Page 99 of Until the End

“I joined the navy to get out of my father’s house. It was the fastest, easiest, all-expense-paid, one-way ticket from under his thumb. I turned out to be a natural fit for the SEALs, and once you become a special mission unit operator, it gets in your blood. When Sanborn recruited me after I was discharged for PTSD, it was a second chance to do the only thing I’m good at, but this life wears on your soul. I can’t do it forever.

“Sometimes I look at my soon-to-be brother-in-law.” He gritted his teeth and rolled his eyes. “Cole. He’s making three times what I bring home for doing a different version of the same job. Maybe he’s cracked the code on how to be an operator and still sleep at night.”

She caressed his cheek, her heart overflowing with gratitude for his presence in her life, despite the shitty circumstances responsible.

“This life picked me,” Castle said. “The same as with you. No sane person seeks out death and violence, but it has a way of finding some of us.”

“I keep wondering why the Outliers? With the other hacker groups out there, why did Bravo pick us?”

“Maybe you weren’t his first choice. Maybe he tested other groups and they failed. If you can figure out who else he might’ve contacted, determine the common denominators, you’ll have your answer. Your group was good, right?”

“One of the best. We played by our own rules, but…” Ever Shield.

“What?”

“We did something shady that our small community apparently knew about. Perhaps Ever Shield painted us as a group open to black-hat work.”

“Do you know anyone else like that, someone who might be willing to talk to you?”

Two groups sprang to mind, but only one might talk to her. “As a matter of fact, I do. I can reach out, see if they’ll meet. I can tell you right now, they’ll only talk face-to-face after verifying my identity. And if you think I’m paranoid, then you haven’t seen anything yet.”

35

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

9:39 p.m. EDT

Castle looked around, seated on a bench in front of the fountain in Passyunk Square. Home to cheesesteaks, taquerias, pho restaurants, the trendy neighborhood was a melting pot of cultures with a small-town vibe. Not to mention a host to rich, savory smells.

They were being watched and had been since they’d arrived an hour ago. Someone in the van parked across the street was sizing him up. By now, they might even have run his picture through facial recognition, cross-referencing it with local PD and FBI records.

“Who are they?” Castle asked.

“CONTRA84.”

He was better versed in foreign terrorists than potential subversive threats in their backyard, but the name struck a distant bell. “I’ve heard of them. They hacked a government satellite, right? Turned it into a weapon or something.”

“Three satellites. American, French, and Russian. I heard through the grapevine they used them as high-intensity radio frequency weapons targeting three U.S. battleships, frying their electrical systems.”

“Aircraft carriers. No one uses battleships anymore,” he said, correcting her without thinking about it. “Killing their electrical systems would leave them dead in the water and vulnerable to physical attack. Why would CONTRA84 do that unless their intent was to inflict serious harm?”

Containing the war on terror beyond their borders was hard enough. They didn’t need their own citizens presenting a clear and present danger to national security.

“Supposedly, they were working with a company chasing a government contract building a new class of warships—aircraft carriers,” she said, making a gesture of apology, “with HIRF shielding. After the incident, the company won.”

“I remember that.” He tended to stay abreast of navy news. Once a SEAL, always a SEAL. “The company was awarded a fifteen-billion-dollar contract for two new aircraft carriers with sweet upgrades, better defense systems, and new stealth technology after a malfunction on three older models. I never saw anything about an attack.”

“It’s hard to know what’s fodder to build a group’s reputation and what’s real. CONTRA84 tends to stay under the radar, and they’re very good at covering their tracks. They do a lot of legitimate corporate work, but every year, their presentation at the black-hat convention leaves everyone speechless.”

This CONTRA84 sounded about as malicious as they came. Whether or not they’d had a run-in with Bravo, Castle made a mental note to have the Gray Box dig into them once things settled down. Hopefully that would be sooner rather than later.

The black, nondescript van on the corner flashed its headlights three times.

“That’s the signal,” Kit said, rising to her feet. “Let’s go.”

The check on him had apparently come back clean, as well it should’ve, but Castle had been at this long enough to know that his physical size and grim countenance tended to set people on edge. When he opened his mouth, it didn’t ease anyone’s qualms that he was capable of crushing bones. In fact, it only bolstered them.

“Stick to my side, no matter what,” Castle instructed. “Got it?”