23:41, MONDAY JULY 5, 1999, ZULU TIME
'GLOBAL EXPRESS' CORPORATE JET, WESTBOUND OVER THE ATLANTIC
"Well, póg mo thón ...."
"Not in public, Topaz," Onyx quipped from behind his Times. "What is it?"
"I've got some bots monitoring our subjects, yeah?" the cracker reminded her boss - albeit respectfully, bearing in mind that the Englishman hadn't become SHRIKE-1's Deputy Commander by being overly forgiving of slights, real or imagined. "Harris' car just changed registry again."
"What?" Onyx blinked, dropping his paper to cross to the brunette's shoulder. The Silicon Graphics workstation, next-generation satellite phone, and the top-of-the-line shadow-market ICe-breaker programmes Topaz wielded meant that she could punch through data-walls few others could even dream of scratching, even travelling at over four hundred knots at thirty thousand feet, and now her screen showed a correction to the California DMV database. Of course, it wasn't like said database was anything resembling a real challenge, but still.... "He was so fixed on the idea of wandering America. Why the devil would he sell his car like that - less than two months after buying it, and after only driving it from Sunnydale to Los Angeles?"
"You tell me, sir: you're the one who's met him," she shrugged.
Onyx reminded himself that he couldn't shoot her under present circumstances - explosive decompression, and all that. "Pull up airline ticket purchases. Perhaps he's taking a different route."
Topaz nodded and rattled the keyboard for a moment. "Just as well 'Xander' is such an unusual name, yeah?" she observed as she waited for the results. "If he was going by 'Alex' or something mundane, I might as well try to find a given water molecule by running a sieve through the Thames."
"I'm well aware of the difficulty of the task, Topaz." His tone was patient but crisp. "You don't have to impress it on me to inflate my opinion of your skills. Erwin Rommel did the same thing with his superiors... and look at how he ended up."
Topaz swallowed carefully. "I'm just saying that it's easier said than done, sir. I - here we go." The screen had changed again as the search-bots came up with something. "One hit returned: a United flight from LAX to... Dulles? What the hell does he want in D.C.?"
"Who gives a damn?" her superior countered, tapping the screen. "The flight lands around nine p.m. tomorrow, Eastern. That gives us barely a day to get people in place to intercept him. Who's available?"
Topaz pulled up another window and ran through her database. "Uh... Jasper and Bloodstone are in New York." She clicked for more details. "They're currently, uh, 'convincing' an antiquities dealer that the suit of armour he just received - the armour of a Knight Templar who was crucified for heresy - would be better off in the hands of someone who can better manage its more... esoteric properties."
"If we don't get a clean sweep on every one of Buffy's lackeys, Keystone will floss his teeth with our spinal columns. Tell Jasper and Bloodstone to expedite the armour's recovery and get to Washington within the next twelve hours."
"Any special instructions for how they should deal with Harris?"
"No. They know what to do with him, and there's no need for any precautions in handling, the boy has trouble putting his shoes on the right feet."
"Sounds like he made an impression on y', sir," the Belfast native opined, switching her head-/eye-phone rig to a mode that allowed voice telecommunication.
SHRIKE-1-Deputy shrugged. "Stupidity that gross is hard to forget."
- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -
21:23, TUESDAY JULY 6, 1999, LIMA (01:23/07-07-99, ZULU)
DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, OUTSIDE WASHINGTON D.C.
Xander rubbed his eyes and checked his newly reset watch. And that explains why I never wanted to be a pilot. Okay: now I find a hotel, a rental car, and a 'phone. Anything else can wait.
He slung his carry-all and started picking his way through the crowd. As he went, he reached into a pocket and produced the pamphlet he'd acquired at the '98-'99 Career Fair, once again contemplating the caption at the bottom. {The Change is Forever. 1-800-MARINES.}
He'd told his fellow Scoobies that he was heading away to find himself; true enough, as far as it went. But the whole Kerouac thing had been a blind. Let's face it, I am not cut out to live an unstructured life. 'On the Road'? Give me a break! Hell, my life fell apart in the school holidays because I didn't have any idea of what I was gonna be doing. Six months without a plan, without being part of a team, and I'd just end up another 'missing hitch-hiker' statistic.
