Wairwolf
A/N: Airwolf belongs to Bellisario and Universal, Sentinel concepts to UPN and Pet Fly, Something Is Out There to Columbia Pictures, Radio Shack to Radio Shack. Something Is Out There show summary is in the last chapter, if you're lost. Airwolf is AU (moved ahead about twenty years). This story occurs a few weeks after "Talking with Wolves".
~*~*~*~*~
"And... action!"
A shot-up cherry-red Ferrari screeched around the busy street corner, pursued by a helicopter that glimmered shark-gray against the sky. Smoke trailed from both vehicles, dark hint of the battle still raging. Hint that turned to deadly promise, as the desperate woman in the Ferrari's passenger seat tossed up a clayey brick of olive gray-green, aiming dead-center for the chopper's windshield.
A telephoto lens zoomed on the look of insane glee on the dark-haired pilot's face; zeroed in on the flash of horror as he caught sight of the ruby LED display counting down-
"Cut!" Mitch hovered behind the head cameraman a moment longer, picturing how the FX studio would cut this film into a miniature shot of a chopper exploding. Angle, light... all right.
Jumping down toward his director's chair, Mitch went so far as to grin. He cast a moment's glance toward the gray-haired man with a headset cinched over his red ball cap, still coordinating between the stunt chopper and the chase helicopter getting the aerial shots. Santini Air might cost more than your average chopper wranglers, and they might be hard on stars who only thought they could fly, but man, they got things right the first time! "Good work, people! Joshua-" He gave the descending chopper a brisk thumbs-up, using his megaphone to cut through the rotor noise. "Great work, kid, the camera loved it!" Mitch waved a circling hand. "All right, let's get this circus packed and out of here-"
A barefoot blonde extra shrieked, running from stage right as if hordes of crazed fanboys were hot on her heels. Veteran of a dozen summer slasher flicks, Mitch automatically characterized the scream; short, a bit high, but good carrying volume.
Too bad this was supposed to be a spy thriller, the director thought, stalking toward the noise with mayhem on his mind. Ah well, this wasn't the first time Casting had screwed up-
Blood was a bright crimson stain across the dark jacket of the suited man crumpled at the edge of the set alley; a wet arrow toward a steely hilt embedded between two ribs. He might have been a hapless victim-actor off any one of the hordes of B-movie thrillers being made here; possibly drugged, probably drunk, definitely lost.
He might have been. But something in the way Santini blanched - something in the way Santini's chief pilot suddenly slapped that stunt chopper on the ground, using rotor downdraft to herd onlookers away before he touched skids to asphalt - told Mitch he wasn't.
"Aw, hell."
~*~*~*~*~
I was your average street cop. Name: Jack Breslin.
Then I met your average not-bad-looking alien from another planet, who crashed on Earth and was stuck here.
We work pretty well together. 'Cause, I know my way around, and - well she can read minds. Among other things.
~*~*~*~*~
So this is how the people of this planet make their entertainment, Ta'ra thought, approaching the yellow tape around the scene. She went through the ritual of displaying her crime scene analyst's identification to the young uniformed officer guarding the scene; he waved her through with a nervous smile. Odd. It looks very different from their documentaries.
Of course, that might have something to do with the body sprawled in the midst of the set.
Did you see that... oh my god... miss my hairdresser's... blood everywhere... delay's going to cost us thousands... Dead? You mean dead dead? Really?....
The former med-tech officer of the prison ship Andulon winced, trying to sort useful information from the chaff of odd thoughts floating through the air. The Earth TV shows she'd watched had never hinted at this morass of psychic noise. Who'd have known the people of this planet couldn't thought-process? The vast majority of them couldn't even project clearly, not like-
A dry, ironic mind-voice cut through the cacophony. Offhand, Ta'ra, I'd say somebody didn't like this guy very much.
Ta'ra hid a smile, placing her kit on a patch of empty street. Definitely Jack. "What do we have?"
