Shadow of a Killer

by David Anderson

  I waited another quarter of an hour or so but there were no more noises and I was getting worried that he was up to something. Silently circling around to my rear? That was probably impossible even for the most experienced 161uerrilla or tracker, but I could not be sure. I needed some kind of ruse, a trap to fool him. The toe of my shoe touched against a small rock. With infinite care I pushed myself backwards with my arms until I was level with the rock. I never moved so slowly in all my life. At last, my fingers fumbled around and found the small, smooth stone.

  My plan was to toss the stone to my left, a little to the right of Bautista, close enough to startle him and lure him into firing first. Then I would return fire whenever I saw the flash of his automatic. If Bautista moved to his right as I thought he would, it would be difficult for him to return fire at me from under his body and across his left arm. He would have to get up. By then I hoped I’d have killed him.

  I took a deep breath through thin lips and tried to visualise where the stone had to land.

  Then I tossed it and all hell broke loose.

  Chapter 56

  The man had to be a cat, not a human being. Somehow, impossibly, Bautista had moved to my left. The rock must have hit him, as I heard a muted cry of pain. He fired immediately.

  His hearing was as sharp as a cat’s, too. If I hadn’t moved like lightning, he’d have got me. With my reactions taut as wire, I sprung away the instant the sound of him reached my ears. By the time he fired, half a second later, I was already gone. My aching feet and ankles flew over the cracked concrete. There were numerous scraps of barbed wire and bits of old iron near the gaping exit. I prayed I wouldn’t trip on any of them. Ironically, it was dog or rat crap that nearly did me in. My right foot slipped sideways on something sticky, and my ankle went over sideways. I hobbled on, barely registering the lightning bolt shooting up my leg.

  Unsteady, swaying, my shoulder banged against the hard edge of the wall around the exit. More bullets rang out, but maybe the rock, or the angle of fire, had affected his aim. I bent low and almost fell around the doorpost to the other side. With the end of the wall now between me and Bautista, I fired three rounds back into the utter blackness of the hangar. Bautista cursed loudly in Spanish and I heard him start running. He was not backing down. He was coming.

  Renewed fear spurred my legs as I ran away from the hangar and kept going. Ignoring searing pain in my wobbly legs, I kept running until I was behind the house again and out of his line of fire. Without thinking, I ran in the back door and up the stairs, finally collapsing between the bed and the window in the upstairs front room.

  Not knowing if Bautista was still inside the hangar, I waited, watching its gaping entrance through the corner of the broken pane. His slighting words about María still rang in my head. Killing him would now be a pleasure. But it was not going to be easy. The way things were going, I’d be lucky to be able to get up and walk again, never mind turn the tables and stalk him. And if I had to run again one more time, I’d didn’t think I could do it. I felt I’d aged about thirty years in the last thirty minutes.

  It was nearly as dark outside as it had been in the hangar and it was now in the house, but at least there were faint glimmerings of moonlight reflected off clouds, which honed my eyes to pin sharpness and allowed me to make out the main features outside. Low down on the horizon was a faint streak of light that I knew from night flights was what they call the false dawn.

  Eventually I spotted him. Boldly he came forward and walked right up to the cottage until he was standing in the front garden. With thick window glass between us, I decided against firing. As I watched, he raised his right arm, which held his automatic, and with practised ease ejected the old clip and slid in a fresh one. Clicking it into place with a slap of his palm, he raised the weapon and his head at the same time. Before I could move back, he was staring into my eyes, pointing the gun right at me.

  I told myself there was no way that he could pick me out in the absolute darkness of the room. It had to be a lucky guess, though maybe by this time, after our hours of intense effort to get into the other’s mind, there was now some sort of telepathic link between us. I expected him to charge the front door; instead he jogged around the side of the cottage and I heard him enter by the back, just as I had.

