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

Total commitment. Like an athlete, except getting it wrong wasn’t going to be try and fail, it was going to be try and die.

One fast stride onto the platform, one step up onto the first railing. Boot planted firmly. I pushed off hard and sprung into the air. The guy was still clueless, looking deeply into the trees. Trying to draw meaning from the wind in the branches. Or maybe he was thinking, reflecting on life. In either case he was condition white. Unaware.

I went over the other side of the railing and up, a panther coming down from a jungle tree. The guy was slow to notice the movement above and behind him. He was still fixated on the spot across the yard. I was a quarter-second away from landing when my peripheral vision was disturbed. I whipped my head back to the staircase I had just launched from and caught a blur of black clad movement. Another guy, coming right behind me. I got eyes on him just as he was grabbing at my foot in mid-air. I tried to pull the boot back. At that point my target grunted in surprise, noticing what was happening for the first time. I felt the new guy’s hand scramble to grip my boot but I managed to twist it free of his grip. I lost balance. I wasn’t going to land as intended, that was for damn sure.

I landed on the guy below, bringing us both to the ground. He scrambled clear of me.

At that point I was dealing with two enemies. My only instinct was to prioritize the threat. The guy I’d landed on was recovering his wits. He’d been thinking about something, which had kept him condition white. Now he was moving out of that and transitioning to another mental state, gearing up for a decision. But he wasn’t there yet.

The second guy was condition black, fully alert and combat ready. I moved the first guy to my peripheral vision and brought my full attention to the guy who had come at me from behind. One thing I registered instantly, the smoothly shaved head and pointy ears. This was our fourth encounter.

One too many.

He was putting up his weapon and smiling. I had landed badly, rolling my ankle and coming down hard on my ass. I saw muzzle flash as the guy fired twice, in quick succession. I was hit once on my left side. The impact came like a glancing blow from a sledge hammer.

I’d been hit before. When it happens, it happens fast. No time to understand what’s going on, only time to react.

My hand still gripped the knife. I had practiced throwing it so many times that doing so now was only a muscle reaction, not even a conscious thought. The pointy-eared guy was sucking in air. I figured he’d been winded by the lurching and grabbing and had forgotten to take a breath before letting off two rounds. Whatever. I guess I saw the target and just went for it. By the time my thoughts caught up, I had flicked the knife backhanded. It spun in the air a couple of times and went straight through into his open mouth.

Which was one move in a fast-moving sequence. The guy I had landed on was backing up and raising his weapon. Maybe the knife play had caught his attention. Maybe he was a thinking person, which didn’t bode well for his chances of surviving. By the time he’d paused his philosophical reflections I had the Glock out of my waistband and had squeezed two rounds into his chest. He fell back, his breath coming out quick and hard, the way a balloon deflates. I pulled the trigger on a head shot and nothing happened. The slide was jammed. I dropped the weapon and turned back to the guy with the pointy ears and my knife in his mouth.

He was on his knees trying to deal with a serious situation. My blade had buried itself in the back of his throat. Which caused him to clutch and gag and generally bug out. That might have been enough, after a while, if time had been allowed to play out. He might have choked on the thing or bled out. Or maybe the blade had gone into key areas in the neck, areas that are necessary for the continued viability of the human organism.

I’ll never know.

What I do know is that I moved at him very quickly, with neither mercy or delay. I vaulted the stairs, seized his head and ripped it the wrong way, with maximum prejudice. I felt the vertebrae pop as they separated unnaturally, tearing out and shredding vital elements of the pointy-eared guy’s nervous system. In the darkness I saw the whites of his eyes film over as he ceased to be a living being and became an inanimate object. Black magic. It was as obvious as shades being lowered on a window. I eased the body to the steel platform. He was dead weight, all slack and nothing holding it together anymore.

His mouth closed with a sharp snap, like some kind of involuntary muscular contraction. A final, jealous reach from the nervous system. For a moment I hesitated. That knife had become an important souvenir of my time in Alaska. Now it was locked up in the guy’s head. I released the object from my mind. After all, it was just a knife.

I stepped into the factory again. Picked up the Breachers. I knew at least two things to be true and meaningful. I had been hit, and the only thing keeping me going was the adrenaline of combat. No time to lose, no reason to stop. Two more enemy down. I stepped off the stairs and crouched against the wall. Waiting and watching.

From across the yard came a low wolf whistle.

The whistle came from the spot that the first