THE THOUSAND DOLLAR HUNT: Colt Ryder is Back in Action!

by J. T. Brannan

  ‘Yes,’ Badrock said. ‘Security for the park itself – we need to be sure that nobody gets in after dark to see what it is we really do here – and security for the hunters too, to protect them from the other animals. Some important people come here for the hunt – politicians, military officers, law enforcement officials, even movie stars, you name it – and it wouldn’t do for them to end up like your friend Hooker there.’ He grinned, and for the first time I could sense the insanity which gently touched his face in the diminishing light of dusk.

  ‘The rate of pay for senior security personnel –and after watching you in action, you definitely come under that category – is a thousand dollars a day, and we provide food and accommodation too, which as you have seen already, is first rate. Vanguard offers all sorts of other benefits too, but my personnel officer will tell you all about that back at the ranch house if you’re interested.’ His eyes locked with mine as if in challenge. ‘Are you interested?’

  I smiled at the general. A thousand dollars a day? The figure had to be a good omen for the thousand dollar man. I also still needed to find out more about his operations here, and what better way to do it than from the inside?

  ‘Okay,’ I told him. ‘I’m in.’

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  I was seated once again at the dining table in Badrock’s personal ranch house, being served roasted quail by an extremely attractive young lady in a black uniform which was tight in all the right places, and I couldn’t help but wonder why I was being so honored.

  What was it that Badrock wanted from me?

  ‘You saw my men in those hills,’ the general said with a smile as he tasted his Chateau Lafitte. ‘That was impressive.’

  When I’d given Badrock my answer earlier that evening, agreeing to work for him, it hadn’t only been due to the fact that I wanted to learn more about his business here – it was also because I’d picked up a reflection on the side of the ravine, maybe six hundred yards out. I would have been an easy target for a sniper with a scope at that range, and – now knowing what to look for – I spotted two more snipers at angles to the first, perfect for triangulating fire on the cemetery.

  I hadn’t realized that Badrock had seen me observing them.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said after finishing a mouthful of quail. ‘I guess my eyes haven’t succumbed to old age quite yet.’

  ‘You’re too modest,’ Badrock said. ‘Only a man of exceptional skill could have spotted those snipers.’ He paused. ‘How many did you see, by the way?’

  ‘Three,’ I said instantly, conditioned to answering senior officers when they asked questions.

  ‘And where were they?’

  Again I answered instantly, reeling off a description of the men’s positions as if I was back in the Rangers giving a report on a recon mission.

  ‘Very good,’ Badrock said, then his eyebrows furrowed. ‘Which unit did you say you served with?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘But you’ll tell me now.’

  I knew it wasn’t a question. ‘Rangers,’ I said. ‘Regimental Recon Detachment.’

  ‘Ah,’ the general said, ‘of course. You had to be special ops of one kind or another. When did you get out?’

  ‘Ten years ago,’ I told him, before taking some more of the delicious wine. ‘Medical discharge after Iraq.’

  Badrock’s raised eyebrow told me he wanted me to go on.

  ‘It was a mess,’ I said, ‘an Iraqi translator gave us some false information, dragged us into a walled village near Mosul. Told us there was going to be a big meeting of al-Qaeda leadership, the army sent in an entire company from the seventy-fifth Rangers. It was a trap.’

  Badrock sipped more wine, eyes regarding me coolly. ‘New Year, two thousand four?’ he asked, and I nodded in reply. ‘The seventy-fifth Ranger regiment was one of the unit’s under my command then.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘Damn,’ Badrock said after a moment’s thought. ‘That was a bad one. How many was it?’

  ‘Twelve,’ I said. ‘Twelve good men.’

  ‘Enemy casualties were much higher, if I recall.’

  ‘We got fifty-six of the bastards,’ I said.

  ‘Doesn’t make it any easier to swallow,’ the general said, ‘but at least there was some payback.’ His eyes looked up, as if he was remembering something. ‘One of the recon boys bagged half those bodies himself, if memory serves me correctly,’ he said. ‘He was awarded the Medal of Honor.’

