Hunters

by Matt Rogers

  ‘Until then you sit in your house and watch some television and forget I exist.’

  Another nod.

  She was scared shitless.

  He knew she’d follow orders.

  He gestured to the idling Ford. Violetta spilled out first, all four passports sandwiched in her closed fist. Alexis followed. Together they rounded to the rear door and manhandled Slater out. With a shoulder under each arm they helped him limp groggily up the sloped driveway, brushing past the blonde woman to dump him across the rear seats of her car. The door was already open thanks to the grocery bags in her hands. The car itself was a mid-size Kia Optima, plain and suburban and anonymous, perfect for their requirements.

  Violetta stood upright, arching her back, sucking in wind at carrying most of Slater’s weight. She turned and regarded the woman, then looked at King. ‘Should she be seeing our faces?’

  King said, ‘Doesn’t matter,’ as he tucked the gun away. ‘By the time she talks we’ll be long gone.’

  Even though he’d removed the main threat from sight, she didn’t budge an inch, seized by fear. She knew what he was capable of.

  Or, at least, what she thought he was capable of.

  The woman was smart. She swept damp locks of hair off her forehead, then stared King in the eyes. ‘Midnight. Tonight. You can trust me.’

  ‘Yes I can.’

  He motioned to Violetta, who tossed him the keys to their Ford. He handed them to the woman, who gave him a reluctant, confused look.

  King said, ‘Put our car in your garage, out of sight. Tell the authorities I made you do it at gunpoint. Or, if you prefer the Ford, never place the call to the cops in the first place. Consider it a fair trade.’

  She glanced at the rundown second-hand Ford Explorer, then her shiny Kia in turn. Her voice infinitely feeble, she almost whispered, ‘I like my car.’

  ‘Then go get your insurance money,’ King said.

  He swept past her and got behind the wheel of the Kia. Alexis, naturally magnetised to Slater, helped him into the back seat, and Violetta took the passenger seat. Alexis then got out and doubled back to collect the MP5s from the Ford. She lugged the submachine guns up the driveway and ducked into the Kia with them as the civilian woman watched in horror.

  King threw the mid-sizer in reverse and gunned it out of the neighbourhood. The last image he caught in the rear view mirror was of the woman ducking behind the wheel of the Ford, fishing for the ignition.

  It was reality. People like King and Slater could afford to be heroes. They had very few personal attachments, even fewer possessions, and a devastating skillset to boot. This mother had a child to protect, and there was no withstanding the might of the Sinaloa cartel.

  In this situation, she was brave to obey.

  Bide her time, learn from the experience, and live to fight another day.

  Violetta said, ‘She’ll call right away. We’ve barely bought ourselves more time.’

  ‘She’ll call at midnight,’ King said, barreling back toward I-15.

  ‘And how do you know that?’

  ‘Because our car’s not there anymore.’

  Violetta twisted in her seat and caught a glimpse of the Ford’s rear end disappearing through the rolled-up garage door. She said, ‘I’ll be damned.’

  King said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  They sped back toward Vegas.

  41

  They made it back to the city limits without incident.

  There was a brief respite from conversation, a period of time they all used to recover from the whirlwind in St. George.

  Finally, Violetta held up the passports. ‘These aren’t going to work.’

  King said, ‘They’ll work in the sense that they’re valid passports. Jada was playing for the other team but she still did her job. You know what a legit document looks like, and you checked them before Slater unleashed hell. They’ll get us past customs, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Violetta admitted. The documents were perfectly legitimate. ‘But that’s the end of the road. They’ll trigger alerts the moment they’re scanned.’

  ‘We still have Alonzo.’

  She hesitated. ‘We’re asking too much of him.’

  ‘Like he hasn’t risked his career for us already?’

  ‘He’s doing it from the good of his heart,’ Violetta said. ‘He’s lending a helping hand. What you’re asking for now…’

  From the back, Slater said, ‘If you’ve got another plan, Violetta, we’re all ears.’

