Part six of End of the Road. Sorry for the hiatus, but as I mentioned earlier, I was with my grandparents, cousins and twins on an excursion through Western Europe. Tons of fun. We took a cruise through Germany and Luxembourg, a walking tour in Belgium (wish it had been longer) and spent a week in France. I would have taken my laptop to continue typing if I could have. For hundreds of reasons, I was convinced otherwise. Everything for this chapter was written out on a dozen scraps of paper, some borrowed notebook sheets, and, when I finally ran out on the plane rides back, my hands and arms. Those flights can get very boring. But you don't want explanations. On to the story! :D
As expected SCORPIA had sent a backup team. Their purpose wasn't to assist Alex, should he encounter resistance or trouble he couldn't handle on his own; quite the contrary. They were there to either make certain he completed the assignment, or, if he was unable or unwilling, to finish his job themselves with the swiftest efficiency.
While Alex didn't know what details the team had been given, he could hazard a reasonable guess as to where they would be located the hour prior.
K-Unit, Ben and Alex were sitting in a small restaurant with an undisturbed view of the embassy from their window seats. The teenage spy was drawing out the floor plans of three different buildings on the backs of the restaurant's napkins while explaining in hushed tones what the SCORPIA operatives would likely be doing. "They never canvass just one vantage point; no single location is capable of overlooking absolutely, even at the very top. Those two buildings," he said, pointing at the locations through the glass, "have their windows practically bolted shut, and on top of that, they're bulletproof. The bank across from them was afraid of someone sniping from there, and made sure it couldn't be done. Too many alarms. Not practical for a quick job. The bank itself and the hotel two buildings to the left of that both have incredible amounts invested in their security systems.
"That leaves these three buildings." The completed blueprints, done in blue and green crayon to K-Unit's amusement, were turned around for them to analyze. "Now the one in the middle," he scooted the set of napkins with the building's sketches to the front, "is useless to them. The viewpoints of the two on either side offer much broader coverage and would allow for two sets of two-man teams." Alex removed a yellow crayon from the box he had requested of the waitress upon their arrival in the restaurant. "They won't be on the roof, top floor or bottom floor. Without knowing what guns they took, I can't determine an exact location."
Falcon took that as an end to the explanations. "Where do I go?"
"The middle building," he answered, "right here." With the yellow crayon, he marked a specific spot.
"On the top floor?"
"Yep. If it makes the shot too difficult on your rifle, much as I doubt it, there will be another one hidden in the floor beneath the four tiles that look more yellow than white. Hard to miss." At their questioning looks, he added, "This isn't the first time I've come back to London. MI5 just doesn't keep as close an eye on the passenger logs as they used to. Especially those small passenger planes traveling relatively short distances.'
Fox pinched the base of his nose. "I sense an upcoming lecture on seeing through disguises."
"Oh you have no idea. I've had all the time in the world to plan my next classes, and there will be no end to the surprise field tests."
The spy groaned, but made a rolling gesture with one hand. "What do the rest of us get to do?"
Dropping the crayon by its boxmates, he steepled his fingers in front of his face. "The main priority is to get the American safely to his embassy's grounds. Once there, he will be out of danger. The SCORPIA team won't be able to touch him, as per orders. As he leaves for his flight out, MI6 and MI5 will doubtlessly be taking more precautions once they catch on, especially if I show them all the flaws I found in the security they maintain there. He'll be safe at that point.
"Until then, we have just under an hour to take out the four SCORPIA agents in the area. Our advantage is that they will have minimal attention on what's happening in their own buildings. One will be on guard to ensure the floor is clear, but past that, it's a straight shot."
"You make it sound really easy when you put it that way," Wolf said dubiously.
"Did I forget to say that all of their agents will be heavily armed, including the one sniping? And that they have to be taken out simultaneously?"
K-Unit grimaced, and Eagle dropped his head to the table with an audible thud. The unit leader sighed. "Why simultaneously?"
"The teams stay in constant contact. If one team is taken by surprise, the second will be prepared. SCORPIA favors the survival of the individual over that of the whole. If things get done, it doesn't matter how many agents get back."
Snake leaned back in his seat, resting it on two legs like your parents tell you not to. "Well this puts a wrench in things."
"Not particularly." Alex turned to Fox, who sat next to him. The spy was the only one fully comfortable sitting too close to the teen. "Pop quiz. How do you react in this scenario?"
It took a few seconds for Fox to realize he was serious. "Uh, you take two teams with radio coordination to take out the teams at the same time."
"I give you half-credit for the textbook solution, but you need more details, especially when the other side has the same amount of people, greater firepower, and an undetermined location. And where are these radios you speak of?"
Fox flushed as Alex raised an eyebrow, twirling the blue crayon absently. Wolf put his elbows on the table, and Eagle tilted his head up to better see the scene. "You have a better idea?" K-Unit's leader had agreed fully with the straightforward plan. Then again, there was a distinct difference between spies' work and soldiers'.
