Chapter 11 – The Escape – Take 3
Notes: See Chapter 1.
[CIA van, blocks away from Hartley House]
Vaughn absently fingers Aunt Trish's hanky in his pocket. "How long has she been in there?" Weiss asks him. Vaughn makes a movement to slide his shirt cuff away from his watch so he can tell the time, but stops, and watches Weiss laugh. "Mike, you've been staring at your watch every minute for the last 50—"
"56," Vaughn corrects him.
"Ah…*56* minutes. My mistake."
Vaughn is exasperated. "Will you cut it out? Yes, I'm nervous that we haven't heard anything from her in that long…and yes---" he pauses, "---she could be in there for a while yet," he finishes absently, feeling suddenly uneasy. He catches himself staring at one of the night vision monitors.
"What's the matter?" Weiss prompts him.
"I don't know. I thought I saw something move on that screen right there, aimed at the rooftop of the building across from here---" Vaughn begins, pointing. They both jump in their seats as they suddenly hear her voice burst into their headsets.
"Guimauve…to base, do you…copy?" Vaughn can hear her panting--she must be running full tilt from Hartley House.
"We copy," Vaughn cuts in before Weiss can speak. "What's your status? We may have some unusual activity going on in the vicinity…" he says, gesturing to Weiss and pointing to the monitor showing the rooftop again. This time it was unmistakable---someone or something was definitely moving around up there.
"I have the take. I'm a…block away, coming back…the way I came. Had no problems…getting out…" She pauses before speaking again. "And what did you mean by unusual activity?"
"He means unfriendlies," Weiss replies through his headset, shifting around in the back of the van to ready the wireless data-storage device.
Vaughn hears her footsteps speed up very slightly---she must be trying to hurry to get within range of the CIA van to do the file transfer. Furiously thinking, Vaughn considers options. Option A, get her to do the file transfer and leave her on her own to get out. Option B, abort the file transfer, get her out of the area safely and figure out a way to do a transfer of some kind before she arrives back in LA.
"I can hear you thinking. You want to abort this op, don't you?" she asks him, with a hint of mutiny in her voice.
Vaughn hesitates before answering her. "It's a possible option at this point."
"We're not going to abort this operation," she begins slowly.
"It's too dangerous—" he starts, but she cuts him off.
"Base, I mean to complete this mission, unfriendlies or not," she says, with a ring of steel in her voice. "Am I within range yet?"
Vaughn finally sees her appear on the night vision monitor, walking briskly. The momentary feeling of dread he had experienced when she said she'd finish the mission quickly dissipates as he views her now, unharmed. He watches her take her backpack off and open it to retrieve her PDA/data-extractor. She palms it to her right side, the gadget face side up towards the van.
Vaughn watches Weiss fiddle with the device and then mouth the phrase '3 car lengths'. "Negative," he relays to her. "Another 3 car lengths." Within 5 seconds, the green light on the wireless device begins to flash. "Okay, you're within range now. Transmit."
"Transmitting…now."
"At the rate you're moving," Weiss informs her, "we're not going to get all the data from you before you step out of range with your gadget. So if you can slow down just a couple seconds…"
"I copy," she says, stopping instantly as if she had dropped something on the sidewalk. Keeping her gadget face side up and out of sight as much as she can, she squats down and peers at the ground. After a few seconds, she pretends to pick up what she dropped and starts walking again. "So where are these unfriendlies you speak of situated?"
"On the rooftop of the building across from us," Vaughn replies.
"You know it could just be pigeons," she offers as an explanation.
"Nocturnal pigeons?"
"Sure, there are some species that live in the city who've adjusted to the night by staying close to bright street lamp lights. Hey, did you know that some pigeons have the ability to see ultraviolet light*? Marshall told me that the other day."
Vaughn watches Weiss roll his eyes.
Sydney continues her train of thought. "Maybe someday SD-6 will create a squad of super-pigeons and get them to go on missions instead of sending out people. Though I don't know how the CIA handlers would be able to deal with pigeon double agents. Or stool pigeons would be the more appropriate term to call them I guess."
Weiss is sitting in the van, shoulders shaking, trying not to laugh out loud.
Vaughn shoots him an outraged look. "Always glad to be someone's punching bag," he finally replies in a sardonic tone.
"You guys are a tough crowd. I was just trying to kill some time here. Lighten up will you?" They hear her laugh. "So how are we doing with the file transfer?"
Sitting up in his seat, Weiss checks the device.
