Marella stretched languidly, consciousness emerging gradually into the dim light of morning, luxuriating in the delicious warm and deep comfort of her bedclothes. She sighed softly, pleasantly surprised to wake with a sense of comfort and wellbeing considering the stress of the current situation.

The light coming through the bedroom windows was dishwater dirty, rain thudded steadily against the skylight glass but the absolutely wonderful thing about Sunday mornings was the ability to turn over and sink into the decadence of a lazy morning at home. Marella tugged at the duvet, determined to burrow under it for at least another hour. Its resistence to her attempt to move it was a little odd and she squinted at it for a long minute before her sleepy brain registered the weight of arm holding it down.

She twisted around in place, surprised at the sight of Briggs' head on the other pillow. He was facing her, eyes presumably closed but with the right side of his face buried into the down pillow, impossible to know for sure were it not for the slow, sonorous breathing of deep sleep. She'd no idea when he'd come home; he must have been extraordinarily quiet to keep from waking her. Based on the fact that he hadn't woken when she'd shifted, he'd had little sleep in D.C. Marella longed to wake him, but settled for quietly lying inches from him and watching him sleep.

Which was entertaining for about ninety seconds.

Then she turned back onto her right side and shifted herself, in increments, back into spooning range. Pulling the duvet over her shoulders, she reached behind her, felt around until she located Briggs' hand and then draped his arm around her waist. Habit and instinct sleepily kicked in; his arm tightened, pulling her closer. Marella sighed happily and sunk back into the feathery comfort of her down pillow and the warmth of a loving embrace, her favorite way to spend a Sunday morning.

It was the phone that woke her the second time, her phone, not his, and she scowled at it while pushing herself to the side of the bed.

She cleared her throat once, then again, and answered, hoping it wasn't her mother. She wasn't in the mood for a long conversation. "Yes?"

"Hi, it's Laura. Did I wake you?"

Marella glanced at the clock on the bedside table before answering. Almost eleven. She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept that late. Check that. She'd never slept that late. At least not since college.

"No, of course not," she lied. She heard Briggs moving behind her. She glanced back; he was sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his face. "Not enough coffee, I guess. What's up?"

"What time did the boss have everyone coming in today?"

Laura was duty officer this weekend, so she'd been in at 8:00 AM sharp, maybe earlier. Marella could hear the suppressed eagerness in the other woman's voice. Laura had something.

"He wasn't specific," Marella said, with a fond glance at Briggs. "When I spoke to him last, he wasn't getting back until sometime this morning so I told everyone to be in at 1 PM. Why? What do you have?"

When did you get home? she mouthed at Briggs. He smiled wearily and held up three fingers, frowned at his hand and then raised another finger, shrugging. A white suit jacket, trousers, and dress shirt tossed over the bench at the foot of the bed indicated he'd undressed quickly and without regard for his clothing.

"Ray Zinn," Laura answered.

Marella sat up. "What about him?" she said, trying to keep the sharpness out of her voice.

Briggs crawled across the bed to try to listen to the conversation.

"We can't find him," Laura said. "He's disappeared. No one's seen him in the last two weeks and he didn't give any notice at work or with his landlord. The local police are treating it as a missing persons case."

Marella frowned, mouthed 'Ray Zinn' at Briggs and tried to remember everything she knew about the man.

"Odd," she said finally. "Sounds unplanned, which raises a number of questions." She could hear in the charged silence that Laura was waiting for something more than that. "It's our first concrete bit of information. Good work." She smiled suddenly, realizing that her praise wasn't what the other woman really wanted. "You should brief Archangel yourself, though you might want to wait a little while before calling. His flight was delayed – thunderstorms in the Ohio valley – and he probably got in at an ungodly hour this morning."

Laura's laughter trickled through the phone line. "Oh, thanks. I get to brief him when he's had no sleep. Maybe I should wait until he comes into the office."

Marella grinned at Briggs who scowled back at her. "I'm sure he'll be happy to hear we're got something. Who do we have working Zinn?"

