Cartel Fire

by Tom Riggs

  Munro stumbled slightly as he was thrown forward. He quickly regained his step and looked around. Anton was standing at the gate behind him, holding the rifle. The Ruger M77 with telescopic sight was accurate to at least a mile. There was no going back. He started to run, fast, along the track. His mind was racing his adrenalin surging. The odds were not great. The ten minute head start meant nothing. The ATVs could do forty miles an hour along the track no problem, maybe more. The fastest he could maintain a run at was about twelve miles an hour. Probably less, a lot less in his state. They would make up any head start in the vehicles, then use the dogs to find his trail. It wasn’t a hunt. It was an extended execution. They were sadists, and sadists don’t like a quick kill. As Lipakos had said, he was probably the most fun they had had in months. He picked up his pace and ran along the path, through the field of dead trees. As he gained height, he saw that he was coming up to the ridge of the first set of hills that framed the valley.

  He ran, hard and fast, for five minutes. He still had his watch on and checked it every two minutes. After five minutes of hard running he came to the top of the field. A low ridge in a landscape of hills and ridges. The dead trees had now given way to heather. Miles and miles of heather. He stopped to catch his breath. If he had been going for a Sunday afternoon stroll, he would have had time to take in the view. It was breathtaking. The moors stretched out for miles, rolling and steep, completely barren, but brutally beautiful. And perfect for a long distance sniper shot. Munro quickly assessed his options. Once the South Africans were at this first ridge, they would be able to pick him off wherever he was. He looked closer, the hills were steep and rolling. Cutting off each huge moor from the other was a burn, a stream. Ice cold mountain water blasting through the peat. Most of the burns were easily visible, he would be just as easy a target in the dips as he was on the moor. Munro looked to his left. The moor dropped steeply and turned around another moor that dissected it. Just visible on the other side of the steep ridge was some vegetation. Cover. He turned left and ran. Hard. He was going downhill now. The peaty ground was almost bouncy, and he sprung from tuft to tuft with increasing speed. All around him were peat bogs, the death of many a mountain goat and deer. Munro moved fast, but carefully. He knew that falling into one of the bogs would slow him down. And that would mean death.

  Half way down the slope he heard engines sound. He looked at his watch. He had been running for eight minutes. Two minutes later he came round the bend in the incline and saw below him about two acres of juniper bushes. Five feet high and razor sharp, they were the only vegetation other than heather that could survive the ravenous deer. They were also the only cover he had for miles. Munro went into the bushes and slowed his pace so as to avoid ripping his skin on their sharp leaves. Fifty meters below the juniper bushes was a narrow stream. He knew that he should get into the water as soon as possible, wash off his scent, confuse the dogs. But he didn’t go into the stream. The moor was strewn with skeletons, the legacy of a long summer of deer stalking followed by a winter of starvation. Lying by the stream were the bleached bones of a large male deer. A stag. Typical Lipakos, thought Munro. He had shot the animal and then just left it out to be picked apart by scavengers. No respect for nature.

  Munro stopped at the skeleton. Its antlers were not huge, two points either side. He ripped them off the skull.

  “Sorry old boy,” he said as he snapped them in half. The bone was so strong it took all his strength. He could hear the engines clearly now, they had got to the first ridge already. The dogs would pick up his scent in seconds. He crouched down and started rummaging through the pile of bones that had once been a stag. He quickly found what he was looking for. He smiled as he stood up, the antler in one hand, the stag’s trachea in the other. He looked up. He could hear the dogs barking now. They were close. Quickly Munro turned and ran down to the stream. He carefully jumped across it, making sure that he did not put his feet in the water. Slow them down, but don’t stop them. Not yet.

  He was across the stream in seconds. The bank on the other side was steep, almost vertical. He clambered up it with slight difficulty, his wounds beginning to hurt, the cold wind biting into him, numbing his muscles, numbing his hands. Once at the top of the bank he looked up at the juniper bushes behind him. And waited, just a beat, until he saw the first ATV come winging down the hill, the two dogs running either side of it. He held his position, one beat, two beats. There were two men on the ATV, one driving, one spotting. Munro waited until the spotter, handlebar moustache he thought, saw him. And then he jumped down the other side of the bank and started running. Running as fast as he ever had. He heard two shots fire. But he was out of their sight now. Out of sight but not out of range. The hill on the other side of the bank dropped steeply into a boggy mini-valley. On the other side it rose so steeply that Munro was not sure if he could climb it. He quickly assessed the situation. He had a minute, possibly two, before they were across the stream. There was no way he could be up the hill in two minutes. The sides were so steep that if he tried, they would have a clear shot at him. His best options were to go left or right, up or down the mini-valley. Find more cover, get out of range, stay out of sight.

