The Will Slater Series Books 1-3

by Matt Rogers

  He needed rest.

  He needed months of rest.

  But the encounter with Magomed had put his health on the sidelines.

  Because he feared the consequences of walking away from this particular incident were monumental.

  The husks of titanic container ships and merchant vessels dotted the sky all around him. This portion of Medved Shipbuilding Plant was a ghost town, wholly deserted. He limped through swathes of no man’s land, the deserted stretches of nothingness between construction projects.

  Then he saw it.

  At the far end of the plant, a colossal industrial zone speared out of the empty land. It was an enormous slab of steel and metalwork, complete with cranes hovering just out of reach of the central point of focus.

  The icebreaker.

  It was as impressive as Slater had imagined. A gigantic, dark blue hull rising up from the construction site, shined to perfection for its maiden voyage. It rested on gargantuan metal supports, waiting to be lowered into a narrow man-made channel leading into the Sea of Japan. On the open ocean, the swells stirred and frothed and lapped at the edge of the channel, beckoning to accept the icebreaker.

  And a few hundred feet away from the ship, activity roared. Hundreds of people. Journalists. Cameras. Men in suits.

  A media frenzy.

  But the no man’s land between the circus and the icebreaker felt shockingly desolate.

  Slater froze at the edge of the vast arena, staring back and forth between the small civilisation of media erected around the administrative buildings, and the towering icebreaker perched on its lonesome on the horizon. The bleakness of the morning drenched everything, weighing him down, reminding him how damaged he was.

  Something happened here last night, he thought.

  But he couldn’t quite put it together. His sixth sense was still there, imperceptible but present, and he noticed the bitter taste of warfare in the air. People had died here last night.

  In the plant.

  Something was seriously awry.

  But the concussion weighed heavy on his brain, clouding his thoughts, delaying his reasoning. He struggled for clarity. Finding none, he dragged his left foot through the gravel and made for the icebreaker.

  Because if he had to choose between two paths, he chose the more dangerous one.

  Every single time.

  Even when his neural pathways disconnected. Even when he couldn’t string a cohesive thought together. Even when the world became nothing but a bleak, soulless husk of its former self.

  His surroundings pulsed with unnatural vigour, making his vision swim.

  His chest felt tight, constricted by a shortness of breath. Suddenly he locked onto that sensation, and it sent him on a downward spiral into a pit of anxiety. A concussion could amplify emotions, skewer discipline, and ruin the confidence that Slater had spent a lifetime building up. Now he could only focus on his heart rate, which only served to amplify the sensation. By the time he made it a hundred feet through the murky pre-dawn light, it seemed as if his heart was about to explode in his chest. It pounded and thrummed and beat hard against his chest wall, swollen to what seemed like bursting point.

  What the fuck, he thought.

  A full scale panic attack.

  He was in no condition to sneak aboard an icebreaker which, as far as he could tell, had been secretly overrun by Magomed and his forces at some point in the early hours of the morning.

  How the hell had they done it?

  It didn’t matter.

  Slater couldn’t concentrate on that for more than a couple of seconds. Each time, the terror in his heart roared back to the surface, drowning out the background noise. Sweating in the freezing cold, he crossed to the nearest building, a one-storey administrative complex skewered into the dark gravel, a concrete beacon amidst the barren industrial zone.

  He pressed his back to the concrete wall and slid to the ground, out of sight of any curious passersby.

  There was no-one.

  The workers had been shepherded away from the plant, no doubt to make room for the media frenzy currently unfolding.

  But why?

  The maiden voyage for the largest nuclear-powered icebreaker in the world was certainly attention-grabbing, but this was something else. There was another level to the media circus, and this had seized it. Even in his inhibited state, Slater had only needed one look at the army of journalists and official-looking representatives to understand there was something else at play here. A surprise announcement, perhaps.

  Hence Magomed’s secrecy the previous night.

  He didn’t know. He couldn’t concentrate. His heart beat faster and faster, and the more he focused on it the worse it became. But he couldn’t focus on anything else. He started hyperventilating, which made the headache compound, his temples throbbing and pulsating and sending nauseating agony through his body.

  ‘You’re a mess,’ he told himself. ‘You’re a fucking mess.’

  How?

  How did this continue to happen?

  His body and brain wouldn’t hold together much longer if he continued at this pace. He’d taken advantage of a private stem cell clinic to nurse himself back to full health after Yemen, but he couldn’t rely on controversial methods forever. Sooner or later he would succumb to it.

  Better a fast death than a slow, agonising one.

  So he got to his feet. He pointed himself in the direction of the icebreaker and put one foot in front of the other. It was suicide. Utter insanity. He had the scraps of a plan in the back of his mind, but he wouldn’t survive anywhere near long enough to pull it off.

  He was the scapegoat.

  The sacrifice.

  And maybe that’s all he was ever supposed to be.

  Under a swirling, roiling sky full of grey storm clouds, he hobbled between buildings, heading for the icebreaker and the army of rented mercenaries that lay within.

