Predator: Turnabout: Novel Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: February 2008
Author: Steve Perry
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
Format: Mass market paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 978-1-59582-054-9
Series: Dark Horse Predator novels
Setting: Alaska park, summer

Predator: Turnabout is a 2008 novel by Steve Perry, published by Dark Horse Books in February 2008. It followed aging park ranger Sloane, an experienced Vietnam sniper, and Los Angeles teacher Mary Collins in an unnamed Alaska park far enough north that summer nights barely went dark. Mary had come to see the river camp where her brother Paul Collins had died. Sloane was the only ranger for about a hundred miles. A poacher crew was already taking brown bears for parts, and four unnamed Yautja were hunting the same animals for trophies.

Plot Summary

In high summer, ranger Sloane worked an interior Alaska park near the Arctic Circle, a country of Douglas fir, a salmon river, tundra to the east and north, and mountains that still held snow. His log station had a landing strip, a propane generator, a Yaesu radio, a satellite-linked computer, and a padlocked gun cabinet. Bush pilot Bill Dietz flew mail and supplies in a Cessna painted with Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. Chief Pollack was Sloane's boss.

Two other groups were already in those woods. Regal led seven poachers from the Spokane side, taking brown bears for organs and parts sold to Hong Kong buyers. They had eight bears down and wanted a few more. Four unnamed Yautja had come for the same animals, with cloaks, wristblades, and a shoulder cannon. While they were in the park, the radios, the satellite net, and GPS all went dead. Sloane treated that as jamming rather than weather.

Paul And The River

Paul had wintered in a tourist cabin near an airstrip south of the river, then snowshoed or skied to an empty bear den. In March he pitched a new tent under Douglas firs about 50 meters from the western bank and set up a video camera. He was from Los Angeles, had dropped out of Santa Monica College, and had once sat in an Oregon tree for spotted owls. He carried no gun and no pepper spray. He believed the bears would accept him. A young male fished across the water. A second bear took salmon on Paul's side. He thought that day would be the best of his life.

Sloane later rebuilt the death from the ground. At least six or eight bears had been on the river, including a brown female with a cub and several males of about half a ton. A male brown took an interest while it was feeding. Paul ran into the tent and zipped the fly. The bear tore the nylon, dragged him out, and bit him near the door. Paul got up and ran twenty or thirty feet. He died at the second spot. The bear had already eaten salmon, so it fed only a little. Scavengers scattered shoes, clothes, a gnawed hip bone, and long-bone shards. Half a skull sat jammed in a tree root. The camera was smashed. The remaining tape was Paul talking about the place, not the attack. Sloane killed that bear afterward because the state treated a man-eater as a tourism problem. He blamed Paul, not the animal. The remains were cremated in Alaska. The urn went to Forest Lawn beside Paul's parents.

Mary Arrives

In summer, Sloane found a scavenged brown bear on rocky ground near the northwest bank. The head was gone. A clean knife cut marked the hide. Distant rifle shots had already told him someone else was in the park. He first read it as poachers. Gall, claws, and organs sold well overseas. He hiked the two hours back to the station.

Dietz landed with Mary Collins, about forty to forty-five, a teacher from Los Angeles who had waited for summer break. Pollack ordered Dietz to extend every courtesy and show her the death camp. Dietz would return in about a week. Paul had been fourteen years younger. Mary had raised him after their parents died when he was eight, just after she finished college. The story she used, and the story Paul believed, was a multi-car wreck on the Harbor Freeway. Sloane treated Paul as a fool who had camped in a feeding site. He had not liked killing the bear. He agreed to take her to the river at dawn.

The Poachers

Regal was thirty, fit, and home-based in Spokane. He carried a .308 Winchester bolt gun and a Desert Eagle .44 Magnum. He had done time at Sheridan after a fight over Native artifacts on the Navajo Reservation, and he had learned tracking from a man he called Honigstock. Richardson, forty, and Warner, about twenty-five, were his first pair. Gibson and Martin used guitar-player names in camp. Gibson's real first name was Billy. Mel and Danny made the third pair. The crew split two thirds of the take. Regal kept one third, about $30,000 if they finished the run.

They ran a low camp: camo tents, jungle hammocks, a propane stove, a cooler hoisted in a tree, and Honda four-wheelers parked six miles out under a net. Radios that should have reached fifteen or twenty miles were already dead. Richardson and Warner then found their tracked bear already down, a young male of about 1,000 pounds, dead thirty or forty minutes, head cut off, no shot heard. Gibson and Martin came back empty. Mel and Danny were still out. Regal thought about leaving, then decided to kill whoever was cutting in.