"Colonel Mustard on the roof with a letter opener." Detective Jack Breslin was crouched by the impact site, carefully avoiding bits of unidentifiable matter from the height-crushed skull. Dark brows drew down into serious concentration, fragments of thought swirling past her, Jack's mind comparing this scene to innumerable other homicides - not a few of which they'd investigated together, since she'd found herself stranded on this planet.
Despite the grisly scene, Ta'ra had to laugh. At least this was a body, and not more of the bits of unidentifiable bone the rest of Robbery/Homicide had dropped in their laps the past few months. "Jack, be serious."
"Who's not being serious?" He skewed a glance over toward the shivering blonde with the paramedics. "Lady over there, Enrika Dion, says she saw an older guy with a real military look to him skulking down that alley a few minutes before a body fell out of the sky." He nodded toward the metal handle sticking out of the wound, placed to intersect the edge of a human heart. "Silver, looks like. Who stabs a guy with a silver knife?"
"Then threw him off a roof?" Ta'ra kept gathering bits of evidence, letting her partner "think out loud", as Earthlings put it. Odd phrase. "Which roof?"
"Not sure yet."
Which meant he was fairly sure, but needed to check his own perceptions. Jack had a talent most natives of this planet lacked; the gift to see what was truly there, no matter how badly it contradicted what most thought must be true. "Jack?"
"Something down here...." Heading down the alley, he stopped near a scuffed patch of asphalt. "Ta'ra? What's this look like to you?"
She frowned at the remnants of yellow leather poking out of a pair of thumb-deep holes. "Heels. Size... eight, eight and a half?"
"That's what I thought you'd say." Jack rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist. "Just once. Just once, a normal case, would that be too much to ask? No aliens, no psychos, no people jumping off the tops of buildings to land on their feet...."
"You don't think-" But he did, quite evidently. She frowned, tracing trajectories by eye. "Well, at least this simplifies matters."
"Oh yeah? How?"
She shrugged. Wasn't it obvious? "Locate the person on this set who's missing a pair of shoes."
If it weren't for latex gloves, Jack would have buried his head in his hands.
"Right," he said after a long moment. "Okay. Give me a minute to convince a few more uniforms I'm out of my mind." With a martyred air, he marched off toward yellow tape.
Ta'ra chuckled softly, even as she turned to her grisly task. Jack would never believe the vast majority of the force considered him an excellent detective. Even if a few of them did think he was... what was that Earth phrase, not playing with a full deck?
Footsteps returned, accompanying familiar annoyance. "Do we know who he was?" she asked.
Jack offered a set of cards. "Passport and driver's license say William Yates."
She studied the laminated photo of a thin, nondescript dark-haired man, rubbing it as she'd seen Jack do to test whether or not someone had altered the ID. It appeared legitimate. As did the passport; though some of the locations tweaked her interest. "Germany?"
"Not that long ago, either. Must've caught the red-eye from Europe to get here this fast."
Just in time to encounter an elderly madman with a knife. She shook her head. Well, it wasn't as if her own species didn't have their share of criminals. "Which roof, Jack?"
Her partner peered upward toward the most likely angle; a solid warehouse backing the end of the set's alley. "Looks like that one, but to throw a hundred-fifty pound body out this far...." The killer wouldn't be human. A brief, nightmare image rose up; chitin and darkness, and a skewed, psychopathic form.
Which touched her own nightmares, the ones that woke her screaming names only one other being on this planet knew. Perhaps it was time to indulge in another Earth custom, and change the subject. "I didn't see anyone being treated by the paramedics." Sad truth of living on this planet; rendering emergency aid put the rescuer at risk for a host of unpleasant diseases.
"Wasn't anybody to treat." Jack jerked his head toward a trio of strangers standing near a shark-gray movie helicopter, under a uniform's watchful eye. An elderly gentleman in a blue jacket and red cap stood comfortingly close to a redhead in tan blouse and slacks, while a dark blond with cold eyes steadfastly ignored the cops to scan the area. "Guy with the granite face? Stunt pilot. Kept people back from the body, wouldn't let anyone try CPR." Skepticism drew dark brows up. "Said it wouldn't do any good."
