Untouchable (Alex King Book 17), page 1
Untouchable
A P Bateman
Untouchable
By
A P Bateman
Copyright © 2023 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.
Also by A P Bateman
The Alex King Series
The Contract Man
Lies and Retribution
Shadows of Good Friday
The Five
Reaper
Stormbound
Breakout
From the Shadows
Rogue
The Asset
Last Man Standing
Hunter Killer
The Congo Contract
Dead Man Walking
Sovereign State
Kingmaker
Untouchable
The Rob Stone Series
The Ares Virus
The Town
The Island
Stone Cold
DI Grant
Vice
Taken
Standalone Novel
Never Go Back
Short Stories
The Perfect Murder?
Atonement
Further details of these titles can be found at:
www.apbateman.com
For Clair
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
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Casablanca, Morocco
King sipped the hot and fragrant sweet tea and watched the Mercedes pull to the curb. The Range Rover followed. Ahmadi got out of the rear of the Mercedes, cutting a fine figure in a dark blue Tom Ford suit with a crisp white shirt open at the neck. Two buttons down, but not spread too far. King imagined the shirt cost more than his own entire outfit, but that didn’t take much. The bodyguards got out. Three in all. He wondered if they had kissed their loved ones goodbye this morning. He checked his watch. The bodyguards only had a few minutes to live. Tough, but those were the breaks. The greater good. The big picture. At least he wouldn’t be pulling the trigger. He could have done with more bodyguards joining him, but those were the breaks.
The boy got out of the same door as Ahmadi. Like father like son, the boy too wore an expensive suit. King knew the boy to be eleven years old. What kind of man took his eleven-year-old son to business meetings? But King already knew the answer. The kind of man who trained his kin young, indoctrinated them, even. In twenty years, the boy would be doing his own deals with terrorists and another agent would be standing in King’s place. King checked his watch again. It was a cheap, yet durable military style watch. A plain face, a screw-down crown and a NATO strap. Durable as hell. It went better with his cover than his own vintage Rolex, and it was the watch his ‘legend’ had worn into prison after sentencing. Details mattered. He carried no phone, no credit cards either. Just a single debit card to access ten-thousand pounds in savings under an assumed name. The only form of ID he carried was a well-thumbed and heavily stamped passport. It looked good. An older photo to go with the assumed name and plenty of visa stamps to match his legend. King sipped some more of his tea and watched as the bodyguards split into different directions. The lead bodyguard led Ahmadi and his son into the restaurant, followed by another. The third waited outside while the Mercedes and Range Rover drove away to find some parking. With that, a second Range Rover thundered past, the bodyguards intending to wait for their charge down the road.
King was seated at a table outside a café across the street. Throngs of people walked past, some tourists but many Moroccans just going about their day. The warm air was heady with the aroma of spices and strong coffee and delicious breads and baclava, but crucially interspersed with the stench of cigarette smoke, drains and vehicle fumes. The sounds of vehicle horns, whining engines and worn exhaust pipes, people bartering and shouting, and construction machinery filled the air, an assault on the senses. He checked his watch again. Less than a minute to go.
King watched the old Volkswagen Transporter drive past and pull into the curb fifty metres further down the road. The vehicle was dented and scuffed and looked fit for the scrapyard, but then again, so did most of the vehicles in Casablanca. Either that, or the extremes of new BMWs, Range Rovers or Mercedes, visual proof if it were ever needed that the divide between rich and poor was never further apart, and truly a global trait. Another old VW Transporter pulled up short of the restaurant. King finished his tea and checked his watch a final time, before removing the Ray Ban Aviators he had bought eight months ago in the duty-free at Gatwick and slipping them into the thigh pocket of his cargoes. He dried the palm of his hands on his knees, then pushed out his chair almost a foot, his eyes on the motorcycle further down the road, its rider stretching his legs and drinking from a bottle of water. The motorcycle was a Suzuki SV-1000. A powerful street bike with a comfortable riding position and savage acceleration. King looked back up the street where a truck piled high with melons had parked behind the first VW Transporter. The bodyguard standing outside the restaurant seemed to have noticed none of these things, and King wondered how alert the man would be and what his reaction would be when the time came. But he did not have to wonder for long. The VW pulled out in front of the truck and accelerated towards the restaurant and the truck loaded with melons followed, before swerving erratically, counter steering with excess and lifting onto two wheels. With a screech of tyres, it carried on lifting and tipped onto its side, its load crashing into the road. The bodyguard watched incredulously as the melons squashed and scattered and children leapt into the pile stealing what they could carry, some already eating what was split and crushed. The VW Transporter stopped outside the restaurant and the bodyguard was cut down with a burst of automatic gunfire. People scattered and screamed, and men piled out of both Transporters, weapons held at the ready as they stepped over the body and filed into the restaurant and opened fire.
