Stephen Leather - The Hunting

‘With all these trees, I don’t reckon we’ll ever get a view of the land,’ said Sid. ‘I didn’t see any mountains on the flight here.’

‘That’s true,’ said Erol. ‘Just trees.’

‘So we’ll go down,’ said Raj. He had a closer look at the knife. It was good-quality steel and was well balanced. The top of the blade was serrated and it narrowed to a wickedly sharp point. The compass was set into the metal handle. Raj unscrewed it. As he suspected the handle was hollow. Inside was a small black plastic capsule. He put the knife in its scabbard and twisted the capsule open. It contained a small flint for starting a fire, three matches, a fishing hook and a length of nylon fishing line.

Erol peered over his shoulder. ‘What about food?’ he asked.

‘What about it?’ asked Raj.

‘I’m fucking hungry.’ He pointed at the contents of the knife handle. ‘There’s fishing stuff there, right?’

‘Mate, first of all I don’t see a lake, and second of all we don’t have time to start catching fish. Plus we’d have to cook it and a fire’ll give away our position.’

‘I’m starving.’

‘No you’re not. Not even close.’ Raj laughed. ‘You go by the rule of three,’ he said. ‘You can survive for three minutes without air, three days without water and three weeks without food. So we’ve a way to go before food becomes a priority.’ He looked at the watch on his wrist. ‘I reckon we’ve got four hours before it gets dark so I suggest we head east for two hours and then we’ll set up camp as best we can.’ He put the survival gear back in the handle of the knife and looked at them one by one. ‘Any questions?’

They all shook their heads.

‘Okay,’ said Raj, slotting the knife into its scabbard. ‘Let’s head down and see what we find.’

‘I’ve got a question,’ said Sid. ‘Where did you learn to shoot like that? You’re a doctor, right?’

‘I’m a doctor, but I had some military training.’

‘Where?’

‘We don’t have time for a Q&A right now,’ said Raj. ‘It’s getting late and we need to put some distance between us and this clearing before we build shelter for the night.’

Sid stared at him for several seconds and then sighed. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ he said.

Raj knelt down and scratched at the forest floor. He found a small pebble, then another. He kept scraping at the ground until he had nine. ‘What are they for?’ asked Sid.

‘I’ll show you, soon enough,’ said Raj.

CHAPTER 23

Van der Sandt heard the helicopter from the terrace at the rear of the house, where he was sitting with a crystal tumbler of his favourite malt whisky in one hand and a cigar in the other. Laura had always insisted that he smoke his cigars outside and he didn’t feel like changing that now. The chair he was sitting in had once graced the verandah of the main house of a Burmese rubber plantation owned by a business friend. He’d found it to be the most comfortable chair he’d ever sat in and had been delighted when Laura had presented it to him for his fiftieth birthday. It was known as a planter’s chair, made from teak with an inclined seat of cane matting and extensions that folded in and out to provide leg rests. Van der Sandt didn’t have the leg rests out – he had propped his feet up on a wooden coffee table carved from a single trunk with a frieze of elephants around the bottom. Another gift from Laura.

He stood up and walked over to the edge of the terrace, and watched as the helicopter turned gently over the grounds and landed in the centre of the concrete pad.

The door slid open and Colin Bell climbed out. He ducked his head as he jogged away from the helicopter, then straightened up and waved to Van der Sandt. Van der Sandt waved his cigar. Bell’s men began to exit the helicopter as he approached the terrace, his Heckler 416 on his back. Van der Sandt wasn’t a fan of the weapon. He knew that American special forces liked it, but then the requirements of a soldier were very different to those of a hunter. A flick of the selector switch on the side allowed the weapon to either fire on semi-automatic or fully automatic, which was great for a firefight but of little use when trying to bring down an elephant or a rhino. The HK416 fired the standard 5.56 x 44 mm Nato round, which was based pretty much on the .223 cartridge developed by Remington some sixty years ago. It was powerful enough to go through more than twelve inches of flesh, which meant it tended to go in and through a soldier, though if it hit bone it would often fragment and cause serious internal damage. The downside of a bullet going right through a target was that it could take more than a minute for the target to bleed out, during which time he was capable of continuing to fight. That meant that several shots were usually necessary to make sure of a kill; either that or a shot to the head. But it was horses for courses, and not everyone agreed with Van der Sandt’s weapon choices.

Bell reached the terrace and climbed the short flight of stone steps. ‘There was a bit of a problem, sir,’ said Bell. ‘One of our men fell out of the helicopter and is quite badly injured.’

‘Then get him to a hospital,’ said Van der Sandt. Half a dozen of Bell’s men were now off the helicopter and were standing in a group a short distance away. Two of them were smoking.

‘That’s the plan,’ said Bell. ‘But I wanted to drop off most of my guys and all of the weapons here before we fly to a civilian hospital.’

Van der Sandt nodded. ‘There’s a good hospital emergency room seventy kilometres to the west, and they have a helicopter pad.’ He sipped his whisky. ‘So what happened?’

‘We were dropping the guys out of the heli, and one of them grabbed Nick and fell on top of him. Nick’s just about conscious now but it looks as if his right lung has collapsed and there’s a good chance there’s more internal damage.’

Van der Sandt waved at the helicopter where another of Bell’s men was climbing out. ‘Your men are welcome to stay in the staff cottages until you’re ready to pull out.’

‘There’s something else, sir,’ said Bell.

‘They took his weapons,’ said Van der Sandt. He smiled at the look of confusion that flashed across Bell’s face. Van der Sandt had always had a talent for reading people. It was clear that the Colonel had something he needed to get off his chest, and that he feared that Van der Sandt wouldn’t take the news well. He guessed that the jihadists had taken the man’s weapons and he could see from Bell’s reaction that he had guessed right.

Bell nodded. ‘His Heckler and his Glock.’

‘How many rounds?’

‘One clip for the Glock, three for the Heckler. A few shots were fired at the helicopter.’

That news did catch Van der Sandt by surprise and he raised his eyebrows. ‘They shot at you?’

Bell nodded. ‘The mouthy one, the one that said he was a doctor. He’s the one who pushed Nick out and then landed on top of him. He grabbed Nick’s Heckler and fired at us. We regrouped, retook the clearing and recovered Nick, though by then they’d stripped him of pretty much everything.’

‘Which would be what, exactly?’

‘His guns, his knife, his radio, his watch, most of his clothes, his boots.’

‘Sounds as if this doctor knows what he’s doing.’

Bell smiled thinly. ‘He was behaving less like a doctor and more like an ISIS-trained jihadist. I’m sorry about this. I take the full blame for what happened.’

Van der Sandt shook his head. ‘Shit happens, Colonel,’ he said.

‘But in view of what you have planned …’ Bell shrugged.

Van der Sandt smiled. ‘It’ll just make it more interesting,’ he said. All the men except Nick were off the helicopter now. ‘You should be on your way, get Nick to the hospital.’