Page 100 of Enemy Within
If he was getting rid of bodies in the Arctic, throwing them down a deep, dark hole would be the perfect place. “What did you see at the ice hole?”
Coleman shook his head. “Nothing. It was like they were never there. No signs of a fight.”
“Did you hear anything?”
“Not a damn thing. Fucking radio.” Coleman squeezed his rifle hard. The plastic casing groaned.
He had to see for himself. “Stay here. Guard the others.”
“L-T—”
“Stayhere.” He forced Coleman back with his gaze. “Someone’s out there, and we’ve got wounded in here. You need to guard them. I’ll go check it out.” He looked back to Faisal. Faisal held Ruiz’s head while Doc rubbed at the gash, cleaning the blood away. Ruiz was still out.
Coleman glared. “Yes, sir.”
Adam ducked out of the station and stayed low. He scanned the ice. Nothing. Nothing but windblown desolation. The open doors of the shipping containers Coleman had gone through banged in the wind, the hinges creaking and groaning as steel clanged against steel. On the ground, he picked out the disturbance in the snow, the buried cables he’d traced from above. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to cover every inch of those cables with loose snow. Thanks to the ice cap, they couldn’t go very deep, though. This part of the Arctic was essentially a desert. The snow blowing in the air was the same snow that had fallen twenty, fifty years before. Old snow, dry like sand. Maybe an inch of new snow fell each year. Probably less.
The antenna farm lay to the left, and the ice hole to the right. He headed to the right, jogging low from the station to the submersible, staked to the ice. The suspension cable swayed above, creaking in the winch.
It was just like Coleman said. There was nothing at the hole. No signs of a struggle. No shuffled snow. Nothing at all to suggest that two of his men had vanished at this spot. He edged his way around, checking every inch of the frozen ground as he made his way toward the antenna farm.
On the far side of the hole, just as he was about to turn away, he finally spotted something: about eight feet down, smeared against the side of the ice, was a streak of bright red.
Fresh blood.
HE HEADED FOR THE antenna farm next, moving fast through the line of snowmobiles to the open shipping container. Doc and Ruiz had been inside, Doc said, checking out the oil drums.
A crowbar lay half-inside the doors. Blood clung to one end. Snow stuck like dust, the dry flakes crimson.
Oil drums lined one side of the container, all the way into the black depths. Chains and tools hung on the other side, clanging as the winds slipped into the open container. Spools of cables and rope turned the darkness into a maze. Three drums in, a lid was partially pried off.
He grabbed the crowbar and went to the third drum, prying the lid the rest of the way off. He tossed it aside.
The drum wasn’t filled with fuel or oil.
Thick rubber suits were stuffed inside, and on top of those, heavy masks with thick seals stared up at him, like alien faces. Badges with blank indicators. A Geiger counter.
Radiation suits. He was looking at radiation suits. His briefing with Reichenbach and the others came flashing back: K-27, the nuclear sub, the weaponized reactor, and the potential for a nuclear blast that would kick-start the fires in the sky, and the chain reaction that would decimate the world. Madigan needed this equipment, nuclear technology to restart the reactor in K-27. Did he have a technician, too? Or was he just going to flip the switches and hope for the best?
A noise in the darkness, like a boot scraping over cold steel, made him turn. He whirled around, raised his rifle to the darkness, and crouched low, hovering behind the drum. He could feel the presence of another person, the way his senses screamed that he wasn’t alone. The way his blood quickened, his pulse raced. The way his stomach clenched and refused to let go. Someone else was there with him. But who? One of his own? Or the attacker?
His eyes scanned the container, the sides, the tools and parts hanging on the wall.
Realization slammed into him. Those weren’t tools or parts for oil drilling. He’d seen enough intelligence briefings on nuclear reactors, on dirty bombs, on components to always be on the lookout for, to recognize what he saw.
Time to go. He had to get back to the others. Adam backed out of the container, keeping his weapon trained on the dark shadows, the plunging blackness behind him. He could feel eyes on him, a hot, heavy stare like a predator lying in wait.
He ran across the ice, zig-zagging his way back to the main station. As he thundered up the stairs, he saw Coleman through the windows, watching his approach. Coleman’s gaze was sharp, tracking every one of Adam’s steps.
He spoke as soon as he stepped into the station. “Sergeant, we have a problem—”
“Actually,youhave the problem, Lieutenant Cooper.”
Behind Coleman, a new voice rose. A head appeared, and then shoulders. A tall man with dark hair and a lean face stood behind Coleman, his hands hidden. From the way Coleman stood, Adam guessed there was a rifle digging into his back. Coleman’s weapon lay on the table. Ruiz still lay where he’d been, unmoving with gauze covering half his head. Doc was nowhere to be seen.
Adam raised his rifle, pointing it at the center of the new man’s forehead. A blink later, and he remembered the man’s face, the last time he’d seen him: on a report of the officers who had fled with Madigan from South America, joining up with him after murdering their colleagues at the base in Paraguay. Captain Martin, Army Special Forces. Even from his official Army photo, he’d looked like a creep. Deep-set eyes, dark and gleaming, like he had a secret that would destroy you and he couldn’t wait to tell the world. Lips that seemed to perpetually smirk, a pair of sharp cheekbones.
“Drop it,” Adam growled. “Or I’ll shoot you in the head.”