Two Headless Men

About five in the morning, Sloane and Mary hiked to Paul's site. She was fitter than he expected from Griffith Park walks. He had been a Marine in Vietnam, and he gave her that much on the trail. At the river he walked her through the camp, then lied that the bear had broken Paul's neck at once. She found the place beautiful and not worth dying for.

On the walk back they circled north along the river. About thirty meters ahead lay two headless men, spines stripped, with a cooked-meat smell. Mary vomited. The wounds were burns, not claws, and the tracks looked like oversized boots. Sloane logged the gun serials and left the bodies. He had seen men killed with C-4, machine guns, and napalm. He had not seen this. Those dead men were Richardson and Warner. Their guns had not been fired. Regal found them after noon, read Sloane's newer tracks and a smaller set beside vomit, then threw their guns into the river and decided to fold the job.

The Bear Hunt

That afternoon Sloane heard a bear in a rage. From a crest 1,412 meters upslope he watched a male brown of about 1,300 pounds fight two cloaked hunters. They used paired wristblades on the right forearm and stayed on the animal when it knocked them down. Woven armor took the slaps. They bled it out, finished it with an energy bolt, and cut the head with a bright ulu-like tool. The hunters stood about seven feet tall in helmets and braided hair. Sloane took them as extraterrestrial sport hunters with a hidden ship. He would not start that fight with the single-shot .610.

The poachers then found their Hondas smashed, twisted and burned. Regal sent Danny and Mel south and Gibson and Martin east. The new plan was the ranger station, a working radio, and a stolen plane. If Sloane and the woman fought, they would kill them.

The Chey-Tac

Sloane laid out what he had seen. She wanted the authorities. The station radio was still dead, and he treated that as a jam. He opened the cabinet and an aluminum case and took out the Chey-Tac M-200 Intervention, a twenty-seven-pound rifle that had cost about $14,000. It wore a Nightforce NXS scope, an Advance Ballistic Computer, and a Kestrel sensor, and it fired handloaded .408 419-grain rounds. He had put three shots on an oil drum at 1,800 meters. He treated the hunters as his own kind of work. He had been drafted at eighteen from a Texas farm, joined the Marines instead of the Army, and finished three tours with medals and 97 confirmed kills, plus a couple of Russian and Chinese advisors. He had last hunted men about forty years earlier. After the war he bounced through odd jobs, then spent about twenty-five years as a ranger. He was going after the hunters. She could not talk him out of it.

Station Raid And Mary's Tree

Sloane went out in stained camo with a ghillie in the pack. Mary tried the radio on the hour. The computer net was dead too. At the two bodies, the guns were already gone. He tracked heavy hunter sign on bear and deer paths, then closed on minutes-old tracks. At the station, Regal hit the building: Martin and Gibson on the south windows, Danny and Mel on the north, Regal at the front with a fake injured-man call. Mary grabbed the emergency pack and ran out the back as glass broke.

She covered about two miles and climbed a leaning fir over a cliff, then belted into the hammock from the pack. The poachers drank Sloane's beer, found an empty Chey-Tac case and an ID that only said Sloane, and sent Danny and Mel after her. Regal wanted her alive. Near 11:00 p.m. her handheld was already dead. Dawn brought Danny and Mel under the tree. They threatened to shoot her out of it. Red targeting marks flashed on Mel's forehead, then his chest. An alien call came out of the trees. A plasma bolt from a shoulder cannon went through Danny. Mel fired wild, then took a hit into the trunk. Both bodies went off the cliff. Mary fell, caught, then dropped toward the trail. Saplings broke the drop. She twisted her right ankle and kept moving, unarmed and limping, which she later took as the reason they left her alive.

First Hunter Down

Before he turned for home, Sloane found a four-shelter camp by a stream. One hunter stood in the open and cleaned a bear skull with a glowing green rod. From a hill about 1,500 meters across the water, Sloane put a Chey-Tac round through that hunter's chest. The second cloaked, sidestepped the follow-up shot, and answered with shoulder rockets. One dropped a tree fifty meters left. The next blast knocked Sloane as he ran. He marked the count as one down and three to go. He did not loot the body. He was already thinking about smart guns and traps.

He reached the station about 2:30 a.m., crawled in, and found at least two people inside and a fresh .308 casing eighty meters in front of the door. He waited for dawn, then set a fishing-line trip on a garden-tool stand on the unused concrete pad. When a curtain moved he fired. Gibson's head came apart. A second round went through the window. Regal claimed they had the woman. Sloane wanted proof. They ran out the back. Inside, Gibson was dead, Mary was gone, and the emergency pack was gone. Sloane started the track.

