by Matt Rogers
Not well.
He’d succeeded for most of his career by capitalising on the reactionary nature of his enemies. Now he would do so again.
He stopped running as they approached a sharp turn in between two enormous concrete structures. He raised a hand, halting Raul and Luis in their tracks. Ahead, the multi-storey outer wall loomed over everything else. A twisting path would take them right up to its door.
‘Wait,’ he whispered.
Gunshots sounded from the same direction they’d come. Either inmates had got their hands on weapons, or the Guardia Nacional had reached the end of their patience and turned to more dangerous means of subduing the riot. Probably both. It came with a shift in atmosphere. The situation had turned from barely under control to completely irrepressible.
Now people were dying.
King continued to wait. He predicted what would come next.
He was right.
A pair of prison guards stationed on this side of El Infierno came careering around the corner. They saw King standing in their path and baulked, but their momentum carried them a few more steps, unable to slow themselves in time.
The shiny assault rifles in their hands were useless at such close range. King bundled one up against the wall and kneed him in the gut, hard enough to do significant internal damage. The guy crumpled, letting go of the rifle.
An AK-74, King noted as he caught the gun in mid-air, spun and swung it into the neck of the second guard.
One of my favourites.
The butt of the Kalashnikov slammed home into the soft tissue of the guy’s throat. Not hard enough to kill, but enough to cause serious problems. He shot off his feet. As he went down, Raul kicked him hard in the ribs, incapacitating him for the foreseeable future.
They hadn’t done anything to provoke King. But sometimes certain situations called for injuries to innocents. Sure, it was unfortunate. But these men would heal up. He would die gruesomely if he stayed within these walls.
He turned to see both twins slack-jawed, astonished at the ease with which he’d dispatched the guards.
‘Come on,’ he said, hurrying them along.
The twins hustled past the two incapacitated guards. Before he followed, King bent down and patted his hands along the first man’s olive-coloured vest. He was met with no resistance. The blow to the gut had put the guy out of action for at least the next few minutes as he recovered his breath. King found what he was searching for — the jangle of a set of keys — and ripped the bunch from the guy’s pocket. Sure enough, a keycard had been slotted into the keychain, its plastic knocking between two keys. He gripped the bundle in one hand, keeping the other wrapped firmly around the AK-74.
‘You think that will get us through?’ Raul said.
‘Let’s hope so,’ King said. ‘Otherwise I’m going to have to turn to more desperate measures.’
‘These aren’t desperate measures?’
King looked up. ‘Not even close.’
‘You used to be a bad man, didn’t you?’
King glanced down at the prison guards writhing on the ground, fighting through the considerable pain he’d brought upon them. ‘Hard to say. There’s too many grey areas.’
‘Use those grey areas to get us out of here. Please.’
‘I’m trying my hardest not to.’
They continued towards the compound’s perimeter, passing under the line of sight of a rusting watchtower. If occupied, it would take little effort to unload automatic weapons in their direction, picking them off from a clear vantage point. But there wasn’t a guard in sight. King heard the conflict on the other side of El Infierno escalate in volume, and grimaced.
‘Raul,’ he said. The man stopped and turned. ‘You think they’ll get the riot under control?’
Raul shrugged. ‘No idea. But don’t feel bad. Something like that had been brewing for months. It would have broken out with or without you. I was waiting for the day it all kicked off.’
‘To escape?’
He shook his head. ‘To fight back.’
Up ahead, Luis called out. They saw him tugging at the handle of a thick metal door built into the side of the multi-storey perimeter. It led inside. Probably into a maze of dilapidated corridors. As King jogged to catch up, he found himself questioning whether he’d instigated all this anarchy for nothing. If they were cornered inside the building, he didn’t fancy his chances of being alive by sundown.
He approached the panel next to the steel door and tapped the keycard against a small electronic pad. A beep of confirmation — and a small green light kicking into life above the panel — indicated that the card was compatible.
Luis pulled the handle again.
It didn’t budge.
King eyed a grid of numbers under the pad, hovering just above a thin LED screen.
‘There’s a key-code on every door,’ he said. ‘Thought that might happen.’
His gut constricted as the situation became clear. A beat of fear arced its way down his spine. His hands grew clammy. Sweat dripped off his brow.
Death would not come quickly if they caught him alive.
‘I’m going back to those two guards,’ he said quietly.
Raul noted the steely determination in his tone and raised his eyebrows. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Get the code out of them.’
‘What if more of them catch up? What if we’re overwhelmed?’
‘We don’t have many other choices, Raul.’
Then the door burst open in their face.
CHAPTER 25
A frantic shuffle of bodies. Official-looking military uniforms. Tight lines of tension on foreheads. Furrowed brows. Determined expressions. Bulky assault rifles.
Four Guardia Nacional soldiers stormed out of the building.
King saw them power their way through, carried by the energy injected from approaching combat. At the same time, he heard the whining of an alarm behind them, emanating from within the building.
Reinforcements.
Heading for the pavilion.
