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

doesn’t matter. You know that, right? You’re trapped in-country with no allies, and the whole military’s in our pocket. They’ll crush you like a bug.’

The response was a deafening cacophony of automatic gunfire from behind the barbecue.

It didn’t stop.

The carbine fired and fired and fired until it went dry, which only took a couple of seconds given the rate of expenditure.

King leapt up and vaulted back over the table again, despite everything telling him it was a trap. Truth was, it didn’t matter if the gunfire was a ruse to bait him. He had to take the opportunity regardless. Topaz had run his main firearm dry to lure King in, and even if he thought that might give him the element of surprise with a backup weapon poised and ready to fire, it still put him at a lesser capacity.

And if King gave him the time to reload a fresh magazine, they’d be back to the same stalemate which he had little hope of winning.

He rounded the barbecue, brandishing the MEU(SOC) one-handed, ready to fire at the slightest hint of human movement.

He found nothing.

Just the M4 carbine lying horizontally on the terrace floor, the barrel facing away from King. There was a half-toothpick jammed tight between the trigger and the opposite side of the guard, pinning the trigger down so it fired continuously until it ran out of cartridges to chew through.

Topaz was gone.

King put it together fast, because there were few options. He couldn’t have sprinted left or right — King would have seen it. So all that left was backwards, and King’s gaze darted up to find the window right behind the barbecue shattered. The dawn breeze blew the curtains inward, exposing a study with a giant fireplace.

Nobody inside.

Which meant…

King wheeled and saw Topaz vaulting over the lip of the balustrade once more, following the same sequence as before. Like he’d hit a giant reset button. Sweat coated his bulky frame. He’d moved at inhuman speed, going through the sitting room, out the eastern window, and down the side of the mansion, back to the eastern side of the terrace. It succeeded in throwing off the rhythm of the standoff, getting King out of position, but the brute hadn’t been anticipating King’s reaction time.

King doubted Topaz had ever come up against someone with identical reflexes.

King fired three rounds at Topaz, who fired back with a smaller pistol of his own.

Once again, chaos.

But when King pulled the trigger a fourth time, he found his gun dry.

Of course, he remembered. Seven-round mag.

He wasn’t used to such a cumbersome sidearm.

Luckily, Topaz was no longer there.

He could have fallen back off the balustrade out of sheer shock, but it was more likely he’d been hit. King only had to register that he was unhurt, and after that it all became simple. Not easy, but straightforward. Topaz’s shots had been wild spray-and-pray, so they hadn’t found their target, because he was more focused on traversing the balustrade without falling flat on his face. He’d fired in motion, and it hadn’t worked.

But now King was unarmed, and if he went for the carbine on Opal’s corpse at the foot of the staircase, Topaz could pull himself together and retreat.

That wasn’t acceptable.

So King hurled himself over the balustrade, knowing it was only a seven or eight foot drop to the garden bed.

Also knowing he had a landing pad.

He landed feet-first on Topaz’s chest, his two hundred and twenty pounds of bodyweight picking up brutal speed on the short descent, aided by the pull of gravity.

He crushed Topaz’s sternum, possibly stopping the man’s heart, and the brute wheezed a spluttering moan.

King fell to his knees beside the man, and seized Topaz’s throat with his good hand, pinning the man in place as he searched him for signs of the bullet wounds that had sent him sprawling back.

He didn’t find any.

All he found was a crushed pancake of a round, embedded in the centre of Topaz’s Kevlar vest.

No mortal injury.

Only enough force to propel him backward off the balustrade.

Topaz’s eyes came open.

King thought, No way. I crushed his chest.

He had. But that didn’t seem to stop Topaz reaching out with huge gloved hands. They found King’s left arm and grabbed him by the wrist and yanked hard, aggravating all the damage inside his forearm and elbow, all the torn muscle and torched nerve endings.

King didn’t cry out, too overwhelmed by the pain. His grip around Topaz’s throat slackened, passing from his mind completely. His only priority, the only thing that mattered at all, was to get his left arm free. It was like Topaz was holding a blowtorch to his muscles under the surface of his skin.

He tugged his arm away, and more agony seized him, but he got free.

Then Topaz used the momentum to reverse the position, scrambling up and pinning King to the ground.

He grinned through bloody teeth. He wasn’t cut in his mouth or on his lips. The blood had risen up his throat, coming from somewhere internal. He was grievously wounded. Maybe his heart was already starting to fail.

It didn’t stop him.

King fought to move, but he was weakened beyond comprehension. He couldn’t move his left arm an inch.

He’d lost all feeling in the limb.

Topaz locked eyes with King, and his gaze said, You’re right. I won’t make it out. You won’t either.

He wrapped his hands around King’s throat.

Started to squeeze.

King almost welcomed it.

Mere feet away, Violetta said, ‘Stop.’

102

King was barely lucid as he made out Violetta’s form floating on the lawn, clad in a stunning dress.

There was a giant assault rifle in her hands, its stock pressed to her shoulder, one of her eyes squeezed shut as she aimed down the sight.

It was Opal’s M4.

Topaz didn’t loosen his grip. In fact, he squeezed harder. He pressed his body to King’s, so there was no gap between their torsos, uncomfortably close. From that position, prone like a snake, he craned his neck to look up at Violetta.

For the first time, he spoke.