Stephen Leather - The Hunting

Once they had stripped all the branches, Raj took the knife from Jaffar and went off in search of vines. He found a redwood that was covered in them and he hacked off a dozen sections, each two or three feet long.

When he returned, he showed Sid and Jaffar how to use the vines to make the A frames. Together they placed ferns on top of the branches to make the roof, then they piled more ferns and leaves underneath. It was almost dark by the time they had finished, and their breath was feathering in the night air.

‘I think Mo and Erol should take the smaller one and the three of us take the bigger shelter,’ Raj said to Sid and Jaffar.

The two men nodded. ‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Sid. He and Jaffar went over to Mo, helped him to his feet and walked him slowly over to the shelter. He lay down and they covered him with ferns.

‘Erol,’ said Raj, gesturing for him to lie down next to Mo. Erol limped over and crawled into the shelter.

‘So how come you know all this survival stuff?’ Sid asked Raj.

‘I’m a big fan of survival shows,’ said Raj.

‘Fuck off,’ laughed Sid. ‘Okay, the shelter stuff you could have seen on the TV or YouTube, but the way you handled that gun when they dropped us off …’ He shook his head. ‘That takes training. And not the sort of training me and the guys have had.’

Raj didn’t say anything and waited for Sid to get to the point.

‘Army, right?’ said Sid quietly.

Raj nodded. ‘Sort of.’

‘I fucking knew it,’ said Sid. ‘So if you’re a soldier, what the fuck were you doing in a hospital in Syria?’

‘I had military training and medical training,’ said Raj. ‘Now I’m just a doctor.’

‘How can you be both? It takes years to be a doctor.’

‘They trained me as a doctor when I signed up. It’s a programme they’ve got. You join the Royal Marines and they train you as a commando, and you study medicine at the same time,’ Raj said. ‘It was the medical side I was most interested in. My family didn’t have much money and I didn’t want to get stuck with a huge student debt.’ He shrugged. ‘Plus I was bored and the Marines definitely isn’t boring.’

‘How the fuck does a Muslim end up in the fucking Army?’ said Jaffar. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘The Marines are part of the Navy, not the Army. And I’m not going to argue with you, not when we need to get some sleep.’ He knelt down and crawled into the larger shelter. The last thing he wanted just then was to explain that he wasn’t a Muslim. He wasn’t sure how they would react to the news and was in no hurry to find out.

‘This is fucked up,’ said Sid, and he crawled in next to Raj.

‘No argument here,’ said Raj.

Jaffar crawled into the shelter and lay down next to Sid. The three men covered themselves with leaves and ferns and then settled down to sleep. Raj had his hand on his carbine as he closed his eyes.

CHAPTER 25

Sal tripped over a tree root, staggered and fell to the ground. He cursed and picked himself up. ‘Fuck it,’ he said.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Abdullah, coming up behind him.

Sal wiped his hands on his trousers. ‘Yeah.’ He looked around. ‘We’re going to have to rest up. We’re going to break something if we keep walking in the dark.’ They were heading up a gentle slope, and had been for the best part of an hour. The darkness had crept up on them slowly but now the bits of sky that they could see through the tree canopy were dotted with stars. The temperature had dropped and they could see their breath in the night air.

‘What do you want to do?’ asked Abdullah.

‘Grab some ferns, we can sleep on them,’ said Sal. In the distance he spotted a giant redwood that had died and fallen over, leaving its roots exposed. He walked over to it. Much of the bark was rotting and covered in moss, and the roots had dried and were cracking. ‘We could sleep in there,’ he said. ‘It’ll block out the wind.’

They gathered armfuls of ferns and threw them under the roots. They made several trips until they had a few inches of makeshift bedding. ‘That’ll do,’ said Sal. He threaded his way through the roots and lay down.

Abdullah joined him. ‘Fuck, we didn’t pray,’ he said.

‘We’ll pray tomorrow,’ said Sal.

‘We should pray tonight,’ said Abdullah.

‘Bruv, I tell you what,’ said Sal, ‘you don’t tell my imam and I won’t tell yours. We’ll pray tomorrow.’

Abdullah nodded. ‘Okay.’ He shivered. ‘I’m fucking freezing.’

‘Lie next to me,’ said Sal.

Abdullah moved over so that his side was pressing against Sal’s. ‘What’s the plan, Sal?’ he asked quietly. ‘What the fuck are we going to do?’

‘We’re going to get out of here, don’t worry,’ said Sal.

‘We should have taken Raj’s gun.’

‘He wasn’t going to give it up,’ said Sal. ‘But he’s fucked himself. Mo and Erol will slow him down. The guy who wants to kill us is going to get them first. They can’t move quickly or quietly, but we can. Either we find help or we get back to the house. There are phones there, we can ring the cops.’

‘Do you think you can find the house?’

Sal sighed. ‘I don’t know bruv, I hope so.’

The two men lay in silence for a while. ‘We killed his family, didn’t we?’ said Abdullah. ‘In Cyprus.’

‘That’s what it looks like.’

‘So, family. That means wife and kids.’

‘I guess so.’

‘Did you kill kids?’

‘I shot kafirs. They were all kafirs. Man, woman, child, a kafir is a fucking kafir. We’re fighting for our religion and anyone who isn’t a Muslim is the enemy.’

‘I know, bruv. I know. But I didn’t shoot any kids that day.’

‘What, and you think he’ll take that into consideration?’ He snorted contemptuously. ‘He don’t give a fuck about who you did or didn’t kill. He just wants revenge and we fit the bill.’

Abdullah took a deep breath and held it for several seconds before exhaling. ‘This guy, I understand where he’s coming from, bruv. He wants revenge for what we did to his family. And maybe he’s right. Maybe what we did was wrong and we deserve this.’

‘You need to shut the fuck up or I’ll kill you myself.’

‘I’m just saying, what we did …’

‘I’m serious,’ interrupted Sal. ‘If you don’t stop talking I’ll pick up a rock and bash your fucking brains out.’

‘Bruv …’

‘I’m serious. We’re in deep shit and you whining about it isn’t going to get us out of it. You hear me?’

‘I hear you,’ whispered Abdullah. He turned his back on Sal and curled up into a foetal ball as tears ran down his cheeks.

CHAPTER 26

Van der Sandt whisked some eggs, then added a splash of milk. He put the mixture into a saucepan and put it on the gas burner. Two slices of toast popped out of the toaster and he buttered them as the eggs began to cook. He stirred the eggs until they were the consistency he liked, then spooned them onto the toast. He topped the eggs off with slices of Forman’s London Cure smoked salmon. He had the salmon flown in from London on a regular basis. H. Forman & Son were the oldest producer of smoked salmon in the world, and in Van der Sandt’s opinion theirs was the finest by far.

He poured himself a fresh mug of coffee and then carried it along with his breakfast out onto the terrace. Two of Colin Bell’s men were standing guard at either side of the terrace, cradling their Hecklers. They nodded and he nodded back. He hadn’t asked for the security and he didn’t think it was at all necessary, but he figured that at least it would give them something to do.

He sat down and tucked into his breakfast. As he ate, three more of Bell’s men came into view, heading from the direction of the staff cottages. They were wearing green shorts and T-shirts and they ran around the perimeter of the grounds before dropping to the grass and carrying out an energetic series of press-ups and sit-ups.