Slow Burn (Book 5): Torrent by Bobby Adair Read Free Book Online Page B

pool the first time, and whatever it was, whether pride or something less tangible, it felt better than anything I’d ever felt before. I would not lose. No matter how much my muscles begged to quit.
    We made it to the halfway point and we were still underwater. Despite my resolve, I silently begged Benny to quit and end the irrational pain screaming in my head . Surface. Surface. Breathe.
    But Benny swam. And swam.
    I swam.
    At three quarters of the way, my prayers were answered and I saw Benny’s body change its position in the water just before he pushed his head above the surface.
    Victory.
    But not enough victory, not yet.
    Only a quarter of the way to go. I swam on.
    I’d make three full widths.
    To my surprise, my body complied.
    Stroke. Kick. Stroke. Kick.
    Black lane markers passed beneath me.
    The pool wall curved up and I hit it with my outstretched hand.
    But I wasn’t done.
    I turned, pushed off with my feet and let my momentum carry me back out into the pool. Three full widths had passed underwater. I knew I wouldn’t make a fourth. But I pushed myself anyway and watched the black stripes slip past. Then I saw Benny, just ahead of me, standing on the bottom with his head above the water, feeling his defeat.
    With the last anything that was left, I stroked past Benny and swam another ten feet before surfacing.
    I hadn’t just beaten Benny. I’d beaten him in legendary fashion. The boys on the side of the pool were silently amazed.
    I felt fucking fantastic.
    So in that cold green water with a seemingly impossible distance to swim, I knew I could make it. No matter how much my lungs, my muscles, my brain protested. I knew I could.
    I’d made an unspoken commitment to myself and Murphy when I chose to drive the Humvee into the river. And no way was I letting Murphy down.
    But i t was rationalization and the fear that almost beat me.
    In the murk, every direction looked the same, just green fading to darker green. Distance passed without measure. Direction existed only in degrees of hope. Had I swam past the pontoon boat? Had I veered so far off course that I was swimming up the boat ramp and into the greedy hands of Whites brave enough to wade into knee-deep water for their supper?
    It was at the end of a stroke with my arms back at my sides that I realized how little visibility I had. One of the boat’s pontoons materialized from a lighter green color in front of me into silvery aluminum. Before I could react, my bald head collided with a thin metal fin that ran the length of the pontoon just under the surface. It nearly knocked me silly and pissed me off to the point I grabbed my scalp while yelling my anger into a flurry of bubbles.
    I ducked under and quietly surfaced between the pontoons , beneath the boat’s deck. Neither the burned squatters under the trees nor the infected on the boat ramp could see me. Grabbing onto a piece of the boat’s deck support to catch my breath, I reached up to evaluate my latest wound. The gash felt deep and enormous but probably wasn’t. Warm blood flowed down my face.
    Dammit.
    After several deep breaths, I slid back beneath the water’s surface, swam over to the far side of the boat and went under the other pontoon, and came up under the dock. I heard feet on the wooden planks overhead.
    The footsteps belonged to Whites. Whether they were working their way around the marina trying to find a way to get to Murphy , or they’d seen me go under water and had deduced my destination, my time had expired. Retrieving the pontoon boat was going to get difficult.
    After positioning myself near the rope I’d used to tie the boat to the dock, I reached up with my knife and started to saw at the rope. I wasn’t quick enough. First one, two, then three noisy Whites jumped from the dock to the boat.
    More feet were coming when the rope finally separated. I wasted no time in using a support post for leverage to push the bow of the boat away. The Whites on the boat’s deck,