Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero Read Online Free PDF Page A

stare, and then slowly smile at me. It was not a friendly expression. He smiled, I thought, like a shark.
    “You’re an interesting fellow,” Homza told me that day, out in the hall. I knew then that he would keep watching.
    •   •   •
    NOW, IN THE COPTER, THE MEMORY DIED AWAY AND I GREW AWARE AGAIN of static in my earbuds. Perhaps the dead were trying to speak. Who could tell? Who can predict science? The pilot was pointing and we all craned to see through the thick white mist and light falling rain, an October drizzle mixing with a few flakes of confused snow.
    Ahead I saw a small wooden shack with a long porch and a concave outhouse, both set inside a tramped down area of grass near a thin, long, elliptical lake, with ripples on the surface from the drizzle. I saw a parked ATV. I saw a pile of canvas-topped gear. I saw two bodies—lumps on the ground—growing clearer in the drizzle as we approached.
    Eddie said, “This is bad.”
    I saw a lone red fox trotting off in the distance, moving in a sideways gait, absorbed into mist.
    My dread for the Harmons was a cold clenching, a grinding in the pit of my belly.
    The copter circled first, in smaller and smaller circles, to check if someone with a gun was hiding in one of the low areas between hummocks.
    Merlin’s voice was in my earbuds, quiet and serious.
    “Those were the parents in the grass. Where are the other two, Kelley and Clay?”
    “The cabin. Gotta be,” Eddie said, staring at the buildings.
    “Unless they left,” said Merlin.
    “Unless it’s an ambush,” I said, reaching for my gun.

THREE
    “The shooter could still be here,” I said.
    Look anywhere except at the bodies, and the tundra presented a subtle, sweeping beauty; lovely, quiet, but as mute and indifferent as the huge snowy owl peering at us from fifty yards away. The rotors stopped moving. I had the door open and my shotgun out in case we took fire. The bodies out there, close up, lay in the loose-limbed tangled attitude with which the dead announce themselves.
    Maybe the other two are still alive.
    “Merlin, Eddie, and I should go in first. We have some experience in . . . uh . . . this.”
    Merlin nodded. “You Marines take the door. We’ll spread out, hit the back and side. Stay low,” he warned his deputies, two big, nervous men from Minnesota, cold-weather farm boys who’d found their birthplaces too boring, rule bound, or confining. One thickly dark haired, named Steve Rice; the other bald and bearded, Luther Oz.
    All of us wore Kevlar vests. The deputies had their Mossbergs out. Dr. Sengupta hung back in the chopper, wanting to go but waiting for an all-clear. The pilot snapped off the safety on his sidearm, a Beretta .45, but I told him to stay put. We needed him to get home.
    Eddie and I hit the ground fast, separated, and, communicating with hand signals, stayed low and quick-ran toward the cabin, just like we would have done in a potential enemy village back in Afghanistan, expecting fire. Anyone inside would have heard the chopper.
    Did I feel someone watching from the cabin, or was it my imagination?
    Fifty feet to go
.
    I’d not protested when Merlin made us sign some legal paper . . . “cooperation agreement between federal agency X and local law enforcement” . . . on the way here. The admiral would be angry, but I’d taken him at his word when he said, “
I value your judgment
.” Merlin needed us to have a legal, official role in case later on, he said, “The issue comes up in court, Joe.”
    I was aware of Merlin bending quickly over the two bodies—man and woman—sprawled amid the heather and sedges. He sought a pulse and my heart plunged into my belly when he rose and kept going.
    Ten feet to the cabin. Is Kelley in there? Is Clay with her?
    Something just moved at the window.
    I hit the ground, rolled sideways to avoid a direct shot, and wriggled forward. The ground smelled of rain, voided bowels, and sweetish blood. Cold drops ran