"Given that the cause of death appears to be what you call cardiac tamponade, he's likely right," Ta'ra acknowledged.
"Cardiac-?"
She gestured at the knife impaling the man's upper chest. "Here, it would have nicked the pericardial sac."
"Sac fills up with blood, heart can't pump, and that's all she wrote," the detective nodded. "Saw it in a car crash a few years back. Nasty. Still doesn't explain-" He closed his teeth on the thought.
"Why he and his coworkers kept anyone from aiding the victim?" Ta'ra finished. She extended her mind toward the trio, listening for any stray thoughts they might project about the murder. Listening for any hint they might be... other than they appeared. The blond might be chill and unmoved, but his co-workers were certainly shaken-
Silence. A soft, snowy silence, like wind through giuis-tree boughs on a winter's morning.
What? Ta'ra stared at them, listening hard. Letting the solid sharpness of Jack's mind ground her efforts.
...safe, Lady... call... know him?....
Static. Not the empty silence she'd run into when one Earthling psychic had a blocking metal plate in his head. But faint, faded thoughts, past the edge of the normal frequency range. As if they were-
"Military, Jack!" Ta'ra breathed, eyes wide. It wasn't encrypted, not as her own people's Foglai'ech Tratnona - Night Raiders - would have been; but she'd felt that high, whispery flow of information before. "They're covert operatives!"
~*~*~*~*~
"Said you wanted a little excitement, Dom," Stringfellow Hawke murmured dryly.
"Next time I say that, do us both a favor and shoot me," Dominic Santini muttered under his breath, knowing his partners would hear him. He stuck his head into the cockpit to give the controls a visual once-over. One hand touched the brim of his red ball cap as he checked off items on a mental list; you never could tell what a star might take it into his head to do to a perfectly good helicopter. "Dull is nice. Dull is good. Dull is no weirdoes in white suits bugging us, no jets buzzing us, nobody shooting at us!"
"Right. Boring."
"Anybody else freaking out here?" Caitlin O'Shannessy put in, rubbing her arm where String had grabbed her to keep her from touching the body. Hazel eyes jumped to the still form, jerked away with a shiver. "'Cause I don't know 'bout you two, but this is really giving me the heebie-jeebies."
"Yeah." Damn an ex-cop's instincts to help, anyway. Cait was one of his people, now, and String didn't need Airwolf's angry shrill in the back of his head to see something was desperately wrong here.
Anomalous PKE readings: low-level, the AI murmured. The thought had an odd, echoing feel, the kind Hawke was beginning to realize meant she was transmitting to multiple minds. Hazard level: Unknown.
"Heck of a thing to know about a guy," Dominic grumbled. But it didn't have nearly the bite it could have; the older pilot had seen enough between 'Nam and the Firm to know even a dead man could be a trap.
And there'd been those weird rumors, a year or so ago in downtown L.A., about bodies that weren't quite dead....
At least this would be it for the day. For Santini Air, anyway. The stars were already throwing fits about this interruption to their few hours off, while the film crew had made half a dozen surreptitious calls to get their early supper break trucked in, hot. But the rest of this pack of Tinseltown denizens would have been here anyway, spending what was left of today to tear things down and transport gear to the next location. "What a mess."
"You can say that again," Dominic grumbled. "Time's money. If they can't start filming first thing tomorrow on the new set, it'll cost the company a few thousand, easy."
"An' a few thousand here, a few thousand there - pretty soon you're talking 'bout real money," Caitlin grinned. A little pink came back to her cheeks, making her look more as she had flying the chase helicopter, getting aerial shots while Dominic kept them coordinated from the ground. "Not that you'd know anything about that, Mr. Cézanne."
