He dove for cover behind a tree and was catching his breath when he saw the line of bodies running up from the east.
Here they come.
He figured they would start at the bar, check the interior, and then, if he was lucky, head north where the Mako was docked. If he was super lucky, they would see the tracks he’d made, assume he was an idiot, and haul ass up the hill.
It wasn’t the most solid plan, but he’d lived through worse. Hayes was craning his neck to the south, trying to get a clear look at the dock, when he heard a sound that sent ice rushing through his veins.
He snapped his head back toward the men running to the bar, fifty feet to his front. They were closing fast, and he could hear their angry chatter and see the assortment of eastern bloc hardware they were toting.
But while Hayes wasn’t worried about the exotic array of Kalashnikovs in the men’s hands, the same could not be said of the beast straining against the length of chain that ran from its collar to the handler’s waist.
What the hell is that, a bear?
With the branches and tall grass blocking his view, Hayes was able to get only brief glimpses of the animal, but what he saw made no logical sense. His first thought was that it was some kind of visual distortion, his brain trying to help out his eyes by boosting the magnification of what he was seeing through the night vision. But he rejected the thought when he realized the phenomenon didn’t carry over to the men.
Maybe they breed fighting dogs and one of those dudes got a lion drunk and got it to mate with a St. Bernard or something.
Hayes was forced to wait an agonizing couple of minutes before the men were close enough to get a clear view of the animal.
It’s a freaking Boerboel.
In most cases the fact that he was dealing with a dog and not some failed genetic experiment would have brought a modicum of relief. But knowing what he did about the Boerboel—that the males weighed close to two hundred pounds and had a bite pressure of more than 850 psi—Hayes wished he had a bigger gun.
And if the beast’s size wasn’t a big enough challenge, he realized that he had another problem when he felt the tickle of wind dance across his back, then dive down the incline toward the men.
Before the breeze, the Boerboel seemed almost passive, perfectly content to drag his handler through the undergrowth. Up to that point Hayes’s plan of lying still and waiting for the men to pass had seemed feasible. But the moment he felt the breeze, he realized the dog’s size was the least of his worries.
According to a study Hayes had read, the average human had six million scent receptors and was able to detect up to a trillion different odors. Both were big numbers, but even with the men standing downwind of him, he wasn’t worried about them catching his scent. Mainly because, like him, evolution had programmed his pursuers to process their environment visually.
The Boerboel, on the other hand, had come into the world blind and deaf and like all puppies had learned to process its environment not with its eyes, but with its nose and its up to three hundred million scent receptors. So it was no surprise when, seconds after sniffing the air, the Boerboel froze, its massive head snapping left, a mohawk of fur running up its back as its eyes locked on to Hayes’s hiding place.
Annnd . . . dammit.
The second the Boerboel turned in his direction, he had the reticle of the STI centered on the animal’s chest and his finger hovering over the trigger.
For God’s sake, shoot the dog, the voice urged.
While twenty yards was a long pistol shot for some, Hayes knew at this range he could shoot the wings off a gnat, but still he held his fire. Not because he had any ethical problems with shooting a dog but because he honestly wasn’t sure if the 9-millimeter had the ass to bring it down.
Better to go with what you know.
Hayes shifted targets, transitioned from the Boerboel to the handler, who was in the process of unclipping the chain from his waist when Hayes fired.
The 9-millimeter Corbon Pow’R Ball left the barrel at fourteen hundred feet per second and punched through the man’s skull, before mushrooming inside his cranial vault.
It was lights out—instant death.
The handler’s comrades spun in the direction of the shot, but before they could open fire, Hayes dumped the rest of the magazine, firing so fast that the STI sounded like it was on full auto, trying to keep their heads down long enough to unass his position.
But the men were well trained and reacted to the incoming hail of bullets by dropping prone and hosing the tree line with a wall of lead. The bullets came snapping through the brush, one of the rounds slamming into a tree two inches above Hayes’s head.
He rolled out of the line of fire, snagged a fresh mag from the magazine pouch clipped to his belt, and slammed it into the pistol. Then he was on his feet, bent at the waist, twisting and dodging through the trees, sprinting for higher ground, knowing from the hail of lead impacting all around him that he wasn’t going to make it.
Hayes changed directions, threw himself off the edge and down the hillside. He tumbled head over heels, the scrub brush slapping his face, tearing the night vision from his head.
By the time he reached the bottom he was cut to shit—his mouth filled with dirt and bits of leaves and bark. But he was alive and knew that if he wanted to stay that way he needed to find some cover—fast.
He hobbled into the low ground and ducked behind a boulder and was checking his pack, making sure that he hadn’t lost the pills, when he heard his pursuers crashing through the undergrowth behind him.
Hayes brought his pistol to bear and was squinting through the darkness, ready to engage the first target of opportunity, when he heard the guttural bark of the Boerboel.
You’ve got to be shitting me.
But there was no mistaking the hulking silhouette that burst out of the trees or the lifeless bounce of the figure dragging behind it.
Run.
Hayes shot to his feet and, throwing caution to the wind, raced toward the dock, figuring that he had a better chance of outrunning the dog than a bullet. He ran as hard as he could, taking long, loping strides, but Hayes had never been a sprinter and knew that if it weren’t for the added deadweight of the handler, the Boerboel would have easily run him down.
He hit the gangway at a full sprint, eyes locked on a rusted twenty-six-foot trawler pulling out of its slip. Hayes had no way of knowing how many men were on board, or if they were armed and, honestly, at this point, he didn’t give a shit.
The only thing that mattered was getting away from the hellhound snapping at his heels.
He was halfway to the T intersection at the end of the dock when the captain swung the bow, aiming for the buoy that marked the channel mouth.
Hayes was almost to the end, the dog so close he could feel its hot breath on the back of his legs. All that was left was a hard right turn and a dash to the crates stacked at the far edge of the pier and he was free.