Betrayed: A Jason King Thriller (Jason King Series Book 4)

by Matt Rogers

  But he was alive.

  Slowly, an inch at a time, he lifted his head off the path. It took an incredible amount of effort, but he had to get a glimpse at the result of the blast.

  He saw the limp body of the boy a hundred feet further down the path, and knew instantly that the kid had not been so lucky.

  That short gap between them had spelled the difference between life and death.

  Due to his slight frame, the blast had hurled him through the air like a plaything. He had impacted the ground hard enough to kill him, his internal organs likely also shattered. King let his gaze linger on the slumped form before turning his eyes to the scene beyond.

  Half the Giza Pyramid complex had been turned to a smouldering wreck.

  Great craters had been smashed into the sand across the site, and vast chunks of earth had been ripped from the ground. Gazing in awe at the devastation, King couldn’t help but imagine what the result would have been like at mid-morning. His estimate of a few hundred casualties would have been way off.

  It would have killed nearly everyone in the site.

  He clambered to his feet amidst a wasteland, finally allowing himself to breathe a sigh of relief. Despite the shocking events that had transpired, innocent casualties had been avoided. In the end, setting the explosives off at night would have been the best way to go about it. King couldn’t imagine the painstaking process of combing through the complex piece by piece, uncovering each new cluster of explosives one at a time.

  The risk of any of the Semtex detonating whilst in the process of being discovered would have been unimaginably high.

  He limped slowly through the chaos, taking his time. He made in the direction he had come from, each step a little more painful than the last. He reached the start of the detonation site within a few minutes. If any of the explosives had been up the back of the complex, he imagined he would not be alive to see what remained.

  He had been incredibly lucky.

  In the distance, the howling of a dozen sirens lit up the night. King could barely hear the commotion over the high-pitched whining in his ears, left over from the sheer volume of the blast. He stumbled. His foot sunk at an odd angle into the sand and he rolled his ankle. He slumped to his knees, wincing as pain wracked his body. It finally overcame him all at once.

  He had come to rest between the two largest pyramids, dwarfed by them. All around him the ground had been churned, torn apart, shredded.

  King collapsed into the sand.

  He didn’t know how long he lay there. Seconds or minutes or hours — it could have been anything. Swimming in and out of consciousness, time passed in sporadic bursts.

  Finally, he heard something.

  Footsteps.

  Voices.

  Hands seized his back and pulled him to his feet.

  He blacked out.

  CHAPTER 40

  Somewhere over the North Atlantic Ocean…

  The Boeing C-17 Globemaster III blended into the night sky as it rocketed through a thunderstorm at over five hundred miles an hour. It was an enormous aircraft, used by the U.S. Air Force to carry up to a hundred paratroopers into war zones. In this instance, it had a very specific destination and a strangely sparse capacity.

  It had been contracted to Black Force in order to extract one of their operatives.

  King came to somewhere in the fuselage of the gargantuan airplane, surrounded by cold metal and pallets of what appeared to be ammunition. He lay in a portable hospital bed with a thin white sheet draped over his legs. His arms were hooked up to all manner of machines. Groggily, he glanced down and saw several needles embedded deep in the veins running along his forearms.

  He blinked hard in an attempt to wake himself up.

  There was no-one in sight. Above him, the roof of the plane ran into the distance, where it ended at a massive hangar door sealed firmly shut. King recalled many situations in years prior — back when he had been a nervous rookie operative — waiting for similar doors to descend and to leap out into the night sky with nothing but a chute on his back and a weapon strapped to his chest.

  The good old days.

  He felt every bit of his age now. Despite the cocktail of sedatives swirling through his system, there was no denying that he was in bad shape. His movement was impeded — not by the drugs, but by his injuries. Slowly, tentatively, he lifted a hand and ran it across his scalp. His hair had been shaved off.

  For a brief and terrifying instant, he felt something close to panic.

  Where am I?

  Then Isla stepped into view.

  She wore military get-up for the first time since King had known her — dark khaki pants and a jet-black sweater to combat the cold. Her secretarial hair — usually worn as inconspicuously as possible — had been tied back. She crossed the metal floor of the Globemaster and came to a halt by the side of King’s bed. She rested a hand on his wrist, more to reassure him than anything else.

