Sloane: Alaska Ranger Who Survived Two Yautja Hunts

Name: Sloane (first name unused)
Species: Human
Affiliation: U.S. Marines; later Alaska park service
Role: Marine sniper; park ranger
Known for: Alaska hunt; Oregon rematch
Partner: Mary Collins
Setting: Alaska park; Oregon forest nine years later
First appearance: Predator: Turnabout (2008)
Status: Alive after Rematch
Weapons: Chey-Tac M-200; MegaBeast .610; BMF / BFR .500; Shiva Ki Spirit knife
Injuries (stories): Cracked ribs in Alaska
Kills (stories): 97 Vietnam · 2 solo Yautja in Alaska · 1 solo Yautja in Oregon · 1 shared (Nakande) · 2 poachers · 1 brown bear before the hunt

Sloane was an aging park ranger and Vietnam Marine sniper in Steve Perry's Predator: Turnabout and in Rematch, collected in Predator: If It Bleeds. In an unnamed interior Alaska park he survived a hunt by four unnamed Yautja with Los Angeles teacher Mary Collins. Nine years later they lived at the old McGee place near Crown Pond in Oregon, and he killed Vagouti after she and Nakande came for him.

Biography

Texas Farm And Vietnam

Sloane grew up on a farm in Texas. At eighteen he was drafted and joined the Marines instead of the Army. He knew rifles from the farm, and they trained him as a sniper who worked alone or with a spotter.

He finished three tours with medals and 97 confirmed kills, among them NVA, Viet Cong, and a couple of Russian and Chinese advisors. He last hunted men about forty years before the Alaska job. After his father died, his mother sold the farm to a developer and moved to Georgia to live near her sister Janet. Sloane then worked as a bouncer and a delivery driver, knocked around the country, and went north.

Alaska Ranger

He spent a couple of years hunting and trapping in the Great Northwest, then took a ranger post. By the summer of Turnabout he had held that job for at least twenty-five years and was the only ranger for about a hundred miles. 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. Chief Pollack was his boss.

He was pushing sixty, and on the trail he carried a custom falling-block MegaBeast in .610 GNR, based on a Ruger No. 1, plus a heavier rifle in the cabinet for work he treated as his own. Before Mary arrived he had shot the brown bear that ate her brother Paul Collins, because the state treated a man-eater as a tourism problem. He blamed Paul, not the animal. Rematch later named that ranger work as Denali.

Mary Arrives And The Park Radios Fail

Mary came north on summer break to see the river camp where Paul had died. Radios, the satellite net, and GPS failed while they were in the park, and Sloane treated that as jamming. He found a headless brown bear, then two headless poachers, Richardson and Warner, killed with burns rather than claws. From a crest he watched two cloaked hunters, about seven feet tall in helmets and braided hair, blade a male brown of about 1,300 pounds and finish it with an energy bolt.

He opened the cabinet and took the Chey-Tac M-200 Intervention, a twenty-seven-pound rifle with a Nightforce NXS scope that fired handloaded .408 419-grain rounds. He had put three shots on an oil drum at 1,800 meters. A poacher crew led by Regal was taking brown bears for parts, and those men hit the station while Sloane was out. Mary ran with the emergency pack.

Sloane Kills Two Hunters And The Poacher Regal

At a four-shelter camp by a stream, one hunter stood in the open and cleaned a bear skull with a glowing green rod. From about 1,500 meters Sloane put a Chey-Tac round through that hunter's chest. The second cloaked, sidestepped the follow-up shot, and answered with shoulder rockets. Sloane later taped a Motorola handheld on transmit and left it as bait. After a cloak-shimmer took the radio, he fired from about 400 meters and green blood marked the second kill.

He killed poacher Gibson through a station window, then used Regal and Martin as bait after hunters took Mel and Danny at Mary's tree. A rocket from the trees destroyed a white-and-blue Piper flown by J. J. Heiner of Outback Charter Flights. On an old-growth trail a hunter decloaked five meters from Sloane with wristblades out. Regal put three Stoner rounds into that chest, thinking he had Sloane, then Sloane shot Regal just over the right eye.

The Last Hunter Dies In A Knife Fight

The last hunter had the high ground at dawn and did not use the shoulder cannon. It knocked the Chey-Tac away, cracked Sloane's ribs, pinned him, kicked away his BMF revolver, then stepped back so he could stand for a knife fight. Sloane's blade was a ten-inch Shiva Ki Spirit in Damascus steel, a style he had learned in Vietnam from a teacher named Setarko, with a Marine hand-to-hand instructor named Pablito in the same memory. He cut the mesh and put about six inches of blade into the chest.

