Chapter 50: Fire

"Get down!"

General Hawk spared one minute to think, incredulously, Isn't that supposed to be my line? But Olivia had already ducked around the back of the Hummer and crouched behind the vehicle, and there was what looked like an incredibly huge gun dwarfing her hands .40 caliber, a distant part of his mind identified, but the other, conscious part of him was already reacting.

A hidden seam in the wheel well yielded another 40 caliber, and he palmed the safety back as he peered over the hood of the Hummer. The matte black paint disguised the Hummer's armored 'second skin', courtesy of a long-ago experiment by Courtney and the rest of the garage crew; while bullets would scratch and dent the surface skin of the Hummer, the engine and 'vital organs' of the vehicle were still safe and secure under the armor.

There was a large black SUV stopped in the middle of the street; the unmistakable sight of automatic rifle barrels poked out from behind the just-this-side-of-legal dark-tinted windows. He was still taking in details when Olivia sprang up from a crouch beside him, paused for a half-second to take aim, then fired. He hadn't even expected she could handle the gun, much less fire it, so the scream coming from the inside of the SUV caught him by surprise. She actually hit somebody in there!

And then there was no more time to think, just react, as the occupants of the SUV opened fire. He and Olivia dropped back behind the Hummer; he barely had enough time to gasp out, "The Hummer';s armored, so don't worry about them hitting us."

She had her cell phone out. "911, this is Detective Olivia Benson, Manhattan SVU, badge 4015. 10-14, 10-14, shots fired, I repeat, shots fired, officer needs help!"

He approved. Quick thinking. Instead of calling her partner, call the entire police force. They can't shoot up this much of a public street without attracting some very unwanted attention. And his guess proved to be right; he managed to empty his clip, eliciting two more screams from the occupants of the SUV's, and Olivia managed to get one more, before the distant sound of sirens made the driver of the SUV decide he'd had enough and peeled out of there.

Olivia ran out into the middle of the street to squeeze off two more shots, but as she turned back to the Hummer and Clayton her cell phone was in her hand. "Calling your partner?" he asked her as he scanned the street for any more potential hostiles. After the first few gunshots, most of the people in the street had taken cover behind vehicles or had run into neighboring shops and store, and were only now cautiously poking their head out to see what the fuss had been about.

"In a minute. I got a partial plate number." He was impressed that she'd have thought that fast, to try and get a plate, and he told her so. She gave him a wry smile as she put the phone to her ear. "Not the first time I've been shot at. After the first couple of times you get used to it."

Damn. I thought getting shot at was an occupational hazard for my people. Never quite saw it as an occupational hazard for cops too. She was talking into her phone now, and he'd guess it was to her partner. "El. Yeah, I'm okay. I was out at Knickerbocker's with a hawkeyed friend of ours when a troop of guys in an SUV did a drive by in the street. Got a partial plate." She looked troubled. "I don't know if it's tied in to Alex or not."

Clayton sucked in a harsh breath, turned to look down the street in the direction the SUV had gone. It hadn't occurred to him that this might not have been just New York City crime; it hadn't occurred to him that this could have been an effort to get Olivia by the same guys who'd gotten Alex. The thought of Olivia in the hands of the madman who'd orchestrated the conspiracy against Alex Cabot made him want to grind his teeth. No.You're not touching Alex again and you're not getting Olivia!

"Is there any way they could have been after you?" Olivia had finished her conversation with Elliot and turned to Clayton.

"I…don't know. I'm one random soldier. There are a lot of soldiers out there in the city. When I'm off base I don't wear anything that indicates my rank, so unless my base has been compromised, no one would have known I was having dinner with you this evening."

"I'm pretty sure you trust your people but I have to ask…are you positive your base…" but she stopped because he was shaking his head.

"No. It's not even a consideration. Every single person on that base has been handpicked by me personally. I would not only trust them with my life, I trust them with Alex's."

"Oh." Then, "Sorry."

"Don't worry. It's your job to be suspicious." She smiled at him just as a two balding, uniformed men came up.

"Detective Benson," said the shorter, rounder man.

"Chief." Olivia snapped to attention crisply; Clayton had to fight a grin. Cops and soldiers weren't all that different.

"You have been popping up on my radar a few too many times in the last few months. First that debacle with the mayor's personal friend, then the UN comes looking for the Chief to find you to tell me that your lawyer friend died in the jungles of the DRC, and now a shootout in the middle of a public street. What is it with you?" the taller man said. Clayton watched Olivia's stance change slightly; less deference, a little more sarcasm and definite antipathy. She didn't like him.

