Wolf: A Will Slater Thriller (Will Slater Series Book 1) Read online

  Steve.

  Diana bowed her head and moped into her room, trying not to disturb them. Steve hadn’t been around for long, but during the short stint he’d spent with them, he’d been awfully mean to her mother. Diana hated the way he treated her.

  But there was nothing she could do about it.

  She’d spoken up once.

  Steve had taught her a lesson to never interfere again.

  She dropped her schoolbag on the floor and leapt onto her bed. The usual routine took over. She operated out of instinct whenever she heard Mummy and Steve arguing. The automated actions unfolded without a hitch.

  She slotted her head between the two pillows resting against her bedhead and pressed down over her ears with the fluffy material. The biting voices became muffled, drowned out by the thick pillow over her head.

  Silently, dejectedly, she sobbed into the pillowcase.

  3

  Hadhramaut Valley

  Yemen

  The sun beat down relentlessly, scorching the baked earth.

  The plain stretched for thousands of miles in every direction, dotted intermittently with dry rocky mountain ranges spearing into the sky, blocking the view of the land beyond. A narrow, two-lane dirt road twisted along the plateau, the only sign of civilisation amidst the deserted valley.

  A newcomer with no knowledge of the geographical location would have assumed they had reached the edge of the earth itself, where most ordinary life shrank away, replaced by something more intense and primal.

  There were no rules out here.

  For Will Slater, it was temporarily home.

  He strode with measured paces along the side of the dirt track, littered with potholes and only traversable by four-wheel-drives and other heavy-duty vehicles. Archaic Toyota Land Cruisers made up ninety percent of the vehicles that had roared past over the last few days. They seemed to be all that anyone drove out here, most of them beat to shit and barely functioning.

  Slater had been subconsciously hoping that one of the speeding pick-up trucks would slow down to enquire what he was doing out here.

  But it seemed that nobody cared.

  They went about their lives, keeping their noses out of other people’s business, avoiding any kind of confrontation with strangers.

  Over the course of his time in Yemen, he had come to learn that nearly everyone he’d stumbled across was plagued by a certain reservedness, a suspicion that carried through into their mannerisms.

  Out here, everyone was scared.

  Slater wondered exactly what they were tense about.

  He’d caught broader flashes of what might be troubling them. The poverty. The isolation. The rampant unemployment. The civil war that occasionally roared into fruition all around him, whether that presented itself through a bloody close-quarters skirmish or the distant crack of gunshots resonating around the outskirts of the villages he’d passed through.

  But so far, the language barrier had prevented him from holding any kind of meaningful conversation. He’d only managed to observe from a distance.

  That suited him just fine.

  He’d been observing from a distance his whole life.

  When the opportunity presented itself, he was happy to dive into conversation. He didn’t shy away from it. But solitude didn’t bother him.

  It never had.

  He wouldn’t have lasted a day in his previous occupation if it did.

  For what felt like the first time in weeks — despite the fact that he’d set off from the village of Fughmah earlier that morning — a roadblock materialised down the road. In the shimmering heat that seemed to waft off everything in sight, Slater found it hard to make out exactly what lay ahead.

  It seemed to be a single hut, thrown together haphazardly with the scrap materials that lay on hand at the time. He recognised it as a security checkpoint, seeing as he’d strolled past many similar abandoned structures over the course of the day.

  This one, however, was occupied.

  The tiny blip of humanity in the middle of the desolate valley accentuated the toll that the civil war had dealt on Yemen. As Slater got closer to the security checkpoint he made out a trio of individuals, all dressed in identical uniforms. It made him realise how alien this area of the planet was. It felt strange to lay eyes on a group of people so far out from the towns and villages scattered throughout the Hadhramaut Valley.

  They were equally shocked by his appearance on the horizon.

  Slater saw them reaching for the battered old rifles hanging by their side. He froze in his tracks, kicking up twin clouds of orange dust as the soles of his boots ground to a halt on the uneven valley floor. He sized up the distance between himself and the checkpoint — close to a hundred feet.

  They would need to have expert weapons training to hit him with their first volley of shots. He might be able to avoid the initial barrage, but a quick glance in either direction revealed that he had nowhere to go. The only cover for dozens of miles in any direction was the guards’ hut itself. It would only be a waiting game before he caught a cluster of lead and it put him down for good.

  He knew what that felt like.

  An ancient instinct speared through him, recalling the sensation of twisted flesh and the sight of arterial blood.

  Then the trio of militants relaxed as they saw that Slater was unarmed.

  He stayed put for a long, drawn-out minute, sizing up their mannerisms.

  Satisfied of no immediate threat, he continued toward the checkpoint.

  The document in his back pocket would hopefully see him through to the road beyond without incident. The tasrih — written entirely in Arabic, indecipherable to Slater — had been acquired from a policeman stationed along the eastern border of Yemen. It had required a sizeable cash payment.

  Slater had crossed into Yemen from Oman three weeks earlier.

  When the policeman asked — using the limited English skills he possessed — what Slater had been doing in Oman, he’d found himself at a loss for words.

  He’d clammed up and offered more money in exchange for the policeman’s discretion.

  The man had obliged.

