“Where — ?” he started to whisper into the small microphone attached to his left ear-protector. But at the moment he saw it too: a tiny flashpoint of bright light that suddenly appeared — far away, deep in the trees, high off the ground — and then vanished.
As he watched, barely breathing now, the pinpoint of infra-red light — intermittently visible now at four- second intervals — grew bigger as it approached the clearing, and the platform. The stealthy movements portrayed an attitude of aggression as well as innate caution.
The inference was clear. High up in the trees, in his element, this on-coming creature feared no other species. Not even man.
Big Bastard. Fearless. Probably come right at you, Emerson had said, and Hateley knew that this would be his moment, his trophy: the biggest Clouded Leopard that had ever lived, and almost certainly the last of a kind.
Feeling his heart starting to pound deep in his chest, Hateley shifted the aim-point of his rifle until the intermittent flashings were centered in the cross-hairs of his transmitter-equipped night-scope. Then he gently slid his gloved forefinger across the smooth, cross-hatched surface of the Remington Mag’s trigger.
As the flashing light grew closer, still high up in the trees, the night sounds in the clearing grew quiet, as if all of the birds, frogs and insects were collectively holding their breath.
Unlike Hateley, they had never seen an apparition like this before, and they didn’t like it at all.
About a hundred yards from the platform, the pinpoint light-source flashed behind the central trunk of a widely-branching tree — its presence signaled by a brief glow of dimly-reflected light off the surrounding vegetation.
Hateley began to count silently.
Thousand-and-one.
Thousand-and-two.
Thousand-and-three.
Thousand-and…
At that instant, the fire-fly flashed again.
Expecting to see the reflected glow again, Hateley was caught off guard when the Clouded Leopard’s face — with its incredibly blank wide-open eyes — suddenly filled a considerable portion of the night-scope viewer, and then immediately disappeared when the infra-red Fire-fly™ tracking device secured to the cat’s neck flashed off.
Hateley cursed silently, but a subconscious portion of his brain had already begun the metronomic flasher count.
Thousand-and-one.
Thousand-and-two.
Thousand-and-three.
Hateley’s gloved forefinger tightened against the trigger.
One thousand-and The cat’s highlighted rosette spots and the distinctive black line running from eyes to ears — characteristics that had long made it one of the most coveted and endangered of the thirty-seven cat species — reappeared in the reflected glow of the Fire-fly™; and then vanished in an explosion of bright green light as a billowing streak of fire erupted from Hateley’s rifle.
In something less than a tenth of a second, a spinning 85-grain, full-jacketed bullet arced across the clearing, tore through the furry chest of the famously agile cat, and embedded itself deep into the wood trunk of an adjacent tree.
Heart shattered and torn from its chest, the grey-spotted creature was dead before its limp body finished crashing through tree limbs, branches and brush to the ground. But Hateley instinctively worked the bolt of his rifle anyway, ejecting the still-smoking brass cartridge and smoothly feeding another live round into the polished chamber of the lethal weapon; just in case.
Then the voice in his ear-protectors confirmed what he already knew to be true.
“Excellent shot, sir, but it’s time we departed. We may have some unwelcome visitors in the area.”
In a series of movements made routine by many replications in many foreign lands, Hateley thumbed the safety of his rifle to the ON position; sat up on the platform; turned; handed the expensive rifle down to the dark, barely-visible figure of a man now standing beside a crude bamboo ladder braced against the platform; and then quickly climbed down the ladder.
As soon as Hateley’s boots were on the ground, Marcus Wallis shifted the rifle to his left hand, stepped forward, shook Hateley’s gloved hand, and slapped the wealthy chief executive on the shoulder.
“About time you got that fellow in your sights,” Wallis said cheerfully.
“You and your team provided the perfect opportunity, as usual; I couldn’t possibly miss,” Hateley replied.
Then, after a pause: “what kind of visitors were you talking about?”
“Jack spotted a Thai Forestry Ranger jeep on patrol about an hour ago. They should be about five clicks north of us by now, but they could be heading back this way if someone heard and reported the shot.”
“Is that going to be a problem?”
“Not likely, but why take the chance? Be a lot less complicated if I take you directly back to the airport while Quince and the lads sort things out around here,” Wallis said.
“Then let’s get going,” Hateley agreed. “Is the helicopter ready?
“Yes, but as a precaution, I had them relocate to a nearby clearing — a bit more of a drive for us, but worth the effort. You never know where these damned Rangers are going to pop up next.”
Wallis paused for a second, turned away from Hateley, pressed a forefinger against a switch on his throat mike, and then whispered softly: “Gecko-One to Gecko-Two.”
“Gecko-Two, go.” The deep calm voice of Quince Lanyard rumbled in Wallis’ earphones.
“Gecko-Two, be advised we’re moving out now. Collect the target, secure the scene, relocate your team to rendezvous point Checkers, and then stand-by for link-up with Gecko-Three. Repeat, rendezvous point Checkers. I’m taking the Fireman to Alpha-Tango now.”
“Gecko-Two, copy.”
Wallis turned back to Hateley and motioned with his gloved hand. The two men began walking quickly in the darkness toward a pair of Land Rovers parked on a dirt road about fifty feet away.
Behind them, two small darkened figures moved in and quickly began to disassemble the shooting platform, cutting the lashing ropes with sharp knives and tossing the freed lengths of bamboo into the brush, while a third much larger figure ran toward the distant tree where the cat lay motionless. Wallis, Lanyard, and their two Thai helpers were all outfitted with night-vision goggles and infra-red filtered flashlights, the beams of which were invisible to anyone not equipped with night-vision gear.
As the two men reached the Land Rovers, Wallis turned back to Hateley. “What’s the status of your plane?”
“Sitting on the tarmac at Phuket International, fully fueled and re-stocked, flight plan filed,” Hateley replied. “I told the pilots we might be leaving tonight. They’re ready to taxi out as soon as we’re on board.”
“First-rate.”
As Hateley quickly levered himself into the front passenger seat of the first Land Rover, and reached for the safety belt, Wallis unloaded and then carefully slid the expensive scoped rifle into its soft leather case, laid the weapon across the back seat, hopped in the driver’s seat, secured his own safety belt, and then reached for the ignition key.
The Land Rover’s powerful engine started up immediately.
As Hateley stared out into the almost complete darkness with a calm and satisfied expression on his unshaven face, Wallis accelerated the vehicle down the pitch-black dirt road — an easy accomplishment in spite of the numerous potholes, because the jeep’s headlights were infra-red filtered as well. From Wallis’s narrowed view through his night vision goggles, the narrow winding road was as clearly visible as if it had been noon in one of Thailand’s most spectacular wildlife preserves instead of midnight.
As Wallis continued to accelerate along the rough dirt road, he pulled an encrypted satellite cell phone out of his jacket pocket and activated a quick-dial number.
“Alpha-Tango, this is Gecko-One. Do you copy?”
“Go ahead, Gecko-One.”
“Alpha-Tango, be advised our ETA is approximately forty minutes. Be prepared to… oh bloody hell!”
