by Nigel Price
“Don’t text and fucking drive,” he muttered, still wishing the car had gone into the water.
His legs were shaking a bit but as he set off again down the road, he slipped back into his easy rhythm. The peaceful empty mind had gone. He tried to regain it, breathing deeply and steadily, taking in the scenery, all of which had continued with its own blind existence oblivious to his near-death experience.
He reached the turn-off where the track led up into the forest and took it. The surface was compacted woodchip and was soothing underfoot after the metalled road. He jogged easily up the gentle incline, passing a car-park that had been cut out of the trees for anyone wanting to walk a dog or take a hike.
Sitting on the far side of it, was the chunky black 4x4.
Sixteen
“Gotcha.” Harry said it with glee. If Small Dick Man was enjoying a nice dog-walk, he was about to have Fido’s hottest turd shoved up his nose.
He went over to the car. There was no one inside. The doors were locked and he couldn’t see through tinted rear windows into the back. Nothing on the front seats told him anything about the owner, but a blanket on the passenger seat made him think dog.
He set off up the track, settling into an easy gait that would bring him level with his would-be nemesis in due course. Right now there was no sign of them. Which perhaps was a good thing, Harry conceded. It gave him time to calm down. No point getting charged with assault. A few robust words would be enough.
The track snaked on up into the forest. On either side, the space between the trees was open, low ground cover only appearing further in where gaps in the canopy allowed sunlight to hit the forest floor where it nurtured the growth of shrubs and bracken. A thick carpet of last autumn’s leaves was slowly being mulched into the earthen floor. As far as Harry could see, there were no signs of a walker having left the trail. His tracking skills came from an army jungle warfare course in north Borneo. He had been taught by the best – Gurkhas and Dayak tribesmen.
He crested a rise in the ground. The track spread out in front of him. It was completely empty. No sign of anyone. He was sure he would have passed the driver by now. But that was assuming he had taken this path. He might have gone back down to the lake with his dog and found a way down to the water for the animal to swim before Harry had arrived on the scene. Harry could have missed him.
He slackened his pace. It seemed there wasn’t going to be any confrontation today after all. He wasn’t sorry. His anger had cooled and the forest was too calm and peaceful to spoil with a row.
He slowed to a walk. Stopped to do some stretches and considered turning round. By the time he got back to the hotel, the smell of breakfast would be seeping from the dining room. It was tempting. He walked on a bit further. Another ten minutes would do it, then back to Haus Fischer for bacon, eggs and lots and lots of scalding hot coffee.
The trees on either side were thinning out. The track angled downwards. In front of him Harry saw a vast clearing. Stumps remained, but mostly rotten. The trees they had once been had long become furniture or boats or floorboards. He wondered why the clearing had been left like this. Why it had been created in the first place.
Then he saw. On the far side, high in the trees ringing the edge, was a hide. A wooden ladder climbed up to it. It was poorly camouflaged, but enough. He reckoned it was probably for hunters after the deer or wild boar that would wander into the clearing. Good open fields of fire for one-eighty degrees to the front. It looked empty as far as he could tell.
He panned round and saw another. Then another. The clearing was a killing ground. He felt a bolt of contempt for the lazy, overfed businessmen who would haul themselves up the ladder and then slump in a camp chair with flasks of coffee and a bag of doughnuts, waiting to blow the lights out of the beautiful animals that would never stand a chance.
He took it all in with disgust. What had happened to him? He had been a hunter himself, but in his case the hunted had been as dangerous as him and armed with weapons equal to his. Often they had outnumbered him too.
Surveying the skeleton frameworks of the distant hides ringing the killing ground, he felt himself back there now. In the mountains, tracking, hunting, fighting for his life. Without realising, his consciousness slipped back into the old mindset, reliving it.
Which saved his life.
