Disclaimer: I like to play with things that don't belong to me.
Warnings: Rating will likely go up. Oh, and it may get a wee bit political, sugarbutt. Can you dig it?
Author's Note: So here's the deal. When plot bunnies attack, you don't argue. Especially when they're gun-toting psychotic Mexican bunnies wearing CIA t-shirts. It's their fault, not mine, that I'm writing a OUATIM OFC fic. However, I very much doubt it will evolve into a romance. Much as one might wish it to be so, Sands does not make a good romantic lead. So this tale will not be about twue wuv, though it may contain sexual situations (most likely in flashback.) Other than that, as is on par with my usual seat-of-the-pants writing style, I only have a vague idea of where this is going to lead. Please let me know if it is worth continuing.
Technical Note: The Spanish is only as correct as four years of high school language classes can make it. Lindsey Moran's highly entertaining Blowing My Cover has provided some useful insights into CIA training and culture, including the little-known fact that CIA operatives are designated as Officers, not Agents. (Actually, in the movie El Mariachi was the CIA agent, meaning that he was recruited by a CIA case officer, i.e. Sands, to do the Company's dirty work.) But keep in mind that I mostly just pretend I know what I'm talking about.
P.S.: I thought Jack Sparrow's character was hard to capture...Sands presents an even tougher challenge. He's an intimidating bastard. If I screw up on characterization, please tell me so.
Feedback of any kind is always appreciated. Constructive criticism is manna in the writer's wilderness.
Dead Eyes
Chapter One
My life has been empty
my life has been untrue
and does she really know
who I really am?
does she really know me at last?
dead eyes, are you just like me?
The Smashing Pumpkins, "By Starlight"
He slept, wandering in a nightmare of pain, of blood and betrayal and darkness.
He woke, echoes of his own screams raw in his throat, in his ears. But daylight never came. The pain was real. The nightmare went on. The darkness went on.
He tried to shut his eyes against the darkness, but he had no eyes to shut.
No eyes no eyes no eyes...
"Shut up," he muttered savagely. "Just shut up."
He listened, twisting his head restlessly from side to side. The laboring rattle of a geriatric air conditioner effectively shut out everything else; still, he caught faint snatches of street noise under it. The room felt small. The street was at least one story down.
Finally, reluctantly, he called out, hating the weak, rasping sound of his own voice. He lay tense, waiting, but no one answered. He was alone.
After a while, he tried to get up. The movement made his head swim, the pain jolting up several notches from throbbing personal hell to vicious white-hot agony...
He must have passed out, then. When he woke again, someone was there in the room with him.
"Señor?"
The kid, he realized, in a hard-earned moment of lucidity, and stopped himself from groping under the pillow for his gun.
Something blessedly cool touched his lips. It wasn't tequila and lime, just plain water, but he drank it so greedily he almost choked.
"Where the hell am I?" he demanded hoarsely, when he was done coughing.
"Su hotel. Como quisó."
He didn't remember asking to be taken back to his hotel. "I did?"
"Sí. Debe ir al hospital, Señor," the boy whispered. "Llamaré la ambulancia..."
"No!" he snarled. "Don't you even fucking think about it."
"But Señor..."
"No more fucking doctors. Comprendes? I am not going to the hospital." He heard quiet sniffling, and reached out with his good arm to grab the boy's wrist. "Here's what I need you to do..."
CIA Headquarters, Washington DC
November 3rd, 2003
"Welcome back, Officer Cassidy. Have a seat."
Jules eyed the Chief of Operations warily. "I'll stand, thanks."
"Suit yourself," her boss said. "Enjoying your visit Stateside?"
"Sure, it's been great." It hadn't been; but he wasn't asking because he cared. "Let's cut the crap, Hollister. What is this about?"
Hollister sighed, ran a hand through his thinning sandy hair. "We have a problem."
"What a surprise," she deadpanned. "Cockroaches in the cafeteria again?"
"It's serious matter, Cassidy," he said sharply. "The Agency is very concerned."
"Sorry." Shit. She wondered suddenly if she was being called onto the carpet. Maybe someone had made note of her extracurricular activities and considerably unorthodox tactics in Beruit and decided to make an example of her.
Lie, cheat and steal. Just don't get caught. The unofficial motto of CIA Ops. And she thought she had made pretty damn sure she wasn't going to get caught. She sat down carefully, keeping her movements nonchalant, her face smooth. Spook training was useful in other places besides the field.
But Hollister said, "You been reading the intel briefs these last couple of weeks? Watching the news?"
"I'm on vacation," she said, relieved. "All I watch is Jeopardy." She still read the briefs, though. In the Company, you never got a real vacation, and you always, always, took your work home with you.
Hollister smiled humorlessly. "You're not on vacation anymore." Case in point. He pushed a folded newspaper across the desk to her. "Special Activities officer went rogue down in Mexico, set up a coup that got messy," he said. "You're on clean-up."
