Hellgate London - Exodus Part 3

Returning to the tree where he'd left his gear, Simon collapsed the dagger and put it away. He hefted the backpack and his hunting rifle, took out his good compa.s.s to check the direction, and started back toward camp.

Back at the campsite, Simon knew things had gone badly wrong. He'd known they would when he started tracking the tire marks left by the poachers' vehicles and found they headed toward the campsite.

For a little while he'd let himself hope that the poachers wouldn't find the campsite. But as soon as they'd gotten into the area, Simon knew the men were hunting them too. Tire tracks cut through the abandoned campsite, rolling through the gray ash of the campfire.

Simon cursed himself and surveyed the terrain. The poachers hadn't had any problems picking up Saundra's trail. Saundra hadn't had time to hide her tracks, and with tourists in tow, that hadn't been possible.

There was little doubt that the poachers had probably overtaken Saundra and the others by now. And what will they do? Kill them for possibly being witnesses to their poaching?

The possibility flushed ice water through Simon's veins. He redistributed his pack across his shoulders and pushed himself into a jog. He'd lost over two hours tracking the wounded Cape buffalo. His sweat-drenched clothing clung to him. His muscles protested, but he pushed himself forward.

Four and a half miles later, as best as Simon could guess, he found where the poachers had overtaken Saundra and their group.

Hyenas savaged Dalton's and Carey's bodies, growling at each other as they claimed their meals. Both men had been executed, a bullet between the eyes and powder marks to show the proximity.

Breath burning in his lungs, Simon dropped to his knees beside the men and checked their pulses even though he knew he wouldn't find any. He closed their staring eyes and got up again.

Why did they kill you? Did you resist?Simon couldn't believe that.Or to make a point? That felt more right even though it was ultimately more wrong.

He swung back to search the ground, barely holding the panic within him in check. There were footprints and tire tracks everywhere. He figured that the poachers had found Saundra and the tourists in the brush, flushed them toward the trail, then killed Dalton and Carey and loaded the survivors onto the Land Rovers.

Saundra's alive. The others are alive.Simon chose to concentrate on that instead of the dead men. Despite his fatigue, he sipped water from his canteen and ate an energy bar as he walked. When he finished, he began to run again.

"What are they going to do to us?"

Calming herself, Saundra turned to face one of the women in the group. It was a struggle to remember the woman's name. Saundra hated that; she prided herself on getting the names of her charges sorted out promptly. She was a perfectionist. Simon teased her unmercifully for that.

Simon.She wondered if he was still alive. So far the poachers hadn't said anything about killing him. He couldn't be dead. She wouldn't let him be dead. She'd never known a man more alive than Simon Cross. But he wouldn't have given in to their captors either. She knew that as well. "Miss McIntyre? Did you hear me?" The woman whispered more forcefully.

"I heard you." Saundra made herself speak calmly. She was anything but calm. The poachers had tied their hands behind them with rope, then tied them together around a tree. At first Saundra had tried to break free, but her hands had quickly gone numb from lack of blood circulation.

"Well?"

"I don't know what they're going to do."

The woman was young, probably in her mid-twenties, the same age as Saundra. But she hadn't seen as much of the cold callousness of life that Saundra had. The woman lowered her head as she wept. Tears ran down her dusty cheeks, leaving muddy furrows behind.

Saundra's first impulse was to tell the woman-Cherie,the name just popped into her head-that everything was going to be all right. But she didn't. One of her first rules, one she'd had to teach Simon, was not to ever promise a paying client something you couldn't deliver.

So she let the woman cry. One of the others, Denise, leaned in to her. They whispered in French, and Saundra only had marginal French. The two women came from France, somewhere outside of Paris, Saundra thought, but she couldn't be sure now. They'd come on a grand adventure, hoping to meet men that would make them forget about boring jobs.

They're not thinking about work now,Saundra thought, and she felt guilty as soon as the thought had manifested. She scanned the camp.