On the periphery of his vision, the tiniest puff of smoke. Instinct. Harry flung himself sideways, flat on the ground. The crack of the round snapped through the space where his head had been. Then the report of the rifle firing, catching up a fraction later. Crack and thump. Training as old as modern firearms themselves. His instructor at The School of Infantry in Warminster would have been proud of him.
Whoever had fired the shot hadn’t dry-cleaned the barrel. The first shot of the day burned off the gun oil in a telltale puff of dark blue smoke. Big mistake. Unless you were shooting at deer who generally couldn’t fire back.
Unfortunately neither could Harry.
Too late, it all clicked in place. The car. Harry felt so bloody stupid. No accident while texting or scratching his arse. Chunky black 4x4 Man – the dick with a small dick – was out to kill him.
Well done Harry. For the second time since all of this had kicked off he felt a fool.
He slithered forward five yards. He did it in a short burst, flat on the ground as he had been taught. He was aiming at a depression in the beaten earth floor. It looked like an old tree stump had been torn out of it a long time ago. He slipped neatly into it as a second round struck the spot where he had first hit the deck.
“You’ll have to do better than that, fuck-head!” he shouted. Which was stupid. Shouting back was the puerile reaction of an amateur.
He had also just given away his location. Sure enough a third round pinged off a piece of rock on the lip of his crater. It was like being in a shell hole in no-man’s-land. Now the firer had him pinned down. He was safe in the bottom of the crater but the moment he moved out of it, the firer would have him. All the guy had to do was slide down his ladder while keeping an eye on Harry’s crater, and walk slowly towards it, rifle butt in the shoulder. Advance to contact. Standard drill. How many times had Harry done it on the ranges? Except then he hadn’t been the pop-up target.
He imagined the firer hitting the ground about now. He reckoned the man was a couple of hundred yards distant. Every second Harry delayed, the firer’s shot became easier, the closer he came.
But this firer wasn’t Taliban. He wasn’t armed with a Kalashnikov. Harry guessed he had a hunting rifle. Bolt action. In effect, single shot. It probably had a mag with a handful of rounds in it. Five perhaps. But after each shot he had to work the bolt to reload. That gave Harry his window. A slender one, but it was all there was.
He had to get out of this hole. He had to move his position. Get into thicker cover. Undergrowth would do. He had seen some on the way up the track. Once in there he would go to ground, make the firer come in after him. With the range cut to a yard or two, the value of the rifle lessened. Close-quarter battle. Harry would take him then and kill him.
He could feel all the old juices oiling his senses. All the old skills piled out of the cupboard, ready for use. Training was a wonderful thing. Like riding a bike.
He pulled off his sweatshirt. His running vest underneath stuck to his skin. He drew up his knees and prepared to bolt. Holding the sweatshirt by the end of one arm, he readied himself then flung it in the air.
Sure enough, the firer was not Taliban. He fell for the ruse and fired off a round. The moment he did so, Harry was up and sprinting in the opposite direction, zigzagging between the stumps, heading into deep cover. The air snapped with the crack of a bullet missing him by a foot. His trick had worked. Shooting a grazing deer was one thing. Hitting a fast-moving target quite another. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t up to the job.
Harry dived into cover and slithered further on his belly. No more shots followed him. The firer knew he’d been tricked. He woul
d be reloading. Would he pursue his quarry into cover? Harry was praying that he would.
He hunted around for a weapon. His bare hands would do if they had to, but something with a longer reach would be nice. He saw a long thick stick. Perfect. He crawled forward and retrieved it. Rotten right through. Useless. Hands it was then.
First he had to bring the guy in close. He might need to get him to fire off one more round and then rush him as he worked the bolt, ejecting the empty case, sliding a new round into the breech. That would be tricky. A feint at such close range could equally end with Harry’s chest sucking in air other than through nose and mouth.
He slithered round to face the direction his attacker would come. Right now he could imagine him angling forward, figuring out a plan. He would know as well as Harry that the moment he entered dense bush the odds tipped the other way. Harry was at his most dangerous, like a boar gone to ground. Even a rat catcher would know it.
