by Matt Rogers
Slater figured he’d reached the tipping point, gently pushing Malvado over the edge of a downward slope into confrontation. It seemed as if the tension in the air could be physically cut, and Jorge had started drifting one hand toward his weapon.
Is this it?
Is this where all hell breaks loose?
It was.
But not in the way Slater anticipated.
Harsh white light exploded in front of them — two sets of headlights flaring to life simultaneously. Slater shielded his eyes from the glare, and when he double-checked what had happened he realised two armour-plated pick-up trucks were hurtling toward them at sixty miles an hour.
A head-on collision was imminent.
19
Malvado yelled, breaking the horrid silence permeating the van’s interior. He slammed on the brakes as Jorge and Slater dove for handholds, seizing them at the very last second. The brutal change in momentum sent Slater crunching into the back of the driver’s seat, whiplashing his neck to the side as he impacted.
Pain.
Unbelievable pain.
In his head. Behind his eyeballs. He couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. For a moment he thought he’d suffered a stroke, or a brain aneurysm, or something fatal and debilitating and completely random, but he realised the assault on his senses had left him with the mother of all headaches, only compounded by the chaos around him.
Bang.
Something hit the van, so hard that Slater almost passed out. He bounced off the hard plastic of the seat in front of him and tumbled into the footwell as glass shattered above his head. All the windows burst simultaneously, showering the interior with shards and fragments. Slater shielded his eyes and rode out the madness. He’d come to a crashing halt in the footwell as Malvado skidded the van to a halt on the road, and they’d taken the full force of the approaching pick-up truck to the side of the chassis.
Surprised they hadn’t overturned, Slater shoved a hand through the gap between the two front seats and wrenched Malvado’s Glock 17 out of its holster. Before the big man could respond he tumbled out of the vehicle, throwing the door open and spilling out onto the dirt track with blood running down the side of his head.
He couldn’t pause, couldn’t even stop to take in his surroundings.
If he paused, he died.
Experience had taught him that.
He spotted hulking silhouettes in the gloom, ghosting around the outside of the van, weapons in their hands. He didn’t need to think twice. He fired two shots into the nearest guy, ripping his stomach open, then wheeled on the spot and flattened himself into the dirt. Shots rang over his head, three or four of them in consecutive fashion. The sicarios, firing at the last space they’d seen muzzle flares. Slater took a cloud of dust to the face as he hit the ground, obscuring his vision for a half-second, but he brushed it aside and fired three times underneath the vehicle, shredding the ankles of the guy on the other side of the van.
The man dropped and let out a blood-curdling scream, and Slater cut it off mid-outcry with the kill shot through the forehead, the bullet powering underneath the vehicle and embedding itself square in the guy’s temple.
One more.
Slater rolled onto his back and raised the Glock and fired four times — bang-bang-bang-bang. Shockingly fast. The last guy, just a shadow in the corner of Slater’s eye, jerked like a marionette on strings and toppled into a ditch on the side of the road.
Three seconds after tumbling out of the car, Slater had separated every hostile soul in the vicinity from their bodies.
He breathed. He settled his heart rate. He let his hearing return, piece by piece. He did all the right things. He stayed exactly where he was as Malvado and Jorge spilled out of the car, rattled by the war that had unfolded around them. Slater lay there on his back, looking up at them, trying not to think about how the slightest mishap would have cost him his life.
Then he heard someone kill an engine.
‘Second car,’ he breathed, hoping either of them heard him.
Jorge did.
Malvado was nowhere to be seen.
Jorge wrenched his sidearm from his waistband and aimed it sideways into the darkness, one of the most ridiculous things Slater had ever seen on the battlefield. This wasn’t a video game. It wasn’t a street thug’s intimidation performance. What the hell was the man trying to achieve? But Slater chalked it up to Malvado surrounding himself with inept buffoons and rolled onto his stomach to defend himself when the inevitable happened.
It didn’t take long. Two new figures appeared in the gloom, backlit by distant headlights. Jorge raised his gun and fired, but the shot went wide. He caught three bullets in the chest for his troubles, and went down directly alongside Slater.
Slater took aim and fired, letting loose shot after shot until one of the silhouettes jerked back and went down, blood spraying from exit wounds as he fell. The next attempt to pull the trigger failed spectacularly — the Glock was empty.
Slater dove for Jorge’s corpse and slapped wildly at the ground around him, searching for his dropped weapon.
The last remaining silhouette advanced.
Then a giant shadow materialised behind it, a lanky figure that seemed almost alien in the ethereal glow. The headlights glinted off something sharp and metallic, and suddenly the silhouette collapsed, its throat sliced wide open, its blood spilling into the dirt.
In the gloom, the pale blue eyes hovered.
‘All clear,’ Malvado muttered. ‘You alive?’
‘Yeah,’ Slater said, his heart hammering in his chest.
‘Let’s take one of their cars and get the hell out of here. Jorge was always useless.’
