Episode One: Killer

Chapter Four

Casey and Grant arrived first, both within an hour of having been accepted onto Jim's team. They shook Jim's hand warmly and while Grant immediately began to organize their various equipment needs, Casey reviewed the team's profiles and started an account of logistical requirements.

Coming from a further distance, Max and Nicholas didn't arrive until later that evening, but brought with them a subtle rhythm that the five together settled into flawlessly. For Jim the feeling was eerily reminiscent of the early days among his now mostly retired team. The instantaneous ease and familiarity beguiled his memory.

He kept looking up from a task expecting to see Rollin or Barney speaking to him instead of Nicholas and Grant. The resulting sensation was alluring. The enticement to learn more about these young agents—to invest in them—pulled at him.

As a team they spent the final hours of the night setting up and detailing contingency plans. Jim watched the four closely as they worked, looking for details of their personalities, in their gestures and movements, in the way they spoke to each other. Every subtle interaction.

The information he got from the process was invaluable. If he watched enough he'd be able to pick out which gestures or facial expressions might matter on their mission. Would recognize which gestures indicated undue stress or exhaustion, which ones demonstrated a level of seriousness, or a need for help.

Watching, he was impressed at the way they appeared to balance each other, how a comment started by one would be picked up by another. He applauded the way they checked their strengths and weaknesses against each other, holding nothing back, ensuring they would know where they might need to fill in the possible cracks between their skills, attempting to ensure no mistakes in the mission would be made.

Jim made less technical observations as well, processing this information in a less conscious way. Grant had a wide, honest grin and very serious eyes. Casey moved like a dancer and had a quiet laugh. Max's strongly obvious Australian accent echoed off the walls, while Nicholas's softer, yet no less distinctive, Mid-Atlantic accent did not.

He stood in the doorway watching the young team interact. Listening to a ripple of laughter as Max and Nicholas reminisced about experiences in Australia, comments from Casey and Grant blending smoothly into the mix. Jim was grateful for how quickly the four agents unified, and contented by how intensely they viewed the success of their mission.

Tom would have found them a fitting team.

Jim closed his eyes as his thoughts rebounded back to Tom. Already Tom's funeral—though only held that morning—felt an eternity away, but the emotions it provoked in him were as fresh as when he received the midnight phone call.

"Guys," Casey's supportive voice cut through his thoughts and the others' chatter. "We should get some rest. We could have to go at any time." The three young men agreed quickly and set about ensuring the kitchen and any other room they'd used was returned to its immaculate state.

"Do we know which rooms we're set up in?" Max asked.

Nicholas looked up from his stance near the coffee table.

"There are five rooms in the house," Jim stepped forward as he spoke. "I've been using the one above our conference room." He spoke indifferently of the house, not thinking of it as his, even though it felt natural to do so. "And I believe Grant made sure the room off the front entry was set for Casey." He looked to Grant who nodded in confirmation.

The others followed Jim's gaze, all willing to allow the resident technician the right to set up their remaining sleep arrangements.

"Yeah, Casey is down here. And I think Max is best set up in the back room off the kitchen—it has easy access to the rest of the house." Grant didn't need to clarify his reasoning. Max had already taken up position as the team's informal bodyguard. "That leaves Nicholas and me in the loft rooms just above him. Now, I've linked our communicators to the communication system here in the house." Grant slid small black devices toward each of them. "With the touch of a button Jim can have one or all of us ready to go."

Jim picked up his communicator and slid it into his pocket. "The minute I know what Drake's doing, so will you," he promised. "Let's get some rest."

The four quickly complied and as they withdrew they nodded politely in Jim's direction—looks sympathetic but withholding pity. It spoke volumes to him of their character. IMF had come through for him, sending him agents of a caliber he couldn't imagine even hoping for, and he was grateful.

"You'd like them, Tom," he whispered out loud. "I think you'd like them."

It was early the next morning when the team assembled in the main room—the room Jim had started calling the war room, if only to himself. It felt appropriate. War was what he was planning for, if it came to it.

He hoped the others were ready.

On the already unhidden wide screen, Jim called up the footage of Mathew Drake, then paced slowly around the room while readying to explain the details of their next move.

"Late yesterday I got word Drake has orders to go to England. I've since learned that his plane is due to arrive at Heathrow airport at 9:00am on Friday and that he's booked out under two separate names on flights later that night."

