Hawk, p.8
Hawk, page 8
part #6 of Will Slater Series
It didn’t matter either way.
Camilla and Dani had taken him back there.
He doubted the girls were there now — the husbands were likely in damage control.
Hence the burly security standing guard on the steps of the front deck. They were staggered in a rough triangle, with two at the bottom of the narrow stairwell and one near the top. All of them were leaning on the metal balustrades.
Spending half the time scouring the street for any sign of a threat, and the other half checking themselves out in car window reflections, puffing their chests out and touching their hands reflexively to the Heckler & Koch pistols in leather holsters on their belts.
Openly carrying.
Lukas and Benicio must be damn confident they’ve paid off the right people.
It made sense, though. Hungary was relatively well-known for its corruption, and even if these boys were arrested by cops who weren’t in the know, they’d be promptly let out of their holding cells at the local precinct after a quick and informative call from someone high up in government.
Slater kept to the shadows, employing the training of years past, aided by the dreary conditions overhead. The sky was overcast and a light drizzle began to fall, coating the street in a general air of misery. The occasional luxury vehicle drifted past, but the windows were all tinted to the maximum, and Slater couldn’t make out any other details of note.
The three sentries stood there, shifting from foot to foot, ignoring the thin sheets of rain falling over them. It dripped off their coats and ran down their faces, but they stood there resolute, following their orders to a tee.
With organised crime, there was no alternative.
It was a ruthless amoral industry with no room for misinterpretation of orders.
You either did what your superiors said, or you got the hell out of Dodge.
Slater used a metal awning to shelter himself from the rain, letting it pour down in rivulets off the edge of the platform above him. From there it dripped to the grimy concrete and ran along the alley floor, coagulating with the dust and muck surrounding the big garbage dumpsters.
And there he waited, until his phone lit up with a message from King.
He fished it out of his pocket and went through the exchange, finally receiving a single phrase to sign off the conversation.
He’s back.
In the darkness of the alley, surrounded by drizzle and shadow, Slater smiled.
He put the phone in his rear pants pocket and took off his knee-length coat. He folded up the expensive garment and placed it in a dry patch underneath the awning, resting it on a single step out the back of a restaurant. From deep inside the building, he could hear the unmistakable sound of food frying.
He rolled up the sleeves of his jumper, crossed to the dumpster nearby, and fished a full can of pasta sauce from the top of the garbage. It was well past its expiry date, and had been thrown out fully sealed. He tested its weight in an open palm, then considered his options.
It didn’t take him long to decide.
He wasn’t about to murder three men in cold blood just to send a message. He didn’t know if any of them had been pressured into organised crime by their circumstances.
It sure wasn’t an excuse, but he wasn’t prepared to massacre them for it.
Besides, he needed them alive to contact their bosses.
So he left the Glock 17 in the rear of his waistband.
He kept low, masked by the shadows, and hurled the sealed tin like a fastball as soon as the three men were looking in the other direction. As soon as he’d let the can go, he stepped out from under the awning and sprinted out of the lip of the alleyway.
The can arced over their heads and smashed through one of the townhouse’s ground floor windows. The pane shattered with a noise like a gunshot, and all three men flinched. They wheeled instinctively toward the source of the noise, hands flying to their waistbands.
They scrutinised the scene, but couldn’t immediately put two and two together. They’d just missed the sight of the can tumbling into the interior.
They couldn’t understand how the window had exploded.
Then, almost as one, they thought, Gun.
They thought someone had shot the window out.
Maybe they’d even been aiming for the sentries themselves.
They wheeled back around in unison, tugging their Heckler & Koch pistols out of their holsters. But they hadn’t prepared for a situation like this. They were fast, and they were big and muscular, and they looked mean, but they didn’t have the uncanny reflexes of experienced combatants who had made their life revolve around getting a pistol out of its holster at lightning speed.
So they fumbled for a second or two.
And at that point Slater was on them.
He came out of the dreary morning gloom, coated in rain, and maintained the momentum of the sprint into a stabbing front kick. In the lowlight, it looked like a whip cracking. The sole of his hefty boot found the sternum of the first guy and shoved him off his feet like he’d been hit by a shockwave. He crumpled across the first few concrete steps with a disgusting thump, out of commission, but Slater didn’t even see it, because by that point he’d used the same momentum to twist a half-revolution with his left elbow jutting straight out, cocked like a lever.
In the movies, spinning elbows are utilised because they look flashy on the big screen, but they’re also utilised in real life mixed martial arts contests because they hit like a goddamn freight train. The momentum you can generate by twisting into a blow is monumental. Mixed martial artists don’t rely on them, because it’s awfully difficult to keep someone in place for a pinpoint accurate strike when they’ve been training for months to avoid that exact scenario.
But that wasn’t the case here.
The second guy didn’t even understand what was happening. He was deep in the throes of sensory overload, and he’d frozen like a deer in headlights, so Slater had all the time in the world to throw the elbow.
