The Hunter

by WOOD TOM

  Kennard hated the French, hated everything about the country. The people, the language, the so-called culture. Even the food was bullshit. Sure, if he paid a month’s salary he could get something half-edible, but greasy omelettes, tough bread, rank cheese, and meat that smelled rotten was not his idea of fine eating. He’d take a quarter pounder with good old freedom fries any day of the week.

  He continued to walk along the sidewalk, going past where his car was parked. A group of drunk executives were heading his way, failing miserably to walk in a straight line. No doubt they had been celebrating a deal of some sort. They looked the type.

  As they drew closer one of them shouted something to him in French. Kennard recognized the aggression. Maybe the Frenchman had noticed the antipathy in Kennard’s face, or maybe he was just looking to have some fun.

  The man was just taller than Kennard and twenty pounds heavier, most of it around the gut, but beneath his suit Kennard wasn’t the soft guy he looked. He would have liked to have demonstrated that he was no easy target, but instead he averted his gaze and moved out of the group’s path. He couldn’t afford to get into any trouble. He heard laughter and jeers from behind him as they walked away. Lucky for them that they did.

  Kennard crossed the street. His face remained blank, but he could feel the pressure of blood in his temples. Alvarez had given him a host of urgent tasks to complete, tasks that could not wait, but Kennard wasn’t returning to the embassy. He had something more pressing to do first.

  After another minute walking, he turned into a side street. He found the pay phone again and had to wait a difficult thirty seconds before the young woman inside had finished her call. Kennard entered the booth and took out his cell phone to check the latest number. He pushed the buttons quickly but carefully. He would wipe down the surfaces he had touched when he was finished.

  The back of Kennard’s collar was damp. He wasn’t supposed to make phone calls that were not prearranged, but after Monday’s disaster news like this couldn’t wait. The phone didn’t start ringing immediately, and, when it did, it seemed to take forever before someone answered. He coded in.

  There was a long silence before anyone connected. When the voice on the other end of the line spoke, it practically dripped disdain.

  ‘This had better be important.’

  Kennard took a deep breath before continuing. ‘It’s been confirmed. He did go to Svyatoslav’s apartment in Munich, but he’s long gone. We’re pretty sure he flew to the Czech Republic. After that, we don’t know yet.’

  There was a long pause. ‘Okay,’ the voice said. ‘This is what we want you to do …’

  CHAPTER 19

  North of Saint Maurice, Switzerland

  Wednesday

  08:33 CET

  Victor’s breathing was laboured. The thin mountain air expelled from his lungs in clouds of white vapour. The first two hundred feet had been difficult, but the last fifty had been murder. He grunted and pulled the ice hammer from where it was embedded in the frozen waterfall and hacked it into the ice above his head. Ice and snow rained down over him and fell to the base of the waterfall far below.

  He watched the glittering fragments fall for a moment and took in several large gulps of air. His face was red from the cold and exertion. A pair of climber’s goggles shielded his eyes from the unfiltered sun above. The ice of the waterfall was bright blue and white but much darker, almost black in the depths of the cracks and fissures. A distorted reflection watched him climb.

  Up here it was easy to forget about the events of the last few days. He had no choice but to focus solely on what he was doing. Nothing could invade his mind except the task at hand, because if it did those thoughts would be his last. He’d rested his body as much as he could, but now he needed to clear his head. He had no friends he could talk to, no one to share his problems with, and this was the next best thing.

  Alone in the mountains he felt as though he was the only person in the world. Just him and the brutal honesty of nature. He was as far from civilization as he could hope to get, and yet up here the world seemed far more civilized.

  He pulled with his arms and pushed with his legs, wrenching the crampons of his boots free from the ice before jamming them in farther up. The stress of the climb shook his body, but the inherent danger calmed his mind. He was confident in his abilities, but he had to maintain one hundred per cent concentration. He used no screws, carabiners, or rope – so if he didn’t concentrate, he fell. If he fell, he died. It was that simple.