"I know enough." He'd scrimped and scrounged plenty of times to keep Airwolf flying, when Michael'd had trouble diverting parts away from the Committee's view. It hadn't come down to threatening his grandfather's art collection. But he'd always known that might happen. "Any word from Michael?"
"You kidding me?" Satisfied his bird had survived another close encounter of the Hollywood kind, Dominic backed out and shrugged. "No calls, no messages, no strange ladies in white lurking around corners. It's like the man fell off the face of the earth. You sure he's even in the country?"
With Archangel, you could never be sure. But the ache in his bones that said Michael isn't here didn't feel that far away. Maybe a state away. Maybe the other side of the street, for all he knew....
Location query?
A feel of fur and feathers; a gentle warmth, totally at odds with the deadly power at her command.
Airwolf.
String controlled his shiver. This was part of him now. Part of all of them; coin paid for flying one of the most advanced pieces of hardware on the planet. Though it was her software that had caused the problem; a combat AI so sophisticated it had somehow broken the bonds of silicon and come to life. A life now tangled in their own minds, curious and warm and absolutely impossible to shut out. Get used to it, he told himself. You want to fly her, you pay the price.
Easy to say. Another matter entirely to realize how deep Airwolf had burrowed, to the point where String wasn't sure when he'd lost what it was to be alone in his own skull. He wasn't surprised Archangel had left the cabin as soon as humanly possible.
Deliberately, String reached back toward that warmth. Where's Michael? She might not tell him. Archangel's security clearance was far higher than any member of Santini Air, no matter how many Firm missions they'd flown.
But then, Airwolf tended to ignore little matters like security. At least when it came to her aircraft commander inquiring about one of her stray pilots.
Pilot Michael, Archangel located: Knightsbridge, came the swift reply. GPS coordinates....
The swift flow of numbers translated to one specific patch of air above the planet's surface; a stuttering flow of where-Michael-is that matched patterns String had seen before. A pattern that clutched at that odd ache, tugging at him to go, forget the cops, find the man-
No. No, I won't. "He's in his office. Pacing."
"I knew it, the bleach finally got to him," Dom said firmly.
"You can tell?" Caitlin was wide-eyed with wonder. Of all of them, she'd been the quickest to warm to Airwolf's presence, meeting the AI's curiosity with a pilot's avid joy in flight. "When I ask her about you and Dom... well, she gives me a location, but...."
"Heads up." String let his gaze indicate the two cops heading their way now that the medical examiner had taken over the body. The man moved lean and dark in a casual gray suit, the woman fair as cream in slacks and a white blouse, hair pulled back to cascade in golden waves over her shoulders.
"Detective Jack Breslin," the man introduced himself with a casual flash of badge. His smile had a wry, honest edge. "My partner, Ta'ra Andulon." His gaze fixed on Hawke. "Mind if we ask you a few questions?"
"Yeah, we know the routine," Dom said testily. Brown eyes skewered his partner before he walked away with Caitlin. "You holler if you need us."
"You've been in an investigation before?" Ta'ra asked curiously.
"Couple," String shrugged. Let the cops believe they'd get separate stories. Dom and Cait could hear him streets away, not just down the block. "While back, one of our choppers blew up. Things got messy for a while. You can look up the reports."
"You think that's got anything to do with this?"
Breslin was quick. "Doubt it," String said carefully. "The government took over the case. They say they handled it." True enough. If you counted Michael's handpicked Firm agents wiping out the evidence that Hawke himself had set the charge.
The detective was taking fast notes, pencil scribbling over his leather-backed notepad. "Anything else?" he said dryly.
Tell them, or don't tell them.... Breslin didn't look like the type to let little things like an old murder investigation slide. But that was Dominic's story to tell, not his. "No."
"What did you see?" Ta'ra asked softly.
Death. A death he hadn't caused, for once; he didn't even know this man. Whoever he was. "Ms. Dion - one of the extras - came running out of that alley." String pointed. "She looked terrified. I looked, saw the body, and put Dom's bird on the ground before the rest of the crew could trample everything."
