by Juno Rushdan
“Come out.” Sanborn’s voice carried in the wind as he held up his right hand, clutching something in his palm. “Or I’ll blow the boat with Westcott onboard right now. And in case you were wondering, I turned off the jammer, so the signal won’t be blocked.”
A headache pounded at Castle’s temples. He’d completely missed the detonator.
It was almost as if Sanborn had been expecting him, prepared for every eventuality.
Firing without anticipating that had been sloppy. Reckless.
With Sanborn’s finger on the trigger, Castle wasn’t going to gamble with Kit’s life by shooting him. And they both knew it.
Drawing a heavy breath, Castle came out from behind the row of bushes into the open.
Sanborn stepped off the dock onto the lawn. Even though he’d shed his suit jacket and his starched shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows, he still had an immaculate, suave air to him. The only thing to spoil his civilized businessman look was his shoulder rig holstering a suppressed gun and a detonator in his hand.
“Toss your weapon,” Sanborn said, “behind the bushes, and really put your back into it.”
Castle hurled his gun, chucking it as far as possible. Then he faced the chief.
“I need you to listen to me, son, before you form a judgment.”
They were well beyond judgment and had reached condemnation, but he’d listen if it meant saving Kit.
“Remove your gun.” Castle approached with his palms raised in the air. “Put it on the ground along with the detonator and I’ll listen to whatever you have to say. I swear it.”
Sanborn crouched down, setting the gun and the detonator on the grass beside his foot. An easy arm’s reach away for someone with Sanborn’s skill set, but Castle would have to take it.
“Please, tell me it wasn’t you,” Castle said. “That you weren’t the one who hijacked a shipment of bioweapons.” Please, tell me you haven’t turned into a full-fledged monster.
“I am responsible,” Sanborn said without a drop of contrition.
“No, no. No.” Castle shook his head, half-disappointed, half-dumbfounded that Sanborn didn’t even try to deny it. The admission struck at the heart of everything Sanborn believed in, that Castle believed in, a cornerstone of the Gray Box itself. Some things you could hide, lie about, but Sanborn’s principles had been consistent since the first day Castle had met him. “You abhor the thought of biological weapons. You wouldn’t steal them. You wouldn’t use them.”
In a strange way, Castle was begging him to change his tune, sing a song he could rally to, because the alternative, this rapidly evolving new reality, was unfathomable.
“Biological warfare is heinous,” Sanborn said. “For a select few to take it upon themselves to hide in the dark, to create monstrosities behind the backs of the American people, that is unforgivable. They used me.” Sanborn’s face twisted in disgust and he pressed a palm to his chest. “They used my people when I was in the CIA. The compound we stole was used to engineer pathogenic viruses, toxins, and bacteria to be more virulent. They used me to create weapons of mass destruction, the deadliest enemy of mankind.”
The moral affront must’ve cut Sanborn to the quick. The insult, the hurt was splashed across his face.
“I couldn’t abide it,” Sanborn said. “How they made me complicit in their sins.”
Castle scrubbed a palm over his head. “So your answer was to steal the weapons?”
“My answer was to protect our republic from those who have gone rogue. My answer was to ensure that abominable program would be permanently shut down and to punish those who sought to create an evil empire.”
Black ops was a gray world where they often had to make tough decisions and hard sacrifices. Where they paid the price for others’ civil liberties with blood-stained hands. This profession left them raw. Empty and wounded, haunted by ghosts in the darkness.
But bad deeds done to achieve a good end was only asking for trouble. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
How had this all started for the Gray Box?
Castle thought back to three months ago, replaying everything and connecting the scattered dots. “Willow found out about the sale of smallpox-M in an auction on the black market. Do you mean to tell me that you were the seller?”
“Yes,” Sanborn said, flatly.
The answer was a blow so crushing it sucked the air from Castle’s lungs. “Selling bioweapons spits on every righteous idea you’ve ever espoused. It makes you a hypocrite.”
