Hunters: A Trilogy (29 page)

‘No more guns,’ it had been their motto.

Finally they had been in charge of their own destiny.

Ken shook his head in disgust and let his angry thoughts off their leash.

‘Yeah, well that’s just great, isn’t it? And now here we are – in the middle of bloody nowhere with more guns than John-fucking-Wayne! How the hell did we end up here doing this? It’s just way too crazy! His mind started doing that little sliding thing once more. Ken shook the feeling away and let the memories of the storm come back to him.

He shuddered as the sharp teeth of their terrible reality returned; the stinging bite of their undeniable truth jumped into his head and savaged his mind like a rabid Pit Bull. It seemed like an awfully long time ago since his life had been more normal, a very long time ago. The thoughts sickened him. He and Mike had been in a different place back then, worlds away.

In a place he was able to remember, and remember exactly…

The other thing that Ken remembered, precisely, was how they had ended up here on this very beautiful, but eerie, night. The smell of blood lay in his nostrils, gunpowder residue clung to him, its sticky abrasiveness sitting between his fingers and lying etched into the lines on his face. Burnt propellant and rifle-oil had a way of clinging to you, sitting there for days afterwards. Dying men’s blood had a way of clinging to your mind, too. It stuck in your head to run in rivulets through your memory – sometimes it kept running forever. The contact from a couple of hours ago was still fresh in his mind and Ken envied Mike’s ability to simply sleep it off.

He looked up at the sky and then with a rueful shake of his head, walked over to the rock face and squatted on his haunches for a while, just to take a breather and do some thinking. He needed to let this madness find its own way out of his head, five minutes was all it would take – five minutes of peace and quiet and all would be well with the world. Ken grinned horribly at that pleasant, but ridiculously stupid thought.

He knew that things weren’t finished yet, not by a long way.

The moon rose over the top of the hills behind him and although its face was obscured by the huge rock, the orange glow of its cascading light still illuminated the vast expanse of hills and desert to his front. It had a calming effect upon him. Ken wondered if George and his gang weren’t perhaps looking down at them on some fancy monitor or a weird silver screen. Maybe they were here, but he just couldn’t see them...‘Everything has a parallel, Kenneth!’

He shook his head to dispel the sound of the old man’s words. The surrealistic nature of his predicament rolled over him once more. Here he was, fresh blood still spattered on the toes of his boots, sitting under the stars, sitting and waiting for the dawn to arrive, whereupon they would go and confront the last Demon, conquer him and save whatever it was they were supposed to be saving.

‘Yeah, what is it that we’re supposed to be saving again? Stuck here and risking our necks to prevent a handful of people from being burned to a crisp and then sucked into a giant black hole in the sky…’ His sanity did a little somersault at the idea. ‘Crazy, plain crazy, is what this is; it’s just plain crazy!’ The thoughts made his head tighten, Ken wished that he had some of George’s liquor; a couple of stiff ones would be most welcome right about now, just to help knock him out. Shaking the dark feelings out of his mind, he rose to his feet, picked up the rifle and walked around their perimeter.

Prowling silently through the darkness, he would pause every so often to let the quiet noises of the night come to him. Crickets chirruped in the nearby undergrowth, some night bird screamed above the rock face, and away in the distance he caught the lonely howl of a predator, its feral noise wafting up to him, effortlessly carried across the desert upon the back of a cool night breeze.

Life sounded quite normal out here in the wilderness.

‘Normal...this isn’t even close to being normal!’ The thought made him shiver. He rolled down the sleeves on his shirt and returned to the protective lea provided by the overhanging rock. His position was an ideal one as the huge shadow from the rock covered him with its blackness. He sat and watched the desert floor below as it reflected the pale moonlight, which poured from behind him. It made Ken feel like some ancient, eagle-eyed hunter, sitting and waiting for the dawn to break, waiting for the new day when the hunting would begin again.

Just for once he let his little mental partner have a whinge. ‘When is the time gonna arrive when I’m gonna be able to stop doing all of this crap?’ he thought. Then, with a wry shake of his head, and whilst forcing himself to getting a grip, he reminded himself of the current situation, letting the old soldier within automatically contemplate on how he would try and approach this position, should he have been the enemy.

