There would be no trophies. This was not hunting. This was survival. He had consumed the meat of the local creatures before, and though he found it unpleasant, there was a need to keep going and that meant sustenance. He skinned the thigh of one of the creatures and had a hasty meal before preparing to depart. He dragged all three corpses through the trees and dropped them into the waters of the closest marsh, and then he was on his way again.
When the stars faded away and the local sun rose, he used its position to keep his path true. He moved at a rapid pace, though he was near exhaustion.
The sun rose higher into the sky as he slipped into the waters of a slow-moving river that was heavily populated with fish and the occasional reptilian hunter. He had already proven himself against one of the great lizards and now, instead, he remained wary of them.
The lack of his visor was maddening. The lack of his control gauntlet was worse. He could have called the ship to him. As he did so, he could have activated the plasma caster and eliminated all threats. Instead he was forced to rely on the old ways, which his father would have said were the best ways. It was draining, but it was also exhilarating.
* * *
The sun set and clouds covered the sky in a dark, threatening blanket. It would storm soon. He knew that much.
The elements always presented a level of danger. He could not hunt lightning, or slay a flooding river—it did not care about a plasma bolt, and when his ship was so far away, there was always a possibility that he could drown. That was part of the thrill of hunting in a new place. There were always challenges to consider.
The winds increased in intensity until they roared and shook the trees, and he moved on, sliding between the foliage as best he could while moving at a steady pace.
Finally he reached an area that was familiar. A copse of trees where he had carefully made a few directional marks, the sort that would be overlooked by anyone who didn’t know what to look for. The scratches were small, but distinct.
* * *
Daylight had returned by the time he found his ship, but it could not be clearly seen past the heavy clouds and constant rain.
A voice command and the door of the vessel opened, dropping to allow him access. The vessel’s cloak shimmered and stuttered through the process. Once inside he moved as quickly as he could, gathering what he needed. A new command gauntlet. A new bladed gauntlet. The old mask he had worn on a dozen previous hunts, damaged and scarred but still fully functional. Another Combistick and a plasma caster.
He could not allow the indigenous creatures to keep his property—he would have it back. He would hunt down and destroy the ones that sought to keep him as a prize and examine him. Such treatment was unforgiveable.
Conducting a quick scan he discovered something that quickened his pulse. He’d been compromised, and after a few moments he managed to find the device that someone had attached to his shoulder. It was almost undetectable, and he removed it with one quick stroke of a surgical blade.
It was a small thing, very likely with a limited range, but he thought he could still use it to his advantage.
There was time left, but not much. The hunt was almost finished. His trophies were few, but the hunt itself had been rewarding. He had even acquired data about the culture of these primitive animals. Until this expedition, he had never really considered that they had hunters, too. Now he knew.
That changed the challenge, in a profound way. It was far more interesting to be the predator and the prey at the same time.
* * *
“What the fuck do you mean, ‘the target is missing?’” Traeger’s voice was soft, but only because he made himself speak calmly instead of roaring.
For the moment he could maintain his composure, because he had the photographic evidence he needed to make his point, and he’d shown it around without any hesitation. If Elliott hadn’t come through, his wrath would have been epic.
He was back in his room after several last-minute meetings, and he’d been feeling pretty damned good when LaValle called him. He’d expected it to be Church, but apparently the man was handling problems on the home front instead of actually doing the hunting. He’d have a chat with him about that when he got back to the base.
“Look, it’s not all bad news,” LaValle said. “We have a team ready and we have an advantage.”
“There’s always a team ready, asshole. They’re called the fucking Reapers.”
“Yeah, okay. So the Reapers are out there, and they’re looking, but they don’t have all the best information, okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the damn thing has a tracker. It’s one of ours. We have the code. We can activate.”
Traeger took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “All right. Okay. Now we’re talking. The Reapers are already gone?”
“Yeah. They slipped out of isolation as soon as it happened.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. They’re all worried about honor and pride. We don’t have to worry about shit like that. We just have to worry about getting back our new acquisition.”
“That’s it,” LaValle confirmed. “We’ve got the tools. We’ve got a team heading out.”
“Good, excellent. Make sure they get to our Predator before the Reapers do.”
“‘Predator?’”
“Have you looked at that thing, LaValle? Does it look like a vegetarian to you?’
“Thing’s got all the good looks of a crab, or a spider.”
“Predator is good enough. Go get my Predator, LaValle, and don’t disappoint me.”
“Not gonna happen,” LaValle replied. “We’ll have it soon enough. Where can it go? We’ve got it tagged.”
Time for a quick lesson. “You had him tagged and strapped before and he got away,” Traeger replied. “What good did that do? Go get him, and don’t fuck it up.”
He killed the conversation.
The Predator was a must-have, but just as importantly, he needed to make this happen without the Reapers. It had to be on his terms. He needed to prove that the Company was as good as it needed to be in order to finish what he’d just started.