“I controlled the game,” Sanborn said. “I picked the players. Figured out how to put the Gray Box on the field. We were always meant to win.”
The terrible truth was an unbearable weight that Castle wished he’d never known. “That’s why you picked Maddox for the assignment? Because you learned Cole was alive and connected to his arms dealer brother. You were banking on him still caring about Maddox and that if you got him into enough trouble with the Russians, offered to take care of his problems, that he would help her. Help the Gray Box.”
Sanborn nodded.
And it had worked.
Something inside Castle withered at the knowledge of how far Sanborn had gone, how low he had sunk.
Sanborn took a step toward him, reducing the gap, renewing that cherished sense of affinity between them. But Castle wasn’t so foolish as not to also see it as Sanborn moving further away from the gun. Something Castle could exploit.
“The middleman,” Sanborn said, “the broker who conducted the auction was a confidential informant for the government. We owned him already. I meant for the arms dealers who were invited to the auction to be arrested in the operation, the bioweapon to be recovered and—”
“And rack up a big win for the Gray Box.” Castle hung his head, thinking back to what Ashley had told him about the water treatment facility. The enemy stacked the game and torched the rules and didn’t care if the world burned as a result. Not them. Not ever. Not Sanborn. “But you didn’t factor in Aleksander Novak.” Novak had been an assassin with a vendetta. He’d crashed the auction, stolen the smallpox-M weapon and made their lives hell. “Novak almost killed twenty thousand people because you tried to play God.”
“It all worked out.” Sanborn extended his hands, palms up, and took another step closer. “The team recovered the weapon.”
By the skin of our teeth! Had he truly gone mad?
“And Novak was captured,” Sanborn said triumphantly.
And Maddox and Cole had both almost died stopping him.
“I’m the one who makes the hard decisions, without doubts,” Sanborn said, “and I live with them. I don’t crack. I don’t wallow in regret. We’re the same.”
Most of what Sanborn had said was true. At their cores, there were striking similarities, but there were fundamental differences between them too. “We’re not the same. You started out with convictions and principles and ended up here. Corrupted. Telling yourself and me whatever you have to in order to justify the terrible things you’ve done. The things that you’re still doing.”
Sanborn had gone off the rails, full-blown dark side.
“You can stand there and lecture me on morality.” Sanborn’s voice softened as he edged forward. “Or you can acknowledge that sometimes we have to do things that keep us awake at night so that the rest of the country can sleep safely and soundly.”
Castle would swallow his tongue before he admitted that Sanborn’s point was valid. If he voiced any credence, no matter how slight, it’d only feed into this manipulation technique to get Castle to believe and obey, to impair his ability to discriminate between what Castle thought was right and what Sanborn thought was necessary.
“The five million dollars that you walked away with, what did you do with it?” Castle asked. “Buy an island in the Caribbean for yourself?”
Sanborn
gave a scathing laugh devoid of any humor. “You think so little of me? Do you really see me as a selfish, greedy opportunist?”
No, Castle didn’t. But he hadn’t seen Sanborn as Darth Vader before today either. What else was he supposed to think?
“We’ve suffered tremendous financial cutbacks,” Sanborn said. “Lee Pomeroy and Ed Boswell have been siphoning money from the Gray Box to fund biological weapons. They continue to tie our hands, limit our resources, make us do more with less. They were risking the lives of my operatives to fund their dirty program.”
Being short-staffed, they never had enough downtime to fully recuperate from one mission before heading out on the next. Limited resources meant shortcuts had to be taken. And shortcuts eventually led to the loss of lives.
They already gave so much in this thankless job. Government officials stealing money from the Gray Box was unforgivable. At the top of the list, right beneath launching a bioweapons program.
It was hard for Castle to disagree that he and Sanborn did indeed share a common enemy and a worthwhile fight, but this was bigger than the two of them.