"You're the rat, Sergeant Tucker, you tell me." Ah. Internal Affairs. Like MP's. No one liked them. They performed a necessary function but no one liked them. And this one was a complete hardass, the way he was glaring at Olivia.

"Did you fire back?"

Clayton got the impression that Olivia was just barely suppressing a very Courtney-like eye roll. "I was being shot at. Yes, I fired back in self defense."

"That gun is not standard police issue."

Olivia looked down at the 40 caliber in her hand. "No, it's not."

"Did you purchase this firearm?"

"It was given to me, Sir. By a friend."

"Is it registered to you?"

"Yes, of course."

Tucker held out a hand. "Badge and gun, detective."

Olivia's back went rigid, but she slowly unclipped her badge from her belt, hidden under her jacket, and handed that over along with her police-issue Glock. "The other one too, detective."

"Sir. This is my personal property and not police issue." Tucker just stood there, holding out a hand. Much more reluctantly she slapped the gun into his hand.

"Consider yourself on administrative leave until the investigation into tonight's events is concluded." He looked to her right, saw Clayton standing there. "And you are…"

"Clayton Abernathy, United States Army." Clayton decided not to give them his rank. Olivia didn't need any more attention from these guys; it looked like she was already under more scrutiny than she wanted.

"You should pick your dates more carefully, soldier."

Clayton had to fight to keep his tone neutral. "I don't believe my choice of friends is your business."

"Watch that tone, soldier. I might have to speak with your superior about interviewing you in regards to this incident, so consider yourself placed on notice. Are you being deployed anytime soon?"

I am the superior on base, but Clayton didn't say it aloud, settling for a simple, "No, I'm not leaving anytime soon."

"Good. Don't." Tucker strode away, and the other man looked Olivia over carefully. "Go home, get changed. Clean up. Look to hear from us in a few days." Without waiting for her answer, he followed Tucker.

Olivia blew out her breath. "Tucker's part of the rat squad. And that was my boss's boss, the Chief of Detectives. Looks like I'm stuck at home for the next few days."

"This wasn't your fault."

"'If it happens to you it's your fault'. Tucker lives by that. So by his reckoning, it was my fault." She looked down at her clothes, sighed. "Damn. I just bought these pants too."

Clayton looked down. The knees of her dress slacks were torn, ripped, and he could see she'd skinned her knees underneath. He winced. "That's gonna hurt."

"Well, I have the next few days to nurse them. And my hands." She looked down ruefully, and he gently took her wrist, turning her hand over, and he saw she'd skinned them when she'd hit the pavement behind the Hummer.

"You should get that looked at. With all the garbage on the street they'll get infected easily." He eyed the Hummer. "You know, instead of dropping you off at the precinct so you can drive home, let me drop you off. If those guys were connected to what happened to Alex, they could be waiting at your apartment for you."

She looked like she was about to demur, then sighed. "I left my car at home," she said. "Too distinctive and easy to spot in traffic. I've been hoofing it to work this week."

"Then you should definitely let me take you home. In fact, I'm going to insist; you shouldn't walk home right after getting shot at. When the adrenaline wears off and you get the shakes it's not going to be pretty."

She smiled at him. "Okay. You're on."

He followed her directions through the city until they reached her apartment; then, at his insistence, he drove into the garage to make sure her car was okay and hadn't been tampered with. When he finally saw it, he whistled. "Wow."

"Yeah, well, I liked it." She sounded slightly defensive.

"Hey, I'm not saying anything. I think my Dad had one of those Mustangs when I was born; I remember working on the car with him on summers out of school." He couldn't stop admiring the sleek royal-blue '65 Mustang parked carefully in a corner of the garage; in fact, he pulled the Hummer into a space a few spots down, parked and helped Olivia get out, then wandered back while she was getting her purse and closing her door to get another look.

"She's my baby." Olivia patted the hood caressingly.

It didn't surprise him that Olivia referred to her car as a 'she'. "Does she have a name?"

It also didn't surprise him when Olivia told her the car's name was Alex. However, he couldn't resist a joke…"Does Alex have a matching one named Olivia?"

Olivia cracked up laughing. "Oh, my. I have to tell her that one. She'd probably go out and get one to match mine just because she likes the idea." She reached down to pat the car's hood again, but Clayton caught her wrist; her hands had left a bloody smear on the paint. "Your hands are bleeding. Let's get that taken care of."

