10 – Keeping it Together

Nachos, foot-long corn dogs, sodas, popcorn, cotton candy, and funnel cakes. They all smelled so damn good, and it was enticing to Sonya. Her stomach growled to remind her of the last time she ate. Giving in, she broke out of Lily's clutches and stood in line for a funnel cake. Meanwhile Lily and Vanessa scampered off to the bumper car line. From where she stood, she could see Sergeant Brevard in his choice of regular clothing, consisting of a black t-shirt and old fatigues, and at a game booth playing shoot the target.

Behind him was Kevin, McLaurin and of course Dr. De Thiel. It seemed everywhere Kevin went, his assistant followed like a lost puppy out of his element. One shot, two shot, three shots fired and all hitting their targets. The small targets moving along on their conveyer would fall back after a sharp dink sound stuck them. Out of the allowed eight shots, all hit. Brevard was pleased with himself.

He passed the carnival rifle to McLaurin to try next. The targets were reset, and the conveyor switched back on. Of her eight shots, only six hit their mark. "C'mon, Airman, I know you can shoot better than that! I've seen it for myself at the range!"

The woman was obviously discouraged with her aim. "Shooting with a real rifle that's been taken care of versus an overused and neglected carnival pellet gun are completely different things, Sarge."

Brevard stepped aside and motioned Kevin to the stand. "Take a few shots, Doc." The scientist was skeptical. "It's not like you're shooting any of your lab rats! It's just a game! What's the worst that could happen?"

Kevin dropped his head, laughing, and accepted the challenge. "All right, fine. But just know I'm not anywhere as good of a shot as you military people are. I'm a scientist, not a soldier."

Brevard chuckled. "Don't worry about it, Doc. I'm the firepower, and you and your nerd herd are the brain power. I won't hold it against you."

Sonya paid for her funnel cake and joined the group at the stand.

The targets were reset, and once again, the conveyor turned on. Only two of the eight shots hit. Kevin laughed to himself. "Hopefully, no one's life will depend on my ability to shoot targets later."

The sergeant clapped Kevin on the shoulder. "You did good, Doc. Some of those targets can be tricky little bastards." He looked over at Sonya shoving a torn off piece of funnel cake into her mouth. "What about you, Missy? Maybe you can win that stuffed white rabbit up there to go with your new pet."

Sonya wiped the residual powdered sugar off the corners of her mouth. "I assure you, Sarge, people are safer in front of me than behind me when I start shooting a gun. Real or not."

"Bah." He jerked the paper plate of her hand and replaced it with the game's rifle. Three dollars were slammed down on the stand's table top, and the targets were reset.

Sonya squeaked and nervousness and approached the stand. One shot missed. Two shot missed. The third shot hit but ricocheted. Everyone ducked, expecting to get pelted by the rogue pellet.

Arnaud joked, "I think she's right. Perhaps it is safer in front of her than behind."

Sonya raised the rifle again and finished off the rest of her shots. By the time she was done, everyone was standing at a distance behind her.

If there was ever a told you so moment in my life, that would have been it.

She planted her hands on her hips and scowled at Brevard. "Happy?" She stormed over him and took her funnel cake's plate back.

The sergeant's cunning eyes fell on light green ones just daring him to open his mouth. "Dr. De Thiel! Come on over, and let's see what you can do!"

Arnaud waved his hands in front of him. "Oh, no misère. I'm only here to watch. Besides, rifles really are not my thing." Pistols were. And knives. Couldn't forget the knives, in all of their miscellaneously concealed ways. His favored penknife came to mind, first.

"Everyone else has given it a try. We won't judge you."

If only Arnaud had a pistol with him right now. He was sure he could get one of his cronies to loan him one, but that was a scenario best saved for his la la land. He stepped forward and thinned his lips. The son of a bitch sergeant asked for it. The targets were reset, and Arnaud slid his glasses atop his head.

Brevard was confused by this. "Don't you need those to see?"

"I can easily see ten feet in front of me, misère. Ten inches, however, is something entirely different." The conveyor started, and each shot made knocked a metal target down. Everyone was left jaw dropped. How did the biggest nerd of the group just shoot that damn good?

Brevard's surprised expression fell on the lean scientist. "Mind telling me where the hell that came from, son?"

