The Hunter v-1

by Tom Wood

  Click.

  The Browning was empty.

  Victor immediately dived back over the wall behind him, going into a roll to break the fall, coming out of it fluidly into a sprint despite the pain. A four-wheel-drive Jeep with sun-faded paint and dried mud caking the wheels and sides was pulling away from the kerb farther down the street. Perfect. Victor jumped up onto the hood, took two steps, dropped down on the other side, taking the drop with his right leg to spare the left. The Jeep stopped sharply. The driver was already fleeing before Victor had the chance to order him out.

  A bullet flew past his head.

  Victor climbed inside and slammed the door shut. The interior was filthier than the outside, seats split with padding spilling out in several places, instrument panels cracked, upholstery ripped, everything dusty. Victor glanced to his right, saw the assassin hurrying across the hotel parking lot, reloading his pistol on the move.

  Victor ducked in the seat, put the Jeep’s stick shift into first, transmission creaking, and accelerated. The passenger door’s window blew out, scattering fragments of glass over his head and back. More bullets came his way, flying through the broken window, slamming into bodywork.

  Victor reloaded with one hand as he drove. The last magazine. The Browning held thirteen bullets. Good, Victor thought.

  Unlucky for anyone who followed him.

  Reed watched the Jeep race out of the Glock’s effective range, lowered his weapon, and scanned the area for a suitable vehicle to chase Tesseract. There were several cars, mostly old sedans with neither the horsepower to catch up with the Jeep nor the four-wheel drive to handle Tanga’s less-than-even roads at speed. Anger threatened to explode through his calm exterior. Tesseract had survived yet again, and once more Reed suffered the indignation that his skills had been found lacking. He needed affirmation that only blood could provide.

  He heard Russian voices nearby and glanced in their direction to see several men entering the parking lot from an open fire exit. All were armed with Bizons and looked hungry for violence. One of their comrades lay dead on the ground in front of them.

  The Englishman held the Glock out of sight down by his thigh and acted like a shocked bystander as the Russians hurried out into the street. They shouted at locals, but the Tanzanians did not understand them, and in turn the Russians did not understand what was said back.

  There were four Russians so similar in appearance and movements they might as well have been military-bred clones of one another. Spetsnaz, Reed assumed. He had much respect for the highly trained and fiercely capable Russian special forces, considering them third only to their British and American counterparts. A fifth man appeared, clearly their CO, but not military, probably GRU or SVR. He was the man Tesseract had thrown at Reed and who Reed, in turn, had shot.

  Reed turned his body and head away. He did not want to risk being recognized, unlikely as it was. The officer ordered his soldiers to get to their vehicles and continue the pursuit. He did not follow as his men split into two pairs and rushed off. He leaned against a wall, a hand on his chest. He must have been wearing a vest to have survived Reed’s bullet to the sternum. Most fortunate.

  Reed walked quickly until he was out of sight of the Russians before breaking into a run. He dodged around pedestrians, sprinting around the hotel’s exterior until he emerged on its front side. Cars were parked along the half circle of driveway that linked the hotel to the main road. He knew that he did not have time either to hot-wire a car or to find keys for another. But he didn’t need to. A man was closing the door of a well-kept-looking Land Rover.

  Reed threw the driver from his seat and climbed in.

  CHAPTER 75

  17:26 EAT

  Sykes hurried down the stairs, trailing behind Dalweg. The big ex-SEAL had his Beretta held out before him and moved fast and assured while Sykes breathlessly stumbled after him, one hand loosely gripping his own gun and the other on the banister to help keep him on his feet. Fear and acid reflux made for a lethal cocktail.

  Gunshots made Sykes hesitate. They were loud, seemingly originating from outside the back of the hotel. Dalweg was unfazed, reaching the bottom of the staircase and taking up position to peer into the adjoining corridor. He looked back at Sykes.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You need to keep up, or I’m just gonna fucking leave you here. I don’t care.’

  Dalweg headed down the corridor and Sykes followed, trying not to startle at every bang. It sounded like a full-scale war was being fought, but he was glad that those who were trying to kill one another were not doing so inside the building any more. Sykes’s palm was moist around the SIG’s grip.

