Page 48 of The Lazarus Protocol

“You aren’t going to kill me.”

Adam said, “I’m not a murderer, and neither is anyone else on my team.”

“I thought you were Division Zero?”

“We do impossible jobs. But we don’t take contracts and execute people.”

“What if the target was a genocidal maniac or someone who hurts children? Would you do the job then?”

“This isn’t about me.”

She countered with, “I think it is.”

“Because you have no intention of allowing this to be about you?”

That almost got him a smile. “If you let me call the CIA⁠—”

“We’ll see.” Adam twisted to look over his shoulder at the open airplane door.

A second later Kai rushed in. “We’ve got a serious problem.”

Dan came aboard right behind him. “Your buddy Johannsen wasn’t here. He’s out sick, or never showed up for work, or something my rudimentary French skills couldn’t figure out.”

Adam glanced at them. “You handed over the drone, right?”

Kai slumped into a seat across the aisle, facing Ice. “I doubt we’ll get paid since there’s a piece of the drone missing. We didn’t bring the whole thing back intact.”

“The guidance chip was gone.” Dan headed down the aisle to his seat. “Apparently, we should call Johannsen if we want our payment, because they don’t know anything about our agreement with him.”

“They pretty much chased us out.” Kai shook his head. “Told us they were getting ready for a launch. Some big project they had going on that we shouldn’t be here for.”

The ground under the plane started to rumble.

Adam got up from his seat, crossed the aisle, and peered out the window on the far side. The others went to the door. A second later, she appeared beside him. Sliding into the seat on this side.

“I hate to state the obvious…”

Adam had no problem doing that, especially if it sounded like an order from the team leader. “We might want to get our wheels up. There’s a rocket launching across the facility, and the smoke is headed this way.”

Kai stuck his head back in. “Can’t we sit here and wait until⁠—”

“We’re leaving! Right now!” The copilot rushed down the aisle. “Move. Move. Get the door shut!”

Dan and Kai ran to their seats, close to Ash. Ice slumped into the chair where Adam had been sitting, while Adam reached over and buckled Steph in.

“I need a phone.”

The airplane engines roared. Under them the ground rumbled so hard the plane wheels bounced off the asphalt enough to shake him into his seat.

“We’ve done this already.” He’d told her to wait before, that they had other priorities. “You always pick the worst times to need something?”

“So this would be a bad time to tell you I need to pee?”

Adam barely got his seatbelt buckled before the rumbling engines got them moving, gaining speed and lifting off the runway. The plane shuddered into the air, just as a plume of superheated smoke washed over the ground and hit the spot right where they’d been only seconds ago.

He gripped the sides of the seat and the plane took off, trembling as it climbed sharply into the air.

SEVENTEEN