Ciphers

by Matt Rogers

  Slater stood up, and King raised an eyebrow.

  Slater said, ‘I need him alive. I need to know how he did it. And why.’

  ‘He told you why.’

  ‘That’s not a real explanation. I want to know exactly why.’

  ‘You think he’ll talk to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Slater said. ‘I think he will. But first…’

  He hauled Gavin to his feet, pressed the MP7 barrel to his head, and held him out in front as a human shield. King got the message, and jogged over to their position, a couple of dozen feet away from the elevator behind them. Together they turned to face it, and King stepped in behind Slater and rested his own MP7 on Gavin’s collar bone, using the man as a gun rest.

  Gavin whimpered in pain.

  Slater said, ‘You haven’t felt anything like that before, have you? I hit you and kicked you, but you’ve never taken a bullet. It’s a whole new level of pain.’

  Despite everything, Gavin smiled. ‘You’re fucked now. I was just stalling. You know who’s coming?’

  ‘No. I assume you do.’

  ‘Put two and two together,’ Gavin said. ‘Who was I most afraid of while I was planning this whole ordeal?’

  ‘Us.’

  ‘So where would I go if I wanted to mirror the pair of you?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You can’t mirror us,’ King said.

  ‘Oh, but I can. And I did.’

  The elevator chimed, and an artificial ping echoed through the empty office floor, and a white “down” arrow lit up beside the doors. It was the first thing that made Slater realise some of the building’s mechanisms must be operating on a backup generator.

  The doors whispered open.

  A man stepped out.

  Rather, he strolled out.

  Lackadaisical, uncaring. Clad neck-to-toe in combat gear — bulletproof vest over a dark khaki shirt and olive green pants. Huge Gore-Tex boots. He was Caucasian, around six feet tall, with a military-style buzzcut and a thick pink scar under his left eye. The lights in the elevator illuminated him from behind, so it was hard to discern his features front-on, but King could have sworn he was chewing gum.

  He had a 9mm Glock in his palm, and nothing else.

  He took six big steps out of the elevator, practically striding, and came to a standstill with a cubicle on either side of his giant frame.

  In a heavy scouser accent straight from the streets of Liverpool, he said, ‘Alright then, lads.’

  Silence.

  Neither King nor Slater were sure whether it was a question, or a demand.

  ‘That’s enough,’ the newcomer said, and his voice boomed like thunder. ‘Party’s over.’

  He spoke with such utter confidence, and was so incredibly sure of himself, that King felt a faint urge to drop his weapon right there.

  Instead, he pushed the barrel a little harder into Gavin’s skull, and the kid audibly yelped.

  ‘You hear that?’ King said. ‘That’s your paying client. How are you going to collect your fee if he’s dead?’

  The man said, ‘That’s assuming there’s a fee, mate.’

  ‘You work for free?’

  ‘Who says I’m working for anyone?’

  ‘I am,’ King said. ‘Because I know your type. What were you?’

  ‘SAS, once upon a time.’

  King stiffened. ‘That’s quite the fall from grace.’

  The man shrugged. ‘Depends on your perspective. The way I see it, this is the purest form of organised violence there is.’

  ‘Working for anyone who pays the bills?’

  The man smirked. ‘You take cheques from a government that doesn’t give a shit about you. You do their dirty work. You’re no better than me. Actually, you’re worse, because you pretend you’re righteous. I gave up on that performance a long time ago.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Walker.’

  ‘Walker, I’m—’

  ‘Jason King,’ Walker said. ‘Yeah. I know. Your friend’s Will Slater. You think I’m an idiot?’

  ‘No,’ King said. ‘I don’t think you are. How are we going to solve this little stalemate?’

  ‘You’re going to put your guns down.’

  ‘What if we don’t want to?’

  ‘That’s the only option you have.’

  Slater opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word out, Walker said, ‘Did I ask for your fucking opinion, mate?’

  Slater clammed up.

  King said, ‘Are we going the Wild West route? First to the draw? I’m not sure you want to try that.’

  ‘Why?’ Walker said. ‘Because of your reaction speed? You think Black Force has a monopoly on that?’

  ‘Black Force doesn’t exist anymore. If you knew as much as you think you do, you’d know that.’

  Walker cocked his head to one side. ‘I’ve been out of the loop for a spell. Quite right.’

  ‘And now you’re protecting the scum of the earth.’

  Walker raised an eyebrow. ‘Who might that be?’

  ‘Whoever turned the lights out.’

  Walker smirked again. ‘That’s the extent of your lecture? I killed eight cops with an M82 less than thirty minutes ago, for Christ’s sake. Tried to put one in your buddy’s head over there, but his reflexes are something special. I’ll give him that much.’

  Slater said, ‘Is this what’s going to happen? We’re going to stand around talking all day?’

  ‘No,’ Walker said, suddenly cold and serious. ‘What’s going to happen is, I’m going to get fed up with this whole charade. I’ve got enough in a numbered account to live offshore for a while, which I’m going to need to do after this little disaster. So what I’m going to do is shoot that kid you’re holding between the eyes, because he made the timeless mistake of paying me before the job was over. And, if we’re being honest, I didn’t expect him to actually pull it off. Kid’s half-genius, half-dipshit. But I guess you need those qualities, huh?’

