Chapter 21
Joel knew how this game was played because he’d played it himself many times overseas.
It’s just not something he ever thought he would have to play again.
He moved steadily, not forward, not backward, but to the right where he could see Tiger’s slow approach.
This guy wasn’t anywhere near as good in the bush as he thought he was, and even Joel himself wasn’t as good as he used to be, not with the injuries he’d sustained.
Yet he was doing what he could, which was whatever was needed to keep Tiger away from where Chelsea was stashed.
Hopefully she followed orders, and he just hoped to God she understood how important it was that she did exactly that. He couldn’t have this guy get a shot where he could take her out.
Tiger, of course, wanted to put the two of them down, then hop into his vehicle, and drive away a free man. Joel would do every damn thing possible to stop him. So, he and Chelsea had to split up.
When he heard the sniper call out again, Joel was solidly on Tiger’s left, which made Joel smile.
As Tiger had approached, Joel had gone up the side, about to circle back and around, and would soon have the asshole exactly where he wanted him.
Except that this asshole had a weapon, and Joel didn’t, but he wouldn’t let that stop him.
“No point in hiding,” the sniper called out again.
Joel didn’t say anything.
The sniper continued. “I’ll get you, and I don’t care if we stay here until darkness settles in,” he added, with a gruff laugh. “That won’t bother me at all since I’ve got night-vision goggles with me.”
Joel wasn’t sure about that, but for any hunter in a situation like this, it probably was to be expected.
“And don’t go telling me that I don’t need to do this because anybody who understands self-preservation realizes I can’t leave any witnesses behind. It’s all bullshit anyway,” he said, his voice rising in anger, “because if she hadn’t seen me, it would have been just fine.”
Joel waited in silence.
“But it’s not fine now. I don’t even know what the hell caught her attention, but she did see me, and I can’t leave her behind.
It’s not like I killed my old buddy anyway.
I mean, this is where he wanted to go out, just to be in nature one last time.
I fell asleep, and so did he, but he never woke up.
I wrapped him up in his little carpet and placed him in the back of the truck—his truck at that—and I left.
It was a bit of a walk, but I was okay with that.
I would have left this damn place that same hour.
I could go cross-country and hitch a ride, never have to worry about a thing.
But, once she saw me, well, I just couldn’t leave it alone. ”
Joel remained silent, getting closer to the sniper’s location with each stealthy step.
“If you thought about it, you would understand,” he stated. “It’s nothing personal, but I didn’t get this far in life to have something like that so casual and out of the ordinary drop me,” he muttered. “I spent way too long hiding and playing this game to let some random encounter drop me.”
Just more silence came from Joel. He heard Tiger’s footsteps softly off to the left.
“If I hadn’t come to say goodbye to my buddy, this whole thing wouldn’t have happened in the first place. That was my lesson to learn here,” he muttered, talking to himself, almost as if he needed to hear his own voice or something.
As Joel thought about it, he realized that the old man had died not in the best of shape, and there was no guarantee that this guy was in his prime either.
Maybe he was younger than Peacock, even quite a bit younger, or maybe he was dealing with health issues himself.
It was definitely a consideration. It might also explain the need for the night-vision goggles.
Maybe Tiger needed to stack the deck a little bit more to ensure he won this one.
Joel knew that something like this nagging loose end would eat away at any criminal.
So, if it was eating away at Tiger, then Joel was all for it.
This Tiger guy was an asshole from the start.
The things he’d done, the reasoning behind it, nobody would want to see any of that happen.
Joel stayed quiet, moving smoothly up behind him, hating the fact that the ground was still crackling with nearly every step.
Maybe not quite that bad but enough to notice it.
As he approached, he stopped, seeing that Tiger was in front of him, but staring upward. Joel swore at that because it meant that Tiger was searching for Chelsea up there.
“I know you went up that damn tree,” he announced in a conversational voice.
“And I’m okay to just shoot blindly into the tree, if that’s how you want it to go down.
I’m going to hit you at some point, though I don’t really want that level of noise.
