Authors: Matt Hilton
Taking Billie by an elbow, I urged her across the road. She pulled gently from my grasp before we were halfway across, and jogged forward, then crouched again at the treeline. The bags hanging off my shoulders bounced uncomfortably as I jogged after her. They were an encumbrance, but if I ditched them it would give a clue to our pursuers as to where we had re-entered the woods. I should have dumped them out in the wedge of woodland, thrown them off the scent for a few minutes.
Further down the slope another engine roared. The vehicle was out of sight but its headlights flared between the trees. At least two cars were now on our tail, and it was apparent that having found our car stuck in the mud our pursuers had pushed on up the hill. Coming to the fork they had enough vehicles to take both ways. I tapped Billie on the shoulder, flicking my hand in the direction of the deep woods. Billie stood, and jogged bent over into the trees. The forest floor was thick with needles. They covered Billie’s footfalls, but I could easily see the deep swathe as she kicked through them. Anybody with experience of tracking would immediately spot the trail if they stumbled across it, even in the dark. I backed into the woods trying to kick the needles back into place, but it was largely a fruitless task. I searched through the gloom for higher ground, rocks or even packed earth where we could tread without leaving a trail a blind man could follow.
A hundred yards in, Billie paused, waiting for me to catch up. She took a moment to adjust her pumps, emptying them of invading needles. Running in them must have been hell, and I again regretted not advising bringing sturdier shoes.
‘Everything OK?’ I asked.
‘Apart from being hunted through the woods by a bunch of hired killers, you mean?’ She smiled to show she wasn’t over-troubled by the notion. But I noted that the smile wouldn’t hold. She grew tight-lipped, less excitable than before. I knew that the initial flush of adrenalin would dissipate and with it she’d feel drained. Through the darkness I could barely make out a rocky feature in the terrain, but it was there. Billie followed my gaze, and without comment headed for it. It angled back towards the road and a crest in the hill, but it was better than working our way through the deep drifts of fir needles.
A car shot up the trail, going too fast for the conditions, but the driver probably didn’t care about the depreciation of the vehicle he was driving. As it moved its headlights danced up and down among the trees. By now our pursuers had probably guessed we’d gone into the woods and were more concerned with cutting off our progress than anything. Lower on the slope a third vehicle joined the search, coming at a slower pace. It stopped and I heard the clunk-clunk of opening and closing doors. I could neither see nor hear the helicopter. I didn’t believe it had left the area, only that it had continued its search along the other trail towards the cabin.
We were surrounded on three sides, with only the option left to us of heading east into the wild mountains. Had I been alone I would have taken it, but not when accompanied by Billie. My order of play would be to outdistance the noose our hunters were attempting to tighten, flank them and then take the fight back to them from an unexpected direction. But with Billie along, I couldn’t do that. It would mean abandoning her while I went off to play seek and destroy, and I didn’t trust that she’d stay safely hidden for long enough: not while they had greater numbers and an eye in the sky. Plus, I’d no clue about the terrain. For all I knew we could run into a bottlenecked canyon, or to the lip of a precipice, and then where could we go? At the moment our best allies were the darkness and stealth. Stay quiet, stay down, and with luck we’d foil our pursuers.
Arriving at the outcrop of earth, I found it scattered with large boulders. Fallen twigs and needles drifted at their bases but there was no other cover. We could set our backs to the larger boulders, hidden from one side, but it wouldn’t put off a determined hunter who’d make a point of checking behind the rocks. Still, they offered momentary respite. I gestured at a huge boulder and Billie headed for it. She leaned against its mossy side while she again emptied her shoes of needles. Without asking I delved in her bag, and pulled out two T-shirts she’d packed. While she eyed me quizzically I knotted each at their necks, then crouched down, and pulled one after the other over her feet. I then bunched and tied off the tops around her ankles. She looked comical in her impromptu footwear, but it stopped her shoes being invaded at every step. ‘Looks weird,’ I whispered, ‘but they’ll help.’
I didn’t expect that we could travel far before the cloth became worn and shredded, but then again I didn’t think we’d be going much further in the meantime.
‘We have to find somewhere to hide until they go past.’
‘Then what?’ Billie asked.
‘We backtrack, try to avoid them until they give up.’
‘What if they don’t give up?’
‘They will. If we manage to evade them they’ll have no idea where we are and assume we’ve made it back to a road. If we stay hidden long enough they’ll abandon the search here and start looking further afield. Hopefully by then we’ll have found somewhere where we can get a signal and phone for help. If I can get hold of Rink I can organise extraction.’
Nearby was a storm-toppled tree. The trunk had snapped midway, and the upper half of the tree had fallen, and become wedged among its neighbours. The branches hung low to the ground; a pile of broken limbs and twigs lay scattered beneath. ‘Over there,’ I urged Billie.
The forest floor undulated like a series of waves on a balmy sea, and there was a natural depression beneath the fallen tree. I pulled aside some of the branches and Billie settled down in the hollow. I unhitched the bags off my shoulder and laid them next to her, then quickly rearranged the branches so that they were piled around her, concealing her from those coming up the trail. I moved to one side, crouching alongside an upright tree trunk, and took out my SIG just as the third vehicle came into view. I could tell from the shape that it was a large GMC Suburban, and through the backwash of its lights could see three figures inside. One of them was scanning the area with night vision binoculars.
I warned Billie to stay low and silent, and promised that I would protect her.
Everything went to hell in seconds.
