Hunters

by Matt Rogers

  The jeep slowed.

  King said, ‘Looks like they didn’t trust the Armed Forces to get the job done over here.’

  Slater said, ‘Why didn’t they just stall the plane at McCarran?’

  ‘Because we would have sensed something was wrong. Airport security or the LVMPD … those are the last people the secret world wanted to rely on. They needed to get hunters to McCarran, or at the very least Special Forces soldiers with automatic weapons. They couldn’t do that in time, probably because they only picked up the fact we were flying out less than an hour before we departed. All they had were plainclothes — maybe TSA, maybe cops — to replace the few passengers who were boarding. Men and women they could rely on to at least get out of harm’s way when the Armed Forces came aboard and arrested us when we landed.’

  ‘Yes,’ Slater said. ‘I put all that together, thank you. What’s it got to do with who’s behind us?’

  ‘The real muscle were only an hour or two behind us, tops. How long were we in custody for?’

  Violetta said, ‘Two hours, give or take. I timed it as best I could.’

  ‘There you go,’ King said, twisting in his seat to get a better look at the jeep. ‘They’ve chewed up our lead.’

  Antônia said, ‘Hunters?’

  ‘You’ve heard of them?’

  The colour leached from her face. When she spoke, her voice was quieter. ‘I’m from Alonzo’s side of the secret world. The semi-respectable side.’

  ‘And the other side?’

  ‘They’re not the sort of people you want to piss off.’

  King said, ‘That’s exactly what we did. We pissed them off.’

  54

  Antônia’s face was a pale sheet of unrest.

  King contorted in the passenger seat, squinting out the rear windshield.

  Slater had apprehensions.

  He said, ‘Who’s to say it’s not the Armed Forces?’

  ‘It’s not,’ Antônia said, fighting to keep her voice level. ‘They’ve been explicitly instructed to leave us alone.’

  ‘Torres could have flipped.'

  She shook her head emphatically. ‘Whatever’s happening, it’s not that.’

  King’s stomach tightened. ‘What exactly did you threaten him with?’

  ‘I told you. Nothing you want to know about. But you can be sure he won’t double-cross.’

  ‘Salvadoran paramilitary?’ Slater suggested, making out the gloomy silhouette of the jeep on their tail. ‘From in-country?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  King said, ‘Then it’s them.’

  Antônia’s face paled to a ghastly mask. ‘Oh, God.’

  She violently took an exit off the highway, and the jeep followed them.

  As the Nissan whined with exhaustion, King said, ‘We’re not going to lose them in this.’

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t get my hands on a supercar,’ Antônia snapped.

  ‘Easy.’

  She reined it in as she swerved onto a narrower road that weaved through a town called Sitio del Niño. King spotted the name on a faded sign drenched in water. He stared out at small barrios, industrial developments, and gloomy fields.

  ‘Where are we?’ he said, uncomfortable with the desolate atmosphere. At any point they could hit a dead end, barricaded in as the jeep bore down on them from behind.

  ‘We’re going the long way.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s a straight shot on the Carretera Panamericana all the way up to Santa Ana. They can stay on our tail the whole way. I know the land. We can take the backroads up north to San Pablo Tachachico and then cut west to Santa Ana. Plenty of places to lose them on those trails.’

  The trails in question were getting worse. The Nissan thumped and bounced over the deep potholes, rattling them to their cores. King kept his bad arm pressed deep in his lap, trying to minimise the grinding pressure on the torn muscles. Each vicious pothole drew a wince out of him. He twisted to see Slater, who had his eyes squeezed shut, still not fully recovered from the concussion in Vegas. He was clearly riding out a migraine.

  They floored it for ten minutes, their concerns going unspoken. They were all aware of the stakes. Sitio del Niño fell away, replaced by stormy countryside, then the outskirts of a new town crept up on them.

  A sign read: JOYA DE CERÉN.

  The jeep’s headlights grew brighter in the rear view.

  Gaining ground, mile by tense mile.

