Page 47 of The Team

“You’re not in charge here,” Rhett said calmly. “You wanna court martial me, you can fucking do it when I get back. But we are gone in four minutes, and you’ll need to shoot me to stop me.”

The room went silent, and figuring King was done—or maybe he was actually considering shooting Rhett—Rhett turned to Yin and Chen, who were standing very much on Rhett’s side. “Let’s get this done.”

“Who authorised you?” King screamed.

Rhett spun around and yelled right back at him. “I did! I was authorised when my orders werewhatever means necessary. And this”—he pointed to the screens of satellite images and data—“is me getting my own fucking intel, by any means goddamned necessary.”

“You went over my head?—”

“You’re damn right I fucking did. Your head, and whatever bullshit headquarters is feeding you, King. We were set up to fail. And if you’re not in it, then you were set up too. Within twenty minutes, I have every piece of information we should have had from the beginning. Twenty minutes, one phone call. So if you wanna help, find out who the fuck tried to sabotage us and who the fuck we’re actually working for.”

Rhett could see King process this, the possibilities, the conversations he must have had, and Rhett could see the pieces clicking into place. He wanted to believe King was innocent in this, but he couldn’t be sure.

Jay came up to Rhett’s side with his phone to his ear. “Captain, the White House is now involved, and Russia just went airborne. We need to leave. Now.”

Holy fuck.

Then Jay held the phone out to King. “Asher Garin would like a word.”

King, now an unhealthy mix of red and grey, stared at the phone before he took it. Rhett turned for the door, kinda wishing he could listen tothatconversation, but they were out of time.

They ran for the chopper.

“Director Ericson King,”Asher said, his voice eerily sweet. “So nice to finally speak to you. We have a situation on our hands, and you are either one of two things. You are either complicit, or you are being misled like the Milvus team.”

King stammered for a second. “I don’t know what the hell is going on. I haven’t been told jack fucking shit. Everything I’ve been told, I’ve relayed directly to Ouston.”

“I’m very glad to hear that,” Asher replied. “Because Captain Ouston and his little Medic Lin are good friends of ours; I’m rather fond of them. Should anything happen to them because you knowingly put their lives in danger...” Asher sighed as if he had all the time in the world. “Well, that won’t end well for you if we have to come over there.”

King let out a short breath, then another, his mind reeling. Did he just get threatened by Asher Garin?

“I don’t know what’s going on,” King said again. “But I am not complicit in any of this. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I’m in the fucking dark.”

“You don’t normally attend the team on location?”

“No. I just assumed because of the scale of this, they wanted me on the ground.”

Asher was quiet then, and the next voice he heard was deep, gruff, and Australian. “Director King,” he said. It had to be Harrigan. “Do you believe in coincidences?”

King wasn’t expecting that. “What?”

“You got Yixing, the Chinese wonder-kid as your intel hub, and then you have Commander Zihao walk in, drop two fucking Sea Dragons into your goddamned Milvus team, and suddenly your intel goes to shit. In my line of work, we don’t call that a coincidence. We call that evidence.”

Fuck.

What could King say? That it wasn’t his fault? It wasn’t his doing? He too was just following orders? Did it look suspect? Yes.

Did he trust his office to do full background check on Zihao, Yin, and Chen? Of course.

Well . . .

He hoped they had.

Did that information go through Yixing? Fuck.

But at the end of the day, it didn’t matter.

Because Ouston was right. Rhett Ouston was a good agent, and King trusted him.