Chapter 53: The Others
"Damn it!" A hand on his arm kept him from punching the wall, but only just. He spun away from the touch and paced the room. "You were supposed to get him! He was practically gift-wrapped for delivery."
The agent – Daniels, he had insisted – rubbed at his forehead and looked just as tired and worn as the rest of the team. They had been counting on him to do his job. To bring Alex back to them.
"The DINI agent was found dead this morning. Gunshot to the head and the jeep she was driving was run off the road. Whether that was before or after…" Daniels shrugged. "Alex was with her at some point. She wouldn't have left without him, so we can only assume Raab's men have gotten their hands back on him."
Cameron bit back a growl. Raab's men or whoever the third party in the recordings had been. Raab had had Alex for far too many days – but the recordings had been invaluable. Those had held enough to launch an official investigation and to start weeding out enough of the moles within MI6 to start getting the unit's names cleared. It had gained them an agent of their own to coordinate with the local authorities. It meant that there was light at the end of the tunnel, if only they could get their hands back on Alex.
He and Jacobs had both listened to the recordings.
Cameron seriously doubted that Alex had meant for anyone to hear his suffering – the grunts of pain as Raab attacked Alex, brought him down with words and lies. The unmistakable confusion in Alex's voice after they dosed him with something. Multiple times. The constant teasing and references to events that Alex probably didn't remember – though Daniels had been able to fill in at least some of the blanks. They were able to get a clearer picture of what exactly had happened during the first captivity.
The only good bit of news was that there seemed to be minimal torture for the sake of torture. They were testing the limits of their drugs and whatever conditioning they were testing out with Alex.
That was likely going to change now that he had tried to escape.
"DINI has sent teams up into the mountains. There are only a few houses up there… if they left any clues behind, they'll find it." Daniels got up from his chair, before regarding Cameron and Jacobs carefully. He didn't say it, but there was no way Raab's men had gone back to their original location. It was more likely that there was something they were missing in the city again. It was why Daniels had flown back so quickly following the failure of the mission. "I'll come back to give you an update this evening."
It was all too obvious what no one was mentioning – the longer Alex was missing, the more likely it was that they would be finding a corpse. That everything they had, had turned into dust. He knew they never should've trusted a lone foreign agent to get him out. They had known where he was, more or less. Brute force would've been a better option.
Sure, the local agent knew the best way to get him out, but at the very least, there should've been a team there. Ready and waiting.
"Any idea when your bosses are going to let us out of here?" Jacobs asked.
Right.
Because they were still being kept under lock and key. And wasn't that insulting. Their government trusted them so little – despite the fact that it had been the government's idea in the first place – that they couldn't even help with the search.
"Paperwork," Daniels said with a grimace. "Kendrick's came through first. He's being transferred back to Birmingham this afternoon. I imagine yours will come through relatively quickly now."
Birmingham. Which meant they weren't planning on releasing Nico from the hospital any time soon. He was going to be furious at the lack of updates. Cameron sincerely hoped they were prepared to deal with the man. Forcing a medical discharge on him was going to be the least of their problems.
Daniels took their moment of pause to escape the room.
"You think they'll let us stick around?" Jacobs asked quietly, eyeing the door suspiciously.
Cameron shook hie head. "Not unless something happens before they can ship us out." He didn't blame them. He wouldn't have wanted an emotionally compromised unit underfoot either. That they were keeping them updated at all was a kindness.
And he doubted any of them were long for the service anymore.
The stacks of paperwork had finally come their way, courtesy of a young diplomatic agent that side eyed them warily.
Fill this out.
Report this.
Sign these.
Central Command had not been pleased to find out about the maneuverings that someone had signed off on – though to be fair, even that had been done by one of their own. They generally frowned on quasi-black ops missions that they weren't fully informed of – too many toes got trampled.
It just meant that they were caught up in the midst of it.
Cameron had no doubt that the slowness to the final paperwork was meant to give them time to contemplate just what they had done. They were all going to be lucky to get away without a black mark on their records.
And then Central Command had wanted a detailed recounting of just how screwed up the mission had become. Nico's injuries. Mickey's death. Alex's desertion. All in minute detail of just where Cameron had gone wrong. How he had failed his mission and failed his team.
It stung.
They should've stuck closer to the safe houses.
He should've insisted on more thorough protections around the house.
Should've known that one person wouldn't necessarily be able to raise a warning that they were walking into a trap.
