Read Online This Mortal Coil by Logan Thomas Snyder - Free Book Online

Will?”
    “What’s that?”
    He lifted his head just enough to meet Willem’s eyes. “Make it quick.”
    “Make what quick?”
    “C’mon, Will. You know you can’t let us go. This here business is kill-or-be-killed. And quick as those barbs do their work, I don’t wanna go out like that. So just take one of those blades you grabbed from us and—” He yanked his thumb across the line of his throat. “That’s the hunter’s way.”
    Willem felt his hand go to his belt where one of those very blades rested. He fingered its grip thoughtfully, glancing back. Theresa and the others had taken the lengths of cording cut from the parachute rigging and were binding the hands and feet of Mack’s men while the others covered them. Willem turned back to Mack. “Anything else I should know?”
    “Just that it’s been a gas, baby.”
    Willem laughed in spite of himself. So that’s what it was.
    A gas, indeed.
    Drawing the knife, he considered it in his hand as he stepped behind Mack. The weight of the grip, the sharpness of the blade. Mercy or malice. Commiseration or cruelty. The golden rule or the false idol of revenge.
    The truth was he still didn’t have any answers. Just a knife in one hand and a man’s life in the other.
    With a single, clean slice of the blade, Willem opened Mack’s throat to the world, a curtain of blood unfurling down his chest. Even as he felt the rush of life it released and saw the dying light of the stars reflected in Mack’s eyes, he knew he had just killed a little piece of himself, as well.

    With Mack and Stone dead it was quickly agreed they had no choice but to dispose of the rest of their men. It was grisly business. Some among them took to the task more eagerly than others. Still, Willem reasoned, it had to be done. They simply couldn’t risk leaving them tied up only to somehow free themselves and warn their employers of what was coming. Better to do it quick and stow the bodies somewhere out of sight before firing off the PIGSI.
    The question, then, was not how, but who. Sensing Willem was loathe to take another life, Theresa volunteered to handle the bloodletting along with three others: Arlo, Elam, and Marcus. They proved only too willing to lend a hand.
    “Well, that was fun,” Marcus announced when at last the deed was done and the turf freshly stained.
    Several yards away, Willem had just finished fitting the PIGSI atop Lucas’s rifle. “Got it,” he said, carefully taking the suddenly top-heavy rifle from Lucas. “I’ve got it. Go help Arlo and Joss get ready. The rest of you get those bodies out of sight. We don’t want to spook whoever’s in that helicopter before it even lands.”
    It took several minutes to clear the area and prep Arlo and Joss before they were finally ready to launch the PIGSI.
    “Well, here goes nothing,” Willem murmured.
    “Or everything,” Theresa whispered back.
    Willem shot her the briefest of glances before starting the countdown. “Three… two… one!”
    He pulled the trigger.
    The PIGSI launched impressively enough, soaring above before jettisoning   its housing. A tiny flash twinkled among the canopy of stars above them as if to punctuate the anticipation of the moment, then winked out of existence. It was a promising sign. Beyond that all-too-brief display, however, they had no way of knowing if the device was actually working in the fashion Mack had described.
    “I swear, if this doesn’t work I’m going to kill that son of a bitch,” Theresa mused dryly. “Again.”
    Smirking, Willem just shook his head. “C’mon, let’s get hunkered down before whoever is coming sees us.”
    Twenty minutes later, they were still hunkered down, waiting.
    “How long is it supposed to take?”
    “He didn’t say.”
    “Doesn’t that seem like something you should have asked before—”
    They heard the helicopter before they saw it, the conspicuous whump-whump-whump of its rotors chopping at the air as it vectored inbound. It