"Meaning you blew away half the evidence." Breslin's gaze wasn't quite a threat.
So you're bad cop. Fine. "We've been flying choppers all over here all morning. I figured fifty pairs of feet would do more damage than downwash."
"You saw he was dead?" Ta'ra, gently questioning.
String grimaced, thinking of the bloody mess smeared over asphalt. "Pretty obvious."
"From a hundred feet up." Breslin. Deadpan.
"Yeah." And you can think about it whatever you like. As a pilot his eyesight was a matter of medical record. Not that the examiners knew how well he could see; twenty-ten vision didn't even come close. But there was evidence to show he could have spotted a bloody blur that far away. "Who is he?"
The detective gave him a thoughtful look. "You don't know him?"
"Never seen him before."
"And your partners don't know him." It wasn't quite a question.
String shook his head anyway. "They'd have said if they did."
"William Yates," Breslin challenged.
String thought about it a moment. "No one I know." He glanced toward the stunt chopper. "Let us know when we can move out."
"You act like you think this interview is over, Mr. Hawke." The detective's smile was about as warm as a pile of ice cubes.
Isn't it? "I don't know him, Detective. Odds are somebody did, and somebody loved him, and it's a shame he's dead. But I'd be a damn idiot to stab a man and drop the body in the middle of a set I planned to fly over. And Dominic Santini doesn't hire idiots."
~*~*~*~*~
"They didn't do it, Jack."
The detective didn't waver from his spiral search of the suspect rooftop. "Thought you were having a hard time picking them up."
"Their thoughts, yes," Ta'ra acknowledged. "I can only tell when they are communicating with their companion by the few words I do catch. Yet I clearly sense surprise and dismay; much as any of your officers would feel, stumbling onto the scene. Empathically, they project almost as well as you do."
Just what he'd always wanted. A person-to-person line straight to the lady he shared... well, stuff with. Like investigations. An apartment. A smart-Alec cockatoo. And sometimes a quiet dinner, as long as he didn't let Ta'ra cook- Oops.
"You didn't like it!"
"Ta'ra, your mashed potatoes set fire to my wall," Jack pointed out, stopping in his tracks as something dark caught his eye. Blood drop, maybe?
Ta'ra photographed it, handed him a swab. "They were perfectly edible."
"Says the lady who gets blitzed on half a cup of coffee." Ta'ra might look human, but there were things about her that were just - not. "Tell you the truth, I was starting to get a little worried before you whipped up that biochemical analyzer to check what you were eating. Kept thinking if caffeine got you that bad, what about that stuff that's in chocolate? Theo-whatsit?"
"Theobromine," Ta'ra filled in. "Another of your planet's alkaloids. Chemically, very like caffeine; though not nearly as powerful."
"Yeah. Or half a dozen other things we eat every day without thinking 'bout it. Or worse, that there was something you weren't getting, that we just didn't have here." Which had almost been the case. Not long after that attempted alien invasion had powered through Ta'ra had just - collapsed.
Epilepsy, the doctor on the case had said, dismissing Jack and Detective Lieutenant Victor Maldonado's fervent denial of any such problem. Grand mal seizure. Have her take these.
Jack hadn't dared let them drug her. Especially after a particularly determined elderly nurse pulled him aside and told him no matter what the doctors might think, that poor girl just didn't feel right to be an epileptic.
Given that there were no few L.A. cops alive today because Nurse Doane had been in the E.R., Jack listened. And played a desperate hunch, enlisting Vic's help to fend off Dr. Shrinkenstein and sneak Ta'ra out of the hospital to her lab. Where he sorted test tubes, and mixed solutions, and held her hand through the painful hours of test after test between fits.
When they found out the problem was low selenium, he almost cried.
So now their pantry shelves were stocked with canned shellfish, their medicine cabinets had bottles of supplements, and Ta'ra cooked her own bread from enriched grain. And he worried. A lot.
