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  ‘Lovely to meet you all,’ Slater said. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

  Bautista stiffened and said, ‘It is usually polite for the other party in the conversation to introduce themselves in turn.’

  ‘Right,’ Slater said, then followed up with, ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ with the same sardonic tone.

  ‘You can ask us who we are.’

  ‘I couldn’t care less who you are.’

  ‘I think you should.’

  ‘Narcos?’ Slater said. ‘Is that what you’re getting at? I’m quaking.’

  He said it dismissively, without a shred of interest in his tone. The trio picked up on it, and it set them on edge. Slater spotted them shifting a little faster on the balls of their feet. They weren’t accustomed to a reaction like that. They were used to eliciting fear wherever they went. They were masters of intimidation.

  Not here.

  Not with Will Slater.

  ‘On your way,’ Slater said, dismissing them with a wave of the hand.

  ‘Listen, you fucking—’ Bautista started.

  There was venom in his tone, and the instant Slater recognised it he burst into motion. He threw the door open with enough verve to startle all three of them, and he noticed Vicente and Iván backing up, reaching for leather appendix holsters tucked into their cargo shorts. Momentarily, he thought he’d made a mistake. He could die right here, right now — all because of his foolish recklessness. But he knew the specifics of human confrontation well enough to have faith in his ability to read people. And all three of the men in front of him knew he was clearly unarmed. Therefore any move to draw a weapon would seem like a horrendous overreaction, which would only serve to make whoever did it look like a weak idiot.

  Slater was right.

  The two men backed up, and their hands twitched imperceptibly, but they didn’t wrench their pistols from their holsters and fire like morons.

  Iván even let out a bout of nervous laughter, quickly cut off by Slater’s subsequent tirade.

  ‘You fucking what?’ Slater hissed at Bautista, who hadn’t stepped back, but had definitively jolted in place. Then he turned rapid-fire with his speech. ‘Come on. You seem like you want to do something about it. You going to call me names all day or are you going to try something? I really, really want you to try something. Come on. Go for that gun at your waist. Do it. I’m on a tight schedule here, so either get straight to the point or turn around and fuck off back to where you came from and stop wasting my time.’

  Bautista said nothing.

  Clearly unsure how to respond.

  He wasn’t used to anyone standing up to him.

  Let alone someone with Slater’s confidence.

  It wasn’t easily replicable, even under the old “fake-it-until-you-make-it” adage.

  It came from a decade of experience.

  Bautista had come expecting a wealthy expat from some Western country with a silver spoon in his mouth and a whole lot of apologies for treading on the toes of the cartels inhabiting the area. Instead he got something wholly different. He got an African-American powerhouse with a psychotic glint in his eye who seemed more than capable of taking on a trio of lowly narco thugs.

  And there wasn’t a shred of fear or hesitation on Slater’s face.

  That’s probably what deterred him the most.

  So Bautista simply nodded, and backed up a step.

  His mouth was a hard line.

  ‘You get me?’ Slater said, refusing to blink. ‘You see my eyes?’

  Bautista nodded.

  ‘You think I’m scared of the three of you?’

  Bautista paused for a long time, and then shook his head. ‘I like you, friend.’

  ‘We’re not friends.’

  Bautista leered and tapped the side of his head. ‘You crazy. Loco. I like that.’

  ‘You three want anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then get out of here. I know what you came here to do. You’re not getting that from me.’

  ‘What do you think we wanted?’

  ‘I know what being friends means out here.’

  ‘Thought you might have some spare cash lying around. We’re always looking for donations, you know.’

  Slater nodded. ‘Yeah. I get it. Protection racket. I’ve got no spare cash. Fuck off.’

  ‘You’re not very nice.’

  ‘That’s rich coming from the three of you.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about us,’ Bautista said, but he was smiling as he said it.

  Menace dripped in his tone.

  Slater thought he spotted a dry bloodstain on the shoulder of Bautista’s singlet.

  The wiry man gave a sickening smile, touched a hand to the butt of his sidearm reflexively, turned on his heel, and headed off back down the trail. Vicente and Iván followed in tow, flashing glances over their shoulders every few seconds to make sure Slater wasn’t trying anything drastic.

  He wasn’t.

  He stood in the giant doorway, leaving himself exposed in case any of them had a change of heart and tried to gun him down as he turned away. But he knew they wouldn’t. His overly confrontational nature had disrupted their routine. They were used to getting their way, and now they hadn’t. They did their best to hide it, but it rattled them.

  When the trio disappeared from sight, ghosting back down the jungle trail, Slater mimicked Bautista’s earlier movements. He reached back and touched a hand to the Glock 17 resting loosely in his waistband. He’d been unable to fetch his holster in time, but he didn’t need it. If any of them had made a real move for their weapons he would have put a cylindrical hole in each of their heads in the space of a couple of seconds. With close to the fastest reaction speed on the planet, he had quiet confidence in his abilities to dismantle a few drug fiends.

  He hoped he never saw them again.

