Secret Mission - Undercover Agents Never Back Down-

But Koval was paranoid. He ran background checks on Julian Ashford that went back to elementary school. Vex had prepared for that. What he hadn’t prepared for was the dead drop. One morning, he found a photograph slipped under his safehouse door: a candid shot of his real sister, taken that week. She lived in Arizona. No one was supposed to know she existed.

For the agents of Section Zero—a unit so deep within the intelligence community that its own director doesn’t know all their names—that silence is a second language. Their motto is not written on any wall. It is whispered in dead drops and encrypted dead-letter boxes: Never back down. Secret Mission Undercover Agents Never Back Down-

Because for an undercover agent, backing down isn’t failure. It’s death. And death, as they’ll tell you in Section Zero, is just another cover story. But Koval was paranoid

Never back down.

In a safe house in a city he’ll never name, he tapes a fresh photograph next to his shaving mirror. Not of his sister this time. Of the château library. Of the egg. Of the moment before everything went wrong and right. What he hadn’t prepared for was the dead drop

This is the story of one such mission. Operation Ghost Mantle.