Lethal Force

Lethal Force

  Copyright 2011 Matt Lynn

  Lethal Force

  Ryan Bekker took a single step forward from the line of five men, and offered Steve West his hand. He was a big, ugly brute of a man, with the build of a tractor. “I’ll be your executioner today,” he said in a clipped South African accent. “Enjoy.”

  “I don’t suppose you fancy a day off, pal,” said Steve.

  Bekker shook his head. “You’ll get a five minute head start. Then we’ll come after you. And kill you.”

  Steve could feel a pump of adrenaline in his veins. “Just a game, right?”

  Bekker flashed up his watch. “The clock’s ticking.”

  Steve started to run hard. After five years in the SAS, and five more as a mercenary for an outfit known as Death Inc. within its deadly trade,he reckoned he was as fit as any man. Even so….

  Against Bekker, and his four thugs?

  Who the hell knows?

  He pushed on, his boots crashing through the soft, damp ground. The Isle of Maree was a desolate strip of forest and windswept, craggy shoreline, on Loch Maree in the Scottish highlands. A mile long, and half that wide, it was isolated and uninhabited.

  A perfect killing ground. If that’s what you wanted, reflected Steve.

  He glanced left and right. The island was dominated by oaks, holly and birch, a dense mass of treacherous trees He’d been hired by Pyramid Entertainment, a huge games company designing a new ‘shoot-‘em-up’ for the Xbox 360. ‘Lethal Force’, it was called. A Special Forces soldier was dropped onto a remote island, then tracked by five assassins. It was kill or be killed. There were micro-cameras fitted to their combat fatigues. The whole island was wired. Today’s manhunt would be captured in crystal-clear digital images, then processed into the most realistic video game ever produced.

  Left, Steve decided. He hurled through the trees. Escape and evade. He’d done it plenty of times during Regiment training. It was one of the most basic soldiering skills. If you can’t hide you can’t fight, his instructor had bawled in his ear on a wet day in the howling wind on the Brecon Beacons.

  A shot.

  Steve ducked

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  That wasn’t five minutes. Nothing like it.

  He glanced backwards. Nothing. It was still early morning, and the misty dampness made it hard to see clearly. The hunters had AK-47s, their thirty-round clips filled with blanks. If there was a direct hit, the micro-cameras would flash to tell Steve to go down.

  Another shot.

  Closer this time.

  It struck one of the holly trees, and Steve could feel a fragment of bark fly into his face. He swerved. There was a ridge of higher ground in front of him. Bark, he wondered to himself. On my cheek.

  Blanks don’t chip bark off a tree.

  “Christ,” he muttered.

  They didn’t give me five minutes.

  And they aren’t firing blanks.

  What the hell is going on?

  He started to tear up the hill, searching anxiously for some shelter. Behind him, a shout. Then the crashing of boots on leaves, as the men in pursuit pushed on through the forest. Steve hadn’t been equipped with any weapons, but he kept a small knife tucked into his boot. Looks like I’ll need it, he thought bitterly.

  Five against one.

  Guns against a knife.

  Whoever the hell dreamt up today’s entertainment clearly didn’t believe in a fair fight.

  A cave.

  It was straight ahead: a mound of dull, grey stone, with a small opening carved into the rock. Steve paused, grabbed a tall, sturdy stick, then flung himself towards it. The stone was mossy and damp, and he had to cling to the cold walls. He walked ten paces forwards, straight into the darkness. The cave twisted into a narrow tunnel. He cursed the fact he didn’t have any kind of torch: the rules of the game demanded the target had nothing to rely on but his wits.

  But wits are okay, he reminded himself.

  In the right hands, they could be as deadly as any weapon.

  He grabbed the knife from his boot, and held the stick steady between his knees. It was a birch; a strong but supple wood, easily worked. Of all the weapons man had ever devised, a spear was the oldest, and the simplest. That didn’t make it any less effective. Steve started to cut, slicing the knife into the wood, carving and cutting until the tip was turned into a sharp, lethal point.

  Why? he repeated to himself.

  Why are these bastards trying to kill me?

  He could feel the sweat pouring off him. The cave was dark, and somewhere in the distance he could hear growling, angry voices. He wasn’t hard to track, he knew that: his boots would have left a trail through the leaves so clear it might as well be lit up in neon. They’d be here soon. He gripped the stick. Let your enemy come to you, he reminded himself. Exploit his weaknesses.

  Bekker? He was trying to think why the man might have a grudge against him.

  The Circuit, as the network of mercenaries was known, was a rough arena, full of desperate men. A decade of soldiering meant Steve had racked up plenty of enemies. There was an endless succession of corpses. And all of them had brothers, families, mates. Men with scores to settle.

