The duo walked through the camp like they owned the place. “You get him this time?” one asked, sounding as if he could’ve cared less.
Hunter cocked an ear. Him who? Me? These jerks couldn’t be talking about him. They hadn’t cleared the dense brush opposite his camp when they’d fired and he was fairly certain they hadn’t seen him. Were they idiots?
“I’m not even sure it was the same guy. Might’ve been that woman or one of them monkeys. You know how big they are.”
“Next time, use your night-vision goggles,” the first badgered the other. “Monkey or man, kill the bastard.”
“How d’you expect me to do that when he’s like smoke?”
“Smoke, my ass. If it was him, he’s a grunt like the other two we put down. Shoot him and be done with it.”
Hunter’s ears perked up. These guys had killed two of McCormack’s men, but it didn’t sound like they’d killed Eric, Ky, or Seth. But who was like smoke? They couldn’t be talking about him. He hadn’t run into these guys until now. Hope flickered to life that Eric and the guys were still alive.
The guards weren’t forthcoming with any more info. The one kicked his way through the camp. “Ain’t nothing here. Come on. Let’s fade to black.”
When the two turned back the way they’d come, Hunter followed. They made that easy, too. The whole concept of ‘fade to black’ was stealth and silence, neither of which these guys seemed to comprehend. They made enough noise for a dozen men, and their flashlights might as well have been flashing neon signs proclaiming their exact location to the whole world.
Hunter kept close enough behind them to reach out and touch. Or kill.
“You still thinking what I’m thinking?” The big guy in the lead spoke over his shoulder.
“Might be.” The fat bastard behind him chuckled as they tromped along the trail between The TEAM and MI camps. “Depends on who gets to the woman first. Just so you know, I don’t share.”
Her. Meredith. Hunter’s jaw tightened. Touch her and I’ll gut you like a pig.
“Yeah, but I hear she’s a real spitfire in the sack. Likes the whole bondage thing. Whips. Chains. Cuffs and collars. I’d like a piece of that ass.” Big Guy sounded as if he’d been talking to someone who had an ax to grind with Meredith. “Always liked a woman who can take a beating and still deliver like she means it.”
“Hell, I got a belt. Fact I got two. I’ll loan you one. Let’s see who can make her cry, open up them long legs, and—”
“Shut your pie hole.” Big Guy stopped and pointed to the drag marks the cot had made. “Look here. Tracks.”
Fat Bastard shoved around Big Guy to take a look. “You think she went this way?”
“She did if she’s dragging the Horton fella. Come on. We take him down easy and then she’s ours. Let’s go get some of that ass you’re planning on whupping. Least ways, I can watch.” Big Boy lifted his rifle up against his cheek, aimed it forward, and took one step on the trail that led directly to Meredith.
Hunter’s gut clenched at their brutal plans for that petite but feisty woman. Who had they been talking to about her? Who’d been lying about her? Hunter might be angry with Meredith, but she was no tramp and she didn’t do bondage. He knew it to his soul, damn it.
“Don’t shoot her before we play with her,” Fat Bastard whined.
“I ain’t gonna shoot her, but I ain’t taking chances, neither. She’s a tough bitch. Don’t forget, she shot Jonesy.”
“Yeah, but...” Fat Bastard smacked his lips. “I like ’em tough. It ain’t no fun when they’re beat up and they just lay there and take it neither.”
Hunter could take no more. Silently closing in on the pair from the rear, he raised his USMC knife. It allowed him to be silent and deadly when he had dirty work to do.
It took less than five minutes to dispatch the bumbling degenerates. Fat Bastard went down with his throat cut from behind. Big Guy took a little longer, but only because he thought he had a dog in the fight. Turned out he didn’t. One lightning kick to his throat ended that misconception.
All business now, Hunter collected their weapons, flashlights, and searched their pockets. He found no wallets or identification, but both carried concealed knives, matching stainless steel holstered revolvers—both .44 Magnums, five-inch barrels. He checked the chambers. Five rounds each, and nearly full ammo packs of 454 Casull on their belts. Between the handguns and the basic-but-deadly tactical carbines they’d been toting, these guys were armed to the gills.
