Ken Goddard: Chimera

“He — he shot at me! My arm, I’m — ”

“Probably just nicked you, judging from all that whining up there. What kind of ‘merchant of death’ are you, anyway, Hateley? Scared by a little ricochet shot? Well, get yourself hunkered down in there, lad, because there’s a lot more just like that one coming your way.” Wallis’ pained laugh echoed in the darkness again. “Bound to hit a vital spot eventually, you know; and then — ”

A sound somewhere between a gasp and a scream echoed out of the darkness; and then silence.

Bulatt waited for a count of sixty.

Still nothing.

Bulatt was in the process of deciding how long it would take him to move to the next tree down — and how long such a move would put him in the cross-hairs of Emerson’s rifle — when a hulking figure suddenly became visible in the falling snow as it slowly trudged up the hill.

Bulatt started to sight on the figure; and then watched, hardly able to believe his eyes, as the huge and horribly swollen figure of Borya staggered up to the top of the hill with M40A1 sniper rifle in one hand and a bloodied obsidian-bladed knife in the other. He stopped beside the fir tree and stared at Bulatt for a long moment.

“Did you kill him?” Bulatt finally asked the misshapen man whose facial features now looked far more Neanderthalish than Homo sapien, keeping the. 44-Magnum revolver down at his side.

Borya smiled and nodded his head slowly as he held the rifle and bloodied-knife up on display for a brief moment. Then he dropped them to the snow-packed ground, and continued walking toward the cave where the bear lay still on the ground.

Borya was kneeling beside the bear, his huge hands pressing against the bloody hole in the creature’s chest when Bulatt came up beside him. Both of them could see small, ragged puffs of air coming from the animal’s blunt and bleeding snout. They ignored Hateley who was staring out at the macabre scene from the mouth of the small cave.

“You can’t do anything to help him,” Bulatt said softly.

Borya looked up at Bulatt, nodded his head slowly in agreement, slowly lumbered up to his feet, smiled again, slapped a muscular hand onto Bulatt’s shoulder, turned, took two steps toward the woods, and then collapsed face down in the snow.

Bulatt was kneeling beside the horribly disfigured Russian, feeling for a pulse and finding none, when he heard Hateley scrambling out of the cave. As he turned around to look, he saw Hateley stand up with a spear in his hand.

Bulatt started to yell as he brought the. 44-Magnum up in both hands; and then stared in disbelief as Hateley placed the obsidian point of the into the center of the bear’s chest, and then drove it downward with the weight of his own body. The bear gave one last snort of pain and rage, and then went still.

“What the hell are you doing?” Bulatt demanded as he stood up and approached the triumphant poacher, seeing that Hateley had driven the spear deep into the hole created by Wallis’ rifle bullet.

“I just killed my trophy,” Hateley said defiantly.

“ You killed it?”

“You saw me do it, and you could see it was still alive. You’ll testify to that for me, won’t you?”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Hateley,” Bulatt nodded as he holstered the. 44 revolver, grabbed Hateley’s wrist, leveraged him down to his knees, and then handcuffed both of the CEO’s hands behind his back before turning and starting to walk down the hill to check on Wallis’ body, “my testimony is one thing you can definitely count on.”

Base Camp, the Maze

Henry Lightstone stood in the middle of the now-brightly-lit base camp, watching as Special Agents Dwight Stoner, Larry Paxton and the responding search and rescue team walked by carrying litters bearing the groaning figures of Stuart Caldreaux and Max Kingman to the waiting helicopter; Caldreaux with a tree branch sticking through his lower right leg, and Kingman with the spear still lodged in his shoulder.

In doing so, they trundled past four bodies laid out on the snow-covered ground next to the landing zone: Borya, Wallis, Gavin and Lanyard — the latter three with a spear, a pair of home-made arrows and a chain-sawed-off mammoth tusk sticking out of their back, neck and chest respectively.

Off in the distance, at Landing Zone 3 that was now also illuminated, a State Police Emergency Response team could be seen working the helicopter crash scene.

Finally, Lightstone turned to Bulatt and Achara who were standing beside him, arms wrapped around each other, and looking very happy to be back together again. “I feel like I’m the CSI officer at the aftermath of Little Big Horn,” he said, looking down at the pile of hand-made spears and knives at his feet, and shaking his head. “You sure you don’t want to write the report?”

“Be happy to,” Bulatt said, “but I’d probably be accused of being emotionally involved with the primary shooter.”

Lightstone turned to face Achara with a skeptical look on his face. “ You’re going to take credit for all of this carnage?”

“Not all of it,” Achara replied, “just the ‘attacking the fort’ and ‘saving the special agent’s posterior’ parts. The Chimera did all the hard work.”

“The Chimera saved the day? Do you really expect me to put that in an official investigative report?” Lightstone asked.

“Why not?” Achara shrugged innocently. “After all, it would be the truth.”

“And her father will definitely be proud of her when he reads the report, and might even forgive us for putting her at risk in the first place,” Bulatt added helpfully.

“Yes, I’m sure he will,” Achara agreed, looking up at Bulatt with a dimpled grin that suggested she had a few other activities in mind that her father might not approve of quite as readily.

“Okay,” Lightstone held up his hand in surrender. “I’ll write the damned report. What do you want me to do with Sitting Bull?” He nodded over at Michael Hateley who was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the sniper post with his hands still handcuffed behind his back.

“For the moment, you can charge him with killing a protected species on Federal Government property,” Bulatt said. “I imagine we’ll tack a few more charges on later, once we get the search warrant for his house.”

“And the bear… or Bulldog Bear… or whatever the hell Draganov called it?”

“Seize it as evidence.”

“What?!” Hateley’s head snapped up. “You can’t do that! That bear isn’t on any endangered or protected species list!”

Bulatt looked over at Mike Takahara, who was busy taking photos of the base camp.”

“Hey, Mike,” he called out, “would you tell Mr. Hateley exactly where we’re standing right now?”

Takahara set down his camera, took out his GPS receiver, thumbed a couple of buttons, and then said: “we are, precisely, one hundred and twenty-three feet inside the boundary of the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area.”

“And the location of Cave-Three?”

“Same answer, only further inside the boundary,” Takahara replied.

“The relevant words being ‘wilderness area,’” Bulatt said, turning back to Hateley, “where it happens to be a violation of law to hunt and take any species, regardless of how long it may or may not have existed on this planet.”

Hateley blinked in disbelief. “But — ”

“And before you and your lawyer start working on a new story,” Bulatt added, “don’t forget: I will testify that your trophy was still breathing when you jabbed that spear in its chest. I always like to keep my promises.”