Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

He stared into the fire and considered that a minute. The more he thought about it, the surer he became it was a missile. In which case he might have gotten very lucky. Even the most accurate ones could be off by a few yards in poor weather; it could have been a near miss. Then again, maybe the strike hadn’t been meant to take him out. Say their primary intention was his capture, and their target was the roadway in front of him. With the northbound road impassable, he would have no recourse but to double back toward the castle. Or otherwise abandon the car and set out on foot. But he wouldn’t get far. There was nothing around for miles in either direction. Nothing but deep woods and empty fields. He would freeze to death in the snow and darkness. He knew it. His enemies knew it. They wouldn’t expect him to try it.

Their goal, then, was to turn him around. It had to be. That would send him right into their hands.

Unless...

Lifting his foot off the brake, he shifted into Reverse, turned his wheel sharply to the right, backed onto the gravel shoulder, and spun around toward the crossroads he’d left some miles behind him. He needed to reach it before his pursuers. He had no idea how close to it they might be, but he would soon find out. Getting there first was his only chance.

If this had turned into a race, he was driving the right car for it and had no intention of betting against himself.

Carmody stood a couple of paces inside the garage, Schultz to his left with his gun at the ready, covering the door. The snoofer had gotten them through without any problems.

The silent underground space was probably half-empty. Carmody saw a Mercedes SUV, a Rolls...and two motorcycles leaning on their kickstands somewhat apart from the four-wheeled vehicles.

He stared at them, his eyes very still behind his goggles. They were identical Kawasaki Ninja H2Rs. Onyx-black shiny metallic finish. Supposedly the fastest bikes in the world.

His molars clicked.

His and hers. Charming.

“Pickles,” he said into his headset. “Rover One.”

The AI opened a channel to Dixon’s BearCat.

Kali had seen people die violently before, seen her own parents murdered when she was only a girl of nine, and she knew Dixon was right. Emerick didn’t have long.

Crouched between the two front seats, facing the BearCat’s crew compartment, she realized at a glance that he was in seizure, his back on the metal floor, his right arm and leg thrashing as if flooded with voltage. Though the men had elevated his feet under a rolled up field jacket, they seemed undecided about whether or not to restrain him. They didn’t want him to suffer the indignity of the paroxysms, but they also didn’t want to make his pain any worse.

She shuffled toward him on the balls of her feet, swaying with the vehicle’s rapid motion. The dressing Jimmy Singh had applied to his head and jaw, a loose cravat, was already soaked through with blood, and she saw a runny red puddle on the floor under the bandages. At the back of his head, the wrapping had been sucked in and wadded up like a saturated paper towel. It explained why they hadn’t lifted him onto one of the stretchers that were anchored, flat and unused, against the side of the vehicle. Nothing was left of his skull there. It was entirely blown away. If they had tried moving him, his brain would have spilled out of the wound.

The Cat shifted suddenly to the right, and something rolled against the side of her boot—a discarded auto-injector. She scanned the label and nodded to herself. Ketamine: good, better than morphine. The drug was a bronchodilator as well as a painkiller. It would make it easier for him to breathe and was less likely to deepen his trauma.

Jimmy Singh was kneeling over him, bracing his head gently between his hands to steady it against the vehicle’s jerky side-to-side movement. He saw Kali edging closer and nodded. She nodded back. Jimmy was among the few people at base she had allowed herself to become friendly with in the past four months. She had been on one of her predawn walks when she first saw him doing his yogic asanas out in the field behind headquarters, facing east toward the sunrise in the traditional manner. They had soon started doing their morning practices together.

Now their eyes connected over Emerick. His spasms were worse, his heel rhythmically banging against the vehicle’s floor.

“Let me help,” she said.

Jimmy nodded. No hesitation.

Kali moved up closer to Emerick. Bang-bang bang bangbang . Spencer was kneeling over his lower half, a medal clenched in his fist. Each time the dying man thrashed he started a little, as if they were joined on a string.

“I need you hold him steady,” she said.

Spencer nodded, let his medal fall over his shirt, and placed both hands on Emerick’s right ankle. Pushing it down as gently as he could manage, he succeeded in restraining him.

Kali unlaced his combat boots, tugged off his right, then his left. She reached into her jacket for a Swiss Army knife, cut the right pants leg up along its inner seam to his thigh, and tore it away from him. Bending over him, she put her left thumb over a point below his kneecap, then placed her right index and pointer fingers an inch to the outside of the femur.

His leg jerked and twitched. Spencer held it down. Kali gave him a small nod of encouragement and applied direct, even pressure with her fingertips, slowly increasing it, concentrating on the slight pulsations under Emerick’s skin. She couldn’t let the vehicle’s rocking and swaying affect her. She needed to be focused and precise.

After fifteen seconds she felt the leg start to relax. It was as if hard little knots of tension were dissolving under her fingertips. But Emerick’s hands were still clutching at the air, and she could see reddish-blue blotches on his knees. His heart was no longer pumping adequate blood to his extremities. She had more to do, and quickly.

She looked at Spencer.

“You’ll have to take over for me,” she said.

He stared at her. “I’m not sure I can.”

“This isn’t magic. I promise.”

He looked down at Emerick. After a beat of silence, he raised his eyes back to hers. “All right,” he said. “Show me.”

She motioned with her chin. “Put your hand next to mine. Position your fingers like this. See?”

“Think so...yeah.”

“Good. Now we switch. On my nod.”

“Okay.”

Kali allowed another second, nodded. She watched as his fingers replaced hers on Emerick’s leg.

“Keep them on the points,” she said. “Don’t turn them. Count to thirty, increase the pressure, decrease it. Then repeat.”

He glanced up at her face. “Got you.”

Kali edged farther toward the rear hatch. Emerick’s blood was all over the floor, his uniform everywhere. Still crouched over him, Jimmy Singh was holding his head between his hands. They were smeared red.

“Open his vest,” she said. “His shirt. Hurry.”

Singh nodded. Keeping Emerick’s head in a stable position, he gestured for one of the other troopers—an E9 named Jamal Carter—to open the zippers, clasps, and straps of the dying man’s uniform.

Kali leaned in. She put a hand on his bare chest below the rib cage and felt a wiry, shivering tension. He was in pain despite the ketamine shot.

Then Dixon, over the crew radio: “Kali, we’re out of time!”

Before she could reply, automatic fire rattled outside the BearCat, and it hauled forward with a jolt, its engine roaring like a jet plane. Emerick let out a long, deep moan, his spine arching up off the metal floor. His lips were blue, his mouth wide open. He was panting rapidly. Shallow, explosive breaths. It didn’t resemble normal respiration, because it wasn’t. His autonomic nervous system had taken control of his vital functions even as they shut down.