Page 166 of Enemy of My Enemy

A grim smile tugged at his lips. “You know, it wasn’t long into my presidency that I realized I didn’t want to be president anymore.”

Elizabeth snorted. “Good luck,” she whispered.

“You too.”

* * *

Chapter 55

Ethan drove for hours,never stopping.

He took the road north to Medina, and then northwest across the barren Arabian desert. Across the Iraqi border and then north, all the way through Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Erbil.

He’d been there before. Seen it all before. One dilapidated truck of masked fighters thought about running him off the road, but he fired a burst of gunfire into their engine and tires. They snaked off the highway, into the sand, and he floored it another hundred miles.

He’d filled up jerry cans with fuel on his way out of Jeddah. More than enough to get him where he needed to be.

Outside Erbil, he jerked the Land Rover off the road and stumbled out on shaking legs. His boots kicked at the packed sand, kicking up dust. Baking rubber, oil, and melting asphalt burned his nose. Overhead, the sun scorched his skin. Sweat dripped down his neck.

He knelt down, his stomach heaving, and waited for the vomit to rise. It did, and he hurled the bottle of water and half a fig he’d struggled to get down. Spitting, he laced his hands behind his head and stayed in a crouch.

Maybe if he closed his eyes, everything would change. Maybe this was all some kind of nightmare and he just needed to wake up. Maybe if he stayed down, he’d never have to rise again.

Eventually, he ran the back of his hand over his mouth, his skin scraping over the half-beard that had grown in. He looked like a man on the run, a man on the very edge.

He got back in the vehicle and kept going.

From Erbil, he greased the palm of a Turkish border guard, and he went north through the eastern wilderness of Turkey. He paid crossing into Georgia and then again leaving Georgia.

The border to Russia was closed, they said. No entry.

A stack of American hundreds changed that.

He wound through the narrow mountain roads, through the primeval forests that clung to the Caucasus. Spruce and fir loomed above him, and farther still, ice and snow clung to the peaks. His road twisted and turned, switchbacks with a steep ravine dropping off to nothing on one side.

Six miles into Russia, buried in the impenetrable black forest blanketing the Caucasus, the first roadblock appeared outside a mountain town. Six men stood at a barricade of armored trucks, all wearing Russian military uniforms and holding heavy rifles.

Moroshkin’s men.

Sergey’s rebels—policemen and everyday Russians—wouldn’t be in uniforms, and they wouldn’t be riding Russian military jeeps. Sergey’s forces were a ragtag slice of Russia’s people, and these weren’t them.

Finally, something to do with all of his anger, all of his furious rage. Rage at Madigan, rage at the world, and rage even at Jack. Jack wasgone, and what was Ethan supposed to do now? How was he supposed to go on without him?

There was no place for his fury, no place for it to go except poured into raw brutality. His hands trembled, yearning to fight. To hurt. To cut into someone as deeply as he’d been cut into. To make it agonizing.

Moroshkin’s men—Madigan’s men—were just what he needed.

He slowed, just enough to ready the shotgun he’d plucked from Faisal’s house. As the first soldier waved him down, ordering him to stop, he slid the barrel against the window frame of the Land Rover and pulled the trigger.

All hell broke loose.

Bullets flew, pinging into his vehicle. He slammed on the accelerator, gunning it for the center of the barricade. The tires popped and his SUV swerved hard toward the ravine’s edge. He yanked on the steering wheel, overcorrecting, and plowed through two of the Russians. They dropped beneath his car, but he kept sliding, right into the side of a Russian jeep.

He still had too much momentum. The bullets were still flying, shattering glass and pinging off the steel frame of both the Land Rover and the jeep, impaled together and careening toward the ravine’s edge. Trees spun, tilting like a carnival ride as his Land Rover fishtailed wildly and arced out of control.

He saw the back end of the jeep tumble over the side of the ravine, and then he saw nothing, a pitch blackness that seemed to swallow the world. The Land Rover’s tires left the ground, and for a moment, he was floating.

Ethan closed his eyes, gripped the steering wheel, and prepared to drive into Hell. His world blacked out, vanishing.