more prequel genfic. i have officially run off to play in my own bizarre world again. you know how i get. this time, we get to see Cougar's first Black Op for the CIA.

warnings: well, we're still in my bastardized incomprehensible com-movie-verse, but now it has blatant Burn Notice crossover. military and spy jargon. contains violence and organized crime. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus f*** and some naughty Spanish words).

pairing: none/gen.

timeline: several years pre-movie/pre-comic (let's call it about two years after King of the Losers).

disclaimer: the Losers belong to DC/Vertigo.

notes: 1)italic is spanish, bold is emphasis. translations by MerianMoriarty, who is the one who called Panamanian "a fucking ghastly mangling of Spanish." 2) Bragg = Fort Bragg, headquarters for Army Airborne and Army Special Forces. 3) the M9 is a Beretta 9mm pistol that's probably the most widely-used by military and police worldwide. it's extremely lightweight and reliable. 4) mestizo is an ethnic mix of central-american-native and european spanish. 5) fantasy artist Frank Frazetta is famous for painting very curvy women. 6) training exercises are great for teaching you how to climb down a building and shoot targets through a window, but they can't really do much to prepare you for the psychological effects of being in real danger and blowing somebody's brains out.

Spanish
"¿Esé ahuevao?" (Panamanian) = "this jackass?" normally, the word would be spelled "ahuevado."
"Tú me estás jodieno." (Panamanian) = "you're f***ing with me" / "you're f***ing kidding." normally, the word is spelled "jodiendo."
"carajo" = "balls/bollocks", a general negative interjection.
"capo" = the "don" of a spanish cartel.
"de puta madre" = "motherf***er (idiomatic)."
"gringo" = "foreigner." often used derisively, but isn't actually a derogatory term.
"¡Bello!" = literally "handsome!", pretty much means "ooh, he's hot!"

Black Op = super-duper-top-secret special mission, usually not even acknowledged by the organization running it. details are almost never kept on record, and are always highly classified.
operator = someone working on a spec ops mission.
handler = the agent coordinating a special operation. some CIA field agents work with one handler more than others.
asset = in the context of a special op, an 'asset' is an agent with especially pertinent skills or information.
breach = to enter a room aggressively (usually with explosives).
basic = armed forces basic training.
hide = a stakeout position for a sniper.
lojack = fit with some variety of tracking or positioning device, usually to counteract theft.
GPS = global positioning satellite (and the devices that use them). a means of tracking coordinates electronically.
oh-eight-hundred = 0800, eight o'clock in military time.
SF = special forces.
multi-purpose ammunition = ammunition that includes incendiary and explosive stages.
FNG = fuckin' new guy (n00b).
SEAL = Sea, Air, and Land; the Navy's primary special operations force. their qualification and training process is notoriously rigorous and yields the Swiss Army Knife of special forces operatives. they have a reputation for being some of the best snipers in the world (seriously; sniping from a boat? not easy!).
Q-Course = the Army Special Forces Qualification Course, consisting of four phases of training and assessment. it takes about a year, unless you're going into Medical (which takes another 32 weeks).
mag = short for magazine; ammo clip.
the Company = the CIA. if military personnel say something's "Company-funded" or "Company-backed," they usually mean that the CIA is paying for whatever-it-is.
sanitize (or sterilize) = remove all evidence from (usually by use of fire or explosives).
casing = the empty metal shell of a bullet that's been fired. has certain distinguishing features that tell the make and manufacture of the bullet, and can be used forensically to match certain characteristics of a gun's firing pin.

Asset

Cougar tried not to be nervous, but it was hard when he was introduced to an operator and a handler and told that the fate of the free world probably depended on the success of their mission. 'Welcome to Panama—by the way, if you screw up, organized crime will conquer the world.'

Before he left Bragg, Clay had told him that he'd hear that kind of talk, that it was boilerplate for Black Ops assignments, and he shouldn't feel like it was any more or less important than any other mission. And then Clay had handed him a fucking fifteen page long nondisclosure agreement that included a description of his alibi (the CIA decided that he was sightseeing in Barcelona).

