by Matt Rogers
The bullet I fired through the peephole, he realised.
It had gone through the first guy’s shoulder, and before it lost momentum it had embedded itself in the reinforced glass window.
The pane hadn’t cracked, but it was close to it.
King remembered a vital, crucial detail.
It came to him in a flash, even though he was losing oxygen and brain cells and consciousness all at once.
And he took off at a mad sprint.
Straight for the glass.
He ran, crossing the empty space.
The crushing pressure around his throat got tighter. Because the hostile on his back could see what he was about to do, but he couldn’t let go, because then he’d almost certainly die. The guy must have thought his enemy had turned suicidal, so he was using every morsel of animalistic strength in his body to choke King unconscious before he reached the window.
Unfortunately for both of them, King had willpower that belied what most considered humanly possible.
Even with his vision going dark and his limbs going weak, he kept running.
He slowed, of course.
But he still had enough momentum.
He threw himself into the window pane, twisting in mid-air so they hit the glass side-on instead of impacting face-first. The glass gave out, and it was a horrifying sensory experience. King had limited consciousness left, but he felt overwhelming terror all the same.
What if it’s not there anymore? he thought.
Then you die.
There was a bang as the glass shattered, then the even worse sensation of falling, and his stomach fell into his feet, and he started to plummet hundreds of feet to the sidewalk far, far below—
But something broke their fall.
31
Slater heard the concussive thud, so faint and imperceptible that he thought it must have been his imagination again.
Then he opened his eyes and looked out the window, and saw glass fragments spiralling down to the ground, and saw two bodies plummeting.
Then crashing into something outside his field of view.
One of them was Jason King.
‘What the f—’
He leapt to his feet, and pressed his face to the glass.
There was a service elevator hovering at the top of a shaft erected on the exterior of the building. Its roof was square, and littered with remnants of a shattered window pane, and there were two bodies sprawled out across the surface, both only inches from a fatal fall on either side.
Slater had seen the elevator resting there a couple of dozen times before, but watching the brief period of freefall had sent his stomach into his throat all the same. He’d been convinced King’s recklessness had caught up with him, and that the man had leapt to his death. Briefly, his world had come crashing down around him.
Now he didn’t spend any time watching what would unfold. That wouldn’t help anyone. He realised that King had been in his apartment the whole time, and that Victor had lied to him, and that there had been a fight to the death playing out next door, and he turned and sprinted for the hallway.
He snatched up one of the HK417 rifles on the way, and checked it was ready to fire. He quickly slotted a couple of spare magazines into his pockets, then lifted the stock to his shoulder and threw the front door open.
He came face-to-face with reinforcements.
There were four of them, clustered together in a tight group — horrendous tactics for a close-range shootout. But they must have figured there was little point spreading out when their main focus was getting into King’s apartment as quickly as possible. Which meant their initial plan had already fallen apart.
You’re a tough motherfucker, King, Slater thought.
They hadn’t been anticipating any sort of resistance from Slater’s apartment, so when he unloaded an entire clip of ammo into their bodies, they were helpless to fight back. They hadn’t been in position to adjust their aim on the fly, so they went down in a heap as he riddled them with bullets.
He leapt over their twitching corpses and ran flat-out for King’s door.
On the way, he ejected the empty magazine using the release lever and chambered a fresh one. Then he pushed down on the handle and shouldered the door inwards, figuring the only thing left to do was to stand on the precipice of the shattered window frame and put a bullet in the head of King’s enemy — if the hostile hadn’t already been taken care of.
So when the door struck a large object halfway along its trajectory and rebounded into Slater’s face, he jolted in surprise.
There was a grunt, and Slater realised he’d hit someone across the upper back when he’d thrust the door open.
More reinforcements.
A party that had already made it to the apartment, as King had leapt out the window with his current enemy.
There’s too much happening at once.
Slater’s Heckler & Koch rifle was now pinned awkwardly between his chest and the edge of the door, and when he dropped another shoulder into the door it didn’t budge. Now the twenty inch barrel was a disservice, and he wished for something sub-compact, like an MP5. But he had to work with what he had, so he smashed the same shoulder again and again into the door until it finally caved inward, nearly tearing off its hinges despite the expensive materials.
The hostile blocking the door stumbled backward — another big guy in a balaclava, decked out in combat gear, with an M4A1 carbine in his hands.
They were only inches apart, now that Slater had forced his way into the apartment.
It was a fight to the death in a space the size of a phone booth.
The guy tried to bring the barrel around to aim at Slater, but Slater saw it coming from a mile away. He reached out and wrapped a hand around the bulk of the gun and wrenched it forward, throwing the guy off-balance. When he stumbled forward a step, Slater headbutted him on the bridge of his nose — an impact that a balaclava did little to absorb. The guy’s nose cracked and Slater twisted into a spinning back elbow that struck him in the jaw, breaking more delicate bones in his face.
