Page 10 of The Lazarus Protocol

Adam dug the device out of his thigh cargo pocket and slapped it into Dan’s hand. “Knock yourself out.”

“I haven’t been trained on this particular piece of⁠—”

“Just plug it in.”

Dan turned his back to Adam.

Adam slid the small device that looked like an outlet cover from his pocket and slid it into the plug on the wall behind him, the whole move only taking a couple of seconds. A curious person might find it, but would discover nothing.

“Is that why she gave it to you?” Dan asked. “Because it’s easy to operate?”

Adam moved to his friend’s side. “Um, did you just tell a joke?”

Dan’s attention was on inserting the plug. “Don’t get excited.”

“I think that might be cause for celebration.” Adam grinned. “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”

“I wasn’t …dead.” He choked on that last word.

Adam winced. Shouldn’t have said that. “I know, bro. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

Adam was about to respond when Dan said, “Since when do you quote the Bible, anyway?”

“My sister keeps texting me whole passages in these long messages.” He rolled his eyes. “Tryin’ to save my soul. Guess something stuck.”

Dan watched the screen of the phone. “We could all use a little saving.”

Adam thought he’d say sometimes at the end of that, but he didn’t. “So what is this thing?”

“The phone has no idea. This is just protocols, but I can’t make sense of it. There’s latitude and longitude coordinates here, and what looks like a flight plan. But then it says, ‘Perform lunar contact checklist.’”

“Are we going to space?”

“I hope not.” Dan glanced at the dark windows. “If this is a launch pad, this entire building would be destroyed when the engines were fired. I still think it’s a server cooling system.”

“For a space shuttle.” Adam liked the sound of that.

Dan unplugged the device. “I’ve got it. Let’s go.”

They jogged back to the stairwell and were almost to the landing between floors when the comms channel broke into violent static.

Adam winced. “What’s going on?”

“…our way to them!” Kai sounded panicked.

“You only have a few seconds,” Ice responded.

“Sitrep!” Adam pounded up the stairs to the ground floor and hauled the door open.

As he ran, Marina said, “Chopper inbound, and they’re hostile.”

An explosion rocked the side of the building, shook the whole place, and sent dust raining down from the ceiling.

“All of you get out of there,” Ice yelled. “Now.”

FOUR