by Matt Rogers
He locked a powerful forearm around the throat of the guard he’d disoriented and squeezed. The guy bucked and writhed like a mad man, but it had little effect on King’s hold. He felt the man slipping into unconsciousness as the four men on his side lashed out in frenzied bursts of anger.
By the time King put the Guardia Nacional soldier out and released him to the floor, the other two men had been dealt with sufficiently. The twins had beat down one guard using his own Kalashnikov as a dull object, and Daniel and Mateo were in the process of raining down savage blows on the third.
‘Stop,’ King said, and they instantly ceased.
The third guard, still conscious, stared up at them. King held out a hand and nodded a truce, gesturing for him to stay put at risk of another beating. The guy nodded, wiped blood from his nostrils and scooted to the far wall. He sat still and simply watched.
‘Where’s your friend?’ Raul said, looking around.
‘Dead,’ King said, bowing his head for a moment. He let the image of Percy’s bloodied corpse lend him energy. ‘I just caused a raqueta. A very violent one. I’m going to attempt to get out of here now. It might mean I end up on the wrong end of a bullet. You four can either come with me, or stay put. Completely up to you. Tell them.’
Raul muttered to the other three in Spanish, translating the message. Daniel and Mateo listened silently, their faces contorted into skeptical grimaces. King already knew they would refuse. Their opinion on him had quickly changed. They thought he was some kind of wild madman.
Perhaps I am.
Luis seemed eager. His eyes widened and the corners of his mouth tilted upwards. Fascinated by the opportunity to escape.
‘I think we’ve made our decision,’ Raul said after the four had finished going back and forth.
‘You two are coming?’ King said, pointing to the twins. ‘And the other two are staying?’
‘Yes … how’d you—?’
‘Pretty obvious. Let’s go.’
He hadn’t grown close to either Daniel or Mateo. He had known both of them for less than a day. He couldn’t communicate with them due to the language barrier. It was their choice to stay, and he had no qualms with their decision either way. They would probably look back on their choices and smile if he and the twins ended up getting caught and executed.
Either way, he wasn’t bothered at all. He nodded goodbyes to both of them and then turned to Raul and Luis.
‘This could get messy,’ he said.
‘We know,’ Raul said.
‘Any reason you two want to take that risk?’
‘Our sister, and our mother. They were dependent on us when we worked for the Movers. That’s why we started in the first place. We haven’t been able to contact them since we got in.’
‘You’d risk your life for them?’
‘Of course. It’s family. I thought escape was impossible before, but if you’re saying there’s a chance then we’ll take it. Wouldn’t you do the same for yours?’
‘I don’t have any family.’
Raul nodded. ‘I guess you can’t relate then.’
‘I can’t relate. But I can understand. Let’s go.’
They gathered up the Kalashnikovs dropped by the three guards, so that each man brandished an assault rifle. King checked the safety of his weapon. It had been flicked off before the soldiers had entered. They’d been ready to kill.
Now he was ready to kill.
The old Jason King had resurfaced.
The din of the raqueta had been muffled by the concrete walls, but as they exited into the hallway its volume reached a crescendo. King took in the scene, slightly surprised by how quickly the conflict had escalated.
The pavilion had turned to bedlam.
Guardia Nacional were involved in many of the brawls. Batons swung and the constant crack of shotgun discharges ripped through the heavy air. In their primal states, the prisoners had switched from fighting amongst themselves to lashing out at the guards. It had quickly become a skirmish.
King couldn’t help but hesitate. He’d planned to charge headlong through the chaos — cutting a path to the nearest open gate — but the sheer intensity of the conflict made him stop to reconsider. Maybe there was another way…
Then he heard screaming behind him.
Coming from the end of the hallway.
He turned and saw Tevin’s door flying open. Armed men spilled into the corridor, searching for targets. All their eyes were wide and rabid. He guessed most were hopped up on some kind of drug that Tevin had access to. Maybe speed.
Tevin’s hired thugs. They numbered at least seven, and came tearing down the corridor like berserkers. Heading straight for them.
The pavilion to King’s rear. Crazed killers to his front.
He raised his Kalashnikov and started firing, and then all hell truly broke loose.
CHAPTER 23
The element of surprise saved his life.
The thugs hadn’t been anticipating King and the twins lying in wait in the corridor. They must have planned to seize the confusion and charge to his room, bursting the door open and unloading their weapons into the cramped space. It would have worked, had King not been ready for violence at a moment’s notice.
He flipped a neurological switch and was transported back to a time where all he did was kill. When his career had revolved around the deaths of mercenaries and gangsters and terrorists. He swung the barrel from man-to-man, squeezing off just enough shots to put them down. He moved with cold, calculated efficiency. Blocking out all emotions.
It only hindered his aim if he thought of his targets as people.
For a brief millisecond, he considered the dangers of returning to this state. He’d worked so hard to break free from it. He’d retired from Black Force. He’d travelled through desolate countries and kept his head low to try and recover from a career of madness. And here he was, right back in the mayhem.
But it was the only choice he had if he wanted to stay alive.
