Note: I want to see if anybody notices that I didn't write a disclaimer. Anyway, I know the title is really weird, but it's the best I could come up with. As in the last chapter, I made a reference to a movie and so in this chapter I refer to wake up juice. Can anybody tell me which science fiction trilogy with a crazy scientist with wacked out white hair, it was in?
Ch. 8 "Drunk Got Ran Over By A Missy"
.....and turned over. He hadn't seen her. Irina couldn't believe it. She lowered herself to the ground, incase he would roll over again. She waited for him to fall asleep. After about 10 minutes she heard the thunderous snoring that drunkenness brings on, accompanied by natural talent. She carefully tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. She had just about made it, was almost home free or in this case was it free from home? Anyway she was almost safe when...there was a knock at the door.
"Oh sh...eet of cookies," Irina mumbled under her breath. It was an old habit. Whenever she had been about to say the s-word in front of Sydney she had saved herself by saying that. Irina scrambled behind the counter and thought that the day, yes technically 4 a.m. is morning although no human is up at that hour to know if it is or not, could get any worse. Of course, it did. Who should walk through the door, but the one and only Sloane. Irina clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Even a well trained individual as herself got scared when the likes of Arvin and the Chipmunks Sloane was around. She watched as he called out Jack's name and heard Jack groan in reply. As he went upstairs Irina debated whether to make a run for it while they were talking. It would be dangerous for her to leave with them right upstairs, but she figured it would be even more dangerous to stay. Who knew when her next chance might come? Even worse, she could really be in trouble if Sloane came down to make Jack some wake up juice. She decided to go and closed the door so quietly that the two men never even knew it had been opened. Well, not exactly.
"Did I just feel a draft?" Sloane asked, as he shivered.
"No thanks. Already had one. Would like a Bud Light though," Jack answered.
"No Jack. I didn't offer you a drink. I said it was cold," Sloane said, somewhat irritated.
"You're not that old, Arvin. I mean you're getting on and all, but...."
"Jack we have a problem at work. I think you should come with me."
Jack begrudgingly followed Sloane to the door. Sloane seemed to think better of it though and turned back to Jack.
"Maybe you should shower first."
Back in the Atlantic Ocean, Sydney was singing the theme song from Titanic. "And my heart will go on and on..." Finally she got bored and started thinking of other sea related songs, which turned out to be a bad thing when the Jaws theme popped in her head. Although, it is very rare to find a shark in the cold Atlantic Ocean, Syd was tired, hungry, thirsty, and very bummed out, so it was very easy for her to become paranoid. "Da da..da..da..dadadadadada" "Ah!!"
It was only a small fish, but like I said she was paranoid. Fortunately for her the scream actually did some good because a young boy in a boat a few miles away heard the scream on his little device hearing thingy. Naturally curious, he went towards the noise maker.
When Sydney saw the boat she couldn't believe it. "How lucky am I?" she thought to herself. Of course, the opinion would change momentarily.
The boat and the blond haired boy reached Sydney within a few minutes. Seeing her in the water he lowered down a life saver and when she got in, pulled it up. Although she was very wet and not in her best, the teenager was quite taken with her.
"Hello," he said in an unmistakably British accent.
"Hi," Sydney replied back in an obvious American accent. Sark helped her find a blanket while she told him her story. Of course, it wasn't exactly the truth and of course, Sark wasn't a complete idiot. He found it hard to believe that she had ski dived out into the Atlantic Ocean at that early an hour in the morning and that someone had just forgotten to pick her up. "That's too stupid even for Americans," he thought to himself.
"What did you say your name was?" he asked, suspiciously.
"My name is Irene Bostow," Sydney replied.
Sark, having no reason not to believe that she wasn't just some stupid valley girl from California who was even stupider than the stereo type, led her to an empty room and started the boat back toward home. If Syd had thought about it she might have wondered what a 15 year old boy was doing driving a boat worth a couple hundred thousand dollars, but she was still recovering from theme song trauma.
