Operation: Bury Your Dead – Alex In Wonderland
Hey all! Glad to see me? I bet you are. See, I'm very proud of this chapter. It's a nice, long, action packed update!
Ian has this weird thing going on where he's pretty much entirely sane-looking, but he's kind of... the English equivalent to the Hebrew expression I want to use is 'not all is well upstairs' but it loses something in translation.
Also, He's beginning to annoy me, and I can't wait for the scene I have planned for the next chapter, in which he gets beaten senseless. Or rather, gets some sense beaten into him. Or both.
My point is, at this point, I think I'm getting rather annoyed by all of his equivocation, and I need him to do something, rather than be paralyzed by non-action by his drug-fuelled musings.
Also, I'm pretty sure Felix sucks at his job, and he, along with everyone who works for him, is getting fired. They just really, really suck at their jobs apparently. .
Have a wonderful evening, and remember to review!
...
"Did Alex say anything?"
Even over a video conference, Alan Blunt's voice still sounded severe, Yedit thought sourly.
"He seemed to blame MI6 for driving Ian Rider to the point of insanity," she said very carefully. "But I do not think Alex is thinking quite rationally himself at the moment – I've seen it before in agents, Director; they get pushed into a corner and get scared and desperate, and they lash out."
"Alex does not have problems operating under stress," Blunt said, dismissing her defense of the teenager. "Do you have any idea where he might be headed?"
"I can't let you bring me in," Alex said from over by the wall. Yedit sighed.
"I know."
"Then let me go!"
"I can't do that either," Yedit said. She was examining the skyline for any possible shooter, but whoever had fired was keeping out of sight, for now.
"Where would you go anyway, Alex?" she continued. "You have no one, you have no recourses, you're running low on money, you have no weapon… What exactly do you hope to achieve by running?"
"If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn't be running," Alex muttered. "All I need is time."
Yedit bit her lip. She was going to get into so much trouble for this…
"Dani and I set up a safe house in Boston," she said finally. "Mossad doesn't know about it – we set it up just in case any of our ops went bad, and Mossad needed plausible deniability as to where we were. I hid there when I was on my way to Virginia, hoping to get Davis to listen to me. It's at the corner of Bartlett and Green, in Charleston. Apartment number 113."
Alex's eyes narrowed in suspicion. Yedit didn't blame him – she would have suspected a trap too, if she had been in Alex's position.
"The key is the specialized, bright green one on my keyring," Yedit went on before she could second-guess herself. "It has a dragon on it."
"Thank you," Alex said carefully.
"Just a warning Alex," Yedit said, not looking at the teenager. "Mossad believes that he intends to use his underworld connections to carry out some massive terrorist attack. Ian has purchased enough weapons and ammunition to fight a small war with a third world dictator. He's met with extremist fighters who were trained in Chechnya, and who were part of the original Taliban. He's purchased ballistic missiles, and I know for a fact that he has enlisted the help of experts in the field of jamming Patriot missiles. He may be beyond even your help."
"No one is beyond help," Alex said, and he made his move.
"Not really," Yedit said. "I only know what I would do in the same situation."
"Care to elaborate?" Blunt asked, bringing Yedit back to the present with a jolt.
"I'd go to ground until the search moved on," she answered calmly, showing no sign that she had been even a little disconcerted. "I'd stay somewhere very close by, probably even in the same city, since most newbies panic and make the mistake of trying to get as far away from where they were sighted as they can, as quickly as they can. I'd change my identity, switch out my passport, and head south. I'd sneak across the border into Mexico, and then use my contacts to go from there."
It was the same assessment she had given her own director, and it made sense. Yedit forced down the guilt she felt at the lie, but she had decided to make her choice. She wasn't choosing between betraying Israel and protecting a friend – Alex posed to threat to her country – or any other, really.
"And you think Alex would do something like this?" Blunt asked.
"I don't know," Yedit shrugged. "Alex isn't some panicking newbie, Director. He's a trained agent. If anything, he knows what he's doing. But keep in mind that he has no recourses. No money, nothing. At this point, I think you'd probably find him sleeping on a park bench somewhere. He doesn't have the backing to stay missing very long."
"Do you know what he might be trying to do?" Blunt continued.
"I'm sorry," Yedit shrugged. "I was more worried about trying to sight my target while I was under fire when I was knocked out. I can't be of any more help."
