Hunters

by Matt Rogers

  Slater took in all this detail in the blink of an eye, then moved to spin the CQBR around and send a few rounds through that ugly face.

  The guy darted forward and stomped on the protruding magazine as the gun came above Slater, pinning the rifle to his chest with a thick combat boot.

  ‘Put that down, man,’ he growled, spit flecking in the corners of his mouth. ‘I want you to test me. Come onnnnn—’

  His voice was strange, like he put emphasis on all the wrong syllables. As if artificial intelligence had been fed every word in the dictionary and told to figure out tone and diction on its own.

  Slater’s head was pounding and the aftereffects of the flashbangs were still front and centre of his mind, so he didn’t waste time arguing. He lifted one shoulder up and thrust it sideways, forcing the guy’s boot off his chest. Then he launched to his feet and brought the rifle up and—

  A gloved fist cracked him full in the face.

  He went blind for a moment and staggered back, reeling, and the gun was gone from his hands. Dropped or stolen, he didn’t know. He couldn’t see from involuntary tears in his eyes, which could only mean one thing.

  His nose was broken.

  He could feel the throbbing, thudding, drilling behind his eyes. He took in exactly how hopeless the situation was. His back was to the breached window, so anyone coming in could shoot him in the back of the head, no problem. He was weaponless, the CQBR at his feet. Facing him was this strange man who looked right at home in the midst of a life-or-death situation, which was a rare trait even for seasoned combatants.

  It made the guy an outlier, just like Slater, just like King.

  Something wasn’t quite right about this.

  The guy leered and said, ‘Go on! Pick it up!’

  He gestured to the carbine rifle at Slater’s feet.

  Slater reached down for it and the guy swung a kick up vertically from floor to ceiling, but Slater’s face wasn’t there to take the impact because the reach had been a fake, and Slater skirted forward and left diagonally, moved around the kick and grabbed the guy by the collar and threw him sideways into the kitchen island. The guy slammed into the edge of the countertop, driving his hip into it, and bounced off. A visible wince came across his face but he suppressed the pain and winged a pair of body shots into Slater’s mid-section.

  The left cracked off his ribs.

  The right smacked him in the solar plexus.

  He felt the wind go out of his sails, an invisible constriction gripping his insides.

  Gassed.

  Winded.

  Compromised.

  The man’s eyes lit up as he sensed it. He faked another body shot and Slater fell for it, bringing his hands down, then the guy cracked him in the broken nose with a gloved fist.

  Slater went down, his head swimming, his knees giving out. The kitchen suddenly felt alien, cold, like a strange freezer. He knew he was teetering at the edge of consciousness. He’d been here many times before, but the sensation wasn’t something you could acclimatise to. No amount of experience would salvage the disadvantage.

  He dropped to his butt and then sprawled onto his back. He tried to bring his arms up to protect his bloodied face but they were like pool noodles, swinging uncontrollably on joints made of rubber.

  He was in bad shape.

  The ugly man pounced on him, still unhurt, still enraged.

  It was then that Slater saw the Heckler & Koch HK45 pistol holstered in a utility belt at the man’s waist.

  His blood went cold.

  What is this? his scrambled brain managed to think. Why hasn’t he pulled his weapon?

  The ugly man seized Slater by the collar of his dress shirt, no longer pristine like it had been at Nobu. Now the material was soaked in sweat and stained with blood.

  The man yelled in Slater’s face, his beady eyes wide, flecking him with spittle. ‘See?! You ain’t shit, boy! Tried to put us all outta a job but ya past ya expiration date.’

  He raised a fist to drive down into Slater’s mangled nose, which would probably punch the whole mass of bone and cartilage into his brain. It would instantly kill him.

  Slater willed his hands up to defend himself, but they didn’t respond.

  So this is it.

  The ugly man threw the fist from twelve o’clock to six o’clock.

  Straight down.

  As soon as he threw it his throat exploded, an exit wound bursting forth from the skin as the bullet that entered the back of his neck came out the other side. But that didn’t stop the trajectory of the punch, or the weight of it under the influence of gravity.

  Slater mustered all his strength and threw his own head to the side.

  The punch glanced off his ear.

  It rattled his brain, and his senses faltered.

  Anaesthetising darkness closed in.

  He didn’t feel the body collapse on top of him.

  He was already unconscious.

  22

  King burst into the kitchen, saw the guy standing over Slater, raised the SIG and fired.

  He’d seen a million punches thrown, so he knew the guy got the strike off in time. He’d also seen the effects of too many strikes absorbed over and over and over again, so he knew Slater was compromised. The guy unleashed the punch at the shoulder joint even as the bullet went through his neck, and it came snapping down toward Slater’s hazy, unfocused eyes.

  Then Slater summoned energy reserves from some hidden nook and jerked his head aside.

  The punch still landed.

  It knocked him out.

  The hostile’s body went limp and fell on top of Slater, arms and legs splayed.

  King sprinted over, hauled the body aside, and rolled Slater onto his side to minimise the risk of vomiting if he choked before he came to.

