by Juno Rushdan
The analyst always went home to give her father dinner and then came back to work if necessary, but her soon-to-be surrogate mother-in-law, a retired nurse, had driven down to help at home since Willow and Reaper were in the trenches with the current mission.
Black ops were at this very moment raiding a second safe house where they suspected Khan was holing up.
While Sanborn was where? Off at an appointment that he couldn’t cancel.
Cutter laughed into the phone. Those two would chat for a little while, as they always did.
If Emily was going to gamble and make a play, this was the time. She spun out of her chair, pulse racing, and strode up to the tech-savvy analyst. “Hi.”
Willow turned, taking out an earbud. “Yes, Doc?”
“I just discovered some critical information that I have to relay to Sanborn immediately. About the bioweapons.” Emily’s gaze bounced to Cutter, engrossed in conversation, and boomeranged to Willow. “Do you know where he is?”
“No. Have you asked Janet?”
“I did. She doesn’t know.” Emily rubbed her forehead. “I would call him, but it’s classified, and I can’t discuss it over an open line.” She kept her voice low. “I have to tell him in person, as soon as possible. It’s time sensitive. Can you find him for me?”
“I can track his cell phone and give you his coordinates.”
“It’s turned off. I tried calling him to see if he was close by or could get to a secure line.”
“I have ways around that in case of an emergency.”
“Perfect. Start looking for him. I’m going to my car. Call me with his location.”
“Sure. No problem.”
Guilt stung Emily for lying and using Willow, for checking on Sanborn, but she was 0–4 in the relationship department. Every man she’d ever ended up in a relationship with had invariably turned out to be some species of filthy vermin.
Sanborn was a good man, the best kind of man.
She just had to prove it to herself.
* * *
Somewhere along the Potomac River
7:15 p.m. EDT
Sierra paced the ground floor of the abandoned warehouse along the river. She glanced at her husband, torn. She’d been ordered not to bring Yankee and she’d let him come along anyway.
It wasn’t as if he’d given her much choice.
Officially, he was the team leader, but when it came to balancing marriage and Alpha-Zulu’s command, authority oftentimes blurred. Alpha-Zulu didn’t want Yankee present for the Khan handoff for some reason, and her husband had refused to stand down and stay in the rear. On these deep-cover missions, it was hard to compartmentalize. Sticking to codenames helped buffer the degrees of separation and enabled her to do a better job.
Yankee looked at her from his position by the westside window and gave her one of his panty-wetter smiles—one of the things that had made her first fall in love with him. That, along with his sense of humor, courage, and integrity. His devilishly good looks and his six-foot-six ripped body didn’t hurt either. He stared at her now, his one good eye lit up and gleaming.
A terrorist attack on their team years ago—when they’d both worked for the CIA—had stolen the sight from one of his eyes, the hearing from an ear, and the unmarred landscape of his back. The car bomb might have scarred him on the outside, but not his heart. Not his soul. He was still one of the most capable operatives on the planet.
Yosef Khan grunted on the floor, six feet in front of her. He was blindfolded, gagged, his hands and feet bound, and had earmuffs on pumping music by Death Before Dishonor.
“Alpha-Zulu is here,” Yankee said, announcing the arrival of their boss as he looked out the window that overlooked the rear of the building where they had parked. A car door slammed, followed by another. “Shit. He’s not alone.”
“Who’s with him?” she asked.
Yankee drew his weapon and trained it on the doorway.
Adrenaline sent her pulse skyrocketing and she pulled her gun from her shoulder rig. “What’s wrong?”
“You’ll never believe who he brought.”
Alpha-Zulu, the man conducting this orchestra, the one and only Bruce Sanborn, waltzed into the room. A man trailed behind him. Reddish-brown hair the color of rust in a corroded drainpipe. Milk-of-magnesia-white skin. Glasses.
The gut punch of recognition dragged her to a different time, a different place. Seven years ago, Germany. She’d been on her first assignment as a CIA operative in the field for Sanborn.
