Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.
-M-
The little girl wrinkled up her nose and pointed. "Keci!"
All three of them laughed, and Jack just shook his head. "You kiss your momma with that mouth?"
At some point during his morning nap – which weirdly enough always happened immediately after breakfast – the carnival that typically kept itself outside the tent had come inside. The three rugrats were varying ages, all in clothing that had clearly fallen off the back of the Gucci truck, and they seemed to think that he was a pretty funny dude.
Maybe keci didn't really mean asshole. After all, they'd barely just met him.
The eldest was a boy, roughly fourteen and basically Basha's height and build. His younger brother – and they were definitely related, same cowlick to their coarse black hair – was about nine or ten. The little girl was the baby of their little troupe, no more than seven.
Which of course meant she was the one in charge.
"Keci!" she declared again, stamping her little foot, and this time Tessa joined in the merriment. Jack thought she was just being polite, though. That cow had a very sweet temperament.
"Yeah, yeah," he agreed, letting his head fall back on the bale of straw he was propped up against. "Repetition makes it funnier, and all that."
Little gypsy kids, flocking to good ol' Jack Dalton for comedy advice.
The tent flap crackled explosively as a body barreled through it, and Jack's eyes snapped open in time to see Basha snag the middle kid by his ear. The other two had scattered like roaches, both diving under the tent walls, and the one they left behind howled like he was getting his ear ripped clean off.
Basha looked supremely unimpressed, so Jack took his cue and kept his seat. The sound did make him wince a little, though.
Basha shouted over him, giving him a hard shake, and the kid continued to flail, adding words to the high-pitched wail.
So it wasn't a stereotype, then. They really were all just dramatic as hell.
If he could have clapped, he would have. All he could actually do was rattle his chains like a wet noodle version of the ghost of Jacob Marley, and nothing against Bruce Willis, but the best adaptation of A Christmas Carol hands down was the George C. Scott version, and time needed to be carved out from the Die Hard marathon every year to watch it.
Something he needed to do with Riley, come to think of it-
Jack tried to focus back on the bloody massacre going on in front of him. It was harder to concentrate, and easier to sleep. Ma Goral had upped her drug game. He was gonna be in rehab for a month after this.
If they didn't all die of lead poisoning.
That was a sobering thought, and Jack frowned, making a 'cut it out' gesture. "Enough already, for cryin' out loud, kid."
Heh. He was cryin' out loud. Jack tried to keep his snigger to himself.
He didn't succeed. The urchin turned on him instantly, without Basha even letting go of his ear, and let rip with a blazing tongue-lashing in rapid-fire Turkish. It took him a good thirty syllables to wrap it up, and Jack looked over his head at Basha.
"Kinda reminds me of your mom."
Bashavel said something that was not very polite and released the other boy with a hard shake. His head was heavy, so Jack just laid back and enjoyed the show. He found that if he didn't listen too carefully, Turkish sounded kinda like Hungarian, and once he thought about it in that context it become a quarter supermodel.
Maybe that was because supermodels all had to have their Bohemian phase to go with their Paris phase.
Basha yelled at him for being there. The boy defended himself by throwing his sister under the bus. Basha wasn't having anything to do with it. The boy said she was a monster. That was right around the time said monster came marching right back in – he should have known they wouldn't abandon their brother – and grabbed him by his other ear.
The kids bickered for a while, but then agreeing that they all now knew there was an American – a soldier, wow, apparently that was pretty cool – in the tent, they asked Basha to tell them about him.
Jack let his eyes slide closed. This oughta be good.
Basha took this appointment very seriously. He left any words familiar to Jack far behind, except when he fell into English to repeat a few not terribly flattering things, and a few noises Jack was fairly certain he'd never made in his life. He slit his eyes open, giving the kid a warning glare, and found that the little girl was about six inches from his face.
He was too lazy to startle, but he did feel his heart rate jump. Jesus she was quiet.
The little girl flinched back when she saw his eyes, but when he didn't otherwise move, she studied him with a very serious expression. He narrowed his eyes another few degrees and copied her frown, and just when neither of them could squint any further without actually closing their eyes, he winked.
She leaned back, staring at him in surprise – and then produced an enormous yawn and turned away.
Jack watched her go. Tough crowd.
Her eldest brother had also returned to the tent, this time with a few loops of cording over his shoulder, and he proclaimed that they were much too busy to hang around in such a shitty tent. Jack noticed Basha very carefully didn't take any offense, disdainfully agreeing that everything he had was awful.
The difference in their clothing was marked. The interlopers had brand new jackets, the girl was wearing a cute little Hello Kitty dress and the kicks on the eldest boy were a decent knock-off. Nothing was mended. Bashavel, on the other hand, was cultivating the Oliver Twist look, and considering the rest of his family's wardrobe, Jack figured that was on purpose. Hard to beg on the street when you dressed like you owned it.
But maybe he'd read the situation wrong.
The eldest said something about soup, and indicated the cording on his shoulder, and Jack stared at it absently for a moment. It was thin and white, almost the same gauge as Riley's earbuds that Mac had confiscated that time in, Holland? No, Ireland? when they'd ended up spending the night in that rickety old windmill ruin hiding from the O'Haughans –
And had a pretty decent hasenpfeffer on the hoof.
Tavsanlar wasn't 'soup'. It was 'rabbit'.
"Hey, kid."
All of them pretended like he hadn't said anything, and Jack sighed.
"You don't wanna catch any tavsanlar, that's fine by me. I ain't the one hungry."
Four head swiveled, none smiling, and Jack gave it right back to them.
"You said it wrong," Basha finally growled, then shook his head in classic teenage disappointment. "Idiot."
" . . yeah, a big salak, you said that before." He gestured at the cording. "Seriously, kid, c'mere."
The eldest kid touched his chest. Jack nodded.