On top of the guns, Hunter found identical key fobs in both men’s pockets, and a garrote in Big Guy’s back pocket. Fat Bastard’s vest concealed a set of brass knuckles and a cigarette lighter, along with three foil-wrapped condoms. More interesting was the full syringe in his shirt pocket. Hunter held it up to the light. It wasn’t one of those jet-injector hypos like they shoot you with during your USMC physical, just a regular needle and vial hypo with a finger plunger. What the hell is this?
Checking Big Guy more thoroughly, he found a similar hypo along with a vial of liquid. Again, he paused, holding the lime-green stuff up to the beam from one of the assassins’ helmets. These guys were common thugs, not even decent military-grade, probably boot camp washouts. Why were they packing pre-filled hypodermic needles? Were they all on drugs? Could it be an antidote for spider bites maybe? Snake venom? Exactly who were they after? Just Meredith? The ActiveCamouflage System? Corporate espionage might be behind all this, but Hunter had one of his gut feelings.
He just didn’t have all the puzzle pieces to go along with that feeling. Hurriedly, he stashed both capped hypos and the vial into one of his many cargo pants pockets and let the mystery go for now. The flashlights were small enough, they fit in another pocket. Going one step further, he pulled Big Guy’s shirt and boots off. They might be a little large, but Meredith needed something to cover that sexy body of hers before Hunter did something really stupid. He couldn’t handle the continual sexual assault on his eyeballs.
Stripping Fat Bastard’s bloody shirt off next, Hunter shrugged it over his bare shoulders and buttoned up, intending to wash it in the next puddle he came across. Wearing a dead man’s clothing wasn’t his favorite thing to do, but he needed cover. The bugs were eating him alive. He should’ve let Meredith spray him down, but his pride got in the way. Marines never asked for help. They were the ones who gave it.
“Lance? You there?” a disembodied voice crackled at his throat, startling Hunter out of his egotistical rant. Was it possible? Sure enough. He pulled the shirt off to inspect it and found the smallest walkie-talkie he’d ever seen fastened to the underside of the collar. Unclipping it, he examined the feather-light device. No wonder he hadn’t noticed it. The thing weighed less than a ballpoint pen.
Deliberating for all of one split second, he retrieved the other shirt and pulled the walkie-talkie off its collar, too. Walkie-talkies of this grade surely included GPS locators. Someone would come looking for Big Guy and Fat Bastard and he meant for them to be found. It was time to make a point. A very deadly point.
He set to work with that extra sharp blade of his, working over four bamboo stalks. That’s all he needed. He didn’t have time for more, not with Meredith on her own. Once done with the stakes he’d made, he shoved them at just the right height and angle across from the bodies. Not only did he intend to humiliate the naked remains of these two guys he’d killed by leaving them for the jungle nightlife, he meant to strike back at whoever was behind this hostile takeover. Whatever jokers came looking for Big Guy and Fat Bastard wouldn’t notice the bamboo spears until it was too late.
Hunter knew his history. During the Vietnam War, both Viet Cong and Americans had resorted to using booby traps with punji stakes to surprise their enemies in the dense jungles. Bamboo could be deadly, and simple vines could be rigged as trip wires.
He worked swiftly. Finally done and sweating, he strapped the walkie-talkies to the sharpened stakes. He stretched the trip wire vines extra tight
, so, with one wrong step, the stakes would spring forward, and any would-be rescuers would never see what hit them.
Hunter chuckled at his dark humor, but he wasn’t going down without a fight. Wrapping the spoils of war into one bundle, he beelined back to Meredith and Teague. Stopping short of the hiding place, he cupped one hand to his lips and whispered, “Hotel Charlie.”
Meredith didn’t respond.
He cocked his head to listen more carefully and repeated the signal a scant bit louder. Still, no ‘Mike Foxtrot’ came back to him. Only silence. In five swift steps, he was inside the grove. She was gone, damn it. The litter and everything else, too.
A single gunshot pierced the jungle from the direction of the MI camp, and Hunter couldn’t get out of that bamboo hideout fast enough. The enemy was on the move. He let his senses reach out into the jungle to pick up the slightest sounds of a woman dragging a heavy load. The slightest sigh or shadow. The smallest scent. Anything.