He met their eyes, and knew both he and the twins would be torn to shreds in seconds if he didn’t act. Almost in slow-motion, he saw their pupils widening in shock, their hands beginning to react, their barrels swinging in his direction. They were very clearly three prisoners far away from where they were supposed to be. They were close to the wall. They were armed. They would not be shown mercy.
So King would not show them mercy either.
He dropped, his feet scraping away from the ground. He fell a foot and then his knees slammed into the earth. His jaw rattled. His senses faltered for a moment, stunned by the impact. But he’d driven his centre mass out of the guards’ line of sight, meaning it took them that extra second to react to his actions and re-focus their aim.
By which point he’d brought the barrel of his own AK-74 up and unloaded its contents into their legs.
Gunfire rang out across the empty path. Thirty rounds of ammunition tore across the tiny space between them. Bullets sunk into calves and shins and feet before any of the four had time to fire a shot. They fell simultaneously, blood arcing from flesh, screams slicing out of their mouths.
Shocked by such a rapid sequence of events.
Much like any man who crossed King.
Sometimes he imagined how events unfolded from the perspective of his enemies. He knew his reaction speed was inhuman, an extreme outlier amongst the outliers themselves. That’s what had secured him a position in a top-secret U.S. black-ops program. That’s what had kept him alive through years of vicious combat.
That’s what would keep him alive today.
He didn’t hesitate to surge forward as soon as the pack of soldiers were taken off their feet. It took a millisecond to assess who his attention had to shift to. Two of the men sprawling into the dust had taken wounds of such a painful nature that their instinctive reaction had been to release their weapons and clutch their trousers, which were quickly turning crims
on. Instantly, he disregarded them. He focused solely on the two men that had their fingers slotted inside the trigger guards of their assault rifles.
Kalashnikov AK-103s. Standard issue for the Venezuelan Army.
Very dangerous at close quarters.
He wound up and swung his leg at one of the weapons as if taking a free kick. He targeted the space where the magazine met the receiver, as it provided the least room for error. As soon as contact was made and the gun tumbled away across the dirt he spun and pounced on the last armed guard.
The guy lay on his back, covered in dust, bleeding profusely from exit wounds in his calves. Nevertheless, he possessed the mental fortitude to keep a grip on his firearm. King squashed him into the ground, slamming him chest-to-chest. Minimising the potential to find himself on the other end of the barrel. He grabbed the AK-103 and wrenched it free, then used the stock to drop a blow into the guy’s stomach. The man let out a wheeze of protest. Coupled with the other injuries, King didn’t imagine he would be putting up much more of a fight.
He got to his feet, surrounded by four groaning bodies. All disarmed. All going nowhere.
Raul and Luis had barely begun to react.
‘What the f—’ Raul whispered, gazing at the scene around him. He looked at King like he was some kind of monster, like he didn’t come from the same planet. Like he possessed skills that bordered on otherworldly.
‘Let’s go,’ King said.
There wasn’t time to gawk at his talents. They had all the time in the world to ponder such thoughts when they were free.
King caught the edge of the door just before it swung shut. As his fingers locked around the cold metal, he breathed a sigh of relief. If it had clicked closed, they would have been left in the same position they’d started in.
And now every guard in the compound knew of their presence.
Thirty rounds ejecting from the AK-74 had caused a deafening racket. The noise had echoed across El Infierno. Harsh and sharp. Drawing attention to the other side of the prison.
King knew they needed to move, or they would quickly find themselves in a war.
He used short commands to instruct the twins. They needed to be told exactly what to do. He saw shock setting into their features. Their time in the pavilion may have desensitised them to violence, but not at this level of intensity. Not when every move made the difference between seeing freedom and being carted unceremoniously back to the prison in chains.
Where he had no doubt Rico would relish torturing him slowly to death.
Raul and Luis scooped up two of the AK-103s the soldiers had dropped. Briefly, King glanced at each man’s legs. The sights passed through his mind and he checked to see whether any limbs would need amputation.
Probably not, he concluded.
Which was the most reassurance he would get, for a fresh set of alarms exploded from loudspeakers across the compound. These sounded at a different frequency, shrieking with the urgency that highlighted a volatile situation.
He imagined that the three of them had been spotted on various cameras. Now every guard in the compound would be alerted to their presence.
There were prisoners breaking out.
King ushered the twins inside the building, his heart racing, wondering just how on earth a peaceful holiday had turned to this in the space of a few days.
CHAPTER 26
The interior of the building brought with it a different smell.
It was still putrid — but a controlled kind of putrid. Not the filth of untouched faeces and urine that permeated every inch of El Infierno’s centre. Prison officials and Guardia Nacional soldiers patrolled these corridors. They had offices in these buildings. As such, the conditions were somewhat passable. Hygiene was tended to. So King inhaled deeply as the three of them tore through white-washed hallways, relishing the smell of civilisation. He tasted freedom, so close now he could almost sense the other side of the building just there.
And he’d only been locked up for two days.
He couldn’t imagine how Raul and Luis felt.
He saw it in their faces. Something that he hadn’t seen since he’d met them. An emotion that began to surface only when escape transformed from a shaky improbability to something very plausible.