He didn’t need all the time in the world.
He needed a half-second of hesitation.
It landed home, bone to skull, elbow to temple.
Lights out.
The third guy almost had his Heckler & Koch free, fumbling with the latch on the holster, but he’d be there any second. And he was at the top of the triangle, so Slater would have to cover the gap and then throw a punch with every intention of killing the guy. Given the circumstances, there wasn’t enough time to…
Slater gave up.
He ripped the Glock 17 out of his waistband like he was moving in fast motion and had it pointed square between the guy’s eyes before the man could even finish grappling with his own weapon.
Because Slater had made his life revolve around getting a pistol out at the speed of light.
Slater said, ‘No, no, no, no, you stop right there.’
The guy froze with his hand on his weapon, eerily similar to an old-school gunslinger who’d been beaten to the draw.
Which he had.
Slater said, ‘Take that out of its holster with two fingers like pincers, please.’
The guy complied.
‘No fast movements,’ Slater said. ‘I swear to God I’ll shoot you dead right here.’
The guy complied.
The guy had never seen anyone move as fast as Slater.
He would do anything Slater said.
‘Now throw it over the balustrade.’
The guy complied.
The gun clattered to the concrete a few feet below.
Slater lowered the gun, walked up the three steps, and feigned a punch.
The guy flinched.
But Slater didn’t want to break his delicate fingers, so he waited for the guy to realise he’d been duped, then jerked forward at the waist.
The guy didn’t flinch this time.
He didn’t want to be humiliated twice in a row.
But this time, Slater wasn’t faking it.
His forehead crashed into the guy’s nose.
A colossal headbutt.
The man went down in a squirming heap, hands flying to his face.
Surrounded by three incapacitated goons, Slater calmly slipped his phone out of his back pocket and checked for an update from King.
16
King kept his hands in his pockets the entire way across the street. He weaved through traffic that had trickled to a standstill in the busy morning rush hour. He passed in front of a panel van and the frustrated driver leant on the horn.
King stopped dead in the middle of the road and wheeled around, staring the man in the eyes. He reared up to his full height, and let his broad shoulders bulge on either side of the giant overcoat.
The driver lowered his head, and lifted a hand in apology.
King continued onward.
He stepped up on the opposite footpath and beelined straight for the junkie. The man was sitting on the third step leading up to the portico, sheltered from the light rain by the stone ceiling overhead.
King stopped in front of him.
‘Hey,’ he said.
The junkie looked up, suspicion and anger in his eyes. ‘What the fuck do you want?’
‘You’re coming with me.’
‘What—?’
King kicked him in the chest, flattening him against the steps, smashing all the breath from his lungs. The junkie gasped and clawed at his shirt, but before he could ascertain exactly how injured he was, King bent down and used a sixty pound weight advantage to haul him off the stairs.
King threw the slight man over one shoulder, turned around, and walked off down the street.
A couple of passers-by stared.
King said, ‘He’s drunk. I’m taking him to the police station.’
They half-nodded, still suspicious.
Then they saw the man’s behaviour — his eyes nearly boggling out of his head, his breathing laboured, his arms thrashing — and they turned their half-nods to full nods and went on their merry way.
King took the first right turn into a narrow laneway and dumped the guy down between a trash can and an empty van. He figured the van belonged to a cleaning company, and they’d currently be sweeping through one of the neighbouring office complexes.
He figured he had all the time in the world.
The junkie tried to scramble to his feet, and King shoved him back down into the damp gutter.
Then the skinny idiot tried to pull out a switchblade.
King lunged forward, seized hold of the guy’s wrist, and smashed his arm into the trash can. There was a crack — either from the guy’s arm or the metal caving in — and the whole trash can went over, spilling its contents across the alleyway floor. The switchblade came free and King kicked it away with reckless intensity, sending the knife skittering dozens of feet further inside the alleyway, where it was lost to the shadows.
The junkie reeled back, clutching his arm, and his entire demeanour shifted. He went from trying to escape to sporting a look of terrified complacency. He cowered against the wall, soaked in dirty water, and stared at King with pleading eyes.
King said, ‘Don’t play the victim.’
In accented English, the junkie said, ‘I do not know what you want.’
‘Answers.’
‘What answer? I no have answer.’
‘You have the answers I want.’
‘What you want?’
‘I need to know where you get your product.’
‘What product?’
‘Three seconds.’
‘What?’
‘I’m giving you three seconds to answer before I get mean.’
‘You are mean.’
‘You’re selling meth to the general population. You’re ruining lives. Don’t get preachy with me. You don’t get to play the victim.’
‘I no play victim.’
‘Where do you collect your product? Who gives it to you to sell? Give me an address.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘One second.’
