The Tide (Tide Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Stealth was key, and he had no intention of being discovered prowling about the enigmatic oil drilling platform. They were deep enough in the metal behemoth that they couldn’t see without the aid of their night-vision goggles. Someone had cut the lights, and no natural light could penetrate the inky darkness this far below decks.
    With every guarded step, he wondered if there was anybody home. So far, the expedition had been nothing more than a silent meandering through abandoned crew quarters and a mess hall.
    Their handler at the CIA had warned them she could find little intelligence on the aging structure above the crashing waves in the middle of the Atlantic. It had been tucked away, off the beaten path of the shipping lanes. According to Webb, the platform had been commissioned for a drilling operation, but all the paperwork had somehow fallen through. Webb had found it in the satellite images she’d obtained through some coordinates mistakenly delivered to her. She’d told Jay the op might be dangerous, but so far, they hadn’t found anything.
    Jay and Corey were nothing but expendable cannon fodder to her, hired guns with a penchant for secrecy and covert ops. The money was good, the risk was high, and the repercussions of failure were even higher.
    “This is creepier than the mines in Syria,” Corey said.
    Jay nodded, playing the muzzle of his gun across the countertops. He recalled the bomb-making facilities Webb had sent them to investigate in the Middle Eastern country. At least there, they had recognized what the terrorist facilities were used for.
    Here they had no idea. Webb had been especially hush-hush this time around. She wouldn’t even tell them why she wanted them to investigate. Normally, Jay would have been skeptical, but the money Webb had offered them was more than enough to retire on.
    If he and Corey succeeded, Jay could buy a house on the Florida Keys, maybe St. Thomas, or Grand Cayman Island.
    Somewhere tropical.
    A loud blast of thunder rumbled outside. Maybe it was his imagination, but the platform seemed to sway in response. He pictured dark waves outside, crashing against the thick pillars and scaffolding holding the platform above the roiling ocean.
    Hell, maybe living on an island wasn’t such a great idea.
    “You know what the fuck this is?” Corey held up a plastic tube. Jay could see a couple of chemical formulas scrawled across a paper tag attached to it.
    Jay squinted at the label. “No idea. But we should probably snap a couple pictures for Webb.” He slung the strap of his rifle across his back. “Take guard for me.”
    Corey nodded and crept around the hulking lab bench in the center. He nudged the door closed and locked it. The mechanism clicked loudly, and Jay flinched.
    “Sorry, boss,” Corey said.
    Directing his camera over the chemical formulas and unidentified solutions in the lab, Jay snapped a bevy of pictures. He adjusted the second small camera strapped to his head. It provided a constant one-way visual and audio feed back to Webb. He wanted to be sure she saw everything he did back in the States.
    “I wonder if this is what Webb was interested in,” Corey said. He crept toward the rear of the lab and peered through the porthole. “Shit.”
    Jay’s heart stopped. He dropped the camera and spun, raising his rifle. “What is it?”
    “Come look.”
    Jay joined him and peered through the thick glass of the porthole. Before them stood huge steel drums. Pipes snaked between the drums with gauges reporting pressure, oxygen concentration, and other gas levels.
    “What the hell is that thing?”
    In his mind’s eye, Jay pictured one of the courses he’d taken during his year-long training at the CIA before his first assignment. An image of a similar contraption in his biological and chemical warfare class returned to him. “It’s a large-scale bioreactor.”
    Corey tilted his head. “What’s it for?”
    “Typically, it’s used in the pharmaceutical and