Hawk, p.17
Hawk, page 17
part #6 of Will Slater Series
Finally, King said, ‘What exactly did you see?’
‘Nothing. Just someone tailing me. I was sure it was you.’
‘So someone had eyes on you.’
‘On us, potentially.’
King didn’t respond. Then he said, ‘I can’t get my mind off what you said. Toying.’
Slater said, ‘What if they wanted us to crack that phone?’
‘They couldn’t have. You said it yourself. It was next to impossible to find someone who could do it. It took all our resources.’
‘We’ve been doing next to impossible things for our entire careers,’ Slater said.
A pit of anxiety started to form in his stomach.
His blood ran cold, and beads of sweat broke out across his forehead.
Slater said, ‘What if they knew they had to make it next to impossible? Because that’s the only way we’d believe it. That would get us here. On this goddamn desolate island. Right where they wanted us.’
King said, ‘It’s unlikely.’
Slater said, ‘But … what if?’
Then they passed a crossroads, where the State Highway intersected with a rural gravel trail, and a jet black vehicle roared out of the mist and crumpled their flimsy sedan like it weighed nothing, spinning them across the asphalt with the shriek of metal and the explosion of airbags in their ears.
38
Slater held on for dear life.
The impact lashed him against his seatbelt and the airbag burst forth from the dashboard, pummelling him. Out of the corner of his eye, through blurred vision, he saw King hit with his own airbag.
It billowed into the man’s face, erupting from the steering wheel.
The mountains and the farmland and the mist outside turned to an impossible blur, and the chassis all around them groaned and protested the collision.
Then they were off the road, bouncing and jolting over uneven terrain. A geyser of displaced mud poured in through the open driver’s window, showering them in debris, and Slater found himself temporarily blinded as he fought the airbag away. He reached down and held onto the seat, as if that would help, as the G-forces worked their way over him.
His muscles screamed in protest.
His eyeballs felt like they were about to bulge out of their sockets.
Then they came to a standstill. It was abrupt, and jolting, and the Toyota slammed into place at the bottom of the shallow ditch.
They’d come to rest only a dozen or so feet from the side of the highway, but it felt like they’d travelled a mile during the uncontrollable skid.
Slater slammed back against his seat at the same time, and as he caught his breath he reached down and stabbed the seatbelt release with a pointed finger. It came free and he punched the rapidly deflating airbag away, still in the process of getting his bearings.
When he looked over at the driver’s seat, he found it empty.
King was already out of the car.
Turned out that King had reacted with impossible speed, untethering himself from the seatbelt and the closed driver’s door in the vital seconds when the car had been slowing down.
Now he was out of the wrecked vehicle and halfway up the side of the muddy ditch, making a beeline for the road.
Slater gawked when he realised how slow he’d been in comparison.
He shook himself free from the seat and thrust his own door open. It jammed in the mud, but there was enough room for him to spill out.
He fell into the churned earth and scrambled to his feet, rounding the hood a moment later.
By that point, King had made it to the top of the ditch.
And he’d timed it to perfection.
The truck that had rammed them was only a few feet from the lip of the ditch, trundling to a halt at an almost leisurely pace after brutalising the smaller sedan.
It had rumbled across the highway and come to rest above the Toyota’s muddy grave, the aftershock of the impact still reverberating through its steel chassis. It was a big brute of an armoured vehicle with a giant bull bar and dark tinted windows.
But the line of sight was hindered by the slope of the ditch. To see the aftermath of ramming the Toyota, the occupants would have to climb out.
The hood of the truck was too big to allow a view of the ditch from within, unless they pulled up horizontally, which they hadn’t.
So the driver and passenger were halfway out of the vehicle. Big bulky men with hard faces, carrying fearsome weaponry. Slater spotted the glint of automatic rifles and knew he didn’t stand a chance where he stood.
But King was right there.
And then King was on them, barrelling into view as he sprinted out from the cover of the ditch. He rose up out of the chilly gloom and made a mad dash for the passenger door.
It was only a few feet away, and he was there before the passenger could react.
The big man with the rifle only caught a glimpse of something right nearby before King thundered a boot into the door, knocking it back into the guy with incredible force, and as fate would have it the top of the door caught the guy in the throat and crushed him momentarily against the chassis, startling him enough to freeze up.
Only for a second.
That was how it always happened.
And that was all King ever needed.
Slater watched King heave the door aside and crush an elbow into the same point of the guy’s throat, and as always Slater marvelled at both the speed and the accuracy. The guy’s neck was already numb and swelling from the metal door catching him in the soft tissue, and now the elbow put him down for the count. He folded at the waist and splayed back into the passenger seat he’d just burst up out of.
And then the real magic happened.
King had control of the guy’s rifle — a shiny new M4 carbine — as soon as the guy went down, and he had effective use of it a second after that. He had a finger in the trigger guard and his frame was already compensating to aim through the vehicle.