The picture went blank without so much as a farewell. Yedit nodded to the CIA agent operating the screen, and left.
…
"Put your weapons on the floor," Alex ordered. Felix glanced at Ian. The older man's face was impassive.
"Alex," he said warningly.
"Don't make me ask twice," Alex said.
Felix sighed, and with extremely exaggerated movements, put his 9mm handgun on the floor, and kicked it away from him. Ian did the same, with Felix casting him a wide-eyed look - he was rather put out that even after his men has searched Ian, the man had still managed to keep a weapon within easy access.
"And your backups," Alex ordered. Felix pulled another gun out of a holster at his anke, and Ian removed a combat knife from his sleeve.
When they were disarmed, Alex took a few steps closer to the men.
"What the hell is going on?" he asked Ian pointedly.
"What are you talking about?" Ian asked innocently. Alex snorted.
"Ian, enough with this attitude that I'm a child who can't handle the truth," he snapped, impatient. "I'm not a child anymore. Not by a long shot. So don't treat me like one. Tell me what is going on."
Ian seemed to be trying to stall for time. He pulled a small bottle from his jacket pocket and was fiddling with it.
"What are those?" Alex asked, almost absently. Wordlessly, Ian tossed it over to him. Alex examined the label, and his expression of curiosity turned to disgust as he read. He threw the bottle of pills back as his uncle as if he was hoping to hit the man in the head with them.
"Drugs, Ian?" he asked in the most scathing tone he could, trying to mask the fear he was feeling. Fear that Yedit was right, that this was a misguided venture that could only end in tragedy. Ian, to his credit, merely caught the bottle and pocketed it, refusing to rise to his nephews bait.
"If you have a point, I suggest you make it Alex, because Felix here is a few minutes away from calling for his guards to come and drag you away, or shoot you," Ian said reasonably.
"Just tell me why," Alex snapped. "Why buy missiles, why collect enough weapons to take over a small country?"
Alex thought he might have imagined the look of sympathy on Ian's face before it twisted into a sneer.
"Because I can," he said, and Alex felt his stomach plummet. "I can take revenge for John, and for Helen, and for the crap that MI6 put both of us through, and now, I'm going to."
It wasn't supposed to be like this, Alex thought desperately, looking at his uncle. He barely recognized the man. Honestly, Alex had wondered if he really knew the man after he had died, and now he knew that he had no idea who Ian Rider was. He had spent Alex's whole life lying to him, keeping secrets, playing this stupid game.
And Alex was done with it. Done with it all. To hell with MI6, to hell with Ian, to hell with all of these damn, bloody spies!
"So you mean to kill Blunt and Jones?" Alex asked, wanting to be sure, even through the litany of curses that was crowding his head.
"Along with many others, yes," Ian said. There was something curious in his voice – Alex didn't hear it, because he was fuming over what his uncle had actually said, but Felix heard the challenge in the spy's voice – he sounded almost like he was trying to goad Alex, to see what his reaction would be.
"You're mad," Alex said, shaking his head. "Barking, bloody mad."
"And you're out of time Alex."
Alex's head snapped towards Felix, who hadn't spoken until now. A second later, he heard the pounding footsteps – it seemed that the other guards on the yact had found the two men he had knocked out to get onboard without raising an alarm.
Alex cast a last desperate look at his uncle, hesitating for the one crucial second he should have used to run. There was no sympathy there, and Alex felt the gun wrenched from his hand.
All at once, he seemed to remember that he was in a very dangerous situation, and he struggled violently against the guards that were trying to take him down. He kicked one away from him and reached down, grabbing what he thought was his gun (well, really, Yedit's gun), and firing. One of the men cried out in pain, but Alex didn't look to see if the shot had injured or killed him.
He fired twice more, but his clip was only half full to begin with, and he soon found himself lashing out with his fists and his feet, trying to resist as much as possible. There was no blocking every hit that came his way – Alex counted six men still standing and fighting – and he had to ignore the bursts of pain that exploded when they did land. He tried to disarm them whenever he saw guns or knives, but it became clear that they weren't shooting now that he no longer had a gun, and trying to wrestle their knives away only resulted in long cuts up and down his arms.
