Hunting Season: A Rhys Adler Thriller

by Alex Carlson

  WHEN THE TRIGGER broke, the projectile initiated its journey at 2,800 feet per second and travelled the hundred yards without losing significant velocity. It flew between the first two men and hit the third in the neck with a wet whack, all but ripping the head from the soldier’s body, which collapsed backwards in a heap.

  The rifle’s muzzle brake helped Manny control the recoil as he searched for a second target. From his position, Manny saw Rhys execute his part. With a good two-handed hold, Rhys tapped out a pair of shots into each of the chests of the stunned pair. Their bodies fell to the ground.

  Manny ran the scope’s reticle down the path through the pasture and searched for the second trio of Russians, who had recently emerged from the woods. They stood frozen, as any normal men would, but not what he would have expected of Spetsnaz. He figured five hundred yards, a long shot to make on the fly, but within his capability. He calculated the bullet’s drop and aimed twelve inches above the head of the man in the middle of the group. He squeezed the trigger.

  THE EPISODE WENT down quickly, when it finally arrived. Rhys expected the shot, but that only increased the tension. His gut was knotted and his mouth tasted like copper. The waiting was interminable. Waiting distorts time; waiting in line for five minutes is different than five minutes on a motorcycle. And both are different than five minutes with a gun in your hand, praying the enemy would stick to the path and go around the right side of the boulder rather than the left.

  He was lucky. The Russians didn’t practice operational silence and he heard two of the men murmur to each other as they approached. Then he heard a rustle, probably one of the soldiers shifting the weight of his pack. By the time he heard footsteps, he knew Manny’s shot was seconds away.

  He crouched behind the rock in a three-point stance, his right foot planted flat on the ground, his left knee and foot stabilizing his position. He maintained a solid two-hand hold on his Glock, holding it low and ready to rise.

  Single file they came into view, first one and then the second, as they walked past the boulder and ahead without noticing him. He had just caught a glimpse of the third when the bullet came. He heard a solid wet slap followed immediately by the crack of the bullet breaking the sound barrier.

  No matter how well trained a soldier is, there’s that frozen moment of processing a sudden, unexpected stimulus. The two forward Spetsnaz froze and took an interminable second to shake off the confusion. Rhys raised his gun and fired two shots into the chest of one, pivoted, and fired two more into the other.

  The echo from Manny’s shot dissipated.

  He aimed at the soldiers on the ground, looking for movement. There were a few involuntary twitches, the last bits of muscle memory as their central nervous systems struggled with the complete break down of the neural pathways. Then they went still. Rhys looked at the third, the one Manny shot. The head was attached by a thread of skin and the body lay with a stillness that could only be associated with death.

  Another crack pierced the air. Manny had found another target. Ignore it, Rhys told himself. Do your job.

  He kneeled at the first body, unclasped the dead man’s rucksack, and ripped it off him, liberating a hidden AK-9 in the process. That must have been a chore, keeping that between pack and back over a long hike. Rhys dumped the contents of the pack on the ground and spread them out. It was mainly personal shit: a water bottle, extra socks, a sweatshirt, a black boonie cap, sunglasses. But there was a suppressor and a flash guard for the rifle and a pair of flash-bang grenades. He then rummaged through the dead man’s pockets and found extra clips of subsonic 9x39mm rounds and a foreign-looking grenade. He’d give that to Manny; he had no idea how it worked. On the belt, he saw a knife in a scabbard. He unsnapped the clasp and slid it out. The thing so terrified him that he slid it back. He’d rather die empty-handed than have to defend himself in a knife fight.

  Rhys knew what he had to do. The basic principle of gaining advantage in a military engagement is influencing the enemy’s decision-making process. They had cut off RG 405’s preferred route north, which followed a path that eventually cut through a pass between two bluffs. They’d now search for an alternative. Didn’t make much sense to file through an open space with a sniper at the far end. They’d go to the east or to the west. Or they’d split and go in both directions. Rhys and Manny desperately wanted them to go east, which would mean climbing higher before they again descended, a detour that would add a couple of hours.