"I hear good things, Alvarez," said the mission handler. "You come very highly recommended. This is your asset for the mission: Westen. His cover is an American arms-smuggler. You are to provide transport overwatch and long-range cover; if absolutely necessary, your pack has the proper gear for a rappel-and-breach entry."

Cougar frowned. It sounded an awful lot like the handler expected Westen to get caught and interrogated.

Westen had a dull smile frozen on his face, like he couldn't believe his life depended on some kid who looked fresh out of Basic (Cougar knew just how young he looked; he'd have to find some way to fix that, because it was getting annoying).

The handler slapped Cougar on the back (he probably thought it was reassuring, but he almost startled Cougar into breaking his arm). "Everybody's scared the first time, Alvarez. Just keep your head on straight and bring the asset back alive." And he got back on the civilian helicopter and left.

"First time," Westen echoed with blatantly feigned enthusiasm. "Not 'first time in the field,' I hope."

Cougar shook his head.

"Oh, good."

Cougar shrugged.

"…You don't talk much, do you?"

He shook his head again.

"That works out, since it's a radio-free op. You can read lips, though?"

He nodded.

"Good. I'm Michael, by the way."

Warily, Cougar shook the asset's hand. "Cougar."

Westen blinked. "Oh…kay. Listen, I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself pretty well, Cougar, so I need you to sit back and not do anything stupid. Use your best judgment covering me on the way to the meet, but once I'm there you will fire if and only if I give the signal—got it?"

Cougar nodded once, sharply.

"Good. Get to your hide. If you lose sight of me tomorrow, my phone is lojacked to show my position on your GPS. I hit the road at oh-eight-hundred, and your skinny ass had better be in position." And Westen headed for the car waiting thirty feet away.

"Hey, what's the signal?"

Westen paused and glanced back. "I'll give you a nod and three-count. So keep your eyes on my hands—or my feet if I'm tied up."

He frowned and quelled his sense of confusion. Clay's reputation was riding on this op. If the handler and the operator both acted like being restrained and requiring rescue was an expected deviation, he'd go along with it. For all he knew, all Black Ops were run that way (ass-backward as it might seem).

"I mean it, kid," Westen said, pointing. "I don't expect to need you at all tomorrow, so don't get trigger-happy."

And then Westen was driving away, and Cougar was looking between his map and his GPS to figure out how the hell to get where he was going without looking too suspicious. He was in civilian clothes, and his rifle was stowed (disassembled) in a backpack, and at least he spoke the language…but that didn't mean getting into the heart of a cartel-owned district was going to be safe or easy.

Once he'd visually identified his post for the operation, he started walking.

Axe always said (and the SF instructors had agreed, using slightly different words) that blending in was a grift, and that the key to any grift was confidence. Look and act like you have every right to be there, and most people will never question it. So Cougar kept his eyes forward, ignored the itching desire to scan the nearby roofs for enemy snipers. It made no sense, but he felt like everyone was staring, like every street vendor was hiding a gun under the counter, like he was deep in enemy territory just waiting to be spotted and gunned down.

Despite his paranoia, he made it to the target building unharassed. Then it was just a matter of vaulting from a dumpster up to the lowest level of the fire escape, and then a long and tedious climb to the roof forty floors up. Good thing it was an older part of the city.

The first thing he did was to check (and booby-trap) the roof-access stairwell. After that, he established his orientation and sight-lines. Once he'd changed into his gear and put his rifle back together, he settled in for the night.

Instinct and routine had him awake by five. He checked his rifle again, cleared all the nearby roofs, ranged his scope. Knowing he would need the energy, he forced himself to eat a protein bar.

It was a quarter to nine when he spotted Westen's car en route.

He watched carefully for suspicious cars, for men who might be armed, for the subtle motions that broadcasted an attack, but none came. It took almost ten minutes to get through a mile of morning commuter traffic. When the car stopped, Cougar switched the magnification on his scope, swapped out ammo types, and shifted to a firing position facing the location of the meet.

Between the touristy tropical-print shirt and the Bermuda shorts (with an M9 tucked sloppily into the back), Westen certainly looked like some arrogant American gun-runner.