  King asked, ‘Does the government know this is your ride?’

  Antônia’s eyes flashed with fear, then she composed her thoughts and remembered. ‘No. I stole it from a lot, just in case. But if they see me…’

  She trailed off, her terror internal, but she didn’t have to finish. King knew what awaited her if she was identified aiding enemies of the state.

  Immediate excommunication, if not imprisonment and death if she was caught.

  Her life, her career, all her potential — over.

  He could see it getting to her, the hypotheticals worming their way into her brain.

  They drove onto a bridge that rattled under their wheels, passing over a raging river swollen from the rainfall. King saw the rapids churning, looking out the fogged-up passenger window.

  The jeep hit the bridge five seconds behind them.

  Antônia jolted like she’d been electrocuted, and suddenly she was overwhelmed.

  ‘Fuck this,’ she said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Breathe,’ King said, but it was too late.

  The road was a straight shot for at least a couple of miles. If they stayed on it, it was only a matter of time before the jeep closed the final hundred yards and rammed them off the road.

  So Antônia took matters into her own hands.

  She swerved left as soon as they were off the bridge, stamping on the brakes at the same time so they skidded into the tree line. King made out some sort of community through the trees — a cluster of buildings grouped together. The buildings were all deserted, ominous under the storm clouds. There was too much going on, but King thought it was some sort of archeological site.

  Then the Nissan plummeted down a steep drop in the woods, and they plunged below the line of sight from the road.

  Antônia skidded the old pickup to a halt at the base of the gully and threw her door open.

  Alexis cried, ‘What are you doing?!’

  Slater said, ‘Abandoning us.’

  Antônia spun, her eyes aflame. ‘If they see me, my life is over. All of you run ahead. You’ve got a head start. If we all bunker down, we’ll lose them. There’s no other option.’

  King focused hard, concentrating only on what he could control. ‘Weapons?’

  ‘There’s a few in the rear tray. All I could get my hands on.’

  Then Antônia was gone, melting into the gloom.

  They had no time to speculate. King said, ‘Out.’

  They piled out of the pickup, soaked to the bone within seconds. Torrents of rain fell through the canopy overhead, forming miniature waterfalls as the broad leaves overflowed and dipped each time they needed to release the water they held.

  Dozens of feet above the gully and encroaching hillsides, the sound of screeching tyres trickled down into the woods.

  King rounded to the rear trunk and found a pile of Kalashnikov AK-47s, old-school relics that he knew Antônia had chosen for a reason. They were swimming in a few inches of rainwater within the rear tray, but what they lacked in innovation they made up for in brutish reliability. They would shoot in any circumstances — soaked, battered, thrown around, clogged.

  He tossed one to Slater, who took Alexis’ hand and ran with her into the lush plant growth, heading for the strange buildings.

  He handed Violetta the second rifle, then scooped up the third and abandoned the Nissan just as torch beams appeared at the peak of the hill, shining down into the jungle shadow.

  Violetta stayed on his heels as they moved in a diagonally opposite dir
ection to Slater, beelining for the opposite side of the community.

  As he got closer, the gloom receded, exposing what the buildings were.

  They were towering husks of metal scaffolding looming over the real prizes. The metal exoskeletons covered ancient households with thatched roofs and other similarly preserved structures.

  King found himself awestruck.

  It was an archaeological site, the remnants of a Mayan farming village.

  The ruins of Joya de Cerén.

  55

  Three silhouettes stood at the lip of the jungle, the water-soaked asphalt of the road at their backs.

  Not forty-eight hours ago two of the trio had been in the Oval Office, a world away from this hellhole.

  But there was reward in venturing to the Northern Triangle.

  Opal turned to his brutish right-hand-man. ‘Flush them out?’

  Topaz grinned his trademark grin, made more sinister by the rainwater flowing down his face. All three of them were soaked to the bone, but so were the prey they hunted.

  Whenever Topaz spoke, it was an event. The man was practically mute. Now he said, ‘Slater and his girl went to the right.’

