THE THOUSAND DOLLAR HUNT: Colt Ryder is Back in Action! (11 page)

Chapter Ten

I woke up with a pounding headache, and a dull aching in my muscles.

My head came up and I looked around in an attempt to orientate myself. I was in the back of a jeep, wrists and ankles bound loosely; and the jeep was out in the wilderness, under a brightly moonlit night sky.

I wondered how long I’d been out.

‘You’ve been out of it less than an hour,’ a voice came from the front seat, and I recognized it as the general’s. ‘But the nights come in fast around here. Although it’s almost daylight with that moon up there.’

I couldn’t tell if Badrock’s voice held disappointment or happiness at the fact, but I could see that he was right. Even without electric lighting, I had no trouble discerning the general’s features as he stared at me, his face bathed in a silvery glow.

‘Do you think that will make things harder for you, or easier?’ he asked, and I paused as I thought.

Good light would mean that I would see my hunters more easily than I would otherwise; but of course, they would also be able to see me, and it would make it all the harder to hide or conceal myself.

But then again, with the thermal imaging and night vision technology these guys would be packing, they’d be able to see me as clear as day anyway.

‘Easier,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ the general agreed. ‘It will negate our technological advantage, to some small degree at least.’

‘Might be all the degree I need.’

‘It might,’ the general agreed, as he took a lungful of warm night air. ‘It just might. As I told the others, we’ve never had a man like you here before.’

‘You prefer the easy option.’

‘Do I?’ Badrock shook his head. ‘Don’t be so sure. If I liked the easy option, why select you? Why entertain you, why give you a chance? I could have just killed you in your sleep. I could have let Hatfield kill you the first time I saw you.’

‘So why didn’t you?’

‘Curiosity, I suppose. Boredom, perhaps. Do you know the kind of people we normally hunt here?’ He scoffed. ‘Men and women like the other six targets tonight, untrained and generally useless. Oh, we get the odd surprise now and again, the occasional drifter with a bit of fight in them. But nobody ever lasts long out here.’

‘I don’t suppose they would, given the fact that their hunters have rifles and night vision, and they have nothing.’

‘Do you think you don’t have a chance?’

‘I’m different.’

‘Exactly,’ Badrock agreed. ‘
Exactly
. You’re different. You’re better. An elite soldier, in the prime of life, experienced in combat and highly conditioned. Now, we’ve had combat vets here before, people we’ve pulled in from shelters, soldiers who’ve fallen on hard times, you know the sort. But the trouble is, by the time they’ve got to that stage, they’re a mess – mentally
and
physically. Most are alcoholics or drug-dependent, and their bodies have suffered for it. We get the odd gang-banger in too, boys off the streets. They talk tough, think that because they’ve fired a Glock or a MAC-10 in the hood, they’re the real deal.’ He shook his head, his skull pallid and eerie in the moonlight. ‘Within five minutes of being out here, they shit their little pants, every last one of them.’

He stretched out, yawned, and turned back to me. ‘But you can see our problem, of course. We need people who won’t be missed – people who are here illegally, for instance, and therefore haven’t told anyone where they are, or else people from the homeless shelters, or living on the streets. People who won’t be missed.’

‘Benjamin Hooker was missed,’ I pointed out.

‘Yes, and look what a stroke of luck that was for me,’ Badrock said happily. ‘Because that poor unfortunate boy brought me
you
. Imagine my surprise, my
joy
, when I figured out who you really were. The thousand dollar man. A drifter, a myth, not a real man at all. A loner who nobody would ever miss, because nobody even knows for sure if you really exist. But a top solider nevertheless. And therefore a
challenge
, at long last!’

The general withdrew a large Cuban cigar from his breast pocket and lit it, pulling in a great lungful of scented smoke. ‘Hmm, that hits the spot,’ he said contentedly. ‘Would you care for one?’

I was about to turn him down, when a thought occurred to me. ‘Yes,’ I said, and took the cigar from him, slipping it into my own pocket.