[A rooftop of an abandoned, boarded-up building, across the street from the CIA van]
He had considered leaving his perch 5 minutes earlier to get the Master File from her just as she left Hartley House. But that would have put the both of them at risk of being shot at by the Alliance's Security Section. And that was a complication he could ill afford.
So he had watched and waited to see if she would end up coming back the same way as she came, and as expected, she did. But what surprised him was when she sped up partway down the block and then stopped moments later to look for something on the ground.
She had to be doing something with the File. But what? A dead drop or file transfer? Possibly. But who was she in contact with? SD-6? No, they wouldn't chance a transfer, not this close to Hartley House.
Standing up quickly even after a few hours of inactivity, Sark stretches his legs and takes his night vision goggles off. Opening the door to the roof, he descends the stairs quickly and quietly, hoping to catch up with her.
Reaching ground level, he finds the boarded up window he had initially entered the building from, and pulls at the damp plywood. The plywood gives easily under his tugging, and he slips out the back of the building.
He walks around to the front of the building, and stops. Hidden in shadows, he sees her tall, slender form pass by a station wagon. Where could she have transmitted the File? His eyes dart back and forth, and finally fixes his gaze back on a nondescript van she had passed seconds earlier.
He smiles. Of course the CIA would be nearby in the hopes of obtaining a copy of the File from her. Mindful of his orders, he takes his handgun out from his jacket, flicks the safety off of it and begins to moves stealthily towards the van, shifting his focus away from Sydney.
[CIA van]
Vaughn tries to keep his voice neutral even though he is feeling something close to euphoria. "Base to Guimauve, we have the take. Repeat, we have the take."
"I copy." He can only see the back of her now as she walks down the block, but he can hear the smile in her words.
"Well done." Weiss says. "Now get the hell out of there before Mike goes and calls for a not-so-subtle CIA escort for you. We'll stick around for a little while yet and see if the unfriendlies show up."
Vaughn glares at Weiss. They both hear her snort. "Thanks, you guys. Gotta go, I have to make my checkpoint in 2 minutes or SD-6 Security Section may come looking for me."
"All right." Weiss says.
"Thanks for putting up with me, guys. Guimauve out." They watch her make her way down the block and turn the corner.
Satisfied that nobody is up on the rooftop after 10 minutes of watching the night vision monitors, they decide to pack up. Weiss turns off the last of the night vision monitors. Vaughn shifts around the back of the van, clearing things up.
"You done?" Weiss asks him. Vaughn nods, watching him slide past him in the cramped space to the back doors so he can get out to get to the driver's side door. As he opens the back doors, he starts to speak. "She did great out there tonight—"
And then stops abruptly as Sark lowers his gun barrel at his forehead.
"Good evening, gentlemen. Ah, Mr. Vaughn. Will wonders never cease, running into you again so soon."
Heart pounding, Vaughn glances at Weiss, and then at Sark. "What do you want?"
"You have a file that Miss Bristow has transmitted to this van. My employer would like to obtain the CIA's copy of that file."
"You…this was all a set up. The information was leaked to SD-6 and the CIA, about the Master File," Vaughn gets out. "Getting us to do the dirty work for you."
"Yes, and if you don't give it to me in the next 20 seconds, your partner here will die."
"Mike, don't give the file to him," Weiss says calmly.
Thinking quickly, Vaughn attempts an opening gambit. "What if I duplicate a copy? You get yours, the CIA gets theirs, and everyone wins."
"Mike, don't, don't let them get a copy." Sark presses the gun barrel against Weiss's forehead to silence him.
"Tantalizing though the offer may be, it wouldn't serve any strategic advantage if the CIA, SD-6 and the organization I work for were all to have the same intel at the same time. My terms are non-negotiable. You now have 10 seconds to decide." Vaughn puts his hands out to where Sark can see them, and reaches for the wireless device.
"Put the gun down Sark, and I'll give the File to you."
"5 seconds—"
But suddenly, to Vaughn's amazement, Sark is jerked violently back from Weiss by a pair of unseen hands. Weiss slides to the pavement, and scrabbles for a hold to hoist himself up.
Vaughn watches in utter shock and amazement as he sees Sydney fly through the air and deliver a series of furiously quick punches finishing off with a roundhouse kick that dropped Sark to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Her voice floats in the night air and reaches him, faintly. "You guys okay?"
"I just watched the Matrix, only it was live," Weiss says, dazed.
"Why did you come back? You should be at your checkpoint by now," Vaughn starts, getting out of the van to see if she was hurt at all (she wasn't, of course).