  Yet Rhys knew that RG 405 had to make a more fundamental decision: evade or engage? RG 405 had the advantage of overwhelming numbers, but they might not know that. Rhys and Manny had the advantage of elevation, field of view, greater familiarity of the terrain, and the knowledge of what they were up against.

  What would 405 do? Would they continue forward and take casualties? Would they divert to the east? The west? Would they slither back and take cover? Send out scouts to recon the scene? What would they do?

  Tell them what to do, Rhys thought.

  He ran hard to the west, knowing that the rise that bisected the open field hid him from view. Besides, Manny had him covered. The weight he carried increased due to the backpack he now wore and the AK-9 in his hand. He ran uphill, cursing the fact that climbing a mountain always meant going uphill.

  His destination was the top of a steep incline, a cliff, really, less than a kilometer to the west. He’d climb around it and set up on top. If Spetsnaz were to go that way, they’d stay at the lower elevation, inside the tree line, and then scale the rocks. They’d have studied the maps. They’d know, as he and Manny did, that that was the only western option.

  Rhys would cut off that option, force them to go east—where Manny would set up and be ready to unload on them, forcing them still further east.

  SCHARKOV DIDN’T PANIC. He lay on his back in the crater and looked at the gray clouds above him. The rainwater pooled around him like a cold, gritty bath. He felt grass stuck to his face.

  He’d been in worse situations, but still, he hated the unexpected. It meant they weren’t in control.

  He studied a map that was folded inside a clear zip lock bag. No one from the hut could have descended this far that quickly. So where did they come from? And who were they? The safe house’s perimeter security? Why hadn’t they engaged Gray Scout? Whoever had just shot had the advantage of elevation. So why didn’t they press? That’s what he would do. Perhaps the commander had no trust in his men?

  And worse, if they hadn’t come from the hut, they had to have come from the valley below. The realization enraged Scharkov for it meant that they had responded to the initial attack on the hut—and that they had been faster. But what team could move into position that quickly? American Special Forces?

  And Shuvalov had wanted them to slow down!

  A part of Scharkov’s brain welcomed the prospect. How often would there be the opportunity to go head to head with American Special Forces? He had the utmost confidence in his team. It would be worth the casualties. The engagement would remain forever classified, but both sides would know the outcome and that would shape the confidence of both programs for decades. And he would be the one who had commanded.

  The solution was aggression. Always aggression.

  He pinpointed a location on the map that met his needs.

  “Andrei,” Scharkov said to his radioman, “get me Team 2 leader again.”

  It took Andrei a moment get through on the R-350M burst-transmission radio, but Scharkov was quickly able to issue his orders to the captain: “Send a diversionary unit—composed of two recon specialists and a sniper—to the west and up the incline in map grid 12H. From the way the elevation lines come together, it must be a cliff. Have them go straight up it. There’s a ridge or flat of some kind on top. Have them set up on it to cover us. We’re proceeding as planned. We’re not diverting.”

  C

  HAPTER SEVENTEEN

  TYLER, HOW MUCH did the bullet weigh?”

  “Pardon me?”r />
  “The bullet. The one you shot at the man. How much did it weigh?” Maksym had a distant look in his eyes. He was present and communicating, but he wasn’t entirely there.

  “Uh, 147 grams, I think.”

  “And the speed at which the bullet left the rifle?”

  “The muzzle velocity? 2,700 feet per second.”

  “Feet! Why can’t you Americans use the metric system? It makes everything so much easier. No matter. 2,700 feet. That’s about 823 meters per second.” Maksym did the math in his head. “And we’ll say the distance was an even 300 meters. It wasn’t exactly, but if we’re estimating, we might as well estimate round numbers.”

  Tyler had no idea what Maksym was going on about. Maksym just stood there, his eyes darting back and forth and up and down as he calculated.

  “Of course, I’m sure altitude, humidity, wind all play roles, but I wouldn’t know how to factor that in, so I’ll just ignore it. Regardless, with what you told me, your bullet dropped 8.5 centimeters. That’s 3.3 inches to you.”

