Chapter 1
There's a long tradition of using doubles in espionage. They're mostly used by dictators who want to confuse would be assassins. But they have other less common uses. Like framing someone for a crime they didn't commit.
As Fiona, Michael's mother, Michael and Sam all look over the stolen security camera footage, Sam pauses the footage at a point in the video where the double looks exactly like Michael. Michael and Sam give the video a hard stare, Sam gripped his beer hard, raising the remote up to shoulder height as Maddy pulled her cigarette up to her lips and took a long puff. Sam finally broke the silence, "I know this video is grainy, but, from that angle, it sure looks like you."
Michael responds emotionless and in a stone hard voice, "It's not me, Sam..."
"I assume the burner's cell phone he's buying made a call from the scene of Max's murder," Fiona replies.
Maddie decides to put in her golden voice of reason, "Well, somebody went through a lot of trouble to do this. They didn't find this guy sitting at a bus stop."
"She's right, Mike. This is starting to feel personal."
"It's been personal since Max bled out in my arms. Since he told me to say goodbye to his wife," Michael said coldly.
"So, what's the plan to keep my son out of prison?"
Sam responds to Maddie, pointing the hand holding his beer to the TV in reference to the man he's speaking about, "We gotta track down the fellow on this tape. And that's step one in finding Max's killer."
"Actually, step one is deciding what to do with the bloodhound the CIA is sending to replace Max. Pearce knows we have the security footage," Fiona says quickly.
"I can buy us some time. I'll tell her it's taking a little longer to analyze the footage," just as Michael finished his sentence, his phone begins to buzz. Sam quickly takes a sip of his beer, staring intently at the video still, as was the rest of Michael's "closest" friends and family. "Speak of the devil..." he says as he answers his phone. "Agent Pearce, right on time! I..." he paused, Pearce speaking into the phone as Fiona, Maddie, and Sam all watched with interest. "...got it," he said as he beeps the phone off.
"What's up?" Sam asks, "She got something new about the murder?"
"No, it wasn't about that," Michael replies quickly. "She wants to meet with me tomorrow at 0700. She's got another job for me, high priority at the CIA. Wish me luck," he says as he walks out of the room. The rest of the crew going back and staring at the footage, questions still fresh in their mind on who would frame Michael for Max's murder.
As Michael walks up to the van, he spots Pearce looking up into a hotel room with binoculars. He leans over the opened driver's side window, his arm hitting with a bit of noise as he kind of stares cockily into it. Pearce notices him there and speaks sarcastically, "You're only five minutes early."
"I'm sorry, is this a rush job?" Michael responds, confusion in his voice and in his eyes behind his dark sunglasses he normally wears.
Pearce, not even looking back over at Michael, gives a bit of a soft smile as she replies with her own sarcasm, "Very much so."
Pearce lowers the binoculars just a little bit, giving Michael enough time to come around the front of the van and open the passenger door. As soon as the door shuts, Agent Pearce slams him with the folder of the next CIA operation he had to follow through with, "We have a source inside a Serbian Syndicate. He just informed us that they're about to buy a stolen 'Predator Drone' from an arms dealer in Miami."
"Wow... really? None of that sounds good."
"We don't have much on the deal other than it might be going down tomorrow and the dealer sent a courier. The man's holed up in room six forty-two of this hotel," she raises the binoculars again, then lowers them again to stare at the room with her naked eyes. She continues speaking like the CIA agent she is, "We have to get the drone before the Serbians do, Michael. Now normally, we'd bring a team, but, this is very time sensitive..."
"AND... you'd rather not have someone on the agency payroll doing it," Michael responds quickly.
Pearce wanted to laugh a little bit, but stopped herself from doing it as she turned her head to look at Michael, "Exactly. Our intel describes him as well armed, well trained, and very unfriendly. It actually says very unfriendly in the file. I made a specific notation." she says as she taps the files on Michael's lap. Turning to look out the window as Michael borrows the binoculars from Agent Pearce to look up at the patio that held the guy who was the courier to the arms dealer.
As Michael looks towards the room, he speaks business like, "Okay, I'm going to need some climber's chalk and a small charge and I need them quickly. I'd like to do this before the pool opens and I have an audience." he says as he pushes the door open, setting the binoculars down and putting on his sunglasses, having removed them earlier.
"I have to say, Westen, you're a lot more agreeable than the notes in your files indicate," Michael looks over at her with disbelief. She shrugs her shoulders, "Just sayin'."
Michael begins walking to the back of the van, opening the door and ruffling through some drawers. Finding mostly ammunition, listening devices and a bunch of other miscellaneous items until he found the small sound charge and climbers chalk he was going to use. He takes the chalk and small charge, climbing the fence and walks over to the hotel. He puts the chalk on his hands and begins to slowly climb up the side of the hotel, grabbing bar by bar as he begins to climb up slowly. Feet and legs hooking around the bars as he uses his upper body strength to pull himself upwards.
About two floors up, Agent Pearce comes over Michaels bluetooth headset with a patronizing remark, "Careful... That's a dicey hold you got there, Westen."
