Free Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2) by Nicholas P Clark

Nice and calm. If you
decide to run you will be shot. If you decide to fight with me you will
be shot.
And for the record; I do not carry a weapon. You will still be
shot. Do you understand?”
“I think I have a reasonable grasp on my circumstances. Shall we?”
Jack said, with his voice resonating contempt for the cop’s threats.
The cop got
out
of the vehicle and he went around to the side and
opened the door for Jack.
As Jack climbed
out he looked down at the
policeman’s belt. There was no gun. Jack scanned the derelict
buildings quickly, but with care, as they walked towards them. Jack’s heart
began to race. This was bad.

3

The End of Civilisation
    The short trip to the abandoned fertiliser plant
did not justify it
in any way, but Jack had no option; he stopped walking to deal with
a feigned cramp. The cop sighed as he immediately
sensed that this
was nothing more than a delaying tactic
on Jack’s part. Jack used the
brief
window
of
opportunity
to
get
a
better
sense
of
his
surroundings. Unarmed and unsure where a sniper might be hiding in
the warren of
high buildings which surrounded him, Jack decided that
it was probably sensible not to push his luck too far. He began to walk
again;
a
slow
pace
building
quickly
into a
confident
stride—if
he
wasn’t going
to fight his way
out of this situation then the only option
left open to him was to try to bluff his way out.
    Everything
about
the
structures
around
him,
which
stretched
towards the unpolluted night
sky
like a
man
made forest,
spoke
of
menace. He wondered just how many
before him had made the same
ominous journey to that
same location;
never to return, with their
bodies being left to the jackals in the eastern wastelands,
or buried in
a shallow grave beneath the hot desert sands.
    The complex was made up from a series of differently sized buildings that covered an enormous range
of sizes. There was a large nitration unit
clad in stainless steel that towered above everything
    else; the top of which caught the very last
had already
dipped below the horizon,
out
ground level. The
unit would
have
made the
perfect
lookout
spot
for any
potential sniper—at least that’s where Jack would have gone
had he been tasked with that role. His only comfort at that particular
consideration was the fact that he was still alive. If they had wanted
him dead then the charade would have been ended much sooner. They
would never willingly have brought him inside to do the deed as there
were too many things that could have gone wrong—Jack could have
made a run for it; he could have used some piece of industrial debris
to mount a counter attack;
bullets could bounce
off any
of the hard
surfaces inside the complex, injuring one of the would-be assassins.
    Jack’s highly trained brain then
moved
quickly
on to the reason
why he was being brought inside at all. His conclusions were anything
but reassuring. The cop overtook Jack as they approached a small door
leading into one of the smaller buildings. Jack figured that the building was some kind of administration unit, but as he followed the cop
inside, he quickly realised that he was mistaken. A second door
on the
inside opened into a lab.
All kinds
of
dated laboratory
equipment sat
undisturbed on dusty benches. Located so close to such crippling poverty, Jack wondered why this
expensive looking
equipment
had not
been looted the very
day that the plant closed
operations. His
mind
could reach
only
one conclusion—the plant was
owned
by
someone
who was not to be messed with. It was the fear that the poverty stricken, human waste, back in the townships respected so very
much that
they did not dare assault such an easy and obvious target, and it was
that unidentified owner who now held Jack’s life in his hands.
    The cop moved to the back of the room and Jack followed him. If
the bullets did start to fly then he wanted to be as close to the cop as
possible—turning the man from abductor to human shield would
not
cause Jack a second