A/N: Okay, I know my excuses are getting old, but I am incredibly sorry for not updating. I've been really busy with school, and college stuff, well, none of you want to hear my woes, but I can't guarantee that I can add-on as often as I would like. I'm sorry to all my reviewers, but I hope that you all will continue to give me encouraging feedback.
P.S. About this chapter. It may seem a little confusing, but I hope not so that I completely lose you guys. The other things is that if anyone goes and researches any of my info about the bombs and the transmitters and frequency levels you'll probably find that it's inaccurate or doesn't exist. All that stuff I made up, and believe me, I have no idea what my mind is talking about.
P.S.S. Hope everyone had a happy holidays. Happy New Year! Wahoo! Class of 2005!
Chapter 24
"How long?" Dixon demanded
"Twenty-four hours," Jack explained.
"That's not enough time to evacuate the whole hospital."
"My guess is Sark is watching the hospital, I doubt it would be a good idea to begin with," Jack rationalized.
"Get Agent Vaughn," Dixon explained to a nearby agent. "I want a team assembled to locate these bombs. Hopefully we can locate and disarm them in time."
"And if we can't?" Jack asked. Dixon was silent. Jack strode angrily towards the door.
"I can't be responsible for the death of hundreds of the men, women, children, doctors, and nurses who are residing in this hospital," Dixon defended himself.
"And you can't be responsible for giving the Covenant Nadia and allow them satisfaction of getting the next piece of the Rambaldi puzzle. The CIA does not negotiate with terrorists," Jack argued.
"I don't like the idea either, Jack, but there may be no other choice."
"There's always a choice."
24242424
"I am confident that you know who this is."
"I do, but I am wondering why the CIA's new humanitarian is calling me?"
"You already know."
"I don't believe I know what you're talking about."
"I know about her, and though I admire your ability to keep her a secret all these years. I am disappointed however, in your lack of faith in telling me."
"Let's get one thing clear. I never had faith in you."
"You've made your point clear."
"Why have you called me?"
"I want to get her away from the CIA."
"Why?"
"I'm sure you've heard about Sydney's kidnapping? Well, the Covenant has been holding Sydney in hopes of making a trade. The CIA is currently in Krauss, Germany making the trade."
"If you had an extraction plan you should have contacted me earlier."
"My sources in Germany tell me that the Covenant failed to obtain Nadia and Sydney is safely in the CIA's hands. However, they were supposed to report back to the states three hours ago."
"Give me one good reason why I should help you do anything you have planned?"
"You have the underground access to get her out of there."
"I highly doubt your concerns are coming from a black heart gone red."
"She will be completely in your hands. It's up to you. The only way to get her out of Covenant hands is to extract her from the CIA, and as of now, you're the only one who can do that. I trust you'll do the right thing for our daughter."
24242424
"Our sensors aren't picking up anything," Vaughn announced to Dixon through his earpiece.
"Keep searching, Agent Vaughn."
"Sir, we've searched the basement twice, there's nothing here."
Dixon bowed his head as he looked down at the walkie-talkie. "We need to call Marshall," Jack encouraged. "We need to keep acting as if Sark did place bombs in the hospital."
"Marshall's on line one," one of the other agents said handing Dixon the phone.
"Marshall?"
"Yes, Mr. Dixon, Sir. What can I do for you?" Marshall stumbled. Dixon glanced at his watch. It was three o'clock in the morning back home.
"Sorry for waking you. We believe that there are bombs located in the hospital we're staying at, and we need to locate them. All that we can tell is that the bombs, if they're here, they are not C-4 based," Dixon stated.
"No problem, I don't get asleep that much lately since Mitchell was born. So you know, getting a lot of sleep is actually kind of bad for me…"
"Marshall."
"Right, sorry. Give me a second so I can log onto the system. It's possible that if there are bombs in the building we can tract them by their mercury levels or transmitters. Though with transmitters there are always possibilities of setting those bombs off, so that might not be the wisest way to go." Dixon just stood anxiously in the room waiting for Marshall's response.
"Okay, I've got you on satellite. I'm running a scan over the hospital. I'm not picking up abnormal mercury levels but—Hold on." Dixon could hear some tapping of keys.
"Marshall, what is it?" Dixon demanded.
"This is not good. I'm picking up on an INBS transmitter."
"In English, Marshall."
"An INBS transmitter is one where a transmitter and a receiver are sending a consistent stream of data back in forth on a particular frequency."
