"I can't ask Logan if the admiral gave him the order face to face, because Jesse Calhoun contacted him, said it was urgent, and Logan went to see him. Jesse's been conducting an investigation into the Ekabela-Senator tie. That's why Kadan Montague took his place on the team."

"I thought Jesse was still in a wheelchair," Jack said. "The last I heard he was inactive and doing physical therapy."

"Well, apparently he's working again. He's one of the more powerful psychics on our team and he's got brains. The admiral wasn't about to give him up. It was a hell of a thing what they did to him. Between enhancement and the psychic experiments and Jesse's legs, he got the short end of the stick."

"We all did. When we volunteered for the psychic testing," Jack said, "we had no idea we were pointing a gun at our heads. We're screwed, Ken. We're in so deep, hell, all the GhostWalkers are. What have we gotten ourselves into?"

At least they had volunteered for the experimentation. All Special Forces, all military trained. The women had been babies, orphans Whitney had adopted from foreign countries, children he bought and paid for, experimenting on them without thought to their lives.

Ken shook his head. "I don't know, but we have to find out. Colonel Higgens tried to take out Ryland Miller's team. He murdered a couple of them before they got away and exposed him. Maybe they didn't get the head of the snake."

"'We know the head is Dr. Whitney. He's the brains. He came up with the experiments, had the contacts, money, and security clearance to get the green light, and he faked his own murder. We find Whitney, we kill the snake."

"Maybe." There was doubt in Ken's voice. "First we all believed Whitney was murdered. Then we believed he faked his own death to get out from under the illegal experiments he was conducting right along with his military experiments. Now…" He trailed off, once again staring at the clouds. The steady drip of blood seemed overly loud in the night. Never before had his past consumed him to the point of endangering a mission, but for the first time, he was beginning to doubt his ability to stay focused.