Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2) by Jack Lively (reading well TXT) 📕

cartridge firing. At about the same time, give or take a millisecond, I was hit. The shooter was using lightweight bird-shot, which would have been a good thing, if it wasn’t for all the negative implications. Good because number nine shot won’t kill you from twenty feet. Bad because it meant they wanted me alive. Very bad because, given what he’d been prepared to do to the moose, I wasn’t optimistic about his plans for me.

The initial blast had propelled something like 600 pellets out of the 12 gauge barrel. They’d shot out in a tight pattern, but seeing as the pellets were light, they’d spread quickly. About ten or twenty of them struck me in the neck and the side of my face, the other five hundred and eighty odd pellets swooshed past and shattered the Toyota’s left headlight. So, first thing I did when I hit the ground was raise the Glock and take out the other light.

One shot.

Which left me lying in the dark alongside a sedated and hamstrung moose with bird-shot embedded in my face and neck. But at least it was now dark, but not impossibly so. There’s always going to be some ambient light coming down through the break in tree cover over a trail. The moose went still, maybe trying to understand what was going on, which might have been tough in normal circumstances, but incredibly difficult under the influence of a tranquilizer. That was one confused moose. I heard the shuffle of booted feet, two sets. What I didn’t see or hear was the vehicle that’d been following me.

Which made me think of two sets of adversaries, the ones following, and the ones setting the trap. The ones who had set the trap were right up there with me on the other side of the moose. The ones following were sitting back and waiting. No way to kill two birds with one stone.

Many people finding themselves in a position like that would get up and run for the trees. I did the opposite and rolled closer to the moose. I figured he was so big that I could hide in the black shadow of his mass.

I backed right up to the animal, warm and bristly. I got perfectly still. Around me the moose was becoming agitated. He was trying to raise himself, wounded, incoherent, and double spooked by the gunfire. But there was no way he was going to get up. I was worried about being crushed if he lurched in the wrong way. I could feel my face burning with shot, dripping blood. I resisted the urge to wipe the blood away.

I heard an excited voice from the other side of the wounded animal, speaking low. “You get him?”

Another voice. “Yeah, but I can’t see.”

I recognized those voices, but couldn’t place them. It was not Deckart or Willets.

The first voice spoke again, this time I detected slurring of the speech. He had been drinking. He said, “Fucking moose. What am I, a lucky genius or what?”

The other man said, “Shut up, Gavin.”

I placed the voices. Gavin. The skinny prison guard who had set me up with the 1488 goons.

I saw a dark upright humanoid form creeping around the side of the stricken animal. I put up the Glock and pulled the trigger on two rounds, bang-bang. Directly into the figure’s center mass. Then it was time to move.

I rolled out from under the moose and came up behind the first tree I happened to bump into. There was a sudden flurry of movement to my left, so I put two rounds in that direction and rolled off the tree. A second shotgun blast barked. The tree protected me. Shredded wood shot past and tinkled into the undergrowth. By now I was counting my ammunition. Five rounds fired, one that had already been in the chamber, plus the four pushed up from the fifteen round mag. Eleven rounds waiting.

Someone coughed near the moose. There was a sound of grunting from the animal. Then a whole lot of shuffling and shifting and heavy breathing.

I stopped behind another tree and stayed absolutely still and silent. Quiet enough to hear stealthy movement from the woods, across the trail from my position. Like someone tip-toeing through the forest. I stayed still another couple of seconds. More movement, this time further away. The second guy was trying to get away. Trying to do it quietly. The one I’d shot was wounded, and no longer on two feet. There were guttural noises coming from there and a muffled cry. Like moose and man combined in one flailing package of misery. I crossed the trail and entered the trees.

I moved fast and quiet. My aim was to flank the guy who was trying to get away. I came around without making any effort to get a visual on him. Concentrating on moving fast enough to get ahead of the guy. I cut inside his line. In front of him, and in his path. I stuck myself against a large tree.

A moment later, I heard loud panting, and heavy footsteps approaching. The guy didn’t know how to walk quietly in the woods. He came level with me and I saw his silhouette. A heavily built guy. The other prison guard, the one with the tattooed arms. I had the Glock up. Problem was the other people, the ones who had been following me in the car. I had no location on them, no idea where they might be.

It was best if they felt the same way about me. I slid the Glock into the waistband at my back. My knife thumbed open with a soft click.

I considered throwing the knife at the guy. The salmon season on a purse seiner is interesting and tough work. But there is downtime. In such times, the fisherman will occupy himself with knife work. Many guys carve things into wood. Like pretty maritime pictures, or the initials of their girlfriend’s name. I used the