He shot the passenger twice in the chest as the guy crumpled into the seat, then aimed past him to the driver, who was still trying to work out what the hell was going on.
Because Slater had seen every move play out almost in slow motion, but in reality it had been bang-crunch-blam-blam.
The kick to the door, the elbow to the throat, the seizing of the weapon, and the two shots through the passenger’s chest.
The driver was still reeling, because he’d spotted Slater in front of the Toyota, so he couldn’t work out which threat to deal with — him or the immediate problem around the passenger side — and he only had milliseconds to make the choice.
He didn’t make the right one.
He aimed at Slater, figuring he’d take out the stationary target first.
Slater closed his eyes.
The situation was out of his control.
There was a gunshot.
39
When Slater opened his eyes again, the driver was lying beside his vehicle with half his face missing.
King swept the carbine ruthlessly over the rear seats, searching for any backup, but there was none.
Just the two men.
King backed out of the car, carbine held at the ready, breath steaming in the cold air.
Slater clambered up the embankment and joined King on the asphalt.
He looked at the empty armoured vehicle and said, ‘Guess we’ve got a new ride.’
‘There’s more than that on the way,’ King said. ‘Look.’
Slater followed his gaze, spotting the faint glow of headlights down the overcast misty highway.
Coming from the north.
Blazing toward them.
An arsenal of vehicles, just as big and fearsome as the one they stood beside, probably packed with armed combatants juiced up on Dexedrine and ready for war.
Right on their heels.
Slater said, ‘Shit.’
‘How many? Can you see?’
‘Looks like five. Six. Maybe seven … Christ.’
King looked down at his own carbine, then watched Slater collect the second M4 off the dead driver.
They both studied their own weapons, followed by the open terrain around them, stretching on for miles endlessly, desolate and sweeping all the way up to the mountains in the very distance.
Like something out of Jurassic Park.
Just as Slater had described.
Standing like twin beacons on the empty highway, Slater said, ‘We make damn good targets out here.’
‘We can get behind the truck,’ King said. ‘Use it as cover.’
‘They’ll just drive around us. There’s seven goddamn vehicles. They can surround us, or just drive into the fields if they find that too dangerous.’
‘You sure there’s that many?’
King squinted, trying to ascertain for himself.
His eyesight evidently wasn’t as good as Slater’s.
Then he said, ‘Shit, you’re right.’
Slater said, ‘Make the call.’
‘We run.’
‘Good call, soldier.’
They piled into the armoured vehicle. Slater hauled the dead passenger out onto the asphalt and clambered in — King skirted around the enormous bull bar and slotted into the driver’s seat.
Slater took one look at the interior and figured the truck was a Mercedes G-wagon with aftermarket Brabus modifications to tune its performance. King confirmed it when he stepped on the accelerator and the truck responded with a deep, thrumming, throaty roar.
The truck had been outfitted with armour plating on top of the original Brabus modifications. It must have cost somewhere in the vicinity of three hundred thousand dollars.
And there were seven more on the way.
Whoever the hell they were dealing with had a metric shit-ton of money.
Slater vocalised this.
King said, ‘I think we already knew that.’
He twisted the sleek black wheel and pulled away from the two corpses they’d left on the side of the road. Slater wondered how long it would take for police to get involved, and whether they’d even survive until then.
His heart pounded in his ears as he checked the passenger side mirror.
The fleet of seven trucks roared forward, only a few hundred feet behind them.
A muzzle flash flared from one of the windows — someone leaning out with a carbine rifle — and a moment later the round whizzed by the open passenger window, sending displaced air washing over Slater’s face.
He recoiled from the window and gripped his own carbine with sweaty palms.
‘They’re good shots,’ he said. Then he gulped back anxiety. ‘You can’t push this thing faster?’
‘Pedal’s on the floor,’ King snarled. ‘It’s a big beast. Takes a while to accelerate.’
Then it picked up steam, and Slater held onto the windowsill with white knuckles as the 4.0L Biturbo V8 used all of its seven hundred horsepower and the big Brabus surged forward with ferocity.
King kept the pedal on the floor and suddenly they were at top speed, barreling down the desolate State Highway, heading further and further south.
But the fleet behind them was gaining.
And gaining fast.
More shots flew past, and one impacted the rear of the wagon. King flinched involuntarily, ducking low, and Slater followed suit. But the tinted windows were bulletproof, and soon enough they sat back up and corrected their course.
Then the worst case scenario unfolded at horrific speed.
They crested a rise in the highway, and when they plunged into the decline, the scene before them revealed itself.
There were two civilian vehicles in sight, both heading in the opposite direction — toward Christchurch — but one of them was in the process of overtaking. It was a small blue hatchback — a Volkswagen GTI — and its driver had made to dart past a rusting old pick-up truck with alarming speed.
It was side-by-side with the truck, opting to overtake it at that exact second, and King and Slater were rocketing toward it in their Brabus.
