THE THOUSAND DOLLAR HUNT: Colt Ryder is Back in Action!

by J. T. Brannan

  I saw Talia’s body then, unconscious and threatening to be swept away by the violently swirling rainwaters, and knew I had to act, had to throw myself back into open view to get her.

  I breathed deep, and accepted the fact that I would soon know if there were armed people watching me.

  I would feel the impact of the shot.

  I would know.

  And then I would be dead.

  But what could I do?

  I ran anyway.

  Chapter Five

  The water was coming faster than I’d realized, gushing down the old riverbed with real force now; as I reached Talia, her body had already started to get washed downstream and I almost lost sight of her in the dark.

  But then the lightning flashed again and I caught sight of her, waded fast to catch up and finally got a hold of her. I pulled her free of the water, threw her across my shoulders and headed for the nearest side of the raging gully, keeping her secured to me with one hand while I used the other to grab hold of the branches of a tree to pull ourselves free from the mire.

  Eventually we were out, legs clear of the rising water, and I continued to pull ourselves further and further up the slope until we were well and truly safe. I looked back down and saw the once dry gully was now a surging torrent of rainwater, taking everything with it – the dead bodies, the weapons and the equipment.

  I lay Talia on her back on the wet slope and checked her pulse, her breathing; she was still alive, although badly concussed from the blow with the knife hilt.

  ‘Colt . . .’ she whispered weakly, eyes still half-closed.

  ‘It’s me,’ I told her, careful to keep my voice low despite the noise of the storm. ‘You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.’ I smoothed her wet hair back over her forehead, and in the next flash of light I saw her smiling weakly.

  Kane arrived soon after, his muzzle coated with dark blood, and I rubbed his head. ‘Thanks,’ I whispered. ‘Good work, boy.’

  I heard the noises then, even over the storm – vehicles, engines straining through the bad conditions. Heading here.

  I wondered how many there were, if Badrock had decided to call in all hands to help defeat me.

  The six workers would be dead by now, I realized, probably even before the rains had started in earnest.

  Two hunting parties were left – the pretty little country singer, and the handsome TV soap star – along with Badrock, Hatfield, and the dozen or so other Vanguard men assigned perimeter guard duty. If they were all called in, there would be over twenty of them.

  Twenty to one weren’t my favorite kind of odds.

  On the other hand, though, if they were all gathered in one place, it might make killing them all the easier.

  That’s right, I told myself. Think positive.

  I remembered reading somewhere once that the man who thinks he can, and the man who thinks he can’t, are both right.

  Success was all in the mind.

  So fuck the odds.

  I was going to kill them all anyway.

  They wouldn’t see us in these conditions unless they got very lucky indeed, I was pretty sure of that. But from my covered position in the tree line of a steep slope, I could see them just fine, at least when the lightning hit.

  It was as I suspected, Badrock had called everyone together to launch a concentrated attack on me. He’d be panicking now, four of his high-paying celebrities dead and gone, a dozen of his most trusted Vanguard men along with them.

  They must have thought that I was still armed, because they’d parked their vehicles in a tight, protective circle and met in the middle, crouched low with sharpshooters posted at the four points of the compass – no doubt ordered to fire at wherever they saw a muzzle flash.

  The only trouble was that I wasn’t armed, and I couldn’t really see a hell of a lot either.

  I also had the added baggage of Talia to think about.

  I needed a place to make my stand, somewhere that Talia would be safe, and that would give me the advantage, even without weapons and equipment.

  I thought back to my tours of the park, my study of its maps and plans, and eventually an idea started to form in my mind’s eye.

  Yes.

  I knew where we had to go.

  Chapter Six

  It had taken me a long time – time in which I was often terrified, sure that my location was going to be observed at any moment – but everything was as ready as it could be, and now all I could do was wait silently inside my dark pit, unable to know what was going on around me.

  Unable to know how long I would have to wait.

  Talia was safe though, at least; she was at the top of the nearby mesa which towered over us, hidden in a small copse of low bushes. The climb had been hard, and it was unlikely that anyone would bother trying to access the summit.

  Back down here, below ground level, drowning was a threat – despite the pit being covered, water was still seeping through and was already up to my navel; before long, I would be forced to escape and the trap would be ruined.

  But then I heard footsteps nearby, voices whispering softly, and I knew that at least some of my hunters had taken the bait and entered the graveyard, following tracks that led toward a stand of trees on the far side of the chapel site.

  I knew that others would be watching the area, but – for now at least – that didn’t matter.

  I just had to wait a little longer.

  The first scream occurred just a few seconds later, a cry of shock as the ground gave way beneath one of the men, a second cry of pain as their body became impaled on the sharpened sticks I’d placed in the cemetery’s open graves, before covering them with branches and foliage so the holes couldn’t be seen. I’d sharpened the sticks with the blade of the multitool that had still been in my pocket, and the sticks had in turn also been dipped in animal dung, Vietcong-style, to poison their victims’ bloodstreams if the penetration didn’t kill them immediately.