She listened as Laura gave the names, teams, organizations, briefing schedules, things they'd cover in even more detail later in the office. Her eyes followed Briggs as he headed towards the bathroom, wondering how on earth he'd found pajama bottoms at the time he'd arrived home, specifically how he'd found them without waking her.

Briggs exited the bathroom just as Marella was replacing the receiver in its cradle. Glasses on, she noticed, he's up for the day.

"Good morning," he said, smiling as he headed towards her.

He leaned down and kissed her, lips touching hers softly. She tasted toothpaste as her lips parted and the kiss deepened. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled him back down to the bed. "Welcome home, baby."

"You're wearing my shirt," he said, each word a subtle exhalation of breath on skin that left her shivering. His lips moved down her neck to the base of her throat, lingering in the hollow between her collar bones.

"It's a poor substitute for the real thing," she whispered. And as terribly cliché as it was to sleep in one of his shirts, one of his worn shirts, she slept more soundly that way when he was out of town.

"Ahhhhh." His attention, and his hands, shifted further south. "I'm going to have to ask you to remove it."

She laughed lightly. "Too many words, Michael."

"I missed you," he said as he began unbuttoning the shirt himself and then halted, looking up at her. "This would be where you tell me how much you missed me."

Running her hands down his spine, she leaned into him and nipped at the lobe of his ear. "I'd rather show you."

It was his phone that woke her the third time. Tangled limbs and twisted sheets delayed Briggs's grab at the phone and it rang four times before he snagged the receiver.

"Yes?" he barked, irritation at the sheets still wrapped around his hips unfortunately redirected at the caller. "Yes. I mean, no. I'm awake. Go ahead."

Poor Laura, Marella thought as she untangled the sheets and crawled free of the bed. Their boss did sound unusually fierce when he'd just been woken. Despite the foreknowledge that Laura would be calling, they'd both drifted off after slow and lazy lovemaking, a perfect pace for a dreary gray Sunday. She found Briggs's glasses on the floor where they'd landed after he'd tried to put them on the nightstand, and handed them to him as he concentrated on Laura's briefing.

Shower, something to eat, and then to the office, she ticked off in her mind as she twisted the shower knobs to the temperature she preferred. She was rinsing shampoo from her hair when the shower door open and Briggs joined her.

"Anything new?" she asked, handing him the shampoo bottle.

"Ray Zinn," he said, thoughtfully, pouring an excessive amount of shampoo into his hand.

She winced as he, in a typically male move, used it to wash his hair, his face, his mustache, and the rest of his body. Fourteen dollars a bottle, she reminded herself. He's worth fourteen dollars a bottle. Most of the time.

"Ray Zinn isn't new," she said gently as she removed the shampoo bottle from anywhere near his vicinity. "Laura mentioned that when she called earlier." She kept the fifteen dollar bottle of conditoner out of his reach as well.

"Zinn has the motivation for it," Briggs said. "I'll even grant him the brains, but he doesn't have the capital or the organizational skills. And if we recover Airwolf, DOD will grab her and start mass production, which is not his goal."

Marella worked the conditioner through her curls, finger combing a few strands at a time as she mulled over his words.

"We're assuming the goal is for us to recover Airwolf. Whether that results in having to turn her over to DOD, or having her stolen, or even destroyed, is less clear."

"You're cheerful this morning," he complained. "Where's the conditioner? The water in DC was awful."

She poured an appropriate amount into one cupped palm and began massaging it through his hair, to appreciative sighs.

"Turn around," she ordered, pleased with his immediate compliance. "We're running down all purchases or thefts of Bell 222's or helicopters with a similar fuselage. We're tracking down all merchants selling the particular DuPont paint that was used for Airwolf, or a similar dark gray metallic. It doesn't have to match, just pass at a distance."

She pulled out the handheld showerhead and rinsed the conditioner from his bowed head, envious of how easily his hair fell into place. Hundred dollar haircuts will do that, she grumbled to herself.

