The King: A Black Force Thriller (Black Force Shorts Book 8)

by Matt Rogers

  The doors slammed as he emptied the clip, and then his shots pinged harmlessly off the glass and the chassis. Panicking, trying not to let the situation affect him, he turned his aim to the rear tyres and hit both sets of rubber dead-on.

  Almost wanting to sigh with relief, he waited for the requisite pop.

  Nothing.

  Bulletproof.

  All bulletproof.

  King stood open-mouthed in the loading dock, his hearing ruined from the consecutive gunshots, in disbelief that the odds had tipped so far away from him. The plainclothes cop must have been threatened one too many times, and it must have fit the budget to deck his squad car out with the proper accessories.

  Bulletproof windows.

  Bulletproof tyres.

  The trio didn’t even bother returning fire. They hunkered down in their mobile fortress, probably thanking their lucky stars, and the olive sedan shrank from sight. Up ahead, a T-junction beckoned, and then they would be lost forever.

  Free to carry out whatever kind of massacre they pleased.

  King weighed his options.

  The Ford — not a chance. It was a giant F-150, prepared especially for the job, a hulking behemoth of a truck now resting on its side. It would take five men to topple it upright. King was strong, but still human. The guy called Rob writhed in pain, half his body trapped underneath the truck. King ignored him.

  The Lamborghini — equally unlikely. The collision with the Ford had turned the supercar into a broken mess, its hood punched in, its engine likely destroyed. There was no way in hell it would start, let alone drive.

  That left the chopper.

  No alternatives.

  King had spent his life calculating his next move. That’s all his career involved, a series of actions taken with risk minimisation in mind. The only path to victory here involved risk off the charts. But he wasn’t about to stop, so that left him with no other option.

  His helicopter knowledge nothing but a distant murmur in the back of his head, he hauled the dead pilot out of his seat and clambered aboard.

  ‘Please let this work,’ he whispered under his breath, barely able to hear himself think over the noise of the rotor screaming above his head.

  He snatched hold of the collective control by his left leg and wrenched it upward, hoping for the best.

  The chopper shot skyward like a rocket.

  29

  His stomach fell into his feet, and in that moment King had never felt such uncertainty.

  He could handle combat. Thousands of hours of boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and thousands more hours clocked into the shooting range, and he could comfortably dispatch almost anyone he came up against in a confrontation. But this was the unknown, the knowledge that if he made the slightest incorrect movement of the controls he would plummet to the road in a steel coffin.

  Trying not to faint, he grabbed the cyclic control between his legs and pushed it forward, far more violently than the instructions intended. The chopper’s nose dipped and it accelerated like a bullet. King gulped back apprehension and kept his gaze locked on the olive sedan barrelling down the road in front of him.

  The sedan reached the T-junction, and veered left.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ King muttered, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

  He rotated the cyclic control to the left — once again, too hard. The change of direction almost hurled him out of the pilot’s seat, which would have sent him tumbling out the open doorframe to the road fifty feet below. The chopper continued to ascend until he locked the collective control in place, maintaining a level heading above the sea of warehouses stretching as far as the eye could see. In the distance, King saw suburban Columbus sprawled out in all its glory.

  He’d never been so out of his depth.

  He shrugged the safety harness on for good measure and gently lowered the chopper over the new street. Almost shocked that he’d achieved any kind of success, he picked up the pace, closing in on the sedan from above. Any attempt to make slight adjustments to the cyclic control sent the frame lurching violently around him, almost sending him nose-first into a particularly tall factory.

  The sedan picked up speed, sensing the chopper closing in, and a burst of gunfire laced past his left ear, rounds tracing through the open air.

  King paled. He didn’t think his heart rate could increase any more.

  He could barely handle the tension.

  He urged himself to calm, allowing an icy chill to settle over the cockpit. He lowered the chopper gently, maintaining the same ballistic forward pace. He could easily match the sedan’s top speed in the aerial beast, but maintaining accuracy was another story.

  He went lower.

  Sweat pouring, pulse pounding, the nose of the chopper dipped below the warehouses. Now he hovered only a few dozen feet above the sedan. He figured they were both travelling at roughly fifty miles an hour. Surrounded so closely by enormous mountains of metal, it seemed to King like they were going a hundred.

  Calm.

  He let the sensation stir within him, gently instructing him what to do next. It was madness. Ludicrous. Suicide.

  But, in a shocking moment of clarity, he realised he didn’t care if it killed him.

  And if there was one thing he’d learnt over his long and storied career in black operations, it was that he could take a hell of a beating when the situation demanded it.

  So he tightened the four-point seatbelt, took the deepest — and perhaps final — breath of his life, and before common sense could stop him in his tracks he reached down and jammed the collective control downward.

  His stomach fell.

  The chopper fell.

  He held on for dear life.

  30

  The three men in the sedan must have sensed the helicopter frighteningly close above them, but none of them could have guessed they’d be on the receiving end of a kamikaze dive.

  But, in the end, it had been a simple choice to make.

