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

of the room when he got the gist of the call. He sensed cold fury stirring in him, and he knew what that meant. He had a temper that made everyone quake, and now it was here, and it had him in its grip.

He held the phone so hard he thought he might break it, and said, ‘César, are you under duress?’

Vásquez took a long time to answer.

Finally, the tycoon said, ‘Does it matter?’

He had a point.

The President said, ‘If you’re being held hostage, I’ll bring everything down on them. I’ll crush them.’

‘It’s not that,’ Vásquez said, his voice shaking through the receiver. ‘Nothing you do will make a difference. And you don’t have a choice here.’

‘You know you’re signing your own execution if I go through with this?’

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’

The President said, ‘I’ll have you skinned alive.’

‘I understand that,’ Vásquez said. ‘But you will do this for me. This instant. Or I’ll do exactly what I laid out. Our beautiful country will be driven into a pit from which it won’t emerge. Not for a long time. You won’t be alive to see the recovery. You know what I can do with my empire. What I can jeopardise.’

The President heard something snap inside the phone. He took a deep breath and eased off the pressure of his grip.

The device still worked.

He said, ‘Be careful about how you answer this. It’s the last time I’ll ask you. If I do this for you, you will have made an enemy of me for life. Understand that. Are you sure this is what you want?’

‘Do it,’ Vásquez said, and the President thought he heard the old man fighting back tears. ‘Or I’ll ruin everything.’

The President hung up without another word.

He burst up out of his chair like he was possessed and overturned his desk, which was no small feat. The desk was solid oak. The floor vibrated as the surface slammed down on the floor, crushing a vase that had fallen off.

An aide burst into the room.

‘Get the fuck out!’ the President roared.

The young man scurried out.

The President stared at the phone in his hands for maybe a minute.

Then he realised he didn’t have time, and he dialled a number.

94

Vásquez’s eyes went wide.

He took the phone away from his ear.

He was still in the same position, lying on Alexis, who he wore like a backpack. Her forearm hadn’t budged, an inch from crushing his throat. He looked helpless and now scared.

Violetta took the phone. ‘What happened?’

Vásquez’s bloodshot eyes bugged as his voice trembled. ‘He hung up.’

‘Did he say he’d do it?’

Vásquez’s voice was weaker. The adrenaline dump had faded him, leaving him tired and terrified. ‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ Vásquez repeated, but not as confidently.

‘If he doesn’t go through with it…’

‘He will.’

‘Then why the long face?’

‘My life is over.’

Violetta looked around at the lavish bedroom, the luxury. ‘You ruined more than a few lives getting here. Call it karma.’

It didn’t compute. It never would.

Vásquez began to cry.

Then the gunfire from Torres’ neighbouring mansion reignited, twice as furious.

There was a war unfolding next door, and King was in the thick of it.

Violetta wanted nothing more than to sprint down the road, help him as best she could. She could see Alexis was thinking the same.

But they couldn’t.

Slater’s life hung in the balance.

The jigsaw hadn’t slotted into place yet. The pieces were hopelessly scattered.

Can we salvage this? Violetta thought.

It would come down to a matter of seconds.

She tapped the phone against her temple twice to centre herself, pacing back and forth across the room like a caged animal.

95

The impact ended up working in Slater’s favour.

He was already turning, the back end of the Mustang sliding out, when the pursuing truck rammed them.

Sure, it bounced his head off the wheel, but his headache couldn’t get any worse. It was like a drill in his brain, and as soon as the adrenaline wore off it would cripple him. But that hadn’t happened yet, so why worry?

The collision shot the Mustang forward and it managed to clear the surrounding traffic. Only by dumb luck, but Slater had relied on dumb luck more times than he liked to admit. He surged into the narrow mouth of East 36th Street and got his bearings.

There it was.

The flag of El Salvador, its blue and white stripes fluttering in the soft breeze, dangling from a diagonally positioned pole above a small black door on the ground floor. The consulate was smaller than he’d anticipated, its entrance merely a hole in the wall, almost anonymous in the chaotic mess of Manhattan’s shopfronts.

A thought came to him. What if they don’t open up? It’s still early.

Too late to worry about that.

Either they died or they didn’t.

He skidded the Mustang to a halt out front, and only when the car came to a chugging stop did he realise the extent of the damage. The whole right side was caved in, the door twisted beyond recognition. Smoke billowed from under the hood.

And Alonzo was groggy.

At some point, one of the impacts had knocked him out.

He tugged feebly on his mangled door handle, but the deformed door didn’t budge.

Slater yelled, ‘Climb over!’

He threw his own door open, climbed out, and levelled the HK45CT at the approaching Dodge RAM.

A tiny gun against a growling truck packed with killer operatives armed with automatic weapons, but Slater had triumphed in the face of worse odds in the past.

Correlation isn’t causation, he reminded himself.

Then he realised there was still time to make it into the consulate before the truck reached them.

Alonzo fell out of the driver’s side, scrabbling after Slater. He sprawled to the bitumen, trying and failing to gain control of his limbs. The sensation must be alien. Perhaps he’d never been concussed before.

Must be nice, Slater thought.

He hauled Alonzo to his feet with one hand and kept the pistol trained on the Dodge with the other. Then he moved Alonzo off the street, onto the sidewalk, whereupon cowering pedestrians screamed and