The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

he tripped his feet from under him and dropped him onto his back. The man hollered, then screamed when his buttocks hit the ground and the bolt took the impact.

He didn’t stop screaming.

King stepped away, picked up the assault rifle and checked it. The man did not have a spare magazine on him, judging from his attire, but he did pick up the man’s radio and tossed it over the fence. He looked back towards the property and could see two men on the lawn, two-hundred and fifty metres away, and one-hundred and fifty feet below. They were looking his way, but the sun was still in their eyes. King shouldered the rifle, took aim and fired three shots at each man, all aimed below the waist and above the knees. Both men dropped a moment later. He could hear their screams, even above the man squirming and hollering on the ground behind him.

King didn’t look back. He started down the embankment, then crouched and took aim at the guard by the pool. He could see the woman on her feet, the children in the pool, their play having stopped as they stared up at him. King shouldered the weapon again. He fired two shots at the guard. Steadied his aim and fired another two rounds. The guard dropped to the ground, but he was alive and crawling desperately to safety. King sent half a dozen rounds into the pool and each impact threw a spray of water three-feet into the air. The bullets landed near the children, but he was never in doubt they would miss. The children screamed and scrambled to the side, their mother dashing towards them, desperately trying to pull them clear.

Luca Fortez appeared on the patio with a nickel-plated handgun and fired on King. The bullets went wide and low, sending up dust that showered his feet. King returned fire, making sure his bullets hit the glass doors behind. The glass showered the mafia boss and he ducked down, crouching low as he got to his wife’s side and heaved his son out of the pool.

The radio in King’s pocket chattered and he took it out, pressed down on the transmitter switch and tucked it into his belt making sure the switch remained activated. He had now jammed all communication between the security. The handset was ancient and only had the one channel. King stood up straight and fired two more rounds on Luca, aiming just a little to his left. He slung the weapon over his shoulder and calmly took the Uzi off his other shoulder. A guard ran onto the lawn and King mowed him down, taking the man’s legs out from under him in a burst of 9mm copper-coated lead.

There were many screams now, calls for help and the sound of general panic and pandemonium. Gunfire erupted to King’s left and he returned the rest of the magazine, hitting the gunman and the vehicle he had sheltered behind. The car’s alarm added to the cacophony of noise. He changed magazines, then slung the Uzi over his shoulder and switched to the Heckler and Koch G36. He had barely noticed what make the weapon had been. All he knew was he was familiar with it and had it switched to selective fire mode as soon as he had picked it up. The 5.56mm rounds were more powerful than the 9mm pistol rounds in the Uzi, and the weapon was accurate to five-hundred metres.

King reached the lawn and the writhing men. He kicked the first man’s weapon aside. Then covered the other two with the rifle. “Where… is… Luca… Fortez?” he asked harshly in carefully rehearsed, but poor Italian, with as much Russian accent as he could achieve speaking a language he would not even understand the answer to. He bent down and picked up one of the men’s pistols and tucked it into his waistband. The man spat something in Italian at him, and King dropped the rifle butt down onto the man’s ankle. He wailed, and King kicked the other man’s rifle away.

Two guards ran out into the grounds from the buildings behind the mansion and fired on King with pistols. King turned and fired, but this time, the men were close, so he took no chances and gave each one two rounds, centre-mass. They went down hard and one rested still, the other squirmed, his legs kicking and striking the ground in an effort to push himself into cover. King turned towards the house and fired the rest of the magazine at the windows, then dropped the weapon and slipped the Uzi off his shoulder. He jogged down the side of the house towards the pool. Luca’s wife was shepherding her children into the house, but the broken glass was making their escape on bare feet difficult. King was instantly regretful, not wanting the children to injure themselves, but he knew they would be ok. Nothing a few plasters wouldn’t sort out. He had seen worse in Syria and Iraq; these two privileged children would cope with a few cuts and a day of discomfort. They may be traumatised, but then, maybe he had done them a favour. Maybe they would head clearly down a different path, a life without crime.

King looked at the woman. She was frozen to the spot, her feet bleeding on the broken glass. She didn’t seem to notice the pain and was simply staring back at him, looking at the muzzle of the machine-pistol. King grabbed hold of her, twisted her around and held her in front of him for a human shield. Just as long as her husband did not fire upon them, she would be alright. Luca wouldn’t be so lucky. He was going to feel some pain now. King saw him sheltering behind a large planter and opened fire. The terracotta pot smashed, and King aimed carefully at the man as he cowered.

Again,