She handed him her keys when they got up to her apartment so he could unlock the door. "Stay here." He opened it warily, tensed in case someone was inside, and kept the 40 caliber that he'd taken from the wheel well in front of him. Shoot first, ask questions later, he thought as he went through her apartment, turning on lights and checking to see if anything looked disturbed or out of place. Nothing did, and he finally returned to where she was standing by the door, waiting for him to clear her apartment before she walked in. So she could take orders, and had enough sense to realize when she was incapacitated and unable to defend herself, and was also willing to let someone else take the lead. He nodded to her, and she walked in as he closed and locked the door.

He stepped close to her as she was taking her jacket off and whispered in her ear, "Have you swept for bugs?"

No, she shook her head. Then she pulled a pad of paper out of her pocket and scribbled on it. Haven't had a chance to get one of the tech guys here to sweep. Might look suspicious. Don and El put a ban on saying Alex's name in my apartment and I've followed that. We used each other's codenames where necessary.

He took the paper, scribbled. Go wash your hands. I'll sweep for bugs. He'd thought about this on the way over, and had taken one of the Joes' standard-issue detectors from a compartment in the side of the driver's door as he got out. She nodded and headed for the bathroom while he carefully checked every inch of her apartment.

Living room was clean; the tasteful, subdued décor and couch yielded no bugs. The kitchen was neat and ordered; maybe too neat, he thought bemusedly as he saw the thin layer of dust on the pots and pans in her cabinets. She must not be home much. A quick peek in the refrigerator proved it was well-stocked with frozen dinners and not much fresh food. Workaholic. And no one comes over to cook for her, and it's no fun cooking just for yourself.

He peeked into the second spare bedroom, then hesitated at her bedroom door; he didn't want to intrude here, but he still felt he had to check; when he'd done his walkthrough he'd simply opened the door, made sure no one was hiding in the walk-in closet, then left. A soft curse from the bathroom caught his attention, and he stepped into the doorway. "What?"

"Got a splinter of glass in my right hand. It's damned hard to get it out with my left." He solved that problem for her by taking the tweezers from her and checking her right hand carefully. Sure enough, he saw a thin sliver lodged under the skin of the heel of her thumb, going in; it was longer than it looked, and he heard her inhale sharply as he grabbed it with the tweezers and tried to pull it out. Her left hand curled into a fist, but she held her right hand steady until he'd pulled it out, then held it under running water. "Damn it, that stings," she hissed.

"Here, put some antibiotics on it, it'll heal faster." She took the tube he offered her. "But bandage it, because that glass went pretty deep and you're bleeding." She tried, clumsily; he took the gauze pads and white medical tape from her and expertly dressed the cut; she gave up and just let him tend to her hands, leaning one hip against her bathroom counter and watching him. "You're pretty good with this," she said as he smoothed a last piece of tape around her thumb.

He shrugged. "I'm a General. My work's pretty much behind a desk. The most I ever get is a skinned elbow or knee when I decide to go and work out with the troops, and I hate taking up Doc's time with something petty like that when he has soldiers with sprains and strains and stuff like that. So I usually take care of myself."

"So you do work out."

"Absolutely," he said. "I won't ask my soldiers to do anything I wouldn't be able to do myself, so I make time once a month to go over the obstacle and endurance courses with them."

"I should take you running with me one time," she said. "Alex and I used to go running in the morning, in Central Park. I haven't gone as much as I should lately; it's not as much fun when she's not there."

"Well, I can't tell," he said, looking her up and down. "You still look pretty…fit…to me." He'd been about to say 'good' but that could be taken in a different way, and he didn't want to find himself wading in verbal quicksand. From the slight smile on her face she'd picked up on that, but she forebore to comment as she slipped past him into the bedroom. "Let me get out of these pants and slip into some shorts, then I can take care of my knees." The bedroom door closed behind her.

Several moments later she opened the door again, this time dressed in a comfortable-looking soft gray t-shirt and a pair of running shorts. She sat on the edge of the bathtub and started dabbing at her skinned knees with an alcohol pad, gritting her teeth.

He took it from her wordlessly and sat on top of the toilet seat, taking one ankle and laying it across his lap so he could work more comfortably. She had long, muscular legs, and as he cleaned and bandaged her knees a small part of his mind wondered what those legs would feel like wrapped around him…he tried to dismiss the image, but it kept coming back.

She giggled suddenly, and he looked up. She was looking down at him, and he followed her line of sight to his lap. And blushed. "Sorry," he looked up and started to say.

He never got past the first syllable.