Chapter 95.
Saad al-Harbi has had extensive training with firearms. In controlled places. Expensive places. Clean places. Places where people talk about discipline like it’s a brand.
Private instruction. Competitive shooting. Security courses his father insisted on after a kidnapping scare years ago.
It had also been one of the requirements for service in the Royal Air Force. More than one instructor had remarked about how proficient Saad was with guns already, as unlikely as it would be for a pilot to ever have to put that skill into practice.
He never dreamt he might have to.
Saad had hated all of it at the time.
Now he hates that it still isn’t enough.
His father had bought his way back into another set of trials—one he was told could get him back into the games.
He had paid high, after Saad had been sent home from Ohio.
Saad had been able to avoid life-and-death situations in Antarctica and Chile; and in caves and mountains and the place in America known as Death Valley.
But he had faced off against player after player eliminated after the red tents.
Even though his father bought him back in, he earned his place back.
Maybe that was part of the arrangement between his father and the people in charge.
But there had been no way for Saad, once he was back in the competition, to ever imagine he would find himself in a setting like this. Or a situation like this. Here he was, anyway, essentially in combat, with someone like Tipton.
Tipton was a natural-born killer.
Saad thinks about Tipton’s skill set now as he moves silently forward through a forest much larger and more dense than he had anticipated. Somewhere in his memory was a line of poetry from his English studies, about woods lovely and dark and deep.
Nothing lovely, though, about these woods.
They are most certainly dark and deep, under a sky that is growing more ominous by the minute.
Every time Saad hears the snap of a twig underneath his feet he stops and holds his breath. And waits. Then waits a little longer, listening for any other sound in the immediate area, the hint of any movement, before proceeding.
Every twenty yards or so he stops at another tree, peers around it and around the immediate area, looking for any sign of Tipton.
Telling himself:
I will only need one shot.
A clean shot.
One he knows he will take without pause even though he has never killed anyone in his life. And he can’t stop thinking about Tipton’s eyes. Tipton isn’t here to win. Tipton is here because he knows how to do this. And because someone wants him to.
It begins to rain, the sky growing darker, turning day into night, the woods darker and deeper than ever.
Saad moves forward anyway, crouching behind a tree, peering into a clearing blurred by rain.
Black clothes. Black trees. Black shadows.
Saad hears something over the steady pounding of the rain.
Is it just the normal rustling of branches as the wind has picked up?
Or something else?
What will happen if they do come face-to-face in these next few moments?
Will someone actually say, Draw, like this is a scene from some old western movie? Who will be the first to fire?
Saad thinks about these things as he crouches behind another tree before rising again and pressing ahead in the rain. There are no rules out here.
Only the law of the jungle.
Maybe, he thinks, the real scene in which he finds himself is from Lord of the Flies. A story of savagery and violence.
Would it be enough for him, as good a marksman as he is, to put a bullet into Tipton’s arm or leg or shoulder if Saad is the one to get off the first shot?
Tipton will shoot to kill, of this Saad has no doubt.
Saad leans out from the lush tree providing some shelter from the rain. In the next moment he is certain he sees movement on the other side of the clearing. And decides, just like that, it is time to force the action. He is tired of waiting. Or maybe the waiting has gotten to be too much for him.
Make something happen.
Now.
Saad joined the Air Force to prove to his father that he isn’t some rich, pampered boy.
That he’s a man.
He wishes his father could see him now.
He rises.
And makes the worst decision of his life.
“Tipton!” he calls out, loud enough to make himself heard over the rain. “No more hiding for either one of us. Let’s settle this like men.”
His voice cracks on the last word, and he hates that it does.
Then a voice answers—soft, close, almost conversational.
“Fine with me.”
From behind him.
Saad’s blood goes cold.
Because he realizes he never heard Tipton moving at all.
And that means Tipton had been there the whole time.