Wow this chapter was re-written at least 6 times...This shoukd be wrapping up soon! _

Chapter 24 - Clues

Mac wasn't sure how long she slept, her internal clock had finally shut itself down after the harrowing activities of the last few days. It was morning, evident by the warm light that shone through the windows and cast a familiar glow across the loft.

A strong arm was wrapped around her middle. The comforting scent of him was wrapped all around her. She felt safe and loved and warm and if she never left that bed, it was fine by her. Saving the World could wait.

Harm shifted slightly, groaned a little because the wound still hurt when the skin stretched. He opened one eye to find Mac looking at him with a gentle smile. "Hey."

"Morning." Her lips teased his and a hand came to cup the side of his face. Mac ran a finger over the facial hair, still lamenting that he hadn't shaved the damned thing off. As selfish as it sounded, she wanted her Harm back even if he had scars. "I take back what I said last night. Maybe we should stay here, ignore the rest of the World."

"Wouldn't that be nice?" He rolled onto his back and sighed heavily. "We need to get a burner phone, talk to Chegwidden. I don't trust Kitcher, neither of us trust Webb, there isn't anyone left." Harm thought about contacting Beth O'Neil, she'd been a great partner and friend, someone who had his back when Mac wasn't there. But, she'd left the CIA and wanted little to do with them since nearly being killed.

There were limited friends left that he knew would help and most Harm didn't want involved in these harrowing affairs. Chegwidden was a former SEAL and a man he once saw as a father figure. He was also a man that Harm blamed for not allowing him back in the Navy but that was a grievance that he needed to put aside.

"He'll help."

"You sound sure of that."

"You still hold a grudge?"

He turned his head to look at her. "Chegwidden could have let me back in. He could have torn up my resignation and ignored it like he did yours." Harm turned his head back to stare at the ceiling and the wood beams that held it together. In a way, he was a little jealous that Mac had always been the Admiral's favorite. "He always liked you better."

"Yeah right. You were the one he was grooming for that chair, not me. And you need to let that go, it's almost been two years. You didn't have to join the agency."

"No, I didn't." He agreed but at the time Harm believed it was for her benefit to join the fight and find Sadik Fahd. Then a year passed and almost two, the terrorist was still at large and more players in this game had been revealed. "I wanted to keep you safe. It backfired."

Carefully, Harm turned to his side and ran a hand gently down her arm. "Mac, look..If we get caught, if anyone finds us, tell them I took you, kidnapped you, whatever it takes to get you out of this mess."

"No."

"Mac-"

"No." Mac said with determination as she sat up and leaned against the headboard. "We're partners, remember? I'm done hiding and lying, none of it worked before…I'm in it with you."

"You can be damned stubborn, you know."

She grinned and leaned down to kiss him. "I know, I learned it from you."

The laptop had failed to turn on for a fourth time, a dreaded black screen kept cycling over and over until Mac lost her patience and considered tossing it out a window. Each reboot took nearly an hour and was draining the battery so quickly, she wondered if the machine had some kind of virus they weren't aware of.

She was pissed and cursing, the frustration getting the best of her until Harm grabbed the device and slammed it hard into the table. A piece of the plastic housing cracked but, miraculously the computer sputtered to life. "How'd you do that?"

"Not everything needs finesse, Colonel. A little brute strength helps as well." He grinned and once it turned on Harm punched in the long series of passwords that gave him access. "You sure they can't track us?"

"Nope." Her fingers flew over the keypad after opening the command prompt. "I disabled a few things, sent the IP address bouncing around the globe. If anyone checks, this computer can appear to be somewhere in the Middle East."

Impressed, he pulled out a chair and settled in next to her. "I knew you were good at computers. but not this good. It's sexy." She gave him a pointed glare of the 'gimme a break' variety but he simply shrugged. "I mean it. You're not just a pretty face."

Mac entered code upon code onto a black screen until she was able to access the USB drive's inner workings. A manifest of folders appeared, even the deleted ones that could never be fully removed, she clicked on one first and then another but it was the third that hid information. "Part of my curriculum in college was computers. The CIA wanted me proficient so I was put into their own training before joining law school."

"How did they find you?"

"I didn't know this at the time but they often recruit college students. I was a young Marine officer, top of my class in OCS and I guess I popped up on their radar." Maybe if Farrow hadn't steered her towards the law, the agency wouldn't have taken notice?

