Warrior_A Jason King Thriller Read online

  Altogether, it took less than three seconds.

  After the staggering volley of elbows, Reed slunk off the corpse, satisfied that Johnson had taken his final rasping breath. He had destroyed the man’s larynx, knocking him out from the pain and ultimately suffocating him. As Johnson rolled onto his back and lay still, Reed collected his weapon, swung the duffel over one shoulder and hurried for the front gate.

  A dozen feet away from the pair of bodies, he turned back and admired his handiwork.

  Then he managed a wry smile.

  Something clicked.

  The situation had unfolded naturally, with surprise and reaction and unintended consequences, but it had reached a conclusion that favoured Reed.

  When the peacekeepers decided to investigate the gunshot — whenever that happened — they would stumble across Johnson first, who appeared to have been murdered in a violent rampage. Then, a few feet later, they would find Victor with his issued firearm in one hand and his brains scattered over the trail.

  A drunken spurt of rage. An overwhelming barrage of guilt. A quick bullet to the temple to escape the consequences.

  Reed shook his head in disbelief at how effectively the scene had fallen into place. It was unmistakeable — Johnson had confronted Victor on his alcoholism and been attacked. Victor, in his panic, had decided to end it all after seeing the results of his sudden outburst.

  If Reed disappeared now, the peacekeepers might assume he’d been killed and hidden by Victor. Perhaps Johnson had seen it, and that’s what had caused the argument in the first place.

  Reed shrugged. They could think whatever they wanted. Whatever the case, enough confusion would reign to give him more than enough time to make it five hundred miles up the coast, to the tiny seaside village of El Hur.

  He briefly wondered why Beth hadn’t been woken by the gunshot and come hurrying out of the lodge to investigate.

  Perhaps she was panicking.

  Choking in the heat of the moment, like the incompetent soldier she was.

  Reed ducked into the security booth at the edge of the compound and fetched Johnson’s M4A1 carbine. The man had left the weapon resting against the console, propped up and fully loaded, as if beckoning Reed to acquire it. He slipped a finger inside the trigger guard, just in case there were any surprises waiting outside the gate.

  Then he disappeared into the shadows.

  20

  At the Port of Mogadishu, the door to the security office burst open with unmistakeable intensity.

  King recognised the force applied to the other side of the wood as an act that couldn’t unfold in a normal situation. Whoever was barging their way in meant business, and he treated the resulting confrontation accordingly.

  King was off the chair in a heartbeat, crossing the few feet of empty space before the door had entirely opened. He used all two hundred pounds of his bulk to shoulder it back in the other direction, jarring enough to stun the man on the other side into hesitation. He knew it was a man because of the resistance he met — enough kinetic energy slammed against his frame to rattle his bones in their sockets.

  King didn’t pause, not even for a half-second.

  He hurled the door open with a single, violent heave, revealing a stocky dock worker snatching at the sides of the doorway. He was fumbling with some kind of cheap black market handgun — King realised the man had stormed into the office with the gun raised up in front. He hadn’t been anticipating the door to hurtle back against him, jamming his finger awkwardly in the trigger guard and knocking him off-balance. He’d been leaning forward, expecting an incident, nervous for what he might find.

  Either the guy had seen King enter the office — which didn’t make much sense considering he’d been trawling through security footage for over twenty minutes — or somehow, the guy he’d tied up had managed to alert his colleagues.

  King yanked the guy forward by the collar, violently, holding nothing back. With his other hand he smashed a meaty forearm down into the guy’s wrist, hard enough to break bone and send the handgun skittering wildly out of his palm.

  Now disarmed, King could afford to employ recklessness.

  He brought his free hand up and wrapped it around the other side of the man’s collar, now holding him by the neck in a two-pronged grip. He let out a grunt of exertion and heaved the guy inside, sending him tumbling head-over-heels across the carpeted floor.

  The guy had been thoroughly unprepared for any kind of resistance, judging by his panicked reaction. He scrabbled for purchase on the carpet — finding none, he simply curled into a ball, anticipating blows to rain down.

  But he made the timeless mistake of using both hands to protect his head.

  King thundered a front kick into the guy’s side, rocketing the heel of his combat boot directly into the liver. He felt all physical resistance ebb out of the dock worker in a single instant as the man succumbed to agonising pain. King had taken a punch to the liver in training over a year ago, and the memory still hadn’t faded from his mind.

  It had been one of the most painful experiences imaginable.

  He had then learned to implement it in his own arsenal.

  The results spoke for themselves.

  The liver kick carried enough weight to intimidate the pair into submission. The first worker — the guy who seemingly manned the office — didn’t move, his skin paling and his eyes wide. The newcomer had doubled over and didn’t seem to be concerned with anything other than making it through the next few minutes without passing out.

  King turned back to the monitors.

  Did he have time to check the two remaining video feeds?

  He scolded himself for his own foolishness, as he realised there was no need to investigate any further.

