Prime (33 page)

Shanghai, China

Three days was long enough—too long, really.

Rainer wasn’t coming back. The rogue Delta
operator had failed, and given the resources he’d taken into the field, that
was a frightening prospect indeed.

The telephone trilled once, twice…

Damn
it! They know they need to pick up on the first ring
.

“Reinhart.”

“What took you so long?” He didn’t wait for
an answer.
“Never mind.
You’ve just been promoted;
congratulations.”

“What?”

God,
the man is thick
. “Rainer’s
not coming back. He’s either dead or—God forbid—captured. Either way, you’re
running the show now. First order of business is damage control.”

“Got it; no loose ends. I’ll make sure there’s
nothing that ties us to him.”

To his credit, Reinhart seemed to grasp what
was being asked of him, but was tidying up after Rainer going to be good
enough?

The whole situation had been a farce from the
beginning. He had no interest in plague research; that had been Katherine’s
passion, and the only reason he’d even started down that road was to honor her
memory; he’d thought that perhaps if he could salvage something useful from her
work, her death wouldn’t feel like such a waste.

Sentimentality
is for suckers. It’s time to write this whole fiasco off.

“Good. And while you’re at it, I think it’s
time to dissolve our partnership with the Chinese.”

“When you say ‘dissolve?’”
Reinhart let the question hang.

“Complete liquidation of our assets.”

“Clear as crystal.”

Reinhart hung up first, which would have been
a further irritant to his employer under any other circumstances, but the
breach of protocol barely registered. Things were finally looking up.

He had never been comfortable with the idea
of dealing with the triad. Criminals were so unsavory, and while the
partnership had been useful for procuring test subjects and generating
untraceable revenue, the risk of exposure was just too great.

Besides, that line of research was a dead
end—literally. Richard Ridley had no use for dead ends. He was going to live
forever.

###

Dear Reader,

You have just finished the Chess Team origins novel book and I wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading. I hope you have enjoyed the journey and that you will come back for more adventures. If you did enjoy the book, please show your support by
posting a review at Amazon.com
. The Amazon website works on algorithms, meaning the more people review my books, the more Amazon will recommend them to other readers. And the more people buy my books, the more I get to write them, which is a good thing for both of us (assuming you enjoyed the book). While some authors pay for five star reviews, I'm depending on you, the actual reader, to voice your opinion. And while you're there, feel free to pick up the next Chess Team books, PULSE, INSTINCT, THRESHOLD, RAGNAROK and OMEGA. There are also eight novellas bridging THRESHOLD and RAGNAROK! Hey, I’m an author, shilling my books is part of the job.

Thank you!

-- Jeremy Robinson

PROJECT
NEMESIS

Available
now!
Click here to purchase.

DESCRIPTION:

Jon Hudson, lead
investigator for the Department of Homeland Security's Fusion Center-P, thinks
his job is a joke. While other Fusion Centers focus on thwarting terrorist
activity, Hudson's division is tasked with handling paranormal threats to
national security, of which there have been zero during his years at the DHS.
When yet another Sasquatch sighting leads to a research facility disguised as
an abandoned Nike missile site in the back woods of Maine, Hudson's job becomes
deadly serious.

Hudson and the
local Sherriff, Ashley Collins, suddenly find themselves on the run from a
ruthless ex-Special Forces security team, but the human threat is short-lived
as something very much not-human destroys the facility and heads for
civilization, leaving only a single clue behind--a name scrawled in blood:
Nemesis. Working with his team at Fusion Center-P, Sherriff Collins and a surly
helicopter pilot named Woodstock, Hudson pursues the creature known as Nemesis,
attempts to uncover the corporate secrets behind its creation and accidental
release and tries to comprehend why several clues lead to a murdered little
girl named
Maigo.

But as the
body-count explodes, along with the monster's size, it quickly becomes clear
that nothing short of a full military response can slow Nemesis's progress.
Coordinating with every branch of the U.S. military, Hudson simultaneously
searches for clues about Nemesis's origins and motivations, and leads the
counterattack that will hopefully stop the monster before it reaches Boston and
its one million residents.

Witness the birth
of a legend as Jeremy Robinson, bestselling author of
SecondWorld
and Ragnarok, combines the pacing of Matthew Reilly with the mystery of James
Rollins and creates the first iconic American
Kaiju
*
story since King Kong. 
Includes original creature
designs by legendary Godzilla artist, Matt Frank.