The boy came forward, on just as creepily light feet as his younger sister had, and Basha put his arm out halfheartedly to stop him. It was his right arm; as soon as it was extended enough that the tremor was obvious, he pulled it back.
But he still issued the warning. Stop. He's dangerous.
Jack was getting a little tired of that allegation. He was pretty sure Goral knew he knew it was bupkis, but the guy had him dead to rights. Screaming for help in a gypsy camp would get him attention, but it wouldn't be the kind he'd enjoy.
He'd taken to wincing more and moving less, which had made Basha's mother change up the stink of her medicine – and give him an earful for her trouble – but he was pretty sure he'd bought himself a little time. They wouldn't get as good a price for him if he couldn't walk, after all. The more docile he was, the longer they'd let him recover.
The mere thought of trying to take on even one decent merc in this condition was not something he was looking forward to.
But one little gypsy kid, that he could handle.
"I'm not gonna hurt ya. I wanna show you somethin'."
The elder boy had a decision to make – yield to Basha, or show off in front of his siblings? Not much of a decision. He marched up confidently, staring down his nose at Jack.
From what he clearly thought was a safe distance.
Jack stared at him a moment, then cocked an eyebrow. "Seriously, kid?" The gypsy said something in Roma, which he'd decided was the devil's tongue for all the sense he could make out of it, and Jack rolled his eyes to Basha.
The boy frowned at him. "What do you want to show him?"
He gestured to the cord with his left hand, pulling the chain out of the straw, just a little. "Little trick I picked up in Ireland."
The boy scooped the cording off his shoulder, tossing it unceremoniously onto Jack's chest, and he sighed at the rudeness – maybe a little dramatic, but when in Rome, or at least, with Roma – heh - and got to work.
For all that Mac had the monopoly on genius in their little partnership, most of the stuff he did made sense once he'd finally finished assembling it and you could tell what the hell it was supposed to be. This little trick was even simpler than that. The cord was just soft, woven cotton, with even less grab to it than Riley's rubber-coated headphones, and the knots came back to him quickly.
Jack tied a finger's width of straw into the large loop, just past the original knot, and then he pointed at the younger brother and made a 'come hither' motion. After a moment, he did so.
"Okay. You." He pointed to the elder boy, and then he tossed the larger loop out onto the straw past his feet. "Stand there."
Basha translated, and the elder boy strutted back to the loop, eyeing it disdainfully before putting his foot right in the middle.
Jack gestured to the little boy. "C'mere, champ. Up by me."
That didn't need translation, just coaxing, but eventually the little boy approached his right shoulder warily. Jack gestured for him to come down, kneeling right beside him, and he handed the little boy the other end of the cord. He drew up the slack until there was just a light tension between them and the main loop.
"Okay, wait," he instructed, holding up a finger just in case. "He's a rabbit, right? Uh, a tavsanlar. Real fast, real nervous. Right?"
Jack glanced up at Basha, who grudgingly translated. The oldest boy demonstrated how quickly he could remove his foot from the loop, he would barely have to move it an inch vertically and the cord would slide right under his sneaker.
The little girl clapped in delight, and beside him, the middle child shifted, giving him a look that clearly said 'if you're making fun of me I'm going to punch you in the nose. '
"Nobody's getting punched in the nose," Jack continued. "Okay, when you have your cute little tavsanlar in your loop, you just want to twitch the cord. Little flick of the wrist, like this." "Jack demonstrated, poorly, then frowned and pulled a little more slack in his chain and tried again.
"Okay?" He met the kid's eye. "Okay, when you're ready. And you, big man, you try to get out of it, alright?"
Despite himself, Basha looked as curious as they did, and there was a tense standoff, and a fair amount of feigning and giggling, and then the little boy twitched the cord.
For all that he barely moved his end of the cord, the larger loop closed at least twice the distance, and the eldest boy wasn't fast enough to get his big fancy-ass sneaker free of the loop before it snared him. The smaller boy crowed in delight, and his elder brother glared and demanded a try. Jack motioned him over and showed him how to loosen the modified constrictor knot, then pulled it tight again.
The eldest boy got the message, kneeling and demonstrating – with a little assistance from Jack - that he could loosen it without untying it, and he ordered his little brother into position. His mini broheim had much smaller feet, and was plenty quick, but he too was unable to escape.
Basha declined to participate, and after one or two more attempts – and failures – of the humans to evade the snare, the eldest boy grudging admitted that the American soldier was not a total idiot. Basha assured him that the soldier had just gotten lucky, and truly was the worst possible idiot.
Jack gave a halfhearted gesture he was pretty sure they all recognized, then yawned so widely his jaw cracked. "Get off my lawn. Or out of my shitty tent. Whatever."
There was some kind of negotiation that went on, then, that Jack wasn't able to make much sense of. Eventually the eldest boy handed Basha something, which was clearly not what he wanted, but he wanted it enough to not give it back, so apparently it was a deal. The four Roma then turned and curtsied to him, which Jack expected was some kind of insult, and they traipsed out of the tent totally innocently, as if nothing at all interesting had happened.
Jack gave them a ten second head start – just in case – and then he used his left hand to gently brush the straw away from the slim black device he'd lifted right out of the kid's pocket.
As long as whoever the kid had nicked it from hadn't noticed yet, the smartphone might actually still have service.
Gypsies – 2. Jack Dalton – 1.
It was locked, but it was an iPhone, and Jack found himself grinning fondly. "Riley, you beautiful girl, you're gonna be so proud of me." He tapped the Emergency Call feature and got the dialer. It would only let him call an emergency number, and he didn't know what country he was in, but it was pretty much 112 anywhere in Europe.
Sure enough, it dialed. He immediately clicked the button on the top of the iPhone, just like she'd taught him, and the lock screen disappeared, showing him the phone's contacts and the red Hang Up button. He hung up on emergency services, and dialed the first number that came to mind.