Sadly, she had to thank them for her job, her position and even the games Webb played to find her Uncle. It all led her to the White House rose garden and the most incredible man Mac had ever met. "I was young, stupid and, if I'm being honest…it gave me an ego boost that I needed at that time."

"Yeah, I get that." For Harm they tangled billion dollar planes that touched the atmosphere, sent an adrenaline junkie on assignments that were just a touch harrowing. "Were you sent to the Farm?" He asked quietly, the training facility was at an undisclosed location and although he'd been a guest for about two months, Harm never got to learn more than was required for one assignment.

"Yup."

"What was it like for you?"

"Sort of easy, the work at least. The rest, the psychological I was exempt from but I know it's hell for some recruits." She sighed and frowned. "I guess since I'd been in the middle of a war zone they afforded me a little leeway in that department."

"They trained me for one assignment and it was more like torture. I think. I think Webb was trying to kill me."

"The manhole assignment." Mac said quietly, recalling the conversation they had back on the houseboat. Some chemical was poured down on Harm during training and left the scars he bore on his back. They treated him like a real prisoner, locking him in a cell with no medical care. It was a miracle the acid never got down to the bone.

"Yeah. What I was offered was different with MI6. I didn't feel expendable, those assignments were flawless." Will Kitcher treated him like a partner, an important one that shared information British intelligence couldn't find. "It was easy to follow Will's lead."

Now Harm felt like a fool and as she watched Mac open and close files, he realized how lucky he was that she was still by his side. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and let his fingers trail down Mac's neck to her shoulder.

"You already apologized."

"I know, but I'm still sorry." And when she turned to look at him, Harm pulled her into his embrace. He held her close, buried his head in her shoulder and took a deep breath. Mac's scent was comforting, like a balm that soothed his weary soul. When they parted her hands cupped his face and she pressed the softest kiss against his lips. "I needed that."

"I did too." She admitted and pressed her forehead against his.

Harm was napping on the sofa when a yelp startled him out of a dead sleep. He focused on the source, his eyes locking in on the woman hurrying towards him with the laptop in hand.

"I'm in!" Mac exclaimed excitedly. She practically shoved him to a sitting position and settled the laptop on the coffee table where Harm's sleep laden eyes tried to focus on the windows that were open across the screen. One had thumbnails with tiny images that previewed the files that lay within it.

Another was a list of documents assembled in a familiar alphanumeric order that reminded him of the files that Kitcher's men would send to him each night. "What is all this?"

"A manifest, as best I can tell." She clicked on one file and it opened a list of items Mac wasn't familiar with and others that seemed "normal." The pictures she opened next were of a field of vibrant purple, red a white flowers that grew from long green stems.

Mac wasn't sure why there were photos of the flowers until she noticed the spherical capsule atop the stem. A sort of goo oozed out of them, a latex that she knew was turned to opiates for medicinal purposes or, in this case, the drug trade.

"What is that?" He asked after squinting at the screen and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes

"Poppy. Probably being grown in Afghanistan with the CIA's blessing." For decades the fields had flourished and the heroin smuggled into Russia was used as an advantage during the war. Soldiers became addicts, weakening the resistance that helped the Afghans fight against the Soviets. This time, they weren't looking at fields in the Middle East, the map Mac brought up clearly defined where they were located.

"That's not Afghanistan." He was surprised that Paraguay showed up, a little town just south of Ciudad Del Este where Sadik's compound was more or less located.

The place seemed to have been abandonded when he was dropped in a year earlier to do reconisance on the terrorist or maybe it was just for his benefit? No one ever thought to look beyond the trees to the farmlands nearby. They were merely searching for clues, remnants to appease the agency. Now it seemed like there was more to it than diamonds and weapons.

"Shit. How did we miss this?" Harm said suddenly as he minimized the window's she'd opened so that he could access the information Kitcher sent him. He found the topographical maps and stared at the land using what he knew of the compound to locate the fields.

This is what Kitcher and his men were searching for, the secret Webb had hidden away. "They are about two miles away from where I found you."

Harm changed files and searched through Mac's thumbdrive where he stopped at a specific photo. The poppy fields with its vibrant flowers were in view and in the distance was a building, a shed made of sheet metal that had rust stains on one side. "Why is that structure so familiar?"

"Maybe you've been in it? Didn't you return to Paraguay to search for Sadik?"

Harm shook his head slowly. "We never got this far out, only kept to the hacienda. Everything was gone." He set fire to the shack, the one where Mac would have been tortured and killed. Harm watched it burn to the ground while the CIA officer he was paired with searched the area for clues.

