The roar grew closer until it was right on top of them.

  Kane couldn’t believe it could be this easy. King and Slater had no allies on this small island, no one to turn to in their hour of need, so that meant this was the entirety of their plan. A brazen frontal assault, which they were in fact renowned for, but Kane figured the stories had to be overblown.

  Sure enough, a plain old sedan with a faded paint job and no visible armour roared through the resort’s entrance.

  Its windows were tinted, and its engine screamed in protest at the burden it was required to bear.

  But it came in fast, and Kane found himself thinking that in combat things happen much faster than you think they’re going to.

  All four sentries unloaded their weapons at the sedan.

  The resort erupted into chaos.

  Distant screams and shouts of distress punctuated the gaps in automatic gunfire, and Kane grinned at the sheer carnage of it all.

  Then the grin faded.

  Because the tyres hadn’t blown out yet.

  They must be modified, bulletproof.

  No matter.

  The sedan itself wasn’t.

  All the windows shattered and bullets ripped through the doors and churned the upholstery inside. Whoever was inside had nowhere to hide, nowhere to shelter. They were mince meat by now, chewed and churned to a pulp, their insides coated across the dashboard.

  Except the car kept coming.

  In fact, it picked up speed.

  Through the window frames Kane could see some object blocking the driver from view, but he hadn’t the slightest clue what it was. It looked like insulation of some kind, then he couldn’t think about that anymore because the sedan was still coming, doing sixty miles an hour now, its doors and hood and trunk practically hanging off due to the sheer number of rounds it had absorbed.

  Its wheels still worked, though.

  It began to slow maybe thirty feet from the villa, its engine sputtering out under the relentless barrage of bullets, but momentum carried it. Kane fired a wild burst from his sub-machine gun, coating the shattered windshield, but adrenaline pulsed at his temples, and he had no idea whether he’d hit anything.

  The sedan ploughed across the lawn, roared down the path, and obliterated the front door of the villa, taking chunks of stone and brick out of the walls on either side.

  It came to a stop with its bodywork destroyed, wedged half-in and half-out of the house. Brick and plaster and glass rained down on it, exposing clear gaps on either side of the car that could be used as points of entry into the villa.

  Kane gulped.

  The saliva hadn’t even gone down his throat before what was left of the driver’s door flew open, kicked from within, and a man stepped out with a heavy ballistic shield strapped to each forearm. They were the type used by riot police the world over, complete with armoured viewing ports made of bullet-resistant glass. Through one visor, Kane saw the grizzled man’s face twisted in exertion as he hefted the enormous weight of the shields, barely able to balance the load. He’d wedged one on either side of the driver’s seat, creating a miniature portable bunker that he could use to manoeuvre the car through the storm of gunfire, and now he’d untethered them and was using them as a shoddy suit of armour.

  It would have been insane if he had any intention of fighting.

  But instead of fighting he ran as fast as he could away from the villa, down the side lane, taking direct hits to the right-hand shield. Both shields were pressed tight to his sides, and their curved shapes covered most of his surface area, so nothing got through the slim gap between the twin chunks of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene.

  Then he was gone.

  Out of sight.

  In the clear.

  Kane’s head spun.

  He whipped his gaze back to the path, where all four sentries were on their feet in the undergrowth, visibly exposed. They’d had to compromise their cover to be able to take potshots at the sedan during its barrage down the road.

  Kane shouted, ‘No! Decoy! Get the fuck down!’

  Too late.

  84

  King waited for Wayne Portis to begin the blitzkrieg.

  And what a blitzkrieg it was.

  Whatever the resisting forces had been anticipating, it wasn’t that. King could sense them collectively frothing at the mouth as the sedan roared into view, as if it were handing itself over voluntarily. He slunk through the entrance in the wake of its furore, skirting from cover point to cover point in case any of the remaining Walcott forces had their wits about them.

  They didn’t.

  One sentry dressed in a makeshift ghillie suit reared up from the bushes running the length of the tree line, and a domino effect followed. If one had done it, then it was permissible, so a second sentry joined him, bursting up so he had a clear shot at the side and back of the passing sedan. Thus began an unpreventable chain reaction, and before the vehicle had covered the length of the path and reached the villa, all four men had revealed themselves.

  Considerably amateur, but what could you expect?

  King waited a long beat in case there was a fifth or sixth who hadn’t yet followed suit.

  Wayne buried the front half of the car in the villa and levered himself out of the driver’s seat with his bullet-resistant ballistic shields in tow. This was the most dangerous part of the whole attack. If a lucky shot snuck through the small gaps between the shields, an arms dealer would be dead, and King and Slater would have blood on their hands. But the five beers must have done their job — Wayne displayed impeccable athleticism as he hauled the shields down the side path between villas and vanished into the laneways of the resort.

  A frantic warning shout emanated from the villa’s front garden.

  King ignored it.

  Leaning out from behind a tree on the opposite side of the path, he snapped the closest sentry’s head back with his first shot.

