A/N: The talking characters speak Spanish throughout this fic. I've tried to show that both through the prose and by using a couple well known Spanish words in there (e.g., 'que' and 'quiete', etc). Thanks for being interested and happy holidays!

Keeping his back against the wall, Weiss began sliding along it in the opposite direction from the crowd, most of which was dispersed by now. He kept the gun wrapped in both hands and held it up against his right shoulder so that he took up the smallest space possible. He slipped into the bar area, and found the door out onto the platform. It was already open.

The club was on the third story—second, if you spoke Spanish, he thought idly—above an innocent enough jewelry boutique. In the briefing, they'd mentioned the balcony over the alley in the back of the club as a possible escape route if the situation got ugly. It's pretty ugly, Weiss judged, and he wasn't thinking about the leisure suit.

Gun first, Weiss darted around the corner and scanned his surroundings, well aware that whoever'd left the door open might still be out on the balcony. All clear. In fact, everything was freakishly quiet; most of the crowd had gone down below or escaped completely, and out here was your normal Colombian alley: the clothesline, a radio playing on a window sill, the heaps of junk in the corners, and the pool of blood with the dead guy laying face down in it.

Apparently, the someone who'd opened the door and escaped this way was not a civilian someone. Weiss just hoped it was Huang or Sutton.

Quickly weighing his options, Weiss shoved the gun behind his back in the waistline of his pants—it was getting hard to hold, anyway. His hands were sweaty and the metal was slippery—but sweat was running down his back, too, dampening his shirt. There was blood, also; the sting in his shoulder was intensifying. Weiss took a fleeting look down at the building to the right—a floor down with a not-so-comfy looking roof. But it had the promised ladder down the side, and risking one story was better than three, so . . .

Weiss had made the jump and had begun scrambling down the ladder when the shooting started up again. Dropping off the last eight rungs, he kicked down the closest door and hopped inside, only then turning to see where the noise was coming from. He took out his gun again and peeked—

And ducked down. Fast.

Crap.

There were way, way too many guys out there for his taste; he could make out at least three and that meant, realistically, at least seven. Okay, Eric, he told himself. Keep your cool. You're a spy remember? You're badass. Your badassness was a legend of the Somerville Junior High hockey team. What the hell would Coach Renfro say?

If Vaughn were here, Weiss would be making jokes, and that would calm them both down. Moving along the wall at the ready again, Weiss moved through the building toward the west side, the opposite end from the alley, where the front entry should be. Scanning the interior, Weiss realized he was in an art dealer's gallery. There were paintings on the walls. Nude paintings. Really poor nude paintings. Look, Mike, we hit the jackpot. All the way to Columbia only to find what you could get at home in a twenty-four hour news—

The guy coming around the corner was going like Weiss, back to the wall and gun at the ready, but apparently not as good as Weiss because he had a bullet in his stomach before he could fire.

Weiss slammed back against the wall, sinking into a crouch and closing his eyes as he gradually forced himself not to hyperventilate. He brought the barrel of the gun against his face, feeling the cold metal.

Crap crap crap crap. That could've been one of his own guys; that could've been Sutton; that could've been Huang; that could've been Mike oh shit—

Sucking in his breath unevenly, Weiss cracked over his eyes and leaned over, looking into the face of the dead body sprawled out in front of him. It was a face he recognized, but not from personal association. He'd seen it in a briefing. The guy he'd shot was SD-5.

What, was the whole damn Alliance here? The thought wasn't very appealing, to say the least

Trying not to feel sick over the first person's life he'd ever ended, Weiss compartmentalized. He'd think about it later. He'd have a good long drink and a mean game of hockey with Mike, who would understand. He just wouldn't think about it now.

Setting his jaw, Weiss went on, faster now, moving along in half a crouch. Those guys in the alley were going to follow him and they were going to follow him fast, especially if they had back-up and knew he was alone—another guy popped out, and Weiss was suddenly realizing the benefit of those simulations they made you do in training when the cardboard figures popped out of doors and windows and you had to shoot any moving thing you saw—

But to do it this time, he had to hop out into an open hallway, and just as he was squeezing the trigger he heard someone behind him, but it wasn't till he'd finished the shot that he could whirl around—and meet a semi-familiar sight.

A woman was whirling around at the same time he was, having shot a man coming at her from the opposite direction, and was mimicking his position, arm extended, gun trained right on his face. It was his gun, the barrel of which he'd already stared down once tonight, and it was that same damn blonde. Funny how they kept meeting like this. Except this time he was in a little nicer shape because he had a gun too and it was pointed at her very revealing cleavage.

This time, the girl didn't say anything; she merely stood, arm extended to point the gun at him. The nice thing about it was that she wasn't shooting at him.

Of course, Weiss knew, that was probably because she knew that if she shot, he would too. It was a regular Mexican stand-off. Except they were in Columbia and if Weiss had to guess he'd've said she her accent was South American as well—south South American. Chilean. Argentinean, maybe.