"I am a med-tech officer, Jack. I should have checked for nutritional deficiencies before. And I am fine now. Really." Blue eyes rolled. "I've my own job, my own ID, and my own personal experience with your culture. I do not need a white knight in the bargain."
"Hey, you never know when one of those dragons is gonna drop by," Jack shrugged, spotting what might be a suspicious scuff on the roof. Footprint? He waited out the camera flash, trying to reconstruct the scene in his head. "And what do you mean, their companion? Thought you said our military wasn't anything like yours." Footprint, scuff mark, footprint...nah, doesn't make sense. "And if they're military, why'd Santini say they're a stunt pilot business?"
"Likely because they are." Ta'ra put her camera away, took out a few of her more esoteric pieces of equipment. That they had to be careful with; while the bits of alien technology Ta'ra could construct might help them solve cases, they had to be able to back it up with Earth-native investigative techniques. "I'm not well informed on my own military, much less yours. Yet I'm certain you have - reservists, is that the word?"
"Yeah, but-" He knew a distraction when he heard one. "Companion, Ta'ra. Give."
She hesitated. "You understand, what little I do know, I really shouldn't be speaking of. It is sensitive material."
"I won't talk about it," Jack assured her. "I'll try not to even think about it." Besides, we're on a whole 'nother planet.
Ta'ra gave him a wry glance. "Part of the difficulty is, I truly don't know that much. We have our exposés, our... investigative reporters, I suppose you would call them. Yet I simply never found the Night Raiders of much interest before." She frowned. "I do know our covert operatives can send their thoughts in such a way as to make them difficult for the average citizen to pick up. As those three do." Putting her latest gadget away, she drummed fingers on her slacks. "I couldn't catch more than a few words, yet they seemed to be reassuring a fourth who wasn't with us."
"They're telepaths?" Man, oh man....
"That's the oddity of it. I don't think they are." Ta'ra spread empty hands. "They didn't appear to hear me, or you, or even each other. They certainly didn't project as if they were listening to anyone besides their companion. Their Lady." Blonde brows drew down. "It's as if they were on a - dedicated channel?"
Telepathy as hardware circuits. Just when had his life gotten this weird?
When you found a body autopsied inside thirty seconds. He shook off a shiver. Focus, Jack. "You know, this just doesn't make sense." He gestured at what little fragments of evidence remained on the roof after the chopper had blasted through. "This blood's from our victim, right?
"I'll need to run the full analysis to be sure, but the preliminary matches," she nodded.
"Okay. Here we got footprint, footprint, scuff, footprint." None of which looked good enough to match in court; he made sure they had tape and photos anyway. "Looks like Yates came up here with our friend in high heels. Then some other guy - probably our suspect - snuck up here, lunged, and then...."
"Yates' footprints seem... misshapen." Ta'ra frowned. "Or is that only the wind?"
Jack shrugged. Don't know. "High-heels beats feet out of here, goes over the edge this way." He pointed down, toward the near-invisible spot where yellow leather still lurked. "Struggle goes that way, now it looks like only one set of prints, and-" Walking to one side of the trail, he hit the edge of the roof. "That's all she wrote."
She shivered. "Awful way to go."
"Aren't that many good ones." Jack snapped off his glove, dragged fingers through dark hair. "We've got an APB on the guy Dion saw, and it's going to be a day or two before L.A. County Coroner gets around to the body. Let's go see if we can track down any of Yates' nearest and dearest."
~*~*~*~*~
Flip. Flip. Slice.
In the privacy of his office, Michael Archangel shredded a leftover bit of paperwork the old-fashioned way - with a throwing knife and a temper. So much for the former Yugoslavia's inter-ethnic shenanigans, he thought dryly. Can't those people find anything better to do? It's not like making a living in mountains is easy even when you're not shooting at each other....
Mountains. A valley between; sapphire-blue lake nestled in its depths, solid log cabin snug against the shore. A fire on a stony hearth, the rich scent of steak and trout hanging in the air....
I. Am. Not. Going.
Furry warmth touched his mind. Transport request?
