The truth lay in plain sight.
King continued through to the next section of the complex. The land near the front gate lay under large floodlights that left no room for secrecy. Everything lay out in the open, under the watchful eye of the handful of guard towers stationed along the perimeter.
The grid of warehouses was an untapped goldmine, and he imagined how easy it would be to track down a stockpile of extra-legal profits and slot them into an offshore account without anyone in the chain of command finding out. Because this world operated outside of the law, they would have to trade exclusively in cash or physical goods like diamonds. It would be laying around here somewhere…
But money had never motivated him.
Dealing with pieces of shit like Bryson Reed was all he needed to stay on track.
He realised Reed had embedded himself into this mess the exact same way King had. Criminals trusted each other — they had to, if they wanted to survive in this world. It wouldn’t have taken much persuasion for Reed to convince these men he was from the port. From there, cash would flow to him with little effort, if he made it to the right place at the right time.
But then what?
There had to be an endgame. In all likelihood Reed would make off with millions of dollars — maybe even tens of millions — but he had to do something with it. Murdering two Force Recon Marines in cold blood had exiled himself from his old identity in a single stroke. He would have to start a new life, somewhere off the beaten track.
He’d need help to achieve that.
He couldn’t front the burden alone.
King found himself grappling with these thoughts as he drove straight into another hotspot of commotion, this hive of activity wedged between a pair of warehouses of similarly gargantuan scale. He drew the jeep to a halt in a long row of idle vehicles, all empty. The towering walls of each warehouse cast great shadows across the land all around him. He looked out over an identical scene to the one at the front of the complex, just slightly smaller in scale. Hundreds of Somali workers in faded overalls manhandled pallets of goods across the space between the two warehouses — a faded stretch of concrete jam-packed with dump trucks and semi-trailers and half-empty shipping containers.
King’s eyes widened at the sight.
Entire containers had been transported from the port.
He wondered just how much of the global shipping industry operated in murky legal waters.
From here, it looked like all of it.
He slipped out of the jeep, quietly closed the door, and made sure the M45 in his right palm had its safety off. He wanted to be ready for anything. The HK416 resting on the passenger’s seat wielded plenty more firepower, but it would stand out like a sore thumb if he decided to carry it into the midst of the commotion.
He skirted around one side of the jeep, keeping low, barely making a noise.
Reed was here.
He could sense it.
Then a boot scuffed on the concrete less than a foot behind him, almost imperceptible amongst the sound of thousands of tons of goods being moved from place to place.
But King heard it.
He wheeled, gun raised — too late.
A well-placed fist smashed into the top of his hand before he could pivot, breaking one of the bones in his wrist with an audible snap. The attacker’s punch kept moving down, simply slicing the M45 out of King’s hand like it was nothing. The gun clattered against the concrete and skittered away, well out of reach.
With the other hand, his attacker jammed the barrel of a sidearm into the side of King’s temple, hard enough to rattle his senses. The original hand that had stripped King of his weapon looped up and tightened around his throat, placing him in a sleeper hold while keeping the weapon levelled at his head.
‘Let’s take a walk,’ Reed snarled in his ear.
30
King complied, the blood draining from his face as the shock of the broken bone set in.
He hadn’t reacted in the moment, more concentrated on retaliating against the assault, but Reed had hit him with the perfect storm of actions, a flurry from which there was no coming back. He’d been stripped of his weapon, one hand had been disabled, an arm had choked him into compliance, and there was a loaded handgun crushing against one side of his skull.
He wasn’t going anywhere, and both of them knew that.
Just stay alive, a voice commanded.
He hasn’t killed you yet. See what happens next.
Don’t quit.
Reed dragged him to the end of the line of vehicles, a stretch of the open concrete more desolate than the rest of the massive aisle. From there it was a simple enough procedure to stay out of the window of detection, slinking along the side of one of the warehouses, keeping an industrial vehicle between themselves and the workers at all times. They were headed for the other end of the concrete corridor, an area King hadn’t had the opportunity to scope out.
With each step, the chance of survival lessened.
He focused on putting one foot in front of the other and deliberately dulling the horrific throbbing in his right hand until he had time to focus on recovery.
‘You’re staying out of sight,’ King noted, making sure not to talk with too much urgency in case Reed got trigger-happy.
He sensed the finger near the side of his head tighten against the trigger. His heart skipped a beat.
Then the finger eased off.
‘Not yet,’ Reed said. ‘Gotta do this somewhere quieter. Attract less attention. Keep walking.’
King kept his pace measured, wondering how Reed could have made it this far for someone so foolish. He might as well have said, Feel free to try and escape. I don’t want to shoot you here and blow my cover.
King spotted a narrow overpass about a hundred feet ahead, past the two warehouses. Underneath the concrete structure — seemingly erected for no reason whatsoever — a procession of parked semi-trailers rested in tight slots, ready to be loaded with goods and sent off to all corners of Somalia, or even the Middle-East in its entirety.
He sensed what Reed planned to do.
A single unsuppressed shot from an M45 handgun would be noticeable enough, but there was no-one in the vicinity of the overpass. Reed could have his weapon tucked away and King’s lifeless body hauled over the lip of the bridge before anyone responded to the blistering report.
Until then, they would walk and talk.
King didn’t mind that.
Anything he attempted here — with workers milling around on the other side of the nearby vehicles — would spell certain disaster. If the gun went off in the middle of the packing operation, workers would scramble in a mad panic, and the entire complex would go into lockdown until the threat was dealt with.
King was just as reluctant to cause a shitstorm as Reed was.
For now.
‘They know you’re military?’ he said.
‘Of course not,’ Reed hissed.
‘Thought as much. What’s the plan from here?’
‘Not telling you shit.’
‘Why not? You’re going to kill me anyway, you might as well—’
Reed flexed the muscles in his forearm, compressing King’s air passage with a single, gut-heaving wrench. King’s voice petered out halfway through the sentence, leaving him choking for air, his face turning the colour of beetroot as he scrambled for breath.
He shot both hands up to Reed’s arm out of instinct, fighting for mere survival, and Reed responded by jamming the barrel of the M45 so hard into his temple that it tore skin off the side of his head, right above his ear. Warm blood gushed.