The Manhattan Hunt Club (31 page)

CHAPTER 36

T
he hunter called Viper had hardly moved for more than two hours. The activity of brushing bugs away from his face or striking out at any too-curious rats that approached had been sufficient to keep stiffness out of his joints and numbness from his muscles. But while his body had rested, his mind was humming, taking in every bit of sensory information, and analyzing it from every angle.

For Viper, the hours spent on the hunt were the best of his life, far more interesting, far more challenging, than the endless tedium of listening to lawyers debate the arcane trivia of law, precedent, and Supreme Court decisions. Viper had always known what was right and what was wrong. It was why he had become a lawyer in the first place. He hadn’t gone to law school out of any interest in arguing cases, but out of the certain knowledge that he had a unique ability to determine right from wrong.

With that in mind, Otto Vandenberg had set out to be a judge, and by the time he was forty, his ambition had been fulfilled. But as the years had gone by, his own satisfaction in his judgments had first been diluted, and then washed completely away—by the steady trickle of decisions from the courts above him, limiting his discretion, establishing maximum sentences, even dictating immediate release for some of the leeches that he believed were sucking the life out of decent men and women.

But the Manhattan Hunt Club had changed all that, and from his first moment in the tunnels, when Vandenberg had shed his judicial robes for hunter’s black and the role of the Viper, he’d once again experienced the deep sense of fulfillment that came not only from exercising his perfect judgment, but from having his sentences carried out as well.

Today, two of his sentences were to be enacted, and it was his intention to bag at least one of the trophies himself. Thus, after studying the records of every one of the previous thirty-seven hunts, and tracing the routes the prey had used in their attempts to escape their stalkers, he had settled on this particular spot, a nearly invisible shelf, so well-hidden in the maze of pipes and conduits running through the utility tunnel that he could stay in almost perfect concealment, his senses alert, ready to strike like the snake from which his code name derived.

His weapon was prepared—a 7.62mm M-14A1 that he had acquired directly from a friend at the Pentagon, but to which he’d added a special laser sight himself. His backpack held four magazines for the rifle, each of which contained twenty rounds, but Vandenberg fully expected to come back with three of the magazines full and the one in the rifle less than half empty.

The sporting method of bagging the prey, after all, was with a single shot.

The rest of the magazine was nothing more than insurance.

His night scope lay beneath his right hand, ready if he heard the sound of approaching prey. And his ears would have no trouble distinguishing the sound of the quarry from the background noise that constantly drifted through the tunnel. Vandenberg had long ago learned to tell the scurrying sound of mice from that of rats, the sound of a leaking pipe from that of a derelict pissing on the wall, the moans of a dying man from those of one who was merely ill. He’d learned to sort out the scents as well, sniffing out the smell of an approaching human being as efficiently as a great white shark can catch the scent of blood from miles away.

Now, as he lay concealed, all his nerves suddenly went on full alert. He couldn’t have said what it was that set his senses on edge; perhaps it was a whiff of an aroma, or a nearly subliminal sound—or perhaps it was nothing more than the perfectly honed instincts of a predator.

All he knew was that something was coming.

G
otta get rid of her, Jagger thought. Gotta get rid of her before she wrecks everything. He watched Jinx following Jeff through the tunnel. She was ahead of him, but not very far, and she was staying close to Jeff.

He knew why she was doing that—so she could smell him, take his scent deep into her lungs, just the way he had last night and the night before, when he’d watched over Jeff, making sure nothing bad happened to him while he slept. But since Jinx had shown up, he hadn’t been able to get anywhere near close enough to Jeff to—

He cut that thought off. He just wanted to take care of Jeff, to protect him, so they could be friends—best friends.

His fist tightened on the railroad spike, and he edged closer.

O
tto Vandenberg gazed through the eyepiece of his night scope.

Three people coming.

He recognized two of them immediately—he’d sentenced Jeff Converse only a few days ago, and Jagger just last year.

But the girl . . .

Who was the girl?

He focused the scope on her, searching his memory.

He had it—a street girl, someone he’d seen in court.

Young, and pretty. Or at least she’d have been pretty if you cleaned her up.

He kept the scope on her until she was so close he could see her features perfectly. If she were alone, if he had more time—

The hunt was far more important than any transient pleasure his body might enjoy, he reminded himself. Plenty of time for girls later . . .

The trio passed below him, and he shifted silently around, making up his mind.

Converse, or Jagger?

Perhaps both?

His nerves tingled as he set the night scope down and turned to the sniper rifle.

S
omething had changed.

Jeff could feel it. There was a sense of danger lurking nearby, so close it was palpable. But where?

They’d been moving steadily for almost a quarter of an hour, and their destination wasn’t too much farther ahead. Stopping would only serve to alert whatever threat lay in the darkness that he had been discovered, so he kept moving, but increased his pace—not enough to betray his awareness, but enough to get them past the unseen danger more quickly.

Behind him, he sensed that Jinx could feel the danger, too.

