A Quiet Man (Victor Book 9)

by Tom Wood

  He cried out, blinded, trying to flinch out of the way, but Victor hooked his arms before they could retreat and wrenched the guy closer. He was already turning his head away from the path of the blood.

  Which exposed the side of his skull to Victor’s face.

  The bounty hunter screamed as Victor’s teeth found his ear.

  Cartilage crushed as Victor’s powerful masseter muscles contracted and his incisors pressed together.

  Victor bit harder as the bounty hunter screamed louder.

  Victor wrenched his head from side to side in savage, violent shakes until the ear tore away from the skull, leaving only frayed strips of skin behind.

  Blinded by Victor’s blood in his eyes, and screaming in agony, the bounty hunter wasn’t fighting back. Too much pain. Too much horror.

  Lex, nearby, was yelling for Victor to release him. He couldn’t get a shot on Victor with the other bounty hunter over him and acting as a human shield.

  Victor released the severed ear, spitting it away, and went for the pistol in the guy’s thigh holster.

  He pulled it free and started shooting.

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  With the wounded bounty hunter wailing and thrashing, Victor couldn’t take proper aim at Lex, but seeking to intervene, Lex rushed closer. Making himself a bigger, easier target.

  Victor squeezed the trigger several times and saw Lex flinch and stagger, although he remained on his feet. Wounded but not incapacitated.

  He returned fire with his carbine, loosing off a quick burst, and the bounty hunter on top of Victor shuddered from the impacts. None of the rounds came through to Victor. He had a thick torso protecting him and that had body armour protecting it on both front and back. The reverberations that reached Victor’s body felt like finger flicks.

  They didn’t stop him squeezing the handgun’s trigger again and again and again until Lex dropped to one knee, then tipped over on to his back.

  The bounty hunter on top of Victor had stopped struggling by then, and he rolled him clear. One of Lex’s shots had penetrated the body armour over his chest. Air hissed and frothy blood bubbled from the wound.

  Lex lay on the ground near to the disabled Escalade. He wasn’t moving either.

  Victor pushed one palm back over his wound, fighting the resulting waves of pain and nausea while he retrieved the compression band. His jeans were now soaked from hip to knee. The dirt all around him had a dark red hue.

  With one hand he looped the band around the top of his thigh and worked the lever until it was tight enough to hurt. He locked it in place.

  Blood gushed from the wound when he released his palm but only once. He grabbed the sachet of Quick Clot and tore it open using his teeth because his fingers were too slick with bright blood to get a firm grip. He had blood in his mouth also, but far less.

  He poured the granules of Quick Clot into the wound.

  It stung so much his eyes watered and his jaw clenched hard. A thick, dark crust formed in and around the wound. No fix, but it would slow down the rate of loss of any blood that managed to get through the compression.

  He stood. Felt a wave of dizziness in his head. Controlled his breathing to fight the intermittent waves of nausea.

  Lex emitted a weak groan.

  Victor’s shots had hit in several places – arms, legs, lower abdomen – but none of the wounds were fatal in the short term. He was out of action, however, delirious from blood loss and shock.

  Victor ignored him.

  His instinct was to hurry, and there was every need to hurry, but he had to take his time. There were still ten heavily armed and armoured bounty hunters and he had a wound that had already weakened him significantly and would kill him if not treated soon, or if it reopened. Despite the danger Joshua, Michelle and Naël were in, Victor was no good to them like this.

  In the trunk of the disabled Escalade, Victor found a cool box with blood packs for every blood group, syringes and cannulas and drips. He could rig one up and regain the blood he had lost, but it would take too long. Instead, he rooted through the supplies to find water, electrolytes and glucose tablets. He mixed the electrolytes into the water and drank down the mixture, then chewed on a mouthful of glucose tablets.

