BRAINRUSH 02 - The Enemy of My Enemy Read Online Free PDF Page A

but for some reason his body refused to respond to any signals from his brain. His eyes wouldn’t open and his limbs were nothing but a distant numbness. He realized he wasn’t breathing. How odd. There was a repetitive irritation at his chest, but that was fading, too. There was no pain. External sounds were dissolving…
    I’m dying.
    A flush of sadness as images of those he cared about danced across his final thoughts.  Francesca—I should have married her. Sarafina—so young, so innocent. His best friends Marshall, Tony, and L—
    A jolt sent a burst of pins and needles through his consciousness.
    “Clear!”
    Jake’s brain was still trying to compute what he’d just heard when a second jolt shot through his body. Pain enveloped his senses. His chest convulsed into a cough.
    His eyes twitched open.
    Bradley hovered above him, a defibrillator paddle in each hand. “We couldn’t let you die just yet, Jake, now could we?”
    Francesca leaned into view, her relief palpable. “ Dio mio, I thought I lost you.” She caressed his face.
    Jake’s mind cleared, and his body ached all over. Sarafina lunged and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Daddy!” she cried. Her real father was dead, and she’d started calling Jake her dad after the events in Venice and Afghanistan. He embraced it.
    “My girls,” Jake said, looking at them, knowing they’d been targeted because of him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
    The lie tasted bitter on his tongue.

 
     
     
    Chapter 8
     
     
    The mountains of Northern Nevada
     
    T he top-secret underground facility was situated in a remote location in the mountains of northern Nevada. It had been carved out of the remains of an abandoned gold mine nearly sixty years ago when fear of nuclear attack prompted the government to build blast shelters across the country. Several of the sites had been maintained and updated over the years, including this one. In a flurry of recent activity, the normally quiet site had been converted to a research facility. The few drab structures above ground belied the fifty-five-thousand-square-foot space that existed one hundred feet below the surface.
      Sole access to its depths was through a secured forty-foot-wide blast door, carved into the side of a rocky escarpment at the end of a natural canyon. The facility was home to two dozen scientists and technicians, each of whom had undergone extensive background checks. An elite United States Air Force security team guarded the site.
     “You’re missing the point, Fester,” the chief scientist, known as Doc, quipped to the USAF lieutenant colonel. “Area 51 is two hundred fifty miles south of here. It’s received so much publicity over the past half-century that no agency in its right mind would ever conduct serious research there. Conspiracy quacks have even established tent cities in the hills around the place, just hoping to catch a glimpse of the next alien encounter.” 
    The sixty-year-old scientist scratched the salt-and-pepper beard that covered his face. His wavy silver hair spilled to just above the collar of his shirt. Beneath frameless spectacles, his light blue eyes twinkled as he ribbed his military counterpart.
    “So, when the government set us up here, we decided to call it Area 52. Get it?”
    “I don’t like it,” the new arrival announced. Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Brown stood ramrod straight on his five-foot-six frame, as if by doing so he might appear taller. For a man in his late forties, his muscles bulged impressively under his USAF dress uniform. He had a bald pate that shimmered under the banks of fluorescent lights. A pronounced brow shaded a pair of deep-set brown eyes that were permanently ringed by dark circles.  
    With tight lips, the colonel added, “And if you ever call me Fester again, I’m gonna take that silly-lookin’ pipe right outta your mouth and shove it—” He caught himself when he heard a muffled