As might be expected, Cougar lost visual contact when Westen entered the lobby of the target building. Five minutes later, the spy exited the elevator on the floor where the meet was to take place. He flirted with the secretary—some curvy mestizo girl who looked like something out of a Frazetta painting—and made broad, cheerful gestures when a pair of bulky enforcers appeared and beckoned him to follow.

There was some conversation at the door of the target office (he couldn't see what Westen said, but one of the enforcers said, "Shut up and wait here."), and then the paired thugs left and shut the door.

Westen nonchalantly sidled up behind the desk and plugged something into the computer. After a moment of typing, he unplugged the little thing and hooked it up to his phone instead. No sooner had he stowed both in his pocket than the paired thugs from before came back, flanking a more important-looking man in a bad suit.

Some people might find this part—the patient, alert waiting—to be tedious, but Cougar had always found it relaxing. The waiting let him slow down his breathing and focus on the air around him. No wind today, and mild humidity. A straight shot. It was the best kind of day for sniping.

They were talking. (You're Jones?) The man in the suit looked at his companions and gestured with a smirk. (¿Esé ahuevao? Tú me estás jodieno.) The thugs chuckled and shook their heads. He paced a circle around Westen, who turned to follow him. (—looking forward to meeting your boss. This contract'll buy my kids a new pool; y'know, the swanky in-ground kind.) Westen slipped his hands into his pockets and frowned as the suited man said something; maybe the conversation wasn't going the way he'd hoped it would. (Well, look, I mean, if you guys don't have the bank to make a big purchase right away, we can work out a payment plan. Start small, build up.)

Suddenly, the guy in the suit was angry, shouting…but his back was to the window, so Cougar couldn't tell what he was saying. Westen was trying to play it off with a shrug and a grin (Hey, was it something I said?). He got halfway through a recommendation to a relaxing day-spa when the shouting guy socked him in the gut.

There was a brief scuffle—Westen was pretty impressive in a fistfight—that ended when one of the thugs grabbed Westen's sidearm and hit him in the temple with it.

Still, even when Westen had blinked away the haze of the strike, he didn't give the signal. (No need for that, fellas.) The two of them hoisted him back to his feet and started hauling him toward the door. (Hey, let's just forget this whole thing. That's okay, I know my way out. No, really.)

And then they turned a corner into the hallway.

He couldn't see them. He panned his scope across the whole floor—no sign of Westen.

"Carajo…" he sighed, and started eyeing the adjacent floors.

A minor commotion drew his attention downward, where the two thugs were dragging Westen across the granite-paved plaza while the third (the shouting man from before) yelled something; most of what he said was lost over the distance, but Cougar made out the word 'capo.'

There was no way to be certain, but he thought he saw Westen give the signal.

By the time Cougar realized how stupid he'd been not to move his weapon with his line of sight (fucking amateur mistake), they were in his building.

"De puta madre," Cougar snarled under his breath.

Should he assume this was something else Westen and their handler had expected?

Should he risk blowing the op for no reason?

Clay would've said it was worth blowing the op to save a life, and the handler had told him to bring Westen back alive…

He pulled out his GPS and punched up Westen's phone. While he waited for the cartel thugs to get settled at whatever venue they'd be using for interrogation, he set up his rappelling gear. With any luck, they'd pick a room with a window; otherwise, he'd have to breach nearby and risk involving civilians.

They finally held steady two feet northeast of him (and some number of floors below). The phone did, anyway.

Cougar hoped he was doing the right thing. And he hoped like hell he wouldn't fuck up.

He planted his anchor, crossed himself, and jumped the rail.

He knew he shouldn't be nervous…he'd trained for this…just a window breach on hostage-takers… But it was Clay's reputation on the line. The Company had asked for a sniper, and Clay had put him forth as the right man for the mission.

Eight floors of quick-but-cautious head-first rappelling later, he caught sight of a man with a gun leaning against the window. There'd been three men with Westen when they dragged him across the plaza separating the two buildings. There was probably at least one more, someone to call the shots on the interrogation—maybe even the capo.

Taking a deep breath, he readied his rifle and dropped the last eight feet.

It was exactly like training. It was nothing like training.

