by Matt Rogers
Wired, pulsating with nervous energy, honed in on micro-reactions and micro-expressions, Ruby turned and walked backward down the corridor when Phil followed her.
She kept her eyes on him, watching for any sign of sudden aggression. But there was nothing there behind the milky unfocused pupils, and she could immediately tell there were a thousand thoughts running through his head that had nothing to do with situational awareness — thoughts like, What if I don’t impress her? What if I finish early? What if I ruin my one chance to fuck a supermodel?
She almost smiled at his vulnerability.
Phil led her to a tiny bedroom with no windows and a musty odour. The air was stale — with no ventilation, the biker’s dirty laundry and general untidiness had been left to fester. The single mattress in the corner of the room had no bed frame, and the sheets were stained yellow from sweating in his sleep.
Ruby nearly gagged, and briefly doubted everything.
Does he think I’d be stupid enough to come here?
Is he the one roping me along?
But she’d forgotten the most fundamental law of human nature.
Men often think with their privates, and that makes them stupid.
She sauntered into the room and twisted at the waist, looking back, flashing him the universal fuck-me eyes. He practically ran inside and shut the door behind him.
Immediately reached down to his belt and unbuckled the catch and…
The Ka-Bar was in her hand in an instant and she slashed his throat with a slick horizontal swing. She clamped her other hand tight over his mouth as his arteries erupted and gently lowered his bleeding, shaking, dying body to the mattress.
She watched his eyes glaze over, and felt nothing at all.
Wiped the blade on his leather vest, and danced over to the door.
Quietly opened it and slipped out into the corridor.
83
King battled down the urge to react with desperate aggression.
It wasn’t going to work.
His default mode was fundamentally useless here.
The guy was sweating and shaking and there was nothing binding his finger to the detonator. No tape holding it in place. No fail-safes. Which meant he was a live operative. There was no turning back. He’d pressed down on it, and they’d sent him out into the field. He’d no doubt been ordered to head straight for the earliest festivities and let go in as crowded a location as he could find. And now King could see he was wearing a jacket at least three sizes too big, with the sleeves rolled way up and the buttons undone. When he adjusted those, he’d look like any other junkie roaming the streets in clothes that didn’t fit — not, by any stretch of the imagination, a suicide bomber.
King floated a glance past the man, inside the warehouse. His view was stunted, but he saw an interior metal walkway running around the perimeter of a cavernous central space. There was no sign of anyone else. This guy had pressed down on the detonator on the first floor, and made straight for the fire stairs. Maybe to breathe. Maybe to comprehend the gravity of what he’d done.
King knew, deep in his soul, that every word he uttered would be the difference between life and death.
Between victory and failure.
On a national scale.
Sweat ran down his face but he didn’t dare reach up and wipe it.
He kept his voice low and calm, and he said, ‘You don’t want to do this, do you?’
The guy gave him a blank stare.
As if looking right through him.
King said, ‘You regret pushing down on that thing. You regret listening to everything they told you. You regret believing them.’
Silence.
King said, ‘You’re angry at the country. Angry at the world. But you’re not insane. You hear me? They might have told you you’re crazy and that there’s no hope and that you might as well go out with a bang and take as many of these motherfuckers with you along the way, but you don’t believe that deep down, do you? You thought you did but now you’re realising you don’t.’
The guy — no, not a guy; a kid, because he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five — didn’t say a word. Didn’t give any sort of emotional reaction besides a twitch of the eyelids. He stared at King — not looking him in the eyes, vacantly gazing — with a look of utter nihilism. He’d given up all hope.
But he hadn’t let go of the detonator.
King said, ‘How much do you hate them?’
‘Who?’
‘The people you’re going to kill.’
‘Fuck them.’
‘Why?’
‘You think any of this matters? What’s it matter what I do?’
‘I don’t think you’re weak.’
‘What?’
King said, ‘I don’t think you’re as soft as they think you are.’
‘You fuckin’ think that I’m—?’
‘No,’ King said. ‘They do. Not me. I think war or trauma has fucked with your head like it’s fucked with mine — like it’s fucked with all of ours. You go overseas and you fight against people you don’t know or understand and it ruins you. You dream. You wake up sweating. I know what it’s like, brother. You hear voices. Maybe they’re powerful voices. But you know what those guys downstairs did to you? They put you in a place like this with a dozen other guys that feel the exact same way, and they made an echo chamber out of it. Because if everyone hears the voices, then they must be there, right?’
The guy brought the detonator up in front of his face and looked hard at it.
King’s heart rate spiked.
But he kept his voice controlled, at all costs.
He said, ‘Look at it. You don’t want to be here.’
‘Keep talking,’ the guy said, still sweating, still shaking, still locked in a staring contest with the small inanimate object that could, through second- and third-order consequences, change the fate of the developed world.
