The Alex King Series by A BATEMAN (free ebook reader for ipad TXT) 📕

stung like a thousand beestings. A graze, but an agonisingly close call, which he had dressed in reindeer moss and a leather patch and would leave a thick and jagged scar.

The Sami was close for a shot like this, the blue jacket filling his scope, too close for the magnification of the lens. He sighted quickly, fired, then ducked back down as gunshots sparked from his right and ice chipped away at his feet. The bastards had pincered him. Come in on him from two sides and attacked simultaneously. He had nailed one for sure but could not see the other man who was raining lead around him. He fired in the general direction, then slid back down the drift and worked the bolt as he scurried across the snow back to the snowmobile. There was a pause to the gunfire and the man assumed that whoever was doing the shooting was now reloading. He slammed the rifle into its rack and jumped onto the snowmobile. He felt and heard the impact of a bullet hitting the machine and ducked down as he started the engine and revved hard, throwing a blizzard of snow up as the tracks dug in and he slewed away. He knew that with every ten-metres he travelled he was getting well beyond the range of a small pistol, and he swerved through trees to present himself as a more difficult target and to put obstructions in the path of a lucky bullet. He laughed, as much a product of adrenalin as the thought of having accomplished at least a part of his mission. He doubted the centre shot would leave the man wounded. And the cold and remoteness of the location would see that in his favour, too. The man he had shot would be dead. There was no question about it. It hadn’t gone to plan, but he would have to be more fluid. He had not expected a gunfight. It was too late to make it look like an animal attack. He would have to put them through the ice. The river from the power station on the Russian side spewed out hot water at enormous pressure which created a current. If he took the bodies to the melt, tossed them in, they would move under the ice and be lost. Once the putrefied corpses lost their gases, floating against the underside of the ice, they would sink and the temperature at the bottom of the depths would make them sink forever.

He slowed the machine, spun around and took a course that he hoped would put him behind the second gunman. He knew he was getting into a fight now. He had speed and the ability to manoeuvre, and he had the firepower advantage. He would not be caught off guard again.

He had covered a lot of ground. Shutting down the engine gave him a thrill he neither understood, nor would have been able to describe. He had hunted his entire life. For food and for animal fat to use as fuel and for fur. He had killed his first tethered reindeer with a knife to its spinal cord when he had been five. He had shot his first seal at ten. Since then, he had taken many lives, but never human. Not until the man in the clearing. He had been paid well for his tracking skills, paid even more handsomely for killing the English spy. He had enjoyed it. He had never enjoyed killing animals, but it was a vital part of his tribal, nomadic lifestyle. His heritage. But the killing of a man had been a different and completely emotive experience. He had already killed the man in the blue jacket, the Englishman sent to investigate the death of his colleague, and now he would enjoy hunting and killing his older companion.

He opened the bolt and breach fed the internal magazine until he had replenished the maximum of five bullets. He closed the bolt and held the rifle ready as he walked, carefully placing his soft-soled boots on the dry ice. Even with the soft leather, the ice crunched underfoot. He listened intently as he walked, expecting to see the man in the green jacket at any moment. He was sure he would come in behind him. He raised the rifle to his shoulder and sighted the terrain through the scope. He took another few steps, paused and sighted again. The older man was kneeling in the snow. He was bending over the body of the man in the blue jacket. The Sami hunter smiled as he steadied his aim and released the bolt safety with his thumb.

And then he froze.

The blade of the knife was ice-cold. It had slipped in through his open hood, the tip of the blade digging into his neck, piercing the skin. A warm trickle of blood ran down his throat. An irritating dribble, tickling his cold skin. He realised he had stopped breathing, took a sudden breath and felt the blade dig deeper.

“Put down the gun.”

The man did as he was told. He had cut enough reindeer throats to know how it worked. The rifle clattered on the solid surface of the compacted snow and he slowly raised his hands.

King pushed him hard in the back. The man spun around defiantly but stopped when he saw the pistol in King’s left hand, the knife in his right. He was shivering, wearing only a thin sweater and a hooded sweatshirt.

“Peter!” King shouted, his eyes not leaving the other man’s. “Bring my bloody coat!”

The Sami stared incredulously at him. He had been fooled by the blue jacket. He had taken a shot at it, obscured by the trees and the close range through the powerful scope thinking he had killed one of the men. And again, as the other man had lent over the ‘body’. He did not seem angry, if anything, his expression showed