Stephen Leather - The Hunting

Sid listened again. There was only the sound of the birds overhead. He turned his head from side to side, frowning as he concentrated. Eventually he heard a rustling from somewhere down the slope. The man was heading up, towards him. Sid’s heart was pounding and he took several slow, deep breaths to calm himself. The rustling stopped, then after a few seconds it started again. Sid took another deep breath, then jumped to his feet. His eyes scanned the slope in front of him. The man was off to his left, in a crouch, his Heckler moving from side to side. As Sid stood up, the man turned to look in his direction. His eyes widened in surprise and he began to swing his gun around but Sid was already pulling the trigger. The gun kicked in his hands and he had to fight to keep it from pulling to the right. The first rounds ripped through the ferns next to the man but then he managed to get the bullets on target and several shots smacked into his chest and face. Sid kept his finger on the trigger until the magazine was empty and the man was falling backwards in a shower of blood.

CHAPTER 58

Van der Sandt stood with his rifle against his chest, frowning. He had heard sporadic shooting from the south. It wasn’t possible to tell how many guns were firing but there must have been twenty-five or thirty shots. He took his transceiver from its holster and put it to his mouth. He pressed the transmit button. ‘Charlie Bravo are you receiving?’ There was no reply. ‘Charlie Bravo, this is Victor Sierra, talk to me.’

‘Charlie Bravo here,’ said Bell.

‘I’ve just heard shots. It sounds like your men made contact. Can you find out what’s happening?’

‘Give me a minute. Charlie Bravo out.’

Van der Sandt stared at the undergrowth ahead of him. The shots had sounded close. He checked his GPS and could see that Bell’s men were around a kilometre away.

The radio crackled and Bell was back on. ‘My men are out of contact,’ he said.

‘That’s not good.’

‘They could be operating under radio silence; they could be having problems with the equipment.’

‘Or they could be dead,’ said Van der Sandt.

‘I think that’s unlikely, sir.’

‘A lot that has happened today has been unlikely,’ said Van der Sandt sourly.

‘Do you want me to come and get you, Victor Sierra?’ asked Bell.

‘No, I’ll handle it,’ said Van der Sandt. He turned off the radio and put it back in its holster.

CHAPTER 59

Raj heard a voice in the blackness. ‘Raj! Raj!’ He was being shaken, hard. He groaned and opened his eyes. ‘Fuck me, you’re okay!’ said Sid.

Raj blinked several times. ‘What the hell happened?’ Sid and Erol were looking down at him.

‘You were shot, bruv. I thought you were fucking dead. Fuck me, that was close.’

Raj put his hands up to his right temple and winced as he touched a wound. ‘How bad is it?’ he asked.

‘It’s bleeding but I can’t see bone or anything. You were lucky, bruv.’

Sid pulled the knife from the scabbard on Raj’s thigh and used it to hack off a piece of his own shirt. He pressed it against the wound on Raj’s head.

‘Help me up,’ said Raj, holding out his left hand. Sid helped him to his feet. He looked over at the slope opposite and saw the body of the second man he’d shot. Then he spotted the one he’d shot first, some fifty metres away from where they were standing. He frowned. ‘I shot him. In the chest.’

‘They’re wearing vests,’ said Erol.

Raj forced a smile. ‘Well that’s not a mistake I’ll make again.’

Sid bent down and picked up the carbine. He handed it to Raj. ‘It’s empty,’ he said.

‘We can get ammo off them,’ said Raj, nodding at the bodies. ‘And the vests might be a good idea, too.’

They headed down the slope to the man that Sid had shot. He was short and stocky with a dagger tattoo on one arm. The man had a backpack and Raj pulled it off him. He went through it as Sid undid the man’s ballistic vest. There were two energy bars in the backpack and he tossed one to Sid and the other to Erol. Erol ripped the wrapper off his bar and devoured it. Sid did the same and then went back to removing the vest. There was a bottle of water in the pack. Raj took a long drink and then passed the bottle to Sid. Sid took a drink and then gave it to Erol.

There were three magazines for the man’s Heckler, a first aid kit, an emergency foil blanket, a torch, a set of night vision goggles and a battery pack. Raj opened the first aid kit and took out a large plaster. ‘Do me a favour mate and stick this on my wound, will you?’ he asked Erol.

Erol checked the wound. ‘It looks like it’s stopping bleeding already.’

Raj handed him a tube of antiseptic cream. ‘Slap some of this on it, too.’ Erol applied some of the cream to the wound and then ripped the back off the plaster and fixed it in place. There was a strip of paracetamol tablets in the first aid kit and Raj swallowed a couple and washed them down with water. He picked up the dead man’s Heckler and handed it to Sid. There were still ten rounds in the magazine.

Sid finished taking the vest off the corpse and began pulling it on over his shirt. ‘Sid, how about you put on all his gear: fatigues, boots, everything,’ said Raj.

Sid frowned. ‘Why?’

‘It might give us an edge when we get closer to the house.’

‘Because I’m white?’

‘Yeah, if they see a white guy in full combat gear they’re less likely to shoot.’

‘Okay,’ said Sid. He knelt down by the body and started to unfasten the boots.

Raj took one of the magazines from the backpack, ejected the old one from his Heckler and slapped in the replacement.

Raj and Erol went over to the second body. Raj removed the backpack from the corpse. It was different to the first one, and made of Kevlar. Heavier and bulletproof. Raj opened it. The contents were similar to the first backpack. He tossed Erol another energy bar and a bottle of water, then he pulled out the goggles and examined them. They seemed to be a dual-system pair, using infrared and thermal imaging. He spotted what looked like a transceiver, but when he pulled it out he realised it was a handheld GPS unit.

‘What is it?’ asked Erol, unfastening the man’s Kevlar vest and picking up his carbine.

‘GPS,’ said Raj. He showed the screen to him. ‘And see that blue dot? I’m pretty sure that’s the guy on our tail.’

‘So we can find him?’

Raj nodded. ‘He’s about a kilometre away.’ He paused. ‘We’ve got a decision to make. We can press on to the house, or we can double back and get him.’

‘If we head to the house, he’ll be coming up behind us,’ said Erol. He put on the dead man’s vest and fastened it. ‘That feels more dangerous to me.’

Raj nodded. ‘That’s what I think.’ He held up the GPS unit. ‘We can go straight to him. You okay with that?’

‘Sure.’

‘What about you, Sid?’ asked Raj.

‘Sure. Why not? All three of us are armed now, we’ve got the advantage.’

Raj took the dead man’s holstered Glock and strapped it to his thigh. ‘How’s the head?’ asked Erol.

‘Hurts like hell still, but I’ll live. Okay, let’s go.’ He put on the backpack.

Erol nodded at the GPS unit. ‘If we can see his position, he’ll be able to see us, right?’

Raj checked the screen, noted the position of the hunter, and switched off the unit. ‘Only when it’s on,’ he said. ‘We’ll check again in a few hundred metres. For the moment he’s still moving south, towards us.’

Sid stood up and jogged on the spot to test his boots, then bent down and picked up the remaining Kevlar vest. Raj helped him fasten it. ‘At least now we’ve got him outgunned.’ He put on the Kevlar helmet. ‘How do I look?’ he asked.