"Prey? What...?" Will's hands slid down from between his back and the wall, to fall, unheeded, on the pallet. "Prey? You're hunting me?"
"I talk, you listen," the Coordinator reminded him, and Blue Cap made a nudging motion- up, up- with the gun. Numbly, Will tucked his hands behind his back once more.
"I own this compound. Fifty square miles of pristine wilderness, surrounded by a buffer zone of federally- and state-protected designated wildlife preserve. The only people within screaming distance are the ones I've invited." He stared down his nose again at Will. "Point is, you're on your own here, son. And it's up to you if you make it out of the hunt or not."
"I'm prey and you expect me to believe I can survive?"
"With your wits, your skill, your training, you have a fair chance. I want my clients to have to work for their trophy. It's no fun for any of them if they take you down before sunset on opening day. Each and every one of my prey is hand-picked to have a better-than-average chance of besting the hunters."
Hunters, plural, Will thought, and he opened his mouth to ask 'How many?'. He was still reeling with shock, but his analyst's mind was already trying to compile as much intel as possible.
The Coordinator held up a warning finger. "Three," he answered when Will snapped his mouth shut. "Three recreational hunters to one professionally trained target. Seems fair enough, doesn't it? They'll be armed, you'll be armed, they'll have supplies, you'll have supplies. You even get a four-hour head start before they can start tracking you." He offered a thin, humorless smile. "And here's the brass ring to motivate you- you don't have to kill all three to win. Somewhere on the compound is one other building. It's an old hunting cabin from before I purchased this property. You find it- you get yourself inside- and it's a safe zone. No one can touch you. Inside you'll find a walkie talkie; you radio in and the game is over. The hunt stops, the clients remaining stand down, and one of my guys comes out in an ATV and escorts you back. Alive." He spread his hands in a benevolent gesture as if to say 'See how magnanimous I am'.
"And then what?" Will asked, when it seemed like the other man had finished speaking. "I come out of the woods, after being kidnapped, after three people tried to kill me, not to mention I got good long looks at your face and Mr. Friendly's." Will tipped his head toward the stone-faced Blue Cap. "And... what? You just let me go? You drop me off at the nearest bus station and say 'Arrivederci, thanks for playing'? Yeah, I don't think so." He pulled his arms from behind his back and folded them over his bare chest. "I think I'm dead win or lose."
Blue Cap made a menacing motion with the rifle, but the Coordinator held up a hand and he stilled. "What do you remember about being picked up?" The Coordinator cocked his head, looking disturbingly like a vulture with his beaky nose, scrawny neck, and naked scalp. Will pressed his lips together and averted his gaze. "Nothing, am I right? What about the rest of that day? Do you remember what you were doing before we acquired you? Where you went, who you talked to? You don't. Today is Friday. Yesterday..." He snapped his fingers, a sharp crack in the close room. "...doesn't exist for you anymore. Maybe not Wednesday, either."
Will flashed back to his last clear memory, working in his home office, with the door open to the summer evening. That had been Wednesday, because the presentation he was finishing up was due the next day. He shook his head. "I remember Wednesday... mostly."
"Mostly, yes. That sounds about right. See, there are some really interesting neurotoxins coming out of South America these days. You had a minimum dose of one of them. And it took a good forty-hour chunk- give or take- out of your life." He cut the air sharply with one hand. "With a full dose, you won't remember this entire week. You'll wake up, your experiences here will be erased. Me, my people, The Lodge, the hunt- all of it, gone.
If you best my hunters, either by eluding them or killing them, you win. And your prize is your life. I won't need you any longer and I won't fear you can identify me- so I'll let you go."
Will swallowed. It sounded convincing... but then, it was scripted to. Earnest words to present the illusion of hope. A shiver chased down his back. "You're crazy, you know that? Bugfuck crazy. Deciding to stage your own version of the Hunger Games on your private estate? That's men-in-white-coats territory."