"We've tracked down every aircraft mechanic with the skills to modify a helicopter to look like Airwolf. We've tracked down everyone who has ever worked at Red Star, even if it was in a maintenance position…"

"Zinn fits both categories," he interrupted, "and we don't know where he is."

"We know he's missing," she said. "In the meantime, our analysts are pouring through every piece if information, no matter how small, modeling every possible scenario, identifying anyone who would benefit from the Firm recovering Airwolf."

"Including our own people?" he asked, turning around to face her.

The grimness of his question stopped her recitation. She bought some time by rinsing out the remaining conditioner from her hair.

"How did it go with the Committee?"

The ample sigh and his exit from the shower stall was a pretty good indication of how it went. Damn, damn, damn, she thought as she finished up in the shower herself.

Briggs had wrapped a towel around his waist and was running hot water into the sink as he tested the sharpness of his safety razor with a thumb. His gaze followed her appreciatively in the mirror as she came out of the shower stall.

"That well, huh?" Marella said, reaching for a bath towel and wrapping it around her body.

"I told them that I have eleven very promising developmentals, an agent in Budapest under suspicion and possibly in need of extraction, six different operations including paramilitary training for those poor bastards who think they can overthrow Khaddafi, and a pressing need for multilingual case officers in the Middle East and Africa."

Marella grabbed another towel for her hair, began rubbing ferociously. "And?"

"And that painting a helicopter black and white and buzzing some other helicopter is nothing more than a distraction to take our eyes off what's important, namely whether or not certain of our allies have been so severly compromised in their intelligence infrastructure that we should reevaluate our policies. Not to mention that participating in this farce is playing into the hands of whomever is behind it."

Marella winced. She was sure that went over well with the older members of the Committee who tended to have little appreciation what they perceived as Briggs's irreverance and blatant disregard for their wealth of experience.

"And?"

"I was reminded of the Firm's investment of money and resources into the Airwolf project and of the fact that these incidents bring renewed attention to our inability to recover the aircraft, not to mention unwelcome interest from local law enforcement and the media."

"Ouch."

Briggs had probably cleaned up the language and the tone used in the meetings but there was no mistaking that the Committee was not happy.

"I bought us a few days, no more. Another incident and it's time for a 'fresh approach to the Airwolf situation.'"

"Good God, who said that? Not Zeus?"

"No. Zeus clearly understands that reacting in any way is akin to giving them exactly what they want. Whoever they are." Briggs shook some of the shaving cream off the razor into the hot water. "Handing the investigation entirely over to the Bureau was discussed."

"The F.B.I?" She couldn't have been more shocked if Briggs had announced he was planning to recover Airwolf himself. "Tell me you're joking."

The scowl that she drew was more than clear indication of Briggs's opinion of the idea.

"Which of the Gods suggested that harebrained idea?"

Briggs smiled down at the sink. "They're not all code-named after Greek Gods, you know," he said, obviously trying not to laugh.

They'd covered this topic before but Marella was perversely amused by the Firm's cryptonymic naming conventions and how they varied by generation of officers. Briggs was of the Biblical generation, as was Vlad Rostoff, cryptonym Moses. Marella herself had the unfortunate timing of being recruited during the horicultural generation. Somewhere down the line, the Firm would be headed by someone named Camellia Japonica or Brassica Oleracea and they'd rethink the latitude given to Logistical Support.

"It was Thor, actually," Briggs said, wiping his chin clean with a washcloth. "The 'fresh approach' comment, not the FBI suggestion. That came from the jackass in Science and Technology."

The twin positions of Deputy Director, Operations and Deputy Director, Intelligence were traditional rivals in the Firm, in the CIA, and in Intelligence Agencies throughout the world. Operations was perceived as the more glamourous, the area most civilians associated with Covert Intelligence, and it was common for DDIs, worldwide, to chafe at the injustice and inequities in acclaim and, more critically, in budget that went to the flashier of the two divisions.

