Page 126 of Enemy of My Enemy

Adam heard a roar, a crack, and then his hearing shattered, like a giant gong breaking in two. He felt the reverberation, felt a rush of hot liquid flood the side of his face. Felt a burning flash burst over his skin. Tasted gunpowder in the air, wet copper. Pressed his lips together and rubbed thick blood between them.

Noah collapsed on top of him, a heavy, dead weight.

Doc appeared over Noah’s shoulder, eyes wide and lips moving fast. He was saying something, but Adam could only hear the roar of clanging bells, so loud his head wanted to split in two.

Frantic, Doc rolled Noah’s limp body off Adam. He grabbed Adam’s face, rubbing through the splattered blood, his hands pressing into Adam’s temple and his fingers searching through his blood-soaked hair. Adam tried to shake his head, tried to wave him away, but the bells roared louder. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Doc tugged at him, shaking his shoulders until he opened his eyes. Doc was still shouting something, his eyes wide enough to show a ring of white all the way around. He pointed to Noah and then to the car idling at the opening of the alley, driver’s door thrown open.

Adam’s gaze wandered over Noah’s facedown body. Bits of bone and brain had blown out from the side of his head, splattered in the dust. His hand clung limply to the gun.

He’d shot himself. Why had he shot himself?

Doc shook him again, his thumb jerking to the car. He tried to pull Adam to his feet.

“We have to take him!” Adam thought he said it normally, but Doc ducked down, his eyes wild, and waved his hands in the hair, as if Adam had shouted. “We can’t leave him,” he tried again, softer.

Rolling his eyes, Doc grabbed one of Noah’s arms and then snapped at Adam, his soundless lips moving. “Help me!” Adam managed to lip read. “We gotta move!”

He stumbled to Noah’s side, grabbing his other arm, and ran with Doc to the Mercedes. They shoved Noah in the back seat. Doc ran to the driver’s side, and Adam collapsed into the passenger seat. Doc took off in a cloud of dust, tires kicking back and stuttering. He fishtailed down a side street and then slowed as he hit the main drag. A few more turns, and then it was the straight desert road to the airport.

Adam’s hearing came back in a high whine, the bells’ roar turning into a smear of static and nails on a chalkboard. Groaning, he mopped at the side of his face with his coat sleeve, wiping away Noah’s blood and a trickle coming from his ear. Through the electric whine, he managed to piece together Doc’s diatribe. “…thefuckhappened? I thought you wanted to interrogate him, not kill him?”

“He shot himself.” His jacket sleeve was drenched, and in the car’s mirror, his cheek was a mess of blood, his hair matted with it. “He leaned into the gun. He killed himself.”

“What thefuck?”

“I don’t fucking know.”

“And where the fuck are your shoes?”

They blew through the airport’s dilapidated chain-link fence and drove right to Faisal’s waiting Learjet. The pilot had wisely lined up on the departure runway, ready and awaiting their return. Doc drove straight to the jet’s stairs, screaming to a rubber-screeching stop.

Adam shucked his jacket and threw it over Noah’s head. He and Doc manhandled Noah’s body out of the car and up the jet’s stairs. One of Noah’s arms dropped. Doc lunged, flipping it up onto his chest, hopefully before the bored Jordanian military police caught it.

Faisal’s pilot paled when they dropped Noah’s body on the Berber carpet in the center of the Learjet. Blood smeared on the lambskin leather seats.

“Let’s go. Now!” Adam kneeled by Noah and shooed the pilot back to the cockpit. A moment later, the engines turned over and the plane began to taxi.

Panting, Doc glared over Noah’s body at Adam. He gestured to the mess, to their failed mission. “So, he recites poetry to you by candlelight and you fuck up his jet and bring him dead bodies?”

Adam laid back, exhausted, on the jet’s ruined carpet as the plane took off, the weight of the lift pushing him against the deck.

Why hadn’t Noah said anything? He hadn’t even tried to explain himself. Why had he run? Who was he waiting for?

Why kill himself?

* * *

Chapter 43

White House

Jack knew,without a single doubt, that he had to spend the rest of his life in penance.

He could never fix what had become of his life. What had become of the world around him. Of the people around him.

He couldn’t undo what had been done to Leslie. The long years she’d spent in solitude, in captivity. Years of her life gone, lost to a madman. Years of her life spent in agony, wondering about the life she’d lost. About Jack. About his life.