"Why is that bad?" Dixon asked feeling slightly contentious that he didn't know what Marshall was talking about.
"The data that the transmitter and the receiver are sending back and forth is basically whether or not one or the other is functioning. So if this transmitter is coming from a bomb and you disconnect the bomb, you end up disconnecting the data that would be sent to the receiver which in turn would initiate the countdown to any other bombs that are in the building."
"Can we trace the transmitter to the receiver?"
"We could, but it's risky. If in tracing the receiver we disrupt the frequency in anyway, we could cause all the bombs to go off simultaneously."
"So how do we locate the transmitters in these bombs?"
"This kind of transmitter generally works on frequencies between ten and twenty micro hertz. It shouldn't be that hard to locate. Not many things operate on such a low frequency," Marshall said optimistically.
"I'm at a hospital, Marshall. Tell me what I can use to locate this frequency without disrupting the transmitter."
"You don't need to use anything. I'm scanning the area now."
"Marshall, what would we ever do without you?" Dixon asked with a momentary sigh of relief.
24242424
Sydney slowly let her eyes fall into focus. The room was still as dark as it had been when Vaughn had visited, so she must have not been asleep long. It had nearly killed her to say what she did to Vaughn, and if she had the chance, she'd take it all back. It was the combination of hurt and anger, and inability to prepare herself for what she might say to him after having discovered his secret. Even after everything she'd been through, there was still no one she trusted more than Michael Vaughn.
Sydney blinked away a stray tear before furrowing her brow. A red light was blinking from the middle of the ceiling. Sydney struggled to make out what it was. It looked like a smoke detector. She hadn't recalled there being a smoke detector being in her room before. Her spy instincts suddenly made her wonder about this new item as she reached over and hit the call button on the wall next to the bed. A nurse arrived within five minutes.
"Are you alright?" The nurse asked in German.
"Yes. Could you tell me what the red light is coming from?" Sydney responded in German.
"Oh, those are our new smoke detectors. They were installed last night," the nurse answered.
"Thank you, that's all I wanted to know." The nurse nodded and left the room as Sydney settled down into the pillow.
24242424
"I'm detecting over a hundred bombs located throughout the hospital," Marshall said.
"Can you narrow down exactly where?" Dixon asked.
"Give me a moment—okay you'll want to write down these room numbers." Dixon motioned to a nearby agent that he needed a pain and paper. Marshall began firing off room numbers within the hospital.
"Agent Vaughn," Dixon said once Marshall had finished. "I need you to divide the team and investigate the room numbers I am about to give you. Marshall did a scan and declared that there was a bomb located in all these rooms."
"Alright, Sir."
"Be sure not to attempt any deactivation of these bombs. Once you've located at least one, talk back to me so I can figure out how we're going to disarm them."
"Yes, Sir." Vaughn quickly wrote down the room numbers and divided it amongst his team by floor. He however, froze, when he saw Sydney's room number printed on the page.
"I've got the fourth floor. Edison, you've got the seventh. Report to me if you find anything suspicious in any of the rooms, and remember, don't attempt to dismember the bomb in anyway." As soon as Vaughn had given the orders he rushed off to Sydney's room. If he needed a place to start, Sydney's room was as good as any.
Moving down the hallway at a fast walk past nurses and doctors who were bent over reading medical charts, he reached Sydney's room in no time.
"Not you again," the agent outside Sydney's door groaned. "Look, I let you in last time, but I'm not doing it again."
"This time you have no choice." Vaughn leaned in towards the agent and explained the situation. The agent however still eyed Vaughn with doubt.
"Then it's a coincidence that out of all the agents you were chosen to investigate Agent Bristow's room?" he asked.
"I don't have time for this," Vaughn said angrily as he pushed past the agent and entered Sydney's room. The agent was short to recover and he entered the room shortly after Vaughn.
"Vaughn, what's going on?" Sydney asked, sitting up with a wince as she tried to figure out the reason for this commotion.
"I apologize, Agent Bristow. Agent Vaughn shouldn't be—"
"Sydney," Vaughn interrupted urgently. "Sark's threatening to blow up the whole hospital if we don't give him Nadia. As of now, we know that the Covenant isn't bluffing. There are at least a hundred bombs throughout the hospital and one of them is in this room. Have you noticed anything out of place within the last twenty-four hours?" Vaughn asked.