And then he realized where the danger was emanating from.

It wasn’t the herders at all.

Or the hunters.

No, the danger he was sensing was coming from much, much closer.

It was coming from Jagger.

J
agger was close enough behind Jinx that he could almost feel her. If he reached out, he could touch her, could put his fingers in her hair and yank her back, drag her away from Jeff, twist her neck until he heard the bones pop, then plunge the point of the spike into her flesh.

That would stop her.

That would keep her away from Jeff.

He edged closer, his right hand clutching the spike so tightly his whole arm was trembling.

O
tto Vandenberg felt the hypnotic calm of the imminent kill fall over him. His hands were steady, his breathing slow and even. He could feel the calm, rhythmic throbbing of his heart, and began silently gauging the perfect moment, anticipating the instant when his finger would take advantage of the utter stillness of his body when neither his lungs nor his heart could throw his aim off by so much as a millimeter.

He’d made his decision as to which trophy he would take first, and the crosshairs of the night sight were fixed on the spot where the single bullet he would fire would be most lethal but do the least damage to the prize.

Why make Malcolm Baldridge’s job any more difficult than it already was?

The moment came—that perfect confluence of lung and heart—and Otto Vandenberg slowly squeezed off the single round in the rifle’s chamber.

The soft phut of the silenced shot was barely audible, even to the Viper’s sharply honed ears.

J
agger’s left hand came up, and he reached toward Jinx’s hair, imagining its tangled strands in his fingers. His heart pounded as—

J
eff whirled around to see Jagger looming over Jinx, one of his hands reaching for her, the other clutching the railroad spike, which hovered dangerously above her. Without thinking, he lunged at Jinx, knocking her to the side just as Jagger made his move.

But then he saw a look of utter astonishment on Jagger’s face.

J
agger felt as if he’d been struck by a sledgehammer.

He stumbled, tried to regain his balance, but something had gone wrong.

He couldn’t feel anything.

He dropped the spike, and his huge body crumpled toward the ground.

What had happened?

As he sank onto the floor, and realized he could no longer move his legs, the truth came to him.

Not a sledgehammer at all.

A bullet.

A bullet had struck him in the back, and—

He looked at his chest and saw blood oozing through his shirt and jacket.

But his mind still refused to grasp the reality of what was happening to him. If he’d been shot, why didn’t he feel it?

He tried to speak, but there was no air in his lungs, and when he tried to breathe in, he heard a gurgling sound from somewhere deep in his chest.

And then he heard nothing at all.

CHAPTER 37

J
eff had Monsignor McGuire’s rifle already raised. When he saw Jagger fall, his first thought was that Jagger had tripped while lunging at Jinx. Then he saw the blood oozing from the wound in Jagger’s chest, and was about to go to Jagger’s side when Jinx shoved him against the wall. As she did, a bullet ricocheted off the opposite wall, a few yards away.

“It’s one of them!” she whispered. “He’s gonna get us!”

Jeff rose to his knees and raised the rifle again, jamming the stock against his shoulder as he fumbled with the safety. Peering through the scope, he saw nothing, but pulled the trigger anyway.

The rifle came to life, pouring a stream of lead into the far reaches of the tunnel and shattering the underground silence with its roar. The gun vibrating in his hands, Jeff sprayed the tunnel with bullets until the magazine was empty, its twenty rounds fired in less than a second. The chatter of exploding cartridges died suddenly away. He groped in the priest’s backpack for another magazine, but Jinx was jerking at his arm.

“Let’s get out of here,” she whispered. “They’ll all be here in a few minutes!” She darted away into the darkness.

Instead of following her, Jeff crouched down next to Jagger’s unmoving form. “Jagger?” he said softly. “Hey, Jag . . .” His voice trailed off when he saw there would be no response. He reached down and took Jagger’s wrist, feeling for a pulse.

Nothing.

For a long minute Jeff stayed where he was, hunkered down next to Jagger’s body.

He thought of the onrushing train that would have crushed him if Jagger hadn’t hurled him aside. And of the man they’d come across in the depths of the tunnels, the man Jagger had killed, certain he’d intended Jeff some kind of harm.

How could he leave Jagger here? He knew what would happen as soon as he was gone. First the rats would come, and then the flies and ants and cockroaches.

But what choice did he have? Even if he could have carried Jagger, where could he take him?

From somewhere in the shadows, he heard Jinx’s voice. “Hurry! They’ll find us!”

Still he lingered, and finally lay his fingers on Jagger’s forehead. “Thanks,” he whispered in the darkness. “You were my friend.”

Picking up Jagger’s railroad spike from the floor, Jeff gazed down at Jagger once last time. Then, staying low to the ground, he turned and hurried away.

E
ve Harris pressed the transmit button on her radio over and over again, as if the mere repetition might bend the instrument to her will. Yet she knew the problem didn’t lie with the radio, but with the hunt itself.

Something had gone wrong.

