“Where what?” Hunter prompted.
“I’ll make it look like…department payments for an assignment. Materials. Payroll, etc.”
“Now you’re thinking,” Hunter chided. “Crazy how inspiring a pistol to the head can be.”
Taylor cracked a small smile at the comment.
Eduardo stammered through explanation after explanation of how and from where he was transferring the money. After several minutes of work, he had Hunter and Taylor check their respective accounts to see that each was two million dollars richer.
“How much cash we have on the premises?” Hunter continued.
“Which currency?” Eduardo asked.
“Don’t get technical on me,” Hunter barked.
“One hundred thousand U.S. Maybe 10,000 pesos.”
“Good. We’ll need that as well.”
“I don’t need the pesos,” Taylor said. “I don’t plan on hanging around in Mexico much longer.”
“Agreed. The country’s kinda worn out his welcome for me as well,” Hunter added. He turned to Eduardo and said, “U.S. cash only.”
Eduardo nodded and pulled the bundled cash from the safe in the corner he had hid behind. Hunter took the money. He put half in his vest and gave the other half to Taylor who did the same.
“Let’s go,” Hunter said, waving his pistol at Eduardo.
“Go…go where?” Eduardo stammered. “Are we leaving?”
“No. I’m putting you in that tunnel,” Hunter stated.
“No…no…” Eduardo begged. “I did what you asked.”
“You did,” Hunter agreed. “But if I let you live, you’ll tell your higher-ups just that.”
“I won’t… I won’t tell anyone. I swear!” Eduardo pleaded.
“I know you won’t.” Hunter smiled. “Those monkeys will make sure of it.”
63.
Taylor and Hunter returned to the bunkhouse to find Dejah asleep on Drake’s bed. Taylor took a minute to relish in the child’s peaceful sleep. He wondered how she could find such comfort so easily considering all that she had witnessed in the past few days.
Maybe it was pure exhaustion.
Maybe she was resilient.
Either way, Taylor mused, she’d need help dealing with all that had happened to her. Taylor had seen many men, with far stronger wills, fail to do such and the price they paid for it.
“Can’t keep her,” Hunter jokingly whispered. “She’s got a family out there somewhere.”
“I know,” Taylor agreed.
“So, what you wanna do with her?” Hunter asked. “Leave her here? Drop her on some rich family’s doorstep?”
“She’s a dog now?” Taylor questioned.
“Wait. You can do that with dogs too?” Hunter laughed. “Just leave them someplace? I thought it was just kids you could do that with.”
Taylor smiled at his friend’s kidding then explained his plan. He’d find the girl’s family in the United States, tell them everything he knew and everything that had transpired, and leave them some money with the instruction that Dejah would need counseling.
A lot of counseling.
“Then what?” Hunter asked.
“Find a beach. Start drinking my way through two million dollars.”
“Sounds like a plan. Think I’ll join you for a time.”
“For a time?”
“I’m not done with this way of life. Neither are you. It’s all we know.”
Taylor and Hunter’s planning was interrupted by stirring on Dejah’s part. She twisted and writhed then shot up and gasped. She saw Taylor and Hunter looking down on her and realized she was safe and offered, “I had a bad dream.”
Taylor sat next to her on the bed, stroked her hair, and said, “It’s over now. The bad dream’s over.”
Read on for a free sample of Bug Hunt
1.
“SHOOT! Shoot now, Goddammit!”
Joel Andrews stood motionless, a victim of his own panic. Blood drained from his face, his legs turned to jelly, his hands palsied.
Over 5,000 pounds of armored steel steamrolled toward him. The ground trembled, huge clouds of dust burst upward. The juggernaut slammed into Joel. The force of such enormity propelled forward at 30 miles per hour shot his head back and snapped his vertebrae. His body fell limp, paralyzation replacing the panic that kept him from controlling his body. The monstrosity’s goliath mandibles squeezed Joel’s chest with the force of a hydraulic press.
Joel screamed.
Bones snapped.
Air escaped his lungs in a harrowing gasp.
Thunder clapped as Burke Tyler fired his .600 N.E. from 15 yards away. The 900-grain bullet punched through chitin armor with a piercing scream. Hemolymph exploded outward in arterial spray. Burke fired once more, driving a hole into the beast’s head only five inches from the first. Burke’s Heym double rifle broke.
Shells ejected.
Burke dropped two in the tubes, snapped the barrels shut, aimed, and fired once more.
The ant crashed forward and onto the ground with an explosion of dirt and vegetation. Its mandibles cinched completely closed and Joel’s body was halved. Blood and intestinal fluids, viscera and other bodily liquids pooled in the dirt below his broken body. Burke climbed upon the fallen insect’s body and fired once more into its primitive brain.
“Goddammit,” he barked. “God damn it all.”
2.
“Crushed his ribs. Shattered ‘em so badly the bones fused into his vertebrae. All in less than a second.”
“Not much of a sales pitch.”
“I’m not here to sell you. That’s been done. I’m here to warn you…”
“Warn me?!”
Burke could already tell he didn’t like the client. He was arrogant. Too cocksure for his own good. One of those entitled rich pricks that felt he had to monopolize the conversation because he knew more than the person leading it. Not only were assholes like this a pain in the ass to have on a safari, but they could be dangerous as well. They could miss shots. Fail to drop an animal or panic in the face of a charge. An example being the hunter he’d just detailed, the one that came back with a far more interesting vertebra than the one he had left with.
“Warn you of the dangers. To be honest with you,” Burke continued, trying not to let his opinion of Champe Carter influence the tone of his voice.
“I can appreciate that,” Champe interrupted once more. “Please do.”
“Regardless of the bugs you choose to hunt,” Burke began again, “poor judgment or hesitation on any part can and will be lethal. As I’ve said, these things are far more dangerous than anything else you can hunt on Earth, legal or illegal.”
Champe’s face lit up in excitement. This is what he wanted to hear. What he wanted to experience. He wanted to test himself, test himself in a setting built around life and death. Where a certain outcome couldn’t be bought and life wasn’t guaranteed. Champe’s boss David Braxton had told Champe that three clients had died in the last two years on safaris with MicroTech. Only David’s wealth and a whole lot of legal wrangling had kept the clients’ deaths from becoming public. Not that MicroTech or the safaris were public to begin with. Very few could afford the hunts MicroTech offered and even fewer had actually heard of the company or of the technology that made it possible.
“I’m well aware of the risks,” Champe proudly stated. “And of what the animals can do. How do I prove that to you?”
“Practicing for what’s to come is a poor substitute to actually experiencing it first hand,” Burke explained. “But we have a live fire cinema projection range facility on campus—”
“I’ve been to one of those,” Champe once again interrupted. “Hell’uva lotta fun. Ya shoot at game animals projected life-size on a movie screen.”
Burke nodded.
“Ours uses footage from actual safaris we’ve conducted. It’ll show the bugs’ full size. I’ve penciled us in for tomorrow morning. Nine work?”
“I’ll make it work.”
“What do you plan on shooting?”
“I’ve got a Kreighoff double .500 Nitro Express. It’s a freakin’ hammer.”
“You’ve shot it before?”
“Oh hell yeah,” Champe scoffed. “Who’d plan a safari like this without practicing for months ahead of time?”
“You’d be surprised,” Burke assured him. “Very surprised.”
Bug Hunt is available from Amazon HERE!
The Tunnel Page 13