Zombie Team Alpha Read Online Free PDF Page A

accounts. And if you do not agree to come along with us today, your little ‘vacation’ here will come to an abrupt end.”
    Cutter reached into his robe’s right pocket and felt the roll of twenties. They were probably all he had left other than the boat. He massaged the bills between his nicotine-stained fingers.
    Not yet.
    He stood. “Screw you, Morgan,” he groused as he retightened the belt on his robe. Then he headed for the exit with his bunny slippers scuffing loudly against the rough concrete.

 
    ~4~
    THAT ATLANTA BUSINESS
     
    Cutter didn’t like the look of the two men sitting across the conference room table from him. Assholes. Something about them rubbed him entirely the wrong way. While he was not opposed to being rubbed the right way, or even the right way when it was oh-so-wrong, these guys would not be his first choice to do it. And for that matter, they would not even be on the list.
    Perhaps it had been the four-hour flight he’d just endured, mixed with an hour-long taxi ride into the heart of the city that had set him on edge. Perhaps it was his anger with himself over his final capitulation to Morgan and Gauge that had allowed the trip to begin in the first place. Or, it could just be that the last time he’d worked with the guy directly across the table from him, the mission to locate a mysterious artifact deep in a mine in Ecuador had been a complete and utter Charlie Foxtrot. Whatever it was the was prickling him, he was already nearing the getting-ready-to-walk-out-of-the-room mode, catch the next flight back to where the sun shined brightest, find a fat bottle and a native girl, and crawl inside both.
    But he owed it to Morgan to listen to these guys— for a little bit, anyway.
    Her arguments had persuaded him to go to Atlanta and hear these guys out. Hell no had he made it easy on her, but she basically had put his balls in a vise when she had drained his bank accounts. So, while she fully deserved his righteous wrath, he had to play nice, for now— which sucked.
    Damn her .
    While they had flown to Atlanta, she’d briefed him on the operation and the similarities with the Ecuadorian job—the one that had gone south and led the death of his wife, Sharon. Morgan had also dangled the validation of Sharon’s theories in front of him, too, but he questioned how that could possibly be, given the vastly different geographic locations in which these similar artifacts they’d been discussing had been discovered.
    Maybe, though, just maybe, she had a point—a small one.
    Gauge had returned to Texas to begin preparations in anticipation of them taking the new gig. Which to Gauge, meant purchasing and assembling the biggest guns and explosives and other armaments that a large advance payment would allow for. Morgan is betting big on this one , he’d thought on the plane ride. He didn’t quite have the same certainty of purpose, as he hadn’t yet decided if he would even take the job. So, in his mind, Gauge was already acting a bit prematurely. But that was Gauge. The man just liked guns—the bigger, the badder, the better. And, although he still wasn’t committed yet to the cause, Cutter was suspicious that both Morgan and Gauge were thinking the briefing in Atlanta was more of a formality than a necessity. Those two were planning to take the gig no matter what. Maybe even if he refused, as well.
    Let’s see about that.
    He still had serious doubts that he could go through with it and wondered if he’d freeze up and lose his focus like he had in Ecuador. He didn’t want to make another bad decision that would get more people kill. Hell, he wondered if he even would be able to step into the darkness of another mineshaft ever again. Regardless of all that, he wanted to meet whomever it was that was bankrolling the little adventure—if only to look him or her or them in the eyes and figure out why in the hell they wanted one of those damned artifacts in the first place. It all seemed a