Bishop's Song (13 page)

His still-groggy brain told him something was wrong.
 
Was that a dream?
he wondered.
Or
w
as there actually a sound?

Bishop opened his eyes to darkness
, his first physical move an intentionally slow, slight reach of his hand to the rifle lying beside him.
There! There was the noise again – a voice.

Someone was close.
Bishop was reminded of the primary issue with using a treehouse as a bunk.
You can’t get down quickly
.
If anyone finds you up in this tree, you are basically fucked.

Again, t
he voice… a mere whisper… drifting across the otherwise silent forest.
Was it closer that time?

Prudence advised his now adrenaline
-charged body to remain absolutely still. As dark as it was, he didn’t think the man owning the voice could see him. His imitation of a statue didn’t last long. He couldn’t stand the inaction, couldn’t lie still. He gradually raised his head to peer over the edge of his bedrail-branches.
Nothing… can’t see a damn thing
.

A parade of scenarios
zipped through his mind, a mental kaleidoscope covering every possibility, from a bullet slamming into his back from below, to staying put and hoping whoever was out there passed by. It was maddening.

“
Go left or go right, just get the hell out of the way!” He remembered the words. The instructor was one of the feared “Black Hats,” the cadre of elite men teaching Jump School at Fort Benning – educating mostly at the top of their lungs.
In other words, make up your mind.

Bishop reached for the night vision. He justified the
action by telling himself that it was too dark for his movement to draw the human eye. He powered up the unit and inched it to his face, bringing an alien world of greens and blacks into focus. A red light was blinking at the edge of the monocle’s display. And then the picture went dark – a dead battery.

The anger at his carelessness barely overrode his fear of the threat.
His inner voice spouted long strings of foul dialog, most of the tirade of vile vocabulary directed at his own stupidity. He had spare batteries in his pack, but there was no way he could swap to a fresh cell. In a tree. In the dark. With potential hostiles nearby.

Concern over
discovery soon outweighed his self-directed anger. The sound of rustling leaves drew his attention. Then the murmurs… faint… the words almost intelligible.

Two men. Walking as quietly as possible. An occasional whisper between them.

Had he been discovered? Had they found the truck? Or its tire tracks?

Then the footfalls were close. Very close. A few steps and then a pause… more steps.

A twig snapped, no doubt from the weight of a footfall. The noise was so loud, it startled Bishop. They had to be practically underneath him. His grip on the rifle tightened, his muscles ready to spring.

“Why don’t you try and make more noise?” a
hushed voice hissed. “Why don’t you just advertise to every deer in the county that we’re here?”

“Oh great white hunter,” came a sarcastic
tone. “Please forgive me.”

“Fuck you.”

“If those rangers find us hunting on park property, they’ll be some fucking going on, but it won’t be you doing me.”

“Fuck them, too.”

Poachers. Bishop exhaled, relaxing his coiled frame. While discovery by the two hunters wouldn’t be a good thing, it was a positive that they weren’t looking for him. He remained quiet, waiting as their occasional footsteps and whispers faded into the distance.

As he started to rise, it occurred to him that the rangers might already be
tailing the two trespassers. He’d give it five minutes before exposing himself – just to make sure no one was following the hunters.

No one showed, so he immediately changed the battery in the night vision and began
preparations to follow the two trespassers. It wouldn’t be good for Hugh and the resupply plane to land while there were prying eyes.

With body armor, load vest, laced boots and fully function
ing monocle, Bishop lowered himself from a branch, suspended in the air until his arms were fully extended, and then dropped the remaining four feet to the ground. The impact was much louder than he anticipated.

And then he was off,
tracking the two poachers, trying to make up ground.

Using the night vision, he could travel faster and with more stealth than the two men.
As he moved to close the distance, a break in the canopy above allowed him to check the sky. There were no visible stars or moon.
Cloud cover
, he thought,
a potential issue for Hugh and the relief flight
.

Clearing
his negative mindset, Bishop realized he couldn’t do anything about the weather.
If I get socked in here for several days, I might need one of those deer myself
, he thought.

Bishop realized that a
stalker has an advantage over prey. As long as the two men kept moving, their footfalls would mask any noise made by his approach. A single man can stop and listen, but a group of two or more must coordinate their pauses. Bishop wasn’t worried about the two poachers – they just didn’t impress as being that good.

What did put caution in
the pace of his steps was the chance that the rangers were about. His only clue about their capabilities and resources were the anti-personnel devices rigged on the trail. While they were not bad setups, they weren’t clever enough to merit anticipation of an extreme level of stalking skills.

He also knew that desert hunting was different than seeking game in a wooded area. Visibility was one obvious factor, the dense forest adding difficulty in spotting the target. For this and other reasons, he knew that most woodland hunters used a deer hide or stand
, often elevated and commanding a wide angle of approaches. He slowed a bit, lest the hunters were already in their perch, lying in wait.

As he traveled, the forest took on a dull gray
hue – the obvious result of the sun rising to a densely cloudy day. A few minutes later, the first raindrop smacked against a leaf, several more joining it within moments. The wind picked up shortly after, a clap of thunder rolling in the distance.

Great
, he thought, pulling out his poncho.
This is just fucking great
.
At least I didn’t run the truck through a carwash.