  Victor took Lex’s cap and anti-flash goggles. He took his overshirt too – a brown corduroy garment, baggy and worn. He swapped his own plaid shirt for the corduroy, fixed the cap in place, and would have swapped his jeans for Lex’s trousers if not for the compression band preventing him from removing them. He could risk no further blood loss.

  He stripped Lex of his body armour because Lex was a closer physical match, took his tactical harness, side carbine, sidearm, ammunition, knife, a single grenade and everything else he had, including a radio and headset. Then he hot-wired Naël’s Land Rover. It was an older model and Victor had been stealing cars long before his first whisker had appeared. Within two minutes the engine was revving.

  He threw supplies into the back and placed the extra rifle and sidearm from the other bounty hunter in the passenger’s footwell and on the seat. He climbed behind the wheel, released the handbrake, put the Land Rover into gear, and … stopped.

  He pictured accelerating away, mud spraying from the tyres as he rushed from the driveway and down the narrow track through the trees. Leaves and branches would brush the side windows, scratching and clattering against the glass. The uneven, rutted surface, narrow breadth and frequent twists were meant to be taken at a slow pace. Victor would accelerate the entire way, fighting a wheel that had no power steering. He would jolt and slide in his seat, every bump and swerve in the track pulsing and throbbing through his leg. The rifles would dance around in the footwell.

  On the highway, he would accelerate harder. There would be little to no traffic to overtake. Maybe the odd vehicle passing, going the other way. They would be zipping blurs he barely noticed.

  Garrett and the other three in the Escalade had a four-minute lead. Victor had counted every second since they had left. The six bounty hunters, the three two-man teams, had set off on foot three minutes before that. Joshua, Michelle and Naël had a five-minute lead on the six on foot and an eight-minute lead on Garrett, but they would move at a slower pace. They might get lost. Naël might lose the keys to Victor’s truck. The newly fitted ignition switch might be faulty, or the fault wasn’t the switch in the first place. Or the truck might get stuck going back down the creek. There was no guarantee they would get away and every reason to think they would not.

  If anything went wrong the bounty hunters chasing them would catch up before Garrett and the others traversed the track, the highway, then the creek. If Victor chased in the Land Rover, he was going to arrive too late.

  He climbed out of the vehicle.

  His leg felt cold already. The lack of circulation caused pins and needles. The pain was there too, but he pushed it to the back of his consciousness, filing it away as a constant, a danger, but one that had to wait.

  He had to do this on foot.

  Lex’s headset crackled.

  ‘How’s the fisherman?’ Garrett’s voice asked. ‘Don’t let him go dying just yet.’

  Victor considered the chances of imitating Lex’s voice after hearing so little of it. Even with his considerable skills at imitation, it seemed unlikely he would fool Garrett.

  Besides, he didn’t want to fool him.

  ‘I’m good,’ Victor said, after hitting send. ‘Your guys, not so much.’

  A long moment of silence.

  ‘Seems we have ourselves an uninvited guest on the airwaves,’ Garrett said to the rest of his men in radio contact. His voice was tight with anger, perhaps even grief for the two men he had left behind. ‘Kill your comms.’

  ‘First and only chance,’ Victor said. ‘Withdraw.’

  He approached Lex, still groaning weakly.

  Garrett said, ‘Next time I see you, I won’t be aiming at your leg.’

  Victor knelt down next to Lex, and said into the mic,
‘Remember when I told you fishing was just a hobby? That it’s not what I do best?’

  Again, a long pause before Garrett’s voice came through the earpiece: ‘Yeah, I seem to remember you leaving that particular point hanging in the wind.’

  ‘This is what I do best,’ Victor told Garrett as he reached a hand down and Lex’s awful gurgling screams were projected through the mic; and as those screams fell into silence, Victor added, ‘Ready or not, here I come.’

  SEVENTY-SIX

  No simple taunt. A distraction. Now Garrett’s and his men’s focus would shift from Joshua to Victor. Their mission could wait. Staying alive trumped any payday.

  Besides, he was just one man.