The Coordinator didn't react to the provoking tone. "I was running The Lodge before there was a Hunger Games," he informed Will.
"Battle Royale, then! Shit." Will looked the other man in the eye. "What if I don't believe you? What if I decide I'm dead no matter what and I just don't play? What then, Coordinator?"
"My clients paid a premium to participate, and I don't give refunds. You don't cooperate, I let them in here with you instead of out there, and they can take their sweet time expressing their disappointment." He shrugged. "Your choice. Give up and die like a rat in a cage of tigers. Or man up and fight." He turned, clearly finished with the conversation. "I don't acquire quitters for my program, Mr. Brandt. I know you'll make the right choice."
Blue Cap was backing toward the door in his employer's wake, rifle still leveled at Will to hold him at bay. The Coordinator paused with his hand on the door. "Wake-up call is at five a.m. Think it over until then." And then, in a parody of a gracious host, he inclined his head. "Good night, Mr. Brandt. Enjoy your stay with us."
It was anything but a good night. The overhead light clicked off again about an hour later; but even in the darkness, Will couldn't switch off his mind and rest.
The cold pouring through the window didn't help, either. After curling up didn't alleviate his shivering, Will got up and stripped the sheet from the mattress. It was inadequately small and thin, but he wrapped it around himself before huddling down again. He hoped the supplies mentioned by the Coordinator included clothing. He did not want to be running through the woods naked. Did that once in wilderness training, he thought. Don't need to do it again.
Especially if it was going to get cold like this at night. Will drew his knees up and tucked his hands between them. The rapid drop in temperature, the crisp, clear air chilling the room, suggested The Lodge was located at a higher elevation than Langley and Maryland. If he was snagged Thursday, and it was now only Friday night, he might still be somewhat nearby, albeit in a mountainous region.
Unless they had access to a private plane or helicopter to move him further.
Did it matter? No one outside was going to track him down in time. At some point, IMF would miss him when he didn't report in; at some point Ethan would start to wonder when Will disregarded his phone pings about a mission, Benji and Jane if he ignored their texts. But that was unlikely to happen for days.
No, he couldn't count on the team swooping in to the rescue. He was, as the Coordinator had said, on his own.
Eventually he nodded off. And had fitful dreams of Mumbai, Pyongyang, Croatia... all places where things had been bleakest.
The birds and a full bladder woke him before sunrise. Will paced and swung his arms and jogged in place in the pitch dark to warm up and wake up.
Slowly the room brightened.
As dawn approached, a cold certainty settled heavily in his belly.
He was, most likely, going to die.
Maybe not immediately, today, but before the week was out.
Three against one? Three who were depraved enough to hunt other humans?
The Coordinator was lying. No way was he going to put himself at risk by letting Will go back into the world if he survived. Even with memory loss- he'd have the IMF investigating, for crying out loud!
There were probably a lot of unmarked graves out here in the woods.
Ethan would eventually track him down, of that Will had no doubt. He would be long dead, of course, a trophy to some "hunter's" success, or victim to the Coordinator's mop-up measures, but Ethan would pick away at Will's disappearance until he unraveled it. And when he did, he would expose The Lodge and every one ofl its dirty secrets...
And he'd learn Will had gone down fighting.
Will took some small, grim satisfaction in that.
The light flicked on when the outer door clanged. Footsteps came down the corridor, two pairs, one much lighter than the other. The peephole flap opened, closed.
The key rattled in the lock.
The door swung open.
A different guard entered first, dressed identically to Blue Cap; this one had a shorter, more wiry build, and the thickened ears and flattened nose of a not-too-successful boxer. He gestured at Will with the rifle cradled comfortably in his hands.
"Feet apart. Hands on your head."
Will complied without fuss. Flat Nose glared at him for several beats, standing just out of arm's reach should Will lunge for him. He spoke over his shoulder without taking his eyes off his prisoner. "Secure."