  But Munro did not go left or right. He went down, into the dip, towards the bogs. In range, and very soon in sight.

  Strewn across the moor like some primordial litter were small limestone boulders. Bits of the surrounding Cairngorm mountains, fallen away. Too hard for the steams to erode, but not strong enough to resist the bogs. Over the years they slowly sank. Munro crouched by one of them. The engines were close now, just the other side of the ridge. But the ridge was too steep for the ATVs, too vertical even for their tank tread. Munro crouched by a small limestone bolder and put the antler against it. He started rubbing hard, bone against stone. The bone was hard, but the stone was harder. Munro slowly turned the antler as he rubbed, as he sharpened. Quickly the blunted point of the antler became a sharpened point. He kept rubbing until it was sharpened to a tee. He heard the dogs barking now, as they led the way up the ridge. He turned and looked at the ridge, seconds now. Munro paused, just a beat, and then he jumped.

  He jumped feet first into a large bog to his left. Immediately he felt its suction grip him. But he did not struggle. He smiled quickly, he had chosen well. There was more water than mud in this bog. It was gripping him and pulling him under, but its power had waned. Holding the antler in his right hand, Munro leaned back into the bog pushing his feet out to the sides. The pit was long, but narrow like a coffin. His feet, about two feet below the surface, quickly found the hard rock edge. He pushed his feet into the side and used his stomach muscles to lower his torso down slowly. He quickly looked to his left, just in time to see the first dog come up to the ridge. In his left hand he held the trachea above the water. Still gripping hard to the edge with his feet, he allowed his torso to go under, allowed the mud to come up to his neck. Almost horizontal now. Just as his head was about to go under, he took a deep breath, put the trachea to his mouth and went under.

  For a split second, Munro felt panic rise in him as he tried to breath through the stag’s windpipe. A piece of bog had gone into it, over the top, blocking it. He blew hard and the mud flew out as easily as it had come in. He then let himself sink down into the cold mud. And waited. His feet were still gripping the edges hard. His right hand still held the antler. His left hand, half a foot below the surface, held the trachea. With his eyes closed, under a foot of stinking mud and water, Munro went into almost total sensory deprivation. But not quite. He kept breathing, through his improvised snorkel, and was surprised by how calm he felt. He found himself thinking of a past girlfriend he had had. She had been into alternative therapies and had persuaded him to spend ten minutes in a flotation tank. To realign his chakras. The experience was not dissimilar. Except that the flotation tank had been in New York and had cost him fifty dollars. It had also been a lot warmer. Munro kept breathing and waited.

  The next few min
utes could have been seconds. Munro was faintly worried by how quickly he lost track of time under the mud. But they felt like minutes.

  Suddenly he heard barking and men shouting. So much for the stalk, so much for subtlety. These hunters did not care if their prey knew they were coming. They outnumbered him four to one, and outgunned him four to zero. Good odds. But there was one thing their prey had that they didn’t. Experience. They could not have known it when they chose to hunt him, but Munro had spent more time on moors like this than he had in any other environment. Stalking as a child, he had killed his first stag when he was thirteen. Later, as a man, he had trained extensively on cold harsh moorland across the country. The Brecon Beacons, the Scottish Cairngorms, the North Yorkshire Moors.

  Munro was in his element.

  He waited for the mens’ voices to come closer. They were shouting to each other, but under a foot of mud he couldn’t make out their words. Still he waited, waited for the voices to get louder. A few seconds, a minute. He knew the dogs would lose his trail close to the bog. Whether any of them would notice the small piece of bone sticking out of the mud was out of his control. There was nothing he could do about that. It would mean the difference between life and death. He waited and he pushed his feet harder into the hard rock lining the bog. He could hear the men now. They were close, but how close he could not tell. He pushed his feet even harder into the rock and took a deep breath.

