Chapter 12

It was the cold of the morning and the sounds of the waves whispering on the beach that awoke Ethan Quade. He'd slept the sleep of the dead throughout the night although his dreams had been confusing and mixed. Once again he was dreaming of a blond haired man. The man had no face and no name but it seemed to Quade as though he'd known this man for a very long time. The dream was set on an island very like this one. Disturbingly the island was festooned with shrunken heads and voodoo symbols and occasionally a black man's face would loom out of the dark and laugh at him as he writhed on the ground. By the time Quade awoke he felt spooked and his first action as his eyes opened was to reach for the knife he'd placed under his bag the previous night.

Now, as he moved Quade realised that the swim the previous day had not just tired him out. His chest was on fire and as he moved his arm that fourth rib, the one Doctor Isaac had worried about, felt as though it were going to poke through his chest at any moment. Carefully the curly haired man stretched, easing the kinks from his muscles and started some deep breathing exercises to ease his pains. His ankle was also swollen again although the break had healed well and there was a warmth to Quade's back, chest and legs where the coral had cut him up. The wounds had turned an angry red despite his emersion in the healing sea water but Quade decided he could ignore the cuts and abrasions. They were the least of his worries now.

His stomach rumbled loudly and reminded the castaway that he was hungry. He'd felt so pumped up the previous day that he hadn't eaten at all and now he felt light headed and empty. Reaching into the bag he'd brought with him, Quade pulled out a granola bar. For some inexplicable reason a list of ingredients ran through his head; lecithin, sea kelp, black strap molasses. None of those things appeared on the list of contents on the pre-wrapped pack and the brunet shook his head. You're losin' it boy, you're losin' it!

As he munched on the bar, Quade looked around him. Through the palm trunks he could see the white sand beach he'd swum to yesterday. The sandy ground extended to where he was sitting now and then, as he looked behind him the ground became grassy and rose slightly in an apology for a hill. Calling on the skills he thought he should have had as a soldier, Quade considered his next moves.

Primary target was Ray Hunt. Isaac had assured him that Hunt would be on the island and Quade had no reason to doubt that. With nothing to go on, it would be a game of stealth. It was a shame he didn't have a gun. A gun would have made him feel safer; more secure and yet looking down at the sheaths strapped to his forearms, Quade seemed just as happy with the knives. Was he used to hand to hand combat? Where had he learned to fight with knives? Did he do that in the Army? So many questions ran through his head and yet he had no time to seek answers. They would come later. Right now he needed to be on the move. Staying in one spot was dangerous. Moving silently through the undergrowth was the right thing to do and as though following his own advice, Quade stowed the wrapper from the granola bar into his bag, shouldered it and looked around at his temporary bedroom. The depression he'd slept in showed a body shaped hollow and he scuffed the sand up with the side of his sneaker, hiding the evidence that he'd ever been there. Satisfied he'd covered his tracks, and walking only on the tussocky grass to avoid footprints, Ethan Quade started to make his way through the trees in search of his quarry.

On the far side of the island, the cool of the dawn had also woken Ray Hunt from his dreams. He'd spent a toasty night beneath his palm frond shelter and the embers of his fire still glowed red. Carefully the blond man rose, stretched his long legs and turned his attention to the fire. His pack included a tin cup and a tiny packet of coffee along with one bottle of fresh water. Hunt leaned low over the remains of the fire and blew gently, coaxing the ashes back into life. He didn't question how he knew what to do. He worked calmly, coldly, methodically and with the ease born of practice. A few minutes work later and a spark blazed into life, caught against the kindling and produced a small flame. Carefully Hunt added small twigs in a pyramid shape and when there was a gentle blaze, he balanced the tin cup on top of the fire, added water and sat back to wait for it to heat. Five minutes later he added the coffee granules, used his tee shirt to pull the piping hot cup from the fire and carefully sipped appreciatively at the steaming brew.

As he squatted by the fire, Hunt considered his options. Half of the blond man wanted to find Quade, kill him and then get on with his life. The other half wanted some fun – wanted to hunt Quade down and make the other man suffer a little before extracting his retribution. So what to do?

