Page 4 of Enemy Within
It had been four days since Sasha had flown off for the Kara Sea, volunteering his life on a one-way intelligence mission to the Arctic.
Sergey Puchkov, deposed president of Russia, leader of the Russian insurgency and of their convoy, had always been an enigma to Ethan. He’d met Sergey a year before, when Sergey and Jack had been at odds, striking and parrying at each other in the international arena. They’d formed a tentative alliance in Prague, but when Jack had come clean to the world about him and Ethan and their relationship, Sergey had backpedaled hard and fast.
And then returned, when it became clear Jack wasn’t going anywhere. After Ethan had stopped Madigan’s attempted coup against Jack, and Madigan’s plan to devastate the Middle East that would have murdered thousands of Russian soldiers. After all that, Jack kept being the president, a foiled coup under his belt and Ethan on his arm, and he stared the world down and waited for someone else to blink.
Somehow, Sergey had become Jack’s closest political ally on the world stage. More than that, even: a good friend.
Along the way, Sergey had befriended Senior Lieutenant Sasha Andreyev.
Another riddle of a man. A former Russian Air Force officer, MiG pilot, and the survivor of a brutal anti-gay beating by his former Air Force comrades. Half-dead, he’d made his way to Moscow in a delirium, where Sergey’s personal physician found him collapsed outside the Kremlin’s walls. Sergey had kept him in the Kremlin as his physician nursed Sasha back to health, and then offered Sasha a position as his senior aide. He worked closely with the head of the Russian FSB, Sergey’s friend, Ilya Ivchenko.
From strangers, they had become a nearly inseparable pair. Sergey had glossed over most of the details when he first told Jack of Sasha and how he’d come to be at Sergey’s side. But it didn’t take a psychic to see the way Sasha felt about Sergey. Ethan could read it in his eyes, and in the way every part of him was tuned to Sergey, at the State Dinner and after. Sasha had fallen and fallen hard.
But Sergey never saw Sasha’s feelings. Whatever their relationship was to Sergey, he hadn’t seen how Sasha had felt.
Until the very end.
Sergey had been bitterly opposed to Sasha’s Arctic overflight, petulant in his anger. He’d confronted Sasha after snapping at him for hours. And then—
Whatever had happened between the two of them, out on the flight line by Sasha’s MiG, was a mystery.
Somethinghadhappened, though. Sergey came away knowing how Sasha felt. His Russian temper had flared after Sasha’s takeoff, and he’d lashed out at Jack, roaring, “Everything wasfineuntil you! You changed the wholeworld, andmyworld!”
Devastation had slammed into Sergey. Ethan had watched it, watched Sergey’s knuckles go white as his fists clenched, and he’d fought for something to say as his world rearranged itself, pieces to a broken puzzle that suddenly wouldn’t align. “He saidnothing!” Sergey had hissed. “Why did he notsayanything?”
Sasha’s last satellite call, and the screech of metal and the roar of flame, haunted the silent places in their convoy and hung like a cloying shroud around Sergey. Tragically faithful to the last moment, Sasha had given everything to Sergey and his mission. Even his life.
After that, it seemed like Sergey had been turned inside out. He moved in a daze, his eyes wide, gaze shattered, limbs listless. Normally full of life, his long arms brimming with energy, his hands always moving as he spoke, he’d lapsed into a dull, heavy melancholy. Scott said that the days crawled by, riding shotgun in Sergey’s jeep as they drove at the head of the caravan, Sergey silent at his side and with all the energy of a sucking black hole.
Scott blew another puff of cigarette smoke away from the jeep. “Vasily ransacked a chicken coop at one of the farms. He’s scrambling eggs if you want to get up and get some. We move out in ten.”
Finally, Jack stirred in Ethan’s arms and let out a soft groan as he came awake. His hand stroked over Jack’s chest beneath the blankets, and Jack covered his hand with one of his own. “Is there coffee?”
Scott snorted. “Whatever it is they pretend is coffee is boiling.” He held out his cigarette, offering it to Ethan.
Ethan shook his head. “You know Stacy is going to kick your ass for smoking again.”
“I know. I love it when she gets all protective.” Another long drag, and then he stamped out the cigarette. “Don’t tell her I said that.” He wagged a finger at Ethan before picking up the cigarette butt. “You and I smoked in Fallujah to keep ourselves awake.” Scott shrugged. “It does its job.”
Ethan dropped another kiss to the top of Jack’s head, just before Jack opened his eyes. “Things are different now.”
Scott rolled his eyes, but grinned and walked away from their jeep, back to the center of camp. It was less a camp and more an array of parked jeeps crowded together in a defensive ring. Clumps of snow covered the ground and clung to the evergreen branches overhead. Thick, fog-shrouded forest surrounded their convoy, stretching as far as Ethan could see, giving the landscape the feel of a cemetery. It made Ethan’s bones pucker and his skin tighten. He wanted out.
Ethan had tucked his and Jack’s jeep in the back of the camp, at the base of a thick pine. Opposite them, Sergey and Scott had parked theirs. The rest of the men were in between.
The sounds of the convoy coming alive in the frosty morning started clattering through their patch of snowy forest. Grumbled Russian, squeaky metal hinges and slamming doors, the crackle of logs in a fire, and the clang of pots and pans that Vasily had insisted on bringing from Volga.
Jack nuzzled at Ethan’s neck, and the roughness of his beard, grown thick in the five days they’d been on the road, scratched over Ethan’s skin just before Jack dropped a kiss beneath his jaw. “Morning, love.”
Ethan smiled down at him, de-cocked his pistol, and slid it into his hip holster beneath their blankets. He wrapped both arms around Jack as Jack turned and faced him. “How are you? Are you warm enough?” As Ethan spoke, his breath clouded the air between them.
“I’m good.” Jack peeled off his gloves beneath the blankets and snaked his warm hands up under Ethan’s jacket and sweater. His gentle, searching fingers found the long line of ragged stitches in Ethan’s side.
Ethan flinched.
“Sorry. You know we need to check them.” Carefully, Jack felt around the stitches, testing the skin, and then rested his palm over the top of the mostly-healed wound. “No heat. No swelling. No pus. No infection.” He smiled. “You had me worried after yesterday.”
Ethan ducked his head, his cheeks warming. While rummaging through an abandoned barn, he’d walked right through a rotted-out baseboard and fallen into a cellar, into the rough, loose earth. Not his finest moment. They’d wrangled some supplies, but he’d come away filthy and bruised, his ego smarting. Jack’s worried eyes and his gentle ministrations after they’d stopped for the night had helped soothe the ache.