  I looked down at my plate, took some more wine, a gulp this time.

  ‘You?’ Badrock asked softly. ‘That was you?’

  I raised my eyes to his. ‘That was a long time ago,’ I told him, and it was true; it was a lifetime ago.

  But I still remembered it all too well, the blood of my friends over me, the feral thrill I felt as I fought my way up through the building full of terrorists; the pain as I was shot, stabbed, and went crashing out of a fourth floor window, a death grip around the last man, taking him with me and using his body to cushion my fall but only partially succeeding; the months of rehab on my broken body, my eventual discharge; more months of struggling to find work, nobody interested in my unique mix of abilities; my eventual release of everything tying me to a normal life, and my final transformation into the thousand dollar man.

  I remembered it all.

  Badrock stood solemnly, raising his glass. ‘A toast in your honor, sir,’ he said. ‘I had no idea the kind of man I was entertaining.’

  I rose and we touched glasses, and we both drank deeply from them before sitting down again. ‘How lucky I am to have you here,’ Badrock said. ‘Who would have thought it? I said I had no idea of the kind of man I was entertaining, but that is not entirely true. I saw the way you moved in the office when you took out those boys there, saw how you observed everything that happened this evening, so aware, so switched on to what was happening around you.’

  I ate more of the quail, unused to receiving so much praise; especially from a general, retired or not.

  ‘You are truly special,’ Badrock continued. ‘A man of your caliber, I can use you for so much around here. As word from my influential friends gets around, we’re only going to get busier on our nighttime hunts, and I need real professionals helping to make sure it all goes smoothly. The last thing we need is a Hollywood starlet getting gored by an elephant, or a Texas governor being ripped apart by a lion. Or a presidential candidate accidentally getting shot by an overexcited chief of police.’

  ‘I should think that wouldn’t be good for business,’ I agreed.

  Badrock laughed. ‘It sure as hell wouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘But you know how easily those things can happen, especially after dark.’

  ‘They use night vision?’ I asked, interested in the specifics of how things were run.

  ‘Of course,’ Badrock replied as the beautiful girl came back in to the room, uncorking another bottle of wine and clearing our empty plates away. ‘We only use the very best equipment, military-grade stuff. We provide training too, but most of our hunters are hardly professional men like yourself. Accidents can and do happen, we just need to mitigate the chances as much as possible.’

  ‘And what sort of work do you see me doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘Working the hunts, of course. Keeping an eye out for any potential problems, keeping the animals away from our clients, making sure that friendly fire doesn’t catch anyone. And now I know your background, I might get you training them too, before they go out. Teaching them how to use the equipment, basic tactics. How does that sound?’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘A little different from my normal work.’

  ‘And what sort of work is that, exactly?’ he asked with interest.

  ‘Private investigation,’ I said. It was near enough to the truth anyway.

  ‘I see,’ the general responded. ‘You work for a company?’

  ‘I work for myself.’

  ‘Good. No need to han
d in your notice then. Have you got any jobs outstanding, anything you need to go back to your offices for?’

  ‘Only this one,’ I said. ‘I’ll need to contact my client regarding the fate of Mr. Hooker.’

  ‘And what are you going to tell this client?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘The truth,’ I said. ‘He went to the BioPark looking for a job and was turned down. Witnesses have him heading across the Mexican border soon after that. Unlikely we’ll ever see him again.’

  Another smile appeared across Badrock’s face, this one the largest yet. ‘An excellent answer, Mr. . . .’

  ‘Ryder,’ I answered truthfully, knowing that my fingerprints were all over the place anyway, and that a man in Badrock’s position could have them checked within hours. ‘Colt Ryder.’

