War Mountain by Jerry Ahern

Author:Jerry Ahern [Jerry Ahern]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense, Military, Spies & Politics, Terrorism, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic, Thrillers, Pulp
ISBN: 9781612322872
Amazon: B00IAR4XW6
Barnesnoble: B00IAR4XW6
Publisher: Speaking Volumes
Published: 2014-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

Time dilates when life hangs in the balance. Tim Shaw didn’t learn that truism during his first gunfight, but instead had it forever hammered into his understanding of the world when he was just a child.

His father, Emma and Eddie’s grandfather, had always been big on water sports, a natural thing for someone living in Hawaii, even with the colder post-War climate. They’d been out on an all-day fishing trip and Tim Shaw had been pestering his father, Ed, from the very start to give up on the fishing and take out the water skis. It was the last time he ever water-skied until after he was married and his wife, Emma and Eddie’s mother, got him to try it again.

After the Great Conflagration, the only place where life survived in any true diversity was in the oceans. And sharks were ultimate survivors. His father had gotten the boat going along pretty well when the craft hit a swell and rolled over it. Tim Shaw never rolled over it. He lost the rope, the skis, the whole thing—and his cool. His legs and arms thrashing around in the water, he shouted to his dad.

Then he felt something slam against him, knocking him below the surface, knocking the wind out of him, too. As he opened his eyes, he saw the snout, the dorsal fin, cutting through the water away from him in a long arc.

Sometimes, when he’d take Emma and Eddie swimming when they were kids, he could still see that dorsal fin, like a keel on a boat turned upsidedown, cutting through the water, turning toward him. It was all in slow motion, the whole thing.

His father was suddenly there.

Tim Shaw remembered that his fists were balled up and he was going to fight the shark even though he knew the thing would kill him, eat him alive. But his father was leaning over the boat, a .45 automatic in his hands, shouting, “Swim to me, Timmy! Swim!” And Tim Shaw swam. It was only years later that he realized what his father was doing, using him as bait for the shark. The shark came up through the water and straight at him. His father’s .45 boomed, boomed, then boomed again. Then there was silence. So suddenly that he almost threw up, the water was filled with blood. A life preserver was flung into the water and the next thing Tim Shaw knew, he was safe in the boat, his father’s arm clamped around his shoulders.

What Tim Shaw realized years later was that if his father hadn’t made him swim, the shark could have struck from any angle that it chose and he would likely have been killed. But, swimming as he did, he drew the shark after him so that his father could kill it.

It was the same situation now. If he stayed put, since a sofa wasn’t an ideal defensive position, he’d be killed.

Another thing he’d learned about time dilation during periods of extreme danger was that people didn’t experience it in the same way.

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