Hunters

by Matt Rogers

  Violetta breathed, ‘What on earth…’

  The giant shouted through the downpour. ‘You’re out, right?’

  King froze.

  Violetta whispered something. Her words were whipped away, washed out of earshot by the rain.

  King said, ‘What?’

  Louder, Violetta said, ‘How does he know?’

  ‘He counted,’ King said. ‘Just like I counted.’

  ‘You were counting semi-automatic shots. We unloaded these.’ She motioned to her useless Kalashnikov.

  King shook his head. ‘It’s all the same to people like us. I used to count automatic rounds.’

  ‘People like us?’

  Outliers, King thought. Elite operatives.

  He stood up, rising above the cover of the barricade. There was no use cowering. The giant knew where they were, and there was nowhere they could run to fetch backup guns. But he hovered there, hesitant to step out.

  The giant noticed his hesitancy, and spread his arms wide as if catching the rain. His wingspan was enormous. Then the man pivoted, a slow, full revolution. Proving he had only the one holster, and that the gun in it had no magazine inserted. He’d already discarded the empty mag. King saw it was in fact an M45 MEU(SOC).

  King’s focus narrowed in on the big man. Assessing form, movement, stride. Breaking down the way he lumbered, how his body mass was distributed, where the weaknesses lay.

  Violetta evidently saw the cogs turning in King’s brain. ‘Jason…’

  King stepped out from behind cover. Turned so he could take one last look at her. Despite the rain and the mud and the fear, she was beautiful. The best thing that had ever happened to him.

  If you fail, she dies.

  It was a different breed of motivation. Now it was indescribable. He couldn’t feel his bad arm, couldn’t feel his broken nose, couldn’t feel the bruising all over his body, the soreness and fatigue and weakness. It no longer existed. Because this was about something bigger than his own survival.

  He rounded the barricade and walked through the mud towards the giant.

  59

  Opal and Topaz weighed north of two hundred pounds each, but they moved through the jungle without a sound.

  Even without the background roar of a storm, no one would have heard them. Every step was placed intentionally, and they balanced their silent movement with beautifully synchronised sweeps of their weapons. They maintained interlocking fields of fire, their M45 MEU(SOC) pistols covering every exposed inch of the terrain ahead. The moment either of them spotted anything strange ahead, it was game over for their foe.

  But despite their training, they missed something.

  Opal was thirty feet from where the tree line opened out onto the archaeological site when he put his boot down and felt a human spine underfoot.

  He jolted back, locking his weapon onto the target. For the first time in months, his heart rate had amplified unintentionally. The second he made an odd movement, Topaz was there to assist, mirroring the aim with his own pistol.

  Lucky they didn’t shoot, because the woman was defenceless.

  She’d camouflaged herself better than a damn chameleon. Her windbreaker and jeans were covered head-to-toe in mud, and she’d been lying facedown on the jungle floor, not moving a solitary muscle. If Opal hadn’t trodden on her, he’d have swept right past her without a second look.

  Now he rolled her over and jammed the gun in her face. She was a pretty Latino, but he couldn’t discern much more than that. There was a curved knife in her hands, but she released it as soon as she noticed the barrel aimed between her eyes. She clearly realised she’d have no time to use it.

  Antônia said, ‘Shit.’

  60

  King stopped ten feet from the giant.

  He wiped his face, clearing his eyes of rainwater. He refused to display emotion. He kept himself loose and supple, because tightening like a coiled spring for no reason simply drains the gas tank. When he threw a strike, he’d put everything into it. Until then…

  King looked upward into the man’s eyes. A strange sensation, but he didn’t let it show. Usually he loomed over everyone.

  He said, ‘Let me guess. Topaz?’

  The giant cocked his head, then shook it. ‘Close. That’s my colleague. You know him?’

  ‘I know you go by gemstones. I guessed one.’

  That drew a smile. ‘Diamond.’

