Page 112 of Enemy Within

Sergey bolted upright. His face was purple, twisted with rage, and he lunged at Sasha, grabbing him by his jacket. Bitter Russian flew, in time with each shake Sergey gave Sasha.

“Holyshit. They’re going down.”

Scott’s voice made Sergey pause. He glared back, his eyes red-rimmed and furious. “What?”

“The Halo. It’s fucking going down.”

Ethan scrambled to his feet and pushed his face out of the busted side window. Below them, the Halo was plunging, spinning faster and faster as it dove out of control. Smoke poured from its shattered cockpit. They watched it slam nose-first into the ice cap and burst apart in flames.

Everyone turned to Sasha, staring. They hadn’t fired a shot. There wasn’t a way to, not in the sealed Beriev.

“What… did you do?” Sergey asked slowly.

“Target fixation.” Sasha tried to exhale. His hands were still shaking. Sergey grabbed them. “Is problem with Russian gunners. Door mounts break all the time. Russian gunners think they can shoot without them. But the mounts stop gunner from swinging around inside the aircraft and—”

“Shooting their own pilots in the back.” Ethan exhaled and slumped against the bulkhead. “Jesus Christ, you got their gunner to shoot their own pilots?”

Sasha nodded, once. “I thought would work.”

“What would you have done if ithadn’tworked?” Scott’s grumble hung in the silent cockpit.

Sasha shrugged.

Sergey opened his mouth, a fresh tirade on his tongue.

“Okay.” Jack interrupted Sergey before he could begin, clamping one hand down on his shoulder. “We made it out alive. What’s our next step?”

“Our plan got shot to shit.” Ethan closed his eyes briefly.Adam, where are you? He rejected the niggling voice in the back of his head that said the only logical answer was that Adam and his men were inside the station when it blew. There wasn’t anything logical about this. “We can’t fly anywhere in this busted plane.”

“No.” Sasha scowled at the display. He leaned forward, his frown furrowing. “Actually, we cannot fly much more at all.”

The engine sputtered, groaned, and then died, a sad little whine the only farewell it made. For an instant, everything was silent. They glided, almost weightless in the Arctic air.

Sasha looked at Sergey as alarms rang out in the busted, bullet-riddled cockpit. “We are going down.”

44

Kara Sea – Madigan’s Base Camp

COOK SHOVED ADAM FORWARD, pushing him through the dark hallways onboard the old Soviet destroyer.

The ship should have been mothballed years ago. Paint had long ago chipped, and bare metal had turned to rust. One flickering light worked in each hallway. The ship was cold, power mostly offline. Their footsteps echoed like bells, his and Cook’s and two of Madigan’s criminal army as they paraded toward Command.

Light poured from a hatch ahead, dull, but brighter than the dim gloom of the hall. Voices rose and fell, some in Russian, but most in English. He could barely make out the words.

Adam stumbled, and Cook shoved him hard against the bulkhead, digging his cheek against the rotten metal. “There’s something you should see,” Cook said slowly, almost hissing into his ear. “Come with me.”

He dragged Adam by the back of the neck, bending him over at his waist with his face pointed down until they reached the hatch. The voices were louder, but Adam couldn’t parse out what was being said, not bent over and twisted around Cook’s grasp. He tried to fight, tried to shake Cook off, but Cook just squeezed harder, until spots floated in front of his eyes and the world started to go dark.

And then Cook threw him through the hatch. He landed in a sprawl on the deck, face mashed to the cold steel.

Voices stopped. He felt eyes on him, gazes peeling back his skin. What were they looking at? Was he supposed to perform? Be their circus freak? He looked up, glaring.

And found himself face-to-face with Kobayashi.

Reality stuttered to a halt. The world, even, seemed to stop spinning, stop turning. His thoughts froze and then shattered, like an iceberg crumbling to dust. He tried to add it all up, put two and two together. He tried to breathe, but everything was too slow. A gong must have gone off somewhere; he could barely hear, save for the deafening roar of his world falling, ending. A scream sounded, somewhere far away, a roaring, wailing bellow. He stared into Kobayashi’s eyes and watched his teammate slowly smile.

“Hey, L-T,” Kobayashi said. He threw his hands out like he was celebrating. “Surprise.”