One of them managed to land a particularly hard punch to his stomach, forcing Alex to double over, winded. Another kicked his feet out from underneath him, sending the teenager sprawling onto the floor, fighting for oxygen for the second time in what felt like as many hours. Probably even less, Alex would later reflect. One of them Alex, hitting him square in the chest. Plain exploded, seemingly emanating from the gunshot wound just above his heart, and Alex thought that one or more of his ribs had cracked from the blow.
For a moment, it looked like the fight was over, but Alex kicked out from his position on the floor, blindly lashing out with his legs, buying himself enough time to pull himself back up to his feet and into a fighting stance once again, ignoring the pain in his abdomen.
He made it into the hallway, and he knew that his smaller size was giving him the advantage in the awkward space.
Alex spotted another door, and hoping against hope that this would world, slammed in open, right into the face of one of the man trying to bring him down. Without waiting to see what kind of damage it had done, Alex ran down the rest of the hall, making it up to the deck before any of the others could catch up with him. He barely even registered the fact that it was raining, again. Its not like London was exactly the sunniest place in the world either.
Alex knew he only had seconds left, and he decided that the only way he was going to get off the ship was the same way he had gotten onto it. He dived over the edge just as his pursuers broke out into the open, guns drawn. But Alex was already gone, hidden by the murky waters of the Delaware, and the mist of rain that was falling all around them.
...
"Put your hands up, Ian," Felix said calmly, when his men returned, telling him that Alex had vanished. He didn't look even the slightest bit surprised.
Ian quirked an eyebrow and fought the urge to laugh.
"Are you going to shoot me, Felix?" he asked. "I can grab my gun and fire three rounds before you so much as pick up the Sig* you've hidden in the table."
"Any one of my men could have a round in you before you did," Felix said, all too calmly. "But before you start shooting, I'd reconsider. Especially since your nephew has already killed two MI6 agents."
Ian eyed Felix like he thought the younger man was lying. Finally, he looked down, shaking his head, and laughing just a little.
"Well done Felix," he said. "You really had me going there. When did MI6 turn you into their mole in the world of American gun sales?"
"I've been MI6 for several years now," Felix said. "I usually work in the UK, dealing with gun shipments in the UK, but I got reassigned, just to track you down."
"I'm flattered," Ian said. "Did MI6 not have faith that Mossad was capable of shooting me? Their agent came about three inches away from killing me about an hour ago, and she was firing on instinct, without even sighting."
"Good shot," Felix said absently. "I do have to congratulate you on that misleading bit of information. Rather inspired, really. I wouldn't have thought of it on my own." Ian bowed slightly to the younger man.
"I am one of the best," he said.
"Were, Ian," Felix said. Ian didn't argue. He looked from Felix to the men that had returned.
"So I guess now you call MI6, tell them that I'm barking mad, and have me in custody, and then you go after Alex," Ian said, sounding resigned.
"Pretty much," Felix said. "I do have to ask though, what made you switch sides? I know you're angry with MI6, but they never told me what they did to deserve it."
"Of course they didn't," Ian muttered. "MI6 killed my sister-in-law, and drove my brother bonkers, throwing him to the wolves over and over again. And when Scorpia captured me, instead of trying to find me, they declared me dead, even without a body. Then they used my absence to turn my nephew into their spy. And as far as I'm concerned, they're responsible for killing my brother, even if it was some bloody Scorpia assassin who pulled the trigger."
"That's heavy," Felix commented, sounding surprised and angry all at once.
"But unfortunately, I still have to do my job," he added, when he saw something akin to hope sparking in Ian Rider's eyes. "Get on the floor, hands on the back of your head, laying on your stomach."
Ian looked over at the men with guns, who were eyeing him as though they were just daring him to do something that would force them to fire their weapons. He decided to do as they said, for now.
But he had no intention of going back to MI6.
Why was that again?
They killed John.
Yassen Gregorovitch killed John, Ian reminded himself sternly. Somehow, the distinction seemed important, but it also wasn't, at the same time.
Why was he mad at MI6 then?
They let it happen. How could they?
Wasn't a choice.
They had all the choices in the world!
John or England? That's not a choice. You made the same decision they did, because you knew what was important.
John was important. Helen was important.
And Scorpia killed them.
MI6 left me to die.
They thought you were dead already,
And Alex?
You didn't protect him either. You trained him. You willed him to the Royal and General, without even leaving him a real guardian!
I never had a reason to believe I had a better choice!
What about Jack?
