Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Picture Prompt: Ezio de Auditore overlooking a village, unseen (Assassin's Creed II) Vol 2. Week 47 on scifi_muses on LiveJournal
Setting: Season Four Episode: Unrequited
AN: Some of you were expecting Paper Hearts, and that is coming. But my stories are plotted out according to months of the year, (else I'd never keep them straight), and Unrequited occurs during Veterans Day, which is in November, (our Armistice Day). So it had to be bumped up to fit the calendar.
Was there ever a "normal" when it came to the X-files?
If there was, life returned to it as the ice thawed a little, the wall thinned somewhat, and the hard feelings softened to bearable levels as they returned to normal operating conditions. Little more was said about the outbreak of bad behavior, thought Mulder did bring in Jake's coffee as a peace offering. For now, at least, things were quiet, even well behaved.
All good things come to an end at some point. Skinner's call to his office was the first in several weeks. Scully frowned sideways at Mulder beside her as the two made their way to Skinner's office through the press of early morning arrivals to the Hoover Building. "You didn't egg Skinner's car again?"
"Tempting as the idea is, I rather like my ass attached to my body, thanks." Mulder held open the door to Skinner's out office, allowing Scully to step inside. Kim nodded them into their superior's office; clearly the two of them were expected.
"Mulder, Scully," Skinner waved them towards two empty chairs in front of his desk, the third already occupied, though not for long. The graying man stood, tall and proud in his Army dress, tugging his olive drab coat tightly as he glanced between the two agents.
"General Bloch, two of my best, Agents Mulder and Scully." If Skinner was being ironic, he didn't show it, though pointed gaze he shot them both as they took the General's perfunctory handshake was to not prove his compliment wrong. "They specialize in…difficult cases."
"I've heard," General Bloch replied knowingly, a smile almost akin to a grimace on his lean face, tanned with years in the outdoors at some point in his military career…likely Vietnam, judging by his age. His steely, gray eyes glanced Mulder up and down briefly. "Agent Mulder, you've been a particular pain in the ass for the Army for years."
"I try my best, sir," Mulder managed with only his brand of straight-laced, acerbic humor. Despite Scully's instinct to cringe and apologize over her partner, the General chuckled, nodding approvingly.
Skinner, however, didn't need reminding of the many times he'd had to bail out Mulder's ass from the DOD and the Army. He barely hid his scowl as he motioned them all to sit. "General Bloch has approached the FBI with a matter of upmost sensitivity and security."
Sensitivity and security…Mulder's blazed giddily at those words. Skinner continued. "At approximately 0600 this morning, Lieutenant General Peter MacDougal was shot close range in his own car. The gunshot was not self-inflicted. The military investigative service is preparing to go on seen with a forensic unit and will feed back to us as soon as they have information."
"Where was the incident?" Mulder fell easily into investigative mode, all wisecracks set aside as his mind began picking apart the situation presented to them.
"Ft. Evanston, MD…I believe you two worked on a case there last year?"
The case of the men who couldn't die…Scully remembered it all too well, young Trevor Callahan, the son of the General in charge of Ft. Evanston had died. The man Mulder had thought responsible had ultimately been killed at the hands of one of the other soldiers he had supposedly tortured. Afterwards the Army had cleaned up the mess, hidden it, and pretended that it hadn't happened. Now they were coming back with an entirely new problem from the same area. Interesting who they went to first with their problem.
"General MacDougal was preparing for a Veteran's Day speech as part of the ceremonies rededicating the Vietnam Memorial. His driver claims that he arrived via helicopter, as scheduled, no one else was with him. He entered into his limo, alone, save for the driver, and they pulled off the base. They were only a block away when the driver claims he heard a gunshot go off. He said he stopped the vehicle, checked the back, and found the general shot to death."
"He didn't see the event happen?" It seemed self-explanatory, but it seemed convenient to Scully that the one witness to the event didn't actually see it.