‘You’re not going to smoke it?’ he asked.

‘Not yet,’ I replied, aiming once again to unsettle him before the games started for real. ‘I thought I’d smoke it over your dead body, drop the ashes on your bloody corpse. How does that sound?’

‘Unlikely,’ he answered evenly, obviously resigned to my verbal attacks. ‘Extremely unlikely, as I think we both know.’

‘How could you do that to your daughter?’ I asked, changing the subject, hoping he might provide me with a hint of her location within his answer.

‘I’m a practical man,’ he answered, ‘and she was a tool to be used, a resource like any other.’

‘Dammit, she’s your
daughter
,’ I objected.

‘Not anymore,’ he said, ‘not after what she did. Oh, I managed to keep her various indiscretions out of the papers of course, but you can never entirely defeat the rumor mill, and word had already spread among my competitors. Proven or not, there was no way the army board would give a fourth star to a man with a
crack whore
for a daughter. That bitch cost me my promotion to full general rank, destroyed my hopes of making it into the halls of the joint chiefs. What she’s done here is simply pay me back for what she took from me.’

‘What she took from you?’ I asked incredulously. ‘What about what
you
took from
her?
’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean her childhood,’ I said. ‘Absent father, sent away to boarding school, you think that’s what she wanted?’

Badrock shook his head pityingly, as if to a child who didn’t understand. ‘I never wanted her in the first place,’ he said. ‘Married late, which was a mistake. Never should have gotten married at all. But it looked good for the promotions boards, you know? More stable, more trustworthy.’ He shrugged. ‘Whatever. The bitch was nothing but trouble, a real pain the ass. And then the dumb bitch got pregnant. I tried to love the girl, but I just couldn’t; it was a drain on my emotional resources, and I needed every ounce of energy for my job.’

He smiled wryly. ‘I killed her mother, you know.’ He nodded his head knowingly, his smile widening. ‘Yes, I killed her one day when I was back on leave, Talia was in kindergarten. And what kind of stupid fucking name is
Talia
, anyway? I was away on tour when she was born, never had a chance to stop my wife naming her. But anyway,’ he continued, smoking happily on his cigar, ‘I digress. Where was I?’

‘You were killing your wife.’

‘Of course I was. So I was at home, and it was the same as always, the woman moaning and whining,
clean this
,
tidy that
,
don’t put that there
, you know the sort of thing. So one day I just grabbed hold of her and throttled her, wrung her damned scrawny neck until the life bled right out of her, right there on the living room couch. Poured a quart of vodka down her neck, arranged a nice little DUI crash scene. I was sure to burn the thing right out too, make sure the authorities couldn’t tell what had really killed her.

‘I have to admit, I thought about killing the girl too. But whatever you think of me, I’m not a monster – even I couldn’t bring myself to kill a child in cold blood. And so I sent her off to boarding school. She never wanted for anything, what more could I do? And then she repays my kindness by becoming a crack addict and selling her body on the streets.’

He shook his head, obviously still not able to come to terms with her ‘betrayal’. It was clear that the general was insane, and had been for some time; perhaps had always been. He existed in his own private world, and anyone who questioned it was liable to get hurt, or worse.

‘You call killing the girl’s mother
kindness
?’ I asked in disbelief. I didn’t mind questioning his private world; I was going to get hurt anyway.

‘Not killing the girl was kindness,’ he replied. ‘Misplaced kindness, as it turned out. But then again,’ he added, ‘at least she helped me confirm my suspicions about you.’

‘That’s why you sent her to me.’

‘Of course,’ Badrock said. ‘I didn’t believe you really wanted to work for me, I suspected that you were sticking around to poke your nose further into my affairs. But I knew it would be hard to get you to talk – and if my suspicions as to your true identity were verified, I also didn’t want you injured. Hence my protection of you during your time here. I wanted you fresh for the hunt. My daughter, on the other hand – her I
could
use for information. I knew if your intentions were not sincere, you would either volunteer them to your pillow partner, or perhaps even try and recruit her to your cause. And then it would be no problem at all to get
her
to talk.’

