DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything, except for the original ones. Please don't sue because you will get it. I tell you, you WILL GET IT. Heh just kidding. :D
CHAPTER NINE
Two cars raced each other towards the finish line. Winner takes all. Of course, the loser's going to pay what the winner will take.
One of the cars slammed into the concrete wall and overturned, giving his opponent a chance to take the lead.
After a few seconds, the word WINNER flashed on the screen.
"YES! YES! I. BEAT. YOU! YEEESSSSS!"
The young man of about twenty years old stood up and danced a victory dance in front of the flat screen television and hopped around the PlayStation 2.
"I beat you. Pay up!"
His friend, who is almost the same age as he, chuckled and took his wallet from his pocket. "Wow, Truman, this is the first time you actually won." He grinned at him and handed him fifty dollars. "Here, I'm giving back your fifty from my past wins."
"At least I still won."
"It's just a fluke, Truman. I won thirty games, you won only one."
"No, it's not Premenov. Do you want another round?"
A ringing cell phone interrupted them.
"Excuse me." Mikhail Premenov stood up as he took the phone from his other pocket. He went to a corner and took the call.
"Premenov."
"Hey, it's me."
"Hey." He greeted after recognizing the voice.
"I have a verified location."
That took him by surprise. "Really, where did you find it?"
"CIA Database."
"Oh…" he looked at Truman and motioned him to wait for a while. "Anything to work on?"
"Yes, I'm currently working on it. I'll be executing phase two after I send the plans to you."
"You do that. Thank you. Call soon." He ended the call. Mikhail Premenov then turned to his friend. "Are you sure you want a rematch, Truman?"
"Hell yeah. I bet you a hundred bucks?"
He smiled. "I don't care. I have cash to spare."
They raced again. Beads of sweat formed in their foreheads as they tried to outrun each other. But like all games, only one will emerge a winner.
"I told you that win was a fluke…"
x-x-x-
Jack went out of the house to bring out the garbage. He had a long day. His students have good papers, pass perfect assignments and have good scores in his first few quizzes. But they seem to falter when it comes to class discussions.
'A case of cheating?' he thought as he walked down the lawn. Actually, they seem to be uncertain whether they should answer his questions or not.
'Are they intimidated?' he asked himself. Physics is an intimidating subject. And he doesn't really know how he came to understand this subject himself.
He sighed. Being a teacher is hard. Good thing he's into this occupation for less than a month.
"Mr. Brennen!"
Jack looked towards the direction of the voice and found Roan Benson running towards his direction. A young girl followed him.
"Hello, Roan." Jack greeted in his James Brennen voice. "And who is the pretty girl behind you?"
Roan grinned and motioned for the girl to come beside him. "This is my sister, Bridgitte. But call her Hanna."
Jack raised a brow. "Her name is Bridgette but I'll call her Hanna?" The girl has light brown hair like her brother but has a pair of sparkling blue eyes.
Roan grinned. Bridgette shyly smiled at him.
"My whole name is Bridgette Yohanna. My nickname is Hanna."
Jack nodded his head in understanding. "Oh… and how old are you, Hanna?"
"I'm eleven."
He looked at Roan, a bit inquiringly. Roan smiled even wider.
"We're twins." He fidgeted for a bit. "But we have older brothers. Dan and Yuan. Dan is much, much older but Yuan is thirteen."
Jack smiled a bit. He knows about Yuan, but who is Dan? There was no Dan indicated in the Benson's files.
"Did mom invite you for dinner already? I know it's not tonight 'cos dad's not here." Roan asked when Jack placed his plastic of garbage in the can.
The comment caught Jack's attention. "Your dad's not here? I saw him in school this morning."
Roan and Hanna both shook their heads. "Yes, but daddy left this afternoon. He had some meeting for the school." Hanna said. She looked around and saw that their car is pulling up the driveway.
"Roan, mom's home." She whispered. Roan looked at Jack. A little frown is in his face.
"Uh… we have to go. Mom told us not to bother the neighbors because it's nearing dinnertime. Bye, Mr. Brennen."
"Bye, Mr. Brennen" Hanna repeated and they ran towards the back door of their house.
Jack just looked at the backs of the children. Their father, one of their targets, is not home. It's not in any of their schedules. As far as he knows, the agents that were assigned to track his whereabouts out of the school and his home have not reported anything.
He hurried back towards his house.
x-x-x-
Weiss turned on the audio of the surveillance videos. It's nearing dinnertime and the six college girls are preparing their meal.
Well, it's more like Eoclin preparing the meal while the rest of the girls are locked out of the kitchen.
"Genny, get down from that table! And turn down that damn television."
