by Matt Rogers
The sound flared up on the very edge of his hearing. Somewhere far in the distance.
Not this building.
He continued across the space, noting that the building served as some kind of storage facility. He picked up the faint smells of fresh produce, coupled with the distinct whiff of gunmetal. There were wooden carts and sacks all over the place, distributed at random. There was no order to things. It proved the three men he’d already killed weren’t outliers — these men were sloppy, undisciplined, unfocused.
He felt a knot forming in his stomach, and the familiar nausea returned.
From past experience, undisciplined terrorists never treated their hostages with anything resembling decency. Men with true combat experience had a little more restraint. The care they showed their work carried over to their interactions. These men would be rabid, and King didn’t want to think about what they’d done to the hostages.
Two days.
Imagine what could have happened in that time.
Unforgivable.
Lars’ strange orders still rolling through his head, he slipped out of the building through another open entranceway and crossed to a large sandstone house slapped in the middle of the compound, its exterior lights on, penetrating the night that had almost completely fallen over the desert. He heard unrestrained voices talking loudly inside the house, and shadows fell across the windows. They weren’t taking any precautions to keep a low profile, and King wondered if the regional terrorists had ever realised the stupidity of their actions in taking Americans alive. Had they not expected the U.S. to retaliate?
But out here, in the lawless desert, King could see how they’d been seduced by the concept of easy pickings. America was a world away, and here were these unarmed aid workers stranded deep in contested territory. Surely an elite military unit wouldn’t dangerously insert themselves into war-torn Mali so quickly.
But they had.
They’d sent a single man.
King realised the three he’d killed had been sentries. There was no-one stationed around the house, no-one in sight, and it made him question whether the terrorist cell was as large as he’d been envisioning.
Don’t hesitate.
Go.
Thirteen rounds in the clip, he charged up the steps and thundered the door open with a giant boot to the centre of the plywood. The flimsy lock snapped cleanly and the door swung inward, making a sound akin to a bomb going off in the otherwise muted desert.
King let out a bellow as he smashed the door open, an unbridled roar that, coupled with the crunching of the wood, would have startled everyone in the house into action.
Then he went silent and pulled back, pressing himself to the wall beside the doorway in identical fashion to how he’d approached the last building, opting for shock and confusion over a brazen charge.
He could take that risk.
Because by now he’d comfortably ascertained these men were amateurs.
There was a difference between impulsive violence and professional violence.
Like flushing rodents out of the pipes, two figures materialised in the land around the house, running out of separate doorways in response to the foreign threat. There were crude AK-47s in both their hands.
The only terrorists left in the compound not inside the house.
King raised the Glock and shot the closest guy once, taking care to line up his aim with the terrorist’s centre mass, dismissing the chance of the guy wearing any kind of body armour. These men didn’t have those kind of resources, or didn’t think they needed them. Then he pivoted to the furthest man and unloaded three shots in a tight cluster, a little looser with his aim, sacrificing accuracy for speed.
Both silhouettes went down.
Compound cleared.
Now take the house.
He shoved the Glock into the empty doorway and fired blind, sending two silent rounds through the hallway. He knew by that point any hostages nearby would have been hauled away from the entrance, giving the terrorists space to set up a trap.
He heard a muffled grunt, and his eyes widened in surprise.
He’d hit someone.
Like a man possessed, King sidestepped into the doorway and let the genetic reflexes gifted to him by a rare stroke of luck take over.
His opposition didn’t stand a chance.
7
Two men had taken up position inside the dimly lit hallway — King had hit one of them in the arm. Bleeding uncontrollably, the guy dropped his weapon in an awful display of situational awareness. It didn’t matter how much it hurt — you don’t forget about combat because of a flesh wound. Then King caught sight of the sheer amount of blood erupting from the guy’s bicep, and figured he’d hit the brachial artery with his warning shot.
Tough luck, buddy, he thought.
King put him out of his misery with a headshot, then turned to his friend and pulled the trigger.
The sole remaining terrorist let loose with his own Kalashnikov at the same time.
Shit.
It was close. Uncomfortably close. Three rounds made it out of the barrel before King’s shot hit him square between the eyes and killed him on the spot. Two of those shots went incomprehensibly wide, embedding themselves in the plaster ceiling, but one whisked over King’s shoulder with enough proximity to blow displaced air across his cheek. A few inches lower, and it would have taken a chunk out of his collar bone, rendering his favoured arm useless.
Out here, with no medical assistance to speak of, he probably would have bled to death in a couple of minutes.
But none of that happened, and King breathed a sigh of relief as the guy slumped forward, crimson gunk pouring from the hole in his head.
The house lapsed into silence. King had to remind himself that he’d killed seven men in less than a minute — sometimes, the lines blurred between fantasy and reality. The fact that he could draw a bead on a hostile a full second before they could react made most encounters deceptively easy. It was only upon reflection that he realised how close he came to death each time. If he was ever a half-second too slow, his life would be cut painfully short. He could never forget that, because if he settled into the routine it would only be a matter of time before he grew careless and succumbed to the consequences of his confidence.