  King had chosen this career. He’d willingly stepped into this world. And that carried responsibility. If he had to choose between sacrificing himself to stop a gang of lunatics, or letting them go free and slaughter innocent men, women, and children, he knew which option to select.

  Every single time.

  So he let go of the controls and clutched both hands around his harness as the helicopter plummeted downward. The landing skids obliterated the roof of the sedan, pulverising its occupants. The driver didn’t have time to swerve out of the way, because he hadn’t been anticipating anything like what unfolded.

  King simply crushed the sedan underneath the chopper, brutalising the three men inside, killing them instantly.

  Wiping out the last of their force.

  The threat dissipated, he wanted to breathe a sigh of relief. But he couldn’t, because there was no chance of the chopper righting itself after such a destructive manoeuvre. One of the landing skids caught in the sedan’s mangled chassis and the momentum shifted violently.

  King held on tighter.

  His knuckles turned white.

  He felt the chopper pitching around him.

  It rotated off the sedan, one of the skids snapping clean off. By then it was too late for any kind of correction. It had already started to overturn. King saw the ground rushing up to meet him, and thought, I’ve had a full life.

  If this is it, then this is okay.

  But it kept rotating. Instead of hitting the asphalt on its side and acting as a giant cheese grater against the door frame, it landed on its roof and entered an uncontrollable skid, sending sparks lurching in every direction at once. King clenched every muscle in his body at once, upside-down, close to hyperventilating. Sparks hit him full in the face, almost blinding him. He gripped the harness with sweaty palms, and thought, Holy shit. Is this survivable?

  He hoped like all hell the chassis didn’t go up in a fireball. He couldn’t see a thing, his senses assaulted by everything at once. All he could do was
hold on and wait for the end.

  Whether that be the end of his life, or the end of the skid.

  Then came a brutal, shocking, devastating impact.

  Bang.

  It battered him senseless, and he realised the chopper had skidded straight into one side of the closest factory. It ricocheted off the concrete wall, threatening to ignite at any second, and the physics of the impact sent the destroyed chassis rolling back off its roof.

  The whole shattered frame righted itself, ground to a halt, and all went still.

  31

  King opened his eyes.

  Everything hurt.

  He groaned, reached up with bloody fingers, and feebly unbuckled the safety harness. It fell away on either side, and he turned his attention to his surroundings, soaking in the demolished chopper around him. None of it felt real. He could have sworn he’d transcended reality, entering some kind of new dimension, one filled with blood and sweat and pain and fire and steel.

  But he was here.

  And he was alive.

  He flashed a glance over his shoulder and his eyes widened as he spotted the dead body of a policeman wedged awkwardly into the footwell of the passenger seats. The man must have fallen back into the body of the chopper as he was shot and stuck there, brought along for the wild ride. King reached back, plucked the shockproof cellphone out of the guy’s waistband, and punched in the familiar digits, number by number.

  He could barely hold the phone in his grasp.

  Lars answered the call with dead silence.

  Of course, King thought.

  Unknown number.

  ‘It’s me,’ he croaked.

  ‘King? Where are you?’

  He stared up at the crumpled roof over his head, then out through the shattered windshield frame at the desolate street beyond, nothing but a blur as his senses begged for mercy.

  ‘I … don’t really know,’ he said. ‘I should probably get out of here. Hold on.’

  ‘What?’

  He put one shaky leg down on solid ground and tumbled out of the pilot’s seat, spilling out of the helicopter’s chassis, fully aware the fuel could ignite at any moment and turn the interior into an inferno.

  He managed one step forward, then his knees gave out and he sank to the asphalt, the sun beating down on the back of his neck, the distant sound of approaching sirens gaining closer and closer with each passing second.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I can talk.’

  ‘I asked where you were.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I stopped it. I did it.’

  ‘I’ve got reports of a downed chopper.’

  ‘They downed it. Then I took it back up and dropped it on them.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘Maybe we should debrief when I can think a little more clearly.’

  ‘You need to get away from the scene if you’re still there. It’s on you if they arrest you.’

  ‘I know. I just need a minute.’

  ‘Take as long as you need, but make sure you disappear. You know the drill.’

  ‘Yeah…’

  Lars seemed to sense how little King was saying. ‘You’re in bad shape, aren’t you?’

  ‘Pretty bad.’

  ‘We can organise a mobile medic unit to meet you somewhere discreet. Patch you up before we bring you back to Washington and heal you up.’

  ‘Maybe later,’ King said. ‘There’s something I need to do first.’

  Lars paused. ‘I don’t think you’re in the right shape for that.’

  ‘I beg to differ.’

  ‘You sound like you’re on the verge of death.’

  ‘I think I am.’

  ‘Then let us handle it.’

  ‘No. This is my operation.’

  ‘King, that’s an order.’

  ‘If I followed orders I’d still be in Mali. Let me do this.’

  ‘You’re not going to use that as leverage for the rest of your career, are you? Because that’ll get real old real quick.’