“What did you do with the money?” Castle demanded.
“Part of the five million has gone into the Gray Box, enabling me to pay Tanaka Enterprises the outstanding debt I owed for the state-of-the-art gear you all have. Another portion was to pay my under-the-table operatives. I have several with families. They need to cover health insurance payments, put their kids through college, afford to retire from this ugly business one day. And the rest funded this operation. To destroy the enemies of the republic. Lee Pomeroy. Boswell.”
The more Sanborn confessed, the more Castle’s paradigm warped and the less he knew what to think.
“Why target the Outliers?” Castle asked.
“Ever Shield. You and I both know it was a threat that couldn’t be left unchecked.”
He was right. Another harsh, bitter truth. “But why kill them?”
“If they were good and meant no harm, then why did they accept a job that they knew was dirty?”
CONTRA84 had passed his test, rejecting the offer of two million in exchange for doing something illegal. Proved their skills weren’t for sale to the highest bidder. So they got to live. Unlike the Outliers.
Castle’s gaze flickered to the boat. “Kit isn’t a threat to you.”
“Isn’t she?” Sanborn cocked his head to the side. “She knows too much. She’s a liability and can’t be trusted to keep her mouth shut—not like you. Let me finish what I have to do here today, and things can go back to normal. I’ll resign and let Knox take over.”
Knox. He’d been gone an eternity on some mystery mission, too classified to discuss. “Is his op even real?”
“I have him chasing his tail. He would’ve gotten in my way otherwise, and I didn’t want to have to kill him.”
“What about me?” Castle asked. “I’m standing in your way.”
“You don’t have to. I don’t want to kill you either. It doesn’t have to come to that.” Sanborn sighed. “Hackers like Kit are human garbage. She’s beneath you. She’ll never understand or respect people like us.” His voice quieted, a lethal edge creeping into it. “Once she’s gone, your head will clear, and you’ll come back to your senses, son.”
Castle’s heart dropped into the bottomless pit of his stomach.
He understood what Sanborn was fighting for, the necessary lengths he’d gone to, and why. Some of it he agreed with, was even grateful to Sanborn for ensuring the Gray Box had adequate funding, for taking a stand against a horrific biological weapons program. And all the rest of it—to his shame—Castle would’ve accepted and conceded. If it hadn’t been for Kit.
“Let her live.” Castle was pleading, for both their sakes. He needed Sanborn to understand what this meant to him. What Kit meant to him.
For a moment, in the silence thickening between them, an irrational stab of hope speared Castle.
Then Sanborn’s eyes hardened. Ice-cold dread spilled through Castle, saturating every muscle, drowning that hope.
“You’re conflicted because you blatantly disregarded my orders and got invested in that parasite, but the world will be a safer place without her.” Sanborn’s tone turned glacial. “I have endeavored to protect this country for most of my life. Since you came to the Gray Box, I’ve protected you too, kept all of you under my charge safe from harm. But you seem to have forgotten who I am. That we’re family!”
There was no reasoning with Sanborn and there would be no peaceful resolution.
Inches of physical space separated them, yet they were miles apart in every other way that mattered.
“I don’t make decisions lightly, without careful consideration.” Sanborn glared at him, reeking of disappointment. “You look at me right now and think I’m some misguided, heartless monster. I. Am. Not. When I strike, it is with precision and it is with justified cause. It is your duty, your responsibility not to interfere. Not to get in my way.” Each word burned with fury and vitriol. “And you are never, absolutely never to choose one of them”—Sanborn stepped back and pointed to the boat—“over me. Is that clear?”
The bedrock of Castle’s life disintegrated. He’d always counted on being able to tell the good guys from the bad guys and now it was a blur. The one thing anchoring him was Kit—a woman he was never supposed to like, never supposed to get close to, never supposed to love, but he did. He loved her.
Kit’s life was nonnegotiable. The idea of Sanborn killing her sent a bolt of intense rage surging through him, but this battle wouldn’t be won with unchecked emotions.
