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

It never goes as smooth as it does in the movies.

He’d got one hand cupped over the right-hand roof ridge before he slammed into the side of the vehicle, but he used the momentum to brute-force his way atop the car. Adrenaline overwhelmed the pain, but he knew one whole side of his body would be bruised the next morning from the way it went instantly numb. The vehicle had been sliding sideways as he dived onto it and when it corrected course he nearly rolled off the other side. He came inches away from careening head-first off the top before he seized hold of the left-hand ridge and pressed himself between them.

This was the most dangerous part.

He needed both hands free to hang on, and if any of the occupants buzzed their windows down and came up with automatic rifles, he’d be dead. But the drift into the alley had been chaotic, frantic, intense, and the SUV had grazed both walls on the way in, so the bump of Slater impacting the side of the car could be chalked up to banging against the side of the alley.

The SUV went forty miles an hour down the claustrophobic laneway until it screamed to a stop in front of the closed bay doors. Slater heard hoarse shouting through the roof he was gripping. The occupants of the vehicle were screaming commands into their radios, demanding the roller doors be lifted again. They’d only just come down after spitting out the convoy a minute earlier, and mechanical procedures couldn’t be expedited.

With a groan, the doors started inching upward.

Muffled to a dull murmuring through the reinforced roof, Slater heard one occupant shout, ‘Fuck this! Out!’

All four doors burst open, and black-ops killers manhandled their prisoner out of the vehicle, ready to duck under the slowly-ascending roller door.

Slater looked down as the prisoner looked up.

He met the gaze of Alonzo Romero.

83

Torres wrapped the Versace bathrobe around his short fat frame and toddled out of the en suite bathroom.

Warm air snaked out after him. Despite the weather, he’d needed the scalding hot shower, if only for to kickstart his brain by exposing himself to something shocking. He needed his head clear so he could think over the morning meet. Cártel de Texis would be none too happy. He knew who he was meeting with. He also knew how the cartel head handled bad news.

It wouldn’t be pretty.

He was halfway to the four-poster bed where his clothes for the day were laid out when he felt the barrel against the back of his neck.

He froze.

84

Slater slid off the roof, using all his two hundred pounds as deadweight.

He simply crushed the man who had a grip on Alonzo’s collar, landing with both boots on the top of the guy’s skull, driving his head down into the filthy pavement. The man’s fingers hooked into Alonzo’s collar, dragging the prisoner down with him.

Alonzo cried out from pain and shock.

Slater was already inside the SUV, diving into the rear seats and scrambling out the other side, moving with the haste of a rabid animal.

It all happened fluidly, and he stayed alive because he was almost prescient to the way men move in combat.

He came down on his side outside the vehicle, on the opposite side to Alonzo, just as the three remaining operatives ran round to investigate the cause of Alonzo’s shouting. Two went round the trunk, and one went round the hood. They missed Slater in their peripheral vision by milliseconds, and when they came upon Alonzo and their incapacitated colleague, the pair were alone.

‘Wha—?’ one of the men started, then Slater shot him from underneath the SUV.

Thankfully, no one wears Kevlar on their ankles.

He pumped the HK45CT’s trigger twice more, and obliterated an Achilles tendon on each of the last unscathed pair.

All three operatives took a knee, scrabbling in rapidly broadening puddles of their blood, and one had the good sense to lower his HK416 rifle so the barrel pointed below the undercarriage of the SUV and pull the trigger.

At least a dozen rounds spewed out of the automatic weapon.

They would have torn Slater to shreds, only he wasn’t there anymore.

He was back in the rear seats, moving like a man possessed, and he came back out Alonzo’s side and crash-tackled the man who had his HK416 lowered underneath the car. He drove the guy down into the pavement, making sure all his weight was leaning on the side of the man’s head as it hit the ground. It knocked him clean out, and Slater dragged his unconscious body upright by the collar and used him as a human shield as he trained his pistol on the last two men.

One of them was pale as a sheet, already deep in shock, gripping his carbine like he had no idea how to use the weapon. His ankle fountained blood, and he couldn’t take his eyes off it.

The second had his wits together, but Slater locked his aim on the guy’s forehead.

‘Drop it,’ he snarled. ‘You’ll hit your friend here if you shoot.’

The guy almost raised the MP5 submachine gun in his gloved hands, but didn’t. He was blue-eyed, sandy-haired, young. Maybe mid-twenties. Likely a prodigy in the special ops world, just as Slater had been ten years ago.

He was lucid as he said, ‘You’ll just kill me.’

‘Have I killed anyone yet?’

The guy blinked. ‘You’re—’

‘Yes. I’m Will Slater. Now drop it. And take a long hard look at your employers.’

The guy didn’t waste another second, because he was smart. He recognised that, for Slater, this standoff had to be over in a matter of seconds. Either Slater would be forced to kill, or he wouldn’t.

The operative chose to live another day.

He dropped the MP5.

Slater hurled the unconscious body aside and charged at the remaining pair. He thrust a boot heel into the face of the man who was in shock, snapping his head back and separating him from consciousness. Then he twisted