Hunters

by Matt Rogers

  King remembered what Will Slater had done for him in the Russian Far East, deep in an abandoned mine on the Kamchatka Peninsula many years ago.

  He hadn’t told them this part.

  Only Slater, briefly, before the man departed for the cartel-owned airfield.

  He’d kept it secret because it was the most dangerous part of it all.

  Violetta pressed him. ‘Jason?’

  He said, ‘I’ll need your talents.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Finding who I’m looking for.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘The weak link.’

  She stared at him. Like, Could you be any more cryptic?

  He said, ‘And get Slater to send us all that dirt he has on Texis. We’ll need to make a stateside trip of our own.’

  104

  Two days later…

  For the most part, the consulate staff had treated their unwanted guests with respect.

  Slater sat in front of his borrowed laptop in the tiny back room that comprised his living and sleeping space and noted from the digital clock in the top corner of the screen that it was six-thirty in the morning. This somewhat surprised him. There was no way to tell the time by natural means; his room was windowless, and he wasn’t allowed into the main reception area where daylight spilled in through the big windows.

  Alonzo was in the next room, which was practically a cupboard, and they were only permitted to converse with each other, not with the diplomats that bled through the corridors all around them on a daily basis. There was normalcy in the staff’s demeanours, but Slater knew it was a façade. Whenever he got too close to one of them, they shrank away like he was radioactive, poisonous to the touch.

  It had perhaps been the tensest forty-eight hours of Slater’s life. Keeping his gun close, having to worry about an undercover U.S. operative slipping in one morning under the guise of a diplomat, wearing the uniform to infiltrate and exterminate him and Alonzo. When he’d first stepped foot inside two days prior, he’d memorised every face in the building. Then he’d asked the consul for a list of diplomats who had their shifts over the forthcoming days along with their matching passport photos, and he’d memorised those in turn.

  Every time someone stepped foot in the back hallways of the consulate, Slater scanned their face and mentally matched them with a passport photo. If he didn’t recognise them when he saw them, he’d turn his gun on them in less than a second.

  So far, it hadn’t happened.

  Everyone was familiar.

  He knew that outside, in the civilian world, there would also be the façade of normalcy. At surface level, there would be nothing out of the ordinary on East 36th Street. Residents of Manhattan and commuters who’d travelled in from the outer boroughs would go about their day, unaware that behind closed doors there were crack teams of black-ops killers watching their every move as they passed the sidewalk out the front of the consulate.

  All of it was surrounded. Slater had no doubt about that.

  The entire block.

  Park Avenue to the west, Lexington to the east, East 36th to the north, and East 35th to the south.

  Nothing would escape the secret world’s cordon.

  Every CCTV camera would be commandeered, everything in the vicinity aimed at the front and back entrances of the consulate. There would be no walking out of their own free will. The second Slater or Alonzo stepped onto American soil, they’d be taken. The shadow world wouldn’t show a shred of mercy.

  Nor would El Salvador.

  Slater was under no illusion that the stranglehold on El Salvador’s President would last forever. It had already been two days since Vásquez ordered the harbouring and protection of the two strange Americans, and there were already whispered rumours that he was getting looser and looser with his terms. Slater knew exactly what was playing out behind closed doors, but no way of eavesdropping. Frantic calls would be placed over and over and over again by a wide variety of important U.S. government officials, and eventually the President of El Salvador’s hardline approach would crack.

  Eventually he’d give up and say, ‘You know what? You can have them…’

  Alonzo appeared in the doorway to Slater’s claustrophobic quarters. He hovered there, demanding attention.

  Slater lifted his eyes off the laptop screen, his bulky frame hunched between the two walls, so close he could reach out and touch them both.

  Alonzo tried to wisecrack. ‘Not much different to the prison they had me in.’

  Slater rolled his eyes.

  Alonzo cleared his throat, took a step back. Slater noticed how ragged the man looked — curly hair greasy with oil, forehead breaking out in acne, deep bags under his eyes — but had to think he wasn’t much easier on the eyes himself. His hair had even grown out a couple of millimetres. He hadn’t bothered to adhere to the regular routine of shaving his head each morning.

  Alonzo asked, ‘You been sleeping?’

  ‘Only when I ask you to keep watch.’

  ‘That’s only been a few hours in total…’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You need the rest.’

  ‘I need to stay alive.’

  ‘How much longer do we go on like this? When do we make a break for it?’

  ‘We don’t.’

  ‘Do you have word from King? From Violetta?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What have they said?’

  ‘They’re working on something. A way to get us out of here.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Hopefully soon,’ Slater said, ‘because Vásquez will give up today.’

  ‘You’ve got inside sources on that?’

  ‘No. I just know how long a weak man’s resolve lasts.’

  ‘Give up how?’

  ‘Lift the blackmail. Relinquish the threats. Let the President do what he wants.’

  ‘Which will be to grant the American authorities permission to storm in here and extract us by force.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Alonzo glanced over his shoulder. ‘The consul will be pleased with that.’

  ‘I don’t blame him. We’ve been nothing but trouble.’