The Downed Plane

Regal and Martin ran Mel and Danny's trail. Martin carried Gibson's gear. They still thought Sloane had killed the first pair and wrecked the ATVs. Sloane climbed forty feet into a Douglas fir and watched Regal set a .308 ambush about four hundred meters up the path. Martin came back with Sloane's crumpled emergency bag. Sloane read that as hunters taking Mel and Danny at Mary's tree, then let the two poachers walk so he could use them as bait.

Mary got lost for about two hours, crossed her own tracks, and hid from black-bear noise before Sloane found her. He already had her day reconstructed. He would not take her back to the station. Three hunters were still out by his count. They moved toward an old bear den in the foothills where he kept a steel locker, water, MREs, and sleeping bags.

Regal and Martin broke the gun cabinet. Regal took a Stoner .308. Martin took a Benelli M4 shotgun and a Reeder Skorp revolver. They covered Gibson with a blanket and left him. They wanted Sloane's head. On the way to the den, Sloane heard a plane that was not Dietz, a white-and-blue Piper circling the station strip. A rocket from the trees hit it. The wreckage spread seven or eight hundred yards. No bodies turned up. Sloane found a belly pouch for J. J. Heiner of Outback Charter Flights in Juneau: licenses, about two hundred dollars, a short-barrel S&W 66, and a photo of a woman about thirty. Regal, near the strip, blamed Sloane for a rocket launcher. Sloane kept the pouch for Heiner's woman if he lived. Dietz was still due in days. As long as radios stayed dead, another inbound plane could die the same way.

Radio Bait

At the den they taped Mary's ankle, ate, and slept. Later they had sex. In the morning he left her a compass and a stay-put plan: one or two days, then the river, then the far end of the airstrip and the storage shed to wait for Dietz. The cover story for Anchorage would be poachers with heavy gear. He went back out in the ghillie.

Regal and Martin picked up the real tracks at the cliff. A cloaked hunter put an energy bolt into a tree over their heads. They ran, still sure Sloane had a bazooka. Sloane taped his Motorola handheld on transmit and left it as bait. After about an hour a cloak-shimmer took the radio. He fired from about 400 meters at a point a meter and a half above the set. Green blood pooled in midair against an invisible body. That was the second hunter. He still would not walk up to the corpse. In his head at least two remained.

Regal Takes Mary

Regal tracked Sloane and Mary to the den, crawled in, and found her alone. He groped her, took the pack, and forced her out on the bad ankle. They wanted Sloane alive long enough to suffer. In river shallows to the south, an 800-pound young male brown came within twenty feet of Sloane's ghillie, whoofed, and left. He did not shoot it.

Regal pushed Mary for answers. She blamed aliens for his men and the plane. He laughed, then hardened, and still treated Sloane as a man with a beam weapon and a missile that could kill a plane. While Regal was urinating, a plasma bolt hit Martin in the guts. Mary ran. Regal dragged her back. After about half a mile he locked her in a weathered parts shed half buried in poplars, with a jug marked water inside, and went to hunt Sloane alone with the Stoner. Mary started punching a crater in the door with a geared metal rod. She had already decided she would not sit and wait for a man to finish the job.

The Old-Growth Ambush

Sloane picked a hairpin trail under an old-growth Douglas fir about eighty-five or ninety meters tall. He planted a few obvious signs, a half print, broken salmonberries, a snapped sapling, then went clean and sat about 492 meters from the far leg of the path. Regal found the planted track, got cocky, then circled when a heavy unseen passer and a scope glint made the setup look wrong.

A hunter decloaked five meters from Sloane with the blades out. Regal saw a huge figure and put three Stoner rounds into the chest. The hunter dropped, green blood showing, then reached for a wrist control and died. Sloane already had the Chey-Tac on Regal. The hit sat just over the right eye. The back of the head was gone. Sloane took the wallet, a couple thousand in hundreds and an ID, to give to Dietz. At least one hunter was still out. Light was failing.

The Last Hunter

Sloane opened the shed. He had already passed Martin's body on that track. At least one hunter and a ship were still nearby. The plan was twenty miles south to a radio relay airstrip. They risked the station only for food. He put the stolen guns back in the broken cabinet, gave Mary his winter staff and a Smith & Wesson Chief .38, and finally heard the truth about her parents. Their father kept a gun in the bedside table. Eight-year-old Paul shot both parents during a violent fight. He blocked it and invented the freeway wreck. A psychiatrist named Dr. Frankel had treated him. Mary had kept that from Sloane until that walk. She would not fire at a person. She might fire for noise. She still thought unarmed people had been spared. He would not go unarmed.

