End Game

The fifth installment in the Will Robie series follows two elite government assassins, Will Robie and Jessica Reel, as they search for their missing handler in the remote plains of eastern Colorado.

Robie, a covert operative for a U.S. intelligence agency, completes a dangerous solo mission in London, infiltrating a house where 17 terrorists are preparing to plant a cobalt bomb, a radiological weapon, beneath the Oxford Circus Underground station. He kills 16 of the terrorists, and a British tactical team secures the bomb. Returning to Washington, DC, Robie finds a cryptic note from his partner, Jessica Reel: "It's complicated. I'm sorry. JR" (19). Reel has been silent for six months since both were injured during a previous mission in Mississippi. That same night, Robie learns that his handler, Roger Walton, known by the code name Blue Man, has vanished while on a fly-fishing vacation in his hometown of Grand, Colorado.

Reel has spent those six months volunteering as a sniper in Iraq. During a nighttime operation supporting a raid by SEAL Team Six, an elite U.S. Navy special operations unit, her 15-person team is ambushed after an Iraqi team member provides false intelligence. Every member of the team except Reel is killed. Extracted as the sole survivor, she is ordered home.

At CIA headquarters, the new Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), Rachel Cassidy, reunites Robie and Reel and orders them to find Blue Man, framing his disappearance as a national security crisis. Despite personal tension, they accept and fly to Colorado.

In Grand, a tiny, economically depressed town, they meet Sheriff Valerie Malloy, a former NYPD officer who relocated to be near her troubled younger sister, Holly Malloy, and Deputy Derrick Bender. Blue Man's cabin still holds his truck, belongings, and Glock pistol, but there is no sign of struggle. JC Parry, a local fishing guide who reported Blue Man missing, claimed to have been his guide, but Blue Man knew the area too well to need one.

Claire Bender, Derrick's mother and Blue Man's former fiancée, reveals she and Blue Man were engaged decades ago but split when he wanted to leave Grand. She warns them about dangerous fringe groups in the area: skinheads, white supremacists, and a quasi-religious outfit called the King's Apostles, led by a man named Doctor King.

Violence erupts when Robie discovers Holly meeting secretly with Luke Miller, a skinhead, in an abandoned building. Armed skinheads converge to kill Luke, and Robie evacuates Holly while Reel provides sniper cover. Holly is an MIT graduate who moved to Grand and developed a drug addiction. Luke, a Northwestern graduate, is trying to leave the skinhead life. Holly reveals a crucial lead: While in drug rehab, a fellow patient named Clément Lamarre told her he saw six hooded and shackled prisoners in a white van while working a night shift at a rural convenience store. Holly told JC Parry, who brought Blue Man into the matter. Shortly afterward, Blue Man, Parry, and Lamarre all vanished.

Robie and Reel help Holly and Luke flee Grand, but the skinheads track them via malware on Luke's phone. In a running battle involving rocket-propelled grenades and sniper fire, they destroy the attackers' vehicles and put the couple on a bus. The skinheads soon ambush Robie and Reel. Reel freezes at the wheel, experiencing a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) flashback to Iraq, and is knocked unconscious. The skinheads produce Holly, intercepted at the bus station, and force Robie's surrender. At the compound, the skinheads' leader, Dolph, shows them photos of Luke's beheading, then shoots Holly in the head. He orders Reel to shoot Robie as a loyalty test, but she cannot pull the trigger. Doctor King's Apostles storm the compound and rescue them. King reveals he is FBI Special Agent Dwight Sanders, undercover for years against the area's extremist groups. He asks them not to reveal the murders to protect his investigation.

The CIA confirms the white van drove toward the area near a luxury doomsday bunker owned by Roark Lambert, a Denver real estate developer who converted an Atlas E missile silo into multimillion-dollar condos. Blue Man had requested a tour of this silo shortly before vanishing. Reel investigates a remote cabin used by Scott Randall, a wealthy heir and Lambert tenant, finding dirty work boots with chemical residue and blank ammunition. The Agency discovers Randall lost his fortune, then mysteriously regained wealth through shell companies.

Reel extracts a tiny paper from the barrel of Blue Man's Glock, showing a stick figure holding a sphere. Robie interprets the drawing as Atlas holding the world, pointing to an Atlas missile silo. Claire identifies a map from Randall's cabin as depicting a second Atlas site in the region, one Lambert failed to purchase. During an earlier confrontation, a dying skinhead had distinguished between "the bunker" and "the silo" before being killed by his own comrade, confirming two separate locations.

Personal tensions mount. Robie begins a relationship with Malloy. An anonymous note informs Malloy her sister is dead, and Robie confirms the truth. Reel describes the Iraq ambush and her recurring freezing episodes, telling Robie: "The problem is...I love you, Will Robie. More than I've loved anyone. And that's why you'll never be able to help me through this" (275). Claire also reveals that Patti Bender, Derrick's half sister, is Blue Man's biological daughter, conceived before Claire married Roy Bender. Blue Man was never told.

Robie, Reel, and Bender approach the second silo through an abandoned rock quarry. Deep inside, Patti shoots Derrick in the back of the head, revealing her allegiance. The door opens to armed guards and Dolph, who removes a latex mask and fat suit, exposing himself as Arthur Fitzsimmons, a Caltech-educated chemist with Jewish heritage who adopted the neo-Nazi persona as cover. Patti, the true mastermind, has built a massive drug-manufacturing operation inside the silo producing oxycodone, fentanyl, and methamphetamine for nine-figure revenues. Kidnapped workers, mostly young Hispanic people lured with promises of jobs, serve as disposable labor and are killed when used up. Patti conceived the scheme and recruited Fitzsimmons and Randall.

Randall announces a hunt: The prisoners, including Blue Man, Malloy, Parry, and Lamarre, will be armed and pursued through the silo's dark tunnels by seven fighters. The weapons, however, contain blank ammunition. Reel builds improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from the extracted gunpowder. Blue Man guides the group using his knowledge of the silo layout. Robie seizes real weapons after killing a hunter with a makeshift blade. Parry, Lamarre, and two enslaved workers die in the fighting, and Blue Man is shot in the shoulder. Robie and Reel detonate their IEDs to eliminate five hunters, and Reel kills Randall when he surrenders, refusing to let him escape justice through expensive lawyers.

Patti holds a gun to Blue Man's head, intending to take him with her in death. He stabs her with a makeshift knife, and she dies as he holds her hand. Fitzsimmons detonates charges to destroy evidence, but FBI Special Agent Sanders arrives by helicopter. Blue Man and Malloy, both critically wounded, are airlifted to a hospital. Robie leaps from the helicopter, chases Fitzsimmons, and captures him alive.

DCI Cassidy commends Robie and Reel. Fitzsimmons is transferred to Israeli custody. Blue Man and Malloy survive. The quarry is drained, revealing a graveyard of victims including Holly. Weeks later, Blue Man returns to Grand, tells Claire the truth about Patti, and proposes marriage. On the plane home, Reel insists their dangerous lives make a relationship impossible. Yet she silently takes Robie's hand. The novel closes with the suggestion that "perhaps for Will Robie and Jessica Reel there was now a seam of light somewhere inside the darkness" (406).