by Matt Rogers
Savages
The Jason King Files Book Three
Matt Rogers
Copyright © 2018 by Matt Rogers
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Onur Aksoy.
www.pagesgraphica.com
Contents
Reader’s Group
Books by Matt Rogers
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Announcement
Afterword
Reader’s Group
About the Author
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Books by Matt Rogers
THE JASON KING SERIES
Isolated (Book 1)
Imprisoned (Book 2)
Reloaded (Book 3)
Betrayed (Book 4)
Corrupted (Book 5)
Hunted (Book 6)
THE JASON KING FILES
Cartel (Book 1)
Warrior (Book 2)
Savages (Book 3)
THE WILL SLATER SERIES
Wolf (Book 1)
Lion (Book 2)
“We were not realising that, with just a machete, you can do a genocide.”
Outros Boutros-Ghali
1
Democratic Republic of the Congo
2004
It was an ordinary fork in the road, positioned in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothingness. A vast sea of darkness spread in every direction for as far as the eye could see.
The edge of the earth, or so it seemed.
Four men stood on the hot gravel, sweating freely amidst the stifling humidity.
Silhouettes in a wasteland.
On the horizon, the terrifying shadow of a stratovolcano dwarfed all its neighbouring surroundings. There wasn’t a street light in sight. Nervous energy crackled through the group. They hunched over their gear, checking and re-checking with the impatience of untrained amateurs.
Or, at least, three of them were.
One was there to simply instruct.
Oversee.
Supervise.
The experienced member of the party hissed a command, ordering silence. Despite usually operating under the orders of everyone around him, for a brief moment in time the dynamic had changed. This was not their world. They were uniformly unprepared for what lay ahead, but the man couldn’t possibly refuse their orders.
They had made the request, and he would see it completed.
That was his job.
The bulky assault rifles seemed ludicrous in the soft hands of the trio he faced. Despite the darkness, the man could make out the sheens of perspiration glistening on their faces. Their combat gear didn’t fit. Two of them had started shaking from the heightened stress of a live situation, and the other had chosen to lock all his limbs in a laughable display of perceived confidence.
In reality it made him look like a fool.
The experienced man shot a question across the fork in the road, his South African accent biting. ‘You all ready?’
The trio shuffled on the spot.
‘Yeah,’ one of them managed.
His voice wavered.
The South African guy sighed, making a point of the gesture. ‘There’s still time to hand this over to us. I think you all know my stance on this.’
‘Did I say you could do anything but give us instructions?’ the youngest member of the trio spat. ‘How do you make your money, exactly?’
The South African man ignored the question entirely. ‘Make sure all your safeties are off. I don’t want you fumbling in the heat of—’
In the darkness, the younger guy loomed forward. He was the wrong kind of skinny — weak, not athletic or wiry. But his chest had swollen with all the pride of a successful man, a man who had faced no adversity in life — which had likely led to the three of them standing here today.
He was confident.
He shouldn’t have been.
The South African man slapped the younger guy full in the face hard enough to omit a resounding crack, a grotesque noise that echoed down the desolate countryside trail. The guy recoiled, hunching over, in no way accustomed to the savagery of sudden violence.
‘W-w—’ he spluttered, and the South African man took that opportunity to lunge forward like a wraith released from hell.
He wrapped two scarred hands around the younger guy’s shoulders and hurled him to the ground as if he weighed nothing, sprawling the guy into the dirt. The young guy bit the dust, choking on gravel. He coughed and spluttered and sat up to offer a threat, still desperately holding onto his perceived superiority.
The South African man crouched down by the young man’s helpless form, staring at him with predatory eyes in the darkness. ‘Look at you. You’re on the verge of crying, for God’s sakes. One slap, and a push, and this is what you end up like. You see what this shows me? You think you’re prepared for what you’re about to do?’
‘Of course I am,’ the young guy said, now firmly on the defensive, but he couldn’t mask the wavering octaves in his tone. He’d been in the process of scrambling to his feet, but the way the South African man had positioned himself cancelled that out. Subtly intimidating. Making sure he knew who was really in charge out in this hell hole.
