Page 80 of Enemy Within
“You all right?” She leaned over the back of the couch, where it blocked the doorway, and smiled at him.
“I’m fine.” Levi managed a tiny grin. “Sorry I woke you.”
“What happened?”
Shaking his head, Levi looked away. “I think I had a nightmare,” he finally breathed. “Came up swinging.”
She stayed quiet, listening to the sounds of the White House, the creak and hum of the old house’s bones. Carefully, she climbed over the back of the couch and settled down beside him. “You too, huh?”
“Nightmares seem to be the name of the game, right now.”
Elizabeth leaned back, sighing. “The Chinese fleet is due to hit our blockade off Hawaii soon. God only knows what will happen then. Are we about to have a war on two fronts?” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Or is it three fronts?”
Levi de-cocked his pistol and set it down. He rubbed his hands together and shook his head. “I don’t know who to trust. If I trust the wrong person, it’s game over.” He swallowed and turned to her. His dark eyes caught the reflection of the moonlight. “But what if I already have trusted the wrong person? What if I can’t see it?”
She frowned, studying him. Deep in his gaze, fear bubbled, a grating, grinding anxiety. It wasn’t like Secret Service agents to be woken by nightmares. What had spooked Levi this deeply? “Something happen?” she asked, her voice soft.
Levi turned away. His hands rubbed over themselves again. He shook his head but didn’t speak for a long moment. “I’ve hit a dead end investigating the Secret Service,” he breathed. “I need another angle. Another way to approach this. I’m going crazy looking at my own people.”
“Have you looked into Corporal Fitz’s murder?”
Levi turned to her and frowned.
“Corporal Fitz was murdered right before theVinogradovwas sunk. He was a member of Lieutenant Cooper’s team. The one Ethan was running.”
Levi buried his head in his hands and groaned.
“The number of people who knew about Lieutenant Cooper and his team can be counted on one hand. We need to know who said something and to whom. How did Lieutenant Cooper’s team get exposed to Madigan’s people?”
“You’re gonna want to call General Bell up to Washington,” Levi growled. “I can’t get ahold of him. He’s blowing me off. But he’s one of those people who knew. And he’s an asshole, too.”
She arched one eyebrow.
“Ethan and I went down there when Ethan and President Spiers were setting up the team. We had to go talk to General Bell at SOCOM to get Lieutenant Cooper transferred over to Ethan’s command. He… wasn’t happy to see Ethan. Atall. Wanted nothing to do with him. Accused him of being illegal.” Levi snorted. “I wanted to punch him right in his smug mouth.”
Leaning back, Elizabeth covered her eyes. “So there’s one who wasn’t fully on board the ‘Team Jack’ train.” She sighed. “All right, I’ll summon him to Washington. When he gets here, meet with him personally. See what he has to say about Cooper and his men.” Levi nodded, but his shoulders stayed taut, clenched like he was waiting for a blow. She reached out, resting one hand on his arm. “I know it’s hard, Levi,” she said softly. “But we have to keep looking, even at our friends. If someone is out there, waiting to hurt us, then we need to root them out. Dig them out before they get a chance to do anything. Betrayal… it’s the worst kind of pain when someone you know twists a knife in your back. Let’s catch them before they have the chance to plunge it in.”
34
Bering Sea
LAUGHING, CAPTAIN ANDERSON REACHED for Jack’s glass. He refilled it with sweet tea and passed it back, still smiling after retelling one of his favorite training stories. He had a reputation as a captain who could turn shit into gold and break hard-luck curses. He took on board officers and men who needed a little extra polishing and delivered fine sailors to the fleet after a deployment on his boat. The job, though, came with its share of hair-raising stories, which were only funny in the retelling.
Anderson sat back, stretching one arm along the wall behind his seat. They were in the wardroom, alone in between shifts. The rest of the officers had already eaten and cleared out. Anderson sat at the head, in his seat, with Jack and Ethan sitting on either side of him.
“Captain, I’m impressed you recognized us on that pier.” Jack smiled. “We looked like an escaped chain gang, and we smelled worse. How did you know it was us?”
Anderson smiled. A new light shone in his eyes. “It’s impossible tonotrecognize you, Mr. President. You’re the media’s favorite subject. Then, and now.”
He rolled his eyes. “The media. They, almost more than anything else, make me want to run away and hide on some lonely island.”
“Truth be told, Mr. President,” Anderson said carefully, “I never paid much attention to the media about you and Mr. Reichenbach. It was your private life they were trying to dig into. I didn’t care for it. But—” Anderson pointed his finger at Jack. “I’ll tell you who did listen to the media. Who listened to every single thing that came out about you and Mr. Reichenbach.” His eyes narrowed as he leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the edge of the table. “My son.”
Something in the room changed. The lightness, the fun, the laughter, fled and seemed to take all the oxygen with it. Jack’s gaze darted across to Ethan.
“I was in port after a long exercise. My wife had been emailing me and emailing me about how our son had been acting up. He’s sixteen, so, typical teenage stuff, I thought. Mouthing off. Being a brat. Slamming his door. I thought he was just going through phases, but she told me it was getting worse. That he was getting depressed. He’d sit in his bedroom and listen to music at full blast, and when she went in to yell at him to turn it off, she’d find him crying.”
Under the table, Ethan’s foot slid alongside Jack’s.