Arnaud innocently chuckled and returned his glasses to the bridge of his nose. "I play a lot of video games during my downtime in my room."

"Uh, huh." Brevard wasn't about to be outshot by a video gaming bio-chemist. "Let's go again, Doc. You and me. Best of three turns."

Arnaud stopped mid-step and looked back over his shoulder at the sergeant. He really didn't want to do this and Arnaud stupidly smiled.

Ever get the feeling you really didn't know someone, when you already really didn't know them in the first place? That was how I felt watching Dr. De Thiel go toe to toe with the by the book sergeant. Shooting that good had to go beyond just video games. There had to be more to this guy than what was being led on. I could also be wrong. I knew there were some gamers out there damn good at what they did, hence why there were pro tournaments. I just found it hard to believe that someone with more degrees than the entire science team combined had the time to play video games. It seemed every time I saw him, he was in the lab working, regardless of the time of day or night.

They were starting their second round of shots when the idea came to Arnaud. He was chancing on blowing his cover over a simple carnival game and for what? To shut some old sergeant up? So, he started deliberately missing his shots. He had become so focused on what he was doing that he didn't notice his brother and a henchman standing nearby, watching them.

By the end of the third round, Brevard had only missed one shot while Arnaud let four of his shot miss. The sergeant, now pleased with himself for outshooting the scientist, smiled and patted the other man on the shoulder. "Good shooting, Doc. You almost had me for a moment, there. What happened?"

Arnaud wiped his sweaty palms on his slacks. His blood was boiling in anger to the entire situation, but he played it off flawlessly. "I just got so excited, and my hands started shaking!" He held up his hands, trembling with an adrenaline rush but out of extreme rage and not excitement. "It was intense! It was fun! Very fun!"

Brevard laughed and patted the man's shoulder again. "You keep it up with those video games of yours. They seem to be working for ya so far."

Arnaud gave an appreciative nod to the compliment and turned to walk away. "Uh, sir?" called the game tenant. "You forgot to pick your prize."

Light green darted over to the unsuspecting Sonya finishing the last of her funnel cake and brought his gaze to the ground before anyone noticed. "I'll let one of the ladies choose."

With that, he disappeared into the crowd to calm his seething anger. He got stupid; careless. He was better than that. It wasn't like him to let himself be so reckless, especially with a cover so sensitive and important as this. It was absolutely imperative he kept Arnaud De Fehrn in check and Arnaud De Thiel his primary focus.

Kevin calling to him, broke him out of his thoughts. "Hey, you okay?"

Arnaud laughed and blew the question away with a wave of his hand. "Of course. I just let myself get carried away."

"It's good to blow off some steam, once in a while. We're all so tense and stressed at the lab that it helps to cut loose and have fun. That's what today is all about! Having fun!"

Arnaud observed his brother standing nearby and without drawing attention to himself, luckily. "You know what? You're right. You're absolutely right!" He gave the senior scientist his most convincing happy go lucky smile yet. He gazed up at the sky to see it was getting dark, soon. Hopefully, in an hour's time, things would be completely different.

Lily eventually found Sonya and with Nurse Carerra in tow. The two women had obviously been drinking, which didn't surprise Sonya. She toyed the notion of a beer or two but decided against it. She still had that blind date meeting with her secret admirer coming up in a bit. If her admirer did, in fact, turn out to be Dr. Ramsey, then she was going to need all the beer she could get. Every five minutes, she was checking the evening sky to see how dark it was, as though twenty or thirty minutes had passed by. Of course, it wasn't time yet, and she groaned.

Sonya plopped down on a bench near the food court area and sighed. She wrapped her arms around her brand new stuffed white rabbit with big cartoonish eyes and rested her chin on top of its fluffy head. She was bored.

Now I remembered why it had been so long since my last time at a carnival. Fast and crazy rides till I threw up were never my thing. Neither was the rigged games meant to suck the money out of my pocket and all for a two-dollar stuffed animal. The food was always overpriced for either burned or undercooked whatevers, and the sodas tended to be flavorless or flat. So, what was the point of coming to one?

