Ghosts by Matt Rogers (ap literature book list txt) 📕

Icke had no more screams left to release.

He passed out from the pain.

King waited for the judge to resurface back to consciousness. It took a couple of minutes. He started to worry that he’d killed the guy, but Icke’s breathing was stable.

Finally the judge started twitching, and then one blood-rimmed eye opened. The rest of his face stayed squashed against the ground.

King heard footsteps far away, echoing from the ground floor corridor, and low concerned voices bickering back and forth.

He timed the footsteps.

Icke mumbled, ‘Please don’t hurt me anymore.’

A simple yet effective surrender.

King said, ‘You’ll get it done?’

Icke said, ‘I’ll get it done.’

‘Whatever it takes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you thinking of running? Disappearing?’

‘No.’

‘How can I trust you?’

‘Look at me,’ Icke mumbled, half his face still squashed. The judge didn’t have the energy to lift his head and regard his own sorry state.

King said, ‘You still have resources. You could still try it.’

‘I won’t.’

‘My friend and I are staying right here in town until we see this through,’ King said. ‘We’ll be watching you. If you even think about making a run for it…’

‘I won’t.’

The footsteps grew louder.

They were close now. They’d swept the ground floor, found all the bodies. Hadn’t swept upstairs, hadn’t found Elsa. Now they were en route to the loading bay. Clearing the complex, room by room.

A door slammed, far off.

King didn’t turn.

He kept his eyes fixed on Icke.

He waited for Icke to look at him.

When the judge did, King said, ‘This is what happens to anyone you turn to for help.’

He turned around as the door to the loading bay flew open.

88

Jack Bowman wasn’t particularly fazed.

There were dead men everywhere, and the stench of blood and sweat hung thick in the air, but he’d been a Green Beret. He’d seen serious shit. Two stints in Afghanistan, followed by crippling disillusionment, followed by an honourable discharge, followed by accepting a gig at a private security firm, followed swiftly by the buyout of that security firm by one Chief Judge Alastair Icke.

Jack had to give it to the old bastard — he was brave. He’d told them what he wanted to do with them almost straight away. Some refused to participate and left, but none of them ratted him out. Who’d they rat him to? He owned everyone.

Jack had appreciated the honesty and signed on the dotted line.

There hadn’t been a whole lot of excitement so far. He was coming up on his one year anniversary with Icke. Day to day he watched drugged-up teenagers come and go. Some stayed for a while. The three here now had been prisoners for some serious time. Some sort of negotiation with foreign buyers. Jack didn’t mind. He was paid handsomely by the hour. There were high profit margins in sex trafficking — product was cheap to acquire, and the supply never ran dry. Icke could afford to splurge on security. Better for his peace of mind, considering the thousand other things he had to worry about.

Now Jack cleared empty room after empty room, feeling more at home than he’d ever felt in this boring job. When he’d signed on that line he’d accepted he was selling his soul to the devil, and he hadn’t cared one iota. He’d anticipated having to take part in some seriously dark shit. Instead he stood around and looked intimidating.

He hoped to God the perpetrators of this massacre were still in the building.

Nothing better than the opportunity to flex his long-dormant trigger finger.

The offices were empty, that much was certain. Jack swept the last windowless space, came up short, and ducked back out into the corridor. Three of his team were there, their eyeballs bugging, their weapons hot. They were on Dexedrine. He’d always avoided using artificial means to pump himself up.

Adrenaline did more than enough.

Ricardo said, ‘Clear?’

Jack nodded, and jerked his thumb at the door to the loading bay. ‘Clear that, then we go upstairs, then we’re done.’

‘What if—?’ Usman started, but Jack cut him off with a closed fist.

He’d heard something.

In the loading bay.

He almost smiled. He hoped for something more than rival gangbangers who’d got lucky. He hoped for world-class operatives, which was a hell of a long shot in this pathetic city, but sometimes miracles happened. He wanted challenge.

He connected to the gun in his hands — a HK MP-5KA4 with a fifteen-round mag, highly effective for urban warfare — and felt it become part of him. It didn’t matter how many men he was up against. He’d racked up over a dozen confirmed kills in Afghanistan, and he’d never once been in trouble.

Vegas, in comparison, was child’s play.

He made sure Ricardo, Usman and Jesse were right up on his six, but he didn’t figure he’d need them. He took a deep breath, tapped into the beautiful rush of stress chemicals, and flung the door open.

He processed the scene in milliseconds.

Icke on the ground a couple of dozen feet away, half-dead.

A big man, like a bodybuilder with functional strength, standing over Icke, facing them, watching them arrive.

And a blurry silhouette only a couple of feet to his left, moving at him like a freight train. The guy was slightly smaller than the big man but still fearsome to behold, a bald African-American guy in his thirties with—

That was as far as Jack got.

The black guy collided with him, knocking the submachine gun back into his own chest. The barrel struck him so hard in the solar plexus he thought he heard the bone crack. Before he could even breathe the attacker wrestled the gun off him like it was nothing, shoved him aside and killed Ricardo, Usman and Jesse with a perfectly placed spray of gunfire.

He’d never been dismantled like that before. He couldn’t blink, let alone retaliate.

Shock didn’t even have the chance to set in.

There were levels to this game.

Jack thought he’d been at the top.

He wasn’t even close.

That was the last thought that went through Jack Bowman’s brain before the big man across the room shot him