Keeping one eye trained on her, Weiss let his other eye take in the surroundings—a trick you learned in the CIA that his mother would've said would make him cross-eyed. That last spin had turned him away from the series of corridors he'd been in; he was now facing the central gallery, which was large, open, and had many entrances. The girl was standing in the middle of the room, which was a terrible position to be in. An experienced agent would never . . .

Suddenly, even as he stepped back just to be certain of his back against the wall, he saw how young she was. He saw the wideness of her black eyes, and the trembling in her arm as she followed his movements with his gun. How many times has she done this? he wondered. When she'd put his gun to his head in the bar, he'd assumed he'd made a vast mistake checking her out; he'd assumed that she was an experienced agent, whoever she worked for, and that he was out of his depth.

There was no denying she was good—despite what a bad position she'd allowed herself to get into. But until now, it hadn't registered that she looked barely twenty, and that she might be just as green as he—and just as nervous.

This was an advantage. She was in a bad position and she was anxious. When someone—anyone, the guys from the alley—made a noise and her attention was diverted for a single instant, he could shoot her dead and probably take out the distraction in the next second.

Except, when that moment came, he didn't. The distraction came from behind the blonde—to Weiss's advantage, since he could see the guy aiming his gun at the blonde and the latter didn't even know he was there until Weiss's gun was moving a fraction to take him down.

That fraction involved a split-second decision that Weiss was never quite sure why he made. For one moment, he hadn't been aiming at the girl, and she'd had an open shot.

He didn't know whether it was this weird moment-of-trust thing they had going on or a mistake on her part, but she didn't take that shot. Instead, in the next second, she whirled around and was opening fire on the another SD-3 guy entering the gallery.

There were shouts, and Weiss knew that the rest weren't far behind. They were regrouping, and would come at them as a single force. Weiss bent down, ignoring the incredible sting in his shoulder, and quickly picked up a gun that had slid out of a dead hand. When he straightened, he pointed one gun at the girl and the other at the corridor the Alliance men had come out of.

In the brief lull in shooting as he skirted the perimeter of the gallery, Weiss debated whether he should be going back the way he'd come to try to find Huang and Sutton. All his training and good common sense told him flat out "NO," but if there was a chance they were back that way . . .

Then they were probably already dead. But Sutton and Huang were resourceful; they'd probably found another way out. In fact, they were probably in a much better situation than he was now, or at least, weren't stuck inching around some unpredictable blonde who had a penchant for pointing guns at his head and not shooting. A few more yards, and he'd be at the front entrance of the gallery. And the blonde would have her back to him.

Just then, the rest of the guys came out shooting, from different directions. The girl was faster than he thought, pulling back toward the entrance—but she showed him her back. She had to, if she was going to get out of here, but it gave him the chance—

But even if he'd really wanted to, Weiss just plain didn't have the time to take her out, and maybe she knew that. Too many men were swarming through the halls of the gallery and opening fire. If he were going to make it out of here alive, she'd have to trust him and he'd have to trust her for a couple seconds. They were obviously both against the Alliance for the moment, which, in general, was a good thing.

They pushed through the glass doors and were out of the building just as the entire glass façade of the entrance crashed down. Both of them, working on a single instinct, flung themselves against the brick wall beside the crashing glass, where the bullets still ringing from inside the building couldn't hit them. They moved along the wall until they could turn the corner and—

Pause for breath. Weiss dropped the gun that was out of bullets. The blonde wasn't looking at him—but Weiss was a little more worried about the guys coming after them from the gallery, at the moment. Futilely, he gave the receiver in his ear another tap, and spoke into his ring. "Base-ops? Retriever. Do you copy?"—but the ring was broken and his line was dead. He looked around. The street was calm, and the rendezvous was only five blocks away. If he could just—

Oh for the love of—

A car was jetting down the street in their direction, tires squealing, and the shooting started once again. Weiss thought he could almost get used to that sound. There was a crowd still around the club, and open fire was coming from there, too, and from across the street there was yelling—then a Spanish voice right in his ear—

"Cover me."

"¿Que?" he responded to the blonde dumbly. "Why should—"

"Because I have a car," she said simply, and was already moving out into the street.

"Wait, I can't—" Weiss yelled after her. There was no way to cover her; shots were coming in all different directions—and yet . . . some small, remote, compartmentalized part of his brain was admiring that incredible courage. What in holy hell was she thinking?

Maybe it was that admiration, maybe it was the command in her voice, or maybe it was because he was a sitting duck unless she really did have a car, but whatever the reason, he ran after her, hoping to provide the necessary distraction, opening himself to fire even more than she was, shooting futilely at targets under much better cover—

—they do not teach running after crazy blondes in agent training, any more than they cover how to act normal around them when their sexiness is making you nervous while you stand beside them at the bar in your leisure suit—

—and what if she got to her car, then what? The smartest idea would be to head straight west along Calle Fontana and forget about the dupe in the damn suit who was trying to save your ass—again—

A car door flew open next to him as Weiss belatedly noticed the black Mustang roaring along side him. "Get in," she commanded. He got in.