  ‘This is stupid, Diamond.’

  ‘Depends,’ Diamond said. ‘For a coward, yes. For a man so desperate to cling to life out of selfish preservation instincts, yes. For me, it’s the purest test there is.’

  ‘You don’t have spare mags?’

  Diamond reached into the back of his utility belt and produced a full magazine of .45 ACP cartridges. A single round could blow King’s head apart. Diamond tossed the magazine away, where it slapped into the mud.

  King said, ‘That was stupid, too. One of your buddies did the same thing back in Vegas. Fought Slater without pulling his gun. Are you all like this?’

  ‘Only the purists.’

  ‘You’re a philosopher in your spare time, are you?’

  ‘I like to think of myself as a stoic.’

  ‘So do I.’

  Diamond unhooked the holster containing the empty MEU(SOC) from his belt and tossed it in the opposite direction to the mag, removing it from the equation. He clearly felt it would only serve to get in the way.

  ‘You are entitled to the work,’ he said, reciting a mantra to himself. ‘Never its reward.’

  ‘I like that.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Can I ask you a question?’

  King offered a fatalistic shrug, like, Sure. No time like the present. Considering what comes after.

  Diamond said, ‘You still feel fear at times like these? After everything you’ve been through?’

  ‘Of course. You don’t feel fear, you don’t understand the stakes.’

  Diamond nodded slowly. ‘Fear keeps you alive, huh?’

  King nodded back.

  No talk, only the growl of the storm.

  Diamond said, ‘We’re the same, you and I. This is a shame.’

  ‘Not quite the same.’

  ‘No,’ Diamond said. ‘Not quite.’

  King didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t consider specifics. If he thought too hard about how to block or strike or catch or obstruct, he would freeze in the moment. Every action, when it happened, had to flow with the intention to kill. Fluid, not restricted. It was the only way he’d survive.

  ‘Jason King,’ Diamond said, rolling the name off his tongue. ‘Your name is legend. It’s an honour.’

  ‘You want to fight me because you think you’re enlightened, but really you’re a nobody who thinks they’re special because they read a book once.’

  In that split second after the response something flared in Diamond’s sharp eyes. He was a strange yet principled man, willing to show respect in a violent arena. There weren’t many people on the planet who could override the instinct that screams, Survive, and chain together a cohesive thought. That showed experience. He’d been in situations like this many times before. His life on the line, his very existence threatened. But now that animal instinct was back. He’d expected the same stoic respect from King, and hadn’t found it. Maybe he’d imagined this in his head, over and over, and reality wasn’t aligning.

  This was a showdown between operatives of the highest calibre. Surely his foe could treat it with the reverence it deserved?

  It made him angry.

  When Diamond got angry, King charged.

  61

  Slater watched Antônia stumble out of the jungle, her face a mask of blood and mud.

  Red and brown in equal quantities, her mouth open. She was trying not to scream again, but the pain must have been horrific. She was a seasoned operator, after all. Now she was unarmed, reduced to her primal instincts, gasping for air, crying.

  Two murky figures followed her, both striding it out a
cross the uneven jungle floor.

  Coaxing her toward the ruins.

  When the pair emerged from shadow, Slater knew immediately they were hunters. He could barely make out their faces through the rain, but they moved like physical specimens. Not an ounce of wasted movement. Patient, measured, disciplined, which in turn resulted in them gliding over the forest floor.

  Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

  Alexis had lifted her head an inch at the sound of Antônia’s scream.

  Slater let out a soft deep noise, like a lion’s warning growl, and she stayed put, her face still burrowed in the mud. The hunters were doing this for a reason. They wanted to evoke their prey’s emotions.

  Antônia made it to the edge of a building in the corner of the archaeological site and collapsed on her hands and knees in the mud, spitting blood into the puddles underneath her.

  Slater stayed put.

  You are invisible, he told himself. You are rock. You are earth. You are unmoving.

