Hawk, p.15
Hawk, page 15
part #6 of Will Slater Series
But he tapped.
He reached up and patted Slater’s forearm, twice, and surrendered.
Slater let go and skirted over on his butt, moving a foot to the left, and he rolled into a seated position and caught his breath.
King sat there, too, silently working for breath, his throat already red and aggravated and swollen.
Then he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
And it echoed down the trail.
33
They sat there for a couple of minutes, not talking, because that was how they operated.
Instinct.
Bred into them over time.
They’d spent their whole careers out in the field, alone, compartmentalising their own emotions and grappling with their life choices, bogged down in muck and sweat and blood and dust, outnumbered almost every time.
And here they were, fighting each other.
King piped up eventually. He said, ‘I was angry.’
Slater said, ‘I know.’
‘Would have gone differently if I’d been calculated.’
‘Keep telling yourself that.’
‘Is this going to happen again?’
Slater said, ‘You tell me.’
‘I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often. This is a mad world. I don’t know how we stay sane.’
‘We don’t.’
King just nodded.
Then he picked himself up and dusted himself off, and offered Slater a hand. Slater took it, and clambered to his feet, and they set off back down the trail like nothing had happened at all. The sky turned steadily more overcast with each passing minute, shrouding them in grey, adding to the uncertainty they both felt churning in their stomachs.
They walked on and on.
Eventually Slater said, ‘I really don’t want that to happen again.’
King said, ‘I know.’
‘I fucking mean it. I see a punch coming like that again and next time I might not let go when you tap.’
‘I understand.’
‘If you’re going to do it again, make it count. Because there won’t be a third time.’
‘I’m telling you — that was it. I’m not myself.’
‘I can tell.’
‘But that shouldn’t mean I should place you at risk.’
‘Exactly.’
‘You could turn and walk away whenever you want.’
‘You’re goddamn right I could.’
‘In fact, you probably should. I’ve asked for your help, and put you at risk, and I just tried to attack you. You owe me nothing. I have a location, and really … I’ve got all I need, don’t I?’
Slater raised an eyebrow and looked at King quizzically.
King turned, palms spread, face open. ‘I mean, you did what I asked. You helped me out. You got into the phone. There wasn’t much on it, but that’s all I asked you to do. This isn’t your fight and I don’t expect you to help me. I’ll go in alone. It’s probably better that way — given how our careers unfolded.’
Slater said nothing. He let their footsteps echo ahead, and behind, and he kept his gaze wired down at his feet.
Finally King said, ‘Slater.’
Slater looked up. ‘What?’
‘I can’t do this anymore. This silence. I need an answer.’
‘You said it’s better if you go in alone.’
‘Isn’t that what we spent a decade each doing? Learning to thrive on our own? Shouldn’t it go that way? And besides, don’t you want to fight your own fight? Why fight mine?’
Slater said, ‘You don’t remember why Black Force was founded in the first place, do you?’
King said, ‘You kidding?’
‘No. I’m not.’
‘That shit was my life. I poured my heart and soul into it. I remember every goddamn moment.’
‘You were pulled out of Delta because you didn’t mesh with your unit, and neither did I in the Navy. And you know why that was? Because we were simply better. That’s the cold hard truth of it. We reacted faster, we went our own way, and we felt like our team bogged us down in combat. Even though we were operating with the best of the best — it wasn’t enough. Black Force’s founding principle was that those outliers work better alone, because there are no contradicting orders and nothing to hold us back. We can go at our own pace. We can go deep into our own inhuman minds. We can do extraordinary things. And we did. We did them over and over again until we were the stuff of legend.’
King said, ‘Where are you going with this?’
Slater let the silence drag out, and they trudged on a little further, and then he said, ‘They never thought of putting us together.’
King said, ‘Maybe they tried it with the others.’
Slater said, ‘I don’t think they did.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because if they ever put the two of us together in the field, I don’t think they ever would have gone back to the way things were.’
‘That’s a stretch.’
‘Look what we just did. We didn’t butt heads until after we got what we needed. Until then we were operating in the red zone, but we were doing it effortlessly. We ticked off our separate objectives and then came together to get what we needed. Who else could have done that? Certainly not either of us on our own. It took a whole plethora of moving parts, but it felt streamlined in the process.’
King let that sink in. They reached the secluded dirt lot, and both of them silently selected the BMW as the vehicle of choice to get them to the airport.
It was quicker than the Peugeot, and in this business speed was everything.
Slater got behind the wheel, and King sank into the passenger seat.
Slater fired up the engine.
King said, ‘Maybe everything happens for a reason.’
Slater said nothing.
King said, ‘Maybe I was never supposed to settle down.’
Slater turned out of the lot and got back on Route 63 and gunned it in the direction of the closest airport, which the GPS told him rested on the outskirts of Budapest.