*
Kaiju
is Japanese for "strange beast." The genre
includes classic monsters such as Godzilla,
Gamera
,
Mothra
,
Rodan
and King
Ghidorah
. 

1

Now

"You have
got to be kidding me!" I shout to myself when Def
Leppard's
Pour Some Sugar on Me blares from my pickup truck's feeble speakers. If the
flashback to my childhood wasn't bad enough, every thump of the bass drum
releases a grating rattle. Whoever owned the beat up, faded red Chevy S-10
before me blew nearly every speaker.
Probably some teenager.
Man, I'd like to punch that kid in the face. Of course, right now I'd like to
punch every radio DJ within a hundred miles, too.

I tap the radio's "seek" button. Boston.
More
than a Feeling.

Again.
Jane's Addiction.
Pets.

One more time.
Aerosmith.
Love in
an Elevator.

I punch, literally punch, the radio's power button, but all I manage to
do is spin the volume up. Steven Tyler howls in my ear. The vibrating speakers
make him sound like a smoker with an artificial voice box. I tap the button
more carefully, despite the racket, and silence fills the cab once more.

My neck cracks as I roll it, releasing my music-induced tension.
"Welcome to Maine," I say, doing my best DJ impression, "home of
the seventies, eighties, nineties, and...
that's
it."

I should probably invest in a new stereo system someday. Hell, I should
probably buy a car with anti-lock brakes, eighteen airbags and all the other
things most people care about. But that would require an effort beyond my
actual desire to replace Betty.

Yeah, I named my truck. Betty was the name of my first girlfriend. Like
this truck, she had a grating voice and a high maintenance personality. Despite
girlfriend-Betty being easier on the eyes, I stayed with her for only six
months. Pickup truck-Betty talks less.
And doesn't complain
when I turn her on.
We've been together for going on five years now, and
even though she's rough around the edges, she's just about the only thing in my
life that makes any sense.

I glance in the rearview. The road behind me is as empty as the road
ahead. I catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror and shake my head. I don't
look like a DHS agent.
DHS—Department of Homeland Security.
Most of the people working for the DHS are straight-shooting, tight-ass suits.
An inordinate percentage of the men have mustaches, like they're 70s porn stars
or 1900s Englishmen ready to engage in some old fashioned fisticuffs.

Of course, I am sporting the beginning of a beard myself, but that's
less of a style choice and more of a result of my ancient shaver, pilfered from
my father when I moved out ten years ago, crapping out a week ago. I think it
looks good, but if any of my superiors saw it, I'd probably get a good talking
to.
Proper dress.
Appearances matter.
That kind of stuff.
It's a good thing my superiors don't
give a rat's ass about me or my department. I don't think I've seen or heard
from someone with a higher pay scale than mine in the last six months.

I adjust the maroon beanie cap covering my crew-cut brown hair. The
tight-fitting knit hat has become a staple of my wardrobe, and it is a style
choice, mostly because it disguises the fact that my hair is slowly retreating
like soldiers from my muddy battlefield. I think it makes me look like The
Edge, from U2, a band of the eighties, nineties, and today that I actually
wouldn't mind hearing on the radio.

My
smartphone
—which is really a company
phone—cuts through the silence, saying, "Turn right," in a far from
sexy, yet feminine voice that is the closest thing I've had to a girlfriend in
a year. Other than Betty, I mean. I spot the dirt road up ahead and turn onto
the uneven surface. The road is covered in half buried stones the size of
grapefruits and rows of hardened ridges formed by water, which, in combination
with Betty's rigid suspension, bounces me around like I'm on a grocery-store
horsey ride, having a seizure.

Twenty minutes and a headache later, I arrive at my destination. I pull
the truck into the lone parking space, put it in park and kill the engine. The
car door creaks as it opens, allowing the outside world to wash over me. Warm
summer air chases away the chill of Betty's air conditioning, which works like
a champ. The smell of pine and earth and, I think, water, fills my nose.

It's been too long.

Once upon a time, I'd been a real salt of the Earth type. I camped,
fished, hunted, slept under the stars and smoked a
doobie
or two. It's been at least ten years of indoor and pot-free living since then.
Thank God I'm not in drug enforcement. I'd be horrible at it, mostly because I
think I'd let
all of the
potheads walk.

