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

before it suddenly cut off; it was as if he’d seen it all through Kai’s eyes. But while it enraged and sickened him, he knew their work wasn’t for the weak. It came with risks. In Afghanistan. Afterward. Risks all along, right up to tonight.

Tai had always kept his wits about him before. He would do so now. He couldn’t let any of it shake him.

He looked over the rifle in the dim light of the cabin. It was a vintage Parker Hale M85, a stellar sharpshooter’s rifle he’d bought from a retired British SAS man. One of only eight hundred in the original factory run, it was superbly engineered for stability and accuracy. Tai had done nothing to modify it beyond replacing the standard Swarovski scope with an autogated gen 3 day/night vision model, which had a digital recorder and Bluetooth for capturing the kill. Under most conditions, the built-in IR illuminator would have been unnecessary, but tonight, with no moon or stars and the darkness thick as tar, he would make good use of it.

Now he turned toward the stern, looked out the doorway, and held the rifle up to his cheek. Pressing its butt against his shoulder, he hefted its weight and felt its balance and smelled the lubricant oil. It was a no-frills weapon. Nothing fancy. But he liked that about it, liked its simple functionality. It did what it was supposed to do and did it well.

Tai peered through the scope at the beach. His twin had known the path their marks were taking here, and he’d mapped and uploaded it over their neurolink. If he had simply waited, their targets would have been trapped, front and rear, between land and water. What was the sense of the fucking onboards, of putting themselves through the cybermod surgeries, if Kai was going to let his impulses get the best of him? Become distracted and deterred from his purpose by the fucking boyfriend?

If he’d waited, it would have been easy. But he was rash and careless and it had cost him. Their so-called tame fox had proven her former keepers correct. The chips in her brain were failing. Someone had managed a reprogram or, at worst, a partial deletion of their blocks.

Tai felt the boat toss on the water, its deck moving under his booted feet. Wind battered the sides of the pilot house. He lowered the rifle against his side and stood looking out at the shore. This storm. This mad storm out of nowhere. It was like a living thing. He wondered, briefly and uncharacteristically, if its hellish savagery had somehow seeped its way into Kai’s mind and judgment...but then he pushed the thought aside. It was lunacy in its own right. What was done was done. He would not rationalize his brother’s costly mistakes. He would keep his emotions in check. Keep his eye on the prize.

And then he would get out.

He stared out at the beach and waited in the offshore darkness.

Waited for the girl to show.

Natasha and Bryan crouched in a stand of maples on the ridge above the beach, wet and shivering, taking a final respite before starting downhill. They had hiked east in fits and starts since leaving the emergency tent, sheltering under the trees from time to time. But the natural path was straight, flat, and fairly easy to follow, and their pauses gave Bryan some brief opportunities to gather his strength.

The wind escalated rapidly as they neared the shore, ramming in over the bay, blowing rain horizontally into their eyes. Once or twice, the gusts almost knocked Natasha off her feet, but she’d leaned her head into it and kept pushing forward.

Now she crept ahead of Bryan under the trees. The binoculars were still hanging from her neck—like the Maglite, none the worse for wear—and she pulled them from under her jacket and raised them to her eyes. Peering through the trunks, she saw a dash of orange in the scrub below. They were on the high ground about a hundred yards south of where they had come ashore that afternoon.

“Can you see the kayak?” he asked from behind her.

“Right where we left it before,” she said.

“Does it look like anyone’s messed with it?”

“I can’t tell for sure,” she said. “The rain’s too heavy. And there’s too much growing around us.”

He was quiet. Natasha glanced over her shoulder and saw pain all over his face. Blood had permeated his bandages and was spotting the elasticized sling. He needed medical attention as soon as possible.

“Think you have to rest up some more before we hit the beach?” she said.

“No.”

“Could you be lying to me again?”

“Yes.”

A smile threaded across her lips as she turned to help him to his feet.

“There’s nothing sadder than an honest, shitty liar,” she said.

Kai pushed through the forest toward the shell beach. His shattered nose throbbed mercilessly under his goggles. It’d stopped hemorrhaging about an hour ago, but still some blood was streaming over his lips and chin. He couldn’t inhale at all through his clogged, distorted sinuses. The Russian whore had smashed it to a pulp, destroyed the neurotech interface behind his ear, and nearly killed him in the process.

With a flashlight.

A fucking flashlight.

He headed east in the rain-swept darkness, the wind animating the treetops overhead, so they danced and gyrated with a weird, menacing cadence. He had noticed the paper-thin emergency tent stuck on a branch about a mile back, hanging where the gusts must have blown it. Also noticed runny traces of blood on the ground; leading from the creek to a spot not far from the flapping tent and then from there toward the shell beach.

They were still headed for the kayak. That confirmed it. And Kai was confident he could catch up to them quickly. He’d done a fucking number on the boyfriend’s hand and was sure Mori had halted under the tent to take care of it. But his fingers were in cracked, shattered pieces, and his