"Not now, Lady," Archangel murmured. His personal avatar of Murphy's Law; currently personified in the form of a helicopter-sized security breach. Didn't Airwolf know there were surveillance systems at Knightsbridge?
Yes.
Knightsbridge security systems specifications accessible.
Systems incapable of detecting link transmission.
Audio surveillance inoperative within pilot Michael, Archangel's office.
Security hazard of pilot contact: Low.
Secondary link agitated. Suggest contact with link partner to stabilize.
Requesting transport?
"No," the spy grumbled. Airwolf had access to Knightsbridge's security specs? How long had that been going on?
Airwolf AI free to act in pilot defense since Edwards.
Effective defense requires knowledge of offensive, defensive, and surveillance systems surrounding pilots and dependant personnel.
"And I've told you to stop reading my mind."
Pilot Michael, Archangel broadcasting in the clear, came the AI's sharp reply. Re-transmitting broadcast-
Anxiety mired him, a sucking swamp of uncertainty; the risk of detection, the all-too-clear knowledge of what would happen to him, to all of them, should Zeus learn what bound him to Hawke and Airwolf. The intangible chain dragging him east to the mountains, toward a carved, rocky cavern he knew would be filled with a waiting hum-
Gone, leaving his hands trembling on his desk. Damn. Damn! If he'd been broadcasting this, and there were any Starlight Project operative or Heart-of-Dragon in the area - god, Zeus would be right to take him out now, he was a walking security breach-
Broadcasting via link, Airwolf corrected herself shyly. Transmission unreadable without link access. Transmission recipients: Airwolf, pilot Stringfellow Hawke.
Almost as bad. If Hawke broke that stoic calm and came here....
"Sir?"
Marella. And he'd barely heard her come in. "Yes?"
Duval's dark brows drew down. "Talking to our little cub?"
Airwolf was hardly a cub. "Yes," he admitted shortly.
"So I take it we're eating at the lake tonight."
"No." Why did Marella keep pushing that? Once a day, every day, ever since he'd said he wasn't going back there.
"Sir." Dark eyes were level, unyielding. "Our reports to the Committee didn't exaggerate the territorial component of the sentinel-guide bond that much."
"Hawke isn't a sentinel."
"By all available evidence, no," she admitted, advancing toward his desk. "No more than you're a guide. But he is close, Eagle Lake is his territory, and he needs it as much as he needs Airwolf. And he needs you." She crossed white-clad arms. "And frankly, sir - you need him."
"The hermit of the San Gabriel Mountains? Not likely." Though his inner sense murmured something was off, out of kilter. He simply couldn't put a finger on what. His sensory spikes had stopped once Airwolf got a good hold; no more pseudo-migraines, brought on by sight or hearing thrown out of control. Instead, he felt a deepening tension, a growing irritability nothing seemed to soothe.
But need Hawke? Not a chance.
The ringing phone was a welcome distraction; Marella caught it, which meant he got stuck with the whine of a fax machine. Ah well.
Germany? Late for them, Archangel thought, pulling off the cover sheet. But then the German police force, like any other, didn't keep nine-to-five hours. Wall or no Wall.
"Oh, my god." Marella Duval sucked in a breath, playing ditzy secretary to the hilt. Fingers clicked over her laptop; Michael raised an eyebrow, recognizing a systems access of the LAPD computer network. "Oh, that's horrible. Yes, of course - of course we'll help. Can I have your number, Detective Breslin? I just need to go down the hall to our files, it's kind of late, but I can call you back in twenty minutes with all the details. Oh my god, this is horrible...."
This is to inform that we have perhaps located a member of your staff, Michael translated quickly in his head. Of the unfortunate circumstance....
Not good. Not good at all.
Marella kept up her breathless spiel a good minute more before she let Breslin soothe her with matter-of-fact words. Listened to the polite click as the detective hung up, wiping the vapid expression from her face as she would a spot of mustard. "Sir, we may have located Agent Yates."
