Blood Hunt

quickly-this running was measured, paced, steady, more a jog than anything else. The secret was not to stop, not to falter-and that was the most difficult part of all. It had been difficult on the Brecon Beacons during those arduous training runs. Reeve had jogged past men he regarded as fitter and stronger than him. They’d be standing bent over, hands on knees, spewing onto the ground. They daren’t sit down-with the amount of kit they were carrying they’d never get back up. And if they stopped too long they’d begin to seize up. It was something joggers knew. You saw them at traffic lights or pausing to cross the road, and they jogged on the spot.

Never stop, never falter.

Reeve kept running.

The terrain became much as it had been the other side of the river, steep ridges of loose shale with shallow valleys between. He didn’t bother counting his steps, just kept moving, putting miles between himself and the river. He knew he couldn’t outrun vehicles, but this terrain, inhospitable to a human, would be downright lethal for any vehicle other than the hardiest. No Jeep could take these slopes, and a motorcycle would slew on the loose stones. A helicopter was the enemy’s best bet, and he’d probably wiped that option out for the meantime. He took strength from that fact.

He was climbing again, trying not to think about the pain in his hands, crossing the ridge, then sliding. At the bottom of the slide, he picked himself up and ran forward four paces.

Then he stopped dead.

He couldn’t really see anything, but some sixth sense had told him to stop. He knew why: it was the nothingness itself that had warned him. He couldn’t see the ground ahead, not even ten feet in front of him. He shuffled forwards, toeing the ground, until one foot stepped off into space.

“Christ!”

He took two steps back and got down on his hands and knees, peering into the darkness. He was on the edge of a gully. No… more than a gully: sheer sides dropped he didn’t know how far. A ravine, a deep chasm. Even supposing he could climb down into it, he’d no idea whether he could scale the other side. He might be trapped. He’d have to go around it, but that might take hours. Damn it to hell. He tried to see something, anything down there, something that might tell him what was waiting for him. He unclipped the night scope from his belt and put it to his eye. Its range was limited, but he thought he could make out shapes at the bottom of the hole, rocks or boulders probably. The drop was pretty sheer, tapering off towards the bottom. In daylight, if he wasn’t rushed, he could probably find enough hand- and footholds to climb out the other side. But in darkness with the enemy behind him…

He took the night scope away from his eyes and was confronted by the ravine’s blackness again. It was taunting him. Everybody, no matter how good, needs luck, it was telling him. And yours just ran out.

“Fuck that,” he said, clipping the scope back onto his belt and standing up. His leg muscles complained. He had to make a decision soon, for all sorts of reasons. Turn left or right? Right, and he’d be heading vaguely in Jay’s direction; left, and he might hit the coast. Was that correct? He screwed shut his eyes and concentrated. No: if he turned right he might hit the coast. He had to turn right.

He ran more slowly now, keeping close to the edge of the ravine so he’d know if and when it ended. The problem was, this close to the edge, he daren’t pick up his pace. One stumble might send him over. The ground was dangerous enough as it was. He remembered the dirt track, and the scree, and the boulders at the bottom of the pit… it was a quarry! The landscape made sense now. And if he was right, then he could half-circle the pit without too much difficulty. Quarries weren’t that big. There might even be places he could hide or, as a last resort, a vehicle he could hijack.

He heard voices ahead of him and stopped again, unclipping the night scope. A two-man patrol. Somehow they’d got ahead of him, which was very bad news. There could be any number of them between here and the coast road. One man had called to the other to let him know he was stopping to urinate. The other carried on. Both had their backs to Reeve. He walked forward in a silent crouch and, when he was near enough, reached down to lay his rifle on the ground. His right hand was already clutching Lucky 13.