  Silence.

  King said, ‘Then that’s that.’

  ‘What if he says no?’

  ‘Then he says no. Why bother speculating until we know for sure?’

  Violetta inhaled sharply, then nodded. ‘You’re right. Shit, this is bad.’

  She used the sat phone from the safe house to dial his number.

  He answered immediately. ‘What happened in Utah?’

  ‘We went to an old employee for fresh passports.’

  ‘Jada Butler,’ Alonzo said, as if he were reading off a screen.

  Violetta paused. ‘So you do know what happened in Utah?’

  ‘I know now. There’s a report in my feed of an incident with an unnamed operative in Bloomington Heights. One of the gemstones, I take it? Those are the only wet work operatives that keep their movements hidden. I only find out about these things after the fact.’

  ‘Then why were you asking what happened?’

  ‘I had no idea you were headed there.’

  ‘No shit,’ Violetta said. ‘What do you think would have happened if you set up the meet? She would have called her old superiors regardless, to double-check you were legitimate, and they would have discovered you were aiding enemies of the state. If we told you what we were doing you’d be dead already.’

  Alonzo let it sink in. ‘Shit. So she was a double agent?’

  ‘No,’ Violetta said. ‘It’s not as conspiratorial as that. She made a judgment call. What she thought was the right decision. She doesn’t know us, after all. She passed it up the chain of command.’

  ‘So you still need documents, I take it.’

  ‘We have them,’ Violetta said. ‘The ones she made for us.’

  ‘Why would she—?’

  ‘She’s good at what she does. She used them to stall us. We were supposed to be studying the passports so that Zircon prick could step out of a side room and put bullets in our backs.’

  ‘What happened instead?’

  ‘Slater sprung him first.’

  ‘Judging by the report in front of me, I take it it didn’t go smoothly.’

  ‘It did not.’

  Alonzo thought hard, absorbing the information he had on hand. ‘You need me to kill the passport alert so nobody sees them.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘It’s not something I can automatically program, or they’ll have physical evidence that I was aiding the four of you.’

  ‘Who will see it?’

  ‘Them.’

  The hunters, Violetta realised. ‘Go on.’

  He said, ‘I’ll need to manually kill the alert as soon as it enters the feed. As in: see it come in, highlight it, get rid of it, erase any trace of it ever being there. But that’ll be in real-time. There’ll be a second — maybe longer — when it’s there for anyone to notice.’

  Violetta paused, ruminating, her stress levels skyrocketing. She tried to lower them intentionally, putting her mind to it. Stress in any form couldn’t be healthy for the baby growing inside her.

  She said, ‘Is there any other way?’

  She noticed King’s ears perk up at that line.

  Alonzo said, ‘Not that I can think of. The digital blanket over your identities took me weeks to set up. Here, I only have hours. Can’t you stay in-country for a while?’

  ‘They’ll track us down,’ Violetta said. ‘You told us that yourself.’

  ‘I did,’ he muttered, clearly uncomfortable. ‘Okay. I’ll do it. But if a
ny of the higher-ups are watching the feed of incoming alerts at precisely that moment…’

  ‘It’s all of our lives,’ she said.

  It might have been prudent not to bring that up, but she needed Alonzo to understand the stakes, to know what he was getting himself into. If he made a rash decision, failed, and regretted it, she’d carry that burden with her for the rest of her life.

  Alonzo said, ‘We’ve come this far, haven’t we?’

  ‘You don’t have to do this.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I turned you away. And maybe it’s tipping the scales, you know. I signed up to serve my country to help people. What I’m doing now … it’s only helping the elites. Not the masses. Maybe if I help you, there’ll be karmic rewards down the line. The light at the end of the tunnel and all that.’

  Violetta said, ‘We’ll let you know when we’re in line.’

