Hunters

by Matt Rogers

  Slater took stock.

  His face was a mask of sweat, his heart thudding over triple-time, but his hands weren’t shaking. He had total control of the adrenaline response, channelling it into supreme focus.

  He turned to Alexis and Violetta. ‘Armoury. Now. Go.’

  They took off down the hallway the two intruders had emerged from. Slater stayed behind them, sweeping the hallway with the CQBR, but he found it empty. No one had accompanied the initial two intruders round the side. They’d been a small contingency designed to flank and confuse.

  So Slater let them go.

  He wheeled back to the kitchen and covered the window, anticipating the next wave.

  He sensed King at the door.

  Slater’s ears were ringing and his hearing was temporarily ruined.

  He implemented box breathing — in for two seconds, hold for two, out for two, hold for two — and waited.

  18

  Violetta sprinted to the armoury door.

  She had goosebumps the whole way down the hall. The side door at the end of the corridor hung half-open, and if anyone else came in they’d have a clear shot at both her and Alexis. They were sitting ducks without weapons.

  She made it to the small room, opened the door and stepped in. It was dark but she didn’t bother taking the time to turn on the light. If there were scouts in the backyard it’d only alert them to her position. There was enough hallway light to faintly illuminate the racks of weaponry — carbines, submachine guns, and semi-automatic pistols.

  She reached for one of the Heckler & Koch submachine guns — an MP5.

  She heard Alexis’ footsteps behind her, sticking close.

  And someone else’s footsteps.

  She didn’t know whether to grab the gun or turn immediately. She went for the MP5, and a barrel pressed to the side of her head.

  A voice whispered, ‘No, no, no.’

  It was barely audible above her laboured breathing, but she froze up all the same. Behind her, Alexis was a statue.

  Slowly, Violetta turned, so the barrel drifted to touch her forehead.

  She faced a man with a mane of long black hair. He was tanned, maybe half-Hispanic, and powerfully built. He wore a Kevlar vest and tight black khakis.

  Alexis inhaled sharply.

  The long-haired man smiled at her like a jester. ‘I’m not so drunk now, huh?’

  He kept his voice low, barely above a whisper, and Violetta’s stomach sank. A chill wriggled its way down her spine. There was only one reason he hadn’t executed them yet.

  He was preserving them.

  They were his reward for a job well done.

  Alexis seemed to sense the stakes too. She bristled with pent-up energy. The Hispanic man noticed and raised an eyebrow. He licked his lips, took the gun away from Violetta’s forehead, and took a step back.

  ‘Go on,’ he muttered, still quiet. ‘Do what you think you can do.’

  He was relishing this.

  Violetta willed Alexis not to try anything. They were swimming out of their depth, dragged down by the sick current of overwhelming odds…

  Alexis lunged at the man.

  He kicked her in the ribs as she came in, his shin like a baseball bat. An audible slap emanated from the skin over her ribcage.

  Alexis crumpled, all the fight sucked out of her.

  Violetta’s blood ran colder. They were going to die here tonight, she realised.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to battle down the wave of helplessness. There was a chance she could lunge for the nearest weapons rack, get a pistol in her hands. The long-haired man would have to miss his first shot, maybe his second, too. Which was overall unlikely. But the alternative was worse. One hundred percent chance of death. Undebatable.

  She tensed up to burst off the mark, and the man noticed. The confident smile returned. ‘Go on.’

  The barrel of his gun was pointed at the floor, but now he raised it and aimed the dark maw at her face.

  She froze up.

  The door slammed open as a body crashed into it.

  Someone spilled into the room.

  All the long-haired man had to do was pull the trigger, an action that would take a few milliseconds at most, but he didn’t. He seemed utterly confident that Violetta was still preservable. If he dealt with this new threat, then Violetta was all his.

  The spoils of war.

  It was King who barrelled into the armoury.