  Alonzo was frozen in the door frame, leaning against one side of it, a blank look on his face. Like his mind was racing too fast for his features to keep up and show emotion. Slater had seen that analytical look before. It happened when the tech wizard had an epiphany and went deep, connecting logical dots to see if it was possible.

  Slater waited a long beat, then said, ‘What?’

  Alonzo said, ‘You think the authorities will hit the consulate today? This morning, even?’

  ‘I don’t see them wasting time. As soon as El Salvador backs off, they’ll breach.’

  ‘Hypothetically,’ Alonzo said, ‘if I could get contradictory orders to the strike force, we’ll be able to slip out in the confusion. King won’t need to put himself in harm’s way.’

  ‘Contradictory orders?’

  ‘I still have access to the system. All of it. I didn’t sleep last night. I spent the whole time seeing if I could get in using the laptop the consul gave me.’

  Slater felt his blood run cold. Everything about it was a bad idea. ‘You don’t think they’ll be watching every move you make if you go back in and try to mess around with the system? They imprisoned you for treason, Alonzo. You’re Public Enemy Number One. They’ll be waiting for you to try something.’

  Alonzo shook his head. ‘They won’t.’

  The man was adamant.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Slater asked.

  ‘Because that’s the flaw in the way their world works,’ Alonzo said, his eyes aflame with passionate intensity. ‘Don’t you see it? There’s the shadow people at the very top. The grand architects, so to speak. They shape the country. But they need workers like me to implement their sweeping ideas, which is what I was very good at doing. They know how to use the system. They know nothing about how it was designed. There’s back doors
I created that no replacement is going to find. I’m sure they have their best people scouring for it, but they’ll never find it. No one is me.’

  ‘You think that highly of yourself?’

  ‘You have to in our game. I’m sure you do, too. Even if you don’t say it.’

  Slater didn’t respond, which was a response in itself.

  Then he said, ‘Are you telling me you can order the troops to stand down the moment they go to breach the doors?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then get ready to do that.’

  ‘I already have. I wasn’t asking for your permission. I was trying to make you understand why I did what I did. When they go to take us, I’ll stifle them with orders that look like they’ve come from the very top.’

  Slater shook his head slowly in disbelief. ‘You tech guys are something else.’

  Alonzo nodded slyly in return. ‘Tell King to hold off. He might not be needed.’

  Slater said nothing as Alonzo retreated back to his quarters.

  105

  Maybe this will be the one.

  That’s what Deckard Cross thought, sitting in the grimy darkness of the cheap Brooklyn motel room, his features obscured by the drawn curtains. Only thin slivers of light leaked into the sad space. His face was all that was illuminated, drenched in the harsh glare of a laptop screen. He hunched over it, tapping the “Enter” key at regularly spaced intervals, each command sending a virtual online slot machine spinning on-screen.

  Each hit gave him the chance to win a jackpot, but usually just sucked another portion of his savings out of his bank account.

  Savings. The word carried grim nostalgia. I used to have something to show for myself.

  They were considerable back in the day. He did elite-calibre work, after all. Now they were dwindling, and not because of an absence of jobs. There were always jobs for someone with his skillset — the government was a twisted, corrupt demon of an entity, and people who knew the truth always needed disappearing. That work would never dry up.

  What would dry up, however, was any hopes he had for a future if he continued on this course.

  He stabbed the “Enter” key and lost another two grand.

  Just like that.

  In the dopamine-fuelled hangover he had a rare moment of lucidity. He reflected on his life for once. He guessed this depressing spiral had started with the rejection handed down to him by a man who went by the moniker “Onyx.” You see, Deckard Cross had never been rejected from anything in life, probably thanks to genetic blessings that made him the furthest outlier in physical advantages. He was strong and lean, he had the ability to endure, his mind was sharp, and above all he was fast. They liked that in the secret world — his reaction speed trumped practically anyone else’s on the planet, and in a situation where saving a hostage came down to a millisecond of decision-making, that was important.

  So he’d ascended, and excelled, and been promoted, and been paid gross sums … without much real effort.

  What destroyed his fellow brothers-in-arms in training was nothing to Cross. He could run forever, he could out-bench colleagues who outweighed him by fifty pounds, and his focus never seemed to waver. His reserves never depleted, and most of the instructors throughout his life had given up on trying to punish him for insubordination with physical tasks. They simply didn’t work on Deckard.

  So he’d never met real resistance, and now he saw that for what it was.

  A curse, not a blessing.

  A couple of months ago Onyx screened him for the elusive “hunter” force, a prestigious and feared wing of the black-ops world that struck awe into anyone who’d ever heard a whisper about it. Before he went for the audition, Cross already knew he had the gig. He knew that’s when the real party would start. He’d always liked the drink, the drugs, the girls. As the best Tier One operator in the United States, that would only be amplified.

  Then it wasn’t.

  Cross failed every psychological test and Onyx gave him the boot the very next day.

  And now, he thought, here I am.

  He stifled the self-hatred with every dopamine hit he could find, which wasn’t a problem in the modern world. Everywhere you turned there was a quick fix, but nothing hit the spot quite like online gambling. Sitting in front of this shitty laptop in this shitty motel, he could win or lose millions, and no one was the wiser.

