Crimson Waters Read Free Page A

far more common than the big bottleneck rifle rounds, and if anything, the pistol’s handiness and quicker firing gave him a better chance of hitting one of the slim, elusive targets. “But I think we got a bigger problem than these little fuckers.”
    “Why, Ryan?” Doc asked. Swirls of dark blood trailed from both his legs now. But his upheld swordstick ran red halfway down its blade, indicating he’d at least gotten some vengeance. “The blighters appear to be fleeing.”
    “’Cuda got bigger problem, too!” Jak yelled. “Look!”
    Thirty yards to their left, a big triangular fin cut the surface. As Krysty watched, at least half a dozen more appeared behind it, gray and unspeakably sinister.
    “Sharks!” Jak shouted unnecessarily.
    “Bull sharks, I do believe,” Doc said. “Known for their highly aggressive natures. And for their proclivity for extremely shallow water.”
    Krysty spun and lunged. She caught Jak and yanked him up out of the water in a huge gout of spray. She winced at the way the nasty sharp bits of metal sewn to his jacket bit into the flesh of her arm, meant to discourage just this sort of bear hug.
    A foot-tall fin slashed past beneath him, barely two feet from Krysty’s own legs.
    Krysty managed to pump three quick shots after the departing bull shark.
    “Looks bad, here,” J.B. said, racking back the charging handle on his Uzi after slamming in a fresh thirty-round mag.
    “All this blood in the water is drawing them,” Doc said. “It will induce a feeding frenzy, no doubt.”
    Ryan had holstered his SIG-Sauer to whip up the Steyr. He fired a blast. Water gushed into the air just in front of another fin carving toward him. The big shark turned away not five feet from Ryan’s legs, red foam marking its wake.
    “Ryan, behind you!” Mildred shouted.
    Ryan spun with remarkable alacrity despite the water’s drag. Holding on to his longblaster’s forestock, he whipped his long panga from its sheath, sidestepped and swung upward.
    Horrified, Krysty saw a great dark shape like a fat gray torpedo blast out of the water to fly with its open jaws aimed right at Ryan’s face. Or where it had been an instant before. She saw his heavy knife blade score a long gash from the gill slits back along the water-streaming side of the killer fish. Trailing a pennon of bright blood, the shark dived back into the water in a huge shower of spray.
    In an eyeblink Ryan had the panga sheathed again and his longblaster shouldered. Taking a flash aim through the flip-up ghost ring sights, he fired, but not at the shark that had so narrowly missed biting his head off. Nor at any of the others swimming horrifyingly close by to the eight-foot-wide path of submerged stone slabs. But at a fin moving at the back of the pack, almost a hundred feet away.
    A pink-tinged jet greeted the shot, and the fin began to move away. Ryan cranked the bolt and fired again, at another of the more distant sharks.
    “They’re turning away!” Mildred shouted.
    “Got bigger food,” Jak said as Krysty let him back down into the warm embrace of the sea. Her bare left arm streamed blood from a dozen gashes into the water.
    “You’re hurt, Krysty,” Mildred said.
    “Not as bad as I will be if those big bastards come back,” Krysty said. “Let’s move while we’ve got a chance! We might actually make the island.”
    They ran clumsily. The water pulled at Krysty. Strong as she was, it sucked the strength right out of her. She was bleeding, too—not fast, but enough that it would sap her energy in a short time.
    Doc ran high-stepping, water flashing by his upraised knees. But the effort quickly took its toll. Mildred cruised past him, grabbed him by the coat and towed him behind her as if she were a tugboat.
    Most of the sharks were distracted by the bigger feasts offered by the three of their kinfolk Ryan had chilled. Especially the one that was thrashing on the surface, sending prisms of water flying and causing a tremendous