And why not the Corps? After Hallowe'en '97, I'm already pre-trained, and it's not like I don't have combat experience, he thought wryly, giving way to a couple of screaming kids and their harried-looking mother. Besides, it's not like I've got any real reason to -
Hey, just a par-boiled minute.... His head came up again, and he searched the concourse for the oddity that had caught his -
There. A tallish Asian man was standing near the exit, holding up a sign. {X. HARRIS}
Everything around the dark-haired Scooby went into slow-motion, and alarm-bells went off in his head. I never told anybody I was coming out here to go to Parris Island, not even Willow - hell, I didn't even buy the plane-ticket until I got to L.A. yesterday! - and yet Mister Sign-Man is here, waiting for me. Ergo, he is not somebody I want to meet. "Excuse me, pardon me, excuse me," the Scooby repeated, carefully making his way through the crowd - away from his reception committee.
He'd made not fifteen yards before something cold and round screwed itself into his left kidney. "Going somewhere, meneer Harris?" a cold male voice asked, its accent distinctly Afrikaans.
"Baggage claim. I forgot my Kevlar underwear," he riposted. The terror that had instantly leapt into his throat he seized in both hands, wadded up into a ball, and stuffed back down into his stomach - panicking would not help.
"Then you'd better do exactly what I say, hadn't you?" The pistol-muzzle dug into his back a little harder.
"What're you gonna do, shoot me in the middle of the concourse in front of a few thousand people?"
"I'd just be another shocked bystander, meneer. Now get going. Out in the parking lot there's a red Lexus with grey stripes and New York number-plates. Get into the passenger's seat. I'll be right beside you every step of the way, so don't think running will get you anything but a bullet in the spine." The man stepped up next to him. He was blond, blocky, vaguely military-looking, and the overcoat draped over his right arm just happened to mostly conceal the suppressed SIG-Sauer P230 he was holding.
Cute trick, Xander noted, starting in the direction he'd been given. The Chinese man was headed towards the same door, wearing a carnivorous smile as he looked over at them; Xander noted that he had a rolling sort of gait, like he'd had both his knees busted at some point. "Where'd you learn your trade-craft, Sesame Street?"
"Unlike you, meneer Harris, some of us in the real world can actually read," the guy responded, his voice completely level. "You should have tried it when you had the chance. Now move."
- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -
Out on the freeway, Xander kept his mouth shut and tried to figure out how the hell he was going to get out of this. The Asian was in the seat behind him, undoubtedly with another P230 levelled at his spine. Blondie was keeping his eyes on the road.
Who the fuck are these guys, anyway, and what do they want with a nobody like me? "Can I ask where we're going?"
"You can ask all you like." Blondie smiled thinly. His tone made it clear that the question would be ignored.
"That's what I thought." These fuckers are gonna shoot me as soon as they get to where they decided they're gonna dump the body, and there's not a damn' thing I can do about it! he railed.
There was a flash of lights behind the Lexus, and a siren whooped. The Afrikaaner breathed a curse as he checked the mirror. "Never a blery cop around when you need one, and just when you don't.... Jasper -"
"Got it," the Asian man said crisply, in New York inflections. Under his voice was a distinct dry 'klik', awfully like the sound of an autopistol's hammer being earred back.
"Meneer Harris, say nothing, do nothing to betray us. I'd hate to have to kill you."
You'd hate to have to kill me here, you mean, Xander sneered to himself, breathing deeply and quietly gathering himself as the car pulled into a lay-by. Gun at his back or not, he couldn't afford to waste his only chance - no matter how slim it might be.
The Virginia State Police cruiser came to a halt just behind the stopped Lexus. The uniformed man who emerged had grey hair and skin so beaten to leather by the elements that it prevented any sort of guess about his age; he wore a wicked-looking SIG-Sauer strapped to his thigh, and under his uniform cap, shooter's glasses shielded his eyes, despite the darkness of the hour.
Xander watched the man approach through the rear-vision mirror, and his alarm-bells went off again. His Marine-memory recognised something in the oncoming man's body-language, the way he moved, the way he looked at the two hijackers - Ohhhh, shit - that is not a cop!
The 'officer' came up to the driver's door, tapped on the window with one knuckle, then rested his hand on his holster (as cops do, any normal onlooker might assume). Blondie obediently rolled down his window and offered his licence and registration without being asked. "What can I do for you... Officer O'Ryan?" he asked pleasantly, reading the man's nametag.
"Step out of the car, please, sir," O'Ryan replied, quietly but respectfully insistent. Something about his accent was... off, somehow, and Xander's mental alarms got louder.
"Is that really necessary? We're late for an appointment."
O'Ryan's tone got firmer. "Please step out of the car, sir. All of you."
Jasper sighed, and Xander could almost see him slipping his pistol into his pocket as he opened his door and climbed out. Here goes nothing.... The Scooby carefully climbed out of the car and stepped into full view, closer to the edge of the gravel than Jasper. As the two older men turned to face the cop, he started sidling towards the underbrush, one inch at a time. Closer... closer....