  They didn’t want him sneaking up on them from behind, but they could handle a single opponent between them. They had no doubt about that. They had underestimated him once but now they knew what was required.

  Kill on sight.

  Whatever Garrett had said about cutting comms, the bounty hunters would still be talking to one another. They would have a backup frequency to switch to, denying Victor access to their communications, but it was worth it. He couldn’t outrun them, he couldn’t head them off. He couldn’t even catch them up. He needed them to come for him.

  We take care of the fisherman, then get the boy, Victor could almost hear Garrett telling his men.

  If they were a tight team, they would be glad of this change in orders. They wouldn’t have changed the frequency until after Victor had ended the transmission. There would be a burning need for vengeance. They had heard Lex dying by his hand. Victor had ensured Lex’s screams sent an unignorable message.

  He left the spare weapons, and found the tracks left by the pursuing bounty hunters in seconds. They were following tracks already left by the hasty flight of Joshua, Michelle and Naël. Twigs were broken. Leaves crushed. Undergrowth flattened.

  He followed, thinking the bounty hunters couldn’t be more than a few hundred yards ahead up the hill at the most.

  Would they stay put and wait to ambush him or would they be heading this way?

  Only one way to find out.

  He pushed on, fighting the pain in his leg with every step as the incline increased.

  The forest was a kaleidoscope of greens – at least a thousand shades of green within his limited sight. Bright and dark, warm and cool. Some browns and oranges too in the dead vegetation and tree trunks – the former shaded on the forest floor and the latter half covered by mosses and lichen. The canopy put all into shadow except rare spots where unfiltered sunlight could reach and brighten the green into yellows and white.

  The rain had only been light so far today – little more than drizzle once it had made it through the maze of canopy shielding the forest floor – but the sky was dark above. The ground was damp but not mud, except where a gap in the canopy had let rain fall unhindered.

  Victor found one such place and scooped up mud from the ground. He smeared it on his clothes and through his hair and painted every inch of exposed skin until he was as dark as the ground itself. He grabbed handfuls of dead and dying leaves and patted them against his clothing, gluing them to the mud’s embrace. He did the same with his face, with the backs of his hands and forearms, with his neck, with his eyelids. He pulled free fresh sprigs of bracken to deepen and vary the camouflage.

  Finally, he scooped up more wet soil with his fingertips and rubbed it over his lips and gums, and against his teeth until they were more grey than white.

  He kept his eyes pinched, almost closed, despite the instinct to open them as wide as possible in the poor visibility. He was willing to trade a little peripheral vision to lessen the amount of bright white cornea on display. Surrounded by the mask of dark mud, that white would stand out even brighter. No point the rest of him blending into the forest if his eyes shone for all to see.

  He dirtied up the carbine too. It was painted black, but black did not exist in nature and to a keen eye would be noticeable against the greens and browns of the forest. He was careful not to get mud into any of the working parts.

  Against so many, he couldn’t use the gun. Not at first. Gunshots would give away his presence. Muzzle flashes would pinpoint his exact location. He might shoot one or two or even three, but at some point they would surround him and it would be over.

  So, stealth.

  He had to kill as many as he could as silently as he could before it went loud, so that when it did go loud they didn’t have the numbers to envelop him.

  He slung the carbine on his back, its strap over his shoulder and across his chest in a diagonal line. He tightened it to keep the weapon as still and stable as possible. He didn’t want it rattling around or catching on foliage. It would be slower to take off, but he deemed it an unavoidable compromise. If he needed the gun in hand quicker, then the situation had already become untenable.

  The knife taken from Lex had a razor edge along seven inches of high-carbon steel. The gladiator point was just as sharp. No tool.

  This was a formidable killing weapon.

  It felt good in his hand, like it belonged there.