The skies outside were clear to the north, but when Traeger looked south he saw a line of darkness obscuring the horizon. Storm clouds blocked his view, save for an occasional dance of lightning within the very heart of that storm.
There was nothing more he could do except pray, and that was one lesson he’d never learned from his momma. Prayer was for the weak and the desperate, and he refused to be either.
Hours to go. He should have been nervous, but Traeger felt confident. He knew he’d done his best and his best was—with very rare exceptions—always enough.
22
The sun was up, the rain had set in again, and they were tired, but none of the Reapers thought about resting. There was a monster out there. They’d caught it before and they’d catch it again, though this time they wouldn’t be worried about bringing the damned thing in alive.
Hill said nothing. He had his eyes closed and he was resting as much as one could without being asleep. Tomlin knew the man well enough to know that if he so much as whispered, Hill would be up and active.
He didn’t test the theory.
They sped down Highway 41, staying close to the water whenever they could and heading for the last place where they’d seen the alien hunter. They’d seen evidence of its passing, subtle signs that most people would have missed. A branch broken here, a spot in soft mud. There was no time for closer examination. The marks were hard enough to distinguish in the rain, but Tomlin had no doubt that Hyde was right. He was a hunter and a killer, and he was the best tracker they had left.
No time for taking chances. The alien was out there and heading for whatever passed as a base camp. Maybe it planned to go home. Maybe it planned to call in reinforcements. It was hard to say. All they knew for certain was that no one had ever successfully captured one of these things in the past, and it would do whatever it could to end this
contest without anyone having hard evidence that it existed.
Because if the situation were reversed, he would be doing the exact same thing.
That meant it would be hunting them down, taking out the Stargazer base if it had to. They needed to get to it before it could get to them.
“There.” Pulver nodded and pointed with his chin. “We need to cut off the main road and head into the Okefenokee Swamp, I think.”
“Is that the best approach?”
“It’s not the fastest, but if we want to see signs of where it’s headed, then 41 isn’t going to do us much good. The road here veers away from the swamp, and most of the attacks took place pretty damned close to the waters. The thing won’t be following the populated routes, either.”
Tomlin nodded. The man wasn’t wrong. He just didn’t really like the idea of getting away from the main road. He wanted faster, and 41 was going to be faster than the dirt roads and warped pavement.
* * *
The side road—he couldn’t even make out a sign that offered a name—was every bit as bad as he’d feared. Even with a reinforced suspension, they had no choice but to drive slower and to use caution. There were places where the heavy rainfall had washed the road away, or buried it under muddy waters that would only grow deeper.
Hill opened his eyes, looked at their surroundings and growled, just as annoyed as Tomlin.
Hyde was the most active of them, scanning every tree they passed and searching for any signs that a seven-foot-tall alien might be hiding nearby, or at least that it might have passed this way. There was nothing. Even if they were following the exact same path, the creature was canny.
Above them a nearly silent military copter tore the air apart, heading south. They knew the bird well enough, having traveled in one before. Someone other than the Reapers had left Stargazer with a mind toward finding and capturing the thing they’d already taken down once.
“Who do you think it is?” Hyde’s voice was startling in the silence.
“Modified HAL LCH,” Pulver answered, “Army or CIA—either way, they’ve got a nice lead on us.”
Hill shook his head. “They don’t have shit. They’re just doing the same job as us, and they got birds while we got wheels.”
Tomlin said, “Anything is possible. We don’t know what they did to that thing while we were locked away. Maybe they’ve got trackers. Maybe they have a damned GPS satellite aimed at it right now.”
“No way to know,” Hill responded, “but I say we do our best to follow those guys if we can.”
Tomlin nodded and gunned the engine a bit more than he was comfortable with. They didn’t want to lose out on the hunt, but he also knew they failed immediately if he wrecked the transport.
The rains picked up again and the wipers moved furiously to allow him to see past the water smearing the windshield. Hill sat up, suddenly alert, and kept his eyes on the side of the road, while the other two did the same thing.
They moved as quickly as they could, the wind and the rain playing havoc around them.
* * *
LaValle peered toward the ground below, ignoring the furious winds that made his stomach churn and the nearly continuous wash of hard rain that obscured the view. On the screen in front of him a small dot blinked constantly, indicating that their target was no longer moving.
“I think we might have just gotten lucky, gentlemen.” He looked at the pilot, a man he’d known for more than a decade, and then looked back at the soldiers in the black helicopter. There were markings on the vehicle, of course, but they were lies. According to those markings it belonged to a company that did emergency repairs in remote areas. The company was on the New York Stock Exchange, but never did enough movement to look even remotely sexy to the average investor.
It was a good cover, and it helped the Company move where it needed to without anyone getting too curious. Not that he expected too many people would be popping their heads out of the windows in this weather. Besides, in comparison to the average helicopter used by the state and local authorities, this thing made only a whisper of noise.
“Got a location for me?” Rodriguez, the pilot, looked away from his controls only for a moment, and even then his hands held a death grip on the flight stick.
