Die trying, p.1
Die Trying, page 1
Die Trying
A P Bateman
Die Trying
Copyright © 2024 by A P Bateman
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
I lost my mum while writing this book. She was probably my most avid reader and it was rare to see her without one of my books in her hand. She re-read them so many times that she undoubtedly knew the characters better than I did. I remember when I was starting out and she was the first person to read my novel. It was hand written and rough. I hadn’t yet learned to type. I asked for feedback and she said it was “Ace”. I asked her to be more specific and she said, “Er, absolutely ace…” I got upset because her feedback wasn’t constructive, but I wish she was here to tell me that again.
This is for you mum
X
Also by A P Bateman
You can find all the links for A P Bateman’s previous work at Amazon Author Page
The Rob Stone Series:
1) The Ares Virus
2) The Town
3) The Island
4) Stone Cold
The Alex King Series:
1) The Contract Man
2) Lies and Retribution
3) Shadows of Good Friday
(a series prequel/standalone)
4) The Five
5) Reaper
6) Stormbound
7) Breakout
8) From the Shadows
9) Rogue
10) The Asset
11) Last Man Standing
12) Hunter Killer
13) The Congo Contract
(a series prequel/standalone)
14) Dead Man Walking
15) Sovereign Power
16) Kingmaker
(a series prequel/standalone)
17) Untouchable
18) The Enemy
19) Die Trying
The DI Grant Series
1) Vice
2) Taken
Standalone Novels:
Never Go Back
The Most Dangerous Game
Short Stories:
The Perfect Murder?
Atonement (an Alex King thriller)
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Cadiz, Spain
The sand was warm and fine, shimmering like golden castor sugar in the sunlight. White clouds scudded through the azure blue sky and the sea was sapphire blue. But King saw none of this as he stared into the muzzle of the Colt .45 just a metre from his face.
“She didn’t call off the contract, then?” King asked, staring, like so many of his own marks had, down the barrel of the gun.
“No,” the man replied somewhat effeminately. “She wouldn’t do something like that. It’s quite ridiculous of you to think that she would.” He paused. “You crossed a line. I hear you visited her husband, threatened her family. She upped the bounty on your head, and more like me will come after you if I fail… which clearly, I will not,” he said, moving the weapon so that it lined up with King’s face, just in case he hadn’t seen it.
King noticed that the man wore the same red bikini bottoms, which now looked like a Speedo, but he had lost the bikini top, and the oversized woman’s sunglasses were pushed up on top of his head. He was thin and lithe, and his body was completely hairless. Curiously, King felt somewhat miffed that if he was going to die, then this was not the sort of person who should do it. The man certainly did not look like a tough guy – hell, King had even been attracted to the man’s legs when he had been in the guise of a woman sunning herself on the rocks. Of all the soldiers, well-trained agents, and hardened criminals he had cut down over the years, this was not a fitting end. As ridiculous as it sounded in his head, he felt cheated somehow.
“Are you scared?” Franz Oppenheimer asked. He had thought of himself as Frankie while sunbathing on the rock, and she had lured many men to their fate. Now it was down to Franz for the kill.
“No,” King replied, choosing to stare the man in the eyes rather than look at the gun barrel.
“Are you going to beg for your life?”
“No.”
“Good,” Franz replied. “Because it wouldn’t do you any good.” He paused, glancing around longer than King ever would have in the same situation. Then, looking back at him with determination in his dark eyes he said, “Because I’m an assassin, it’s what I do…”
King had already slipped his hand underneath the towel beside him as the assassin had briefly taken his eyes off him. There were no second chances in this game. He fired the speargun through the towel and into the man’s sternum. The spear travelled through the man’s aorta and halfway out through his back and as the line briefly unspooled and coiled at the man’s feet, he dropped the rolled-up towel and the .45 Colt hidden within and fell onto his knees. “Me, too…” King said coldly, gathering up the pistol and glancing around the beach. The two men fishing on the edge of the bay were still casting and reeling from the rocks, quite oblivious of what had just transpired in front of them.
