The Alex King Series by A BATEMAN (free ebook reader for ipad TXT) 📕

Perhaps it was time for plan B? Plan A had gone to shit, he just hoped things would get better. There was no avoiding the stamping foot, nor the darkness of the unconsciousness which followed.

7

The pine forest smelled dry and fresh. The scent was strong, heady – like a pine air freshener. The forest was dry and hot too. A savagely-hot start to the summer, with long hot days and uncomfortably close nights, had dried the forest floor, the needles and the scattered pine cones.

King could smell this, and more besides. His own body odour in the confines of the vehicle’s boot was not the freshest thing he’d smelled in a while. And the exhaust fumes that filled the boot had worked its way into his nose, his throat and his eyes.

He had regained consciousness on the drive into the forest. The car had been driven erratically along the twisting country roads. Many were straight, interspersed by cross-roads, but the road surface was of poor-quality. Seldom maintained, deeply rutted, which tested the vehicle’s suspension.

The vehicle had slowed and pulled off the road, and King could tell that they had travelled on softer ground. Just as rutted, but foliage scraped underneath and occasionally, the vehicle would bottom out and the wheels would spin as the driver tried to maintain progress.

When the car eventually stopped, King realised he could hear another vehicle. There was the sound of doors opening and closing, and low voices. He could smell cigarette smoke, and he imagined the men gathering together to devise their plan or receive orders.

There had been a few times over his time with the intelligence services, that King had been convinced he was about to die. Fate, luck or happenstance had turned it around, but right now, bound and imprisoned inside the boot of the vehicle, this was one of those times. Possibly the definitive moment. Plan A hadn’t worked out, and plan B was a work-in-progress. Whether he got out of this would depend on one thing. But now, after spending much of his time in confinement, he just hoped it had been enough.

The boot lid opened and even though it was close to sunset, the light stung his eyes. He blinked against it, then felt rough hands on him, some grabbing his collar, others grabbing him around the ankles. King was solid, a shade under six-foot and around fourteen-stone. But he was whipped out of the boot and thrown through the air as if he were a child. He looked up to see it had been three men who had got him out. The monkey named Dimitri, all twenty-stone of him, and two other men, similarly sized. Dimitri clearly had a grievance, and King couldn’t blame him, but could have done without another kick to his ribs. He gasped, grit his teeth, and hoped he had not shown how much it had hurt. He couldn’t get up with his hands bound behind him, but he got onto his side, more to take in his surroundings than in any hope of getting to his feet.

Sergeyev smoked a cigarette and watched with amusement. He was flanked by two more guards. He nodded to one of them, and the man dutifully walked around to the open tailgate of the Range Rover. He retrieved a shovel and a chainsaw and walked towards King, throwing the shovel at him. It hit the ground and bounced into his face. King recoiled, fell onto his back.

“I think getting a man to dig his own grave gets that man into the right headspace for what is about to happen,” Sergeyev paused as he inhaled some of the cigarette smoke and blew out a thick pungent-smelling plume. “You will die, but before you do, you will tell me where my family are, and you will beg for a swift end. I guarantee it.” He nodded to one of the men behind King and he bent forward, slashing the rope bindings with a knife.

King knelt slowly, rubbing some feeling back into his wrists. He looked around him. There was a glimpse of the ocean, the beach some fifty metres beyond the trees. He closed his eyes, a distant memory coming to him. Southwest France, the beach, the pine forest, the pungent cigarette smoke. King would bet anything it was a Turkish blend. The memory of a night of killing, the start of his career all those years ago. He shook his head to dismiss it. He needed to stay in the game.

King stood up, heard the safety catches release or hammers cock on the various pistols around him. For a moment he was reminded of the scene in the film Blazing Saddles and the gunmen lining up on the Wako Kid, hammers cocking. Comedic interlude in a dire situation. Gallows humour. He smiled to himself. He didn’t have a gun, almost certainly wouldn’t be as fast as Gene Wilder’s character. The shovel was at his feet and he figured he could slice at least one man’s head open before he went down. He figured that was the best he could hope for.

Plan B, still a work-in-progress…

“Dig,” Sergeyev said.

King shook his head. “You risk never finding your wife and child.”

“I’ll pay the price for showing strength,” Sergeyev smirked. “But it will not come to that. You will give me what I want to know.”

“Don’t count on it,” King said.

“Who are you?”

King smiled. “Is that it? You think you’re getting shit out of me? I told you – I have been told to kill you to free my fiancé. I gave you the chance to keep your family safe and for you to lay low while I sort this out. And you do this?” King gestured at the forest clearing. “There’s no deal anymore.”

“What did you want to deal?” Sergeyev frowned. “You captured my wife and daughter.”

“Well,