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

He grunted out a curse and smacked face-first into the water, motionless.

Natasha thought he was out cold but didn’t stop to check. She splashed around his bulk, looking for Bryan, her eyes shooting left, then right over the water.

Then she saw him. But not in the water. He’d been washed onto a bed of rocks several feet away, jutting out of the creek near the west bank. He was on his left side, his right arm hanging into the current.

Still gripping the Maglite in one hand, she splashed wildly over to the rocks and scrambled up onto them.

“Bry!”

No response. He didn’t move. She picked her way over to him in a half crouch, balancing on the uneven stones. Then set the Mag down beside her and gently turned him onto his back.

He had a large, bloody gash on his cheek. There were smaller lacerations all over his face and forehead. But his eyes were open, and she could see that he was still breathing.

He was alive. He was alive. He was alive.

She slid a hand under his head, lifted it off the rocks. His dripping hair spilled over her wrist.

“Bryan... Bry, it’s Tasha.”

He coughed and gasped, rain falling on his face.

Then she noticed his right hand. It was bleeding badly, and several fingers were crooked and swollen. She thought they were probably broken, took a closer look at the wound, and winced.

Something was protruding from the back of the hand. At first she thought it was a knife. But after a second, she saw the long metal spike sticking out of his palm. It looked like an icepick; she wasn’t sure. But it had pierced clear through.

Her eyes blurred. She wiped her sleeve fiercely across them.

“Bry, listen,” she said. “We can’t stay here.”

He stared up at her, muttered inaudibly but didn’t budge.

Natasha glanced back over her shoulder. There was no sign of the big man. He might have floated off, unconscious. Or he might have climbed up the bank and hidden somewhere. She couldn’t know. Nor could she and Bry stick around to find out.

She grabbed his arm with one hand, still cradling his head on the other.

“You have to get up,” she said. “Try for me, OK?”

He opened his mouth, took a rasping breath.

“Bry...?”

He took another breath. Then nodded slightly.

“OK,” he said.

Natasha quickly clicked the Mag on and off, covering the lens with one hand to dim the light. To her amazement, it worked fine. Ball Cap had gotten the worst of it.

She was crouched with Bryan in the flimsy Mylar emergency shelter he’d folded into her pack the day before. It flapped and rattled around them in the tumultuous wind, just barely anchored to the ground with stones and hardly at all camouflaged with the leaves, dirt, and branches she’d piled around it, most of which had blown away within minutes.

Her smartwatch told her it was five minutes to midnight. They had left the creek about half an hour ago after finding a spot where the bank flattened and lowered by several feet and had enough trees and saplings along it to offer tenuous handholds as they climbed. That was a stroke of luck, and this dense stand of spruces where she’d set up the tent was another. The trees were natural windbreakers and offered some concealment. Without them, the tent would have been swept off like a kite.

But Bryan’s hand was bleeding heavily, and he was weak and in terrible pain, and they couldn’t rely on the tent to hold up much longer. It wasn’t made to withstand the kind of wind and rain the storm was generating, and those conditions were only getting worse. It was also much too visible from outside.

“How do you feel?” she said, and then forced a thin smile. “Tell me ‘great’ and you’re toast.”

He was sitting straight up, his face pale and full of anguish. The gash on his cheek was already scabbing over, and the flow of blood from it had slowed to an oozy trickle. But it was running freely from both sides of the swollen, wounded hand at his side. The awl was still buried in it, blood dribbling down its shaft.

He glanced down at it.

“It hurts,” he said. “A lot.”

She nodded.

“We can’t stay here,” she said. “The tent won’t hold up. And if we do, those two loons will find us.”

Bryan hesitated a moment. “Where do we go?”

“Where we’ve been going all along,” she said. “The kayak.”

He shook his head. “I can’t paddle,” he said. “We won’t make it to shore.”

Natasha looked at him. “First things first,” she said. “If we’re going to move, I’ll need to take care of your hand.”

He nodded. “My first aid kit’s gone. It was in my pack. But there’s a spare in yours, in the main compartment.”

Natasha was already shrugging off the backpack. She extracted the red plastic kit bag and set it on the ground.

“I think he broke my fingers,” Bryan said.

“Yeah.”

“It hurts.”

“Which we’ve already established,” she said, smiling although her eyes were suddenly moist. She leaned close and touched her hand to his cheek. “That thing has to come out, Bry. I need to get it out and clean the wound, and that’s going to hurt even worse. So I want you to be ready.”

He nodded, silently.

She unzipped the kit and looked inside. There were bandages, tissues, over-the-counter painkillers, antibacterial ointments, sling wraps, other items. She thought it was everything she would need. Or almost.

“One second,” she said.

She poked her head through the tent flap into the rain, searched the ground for broken twigs, and found one about the right size. Then she turned to Bryan.

“We have to be quiet,” she said, and held it out. “Use this if you need to bite down on something.”

He nodded and took it and put it in his mouth. She shuffled closer to him on her knees.

“Try to stay still, OK?”

“OK.”

She carefully took hold of his wrist with her left hand. He trembled a little but otherwise didn’t move. His fingers