-M-
Riley was two-thirds of the way through a massive forkful of spaghetti when her back pocket buzzed.
She shoved the rest of the pasta into her face, setting down her fork and ignoring some comment Bozer made about crimes against food, and fished the phone out of her denim shorts.
"If that's Matty, tell her I said no electronics at the dinner table."
She didn't recognize the name, and it was calling from a 359 country code. Riley frowned, swallowed, and silenced the ringer, waiting for her phone to resolve the call further.
It didn't. Boyan Lyubomir apparently wanted to speak with her.
"Riley?"
She looked up at Cage and shrugged. "No idea. Some dude in Bulgaria. He called me, not Maria."
The agents all exchanged a quick glance. Riley's alias did indeed have a phone – everyone in Greece did – but this wasn't a forward from her alias. Whoever it was had called her personal line.
"You mean you been here less than two weeks and the telemarketers have already found you?"
They all ignored Bozer, and Cage started to shake her head. "Don't-"
Riley accepted the call, putting it on speaker and confident that her software mods would give them at least thirty seconds of untraceability. After almost two weeks of nothing, if some dude in Bulgaria had something to say to her, she'd hear him out.
But there was no sound on the other end of the line.
Riley glanced at Cage, who was frowning but silent, so she cleared her throat. "Yeah. What."
There was a sigh on the other end of the line that broke out into a quiet chuckle. "Yeah what yourself. Is that any way to answer your damn phone?"
Riley didn't move, or look at anyone else. She just stared at the phone.
That sounded exactly like Jack. Exactly.
". . . it's me, Riles." Much more sober.
It took her a second to find her voice, and when she did, it shook. ". . . is this a joke? Do you think you're fucking funny?"
Another low chuckle. "I'm hilarious. But I'm a little high at the mo', so take that for what it's worth." He grunted, and there was some hissing on the line. "Sorry to call ya out of the blue, and I'll make it up to you later, I swear I will, but I'm not gonna have this phone for long. Can you please do whatever it is you do and get a location on my happy ass?"
She was already halfway down the hallway.
"Jack? Jack, where the hell are you?!"
Another sigh. "Didn't I just ask you that?"
She raced up the stairs and around the corner, flinging the phone onto the chair beside her keyboard. She had her tracer program up before Bozer cleared the doorframe. "Are - are you okay? What happened-"
"Tell you all about it when I see ya." This time his chuckle was a little different from the others, a little less even. "Long story." More hissing. "Everybody okay? Is Mac there?"
Her tracing software agreed the call had originated in Bulgaria, and it started closing in on cell towers in the southern part of the country-
Mac.
He'd asked about Mac.
Riley glanced at Bozer, wild-eyed, and he nodded emphatically. Yes!
"Yeah, yeah, we're all fine," she said quickly, finally getting a connection to the phone. It was an iPhone, and she ran a script to turn on GPS. "Jack, are you safe? What can you see?"
"Not much." There was a crumpling noise in the background, and then a woman started shrieking. "An angry gypsy," he corrected himself loudly, trying to be heard over the woman. "Riles, do not come here. You send a tac team, you hear me? Armed for bear. They'll be at the embassy –"
There was a brief scuffle, the sound of metal on metal, and then Jack gave a shout of pain. More hissing.
"Jack!"
The line disconnected.
Riley snatched up her phone and hit redial. The room was full of agents, everyone tense and silent as the phone rang.
No one picked up.
The map zoomed in on Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Then it refined itself to a neighborhood, Stolipinovo. A dot appeared with GPS coordinates, and blinked at them steadily.
The call disconnected.
The GPS beacon remained. It put him almost 200 miles from Cilingoz Tabiat Park.
Cage studied the map a long moment. "Two teams. You heard him. We're rolling in ten."
Riley leapt to her feet and Cage reacted instantly, pushing her firmly back into the chair. "You heard him," she repeated. "I need you here." Samantha glanced back up at the room. "Bozer too. McMurtrie, you stay on overwatch."
"But-"
Cage's attention returned to her, and the hand on her shoulder tightened warningly. "I need you here." The dark locks made Cage look a little more severe, a little less friendly. Her tone brooked no argument.
And that was just too damn bad. Riley opened her mouth again, then winced as the pressure crossed the line into pain. "Hey-"
"Riley, look at me." The agent's hazel eyes were colder than Riley had ever seen them. "This is a trap. You heard the chain, same as the rest of us. We need coms, and we need eyes. Now. You're either in or you're out."
Riley stared up at her as the words filtered in. Eyes. She meant satellite. If whoever had him moved Jack now, that iPhone beacon would become meaningless.
She nodded, leaning back a little to show that she understood, and the hand on her shoulder let her go, and gave her a squeeze that was only fractionally more gentle.
"Watch him, Riley. Watch him and do not lose him."
-M-
Major Oguzhan ignored the vibration for a moment, remaining silent as the party and their prisoner passed. The American didn't seem to be able to walk under his own power, but the black hood made it difficult to tell if he was conscious. Zhan didn't take the chance, waiting until they went around the corner before he silently retrieved his phone.
He didn't bother to check the caller ID. "Go."
"The other American's resurfaced."
Zhan glanced out the window closest to him, looking over the courtyard without seeing it. "My contacts confirmed. Stolipinovo."
"Probable. The US embassy in Sophia just got a call. Missing American photographer. Asking 500K."
Fairly reasonable, for the Roma. "They must really hate him."
"The US State Department will be made aware soon, if it hasn't happened already. I'll contact you again when I have a location for the exchange."
Which would be nominally better than tearing apart the largest gypsy slum in Bulgaria looking for him. It would also make it more convenient to finally discover who it was that searched so hard for him. "Anything else?"
