Page 144 of Enemy Within

The second shot grazed Adam’s shoulder. He kept walking.

Kobayashi fired again. This time, his shot went wide. He squeezed the trigger again.

His weapon clicked.

Out of ammo.

Adam smiled, a wild, feral baring of his teeth. He burst forward, racing the final feet that separated him and Kobayashi, and tackled Kobayashi to the ice. Howling, Kobayashi tried to get away.

Adam was bigger than Kobayashi, taller, stronger, even while shot. He manhandled Kobayashi, throwing him down and straddling him, pinning his arms beneath Adam’s knees. He ground Kobayashi’s face into the ice, slamming his skull again and again. Blood pooled beneath Kobayashi, from his nose and his temple, and the back of his head. Bone crunched along the side of Kobayashi’s skull, like cracked eggshells beneath Adam’s fingers.

Adam’s arms tingled, though, and his hands grasping Kobayashi's hair slackened. Blood loss was a bitch, stealing his strength when he needed it most. He could feel his blood pumping out of him.

He scoured the glacier, searching for something, anything to help him. He was weakening, and he needed to end this, now.

A chunk of broken ice the size of a basketball rested only a foot away. Shorn from the ice pack, it had sharp, jagged edges, and had probably been frozen solid for a hundred years.

Perfect.

Staggering, Adam scrambled for the chunk of ice. He hefted it in both hands and turned back. Kobayashi tried to slither away. Adam stumbled after him, heaving the ice chunk over his head on trembling arms.

Kobayashi screamed and threw his hands up, trying to block Adam’s blow. Adam dropped to his knees, using his body’s fall to help drive the ice down, slamming it into Kobayashi’s face, and then again, into the side of his skull. Kobayashi’s arms fell away as he went limp, motionless on the blood-drenched ice.

Adam pitched sideways, collapsing beside him. He tried to breathe, to keep drawing in slow, shallow breaths. Crimson spread beneath Kobayashi, reaching across the glacier to him. He splayed his hand out, resting his fingertips in the spreading pool.

Kobayashi’s eyelids fluttered. “I… wasn’t… alone…” he croaked. His chest rattled as his body trembled, and Kobayashi’s last breath slipped from his lips.

Adam closed his eyes and rolled to his back.Faisal. I’ll see you soon,ya hayati.

ETHAN STRUGGLED TO BREATHE, gasping against Cook’s hold around his throat. Cook’s hands were massive, both circling his neck, all the way around to his spine. The crime scene photos from Cook’s jailbreak flashed in his mind: the young guard had had his spine broken, an internal decapitation by someone ripping out his vertebrae.

Cook’s fingers closed around the knobs of his spine as if searching for handholds. His nails dug into the open cuts on Ethan’s neck, the wounds where Cook’s chain had already broken his skin, almost down to his muscle.

He thrashed, trying to throw Cook off. It was no use. He might as well have tried to move a mountain. His own hands wrapped around Cook’s neck, squeezing, but his strength was gone, bled out of him through Cook’s torture and their escape into the freezing waters. Cook would kill him long before he could even make Cook dizzy.

Still, he couldn’t just give up. Ethan kept squeezing, even as the world started to darken around the edges of his gaze.

“Ethan!” A voice shouted over the ice pack, a hoarse bellow.

A voice he would recognize anywhere. A voice that had been with him for nearly his whole life. A man he trusted to his bones.

“Ethan!”

The rumble of a snowmobile engine, running at the engine’s redline, screaming almost out of control.

Gunshots, wild firing, chewing the ice beside him. Cook looked up, glaring, and his grip slackened momentarily. Ethan sucked in a partial breath before Cook’s hands closed again.

Scott, be ready. I only have one shot at this.Ethan let go of Cook’s throat and slammed both his palms against the underside of Cook’s jaw, shoving his face upward.

Cook’s hands closed tighter around his throat, choking out all his air. He felt bones twist in his neck, his trachea start to collapse as Cook’s fingers gripped the edges of his vertebrae. Moments, he had moments. Ethan pushed, heaving with all his might, straining through gritted teeth as he pushed Cook up, up, up—

A shotgun blast boomed, echoing over the glacier. And then another. A third. Cook’s head exploded, half his face melting away as Ethan held his chin high, pushing him up for Scott’s aim.

Blood and bone and bits of brain poured down on Ethan, coating him. Cook’s hands went slack around his throat

Ethan gasped, dragging in breath after breath as he shoved Cook’s corpse sideways.

Footsteps pounded over the glacier, and then Scott slid beside him, grabbed him, pulled him close. “Holy shit!” Scott shouted. “Ethan! Jesus, Ethan!” Scott’s hands went everywhere, searching for wounds.