Raiders

CHAPTER NINE

This time, the strike knocked him clean out of his chair. He fell back onto the floor and his skull smashed into the concrete. The blow had almost dislocated his jaw and made him lose focus for a few seconds. For a moment, it looked like he was seeing the world from the bottom of a swimming pool.

Jed Mason shook it off and took a deep breath. An hour ago he had told the others that it would be a dangerous mission but the pay off would be worth it — but now he was starting think again. There are some things that are not worth five million dollars, and as the heavy-set man punched him in the face and hauled his chair upright again he was starting to think this was one of those things.

The smell and taste of his own blood washed over him as he scanned his new surroundings. As expected, the men had dragged him into the mechanical floor directly below the penthouse. These were the places that housed the building’s electrical generators and HVAC systems. Through a beaten, swollen eye he saw a series of metal tubes leading from a water-cooled chiller plant in the corner and vanishing in the ceiling above his head.

And the trash compactor.

Mason had been in tougher scrapes, but this situation could easily get out of control.

“Who are you working for?”

Mason fixed his good eye on the man. “I’m a self-employed man.”

The men looked at each and started to laugh. “You’re a dead man.”

Without warning, the man rushed him and powered a mighty punch into the side of his head. His felt the blood froth up in his mouth and spill over his swollen lip. It felt like he was drowning in hot copper, and as he spat the blood out it ran down his chin and almost made him throw up.

“Mr Omar is a nice man, but it was a mistake coming here and stealing from him. If you tell us where the item is, we will feed you into the trash compactor face first. If you don’t tell us where Mr Omar can retrieve what belongs to him, you go in feet first, Trust me, that’s not nice.”

“Well, I can see I’m spoilt for choice.”

The man smashed him with a left jab. Mason couldn’t duck, bob or weave anymore. He was too badly beaten. He barely knew what day it was, but one thing was still very clear in his mind — the sight of Kat Addington smiling at him as she turned the R22 into the sun and flew away, stranding him on the roof.

Leaving him for dead.

Letting these men feed him into an industrial trash compactor.

How could she do such a thing? The betrayal was so raw it hurt more than the beating he was getting at the hands of these men.

Another blow to the face, this time delivered by the smaller man. The impact cut his upper lip and knocked his head back hard. Stars flicked in front of his eyes like pieces of shredded aluminum sparkling in the sunlight. He felt sick again.

The nausea climbed higher inside him every time he saw her face… the face he had loved, the lips he had kissed. She was the woman he wanted to marry, and yet she had stolen the ultimate prize from him — from them all, torn it away from him the way she had ripped his heart out.

“So… where is the item?”

“I don’t know…”

It was the truth.

“Feed us lies, and we feed you into the compactor — feet first.”

“She robbed me — you saw it. I threw the bag into the chopper and she just flew away and left me for dead.”

“She left you for dead all right, but I don’t believe it when you say you don't know where she is. Where did the chopper come from? Where is it going?”

“Are you deaf?” Mason said, raising as much energy as he could muster after such a savage beating.

Another blow, and another. Brutal fists rained down on his face. He felt the men’s knuckles smashing into his swollen cheek bones, and now he was seconds from passing out. “I… don’t know… where she….”

The bigger, older man turned to his protégé. “Turn on the compactor.”

“No… wait.”

“Put it on slow, Mehmet.”

“Yes, boss.”

Mehmet trudged across the mechanical floor and turned the machine on. Its motor began to whine and Mason felt the vibration through his chair.

Kerem, the bigger man, picked up a chair and walked over to the machine. It was a solid chair with metal legs and a wooden seat, but when he dropped it into the compactor the machine crushed it as if was made of papier mâché. The older man turned and gave Mason an innocent shrug. “You see why it’s better if your head goes in first, no?”

Mason’s reply was to spit out more blood.

“That way, it’s over in a second, but if your legs go in first it’s very painful. Trust me, I’ve used both methods on men who have incurred the displeasure of Mr Omar.”

Goodbye, Jed. It’s been nice knowing you, but it’s time we went our separate ways….

The hopeless sense of treachery and betrayal was slowly giving way to anger and rage. Kat Addington was a highly skilled extraction specialist. She knew all the tricks. She had contacts all over the world. But he was better, and so were the other Raiders. Together, they would track her down and…

Suddenly he was aware of the old man right up in his face. He was gripping him by the chin and forcing him to look into his eyes. Sweat was beading on his forehead and running down his nose. When he spoke, it dripped off and landed on the floor in a tiny splash.

“Last time I ask you. Where is Mr Omar’s property that you stole?”

Mason’s head was swimming now. He was no longer sure what was happening. He could still hear the whine of the trash compactor and something about Kerem told him he wasn’t the type to bluff.

Say goodbye to the other Raiders for me, won’t you, darling?

He heard her say it over and over again, but the upper class English accent that once chimed his heart strings now made him feel nothing but hatred and revenge.

Milo.

Milo and the others would get him out of this.

But how?

Then he heard a scream. At first he thought his fevered imagination had cooked it up, but then he heard it again. A man’s scream. It sounded like Mehmet. Something was happening in here. Kerem had released his chin and was fighting with someone using a metal bar as a weapon.

Mason turned his face and strained to see through his battered, swollen eyes.

His heart started to pound with hope — was that Zara?

It was hard to see through eyes almost sealed up with dried blood, but if it was Zara then these two men would end up begging for the trash compactor before too long. He almost felt sorry for them.

For the next thirty seconds he was reminded strongly of a program he’d once watched about how lionesses hunt and kill to feed their young. Watching the two heavy-set Turkish men desperately trying to keep up with a Silat guru was in many ways more painful to watch than seeing a baby gazelle getting brought down on the African savannah.

At least the TV show blurred out the really graphic parts.

When she had finished pummelling them, she strolled over to Mason and cut his hands free with her knife.

“Aaand you’re welcome,” she said.

“How did you get here?”

“Same way you did, but I took the scaffold to the roof.”

“Thank God. She betrayed me, Zara,” Mason took a deep breath. “After all the times we shared together she double-crossed me and left me for dead, not to mention the fact she stole the damned asset as well.”

“No, she didn’t,” Zara said.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I was beating those two assholes with?” She held up the steel bar, and now in the peace and quiet Mason saw for the first time it wasn’t a steel bar at all, but the steel tube he had recovered from Omar’s safe.

He was astonished. “You have the asset! How?”

“Some freaking idiot left it lying around on the roof.”

“It must have come out when I dropped the bag up there!”

“You think?”

Mason changed the subject. “We’re going to need to get out of here in a hurry, and when I say here I don’t just mean this building, but Turkey.”

“No problem,” Zara said. “Cal just got another call from his old buddy. Turns out he was in Germany on a job and when he found out we were in Istanbul he made the trip down.”

“Sounds like this guy’s pretty serious about getting Cal on board. I wonder what the job is?”

She shrugged. “We’re not going to find out in here,” she said.

“Where is he?”

“At the airport.”

“So let’s get going.”

“Can you walk?”

He nodded and held up the asset. “Whatever this mysterious job is, we have to get this back to its rightful owner before the world finds out what happened.”