by Matt Rogers
‘What was your thinking behind that?’
‘I knew the workers were in trouble. I wanted to bring them back silently. Without making a scene. I thought I could manage.’
Slater turned to look at the gaping wound in the peninsula. As the residue from the blast cleared, King noticed that the land had been scorched, the snow incinerated. The wind turned and the sweeping trails of smoke began to arc in their direction.
‘You certainly made a scene,’ Slater said.
‘I know. So you need to get out of here. They don’t know you’re here. Keep your profile low, and maybe they’ll forget all about you while they deal with Isla and I.’
Slater shook his head. ‘I’m in this with you. You only returned to Black Force because of my departure. I’d be a coward to run away a second time.’
‘Slater…’
It was too late. By then the man had dialled a number and pressed the device to his ear.
‘Isla,’ King heard as he slumped back into the snow. ‘It’s Will Slater.’
52
The fishing village rested on the edge of the Kamchatka Peninsula, tucked into an alcove of the craggy landscape. It was composed of a small community of identical weatherboard houses designed to withstand the raging coastal storms that buffeted the coastline. Sturdy warehouses lined the piers that jutted out into the churning waters of the Pacific Ocean. Large commercial trawlers and smaller vessels were docked in a plethora of marinas, most left unattended. The disastrous weather had limited operations for the day.
King’s jaw rattled as the buggy bounced across uneven terrain. It screeched to a halt at the top of a mountain trail that spiralled down towards the coastline. From his position in the back seat, he had an unobstructed view over the village. He pulled the official WHO jacket a little tighter around his quaking shoulders and sucked in a deep breath through his open mouth.
‘This is it?’ he called over the howling wind.
‘I think so,’ Slater said, sitting behind the wheel. ‘Could have picked a better day for the rendezvous.’
He touched the accelerator and set off precariously down the narrow gravel trail.
The five health workers had found them several hours ago, only minutes before King was set to turn hypothermic. He had experienced the sensation before, and knew all the warning signs. First, the loss of feeling in his limbs. Then a strange warmth in his core, a natural reaction as his body began to cave into the mind-numbing cold.
His vision had started to fade when the crunching of dirt under all-terrain tyres sounded nearby.
Léo had taken the initiative, peeling most of King’s soaked clothing off and replacing it with dry garments from the workers’ own bodies. Slater received similar treatment, as his temperature had also plummeted after the call with Isla had ended.
King hadn’t heard much of the conversation that Slater had with his old employer, but it had certainly seemed terse.
They had been instructed to make the journey to the nearest coastline and await further instructions.
Now, the storm raged all around them as the buggy descended into the fishing village. Slater steered through potholed dirt streets, attracting the curious gazes of a handful of weather-beaten locals. King inhaled freezing air, unable to breathe through his nose due to the swelling. His eyes and the inside of his mouth stung from exposure to the elements.
He had experienced enough cold for a lifetime.
The five health workers were squashed into the available seats. All of them sat in stunned silence. They had barely spoken since rescuing King and Slater from the edge of Kharchinskoye Lake. It could be due to any number of reasons — shell-shock from the narrow escape, a depletion of their energy reserves or simple overwhelming sensory overload.
King wasn’t bothered.
He didn’t exactly feel like talking either.
They reached a rundown marina — home to several groups of fishermen unloading their haul from moored trawlers. Perhaps the conditions had been right for fishing this morning. Rain lashed the piers, but the hardened men and women seemed accustomed to the conditions. They set about their work with weather-lined faces, uninterested in the storm.
Slater shepherded the health workers out of the vehicle, gesturing for them to make their way single-file down one of the piers. He looped an arm around King’s waist and helped him along the slippery wood. King appreciated the assistance.
He had reached the end of his limits.
They were approached by an ageing local, shocked by the appearance of outsiders. King imagined the remote location of this village meant that visitors were an astonishing rarity.
Slater took the lead, striding forward to shake the man’s hand. King couldn’t hear what was said above the wind, but the conversation lasted just over two minutes. Slater spoke animatedly — King quickly realised the man was fluent in Russian. He gestured first to the modified buggy, bringing the expensive vehicle to the man’s attention. Then he pointed to one of the smaller boats in the marina — a rusting carcass of a vessel, barely holding itself together.
The man shrugged, then nodded.
He exchanged a set of keys with Slater.
Slater returned to the party, jangling the keys for them all to see.
‘We have a boat,’ he said.
‘Why do we need a boat?’ King said.
‘Isla’s on a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, several hundred miles off the coast. They’re sending a Navy chopper to extract us a few miles offshore — we attract less attention that way. I called her when you were passed out on the drive here.’
Léo turned his gaze to the frothing waves slamming home against the coastline. ‘We’re going out into that?’
‘You can handle a few waves,’ Slater said. ‘Especially given what you’ve been through over the last day.’
‘True,’ the man said.
King had no words of protest.
He had no words at all.
In fact, by this point he didn’t think he could manage an audible syllable.
