Net Force--Kill Chain by Jerome Preisler (e book reader txt) 📕

The sensors and meters in the island’s wired forest detected this too.

One of Maine’s two National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather forecast stations, NWS Caribou stands on a high hill in Aroostook County at the state’s northern extremity, about a hundred miles from the Canadian border. A stand-alone, single-story brown brick building that would be definitively nondescript but for its eminently conspicuous purple roof, it is staffed round-the-clock with a pair of forecasters on twelve-hour shifts. Today Senior Meteorologist Bill Caldwell was briefly flying solo till the six-to-midnight crew showed up, his colleague Barbara King having left early on a family obligation. He didn’t mind. It had been a smooth afternoon, and his wife’s Indiana Dutch cabbage rolls awaited him at home for Sunday dinner.

At 5:00 p.m., Caldwell was returning to his desk from the combination water cooler/heater when those dinner plans were abruptly shot to hell. What had stopped him in his tracks, a steaming cup of mint tea in hand, were the three monitors high on the wall to his right flashing Code Orange alerts.

He glanced around at the room’s other displays. There were over a dozen altogether—some at consoles, some on overhead mounts. Only the bank to his right showed anything pronouncedly different from ten minutes ago, when he’d gotten up to fix his tea.

That did nothing to reassure him. In fact, it made him more concerned. Because the aluminum sign mounted above this bank tagged it as exceptional—if one knew modern weather acronymspeak.

The sign read CHACAGUA ESOP ML/DL NICAST.

In the shorthand of Caldwell’s trade, ESOP was shorthand for Earth System Observation and Prediction. ML/DL stood for Machine Learning/Deep Learning. And NICAST was an abbreviation for Near Instantaneous Forecast.

Caldwell set his cup down on the nearest flat surface and promptly forgot about it. He’d been watching the temperamental nor’easter down the coast throughout the weekend and thought from every indication that it was easing off from its previous intensity. Maybe there would be some high tides. Rough waters of concern to local fishermen. Mild flooding in the lowest-lying areas. But his conventional models agreed it would likely arrive in the region as a midlevel storm, assuming it struck at all.

The Chacagua model contradicted all that. The trees were talking. Excitedly.

Caldwell studied the multicolored maps on the screens, assessing the readings on the grids superimposed over them.

“Shit,” he said, and went to grab a phone.

He needed to tell his wife to keep the cabbage rolls in the oven. He was going to be late.

Kai leaned over the Big Dipper’s starboard rail, its mooring line in his fist. One tug and the hitch knot came apart, slipping off the wooden bollard without resistance. Its deceased owner had tied it expertly.

He turned toward the pilot house as he wound in the rope. His brother was at the wheel.

“We’re good to go.”

Tai swung the boat around to the west, then threw it in gear and throttled up. The hull was a light fiberglass composite, and he guessed he could push her to seventy or eighty miles an hour without leaning too hard on the engine. But it was a short hop to Chacagua, and even a moderate clip would get them there in minutes.

He pulled away from the dock, gaining speed, throwing back a wide, gray fan of spray.

Kai looked aft across the deck. He saw the lobsterman’s red pickup, the Pilot, and Tai’s Civic all parked relatively close together on the receding shore. Kai himself had left his MINI a mile away near the town’s main harbor, then headed over on foot to meet his twin. He had been wary of crowding a fourth vehicle—and another one with out-of-town-plates—onto the tiny pebbled landing. That, he’d thought, might attract unwanted curiosity.

He raised the collar of his Burr jacket and gazed out over the bay. His brother had set them on a westerly course, following the sun’s slow roll down the sky, and he could feel the temperature dropping fast. But the water was calm and quiet and gave no hint of the storm he’d driven through back on the turnpike.

The boat hummed along toward Chacagua. As it came within a mile or so of the island, Kai noticed a humped stone outcrop about two hundred yards to its right. He lifted his glasses to his eyes and saw the seals lounging atop it. Fifty of them, maybe more. Then he noticed something closer to him in the water. It was long and dark, drifting midway between the boat and the rock.

“Fantastic,” he said under his breath.

Kai looked quickly left and right. Then forward and back. When he saw there were no other vessels nearby, he unzipped his jacket. He wore the Jägar underneath it in a chest rig, so the long-slide holster would not bulk up awkwardly against his hip. It offered better concealment and a smoother draw.

Thumbing open the weapon’s safety, he took aim through the scope. The seal he’d noticed in the water studied him with wet brown eyes, its head bobbing above the surface.

Kai squeezed the trigger, a smooth, steady pull. A single round cracked from the barrel and the animal’s head dissolved in a swirl of blood. Kai saw its flippers thrash out of the water, then saw the rest of the frightened seals dive off the outcrop, yapping, chattering and barking as they splashed into the bay.

He lowered his pistol. The animal never had a fair chance. Possibly it had recognized the lobster boat and expected someone to toss it a morsel of food. But life wasn’t fair. Death wasn’t fair. Nor was there any fairness in the hunt. It was simply about utilizing your advantage and exploiting the vulnerabilities of your prey.

Kai stood looking out over the rail. The seal’s headless carcass floated in a blot of red water. It had felt safe. Let its guard down. Big mistake.

He returned the massive hunting pistol to its holster, then walked up to join his brother in the pilot house.

“What was all