The shockwave rocked through the ground under the torture shack. The rusted bolts holding the chair in place cracked, and it and Jack toppled over. He hit the cement on his left side. Pain snapped through him from the knife wound, blanking out the roar of the explosion for a moment. When he could make out nuances beyond the dull pound of blood through his ears, Jack heard the rising whine of a chopper straining against gravity. The pitch of the engines was wrong, too high, overly stressed, as if something had been damaged. Then the sound evened out and, with a burst of deep, thrumming noise, the chopper shot away.
So, the aircraft wasn’t what had exploded.
In the wake of the vanishing chopper, Jack could make out the relatively quiet hiss and cackle of fire. Something out there was burning. A sudden flurry of gunshots signified some survivors.
Jack struggled against the plastic ties, hoping his new position had changed something. The metal of the chair creaked, and the armrest under his right arm shifted. Teeth gritted, Jack worked his arm back and forth and up and down, feeling the frame of the chair move. Feeling, also, a rather excruciating pain rip up his arm. Tears stung his eyes and he blinked them away. The plastic armrest cracked as he kept working. Sucking in a deep breath, he held it and twisted his arm savagely. The old plastic snapped all the way through and fell away from the metal frame.
The sudden relief whipped through him like a blow to the head, leaving him dazed. Continued gunfire encouraged him to keep going.
With the tie loosened around his wrist, Jack wriggled his swollen arm free of the plastic restraint. His situation had improved, if fractionally. He was still mostly tied to the chair, still surrounded by the enemy, still confused as to what Blade was doing, but he had an arm free. Albeit a broken arm, but he’d worked with less.
Jack began rocking, leaning forward, pushing back. Twisting his left arm, he managed to get some purchase on the ground, and used it to help lever himself upwards. When he had some momentum going, he shoved up and threw his weight sideways. The chair rolled over and he was on his back, legs higher than his head. Another little shove and he toppled onto his right side, arm out to avoid smashing it into the ground. Still, the impact on his shoulder jarred his wrist, and he couldn’t hold back a cry of pain. Breathing through it, he reached out and, scrabbling at the cement, hauled himself towards the wall with the torture tools.
Time vanished somewhere beyond the pain, his whole being focused on his goal. Peripherally he was aware of the gunfight continuing outside, though the number of exchanges was reducing, now interspersed with panicky yells.
At the wall, he used the holes in the backboard to help pull himself upright, shuffling the chair back under him. Its rough journey across the floor had hastened its rusty deterioration, and it wobbled under his weight now.
The straight razor was at the very outer edge of his reach. Stretching his fingers towards it strained his broken bone and inflamed flesh, but when the slender tool slid off its hook and fell, it was all worth it when it landed in his lap. From there, it was relatively painless to pick it up, flip it open, and saw through the plastic ties.
“Good,” Blade said behind him. “At least you’re not totally useless.”
Standing and spinning in the same move, Jack hooked a foot through the leg of the chair and kicked it in Blade’s direction. The assassin sidestepped it casually.
Muscles burning from too long in one position, Jack held back even though he wanted to charge and hit and kick. He’d been knocked down one too many times tonight. Confusion and frustration made a sparking cocktail of his blood, but being injured and clueless made it the wrong time to go against someone of Blade’s reputation.
Instead, Jack matched Blade’s calm pacing around the walls of the torture shack. Blade watched him, expression part curious, part amused. He kept his Eagles down by his sides, with all the appearance of being nonthreatening. Jack carefully didn’t laugh at the ridiculousness of the thought. Rather, he rolled his shoulders, flexed his arms, and tensed and relaxed his legs. The ache subsided and he warmed up in the cold night air. Blade stopped by the poster, waiting. There was dust on his coat and his hair was frazzled, but otherwise, he looked as if he’d just walked out of a meeting with his accountant, not out of a gunfight.
“What’s the deal, Blade?” Jack asked.
“The deal, Jack, was to kill Samuel Valadian,” Blade said blandly.
Jack should have pretended confusion at the name, but protecting a cover already shot to shit was pointless. “You know who I am?”