"The divider was up between the driver and the cabin, he says the General was looking through sensitive files." Skinner glanced cautiously at Bloch, but received no confirmation one way or the other. "Military Police are holding Private Burkholder at the moment."
"For questioning?" Mulder obviously knew better, else he wouldn't have asked.
"No, for murder," Bloch cut in, shooting Skinner an apologetic glance. He obviously wasn't a man used to sitting on the sidelines while others conducted the show, and he easily took the reigns from the Assistant Director. "MacDougal was found with this." From out of his pin-straight breast pocket he pulled a plastic bag, inside, the King of Hearts. "You two are too young to remember much about Vietnam." He paused, shooting Skinner a meaningful gaze; the sort Scully had seen many Vietnam vets share with one another. "These type of cards were used by some squads to mark their kills. They called it the death card, sort of their calling card to the Viet Cong. Different platoons and squads would have their own unique ones printed up." He handed the bag carefully to Mulder's outstretched fingers. Scully leaned over to study it as Mulder flipped it over. Two crossed, bloody sabers were emblazoned on the back.
"Is there a meaning to symbol on the back?"
"Not particularly, several groups used crossed sabers, but…" The general paused, drawing out his last syllable in a gust of hesitant air. He frowned fretfully at the card and the secret it possessed. The Army always was closed mouthed about everything; it was the nature of being a soldier. One did not win wars without learning to keep ones mouth shut, to everyone. Scully knew from their many run ins with the Army over the years getting them to volunteer any information, no matter how trivial, was like getting blood from a stone.
"There is a group, I think the FBI has it on its radar. They are a right wing militia group, based out of Northern Virginia. They call themselves the Right Hand. They like to use those as their calling cards."
The FBI had heard of it, or at least Skinner had. "Anti-Terror and ATF has been watching the Right Hand for years. They have a bunker fairly close to hear, though all their weapons are completely legit. Still, they like to flip a fat finger at us from time to time, and remind the Justice Department of their Constitutional rights." Skinner apparently didn't think much of their rights, or their need to express them. "They are led by an ex-Marine, Denny Markham, served in Vietnam and has loudly decried the government's supposed abandonment of POW's behind the lines there."
This wasn't the first time Scully had heard that argument. "I thought the State Department declared that all MIA's were accounted for years ago?"
"All the ones they are willing to admit to," Mulder muttered beside her as he studied the bloody playing card in his hand.
"Whether or not there are POW's still behind the lines in Vietnam, Markham's group has made known what they think about both it and the US government, especially how much they would love to see it change, by violence if necessary." Skinner's face-hardened, as close as he ever got to a worried look. "Perhaps the murder of the general is a first volley in exactly this sort of action."
"Why then would that implicate Private Burkholder?"
"We pulled Brukholder's files as soon as we brought him in." The speed of Army security even outstripped that of the FBI, clearly, a surprise to Scully. "It turns out Burkholder's uncle is affiliated with the Right Hand group."
"Quick turn around on Army intelligence. And no one bothered to find this out about him before he was assigned to General MacDougal's detail?" Scully had expected Mulder to pick up on the most obvious weak point. "Does Private Burkholder have any sort of explanation?"
"None, he simply said he was in the front seat and heard and saw nothing. That isn't to say that he didn't facilitate someone waiting for the general in his limo."
"Do you think he'd agree to a polygraph test?"
"Military police have this, Agent Mulder."
"All due respect, sir, you are the one coming to the FBI. I'm assuming because you are worried that this is only the first of what could be several high profile hits on key military officials on a holiday honoring veterans of war. Assumptions of guilt aside, we need to find out information from Brukholder, and if he's not guilty, we need to start asking the right questions, before anyone else gets hurt."
Bloch stared speechless at Mulder for long, strained moments, before turning to Skinner in disbelief. The other man's response was a faint smile and a warning glare at Mulder. "I told you they were two of my best."