Sloane had told Jack to head to SD-6 as soon as possible and also to take a taxi. After taking a shower and drinking some really awful remedy, he finally began to wake up. Besides wondering what the problem was, he was also beginning to wonder about a few other things. Like how in the world did he get home? The last thing he remembered was asking Mickey for another scotch and wondering why the bar was spinning around and around. Well, actually that wasn't the last thing he remembered. He remembered hearing voices or to be more correct, a voice. A female voice, very familiar, yet different. Jack didn't remember much of what it said, but he did recall something that sounded like Russian swear words. He shrugged it off. Probably just delusions, he thought. After he was ready, he hoped in the car and sped towards the office. By the time he reached SD-6 he was very proud of himself. He had only hit one mailbox.
He rushed into the building and went to the elevator that went down to the SD-6 level. While he was waiting a thought suddenly came to him. Why didn't Sloane just call him? Well, he would find out soon enough. The door opened and he made his way towards Sloane's office. When he arrived there he was greeted with a sober face, sober in both respects.
"Jack, sit down."
Jack did as wished and became even more worried. "Could something be wrong with Sydney?" he wondered.
"There's no easy way to say this, but Sydney's missing. Her plane never made it to its destination. When we tried to contact it, no contact could be made. At first we thought maybe they had needed to land somewhere or for safety reasons couldn't contact us. I came and got you all the same, in case..." he paused for a moment. "In case we had reason to fear something was wrong." Sloane paced around his desk as he delivered his little speech and suddenly came to a halt. "We have already sent out a team to look for her. We will find her if she's still...." Sloane halted and looked out the window to advert Jack's eyes. Even though he wasn't completely clear-headed yet, Jack could tell that Sloane was having as much trouble with this news as he was. "So we have no idea where she could be?" Jack asked worriedly.
"Well, the last transmission we had from the plane was when they were about 45 minutes away from England. We can only assume that if there was a malfunction....."
"Sydney could be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean," Jack finished for him.
Sloane solemnly nodded his head.
"Waz' you got there sonny?"
Sark turned toward the familiar loud and boisterous voice.
"A souvenir from the sea, Kim," he answered back.
"You finally catch a mermaid have ya?"
Sydney, still wrapped in the blanket, stared at the man her rescuer was conversing with. He looked like some old sailor bum off a Hornblower movie.
"Allow me to introduce you to one of the finest drunken idiots in the world, Kim..."
"The last name doesn't matter, missy. Little scalawag can't even pronounce it correctly anyway." Kim interrupted.
"I'm Irene Bostow," Sydney said, extending her hand.
The gesture was met with the strongest handshake Sydney had ever felt. She just hoped she never had to fight him or anyone in his family.
"Why don't we save the pleasantries for inside," Sark suggested. "I don't know about you," he said turning towards Sydney. "But I feel like some hot cocoa."
Sydney smiled and the three walked into a nearby café. They sat down and a waitress around Sydney's age came over to get their order. "Hello, my name is Lauren and I'll be your waitress tonight. Is there anything I can get you?"
"Ya," Kim replied. "A round of hot chocolate and uh," he said leaning towards the waitress and lowering his voice, "Make mine something stronger," he said with a wink.
The waitress smiled and left to get their drinks. That was when Sydney realized she should contact the CIA, to let them know she was okay. She excused herself and was glad that the pay phone was one, around the corner and out of sight, and two, right by the bathroom, which made her excuse of leaving much more believable.
Using a trick she'd learned she dialed the number for SD-6, but instead got a place called Joey's Pizza. Ticked off that she'd forgotten the real phone number, she dialed the only other one she could. She called the CIA headquarters. Sloane had told her that the CIA wouldn't acknowledge the SD-6 branch, but they couldn't very well leave her stranded. A female voice answered and asked for her number. Sydney recited it perfectly, she hadn't forgotten that thankfully, and was confused when the voice yelled back at her. "This is a government line. You should be ashamed of yourself. Now I want you and your little friends to stop these pranks calls or else!" The voice slammed the phone down and Sydney, mouth open in surprise collected herself and headed back to the table. She was beginning to wonder if all adults were cranky.
"We've located her, sir."
Jack started up from his desk. He had fallen asleep. "Where is she?"
"She's in a café in a little village by the coast," the messenger answered. He turned to leave the room, but then he remembered something and turned back around. "Mr. Sloane would also like to see you sir."
Jack got up from his desk and went to Sloane's office. He was expecting to see him in high spirits, but was surprised to find the same sad look still on his boss's face. Jack was almost afraid to ask.