  Mostly lose.

  He tapped “Enter,” four more times.

  Cha-ching.

  Nothing.

  Another eight grand gone.

  He slammed the screen shut and sculled the last of his Monster Energy can, hoping the caffeine would kick in soon. Then he shoved two pieces of extra-strength nicotine gum into his mouth and chewed hard, rolling his neck until he heard cracks on both sides.

  When he sighed, it came out loud.

  He knew he was unravelling.

  Thank God his genetic gifts still counted for something.

  It meant there was still work…

  His phone chimed a familiar tone. The unique notification sound had been paired with only one number, and whenever he heard it he knew it was time to go. He checked the message, nodded slowly to himself, and lurched up off the armchair. He snatched his jacket off the seatback and the loaded assault rifle from its position propped against the wardrobe doors.

  Manhattan. The consulate. Guatemala? El Salvador?

  One of those in the Northern Triangle.

  He’d visited all of them. Not pleasant places. He wondered if that was due to his line of work…

  Anyway, a couple of idiot traitors needed putting down.

  He’d do that.

  It’d buy him another night of gambling. Or, even better, it’d wind up getting him killed. He subconsciously understood that he’d reached his ceiling in this game, and the last thing he ever wanted to do was decline. He’d never stepped down a rung in his life. He wasn’t about to.

  No, if he got relegated to the D-League in future, he’d go out on top.

  A blaze of glory.

  He steeled himself for imminent warfare, dredging up that familiar sensation of an invisible fist gripping his insides, and threw the motel room door open to head for his pickup truck.

  He didn’t make it.

  As soon as he stepped over the threshold, someone waiting right beside the door wrapped a giant arm around Deckard’s throat and wrapped him up in a one-armed choke hold, slipping expertly behind his centre mass to prevent a counterattack. Then the assailant dragged Deckard back into the motel room and slammed the door shut with his boot.

  Cross was plunged back into the seedy lowlight just as the attacker threw him down hard enough to send the rifle and the jacket flying in separate directions. His skull bounced hard on the floor, which was really nothing more than a paper-thin layer of carpet over solid concrete, so he lost all his ability to fight back. He was surprised he stayed conscious.

  One thought overrode all the others. Who the fuck can do that to me?

  Then he looked up, his vision swimming, into the eyes of a man he recognised.

  ‘Oh,’ he muttered. ‘I know you.’

  The mythical Jason King stared down at him. Cross almost hadn’t believed the man actually existed. He was the stuff of legend — real legend, not fairytales. King’s condition wasn’t like the mugshots Cross had seen many years ago. Now he was dishevelled, like a barbarian on the battlefield, his hair a damp mess and his left arm pinned tight to his body in a sling.

  King pinned Cross to the ground with a boot in the middle of his chest and regarded the operative with contempt. ‘This is who they’ve got doing their dirty work these days?’

  Cross couldn’t be bothered defending himself. The self-hatred cut deep tonight. ‘I’ve got the reflexes going for me, like you. Everything else … not so much.’

  ‘They’re too reliant on those tests,’ King said.

  ‘Tell me about it. If I’m not mistaken, you just took me down with one hand.’

&nbs
p; King stared at Cross in silence for a long beat. Then he said, ‘You got personal troubles. But I guess I already knew that.’

  ‘Is that how you found me?’

  ‘You play online blackjack more than you actually work. Leaving your personal computer open to all sorts of malware. Maybe next time don’t be a moron with your internet security and you won’t end up here.’

  Cross rolled his eyes. At least the caffeine and nicotine were kicking in, combining into a potent stimulant that made this little chat bearable.

  ‘You know who I work for,’ Deckard said. ‘You know there won’t be a next time.’

  King shrugged as best he could with one functional arm. ‘That’s on you.’

  Then he stomped down on Cross’s head.

  106

  Slater only stayed sitting on the cheap mattress in his room for a couple of minutes before he abandoned his laptop and joined Alonzo next door.

  He could spend all the time he wanted tracking official channels, waiting for a hint that the secret stalemate between America and El Salvador was off, but it took an absence of ego to recognise he was out of his depth and turn it over to Alonzo. The technological world would never be his strong suit, and he knew that. Alonzo was already inside the system he’d previously lorded over, able to fire off orders to any of the black-ops agents scattered across the globe.

  There was nothing Slater could do to compete with that.

  So he waited with bated breath in Alonzo’s room. The man was hunched over his laptop on the sofa cushions he was using for a bed. The space was the size of a walk-in wardrobe, plagued by the faint smell of stress and dirty clothes and body odour.

  Alonzo inched closer and closer to his screen, then his eyes went wide. ‘Oh, fuck.’

  Slater tensed up, gripped the HK45CT tight. ‘What?’

  ‘Orders are out. El Salvador caved. The consulate is to be breached immediately. Looks like there’s seven … eight sets of orders. I’m looking at the live feed. Six from the front, two from the back. So eight ground troops spread across two strike teams.’