The Hunted Chapter Six Snippet (100% new writing)

By captain kate · Mar 27, 2009 ·
  1. The blonde haired woman stumbled around the corner and took Kate by surprise. She was so stunned by her appearance that it took her several moments to realize who was standing before her. It wasn’t possible, but there was her best friend!

    “What the hell?” Loving said.

    “Jennifer!” she blurted out. “What are you doing here?”

    “I thought you were dead!”

    Kate pulled her friend behind her and peered around the corner. The two men she had heard earlier were drawing closer. While the cubicles gave her plenty of room to hide and ambush, she didn’t like the odds to beating two men who were trained and prepared for this mission.

    “I get that a lot,” Kate said dryly, noticing the rifle in her friend’s hand. “Care to give a situation report?”

    “What the hell?” Loving said. “You leave me thinking you’re dead for over a year and now you just show up wanting a sit report?”

    “I haven’t had much choice in the matter,” Kate said with a sigh. “Intelligence has co-opted me and I have to work for them.

    Jennifer looked at Kate closely and she realized what had happened. The too smooth movements of her arms and the slightly off color skin she could see answered a lot of questions. It was no wonder that Intelligence had co-opted Kate! That body had to have cost a fortune!

    “I can see why,” Loving said. “They made you a cyborg, didn’t they?”

    “Close enough,” Kate muttered. “Come on, we need to keep moving. There are two men hunting us.”

    “I don’t know who they are,” Loving said. “But I do know who they’re hunting.”

    “Who?”

    “Some hot-shot Intelligence agent,” Loving said. “Someone who killed a man from outside a building.”

    ****, Kate thought, that’s me.

    “Really?” Kate said. “Any idea why?”

    “No,” Loving said. “Just that there’s a bounty on her head. Any idea who they’re talking about?”

    “Yeah,” Kate said. “Me,”

    “You?” Loving looked at Kate askance. “The agent that killed that man was you?”

    “Unfortunately,”

    “Damn you’re in deep ****, Kate,” Loving said. “Because these guy’s mean business! They’ve used this entire operation to lure you in!”

    “I noticed,” Kate said, slipping back the way she came. “They killed the team I commanded.”

    “That’s who they were shooting at,” Loving sighed. “I wish I could’ve helped them, but I couldn’t afford to give away my location at the time. Hell, I wasn’t even armed!”

    “That’s okay,” Kate sighed. “But this isn’t the time to talk. Cover me.”

    “Cover you?” Loving said. “What the hell are you going to do?”

    “I’m going to do what I’m best at, I’m afraid,” Kate looked downcast. “I’m going to kill the men hunting us.”

    There wasn’t time for debate at this point and Kate slipped away, leaving Loving to watch her back. It wasn’t fair that she couldn’t get away from killing people and maybe the voices were right. Maybe a killer was all there was to her life and nothing more.

    I wish I had a chance to learn if that was true, she grumbled while she crouched behind the dividers.

    As stealthy operatives, the men stalking them were rank amateurs. They talked between themselves and made no effort to conceal the nose being made. It was almost like they were so confident in their position that the lack of strategy would be overcome somehow.

    Could there be more terrorists? Kate wondered, chewing on her bottom lip. It wouldn’t be the first time that Intelligence information had been wrong and that concerned her. What if there were more then the ten men that Loving saw? Could she take them all out and keep the civilians alive at the same time?

    Kate leaned back against a divider and took a deep breath. A quick check of the clip in the rifle showed only half a clip plus the three in her pocket. Damn, that was cutting it close if there were more then two assailments out there. Sometimes it just didn’t pay to get out of bed, and this was one of those times.

    Well, she told herself, lets get this over with.

    The men were moving down the central corridor behind her, and Kate waited for them to pass a crossing walkway. This was going to be a simple matter of slipping up behind them and firing if everything worked out properly. However, something didn’t feel right to her, but she pushed the thought out of her mind. Behind her, she could hear Loving breathing hard while watching her back.

    Kate stepped out behind the men and raised her rifle. Just as she was to fire, the sound of safeties clicking off filled the air. Damn, it had been a set-up! It had been way too easy and the first men were being used as the bait to drew her out for others.

    “****!” she exclaimed.