"Nothing on MacGyver. After he was discharged from the Army, his records are redacted. I have yet to find a clean copy."
Presuming the same employer for both agents, that question would be answered soon enough. "And on the recruitment?"
"No issues at this time."
"The colonel will be pleased to hear it."
The call disconnected, and Zhan tucked the phone back into his thigh pocket, and pushed off the wall, heading in the general direction of the American and his entourage.
He wasn't terribly hard to find. Zhan stepped aside to allow the two recruits to pass, no longer carrying a body but instead a large banquet table, and the door of the nearest guest bedroom was wide open. The room, like every other room on the third floor, had been stripped of anything useful weeks ago, and there was plenty of space.
The American was sprawled in a large wooden armchair, secured loosely around the chest and arms. He was quite unconscious, his head thrown back, and the second lieutenant had just finished threading a thin tube down the American's throat. He stuffed a rag in the man's mouth, apparently to prevent him from biting down on the tube, and then he reached into the large duffel beside him, expertly assembling a telescoping pole.
A bag of liquid nutritional supplement was hooked onto the pole, and that was then attached to the tube going down the prisoner's throat.
Zhan shook his head quietly. "This is all a great deal of trouble."
Cenk jumped, clearly not having heard him enter, then turned and gave him a mild look. "I'll remember that for when you need treatment in the field."
The major gestured. "We are not in the field. And you did not do it right."
Cenk chuckled. "Thanks, doc." He indicated the feeding tube. "You mean this?"
Since it was the only thing he'd done to the American, there was no point in responding, and the second lieutenant tried to adopt a serious look.
"You only run it through the nose to prevent people from chewing on it when they talk. I run it through his nose, he might notice it's sore. Straight down his throat, it blends in with everything else."
Yes. That was exactly his point. "A great deal of trouble."
"It's not so bad," a voice observed, directly in his ear, and Zhan had a knife drawn before he recognized the voice.
Luckily for the sergeant, he had very good reflexes, and he had retreated just out of range.
Hakan held up his hands in mock surrender, and behind them, the second lieutenant snickered.
Zhan gave the newest member of the team a dark look. "That was unwise."
The sergeant inclined his head. "My apologies, major."
The major fingered the knife, as if considering whether the apology was sufficient, but the sergeant wasn't cowed.
Hhn. Not bad.
Zhan sheathed the blade. "Is this what you did for Special Operations?"
Sergeant Hakan was the only member of the team the colonel had recruited from the Gendarmerie. He wasn't actually sure what they did, but he knew all of it was classified.
Hakan took that as permission to fully enter the room. "Yes and no. Interrogations, yes, but over the course of months." He indicated the American. "Accomplishing it in weeks is more challenging."
"And this American is worth that?"
The sergeant exchanged a look with the second lieutenant. "I have no idea," he finally confessed. "I don't know what he knows yet. It was supposed to be a quick break and build, but he's not a typical subject. Normally we wouldn't artificially accelerate this process with drugs, but the lieutenant has experience with it, so . . . he's an experiment."
Zhan digested that. "So this farce –" and he pointed to the hallway, where the recruits were now hauling chairs – "is part of the technique?"
"That farce?" The sergeant also pointed. "No, that farce is different, because it's specific. And yes, it's standard for the technique. The first one was honestly because . . well, Kenan asked me to come up with something for the recruits to do."
Cenk looked up from where he was examining the American's wrists. ". . . seriously?"
Hakan nodded. "It only took about an hour to set up. Liris had gotten the Army file back to us and I knew we were having that supply issue in Kesan. One of the missions in his file was a pen test of a base. I figured he might know of vulnerabilities in base security that had shaken out of the test. Things like gaps in camera placement, maybe substandard fencing. I had no idea he would know manufacturer access codes off the top of his head."
Zhan thought that through. "We burned a set of UN credentials on your hunch that the access codes he gave you were valid?"
Kenan had failed to mention that in the mission briefing.
The sergeant stared at him. ". . . yes. When you put it that way. I mean, Liris confirmed a Raytheon system had been installed at Camp Bondsteel within the past year, which improved the odds of the code still being valid, but . . . yes."
Zhan reconsidered slitting his throat. "How frequently does this technique result in faulty intelligence?"
"Not often, when done correctly." Hakan had turned back to the American, studying him. "Accelerating the process certainly means the subject is in better physical and mental health than one that has undergone the full treatment."
Cenk snorted, still applying a topical to the American's wrists. "I bet."
"He was still cognizant of details he shouldn't have been. The wound he saw on Kenan – that was from his memory of the other agent. He knew his wrists were injured. Typically knowledge of the present is completely inaccessible when the technique is properly applied."
And that was not reassuring. Zhan was still floored Kenan had ordered the mission on such risky intel. Then again, they had needed to take the last batch of recruits on a real mission, and test the new pilot, so even if the access codes hadn't worked, the mission still would have been useful from a training perspective.
He was going to have to have a conversation with their lieutenant.
Speaking of which –
"Well, that farce," and he thumbed over his shoulder, "will have to wait. We've located the other American."
The second lieutenant straightened, tossing the used cotton swab into a refuse bag. "The one Arda shot?"
"The same. I believe we have an opportunity to discover who it is that seeks these agents so desperately."
"Great." The sergeant glared halfheartedly at the unconscious agent. "Maybe we can find a more cooperative one."
Cenk went back to his duffel. "Let me finish up here, I'll be down in twenty."
That the American had only been valuable accidentally irritated the major in a way he couldn't quite pin down. The care they were forced to administer only annoyed him further. Every ounce of medicine they wasted on this American agent was one less ounce for their own men. "How long could you keep him alive?"
The second lieutenant's expression didn't change much as he selected a couple vials. "Indefinitely. Unless you shoot him again. Then not very long."
Zhan continued to glare at the agent. "This is a lot of trouble. I am not sure he is worth it."
