Page 129 of Enemy Within

JACK’S WHOLE BODY SHOOK as he held himself up, leaning his entire weight into his palms as he slumped forward. In front of him, a steel sheet haphazardly stuck into the ice cap formed a wall for one of the Arctic shantytown camp huts. Only a scattered handful of Madigan’s criminal army seemed to still be around, and they were near the center, huddled around barrel fires and drinking vodka. He could hear their shouts and cheers in the silent spaces between Madigan’s transmissions and Ethan’s screams and cries of pain.

Ethan. God, Ethan… Had he really told Ethan to let him go, let him die in order to save the world? Had he really condemned Adam for caving in the face of losing his team and the love of his life? Watching the people he loved be murdered, one by one? Had he really thought he could somehow withstand the same? That he was made of sterner, more hardened material, his soul girded with patriotic passion, ready to embrace sacrifice for the good of the world?

Ethan’s screams shredded his convictions, made a mockery of his lecture on the greater good.

He wanted to tear across the ice cap, run guns blazing toward Madigan. Fire into the sky like some kind of deranged action hero and bellow at the top of his lungs, demand Madigan meet him for a pistol duel at high noon. Everything in him wailed, desperate to rescue Ethan, to put a stop to his torture, to just give in and give Madigan what he wanted.

Tears streamed down his face as he trembled and heaved. Vomit stained the ice between his feet. Beside him, Scott clenched his rifle so hard his arms and shoulders shook, and his face turned purple, his eyes almost incandescent with pure rage.

TheVeduschiy’s speakers hissed as Madigan opened his broadcast again. “Are congratulations in order, Jack? I see a ring on Reichenbach’s left hand. Are you wearing one too?” His voice dripped with condescension, with hateful mockery. “Are you going to let your husband die?”

Ethan’s voice broke in, and Jack’s heart leaped to his throat. He spun, staring at theVeduschiyas Ethan spoke. His voice cracked, sounding choked, but he forced his words out. “Jack will never surrender.”

“Everyone has a breaking point,” Madigan purred.

“Get out of here, Jack!” Ethan shouted. “Get far away!” His voice cracked again, and a wet thump echoed over the transmission. Ethan groaned. “Go,” he grunted. “I’m with you all—” Another wet thump, and then a kick, and Ethan’s voice faded to pained grunts and groans.

“Turn yourself in, Jack. Your plan has failed. We stopped your people from blowing up this ship. You’re not sinking anything today. Surrender and I’ll let your husband live.”

Jack turned to Scott, tears blurring his vision again. Scott gazed back, his entire soul tearing apart in the depths of his eyes. Surrender was anathema to everything Jack knew, everything Ethan and Scott stood for in their professional lives. If they surrendered, that would be it. Madigan would win. The world would die.

But Ethan would live.

You are my whole world, Ethan had said.You are my everything.

If he didn’t turn himself in, seven billion people might have a chance of surviving. Maybe he and Scott could storm K-27. Or blow the net, and send her back to the depths. Maybe they could cobble together a plan, scrape a victory out of the disaster their mission had become.

But his world, after Madigan and after Ethan, would be bleak and empty.

He wasn’t strong enough for this. Wasn’t strong enough to listen to Ethan suffer and die, all for his moral convictions. Damn it all, he was just aman.

He blinked, and tears cascaded down his cheeks. He looked at Scott again.

Scott saw the decision in his eyes. “Jack,” he breathed. “Ethan—”

“Honolulu to Phoenix One. Honolulu to Phoenix One. Come back.”

Jack’s jacket squawked, his secured ship-to-shore radio blurting out Captain Anderson’s message. He and Scott dove down a darkened alley, hiding between a torn-apart shipping container and an old, broken plane fuselage. No one shouted, and no one came running.

“Honolulu, Phoenix One,” Jack breathed back into the radio. “Christ, am I glad to hear you.”

“We picked up Madigan’s transmission. We know he’s got Reichenbach. What’s your status, Phoenix One?”

Jack’s eyes squeezed closed. He exhaled. “Ethan led a team into theVeduschiyto blow the ship. The plan was to crack the ice cap and sink theVeduschiyand K-27. They must have been captured. I’ve only heard Ethan’s voice.”

“Where are you now? Can you get to an extraction point for us to pick you up?”

Jack pressed his lips together and bowed his head. Ethan’s voice, telling him to run, to get away from there, replayed in his head. Anderson was offering him just that: an escape.

He couldn’t live with himself if he walked away from Ethan again. He’d sworn to Ethan to always be by his side, to have and to hold, in good times and bad. To turn to each other, always. To never, ever let go of each other.

Run, and survive as a shell of a man?

Surrender to Madigan?

There was a third option.

“Captain, if you’re in range for an extraction, you should be in range for a torpedo strike. Do you have a bearing on theVeduschiy?”