Minutes passed. Harry lay still, listening. Silenced by the rifle shots, birdsong started to return as if a heavy rain shower had passed. The whole forest came to life again.
After a while Harry began to wonder what was going on. He knew the hunter might intend that. Might be waiting for Harry’s inquisitiveness to get the better of him. To pop his stupid head up and … blam! Straight between the eyes.
But the birdsong was close and untroubled.
He raised his head a foot off the ground. Tried to peer through the undergrowth. A large beetle scuttled away. Next he propelled his body forward through bracken. Every second he was braced for the blast of rifle fire. If that happened he would make a snap judgement. Probably launch himself into an attack. A short dash to victory or death. It sounded like a Boy’s Own tale: Harry Wins Through. Harry and the Dastardly Cad. Harry and the Shit Driver Who Tried To Blow His Fucking Brains Out.
Decision time. He changed his position. Then, braced for anything, he stood up. His head emerged above the undergrowth like a hull-down tank. Optics first, commander second, turret and body mass last.
The ground in front was empty. Not a soul. His eyes flicked to the distant hides and he prepared for a shot. The firer could have relocated into any one of them. But why would he? He would be mad to stick himself up a ladder with no escape route.
Escape. The penny dropped. The chunky black 4x4. The guy had fled.
Harry pounded down the track as fast as he could. The compacted woodchip and beaten earth of the path made the running easy, better than a running track. Back through the trees and away from the clearing. Up over the rise and down the long stretch towards the car park.
The birdsong diminished. His ears were full of his blood pounding. He would get this bastard or … what?
He arrived at the car park in time to see the rear end of the chunky black 4x4 skittering out of the far side, fat tyres skidding onto the metalled road. Smoke belched from the exhaust. Then it was gone. He sprinted the final yards to the road and looked after it as the engine surged, powering it out of sight, the number plate unreadable.
“Fuck,” said Harry. “Fuck and fuck and fuck.”
Seventeen
Strangely, Harry felt remarkably relaxed. He had almost been crushed under the wheels of a four-by-four then shot at. Yet he was alive.
He needed to call the police but right now he was standing in the forest, at the lakeside, without a mobile, in running kit, and a long way from the hotel. There was no one about.
With nothing else for it, he set off back to Haus Fischer. Not surprisingly the return run lacked the mindfulness of the outward journey. As he ran down the lakeside road, he kept checking over his shoulder in case the 4x4 reappeared to have another crack at him.
The footbridge came into view. Harry accelerated towards it then swung left and started across. He slackened his pace a bit. The car couldn’t follow him there. It was too narrow. His next thought was less reassuring. All the way across he was going to be an easy target.
Keeping a good pace, he scanned the shoreline behind him. He was easily within range of a hunting rifle sited at the water’s edge. The car could pull over and the driver would have a nice clean line of fire. He wouldn’t even have to leave the vehicle, just open the window and use the door frame as an arm rest. But it would be a traversing shot at a moving target. Easy enough for a skilled, trained marksman – Harry himself could have done it – but this guy? Unlikely.
Before Harry got too excited, he realised that if the car just pulled up at the far end of the bridge, in the convenient open area by the notice board, he would be shooting in a straight line right at his back. There wasn’t room for Harry to zigzag, so it would be like shooting a Harry-sized rat down a drainpipe. The driver would even be able to check out the local flora and fauna on the notice board. Win win.
He lengthened his stride to get off the bridge as quickly as possible. The end was rushing towards him. He was nearly there.
He reached it. As at the other end, a paved open area greeted visitors. Harry bundled onto it and flopped over, panting hard. He wiped a hand through his sweat-soaked hair, fingers rasping the cropped bristle. He had made it.
He moved behind a tree to look back. There was no point presenting a static target after all that effort. A clean shot could still get him. The range was now more like five or six hundred yards. Easy for Harry and maybe not impossible for this guy if the target stood nice and still.
