The Hunt

Eli thought that he had him for a second -- that is, till the kid started shooting back. Most of the shots went wild, but one came pretty close to him. So with that in mind, he decided to move himself, and took off crawling.

Paco got behind a log and dared to peek over the top. He couldn't see anything in the murky light, but that didn't mean much; he hadn't seen anything before either and damn near got shot for his trouble. Putting a fresh clip into his pistol, Paco considered his next move.

Eli reloaded his rifle as well, wanting to make sure that he'd be ready when his target poked his head up again.

With the cloudy sky, it was really starting to get dark now. With that thought in mind, Paco got a little braver. Feeling the nervous sweat running down his face, he got behind a more substantial-looking tree and rose up to one knee, hoping to get a better look around.

From where Eli was lying in wait, he finally saw the man he was going to kill clearly when the guy incredibly got up and looked around from behind a tree. Hardly able to believe his luck, Eli took quick aim and fired before he lost his chance.

It wasn't the best shot he'd ever made, but it connected this time, which was all he needed it to do. Paco saw a flash of the muzzle an instant before what felt like he'd been hit in the side with a baseball bat. The shot had gone a little wide, but it had hit him in the hip before ricocheting off his pelvis. The force of the blow sent him spinning away from the tree to land in a heap on the ground.

It took a few seconds for the pain to start but when it did, it was excruciating. Paco could feel what he knew to be blood soaking his right side from the waist down. He knew rationally that he shouldn't make any noise -- not with his would-be killer so close -- but he couldn't help it. He just couldn't keep from screaming through the pain.

Eli knew that he'd hit him that time even before the spic had started screaming. He promptly got up and started forward, still at the ready since he knew his target wasn't dead and there wasn't anything more dangerous than a wounded animal. It was a good thing he was being cautious too, since he nearly got shot. Through his ordeal, Paco had somehow managed to hang onto his pistol and started pulling the trigger as soon as the two men saw each other. Paco wanted more than anything to just kill his would-be murderer simply out of spite, if nothing else, since he really doubted he was going to make it himself at this point.

Unfortunately, as he gasped in pain, Paco's luck wasn't with him. His first shot went wide, which gave Eli time to quickly duck out of sight while pausing to listen as the bullets thudded around him.

Now, being so close to his prey, Eli decided a change of weapons was in order. He set his trusted long rifle down and pulled out his own pistol instead. Waiting till he heard the spic's gun click on an open chamber, before the man could reload, Eli expertly stepped out and fired, putting two rounds right into the 10 ring.

Following up, Eli quickly closed the distance between them. He didn't want to miss the best part. Ever since Nam, whenever possible, he'd always wanted to watch as his prey died. Eli had always thought that getting to see the life drain from a person's body was something that had to be experienced.

After kicking the spic's gun away, Eli sat down to watch. It didn't take long, and as the minutes slowly passed, he kept vigil till the gasping and twitching were finally over and the look of absolute fear and terror of not only the realization of death but of what lies beyond had finally drained from the eyes. Only then, with the show over, did Eli calmly take his trophy, mark the remains position on his GPS unit, and head back to his campsite, having already decided to end a days successful hunt with a good meal.

From their own hiding place, Jim and Jennifer both got to listen to the play-by-play: the sounds of shots, then silence, then more shots, then more silence, and then a lot of screaming and more shots followed by a final unbroken silence.

Jen had wanted to go out into the dark to see what was going on, but Jim had quickly vetoed that idea as absolutely insane. There was no way he was going out there tonight not knowing where anybody really was or what was really going on. No, he was staying right here.

Hearing that, Jen thought for a moment about going alone, but finally, after not hearing anything more for a long time, they both settled back in for the night, knowing that in all likelihood, two of their number were now dead and they were next.

The Second Day

Resting in his waterproof sleeping bag, Walsh had slept well, as he always did on his hunts. Something about the outdoors, he supposed. He'd spent the night in his favorite campsite near the supply dump he maintained on the island. He really would have liked to have had a fire, but he wasn't nearly that foolish. No, the prey he was hunting, drawn by the fire light, wouldn't hesitate to come up on him in the middle of the night. Despite the lack of a fire, though, he kept himself as comfortable as possible, and in the morning he woke up refreshed and excited about a new day.