He hadn’t even gathered his thoughts when the sudden, muffled
‘Crump’
of an exploding hand-grenade echoed over the top of the outcrop, its distant percussion springing Ken straight back into his usual character. Standing quietly, he moved across the moonlit ground to wake Mike, as he approached the Spear, his eye was caught by a white flash upon the screen in his own vehicle. Stooping into the cab, he tried to focus on its dimly illuminated glow. The screen seemed to have come alive of its own accord.

‘What now?’ he thought. Glancing at the screen again, Ken caught sight of a moving light. There, in the top corner of the monitor was the symbol of the Light Maker, and it was glowing as it moved. ‘They’re moving!’ Ken tried to orientate himself, the dot was blinking as it moved down the screen and its angle confused him at first. He realised it was because the Spear was facing the wrong way and the screen was actually showing him a scene from behind his position, beyond the rock face to his rear. By the angle of the blipping white light, he guessed the device was now level with them and probably on the track where he’d killed the Afghans. His thoughts leapt into action. ‘Yes, they’ve fallen for my little surprise – some people just never learn, the suckers!’

Ken hoped that Red was now on his own, or perhaps full of shrapnel himself...‘Yeah, that would be even better!’ he thought, maliciously.

However, the rapidly moving white dot told a different tale, whoever had been left alive obviously still had the device, and by the looks of things they were making good progress down towards the main road. Ken watched as the blink rapidly headed straight toward Highway One. After one more glance at the screen, he spun around and started running towards Mike’s vehicle.

As he neared the darkened Spear, he was surprised to see Mike already up and in the process of exiting the upwardly sliding door. ‘There’s an alarm sounding in my wagon, is it the perimeter? What’s happening?’ he asked, still half asleep as he clambered over the front seat.

‘It sounds as though they’ve found my grenade, but someone is still moving,’ Ken said, ‘and whoever it is, well...they’re heading back down to the main road, and in a big hurry by the looks of it. We might be able cut them off, but I don’t think we can make it in time, not even if we hammer these.’ He nodded at the Spears and waited for Mike to digest the information.

Mike agreed and then suggested that perhaps they should manoeuvre the Spears so the screens overlooked the main road far below, by using the screens they would at least be able to see who was moving past. He said it was unlikely that Red would go further away from the base, because it was where the portal lay, so if he wanted to get back to George and be one of them, then he was going to need the tiny hole in the SD House.

Ken started his Spear and turned it so that the front was facing back down the valley toward the road. Mike jumped into the other side and caressed the screen, his actions causing it to zoom rapidly onto the road far below them. By pure luck they were in a good position and easily able to observe at least two miles of the route as it passed between the hills.

Seeing the amazing view which the screen provided, Ken whispered: ‘How good are these things, eh? That’s a bloody great picture!’ Taking time to think, he then suggested that maybe Mike should place his Spear in a position watching the other way, just in case Red had figured out their position and this was nothing more than a diversion to get them looking the wrong way…

Mike clambered out, saying: ‘I’ll just watch our backs; you see what they are up to when they come past on the road. I reckon he will definitely head back to the airfield...’ He turned away to jog back to his vehicle.

Nodding in affirmation, Ken continued to watch his monitor.

Five minutes later, he shouted Mike over.

‘What’s happening, mate?’ Mike asked, breathlessly sliding into the passenger seat. Ken pointed at the white pickup that raced across the screen.

Even from this distance, they saw Red’s ponytail flapping as he wrestled the truck over the broken ground. In the rear, manning the machinegun was a lone Afghan, who, by the looks of things, was badly injured, his left arm dangled uselessly by his side whilst he clung desperately to the pistol grip of the weapon with the other hand. Each bouncing jolt of the suspension nearly threw him overboard and his posture was one of desperation. The two watching men were almost able to smell the fear on him from their distant position. Red was merciless with the whip he administered to his bucking bronco of a vehicle.