  Trapped in the room, I searched the bedside cabinet behind me and my hand closed around the familiar shape of a small flashlight. I gripped the gun in one hand, the flashlight in the other and waited for Bautista. If he stood framed in the bedroom doorway even for a second, his black form slightly darker than his surroundings, I would finish him. By now I sensed it would not be that simple. Nothing had been so far. I held my breath and lived only in my ears. The staircase creaked loudly. Somehow he really did know where I was and was making straight for me.

  A blurry shape moved on the upstairs landing. What his plan was, I’ll never know. Weariness and nervous tension, perhaps the fear of his confident approach, caused me to snatch both shots. I fired too quickly, shot high and to the right. At the same time I thumbed on the flashlight. The bullets embedded themselves in the edge of the doorframe, sending splinters flying into Bautista’s face. He screamed and his hand flew to his eyes. With an angry roar he turned and ran.

  I followed him, crouching low and suspecting a trap. For once, there was none. As soon as the splinters blinded him, he must have made an instant decision to retreat. I heard him charge into the back bedroom and arrived just in time to see him hurtle through the smashed window. There was an almighty clatter onto the ground below and I looked out and saw him pick himself up and take off at a loping run towards the trees. I fired several rounds at his shadowy back and missed with every one.

  My hands shook as I dropped the flashlight and lowered the Sig Sauer. The clip was empty. I ejected it and slid in the last full one. As I did so, my head reeled with dizziness and I almost fell over. I was disgusted with myself for failing so badly but I also realised that exhaustion had set in and, in my present condition, I’d be lucky to hit a barn door. If this didn’t end soon I would faint again, lose consciousness, and, after he came back, never wake up. I had to get to him first.

  I emerged from the back door and slunk off to the left, intending to circle around and enter the trees from the side. At this point I was taking risks I’d have thought crazy earlier on, and I couldn’t have cared less. I existed only in a brain-numbed nightmare world, my torn, tattered body moving on autopilot. If I made noises – which I did – well, it might draw him out.

  Once I was in the shelter of the trees again I crouched low and began to stalk Bautista. I knew his general position, or thought I did, but it was not easy approaching it. The ground was bone dry and leaves underfoot crackled and cracked. It was impossible to crawl for any distance here. I would have to walk.

  I got to a place where I should have been in sight of him. Standing behind a tree, I examined the area ahead and tried to distinguish which amorphous shape was a man and which were merely bushes or scrub or mounds of grass. There was no way of knowing. I moved forward to the next tree.

  Progress was slow and starched with tension. I took a careful step and a dry stick snapped under my foot like a fistful of uncooked spaghetti. My heart hammered in my chest. Nothing happened. I took several more steps. The next tree came, then the next. My nerves were tightest piano wire – I could have been killed at any moment – but it still felt better, after all this time, to be the attacker, the hunter, the tiger. I came to a patch of grass, got down on my knees and crept up to its edge. On the far side there was a darker darkness that looked like him. It was exactly the sort of place where he would set a trap for me.

  I crawled around the edge of the grass to get closer. Halfway to the Bautista-like mound I realised that where there was grassy space, there had to be at least a little extra light from above. The sliver of moon was out again. The way our optic nerves were straining to detect each other, he could see my shape better than I could see his. I paused and
stared at the mound, ready to roll sideways into greater darkness. Again, nothing happened.

  If the mound really was Bautista, perhaps he was injured or passed out. I wondered if I could commit the coup de grace if that was the case. Finish him off in cold blood, as a matador finishes a bull.

  I was about to continue toward him when it happened. Something metallic clicked high above my head and my eyes automatically darted upwards to see what it was. I caught the gleam of the moon on grey metal; of ghostly white teeth in a sneering mouth. Or so I thought anyway, in the split second of terror-stricken paralysis before I leapt to my feet and turned to run.

  Bautista fired. He’d shaped the mound, probably a couple of dead branches, to make me think it was him, while all the time he was hiding up a tree, waiting. I was no longer even a goat; I was now a mouse in a trap.

  His first shot got me in the arm. The second and third deafened my ears as I tripped, stumbled and fell.