He killed every thug who was in the process of raising a gun. Two at the front. One off to the side. They sprawled into the mud, bleeding heavily. Firearms clattered from their limp hands. The rest seemed to wield only handheld weapons. Bats, crowbars, machetes. King picked the guy with the machete off. His head jerked back as he took two rounds to the temple in a spray of brain matter.
And then they clashed.
The hallway was too narrow, too small. He couldn’t hope to put them all down before it turned to a close-quarters brawl. The commotion had played out so fast that Raul and Luis had yet to get a shot off. Their reflexes were slower. Less honed.
They still had their barrels pointed at the ground when the group of Tevin’s goons slammed into them.
A filthy cramped corridor was the worst place for a strategic fight. But that didn’t matter, because King thrived in these scenarios — when technique and efficiency went out the window and the upper hand was given to the man with the most sheer power.
He knew that was him.
As soon as two thugs crashed into his chest — knocking the gun out of his hands — he exploded. He threw a vicious slicing elbow to his left. A sharp knee to the right. The men fell away. He seized the man in front of him — a tall, bald Spanish guy baring his teeth — and delivered a colossal headbutt into his nose.
It was the third septum his forehead had destroyed since arriving at El Infierno.
Raul and Luis did their best. Both men were well-built. Tall and solid. They could scrap. More importantly, King knew his own actions would encourage them, spurring them to fight. He hadn’t hesitated in the slightest before fighting back against Tevin’s assault. He knew from experience that the display of bravery would lend a motivational boost to everyone on his side.
So the twins lashed out at anyone nearby, giving it their all. King tried to ascertain if they had the upper hand, but the brawl was too feverish to get a decent look. He could only worry about himself.
As he lashed out w
ith a two-punch combination that smacked a thug’s chin in one direction just so he could wind up for a haymaker on the other side, he took a quick glance to see if Tevin had appeared. So far, still no sign of him.
The guy in front of him dropped, his limbs loose. He’d been knocked senseless by the combination. King sensed Tevin’s thugs crumbling all around him and realised that he and the twins had more than likely gained the upper hand in the conflict. He hadn’t taken any kind of considerable blow yet. Sure, he was injured from the beatdown he’d suffered during the first raqueta, but adrenalin did its best to mask the effects of all the bruises and cuts.
Then a wave of bodies slammed into him from behind, pressing him forward, knocking him off his heels.
Claustrophobia kicked in. The corridor had become so densely populated by the fresh swarm of men that he had trouble breathing. He wheeled around and saw inmates surging into the hallway, fleeing from the Guardia Nacional.
They must have turned lethal, King thought.
It was the only thing that could explain such a mad rush.
Punches and baton swings whistled through the air around his head. He weaved left and right, ducking and bobbing. He dodged the tip of a baton that came at him so fast it would have broken his jaw had it connected. The displaced air washed over him, chilling him.
A shiver ran down his spine.
He didn’t even see where it came from. Just that it almost knocked him into a coma. He slammed a trio of inmates aside and spotted Raul and Luis in the crowd.
‘To the gate!’ he roared above the din.
Raul nodded and battered a man in his way aside. The guy’s slight frame didn’t stand a chance in the carnage. He crashed into the far wall and dropped underneath the rampaging horde.
The three of them powered through. King got in front of the twins and used his weight advantage to smash aside anyone in his path. He didn’t care who they were. Inmates, Guardia Nacional … they all stood between him and the other side of El Infierno’s walls.
A soldier saw the three of them fleeing in the opposite direction to the crowd. He raised a shotgun and aimed it directly at King’s face. King looked down the barrel and baulked. Riot pellets or not, they would still shred his skin to pieces. Probably kill him at such a close range.
He ducked and leapt simultaneously. The guy had the extra weight of the shotgun in both hands and couldn’t bring his arms down in time to protect his mid-section. King rammed a shoulder into his stomach and took him off his feet. The two sprawled into the mud.
King was momentarily blinded by the mud that geysered away from the impact zone. He wiped it frantically off his eyelids and assessed the location of the guard. The man had landed hard, smashing all the breath out of his lungs, sending the shotgun flying away into the crowd. As bodies moved all around them King drove a fist into his solar plexus, taking out every last ounce of breath. The guy coughed and spat and doubled over. It would take him a few minutes to recover from that.
All King needed.
He saw the tiniest sliver of a gap between two separate brawls, both involving a mixture of inmates and guards. A narrow line leading directly towards one of the gates. He scrambled to his feet and turned to find the twins.
He stared straight into the barrel of an automatic pistol.
Tevin leered from the other end.
Somehow, someway, the old man had made his way through the pavilion in the heat of the widespread melee. Inmates had probably let him pass. Even in such rabid states they still more than likely respected his rank within the pavilion.
He’d made a beeline for King.
King didn’t move. Any sudden action would cause Tevin to pull the trigger even quicker than he already intended to. He’d only been staring at the weapon for half a second, but in his mind it felt like an eternity. What could he do?
Nothing.
Except feel a crushing blow in his ribs as a Guardia Nacional soldier crash-tackled him, sprinting in from the right-hand-side, using a running start to drive momentum into the attack. The man must have seen King attack his comrade and decide to return the favour.