  Experience had taught him there was some subconscious psychological aspect to remaining undetected. Now he used every scrap of mental fortitude he could find. Hopefully Alexis was doing the same.

  The hunter who took the lead was like a bull in human form. Almost as wide as he was tall, all of it muscle rippling beneath a three-quarter-sleeve shirt and black khakis. He sported a sickening widow’s peak, forming a razor-sharp triangle atop his head, and when he opened his mouth Slater saw all his teeth were fake veneers, white and gleaming and perfect.

  Antônia was barely a dozen feet ahead.

  Slater watched her, a black panther in the undergrowth. He didn’t so much as move his irises side to side. Any microscopic inkling of movement was detectable in the hunters’ peripheral vision. He couldn’t allow that.

  Opal walked up to Antônia, planted a boot on the small of her back, and forced her down hard into the mud. She landed on her already-damaged face, and howled into the puddle.

  Opal spun in a half-circle and roared at the top of his lungs. ‘Come out, Will! Come out to play!’

  He backed up three steps, brandished his M45 MEU(SOC) pistol for all to see, and aimed it at the side of Antônia’s head.

  Thankfully, he’d backed up in the direction of the undergrowth.

  Slater was three feet behind him.

  He burst up out of the lush plants like a demon, bringing up the AK-47. He dug the barrel into the back of Opal’s thick hairy neck before his partner could so much as react.

  Slater stared daggers at the second hunter, who so far hadn’t said a word. ‘That gun comes up, your buddy’s dead.’

  The second hunter stared wordlessly. His identical M45 MEU(SOC) was half-raised, but not pointing in Slater’s direction. It stayed there.

  The first hunter sighed, rolling his neck to feel the exact placement of the Kalashnikov barrel. ‘You’re better than I thought, Will.’

  Water ran off Slater’s upper lip as he said, ‘What happens now?’

  62

  Everything happened blindingly fast, like a film reel sped up.

  King flicked out a left-handed jab as he barrelled into range just to get a reaction out of Diamond. The giant didn’t have his head in the game the way he wanted, so he was flustered when he threw a reactionary counter shot, but there was still three hundred pounds of bodyweight behind it. He launched the uppercut from ground to sky, hoping to catch King clean on the jaw and snap him out of consciousness with the first shot. To the untrained eye it would have seemed an impressive reaction, but to King it was amateurish. That didn’t nullify the threat, though, so he still employed full focus when he slipped his head to the side and felt the brutal uppercut whip past, washing air over his ear.

  Then he was close, only a few feet away, and Diamond lowered himself a few inches to brace for the double-leg takedown he knew was coming.

  But it didn’t.

  Diamond was expecting a tactical chess match. Striking, wrestling, grappling, all blended together with expert precision and seamlessness. That would give him a clear advantage, seeing that he outweighed King by eighty pounds. So King didn’t allow it. Instead he turned it ugly.

  He dropped his shoulder and just kept running. By now he’d worked his way up to a sprint, mud geysering up as each boot slapped down. He hit Diamond square in the solar plexus and knocked the giant back off his feet.

  The fight became a frenzy.

  King leapt down into Diamond’s jiu-jitsu guard despite the obvious risks, refusing to hesitate for a moment. Diamond wrapped his legs around King’s waist, seizing a full guard, which was what King had expected. Now instead of following through with the charge King careened back in the other direction, grabbed Diamond’s enormous leg, and wrapped his foot in a heel hook.

  Diamond kicked and bucked. Three hundred pounds of carefully constructed strength. The gesture shook King like a rag doll, rattling his bones, making his vision swim … but he held on.

  He twisted his body with Diamond’s right heel still in the crook of his armpit.

  He torqued and wrenched and it tore every ligament in Diamond’s right leg. The ACL, the MCL, the LCL. They all went. King knew the sound. A gut-wrenching pop.

  Then he rolled away and scrambled back to his feet.