  The only sound was that of the wind, of metal hitting ice, and of his own heavy breathing. The sense of utter freedom was prevalent. He was relaxed and at peace.

  After another ten feet he paused. Leaning backwards, he took one hand from an ice hammer and reached into a pocket to pull out a hard candy, pleased to find it was a green one. He threw it into his mouth. They kept his mouth moist so he didn’t feel thirsty, but more than that they tasted good. Victor sucked on the candy and tilted his head to one side to enjoy the view. All he could see were mountains and trees topped with snow.

  He could’ve stayed hanging there for hours, but he felt water strike his face. He looked up, squinting against the glare. Droplets of water glistened in the sun. The ice was melting. Not surprising with a cloudless sky. He climbed on, not hurrying, knowing he would reach the summit long before there was any danger.

  The ice above groaned.

  Victor stopped climbing and looked upward. Twenty feet above his head a sheet of overhanging ice broke away. Victor flattened himself against the waterfall, and chunks of ice and snow fell past him. He took back his previous judgment and quickened his pace. His muscles, craving more oxygen, filled with lactic acid, and his lungs ached from sucking in the frigid air. He climbed fast, driving the ice hammers and crampons home, pushing and pulling and repeating until he reached the summit and collapsed spreadeagled onto the snow.

  He arrived back at his chalet several hours later and made himself lunch, his own recipe for bruschetta con funghi to start and two large sausage sandwiches for his main course. Just what he needed. He followed it with a protein shake and swallowed a handful of supplement pills. After bathing he sat naked on his bed and drew the handgun from the holster attached to the underside. He withdrew the magazine and popped the rounds, reloading them in the order they’d come out. He put the gun back.

  It was late morning, the sun streaming between the Venetian blinds on the east wall. He walked over to the window on the west wall, pulled the string sharply to raise the blinds. The valley stretched off into the distance, the village of Saint Maurice visible at the centre, its triangular roofs topped with white. Pine trees covered the mountainsides. Snow-capped peaks lined the horizon.

  There had been a time when Victor had almost believed he could separate his life from what he did for a living. Such a time had long passed. Now he realized he was merely just alive, that he didn’t really live. Normal people didn’t hide themselves away in remote mountain villages, protected by reinforced doors and three inches of armoured glass. It was hard to remember when it had been any different.

  He lived alone for his own protection. Here nobody knew him and he knew no one in return. He found it easier, too, to live away from cities, from people. It was hard to miss something he didn’t see every day. Living alone had never been difficult for him, but total solitude was something Victor had been forced to learn to deal with. But like any skill he needed to survive, he had mastered it eventually. Staying busy was the most important element. When he wasn’t working he spent hours each day keeping himself in top physical condition, hours more training and honing his skills. Weeks may go by between contracts, but his was a full-time vocation. The rest of the time he climbed, skied, read, played the piano, and took frequent trips to explore the globe.

  There were some things that such distractions could not replace. Victor’s idea of a relationship was a call girl he liked enough to use more than once and who was good enough an actress t
o pretend she didn’t find his touch repellent.

  Looking out over the picturesque valley it was almost possible to pretend what happened in Paris wasn’t real. Here he was just another wealthy businessman enjoying an isolated mountain retreat. Maybe he wouldn’t leave. He had enough money stored away to live comfortably for years if he was careful. Maybe when it had run out he could take a regular job, teach languages or even climbing. If he wanted to teach though, he knew he was going to have to work on his people skills. Maybe in time he could actually start to live like a regular person. Assuming he could remember how to.

  The first step would be to smash the flash drive into a thousand pieces, throw them into a ravine, and forget he’d ever taken the Ozols contract. He had escaped whatever enemies wanted him dead, and no one knew he was here. He could stay hidden, take no more contracts. They would never find him here. He nodded.

  Yes, it was time to get out.