King said, ‘Let’s see how we do in New Zealand.’
Slater said, ‘I agree. You read my mind.’
‘And then we can figure out where to go from there.’
‘If we make it through this.’
‘They won’t know we’re coming. They won’t think we cracked the phone.’
‘But we did it. And we did it easily.’
‘So we’ll do this easily.’
‘Because we’re two of the toughest bastards that ever lived.’
Slater smiled.
‘That’s why I didn’t answer your question,’ he said. ‘Of course this is my fight. Every goddamn fight is my fight. Especially if it’s yours. Because I don’t think we’re ever going to meet a warrior like each other. No-one’s wired like us, which is why they isolated us in the military. But now we’re out, and we’re free, and we’re unburdened. Where do you think that could lead?’
‘We’ll find out,’ King said.
He offered a hand across the centre console, and Slater reached over and shook it.
‘New Zealand sounds like a nice place for a vacation,’ King said.
‘You read my mind.’
‘Let’s raze hell.’
‘Always.’
They redlined it toward the unknown.
As they’d been doing all their lives.
But this time, they did it without a haphazard plan. They did it unified. Not thrown together by fate or happenstance, but deliberately coming together as a team.
Slater felt it in the air.
He wondered where it would lead.
But the possibilities were endless.
Jason King was back, and the future was bright.
Part II
34
As they’d suspected, it turned out to be a mammoth of a journey.
Halfway to Budapest International Airport, King sat up straight in his seat, as if suddenly struck by a sinister premonition.
Slater said, ‘What?’
King said, ‘Didn’t you tell me things had gone south with Uncle Sam recently?’
Slater nodded. ‘I’m not in their good books, to say the least.’
‘Are they actively looking for you?’
‘I think so. Maybe not as intensely as they were when I went AWOL back in Russia. They’ve got their own problems to worry about. When the Lynx program dissolved, it made the news. It was a PR disaster. But they mitigated most of the damage, and came away relatively unscathed by downplaying what was going on in the North Maine Woods. And then the media cycle kept churning, and everyone forgot about it real fast. So I think they were more concerned about recovering their image in the headlines than actively hunting me.’
‘But I assume you’re on every flight list in the world.’
‘Is that what you’re worried about?’
‘I don’t want to trip at the first hurdle by not thinking things through.’
‘How do you think I got into Hungary?’
‘There’s a dozen ways to do that illegitimately.’
‘And there’s a dozen ways to do it legitimately.’
‘You’ve got a fake passport?’
‘Did I mention how much I was worth?’
‘Right. That didn’t cross my mind.’
‘Four hundred million dollars buys you any kind of access you want. And I’m creative.’
‘Right,’ King said.
They left the car five miles away from the departure terminal, parking it well away from the airport in a narrow side street, surrounded by industrial developments and the stink of smoke and steel. They got out and slammed the doors and left it unlocked. If petty thieves chanced across it, then all the better. If not, when the inevitable investigation began into what the hell had happened around the airfield, the necessary parties would take their time linking it to Budapest International Airport.
They’d scour the immediate search area, and find nothing amiss in the industrial zone, and then finally make their way to the conclusion that the two occupants had fled the country.
As long as he and King were on the ground in New Zealand by the time that happened, it didn’t matter in the slightest.
‘What’s your status with our government?’ Slater said as they strode through empty industrial laneways in the darkening afternoon.
A stormy grey sky infiltrated above, lengthening the shadows and adding to their unrest. They had nothing but a location near Tapanui, one of the most isolated and scenic locations on the planet. They had no idea what was in store for them.
All King needed was revenge.
Now he said, ‘Nothing’s changed.’
Slater said, ‘Well, technically, everything’s changed.’
‘Not since you told me I was cleared. No-one came looking. No-one came knocking. The government didn’t care about me anymore, and I was free. I was happy. I had no burdens. I was…’
He trailed off, glancing up at the sky, fighting back a wave of guilt. Slater could see the expression on his face, his eyes wracked with pain.
King said, ‘Everything was good, man. Real good. Better than I deserved — that’s for sure.’
‘It was quick,’ Slater said, but he kept his voice low. ‘When it happened, it was quick. She wouldn’t have known what was coming.’
‘The bullet went through her forehead from close range,’ King said. ‘She would have seen it coming. Trust me.’
‘Only for a moment. If I had to choose how to die, that’d be it. Quick. Painless. Nothing to it. I know you feel the same. We’ve talked about it.’
King said, ‘It’s not that. She died because of me. That’s the problem. I don’t know what she did to deserve it. Is it because of what I’ve done?’
‘It’s not because of anything,’ Slater said, and suddenly all his ruminations about life bubbled to the surface. ‘It’s just because shit happens. That’s the truth. Life goes that way sometimes. We’ve all got to suck it up and deal with it. Do you really think anything we do is going to make a dent in the suffering going on in the world? We could spend our whole lives fighting this shit and we wouldn’t change a thing. That’s the truth, too. Nothing means anything, but at least we can do our best in the moment. Understand?’