Hakan turned for the door. "Well, if the lieutenant is right, and he can come up with a way to let us track that NATO fleet in real time, he'll be worth more than his current weight in gold."
-M-
20 HOURS LATER
Jack forgot to keep his voice down. "He WHAT?!"
"Ayi!" the boy shouted back, throwing both his hands in the air. "You are better asleep! Of course he went! The reward is large! Idiot soldier, does medicine fall from sky for free?!"
Oh, he was getting sick of this bullshit. "Your father fucking ransomed me to the State Department and we both know it, so drop this 'reward' crap. Bashavel, the guys who did this to me –" and he jammed his forefinger in the direction of his gut – "are dangerous people! Do you understand?!"
The boy kicked a pile of straw at him. "Idiot! All soldiers are dangerous! Do you know what Roma are?!"
Jack dropped his gaze to the towels over his legs, taking a couple deep breaths. In through his nose, out through his mouth. Going all Bruce Banner here was not going to help.
Nor was his swimming head. He could barely see straight, let alone think. Once they'd gotten the phone away from him, he could barely remember a thing until about ten minutes ago. And Goral was already long gone. If Basha hadn't been so rough trying to put his boots back on his feet he wouldn't have woken up at all.
God they were in trouble.
Riles, honey, you better get that backup here in a hurry.
"Okay." He held up his hands placatingly. "How long ago did he agree to the meet. Was it like hours, or like, twenty minutes ago?"
"I am Roma! Do you see watch, idiot goat?!"
"Enough with the goat! I don't even get it!" He waved his arms for silence. "Was the exchange set up right when your dad left, or before?"
Basha shook his head with an enormous sigh. "Idiot, idiot, idiot," he chanted angrily. "We are Roma! We will not be where soldiers think. We will not be where police think. Reward – reward-" he repeated with heavy enunciation even as Jack ground his teeth, "will be given but you will not! You will be safe on park bench! We will give this place after!"
Public place, a park in a major city, sniper angles galore. Jack leaned as far right as he could, scrubbing his face furiously with his hand.
It didn't help.
"Goral's gonna get himself killed," he muttered. "Basha, you gotta call him off."
"My father is fine!" the boy shouted, and then he swayed. This time, he stumbled over to a bale of straw before he fell, and Jack watched helplessly as the kid struggled with his body.
This wasn't going to work.
When Basha seemed to have recovered a little, Jack tried, one more time. "You remember when your father found me? What I looked like?"
"Da, salak!" Yes, idiot!
That was kind of disturbing. He wouldn't want a thirteen year old to see someone in his condition. Jack shook the stray thought out of his head.
"The guys that your dad's about to meet shot me four times. Four." He shook four fingers at Basha, just in case. "Then they dumped gasoline on me and threw a match."
Basha straightened, the picture of skepticism. "You had no burns!"
"Yeah, because I got up and ran, you stupid kid. I went ten miles in that condition." Maybe three. Running had not been involved. "Ten miles to that ranger station where your dad found me. Lookin' like this."
Despite his best intentions, Basha appeared a little impressed.
"That's how much of a badass I am. How much more badass do you think those guys are, if they were able to do this to me?"
He was right; the kid hadn't thought about it that way. Basha prepared a breath, undoubtedly to tell him how impossibly stupid he was, but second after second ticked by and he still hadn't found the words.
"Basha, you gotta call your dad. Get him back here. We'll work the money out. It's not worth his life!"
Or yours.
The boy shook his head, but the bravado had started to drain from his face. "I can't. He has no phone."
Son of a bitch. "What happened to the one your mom took off me?"
After she kicked him right in the gut for it.
A little of the boy's anger resurfaced. "It was not ours!"
"It wasn't theirs either! They stole it from someone else! How does that even work?!"
The crunch of tires – moving rapidly – got his attention, and Jack was not surprised to see that Basha responded in kind, both of them pausing to listen.
In all the time he'd been here, he'd not heard vehicle tires like that. SUV, and it had to be flying. It wasn't far, and it was getting closer by the second.
"Get out. Basha, get your mom and get out!"
He pointed to the tent flap, as best he could with his reduced range of motion, but it was unnecessary – the kid was out of the tent like a shot.
He heard several shouts of alarm going up, he imagined because a big black SUV in a gypsy slum was probably never a good sign for any of them, and Jack glanced around the tent. He could drag a couple straw bales over, but it wouldn't take them any time to figure out the pile of straw next to the cow looked awfully strange.
Frankly, the quicker they found him, the better for Basha and the Bitch. Maybe him and the colonel could have a nice chat and catch up, buy the kid some time.
If they were here in the slum, they either had Goral already, or they'd deployed two teams.
God dammit. He thought he'd had more time.
A new thought crossed his mind. That could be a Phoenix tac team. It had apparently been a whole fucking day, so they'd had plenty of time to hop a fourteen hour flight to Turkey – or wherever.
When is your luck ever that good, Jack? When? It's fucking Turkey. We might as well be in Cairo. Egypt's like, right there.
Jack closed his eyes and grimaced as the tires ground to a halt, far too close for comfort.
"Sorry, Mac, I know better than to invoke the Day-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, and if it's you, buddy, I'll take it all back."
Feet hit the ground, moving fast. He wasn't sure if there were three or four, his head wasn't clear enough for that, but one of them swept around the back of the tent, so scuttling out that way wasn't an option. He heard what sounded like a nearby tent entered – the one Basha and his parents lived in – but no screams, no gunfire.
Good. At least they'd run.
Jack winced a little, dragging himself up as best he could against his bales of straw. Might as well face this not looking too pathetic. If it was Mac, after all, that'd just be embarrassing.
And if it was the colonel, well, fuck him.
