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“Red team, report! Red team, report!” wailed the walkie-talkie. But even though Cookie knew others would be arriving soon, he needed a moment to compose himself, so he leaned against a tree, pressing his palm to the spot where the bullet had grazed him. He pulled up his sweater to inspect the wound. It looked bad, but he knew from painful experience it was nothing to worry about. Blood loss and the fact that he’d be easier to track were the worst of it.
He took stock. The old guy was still twitching. Alan was dead. Cookie reached for the security guard’s assault rifle, but when he inspected the grip, he found it inset with some kind of sensor. His heart sank as he tried to operate the safety and found it unresponsive, knowing what the sensor meant: smart-technology. Linked to the user’s palm print. And if his guess was correct…
Fuck! The old guy’s Purdey was equipped with the same. He tossed it away. From Alan he took a hunting knife. The old guy had a sidearm, also smart-protected and also useless.
The hunting knife would have to do. But now it was time to find out if these Quarry Co. guys were going to fulfil their part of the bargain. He put a hand to his side and started running. Leaves stung his eyes. Twigs lashed him. He stumbled over roots bubbling on the ground and reached to push branches aside as he hurtled forwards in search of sanctuary.
From behind came the crash of gunfire. Overhead, the sound of the drones intensified. They’d spotted him now. The time for stealth was over. He just had to hope he’d given them enough to think about in the meantime, and that the two casualties would slow them down.
Teeth bared, hatred in his bones, he kept running. The trees were thinning. Ahead of him was a peat-covered slope and he hit it fast. Scrambling to the top, he was painfully aware that he’d made himself a visible target, but he was close now. Close to the perimeter.
“If you reach the road you win. The money’s yours.”
“No matter who I have to kill along the way?”
“Our players expect danger, Mr. Cook. What is the roulette wheel without the risk of losing?”
He’d believed them and, fuck it, why not?
And there it was—the road. It bisected a further stretch of woodland, but this was definitely it. An observation drone buzzed a few feet above him. To his left he heard the sound of approaching engines and saw a Land Rover Defender leaning into the bend, approaching fast. Two men in the front.
They didn’t look like they were about to celebrate his victory. He tensed. At his rear the noise of the approaching hunting party was getting louder.
The Defender roared up to his position, passenger door flapping as it drew to a halt. A security guy wielding the same Heckler & Koch assault rifle carried by Alan stepped out and took up position behind the door.
“Where’s my money?” called Cookie, with a glance back down into the basin of the wood. He could see the blurry outlines of players and their security among the trees, the crackle of comms. “You said if I reached the road I win,” he pressed.
Ignoring him, the passenger had braced his rifle on the sill of his window and was speaking into a walkie-talkie, saying something Cookie couldn’t hear. Receiving orders.
“Come on, you bastards. I reached the fucking road, now where’s my money?”
The passenger had finished on the walkie-talkie, and Cookie had been shot at enough times to know the signs of it happening again. There was no prize money. No winning. No survival. There were just hunters and prey. Just an old fool and a man about to gun him down.
The passenger squeezed off bullets that zinged over Cookie’s head as he tucked in and let himself roll back to the bottom of the slope.
I can do this, he thought. He’d fought in Afghanistan. He’d fought with the best, against the best. He could go up against a bunch of rich geriatric thrill-seekers and come out on top—security or no security. Yes. He was going to get out of this and then he was going to make the fuckers pay.
He could do it. Who dares wins.
Then a bullet ripped the top of Cookie’s head off—a bullet fired from a TrackingPoint precision-guided bolt-action rifle.
“Oh, good shot, Mr. Miyake,” said the players as they emerged from the undergrowth in order to survey the kill.
They were already looking forward to the post-hunt meal.
It was dark and Shelley was ground down after fruitless hours in various London shitholes, when trouble leaned on the bar.
It was the last place he’d intended to visit that day: the Two Dogs on Exmouth Market, a pub that was always open and always gloomy inside, forbidding to all but the early morning traders, afternoon postal workers from nearby Mount Pleasant Mail Center, and gangs of rail-link laborers who descended at nighttime.
Shelley had cast an eye across the gathered throng with a sinking heart, sensing he’d get no joy from this lot. Most were already half in the bag. They were likely to give him the runaround, just for the hell of it.
So, a wasted day. The only thing to say for it was that Lucy would be proud. They’d both known there was a danger he’d simply dig in at the first pub he visited, emerging a day later with a hangover and a bad case of drinker’s guilt. But no. All temptation and even the odd invitation had been resisted. He’d done the rounds as sober as a judge. A man on a mission.
Word of which had evidently got around, if the guy leaning on the bar was anything to go by.
“You’re looking for somebody, I hear?” he said now, with a voice that sounded like a cement mixer.
Shelley stared into rheumy, drink-sodden eyes and knew a shakedown when he saw one. After all, with his black woolen overcoat and baker-boy cap tilted rakishly, he knew he stood out. That was the plan. But the same presence that made him a serious customer also made him a target for shakedowns and, from the looks of things, matey-boy here had in mind something more ambitious than a drink in return for yet more useless information. There was the knife he was wearing, for one thing.