The whimper sounded again, coming from the same source, now much closer.
In a nearby room.
King sunk back into operational mode and ghosted down the hallway, extinguishing the light in the space by knocking the desk lamp off the wooden table as he passed it by. It shattered upon impact, the sound resonating through the house. But there was no need for stealth anymore — if there were more hostiles inside the building, they would know he was here. He would do better to implement chaos and confusion. So the light died out, and King embraced the darkness once more.
He found the room he was looking for and flattened himself to the hallway floor, pressing his stomach to the carpet. Then he crawled steadily into view, Glock trained on the space in front of him, ready for anything.
Almost anything.
Not this.
He spotted all the hostages at once but barely paid them any attention — they were tied up, lined up against the far wall in seated positions, most of them crying. Not important. Not when King was in combat mode.
What he locked onto was the last remaining Islamic terrorist in the compound, clutching a serrated tactical knife between white knuckles, his eyes beady and his face gaunt, his pupils three times the size of what they should be. There was a chemical cocktail in his system, and he was thoroughly unprepared for combat.
None of that surprised King — what did was the complete lack of clothing on his lower half. His pants were around his ankles, and he’d been so surprised by the violence that he hadn’t even considered pulling them back up again.
King looked past the man, noting that one of the female hostages had been dragged out into the centre of the room. Thankfully, she was fully clothed. It
hadn’t happened yet.
But there was no mistaking what would have unfolded if King hadn’t intervened.
A surge of white-hot fury coursed through him. Instead of showing mercy, he lowered his aim from the guy’s forehead to his upper thigh and fired two shots, no doubt severing an artery. The guy screamed as his leg gave out from underneath him, and he dropped into a half-squat as blood began to spurt from his leg.
King burst to his feet, tucked the Glock into his waistband, and strode into the room.
The hostages watched him with teary eyes, their mouths gagged and their expressions desperate.
Despite the rage in his veins, King had the common sense not to traumatise them even further.
So he grabbed the terrorist by the collar and stripped him of the knife by snatching hold of his wrist and shaking violently. With an advantage of fifty pounds of bodyweight and ten years of honing his body into a literal weapon, it didn’t take long to wrestle the knife free from the guy’s grasp. As soon as he was disarmed, King wordlessly hauled him out of the room, dragging him into the darkened hallway.
Out of sight from the aid workers.
They wouldn’t see what came next.
King wrapped a giant hand around the man’s throat and thrust him up against the nearest wall, denting the plaster. Surprised at his own strength, making a note never to doubt the power of fury again, he lined up the straight right punch perfectly and drilled it into the guy’s forehead, punching his head through the plaster, gouging a giant divot out of the wall.
It sounded like a gunshot.
The man’s skull cracked.
Leaving him half-embedded in the wall, King pulled the Glock out of his waistband and finished it with a shot to the guy’s broken forehead.
Then he stepped calmly back into the room containing the hostages.
‘Sorry you had to hear that,’ he muttered.
Then the discrepancies appeared.
8
First, he noticed that what limited intel he’d received from Lars was completely wrong.
There were four hostages. Not six.
Now that he’d cleared the compound, that proved inconsequential, but if he’d found himself in a situation where he needed to extract everyone in a hurry he might have spent vital minutes hurrying from building to building searching for two people who didn’t exist.
To be sure, he crouched down by the hostage who seemed the most composed — a tanned guy in his mid-forties with streaks of grey in his thinning hair — and yanked the duct tape off his mouth.
The guy gasped for breath, sucking in air like his life depended on it. It was rare that someone showed true, raw emotion, but nothing could rival the relief in the man’s eyes. ‘Thanks, mate.’
King froze.
British accent.
‘You’re from England?’ King said.
The guy paused, then nodded. ‘Liverpool. You didn’t know?’
‘Just you?’
‘What?’
‘You’re an aid worker, correct?’
‘Nah, mate. Journalist.’
Now it was King’s turn to say, ‘What?’
‘Were you expecting someone else?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Sorry to disappoint.’
King shook off the initial shock and lay a hand on the guy’s shoulder. ‘It doesn’t matter. You’re all safe now. I’m here to—’
The guy shot daggers at him. ‘You don’t need to coddle us. We’re investigative journalists. Working in Mali. What do you think we were expecting?’
King nodded. ‘Right. Sorry. How are you doing otherwise?’
‘Ask Alicia first,’ the guy said, nodding to his female companion in the centre of the room.
King nodded again.
He crossed to where Alicia lay cowering in the foetal position, her knees tucked to her chest, her wrists and ankles bound by tape. He stripped the tape off her mouth and propped her up against the wall beside her three co-workers. He studied the four of them, then set to work freeing them all from their restraints.