  He must have heard the slap of shinbone against ribcage. A cacophony of chaos erupted behind him, the noise of the mansion under siege. Gunshots, fired into the house from the hostile force and returned outward from Will Slater.

  But all of that fell to the wayside as Violetta watched the love of her life charge into danger.

  He’d shouldered the door open so he spilled into the room at top speed. The long-haired man whipped the gun around and fired a reflexive initial shot, which missed King’s head by what had to be inches. It was hard to tell in the lowlight, but Violetta didn’t see his head snap back, didn’t see blood fountaining from an exit wound.

  Her heart was in her throat.

  King returned a couple of shots, but he was on the move, charging with reckless abandon. The first shot hit the man in the Kevlar vest, and the second went just wide of his throat. Violetta realised King was frantic. She’d seen the same recklessness in him when they were threatened at the commune in Wyoming. He’d sacrificed his own wellbeing the moment he’d realised his partner and unborn child were in danger. He was doing the same here. Willing to take a bullet merely to cause a distraction.

  But both men had missed their first shots, and King was still coming, like a two-hundred-and-twenty pound freight train and—

  Impact.

  King tackled the long-haired man around the midsection with no regard for his own safety. They flew back, over four hundred pounds in total, and burst through one of the metal weapon racks. The rack imploded, collapsing on itself, and the two men smashed through, spilling to the floor.

  Violetta knew what she needed to do.

  The noble thing would be to help her man. Charge in and try to kick the long-haired guy in the midst of the scrabble. But that was insanely selfish.

  One glancing blow to her mid-section from a man like that and her child would stay unborn forever.

  So, despite her instincts screaming otherwise, she hauled Alexis to her feet and hustled her out of the room. Behind her, she heard the animalistic grunting of two men wrestling, fighting, brawling for their very lives.

  In the gladiator’s arena.

  She stifled tears as she fled with Alexis, determined to protect her baby.

  19

  Glass shards trickled off the pane of the shattered window but Slater didn’t notice them.

  He was zoned into that window frame like it encompassed his whole world. All he needed was the slightest flash of movement and he’d pump the trigger of the CQBR, lacing the breach point with lead.

  King was still at the door.

  Cold silence.

  Nothing.

  No noise besides the hollow ringing in his ears.

  Then bedlam erupted.

  A sound came from the armoury — bone against flesh. With Slater’s impaired hearing it was like a small stone splashing in a pond, at the edge of his hearing. But it was unnatural, and it seized his attention. Immediately, King abandoned his position at the front door and sprinted behind Slater, SIG Sauer clutched in white knuckles, gunning for the armoury.

  Violetta was in danger.

  The rest was a non factor.

  Slater swept his aim to the door in an attempt to cover both positions from his vantage point beside the kitchen island. He panned in sweeping arcs from door to window, door to window, door to—

  Another flashbang came in through the window.

  Slater thought about diving for it, but it fell just short of the kitchen island countertop. It clattered into the dead space on the other side, out of reach
, and Slater threw himself down, putting the giant slab between him and the grenade.

  Instinctual reaction saved his vision. He knew squeezing his eyes shut wouldn’t be enough, not at such close range. So he pressed his face into the side of the great marble slab, squashing his nose in an attempt to put a solid surface against his closed eyes. Then he pressed his hands so hard against his ears that he thought he might crush his own skull with the squeeze.

  The flashbang exploded.

  It was still horrendous.

  He lifted his face away from the slab, working his jaw. His skull was splitting with pain. He backed up, raised the CQBR, tried to focus…

  There was a new development.

  A soldier in tactical kit had a boot in the kitchen sink. He was working his way in through the window. He leapt down, identical CQBR carbine in his hand, and ducked behind the other side of the kitchen island before Slater could get a shot off.

  Now it was a one-on-one standoff, and only one party was impaired. Slater was ninety percent deaf, seeing double, fighting back waves of nausea from the lack of proprioception.

  Then the mercenary made a tiny mistake.