  Suddenly, quickly, he let go of the trachea and moved his arms to the side. When his hands hit rock he gripped hard and then he pushed. With his feet and his hands leveraging against the hard rock he pushed as hard as he could. The bog resisted at first, its instinct was to suck down, not to push up. But then it relented, as Munro knew it would. The suction reversed and with all the force of the bog behind him, Munro sprang up and was thrown out. Milliseconds out of the mud, he opened his eyes. The reverse suction of the bog, along with the strength in his legs and arms, was enough so that he came out at speed, torso first. He opened his eyes and saw that he was level with one of the South Africans. Thick neck, buzz-cut blond hair. Pushing down hard with his feet for grip he jumped up and out of the bog, landing feet first on the peat beside it. In less than three seconds he had gone from being totally submerged to standing on dry land, behind the South African, the sharpened antler still in his right hand.

  The man had just begun to turn when Munro grabbed him by the scruff of his coat. Pulling his head back and exposing the man’s thick neck, Munro rammed the antler into it, at a 45 degree angle. The sharpening had worked. It pierced the soft skin over his glands easily as Munro pushed hard and then yanked it sideways, breaking his windpipe. In the same movement, and keeping hold of the man’s jacket, he turned the man around. He had sensed another man to his left. Just in time he turned the now dead South African into the line of fire and the inevitable bullets that now let rip. Munro held the large dead body tight against him as it absorbed the bullets. He thought how lucky it was that the South Africans were so large. He felt six bullets thud into the body. Fired from less than eight feet away, it took every pound of flesh the South African had to stop them hitting Munro. Leaving the antler jutting out of the man’s throat, Munro brought his right hand down and pulled out the pistol that was strapped to the dead man’s waist. Between the six and seventh bullet being fired, Munro raised the pistol now in his right hand and fired two shots. Almost without looking. Eight feet. He could hardly miss. The whole movement had taken less than eight seconds.

  He threw the man’s body down and raised the pistol, firing two more shots into the other one, and then noticed the man with the ginger moustache. He aimed this time, both bullets went into his head. One through his cheek, an inch above that moustache. One through his forehead. Four bullets fired. He quickly looked at the pistol he had just taken. Colt .45 semi-automatic, twelve bullet magazine. Eight left.

  A shot fired, Munro felt the air cut as a bullet missed him by millimetres. He dived for cover, seeing the two dogs run off down the mini-valley as he did. Good dogs, he thought. Munro wanted to do the same thing. But he didn’t. He saw the remaining two South Africans on the ridge above him. Anton and Piet. Egg head and handlebar moustache. Piet with the pump action, Anton holding the Ruger. The boss wanted to make the kill. Sent the two dumb blonds and the dogs ahead as scouts. Without hesitation Munro raised the pistol, aimed at the men and started firing. He was too far to be accurate, but that was not the point. He was at the bottom of a ridge, outnumbered two to one, against an opponent with accurate long-range weapons. His position was weak, he needed to take the ridge. As he fired the pistol he jumped forward to the now dead man, ginger moustache. He had been holding the SA 80 assault rifle. Hunting in Scotland with a machine gun. As he fired the last shot of the .45 he threw it aside and picked up the SA 80 that had fallen into the peat. He started firing again, as he felt another bullet whizz past him. It was semi-automatic, had an extended magazine. Seven fired, thirty in the clip, twenty-three left.

  Just as he saw Anton turn the rifle, aiming more carefully this time, Munro fired. He was still too far away to be properly accurate, but that was not the point. He fired with his right hand. Two shots, as he felt down to the dead man’s waist for his pistol. A soon as he had it in his grip, he fired again and started running. Running towards the ridge. It was one of the first things they had taught him at Sandhurst, and one of the most important. If you are ambushed, your first instinct is to turn and run, get under cover, get to safety. You have to fight that instinct, find the source of fire, and attack. Munro ran towards the ridge, holding the SA 80 ahead of him as he fired. He was hardly aiming, but that was not the point. He had to take the ridge.

  Munro ran fast as he fired more shots, up the slope, towards the ridge. Ahead of him a barrage of nine millimetre bullets winged their way up the slope. Faced with the onslaught of bullets, Anton and Piet jumped down off the ridge, out of sight. Normally, Munro knew, this would have been disastrous. Trying to take an entrenched enemy on higher ground is hard. Practically impossible when that enemy is under cover and has a sniper rifle. But Munro knew they did not have cover. Munro knew that the slope on the other side of the ridge was practically vertical. He had climbed it not five minutes before. Take the ridge and you win the battle. On he ran, firing almost indiscriminately as he did. He knew he was wasting bullets, but that was not the point. He had to take the ridge. Munro squeezed the trigger of the SA 80 and it clicked. Twenty-three rounds fired, in less than twenty seconds. A lot of bullets, but he had covered a lot of ground. Munro was twenty feet from the top of the ridge now, and there was no sign of the South Africans. He threw the assault rifle aside and put the other pistol into his right hand. Another Colt .45, semi-automatic. Lipakos had clearly bought a job lot.

