Zombie Team Alpha Read Online Free PDF Page B

finger, smearing the water around and creating an annoying low-pitched stuttering noise on the polished surface of the mahogany tabletop.
    “If we do this,” he said, “we do it alone and our way this time, Mr. Wayland.”
    “I have been informed—” Wayland stopped. He glanced at the man seated at the head of the conference table. The man was someone Cutter had not met until today. The guy had a round face with protruding cheekbones, which Cutter thought made the guy look a little like a chimpanzee in an expensive suit. That made sitting there and taking Wayland seriously a real challenge. Chimp-man was obviously in charge and pulling Wayland’s strings, which was a bit of a mindset shift. Cutter had always thought that John Wayland had been the man in charge all along, given his exclusive involvement in their past dealings. But it appeared, Cutter realized, that he might have been wrong in that assessment. He had seen Chimp-man before on cable TV. The guy had been on a business channel, but Cutter knew little else other than the man had thought of himself as a player on Wall Street. Gold was what he remembered the guy being into. There was something about gold mining in the guy’s background, but what that was, he did not know. Given that the failed mission to Ecuador had been to retrieve an artifact from inside a gold mine—a real Indiana Jones kind of job—it all had to be connected somehow.
    Who are you? Cutter had asked himself, and no matter how hard he flogged his brain, he couldn’t recall the Chimp-man’s name or where the connections all lined up. Pieces were missing from the puzzle. Partly, that intrigued him as well as watching Wayland squirm a little.
    Chimp-man nodded, and Wayland started to say again, “I have been informed—”
    Cutter held up a hand and glanced at Chimp-man. “I’m going to cut things short here and assume that, by bringing us this far, you are not planning on taking ‘no’ for our final answer. So, if you can pay the freight, the girl can come along for the ride, much as that troubles me.” He winked at her again, and she sneered. “But she takes all her orders from me, okay? I’m not going to compromise there. So are we all going to be all right with that?”
    He smirked at her, and she frowned back, letting him know just how easily he could get under her skin anytime he wanted to— or she is bright enough to let me pretend I can. Cutter figured if they actually took the gig, he’d have to sort it out somewhere down the road.
    “But not him.” Cutter waggled a finger at John Wayland. “That guy stays here. He is not to be involved in any shape, form, no how, and no way. Got it?”
    Cutter set his hands down on the tabletop and stared down Wayland, wondering again if the last mission they had been involved in together had been a setup from the beginning. That mission had ended with Sharon’s death and no goddamned artifact. Or had it? Could that little weasel have hidden the success from him somehow? Cutter had never quite figured that out. He’d had other far more pressing things on his mind at the time. His wife. Who’d just died. And yet, here he was, back at the negotiating table being asked to do it all over again.
    There was an old adage about enemies and how close they should be kept, but Cutter also knew that whatever he said next, Wayland would get involved somehow—worm his way in, so to speak. It was just how that guy seemed to operate. So whatever was going on, or going to go on, Cutter would make sure to extract a little payback from the man before this was all said and done. And that would be much easier to do if he had cause to do so. If not, he’d trump something up.
    “Agreed,” John Wayland said, nodding almost a bit too easily.
    Really? Cutter suppressed the surprise he felt, or thought he did. He glanced at the tabletop and back up again.
    “Your fee, Mr. Cutter, will be two million US. Half on acceptance of our arrangement, the rest