Opting against using the flashlights he now possessed, he searched for tracks in the dark, ruts from the heavy travois he’d turned the cot into. They were easy to find. She’d left a trail anyone could follow. Where was she going?
One more shot echoed behind him, and he pressed forward. Running on instinct and a healthy dose of fear, Hunter literally turned into a walking radar dish, willing himself to receive input from all directions. He tuned the world out and tuned in, his only mission that one particular sound in front of him. That quiet murmur. When it stopped, so did he. His nostrils flared. He’d caught a whiff of some flowery scent. Meredith.
Advancing cautiously, he angled his broad shoulders between branches and shrubs. At last he found her crouched behind a fallen log twice her size. He’d almost missed her. She’d covered herself under a layer of leafy branches, but the sharp line of his rifle in her hands gave her away. Stealthily, he approached her from behind until he was close enough to touch. He knelt, placing one hand firmly on her upper arm and whispering, “Hotel Charlie.”
She nearly jumped out of her skin, which would’ve been a neat trick since that was about all she had on. “Darn it, Hunter, you scared me,” she hissed, lowering her weapon, scanning the shirt splashed with someone else’s blood that he was wearing.
“Why’d you break cover?”
“They came.” She clutched his wrist, the whites of her eyes showing. “I heard them. Two. Maybe three guys. I think they were the same ones.”
“I’ve seen two of them,” he whispered back. “We won’t be seeing them again, but there are others. Let’s move. Where’s Teague?”
She pointed wordlessly to a truck-sized rock sticking out of the ground several feet away. “I hid him over there. No one will see him in all those roots.”
He glanced at the massive banyan tree with its army of columnar roots entrenched along its trunk. “Good thinking.”
“Did you find any of your guys?”
“No, but I’ve got a shirt for you to wear and another couple more guns. Some ammo.” He tucked his pistol into the palm of his hand and extended his other hand. “Give my rifle back.”
Just as he took it out of her hands, a sudden movement starboard caught his eye—and then his heart. The blackest panther had just dropped soundlessly from the tree branch Teague lay beneath, no doubt lured in by the scent of blood.
Hunter barely had time to aim. His shot went wild. So did the cat, but now the whole world knew where they were. He pulled Meredith to her feet. “Time to go.”
Easing her branches aside, she peered both ways before she stood. It was a small thing, but the innocent action made Hunter very aware just how unskilled she was at covert operations. She was a woman, a very feminine woman in the wrong place at the wrong time.
With her elbow firmly in his right palm, Hunter shoved his rifle over his shoulder before he secured Teague’s cot again. But damn, Meredith surprised Hunter again. The damned rolling crate stood alongside Teague’s litter. How had she managed that?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Meredith kept an eye on Hunter. He seemed different, radiating a feral energy that fit the tempo of the jungle more than that of the civilized world. He was like that panther, wild and lethal, intense and abrupt. Cold. Deadly. What happened while he was looking for his men?
“How’s Teague?” He broke the spell.
“Feverish. Still bleeding. We need to change the bandage.”
“Not now. That shot will bring trouble. We need to keep moving.”
Warmth radiated off his body as they walked side by side. The path turned wide with fewer trees, the ground clear of shrubs. Vines and roots still snared the container and the litter as they hurried, but they were able to move quicker. Some kind of fungi glowed in the dark and the tree roots seemed more like giant fingers stuck into the ground, anchoring the massive giants as their branches reached high into the canopy.
A rustle in the brush behind them turned him around. He set the litter to the ground, and, without a word, charged the intruder before she could be sure it wasn’t Eric or the guys.
A struggle ensued, and Meredith was witness to two lethal fighters squaring off in the dark. The intruder grunted. Hunter cursed. They backed away from each other, both gripping long, serrated knives.
“Who are you?” Hunter hissed, his rifle still at his back.
What was he thinking? “Shoot him,” Meredith whispered. “Use your gun.”
“Your fucking worst nightmare.” The guy hefted his blade from one hand to the other. “You killed two of my buddies back there. I’m here to return the favor.”