But, if I have to, I have to, because, no matter what I have to do, I’m getting out of here,” he muttered.
Joel sent a silent message to Chelsea. Don’t answer.
It would be a complete catastrophe if she did.
It was unlikely the sniper would take the chance of shooting blindly like that, unless he had a pretty damn good idea where she was.
The bushes would do a lot to distort his aim but not enough, not if he had any kind of luck that he’d apparently had up until now.
Joel stepped a bit closer and saw the guy right in front of him. He dared not look at him straight-on because that was always a dead giveaway for anybody. As he took another quick look, Tiger was glancing around, almost as if sensing Joel’s presence, realizing that he was potentially being hunted.
“That’s enough fooling around,” he yelled, his anger evident in his tone. “Get down here,” he snapped. “I want this over with.”
Joel didn’t understand Tiger’s fear, except that something was unraveling for Tiger.
Maybe it was just a sense of bad luck or something else was triggering him.
For whatever reason this guy was nowhere near as comfortable or as confident as expected.
Maybe he was older himself, or maybe it had everything to do with his buddy.
“How much did you even see?” he snapped. “If I don’t have to do this, I don’t want to do it.”
And yet he was the one who chose to do exactly this, was still choosing to do this, so that didn’t make a whole lot of sense to Joel. It was likely just something to say to flush her out into the open so he could kill her. And that was something Joel just wouldn’t let happen.
He picked up a rock and with an aim he had long developed in the military, he tossed it into the brush off to the other side of the gunman, who immediately turned and fired into the shrubs.
So much for not wanting to kill anybody, Joel muttered in his head.
“Now look what you made me do,” he snapped.
“I hate that shit. I absolutely hate the thought of people creeping up on me. They were always so fucking good at it in the military, and I really sucked. Just another thing I hated about it. The only thing that I was any good at was killing—but killing on the sly. I was the night hunter, keeping everybody on their toes because they had no idea what was happening. No one but John. … He knew.” Tiger laughed.
“He always knew and pleaded with me to stop. He told me that it wasn’t right, and maybe it wasn’t, but it was about the only damn thing that I could do that made me feel like I wasn’t stupid, like I wasn’t the one always in the wrong.
The military sucks for that, forever placing you at a certain level.
This level, that level, good to go, not good to go, needs to go, needs more training, needs therapy, needs help, beyond help. ” He laughed again.
“Anytime they tried to tell me that I was beyond help and tried to kick me out, either I found out something unpleasant to share about the person trying to get rid of me or the informant found me aiming my gun at them before they could do something about me. I always wanted to be the last thing they saw before the lights went out.” He gave a heartless laugh.
Then his tone changed. “I don’t know what the hell John did or who he told,” he cried out, “but I don’t want to kill you if I don’t have to.”
Of course, Joel knew that was complete and utter bullshit, having just shot into the brush, without any understanding of where people were. Tiger was bound and determined to make whatever happen, which would be yet another opportunity to add to his kill count.
Tiger hesitated, wondering if he should say something more, when his voice rang out again, angry and yelling at whoever he thought he was talking to.
“If you hadn’t seen me, it would have been fine, and I wouldn’t have to be here,” he repeated, as if making it true.
“I wouldn’t be in this position, and neither would you. ”
It was obvious he was working himself up into a rage.
“Everything has been wrong ever since John told me that he was dying, and I figured he would do something stupid at the end. I didn’t want him to.
I wanted to make sure that he didn’t do anything foolish, but you could never really tell with him.
What I considered foolish and what he considered foolish were two different things.
I told him not to say anything, not to do anything stupid, and he told me that he wouldn’t, but I didn’t trust him. ”
Tiger gave a long sigh. “I came here to say goodbye, plus to find out whether he really was somebody I could trust or he would be that asshole all along. I had him threatened into submission a long time ago, and it worked, or it seemed to work. But there was just something about him this last time, like he didn’t care, like he was free somehow.
Like something had happened that I didn’t know about.
It scared me, and I didn’t understand it,” he cried out.