"Oh, well. I was getting bored in DC anyway." This, at least, was true. She'd been ready to crawl out of her skin these last few days; yesterday, she'd stalked around her small, barren apartment like a caged panther until she'd realized what she was doing and taken herself to the streets for a grueling two-hour run in the cold November rain. It hadn't helped much. Skimming the article ("Mexican cartel brought down in attempted government takeover") she frowned. "Haven't we been trying to take Barillo out for years now? According to this, someone did a nice clean job of it." Clean being a relative term. A lot of men had died, but they were mostly soldiers. Non-com casualties had been light--for a minor revolution. "What am I missing?"
"The cartel was a target. Just not the only target."
She could see by his face that he wasn't about to reveal any more information about that, not yet. That meant a sensitive objective, an important mark. She probably wouldn't even see the whole file.
Her gaze fell on the picture that accompanied the article. El Presidente. Who else? With his Mexican Nationalist agenda, he wasn't exactly known for his amenability to the economic and foreign policy goals of the current administration. He would certainly be a confidential target. Plausible deniability all the way to the top; U.S. involvement would be tantamount to an act of war, if it ever came to light. But she kept her guesses to herself--even as a spy, it was possible to know too much--and said only, "The job was botched intentionally?"
"We don't know that." Hollister's voice was heavy with frustration. "We lost contact with our man just before it all went to hell. By all indications, he's dead." He dropped a manila folder on top of the newspaper. "The only thing we do know is that he was playing both sides. Unfortunately, our informant also seems to have dropped off the map."
Jules opened the file, glanced up swiftly.
"I know him."
Her boss inclined his head.
"Knew him, that is...We were at the Farm together."
"All of that is in your file, of course." He smiled. "All of it, Officer Cassidy. You were lovers, isn't that right?"
Damn him. She refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her rattled. "No secrets among spies, huh?"
"Information is our business, Cassidy," Hollister said dryly. "Your history together makes you ideal for this job, you see. Familiarity with the target is always an advantage. But you know that."
She stared at him. "I thought you said he was dead."
"Presumed." Hollister leaned back in his chair, watching her. "Your objective is to tie up any loose ends, so to speak."
She looked down again at the file in her hand. Sheldon Jeffrey Sands smirked up at her from the ID photo, arrogant, hard-faced, beautiful. Height: 5'10". Weight: 160 lbs. Hair: brown. Eyes: brown. But that wasn't accurate; to describe his eyes as brown connoted warmth. Sands' eyes were simply dark.
She had made it her private mission, for awhile, to discover what lay behind that cold, ironic glance. Perhaps she had been naïve to assume that the darkness implied hidden depths, that the biting wit shielded a wounded soul; back then she had glimpsed, or thought she glimpsed, an occasional flicker of light chinking through. But in this photograph, the eyes were flat, dead. The darkness went all the way down.
They'd parted ways with their first real assignments; she didn't know where he had been posted. One didn't carry on long-distance relationships in the Agency, even if they had parted on good terms. Which they hadn't. That had been almost seven years ago; she hadn't really expected to see him again, hadn't wanted to. But...
Gone rogue. Christ. Asshole or not, he had been a damn good spy. Ruthless, driven, brilliant. What happened to you, Shel?
He had gone black ops too, that much she did know. The job changed you, hardened you. It was inevitable; she saw it herself in the mirror each morning, in the guarded, impassive green eyes that gazed back at her. To make it in CIA Operations, you had to have hardness at your core to begin with; if not, you dropped out of the training program pretty damn quick, because they honed in on your weaknesses there--bad habits like playing fair or playing nice--and pushed you 'til you broke, or broke yourself of the habit of weakness. But in the euphemistically named Special Activities Division you witnessed enough terrible things, orchestrated them yourself more often than not, and you lost whatever innocence and idealism you had left real fast. You learned to stop asking whether the ends justified the means. You learned to forget that the mark you saw in your crosshairs was a person, someone's son or someone's mother. You caused regimes to fall, stood by while whole families were murdered in small, bloody wars; if you were unlucky, you might have to watch a fellow agent die, leave them behind unburied and unsung, to be remembered only as a nameless star etched on a blank wall in HQ.
And if you were very unlucky you might have to take one of them out yourself, someone you had known, trained with, briefed with. Slept with...
"You want me to kill him."
"I hate to put it that way." Hollister looked pained. "But we have reason to believe it may be necessary. Alive and at large, he is, at best, a loose cannon. At worst, a traitor. You understand, of course, what is at stake here, Cassidy. Such a liability must be neutralized."
"I understand, sir."
"I've read your file over very thoroughly, Officer Cassidy. I assume you will have no trouble accomplishing the task that is set to you."
She smiled grimly. "No, sir."
"In fact, it's been said that there is only one SA operative currently in the field who can match you in experience, skill, and audacity." He paused, met her gaze directly; there was a warning there. "That officer's name is Sheldon Jeffrey Sands."