O'Malley had asked him what he wanted to pack for his trip to the island. Hunt had considered carefully. For some reason he seemed at home thinking about survival techniques and the prospect of a hunt. He had quickly made a list and given it to O'Malley who'd told him he would see what he could do to get everything together. Now Hunt looked at his carefully packed bag. He took out each item in turn and examined it before placing it down on the ground in front of him. A small shovel with a detachable handle; a tin with a flint and sparker; the tin cup; bottle of water now half gone; a length of thin but strong rope and a change of shirt. Just because he was on an island he didn't' need to compromise his comfort too much!

Carefully Hunt repacked his bag. He drained the last of the coffee from his cup, packed that also and stood up. The sheath with the long knife was the next thing and the blond man fastened the straps back around his shoulders. It felt snug and the knife was a comforting weight down his back. He wiggled his shoulders a little to get the weapon bedded in and then scuffed sand over the small fire, extinguishing the flames. He scattered the ashes and the burned wood, took a final look around his campsite and nodded to himself. The shelter – should anyone find it – was a giveaway that someone had camped there, but it had taken a while to construct and was too valuable to dismantle. If he had to stay another night, it would be useful once again. He would take the chance that Quade would stumble across it – it was more energy effective to leave it alone than to start taking it apart.

Looking at the lay of the land, Hunt turned his back on his shelter and headed inland. The ground rose slightly and he guessed that in the middle of the small island there may be a hill from which he could survey the whole area. From that, he could decide how and where to take out Quade, make it back to the jetty and get the hell out of there back to his life once and for all.

Hunt started his trek. He walked slowly but with purpose, his whole mind concentrated on his quarry and how to achieve his goal. As he walked, he examined the ground and the surrounding area for any clues that there was another person on the island. It wasn't long before he got his first one.

The island was heavily wooded, the palm trees on the beach giving way to taller, denser vegetation the further away from the sand he walked. The ground cover changed too and bindweed and other plants littered the small pathway that seemed to have been used by animals. Rats were feral on these small islands, but rats didn't leave imprints of shoes on the ground.

Carefully Hunt knelt and examined the print. It was man-sized and looked as though it had been made by a sneaker or some soft kind of shoe. Obviously someone had come this way and not too long ago. There were no particles of sand or debris in the depressions of the print. That denoted that not too much time had elapsed since it had been formed.

The blond man looked around him. There was no sound and no breeze in between the tall trees. It was hot and humid and sweat ran annoyingly beneath the sheath of the big knife at his back. No birds sang, which meant that someone had passed this way recently and this seemed to be the only path up to the brow of the rise.

Hunt stood, making his decision. The art of good survival was not to be too quick to use up your reserves of energy. If he could allow Quade to come to him instead of the other way around, then hunt would have conserved his own energy for the kill. An idea formed in the flaxen head and Hunt looked critically at the lie of the land.

The path was narrow and undulating. Just ahead of him, the path dipped down into a hollow with a slight climb out of the other side. This he could use to his advantage and so long as he was quiet in his work, the trap might just work. Checking around him once more, Hunt took out the shovel from his bag, attached the handle and started to dig where the hollow reached its deepest part. The work was hard and within minutes the blond man was sweating profusely, but he knew time was not on his side and he needed to complete his work.

Hunt continued to dig solidly until he had a hole in the ground big enough the hold a body. The lie of the land meant he didn't need to dig too deeply for his purposes and he carefully crawled out of the hole and cast around for his next target.

A tall tree opposite provided what he needed and Hunt took the large knife from its sheath and hacked off one of the lower branches. It was about two feet long and the end he hones into a sharp point, testing it with his hands to see how resilient it was. Apparently satisfied with his weapon, the blond man lowered it into the hole he'd dug and jammed it into the bottom of the sandy soil so that the point reared up from the centre of the hole. Finally Hunt cut down some of the more accessible palm fronds and laid them over the top of the hole. With the natural dip in the ground, and the area he'd just dug, the hole was maybe four feet deep – more than enough he hoped, for what he had in mind. Vegetation in place no-one would know it was there as the palm fronds disguised it from all but the most detailed scrutiny. Hunt stood back and admired his handiwork critically.

The trap was set and it had taken a little over two hours of work. Now all he needed to do was find Quade and lure him back to this spot and the man would be, as they said in the novels, "toast".