Weiss watched amusedly as Deia Treadcliffe tried to persuade the youngest member of the group to settle down. Guinevere is dancing to the tune of Christina Aguilera's "Dirty"
"Help me here, please!" she called out to the others.
Lex, Nasha and Dylan appeared next to her.
"Genny, are you coffee?" Lex asked.
"No." Guinevere gave her a confused smile
"Are you a good coffee book table?" Nasha inquired.
"Uh… no." Guinevere stopped dancing a bit.
"Then why are you on top of that table?" Dylan raised a brow.
He smiled when the she jumped off the table. These girls have some kind of control over another. Nasha, Lex and Dylan can stop Guinevere's childishness. Eoclin and Nasha can ask Lex not to curse out loud too much. Guinevere and Lex remind Deia and Nasha to loosen up a bit while Deia and Eoclin can tell Dylan that she's too bitchy already.
Weiss sighed. Sometimes, he feels so much like a pervert for watching the girls' daily activities.
The door to the room opened. He looked behind him and found Nadia walking towards him.
"Hey, how was tailing Elaine Benson?"
She shrugged. "It was fine. She just went to the drugstore to buy vitamins for her children." She took a seat beside him. "Jack called."
"No, he didn't."
Nadia shook her head. "No, what I meant was Jack called. Did anyone report that Pitte Benson has eluded his tail?" she didn't tell Weiss about her strange recollection. He might think that the mission is getting to her nerves. She does talk to Jack every morning. And that might be the reason for those dreams.
"He's still in school."
"But his kids said that he left this afternoon."
Weiss looked at her, confused. He took one of the phones in front of him and called one of the agents assigned to follow Pitte Benson.
"What do you mean, he's not there!"
Nadia looked at Weiss. She then looked at the papers, the schedules of their targets, in front of them. She began to look for Benson's schedule and found that he was supposed to be in a luncheon hosted by UCLA tomorrow.
She took her cell phone and called UCLA. "Yes, this is Marie, secretary of Mr. Herman. May I just confirm if Mr. Pitte Benson is included in your roster for tomorrow's luncheon?" she put her Argentinean accent in good use.
She glanced at Weiss when she got an answer.
"Oh, is that so? Thank you."
Weiss looked at her expectantly. "Is he there?"
She shook her head. "He backed out the last minute. He said its family emergency."
Both then scrambled to get to the phones. They need to contact all the agents positioned in the airports. If he's going out of the country…
Weiss slammed the phone on its cradle.
"Damn it, they haven't seen him anywhere!"
x-x-x-
"Did you get the plans?"
"Oh, yes. Thank you. I refined it a bit, but you'll still have the credit." Mikhail answered, a bit teasingly as he smoothed the blueprints on his table.
"When will we execute this?"
He leaned back on his chair. "I don't know. We still need arms and reinforcements-"
"But your minions are ready?"
He smiled. "Yes, my minions are ready. Transportation and equipments are ready. I'll just call you."
"Good. Because if you don't include me in this, I'll kill you."
Mikhail laughed as the line went dead. Athena has a really weird sense of humor.
x-x-x-
"I can't see why we need to send Sark for this."
Dixon studied Sloane's face. They all know Sark cannot be trusted, but here he is, suggesting that they use Sark to entrap Mikhail Premenov. He has a feeling that Sloane is going to manipulate them again and rebuild his empire of evil.
'Stop thinking about that, Marcus. Sloane just wants to use Sark for his quest for Rambaldi again.'
Sloane directly looked into Dixon's eyes. "The CIA has interrogated him once again. We learned that Mr. Sark knows Mikhail Premenov and knows how to contact him."
"Why can't we just ask how to contact him and then send men to capture Premenov?"
Sloane clasped his hands together. "And risk them all being killed? Premenov is a ruthless man. Fifteen people died because of his anger. As Mr. Sark recounted, he once broke a man's legs for failing to do something his bidding."
He took his glass and took a sip of water. "If he finds out that he was duped, he will kill everyone who was sent to capture him. Please tell me that, what you're suggesting is not a suicide mission."
Dixon sighed. Sloane has a point. If they send a team of about four or five men, they will most probably killed by Premenov. But if they send Sark…
"Sark escaped CIA custody once. He can do it again." Dixon said after a few minutes, accepting Sloane's plan of using Julian Sark as bait.
"It won't happen. I have-"
The door to the conference room burst open. Marshall ran inside, out of breath and quite disheveled.
"Mr. Sloane, sir…" Marshall said, gasping for breath. He went towards Sloane. "Our computers…"
"Our computers are what? Marshall, calm down."
"A virus is corrupting our database. I can't… can't stop it."