  ‘You want him?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Topaz said, barely audible over the storm. ‘I want him.’

  Opal turned to the third member. He was huge. At least six foot eight. He didn’t seem overweight, but it took three hundred pounds of bodyweight to fill that frame. He was vaguely Scandinavian, resembling a Norse Viking from centuries before. Blonde hair tied back, blonde beard thick enough to mask his sharp jaw, and baby blue eyes. Conventionally attractive, but all that was thrown aside by his demeanour. Opal had worked with the man for nigh on five years, and he’d only had maybe five minutes of superficial conversation with him. Everything that came out of his mouth did so with withering intensity. The giant was a strange, philosophical man. Opal didn’t judge.

  Whatever you needed to do to get through the day in their world, you did it.

  Opal said, ‘Diamond?’

  The giant pierced him with his gaze. ‘King is mine.’

  ‘Do you need help?’

  Diamond said, ‘Mine alone.’

  Opal nodded. ‘That settles it, then.’

  He fell in behind Topaz. ‘Remember, Spinel and Citrine didn’t make it.’

  ‘There’s a reason they were sent in first,’ Diamond growled.

  ‘Oh?’

  Diamond touched a hand to the side of his mouth, as if sharing the deepest secret. ‘Expendable.’

  Topaz growled, ‘Amateurs.’

  Opal nodded again.

  Then the rest of the world fell away as adrenaline took over. He narrowed and honed the sensation until he was trapped in a tunnel of focus, and he knew his brothers-in-arms were doing the same.

  They started down the hill.

  Opal and Topaz went right.

  Diamond went left.

  56

  King led Violetta through the rain, now falling so hard it was akin to moving through sheets of eternally suspended droplets.

  They reached the western edge of the archaeological site.

  King advanced to the tree line, peered into the gloom, then shook his head.

  Violetta had to yell above the downpour. ‘What is it?!’

  King turned back. ‘Not feasible. Can’t see a goddamn thing. We go in there and it’ll be fifty-fifty.’

  ‘So we stay here?’

  He grabbed her arm and ran with her to the nearest building. Beyond a railing that separated the perimeter viewing stations from the protected ruins, the earth sloped sharply downward, chipped away by the initial excavation that must have uncovered the farming village in the first place. Five feet below the lip of the slope, there was a flat platform made of hard packed earth. It overlooked the structures, which were awe-inspiring, but King couldn’t waste a second soaking in the eerie sight of a fifteen-hundred-year-old village drenched in gloom.

  He lifted Violetta over the railing and dropped her to the platform, making sure she landed on her feet. Then he vaulted it himself. He spun, set the AK-47’s handguard on the lip of the slope for stabilisation, and waited.

  It was an unending wait, and the concept of time vanished, but he had experience lying in wait for armed men.

  Seconds became minutes, which felt like hours, then days.

  He became aware of the ebb and flow of the storm, every sense attuned to the environment.

  Violetta said something, but he didn’t hear it.

  Then she positioned her rifle next to his, and she wordlessly swept a wider angle, covering the sections he couldn’t.

  They waited, poised, encompassed by the roar of rain on the tin roof overhead…

  A huge silhouette inched into view, rising from the undergrowth.

  King fired twelve rounds at the shape in four consecutive three-round bursts, tightly clustered. Violetta followed suit. Twenty-four total shots between them. It was a barrage of gunfire.

  The jungle swallowed the rounds.

  Four semi-automatic pistol reports answered from the trees. The muzzle flashes were shocking, and the reports cracked like thunder. At least one of the bullets whipped over King’s head. He felt the displaced air, and recoiled down, out of sight. Violetta was already down.

  It was chaos.

  King resumed his position and saw the silhouette belly-crawling out of the tree line into muddy no-man’s-land.

  Now or never.

  He emptied the AK at the target.

  But it was a crude gun, and the figure vanished back into the tree line.

  Unharmed.

  A pause, then the figure fired three more shots. They were heavy rounds, at least .45 calibre.

