‘Your men back there,’ King said. ‘Who—?’
‘Not my men. Business partners.’
‘Who were they?’
‘Ex-Marines. All retired from service. They run a private security firm in New York. Or, at least, they did. The kind of guys that get paid obscene amounts of money for bodyguard work. Protecting high-profile individuals, looking menacing when they need to. That sort of thing. But business was slow.’
‘Their income was up and down, I take it?’
Reed nodded. ‘They got used to the highs. All of them were miserable when they had to ride out the lows. I got in contact with them in the midst of a particularly poor stretch.’
‘How?’
‘I saw the amount of money flowing out of the port and sensed the opportunity of a lifetime. Leeched information off my military contacts until I came across that firm. Got in contact with them and we organised to rendezvous here, off El Hur. They knew enough about the shipping industry, apparently. Enough to know that almost anything can be bought.’
King nodded, connecting the dots. ‘That’s what you planned to do with the money. Launder it through their firm.’
Reed smirked again. ‘Bingo. Because of the private nature of their contracts, no-one would have ever known where the money came from — and no-one would have ever questioned it. I’m proud of myself, if we’re being honest. Sure, I had to use my sociopathic tendencies, but I knew I had them and I knew I could use them to my advantage. Empathy, sympathy — I don’t know what those kind of emotions are, you see. All bullshit. So I did what I had to do and I almost made it.’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’
‘Because I’m dead anyway, and I want someone to know how close I got. It would have been beautiful, man. Ride off into the fucking sunset with a billion dollars and a new identity. Shame how things work out, hey? I’ve never been shit, but I almost did something, man. Almost did something…’
King could see the glint in the man’s eyes. He could spend weeks and months dissecting Reed’s motivations, but he thought he understood the general gist of it.
Bryson Reed was a Force Recon Marine with a monotonous life and a God-awful salary who’d taken a risk and murdered his closest allies for a shot at a lifetime of freedom and luxury. There had been many like him in the past, and there would be many like him in the future. It was inevitable.
King reached down with his good hand and clamped his meaty fingers around Reed’s throat. He began to squeeze. ‘Anything else you want to say?’
Reed shrugged, even as his cheeks turned beetroot and his eyes turned bloodshot from the restricted air supply. ‘Nothing that’ll change your mind, brother. Do what you gotta do. No shame in it.’
Reed paused, succumbing to the pressure of the choke, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. King watched him momentarily give way to the sensation, then his eyes shot open, and he managed to wheeze out one final question.
‘You … r-really killed … all my men?’
King nodded. ‘They weren’t the fastest, I’m afraid. Retirement must have made them rusty. Four-on-one — they should have got the better of me.’
Despite clutching at the throes of death, Reed exposed blood-stained teeth in a final, pathetic smile. ‘There’s … five of them. Y-you missed one. Good luck.’
Reed slipped into unconsciousness at the same moment as King sensed rapid movement behind him. He was slow to react, still stunned by Reed’s last words.
Before he could even turn around, a sharp steel blade hammered between his ribs, cutting him wide open with a sensation like nothing he’d ever felt before.
54
In the blink of an eye, King knew he was dying.
He had been stabbed without resistance, giving his attacker the opportunity to slide the entire length of a blade into his abdomen. It carried a squeamish sensation, the feeling laced with horror — King felt no immediate pain thanks to shock, but the knowledge descended over him that the stab wound was fatal.
At the same time, some kind of primal instinct took hold.
He lunged into action with both hands spread wide, searching for the one manoeuvre that would keep him alive for a few seconds longer.
That was all that mattered.
Prolonging his life by seconds.
He would go down fighting. He was only twenty-two years old, but the only thing he knew he could rely on was sheer, unadulterated willpower.
So he clamped both his hands down on the knife, keeping it buried to the hilt in his flesh, using every shred of power in his massive forearms to lock the blade in place. Subconsciously, he knew that if the attacker wrenched it free, he would undoubtedly go into shock from massive blood loss. He would be dead within a minute.
And despite his rational self screaming at him to remove the foreign object from his body, he kept it pinned inside him with a vice-like grip, sweating and shaking and paling as he rode out the abhorrent waves of agony. He looked up into the eyes of his attacker — just another bearded white man with hard lines creased into his features from years of exposure to the sun.
Probably the desert.
Ex-Marines, just like the lot of them.
In the grand scheme of things he meant nothing — just one of dozens of men that had tried to take King’s life in the past.
This one, however, was about to succeed.
King realised how pathetic his efforts were. He wavered in and out of reality as he fought to keep the knife embedded in his side, just as the bearded man battled to wrench it free. Muscles strained and veins pulsed with exertion, both men locked in a struggle that could only end one way.
King felt the lactic acid burning in his arms, and his grip began to falter. It would have been simple enough for the bearded man to release his grip on the knife and beat King into oblivion with his bare hands — such was the nature of King’s injuries. But the man elected to continue trying to pull the knife free, maybe sensing a personal challenge to out-wrestle a dying man.
King knew he didn’t stand a chance. Even if he managed to keep the knife in place, he couldn’t move. His body was shutting down on itself — he was acutely aware of the sensation. With cold sweat dripping off his brow he began to lose traction on the handle.
Any second, it would tear free.
Slipping…
Slipping…
The top of the bearded man’s head exploded, showering King with gore. A fraction of a second later he heard the gunshot, deafeningly loud in the otherwise-silent vehicle bay. The guy pitched forward, missing a significant portion of his skull, and slumped across the cash next to King and Reed, his legs kicking unconsciously in his death throes.
The gunshot — coming seemingly out of nowhere — spurred Reed into action. He began to buck violently underneath King, sensing a fleeting opportunity.
King understood. He couldn’t move a muscle.
Reed’s wild thrashing began to topple him over onto his side, both hands still feebly clutching the knife in his side.
King pitched, then fell.
He hit the ground with a certain finality, aware that he wouldn’t be getting up again. He’d taken full advantage of his second wind but now it had dissipated entirely, and he was left clawing for consciousness in a body that had given up on itself. He was dying, and he recognised that.
Reed began to scramble upright, breaking free from the full mount he’d been trapped under.
Then a second bullet caught him full in the face, yielding similarly graphic results to the last gunshot. Through half-closed eyes King watched the man twist unnaturally off his feet, more blood added to the crimson mask covering his features. The man collapsed into one side of the mountain of hundred-dollar bills, bleeding all over the paper.