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 call 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.
“I don’t have much time.” She had to go back inside. If she didn’t, Bravo was going to kill two people in cold blood. Lee Pomeroy and Ed Boswell weren’t innocent by any stretch of the imagination, but she wasn’t a vigilante. Sanborn didn’t have the right to be judge, jury, and executioner. She’d helped create this nightmare, put the bioweapons in Sanborn’s hands. Walking away wasn’t an option. She had a responsibility to end this before more lives were lost. “You were able to find us,” Ashley said, “because I didn’t remove the tracker from Ms. Westcott’s hip.”
Desperation flashed in his eyes and rose in his voice. “Is she alive?”
“Yes. Sanborn has her on a boat with Yosef Khan. He plans to rig it to explode with both of them onboard. He wants it to look like Khan was trying to flee the scene of the attack with his accomplice when the explosion happens.” Her watch vibrated on her wrist. “I have to go.”
“Where are they? Where’s Kit?”
“The dock.” Ashley backed away from him, toward the door, keeping her eyes on him. “Southeast corner of the lawn,” she said as he took off in a backward jog in the direction she indicated, his gun sight still focused on her. “Quarter of a mile down. Hurry.”
* * *
3:09 p.m. EDT
The gag bit into Kit’s mouth and the zip ties were so tight they cut off the circulation in her wrists and ankles.
Seated upright, she kept her knees pulled into her chest to make herself smaller, not wanting to draw Sanborn’s attention. The other captive, the man they called Khan, was in a different position on the boat, closer to the cockpit.
The speedboat rocked and bounced on the choppy open water. After dropping off his murderous minions on the dock, Sanborn had driven the boat away from shore.
From her low position, she couldn’t see how far out they were, but they’d only gone a minute or two before he cut the engine.
Kit’s frantic gaze scoured the boat for anything that could possibly save her. Sanborn and his goon were working with the only tools she’d spotted, and both had guns. A ring-shaped lifebuoy hung on the side, but with her hands bound behind her, it was useless.
The one who went by Echo came up the steps from the cabin below. “Everything is set. The engine is rigged per your specifications.”
Sanborn gave a thumbs-up from the rear of the boat, close to her as he meddled with the gas tank. “Inflate the raft and get the motor started.”
Echo nodded.
Sanborn went back to tinkering with the gas tank and caught her watching. “Curious?” he asked, his voice taunting. “Let’s just say the tanks aren’t made strictly out of molded polyethylene. Nothing will survive the explosion.”
She squeezed her eyes closed, regulated her breathing, and prayed for a miracle.
* * *
3:11 p.m. EDT
This wasn’t the time or place to be late, but Ashley was one minute off schedule. She prayed the drama with Castle played out in his favor.
Part of her was ready to finish her own drama with Bravo and hightail it back to her husband, but the scene unfolding in front of Ashley stole the rest of her focus.
Bravo and Charlie had lured Pomeroy and Senator Boswell to Section 10 off the west corridor with the bait of urgent landline phone calls for both. With the cell signals blocked in this technology-on-demand world, every attendee had fingers itching to swipe right, check an email, send a text.
The two had surely jumped at the chance to take a call.
Bravo opened the door to the insulated room. Sanborn had cut the ventilation system to the entire section so Z-1984 would be completely contained.
The older gentlemen strolled inside, chatting animatedly, unaware the space was meant to be their tomb. The door closed behind them. Through the huge plate-glass window, she watched Pomeroy and Boswell. Their conversation stopped as their gazes homed in on the bioweapon sitting on a stand in the corner, counting down. Both men froze.
Their expressions shifted in confusion, evolving into denial, blossoming into horrified desperation.
But with the door locked, there wasn’t anything they could do except wait to die.
With a smirk that made Ashley’s skin crawl, Bravo removed his wig and mustache.
Lee Pomeroy’s eyes flashed with fury. “Howe!” he yelled. “What are you doing?”
Soundproofing muted their terrified screams and furious cries, forcing her to read their lips. They banged on the shatter-resistant glass that divided the observation room from the chamber, picked up chairs, and flung them at the door.
It was horrible. A fifteen-car pileup happening right before her eyes.
The timer was set for five minutes. Only three left.
Before she could strategize how to take out both Bravo and Charlie as quickly as possible, Bravo did the unthinkable.
He turned toward Charlie with a pen in his hand. The cap slipped to the floor. Silver glinted in the light, a wink of violent intent.
Bravo’s hand swooped up and lodged the ice pick in Charlie’s ear. Then Bravo stabbed him a second time in the chest.
Ashley drew her Glock out of her holster, flipped the safety off, and aimed. Forget about giving that psycho a chance to attack her first. She’d waited seven years to make him pay for what he’d done to her in Germany, for the way he’d tortured her. She wasn’t going to wait a second longer and fired.
The report of the gun roared in the compact space, but Bravo was unaffected.
She squeezed again and again.
Two more shots rang out. Still nothing.
“I gave you the one with blanks,” Bravo said, his grin spreading.
Leaping forward, Ashley threw the gun, slamming it into his face with the full force of her body behind the blow.
He staggered back, dazed, nose busted and bleeding. She pulled her belt off and braced herself. Just as she predicted, he charged, swinging the ice pick.
Ashley caught his wrist with the belt and moved the sharp point of the steel shaft away from her. She smashed the heel of her free palm up into his broken nose.
He might not have screamed, but the certain agony of that blow left him at a disadvantage that she seized. She knocked the ice pick from his hand.
The shank clattered to the floor. But in the tussle, it was kicked and glided into a corner.
Howe rebounded, far too quickly. He landed a vicious punch to her gut that left her doubled over in pain. With a leg sweep, knocking her feet from under her, he brought her hard to the floor. He withdrew the gun from the holster on his hip.
If she didn’t move lightning-fast, he’d have her and those precious nanoseconds would cost her life. She whipped her legs around his calves in a scissor move and rotated with all her might, flipping herself facedown, and brought him to the floor.
Raising her heel, she thrust her foot into his face. Her kick was perfectly aimed. His head dropped back. She went for the gun still locked in his grasp. But he fought her with the strength of a madman. They rolled, both throwing jabs. Taking some and deflecting others.
She pried the gun free from his hand, but he wasn’t intent on letting her keep it. He delivered a powerful blow to her head that made her fingers open in reflex.
The gun rattled to the tile, sliding under the table.
He pounced on top of her, but Ashley sent the side of her hand sailing in a chop to his jugular. Gasping, he fell backward.
In a blink, she was on her feet. Moving, moving to the closest weapon—the ice pick. She seized it and jumped up.
Bravo had already reached the gun. He was rolling from under the table. She flipped the ice pick in her hand, holding it by the stainless-steel shaft.
As he spun toward her, prepping to take aim, she threw the ice pick. And hit her mark—Bravo’s throat.
Not a breath to spare to think. She ran to the door of the sealed room and glanced at the timer. Nine seconds dropped to eight.
She wrangled out the security pass. Six seconds. Pressed it to the digital lock. Four seconds. The red light blinked. Why didn’t it work?
Two seconds. She turned the badge to the opposite side and went to try again, but—
The timer hit zero and the bioweapon deployed.