  Victor used mud to dirty the blade but kept the edge clean in a single line of shining steel destined to become red.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Victor had no home. Had never had a home in the truest sense. But there were places he felt at home. He felt it in nature, in the woods, waist-deep in bracken and undergrowth; all around him endless wilderness untroubled by the neighbouring civilisation it would outlast. Here, back against a moss-covered boulder while he surveyed his surroundings, was his primordial home. Here, there were no guests, only trespassers. Here, Victor belonged.

  He moved on, walking on the balls of his feet. A slow, careful gait. He felt for secure ground, for dry twigs waiting to send a snap echoing through the trees. He kept low, moving with legs bent and his shoulders down. The loss of height meant a restricted view, yet sight was a secondary sense in the wilds. Even the tallest man, the most acute eyes, could not see far in this primordial home. To rely on sight here meant to be surprised.

  Victor listened.

  He was close now, he knew.

  If the bounty hunters were coming for him he would have encountered them by now. Instead, they were waiting for him to come to them.

  He heard the gentle rustle he made as he pushed through the bracken. He heard the swish of wind through foliage. He heard the creak and scratch of branches.

  He heard no wildlife. Every mammal and bird had wisely left the area upon the intrusion of nature’s most dangerous creation.

  The rustles and swishes and creaks and scratches became a series of notes, forming a melody in Victor’s consciousness. He listened for a note out of place, a harmony where there should be none, the introduction of a new instrument altogether.

  He was both conductor and audience to this primordial orchestra and would tolerate no interruption.

  But the bounty hunters were no strangers to such a performance. They were musicians in their own right; only their music went unheard by him.

  Against ten, he had to be invisible to twenty eyes and silent to twenty ears.

  Impossible.

  Against civilians, yes.

  Against bounty hunters, no.

  Victor, conductor of the primordial orchestra, changed the symphony.

  He found a thick, dry twig with the toe of his shoe and stepped down on it.

  Snap.

  A sudden, sharp sound. Loud to Victor and noticeable to any hunters close by, but noiseless to others outside the immediate area.

  Victor dropped down on to his stomach, palms on the damp earth of the forest floor. The scent of wet soil and detritus was strong and comforting.

  It was home.

  He listened.

  He waited.

  Quiet at first, but distinct and clear to Victor’s ears, undergrowth rustled. With the confusing echoing effect of the trees it took a moment to place the source.

  Left.

 
; West.

  Victor, invisible on the forest floor, remained in position. He didn’t need to see the bounty hunter to know he was there and to know he was approaching. The man wouldn’t be able to identify the exact location of the snapping twig but he had been close enough to be sure of the general area.

  In the absence of other indicators, such an invitation could not be ignored.

  With an enemy announcing his approach, it had to be investigated.

  The rustling grew louder.

  Victor heard footfalls. The careful placement of one boot followed by the next. Slow, tactical.

  Smeared with mud and vegetation, Victor was indistinguishable from the undergrowth.

  Then the bounty hunter was so close Victor could hear the man’s breathing. Deep and regular.

  In many ways you could say that the fish catches itself, Victor had told Joshua.

  When the bounty hunter turned around and headed away, Victor let him.

  He waited.

  He rose into a squat, a tree trunk behind him, his eye level at that of the tallest bracken leaves. He watched the bounty hunter go. The man moved well, tactically, sweeping back and forth.

  Alone, but he wouldn’t be alone.

  Victor watched.

  The pins and needles in his left leg had gone. A double-edged relief because he knew that meant the lack of circulation was so bad he was losing all feeling. Cramps would follow soon afterwards. Then the leg would become unresponsive.

  He almost did not notice another bounty hunter passing by so close he could smell him.

  Victor stayed motionless.

  The bounty hunter walked with slow, careful steps, gun up and sweeping back and forth with his gaze. He looked left. He looked right. He looked near and he looked far. But he did not look down.

  The second of the two-man fire team.

  Five metres behind the first. Close enough to cover the first man but not too close.

  A classic, universal tactic. The buddy system, as some referred to it. Each man looked after the other. Safer and more effective than operating solo.