It was that same mission nearly a decade ago that had sparked all this. She’d stolen a breakthrough lead compound for the Agency from a German biotech company. The compound was so classified not even she was supposed to know what it was, but she wanted to understand what she’d risked her life for and looked. Curiosity nearly killed her when that psychopath had stalked her, tortured her, and almost put a bullet in her head.
And the Agency had gotten the compound, or at least enough of the formula to bioengineer the most devastating weapons the world had ever known.
“Holster your guns,” Sanborn said.
That pale-faced fucker behind him had the nerve to smile as if he were walking into a party, eager to make friends. It took every ounce of bitter restraint not to drop him where he stood. Her husband was so furious he was literally shaking with rage.
“Holster your weapons. Now!” Sanborn’s raised voice sent them both into reluctant compliance. “Yankee, Sierra. Or, shall I say, Logan and Ashley, let me formally introduce you to Bravo, the lead for Alpha team,” Sanborn said, obliterating all the degrees of separation at once. “You know him as Helmut Fuchs.” The name he’d gone by in Munich and Berlin when he’d impersonated a BfV officer—German intelligence. “Since he knows your real names, you should know his. Meet Howe Fuller.”
Her skin crawled at this farce of a let’s-all-play-nice introduction. Fuck that. “How could you work with him? Him of all people?”
“Do you know what he did to her?” Logan stormed up to Sanborn. “Kidnap, torture, interrogation?”
“Yes,” Sanborn said coolly. “Of course I do.”
Logan recoiled, looking so disgusted she wondered if her husband might spit in Sanborn’s face. “After everything we’ve done for you, how could you bring him here?”
“You’ve been paid very well for everything you’ve done. Let’s not mistake this job for a favor you’re doing me. For the last seven years, you’ve cashed checks from me and all you’ve had to do was wait until I activated you.”
The mission in Germany had gone FUBAR—fucked up beyond all recognition—and tanked her team’s careers with the CIA. The four of them—her, Logan, Mike, and Ethan—had been disavowed for insubordination. It was as if they no longer existed as far as the Agency was concerned. No pension. No work history. No unemployment compensation. They became ghosts.
And perfect freelance operatives for Sanborn. He’d kept them on retainer, paying them nicely over the years until the day he’d called and demanded service.
“Why choose him to lead Alpha team?” Ashley asked. “Why not one of us?” She knew Alpha team was comprised of a bunch of rogue operators, but anyone from Zulu team could have stepped up to do it. “Why would you work with him?”
Sanborn gave an impatient sigh. “I needed him to be something none of you could.”
They had stolen biological weapons for him, inadvertently killing an innocent woman. Crossed an ocean and captured a top-ten terrorist. They were prepared to go further still.
“And what is he that we can’t be?” Logan asked.
“A necessary evil,” Sanborn said matter-of-factly.
Howe Fuller took a bow with the flourish of a stage performer.
Ashley wanted to knock the grin off his face with a 9mm bullet.
“Some of the things he has done, you w
ould’ve found difficult.” Sanborn looked from Logan to her. “Questionable. The end of this is at hand, but there is still so much more to do.”
“That doesn’t explain why the fuck you brought him,” Logan snapped.
Sanborn smiled, brittle and hollow, giving Ashley the chills.
It was only because the boss understood the raging depths of their anger that he put up with such disrespect, but judging by that smooth, sharp, razor-blade smile, he wouldn’t tolerate much more before he made them wish they could slither off into oblivion.
Sanborn was part spy, part ninja, and one hundred percent the Godfather rolled into one. He took his people under his wing, protecting them, guiding them, teaching them, arming them, sending them to war in his name. But if his soldiers decided not to toe the line, they might wake up one morning to find a horse head in their bed. A small reminder about the status quo.
Ashley touched Logan’s forearm, a light pat to say take it down a hundred notches.
Logan reeled in a heavy breath, picking up on her meaning. “You could’ve brought someone else from Alpha team for the pickup,” he said, better but still not calmly enough. “So we never had to see him. Why is he here?”