  ‘You’re one tough motherfucker, Jason King,’ she said.

  He managed a half-grin. ‘Can’t keep a good man down.’

  ‘I had to pull some strings to get you out of there. Egyptian authorities were getting ready to have a field day with you.’

  ‘I can only imagine.’

  ‘You know the shit-storm you caused? The whole of Egypt is in pandemonium.’

  ‘I didn’t cause anything. I stopped the real shit-storm.’

  ‘I know.’

  King paused, a million thoughts racing through his head after the whirlwind of insanity had finally come to an end. ‘How much attention was brought to it?’

  ‘A shitload. The Opera House, the Cairo Tower, the Giza Pyramids. All the major landmarks have been either destroyed or the site of a battle. You left dead mercenaries all over Gezira Island. And the pyramids … my God. The damage is unfathomable. We could only postulate what would have happened if Nasser’s plan had gone ahead.’

  King grimaced. ‘But their plan all along had been to secure futures in the stock exchange. I think what went down would have created enough uncertainty. The tourism industry will take a huge blow. So will the economy. I think they’ll make the money…’

  Isla nodded. ‘You’re right. But Walcott’s splattered all over the pavement at the Cairo Tower. We’re in the process of tracing all his blood money. When we locate the accounts, they’ll be frozen.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what Nasser would have done with his cut if he got his hands on it…’ King said, shaking his head. ‘This was supposed to be just a precursor.’

  ‘I need to get used to your ways again,’ Isla said.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You’re a reckless bastard.’

  King smiled. ‘Just how I do things.’

  ‘It paid off this time,’ Isla said. ‘I can’t imagine any other way we could have shut that down in time, aside from sending in a military convoy and causing World War Three.’

  ‘That’s why we exist, isn’t it? Lone, rogue operatives have their advantages. I work for no-one.’

  ‘You work for us,’ Isla reinforced. ‘I can’t stress that enough, especially now.’

  King nodded. ‘I understand.’

  ‘You’re not going to run off on us again, are you? We’d rather not just have you as a once-off. We sunk millions of dollars into preparing Lopez and Price as the top dogs. Look what happened to them.’

  ‘They got what they deserved. There wasn’t a chance I was letting them run around Egypt with me and dream up another plan to get rich quick. Men like them always do…’

  ‘You’re damn right they got what they deserved. You made the right call.’

  Isla crossed to the other side of the bed and lifted a clipboard off the floor nearby. She thumbed through a few pages of medical jargon, shaking her head in disbelief as she did so. ‘You’re hurt real bad, according to this.’

  ‘I’m not going to disagree with that,’ King said. ‘Feels like I am.’

  ‘You’ll receive the very best tre
atment money can buy,’ she said. ‘I need you fully functional as soon as possible.’

  ‘Understood.’

  She paused, chewing her lip, contemplating something. ‘If you need more time…’

  King raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can’t imagine trying to process some of the shit you saw,’ Isla said. ‘It would be foolish to neglect the psychological effects that could have. If you feel like you need time to process what you went through…’

  King raised a hand, cutting her off. ‘Isla.’

  She looked at him.

  ‘I’m just getting warmed up,’ he said, before sinking his head back into the pillow and closing his eyes. ‘Soon as I’m physically ready, put me back to work.’

  ‘You certainly are a unique individual,’ she said, turning on her heel and striding back the way she had come from. ‘We’ll be in New York City in four hours.’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ King mumbled.

  He drifted into a dreamless sleep. Another task completed. Another plan foiled. By now, the feats he had accomplished and the turmoil he had experienced seemed commonplace. Even though no-one had officially employed his services for close to a year before now, it felt like nothing had changed.

  Black Force called.

  He answered.

  That’s how it was meant to be. And that’s how it would continue to be.

  The Boeing Globemaster soared over the churning ocean, and Jason King felt at peace.

  JASON KING WILL RETURN…

  Corrupted: A Jason King Thriller

  (Jason King Series Book 5)

  Coming Soon…

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