IT WAS DESIGNED TO DELIVER YOU TO ME.
**PART 3 — THE MAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE D/E/@/D**
The aircraft dropped through the rain with its controls locked, and for the first time in seventeen years of covert operations, I was staring at a man who had already attended his own funeral.
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Caleb Rourke stood beside the runway below us.
Alive.
Waiting.
“Brace!” Keller shouted.
The military transport descended too fast.
Cole grabbed the seat frame beside him. Tara Nguyen secured the medical case against her chest.
Reed leaned over the communications console, fingers moving wildly across switches that refused to answer.
Noah Briggs stood perfectly still.
That bothered me more than anything.
“Reed!” I shouted. “Can you break the lockout?”
“Trying!”
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“Try faster.”
The runway rushed closer.
Keller reached the cockpit and disappeared inside.
Three seconds later, the aircraft suddenly pitched upward.
Everyone slammed backward.
The engines screamed.
We passed barely fifty feet above the runway.
Below us, Caleb didn’t move.
He simply watched.
The aircraft climbed.
Then the controls failed again.
“Chief!” Keller yelled from the cockpit. “We’ve got maybe ninety seconds before the automation brings us back around.”
