Page 66 of Enemy Within

“He’s received Secret Service training.” Scott jumped in, speaking from his slump against the door. “Tactics, weapons, advanced drills. I’ve seen him in combat, too.” Scott looked Jack dead in the eye, shadows of Sochi in both of their gazes. “I wouldn’t have smuggled him to Russia if I thought he couldn’t survive.”

Anderson’s eyebrows arched to his hairline. “I’d like to hear that story sometime,” he said. Sighing, he scrubbed one hand over his mouth and peered at Jack, as if trying to divine the future in the depths of his gaze. Measure Jack’s soul by the light in his eyes.

It was all on Anderson. Submarine captains were confident to the point of cocky, but rock-solid in their measured, precise risks. Aggressive, but not reckless. Surety lived in their bones, as much as salt flowed in their veins.

“If anyone can do this, Madam President,” he finally said, softly, “it’s the people in this room.”

He held Jack’s gaze as he spoke, unblinking.

Jack smiled, nodding to Anderson as Ethan slipped his hand into Jack’s and laced their fingers together. Jack squeezed back until his bones ached, until, if he squeezed any harder, Ethan and he would become one, bones and blood fusing together.

This was it.

Time to save the world.

THEY SPENT HOURS SKETCHING out their battle plan. Courses plotted up to the Arctic and beneath the ice. The best vector for approaching Madigan’s location. Sasha helped them draw a finely detailed map, to the grid square, of Madigan’s forces and position.

Anderson offered them each the use of his shower. “It’s not much. We run tight water rationing on board. Our de-sal plant can only do so much each day, and the bulk of that water goes to the reactor cooling system. But, you can each get wet, soap off, and rinse. And shave.” He grinned. “I can scrounge up some fresh uniforms for you as well.”

A sponge bath didn’t really count as bathing, not compared to a shower with soap, and falling into the ice didn’t count either. Jack stank, badly enough that he’d gotten used to the odor. A dignified president, even a former president, he was not. “We’d be grateful, Captain.”

He went first, followed by Sergey, and then Ethan, Scott, and finally Sasha. They gave their clothes to a young seaman in exchange for fresh navy uniforms, blue combat fatigues. Jack kept Ethan’s sweatshirt, holding on to the grimy, stained fabric.

As they were dressing, he watched Ethan smuggle something from his old jacket into the pocket of his new uniform top. Ethan wouldn’t look at him, no matter how much Jack tried to catch his gaze.

Jack hoped the seaman took their old, disgusting clothes and threw them straight overboard.

After, Anderson met up with them again. He already looked haggard, worn weary just at the thought of their mission ahead. “Would you like to spend the night on the sub, Mr. President? I can move my officers around this evening. Give you and your men bunks on board.”

“We’ll be crowding you soon enough, Captain. We’ll spend the night on the island and stay out of your hair until we’re underway. We’ve got to connect with our people back there, too. Sergey’s men need to keep fighting.”

Anderson nodded. He most likely wouldn’t be sleeping for another two days. “Fair enough. I’ll send you back to shore with the supplies we brought from Pearl.” Food, clothes, blankets, weapons, and fuel. Elizabeth had filled the subs to outfit an army. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to get ready to be underway. We’ll be able to raise anchor just after dawn.”

Jack nodded. “Send a boat to pick us up. We’ll be ready.”

27

Simushir Island - Okhotsk Sea

ALEKSEY, ANTON, AND VASILY, three former federal policemen and the unofficial officers of Sergey’s convoy, had rounded up the men and started fires by the time Jack and everyone else made their way back to the island. Cheers rose when Ethan and Scott brought up crate after crate of food, blankets, weapons, and the rest of the supplies. Three of the men had shot a deer while surveying the west side of the island. Already skinned and gutted, it slowly spun on a homemade spit over a roaring bonfire. Smaller fires were scattered on the narrow beach, some occupied, some burning low to embers and left abandoned.

The sun slipped beneath the rise of the volcano, turning the gunmetal sky dark granite, and then to deep black when it disappeared behind the island. From horizon to horizon, a billion twinkling lights stared down at the beach. A tiny sliver of moon crept through the sky, but the majesty of the night belonged entirely to the stars. They winked overhead, scattered like diamonds thrown across the inky fabric of space, the carpet of time. How many of those stars were already extinguished? Were they only seeing ghosts, spectral flashes that had already passed from the universe?

There was something there, in that thought, that Sergey couldn’t put his finger on. Something about time passing, and the end of all things. Death, and what was left behind. Unsaid. Undone.

And, always, there was Sasha.

He’d never thought much about the stars before Sasha. They were there. Pretty to look at. Political, once he’d moved into Russian politics. Space was a place where nations could further extend themselves. Russia and the United States, always pushing for more. Russia’s space program hadn’t been as grand as it once was for decades, but it was there, and he’d kept up with their advances. Signed leases with other countries to blast their rockets into orbit. Cut ribbons at a new launch pad. Welcomed home Russian cosmonauts from their tours at the International Space Station.

Sasha always looked up at the stars.

He’d wanted to be a cosmonaut before his Air Force career came to a bloody, violent end. Serve Russia in space, proudly wear the Russian flag on his sleeve as he lived aboard the International Space Station. Fly a ship into space, even.

What had he thought, staring up at the stars over Moscow, over the Kremlin, knowing that his dreams had come to an end? What color, what shape, what form did his pain, his anguish take?

Had he ever mourned for the life he’d lost?

Had he felt like Sergey had felt, bereft and broken, lamenting the loss of a life he hadn’t even lived? All of the what-ifs and the hopes, the dreams and the fantasies, gone forever with finality’s severing blow, a finite slash across their lives.