When the shooter broke cover and we exchanged rounds, there was a small part of me that expected him to be one of the Jaeger brothers. Because he wasn’t wearing spectacles, I hoped it was the other one referred to as Danny. But it was neither. It was some guy I’d never seen before. That’s the way of many soldiers’ deaths: they don’t recognise the stranger behind the bullet that ends their life. I wondered briefly if he thought the same about me, but probably not.
He fell.
I fell too.
When I came round briefly I didn’t give him a second’s notice, but took it that he was lying dead or wounded beyond where Billie crouched over me with my knife. I lay on my back, peering up at her as she spat and screamed like a bobcat, cutting wildly at the air.
‘I . . . I’m done,’ I told her. ‘Get away before the others come.’
Of course it was already too late for that. Figures stood around us, pitiless men with guns in their hands.
Billie shrieked savagely, launching herself at them as if thinking she could cut a way through them.
One of them grabbed Billie by an elbow and yanked the knife away. She struggled to break loose of his hold and was struck in the face for her trouble. As she slumped, I tried to struggle up, but I wasn’t going anywhere. My extremities were numb. I felt crushed by an immense weight. Only my eyelids had the ability to move, but even that strength was fading.
Someone crouched, roughly patting me down.
‘So who the hell is this guy?’ someone asked.
‘Doesn’t matter now,’ said another. ‘Finish him, Danny.’
Those words sealed my fate. Death was coming and I tried to face it with resolution, but I could barely keep my eyes open.
A gun barrel caught a beam of moonlight, and it was enough to focus on.
A second flash blinded me.
Then there was nothing.
You don’t hear the bullet that kills you.
18
I wasn’t dead.
Part of me wished that I were because the pain was incredible, and I longed for release from it. It came in pulsing waves that wouldn’t diminish, and the agony went on for an eternity. That, at least, was how it seemed. I can’t be sure if it was hours or simply minutes, but after waking that next time and trying to roll over on to my belly, the effort only helped intensify the pain to a point where I felt as if molten magma was boiling from my every orifice. Scarlet flashes across my vision grew white, then blinked off and I knew nothing. When I next returned to some sort of cognisance I found myself at the edge of the muddy track, a dozen yards from where I’d fallen. I’d no recollection of having crawled there, but must have, and the trail of blood spatters and smears on the forest floor told that it had been a winding route. I was upright. No, on second thoughts I was only partly upright. My back was supported by a mossy rock, my legs splayed in an ungainly manner on the muddy verge, my boot heels digging into the hardpack of the trail.
The mist of last night was back, and my world was one that faded within a hundred yards on all sides. It was silvery grey. But a roseate glow overhead hinted that the sun was up. I’d no idea how long ago the sun had risen, but it can’t have been long because it hadn’t begun to burn off the mist or dew that clung to the grass my palms were pressed into. My arms propped me, but there was little feeling in them beyond pain. Blinking, I watched a trickle of blood run out of my left cuff and across the back of my hand. It was only one trickle of many that had previously dried on my hand. Hopefully the bleeding in my upper chest had stopped, and the movements I’d made on waking had only broken the scabby coagulation. I tried to lift my hands to check the wound, but couldn’t without swaying and threatening to fall on my side. I sat there, taking in air, fighting the stabbing ache throughout my entire body.
I must have passed out again, because when next I eased open my eyelids it was nearing noon. The mist had disappeared, and the sun was a ball of fire hovering over the down slope to my left. It wasn’t hot, but it seared my eyes when I tilted my head up. The tickling of its rays wasn’t what roused me, but the distant sound of an engine. I wondered if somehow the Jaegers had realised that I’d beaten the odds and were on their way back to finish the job. In my current state they wouldn’t have to try very hard.
I craned round as far as the pain would allow. There was no sign of the man I’d shot, so either he’d survived or his friends had taken him with them when they left. I decided it would be the latter because I was positive at least one of my bullets had hit his head. Then again . . .
I felt for the gun wound in my own skull.
There was no bullet hole, no gaping wound through which I could feel the mushy pulp that was left of my brain, just a sore spot and a large knot of swollen tissue. So I hadn’t been shot in the head at the end? Thinking my wounds mortal, the gunman had used the butt of his weapon to rap me unconscious. I doubted it had been an act of mercy, but an oversight. I was alive, but there were no guarantees things would stay that way for long.
Peering down the trail, I expected to see a bottle-green van appear from the dappled shadows. It didn’t, but then neither did any other vehicle. Something was there though, somewhere down the hill beyond where the road forked. Police perhaps, though I doubted it. My hope was that it was Rink, that somehow – beating odds in the billions – he’d managed to follow my trail from Baker’s Hole to this muddy hole in the ground I currently sat in. Of course it couldn’t be Rink: that was just my delirium offering false hope. The engine noise sounded as if it was getting closer, but who knew? The acoustics of the mountains had already proven unreliable, so it could be the last of Billie’s hunting party moving away.
Billie!
Hell, I hadn’t given the woman much thought throughout my misery of the last few hours.
Where was she?
I looked around, and being unable to find her didn’t exactly make me feel much better. If I had discovered her lying close by she’d be dead, and that would be bad. But the alternative was that she’d been taken and God alone knew what she’d have to go through before she was finally put to death. Of that there was no doubt. The Jaegers, or those they worked for, would torture answers from her, and once they’d learned what they wanted then there would be only one outcome. They couldn’t release her; she’d be buried in an unmarked grave in some desolate place.
Until then I’d been complacent about my lot. I’d sat, feeling the pain and the leaking blood, and it hadn’t been enough to get me moving. But now that I had someone else to focus on I struggled to get to my feet.