THE THOUSAND DOLLAR HUNT: Colt Ryder is Back in Action! Read Online Free PDF Page B

an older, lone traveler like myself. We’d all paid a little extra for the smaller jeep, to get closer to the action than the larger tour buses allowed.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ the tour guide said in a thick South African accent as the driver edged the jeep slowly along, flattening the grasses as we traveled across the vast landscape at somewhere under five miles per hour. ‘Samson here’s pretty lazy, he’s not going to do anything, this is just his way of letting us know he’s there, that’s all.’
    Well, Samson was doing a pretty good job of it, I had to admit.
    And, as the lion padded gently alongside us, his muscles rippling and his mane swinging, I also had to admit that I was rather enjoying myself here at Badrock Park.
    I’d arrived that morning, having hitched a lift along Interstate 40 with a long-distance trucker on his way to LA. I’d got out at Laguna, then waited for the transport which bused people the fifteen miles further north to the safari park itself.
    I’d picked Kane up from Kayden, and he’d come with me as far as the front gate but – like the Rio Grande Zoo – they wouldn’t allow him in the park itself due to ‘animal welfare’. I didn’t know whose welfare we were being concerned about – Kane’s or the park animals’ – but agreed to leave him at the kennels provided. He didn’t seem bothered – he probably welcomed a proper bed after a lifetime of walking and sleeping out under the stars.
    I’d decided to do the tourist bit first, get an idea of the layout of the park, see what I could ascertain about the security here.
    I could see straight away that Ortiz had been right about Badrock hiring ex-military personnel; there were a hell of a lot of former soldiers here, you could tell straight away from the way they held themselves, the way they moved. But perhaps in a place where predators and prey mingled freely – and with fee-paying humans also in the mix – having a good security team was a pretty sensible precaution.
    Ortiz had also been right about the rest of the hired help, at least around the main entrance, animal houses and recreation facilities near the front gate. I didn’t know whether they were illegals or not, but there were plenty of Mexicans here.
    But on the whole – despite Ortiz’s misgivings – the park was impressive and the general seemed to have invested a huge amount of money in the place. It bore out what I’d read in an internet café back in Albuquerque the night before, when I’d done a little research on Badrock and his safari park.
    Badrock had retired five years ago, after thirty-three years of service to his country. Born in 1960, he’d joined as a boy soldier aged seventeen; a move that had surprised both his parents and their wealthy and influential friends. His father was a rich oil baron, and it was assumed that Roman would grow up to take over the family business. Even after he signed up, people thought he would just serve out a short-term contract and then go back to the oilfields.
    But then came active service in the Sinai, El Salvador and Lebanon, until – just before his short-term commission was due to finish – he led a platoon of paratroopers into Grenada as a Captain in the 82 nd Airborne Division. And it was there – after extricating three of his wounded soldiers from a gun battle with two bullets in one of his own legs, killing or wounding thirteen enemy combatants as he went – that Roman Badrock’s legend started to be formed, cemented by the awarding of the Medal of Honor at a congressional ceremony a few months later.
    It also gave Badrock a taste for action that he knew would never be satisfied in the civilian world; and so a short-term commission became long term, and the powers-that-be had marked the man out for great things, a fast-track career to high office.
    At some stage during that fast-track, lengthy and impressive career, both of Badrock’s parents died and – with no siblings to split the inheritance