The steel bull bar attached to the front of the truck would obliterate the Volkswagen.
The GTI driver saw the oncoming Brabus at the last second, and in his panic he accelerated instead of braking, trying to complete the overtake manoeuvre before impact.
King braked.
He had to.
If he didn’t, he would pulverise a civilian.
He hadn’t factored that into his day.
Slater said, ‘No,’ but it came out muted, and he took it back almost immediately.
It was the lesser of two terrible options, and the Volkswagen made it into the correct lane with mere inches to spare.
The two vehicles blew past each other, so close they could almost feel the wash of wind against each other’s chassis’.
But then the Brabus slowed after braking, and the fleet of seven oncoming trucks crested the rise only a few seconds later.
Slater twisted in his seat to survey the damage, and winced as one of the bull bars on the rightmost truck simply crushed the Volkswagen to a pulp, pulverising the driver and spinning the hatchback like a child’s plaything off the highway. It landed on its roof in the ditch by the roadside.
Inevitably fatal.
Then the pick-up truck it had been attempting to overtake followed suit, driven by an old farmer with slow reflexes and not a shred of time to get out of the way.
The Brabus caught it with a glancing blow, unwilling to slow down or veer off into the ditch, and the pick-up truck shredded to pieces as its rusty old parts crumbled and blew apart from the impact.
It spun away too, its driver flung from the vehicle.
Two casualties, just like that.
Slater clenched his teeth and said, ‘Fuck.’
It was all he could think to say.
The fleet approached.
‘Faster,’ Slater muttered.
‘Trying,’ King snarled back.
Then the first of the pursuing vehicles caught up to them and all hell broke loose.
40
The oncoming fleet had expertise in the realm of aggressive takedowns.
The first vehicle to catch up to them was an identical black Brabus with tinted windows and a vicious bull bar attached to the front, but the guy behind the wheel was much more adept at tackling the weight of the truck than King was.
So he came in at an angle, expertly weaving toward them, and at the last second he twisted the wheel tight and the enemy vehicle steamed toward them from the side.
‘King,’ Slater yelled.
Too late.
King braked at the last second, attempting to outmanoeuvre the oncoming truck, but it proved futile. He only served to worsen the blow. Slater didn’t blame him — this was a brutal and barbaric realm to learn how to handle such a massive vehicle, and Slater knew he wouldn’t have fared any better.
But understanding why it had happened didn’t change the consequences.
The enemy vehicle caught them in the driver’s side door, coming in from the right, crushing against the armour plating. Steel met steel and sparks flew, and King recoiled away from the window.
He had the bulletproof glass pane raised, so when three rounds impacted the glass right near his head and splintered into a trio of spider-webs, he came away with his head intact.
Slater gripped his carbine and vaulted out of his seat, leaping through the narrow gap above the centre console into the rear seats. He sprawled out across the leather, almost tumbling into the footwell from the inertia as the Brabus screeched and careened across the highway.
He found the electronic button that controlled the right-hand window and pushed it halfway down. He shoved the M4’s barrel through the narrow crack and let off a volley at the enemy vehicle, the big beast still grinding and pressing into their side.
The passenger in that vehicle was leaning out the window, almost half his body extended into empty space, a carbine of his own in his hand.
Slater saw the determination in his dark eyes, and spotted the sharp jawline and hair shaved to the scalp.
Ex-military.
Guns for hire.
Slater worked his aim to the left, and squeezed the trigger again from his makeshift bunker, and caught the passenger in the forehead.
He didn’t actually see the bullet strike home — there was too much happening.
Too many variables.
King fought for control of the truck, and the metal on the right side of the chassis groaned, and the enemy vehicle continued its attempts to force them off the road. But amidst all that the passenger’s head snapped back like someone had tugged it on an invisible wire, and a spout of crimson blew out the back of his skull, and then his body overextended and tumbled out the open window. It disappeared under the truck, squashed like a rag doll, and wound up somewhere on the other side to be run over again by the fleet of charging vehicles.
Then the rear window on the enemy vehicle buzzed down and a volley of shots came right at Slater. He recoiled away from the window frame, but a couple of rounds made their way through.
One buzzed over his head, so close he could feel his own death right there, and the other struck his carbine rifle, still halfway out the window.
From there, it ricocheted into the roof, and then down past Slater’s shoulder.
He didn’t actually conceptualise any of this — he just felt lead sizzling through the air all around him, and he collapsed into as small a target area as he could manage.
‘Shit!’ he roared.
‘You hit?’ King roared back.
‘No, no, I’m good. How are we doing?’
King didn’t respond — he just swore at the top of his lungs.
Slater scrambled to get a view through the windshield, staring between the two front seats.
He swore too.
King was skirting a precipitous line between the edge of the highway and another sizeable ditch resting at the bottom of a muddy embankment. The Brabus’ left hand wheels were spinning against mud, and the right hand wheels were gripping the asphalt, naturally turning them away from the side of the ditch.