They hiked south at night. A hunter chittered from a ridge just east and moved with them. Sloane wanted her to wait. She refused. At dawn the remaining hunter had the high ground and still did not shoot. It knocked the Chey-Tac away, kicked Sloane's ribs, pinned him, knocked the BMF revolver away, then stepped back so he could stand. That was a close-weapon challenge. Sloane's knife was a ten-inch Shiva Ki Spirit in Damascus steel. The hunter used twin blades on the right arm. Sloane circled left, cut the mesh, and put about six inches of blade into the chest. A backhand threw him three feet. The hunter came in to take his head.

Mary emptied the .38. At least three of the five shots hit the back and left green rings. The hunter turned on her. Sloane tackled it behind the knees. It fell on him, ripped its helmet off, showed boar teeth, kicked the revolver away, and raised the blades. Mary picked up the Chey-Tac and fired. The hole sat in the chest beside the buried knife. The hunter died. She had made the killing shot.

South And The Blast

They hobbled about half a mile to a rock overhang. Sloane taped cracked ribs. She iced the ankle. He would not go back to the station. Dead hunters were there, and he expected a mothership team, a fire, or a blast from orbit. The story for other people would be simple. Poachers attacked them and then turned on each other. By the time anyone flew in, there would be little left to argue with. He did not know if hunters would return to that park. She wanted to come back. He wanted that too. She asked his first name and got it. It was not the hard name she had expected. Mary slept. He watched, then slept. He did not dream.

They walked south, slow, and watched the sky for a star that dropped too low. At dawn they heard a deep rumble they could not place. Hours later they heard it again and still saw nothing. About ten miles from the station an explosion rolled a shock wave through the trees. Sloane took that as a cleanup crew leaving. The station was probably a crater. He started to raise a radio, then held the poacher story. They could not explain the blast because they had already hiked out. He believed hunters would come back because four of them had died. He talked about retiring and about a room in Los Angeles. She offered a queen-sized bed. They kept walking.

The Yautja Hunters

Four unnamed Yautja arrived. Four camo dome shelters sat by the stream. Four of them died on the ground. The novel never gives them names, ranks, or clan words. Sloane once joked trophy-wall names in his head: Bahg, Mang, and Shande. Those were not real hunters. They stood about seven feet and two hundred eighty to three hundred pounds, in helmets, mesh armor, and braids, with a cold rotten-fish smell and a cicada chatter. Green blood showed when they were hit. Helmets came off. The last one had a boar-like mouth. They took heads and human spines. They used blades on brown bears and the energy weapon on armed men, a downed bear, a circling plane, and anyone who shot back. An unarmed limping woman was left alive more than once. The last hunter closed to knives with the man who had already killed its group.

Human radios, GPS, and the station satellite link failed while the hunters still talked to each other. A craft stayed unseen. One rocket from the trees killed Heiner's Piper. After the four deaths, a later ship made the rumble and the cleanup blast. No corpse on the ground sets off a wrist bomb. The third hunter reached for a wrist control as it died. Nothing exploded then. Sloane would not strip the bodies. He expected traps.

Confirmed Kills

All four hunters died. Sloane killed the first at about 1,500 meters with the Chey-Tac, uncloaked, in the chest at the stream camp. He killed the second at about 400 meters through the cloak after the radio bait, with green blood marking the hit. Regal killed the third by accident with three Stoner shots to the chest, thinking he had Sloane. Mary killed the fourth with the Chey-Tac after the .38 failed to stop it. The MegaBeast and the BMF killed no hunters.

The hunters took the first headless brown bear on the northwest bank, the thousand-pound young male the poachers had been tracking, and the 1,300-pound male Sloane watched them blade and finish. They killed Richardson and Warner with plasma, then took the heads and spines. They killed Danny and Mel at Mary's tree and threw the bodies off the cliff. A bear later ate most of Mel's guts. They killed Martin with a gut shot, and they killed Heiner and anyone else on the Piper. Mary lived through two of those attacks. Sloane's reading was that an unarmed injured woman was not the quarry they wanted.

The poachers had already shot eight bears before the hunters undercut them. Sloane had already killed the brown that ate Paul. During the present action he killed Gibson through the station window and Regal on the old-growth trail. He did not kill Richardson, Warner, Mel, Danny, Martin, or Heiner. Mary killed no humans. The poachers never shot each other.