  50

  In truth, he was never going to succeed.

  He’d heard whispers of Magomed’s manpower.

  Bogdan and Pasha had hinted at it. Slater wondered where they were now. If they were safe. If they’d made it home free. He hoped like all hell they were away from this madness. He hoped they’d stayed true to their word and left it to him.

  Because he was so used to the torment that it was worth bearing the burden for everyone else.

  He was stumbling blind into an irreparable situation. He had no knowledge of the forces he was up against. He was unfamiliar with the layout of the icebreaker itself. He wasn’t even sure how to smuggle himself aboard. He had a gun, and a combat knife tucked into a holster at his waist, but lacked the mental fortitude or the spatial awareness to use either of them effectively. The concussion had ruined his co-ordination and fine motor skills with equal measure.

  He was a shell of his former self.

  And he wasn’t even certain his former self could have triumphed over this particular threat.

  So it was with a reserved acceptance of his fate that he stumbled and lurched into the giant industrial zone, moving quietly between larger warehouses and smaller administrative complexes. He didn’t run into anyone, and he figured he wouldn’t be able to justify his presence if he did.

  He passed underneath a towering crane, and for a moment he stared up into the abyss, noticing the dark grey sky through a maze of steel beams.

  He paused there, contemplating whether this was the right move.

  Yes.

  It had to be.

  Because last night, everything had changed.

  He continued forward. There should be at least a handful of the plant’s security milling around, but even in his debilitated state Slater could piece together what had happened. Magomed evidently controlled most of the soldiers of fortune assigned to protect the icebreaker over the course of its construction. When they’d stormed aboard the ship at some point the previous night, the mass confusion and bureaucratic log jams would have been too much to deal with.
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  And if there was anything the Russian government needed to go swimmingly, it was the maiden voyage.

  Because of the media frenzy.

  Because of the unknown reason for all the attention.

  But they couldn’t pull the plug, not this late. Sure, the majority of the shipbuilding plant’s workers had mysteriously disappeared, but there was a vast difference between being unable to locate them and knowing they were in the process of something devastating, something unimaginably wrong.

  So they’d dismissed it as a communication error and pushed ahead with the voyage.

  Unaware that everyone was aboard.

  Unaware that they were ready to take control of the ship.

  And then what?

  Slater didn’t know. He couldn’t see a purpose for seizing control of an icebreaker out in the Sea of Japan. What purpose would that serve? There was nothing resembling weaponry aboard. The fact that it was nuclear-powered meant nothing. If that was Magomed’s intention, he would have been better off constructing a nuclear bomb himself, assembling a team of rogue scientists in some third-world hell hole to build the devastating weapon in secrecy.

  No, this was public.

  And it was very deliberately public.

  Magomed wanted a spectacle.

  And, given what Slater suspected was a previous career in politics, he had the experience and the knowledge to pull it off.

  Hence the complete lack of security around the ship in preparation for its launch.

  He imagined the crew were aboard. Perhaps they didn’t suspect a thing. In the brief time Slater had met Magomed, he’d sensed unbridled superiority in the man. Maybe the old man was at the apex of a staggering deception.

  Maybe he had everyone dangled from strings.

  That was about all the deductive reasoning Slater’s brain could compute. The strands of information faded away, his thoughts dissipating, replaced by the reality of what lay in front of him. His mind clouded, and he continued forward.

  There was the icebreaker.

  It rose out of the supports in front of him, impossibly enormous. Slater stared up at the hull, and a tight ball of nausea twisted his gut into a knot. The slab of steel, coupled with the grim conditions and the overall aura of helplessness, made him sick to his stomach.

  But there was nowhere to go but forward.

  He implemented what little training he could remember and ghosted across the final portion of the dead shipbuilding plant, keeping to the shadows, searching for non-existent enemies. He might as well have been walking through a graveyard. There was no-one in sight, but the atmosphere was tinged with death. It wasn’t something an ordinary civilian could recognise, but Slater knew.

  There were dead men hidden nearby.

  But he couldn’t help the dead.

  He spotted movement. Straight ahead. In the lee of the icebreaker’s dark blue hull, near the bow of the giant front end, a lone mercenary hunched over against the elements, talking rapidly into a black satellite phone. One hand gripped a rope ladder ascending to a shell door skewered into the side of the hull. He was gesticulating as he spoke, probably screaming commands into the phone, but Slater couldn’t hear a thing over the howling wind.

  Even if it was dead silent, he might not have heard a thing.

  His senses were drastically compromised.

  The mercenary seemed blissfully unaware of his surroundings. He stood facing the icebreaker’s hull, encapsulated by the phone call, probably dealing with the aftermath of the entire security team breaking away from their predetermined positions. Magomed would have used his leverage, causing diplomatic chaos, and upper management would be scrambling to work out why no-one was at their posts or following their shifts. The mercenary yelled back into the satellite phone, defending himself against a mountain of accusations.

  It was a test if Slater had ever seen one.

