by Matt Rogers
King jolted as his shoulder straps tugged hard against his arms. The chute above him caught the wind at a speed he wasn’t used to. BASE rigs had mesh vents built into the bottom skin of the canopy which enabled them to open faster than traditional parachutes used for skydiving. This was due to the tiny window BASE jumpers had to open their parachute.
King reached up and snatched at the toggles, eyes wide. The lightning-quick opening had caught him off-guard. He found himself twisting in the air, starting to head toward the side of the Cairo Tower…
He yanked hard on the left-hand toggle, spinning him around in the air. He found himself two hundred feet above the ground, having covered two-thirds of the height of the tower in a couple of seconds.
His canopy spun wildly out of control.
He should have known the expertise required for a BASE jump. He had done a handful in his day, but that had been years ago. There were countless variables he hadn’t anticipated.
Landing would be vicious.
He seized control of the toggles and steered over the square, soaring out onto the open road. He spotted Nasser’s vehicle a couple of hundred feet away, rapidly shrinking in size. The driver had opted to lean on the accelerator and dodge the civilian vehicles as fast as he could, which meant he was putting serious ground between them and King.
King realised he would overshoot the street unless he corrected his course. Heart pounding, he tugged the right-hand ripcord almost all the way down. The canopy drooped on that side and he experienced a moment of sheer terror as he rotated almost ninety-degrees horizontally. His ankles swung above his head for a split second, then the chute dipped again and he found himself travelling parallel to the road — hovering a hundred feet above the asphalt.
And rapidly descending.
He realised he would land amidst speeding traffic and gulped back nerves.
Now was not the time. Being afraid would achieve nothing. He needed every bit of his awareness and response time intact to survive what came next.
Then — all at once — another variable was added.
Something whistled in between his canopy lines, passing just a couple of feet over his head, coming incredibly close to severing one of the lines and sending him into a death spiral.
The sound of the gunshot came a moment later.
He flashed a glance back and saw a cluster of Nasser’s guns-for-hire standing around the base of the Cairo Tower. They had watched his descent in disbelief before firing on his position when they had a good shot.
He had nowhere to go. He couldn’t duck behind cover. He sat in open space, suspended by the rig’s harness, his feet dangling uselessly in thin air.
He looked ahead again, and saw that he had no time to worry about Nasser’s security.
He would hit the ground in seconds. Below, a sleek grey Maserati travelled at an identical speed — he guessed around thirty miles an hour. Nasser’s SUV had gained more ground, almost disappearing from sight far in the distance. King realised that if he landed on the road itself, he would lose them.
Begrudgingly, he accepted that he would have to aim for the Maserati’s roof.
If he wanted to hit the minuscule target area successfully he would have to keep up his current speed. It meant that he would have no time to flare, the technique used by all skydivers and BASE jumpers to slow themselves before landing by pulling both toggles at once.
The impact would do some damage — that was inevitable.
He spent a moment building up the nerve, then burst into action.
It took a couple of simple adjustments to line himself up with the Maserati. In all likelihood, the driver had no idea that King coasted through the air above his head. Drivers don’t usually look up. King saw the thin roof rush up to his feet and knew the impact was inevitable.
Brace.
The soles of his feet crashed into the roof. If he stayed on his feet, the parachute and its attached harness would throw him down onto the asphalt at thirty miles an hour. He dropped voluntarily, slamming back-first into the metal and denting most of its surface area. Then he spun and snatched at the harness looped around his legs. He unfastened each loop with two vicious tugs and slipped himself out of the restraints as fast as he could.
The leather strap across his chest yanked him backwards as the parachute caught the air and blew to the left. Panicking, he wrestled with it one-handed, desperately searching for a handhold with the other. At the last second he wrenched the chest strap loose and ducked out of the last portion of the harness. The leather straps shot away into the air, just as the main canopy struck a streetlight and came to a jarringly abrupt stop.
King watched the situation unfold and gulped back relief. If he had stayed in the harness a moment longer, it would have torn him off the Maserati’s roof hard enough to kill or paralyse him. His stomach dropped as the driver touched the brakes, obviously shocked by the heavy object thudding into his roof.
King felt himself sliding off the car, heading over the windscreen. He snatched at the metal chassis but found no handholds to speak of.
Fuck.
The windscreen crumpled as he slammed into it, splintering the reinforced glass into a million pieces. He continued over the hood, landing hard enough on his shoulder to send nerve endings firing down his arm.
The road rushed up to meet him.
He dropped an elbow and tried his best to roll with the impact, taking the majority of the force out of it.
It half-worked.
King slapped the asphalt with a grunt of pain and sprawled across the road. Agony flared across his back as some of his skin grated against the hard surface. He ignored the urge to drop his palms onto the asphalt, fully aware of what the consequences would be.
When he finally got his feet under him and sprung to a standing position, Nasser’s vehicle had all but disappeared.
He heard aggressive quips from the driver of the Maserati, who had rolled his window down to scream at the man who had damaged his car. King crossed over to him and wrenched the driver’s door open. The guy was in his early fifties, balding, with a plump belly and an acne-ridden complexion. In the passenger seat sat a twenty-something Middle-Eastern woman with pronounced cheekbones and a slim figure.
