Chapter 2

And Introducing …

"I want to hit L.A. by dawn. I'm not big on daylight driving."

Captain MacKenzie gave one curt nod to the tall, dark-haired man before him. 'Man' was, perhaps, a poorly selected word. The thing getting into the car to drive was a demon in the body of a man – a vampire. It was, in fact, precisely what Captain MacKenzie had been sent here to kill. But since coming to Sunnydale, MacKenzie had learned that there were far worse things in life than demons, most of which were completely human.

MacKenzie got into the passenger's seat, tossing his small pack in the back of the car. The demon started the big engine and popped the vehicle into gear, the tires peeling out and thrusting the large, old convertible onto the desolate road with surprising speed. Behind them and going the opposite direction were the dim taillights of the vehicle being driven by Buffy Summers, the Slayer.

Buffy had nearly been duped into murdering California Congressman Jackson Greene. The plot had been furthered by the SAS team that MacKenzie belonged to – operating covertly in the United States under strict orders for the highest echelons of the British Military. The plot was masterminded by a corrupt wing of the Watchers' Council in order to eliminate the congressman's interference in other of their projects. The one in question was known only as 'Project Eve', and all anyone knew was that it involved Faith.

The Watcher who had nearly succeeded in turning Buffy into a murderess, Madame LaFusce, had been killed in an ensuing magic battle with Willow. MacKenzie had nearly been killed by his former SAS teammates. That team withdrew, having failed in the primary mission of killing the congressman. They were now operating under the secondary mission – to retrieve Faith from the California Corrections Department. Faith was in prison, and the SAS team was going to break her out.

MacKenzie didn't know why the Watchers' wanted Faith, but he knew that the plot needed to be stopped. He may not know what they wanted with the woman, but he'd learned enough to know that it couldn't be good. So Buffy had hooked him up with the vampire Angel, a self-appointed guardian to Faith.

Angel looked over at the Scottish Captain and raised an eyebrow. "Scotland, huh?"

"Aye. Familiar with it?" MacKenzie replied.

"Yeah," Angel replied noncommittally. "Granted, the last time I was there was a little over a hundred years ago. I always liked it there, though."

"A hundred years? Well, not a lot has changed, I imagine." MacKenzie smiled, amused by his people's resistance to change. Solid and pragmatic, the Scots had become renowned as engineers. They were, according to many, responsible for the modern world. Men like Carnegie and Bell had led a wave of invention at the turn of the century whose impact was intensely disproportionate for the tiny country North of England. The very concept of modernity had originated there – a nonsexist concept prior to the intellectual renaissance of the early 1700s. With this lone thought the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow had developed whole new disciplines – economics, political science, and sociology to name just a few. Capitalism and the free markets of Adam Smith were perhaps the most visible changes to the world, but the very heartbeat of modern civilization had started there.

Still, for all that, they were deeply embedded in their traditions and superstitions. Gaelic was still common there, and people resisted the vagaries of the outside world in favor of the steadiness of 'All things Scottish."

"Not to change the subject too abruptly, but how much time do you think we have, before they go after Faith?" Angel was nervous. As Faith's guardian, he wanted to be prepared. But preparing for an SAS team was a bit more complicated than your typical, run-of-the-mill apocalypse.

"If they follow standard tactics, they'll need to acquire arms, munitions, logistics, and intelligence. That means we have maybe three or four days. They'll strike fast, with a decoy strike on the guards most likely. They'll shoot their way in, pick her up, and keep going the same direction and out the other side." MacKenzie hesitated a moment at the end of recitation of the basic doctrine of this kind of conflict.

Angel sensed the hesitancy. "But?" he prompted.

"But Sheffield's been in contact with the Ring of Arinoth. I'm not sure they're calling the shots, per se, but I think they're not going to follow basic doctrine." MacKenzie's worst fear was that he was not going to be able to predict what was going to happen, and he didn't like admitting it.

"How many days then?" Angel asked.

"Anyone's guess," the Scottsman answered. "But they couldn't have made L.A. more than twelve hours ago. You can't put an operation of this scale together in that amount of time." Again he hesitated.

"Unless?" Angel prompted once more.

