Sharks - Matt Rogers (classic books for 11 year olds txt) 📗

weaving in and out of side street traffic. He knew the roads like the back of his hand, like arteries weaving through the backwaters of Freeport.

Then someone came up behind him and pressed a blade to an actual artery.

Wayne froze, nearly choking on his own gulp. That was what most people didn’t understand — you do a couple of tours of the Middle East, everyone thinks you become superhuman, immune to fear. Really, it almost makes you more paranoid. He’d seen throats cut. He knew what it looked like, how much horrid pain and terror came with it, how gruesomely you died. So where a civilian might pass the whole thing off as a bad dream, Wayne knew it was very real and very serious, and the blood drained from his face.

Which wouldn’t help him.

Keeping his head right where it was, his eyes went haywire in every direction.

Bad tactical awareness on his part.

Perfect awareness on his abductor’s.

They were in a desolate stretch of unpaved road with perimeter walls of larger properties on either side. This lane was practically an alleyway, but it led to the beach. He had to hope that a tourist would stroll in off the sand and—

A car screeched to a halt beside him, and a hand forced the back of his head down into the rear seats.

He sprawled across them, twisting onto his back so he could get a look at—

The kidnapper didn’t have a knife anymore. Now he had a Ruger, brand new and sleek black, aimed at Wayne’s forehead. A gun so pristine and reliable that Wayne might as well have sold it to them himself.

But looking up at the guy, trapped in the back of the car, Wayne realised that wasn’t a possibility.

He didn’t sell to Dylan Walcott’s thugs.

Wayne said, ‘Where we going?’

The thug was big, strong, like a pitbull in human form. His bones looked thicker than the average man’s, and his aim was steady. He said, ‘Nowhere. You’re staying right here until you talk. You think you can lay off an arsenal like that and Dylan wouldn’t find out?’

‘Tell Dylan to go to hell.’

‘Wrong call, bud.’

The passenger and driver piled out of their seats. The passenger rounded to the door Wayne was leaning against, threw it open, and held him down by the shoulders. The driver came next to the thug with the gun and took his ankles. They held tight, like they were trying to pin down a wild tiger.

They thought he’d start thrashing.

They were right.

The thug held the pistol one-handed and came up with an acetylene blowtorch.

‘No,’ Wayne said, clenching his teeth so hard he thought they might shatter. Now he was ghost-white. ‘No, come on, you know I’m just a—’

‘I couldn’t give a shit what you think you are,’ the thug said. ‘Start talking.’

‘They’re some Americans, I don’t know.’

‘You know more than that, at least.’

‘Come on—’

The guy fired the torch to life.

Blue flame seared hot.

He started lowering it.

Wayne thrashed. He was stronger than each of the men holding him down, but not both of them together. They pinned him to the cheap seats. The material was sticky, ripping up his back as he jerked his way half out of his open Hawaiian shirt.

The torch lowered further.

Wayne went deep into his own mind and put up a barricade. Old military tactics for resisting interrogation — detach yourself from your body, make pain something physical that doesn’t encompass you. Separate yourself from it. He watched the blue pulsing flame tickle his ankle and figured all of that was complete bullshit. He didn’t know whether he’d make it through this without going into cardiac arrest.

He closed his eyes and stifled a sob.

But only for a moment.

Milliseconds after his world went black he flared them open again, unable to resist taking a look at what the thug was about to do. The hairs on his ankle started to singe as the torch kept lowering…

But now there were five men around the car, not three.

Wayne blinked.

The dark-skinned guy from the waterfront bungalow pointed his new Glock at the head of the pitbull with the torch and put a bullet in his skull from behind.

The small guy holding Wayne’s ankles let go and jerked around like he’d been shot, but it was just shock at the unsuppressed gunshot in his ear.

The big white guy from the bungalow grabbed the small man’s head like it was a bowling ball and smashed it into the top of the rear door. Wayne thought he’d killed the guy. There was no way the blow hadn’t caved his skull in.

The guy holding Wayne’s shoulders let go immediately and fumbled for a gun.

The dark-skinned man leant into the car, aimed over Wayne’s body across the rear seats, and shot the last thug in the gut.

He doubled over, nearly headbutting Wayne as he buckled at the knees, and his face fell into the line of sight perfectly, like it was framed. A second bullet smashed his face and he jerked backwards and lay still.

Blood covered Wayne Portis.

Not his own.

He sat up, rattled. The gunshots hadn’t deafened him thanks to the suppressors he’d delivered to the Americans along with the Glocks. The attachments were now firmly screwed onto the barrels.

Wayne said, ‘Lucky I armed you when I did.’

‘Lucky I didn’t trust you,’ the dark-skinned man said. ‘Otherwise we never would have followed.’

The white guy said, ‘It’s our lucky day all round.’

Wayne clambered shakily out of the car.

20

There were bullets in the heads of two of the three kidnappers, but the last guy was alive.

King and Slater threw the bodies in the rear seats and slammed the doors on them, sealing them in, then King hauled the half-conscious survivor to his feet.

The man was barely with it.

Swaying all over the place, his ankles shaking, his jaw slack. King held him upright by the collar and pressed the Glock discreetly into his ribcage to prevent him going anywhere. Not that he could if he tried. He could be armed with an assault rifle