I should have done myself a favor and stayed at the compound. I could've gotten a much-needed nap or a chance to finally play a game a pool without someone butting in to play for the table. Coming to the carnival wasn't a mandatory thing, as some people chose to stay at the compound and relax. They were smart. They saved themselves a total of three hours on a pointless road trip and a lot of money spent on nothing to show for.

The lights around the tent covered food court automatically came on when it started getting dark outside. Sonya noticed this and stood up. As bummed out as she already was, she was just going to have to break Dr. Ramsey's heart by telling him she didn't want to continue his little secret admirer game. That is if that's who her admirer was.

Sonya somberly strode through the bustling crowd of people, that seemed more numerous than before, and to the exit leading to the parking lot. Little did she know she was being watched by the groundskeeper picking up a piece of trash.

He pressed into his earpiece hidden beneath his black beanie, "She's on the move."

Huiclov had been keeping a close watch on his brother at a distance, but well within viewing. The two would routinely lock gazes long enough to relay a single head nod or shake. This time, when Arnaud looked to his brother, he received a single nod's signal. Arnaud knew what that meant and quietly left Kevin's side without excusing himself. As distracted as the doctor was watching a strong man challenge, it would undoubtedly take him a while to notice his assistant was absent.

There was no fighting back that plotting and scheming smug smile across Arnaud's face. He exited the fairgrounds and onto the marked off area that was the parking lot. Striding through the many rows of parked cars, was a familiar black dress. Arnaud took note of her slow pace and downcast head. She was unhappy, something he hoped to change.

Coming towards him still disguised as a parking flagger was an undercover henchman. In one of his hands was a half-full trash bag of garbage collected from the parking lot. Not only was directing traffic one of his temporary job's duties but was also to pick up bits of trash off the ground as directed by the carnival grounds operator.

Arnaud strode towards him just as the other man strode towards his well-paying boss. They bumped into the other, Arnaud secretly handed a small earpiece. The undercover man kept with his ruse. "My apologies, sir."

"It's fine," was given back in calm reply.

Arnaud made sure to stay back some ways and out of Sonya's immediate line of sight as he followed her. He secured the earpiece snuggly in place, making it hard to see unless a person knew what they were looking for. "Testing, testing."

Huiclov replied in his venturing through the cars. "Rattlesnake copies. Moving into position."

Then came the other henchmen in their many call signs. "Crow copies. In position."

"Spider copies. In position."

"Scorpion copies. Moving into position."

"Boar copies. In position."

Arnaud narrowed his scheming watch down on the woman closing in on the vans' location. "Cut the lights."

The generator at the far back right of the parking lot sputtered off, and its light went dark courtesy of a hired hand hidden behind it. Sonya's strides stopped, and her attention snapped in the direction of the dead generator. Then another went off much like the first further down the outside edge of the parking lot. She could see she was almost to the vans and became more anxious.

Huiclov questioned over the earpiece. "You're not going to hurt her, are you?"

Arnaud rolled his eyes and hung back beside an SUV so as not to be heard nor seen by Sonya. "Of course not, you idiot! I didn't do everything I did just to hurt her."

This comforted the worried man, some. "What about the siege?"

"What about it?" snapped the irritated Arnaud.

"I know you stated not wanting to leave any survivors, except Fawkes. Then that means…"

Light green eyes rolled in their sockets in further annoyance. Why did he have to get the brother with a guilty conscience? The line of work they were in wasn't very forgiving or tolerant of soft-hearted terrorists. "Relax, brother. The gland is still far from perfection. There is no real knowing when the siege will take place, at this point. Who knows, I just might decide to spare the girl…depending..."

Huiclov dug around in his pants pocket for his bottle of Pepto Bismol and took a drink of it. He could feel his anxiety induced ulcer starting to bother him. "Depending on what?"

"Don't worry yourself with that right now. You just do what you are supposed to until then."

Sonya's feet carried her the remainder of the way to the vans, and she stopped beside the one she had traveled in, uncertain. She sat her stuffed rabbit on the hood of the van and pulled the blindfold out of her shirt pocket.

I could either run and use the excuse I chickened out, or go through with this scatterbrained idea. I really wasn't one to chicken out on most things, which left me with one other choice.

Sonya tied the red satin scarf around her eyes and tried to calm her racing heartbeat with steady breaths.

…To wait.