He stumbled back a step, and Slater found the space to raise his HK417 and put a single round through the guy’s forehead.
He exhaled, shaken by the close-range brawl.
Then he remembered the reason he’d come into the apartment in the first place.
He sprinted for the open window frame, ignoring the feeling of vertigo in his stomach screaming at him to stop.
The wind howled in as he ran across the penthouse.
32
King and the enemy absorbed the impact equally.
They both hit the top of the elevator on their sides, and they both lashed their heads against the metal, and they both rolled off each other with twin groans, crippled by dizzying waves of pain.
King figured he was a little worse for wear, considering he’d been perhaps a second away from blacking out. As soon as the arm came away from his throat, air rushed in, but the risk he’d taken to get the hostile off him had damaged him. He could already feel his throat swelling, and his jaw aching, and the muscles in his neck spasming as he lay on his back inches away from a precipitous drop.
If he were more lucid, his palms might have turned sweaty — being so close to plummeting to his death and all. But right now he could barely see his hand in front of his face, let alone his surroundings. He lay on his back and breathed cold air and felt the wind against his frame, and tried his best to recover.
Thankfully the guy in the balaclava was similarly incapacitated, semi-conscious from the brutal landing.
King blinked.
Sight returned.
The floating specks consuming his vision started to recede.
He gulped back a wave of pain and rolled onto his knees. Now he experienced the shocking vertigo. They were so high up, and there was nothing to prevent either of them toppling off the edge. No railing, no barrier.
The hostile clambered to his feet. Through the slit in the balaclav
a King saw his eyes were glassy, which probably put them on a level playing field.
For all King knew, his own injuries were fatal. Stress chemicals were coursing through him, masking how hurt he truly was, and there would be no way to know for sure until after the fight was over.
Better get on with it, he thought.
Woozy with fatigue and agony, he lunged forward and grabbed the guy by the neck. Hands reached up and locked onto his wrist, but he shoved the guy back all the same. One of the hostile’s feet slipped off the edge, and King powered forward, desperate to finish the fight.
But he overcommitted.
The hostile deliberately went down on his other leg, getting closer to the metal surface to prevent himself falling. He went prone, and King lost the grip on his throat and almost tumbled head-over-heels off the edge. His stomach pulsed with pure fear, and he reached for the metal with palms slick with sweat. He found purchase and went down to a prone position too, heartbeat pounding in his ears.
He was inches from the endless drop.
Then the guy in the balaclava rolled over and kicked out, and smashed the heel of his boot into King’s chest.
King skidded half a foot along the surface…
…but there was no more surface.
He caught a dizzying, heart-pounding view of the street hundreds of feet below at the same time as he snatched hold of the guy’s boot and used it to drag himself violently back in the other direction, literal milliseconds before he would have toppled and fell.
Drenched in sweat, he gasped for breath as he rolled out of the way of another kick. This one glanced off his face, nearly shattering his nose into a dozen pieces. He used the momentum to spring to his feet, and the surface of the elevator pitched and swayed underneath him. He realised it was a figment of his imagination, but it drained him of energy all the same. He wanted nothing more than to get down on his stomach and make sure he didn’t go over the edge, but he had to fight for his life instead.
Then he found his opportunity.
He was already on his feet, but the guy in the balaclava had the same idea. So the hostile was on his knees, about to follow suit, but King was in perfect position for a—
He threw a kick, ignoring the fear of balancing on one leg atop a rickety service elevator with the wind coming in strong. He used his shin like a baseball bat, and bounced it off the side of the guy’s head, hard enough to kill a civilian.
But this guy was a trained killer in full survival mode.
He nearly went down in an unconscious heap, but something kept him upright, and all of a sudden he reached out with both hands and caught King’s ankle.
Oh, fuck, King thought.
He tried to wrench his leg out of the man’s grip, but the guy held on with vice-like strength. King hopped up and down on his other leg, off-balance, so close to the edge, so close to—
The guy stood up, still holding King’s leg, and pushed his ankle toward the sky.
Making him do the splits in mid-air, throwing him all the way off-balance, sending him tipping back away from the—
Fuck it.
King committed to the fall, because he had no other choice. He executed almost an entire revolution as he tumbled backwards, and with two sweaty palms he clamped down on the edge of the elevator roof. His legs went over, spearing into thin air, and he found himself suspended by his hands. His heart pounded away in his throat, and he wasted no time hauling himself up over the lip.
But the guy in the balaclava was waiting.
The man stomped down viciously on King’s left hand, almost breaking the fingers, and King’s palm came away from the cool metal, already red and swollen.
Dangling from four fingers, he strained every muscle in his left arm and gripped through sweat and dirt. He was slipping, falling, and his heart was in his throat, and his stomach was in his chest, and the guy in the balaclava loomed over him and raised the same boot and brought it down and—
A bullet exited the guy’s throat from behind.
King felt the warm spray of blood on his face.