Key Characters

Sloane - Alaska ranger, about 60, Marine sniper with 97 Vietnam kills. Survived with cracked ribs and walked south with Mary.
Mary Collins - Los Angeles teacher, Paul's older sister, about 40 to 45. Killed the last hunter with the Chey-Tac. Twisted her right ankle and lived.
Paul Collins - Mary's brother, 14 years younger. Died at his river camp after he approached a feeding brown bear, before the present hunt.
Regal - Poacher lead from Spokane. Killed the third hunter by accident. Sloane shot him just over the right eye.
Gibson / Billy - Poacher. Sloane killed him through the station window.
Martin - Gibson's partner. Plasma to the guts while covering Regal.
Richardson and Warner - First poacher pair. Plasma, heads and spines taken, guns unfired.
Mel and Danny - Sent after Mary. Plasma at her tree, thrown off the cliff.
Bill Dietz - Bush pilot, former Navy medic. Brought Mary and was still due back when they walked out.
J. J. Heiner - Outback Charter Flights, Juneau. Shot down circling the station strip. Body not found.
Chief Pollack - Sloane's boss. Ordered courtesy for Mary when the radio was already failing.

Place In The Dark Horse Line

Dark Horse's mass-market Predator novels in that stretch were Predator: Forever Midnight in 2006, Predator: Flesh and Blood in 2007, Turnabout in February 2008, and Predator: South China Sea later that year. Forever Midnight had used the Hish-Qu-Ten. Flesh and Blood spent long stretches inside a hunter's head. Turnabout did neither. Perry had already launched the Bantam Aliens line with Earth Hive and Nightmare Asylum, then wrote The Female War with his daughter S.D. Perry. The pair also wrote Aliens vs. Predator: Prey, which built the Yautja culture later stories still use. Turnabout was his first solo Predator novel that was not a comic expansion, and it stays with the humans.

In 2017, Titan published Predator: If It Bleeds. Perry's story Rematch picked up Sloane and Mary nine years later.

Continuity And Rematch

The novel never prints a calendar year. Sloane last hunted men in Vietnam about forty years earlier, and the gear is contemporary with the 2008 book: GPS, a satellite uplink, and the Chey-Tac. Rematch is set nine years after Alaska. Sloane still lived with Mary, by then in a remote Oregon forest, and still carried the custom .610 and the .500 revolver. Fragments of recordings from the Alaska fight had reached a hunter ship. Vagouti and her mate Nakande came for the sniper who had killed hunters there. Both of those hunters died. Sloane, Mary, and a deputy named Mac lived. Vagouti was smaller than the Alaska males Sloane had seen, and she was female.

The Alaska hunt ended with a cleanup blast and a poacher cover story. All four hunters were already dead. Sloane's last guess in Alaska was that others would return because four of their kind had died, the way a man-eater draws more hunters. Rematch is that return. It is not a fifth member of the original four.

Editions

Dark Horse Books released the first edition in February 2008 as a mass-market paperback. The printed book gives that month, names Heidi Whitcomb for design and Stephen Youll for the cover painting, and uses the Fox copyright line. Dark Horse's catalog also listed a 19 March 2008 street date and 256 pages. The novel was never reprinted, and it remains one of the rarest Predator books, alongside Predator: South China Sea and Predator: Forever Midnight. The characters next appear in Rematch.

Behind The Scenes

In a May 2007 AvP Galaxy interview, Perry confirmed that DH Press had asked him back. The next Predator book would be more like the first Predator movie, with human viewpoint characters and no Yautja or Hish material. His daughter was writing for them again under S.D. Perry, and people still mixed the two of them up. Dark Horse timed the release against the second AvP film, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.

The dedication is to Dianne and to the silat group at Maha Guru Plinck's Thursday class. Sloane's last fight uses pentjak silat he learned in Vietnam from a teacher named Setarko, with a Marine hand-to-hand instructor named Pablito in the same memory. Youll signed the cover painting SOULL 07. The tagline on that cover is "The hunter becomes the hunted."

Paul's life among the bears, and the way he died, sits close to the Timothy Treadwell story later filmed as Grizzly Man. The novel never names Treadwell. Mary waited until summer vacation, brought researched camping gear, and found a ranger who had already shot the man-eater and did not want a visitor.

Conclusion

Predator: Turnabout is one of the rarer Predator novels, a 2008 Dark Horse book set in the Alaskan wilderness. Steve Perry kept the story with ranger Sloane and teacher Mary Collins, and left the four unnamed Yautja on the edge of the hunt. A poacher crew was already after brown bears, so the human conflict was in place before the hunters showed themselves. It is often ranked among the best Predator books, and it is praised for its characterization, gun realism, and a simple but effective plot.