Ken glanced at his twin. "Do you hear yourself? We aren't the only ones who know Senator Freeman isn't squeaky clean like the public has been led to believe. We were all debriefed when we came back from the Congo, both teams, and both teams came to the same conclusion-that the senator was dirty-yet he was never questioned, never reprimanded or exposed. And now we've been ordered to protect him from an assassination threat."

Jack was silent for a moment. "And you think we're being set up to take the fall if they get to him."

"Hell yeah I think that. Did the order come down directly from the admiral? Did the admiral actually tell Logan himself? Because, if they have dirt on this guy, why didn't they arrest him? And we just turned down a job to get rid of General Ekabela, another old enemy of ours-one connected to the senator here. It's looking a bit like a pattern to me."

"Ekabela was taken out anyway. They just brought in another shooter and I didn't get the pleasure of putting the guy in the ground."

Ken frowned at his twin. "You're making it personal."

"The senator made it personal when he delivered you to Ekabela so that sadist could torture you. I'm not going to pretend. I want the senator dead. Ken. I don't mind looking the other way if someone wants to slit his throat. If he lives and continues the way he is. he's bound to become president, or at least vice president, and then where are we going to be? He knows we know he's dirty. The first thing he'll do is send us on a suicide mission."

"Like when they wanted to send us back to the Congo to kill Ekabela?" He had to stop looking at those carcasses. He was going to get sick, his stomach churning in protest. He could almost hear the steady drip of blood even though he was yards away. It ran like a small stream down through the boards and collected in a dark, shiny pool. He tried to shut off the sound of his own screaming in his head, but his skin was crawling and each scar throbbed as if every nerve remembered the steady slice of the relentless knife.