  Chapter 57

  The fall saved me from at least one bullet in the skull. Instead the rounds Bautista fired thudded into the ground above my head. Whatever adrenalin I had left got me back up on my feet and stumbling forward, seemingly in slow motion and expecting a bullet in the back any moment.

  For whatever reason – jammed mechanism or whatever – it never came and by the time Bautista started firing again I was bobbing and weaving between trees. I kept going but was running on empty and had to drop to the ground, breathless and pouring with sweat. Hot tears of sheer relief streamed down my cheeks.

  I want to live, I want to live, God knows I want to live!

  Blood dripped from my left arm just beneath the elbow. I slipped off the crimson-soaked sleeve of my jacket and explored the wound with the fingers of my other hand. It hurt like hell but I sighed with relief when I found it was only a surface gash. The bullet had skimmed across the skin, opening up a nasty cut that bled profusely. With nothing to bandage it with, I took a clean tissue from my pocket and stuck it into the sticky mess. It stopped some of the bleeding. Anyway, the wound was anything but fatal. I lived to fight another day, or at least another few minutes.

  I squirmed deeper into a little hollow, ignoring broken sticks and thorny stems. Bautista would never be able to spot me here unless he stepped on me. And if he got that close, he’d be dead already. He had worn down my nerves by being completely unpredictable, rushing at me when I least expected it, remaining utterly quiet and still while I tried unsuccessfully to locate him, and moving as silently as a cat on feathers at crucial moments. Somehow I’d survived being outguessed at every step, though my injuries meant that I was now reluctant to move about unless I absolutely had to do so.

  He must have followed me through the trees but I’d zigzagged and veered off right at the end, so I was pretty sure he couldn’t possibly know where I’d ended up. My best tactic seemed to be to wait it out as long as possible and let him tire himself out trying to find me. With luck, he might eventually lose patience and expose himself.

  For a long time I didn’t see him. Then I heard him rushing through the trees to my right. As usual, he was surprising me. But there were no more shots, just the breaking of twigs underfoot, then silence again. He was listening for me as I was listening for him.

  I cautiously picked up a small, hard clod of earth and tossed it ahead as far as I could. It fell with a soft thud, sounding exactly, I thought, as if I’d tripped again. His response was a rustle of his own and an audible groan. No footsteps. He too, I reminded myself, was human, with no special powers to follow scent like a dog or see in the dark like a cat. Like me, he had exhaustion and injuries, as well as strung-out nerves. I had to play on these weaknesses just as he had played on mine.

  I closed my eyes and tried to quieten my beating heart and steady my woozy head. If I had let myself, I could have fallen asleep in seconds, despite the mortal danger. Instead, I counted to thirty and stilled my breathing, calmed myself, thought hard. I had very little energy left to continue the struggle. My next move would be my last; it would have to be a good one, the deciding one.

  When I opened my eyes again I realised the true dawn was coming. At this time of year it changed from darkness to light quickly and I could now distinguish separate trees and locate them spatially in front of or behind others. In the space of a few minutes, the light changed from black to dark grey. I was lying between two trees, in a dark hollow with a big fallen branch in front of me.

  Then I heard a rustle over to my right. Bautista was coming and would see me in the hollow before I would see him. The thought of more physical exertion appalled me and I tried to think of excuses to get out of it. Maybe where I was lying now was good enough; maybe he would go right past me. But with the light growing, tree trunks and bits of scrub would no longer conceal me from detection. I needed a better place to hide.

  My eyes fixed on an old compost heap at the edge of the trees, near the house. It seemed to have been thrown together with whatever was at hand; a sheet of corrugated iron at the back, sides made from rows of two by fours with air gaps between them, and chicken netting at the front. I had no time to waste and started crawling towards it, flattening the grass, pushing aside twigs and sticks as I crawled. My arm started bleeding again, leaving bright red drops on green surfaces. I cursed under my breath. Now that Bautista could see, he would look for a trail to follow and I was providing too easy a one for him. I might as well draw arrow signs.

