Page 121 of Enemy Within

“Colombia.” Scott leaned back. “Got popped running high-value shipments for the cartels into Miami. But at least the prison was warm. And I did good business inside. ‘Prison Banker’, they called me.” He grinned. “It was a hell of a lot warmer there than here.”

“If you don’t like it here, why’d you join?”

“I like my freedom better. I wasn’t about to stay in that prison after you emptied it. Fuck that.”

Cook grinned slowly. “You’ll be warm in no time. We’re almost through with our mission. See me later.” Nodding once, Cook straddled his own snowmobile and throttled the engine. He waited, though, watching.

Scott nodded. He waved to his teammates and revved his engine, guiding his snowmobile toward theVeduschiy. The others slid into a line, passing by Cook as they wound their way around the destroyer.

Cook stared after them, and then switched the channel on his radio and raised it to his lips.

“ALHAMDULILLAH, I DID NOT think that was going to work.” Adam slid off the back of Scott’s snowmobile and crouched behind him, keeping low by the stern. He mumbled something that sounded like Arabic, closing his eyes as he kissed his gloved fingers and touched his chest.

Ethan, Jack, Sergey, and Sasha moved in beside them, parking by the stern and out of sight, tucked in close to the destroyer’s rear loading ramp. On each of their snowmobiles, one of Madigan’s dead lay, dressed in their own white arctic outerwear. They’d changed into the mismatched uniforms of Madigan’s men on the ice cap, keeping their dry suits on underneath everything. That had been a level of cold Jack didn’t want to experience again. He’d caught Sergey’s eye, shadows of his harrowing plunge beneath the ice in both their gazes.

Jack scanned their surroundings. Coming around the back of the destroyer, they’d entered the inner spaces of Madigan’s Arctic base. The destroyer,Veduschiy, rose to their right. Dead ahead, rising from the cracked surface of the ice cap, was the dark sail of Madigan’s submarine. Both ships had been on Sasha’s map.

Scattered between Madigan’s two ships, a slumland shantytown had sprung up. Tents and cargo containers and homemade scrap lean-tos squatted beside snowmobiles, arctic crawlers, ice diggers, and cannibalized bodies of old Soviet airplanes. Anything that Madigan’s criminal army could use as living space had been rolled onto the ice and lay in a tangled, twisted scatter. Ratty tarps stretched between the tips of cargo containers and shorn steel walls, fluttering in the wind. Fires burned in barrels, and weapons leaned against the drums, keeping warm.

Off to the left, the rotten, rusted, slime-covered hull of K-27 hung suspended half in the Arctic waters. Just like Captain Anderson had speculated, Madigan had blown the ice in order to raise K-27. Frigid waves lapped over the ice cap, freezing into a new lip that circled the hole. The net Adam described strained and creaked, stretching the length of a football field beneath the sub, down the center of her hull. It must have been a commercial fishing net, something Madigan had taken from the Russians in Murmansk.

K-27 was already up. Kobayashi was already inside restarting the reactor, according to Adam. Their options were growing ever more fractional by the moment.

“Holy fucking shit…” Ethan’s whispered curse drew Jack’s attention. He whipped his head around, searching for what had made Ethan react.

He found it a moment later.

Strung up on the side of the port bow, dangling by their necks from chains tossed over the side of theVeduschiy, twelve bodies hung, limp and lifeless. Each wore the distinctive operator’s uniform of a Navy SEAL.

“The team Elizabeth sent in…” Jack swallowed. He closed his eyes and bowed his head. How many had Madigan slaughtered? How many had he killed already, and how many more did he plan on murdering? Where did his bloodlust, his madness, end?

Who could stop such a man, determined and deadly as he was?

Standing on the ice beside the gruesomeVeduschiyand bracketed on two sides by twin submarines—one a dangerous relic of Soviet history, and the other a gut-punch representation of Madigan’s amassed power—Jack felt small in a way he hadn’t had for years. Presidents, as a rule, didn’t feel small. Not even facing down the UN, or Congress, or the press, or even in his election campaign. Here, he felt small as a human being and small as a man.

What they were doing was ludicrous.

Madigan had broken the back of the world, had broken the back of America, and here he was, standing beneath the corpses of the best military personnel the United States could offer and still thinking he could make a difference. He and Sergey, two middle-aged men. Ethan and Sasha, men too devoted for their own good, with hearts and souls too big for this world. And Scott, a beacon of eternal friendship, of fidelity, enough to make him want to weep.

What could they possibly do, in the face of what they were up against?

Dejection wasn’t something he was used to feeling. That sinking, hollow feeling, the bottom of the world dropping out from beneath him. An aching void of hopelessness that swallowed his soul. Those were unnatural feelings, and his bones itched, trying to shake it off. But his soul was screaming, shrieking that he’d already failed, he’d already lost, and he was just too dumb to realize it.

Ethan. He needed Ethan. Jack looked up and found Ethan’s gaze.

Ethan’s eyes were begging, pleading with Jack, desperate for a shred of hope.

He slid off his snowmobile and padded to Ethan’s side. Ethan held him close, drawing him in, as if he, too, needed to lose himself in Jack’s arms. They were still huddled by the stern of theVeduschiy, away from the blowing wind and the bare desolation of the ice cap. K-27 lay across the ice, and they could hear the muted sounds of Madigan’s men making noise in their shantytown. Sergey and Sasha stood nearby, but for the moment, they were alone.

Ethan exhaled into Jack’s neck, kissing his jaw. “When this is over,” Ethan started, whispering. “I’m going to take you to a beach. Some faraway island where it’s just us and the ocean. Perfect water, crystal clear, as far as you can see. Warm white sand forever. We’ll lie in the surf, and I’ll make love to you for days.”

Jack grinned. “Sounds perfect,” he whispered back. “Exactly the honeymoon I want with you.”

Ethan’s hands stroked up and down his back. He leaned into Ethan, listening to his breath drag in and out, his heart beat its steady rhythm. “I love you.”

Scott coughed. “We need to get moving.” He almost sounded apologetic. “Are we going in, or what?” He slid the bolt back on his rifle, checking the chamber.

Ethan stepped back. He looked into Jack’s eyes, cradling his cheeks. “Not all of us.”