The tent flap crackled, and a slim brunette entered, weapon ready. She sighted on him instantly – he was kind of obvious – but she didn't fire. Instead, she cleared the rest of the tent, and approached.
A second man came in behind her, and Jack's jaw dropped. Then he started to laugh.
"Wha-what the hell'd you do to your hair?!"
Samantha Cage holstered her firearm, crouching down beside him and all he could do was laugh. It hurt like hell, and she figured that out pretty quick, but he just couldn't stop.
Behind her, Micah Tunstall – another one of theirs – gave him a nod, and Jack gave him the closest thing to a salute he could manage. As soon as he raised his hand, Cage finally figured out why he was just sitting there laughing his ass off.
She pulled something out of her back pocket and by that time his eyes had teared up too much to see, his gut hurt too much to care, and he couldn't breathe. He'd have just shot the manacles off, but maybe they didn't want to upset the cow.
Tessa. He was going to miss that cow dog.
Whatever Cage did, it didn't take long. "Jack. Jack, can you stand?"
Shit no. He hadn't even tried in like two weeks.
Someone wormed their way under his arm – so this standing thing was going to happen one way or another – and Jack tried, honestly, to do his part. Getting up was as bad as he'd thought it'd be, but once he was actually standing, it was bearable. There was a deafening buzz in his ears but he didn't pass out. His left leg was shaky but it held, and she was on that side like she'd known that –
Oh. Right.
Jack adjusted his weight so she wasn't pulling so hard on his abdomen, and he guarded it with his right arm, but it was a hell of a lot better than it had been, and then they stumbled out into the sunlight.
The blinding halos had Jack closing his eyes before they made it to the vehicle, but he was able to figure out what went where. Their voices started to sink back in.
"-alton, I need you to look at me-"
He tried, forcing his eyes wide, and Micah's face swam into view. One of the few other ex-special forces operators at Phoenix, they coordinated a lot of joint operations but rarely ended up on the same tac team. Still, he was glad as hell to see the guy. Micah gave him a broad grin, his white teeth flashing.
"Jesus, Dalton, you are high as a kite."
Jack grinned. "Yeah?"
"I could drive an Abrams through those pupils, man. How's your pain?"
He thought about it. "Three. It's fine." Micah was checking on his gut anyway, and Jack allowed it, letting some of the euphoria momentarily clear. "Look, there's a gypsy, he's about to walk into-"
"We got him, Jack. Saito and Tunne picked him up before he hit the meet."
Jack shook his head. "Goral, that's his name –"
"The wiry guy in the aviator's hat?"
Jack nodded, a little nonplussed. "Yeah. That's the guy."
"He's fine. Saito's waiting to see who else shows."
Goral was fine. He was fine.
Jack took a deep breath, and finally let himself relax back against the seat. Saito was ex Japanese SWAT. He was no slouch. They knew what they were dealing with.
"Whoa, big guy –"
Jack waved Micah off, or at least he thought he did. He didn't bother to open his eyes. "I'm good. Just . . . Basha. There's a kid, and his mom-"
"You need us to pick them up?"
No. Yes. "The kid needs medical."
Micah took a step back, removing himself from Jack's personal space. "You copy?"
Jack decided Micah wasn't talking to him. Someone else got in the SUV, he felt the vehicle shift, and then someone had picked up his right wrist, taking his pulse. He rolled his head to the right, also recognizing the guy sitting next to him. Gabe Pinion. Ex spec ops, USAF.
Well. If an Air Force flyboy could be considered spec ops. "Hey."
The guy gave him a nod, eyes on his watch. "Hey Jack. Long time no see."
Yeah. That was a fucking understatement. It felt like it'd been a year.
It mighta been, actually. Last year's Christmas party?
Riles had really outdone herself. Or maybe Matty. That was a lot of fucking firepower, just like he'd told her. But there was clearly a face missing.
"Where's Mac?"
Gabriel scribbled something down on an EMT pad. "How's your pain, Jack?"
. . . not so high that he couldn't tell a fucking evasion when he heard one. "Gabe. Where's Mac?"
"Mac's not here, Jack. It's just us."
He stared at the agent for a long moment, and Gabe stared back. Then he whistled.
"That's impressive. You know what they gave you?"
"You found him, though, right? Mac?" They must have, Riley had said-
Gabriel stared at him with those baby blues, so much like his partner's, and then he slowly shook his head. "No sir. He's MIA. We think he's still with Colonel Aydin."
Jack thought about that for a little while, too tired to be irritated as his physical continued.
The colonel still had Mac.
-M-
"Got an ETA yet?"
Riley didn't even look up, she just accepted the plate and set it on the opposite arm of the overstuffed chair, and Bozer took his usual seat, wiping his hand across his apron. He had eyes only for the monitors.
"Not yet." Cage had been off their frequency for a while now, and there wasn't much point in keeping satellite surveillance on the villa, since there was so much traffic in the area. It was well after dark, so they'd be relying on the same heat map technology they were using for the other site, and it wasn't like their SUVs looked any different than anyone else's in that regard.
So the entire wall of monitors was dedicated to their other site.
"What did I miss?"
Riley grabbed a carrot stick off the plate and pointed. "Those guys."
There were two people-shaped orange and blue dots, near a squarish vehicle that was cooling as she watched. The dots weren't moving much, apparently content to observe, and further towards the center of the screen, a small canning factory showed minimal activity. It looked like it was shutting down for the night, but in truth it hadn't really been producing much for the past week.
That was when Phoenix had bought it, and set it up as their beta site.
She hadn't been in on most of those meetings, she just knew it existed, how to find her way to it, and that it was either a fall back point, or an ambush point. Whichever was needed. Having been living a messed up military reboot of MTV's The Real World with six different versions of Jack for the past couple weeks, she was beginning to appreciate that even when she and her mom thought he sold bathroom tile, a lot of Jack's idiosyncrasies were really just a symptom of how screwed up career spec ops folks were.