“He”—Sanborn gestured to Howe—“is supposed to be here. Whereas you”—Sanborn swung his finger at Logan—“are not.”
Regret was a foul taste in Ashley’s mouth. Sanborn had called her at 2:00 a.m., told her not to bring Logan, to come with Mike or Ethan instead. She should’ve listened. Sanborn had excellent reasons for every word that left his mouth, every action he took, every order he issued.
Always to spare us, protect us, even from ourselves.
“His team is short one body. I need to move a replacement from Zulu to join Alpha. They need four to do their job. Zulu doesn’t.” Sanborn’s hot gaze shifted from Ashley to her husband. “And it can’t be you, Logan.”
Logan’s head swung in Ashley’s direction as if realization had slapped him in the face. “No. I’m not letting her work with that sick fuck.”
“She wouldn’t have to if she had listened to me or if you had listened to her, but this is our current predicament,” Sanborn said pointedly. “Logan, when it comes to Howe, you become unhinged. It has to be Ashley.”
“I said no!” Logan glared, and Ashley put her hand on his chest, but this time, he knocked her away. “There has to be another solution.”
Sanborn cut his eyes to her. “Ashley, I need to speak with you privately.” He extended his arm, inviting her to lead the way to the opposite side of the room.
Ashley went off, and behind her, she heard Logan say, “I’m going to kill you, son of a bitch!”
Howe laughed. “Not if I kill you first.”
“Gentlemen, please,” Sanborn said as if scolding errant children, “stay in your respective corners. No killing each other.”
Once they were out of earshot, Sanborn put a hand on her shoulder and brought her into his body in a side hug. He had a remarkable way of getting someone to drop their defenses and lulling them into a sense of security. She’d known him a long time, trusted him.
And Ashley’s team owed him a debt that could never be repaid. Sanborn had been ready to retire early from the CIA at his wife’s insistence. Then Ashley had screwed up in Germany and gotten her team’s neck in the noose. Someone in the president’s cabinet had sent Howe and cleaners to annihilate her team. Sanborn had cut a deal with Winthrop Pomeroy, then the national security advisor and now the director of national intelligence, to spare them. In return, Sanborn had agreed to serve as the director of a new secret agency, the Gray Box, handling off-the-books black ops.
He’d lost his wife as a result.
Anything he needed that was in her power to give, she was obligated to do.
“There’s too much at stake here.” Sanborn met her eyes. “What we’re trying to achieve is greater than any one person.”
He had figured out a way to kill the illegal bioweapons program the government was running, permanently. And in the process, he was going to put the fear of God into those responsible and somehow make his people at the Gray Box look like they saved the day. If anyone could pull this off, move a mountain, part the Red Sea, it was Sanborn, the Black Ops Whisperer.
“It would’ve been one of the others, Mike or Ethan,” Sanborn said, taking on that firm yet soothing parental tone. “You eliminated that option by bringing Logan when I expressly told you not to. This is what happens when you don’t follow orders. You must suffer the consequences.”
Working with Howe would be her penance.
“The next step is physical and requires precision,” Sanborn said. “If Logan goes, emotion will cloud his judgment. Howe already perceives him as a threat. As soon as the mission is done, Howe will take him out first.”
Tension grew, diffusing through her, enveloping her heart, saturating her lungs, pounding through her head. “I can’t let that happen.”
“That’s why it has to be you, Ashley. Howe looks at you and sees someone he victimized. Someone he wants to toy with. Not a threat. He doesn’t know how lethal you’ve become. And when this mission is done, you will take out Howe instead.”
Hope shot through her. “You don’t care if I kill him when this is over?”
“I understand what Howe is and the horrors he’s capable of. I never meant for team Zulu to ever know about his involvement. There’s too much bad blood. But circumstances have changed. This can only end in one of two ways now—with either Howe dead or whoever joins him from Zulu. The choice is yours.”
She nodded. There was no choice. She had to be the one to join Alpha and take care of Howe.
Ashley returned to her husband, pulling him to the side where they wouldn’t be overheard. “Logan, listen to me.”