“Yes. Jack Reardon, former lieutenant of the Australian Special Air Service Regiment. Discharged six years ago for medical reasons I couldn’t discover.” Securing his right-hand gun in the underarm holster, Blade kept his gaze on Jack. “May I change mags? I’m almost out and there are still a few soldiers out there. It would be best to do this now, rather than in the middle of an exchange.”
Jack was fixated on Blade’s eyes. They were pale, unnaturally so, with pupils big and dark in the light of the fluorescent tubes overhead. Between that and the revelation Blade actually knew who he was but hadn’t told Mr. Valadian, Jack realised just how painfully ignorant he was of, well, everything at the moment.
“Sure,” he said, struggling for the one thing that seemed even remotely likely—Blade was planning on keeping him alive. Why? Jack had absolutely no idea.
Lips curled up in an unreadable smile, the assassin reached into an inner pocket on his overcoat and pulled out a mag for the handgun. “Catch.” He tossed the mag at Jack, no harder than what was needed to get the mag to him.
Jack let it hit him in the chest. It landed on the ground at his feet.
“These are my favourite guns,” Blade continued, hefting the Desert Eagle he still held. It had the laser sight. “I’d rather you didn’t let this one hit the ground.” He made as if to throw it.
“Why give me a gun?”
“You feel up to hand-to-hand combat? I’m impressed. Personally, I’d rather we didn’t close with the remaining forces outside, but you were SAS. Your tactics probably differ from mine.”
“Yeah,” Jack muttered. “I’m not a murderer.” It was hard to put honest conviction behind those words.
“Do you think to shock or shame me with that?” Blade advanced, holding the gun out to him, butt first. “I am what I am. And right now, I’m a lone man against superior numbers. It would be silly to dismiss a potential ally. At the very least, Jack, take it so you may protect yourself if I fall.”
Jack adjusted his grip on the razor, keenly aware of how sad a weapon it was contrasted to the man before him. Within the military, the SAS were the elite forces. Jack hadn’t been the most gifted in all fields, but he could hold his own against his fellows, which meant he could wipe the floor with just about anyone else. However, what he knew of Ethan Blade was enough to give him pause.
Shifting the razor to his injured hand, Jack accepted the gun. It settled into his hold with a satisfactory weight.
The moment the weapon was transferred, Blade backed off. He made a slow show of producing another mag and the other gun. After tucking his Eagle under his right arm, Jack crouched and picked up the mag at his feet. He worked his fingers over it to make sure it was actually full. It was. Standing, he locked his gaze on the odd, unsettling eyes of the man across from him. Together, they released the spent mags and slammed the new ones home.
Jack had the loaded gun pointed at Blade instantly, turning side on to present a narrower target. “Drop it, Blade.” The red dot landed on Blade’s chest.
Smiling, Blade held his own gun in two fingers, the other three splayed out. “Yes, Jack.” He crouched and laid it on the ground carefully. “May I remove my coat?”
“God,” Jack hissed, out of his depth with this strange creature. “How many more weapons do you have in there?”
“A few,” the assassin said, amused. He shrugged out of the coat and spread it over the ground. “Would you cover the door while I assemble the rifle?”
“The rifle?” He was starting to wonder why he was even trying to get the upper hand. Blade was refusing to play the part. Lowering the Eagle, he nodded. “Sure. Got nothing better to do.”
Blade smirked at the sarcasm and began tearing open the seams of the overcoat’s inner lining.
Shaking his head, Jack turned his back on the assassin and crouched by the door. He expected his better judgement to put up an argument, but the usually finely honed sense stayed quiet, as if having a known killer at his back wasn’t at all alarming. Frankly, at this point, a bullet in the back of his head would just be an end to the confusion. A hollow-point at this range would take out the implant, making the last fifteen months a pointless waste of time. Still, if Blade was serious about killing Valadian, then the problem was eighty percent solved.
Flickering orange light rimmed the door to the shack, the crackle of flames clear now he had the chance to listen for it. There wasn’t much else to hear, apart from the tin roof shifting as it heated up. The air in the shack started to warm, smoke curling through the gaps in the walls. Whatever was alight was close by.
“They’ll be closing in on us,” Blade said as he worked behind Jack with a quick staccato of weaponry pieces snapping together. “I believe there are three snipers on the ridge to the east. At least five more mobile troops on the flat. How’s your long-range aim?”
“Better than average.”