A realization fell over Sydney as she looked up at the blinking light that the nurse had so reassuringly told her was being produced from the new smoke detector. Vaughn followed her gaze and suddenly understood.
24242424
"Marshall, we've got a lock on the bombs. They're located in the smoke detectors. According to some of the faculty these new smoke detectors have been sitting in a warehouse for the last month. Yesterday they received a notice that the fire marshal would be visiting, so they took the smoke detectors out of storage and started installing them last night. Our guess is that Sark made the call," Dixon explained. "Do you have any more news on the receiver?"
"No," Marshall said with dejection. "The Covenant was smart. They've set up an RT unit that sporadically spits out emissions of the same frequency in various directions. I would need more time to single out the right frequency to lead us to the receiver."
"How much more time?" Dixon asked.
"How likely is it that the Covenant is still in Germany?" Marshall asked.
"It's likely but there's no certainty," Dixon answered; sorry he couldn't Marshall a more definite answer.
Marshall sighed. "Narrowing down the frequencies within Germany would take at least eight hours, but with no guarantee that the Covenant is even still in Germany, I may need up to twelve hours."
Dixon grimaced. Twelve hours was cutting it too close to their deadline. Already they had 19 hours to comply or refuse the Covenant's demands. Seven hours may or may not give the CIA enough time to assemble a team and locate Sark, and that's already risking the lives of everyone in the hospital if Sark somehow found out their plan before they reached him.
"What about disarming? Is there anyway to disarm the bombs without setting them off?"
"I'm currently trying to locate all the active bombs and create a source that can send off as many signals of the same frequency as there are bombs in hopes of tricking the transmitters. But if I don't match the frequency or amount of bombs exactly as we are deactivating the other bombs than, well…kaboom."
24242424
She had been on so many missions and been so many people that it would take as many years as her age to try and remember them all. She knew protocol and that she could expect absolutely everything to happen. However, this mission, as easy as was and as disastrous as it could turn out, nothing could prepare her for meeting the daughter that was stolen from her so many years ago.
She sighed from the shadows. She had to move soon. She'd officially established the CIA's routine, and found that Nadia herself rarely left her room. A few times she'd seen her daughter from the window as she went to talk to an agent and often went back to her room angry. She was beautiful.
The same hair that she herself bore was evident on her daughter's head. Her face was soft and beautiful. She had yet to see her smile, but she knew that it would be beautiful. She still seemed so young and despite all her hardships it almost seemed as if with her purity, that she was a woman who could forgive and enjoy herself with a normal life. The kind of life that she'd always desired for Sydney. However, she didn't seem to be without the same strength and determination that she herself possessed, and she was glad to see that commonality in both her daughters.
Slowly, she pulled out the transmitter from her pocket. It was time for her to act. She had placed two gas cartridges in the chimney and had succeeded in blocking the top so that none of the gas would escape. With Nadia's door closed and on the opposite side of the house as the chimney, Nadia would be allowed more time than the other agents for escaping. Not to mention that she did not intend to leave her daughter without an escape route. The window to Nadia's room only needed to be pushed open to allow her to escape easily to the ground. With a deep breath, she pushed the button.
24242424
Nadia lay on her bed thinking. Anyone who was to enter the room at the moment would think that she had some sort of odd infatuation with the circular brown water stain on the ceiling, for her eyes had not left it for the last hour. Her thoughts however, wandered over many topics. She was angry that she wasn't allowed to see Sydney and that she was unable to get any information from the CIA on what was going on. She was forced to sit and do absolutely, positively, nothing.
Suddenly, a loud thud seemed to rock the house, soon followed by another. There was a sound that came out like a strangled gasp before yet another thud hit the ground. Nadia sat up on the bed as a wave of fear passed over her. Slowly she crept over to the door and pulled it open, glancing out into the living room. She closed the door as soon as she had opened it. The entire room was filled with a thick white fog. She could barely make out the dark hair of one of the agents lying on the ground. Nadia turned around hurrying over to the window, but was surprised to find that the window was already open and a woman was standing inside her room, next to the window, watching her.
An odd combination of fear and recognition for a person she didn't know washed over her. The woman had hair of similar color to her own. Her eyes and Nadia's were almost the exact same color, and her beauty, even as an older woman was not diminished from her days of youth. Nadia reflected back to an old KGB picture that had come back in one of the searches for her mother. The two women were one in the same. This was Irina Derevko.
Nadia's eyes began to fill with tears. "Mom?"