The Evolution of Fear (Claymore Straker #2) - Paul E. Hardisty Page 0,87
the man was struggling. There was quite a bit of blood. Inside the thicket it was dark and cool, the ground underfoot moss, stones, fallen rotwood. He could hear the trickling of water, smell the humic freshness of cedar. Visibility dropped in the undergrowth. Clay slowed, crouched low, moved in short bursts to cover, wary now. If the man had sensed he was being followed, he might turn, face his pursuer. Ahead, beside a moss-covered boulder, a flash of white on the ground. Clay moved forward, crouched. A paper bandage package, smeared with blood, still wet. Boot marks in the soft ground, moving away down-stream. He was close. Clay waited a moment, listened, but all he could hear was the sway of the treetops in the mountain breeze. He checked the round in the Beretta’s chamber then kept moving.
About two hundred metres along the valley, the trail cut sharply upslope. Clay could see gouges in the moss where the man had slipped, deep imprints where he’d used the butt-stock of the Dragunov as a crutch. Blood hung in semi-coagulated droplets from the tips of pine needles. Up above, the torn yellow rock of the old mine road. Clay had walked this road once, about three years ago. He knew now that the guy was making for the northeastern approach, the terminus of the old mine rail line, only about a kilometre and a half away. That’s where he would have left his vehicle. Clay looked at his watch. Almost an hour now since he’d left Koevoet. The guy was moving fast.
Clay scrambled up the slope towards the mine road. He’d just reached the frayed edge of the cut, was picking his way through the rusted boulders piled on the valley side of the road, fragments of ancient oceanic crust, when the tree behind him splintered, a twisting, snapping sound. He flinched, pure reflex as the second sound came, a high-pitched crack that echoed down the valley. Clay dropped to the ground, pushing himself into the rock as more rounds sent shards of wehrlite and gabbro zinging through the air around him. Then quiet. Clay stayed absolutely still. From the report of the rifle, the same one he’d heard back at the pits, he guessed a range of four hundred metres, off to the right, towards the terminus. He’d been lucky. At that range, the Dragunov was deadly accurate. But tired, breathing hard, bleeding, it would have been a difficult shot.
Clay waited a few seconds, backed away into the valley then started off at a run. He contoured the valley side about ten metres below the road, moving quickly through the trees. He guessed the sniper would be on the move again, heading towards his vehicle.
Clay had gone about three hundred metres through the trees when the valley started to shallow noticeably. He was nearing the flats, an area where four valleys met, where the mining company had chosen to build the camp and the ore-crushing plant. Derelict now, equipment dismantled, roads blocked by berms of earth, it was part of Cyprus’s two-thousand-year-old legacy of copper and gold extraction, forgotten, rarely visited. Clay knew that, from this point, the road flattened out, swept around to the east in a long arc towards the camp. He kept moving, faster now, sprinting over the increasingly dry, stony ground as the wooded valley gave way to the open scrubland and dry pine of the flats. He had a clear view of the road now, tracking along the convex side of the curve. There was no spoor, no trail to follow. It was a footrace.
Clay sprinted across the open ground, still paralleling the road, between stunted scrub oak and the occasional tall, fire-scarred pine. At any moment he expected to feel the impact of a bullet, hear the sound of gunfire. And then, there on the road, not far from the berm and the old tin sheds, about two hundred metres away, a man in dark trousers and shirt. The guy was powerfully built, stocky, ran with an uneven gait, a limp, as if his left leg was strapped, held straight. Clay could see the man’s left arm dangling, the white bandage tied up high near the shoulder. He carried the Dragunov in his right hand.
Clay stopped, chambered a round. He was closing. The man was almost to the sheds now, the earthen berm blocking the road. Clay called out. The man stopped, turned, stood facing him, chest heaving. A hundred metres separated them. Not