  ‘Well, Colt,’ Badrock said, ‘never let it be said that I am ungrateful to my friends.’ He clapped his hands, and the dark-haired beauty that had been serving us reappeared from a doorway. ‘Sweetheart,’ the general addressed her, ‘see Colt here to his quarters, and make sure he has everything he needs.’

  ‘Yes general,’ the girl said as she looked at me with a mischievous smile. ‘It will be my pleasure.’

  I smiled back, sure that at least some of the pleasure was going to be mine.

  Chapter Two

  The tray hit the back of my head hard, and I only narrowly avoided my face hitting the table by getting my hands there first, with just fractions of a second to spare.

  It was breakfast time at the Vanguard security accommodation block, and – despite the general’s seal of approval – I was not turning out to be the most popular guy there.

  I supposed it might have had something to do with the four contractors I’d smashed up the day before, back in Groban’s office.

  I was stunned, but that was never going to stop me; an instant after the tray hit me, I pulled one hand from its braced position on the table, grabbed the fork from in front of me, whipped around in my chair and buried it right into my attacker’s balls.

  The man cried out in a high-pitched, strangled scream as his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell to his knees in agony, fork still embedded in his anatomy.

  There was only one guy, but I knew my response was going to create some more heat; I could already feel the men to my right and left tensing, getting ready to strike in retaliation.

  I moved before they did, elbowing the guard to my left in a backward swing that hit him right in the face and knocked him back off his chair; in the next breath, I caught the wrist of the other man, stopping the table knife just inches from my ribs, and smashed his face down into the table in front of him.

  I was on my feet in the next second, turning to face two new assailants running at me from the next table along. I dropped the first with a heavy thrusting front kick to the gut, then sidestepped the next and whipped a vicious Thai round kick across the man’s exposed thigh muscle, the pain from the scything impact putting him down immediately.

  Another man went down from a straight right, the big knuckles of my fist connecting hard with his jaw; and then another hit the deck from a side kick to the knee cap.

  But then there were too many people around me, arms and legs coming at me from all angles, fists and feet hitting, and then hands grabbed me and forced me to the floor and it was all I could do to cover my head with my own hands as the blows came raining down. There must have been thirty guards at breakfast, and I thought they must all have been hitting me at that moment, and I could feel the weight of them crushing me.

  Where was Kane when I needed him?

  A gunshot rang out then, and the blows stopped hitting me, the weight stopped crushing me.

  I heard shouting through the blood rushing in my ears, felt the men move away from me until I was just there on the floor, alone and bleeding.

  ‘. . . the general told you he doesn’t want him harmed,’ I heard a voice shouting, and as my vision cleared I could see Hatfield standing there, pistol in his hand. ‘Now back off,’ he continued, ‘and I mean right now.’

  The crowd slowly shrank away, murmuring and muttering to themselves but obviously not wanting to cross Hatfield. And why would they? Even if he wasn’t their commanding officer and meal ticket, he was an ex-Delta commando with a loaded handgun; they would have to have been crazy to argue.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to me as he approached. ‘Get on your feet.’

  He ignored the other men scattered unconscious on the dining hall floor, and stepped over the man I’d slammed in the balls with the fork, who was still screaming in pain, and helped me up with one huge, callused hand.

  ‘You’re not exactly endearing yourself to the men here,’ he said with a half-smile, ‘are you?’

  I tried to smile back, though the bruising was already starting to make it painful. ‘They just haven’t got to know me yet,’ I replied, and Hatfield chuckled to himself.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that guy right there on the floor with the fork in his balls is the brother of one of the guys you beat up with that metal baton of yours yesterday.’ He watched the man writhing on the ground for a few moments before turning back to me. ‘But maybe we’ll leave the formal introductions for another day. Why don’t you get yourself to your room and clean yourself up? We’ll be starting work soon, and you don’t look so good.’

  I nodded my head, and wiped the blood from my mouth. ‘Yes sir,’ I said in agreement.

