The Project 04 - Black Harvest

Ronnie with him. Ronnie cried out again. Nick got to his feet. They dragged Ronnie through the fence. Selena ran backwards behind them, firing at their pursuers. Lamont kept up covering fire from the truck. Spent casings littered the ground around him.
    They heaved Ronnie into the back of the truck. Korov clambered in beside him. For a big man, he moved fast. Lamont fired a last burst and climbed in on the other side.
    Nick got behind the wheel and started the engine. Selena scrambled into the passenger side. A window shattered. More rounds punched into the truck, hard, metallic sounds. He gunned the Suburban and headed away from the compound and hoped nothing hit the gas tank. The rear view mirror filled with bright spots like deadly fireflies in the night. Behind them, Building Four burned with sullen ferocity. Smaller fires marked the vehicles they'd destroyed.
    Nick drove into the dark and prayed he didn't run into a wash or a stand of cactus. When he figured they were far enough away he turned on the lights. He pictured the map of Texas in his mind and drove across the plain, headed for the nearest road. They'd left the second vehicle, the Barrett, the launcher. Sooner or later Lodge and Dansinger would figure it out.
    His back was numb. His arms didn't work as well as he would have liked. Nick heard Korov in the back seat.
    "You were shot. Are you wounded?"
    "I'll be okay. The vest stopped it. Thirty layers of Kevlar, it'll stop a .308. Usually. Felt like Barry Bonds slugged me with his bat. Lamont, How's Ronnie?"
    "I've got the bleeding stopped. He took one in his right leg. Got the bone."
    "Conscious?"
    A hoarse croak from the back seat. "Yeah, I'm conscious. Hurts some."
    "Run faster next time."
    "Speak for yourself, Kemo Sabe." Ronnie turned to Korov. "Thanks for dragging me out of there."
    Korov shrugged. "You would have done the same, nyet? It is what we do."
    Ronnie nodded. "Yeah. It's what we do."
    The Texas night stretched ahead of them. A rabbit darted away in the lights.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

    Wendell Lodge was enraged. He was dismayed. It was bad that the stockpile of the virus had been destroyed, but it was only a setback. In the end, an annoying inconvenience. More could be produced. There would always be crops.
    The fact Demeter had been discovered was what dismayed him. It was the rest of it that enraged him. He'd traced the vehicle left behind to Sheppard AFB. From there he'd followed the trail to a dead end. The RPG launcher was standard military issue. The plasma cutter found near the fence was not standard issue. Few could get their hands on that. The heavy Barrett rifle was another sign of professionals. Who had the capability, the balls, to do something like this? An all out assault on American soil?
    Lodge knew. He felt the rage building. The President's pet covert ops team, Harker and her Project. It was just the kind of thing they were good at. No one else would dare. Harker was always meddling. She'd meddled in the wrong place this time. He would put an end to her interference once and for all. She was playing hardball. Two could play that game. But he needed to be careful.
    Lodge swiveled around in the red leather executive chair he favored and studied the view through the French doors of his study. It was a fine morning, a pleasant view, the Virginia countryside green with spring. Dogwoods bloomed on the landscaped rolling lawn in back of his colonial home. Ordered flowerbeds shouted with color. Normally the view pleased him. Not today.
    In the closed world of the CIA, no one rose to his level by accident. Lodge was, after all, a spy. He thought like a spy. He understood the game, how it worked. He had resources Harker didn't know about.
    Someone had tipped her off. There weren't many who could have done that. Lodge was certain she could not have found out about Demeter in any other way. The deaths of Campbell and the others and the events in Greece had sent her after the urn. But she could never have discovered Dansinger's involvement or Demeter without help.
    He would find out how she knew and plug the leak. He would take her and her team of trouble makers out of the picture for good. A plan began to form in his mind. The close bonding of the members of Harker's team was a weak spot, a vulnerability. He could exploit that vulnerability and use it to destroy them. He'd start with the weakest link.
    Lodge had been waiting for this for a long time.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

    Bob Elroy was