by Juno Rushdan
“I did.”
Ashley blanched. This was in complete violation of the original plan. When Ashley and her team had agreed to steal the bioweapons en route from Nexcellogen to Fort Detrick, they had decided on scare tactics only. The point had been to teach the government a lesson, elevate awareness, put a feather in the cap of the Gray Box, force confessions from the senator and directors responsible for the creation of the weapons. And ultimately rip those responsible parties out of seats of power.
But not this.
“This isn’t what we agreed to,” Ashley said. “The weapons were never to be used. We never signed up for cold-blooded murder.”
“And this is precisely why I have Bravo.” Sanborn’s eyes darkened. “Because none of you on Zulu have the stomach for what’s necessary. I told you what you needed to hear to get the mission done. You all did a marvelous job hijacking the bioweapons and capturing Khan.”
Marvelous until an innocent woman had been accidentally killed. Guilt gnawed at her, woke her up sometimes in the middle of the night. Logan did his best to soothe her conscience and comfort her. The only thing that eased the terrible weight she dragged around was doing good whenever and wherever possible. Like interfering with the transport of those child brides. But every decent deed was going to be washed away in blood if Sanborn had his way.
Ashley stepped closer, trying to appeal to his sense of reason. “We can still get the confessions and—”
“I don’t need their confessions,” Sanborn said lightly. “I have enough evidence stockpiled against them to not only condemn but convict them.”
“Then why are you doing this? Why not just use it instead?”
Shaking his head, Sanborn narrowed his eyes and stared at her like she was the crazy one. “How can you of all people ask me that? Winthrop Lee Pomeroy III set this in motion, or have you forgotten? When he was sitting in the national security advisor’s chair, he was the one who counseled the president that it was in our country’s best interest to steal that compound from the Germans. It was him who tried to have you killed over it while I saved you.”
She cut a glance at Howe, remembering all too well. The bastard blew her a kiss.
“It was Lee who moved the pieces on the chessboard, enabling the president to restart a disgusting bioweapons program. It was Lee who brought Senator Boswell into the fold, and it was Boswell who made the rest possible. They have no consideration for the value of human life. They didn’t care about what could have happened, the kinds of pandemics that could have been caused if those weapons fell into the wrong hands.
“Not until I gave them a wake-up call. One they badly deserved, and one that will serve them the miserable, agonizing deaths they were so ready to inflict on others. That will be the consequences of their actions.”
Ashley was stunned speechless. Her ears were on fire with disbelief. This was why the details had been compartmentalized, why Alpha team didn’t know what Zulu was doing and vice versa. She’d assumed it was only for operational security.
The truth was that Sanborn hadn’t wanted her—or anyone from Zulu—to know how ugly and blood-stained the path he was leading them down was.
“How are you going to contain it and prevent an outbreak?” she asked.
“I’ve already coordinated with the CDC about the threat of a potential bioattack and instructed them to prepare for containment. They’re standing by. Waiting to deploy. They can reach this location in less than twenty minutes.”
Sanborn was right. She didn’t have the stomach for it because she still had a soul. She would champion justice with her dying breath. But she wouldn’t be complicit in this madness.
“Are you strong enough to be with me?” Sanborn asked. “To get back to Yankee? Or are you against me?”
Were those her only two choices?
Bravo, Charlie, and Echo drew their weapons but kept the guns lowered at their sides.
If she was against him, then she was as good as dead.
That narrowed her options down to one. “Of course I’m with you.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” He turned and picked up four garment bags, handed one to her and the rest to the others. “Get dressed.”
* * *
I-495 East, Virginia
2:42 p.m. EDT
Castle raced down the freeway, weaving through traffic, following the last GPS signal.
Two of Kit’s trackers had been disabled, the red blinking lights blipped off into oblivion. They must’ve been the ones Sanborn found in her clothes.
The one in her hip was still functional, pinging from a location in Belle Haven near the river.
He was close, so close his fingers ached. If Sanborn had hurt her, killed her, God, he didn’t know what he would do.
Castle shook his head, at a loss. How could the one man in the world he’d admired the most, respected the most, trusted above anyone, be capable of this?
As Castle racked his brain for answers, something he could sink his teeth into, the third light on the GPS tracking device went out.
His heart stumbled and gave a great kick. What the hell? What had happened to the signal? Panic unlike anything he’d ever experienced swamped his system. His lungs felt like sandbags and he couldn’t breathe.
He loved Kit, needed her in every way imaginable with an intensity that rattled him to the bone. If he failed her, didn’t bring her back safely, he wouldn’t be able to live with it.
Sweat trickled down his face and arms. His skin was feverish and his brain a fuzzy nugget from the waning drugs slowly filtering through his system.
As he squeezed the steering wheel, blood leaked from his hastily bandaged hand. He was not giving up and he was not giving in.
Surrender wasn’t in his nature.
Continuing on the interstate toward Belle Haven, he called Willow at the Gray Box. “Has the team gotten back from the raid in Maryland?”
