Page 17 of The Lazarus Protocol

“You don’t know what she wants,” Marina pointed out.

“So I’ll ask her.”

“And if this isn’t just part of the exercise we were hired for?”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.” Adam took off his night vision goggles. “Count to three and give me lights again.”

“…two…one.”

Adam eased the door open. “We’re coming out!”

He yelled it in English but didn’t know what language these people spoke or who they were. The guy who owned the company they’d been hired by was Polish and only visited this facility once a year—according to what they’d been told. They’d done everything through an intermediary.

Adam emerged into a courtyard with the main building behind him and two long wings on either side, leaving a forecourt in the center lined on the left with a couple of cars and a van.

First thing he saw was Ice, his expression distinctly unhappy. Yeah, Adam wouldn’t be either if he was being used as a hostage.

The woman stood behind Ice, wearing skinny black jeans and a brown leather jacket. Long dark hair with thick heavy bangs that touched her eyebrows. A stud glinted in the side of her nose as she shoved Ice forward a step, toward Adam, a pistol pressed against the underside of Ice’s chin.

She stared at them as Adam kept a steady pace toward her, his gun angled down but ready—and she knew it. Sig versus beanbag rounds? Yeah, this was gonna be great.

He had one member of his team with him. A security guard under their protection. Above them, or behind him—where he couldn’t see without turning to look—the helicopter hovered. Angling its guns at them, probably. He didn’t relish the idea of being shot in the back, but dying alongside his teammates was the best way he could think of to go.

Sorry, Roxie. His sister had been a US Marine, and so had her husband. Now they were feds. They would understand.

Adam stopped a car’s length from her. “You’re in my way.”

Ice got himself into this, and the second Adam showed concern for his friend, this woman would know she held all the cards.

“Yes, I am.” She shifted her weight from one heeled boot to the other. “I’ll take the drives. Everything you downloaded from inside. Then I’ll be out of your way.”

“You have ID? ’Cause we’re not supposed to turn the program over to anyone but them.”

Adam glanced over his shoulder at the chopper, the rotor blades pulsing overhead. The craft was angled to the right, so the pilot and a guy in the doorway—slid open—pointing what was probably a 50-cal at them. He turned back to the woman. “So …who are you guys?”

A tendon in Ice’s jaw flexed, and his hand reached for his pocket.

The woman sneered. “I’m the person who is going to kill you and all your friends if you don’t give me what I want.”

Ice slid out a pen-shaped device and clicked it, pointing it up at the chopper. Adam caught a glimpse of green laser, and at the same time lifted his shotgun and fired at her face—the only clear shot.

The beanbag round hit Ice’s shoulder, and he fell back, along with the woman.

The sound of the helicopter rotors got louder. It swept toward them, and the 50-cal sprayed bullets that hammered the asphalt. Adam rammed into the two of them and slammed the woman’s head on the ground as more heavy rounds pounded around them.

“Go!” He didn’t have time to turn before Dan smacked into him, dragging him up and shoving him along. Getting him out of the line of fire.

Adam got Ice up, aware the guy was now bleeding from two places.

As a group they raced for the closest vehicle, and Adam ducked between them, getting low. But they weren’t going to be out of sight of the gunner on that chopper. The gunner would just spray bullets at the car. Eventually, he’d hit one of them.

Adam called over his shoulder, “The guard?”

Dan ducked down right as bullets slapped the roof of the car over their heads. “Square in the chest. He’s gone.”

Adam hurried around the front end of the vehicle. “We need a way to do more than just distract this chopper, or we’ll never get out of here.”

He kept to the shadows, trying to stay where the helicopter couldn’t get to them, then stopped with his back up against the van’s rear doors.