by Matt Rogers
Reed gazed left, then right. Searching for anything he could use as a weapon, more than likely. Finding nothing. A wry smirk spread across his face.
‘Sort of poetic that it came down to this, huh?’ he said. ‘Our bare hands. I’d be shitting myself if I were you. You saw how well that worked out for you in Afgooye.’
He was talking, droning on and on. Far longer than necessary. King sensed the blurry darkness forming like a ring around his vision, closing in, threatening to consume him. He realised that Reed knew fully well how debilitating King’s injuries were, and had simply elected to distract him long enough for nature to take its course.
Every second he spent waiting, listening to the spiel, was another second of opportunity for his body to shut down on himself. He recalled each sensation back in Afgooye as Reed had manhandled him, breaking his wrist, kicking him hard enough to incapacitate him, throwing him off a haul truck like he weighed nothing at all.
That was what awaited him just a dozen feet ahead.
Bryson Reed was a hand-to-hand phenom — there was no doubt about it.
But there were few other alternatives.
In fact, there were none.
King took a deep breath, hurled the disabled Browning away and sprinted straight forward, surging directly toward his worst nightmare.
51
As King charged, the endless list of disadvantages rolled through his head — unable to help the doubt seeping in, he chose to utilise the emotion. He let it wash over him, relishing the raw fear it carried with it. It honed his senses, zoning him in on the man in front of him.
He thought of all the reasons why Reed would beat him to death in the coming fight without breaking a sweat.
With both of them at optimal health in Afgooye, Reed had practically manhandled him, breaking his wrist and hurling him off a haul truck without King landing a single shot of his own.
Now, he was hurtling toward the same man — who was still unharmed, unblemished by the raging effects of non-stop combat — whereas King had a seemingly unending list of injuries to deal with. From his broken wrist to his crippled abdomen to the tender patches of skin all across his face from repeated blows, he knew it wouldn’t take much effort for Reed to overpower him and end it all with a rapid outburst of pinpoint-accurate punches.
King knew how to kill a man with his bare hands, which meant Reed did also.
Once again, King thought of the sheer potential in the man, and how much of an impact he would have made in the ranks of Black Force. For a moment he felt nauseous — he himself had single-handedly beat down everyone he came across in Mexico, and his superiors had hyped him up as one of the greatest prodigies in military history. Now he was facing a man who had made him look like a fool in hand-to-hand combat, something King was unaccustomed to.
He forced it all from his mind.
Reed was untarnished, and maybe that meant he’d be susceptible to the power of momentum. If King managed to gain the upper hand for just a second, he could deal out such pain that the tide would turn, and Reed would lock up, paralysed by a barrage of attacks. It had worked flawlessly with the bearded man minutes earlier.
He held onto the fleeting idea that he had a chance in the coming brawl.
Even though he knew what little hope there truly was.
You can take any kind of punishment he can deal out, he told himself. You don’t know if he can deal with pain the way you can.
He kept that idea in the back of his head as he surged into range and launched a series of Muay Thai side kicks into Reed’s torso.
He targeted the largest centre mass, making sure that each kick slammed home. Even if Reed had the reflexes to block the strikes — which he did, bringing his arms up to protect his sensitive mid-section — King’s shin bone smashed home relentlessly against the delicate bones in the man’s forearms. He let them fly with all the technique and power in his arsenal, drilling each kick home with enough force to break bones.
Reed battered them away, taking all the correct precautions to make sure none of the kicks were fight-ending. He used his forearms as twin shields to absorb the brunt of the impacts — King prayed that one of the kicks would hit with just the right pressure to crack the radius, or the ulna. The two major bones in the forearm — an injury to either of them would be debilitating.
Unfortunately, after four of the side kicks in the space of two seconds, Reed timed the fifth and hurled himself into range, taking a glancing blow from the fifth kick in exchange for closing the gap. King twisted away from the punch he knew was coming, but certain movements were slow and laborious. He tried to lean back away from the swinging left hook but his mid-section screamed in protest. Broken bones and torn muscles simply refused to move with the rapidity he was looking for.
It threw his timing out the window.
The fist crashed against the side of his head with enough force behind it to knock him unconscious. Thankfully, the muscles in King’s neck and jaw were unhurt, and he managed to roll with the trajectory of the punch at the last second. It took some of the devastating weight out of the shot.
But that didn’t make it any less painful.
He physically sensed his brain reeling from the punch, and a bright light flared across his vision. He understood a terrible sign when he saw it — his motor functions were fried, subject to a world of hurt with little room left to delay the inevitable.
You don’t have much time, a voice told him.
Take one to dish one.
The second thought kept him in place, planting his feet when every fibre of his being screamed at him to recoil away from Reed’s attacks. There was another punch heading straight for his face — a lightning-fast jab with Reed’s right hand. But the timing was slightly off — Reed had been expecting King to stumble away in the aftermath of the connecting left hook.
The jab landed with half power, hitting home a full foot before Reed intended. The man had been expecting to build up speed as he flicked his fist through the air, and it crashed home far too early.