Ken laughed and said, ‘Look at old Red going for it, watch him go, now there’s a man in a hurry if ever I saw one!’ He wished that he were in the gunner’s seat of a Main Battle Tank...‘Yeah, that would put an end to this right now, one well-placed depleted-uranium round and that would be the end of it. ‘Kaboom’ and it would be goodbye, Red!’ The thought filled him with the desire to enter battle.

Mike’s whisper filled the cab. ‘And goodbye to the Light Maker as well, you lunatic!’ Ken looked across in surprise. Mike said, ‘I can hear your bloody thoughts from here, Ken. I know what you’re like, mate!’ He shook his head and continued watching the screen as the racing pickup bounced away from them.

Almost as it was about to leave their field of view, the truck swerved violently to one side, the sudden movement leaving a long trail of sparks flying out into the darkness, the flurry of sparks were followed by a red gleam from the truck’s brake lights. Staying firmly ablaze the rear lights rose into the air, and as the men watched in surprise, they witnessed the unbelievable sight of the Ford’s nose dropping viciously into some unseen void. The taillights hung upright for one brief moment, before abruptly turning turtle and then crashing over the top of the truck as it tossed itself into an upside down position. The last thing they saw was the Afghan gunner clinging onto the barrel of his murderous weapon. In a large plume of dust, the vehicle disappeared from view and flopped into the crater.

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Ken punched the air with glee. ‘Have some of that, you bastards!’ he said, through clenched teeth.

Mike grinned at him in the darkened cab of the Spear.

Ken grinned back, saying: ‘Oh, what happy days these are, Mister Wyppen – what happy days indeed!’ He roared with angry laughter. It was a rare thing indeed when the enemy simply rolled over in front of you, his mind did a small jump for joy at the thought and he banged out a quick drum-beat on the steering column with his hands.

‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and finish the job, it looks like George, or someone, has given us a helping hand, no more running around the desert like lunatics looking for this prick, Red’s right there – upside down and waiting for us to join in the party, and it’s gonna be his own fucking goodbye party!’ Ken couldn’t contain himself and laughed once again.

They decided it was exactly what they would do.

‘Let’s go, last one there’s a loser!’ Mike shouted, racing across to his Spear.

And so, with the sound of thunder bursting forth from their engines and a roaring within their hearts, the two men exploded from their hiding place and headed down to where their final confrontation awaited, to where Red lay trapped.

It would have been an eerie sight to anyone who saw them as they rocketed past in the darkness, orange moonlight glinting against the dull flanks of the Spears, engines howling into the face of an approaching, velvet dawn. Racing into the dark without headlights, guided by the dimly glowing blue screens in front of their eyes, gravel and dust spitting away from under their giant tyres, they hurtled into the teeth of the Dragon.

The blinking of the Light Maker gave Ken a strong signal as he turned left onto the main road, the small light was still moving upon his screen, which was now showing the heat signature of the wreckage ahead of them. Through the darkness, and through the sides of the crater, his scanner showed the outline of the upside down Ford ahead. Two shining, people-shaped, glares showed him where the men were. One lay under the vehicle and was very still, whilst the other figure was making its way out of the hole and heading away from him, the signature of the device shining as it moved with him.

Ken floored the Spear’s accelerator and with an immense rush of power, took off like a banshee after the last man. The distance between the vehicle and his quarry shrank rapidly. ‘Split up when we get there, he’s still moving, you go left and I’ll take the right, try and go around the crater!’ he shouted into the microphone. He began to feel the adrenaline rush burning his eyes. In typical fashion, its release slowed everything down as the moment of truth arrived. He felt as though he was floating, racing towards Red, floating through time.

That same time had now begun to slow almost to a standstill, yet Ken still saw the trees and rocks zooming by the windows of the Spear, stars blurring as they rushed overhead. His was an unstoppable, headlong charge towards the enemy. It was only him and the rocketing vehicle beneath, hurtling into the teeth of the Dragon. And then time did stand still for Ken, he felt as though he had been paused, frozen, by some unseen force. He yelled at the blue screen. ‘Come on! Come on!’ Then, abruptly, as though he had somehow leapt across that frozen portion of time, he saw the pit appearing, the dust from Red’s crash still floating like a mist over the deep hole.