Savages: A Jason King Thriller (The Jason King Files Book 3) Read online

  Lars noted the sarcasm but ignored it, passing it off as a genuine comment. ‘Not a problem.’

  King pressed a pair of fingers into his eyeballs, then wiped his hand down his face, as if trying to tear stress out of his brain. When he opened them, he’d considered all his options.

  There were few.

  ‘How long is this going to take?’ he said.

  ‘As long as Brody deems it necessary to take.’

  ‘The Congo…’

  ‘He wanted to fall off the face of the earth after we were done with him. Nothing’s going to convince him to leave that place. But — as far as we can tell — he’s set up a nice compound out there in the middle of nowhere. We gave him an unlimited budget to prepare for your arrival.’

  ‘When is he expecting me?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘You said the message you sent me was vague for a reason. You said there was no rush.’

  ‘I had a read on you. I knew you’d be keen to get back in action. You don’t like sitting still — I’ve sensed that much throughout our time together.’

  ‘So you get why I’m not happy about this camp.’

  ‘You think you’re good enough?’

  ‘I got momentum from Somalia, even though it was hell. I was intent on using it.’

  ‘So use it. But direct it toward your physical training. Think of Mexico as a test, and Somalia as a confirmation that you’re special. Now it’s time to truly see what you can do.’

  ‘In the Democratic Republic of the Congo.’

  ‘It’s not our first choice, but we’re making do with what we’ve got. Brody’s just as special as you are. Together you’ll make a powerful combination. But if he doesn’t want to leave the Congo, we aren’t entitled to tell him otherwise.’

  ‘You order me around like it’s nothing. What if I don’t want to go to the Congo?’

  ‘You’re going to the Congo.’

  ‘What sets me apart from Brody?’

  ‘A fifteen year career. If you want an even playing field, then put your head down for a decade. Then maybe we can talk.’

  ‘What if something comes up — while I’m gone?’

  ‘We’ll use other operatives.’

  ‘What other operatives?’

  ‘We’ve got a couple of things in the works. None of which concern you.’

  ‘Give me a taste. A snippet.’

  ‘Will Slater.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Exactly. He’s a guy showing similar potential to yourself, but we’re still in the early stages with him. That’s all I’m going to give you for the rest of your career. This is a division of solo operatives, and you will never work together under any circumstances. So don’t ask.’

  ‘Got it. He sounds like a prick anyway.’

  ‘You got that from a name?’

  ‘Sure did.’

  ‘I’d hazard a guess that you’re pissed off about the Congo, and you’re taking that out on me.’

  King shook his head, dripping with sarcasm. ‘I hadn’t told you, but after my next assignment I was going to vacation there anyway. Nothing calms me down like genocide.’

  ‘It’s not the best place on earth. But it doesn’t matter. All that matters is a compound, and a man named Brody. Nothing outside the perimeter walls should concern you.’

  ‘When do I leave?’

  ‘As soon as you’re ready. We’ll arrange transportation.’

  ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Let’s get this over and done with. I want to get back out in the field.’

  5

  Another cargo plane.

  King had begun to sense a pattern in Lars’ choice of transportation. He sat in the fuselage of a shaking metal beast with a row of shaking metal seats to spread out over.

  The pinnacle of luxury, he thought.

  He certainly didn’t feel like a millionaire. Lars’ words had been just that — nothing but words — and the fact that he had three million dollars to his name effectively meant nothing to him. He had never been in it for the money — if cash had been his sole focus, he would have taken the unwavering dedication imbued in his soul and applied it to any number of more lucrative fields.

  Despite his best efforts not to seem cocky, he couldn’t imagine himself failing in any position he set his mind to. Thinking over the feats he’d accomplished during the short portion of life he’d spent in the military, he found himself shocked at his willingness to return to the fray. He had no doubts that a similar level of perseverance in the financial sector would have reaped untold benefits for his bank account and, more importantly, his wellbeing.

  But that wasn’t Jason King.

  Jason King was something more.

  An idea.

  A vessel of potential.

  It had taken him that sort of reasoning to justify many things in his life to this point. It had taken a particularly hellish week during SEAL training to recognise the potential for the mind to falter. He’d detached himself from his body upon recognising that almost anything could be accomplished if one simply told the mind to shut the fuck up and put up with the circumstances.

  Since then, there’d be almost no limit to how much he got done.

  Sitting on the freezing seat, surrounded by pallets of supplies lashed together with giant leather straps, King closed his eyes and listened to his gut. It was telling him surprisingly little. He realised the feeling wasn’t quite the same — his trip to Mogadishu had been a live operation, and that had come with all kinds of uncertainties that stretched past the uncomfortable location of Somalia. Somalia itself had never truly bothered him. The capacity of a Force Recon Marine to rebel and cause chaos in the ranks had troubled him far more.

  In reality, he realised the Congo bothered him less than he’d let on.

  He didn’t give a shit about his surroundings. What worried him, time and time again, was the unpredictability of an operation.

  This was training — albeit, training in a hostile wasteland — but training all the same.