The South African man turned to the other pair. ‘You two feel like ordering me around out here?’
They both shook their heads. They knew their place. In air-conditioned comfort they had full control — they were cerebral in a way that suited the boardroom just fine. But in chaos and heat and darkness, they were resolutely out of their depths.
And that, in turn, suited the South African man just fine.
‘Weapons ready?’ he said.
‘Weapons ready,’ said the first man.
‘Weapons ready,’ said the second man.
The third picked himself up off the ochre earth and stifled a growl. ‘Yeah.’
The South African man turned to him, patient. ‘Weapons ready?’
The gu
y said nothing.
‘I’m not giving you the all-clear until you follow through with what we practiced.’
‘Weapons ready,’ the third man spat.
‘Very good. Off you go, boys. Enjoy yourselves. Meet back here in fifteen minutes.’
The trio nodded simultaneously, flashing excited glances at one another in the darkness. The South African man knew exactly what they were going through. Nothing quite rivalled the first experience of a live situation, when cortisol flooded the bloodstream in a raging explosion of testosterone and one felt truly unstoppable as the laser-sharp focus of imminent battle draped over them in a hazy fog.
Of course, it helped when the targets couldn’t fight back.
The trio stood frozen in time for a brief moment, as if each man were unwilling to be the first to take a step forward. The South African man watched them intently, studying their gazes and the way in which they conducted themselves. He secretly found himself fascinated by the three men. Two days ago, when they had come to him with hushed voices and a strange request, it had been one of the oddest encounters of his life. Their demands had taken him entirely by surprise — and he prided himself on his ability to read people.
He’d been certain that between the time of their request and the time of the operation, they would have backed out.
But now, here they were.
The South African man offered an inviting gesture, pointing down one of the trails leading into the hot, rancid night. The eldest of the three nodded understandingly and set off, putting one foot in front of the other with a finality that spurred the other pair into following. The South African guy noted how the weaker, smaller, younger of the three took up the rear, his confidence suddenly quashed by getting hurled into the dirt.
But he wasn’t about to back down.
The three apparitions disappeared into the night, the blackness swallowing them whole. The South African man stood alone, and as the footsteps of the trio faded into nothingness the natural sounds of the Congolese evening settled over the fork in the road.
Wild animal cries became noticeable, drifting imperceptibly over the plains. The man heard a distant rumble, coming from somewhere in the vicinity of Mount Nyiragongo. Even after four long years in the Congo, the stratovolcano never failed to set him on edge. He waited patiently with his hands clasped behind his back, sensing the seconds ticking by, wondering if the three nervous men would choke at the last moment.
He fully expected them to come slinking back with their tails between their legs, calling off the brash idea and deriding themselves as fools for ever thinking they could go through with something like that in the first place.
Then the automatic gunfire tore through the night, complete with horrific shrieks of panic and the distant strobe-like effect of muzzle flares. The sounds of nearby wildlife died as animals fled the slaughter.
The South African man closed his eyes.
In his line of work, little surprised him anymore.
But this had.
The wailing of villagers rose in both panic and frequency until, a few minutes later, the final cry ceased. The chaos dissipated, remnants and echoes of the noise sweeping across the smoking plains, until it finally faded into sheer silence.
As if it had never happened at all.
2
Miami International Airport
September 2007
Jason King didn’t make it onto the flight.
He stepped out of a stark yellow cab onto pavement with a spider web of cracks running across its surface. The sun beat down, scorching the hordes of travellers swarming the terminal for domestic departures. He yanked the small suitcase off the seat as he exited the vehicle, containing all the possessions he owned besides a secure bank account soon to be injected with an obscene level of government black funds. That thought triggered a wave of unrest — despite completing two of the most gruelling operations one could imagine for his employers, there had yet to be a concrete discussion about his salary.
He still hadn’t fully recovered from his last stint in Somalia.
He had only been promised a hefty chunk of cash.
