Fuck them both, he thought.
Johnson had the personality of a cardboard box, but at least the man could be trusted to stick to the assigned schedule. Reed had no doubt he would find Johnson manning the security booth at the compound’s perimeter, which was why he kept the M45 clutched tight between his fingers. He was ready, should the opportunity present itself.
He stepped onto the long, winding trail running through the empty space in front of the main lodge. There was at least a hundred feet of open ground between the front gate and the complex itself, riddled with tall weeds and complete with miniature valleys carved out of the uneven ground by the elements. Reed slunk off the trail, keeping low, large enough to be visible to a trained flashlight. The moon had dipped behind a cloud, and the resulting blanket of pitch darkness hung thick over everything. No-one would spot him unless they swung a torch in his direction.
He made for the front gate.
A low muttering floated up the trail, emanating from a source just a dozen feet from Reed’s position. He froze. He recognised the incoherent rambling, and what it signified.
Victor was back.
The Hispanic alcoholic had barely been in-country two days when he’d set off in search of cheap moonshine, acquiring a stash of the eye-watering liquid somewhere in Mogadishu’s slums early into their station. From there, it had been a downward spiral.
The man had no self-discipline whatsoever, and didn’t deserve the position of a Force Recon Marine.
Then again, neither did Reed — for entirely different reasons.
Victor came careening into sight, barely able to keep himself upright. The scent of intoxication emanated off him — Reed smelt the sharp, acrid tang of distilled spirits. The man could function respectably during the day, but something about the night-time encouraged his darkest vices. He routinely slunk off to drown his emotions in the moonshine. Johnson must have allowed him to do it, for the man let Victor through the gates each night unobstructed.
Reed shrugged noncommittally. He couldn’t blame Victor. They were all wrestling with demons. Each of them elected to deal with their issues in different ways.
He heard Victor slurring incoherently. The man drew directly alongside him, hesitating in the middle of the track, barely able to keep his feet underneath him as he swayed on the spot.
All of a sudden, Reed sensed an opportunity.
He didn’t hesitate. King had nailed his analysis in one crucial aspect — when Reed sensed an opportunity, he committed in a single instant and didn’t look back. It probably made him perfect for the organisation that King belonged to.
In another life, maybe, Reed thought.
In this life, he materialised out of the weeds on one side of the trail, moving cautiously enough to avoid detection. Victor had no idea there was anyone nearby, so when Reed lifted the M45 in a gloved hand and fired a deafening round through the corner of the man’s temple, he died instantaneously without any knowledge that his life had reached its end. The pistol’s muzzle flashed in the darkness, bright as a beacon.
Reed moved like lightning, darting over to the corpse as it slumped to the dirt trail in grisly fashion. He placed the M45 in Victor’s right hand and wrapped the guy’s limp fingers tight around the sidearm’s grip, slotting one finger inside the trigger guard. Then he reached down to the man’s waist and yanked Victor’s own service pistol out of its holster, swapping weapons with the body in the blink of an eye.
Force Recon Marines all carried identical M45 MEUSOCs, so no-one would immediately notice the difference.
His work complete, Reed disappeared back into the field with his ears ringing and his pulse racing.
It didn’t take long to muster a response. The gunshot had torn through the silence of the compound, stirring everyone from sleep. The peacekeepers would be slow — even if they realised the discharge had come from within the complex, they would hesitate to investigate. That was the Marines’ responsibility, after all.
Sure enough, Johnson came sprinting down the trail a few seconds later, his own M45 sweeping the dirt track from left to right. Reed watched him approach, buried in the darkness, his own ears still adjusting to the returning silence.
Johnson spotted Victor’s body and approached cautiously, spotting the dark pool of blood and brains around the man’s head.
‘Oh, fuck!’ Johnson said, grinding to a halt as he spotted the M45 in Victor’s palm. ‘No fucking way… oh my God.’
Johnson lost his temper in drastic fashion, pacing back and forth across the trail, pressing a pair of fingers deep into his own eyelids to combat the stress. He dropped his guard entirely, encapsulated by the apparent suicide, clearly wondering just how the hell he was supposed to react to the situation.
Reed could imagine what would be running through the man’s mind.
You let him out. You let him drink. You let him die. It’s on you.
Johnson squatted on his haunches in the centre of the trail, frozen in shock, staring at Victor’s corpse in sheer disbelief.
Behind him, Reed rose out of the weeds and descended on the man silently, like a ghostly apparition in the night.
It was rather simple. Johnson expected nothing, which made the first blow the most important, and Reed had the physical capabilities to end a fight with a single strike. He snatched a handful of Johnson’s thick curly hair to stabilise the man’s head for the half-second it took to swing through with his power arm, bending at the joint and sending the point of his elbow like a jackhammer into the side of Johnson’s throat.
The man went down in a crippled heap.
From there, it didn’t take much. Reed preferred not to fire another shot and attract more attention than absolutely necessary, so he followed Johnson down into the dirt and hammered three strikes with the same elbow into the same exact point, using gravity and momentum and the raw power of adrenalin to maximum effect. He heard bones crunch and felt muscles tear under the force of his overwhelming assault.
Altogether, it took less than three seconds.
After the staggering volley of elbows, Reed slunk off the corpse, satisfied that Johnson had taken his final rasping breath. He had destroyed the man’s larynx, knocking him out from the pain and ultimately suffocating him. As Johnson rolled onto his back and lay still, Reed collected his weapon, swung the duffel over one shoulder and hurried for the front gate.
A dozen feet away from the pair of bodies, he turned back and admired his handiwork.
Then he managed a wry smile.
Something clicked.
The situation had unfolded naturally, with surprise and reaction and unintended consequences, but it had reached a conclusion that favoured Reed.
When the peacekeepers decided to investigate the gunshot — whenever that happened — they would stumble across Johnson first, who appeared to have been murdered in a violent rampage. Then, a few feet later, they would find Victor with his issued firearm in one hand and his brains scattered over the trail.
A drunken spurt of rage. An overwhelming barrage of guilt. A quick bullet to the temple to escape the consequences.
Reed shook his head in disbelief at how effectively the scene had fallen into place. It was unmistakeable — Johnson had confronted Victor on his alcoholism and been attacked. Victor, in his panic, had decided to end it all after seeing the results of his sudden outburst.
If Reed disappeared now, the peacekeepers might assume he’d been killed and hidden by Victor. Perhaps Johnson had seen it, and that’s what had caused the argument in the first place.