Contracts, Matt Rogers [phonics reading books TXT] 📗

footsteps pattering away. Slater waited, breathing hard and deep. That was about the only thing he could do. The newcomers swept room 108 — he could tell where the majority of the sound was resonating from — but they didn’t seem concerned about the other rooms.

Then what was…?

He put it together. One of the rebels had bent down and checked the pulse of the corpse out there. Maybe the dead man was a close friend. Whatever the case, the body must have blended into the half-dozen other dead insurgents scattered down the hallway. The door to Slater’s room mustn’t have stood out enough to investigate.

Slater fought to control his impulses. Every part of him was on the verge of losing control. It wouldn’t take much prompting. He was utterly helpless, all his training thrown out the window, praying the second wave of rebels didn’t walk in. They might take him alive if they found him in such a state. That would be a whole new world of awful.

Out in the hallway, they muttered to each other in Nepali. They were keeping their voices low, even though every civilian in the building had fled in a panic minutes earlier. They could shout if they wanted. No one was around to hear. No one was around to help.

Slater tried to raise the Sig Sauer one last time.

His shaking hand made it a few inches off the floor.

Then fell straight back to earth.

He lay still and focused on avoiding a heart attack.

And then, all of a sudden, there was silence.

Slater couldn’t help himself. He drifted off again. Consciousness fell away as his body entered survival mode, and he didn’t know how much time passed before he came out of it. When he cracked an eyelid open, he realised it might as well have been hours.

But he was still alive, and during the time he’d been out cold his body had scraped together a few morsels of… something.

He sat up.

Cradled the Sig in his palm.

He couldn’t move fast. But he could move.

And he knew he needed to get the hell out of Gokyo before the rebels tore every building in the village apart searching for him.

Shaky, weak, faint, he attempted to get to his feet.

Levered up onto his knees, then fully upright.

He wavered.

But he remained standing.

Then he wobbled forward and threw the door open.

68

King fell to his knees.

He couldn’t process it properly.

He and Slater had nearly killed themselves to get here, and now their rescue was eradicated with a single piece of lead.

The only salvation he could find was that she never would have known what was coming. It happened so fast, so unexpectedly, that King almost didn’t realise himself until her body hit the cave floor.

Then he dropped, all the feeling sapping out of his legs.

He rocked back on his haunches, turning pale, turning wide-eyed, and tears flooded his eyes.

Mukta actually smiled.

‘How does that feel?’ the porter said. ‘How does it feel to fail? I wouldn’t know, to be honest. This shit is too easy.’

Oscar Perry barely batted an eyelid, but King knew he was hurting on the inside. He also knew the bodyguard was confused. Elite operations were about compartmentalising your emotions and refusing to let them affect you in the heat of combat, no matter what happened. And here was supposedly the best warrior on the planet, succumbing to an emotional breakdown. What the hell was King thinking?

King didn’t blame him for being surprised.

Mukta and the rebels, however, didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.

King bowed his head and sobbed into the cuff of his sleeve.

‘Shut up,’ Mukta hissed. ‘Stop your whining.’

When King sat up, he scooted back half a foot on his rear.

But he timed it well, so both movements aligned, and Mukta didn’t notice.

‘Get up,’ Mukta said. ‘You’re pathetic. Makes me embarrassed that I gave up on the ransom. Maybe you’re not as special as I thought.’

King moved slow, lethargic with his actions. Like all the life had been sapped out of him. Like he’d lost any motivation to continue. Eyes bloodshot and red with tears, he rolled onto his knees, turning his back to the mouth of the cave. He stared into the dark abyss for a moment, contemplating reasons to get to his feet.

‘Up,’ Mukta roared.

King rose. But as he did he reached out for the object he’d blocked with his body.

The empty Sig Sauer P320 given to Perry to use as bait.

He tucked it in close to his body, rose to his feet, and slotted a fresh magazine home, lifting it gently out of his belt.

Then he turned and unloaded the weapon in the space of three seconds.

He blew the brains out of the two rebels with Kalashnikovs, sending them careening off their feet in the mouth of the cave. Then he put three rounds into the guy with the pistol — two in the chest and one in the head, just to make sure his soul was ripped from his body. He put a round into Mukta’s left leg, then his right, disintegrating both his kneecaps. The result was grisly — the porter’s legs splayed out at unnatural angles and he broke a few bones in his upper and lower legs as the limbs simply folded beneath him. Mukta passed out from the pain, but King didn’t notice because he was already putting the last two rounds of the magazine into the unarmed insurgent hovering in the snow outside. The guy took both bullets to the throat and he died before he could even reach for his neck.

The carnage ended, almost before it had begun.

The echo of the gunshots rippled through the cave, and Oscar Perry said, ‘Holy shit.’

King didn’t hear it. Fury roared in his ears. First he went over to Raya and made sure she was dead, but he quickly realised there was no room for debate. She had a cylindrical hole in the centre of her forehead, and an exit wound out the back of her skull, and her