When Jim woke up that morning, he was a lot less refreshed. Between the rain and sleeping on the cold ground, he was reminded of why he never went camping. He hated sleeping on the ground. He woke up stiff and sore all over and realized just how much he missed indoor plumbing.

From the look of her, it was clear Jen obviously hadn't slept well either. Her face and clothes still had dried mud on them from the day before, and her long hair was full of leaves, twigs, mud, and other things she didn't want to know about.

Grabbing his canteen, Jim moved off further into the trees they had sheltered in for his morning business. After relieving himself, he gargled some water to try to get the awful taste out of his mouth. He wished that Walsh had been kind enough to include a toothbrush, but the nut probably thought that they'd be dead before it became an issue.

Coming back into camp, he topped off his canteen from the larger water bottle he had in his pack and finally pulled out another MRE for breakfast -- not that he was really hungry, but Jim knew that the two of them needed to keep their energy level up.

After taking her turn to relieve herself and clean up a little, Jen sat down with her own breakfast (such as it was) and asked, "Are we going to stay here today?"

Jim had already thought about that. It was a tempting idea; with the rain to wash away their tracks, they would be hard to find here. But he was worried that Walsh would have had to have thought of that too and have some means of driving them from any hiding place they found. So he concluded that the best thing to do was keep moving. Besides, they needed to find out about the others.

Paco and Mark were most likely dead, but if not, they needed to hook up with them again. Jim was beginning to think it had been a mistake to let them go off alone.

"No, we're going to keep moving and try to find the others," he told her.

She looked surprised at hearing that. "Do you think they're still alive?" she asked him, mirroring his own thoughts.

"No," he told her honestly. "But if they are, we need to find them," he said, shouldering his pack.

Part 2

After his own breakfast, Eli got ready for the new day and, when he felt he was ready, headed out. Unfortunately for him, it was Jen who found a track first.

The two of them had been moving slowly and carefully for about an hour, and Jim had just called a break when Jen sat down and looked to the side and saw a boot print in the soft earth.

"Look at that," she told Jim. Jim took a look and knew that they had just found their would-be killer. The guy had gotten careless and had left some nice clear tracks on what looked like a small game trail.

"Could this be from one of the others?" she asked.

"No, I don't think so," he said to her. Then, to answer her questioning stare, he went on, "The tread pattern's different." He pointed to the tracks on the ground, then to Jen's boots (which were the same as the others' -- except for Jim's, since he'd worn his own boots.

"What are we going to do?"

Faced with a tough choice now, Jim had a sudden inspiration. He decided to back track the trail to see if they could find Walsh's campsite. Maybe they could get lucky and find a radio or something, or if not, they'd just wait for him to come back. "We're going to follow the trail back the way it came," he told her.

"But he went the other way," she protested, not understanding Jim's reasoning.

"Yeah, that's right, but seeing how fresh these tracks are, he had to have passed by here already this morning, so we're close to him. I'm interested in seeing where he spent the night." "Why?"

"Because if he has a regular campsite, he might have a radio or a sat phone or something we could use. Besides, even if he doesn't have a radio or phone, he could come back to his campsite tonight. If he does, we'll be waiting for him."

"Ah, an ambush," she said, now understanding his thinking, with an almost grudging degree of respect. "Not a bad idea."

Going down the trail, Eli headed to where he thought the other two would likely be. After beginning these hunts, he had found it interesting how much different people thought alike; for instance, they always seemed to go in the same directions when given similar motivation.

After a leisurely hike to the area of the island where he expected them to be, he started a spiral search for any sign of them. Eli thought that he might have some problems with the rain yesterday, but he'd done the hunts in the rain before, so he didn't believe that it was anything that he couldn't handle.

But after a couple of hours of searching and not finding even a trace of them, he was starting to wonder if he'd miscalculated. Could there be more to them than met the eye? He personally found it hard to believe, but he also knew that even the simplest animals could sometime surprise you.