  Encouraged by the fact he sported more protective gear than his adversary, he risked a glance over the top of the kitchen island. Slater couldn’t comprehend why, but perhaps the guy had little experience in active combat. You make all sorts of mistakes in the real world. The top of the guy’s helmet materialised for a split second, his visor following just long enough to assess the situation.

  Slater put a three-round burst into his helmet.

  None of the rounds went through, but stopping a bullet takes a tremendous amount of resistance, all absorbed by the helmet. Within, it would have felt like three brutal smacks to the dome.

  The guy jerked and went down.

  Slater took a two-step run-up and dived, skidding across the smooth surface of the countertop. He lost his momentum fast, but he didn’t need to tumble off the other side of the kitchen island.

  He only had to get a new line of sight.

  He slid to a halt on his side, facing down at the mercenary, who was rattled and disoriented from the brutal impacts. The man’s visor was cracked by one bullet, and the other two were embedded in the side of his helmet. Slater aimed the CQBR one-handed and put a round through his exposed shoulder, sending the rifle spilling from his adversary’s hands.

  Then he leapt down off the countertop.

  He wanted the guy alive.

  He landed on top of the newly disarmed man and used the butt of his own rifle to smash the visor in with two well-placed strikes. Then he grabbed the guy by the collar with his free hand and dragged him across the length of the kitchen, back behind cover in case anyone else came through the window.

  Hunched over the bleeding, semiconscious mercenary, Slater growled, ‘Who are you? SAC?’

  He could barely hear the sound of his own voice.

  The mercenary didn’t answer. He wouldn’t, even if he was from the Special Activities Centre, the CIA’s deniable program for covert wet work. They were the soldiers sent in to do the dirty work whose executors couldn’t afford donning the official uniform. There was no patriotic pride in operations like theirs.

  Slater shook the guy by the collar. Under the broken visor, under the blood, he looked to be in his late twenties, with that college jock demeanour. A strong jawline, smooth tanned skin, sharp eyes.

  He opened his mouth and mumbled something.

  Slater hissed, ‘What?! Who are you people?!’

  A low voice behind him said, ‘Decoys.’

  20

  King thought he had it in the bag.

  As he struggled to heave the mangled weapons rack off his chest, Violetta fled with Alexis in tow, and relief flooded through him. He could die here as long as they survived. He’d lived a thousand lives already, and the pain of a fatal beating at another man’s hands didn’t faze him either. He’d felt pain in all its facets. Experienced it in every imaginable way.

  Then again, he quite liked his life, so he fought for it with everything he had.

  He powered his way to his feet at the same time as the other guy, whose long hair billowed in waves over his face. The man didn’t bother sweeping it back, just fought with it obstructing his vision like a hellish apparition from a horror movie. He darted forward in a crouch and threw a laser-sharp right hook at hip height, aiming to sweep it upward at the last second and pop it into King’s ribcage.

  King brought his hands low, enacting a competent defence, but the strike never came.

  A fake.

  Oh, shit.

  The other fist was coming at his head before he could change his hand positioning. He jerked backwards like an amateur contortionist in an attempt to avoid the shot, but the ends of the man’s knuckles still smacked him in the nose.

  It broke King’s nose.

  He recoiled, white hot pain drilling through his nose into his skull. He couldn’t think, couldn’t hear, couldn’t see. The pain was monumental. Either it had been a lucky shot, or the long-haired guy was a high-level striker.

  The guy charged in and threw three consecutive punches into King’s mid-section, each one more powerful than the last as he built momentum.

  Left-right-left.

  King turtled up, almost sinking to his knees from the punishment, crippled by the pain. The guy loaded up for a final haymaker to King’s jaw, which would separate him from consciousness long enough to pick up a gun and put a bullet in his head.

  But finally, miraculously, King saw it coming.

