A round sat firmly embedded in his forehead.
King glimpsed the result and let out a sigh that had been building in his chest ever since he’d discovered Bryson Reed’s deception. Justice, natural law, had been exacted. It took the stress away, and his mind settled into a trance.
He fell into a welcome unconsciousness, not really caring if he would wake up from it or not.
He doubted he would.
His last vision before he blacked out was of Beth standing underneath the open roller door, her hands on her knees, vomiting seawater onto the metal floor. Her left arm was twisted at a horrific angle, clearly broken. Her face was a swollen, bruised mess. The bullet wound in her shoulder was pouring blood down her side. Her skin was pale and her eyes were wide. In her right hand, she clutched her M45 MEUSOC pistol, but as she realised the threat had dissipated she let it fall from her grasp, clattering to the ground between her feet.
King chalked the sight up to a hallucination and slipped into nothingness.
55
He came to slowly, darkness giving way to a soft white glow, which then gave way to a blinding explosion of harsh white light. He opened his eyes, peeling his eyelids apart one after the other, taking a moment to soak in his surroundings and make sure he was back in reality.
‘I’m not dead,’ he muttered, his voice croaky.
He’d uttered the words more to hear the sound of his own voice and confirm he wasn’t imagining things, and he hadn’t anticipated a response.
‘No, you’re not,’ someone said from beside him. ‘Can’t really believe it myself, to be honest.’
Features of the room became apparent, from the hospital bed to the white blanket draped over his legs and mid-section to the small flat-screen television hanging from the ceiling on the other side of the room. He rolled his head slowly to the left and spotted the familiar unimpressive oak bedside table topped with a tiny vase of flowers. Past that, he saw a cheap wooden waiting chair that someone had dragged around to face the bed.
Lars sat in the chair, his eyes wide and an expression of disbelief plastered across his face.
‘Is this a civilian hospital?’ King muttered, rolling his gaze around the room.
‘Sure is. We were sending you express to a military hospital but this place had a private room available and some of the best emergency doctors in the country on-staff. All very convenient.’
‘Where?’
‘Virginia Beach. We came straight down as soon as we hit the east coast. You were barely clutching onto your life.’
King paused, dealing with the befuddled mental state that came with losing a significant chunk of time. ‘Did you treat me on the container ship?’
Lars nodded. ‘That Force Recon Marine I warned you about — Bethany Morris. She made a series of calls and managed to get through to the very top. They put her in touch with the appropriate parties. We had a chopper on deck within a couple of hours.’
‘A couple of hours…’ King said. ‘How’d I survive?’
‘She stabilised you as best she could. She was in pretty horrendous shape herself. You’ve both been dragged through the ringer.’
‘You flew me straight stateside?’
Lars shook his head. ‘We had a small army of medics operate on you both on one of our warships in the area. We kept you there twenty-four hours, but we wanted you back here for most of your recovery.’
‘Wait … how long have I been out?’
‘They deliberately induced a coma so they had time to deal with each of your injuries. You’re only just coming out of it now. It’s been four days since we found you on the container ship.’
‘Jesus.’
‘You can imagine I’ve got about seventeen thousand questions,’ Lars said.
‘I thought you might. Can it wait?’
The man nodded. ‘Of course. You shouldn’t be talking to me, actually. Doctor’s orders. But I know what a tough son of a bitch you are. You wouldn’t let something like that stop you, hey?’
‘Did you check the bodies I left on the ship?’ King said, keen for at least a handful of answers before he slipped back into a much-needed slumber. ‘They were ex-Marines. Ran their own security firm in New York. Apparently.’
Lars nodded. ‘As you can imagine we’ll be dissecting what happened for months. But that checks out. It didn’t take much digging to bring up a laundry list of dirt on the bastards. It’s not pretty. They did their best to hide their pasts. Most of them were dishonourably discharged, and the rest were implicated in shady dealings during their time in service. Seems the scum of the earth banded together when they all got out. The one thing they all shared in common was that they’d avoided military prison by the skin of their teeth. Not enough evidence to put them away, so they were let loose into civilian society to do as they pleased. We should have got them sooner. You can be damn sure we’ll be changing our transition programmes.’
‘They almost had all the money Reed stole at their disposal. That would have been grim. That kind of cash could have bought them influence anywhere in the world.’
Lars nodded. ‘We counted everything we could find in the vehicle bay. Nine hundred and fifty six million dollars, give or take. Not a bad haul, all things considered.’
King made to respond, but a sharp bout of phantom pain in his side creased him over. He scrunched up his face and rode out the agony — it managed to seep through despite the cocktail of drugs racing through his system, injected through the intravenous drip in the crook of his elbow.
Lars noted the bout. ‘Let’s not talk for too long. We have all the time in the world for that later. Just know you did damn good. Reed would have got away if you didn’t persevere.’
‘Is Beth here?’ King said. ‘At this hospital?’
Lars nodded. ‘She sure is. Anything else I can get for you before I leave? I’ve still got this whole mess to sort out.’
‘You can get her a goddamn medal. And you can get us both some time off after we finish recovering. In the same place, preferably.’
Lars smirked. ‘What did I tell you about not getting distracted?’
‘I’ve earned a fucking distraction. With respect.’
‘That you have. Job well done, my friend. Talk soon.’
And with that he disappeared into the sterile hallway, melting into the doctors and nursing staff flowing past King’s room. For a moment King wondered whether security measures had been put into place given the fact that he lay in a civilian hospital.
But then he remembered that he didn’t officially work for the United States government, and in turn didn’t officially exist.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and sunk back into slumber.
He deserved it.
56
After a recovery process that had taken longer than expected, given the mess King’s insides had been left in, he woke up one hot August morning realising he felt as close to a hundred percent as he had for quite some time.
The penthouse suite of the Titanium Seaside Resort on Miami Beach had been booked for two weeks, courtesy of a gift from the United States government based on exceptional service to one’s country. Of course, nothing about the transaction was on the record — King hadn’t bothered to involve himself with the finer details, but he imagined it had involved certain back-channels that the general public had no knowledge of.
Looking out at the turquoise ocean through the floor-to-ceiling windows stretching across one side of the towering complex, King realised he didn’t care about the specifics.
He was just here to enjoy the view, and unwind.