Considering the lack of tracks, Eli just hoped that one or both of them hadn't decided to hole up somewhere. He really hated it when they chose to do that. It made it that much harder to find them, and when he did (which he always did), they'd put up even more resistance to the inevitable conclusion. He could remember once he even had to use hand grenades to rout them out of the hole they'd burrowed into. That hadn't been a very satisfying hunt, he thought with a frown, but he'd collected his trophies just like he always did.

Part 3

It hadn't taken the two of them long to backtrack the trail Jen had discovered and find where their host had spent the night. Looking around for the camp, Jim at first had almost missed it, but there was another trail leading up to a small hill.

Out of curiosity, he followed a fresh set of tracks, which led right into the hill side. Stopping before the now obvious entrance to some kind of underground structure, Jim had to admit it was well concealed; if it hadn't been for the tracks in the soft earth, he probably could have walked right past it and not even known it was there.

But that's the thing about camouflage: It only works up till the time it doesn't. Then it's like hanging a neon sign up with an arrow saying "interesting shit hidden right here."

The simple wooden door covering the entrance was protected by some thorn bushes that Jim figured had been planted there deliberately to mask the entrance. The door itself was covered in burlap, which had been smeared with paint and leaves to break up its silhouette, making it all but invisible from any kind of distance.

Motioning Jen off to the side, Jim pulled his pistol and flicked off the safety. After making as sure as he could be that the door wasn't booby trapped, he opened it and moved inside, watching the floor and walls looking for anything like a trip wire. He just couldn't believe that Walsh would leave a structure like this without taking precautions.

The inside of whatever this place was supposed to be was very dark. After grouping around, he found a flashlight that had been conveniently left near the door; after playing with it for a moment, he got it to switch on.

Shining the helpful light around the dark interior, Jim discovered his current idea of an Aladdin's cave. Instead of gold, though, they found shipping containers stacked against the wall, as well as boxes of MREs and extra clothing, but no radio. Damn!

"What is all this stuff?" Jennifer asked finally.

"It looks like we found Walsh's supply dump. We've got food and water over here and on this wall," he said. Jim walked up to the containers, and after checking them and seeing that they were sealed, he popped the latches and opened the top one. Inside he found handguns identical to the ones they were carrying. Each one had been vacuum-packed in a plastic bag -- to protect it from the weather for long-term storage, he supposed.

The next container had a variety of different kinds of hunting riles in it. The contents of the next one were an even more beautiful sight to Jim's eyes. It held four of what he immediately recognized as M-4 assault rifles, which were really just cut down M-16s. They had the shorter all-metal stock, which could be released and slid forward to make the weapon even shorter. With the shortened barrel and the stock telescoped forward, the rifle could be handled almost like a big pistol --not that you could hit much that way, but it did look cool.

Quickly pulling one of the assault rifles out and tearing the heavy plastic off, he found the weapon to be in perfect condition. It had even been cleaned and oiled before it had been packed. After adjusting the sling, he slung it on his back and grabbed another, which he handed to an uncertain-looking Jennifer.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Shoot people," he told her bluntly. "What do you think?" He turned back and opened another case and found pre-loaded magazines full of ammo for all the weapons. Tearing the plastic off, he pulled out one clip and slid it into the receiver of his newfound friend. Jim chambered a round, and hearing that metallic snap of a well-oiled bolt sliding forward made him feel a whole lot safer. Now he was ready to deal with that crazy fucker, he thought with a smile.

Filling bandoleers with loose magazines, he handed the first one to Jen, who still didn't appear to really know what to do with it. But Jim didn't have time to worry about that right now. Walsh was going to come back here eventually, and when he did, Jim wanted to make sure that they were somewhere else.

