Isolated: A Jason King Thriller (Jason King Series Book 1)

by Matt Rogers

  Which would be more than enough time.

  Lars scrambled away, out of reach. He got to his feet and took a couple of short hurried steps and before Dirk could reach him he’d scooped up the remote and had his finger poised on it once again.

  ‘Impressive,’ he panted, spitting blood. ‘Very impressive.’

  King stumbled to his feet, feeling every inch of movement in his nerve endings. As he rose his knees momentarily buckled. He righted himself and assessed their positions.

  Now, there was no hope. Dirk and Kate stood behind him, side by side, unarmed. In his haste to disarm Lars, Dirk had dropped his Barrett. Now he stood weaponless, both hands free. Not that a heavy-duty sniper rifle would do much use in this situation anyhow. King saw his own M&P several feet away, far out of reach. Lars stood near the plane’s open exit door, a large space built into the side of the fuselage to enable multiple skydivers to leap out at once. It had a rolling cover that was currently locked in place, leaving the door wide open. Inside, King saw the stacked crates of anthrax, tied down with thick leather straps.

  With his free hand, Lars wagged a finger in their direction. ‘Almost had me, boys. Was worth a shot.’

  He paced a few steps to the right and picked up King’s discarded M&P. He raised it, levelling the barrel at King’s head. King stared at the small dark hole, wondering if it would be the last thing he saw.

  Then Lars paused.

  ‘You know what,’ he said, ‘I was going to shoot you all before I left. But I might just leave you here, King. You’ll feel worse when you hear about what I did. When you see the sheer number of casualties. Wasn’t that the whole point of this?’

  He shook his head, smiling through bloody teeth.

  ‘Where are you going to use it?’ King said, his shoulders slumped, his demeanour that of a defeated man.

  Lars winked. ‘You’ll just have to wait and see.’

  He turned away from them and stepped up into the P-750. He clambered through to the front. There was no cockpit, just a single pilot’s seat built behind the controls to maximise room for jumpers. Keeping them in his peripheral vision, he thumbed a few switches on the dashboard and the front propellor coughed and spluttered to life, creating a whine that echoed through the forest.

  King knew that if the plane took off it would be final. With no aerial transport of their own, they would lose Lars forever. As his gut twisted into a knot he battled the urge to pass out.

  ‘King,’ Dirk yelled above the roar.

  He turned and looked at the man. Dirk stood awkwardly, one hand behind his back, the other hanging at his side. Not a natural position. He was hiding something from sight. As King watched, he brought the hand out into the open. He clutched a leather belt between his meaty fingers. King’s eyes darted to Kate’s waistband. No belt to be seen. Dirk must have unfastened it in the few seconds that he had spent fighting with Lars.

  He put everything together.

  Dirk turned and heaved the belt as far as he could. It soared high in a broad arc and slapped the runway a few dozen feet behind the plane, well out of range. Then he turned back, just as the plane beside them began to roll away, its wheels slowly turning over, picking up momentum. Within a few seconds it had accelerated faster than either of their top running speeds.

  They would not catch it on foot.

  The P-750’s propellor made verbal communication impossible. But two years as brothers on the battlefield meant that words were not always necessary. Dirk pointed a single finger at the Hawkei, its engine still running. King knew what needed to be done.

  Head throbbing, foot aching, body screaming for rest, he broke into a sprint for the only vehicle capable of catching the plane before take-off.

  CHAPTER 42

  As the urgency of the predicament sunk in, King felt his heart beating hard against his chest wall, threatening to break through at any moment. He ducked through the Hawkei’s open frame and sat down in the passenger seat.

  Ahead, nearly eight thousand pounds of aluminium continued to increase its speed as the P-750 gained traction on the runway. Every passing second meant a higher chance that it would escape.

  Dirk shot around the rear of the vehicle and clambered into the driver’s side. As soon as he got both feet inside the footwell he stamped down and the tyres spun, screeching against the tarmac. They shot off the mark, accompanied by the familiar stomach drop that came with rapid acceleration. King leant against the head rest and took a deep breath. The next few minutes were the most important of his life.

