Hunters

by Matt Rogers

  ‘Bullshit. You don’t have his line.’

  Slater fished the sat phone from his jacket pocket. ‘Want to risk it?’

  The consul didn’t answer.

  Slater dialled a few random numbers, the supposed first in a long chain that would get him—

  Nowhere, he knew.

  But he could bluff with his life on the line. In comparison, this was nothing.

  The consul waved his hands frantically. ‘Okay. Okay. Sir, okay. What do you need? We’ll cater to your every need.’

  Slater tucked the phone away. ‘Aspirin. Food. Water. And a mattress.’

  The consul shifted restlessly from foot to foot. ‘And then…?’

  Slater raised an eyebrow.

  ‘What’s your endgame? How long will you be staying here?’

  Slater didn’t have the mental capacity to consider that right now. ‘That phone call you just had. At any point, did your President say you could ask me questions?’

  Hesitation. Then, ‘No.’

  ‘Is this an interrogation?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘It seems like one.’

  ‘I apologise.’

  Slater nodded. ‘There we go.’

  Broken, dishevelled, his head pounding, he got to his feet and limped deeper into the reception area, away from the front door that may as well be radioactive. Outside, a cordon was no doubt being established. They’d surround the neighbouring buildings with enough manpower to subdue an army.

  However he and Alonzo were getting out, it wouldn’t be straightforward.

  The second they stepped out of the zone of diplomatic immunity, they’d be taken.

  As Alonzo followed him into the back of the consulate, Slater thought, Please be alive, King.

  98

  King burst out onto the front terrace of Torres’ mansion and came upon a scene of slaughter in the predawn light.

  It shook him to his core.

  Bodies littered the front lawn, blood staining the perfect grass. Over a dozen men were dead. Their corpses were riddled with bullets.

  There was no sign of life.

  And then there was.

  The silhouette hobbled up the weaving driveway, dragging one leg behind him. He’d been shot in the thigh, and perhaps elsewhere. He was on death’s door. Personal safety had become a non-factor, and it seemed he’d decided to abandon all tactical awareness and make a beeline for the giant house.

  Hoping to confront me? King thought.

  He crouched behind the outdoor dining table on the east side of the terrace, staying low, keeping out of sight. He brandished his pistol, tightening his grip, ready to use it.

  When the silhouette made it all the way up the driveway, the exterior floodlights illuminated him.

  King finally understood the gravity of the newcomer’s wounds.

  He’d been riddled with automatic gunfire, perhaps a stray burst from one of the guards. Blood poured down both his arms, his head, his neck. His left leg was functionally useless. Muscle hung in tatters on the outside of his knee. A bullet had torn through every ligament, taking chunks of bone out with it.

  King had no idea how the man was still alive.

  He scrutinised his features and figured it was Opal based on Slater’s description. The talkative one, the mastermind, the yin to his partner Topaz’s yang.

  He was still holding his carbine rifle — an M4 — but as he reached the marble steps up to the terrace he lowered the barrel to the gravel and used it as a cane.

  He turned away from the house, lowered his squat powerhouse of a frame to the second step, and sat down hard. There was a finality to it.

  He knew he wouldn’t be getting back up again.

  King knew he was within earshot, but he didn’t dare raise his head above cover.

  Topaz was unaccounted for.

  He called out, ‘Came to surrender?’

  Opal’s head became one of those rotating circus clown games as he searched for the source in his half-dead semi-consciousness. When he failed to find it, he threw his head back and sighed.

  ‘That wasn’t fair, Jason,’ he called back. ‘What you got those guards to do…’

  ‘I can come out there,’ King said. ‘Patch you up. Send you on your way. We can come to an arrangement.’

  ‘You know we can’t.’

  ‘Says who? Your faceless employers? Spineless cretins who sit behind a desk and tell you what to do and when to do it?’

  Opal didn’t answer.

  ‘You see them out here?’ King shouted. ‘You see them in-country?’