The man was zipping himself up as Reeve came close. He’d had to lay down his own rifle while he was peeing. Reeve tensed and sprang, one hand over the man’s mouth, the dagger chewing into the exposed throat below. The man’s hands reached up from his fly too late. Reeve kept gouging at the neck, hot blood spilling over him. It splattered onto the ground like urine. He laid the body on the ground and retrieved his rifle. The other man was calling for his friend. Reeve made an affirmative sound and started jogging forward, like he had finished and was now catching up. His eyes burned into the enemy’s back. The soldier was saying something about radioing in when Reeve grabbed him by the head and went to work with the knife. More steaming blood. Another body.

He’d killed them by the book. Quick and silent.

He rolled both bodies over the lip of the quarry, then started jogging again. There was not time for analysis or shock; he simply stuck the dagger back in its scabbard and ran. He had maybe four more hours of darkness.

He reached the other side of the quarry without incident. He’d presumed from the casual attitudes of his two kills that nobody was expecting him to get this far. The patrol hadn’t been primed for sudden contact. At the other side of the quarry he got out his compass. He’d start heading east now, a direct line to the coast. From what he remembered of the map, there were no settlements of any size for thirty miles north of the town of Rio Grande. There was the coast road to cross, and he hoped that would be his next and final obstacle. He heard a chopper approaching, but it veered off again. Maybe there had been a sighting of Jay. He hoped the chopper hadn’t found the bodies in the quarry, not so soon.

He felt good again. He gave himself a few seconds to think about the killings. They’d been necessary, he was sure of that. They wouldn’t exactly trouble his conscience; he hadn’t even seen the men’s faces, just their backs. One of the trainers had said it was eyes that haunted you, that final stare before oblivion-when you kill, never look at the eyes: concentrate on some other part of the face if you have to, best if you don’t look at all. Because the person you’re killing is staring Death in the face, which makes you Death. It was not a role any man should be happy with, but sometimes it was a fact of conflict.

The blood was sticky on Reeve’s hands. He had to pry his fingers off the rifle barrel. He didn’t think about it at all.

He hit the coast road before dawn, and let the feeling of elation have its way for a few moments while he rested and checked the road for guards, patrols, or traffic. He could see nothing, but he could hear and smell the sea. He double-checked with his night scope that the route was clear, then picked himself up and jogged across the paved surface, his rubberized soles making little sound. He could make out the edge of the sea before him, and a ribbon of sand and shale. Lights south of him told the story: he was only five or so miles north of Rio Grande, which put him maybe twenty to twenty-five miles south of the next decent-sized settlement. Reeve knew what he wanted now-he wanted a boat. He doubted he’d find many between here and the next settlement north. He’d have to walk towards Rio Grande and, this close to the ocean and the road, cover was limited to say the least.

He had to use what darkness there was.

And he had to get a move on.

He picked up his pace, though every muscle in his body complained and his brain told him to go to sleep. He popped two caffeine tablets and washed them down with the last water from his canteen. His luck was holding. After barely a mile he came across a small cove filled with paddle boats. They were probably used for fishing, a single rower and lines or a net. Some of them bobbed in the water, attached by lines to several large buoys; others lay beached on the shale. An old man was putting his gear into one of the beached boats, working by the light of his lantern. Reeve looked around but saw no one else. It would be dawn soon, and the other fishermen would arrive. This old man was beating the rush.

The man looked up from his work as he heard Reeve crunch over the shale towards him. He prepared a glint of a smile and some remark about another early bird, but his eyes and mouth opened wide when he saw the soldier pointing a rifle at him.

Reeve spoke to the man quietly in Spanish, stumbling over the words. He blamed fatigue. The man seemed to understand. He couldn’t take his eyes off the caked blood on Reeve’s arms and chest. He was a man who had seen blood before. It was dried to the color of rust, but he knew what he was looking at.

Reeve explained what he needed. The man begged him to take another boat, but Reeve needed the man with him. He couldn’t trust him not to raise the alarm as soon as his fellow fishermen arrived.

What Reeve did not say was that he was too tired to row. That was another reason he needed the old man.