Briggs and his counterpart had managed to achieve a sort of détente that had allowed a good working relationship for the past few years. Thor needed the raw information that Briggs's case officers obtained from their agents; Archangel needed the comprehensive National Security Assessments that Thor's people provided the President, the DCI, and the Committee each day.

"That comment earlier, about investigating our own people," she said hesitantly. "Did you have anyone particular in mind?"

She could see him thinking about his answer as he carefully combed his hair.

"No," he finally answered. "I don't think Thor has anything to do with our pseudo-Airwolf, but that doesn't mean he's not willing to take advantage of the situation. As far as our alleged rotton apple, your guess is as good as mine and a hell of a lot better than the Committee's."

Great.

Marella picked up a comb and started her attempts to tame the unruly mess that God, and her father's genetics, had blessed upon her

"We've identified every airport within 400 miles of the two sightings, and have had teams out to about a third of them already."

Briggs popped his head out of his closet. "400 miles? Jesus! That's a hell of a search radius."

"It looks like Airwolf but it's probably a Bell 222 or a 222B, which have a range of approximately 700 kilometers without a full complement. We're working in a grid pattern outward from the sightings. If they didn't refuel, they should be within a 200-mile radius. If they refueled…." She shrugged. "We're also checking all sources of av-fuel and any airports that are technically closed, but have hangars or other support buildings."

"Good," Briggs said, mostly into his closet.

"But?" she called back.

"Hmmm?" He emerged, in shirt and trousers with a silk tie draped around his neck.

"You said 'good,' but there was a 'but' in your voice," she said, smiling at his distracted expression.

"Oh." His full attention returned. "All things being equal, we will locate this pseudo-Airwolf using that approach." His mouth tightened. "Given enough time, that is."

Marella nodded. Briggs had said he'd only been able to buy them a few days. And speaking of time.. she checked the small clock on the vanity. If they wanted to eat, and get to work by 1PM, she'd better get dressed.

"I can pull more resources in from the field," she suggested.

His expression darkened for a second and then his eye lit with a deadly twinkle. "I'm thinking about a fresh approach to this particular Airwolf situation," he said, with more than a hint of sarcasm.

Marella was caught between two equally strong but opposing reactions. "Oh really?" won, in a photo finish with 'Uh-oh.'

Briggs dumped the clothing he'd worn yesterday onto the bed and sat on the bench to begin pulling on his socks and shoes. His grin seemed slightly maniacal to Marella.

"As the Committee is so absurdly zealous to know Airwolf's exact whereabouts, I thought we'd provide specifics."

Marella opened her mouth but couldn't find words to express her utter shock at this unexpected reversal of course.

"While in DC, I thought it prudent to obtain approval for a critically important Airwolf mission."

"What mission?" she asked hesitantly as she pulled a pair of white trousers from the closet. Heading to work on a Sunday didn't require a skirt and Lord knows she could use a day without pantyhose.

"Fly-fishing in Canada for all I care, but as the Committee requires a reminder of the significant value that Airwolf provides the Firm, it should at least retain the appearance of legitimacy. There are sufficient hot spots and operations underway. We'll come up with something."

"Okay," she said, reassured that he hadn't entirely lost his mind. "You want Airwolf out of town."

He nodded as he leaned over to tie his shoes.

"Did any of them really believe that Airwolf herself was involved in these incidents?" she asked, incredulous.

Briggs shrugged. "I doubt it, but it is a pretext I plan to eliminate."

Pulling a sweater over her head, Marella quickly sorted and eliminated half a dozen different scenarios.

"You obtained approval?" she asked. Of everything he'd said, that was the greatest departure from norm.

"From Zeus."

Which meant Archangel and Zeus had tightly compartmented the Airwolf mission. The Committee would only know of it if there were another incident and Zeus would stand witness to Airwolf's mission out of town. Which left them free to …

"What are we going to use for bait?"

Briggs smiled, a relaxed and slightly mischievous smile. "I thought we'd paint a Bell 222 for a start."