Page 106 of Enemy Within

“One thing at a time,” Coleman growled. Together, they pushed out of the station, heading down to the ice. Doc followed, Faisal on his heels.

Doc dropped to his knees and peered beneath the station, between the stilts. He cursed. “Motherfucker. They rolled the oil drums under there. Our C4 is all over the barrels.”

Coleman and Wright went pale. Their eyes widened. “The whole station is going to blow.”

“We’ve got to get the fuck out of here.” Doc jumped up and turned to the snowmobiles. Empty ice greeted him. “Fuck!”

Faisal’s eyes darted over the station, the shipping containers, the fuel drums, the ice hole, the submersible—

The sub.Allah u akbar. He swallowed. “We need to get inside the sub,” he said, stepping forward. “We can use it to escape.”

“We need to go after the L-T—” Coleman started.

“How?” Wright said, his voice going shrill. “We’ve got no gear, no equipment. Zero intel. What the hell can we do?”

Coleman stepped forward, snarling as pressed into Wright’s face. “We can’t just abandon him—”

Faisal grabbed Coleman’s jacket, tugging him back. “I want to find Adam just as much as you do.Maa shaa Allah,we will. But right now, we have to survive. We must get away before this station blows up.”

Doc took off first, heading for the ice hole. Coleman stared back at Faisal, his expression sprinting from rage to frustration to defeat and back again. “We can’t leave him,” Coleman growled.

“I will never leave him,” Faisal breathed. “But he wants you to live, Sergeant. That is why he did what he did. Do not make his sacrifice be in vain.”

Doc managed to get the sub door open and crawl inside. “It’s all in fucking Russian!” he shouted, his voice tinny and echoing in the sub’s belly. “I don’t know what fucking buttons to push!”

Coleman cursed as Wright slid inside the sub, belly-flopping through the round opening. “Get in,” Coleman grunted, nodding to Faisal as he reached for the sub’s thick docking chain, wrapped around a metal stake driven into the ice.

“Together.” Faisal helped him unwind the chain, the frozen metal biting into his skin, so cold it felt like knives were flaying his palms open. Coleman hissed beside him, gritting his teeth with every yank on the metal. Each link was the size of Faisal's thigh.

“Get in, Faisal,” Coleman snapped. “If that thing goes, you can’t get caught in the blast.”

“Neither can you.” He heaved the final twist of the chain off the stake. Overhead, the winch groaned, the cable slipping, and the sub started to swing toward the center of the ice hole.

Wright lunged out of the opening and reached for them both. Faisal grasped his hand, holding tight. Coleman followed, grabbing the sub’s round hatch opening with his bare hand. He strained, digging his heels into the ice as he struggled to hold it close. Wright hauled Faisal through the hatch, almost throwing him in before turning to Coleman.

“C’mon, big guy.” Faisal scrambled out of the way as Wright and Coleman came hurtling through the hatch, tumbling to the sub’s deck. With four men, the submersible seemed tiny all of a sudden.

Doc sat at the controls, cursing more than Faisal had ever heard. He hovered behind Doc, eyeing the array of knobs and controls and the hard angles of the Cyrillic alphabet.

A rumble started, and then a blast, like thunder cracking over their heads. Furious flames roared into the sky, swallowing the station whole and blasting debris across the ice. Burning metal and fireballs of diesel screamed for the sub, for the open hatch.

“Holy fuck!” Doc hollered. “Shut the hatch! Shut it now!”

Coleman leaped first, slamming the hatch closed and pulling the lock. They swung over the hole, battered by debris and flames, the ruins of the station plinking against the sub’s hull like hail. They swung crazily, a pendulum pushed too hard.

“Get us out of here, Doc!” Wright bellowed.

“The fucking buttons are all in Russian! What should I push? I don’t know, how about that one?” Doc sputtered, shouting half to himself and half to Wright, and jammed his finger down on one of the buttons. They started to rise, winching upward toward the crane hoist.

“Other way!”

Doc jammed his finger down on the button directly below the first.

The winch unspooled the entire length of cable, and they plunged straight down, deep into the blackness of the ice hole, tumbling end over end.Adam, ya hayati. I will wait for you at the garden of paradise as well. We will be together again.

ETHAN SLIPPED QUIETLY OVER the ice, his rifle up and ready to fire. Sasha mirrored his movements, padding down the length of the runway. Nothing moved at the station. In the mist, it was as eerie as a ghost town. The winds whistled through the steel containers, over the ice, under the wings of the propeller plane, and around the ugly confines of the main building.

Where was Adam? Where was his team? Where was Faisal?