The Breach Read Online Free PDF

transmission.
    Just like that, he’d understood that hope was lost. Ink Burst—a technology derived from another Breach object, albeit a relatively benign and manageable one—was a defensive measure designed to hide a crashed aircraft from satellites. Even visual satellites. It pulled a variety of clever tricks to fool them; one involved broadcasting an omnidirectional signal that caused spy birds to ignore the live crash site and substitute their own archived shots. The effective radius was something like five miles from the crash site, to cover any possible debris field. Currently every satellite platform in the world was vulnerable to it, though DARPA had a system ready to launch in November that was immune—after all, you never knew when your own toys would be used against you.
    That precaution would come a few months late, as it turned out.
    The whiskered man made a sudden adjustment to the nerve actuator’s power, and Paige’s body convulsed, a new flood of tears brimming in her eyes. He did that every few minutes to break up the pattern, keep her from getting used to any one strain of agony. This round would go on for another hour and a half, and then they’d crank the table flat again and let her rest an hour, as the drug lost its edge. The resting hour had nothing to do with kindness; it was simply the whiskered man’s understanding of how far he could push her and still keep her alive. The drug must be one of a dozen shock-inhibiting agents Peter knew of.
    It was time to break.
    He no longer cared what consequences would befall the world as a result. His world had shrunk until it no longer contained even himself. There was only Paige.
    He could end her pain right now; in twenty words he could tell them where the Whisper’s key was hidden on the plane. An inch-long strip of something like clear cellophane, the key was the easiest thing in the world to hide, and among all the components of a 747, even a team of Boeing engineers could spend months searching for it, if they didn’t know where to look. Peter could give these people its location, and once they’d found it and verified that it was valid, they’d put a bullet in Paige’s temple, and his own.
    Chirping laughter broke from the group encircling the campfire. That the arrogant fuckers had built a fire at all had made it abundantly clear to him, three days earlier, that this place would not be found in time. For the first twelve hours he’d clung to the hope that Ellen had survived. He and the others in the equipment room had forced her to hide in a mainframe cabinet; she’d protested, unwilling to be spared the others’ fate, and had given in only as the ATVs had stopped outside the plane. If she’d lived, she could have waited until the attackers left and then called for help.
    But the hostiles, after executing everyone but Paige and him, had fired magazine after magazine into the equipment room, shredding every piece of machinery. He’d watched four shots pierce the compartment where Ellen lay hidden. There was close to zero chance she’d survived.
    By the end of the first day, when Paige had already endured eight cycles of the torture, Peter’s resolve had withered to a thread, and all that had kept it from breaking had been the angry insistence in his daughter’s eyes, promising to hate him if he gave in.
    All these impossible hours later, her strength was still intact.
    But his was dead and gone.
    It was time.
    In the pines at the edge of the campsite, Travis set two of the spare M16s on the ground. Another he kept slung on his shoulder, and the last he held in his hands.
    Fifty feet away, String Mustache was still about his business. From this angle Travis could see the face of the other captive, an older man tied to a tree near the young woman. Travis wondered if a look of greater anguish had ever existed in the world.
    Ten feet from String Mustache, four of the other men were gathered around a fire, carefully tended to burn clean