  Violetta was back in position, one eye squeezed shut.

  ‘I’ve got him,’ she breathed, sighting in.

  ‘Don’t—’ he started.

  But she followed his example, unloading her weapon, convinced she had the target in her crosshairs. This enemy was moving like nothing King had seen before. It was like he was using himself as bait, showing his considerable bulk for just long enough to know their aim was on him, and then vanishing like he was made of dust. King knew the amount of physical dexterity and fluidity it required.

  They were dealing with a different beast to the usual Tier One operative.

  The jungle ate the rounds, much like the previous forty-two.

  King had no idea if they’d hit the target. Neither had Violetta.

  Then a voice from the jungle screamed, ‘Nice try!’

  They barely caught it — it was only a whisper above the storm — but it floated to them all the same.

  Violetta clutched her empty Kalashnikov. ‘What now?’

  Their rifles were useless. Antônia hadn’t included extra ammunition in her shabby arsenal.

  King said, ‘Now we run.’

  57

  Slater and Alexis came to the same realisation as they charged through the jungle.

  The buildings weren’t a community of the present day, but a community from Mesoamerica.

  Ancient ruins.

  Slater couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a landscape so eerie. They reached the edge of the archeological site at a jog, and he surveyed what appeared to be an ancient communal building, storage houses, and households inhabited by ancient villagers. All the structures were preserved and protected from the weather by modern-style warehouses with exposed walls. The site was empty, no doubt closed to visitors due to horrid weather conditions. Taking it all in at once, it was clear that an entire plaza had been excavated. The ancient buildings were made of rammed earth, wattle, and daub. It would have made an awe-inspiring sight if there weren’t rabid killers hot on their heels.

  Slater forced Alexis down into the undergrowth at the edge of the site. From this position, they’d have a wide view of any approaching hostiles, as the land sloped gently down away from the plaza.

  Her breath was ragged and harsh. She had to forc
e the exhalations out — the pain in her ribs was making her insides seize up, and she made herself breathe despite the agony. She was far from fighting condition.

  Slater burrowed himself into the mud beside her and splashed some of the gunk on his shoulders, then threw a few handfuls over his back, darkening his shirt. Thankfully his skin was a similar tone to the earth underfoot, and coupled with his ability to become statuesque, he could be invisible.

  Alexis couldn’t.

  Slater said, ‘Put your forehead in the mud.’

  ‘What?’ she mumbled.

  ‘Face down. Give yourself just enough room to breathe. Spread your hair over the back of your neck and the sides of your face.’

  It must have pained her greatly, but she obliged. He could sense her trying valiantly to control her breathing, settle her heart rate, quash the combination of pain and panic that made her close to hysterical.

  Within seconds, she had it under control. She became silent and motionless beside him.

  It never failed to impress him how expertly she’d adapted to life-or-death situations.

  It had taken him far longer when he first began his career.

  Seconds passed, blending into minutes.

  The rain beat down, relentless, incessant.

  Then a woman’s scream echoed through the ruins.

  58

  Thirty rounds apiece expended.

  No additional curved magazines in their possession.

  Game over.

  Or not.

  King counted seven rounds fired from the jungle, then an absence of follow-up shots. There had to be more on the way.

  Unless…

  Unless the hunter was carrying an M45 MEU(SOC) pistol, which sported seven rounds per mag. It would make sense, given the weapon’s prevalence in the United States Marine Corps. And the reports had sounded powerful. They could very well be a result of the MEU(SOC)’s trademark .45 ACP cartridges.

  But didn’t the hunter have spare magazines? Only a fool wouldn’t.

  Then the man emerged from the tree line. Just walked right out into the mud, gun holstered, hands spread wide apart. He was enormous. Six inches taller than King, at least eighty pounds heavier. He looked like a Viking. Scandinavian blood, perhaps. Blonde hair and beard. King couldn’t make out his eyes, but he imagined they were blue. The guy lumbered out into no man’s land, moving toward King and Violetta’s cover.