  An ominous silence settled over the house as Slater returned to consciousness. King sensed him come back, but didn’t see it. His attention was fixated on a revolving door of vantage points — the front door, the broken window, the side passage. But there was no sound whatsoever. He knew he was impaired from the unsuppressed gunshots, but his sixth sense told him that was it for the first wave.

  Still, he whipped the barrel of his SIG from door to window to hallway, just in case he was wrong.

  He’d been wrong before.

  Slater spluttered beside him. King’s arm flared with pain as Slater moved his head.

  He gently lowered Slater’s skull to the ground and shook out his left arm to test it.

  Horrific pain flared.

  King went white, winced, and pinned the arm to his side.

  He wouldn’t be using it for some time.

  He risked a glance down at Slater and saw the man blinking hard, composing himself. The man’s nose was already a swollen mess.

  Slater looked up at him. ‘As bad as yours?’

  King remembered his own nose was broken. He couldn’t breathe through it, and now that someone else had drawn attention to it he felt the pain.

  King saw Slater’s septum puffing before his eyes. ‘Probably.’

  Slater blinked again. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You got knocked out.’

  ‘I see that. I feel alright.’

  ‘Adrenaline.’

  ‘Wait…’

  Slater rolled to his knees and retched, a common occurrence after awakening from involuntary unconsciousness. No vomit came up. He breathed out, a deep rattling exhale, and composed himself.

  King said, ‘I don’t know if you can walk.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Slater said.

  He got a foot underneath himself and levered up to a kneeling position. Then he wobbled at the hips and fell straight back down to the kitchen floor. King saw goosebumps rippling along Slater’s forearms. The man was spooked, and for good measure.

  It’s a terrifying, alien sensation when you lose control of your basic physiological functions.

  Slater took a breath, then snatched up the CQBR and aimed it at th
e shattered window frame above the kitchen sink.

  King said, ‘Don’t be stupid. Put that down.’

  ‘Drag me,’ Slater said. ‘By the collar. I’ll cover you.’

  King shook his head disbelievingly at the resilience. Slater was too mentally compromised to even get his feet under him, but still his automatic instincts were disciplined. He was doing what he could to help.

  King said, ‘I’m defenceless if I drag you.’

  It was true. He couldn’t lift his left arm to aim a weapon if he was dragging Slater with his right.

  Slater said, ‘That’s what I’m here for. We need to move. Come on.’

  King watched Slater brandish the CQBR rifle. His aim was all over the place, his hands shaking involuntarily, his focus wavering with each breath he took. He was in no position to competently cover for King, but there were few other options.

  Then Violetta and Alexis burst into the room.

  King wheeled, frantic. ‘No! Get back in—’

  ‘We heard you,’ Violetta interrupted. ‘You can cover us. We’ll get him to the garage.’

  King hesitated, then heard glass crunching over his shoulder.

  He wheeled back to the window.

  There was a silhouette in it, filling the whole frame. Tactical gear, helmet, visor — the works. He was taking aim with a M4 CQBR variant, identical to the gun Slater wielded.

  King’s stomach dropped hard.

  The mercenary fired a single round.

  That was all he managed.

  King blew his throat apart with a concentrated three-round burst before the guy could squeeze off any more shots. He fell back from the window, clutching his neck as arterial blood spurted from it.

  King spun.

  He thought his heart had stopped.

  Violetta was frozen in place, her hair tousled, her face pale. Her eyes were wide with shock.

  King feared the worst, but a glance at her belly revealed it was untouched.

  Then his gaze wandered sideways and he saw the bullet hole in the plaster wall beside her.

  Inches from her right shoulder.

  Maybe everything could be okay…

  ‘Fuck,’ King said, unable to hide the relief in his tone. ‘Get to the garage, both of you. I’ll handle Slater. If anyone’s getting shot it’s me.’

  They sensed the devotion in his voice, and both women high-tailed it for the garage.

  King said to Slater, ‘Your aim better be decent.’

  Slater said, ‘When isn’t it?’

  Right now, King thought.

  He watched the rifle barrel sway like a hypnotic pendulum, then snapped out of his trance, dropped his weapon, snatched Slater’s collar, and slid the man across the tiled floor out of the kitchen.

  They passed the ugly man with the bullet in his neck, who was curled up in the corner, facing the wall, blood everywhere.

  King said, ‘Who was he? Why is his fucking gun holstered?’

  Slater said, ‘An old coworker. Think he was trying to prove a point.’

  King went silent for a beat as he dragged Slater. ‘Shit.’

  Slater said, ‘Yeah, shit.’

  23

  Slater kept the CQBR trained on the window frame.

  Well, one of them.

  There were four windows swimming around in his vision. He had to guess which was the real one. He saw double, triple, quadruple, and it made him realise he hadn’t been this compromised for a long time. Besides ingesting a mammoth dose of Bodhi in Wyoming, he hadn’t faced serious physical or mental adversity for several consecutive operations.

  Not since New York, when the lights went dark on the whole city.

  King dragged him out of the kitchen and he let the rifle droop, trying to condense all his focus into returning to full health. It wasn’t easy. He willed his vision to centralise, willed his reflexes to return. Nothing happened. The brain is mysterious and complex, but the rules are simple enough. Take a smack to the head that’s powerful enough to black you out and you’re going to be swimming for some time. No way around it.

