Stephen Leather - The Hunting

‘Everything okay, Raj?’ asked Erol behind him. Erol was managing to keep up with Raj, though he was breathing heavily and limping.

‘Another ninety metres and then we can take a break,’ said Raj. He looked at his watch. It was taking them close to half an hour to cover a kilometre and they had just over thirty kilometres still to travel. At their current pace that equated to fifteen hours, which meant they would have to spend the night in the forest again.

At some point they would have to head west but Raj planned to leave that until they were closer to their destination. Hopefully their hunter would take the most direct route to the clearing so they would be some distance away from him. That was assuming that the hunter would first go to the clearing where the helicopter had dropped them off. Raj couldn’t see that the man would have any choice. There hadn’t been any helicopters or drones overhead in the past few hours, which meant the hunter had decided to track them the old fashioned way, by following their trail. That they were leaving a trail was beyond doubt. Five able-bodied men could perhaps move through the forest without leaving tracks, but Erol and his crutch would be unmissable, and they’d also been dragging Mo through the undergrowth. Once the man reached the clearing he wouldn’t have any trouble spotting their trail. The question was, how quickly could the hunter move through the forest? Three kilometres an hour? Four out in the open maybe, but with the undergrowth, bushes and trees three would be as fast as a man could go.

Mo yelped and Raj looked over his shoulder. His splint had raked across a stone and from the look on his face he was in agony. Raj turned and held up his hands. ‘Okay, we can rest here.’

Mo continued to moan as Sid and Jaffar lowered him to the ground. Raj went over and examined the splint. It had loosened and the wood was rubbing against the ankle. He pulled out his knife and used it to cut a piece of material from the sleeve of Mo’s shirt, which he wound around the wood. ‘I’m sorry about the pain,’ said Raj. ‘There’s nothing I can do, I’m afraid. You’re just going to have to grin and bear it.’

‘I’m okay,’ said Mo, but it was clear to Raj that he wasn’t.

Raj stood up. Sid came over. ‘He’s not getting better, is he?’

‘It’s tough going,’ said Raj.

‘Do you want us to try carrying him?’

Raj grimaced. ‘Better he tries to walk for as long as possible,’ he said. ‘I can build a stretcher but carrying him all the way will really slow us down.’

‘I can walk,’ said Mo.

Sid leant down and patted him on the shoulder. ‘I know you can, bruv, but you’re in a lot of pain.’

‘Give me a few minutes, Sid,’ said Raj. ‘Let me have a look around.’ He walked away to a clump of waist-high bushes. The forest was made up mainly of redwoods but there were other trees around, some of which he recognised and many of which he didn’t. He found a huckleberry bush and picked off a few berries as he walked by. He wasn’t looking for food – he wanted a specific tree, a willow. The leaves and bark of willows could be used for medicinal purposes. The faster-growing varieties, such as the black willow and white willow, were the ones most often used but in the situation he found himself in, beggars couldn’t be choosers. He grinned when he spotted a multi-trunked Scouler’s willow close to the edge of a clearing. The branches were dark brown and smooth and the newer twigs were velvety. It had the typical willow leaves, long and narrow, widest in the middle and tapering to a point on both ends. The leaves were bright green on the upper side and pale green underneath, and it was the combination of shades that gave the tree its silvery appearance.

Raj pulled his knife from its scabbard and used it to hack off several low-hanging young branches. He took them back to the group, who were now all sitting on the ground. Sid frowned at the branches that Raj was carrying. ‘What are they for? The stretcher?’

‘Pain relief,’ said Raj. He sat down next to Mo and began stripping the outer bark off one of the branches with the knife. When he had revealed the creamy-coloured inner bark, he stripped off small sections and handed them to Mo. ‘Chew on these,’ he said.

‘Seriously?’ said Mo. ‘How does chewing a tree help?’ He took the strips of bark and sniffed them suspiciously.

‘The inner bark contains a chemical called salicin which your body turns into salicylic acid,’ said Raj. ‘That’s an anti-inflammatory and works as a painkiller.’ He grinned. ‘It doesn’t taste great, unfortunately. Salicylic acid is a precursor to aspirin, which is pretty much what the willow bark tastes like.’ He nodded at Mo. ‘Go on, give it a go.’

‘Do I have to swallow it?’

Raj shook his head. ‘Chew the strips and swallow the juice, then spit out what’s left,’ he said. ‘You should feel the benefits in about half an hour.’

Mo put the creamy strips in his mouth and then grimaced. He started to chew, with a look of disgust on his face.

‘Give me some for Erol,’ said Sid.

Raj took another branch and cut off four two-inch strips of bark. Sid took them over to Erol who popped them into his mouth. He shuddered and his stomach heaved but he managed to stop himself from throwing up.

Raj cut the inner bark from the rest of the branches and gave them to Mo. ‘Keep them in your pocket. If the pain gets bad again you can chew on a few more of the strips.’ He got to his feet and put the knife back in its scabbard, brushing the bits of bark from his trousers.

‘We can rest here,’ Raj said to Jaffar. He pointed into the trees. ‘There are some huckleberry bushes out there and I think I saw some wild raspberries. Grab yourself some if you want.’

‘Hell, yeah,’ said Jaffar and he headed off. Sid went with him. Raj sat down and lay on his back, staring up through the tree canopy. The sky above was a clear blue with not a cloud to be seen. Birds were singing, and the occasional insect buzzed by. He was dog tired and within seconds he was asleep.

CHAPTER 41

Van der Sandt raised his rifle to his shoulder as he approached the clearing. There was always a chance that the remaining jihadists had stayed put. The only tracks he had seen belonged to the two men he’d killed, which meant the others had either gone in a different direction or not moved. He moved slowly as his eyes swept the clearing. It was a couple of hundred metres across at its widest point, an area that was too rocky for trees to ever get hold. There were a few dozen bushes that had managed to get a foothold between the rocks but they were too small to provide any cover. It took him only a few seconds to confirm that there was no one hiding in the clearing, but that didn’t mean they weren’t seeking cover among the trees around it. He skirted the south of the clearing, keeping his gun at the ready, placing his feet carefully to keep any noise to a minimum.

There was a fluttering of wings above his head and he caught a flash of blue out of the corner of his eye. It was a Steller’s jay, one of the most common birds in the forest, and he had been hearing its wek-wek-wek call for the past few minutes.

He had traversed all of the southern perimeter and half the eastern side when he came across the tracks. He smiled to himself when he saw the marks in the dirt. Five men. So they were sticking together as a team. One of the men was wearing boots with a distinctive tread. When the men had been in the house, none of them had boots on, so they must have been taken from Nick. Another of the men had clearly been injured; his feet were scuffing the ground and he was being supported as he walked. And another was taking small steps accompanied by a round hole, which could only have come from a branch being used as a walking stick. Two of the men weren’t wearing shoes or sandals but seemed to have bound their feet with cloth. So, five men, two of them injured, one badly, all heading east. He frowned. Why east? The ground was sloping to the east so it would be easier for the injured men. But it was taking them in the wrong direction. He cradled his gun in his arms as he studied the footprints and tried to put himself in the mind of his quarry. There was nothing to the east, just hundreds of kilometres of forest. And they wouldn’t know the geography of the area. Had they chosen the direction at random, assuming that they would eventually reach a road or even a town? If that was the case, they were wrong. He frowned, then tucked his weapon under his arm and took a drink from his water bottle.