“You’ve killed me…” Franz managed through snatched breaths. “Oh, my god… you’ve killed me…”
“It’s the business you’re in, pal,” replied King. “Suck it up…” He drew the diving knife from the hard plastic sheath strapped to his ankle. “Now, are you going to talk?”
“No…” Franz started to wobble. “But your world is about to come crashing down around you…” he wheezed.
“Enough bullshit…” King said and slashed the blade across the man’s throat and when he fell dying on the sand, King got to his feet and covered him up with his own towel.
Two hundred metres from the shore, the yacht bobbed on the growing swell. He could not see Caroline, but they would be ready to sail as soon as he returned in the tender. The plan had been to sail to the Canary Islands, and he did not see why that should change. The contract on his head would still be open, but the distance would give him the time and space to figure things out. King cut the line and tossed the speargun into the tender along with the pistol and the net of fish he had earlier speared, along with his mask and fins. He pushed the prow of the rubber boat off the sand, and the transom and engine met the building swell and lifted easily as King leapt in and started the engine. He heard the explosion, felt the ‘whump’ of the concussive shockwave inside him, and even as he turned his head, he knew what he would see. Or what he wouldn’t. The yacht was gone, only flotsam in its place. There was no part of the hull intact, and the mast was gone. King felt a wave of nausea inside him, his blood surging and heart skipping as he powered on the tiller and the tiny boat rose above the waves. Ominously, perhaps even fittingly, the sky had greyed, and black clouds loomed on the horizon. The once blue water was now grey and impossibly black on the horizon. The swell was growing and a squall was coming in. The gunshots hammered into the water beside him, and King knew that they were high-velocity rifle rounds because of the metre-high plumes of water they created, splashing his face. He turned around, briefly catching sight of the two fishermen running for their lives across the rocks, then found the gunman a hundred metres to his starboard side, crouched behind a large rock on the other side of the horseshoe bay, muzzle flashes giving away his position. King thought he heard more gunshots but could not place them. He picked up the .45 and emptied the weapon’s seven rounds in the general direction, then tossed the weapon over the side. It was enough to make the gunman duck for cover and break his aim, which had been getting ever closer to the
The seabed was scattered with wreckage and the mast was pinning the forward part of the hull to the sand. King was all but out of breath when he reached the seabed and peered inside the hulk. Their possessions were scattered everywhere, and he could see that the explosion had blown the boat completely in half. He knew enough about demolition to know that this had not been an accident with the boat’s gas, and nor with the small amount of fuel on board for the yacht’s outboard engine. There were scorch and impact marks all over the remains of the hull that were conducive to shaped charges. He paid this little attention, desperate to find Caroline, but there was no sign of her. He could see a shimmy of light and water inside the broken hull, and he knew that it represented a pocket of air. He swam desperately, the last of his breath escaping his lips as he pressed his face into the air pocket. It was no larger than a bucket, and he spat and coughed and heaved gratefully for breath, and above the sound of him panting, he heard an eerie wail, and realised somewhat despairingly that it belonged to him and with it the realisation that Caroline was gone.
That’s it, lad. Take a breath and fight on… he could hear the gravelly Scottish voice of his old mentor echoing in his ears, as clearly as if the man had been there beside him and not six feet under the ground in an unassuming MI6 graveyard. King blinked, realising that for the first time in years he was alone again. Strangely, he had to pull himself out of the despair as if it were a physical rope anchoring him to the spot. He cleared the mask and took in all the precious air that his lungs could carry, and he dipped back under and made for the flattened wreckage of the stern and the bosun’s locker, which was now gaping open with its contents scattered over the seabed. He snatched up the scuba tank and switched on the valve, then slipped himself into it and bled some air into the BCD until he drifted off the seabed and found negative buoyancy. Progress would be difficult without a set of fins, but even as he drew near, he could see the remnants of the tender drifting loosely on the surface as if it were a large rubber blanket. The gunman had found his range and had ripped the tiny rubber boat to shreds. King kicked on and used his arms to make up for the lack of fins. He knew that he had forty minutes of air and he set the bezel marker on his vintage Rolex at thirty-five minutes. He could already see the rocks of the headland to his right, and he kicked on past and took a path to his left, hoping without a compass that he would cross the next bay and reach the opposite headland rather than swim further out to sea. He would surface in ten minutes and get his bearings, and as he kicked and sculled with an aggression and determination he had not summoned in himself for some time, he vowed that he would find the gunman, and the people behind the bomb and he would exact a wrath upon them beyond anyone’s imagination. When he was done, they would pray and beg for even a painful death. Because anything would be welcome after the pain King would inflict upon his enemy.