  ‘I won’t mention it again. But you need to give me a bit more leash in future. I think I’ve proved my judgment is solid.’

  ‘This time.’

  ‘We’ll see what the future holds, then, won’t we?’

  ‘We will. There’s no way I can talk you out of what you’re about to do?’

  ‘You really want to talk me out of it?’

  ‘This is the part where I’m supposed to say something about a fair trial. Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Blah, blah, blah.’

  ‘If you believed any of that you never would have founded this division.’

  ‘Go make him pay.’

  King took the phone away from his ear and snapped it clean in two, crushing the vital electronics inside and eliminating any chance of recovering a call log. He discarded the pieces along the weed-choked sidewalk of the industrial street and hobbled into the shadows between two giant factories. Behind him, he heard horrified onlookers converging on the scene.

  There would be a lot to piece together in the coming weeks and months as the extent of the carnage hit the media.

  King would never be acknowledged.

  He didn’t want to be.

  He just wanted to come face to face with the man he’d left tied up in a mansion on the outskirts of Columbus.

  32

  Another bar.

  Another gloomy corner.

  Another drink.

  King tipped back the tumbler of triple distilled vodka and slid the cuff of his shirt down over the flesh wound on his forearm, disguising the extent of his injuries. When the headache had subsided, he’d realised his condition was miraculously superficial. No broken bones. Nothing impeding his movement. He’d followed through with everything he’d wanted to do, and now he was here. He didn’t quite feel like returning to duty yet. Everything about Black Force left a sour taste in his mouth.

  Lars would track him down eventually, but he didn’t plan on hiding for long.

  He simply needed time to think.

  Digest.

  Speculate.

  Mull over what had happened.

  It seemed surreal, and King might have chalked it up to a vivid nightmare if the giant flat-screen television above the bar didn’t cut to breaking news at that very moment.

  His energy depleted, he shifted in his seat to get a better view of the news report.

  It was madness. Several stories were developing simultaneously.

  The governor of Ohio, Stanley Fischer, had been found dead in his home a few short hours ago, a single bullet fired from a Glock 17 placed square between his eyes. What puzzled crime scene investigators, and made the media salivate with rumours of a conspiracy, was that the time of death for Fischer came several hours later than his security detail, all of whom had been massacred too.

  The media speculated that an unknown assailant had entered the premises, mown through Fischer’s bodyguards, and then returned some time later to finish the governor off. The young female reporter, positioned outside the perimeter fence of the grounds, labelled the incident a horrifying spectacle, and promised further updates as soon as she learned them.

  Then a sharp cut to another notable development — Senator Arnold Allen of New York had vanished from his downtown D.C. vacation home, reported missing by an unidentified family member. His three security guards were also nowhere to be found.

  The unseen, unknown body of Black Force, cleaning up its loose ends.

  Part of King hoped for some kind of salvation for Allen. An unofficial witness protection program, or a new identity and a humble retirement on a beach somewhere in Europe, or a redacted sentence in military prison before being released out into the world to start anew. Somehow he doubted any of that would unfold.

  He would never know.

  He spoke to Lars Crawford, and Black Force operated silently, clinically, in the background.

  He was an operative.

  And a damn good one at that.

  ‘What
a mad game,’ King muttered under his breath.

  The bartender must have noticed King talking to himself. The thin man sauntered over, his eyes greedy with potential profit. At this time of day, King was the only patron on the premises.

  ‘Get you anything else?’ the guy said.

  King didn’t take his eyes off the screen. ‘I’m good.’

  The bartender crossed his arms over his chest and let his gaze drift to mirror King’s. He studied the ongoing developments for a beat, then said, ‘Politicians, huh? They got what was coming to them. The way I see it, they’re all scum.’

  ‘Some more than others,’ King muttered.

  The guy flashed a glance at him. ‘Yeah. I guess. Well, enjoy your drink.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The bartender might have noticed the dark crimson patch on King’s shirt, but he wouldn’t have imagined in his wildest dreams that the huge man squirrelled into a corner booth was in any way connected to the media frenzy unfolding.

  And that suited King just fine.

  He sat alone, sipping intermittently at what was left of his vodka, letting the alcohol dull the pain. He breathed in deep, and exhaled fully, over and over again. Stilling his mind. Draining it of unnecessary thoughts. He was not a politician. He was not a bureaucrat. Concerning himself with the inner workings of his organisation didn’t appeal to him in the slightest.

  But wiping the smug smirk off the face of a governor who thought King had returned to arrest him…

  That appealed to him.

  That felt good.

  So he didn’t think, because thinking too much might drive him mad. He went through the familiar motions, battling the pain, letting the dull headache settle, assessing his range of motion, staring at the wall. He finished the vodka and exhaled one more time, releasing the hypertension that had caught him in its knotted grasp ever since he’d received the orders to head to Mali. He released the memories of all the men he’d killed. He released the anger, the disbelief at the state of the entire system, the frustration at how effortlessly those in power could get what they wanted, the anxiety that if he wasn’t there to stop it, no-one would.