Not well enough. Her white gown was still discernible through the leaves. He should smear it with mud to break up her shape—
A shout, close by. Out of time. His trail had been found.
He ducked behind a tree and peered into the jungle. Another urgent cry in Vietnamese. The man was less than eighty metres away. He shouted again, waving his flashlight. Chase rapidly checked to each side. Those other hunters that he could pick out by their torches were advancing in a widely spaced ragged line, some of them now level with his position. Unless they looked back and happened to have a clear line of sight on their companion, they would not see or hear his warning.
What would the man do? Leave the trail to run after the others — or follow it?
The latter. The torch beam moved back down to the ground, then began to advance on Chase’s position. Fast. The man was moving at a near-run, certain he had his prey’s scent.
The trail would lead him past Chase’s hiding place. He dropped low, keeping the tree between himself and the approaching light.
The man shouted again, excited triumph clear. Rain-dripping metal gleamed; his gun. The AKS came up, tracking back and forth as he searched for his quarry.
Chase hunched lower. He heard squelching footsteps over the wind and rain. The Vietnamese man was almost upon him.
The hunter jogged past the tree — then slowed, the torch warily sweeping the surrounding vegetation. The boot prints had become muddled, tracks crossing over each other. He hesitated, then started to follow one set.
Towards Chase.
The Englishman kept moving around the tree as the Vietnamese lifted his torch. Its beam followed the trail to the base of the trunk. Chase sensed his sudden wariness, afraid of an ambush.
Gun and torch came around in unison as he turned the light on the undergrowth. Chase tensed as it reached him—
A low moan. Natalia.
The man spun, torch beam locking on to the wet rock — then the figure in white beside it as she lifted her head. He raised the gun—
Chase burst out from behind the tree and dived at him.
The man whirled to shoot, but the Yorkshireman had already lashed out at his gun as they collided. His arm caught the magazine, knocking it out of the receiver and sending it spinning into the darkness. Both men hit the ground, mud splashing around them.
But there was a round already in the rifle’s chamber. If it fired, it would draw all the other hunters to their position.
The Vietnamese knew this too. Chase was on top, but the other man still held the AK in his right hand. He tried to bring it around to fire into his attacker’s side. Chase felt rather than saw the movement and snapped his left hand across as the man pulled the trigger—
It didn’t move. Chase had thrust his thumb through the trigger guard — behind the trigger itself.
The hunter squeezed it again, harder. Metal dug into Chase’s thumb like a guillotine blade, nerves and tendons crunching. He gasped in pain, but kept his grip on the gun.
The Vietnamese snarled as he struggled against Chase’s weight — then jerked his left hand free and smacked his heavy flashlight against the side of the Englishman’s head. Chase cried out. The light swung again—
Chase moved — not sideways to avoid the blow, but down, delivering a punishing headbutt. The man shrieked as his nose broke, cartilage cracking like damp wood.
The crushing pain on Chase’s thumb suddenly eased. He yanked at the gun, wresting it from the Vietnamese’s grip and tossing it out of reach. The other man was still paralysed by pain, bloodied face scrunched up in the spill of light from the torch, but Chase knew he only had moments before he recovered his senses.
He rolled off his attacker and grabbed him by the throat, hauling him over to clamp his arm around his neck. The Vietnamese realised what was happening and struggled, kicking furiously and slamming his elbows into the Englishman’s body, but Chase grimaced, withstanding the pain of the blows, and tightened his hold. The hunter’s fury turned to panic as he choked, but there was nothing he could do. His attacks grew weaker, then stopped. His body convulsed before going limp.
Chase eased his grip, taking several seconds to recover his breath and let the adrenalin rush subside, then brought up his aching hand to check the man’s pulse. It was slow, but steady. He pushed the unconscious form away and painfully rose to his knees.
Natalia had also risen. She stared at him in horror. ‘You — you killed him!’
‘No, he’s still alive,’ Chase rasped, ‘but we’ve got to get away from here before his friends realise he’s missing and come looking for him.’ He picked up the Kalashnikov, the rifle feeling unbalanced without its magazine. A rapid check of the ground around him revealed no trace of the curved metal clip, and he had no idea where it had landed. ‘Bollocks!’
He helped Natalia up. She gasped when she put weight on her foot, so he hoisted her over one shoulder in a fireman’s lift and, the AK in his right hand, moved off into the jungle, angling away from the other probing lights.
It wasn’t long before he heard shouts from behind. The Vietnamese man had regained consciousness and was yelling for help. By now, the gap in the search line had been noticed, some of the other hunters having turned to investigate. All Chase could do was keep going, trying to camouflage his tracks as much as possible.
He pushed on for five more minutes, ten. A look back. The pursuing lights had finally been lost in the storm. But could he risk trying to find a hiding place?
A feeble moan from over his shoulder forced an answer. Exhausted from the drugs and whatever experiments the Russians had been carrying out on her, drenched and cold in only her thin surgical gown, Natalia had reached the limit of her endurance. If he didn’t find shelter for her soon, there was a definite danger that if she passed out again, she might never wake up. He clambered over more roots, eyes straining to pick out details in the darkness.
A shadowy shape on the ground resolved itself into that of a fallen tree as he approached. One end was higher than the other, propped up by a hunk of half-buried stone. A black void told him that the log was hollow. He went to the open end, using the rifle to probe its interior — partly to check if it was large enough to fit Natalia, and also to make sure it was not home to any venomous snakes. It seemed big enough to accommodate her — just — and nothing hissed at him.
He bent forward, carefully letting the young German slide off his shoulder and taking her weight with his arms. ‘Natalia, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m going to put you into a hiding place. I’ll be right here with you.’ He lifted her again, this time trying to manoeuvre her bare legs into the open end of the log. It felt like trying to push wet spaghetti through a keyhole, but after a couple of attempts he finally got both limp limbs into the gap and eased her inside. When she was fully swallowed by the log, he shrugged off his backpack, then removed his rain cape and draped it over her as best he could.
There was a low hollow beneath the trunk’s raised end. Another quick check for snakes, then Chase squeezed down into it, keeping the gun with its single bullet at the ready as he stared into the jungle back the way they had come. No lights, no movement but the sway of trees and bushes in the wind and the constant falling rain.
He kept watch for as long as he could, but tiredness inevitably caught up. Despite his best efforts, sleep eventually swallowed him as completely as the night.
11
Eddie gazed out across the long frozen lake. ‘So, somewhere under that… there’s a Viking village?’