That wouldn't have been fair, to saddle her with a child or a teenager, who wasn't even her own, Ian argued.
Ian felt his head give a violent throb, and he wished he could reach for the pills in his jacket pocket. But they were confiscated along wit everything else he was carrying (a Swiss army knife, two pens, about five pounds in change, his car keys, and a full magazine clip) after his hands were handcuffed behind him.
Its all your fault, Ian's mind whispered to him.
At least Alex ran before he got involved, Ian thought. Thinking of Alex, however, reminded him of Jack, and since he so did not want to go there right now (so did not want to remember sharing a kiss with her on Christmas eve when Alex was only 10 years old, part of his mind said mutinously), he just shut himself off to the world, trying to ignore the desperate need he was feeling, too proud to ask for his drugs back just yet.
He knew it was only a matter of time before that changed - before he was reduced to a pathetic pile of whimpers and tears. Zeljan Kurst had shown him that, had show him that his brave and sarcastic exterior was so easily broken, just like his spirit. Ian Rider shuddered as he remembered how Scorpia had broken him into thousands of tiny shards so effectively.
But Scorpia didn't know that he was slowly bringing himself together. Ian Rider didn't quite know it himself either. But, as he had told his nephew, Riders did tend to live long past their expiration date, mostly because they were far too stubborn to just keel over and die when they should.
MI6 abused Riders. At least Scorpia never did that. At least they gave John a choice.
They did what they had to, murdering John. Cleaning lose ends. Would you have done differently?
They killed John.
MI6 killed John.
MI6 abused Alex.
I gave him to them...
Ian was barely aware of lashing out at his captors, of the bullet that went straight through his shoulder, right next to the path formed by Yassen Gregorovitches shot. He wrestled his way past the guards, hands still cuffed behind his back, fighting blindly. He all but fell over the side of the boat, tumbling into the dark waters of the Delaware after his nephew.
Barely a minute later, when the small yacht had circled the area several times and failed to find him surfacing, they gave up the search as a bad job.
Felix Dawn radioed to his bosses, Alan Blunt and Tulip Jones, that Ian was dead (for real, this time, it seemed), and stomped back below deck in a foul temper.
Of course, no one on board saw the diver who had been following along underneath the boat, and who offered Ian a breathing mask when he fell into the river.
They never saw the two of them surface, about five minutes later, Ian's handcuffs unlocked.
The diver, who's face remained covered, saw Ian to shore and vanished, leaving him with nothing but an extra bottle of pills. Ian gobbled two like they were his last meal, and settled into comfortable oblivion, starting to weave through the streets towards his safe house, knowing that once he got there, he could deal with the second bullet wound in his shoulder.
I have to destroy MI6...
...
The explosion rocked the ground like an earthquake, shattering the calm of the army composed of mercenaries who were hiding underground.
"Blitzkrieg," one of them muttered. "That Zaaiman bastard always did have a flair for the dramatic."
"This isn't bloody World War Two," Ben found himself snapping at the man, unable to check his temper. They were all on edge.
"Its just drugs," another man said. Ben had been partnered with him on multiple occasions, but the only thing he knew about the man so far was that his name was Rahim and that he was of Indian decent, but there was almost nothing of an accent in his voice. "What the hell are they trying to get at? Sure, opium pays well, but it's not worth a bunch of bombs!"
"They're proving that if they want to take our goods and clients, they can," Ben answered. "Its just a scare tactic."
"That Israeli bastard always did have a flair for the dramatic," Rahim muttered mutinously. But he was quiet after that. The subterranean chamber in the middle of the desert was so silent that you could have heard a pin drop, if you could listen over the sound of explosives, that was.
Several minutes passed before the hail of bombs stopped. Ben knew that whatever Gregorovitch and his ilk were looking for, they wouldn't find it. The drugs were hidden in this very room, right under their noses. He had helped his partner hide the opium here.
Ben was also sure that whoever was outside was probably Afghani drug lords, not the renegades themselves. They were too smart for that. The drug lords had their own problems with Scorpia's presence in their business, mostly because they were used to killing anyone that got in their way, and Scorpia was most definitely in their way.
"Scorpia!" The voice that came through the shut steel doors to the hallway beyond was muffled but still understandable, especially in the death-like silence. "Come out with your hands up and bring the drugs with you, and we may let most of you live!"