Hunter stuck his chin at the intruder. “Why don’t you step on up and die trying?”
Typically, he charged the short distance, his head lowered and his shoulder angled. He met the intruder with thunder, swinging out with fists and growling profanities. Two blades glinted amidst the flying tangle of men’s arms.
Hunter feinted to his left, but quickly lunged right. The other man kicked out with his boot, but Hunter had gotten in too close for that strike to be effective. He crashed both fists to the sides of the guy’s head and the man fell groaning to his knees. Hunter gave him no quarter, just landed a solid kick to his throat and down the assassin went.
Meredith’s heart beat high in her throat, but she couldn’t look away.
Hunter jumped on the guy’s torso, his knee in the stranger’s gut and his hands at the man’s neck. Choking and his eyes wide, the guy gripped Hunter’s forearms, trying to break the hold. The cords in Hunter’s neck stuck out. Muscles all the way up his arms bulged, the veins on his forehead, too. The coldest shadow darkened his face, and Meredith knew he was killing his opponent.
And then she understood. He’d deliberately chosen his knife over his gun. It was almost as if he’d needed to feel his enemy’s life seep out of him, as if Hunter needed the risk, the challenge of close-up battle. As if he courted—Death.
At last, the intruder’s eyes rolled back in his head and his body went slack. Her heart fell to the forest floor. He didn’t twitch or hiss or do anything she’d expected a dying man would do.
Hunter bowed his head, his hands to his knees, and still straddling the dead man.
She saw it then—the knife handle protruding from Hunter’s chest. She flew to him. “Hunter!”
When he lifted his head, the cold disgust in his eyes raked her up and down, halting her in her tracks. “Don’t touch me.”
She froze at the deadly chill in his voice, but in case he didn’t know, she whispered, “B-but you’re hurt.”
A glint of surprise shifted over his face when his chin dropped as he took in the blade. Without a word, he jerked the wicked thing out and tossed it aside. The man needed help, but he didn’t wince or gasp or… or anything.
Once again, she shifted closer—until he straightened. A stranger she no longer recognized glared back at her. His upper lip lifted into a half snarl like a wolf protecting his kill. She lifted her fingers to her lips at the feral beast on his knees. This wa
sn’t her friend. Not anymore. Hunter’s pupils were devoid of light, and the handsome face she’d wanted to caress now seemed chiseled in marble. Cold. Relentless. Dead.
The hardened warrior had returned. Without a word, he shifted off to one knee and began disrobing the man he’d just killed. Swiftly. Efficiently. Like he’d done this many times before. Hunter took everything, right down to the man’s underwear. He only paused to roll the man to his side, facing away from Meredith.
Grunting as he pushed to his feet, Hunter held up a plastic syringe. “Do you know what this crap is?” he barked, breathing heavily, blood staining the front of his shirt.
She shook her head, wanting to help if he’d let her. “No. What?”
“Never mind.” He tucked the capped syringe into one of his pants pockets, and rolled everything else into a bundle except the shirt. Using the man’s belt, he secured the bundle and turned to her again, his top lip lifted in a sneer. “Are you so desperate you’re into M&Ms?”
“Am I what?” she asked him right back. “How can you ask about candy at a time like this?” What a stupid question.
“I didn’t ask about candy. I asked you... hell.” He rolled his eyes, annoyed at her for what she didn’t know. “Never mind.”
Oh. Now she felt stupid. Did he mean S&M, as in sadomasochism? BDSM and all that—stuff? Her mother’s ears had automatically registered M&M because—well, that was her life. Heat swarmed her cheeks like a flash fire. Hunter must think she was an idiot, but still. What did S&M have to do with anything?
Intensity shuddered off Hunter, so Meredith kept her distance and stayed with Teague. He, at least, seemed stable, but she checked on him anyway. Hunter didn’t look at the dead man’s body again; she couldn’t stop. Her eyes seemed unable to look away. At least as tall as Hunter, he was thicker around the middle. Even in death, his fists, as big as hams, were clenched tight, yet Hunter had taken him down swiftly. Almost easily.
Hunter (In the Company of Snipers Book 14) Page 6