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  Xander chuckled. “Gotcha,” he said, but his gloating was short-lived. A swerving truck struck him, sending him flying down the street to land right beside Xiang. The two men looked up at the same time and locked eyes.

  “Think I found my new favorite sport!” Xander said.

  “Gonna have to fight me for the gold!” Xiang replied.

  They smiled at each other then, and Xander thought that in other circumstances they might actually be friends.

  But there was no time for sentiment. Xiang kicked out at Xander, but this time he was ready. He deflected the blow and gave Xiang a punch that sent him tumbling. Xander rose to his feet and started running once more, but Xiang quickly recovered and gave chase, and he soon overtook Xander. An approaching car slid to a stop to avoid hitting the two of them, but a second car plowed into it, and a third car swerved, trying to avoid a collision, but it couldn’t avoid hitting the second car. The impact flipped the third car into the air—right toward Xander and Xiang. Xander moved without thinking. He grabbed Xiang and dove to the ground as the car flipped over them with inches to spare. When it struck the street, its gas tank exploded, and a wave of heat rolled over the two men, and chunks of metal and engine parts rained down around them.

  Xander rose to his feet, and held out a hand to Xiang. After a moment’s reluctance, Xiang allowed Xander to help him up.

  “Thanks,” Xiang said. He sounded sincere, and Xander had no reason to doubt him. He’d saved the man’s life, and they both knew it.

  “Don’t mention it,” Xander said.

  He elbowed Xiang in the face and started running. Xiang shook off the attack and took off after Xander. The apartment building where the Director was preparing to use Pandora’s Box was now only a block away.

  * * *

  Adele raced up the stairs of a dusty rotted tenement across the street from the Director’s building. She found a room she thought was suitable, smashed out the window and then quickly set up her sniper rifle. When she was ready, she took aim at the penthouse across the street.

  “Do you have eyes on the target?” Becky said in her ear.

  Adele scoped the building, but there was only one penthouse window visible, and she knew the Director wasn’t stupid enough to stand in front of it. She switched her scope to thermal imaging and saw that the entire top floor was a red bloom of light.

  “Dammit! Bastard’s got the heat turned up. I can’t see shit inside.”

  “Kinda genius, actually. Almost have to respect it,” Becky said.

  “Give a man enough time, he’ll always make a mistake,” Adele replied. “So now we wait.”

  * * *

  Xiang jumped over a wall and into an alley, Xander on his heels. Xiang rolled over the hood of a parked pickup truck and launched into a 360-degree flip as Xander rolled off the truck hood right after. Xiang executed a spin kick, knocking a box on top of a dumpster, sending debris flying at Xander.

  Xiang then ran toward a fire escape, Xander close behind. Xander caught up to Xiang, grabbed hold of him, and flipped him over. Xiang kicked out, but Xander dodged the strike and leaped up to the fire escape. He began running up the metal stairs, but Xiang jumped onto the fire escape and gave pursuit. The two men raced up three stories until Xander reached a door. He kicked it open and entered the building, Xiang right behind.

  * * *

  Tennyson and Nicks managed to stay on Hawk’s bumper, but no matter how hard Tennyson pushed the van’s engine, they couldn’t quite catch up. In the distance, they saw the apartment building where the Director had set up his operation.

  “Don’t let him reach the penthouse!” Nicks said.

  Tennyson could think of only one option, and he knew Nicks wasn’t going to like it. “I have a plan. Hold on.” Tennyson fit his mouth guard into place.

  Nicks’s eyes went wide with fear. “Hold on ain’t no goddamn plan! Shit!”

  Nicks braced himself as Tennyson veered onto the sidewalk, gunned the engine to draw even with Hawk’s vehicle, and then swerved their van into his. The two vans collided, flipped, and tumbled, Tennyson laughing the whole time. Seconds later, the vehicles came to a halt, Hawk’s on its side, Tennyson and Nicks’s van upside down.