  The lobby was deserted apart from a couple of members of the hotel staff cowering behind the check-in desk. Dalweg picked up speed, almost jogging across the open space of the lobby before reaching the main entrance. He put a shoulder to a wall and glanced through a window. He moved to another and looked out again.

  ‘Looks clear. I think we’re good.’

  Sykes swallowed and used the sleeve of his T-shirt to wipe his sweaty face. A sustained barrage of automatic fire made him freeze in place, and even Dalweg flinched. Shouting came next. It sounded like Russians in the adjoining bar and corridors.

  A barrage of thoughts assailed Sykes’s mind. If Russians were here, they must have found out about the missiles. But who were they fighting? Who was the man who shot Wiechman? What the hell was going on? The answer terrified him.

  Sykes felt Dalweg’s hand on his shoulder. He looked at him.

  ‘Listen, you worthless little shit,’ Dalweg said. ‘If you want me to get you out of this I’m going to want more money. A hell of a lot more.’

  Sykes nodded several times. ‘Of course, whatever you want. Just get me the hell out of here. Please.’

  Dalweg looked at him contemptuously and pushed through the main hotel door. Sunlight flooded through the doorway and made Sykes squint. He’d left his sunglasses in his room along with the rest of his belongings without a second’s thought.

  Dalweg rushed out into the glare and took up a covering position behind a car parked in front of the hotel. Sykes ran after him and squatted down nearby, panting, terrified.

  Dalweg looked left and right down the street. Locals were gathering in response to the gunfire. They appeared curious more than scared.

  ‘I don’t see anyone,’ Dalweg said.

  Sykes kept low anyway. ‘What about the truck?’

  ‘It’s still there.’

  ‘No one’s near it?’

  Dalweg shook his head. ‘If they were I would have said, idiot. Whatever’s going down here isn’t about those missiles.’

  ‘It must be.’

  Dalweg looked at him, scowling. ‘Then why, genius, are those clowns shooting the shit out of one another around the back and not making off with the truck?’

  Sykes shrugged.

  ‘Exactly,’ Dalweg said.

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘We’re leaving.’

  Dalweg stood and hurried across the street and over toward the truck. He stopped and motioned for Sykes to follow. It took three deep breaths and a half-hearted prayer for Sykes to get his legs moving. He sprinted out from behind the car and across the street, heading toward where Dalweg was climbing into the truck’s cab.

  Sykes heard the sound of a vehicle approaching and flattened himself against the truck as a Jeep hurtled closer. He stared at the driver, in shock. The Jeep sped past and Sykes watched it, openmouthed, disbelieving. Tesseract.

  Movement caught his eye. A man emerged from out of a side street. The man had a buzz cut and a neck like a tree trunk, skin too light to be a local. It took a few seconds for Sykes’s brain to catch up with what he was seeing, and in that short time the man charged straight at him.

  Sykes raised his gun hand, but he was nowhere near fast enough, and 205 pounds of angry Latino struck him shoulder first in the gut, sending Sykes flying backward, hitting the dusty blacktop on his
back, hard. The gun flew from his hand and clattered out of sight.

  Sykes wheezed, red faced, trying desperately to pull air into his deflated lungs.

  Alvarez was on his feet in only a few seconds. He was a big guy, but he still had more speed than most people expected. A small crowd of Tanzanians were watching him, but he ignored them and looked around for Sykes’s gun. He couldn’t see it anywhere, and there was no more time to search.

  He took a step back, turned around. A tall square canvas cover shielded the back of the truck and had a secured door in the middle of the back panel. Alvarez ripped the door open and peered inside. Two pick-up trucks sped past him. The sickly strong smell of salt water made him wince. Thick canvas sheets covered the cargo. Alvarez pulled them aside, seeing an assortment of items: dive tanks, regulators, an underwater cutting torch, lanyards, fins, open-bottom lift bags, underwater lights, a box of flares.

  Lying among the equipment were huge tubular sections of white-painted metal that ran the entire length of the cargo box and that were as wide as Alvarez’s shoulders. They had obviously been dismantled to allow them to be brought to the surface, but the missiles were still much larger than Alvarez had imagined.