She had two go bags. One was heavier than the other. She had a list of criteria that she had to justify in order to take the heavier of the two.
Despite the fact that nine people lived in the house, there was no evidence of this. Anywhere. No one left toiletries in the bathroom except the Lady King, on pain of being woken at 4 in the morning by a very unhappy agent. Bozer was required to run and empty the dishwasher after every meal so no one would be able to accurately count the dishes being used. Trash had been separated into different brands and types of trash bags and was frequently smuggled out when the agents, in their various aliases, went out their 'daily' routines.
Jack had never taken those things to that extreme, when he'd lived with them, but there had been the same tendency to require her to justify wearing heels if she was going out with friends, Jack had never once had an issue with the way Diane could take over a bathroom - and could she ever - and now that she looked back on it, the number of things Jack had brought into the house that were actually his own had all fit in a single duffel.
At the time, she'd figured that had been her cue that he was always planning to just ditch them one day.
But now she really appreciated that it was simply the way he'd been trained to think. And despite all the different backgrounds of the agents, they all basically solved problems the same way.
So the canning factory had been purchased last week, once they realized the magnitude of Colonel Aydin's recruitment efforts and just how deep General Doukas' pockets could be. Just in case. Like Jack used to insist Diane kept a wooden baseball bat in the car. Just in case. And now that cannery was in ambush mode, and they were all sitting around waiting to see what the two guys who had tailed Cage's team were going to do.
"Just those guys?"
Riley nodded. "Saito and Tunne didn't get there til after you went downstairs to make dinner." Which had only been about forty minutes ago. Since then, she'd watched them - plus the four agents Phoenix had sent when she'd gotten that phone call yesterday - set their traps and wait.
"So it's still their move."
Riley gave him a look and chomped on the carrot. "This isn't a round of Scrabble, Boze."
He shrugged. "There's a reason Sun Tzu called it the 'art' of war. And why most great military leaders play chess."
If that were true, their team had obviously missed a couple of their turns. Once the State Department had finally gotten around to telling Matty they'd gotten a lead on Ethan Darby, Jack's alias, it had been hours after Jack's call. By then Director Webber had already dispatched the team that was supposed to back them up. They assumed there was some kind of leak at the State Department, so that should have been around the time Colonel Aydin got wind.
So Matty had sent them more agents, which had taken around fifteen hours, and presumably the colonel had put his men into play, who were way the hell closer than fifteen hours. The State Department hadn't known exactly where the exchange was going to happen until the hour before it was supposed to go down, which meant the colonel shouldn't have either.
And the only ones who should have known precisely where Jack was, was Phoenix.
But somehow the colonel's men had known exactly where Jack was. No one, not even Riley with her bird's eye view, had seen the guy at the time; she'd had to go back to the footage after Cage asked and confirm it.
The moment Cage had actually come out of the tent with Jack, Micah had crossed to her side of the car, and a gypsy darted out from a corrugated tin 'house,' placed the tracker in the wheel well, and disappeared right back under the tin.
Micah was back in position in less than ten seconds. That was the one and only time their agents had had one side of the vehicle out of direct line of sight.
And despite crawling the footage for hours, she never saw that gypsy emerge. He'd managed to keep under tents, houses, and trees until he was able to change his costume. She never found a suspicious vehicle. No idea how he got there or when he got there.
Nor had she seen Saito's SUV tagged. In his case, analysts at the Phoenix had digitally removed the sidewalk tree that had been partially blocking their view, and one of the many passing pedestrians had placed the tracker with the three agents actually sitting in their vehicle. They'd already picked up the gypsy that had tried to sell Jack back to them, and she assumed the colonel's guy had timed his passing by for when he could see the gypsy was distracting them.
That the colonel's men could have figured out they'd have agents at the meet point, that was expected. That was why Cage had split up the teams, and had them meet at a rendezvous site outside of the city. Finding the tracker on Saito's car had been believable.
Finding the one on Cage's SUV, that had been dumb luck.
She could have led the colonel right back to the villa.
Instead, they'd split the trackers to the front and back of Saito's SUV, and the rest was history. The colonel's men had tailed the trackers to the beta site, Cage was apparently coming home by way of China for all the time it was taking her, and Riley was getting more and more impatient.
Cage and her team were on their own frequency, so they could keep her appraised of what was going on at beta site. Phoenix was handling that op from Los Angeles. She and Bozer were literally just spectators.
Riley eyeballed her carrot remnant and dropped it back on the plate. Bozer had done a good job of providing crunchy, salty, and bite-sized, which were her go-tos.
Her stomach was still too knotted up to eat.
"So what's gonna happen when they do decide to move in?"
Riley looked back up at the wall of monitors. "Uh, pretty sure we picked the cannery because there's a network of big-ass drains that go out to tanks, like if one of the vats ever failed, the whole place wouldn't be flooded. I think the plan's to let them come in and then to blow it."
Because the beta site had to be both a fall back point and an ambush site. Either way, the drains gave the Phoenix agents a way to flee without being seen. Giant soup drains weren't exactly her idea of awesome, but she wasn't there, so she didn't need to worry about it.
. . . though they might need to worry about exactly how deep they were buried, considering they were up against a literal army.
Nah. They were in Greece. There was no way the colonel could get his buddy Count Dooku to call in an airstrike.
Right?
"Hey, Troy?"
Riley and Bozer waited a beat, and then a smooth voice spoke into their ears. "Not your op. Stop worrying."
She really liked Troy McMurtrie. He sounded like one of the guys that did audiobooks, and he had the same sense of humor as Bozer. It was easy to understand why Cage had picked him as the agent to keep an eye on Boze. And, by extension, her.
"Besides, Agent Davis, I believe you're expecting a package at the rear entrance?"