“Sending it right now.” The tap of a button and the coordinates were sent to Rodriguez. The pilot nodded and made corrections.
“Fifteen minutes out. Looks like it’s gonna be near Deer Water Springs.”
“What the hell is Deer Water Springs?”
“Very small town. Like one paved road, a handful of buildings.”
“Then maybe our luck is holding.” LaValle allowed himself to smile. It was good to catch a break or two. He needed them. They needed them. He understood what Traeger was up to—he was one of the few. Most of the men with him were loyal to the Company and they’d all been loyal to Elliott. The old buzzard had been the butt of a few jokes in his time, but that had changed the moment the Predator had been brought in.
They’d been ready to volunteer for the job the instant Pappy’s body was discovered. It was hard not to want to make amends for any harm they’d caused the poor bastard over the years, even if the harm had all been muttered comments and the occasional joke in poor taste.
So, yes, they were here to capture the Predator. They were also here to make sure they felt a little better about themselves when it was all said and done, and LaValle supposed that included him as well.
The winds were hellish and he held on tightly to the bar above his head as Rodriguez compensated for the latest hard gusts. LaValle’s stomach tried to churn and he refused it that luxury. There was too much at stake for him to puke his guts out. He’d save that for after everything was done.
Despite the conditions that tried to wash them from the sky, Rodriguez managed to land in a clearing not far from their target. There were lights out there, garish lights that flashed in a dozen different colors and, unless he was mistaken, there might actually be a Ferris wheel just past the closest copse of trees.
“Are we near an amusement park?”
Rodriguez shook his head. “Looks like a county fair set up, and not even a big one. Odds are there’s no one even there in this weather.”
“Well, isn’t that just shits and giggles.” LaValle looked at the men with him and gestured for them to get themselves ready.
“Hey, it’s light,” Rodriguez said. “Beats total darkness.”
“Not always, but probably in this case,” LaValle admitted.
They cleared the copter a few minutes later and headed in the direction of the fairground where, according to the tracker, their target was waiting. There were no pep talks. They knew what they were there to do.
The Reapers had been handicapped by the need to bring their prey in alive. These men weren’t the Reapers, and LaValle didn’t feel that particular compulsion. Dead or alive was fine with him, and if they could locate the alien’s ship, well, that was just going to be a big old cup of gravy to wash down their meal.
The air hissed as the hot rain shifted and blasted down hard enough to make him blink past the waters bouncing from the brim of his cap. They all were soaked in seconds, and not a damned thing to be done about it. The only advantage he could think of was that their intel said the aliens saw in the infrared spectrum. If that was true, the rains might well make it harder for the creature to spot them. A little camouflage in the form of warm waters hiding their heat trails.
The county fair rides glowed weirdly in the downpour—vague, brightly lit shapes. There was no clear paved access to the grounds, but there were mud trails where people had walked through the local greenery and trodden it down into the muck. LaValle had the men split into two separate groups and approach the lighted area from different directions. The Predator was supposed to be a keen hunter, and it seemed foolish to offer it a single target.
The shapes became more cohesive the closer they got. At first a few trash cans and empty stands that offered
fry bread, games of chance, and hamburgers—or would have if the place was actually up and running. Badly painted signs on plywood surfaces, open-faced booths with canvas tops that were snapping and sputtering in the hard winds and rain. He could remember a dozen similar carnivals from when he was a kid, but none had seemed so menacing. Somewhere nearby a creature was very likely hunting for them.
Murphy, his second in command, ducked low and very nearly crawled as he reached the first stand and moved behind it, checking for any hint of an enemy. He came back out a few seconds later and started toward the next stall, gesturing for Hamilton to do the same on the other side of the clearing. Hamilton nodded and ran to a ring toss. The winds had knocked over most of the glass bottles in the center island. There was a completely irrational sense of satisfaction in that. LaValle had never been any good at ring tosses.
Hamilton moved with slow precision as he examined the entire stand and then moved for the next game of chance.
Murphy didn’t emerge from his latest stall.
LaValle felt the hairs on his neck rise. No one spoke, but they all looked to him for direction. He gestured for a halt and then waved two others to join him at the shooting gallery, where several waterlogged air rifles waited for someone to use them against battered tin targets.
Nothing.
There was no one in the booth. That was a problem. Murphy should have been there, and he was not.
LaValle looked carefully around the area. One of the others—Brown, was it?—pointed at a spot near the back of the booth. A dark pool was quickly spreading into a larger puddle. LaValle felt his skin crawl into gooseflesh.
Was it possible? Moving closer he saw the water-soaked footprint that belonged to nothing from this planet. There were too many toes, and they were in the wrong places. Also, the print was enormous, several inches longer than his size ten.
Brown—Anderson? Carter?—he hated forgetting names. The guy gestured toward the dumpster set behind the row of stalls, silently asking if he should check it out. LaValle nodded a quick yes and looked up toward the trees above, as the rains kept crashing down into his face.
THE PREDATOR HUNTERS AND HUNTED Page 15