"Spare me the commentary, please. This requires some concentration," Michaels says with a heavy grunt as he pulls himself up another floor. About four more floors later, Michael hits the sixth floor. Pearce still having eyes on him from the binoculars in the van.
When confronting an armed enemy, the big question is what weapons they're bringing to the fight. Trick your enemy into bringing the wrong weapon and you've got the advantage.
Michael looks around real quick, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the small noise charge and placing it on the glass door. He leans against the wall next to the sliding glass door and pulls out a remote. Hitting the button with his thumb, the charge goes off with a loud, high-pitched noise, "Time to say hello..." Michael says with a bit of a snarky tone. The glass breaks, shattering. Michael stands there, waiting for the man inside to come out with a drawn weapon.
If someone thinks they're taking fire from a sniper, for example, they'll choose something long range with a long barrel. Which won't do much good in close combat.
Michael quickly grabs the business end of the rifle as the man slowly comes out, turning the man into another piece of the glass door, pinning him with his arm nearly into the man's neck. A quick elbow to the face later and Michael has the rifle in his hands, the barrel pointed into the neck of the man, "Where's the drone?"
The man gasps a little bit, "It's not here, it's gone. I delivered it last night." Michael puts the gun deeper into the courier's neck. "I SWEAR! Search the room, the cache, it's right there." Michael's head slowly looks into the hotel room, seeing a cache of money sitting on the bed.
"Did he just say...?"
"Lemme put it this way, either he just found a million dollars of cash on the street, or we're too late."
As a spy, just when you think you have all of the right answers, the questions get changed. Like the answer to a time riddle changes quickly if a bad guy thinks you're on to him. So, he changes the time to be a bit more convenient for him so he doesn't get caught. However, in espionage, you want to be the person who is the right hand man and can possibly do the job for the boss.
"So, Mikey, what's the plan?" Sam asks hastily, the green mojito shaking slightly in his hand as the hard breeze began to hit him from the open terrace. Michael lowered the newspaper and stared at Sam. Sam took the mojito and took a slow sip. savoring the flavor.
Michael took in a heavy breath, "I was planning on going in as Johnny and getting the job done. It's a rough cut and I'll probably come out with a few scrapes and bruises that will cause Fi to put a few more on me, but, I'm fine with that."
Sam raised an eyebrow in question, his eyes staring at Michael while Michael just stared back. Out of nowhere, Fi sat down next to Michael, grabbing his hand only for Michael to attentively pull it away. To this, Fi frowned. She stares at Michael with a burning fire of anger in her eyes. Michael shrugged off her look and continued to speak to Sam, "The only problem I see right now with the Johnny alias is that he might be too... cold. No emotions tend to make a crime boss sort of want to stray away. Maybe I should give Johnny a bit of attachment to his work? Maybe..." he looks over at Fi, "a woman in his life who is a real bitch that he puts into his job?"
Fi gave him a harsh look, "Michael, don't you think that using this mission is a horrible way to spend time with me?"
"Well, you always liked using violence as foreplay. Johnny is the same way. But, this won't be a pleasure vacation, Fi. This will be a serious mission. I just need to get clearance from the top brass at the C.I.A. to get you clearance for the job. Any freelance work come your way, Sam?"
Sam smirked, "Well, this lady friend of mine has this thief who seems to be stealing towels. Nothing a few C.I.A. spies need to deal with. But, there is something interesting Jesse pulled up." Sam tossed a manila folder towards Michael who quickly opened it. Inside were a few pieces of paper, each with encrypted coding language written on it.
"Hm, I can't really say what this is. It's a bunch of encrypted files that are turned onto paper. Scan it through my computer at the loft and see what it translates it to. You," he turns to Fi, "need to go pick out some bad ass outfit so we can get this "couples" mission done."
"Don't you think this is a little risky? Going in without knowing who really stole the drone..."
Michael gave her that cold, emotionless look and in a monotone voice, he replied, "True, we don't know who stole the drone, but, that's what we have Sugar for. Sugar will be forced to do some of our digging for us and if he don't, we'll fire blanks at him until he does."
"While that sounds like a solid plan, Mikey, I still think we should probably go another route. I mean, c'mon, it's not every day we get a job to find a lost predator drone, right?" Sam stared at Michael through the glass of his mojito. Sam then sat the mojito down and clasped his hands together in front of him, shaking his head a bit.
"Well, this route might be the only way. Get in good, bring the troops. It's the Michael Westen way, Sam."
"I thought the Michael Westen way was avoiding getting shot at?" said Jesse as he sat down.
"Perfect timing!" Sam exclaimed. "Just told Mike here about our little side job. Hopefully it works out the way we need it."
Jesse laughed a moment, throwing an optical disc on the table, "Already done. I just printed out a hard copy for Michael to see. The translation is right there on that disc, however, I had to get a code breaker to do it."
"You brought a desk junkie in on a job that didn't involve him?" Fi scolded.
"Well, it was either that or we try to hack it out of the mainframe without getting caught ourselves. Neither of us are hackers, so, this was the only way. Besides, we got the information. It'll tell us who hired the guy to frame Michael."
