Stephen Leather - The Hunting

Bell waved at his men to round up the captives. ‘Let’s get this show on the road!’ he shouted.

CHAPTER 20

When Raj came round he was sitting in one of the helicopters again. His neck was burning and it hurt when he breathed. The thudding of the rotors and the roar of the turbine was loud but far from deafening. This time he was sitting on the starboard side of a row of three seats. Next to him was Sal and on the other side of Sal was Mo. They were both staring fearfully out of the window. The helicopter was flying just above the trees, the leaves rippling below like the waves of a green sea.

Judging from what Raj could see inside the helicopter, it looked like an Airbus H175. He twisted around. There were three armed men sitting on the back row. One of them prodded him with a taser. ‘Eyes front or I’ll zap you again.’ Raj did as he was told. The rear-facing seats at the front were occupied by three of the men in fatigues. The one on the starboard side was grey-haired and older than the rest. His right hand had been replaced by a steel hook. Raj figured he was the guy in charge. Raj got eye contact with the man but there was a coldness to his stare that made it clear there was no point in saying anything to him. The two men sitting with him were cradling their Heckler & Koch sub-machine guns.

The four seats in the row in front of Raj were occupied by Erol, Sid, Jaffar and Abdullah. In front of them were three more men in fatigues, facing forward. So nine of them, all armed. Raj looked down at his ziptied wrists. He had nothing. They’d taken his watch so he had no idea of the time, and he had no shoes. All he had were the clothes Sid had given him at the camp. The leg shackles had been removed but even if his wrists weren’t bound he couldn’t take on nine armed men.

The trees below flashed by. The sky was a cloudless blue. Raj couldn’t see the sun out of either side of the helicopter, which suggested it was high overhead. That meant it must be somewhere between eleven o’clock and three o’clock. He looked down at the trees below, trying to work out where in the world they were. Europe, maybe. North America, perhaps. Not Asia, he was sure of that. Probably not South America. Most of the trees looked evergreen. Firs and cedars. But he wasn’t an expert.

Sal caught his eye. ‘What are they going to do with us?’ he whispered.

‘You heard what that guy …’

‘No talking!’ shouted one of the men behind Raj and he felt the metal prongs of a taser press against his neck. He flinched but there was no searing pain, just pressure. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said.

Raj’s mind raced. The man in the mansion had talked about hunting them and clearly it wasn’t an idle threat. At some point they were going to be dropped into the forest and he’d come after them. One man with a gun against seven unarmed men, hungry and thirsty and dressed for the desert. It wasn’t going to be a fair fight, but then fairness seemed to be the last thing on the man’s mind. If Raj was going to stand any chance of surviving this he was going to need a weapon, but he doubted that they planned to give him one.

The engine noise changed and the helicopter slowed. Raj peered through the window. Ahead of them was a clearing, a couple of hundred feet across. The helicopter approached the clearing and slowly descended. Raj assumed they were going to land, but once the helicopter was about ten feet above the grass, it went into a hover. The men in fatigues undid their harnesses. The one nearest the door let his carbine swing on its strap and he used both hands to slide the door back. The noise from the engine was deafening with the door open. The grey-haired man pointed at Erol with his steel hook. Then pointed at the open door. ‘Out!’ he shouted.

‘Fuck that!’ shouted Erol.

‘Out!’ shouted the grey-haired man, and when Erol shook his head one of the men took out his taser, leant forward and thrust it against Erol’s chest. Erol went into spasm as the man continued to press the taser against his chest. The man put the taser back in its holster, undid Erol’s harness, and then manhandled him towards the door. With the help of the man who had opened the door, he tossed Erol out.

The man with grey hair pointed at Sid. ‘Now you.’

Sid stared at the open doorway. ‘Can you go down further?’ he shouted.

The guy opposite reached for his taser. ‘Okay, Okay, I’ll jump,’ said Sid. He undid his harness, then held on to his seat as he edged closer to the open door. The grey-haired man drew back his right leg and pushed Sid out with his foot. Sid shot out of the helicopter, screaming and waving his arms frantically.

Jaffar was next, followed by Abdullah. Both jumped out without saying anything.

It was Mo’s turn next but he had frozen in his seat, his eyes wide and staring. When he ignored the grey-haired man, the man sitting behind him leant forward and tasered him in the neck. The man by the door went over and undid Mo’s harness and together with the grey-haired man carried him over to the doorway and threw him out.

Sal undid his own harness and shuffled over to the door. He gave the finger to the grey-haired man, told him to fuck off, and jumped out of the door. Now only Raj was left. The grey-haired man pointed his hook at him. ‘Come on, we don’t have all fucking day.’

Raj undid his harness and shuffled across the row of seats to the door.

‘Come on, come on, or do you want us to zap you?’ shouted the guy by the door.

‘It’s okay, I’ll jump,’ said Raj. He took a step towards the doorway and he looked out. They were now fifteen feet above the ground. Twenty maybe. He flashed the man by the doorway a worried look. ‘Can’t we go lower?’

The man opened his mouth to speak but before he could say anything, Raj grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him out of the doorway. Raj kept a tight grip on the man’s shoulders as they fell, twisting his body so that the man stayed underneath him and bracing himself for the impact. They hit the ground hard but the man under him took most of the fall. Raj rolled off him and found himself staring up at the helicopter. The grey-haired man was looking down at them, shouting something, but his words were lost in the roar of the turbine.

Raj sat up. The man he had pushed from the chopper seemed to be unconscious and his left leg was twisted at an unnatural angle, almost certainly broken. Raj grabbed at the man’s carbine, checked that the safety was off and in the single shot position, and then lay back and aimed it at the helicopter. He fired at the hatchway and the grey-haired man ducked away. There was very little recoil and Raj knew that the rounds wouldn’t do any real damage to the helicopter, but pilots never liked being shot at. He fired again, two single shots, and the helicopter banked to the left. Raj knew that he didn’t have long so he placed the gun on the ground and pulled off the man’s boots and socks. Then he took off the man’s belt. There was a transceiver in a holster on it. As Raj started to remove the man’s fatigues his eyes fluttered open. Raj punched him, hard, and the man went still.

Raj heard a noise behind him and he turned to see Sid. ‘What the fuck did you do?’ asked Sid.

‘We’re going to need gear if we’re going to get through this,’ said Raj.

Sid reached for the carbine but Raj grabbed it. ‘The Heckler’s mine,’ he said.

‘You’re just a medic.’

Raj pointed the barrel at Sid’s chest and tightened his finger on the trigger. ‘It’s mine,’ he said. ‘I got it, I’m keeping it.’

Sid raised his hands. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. He gestured at the Glock in the man’s holster. ‘Can I have the handgun?’

Raj nodded. ‘And strip off his vest. And shirt. We need everything we can get.’