  He could have shot the mercenary in the back of a skull without a second thought. The guy was big and strong, packing the all-weather clothing with enough muscle to fill the uniform out, creating a menacing aura. Slater put him at six foot two and well north of two hundred pounds. Probably ex-military. He had that air about him. Confident, disciplined, hard. He carried himself well. Shoulders back. Chin up. He seemed ready to attack anything at a moment’s notice. To a common civilian, this man would epitomise the pinnacle of physicality. He looked like he could destroy anyone in a fight.

  Thankfully, Slater had been dealing with ex-military types his entire career. They were usually the first to turn to acquiring blood money. They had certain talents, and a physicality that was imposing to anyone who hadn’t seen combat, and that usually meant they could get their way if they turned off their conscience. Which was far more appealing than working odd jobs with their limited resumes.

  So he knew what to do.

  The only question was whether he could do it.

  And he needed to know.

  Because if he climbed aboard, facing at least thirty identical soldiers of fortune, it would prove disastrous if he didn’t have the physical capacity to engage in a fight. He would get beaten down, and he would die.

  You need to find out.

  So, despite the combat knife in his left hand and the Makarov in his broken right hand, he strode across the final stretch of concrete and walked right up to the mercenary. The guy didn’t turn around, still hunched over the phone, still entirely unaware of his surroundings. And why should he be? For months he’d been isolated in the Medved Shipbuilding Plant without a threat in sight. The hard work was over. The ship had been seized. All that was left to do was climb aboard.

  Or not.

  Slater bent his right arm, recognising the uselessness of punching with his swollen hand, and twisted his body into an elbow. The point of his bone whistled through the air, but the wind drowned out the noise. The guy didn’t even see it coming.

  Bang.

  Slater’s elbow struck the man’s skull, and his entire arm rattled in its socket. The impact speared its way up through his shoulder, his chest, and finally his head. His own skull rattled, and he winced as the headache amplified, warping his sense of reality as he grappled with the pain.

  But he stayed on his feet.

  And the mercenary didn’t.

  Knocked out cold by the elbow, he pitched and toppled and sprawled across the concrete, the satellite phone falling free from his hands. It clattered to the dock and spun on its axis.

  Slater picked it up, ended the call the mercenary had been on, and dialled a new number.

  Someone answered.

  ‘Now,’ Slater said, and put one hand on the rope ladder.

  51

  The fact that he’d physically dominated a hostile in such a debilitated state should have sent confidence surging through Slater.

  But it didn’t.

  If anything, it only reminded him how hurt he truly was.

  As he crept inch by inch up the rope ladder, bouncing off the steel hull, buffeted by freezing arctic winds, he should have been experiencing every uncomfortable sensation at once. But they all took a back seat to the headache, roaring between his temples with enough intensity to distract him from any kind of situational awareness. He grimaced as the wind smashed him against the hull again, which only served to compound the migraine.

  It got worse.

  He didn’t even know that was possible.

  He had experience with concussions. He knew what they were like. That didn’t make them any easier to grapple with. His head seared, and he took a moment to pause halfway up the rope ladder, pressing the forefinger and thumb of his left hand to the bridge of his nose and blinking hard in an attempt to feel something resembling normal. It didn’t work. If anything it only made things worse. His right hand had swollen into something unrecognisable, three of the fingers mangled by Ruslan the previous evening. Any kind of hesitation only served to show him how seriously hurt he was.

  Keep going.

  Never stop.


  He made it to the shell door and tumbled in through the steel hull, barely paying attention to the dizzying vertigo. Despite the concussion symptoms, the escape from the wind proved blissful. Unable to feel his right hand because of the broken bones and with his left hand almost frozen from cold, he was largely defenceless against any kind of frontal assault. But one look at the steel corridor revealed it as deserted.

  He took a deep breath, got to his knees and then to his feet, and did what little he could to compose himself.

  He hadn’t released his grip on the Makarov since he’d stepped out of Natasha’s final resting place. His hand was turning purple, but one of his two good fingers rested inside the trigger guard, and the rest were wrapped awkwardly around the stock, already ballooning in size.

  He used the combat knife to cut the rope ladder free from the lip of the shell door. It twisted and spun away in the breeze, coming to rest in the narrow passage of water between the metal supports and the edge of the dock. Slater surveyed the Medved Shipbuilding Plant one last time, most of its contents quiet and dormant, save for the cluster of movement in the section of the plant reserved for the media.

  He set off into the bowels of the ship, without a clue where he was headed, his eyes wide and peeled for any sign of activity. The icebreaker creaked and groaned around him.

  He made it thirty feet.

  Before he could step foot in the adjoining corridor, he spotted a flash of movement directly ahead. He raised his gun to retaliate, but suddenly his sense of time seemed to leap from one moment to the next. Like a film projector changing reels. The jarring stuttering threw him off, and it took him far longer than necessary to realise the concussion had inhibited his grip on reality. He skipped a patch, and the next moment there was someone right in front of him, thundering a long metal object into his gut.

  It hit like a freight train.