Read Swords of Exodus [Dead Six 02] for Free Online Page A

stay on St. Carl. The rock shrimp really is good this time of year. You should try some. My treat. And then have a nice trip home.”
    “Your brother said you would react like this.” She didn’t even look at me. She placed the envelope on the table and spun it. “I didn’t pick you out of the crowd. You look nothing at all like him. I was expecting a man of greater . . . stature.”
    I paused. That would explain how she found me. Son of a bitch.
    I was a foster kid. I said as I sat back down. The envelope sat between us. Ling didn’t speak. I had been correct in my earlier assessment, she was a hard one. “How do you know Bob?” I asked, because of course, of all my brothers, it had to have been him. For some reason she didn’t strike me as the type of person that ran in the same social circles as my straitlaced, honorable, FBI Agent older brother.
    She opened the envelope and pulled out a torn paper napkin. It had been scribbled on with black ink. She shoved it toward me. “He gave this to me, right before he was chased down, beaten unconscious, and taken away. That was . . . ” she theatrically looked at her watch. “. . . seventy-two hours ago. I do not know if he is alive or dead.”
    “What?” I snatched the napkin from her. I recognized Bob’s blocky handwriting.

    HECTOR—NEED HELP. REMEMBER Q?
    THEY KNOW.
    DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME.
    HE IS IN NORTH GAP.
    HE IS THE KEY.
    YOU MUST SAVE HIM.

    The bottom half of the napkin was missing, torn off.
    Q? Quagmire. Quagmire, Nevada. They know? Eddie’s dead. His organization is destroyed. Gordon . . . The shadow government types. They must have found out about Bob helping us in Quagmire.
    The Quagmire Incident had made national headlines the year before. Everybody knew about how a civilian jet, owned by billionaire philanthropist Eduard Montalban, had allegedly been shot down by a surface-to-air missile. That part was actually true. I knew because I was the one who had fired the missile. The rest of the story had never made it to the news, nothing about the gun battle with a bunch of secret government agents in an abandoned prison work camp ever made it beyond the usual conspiracy-theory sites. Except all of that was true as well. Bob had been there for every bit of it.
    “Who’s in North Gap? What does that mean?”
    “North Gap is a decommissioned US Air Force radar station in the State of Montana. It is now used by a covert organization within the United States government. It serves as a secret prison and interrogation center for high-value, high-risk subjects. I’m here to offer you a trade, Mr. Lorenzo. You help me rescue someone from this facility, and I’ll give you all of the information I can to help you find your brother. We will lend you our full assistance and allow you to use our intelligence network for this end.”
    “What happened to my brother? Where was he when he was taken? Why was he with you?”
    Ling folded her hands neatly on the table. “Do we have a deal or not, Mr. Lorenzo? I do not have much time.”
    I could feel the anger bubbling to the surface, the same killing anger that I had used as a tool for so long, the same evil that I had thrown into the deepest, darkest well of my mind to be locked up safely for the last six months. “How about you tell me where my brother is right now or I cut your eyes out?” Her men sensed the change, and started to rise from the bar, hands moving under their shirts.
    Ling didn’t flinch. She casually raised her hand, and her goons grudgingly lowered themselves. The rest of the patrons kept eating, unaware that for a split second the room had teetered on the edge of a gunfight.
    “Read your brother’s words. That isn’t what he wants. This is bigger than your brother. Greater than you, than me, than all of us.” She spoke with the sincerity of a true believer, and those were the most dangerous kind. Ling produced a smartphone, tapped the screen a couple of times, then laid it on the table