Mary emptied a Smith & Wesson Chief .38. At least three shots hit and left green rings, and the hunter turned on her. Sloane tackled it behind the knees. It ripped its helmet off, showed boar teeth, and raised the blades to take his head. Mary picked up the Chey-Tac and put the killing shot in the chest beside the buried knife.

Sloane And Mary Walk South After The Hunt

Sloane and Mary hobbled south toward a radio-relay airstrip and left a poacher cover story for anyone who flew in later. About ten miles from the station a cleanup blast rolled a shock wave through the trees. Sloane treated that as another ship leaving, and he expected more hunters because four of their kind had died. On that walk Mary asked his first name. He told her a name he did not use, and the novel never prints it. They talked about retiring, and she offered him a bed in Los Angeles.

New Life With Mary

Nine years later they lived together at the old McGee place near Crown Pond, a senior couple in a remote Oregon forest. Deputy Mac knew Sloane from the Tricounty Gun Club as a retired ranger with white hair and skin like rawhide. Mary was fifty-five, and Sloane had a birthday coming with a zero on the end. A morning walk took twenty or thirty minutes before the stiffness eased. He no longer carried a rifle on that path, only a three-inch ZT folder.

Fragments of recordings from Alaska had reached a hunter ship. Nakande treated Sloane as old, slow, and unarmed. Vagouti wanted them together because the same man had killed hunters in Alaska. They let him walk home, slashed the tires on his truck, and used a meth-lab RV by a pond as a warm-up. Plasma killed Harvey, Martin, and Beau.

Sloane Kills Nakande And Vagouti

Sloane and Mary refused to split up. They put on ghillie suits, took the MegaBeast and a BFR in .500 Max, and ambushed a cloaked hunter on a narrow trail. Both rifles hit Nakande, once through the lung and once near the hip. Nakande died after underestimating Sloane. Vagouti shut off his self-destruct so she could finish the hunt.

She climbed about five meters into a Douglas fir over Mac's cruiser and waited until all three were in the car. Sloane sent Mary into the back seat and only pretended to climb in front. A falling pine cone gave her away. He fired the MegaBeast into empty-looking space on the branch, knocked her out of the tree, and finished her with the revolver from about sixty meters after one low plasma bolt dug a two-meter trench beside him. She looked at him, spoke in Yautja, made a sound like a laugh, and died as a wrist device began to flash. They were half a mile down the road when the bomb went off and spun the cruiser.

Confirmed Kills

Turnabout and Rematch give Sloane a short, checkable line:

Vietnam: 97 confirmed across three Marine tours. He told Mary those were NVA and Viet Cong, with a couple of Russian and a couple of Chinese advisors among them.
Solo Yautja in Alaska: 2. The uncloaked hunter at the stream camp, about 1,500 meters, Chey-Tac to the chest. The cloaked hunter on the radio bait, about 400 meters, marked by green blood.
Shared Yautja in Alaska: the last hunter. Sloane put the knife in the chest. Mary fired the Chey-Tac killing shot. Regal killed the third hunter by accident with the Stoner.
Humans in Alaska: 2. Gibson through the station window. Regal just over the right eye. He did not kill Richardson, Warner, Mel, Danny, Martin, or Heiner.
Animals in Alaska: 1. The brown bear that ate Paul, before Mary arrived.
Solo Yautja in Oregon: 1. Vagouti, MegaBeast out of the fir, then the .500 revolver at about sixty meters.
Shared Yautja in Oregon: 1. Nakande, hit by both rifles on the trail.
Humans in Oregon: 0. Harvey, Martin, and Beau died at the RV. The story never says which hunter fired which shot.

Continuity Notes

Turnabout never prints a calendar year. Sloane last hunted men in Vietnam about forty years earlier, and the gear matches the 2008 book: GPS, a satellite uplink, and the Chey-Tac. Rematch is nine years after Alaska. He lived with Mary, kept the MegaBeast and the .500 revolver, and had a birthday coming with a zero on the end, which fits a man who had been about sixty in the novel. The Alaska park is unnamed in Turnabout. Rematch later calls that ranger work Denali.

All four Alaska hunters were already dead before the cleanup blast. Vagouti and Nakande were a later pair who came for the sniper after recordings reached a ship, not a fifth member of that first group. In Rematch the Alaska hunt had been hushed up by the government. Sloane's first name was spoken once to Mary and was never written on the page. His identification in the ranger station said only Sloane.

Conclusion

Sloane was a Texas-raised Marine sniper who spent decades as an Alaska ranger and walked out of a four-hunter Yautja hunt with Mary Collins. Nine years later, in Oregon, he killed Vagouti after she and Nakande came for that Alaska debt. He, Mary, and deputy Mac lived.