  Four feet from the ridge Munro dived to the ground, took cover. He had won the ridge, won the battle. As he dived, he saw the ground in front of him explode and a boom sound. The shotgun. Piet. He lay at the top of the ridge for a few seconds, regaining his breath. Assessing the options. Two men below him, a shotgun and sniper rifle. He had the ridge, he had the advantage. But they still had the numbers, still had the weapons. He heard the shouting to each other in Afrikaans. He stayed down. He had the ridge, but he knew that if he raised his head so much as an inch, it would be blown off by shotgun pellet. So he waited. Something was happening, they were shouting at each other in Afrikaans, urgent shouts. Not the confident shouts of hunters closing in on their prey, but the frantic shouts of men who have lost control of events. Munro waited and paused. The shouting continued. An argument. He waited some more. Then he heard it, engines sounding. Someone had won the argument. Staying under cover, out of sight, Munro rolled six feet to his right. In the same movement he went up into a crouch, pistol first. He looked below, at the hill sloping up and away from him, and saw the ATV slowly climbing away. He looked at it again. There was something wrong. Only one man.

  Too late, he heard a boom below him fire. Too late Munro felt a f
orce blast at his shoulder, spinning him around. As he spun he raised his pistol and pointed down at the source of the boom. Munro fired three shots, straight and fast. He watched as each one hit the man called Piet square in the chest. He was less than twenty feet away, he could hardly miss.

  Munro fell to the floor in shock and pain. Some of the pellets had hit him. But he was still there, still breathing. He had been clipped. He would live. But it hurt. It really hurt. As he fell to the floor, he saw, coming directly into his line of fire, the ATV. He held the .45 out, closed his left eye, and fired. Not at the driver. His adrenalin was countering the pain and the shock of getting hit, but his critical faculties were fading, they were damaged. Instead he took the larger target, the ATV itself. It was climbing a hill that sloped away from the ridge, towards the juniper bushes. As Munro’s bullets ripped into the machine, they hit its tread. The tread tore and then snapped and the tank-tracked ATV skidded, just as it was trying to climb a forty five degree slope. It skidded and flipped, backwards onto its driver. The man called Anton screamed as a ton of metal landed on his legs. The tracks were still spinning, the engine still on. The tread had come off, but the impotent metal wheels were still turning. Munro could not see what they were doing, but Anton’s screams told him as much as he needed to know. Anton screamed louder, his cries filling the empty moor.

  Munro sat down on the ridge. His adrenalin was still pumping but he was injured. He needed to assess the damage, assess the situation. Two men dead by the bog. Handlebar moustache dead below him. Anton trapped beneath his ATV. Four men, three dead, one down. Not bad. Not bad at all.

  He looked down at his shoulder. It was a mess of blood and grime. He was covered head to toe in stinking black mud. But the injury was not too bad. Only a few pellets had clipped the edge of his shoulder, luckily his good one. If Piet had aimed his gun six inches to the right, Munro would have lost his head. Literally. He looked at his watch. He had been on the moor for fifteen minutes. Too long in only a shirt. Time to get inside. He scrambled down to the bottom of the ridge. The second ATV was parked beside Piet’s now prone body. Pausing only to pick up the shotgun, Munro jumped onto the machine and fired it up. Its tracks engaged and he gunned it up the sloping moor, towards where Anton was trapped under the other ATV. The engines were still turning the tracks, but he had stopped screaming now, passed out from the pain. Munro parked next to him and jumped off. Slowly, casually, he walked over the flipped vehicle, reached over and turned off the ignition. The engine died and the moor was silent again. He looked down at Anton. He was lying on his back, one arm broken, bent at an impossible angle. The ATV had fallen onto his legs, crushing them just above the knee. Munro took the machine by its handlebars and pushed hard. It took all his strength, but it lifted. The wheels of the tracks had indeed cut into Anton’s legs. As Munro lifted, he saw the reason for Anton’s screaming. One of his legs had been almost completely sawn off. The wheels had even cut through some of his thigh bone. As Munro lifted and the metal disengaged from Anton’s legs, the South African came round again and started screaming. Munro continued to push up and flipped the machine back over. It had taken almost all that was left of his strength, and he collapsed down against it.