‘Nothing about Mexico was a good thing.’
‘We’ll see,’ Lars said. ‘I’ll be the first to say you don’t seem like the same person since you returned.’
King paused. ‘How so?’
‘You were a twenty-two-year old kid the first time we met. Talented, for sure, but inexperienced. The fact that you’d already made it into the Delta Force shocked a lot of people — my superiors included. Behind the scenes you were ridiculed. What you did in Tijuana, and then in Guatemala after that — it shut a lot of people up. And I think you proved to yourself that you could do it. I think you went across the border with hidden questions about yourself, and you returned with answers. Any of this ringing true?’
King took some time to consider the spiel. He concluded that nothing Lars had said rang false, and nodded. ‘Something like that.’
‘Do you feel like you’ve matured since then?’
‘I feel different,’ King said. ‘It’s not something I can easily describe. I can’t really put my finger on what it is.’
‘Confidence, I’d say.’
‘Not that obvious. Something deeper. I spent years trying to convince myself that I wasn’t a special little snowflake, like everyone was telling me I was. I thought I was progressing through the ranks because of sheer dumb luck. Then Mexico happened, and I realised that all the tests weren’t exaggerated. I guess I always felt different to other people, but I suppressed it because I didn’t want to come off as an arrogant little shit.’
‘That’s what I thought. You’re starting to understand what you are.’
‘And, to be honest, I think it’ll get me killed.’
Lars raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’
‘That’s why I’m reluctant about this one. If I’m being honest — as much as I hate to admit it — Mexico gave me this aura of invincibility. By the end of it, I was convinced that I could do anything. I wouldn’t have sprinted headlong into Guatemala if I didn’t have confidence in myself.’
‘Nothing wrong with that.’
‘If it sticks in my behaviour, there’s plenty wrong with it. I can’t survive like that forever.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Lars said. ‘These are still early days. You need a proven track record behind you, and I need to carefully slot you into situations where you can build that resume. You can attempt the impossible later — we have all the time in the world for that. For now I need you in situations like these — where your skills are necessary, but you’re not being thrown straight into a war.’
‘I could be,’ King said. ‘You don’t know much about what’s going on in Mogadishu.’
‘No-one does,’ Lars admitted. ‘Which makes it the perfect test for you.’
‘In what sense?’
‘I’m giving you even less instruction than I did in Mexico. The end goal is to detach support from the operations entirely. In future I want to be able to turn you loose in any kind of environment I deem necessary, and let you wreak havoc until the objectives have been completed.’
‘I like the sound of that.’
‘Well, it starts in Mogadishu. Get to the bottom of whatever the hell Reed’s got himself wrapped up in, and clash some heads together if you deem it necessary. Basically, sort the situation out. On your own. With no help.’
‘Got it.’
‘There’s another fourteen hours of flying ahead of us,’ Lars said. ‘Rest up.’
He closed his eyes all of a sudden, slipping back into slumber in mercurial fashion. King watched Lars drift away into a peaceful sleep, then he leant his own head back against the cold headrest and let out the breath that had caught in his throat over the course of their conversation.
He knew he had no chance of sleeping for quite some time. A few hours of restless stirring would suffice.
King closed his eyes, but no sleep came. Instead he thought of war zones and instability and a burning desire to disregard the boundaries of the law.
He had received an addictive dose of the feeling in Mexico, and something told him he wouldn’t grow tired of the ability to improvise for quite some time.
It’s what you were put on this planet to do, he thought.
In an unknown cargo plane somewhere above North America, heading for a war-torn hellhole in Africa entrenched in an active civil war, with his instructions unclear and his exact destination unknown, King managed a smile.
This was what he was meant for.
7
The ship stank of fuel and rust and grime. Thousands of shipping containers lined the deck in towering, orderly rows — most were coated in mould and muck from years of constant use. There weren’t many new TEUs onboard the vessel. It was an ancient creature by international shipping standards, used for countless supply runs by one of the major respected corporations.
Inside its bowels, a meeting had begun.
A cluster of grizzled, bearded men with weather-beaten features and crude tattoos snaking up their tanned forearms crowded around a long metal table in the centre of a cramped windowless room. The table seemed like an extension of the ship itself, made of the same material as the steel walls and bolted into the ground, fixed in position. The surroundings were sterile, as if they were regularly wiped down.
One wondered what needed to be wiped clean from its surfaces…
‘I won’t budge on this,’ one of the bearded men said, ice in his tone, gripping the edge of the table with white knuckles to ride out the sickening rage coursing through his system. ‘It’s our way or nothing.’
Across the table, a ragtag collection of frail foreigners in official crew uniform stood in varying states of distress. None of them looked like they wanted to be there, most opting to stare vacantly at an empty wall or cast their eyes down to the floor between their feet. The only man with a semblance of determination in his gaze sat straight-shouldered on one of the stools surrounding the table. He was in his late-twenties, with deep bronze skin and a distinct Spanish accent.
‘We didn’t want you onboard in the first place,’ he said, daring to defy the bearded men, shooting daggers across the room. ‘You are not welcome here.’
The first man who had spoken snarled. ‘Too bad, sunshine. Our payload is due for arrival in exactly thirty hours, which is when you lot are scheduled to arrive on the coast of Somalia. It’s crucial that we retrieve our cargo, and your superiors clearly agree. They were the ones who gave us the all-clear to come aboard.’
‘Because you paid them,’ the Spanish man said.
‘Maybe so. It’s none of your business what happened. The reality is that we’re here, and you’ll have to put up with our requests. Besides, they don’t involve you. You may just need to stay an extra day milling around the coastline, while we wait to receive information. But it’ll all be wrapped up within a day. We’ll have what we came for, you’ll turn a blind eye, and no-one outside of this ship will be any wiser. How’s that sound?’
‘Not good,’ the Spanish man said, his tone matter-of-fact. ‘I know what cargo you are after. Some of my men don’t, so I’d prefer to keep it vague in order to keep it that way. It is not welcome on this ship. I don’t care what my superiors said. I’m in charge when we’re on the open waters, and I won’t let you bring it onboard. It could get me killed.’
The bearded man frowned. He hadn’t been anticipating this level of resistance. The hardest part of the entire ordeal had been convincing the multinational corporation that owned the container ship to let them discreetly attach themselves to the supply run for their own personal advantage. It had taken the man long enough to realise that money talked, and after a substantial offer they had been given a long list of instructions and protocol.