They filed down to the ancient fishing trawler and climbed aboard one-by-one. Slater went first, leaping over a sizeable gap. He found a wooden plank resting against one of the plastic benches and shimmied it across to the pier. The health workers crossed the board precariously. King went last, taking his time with his footing. When he made it onto the main deck he slumped into one of the hard plastic seats and drooped his head, ignoring the rain lashing against him.
A hand clamped down on his shoulder.
Groggily, he raised his head.
‘All good, brother?’ Slater said.
King nodded.
‘We’ll be home soon.’
King grimaced. ‘That’s what I’m worried about.’
‘Don’t be. You’ve got me by your side.’
King smirked wryly and shook his head. ‘You’re only going down with me, Slater. Now’s your last chance. I’m telling you. They won’t forgive this.’
‘They shouldn’t have to forgive this. You did the right thing.’
‘Not in their eyes.’
‘Whose, exactly?’
King shrugged. ‘We’ll find out.’
Slater gave him a reassuring look, then climbed a rusty steel ladder and disappeared inside the wheelhouse. The five health workers dropped into the seats all around King as the trawler chugged to life.
‘How the hell does he know how to drive one of these things?’ Léo muttered.
‘He knows a lot of things,’ King said. ‘Resourceful guy.’
‘What were you two talking about before? I overheard something, but I wasn’t sure if I was interpreting it the right way.’
King closed his eyes as the trawler peeled away from the marina and churned through the seawater, heading out into open ocean. ‘That’s a long, complicated story, Léo. Let’s just worry about getting you home safe.’
‘Are you going to be okay?’
‘I’ll be fine.’
They crested
a sizeable wave and the deck rattled, aggravating King’s injuries. He gulped back nausea and hunched lower, bracing against the storm.
53
By the time the Russian shoreline had faded into a hazy blur, King had thrown up twice in the space of a minute. He wasn’t sure if it was his injuries that had made him so nauseous.
He didn’t ordinarily get seasick.
If he did, he never would have made it through SEAL training all those years ago.
The six of them sat rigid on the main deck, clenching nearby handholds with white knuckles. Slater was somewhere in the wheelhouse, guiding the trawler through the madness. Their surroundings were an unidentifiable blur of dark clouds and dark waves. Sheets of rain lashed the side of the boat, slashing sideways through the air due to the scything wind.
The painkillers given to him in the mine hours earlier had all but faded away. Their effect had been futile, but they had enabled him to function. Now, every waking moment was spent concentrating on the mental torment. He figured one of his ribs was broken. Although it had been dulled earlier, each breath came with a rattling jolt of pain in his mid-section. He couldn’t breathe out of his nose. His left hand had swollen beyond belief. Patches of skin around his wrist were starting to turn purple, as was much of his face.
He needed serious medical assistance — and an extended vacation.
Something told him that would not be on the agenda anytime soon.
A few minutes later, the distinctive sound of thrumming helicopter propellers sounded on the horizon.
They heard the aerial beast well before it came into view. The low-hanging storm clouds masked visibility, but the roar of the chopper drowned out everything else.
‘Can you hear that?’ Léo gasped, shocked by the intensity of the noise. All five of the health workers cast their eyes skyward.
‘That’s them,’ King said.
He heard Slater kill the engine. The trawler halted its forward trajectory and settled to a halt in the roiling seas. King gripped a nearby handrail to steady himself and looked for the military chopper.
It sounded like a CH-53E Super Stallion.
That was the only kind of helicopter capable of creating such an imposing sound.
The behemoth descended into view, directly above them. King peered up at the vast steel underbelly of the Sikorsky chopper. He spotted noticeable differences in the design — specifically a wider cargo hold, easily capable of fitting a Humvee within its fuselage.
Slater stepped out of the wheelhouse, dropping onto the deck beside King.
King pointed up at the chopper. ‘You ever seen one of those?’
He scrutinised it. ‘Last I heard they were still in production.’
‘They’re bigger.’
‘I’m guessing this is a prototype.’
‘What are they?’
‘CH-53K’s,’ Slater said, then regarded King with a grin. ‘King Stallions.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I can assure you the name’s a coincidence. Unless you really are the stuff of legend amongst the Armed Forces.’
‘I don’t think the Armed Forces know either of us exist.’
Slater grimaced. ‘We might not exist for much longer.’
Before King could consider the weight of the statement, the CH-53K came to a hover about a hundred feet above the trawler. The gargantuan rear ramp descended, and thick cables unspooled off the edge. King counted four separate hoists — each outfitted with a search-and-rescue style safety harness.
The cables thumped onto the deck, one after the other.
King and Slater set to work.
Between them, they had over two decades of training in hostage extraction. They moved clinically to each of the WHO workers, instructing them on what was about to occur before strapping them into the full-body harnesses. With four cables to deal with, they secured all the men but Léo, who would go up with King and Slater on the following round.
When safety checks had been completed, King stared up at the hovering beast and flashed a thumbs-up with his good hand.
The four terrified men were whisked into the air.