Michael gave Jesse a sarcastic smile, his eyes slowly squinting down at the optical disc below, "Well, while that's going on, Fi and I have another job to do. Happy reading, boys."
As Michael and Fi reached the loft and Fi quickly sat down on the bed. Her legs crossed, she looked seductively at Michael, "Could we just go one more inning before you become Johnny? I'd rather get it on with Michael and not Johnny."
"Fi, I told you on the way here, preparing to become Johnny takes a lot of work as I have to have everything a certain way. I'd suggest coming up with a new alias for yourself as well. You need to be someone Johnny would pick-think the fifties."
"The fifties? Is this some kind of a sick joke, Michael?!"
"Now Fi, why would it be a joke? It's easy to figure out what those people looked like. Just think of the movie Grease. Find a bad ass chick out of there and portray something like that. Johnny's a smooth talker, he's "good". So, his girl would need to be equally as "good". Get it?" Michael gave her that reassuring smile that has yet to fail her.
Fi took in a heavy sigh, staring at Michael's eyes while he gelled his hair, "I've got something I can wear. As for a name, I really don't know..." she began going through a small trunk that held her clothes. It was mainly clothes she used for her aliases but, this occasion needed it. She didn't really want to get involved in this but, instead look for Michael's double. Michael sensed her displeasure and sat down next to her, his "lucky" comb in his hand.
"Fi, if this wasn't important to finding Max's killer, I wouldn't be doing it. But, the CIA wants it done, so, I'm getting it done... and... since they'd rather have a burned spy doing it, why not someone close to Max who'd be wanting to do away with the person who hired the double?" Michael began to wrap his arm around Fiona, gently pulling her to him. Her hand went to his chest, her body slowly getting comfortable as she always felt comfortable in his arms. Although Michael was a pain in the ass sometimes, he never did steer her wrong.
"Trinity..." Fiona muttered under her breath.
Michael snapped back into reality for a moment, having gotten a bit too comfortable where he sat with Fiona, "What?" he asked.
Fiona smiled, "Trinity. Johnny's girlfriend."
"Is it sad that name kind of fits with Johnny? All right, get on the outfit we used against the Yakuza and let's go. We've got some work to do."
Soon as he finished the sentence, Fiona was already up and moving. She grabbed the slim black and white outfit, paired with a pair of dark sunglasses, and slipped it on in front of Michael. It's not as if he hadn't see anything about Fiona before. This wasn't any different. Just as she had gotten the pants half way up to her knees, he began undressing and slipping on his own suit. Slowly, he walked over to his cabinet, pulling out a pistol that he has made as a mainstay with the Johnny alias. He looks in a mirror, practicing his speech lines, which were monotone and not full of any emotion whatsoever. Slowly, he reached over to his right and grabbed the sunglasses and pulled them slowly, almost dramatically to his eyes and slipped them on. Fiona came up behind him, small forty-five caliber pistol in her hand, she loads a clip and cocks the pistol, immediately clicking the safety on, which Michael responded with a load, cock, and click of the safety himself. When they were ready to go, they got into the Charger and drove towards the area where the Serbian Syndicate was conducting business.
When trying to contact an enemy whom you know is going to be armed and dangerous as a person who is willing to join their ranks, it's best to play it cool and look like you're ready to follow their lead no matter the cost. However, when the deed is to get back a stolen military weapon from the people who will kill you if you mess up, then there's only one other alternative...
As Michael and Fiona began to get into the building to interrupt the Serbian's business deal, Michael began to play the Johnny character to a T once again. He pushed a table to the side, enough to get it out of his and Fiona's paths and walked closer. A few guards drew their weapons, but, Michael quickly held his own hands up, "I came unarmed. Now, I've got some information for you that is going to be highly of interest to you. If you're willing to listen, I can give you this information."
The man who apparently identifies himself as the group leader, nods to one of the guards, whom quickly points and shoves the pistol all but down Michael's throat. "I assure you, the information you can give me is not of anything of value to me. I already know most gangs on the street would want this weapon once they know I have it. So, tell me why I shouldn't just let my friend kill you and your woman right now?"
Michael almost wanted to smirk, but, he couldn't. Johnny was emotionless. "Because, if I don't give you this information, then your entire syndicate will be walking out of this building in handcuffs in about a week. You have a tail, mister leader. The FBI are all over you and they know you have the predator drone. Yeah, I do my homework just as well as the FBI does. But, if you want to search me for a wire, you're going to have to tell your goon to get his gun out of my face."
The man sighed and then nodded towards the man. They began to search Michael and Fiona for wires and allowed them to sit down, Fiona on Michael's lap. Fiona wrapped her arms around Michael's neck and softly cooed into his neck. Michael turns to look at her with his stoic look and she gently pulls her face up out of his neck, "The FBI is on you and is currently working on getting search and seizure warrants on you. Not to mention arrest warrants on each and every single man here. They might even be getting arrest warrants now with a tail that had followed me here. Since I know the predator drone is probably lying somewhere around here, I'm willing to bet that there's probably a traitor in your midst at the moment who is talking to the FBI."