But then the elephant turned towards him.
What the hell!
Then when the elephant crashed through the undergrowth Cole panicked and broke into an all-out sprint.
He cut through the trees, tripping, regaining footing, moving this way, then that.
But no matter what he did, how he changed course, that damn elephant stayed on his ass and seemed to have targeted him.
Cole made moves through the trees he hadn’t made since he’d played football in high school.
There was a moment he thought he’d lost the bastard.
He eased to a jog and headed now for what looked like the open ground where the chopper was. He heard the chopper come to life, getting geared up for liftoff.
Cole broke into a final run for safety.
When he was just about to break out into the open boulder field he heard the damn elephant crashing through the jungle right behind him.
He looked back and couldn’t believe what he saw.
The elephant carried a man on its neck and a rider in the basket with a rifle and he thought it was a woman.
He thought it must be Hunter’s granddaughter…decked out in gold like the elephant she rode.
A nightmare. Impossible. This just couldn’t be.
The jungle thinned near the rock field, and Cole headed into the open, dodging through the rock field.
Besson, fifty yards ahead of Cole, reached the chopper with his security detail and they scrambled aboard as chopper rotors spun up to full takeoff speed.
***
Kiera yelled at the Hmong guiding Bo to slow down.
She’d chosen him because he spoke English better than the others and turned out to be an excellent steward of the elephant.
She had him keep Bo on the edge of the trees. Kiera didn’t want to be out in the open where the gunners on the chopper could direct fire at them.
Leading the war party of elephants from the caves around and up the mountains, Kiera had been in a kind of exhilarated delirium. All the while, she had been in the grips of the dream, of something strange and powerful, as if she’d been completely taken over and transformed.
Coming across those ridges and up the long swell of the mountain through the driving monsoon rain, she’d just grown stronger and stronger in the creation of this persona that drove her, that led this small group of men.
She couldn’t remember what she’d said to them. Only that it had inspired them, as it had her.
She didn’t know what would happen when she reached the field of battle. Maybe she would somehow snap out of it, collapse and run.
But the closer they’d come, the elephants moving slowly and steadily through the heavy morning mist, she knew the metamorphosis was not shallow. It was not foreign. It was fully within her to
be
now what she was.
She saw the American Cole stumble, regain his footing. She waited for an opportunity to get a clear shot at him.
I got you now.
***
Cole regained his footing and made a desperate, adrenaline driven, last-ditch run for the chopper, dodging the bigger rocks, flying over the smaller ones.
But his lungs and legs weren’t what they used to be and the adrenaline from fear could only take him so fast, so far.
He stopped and glanced back and didn’t see the elephant.
Where are you?
She’s tracking me.
He had to get to the chopper.
Besson provided cover fire for him and he knew this was his chance.
Most of the fighting seemed to be going on in the jungle across from him.
He ran for the chopper through the clusters of rock and boulders, confident Besson and his security team would suppress gunfire from Hunter if she tried to take him down.
In a part of his mind he congratulated Kiera Hunter, for he knew now that it was her on that gold-cloaked elephant.
Brilliant. The vision of a girl on a golden elephant had sent panic through the idiot poachers and drug runners. That was a feat worthy of the granddaughter of Neil Hunter.
Cole was fifty feet from the chopper when it lifted off.
“Hey! Hey!” he screamed.
He couldn’t believe what appeared to be happening.
Besson was leaving without him!
Besson was in the door with his rifle. Gunfire from the jungle seemed to have his attention and he ignored Cole as the chopper rose.
“Get back here, goddamn you!” Cole screamed, waving his arm.
The chopper showed no sign of coming back down to pick up Cole, and instead it kept rising and began to lean away from him.
“You bastard!” Cole yelled bringing his weapon up. “Come back here!”
As the chopper rose toward the tree line Cole fired a burst at it in anger. Than another and another.
The weapon had tracers every four rounds. He was making direct hits.
For a moment the chopper seemed to have escaped Cole’s wrath. It slanted to clear the trees, leaving Cole abandoned in the rock field.
