Prey

Chapter Fifteen

Alex Chareaux had been right after all, Henry Lightstone decided. The bear was a monster.

As best he could judge from his vantage point, it was bigger than any grizzly he had ever seen, including the stuffed mounts that had been prominently displayed behind glass in the lobby of the Anchorage Hilton.

Lightstone was hopeful that the bear wouldn't be all that active for the next half hour or so. Not with a tranquilizer- dart dose of sodium secobarbital still swimming through its bloodstream.

But then, too, Lightstone reminded himself, all of that just might change if somebody with more guts than brains decided to do something really stupid.

Like ricocheting a navel orange-size rock off a huge male grizzly bear's thick skull.

After bracing himself against the protective bulk of a fifty-foot Douglas fir and checking with his thumb to make absolutely certain the safety of his rifle was in the forward "off" position, Lightstone used his right hand to remove the small packset radio from his jacket pocket.

Then he looked over at Butch Chareaux, who was standing about thirty yards back and to his right, his old weatherbeaten 7mm Winchester rifle held up in the ready position. Lightstone waited until Chareaux waved his hand to indicate that he was all set before he keyed the radio mike.

"Okay," he whispered. "I've got him in sight."

"Describe your position," Alex Chareaux demanded, his voice sounding clear and very close through the expensive digital radio.

Lightstone looked out around the big Douglas fir, made an estimate of the distance, and decided that he was much too close by at least a factor of three.

"I'm about twenty yards away from the bear right now," he said quietly into the radio's external microphone. "I figure that puts me just about due south of your position, maybe a hundred and fifty yards at the outside. There're a couple of pretty steep gullies with a lot of rocks and trees between us, but the way he's positioned right now, we ought to be able to keep him running straight in your direction."

"What is he doing now?"

"Sitting on his ass, rocking his head back and forth like it weighs a couple hundred pounds, making some kind of weird grunting noises. Acts like he's got one hell of a hangover," Lightstone said uneasily.

"The drugs should start to wear off soon now," Chareaux acknowledged. "Does he know that you and Butch are there?"

"I think so, but it's kinda hard to tell," Lightstone said, ready to drop the radio and bring the heavy-barreled. 300 McMillan up to his shoulder the moment the huge bear made the slightest move in his direction.

"He will still be confused by the drugs for a while, so he should not be too difficult to move," Chareaux said. "You know what to do then, do you not?"

"Pretty much. I just hope to hell somebody gave a copy of the script to the bear, too."

"It is just as I promised you, Henry-" Chareaux said reassuringly "-an adventure unlike anything that you've ever had before."

"Okay, Alex, just tell me when," Lightstone said.

Alex Chareaux looked around to confirm that his three hunters were in position, with Reston Wolfe in the center, braced against a fallen oak; Lisa Abercombie about fifteen yards to Wolfe's left; and Dr. Morito Asai an equal distance to his right. All three were facing the area where Chareaux had predicted the bear would most likely appear.

"We're ready here," Chareaux whispered into his radio. "Do it now."

Taking a deep, steadying breath, Henry Lightstone propped the beautifully finished McMillan up against the tree with his left hand and then slowly knelt down and picked up a pair of rocks that were sitting by his boots, each of which was about the size of a large navel orange.

Then, after slipping one of the rocks into his jacket pocket and holding the other in his gloved hand, he slowly stood up and looked over at Butch Chareaux, who gave him a thumbs-up sign.

Okay, McNulty, Lightstone thought to himself, I hope to hell you and Scoby and that maniac Stoner are going to appreciate this.

After picking up his rifle and holding it tightly in his left hand, Lightstone took in one last deep breath and stepped away from the tree, nervously aware that the bear was staring groggily in his direction.

Sliding his boots forward in slow, easy steps, Lightstone moved closer to the huge animal, until his right foot crunched down on a small twig.

The sound seemed to focus the bear's attention, resulting in a low, guttural "Woof!" as it slowly brought its huge furry body around to a position where it could watch the approaching upright figure without having to lift its head.

Lightstone froze. Now that he was out in the open and fully exposed to a sudden charge, the huge grizzly looked a least twice as big as it had from behind the protective bulk of the fifty-foot Douglas fir. It seemed to be increasingly aware of its surroundings, as though the sound of the snapping twig had activated some sort of survival mechanism that was helping it to counteract the dwindling effects of the secobarbital.

For a long moment, Henry Lightstone and the bear remained in their respective positions, each staring silently at the other.

Then, in an act of pure madness, Lightstone lunged forward in a headlong charge toward the squatting bear, yelling as loud as he could as he heaved the rock at the large cluster of pinecones hanging just above the bear's head.