Now Viper wasn’t responding to her call. Viper, whose preferred method of hunting was to lie in ambush, waiting for his prey to come to him. She’d spoken to him only a few minutes ago, and his voice had been clear over the static.

And now nothing.

She told herself that Vandenberg might have decided to change his position—to set up his ambush deeper in the tunnels, where the radio couldn’t reach. But she knew better. Vandenberg was a coward at heart, and unless he’d been flushed from his blind, he’d stay where he was until the hunt was over, bagging the quarry if it came his way, but content to let others stalk the tunnels.

Cursing softly, she turned her attention back to the radio, changing it from one frequency to another, silently praying that at least one of the hunters would still be within range of the transmitter.

Or at least still be alive . . .

K
eith recognized the sound as soon as it crashed against his ears, echoing and reechoing off the concrete walls until it faded away.

A semiautomatic rifle, firing at least twenty rounds.

Heather, who had been behind him only a moment ago, was now next to him, her fingers digging into his arm.

“Where did it come from?” she whispered, as if afraid to speak out loud in the sudden silence that followed the volley of shots.

“Ahead,” Keith replied, his voice grim. “Come on.”

Giving Heather no chance to argue, he set out at a dogtrot, moving quickly down the tunnel in the direction from which the blast of gunfire had come. Heather caught up with him, and less than a minute later they came to an intersection.

“Which way?” Heather gasped.

Raising the night goggles to his eyes, Keith scanned the tunnels in both directions. At first he saw nothing, but then, at the farthest reach of the goggles’ range, he spotted something protruding from a kind of shelf high up on the tunnel’s wall. Something that looked like—

“This way,” he said. “Hurry.”

He took off again, not at an easy trot this time, but as fast as he could run.

Behind him, Heather struggled to keep up.

P
erry Randall pressed the transmitter button on his radio, silently praying he was still within the instrument’s short range. “This is Rattler. Come in, Control. This is Rattler!” He released the button and strained his ears to find a voice hidden in the static that was all he could hear.

Nothing.

He swore silently, glanced at the glowing dial on his watch, then played the thin beam of his penlight over the map in the back of his log. He was in Sector 2 of the second level, and Viper should be working the next sector on the same level. If the herders had done their job, Jeff Converse and Francis Jagger shouldn’t be too far away. If they were a level down, though, Randall knew it was possible that Mamba might get them before he could get his own shot.

Not that it would matter if one of the others got Jagger—Randall didn’t give a damn about him. When he’d looked over Jagger’s record during the Hunt Committee meeting, it had been obvious that Jagger would be easy prey—big, and stupid, like a rhinoceros, dangerous only if you got too close. Indeed, Randall suspected that Jagger had already been taken, and whoever had bagged him was on his way back to the club, the carcass marked and mapped, ready for the gamekeepers to collect and deliver to Malcolm Baldridge. But Perry Randall wanted Jeff Converse himself—had wanted him ever since the night Converse had been arrested in the subway station, crouched over his victim. Of course, Heather had kept insisting the boy was innocent right up until the day he was sentenced, but that hadn’t surprised him. The boy had a certain charm that, though it hadn’t fooled him for a moment, had certainly taken his daughter in. Not that it mattered anymore—the boy would be dead within the hour, and it would be his own personal pleasure to bag that particular specimen.

Except that right now Perry Randall had the distinct feeling that something odd was happening.

He pressed the transmitter again. “This is Rattler. Come in, Control. This is Rattler.” He released the button, listening.

Still nothing.

As he was about to try one more time, the quiet of the tunnel was shattered by a blast of gunfire.

Not a single shot, but a burst from a semiautomatic rifle.

His nerves suddenly tingling with the excitement of the hunt, Randall jerked the tiny plug from his ear and listened for another burst from the rifle so he could be certain of the direction from which it came.

Putting on his night vision goggles, he peered through the greenish haze of amplified light.

Three rats, invisible only a moment ago, could now be seen scurrying along the tunnel’s floor, searching for any kind of edible scrap. As Randall watched, two of them caught each other’s scent, froze, found each other, and hurled themselves to the attack, each determined to drive the other from its territory. Randall felt a twinge of excitement as he watched the rodents tear at each other, and when one of them finally gave up and scuttled up the wall to disappear into a wide crack near the ceiling, he felt a sense of disappointment.

The fight should not have ended that way, with one of the combatants fleeing the battleground.

The loser should not have been allowed to escape.

The loser should have died.

And today, the losers
would
die. Flush with anticipation, Perry Randall turned his full attention back to the hunt.

He heard another sound, this time that of running feet, and whipped around with the speed of a striking rattlesnake, peering deep into the greenish haze.

Even with the help of the night vision goggles, he almost missed it.

Almost, but not quite, for Randall’s eyes were every bit as sharp as his mind, and though the shape in the distance had disappeared almost before he was aware that it was there at all, he caught it.

A man had gone into the cross passage ahead of him.

A rush of adrenaline sent a tingle through his nerves as Perry Randall started after the vanished figure.

He was certain the hunt would soon be over.