  ‘Jackpot,’ he whispered.

  Alvarez heard the driver’s door open, pressed his back flat against the tailgate, and waited.

  Sykes tried to call for help, but he didn’t have enough breath to make words. He struggled on the hot ground, scared and in agony. He watched a Land Rover accelerate out of the hotel’s driveway and heard Dalweg’s voice.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  Sykes tried to look up to see Dalweg, but he didn’t have the strength. Instead he rolled his head to the side, seeing the world at a skewed angle and watching Dalweg approaching him along the side of the truck, on his way to help. Sykes rolled his head to the other side and saw Alvarez waiting behind the back of the truck, out of Dalweg’s sight.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Dalweg asked.

  Sykes rolled his head back again and tried to warn Dalweg, but his shouts came out of his winded chest no louder than whimpers. He tried to point, but Dalweg didn’t understand.

  The second Dalweg reached Sykes, Alvarez was upon him. He threw himself at Dalweg from behind, tackling him down to the ground, hitting the road to the left of where Sykes lay. Orange dust wafted into the air.

  Sykes tried to shuffle out of the way as the two men grappled and punched each other next to him. He was still wheezing, but the intense pain in his chest was slowly fading with each second. He managed to roll to the right, first onto his front, and then onto his back again. He heard the grunts and sickening thwack as fists hit flesh no more than a few feet away. Blood specks landed on Sykes’s face.

  Sykes pulled himself slowly to his feet and staggered backwards until he found a wall to lean on. Some locals started cheering the fight.

  Straight in front of him Alvarez and Dalweg pounded the crap out of each other. Both guys were strong, and both knew how to fight. Alvarez wrestled his way on top of Dalweg, using his left hand to pin Dalweg’s right arm to the ground while he punched and elbowed Dalweg with his own right. Blood erupted from a gash on Dalweg’s cheek. He was already bleeding from the mouth. Sykes could see it was all going to be over in a few seconds.

  He couldn’t see his own gun, but Dalweg’s Beretta was lying close by in the road, just out of reach of either fighting man. Sykes pushed himself away from the wall and rushed over to the gun as fast as he could. He circled round where Alvarez and Dalweg fought, staggering to keep his balance.

  Alvarez saw what was happening, let go of Dalweg, and scrambled after Sykes. He caught up with him before Sykes reached the weapon, wrapped his arms around Sykes’s thighs, hoisted him off his feet and brought him back down to ground. Hard.

  Sykes’s arms cushioned the fall, but not enough to stop his face from finding the asphalt. He went limp and groaned quietly.

  Alvarez got to his feet. He turned around to face Dalweg, only to see him heading back to the cab. The door was already opened, and he reached inside. When Dalweg pulled his arms back out, he had an Uzi in his hands.

  Alvarez scooped up the Beretta and sprinted out of the line of fire before Dalweg had the submachine gun raised. Alvarez looked around frantically for some cover, realized there wasn’t any close enough for him to get to in time, turned back, and shot at Dalweg through the truck’s canvas backing, hoping for a lucky hit.

  The Uzi roared in response, and a cluster of smoking holes appeared through the canvas. Rounds blasted chunks out of the masonry around Alvarez. He dropped down to his hands and knees, bending low to see underneath the truck. Dalweg was behind one of the rear wheels, only his shadow visible. The Uzi rattled off another burst, and more bullets sailed over Alvarez’s head.

  Alvarez steadied his aim as much as he could and squeezed off a round.

  The bullet blew out the truck’s tyre, passing through the rubber and striking Dalweg in the leg on the other side. He howled in pain and abandoned his position. Alvarez fired another shot after him, but Dalweg was out of his field of view.

  Alvarez got himself vertical, moved closer to the back of the truck, and tucked himself behind one of the big wheels like Dalweg had done. A second later more rounds came his way.

  He stuck his head out of cover long enough to see that Dalweg was positioned behind a small wall on the other side of the road, and then pulled his skull back down. He felt the reverberations as bullets struck the truck and silently prayed that an unlucky round wasn’t going to set one of the warheads off. Alvarez didn’t know if they were armed or duds, and it had to be a long shot anyway, he told himself, but he didn’t want to wait around to test the theory.

