Contracts, Matt Rogers [phonics reading books TXT] 📗

with a flaming two-by-four. All thanks to spending half his life behind enemy lines, in places he didn’t belong, in situations where discovery by the enemy meant certain death.

He’d been wired to treat unexpected gunshots like the end of the world, so he was halfway across the room before he shook off the tendrils of sleep and thought, Oh shit, this is happening.

The kitchen knife was in his hand. The same instinct had made him yank it out from underneath the pillow when he burst off the mattress. He made it to the bedroom door and threw it open and came face-to-face with three guys crowded in the small space in front of him. It was an alcove in the side of the building, the missing wall exposing the space to the elements. The other two sides were home to another bedroom and a communal toilet.

The three men were dressed in faded military fatigues and wore shiny black boots on their feet and carried an assortment of weapons — one had a Kalashnikov rifle, the other a pistol, and the third had his hands curled into fists and his teeth bared.

So, naturally, Slater slit the throat of the man with the rifle and shot a stabbing front kick into the nose of the guy with the pistol. The rifleman dropped, blood spurting from arteries in his neck, and the guy with the pistol staggered back, bleeding from both nostrils, his nose skewered at an odd angle, blinded by the pain. The pistol was still in his hands, so Slater charged him and slammed him against the opposite door and thrust the knife between his ribs, aiming for the heart.

He thought he found it, because the guy’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he dropped the gun. Slater went to pull the knife out, but was met with resistance. The blade was lodged, probably between a pair of ribs.

Slater abandoned it the moment he saw the last guy swinging for his unprotected head.

He ducked away and barely avoided a right hook that seemed like it might have taken his head clean off his shoulders if it connected. The soldier clearly had some sort of formal boxing training, because he threw with enough technique to impress Slater. He pivoted at the waist and used the entire kinetic chain of motion, but that only made it worse when the punch missed in such a confined space. He connected with the wall and probably broke a few fingers, judging by the wince that spread across his face.

Slater kicked him on the outside of the knee, putting his shin into it like a battering ram.

The guy went down awkwardly into a half-squat, and before he righted himself Slater hit him with a picture-perfect uppercut that cracked off his chin and snapped his head back.

Somehow, he stayed on his feet, so Slater opened up his hips and swung through with the same shin and connected with the same spot on the outside of the same knee, tearing muscle and ligament.

Now the guy went down in a heap, and Slater stomped down on his head.

Crack.

Silence.

A meticulous dismantling.

He took a deep breath, snatched up the AK-47, and went to check on King.

33

King let the echo of the gunshots fade before he made his next move.

The bodies came to rest sprawled across the alcove floor, bleeding from multiple orifices. It was never a pretty sight. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to the sight of life sapping from a human being for as long as he lived. That wasn’t something that ever became normalised. It hit you like a gut punch every single time.

He breathed hard, in and out, controlling his impulses, listening for sounds of turmoil elsewhere.

He heard them immediately.

There were muffled grunts and then a dull thud, and something faint and distant that sounded awfully like the slash of a blade against skin.

Slater.

Fighting for his life.

King burst out of the doorway with no regard for his own life.

Because that was the way he’d always operated.

Protect those you’re closest to.

At all costs.

He leapt out of the alcove and down the two steps, exposing himself to the long stretch of patio. The space was barely lit by the weak bulbs, dull in the night, and the wind swept across the slab of concrete incessantly, howling and twisting and writhing in the darkness. King landed and swept the AK-47 in a full revolution, but the patio was empty.

Until it wasn’t.

Suddenly there were arms around his waist, and it took him by such surprise that he nearly leapt out of his skin. They came from behind, looping around his mid-section, and calloused hands locked together against his abdomen. He tried to manoeuvre the rifle around to fire behind him but it was far too late. Whoever was holding him was small — at least a full foot shorter than King — but their grip strength was astonishing.

King resorted to desperation, and tried to wrench the guy off him, but it was futile.

He was already off-balance, and sometimes that’s all it takes. The next thing he knew he was stumbling toward the edge of the patio, careening out of control.

Heart in his throat.

He felt it pounding in his ears.

He squeezed the trigger of the AK-47, firing a volley of shots into the concrete, hoping the racket of the gunshots would deter his attacker.

It didn’t.

The hostile held tight and kept muscling him toward the edge, pushing him further off-balance, and then when the guy realised they were close enough to the end of the concrete slab he put all his weight into it and threw them both off.

It wasn’t much of a drop — five feet at most to the trail — but that never matters.

What matters is how you land.

King didn’t land well.

He fell forward, face-first, and had to put his hands in front of his face to break his fall, but that meant dropping the rifle.

Which he wasn’t prepared to do.

So the result was a last-second