Ben gulped.
He really didn't like the sound of that.
He also really didn't like the sound that came a minute later, when none of them moved towards the doors. A small explosion, followed by the creak of metal as it was torn from its frame. The door was blasted inwards, and only a moment of frantic scrambling saved all of them from death by flying metal door.
The team of local Afghanis moved in, securing the room. The mercenaries of Scorpia dropped their weapons in disgust as they were outnumbered at least ten to one, and the room was flooded, filled with shouting and curses. A few gunshots fired by the Afghanis silenced them all again.
The cacophony, however, rose up again when a single tall figure made his was through the dust, stepping carefully into the room. Rahim actually spat at the Russian assassin.
"Traitor!" Several of them hissed. Ben only stared at the man he knew to be Yassen Greforovitch, knowing now, with cool certainty, that he was going to die. It was a thought that both scared and comforted him.
"Silence," Gregorovitch said, and the room fell quiet once again.
...
Alex was thoroughly soaked by the time he made it back to try land. He was reasonably certain that he was still on the Philadelphia side of the Delaware, but there was no way he could be sure at the moment. He lay gasping on the shore. The swim had told him that his ribs weren't cracked, as he had feared, but he was going to have some spectacular bruising.
Aren't I lucky? Alex thought sourly. He had to move –staying in one place for too long was a sure way to get himself either caught or killed – and Alex really wasn't sure which was worse at the moment. He felt like hell.
Groaning, he made it to his feet. What had Yedit said, Boston? Alex fingered the key he had stolen from the agent (or rather, taken, since Yedit had pretty much expressly told him to take it). Alex sighed. He was going to need a map. And another car.
Limping, Alex moved away from the Delaware. MI6 had to be in the city already – Yedit would have woken up by now, and they would have agents scouring Philadelphia, looking for him.
The question was whether or not he could trust that Yedit wouldn't tell Mossad, the CIA, or MI6 about the Boston safe house? Dare he rely on the assumption that he wasn't walking into a trap? But Yedit had been right. He'd been running on empty for days, and he was backed into a tough corner. He was going to have to make his choice soon – he wasn't going to survive long on his own if he didn't accept Yedit's help, but he didn't want to take it for granted that she was actually offering him help. .
For now, he would go to Boston, scope the apartment out, Alex finally decided. If something felt wrong, he would leave.
Alex took much longer than he should have to see the agent that was following him. It had taken him several minutes and a few unexpected stops and turns to make sure that his suspicions were correct, but several long city blocks and a very circuitous route later, he knew that they had been.
The man was average height, dressed in a navy blue coat and slacks, like pretty much every other man on the street. It was his behavior that tipped Alex off. The man had remained half a block behind him the whole time, pretty much keeping his eyes on Alex the whole time. Now that Alex knew he was there, he was surprised at how easy it was to spot him – he was extremely obvious about what he was doing.
It would be just like Blunt to be this arrogant, Alex thought, almost disgusted. You would think by now that MI6 would realize that he was far better than they gave him credit for.
It took Alex another few minutes to identify the second agent on his tail – he was much better than the first man, wearing a green windbreaker, and posing as a jogger. He would run by the street every few minutes.
Alex saw the police car coming down the crowded street just as the jogger rounded the corner right in front of him, and decided that it was time to make a tactical retreat, considering he was stuck right in the middle of all three of them. He dodged into a convenience store called 'Wawa*'.
"Hey kid, you look like you took a swim in the Delaware," the cashier called over. It seemed to be a less than busy afternoon, and only a few other patrons aside from Alex were browsing the store. Or maybe the store wasn't that popular. He shrugged and laughed, trying to put as much genuine mirth into the sound.
"Yeah, I had to chase my sister halfway across town to get her lunch to her," he said. Almost unconsciously, he dropped his British accent. He doubted a cashier would think twice of a teen with an accent, but he wasn't going to take any chances. Alex watched as the two agents passed each other outside the store, glanced in, and kept going, and breathed a sigh of relief. They hadn't seen his move.
He looked around the store, and almost grinned when he stopped hair dye near the back. He grabbed a pack of black, and went to the front with it.
Leaving the convenience store, Alex saw a second patrol car. He didn't wait to see if it was mere coincidence, but turned on a dime and started walking in the opposite direction. If he was being followed, he could lose his pursuers in the crowds.