  ‘Make sure you do. If I erase it too late, they’ll have already seen it, and it’ll be obvious I’m colluding with you. Then it’s all our heads on the chopping block.’

  ‘Thank you, Alonzo. From the bottom of my heart.’

  ‘Anytime. From the bottom of mine.’

  He hung up first.

  She pressed the top of the sat phone to her forehead, closed her eyes, and exhaled.

  King said, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘He has to kill the alert in real time.’

  The concept didn’t require further explanation. Everyone in the car understood, even Alexis. King and Slater had a slightly better grasp on it, so they fell into concerned silence.

  Alexis decided to think out loud. ‘So for that brief moment it appears, anyone can see.’

  Violetta nodded slowly, which Alexis saw through the gap in the headrest.

  Slater said, ‘They’re narrowing in on us. We don’t have another choice. We bunker down here and they’ll find us. They’re probably already combing Bloomington Heights for forensics.’

  King said, ‘But they don’t have this car. Not yet.’

  Violetta said, ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘Either way,’ King said, ‘we get on a plane out of here, or we don’t.’

  42

  They parked at McCarran, knowing it would be the last they would ever see of the Kia Optima.

  King hoped it would be found eventually and returned to its rightful owner. They’d taken care of it for the brief time it was in their possession.

  Wordlessly, they followed the procedures they’d drilled for this very predicament. They separated right away, moving individually to different shuttle bus stops in the sprawling car park. Slater and Violetta boarded the first bus that came, sitting as far away from each other as was feasible. King and Alexis caught the next one. Inside McCarran’s international departure terminal, they kept separate with their heads down and their demeanours unsuspicious.

  They met up again at the last second, just before stepping into the line for check-in.

  Violetta hit SEND on a pre-written text message with the sat phone in her pocket.

  It went to Alonzo.

  “Get ready.”

  43

  The soft hum of intelligence analysts deep in concentration trickled down the corridor.

  In his windowless office, Alonzo scrutinised one of the monitors on his desk with fists clenched.

  There were dark sweat patches in the pits of his polo shirt. He kept his arms pinned to his side in case anyone important strolled past. These offices in a bland skyscraper in Manhattan were home to some of the most influential assets in the country. They were those who weren’t elected, who stayed put for as long as the job required them, who controlled the swaying opinions of the masses, and then were phased out when their time was up, retiring as anonymously as when they began their careers. They were more powerful than the highest tier of celebrities and politicians.

  They were the surveillance world.

  And if any of them caught wind of what he was doing — who he was aiding — there’d be hell to pay.

  Everything was set up the way it should be. There was an incoming alert tracker displayed on his screen, currently blank, the white text box glowing brightly enough to make his eyes water. But he didn’t dare blink or look away, in case the notification that King and Slater had been identified at McCarran appeared in that exact moment his vision was dark. He recited the commands he needed to execute to wipe the alert from the feed, over and over again.

  Any second now…

  Nothing yet.

  He reached blindly for his coffee mug, fumbling with it, bringing it to his lips and sipping the lukewarm brew. It was godawful, and he wasn’t sure why he was funnelling more stimulants into a nervous system already overrun with stress, but he did it anyway. Call it a ritual, a good-luck charm.

  He stared harder, as if he could will the alert into existence.

  Nothing.

  Then it flashed on-screen.

  44

  At McCarran, Violetta took the lead.

  None of them had bothered with hair dye or corrective contact lenses. Unless there was in-person surveillance at the airport itself by undercover agents, then CCTV footage would return nothing of note if it scanned their faces. Alonzo had put a digital blocker on their features months ago, like a blanket thrown over any facial identification software that picked them out of a crowd in public footage. Someone would need to physically watch every camera in the airport to catch them lined up in the queue, and not even the U.S. government had that sort of manpower. Those rudimentary tasks had been delegated to machines years previously.

  Violetta handed the passports over. She’d already booked the flights online, squirrelling them onto a red-eye to El Salvador.