  He started to turn away from the window when his eyes were drawn to a point high in the forested hills that lay to the west of the chalet. He saw a glint, a tiny flicker of light. The reflection of the sun on metal.

  Or glass.

  He understood what it meant too late, seeing the small, bright flash that appeared in the same place an instant later. He started to move to his left when a hole exploded through the window before him.

  The bullet hit him in the middle of his chest and everything went quiet. He saw the cobweb of cracks in the reinforced glass, saw the tiny hole in the centre of the web. No sound reached his ears except the dull echo of his heartbeat.

  Victor’s vision faltered. Lines blurred into one another.

  The window seemed to move sharply away from him, and the ceiling came hurtling down. He didn’t understand but then the back of his head smacked against the polished floorboards. He tried to breathe, gasped, struggled to suck air into his lungs.

  He raised a hand, inched his fingers along his bare chest, felt sticky blood, pain as he touched the hot bullet in his flesh. He’d expected to find a gaping hole with blood pumping freely, but the end of the bullet was protruding from his skin. It hadn’t penetrated the sternum.

  The chalet’s polycarbonate and glass-laminate windowpanes would stop even high-velocity rifle rounds … not quite, Victor thought.

  The glass hadn’t stopped the bullet but had slowed it considerably, so that, when it had struck, its kinetic energy was almost spent. Ignoring the burn, Victor pulled the bullet from his skin and tossed it aside. It exhausted him to do so. He tried to stand but couldn’t remember how to tell his limbs to move. The ceiling beams melted into one another above him.

  He realized what was happening but could do nothing to stop it. The bullet’s impact had sent ripples of hydrostatic shock through his body, interrupting the normal rhythm of his heartbeat. His body didn’t understand what had happened and so was doing the only thing it knew how to do in the face of intense shock or trauma.

  It was temporarily shutting down.

  The shooter would have watched the bullet hit and Victor fall but wouldn’t be able to see him as he writhed on the floor, incapacitated but not dying. But all he would have to note was the thickness of the cracked window to realize that Victor was still alive. And he would come to finish the job.

  Victor’s eyelids closed.

  CHAPTER 20

  14:18 CET

  The sniper peered through his Schmidt and Bender 3-12X scope at the thickness of the windowpane. It was made up of alternate layers of glass and plastic. He recognized it straight away. Armoured. Shit.

  McClury silently berated himself for not noticing before. He should have spent more time studying the house’s defences, but he consoled himself with the fact this had been a rushed job from the very start. Beginning with a phone call twenty-four hours ago, he’d been told to head straight for Geneva. In the back of a car, he’d been given the name of a town, a location, a photograph.

  It stank to high hell of a cleanup.

  McClury folded back the rifle’s bipod and stood, disturbing the light covering of snow that lay across his body. His weapon was an Accuracy International L96, a bolt-action rifle made by the Brits. In McClury’s opinion one of the best all-round rifles in the world for this type of work. Precise and powerful but not too big or heavy. He’d used enough of them in the past to qualify his opinion.

  He wore white Gore-Tex pants, a jacket with a hood, and a white ski mask. The rifle’s furniture had been wrapped in strips of white electrical tape. McClury unbuttoned and unzipped the jacket and threw it off. It was camouflage and protection against the cold but impeded movement. Underneath he wore a black thermal shirt. He felt the chill immediately, but for now he could live with it. He left the white ski mask in place.

  His hide was a little under five hundred yards away, overlooking the target’s chalet. McClury had been set up just under the crest of a snowy outcrop dotted with trees to hide his silhouette and to make him virtually invisible.

  He’d been holed up outside for twelve hours straight, watching the house the whole time, waiting for the perfect shot, eating and drinking while lying down, urinating into a bottle, defecating into a plastic bag. On his own he couldn’t watch both exits at the same time and had set up with a good view of the front of the chalet, expecting the target would at some point leave that way. The target would have been dead a second after stepping out the front door. No such luck.

