Page 87 of Enemy Within

“Incorrigible, dumbass, not adorable.” Doc grabbed his spoon, blind, and beat Ruiz with it, never sitting up. “Means you’re impossible. Which you are. Can I study your brain? I want to know how you live with only two brain cells. I could hook up a light bulb to your skull. When your two cells bounce together, I bet the bulb lights up.”

More laughter. Faisal joined in, shaking his head as the men kept their playful bickering. Ruiz had a nasty scar curling around his forearm, and he complained of stiff fingers when it was cold. Faisal pressed halfway down the scar, gently rubbing, and waited.

“Damn!” Ruiz jerked, and he stared at Faisal like he’d been burned. “The hell? My fingers feel all tingly!”

Faisal nodded. “This should help with your pain.”

Ruiz stared at him and then smiled. Not a sarcastic smile or a sharp smile, but something honest. Something that said thanks.

At the end of the table, Adam sat down with his tray in front of Coleman. Coleman sat apart from the others, watching like a hawk. His dark eyes flicked to Adam.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Adam said carefully.

Coleman raised his spoonful of applesauce, swallowed it all, and then dipped his spoon into the sludge again. He never blinked.

Adam swallowed. “You’re right. I do need to get my head straight. Stop being all over the place. So… Here it is.” Inhaling, he glanced down the table again, watching Faisal gently tease Ruiz and Park as Doc brandished his knife and fork in both hands, his head still down.

On the island, Coleman had dragged him down to the beach and read him the riot act, a blistering tirade about how he was scattered, divided, anchorless. How he was blowing in the wind, and if he was going to have any hope of leading the team through what they needed to do, he needed to unfuck himself. Figure his shit out, and fast. Find his true north, and start navigating right. No one trusted an aimless leader, and that was exactly what he seemed.

“I love him,” Adam said, turning back to Coleman. “I’m in love with Faisal. We were together before I joined the team. Before I took command. I ended it, but that was a mistake. We’re working it out.” He took another breath, squaring his shoulders before his sergeant. Time to lay it out there. Get real. “He means as much to me as this team does. Each and every one of you matters to me. Deeply.” He shrugged and gave Coleman a tiny smile. “It’s just a little different with him.”

He’d heard about the love an officer was supposed to have for his men, for his team, throughout officer training. But he’d been a lone operator, a solitary Marine right out of training, and that had led him traipsing down the path of conspiracy, of secrets kept from his own government, and of Faisal. Transferring and taking charge of the team had capsized his already bruised and battered heart. He’d been in love with Faisal, but had tried to drown that love while he struggled to lead his team. He’d been an out of control yo-yo ever since, wild swings sending him everywhere but where he needed to be.

But now, seeing his team and Faisal all together, everything clicked.

Coleman raised another spoonful of applesauce to his mouth.

“We will do this. All of us, together. We will kill this bastard, and then we will all go home.” Adam leaned forward, his hands turning to fists on the tabletop. “All of us.”

Swallowing, Coleman lowered his spoon and set it on his tray. He reached for his water glass and raised that instead, holding it out for a toast.

Adam smiled and raised his glass, clinking the plastic together. “I’ll need you, Sergeant, like always.”

“Fuck off!” Doc leaped to his feet and jumped Park, bending him half over the table as he pretending to stab him with his fork. Ruiz and Kobayashi howled, and Wright tried, weakly, to pull him off, but he was red-faced and laughing far too hard to be helpful.

Coleman arched his eyebrows at Adam, and a tiny smile tugged at his lips. “I don’t think there’s any hope for them, L-T.”

MUCH, MUCH LATER, WHEN most of the team was snoring in hammocks strung around like a crazed chimpanzee swing gym, Adam slipped into the torpedo room, back from his final pre-mission briefing with Ethan, President Spiers, Captain Anderson, and the Russian president and his officer. Even President Wall had been there over a secured satellite uplink to the White House. His mind spun, dizzy from the intel, and a part of him wanted to scream. K-27, a nuclear submarine being weaponized to ignite the skies. Waves of fire that would burn across the world.

President Wall and her Secret Service bodyguard, Agent Levi Daniels, had gone ghostly pale when the Russian president told them about K-27. “As if things weren’t bad enough,” President Wall had breathed. “Now he can weaponize a nuclear submarine.”

“His people, the ones weknowdefected, turned traitor, and joined him—” Daniels’s voice had gone thin, and he cleared his throat, not looking at the screen or at any of them crowded around the Captain’s table inHonolulu’swardroom. “Madigan doesn’t have a nuclear tech. He doesn’t have someone who knows how to weaponize that reactor. Maybe he got a Russian nuke tech from Moroshkin?”

“We proceed as if he has full capabilities,” President Spiers had said.

Christ, it was too much. Adam just wanted it all to end.

And, after… Well, he knew exactly what he wanted after the mission was over. What he’d always, always wanted.

Ruiz snored loud enough to wake the dead. Kobayashi was as quiet sleeping as he was during the day. Park was still awake, flipping through a rumpled magazine he’d swiped from the mess hall. Wright and Coleman chatted softly in the corner, Wright clutching a picture of him and a blonde chick, her face half-hidden behind his bare shoulder as they posed in front of some monument in DC. Doc lay face-down in his hammock, his arms hanging over the sides, almost brushing a bucket someone had placed beneath him. A piece of rope stretched from the bucket’s handle and wrapped around Doc’s waist, tied in a knot. When he stood, the bucket would follow him, every step he took.

Knowing Doc, he’d keep the bucket clattering behind him just to fuck with the rest of the guys, and especially whoever had tied it to him.

Adam wound his way to a hammock set apart, respectfully distant from the gaze of the team and their antics. A slender shape rested in the canvas, curled beneath a green wool blanket. He squatted next to the hammock and leaned in. “Hey.”

Faisal rolled over and smiled. “Hey, yourself. How did the briefing go?”

Adam blew out a long exhale and arched his eyebrows, bobbing his head as he shrugged.