He no longer needed to employ discretion, after all.
From his position, he had a clear view of Reed stepping out from behind the semi-trailer and racing across the open stretch of land, heading for the warehouse on the opposite side of the aisle. Its huge roller doors were raised, allowing access to the interior of the building. Reed hurried straight through, purposeful, with a clear objective in mind.
As the man entered the vast interior, a trio of menacing Somali thugs stepped out from behind what appeared to be a fuel tanker, each of them clutching a dirty assault rifle in their hands. Their eyes were wide and roaming. They had heard the gunshots, but they weren’t budging.
Guards.
Guarding what?
Still moving, Reed didn’t hesitate. He raised the M45 and squeezed off three shots, one after the other, a short staccato that echoed through the enormous space.
Tap-tap-tap.
He was a painfully accurate marksman.
The three guards — now corpses — lost all function of their limbs and cascaded to the dirty warehouse floor, stone dead. King paled at the ease with which they’d been dispatched. Reed disappeared into the grimy shadows of the warehouse, vanishing from sight. He hadn’t stopped moving the entire time, intent on reaching some unknown destination.
He was en route to a target.
It must have been damn important, for the next thing King knew he had been caught in the middle of a war zone.
With his attention seized so entirely by Reed’s ballsy dash, he’d become oblivious to everything else around him. Next thing he knew, bullets flew over his head, bombarding the interior of the warehouse in an unrelenting stream of gunfire. He flattened himself against the concrete — still positioned in the midst of a maze of industrial vehicles — and hoped like all hell that no-one stumbled across his position.
Every worker in the compound was surging for the warehouse, having snatched up automatic weapons beforehand. King wondered what kind of goldmine Reed had managed to acquire. He listened to the barrage of footsteps resonating across the concrete aisle as Somali workers hurried around nearby vehicles, all aiming for a single destination.
One gangly man came sprinting into King’s corridor, his Kalashnikov rifle swinging on a leather strap in front of him. At well over six-foot-six, he towered above King, slouched over with horrendous posture. King burst off the concrete and slammed a fist into the guy’s mid-section before his presence had even been noted. The guy wheezed and collapsed, taken entirely by surprise. King yanked the AK-47 off his shoulders as he went down, winded by the blow, and made up his mind in that instant.
Now, he had a weapon.
Wherever the workers were headed — that’s where he’d follow.
It would lead to Reed, and it would lead to revenge.
Revenge for the two dead Force Recon Marines who would never return to their families, and revenge for the countless dock workers Reed had murdered in his quest to slip into the supply chain unnoticed.
King had a sizeable headstart on most of the approaching procession, so before anyone could identify him as a new face, he seized a grip on the Kalashnikov rifle, ducked his head to his chest to prevent detection, and ran straight into the warehouse ahead.
32
As he stepped onto the interior’s concrete flooring he heard a truck engine roar into life up the back of the warehouse. The noise resonated off the walls, clearly audible despite King’s impaired hearing. He zigzagged through a maze of steel and wood, dodging supplies and vehicles, unsure as to where he was headed but determined to reach it before Reed could escape.
He wouldn’t get another opportunity to catch the man.
He knew that.
Even though the temperature had dropped rapidly as night set in, the warehouse contained most of the day’s scorching heat, packing the humidity into a cubic space the size of an aircraft hangar. The sweat poured off his frame as he hurried through the narrow aisles, leeched from his pores by a combination of stress and overheating. Faint echoes drifted over the towering pallets, coming from behind him.
A handful of the workers had entered the warehouse.
The next moment, gunshots tore across the back of the warehouse, packing the distinctive punch of an M45 pistol.
Reed, firing more shots.
Dropping more guards, in all likelihood.
King quickened his pace, giving the AK-47 in his hands a preliminary check as he ran. Everything seemed in order — when he pulled the trigger, the gun would fire. That was all he needed. His gaze instinctively drifted to his broken wrist, hanging by his side, already swelling beyond recognition. He stomached a grimace and tried to force the injury from his mind entirely.
The more he dwelled on it, the faster it would incapacitate him.
He sensed a break in the maze of supplies ahead and surged forward, drawing closer to the source of the massive engine.
When he burst out into a vast stretch of open flooring, his heart leapt into his throat.
A gargantuan haul truck ordinarily reserved for quarries and mining activities bore down on him, only a few feet away. He caught one glimpse of the massive wheels — designed for off-highway use, at least fifteen feet tall on their own — and threw himself back into the aisle, tumbling head-over-heels in an attempt to avoid being flattened by the steaming behemoth.
He couldn’t believe his eyes as he rolled to a stop and watched the structure-on-wheels tear past.
It came close to touching the roof of the warehouse — King found it hard to believe that a vehicle so large existed. He caught sight of an inscription on the side, reading Liebherr T 282B.
The make and model.
Now he understood the reason for the deafening roar — such an enormous vehicle couldn’t possibly run on less than three-thousand horsepower. He imagined the size of the engine under the hood and blanched at the ramifications of the discovery.
He had no doubt Reed rested in the cabin, sitting comfortably at least twenty feet above-ground. Somehow, he’d discovered the existence of the ultra-class haul truck and planned accordingly. Reed’s furious tirade gave King the impression that the man had planned to commandeer the vehicle with the workers’ blessing, impersonating one of the port officials.
Now, he was forced to leave the complex against resistance.
King wondered how Reed planned to do it.
Then he stepped back out into the open rear of the warehouse as the Liebherr truck screamed past and the blood drained from his face.
There was no exit back here — just three towering walls made of corrugated metal.
And Reed was heading straight for one of them.
‘Oh my God,’ King whispered.
Despite every fibre of his being convincing him to flee, he took off at a sprint after the dump truck.
A colossal impact was imminent, and it would be his only opportunity to gain ground on Reed.
Seconds earlier, as the haul truck had roared down on him, he’d seen an entire metal staircase fixed to the grille, trailing up to the cabin a couple of dozen feet above ground level. He needed to skirt around to the front of the truck when it slowed, hurl himself onto the staircase without getting mown down by the massive wheels, and then make it to the cabin without Reed gunning him down as he ascended the front of the vehicle.
Simple.
He ignored his natural instincts and picked up speed as the haul truck simply smashed through the side of the warehouse.