‘I think I’ll avoid that if it’s possible.’
‘Let’s hope it is then,’ she huffed, her tone sardonic. She took the lead, hurrying King toward Reed’s unit, suddenly impatient to get the proceedings underway. King recognised the shift in mood. Beth wanted him to go about his business and then leave as fast as possible. She evidently thought he attracted nothing but trouble.
Maybe she was right.
She stepped up onto the tiny deck outside the portable room and rapped sharply on the thin door. There was no response for a long, drawn-out moment. Then King sensed movement within the walls — they were paper-thin and made of easily-destructible material, which allowed him the privilege of being able to hear Reed approaching.
The man’s footsteps were heavy.
Big guy, King thought.
Reed opened the door and King found himself face-to-face with what appeared to be his identical twin.
12
They were both powerhouses, each standing roughly six-foot-three and built like tanks. King eyed the man through the doorway and met his gaze, a gaze that was just as hardened and bulletproof as his own. Reed had buzzed his hair in similar fashion — King had decided to saw off his long locks after Mexico, preferring a streamlined approach that allowed him the privilege of not having to worry about strands obscuring his vision.
They both had the same pronounced jawline, too.
‘You’re the guy?’ Reed said in a gruff voice, resigned to his fate.
King nodded. ‘I’m the guy.’
‘I thought you’d be older.’
‘I’m not a bureaucrat.’
‘What are you?’
‘I told you. I’m the guy.’
Reed shrugged like he didn’t care what that meant and stepped aside to allow King through.
‘I’ll leave you boys to it,’ Beth said, retreating off the terrace. ‘Let me know if you need me.’
Her request was answered with silence, so she turned and strode fast away from the portable unit, leaving the pair to hash things out without interference. King watched her go, then turned back to Reed. ‘She doesn’t think you’ve done anything wrong.’
‘I haven’t.’
King nodded. ‘Let’s talk.’
He accepted Reed’s invitation into the unit and moved straight past the man, exposing himself to an attack from behind. He thought of how effortless it would be for Reed to turn and loop a powerful forearm around his throat, at the same time leaping on him like a human backpack to apply maximum pressure to his neck. Once the hooks were in, King knew he would be helpless to resist fading into oblivion.
But he shrugged off the foolish thought, because Reed could have simply up and left any time he wanted if he had desertion on his mind. He had stuck to his position, and even detached himself from the rest of the unit in an attempt to impress his superiors.
King admired the man’s courage.
It reminded him of a time in Ramadi, a soulless city buried in Iran, where he had abandoned traditional protocol and gunned through a two-storey house full of insurgents after witnessing them kill an innocent civilian. That particular event had triggered his involvement with Black Force, and his off-the-books career had begun in emphatic fashion. At the time he’d been scared shitless of the repercussions, expecting his superiors to chew him out at any moment.
Instead, he had been thrust into a highly-volatile new division for his efforts.
Perhaps this would be Reed’s defining incident.
Perhaps he would join the ranks of Black Force before this operation had reached its end.
King wondered why Lars hadn’t chosen to accompany him, if this was a recruitment mission after all…
‘You’re obviously not a pen-pusher,’ Reed said, closing the door and following King into the tiny space. ‘So can I ask what you’re doing here?’
The portable unit had been furnished in similar fashion to the main lodge — sparsely. King imagined the budget for these rooms was effectively non-existent, and it showed in the quality of the furniture. He eyed a fold-out table with two flimsy chairs, a tiny stove and fridge combination, and a single bed with a thin dirty mattress and a handful of sheets. Reed hadn’t bothered to make the bed — and why would he?
This wasn’t basic training anymore. He clearly thought he might be headed for prison if his superiors determined that his actions were unnecessary. What good was a spotless bed if he was soon to spend the rest of his days in a cramped cell?
King sat on one of the chairs and gestured for Reed to do the same — a mirror image of how things had unfolded with Beth just minutes previously. Now King was the one with the authority, the supposed big-shot who had been sent all the way from the States to deal with the Marines’ ineptitude.
Reed sat.
‘I’m here to speak to you,’ King said. ‘Things are a little muddied right now, as you can imagine. There’s no real official jurisdiction and you were told you could use discretion.’
‘Not to the extent of what I did, though,’ Reed said. ‘That’s obvious enough.’
King nodded. Smart guy.
‘Take me through what happened. In detail. Your future relies on it.’
King added the last quip to stress the urgency of what Reed was about to tell him. In truth, he had no authority over what happened to the man, but he wanted the crucial details — fast. He had never been one to mull over a decision for any significant amount of time, and the government was relying on his intuition.
Otherwise, they would have sent a bureaucrat, just as Reed had been expecting.
If necessary, King was prepared to go to hell and back to protect Reed, in the event that the man’s actions had caused a shitstorm of unknown proportions amongst the organised crime outfit at the port.
That differentiated him from a pen-pusher.
But he wasn’t about to disclose that information just yet.
‘In detail?’ Reed said. He leant back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. Like he knew he had crossed multiple lines in his conduct, but was willing to give King all the details if it meant they would show him leniency.
‘I want everything.’
‘Well — if you really want the truth — I got bored here. There’s not a lot to do when the peacekeepers are sticking to their schedule. I knew that the job description of a Force Recon Marine didn’t mean non-stop action, but I thought I’d be doing more than patrolling the perimeter of a bunch of huts for weeks on end. You know how long I’ve been here?’
King shook his head. ‘Can’t say I do.’
Reed paused. ‘You should know that kind of thing if you’re the one coming to investigate me.’
‘What if I told you this isn’t exactly an investigation?’
Reed raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh. What is this, then?’
‘I can’t say. Just give me all the facts, as straight as you can.’
The man nodded. ‘It’s been months. I’ve been shepherding these guys around for months. I wasn’t born to do this. So — and here’s where I messed up — I thought I’d take certain matters into my own hands. Spend enough time in one place and certain patterns start to present themselves. It took me long enough to realise, but I noticed some of the traffic tended to pass at the same time every single day.’
‘Traffic?’ King said. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere.’
Reed scraped his chair back and motioned for King to follow him over to the window. He pointed through the grimy, fingerprint-stained glass at the buildings across the sprawling fields, most of them reduced to pitiful piles of rubble.
‘See the track in front of them?’ Reed said.
King squinted. He could. It was barely perceptible, but he spotted a dirt trail spearing straight through the demolished neighbourhood. As they watched, a distant plume of dust trickled off the earth as a battered pick-up truck trailed through the area.