King didn’t respond for a beat, and briefly the hairs on the back of Slater’s neck bristled as he anticipated another violent outburst.
He made a mental note to not test King philosophically at such a sensitive time.
But the punch never came.
Instead, King smirked. ‘Thought I was going to hit you?’
‘Maybe the part where I said your girlfriend dying doesn’t mean anything might have been taking it too far,’ Slater said.
King shrugged. ‘And yet, the point stands. Life’s going to go on. What am I supposed to do? It happened. I was a wreck for two months. I’m still a wreck, but now I can cover it up. So do I sit in solitude and let it break me, or do something about finding out why it happened? Do something about finding the people responsible…’
‘Exactly,’ Slater said.
They let their thoughts play out as they made for the airport. They powered down a sidewalk adjacent to an endless stream of gridlocked traffic flowing toward the departure and arrival terminals.
Inside the terminal, they approached one of the counters warily, expecting an army of secret policemen to descend on them at any moment.
Which was realistic.
They didn’t know what sort of connections the airfield operation had.
How high up the totem pole it ran…
Slater took a deep breath, and asked how fast they could get to Christchurch on the South Island of New Zealand.
The thin man in uniform behind the desk looked at him like he’d asked to go to Mars.
35
Slater said, ‘I understand it’s going to take some work. But that’s where we need to go.’
The guy set them up with an initial flight to Dubai, then a four hour layover before a connecting flight to Sydney. From there, they could take a short flight across the ocean to Christchurch. Altogether, the journey would take nearly twenty-eight hours.
Slater said, ‘That’s fine.’
King also didn’t look fazed in the slightest.
Something about getting shot, stabbed, and beaten half to death for a living made monotonous travel a non-issue.
And Slater knew they both felt the same.
They had the same mindset.
They were very nearly the same person.
They paid for first class, got their tickets, and shocked the worker a second time when they revealed an absence of luggage.
Their clothes were dotted with dirt and had the faint smell of stress from the sweat they’d exerted whilst beating half the airfield to a pulp, so they moved straight through the check-in process and bought two fresh new sets of cold weather gear from a luxury outlet in duty free.
Slater changed into chinos, a smart dress shirt and a cashmere sweater — altogether totalling nearly a thousand U.S. dollars — and left his old clothes in the change room for the next lucky soul to stumble across.
They were good as new — they just needed a wash.
He passed through each checkpoint without issue, and breathed a sigh of relief when he met up with King on the other side of customs.
But he needn’t have worried.
As soon as he’d been excommunicated from the secret world for the second time, Slater had got to work behind-the-scenes, making use of the time it had taken to heal up his injuries. He’d put all his resources to work, and come away with nearly a dozen ready-to-use passports, as well as an additional layer of secrecy over the top of his Swiss bank accounts. This was the new world, where geography no longer mattered and the best experts on the planet were available via a phone call.
He was a ghost.
And King didn’t need to be.
So they made their way to the boarding lounge and sat in meditative silence as they waited for their plane to arrive at the gate.
Slater could feel the after-effects of the punches and knees and kicks he’d thrown over the course of the day. It was only mid-afternoon, and he’d barely taken a single strike in return, but sometimes throwing a punch hurt just as much as receiving one.
Not in the moment, per se, but in the uncomfortable hours afterwards when your bones and muscles ached from the exertion.
He maintained a respectable posture, but everything hurt.
A first-class seat would give him ample opportunity to recover.
He could tell King was feeling the same way.
When the boarding announcement floated over the speakers, they peeled themselves slowly off their chairs, both of them masking limps. King had his arms hanging straight down by his sides, and he kept them that way as they sauntered to the front of the queue.
They nodded and smiled to the staff, who checked their tickets and ushered them down the long dreary tunnel to the plane.
As they strode out in front of the rest of the passengers, Slater said, ‘Banged up?’
King just grimaced.
‘Ring rust,’ Slater said. ‘Happens to us all.’
King glanced across. ‘You don’t look one hundred percent yourself.’
‘I’m not. You’re never in good shape after throwing strikes with that sort of force. But the repetition gets you used to it.’
King nodded. ‘Damn right. It doesn’t get easier. You just get stronger.’
‘You’ll be back to your old conditioning before long.’
King managed a half-smile.
Slater said, ‘What?’
‘You don’t need to pump me up with reassurances,’ King said. ‘I did this solo for more than a decade. I can take care of myself.’
‘Sometimes I forget who I’m dealing with.’
They made their way aboard and stretched out in first-class seats across the aisle from each other.
Slater put himself in a familiar deep meditative trance, and he could feel King’s eyes on him, curious yet silent.