A woman stepped through the door. Tall, thin, a little younger than Will. Straight black hair framed a pale, narrow face. She bore enough of a resemblance to the Coordinator that there had to be a family connection- she had his nose.
Green eyes- true green, not hazel, Will noted- slid down his bare torso and legs and back up again.
"Good morning, Agent Brandt. Are you running to the hounds this morning or staying in the henhouse?"
Her eyes were amused as they settled on his face, as if she knew a secret he didn't. Will made a derisive sound.
"You're as batshit as your father, aren't you."
She lit up with genuine pleasure. "I love it when I pick a smart one! Makes the clients really work for their prize." She drew a thick bundle from beneath her arm and tossed it onto the bed. "Clothes. Sized to fit, so you won't have difficulty moving in the woods." From her shoulder she lifted a pair of sturdy boots, tied by their laces, and dropped them in front of Will. "Boots. Same."
"Yeah, and that's not creepy or anything," Will growled.
"Oh, relax. No one groped you while you were out. Although... " She ran her eyes down his body again. "Sometimes it's tempting. No, I got your sizes from the clothes we took from you." She winked. "Very suave, by the way. Excellent quality. If you come back alive, you can have them back."
"And how many have ever come back to get their clothes?"
Will expected her to ignore his gibe, but she answered readily enough. "Four. Not horrible odds when you consider we only do this once, maybe twice a year."
"Four. In... how many years you've been doing this?"
She unslung a compact pack from her back. "How 'bout we skip the history lesson since you won't remember it anyway." She opened the pack. "These are your supplies- you'll pick them up as you head out of the compound, because your weapon is in here and we want you behind the barricade before you get your hands on it." She slid a wicked-looking combat knife half out of the pack and then back in again, and moved to the next item. "Water filtration bottle. There are streams and springs all over the property. Fill it up when you cross one and it filters as you drink. Don't make yourself sick on unfiltered water, that's boring." She poked the bottle back in and pulled out a handful of wrapped packets "Enough power bars, jerky, and dried fruit for five days. Should be more than enough, but if you want to supplement, there's plenty to eat out there- rabbits and grouse, edible plants, fish in the streams." She smiled broadly. "You've done survival training, you know how that works."
"I know that survival training is usually against nature, not goons with knives."
"Guns- the hunters will have guns. But you can just think of them as slightly more dangerous bears."
"A knife, against bears with guns- yeah, that's an even match," Will snapped.
The good humor wiped off her face. Thin-lipped, she jammed everything back into the pack and zipped it closed with a yank. "It's not supposed to be an even match," she said shortly. "It's supposed to be entertaining for the clients." She pointed. "Get dressed. The gate opens at six a.m. and you go through it, ready or not."
She swung to the door and paused, the falsely bright smile back on her face. "Oh, there's a breakfast tray in the hall. I'll send it through to you. Most prey don't seem to want to eat before they start, but I always offer anyway."
"I'll give you five stars for hospitality on Trip Advisor," Will snarled, and her peal of laughter echoed with the slamming of the door.
He left the tray on the floor. Infuriatingly sunny as she was, the Coordinator's daughter was right- his stomach was too knotted for the breakfast sandwich the tray held.
Will sorted the clothes on the bed. Forest camo pants and jacket; a matching thermal pullover. A belt, presumably so he could clip the knife to it. An olive drab t-shirt. Two pairs of wool socks. And the boots.
He'd be glad of the layers come nightfall.
He got dressed. Everything fit, as the daughter had claimed. He tucked the spare socks into one pocket, and then the napkin-wrapped sandwich in another. "Main thing I learned from field training?" Benji's voice echoed in Will's memory, from a late night spent around a wobbly table in a Frankfurt biergarten. "Never pass up a chance to eat, sleep, or piss."
Benji was going to take it hard. He liked the way their little team had gelled, the four of them now in tune enough to meet up when off-mission and anticipate each other's actions when on. They were good together.