King said, ‘They took advantage of you because they think you’re weak, and they think you’ll cave to what they tell you to do. And I’m not going to sit here and say life’s a fucking fantasy and that you’ll get that vest off and everything will be fine, because those voices never go away and they only get worse and if you want the truth life’s going to be hell from now on. But you’re a warrior and warriors don’t take the easy way out. I’m not letting you off the hook. You let me help you and you can do whatever the fuck you want with your life. You want to jump off a bridge, then do it. But you’d be doing it with honour, and you’d be taking responsibility, even though your head’s falling apart like all of our heads fall apart.’
Dead quiet.
King said, ‘Don’t be weak. Be strong. Fight that battle between your ears and win. Winning’s all we do, brother.’
The guy was pouring sweat now. There was perspiration running down his face, and King realised some of it was tears. His eyes were bloodshot and etched with deep, visceral pain. The sort of pain you couldn’t fathom. The pain of a crippling, devastating, soul-sucking mental illness. Probably exacerbated by post-traumatic stress.
But deep in there, somewhere hidden, somewhere untapped, he was still in there.
The man he used to be.
He looked at King with crippling existential pain, but he fought through it, and he said, ‘Okay. Get this fucking thing off me, man.’
King exhaled.
84
Slater came in like a freight train.
His natural athleticism aided him as he made it to the second RV in a couple of seconds flat. He was a charging bull, swollen with momentum, and he crashed into the flimsy door so hard that the whole thing snapped off one of its hinges and dangled loosely inward.
Then he was past it and up the same short flight of steps and inside before any of the occupants realised what the hell was happening.
One of them was reasonably close to a few Heckler & Koch sidearms on a table so Slater shot him in the face first, then turned and pumped two rounds into the chest o
f the guy standing next to him.
So all at once there was the crash of the door crumbling and the ear-piercing roar of unsuppressed gunshots in an enclosed space and the warm smack of blood spraying against furniture and the meaty thunk-thunk of two corpses hitting the floor. Not to mention the flash of the muzzle flare to disorientate, and the presence of sudden brutal violence. If the three remaining sicarios had been ordinary civilians they might have had panic attacks, but even though they were soulless killers who raped and murdered men, women, and children, they still had the same biological and physiological reactions to sudden shock.
They flinched.
A couple of them cowered away from the gunshots, protecting their heads with their forearms, as if that would do anything at all. Slater shot one of them in the back of the skull and dotted three rounds across the upper back of the next guy, because he was further away and it was harder to guarantee a headshot.
So the process repeated with those two, accompanied by all the same horrific sounds and sights.
Which made the fifth guy freeze like a deer in headlights in the middle of the room, surrounded by his dead colleagues.
He put his hands up, and said, ‘Surrender. I surrender.’
Slater stared at all the guns in the RV. There was some serious firepower here — the same deal as the first vehicle. Rifles, pistols, shotguns, and combat knives as a last resort.
He said, ‘What if everyone at the festival surrendered? What would you have done then?’
The guy didn’t respond.
Then, after some thought, he said, ‘You wouldn’t kill an unarmed man. Have some honour, esé. That’s how we do it in Mexico.’
‘No it’s not.’
Slater pumped the trigger.
Only once.
That was all he needed.
He ejected the magazine and chambered a fresh one, and swept the RV meticulously for any fail-safes, like explosives set to detonate on a timer, or tripwires. He didn’t expect to find anything, and he didn’t. Then he went over to the fifth guy and pulled his corpse off the floor to preserve his clothes. He didn’t want them coated in the blood that was spreading from the other four bodies.
He needed the garments for later.
He went to the door and pushed it shut.
85
Ruby shed the oversized puffer jacket and took off the cumbersome Balenciaga shoes.
Then she padded barefoot into the hallway, quiet as a mouse. She would do it quietly. All of it.
She braced herself for the violence to come — none of it would be pretty, none of it would make her feel good, but all of it was necessary.
And she’d done this before. The Lynx program, despite its morally bankrupt foundations, had shaped her into the monster the world needed. She’d infiltrated dozens of discreet meetings between sex traffickers and paedophiles and corrupt international businessmen and dictators and warlords. They all shared a common theme. They had money, and they relished power. Even if they went the other way, it was always good business to have pretty girls on the boats to impress clients.
So she was the woman for the job.
She padded to the end of the hallway and held the Ka-Bar in a reverse grip and knocked on the wooden archway leading to the communal area. Just a light rapping, but it echoed in the quietness of the clubhouse. She heard the soft sounds of the mercenary preparing his weapons go silent. Then there was total quietness — but Ruby Nazarian saw quietness as an advantage rather than a hindrance.
She pressed herself up against a slight alcove in the wall and waited for the guy to materialise in front of her.
He did.
She saw his strong jawline and long flowing hair and piercing eyes and almost shivered at how little he looked like a killer. She’d be drawn to his charm if she passed him on the street, and here he was about to gun down civilians en masse.
Then again, everyone she’d killed felt the same about her.