King crossed over the street and stood in the cool shadows as he waited. Three men pulled the boy with them to the lead vehicle. He was bundled roughly inside, his suit torn and stained with blood, but from the way he moved King could already tell that the blood belonged to other people. They clambered in after him and closed the door as the vehicle sped away. Three more men walked out confidently, one of the men changing over to a new magazine as he walked. Six men in, six men out. King stepped out and kicked the last man in the back of his knee, snatching the weapon as he fell. He could tell from the weapon’s weight that the magazine was at least half full. He fired into the man’s face before he hit the ground and followed up with three shots into the closest man’s back. The lead man started to turn but was less than halfway around when King emptied the rest of the compact Kalashnikov AKS-74U into him. King tossed the weapon onto the ground and picked up the man’s CZ-75 9mm pistol which had clattered into the street. He checked the magazine as he walked and when he got level with the confused driver of the van, he shot him once in the head and made for the motorcycle. The man saw the gun, held up his hands and King swung his leg over the machine and turned the ignition and pressed the starter button. He tucked the pistol into his waistband, selected first gear and pulled out into the road, the rear wheel spinning as he kept all his weight over the fuel tank to stop the motorcycle from lifting its front wheel. He feathered the throttle to control the rise and knocked the gears up from first through neutral, second and third and had a hundred miles per hour on the needle before the first bend and throng of people in the road.
The VW Transporter was driving on its handling limit for the streets, the driver swerving to avoid children and goats, stray dogs and motor scooters as Casablanca put on a show of diversity and blocked its path with a Youtuber posing for selfies in front of an orange Lamborghini. The van swer ved in time but knocked over a bicycle laden eight feet high with beach toys and souvenirs on a custom-made rack. The man guiding the bicycle fell to the ground and his mobile stall toppled and spread his wares into the road. King, with nowhere left to steer stamped down on the gears twice, then twisted the throttle and squeezed a quarter pull of clutch, launching the front wheel into a wheelie. The Youtuber dropped his phone and dived for safety as the front wheel touched the bonnet of the supercar and the bike rode up the wedge-shaped car and launched into the air. King stood on the foot pegs; his knees slightly bent to cushion the landing some ten feet to the rear of the Lamborghini. The motorcycle landed heavily and bounced, King fighting hard to regain control, which he did with a twist of throttle to right the wobble. The VW Transporter was now only sixty metres in front of him, the driver swerving and stamping on the brakes to try and force King back.
King knew that he did not have much time. There were four men in the van ahead of him, and he could hear police sirens somewhere. They were heading downhill now, the port in sight. From there the options only favoured the kidnappers. Vehicle changes, fast speedboats, passenger ferries – all could present a place to hide, a way out of the city. There was even a heliport. With a helicopter waiting, the boy could be lost within minutes. Or at least that was the plan.
The rear doors of the van opened, and King swerved and dropped back to avoid the burst of gunfire from a Kalashnikov. There were screams and King could only imagine where the bullets had ended up with people scattering on all sides. He weaved the motorcycle across the road and bounced up the pavement, people parting ahead of him like water against the prow of a ship. The van had accelerated, and King caught sight of people being thrown into the air as it drove relentlessly through the crowds. King weaved back into the road and gained rapidly on the van. The men inside the van were being thrown about in the cargo bay, and while the man with the rifle was reloading, another was clamped around the boy to restrain him. The third man had made it to the front passenger seat and was leaning out of the window aiming a pistol at King as he swerved and dodged fleeing pedestrians. King wound the throttle on full, the front wheel almost touching the rear bumper, and in one fluid move, he released his grip on the throttle, drew the pistol and shot the man in the forehead from less than six feet away, the motorcycle dropping back all the time as it underwent engine-braking. He struggled to tuck the weapon back in his waistband, and by the time he got back on the throttle, the van had skidded out onto the main road and left the busy street behind. King accelerated hard, the powerful motorcycle whining as he used all the engine revs and gear changes, threading the machine through traffic north of one-hundred-and-thirty miles per hour. He flashed past the van and around a truck laden with bottled water, then came hard off the throttle, stamped down two gears, and was engulfed in tyre smoke as the motorcycle skidded and decelerated down to fifty miles per hour and the van caught up with the truck giving King all the cover that he needed to draw the pistol and fire. The man in the passenger seat slumped and sprawled across the gearstick and the driver struggled to control the vehicle, swerving both left then right and crashing into the truck beside him. King tried to accelerate out of trouble, but the truck caught his rear wheel, and the motorcycle defied the laws of physics by going in what felt like every direction at once. King held on as the motorcycle was launched in the air, then landed on its rear wheel. He didn’t know it at the time, but he twisted the throttle and the machine accelerated and went past the point of no return. King was spat to the rear and the motorcycle twisted and spun and when the tyres caught traction on the tarmac, it twisted and turned and rolled down the road amid sparks and fuel and caught fire. King was sliding on the tarmac, and just as the tyres had done, his boots caught the road, and he was upended and thrown into a series of summersaults and rolls. The van continued down the road in front of him, and as King staggered to his feet, he could hear nothing but vehicles skidding and horns sounding behind him.