  Now, Slater opted not to reach for the tasrih.

  Not just yet.

  The policeman had promised it would see him through almost any roadblocks while moving between Yemen’s occupied territories.

  So far, it had worked three out of three times.

  He wondered if it would make it through a fourth inspection.

  Upon handing over the document back in the east, the policeman had advised him to turn around and head back to Oman. Apparently, due to a number of reasons — the intense civil war and unrest one of the major factors — soldiers at security checkpoints could opt to deny a tasrih on a whim and throw him into a lawless Yemen jail without reason.

  Slater had nodded politely and assured the man that he would be able to handle any problems that came his way.

  Now, he wasn’t so sure.

  He drew closer to the trio, keeping his arms by his sides, refusing to reach back for the tasrih or even reach up to wipe the thin sheen of sweat off his forehead, drawn out of his pores by the stifling heat. The plastic water bottle tucked into his other back pocket was nearly empty — he had been on the road for three and a half hours, now.

  In his old life, a cakewalk.

  But not in these conditions.

  He drew to a stop in front of the three men, all regarding him with unrestrained surprise.

  ‘Afternoon,’ he said, which made them recoil even further at the sound of his accent.

  He wondered how long it had been since they’d met an African-American man out here in the Hadhramaut Valley.

  If ever.

  None of them responded. They didn’t speak English.

  Slater hadn’t expected anything else.

  He lifted a finger in a non-threatening manner, keeping his expression placid, and gestured behind him at his rear pocket.

  ‘Tasrih,’ he sa
id slowly.

  They stared back, uniformly mute.

  He repeated the word.

  One of the men nodded, as if to say go ahead, but touched a hand to his Kalashnikov rifle.

  Just in case.

  Slater reached back tentatively as the wind howled across the flat valley floor and slid the single sheet of faded paper out of the back of his jeans.

  He handed it over.

  The trio of guards crowded around the tasrih, studying it all too intently. Slater guessed that this would be the most exciting interaction they would have in months. The beat-up old Toyotas trundling through the checkpoint every day would be as familiar to these men as their own families.

  Slater imagined he might be the first tourist in these parts in years.

  He dropped his guard, ever so slightly. It wasn’t a conscious decision, simply a response to the muted silence of the three soldiers and their prolonged scrutiny of the document in their hands. It had been nearly a month since Slater had seen conflict — and he quickly realised that it had dulled his instincts.

  By the time he started to suspect that these three men might not be as accommodating as the other militants he’d encountered throughout Yemen, the man on the left had seized his Kalashnikov and swung the barrel up to point directly between Slater’s eyes.

  ‘No,’ the man said, teeth bared.

  A single syllable that spelled disaster for anyone in the immediate vicinity.

  4

  Never had Slater seen such a sudden shift into mob mentality.

  The other two soldiers kept their eyes firmly planted on the document before them while the first man reached for his weapon. When the motionless pair looked up and noticed the shift in atmosphere, it charged their adrenalin levels like a super-drug.

  Slater watched the pair mask twin smiles of glee. They reached for their own weapons, hurling the tasrih away into the wind like a useless coupon. Slater’s stomach sank at the sight of the document drifting away across the baked earth. It meant that there was only one way the following confrontation would go down.

  Instantly, the trio fell on him, jabbing him in the ribs and between the shoulder blades with the scratched barrels of their Kalashnikovs. Slater’s eyes instinctively darted to each weapon’s safety — all were switched on.

  The guns — in their present state — were useless.

  The three men didn’t know he was aware of that. They were using their automatic weapons as a group intimidation tactic, designed to send bolts of crippling fear through the hearts of the victims they prodded.

  Slater’s resting heart rate barely shifted, but he acted like it did.

  He started to breathe heavily.

  One of the trio cackled and turned to his two comrades, chattering away in Arabic and gesticulating wildly at Slater. Spurred on by the heightened tension, one of the others stepped forward and planted two hands on Slater’s shoulders, shoving him with enough force to send him sprawling back into the dirt.

  He got to his feet, brushed off his clothes, and let a hint of fear sparkle across his eyes.

  He’d been warned about groups like this. Soldiers who reacted off their gut instincts rather than any kind of official procedure. The policeman who had gifted him the tasrih had explicitly told him as much.

  Somehow, he thought he might have been able to reason with those types of men when he encountered them.

  That would not be the case.

  Their tempers started to rise exponentially. The trio fed off each other, shouting obscenities at Slater, shooing him back the way he had come.

  Slater pointed at the tasrih, which had blown a few dozen feet off the trail, skittering wildly along the plain. ‘That’s mine. Go get that.’

  The three of them stared blankly at him, frankly surprised that he had even bothered to retort. Machismo dripped off them, palpable in the air. They didn’t get many opportunities to stick their chests out and parade their authority around, so now they were taking every opportunity to do so.

  None of them budged an inch.

  Slater stared at the tasrih and sighed. ‘Okay — well, that’s gone. How about you three just let me through?’

  He was met with absolute silence.

  Then the man on the left — the soldier who had first kicked off the egotistical display of dominance by snatching for his gun — strode fast at Slater, unleashing a tirade of abuse in his direction. Flecks of spit arced from the corners of his mouth.

