Page 113 of Enemy Within

The world restarted, reality snapping back like the launch of a fighter jet off a carrier. He throttled from incomprehension to blinding fury in half a heartbeat. He lunged, diving at Kobayashi.

Hands grabbed the back of his jacket, holding him back. He strained forward, choking himself. He’d kill Kobayashi, kill him with his bare hands. Like a rabid dog, desperate for the kill. He pictured it, imagined it, holding Kobayashi down and choking him, strangling the air from his lungs

His throat burned, and he backed down a half step, coughing hard. The shout, the bellow, died. God, it had been him. He’d been making that noise, that inhuman wail.

Kobayashi chuckled. He reached out and ruffled Adam’s hair.

Adam lunged again, snarling. Rage consumed him, burned his soul, ripped through his heart like a nuclear reactor. He’d mourned Kobayashi. Wept for him, and all his men. He’d loved Kobayashi as an officer loves all his men. Hell, Kobayashi had been his easiest, the Marine he could count on to always be squared away. Betrayal opened beneath him, an endless black void. He was falling, toppling end over end, untethered to reality.

“You killed Park!”

Kobayashi nodded. He shrugged. “I had my orders: get here. Had to move quickly, especially since K-27 is already up.” He gestured to the windows lining one wall. Directly across from the destroyer, the ice cap had been blown away in a nearly perfect oval. Red flags and spray paint marked the ragged edges of the massive hole. Dark Arctic waters sloshed against the blown edges of the ice and, in the center, the rusted, algae-covered sloping hull of K-27, risen from the depths. She hovered more out of the water than in, an unnatural sight for a submarine. Gigantic poles, what would have been used as drill pipe on an oil rig, had been slammed into the ice in a circle around K-27. Strung between the poles, and diving beneath her hull, was a massive industrial net, buoying the once-sunken sub. She wasn’t floating on her own; they’d raised her part of the way and winched her up with the net. Just enough clearance to access the reactor, if Adam had to guess.

Red colored his vision, like a bloodlust out of control. He bared his teeth, growling, spewing nonsense, threats and promises to rip Kobayashi’s throat out, dance in his intestines, bathe in his blood. “When did you turn? When did you decide to betray us?”

Kobayashi laughed. “I’ve always been against you. You think I transferred into your unit after you stormed the West Wing with Reichenbach by chance?” He shook his head. “God, you’re naïve. Even for an officer, you’re fucking stupid.”

“Everyone was vetted,” he hissed. “Everyone’s background was checked.” It had been a scouring, a wildfire through the ranks. Anyone and everyone who’d had contact with Madigan was ripped aside, investigated like they’d been abducted by aliens.

Kobayashi shook his head. “Madigan wrote the book on decentralized counterterror missions. Black communications. Off-the-grid operations. What makes you think what we did overseas wouldn’t work against our own government?” He winked. “We’re everywhere.”

Adam spat at him. A fat glob landed on Kobayashi’s cheek. “You killed them all! Did you ever fucking care about them?”

Cook kicked out the backs of Adam’s legs, sending him to the deck as Kobayashi wiped the spit from his face. Squatting, he smeared his spit-covered hand down Adam’s cheek. “Youkilled them all,” he said.

“You killed Fitz. And Park.”

“Park, yes. Fitz wasn’t me.” Kobayashi rose. “You’ll have to excuse me, L-T. I’ve got work to do. We’re restarting the reactor on K-27.”

COOK DRAGGED HIM FROM Command. Adam fought Cook every single step. He kicked, thrashed, tried to body-slam Cook and break away. Cook threw him into the bulkhead, slammed his head against the hatch entrance. Kicked him when he slumped to the deck. The two men with Cook watched and laughed as Adam coughed up blood and saw triple.

“Captain, we’ve got a problem,” Cook’s radio chirped. “Survivors at the station have taken out our Halo.”

“What?” Cook turned to the men with him. “Take him to the brig.” He strode away, barking orders into his radio for a team to assemble at the snowmobiles, ready to ride.

Adam watched Cook stride away as the other two moved in, each grabbing him under one arm and dragging him away. Survivors. There were survivors. Who? Ethan? The presidents? Doc, Coleman, or Wright?

Faisal. Please, please, let it be Faisal.In shaa Allah, please.The thought was an ugly one. He shouldn’t put Faisal over everyone else… but he couldn’t help it. There were a thousand reasons why he should never have gotten together with Faisal, a thousand damnations he could heap upon his shoulders. But what was done was done. He was already finished.

He eyed his captors, the two criminal soldiers carting him to the brig. They were African, busted from a Sudanese prison. One had a sick-looking scar down the side of his face. The other’s arm was twisted and scarred, ravaged with burns. The first carried his weapon in a thigh rig. The other had a knife sheathed on his belt in the small of his back.

Survivors at the station.He had to help them. He’d do whatever he could, anything he could, to right what he’d done.

All he needed was the right moment.

45

Washington DC

SHE WATCHED SECRET SERVICE Agent Levi Daniels slip out of the Roosevelt Room and walk down the West Wing hallway. He rubbed one hand over his furrowed forehead and breathed out slowly as if he was in pain.

Perfect.

Luli Fan was an exemplary graduate student. She earned straight A’s in her Georgetown graduate courses. She’d landed a prestigious fellowship out of Yale, her undergraduate school, which took her to Georgetown and DC. She’d applied for and received an internship in the White House, in the West Wing. She worked in the environmental affairs policy division and loved penguins. She lived alone with one cat and loved peppermint ice cream. She watched four shows on Netflix and kept up with her parents, who lived in California, outside of San Francisco.

Her father was a very bad man, at least according to the government in Beijing. He’d stolen low-level military information, plans about the construction of their submarine bases built inside tunnels and hidden away from American spy satellites. He’d traded the information for a new life in America, for himself, his daughter, and his wife.

Luli Fan’s father, then, was easy to manipulate. All it had taken was a few careful threats, promises of extraction back to China and a description of the exquisite tortures that his wife and daughter were sure to face. Perhaps even a trip to the North Korean prison camps for him, to be reeducated on loyalty.