Now on high alert, Alex scanned the crowds. He was looking for anyone that looked like him – just a bit too interested in the people around them. Alex wasn't going to risk running headlong into another agent just because of being careless. Unfortunately, almost everyone Alex passed seemed to be taking at least one glance at his ragged state, and it was making him extremely paranoid. In his state of hyper-awareness, anyone could be a threat, from that man wearing heavy winter gear during a light summer shower, to the woman reading a magazine across the street, who seemed to glance up far too often.
Fortunately, he was able to get to his next destination without incident, though his nerves were extremely fried.
His next stop was dry clothes and a good raincoat, as well as an umbrella. On a whim, he also bought a container of foundation that matched his skin tone. He was starting to attract attention in his bedraggled and battered state, and the change was necessary, even if it meant that he was now officially broke.
When he was done, he ducked into a busy Subway, making his way towards the restroom at the back. Locking the door, Alex changed out of his wet clothes. He was supremely glad to no longer be soaked through to the bone. Being dry was the best thing that had happened to him all day. He left his wet shirt on, however, knowing that he was going to have to allow for making a bit of a mess with the hair dye, and not wanting anything out of the ordinary to mark him.
All week, more like, Alex thought. He eyed the bottle of hair dye with some trepidation. He had never dyed his hair before. This was going to be... interesting.
Someone banged on the door impatiently.
"Occupied!" Alex yelled back. He didn't even feel a little guilty – there were two unisex bathrooms in the back of the store.
Ten minutes later, he left the bathroom, looking completely different than the boy who had walked in. He was very glad to be able to move around with relative anonymity, and the increasing rain meant that people were moving quickly with their heads down, buried in coat collars and scarves, trying to get to where they were going as fast as possible.
Alex scanned the streets. He needed to find a car and get out of the city as soon as possible. So he was looking for a garage, or somewhere where anyone would keep their cars out of the public eye. He didn't need an audience to hotwire a car.
Alex spotted at least three more agents wandering the streets while he moved, but none of them seemed to have seen him – and Alex dodged out of their way before they could.
It was getting late – the meager light was beginning to vanish behind the cover of clouds, and as if to make matters worse, Alex heard the rumble of thunder overheard.
Alex was glad that he had decided to spend his last few dollars on the sturdy umbrella that was currently keeping him dry while the rest of the world was being soaked. There was no way he could have escaped getting sick in this kind of weather.
And that probably wouldn't have been even a little bit helpful.
Alex found a garage after about half an hour of searching, and losing another agent he had seen on his tail – an agent who had very obviously seen him, and then looked right past him, to Alex's immense relief. He turned into the garage, closing his umbrella as he climbed up the stairs. The higher the floor he could find a car on, the better the chances that no one would see him, he reasoned.
Alex left the stairwell on the floor right below the roof. He found a sturdy Dodge Caravan parked conveniently right next to him, and better still, there was a map in a pocket in the door on the driver's side!
Maybe my luck is beginning to turn, Alex thought cheerfully, picking the lock. He pulled himself into the drivers side seat and started the car – after spending several days doing nothing but breaking into cars, he was becoming quite good at it. He consulted the map very quickly, mapping out a set of roads that would take him to the freeway he needed to be on t get to Boston.
The priority at the moment was going to be getting out of this garage before the owner of this car came by and saw it being jacked by a teenager.
Within moments, Alex was driving down the ramps. He crashed through the arm at the booth in front, seeing nobody around. He sped off into the dark and rainy streets, headed for Boston.
Down the rabbit hole, Alex thought with uncharacteristically good humor as he navigated the streets of Philadelphia.
Hey, I'm Alex in Wonderland! He continued his giddy line of thinking to its inevitable (for him) conclusion. Does that make MI6 the Jabberwocky, or is that Scorpia? I can't exactly imagine Alan Blunt 'with eyes of flame'... And MI6 are supposed to be the good guys. Alex snorted with another wave of laughter. Supposed to being the operative term.
Alex had been giggling hysterically as he drove. It was lucky that he had made it to the open road by the time he had gotten to this point in his thinking, or someone might have seen his erratic driving, and taken it the wrong way.
Several days worth of tension were spilling over into childlike venting, leaving Alex laughing helplessly at the wheel. Finally, he pulled over, knowing that there was no way that he was going to be able to drive safely in this state, and laughed until his stomach hurt.