Lightstone had previously decided to aim for the pinecones-instead of for the bear's head as Butch Chareaux had advised-because he hoped that the noise of the falling cones might confuse and scare the huge animal, rather than making it madder than hell.

But Lightstone hadn't counted on the grizzly suddenly bringing its head up in an instinctive response to the sound of his voice. Thus, instead of sending a shower of pinecones tumbling down over the bear's broad head, the orange-sized rock caught the unsuspecting grizzly right square in the center of its much-too-sensitive nose.

Still running forward and now less than a dozen yards away, Lightstone had already started to pull the second rock out of his jacket pocket when the huge bear roared in pain and fury, and then suddenly rose up on its oddly short and stubby legs to its full, terrifying height of over nine feet, with its four-inch claws fully extended and savage mouth wide open.

Lightstone took less than a half second to realize that he had made a horrible and possibly fatal mistake before his survival instincts took over.

Screaming as loudly as he could once again, he heaved the second rock at the still-dangling clump of pinecones next to the grizzly's head and then frantically swung the heavy barrel of the McMillan around as the impact of the rock sent pinecones spinning away from the tree in all directions.

One of the sharp-edged cones caught the huge bear across the eye. The big creature slashed awkwardly at it with a massive paw. The rapid-acting barbiturate was clearly still affecting the grizzly's motor reactions and coordination; but from Henry Lightstone's stunned perspective, the animal's incredible strength seemed untouched.

Suddenly the huge bear turned its attention back to the puny creature that was now less than a dozen feet away. Furiously intent on ripping this new adversary to bloody shreds with its incredibly powerful claws, the bear lurched forward on unsteady legs, claws outreached and teeth bared. The sticklike object in the human's hand suddenly exploded with a horrendously loud noise as a high-velocity slug streaked past the bear's right ear.

Lightstone hadn't had time to bring the rifle up to his shoulder, and the recoil of the detonated. 300 Magnum round almost tore the powerful weapon out of his hands. But more important, the shock effect of the concussive explosion so close to the bear's face gave Lightstone the opportunity to do the one thing that he figured just might save his life.

Which was to run like hell.

Lightstone made a desperate lunge for the nearby trees, but the only thing that truly saved him in those first few seconds was the fact that the bear had turned its head away from the muzzle blast and the eye-stinging spray of burning gunpowder.

Thus by the time the grizzly blinked its eyes clear and realized what had happened, Lightstone had already disappeared into the surrounding woods in a fully panicked sprint.

Running faster than he had ever run in his life, Lightstone managed to put about twenty yards between himself and the clearing at his back when he heard the unmistakable sounds of the bear tearing its way through the brush and trees in hot pursuit.

Lightstone hadn't thought that he could run any faster, but the fearsome roars and grunts of the infuriated bear, the crash of dried brush being trampled and uprooted, and the splintering sounds of tree limbs being ripped from their trunks provided the incentive his shaky legs needed.

The next thirty seconds of Henry Lightstone's life flew by in a blur of slippery pine needles, thorny vines, entangling branches, and torn clothing as he scrambled up the rocky slope of the gully and over what seemed to be hundreds of exposed and interwoven tree roots.

Somewhere in the middle of those seemingly endless thirty seconds, Lightstone managed to work the bolt action of the McMillan, driving and locking another. 300 Magnum round into the chamber of the powerful rifle, whose beautifully finished stock was now gouged and scratched and muddy from numerous impacts against rocks and trees and anything else that had stood in Lightstone's frenzied path. But he'd held on to the rifle as a last-ditch desperation option even though he wasn't at all sure that with one shot he could kill an animal the size of the enraged grizzly.

The next slope was steeper, and covered with rocks and slippery mats of long pine needles. He lost ground as his boots dug for traction. But the trees up ahead were closer together, and that gave Lightstone something in the neighborhood of a two-second advantage as he zigzagged between the thick trunks like a pro halfback and then flung himself through a tangle of brush and smaller trees that suddenly opened into another clearing.

The sound of the bear as it came ripping and roaring through the brush at his back, and the volley of rifle shots that seemed to come from everywhere at once, echoed in Henry Lightstone's ears as he felt the claws reaching and then tearing into the back of his jacket.

He started to come around to his left with the rifle, determined to jam the heavy barrel into the raging creature's mouth and pull the trigger if it was the last thing he did in his life.

But then one of the incoming. 416 Rigby slugs tore the rifle out of his hand and another spun him around in the opposite direction, mercifully silencing the bellowing screams of the fearsome beast as Lightstone tumbled down into a warm and liquid darkness.