  ‘You want to stop this?’ King said. ‘Then do the right thing.’

  Walker said, ‘The right thing…’

  Silence.

  He said, ‘Right and wrong don’t exist anymore, lads.’

  The Glock came up.

  King fired.

  Slater lunged.

  Walker fired.

  The world went mad.

  67

  Slater had never been in a higher state of readiness, and it paid off.

  The moment Walker stepped foot out of the elevator, he’d known where the conversation was headed. He’d read the ex-SAS mercenary like a book. There was little light, but in the semi-darkness he’d stared into Walker’s soul and seen a man not too dissimilar from Rick Whelan.

  A razor-sharp, no-nonsense, get-shit-done enforcer who was only now beginning to realise that Gavin Whelan wasn’t as naive as everyone thought he was.

  That was when it finally clicked for Slater.

  All along, he’d labelled Gavin as a kid. An egotistical little brat with some good ideas and a whole lot of luck. But that was how Gavin disarmed everyone he came into contact with. There was a reputation that came with being a third-generation mobster. People underestimated him. It seemed Rick had gone along with Gavin’s grandiose vision just to humour the young man, as had Walker. They’d seen the dollar signs and listened to the spiel about recruiting hackers to drop malicious code into power substations across the East Coast and seize control of the grid. Maybe they’d half-believed it was possible, but not really.

  And now the lights were out, and everything Gavin said had come true, and in the darkness their minds were free to run wild, conjuring up all sorts of apocalyptic visions of what might happen if New York stayed dark.

  In the elevator Walker had decided that Gavin needed to die, and he himself needed to get as far away from Manhattan as humanly possible, to create as much deniability as he could.

  Because even a sociopathic ex-SAS m
ercenary could see the sheer pointlessness of all this after he was paid for his work.

  Walker emptied half the Glock’s magazine at Gavin Whelan.

  But Gavin wasn’t there anymore.

  Slater shoved him with both hands, pushing so hard against his shoulder that the kid went toppling into an empty office cubicle head over heels. Then Slater lunged backward, throwing himself off his feet, switching direction, hitting the floor hard enough to exacerbate his concussion. With a spinning head he rolled to one knee, now firmly behind a cubicle divider, out of the line of fire.

  He caught a glimpse of King unloading the contents of his MP7 in Walker’s direction, and leapt to his feet to add to the barrage.

  Walker wasn’t there.

  King said, ‘He went left.’

  Slater turned and bolted.

  He ran the length of the entire floor at a crouch, staying below the partitions. When he reached one set of windows overlooking the intersection, he veered right and raced toward Walker’s last known position. The wall with the elevator at its centre lay dead ahead, and he made it there in seconds, favouring speed and shock over a slow, tactical game plan. He pulled up a half dozen feet from the edge of the aisle, just before they gave way to an open perimeter corridor, and swept the space ahead with his MP7.

  Slowly, step by step, he crept toward the edge.

  A flash of movement.

  Someone rounding the corner.

  A shin, flying at his temple.

  It came out of the dark with such speed that he only managed a half-second depress of the trigger. The MP7 roared, but Walker had planned accordingly, and kept most of his centre mass exposed. Slater went for the easy target before remembering the bulletproof vest, and Walker’s Kevlar absorbed all three shots before the head kick finished its trajectory and slammed home.

  It caught Slater above the ear.

  In the sweet spot.

  His world went dark to match the city.

  68

  He’d been knocked out before.

  Too many times to count.

  Slater dreaded what old age might be like, if he made it that far. The long term effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy — CTE, for short — were widely known. His brain would probably be mush before he turned sixty. But he wouldn’t know for sure unless he made it to sixty, which, right now, seemed implausible.

  Because when he resurfaced from the shadow realm, Walker had one arm looped around his throat, and Slater’s own MP7 pressed to his head.

  Walker grunted, ‘I think you broke a rib with those shots. Very good.’

  Slater didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was conscious, but not alert. The same depersonalisation effects of the concussion were back in full force, now even worse. Nothing seemed real. His surroundings were distant, hazy, unfocused. He cursed his ineptitude, cursed the fact that he’d allowed himself to get hit so much. At the same time, he should be dead. He’d survived so far. He could survive a little longer.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he mumbled through bloody teeth.

  They were in the same position, at the north-west corner of the floor, crouched behind a divider.

  Walker whispered, ‘You mean — why haven’t I killed you?’

  Slater nodded.

  ‘If you raise your voice, I will. But your friend over there is rather talented. I need you as bait.’

  ‘He won’t bite.’

  ‘Yes, he will,’ Walker said. ‘You two have been working together for too long, lad. There’s personal attachment there, whether you want to admit it or not. It was going to get you killed eventually. I cut all that off early in my SAS days.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why you turned out the way you did.’

  Walker stewed over that, and then went quiet. Slater could feel his icy anger brimming just below the surface, barely controlled, so close to rage.