Like moving through a dream, Slater stumbled to his feet and left the grisly scene behind, never taking a back step, always moving forward. He didn’t know anything else. There was no time to debate whether to kill Malvado right now and leave the madness behind — maybe that was the best idea. It would be easier to move alone through Mexico than dragging a man in tow who specialised in torture. But they only needed to make it to a nearby airfield, it seemed, and then they would be in the air and away from the threat of the Sinaloa cartel. Slater cast a glance at the bodies all around him and shook his head in disbelief — there were likely a dozen more on the way. They’d tracked them successfully.
Now the onslaught would be relentless.
So move.
And then figure it out.
He followed Malvado into the pick-up truck — a brand new Toyota — and opted to take the passenger seat. Malvado fired up the engine, and the truck roared back into life. He spun the vehicle around one hundred and eighty degrees and floored it toward the airfield, leaving the van behind, leaving Jorge behind, leaving five dead sicarios behind.
Get the hell out of Mexico, Slater thought.
Right now, that was his only priority.
20
Two minutes out from the airfield, Malvado pulled a disposable phone from the pocket of his jeans and auto-dialled the last number he’d called.
‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Is the plane ready? Okay. Good. You’re not going to fuck me on this, are you?’
Whoever was on the other end of the line mumbled something.
‘You’d better not be lying to me,’ Malvado said. ‘You know exactly who I am, don’t you? The things I can do to you. I have my drill with me. And the metal rods. And the blowtorch. You’ve heard the rumours, yes? You know what I do to people who try to deceive me.’
Silence.
A long, uninterrupted silence.
Then a few syllables. Short and sharp. To the point.
‘Motherfucker,’ Malvado hissed. ‘Okay. You’re lucky you told me. You do one more thing like that and I’ll bring you on the plane with me and burn you alive. I’m not kidding.’
Another muffled response.
‘That’s it? One guy?’
Mumbling.
‘Okay. We’ll be there in five.’
Malvado ended the call and let out a roar, laced with rage and frustration. He clenched the shitty plastic phone so hard between his fingers that its frame warped, the device shattering under his white-knuckled grip. He threw the useless phone into the back seat and put more pressure on the accelerator. They picked up speed, surging into the night.
‘What is it?’ Slater said, sliding a fresh magazine into the Glock 17 after checking the clip was fully loaded.
‘There’s a Sinaloa sicario waiting by the entrance to the airfield. Near the front gate. He showed up an hour ago and threatened my guy, insisting he keep quiet. He’ll try to ambush us.’
‘I’ll take care of him.’
‘You’d better. Cause I can’t drive at the same time.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Focus on the road.’
‘I hope they can take off in the dark.’
‘Of course they can.’
‘It’s a rural airfield…’
Slater readied the Glock. ‘I’m sure they can be persuaded to do anything.’
He made to continue, but stopped himself short.
Malvado noticed.
‘What?’ the man said, looking across.
Slater paused. ‘You just … seem so normal.’
‘What the fuck are you on about?’
‘Apart from the death stares. You seem like a normal guy.’
‘Did you expect me to be some kind of monster?’
‘You are a monster.’
‘That’s debatable.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Slater muttered, reassured by the weight of the Glock in his palm. If Malvado tried anything…
‘Living is suffering,’ Malvado said, with the kind of pompous arrogance that showed he’d been sitting on his thoughts for quite some time. ‘It’s all bullshit. I take people to pain. Isn’t that the most raw experience they could have? At least they fucking felt something before they went to the grave. Imagine living your whole life without suffering.’
Slater said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Malvado looked across. ‘You suffered?’
‘Yeah,’ Slater said. ‘I’ve suffered.’
‘I mean, like, really suffered. Felt true pain. It’s like an awakening. I can see it in their eyes when they cross over. There’s this limit that everyone has … it’s a fascinating thing. When they think they’ve felt the worst of it, when their skin is burning and their nerve endings are firing. They think that’s the limit. And then I take them further. It’s liberating—’
Slater squashed the barrel of the Glock so hard into the side of Malvado’s head that he almost veered the van off the road in shock. When he made a snatch for his own weapon, Slater broke his nose with a straight left, drilling his knuckles into Malvado’s septum. The big man groaned and gripped the wheel tighter, bleeding profusely from both nostrils.
‘Drive,’ Slater said through gritted teeth. ‘And if you say one more word about anything you’ve done I’ll shoot you dead right here and make my own way back to California. Understand?’
‘Yeah,’ Malvado said.
‘At least you ruined that illusion.’
‘What illusion?’
‘You’re very far from normal, friend.’
They turned onto a grittier, more uneven trail running into the arid fields. Slater eyed a mesh perimeter fence interspersed with wooden posts circling a giant rectangular stretch of land, covered in dead grass. He rolled down the passenger window and aimed the Glock outside as they slowed, anticipating an ambush at any moment, searching for signs of movement in the dusk.
There.
He ducked low and fired in unison with the enemy, twin muzzle flashes lighting up the night. The sicario’s shot hit the front tyre of the van and it burst in an explosion of rubber. Slater created a similar explosion in the hitman’s throat, sending him slumping back against the wire mesh with half his neck missing. More precise. More effective.