  He ducked under the turbocharged right hand and grabbed the guy around the mid-section and drove him down to the floor. But the guy was a competent martial artist, not just a one-trick pony, and he bucked at the hips with the leverage and balance of an NCAA wrestler in Division 1.

  King gave endless thanks for all the simulated sparring with Slater. If the bucking had worked, the guy would have rolled King over, wound up on top, and rained down punches and elbows and knees until King was broken and bloody and defenceless.

  Instead, King slammed the guy’s hips back to the floor and swept his left leg over to mount position, establishing dominance.

  Then the guy did something unanticipated.

  He seized King’s left forearm in a kimura grip, and wrenched with all the kill-or-be-killed strength in his body.

  King felt muscle and tendons tearing.

  In half a second his arm would snap like a twig.

  He sucked in a deep breath, narrowed his focus, channelled all the strength he had left into a final blow.

  Ready?

  Go.

  He cocked his right arm at a ninety-degree angle and dropped it like a sledgehammer as the guy was torquing on his left arm. The elbow slammed into the man’s forehead and snapped his head back against the thin carpet. King saw his eyes and nose and teeth rattle from the brutal impact. He let go of King’s arm and King properly established mount position, then rained down three consecutive elbows.

  Two to the face.

  A final one to the exposed throat.

  Game over.

  The guy was either unconscious, paralysed or dead.

  King reached for the overturned weapons rack and pulled his SIG Sauer P226 MK25 from the twisted metal. The guy’s face underneath him was inscrutable, masked by long strands of hair matted to the blood flowing from his mouth and nose. He took one final breath, looking up at King.

  King put the barrel on his forehead and pulled the trigger.

  The gun blared.

  The blood pulsing at King’s temples and the adrenaline roaring in his ears slowly faded away.

  He heard bodies crashing into hard surfaces in the kitchen.

  Another fight to the death.

  Slater.

  King pushed himself up off the body without a second thought. It was only as his left arm took the majority of his weight that it buckled at the elbow, his forearm on fire, like his nerves were guitar strings that ha
d been snapped with twangs.

  There were no broken bones, but there was serious muscle damage.

  He collapsed on top of the long-haired corpse, grunted his frustration out, and rolled to his feet, using his feet to push himself upright.

  Left arm hanging uselessly by his side, he gripped the SIG tight in his right hand and stumbled out of the armoury.

  21

  Slater’s first thought was, Idiot.

  Instead of shooting him in the back of the head, whoever was behind him had delivered a line designed to frighten him.

  Slater was going to spin around regardless, whether he heard a whisper in his ear or the scuff of foot against the kitchen tiles, so theatrics were pointless.

  But when he twisted on the spot the hostile was ready for it. Even though the CQBR was a variant of the M4 carbine, designed for effective use in tight spaces, it was still an assault rifle. It was bulky and hard to manoeuvre compared to a semi-automatic handgun, which would have acted as an extension of Slater’s hand. Instead he had to whip the bulky rifle around, and big hands snatched it and tried to wrestle it out of his grasp. But Slater held strong and he wrenched it back in his direction, using inhuman strength reserves, and he won.

  He spilled back across the kitchen floor on his rear, holding the CQBR carbine the wrong way round.

  The assailant loomed over him.

  He was small and stocky in the way that most Special Forces operators are. King and Slater were wild exceptions in the clandestine community, each being over six foot tall and north of two hundred pounds. That much muscle is usually wasted, fatigued at the first sign of exertion, which made them anomalies due to their otherworldly conditioning, something they’d worked hard for. The best operators are small because the best operators have the ability to endure. They keep soldiering on long after their bigger, heavier brethren chew through their energy reserves.

  This guy was five-nine at most, but built solid as a lumberjack. He shared the same tactical gear as his comrades, minus the combat helmet. He was genetically unfortunate — eyes spaced too far apart, nose upturned, nostrils wide and flared, lips thick and chapped, cheeks riddled with acne scars. Veins pulsed in his forehead. He was very pale.