  ‘That’s the way it goes,’ Opal said. ‘That’s the way it’ll always go.’

  ‘You’re a stoic? Like your buddy Diamond?’

  ‘He wasn’t my buddy. He was a crackpot who never played by the book.’

  ‘You play by the book?’

  ‘I try to.’

  ‘Look where it got you.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Each of Opal’s syllables were now descending in volume as the life sapped out of him. He lifted a bloody hand to his square scalp and ran a crimson streak through his buzzcut with his palm.

  ‘Where’s Topaz?’ King shouted.

  Opal hesitated, then King thought he saw the man smile. It was hard to tell from behind. The brute refused to turn around.

  Opal said, ‘You’re prescient, Jason.’

  ‘You think I’d forget about him?’

  ‘How’d you know his callsign?’

  ‘Antônia told me.’

  ‘Sapphire. That’s who she is. Antônia’s her old name.’

  ‘What was yours?’

  Opal didn’t answer that.

  King said, ‘You’re going to die. You may as well share.’

  Opal sighed, then shrugged. It took all his effort. ‘Hell, why not? Unwavering stoicism was Onyx’s thing. He passed it down to Diamond and that idiot Spinel. Not me.’ A pause to muster his energy, then, ‘Jared Willard.’

  ‘Where you from, Jared?’

  ‘New Orleans. My father worked at the docks. He was a labourer. He taught me to work hard. I maybe took it too far. Worked too hard. Caught the attention of the shadow world when I was a grunt in the Army by outperforming the other grunts. Then … well, the rest is a blur…’

  ‘You ever think about how we ended up like this?’

  ‘Onyx. That’s how I ended up like this.’

  ‘Onyx. Your handler, right?’

  Opal drooped his head into a soft nod.

  King reminisced on his brutal career. ‘I had a sociopathic handler once. His name was Lars.’

  ‘How’d it work out?’

  ‘For him? Not good.’

  ‘Something tells me mine will face the music too. After what happened here comes to light. Unless…’

  ‘Unless?’

  ‘Unless my name’s not Jared Willard, and I’m not from New Orleans. Nor am I Kane Broome, which is what I told Slater my name was in those ruins. You’re a holier-than-thou moron who cares more about helping fictional victims than saving your own skin.’

  Glowing with satisfaction, Opal slid down the couple of steps as the life leeched out of him. His corpse slumped to the top of the driveway, blood soaking down through the gravel.

  He died at peace.

  King held his breath.

  Turned just in time to see the barrel silhouette of Topaz vault over the side of the terrace, carbine blazing.

  99

  Alexis didn’t waste a second.

  If she tried to compute it, tried to figure out what was happening instead of simply reacting, she’d die. Antônia was better trained, better experienced … better everything. But at its core, a fight is usually won by whoever gains the upper hand first. Comebacks from the brink of defeat don’t often happen when two parties are brawling for their lives.

  So Alexis shot a double-leg takedown on Antônia as soon as she registered who it was.

  Antônia was already reacting, but not fast enough. She’d d
arted further into the mansion, slipping out of the doorway and going for something at her hip instead of defending the takedown, so Alexis drove her down to the marble floor of the lobby without resistance. Antônia showed stern resolve to stick to her game plan, and now Alexis realised she was wrenching a knife from a concealed holster beneath her dress. She caught the flash of the blade in her peripheral vision, then it disappeared as the back of Antônia’s skull smashed against the ground, completing the takedown.

  Alexis heard skittering, and knew Antônia had lost her grip on the knife.

  Alexis headbutted her full in the face. It wouldn’t normally have achieved much aside from a broken nose, but she threw her whole head into it. If she missed, and drove her own forehead into the marble floor, she might knock herself out cold, but that was a risk she was willing to take. She was starting the fight at a considerable disadvantage, and that made risk necessary for survival.

  It landed.

