Page 39 of Enemy of My Enemy

The soldiers had been told that morning that the president and first gentleman would be coming by to spend time with anyone who wanted. Ambulatory patients walked or rolled to the lounge on the recovery floor, and patients still confined to their beds with injuries too severe to move left notes with the nurses.

There was no press for this. No media. Just them on their day off, trying to do something good in the world for the people who were risking it all.

Jack was in his element, diving in and listening to everyone’s stories. Stories about their deployments and their victories. Their time downrange. Friends still deployed. American soldiers recuperating with their Russian partners introduced each other to Jack, and Jack practiced his horrible Russian, learned from President Puchkov, with the Russian soldiers.

Ethan heard a lot ofZeabisshouted from across the room and raucous laughter. He smiled as Jack ducked down and took selfies with everyone, making crazy faces together. Jack signed casts and bandages, and for one Russian, signed his right pectoral.

Ethan moved with the quieter guys, the ones in the back and on the periphery. Jack could make friends with a tree, and in a room full of gregarious military personnel, he was in heaven. There were those, though, who stayed back, and Ethan sat with them, talking quietly about their injuries and their mission and about their lives and future plans.

He thought of Cooper and his men, flying over the Atlantic Ocean and chasing down Madigan’s vapor trail. His stomach tied itself in knots. He did not want to be visiting Adam, or any of his Marines, in the hospital. Or worse, at Arlington National Cemetery. Not because of his orders. Not because of Madigan and his fucked-up schemes.

What was Madigan up to now? They were following him, but where were they all headed? Where would Madigan’s crazed mind take them?

Visiting the soldiers in their rooms was sobering. Some couldn’t speak. Some couldn’t move. Jack sat with everyone, talking when he could, holding their hand when he could not. Ethan stayed by his side, and they left flowers in each room.

The drive back was quiet. Ethan held Jack close, arms wrapped around each other as Jack laid his head on Ethan’s shoulder. Ethan was lost in his memories, the times when he’d been in combat and when he’d thought he wouldn’t make it through the next five minutes. Jack had that look in his eyes whenever he was back in the past, remembering his marriage to Leslie, his wife killed in the war.

What was he thinking? Was he wondering about what could have happened if Leslie had been treated and cared for like those soldiers? If she could have been saved?

Ethan rubbed his hand up and down Jack’s arm and kissed his temple. Breathed in the scent of his hair. “You all right?”

Jack smiled and turned in for a gentle kiss on the lips.

“This was a good day.” Jack rested his forehead against Ethan’s cheek. “With you.”

Ethan kissed Jack’s temple again. “I love you.”

* * *

Chapter 13

Kharga Oasis, Egypt

Kharga Oasis was just likeevery other desert city Adam had ever seen. Minarets, mosque domes, and satellite dishes dotted flat mud roofs, and scattered, bedraggled palm trees sucked up what little water there was between baking stretches of concrete and squat tan buildings. Morning calls to prayer wailed over Kharga, shaking the already-sun-scorched air. Palms dotted the oasis and the open air market on the edge of town.

Dates and coconuts were for sale, along with limp vegetables and bruised oranges. Water-filled troughs hung on the market’s perimeter. Cows and camels shared space, drinking their fill. Dusty carpets and prayer beads hung from every other stall.

Dark eyes watched Adam and Doc as they wandered through, dressed in floor-length thobes and loose keffiyehs over their heads.

The rest of their team were hunkered down outside of Kharga in desert jeeps—and a horse trailer—flown down to them from DC and then across the Atlantic. They’d landed at one of the rendition sites in middle Egypt before dawn and driven into the desert in Egyptian-marked jeeps.

Adam and Doc needed to buy camels. The team would take the jeeps with the camels in the trailer as far southeast as the hard-packed sands of theDarb el-Arbaallowed, and when the sands shifted, they’d turn to camels. It was hundreds of miles to the region where Madigan’s plane had been spotted, and that was a lot of empty desert to cover surreptitiously. Which meant no helicopters, and no Egyptian military aid.

“You sure know your way around here.” Doc juggled an orange in one hand, seemingly careless. “Didn’t know you knew so much about the Arabs.”

He’d helped Doc into the thobe and the others into their Bedouin attire, and then had shown them how to wrap their keffiyehs and ghutras. Raiders they were, but before Djibouti, most of his men had served in the Far East and the Philippines.

Adam scowled. He didn’t want to talk about this. Not at all. Across the market, he spotted the universal sign of the camel merchant: angry camels, heavy carpets being beaten out to get rid of the fleas, and a mountain of stinking shit. “Over there.”

“Did you work in Iraq before Djibouti? Or somewhere in the Gulf? You’re fluent in Gulf Arabic, too.” Doc wouldn’t let up. “You know, you never said much about where you were before you came to us.”

As they drew near the camel dealer, and the milling mass of stinking animals on the edge of the market, one of the camels spat, lobbing a hot, rancid glob of phlegm right at Adam’s face. He barely ducked in time. Experience, though, had taught him the warning signs.

Doc, naturally, thought it was hilarious.

The dealer wanted to wheel and deal, and Adam just wanted to get the fuck out of there. He paid too much for ten camels and didn’t care when the dealer made a pretentious show of how he’d just suckered the Gulf Arabic–speaking foreigners out of too many of their Saudi riyals. Doc stayed quiet, blessedly, and picked out the camels, following Adam’s orders to check the hooves and the bellies for any infestations or bleeding.

As they led their camels out of the market and up the main road of Kharga to the edge of town, one of them spat again, landing a glob on the top of Adam’s keffiyeh-covered head.