Riley and Bozer exchanged a look, and the two made a mad dash for the door.
By the time they made it into the kitchen, the back door had just been pulled open, and Agent Pinion walked in, glancing around. When he saw them, he grimaced.
"He smells," the agent stage whispered. "You should probably let him get a shower first."
Behind him, a familiar voice floated into the kitchen. "-ell did you get digs like this? Matty never put any of us up in a damn castle-"
Riley wondered, for one ridiculous moment, if she looked presentable.
Then Gabe stepped aside, and Jack Dalton limped into the kitchen.
He looked like beat-up, gypsy Rick Grimes, except the crazy scruffy beard wasn't as long or as neat. His right arm was wrapped tight around his stomach, but she didn't see any blood, and whatever he was bitching about died in his throat.
Riley had been thinking about what she was going to say to him for two weeks. How worried and angry he had made her feel. How much of a pain in her ass he had made it to track him down. How inconsiderate he had been, this whole time, being alive and well and somehow not being able to give them one single clue.
She didn't say any of that. She just walked straight into his arms.
Once he turned on the waterworks, she was doomed, but luckily for her he could still talk and cry at the same time.
"Oh, baby girl . . . I am so sorry . . ."
Gabe was right. He smelled like a barn.
Riley didn't care. She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and hugged him tighter and tighter until she was sure, damn sure, that he was real.
" . . . I was so afraid I'd never see you again . . ."
She squeezed her eyes shut. Reading my mind, old man.
If he was hurting, he didn't show it. He was just as solid and strong as he always was, and he stroked her hair, just like he always did. He kept apologizing, over and over, and she kept not being able to say a damn thing.
"Are you okay? You good?"
She just nodded into his neck, and held him tight.
They stayed like that long enough that by the time she finally decided she really did probably need to let him go, they were alone in the kitchen. His crying face wasn't any better than hers, but he was grinning that same old Jack Dalton grin, although it was a little hard to see through the scruff.
She sniffled, which was a little embarrassing, and then said the first thing that popped into her mind.
"You smell, dude."
He laughed. "Yeah. Yeah, I know."
She bit her lip and looked him up and down. "Are you . . . okay?"
He nodded. "Yeah. I'll be fine. Might take a couple days, but I'll be up for a few games before you know it."
Riley stared at him for a second, not quite sure what he meant, and he held up an imaginary ball. "Pizza and skee-ball, of course."
She burst out laughing – sort of – and he put his left arm around her shoulders. "How's about you help ol' Jack here to the shower. When I get out, I wanna see a big ol' steak, and everything we've got on Mac. Sound good?"
She nodded, putting her arm around him – carefully this time – and guiding him through the kitchen.
". . . yeah. That sounds good."
-M-
Major Oguzhan settled himself comfortably into the lounge chair, adjusting it a few inches to his right to give him an unobstructed view through the ornate spindles of the roof fencing. He put the binoculars to his eyes, adjusting them slightly to get a sharper focus, and then he started a systematic sweep of the villa.
Most of the windows were partially or fully obstructed by curtains. Smart. The villa had a lot of glass, which was useful, but the light was diffuse, making specific shadows difficult to pick out. It had a small courtyard and its own dedicated driveway, a luxury in the closely packed streets of Alexandroupoli, and obviously a rear entrance as well.
Clear view of the streets running in both directions. Nice neighborhood, cameras on the adjacent villas as well. The street was well-lit, and there were three or four spots that would be excellent for perimeter surveillance.
Zhan continued his study, fishing his radio out of his collar and putting it back into his ear.
"Gamma in position, over."
He waited patiently for the second lieutenant to respond. When Cenk did, his tone was dry. "Did you take a nap?"
Zhan continued to watch the front of the villa. "Women should never be allowed to drive." He had nearly lost count of the number of times he had been forced to back off, and it had taken far too long to convince her that she wasn't being followed. Even then her route had not been direct. "Confirmed safehouse. At least four, not including our old friend."
There was a brief pause. "Do you have a foothold?"
Zhan lowered the glass, glancing over his shoulder at the silk-robed silhouette lying on the lounge chair behind him. "Do I need one?"
"Kenan wants you on surveillance only for now."
The major sighed silently. Not unexpected. "What of Alpha?"
"They were led to an old cannery. The lieutenant is taking a few recruits on a quick seek and destroy."
Which made sense. They would let the Americans think they took the bait, attack and destroy the facility, and withdraw. The agents might or might not believe their little ruse had worked, but either way they would be distracted and their forces temporarily reduced.
Which would make taking them out now a fairly easy job. A pity the lieutenant disagreed.
Zhan set the binoculars carefully on a large paving stone, and climbed to his feet. "The answer to your previous question is yes."
It was Saturday night. Which meant this particular timeshare had just acquired a new resident for the week. She was young, no ring, toiletries and clothes for one, clearly enjoying a holiday on her own. Even if her beau showed up later in the week, it was a minor thing. There would be no staff or cleaners until the following Saturday at noon.
It was roughly half a mile from the American's villa, so outside a typical security perimeter, and overlooking, giving him the advantage of height. It would do quite well.
"Well then, get comfortable, major. I'll send Eren with a kit."
"Acknowledged." Zhan twitched his head to the left, dislodging the offending radio, and stared down at the unconscious woman for a moment.
Bathtub would be the least mess. He hoisted her up by her arms, pulling her up over his right shoulder, and then he proceeded through the french doors to the master suite.
-M-
This ended up being way longer than intended, but for those of you who were waiting so patiently for Jack to make it home, I didn't want to leave you with a cliffie.
Things should pick up pretty fast from here on out. I appreciate all of you, especially those of you who are sharing specifics. It's very helpful and lets me know what works for you and what could use some improvement. I'm getting the feeling the technical details aren't adding much, so I'm going to trim those back. Anything else dragging you kind readers down?