The Polaris Protocol Read Online Free Page A

It’s close to eleven. These guys will be leaving soon.”
    She leaned back, and I saw the fear in her eyes. “I hope nothing’s happened to Mom. I don’t know what else it could be.”
    I knew the unique dread she felt because it was baggage we all carried on deployment—that a tragedy would befall our family while we were gone—but it rarely came true. I had a little special sympathy, though, because in my case it had.
    I said, “Useless worry. Whatever it is, we’ll handle it. Together.”
    She squeezed my hand and said, “Thanks.” Her eyes shifted over my shoulder, and she squeezed again. “Pedro just passed Jake a compact disc. They’re preparing to leave.”
    I didn’t want to whip my head around, knowing she had the targets in sight. I said, “Go ahead.”
    She keyed her radio. “Knuckles, this is Koko. Trigger. Jake is leaving first. Pedro is paying the bill.”
    “Roger. How long?”
    “He’ll break the plane of the door in five seconds.”
    “Roger all. We got the ball.”
    We waited an additional ten minutes, and I saw we were going to be cutting the curfew very, very close. Our hotel wasn’t far away, but there weren’t very many cabs in this weird city, and we’d need to hoof it or be in danger of getting picked up.
    We hit the streets and Jennifer immediately shoved her phone in the air, looking at the signal bar. She began walking down the road like a beagle sniffing a scent, holding her phone this way and that.
    I followed behind her, saying, “Jennifer, it’s the witching hour. Let’s do this from our hotel.”
    She cut into an alley, saying, “We don’t have a signal at the hotel. Let me just check as we go.”
    She was headed in the right direction, so I let her continue. The narrow space of the alley was lined on both sides with four-story apartment buildings, turning it dark enough that her face was illuminated only by the screen of her phone. She said, “Somebody’s got a repeater around here. Signal’s getting stronger.”
    Exasperated, I said, “Jennifer, it’s past eleven. Come on.”
    She stopped, read the signal bar one more time, and dialed her voice mail. I looked past her, toward the end of the alley, and saw two forms leaving the glow of a streetlight. Coming our way.
Great.
    They keyed on the light of her phone. One shouted in Russian. I said hello in English. They picked up their pace and reached us in seconds, wearing uniforms of some kind. I had no idea who or what they were but knew this wasn’t going to end well. I couldn’t allow them to check our credentials or run our names. We had met all the official requirements to be in Turkmenistan, but with only one more night to accomplish the mission, I couldn’t afford to have any kind of spike, any kind of surveillance effort mounted against us again.
    This country was a strange place, to say the least. It was a cult of personality, not unlike North Korea, with giant monuments to the “dear leader” all over the place and the police conducting a healthy bit of civilian control, which included watching all foreigners. We’d already lulled them once and gotten them off of us. A spike like this would get them back on. The documents we carried would link Jennifer and me to the entire team, which meant we’d have a blanket on us by tomorrow afternoon.
    Traditionally, they’d keep the effort going only long enough to prove that we were who we said we were. Two days from now it wouldn’t matter. They could follow us all the way to Gonur. Tomorrow it would prevent us from executing.
    Please take a bribe.
    If they didn’t, the mission was blown. Not to mention Jennifer and I would probably spend the night in some dump prison.
Damn, Pedro, couldn’t you have left an hour earlier?
    I played stupid, saying, “Hello. My friend is trying to get her phone to work.”
    In broken English, the taller of the two said, “It is not permitted to be on street.”
    I feigned surprise, saying, “Sorry, we didn’t