The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 37

Jeff had Monsignor McGuire's rifle already raised. When he saw Jagger fall, his first thought was that Jagger had tripped while lunging at Jinx. Then he saw the blood oozing from the wound in Jagger's chest, and was about to go to Jagger's side when Jinx shoved him against the wall. As she did, a bullet ricocheted off the opposite wall, a few yards away.

"It's one of them!" she whispered. "He's gonna get us!"

Jeff rose to his knees and raised the rifle again, jamming the stock against his shoulder as he fumbled with the safety. Peering through the scope, he saw nothing, but pulled the trigger anyway.

The rifle came to life, pouring a stream of lead into the far reaches of the tunnel and shattering the underground silence with its roar. The gun vibrating in his hands, Jeff sprayed the tunnel with bullets until the magazine was empty, its twenty rounds fired in less than a second. The chatter of exploding cartridges died suddenly away. He groped in the priest's backpack for another magazine, but Jinx was jerking at his arm.

"Let's get out of here," she whispered. "They'll all be here in a few minutes!" She darted away into the darkness.

Instead of following her, Jeff crouched down next to Jagger's unmoving form. "Jagger?" he said softly. "Hey, Jag…" His voice trailed off when he saw there would be no response. He reached down and took Jagger's wrist, feeling for a pulse.

Nothing.

For a long minute Jeff stayed where he was, hunkered down next to Jagger's body.

He thought of the onrushing train that would have crushed him if Jagger hadn't hurled him aside. And of the man they'd come across in the depths of the tunnels, the man Jagger had killed, certain he'd intended Jeff some kind of harm.

How could he leave Jagger here? He knew what would happen as soon as he was gone. First the rats would come, and then the flies and ants and cockroaches.

But what choice did he have? Even if he could have carried Jagger, where could he take him?

From somewhere in the shadows, he heard Jinx's voice. "Hurry! They'll find us!"

Still he lingered, and finally lay his fingers on Jagger's forehead. "Thanks," he whispered in the darkness. "You were my friend."

Picking up Jagger's railroad spike from the floor, Jeff gazed down at Jagger once last time. Then, staying low to the ground, he turned and hurried away.

Eve Harris pressed the transmit button on her radio over and over again, as if the mere repetition might bend the instrument to her will. Yet she knew the problem didn't lie with the radio, but with the hunt itself.

Something had gone wrong.

Now Viper wasn't responding to her call. Viper, whose preferred method of hunting was to lie in ambush, waiting for his prey to come to him. She'd spoken to him only a few minutes ago, and his voice had been clear over the static.

And now nothing.

She told herself that Vandenberg might have decided to change his position-to set up his ambush deeper in the tunnels, where the radio couldn't reach. But she knew better. Vandenberg was a coward at heart, and unless he'd been flushed from his blind, he'd stay where he was until the hunt was over, bagging the quarry if it came his way, but content to let others stalk the tunnels.

Cursing softly, she turned her attention back to the radio, changing it from one frequency to another, silently praying that at least one of the hunters would still be within range of the transmitter.

Or at least still be alive…

Keith recognized the sound as soon as it crashed against his ears, echoing and reechoing off the concrete walls until it faded away.

A semiautomatic rifle, firing at least twenty rounds.

Heather, who had been behind him only a moment ago, was now next to him, her fingers digging into his arm.

"Where did it come from?" she whispered, as if afraid to speak out loud in the sudden silence that followed the volley of shots.

"Ahead," Keith replied, his voice grim. "Come on."

Giving Heather no chance to argue, he set out at a dogtrot, moving quickly down the tunnel in the direction from which the blast of gunfire had come. Heather caught up with him, and less than a minute later they came to an intersection.

"Which way?" Heather gasped.

Raising the night goggles to his eyes, Keith scanned the tunnels in both directions. At first he saw nothing, but then, at the farthest reach of the goggles' range, he spotted something protruding from a kind of shelf high up on the tunnel's wall. Something that looked like-

"This way," he said. "Hurry."

He took off again, not at an easy trot this time, but as fast as he could run.

Behind him, Heather struggled to keep up.

Perry Randall pressed the transmitter button on his radio, silently praying he was still within the instrument's short range. "This is Rattler. Come in, Control. This is Rattler!" He released the button and strained his ears to find a voice hidden in the static that was all he could hear.

Nothing.

He swore silently, glanced at the glowing dial on his watch, then played the thin beam of his penlight over the map in the back of his log. He was in Sector 2 of the second level, and Viper should be working the next sector on the same level. If the herders had done their job, Jeff Converse and Francis Jagger shouldn't be too far away. If they were a level down, though, Randall knew it was possible that Mamba might get them before he could get his own shot.

Not that it would matter if one of the others got Jagger- Randall didn't give a damn about him. When he'd looked over Jagger's record during the Hunt Committee meeting, it had been obvious that Jagger would be easy prey-big, and stupid, like a rhinoceros, dangerous only if you got too close. Indeed, Randall suspected that Jagger had already been taken, and whoever had bagged him was on his way back to the club, the carcass marked and mapped, ready for the gamekeepers to collect and deliver to Malcolm Baldridge. But Perry Randall wanted Jeff Converse himself-had wanted him ever since the night Converse had been arrested in the subway station, crouched over his victim. Of course, Heather had kept insisting the boy was innocent right up until the day he was sentenced, but that hadn't surprised him. The boy had a certain charm that, though it hadn't fooled him for a moment, had certainly taken his daughter in. Not that it mattered anymore- the boy would be dead within the hour, and it would be his own personal pleasure to bag that particular specimen.

Except that right now Perry Randall had the distinct feeling that something odd was happening.

He pressed the transmitter again. "This is Rattler. Come in, Control. This is Rattler." He released the button, listening.

Still nothing.

As he was about to try one more time, the quiet of the tunnel was shattered by a blast of gunfire.

Not a single shot, but a burst from a semiautomatic rifle.

His nerves suddenly tingling with the excitement of the hunt, Randall jerked the tiny plug from his ear and listened for another burst from the rifle so he could be certain of the direction from which it came.

Putting on his night vision goggles, he peered through the greenish haze of amplified light.

Three rats, invisible only a moment ago, could now be seen scurrying along the tunnel's floor, searching for any kind of edible scrap. As Randall watched, two of them caught each other's scent, froze, found each other, and hurled themselves to the attack, each determined to drive the other from its territory. Randall felt a twinge of excitement as he watched the rodents tear at each other, and when one of them finally gave up and scuttled up the wall to disappear into a wide crack near the ceiling, he felt a sense of disappointment.

The fight should not have ended that way, with one of the combatants fleeing the battleground.

The loser should not have been allowed to escape.

The loser should have died.

And today, the losers would die. Flush with anticipation, Perry Randall turned his full attention back to the hunt.

He heard another sound, this time that of running feet, and whipped around with the speed of a striking rattlesnake, peering deep into the greenish haze.

Even with the help of the night vision goggles, he almost missed it.

Almost, but not quite, for Randall's eyes were every bit as sharp as his mind, and though the shape in the distance had disappeared almost before he was aware that it was there at all, he caught it.

A man had gone into the cross passage ahead of him.

A rush of adrenaline sent a tingle through his nerves as Perry Randall started after the vanished figure.

He was certain the hunt would soon be over.