“If you’re not with me,” Sanborn said, his face darkening until he was almost unrecognizable, “then you’re against me. And you will lose.”
Sanborn had drawn a line of blood in the sand, forcing Castle to make an impossible choice.
“I can’t stand with you on this.” A revving sensation sparked inside Castle as he shut down emotion, reined in anything that might keep him from saving Kit. The second his gaze reflexively dropped to the gun and detonator on the grass, he knew Sanborn would take it as a declaration of war.
So he acted first.
Castle launched himself, lowering his shoulder, and rammed into Sanborn’s torso. The force of the impact sent both men crashing down onto the dock. A crunch resounded beneath their weight. They tumbled, kicking and punching until Castle’s back slammed into a post, knocking the wind from him.
Spinning, Sanborn grabbed a broken piece of wood from the dock, raised it over his head, and bashed Castle in the abdomen.
Blinding pain exploded through Castle’s body. For a second, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. He fought through it, cleared his vision in time to see Sanborn aiming the two-by-four at his head.
Castle rolled out of the way.
A cracking thud of wood on wood smashed in where his skull would’ve been. Blocking the next blow, Castle’s forearm bore the full brunt of the strike, agony blooming in the bone.
Another hit like that would break something. Castle swung his right elbow, hand back toward his head. It collided with Sanborn’s jaw, leaving him stunned, staggering. Seizing the brief advantage, Castle knocked the wood block loose.
With a blink, the upper hand was gone. Sanborn charged him, growling, eyes ablaze, throwing both men back into the water. The chief was fast and relentless, clawing at his eyes, hurling wicked punches.
Castle swung, but the cut on his bad hand prevented him from bringing his thumb in.
Almost as if sensing the vulnerability, Sanborn grabbed Castle’s extended thumb, yanked back, and twisted.
Under the water, Castle gave a guttural, agonized scream, taking water into his lungs. But he was a SEAL, part fish.
They thrashed in a tangle, kneeing each other, using their elbows as deadly weapons.
He had to break free, e
ven for an instant. Castle slammed his forehead into the chief’s, repeated the headbutt, and kicked out with all his strength.
Breaking the surface of the water, he came up for air. A deep lungful. Spotting shore, he made a beeline to it, hauling himself up and out onto the land. His gaze darted over the grass.
The gun was a dull glint in the light. He grabbed it, raising the weapon in one sweeping motion, and spun.
But Sanborn already had him dead to rights—locked in the sights of a second weapon. A Beretta Bobcat. Sanborn’s backup weapon that he kept in an ankle holster.
Every memory Castle had of Sanborn flashed before him—the good, the bad, the treasured—leading here. To this moment that’d become inevitable when Castle had fallen for Kit and veered off course, putting two high-speed trains on the same track headed for this collision.
The world slowed and distilled to one thing—the steely, fixed look in Sanborn’s eyes. He radiated pure menace.
All Castle heard was the roar of his raging pulse, the ragged inhalation of his breath.
His gut drew up tight as a drum, heart slamming against his chest. Instinct beat through him, driving his reflexes, and training took over.
Castle fired.
The whisper of the bullet spitting from the suppressor stung his ears as he saw it. The chief had moved his finger off the trigger.
Sanborn caught the bullet in the chest by his collarbone. The impact knocked him backward into the water, his arms flailing out wide as he fell.
Chaos erupted inside Castle. It had happened so fast, had only taken three heartbeats. He ran to him, treading over quickly.
The water around him darkened, suffused with blood.
Castle scooped Sanborn into his arms and pressed down on the chief’s wound to slow the bleeding. A major artery had been hit. God, the shot was fatal.
Blood spurted between Castle’s fingers. There was nothing that could be done.
“Why didn’t you shoot?” Castle’s voice was rough with pain. Sanborn had had him and could’ve taken him out first.