Night was coming, lengthening and deepening the shadows. As soon as the sun dipped below the horizon, full dark would be upon them for a time before the moon rose. It had been full last night, but Saundra couldn't remember if that had been the second or third night.

The men sat around the campfire eating the supplies Saundra and Simon had outfitted their clients with. They'd also found the vodka left over from last night.

In the flickering firelight, Saundra thought she recognized two of them. She knew that wasn't good. If she knew them, they probably knew her. They wouldn't want any witnesses talking about what they'd been doing. Gamekeepers would find the elephants' bodies soon enough, and they'd be looking for the people responsible.

You're a witness,she reminded herself.That's like an inch away from being dead. She pulled at the ropes again, but she still couldn't feel her hands or the ropes. The others were all in the same shape. Even if they'd been able to sit back to back without getting noticed, they wouldn't have been able to untie the ropes.

Worn and weary, caked in dirt and dried sweat, Simon knelt beside an acacia tree and peered through the open sights of his hunting rifle. It was a bolt-action .375 Weatherby Magnum. Even as quick as he was, he could only get off one round, perhaps two, before the poachers reacted. By then the survivors might try for hostages.

The rifle wasn't the way to do this. And if he'd been a regular wilderness guide, he wouldn't have been the man for what he had to do.

He put the rifle to the side and reached into the backpack again. Taking out both punching daggers, he strapped them on. Then he crept deeper into the shadows, getting closer to the poachers.

The men didn't think they were being followed. Otherwise they'd have posted guards. More than that, they wouldn't have been sitting around the fire where they'd be highlighted so easily and ruining their night vision with full dark coming on.

Even as he worked his way toward them, Simon kept his eyes averted from the fire and used his peripheral vision. In darkness, direct vision suffered. It was what was seen from the corner of the eye that was seen best.

He counted all five of them. He could smell them now, too. Even over the smoke from the fire, he scented their unwashed musk and sour odors. Saundra often told him he had the keenest nose of any man she'd ever met. She also said that about his hearing and eyesight.

That was due, in part, to the training Simon's father and the other Templar had put him through. Even down in the Underground, there had been combat zones and tests and trials. He'd been shown how to use all his senses in battle.

"-some kind of craziness goin' on over the radio an' the television," one man said. "I heard there was some kind of alien invasion going on in London. Said some kinda beasts just beamed down from a mothers.h.i.+p of some kind."

"That's a bunch of c.r.a.p if you ask me," another man said.

Simon moved out of the brush, crouched down, and eased one foot in front of the other. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. His first thoughts were of his father. But aliens weren't demons. Then he was behind the closest Land Rover, inching his way forward, trying to figure out how the men would split once they knew he was there.

"n.o.body asked you," the first speaker growled. "So just keep your trap shut." The second speaker made a rude comment.

"What kind of aliens?" someone else asked.

"From another world," the first speaker said. "What kind of other aliens is there?" "Like those aliens out ofAlien ? Or like the ones out ofPredator ?"

"How should I know?" "You said you seen 'em." "On tri-dee."

"When?"

"Few days ago. While we were back in Cape Town. Before we got ready to come out here." "Did they say where they came from?"

"No."

"That would be interestin'. I wouldn't mind baggin' a few aliens." The other men laughed.

Hunkering down beside the front of the Land Rover, Simon took fresh grips on the punching daggers.

He shoved all the questions and extraneous thoughts from his mind and achieved the focus his father had trained him to have. He took in a deep breath and let it out.

Then he moved, as quick as he could, going for the man closest to him. The poacher sat in a collapsible canvas chair that Simon thought he recognized from the gear their clients had brought. There was no hesitation in Simon as he attacked, no forgiveness. Seeing Dalton and Carey had drained that from him. If he was going to save Saundra and their clients, he couldn't be merciful.

