As Reed stepped briefly into elbow-range, King pivoted with his hips, taking care not to twist his stomach too hard at risk of his body locking up in protest. He unloaded an elbow with his right arm, the only strike possible considering his broken wrist had ballooned in size. Thankfully it coincided perfectly with the distance between them, and he hit Reed in the lower part of his chin with the point of his elbow hard enough to omit a crack, signalling a broken jaw. Before the man had time to even recognise the debilitating injury, King pumped his left fist like a mechanised piston, hammering it across the space between his knuckles and Reed’s nose.
The short straight left landed home in exactly the right position, breaking his septum with the familiar twang that he had almost become accustomed to by this point. Blood sprayed from both nostrils, and Reed’s jaw started to slacken as he realised the damage that had been wreaked on the lower half of his face. His bottom lip drooped momentarily.
A perfect opportunity.
King let his left fist retreat from Reed’s broken nose with a single movement, cocking it like a weapon, and sent it flying straight back at a target a few inches lower down the man’s face. His knuckles crashed into Reed’s lower row of teeth, knocking a few of them loose. They shot back into his mouth, exposing bloody gums.
Three strikes, horrendously fast.
Bang-bang-bang.
A broken jaw, a broken nose, and displaced teeth.
King didn’t stop there. Images of Victor and Johnson flashed in his mind — he lingered on the memory of Johnson’s neck wound for just long enough to let it fuel him. He understood the tiny gaps in defence that had to be taken advantage of when two skilled combatants came head to head, and it made him realise that if he hesitated for even a moment he would end up on his back, getting the life choked out of him by Bryson Reed.
So even as the snapping sound of broken bones was lingering in the air he changed levels, ducking low and looping his good arm around Reed’s thighs. High-school wrestling practice came roaring back and he completed the double-leg takedown, thrusting off the mark and sending them both sprawling to the metal floor of the vehicle bay.
Reed on his back, King on top.
The three strikes to the face had killed Reed’s ability to resist for a fraction of a second, and it was all that King needed. He sliced a leg up to the man’s stomach and brought it over to the other side of his motionless form, so that he ended up straddling Reed’s mid-section.
Now the size advantage meant nothing.
He’d taken full mount, a jiujitsu technique that King had found as one of the most effective tools to implement in a live combat situation. Reed could buck and jerk and roll and twist with all his might, but the sheer power of gravity ensured he wasn’t going anywhere. He could throw punches up at King, but they would carry little weight behind them, affected by the same laws of physics.
And, more importantly, the laws of physics favoured King’s strikes also.
A punch thrown straight down had all kind of additional weight behind it.
With that in mind, he forced himself to relax and spot openings with clinical precision. Reed made all the right moves given his predicament, bringing his meaty forearms up in front of his face like a massive shield, hoping to protect himself from the brunt of the incoming onslaught.
He needn’t have bothered.
King simply sat patiently atop the man, one leg on either side of his stomach, his elbow poised like a predator waiting to demolish its prey. As soon as Reed shifted uncomfortably in an attempt to wriggle free, King spotted a slight gap in between his forearms and drove his elbow down in a scything motion, like a sharp bullet splitting through Reed’s defences. It landed right on the button, smashing into the man’s forehead and knocking his skull back against the metal floor.
The successful strike shocked Reed, stripping him of certain reflexes.
King took direct advantage of it.
He loaded up again and dropped the same elbow through the same gap in Reed’s forearms, hammering the same patch of skin above his eyebrows. It carried similar weight and had the same effect, detonating Reed’s head against the cold metal once again.
The gap in his forearm defence widened as he began to lose consciousness.
King let loose with an unrelenting barrage of elbows to the exact same pinpoint, slamming the pointed bone again and again and again into the man’s skull.
When it was over, Reed had entered a groggy state of consciousness, awake but barely functioning. There was no returning from such a series of attacks. It would take him hours to return to his normal levels of alertness, and by then King intended to be far away from the container ship, and far away from Somalia.
He maintained full mount position, but let the elbows cease. He had done enough damage. Anything Reed attempted in retaliation would be laboured by brain damage and semi-consciousness and the disadvantageous position he rested in. His face had become a mask of blood, jagged cuts laced across his forehead, yet King felt no sympathy whatsoever.
Reed seemed to sense that King had yielded temporarily. He let his forearms fall away from his face, exposing himself entirely. He smirked with a mouth full of crimson liquid, his features grotesque and his eyes filled with hate.
‘Good one,’ he murmured. ‘You did it. Fucking shoot me and get it over with. Go get your medal…’
King paused. ‘I’ve got a couple of questions first.’
53
Before he spoke, King touched a hand to the bridge of his nose to wipe away a steady stream of blood that had begun to drip from his nostrils. His lip had been split too, at some point since he’d climbed aboard the container ship. He thought back on everything that had happened in that time, and found himself flabbergasted that he was still conscious.
He knew the pain would catch up to him. If he did recover, it would be a painstakingly slow process. Worse than Mexico.
Far worse.
He didn’t drop his guard, aware that there was a dangerous hostile underneath him — no matter how bloody, battered and beaten, he was still Bryson Reed.
A worthy candidate for Black Force.
And a royal piece of shit.
The blood flowing off him ran down the sides of Reed’s abdomen and covered the thin layer of hundred-dollar bills that had come to rest all around them. Their fight had taken place on the edge of the mountain of cash. King smirked, despite everything, as he studied the sight.
‘Blood money,’ he muttered. ‘Almost poetic.’
Reed spat a glob of blood onto the bills and shook his head. The gesture took all his effort. ‘Not quite. You saw who I stole from. Not quite the attention-grabbing headlines of smuggling guns or drugs, hey? No-one cares about that smuggling route. It’s why they make so much money. Because the big corporations endorse it — it adds to their yearly haul. So who gives a shit if I break away with their stash? If it’s extra-legal, then I deserve it as much as they do. Survival of the fittest.’
‘If you made your getaway without anyone knowing any better, I might have let you go. But you killed people. Innocent men. You don’t think about that?’
Reed shrugged. ‘Not really.’
‘You’re not doing much to help your case.’
‘Fuck my case. You’re going to kill me regardless. And if you don’t, you’re more of an idiot than I ever imagined.’
‘I beat you. I wouldn’t call myself an idiot.’
‘You bought what I fed you. You should have worked it all out when you first interviewed me, but you didn’t. Your eyes lit up at the prospect of guns and drugs and everything illegal. You ignored the banal shit. That’s the only reason I made it this far.’