Page 77 of Enemy of My Enemy
Cooper sat at one of Ethan’s couches, frozen in place with a folder open on his lap. Three laptops were spread over the table and folders littered the floor. Maps were taped up over the fireplace and satellite imagery lay in a grid on the floor, an aerial view of Somalia and the greater Middle East.
“No.” Ethan pushed back and cleared his throat. “No, I want this asshole dead and gone. Let’s keep going.”
Cooper nodded and went back to comparing the list of Sudanese prisoners within the folder to one of the intel dumps the NSA had acquired: a scrape of the databanks of people moving across Europe and through the regions between Somalia and Russia. The murderer—now suicide bomber—had gotten to Russia somehow. He hadn’t flown. The sea route had become difficult, what with the international flotilla monitoring the Mediterranean. That left overland, and for as many checkpoints as there were, there were also holes in borders. Tracking one man across so many wild frontiers was exhausting.
Speaking of exhaustion. Ethan’s gaze tracked over Cooper, taking in the deep-set eyes and the hollow cheeks, the scruff of beard, just too long to be called a five-o’clock shadow. Cooper seemed to have traded sleeping for nonstop work. Ethan received emails and confidential reports from him at all hours; intel analysis from the Gulf, potential action plans for entering Somalia, and his own analysis on top of the CIA’s analysis of happenings in the Middle East. He passed on information sent from Prince Faisal, again with his own interpretation on top of the prince’s.
Every time, Cooper and the prince agreed.
He hadn’t sent Cooper’s team out in weeks. Since they’d returned, Madigan seemed to lay low, and his disappearance was like an itch beneath Ethan’s skin that he couldn’t satisfy. Just out of reach, but still there.
“Whoa. Hold up.” Cooper frowned at the laptop in front of him and tossed the folder of Sudanese prisoners aside. “This can’t be right.” Furious typing, as he pounded on the keys.
“What’s up?” Ethan waited, watching Cooper’s frown turn to a glower.
“This name on the Israeli border checkpoints list. I know this name.”
Frowning, Ethan stepped over the pile of folders and sat beside Cooper. “How?”
“He was my high school hero. The hometown quarterback. Everyone wanted to be him. I was a kid, but I thought he was the shit. He joined the Army. I joined the Marines. We kept in touch for a while after. Sergeant Noah Williams.”
“What’s so unusual about that? There a reason he shouldn’t be crossing the border in Israel?” It was a legal crossing at a checkpoint, and his passport had cleared.
“Yeah, there’s a fucking reason,” Cooper snapped. He typed again, pulling up the security camera footage, showing his former friend’s face clearly, and then his passport with a smiling photo of Noah. Last, he pulled up a news report from Google. “He’s fucking dead. He died in the Iraq War. In Fallujah.”
The news report listed the names of the dead soldiers from the Battle of Fallujah—over a decade ago—from Noah and Adam’s hometown, along with their pictures.
A younger Noah stared back at Ethan and Cooper from the news article. The older Noah Williams in the passport had the beginnings of laugh lines around his eyes and had filled out a bit.
“Track his passport. Where has he been?”
Cooper scowled and slammed his fingers on the keyboard. A moment, as the State Department servers searched through their records, and then a list of his border crossings popped up on screen.
Israel. Turkey. Ukraine. Russia.
Ethan pulled another laptop close and called up Noah’s Army service record from the DOD servers, silently thanking Irwin for clearing total access for them. In moments, Noah’s record popped up on the screen, the DD-214 displaying all of his assignments and his dates of service, all the way up to his supposed date of death.
“Fuck.” A sliver of dread had formed when Cooper spoke, but it seemed too phenomenal, so fantastical, that it couldn’t be true. Still, he had to check, and he pointed to Noah’s last assignment and commanding officer, his stomach turning itself inside out as his heart hammered against his ribs.
Cooper leaned in, reading the screen. “Last duty assignment: Special Operations, commanded by Major Madigan.”
* * *
Ethan wason the phone with Irwin when Jack made it back to the White House late that evening. Televisions droned softly in the background, an endless loop of the bombs in Moscow playing behind talking heads denouncing Sergey, Jack, and the Russian military. Blame was being tossed in every direction.
Ethan and Cooper had combed through the data dumps and had brought in Irwin’s dedicated analysis team at the CIA. In addition to Noah Williams, three other long-dead former members of Madigan’s units had appeared at border checkpoints on transit routes to Russia.
He rubbed his hand over his eyes, sighing. “How long has he been secreting loyal soldiers away? Where have they been for almost two decades?” Jack came up for a kiss, and Ethan hugged him close and kissed his forehead as Irwin answered.
“I can’t even begin to speculate.”
Jack broke away, exhaustion clinging to him. He headed for their bedroom, carrying his small duffel over his shoulder, his only luggage for the trip.
Ethan watched him walk away.
During the day, the FSB had autopsied the blown-apart remains of the murderer. When suicide bombers blew, their heads were usually found intact, separated from the body. Ilya’s FSB had found it, and they were finally able to identify the murderer: an escapee from the Sudan prison break sentenced there for his repeated attacks against the Americans and Russians in Iraq, working with the Caliphate. His name was Asim Walif.
“So are we thinking that these ghosts Madigan has kept around smuggled Walif into Russia? Traded cars and personnel to cross different borders? They have clean passports. They can move around. As long as they’re not in the States, the fact that they’re legally dead won’t be an issue.”
