Page 2 of Enemy of My Enemy

Sputtering, the kid wheezed. “Please…” he grunted. “Please…”

Cook grinned, more a baring of teeth than anything else. He leaned forward, until he could feel the kid’s panicked pants against his cheek, and closed his fist tighter around his throat. “Shhh.”

A gurgle, as the kid struggled to breathe.

There. There it was.

With a bellow, Cook clenched his fist, crunching through cartilage and hyoid bone as his fingers closed around the bony extensions of the kid’s spinal cord. Blood burst from the kid’s mouth in a shocked cough, an explosion of agony that coated Cook’s face and hands. He squeezed again and yanked, feeling the satisfying crack and splinter of bones, decapitating his skull from his spine within his neck.

Cook let go and dropped the lifeless body to the catwalk, leaving him as a limp sack of blood and broken bones.

“Captain.”

He turned toward the voice, coming from the direction of the single door to Z Unit. Blood dripped down his cheek, catching on the scraggly hairs of a beard he’d never been allowed to trim.

“Captain. Phone call for you.”

Through the orange cloth, Cook could just make out the dark outline of a man in full battle rattle holding a sat phone. His eyes were adjusting to the sudden light after so long in the black. He walked forward, measured steps until he reached the phone.

Beneath him, the prisoners of Z Unit were howling, banging on their cells, throwing themselves against the walls. Some banged their heads against their toilets, even after their skulls split open. Intense solitary broke even the most hardened of men.

But not Cook.

“Captain Cook,” a voice on the sat phone said. “I promised I would come for you.”

Cook slid his blindfold back, dropping the bloodied strip of fabric on the catwalk. He blinked and met the eyes of the soldier who had handed him the phone. Six foot four, a bruiser easily over two hundred and sixty pounds, and kitted out in full battle rattle, the near giant of a man averted his eyes from Cook, looking down with a blink.

“General Madigan,” Cook said, his voice catching on the syllables. How long had it been since he’d spoken? “I never lost faith.”

“Saddle up, Captain,” Madigan said over the phone. “We have a lot of work to do.”

* * *

Shockwaves Grip Nation as President Moves Gay Lover into White House

Shockwaves gripped the nation as the announcement that Ethan Reichenbach, former United States Secret Service Agent and gay lover to President Jack Spiers, has moved into the White House, taking the role of first gentleman of the United States following his resignation from the Secret Service. The stunning announcement came late Friday afternoon, with the White House appearing to minimize the impact, and Press Secretary Pete Reyes refusing to comment further.

The move comes on the heels of a tumultuous six months at the White House. From the attempted coup in autumn to the revelation of the president’s clandestine gay love affair, President Spiers has been continuously rocked through autumn and winter.

Leadership from the Republican Party rushed to distance themselves from the president and Reichenbach. Polls indicate President Spiers’s popularity surged briefly following the attempted coup and again after the United States and Russia led a joint UN force against the Caliphate-held lands in the Middle East, but plummeted shortly after.

One possible source of the plummeting poll numbers might be the increasingly negative attacks coming from the Republican Party, led by Senator Stephen Allen. Allen has repeatedly blasted the president as a betrayer of the party’s platform, a liar to the American people, and an opportunist who is putting his own interests before the nation. “When will we do something about this president?” Senator Allen said recently in an interview with TNN’s Full Court Press. “And when will the president listen to the people saying ‘Enough is enough. We don’t want this kind of person leading us.’?”

* * *

Chapter 1

White House

It was a well-knownrule of politics: if you wanted to release controversial news, you did so on a Friday afternoon after three thirty. Hopefully, it would be buried in the market’s closing bell at four and the public’s general lack of care for political news that bled over into their weekends. Everyone would be distracted, the assumption went.

Pete Reyes, President Jack Spiers’s press secretary, released a one-sentence statement on a Friday afternoon following Ethan Reichenbach’s move back from Iowa, two days after Ethan stood in the Oval Office and told Jack he was coming back for good. To stay as his partner and to live in the White House with him.

It was unprecedented in American politics. There were no guidelines for this, for an unmarried couple sharing the White House Residence, much less two unwed men. Men who were lovers.

Pete exhaled as he posted the press release on the White House website and leaned back in his chair, biting his lip.

The White House welcomes Ethan Reichenbach as the president’s partner and first gentleman of the United States.