"Unless the Ring already had a plan in place," MacKenzie finished, and then they both lapsed into silence.

* * *

They didn't quite make it before dawn – it was more like 10:00 AM. MacKenzie was impressed, though, at the vampire's knowledge of the "underside" of L.A. From the deep shadows of buildings in the industrial district to half-forgotten tunnels to the narrow lanes of darkness that exist below bridges, Angel was able to navigate back to his offices even in the daylight. The last section of the drive took them into large underground canals that, it turned out, were wide enough to accommodate the huge old black convertible that he drove.

It struck MacKenzie as odd that a vampire in Los Angeles would drive a convertible. It was, perhaps, some form of temptation or castigation that compelled him to do it – the constant reminder that a small swerve of the wheel was all that kept him from a fiery oblivion. On the other hand, it could just as easily be the fact that even the night air in L.A. is warm. Whichever the case, it was hardly the time to think about it. There was much to do and very little time to do it.

MacKenzie lifted his right arm experimentally. It was currently bound in a sling, a remnant of the fight two nights ago with Sheffield. He had thought the Major was unarmed, but Sheffield had drawn out a last ditch spell given to him by the witch-woman. The effect had been similar to a large caliber gunshot through his shoulder. It had likely been intended to kill him, but aiming that sort of magic was slightly more problematic than pointing a rifle and squeezing the trigger. It was almost sufficient, though; MacKenzie had nearly bled out before Buffy and her 'Scooby Gang' had rescued him.

The loss of an arm didn't put him at too much of a disadvantage in relation to typical combatants. He was fully qualified on all small arms both left- and right-handed. He could engage in a variety of unarmed combat styles while injured, as well. But he wasn't going up against typical combatants. This was a fully trained and highly motivated SAS commando team. His injuries put him at a distinct disadvantage against them. His only hope was that with the help of Angel and his associates he'd have the necessary time to plan and outmaneuver Sheffield before they got to Faith. If he didn't, they'd be fighting a desperate battle against time.

Surreptitiously, he drew the combat command module out of his rucksack and checked it. The device was designed to work with the encrypted GPS transmitters each of the team wore. It allowed a real-time view of their movements against a map. It could be used to do a number of other activities as well, but for the moment it might as well have been a large paperweight. Nothing showed on the screen.

Mac knew that his own transmitter had been carefully left behind at the safe-house the team had used in Sunnydale in order to prevent Sheffield from tracking him. Now it appeared that the rest of team had either gotten rid of their own, or more likely had changed the communication scheme. It was possible that they were operating on another frequency set, or using a different encryption key. Of the two, the latter was the most likely. The Ultra-Wide Band transmitters had the benefit of being practically undetectable, appearing as white-noise across a wide frequency range. The disadvantage was that the frequency choices for them were almost laughably limited. However, the sophisticated encryption sequences more than made up for it. It was more than just message encoding, although that used a highly complex encryption sequence that not only protected the messages, but also made them appear random. The messages were timed bursts of data that had to specifically target for reception and synchronized. Unless the receiver knew exactly where, when, and how to look for the transmitted signal, there was no way to find it.

Mac tried all of the standard, pre-loaded sets of encryption in the unit. None of them produced any detectable matches. However, it was just as likely that Sheffield had created a custom set for the team. Given that circumstance, Mac could guess for a trillion years and not come up with a matching set.

Angel made a small maneuver around some rubble and through a hole in a concrete wall to arrive in what was obviously a basement storeroom of a rather large building. "We're here," he said, and climbed out of the car.

"We're where?" asked MacKenzie, taking in the not-quite-deliberate air of disrepair that clung to the place.

"My place," replied Angel.

"Looks big," grunted MacKenzie.

"Yeah, well …" was the vampire's only reply. He walked through the open doorway and across a large hall to a single, rather ancient hand operated elevator. MacKenzie followed more slowly, shouldering his rucksack with his left hand.

Angel closed the gate and worked the controls, holding down the 'up' button with his thumb and watching the mechanical indicator above the door. The wall slid by with painful slowness. "It's a hotel, you know," he said conversationally. Truth be told, he found that being confined to the elevator with a man who was a trained vampire hunter not nearly as disturbing as being confined to the elevator with a man who smelled of Buffy.

