Contracts by Matt Rogers (i like reading txt) 📕

The bottom of the river.

He hovered there for a spell, in too much pain to function, unsure whether he’d paralysed himself. He couldn’t see a thing, and realised he had his eyes closed. At the edges of his hearing, he picked up a dull concussive underwater boom, and recognised it as the plane plunging into the river further downstream.

He let the icy water numb his wounds before opening his eyes.

It was surprisingly bright. The water was clear, so cold it had nearly frozen over, and the natural ice bath helped to dull the pain. He pushed off the bottom and ascended to the surface. When he broke it, sunlight flooded his senses, and he blinked hard to adjust to the new conditions.

The Dornier rested in a hundred separate pieces only a short way down the river. Slater found himself floating toward the wreckage, and he swam to shore before he got caught up in the debris. It would have pulverised him if he’d hesitated only a couple of seconds longer. And if they’d jumped from a greater height — well, it wouldn’t have been pretty for their internal organs.

The miracle of unnatural reflexes had saved him, once again, from death or permanent disfigurement.

He clambered onto the riverbank and collapsed on his front. His stomach churned restlessly, and he realised he’d swallowed river water when he opened his mouth and vomited a torrent into the mud. Then he rolled onto his back, put his hands behind his head, and tried not to think about what he’d put his body through.

Further up the bank, he heard a groan.

He rolled to one side and squinted against the glare.

King sat on his rear with his knees tucked up to his chest, sporting a thousand-yard stare. One side of his face was already swelling, the skin bruising and turning purple in real time. He looked over and said, ‘That was a hard landing.’

He couldn’t stop shivering.

Slater managed to jerk a thumb toward the Dornier wreckage. ‘Not as hard as that would have been.’

‘Touché.’

‘Did you land face-first?’

‘I… don’t know,’ King said.

His words were slurred. The byproduct of swollen lips.

Slater said, ‘You might be concussed.’

‘Maybe.’

‘We did it. We’re here. The end of the road.’

King patted himself down. ‘I assume you lost your gun too.’

Slater lowered a shaking hand to his waist. He prodded and touched. Then he said, ‘Yeah. It’s gone.’

‘We’re dead if we walk into that village.’

‘No we’re not.’

King looked over. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m on the verge of collapsing.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you expect us to go up against the rest of these insurgents unarmed and half-dead?’

‘There won’t be any insurgents in Phaplu.’

‘You seem to think Aidan Parker has been orchestrating all of this.’

‘No,’ Slater said. ‘Only part of it.’

‘If I was feeling better, I might be able to work this out. But right now… I can barely put two and two together.’

‘Don’t worry. I worked it out myself.’

‘You did?’

‘Yeah.’

‘When?’

‘It hit me all at once. When I saw that spreadsheet.’

‘Care to explain?’

So Slater did. He laid it all out, every last detail, demonstrating how this complex puzzle of Maoist rebels and ex-Naxalite kidnappers and scheming bodyguards and secret files all came together into a straightforward storyline. King listened, and his eyes progressively widened as Slater told him everything he knew.

When it was over, King said, ‘So Parker won’t have anyone protecting him?’

‘Maybe a couple of soldiers he’s paid off,’ Slater said. ‘But it’s unlikely. He’ll be scrambling right now. He won’t have time.’

A pause.

Slater said, ‘And he thinks we have his daughter.’

King placed his hands on the dirt and pushed off the riverbank, getting unsteadily to his feet. His legs shook. Slater could see the pain on his face as he tested his bad ankle. Clearly the impact with the river had disrupted any healing that might have begun on the swollen joint.

But he could stand.

And he could limp.

And he could close a fist.

He helped Slater up and said, ‘Let’s go get that son of a bitch.’

84

They’d lost the satellite phones, and their bags, and their guns.

They had nothing but the clothes on their backs.

But that was enough.

They limped up the riverbank, traversing the forest-coated hill between the river and the village of Phaplu. The sun went away as they hobbled through the clusters of trees, replaced by the eerie grey of low-hanging cloud. Each step sent bolts of pain through their battered, broken bodies, but they’d managed to avoid any permanent injuries. They could walk, and they could think straight. So even if it took them all day to cover the half-mile of terrain, they’d do it.

Because neither of them had an ounce of quit in them.

King put the majority of his weight on his good leg, dragging his puffy ankle behind him. It hurt like hell, but what didn’t? By now it was all blurring together. He looked to the left and saw the staggering snow-capped mountain range far in the distance. Had he really just been there? Had he summited Gokyo Ri earlier that morning? Had he seen Raya die at the peak?

It felt like a lifetime ago.

‘How do we find him?’ he said. ‘You told him to go to a secure location. We have no way of contacting him.’

‘It’s a tiny village,’ Slater said. ‘We walk around, and keep our eyes peeled.’

‘And if we come up with nothing?’

‘Then we don’t stop until we get our hands on him.’

‘Do you think he suspects anything?’

‘I think he’s holding out hope that we’re actually going to show up with Raya.’

‘Surely he imagined—’

‘You now know what he is,’ Slater said. ‘You know what he was willing to do. He had to know this outcome was a possibility. He had to know we might fail.’

They didn’t speak as they ascended the steepest part of the hill, and as soon as they reached the top, Phaplu spread out before them. They’d come up on the opposite side of the airport. They looked through the perimeter fence and saw the small runway draped in cloud, and