Hunters

by Matt Rogers

  Vásquez hesitated, and Alexis sank to her knees on the plush carpet. She stared up at him, maximising the lure in her green eyes.

  Violetta could see indecision tearing at him. Here was an intoxicatingly beautiful woman before him, ready to service his every need, but…

  Pleasure had to be earned. If he grew complacent, allowed slack, then he wouldn’t have the resources to afford this delicacy in the first place.

  So he put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her aside as he strode for the sealed doors.

  Alexis spun with the shove, found her feet like a gymnast, and leapt onto his back with her ankle locked into the back of her knee around his waist.

  Known in jiu-jitsu as a “body triangle.”

  No matter how hard he bucked, he wouldn’t be able to shake her off. It didn’t help that he was old and soft, too reliant on his security for muscle.

  But he could still shout, and he managed a sharp yell, perhaps a second in length, before she sliced her arm under his chin and locked in the rear naked choke.

  He fell backwards from the shock, suddenly unable to breathe, his carotid artery under immense pressure. It’s a natural reaction to getting choked. You think if you land with all your bodyweight on your attacker, you’ll knock them off.

  But you won’t.

  Vásquez landed on top of Alexis but she held tight, and he tried to scream for help but he couldn’t. No sound could escape his lips as he clawed desperately for air.

  She eased the pressure off as soon as he started going limp, but not by much.

  It kept him barely conscious, weak and desperate.

  Alexis stayed clamped to his back as Violetta knelt down by Vásquez’s stretched-out body. He was lying on Alexis, stomach facing the ceiling, but his weight wasn’t anything impressive. She could take it for as long as she needed.

  Violetta saw the red in Vásquez’s eyes, the blood in his cheeks, the fullness of his lips. He was fighting for every last morsel of breath.

  Violetta said, ‘Ease off a little.’

  She knew what would happen, but the demonstration had to be made regardless.

  Alexis eased the choke off fully, so her arm draped without pressure over Vásquez’s throat.

  Immediately he jerked upright, his ego bruised by getting manhandled by a woman, trying to charge his way back to his feet. At the same time he let out another short, sharp shout. No words, only unintelligible noise. Within half a second Alexis reapplied the choke with full pressure, practically popping his eyes out of his head. He fell back against her and slapped feebly at her forearm, which rippled with muscle and sinew.

  Violetta said, ‘Ease off again.’

  She dropped the pressure, but not by much. He could breathe, but it took considerable effort.

  This time, he didn’t try going anywhere.

  Violetta lowered herself into the kneeling position, getting closer to his face. ‘You’re going to do something for us.’

  He wheezed for every syllable, his face bright red, sweat popping from pores. ‘Get … off me.’

  Alexis muttered, ‘No,’ in his ear.

  Pulled the choke tighter for a couple of seconds.

  Tears materialised from their ducts, despite his best attempt to save face.

  He was more uncomfortable than he’d ever been. Already his throat was red and tender. Soon it would bruise and swell, if the life wasn’t choked out of him beforehand.

  Violetta said, ‘Let’s try that again. You’re going to do something for us.’

  Vásquez tried his hardest to maintain his integrity, despite the tears running from his eyes and the snot running from his nose. ‘I called for help.’

  ‘No you didn’t,’ Violetta said softly. ‘You shouted twice. We planned for that.’

  He recalled what he’d told his guards before they’d gone into the bedroom.

  ‘Fuck,’ he wheezed.

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ Violetta said. ‘They’re not going to answer a sound from this room for at least an hour. How long do you usually last?’

  ‘Not that long.’

  Violetta met Alexis’ smirk. ‘You hear that? He’s emasculating himself to try and get out of this.’

  Vásquez got angry, which was good. Violetta needed all that anger squeezed out of him.

  He sucked in a half-breath to try and shout again, but Alexis saw it coming, and choked the outcry dead in his throat before it left his lips.

  When she eased off the pressure for a third time, he was battling to stay conscious.

  Violetta made her voice hypnotic. ‘You’re going to do something for us.’

  ‘Anything,’ Vásquez whimpered.

  Alexis said, ‘There we go.’

  Violetta laid it out.

  If they’d simply held a gun to his head, it wouldn’t have worked. They needed him clinging so desperately to air that he’d do anything, say anything, compromise any relationship, just to find that next breath.

  So he didn’t even hesitate. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Where’s your emergency phone?’

  He told her.

  She went to his chest of drawers, extracted the sat phone from under the pile of clean boxer shorts, and walked it back across the room. He was still in the same position, Alexis’ forearm like a steel bat across his tenderised throat.

  Violetta handed him the phone. ‘I have no doubt you’ll stress the urgency of the situation.’

  Vásquez sucked in a ragged breath, then said, ‘Of c-course.’

  Spit ran down each corner of his mouth.

  Violetta said, ‘Tell me what you’ll say. Give me confidence. Or when my friend puts you to sleep you’ll never wake up again.’

  The concept terrified him, as it terrifies anyone with an oversized ego. Death is something inconceivable, and Vásquez would sacrifice everything material to cling to life.

