Hunters by Matt Rogers (books for 5 year olds to read themselves .TXT) 📕

‘Have you thought of a name?’

‘No. Not yet. You?’

‘A few ideas. But they’re just that. Ideas.’

‘Let me hear them.’

‘Later,’ she mumbled, her blonde hair trailing down his arm as she settled into a comfortable position against his shoulder. ‘I’m exhausted.’

‘Likewise.’

‘It’s hard to tell with you,’ she said. ‘You hide it well.’

‘I hide everything well.’

She smirked, her eyes still closed. ‘I think maybe I’ve cracked through that tough exterior.’

‘You think?’ he said.

He bent down and gently kissed her on the lips, then wrapped his arm around her so she could sleep. He realised it didn’t matter what they’d left behind. Cars, houses, clothes … there was always an identical twin you could replace it with. There was no other Violetta. No other unborn child.

He hadn’t given the burned estate a second thought, but he would die for those he loved.

Externals were replaceable. Internals were everything.

Most of King’s life had encompassed his own interior. His body, his mind, his health, his fitness, his combat readiness, his firearms skills, his discipline, his psychological invincibility. He’d honed his mind into something to be reckoned with, and he’d taken that concept to the extreme because he’d been a solo operative most of his official career.

Now, he realised, looking past Violetta to the next row, it encompassed three other people, and a fourth growing inside Violetta that trumped them all.

Outside of Violetta, Slater, and Alexis, nothing in life mattered. They could be thrust into any situation and as long as they were with each other it’d all be okay.

He thought he understood true freedom for the first time.

He ruminated on that thought for most of the flight, then they descended into El Salvador and everything went to hell.

47

The landing was smooth, the wheels touching the tarmac with little more than a soft bump. No all-encompassing roar of engines, no shaking or rattling. The interior remained quiet.

Slater sat up a little straighter, on edge.

The plane taxied down the runway as the engines powered down.

It slowed faster than normal.

None of the scattered passengers looked around in confusion. Slater did. He pressed his face to the thick window pane, trying to get a better angle on what lay ahead. He couldn’t see anything.

The plane coasted slower and slower until it came to a halt.

They were nowhere near the terminal.

Slater said, ‘Get up.’

Alexis turned her head. ‘What?’

‘We need to move.’

‘Move?’

She was confused, but she reacted instantaneously. She trusted his gut as much as he did himself. She unbuckled her seatbelt and stood up in the aisle.

A flight attendant called out. ‘Ma’am, sit down, please.’

Violetta and King were already on their feet.

Slater stared out the window one final time. He thought he caught a flash of something going underneath the plane.

A vehicle.

His heart skipped a beat.

The flight attendant raised her voice. ‘Ma’am! Sir!’

The seatbelt sign flicked off with a soft gong.

Every passenger on the plane reacted at once.

There were roughly two dozen of them, and all their heads disappeared at once. Slater just managed to see it as he stood up, bringing his line of sight over the seat back in front of him. Had they vanished into thin air? He reeled, nearly off-balance from confusion. Was his concussion screwing with his sense of reality?

But, no. They were still there. All twenty-plus people on the plane had reacted to the gong, like a signal. They’d squashed themselves down into their meagre footwells, shielding themselves from involvement in whatever came next.

They were decoy passengers.

The flight was a trap.

King hadn’t reacted.

Slater said, ‘Why aren’t you moving?’

King’s face was a grimace of despair. ‘They were ahead of us. They planned this. Alonzo’s gesture was useless.’

Chaotic movement up front. Big bodies aggressively storming the front of the plane, already on board. Slater made out the distinct uniform of the Armed Forces of El Salvador. Soldiers brandishing automatic weapons — huge, fearsome carbine rifles — and ready to use them.

Game over.

48

King took in the situation and felt his stomach knot.

Beside him, Slater whispered, ‘What now?’

King was a realist. There was a time for hopeful optimism, but this wasn’t it. ‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘What do you propose we do?’

It was a straight line from the front of the plane to the back. The decoy passengers that had been swapped out for the real ones before they got on the plane were skewered out of sight, having been told what to do long before they landed. King knew he couldn’t take a hostage. He was weaponless anyway. So was Slater, and Violetta, and Alexis.

This was all a setup, to get them into custody as smoothly and uneventfully as possible.

Then they could be extradited with a single phone call, and handed right back to the secret world they’d fled from.

The soldiers moved down the aisle in a single-file phalanx. They were a human wall of physical mass, and that wasn’t taking into account the weapons. The carbine up front was aimed directly at King and Slater’s heads, and there were plenty more where they came from. Looking at the shuffling bodies, King estimated that more than ten soldiers had boarded the plane.

Alexis said, ‘Will?’

King sensed Slater calculating. Could they flee to the back of the plane, take the flight attendant hostage with their bare hands, use that threat to disembark and then run for their lives?

No, King knew. No, we can’t. We’ll go down in a hail of gunfire. We’ll all die. The four of us, and the baby.

King said, ‘We need to bide our time.’

The soldiers up front screamed in Spanish. King could speak the language competently, and he knew they were all being commanded not to move.

If they tried anything…

Slater muttered, ‘How many attendants up the back?’

‘No,’ King hissed.

Violetta said, ‘Will, no.’

Slater was taut as steel. King felt the aggression rippling off him.

He was a bull, hovering with indecision, ready to explode.

Then Slater bent down slowly, giving himself a fresh line of sight out the window. King followed his gaze and noticed the plane was surrounded by army trucks.

Slater stood up, exhaled, and slowly raised his