Maybe Gideon could fly over Belle Haven and ascertain something from the sky.
“Gotten back?” Willow asked. “No. They only just found the bioweapon. How do you know about the op?”
“Wait, what do you mean they just found it? Didn’t they locate it a couple of hours ago?”
“We didn’t get the tip about the water plant until half past nine. The team took the chopper at ten.”
“That’s not possible.” Sanborn had been at Castle’s house talking about the op in the past tense shortly after ten. “What tip? Did you find something about the water plant on the Sentry hard drives from Kit?”
“I don’t have any drives marked Sentry. I have one external hard drive with copied files. Sanborn turned the original hard drives over to the CIA and FBI for intel-sharing purposes, but I never saw them.”
More like those drives disappeared for covering his ass purposes.
“Do you know where Sanborn is now?”
“Liaising with the other agencies.”
Castle growled in frustration. “I need your help.” He debated how much to tell her and what to keep to himself so that he didn’t sound nuts. God knew he felt nuts. Completely certifiable. He couldn’t incriminate Sanborn, a man well-respected in the community. A man whose word would carry more weight than Castle’s accusations as long as there was no concrete proof to substantiate it.
“I’m tracking Kit Westcott,” Castle said. “She was kidnapped. But she has a tracker. I was following it toward Belle Haven when I lost the signal. The last location was near the water. Can you check out the area, tell me what’s around? I need something to work off.”
The sound of keys clacking furiously carried over the phone.
Come on, Willow. Give me something. Anything.
“There’s a park, country club, restaurants…hold on. I found some recent imagery. There’s a large facility.” Rapid-fire typing clattered down the line as she worked her m
agic. “It’s the new supermax prison to replace the Hole, strictly for high-value threats to national security. There’s a commencement ceremony today.”
That had to be it. Why a prison, Castle didn’t have any idea. “Who’s attending?”
“Nothing stated in the media, which isn’t surprising. Important people who don’t travel with a security entourage tend to keep their schedules classified. The general public doesn’t learn about functions they’ve attended until the media coverage comes out.”
The schedules were classified. “What type of servers would the schedules for congressmen and senators be kept on?”
“What do you mean?”
He tried to recall the terminology Henry and Kit had used. “Type 1 encryption? Block cipher?”
“Yeah, sounds about right.”
“What about the architectural plans for the new supermax? The security information? Would it be on that kind of server as well?”
“Absolutely. Nothing less than gold standard for the new supermax.”
Gold standard. That was exactly what Henry had called it.
It made sense now. The test Bravo had given to the Outliers was either to hack the schedule of a government elected official—someone important and high-ranking, who’d attend the opening of a supermax—or it had been to gain security access codes for the prison itself. Maybe both.
A chill spilled down his spine as a disturbing thought popped into his head. “Willow, CONTRA84, Goliath Coders, Outliers. Can you think of anything those groups have in common?”
“Those are the top three hacker groups on the list of possible domestic terrorist cells posing a grave risk to national security.”
Reality slugged him with even more proof of who Sanborn really was. Had it been that obvious? The clues right in front of him? “In what order? One through three.”
“The way you mentioned them. CONTRA84. Goliath Coders. Then Outliers.”
The same order Bravo had approached each.
Had Sanborn put them on a sick hit list? Tested them, had them do his cyber dirty work, them eliminated them as threats?
How many different objectives was he trying to accomplish with this madness?
“Give me the address of the new supermax.” As Castle programmed it into the satnav, he said, “Let whoever is leading the mission at the water plant know that I need backup. Then contact the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and see if anyone from there is going to the ceremony. If so, warn their aides. There’s about to be a terrorist attack.”
41
Supermax Facility, Belle Haven, Virginia
3:05 p.m. EDT
“Foxtrot,” Bravo said low beside her, wearing a wig under his ballcap and a glued-on mustache. “This will kick off fast and hot. Ensure our exit route is clear and meet me in the west corridor of Section 10 in five minutes. Mark the time.”
She checked her watch and set a silent timer to vibrate at four minutes. “Time marked,” she said, following operational protocol like a dutiful soldier.
Ashley smoothed her hands down her crisp security guard uniform, checked the regulation Glock that she’d been given, now holstered at her side, and worked her way through the small crowd. It was mostly politicians and high-ranking individuals in the intelligence community who had a vested interest in the completion of the classified prison and in ensuring that future occupants never saw the light of day.
The real staff was at a bare minimum, present only for the dog and pony show of cutting the red tape and providing background decoration as canapés were eaten over chitchat. Since the facility was supposed to be more safely guarded than the Hole, there was no press coverage.
Low-profile event. Absence of Secret Service. No nosy reporters. Sanborn had done his homework, as was to be expected, and picked the perfect occasion when it would be easy to funnel two individuals away from the herd.
Ashley swept the route for their exit through the building, trying to anticipate when and where on their egress Bravo would make his move to try and kill her. But she wasn’t going to let him succeed. They way he’d brutalized her all those years ago demanded a reckoning, and Ashley was going to have it today. She checked her cell again. No service.
