Free The Lost Island by Douglas Preston

team?”
    “Special Forces. Came up through Airborne, then the Rangers.”
    “What kind of work did you do?”
    “We blew things up, mostly.”
    “What kind of things?”
    “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
    Gideon chuckled. “If you’ve tagged along with Glinn all these years, you must enjoy working for him.”
    “ Enjoy isn’t the word. Let me put it this way: the man’s an honest-to-God genius, and he’s fair. That’s a rare combination.”
    The martini and beer arrived and they broke off as each indulged in his respective drink. As Garza raised his bottle, Gideon—out of habit more than anything else—noticed the man’s wristwatch. “Nice watch.”
    “Think so?”
    “Oh, yeah. Blancpain L-Evolution Flyback Chronograph. With a red-gold caseband.”
    Garza eyed him. “Most people don’t know anything about Blancpain watches.”
    “With that carbon-fiber bracelet, it’s one of the finest watches made. Worth, what, fifty grand?”
    “I wouldn’t know. A grateful client gave it to me.” Garza paused. “What makes you the expert?”
    “I used to be a high-end thief and scumbag, remember?”
    “Right.”
    “Tell me something,” said Gideon. “What is this big project Glinn’s been working on ever since I came to EES? You know, that underwater model that everybody’s crawling over.”
    Garza took a long draw on his beer, draining a third of it before setting down the bottle. “Glinn should be the one to tell you about it.”
    “Come on. I’ve signed NDAs up the wazoo. It’s obviously no secret within the confines of EES—I thought that was the whole point of the open lab.”
    “True.” Garza waved over another IPA. “That project…it’s Glinn’s Moby-Dick.”
    “How so?”
    The fresh beer arrived, and Garza took the opportunity to drain it down almost by half. “Well…” He hesitated for a moment, seemed to come to a decision. “You remember Palmer Lloyd, the billionaire who went nuts a few years ago?”
    “Sure do.”
    “You may also remember he had plans to open a museum, which got shelved after he went to the funny farm.”
    “I remember the auction of all the stuff at Sotheby’s. Unbelievable collection.”
    “Yeah. Well, five years ago—before all that went down—Lloyd hired EES to, ah, expropriate the world’s largest meteorite from Chile for his museum.”
    Gideon put down his drink. “I never heard about that.”
    “Of course you didn’t.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “The meteorite had been found by a prospector on an uninhabited island called Isla Desolación, at the tip of South America. Twenty-five thousand tons. Long story short: we went down there, secured the meteorite, loaded it on a chartered supertanker, got chased by a Chilean destroyer, and were wrecked in a storm. The meteorite went to the bottom in two miles of water and three-quarters of the crew died, including the captain. That’s when Palmer Lloyd lost his mind. And that’s when Glinn became…obsessed.”
    “Were you on the ship?”
    “Yes. What a nightmare.” Garza took another long pull of the IPA.
    “And so Glinn’s still trying to recover it?”
    “No. We’re not trying to recover it.”
    Here Garza ordered a third beer and fell silent, waiting for it to arrive.
    “If you’re not trying to recover it, what are you doing?”
    “We’re trying to kill it.”
    “Kill—?”
    “It wasn’t a meteorite, after all.”
    “What was it?”
    “Sorry. I’ve already told you too much. If you want to know more, ask Glinn. I will say, though, that we’ve lost some great projects because of this damn obsession.”
    “But not the Phorkys Map.”
    “Phorkys. There’s something odd about this project.” For a minute, Garza’s thoughts seemed to go far away. “Eli used to share with me even the most sensitive details of every project. But this time, he’s playing his cards close. He won’t even tell me the name of our client. I’d like a guarantee that it’s