Page 110 of Enemy Within
Pete flipped through Kobayashi’s file as Levi and General Bell went through the short list of White House staffers with the right combination of clearances, access, and who had been on the trip to Russia. Himself. Welby. Scott. A smattering of other agents from Alpha and Charlie shifts. Pete. Jason.
Levi’s stomach had tied itself in knots days ago, and the list only pulled those knots tighter. Scott’s name screamed from the short list, Technicolor-vibrant, like a cartoonPOWthat tried to punch him in the face. Scott’s was the only file they didn’t have. The only background Scott hadn’t ordered. He couldn’t process the thought. Couldn’t draw the line from A to B without detouring into the tangle of his heart. Scott was one of his best friends, and Ethan’s absolute best friend. If Scott had turned and was working against Jack…
Levi didn’t know how Ethan would survive that. Or how he himself would. The thought of Scott’s betrayal made him vomit. He’d already emptied his stomach the day before, overcome with sinking, drowning vertigo, his thoughts a cascading series of screams.It was Scott. No, it can’t be Scott.The signs pointed to—
No. Not Scott.
He tucked the sticky note with Scott’s name behind his own on the wall. He wasn’t ready to face it. Not yet.
Jennifer had slipped in a few hours before, bringing food. She’d set up her phone as well, and music played softly in the background. She sat beside Jason, reading through files with him and holding his hand on the tabletop.
“Kobayashi is the most put-together of them all.” Pete waved to the file before him. “Smart guy. Started in the Navy before transferring to the Marines. Worked on aircraft carriers. I guess he wanted to do something more exciting than babysitting nukes all day, though.”
“Nukes? Was he a security guard?” Welby frowned, looking up at Pete.
Slowly, Levi twisted his head. Pete’s words hit him slowly, like a wave rolling in off the sea, a Doppler shift in the words as meaning caught up to the vowels, the consonants.
“No, he was an actual nuclear technician. Worked on the reactors and everything.” Pete shrugged and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Top marks in his military schools. When he reenlisted, he opted to transfer to the Marines, though.” He flipped the folder shut. “Nerd who wanted some adventure. He’s clean.”
Levi blinked. “Can you… say that again?” he said slowly. “Kobayashi is anuke tech?”
42
Kara Sea
TEARS FROZE ON ADAM’S cheeks, rivers of ice that cascaded down his face. He watched the fireball rise, the black plumes of smoke curl and belch into the dark sky.Faisal…
He’d killed them all. Faisal and his men. Doc. Coleman. Wright. Ruiz. Even Park and Kobayashi. He was responsible for their deaths. And… God, Ethan. Had he arrived? Had he brought the presidents to the station, delivered them to their deaths? Why wouldn’t he trust what Adam had said over the radio?
He was scum. Worse than scum. A murderer. A traitor. There was a circle of Hell reserved just for him, a permanent place of agony and torment. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that his punishment would be to watch, endlessly, the station erupt. The fireball rising into the sky. Feel the tear as his heart ripped in two, as it tore again, shredding itself to tattered ruins in his ribcage.
The sled he was riding on jerked, bouncing over the ice. He rocked with it, his body limp. His head slammed against the metal frame. Ahead, the snowmobile engines whined and then slowed, revving down. They braked and came to a stop, and Cook clambered off his snowmobile. Others stopped nearby—Cook’s men, officers who had joined Madigan, turned against the United States. Adam hated every one of them.
He wasjustlike them.
Cook strode toward him, speaking into his radio. Adam didn’t hear the words, but he caught Cook’s grin as the radio dropped away from his lips.
“Just kill me.” He barely recognized his own voice. Empty, and hollow, like a corpse had spoken. He shuddered out a breath. He was already dead inside. “Kill me. I won’t do anything else for you, you sick fuck.”
The radio chirped in Cook’s hands, and a voice broke over the air. “Halo inbound. Combing for survivors.”
“Shoot on sight.” Cook spoke into the receiver. “Kill anything that moves. Nothing walks out of that station.”
Adam grit his teeth and snarled, trying to lunge for Cook. “Killme!” he bellowed. Fresh tears welled in his eyes, dripping down the ice tracks that covered his cheeks. “Do it!”
Cook laughed. “No. No, Lieutenant. I’m not going to kill you. That would be too easy.” He cupped Adam’s chin like Adam was a boy. “This hurts, doesn’t it? It’s going to hurt for a long, long time. I’ll make sure of that. Remind you every day of what you’ve done. You soldeveryoneout, Lieutenant. You killed themall.” He winked. “Good job. You’re doing great. You’re part of our team already.”
Cook reached over Adam for the parachute silk-wrapped satellite. “Let’s get this set up,” he called, marshaling his people. They grabbed the long rubber cables, shoving Adam aside, and then jogged across the ice. Cook placed the satellite array in the center of their circle and angled it, pointing just off-center to the sky. He swapped what looked like a battery out of the main casing with a fresh one from his jacket and tossed the old one.
“Let’s go.”
Adam watched him and his men walk back to their snowmobiles. He rolled his head, tracking their movements. His breath caught on his cracked lips as he spotted the mammoth outline of a warship over Cook’s shoulder. Beside the warship, the black, fin-like sail of a submarine poked up through the ice cap. Broken blocks of turquoise and translucent ice and brittle snow tumbled around the sail and the black hull. Men moved over the ice, some heading for a derelict smattering of shipping containers and tents, and what looked like an Arctic shantytown. Others lounged on scrappy chairs, smoking cigarettes as they laughed, rifles balanced with easy familiarity across their laps.
An array of snowmobiles rested beside the warship, next to an empty helicopter ice pad, orange spray-painted in a circle with a giant H in the center. Red flags and more spray paint marked the ragged edges of broken ice, a man-made lead the destroyer had carved entering the sea. Tumbled ice broken apart like boulders lay in heaps along the lead, dropping off to the waters below. The ice was thinner than before. Only eight feet, maybe.
He closed his eyes, exhaling. Madigan’s Arctic base. The heart of his plan to poison the skies and burn the world. What was left of his ragtag prisoner army. His Russian warships. K-27, his nuclear trigger.
Cook’s snowmobile and sled started forward, slower this time, heading straight for the warship. He watched the dark hull grow larger, looming above them, until they parked by the stern.