It wasn’t about the money, anyway. So far the government had footed the bill for any costs he had, meaning he effectively required no salary at all. But the principle stood — he had put his life on the line twice, coming within a hair’s breadth of death in back-to-back stints.
Plus, he’d copped the beating of a lifetime.
Both times.
It had taught him new revelations regarding what the human body was capable of, if enough relentless forward pressure was applied to it.
That had been the main factor in the whirlwind of the last three months.
If he could tell his mind to shut up and switch over to autopilot, there was almost nothing he couldn’t do.
Surprised that no phantom pain cropped up, he paused on the sidewalk for a moment, soaking in the last rays of Miami sunshine before he headed to God-knows-where.
First, it had been Mexico, followed by a short siege in the jungles of Guatemala.
Then Somalia, for a cat-and-mouse chase that had pushed him to the outer limits of his pain threshold. Looking back on that turbulent time, he couldn’t quite believe he’d survived.
After half his body had been destroyed in the carnage, his superiors had allowed him over a month to rest and recuperate. He’d spent a blissful thirty days in the penthouse suite of the Titanium Seaside Resort on Miami Beach, sharing the company of a woman he’d met in Somalia. They both knew the connection wouldn’t last, so they’d made full use of the time they had together. When in the service of the United States government they required his attention twenty-four-seven, and there could be no contact with the outside world.
King knew he’d be single for quite some time.
He’d accepted that without a second thought.
He was paving new ground here. He and his handler — Lars Crawford — were leading the way, carving out a new division with built-in deniability and enough room for improvisation to pose a major threat to the nation’s security if King decided to turn rogue.
Thankfully, he had no intention of doing so.
The moral complexity of King’s discretion had struck him deep in the heart of Somalia, surrounded by armed bandits with the capacity to slaughter every single one of them without consequence. For some reason that had set off a chain reaction in his head, culminating in serious questions he’d posed to himself upon completion of the mission.
How was he to know how much leeway he should be provided?
Consumed by the web of thoughts opening up inside his own head, he barely paid his surroundings any attention at all as he sauntered up to the terminal doors. Before they opened, a hand shot out and seized his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. Instinct kicked in and he snatched the wrist in a vice-like grip, applying enough pressure to the delicate bones to make the owner squirm in place.
Face pale, Lars Crawford let out a gasp. ‘Fuck. Relax.’
King froze in place, letting swathes of civilians move past them on either side. He released his hold on the short man. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Trying to stop you from jumping on a flight.’
‘You told me you needed me.’
‘I didn’t say where.’
‘I figured Miami had nothing to do with it.’
‘What was your plan, exactly? Buy a ticket and hope for the best?’
‘I was going to call you inside the terminal.’
‘Pretty whimsical. My initial message wasn’t even that urgent. I just said it was time to think about heading back.’
King paused. ‘I needed to leave Miami. For my own reasons.’
‘Wouldn’t have anything to do with Bethany Cooper, would it?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Relationship problems?’
King remained deadpan, giving nothing away. ‘Things were great, actually. Which is why I needed to leave.’
/>
‘Oh. Didn’t want to get too attached?’
‘Bingo.’
‘And why are you here, exactly?’ King said. ‘Don’t you have more important issues to take care of than chasing me around the country?’
Lars paused, composing his thoughts. ‘You’re my most important issue. Or, rather, your physical condition.’
‘What?’
‘We have a lot to discuss. I have orders to pass onto you, but you’re not going to like them much.’
‘Are you just assuming?’
‘I know enough about you at this point. You’re not going to jump at the chance to—’
He paused again, throwing a glance in either direction.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘maybe a domestic terminal isn’t the best place to talk about this stuff. Where were you staying?’
‘Titanium. But we’re not going back there.’
Lars flashed a wry grin. ‘Of course. Don’t want to run into the ex.’
‘Not the kids either.’
That threw King’s handler off. ‘What?’
‘Well, you seem to think I got married and started a family over the last month. Beth wasn’t anything serious. Get over it.’
