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

And then saw her eyes flick to one side. A minute and almost indiscernible movement.

An instant later, he felt the hard circle of pressure against his temple.

Kai’s thundering, wounded rage accounted for part of it. But most of it was early hemorrhagic shock, when a person loses about 15 percent of his blood, and his circulatory flow is too weak to deliver oxygen to the vital organs and brain.

Dulled, Kai had forgotten about the Jägar that had been in his hand, and no longer was there.

And he’d momentarily forgotten Natasha wasn’t alone.

Bryan had never fired a weapon in his life. He’d lifted it off the ground with his one good hand, not thinking he would use it. Or really feeling sure he knew how to use it. Or could use it with his left hand, being a righty. But he had seen it and picked it up, just not wanting their attacker to regain possession of it.

Then he saw Natasha. Saw Kai lifting her off the ground. Saw the knife going up to her throat.

There was no conscious decision-making involved. There was nothing but reaction.

His heart pounding, he had raised the gun awkwardly in his left hand, and stepped over to Kai, a huge step, and raised the muzzle.

Now Kai felt the pressure against his temple. Brian felt the slight counterpressure of Kai starting to turn his head in his direction. He saw Natasha hanging with the knife to her throat.

He pulled the trigger. The gun kicked. Kai’s head disintegrated.

Bryan rocked on his knees in the whipping rain. His left hand rested over his bandaged right, the Jägar on the ground in front of him. His rocking was slow and rhythmic. The darkness throbbed and roared from the direction of the beach. A light glared through the trees along the ridgeline. He didn’t seem to notice it or hear the roar. His face was expressionless. His eyes looked straight ahead with a fixed stare.

“Bry,” Natasha said. “Stay with me.”

She had also gotten to her knees. Not quite in front of him. Facing him at a forty-five degree angle. Giving him some physical space.

Rain drummed down on the huge body sprawled behind her on the ground. It was partially on its side. The exiting bullet had taken away most of the left temple. More remained of the right temple, where Bryan had pressed the gun barrel. The contents of the skull, sliding down toward the left, had spilled onto the ground under what remained of the head, lumping up like some grotesque pillow.

“Bryan, please,” Natasha said. “Don’t go away.”

No response. She looked at him. The rain had mercifully washed most of the blood and tissue from her face and hair and jacket. When a human head explodes from a large caliber gunshot, it’s as if a bomb detonated inside the cranium. There is a wide radius of scatter.

He rocked back and forth with that fixed, disengaged expression on his face. The light through the trees grew brighter. The roar from the beach swelled, and Natasha’s ears felt stuffed from the rising barometric pressure. She didn’t know which of those things frightened her more.

She slowly reached out and lowered her hand over Bryan’s. Once, during the cyberstrike on New York, when they were in the old HIVE together, he’d had something close to this level of autistic withdrawal. It was an automatic defense. A coping mechanism brought on by trauma or mental and emotional exhaustion. God knew he had reason for it now. She could only imagine the effort he put into living his life. How hard he tried. Constantly.

She looked at him in the wind and rain.

“You’re strong, Bry. I know it,” she said. “I need that strength right now. I can’t do this alone.”

About thirty seconds passed. Bryan closed his eyes and bowed his head. His left hand rose off his lap. He turned it upward, his fingers slipping gently between hers. They held hands.

There was a loud scraping, grating sound from the beach, separate and distinct from the roar of the wind and water. The light was brilliant through the trees.

His rocking slowed. He looked at her. They sat holding hands.

“My ears are clogged,” he said.

“Mine too.”

“We have to get to Rhea.”

Natasha tasted salt on her lips. She kept her fingers meshed with his for a few more long seconds.

“Yeah,” she said.

Tai made his way up the beach through knee-deep water. Everything was submerged. The band of pulverized white shells, the bog up ahead, the rushes, everything, drowned in the rising tide.

Except for the kayak. He could see it off to his left, upended, drifting aimlessly in the current. There were three huge gouges in its hull where his bullets had punched into it.

The rain fell. The wind nuzzled and shoved. Drenched, his Parker Hale slung over his shoulder, he slogged toward the ridge, the Big Dipper’s mast light shining brightly behind him. It could probably stay on for a week without burning out and was far better than his flash for illuminating the beach.

Tai sloshed forward against the drag of the water. He’d brought the boat in hard and fast, and the keel had dragged noisily through the shallows. But while it had shuddered all over, he didn’t think there was much structural damage. It hadn’t hit any rocks. If it wasn’t swept off by the surge tide and he managed to wait out the storm, he would be able to sail off the island when the weather calmed. But he was not going to deceive himself. Those were two very big ifs.

He moved inland. The sound of the wind over the bay was constant. It was like a choir of angry giants.

Tai felt a primal dread in the pit of his stomach. The water was rising fast and had already crept up around his thighs, gaining half a foot in the last minute or two. If its level continued to climb at that rate, it would overtake the high-tide line in no