Despite that, it still hurt like all hell.
King took the punch square on the forehead, his head snapping back as the kinetic energy dispersed through his skull. He clenched his teeth and fought through the sensation, remaining in exactly the same place.
Reed couldn’t help himself.
His natural balance took over and he was forced to take a step forward after throwing two successive punches with all the effort he had.
That put him uncomfortably close to King — only a foot separated each man from chest to chest.
King willed his body to put up with his requests for another ten seconds longer, and then he unleashed hell on the man he’d been chasing through war-torn Somalia for the better part of twenty-four hours.
52
The sequence took five seconds from beginning to end, but by the time it came to its conclusion King had dealt enough damage to kill a lesser man.
As Reed stepped briefly into elbow-range, King pivoted with his hips, taking care not to twist his stomach too hard at risk of his body locking up in protest. He unloaded an elbow with his right arm, the only strike possible considering his broken wrist had ballooned in size. Thankfully it coincided perfectly with the distance between them, and he hit Reed in the lower part of his chin with the point of his elbow hard enough to omit a crack, signalling a broken jaw. Before the man had time to even recognise the debilitating injury, King pumped his left fist like a mechanised piston, hammering it across the space between his knuckles and Reed’s nose.
The short straight left landed home in exactly the right position, breaking his septum with the familiar twang that he had almost become accustomed to by this point. Blood sprayed from both nostrils, and Reed’s jaw started to slacken as he realised the damage that had been wreaked on the lower half of his face. His bottom lip drooped momentarily.
A perfect opportunity.
King let his left fist retreat from Reed’s broken nose with a sing
le movement, cocking it like a weapon, and sent it flying straight back at a target a few inches lower down the man’s face. His knuckles crashed into Reed’s lower row of teeth, knocking a few of them loose. They shot back into his mouth, exposing bloody gums.
Three strikes, horrendously fast.
Bang-bang-bang.
A broken jaw, a broken nose, and displaced teeth.
King didn’t stop there. Images of Victor and Johnson flashed in his mind — he lingered on the memory of Johnson’s neck wound for just long enough to let it fuel him. He understood the tiny gaps in defence that had to be taken advantage of when two skilled combatants came head to head, and it made him realise that if he hesitated for even a moment he would end up on his back, getting the life choked out of him by Bryson Reed.
So even as the snapping sound of broken bones was lingering in the air he changed levels, ducking low and looping his good arm around Reed’s thighs. High-school wrestling practice came roaring back and he completed the double-leg takedown, thrusting off the mark and sending them both sprawling to the metal floor of the vehicle bay.
Reed on his back, King on top.
The three strikes to the face had killed Reed’s ability to resist for a fraction of a second, and it was all that King needed. He sliced a leg up to the man’s stomach and brought it over to the other side of his motionless form, so that he ended up straddling Reed’s mid-section.
Now the size advantage meant nothing.
He’d taken full mount, a jiujitsu technique that King had found as one of the most effective tools to implement in a live combat situation. Reed could buck and jerk and roll and twist with all his might, but the sheer power of gravity ensured he wasn’t going anywhere. He could throw punches up at King, but they would carry little weight behind them, affected by the same laws of physics.
And, more importantly, the laws of physics favoured King’s strikes also.
A punch thrown straight down had all kind of additional weight behind it.
With that in mind, he forced himself to relax and spot openings with clinical precision. Reed made all the right moves given his predicament, bringing his meaty forearms up in front of his face like a massive shield, hoping to protect himself from the brunt of the incoming onslaught.
He needn’t have bothered.
King simply sat patiently atop the man, one leg on either side of his stomach, his elbow poised like a predator waiting to demolish its prey. As soon as Reed shifted uncomfortably in an attempt to wriggle free, King spotted a slight gap in between his forearms and drove his elbow down in a scything motion, like a sharp bullet splitting through Reed’s defences. It landed right on the button, smashing into the man’s forehead and knocking his skull back against the metal floor.
The successful strike shocked Reed, stripping him of certain reflexes.
King took direct advantage of it.
He loaded up again and dropped the same elbow through the same gap in Reed’s forearms, hammering the same patch of skin above his eyebrows. It carried similar weight and had the same effect, detonating Reed’s head against the cold metal once again.
The gap in his forearm defence widened as he began to lose consciousness.
King let loose with an unrelenting barrage of elbows to the exact same pinpoint, slamming the pointed bone again and again and again into the man’s skull.
When it was over, Reed had entered a groggy state of consciousness, awake but barely functioning. There was no returning from such a series of attacks. It would take him hours to return to his normal levels of alertness, and by then King intended to be far away from the container ship, and far away from Somalia.
He maintained full mount position, but let the elbows cease. He had done enough damage. Anything Reed attempted in retaliation would be laboured by brain damage and semi-consciousness and the disadvantageous position he rested in. His face had become a mask of blood, jagged cuts laced across his forehead, yet King felt no sympathy whatsoever.