  He shuffled to the side and reached his arm backwards and around the wheel to fire off a couple of shots in the general direction of Dalweg. His odds of hitting were probably longer than those of one of the warheads going bang, but he couldn’t have done too badly since the Uzi stopped blasting for a few seconds.

  Alvarez didn’t waste the opportunity and changed positions, hurrying to the front of the truck and taking cover behind the wheel there. In a hunched-over crouch he moved around the front fender, leaned out of cover, and took a shot. He watched as the bullet plugged a hole in the wall shielding Dalweg.

  The returning hail of 9 mms forced Alvarez back to behind the wheel. Rounds pinged off the truck’s hood, cracked the cab windows, whacked into the ground. Alvarez heard what sounded like running water and looked to his left to see fuel spilling out from a ruptured fuel tank, bullet holes through both sides.

  Alvarez would be first to admit that his understanding of chemistry was nothing special, but he knew that diesel had a higher flashpoint than gasoline and was much harder to ignite. Even a match wouldn’t do it. But that fact was little comfort when a pool of the stuff was forming next to him.

  He edged away from the diesel, wanting to make a run for it but aware he was completely pinned down. Moving out of the cover of the truck meant braving a storm of lead. Alvarez was brave, but he wasn’t stupid.

  He popped out from behind the truck to fire another bullet at Dalweg, but, before he could fully squeeze the trigger, he felt a searing sensation in his right shoulder and his legs gave way underneath him.

  Alvarez landed on his back, grimaced against the unbelievable pain when he tried to move his right arm. He put his left fingers to the wound, feeling a small entry hole in the front of his outer deltoid. He stretched his fingers around to touch the much-larger exit wound at the back of his shoulder. A through and through. No bone damage, but when Alvarez withdrew his left hand, he saw that it was drenched with blood.

  ‘Oh shit.’

  CHAPTER 76

  17:26 EAT

  Victor followed the dusty road as it curved around and away from the hotel complex. Up ahead it joined onto the main road leading deeper into the city. The main road would be the quickest route out of the area, but it was also the most obvious choice. It would
have to do. Victor didn’t know the area well enough to take to the side streets unless he had to.

  He slowed down to blend in, joining the traffic waiting at the intersection. He checked the rear-view.

  Two pick-ups, a Toyota and a Ford, raced toward him.

  Victor accelerated, manoeuvred out from the line of cars onto the wrong side of the road, changed up a gear, and sped out across the intersection. He swerved around the cross-traffic, switched back to the right side of the road, and changed up again.

  The pick-ups followed his lead, speeding across the crossroads, leaving clipped and crashed cars in their wake.

  Victor released the throttle; slammed the brakes, power sliding the Jeep into a right; then immediately accelerated, the rear end slipping, vehicle rattling under the strain. He raced down a side street. Seconds later he saw the pick-ups following, taking the corner more slowly, glancing off parked cars as they tried to keep up with him.

  Victor took another corner, sped across an intersection. He kept his eyes on the road, following it as it rounded a block of densely packed buildings, whitewashed stone colonials interspersed with shanties. Bald truck tyres lay discarded in loose heaps on the side of the road. He moved around slower vehicles, hearing horns and seeing drivers expressing their anger at him.

  The road straightened out and split in two. For a second Victor hesitated, but then he veered left onto a wide street that sloped downwards. He looked in the mirror. Behind him the pick-ups overtook other cars or barged them out of the way.

  Looking forward again he saw a grime-smeared taxi speed out from a side street, pulling onto the road directly ahead of him. There was no time to brake, no room to dodge. Victor floored it, smashing into the taxi’s front end, the bigger, heavier Jeep knocking the taxi back, sending it spinning into an oncoming car, wrecking both. Victor was thrown forward in his seat, but the seat belt kept his head from colliding with the steering wheel.

  He struggled to keep the Jeep under control, swerving wildly, finally straightening out in time to see the first pick-up, the Toyota, fifty yards behind, swerve onto a sidewalk to avoid the mangled car and taxi. Sparks flew off the wall as the truck scraped along, side mirror obliterated. It skidded back onto the road, dust pouring from its wheels.