The van trundled to a halt, its front left wheel grating against the dirt, loose flaps of rubber slapping the ground at regular intervals, rendering the vehicle useless to drive. Slater and Malvado slipped out into the night, the unlikeliest of duos. Slater detested the giant with every bone in his body, but he needed him to get into the sky. As soon as they were clear of Mexico’s jurisdiction, Slater opted to resolve the situation by whatever means necessary. He felt physically sick at the thought of Malvado somehow escaping punishment. The man deserved to die a hundred times over, but Slater wasn’t one for unnecessary violence.
When he ended it, he would end it quick.
‘Up for a jog?’ Malvado said, his voice disrupting the quiet of the countryside.
‘Looks like the only way we’re getting to the runway.’
They set off, and Slater said, ‘What if your contact was lying?’
‘Then I’ll make sure he dies a slow, painful death.’
‘If we survive.’
A soft blinking light in the distance — probably just under a mile away — told them everything they needed to know. The Lockheed C-130 Hercules, poised on the runway, about to fire to life and shatter the calm draped over the airfield.
Slater hoped for his own sake that the Sinaloa cartel hadn’t got to the plane first.
Would they really only send one man?
Halfway to the runway, surrounded by nothing but desolation and darkness, the question answered itself.
A cacophony of engine roars ascended behind them, growing closer and closer by the second, an entire platoon roaring toward the airfield in an attempt to stop Malvado escaping with his withering list of trade secrets.
The cavalry.
Coming to slaughter.
21
Slater ran, his life dependent on the speed he reached, ignoring the fact that he could turn an ankle on a mound of dirt and ruin his chances of escaping Mexico alive.
Because the Sinaloa cartel wouldn’t tolerate an American witness for a moment, no matter how innocent they thought he was. They would gun him down where he stood — and that was the best case scenario. In truth, if they took him alive, they would probably cart him off to one of their notorious ranches, leaving him in the hands of men who specialised in inflicting horrendous, grievous torture.
Men like Malvado.
Many of them.
It sent fear rippling through Slater, which quickened his pace in turn. He pumped his arms and legs faster, working his way up to the gait of an Olympic sprinter, flying ahead of Malvado thanks to the athleticism gifted to him by his parents. He’d always been fast, but he’d only ever had the capacity to use it in situations where he would die otherwise.
In those times, all his effort presented itself.
And it was something to behold.
He shot dozens of feet ahead of Malvado, tearing toward the tarmac, his boots thudding against the hard dirt packed tight under the grass. When he made it onto flat ground, reaching the southernmost point of the runway, he pushed himself even faster.
Bearing down on the C-130 with reckless abandon.
There was a short, stooped elderly Mexican man waiting by the rear ramp of the Hercules, complete with a cane in his right hand and a terrified, wide-eyed expression on his face.
Is this Malvado’s contact?
Poor guy.
Breathless, Slater screeched to a halt in front of the old man, studying his wrinkled weather-beaten skin and seeing the kindness in his eyes, the pressing need to help whoever was in front of him and ensure his own safety.
Slater threw a glance over his shoulder and saw Malvado a few dozen feet away, materialising out of the darkness. At the same time the enormous propellors on the wings of the C-130 roared to life, drowning out all other sounds, penetrating the night. Behind Malvado, the pale glow of distant headlights grew steadily closer. The convoy had passed the front gate. The runway would be swarming with sicarios from the Sinaloa cartel in a minute, tops.
Slater turned to the elderly man, making use of the vital seconds
he had. ‘English?’
‘Yes. A little bit.’
‘Who are you? You own this place?’
‘I am nobody. I do what I am told. So I can stay alive.’
Slater grimaced. ‘Will the Sinaloa cartel kill you for what you’re doing?’
‘Maybe. I have no choice. Malvado will kill me otherwise.’
‘You can run.’
‘No. This is Mexico.’
Resolute, stone-faced, the elderly man backed away from the rear ramp. He gestured Slater up into the darkened fuselage — clearly the crew were already inside, whisked from their beds and forced to carry out the whims of a mad cartel interrogator.
This is Mexico.
Everyone bowed to the demands of the cartels.
Insanity.
Only when he focused on the transport plane did Slater realise how incomprehensibly enormous the beast was. He was dwarfed by the Hercules, and in the back of his head he recalled the aircraft could seat over ninety passengers.
There would be two for this endeavour.
Malvado certainly wasn’t going for subtlety. He must have scrambled for the first available aircraft he could lay his hands on. Desperation mode.
Slater heard pounding footsteps behind him, and wheeled to face Malvado.
The man was sprinting directly at Slater.
Only a few feet away.
‘What the…’ Slater started, and then he saw the knife whistling toward his throat.
22
The switchblade missed him by inches — Malvado had lunged from a seemingly impossible distance, and Slater hadn’t been expecting the knife to come anywhere near his neck. But Malvado’s wingspan was obscene, and the tip of the blade missed him by inches, almost tearing his neck open end to end. Every stress chemical in his body flared up at once, sending him reeling in disbelief.
He flinched, tumbling backwards, almost losing his footing. He grimaced as he realised he might crash into the old man, needlessly involving him in the confrontation.
But the elderly guy had darted out of the way with deceptive speed.
