Warrior_A Jason King Thriller Page 15

  But money had never motivated him.

  Dealing with pieces of shit like Bryson Reed was all he needed to stay on track.

  He realised Reed had embedded himself into this mess the exact same way King had. Criminals trusted each other — they had to, if they wanted to survive in this world. It wouldn’t have taken much persuasion for Reed to convince these men he was from the port. From there, cash would flow to him with little effort, if he made it to the right place at the right time.

  But then what?

  There had to be an endgame. In all likelihood Reed would make off with millions of dollars — maybe even tens of millions — but he had to do something with it. Murdering two Force Recon Marines in cold blood had exiled himself from his old identity in a single stroke. He would have to start a new life, somewhere off the beaten track.

  He’d need help to achieve that.

  He couldn’t front the burden alone.

  King found himself grappling with these thoughts as he drove straight into another hotspot of commotion, this hive of activity wedged between a pair of warehouses of similarly gargantuan scale. He drew the jeep to a halt in a long row of idle vehicles, all empty. The towering walls of each warehouse cast great shadows across the land all around him. He looked out over an identical scene to the one at the front of the complex, just slightly smaller in scale. Hundreds of Somali workers in faded overalls manhandled pallets of goods across the space between the two warehouses — a faded stretch of concrete jam-packed with dump trucks and semi-trailers and half-empty shipping containers.

  King’s eyes widened at the sight.

  Entire containers had been transported from the port.

  He wondered just how much of the global shipping industry operated in murky legal waters.

  From here, it looked like all of it.

  He slipped out of the jeep, quietly closed the door, and made sure the M45 in his right palm had its safety off. He wanted to be ready for anything. The HK416 resting on the passenger’s seat wielded plenty more firepower, but it would stand out like a sore thumb if he decided to carry it into the midst of the commotion.

  He skirted around one side of the jeep, keeping low, barely making a noise.

  Reed was here.

  He could sense it.

  Then a boot scuffed on the concrete less than a foot behind him, almost imperceptible amongst the sound of thousands of tons of goods being moved from place to place.

  But King heard it.

  He wheeled, gun raised — too late.

  A well-placed fist smashed into the top of his hand before he could pivot, breaking one of the bones in his wrist with an audible snap. The attacker’s punch kept moving down, simply slicing the M45 out of King’s hand like it was nothing. The gun clattered against the concrete and skittered away, well out of reach.

  With the other hand, his attacker jammed the barrel of a sidearm into the side of King’s temple, hard enough to rattle his senses. The original hand that had stripped King of his weapon looped up and tightened around his throat, placing him in a sleeper hold while keeping the weapon levelled at his head.

  ‘Let’s take a walk,’ Reed snarled in his ear.

  30

  King complied, the blood draining from his face as the shock of the broken bone set in.

  He hadn’t reacted in the moment, more concentrated on retaliating against the assault, but Reed had hit him with the perfect storm of actions, a flurry from which there was no coming back. He’d been stripped of his weapon, one hand had been disabled, an arm had choked him into compliance, and there was a loaded handgun crushing against one side of his skull.

  He wasn’t going anywhere, and both of them knew that.

  Just stay alive, a voice commanded.

  He hasn’t killed you yet. See what happens next.

  Don’t quit.

  Reed dragged him to the end of the line of vehicles, a stretch of the open concrete more desolate than the rest of the massive aisle. From there it was a simple enough procedure to stay out of the window of detection, slinking along the side of one of the warehouses, keeping an industrial vehicle between themselves and the workers at all times. They were headed for the other end of the concrete corridor, an area King hadn’t had the opportunity to scope out.

  With each step, the chance of survival lessened.

  He focused on putting one foot in front of the other and deliberately dulling the horrific throbbing in his right hand until he had time to focus on recovery.

  ‘You’re staying out of sight,’ King noted, making sure not to talk with too much urgency in case Reed got trigger-happy.

  He sensed the finger near the side of his head tighten against the trigger. His heart skipped a beat.

  Then the finger eased off.

  ‘Not yet,’ Reed said. ‘Gotta do this somewhere quieter. Attract less attention. Keep walking.’

  King kept his pace measured, wondering how Reed could have made it this far for someone so foolish. He might as well have said, Feel free to try and escape. I don’t want to shoot you here and blow my cover.

  King spotted a narrow overpass about a hundred feet ahead, past the two warehouses. Underneath the concrete structure — seemingly erected for no reason whatsoever — a procession of parked semi-trailers rested in tight slots, ready to be loaded with goods and sent off to all corners of Somalia, or even the Middle-East in its entirety.

  He sensed what Reed planned to do.

  A single unsuppressed shot from an M45 handgun would be noticeable enough, but there was no-one in the vicinity of the overpass. Reed could have his weapon tucked away and King’s lifeless body hauled over the lip of the bridge before anyone responded to the blistering report.

  Until then, they would walk and talk.

  King didn’t mind that.

  Anything he attempted here — with workers milling around on the other side of the nearby vehicles — would spell certain disaster. If the gun went off in the middle of the packing operation, workers would scramble in a mad panic, and the entire complex would go into lockdown until the threat was dealt with.

