Page 134 of Enemy Within
This was it. Time to strike.
58
Kara Sea - Madigan’s Base Camp
JACK DROVE HIS SNOWMOBILE across the ice, out in the open, toward theVeduschiy. He could feel the pressure of a hundred pairs of eyeballs on him, watching his every move. He stared at the frozen, bullet-riddled bodies of the SEAL team Elizabeth had sent. Their corpses banged against the hull like deathly windchimes, frozen chains wrapped around the men’s bodies rattling and scraping against the destroyer's old steel.
When he arrived at theVeduschiy’sloading ramp, a team of Madigan’s soldiers was waiting for him. Americans, not criminal thugs. Soldiers who had abandoned their posts to join his army. They smirked at Jack as he slowly walked up the ramp, his hands held over his head. A dozen rifles were pointed at him. Two men stripped him of his own weapons, his rifle over his shoulder and his pistol in his waistband.
A familiar face walked down the ramp to meet him. “Hello, Mr. President.” Kobayashi grinned and pointed his pistol at Jack’s head. “Won’t you join us on the main deck?”
Kobayashi led him through the dark hallways and cramped hatches, winding him up through rotten ladders until they came to a rusted door that opened to the top deck. Frigid wind whipped over the hull, whistling along the metal surface. Kobayashi shoved Jack through the hatch. He stumbled but caught himself.
Ahead, a crowd of Madigan’s men, easily a hundred or more of his army of traitors and criminals, stood gathered around the bow of the boat, beneath the barrel of the destroyer’s immense long guns. To the right, he spotted Sasha and Sergey, kneeling with their hands behind their back. Sasha practically covered Sergey’s body with his own, trying to shield him. Sergey’s eyes were closed, his forehead resting on the back of Sasha’s neck. Jack met Sasha’s gaze. Grim determination, and what looked like an apology, stared back at him.
To the left, Madigan’s men restrained Adam, pinning him back by his arms and holding him on his knees. A dirty pipe had been shoved in his mouth, and blood dripped from the corners of his lips where it dug into his skin. Hot, angry tears stained Adam’s face, tracks of dirt and sorrow running down his skin.
And, in the center of the crowd, Ethan lay in a soaking, shivering heap. A rusted chain wrapped around his neck, looping over and over, and then rose, thrown around the barrel of the destroyer’s long guns, and dropped to the hands of a grinning member of Madigan’s army.
Jack met the man’s maniacal, vicious stare.You’re going to die.
Where the chain looped around Ethan’s neck, dark bruises and tears in his skin bloomed. Rivulets of blood trickled down his bare chest. Burns and angry welts marred the skin over his abdomen, and the skin over his ribs, from his back to his sides, was discolored, vivid aubergine, ugly olive, sickly yellow.
Silence reigned on the deck as Jack slowly walked forward. Ethan’s eyelids fluttered, and as he sucked in ragged, short breaths, his wandering gaze fell on Jack.
Jack watched his eyes widen, watched him struggle to his knees, trying to form words as he shook his head. Despair poured from him, falling from his watering eyes.
He smiled, trying to put all of his love, all of his happiness, into his gaze. “…All the way, Ethan,” he said softly, completing their promise, the words Ethan hadn’t been able to get out over the radio.I’m with you all the way.
Ethan pitched forward, curling in on himself, as a sob burst from him and his eyes squeezed closed. Tears ran down his cheeks, mixing with the blood on his face, and rained pink droplets to the cold steel beneath him.
“Touching, Jack.” Madigan smirked, crossing the deck to face Jack. Cook shadowed Madigan’s every move. Jack’s stomach lurched. Vivid crimson stained Cook’s hands, his sleeves up to his elbows, his pants, and spattered across his face. He held a blood-soaked rag.God, Ethan’s blood.
Jack’s eyes locked onto the rag. His mind roared, replaying Madigan’s transmission of Ethan’s waterboarding. Ethan’s screams, his thrashing, the sounds of him drowning. And then silence.
Jack swayed, the world around him seeming to tilt, seeming to swirl into a vortex. Was someone screaming, or was that just his mind, the roar of his own rage, his soul on furious fire?
He looked Madigan dead in his eyes. “You wanted me. Now you have me. Let Ethan go.”
Madigan nodded to the man holding the end of Ethan’s chain. Shrugging, the man let go, and the chain pulled free from his hands, rising over the barrel of the long guns and then crashing to the deck, steel crashing against steel. Ethan didn’t move.
“What do you want from me?” Jack shook his head. “What’s this obsession of yours?”
Madigan threw his head back, laughing loudly. “Jack, there is nothing I want from you. Not a single thing. You have no power here. No leverage to negotiate. No possibility of securing your release. No,” he stepped forward, crowding Jack. “I wanted you here because I wanted to look you in the eyes and watch you realize that you have lost. You’ve failed. As thepresident. As aman. You’ve failed, Jack.”
Jack swallowed hard.One minute, forty-five seconds.
“You’ve been living on borrowed time ever since you and Ethan interfered in my last mission. It wasn’t personal before that, Jack. I didn’t care about you. You were Leslie’s ridiculous husband, the one thing that held her back from joining me fully.”
He froze.Leslie?Memories flashed, images of Madigan’s clone, the thing that he’d believed was his wife, preying on his emotions. No, not the clone. Madigan wasn’t talking about the clone. He was talking about his wife. Hisrealwife, before she died.
“She was on the verge of joining my team. I recruited her myself. All she kept talking about was you. What you would say, what you would think when she left you and your marriage and joined my unit. You were a nothing attorney who still acted like a college boy, and she could have done so much better. I was sick of hearing about you. When she died, I thought, ‘at least I never have to hear about Jack Spiers again’.” Madigan chuckled, shaking his head. “Imagine my surprise when you ended up the poster boy for the Republicans trying to rebrand their image.”
Trembling settled over his body. Madigan squinted at him. “You never saw it, did you? You were only picked for the nomination because you weren’t a threat. You were soft. Malleable. Attractive enough to sweep the votes of people who didn’t care about policy. You were the safe choice, Jack. And, just like Leslie did, the world chose to bide their time with you until they didn’t need you any longer.”
Madigan’s words hit him like bullets. His hands shook, his arms, his whole body. He tried to breathe, but his chest was too tight. His eyes slipped closed.
No, Madigan wasn’t going to rewrite his history.