The deluge built quickly,
thunderclaps and flashes of lightening piercing the sky. The wind wasn’t about to be outdone, adding its chorus to the storm. While his poncho would protect the majority of his body from the dampness, Bishop still sought refuge.

Unsure of exactly how dangerous bolts of lightning
could be in a forest, Bishop started looking for some sort of shelter. The nearly constant flashes, combined with the horizontal blow of stinging rain, made him forget about the two men in front of him.

He
identified a deluxe-sized tree that had fallen some time ago, its top landing on higher ground than the trunk. The resulting gap at the base of the hill provided a small space offering a little protection from the downpour and wind. It was the best safe haven he could find.

On and on
, the storm raged. About every 20 minutes, the rain and wind would let up, and Bishop would think it had passed. He’d start to gather himself to move out, and it would all start all over again. Two hours passed before the mini-typhoon finally quit.

The sun remained hidden by a dense overcast of gray
, and that meant no relief flight.

He moved out again, returning his focus
to the two men he knew were just ahead of him.
They must be as frustrated as I am
, he mused.
All keyed up to go steal a meal, and the weather won’t cooperate.

He had advanced another 80 yards when he saw them, or more specifically
, detected the movement of a bush where they had just passed. He cut hard right from his current direction, moving twenty steps to a large tree with more than enough girth to hide his frame.

As before, they were
bickering with each other when they passed. While upset with the meteorological conditions and lack of meat for the dinner table, what really had rustled their feathers was being soaking wet.

“I thought you had packed the rain suits,” accused one.

“Bullshit, you always carry those. Don’t try and blame it on me.”

Bishop grinned at the banter,
thinking of his dead battery, happy in a way that he wasn’t the only incompetent fuck walking the woods today. Apparently, around here they traveled in pairs.

After they had passed, Bishop cut in behind the two hunters, keeping them barely visible and making sure they didn’t cause
him any trouble. He moved from tree to thick bush, never leaving one position of cover before slinking to another. Every footfall was charted ahead of time, avoiding thickets of thorns and general entanglements as important as progressing silently.

Before long
, the two poachers began following a path. Wider and better maintained than a game trail, Bishop was surprised when a sign announced they were progressing along one of the park’s pre-marked hiking excursions.

How stupid
, he thought.
Sure as shit, the rangers have this booby-trapped. I would
.

The terrain
began to change as they passed, large rock formations appearing along the edges of the trail, glimpses of a steeply walled valley visible through the thinning vegetation. Another few hundred yards, and he began to understand why the state of Arkansas had put a park here – the view was postcard-esque.

The vista was ruined by two things, both happening at about the same moment.

Again, sheets of stinging rain began their soaking deluge without any warning, resulting in the already muddy trail becoming a puddle-ridden slop fest.

The second event was the abrupt
halt of Bishop’s quarry, both of the deer hunters moving off the path as if they had seen something ahead of them.

Taking cover behind a formation of
truck-sized boulders, Bishop’s little voice was warning that something was badly wrong up ahead. His premonition was proven correct by the report of a gunshot echoing across the valley. Then another… further off… then another… then several.

The safety came of
f Bishop’s rifle, the ACR moving to his shoulder.

He almost killed the two hunters he’d been following. Both men came crashing through the underbrush, surprising Bishop with
both their speed and position. They ran right past his hide, moving with the determined expressions of terrified men trying to stay alive.

Another round of gunshots rang out, making it clear what the two poachers were running from. Bullets cracked through the air, some
passing directly past Bishop as he hugged the rocks for cover. He realized too late that he should be mimicking the fleeing men. Before he could even pick a direction, several men burst through the foliage and into the boulder field, shots ringing out from their weapons.

Fuck! I don’t have a dog in this fight
, he cursed.
Now what the hell am I going to do?

There were at least six men pursuing the retreating
poachers. Spread out in a loose “V” formation, they clearly meant to kill someone, round after round zipping through the trees.

Bishop pulled off his poncho, the rain gear blocking access to his vest and ammo.
As he peered around his rock fort, a bullet slammed into the stone surface not three inches from his face, the sharp splinters biting into Bishop’s cheek like a swarm of stinging bees. It pissed him off.

Up came the red, illuminated dot of his optic
, and he started dropping the hammer, firing intentionally low. The ACR was a 4
th
generation battle rifle, designed to pour hot lead at a threat, or in this case, multiple threats.

Bishop snapped four rounds left, pivoted right
, and let six more fly. He then centered on the middle of the approaching formation and sprayed 10 more messages of his displeasure. Repeat in reverse, and then repeat again.

The empty magazine
s didn’t hit the ground before a full box of pain-pills was jammed into the weapon. His movements were a blur, releasing the bolt, checking the ejection port for any problems, and then lead was flying at the approaching threats.

The
ACR was like a comfortable pair of blue jeans in Bishop’s hands. Smooth, flawless and rapid, his fire was controlled, well-spaced, and relentless. One man tried to advance, moving from behind the small pine he’d been using for cover. Like a magnet drawn to iron, his motion earned two rounds, geysers of muddy water erupting in the man’s path. The fellow changed his mind and tried to reverse course, but the sloppy ground provided no traction, and he fell into the swill, both legs sticking into the air. Were it not for the deadly hailstorm of lead being exchanged, the routine would have been comical.