Reed seemed to sense that King had yielded temporarily. He let his forearms fall away from his face, exposing himself entirely. He smirked with a mouth full of crimson liquid, his features grotesque and his eyes filled with hate.
‘Good one,’ he murmured. ‘You did it. Fucking shoot me and get it over with. Go get your medal…’
King paused. ‘I’ve got a couple of questions first.’
53
Before he spoke, King touched a hand to the bridge of his nose to wipe away a steady stream of blood that had begun to drip from his nostrils. His lip had been split too, at some point since he’d climbed aboard the container ship. He thought back on everything that had happened in that time, and found himself flabbergasted that he was still conscious.
He knew the pain would catch up to him. If he did recover, it would be a painstakingly slow process. Worse than Mexico.
Far worse.
He didn’t drop his guard, aware that there was a dangerous hostile underneath him — no matter how bloody, battered and beaten, he was still Bryson Reed.
A worthy candidate for Black Force.
And a royal piece of shit.
The blood flowing off him ran down the sides of Reed’s abdomen and covered the thin layer of hundred-dollar bills that had come to rest all around them. Their fight had taken place on the edge of the mountain of cash. King smirked, despite everything, as he studied the sight.
‘Blood money,’ he muttered. ‘Almost poetic.’
Reed spat a glob of blood onto the bills and shook his head. The gesture took all his effort. ‘Not quite. You saw who I stole from. Not quite the attention-grabbing headlines of smuggling guns or drugs, hey? No-one cares about that smuggling route. It’s why they make so much money. Because the big corporations endorse it — it adds to their yearly haul. So who gives a shit if I break away with their stash? If it’s extra-legal, then I deserve it as much as they do. Survival of the fittest.’
‘If you made your getaway without anyone knowing any better, I might have let you go. But you killed people. Innocent men. You don’t think about that?’
Reed shrugged. ‘Not really.’
‘You’re not doing much to help your case.’
‘Fuck my case. You’re going to kill me regardless. And if you don’t, you’re more of an idiot than I ever imagined.’
‘I beat you. I wouldn’t call myself an idiot.’
‘You bought what I fed you. You should have worked it all out when you first interviewed me, but you didn’t. Your eyes lit up at the prospect of guns and drugs and everything illegal. You ignored the banal shit. That’s the only reason I made it this far.’
‘Your men back there,’ King said. ‘Who—?’
‘Not my men. Business partners.’
‘Who were they?’
‘Ex-Marines. All retired from service. They run a private security firm in New York. Or, at least, they did. The kind of guys that get paid obscene amounts of money for bodyguard work. Protecting high-profile individuals, looking menacing when they need to. That sort of thing. But business was slow.’
‘Their income was up and down, I take it?’
Reed nodded. ‘They got used to the highs. All of them were miserable when they had to ride out the lows. I got in contact with them in the midst of a particularly poor stretch.’
‘How?’
‘I saw the amount of money flowing out of the port and sensed the opportunity of a lifetime. Leeched information off my military contacts until I came across that firm. Got in contact with them and we organised to rendezvous here, off El Hur. They knew enough about the shipping industry, apparently. Enough to know that almost anything can be bought.’
King nodded, connecting the dots. ‘That’s what you planned to do with the money. Launder it through their firm.’
Reed smirked again. ‘Bingo. Because of the private nature of their contracts, no-one would have ever known where the money came from — and no-one would have ever questioned it. I’m proud of myself, if we’re
being honest. Sure, I had to use my sociopathic tendencies, but I knew I had them and I knew I could use them to my advantage. Empathy, sympathy — I don’t know what those kind of emotions are, you see. All bullshit. So I did what I had to do and I almost made it.’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’
‘Because I’m dead anyway, and I want someone to know how close I got. It would have been beautiful, man. Ride off into the fucking sunset with a billion dollars and a new identity. Shame how things work out, hey? I’ve never been shit, but I almost did something, man. Almost did something…’
King could see the glint in the man’s eyes. He could spend weeks and months dissecting Reed’s motivations, but he thought he understood the general gist of it.
Bryson Reed was a Force Recon Marine with a monotonous life and a God-awful salary who’d taken a risk and murdered his closest allies for a shot at a lifetime of freedom and luxury. There had been many like him in the past, and there would be many like him in the future. It was inevitable.
King reached down with his good hand and clamped his meaty fingers around Reed’s throat. He began to squeeze. ‘Anything else you want to say?’
Reed shrugged, even as his cheeks turned beetroot and his eyes turned bloodshot from the restricted air supply. ‘Nothing that’ll change your mind, brother. Do what you gotta do. No shame in it.’
Reed paused, succumbing to the pressure of the choke, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. King watched him momentarily give way to the sensation, then his eyes shot open, and he managed to wheeze out one final question.
‘You … r-really killed … all my men?’
King nodded. ‘They weren’t the fastest, I’m afraid. Retirement must have made them rusty. Four-on-one — they should have got the better of me.’
Despite clutching at the throes of death, Reed exposed blood-stained teeth in a final, pathetic smile. ‘There’s … five of them. Y-you missed one. Good luck.’