  Because he didn’t feel like killing anyone today, and if they’d proven even slightly more aggressive he might have taken three lives in an instant.

  He slammed the door closed, allowed the built-up adrenalin to subside, and resumed planning the rest of his day.

  3

  He knew Bautista, Vicente, and Iván were narcos, because they certainly weren’t native. The majority of the population in the Chocó Department were Afro-Colombians, and the trio that had visited him didn’t have the familiar dark skin that came with most of the region’s occupants. They also hadn’t carried themselves like locals. They didn’t have the laidback, overly friendly gait of the men and women Slater had met during his time here.

  So he felt reasonably comfortable with heading into town and avoiding any further interaction with the trio of scum.

  Because he knew if he saw them again, he wouldn’t be so kind.

  He knew their type. The narcotraficantes. The fiends. The sociopathic vermin that inhabited dark swathes of the Colombian jungle, using slave labour to manufacture and package narcotics and ferry their product through the pre-established pipelines, taking it across the border and causing untold misery wherever their reign touched. The cartels were vicious, soulless beasts, and Slater figured he’d subconsciously come to Colombia to wage war against them. He knew he would work his way up to that reality eventually.

  He simply wasn’t ready yet.

  He hadn’t given himself time to switch gears.

  He could have killed the three of them. Effortlessly. He could have wiped the smug expressions off their faces before they realised who he was. But he’d allowed them to sense his aura. He’d allowed them to understand what they’d be getting themselves into if they decided to fuck with him. And they’d made the right move, and retreated.

  Thankfully.

  But eventually he would come for them. He would hunt them down and tear them apart, and continue ravaging the jungle encampments until there was nothing left of the Colombian drug trade. But that would take years of warfare. Years of planning and tactical destruction. And he didn’t want to go dow
n that path just yet. Because it was a one way street. If he dipped so much as a toe into that world, he would never come out of it. The fire burning within him wanted nothing more than to tackle that particular challenge, but he knew he would be giving up every creature comfort imaginable.

  He had to transition into what he used to be.

  First, he wanted a few weeks off.

  To drink. To laugh. To train.

  So he waited until the trio were long gone and then left his compound behind, admiring the low structure as he trudged down the jungle path toward the small parking lot at the end of his patch of land. Before he made it to the semi-circle of gravel, enclosed by lush trees and vegetation and swamped in humidity, he prepared himself for what he might find.

  If they’d slashed his tyres, or defaced his vehicle in any way, he might cut short his self-imposed downtime just for the hell of it.

  Just to show them who the fuck they were messing with.

  But the open-topped jeep he’d bought off a local auto dealer was unblemished. Well, it was rusting and rundown and looked set to fall apart at any moment, but the trio of narcos hadn’t touched it.

  Good, Slater thought.

  Because he craved a beer after kicking the old primal instincts into gear.

  It was cause for celebration, in some sick, twisted way.

  He leapt into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine, tasting the air flowing off the nearby river. The sounds of the jungle encompassed the clearing, complete with the shrills and hoots of exotic wildlife and the hum of mosquitoes.

  He had no particular agenda. Nowhere to be. Nothing to do. Back in Vladivostok, cooped up in a small room above a bar for nigh on four months straight, he’d spent plenty of time dissecting the darkness inside his own mind. He hadn’t been able to venture outside for the first phase, even if he wanted to, and the self-imposed exile had done him a world of good.

  He’d come out the other side strangely calm. Strangely at peace with himself. He hadn’t been alone, without conflict, for as long as he could remember. So now he felt no particular urge to leap back into the action. He knew it would come — that was inevitable. But until then he would resist the lure of confrontation. The old Slater would have beat those three narcos down where they stood. Probably killed them, too, given the fact that their mere existence created enough suffering on a global scale to justify their deaths.

  But he hadn’t reacted. He’d let them go, against his better judgment.

  All in due time.

  Right now, he wanted a drink.

  He kept the top down and weaved through twisting jungle trails, heading for the nearest town. It was unnamed, small enough to serve as both a tourist trap and a local haunt. Slater had become intimately familiar with the grid of streets, considering it was the only source of clustered civilisation this deep in the Chocó Department. There was a bar there, too, and a damn good one.

  Over time, he’d reluctantly admitted his problem.

  In fact, he’d only recently started recognising it as a problem.

  It didn’t mean he was about to stop drinking.

  He entered the town’s outer limits and waved to a couple of familiar locals. As the days passed, he’d found his presence wholly ignored, and he welcomed it. As a black man he blended in just enough with the Afro-Colombians that populated the region to avoid standing out. And he kept a low profile, figuring there was no point ruining his few months of respite by flashing his wealth and encouraging every petty thief in the area to make an attempt on his life.

  He understood the intricacies of encouraging violence, especially in these parts.

  His compound by the river had enough extravagancies within its walls to keep him occupied. When he’d recruited the only high-end construction firm in Quibdó to put the small fortress together discreetly, he’d spared no expense with materials. He’d ordered the best of everything, cutting no corners in the process.