As King waited for the first wave to disembark into the military chopper above, a thought struck him. He felt the trawler shudder underneath his feet as a frothing wave lashed at its hull.
‘They could leave us here,’ he muttered to Slater. ‘This boat’s going to fall apart. It’d eliminate the problem of having to deal with us officially.’
‘They won’t deal with us officially anyway,’ Slater said. ‘Nothing about us has ever been official.’
‘You still have the chance to leave.’
‘Not anymore, brother.’
The empty harnesses dropped off the rear ramp again, signalling that the first four men were secure on board. They unspooled quicker than the first time, hitting the deck within seconds.
Slater secured Léo while King struggled into one of the harnesses. As he slipped the worn material over his left shoulder, he caught his broken wrist in an awkward position. He gulped back another wave of pain and secured the automatic locking system against his chest.
Slater did the same.
A moment later, King felt the sharp tug under his armpits and the trawler fell away from his feet.
The unmanned boat rocked and bucked in the storm, pounded by the churning seas. King squinted as he rose in the air, rain blasting him in thick sheets. Finally, the cables dragged them over the lip of the rear ramp and they touched down on the metal.
King got to his feet, looking through to the interior of the chopper.
The CH-53K’s fuselage was enormous, at least thirty feet long and nine feet wide. There was only a couple of inches to spare height-wise. King ducked into the dim space and helped Léo undercover.
Four Navy soldiers in standard military gear greeted them. They ushered Léo to a section at the rear of the cabin, where the other four workers were seated side-by-side. Two Navy personnel — neither of them in uniform — were crouched opposite the group, likely briefing them on what procedures lay ahead in order to get them back home to their families.
King had seen it all before.
He and Slater waited cautiously as the rear ramp ascended behind them. With a resounding crash, it locked into place, sealing them off from the weather outside.
The four Navy soldiers didn’t budge an inch.
Simultaneously, they drew sidearms from their holsters.
‘We’ve been instructed to ask you not to move,’ one of them said in a voice laced with tension.
‘By who?’ King said.
A voice near the back of the cabin said, ‘By me.’
A grizzled man in unblemished military uniform strode across the empty fuselage. He wore nothing to identify himself by rank or position of authority, but King knew his type. He came from somewhere invisible to the public eye, a branch of the military that operated in the shadows.
Maybe Black Force.
Maybe something else.
He stepped between two of the soldiers and regarded King and Slater with his hands crossed behind his back. There was clear anger in his eyes.
‘You two don’t know me,’ he said. ‘But I know you. I’ve been running your careers for the last few years.’
‘And you are?’ King said.
‘I’m one of the guys who slaves away behind-the-scenes. You see Isla. You see the fancy toys and the meeting rooms and the facade that shields you from the inner workings. You see the shopfront. You don’t see the production facility that keeps it running.’
‘I thought that was intentional.’
‘It was.’
‘We’ve been talking to Isla on the phone,’ Slater said. ‘We’d prefer to speak to her now.’
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘Why not?’
‘Isla’s in a prison cell. Just as you two will be an hour from now. She was instructed to guide you back over the phone.’
‘And why are we all
being thrown into a prison cell?’ King said.
‘Well, it appears the shopfront we put up to separate us from our operatives left room for corruption. It left room for one of our most trusted handlers to send you into Russia on a personal knee-jerk reaction.’
‘I stayed of my own accord,’ King said. ‘I take full responsibility for my actions.’
‘I know you do.’
‘I came of my own accord, too,’ Slater said. ‘I’m—’
The man turned with something close to disgust in his gaze. ‘I know who you are, Will. I know everything. You two don’t seem to get that.’
‘We get it,’ King said. ‘We’re just wondering what happens now.’
‘Black Force is done,’ the man said coldly. ‘You two wreaked havoc in a foreign territory with zero permission. You killed countless people without any authorisation. And I don’t know who the hell you pissed off down there, but Russia isn’t talking to us. All sorts of diplomatic ties are currently severed.’
‘If we did nothing, those five men over there would be dead.’
‘I guess you consider a world war less dangerous than a few missing health workers. This is why you two are the muscle. This is why we keep you out of everything that goes on behind-the-scenes.’
‘I’ll say it again,’ King said. ‘What happens now?’
‘We’re detaining you,’ the man said. ‘As of now, you’re considered rogue operatives. If need be, we’ll turn you over to the Russians to be prosecuted there. I imagine they want blood. At the moment, I’m happy to give it to them.’
‘You think we’ll go along with that willingly?’ Slater said.
The man didn’t respond. He cast his icy gaze over the two of them. ‘I don’t care what you go along with. Neither of you have a choice. Cut the macho bullshit.’
While two of the Navy soldiers trained their loaded weapons on King and Slater, the other two stepped forward and produced steel handcuffs. King’s mind passed briefly over the thought of retaliation, but he disregarded it. He had willingly accepted the consequences of continuing the mission in an unofficial capacity. He wouldn’t shy away from them now.