Except for quick deaths. And that was more a tactical choice than out of compa.s.sion. A dead man couldn't get back up at an inopportune time.

Still crouching as he closed on the nearest man from behind, Simon rolled his right arm forward, twisting his hips and getting his shoulder behind the blow. The katar sliced through the canvas back of the chair, then sank deeply into the poacher's back and punched through his chest.

Kicking out, Simon yanked the dagger from the dead man and knocked him forward into the fire. The smell of cooking flesh and burned hair filled his nose. He whirled, going back behind the Land Rover as one of the poachers pointed a rifle at him and fired.

Three.

The rifle shot jerked Saundra's attention back to the poachers. She'd drifted off to sleep, never knowing when she'd given in to the fatigue that clung to her after spending tense hours traveling in the hot Land Rovers.

A dead poacher lay in the fire, one of the younger men, not their grizzled leader. Flames embraced the body, quickly catching the clothing on fire. The four other men were up and moving, bringing their rifles and pistols to bear on an unseen target.

For a moment Saundra thought perhaps they'd started arguing among themselves. Then she realized that all four surviving men were circling the Land Rover, obviously pursuing someone or something . She couldn't imagine the predator that would so brazenly attack the men.

A flurry of movement erupted from beneath the vehicle. A long blade flicked out across the back of a man's legs. Blood spurted as the man screamed and went down. He tried to hang on to his rifle.

Simon Cross shot out from under the back of the Land Rover as the three other men turned to their fallen comrade. Saundra's heart thudded to life in her chest, but it was more out of fear for Simon than in any hope he might rescue them. She'd seen him fight before, in bars when someone got physical, or to protect her from a drunk that wouldn't take no for an answer.

But that was different. The poachers wouldn't hesitate for a moment to kill him. Saundra was certain they'd kill her and her clients before it was over with. The only thing that had forestalled that up till now had been the possibility of ransom.

In the darkness, Simon looked huge and dangerous, like some big cat. He was six feet five inches tall, broad-shouldered with a narrow waist, no spare flesh on him anywhere. His dark blond hair gleamed in the firelight. Even though she couldn't see them, Saundra knew his eyes were pale blue fire.

He moved like a dancer, hauling himself up onto the back of the Land Rover, then throwing himself forward before the poachers could react. Saundra got a brief glimpse of the two blades he wore on his hands. She'd noticed them in his backpack, and a few times she'd seen him working out with them when he'd thought he was by himself. Reaching the top of the Land Rover, he threw himself forward.

"Up there!" the fallen man roared.

The three poachers still standing turned to meet the threat. Before they could fire, Simon was among them, landing with the grace of a skilled gymnast. His blades flashed. One shot through the throat of a poacher, sending the man stumbling backward. The poacher forgot about his weapons and wrapped his hands around his slashed throat.

A second man wheeled on Simon, pointing his pistol and firing at almost point-blank range. But Simon wasn't there when the shots arrived. The bullets drilled holes into the Land Rover.

Saundra watched, unable to do anything, certain Simon was going to be dead in seconds.

Two men dead, another incapacitated, and two to go, Simon thought grimly. He furled the katars in against his body, spun back into the man with the pistol, then blocked the weapon up with the back of his right hand. Whirling in, Simon drove his left-hand katar into the man's exposed ribcage and pierced his opponent's heart.

As the newly dead man dropped, Simon went after the last man. Bullets sparked from the katar blades as Simon held them up defensively. The movement was sheer instinct. There'd been no hope that the blades would fend off bullets, but one of them hit and ricocheted and the others went wide of the mark.

The poacher tried to run and shoot at the same time, and didn't succeed at either. As a result, Simon blocked the man's efforts, then swept the man's legs out from under him with his own. When the poacher fell on his back on the ground, Simon pinned him there with the katar.

Surprised and scared, the poacher reached for the blade, wrapping his fingers against the sharp steel and cutting himself to the bone. Another breath, though, and he was past caring about the new injuries.

