Hunters, Matt Rogers [pdf ebook reader .txt] 📗

airways constricting, the muscles in his neck tearing, his throat spasming. He went bright red and tried to fight the choke hold. His dopamine receptors disappeared under the avalanche of stress chemicals, and the Bodhi lost its shine.

He fell unconscious in horrific pain, with a final view of the Resolute desk.

Topaz kept squeezing until Nelson was dead.

Then he dropped the body on the Seal.

4

The President seemed to understand what had happened.

Beneath the flimsy barrier of artificial stimulation, his eyes were alight with terror.

Opal wrenched his head up so the President had to look him in the eyes.

The brute said, ‘You’ve met me before.’

The President nodded.

Opal said, ‘What did I tell you then?’

‘N-not to disobey you.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘I disobeyed you.’

‘Was it worth it?’

Blood trickled out of Devin Nelson’s open mouth onto the oval blue rug. One of the rivulets soaked into the edge of the Seal, staining the coat of arms. Opal sighed. They’d have to get professional cleaners in for that.

The President said, ‘No.’

‘Do you think this is a game?’ Opal asked. ‘Is this position a joke to you? Something you can step away from as you please?’

‘No,’ the President stammered. ‘I’m sorry. I was careless. I’ll do what you want.’

‘You already told us that,’ Opal said, staring at Nelson’s body. ‘And now … this.’

Topaz growled, ‘Punish him.’

The President’s cheeks drained of colour, but he concentrated and his expression quickly fell back to neutral.

Even high as hell, the man could hold it together. Cool, calm, and collected. He was a rockstar in the public eye, after all. It’s how he’d wormed his way into office. But the ego trip got to his head. He actually thought he could do what he wanted. He didn’t understand in today’s age the role was that of a puppet, and those in the shadows worked the strings.

Opal said, ‘Does it feel good?’

The President shrugged, but his face did the talking. His face said, It feels spectacular.

Opal said, ‘Okay. Fuck it. No further punishment. You stay in here alone until it wears off and then you head back to your residence to see your wife and kids in the early hours of the morning. You tell them you had a busy night. You’re the President. They’ll understand.’ Opal hissed air out through gritted teeth at the sight of the President. The man was useless, an incompetent fool, a petty idiot chasing a high. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself. What if there was a nuclear emergency?’

‘Your division would take care of it,’ the President mumbled. ‘Because you’re the ones in charge. I’m an empty public figurehead held tight on a leash. Is that right?’

Opal smiled, gripping the man’s hair tighter. ‘That’s right. You learn fast.’

The President tried to nod, but the gesture nearly yanked the hair from his scalp, so he clammed up.

Opal said, ‘Are you being nice to me so I leave you alone?’

The President nodded.

‘So you can enjoy your high?’

Another nod.

The man was honest, at least.

Opal said, ‘Pathetic.’

He let go of the tuft of hair, and the President dropped to the rug on all fours. His back arched and he sighed.

Topaz looked away from him, shaking his head in disapproval.

Opal gestured for Topaz to follow, and left the Oval Office through the usual exit, dumping them into the offices of the personal secretaries. The same middle-aged assistant was locked in a staring contest with his computer screen, refusing to acknowledge the presence of the two brutes. Whatever he heard come out of their mouths he’d soon forget.

Smart man, Opal though.

He turned to Topaz. ‘Task a clean-up crew for that mess.’

Topaz’s eyes gleamed. ‘Who gave the drug to Nelson?’

‘Connor Wright. He’s a lowly intelligence asset in Nelson’s division. I already have a unit picking him up.’

Topaz grinned. ‘Torture?’

Opal nodded. ‘Probably. He might not break easily.’

The grin spread wider. ‘Good.’

Opal led his colleague out of the White House, convinced that Topaz was certifiably insane.

A necessary trait, doing what they did.

5

They snatched Connor with clinical precision.

He didn’t even see it coming.

He clocked out for the day and left the indiscriminate anonymous eight-storey building in which he slaved day in and day out at eight-thirty in the evening. He’d started at seven that morning, but a thirteen-hour day was nothing out of the ordinary. Frankly, he didn’t mind. Sitting behind a desk for thirteen hours sifting through intelligence was nothing. The operatives he fed intel to were out there in the field, in the mud and muck and dirt and shit, either rationing their MREs deep behind enemy lines or dealing with the stress of undercover work in a foreign country.

So the tiredness in his bones barely fazed him as he stepped out into the balmy Washington evening.

What did faze him was the Vipertek VTS-989 taser zapping him in the side of the neck, sending three hundred million volts through his body. It killed his vision and filled his eardrums with a horrid roar for a split second, and when he came to he realised he’d pissed his pants. There were hands under his armpits on either side, and he only figured out he wasn’t moving of his own volition a couple of seconds before they threw him in the back of a van and slammed the doors on him.

Fresh hands grabbed him in the dark, wrenched his wrists behind his back, cable-tied them. Electrical tape went around his ankles, over and over again, until his legs were mummified. Then the hands forced him down to the van floor as it took off. He rolled left and right, his clothes now damp with his own urine, and his heart hammered loud enough to hear it filling his ears.

A gruff invisible voice muttered, ‘Christ, he’s wet himself.’

‘Good,’ another voice said.

There was a moment’s silence, and Connor savoured the reprieve. He tried to force himself to think, to make sense of what was happening so he could approach what came next with a clear head—

A hypodermic needle came out of the dark and sliced into