  Nicks crawled from the wreck shaken and bloody, but Tennyson figured he’d be all right. He glanced over at the van and saw Hawk lying behind the wheel, eyes closed. Unconscious. Tennyson hung upside down in the van, held in place by his seatbelt. He took his phone from his pocket, grinned, and snapped a selfie.

  “That’s two hundred!” he said.

  * * *

  Xander and Xiang raced up the fire escape stairs, both men aiming for the top floor and getting closer with every step. But when they were within a couple floors of the penthouse, gunfire suddenly rained down on them. Xander looked up and saw Jonas Borne firing at them from the penthouse’s fire escape.

  Borne smirked. “Fish in a barrel.”

  Xander ducked the gunfire, and Xiang jumped onto the railing on his level and leaped up one level above Xander, tapping his foot against the wall as he landed. Both men then looked up at Borne.

  “Forty-five USP,” Xander said.

  “Twelve-round mag,” Xiang added.

  “Five left.”

  Xiang stuck his foot on the railing and gunshots landed around it. Xiang quickly withdrew his foot.

  “Three,” Xiang said.

  Xander nodded, and without another word being exchanged between them, a plan was formed.

  Xander continued up the fire escape, passed Xiang, and continued upward toward Borne. Meanwhile, Xiang distracted Borne by sticking his head out and giving the superspy a target to shoot at. Xander reached the balcony as Borne was taking aim, a sadistic smile on his face. Before the man could shoot, Xander grabbed his wrist and threw him over the railing. Borne fell and landed on the level just above Xiang. Xiang raced up to Borne, who was just rising to his feet, an expression of mingled fury and desperation on his face. He still had hold of his gun, and he raised it, ready to fire. But before he could, Xiang grabbed hold of him and flipped him over the railing, sending him down to the bottom of the stairwell. Borne landed with a horrible thud and the sickening sound of his neck snapping.

  Xander looked down over the railing at Borne’s dead body. “Empty,” he said.

  Xiang nodded.

  Then Xander turned and entered the penthouse apartment, as Xiang hurried to catch up.

  Once inside, Xander saw no one. He saw a bank of cobbled-together set of monitors sitting on a table, and he recognized them as the ones the Director had used to deliver his ultimatum to the world. The screens were still active, displaying various images and scrolling lines of data. But what caught Xander’s attention was a small device sitting on the desk in front of the monitors: Pandora’s Box.

  A number of propane heaters were lined up against a wall. They were all on full blast, and they’d made the apartment feel like the Mojave at high noon. Xander had only been in here for a few seconds, and he could already feel beads of sweat forming on his body.

  Xiang entered the room then, but instead of racing to grab Pandora’s Box, he took a seat in a chair, relaxed, and lit a smoke.

  “Gibbons always thought you’d be back,” Xiang said, “and be the hero we needed.”

  Xander answered without turning around. “I never promised him I’d be a hero.”

  “You take that box to the NSA, we’re right back where we started,” Xiang said.

  Xander’s hands balled into fists, but he pushed all frustrations aside. He’d found the Box, and he’d give it to Marke and let her worry about the damn thing. Then maybe the world would leave him in peace.

  “Not my problem,” he said.

  Xiang took a drag on his cigarette, exhaled, and then gave a slow clap of sarcastic applause. “Looks like the Xander Cage Gibbons spoke of really did die all those years ago, huh? We needed Triple-X, and you left us behind. You left Gibbons behind.”

  Xander wondered what Gibbons woul
d say if the man were still alive and here right now. Gibbons had been the only one to see the potential within him, something not even Xander saw. Xander hadn’t wanted to believe it, had fought against accepting it, but Gibbons’s faith in him had never wavered. Not once. And because of that faith, Xander had finally come to realize that maybe—just maybe—Gibbons had been right about him all along.

  Well, shit, Xander thought. Maybe I am the hero after all.

  Just then the Director stepped out from the hallway where he’d been hiding, clothes soaked with sweat, hair plastered to his head. He gripped a 9mm, and he pointed it at Xander.