  The old man said, ‘I’ll deliberately sabotage the infrastructure of this country, plunging it into economic disaster, unless the President demands immunity privileges for Will Slater and Alon…’

  He trailed off, trying to remember all the details Violetta had fed him.

  She said, ‘Alonzo Romero.’

  ‘Right. Alonzo Romero.’

  ‘Do it now.’

  He had to do it now, because if he had any more time to soak in the ramifications of holding the President verbally hostage, he might reconsider.

  But he got on the line and he said his spiel.

  They waited impatiently for an answer.

  Violetta tried not to throw up from the uncertainty.

  92

  Slater could see the walls closing in before his eyes.

  He got the Mustang up to forty miles per hour on the sidewalk, racing in the opposite direction to the adjacent lane. Alonzo gripped the edge of his seat, a physical representation of the tension in the car. One of the operatives who’d tackled the junkie dealer managed to sort out his priorities, and he took a knee and brought the carbine’s stock to his shoulder as Slater and Alonzo roared past.

  Slater said, ‘Down.’

  Alonzo complied.

  Rounds thwacked into the side panel, horrendously loud. Slater could only duck halfway down — he still had to see where he was going or he’d flatten a pedestrian. Already the sea of commuters were parting, some diving out into the stationary traffic to avoid the roaring Mustang.

  The front windshield cracked in a spiderweb pattern, obscuring his vision, so startling and sudden he jerked back in his seat with recoil.

  A sniper? he thought. Firing from ahead?

  If so, they were boxed into a death trap, and it would get ugly fast.

  Then his mind connected the wash of air against his right ear to the windshield cracking, and he realised one of the carbine rounds had blown out the rear passenger window, whipped between Slater and Alonzo, and exited the windshield from within.

  A problem, but better than resistance ahead.

  But it meant his vision went to shit.

  He h
unched forward, straining his eyes to try and see through the glass spiderweb. Pedestrians in close proximity were blurry shapes morphed grotesquely, and any second he’d hit one of them.

  He hovered his foot over the brake, about to stop the car.

  He’d rather put his own life in harm’s way than take an innocent civilian’s through reckless negligence.

  But Alonzo figured out what was happening and pulled his knee up to his chin, freeing it from the footwell, then he kicked out hard.

  The first time the sole of his boot slammed into the glass it didn’t do anything, but the second rocketed the compromised windshield out of its frame. The glass bounced down the hood and disappeared under the Mustang.

  Wind whipped in, and Slater squinted to see—

  A cluster of pedestrians.

  Dead ahead.

  He crushed his palm into the middle of the wheel and the horn blared, one loud endless drone, and most of them scattered.

  But a mother and her daughter froze, wide-eyed with shock-induced paralysis.

  Slater checked the traffic to his left and noticed a gap, only slightly wider than the Mustang, between the front and rear bumpers of two stationary town cars.

  Then there was a larger gap, and beyond that the other lane was clear.

  Didn’t mean it would be for long. This was 5th, so both lanes ran in the same direction. He’d be driving into oncoming traffic.

  Better than the alternative.

  He went for it.

  He pulled the wheel to the left to avoid the woman and child, and the side of the Mustang’s front bumper clipped the back of the town car in front, and metal screamed, and people shouted, and Slater clenched his teeth, and then they were through…

  The Mustang tore out into the far lane—

  And a huge vehicle T-boned them.

  Slater didn’t even realise what happened in the moment — it was that visceral, that violent. He noticed a flash of something approaching out of the corner of his eye, then the force threw him out of his seat, but the seatbelt caught him and slammed him back into place, none too gently. Alonzo hadn’t put his seatbelt on, so he was smashed into the dashboard, and the airbag deployed, adding to the chaos.

  The Mustang spun in a half-revolution, tyres squealing, and came to rest facing south.

  Everything between Slater’s temples became a mass of molten agony. The impact had brought the concussion after-effects roaring back to the surface, and he moaned out loud and worked his jaw as he threw the Mustang into reverse. His head swam, and he couldn’t see straight, but that wasn’t going to stop him doing everything he could to survive.

  So he punched the airbag down until he could see over it, then started reversing before the operatives could surround the car. He saw them through the windshield frame, spilling out of the attack car, having successfully rammed Slater to a standstill. But now he was on the move again, and he spun the wheel and drifted the front around until it faced north, then he floored it again.

  The Mustang choked, spluttered, protested…

  …and obeyed.

  46 Park Avenue, he told himself. 46 Park Avenue.

  There was no time for the GPS. He didn’t have a second to spare. Already rounds were coming their way again, the black-ops killers having seemingly abandoned protocol. It could all be chalked up to an undercover police sting gone bad, an unfortunate firefight that played out on the streets of New York but resulted in a successful result with minimal civilian casualties.

  These things happen.

  Each throb in Slater’s head was like getting hit by a baseball bat. He tried to use them to his advantage, harnessing the pain, using it as fuel. He gritted his teeth and yelled through them.

  The vehicle that had T-boned them — Slater identified it in the rear-view mirror as a modified Dodge RAM — was rumbling in pursuit, growing ever closer. The passenger’s window was down, but the hitman hadn’t yet resorted to hanging out of it, sitting on the sill to spray the Mustang with bullets. That’d overstep the line they’d already unknowingly crossed.