  What the security worker had said to him single-handedly incriminated Reed in something darker. At the very least, it proved he hadn’t been truthful about the encounter with the smuggling ring.

  If there even was one.

  King regarded the pair of sorry souls at his feet and shook his head in anger. Enough was enough. He couldn’t hang around this office any longer. He had no idea whether half the dock workers at the port had been alerted to his presence or not. He fetched his weapon, determined not to use it and trigger a full-scale meltdown of natural order. So far, he had kept matters strictly to physical combat. He promised himself he’d keep it that way until he was well clear of the port’s limits.

  In any case, he had enough evidence for Lars.

  Reed wasn’t their man.

  He checked the first worker’s restraints were still bound tight, and noted the condition of the second man. Both weren’t going anywhere fast. Satisfied that he had time to break away, he slipped out of the office, plunging back into the night without a word of explanation to the two men he’d left in the room.

  Hopefully, they considered themselves lucky enough to simply escape with their lives.

  As he hurried back the way he’d come in a low crouch, he considered what he’d discovered. It had been the right move to stop himself before investigating further — he was inexperienced, and even the slightest slip-up had the potential to turn tensions disastrous. The less time he spent snooping around, the better — and he didn’t need the full details in any case.

  What he needed was a confirmation of whether Reed would serve as a potential recruit to Black Force.

  The answer was a resounding no.

  Yet, something didn’t feel right.

  A restless tic began in his neck, throwing him off as he retraced his steps out of the port. He had caught Reed in the act of … something. He didn’t know exactly what. A major part of him wanted nothing more than to return to the compound and beat the security worker into submission until he got answers.

  How many men did he snatch?

  What did he do with them?

  Why’d he do it?

  King paused in his tracks.

  He faltered.

  Then he spun on his heel
.

  He made the decision to return to the security office and get to the bottom of what Bryson Reed was involved in when wailing klaxons roared into life across the port.

  21

  Just as abruptly as he’d turned, King instantly switched directions again and bolted out of the docks. Sirens screamed all around him, complete with strobe-like flashing lights to signal to everyone in the port that an intruder had been found in their presence.

  Either the first guy broke out of his restraints, or the second guy recovered.

  It had to be the restraints. King regarded himself as one of the toughest sons-of-bitches on the planet, all things considered, but a well-placed liver shot had put him down for over ten minutes. The pain hadn’t faded away for more than an hour. He certainly hadn’t felt like moving for far longer than it had taken someone to activate an alarm.

  So it came down to the first security worker. The guy must have set to work as soon as King stepped out of the office, using some kind of nearby object to saw through the restraints. King had secured the vest tight. He was surprised the worker had capitalised so quickly.

  Now he sprinted down the laneway, abandoning all caution, flying past locked warehouses emanating horrific wails of distress. The alarm system rivalled the decibel level of an old-fashioned military siren — the kind that signalled an incoming nuclear strike. King shook it off, regaining his composure and pushing himself faster.

  Then the noise of an approaching vehicle made him freeze in his tracks.

  The unmistakeable roar of an engine materialised ahead, out of sight, on the other side of a T-junction. King ascertained which direction the car would come careening around the corner and positioned himself accordingly, aware that he only had seconds to act.

  It was nearly identical in make to the sedan full of common civilian thugs that had ambushed him earlier. It screamed around the corner, its rear tyres losing traction against the gravel and kicking up two fountains of the stuff. King hesitated at the sheer recklessness of the manoeuvre.

  All was not as it seemed.

  This wasn’t an ordinary response to a break-in. It couldn’t possibly be.

  These men moved with a furious pace, as if the port had to be guarded with their lives.

  He sensed that Reed’s claim of a smuggling ring might have some merit after all.

  King forgot about the finer details and darted out of the shadows, moving as fast as his massive legs would allow, intercepting the sedan at the slowest point of its wild turn. He yanked the driver’s door open — as he suspected, they’d left it unlocked — and manhandled the driver out of the seat.

  The procedure proved simple enough. In the pair’s haste to respond to the wailing alarms, neither had bothered to secure their seatbelts, so King simply hauled the driver out into the dirt with sheer physical strength and dove into the now-vacant seat.

  The passenger was scrambling for something resting on the centre console. The primitive, survival-oriented part of King’s brain told him it was a gun, so he broke the guy’s nose with a single jab with his right elbow.

  A crack echoed through the cabin, audible over the screaming engine. King reached across the passenger — whose hands were flying to his face to cradle his broken septum — and released the catch on the opposite door. He followed up with a one-handed shove, sending the man hurtling without resistance out of the car.

  King straightened up, slammed both hands down on the wheel, and wrenched the handbrake, grinding the uncontrollable sedan to a halt in the centre of the trail. As soon as the car decelerated, he forced the lever back down, stamped on the accelerator, and twisted the wheel in a tight arc.

  The sedan rocketed back the way it had come, shooting past the two dock workers who had been commandeering it seconds earlier. They had rolled to their feet, coated in dust and gravel rash, shaken by the encounter.