  But that was miles away from civilisation.

  No-one — aside from the three narcos who had so rudely intruded on his privacy earlier that morning — knew about it. To the locals who knew him by facial recognition he was a simple man who drove an open-topped jeep and kept mostly to himself. He was generous with his money at the grocers, at the bars, at the hardware stores. He tipped well. And he seemed intent on continuing with his spartan existence for the foreseeable future. So they left him alone.

  No-one poked.

  No-one prodded.

  He knew, eventually, that would change.

  Someone would tip off one of the narcos, and the jungle would open its jaws and spit out a host of undesirables looking to intimidate the man who lived in the middle of nowhere. Anything foreign was a threat. And Slater had his first taste of that life now.

  Bautista.

  Vicente.

  Iván.

  They were the first.

  Soon, the floodgates would open.

  But not yet.

  He parked in front of the same unnamed bar that had become a staple in his life, already teeming with occupants in the early afternoon. There were ample backpackers in town, flowing from the hostels littering the tiny village. Gentrification at its finest. Slater had heard tales of rural Colombia’s renaissance — hence the uptick in young foreigners on a budget — but he figured most of the corruption and murder still lurked. It just kept to itself and left no witnesses.

  The backpackers drifted to the best haunts like flies to shit. The locals weren’t immune from drowning their problems, either.

  And Slater couldn’t blame any of them.

  Over a career — no, a lifetime — of the most brutal imaginings life had to offer, Slater had yet to find a better numbing agent than the bottom of a bottle. Maybe some found that sad. He certainly didn’t. In fact it tantalised him. His life was a never-ending stream of relentless discipline.

  He had one vice.

  It wasn’t his fault that he was so adept at satiating it.

  It was a whole lot better than the drug-fuelled nightmare his life used to be.

  He shut down the engine, twisted the key out of the ignition, and leapt over the driver’s door that had long since rusted shut.

  The bar beckoned.

  4

  He selected a table at random. There was no order to it. No reasoning. Maybe in the past he might have conducted a rudimentary threat assessment. Scoped out the darkest corners, put his back to the wall, analysed every newcomer under the guise of a curious alcoholic.

  Now he didn’t give a shit.

  If they were going to come for him, they would come.

  Who?

  He didn’t know. He didn’t care. Often he wondered if the concussion had changed him. He recalled every detail of the altercation. The hulking giant of a man with blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. Ruslan Mikhailov. The steel-toed boot, slicing down through the air with over two hundred pounds of bodyweight behind it. The sharp crack of sole against skull. The blinding flash. The sound like a whip lashing against his head. The loss of equilibrium. The uncontrollable headaches. The disrupted vision.

  The pain.

  The endless pain…

  He shook it off as a cold shiver ran down his spine. That was in the past. He’d spent four gruelling months recovering from that, shaking off the lingering symptoms, praying for a relief from the agony. And he’d found it.

  Maybe that was why he was so reluctant to return to the carnage of the past.

  Because it wouldn’t take much effort for it to happen again. A glancing blow. A knuckle crashing against flesh in just the right place. Usually the soft patch of skin above and behind the ear worked well enough. He’d crippled countless men with the same technique. A looping right hook to the skull with hundreds of pounds of force behind it. Cracking bone. Splitting skin. Dropping the most intimidating men on the planet where they stood.

  In the past, a voice in his head said.

  He almost laughed out loud.

  But that would have made
him look insane, and although those effects lingered on the horizon, he wasn’t about to give himself over to madness yet.

  So he ordered a drink. Vodka, three fingers, straight up. No point making it any more pleasant than it needed it to be. He exchanged a subtle nod of recognition with the enormous, dreadlocked bartender, and took the tumbler filled with clear liquid to a table on the far side of the room.

  He gulped it down.

  Fast.

  It burned, and that’s what he relished.

  Something extreme. His life was nothing more than one extreme sensation after the other. He never took anything easy. Even pleasure. He recalled his career in all its excesses.

  Brutal, barbaric training — he trained harder than anyone on the planet. He never took a moment’s break. He pushed himself to the limits of what the human body was capable of, and then he kept pushing.

  Then the operations themselves. Daring, violent, relentless. He never received an easy task. He threw himself at each mission in turn, putting his health on the line over and over again. More times than he could remember. It had all blurred into a seething mass of pain and fury. But he’d done good work. He’d lost count of how many people he’d saved. How many horrors he’d prevented. In Russia, a construction worker named Bogdan had said the world would be a worse place without Will Slater, and without seeming arrogant he had to admit he agreed.

  And then there was the downtime. He’d treated that with the same intensity he brought to anything in life. Drink. Drugs. Women. All in excess. His entire life was one consecutive stream of excess.

  He wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Which made the current downtime so uncomfortable. He was talented at many things, but none of them involved sitting around and thinking about life. Hence why the concussion recovery had proved so mind-altering.

  Ironic.

  To rewire his brain, he’d needed to scramble it first.

  Disrupt the old patterns.