    Bullets chewed into the cubicles around her as Kate ran. The line drew closer and at the last minute, she dove into a forwards roll. Pieces of metal and material sprayed her face from the dividers. She stood, and without aiming, fired in the general direction of her attackers.

    A gurgling cry answered her shots and Kate smiled without enjoyment. Without a solid idea of how man gunmen were pursuing, it was impossible to be excited about one going down. One thing was obvious: she couldn’t stay where she was and live. No, she would have to get back on the offensive and try to stop them.

    But with two sets of people in this room, she told herself, which one should I go after?

    The answer was decided for her when she stuck her head around the end of the cubicle. A hail of bullets came from the decoys and she pulled back with a curse. Jesus Christ, they had Loving and her pinned down! This was a moment that her suit would have been very useful.

    “Why don’t you give it up, Almir,” one of the terrorists said. “Make it easy on yourself.”

    How the hell do they know my name? Kate wondered.

    “Almir,” Reyes said in her link. “What the hell is going on?”

    “Not now, sir!” she thought back, killing the link again.

    Kate resisted the urge to reply to the man, knowing it was an effort to keep her distracted while the others moved in. This was going to be one of the hardest nuts to crack in years and it possibly wasn’t crack able; however, she didn’t have much choice in what to do. The last thing she could do was to sit there, cowering, while waiting for the men to kill her too.

    A plan started to formulate in her mind, but it would take Loving’s help to make it happen. She looked over at her friend and motioned to Loving. The other woman needed to go back the way they came while Kate went after the men behind her. If things worked out like they should, she would have them so distracted that the other two men wouldn’t notice Loving until she shot them.

    And if it doesn’t’ work, Kate told herself, than neither of us will live to collect a pension!

    Loving nodded in understanding while Kate finished telling her what to do. If it was going to work, they would have to work in unison and that would be tricky. Kate watched her friend slip around the other end of the cubicles unmolested and she took a deep breath.

    Jennifer should be in place in a minute, she told herself.

    The trick when tackling opponents who knew you was to do something they didn’t expect. While Kate’s normal mode of operation would have been to be silent but deadly, she was going to have to break the mold. Hopefully this would throw their pursuers off their game long enough to allow her to overcome the disadvantage Loving and her were under.

    Here goes nothing, Kate thought.

    She launched herself forwards while standing up at the same time. A quick jerk of her wrist brought the rifle up and she sprayed the room with bullets. The men following them were taken by surprise and they fell as the bullets cut them down. When the rifle clicked empty, she dropped to the floor before a hail of bullets came back her way.

    A second rifle sounded off and she heard the men firing at her stop. Loving must have gotten the hint and started firing at them. Two screams of pain filled the air as the rifles went silent, which made Kate smile broadly.

    Now the odds will be more even, she thought while changing clips.

    Kate launched herself to her feet and found herself facing a single man. His eyes were wild with surprise and fear. At the man’s feet, three men lay dead, blood draining onto the carpet.

    “Drop it,” she told him and he did.

    “I got the other two,” Loving said.

    “Good job,” Kate said while motioning to the man. “Get over here.”

    The man moved with the slowness of someone on the borderline of shock. It was obvious that he hadn’t expected his team to be routed so easily by the two women. However, in Kate’s mind, he had made one big mistake: his team had tried to kill her and that prevented her from having any sympathy.

    “Who are you?” Kate demanded, the events of the evening fraying her nerves. Loving kept the man under guard while she approached.

    “Thomas…Sanchez,” he mumbled, lips trembling.

    “Why are you after me?”

    “B-bounty h-hunter,” he stammered. “There…there’s a b-bounty on your head.”

    A bounty on her head, Kate absorbed Sanchez’s words and felt like she had been punched in the gut. To hear someone other then Loving say that brought it home to her. Who the hell had put the bounty on her head and was this all an elaborate attempt to kill her to collect the money?

    “Who put the bounty out?” Kate asked, rubbing the bridge of her nose. This was just getting better and better all the time and she could feel a migraine wanting to form in her head.

    “I don’t know who did it,” Sanchez said, his voice growing more confident by the moment. “All I know is who we work through.”

    “And that is?”

    “Simon Peres,” Sanchez said.

    “How much is the bounty?”

    “Three hundred and forty million credits,”

    “Jesus,” Loving breathed.


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