Even Alex wasn't sure exactly when the laugher turned to tears, or when he started sobbing for real, but he leaned over the steering wheel an cried for several minutes after the hysterical giggles, draining his eyes of the tears he had refused to shed over his predicament.
Part of Alex knew that he wasn't exactly dealing with his situation in a very healthy way, but then again, there wasn't any other way he knew how to really handle it.
About twenty minutes after he pulled over, Alex was on the move again, all trace of tears or childish humor gone from his face. Back were the hard lines of the MI6 agent on the run, the lines that Alex was beginning to suspect were becoming permanent.
Down the rabbit hole indeed, Alex thought. This time, the words were filled with grim determination, having a sobering effect, rather than being entertaining.
...
Jack stared at the detective, her mouth suddenly very dry. She had no idea how to respond to that, and she settled, taking a sip of water in order to bide herself some time.
"I'll bet you say that to all the women you save," she finally said, keeping her tone playful. Anything was better than trying to be serious. No, she couldn't be serious about relationships, not when Ian had kissed her – or she had kissed Ian, by the time either of them had realized what was happening, they were sufficiently fazed that neither of them could remember who was to blame for it.
But Ian is dead, she told herself sternly. It doesn't matter anymore. And Donny was polite, charming, and very clearly interested. He was one of the first men Jack had ever met who was good looking, and had a heart that matched the exterior.
And what about Ian? Jack asked herself guiltily.
Damn it, Ian was dead! They hadn't even had anything between them, other than a few stupid (or drunken, that Christmas when Alex was 10). She was an adult, why couldn't she carry on a normal romantic relationship if she wanted to?
Why was it that even now, she felt guilty, like she was somehow cheating on Ian?
That's ridiculous, Jack thought. She sighed.
"Donny, you have no idea how much I would love to spend tonight flirting with you," Jack said. She had learned early on when she was in law school that she lacked the verbal dexterity to jump around a topic as skillfully as some of her colleagues did. She was far too 'to the point,' as one professor had pointed out. "But I can't, in all good conscience, knowing that Alex is somewhere out there, possibly hurt, and definitely being hunted down for some stupid, trumped up reason."
Donny put his hand on hers, immediately serious.
"Then I can respect that," he said. The banter was gone from his voice in a moment. "I had hoped to try and cheer you up a little bit, but I think perhaps distraction was not the best idea."
Jack shook her head, fighting the urge to laugh and cry all at once. What the heck was wrong with her?
"You'll find a way to help Alex," Donny said bracingly. "I'll help. This whole mess reeks of abuse of power, and there has to be a way we can get Alex out of this situation. They're definitely destroying the spirit of the law, even if they are getting out of responsibility using a loophole."
Jack nodded miserably, agreeing with Donny's point. The problem was Alex's opinion. She didn't want to do anything to make things worse for him, but she also didn't want to make a move that he wouldn't want her to. She wasn't sure what Alex wanted, and she knew that he wasn't quite sure either. He didn't want to run, he just wanted space. Jack suspected that he really did want to be working for MI6, but he wanted to do it when he was prepared to do so. But in the absence of that knowledge, all she could do was pray that MI6 left him be so that he could make his decision.
"If anything, Alex will find a way," she said firmly, more to convince herself than to convince the detective. Unfortunately, she failed miserably. "He's always been very good at taking care of himself."
Donny heard the uncertainty there and nodded sympathetically. Their moment was ruined, however, by a very angry yell. Both of them jumped in their seats, startled, at the sound of the gunfire that accompanied the shouting.
"Everyone get down!" A masked figure was shouting. "Or we'll blow this whole place to smithereens!"
Jack's breath caught in her throat.
I think I kind of understand how Alex feels all of the time right about now, she thought, teetering between being nervous and wanting to burst out into laughter at the absurdity of this whole situation. And then there was the use of the word smithereens, which pretty much destroyed any chance she had of taking this whole situation seriously.
The man was standing on top of one of the tables, holding some sort of semi-automatic weapon. Jack recognized the short bursts of gunfire from about a dozen different movies she had watched with either Ian or her brother at some point, though she knew almost nothing about guns.
"See, now this is just typical," she heard Walsh mutter as he glared mutinously at the armed. "Fucking terrorists show up the first time I try and take a girl on a date since I left the crops... Of course it would end up like this."