  There was absolutely no room for error.

  The Hawkei had a top speed of eighty miles an hour. He wondered if it could reach that before the P-750 did. He looked down and saw the road blurring outside the vehicle. With no door to protect him he would be as good as dead if he slipped and fell out. He guessed death would be preferable in that situation. It beat having to worry about losing most of the skin on his body.

  He forced that thought from his mind.

  He knew that a leap of faith would probably be necessary if he had any chance of stopping Lars.

  They began to gain ground on the P-750. He narrowed his eyes against the blistering wind, focusing on the task ahead. The Hawkei would approach the plane from the left-hand side. Its large entrance door still lay open. Lars hadn’t had time to shut it. Just in front and slightly underneath the door, the left wing jutted out from the plane’s body.

  ‘Get me as close as you can,’ King said.

  ‘You sure about this?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘We can pull up alongside and try to shoot him.’

  ‘It won’t work.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  King nodded. ‘If we don’t shoot through the fuselage in exactly the right place it’ll be worthless. He’ll just take off. Margin for error is way too high.’

  ‘He’s close to take-off now.’

  King took one last inhale, sucking in fresh air, then zoned in. ‘So let’s go.’

  Now almost parallel with the accelerating plane, Dirk swung the wheel and the Hawkei veered in. Its bonnet came close to crushing into the side of the plane, an event that would significantly hinder take-off. But at the last second the P-750 gained an additional burst of speed and began to pull away.

  They blasted down the runway, directly behind the left wing. The open door sat at a diagonal to their vehicle, slightly ahead and to the right. King gripped the armoured frame and swung across the outside step, feeling the wind blasting against his clothes, ignoring the pain racking his system. He got a foot on the bonnet and levered himself onto the front of the vehicle. He tried not to focus on the ground below, speeding by at an unbelievable rate.

  One wrong step and he would die.

  He knew the Hawkei would reach its maximum speed shortly. Basic physics meant it couldn’t go much faster than this.

  He braced against the elements and began to assess when would be the best time to jump. He had to time it perfectly. He guessed there was a few feet between their vehicle and the side of the plane.

  So perhaps…

  Then he saw the front wheels of the P-750 lift off the runway and knew if he did not move now, he would never see the plane again.

  He threw caution to the wind and leapt off the bonnet.

  Arms outstretched.

  For a terrifying beat he thought he wouldn’t make it. His back arched, his legs splayed, his fingers reaching for any kind of handhold. It was so close. It was right there.

  He began to fall.

  His hands slammed into the very lip of the doorway, harder than he anticipated. His grip slipped and his legs dangled in thin air and he started to fall away from the plane. He ignored the sudden numbness in his fingers and locked them tight. They seized the lip. Miraculously, they held.

  His stomach dropped into his feet as the plane took off, parting from the ground, ascending fast. He didn’t dare look down. He held onto the fuselage by a hair’s breadth, clutching the floo
r of the plane, heart hammering, mind racing.

  Straining his forearms, he levered his body up. Bringing his head over the lip of the plane. He took a look inside. Lars sat in the pilot’s seat, unaware that King had jumped, concentrating on piloting the aircraft. He battled to control its takeoff, especially in such windy conditions.

  King knew he had to act fast. If Lars heard a single odd noise he would turn, see him and put a bullet in his head. He had to get his bulk inside the fuselage and then act with lethal ferocity, making sure he did not come this far for nothing.

  He still refused to see how high the plane was. The forest would be nothing than a mountainous blanket of green far below, and he knew the vertigo from such a sight would weaken his limbs, especially with no parachute on his back to save him from falling a thousand feet to his death.

  He poised, ready to explode. Both elbows against the plane floor. Upper body inside. Legs hanging out.

  Go.