"Which means if he's going to kill someone, he has to do it within that time frame." Nicholas, sitting on the couch farthest from Jim, picked up on the detail Jim was hoping they'd all notice. This was their window of opportunity.

Standing behind Nicholas, Max leaned against the back of the couch and asked, "Any idea who his target is?"

"Not yet," Jim answered. "Apparently he has to make a phone call when he reaches London to get that information."

"He's not going to make this easy," Casey commented.

Jim agreed. Drake may appear to be boxing himself in by the flight's timeframe, but he hadn't become so elusive by not being flexible.

Nicholas clarified the concern. "Drake has stayed alive by not making things easy. In all the murders he's been linked to, he's never killed twice in a row in the same fashion."

"Yes," Jim acknowledged. "From the hallucinogenic drug he gave Tom Copperfield to a sniper's riffle. He always chooses something different. And the problem is he waits till the last possible moment to choose."

"At Random—that's the key," said Nicholas, and Jim could see his mind was already jumping ahead in the plan.

"There's a certain logic to that," Max added. "If I don't know what I'm going to do, then neither does anybody else." He met Jim's eyes and Jim could see the plan was clarifying for him as well.

"Yes, that's why we have to get close to him—right inside his skin. We have to know what he's going to do at the same time he knows it himself. Grant?"

Grant moved over to the computer console, starting to type while saying, "Well, I've been in contact with London and they're going to loan us the couple of extra men we'll need."

"Does that include the laser technician?" asked Jim, knowing Grant had been speaking on the phone about it since the crack of dawn.

"That's right," Grant confirmed. He then keyed a picture onto the screen and started to explain, "We're looking at the kind of hotel Drake seems to favor—small but classy. He selects these at random also. In this case, we're going to make his random selection for him." Grant smiled a smile that told Jim IMF was in Grant's blood every bit as much as his father's. "This will be the one he chooses—absolutely under our control. All previous identification has been removed. Right now it's a total blank." He looked up at the others then nodded to Jim to show he was finished—they were ready.

Jim considered the faces of his team. They seemed ready. They seemed confident. They all seemed so very much like Tom Copperfield…

"Don't second guess yourself on this one, Tom," said Jim, "trust your instincts."

"Thanks, Jim," Tom nodded, appearing ready. A beat of hesitation passed and he asked, "Jim, don't you ever worry that there's something you haven't thought of… something that you missed?"

"All the time, Tom, it's called covering the angles. If the plan starts to go badly or something comes up that you don't expect—you adapt. You take plan B or C or even Q. You don't let yourself run out of options."

Tom had smiled. "Don't worry, Jim—I'm not going to let that happen."

Jim snapped out of his reverie. "Alright," he said to the team. "We can't afford any mistakes. If we lose Drake, we'll lose our chance to identify his boss, Scorpio."

"Jim, we're not going to let that happen." Jim looked down at Nicholas's confident statement, hearing Tom instead, expecting the voice to sound like Tom's.

Don't worry Jim—I'm not going to let that happen.

Don't worry…

Jim found himself wondering again what it was about Nicholas that reminded him of Tom, and what about Nicholas seemed so fundamentally different.

"We know what this one means to you," added Casey.

Grant and Max nodded with her, meeting Jim's gaze with assurance and fortitude. Jim wasn't sure what he should say—what he could say. He'd taken on personal missions before but always felt leery when asking for help. Always worried he might be demanding too much by expecting others to take up a cause not their own—afraid he'd be asking more than was fair when the problem or situation was his to take care of.

He remembered asking his old team to take on a personal mission for him once—one not even remotely sanctioned, or even known about, by the Secretary. When he'd hesitated in asking his friends for help, they had looked at him exactly as the four young agents in his living room were looking at him now. Jim remembered he had stumbled trying to explain his need, stumbled trying to express his understanding should his teammates choose not to participate.

Rollin had sat patiently through his short speech—his face expressionless, then asked, "Are you done?"

"Yeah," Jim had answered cautiously.

"Good," Rollin had said in his dryly typical way. "Jim, not often, but sometimes, you talk too much."

Barney and Willy had backed the statement with wry nods of agreement.

Jim had learned from them and knew now not to discount what it had meant for his team to help a friend. Their same determination was reflected in the faces of this new team. Jim lifted his chin in appreciation, acknowledged the unified front. Perhaps they did know exactly what this one meant to him. And he was starting to realize it meant something to them too.

tbc