Viper - Michael Morley [157]
Clouds shifted in a sky as dense as iron filings. For a moment the curve of a pale moon shone like a scythe. Dim light hinted at the outline of a mountain track.
He knew where he was.
Close to safety.
The hesitant jog became a run. Uphill, eastwards, across the track, through a clearing he knew well. In the summer it would bloom with apricots and cherries. Geckos would fill the foliage; woodpeckers and turtle doves would warble and coo in the branches. It was near here that he’d walked with his mother after his father had gone. Near here that she’d told him he was never coming back and had explained why it was her fault. Near here that he’d sat for years and let his hatred for her fester.
Something caught his eye. The moon outlined a moving silhouette fifty metres ahead of him.
Sal dropped to the sodden earth.
His Glock jerked in his outstretched arms. The explosion flashed in his face. The boom barrelled across the open field.
The silhouette slumped.
Sal felt his heart bang. His finger stayed on the trigger. He wouldn’t risk another shot unless he really had to.
The silhouette was grounded. Flat. Dead.
He got to his feet. Gun outstretched in classic pistol grip. He ran towards it. The moon slipped back into a sheath of rainy clouds. Damn it! He needed another two strides, to see the body.
‘Merda!’
Barely two metres ahead of him lay the corpse.
A deer.
Nothing more than a fucking deer!
Sal cursed himself. He thought he’d known every animal that roamed the park. He’d been distracted and the thing had surprised him. It must have been a recent addition – damned conservationists.
He knew he should have been cooler. There was no need to have fired so quickly. Risked giving away his position. He wiped sweat and water from his face and slowly turned 360 degrees. Nothing. He held his breath and honed his concentration. He couldn’t hear anything either. They’d have heard him, though. He was sure of it. Way back there, in the dark, in the unseen distance, their little soldier ears would have pricked up and they’d have heard him.
107
Parco Nazionale del Vesuvio
Blue stopped the car on Jack’s command. They were two kilometres south of the summit of Vesuvius, almost four kilometres west of the site where the bodies had been excavated. If his geographic profiling was accurate, Giacomo was following a cognitive map, homing in on a bolt-hole deep in his comfort zone. Lorenzo was right. If they didn’t find him quickly, he’d be gone forever.
Sylvia stayed in the Alfa with Blue. They drifted another kilometre east of the drop point, into a fall-back position. If Giacomo slipped past Jack, then they’d be the last line of the dragnet.
Jack and the other three GIS men hit the ground running. Radios were choked to almost silent. Visual contact was maintained at all times and in the patchy, swirling fog that meant a spread of only fifteen to twenty metres.
They headed due west. Set a pace that would see a mile covered in about twelve minutes. Too slow to set personal bests for any of them, but just fast enough to make sure they didn’t lose each other, miss anything, or make fatal mistakes.
Within minutes they pulled up sharp. Frozen to the spot. They listened like bats to the rolling echo of a single gunshot.
It came from in front of them.
Jack felt a jolt of excitement. He was right. Giacomo was heading home.
They jogged on. The combat suit and cumbersome goggles were already making them sweat. The NVD made the ground fluoresce an alien green as pounding feet crunched across the parkland. In Jack’s hand was a semi-automatic Beretta 92. He knew the gun well – double action with no safety, a trigger as smooth and sweet to pull as a finger through melted chocolate.
He ran in the centre, alongside Brown, the two other GIS men flanking them. Up ahead, in the green foggy mist, he saw something that made them all spontaneously slow to a halt.
It was a large outbuilding of some sort. An ugly bunker of breeze-block