  Soon after first light the target had left through the back way and McClury had changed positions to shoot him when he returned. Hours later he noticed the target was back in the chalet and realized he had entered through the front. Out one way, in another. Damn, he was a slippery customer.

  So there had been no more fucking around waiting for him to leave. McClury had shot the naked bastard while he stood looking out of a window – only the window’s thick wooden crossbeam had denied McClury the head shot and forced him to go for the heart instead, only to have the armoured glass deny him the kill. It was enough to drive a guy crazy.

  McClury slung the rifle over one shoulder, hooked a satchel over the other, clipped a small bag around his waist, and grabbed his 12-gauge Mossberg pump-action shotgun by its pistol grip. He was going to have to get up close and personal to finish this one. It had been a while since he’d done so, and he was looking forward to the change in MO.

  He set off down the slope, his free arm bracing against trees to slow his descent. The slope was steep, treacherous to the unwary, but he negotiated it deftly.

  His eyes locked on the chalet in the distance and his prey within.

  The loud noise woke Victor with a start. He sat straight up and grunted. The pain in his chest was intense; it felt as if a massive weight strapped to his ribs compressed his chest inward. He coughed several times. His lungs felt crushed.

  He groaned but forced the pain from his mind. He had to think. It had been a clear half second after the muzzle flash before he’d been hit. It would have had to have been a large-calibre, high-powered rifle to have pierced the glass, probably with a muzzle velocity of around three thousand feet per second.

  That meant the sniper would have been approximately fifteen hundred feet away in the foothills. It was rough terrain in that direction and would take Victor at least ten minutes to cover the distance in a hurry. He couldn’t imagine many people doing so faster.

  Six hundred seconds.

  Not long. He looked at the clock to see how long he had been out, to see how long before the shooter was upon him, but couldn’t remember the time when he’d been shot. He was confident there was just one man. If there was a team here to kill him, they would have assaulted first, not relied on the sniper, and Victor would be already dead.

  If he could only get to the village …

  Adrenaline was pumping through him, temporarily numbing the pain, but he knew he would feel worse when it wore off. He felt weak but could still function. He had to get out. But without knowing how long he’d been out for he didn’t know if he w
ould be running into a trap. The chalet had two exits, a front door and a back, one too many for a single man to cover. The assassin wouldn’t be able to take up a position and wait for Victor to leave. If he did that he would only have a fifty-fifty chance of picking the right exit. He would have to come inside to kill him.

  Victor was still naked, would have to dress if he tried to run. Getting clothes on would eat time he might not have. It was painful just breathing. He didn’t know how hard he would be able to run or for how long. The sniper would surely be faster. Going outside would only make his job easier.

  Defending the house was his best option. Inside Victor knew every inch and how to use each blind spot to his advantage. If the assassin wanted him, he would have to come and get him. Victor, in a crouch, one hand pressed to his chest, went over to the bed, reached beneath it and drew the loaded FN Five-seveN from the holster. A floorboard creaked.

  The stairs.

  In medieval Japan, with the ever present threat of the deadly ninja, samurai lords had protected themselves from assassination by a simple but effective method. In their castles nightingale floorboards ‘sang’ when someone stepped on them, alerting the occupants that they were under attack.

  Victor had employed the same strategy in addition to his other security precautions. The stairs had been deliberately adjusted so that every other step creaked under the slightest pressure. Other floorboards throughout the chalet did the same, with varying pitch. A moment of silence.

  Then another creak followed immediately by the sound of heavy boots rushing up the stairs, the attempt at stealth abandoned.

  Victor flung open the bedroom door, leaned out, the FN leading in the direction of the stairwell. The shotgun’s report was excruciating, the blast blowing a huge chunk from the door frame. Victor ducked back inside the room as another shot followed. The 12-gauge tore another hole from the pine frame. His wrist stung. A single pellet had grazed his skin. Victor slammed the door shut and locked it.