Shadow Catcher Read Online Free PDF Page B

to the light, hoping that the hard rebreather might provide some protection. He ignored his straps and fasteners and focused on donning and clearing his mask. Just as he opened his eyes and looked up, a small harpoon penetrated the silt cloud above him. He jerked his head to the left. The projectile missed by barely an inch. Grasping a tank in each hand, he shot for the only cover he could find, the cave formed by the bomber’s wing.
    Under the shadow of the B-2, Nick whirled around to face his attacker, but he could see nothing through the dark, swirling cloud. He took advantage of the moment’s respite by strapping on his gear, finishing with the holster that held his rocket pistol, the Triple Seven’s answer to the standard harpoon gun. Designed and built in-house by Scott’s team, the weapon amounted to a compact rocket-propelled grenade. Its small club-shaped rounds were far superior to harpoon bolts—faster, with a more stable trajectory and fragmentation warheads that widened the damage envelope considerably.
    Nick surveyed his surroundings. The crumpled bomb-bay door blocked his path to the right. Behind him and to the left, the wing sloped into the seafloor. There would be no attack from the rear or the flanks, but there would be no escape either. The only way out of this bizarre cave was back the way he had come, back toward an attacker that he could not see. Nick wondered if he had just made a fatal mistake.
    He drew the rocket pistol from his belt and seated a round, but without a target, the weapon was not much use. And even with the pistol’s advantages, the chances of scoring a solid hit against a wary opponent were slim. Somehow he needed to regain the element of surprise.
    The light reappeared, panning back and forth across the seafloor beneath the wing’s trailing edge. In the white beam, he could see the silt settling. Now he understood his opponent’s plan. The intruder was patient, unwilling to enter the cloud of sediment and sacrifice his advantage. He would wait for the dust to settle and the water to clear before pressing his attack.
    After a short time, the light stopped panning and locked onto the spot where Nick had entered the cave. The beam formed a ghostly cone in the drifting particles. Nick watched it shrink as the attacker descended. He held his pistol at the ready, knowing he would only get one shot.
    The beam slimmed, and then the flashlight itself appeared. There was no time to wait for a full target. Nick aimed just below the descending light and pulled the trigger. The pistol jerked in his hand with an audible
thump
. A rush of bubbles trailed behind the projectile as it accelerated away. The beam flashed up to Nick’s face. Through the dazzling white light, he could just make out the silhouette of his attacker and the shadow of a small harpoon gun aimed at his chest. He did not attempt to evade or spoil the attacker’s aim. He knew it wouldn’t matter. The man would never get the chance to fire.
    The projectile found its target a millisecond later, snuffing out the intruder’s light in a surreal explosion, a spherical mass of blue fire and bubbles. The shock wave rippled out from all sides, hitting Nick like a punch in the chest even though he was several meters away. He shined his flashlight on the hostile and grimaced at the macabre effect of the fragmentation grenade. The man no longer had a left shoulder. In its place, a stringy mass of flesh and tissue. Blood poured from his body, tinting the water around him red.
    The hostile diver began to rise, already lifeless, and Nick guessed that some of the steel shards had penetrated his heart. He raced over and grabbed the body before it floated to the surface. He tried to get an idea of the man’s nationality, but the projectile had caused too much damage to the mask and face. Whoever he was, he had a small frame and thin arms, with a gray and blue camouflage wet suit that bore no unit