  Revenge. This isn’t a game, it’s an assassination…

  A body was moving through the pale, dim light. He could see the flicker of a shadow, and smell the damp sweat on the man’s skin. Wait, he told himself. You’ll get one chance at this. He steadied himself, his muscles tightening. The man was drawing closer. Steve could hear him breathing. He was walking slowly, edging into the darkness, clearly nervous of an ambush. Suddenly there was a burst of gunfire. The flash of light from the muzzle of the AK-47. Then the snap of bullets flying in the air, followed by lumps of hot angry metal smashing into the rock. Steve held himself still. The man hadn’t seen him yet. He was just clearing the path. Hoping to finish off whoever lay up ahead.

  Fifteen rounds chipped into the rock. An AK-47 has a 30-round mag, Steve reminded himself, and although the man would have spares, he wouldn’t want to risk slotting another clip into his gun.

  The rifle paused.

  Steve could smell the acrid gunpowder in the air, and the charred metal of spent casings.

  The man took another step.

  Steve lunged forward in a swift, brutal movement. Using a spear was all about upper body strength. You leant into the weapon, so that it became an extension of yourself: a single, sharpened combination of wood and muscle, shaped into a deadly missile. He was aware the man might be wearing body armour, so there was no point in aiming for the chest. Instead, he held the spear at an angle, sending it straight upwards. The spear stabbed into the soft flesh of the neck, just above the Adam’s apple. Steve pushed and twisted, turning the stick into a drill, boring through the neck, and up into the mouth, splitting open the man’s face. He screamed once, but the assault was ripping through his vocal chords, and the sound was soon stifled. Steve thrust harder, slamming through the bone, up into the brain, ignoring the blood pouring down the stick. With a heave of the shoulders, he pushed the man aside, leaving him to die slowly in the darkness. He had the initiative now, and had no choice but to press home the advantage. He grabbed the AK, and started to run forwards. He slotted his finger onto the trigger, and as soon as he saw daylight opened fire. There were four men in front of him. A bullet caught one man in the forehead. Steve flicked the gun a fraction of a millimetre. Another bullet splintered opened a man’s chest, whilst the third took wounds to both his arms and legs.

  The clip was empty. But three more corpses lay dead on the ground.

  But not Bekker.

  He was running into the woods.

  The hunter becomes the prey, thought Steve with
a grim smile.

  That’s the way this game is meant to be played.

  He picked up a fresh clip from one of the dead men, slotted it into his gun and started to run. Bekker was fit, and he was scared, and that combination always made a man fast. But he was also big, and heavy, and even though most of it was muscle, he still lacked the agility to weave his way through thick clumps of trees. Steve was gaining on him all the time. Fifty yards became forty, then thirty. He raised the AK-47 to his shoulder, and released a short, sharp burst of fire. It was impossible to make a completely accurate shot, not from an AK, not at this range, and not at a moving target.

  But you could still blast a man’s foot off, reckoned Steve.

  And if you killed him, that was just bad luck.

  Bekker stumbled,

  Fell.

  He turned around, releasing a volley of fire from his AK, but he’d taken three wounds to his leg, and one to his buttocks, and the blood was pouring out of him, making it impossible for him to focus. Steve was onto the man in a flash, kicking the gun from his hand, then jabbing the barrel of his own weapon into the man’s throat. He looked straight into Bekker’s eyes. They were cold, and dark, filled with the dread of a man who knows he’s been outwitted on the battlefield, and that the bill would be settled with his blood. “Why?” snapped Steve.

  Bekker turned to look at him. “Alan Tolan. 1998…”

  Steve though for second. The wild border country between Southern and Northern Ireland. An SAS hit squad. A firefight with a renegade IRA unit. Alan Tolan was one of the casualties. And the founder of Pyramid Entertainment. Mike Tolan.

  The brother of the man Steve killed all those years ago.

  It makes sense now.

  “It’s murder…”

  “The perfect crime,” said Bekker, with a shake of the head. “We’d have erased all the tapes, and explained it away as an industrial accident.”

  He paused, coughing up a splutter of blood.

  “Except…”

  Steve stood up. “You chose the wrong guy.”

  He could kill the man if he wanted to.

  He wouldn’t feel so much as a twitch of regret.

  But Bekker was just a tool. A soldier doing his job. The same as I was, that night in the border country.

  Steve ripped the micro camera from his fatigues, and looked hard into the lens.

  “Game over,” snapped.

  And then he tossed the device aside, and walked back towards the shore.