  There was an explosion next, and I knew that someone – and maybe more than one – had entered the chapel, where I’d rigged one of my thermal grenades to go off, the only bits of kit I’d retained during the fight with Johnson.

  More screams were heard next – more people falling in the pits – and then the covering of my own grave tore violently open and a man fell down, screaming as his chest, leg and face were impaled on my Punji-sticks; in the lightning I saw the eyes opened wide in shocked disbelief, the sharp end of one of the sticks poking through the cheek of his handsome face.

  Javier Hernandez.

  I was up and moving in the next instant, keen to capitalize on the chaos and confusion that would be erupting around the chapel.

  I took the soap star’s rifle from his dead hands and rose up out of the grave, scanning the area quickly, lit now as it was by flames from the chapel building.

  I saw two flaming bodies through the windows, and another crashed back out of the door, still screaming wildly; I turned away and saw three people still standing in the graveyard, terrified to take another step lest they too tumble into one of the makeshift Punji-pits.

  I aimed Hernandez’s rifle and shot them all where they stood, drilling them with the high-powered rounds.

  I was out of the flooded grave soon after the last man fell, running through the graveyard for the tree line that I had supposedly been hiding in anyway.

  I heard muffled shots follow me, felt the hot spray of mud as rounds hit close by, and knew that other hunters were near, watching and observing; but I was moving too fast and the scene was too chaotic, and their bullets never touched me. I was through into the wood, keeping the speed up as I raced toward the far side.

  But before I reached the end – which my enemy might have staked out – I broke off through the undergrowth, using a small trail I’d hacked out earlier that night.

  I crawled through the small route in the dark, rifle in my hands, and came out in a small thicket that bordered my next specially prepared location.

&
nbsp; I’d left a couple of more surprises back on the woodland trail though, and not a great deal of time went by before more screams could be heard above the torrential downpour, the cracks of thunder, and the rustling flames of the burning chapel.

  On either side of my little escape route I’d placed tightly wound saplings, primed to lash back into their natural position when small ankle-high tripwires were hit.

  The saplings would have whipped back along the horizontal at terrific speed, burying the spikes I’d inserted into their length right into my pursuers’ bodies.

  I hadn’t actually learnt that trap in the Rangers – I’d seen Stallone do it in the movie First Blood. But whereas the Rambo character had placed the wicked spikes at leg height so he wouldn’t kill the person, I had no such qualms. These weren’t innocent cops on my tail, they were hired killers.

  I had therefore placed the saplings at about my own chest height; allowing for variance in size, they would hit people anywhere from the gut up to the neck. Even if my pursuers were bent low, they would take the spikes in the face instead.

  I had no way of knowing how many were hurt or killed, but I did know that – however many it was – it would sure as hell slow the rest of them down as they worried about what other hellish traps I had laid for them.

  They were right to worry, I told myself with a smile as I maneuvered myself into position.

  ‘Hellish’ was a good word for what was going to happen to them next.

  Chapter Seven

  They were more cautious now, and who could blame them?

  I watched as they approached from the east; they knew that I was somewhere beyond the pens, but not the exact location. They could see my tracks though and – although they could no longer be sure if they were being led into another trap – they had no real choice except to follow them, if they wanted to have a chance of killing me.

  And killing me, after all, was exactly what they were here for in the first place.

  To allay their suspicions, I’d not been quite so obvious with this trail. I’d doubled back, crossed my tracks, brushed some of them away, crept through the underbrush and crossed several rain-swept streams. The trail was genuinely hard to follow, and I’d even worried that – with the storm – they might not actually be able to follow it.

  But eventually – with the dawn not too far away now – they came, patrolling slowly and carefully toward a concealed service track which held a series of animal pens, situated purposefully out of the eye of the daytime tourists.

  Through the rifle sight I could see that Paige Lockhart, the sole remaining hunter and hypocritical spokesperson for the WWF and the Nature Conservancy, was in the middle of the squad as they reached the service track, presumably for added protection. Badrock probably wanted at least one of them to live.

  I wondered if she still even wanted to be here. Surely she was frightened? All of the others were dead now, and that fact surely couldn’t have been concealed from her?

  And yet she didn’t look frightened at all; instead, she looked to be taking charge of the remaining men who – after my special surprise back at the chapel – now numbered less than a dozen.

  She gestured for four of the men to skirt around the back of the animal pens and the hillock which concealed them, to investigate the far side of the service track, presumably to see if the trail could be picked up on the far side without having to pass this tactically dangerous area.

  But they wouldn’t find anything; on the opposite side of the service track to the hillock, there were numerous other tracks that I could have taken through a wood which followed a steep incline toward the higher ground that eventually led to the mesa beyond, and they would be forced into going that way if they were going to continue their pursuit.

  Soon the men returned, and told Lockhart what they had found – open land on the other side, and no tracks. I could imagine their words – if we want him, we’re going to have to go in and get him.