  That’s when I finally figured it out. He would be searching for signs of me, looking for visual clues. I was giving him plenty and there was no way I could prevent that. So, instead, I’d make it even better. Intentionally lead him to me. Without being too obvious about it, of course – no socks hanging from low branches or anything dumb like that. It had to be convincing and lead him unsuspectingly to exactly where I wanted him to go. When he got there he’d find no goat, but a wounded tiger with teeth bared.

  If I could gather together the strength and cunning to lay a trap for him, I could at last end our bitter struggle for supremacy. Behind the compost heap was a grassy bank, from which Bautista would be able to look down into the gap to see if I was hiding there. That’s where he would go to put some last shots into his despairing, weeping, begging for mercy victim. Behind the bank was a mound topped with dense shrubbery long since left to grow wild. I’d be waiting for him there.

  Arms and thighs aching in protest, I crawled towards the compost box. I had to leave a followable trail behind me, clear enough to show Bautista in which direction I had gone. Not that he would follow it directly. He would work his way around and above so that he could safely peer down from the grassy bank. Blood was still dripping out of the ripped gash in the arm of my jacket that Bautista’s bullet had made. I yanked the rip wider and tore off the damp paper tissue staunching the wound. Fresh bright blood oozed up and dribbled out. I spread it over pale green blades of young grass.

  Halfway there I looked back. The long grass I’d crawled through was parted sideways, making a clear, obvious trail that would stay that way until the sun rose over the trees and evaporated the dew. I lowered my head and kept going.

  Would he really follow the way I wanted him? He would if he thought I was seriously injured. I clenched my jaw tight and poked the open slash on my arm with two fingers. Thought about slipping my jacket off and leaving it behind. Decided against it – too obvious.

  Still not enough blood. Nothing bleeds like a head wound, right? I reached up and grasped the now blood-brown first aid tapes I’d bound around my scalp to hold the skin flap closed.

  The sodden but still sticky tapes were the hardest thing to yank off. My hand refused to move. I cursed myself and demanded I do it. On the count of three . . . Again my hand just wouldn’t comply.

  One last effort. DO it!

  The tapes came off with an audible tearing sound, and the flap of skin lifted with it. Immediately, hot, sticky blood welled up and gurgled out like an erupting volcano. For a terrifying few seconds I thought I wo
uld pass out again.

  If anything, I’d overdone it. When I started to crawl again, the blood trail was dramatic and eye-catching. It seemed as if I was losing pints of blood and I had to remind myself that, bad as it was, it was still only a surface cut. But my mind and will protested otherwise, and seeing the crimson trail made my head swim and my limbs ache all the more.

  Nearly there . . . I came up to a flat, oval rock and dripped plentifully on it, then reached two smaller ones, and dripped on them too. The compost box was straight ahead. I crawled in behind it and the stink of rotting vegetation filled my nostrils. I remembered reading somewhere, a long time ago, about snakes liking the warmth and shelter of compost heaps. Nothing I could do about that danger, other than close my eyes for a few seconds and pray.

  This cool patch of shadow behind the boxful of soft, dead leaves and mossy stones was just the sort of place that a hunted, dying goat would shelter in. I dribbled a bit more blood, then bound the scalp flap back in position as best I could and covered my bleeding arm with my jacket sleeve. From here on, my movements had to be indiscernible. Despite my mind screaming at me to hurry up, my body insisted on making me sit at rest for a couple more minutes.

  Now for the second move, the crucial one. In the pale, sunless light of dawn, the landscape now starkly black and white, Bautista must not spot me. I crawled out from the side of the compost box, straight into tall grass in a fold of ground that curved around behind the mound. Concealed there, I made it up the slope and into the tall bushes growing wild along the top. I rose to my knees and made sure I could see the narrow flat area immediately ahead and below, where I was gambling that Bautista would go to peer down behind the compost box.