Stephen Leather - The Hunting

He looked over at Sid who was now in position. Raj took two deep breaths, then held up one finger and nodded. Then two. He flashed three fingers and then pushed himself up onto one knee. He fired a three-shot burst at the junction of the branch, then got to his feet and fired a second burst. Leaves and pieces of fern flew into the air. He fired again and this time his shots hit low, thudding into the bark of the trunk.

Sid was also up and shooting, his bullets ripping across the fallen tree.

A round whizzed by Raj’s ear and he flinched, then he fired another three-shot burst and started running. A second shot cracked through the air but it didn’t feel as close as the first one. He fired again and more leaves flew up into the air. Sid ran alongside him, still firing.

Raj veered to the right to avoid a bush and fired two quick bursts towards the fallen tree. It was impossible to aim with any accuracy but keeping up a hail of fire meant that the hunter would be forced to keep his head down. Sid fired two three-shot bursts as Raj rounded the bush and fired again and all three rounds thudded into the trunk.

Raj went right, pulled the trigger, and then went left and fired again. Both bursts went high. He had been counting on automatic pilot and knew that he had three rounds left in the magazine so he fired another burst, ejected the magazine and shoved in a replacement. Sid was still running and firing, crashing through the ferns.

Raj veered right, fired two bursts and then went left, firing several times again. He was just twenty metres from the trunk and his eyes were stinging from the cordite. He blinked away tears as he tried to focus, firing another two bursts and then moving to the right. His ears were ringing from the shots and he couldn’t tell if he was coming under fire. He fired the final three shots in his magazine as he reached the trunk. Sid was also out of ammunition. Raj started to roar as he ejected the magazine and slapped in the last one but as he prepared to pull the trigger he realised that there was no one behind the tree trunk. He kept the carbine at his shoulder as he checked left and right, then he slowly walked around the trunk. There were marks in the soil where the hunter had been standing, and the smell of urine where he’d relieved himself at some point.

‘Has he gone?’ asked Sid.

‘Looks like it,’ said Raj. He gestured with his carbine at footprints showing that the hunter had run off south-west. Raj crouched down and put on the thermal goggles. When he was satisfied that the hunter wasn’t hiding nearby he took off the goggles and put them into the backpack.

‘There’s blood here,’ said Sid. He pointed at drops of blood on the ground and a red smear on the trunk.

‘At least one of our shots hit home,’ said Raj. ‘That’s something. What about you? Are you okay?’

‘A few rounds went by me, but I’m fine.’ He grinned. ‘That was a fucking rush, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s one way of describing it,’ said Raj. He looked at the blood trail. The hunter obviously wasn’t mortally injured because he’d been able to run away. If he was heading south-west, he was probably retreating to the house. Raj smiled thinly. Now their positions had been reversed – the hunter had become the hunted.

CHAPTER 62

Van der Sandt had his gun in his left hand and had his right pressed against his shoulder as he hurried between the trees. He was fairly sure the bullet had just grazed him but he was still bleeding copiously. The sudden attack had caught him by surprise. One of the rounds in the third or fourth burst had clipped his shoulder and at that point Van der Sandt had turned and ran.

The ground sloped down and Van der Sandt picked up the pace. He no longer had the GPS but he was familiar with the area and knew exactly where he was. He still had feeling in his left arm so there wasn’t too much damage. He felt a bit queasy but he didn’t think he’d lost enough blood for it to be life-threatening.

He reached a large redwood tree and stopped behind it. He listened intently but didn’t hear anyone following him. He waited a full two minutes until he was satisfied that he wasn’t being pursued, then put down his gun and took off his backpack. He opened the first aid kit and placed a field dressing and a tube of antiseptic on the ground, then took off his shirt. He flexed his hand and wiggled his fingers. Everything seemed to be okay. He put a large dollop of antiseptic cream over the wound and applied the dressing.

As he was pulling on his shirt, he heard movement behind him and he grabbed his gun and whirled around. A large female wolf was staring at him, its head down and tail up. As he stared at the animal he realised there were another two smaller wolves some distance away. Her cubs. And then he spotted another off to the right. The mother was almost certainly one of the animals he’d introduced to the area; her cubs must have been born in the wild. He lowered his gun. Wolves rarely attacked humans. She was probably only standing there because her cubs were close by. She was being a good mother, protecting her young. His smile tightened as a vision of what had happened in Cyprus came to him. He could imagine Laura and the children on the beach when the killers turned up on their jet skis. Maybe Laura had watched the killers arrive in the same way that the wolf was studying him, assuming that there was no threat to her or her offspring. Maybe she’d seen their guns and wondered what was happening, and then finally the penny had dropped and she’d shouted for the kids to get out of the way. She’d have tried to protect them, Van der Sandt was sure of that. She’d have stepped in front of the children, put herself between them and the killers, but to no avail. Tears pricked his eyes and he blinked them away. The wolf tensed as if she sensed his unease. He smiled at her. ‘Don’t worry, baby,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t kill mothers and their children, that’s not my style. But the cowardly bastards that do, well they’re fair game.’ He looked back the way he’d come. ‘There’s only two of them left, and they’ll be dead soon. You have my word on that.’ The wolf continued to stare at him with unblinking eyes.

Van der Sandt pulled on his backpack and headed towards the house.

CHAPTER 63

Raj and Sid pushed their way through a clump of bushes then headed up a gentle slope. Before they’d set off in pursuit of the hunter, they’d gone to check on Erol. They’d found his body slumped in the ferns, his face destroyed by a single bullet. Raj had taken Erol’s bulletproof vest and Sid the magazine from the Heckler, and they’d set off again.

They had cut slightly to the south to make sure they kept well away from the hunter, but were now heading straight towards the house again. It was almost fully dark, but Raj wanted to put off wearing the goggles until as late as possible. They reached the top of the slope and he stopped and listened. They heard only wildlife. Raj took the GPS unit from his pocket and switched it on. The house was now at the top of the screen. According to the scale, they were just two kilometres away from it. Raj put the unit away and they started to jog, cradling their Hecklers as they ran.

CHAPTER 64

Van der Sandt’s house was surrounded by a twelve foot-high wall. It was more to keep out wildlife than anything, but his security people had installed motion sensors and CCTV cameras so that every inch was covered and monitored in the gatehouse at the main entrance to the house. That entrance, to the south, was where Van der Sandt headed – he wasn’t sure if the side gates would be manned now that Bell had let most of his team go.

As he approached the main gate, he was blinded by an LCD torch. The light overload shocked him and he took a step back as if he’d been punched. ‘Identify yourself!’ shouted a voice.