Read The Devil's Anvil Online

Authors: Matt Hilton

The Devil's Anvil

 

 

 

Also by Matt Hilton

 

Dead Men’s Dust

Judgement and Wrath

Slash and Burn

Cut and Run

Blood and Ashes

Dead Men’s Harvest

No Going Back

Rules of Honour

The Lawless Kind

 

Short Stories in Ebook

 

Joe Hunter: Six of the Best

Dead Fall – A Joe Hunter Short Story

Red Stripes – A Joe Hunter Short Story

 

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

 

Copyright © Matt Hilton 2015

 

The right of Matt Hilton to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

 

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

 

ISBN 978 1 473 61001 9

 

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

 

www.hodder.co.uk

 

 

 

The one is for Sue Fletcher

 

 

 

‘Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.’

– Michael Corleone (paraphrasing Niccolò Machiavelli),
The Godfather Part II

Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola

Contents

 

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Thanks

1

 

‘Keep your head down this time, Billie, and don’t move. They won’t see us if you stay still.’

There were three men in a GMC Suburban hunting us, two in the front and one in the back. The bottle-green SUV was canted on its chassis, the right side sitting in a deep rut in the road where it crested the hill, the other wheels on the grass embankment. One of the men held something to his face, the glint of moonlight off lenses betraying a set of night vision binoculars. He scanned the road and the forest on both sides. His friends relied on their unassisted vision as they checked out the road both front and back.

They couldn’t see the woman or me.

Wilhelmina ‘Billie’ Womack was scrunched in a hollow in the forest floor, with a stack of broken twigs piled in front of her offering further concealment. I was ten feet away, crouching behind the bole of an ancient fir tree. A storm had torn down the upper half of the tree during a previous season, and the tangle of its brittle branches hid me from the watchful eyes of the hunters in the Suburban.

‘Where are the others?’ Billie whispered. ‘What if they’re moving in behind us, Joe?’

‘It’s always a possibility, but I won’t hear them if you keep talking. Do as I say, keep still and stay silent.’

Billie was a spirited woman, not someone who ordinarily took orders lightly. But I was glad to find that this time she knew I was speaking sense, and that it was best to keep her head down.

The Suburban didn’t move. The men inside continued to search the woodland, but none of them was looking our way. The road before them wasn’t an easy track to negotiate, not even for an off-roader. Best-case scenario was if they reversed back the way they’d come, took another route through the forest. Yet it seemed they weren’t ready to give up on the hunt. I listened. Distantly I could hear another engine, alternately revving and petering out as a second SUV pushed its way along another trail. The terrain was hilly, densely forested, and though there was no way of pinpointing the direction of the second vehicle it sounded far off and of no immediate concern. A helicopter kept buzzing overhead, but the canopy was too thick for its crew to see us. More worrying were the searchers on foot who for all I knew could be close.

Occasionally I heard the crackling of twigs, but again the sound was distant. Didn’t mean that a more accomplished stalker wasn’t nearby. My friend Rink could move through this forest without setting a foot wrong or leaving a distinct track, and there were plenty of trackers as skilled as him, some more so. Truth was, the people hunting us were more capable than many. They didn’t rush trying to flush us out; once they’d got in position, they were controlled and methodical in their search. Someone guiding them was laying down a search grid and sooner or later they’d stumble on to our position.

I was armed, albeit lightly, with a SIG Sauer P226 and a folding knife. But those that sought us came with heavier armament: rifles, automatic pistols. It was serious artillery to bring down an unarmed, untrained woman. Our only advantage was that those chasing Billie didn’t realise who was with her. The only person who could have told them about me was in no position to do that. He was lying at the bottom of a ravine with a broken neck.

The man with the binoculars swept the ground before us, but continued past without being alerted to our presence. He must have said something, because the driver brought the Suburban forward a few yards. The big car tipped like a seesaw as it negotiated its new position, but it inched forward again. Then, once out of the deepest ruts, the driver steered it down the hill and so close that I could smell the exhaust fumes that plumed from the tail pipe.

‘They’re going to see us . . .’ Billie’s voice was high-pitched, fraught with anxiety.

‘Hold your position. They’re not aware of you, and things will stay that way unless you move.’

‘Please, Joe,’ Billie said. ‘Don’t let them take me.’

‘I won’t,’ I promised.

My pledge might have rung empty to her. Billie had come to me for protection, and in her mind that might mean firm and resolute action, not hiding like rodents in a burrow. But I was one man against many, outgunned and outmanoeuvred, and her best hope for safety was that we’d go unnoticed by the hunters. I was itching to do something more telling than crouch behind the fallen tree, and if it had been only my life on the line I’d have probably gone for broke. I bit down on the urge to shoot it out with the men in the SUV.

They passed us by.

I sighed as the Suburban jounced a route along the trail and headed up the next incline. I followed the big car’s progress, seeing it through drifting rags of blue smoke that hung in the cold moonlight like will-o’-the-wisps. As it crested the next rise it paused again as the men inside checked the terrain for any telltale signs.

Billie adjusted her position so that she could check where the car was and I heard the crackle of twigs beneath her elbows. The sound was a faint rustle at most, but in the stillness of the forest she might as well have jumped up and down, waving her arms and yelling ‘Over here!’. A corresponding crackle alerted me to the location of something moving through the brush. I hoped in that fraction of a second that it was merely a forest creature, startled by our proximity, but knew our luck was out.

Twisting round, I brought my SIG to bear on the man who’d risen from a dry watercourse about twenty feet behind us. He was wearing cammo fatigues to help blend with the forest. It seemed a lot of trouble to go to when hunting a townie like Billie, as did the rifle the man aimed. The only saving grace was that my movement surprised him. He’d been stalking the woman, closing in on her, and was up until that moment unaware of my presence. He was no weekend warrior though, and my presence gave him only a split second’s pause. He swung his rifle on me even as I shot at him.

Other books

Affair of the Heart by Joan Wolf
Works of Alexander Pushkin by Alexander Pushkin
Dark Lady's Chosen by Gail Z. Martin
Wilde Chase by Susan Hayes
Size Matters by Stephanie Julian
Wicked as They Come by Dawson, Delilah S
Dick Francis's Refusal by Felix Francis
Sworn To Defiance by Edun, Terah


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024