As always, Mulder dazzled. Perhaps it was time she stepped in. "Sir, Agent Mulder has a point. If we can convince Private Burkholder to take a polygraph test, it will clear up one path of suspicion, and help us focus on where we need to be to prevent any further danger to anyone else."
"Do you think you two can handle that?" It wasn't a question out of Skinner. It was marching orders.
"Can we have access to Private Brukholder?" Mulder's question was for the general. Clearly he wasn't comfortable with the idea, but he couldn't say no to them either. He had come to the FBI; he had accepted they would run this case on their terms. Scully only hoped he would be able to handle Mulder on Mulder's terms. That wasn't something any military types usually dealt well with him.
"I'll contact Ft. Evanston, let them know you're on your way."
"Tell General Cahill it's us, he should remember." Rubbing salt in the wound, Mulder, Scully mentally warned him, earning a completely stoic look out of her partner…almost stoic, except for the bedeviled glint in his eye. He was treading a fine line, and she didn't like it.
"You two get up to the private. I'll get together a task force and get as much as I can on Markham and his men." Skinner fell into what he did best, planning, managing, and strategizing. "Come back to me when you have had a chance to run the poly on him, we should have more intel on Markham then."
"Right," Scully was already up and out of the door, Skinner's dismissal curt as always. She could feel Mulder's steps dogging hers as they made their way silently out of the office. He was thinking, she could hear it, even from in front of him.
"Quite the show you put on back there." She glanced over her shoulder at Mulder; deep in whatever possibilities he was running through his head. "Showing off?"
"Maybe?" Mulder always did like a good pissing contest with men in uniform. "I actually really wanted to see what this was really about?"
"About?" It had seemed straightforward to her what was going on. The murder of a US Army general wasn't something anyone too lightly.
"The Army wouldn't come to the FBI if this was as simple as assassinations being executed on their men. They have their own investigative services, they can do that by themselves."
"But anti-terrorism isn't something they are equipped to handle. That is why they came to us." It only seemed logical that the FBI, who dealt with homegrown terrorists everyday, would be the right group to turn to for a group like the Right Hand. "We probably know just as much if not more about this group than the Army does."
"Somehow I can't quite buy that either." Mulder's paused thoughtfully, stopping and frowning back towards Skinner's office with the general still inside. "Bloch is scared, Scully. Here is something that someone isn't talking about, and it isn't Burkholder. He's just some poor kid who was at the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Figured that out without speaking to him?" She met his distracted not with an eloquently arched eyebrow. "No wonder they call you 'spooky'."
"Nothing spooky about it, Scully, common sense, the reason that kid was put on General MacDougal's detail was that there was nothing there to bust him on. And I don't care what Army intelligence thinks they can do, not even the FBI can do a turn around on a background check in an hour, and we do this for a living. Someone wants to pin this on the kid to get it out of their hair, but Bloch knows that this isn't as simple as one murder…it's others. That's why they came to us, to try and stop it before other soldiers with stars on their collars start falling today."
"And you know this because?" That was the part she hadn't figured out how he'd pieced together.
"The death card. Our killer is marking his kills. If this is the Right Hand, they are making examples, and they will take out as many high profile ones as they can, likely military. And if it someone taking out military targets with a calling card and no one the wiser, I can guarantee our private doesn't have a thing to do with it."
He had figured this out in ten minutes with the general? "You know you're scary sometimes, right?"
In an instant the focused directness was replaced with a devilish smile. "I was going for sexy."
Damn him! There was a time, not so very long ago, when such flippant remarks would be met with a gentle snort and a witty remark. Scully's skin flamed to life instantly, her eyes ducking briefly, fumbling mentally for something to say. "You'll have to settle for scary, Mulder, very. You just do that, just…flip a switch, and you just know."
"That's why they pay me the big bucks to hang in the basement, don't you know." Self-deprecation, Scully could live with that. "Let's go chat with our private, see what sort of spookiness he isn't telling anyone yet."
Why did it have to be spooky?