"Give me a second. Unless the rest of you are secretly five foot nine and skinny enough to crawl through the vents, my usual methods won't work. I'm not used to doing this with large groups." Before anyone could interject, he softly thumped a hand on the plastic table. "Ben, has Smithers given you a vehicle recently?"
"Yeah, the 2011 Audi A4. Why?"
"How long ago?"
"Just a couple of weeks ago. The last one was totaled in Paris while I was working. Is that important?" He didn't see the importance of the timeframe, but Alex did.
"Sort of." The teenager absently fiddled with the paper wrapping around the blue crayon. "Smithers, the gadgetmaker for MI6, MI5 and sometimes the CIA when they ask nicely, likes to equip anything he can with as many gadgets as possible." This was for K-Unit's benefit. "Only within the past year, he started working on vehicle designs that would be compatible with the usual benefits as well as heat-seeking missiles. The last time we spoke, he was modifying the AGM-114J Hellfire II*."
"He what?" Fox had, by his flat tone and unbelieving expression, never been informed.
"I need to meet this guy at some point," Wolf muttered in an aside, and more loudly, "You want to use the workings in the heat-seeker to locate the teams?"
"Exactly. From there, I would then enter through the…" he looked to Fox.
"Roof," the spy huffed.
"The textbook wins points there," he pointed out, "but where exactly?"
"The opposite side that the heat signatures are on." By their easy bicker, Alex's constant tests had been common up until he went MIA.
"Very good. You win back points. Instead of Ben's proposed radios, you all have cell phones. Use two of them to call each other beforehand and leave them on speakerphone until all's clear. It runs up the bill and drains the battery, but works just as well." He leaned forward on his loosely bandaged left arm to examine the entry points on the napkins and one of the crayons left a blue streak across his cheek. "Oh, and I'll need someone's phone. Talia probably bugged mine when she brought me the tool set." He didn't notice the slip even when he saw Fox staring as Eagle unclipped his cell and tossed it across the table. "What?"
The spy shook his head wearily. "Nothing." This would come up later. Now wasn't the time. "While we take out the agents, what are you doing?"
"Exactly what SCORPIA thinks I should be doing. Pretending to assassinate the American. I was going to show up at the airport and get the work done early, but they shouldn't mind the location change as long they don't realize you caught up with me."
Wolf took on a skeptical expression. No one else had seen the picture that Fox had handed him, except the spy himself, and he still had those cold eyes seared into his memory. Whether it was MI6 or SCORPIA who had made them was still up for grabs, but those eyes hadn't changed. They had iced over into a similar image as he laid out the plans and drew the blueprints. The question remained as to who the teenager owed his loyalties to.
K-Unit's commander changed his mind, and his doubt melted away, as Fox tried to wipe the smudge from Alex's cheek. The teenager swatted his hand away, but laughed as his partner attacked again with a wet unused napkin from the table behind them. Even if SCORPIA had managed to turn him into a double agent, the kid could never turn against Ben Daniels.
"Quit that! I don't need a mother!"
"It could break your cover," Fox retorted in all seriousness.
"I'm sure, now give me that. I can do it myself."
"You're making a scene, Alex."
The teenager swiped at the spy's hand again. "Whatever. You and K-Unit have forty-three minutes, if the clock on the wall is right." He snatched the napkin from Fox's hand and rubbed at the mark.
Falcon had already jumped up from his seat, grabbing the crayon sketch of his designated building as he did, and started out the door. Wolf paired Eagle and Fox together, handing them two of the napkins for their building. Fox and Wolf switched on their phones to establish the connection. "I'll give you the location for your building as soon as we get back to my car," Fox told Snake and Wolf as they grabbed their own stuff, twisting back around to frown at Alex. "And we will be having a lengthy discussion later about Three and the other things you haven't mentioned."
The teenager ignored the remark sent his way and continued stare at a crack in the ceiling above him.
Fox sighed but left without another word, Eagle following him out, whistling irritatingly as he did.
With the hand not stuck in a sling, Snake grabbed Alex's wrist. A panicked expression immediately crossed the teenage spy's face, eyes widening in fear and muscles tensing to run, before he forcefully relaxed. "Please warn me next time you do that," he whispered as calmly as he could manage, unsure if he could be heard over the sound of his racing heart.
Snake's attention was somewhere else and the quiet words were lost on him. "I don't want to see or hear of you pulling any stunts out there while in this condition," the medic said, displeasure bleeding into his voice. "If it were my choice, you would still be sedated."
Alex sighed, but nodded. "They really don't hurt all that much."
"When you can say that with a straight face, I'll take you seriously. As soon as this matter gets straightened out, you are getting started on rehab for that knee. Walking on it only makes it worse. The limp is getting more and more noticeable as you go."
The teenager opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it at the last second. "You think it can be repaired?"
"It might require a couple surgeries to replace the kneecap and surrounding area. Following that you'd have, at most, a year of rehab. After that, it should at least dull the pain down to a healthy amount if not make it more usable."
"That sounds like something to look forward to," he replied, stretching out the aforementioned limb to shake out the pins and needles feeling that accumulated after sitting for too long in a weird position. "Ben should give you the locations any time n—"
Fox chose just that moment to tell Wolf that he had the positions. The man shook his head, but lifted the phone up to hear better and started marking the spots with Alex's yellow crayon.
