Page 145 of Enemy of My Enemy
“Conflict and war are the truths to human life. Combat is the ultimate test of a human’s worth. There’s too many idiots, Ethan. It’s time for a purge, and the right kind of people need to rise up and claim what’s up for grabs. Power. Back in the hands of the powerful. You could join us. You’re a natural, Ethan. You were born for killing.”
“I’ll never join you,” Ethan spat. “You and your sick delusions can go fuck yourselves.”
“Mmmm.” The man sighed. “I feel sorry for you. I really do. You have no idea how deep this goes. How far we’ve gotten. How many people are with us. How your whole world is about to change.” He laughed. “We’re everywhere, Ethan. Everywhere.”
Those pictures. Taken of him and Jack in their home. His blood burned. “Then why are you rotting on this piece of shit tanker? Huh? Can’t find a real base to call home?”
“I’m just closing up shop.” More footsteps, and then the man’s shadow fell across the bottom of the hold, almost reaching Ethan. He peeked around the chair, trying to catch a glimpse, but the man stood in the lights and all he could see was a slim silhouette.
“Come on out, Ethan,” the man purred. “I want to see you again.” His rifle chambered, and a round dropped to the floor, plinking as it bounced and rolled away. “I won’t even shoot you.”
Ethan closed his eyes. They needed intel. He needed to bring this man in alive, no matter how much he wanted to turn around and empty his magazine into his chest, spray him full of bullets until he was nothing but ground meat and a smear against the cargo hold. They needed him alive. They needed to know what he knew.
He spun out from the servers, standing and holding his rifle high.
He came face-to-face with Captain Ryan Cook.
Cook’s face had weathered some since his last official Army photo. Deep lines etched into his pockmarked face, and his wiry hair was cut short, almost shaved. He wore black combat pants and a black T-shirt tucked in tight, and a rifle hung off his shoulder. His hands were crossed over his belt.
Cook smiled. “My, you grew up big.” His smile turned into a leer. “Don’t you remember me?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Ethan growled. “I never met you.”
Cooktsked, wagging one finger toward Ethan. “Now that’s just impolite. Tikrit. Eighteen years ago. Just after that big offensive. Remember blowing me in the showers? That first shower we’d had in three weeks? Us Special Forces guys got the shaft.” Slowly, Cook grinned.
Memories played fast, sounds and shapes and colors zipping through Ethan’s mind. Tikrit, Iraq. He’d been young, painfully young. Early twenties. New in the unit. They’d been attached to Special Operations Command, and there’d been a young captain who had caught his eye. He’d looked one time too many. The captain had cornered him in the showers after they had survived a battle Ethan had known he’d die in at least six different times.
Instead of him getting a black eye, he’d blown the captain under the hot spray, the rest of their unit just outside the stall. The captain, in turn, had pressed his hand over his mouth—until he couldn’t breathe— and fingered his ass as he’d jerked himself hard, spraying the walls in moments.
“Fuck you!” His finger half squeezed the trigger, but the barrel of his rifle trembled. He blinked hard. Grit his teeth. “Fuck you, asshole!”
Cook laughed. He sauntered to the side, pointing to another laptop. “May I?”
“Fucking freeze!” Ethan squeezed, and three bullets spat from his rifle, slamming into the boards over Cook’s shoulder. Cook ducked, rolling smoothly into the darkness, and disappeared.
Ethan dropped behind the circle of chairs, cursing himself. Cook was an expert in reading people, in interrogation, in breaking a man down to nothing. A minute in front of him, and Ethan’s soul had wavered.
“Oh, you know how it is,” Cook purred. “In war, men will turn to each other for relief. It just makes it so much easier when there are guys like you around. So easy,” he singsonged.
Ethan exhaled, shaking.
“You worked your way up, though. Bigger and better after the Army. Tell me,” Cook said, a grin in his words. “How’s that presidential ass?” A pause in the darkness. “Think some of my guys should try a piece of it?”
Ethan bit his lip until he tasted blood. Damn it, he had to get back under control. Rage nearly blinded him, nearly made him jump up and empty his rifle into the darkness. He held his M4 close, listening, trying to find Cook.
Take control back. Make this conversation yours.He licked his lips. “You cloned them all, didn’t you? Noah. Leslie. All of them.”
“I was one of the first to receive a fancy cloned body part all those years ago. Fucking amazing.” Cook had made it to one of the laptops and called up new images on the scattered boards. Pictures of Leslie’s clone, her eyes forced open, watching Leslie’s life and identity play by, every scrap of her that Madigan and Cook had found online. “Have you ever heard of Aralsk-7?” A pause. “No? Old Soviet bioresearch station. A true house of horrors. A thing of beauty. It got shut down when the Soviet Union fell, but a plucky band of generals restarted it, up by Lake Baikal. You remember the Wild West days of Iraq? Back when the killing and the looting was good? Well, I had a shiny new organ and all my medical records, and the Russians wanted to buy. A few drinks in Bahrain, and I made a decent twenty million. And they, my cocksucking friend, perfected the magic of human cloning.”
“Where’d you get the raw material? You couldn’t make a clone without her DNA.”
“That was easy,” Cook deadpanned. “You do know she was my protégé? I trained her, in the sandbox. She was so brilliant.” His voice turned almost wistful. “Taught her everything I knew about interrogations. And, when she died, when she was blown to bits, Jeff and I helped pack up all her little bone fragments and shattered teeth and pieces of skin into a tiny little box to send back to the States. Not enough for a casket and a funeral, but enough to store in the vault at Dover. They log that, you know. Keep track of all our DNA.” Keystrokes pounded on the laptop. “Hell, I could have cloned you if I’d stolen your DNA samples.”
“Why didn’t you?” Ethan crept around the side of the chairs. Cast in the shadows from the floodlights, he could just make out Cook’s form, silhouetted behind the boards, typing away. “Why didn’t you clone me? Seems like that would have been easier. Replace me. Instant access to the White House.”
“Because,” Cook snorted. “Look at all thiscrap.” Around the hold, videos of Leslie played, social media posts and videos and images and tweets scrolling by at breakneck speed. Interviews Jack had given, telling stories about her. Home videos. Snippets from campaign speeches. Interviews with her parents, even. A perfect preservation of a hero, forever immortalized in cyberspace. “Clones come out blank. You can’t clone memories. Can’t clone life experience. But, through the careful application of stimuli, you can implant anything you want. Including a life they never lived. God, America loved her sob story, didn’t they?” Cook whistled. “And isn’t it just so sweet how America has really rallied behind Jack and Leslie? Hoping for them both? Sorry, Ethan. You’re on the outs.” He chuckled softly, his deep voice raw, his laugh just on the wrong side of unhinged. “I really hope Jack is enjoying all the special skills I taught that clone. She couldn’t go back to him a virgin now, could she? Not with all the married sex they’d had. I had to break her in. Make sure she could properly seduce her husband.”
His heart screamed, his vision turning crimson with furious rage. He tried to breathe, but his lungs seized, and for a moment, he imagined rising up, roaring, and ending Cook in a hail of firepower.