  King was just as reluctant to cause a shitstorm as Reed was.

  For now.

  ‘They know you’re military?’ he said.

  ‘Of course not,’ Reed hissed.

  ‘Thought as much. What’s the plan from here?’

  ‘Not telling you shit.’

  ‘Why not? You’re going to kill me anyway, you might as well—’

  Reed flexed the muscles in his forearm, compressing King’s air passage with a single, gut-heaving wrench. King’s voice petered out halfway through the sentence, leaving him choking for air, his face turning the colour of beetroot as he scrambled for breath.

  He shot both hands up to Reed’s arm out of instinct, fighting for mere survival, and Reed responded by jamming the barrel of the M45 so hard into his temple that it tore skin off the side of his head, right above his ear. Warm blood gushed.

  King froze in his tracks, allowing Reed to tighten the choke.

  If the man wanted to choke him unconscious and drag him the rest of the way, there was nothing he could to do stop it. Reed was too powerful, too composed.

  But King weighed a hell of a lot, and he imagined Reed didn’t want to put that kind of burden on himself. A second later his suspicions were confirmed as Reed loosened his grip. The dark circle on the edge of King’s vision dissipated.

  ‘I don’t know where you’re from,’ Reed said, keeping his voice low as they walked. ‘But you obviously get paid well. You know what my salary is?’

  ‘As a Force Recon Marine?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Just over fifty thousand a year if I’m not mistaken. Clearly low enough to want to kill a bunch of people who trusted you and make off with some dirty profits. You’re scum. Don’t try and justify it to make yourself feel better, you piece of shit. Hope you rot in hell.’

  King had intended to infuriate Reed over the course of the speech, throwing
insults at him one after the other in a relentless stream.

  It paid off.

  Reed applied the same amount of pressure to the choke as he had before, cutting King off in the middle of his tirade.

  But the man had become predictable.

  He’d done the same thing twice.

  King sensed Reed turning all his concentration to his right forearm, subtly taking his mind off the weapon pressed to his temple. King dropped all his weight at once, letting all tension go from his legs, slipping a few inches toward the ground before Reed caught him. But King weighed over two hundred pounds, and Reed found himself straining to hold the deadweight by the neck with a single arm. He lost balance momentarily and leant forward to tighten his grip.

  At that moment, King tensed both legs and exploded off the concrete, launching back a couple of inches in the other direction. As Reed pitched forward, the top of King’s skull cracked him full in the face, hard enough to stop anyone in their tracks.

  Bones broke and blood spurted.

  King had no time to assess the extent of the damage. He writhed and bucked like a bull at a rodeo, suddenly possessed by raging energy, changing his demeanour in a single instant. It startled Reed into hesitation and King jerked his chin down hard and fast. He sensed enough wriggle room to burst out of the choke hold and capitalised on it, tearing free from the man’s grip while the nerve endings across Reed’s face screamed for relief.

  Everything had taken place in less than a second — three short, sharp movements that ripped him out of the choke. But everything came down to what happened next — King understood he had another half-second to seize control of the weapon before the barrel turned in his direction and fired once. It would barely take Reed any time at all. Even though his nose had shattered under the kinetic force of the headbutt, his fast-twitch muscle fibres would kick in and he’d send a round through King’s forehead before he could move one step further.

  King had one attempt to snatch the gun.

  Or he would die.

  He shot out both hands, fingers splayed, palms open, searching in the murky darkness for his target.

  Intense, primal focus lent him assistance.

  He wrapped both hands around the wrist wielding the M45 handgun and jerked the barrel away from him. With disaster temporarily averted, he focused all his energy on wrestling the weapon off Reed.

  But Reed’s frame sported similar raw power, and the two found themselves at a stalemate, writhing from side-to-side across the concrete as they jerked and wrenched with all their might. The M45 spelt the difference between life and death. It meant everything.

  Then King remembered that his wrist was broken, recalling the experience as a fiery wave of pain sliced up his right arm, buckling his knees and making his eyes water. Reed had pinned the broken appendage in a vice-like grip, crushing it between his own fingers and the barrel of the sidearm. He had forced it entirely from his mind as the instinct to survive took over, but now it all came roaring back in a singular moment of weakness.

  That was enough.

  His pincer-like grip on the M45 slipped, barely noticeable but providing enough leeway for a guy like Reed to capitalise. He noticed the sidearm tearing from his grip, and even before Reed had gained full control of the weapon he thundered a combat boot straight up in the air like a kicker trying to punt a football the full length of the field. The toe of his boot slammed home against Reed’s genitals, hard enough to override any kind of willpower and buckle the man where he stood.

  Reed’s face paled and he crumpled on the spot, unable to prevent his body’s natural reaction to the horrifying blow. As he went down, he kept enough composure to shield the M45 against his own body, drawing it in to prevent King from making a snatch at it.

  In the heat of hand-to-hand combat, where mere inches meant the difference between life and death, King recognised that Reed had saved himself with the procedure.

  King wasn’t getting the gun.

  Accepting that fact, he pivoted on his heel and sprinted away at full-pelt.