Simon watched the man's eyes dull, the pupils broaden and relax. Before tonight, he'd never killed another man. Now he'd killed four of them in under a minute. It was unreal. Nothing his father or the other Templar had trained him to do had prepared him for this.

"Simon!"

Saundra's voice drew Simon from his reverie. He put a foot on the dead man and yanked the katar free, then whirled to face the man whose legs he'd sliced.

The poacher had his rifle in his hand and was trying to bring it to bear. Simon ducked to the side and kicked. His foot connected with the rifle and sent it spinning away. In the next heartbeat, his blade was at the man's throat.

Closing his eyes, the poacher threw his hands out to his sides. "Don't kill me! Please don't kill me!" His eyes fluttered open and closed, as if he was afraid to look but was afraid not to look.

Simon thought about the way he'd found Dalton's and Carey's bodies, left out for the scavengers to have their way with. The poacher didn't deserve to live. The Cape Town authorities weren't going to be lenient with them.

But it was one thing to kill a man when he was capable of defending himself, and another to do the deed in cold blood, when he was helpless. Surprisingly, Simon thought-if the circ.u.mstances warranted it-that he could do it.

The poacher must have seen that too. "Please." His voice was a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

Simon knew it would only take one quick thrust to cut the man's carotid arteries. He'd bleed out in seconds and it would be relatively painless. Not at all what Dalton and Carey had had to endure.

"Simon." Saundra's voice was calm. "He can't hurt anyone. Don't. You've done enough." She paused. "Simon. Do you hear me?"

Feeling cold and distant, Simon looked at the man. "You're lucky." He lifted the blade from the poacher's neck. "Feel free to go ahead and try something stupid, though."

The poacher lay back, his chest heaving. He closed his eyes and swallowed.

Simon got to his feet and unstrapped one of the katars with his teeth. He picked up the man's rifle and threw it into the nearest Land Rover.

"I'm not going to move," the poacher declared. "I'm going to lay right here." His accent sounded German or Dutch. Simon's ear hadn't developed enough to tell the difference.

Without a word, Simon walked to the captives. He cut Saundra free with the katar, then gave her his boot knife to free the others.

Simon found the stream only a short distance from the campsite the poachers had chosen. He'd left Saundra in charge of the clients. He could have gotten them organized, but none of them wanted to be around him much.

Last night he'd been the life of the impromptu party. Tonight he'd killed four people.

Be fair,Simon chided himself.They saw two of their own get killed today, too. It might not all be you. While on safari, Simon had seen three people get killed. Thankfully none of those instances had been through any fault of his. One had been gored by a Cape buffalo. Another had been taken by a crocodile when he waded too far out into a river. And the third had been killed in a knife fight with another man.

Each of those incidents had left their marks on him. He knew their clients wouldn't soon forget their own experiences.

He knelt at the water's edge, feeling the wet mud soak into the khaki pants. Across the stream, a four-foot long crocodile lay half-buried in the mud and in the water. It watched Simon with cold eyes that looked bluish in the moonlight.

Other nocturnal birds and rodents drank from the water or went hunting. Some of them preyed on each other.

Leaning forward, Simon scooped up water in both hands and splashed his face. Cuts and scratches he'd collected while scrambling under and over the Land Rover stung. Before he knew it, he was sick, throwing up into the water. It lasted for only a short time and he tried to keep it quiet, but it left him drained and shaking.

"Are you all right?"

The voice belonged to Saundra. She stood somewhere behind him.

The slow current floated the sickness away. Simon leaned forward and splashed water in his face again.

He hated the taste of bile trapped at the back of his throat. "I'm fine."

"Did they hurt you?"

"No." Simon wished she'd go away. He'd come out here to be alone. "What you did, Simon-"

He turned to look at her then. "What I did was kill four men. That's pretty horrible, don't you think?"

He realized he was speaking louder than he'd intended.