1941539114 (S) Read Online Free PDF Page A

“I told you we should have brought Lilly.” She’s probably right, but when I decided to let the rest of our merry band chill in Maine, I didn’t know we might be facing the Russian military.
    I wave her away. The return trip to pick them up might only add twenty minutes to our total travel time, but we can’t risk GOD getting there first. Not only are they more likely to deal with the Russians more harshly, but they’ll also find a way to weaponize whatever—if anything—is hidden there. And since their last genetic experiment would have wiped out humanity if not for Nemesis, that’s a very bad thing.
    And I shouldn’t undersell us. I’ve led enough of these things now to feel confident in my abilities. Collins is, well, Collins. She can handle herself. And Maigo... Okay, the Border Guards probably don’t stand a chance. But if we’re ID’d and word gets out, things could get messy.
    Before Cooper and Watson can offer more tactical advice, I say, “Just fill me in. What are we up against?”
    “It’s going to be windy, cold and desolate,” Cooper says. “The only indigenous life are birds.”
    “No people?” I ask. “Aside from the Border Guards?”
    “The Inupiat Inuits were forced off the island after World War II, to make sure no one communicated with the Americans on Little Diomede, which is just two and a half miles away.”
    “So if things go south we can just swim to America?” I’m being sarcastic, but neither Watson nor Cooper are good at hearing sarcasm, though for different socially awkward reasons.
    “I wouldn’t recommend that,” Cooper says. “You’ll die of hypothermia long before making the swim.”
    “And you have—”
    I cut Watson short. “Look, just send me what you have on our mysterious anonymous tip.”
    “There isn’t much,” Watson says.
    I’m about to complain when my tablet chimes, declaring that I’ve just received an e-mail from Watson. I clamp my mouth shut, narrowly avoiding being a jerk. “Thanks. Got it. Call the others to the Beverly office. If things go south, I want Lilly and Hawkins ready.”
    Lilly and Mark Hawkins, her stand-in father and mentor, are often part of our field team. Sometimes they handle missions on their own. And when it comes to finding elusive creatures, they’re the best. Hawkins is a former Yellowstone Park Ranger specializing in finding lost and sometimes dead people who wandered off the trail or crossed paths with a hungry bear or mountain lion. Lilly is part panther. There isn’t much with a scent or a trail that they can’t find. If we were looking for a person, I would have picked them up, but what we’re after has likely been in the ground long enough for there to be no tracks and no scent. The third member of their team is Avril Joliet, a biologist who now spends most of her time in one of our two labs, happily analyzing blood and tissue samples from cryptozoological creatures.
    I lean forward and call up to Woodstock in the pilot seat. He’s chewing on a toothpick and humming a pop song. “What’s our ETA?”
    “Welp,” he says, “Roughly 3500 miles to go, divided by bat out of hell speed... About an hour and forty, give or take five minutes.”
    “I’ll check in when we get there,” I say into the phone. “But if you find anything else—”
    “We’ll call,” Cooper says.
    I hang up the phone and turn my attention to the e-mail from Watson.
    “What’s with the movie style phone hang up?” Maigo asks.
    “Huh?” I glance up at her from the photo of the Atlantean symbol carved in stone, apparently taken on Big Diomede Island...in freakin’ Russia.
    “You just hung up,” she says. “No ‘See ya.’ Or ‘Bye.’ Or even a ‘TTFN.’”
    “Mmm,” I say, eyes back on the photo.
    “Dad,” she says, and I don’t look up. “Now you’re doing it to me.”
    “Jon,” Collins says, the singsong of her voice slipping through my distraction. “You okay?”
    “What?” I glance up and see them