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

it’d wind up getting him killed. He subconsciously understood that he’d reached his ceiling in this game, and the last thing he ever wanted to do was decline. He’d never stepped down a rung in his life. He wasn’t about to.

No, if he got relegated to the D-League in future, he’d go out on top.

A blaze of glory.

He steeled himself for imminent warfare, dredging up that familiar sensation of an invisible fist gripping his insides, and threw the motel room door open to head for his pickup truck.

He didn’t make it.

As soon as he stepped over the threshold, someone waiting right beside the door wrapped a giant arm around Deckard’s throat and wrapped him up in a one-armed choke hold, slipping expertly behind his centre mass to prevent a counterattack. Then the assailant dragged Deckard back into the motel room and slammed the door shut with his boot.

Cross was plunged back into the seedy lowlight just as the attacker threw him down hard enough to send the rifle and the jacket flying in separate directions. His skull bounced hard on the floor, which was really nothing more than a paper-thin layer of carpet over solid concrete, so he lost all his ability to fight back. He was surprised he stayed conscious.

One thought overrode all the others. Who the fuck can do that to me?

Then he looked up, his vision swimming, into the eyes of a man he recognised.

‘Oh,’ he muttered. ‘I know you.’

The mythical Jason King stared down at him. Cross almost hadn’t believed the man actually existed. He was the stuff of legend — real legend, not fairytales. King’s condition wasn’t like the mugshots Cross had seen many years ago. Now he was dishevelled, like a barbarian on the battlefield, his hair a damp mess and his left arm pinned tight to his body in a sling.

King pinned Cross to the ground with a boot in the middle of his chest and regarded the operative with contempt. ‘This is who they’ve got doing their dirty work these days?’

Cross couldn’t be bothered defending himself. The self-hatred cut deep tonight. ‘I’ve got the reflexes going for me, like you. Everything else … not so much.’

‘They’re too reliant on those tests,’ King said.

‘Tell me about it. If I’m not mistaken, you just took me down with one hand.’

King stared at Cross in silence for a long beat. Then he said, ‘You got personal troubles. But I guess I already knew that.’

‘Is that how you found me?’

‘You play online blackjack more than you actually work. Leaving your personal computer open to all sorts of malware. Maybe next time don’t be a moron with your internet security and you won’t end up here.’

Cross rolled his eyes. At least the caffeine and nicotine were kicking in, combining into a potent stimulant that made this little chat bearable.

‘You know who I work for,’ Deckard said. ‘You know there won’t be a next time.’

King shrugged as best he could with one functional arm. ‘That’s on you.’

Then he stomped down on Cross’s head.

106

Slater only stayed sitting on the cheap mattress in his room for a couple of minutes before he abandoned his laptop and joined Alonzo next door.

He could spend all the time he wanted tracking official channels, waiting for a hint that the secret stalemate between America and El Salvador was off, but it took an absence of ego to recognise he was out of his depth and turn it over to Alonzo. The technological world would never be his strong suit, and he knew that. Alonzo was already inside the system he’d previously lorded over, able to fire off orders to any of the black-ops agents scattered across the globe.

There was nothing Slater could do to compete with that.

So he waited with bated breath in Alonzo’s room. The man was hunched over his laptop on the sofa cushions he was using for a bed. The space was the size of a walk-in wardrobe, plagued by the faint smell of stress and dirty clothes and body odour.

Alonzo inched closer and closer to his screen, then his eyes went wide. ‘Oh, fuck.’

Slater tensed up, gripped the HK45CT tight. ‘What?’

‘Orders are out. El Salvador caved. The consulate is to be breached immediately. Looks like there’s seven … eight sets of orders. I’m looking at the live feed. Six from the front, two from the back. So eight ground troops spread across two strike teams.’

He spoke at warp speed, each syllable following the other in rapid-fire.

Slater took in the information, and his chest tightened.

It all happened like that.

He didn’t know whether King was in position or not, and there was no time to check.

He said, ‘Do it. Now. Your orders.’

Alonzo copy-pasted pre-prepared instructions complete with all the relevant confirmation codes into the live feed and fired them off.

Then he waited.

So did Slater.

A long pause where the air seemed to sit still, then—

Commotion from the reception area. Chairs scraping across the floor, desks shifting, footsteps pattering short distances. As if the diplomats were seeking cover.

‘What’s that?’ Slater whispered. ‘They’ve been warned in advance?’

Alonzo closed the laptop. It served no purpose anymore. Either it would work or it wouldn’t. No use hunching over it praying it did. He stood up, and Slater moved into the hallway to allow him through.

Somehow the narrow corridor was more claustrophobic than before. Slater followed the length of it with his gaze, all the way to the metal back door. Any moment he expected it to burst inward, knocked off its hinges by a breaching tool.

Nothing happened.

Standing beside him, Alonzo whispered, ‘Did it work?’

Slater said nothing.

In the reception, a landline phone rang.

On and on its tone chimed, filling the gaping quiet.

No one answered it.

Slater’s mood was grim as he said, ‘Maybe that’s for us.’

Alonzo said, ‘What?’

‘Who else would it be for?’

‘Will…’

Slater looked at him, a touch nihilistic. ‘I have a compact pistol. They have dozens of Tier One operatives with automatic rifles and all the time in the world to plan a breach. If the call