Should've figured that an external pin code lock wouldn't be enough.
He should've never been alone with Alex – even though Nico needed protecting as well. Jacobs could've kept an extra eye out, especially when they were both injured and reeling.
He should've found Alex before Raab. Daniels had picked up a ping from Alex's device – clearly having stay in Lima for nearly a week – and had set things in motion on his end to come to Peru. It hadn't been enough. It had only transmitted for a couple of hours – long enough to know that Alex was not only the move, but that he had lured Raab straight to him.
Suicidal idiot.
By the time Daniels had arrived in the city, it was far too late. Daniels had tracked the rest of them down not long after he had landed in the city. Mere hours after Alex had gone silent again, Jacobs and Cameron were locked up in a holding facility at the British Embassy. No one had wanted to touch them with a ten-foot pole – deserters deserved the highest scorn, after all.
Cameron had little intention of ever returning to Peru once they were out. It was only a reminder of all his failures.
He wasn't looking forward to visiting Mickey's family either – or whoever his next of kin were. He had never talked about a family to go back to. But there was likely someone.
"I don't think glaring any harder at it will make it any better." Jacobs joined him at the small table, sitting across from him. They had finally been upgraded from the interrogation room to a private suite in the embassy, once the appropriate papers clearing their names had arrived. "Finish those papers and they'll probably have us out of here as soon as they can manage a flight."
Cameron gave him a wry smile. "Don't think they'll send us commercial?"
"Too many chances for us to make a break for it."
And they both knew that the break for it they would take, was to stay in Peru. To take a page out of Alex's book and hide in Lima. Until they had news, good or bad. The moment they left the embassy, any news would likely cease abruptly.
It was possible they would never know what happened in the end.
"Did you ask Daniels?" Jacobs asked.
Cameron grimaced – he had all but begged Daniels to find a way to let them stick around. "Yeah, Central Command wants us back under their thumb. And we're down half a team." It's not like having a full team had actually worked, but… "I foresee long weeks of psych evals and retraining." If they even made it to the retraining step. He wasn't so sure anymore.
He had done a lot of things in his career, but there were just some things… That a kid as young as Alex had gotten pulled into the messes that he had, it was hard to see their side of things. That what they were serving for really was all just and right. Because who bothered to protect the kids of their own country?
There was a knock on the door and whoever apparently didn't care about their right to privacy, because they let themselves in.
Daniels.
He gave them both a cautious smile, but still looked just as exhausted as the two of them. "Thought you might want to know, DINI found Raab's body outside of – well, they found it."
"And this is good news?" Cameron asked. It seemed that Raab was the only lead they had had. If he was dead… who was calling the shots now?
"That's what I wondered. But it apparently opened up a whole new avenue for DINI to investigate. They have more latitude to operate with some solid evidence that he was murdered. National Police is being brought in, but it means there are fewer cracks to slip through. Alex is still in the country, we just have to find where."
And find him before someone decided that he caused more trouble than he was worth.
That was the piece Cameron didn't quite get.
Why hadn't anyone killed Alex yet? It seemed like an awful lot of effort to put into hunting Alex down, when he had already proved he had no information of interest. Raab was clearly somewhat delusional, enjoyed inflicting pain on others, but… it still didn't explain his fixation on Alex. "You think it's someone still connected to Raab?"
Daniels nodded sharply. "Absolutely. We've suspected that there was another shadow figure in the midst of all this. Not all the moles we detected could be traced back directly to Raab. In the DINI agent's last transmission, she warned us about an Emmerson. Raab also mentioned a third-party, and there is a third person on some of the recordings, but never put a name to it. All we know is that this person worked with Raab and had some level of influence. If we find him, I'm sure we'll find Alex.
He sounded so confident too. Cameron nodded in acquiescence. There was a lead, but that didn't change anything. They were going to ship them out as soon as possible, and then they would be completely out of the loop.
He only hoped that someone would let them know when Alex was found – dead or alive.
A/N: Shorter chapter this time. Some of you wanted to know what the others were up to, so... here you go. Also, imagine my surprise when I realize that while the U.S. Embassy is huge and takes up a ton of space in Lima (or at least, it looked huge from the outside), the actual British Embassy is on the 22nd floor of a skyscraper in downtown Lima. So, for the sake of this story and not having to go back and retcon what I've written and my mental image of things, the British Embassy in this world is roughly the same size/location as the actual U.S. Embassy. Fun fact for the day, I guess.