Stephen Leather - The Hunting

‘So?’

‘So maybe we can use a rock and your buckle to make a spark.’

‘Come on, bruv.’ Abdullah shook his head contemptuously.

‘Just give it a try,’ said Sal. ‘What have we got to lose?’

Abdullah sighed and took off his belt.

CHAPTER 33

Van der Sandt slotted the transceiver back into the pocket of his vest. ‘Morons,’ he muttered to himself. The range of the transceiver was only about ten kilometres in the heavily wooded terrain, and they were definitely somewhere ahead of him. There were two of them, which meant that the group had split. That at least would make it more of a hunt.

Abdullah and Sal were the Somalians. It was one of the few parts of Africa that Van der Sandt hadn’t visited. There was nothing of value to hunt in Somalia and most of the country was a war zone. He took a drink from his water bottle and started walking, heading north-west.

It had been more than a year since he had been in the woods and that had been closer to his house. Laura had been seeing friends in New York and the children were at boarding school near Boston, so he had gone out to replenish the kitchen’s meat stocks. He had bagged a blacktail, a buck that judging from its antlers must have been five or six years old. Blacktails were the ghosts of the forest. Their defence strategy was simple enough – at the first sign of danger they would simply vanish into the undergrowth. They usually only appeared in the last few minutes of light to graze and would return to their lairs as soon as the sun came up. They did have their weaknesses though. They tended to graze within an area of just a few square kilometres and during the winter months that area was very specific. They needed enough old-growth tree canopy to trap the snow but with enough spaces between the leaves and branches to allow sunlight through to give life to the grasses, lichens and shrubs that they ate. Once they found an area that satisfied their needs, they tended to stay put. Their colouring was also a weakness. In the summer they were reddish brown and in the winter they changed to greyish brown, but either colour made them stand out against the green background of ferns and mosses.

Blacktail deer could live up to ten years in the wild, but there were so many predators – including black bears, wolves and coyotes – that they rarely made it beyond six. The one that Van der Sandt had killed probably only had a year or so left. He had approached it from downwind, slowly but surely, taking the best part of an hour to cover a hundred metres. Then he had killed it with a single shot from his VO Vapen rifle. It was one of his favourite rifles, handmade by master Swedish gunsmith Viggo Olsson and his son Ulf. Van der Sandt had made several visits to their small factory in the grounds of Trolle-Ljungby Castle in the south of Sweden. The stock was made of walnut root that had been air dried for six years and the engraving alone had taken three months. It had taken eighteen months from start to finish and had cost him close to three hundred thousand dollars. Even that was cheap compared with what Olsson’s other customers paid. The likes of the Crown Prince of Dubai, the Sultan of Oman and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for hunting rifles inlaid with gold and precious jewels. They were for show, of course. Van der Sandt had never met an Arab who could shoot to save his life.

The VO Vapen rifle was in his gunroom. It was far too good a weapon to kill the seven men in the forest ahead of him. Besides, he wanted to get up close and personal when he killed them. He wanted to see the fear in their eyes and he wanted to see the bullets rip through their flesh and the blood spurt from their wounds and he wanted to be the last thing they saw as their miserable lives ebbed away.

CHAPTER 34

The jihadists walked over to Raj, who was sitting with his back to a redwood, cleaning his gun. ‘Okay, we’re good to go,’ Sid said. Jaffar helped Mo over. Every step was clearly painful, but Mo gritted his teeth defiantly. Erol was able to walk on his own, but he was still using his makeshift crutch. ‘What’s the plan, Raj?’

‘We need to get to the house,’ said Raj, getting to his feet. ‘If nothing else there’ll be a phone there and we can call for help. But if there’s no phone there’ll be transport. We covered three kilometres last night, but we went east – not south, towards the house. It’s six now and last night the sun set just after nine. If we can average three kilometres an hour we should make it to the house before dark.’

Mo grimaced. ‘I’m not sure I can walk for fifteen hours.’

‘We can take breaks. I think it’s doable.’

Mo forced a smile. ‘I wish I had your optimism.’

‘Do the best you can. We’ll take it in turns to help you. You’re going to have to walk, Mo. I don’t see that we can carry you.’

‘I’ll walk,’ said Mo.

Raj looked at Erol. ‘What about you?’

‘I’ll be okay,’ he said. ‘You did a good job of binding it.’

‘Good man,’ said Raj. He took his knife from its scabbard and used the compass to check which way was east. ‘Right,’ he said, sliding the knife back into place. ‘I think we should keep going east for another three kilometres, then we’ll head south. I’ll take point, Erol you stick behind me and Sid can help Mo. We’ll rotate every kilometre – me, Jaffar and Sid. Okay?’

The four men nodded. Raj forced a smile. ‘We’ll get through this,’ he said. ‘As we move, try to keep any noise down to a minimum. The route we’re taking should keep us out of trouble, but better safe than sorry.’ He turned east and began walking, counting the paces in his head.

CHAPTER 35

Van der Sandt looked down at the tracks. There were only two sets of prints. Both men were wearing sandals. He took a drink from his water bottle, then took a small GPS unit from his backpack and switched it on. He was about six kilometres from the clearing where Bell had dropped the men. He switched the unit off and took another drink. Sal, the one he had spoken to on the radio, had said that there were just two of them, and the tracks did seem to confirm that. He decided to make sure, and started walking around in a widening spiral, his eyes on the ground. After five minutes of searching, he had still only seen the two sets of prints. So the group had split up then. Two had gone one way and the other five had taken another route. He put his water bottle away. He’d take care of the two close by, then head to the clearing to pick up the tracks of the rest. He could feel his pulse quicken in anticipation of the killing that was to come.

CHAPTER 36

Raj transferred the stone to his pocket and raised his hand to signal that they should all stop. They had covered three kilometres and it was now 7.15 a.m. After one kilometre, Jaffar had taken over from Sid to assist Mo. Sid and Erol were now bringing up the rear. They had stopped in a small clearing.

‘I need to rest,’ gasped Mo. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s okay, mate,’ said Raj. ‘Sit down for a bit.’ Jaffar helped lower Mo to the ground and then walked over to join Raj.

‘He’s struggling,’ said Jaffar, lowering his voice.

‘I know,’ said Raj.

‘Why don’t we leave him here, cover him up so he can’t be seen, and go for help? We can move twice as fast. We’ve got forty kilometres or more to cover, we could do it in what, ten hours? We could be back here with help first thing tomorrow morning.’

Sid walked over. ‘What’s up?’ he asked. Erol sat down next to Mo.

Raj gestured at Jaffar. ‘Your pal here still wants to leave Mo behind.’

‘I’m just saying, he can lie low here, maybe with Erol, and we can make double time to get help,’ said Jaffar. ‘That’s got to be less stressful for the two of them, right?’