Page 113 of Until the End

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?”