  31

  The moment he turned his back on Bryson Reed, King’s heart threatened to burst out of his chest in panic. It was an acute feeling he had experienced many times over, and it never lessened over time. The realisation that he could only will his body to move so fast hit him like a ton of bricks, sending fear through him in crashing waves. He wouldn’t know if Reed had time to shoot — he would simply take the brunt of the impact to the back of his skull and the lights would darken forever.

  The thought spurred him on.

  He couldn’t have been on the move for more than a second before a nearby semi-trailer provided some form of cover, yet it felt like an eternity. He hurled himself behind the enormous vehicle, ducking instinctively, pressing his chin to his chest.

  Just in time.

  Sparks flew a few inches above his shoulder as a round ricocheted off the side of the massive trailer. If Reed hadn’t been dealing with a nightmarish type of pain, he might have been more accurate.

  No.

  King had seen the man’s handiwork.

  He definitely would have hit his target.

  But the incident unfolded over the course of milliseconds, and then King was out of harm’s way. He scrambled for the other side of the trailer in a mad panic, tearing the skin off his palms as instincts took over and he threw all concept of temporary pain to the wind. Gunfire roared in his ears as Reed sent another few bullets in his direction, the reports crackling through the complex in just the way they’d both been hoping to prevent.

  Pandemonium erupted.

  Workers yelled to the heavens and scattered like flies, sprinting for their lives away from the source of gunfire. They had either been trained to flee the scene when confrontation broke out, or there had been enough qualms within these walls in the past to teach them that hanging around a gunfight would achieve nothing.

  They worked in a volatile business, after all.

  No matter how ordinary it looked at surface level.

  ‘Motherfucker!’ Reed roared from the other side of the trailer. ‘You ruined it!’

  King said nothing in return, his ears still ringing from the gunshots. At that moment he realised that Reed was an impulsive man — anger and disdain laced his tone, unrestrained. He hadn’t bothered to try and hide his emotions.

  He had been planning something, and King had stifled it by causing a commotion.

  ‘Guess I’ll just do it by force,’ the man called, clearly sensing that King had morals. ‘This is on you. No-one had to get hurt.’

  Unarmed, reeling from his badly mangled wrist, King was helpless to prevent what came next. He skirted back behind an open-topped transport truck, used to ferry pallets of goods between each of the major warehouses in the complex. He kept his head down, searching for a path back to the jeep where he could get his hands on the HK416.

  He no longer needed to employ discretion, after all.

  From his position, he had a clear view of Reed stepping out from behind the semi-trailer and racing across the open stretch of land, heading for the warehouse on the opposite side of the aisle. Its huge roller doors were raised, allowing access to the interior of the building. Reed hurried straight through, purposeful, with a clear objective in mind.

  As the man entered the vast interior, a trio of menacing Somali thugs stepped out from behind what appeared to be a fuel tanker, each of them clutching a dirty assault rifle in their hands. Their eyes were wide and roaming. They had heard the gunshots, but they weren’t budging.

  Guards.

  Guarding what?

  Still moving, Reed didn’t hesitate. He raised the M45 and squeezed off three shots, one after the other, a short staccato that echoed through the enormous space.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  He was a painfully accurate marksman.

  The three guards — now corpses — lost all function of their limbs and cascaded to the dirty warehouse floor, stone dead. King paled at the ease with wh
ich they’d been dispatched. Reed disappeared into the grimy shadows of the warehouse, vanishing from sight. He hadn’t stopped moving the entire time, intent on reaching some unknown destination.

  He was en route to a target.

  It must have been damn important, for the next thing King knew he had been caught in the middle of a war zone.

  With his attention seized so entirely by Reed’s ballsy dash, he’d become oblivious to everything else around him. Next thing he knew, bullets flew over his head, bombarding the interior of the warehouse in an unrelenting stream of gunfire. He flattened himself against the concrete — still positioned in the midst of a maze of industrial vehicles — and hoped like all hell that no-one stumbled across his position.

  Every worker in the compound was surging for the warehouse, having snatched up automatic weapons beforehand. King wondered what kind of goldmine Reed had managed to acquire. He listened to the barrage of footsteps resonating across the concrete aisle as Somali workers hurried around nearby vehicles, all aiming for a single destination.

  One gangly man came sprinting into King’s corridor, his Kalashnikov rifle swinging on a leather strap in front of him. At well over six-foot-six, he towered above King, slouched over with horrendous posture. King burst off the concrete and slammed a fist into the guy’s mid-section before his presence had even been noted. The guy wheezed and collapsed, taken entirely by surprise. King yanked the AK-47 off his shoulders as he went down, winded by the blow, and made up his mind in that instant.

  Now, he had a weapon.

  Wherever the workers were headed — that’s where he’d follow.

  It would lead to Reed, and it would lead to revenge.

  Revenge for the two dead Force Recon Marines who would never return to their families, and revenge for the countless dock workers Reed had murdered in his quest to slip into the supply chain unnoticed.

  King had a sizeable headstart on most of the approaching procession, so before anyone could identify him as a new face, he seized a grip on the Kalashnikov rifle, ducked his head to his chest to prevent detection, and ran straight into the warehouse ahead.