Then there was a brief pause, followed quickly by displaced air washing over him. He flinched and bowed his head, thinking the final blow was still on its way, but the corpse pitched forward and toppled over him into thin air.
It plummeted hundreds of feet to earth with its dead limbs flailing.
King reached up and put his other hand on the edge as his grip was about to slip. He levered himself up, floating through a dream-like state, utterly spent from the exertion. His fingers hurt, his wrists hurt, his face hurt, his stomach hurt — everything ached deeply. When he managed to clamber over the lip and sprawled out on his back on the cool surface, he looked up to find Will Slater standing in the hole a couple of floors above the service elevator, looking out.
There was a HK417 in his hand.
King smiled through a mouthful of blood.
But his relief at being alive turned to mounting frustration.
Over the wind, he yelled, ‘Took you long enough to show up.’
‘The apartments are soundproof, remember?’
‘Great.’
He closed his eyes and listened to the wind and wondered what the future held.
33
Slater dangled the makeshift rope out the window, fashioned together from most of King’s spare bedding. They were mostly bedsheets tied end to end, but they were sturdy enough to hold. He gripped the side of the window frame tight as he perched precariously on the edge of the building.
It was a long way down.
The end of the rope touched the roof of the service elevator, and King gripped it with two hands. He tried to haul himself up using his own strength, but he only made it a foot off the metal surface before tumbling back to his knees. He looked up, sighed, and shook his head.
Slater yelled, ‘Hold onto it.’
King nodded, and gripped the bedsheet with white knuckles.
Slater snatched two handfuls of the material and started to haul it up manually. King was heavy, which made the effort difficult, but manageable. He could lift two hundred and twenty pounds with ease in the gym, but he’d never done it whilst trying to simultaneously balance on the edge of a precipitous drop. One moment of overcompensation and he’d topple forward, sending both of them plummeting to their deaths.
He pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and as soon as King was back inside the penthouse they both collapsed in mutual exhaustion.
Eventually, lying on their backs staring up at the ceiling grew old. Slater mustered enough energy to sit up, and he trained his rifle on the front door for a few beats, making sure there wasn’t another wave of reinforcements on the way. But this was a civilian building after all, and to get up here they’d needed to bribe Victor — not to mention the rest of the staff — which meant they would be forced to scatter after they realised they’d failed.
With his gaze still trained on the door, Slater said, ‘Looks like we need to go to ground again.’
King ran a dirty hand across his bloody face, wincing as he did so. ‘Shame. I was getting used to a carefree life.’
‘Wasn’t exactly carefree.’
‘Was about as close to it as we were ever going to get. Should have known it was too good to be true.’
‘You think we’ll be hunted again?’
‘We killed over a dozen people tonight in one of the busiest cities in America. We’ll be on CCTV somewhere. We don’t have a choice. It’s game over. Back to being ghosts.’
Slater sighed. ‘What do you need from this place?’
King sat up, too, and he looked around. ‘Nothing.’
‘Not a thing?’
‘Besides the essentials. Phone, wallet, false passport. That’ll do it.’
‘I’m the same.’
‘Then what are we waiting for? I’d rather not get caught up here with this many bodies.’
Slater exhaled a long breath, and got to his feet. The uneasy truce they’d carved with the secret world w
as now gone forever. Back when he worked for Black Force, he’d been sent to hunt down and neutralise King in Corsica, a small island off the coast of France. All because King was causing too much trouble in his retirement.
Now the same principle would apply to them.
‘We should talk to someone,’ King said as they clambered to their feet.
Slater said, ‘Who?’
‘Someone in the government who worked with Williams. Someone who will understand.’
Slater shrugged, dejected, nihilistic. ‘What the hell are we going to tell them? Sooner or later they’re going to treat us like murderers. You think they’re going to believe that—’
‘Williams told me it was the Chinese,’ King interrupted.
‘What?’
‘I tried to pull him out of the wreck, but they shot him. That was all he managed to say. He looked me in the eyes and said it.’
‘The Chinese?’
King nodded.
‘That could mean anything.’
King said, ‘I know.’
Slater clenched his teeth. ‘Why couldn’t he have told us this shit straight away?’
‘Because it was complicated,’ King said. ‘You could see it on his face. I’d wager he only knew half of it. Less than half. He’d stumbled across something, but he couldn’t convey it accurately. That’s why he brought his friend along.’
‘That Turner guy,’ Slater said. ‘You think that was really his aide?’
‘It was someone. Someone manipulative enough to convince Williams he was needed. Who knows who he really was? We’re strangers to that world. “Aide” could refer to a million things.’
‘But it confirms the half-sentence he managed to get out before everything went to hell.’
‘What’d he say? Something about destabilising the economy?’
‘“An active operation within the U.S. government to destabilise our economy.” Then he said something about two events being planned in the next few weeks. There was something else that he meant to say, but the crash cut him off.’