  Tyler looked at him. Maksym ignored the fact that the bullet, whose trajectory he more or less accurately calculated, ended a life, and did so in a gruesomely violent way.

  “Did you know that?” Maksym asked.

  “Yeah, I knew that’s about what it would be.”

  “And you knew it without calculating the math, yes? That’s quite impressive. Requires much experience. Me, I have to do the math. I keep trying to tell Pavlo: we are always doing math, whether consciously or not. Anyway, good shooting, Tyler. I’m proud of you.

  Tyler had made the shot about an hour earlier. The Tereshchenkos were informed of the result after being let up from the safe room, but it filled no one with joy. The mood inside the hut was somber. Maksym had probably been building his equation ever since. Maybe it was his way of dealing with stress.

  Shortly after Maksym’s calculation of the bullet’s drop, they heard a rifle shot in the distance. Some seconds later, they heard a second shot.

  No one in the hut was familiar with local customs. When it came to hunting season in the Carinthian Alps, did June 1 mean June 1, or did it mean around June 1? Could some hunter be getting an early start?

  Tyler, although not a hunter, figured it out. “I’m guessing you don’t get a second shot at a deer or whatever the hell was being shot at, especially not that many seconds later. A deer would be on the other side of the Grossglockner by then.”

  “Practicing?”

  “Maybe,” said Colin, but he was obviously unconvinced.

  Colin, Tyler, and Lucinda knew that there were men with guns somewhere in the distance and it probably had to do with them. They were getting closer. The three exchanged glances but didn’t say anything.

  Svitlana put some water on the stove and threw two teabags in a pot. Maksym and Pavlo returned to the challenge of the radio, though they had made no progress.

  Minutes passed, maybe a half hour. Lucinda couldn’t take the idleness anymore. She got Colin’s attention and indicated he should follow her to the bedroom. One bed was still covered with weapons, the other with first aid paraphernalia. Lucinda closed the door behind them.

  “Ideas?” she asked.

  “As best we know, there’s only one guy out there watching us,” Colin said. “He can’t cover all sides. If we know where he is, maybe we could escape out the other side of the house.”

  “But we don’t know where he is. And we don’t know if he’s the only one out there.”

  “If we’re still here when the rest of the Spetsnaz arrive, we’re finished.”

  “Even if we did get out, it’ll get dark before we reach any shelter. Getting lost in the mountains in this weather would also be a death sentence,” said Lucinda.

  “But we’d have a chance. Maybe we can use the darkness to our advantage. We have a night vision device. Maybe we can spot him.”

  Colin discussed the possibility with utter calm. He was always calm. He wasn’t terribly aggressive or daring, but he was reasonable and Lucinda valued his judgment.

  Boom!

  The blast was far away, diffuse. The two looked questioningly at each other.

  “That was no rifle,” said Colin.

  The next sound they heard was. Clacking subsonic automatic rifle fire could barely be heard well in the distance. Two or three staccato bursts.

  “There’s a war going on out there,” said Lucinda.

  She considered for a moment and then she realized what she was hearing. A smile came to her face.

  “Jesus, Colin, listen to that. You know who that is. They’re singlehandedly taking on a Spetsnaz unit.”

  Multiple weapons fired somewhere in the distance.

  C

  HAPTER EIGHTEEN

  RHYS LAY PERCHED at the top of the cliff. As he had approached it, the Old Man of the Mountain, a natural rock formation in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, came to mind. The Old Man had freakishly collapsed one night in 2003, the result of fissures due to millennia of freezing and thawing. Rhys had been devastated, feeling like a part of him had died. He ached every time he saw the back of a New Hampshire state quarter.

  Just don’t let me fall off this thing like the old man did.

  If they tried to move west, this would be the spot. The map dictated it as the only alternative to their original route—which now appeared cut off to them—and the much longer eastern route, which would add hours to their march. Rhys just didn’t know how many would come this way. Would they send all? Probably not. They’d send a few, to scope it out. RG 405 didn’t know what they were facing. Rhys would engage and make a show of it. Send them a clear signal that the eastern route was preferable.