"I was," she grunts, trying to lift an unconscious Sark up by the armpits. Vaughn automatically bends down to grab Sark's feet. "I made contact with an SD-6 agent at my checkpoint and was asked to drop off the File. I was on my way back to my hotel when, I don't know, I had this, weird gut feeling that you guys might be sitting ducks with a copy of the File. So I doubled back here." Vaughn gives her a skeptical look and she arches an eyebrow at him. "Well, I was *right*, wasn't I?"
They tie Sark up with a few plastic zap straps and then heave him into the van. As Weiss calls the London CIA office for a team to take Sark into custody, Vaughn motions her a little ways from the van. She follows him a few steps. He turns and puts his hand on her shoulder and moves in to talk to her in a low voice.
"Sydney, you shouldn't have come back and risk your life for us."
"I had to. I wanted to," she said, earnestly. "I had to because the CIA needs to get that File to shut down the Alliance. And I wanted to because you would have done the same for me, in my place. You put yourself out on the line every time when I do my countermissions, even though you're not in the field most of the time. Why can't I do the same for you…and Weiss?"
"It's not supposed to be done that way."
She laughs ironically. "You're one to talk. You know we've bent and broken the rules ever since we found out that my mo--Irina, your father--"
He nods, understanding, and he begins to feel a vague sense of déjà vu from his talk with Weiss earlier in the evening. "Yeah, I do. We do okay most of the time, but sometimes—"
She nods, understanding too. "Yeah. I know." She takes a deep breath and for a long moment they don't say anything else, choosing instead to stare at the inky black sky.
But finally, she breaks the silence. "I gotta go. I got a flight to catch in a few hours and I want to get some sleep before I do. Who knows if I'm going to be getting any decent sleep in the next few weeks, right?"
He nods. "Right."
"Okay." She shoots him a small, tired smile. "Bye."
He nods. "Bye."
After watching her melt into the shadows, he jams his hands into his jacket pockets and walks back to the van. Touching the red hanky, he pulls it out and looks at it consideringly. Wouldn't Aunt Trish have a hoot if she knew the hanky just might possibly be a good luck charm after all?
"Ready to bust out of here as soon as the cavalry arrives?" Weiss calls out to him.
Vaughn turns and smiles at Weiss. "Can't wait."
*Note on pigeons and UV light was found here: http://www.stanfordalumni.org/birdsite/text/essays/Hawk-Eyed.html
Notes: See Chapter 1.
[CIA van, blocks away from Hartley House]
Vaughn absently fingers Aunt Trish's hanky in his pocket. "How long has she been in there?" Weiss asks him. Vaughn makes a movement to slide his shirt cuff away from his watch so he can tell the time, but stops, and watches Weiss laugh. "Mike, you've been staring at your watch every minute for the last 50—"
"56," Vaughn corrects him.
"Ah…*56* minutes. My mistake."
Vaughn is exasperated. "Will you cut it out? Yes, I'm nervous that we haven't heard anything from her in that long…and yes---" he pauses, "---she could be in there for a while yet," he finishes absently, feeling suddenly uneasy. He catches himself staring at one of the night vision monitors.
"What's the matter?" Weiss prompts him.
"I don't know. I thought I saw something move on that screen right there, aimed at the rooftop of the building across from here---" Vaughn begins, pointing. They both jump in their seats as they suddenly hear her voice burst into their headsets.
"Guimauve…to base, do you…copy?" Vaughn can hear her panting--she must be running full tilt from Hartley House.
"We copy," Vaughn cuts in before Weiss can speak. "What's your status? We may have some unusual activity going on in the vicinity…" he says, gesturing to Weiss and pointing to the monitor showing the rooftop again. This time it was unmistakable---someone or something was definitely moving around up there.
"I have the take. I'm a…block away, coming back…the way I came. Had no problems…getting out…" She pauses before speaking again. "And what did you mean by unusual activity?"
"He means unfriendlies," Weiss replies through his headset, shifting around in the back of the van to ready the wireless data-storage device.
Vaughn hears her footsteps speed up very slightly---she must be trying to hurry to get within range of the CIA van to do the file transfer. Furiously thinking, Vaughn considers options. Option A, get her to do the file transfer and leave her on her own to get out. Option B, abort the file transfer, get her out of the area safely and figure out a way to do a transfer of some kind before she arrives back in LA.
"I can hear you thinking. You want to abort this op, don't you?" she asks him, with a hint of mutiny in her voice.
Vaughn hesitates before answering her. "It's a possible option at this point."
"We're not going to abort this operation," she begins slowly.
"It's too dangerous—" he starts, but she cuts him off.