Michael shuffled the fax together, raised a blond brow. "Germany?"
"By now, the Los Angeles County Coroner's office."
He narrowed an eye. "Details."
She laid them out swiftly; body, knife, movie lot. The vaguely German face the witness had described, now being sought throughout the city as "wanted for questioning". All the while he knew she was surreptitiously watching his fingers clench and release on his cane.
You're wound like a spring, Marella had told him this morning. And it gets worse every day.
And she thought the solution was Hawke. Ridiculous. "Detective Breslin. Jack Breslin?"
"Still alive." Marella rolled her eyes.
Archangel hid most of his smile. For all his agents' independent minds, they still had an operative's typical annoyance with those slated to uphold pesky little details like the law instead of national security. "Oh, come now, Marella. Any cop who's managed to seriously annoy both the FBI and the CIA by discovering rogue agents running their own operations, and survived, can't be all bad."
"If you say so, sir." Shaking her head, Marella dug into the fax; a sheaf of official German paperwork in reference to a just-discovered John Doe. A dark brow arched up as she hit the pertinent details; one sheet had the peculiar white-on-black of a dental x-ray.
"Very interesting," Archangel said dryly. "According to our contacts in the German authorities, they have Yates too."
"Or part of him," Marella observed, holding up the scan of various bone fragments. "Ragged, almost etched. Acid?"
"Their preliminary guess, yes," Archangel noted. Afternoon sunlight glinted off half-dark glasses as he leaned back in his chair. "It's been my experience that upper jaws don't generally go wandering off without the attached skull. Not to mention clavicles."
"And if we have Yates over there, and someone with Yates' ID and general appearance here...."
Archangel nodded. Sloppy work, disposing of a body in acid to take an agent's place; but it might well have bought the imposter the time he needed to wreak havoc in the Firm. And what else could they have been after? Yates wasn't a particularly high-ranking agent; just one of several keeping an eye on what had been East Germany. "Cutting out their double speaks to a certain finality of purpose."
"I've already yanked his clearance," Marella said briskly. "We'll start checking his back-trail immediately. And I'll run a deeper check on Detective Breslin."
"Yes; he may well need to know some details of Yates' true profession, if he's to follow the available leads," Archangel agreed. "Be discreet."
"Yes, sir." Though something in the glint of dark eyes told him she was considering actions that might be very indiscreet indeed.
Nonsense. Marella was a professional.
Professional enough to have him take Angel One's controls when they left for the night. No sense in flying a helicopter with a headache.
He felt a quiver as he took the stick; dismissed it. The Committee knew he had a license. They might frown on a Deputy Director flying himself home, but it wouldn't be more than a note in someone's report. Certainly no cause to connect him to Airwolf....
Marella dragged a strand of wavy dark hair out from under her white headset. "So, sir. About the Balkans?"
Right; no point in not getting a little more work done on the way home. Even if it was only guesswork and speculation, meant to wind down from the real-life concerns of the day. And it would be a few more minutes' distraction, before he landed at a quiet house that lately felt all too empty.
"So given that the Serbs feel their right to power goes back to the Ottoman Empire, and the local Christians have been hating them at least that long...." Pine trees, Michael suddenly thought, realizing their flight had gone on far too long.
"It's all right, sir. It's not like we had a registered flight plan."
"Dammit, Marella! Where are we?"
Ruby lips quirked in a humorous line, but there was a defiant sparkle in dark eyes as they powered over the mountain pass. "Where does it look like, sir?"
Sunset glinting off blue water. Smoke rising from a stone-and-mortar chimney. A lone eagle winging away, last trout of the evening clutched in her talons.
And one very angry pilot standing on the cabin's back porch.
"No," Archangel bit out, preparing to circle and make for the nearest airport. He hadn't lasted this long as an agent by yielding to compulsions. He wasn't about to start now.
White silk rustled beside him. "I really didn't want to do this," Marella grumbled.
Steel pricked his arm, and everything went black.