Jane, too. Jane could have closed off to everyone after Hanaway, but she hadn't, at least not with the three of them. She was going to take another hit, losing another team member.
Ruthlessly, Will shoved the thoughts away. He should have left a contingency note, a 'If you're reading this, I'm dead' message. It had kind of crept up on him that he had people to leave it for, though.
Shut up, Will told himself. He bent and yanked the sheet from the pallet. Thin white cotton was too visible for the woods, but still had uses. Folded into a ground cover. Torn into strips to make a snare. A rope. A garrote.
Bandages.
He folded it flat and tucked it into the back of his waistband, under his shirt.
The minutes ticked down.
Will's watch had been confiscated along with everything else, so he could only assume that it was promptly six a.m. when the door was shoved open again. Flat Nose gestured with his gun. "Out. Move."
The corridor stretched left, where it ended at a windowed metal door like the one to his room, and right, to a solid one with a metal push-bar across it. Flat Nose stood, just out of reach, barring the corridor to the left.
"Through that door," Flat Nose said, nodding to the right. "Go."
Will put his hands on the bar and pressed it down. It opened to the outdoors- a concrete pad underfoot, heavy chainlink fencing on either side and overhead that made a sort of exit chute from the building. A gate stood open at the end; Blue Cap was behind it, ready to swing it shut once Will passed through. He looked bored.
Will started down the chute. The building towered above him to his left- a sprawling, stone and stucco monstrosity, some bizarre hybrid of Gilded Age hunting lodge and Italianate villa. Just goes to prove money can't buy taste, Will thought, his eyes roving across the façade. Wide columns and arches framed a porch stretching the length of the third story, capped by a dark tiled roof. The daughter was standing in one of the arches, a coffee mug cupped in her hands and held close to her face. The Coordinator stood beside her, hands tucked into his pockets. He dipped his head in a mockery of respect as Will moved out of the lee of the building.
Three others stood on the porch with his "hosts"; Will slowed his steps to take in what he could about them. Clothing similar to what he'd been given, but bulkier- Body armor, dammit, Will thought grimly. Two had rifle straps slung across their chests; the third had his weapon cradled in his hands and was swaying a little on his feet- impatient, eager. The other two were watchful and still, one male, lean, impassive, with a dark cap pulled down to his brow, the other female, tall, white-blonde hair in a tight ponytail, her lips slightly parted.
Salivating to get started.
A crawling feeling buzzed between Will's shoulder blades, to have to walk that gauntlet of murderous intention and firepower. He made himself keep moving down the chute, eyes flicking from the open gate to the line of observers. The height of the porch probably gave them a pretty good vantage point overlooking The Lodge's property. He cut his eyes to the right. An open grassy area sloped downward, to the edge of the forest. High, wooded hills rose on all sides. Will's guess had been right- he was in the mountains, the Appalachians by the look of them.
Fencing stretched out from each end of the building until it vanished behind trees- towering, heavy-duty chainlink, woven through with thick horizontal wires.
Shit. An electrified perimeter.
Well, they had to keep him confined somehow. They wouldn't want him taking off into unbounded wilderness. A straight-line run and a four-hour head start could get him pretty far from his starting point without a fence to limit him.
The pack hung on a hook just outside the gate. Will took one last look around.
The underbrush in the treeline directly below the chute looked thinner than the growth off to the sides. Someone had been doing some selective trimming, to subtly funnel the prey into running straight down the middle of the hillside once they took off.
Okay, Will could play along. Or at least pretend to.
He drew in a long breath. Rolled his neck. Rose on his toes, then rocked back on his heels to give his legs one last stretch.
Touched that cold spot in his center- Go down fighting.
He broke from his slow stride into a hard sprint for the last few feet of the chute. Caught Blue Cap's smirk in the corner of his eye as he passed.
Snagged the pack from its hook.
Ran.
tbc