Contracts by Matt Rogers (i like reading txt) 📕

‘We don’t need it,’ he said.

‘Why not? Wouldn’t it be evidence?’

‘I don’t want it to be evidence.’

‘Why?’

‘Best they think no one knows. Best they think no one’s coming for them. But we’ll be coming for them. When we get out of here.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I still haven’t figured it all out. Let’s go. We’ll talk when we’re safe.’

Both covered in blood, both walking on shaky legs, both disorientated, they stumbled straight out of the room, leaving Perry’s body for the cleaners.

‘Where do we go?’ King said, flashing paranoid glances left and right.

Sure enough, an older Caucasian woman threw her bedroom door open, saw them both striding down the hall, screamed at the top of her lungs, and disappeared back inside her room.

Slater said, ‘Airport.’

‘We’ll be sitting ducks out there.’

‘Would you prefer the trail?’

‘Probably.’

‘We’ll get overwhelmed, and you know it. There’s a whole lot of places to ambush us out there, and they don’t have to pretend to be courteous anymore. The game is over. We need to be back in Kathmandu as fast as humanly possible.’

‘Whatever you say.’

‘But first, Phaplu.’

King remembered the airport in the village they’d set off from. ‘We can fly there if we—’

‘Yeah.’

King thought about it. ‘You want to get Parker?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Care to elaborate?’

‘Not yet. I’m working it out.’

King was about to press the issue, but they made it to the teahouse’s entrance and suddenly there were five or six people in their face, screaming at them. Most of them were Nepali, with the odd weary trekker thrown into the mix. King shouldered his way past all of them and went straight out the front door. Slater followed in his stride.

Then they were jogging down cobblestone streets, steadily descending toward the airport, their eyes peeled for any sign of danger. They passed local after local, who stared at them like they were aliens.

Finally, Slater said, ‘Fuck this,’ and wrenched the Sig Sauer from his belt.

King followed suit.

They barely noticed civilians scattering, because by that point their visions had constricted to twin tunnels. They ran at breakneck speed through Lukla, weaving left and right in a hopeless attempt to make it to the airport before anyone in the town realised they had a situation on their hands.

King saw Slater wrench the satellite phone free and dial a number.

‘What are you doing?’ he said, his heart in his throat.

‘Making a call,’ he said. ‘We’ve still got every insurgent in the mountains looking for us, but I think I can get the army off our backs.’

‘How?’

Slater pulled to a halt in the lee of an archway and sucked in the cool mountain air.

King stopped alongside him, patiently waiting.

‘Parker,’ Slater said into the phone. ‘It’s Will. We have Raya. We have your daughter. Find somewhere secluded in Phaplu to meet us, and call me back. Somewhere away from civilians. We’re going to be coming in hot.’

King inched closer to the receiver, and thought he heard the faint words, Let me speak to her.

‘Okay,’ Slater said, and mimed taking the phone away from his ear. ‘Raya, here’s—’

He hung up.

He said, ‘That should give us the window we need to get out of this place.’

King stared at the phone. ‘What if he has nothing to do with this?’

‘Huh?’

‘What if he’s innocent? You just gave him false hope that his daughter’s alive.’

‘He’s not fucking innocent,’ Slater snarled.

‘Care to enlighten me as to what was on that laptop?’

Slater paused, and bowed his head.

Then he looked up and said, ‘A spreadsheet of payments from a dozen special risks insurers, totalling tens of millions of dollars. And it seemed like that was just deposits. Like the real payout would come later.’

King didn’t answer.

He wasn’t entirely lucid.

He knew that was bad.

He just didn’t know why.

He said, ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means Aidan Parker’s in bed with them. It means he knew about Mukta before his daughter was taken.’

King tried to piece it together.

But he couldn’t quite connect all the dots.

Then a raucous group of hikers rounded the corner a dozen feet in front of them, gesticulating to each other and speaking rapid Spanish back and forth.

One of them — deeply tanned, in his early thirties, with a full head of straight black hair — stared a little too long.

King and Slater stared back.

Then the guy looked over his shoulder, back into the alleyway they’d just come from, and shouted in broken English, ‘Down here! They here! Come quick!’

The trekkers scattered, and King dropped to one knee and took aim with his Sig.

80

Slater, on the other hand, wasn’t about to wait for the firefight to come to them.

As soon as he registered the Spanish guy yelling, he took off at a sprint for the mouth of the alley. He screeched to a halt on the path and found three men in camouflage fatigues working handguns free from leather holsters on their belts.

More insurgents.

They were already in Lukla.

Already searching for King and Slater.

Slater controlled the initial panic response, exhaled fully, and lined up his aim. Then he pumped the trigger three times.

Thwack-thwack-thwack.

Heads snapped back on shoulders, exit wounds sprayed blood on the cobblestones, and nearby trekkers and locals screamed bloody murder as the ballet of violence unfolded in front of them.

Which was accurate enough.

It was bloody, and it was murder.

Slater yelled, ‘Come on!’

King got to his feet and hurried after him. As soon as Slater knew King was on his tail, he broke into a sprint for the airport. Shouts and screams spread through the town like wildfire, and it wouldn’t be long before most of the residents realised war had broken out on home soil. Then there would be bedlam, accompanied swiftly by the closure of the airport. There was no way they could get their hands on a plane if everything was locked and the keys were thrown away.

No, they had to run for their lives and hope that—

Slater rounded a corner and saw the tiny airport through its surrounding wire fence. There was a small passenger plane idling in one of the four loading