Five figures, identified in an instant as three armed, one tied, one leaning in to question or threaten. Three shots. Four dead bodies (the leaning man's head lined up nicely with another man's heart and lung). A messy spray of crimson all over the walls.

Ten seconds later, he was through the window and cutting Westen loose. His arm ached from firing one-handed.

"Nice save. I owe you one."

Cougar snorted, shivering with adrenaline. "What the hell happened?"

"They may have seen through my cover," Westen groaned.

"May have?"

"Yeah, well, I only know about five words of Spanish, so your guess is as good as mine."

Cougar stared. "You—they sent you here to—and you don't even—" He trailed off, lacking the words to properly convey his shock and dismay.

Nevermind the minor fact that Panamanian was a fucking ghastly mangling of Spanish to begin with. Hell, Cougar'd been speaking Spanish all his life and he could barely follow Panamanian sometimes.

The older man shrugged. "Shouldn't have mattered, since my cover was one hundred percent gringo. The point was that I know enough about the Armenians they've been trying to buy from. Whatever got them pissed off, they slapped me around a little and dragged me over here. Four dead bodies definitely blows my cover, but I managed to get what I was after first, so we're good to go. Get back to the roof, make sure nobody kills me on my way to the car. Then clean up your gear and rendezvous at ten."

Once he was back on the roof, he paused to swap ammo again. Two black cars tried to pursue as Westen peeled out, but all it took was one multi-purpose round each to send them careening into the parked cars on either side of the street. When Westen was out of sight, Cougar dismantled his rifle and changed out of his gear.

Getting back to the rendezvous was a blur of paranoia and twitchy reflexes (and the irrational suspicion that every flirtatious girl he passed was waiting for a chance to put a bullet in his back, that every giggle of '¡Bello!' was a preamble to murder).

Westen was calling for a pickup when Cougar arrived at the rendezvous.

"Yes, Mark, now would be nice," Westen drawled. "The locals are getting decidedly unfriendly. Yes. Right. Sounds good." He hung up his phone and slipped it back into his pocket.

Cougar hoped he didn't look like a complete FNG, but his knees were still unsteady and he was sure his hands would shake if he unclenched them from around the strap of his backpack and god he was hungry but the thought of food made his stomach do alarming flips.

Westen gave him a long look. "Pretty damn different from a battlefield, isn't it?"

He nodded.

"Jesus, you look young… If I didn't know better, I'd say you were fresh outta high school. Gotta do something about that."

He gave a helpless shrug, and Westen grinned.

"Grow your hair out, cultivate some scruff so you look at least twenty, if not your actual age. Maybe try a hat."

Cougar didn't bother to tell Westen that he was twenty.

"Saw the cars in the rear-view. Those, plus four-for-three upside-down… Who taught you to shoot like that?"

"SEAL named Axe," he said, and it was true. He'd been good before, but training with Axe had made him better, had given him an edge when he got back to Bragg for the Q-Course.

The name seemed to pleasantly surprise Westen. "Axe? Sam Axe?"

Cougar nodded.

"I'll be damned. Small world. If you see him before I do, tell him I owe him a beer—he trained one hell of a sniper."

The far-off thump of rotors drew their attention to the helicopter coming to land in the parking lot. Their handler waved from the copilot's seat.

When they were on board, the handler twisted around and shouted over the noise, "Alvarez, prep your weapon."

And because Cougar had just been through a year and a half of training, he obeyed without hesitation while the helicopter slowly lifted off. He was slipping the half-empty multi-purpose mag back in when it finally occurred to him to wonder what the hell he was about to be told to do. Would the Company dump him or Westen because of blown cover?

"Sanitize the vehicle."

He closed his eyes for a moment in relief, slid the door open and leaned out. Someone grabbed the waist of his jeans, and he looked back to see Westen bracing to catch his weight if he fell; he nodded his thanks. The shot would have been easier with a better pilot, but the drift of a helicopter wasn't very different from the bounce of a raft on water.

Exhale. Squeeze. Boom.

Reflexively, he darted out his hand to catch the empty casing. Westen pulled him back in, and he shut the door.

"Well," Westen said brightly. "Was it good for you?"

.End.