  So as the cargo plane roared toward Africa, delivering unknown supplies to an unknown airfield for unknown reasons, Jason King slipped into a deep sleep almost effortlessly.

  Sleep when you can.

  He didn’t know what lay in store for him on the ground. Besides rebels and bandits and villagers and soldiers, he understood a training camp connected in any way to a black operations division would pose more gruelling than anything he’d ever experienced before. This Brody character seemed eccentric to say the least, but the way Lars had spoken about him set King on edge.

  This was a tough, tough bastard.

  But then King thought of Somalia, of a time where a serrated combat knife had rammed into his guts after suffering the beating of a lifetime — he remembered struggling to keep the steel embedded in his side, hanging onto life itself by a thread.

  Now that he’d gone through the worst circumstances life had to offer, physical exertion barely troubled him. There were limits to what one could feasibly do while training, but King would reach them unperturbed. Vomiting, aching, squirming — none of it phased him in the slightest.

  Come on, Brody, he thought. Let’s see what you can do.

  As opposed to his journey to Somalia, Lars had elected not to accompany him in the cargo plane. There was no debriefing to be had — the important details had been covered at Miami Beach.

  King was now in the hands of a man he knew next to nothing about, apart from the fact that he’d done Uncle Sam a great service and was resolute in his demand not to leave the Congo.

  Anything other than that was open to interpretation.

  The jolt of touchdown stirred King from his slumber — he shook himself awake with a brief jerk of the neck, composing himself. He had no idea what would be waiting for him on the ground.

  Inside the open cockpit, he noticed the pilot and co-pilot focused determinedly on the land ahead, coasting the giant cargo plane to a h
alt.

  ‘You guys got private shit to deal with?’ he called out above the noise, the first words uttered between them all flight.

  ‘Yeah,’ the pilot said — he seemed hesitant. ‘We were told it wouldn’t be an issue.’

  King smirked. He had no doubt there were many secrets buried in the contents of the cargo plane — the operation in Somalia had opened his eyes to the truth of international trade. The information he’d uncovered in his pursuit of a bent Force Recon Marine had stripped him of the rose tinted glasses he’d once viewed the world through.

  Especially when planes delivered supplies to active war zones like the Congo.

  There were guns aboard — or drugs, or body armour, or simply an entire payload worth of standard undeclared goods.

  None of it concerned King.

  If he wanted to investigate every malpractice in international trade, he would get to work for thousands of years.

  And that would cover one percent of it.

  ‘Don’t worry, boys,’ he said. ‘I’m not here to snoop around. I’ll be on my way.’

  ‘It’s nothing illegal.’

  ‘Illegal’s a broad definition,’ King said. ‘Most things are illegal. What I do is illegal. You two have a good trip.’

  He unbuckled his harness and snatched the thick duffel bag off the seat adjacent to him.

  ‘All your transportation’s sorted?’ the pilot called, his tone now lighter.

  He seemed genuinely concerned. King imagined the guy stressed to the eyeballs over the course of the flight, wondering when the mysterious passenger would reveal himself as an investigator and order the crates to be opened and inspected. Now that King really was leaving them alone, their systems were likely flooding with relief.

  ‘All clear,’ King said. ‘I’ve hired a car.’

  ‘You staying close to this airfield?’

  ‘Relatively.’

  ‘Keep your head down out there. This is a dangerous place.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ King said. ‘I’ll keep to myself.’

  ‘That might not be enough. We’ve never left an airfield. Too many people out there want to kill you.’

  ‘I think they might be too busy killing each other to worry about me.’

  ‘Why are you here, anyway?’

  The pilot had built up to the question over a series of exchanges, and probably thought he’d been incredibly subtle by managing to slip the query in without much fanfare. Nevertheless, King offered a wry smile. ‘Nice try, bud.’

  ‘Worth a shot.’

  ‘You been told anything?’

  ‘Just that we were to pass you over to a group of Congolese soldiers once we touched down. You really think that’s a good idea?’

  ‘I’m not the one calling the shots.’

  ‘Your bosses must have deep pockets.’

  ‘They sure do.’

  ‘If I were you, I’d triple check that everything’s been put into place before you step off this aircraft. It’s no man’s land out there. If a payment didn’t go through and you come up short around these boys, it won’t be a pretty result. Trust me — I’ve been in this game long enough.’

  ‘I’ll deal with any problems when I get to them,’ King said. ‘Besides — I trust my people.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Good luck with the rest of your careers. Stay safe.’

  ‘Not much money in staying safe,’ the co-pilot muttered, the first time he’d spoken all trip.

  ‘Can’t argue with that,’ King said.

  By that point the rear ramp of the giant cargo plane had finished its descent, touching down on the sweltering runway with a mechanical hiss. King swung the duffel over one shoulder and strode straight out of the hold. The air hung thick over him like a wet blanket, drowning him, leaving him sucking in air and sweating all over. Perspiration dotted the loose cotton T-shirt hanging over his frame — within seconds the material clung to him. He wiped a row of droplets off his brow and sensed the cargo plane rumbling behind him — the rear ramp was ascending again.

