On the other side, Steve Owen's progress was going poorly.
Even though he'd secured weapons and ammo, he didn't plan to use them at first. Firing a gun would give away his position; taking enemies down silently was best.
Only, this time he'd met a true expert.
The mercenary squad that had repeatedly fallen for his tricks now saw through several of his traps in a row, making Steve Owen certain there was a specialist among them.
He jogged low along a slope. The brush concealed his trail; they hadn't found him yet, but they were getting closer.
A few hundred meters behind, the mercenary team followed a single man, advancing carefully. The man in front kept reading the ground—faint footprints, snapped branches. Suddenly, he raised his hand and the squad halted.
The one-eyed man pinched some soil and sniffed it, then looked around. In the foliage he found a line, and soon uncovered a booby trap made from a hand grenade.
He disarmed it and said, "He should be close. He didn't have time to build proper traps, so he switched to time-saving grenades."
If Nick had seen this, he would've been baffled—why was last year's defending champion, Golden Eagle, working with these mercenaries, and why did they seem to listen to him?
"Sir, we're fortunate to have you," Edward said respectfully to the one-eyed man. Who would have thought Golden Eagle had once been their commanding officer? After that incident, many had gone to Russia. Golden Eagle chose to disappear. Edward took his men freelance. Now they'd met again—under these circumstances.
Farther off on a hillside, Steve Owen took a brief rest. Spotting the pursuers again, he knew his booby trap had failed once more.
They kept picking up his trail. He'd tried a few tricks to mislead them, but they were all seen through. His traps had likely been neutralized too. On the contrary, they had only slowed him down.
He had tried crossing a river—if they were using dogs, the water would wash away his scent—but no luck. These guys clung to him like maggots on bone.
There were no drones overhead. That left only one possibility: there was a master tracker in the team.
This time, from the high ground, Steve Owen chose a spot with a clear field of view. He decided to snipe that expert. As long as the tracker lived, he would remain on the passive end.
At that distance, a bow was out of the question. He'd have to use a gun. Unfortunately, what he'd taken off the mercs was an AK-74M, all black. Its accuracy was less than ideal—but it was all he had. In a tropical rainforest, reliability usually mattered more than anything else.
He set up the rifle. The 74M's effective range was 400 meters on paper, but in reality, beyond 300 it was hard to hit with precision. This one had only iron sights. Whether he could land the shot, he wasn't sure.
He quickly picked out the one-eyed man at the head of the column. Looked like he was the one doing the tracking. The one-eyed man was dismantling a simple trap Steve Owen had set deliberately—to give himself a clean shooting window.
Feeling for wind direction and speed, and factoring in humidity, Steve Owen silently calculated his hold-off.
He chose 200 meters. Within that range, the 74M could barely hold accuracy. This wasn't a sniper rifle, and there were no adjustable sights. He had only one chance. If he missed, that distance would barely be enough to run.
The one-eyed man had no idea death's scythe was already swinging. He continued to strip the trap. Steve Owen opened his palm; a few blades of grass drifted away on the wind. He made a tiny adjustment to his aim.
A deep breath. Bullet time engaged. The world nearly froze. He squeezed the trigger.
Bang… bang bang… bang bang bang.
He fired several rounds. Only the first was precise; the rest were pure luck. Through the irons, the one-eyed man fell, but whether dead or wounded, Steve Owen didn't know.
Birds burst skyward. A hail of bullets ripped into the area around him.
The mercs weren't amateurs. They triangulated his position almost instantly. Rounds poured in like rain. Steve Owen didn't push his luck—he backed off with the rifle and sprinted.
Rumble, rumble, rumble—
Thunder rolled. A downpour exploded out of a once-clear sky. This was the Amazon—weather turned without warning. One moment blazing sun, the next, thunder and lightning.
Steve Owen ran through the rain, drenched to the bone—and smiled. The storm was perfectly timed. It would wash away his traces. Even if they weren't dead, finding his trail again wouldn't be easy. But he wasn't going to let them off that easily. He decided to turn the tables.
At the trap site, the one-eyed man sat up. Steve Owen's bullet had hit him, but not fatally. After a rough field dressing, he was no longer in immediate danger. One arm was useless—but he'd kept his life.
Injured, the one-eyed man couldn't be relied on. The soldiers looked to Edward, waiting for orders.
Edward was weighing options when he glimpsed a figure flicker behind a tree in the distance. That guy. Steve Owen stepped out, drew, and loosed in one fluid motion. The arrow screamed through the sheeting rain and nailed the one-eyed man square in the chest.
He felt a massive force slam into him. Staring at the shaft jutting from his sternum, stunned, he gurgled twice—and died.
A blatant provocation. Before Edward could speak, his soldiers were already firing like mad at where Steve Owen had been. But he was gone.
"After him!"
No one could stomach that kind of taunt—especially from one man to a whole unit.
The rain only grew heavier. Mud pooled everywhere. The temperature dropped, and a light mist rose among the trees—further to Steve Owen's advantage.
The mercenaries soon lost his track, but he moved like a wraith—never far, circling them. Every so often someone caught a glimpse of him, but when they rushed in, he was gone.
Before they realized it, the soldiers had drifted apart, the gaps between them growing wider. One soldier crept forward, eyes scanning. He spotted a line at neck height, hidden in leaves. Deciding not to spook the trap, he carefully skirted it. The moment his boot came down, he cursed inwardly.
He'd stepped on something. A sapling whipped up from the brush, the sharpened stake lashed to it driving hard into his body. He screamed—but before it carried far, a figure rose behind a patch of shrubs.
Thwock.
An arrow ended him where he stood.
______
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