Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

harvesters there. Here in Russia, where the Earth Defense Society had no resources, the harvesters could have gotten away with anything.  
    This facility was a case in point. It was not a government operation. It was privately owned, but it was not clear by whom. It had no name. To those who worked there, their families, and people from the nearest villages, it was simply known as “The Facility.” It was an enigma, and a very dangerous one.
    Staring at the operations map on the wall of the briefing room as the general had given him his instructions while his regimental commander sat in silence, Mikhailov had felt a cold stab of fear lance through his chest.
    By afternoon, he and his men were on an Il-76 transport aircraft, flying south to Stavropol, the headquarters of the 247 th Airborne Regiment. And at the crack of dawn this morning, he and his men were on an Mi-17 helicopter, flying the two hundred and fifty kilometers from there to the research facility. The pilots who had delivered the ground team yesterday were flying Mikhailov in. He prayed that he and his men would have better luck than their previous passengers.  
    Rudenko returned to his seat, giving Mikhailov a thumbs-up. He did not have a headset, and there was no point in trying to talk above the roar of the engines and rotors. Rudenko made his own last minute check, pulling a massive pistol from a holster under his left arm. It was a Desert Eagle chambered for .50 Action Express rounds, and was a twin to the one Mikhailov carried. Three months after the atomic bomb had been dropped on California, killing Jack, Naomi, and the others of the Earth Defense Society, an unmarked box had mysteriously appeared in Mikhailov’s apartment, sitting on the kitchen table. The box contained the two handguns, two spare magazines each, and two hundred rounds of ammunition.  
    When he saw the two handguns, the same as Jack carried when they had all met on Spitsbergen during the battle for the Svalbard seed vault, Mikhailov knew that Jack and Naomi must still be alive. The guns were a message, and a gift for him and Rudenko. The older NCO, upon receiving one of the weapons, had been mightily impressed. No stranger to the workings of the black market and smuggling in general, Rudenko could only shake his head in admiration, both at the weapon itself and what it must have taken to get them to Mikhailov.
    Checking back through the small box in which he kept those things most important to him, Mikhailov found the small slip of paper Naomi had given him on Spitsbergen. On it was a phone number and a nondescript email address. With a tingle of excitement, he sent an email to the address with only his name, as Naomi had instructed. Fifteen minutes later, he had his answer: they were alive, as were most others from the EDS, although that was to be kept secret. Mikhailov had breathed a huge sigh of relief: he had been greatly saddened at the news that Jack and Naomi had been killed.
    After that, he had received a great deal of information from his “dead” American friends on the harvesters. He had not been able to share it with anyone but Rudenko, who did not profess to understand much of it, but it had helped Mikhailov to better come to grips with what had happened on Spitsbergen, and proved that he hadn’t imagined it all as some claimed he had.
    Since then, except for some training on the firing range when it was deserted, he and Rudenko had kept the Desert Eagles out of sight, for he didn’t want his superiors to ask inconvenient questions.  
    Mikhailov had hoped to never have occasion to use the huge handgun, but was now comforted by the weapon’s bulk. Rudenko dropped out the magazine and checked that it was fully loaded before slamming it back into the big pistol’s grip. Then he pulled the slide partway back to make sure there was a round in the chamber. Satisfied, he slid it back into the holster.
    The two men also carried KS-K semi-automatic shotguns, as did half