But she only killed when it meant something.
When a soulless psychopath needed his ticket punched.
Ruby punched this guy’s ticket with one jabbing downward motion. She always marvelled at how effortlessly a blade could slice through skin. It almost felt like cheating. She stabbed him through the side of the throat and clamped the same hand over his mouth, silencing him with an expert’s precision. Not a shred of muted air escaped out the side of his lips.
She propped him up, using all the strength in her arms, and he valiantly remained standing for a few beats as his life sapped away. She used that time to encourage him down the corridor, taking a series of short weak steps to Phil’s bedroom.
She shoved him through the door, and he sprawled out on his stomach next to the biker and finished dying.
She quietly pulled the door shut, sealing them in, and plotted her next move.
There were sounds of faint commotion all around her, and with her hearing still intact she could zone into them.
She focused on a collective murmuring coming from the end of this hallway, deeper into the building. There was a closed door set into the far wall, and she went toward it.
She stopped right in front of it and pressed her ear to the chipped wood.
Thought about pulling out the Glock, but there could be twenty men in the building, and she figured the odds weren’t in her favour.
Yet.
She heard low voices — maybe four separate ones. They were all speaking fast as hell, cutting each other off with mutual intensity.
‘Should I do another one?’
‘Why the fuck not?’
‘Dunno about that, Joey.’
‘It’ll help us get through the day.’
‘You havin’ doubts?’
‘Nah.’
‘Better not be.’
‘The fuck you gonna do about it?’
‘Chill.’
‘Can’t chill. I’m three lines deep, man. You’re going for a fourth.’
‘I can handle it. Done it before.’
‘We need that many? You really think?’
‘Makes you feel like a god. Best results come from this shit. We ain’t fighting’ anybody. We just killin’.’
‘We’ll stop at a few, right? We ain’t massacring.’
Silence.
But it was a coked-up silence.
So it only lasted a few seconds.
Then one guy said, ‘Did the fuckin’ instructions say to stop at a few?’
‘Let’s do what we gotta do and get outta there.’
‘You are having doubts.’
‘Not doubts. Just … we don’t need to go overboard.’
‘When’d you have a change of heart?’
‘Joey, I told you I’ll do what I gotta do. I’ll gun down a few kids in front of you if you need me to fuckin’ prove it to you. But if we hang around too long emptying clip after clip, we’ll get caught. And you know how bad that’ll look.’
Another voice said, ‘Relax, man. Do another line.’
‘Okay. All at once?’
‘Fuck it, why not? We’re outta here in an hour.’
There was the sound of credit cards tapping against a table, over and over and over again, then four or five snorts in unison.
Ruby took all this in, and applied ruthless analysis, and figured out how to play it.
Sometimes it took courage.
She knocked.
There was a pause, and she tensed up in anticipation, but she put the Ka-Bar behind her back. Then someone crossed the room and threw the door open.
He was a grizzled merc, with red skin starched by a cocktail of testosterone and HGH, and a thick beard flecked with grey and short close-cropped hair. He was wearing a denim shirt that was tight on his corded musculature, and there were veins running up and down his forearms like road maps. And his eyes were crazed — four lines of cocaine would do that to you. Especially if it was the good shit, which Ruby guessed it was, given their co-workers for this particular job were from the Sinaloa car
tel.
They’d probably been gifted a whole brick for the companionship.
The second the door opened Ruby battered her eyelids and gave a warm smile and said, ‘Hey, honey.’
The merc stiffened. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
But he didn’t immediately go for a weapon. In her peripheral vision, she noticed there was an empty holster at his waist. So if he wanted to arm himself he’d need to go back into the room.
Ruby said, ‘Phil hired me. You boys need a good time before the big day, after all.’
He relaxed a little, because it initially made sense, but the more he thought about it the less it added up. She didn’t give him time to think it through, though — she breezed past him and ran a hand along his barrel chest.
Without the jacket, she was in her tube top and lounge pants. Her midriff was on display, and her breasts were pushed up, and her eyes were as tantalising as ever.
She turned and and saw four sweaty mercs hunched over a table with lines of white powder in front of them and rolled-up hundred dollar bills between their fingers. The guy at the door must have been the most conditioned to railing lines, because the other four almost drooled when they saw her.
They’d heard what she’d said, after all.
And in their current state, that was their idea of heaven.
‘Hey, boys,’ she said with a smile.
The red merc by the door figured it out first. He said, ‘Where is Phil?’
He was onto her.
Ruby didn’t care.
She was through the door.
She turned and swung an uppercut with the knife and plunged the blade up through the underside of his chin and into his skull.
86
King said, ‘Don’t move a muscle, okay?’
‘Okay,’ the shaking bomber said.
‘Now step out here, brother. Out on this walkway. Trust me, I’m going to help you.’
The guy came out over the threshold. Out of sight if anyone inside was watching.
King said, ‘I’m going to open your jacket and take a look at the vest.’