But then it began swerving violently. It seemed to waver, suspended in space, before turning into a wobbly spin and heading back into the rock field. The twists and turns became a death spiral straight into the rocks.
It impacted on a massive boulder and exploded in flames, debris spreading in all directions.
Cole ducked behind the rocks closest to him to avoid getting hit.
Then, when the last of it fell, he rose and turned as Kiera Hunter, on foot now, moved out into the field toward him.
Like she was hunting him.
Alone.
This crazy woman.
Cole didn’t expect this. He looked for others with her but saw no one. Just Kiera Hunter, alone, weapon in hand, coming toward him across the field of rock.
She’s fucking nuts.
All that he’d done to keep this woman alive, and now he was going to be the one to have to kill her.
But then he thought he couldn’t kill her. He had to take her alive. She was his ticket. His only chance to negotiate with Porter Vale and find a way out was with Kiera Hunter. He could grab her, he could win this yet. Nothing had changed.
54
Kiera, now off Bo and standing at the edge of the jungle, had watched with astonishment when the chopper left Cole behind. He had been close enough to pick up.
Then he brought the chopper down and it lay in smoldering ruins. Even more shocking.
And Cole stood alone in the field of rock boulders.
She could wait for some of the other fighters, for Porter and Phommasanh or Tang, but she didn’t want to wait. Cole might reach the jungle and force them to hunt him down.
She wasn’t willing to do that and chance others getting killed. This was over and she had to finish it here and now.
Her mind set, she moved out into the open field of rock with a mind of lightness and clarity.
Kiera slowed down. She stayed with as much cover in the rocks as she could, but she had to move forward to cut off any chance of Cole making it to the jungle. He’d disappeared.
No challenge could equal the strange mix of feelings and absolute concentration. The feelings were connected to the reality that they had won, the enemy was defeated and fleeing. But all of it now receded. Nothing existed but the moment, the visual field, the feel of the weapon, the tracking and hunting for the target.
She saw him now as he moved across her field of fire for a brief few seconds to get behind a massive spread of rock and boulders and again vanished.
She held her fire as she shifted quickly to her left and moved faster, her eyes searching for a route he would try and take to make his exit from the field. She wanted an open lane of fire if and when he made his run.
She continued forward into the larger of the rock clusters, some rising to twice her height.
She stopped. She’d seen some movement but lost it and wasn’t sure. The silence of the field was deafening, the smell of burning fuel acrid in her nose.
Somewhere off in the jungle on the far side, more sporadic gunfire.
He was about twenty yards from her now if he was still where she’d fired at him from the edge of the trees.
She slid again to her left behind a line of boulders, closing down the distance.
Kiera stopped and waited, listening and wondering when he’d make his move. He couldn’t reach the jungle without crossing her line of vision. It was all small rock and brush to the edge of the trees. He had to break soon. The fights in the jungles were coming to an end. Men would be coming out into the open and Cole would have no chance.
She stared at the twisting run of rocks.
Well, you going to make a break or not?
She was so close now, and the field of rocks so thick, she decided the Glock was the better of the weapons.
She put down the M1-Carbine the Hmong have given her and took out the Glock. She then wondered what Cole was thinking. He’d waited a long time to make a break. Had she hit him? Was he lying wounded?
It was her first moment of doubt as to what was going on.
***
Cole had reversed his movement. He was crawling on all fours now, going back toward the wreckage of the chopper, then cut around her right flank.
He had no interest in killing her. He needed her as a hostage and that meant getting behind her.
He knew she had the advantage of a lane of high rock and brush and that she was trying to cut off his escape into the jungle.
He had only one way out of this. Only one way to yet get victory.
Her!
If he could nab her, he could win this yet. Or, at the very least, use her as a hostage and get out. Her death guaranteed his.
He moved as quiet now and careful as any hunting animal. When he reached tall boulders he rose to his feet and inched toward where he thought she was.
He couldn’t go too slowly because he feared at any moment, with the battles ebbing across the field, she’d have help coming.
