“Ahead, sir,” came Alan’s voice, urgent enough that Oakleigh dropped to one knee and brought the Purdey to his shoulder in one slightly panicked movement. The wood loomed large in his cross hairs, the undergrowth keeping secrets.
“Nothing visible,” he called back over his shoulder, then cleared his throat and tried again, this time with less shaking in his voice. “Nothing up ahead.”
“Just hold it there a moment or so, sir, if you would,” replied Alan, and Oakleigh heard him drop his assault rifle to its strap and reach for his walkie-talkie. “This is red team. Request status report…”
“Anything, Alan?” Oakleigh asked over his shoulder.
“No, sir. No visuals from the drones. None of the players report any activity.”
“Then our boy is still hiding.”
“It would seem that way, sir.”
“Why is he not trying to make his way to the perimeter? That’s what they usually do.”
“The first rule of combat is to do the opposite of what the enemy expects, sir.”
“But this isn’t combat. This is a hunt.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And it isn’t much of a hunt if the quarry’s hiding, is it?” Oakleigh heard the note of indignation in his voice and knew it sounded less like genuine outrage and more like fear, so he put his eye back to the scope and swept the rifle barrel from left to right, trying to keep a lid on his nerves. He wanted a challenge. But he didn’t want to die.
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Don’t be stupid. You’re not going to die.
But then came the crackle of distant gunfire, quickly followed by a squall of static.
“Quarry spotted. Repeat: quarry spotted.”
Oakleigh’s heart jackhammered and he found himself in two minds. On the one hand, he wanted to be in the thick of the action. Last night he’d even entertained thoughts of being the winning player, imagining the admiration of his fellow hunters, ripples that would extend outwards to London and the corridors of power, the private members’ clubs of the Strand, and chambers of Parliament.
On the other hand, now that the quarry had shown himself capable of evading the hunters and drones for so long, he felt differently.
From behind came a rustling sound and then a thump. Alan made a gurgling sound.
Oakleigh realized too late that something was wrong and wheeled around, fumbling with the rifle.
A shot rang out and Alan’s walkie-talkie squawked.
“Red team, report! Repeat: red team, report!”
Cookie had been hiding in the lower branches of a beech. From the tree he’d torn a decent-sized stick, not snapping it, but twisting so it came away with a jagged end. Not exactly sharp. But not blunt, either. It was better than nothing.
He’d watched the player and his bodyguard below, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Forget the nervous old guy. He had a beautiful Purdey, but he was shaking like a shitting dog. The bodyguard was dangerous, but the moment Cookie saw him drop his rifle to its strap, he knew the guy was dead meat.
Sure enough, the guard never knew what hit him. Neither of the hunters had bothered looking up, supreme predators that they were, and Cookie dropped silently behind Alan, bare feet on the cool woodland floor. As his left arm encircled Alan’s neck, his elbow angled so that his target’s carotid artery was fat, his right arm plunged the stick into the exposed flesh.
But the years of drugs and booze and sleeping rough had taken their toll, and even as he let Alan slide to the ground to bleed out in seconds, the old guy was spinning around and leveling his hunting rifle. And where once Cookie’s reactions had been as fast as his brain, now the two were out of alignment.
Oakleigh pulled the trigger. Cookie had already seen that he was left-handed and knew how the weapon would pull, and so he twisted in the opposite direction. But even so, he was too slow.
He heard tree bark crack and saw splinters fly a microsecond after he heard the shot. A second later, pain flared along his side and he felt blood pool in the waistband of his jeans.
The stick was still in his hand, so he stepped forward and rammed it into the old guy’s throat, cursing him for a coward, as Oakleigh folded to the ground with the stick protruding from his neck.