  CHAPTER 43

  He vaulted into the plane, shaking the fuselage, drawing Lars’ attention. But by then it was too late. He got his feet underneath him and took two bounding steps, crossing to the pilot’s seat in the blink of an eye. Lars swung a hand up. It contained the M&P. He searched for a good shot, desperate to get the barrel on target.

  Not this close.

  King smashed the gun with a meaty forearm, sending it clattering away. It came to rest somewhere under the controls. Well out of reach. He looped an arm around Lars’ neck and squeezed tight. The move crushed the man’s windpipe, eliminating any chance of movement. He held his old handler against the seat for a beat. Waiting for Lars’ instinctual struggle to lose steam. When he finally began to tire, King let go and burst forward, ducking into the footwell. He got a hand on the M&P. Before Lars had time to mount any kind of significant attack he peeled away, back into the middle of the fuselage.

  Effectively disarming the man sitting across from him.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Lars said. ‘Shoot me? I was your boss for years. I know you can’t pilot an aircraft.’

  King kept the gun trained on Lars. He snuck a look over his shoulder, past the stacked crates of anthrax spores, to the rear of the fuselage. Sure enough, he found what he was looking for. A spare parachute container, kept in the plane in case of emergencies. A Javelin Odyssey, by the looks of it.

  Perfect.

  ‘Don’t need to know how to fly,’ he said.

  He retreated to the back of the fuselage, looped one hand around the backpack and stepped into its harness. He worked quickly. Moving with the speed of a man who had thousands of jumps worth of experience.

  Lars cocked his head. ‘If you kill me and then jump, it’ll crash.’

  ‘You’re spot on there.’

  ‘You’d risk that?’

  ‘Look down,’ King said. ‘Nothing but uninhabited forest for miles in any direction. And I recall you saying these spores aren’t weaponised yet. They’re not in aerosol form.’

  ‘Maybe they are.’

  ‘Backtrack as much as you like,’ King said. ‘Won’t change a thing.’

  He clipped the final strap around his waist and strode forward to the open doorway. He aimed the M&P at Lars.

  ‘Now I win,’ he said.

  Lars let out a primal scream. The type of outcry that came from watching a meticulous plan crash and burn. He ducked low and powered across the final stretch of fuselage in a last-ditch effort. King saw it coming. But he didn’t pull the trigger. He saw an opening. He decided to take it.

  This way, Lars would at least face unbridled terror before he died.

  A gunshot would be too quick.

  So he sidestepped, moving to the right. Lars overshot his charge and had to screech to a halt directly in front of the open doorway. Instincts kicked in and he slowed, terrified to fall out of the plane. He reached for a handhold.

  A waste of time.

  King checked one last time that his parachute was securely fastened, then dropped his shoulder low and rammed Lars in the stomach, lifting off with both feet at the same time. The momentum behind the tackle sent both men tumbling out into open sky.

  The wind took them and they spun like rag dolls through the air. King experienced the momentary sensory overload he’d felt a thousand times before, as his brain became suddenly overwhelmed by the sensation of freefall. He let natural reflexes kick in. After more than a thousand skydives, many under dangerous conditions, he’d developed an instinctive response. He thrust his chin up and arched his back and splayed his arms out on either side. Almost instantly he stabilised in the air.

  Alongside him, Lars panicked. He thrashed his limbs, turning over and over. King knew his brain would struggle to process what had occurred. With no form of parachute or means of slowing down, death was inevitable.

  He wondered if Lars had accepted that yet. Or if there was still some inkling of hope. Whatever the case, his old handler did nothing but flail as the trees far below grew ever closer.

  King estimated that they had exited the plane at somewhere close to five thousand feet. He would have to open his parachute soon, after only a few seconds of freefall. He looked at Lars, who managed to right himself for just a moment.

  The two made eye contact.

  King saw the man’s boggling eyes, pale-white expression, clammy hands.

  Now he knew what true fear looked like.