"Do you want the bad new or the good new first?" he asked Jack.
"Does this have anything to do with Sydney being found?" Jack asked back.
"Well, there goes the good news," Sloane said, with out humor.
Jack waited for him to continue and when he didn't, Jack began to worry, again. He was getting very good at it. "Is she okay?"
Sloane emitted a nervous chuckle. "Depends what you mean by okay. If you're asking if she's hurt, yes she's okay. If you're asking if she's in the company of enemy agents, then no she is not."
Sloane slid a file across the desk to Jack. He picked it up. Inside was a picture and a profile of a teenage boy. It was quite a profile and it was quite a problem. Sloane explained that they couldn't move in with out endangering Sydney's life. The people she was with had no reason to believe she was an agent, but it might look kind of suspicious if a helicopter and a group of armed men showed up. Although Jack agreed that a extraction at the moment would be premature, he didn't know what alternative there was. When he asked Sloane, he only got two words, words he did not like at all. The words were, "We wait."
As you know Jack is terrible at waiting. So was the rest of the Bristow clan and this particular Bristow had waited a long time. A very long time and all she wanted, out of anything in the whole wide world, was for a very drunken Kim to stop calling her missy.
"Guess what missy, I use to be a very rich man. Yep missy, I use to be somebody. I owned this town missy, I was the man....missy."
Sark, being very observant, noticed that this bothered her and said something to Kim when Sydney went to the jukebox. Kim, not taking offense, agreed to stop calling her missy. When Sydney got back he was extremely careful not to offend her by referring to her as missy.
"So girly, find any good songs?"
Sydney was about to tell him that she had indeed found a good Christmas song called "Drunk Got Ran Over By A Missy" when she heard something that sounded like a helicopter and she wasn't the only one who heard it.
Sark looked out the window. Once he saw it, his mood shifted fast. "I think we've over stayed our welcome. Let's go."
Sydney didn't have time to argue before Sark almost pushed her out the back door. Sark ran through the alley dragging Sydney with him and Kim lagging behind, swaying from side to side. Sydney could tell they were headed towards the boat. She didn't realize why Sark was running. What reason did he have? That's when Sydney started to put the puzzle together. Why was a teenage boy trusted with such a large and expensive ship? Why had he been out there in the first place? Why was he running from people he shouldn't even know about? He had no cause, unless he did know about them. Unless he was an agent himself. Unless he was an enemy.
Sydney yanked her hand away. Sark looked at her in amazement until it finally dawned on him. As quickly as Syd had put the clues about him together, he did the same for her. His early suspicions must be correct. Why else would a helicopter be in the middle of nowhere? Not wanting to waste time on the rest of the whys, he tried to grab Sydney. By this time she knew that he knew and he knew that she knew that he knew. So they started throwing punches and kicking at each other when suddenly they were stopped by a shot.
They turned around. Kim, who had been dubious to all that was going on around him, had stopped, out in the middle of open space, to take a swig of rum. The two saw him fall to the ground. They just stared for a moment before Sark took off toward the boat. Sydney didn't have the heart to catch him. She just stood there. She was still standing there when the SD-6 agents rushed to her side. They helped her on to the helicopter. The agents decided to give up on Sark, he was already gone and their main mission was to bring Sydney back.
Back at the lair, Jack was pacing back and forth in his office, wondering if it was possible to die of worry. Although earlier they had decided against going in, they had changed their minds when the copilot of Sydney's plane had showed up. He had been found in a British hospital and had just recently contacted them. It was too much of a coincidence that the airplane had been fired on and that an enemy agent just happened to be floating about the coast. They had waited because they thought Sark might figure out who Sydney was if they suddenly appeared, but if he was affiliated with the attack, he had probably already figured out who she was.
"Jack?"
Jack turned to see Sloane standing in the doorway, wearing a smile that was almost too big for his small head. Jack, in turn, allowed himself a small smile that was too little for his big head. Small head turned to leave when big head suddenly stopped him.
"Small head, when Syd was missing, why didn't you call me? It would have been easier than coming to get me."
"I tried, Big head, but your phone was disconnected,"with that small head left.
Big head pondered over this for a moment. Another question for his never ending list.