  Then he slowly panned left.

  He squeezed the trigger of his Glock three more times.

  Being able to fire from a stationary position was a blessing, not to mention all the time he had to control his breathing and eliminate any nervous tremors that might have worked their way through his fingers. All of that was gone when he set his line of fire in motion, and the favourable conditions meant he didn’t miss a shot.

  There was no need for a fifth round.

  Four sentries fell back into the bushes with lead in their skulls.

  Not even the last man realised what was unfolding before he joined his comrades in death.

  King exhaled after the last shot was fired.

  Then he ducked low behind the tree and set off for the next cover point.

  85

  In the bay that the villas overlooked, there wasn’t so much as a ripple on the surface.

  Not even the crunch of a car slamming into brick or the apocalyptic noise of automatic gunfire disrupted the water.

  Until something did.

  The top of a dark bald head materialised close to the surface, then broke through. The rest of Will Slater followed. His appearance from the depths of the bay might have seemed nightmarish if not for the beautiful grounds he climbed up into. The setting was something off a postcard — a series of three beautiful modern homes erected right by the waterfront, their lawns shining under a cloudless sky. What wouldn’t fit in with the postcard snapshot was the war erupting on the other side of the villa. Gunshots popped one after the other and a plume of engine smoke rose from where Slater guessed the front door was positioned.

  Clad in dripping wet clothes, he kept low as he closed in on the back verandah. Draperies billowed in through sliding glass doors, nearly identical to the ones their old bungalow had possessed.

  He almost made it all the way to the back steps before his line of sight changed as he rounded a column.

  It was then he realised the verandah was occupied.

  Lyla Barrow sat at a circular glass table surrounded by patio chairs. It looked like all the life had been sucked out of her. She was aware of the chaos unfolding all around her, but she seemed detached from it. Like this was the cherry on top of a particularly nasty dream she’d soon wake up from. She had her head bowed, her hands over her ears, and her eyes closed, but there was something close to a strange calm in her features.

  Denial can be a powerful coping mechanism.

  But her nightmare wouldn’t end just yet, for a tall man with a receding hairline and round spectacles clipped to the bridge of his nose stood behind her, towering over her frail form. He had a Ruger pistol aimed loosely in her direction but the barrel wavered all over the place. His gaze was fixated inside the house, his attention seized by the cacophony of noise out front. He couldn’t feasibly keep his eyes fixed in every direction. He should have already taken Lyla inside, gone with her into a windowless room, held her in front of him with the barrel to her temple so he couldn’t be sprung from behind.

  He’d done none of that.

  Slater hovered a few feet from the rear steps, ever-patient. He waited for the guard’s barrel to stray an inch to the right as a particularly vicious burst of gunfire from the front of the house seized the man’s attention entirely.

  Then Slater shot him in the side of the head.

  He spun nearly a hundred and eighty degrees from the momentum of the bullet whipping his chin around, then collapsed to the patio floor.

  Lyla opened her eyes.

  They went wide.

  She took a moment to assess whether she was feeling any pain. Slater could see her ticking off the mental checklist. Arms, legs, chest, throat. All clear.

  Then she looked over.

  ‘Hi,’ Slater said.

  ‘Hi, Will,’ she said. ‘How’d you get here?’

  He strode up the steps, stayed low as he swept across the patio, and muttered in her ear as he went past, ‘I held my breath. Once upon a time I was a sailor in the Navy.’

  He stepped inside.

  One of Walcott’s guys stood in the centre of the open-plan living area.

  He had better foresight.

  He’d had a smorgasbord of hostages to choose from, and he’d gone for the human shield who carried the least chance of anyone risking a shot.

  Caleb Barrow had a pistol pressed to his small temple. His hair was ruffled over his forehead, his lips were pale, and his cheeks were white with fear. The only reason he wasn’t crying was because he was deep in shock.

  Violetta and Alexis sat at the kitchen table, their wrists and ankles bound with cable ties, duct tape over their mouths.

  Walcott’s man was facing the wall so he could keep both the front and back entrances in his peripheral vision, and now he whirled to Slater.

  He didn’t say anything.

  He didn’t need to.

  The situation was obvious enough.

  But Slater didn’t budge, so after five eternal seconds of silence the thug’s mouth went into overdrive.

  ‘Gun on the floor right now or the kid gets it,’ he said, spit flecking through clenched teeth.

  Slater looked deep into his eyes.

  The guy was just a hired gun, but he meant business.

  So Slater had been half-right. They hadn’t killed Lyla or Caleb immediately, but they sure as hell would if the situation demanded it.

  ‘It’s just you,’ Slater said. ‘There’s nobody else. They’re all dead.’

  ‘Bullshit. You came in through the back.’

  ‘It’s not only me.’

  ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’

  A hulking silhouette loomed out of a side passage, right behind the thug.

  Jason King attacked like a viper.