The small cabin is on loan to me from Ted Watson, one of two people I
actually oversee. I'm supposed to hire two more team members out of whatever
law enforcement branch I can entice them from, but I haven't really bothered.
Seeing as how every case I have is like a bad episode of The X-Files, but
without the actual monsters, aliens and government conspiracies, I just don't
see the need to deal with more personalities.

Not that Ted is hard to deal with. He's kind of like a grown up version
of Chunk, from The
Goonies
—chubby, funny and he
occasionally breaks into a
jiggly
dance. He's also
brilliant with computers and electronics. I'm pretty sure he got posted to my
team because, like me, he doesn't exactly fit the company profile. Anne Cooper,
on the other hand, does. Cooper, who I call Coop, mostly because it bothers
her, is a straight-laced administrator who does things by the book, even though
so little of our mandate is in any book not written by a fiction author, a
lunatic or both.

They've been with me for three years now, manning the home front—a
house perched atop Prospect Hill in Beverly, Massachusetts. From the top floor
you can see the ocean and, on a clear day, Boston. It's a nice place to live
and work, but it's not the great outdoors.

Believe it or not, I'm not on vacation. I'm working. Watson's family
just happened to have a cabin in the area, and I felt like being nostalgic for
a night before beginning my "investigation."

With a shake of my head, I push away thoughts of the ridiculous day
I'll have tomorrow and hop up the steps to the front door. Despite the apparent
disuse of the cabin, the porch wood feels firm beneath my feet. Maybe it's faux
worn, I wonder, like those beat-up looking hutches made for rich old ladies who
want to have rustic kitchens without the actual rust.

I dig into my pocket for the key while scanning the area. Most of the
trees are pines, though a few maples line the dirt road, their leaves glowing
lime green in the afternoon sun. There's no mailbox or even a number on the
cabin. As I pull the key from my pocket, I lean back and peer down the road.
Nothing.
And there wasn't a single house on the way here,
which suits me, because while I don't have any
doobies
,
I do have a twelve-pack buried in a cooler full of ice.

I'm not supposed to drink on the job, but I'm not technically working
right now and I'm pretty good at warding off hangovers. Besides, I'm pretty
sure that even drunk off my ass, I'll be able to figure out the mystery of
Sasquatch.

Yeah, Sasquatch.

Fucking Sasquatch.

I work for the Department of Homeland Security, and I'm investigating a
rash of
squatch
sightings in the northern woods of
Boonie
-town, Maine. When the DHS was created in 2002, in
the wake of 9-11, the bill was loaded with "riders," tacked-on provisions
that wouldn't normally pass if they weren't attached to something guaranteed to
pass, like the creation of the DHS. Riders usually have nothing to do with the
actual bill, but the one that created my division did. The DHS has seventy
Fusion Centers around the country. They're hubs where
intel
and resources from federal and local law enforcement agencies can be pooled in
an effort to openly share information between departments—something that might
have helped avoid the events of 9-11. Each hub has its own lead investigator
tasked with investigations that affect multiple law enforcement agencies, and
that are a threat to national security. That's me, lead investigator, except my
Fusion Center has yet to be involved in any serious investigation. Fusion
Centers are most commonly identified by the city they're in, such as Fusion
Center – Boston, my closest neighbor in the DHS, otherwise known as "those
assholes in
Beantown
".

The Fusion Center I head up is known as Fusion Center – P. The P is for
"paranormal".
Seriously.
The supernatural
paranoid who added the rider believed the end of the world was nigh and that it
would be a supernatural event. That's also why we're located in Beverly, Mass,
next door neighbor to Salem, Mass. Salem being the apparent gateway to hell and
home to the gruesome Salem witch trials, as well as scores of modern witches
like Susan Beacon, who claimed she caused the "perfect storm" with a
curse. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't praise the good Lord she
made that claim before my stint at the FC-P began or I would have had to
investigate it as a threat against the United States.

FC-P is the seventy-first Fusion Center and it doesn't technically
exist. You won't find us in any public documentation. Despite its creation, the
FC-P is pretty much an embarrassment. That's why the 'Paranormal' on our IDs
was reduced to the letter P.

The deadbolt unlocks smoothly, barely making a sound. I push the door
open and step in. The dim room holds two comfortable looking rocking chairs, a
dining room table, a wood stove and what appears to be a large, black bean bag.
I try the lights, but nothing happens.