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

be two sets of prints. A person could of course walk over his own tracks, but one set was definitely sunk in deeper as they tracked up the bank. As if the man that made them was carrying some added weight.

She could picture the men walking uphill. See them in her mind, extrapolating it all from the depth, dimensions, and placement of the footprints. Not their faces, but the rest. Their arms and legs. Their height and weight. Their identical, or nearly identical, builds. It was like she was watching a video of them with the heads blurred out.

She could see them.

She lowered the binocs, her eyes going to Bryan’s face.

“Does Dwight have a crew?” she asked. “A person who helps him out? Or did he mean it when said he’s a one-man show?”

Bryan nodded.

“He meant it,” he said. “Some lobstermen have a couple of partners. But he’s always worked by himself. Everybody knows it.”

Natasha’s heart rate quickened. She took a long, slow breath to slow it down.

“We have to get back to the kayak right now,” she said. “OK?”

“OK.”

“And Bry?”

“Yes?”

She locked her eyes on his.

“I’m leading the way this time,” she said. “And I want you to walk exactly like I show you.”

The twins found the kayak upslope from the shell beach, resting on a bed of tree roots just above the clumped, wadded wrack at its high waterline.

Kai crouched beside it and studied the ground. He saw no clearly outlined footprints. The soil was too dry, too packed. But he saw plenty of telltales. Transfers of wet sand on the dry dirt. Straggles of kelp that must have clung to their marks’ shoes when they’d splashed ashore. Bent weeds and seagrass with tiny particles of debris ground into them. Or sprinkled over and around them.

There were other things to see too. Plenty of them.

He stood up. Tai was on the right side of the kayak, his back to the shore. He was on its left side, his back to the trees. The tracks led straight off into them.

He cocked his head in their direction and said, “They went that way.”

Tai nodded but didn’t respond. He’d heard a flapping sound and glanced downhill at a large white seabird that had soared from the water’s surface. He noticed there was a clam in its beak.

Kai looked down at the kayak and said, “I think we should smash a hole through this piece of shit. It’ll leave them stranded.”

Tai watched the seabird. It glided over a rock on the shore and dropped the clam. Crack. Its shell broke open like a walnut, leaving the slippery mollusk inside exposed on top of the rock. A moment later the bird alighted with a flutter and gobbled it down whole.

Kai turned to him and said, “Are you listening to me, brother?”

“Yes.”

“So what do you think? Do we trash the bloody kayak?”

Tai looked across its cockpit and said, “I’ve got a better idea.”

“Am I doing all right?” Bryan said.

Natasha glanced over her shoulder at him, flashed an OK sign with her thumb and index finger.

“Great,” she whispered. “Just keep walking the way I showed you.”

The way she’d showed him was toe-to-heel, a forefoot stride. It gave you more control of your steps and let you shift your weight more quickly if you came up to a twig or stone. It was quieter, because it kept your heels from landing hard with all your weight in one spot. It made you lighter and looser on your feet, since your knees naturally bent with each step, and there was less impact than when the heel struck the ground.

Khodit’ kak volk, a ne korova.

Walk as a wolf, not a cow.

She had remembered the Russian expression minutes ago while crouched alongside Bryan at the top of the bank. She’d also remembered practicing the walk out in the woods and assumed it was at the Uzhur. She did not know when that was or recall anything of the circumstances. All that was a total blank, and it was scary. But somehow, her present circumstances were scarier.

They moved through the trees, snaking between the litter of rocks, roots, and broken branches on the forest floor, avoiding any sudden pitfalls that might trip them up. Natasha had insisted on taking lead to make sure they walked the quiet walk, and because she instinctively knew she would be quicker to pick up on any threats along the way. Whatever was going on with her sensory perceptions, it felt like more than a crazy cross up. Together, fused, they also seemed sharpened and expanded. It had come to feel natural to her in very short order...and maybe even feel like an asset.

Natasha hurried on—toe, heel, toe, heel—leading them at a swift, urgent clip. She retraced their path without difficulty, using Rhea as her main landmark; Bryan had taken very few turns after leaving the gigantic spruce behind, and it was impossible to miss, dwarfing all the other trees around it.

The hike from the island’s northern bank to the mother tree lasted about ten minutes. When they were under its sprawling crown, she raised her hand to gesture a pause. She was sure their path to the kayak stretched off to the right but wanted to double check with Bry.

“Is this it?” She pointed down at the ground.

He nodded. “About another fifty yards to go.”

“OK, c’mon.”

Natasha turned to the right, ahead of him. But they went no farther than three or four yards along the path before she halted again. This time without warning.

She stood there on the path, stock-still, listening.

Listening.

After a second, she turned to Bryan, her eyes wide.

“Somebody’s coming,” she said.

Kai knelt on the narrow dirt trail. Behind him, his brother stood with his face tilted upward and sideways, like a predatory animal sniffing the wind. They had gone about three hundred yards into the forest before Kai had called a halt. A moment later, he’d sunk to one knee under an enormous red spruce ascending high above the rest