  King shivered as a sense of deja vu washed over him — this was identical to how he’d been deposited in Mogadishu only a couple of months earlier. The same feelings swirled in his gut — the unease and hesitation of being dumped in a foreign land with threats everywhere. At the same time he remembered how his venture into Somalia had unfolded, and a twinge of phantom pain arced up the wrist he’d shattered. One side of his ribcage twitched involuntarily, remembering where the combat knife had torn through his skin and plunged into his abdomen.

  He sensed the cargo plane trundling away, its work complete, and turned in a tight circle to get a better look at his surroundings.

  Alone in the wild.

  6

  Much like Somalia, and Mexico before that, there had been no prolonged period of debriefing or stressing over the finer details. King wondered if Lars threw him from one situation to the next deliberately, to make him accustomed to a life of rapid responses. There hadn’t been any need for such barebones information before he’d been thrust onto a cargo plane to the Congo, especially because this was supposed to be a training camp.

  But, then again, maybe it was deliberate.

  King certainly hoped so.

  He twisted around in the middle of a private airfield with cracked tarmac under his boots and realised he had no idea where the hell he was, or what he was supposed to do next.

  He didn’t even have a functioning phone. His private mobile was useless out here, and Lars hadn’t felt the need to provide him with a satellite phone. He’d simply stated that Brody had a phone at the compound, and left it at that. The Congolese soldiers he’d been told to meet had already been briefed on his arrival — and, King assumed, paid handsomely for their troubles.

  He wondered if the soldiers would get any ideas.

  His blood ran cold at the thought, and a tremor began in his knuckles, even as a bead of sweat dripped off his massive right hand and splashed onto the runway.

  He hoped they did.

  He hadn’t knocked a man unconscious in quite some time…

  The private airfield lay amidst a vast, sweeping swathe of undulating plains, choked with bright vibrant green. The hills were dotted with thousands of trees, some of them condensed into what amounted to patches of jungle. The sounds of wildlife were ever-present, and the terrain felt alive. King couldn’t quite place the sensation, but everything around him buzzed and crackled with a certain energy that was hard to articulate.

  He spotted the procession of soldiers immediately. They were the only sign of life for miles around. The airfield itself consisted of a single baked runway with a cluster of buildings at either end. The cargo plane had deposited him closer to the smaller cluster, composed of a collection of single-room huts grouped together. Random apparatus and belongings were strewn through the thick weeds around the huts, indicating the buildings were populated. King wondered if the soldiers lived here.

  Maybe they owned the airfield.

  At the other end of the runway, he turned to see the cargo plane coasting into a gap between two shoddy, rusting warehouses. He spotted the distant glint of sweat on a bare chest, and squinted to make out a party of workers waiting to eagerly intercept the fresh payload, their overalls down by their waists, their torsos exposed to the sweltering sunshine.

  They — and the pilots along with them — had no concern about what happened to King. To them, he didn’t exist. He was out of their hands. Another man lost to the lure of the Congo.

  So King forgot about them and made straight for the cluster of huts, beside which rested an array of open-topped vehicles, all painted khaki. He wasn’t up to speed on the Congo’s political arena, but he imagined these were the Armed Forces of the new President, Joseph Kabila.

  Or not.

  It didn’t affect King either way.

  There were four of them, which would prove tricky if a no-holds-barred fight broke out. King wasn’t armed, and all four of the
sweat-soaked soldiers sported Kalashnikov assault rifles hanging on faded leather straps from their shoulders. King knew he possessed a physical advantage — he could probably drop two of them with strikes before the party knew what had hit them, but it would only take a narrow window of opportunity for one of the soldiers to back up and get his hands on his AK-47. Then a couple of bullets would do the trick.

  King hit hard and moved fast, but he couldn’t stop lead in its tracks.

  After all, physics were undefeated on the battlefield.

  He pulled to a halt a safe distance away from the four men, each of whom hadn’t budged an inch while watching him approach. To indicate that he meant no harm, he dropped the duffel bag to the tarmac and raised both hands wide, his fingers splayed, his demeanour non-aggressive.

  No-one reached for their weapons. They let the rifles continue to swing softly from their shoulders. No Kalashnikov barrels arced in his direction. If they did, he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Not from this distance.

  There was nowhere to run.

  Nowhere to hide.

  He could only surge forward, and that wouldn’t cut it against four armed men.

  ‘Anyone speak English?’ King said, his words oddly muffled.

  He paused momentarily, confused, but realised — in the unbelievable humidity — that sweat had pooled in his ears, affecting his hearing. He wiped droplets off his lobes and waited for a response.

  ‘You are not used to this heat,’ the man furthest to the right said in thickly-accented English.

  King nodded and shrugged. He couldn’t deny it — he had turned wet with perspiration, his shirt drenched and his underwear chafing his thighs in uncomfortable fashion. He thought Miami had been hot.

  He had no idea.

  ‘This is a cool day,’ the same man said. ‘I would be worried if I were you.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll get used to it.’

  ‘We were told to give you a car.’

  ‘Did you get paid?’

  ‘Yes.’ Then the man paused, his eyes lighting up with the potential opportunity. ‘Do you have more money on you?’