  King got him into the darkened garage as the roar of gunfire started up again from the front of the estate, a second wave of gunfire lacing the front of the mansion.

  From somewhere nearby Violetta said, ‘We’re never coming back here.’

  King said, ‘No shit.’

  He hauled Slater to the closest vehicle, a four-door Mercedes-Benz GLS SUV. It was their daily driver, purchased when they’d returned from Wyoming and found themselves in a brief stretch of normalcy. Now King left Slater in a seated position against the rear wheel so he could shake out his good arm. Slater looked up and saw the veins flaring in King’s forearm, the muscles drenched in lactic acid from dragging a two-hundred pound deadweight across most of the estate’s ground floor.

  Violetta said, ‘The command centre.’

  King said, ‘What?’

  ‘Needs to be wiped.’

  King knew she was right, but didn’t want to admit it.

  Alexis said, ‘I’ll go.’

  King said, ‘Do you know how to do it?’

  Alexis didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself.

  Violetta pointed down at Slater. ‘Get him in the back. I’ll only be a couple of minutes.’

  King said, ‘No.’

  ‘Alexis will cover me.’

  ‘I’ll cover you.’

  ‘With one arm?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Violetta made for the side door. ‘Get him in the car.’

  King snatched her arm with his good hand.

  She spun, eyes aflame. ‘Your grip’s weak. You know I’m right. Get him in the car.’

  To seal the arrangement, Alexis reached down and snatched the CQBR rifle out of Slater’s limp hands.

  Slater let her do it. There was little alternative.

  King breathed out, then ripped the SIG from his waistband and handed it to Violetta.

  This was hell.

  She took it, gave him a look that said, It’ll be okay, and ran back into the house, Alexis tailing inches from her heels.

  Slater’s head was foggy. He couldn’t think. ‘The command centre?’

  ‘It has everything.’

  ‘Like what?’

  With his left arm trapped to his side, King tugged the rear door of the SUV open and grabbed Slater by the collar. ‘Our account details, for one.’

  ‘Money’s more important than their lives?’

  ‘Our records of contacting Alonzo.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘The location of the safe house.’

  Oh.

  Slater’s heart thudded in his chest as he clambered shakily to his feet. He couldn’t make it on his own, but King yanking him by the collar gave him the extra momentum to get his legs underneath him. He stumbled into the vehicle, sprawling across the rear seats, then pulled himself up into a seated position.

  King went to the wall, snatched up the remote for the garage door, and pressed the button as he back-pedalled to the car. He used the rear door as cover to assess what the situation out front looked like as the garage door inched upward with a mechanical groan. A fresh P226 pistol had materialised in his hand.

  Slater mumbled, ‘Where’d you get that?’

  ‘Beside the remote.’

  Slater’s eyes wandered to where the holster was skewered into the concrete beside the garage fob. His brain took a second to catch up to his eyes. Backup gun. ‘Oh, yeah.’

  The door rolled up to chest height, revealing two silhouettes squatting in the gap, anticipating them fleeing through the garage.

  King fired twice and one man went down. The second got a shot off and King fired back and the final man jerked sideways like a grotesque marionette.

  Slater heard the shots, watched the gunfight play out, but it was like watching it on an old-fashioned TV that couldn’t find a signal. He was still skirting on the edges of dreamworld.

  King collapsed into the car, his face ghost white
.

  Slater got frantic. ‘What?! Are you hit?’

  ‘Right shoulder,’ King gasped between breaths. ‘Quick.’

  Slater understood.

  Even badly compromised, he understood.

  Their combat synergy was something instinctual by now. Even though the haze, he could act. He lurched across the rear seats and fell on top of King in his haste to get pressure on the man’s shoulder.

  Sure enough, a bullet had entered the deltoid muscle, and blood poured out. Only now did Slater notice the shattered window in the rear door, the door King had used for cover. Hopefully the glass had deformed the bullet as it passed through, which is typical in soft nose or hollow point rounds, lowering the speed of subsequent impacts.

  Still, a small piece of lead had torn through flesh and muscle, so it was a terrible situation regardless.

  It was made worse by the fact that King couldn’t use his bad arm to put pressure on the bleeding wound.

  Which was why he’d called for help so urgently.

  Slater was woozy as he pressed his palm hard over the wound, and King winced under the pale sheet that was his face, but it did the job. They sat there side by side, both of them horribly incapacitated, functionally useless in combat.

  King said, ‘Not good, huh?’

  Slater couldn’t see straight, but he mustered the wherewithal to respond. ‘We’ve been in worse spots.’

  Despite everything, King cracked a delirious smile.

  The silhouettes of the dead mercenaries lay sprawled at the lip of the garage, and darkness encompassed everything beyond. They waited for a sniper round to blare out of the abyss, putting an end to all their suffering.

  It didn’t come.

  King mumbled, ‘The girls better be quick.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Slater grunted.

  But a morsel of cognisance returned. Enough to reach into the footwell and snatch up the P226 King had dropped when he’d been hit.

  Slater knew he’d be a terrible shot. Knew he’d be mostly useless to defend them.