Sanborn had their entire team using military-grade high-power portable jammers, outfitted to resemble the walkie-talkie on her hip. That must’ve taken months of planning. The jammers blocked all signals: cell phone, LoJack, Wi-Fi, and GPS. He didn’t want any calls getting in or out. Not until this was finished.
At the outer door, Ashley stopped.
Lo and behold. Castle skulked across the lawn. Slippery, that one.
Precisely what she was counting on when she’d swept Westcott for trackers as ordered…and missed the one in her posterior hip muscle.
After Sanborn’s lunatic tirade on the boat, Ashley was willing to take help wherever possible. Regardless of how slim the prospect that Castle would escape. Or the added problem that once Sanborn activated his jammer on the boat, it’d block the signal emitted from Kit’s GPS tracker. Seemed Castle was resourceful.
Good. It was going to take some extraordinary act to stop Sanborn, and Castle was her only plan.
Sanborn was the worst kind of devil. One who believed he was right, called by a higher purpose to be merciless.
Being one of Sanborn’s operatives had been a coveted status, and she’d gone from that—being protected by him—to expendable in a blink. The price for defiance.
Ashley pressed the badge to the scanner to open the door and crept outside. The credentials were the real deal, but she didn’t want to know who Sanborn had sent Bravo to strangle in order to procure them.
Castle had stalked around the bend, out of view.
She glanced at her watch. Two minutes to chase after him and convince him they should be allies.
The soft grass made no sound under her feet as she hurried across the lawn, moving close to the side of the building. She had no intel on Castle and not a clue how to enlist him as an ally in mere minutes. What she did have was a determined mind-set and the conviction that this course of action was right.
She quickened her pace, drawing to the corner.
As she whipped around, her gun at the ready, a large figure stepped in front of her, blocking the sunlight.
Ashley found herself face-to-face with Castle. She drew a long breath, stringing her thoughts together. Everything depended on the success of this conversation.
“Don’t shoot,” she said, raising one palm in a gesture of peace.
His gaze flickered down, past his gun’s front sight to the Glock pointed at his chest, and then to her eyes. “Give me one reason not to.”
She scanned his face. They were roughly the same age and he appeared equally battle-tested, though his features were more chiseled. “I mean you no harm.”
His hard eyes narrowed, assessing her. “Says the woman who came into my home, helped subdue me, kidnapped the woman I love, and has a gun pointed at me.”
She lowered her 9mm, slowly. “You and I would make far better friends than enemies.”
“Forgive my skepticism.”
“This may be hard to believe, but I’m not your problem.” If this man was one of Sanborn’s most prized warriors, then they were alike. Sanborn had a soft spot for him, had spared him. A position she’d once been in herself years ago. She could use that to her benefit. “You and I have plenty in common. I’ve known Sanborn a long time too. Longer than you. Almost a decade. We both admired him, trusted him. You probably even worshipped him the way I did. Until today. He finally pulled back the mask he’s been wearing, and I don’t think either of us recognized the face we saw.”
Castle scanned the surrounding area as if expecting an ambush while keeping his gun squarely trained on her.
“If you don’t believe me, get out of range of the jammers and cal
l Knox. My name is Ashley Agnello-Silva. He knows me, trained me. Hell, tell him to get his ass down here to help stop Sanborn.”
It was unsettling that Knox Cody, one of the best operatives alive who knew Sanborn better than anyone else, hadn’t already pieced this all together and intervened before letting things spiral this far out of control. If anyone could’ve figured this out, it was Knox, and there was no way he would’ve allowed this to happen.
“Knox is deployed,” Castle said. “Has been for months.”
Convenient. No, carefully planned. Well-played, Sanborn. Always five steps ahead.
“Why would you turn on Sanborn if you once worshipped him?” Castle asked.
“Right now, your Gray Box team is at a water treatment facility in Potomac, Maryland, recovering anthrax.”
“How do you know that?”
“My team—not the men who came into your home, but my husband and two others—set up the fake device at the water plant and ensured your people found it.”
His steely eyes narrowed. “What do you mean fake? We know for a fact that anthrax, some modified super bioweapon, was stolen.”
“It was. My team hijacked the shipment from a company called Nexcellogen while they were en route to Fort Detrick. On Sanborn’s orders.”
“No.” The tortured whisper of the word was carried off on the wind. Castle shook his head as if that revelation was even harder to accept than what he’d already been through.
“Sanborn plans to swap the device your team just recovered with the real one at some point in the Gray Box before it’s handed over to the CDC. To give you a major win.”
“He wouldn’t go that far. Sanborn wouldn’t cross that line.”
“We thought he wanted to teach the president, Pomeroy, and Boswell a lesson, just scare them, but Sanborn actually plans to use Z-1984 today. He’s going to murder the senator and the director of national intelligence. And I’m not sure if he’ll stop there.”
There was still healthy skepticism written across Castle’s face. No doubt the ugly bombshell she’d just dropped was tough to accept, but the precious seconds she had left were running out.