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

head. ‘I doubt it’s that. Whichever way America wanted us back, El Salvador would comply. No, it’s what we discussed earlier. They didn’t want us defenceless in a prison cell. They wanted us out there, to hunt. They’re purists. They’re animalistic operators through and through. King and I know the mentality required, because we lived it. It’s nigh on impossible to hold onto your morality and do the job we did, which is why we got out. But these men — and woman, it seems — are all the way in. They live on that edge of human experience that’s damn near inconceivable to the ordinary human. Which is why sneaking up on us from behind and putting a bullet in our heads is sacrilegious. It’d be like stomping on a defenceless puppy. No satisfaction, no pride in the act. They want the pure fight, and a couple of them were willing to die for it.’

King murmured, ‘What about the ones you met? Opal and … Topaz. They’re purists too?’

Slater said, ‘Topaz?’

‘That’s the quiet one’s name,’ King said. ‘Antônia … told me. When she revealed what really happened at Joya de Cerén.’

Slater shook his head. ‘They’re not purists. They just wanted me dead. I guess there’s a rift in the ranks. The hunters that wanted us dead at any cost … they got us locked up before we even got off the plane. The ones that wanted to best us in combat … they got us released.’

‘Which side is Sapphire?’ King asked.

‘Huh?’

King grimaced. ‘That’s what she told me … her callsign is.’

‘Whoever’s left,’ Slater said, ‘it’s different now. We’ve killed four of them. If it’s just Sapphire, Opal, and Topaz remaining, then we’ve killed more than half of them. Now they’re the underdogs. They’re not going to play with their food anymore. Antônia was restless in the apartment. I was pressing her about the life she’d supposedly forfeited to help us, and it looked like she didn’t want to play the deception game anymore. She just wanted it over and done with.’

Violetta said, ‘There’s something else.’

They waited.

She pulled out her burner phone. ‘Alonzo contacted me. Before they took him.’

Slater sat forward. ‘He did?’

If there was even the remotest chance of salvaging this mess…

Violetta said, ‘I don’t want you to get your hopes up, Will. There’s nothing we can do for him.’

‘Just tell me what he said.’

‘It was a default message. He must have written it long ago for this exact possibility. It was copy-pasted into a G-mail draft on an anonymous account we both share.’

‘And?’

She thumbed an application on the burner phone, entered her login credentials, and pulled up the draft email. Then she took a deep breath.

‘“They take prisoners out on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 0600. They’ve never deviated from this routine. They use the Bay 2 exit. Violetta, you know where that is. If you’re reading these words, I need you.”’

King said, ‘Shit.’

Slater said, ‘What’s he talking about?’

Violetta tucked the phone away. ‘We used to work in the same building, once upon a time. There’s designated floors for … detainees. If they’ve branded him a traitor and taken him in, they’ll be storing him there until they cart him off to a facility outside the boroughs so they can really go to work on him.’

‘And you know this how?’

Violetta grimaced. ‘We’ve both seen it in action. Previous colleagues caught funnelling sensitive data to foreign intelligence agencies. We know what they do with traitors. The burn-off period, where they keep them in the very building in which they work until they’ve sorted out the mess left behind. Then what comes later, after they’re extracted. The real punishment…’

‘What happened to the other traitors?’

‘They became an example.’

She looked at the floor, unwilling to explain.

‘No way that’s happening to Alonzo,’ Slater said. ‘No fucking way.’

Violetta shook her head and turned away. She muttered, ‘This is exactly why I didn’t want to discuss this right now.’

‘You want to leave him to die? Painfully? Slowly? After everything he’s done for us?’

‘We don’t have a choice!’ Violetta yelled, turning back. ‘We can’t show our faces here in El Salvador, let alone the country we fled from. You’re concussed, King’s functionally useless, I’m pregnant, and Alexis—’

She cut herself off instantly, but they all knew where she was going.

Alexis said, ‘You can say it. I’m inexperienced.’

Violetta sighed. ‘I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. You’re already a better fighter than I am. I’m just stressed.’

‘We all are,’ Slater said.

‘I’m not,’ King muttered. ‘But it’s the drugs. When they wear off…’

‘Which won’t be long,’ Slater said. ‘And look what I have.’

He pulled out the intel folder he’d taken from the safe house and perused it wordlessly. No one interrupted. They didn’t have the energy. Violetta and Alexis slumped at the kitchen table with glasses of water, and King sat back and closed his eyes.

Staring at the mess of files, Slater fought back a wave of intrusive thoughts.

Just give it up. Rest. Breathe. Forget about Alonzo. Worry about yourself.

But he’d never listened to intrusive thoughts, and he wasn’t about to start now.

He soaked in the intel, eyes progressively widening as he realised the bombshells that lay on the pages in front of him.

Violetta finally looked up and noticed his expression. ‘You got something?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Slater said. ‘Antônia had serious dirt on the people she was competing for Torres with.’

Violetta hesitated. ‘Cártel de Texis?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘What dirt?’

Slater said, ‘Enough to make them do whatever we want them to.’

Alexis said, ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Deadly.’

King winced and blinked in an attempt to muster the energy to speak. Then he managed, ‘I’m in no state … to do anything … right now.’

‘I know,’ Slater said. ‘So I’ll go. Alone.’

‘Where?’

‘Alonzo risked his career, his freedom, and his life for us,’ Slater said. ‘He asked for nothing in return. He did what Antônia pretended to do — he acted selflessly. And everyone he turned to for help stabbed him in the back. He fed us into the hands of another hunter because he still believed in the