“Brilliant. You can take the rifle then.”
Turning enough to look at Blade, Jack shook his head. “You’re a crazy bastard, aren’t you.”
“You’re half right.” The assassin stood and displayed the assembled weapon.
It was a sleek, lightweight sniper rifle known as an Assassin X. Made by unknown sources for people just like Blade, they were designed for easy concealment, quick assembly, and undetectability to most scanning devices. All those elements combined into a weapon that wasn’t robust, had limited range, and only supported small-calibre rounds. The word that came to mind when Jack saw one was “flimsy.” However, in the hand of Blade, it looked worthy of its name.
From inside his suit jacket, Blade produced a scope and clicked it into place on top of the rifle. “Night-vision scope. The mag holds seven .22 LR rounds, one in the breach.” Which he loaded with a soft clack. “Headshots would serve us best, Jack.”
“Right,” Jack said with a sinking sensation. There was so much about the whole situation that was wrong, but he found himself agreeing all the same. It’d be a bloody miracle to hit anything with an unfamiliar rifle, let alone three headshots.
Blade joined him by the door, listening. “The trucks are still burning. Good.” He paced away, head tilted as he looked at the roof in the corner over the beach poster. “Up, I think. Jack, your assistance.”
Jack hesitated. He was an asset of the Australasian Meta-State, paid to protect its citizens from dangerous elements. Elements like Samuel Valadian and Ethan Blade. Right now, however, his best chance of stopping the former was to work with the latter.
With Blade on his shoulders, Jack stood steady while the assassin pushed the corner of the tin upwards. Done, Blade slid down and dropped to one knee. Making a stirrup of his hands, he said, “You first, Jack.”
There was no point in arguing. With his injuries Jack wasn’t getting up there without help. Judging the height of the wall, Jack stepped back a couple of paces. “Ready?”
Blade nodded.
Jack sprang forward, hit Blade’s hands with one foot, and leaped. With a boost from the assassin, he grabbed the top of the wall easily. His broken wrist protested instantly and strenuously, but he threw his right arm over the edge of the cinder blocks, digging in with his left hand. Shoulders heaving, he hoisted himself up and out.
Slithering onto the corrugated tin, Jack kept low. The ground troops probably wouldn’t spot him, but Blade had mentioned snipers on a ridge. The assassin was up and out seconds later. He’d left his overcoat behind and closed his dark suit jacket from neck to waist, eliminating the glow of his white button-down.
“This way,” the assassin whispered and eeled along the edge of the roof.
As promised, the night was lit up by two merrily burning transport trucks, angled to block access to the shack. They were flatbed trucks with canvas coverings for troop transport. The fires were dying down, however, having consumed the meagre amount of fuel available in the material, the wooden benches, and the interiors of the cabins. Scattered around the two bonfires were the bodies of men from Mr. Valadian’s army. Each transport could comfortably carry fifteen men, and it appeared they had been packed to capacity. About twenty lay unmoving, and then there were three possible snipers and a handful of troops still lurking beyond the fires.
Thirty or so soldiers, plus Jimmy and Robbo, all for Jack. He didn’t know whether to be honoured or horrified.
Joining Blade at the front corner of the shack, bodies pressed tight side by side, Jack pushed away his misgivings and concentrated on the task at hand. This was no different from some of the jobs he’d run with the Unit. Trying to convince himself of that, Jack put the Assassin X to his right shoulder. After a second, he switched to the left. His right wrist wouldn’t handle the recoil in its current condition. Jack settled the rifle, wriggled into a better position, and scoped the lay of the land.
The green-hued scene through the night-vision lens opened up for him. The land was arid; dry, cracked, dusty ground; low-growing spinifex; rocky protrusions increasing in size and number as the land swelled towards the ridge, the rock bed breaking free of the dirt in a jagged wall. The sky above was clear, no clouds, just stars—a perfect desert night. Jack scanned the top of the ridge. It was irregular with a sharp-edged cliff face, rounded mounds of dirt, straggly vegetation and, somewhere amongst it all, three bodies lying much as he was.
“Ready?” Blade whispered.
“No, but let’s just get it over with.”
With a soft chuckle, Blade said, “As you wish, Jack.”
Then he stood up, a perfect target framed against the starry night, and got it started.