  The tired yet artificially happy woman behind the desk didn’t look at their passports twice. She scanned them one-by-one, asked if they had any baggage, looked semi-surprised to find that they didn’t, but her forced smile returned after she realised it didn’t really matter one way or the other.

  No alarms sounded, but why would they?

  The first they would hear of it would be a gun barrel stuck in their faces as they disembarked in El Salvador.

  The woman handed them their passports with a ticket slotted into the first page of each, and sent them on their way.

  45

  Alonzo highlighted the chunk of incoming data.

  Its headline flashed loud on the monitor.

  HIGH IMPORTANCE. POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION @ MCCARRAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. JASON KING. WILL SLATER. VIOLETTA LAFLEUR. ALEXIS DIAZ.

  There was more underneath about the nature of the alert — flagged passports, et cetera — but Alonzo didn’t have time to read.

  Sweating bullets, he executed the “erase” command, tapped in his ten-digit security verification code as fast as his fingers could fly across the keyboard, and hit “Enter.”

  He had uninhibited access to the system, so it was as simple as that. Anyone else required approval from a superior, but he’d designed a sizeable swathe of the system in the first place, so he had free reign over it.

  The text disappeared. It had remained on screen for all of two seconds, but Alonzo was by no means the only one with access to the feed. Blank faces in higher places than he could even fathom relied on it to make measured decisions about the future of the country. They were faces he’d never even heard of, let alone met.

  Alonzo stared at the text box, now blank again, and breathed out. He drank the dregs of his coffee down. They were cold, but the disgusting texture didn’t even register. He pitched back in his swivel chair, looked up at the ceiling and exhaled. Spun a long, slow revolution. That was the last major risk he’d need to take. In El Salvador it would be simpler. He could streamline it, delegate responsibility to Antônia, forget this whole messy ordeal had ever happened.

  When he spun back around there was a broad-shouldered man in a grey pinstripe suit filling the doorway.

  Alonzo froze on the spot.

  S
tared at the guy, who was maybe sixty with bushy eyebrows and a rugby player’s iron jaw. He didn’t recognise the distinct features. There was no ah-ha moment. He didn’t know the man.

  Alonzo said, ‘Are you new?’

  The man said, ‘No.’

  Alonzo’s blood ran cold.

  He said, ‘Fuck,’ involuntarily.

  The steel-jawed man nodded. ‘Yeah. “Fuck.”’

  ‘Are you armed?’

  ‘I don’t need to be. You’ll comply. You’re aware of the alternative.’

  Alonzo managed a begrudging nod. He thought he might vomit, but it wouldn’t achieve anything and would only serve to delay the inevitable, so he battled the impulse down.

  The man said, ‘Come with me, boy.’

  Alonzo rose and tapped his keyboard twice. The monitor went to sleep. It elicited no reaction from the unknown man, because his fingers barely brushed the keys. He knew how to be slick when the situation demanded it.

  Then he shuffled out of the office like a wounded dog.

  He knew it would be the last time he ever saw his workspace again.

  46

  The flight itself was uneventful and quiet, as most red-eyes are.

  There were perhaps two dozen other passengers in total, half of them bleary-eyed businessmen and the other half that undefined assortment of civilians. No kids or babies, but that was no cause for suspicion. Families don’t often fly to any of the violent three countries in the Northern Triangle in the dead of night.

  The foursome banded together, as there was no point remaining apart. It was all on Alonzo now. Sitting separately on the flight would achieve nothing, so they boarded as one. The plane had no middle seats, just a central aisle, so Slater and Alexis took the left-hand row and King and Violetta took the right.

  There were the usual safety demonstrations that nobody who’d flown before paid attention to, and then they were in the sky, cruising above thirty thousand feet.

  Violetta nestled against King’s shoulder. For her, he was a reprieve from the madness. As long as they were beside each other, they’d be okay.