Survivalist - 21 - To End All War Read Online Free PDF

her in those five years when, for all they knew, the lives in The Retreat were the only lives on Earth, she remembered now. “If you are ever placed in the position of having to take human life —and God only knows, we might be the only people left on Earth—remember this: If the necessity for taking life cannot be avoided, you must determine the morality of striking first. In other words, if you’re good enough and willing to risk your life, then give your adversary a chance. But, even if you are good enough, and more than your own fate hangs in the balance, don’t masturbate your honor or your conscience —and who’s to say they aren’t the same, really —but don’t do that by sacrificing lives that may depend on yours to give a known enemy a so-called ‘even break.’ Usually, if an enemy is worth killing, he’s worth killing by whatever means necessary to achieve the end result of his death and the preservation of your life or what other lives may depend on your success. So, ifyouhaveto, shootingaman in the back is just about the same as shooting a man in the front; the important consideration is not that he deserves to die, usually, but that the event of his death will achieve the desired result. If the result is worth killing for to begin with, the direction from which the bullet or knife or whatever comes that ends his life is largely immaterial. Do you understand, Annie?”
    She hadn’t understood then, because in the videotapes of western movies, the good guys never ever shot the bad guys when their backs were turned.
    But she’d come to understand juxtaposing the values of lives, determining which was better, a troubled conscience or wasting the lives of the good and the innocent.
    So Annie Rourke Rubenstein setded the laser-fitted pistol in her right fist, sitting back on her hind end. She spread her legs apart in a way that was unnatural for her because she so rarely wore slacks or pants. With her back propped against a snow-packed rock, her elbows rested just inside her thighs. She brought her left hand up, pulled back the hammer on the pistol, thumbed up the safety.
    She forced her shoulders to relax, taking control of her breathing.
    She could see both men through a niche of rock about eighteen inches wide.
    The taller, brawnier of the two men was doing something with the cannister, which was likely some explosive device. The soft whirring of the helicopter rotor blades was louder now, almost audible between the lulls in the driving cold wind.
    She moved her right thumb to just over the pad, which was the switch for the laser.
    Her left thumb moved down the pistol’s safety.
    She wrapped her double-gloved left hand over her single-gloved right, around the front strap of the 9mm pistol.
    Her right thumb depressed the switch for the laser, and the red dot appeared between the shoulder blades of the man with the supposed explosive device.
    She let out half her breath, catching the rest in her throat,
    blinked once, then touched her right first finger to the trigger.
    He was already pitched forward, as if she’d hit him with a vasdy heavier caliber than 9mm. Either she’d hit him in the spine, or …
    The pistol bucked and the laser beam danced a zigzag pattern across the man’s back and neck as she brought the gun down, swinging her entire body a few degrees right, firing again as she settled the laser beam over the juncture of the second man’s neck and shoulder. He was already turning toward the sound of the first shot as she fired.
    Again, the pistol rocked a litde, the laser zigzagging.
    She fired once more on the second man as she brought the pistol down, the laser beam just below his thorax as his body spun away.
    She thought she’d hit high and off center because of the speed with which his head was turning away from her, possibly striking him in the jaw.
    She swung the pistol toward the first man.
    But he was gone.
    “Damnit,” Annie snapped. She moved the laser beam onto the second