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

He frowned thoughtfully. “If it was earlier in the day, I’d ask a sheriff’s deputy to bring me over on one of their fire/rescue boats...or ask you to charm one into doing it,” he said. “But you said it yourself. It’s Sunday. Dinnertime. They’re undermanned and changing shifts at the office right about now.” He paused, looked at her. “Besides, we know what we saw before losing data. This storm is a stealth comebacker. Figure it’s kicking up to forty, fifty miles an hour, bearing southwest from the Fundy narrows...”

“Chacagua’s dead center in the storm track,” Mills said. “It’s going to get hit with one hell of a sucker punch in three or four hours.”

Caldwell nodded. “I wouldn’t want to be there when that happens. Or out on the water, in the dark, on a thirty-foot patrol boat.”

Mills didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she expelled another breath. “OK,” she said. “I’ve upgraded the SMW to Take Action. Messaged the local radio and TV people to make sure they’re current with our advisories. What else?”

“We still have all the standard data coming in,” Caldwell said. “If we’re very lucky, our Chacagua outage is an internal satcom problem and some IT somewhere will get us back online tonight. Otherwise, we’ll try to get somebody out there tomorrow for an equipment check.”

“So in other words, we sit tight and keep watch.”

Caldwell looked up at her from his chair.

“And hope the island doesn’t get smacked too hard in the meantime,” he said.

The thought struck Kai after he’d gone about 150 paces along the loop trail. More accurately, it floated up like a bubble from his subconscious, where it had formed right about when he’d seen the squirrel doing those cartwheels in the tree.

He paused now and massaged his jaw, the breeze blowing hard around him. In the past few minutes, the sunlight had taken on a dull, filtered, scattered quality. Rain was in the air, which led him to conclude the storm he’d driven through on the highway was catching up to him after all.

But that wasn’t front and center in his mind. What bugged him right now was that he didn’t see any sign of human passage on the trail, and hadn’t since leaving that oddly wired tree behind. Before reaching it, Mori and her boyfriend had done nothing to hide their tracks coming from the kayak. But there was no further trace of them on the loop.

He supposed that was what had made him think of the bloody squirrel...and the noise he and Tai heard before he spotted it. Could he have jumped to a mistaken conclusion back there?

It could have been them. Or not. Possibly they were hiding near the lobster boat. His brother had already given the boat a thorough going-over without finding them; Kai used the two-way neurotech feed to keep up with his search. But they might be lying low somewhere in close proximity. Perhaps waiting for a chance to leave the island aboard it. Or they might have tried returning to their kayak along the island’s muddy north shore.

Either way, it was for Tai to investigate those possibilities. They had agreed that he would go counterclockwise around the island’s shoreline, north to south. Meanwhile, Kai would circle around clockwise, south to north, more or less following the loop trail. They could then simultaneously walk opposite rings around the island’s interior and outer margins, covering as much ground as possible in search of the marks.

Might they be capable of hiding their tracks from him? Maybe Snow Pixie, a Main Directorate trained fox. She was supposed to be the shining example of Russian guided evolution...and a sexy little one, whom he meant to get a piece of before he was finished on the island, taking a special trophy from a special kind of girl. Maybe she could conceal her trail, he would allow for that. But as far as he knew, her boyfriend was just some clumsy tool. Like dozens of others he’d bagged.

Kai stood on the trail another minute. Then a strong gust of wind belted him and he looked up through the trees. Clouds were moving in, a wide band of them. They were a dull, drab dishwater color.

He rubbed his jaw some more.

That noise. That rustling. It might have been the squirrel. Or some other creature. Sure. But he’d been too quick to rule out the marks. That was the truth of it. What buggered him. He’d been way too fucking quick. They could have been out in the woods.

No sense taking chances, he thought. He was burning daylight. With nightfall, their signs would be far harder to read. And the bad weather likely to come would obliterate them.

Kai expelled a breath and doubled back around on the trail. He was going to check things out, and this time he’d do it right and proper.

The storm clouds spun in over Chacagua around six o’clock and immediately opened up. In the island’s southern forest, Bryan was leading the way again, a few short steps ahead of Natasha, the creek he’d mentioned just yards to their left. Bryan had been right; it would have been hard to lose the path while staying anywhere near it. It was pretty wide, and looked fairly deep. Although they had ample space to walk side by side along its bank, she’d wanted them to stay in single file and leave the smallest possible imprint.

Now they heard rain drilling the water and burbling through the pines. Bryan quickened his pace, a half-eaten energy bar poking out of its wrapper in his hand.

Behind him, Natasha felt the first cold splashes of moisture on her face. The rain was no surprise; they’d only been in the woods a little while when the sky darkened from the ground-glass color she’d noticed earlier to an oppressive slate gray. Then, about a quarter hour ago, the branches overhead had started pushing and shaking and bending in a strong northeasterly wind.

Still, the sudden intensity