Hope.
After at least a year inside the walls of El Infierno, he imagined they had become resigned to the brutal, unforgiving system, shattered by the betrayal of the gang that employed them. Now they might finally be able to start a new life.
King kept his AK-103 raised and his right eye firmly aligned between the sights, but they made it down three corridors in succession without any sign of resistance. He spoke as they moved.
‘Where to after this?’ he said.
‘We’re not out yet,’ Raul whispered.
‘We’re close. Will you visit your family first?’
He nodded. ‘Of course. Luis and my sister were inseparable. They did everything together. He didn’t handle the arrest well. He hasn’t spoken to her in over a year.’
‘And you?’
‘I was closer to my mother. But I cherish both of them.’
‘I’ll get you to them,’ King said. ‘Then I’m gone.’
‘Where will you go?’
He paused. ‘Haven’t figured that out yet. Seems impossible for me to escape trouble.’
‘I think you can,’ Raul said. ‘I think you try too hard to seek it out.’
‘You think?’
‘You don’t need to do anything after we get out of here. It’s not on you to get us back to our family.’
‘I’d like to help.’
Raul raised a finger. ‘That’s why. You can’t help everyone. When you try, you get yourself into this shit.’
‘I didn’t involve myself in this. I stumbled across it.’
‘You beat up the three Movers when you didn’t need to. If you want peace, King, you need to refuse to react.’
‘Sometimes I can’t.’
Raul shrugged. ‘Then maybe you’re supposed to do this forever.’
The corridor ended up ahead, sprawling out into a security station to process new arrivals. Two separate steel doors were built into each end of a narrow path, walled in by bulletproof glass. A bank of controls lay beside the station, currently uninhabited. Usually, a guard would monitor the prison staff exiting or entering. The setup was designed to ensure that no-one could leave without express approval of a staff member sitting behind the impenetrable glass.
Now it lay deserted. Surrounded by every siren in the prison sounding in unison, King paused by the first steel door and struggled to figure out a way past the checkpoint. The controls to unlock the doors were locked away in the bulletproof cube, usually occupied by a guard.
They had come this far.
He wouldn’t let them fail when they were so close to the other side.
He heard muffled movement from somewhere in the complex. Somewhere behind them. He froze, listening intently. It came from behind one of the closed doors, within one of the adjoining rooms. Amidst the din of the alarms, he couldn’t confidently assess which one. He dropped into a crouch and headed slowly back the way they’d come, pressing his ear against the wall every few feet.
Nothing.
Maybe they were trapped in this corridor after all.
Sudden commotion broke out directly in front of him, a cluster of hurried panicked movements happening all at once. King saw a wooden door burst outward, thrown open from the inside. A man came charging through into the corridor, his eyes bulging in their sockets. Mid-thirties, King guessed. They were roughly the same age. This man wore an official prison uniform with his buttoned-up shirt tucked into brown slacks. He had a pistol clasped between his fingers with no situational awareness to speak of. The gun looked like a foreign object in his hands. King knew inexperience when he saw it.
A man used to long slow stretches of inactivity behind a desk, watching proceedings through security cameras, buzzing his co-workers i
n and out of El Infierno all day. A man who had fled into an office at the first sign of losing control of a situation. Then he’d second-guessed himself, and come hurtling out into the hallway in an attempt to save face after such a cowardly gesture.
Noble, for sure. But misguided.
King had no intention of ending the man’s life, so he darted forward and jabbed the thin barrel of his weapon into the guy’s liver. The metal pummelled into his side with enough force to double him over. From there, it was simple. Like clockwork.
There was no-one more effective than King at physical conflict.
He bundled the guy into the wall and slapped the pistol out of his hands. It barely took any effort at all. Like scolding a small child for touching something he shouldn’t. The gun made a harsh noise as it skittered away across the linoleum.
Wide-eyed, breathing heavy, the guard let out a moan that signalled a mixture of frustration and fear. He’d made bold plans with such a brash manoeuvre. It certainly hadn’t unfolded the way he’d envisioned it.
King backed off and raised the AK-103. Barrel pointed between the guard’s eyes. He wasn’t sure if the man had ever had a gun aimed at his head. He assumed the gesture would evoke a specific type of reaction in the event that one hadn’t.
He was right.
The guard began to bawl. No build-up. No sobbing or snivelling. Just an explosion of emotions that King knew meant his life had never been threatened before. The man was staring death in the face, and he couldn’t handle it.
‘You speak English?’ he said.
The guard stared blankly, tears trickling down both cheeks.
‘English?’ King repeated.
The guy shook his head.
Luis approached the stand-off and began to talk directly to the guard in Spanish. He spoke low, barely audible above the sirens. King kept his gun trained on the guard, every so often shaking the barrel for effect. Each time he did so, the man flinched.
By the time Luis had finished his spiel, the guard was fully compliant. From the tone of his voice King guessed it had come laced with threats and promises of death in the event that he didn’t help them. By the end of it, the guard had wet himself.