  Her forehead whipped into Antônia’s nose hard enough to punch some of the bone back into her skull. Antônia let out an involuntary howl, and Alexis waited for her to instinctively roll over so she could sink in the rear-naked choke, just as Slater had taught her to do.

  But Antônia didn’t.

  The woman bucked, and she was powerful. Her body was a lean, lithe, finely honed machine, and she threw Alexis off her like she weighed nothing. Alexis spun and tumbled and scrabbled to her feet, looking around for the knife. She didn’t see it.

  The double doors had swung shut but now they crashed open again, and more guards spilled in to back up the head of security already watching in confusion, his weapon aimed loosely in the direction of the fight.

  Alexis froze.

  So did Antônia.

  From the landing that overlooked the lobby, Vásquez screamed, ‘Don’t touch her!’ in Spanish.

  One guard yelled back, ‘¿Cúal?’

  Which one?

  Vásquez looked down, and Antônia stared up. Alexis followed her gaze and noticed recognition in the old man’s eyes. They knew each other. Antônia was supremely efficient, and she’d sunk her hooks into many of El Salvador’s top dogs. It seemed she was making quick work of the country.

  Vásquez looked from Antônia to Alexis, then back again.

  Alexis saw indecision tearing at him.

  Both sides will threaten me.

  After a long beat, he threw his hands in the air. ‘Let them sort it out. Stay where you are.’

  Alexis’ heart thudded. She watched the guards shuffle into place across the open double doors, forming a barricade of flesh.

  Sealing the lobby off.

  The stakes became obvious. If Antônia got the upper hand, she’d slaughter Alexis, then Violetta in turn. Vásquez would side with her and control of the Armed Forces would fall back into America’s hands. King would be surrounded at Torres’ mansion, and Slater and Alonzo’s pleas for help in Manhattan would fall on deaf ears as the consulate threw them out.

  Win this fight, Alexis thought, or you and everyone you love are dead.

  She exuded confidence, because if she didn’t there’d be a clear psychological disadvantage before they even clashed.

  Antônia stared at her in disgust.

  Alexis said, ‘Better make this count.’

  Even though she was outmatched, inexperienced, and an amateur in comparison to this cutthroat black ops assassin.

  But she had something Antônia didn’t.

  Slater’s tutelage.

  Antônia must have glimpsed some unhinged spark in Alexis’ eyes. She didn’t bullrush her. She didn’t wipe the floor with her like she probably could have.

  She turned and ran for her knife, which had skidded to the base of the staircase.

  Alexis charged after her.

  100

  They were as athletic and explosive as each other.

  Alexis was lightning fast, but so was her enemy. Antônia covered the lobby like a gymnast, bent down, and snatched up the knife. It was a beautiful piece — its handle the colour of bone, its blade curved and serrated. She spun with it just as Alexis bore down on her.

  Alexis knew she couldn’t stop her momentum.

  She never intended to.

  Antônia thrust hard at Alexis’ centre mass with the tip of the curved blade, intending to puncture the biggest target she could find. She understood the room for error was tiny. If she missed, Alexis could hit her again in the nose, which was already swelling, puffing her lower eyelids. Soon her skin would bruise and mottle, and she’d be unrecognisable, and maybe the pain would overwhelm her.

  So she thrust hard.

  Alexis knew it was coming.

  She eyed the blade as it jerked forward, intercepted it with an open palm, and clamped her hand down on the knife.

  The blade ripped straight through her palm and came out the other side of her hand.

  The knife embedded in her hand, she clamped down with her fingers, willing her body to respond.

  It did.

  She grabbed the knife at the hilt and held it there, stifling further movement.

  Antônia blinked, like maybe it was a dream.

  Alexis nodded and grinned through the pain, stifling any physical reaction with sheer willpower. ‘Come on, bitch.’

  Antônia froze up.

  Only for a fraction of a second.

  It lined her face up like a flashing target.