  It was war in New York, less than a year after the lights had gone out.

  Media attention would be relentless.

  Slater didn’t worry about that now. He couldn’t. He flicked his gaze across to assess Alonzo. The man was bleeding from the mouth, and his jaw hung limp like a crooked drawer, like it was broken.

  Slater said, ‘Can you speak?’

  ‘Yeah. I bit my tongue. It’s not my jaw. I—’

  ‘Hold on,’ Slater hissed. ‘And put your fucking seatbelt on!’

  A stream of cars had turned left onto 5th Avenue from East 33rd Street, below the colossal base of the Empire State Building. Traffic lights had ushered them through, and they’d advanced unknowingly into the gunfight.

  The first car in the column slammed the brakes as its driver saw the Mustang roaring toward a head-on collision.

  Sweat ran from Slater’s brows into his eyes as he took in all the obstacles.

  There were too many to count.

  Cars, pedestrians, newsstands…

  He let his thoughts fall away, gripped the wheel with one hand and the handbrake with the other, and exhaled.

  Alonzo shouted, ‘No—’ but the sound died in his throat as he was hurled sideways again.

  At least this time the seatbelt caught him.

  He’d listened to Slater.

  Slater ripped the handbrake and slid between two stationary cars. One side of the Mustang mounted the sidewalk, which felt like it would tear the whole car apart, and for all Slater knew it almost did. But he couldn’t pay attention to that because then he was accelerating to build momentum again, and a cluster of tourists reared up ahead, and he deployed the handbrake for a second time and slid back onto the road, where he avoided a collision with one of the stationary cars by inches.

  Then he threw the wheel all the way over for a third time, and drifted onto East 34th Street.

  Finally moving in the same direction as traffic.

  He barrelled east for a few hundred feet, tearing around traffic, then ignored a red light and skidded out onto Park Avenue, heading north.

  Somehow, the Dodge RAM kept up. It was right there behind them, its bull bar enormous. Perhaps its driver had taken a course in vehicular warfare.

  Slater had to slow a touch to scour every turnoff on Park Avenue.

  It should be right here…

  There.

  A right turn onto East 36th Street, and they’d come upon the north face of the long building that housed the consulate.

  Slater slowed fractionally to turn.

  The Dodge smashed into them from the back, throwing them both forward.

  His head bounced off the steering wheel.

  93

  The President of El Salvador was ice as he clutched the phone.

  You had to be, doing what he did.

  Lording over a country where seven hundred thousand families lived in dire poverty.

  You couldn’t let your conscience get in the way of anything.

  He’d sent everyone out of the room when he got the gist of the call. He sensed cold fury stirring in him, and he knew what that meant. He had a temper that made everyone quake, and now it was here, and it had him in its grip.

  He held the phone so hard he thought he might break it, and said, ‘César, are you under duress?’

  Vásquez took a long time to answer.

  Finally, the tycoon said, ‘Does it matter?’

  He had a point.

  The President said, ‘If you’re being held hostage, I’ll bring everything down on them. I’ll crush them.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Vásquez said, his voice shaking through the receiver. ‘Nothing you do will make a difference. And you don’t have a choice here.’

  ‘You know you’re signing your own execution if I go through with this?’

  ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’

  The President said, ‘I’ll have you skinne
d alive.’

  ‘I understand that,’ Vásquez said. ‘But you will do this for me. This instant. Or I’ll do exactly what I laid out. Our beautiful country will be driven into a pit from which it won’t emerge. Not for a long time. You won’t be alive to see the recovery. You know what I can do with my empire. What I can jeopardise.’

  The President heard something snap inside the phone. He took a deep breath and eased off the pressure of his grip.

  The device still worked.

  He said, ‘Be careful about how you answer this. It’s the last time I’ll ask you. If I do this for you, you will have made an enemy of me for life. Understand that. Are you sure this is what you want?’

  ‘Do it,’ Vásquez said, and the President thought he heard the old man fighting back tears. ‘Or I’ll ruin everything.’

  The President hung up without another word.

  He burst up out of his chair like he was possessed and overturned his desk, which was no small feat. The desk was solid oak. The floor vibrated as the surface slammed down on the floor, crushing a vase that had fallen off.

  An aide burst into the room.

  ‘Get the fuck out!’ the President roared.

  The young man scurried out.

  The President stared at the phone in his hands for maybe a minute.

  Then he realised he didn’t have time, and he dialled a number.

  94

  Vásquez’s eyes went wide.

  He took the phone away from his ear.

  He was still in the same position, lying on Alexis, who he wore like a backpack. Her forearm hadn’t budged, an inch from crushing his throat. He looked helpless and now scared.

  Violetta took the phone. ‘What happened?’

  Vásquez’s bloodshot eyes bugged as his voice trembled. ‘He hung up.’

  ‘Did he say he’d do it?’

  Vásquez’s voice was weaker. The adrenaline dump had faded him, leaving him tired and terrified. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ Vásquez repeated, but not as confidently.

  ‘If he doesn’t go through with it…’

  ‘He will.’

  ‘Then why the long face?’