‘Please…’
King squatted down and elbowed the junkie in the stomach, so hard that he threw up all over the alleyway floor. King darted back to avoid contact with the projectile vomit, then dusted himself off and tried again.
He said, ‘Where do you collect your product?’
The junkie said nothing.
King said, ‘An address.’
‘They kill me.’
‘I kill you,’ King said.
He pulled out the second Glock 17 Slater had collected off the organised crime thugs and pointed it square at the junkie’s head.
King said, ‘Same deal. Three seconds.’
‘Please, man.’
‘Give me the address, and then go buy a one-way train ticket to anywhere. Start fresh. Pull yourself together. Get clean and get a minimum wage job and save as much of it as you can. Work your way up from there. Take simple steps every day to improve your life. Read every day, exercise every day, and take your job seriously, no matter how trivial the work is. That’s about the extent of my advice.’
The junkie said nothing.
‘Or die, right here,’ King said. ‘Don’t think I won’t do it.’
The truth was, he wouldn’t do it.
But the junkie didn’t know that.
He blurted out an address.
King said, ‘If that’s wrong, I’ll come back and find you. I know where you live. I’ll finish you off. But it won’t be a bullet. I’ll use a knife.’
The junkie changed the address, giving a new one with an apologetic look on his face.
King said, ‘Thank you.’
He put the Glock back in his waistband and entered the address into his smartphone’s maps application.
Then he said, ‘You got a phone?’
The junkie nodded.
‘Let me see it.’
Hesitantly, the man pulled a slim iPhone out of his pocket. King snatched it up, dropped it to the alley floor between his feet, and stomped down on its screen with a weighty boot, demolishing it beyond any hope of repair.
He didn’t need the junkie calling anyone before he reached his intended destination.
Then he strode off down the alleyway before the man even realised what was happening.
Leaving the guy alone, in a puddle of his own vomit, pale and nauseous and afraid.
But alive.
17
Slater looked up and down the street for any sign of unintended witnesses, but he came up short. It was a series of residential cul-de-sacs, tucked away from the hustle and bustle of busy inner-city Budapest, like a private estate without the perimeter fence. There was no reason for civilian vehicles to be trawling up and down these streets. That’s why the residences in this area were so expensive. They were afforded the luxury of peace and quiet.
It worked for him.
He kicked the first guy in the throat just as he started to recover, sending him straight back down the steps. The second man had started crawling out of unconsciousness, but he was in no state to listen to commands.
It didn’t matter.
Two out of three was good enough for Slater.
He said, ‘Listen up.’
Then he adjusted his tactics. He reached down and ripped the Heckler & Koch pistols from the first two guy’s holsters and sent them tumbling over the balustrade after their buddy’s gun.
The first guy had an unreasonable amount of fight in him, and started crawling back to his feet — even after the kick to the chest, followed swiftly by the kick to the throat. Slater sized him up. He was European, with caramel skin and black hair combed back and thick bushy eyebrows and eyes like crackling thunder.
There was a red mark on his throat and he seemed to be having trouble breathing, but he was persevering regardless.
Slater helped him to his feet, then smashed an elbow square into his forehead.
The guy’s knees wobbled and he bent down in a squat and then tumbled head over heels down the first few steps. He clattered in an unconscious, messy heap at the bottom of the stairs. He’d wake up in half a minute, but he wouldn’t be functional or cohesive for at least twenty.
Slater turned his attention to the third guy — the man he’d stripped of his weapon and shattered his nose.
Now he was the only conscious member of the party.
Slater said, ‘Guess it’s just us now.’
The guy nodded. Rivulets of blood ran out of both nostrils, and swept down his neck. The crimson had already soaked his shirt collar. He lay back against the concrete steps, utterly defeated. He offered both hands in the air, palms turned toward Slater. Showing he was unarmed, and wasn’t going to offer any further resistance.
Slater didn’t need the reassurance.
He already knew the guy meant no harm.
He said, ‘You call Lukas and Benicio and tell them to get back here right this instant. Tell them there’s someone here who wants to talk to them. And be quick about it.’
The guy paused, wincing in pain as the implications of his broken nose started to set in. He screwed up his face and said, ‘Wait, that’s it?’
‘That’s it,’ Slater said. ‘Tell them to hurry, though. I’ll be around.’
‘W-what?’
Confusion. Utter confusion. These men operated in a world that had no room for error. If an unknown hostile got the jump on you, you were dead. He’d been ready to forfeit his own life, and he hadn’t even considered any other possibility.
As if testing the waters, the third guy pointed to his two unconscious friends slumped at the bottom of the stairs and said, ‘What about them?’
Slater regarded them for a moment. ‘They’ll wake up in a minute or so. They’ll be confused. Help them through it.’
‘You’re not going to kill them?’
Slater said, ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not going to kill any of you.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s Lukas and Benicio I want to speak with.’
‘But they will tell us to help them when they get here,’ the third guy said. ‘And we don’t want to do that.’
