Contracts, Matt Rogers [phonics reading books TXT] 📗

eyes were glazed over. He bent down and put a gentle hand on her shoulder, horrified by what had unfolded, and then he went straight for the porter.

Mukta was still unconscious, so King took a run-up to build momentum and scythed an open palm through the air, slapping the guy so hard on the cheek that it sounded like another gunshot on the cave walls.

Mukta came awake in a world of pain.

King grabbed him by his mop of hair and held him a few inches off the cave floor.

‘I’m going to ask you a few questions,’ he said.

Pale and shaking, Mukta noticed his broken mangled legs. ‘Ohhh…’

King bashed his head against the ground like a bowling ball.

‘Just kill me,’ the porter mumbled.

‘Soon,’ King said. ‘I’m still trying to piece this together.’

‘What… do you want?’

‘How long have you been doing this?’

‘Two years.’

‘How often are you successful?’

‘Almost every … time. Oh, my legs, oh. Please. Just… help me. Get rid of this pain.’

‘No,’ King said, and smashed his skull into the rock floor again.

Hard enough to hurt like hell.

Not hard enough to knock him unconscious.

‘How much money do you think you’ve made doing this?’

‘Tens… of millions … of U.S. Dollars. This was… my last job.’

‘Why hasn’t anyone caught you?’

‘Because when they pay the ransom… it’s easier for everyone if no one speaks about it.’

‘And when they don’t pay the ransom?’

‘They always do.’

‘What made you think you could get away with kidnapping an important government official’s daughter?’

‘I didn’t… know how important… she was. Please. The pain.’

King slapped him across his already-swollen cheek. ‘How did you know who she was in the first place?’

‘I… pay some people who know who’s coming into Nepal. There were… certain flags we picked up on… when Aidan Parker came into the country. No one… knew… what he did. So I knew he was important. I made sure… I got the porter job… for his trek. From there it was easy.’

‘Did you know about the laptop beforehand?’

‘No.’

‘How important do you think the laptop is?’

‘I know it will sell for millions. Maybe double my fortune… maybe more. I already told… the rest of my forces… to get it.’

‘How many are there?’

‘Many more.’

‘They’ll come for us?’

‘They are already on their way.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because maybe… you will help me.’

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ King said.

He put a huge palm on Mukta’s throat and squeezed the life out of him.

69

Like moving through a fever dream.

Slater went down the hallway, drenched in shadow, stepping over bodies, surrounded by desolation. There wasn’t a soul in sight. He made it to the shattered entrance doors and stepped right through the frame, holding the Sig in front of him as best he could. The cold hit him like a punch to the chest, threatening to sap more of his momentum, but he killed that line of thinking and stepped down into the snow.

He was in a snowy laneway between the two buildings — the main dining room, elevated on stilts a few feet above a snowy embankment, and the dormitory-style accommodation behind him. From there the slope descended to the flat plains between the village and Gokyo Ri.

But not before it gave way to a small divot in the hillside, home to a patch of land filled with dirt and rock. The snow had been cleared away earlier that morning for…

For what?

Slater blinked.

Really?

He saw the helicopter perched there, painted red and silver, powered down as it rested on its landing skids. But he couldn’t quite believe it wasn’t a figment of his imagination.

When the hell did that show up?

When he was passed out, probably. There wasn’t anyone inside it. There were any number of explanations for that — the pilot had landed for a routine supply drop, or to evacuate one of the many trekkers who succumbed to altitude sickness each and every week. The visit in itself was nothing out of the ordinary — there were choppers flying in and out of the remote villages all the time — but the sheer dumb luck was worth scrutinising.

Slater didn’t believe in coincidences.

But right now, he didn’t give a shit what he believed in. There was a helicopter there, ripe for the taking, and he wasn’t about to debate the semantics.

He didn’t move, though. He swept his surroundings, but frankly it was impossible to cover all his bases. There were probably ten buildings in total facing the helicopter, and all of them had multiple vantage points from which to blast his head off his shoulders.

He just had to hope for…

A door swung open in the dining hall to his left. He pivoted and caught a peripheral glance of a woollen balaclava, and that was all he needed to see.

He swung the P320 up and pumped the trigger ten consecutive times.

He had spare magazines, after all, and nothing to lose anyway.

The rounds shredded everyone in the doorway to pieces. Three or four rebels jerked back inside or collapsed over the threshold, bleeding from entry and exit wounds, either dead or soon to be.

Slater didn’t need any further encouragement.

He turned and ran.

Flat-out bolted for the helicopter.

Bad move.

Very bad move.

Give an elite athlete with unparalleled genetic reflexes all the combat training in the world and they’re still bound to make mistakes when unfamiliar circumstances arise. Slater had never been affected by altitude. The warrior ethos dictated that the solution to all physical problems was just to tough it out, but that wasn’t conducive to success out here. He honestly thought he could make it to the chopper at a sprint. But he made it probably five steps in total before his legs gave out and he sprawled forward on the slope, landing face-first in the powder and tumbling head over heels down the hillside. He picked up steam, his body thrashing this way and that, and when he came to rest in a bruised heap at the bottom of the slope he checked himself over for injuries.

But he genuinely couldn’t tell.

He could have a broken leg for all he