Muzzle-flashes shattered the darkness.
- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -
21:23, THURSDAY JULY 8, LIMA (05:23/09-07-99, ZULU)
SUNNYDALE BOWLING ALLEY
In times past, the (not completely unjustified) accusation had been levelled at Willow Rosenberg that, sweethearted girl that she was, she wasn't quite assertive enough; she simply didn't have the instincts to go for the throat.
The people who'd said that must've never seen her bowl.
Oz watched all ten pins crash about the triangle, his expression (as always) giving nothing away as his girlfriend practically capered with delight; it was her fourth strike in six frames. "Okay, you're using magic, right?"
She gave him a superior look as she came back to their seats. "What makes you think that?" For all her mock snootiness, his being relaxed enough to tease her was a source of comfort. Things between them had always been a little... uneasy since the fluke, despite the way they'd talked and seemly reconciled at Christmas, and lately she couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't quite... settled around her. Xander's leaving had made it worse somehow, not better, and Oz wouldn't talk about whatever was bothering him at all. Not that he'd ever been Joe Loquacious in the first place, but -
"You're getting sixteen-pound results with a twelve-pound ball, Will. Not a natural phenomenon."
'Da dooo da-do-do!'
Both teenagers blinked at the woman who'd just taken to the next lane; she didn't seem to realise that she'd whistled that horribly off-pitch but still recognisable counterpoint.
"Maybe I'm just a better bowler," Willow sniffed. "There's your 'natural phenomenon'."
'Do d-do do!' The whistler wound the ball up, took careful aim, and dropped all ten pins with a shot that drove into the pocket like a stake into a vampire's heart. "DAMN I'm good!" she cried, raising a triumphant fist.
The teens turned matching 'what the hell' looks on her. Willow did the honours. "Phenomenon."
'Do dooo da-do-do, da-do-do, da-do-do, da-do-do-doo-do!' She half-chuckled and turned to the duo, smiling crookedly. Her English held an odd accent, like it wasn't her first language and she'd learned it from someone who didn't come from the US. "I'm sorry. My husband keeps telling me I need to grow up - right before he sticks his tongue out at me," she added wryly.
She was perhaps two years older than Oz, five-feet-nine or so, with a sort of sleek, graceful power to her slender frame that reminded Willow of nothing so much as a panther. Her skin was as pale as fine porcelain, completely flawless, and the mid-back-length tumble of raven-wing hair complemented it perfectly; behind frameless, yellow-tinted glasses - Willow remembered that cops and soldiers called them 'shooter's glasses' - her dark eyes twinkled with mischief, laughing at the entire world. The glint in her eye, the gamine cast to her features and her infectious grin made it seem like just being alive was an exhilirating experience to her; she fairly radiated energy, and a limitless confidence that somehow managed to be completely devoid of conceit. She was dressed in a red-and-grey-checked long-sleeved shirt over black jeans; a battered black denim jacket was slung over her seat, a pair of much-abused Nike running shoes were piled atop each other on the floor, and a Chevrolet baseball cap hung from the score-table's overhead-projector mount. She was wearing no cosmetics, her earlobes were adorned only by silver studs, and the twin rings on her left hand looked like polished stainless steel(!), one inset with diamonds and dark sapphires, the other inlaid with silver and platinum.
"Miss that show too, huh?" Oz asked, mainly for the sake of politesse.
"I was gutted when I heard they weren't making it any more," the brunette declared. "At least I can get it on cable out here. I'm forgetting my manners: call me Shooter," she half-smiled.
"Oz," the guitarist nodded, shaking the proffered right hand; her grip was surprisingly strong, albeit controlled. Weird calluses she's got, he noted in passing. "This is Willow."
"'Shooter'?" Willow asked, a little incredulously.
"It's better than 'hey, you'," she said, waggling blue-black eyebrows over her shades; Willow giggled at the taller woman's deadpan delivery. "Oz, you're up."
"Oh, yeah. Thanks." The guitarist retrieved his ball from the runnel and took position at the line. "New to Sunnydale?"
"More or less. A... a professional opportunity came up, and I couldn't have made myself say 'no' if I'd wanted to."
Russian, he realised. That was her original language; she sounded almost exactly like that lady you saw on CNN, Ralitsa somebody-or-other. He took a breath, released it, made his delivery; he ended up with a 6-7-10 split, which wasn't too bad considering he'd almost guttered out.
"You're hitting the pocket a little too fine. Try starting a shade further to the right next time," Shooter suggested.
"Whatever you do, don't start betting against her," a male voice interjected wryly, its owner stepping up to Shooter's console with a couple of bags of M&Ms in one hand.