  Manny, meanwhile, would move slightly to the east, go to ground, and eyeball the Russians as they moved along the eastern route. He wouldn’t engage. He’d let ’em go and then he and Rhys would advance ahead along the Russians’ original route. They’d hit them again. Then again and again. Slow ’em down enough so that the SEALS could free the safe house.

  The clouds, still thick and full of moisture, had risen in elevation, but they still blocked out the sun totally, leaving an eerie constant light devoid of shadows. The result was a clarity of vision and a surreal view of the surroundings, whether peaks, folds in the mountains, or nearby rocks or trees.

  Rhys backed away from the edge and lay still as death. He listened. They’d present themselves to his ears before his eyes. He’d know when they had arrived.

  He shouldn’t have allowed Manny to come along. Manny was too green. Lucinda would have his ass for that. Of course, everyone—including he and Manny—were all probably going to die, so it wouldn’t much matter who was mad at who. What a waste. All for some woman he had only read about in the newspaper. Was she worth risking his life for? Lucinda might be worth it. He’d already lost one station chief, and damned if he was going to lose another. But he shouldn’t have brought Manny into it. This wasn’t what Lucinda had in mind when she told Rhys to train him. And Manny’s little Olga/Dagmar/Carmelita or whatever she was called will be robbed of a good man. The kid had been just too damn persistent.

  The first sound, when it came, was a clacking of tumbling stones that had been dislodged. It wasn’t no wind that caused that, he thought. He remained still and focused his ears.

  A scrape, contact of metal against stone. A shuffle, probably along a ledge, further down. How many were there? Not too many by the sound of it. That meant most went Manny’s way. Rhys would have to hustle back.

  He wanted them high enough so that they couldn’t retreat. Wasn’t much they could do if he had them pinned in the middle of a rock face. Their only escape would be up toward him, where he’d take ’em out.

  He had familiarized himself with the weapons he picked up. The AK-9 was a neat little thing. He would have liked to have taken it for a whirl before this, but there hadn’t been much of chance for that. His biggest fear was a light trigger, which would cause the gun to spit out an entire clip
before he had a chance to aim properly. He dropped the clip, ejected the cartridge in the action, and tested the weight of the trigger. A harder pull then he had expected. He’d still probably pull the trigger till it spat out its last bullet, but then he’d switch to his Glock, with which he was intimate. He reloaded the weapon and flicked the safety.

  The men grew louder. They were higher, a minute or two from cresting the lip.

  He placed the rifle and the Glock on the rock on the top of the rock, careful not to make any sounds. They’d come into play, but he wanted to disorient the climbers first. He grabbed the Russian flash-bang grenade and fondled it in order to get comfortable with its weight.

  Wait. Just a little longer.

  He heard a rifle hit against the rock face and figured it came from about twenty or thirty feet down. The distance was just about right.

  He palmed the grenade, stuck the index finger of his other hand into the ring of the pin, stole a quick glimpse down the cliff, and pull—

  He stopped. How long was the fuse? Toss it immediately and it would detonate harmlessly well below the climbing soldiers. Hold it for too long and... Well, don’t hold it too long.

  Two seconds? Two seconds would seem an eternity. Fuck it.

  He pulled the pin.

  Wait...

  Wait...

  He tried to remain calm as his face tensed up into a knot.

  Wait...

  He tossed it calmly over the edge. A second later, it concussed.

  A flash-bang grenade is designed to temporarily disorient the senses. It produces a blinding flash of light, overwhelming the eye’s photoreceptor cells, and an intensely loud bang, meant to cause a temporary loss of hearing. In this situation, it didn’t hurt that the bang also disturbs the fluid in the ear, causing a loss of balance. Rhys hoped they’d simply fall off the cliff.

  Yet flash-bangs are most effective in enclosed spaces. The detonation is meant to bounce off walls and assault the target from all directions. Exploding in the open, albeit along a wall of rock, had a limited effect. Still, the concussion, when it came, was alarming. The shock caused all three men to slip and one did tumble down the rocks before landing in a contorted position on the level ground below.