  And then Slater understood.

  ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I’ve met your kind before. You give sanctimonious speeches about the purity of working for the highest bidder, but really you’re just a lonely, isolated, pathetic little man who couldn’t make friends in the military. Didn’t take long when you went out on your own to spiral into what you are now.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ Walker said.

  ‘Struck a nerve there?’

  ‘I told you to shut the—’

  Footsteps, close by.

  Approaching fast.

  Walker jerked up, realising his mistake too late. He was impeccably trained to cover all contingencies, but even the best training in the world doesn’t factor human emotion into account. He was a lonely man, cut off from personal connection for years, and Slater had exposed that weakness. Of course, any competent SF training teaches you to compartmentalise, to go into a state like ice during times of warfare so that nothing affects you. But all it takes is the right pressure point to crack through that outer shell. Walker hadn’t turned irate, hadn’t changed his physical state one bit. But he’d lost his situational awareness, and that was all that mattered in this business.

  He pulled Slater to his feet, but the MP7 shook loose, away from Slater’s skull, the barrel slipping off his skin.

  Walker went to bring it back so he could secure his hostage but Slater shouted, ‘Clear!’ into the dark surroundings.

  Jason King needed no further encouragement.

  Muzzle flare erupted and a bullet passed by Slater’s right ear and Walker jolted in shock and fell away from him, his burly forearm sliding off Slater’s neck.

  Slater spun, nearly tripped and stumbled, but kept his footing.

  Walker had been hit in the collar.

  Slater lunged out and found the MP7 with the toe of his boot — it was the best he could manage with his head swimming. If he bent down to pick it up and aim it, he’d waste valuable seconds, and with his equilibrium disrupted he’d probably fumble it anyway. So he eliminated any chances of Walker getting his hands on it by punting it like a pro kicker, just as he’d done to Gavin’s AK47. Then he raised the same foot high in the air and brought it down at Walker’s unprotected face.

  But Walker was sharp.

  Sharper than Slater expected.

  Even with blood fountaining from his collar bone, he had the wherewithal to throw his head to one side, maybe giving himself whiplash but avoiding a stomp to the face. He rolled with the momentum and came up on his knees and transitioned straight into a rudimentary takedown attempt. He had both arms wrapped around Slater’s legs before Slater could move. The disrupted equilibrium didn’t help Slater’s predicament. He found himself wildly off-balance and tried to lunge out of Walker’s grip, but the man held tight, and pressed close up against Slater’s frame.

  Suddenly Slater was airborne.

  Walker lifted him, and took two bounding steps and caught King rounding the corner.

  King raised his MP7 to fire but hesitated, because chances were he’d put rounds into Slater’s back, with Walker holding him in a rudimentary fireman’s carry.

  Slater’s heart stopped.

  Maybe he was right, Slater thought. Maybe friendship can get you killed.

  Walker maintained the momentum and then planted his feet and heaved.

  Slater crashed into King, and the two of them toppled to the floor.

  In the movies, combat is smooth and flows from one sequence to the next with beautiful uninterrupted choreography. Real life is a little harsher than that. Both of them went down in a tangle of limbs and Slater came close to striking his head against the ground, which would have put him at three concussive blows within the span of half an hour. He knew his brain was volatile, so he took great care to roll with the landing, even if it meant he ended up out of position.

  Bad move.

  When he righted himself Walker was there in his face, and the man booted him square in the chest with enough force to throw him through one of the dividers. He crashed to earth again, and this time he stayed down.

  He watched King rear up with
his MP7 in hand, but Walker was too close.

  They brawled.

  It would take Slater seconds to disentangle himself from the plasterboard. Seconds he didn’t have.

  King was on his own.

  69

  King saw the skirmish unfold in all its chaotic steps, and moved to end it.

  He raised his MP7, which he’d somehow managed to keep hold of, but Walker was right there and drilled a left hand into the bridge of his nose.

  Crack.

  Broken.

  Just like that.

  His eyes watered involuntarily and he lost sight of his target, which spelled disaster. He brought the barrel around but Walker simply wrestled the submachine gun off him and thundered a boot into his gut. A teep kick, executed beautifully. A symphony of violence. King doubled over and Walker made to deliver the finishing blow but a second wind seized King and he staggered away from the man.

  Walker followed.

  Slowly.

  Patiently.

  A vulture circling its prey.

  King wasn’t sure where the MP7 was. Then he glimpsed its outline, firm in Walker’s hands, and he dove behind the nearest partition even though he knew it would do nothing to protect him.

  But it did.

  Bullets shredded the plasterboard, tearing straight through, but in a sheer miracle none of them slammed home against his frame. He burrowed deeper into the ruins of the cubicle he’d entered, squirming and writhing away from the gunfire. The crippling sensation of doubt ran through him, weighing him down. He was Jason King. One of the most feared and respected soldiers in government history. And now Walker was running through him, barely breaking a sweat.

  Then, through the doubt, he found a morsel of calm.

  That was all he needed.

  He tapped into the flow state, and the usual icy focus came over him, despite the carnage unfolding all around him.