Page 64 of Turn the Tide
In Logan’s profile, on the left side, his male glory was unspoiled. He was leaner—solid two-thirty without an ounce of fat—had the towering height of a sequoia, broad shoulders. Quite intimidating. A man capable of reckless unpredictability and lacking a leash of allegiance.
A loose cannon was dangerous. Tended to backfire. A threat Sanborn had conveyed with a single look that he wanted mitigated.
“No way Ash went dark without a good reason,” Logan said. “She’s no traitor. There must be heat on her tail. Are we going to have backup on the ground?”
Backup is always nice. But Knox shook his head. “If you find her, make her see reason.” Trouble was probably chasing Ashley, but that didn’t explain why she had accessed the USB device for twenty-two minutes—plenty of time to complete the upload—but failed to finish the mission. “Then we all go home with the thumb drive. We shouldn’t need backup.”
“When we land, will we get firepower?”
“Not wise for us to carry when the BfV has home-court advantage. We don’t need to piss them or the chief of station off.”
Adam Murphy, the Berlin COS, might be Knox’s friend, but if he complicated his job or created an international incident, Adam would quickly reshelve him under foe. Guess it was business as usual—don’t get caught, and deny responsibility for any havoc Knox and Logan might wreak.
“We don’t know what we’re walking into,” Logan said. “Smarter to have a gun.”
Knox agreed. “We need to toe the line here. If you step so much as an inch over it—”
“What’ll you do? Fire me?” Logan gave a scathing laugh.
Yep, a loose cannon. Good thing Knox was prepared. “I promise, you’ll regret it.”
“Add it to my long list of regrets.”
Logan was going to be a pain—along the lines of passing a kidney stone with blood in the urine—but if anyone could find Ashley fast and bring her in from the cold, it was him.
She was in love with him, even though she did a decent job of hiding it. Logan seemed clueless.
That love would be Ashley’s greatest weakness, and Knox’s strongest weapon.
The flight attendant draped one of Knox’s unpacked suits, which she had steamed for him, over a nearby chair. That was the signal.
Yawning, Logan wiped his mouth with a napkin.
“You look tired,” Knox said, rising from his seat wearing the jogging attire he’d changed into. “I’m going to see if the pilot can get us there any faster, but you’ll still have time for a nap.”
With a nod, Logan looked out the window.
Knox strolled down the narrow, carpeted aisle of the plush cabin and opened the door to the cockpit. The pilots had already donned individual oxygen masks, independent of the aircraft. Knox slipped on his mask and engaged the small tank of air attached at the bottom.
One of the pilots disabled the plane’s onboard rubber jungle, switched the pressurization system into manual gear, and began a rapid drop in the cabin’s pressure.
When Knox got the thumbs-up after a few minutes, he grabbed the case Sanborn had ensured would be here. He returned to the cabin, where Logan had lost consciousness from hypoxia. The sedative in his food would keep him knocked out for four hours, without any groggy side effects, once air pressure was restored. Knox thumbed open the case, placed the barrel of a bio-injector gun to Logan’s nape, and pulled the trigger, inserting a GPS microchip.
The built-in local anesthetic would block the nerve signals in the tiny area, ensuring it wouldn’t leave a sore spot. By the time Logan awoke, refreshed from much-needed shut-eye and thinking he’d merely dozed off, his friend would be none the wiser about the implanted tracker.
With or without Logan’s full cooperation, Knox was going to find Ashley Agnello.
