Page 13 of Enemy of My Enemy

Jack frowned. “When? What time frame?”

Looking up, Ethan’s stomach clenched when Irwin answered. He knew Jack’s history almost as well as his own. He’d been in the middle of his army career, and though he’d been in the Special Forces, he’d never crossed paths with Madigan.

And at the same time, Leslie Spiers, Jack’s deceased wife, had been serving her country in Iraq. Had paid the ultimate price.

It was how Jack oriented himself to the war. Before Leslie’s death and after Leslie’s death. Ethan had learned that slowly, and he never commented on it.

“Do we know where Cook escaped to?”

“Nothing definite, Mr. President.” Irwin shook his head. “He seems to have vanished, just like Madigan. No sightings within a thousand miles of the prison. We searched the airports in all the states surrounding, both major and municipal. Nothing.”

“Damn it.”

“Something else.” Irwin passed over the last red folder. “A possible lead. Yesterday, a prison in northwest Colombia was attacked and overrun. All prisoners escaped in the mayhem. No one knows who the attackers were.”

Ethan spoke as Jack flipped through the photo boards. “Are you thinking Madigan? Even in Colombia?”

“Absolutely,” Jack growled and passed a photo board to Ethan, a snapshot of the overrun prison. Blood pooled on the ground, stained the walls, and puddled in the dirt around the destroyed prison’s grounds. Ethan’s gaze caught on a very specific bloodstain. Captions on the top photo oriented the camera:northwest cellblock; close-up of the cellblock’s walls.

An M written in blood and closed in a dripping red circle.

“The same symbol from the Leavenworth breakout. And here.”

“So you think Madigan managed to get to Colombia? Could Cook be there as well?” Jack’s voice had dropped, a harsher, hunter’s tone.

Ethan glanced sidelong at his lover. This side of Jack was new.

“We don’t know. We just have two symbols connecting two prison breaks within days. One we know has a direct affiliation with Madigan. Could he have gone to Colombia? Could Cook? It’s possible. But to what end?” Irwin pursed his lips and shook his head. “I promised I would bring you everything, Mr. President. Every possibility, every hint of something, no matter how small. We haven’t connected the dots on this one just yet. It’s still evolving. But Cook’s escape is a dangerous signal, Mr. President. If Cook was assisted by elements within the prison, then that means Madigan still has access to people loyal to him. People we don’t even know about.”

Ethan’s chest filled with lead, tightening until he couldn’t breathe. Madigan was still out there. His reach, as Director Campbell once said, was very, very long.

Dark fury roiled within Jack’s eyes. “Thank you, Lawrence. I do want to know everything, no matter how small. I want to run him into the ground and then bury his coffin where no one will ever find him.”

“We all do, Mr. President.” He threw a quick glance at Ethan. “Which is why I asked both of you to be here. I have an idea, and I’d like to bring Mr. Reichenbach on board.”

“Me? How can I help with this?”

“I want to stand up an off-the-books covert strike team. Dedicated one hundred percent to tracking down Madigan and, ultimately, taking him out. A black team. A kill squad. Completely clandestine. Run it through the CIA’s black budget and pull from the CIA’s collected intelligence feed, including the raw intel we get from the NSA and FBI. And, they’d get their orders straight from the president.”

“I don’t have the experience to run a strike team, Lawrence. I can’t order them around in good conscience.”

“The team will be answerable to only you. I would provide strategic direction and political cover through the CIA. And, I’d like Mr. Reichenbach to run the operation.”

Ethan frowned. Maybe once, he’d been the man who could do this, but that wasn’t him anymore. “Sir, I’m flattered, but—”

“You served in the Army for thirteen years. Assigned to the Fifth Special Forces group, you served three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, your team took over the villages controlling the highway on the Taliban’s resupply route, starving them out of hiding in the pass. In Iraq, your team captured an insurgent airfield and successfully guided in badly needed resupply missions for the Peshmerga forces. You captured fifteen high-value targets in two years. In the Secret Service, you rose through the ranks quickly, joining the presidential detail after only three years and commanding the detail in twelve. You have been responsible for the safety and security of the most important men on the planet.”

“Didn’t do so well in Ethiopia.”

“On the contrary. You got the president out alive. You took a hellish situation and you made it a win for the president.”

Jack’s hand settled on the small of Ethan’s back, his thumb stroking soft arcs across his suit jacket. “You do have the experience, Ethan.”

He glared down at the carpet, Jack’s choice of beige and cream redone after the Oval Office had been destroyed. By him. He pushed that aside. “I want to see Madigan caught and killed. I do.” He fixed Irwin with a pinched glare. “But I can’t be running around the world chasing shadows and ghosts. Not anymore.” He’d left that life behind. Now he was a different man with a different life. With Jack. Hunting shadows and chasing monsters made from the darkness of men’s souls turned even the best people toward a darkness they didn’t want to face. Made hard choices a constant living thing, an itch that couldn’t ever be scratched. He’d fought back from that life once. Not again.

“You would run operational command from here. No field work. We’d have to find a tactical commander who can lead a strike team anywhere in the world and who can report back to you for command direction. But, for you, we’d want to keep your involvement out of the public eye. Your main duties would remain here in DC as the first gentleman. This would be something extra. And not to put too fine a point on it, but the whole operation should involve as few people as possible. Just the members of this room, in fact.” Irwin fixed a pointed look at Jack and Ethan, and the emptiness of the Oval Office.

“Authority would be granted through secret National Security Presidential Directive?” Jack sat up, though one hand stayed on Ethan’s back.