Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.

Utopia Now

"We haven't heard from Curt Hollis, codename Leprechaun, in over three weeks," said Billy, holding out a picture of a handsome young man with a charming smile.

"Isn't this the guy who dropped out of sight in Morocco for over a month?" Lee asked, looking at the picture with mild distaste. He was a strong believer in checking in with HQ — something probably drilled into him by his mechanically punctual and rule-abiding uncle.

"Right," Billy replied, holding his hand out for the picture. "We finally tracked him down in Tangiers living with a belly-dancer. He's a damn good agent, but he has this 'thing' with the ladies."

He handed the picture to Francine.

"Sounds like someone else we know," she teased Lee, and he shifted uncomfortably.

"Cool it, will you?" he asked, seeming not to like this reminder of his sordid past. "I thought he just got back from some hairy operation in Tehran." He got up and started pacing, as he always did when ill at ease or thinking.

"He did," Billy said. "But I'm worried I might have sent him back in the field too soon. It was just supposed to be a simple surveillance operation. Francine, would you fill him in?"

She told him everything she knew about Hollis' mission: the tax reformer Peter Sacker and the little community he led called "New Utopia".

It was never a good thing when an agent, even as unreliable an agent as Hollis, went missing. It was even worse when he might be mixed up with a crockpot.

Francine hated crackpots. They caused an inordinate amount of paperwork for people who weren't actually doing anything illegal.

"Why send me, huh?" Lee asked, sounding more like a teenager being given an extra fifteen problems of math homework than an agent being sent on a potentially dangerous mission. "Why can't you put a rookie on this?"

"Oh, I am," said Billy, and he would have grinned if he dared. He had a particular grin, using mostly his front teeth, that Francine had come to associate with Amanda becoming involved in something. The grin didn't appear this time, but she recognized the tone all the same. "I want you to take Amanda."

Lee deflated. "Oh, Billy," he groaned.

It startled Francine. She didn't know when Lee had last complained about Amanda going with him. He'd grown out of it. To hear it again was unexpected and a little confusing.

"She grew up in Virginia," Billy explained. "She should know the countryside pretty well."

"Yeah," Francine put in, testing the waters. "She probably did a lot of camping there with the Blue Jays."

Lee gave her a strained smile and a false laugh that did not suit him. She didn't know why he was so opposed to Amanda going. Was he still so hung up on the black books? And if, as was so plainly obvious, there was nothing between Lee and Amanda, what did that matter?

He left the office with another groan, and she didn't see him again for a long time.

Billy came back with bad news that confirmed that Peter Sacker wasn't the harmless sort of crackpot. He was, instead, a potentially volatile one who had already had run-ins with the law.

Lee missed his 2:30 check-in.

And his 4:30 check-in.

The IFF line rang. She had come to dread it, but she picked it up anyway. It wasn't a voice she recognized. It was when the man asked for Lee Stetman that her heart dropped and she realized what this was: an attempt to verify an identity as a filmmaker. Her suspicion was confirmed when the man asked for Amanda Keene.

They had been intercepted, at the very least. The more likely possibility was that they had been caught.

What was this, some kind of Appalachian Bermuda Triangle? How did three agents — okay, two agents and a civilian — manage to vanish at the same place? They had lost contact with Hollis; that was why they sent Lee and Amanda. And now they had also lost contact with Lee and Amanda. If they didn't check in by 6:30, Billy was going to send a backup team.

At this rate, the only agent left in the agency would be Fred Fielder. The rest of them would disappear into the Virginia mountains one after the other.

An SOS came in at 6:15. SOS messages automatically came through, even if they were sent by someone named "Gear Jam Granny". Even if it was a relay from a trucker named "Baby Moon". Scarecrow's unorthodox methods were paying off.

They sent a backup team. Francine insisted on going, too. They drove up the mountains and along little trails that hardly qualified as trails. They managed to find a little store called "Cobb's Corner". It was closed.

She spent a miserable night. True, it was warm and dry in her apartment, but she was worried. She and Duffy set out before dawn in the morning, driving up and down the same mountains and bumping along the same little trails that were barely trails. They had no success. She radioed Billy on the second pass.

The President was being evacuated. The stability of the country depended on Francine's ability to find and rescue two men and a housewife. It would be difficult; whoever had captured them had managed to catch two of the people who were best-known for eluding enemies. They also had captured Amanda, which Francine considered a point in the agency's favor — Amanda was great at confusing those who had her in custody.

They only got their first clue when they stopped by Cobb's Corner and a little boy thought he recognized Amanda's picture.

It was the break they needed. He pointed them in the right direction, and they converged on Crackpot Junction — formally known as Peter Sacker's "New Utopia".

There was no sign of Lee or Amanda, but she found Hollis bound and gagged. It was a very real indication of his good intentions to stop whatever Sacker and his cronies had planned, at least. She decided to trust him. They jumped in the nearest Jeep and took off, racing the helicopters that held the President, hoping to get wherever they needed to in time.

They didn't get there in time.

Lee did. She and Hollis drove up under a dispersing cloud of dust and debris that had been Sacker and his handheld anti-aircraft missile, and they took Sacker's second-in-command into custody. He was sweating and shaking, which made sense.

After all, Francine thought with satisfaction, whether you know her or not, there is something fundamentally terrifying about the sight of Amanda pointing an automatic rifle at you.

She missed it. Again. Rumors were flying around. Sally and Marge had overheard Amanda and Lee "clearing the air", as it were, about what had happened the night before, while they were lost in the backwoods.

"They weren't talking loudly," Marge said, "but they both seemed a little flushed. And you should have seen the look on Lee's face when she left him there in the hallway!"

She never did hear what it looked like. Marge wasn't very good with details.

But whatever the look was, it resulted in Leatherneck resentfully pushing five dollars across the gun range countertop with only his grease-stained forefinger when she went there next.

"Consider it a refund," he said, and refused to say more.