Firestorm: Book III of the Wildfire Saga Read Free

fully mobilized and ready to depart.”
    “Thank you, Stefan.   I shall be at the main entrance momentarily.   Please load my things.”
    “At once, my lord.”
    “Oh, make sure we have a decent meal on the flight.   I’m famished.”
    “Of course, my lord.”
    Reginald looked back to the monitor showing the underground lab, buried deep under the Swiss Alps.   He tried to imagine the tons of rock and earth separating the main compound and the lab.   You’re somewhere down there…poor bastards, he thought, staring at the floor.   Ah, well…business is business.
    Reginald pushed the button.   The screen flickered with static and the scientists paused in their work, looking at each.   Reginald watched tools and vials tumble from shelves, then watched the shelves tumble from walls as people fell to the floor.   The lights flickered and the transmission died.
    He stood as he felt the faintest echo of a tremble through the floor.   “And that is that."   He picked up the two silver suitcases full of serum and strolled from his lavish office.
    A guard waiting just outside his door took the proffered suitcases.   “Stay with me, I don’t want those cases out of my sight.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Let’s go,” Reginald said as he strode down the hallway, adjusting his tie.   “I’ve a plane to catch.”
    “Business trip, my lord?” asked the guard.
    “Not quite,” Reginald smirked.   “I’m going home.”

C HAPTER 3

    The Swiss Alps.

    L IEUTENANT C OOPER B RAATEN , U NITED States Navy, commanding what remained of SEAL Team 9, stepped up to the open ramp on the modified V-22 Osprey.   Cruising at an altitude of close to 23,000 feet, the twin-engine special ops variant soared high above the Alps.   Safely ensconced in his HAHO suit, Cooper heard only a muffled silence as the Osprey sliced through the thin air.   He checked his wrist screen one more time, depicting a drone's-eye view of their   drop zone.
    Somewhere down there on one of the snow-covered, moonlit slopes, Reginald waited.   The man who’d orchestrated the biological weapon attack on the United States, the nuclear assault on Atlanta—the man who’d had Brenda killed.  
    Cooper switched modes on his heads-up-display so he saw what the drone saw through his visor.   He would bring justice to Reginald tonight.
    He scanned the readouts and switched from optical to thermal displays on the drone’s control pad.   There.   An isolated chalet high in the mountains, protected from ground based assault by a sheer cliff on the northern slope.   The boulder fields to the south and east limited access and provided strong defensive choke points.   The only way in was up a rugged one-lane road—exactly the kind of situation a high altitude combat jump was designed to overcome.
    Thermal imaging from the drone showed somebody was inside.   A lot of somebodies, in fact.
    "Looks pretty hot for a building that’s supposed to have been empty for the last decade…” said Charlie's voice.
    Cooper grunted.   He zoomed in and watched the landscape crawl beneath the drone's unblinking electronic eyes.   Several white pinpricks reflected off the gray snow—they moved in a slow, regular pattern.
    "Guards, just like we expected.   She was right on the money."
    "I count seventeen,” observed Charlie.
    Cooper grunted again.   "Tough odds—almost seems unfair."
    "Poor bastards," agreed Charlie.
    Cooper had seen enough.   He knew from 13’s briefings the fortress-like chalet bristled   with state-of-the-art defense systems.   Reginald's private army—comprised of some of the most ruthless mercenaries and ex-special forces soldiers on the planet—would not be an easy target.
    “All right, listen up ladies," he said, “remember the mission: we're here for one man.   You all know what he looks like.   You've all been to the same briefings I have, the Brass wants him alive.   When we get down there, we’re not taking any other