"We have forty minutes if the American ambassador is on time," Alex told Snake, who nodded. "I'll look suspicious and keep their attention sur moi. There weren't any cameras left that I didn't time to be on loops for the next couple hours. You are using silencers, right?"
"Why would—" The medic chuckled and shook his head. "I forgot. Don't attract attention. That's going to take some getting used to."
"You do have a silencer on you, I hope?"
"It's standard to have one issued per handgun, and it was just luck that we kept them on hand. I know I have never once used mine."
Alex nodded his head towards the soldier talking quietly to Fox, yellow crayon in hand and scribbling quickly along the rim of the napkins as he wrote down the specific locations. "Wolf can show you the ropes if you've forgotten. X-Unit uses them often enough in Kandahar."
Despite his ongoing conversation, he spluttered as the teenager mentioned his previous, and very recent, assignment in Afghanistan. "How the hell did you know that?"
"Besides it being completely obvious?" Wolf's glare demanded elaboration. "Fine. The devil's in the details. First, there aren't many other places you could've been. For Ben to have the means to communicate with you so quickly, you had to be at good old Brecon Beacons either getting ready to be shipped out or just returning. Second, your hair has been cut shorter than anyone else in your unit, but all of you were at BB at the same time. Thus, they probably had units lacking in numbers, which isn't surprising given the high casualty rates in the Middle East right now, especially just those counted in SAS. Third, you were in a forward unit, one doing mostly info gathering and calculated, predetermined shootings, based on the wear of your clothes, the lack of wear and dust on your boots, the lack of sun that you appear to have gotten, and a couple other small things. The only forward units are the last three: X,Y and Z.
"Then I added in other facts, such as the one that Y-Unit is nowhere near the Middle East. MI5 is utilizing them for their specialty—night work—for a routine and purely curiosity-sparked job in northern China. While I have no idea what Z-Unit is up to, I can add in the fact that X-Unit lost one of their guys in an exchange of fire four months back. A week later, their unit commander for the area sent in a request for a guy to fill the position until they could get someone in permanently. So, I naturally assumed that you had been in Kandahar with X-Unit until recently. Occam's Razor** pretty much covers that much." He tipped back the rest of his Coca-Cola bottle, drained it, and walked over to toss it in the trash can before sitting back in his seat to stare down the two gaping soldiers.
Snake copied Eagle's previous gesture, thumping his head down on his folded arms. "I give up. If there's an omnipresent force in the universe, you've got to be it."
"Wait a second," Wolf demanded, waving his hands in front of him as if that could clear everything up. "How did you know what MI5 was doing when you were…uh…" He faltered on the last couple words.
"Being tortured?" Alex offered.
"He was trying to pronounce 'incapacitated,'" Snake helpfully explained, his voice slightly muffled with his face being in such close proximity of the table.
Wolf was not feeling grateful. "Shut up, Snake."
"To answer," the teenager spoke up, "I just listened in to a lot of conversations and supposedly secure radio signals. For some reason, they never think you're listening once you stop screaming." He rubbed thoughtfully at his chin, staring pensively at some distant horizon***.
"You have issues, kid," the soldier snorted.
"More than you realize. And you have thirty-seven minutes." The 'kid' never missed a beat.
"Damn." The two SAS soldiers grabbed their equipment, along with the napkin-diagrams marked in crayon locations. Before Wolf had grabbed the doorknob, Snake whipped back around to point a finger at Alex.
"Any stunts and you will be in that hospital longer than you have been alive."
"He's serious, too."
Alex swore under his breath, "medics," but as the duo left the small Indian restaurant****, he felt a small twinge of happiness that had been a long time in coming.
A/N: Don't kill me for the lack of action in here! While I was in Europe, I scribbled down one block of writing, taking no heed to chapters, line breaks and sometimes ignored paragraphs. Sooooo…I had intended to put action in here, but by this point, I'm already up to a solid three thousand words. Worry not. The next chapter is nothing but action. It should also be up soon, seeing as I still have a lot of pages of scribbling left to transcribe to my laptop. . Scary.
*Hellfire missiles are "fire-and-forget", meaning they are heat-seekers. Great in combat, they can be fired just about anywhere and their rocket motors have long lives. Built in the 80s, they've been used in combat since then (admittedly with lots of mods over the years). The model I named never got off the ground, along with the AGM-114H; the AGM-114K was by far the preference, so the two (three, if you count the -114G) were never used.
**Occam/Ockham's Razor — Everything in nature tends towards simplicity, and the fewer assumptions you have to put into your hypothesis to make it work, the more likely your hypothesis is correct. This is sometimes incorrectly stated as "The simplest explanation is most likely the correct one." That statement has truth to it, but can be misleading. Search it on .org if you need a better description.
***If I could post my cousin's pose here, you would totally understand. He should, by all rights, have the pose copyrighted. I would support it.
****Because what other restaurants are there in England? Apparently, Italian ones.