  Although the company left a little to be desired, the accommodation was as good as Badrock promised. We were in a block close to the main house, a huge log cabin purpose built as a bunk block for security personnel; but it was a far cry from the places I’d lived in during my time in the military. Here we had private rooms with en suites, a full bar with open fire places, a Swedish sauna and an outdoor hot tub. There was the dining room too of course, and I’d already got to know that all too well.

  Turned out dogs were welcome too, at least if you worked here, and Kane had soon settled in to our luxury suite as if he’d been born to it.

  The girl was gone, but we’d had a good time the night before, and some more good times before breakfast too; Kane had been so embarrassed he’d gone to hide in the bathroom.

  I watched him look at me now as I limped back into my room, face bruised and bloody – but it was only a cursory glance, used as he was to seeing me that way. Just another day at the office, I suppose he thought, and he soon got back to the serious business of sleeping.

  As I eased out of my clothes and got the shower running, I considered the fact that – even after the story I’d given him about what I would tell my ‘client’ about Benjamin Hooker – Badrock surely still wouldn’t trust me completely, might think that I’d only accepted the job in order to investigate further. Which was true of course – I had no intention of going back to Kayden with anything less than the entire truth. But I knew I was going to have to do my best to appear as if I really wanted to be here.

  There was also the danger from the other security personnel, as I’d just experienced back in the dining room. Some of them wanted me dead, plain and simple. They’d tried it once, and I had no reason to believe that they wouldn’t try it again.

  Except I knew Badrock would order them to leave me alone, and who would want to go against the general? They’d had their shot and blown it; perhaps things would cool down now.

  I wondered, idly, about the possibility of Badrock making some sort of link between me and my alter ego as the thousand dollar man. It was unlikely though – my name wasn’t connected to the legend, even in that Washington Post exposé a few years back and – as far as I was aware – not even the FBI had put the two together. But even if the general somehow managed to make the link, then so what? I supposed he’d see me as a mercenary, which was exactly what he was after anyway.

  I turned the shower off and left the bathroom, picking up the telephone on the bedside table. I dialed the number for my army friend who was looking into Badrock’s background
for me, to see if she’d managed to find out any more details about his mysterious retirement.

  ‘There isn’t much, I’m afraid,’ she said when I’d finally got through to her. ‘Just rumor really. Apparently there was some sort of family scandal, Badrock tried his best to cover it up but the chiefs learned about it and, well, it ruined his chances of further promotion.’

  ‘What sort of scandal?

  ‘I can’t find out, there’s no official record of it. As I said, it’s all rumor. But there was no disciplinary action, it wasn’t that sort of thing at all, but there was some damage to his personal reputation that meant full general was going to be permanently out of reach. That’s why he retired, because he’d gone as high as he was ever going to go.’

  ‘Thanks for the intel,’ I said. ‘I owe you one.’

  I put the phone down, wondering if the lines were tapped. But what if they were? Even if I was taking on the job for real, I would want to know what sort of man I was working for, and I was sure that Badrock would understand my near-paranoia; it was what kept men like us alive.

  Ten minutes after the phone call I was clean shaven and dressed in one of the plain black combat suits that served as uniforms for the Vanguard troops here.

  I looked at myself in the mirror, readying myself for the day ahead.

  It was time to go to work.

  Chapter Three

  The morning was spent familiarizing myself further with the park property, and with the weapons and equipment the hunters would be using.

  The other Vanguard men kept away from me as much as possible, and the ones I did interact with greeted me with a mixture of open dislike and – having seen what I could do – grudging respect.

  I spent time poring over plans of the ranchland – taking in the relief, the boundaries, the geographical makeup of the place – before heading out in a jeep for a closer look, with Kane in the back and one of the tour guides driving. We followed much the same path as the tourist trail the day before, but with the advantage of being allowed into otherwise forbidden areas – animal holding areas and feeding pens secreted in dark ravines, vehicle hangers and resupply centers hidden in the woods, and hunting stations wherever there was decent cover.