The Hunt: ‘A great thriller...breathless all the way’ – LEE CHILD. T.J. Lebbon

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СКАЧАТЬ a trickle. In the wetter months this would be a torrent, but now it was easy to climb its course, moving from rock to bank and back again. He kept his head down, using his hands as well as his feet when the incline grew steeper. He didn’t worry about his feet getting wet, but knew he might suffer later. Wet socks often resulted in blisters.

      Glancing up frequently, Chris made sure he was heading towards the rocky outcropping he’d noticed. He’d become quite proficient at judging distances across landscapes such as this, and knew that features could often appear much closer than they really were. He’d scouted this one well. The helicopter was much louder now, approaching the wider area of road where Rose had dropped him off.

      He only hoped it could not land anywhere else. He hoped that they wanted a hunt, and not just a quick kill, otherwise they could simply shoot at him from the air. He hoped he was faster than them, fitter, better prepared for confronting the changeable elements these mountains could throw at the unwary.

      Chris was also painfully aware that he knew nothing. This was ridiculous, unbelievable, and everything here was new.

      Breathing hard now, he moved slowly and methodically, resisting the temptation to leap and run up the gully formed by the stream. He’d soon wear himself out that way. Walking uphill, pushing down on his knees when not using his hands for support, would be as quick as trying to run. Gravity might only be a theory, but it was an insistent one.

      The stream ran down directly through the rock feature he was aiming for, finding its way amongst the jumble of massive boulders that might have been there for ten million years. As he approached them he paused, pressed low to the ground and turned on his side so that he could look back down the way he’d come. The road already seemed a surprising distance below him, and the helicopter was just appearing from behind a fold in the land. It was close to the road, stirring up a storm of dust and dried plants as it dipped lower.

      He’d never been interested in aircraft, not even as a kid. And with two little girls there wasn’t much call for toy soldiers and Airfix models. But he reckoned this was similar to the helicopters used to ferry workmen back and forth to oil rigs in the North Sea, a passenger craft with enough room for a dozen people, as well as equipment and luggage. Still dwarfed by the landscape, it took up most of the road as it touched down.

      Chris scrambled the last twenty feet out of the gully and into the jumble of rocks, ensuring that he was properly out of sight. He was sweating already. Some of that was fear. He panted hard, catching his breath, and made sure he had a clear view between rocks down to the road.

      The helicopter’s rotors kept spinning, though the motor’s tone lowered.

      He tracked the route of the road as best he could up towards the ridge, and there at the top … was that a car? He wasn’t sure. It was too far to see, and from this angle the sun shone into his eyes. But he hoped that was Rose up there, paused to see what was happening.

      She could have stayed with him. Rose and her gun, her knowledge of what was going on, everything she knew about these people and what they wanted … she could have stayed and helped him.

      But she was using him, a lump of meat as meaningless to her as he was to these rich hunters she’d told him about. Her only aim was revenge against the people who’d murdered her family. To the hunters he was quarry, to her he was bait. It amounted to the same thing.

      ‘Fucking hell,’ he whispered, shaking, shivers passing down his back and tingling his balls. He still couldn’t quite believe it. People would pay to hunt people? Though he’d always regarded himself as a long-term optimist, he was also aware that in a society of millions there were bad eggs, twisted people with perverted desires. Whether sick or evil, or occupying the wide spectrum in between, these were realities that he did his best to ignore. They were the people he hoped never to meet, and who he was happy leaving alone in their own skewed realities. But he’d always known that such bad eggs sometimes crossed over into the gentle masses. It was one of his greatest fears.

      Today he had met them, and his world had changed. Rose was one. A bad egg, whatever the cause of her badness.

      And now, these others. The helicopter was filled with them. Rich people who might present a respectable facade for all but one day of the year, and today they wanted Chris Sheen dead by their hand.

      He dropped the bag and rucksack from his shoulders and opened the rucksack, rooting around for the phone he’d seen before. His hand delved deep, moving other objects aside until he found the familiar shape of a smartphone.

      He unlocked the screen. There was no service. ‘Shit. Shit!’ He stood, making sure he was still hidden by the rocks, holding the phone up towards the sky as if willing contact. He turned it this way and that, never taking his eyes from the top left corner. No service.

      Later. He would call the police later.

      Slipping the phone into the small, zipped back pocket of his running trousers, he crouched down again and opened the holdall. It contained a new pair of road-running shoes, useless to him up here. A woollen sweater that would hold water and become too heavy. A pack of sandwiches past their sell-by date and speckled with mould. There were spare socks and underwear which he slipped into the rucksack, but most of what the Trail had packed for him was useless. Of course. If what Rose had told him was true, they’d expected a chase through the city. Their aim would have been to make the hunt more exciting, not to give him anything useful.

      He shoved the Adidas bag down between two rocks.

      His shivering persisted. It was a warm September day, but in these mountains there was always a cool breeze drifting across the shadowed slopes. And after his sudden burst of activity, hunkering down motionless meant he was rapidly cooling. Got to keep moving, he thought. If I have to start again quickly, got to keep warm. So as he watched the helicopter he stretched his legs, massaged his muscles, kept the blood flowing.

      The aircraft’s big side door opened and people started to climb out. From this distance it was difficult to make out much detail. But Chris could see that they wore camouflage clothing, carried rucksacks, and he was quite certain that the objects slung on their shoulders were guns of some sort, not walking sticks.

      His blood ran cold, stomach tingled. Like real hunters, he thought.

      Two people exited, three, and the fourth tripped and fell from the aircraft, sprawling in the dust. The others stood around and watched, not one of them going to help. The fallen figure stood and brushed themselves down. A fifth person jumped down from the helicopter, and the five stood around, seemingly aimless. At an unseen signal they hurried to the roadside, then slipped down into the ditch. There they waited. Someone shouted at them from the helicopter, gesticulating from the shadowy interior. Don’t want them to be seen dressed like that, with guns. Too close to the road. But Chris realised he hadn’t seen a single vehicle since Rose had left him standing there, and he wondered just where they were. He had been running in Snowdonia several times, but he couldn’t immediately recognise any of these peaks. He guessed they were more remote, in places where casual holidaymakers might not visit.

      Three of the five seemed to be overweight. Either that, or their clothing was thick and bulky. He couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought they were all men. One had already stripped off his camouflage jacket and tied it around his waist. He seemed to be wearing a black bandana around his head. A real Rambo character. One of the fitter-looking ones was tall and blond, standing apart from the others and shielding his eyes to stare up at the mountains.

      Chris wished he had binoculars. He delved into the rucksack again, realising he hadn’t checked every pocket. But though he СКАЧАТЬ