He saw it. The chunky black 4x4. It was over to his right, far beyond where the car park joined the lakeside road. It was parked behind a thin screen of trees, just sitting there. Harry made a tiny circle like a gun-sight with the tips of his two forefingers and two thumbs. Pinching the tips of the four digits together, he closed his left eye and peered through it with his right. By shutting out all peripheral vision, the effect was to magnify the target. Yes it was him. It was too indistinct to identify anything but the car itself, but Harry was certain.
It was also a fair bet that the man could guess where Harry was lodging. There was nowhere else. Indeed he probably knew that already, unless the encounter on the road and then in the forest had been a freak stroke of luck for a homicidal maniac, out for his first random kill of the morning.
When Harry got back to the hotel, he grabbed his mobile from his room and dialled 110, the emergency number for the German police. The officer who answered took down the details. She noted Harry’s address and advised him to stay where he was. Someone would be along shortly.
Harry ended the call and tossed the phone onto the bed. He didn’t know how long he’d have to wait. Better get dressed. A second shower was wonderful after the fun and excitement of being shot at. He stood under the jet of water for an age, letting it blast him clean like old stonework undergoing renovation.
No sign of the police, so breakfast. He decided not to mention the incident to Herr Fischer. There was no point alarming the man. Something like this was hardly the best advert for staying at the restful lakeside Haus Fischer.
He took his seat in the dining room, a wide plate of bacon and eggs in front of him, a pot of coffee positioned at two o’clock of the glorious, aromatic vision. The first cup barely had time to warm the china. He poured a second. From time to time, Frau Fischer passed by to ask whether he had everything he needed. As well as a small jug of hot milk, he considered asking for a Glock 17 and a couple of spare mags. Doubtless she would have processed it with the same studious diligence as the request for milk, and possibly even produced one. On a tray on a lace doily.
And would you like a Heckler & Koch MP5 with that, Herr Brown?
Instead he ordered rolls and honey.
He heard a car draw up outside. The engine was switched off. Moments later Polizeihauptkommissar Ernst Hafner popped his head into the dining room. He saw Harry and came to join him at the table.
“May I?”
Harry regarded him. “Ernst,” he said. “Good morning. This is a pleasant surprise. Yes, please do.”
The Chief Inspector sat down. He sig
nalled to Frau Fischer for coffee, then looked at his host across the table. “I came as soon as I heard the report.”
Harry smiled. He took a mouthful of roll and honey, speaking through it. “Right. Stroke of luck you were on call.”
“Indeed.”
A pot of coffee arrived. Other breakfast guests too at the table next door. “Shall we take our coffee outside?” Hafner said. “Probably best if we talk in private.”
“Of course. No point alarming the public.”
Harry pushed his plate aside and with their coffees, the two men went out through Reception and onto the terrace. They found a table and sat down. All the other tables were unoccupied.
“So you answer emergency calls as well, do you?” Harry said.
“This one, yes. From a friend. I wanted to deal with it personally,” Hafner replied.
“I’m very grateful. Don’t 110 calls go to a central switchboard?”
Hafner looked puzzled. “Here they go to the police station, Harry. Tell me what happened. We need to move fast on this.”
Harry decided to go with it. He gave Hafner the story. Hafner took notes.
“I can’t believe it,” Hafner said when Harry had finished. “I mean, the hunting season doesn’t start for another two months.”
Harry gauged the remark and then smiled. Good old Ernst. “Yes, you can bag him for infringing the terms of his licence. Go get him!”
Hafner was amused. “Seriously Harry, I can only assume it was one of the gamekeepers and it was a mistake.”
“Five mistakes in a row? And the attack with the car before that?”
“What are you saying? That someone tried to kill you this morning when you were out for a run?”
Harry stared at him. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. And I’ve given you a description of the car.”
“It is a pity you didn’t get the registration plate.” Hafner looked up from his notes. “You didn’t, did you?”