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

The Dodge screamed as the driver hit the brakes, and operatives leapt out before it was stationary.

There were four of them. Three were masked in balaclavas, each face cover sporting a different macabre image — a skull, a wolf, a clown. The fourth had foregone the anonymity, revealing his crew-cut, sharp jawline, and cold eyes.

They were killers.

They were Will Slater ten years ago, ready to die for their country.

Die for a giant corporation.

Insane to consider, but they’d do it. At the core of it they were selfless men, brainwashed by superiors, honed into human weapons.

Slater didn’t want to hurt them.

They, on the other hand, wanted to tear him limb from limb.

And they could do it. They all had carbines with full mags, and as they leapt out of the truck they brought them up to aim at Slater and Alonzo.

Slater backed up to the consulate’s small front door and kicked backwards with the strength of a desperate man. The lock shattered, and the door thundered inward.

Still holding Alonzo by the collar, he stepped over the threshold and dragged the man across.

Then he bent at the knees and put the HK45CT on the floor, between his feet.

He stood back up.

Unarmed.

Filling the doorway.

The operatives hesitated. Clearly, if they had the easy option, they wanted both men alive. Better a slow death, wringing every scrap of intel out of them, than gunning them down pointlessly.

Slater sensed the room he’d stepped into was populated by diplomatic officials, but he didn’t dare turn and look. He could hear the completeness of the shell-shocked silence. They understood that an armed conflict had fallen into their laps and froze like statues, watching it unfold.

Still facing the encroaching operatives, Slater put his hands up, exposing his empty palms. ‘Take me, then.’

Violetta, he thought. If there was ever a time to come through…

Shooting it out would be futile, which was why he’d dropped the gun. Even if he was reflexively superior, he’d still need blind luck to nail four moving targets in body armour whilst avoiding the hail of gunfire that came his way.

But as hesitant as he was to get into a firefight, they were just as hesitant to shoot into a consulate. It wasn’t an embassy — the Consulate General of El Salvador would only handle smaller diplomatic needs — but the ramifications of shooting it up were the same.

The man in the skull mask held the others back by raising a gloved palm, and he lowered his aim away from the consulate’s doorway.

Slater didn’t budge.

The skull cocked to the side as the operative scrutinised his prey.

He walked forward, up onto the sidewalk, until he was four or five steps away from Slater.

One big lunge from either party, and they’d have their hands on each other.

Slater could smell the sweat underneath the balaclava. The man stunk of adrenaline and testosterone.

Slater said, ‘Come on in. Take us.’

A long pause.

The skull was inhuman, its wearer’s eyes covered by ballistic wraparound shades.

The man’s voice was deep, basso in tone. ‘You know something I don’t?’

‘Maybe.’

Nothing happened.

‘Get out of here,’ a loud voice said from behind Slater, accented and pumped full of bravado.

Slater risked a look over his shoulder, then returned his gaze to the skull mask. He’d glimpsed a Latino man with brown skin and a full head of thick grey hair, slight of build, wearing spectacles, hunched over in a suit that was as far from tailored as you could get. He stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by cowering diplomats.

‘Who are you?’ Slater said, looking at the operative over the threshold but speaking to the man behind him.

‘The consul,’ the man said, trying not to lose his bravery.

The chief diplomat, Slater thought. The guy in charge.

Slater said to the consul, ‘Do you adhere to human rights law?’

An embassy or consulate was obliged to weigh up whether someone seeking shelter was at risk of serious injury or death at the hands of local authorities.

‘Not for you,’ the consul said, and now his voice was shaking. ‘I don’t know you. Or your friend. Get out.’

Slater smiled, like there was no problem at all. Now he addressed the operative, whose breath he could feel hissing through the balaclava over his mouth. ‘And you? You know about the rule of inviolability?’

Straight from the Vienna Convention.

The local authorities have no rights to enter an embassy or a consulate without permission from the ambassador.

The skull mask stared, unmoving. The basso voice said, ‘Do I look like the local authorities?’

He had a point.

Black operatives adhered to no laws. It was the nature of the job.

The consul said loudly, ‘You may enter! I want nothing to do with this. I don’t know these men.’

The operative stepped forward.

Now only three paces away.

Slater tensed up.

I’ve bought all the time I can.

Then the skull mask cocked to the side again.

This time, not out of curiosity, but as if the wearer had heard something.

A gloved finger came up and pressed his ear.

He was listening to something. Someone.

New orders coming through an earpiece.

Slater stared hard at his own reflection in the wraparound shades. Trying to bore through into the man’s eyes.

The operative straightened up, three feet from Slater. The two men were identical in height. He could bring the carbine up to Slater’s stomach and pump him full of lead if he wanted.

He didn’t.

He growled, ‘Fuck,’ turned and walked away.

96

The atmosphere in Vásquez’s bedroom chamber was like the aftermath of a junkie’s week-long bender.

The hangover of fatigue.

Alexis released the choke, revealing a swollen throat already darkening with bruising. All the anger and the hurt had been sucked out of the old man. He fell off her and crawled over to the nearby chest-of-drawers, using it to prop himself up. He stared at them, taking in deep breaths.

Violetta made sure he was looking at her before she spoke. ‘You need to understand something.’

‘Okay.’

‘We were assigned to this because we could play whores. The people we work with … you don’t want to know how bad they are. They’re a different