  Slater had never seen the man move so fast. He pounced as if he were inhuman, every muscle and joint flooded with adrenaline. There was simply no way in hell Caleb Barrow was getting on the wrong end of a gun, so King managed to rip the Ruger out of the thug’s hand in a tenth of a second. He clearly broke a couple of fingers in the process, because the thug’s jaw slackened as he spun, letting Caleb out of his grasp, falling to his knees out of a mixture of pain and shock.

  King’s knuckles went white from how hard he gripped the back of the guy’s collar.

  He dragged him into the side passage. ‘The kid doesn’t need to see this. Slater, go get the two out front. They’re in the bushes.’

  86

  Kane Walcott had never seen a firefight.

  The insidious thought struck him as he tried to focus on the resort’s entranceway. The shots that killed the sentries had come from somewhere in that direction, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out where. His heart rate was so high that it was tearing his attention away from his surroundings, making him worry about whether the vital organ would explode from the stress of live combat. He wasn’t accustomed to anything like this … but that’s why you pay people who know what they’re doing, right?

  Right.

  And four of those people were lying dead in bushes along the tree line.

  It began to dawn on him that he might be in over his head. That there was a reason Dylan Walcott conducted business the way he did, never relied on all-out warfare, always made sure he’d paid off the right people so he could exist peacefully below the realm of public presence. A private titan in the boardroom, with more vices than anyone could count.

  Your father is dead, Kane reminded himself.

  It might have been the stress wearing him down, or the realisation that he wouldn’t make it out of this alive, but a guttural sob exploded in his chest.

  ‘Dad,’ he whispered under his breath.

  If only Dylan was here now.

  Hands seized the backs of his legs and dragged him gracelessly out from under the sculpted bushes. He shrieked and spun and tried to raise his sub-machine gun to meet the threat. A dark-skinned man in dripping wet clothes ripped the weapon out of his hands and hurled it aside. Kane threw an upkick, searching for the man’s face with the sole of his boot, but he missed.

  The man stomped down.

  Kane’s chest cracked.

  He wheezed and clawed for breath and rolled to his side, physically submitting.

  At least there’s backup.

  But the guy he’d stationed in the other set of hedges wasn’t able to back him up.

  He was splayed out on the lawn, a chunk of his skull missing.

  The attacker had shot him with a suppressed pistol.

  It was then he realised he had no business in this world.

  No business at all.

  If only you could take things back…

  ‘Wait,’ Kane said as the man loomed over him. ‘Just wait. I know who you are. You don’t know who I am.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘You’re Will Slater.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘I’m Kane Walcott. Dylan’s son. I was responsible for collecting information about the four of you with the bugs we had placed around the bungalow you were staying in. Okay? You following? I didn’t hand that information to my dad. So, you know, I did you a favour with that. And then, well, you know, I’m a Walcott, yeah? I’m sure I’m going to inherit the family fortune. I can pay you a lot of money. Not much use if I’m dead. So how about you put that gun down, okay?’

  He wasn’t exactly sure what he was saying — his brain moved faster than his mouth.

  All he wanted was another second on earth.

  Will Slater looked down at him like he was lower than vermin.

  Kane had never been looked at like that in his life.

  It broke him.

  Slater knelt over him. ‘Your man in there would have shot a small boy in the head if we hadn’t timed this little incursion to perfection.’

  ‘W-what?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘It was one of my men? Not me. My father’s men, actually. I’ve got nothing to do with this.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  Kane was yet to realise that the more he talked, the deeper the hole he was digging for himself.

  He started babbling about money, and payment, and fat bank accounts.

  That’s what mercenaries are ultimately after, right?

  Slater cut him off. ‘Are you responsible for your men?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Again, you heard me.’

  ‘They’re not my men.’

  ‘You knew your father was dead. So you knew you were in charge. Come on, Kane. Time to be a man about this. I’ll lose my respect for you if you deflect.’

  That changed Kane’s tune.

  From the lawn, he started nodding. ‘Yes, yes. They’re my men. My responsibility.’

  Anything to earn Slater’s respect.

  Anything to keep his life.

  Slater said, ‘That was easy. Now, should a leader be punished for the actions of his troops?’

  Kane paused.

  His thoughts stalled.

  He couldn’t keep up.

  ‘It’s a simple question, Kane,’ Slater said.

  ‘Yes,’ Kane said.

  It’s a trick, he thought. He wants me to admit responsibility. Then he’ll let me go with a newfound respect. Like in the movies.

  Slater said, ‘Exactly.’

  He rested the barrel of the Glock on Kane Walcott’s eye socket and ended the dynasty with a single round.

  87

  King, on the other hand, was met with blissful silence.

  The merc who’d held a gun to Caleb’s head didn’t plead, didn’t protest, didn’t whine. He knew anything he said would fall on deaf ears.

  He went to his death with resigned acceptance.

  King dragged him into a spare room, out of sight of the shaking child in the middle of the living room. Caleb had seen enough, been through enough. He didn’t need to see this, too.

  King made him face the wall and put his suppressed Glock to the back of the man’s head.