King had no doubts as to why she was there.
He had come to learn that in so many cases, money was an aphrodisiac.
‘You dumb fuck!’ the driver roared. ‘You’re paying for this…’
Before he could continue his rant, King grabbed two handfuls of his shirt and hauled him out of the seat, using the strength he had built up over his lifetime to treat the man like a misbehaving child. The guy spun a full revolution on the asphalt before sprawling across the road, staring up at King in disbelief.
‘I really am sorry about this,’ King said. ‘I work for the government. I’ll make sure you get another one.’
Then he ducked into the Maserati and ushered the girl out of the passenger seat.
The second he became the sole inhabitant of the Maserati, he stamped on the accelerator and squealed away from the scene in a cloud of burning rubber.
CHAPTER 34
The massive dose of adrenalin injected into one’s veins after any kind of activity as dangerous as a BASE jump brought with it a feeling of utter invincibility.
King felt his veins pumping as he shot past the traffic on either side, weaving in and out of lanes in an attempt to close the gap between his vehicle and Nasser’s. He wrapped both hands around the leather wheel and gripped it tight, riding out the sensation as best he could. He needed full concentration for what lay ahead. Nothing else would suffice. He was so close to gaining the upper hand, he could almost taste it.
He spotted the black SUV ahead, swerving violently around civilian cars with seemingly no regard for personal safety. They were just as desperate to escape as King was to catch them. As soon as the vehicle came within sight, a wave of determination washed over King. He locked his eyes onto the SUV and refused to let it o
ut of his vision.
He would catch it — or die trying.
A clueless elderly man in a silver Mercedes veered into King’s lane, unaware of the Maserati barrelling up to meet it. He changed lanes at close to ninety miles an hour, missing a direct impact by a hair. On the way past his left-hand mirror hit the side of the guy’s Mercedes and broke off in an explosion of parts. King flinched involuntarily, but regained control a moment later.
He passed the Mercedes and re-entered the middle lane, gunning for Nasser. The SUV attempted to skirt into the outside lane to avoid a build-up of traffic, but found itself wedged behind another row of civilian vehicles. It slowed to a crawl.
King didn’t.
With the SUV filling his vision, rushing up to meet his Maserati unless he slammed on the brakes, he formed an idea. It might kill him, but he wasn’t afraid. He made up his mind in a split second, never bothering to think that the cortisol flooding his system after the BASE jump might have convinced him to act so recklessly.
He knew that approaching the vehicle in a slow and controlled manner would eventuate in his death. He was weaponless, and Nasser’s security inside the SUV were almost definitely armed to the teeth. He would have to do something so drastic, so unbelievable, that it would throw them off their game.
With that thought churning through his mind, he hauled himself out the open driver’s window and clambered out onto the hood of the Maserati.
By now, he had built up enough speed to give him ample coasting distance. He didn’t have his foot on the accelerator, but his aim was true, and he anticipated the Maserati would hit the SUV at fifty miles an hour. Its rear window — tinted to limit visibility — filled his vision, large enough to fit his bulk, hopefully thin enough to shatter upon impact.
He felt no pain. He felt no fear. He zoned in on the target area, took a single breath full of anticipation and nervous energy, and poised himself to fly.
The Maserati’s hood crumpled into the SUV hard enough to send it rocketing forward, likely throwing everyone inside the vehicle against their seatbelts. King felt the shift in momentum under his feet, and a half-second later he left the car behind. He shot across the two feet of empty space and tucked his chin into his chest, aiming to hit the window with his upper back.
His vision descended to a blur of G-forces and he waited for what would likely be the most brutal impact he had ever experienced.
His bulk obliterated the rear windscreen, shattering it to pieces. The force behind him carried him through into the massive trunk and he hit the rear seats hard enough to shock his system into fight-or-flight. He registered the jarring impact that crushed his teeth together and slapped his limbs against the hard floor of the trunk and rattled his head in devastating fashion — but he thrust those sensations to the back of his mind.
There were live targets in the vehicle that needed dealing with.
He rolled off his back and took in the contents of the SUV in the blink of an eye — before any of them had even realised their enemy had launched himself into the trunk.
Only three men total.
Nasser sitting bewildered in the left-hand rear seat, shocked by the impact.
One security detail to his right, eyes panicked and dilated, recovering from the crash and trying to get his bearings.
The driver up front, both hands on the wheel, knuckles white, terrified by the rear-end collision.
King knew he could recover faster than them, and react faster than them.
That was all it would take.
He dove for the security guy on the right-hand side, who was fumbling for his weapon. Sheer desperation lent King strength and he ripped the Glock out of the guy’s hands just as he brought the gun to a level height. In an attempt to recover his firearm, the man scrambled in panicked fashion after King.
King scooted back to the rear of the trunk — cutting himself on broken glass in the process — and fired two shots through the guy’s skull.