Chapter Two
London
Three weeks later
“Anything after the phone call?”
“Nothing,” Lomu replied. The big Fijian was six-four and eighteen stone of muscle and known affectionately as Big Dave to those he worked with, and a whole lot of trouble for anyone intent on crossing him. “When I rang back the dial tone was dead. King probably tossed the phone as soon as he ended the call.”
Neil Ramsay nodded, pondering on the man’s report. He looked up as Mae entered, a no-nonsense looking woman in her early sixties with grey hair pulled back in a tight bun. She carried tea and coffee on a tray and pinned a file to her ribs with her elbow. It was just like her to multi-task, and she had been a godsend in the setting up and running of the new department under the umbrella of MI5 yet operating independently until the Security Service could seal their recent security breach. Ramsay knew that it would not be without repercussions, but he had been in intelligence work long enough to know that you simply had to fight the fire when you felt the flames. “Ah, thank you, Mae,” he said, barely looking up from his desk.
Big Dave gave her a wink as she handed him his tea. Jack Luger took his coffee and smiled. She seemed more taken with the big Fijian, and Luger felt she acted a little more matronly in his presence. It must have been an age thing. He did not mind, though. His school matron had been more of a mother figure at his boarding school than his own birth mother ever had. When he thought about it – and he had tried not to over the years – he had grown up in a household with a nanny, been sent to boarding school aged seven and then gone away to university. The family naval tradition followed, and he now viewed his family life as snippets from stuffy Christmases and easters where church service played a larger part than presents or easter eggs and even the long summers had been spent in Italy or France with the family nanny in attendance. It irked him somewhat that his younger brother had attended a local prep school as a day pupil and had a far closer relationship with their parents than either he or his older sister would ever have. Only his aunt had provided him with a semblance of family, and she had encouraged him to leave the navy and come and work with her at MI5. And now she was dead, and that thread of emotional support and comfortable familiarity was gone forever. He would take Mae’s manner with him as something akin to matronly, whether she meant it or not. It was practically the only care he had ever known.
“The Spanish police did not come up with anything helpful,” said Luger once Mae had left the room. “Other than the obvious signs of an explosive charge being used. Unfortunately, a squall whipped up the ocean and scattered the debris both far and wide …”
“What’s a squall? I thought that was a female red Indian…” Big Dave said seriously.
“We call them native Americans now,” Luger corrected them. “Anyway, that’s a squaw. And that’s a racial slur, too.”
Big Dave shrugged. “I’m black,” he told him. “I can’t be racist.”
“Oh, you can,” Luger replied earnestly.
“He’s, I believe the term is, messing with you,” Ramsay said tersely. “He did it to me all the time when I worked in the field. I don’t miss it one bit.”
Big Dave smiled and sipped his tea. “My bad…”
“And that expression makes no bloody sense whatsoever,” Ramsay said, looking at the file that Mae had just brought in. “Thank goodness I don’t have to hear it so much these days…” He paused and stared at Jack Luger. “Why a squall and not a storm?”
“It literally picked up for less than twenty minutes. Heavy wind and rain, big seas and then just as quickly, it was calm and clear, and the sea settled down. I used to see a lot of them in the Caribbean when I was in the Royal Navy.”
“And that ruined any chance of essential recovery,” Ramsay mused.
“Caroline’s body, most of all…” Big Dave said sullenly, leaving his words to hang in the air. “Let’s not forget that.”
“I never would,” Ramsay replied.
“I know,” the Big Fijian shrugged. “Just sayin’, that’s all.”
Jack Luger sipped his coffee. He was new to the team, and he knew when to contribute to something, and when to sit back. He had liked Caroline but would be the first to admit that he did not know her well.