  The nearest man could have snatched for the driver’s door handle and probably seized a respectable grip on the thin stretch of steel, able to offer resistance as King sped past. Instead he simply stood and gawked at the brazen act of grand theft auto.

  The guy hesitated long enough to lose his vehicle forever.

  King smirked as he tore down narrow laneways, twisting left and right, evading any sign of pursuing dock workers. He didn’t know how many men were stationed at the port overnight, but the last thing he wanted was to find himself in a civilian firefight.

  These men didn’t deserve to die.

  At least, he didn’t think they did.

  He made it back onto Jaziira Road, leaving the port behind. Despite the relative success of the infiltration, he slammed an open palm against the top of the steering wheel and cursed in frustration.

  He’d expected more.

  Whether Tijuana had convinced him that scoping out the port would prove easier than he thought, or whether the dock workers truly were hiding something sinister, he found himself more confused leaving the docks than he did when he’d first stepped foot on the premises.

  He massaged a headache that had sprouted to life in the panic. Now that he was well clear of the port, he took his foot off the accelerator and coasted along the track, trying not to draw unnecessary attention.

  Nothing about the situation added up.

  The port security was airtight and precise. King had met a sizeable wave of resistance when trying to flee. The guards weren’t contractors hired at minimum wage to half-heartedly protect the port. They had been determined to stop the intruder at any cost.

  He didn’t know what that meant in terms of their guilt.

  Then there was the matter of Bryson Reed.

  King could hardly believe what the dock worker had told him. He had no conclusive evidence that Reed had been abducting people at the port, but all signs pointed to the man masking his true intentions. The security official would know more — King imagined a faction of the military would forcibly bring him in for questioning as they tried to work out what to do with their misbehaving Force Recon Marine.

  King was a recruiter, and Reed had spectacularly failed his job interview.

  Nothing else was required save for a plane flight back stateside.

  This wasn’t his problem anymore.

  Then, in a shower of sparks and a screech of twisted metal, it became his problem.

  He rounded a tight bend in Jaziira Road and drifted into the middle of the trail in the process, his mind wandering. He hadn’t seen another vehicle for the entire duration of the journey — accordingly, he dropped his guard. The oncoming car had its headlights beaming, the first sight that tore King’s attention back to the present.

  He twisted the wheel sharply to avoid a collision, but it seemed like the other driver had applied similarly lax precautions to their trip, electing to coast.

  Their side mirrors collided together and broke off each vehicle simultaneously, shockingly loud right next to King’s ear. Both drivers stamped on the brakes, King twisting the wheel sharply to screech to a halt in the dead centre of the road.

  He had the M45 ready to fire in a heartbeat.

  Out here, any sign of human interaction spelled trouble.

  He’d learnt that within a few hours of touching down in Somalia.

  But when he darted out of the sedan and trained the M45 on the other vehicle, he noted the faded khaki paint of the military jeep and the blond hair of the woman behind the wheel. She was slow to react, twisting her head to meet King’s gaze. If he was a common criminal, he could have gunned her down effortlessly in the time it took her to throw her door open and lurch out into the dirt.

  King found himself strangely angry at her lack of situational awareness, but when he squinted in the low light and made out the expression on Beth’s face, he froze.

  ‘Beth?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She flapped her lips like a dying fish, searching for words but unable to form them properly. He didn’t press her for answers, knowing she would produce the right string of syllables if given e
nough time to process whatever news she’d received.

  ‘I left the compound,’ she said quietly. ‘To come after you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Thought I might be some help. I wasn’t doing anything otherwise, and I saw you leave. I don’t know…’

  ‘You really shouldn’t have.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s fine, though,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t know why you’re so scared.’

  She wasn’t done, though. Eyes wide, she raised her right hand and held up a two-way radio, standard military issue. Nothing spectacular.

  ‘We use them to communicate with the peacekeepers,’ she said, still looking like she’d seen a ghost.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘They just called.’

  King thought about what the security worker had said.

  One by one.

  I’ve seen the footage.

  Please tell me my men are alive.

  He thought he knew where the conversation was headed before Beth had even opened her mouth.

  ‘Victor and Johnson are dead,’ she stammered. ‘They can’t find Reed.’

  22

  King left the sedan in the middle of the trail, ducking into Beth’s jeep as she slotted back into the driver’s seat. He kept his finger inside the trigger guard of his M45 — more for reassurance’s sake than anything else. The surrounding plains felt suddenly barren and hostile, shifting into something menacing as the new reality of the situation dawned on both of them.

  Reed isn’t who he says he is.

  ‘Tell me everything you know,’ he said as Beth started back for the compound.

  He kept his tone calm and measured, even though every part of him wanted to panic. If they never saw Reed again, the operation would be regarded a colossal failure.

  The momentum from Tijuana would dissipate.

  And, more importantly, Bryson Reed would disappear into the civilian world.

  Never to be seen again.

  The man would have had substantial systems in place to transition into a new identity. He wouldn’t have gone through with this if he didn’t have a backup plan.