Going as fast as he could, Jim quickly filled up several more bandoleers for each of them. After helping themselves to the available food and water, the pair were about to leave when Jim saw a wooden crate he hadn't looked at yet. He now recognized it as an old-style shipping crate for hand grenades. Quickly pulling the lid off, he was disappointed to find only one fragmentation grenade left in the crate. But Walsh had been kind enough to put two smoke grenades in with it. It wasn't exactly what he had been hoping for, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

To Jennifer, what Jim was holding looked like a green baseball and two green soda cans with different colored stripes on them. He seemed excited by the find, but the executive really couldn't see what all the fuss was about. "What are they?" she asked finally.

"A fragmentation grenade," Jim replied, holding up the small round one, "and two smoke grenades." He indicated the green soda cans. Talk about your one-stop shopping, he thought to himself.

"Are we going to take this stuff too?" Jennifer asked, already feeling weighed down by the extra supplies he'd already given her.

"Oh yeah, baby," he replied enthusiastically. "We are definitely taking all we can."

While Jim went to look for a something to carry all this in, Jen looked over the deadly-looking gun he'd given her. Sure, she'd seen her share of TV, and she thought this thing looked a lot like the guns she'd seen there, but it was different too. It looked shorter to her than she would have thought, and she no idea how to make it work.

Jim had found a canvas bag and was quickly filling it with the grenades and extra ammo for both the M-4s and the Beretta pistols. He knew that they'd been here too long already, but Jim still wanted to take the opportunity do a couple of things before they left.

Calling Jen over near the door where they had more light, Jim took her weapon and, after making sure that it was indeed empty, handed it back to her. "Do you have any experience shooting a rifle?" he asked already, suspecting the answer.

"No," she told him with a shake of her head.

Sighing a little, Jim started in with what he thought she needed to know. He skipped all the technical stuff they teach at the rifle range, since he doubted she would have any idea of what he was saying anyway, and instead just gave her the basics.

"OK," he told her, "this is going to be a real quick class on the M-4 assault rifle."

In a very few minutes, Jim did his best to run through the basics of how to handle, aim, shoot, and reload the rifle that Walsh had been kind enough to leave for them. Jim knew that he was throwing a lot of unfamiliar information at the executive. After he'd finished his impromptu class, he had her do her best to demonstrate what he'd told her, and it did seem like she had understood it as least well enough for now. "The rest she's going to have to learn on the job," Jim thought grimly.

Finally, watching her load her rifle a last time, Jim decided that he'd done all that he could and that it was long past time they got the hell out of here. But he still had one more thing he wanted to try to do. After making sure his own rifle was ready, he stuck his head outside to make sure the way was clear.

"OK, I want you to head into the woods and wait for me."

"Where are you going?"

Jim took the fragmentation grenade out. "I want to try blowing this place up," he told her in no uncertain terms.

After watching Jen move safely into the trees and disappear, Jim pulled the pin on the frag grenade, tossed it into the box with the extra ammo he wasn't taking, and ran for his life. He hadn't been sure if he could really get any secondary explosions going this way, but he hoped to at the very least destroy as much of Walsh's equipment as possible.

Part 4

Eli Walsh had been busy this morning too, except he hadn't had as much luck as his intended prey. He'd spent a lot of time looking for any sign of them. But he'd come up empty. It wasn't till he was headed back to his camp to refill his canteens and have some lunch that he found their trail. Or rather, he could see that they had found his trail from that morning.

From the tracks, he knew that they were still together. He considered that a good thing; if he could wrap this up today, he could get back to the city by Monday with no trouble.

After seeing where they were headed, though, he began to get concerned. No one had ever actually found his cache of extra supplies before. It was hidden well enough that a few people had even gone right by it without seeing it. Regardless, he always got nervous when anyone started to get close to it. This time, he had unintentionally -- and quite carelessly, he could see -- left them a trail to follow.

Going easy, the old hunter moved into the tree line to observe the area around his earlier campsite and supply dump for a moment.

He didn't see any activity at first -- not till he saw the janitor come running out of the supply dump and throw himself to the ground. Seconds later, he heard a muffled boom from inside the dugout, after which he saw a cloud of dust come pouring out the entrance. That son of a bitch had tried to blow up his supplies, Eli thought to himself. Moving around quickly to get a shot, Eli had every intention of nailing the would-be vandal right here.