  As they chatted about their plan, I couldn’t help but wonder where Badrock was. Hatfield too. What were they up to? Why weren’t they with Lockhart?

  But then the squad below me started to move, and my concentration went back to the scene in front of me; Lockhart was ordering her men forward, and another four did as she asked, almost tiptoeing onto the suspicious service track, looking about them in every direction for trip wires, traps and bombs. They were paranoid, and with good reason; they’d seen plenty of their friends killed tonight already, and they surely had no desire to be next.

  I watched and waited as they traipsed down the soaking dirt trail, trying to pick up any sign of where I’d gone.

  Most of the pens down this alleyway were empty, but two of them were decidedly not, and the men gave these a very wide berth, although they were securely locked.

  They scoured the trees to the opposite side with extreme care, rifles always up and at the ready.

  It must have been fifteen minutes later that they finally discovered my false route through the tree line and signaled for the others to come.

  Paige Lockhart, relieved that the area was safe, led the others forward into the service area, her own rifle slung casually at her side, supremely confident.

  Silly, really.

  I waited until everyone was inside the narrow alley, and then gave a short, sharp whistle.

  At my command, Kane broke from his cover behind a large boulder and sprinted forward toward my false trail up into the wooded slope, the long vines I’d tied around his legs pulling taut as he ran.

  As the first two lines reached maximum extension, they pulled the pins from the thermal grenades I’d hidden – obviously effectively, given that the search teams had failed to find them – in the undergrowth at either end of the service track.

  The grenades exploded with terrific force, white-hot flame cutting off the party’s main exits and sending everyone into sheer panic, screaming and shouting and waving their rifles around uselessly.

  Kane carried on running and then the next two lines pulled taut and yanked open the restraining bolts of the two occupied cages behind Lockhart and the hunting crew.

  Frightened by the flames, and activated into naked aggression by the chaotic scene in front of them, the African wild dogs leapt from their pens and attacked everything that stood in the way between them and the tree line.

  The vines were still attached to the locks, but I wasn’t worried about Kane – he could easily chew through the vegetation and be free in not more than a few minutes.

  As the dogs ran wild, some were killed by frantic rifle shots, but still others managed to take their targets down, teeth and claws working frantically and feverishly in the terrible orange firelight to separate skin from bone, muscle from tendon.

  Everywhere I looked, Vanguard men were falling, screaming, under the wild onslaught, and Paige Lockhart, country singing sweetheart and would-be killer, also fell, rifle forgotten now as her hands covered her head, desperate to protect herself from the savage dogs; but there were too many of them and, despite her vain efforts to save herself, she was picked apart and ripped to pieces.

  The dogs were wild, crazed into unseen ferocity by the flames which licked at the nearby trees, gutting and eviscerating the poor unfortunates who rolled pityingly across the muddy ground in a gory scene of spraying blood, torn flesh and mangled tissue. I saw two Vanguard men who had managed to escape the grenades and the dogs run for the trees, making no attempt to help their fallen comrades, and I aimed my rifle at them and loosed off two shots, one to the fleeing head of each man.

  The heads burst open just fractions of a second apart from each other and the bodies fell, lifeless, to the ground.

  The soil next to me erupted just an instant later as a round struck the dirt just inches from my shoulder, and I jerked away reflexively, rolling desperately for a change of cover, praying that a second shot wouldn’t hit me.

  I rolled behind a slab of rock, my back to the hard protective surface and my heartbeat racin
g at two hundred beats a minute.

  Damn!

  It had to be Badrock – probably with Hatfield as his spotter – and I cursed myself for taking out the two last Vanguard soldiers and revealing myself with the rifle’s muzzle blast.

  That’s why Badrock hadn’t been with the others – he’d known the service track was the perfect place for an ambush, and had positioned himself to take advantage of it. He’d have seen that I’d taken the rifle from Hernandez, known for sure that I was armed, and understood that I would be lying in wait to pick people off down in the alley.

  He would have had a good idea of where I might be, based on his own judgment of angles and effective fire, but not the precise location; he would therefore have positioned himself somewhere that he would be able to respond to my shots when they inevitably came.

  It had almost worked too, and I cursed my stupidity; I should have realized the general would have thought of that, and left my rifle alone.

  Was I really so keen to kill everyone that I’d been willing to endanger myself?

  Perhaps I was, I could admit to myself; but was it really such a sin, if they were all bad?

  Badrock himself had been happy to sacrifice his own people to get to me; he could have warned them away from the trap, but he chose not to, chose to use them so that he could get my trophy head on his wall.

  Now that was a sin.

  And I would make sure that the general was going to be punished for it.

  Chapter Eight

  I was back up on the table-top mesa, once more lying in wait for my pursuers.

  The night was finally dissipating, the first faint rays of the sun playing at the horizon’s edge; but although the thunder and lightning had abated, the rains continued to fall as heavily as ever.

  I was lying prone on the ground, using a large rock for cover and pointing Hernandez’s German PSG1 sniper rifle toward the only viable route up the mountain.