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

then, ‘Anything. It will be done. I will make sure of it.’ A longer silence. ‘Yes, El Presidente. I understand. You have my word. I swear on my children, I won’t let you down.’

He waited, then lowered the phone.

The other diplomatic officials were in a mutual state of shock, each of their reactions varying. A call directly from the President of El Salvador was unfathomable.

The consul blinked hard for a while, then returned the phone underneath the glass barrier. He cleared his throat and spun to Slater. He scrutinised Slater in a new light.

‘Who are you?’ the consul asked.

His tone toward Slater hadn’t changed, drenched in the same hostility.

‘Someone with connections,’ Slater said. ‘As you can see.’

‘What did you do?’

Slater shrugged, and left it at that. He didn’t have the energy for much else.

To Alonzo, the consul said, ‘And who are you?’

Alonzo said, ‘I don’t see how that’s your concern.’

‘Are you Salvadoran?’ the consul asked. ‘You look it.’

Alonzo said, ‘Cuban.’

The consul snorted dismissively.

That made Slater lift his head. He said, ‘Where’s that tone you used with your President?’

‘I don’t know what you did,’ the consul said. ‘But I know he’s not helping you out of the goodness of his heart.’

‘I imagine there’s no good in that man’s heart,’ Slater said. ‘Whatever the case, he told you to help us. And you’re being standoffish. I place one call, it’s your head on a stick.’

‘Bullshit. You don’t have his line.’

Slater fished the sat phone from his jacket pocket. ‘Want to risk it?’

The consul didn’t answer.

Slater dialled a few random numbers, the supposed first in a long chain that would get him—

Nowhere, he knew.

But he could bluff with his life on the line. In comparison, this was nothing.

The consul waved his hands frantically. ‘Okay. Okay. Sir, okay. What do you need? We’ll cater to your every need.’

Slater tucked the phone away. ‘Aspirin. Food. Water. And a mattress.’

The consul shifted restlessly from foot to foot. ‘And then…?’

Slater raised an eyebrow.

‘What’s your endgame? How long will you be staying here?’

Slater didn’t have the mental capacity to consider that right now. ‘That phone call you just had. At any point, did your President say you could ask me questions?’

Hesitation. Then, ‘No.’

‘Is this an interrogation?’

‘No, sir.’

‘It seems like one.’

‘I apologise.’

Slater nodded. ‘There we go.’

Broken, dishevelled, his head pounding, he got to his feet and limped deeper into the reception area, away from the front door that may as well be radioactive. Outside, a cordon was no doubt being established. They’d surround the neighbouring buildings with enough manpower to subdue an army.

However he and Alonzo were getting out, it wouldn’t be straightforward.

The second they stepped out of the zone of diplomatic immunity, they’d be taken.

As Alonzo followed him into the back of the consulate, Slater thought, Please be alive, King.

98

King burst out onto the front terrace of Torres’ mansion and came upon a scene of slaughter in the predawn light.

It shook him to his core.

Bodies littered the front lawn, blood staining the perfect grass. Over a dozen men were dead. Their corpses were riddled with bullets.

There was no sign of life.

And then there was.

The silhouette hobbled up the weaving driveway, dragging one leg behind him. He’d been shot in the thigh, and perhaps elsewhere. He was on death’s door. Personal safety had become a non-factor, and it seemed he’d decided to abandon all tactical awareness and make a beeline for the giant house.

Hoping to confront me? King thought.

He crouched behind the outdoor dining table on the east side of the terrace, staying low, keeping out of sight. He brandished his pistol, tightening his grip, ready to use it.

When the silhouette made it all the way up the driveway, the exterior floodlights illuminated him.

King finally understood the gravity of the newcomer’s wounds.

He’d been riddled with automatic gunfire, perhaps a stray burst from one of the guards. Blood poured down both his arms, his head, his neck. His left leg was functionally useless. Muscle hung in tatters on the outside of his knee. A bullet had torn through every ligament, taking chunks of bone out with it.

King had no idea how the man was still alive.

He scrutinised his features and figured it was Opal based on Slater’s description. The talkative one, the mastermind, the yin to his partner Topaz’s yang.

He was still holding his carbine rifle — an M4 — but as he reached the marble steps up to the terrace he lowered the barrel to the gravel and used it as a cane.

He turned away from the house, lowered his squat powerhouse of a frame to the second step, and sat down hard. There was a finality to it.

He knew he wouldn’t be getting back up again.

King knew he was within earshot, but he didn’t dare raise his head above cover.

Topaz was unaccounted for.

He called out, ‘Came to surrender?’

Opal’s head became one of those rotating circus clown games as he searched for the source in his half-dead semi-consciousness. When he failed to find it, he threw his head back and sighed.

‘That wasn’t fair, Jason,’ he called back. ‘What you got those guards to do…’

‘I can come out there,’ King said. ‘Patch you up. Send you on your way. We can come to an arrangement.’

‘You know we can’t.’

‘Says who? Your faceless employers? Spineless cretins who sit behind a desk and tell you what to do and when to do it?’

Opal didn’t answer.

‘You see them out here?’ King shouted. ‘You see them in-country?’

‘That’s the way it goes,’ Opal said. ‘That’s the way it’ll always go.’

‘You’re a stoic? Like your buddy Diamond?’

‘He wasn’t my buddy. He was a crackpot who never played by the book.’

‘You play by the book?’

‘I try to.’

‘Look where it got you.’

‘Uh-huh.’

Each of Opal’s syllables were now descending in volume as the life sapped out of him. He lifted a bloody hand to his square scalp and ran a crimson streak through his buzzcut with his palm.

‘Where’s Topaz?’ King shouted.

Opal hesitated, then King thought he saw the man smile. It was hard to tell from behind. The brute