Free Zombie Team Alpha by Steve R. Yeager Page A

said I wanted you to go along with me on this job. Remember? I said I could do it on my own.”
    When he pulled back and saw the hurt look his words had caused break out on Morgan’s face, he withdrew his hand from her knee.
    “It’s just—” she started to say. “Why is it you always have to be so pigheaded about these things, you know? You’ve gotten worse at it too, Jack. You weren’t like this before. You were—” She glanced out the window. “Why can’t it be like it was back then?”
    Never again . It would never be like it had been before he’d lost Sharon. Never. He clenched his jaw. The world owed him a little breather for what it had taken from him— didn’t it?
    He groaned a little. “So what is it that’s really bothering you? Where are these negative impressions about Dr. Martinez coming from? Is it—maybe you find her attractive?”
    “She’s not my type,” Morgan shot back. “Just so you know—the pilot. She and I—” She shook her head. “Never mind.”
    Cutter nodded back. Okay, I get it. He let go of his budding anger.
    Morgan asked, “What do you think of her?”
    “The pilot? I thought she was a little too old for me.”
    “She’s twenty-four, you perv.”
    “A man has got needs, Morgan. A man has got needs.”
    She shoved him. “No, I meant her.” She indicated toward Dr. Martinez with a tilt of her head.
    “I think she’s way too old for me. Plus, I don’t think she likes me much either. But if you insist, I’ll do my best. What do you think she looks like naked?”
    “Jack, I’m being serious here. Do you think we can trust her? We know absolutely nothing about her. Nothing . I’ve been investigating her background. I’ve seen her university bio, her bank account records, even the results of her last pelvic exam. All were squeaky clean.”
    “Isn’t she okay then?” he asked with a bit of hesitation.
    “I don’t know. I just have the creepy feeling we are being set up somehow, and that she is behind it.”

 
    ~13~
    TRUE DANGER
     
    They didn’t land in London. Nor did they comply and divert when requested to by the EU controllers as they flew past Denmark and Sweden. Morgan had been able to stay one step ahead of everyone and keep up her game of swapping transponder signals to match the existing routes of other flights, up until the moment their Wi-Fi signal from the only satellite she could hack into disappeared over the horizon and went dark.
    Now they’d have to make the rest of the flight to Russia on their last known course, hoping the appropriate administrators and commissars had indeed been notified and properly greased. And, given the currently strained relationships with Russia, any requested extradition back to the US would be scoffed at, perhaps even mocked.
    Cutter smirked, thinking again of the stern-faced woman agent they’d left behind in Atlanta and what she must be thinking about all this. She is probably apoplectic .
    He climbed from the pilot’s seat and made his way past a snoring Gauge and back to the seat where Dr. Martinez was sitting. She was reading a book, something about genetically engineered dinosaurs made from chickens or something. Looks kind of dumb. He didn’t even bother to check the name of the author. It wasn’t his type of story.
    He sat in the seat opposite her, and she set her book down and looked at him over her glasses, which were perched on her thin nose. She pushed them up slowly with her middle finger.
    “That book any good?” he asked.
    “What is it you want?”
    “Right down to business, huh? No small talk? No, ‘How are you doing today, Jack?’”
    A tiny smile played at the corner of her lips, and she pulled off her glasses and bit on one of the tips.
    Damn that’s hot. Cutter squirmed in his seat a little. She had that school librarian look—smart with a touch of naughty underneath. He swallowed the small lump in his throat. “We are about an hour out from Vuktyl airfield—if you wanted to