Angel was sure that nothing had happened between them – there simply hadn't been time. Still, the Scotsman had spent enough time around her in the last twenty-four hours to pick up a bit of her perfume on his clothes – as well as other, earthier odors. The commando would never have allowed detectable amounts of the stuff to get on him, or he would have eliminated them if they had. But only Angel, with his heightened vampire senses, could detect them. The result was a distraction that could not be ignored in the small elevator.

"Yep," he continued, rocking the balls of his feet. "Bought it myself. Really haven't had time to do much house repair on it, but who does these days?" MacKenzie merely grunted an acknowledgment that the vampire had spoken, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the statement. This proved, if possible, even more annoying to Angel than the forced proximity.

"And here's the lobby," he said, and exited in front of MacKenzie. Relief seemed to get the better of manners.

The expanse of lobby, by comparison to the storeroom, was immaculate. It had a 1950s art deco feel to it, well executed for the California not-quite-stars set. The eclectic cast of characters that once called this place 'home' was likely only rivaled by the cast that now called it 'work.' MacKenzie nodded appreciatively – it would make an excellent staging area for their work.

"Cordelia? Wesley?" Angel called. He turned and looked over his shoulder at Mac, who was standing just outside the elevator. "It's a bit early yet." He smiled the best he could, offering a cross between an "Aw Shucks" and a "What-do-you-expect-in-California" expression. "Make yourself comfortable. Would you care for a cup of coffee?"

"Sure, love some," said Mac, and walked over to the large round couch in the center of the lobby. He set his things down while watching Angel go back into the office area of the lobby. Behind him, the front door opened.

"I know, I know," said a bold female voice. Mac turned to see a finely shaped brunette coming down the lobby steps balancing a drink carrier of Starbucks cups, a pastry box, several file folders, and a Bloomingdales bag. She appeared to not even see him, but continued to chat as she manhandled her bundles in a barely balanced dance of disaster-waiting-to-happen. "But oh … my … God! Do you think someone in L.A. could find some other Starbucks to go to? It was like everyone was there – well not everyone, because there was no one there who was really important. Just really unimportant people, like me – you know, people who could really use a raise. Or a hand with all this."

MacKenzie stepped up and relieved her of the drink carrier and the pastry box – impressively for man with one arm in a sling. For the first time she looked up at him. "Oh!" she said, and stepped back. "Um, Hi! I'm Cordelia."

"MacKenzie," he said, and nodded at her.

"Are you looking for Angel?" she asked.

"Found him already," Mac replied. "I think he's making coffee."

"Oh no," she said, suddenly upset. "Angel plus coffee machine equals Haz-Mat alert. I'll be right back." She patted Mac on the arm and then half-ran to the back room. MacKenzie stood calmly looking after her, noting that the front door had opened again.

"Does anyone know how to get a tea stain out of … oh, hello there." A bookish looking man stood halfway down the stairs. He had several dusty looking volumes tucked beneath one arm, an arm which he was simultaneously using to rub the aforementioned tea stain on his other lapel with a handkerchief. His other hand was holding a cup of what was presumably tea away from his now stained suit. He smiled. "Wesley Windam Price," he said by way of introduction.

"MacKenzie," replied Mac, nodding to him.

Wesley indicated the drink carrier and pastry box in the man's one usable hand. "I see you've already met Cordelia."

"Yep," replied MacKenzie slowly. "She's in the back helping Angel with the coffee machine." The statement was punctuated by the sound of breaking glass from the back.

"No longer, I would think," replied Wesley. He walked swiftly over to the check-in counter and put his burdens down. Then he retrieved the drinks and pastries from MacKenzie and set them down on the counter as well.

About that time Angel and Cordelia emerged from the back arguing in harsh whispers. They stopped suddenly, having noticed MacKenzie waiting for them, and put on forced smiles. They all stood that way for one long, uncomfortable moment.

With a shake, Angel stepped forward. "Wesley, Cordelia, may I introduce Captain MacKezie of the RAF. Captain, this my crack investigating team."

"Well then," replied Mac, "we should have no problems.". No one was quite sure whether or not he was being sarcastic.