"Base, I mean to complete this mission, unfriendlies or not," she says, with a ring of steel in her voice. "Am I within range yet?"
Vaughn finally sees her appear on the night vision monitor, walking briskly. The momentary feeling of dread he had experienced when she said she'd finish the mission quickly dissipates as he views her now, unharmed. He watches her take her backpack off and open it to retrieve her PDA/data-extractor. She palms it to her right side, the gadget face side up towards the van.
Vaughn watches Weiss fiddle with the device and then mouth the phrase '3 car lengths'. "Negative," he relays to her. "Another 3 car lengths." Within 5 seconds, the green light on the wireless device begins to flash. "Okay, you're within range now. Transmit."
"Transmitting…now."
"At the rate you're moving," Weiss informs her, "we're not going to get all the data from you before you step out of range with your gadget. So if you can slow down just a couple seconds…"
"I copy," she says, stopping instantly as if she had dropped something on the sidewalk. Keeping her gadget face side up and out of sight as much as she can, she squats down and peers at the ground. After a few seconds, she pretends to pick up what she dropped and starts walking again. "So where are these unfriendlies you speak of situated?"
"On the rooftop of the building across from us," Vaughn replies.
"You know it could just be pigeons," she offers as an explanation.
"Nocturnal pigeons?"
"Sure, there are some species that live in the city who've adjusted to the night by staying close to bright street lamp lights. Hey, did you know that some pigeons have the ability to see ultraviolet light*? Marshall told me that the other day."
Vaughn watches Weiss roll his eyes.
Sydney continues her train of thought. "Maybe someday SD-6 will create a squad of super-pigeons and get them to go on missions instead of sending out people. Though I don't know how the CIA handlers would be able to deal with pigeon double agents. Or stool pigeons would be the more appropriate term to call them I guess."
Weiss is sitting in the van, shoulders shaking, trying not to laugh out loud.
Vaughn shoots him an outraged look. "Always glad to be someone's punching bag," he finally replies in a sardonic tone.
"You guys are a tough crowd. I was just trying to kill some time here. Lighten up will you?" They hear her laugh. "So how are we doing with the file transfer?"
Sitting up in his seat, Weiss checks the device.
[A rooftop of an abandoned, boarded-up building, across the street from the CIA van]
He had considered leaving his perch 5 minutes earlier to get the Master File from her just as she left Hartley House. But that would have put the both of them at risk of being shot at by the Alliance's Security Section. And that was a complication he could ill afford.
So he had watched and waited to see if she would end up coming back the same way as she came, and as expected, she did. But what surprised him was when she sped up partway down the block and then stopped moments later to look for something on the ground.
She had to be doing something with the File. But what? A dead drop or file transfer? Possibly. But who was she in contact with? SD-6? No, they wouldn't chance a transfer, not this close to Hartley House.
Standing up quickly even after a few hours of inactivity, Sark stretches his legs and takes his night vision goggles off. Opening the door to the roof, he descends the stairs quickly and quietly, hoping to catch up with her.
Reaching ground level, he finds the boarded up window he had initially entered the building from, and pulls at the damp plywood. The plywood gives easily under his tugging, and he slips out the back of the building.
He walks around to the front of the building, and stops. Hidden in shadows, he sees her tall, slender form pass by a station wagon. Where could she have transmitted the File? His eyes dart back and forth, and finally fixes his gaze back on a nondescript van she had passed seconds earlier.
He smiles. Of course the CIA would be nearby in the hopes of obtaining a copy of the File from her. Mindful of his orders, he takes his handgun out from his jacket, flicks the safety off of it and begins to moves stealthily towards the van, shifting his focus away from Sydney.
[CIA van]
Vaughn tries to keep his voice neutral even though he is feeling something close to euphoria. "Base to Guimauve, we have the take. Repeat, we have the take."
"I copy." He can only see the back of her now as she walks down the block, but he can hear the smile in her words.
"Well done." Weiss says. "Now get the hell out of there before Mike goes and calls for a not-so-subtle CIA escort for you. We'll stick around for a little while yet and see if the unfriendlies show up."
Vaughn glares at Weiss. They both hear her snort. "Thanks, you guys. Gotta go, I have to make my checkpoint in 2 minutes or SD-6 Security Section may come looking for me."
"All right." Weiss says.
"Thanks for putting up with me, guys. Guimauve out." They watch her make her way down the block and turn the corner.
Satisfied that nobody is up on the rooftop after 10 minutes of watching the night vision monitors, they decide to pack up. Weiss turns off the last of the night vision monitors. Vaughn shifts around the back of the van, clearing things up.