  Up close, Slater could see the wavering of his gaze, the slight lack of spatial awareness that brought him to within half a foot of Slater’s own face. He stared past the soldier to the pair behind him, noting the similar expressions on their faces.

  They were high on khat, a drug that Slater hadn’t known existed before he stepped foot in Yemen. Over the course of his time in-country, he’d come to learn that nearly three-quarters of the population munched on the leaves, which had a similar effect to marijuana.

  With the three of them spaced out ever so slightly, Slater realised he could take them all at once.

  As that thought entered his mind, he burst off the mark in the blink of an eye.

  The soldier in his face hadn’t been prepared for anything close to what unfolded. He stood completely still as Slater shouldered straight through him, charging into his chest with enough force to send him sprawling back onto the trail. The guy’s head followed the same trajectory as his falling body, meeting the hard, crusty earth with enough force to knock him senseless.

  The back of the man’s skull whiplashed off the ground, accompanied by a hollow thud. He’d be fine in the long run, but Slater wouldn’t be surprised if he had dealt out a concussion.

  Never slowing or hesitating, he scooped up the Kalashnikov that the man had dropped and spun it around in his hands, locking a firm grip around the weapon’s barrel. He took three bounding steps into the range of the other pair and swung the rifle in one scything motion like a baseball bat, smashing the stock into the closest soldier’s ribs.

  The guy buckled, and Slater swung again into the back of his neck, hard enough to send him face-first into the dusty earth but with enough restraint to prevent lasting neurological damage.

  He twisted on the spot fast enough to catch the last man fumbling with his rifle, pawing at the safety with meaty fingers. Slater could see the confusion spreading across the man’s face as he struggled to work the tiny switch. His senses and reflexes had been dulled by the fat ball of khat residue lodged inside his left cheek.

  ‘Goddamnit,’ Slater muttered to himself as he witnessed the pathetic sight.

  He would have much rather been on his way, leaving the third guy to tend to his beaten comrades. But this man was unrelenting, determinedly trying to make his weapon operational despite his adversary staring him in the face from two feet away.

  Slater recognised the gun barrel swinging in his direction and opted to put his foot down. He would not take it easy on the man in front of him. It was an undeniable truth that if Slater hadn’t possessed the ability to act, he would have been gunned down where he stood.

  And no-one would have been any the wiser.

  He would have been buried in a hot ditch and all record of his existence would have faded away into nothingness.

  Thankfully, Will Slater lived and breathed combat.

  He shot into range, ducking underneath the Kalashnikov while the man carried on fumbling with the safety catch. He activated his glutes and hamstrings, pushing off the dusty track with enough explosive power to knock all the breath out of the man’s lungs. The point of his shoulder sunk deep into the guy’s exposed stomach, taking him off his feet.

  Together, the pair sprawled into the dirt.

  The sun had scorched the track over the course of the morning, turning the dirt impossibly hot. Slater winced as he went through the practiced motions of flattening out an inexperienced adversary. The man had zero jiu-jitsu training based off his panicked reaction, something that proved disastrous ten times out o
f ten when up against a black belt. He flapped around on the ground like a wounded hamster.

  Slater sliced one leg over the guy’s mid-section, sliding into a position known as full-mount. Helpless to resist, the man panicked and rolled onto his front, a natural reaction when someone was unable to buck the weight of an enemy off them.

  Instinctively turning away from the punches that would inevitably follow suit.

  It played directly into Slater’s skill set.

  He looped an arm around the man’s throat from behind, almost lackadaisical in his approach. The Kalashnikov had skittered across the track moments earlier and come to rest well out of reach, coated in dust and desert sand. With the fatal threat eliminated, now he could nullify the man underneath him.

  A rear-naked-choke took, on average, less than five seconds to choke a man into temporary unconsciousness. Cut off the blood supply to the brain and all sorts of neurological systems shut down instantly. In mixed martial arts, opponents tapped in the space of seconds to prevent unnecessary damage.

  Out here, there was no referee to pull Slater off.

  He unleashed maximum exertion, tightening a muscular forearm around the guy’s neck. It happened so fast that the man wouldn’t have realised what hit him. He struggled feebly for a brief moment, then his brain responded to the choke by shutting itself down all at once.

  He went limp.

  Slater released the hold as soon as he felt the man’s limbs turn to jelly, and slid off the unconscious mass. Within the span of a few seconds, the guy spluttered awake, staring at his surroundings with dilated pupils. It would take him a few minutes to get his bearings.

  Until then, Slater had rendered him useless.

  He was in no state to mount any kind of resistance.

  Slater kicked the three Kalashnikov rifles off the side of the track, watching them tumble down the side of a craggy valley dotted with rock formations and overgrown patches of weeds. Satisfied with where the weapons finally tumbled to a halt, well off the beaten path, he nodded to himself and strode quickly through the checkpoint.

  It would take the three policemen at least ten minutes to retrieve their weapons. By then, Slater would be long gone. He had briefly considered taking one of the rifles with him for reassurance’s sake, but it would spell nothing but disaster if he strolled into the next town wielding an automatic weapon.