  “Wow, that’s really touching,” the man said. “The Gibbons Sisters.”

  Keeping his weapon trained on Xander, the Director stepped to the table and grabbed Pandora’s Box.

  “I’m walking out of here,” he said.

  “Not if you keep pointing that gun at me,” Xander said.

  The Director smiled. “I wonder if you’d be so charming lying in a pool of your own blood.”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “Xiang. Xander didn’t kill Gibbons, you dumb bastard. I did. You wanna know why? Because he was a self-righteous prick who thought he could police the world all by himself. He sent his team after me.” The Director paused, and then in a calmer voice asked, “Want to know a secret?”

  “You failed your psych evaluation?” Xander said.

  The Director ignored the jab. “I’m never going to stop dropping satellites. You know why? Because the world is a shithole, and we let it get this way. You, me, him, Gibbons … all of us.”

  “I’m not a fan of this world,” Xander said, “but the answer isn’t blowing up thousands of people.”

  “Thousands of people?” The Director laughed. “This is a war for our survival. Millions of people die in war.”

  “I’m not like you,” Xander said. “I’m an American. You’re from Washington.”

  The Director had advanced on Xander as they talked, pushing him back toward the open balcony door. A breeze filtered in through the opening, and the air was slightly cooler here.

  Xander heard Adele’s voice in his ear then.

  “X, I’ve lost you all in the heat. Thermal’s no good. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there’s no shot.”

  Xander took a step closer to the open balcony door, raised his right hand, and gave the Director a three-fingered salute. “Read between the lines,” he said to the man, but the message was really for Adele.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Xander saw Xiang silently rise from the chair and begin slowly making his way outside the heat circle generated by the propane heaters.

  Xander kept his hand up as he spoke. “I had an aunt in the restaurant business, and she had a saying: You can’t put out a fire with fire.”

  “What are you talking about?” the Director said, incredulous. “We fought fire with fire in World War II, and we won!” The man practically screamed these last few words.

  “Take it easy,” Xander said.

  But the Director continued ranting. “I mean, hell, if you’re not trying to reboot the world, what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning? Am I right?”

  “Okay, something’s been bugging me,” Xander said. “You got something in your teeth. Right there.”

  He bent his middle finger so the tip pointed to the Director, making a perfect gunsight for Adele.

  The Director looked confused. “What?”

  Adele fired. The bullet flew through the open balcony door, passed through the narrow space between Xander’s index and ring fingers, and struck the Director in the face. The man’s head snapped back in a spray of blood, and he fell to the floor, dead.

  Xander gazed down at the man’s corpse. “That was for talking shit about Gibbons, you dumb bastard.”

  “Next time I’ll do it blindfolded.” Xander could hear the grin in Adele’s voice. It was a one-in-a-million shot, and she knew it.

  Xiang stepped to Xander’s side, and the two men looked down at Pandora’s Box, which still rested in the Director’s hand. Neither made a move for the device, and Xander knew it was because at this point, both were willing to let the other have it.

  The apartment door burst open then, and Donovan led a team of armed NSA operatives into the room, followed closely by Marke.

  Donovan pointed his assault rifle at Xiang. “Get on your knees!” he ordered.

  Xiang gave Xander a look that said, Are you really surprised by this? Then he put his hands on his head and knelt as operatives surrounded him and trained their weapons on him.

  Marke walked toward the Director’s body. She glanced at the red ruin that had been the man’s face without reaction. Then she knelt, took Pandora’s Box from his hand, and straightened.

  “Perfect timing,” Xander said. “It’s Johnny Come Lately and the Bozo Patrol.”

  “Watch out, Cage,” Marke said. “Keep this up and people might mistake you for one of the good guys.” She looked at Donovan. “I want this place scrubbed in twenty minutes, stem to stern.”

  Donovan nodded, took out a phone, and placed a call.