"You done?" Weiss asks him. Vaughn nods, watching him slide past him in the cramped space to the back doors so he can get out to get to the driver's side door. As he opens the back doors, he starts to speak. "She did great out there tonight—"
And then stops abruptly as Sark lowers his gun barrel at his forehead.
"Good evening, gentlemen. Ah, Mr. Vaughn. Will wonders never cease, running into you again so soon."
Heart pounding, Vaughn glances at Weiss, and then at Sark. "What do you want?"
"You have a file that Miss Bristow has transmitted to this van. My employer would like to obtain the CIA's copy of that file."
"You…this was all a set up. The information was leaked to SD-6 and the CIA, about the Master File," Vaughn gets out. "Getting us to do the dirty work for you."
"Yes, and if you don't give it to me in the next 20 seconds, your partner here will die."
"Mike, don't give the file to him," Weiss says calmly.
Thinking quickly, Vaughn attempts an opening gambit. "What if I duplicate a copy? You get yours, the CIA gets theirs, and everyone wins."
"Mike, don't, don't let them get a copy." Sark presses the gun barrel against Weiss's forehead to silence him.
"Tantalizing though the offer may be, it wouldn't serve any strategic advantage if the CIA, SD-6 and the organization I work for were all to have the same intel at the same time. My terms are non-negotiable. You now have 10 seconds to decide." Vaughn puts his hands out to where Sark can see them, and reaches for the wireless device.
"Put the gun down Sark, and I'll give the File to you."
"5 seconds—"
But suddenly, to Vaughn's amazement, Sark is jerked violently back from Weiss by a pair of unseen hands. Weiss slides to the pavement, and scrabbles for a hold to hoist himself up.
Vaughn watches in utter shock and amazement as he sees Sydney fly through the air and deliver a series of furiously quick punches finishing off with a roundhouse kick that dropped Sark to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Her voice floats in the night air and reaches him, faintly. "You guys okay?"
"I just watched the Matrix, only it was live," Weiss says, dazed.
"Why did you come back? You should be at your checkpoint by now," Vaughn starts, getting out of the van to see if she was hurt at all (she wasn't, of course).
"I was," she grunts, trying to lift an unconscious Sark up by the armpits. Vaughn automatically bends down to grab Sark's feet. "I made contact with an SD-6 agent at my checkpoint and was asked to drop off the File. I was on my way back to my hotel when, I don't know, I had this, weird gut feeling that you guys might be sitting ducks with a copy of the File. So I doubled back here." Vaughn gives her a skeptical look and she arches an eyebrow at him. "Well, I was *right*, wasn't I?"
They tie Sark up with a few plastic zap straps and then heave him into the van. As Weiss calls the London CIA office for a team to take Sark into custody, Vaughn motions her a little ways from the van. She follows him a few steps. He turns and puts his hand on her shoulder and moves in to talk to her in a low voice.
"Sydney, you shouldn't have come back and risk your life for us."
"I had to. I wanted to," she said, earnestly. "I had to because the CIA needs to get that File to shut down the Alliance. And I wanted to because you would have done the same for me, in my place. You put yourself out on the line every time when I do my countermissions, even though you're not in the field most of the time. Why can't I do the same for you…and Weiss?"
"It's not supposed to be done that way."
She laughs ironically. "You're one to talk. You know we've bent and broken the rules ever since we found out that my mo--Irina, your father--"
He nods, understanding, and he begins to feel a vague sense of déjà vu from his talk with Weiss earlier in the evening. "Yeah, I do. We do okay most of the time, but sometimes—"
She nods, understanding too. "Yeah. I know." She takes a deep breath and for a long moment they don't say anything else, choosing instead to stare at the inky black sky.
But finally, she breaks the silence. "I gotta go. I got a flight to catch in a few hours and I want to get some sleep before I do. Who knows if I'm going to be getting any decent sleep in the next few weeks, right?"
He nods. "Right."
"Okay." She shoots him a small, tired smile. "Bye."
He nods. "Bye."
After watching her melt into the shadows, he jams his hands into his jacket pockets and walks back to the van. Touching the red hanky, he pulls it out and looks at it consideringly. Wouldn't Aunt Trish have a hoot if she knew the hanky just might possibly be a good luck charm after all?
"Ready to bust out of here as soon as the cavalry arrives?" Weiss calls out to him.
Vaughn turns and smiles at Weiss. "Can't wait."
*Note on pigeons and UV light was found here: http://www.stanfordalumni.org/birdsite/text/essays/Hawk-Eyed.html