"Hey, sexy!" Shooter cried, her already animated face outright lighting up at the sight of the newcomer.
He glanced over both shoulders, the gesture not entirely an act. "You, uh... you are talking to me, right?" he hazarded.
"I don't see any other gorgeous men around here; do you?" she near-purred, wrapping her arms around his neck. He slipped his arms about her waist and kissed her, long and deep and with an almost cherishing passion.
When they broke for air long moments later, they rested their foreheads together and shared a private smile. "Well, I'm not in the market and you're biased," he half-chuckled whimsically.
"I'm gonna take a wild guess and say you're the husband," Willow deadpanned.
"I'd better be; any other man she kisses like that'd be a dead man when I found him," he grinned as they both turned to face the two Scoobies. "Call me Nemo."
Nemo was about twenty, a touch under average height, with a wiry compactness of build. He had sandy-blond hair and pleasant, freckle-strewn facial features marred by a pencil-thin scar that started at the left corner of his forehead and ended at the point of his cheekbone; a black patch covered his left eye, and his right eye was a warm, almost wolfish shade of topaz, its gaze reflecting skewed humour, a wryly cynical appreciation of human folly. In contrast with Shooter's borderline hyperactivity, he was possessed of a respectful, caring mien; Willow's sense of him was of thoughtful intelligence and a steady temperament. Like Shooter's, his pronunciation was British, but his accent wasn't quite Australian and had an oddly lilting touch to it. He was wearing semi-casual grey slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt, and his jacket (an aviator-style black Nomex affair) lay on the chair next to Shooter's; strangely enough, despite the warmth of the night his cuffs were securely buttoned. When he extended his hand to her, Willow saw why: the back of his hand was covered with faint but distinct scars - old burns? - that stretched up under his cuff, and probably beyond. She also noted, with a twitch of one eyebrow, that the rings he wore on his free hand were identical to Shooter's.
"So what's your real name, Mister 'My name is Latin for Nobody'?" she asked archly, hiding a puzzled frown. Scars aside, Nemo had the same disciplined strength and calluses as Shooter did, though both were a little more pronounced.
If he'd been wearing glasses, he would have looked at Willow over them; his voice was suddenly a perfect mimic of the sort of high-class English toff who would think of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce as 'dreadfully common'. "Tut-tut-tut, dear... don'tcherknow that's a terribly gauche question to ask in our profession?"
Both Willow and Oz blinked, unsure of what to make of that.
"You'll have to forgive him," Shooter smiled, absently rubbing Nemo's shoulder with one hand. "His subconscious collects languages and accents the way housewives collect recipes, and he has a slightly twisted sense of fun."
"This from a woman who routinely starts brawls with Recon Marines just for the sheer hell of it," Nemo said dryly, playing to their two-person audience.
"It's not 'the sheer hell of it', love," she chided. "It's about keeping them humble."
"And exactly how would you be an expert on humility?"
Oz and Willow shared a look. These two against Marines? Yeah, right!
"Hey, are you guys gonna talk all night? There are other people who wanna use those lanes, y'know!" a beefy jock-type snarled from a couple of paces away. He was flanked by a group of similarly beefy individuals - they looked like a high school wrestling team.
"Who asked ya, Bullwinkle?" Shooter jeered, motioning for Nemo to take his ball from the runnel. "There's free lanes over there."
"Who the hell do you think you are, bitch?" the jock demanded.
Nemo froze mid-step, cleared his throat, and quite deliberately turned to look at the wrestler. Neither Scooby could see his face, but the jock could... and whatever he saw in the older man's expression prompted him and his cohorts to slink away like poodles fleeing an ill-tempered Doberman.
"Sweetheart," Shooter chided fondly.
"You know I have no tolerance for lèse-majesté."
"But, still, maybe they wouldn've listened to reason."
He gave her a look. "Okay, what was that, a rush of blood to the brain?"
She rolled her eyes fondly, then kissed his cheek. "All right, all right.... We're going to have to talk about this protective streak of yours some time."
"Gotta love me!" he grinned, in an eerily good 'Baby Dinosaur' impression.
Shooter chuckled softly and kissed him again. "You're incorrigible," she sighed. "Oz, I believe you were about to make your clean-up shot?"
- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -
22:54, JULY 8, LIMA (06:54/09-07-99, ZULU)
LONG-TERM VISITOR'S QUARTERS, MARINE BASE 'FORT QUICK', SUNNYDALE
'Shooter' tossed her jacket and cap onto an armchair and crossed to the work-desk, setting her shades atop the PC's monitor. "They're great kids, aren't they?" she noted absently, sorting through the file-folders that lay on the desk.
