On the other side of the window stood what the colonel had called a group 4 pathogen disposal system. Burning at three thousand degrees, he explained, the incinerator utterly destroyed whatever entered its doors. “No ash, no residue, no trace,” he’d said. “You put a Buick in there and even its tire tracks disappear.”
Through a porthole in the unit’s side Tanner could see flickering white flames.
A series of green lights blinked across the technician’s console. He turned and said, “We’re ready. Burners show hot, all outlets closed.”
The IDCA chief leaned down and pressed a button. In the incinerator’s antechamber a green light appeared over a door, the door slid open. Wheeling a cart before them, a pair of technicians in yellow biohazard suits entered the antechamber. On the cart sat a Plexiglas case containing the six original canisters of Kestrel. Moving with exaggerated slowness, the technicians lifted the case and placed it on the conveyor belt.
They gave a thumbs-up through the window, then backed out of the antechamber. The door slid shut. The light blinked red. The technician pushed a button on the console. The conveyor belt rolled forward a few feet and then stopped.
The colonel turned to Jonathan Root. “Care to do the honors, Mr. Root?”
“Pardon me?”
The colonel nodded at a white light on the console. “That button. The incinerator will do the rest.”
Root stared at the button for a moment, then looked at Tanner and the others. “Strange, isn’t it?” he said. “You’d think it would be easy. Now that the time’s here … it seems unreal.”
Briggs smiled. “Think of it as your retirement from the Dark Watch,” he said. “You’re the last one alive. It’s only fitting you see it through to the end.”
Root considered this, then nodded. “You’re right. Time to be done with it.”
He reached down and pressed the button.
Acknowledgments
Jonathon and his team at The Lazear Agency Tom Colgan and all the good people at Penguin. Rhon for his creative hard work Dr. David Waagner for his expertise The real Joe for being such a character.
To Pam Ahearn of the The Ahearn Agency and Dan Conaway and the team at Writers House Literary Agency. I wouldn’t be here without you.
Tom Colgan, my editor at Penguin Putnam Inc./Berkley. You, too, were worth the wait. A finer editorial deity does not exist
To the gang at Diversion Books. New partners, new horizons.
To Asha of Asha Hossein Design for her fantastic cover art. You’re a pro, Asha.
More from Grant Blackwood
#1 New York Times bestselling author Grant Blackwood introduces Briggs Tanner in a trilogy that Clive Cussler raves is “Pure fun, pure adventure.”
One Man.
Covert agent Briggs Tanner doesn’t like coincidences. In his business, they always mean trouble. So when a man is professionally assassinated right in front of him, Tanner wants answers.
One Mission.
Who pulled the trigger and why? And what is the mystery behind the key the man clutched in his dying hand — the key that Tanner now possesses?
One War Without End.
His search will lead him on an international trail, city to city, from the depths of the Pacific Ocean to the bullet-ridden back alleys of Beirut, all the way to a deadly secret — buried since the end of World War II — that only Tanner can keep from falling into the wrong hands.
The second installment in the adrenaline-fueled Briggs Tanner trilogy, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author.
Ghosts of the Past.
Twelve years ago, Agent Briggs Tanner snuck into China to help strategic mastermind General Han Soong defect to the West. The escape went perfectly, until, somehow, the secret police interrupted them at the final rendezvous. Tanner barely escaped, but Soong and his family were arrested, and soon thereafter they disappeared…
Threats to the Future.
Now, Soong has resurfaced. He’s contacted the CIA with the message that he needs once more to try and escape — and the only person he trusts is Briggs Tanner. But even as Tanner prepares to confront the chaos of his own past and once again challenge the authority of China’s brutal secret police, forces around the globe are watching him, waiting for the moment that will lead the world to the brink of war, and seal Tanner’s fate once and for all.