  He reached back and tugged the ripcord out of its pouch. There was a moment of delay as the parachute shot out of the pack, still clustered tightly in a ball. The wind did not catch it for a second.

  Just enough time to give Lars the thumbs up sign.

  Then the canopy billowed out and the shoulder straps dug tight into King’s shoulders, slowing his descent. Lars spiralled away, falling at terminal velocity.

  King looked up and saw the P-750 far overhead, its nose starting to dip. He analysed its trajectory and figured it would come down somewhere in the valley to the east. The valley held nothing but an uninterrupted wave of pine trees. No towns, no civilisation of any kind. The gamble had paid off. Then he looked down and saw Lars’ tiny figure disappear into the trees. The impact zone was obscured, hiding the grisly results.

  But King knew there would be zero chance of survival.

  Despite being confident in the P-750’s landing area, he needed to see the impact for himself. He reached up to the toggles on either side of the harness and steered the chute to the right. His legs swung with the momentum as he corrected course. Now he faced the valley.

  It took just over a minute to happen. The plane continued to descend with no-one in the pilot’s seat. It bucked and swayed in the wind as it fell. Then it dove into the valley and crashed into the other side, taking down a couple of trees in the process. The violent sound of tearing metal echoed up from the forest, reaching his ears a couple of seconds after the crash. No flames. No fireball. Just a crumpled wreck with a destroyed chassis. The wings were torn off by the impact.

  He knew that the anthrax spores would not pose a problem. He’d seen the crates Lars had kept them in. Military-grade, reinforced, designed to withstand the most brutal conditions imaginable. Necessary for such a volatile substance. They wouldn’t have torn apart in the crash. Especially with the chassis of the plane protecting them from a direct hit. On the off-chance they had, they would pose no significant risk. They had yet to be weaponised into aerosol form.

  He made sure to memorise the location of the crash zone for future reference. The authorities would need to secure the location as soon as they were made aware of the situation. He used the toggles to spin the parachute one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, keeping the movement slow. Staring at the ground in all directions. Getting his bearings.

  The runway they’d taken off from lay to the west. He wouldn’t make it there. Ahead he spotted the mountain roads ascending up to Jameson, nothing but thin lines from such an elevated position. He estimated he would come down somewhere close to the metal work factory where he’d h
id the bodies of eight men. Six of them guilty, two innocent.

  It didn’t take long for the canopy of branches to rush up at his feet. He guided the parachute into a patch of forest where the trees were widely interspersed. It gave him more than enough room to land. He dipped between a pair of tall pine trees and tugged both toggles down. Flaring the chute. Slowing his descent. It put him at just the right speed to touch down smoothly on the wet grass. Two bounding steps to get his momentum under control and then he was on flat ground.

  Perfectly safe.

  He stayed upright. Listened to the sudden quiet of the forest, compared to the screaming wind and constant gunfire of the last ten minutes. Then he fell back onto the forest floor, staring up at the clear blue sky above. He sucked in breaths of fresh air. Happy to be alive. Happy that the madness had finally come to an end.

  He’d lost count of the number of people he’d seen die over the last three days. Whether it was by his hand, or simply witnessing murder. To anyone else, the sheer volume of horror would be too much to bear. To King, it felt like just another day.

  Which was perhaps the worst part.

  He had grown so accustomed to violence and death and destruction that the events that had transpired didn’t even seem out of the ordinary. It felt like he was back in Black Force, at the tail end of another mission, ready to go for the next one.

  This was not a healthy way to live.

  He promised himself there would be no next time. He would travel somewhere away from all this shit, somewhere where he could finally stop and take in an ordinary civilian life. He wasn’t sure where.

  But first there were other matters to attend to.

  After what felt like a century of rest he clambered to his feet and got out of the parachute harness. He left it there in the forest, its canopy wrapped around a cluster of branches, flapping gently in the breeze. He wasn’t sure he had the energy to cart it back to town.

  He moved on. Starting the slow trek through the woods, searching for a main road which would lead him back to the town of Jameson.