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He came to as if someone had just thrown a bucket of ice water in his face, gasping for breath, shocked into a sudden brilliant consciousness. Nostrils with the heavy smell of dead wet leaves, he lifted his head to see dense trees forming a cavern around him. Slightly muffled by the trees and away in the distance was the sound of excited barking dogs, following a scent, drawing closer. His combat trousers and sodden cotton tunic were drenched with sweat, and…was that blood? Yes, it was. Thick blood, almost black, around his stomach. But he felt no pain. Perhaps it wasn’t his blood? His head hurt though, with a fierce sharp pain that focused his concentration. He looked down and studied his hands. They belonged to a boy in his early teens, with sparse fine black hair on the forearms, and damp earth rammed deep beneath the fingernails. The hands looked strong though, with calloused knuckles and prominent veins, the hallmarks of hard work. He ran his fingers threw his hair, probed the swollen part of his skull, and wincing, looked at his hands again. His palm was red with fresh blood, and this time he was certain it was his own. Instantaneously he found himself relaying a status report. “Impact trauma, I was probably struck with a blunt instrument, there’s swelling and a thumb-length open would, moderate danger of internal bleeding and concussion.” Head wounds always bleed profusely, he told himself. And in this humid forest he would have to be very careful about infection. The gash would certainly have to be cleaned and stitched.
That could wait, though, while he tried to work out what the hell was going on. He’d been taught that it’s quite common to wake up in an unfamiliar place after a deep sleep, or perhaps a general anesthetic, and not know where you are for a few seconds. This sensation quickly disappears as the brain catches up, and the recent past comes rushing back. But this wasn’t what was happening. And worse, not only did he have no idea where he was, or how he came to be there, he had no clear memories at all. There was just a whispy notion of slats of light playing orange, black and white, on the forest floor, and a pungent scent lingering in his nostrils. What was his name? Not even that sprang to his lips. But then his mind played back a short piece of film, tall boys with cropped hair, stripped to the waist to show their dangerous-looking physiques, faces cruel, lips curled in snarls. “Saker, Saker,” they chanted. A sudden recollection. He reached down to his ankles and pulled up his left trouser leg. There on his calf was a bite mark, no blood but still white, and inflicted by blunt teeth. Below it, above his ankle, was a simple monochrome tattoo, the head of a hooked-beaked bird of prey, the huge eye dark and intimidating, a Saker falcon. Yes! Saker was his name; that at least made sense. The distant barking of the dogs shook him out of this small triumph. With sudden clarity he knew they were tracking him, and they were getting closer. He listened intently for a few seconds. “Four dogs, two German Shepherds, a Doberman, and…one more, I’m not sure…” He guessed from the way the calls penetrated the undergrowth that they were just over a kilometer away. The dogs would be coursing, noses close to the ground, to suck on the trail he’d left behind, able to pick up the tiniest of scents with a sense of smell many thousands of times more potent than that of a human. Drenched with sweat and blood, he would make ludicrously easy tracking fodder. Quickly calculating how distant the barks seemed, he worked out that they would be here in under six minutes.
Something primal in the back of his brain was telling him to run.
As Saker got to his feet and his perspective changed, he realized that he was not alone. Lying face down in the leaf litter was a man, big, over six feet tall and built like a nightclub doorman, with no neck to speak of and huge shoulders. He was dressed in black combat fatigues from head to toe, with a bullet-proof vest over the top.
“Private security…” Some macho tough nut who did a lot of weights, ate too many burgers, and loved looking mean in his uniform. Potentially dangerous, no reason to risk waking him…but then curiosity overcame common sense, and Saker grabbed one of the black-clad meaty shoulders, and rolled the figure on to his back. He was unconscious, and the bruising round his throat and his contorted face made it clear that he had been choked. Saker had another flash of memory, and saw the big man staggering around, a berserk figure riding his shoulders, wrists locked around the massive throat, crushing the arteries that feed blood to the brain and cutting off the windpipe at the same time. The frenzied figure was pushing down with his legs onto the big man’s shoulders, using his whole body to get extra leverage. Clawing at his throat in desperation as he started to black out, the man sank his teeth into the calf muscle of his tormentor. In Saker’s mental flashback, the view flew from the struggling security guard and zoomed up to his shoulders and in on the face of his assailant. Everything came into focus. Saker was looking at his own face, twisted with effort and fear. Well, that explained the bite mark on his leg. As the big man dropped, he’d taken Saker with him. Their combined weight had meant that they’d come down like a felled oak tree. The gash in his forehead must have been caused by him clattering into a rock that was sticking up out of the leaves. He was lucky to have got away with just a cut. Looking down at his hands again, Saker’s head began to spin; the security guard’s meaty paws were twice the size of his.
“How could I possibly have overpowered this big lump?” He was suddenly frightened, and shivered despite the humidity. What was he doing here all alone, fighting a big man in this foreign forest? He cocked his head to one side and stood perfectly still. The normal sounds of the forest had silenced. The birds had stopped singing as they sensed the approaching dogs. A few hundred meters off, a short whistle repeated three times; a spotted deer’s alarm call. The deer might as well have been shouting, “They’re coming for you.”
There was no time to search the body for further clues. Saker turned away from the noise of the baying dogs and ran.
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