  “You got what you wanted, Suit,” Xander said. “We both know Xiang’s not the bad guy here. Let him go.”

  “And who do we blame for Moscow?” she countered. “Better a living terrorist than a dead company man. See what I’m saying?” She turned to address Donovan and his team. “Back on the plane. I want wheels up in twenty.”

  She walked out of the apartment, leaving Xander to wonder if he’d done the right thing.

  Donovan finished his call and put his phone away. “All right, boys. Let’s go!”

  The team headed for the door, roughly pulling Xiang along with them. The man gave Xander a parting look before being escorted into the hallway. Donovan was the last to leave. He smirked at Xander and then he was gone.

  * * *

  Back in the safehouse, Serena, Nicks, Tennyson, and Becky were gathered around a computer, while Adele guarded Hawk and Talon, keeping her rifle trained on them. Both men had their wrists bound behind them with zip ties.

  Xander’s voice came over a handheld radio sitting on the console.

  “Pandora’s Box is secure.”

  Serena grabbed the radio and moved away from the rest of the group. She spoke quietly so the others couldn’t hear. “You gave it back to Marke, didn’t you?”

  “It’s what Gibbons would have wanted.”

  DETROIT METROPOLITAN AIRPORT

  A convoy of SUVs drove across the tarmac toward the waiting Globemaster. They pulled up to the plane, and Donovan got out of the first SUV, bringing Xiang with him. Marke followed, and then the other members of the NSA team disembarked, and everyone walked up the ramp into the plane. A few moments after that, Xander came riding up on a “borrowed” motorcycle. He parked the bike, got off, and started up the ramp.

  Inside the cargo bay, Xiang looked around.

  “Nice place,” he said. “Spacious. Expensive.”

  “Shut up,” Donavan said. He cuffed Xiang to a metal ring on the wall.

  As he walked away, Xiang said, “You have no manners.”

  Donovan ignored him.

  Xander entered the cargo bay. “So, are we finished?”

  Marke turned to look at him, but before she could say anything her phone went off. The ringtone was “Hail to the Chief,” which gave Xander a good idea who was calling.

  Marke answered right away. “Sir? Thank you, sir. Minimal casualties. Triple-X performed beyond any reasonable measure of expectation.” Marke then gave Xander a look, prompted, he guessed, by something the President said. She turned her back then, listening intently. Xander waited patiently until the call ended and she put her phone away.

  “Let me guess,” Xander said. “That was my invite to the Oval Office.”

  Marke turned back around to face him. “He wanted to congratulate us. With Pandora’s Box in the right hands, the world doesn’t have to be afraid anymore.”<
br />
  “In your hands?” Xiang said. “I don’t think so.”

  “I told you to shut up,” Donovan snapped.

  “He’s right,” Xander said. “Nobody’s safe as long as that thing is in one piece.”

  Marke looked at him coldly. “Game’s over, Hail Mary touchdown pass to Xander Cage, home team wins, crowd goes wild. Now do what you do best and walk away.”

  “Adele, Tennyson, Nicks, Serena… I brought these people to help you. Why do I get the feeling you’re not going to give them the same offer?”

  “Because you’re smart,” Marke said. “Disappear like you did before. No one will come looking for you.”

  “I can’t do that. Not to say that I didn’t have fun when I disappeared. You gotta follow your orders, but I gotta follow my truth.”

  Marke stared at him for a moment, as if truly seeing him for the first time. “Gibbons was right about you after all. Too bad.”

  Marke drew her 9mm and aimed it at Xander, and the NSA team followed suit.

  “As of ten minutes ago, the Triple-X program was officially shuttered,” she said. “All active agents are to be erased from record and considered enemies of the state.”

  Xander kept his gaze focused on Marke as he spoke. “Xiang, tell them what happened the last time someone threatened me.”

  “Which one?” Xiang asked. “The guy who got blown to pieces or the guy who caught a bullet in the face?”

  “I said shut up!” Donovan yelled, swinging to train his weapon on Xiang.