Hunters: A Trilogy Read Free Page B

early hour, endless streams of traffic had picked up their daily momentum and begun to bustle across the base. Heavily-laden military transport trucks, open-topped Land Rovers bristling with machine guns, dozens of American Humvees and convoys of light armoured vehicles scurried amongst the ubiquitous herd of Toyotas, their movements only adding to the dust that rose into the tepid air.
    ‘Where in God’s name do all these bloody people go every day?’ Ken muttered. He shrugged at the thought and looked at the sky again, letting the Land Cruiser meander through the dust, glancing up through its cracked windscreen as he headed for the bunker. The brown haze had already started to hang above the base like a filthy net-curtain. Half of him did actually hope for a storm, but a proper storm, one with a lot of rain in it. ‘Yeah, a good downpour to wash some of this crap away – that would be great!’ The thought was an appealing one.
    Rumbling to a halt besides a half-buried shipping container, he killed the engine and stepped out of the dirty blue Toyota into the heat. Walking over to the container, he waved nonchalantly at the sentry who watched him from the guard tower over to his left. The American infantryman raised his hand in a lazy return salute. They were used to seeing Ken as he was there two or three times a day, every day. Anyway, the sentries were more interested in what was happening on the outside of the wire where the insurgents still caused havoc whenever the fancy took them.
    There was a rocket or mortar attack almost every other day, but it was a numbers game and the base was so large that a person would have to be pretty unlucky to be hit. Ken figured it would be one of those ‘shit happens’ moments if he did get hit and didn’t let the thought stop him from going about his daily business. As he started to go down the stairs, Ken paused and shot another look into the horizon behind the airbase, into the far distance where he saw the dust rising again. The storm still brewed and he felt it thickening the air, the sensation pressing down on his mind,
    ‘Yep, this is gonna be another big one, that’s for sure!’ he thought. The sensation stayed with him as he walked down the stairs to the bunker and reached for his keys – the last really big storm had been during his first year working in this lousy place.
    ‘That was bloody years ago and I’m still here, I must be out of my tiny little mind!’ He grinned ruefully at the thought as he fumbled with the Chubb padlock.
    Once unlocked, he pulled the heavy steel door open, took one last glance at the threatening sky, and then stooped his six foot, broad-shouldered frame into the bunker. It was a long, steel affair that they’d made from an old shipping container, he and Mike placing the steel box into a large hole they had excavated in the unyielding Afghan earth.
    There were racks and shelves all around the inside of the container, each one stacked neatly with boxes of crystals and cables. There were also a variety of cameras and lenses, plus a collection of other specialist equipment that his company, K&M Electricals, dealt in. It had taken him and Mike two years of hard work to build up the business and now they were starting to reap the rewards.
    Ken’s job today was to install some of his fish-eyed cameras onto the Predator Drones for the Americans. The cameras were the latest, most technically-advanced pieces of equipment that only a handful of people worldwide had access to. If the clients were happy with the results of today’s test, then the deal was going to pay handsomely in the very near future.
    He set to the task and opened a box before removing one of the bubble-wrapped cameras. Carefully laying out all the associated parts in a neat row, Ken placed the instruction booklet on the end of the shelf and turned the black camera-mount over in his large hands – some of the wiring confused him, and supposing he might need Mike’s advice