Joe Ledger by Jonathan Maberry Page B

down at a private airfield near Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and a couple of DMS techs had a car waiting for us. It looked like a two-year-old black Ford Explorer, but we had the full James Bond kit. Well, I guess it’s more the Jack Bauer kit. No oil slicks or changeable license plates. Mostly we had guns. Lots and lots of guns. The back bay was a gun closet with everything from Glock nines to Colt M4 carbines fitted with Aimpoint red-dot sights. And enough ammunition to wage a moderately enthusiastic war.
    Bunny whistled as he opened all the drawers and compartments. “And to think I asked for a puppy for Christmas.”
    “For when you care enough to send the very best,” he said, hefting a Daewoo USAS-12 automatic shotgun. “I think I’ll call her ‘Missy.’”
    “Freak,” muttered Top Sims under his breath. First Sergeant Bradley Sims—Top to everyone—was a career noncom who had been in uniform nearly as long as Bunny had been alive, but for all that he’d never cultivated the testosterone-driven shtick of idolizing weapons. To him they were tools and nothing more. He respected them, and he handled them with superior professional skill, but he wasn’t in love with them.
    Bunny—Harvey Rabbit, according to his birth certificate—looked dreamy-eyed, like a man going courting.
    They were the only two members of Echo Team left standing after our last couple of missions. We had more guys in training, but Top and Bunny were on deck and ready to roll when this Burke thing came at us. Like me, they were dressed in civilian clothes. Jeans, Hawaiian shirts. Top wore Nu-Balance cross-trainers that looked like they’d been spit-polished; Bunny had a well-worn pair of Timberlands.
    I said, “Concealed small arms. We’re here on a search and rescue. We’re not declaring war on rural Pennsylvania.”
    Bunny looked hurt. “Damn, and here I thought it was redneck season.”
    Even Top grinned at that.
    I looked at my watch. “Saddle up. We’re burning daylight.”
    Even as I said it I heard a rumble of thunder and glanced up. The sky above was bright and blue and cloudless, but there were storm clouds gathering in the northeast. Probably ten miles from where we were, which put the clouds over or near Pine Deep. Swell. Nothing helps a manhunt better than fricking rain.
    We climbed into the SUV, buckled up for safety, and headed out, taking Route 202 north and then cutting onto the snaking black ribbon that was State Alternate Route A-32. Top drove, Bunny crammed his six-and-a-half-foot bulk into the back, and I took the shotgun seat.
    “So why’s this Burke guy so important?” asked Bunny. “And since when do we screw around with Witness Protection?”
    “Not exactly what this is,” I said. “Simon Burke is a writer and—”
    “I read his books,” said Top. “Bit weird. Little paranoid.”
    I nodded. “He writes thrillers, and since the middle nineties he’s built a rep for ultrabelievable terrorist plots.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” said Bunny, nodding. “I saw the movie they made out of one of those books. The one about terrorists introducing irradiated fleas into the sheepdogs in cattle country. Jon Stewart had him on and kind of fried the guy because a couple of meatheads actually tried to do the flea thing. Burke kept saying, ‘how is that my problem?’”
    “That’s the story in a nutshell,” I said. “Burke’s plots have always been way too practical, and he likes showing off by providing useful detail. There’s a fine line between a detailed thriller and a primer for terrorists.”
    “Hooah,” murmured Top. That was Army Ranger-speak for everything from “I agree” to “Get stuffed.”
    “Well, early last year Burke was doing the talk show circuit to promote his new book—”
    “— A Predator Species ,” supplied Top. “Read it. Give it four stars out of five.”
    “—and Conan O’Brien asks him about his plots. Burke, who’s a bit of a jackass at the best of times, according to what