Two men, two women.
‘How long have you four been in-country?’
‘A couple of months,’ the guy with the grey hair said. King figured his initial guess had proved correct — this man was the de facto ringleader. ‘We hadn’t been here long when everything went to shit.’
‘Were you advised to leave?’
‘Of course.’
‘And you stayed?’
‘What kind of reporters would we be if we ran away from every tense situation? We’d have no story. Nothing.’
‘You all felt that way?’
Four nods in unison. No hesitation. King cast his gaze across the small party and paused to digest what he’d learnt, thoroughly confused.
‘What is it?’ the ringleader said.
‘Let me get your names first,’ King said. ‘I need to set things straight before I work out what to do next.’
‘Graham,’ the ringleader said.
‘Alicia.’
‘Felicity.’
‘Ray.’
King nodded to each of them in turn, trying to inject some kind of normalcy into the conversation. There was no shying away from the fact that they were surrounded by the dead, but over years of dealing with hostages King had come to learn that maintaining an aura of calm went a long way. The shock set in only when they were extracted, and then they could deal with it accordingly. Until then, he had to keep them sane.
But it seemed these four had their heads screwed on.
‘You’re all British?’ King said, confirming what he already knew would be the case.
Graham raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s wrong, chief? Are you not allowed to rescue us if we’re not American?’
King shook his head. ‘I just received different information, that’s all.’
‘That we were American journalists?’
‘Not quite.’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘No difference,’ King said. ‘Not to you.’
‘What’s it to you?’
Something about the raw nature of the conversation loosened King’s lips. He didn’t mind sharing some things with these four. They were isolated miles from help, surrounded by the corpses of a regional Islamic group King had single-handedly disintegrated.
They would never see him again after this all wrapped up. Such was the nature of his career. He wasn’t the man to ease them back into society. Not that these people needed easing. He had an idea they’d be determined to go straight back to work.
King held up a finger, commanding silence, and left the room, stepping back out onto the stone landing out the front of the house. He let the quiet drape over the surroundings, listening intently for any sign of additional hostiles. He stayed that way for far longer than necessary — almost five minutes at final count. Then, confirming the compound was empty, he went straight back into the room where the four journalists sat rubbing their raw wrists.
‘I don’t trust my handler,’ King said. ‘Thought I’d keep the four of you in the loop.’
A couple of them went pale. Maybe they knew the ramifications of an elite solo operative sharing his personal troubles with them. The more sensitive information they were privy to, the greater the danger. As journalists, the concept wouldn’t be foreign to them.
‘Relax,’ King said. ‘I’ve got a feeling my government doesn’t care about a few British journalists in the slightest.’
‘That’s nice to know,’ Alicia said, her face turning to stone.
King shrugged. ‘Just speaking the truth. You know how many men there were at this compound?’
‘Eight,’ Graham said with absolute certainty. ‘We’ve had the time to count them.’
‘They’re all dead,’ King said.
‘I figured.’
‘It was way too easy.’
‘So you’re arrogant, too.’
King stiffened. ‘You want me to let you out of here, or not?�
�
‘That’d be great.’
‘Some gratitude would go a long way.’
‘Thank you. But I think we’re all thinking the same thing.’
‘And what might that be?’
‘That you’re going to drag us out of Africa and bog us down in a bureaucratic nightmare. That’s the last thing any of us want to do. We came here for a reason, and we stayed for a reason. We don’t want to go back. That’s why we’re all so apprehensive, in case you hadn’t figured it out.’
King paused, weighing up the ramifications of what he wanted to do next. But he’d never strayed away from his gut instinct before. Usually it lined up with Black Force’s orders. Now it didn’t.
You win some, you lose some.
‘Good news, then,’ he said. ‘I don’t care what the four of you do next. I’m not here to babysit you. But answer me one question — are there any humanitarian aid workers in this region? I assume you’d know, considering what you need to cover.’
Graham immediately shook his head. ‘The last relief party we saw in the area left weeks ago. They were all chased out by the coup. The only people who stayed were those with no common sense.’
‘So — you four.’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Can you see why they wanted you to leave?’ King said, gesturing at their surroundings.
‘We don’t need a lecture. Now, why are you so obsessed with aid workers?’
King placed both hands behind his head and took a deep breath. He looked around the room. He debated whether he wanted to speak his next words into existence.
But the situation was already dire.
Holding back wouldn’t change that.
So he said, ‘I think my country just gave me false information to keep me preoccupied. And I need to figure out why.’
9
An hour later, dusk finished its descent over Northern Mali and night fell, swallowing the endless desert plains into sheer blackness. King loitered on the edge of the compound, staring up at the millions of stars dotting the sky. With no civilisation nearby, the distant galaxies were displayed in all their glory. He spent a moment detached from reality, allowing his mind to wander, and then snapped back to the task at hand.