King looked around him but could not see the pistol. He watched the van now in the distance, then turned and looked at the traffic now stationary behind the truck and the burning hulk of the motorcycle. Shouts turned to chatter and from what French and Arabic he knew, he realised that he wasn’t the most popular person in Casablanca right now.
An open-topped Porsche and a slick-looking man in his thirties wearing a white shirt, wrap-around sunglasses and talking on his phone using EarPods is a universal thing, and King headed towards the estate agent/salesman, reached inside and unlocked the door. He unfastened the protesting man’s seatbelt and pulled him out. The man tried to fend King off, but was no match for King’s strength, who twisted away from his blows and shoved him hard to the ground. King was behind the wheel and working his way through the seven speed PDK paddle-shift gearbox. With a break in the traffic flow, he had the Porsche at over a hundred miles per hour in seconds and was still climbing in speed when he caught sight of the van pulling off the road onto the slip road leading directly to the port. He eased off and rode the brakes, keeping the van in sight but maintaining distance. The driver of the van had seen King fall off the motorcycle, likely seen the burning wreckage in his mirrors. He would not have seen King take the Porsche, so there was no sense in giving away his advantage.
The van headed away from the commercial port and to the marina. King held back, but certainly the Porsche fitted in here with newer, expensive vehicles and chic cafés, restaurants and boutiques. It would have been a different story in the old fishing port. He reached over and checked the glovebox hoping he’d get lucky, but this wasn’t the America, and he already knew the chances of finding a gun was slim to none. The van slowed ahead of him, and King eased back but he could already hear sirens behind him and knew that it would only be a matter of a minute or two before he would see the flashing lights as the police closed in.
The van screeched to a halt and on a raised platform on the edge of the marina and breakwater separating the calm harbour from the raging surf of the Atlantic Ocean, a helicopter’s rotors were spinning. The remaining man in the rear of the van roughly pulled the boy out of the vehicle and pushed him ahead of him. The boy tried to run, but the driver grabbed him as he got out from behind the wheel and the two men sprinted for the waiting helicopter. King accelerated hard, the Porsche bellowing from its exhaust, it’s tuned six-cylinder engine whining as the turbo kicked in. One of the men turned and fired and the windscreen and bonnet were peppered with bullets. King raised a hand to protect his eyes from the shattering glass and heaved the vehicle to the left to take cover behind the van. King leaped out over the passenger seat and ran to the open rear doors of the van, where he picked up one of the dead men’s’ weapons. He checked the magazine of the Browning 9mm pistol, knew he had at least twelve rounds remaining from the inspection holes in the rear of the magazine, and eased the breach open a fraction to see a glint of brass. Ahead of him, the helicopter lifted off, banked an impossibly steep turn and spun around heading northwards up the coast. It was probably the easiest day’s work the pilot had ever had, and from the way the two men sagged as they neared the helipad, the last thing the kidnappers had expected. But forewarned was forearmed, and King stopped running and fired at one of the men, sending three 9mm bullets into the man’s back. The second man turned, but he had the boy in front of him and a gun at his head. The boy was sobbing. The man looked confident. In his periphery, King was aware of vehicles pulling up, people getting out. Uniforms, suits. He dared not look, could not take his eyes off the man’s in front of him. Twenty metres. It could well have been twenty miles for all the good it would do him. Again, in his periphery, weapons were being aimed and someone seemed to be taking charge, holding people back.