  Alexis headbutted her again, this time standing, but she put the same amount of force into it as last time. Her tender forehead landed again on the broken mass of bone that used to be Antônia’s nose, and the whole appendage shattered. It was a sickening sound and Antônia reacted suitably.

  She let out a visceral gasp that came from deep in her core and sunk to her knees.

  It was the sort of injury that determination and mental toughness couldn’t keep at bay. A sharp blade through the middle of the palm — that’s unimaginably painful, but you can ignore it for a minute or so. Getting your face rearranged … that’s slightly more debilitating.

  Alexis grabbed the hilt of the knife with her other hand as Antônia released it. She took a deep breath, then ripped the blade out of her palm with a scream that echoed in the lobby. It left a sizeable jagged slit of a wound going all the way through the skin and bone, but Alexis didn’t see that, because she bent down and plunged the knife into Antônia’s neck.

  Antônia opened her mouth wide in shock.

  Blood gushed out.

  Her gaze drifted up to Alexis, her lips flapped, then she keeled over and died.

  Alexis hovered over the body, and the deathly silence of the spectators became apparent. She realised she was panting hard. Now the imminent threat was no more, her body started returning to baseline.

  She sat down hard on the second step, just above Antônia’s body. She wrapped the material of her dress tight around her mangled hand and pressed it into her lap. Then she let out a soft moan — the only weakness she was willing to show.

  She turned her attention to Violetta, who looked on with an expression of total shock.

  ‘Go to Torres’ place,’ Alexis said, keeping her voice level as best she could. ‘King needs you. Opal and Topaz will come for him.’

  Violetta seemed reluctant to leave an ally behind. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ve given it everything.’

  She felt the tendrils of unconsciousness creeping at her vision.

  From above, Vásquez said, ‘Between Torres and I, we have the Armed Forces. Your friend is safe.’

  Alexis shook her head as she watched the guards rush to her to administer medical attention. ‘Whatever you have ... it’s not enough.’

  She started to pass out.

  Her last image was of Violetta racing for the front door, squeezing past the guards.

  101

  King was in motion before Topaz had cleared the terrace balustrade.

  He rolled over the giant concrete slab that comprised the surface of the outdoor
dining table. He knew if he stayed in position, attempted to shoot it out, it wouldn’t have mattered how much better his reflexes were, how accurate he was, how lucky. A semi-automatic pistol against an automatic rifle is never a fair fight. So he simply didn’t engage in the fight.

  He toppled to the ground on the other side of the dining table hard, sacrificing comfort for haste. He shifted some of the torn muscle in his left forearm, but the shock of bullets tearing through the air just above his head took his mind off it.

  He fired a couple of shots through the thin gap between the stone bench and tabletop, which ripped out the other side. One of them hit Topaz in the thigh, and the other sailed on past.

  But it only grazed the man’s leg. It wasn’t a direct impact. Topaz’s reflexes were equally wicked — they had to be, given his Tier One status — and he threw himself behind a giant metal barbecue wrapped in weatherproof tarpaulin as soon as he realised he’d missed King.

  King saw blood spray as skin came off the side of the man’s leg, then he was gone.

  King felt suddenly cold, and his head hurt, and a sickening sensation came over him like he was disconnected from reality.

  He just wanted this all to be over.

  He shouted, ‘All your friends are dead!’

  No response.

  The barbecue sat there, motionless, hiding the operative behind it.

  King said, ‘You’re the one that doesn’t talk, right?’

  He sensed movement before Topaz materialised on one side of the tarpaulin. The powerfully built man popped out to fire a burst with the M4 in his hands, and King returned with a pair of shots. It all unfolded in a split second, and it was impossible to tell what had happened until they both retreated behind cover, assessing the damage.

  King was still alive.

  And he didn’t think he’d been hit.

  Topaz was gone, back behind the barbecue, so he wasn’t dead, but there was no way to discern whether he’d been hit.

  King shouted, ‘We have César Vásquez. You know who that is?’