'Nemo' nodded, hanging his eye-patch on the back of the door. "I can certainly see why he's so taken with her."
"Oz?"
"Well, him too," he shrugged, joining her at the desk.
"When do those SHRIKE teams arrive again?"
"Keystone seems to think there's an overpowering need for more firepower on this one - I don't know why, really. SHRIKE-1, less Opal, should be fully assembled by the end of the week. SHRIKE-2's going to arrive in a couple of weeks, and SHRIKE-3's going to come in at the end of the month. They should be set for action by mid-August."
"And once again, Agate comes in late and decides to skimp on his homework so he can make a big, flashy play. Someone's going to have to learn that boy a sharp lesson in field operations."
"He's due," he agreed.
She finally found the folder she'd been looking for. The sticker on the front had been neatly printed: {ELIZABETH ANNE 'BUFFY' SUMMERS. SLAYER: 18-01-96 - } "Six weeks," she mused. "Will Sucker Punch be ready by then?"
"Better be," he noted wryly. "It's about our best chance of pulling this caper off." He reached around her and tugged another folder from the pile. "Well, everything's set on the other end. Now we just set up, wait for Opal, and roll up the whole lot in one go."
"We hope."
Nemo slipped his arms about his wife's waist and dropped a gentle kiss on the sweet spot under her ear, smiling at her soft moan. "Since when are you a pessimist, cariad?"
"I guess I'd just feel better if we didn't have to rely on 'Colt' so much," she sighed, snuggling back against him. "Based on recent history -"
"That was a decision based on options that made Hobson's choice look downright reasonable. I didn't much like it myself at the time, but it was necessary. Besides, we've pulled off hairier capers on sketchier intel." He hugged her closer for a moment.
"Yeah, but that was just our necks on the line. If this goes wrong -"
"I thought I was the designated worrier around here," he teased, kissing her pulse-point again. "Relax, cariad: we'll get 'em. The whole treacherous lot of 'em."
Chapter End Notes:
The Bombardier Global Express arrived on the 'corporate transport' market in 1996; it can fly from London to Los Angeles (or Johannesburg) non-stop, and can accomodate either a single VIP (with a bed!) and a small office and staff, or as many as eighteen passengers in more standard seating. It had a per-unit cost of about US$38 million in 1999, so these folks clearly have deep pockets.
Póg mo thón - Kiss my ass! (Gaelic)
Of all the British daily newspapers, the Times is regarded as being a 'middle of the road' paper, following the establishment line.
Silicon Graphics workstations are notoriously high-powered... and their price-tags (usually around US$200,000) reflect that. Between these and the Global Express, the Shrikes are well-funded and -connected to a degree that is vaguely appalling.
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was one of Nazi Germany's star generals. Able and ambitious, he made a point of emphasising the skill and quality of his enemy and the obstacles he had overcome in his battles, so as to make his skill appear all the greater. In the end, it availed him little: accused of complicity in the July Plot to assassinate Hitler, he was compelled to take poison to escape a trial that would have dragged his family down with him.
Note that Onyx has met Xander, knows a fair bit about him, and gives Topaz the impression that he holds no great opinion of him.
1-800-MARINES is the free-phone number for USMC recruitment centres. Yes, I know that canonically, it was the US Army Xander 'joined' on Hallowe'en and robbed during Episode 2.14, 'Innocence'; this is a deliberate change.
Meneer - 'mister'. (Afrikaans)
The SIG-Sauer P230 is a compact autopistol that closely resembles the Walther PPK; intended for easy concealment, it is popular in such a role, especially with assassins and terrorists. It fires .380 Auto (9x17mm) ammunition, which is (for the most part) subsonic, making it well-suited to 'silenced' applications.
blery - 'bloody'. (Afrikaans)
For those who've never met it, the 'phenomenon' gag (and Shooter's counterpoint whistling) stems from a memetic mutation of the 'mahna-mahna' sketch off 'The Muppet Show'. I found an .mpg of the sketch a while ago and almost died laughing. Classic stuff.
Note that both of the new arrivals say 'call me such-and-such', never 'my name is ~'; they don't directly lie about their identities.
lèse-majesté - a demonstrated lack of respect for one whose status or achievements merit it. (French)
cariad - endearment meaning 'sweetheart' or 'beloved'. (Welsh)
(I don't know if this is a common phrase in the US.) 'Hobson's choice' originally referred to a stable-owner in Victorian(?) London who gave you two choices in renting a horse: do things his way, or hit the road. It's now a synonym for any situation where your options are extremely limited - and all of them suck in one way or another.