Then when he finally moved out where he had a line of sight toward where he thought she might be, she was there, hunkered down and shifting very slowly to her left.
I got you, Cole said to himself. He was close enough if he wanted, he could kill her. But he just kept moving. He wanted to be close enough she couldn’t run, couldn’t dive for cover.
She’d removed the gold jacket or whatever she’d been wearing and was in black now. But it didn’t matter. He had her.
55
Kiera stopped, now unsure and sensing she’d gone too fast. She turned to her right, her vision partially blocked by boulders and shrubs in the field between her and the burning wreckage.
Something bothered her even as she believed Cole should have made his break to the trees by now. He’s down, she thought. He’s been hit.
But then a new feeling came over her. A new scenario she didn’t like at all: Maybe he wasn’t hit, and wasn’t making a break for the trees. Maybe he was closer that she’d expected and was working his way back to come after her!
Now, for the first time since leaving the caves, she felt vulnerable, thrust back to reality, and it wasn’t comfortable. She was exposed. All the fighting was going on across the field in the jungle and she was alone and no longer confident she’d make the right move.
I made a tactical mistake
. And that mistake became evident a moment later.
From behind and off in the opposite direction, came his voice.
“Kiera Hunter. Relax. I’m not going to kill you. You can’t help either of us dead. Just don’t make any kind of stupid move.”
She froze. Furious with herself. He’d outsmarted her in the simplest and—now clear to her—most obvious way. Running off into the jungle wouldn’t get him anywhere. He needed her.
He needed a hostage and she was the perfect hostage.
He was closing in behind her.
Knowing he didn’t want to kill her was her only asset at the moment.
“You’ve given me a real run for my money,” Cole said. “That whole thing with being the reincarnation of Trung Trac worked brilliantly. Genius. These mystical fools bought it hook, line and sinker. But now, in the end, you and I will come to terms. Just as she ultimately lost, so will you. Drop your weapon. Be smart, Kiera. You gave it your best shot and you almost won. But there’s nothing you can do. No heroics. No one here to help you. Now put that gun down nice and slow.”
Kiera turned toward him. He came toward her out of the rocks. He looked in his late sixties and she realized she recognized him from the funeral. He was the one who’d introduced himself as a former colleague of her grandfather’s. He’d had all kinds of glowing things to say and then asked about memories, diaries. He was thinking of doing a book. But she’d known he was the one that her grandfather always knew didn’t believe the amnesia story.
“The gun, please,” he said. Motioning down, indicating he wanted her to drop it. He looked very pleased with himself.
“Don’t even think something stupid,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “We need each other. We’re going to work something out. Porter Vale is the cause of this mess. Had you worked with me right from when I came to you at Arlington we would have done really well. And, yes, I was serious about doing the book. Your grandfather was one of the greatest operatives I’ve ever seen. You should have trusted me.”
She didn’t do anything, just looked at him. He was about twenty feet away, his weapon leveled at her midsection.
“I will kill you if I have to,” he said. “That’s the last thing I want to do. Obviously. So don’t be stupid. You’re a beautiful, talented woman. The next Lara Logan or Christiane Amapour. I have great respect for war reporters, especially females. It is as close to combat as I believe women should be. And in the Middle East it’s ten times more dangerous.”
Kiera said, “How do you plan on carrying this off?” Keep him engaged. Make him think he’s getting somewhere.
“The gun?”
“Just explain how this is going to work. I’ll give you the gun.”
“We’re gonna get that big elephant of yours. You’re going to tell Porter Vale and his Hmong to get out of here. I assume you found everything intact. Am I correct?”
“Yes. It was all there. The statue, the box of documents, the money. All of it.”
“That’s great. We’re going to really do something, you and me. I like reason. I was so frustrated with Vale’s buddy, the vet McKean. You can’t reason with people like that. Now he’s dead. I really hated to see that. All he had to do was be reasonable. I give you credit. You really have people protecting you. Even that pathetic scooter driver was willing, it seemed, to die for you. You’re truly amazing.”