  When he turned, he caught the toe of Diamond’s left boot full in the face.

  He’d forgotten Diamond’s legs were the length of an entire average-sized person. The giant had swung a kick off his back and it landed, catching the very edge of King’s jaw. King hadn’t scrambled far enough away.

  He only realised when he resurfaced from semiconsciousness, six feet from where he’d stood up.

  A flash knockout.

  It was brutally disorienting. When he was blacked out he’d fallen back onto instinct, his body carrying him to a safe retreat, and coming back to reality was like a light switch turning on in his brain.

  He tried to make sense of what was unfolding but Diamond was already up, charging at him. King’s morale wavered. The giant wasn’t even limping. You can run on a torn ligament, ignoring the pain, as long as there’s adrenaline in your system. At any moment the leg will give out, but for now it was holding strong.

  Three hundred pounds came at him at a sprint.

  King realised he had an opportunity to finish the fight. He stayed light on his toes, ignoring the loss of balance he was experiencing, and prepared to throw a right hook with everything he had. His left arm was now useless. It wouldn’t respond to his brain’s commands. It stayed limp at his side. He’d used it to tighten the heel hook, and the movement had probably worsened the torn muscle in his forearm.

  But he could throw the right hand.

  Diamond closed in.

  King threw.

  Diamond’s leg gave out.

  It saved the giant’s life. King’s hook whistled through empty air because Diamond dropped like a wet sack, his knee caving inwards so he went bow-legged. But he’d been sprinting, so instead of dropping straight down he fell forward.

  Right into a takedown.

  His body mass landed on King’s thighs and drove him backward, and suddenly King was falling. With Diamond on top of him. If he ended up on the bottom in a fistfight to the death against a trained three-hundred-pound combatant, he’d lose every time.

  He hit the mud.

  He was on the bottom.

  Diamond “postured up,” raising himself up onto his knees so he could rain down shots. King writhed to try and avoid them. He failed.

  A fist crashed against his forehead, lashing his skull against the mud. He saw flashes of white like strobe lights, and he lost his hearing. Both awful signs. He could still see a fuzzy outline of Diamond on top of him, but the next punch would snap him out, if not kill him.

  He pleaded silently for Violetta not to interfere. You can’t save me. Don’t try.

  Diamond dropped the next punch. Like a sledgehammer falling onto a watermelon.

  But it didn’t land.

  King sucked
up the pain and whipped his head to the side, which made him nauseous, but succeeded. Diamond’s fist hit the mud beside his ear hard enough to rumble the ground.

  King wrapped his legs around Diamond’s bad knee and jerked both his thighs in a downward motion, which aggravated the torn ligaments. Diamond jolted like he’d been shocked. If the pain was bad enough to override his survival mechanisms, spear through the anaesthetising adrenaline, then it was bad.

  King saw an opening. It was so small, almost infinitesimal, but…

  He went for it.

  Burst upward and wormed his way out from underneath Diamond through a small gap near the man’s ribcage. Diamond lunged for him with a clubbing right haymaker from his knees and through some miracle it landed. Well, the forearm landed. It clobbered King in the face like a baseball bat and he almost slipped over in the mud as he worked his way back to his feet.

  But he made it.

  Conscious.

  Just.

  By the skin of his damn teeth.

  He pivoted on the spot and now he loomed over Diamond, who was still on one knee. The tiny computer in King’s brain informed him of his predicament. You can barely stand. The adrenaline’s going to wear off in about ten seconds. You’re not going to be able to do anything.

  He figured he’d better make those ten seconds count.

  He couldn’t use his left arm to grab the back of Diamond’s head in a Muay Thai clinch, so he abandoned the idea of the clinch and went straight for the knee. He threw his knee like Diamond had thrown his uppercut. Ground to sky. Diamond’s head stayed right there. His cheeks were white with shock. Maybe his leg was worse than King thought. Whatever the case, King felt the crunch of kneecap against jaw as it landed.