It was my turn to shake my head now. ‘You really are one sick, sorry bastard.’

‘Here,’ he said, throwing me a scrap of cloth that I caught in my handcuffed hands. ‘Part of her dress, torn by my men.’ He smiled at my visible reaction. ‘Keep it as a memento of your time together. It’s unlikely you’ll ever see her again . . . in one piece at least.’

‘Son of a bitch,’ I whispered through gritted teeth, putting the piece of cloth away in a pocket.

‘Say what you want,’ the general said, ‘but we are similar, you and I, much more so than you probably think.’

‘We’ve both got a head, two arms and two legs,’ I agreed, ‘and we both piss standing up. But the similarities end right there.’

‘I think not,’ the general said. ‘We both enjoy the thrill of the hunt, do we not? You enjoy your work as the thousand dollar man, of course you do. And why not? You hunt down men like me for your clients, and you love it, you cannot lie to me about it, I see it in your eyes, it’s like poison in your veins. You want to kill me so bad you can feel it in the pit of your stomach, can’t you? Can’t you?’

I
could
; I wanted to kill him so bad it
hurt
. But I stayed quiet.

‘Yes,’ he urged. ‘Of course you do.’ He finished his cigar, threw it into the dirt outside the jeep. ‘You’re scared, of course you are; armed men tracking you, wanting to hunt you down and kill you, you wouldn’t be human if you weren’t. But at the same time, you’re excited too, am I right? You’ll be free out there, free to do what you do best, free to turn the tables, track the hunters and kill
us
instead. A part of you relishes it, can’t wait to get started. Am I right?’

I scoffed, but the fact remained that Badrock
was
right. I was scared, yes; and yet, exactly as he suggested, I literally couldn’t wait for the hunt to begin. If it was a choice between sitting here, bound and helpless, or being out there with a chance – however slim – of bringing the fight to Badrock and his set of bastard hunting pals, then it was no choice at all.

He was right.

I was a hunter, and I wanted the game to start.

‘You might not be wrong,’ I allowed. ‘So when do we begin?’

‘Ha,’ the general laughed, ‘I knew it. I knew it! Yes, that’s the attitude, that’s the spirit I’ve been waiting for all these years. A worthy opponent at last, someone
worth
hunting.’

‘So let’s get on with it then.’

‘You’re right,’ the general allowed. ‘The night is not getting any younger.’ He pointed at the ground outside the jeep, gesturing for me to get out. I did so, putting my bound hands on the side of the jeep and levering my tied ankles over the top, dropping heavily to the dusty floor.

I looked around warily, unsure of what was out there.

‘Don’t worry about the predators,’ Badrock said. ‘Due to the nature of the guests we have here, we’ve taken the precaution of rounding them up and locking them away for the night, in those pens you saw on your familiarization yesterday. All of them except the crocs anyway, so you might want to stay away from the river. Hippos aren’t too friendly either, come to think of it.

‘As you’ve no doubt noticed, your bindings are not tight. You’ll be out of them in a minute or two at most, by which stage we’ll have driven away from here. But we’ll be back, I can assure you. You’ve got a half hour’s grace, to get yourself sorted. Hide, if you can. Come up with some sort of plan, if you want.’

He looked up at the moonlit sky. ‘Beautiful night,’ he said, ‘but it’s not going to last. A storm’s moving in, our first in months. Gonna be a big one, and I couldn’t be happier. I
love
hunting in the rain. It just seems
right
, you know?

‘You’re fair game to any of our hunters, but they’re amateurs,’ the general said. ‘So try and stay alive until the storm starts at least. Because you know that it’s going to be
me
that seals your fate, my boy. I’m going to find you in the rain and put a bullet right between your eyes, and I’m going to fucking love doing it. You hear me? I’m going to fucking
love
it.’