It was empty, or so they thought because the intel kept them away from pushing further into the forest that hid Sadik's compound. On the map it was just a field that provided little importance. That had been nearly a year and a half ago and the agency had abandoned reconnaissance of the area in favor of focusing on other projects.

"MI6 sent me encrypted files, some for me to open and decipher and others for me to protect until someone made contact with a password." That contact never came and despite Will's order to not open certain folders, Harm did anyway. "There was a building that kept showing up in pictures."

His finger flew over the touchpad, seeking out one of the hidden folders in the laptop until it was spotted. Harm opened a picture, zoomed in on an image of that same rusted building with the men standing outside. At the time, all he saw were two men engaged in some sort of negotiation. It was important enough that MI6 sent it his way to decipher but the more Harm stared at the image, the less he understood.

"Why didn't I see it before?" Harm zoomed in a bit more, hitting a key to make the photo as clear as possible. It took a minute to load, for the pixels to reassemble and once they did the man that appeared was almost pale white with long blond hair that was slicked back. He wore a light blue suit and looked more like an out of place German tourist than a Middle Eastern man. "Shit…The Chameleon, that's Sadik."

He wasn't recognizable, the man could have passed through the most sophisticated security and no one would have noticed. What was most interesting about the photo was the currency exchange, a small bag of diamonds that was being given to another man who kept his back turned to the camera.

Harm grabbed the computer and pulled it onto his lap. He quickly clicked through images, hoping to see exactly who the other man was. There was no clear photo. His face was always covered by something, mainly the cap with a neck cover that cast shadows on his face. "C'mon."

The faster Harm clicked the more the scene appeared to move and yet, the other man's identity remained hidden until a final snapshot held one tiny piece of information. A black cane rested against the wall, its silver handle glistening in the daylight. In the last photo the mystery man reached for his crutch and a tiny piece of evidence was given away.

On the ring finger sat a large signet ring with an engraving that Harm was able to zoom on. Although he couldn't make out all the letters, the shield on the design was familiar. "That's a Harvard logo, I'm sure of it."

"Webb." Mac said, frowning when she noticed that none of the photos were clear. "We can't use this."

"No but I wonder if this is what Kitcher was looking for?" He tried another picture and then another, eventually becoming irritated with the lack of any clear shots. "Why didn't Kershaw tell you what he suspected?"

"None of this means anything. No clear picture, the manifests are coded. I got what I could from his computer and clearly it wasn't enough…Why heroin, if Webb is helping Sadik he has an arsenal at his disposal."

"Why not? It poses less red flags than missing weapons of war. Process it, stick it on a truck and carry it across the border. Or in my case, fly it under the guise of medical equipment for humanitarian missions." If any part of the CIA was involved, border agents would be paid off or blackmailed. The heroin could easily spread from the United States and be sent elsewhere. "I wouldn't be surprised if that's why Beth and I were attacked, someone wanted the drugs, we were in the way."

As much as she hated to admit it, Harm's joining MI6 was likely what saved him. Had he kept on transporting the narcotics he would have been killed. "Blaisdale, Will, whatever you call him might have saved you."

"Yeah, well I don't trust him. Not after he turned me against you."

The look of disgust on his face was painful to watch as Mac imagined Harm blaming himself.

She placed the laptop back on the coffee table and covered his hands with her own. "Stop blaming yourself."

"That's gonna take a while."

Mac sighed and cast a jaundiced eye at the laptop. There were still hundreds of files to sift through in order to break Kerhsaw's codes and find the paper trail and time was running out. "I may have to do it. I may have to get closer to Clay."

Harm couldn't help the pang of jealousy, the feeling that the spookster could have gotten under Mac's skin and turned her into an ally. It's what he dreaded the most once they seperated, the nagging, pleading and wearing down until she gave in.

"You're not going anywhere near him." He snapped and winced when his voice made Mac jump. "Webb's a sneaky, shady monster."

"I know what he is." She said quietly, her own shame at marginally believing the spook made her heart ache. Webb caused her to doubt the man she loved and even spy to a degree. "He's like a Teflon man.. nothing sticks."

"Let's start with Chegwidden, see if his contacts in the NSA know anything." Harm stood, went to the closet and came back with a hardsided suitcase. His passports, the money was all at JAG and that's where they would start. He hefted the luggage onto the sofa and opened it Inside was a much more elaborate disguise kit.

Three days later an elderly man and a teenaged boy walked out of the hangar en route to Falls Church.