The Target (will Robie, #3)

The third installment in the Will Robie series follows two parallel storylines that converge in a dramatic climax: a covert CIA operation targeting North Korea's leadership and the personal crises of elite government assassins Will Robie and Jessica Reel.

In a secret White House Situation Room meeting, President Cassion, CIA Director Evan Tucker, and National Security Advisor Josh Potter communicate via secure video link with General Pak Chin-Hae, the CIA's highest-placed asset within the North Korean military. Pak has spent nearly three years working toward a coup to overthrow the Supreme Leader, and the president gives him a personal guarantee of support. The vice president is deliberately excluded so he can assume the presidency if the operation leads to impeachment. Tucker plans to deploy Robie and Reel on the mission but is deeply conflicted: He needs them as the agency's best operatives, yet he wants to punish Reel for killing two CIA officials she identified as traitors. Though those officials were genuine traitors, Tucker considers her unilateral actions unforgivable.

Tucker channels his vendetta through the Burner Box, the CIA's remote training facility in North Carolina. Deputy Director Amanda Marks, a petite, fit woman in her early forties with a sniper's eyes, informs both agents they must undergo complete "recalibration" and warns that powerful forces want them to fail. At the Burner Box, Robie and Reel endure escalating ordeals: grueling runs, weighted swimming, rope climbing, and live-fire exercises. One night, they are waterboarded for over an hour while a voice demands they sign confessions of murder and treason. Neither signs. Marks realizes Tucker is using the facility not merely to test them but to break and possibly kill them.

The novel also introduces Yie Chung-Cha, a North Korean assassin shaped by extraordinary suffering. Her parents were sent to Yodok, a notorious labor camp, for criticizing the country's leaders, and Chung-Cha grew up there from infancy. At ten, she earned her freedom at a terrible price: She was handed a knife and ordered to kill her own father, sister, brother, and mother. Now one of North Korea's most lethal operatives, she lives in Pyongyang with rare privileges that can be revoked at any time.

The CIA's operation unravels when Chung-Cha tracks and kills Lloyd Carson, a British envoy who secretly served as go-between for the CIA and General Pak. She discovers Pak's number on Carson's phone, dials it, records Pak's voice, and presents the evidence to North Korean generals, exposing Pak's treachery. When Tucker learns the operation is blown, the furious president authorizes killing Pak, who has fled to France, and tells Tucker to plan a career outside his administration. Robie and Reel, having survived the Burner Box, fly to France and breach Pak's cottage near Avignon. They find the general sitting calmly on his bed with a gun. He says, "Don't let them hurt my family. And tell your president to go to hell," then takes his own life.

A separate thread connects Reel's past to a present danger. Earl Fontaine, Reel's father, is a dying white supremacist serial killer in an Alabama prison who murdered Reel's mother and many others. From his hospital bed, he manipulates his young doctor into contacting the US Marshals to locate his daughter Sally, Reel's birth name, through the Witness Protection Program, claiming he wants to say goodbye. When a fellow inmate grows suspicious, Earl has Albert, a brutal guard and secret co-conspirator, beat the man to death. Reel reluctantly visits Earl with Robie, tells Earl he is "not worth the time," and walks out. As they leave, long-range cameras photograph them, confirming that Earl's scheme was designed to locate Reel for Leon Dikes, a neo-Nazi leader who raped Reel when she was sixteen and fathered her child.

Days later, Robie's fifteen-year-old ward, Julie Getty, is kidnapped. A coded message demands both Reel and her grown daughter Laura in exchange for Julie's life. Reel reveals she gave birth at seventeen and was forced to give the baby up for adoption. Robie and Reel mount a rescue: FBI Special Agent Lesley Shepherd poses as Laura while US spy satellites track the women through Dikes's elaborate travel instructions to his compound in the Deep South. At the compound, Reel strangles Dikes and signals Robie, who leads a ground force that saves Julie moments before she can be executed. Reel kills Albert in the ensuing fight, then returns to the prison to show Earl photos of his dead allies before Earl is transferred back to death row.

The North Korean crisis deepens when President Cassion learns that Pak's adopted children, Du-Ho and Eun Sun, have been sent to the Bukchang labor camp. Guilt-ridden over betraying Pak, he orders their extraction. Robie, Reel, and Kim Sook, a Bukchang escapee who volunteers as their Korean-speaking guide, infiltrate the camp at night, tranquilize the guards, and flee with the children through a hole cut in the electrified fence. When the alarm sounds, Robie covers the retreat by destroying pursuing vehicles before a US Navy helicopter extracts him under fire.

In Pyongyang, the leadership tasks Chung-Cha with assassinating the First Lady, Eleanor Cassion, and the Cassion children as retaliation. The mission is a designated suicide operation. Chung-Cha proposes bringing Min, a defiant ten-year-old she rescued from Yodok, as cover, but her real motive is to get Min out of North Korea. She teaches Min three English phrases: "I am Min. I am ten. Will you help me?" They enter the United States on South Korean cover identities and travel to Nantucket, an island off the Massachusetts coast, where the First Family is vacationing with Robie and Reel, whom Eleanor has invited to spend time with her children.

On Halloween, the North Korean team, disguised in costumes, attacks the town hall during a reception. They kill multiple Secret Service agents and corner the Cassions, Robie, and Reel in a cellar using flash-bang grenades. When they regain consciousness, the team surrounds them. Chung-Cha then turns on her own operatives, killing all five in under a minute with knives and improvised weapons. She tells Robie and Reel she could not kill this family, saying, "I am from Yodok. They took my heart many years ago." She reveals she brought Min to give the girl a new life. A young deputy who arrives late and does not know what happened shoots Chung-Cha through the neck. Her last words, as Reel catches her, are: "Her name is Min. She is ten. Please help her."

In the aftermath, Tucker privately apologizes to Reel, acknowledging that the officials she killed were genuine traitors and calling her actions justified. He resigns as CIA director. The attack is blamed on "rogue elements" within North Korea through diplomatic agreement, allowing both countries to save face. Chung-Cha is buried in a Virginia cemetery under a headstone reading: "Yie Chung-Cha, Who Fought the Good Fight Until the End." Robie and Reel bring Min to live with Julie and her guardian, Jerome Cassidy. Robie tells Reel he plans to leave the agency within a year, and Reel agrees they both need to figure out what comes next. Standing at Chung-Cha's grave, Reel vows to help raise Min, "not just because we owe it to Chung-Cha" but "because it's something people should do. Even people like us." They walk off together as light gives way to dark.