“No, damn it. Sanborn whispered in your ear and crawled inside your fucking head. Now you want to get in mine. No. You’re not going off with that piece of shit.”
Ashley poked Logan in his injured side, hard enough to elicit a grimace. “The rest of Zulu’s mission won’t put you in harm’s way. You, Mike, and Ethan can handle it.”
The target was the Potomac Water Filtration Plant. The facility had a network of almost six thousand miles of fresh-water pipeline, serving 1.8 million residents. Team Zulu had been tasked to incapacitate the guards and set a dummy bioweapon, supposedly anthrax. In a real scenario, anthrax spores would contaminate the water and remain viable for an extended period. The microbes would adhere to the surface of the pipes, making decontamination impossible. Zulu had to set the fake weapon on a looped timer, then stick around and ensure that Sanborn’s operatives found it in time.
Their mission: give the Gray Box a huge win.
Sanborn would find a way to swap the dummy bioweapon for the real one before it was turned over to the CDC.
“You’re in no condition to go with Alpha team,” Ashley said. There was no telling what dirty deeds Alpha was expected to do, but if it involved Khan and Howe Fuller, evil incarnate, people were going to die. That was a guarantee. “If I had followed orders, this wouldn’t even be an issue.”
“You can’t—”
“Why? Because I’m a woman?”
His mouth flattened into a grim line. “Don’t do that. Don’t use gender against me. You can’t go because I love you and because I don’t trust that evil prick.”
She flicked a glance at Howe, who was eating an apple, his gaze glued to them. “Well, I love you too. But you’re injured. So I’m the one going. If you push me on this, I’ll kick your ass right here, right now. I’ll hurt you, really hurt you, so you can’t go.” At least he’d still be alive.
Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t stand a chance against Logan one-on-one, but they both knew by exploiting his injury, she could make good on her promise.
“You fight dirty, Ash.”
“Only wh
en I have to.” She kissed him, hard but quick.
“We’ll probably all go dark at the same time,” he said, referencing the communications shutdowns at the beginning of the next step of the plan. “But I need you to keep me abreast of what you’re doing. Where you’re going. Agreed?”
It was a violation of protocol, but this exception had to be made. If the situation was reversed, she’d ask no less of him. “Sounds reasonable.”
They walked over to Sanborn, both resigned to their respective paths.
“I’ll join Alpha team,” she said.
“Here.” Sanborn gave Logan a USB flash drive. “That has the details you’ll need for Zulu’s next phase. And this you’ll both need to review,” he said, handing them a new cell phone. On the screen was a picture of a man. “Those are my people. Scroll through and have the others memorize their faces.”
“What are their names?” Ashley asked.
“We’re not allowed to know,” Howe said. “But on my team, we’ve had a few run-ins with the big, brown, bald guy. We call him Caretaker.”
“If you encounter any of them,” Sanborn said as Logan and Ashley scrolled through the photos, “the rules of engagement are that they are not to be killed. Injuries might be unavoidable, but you are to spare their lives. I want them getting through this relatively unscathed.”
“As heroes,” Howe chimed in, staring out the window. “While we’re expendable.”
“Zulu team isn’t expendable,” Sanborn said, his tone harsh and low. “They’re my people too.”
“Well, fuck me.” Howe tossed the apple core to the floor. “I guess it’s just me and my guys who are dispensable Lego blocks.”
“When you’re done with the pictures—”
“Destroy the phone per usual protocol.”
Sanborn nodded. “Load up Khan. Ashley, from here on out, you’re Foxtrot.”
“Heads up,” Howe said. “We’ve got company.”
They all went to the eastside window. A white Kia Optima pulled up in front of the fence along the perimeter.
“Do you want me to handle it?” Howe asked.
A woman got out of the car and peered at the building. She looked familiar. Yes, she was in one of the pictures on the phone. Strawberry-blond hair, blue eyes. Based on the skirt and heels, the jewelry twinkling in her ears, around her neck, and on her wrist, she wasn’t black ops.