Inside the confines of the SUV, the sound was violent and deafening. Nasser screamed and ducked below the seat, thoroughly rattled, attempting to put something solid between himself and the barrel of King’s gun. Beside him, his dead security slumped across the two empty seats, likely bleeding profusely from the grievous wounds in his head.
King heard Nasser’s panicked breathing on the other side of the seat.
The driver slammed on the brakes. King lost his balance and careered into the partition, stripping him of what little breath he had left. He fumbled with the Glock in the process. When he finally regained control of the weapon and slotted his finger back against the trigger, he heard the distinct sound of the driver’s door being flung open.
He sat up and watched as the driver abandoned the vehicle. The man must have called it a day. He could only deal with so much carnage, and it seemed that the death of his co-worker had been the point where he had cut his losses and fled.
Fair enough, King thought.
He let the man sprint away across the road.
Now, only he and Nasser remained in the vehicle.
Quiet descended over the SUV’s interior, aside from the whimpering of the extremist. Charged with rage, King vaulted over into the rear seat, landing on top of the corpse on the other side. Nasser let out a sob as some of the blood from the corpse pooled against his side.
King seized him by the throat. ‘You don’t like this? You don’t like me killing your men?’
Nasser shook his head, tears brimming in his eyes. ‘Just let me go.’
‘What don’t you like, exactly?’
Silence.
‘You don’t like being so close to the dead?’
No response.
‘You’d prefer to just blow up a few hundred innocents from a distance?’ King said. ‘That’s a bit easier, isn’t it? Not as confrontational.’
Nasser kept his mouth shut. King leant over and opened the door behind him, then shoved him out of the SUV. He followed him out of the car, stepping down onto the road. Traffic had ground to a halt amidst the scene of the accident as drivers stopped to gawk at the demolished Maserati that had spun off to one side of the road.
King seized Nasser by the collar and hauled him away from the scene, keeping his other hand wrapped firmly around the Glock. He was ready for any confrontation. He had made it up to this point, and he would not let any more of Nasser’s half-witted security get in the way of his objective.
As it proved, he had done a stellar job of seizing control of the situation. They had ended up at least a mile away from the Cairo Tower, and whatever men Nasser and Walcott had left on their payroll would take too long to reach them.
King hurried the extremist across the open lanes and thrust him up onto the sidewalk. He slotted between the shadows of two residential buildings and threw Nasser to the ground in one of the many alleyways of Gezira Island.
Out of sight.
Away from the horde of security who would no doubt be scouring the grounds around the Cairo Tower for sign of their high-paying client.
King had no qualms with how many of the men he had killed. Besides the fact that he was simply retaliating against those who wanted to take his life, he could not forgive anyone willing to defend such a despicable human with their lives — all for a paycheque. He would unhesitatingly put away blood mercenaries until the end of his days.
He grabbed a handful of Nasser’s bloodied shirt and picked him up with a single tug — mostly thanks to the man’s slight frame. He threw Nasser into the concrete wall, hate flooding his system. The man had endangered so many innocent lives just for financial gain. It tightened his stomach into a knot, constricting it with loathing and disgust.
He couldn’t help it.
Every so often, emotions got in the way of an operation.
Nasser spat out a mouthful of blood and seemed to crumple against the wall. His shoulders sagged and he bared red teeth. King looked at his face and noted the pain, the trauma, but above all else — the depletion. He s
eemed to be on death’s door. King wondered if the injuries he had sustained on the fall out the window were finally catching up to the man. Sheer determination to complete his objective had kept him going, but it seemed that his reserves were dwindling.
He wouldn’t make it much further.
Nasser’s eyes — already wide and sunken — had shrivelled even further back into his head. His skin had paled. Sweat ran in rivulets down his forehead, and the blood streaked across his shirt had threatened to change its colour entirely. One arm dangled uselessly by his side. His breath rattled in deep, shaking gasps.
King crouched down next to the man. ‘Looks like your time’s up.’
Nasser nodded, a feeble gesture. ‘I am aware of that.’
‘You can still fix this,’ King said. ‘Please.’
Silence.
‘Tell me everything you’ve put into place,’ King said. ‘Help me end this nonsense. It’s no good killing all those people if you don’t live to see it yourself. Surely you know that.’
Nasser winced as a fresh wave of pain coursed through him. He shook his head. ‘I admire your determination, American.’
‘And?’
‘And I am afraid I must refuse.’
‘Why? What use is half a billion dollars if you’re not alive to use it?’
Another shake of the head. ‘This is not about money. This is about my objective.’
‘And that is?’
‘You would not understand.’
‘You think it’s fine to kill all those people?’
With his eyes still squeezed shut to ride out the agony, Nasser grinned, exposing stained teeth. ‘Like I said, you would not understand.’
‘I can beat it out of you.’
‘Nothing you do will make me change my mind. No information you get out of me will be useful in any way. Everything is in place.’
‘You have a man in place to detonate?’
Nasser contemplated a response, then shrugged. ‘A boy. It does not matter if you know. You won’t be able to stop him. We have three hundred pounds of Semtex ready to detonate.’