Jack knew the look on Donny's face. She had seen it on Alex's face several times. It didn't bode very well for the man, or his accomplices, who were coming out of the shadows, herding people towards a back corner of the room. It was a look that said very clearly that he was capable of tearing these men limb from limb, and he would be very pleased to do so.
"Any idea what this is about?" Jack whispered to Donny as they reluctantly followed the commands of the man who seemed to be in charge.
"Not a clue," Donny answered. Not that that was going to stop him anyway, Jack observed dryly. At the moment, she was more frustrated and annoyed than scared, though she knew she should at least try muster up some kind of fear.
But the truth was, after spending so much time worrying about Alex, there was very little that could surprise Jack. In her own way, it was an unhealthy reaction to the stress that plagued her and her ward. She had used up all her fear on the men and women trying to kill Alex, and there was really none left for herself. Not that she minded that in the slightest.
"Any ideas?" she prodded.
"Well, if either of us tries something, then we'd probably get everyone else killed," Donny muttered. "Statistically, you're much more likely to survive a bank robbery or a heist if you don't resist."
"This isn't a ban robbery," Jack pointed out. "What are the statistics on surviving terror attacks when you're complying?"
She was spared Donny's worrying answer when one of the masked men ordered her to stop talking. She shut up, but she cast the masked man a quailing glare.
...
The FBI had cleared Robert's industries to resume their normal work late into the afternoon. Kevin Davis had shown up to personally argue with the director of the FBI, but had finally ceded jurisdiction to them after about half an hour of heated (for Intelligence agency directors) arguments.
The FBI had found nothing of note in Roberts Industries when they searched it from the top down, looking for some hint of Alex Rider.
If they had gone through the files for Roberts Industries, they might have found out that it wasn't really a company at all. In fact, most of the floors were empty – something the FBI failed to realize, because the building had been evacuated before they had gotten there.
Roberts Industries existed as a front company. The CEO and sole stockholder for the company was Evert Zaaiman. He had set it up many years ago, and it was a major source of income for his illicit activities.
Most of the people who worked there didn't know that. They filed papers and recorded losses and incomes on their non-existent stock sales, not guessing that Robert's Industries had never bought or sold a single stock.
Many of the people who worked on the higher floors had been personally recruited for their ability to keep secrets, and were vetted personally by Zaaiman before they were allowed to work there. Yedit had assumed that their sales had to do with government contracts, which is why they were so tight on security.
But the truth was that Robert's Industries existed to fund private little wars over territory in Africa. Evert Zaaiman owned a great deal of land in Africa, under various assumed names, including diamond mines in South Africa.
Roberts Industries filtered the profits he made from that land, so that it translated into legal monetary gains. And Zaaiman passed off the occasional few billion dollars given to warlords in conflict ridden third world countries in order to wage their own personal wars, he passed it off as major stock purchases. The building dealt in big figures, spending and making as many as eight figures a day. A great deal of cash flooded into and out of Robert's Industries.
That was why, by nine o'clock that evening, Evert Zaaiman was stalking through the floors of his company, ensuring that none of his physical or electronic files had been compromised, and that everyone in his company had kept their mouths shut, and fed them the company-wide lies they were all trained to feed investigators. His fears, however, were unfounded; no one had said anything to the FBI. They had found nothing, and they knew nothing about Robert's Industries.
MI6, unlike the FBI, did know a great deal about Robert's Industries, not that they were willing to share anything they knew with their American counterparts.
And by the time that Evert Zaaiman was in the United States, Alan Blunt had already made the connection that Alex had gone to them under his own violation. Roberts Industries was involved in enough criminal activity that that alone was enough to damn him.
With a heavy heart, Tulip Jones issued the official arrest warrant for Alex Rider on the charges of murdering a federal officer and international terrorism. An hour later, when Alex was well on the way to Boston in a stolen forest green Dodge Caravan, he was placed on the international terrorist watch list.
You better not hurt my son, John Rider whispered in Mrs. Jone's ear. Don't you dare even try.
...
*It's like 7/11. You east coasters know what I'm talking about, right?
Sorry for the digression, moving on.
*Meaning a Sig Sauer gun. The one being mentioned is a 9mm handgun. I would have said handgun, but this felt a bit more like Ian has an intimate relationship with his weapons, rather than just calling them guns.
See you next time!
~InK