King’s neck whipped to the side, jarring several muscles at once. He felt a ringing pain in his ears. Either from Tevin’s gun discharging at such close proximity, or his brain scrambling from the tackle. Whatever the case, he splayed across the dirt with enough force to slam him into a semi-conscious state. He felt a brutal thump as his head bounced off the hard ground. He groaned and rolled over.
Incapacitated.
But alive.
He looked up at Tevin, who had fired at where King had stood not a second earlier. The old man struggled to correct his aim. Battle raged around him. It threw his senses off just enough. Added a tiny delay to his actions.
All King needed.
He leapt forward, head pounding, arms outstretched. One hand wrapped around Tevin’s lower leg and he wrenched with everything he had, completing what was known as an ankle pick takedown. Usually — if implemented perfectly — the opponent ended up on their back.
But this was not a trained martial artist. Tevin was a frail old man. And King was a powerhouse.
Tevin left the ground and rotated almost an entire revolution, his frail bones doing nothing to resist King’s ferocity. He landed on his neck, hard enough to cause major neurological damage, not hard enough to kill him.
King was more than happy to complete the equation.
He scooped up the gun the man had dropped — a Taurus 24/7 — and brought his aim around. He destroyed Tevin’s head with a trio of Parabellum rounds. Pulped the guy’s temple into a bloody pulp.
Good riddance, King thought.
He’d given Tevin more than enough chances to leave him alone. He’d put up with attempts on his life more than once. Enough was enough. A man only had so much patience.
Raul stumbled over to King, bleeding heavily from the mouth. It was clear that he’d taken a few good punches. Luis emerged from the crowd, shoving aside two Spanish inmates. Blood covered his bare arms.
It wasn’t his.
His face didn’t bear a single scratch.
‘Your brother’s deadly,’ King said as Raul helped him to his feet.
‘He can hold his own, that’s for sure.’
King led the trio out the open pavilion gate. He guessed it was the first time the twins had left the enclosure in a very long time. Their feet crunched slowly over the gravel, and they gazed around in awe at the surrounding buildings, all tinged orange under the warm glow of the rising sun.
Dawn had broken.
A volley of gunfire from a distant watchtower sent a spray of rounds across the path in front of them. King ducked low and wrapped an arm around each of the twins’ midsections. He spurred them forward. They dove in unison across the path and under the shelter of the same building he’d crouched behind a few minutes earlier.
‘We’re pinned down,’ King said, grunting in frustration as another magazine was emptied in their direction.
Then something happened which he didn’t anticipate.
A cluster of inmates had noticed them slipping out of the pavilion. For some reason unbeknownst to King, they decided to follow. Four men spilled out onto the pavement, fleeing the enclosure. Shots rattled around them and they all bolted in different directions.
It set off a chain reaction.
Before King knew it, half the pavilion’s population had surged out the open gates, directly defying the Guardia Nacional. Soldiers came sprinting out after them, tackling inmates at random, throwing wild shots. A multitude of fights broke out across the pavement.
King sensed rebellion in the air. It appeared his provocation at the start of the raqueta had created a snowball effect. Years upon years of abuse had turned the prisoners into caged animals. They were unleashing all the pent-up fury. King watched it unfold in awe.
‘This is getting out of hand,’ Raul said.
‘It’s exactly what we needed,’ King said. ‘I didn’t expect i
t to pay off so well.’
‘Do you know where we need to go?’
‘I know which way I was brought in. That’s about all I have.’
‘We don’t have any other choice, do we?’
‘I don’t. You two can go back to the pavilion whenever you please.’
‘I don’t want to be around to experience the aftermath of this,’ Raul said. He stared in shock at the carnage raging all around them. ‘Neither does Luis. And we have a family that needs us.’
King nodded and waited for an opportune moment to make a break for it. On a whim, he glanced down the track. Percy’s feeble corpse lay in the same place. His glasses were shattered. A peaceful calamity had crept over his face. The relief of death.
But he couldn’t concentrate on Percy for long at all.
Because the space where Rico had previously lay — cowering from his injuries — was bare. The man had disappeared.
‘Fuck,’ King whispered. ‘Let’s go, right now.’
‘Why right now?’ Raul said.
‘Because there’s someone around here who will do anything to kill me.’
They broke free from the narrow alley and took off down the pavement, heading for the far wall of El Infierno.
CHAPTER 24
King felt his chest heaving as he ran down indiscriminate paths, blood pumping, hands shaking. The twins followed close behind. The centre of El Infierno had been haphazardly thrown together in its construction. There wasn’t a shred of symmetry to its geographical layout. The rest of the prison had become a ghost town. Offices previously manned by guards and prison officials lay bare, paperwork strewn across the floor, swept off the desk as they dashed either toward or away from the source of commotion.
He could hear the violence from here, a soft echo of mad screaming that drifted over the buildings and permeated the prison grounds. Every guard in the complex would be drawn to the chaos. They remained at their stations when order was kept and procedures were set in stone. But King knew exactly how people in positions of power reacted when insanity broke out.
