DISCALIMER: The characters of Red Eye don't belong to me.
Chapter 2
"Stay in here and make sure no one else tries to come in." With those parting words, Charles Keefe quickly exited the small watch-room. Johnson watched through the two-way window as two of the guards outside preceded Keefe into the interrogation room. They took up stations on either side of the prisoner.
Jackson Rippner looked up briefly as Keefe entered the room. The senator was glad to see the brief surprise flare in Rippner's eyes before the emotion was quickly shuttered away. His face became a mask once more.
"Mr. Rippner," he greeted his enemy heartily.
Coming closer, he examined the man from head to foot. "Jackson Rippner, born in Dublin, grew up to become a badge-toting member of the IRA, blew up a few buildings here and there didn't you? Trained in Libya…and elsewhere. Decided to follow the money to different parts of the world, and now here you are. You've mostly lost that Irish accent, haven't you?"
Jackson cocked an eyebrow.
"Have our boys been treatin' you well?"
Rippner glanced up at the beefy bodyguard on either side of him."I can complain," he said mildly, rotating one shoulder painfully.
"I wouldn't advise it," Keefe warned. "Do you know how many counts of felony you're currently facing?" The older man placed his palms on the table, and leaned forward. "As Chief of Homeland Security, I can have you locked away for a very long time, son."
"But you've got a better offer," Jackson sneered.
It was Keefe's turn to be surprised. Rippner was quick on the uptake.
Jackson continued, "Turn informant on the people who paid me, and you'll make sure I disappear into the woodwork, is that it?"
Keefe suppressed a smile. So Rippner didn't quite know the extent of his plan.
"I've no need for that," he said, and seated himself in the other chair. "Your comrades were more than happy to give us any information we wanted. I'm afraid my men were a bit rougher on them than they were on you. Probably because you're still recovering from being stabbed in the leg three weeks ago? And shot?" He watched Jackson's reaction with interest.
Jackson's blue eyes narrowed, but that was the only sign he gave to acknowledge the hit.
Keefe signalled to one of the men. "I want you to see something," he said. The door opened and a small TV was rolled into the room. The guard switched it on.
The scene was a hospital corridor, at the tilted angle only a security camera could catch it at. A man made his way down it, walking casually as nurses and doctors passed him.
The scene switched to him outside the door of a hospital room, a guard slumped in his chair. The man swiftly entered, and the view switched again, to the inside of the hospital room, where a sleeping figure lay in a hospital bed, monitored by softly beeping machines, tubes sticking out of his nose and arms. The first man pulled out a syringe, and leaned forward, poised over the unconscious man, but was quickly subdued by two men who came out of nowhere, one capturing his wrist, and the needle with it, and the other catching him in a viselike grip.
Keefe watched Jackson's face. It was pale.
"I suppose you recognise yourself in the hospital bed," he said. "You were unconscious. No less than three attempts have been made on your life since you were captured, Rippner. Only one was recorded. Your compatriots tell us that they got a message from your boss. He's not happy, I hear."
Keefe was enjoying this- enjoying the look on Jackson's face as he struggled to master his rage. Let HIM know how it felt to have someone attack him when he was unknowing and helpless.
"What. Do.You. Want." Jackson ground out between clenched teeth.
"You."
Jackson turned a stunned look on Keefe. "Me? For what?"
Keefe assessed him carefully. This was the delicate part. "I was impressed with your chutzpah in the whole red-eye situation. You had a lot of problems right from the get-go, but you didn't let that stop you, did you? Starting with the delayed flight to Miami…"
Jackson stared at Keefe as memories played through his head. He forcibly clamped down on them, drawing on the well of ice within himself. Red-brown hair. Dimples. Shit.
"I could use a man like you, Mr. Rippner," Keefe finished.
Jackson stared at him incredulously. "You…want to hire me?"
Keefe chuckled. "Hire you? Mm, well…yes, you could put it that way. Or you could say I'm going to the trouble of saving your worthless hide from the men who are out to get you. You could put it that way, too.
My men have saved your life thrice over, and it's time for you to pay some long over-due interest on that."
Jackson bowed his head, so that his thick brown hair fell into his eyes. "You've got need of my skills, yeah?"
"That is correct."
"Well, it looks like I don't have much of a choice." Jackson raised his head, but his expression was shuttered. "All right, I accept."
"Good." It was the only way open for him, Keefe knew. He didn't fool himself that Jackson meant to keep his side of the bargain for very long. That's why there would be safeguards in place.
"My aide will give you the formal rundown on this later, but I'll give you the gist of what I want you to do. You know middle class American suburbia? I want you to infiltrate it. One community in particular- Acacia Heights, a small town. I've received intel from a reliable source that there are sleepers there- A married couple. But the source was unable to determine who it was, and since then the source has been…compromised. I need someone innocuous to go in there and find out the truth."
Jackson looked up, startled. "And what am I supposed to do with them when I find them?"
Keefe's eyes grew cold. "Neutralize them. They're supposedly two people from a country we just signed an agreement with, and this is not a show of good faith on their behalf. The couple has likely been in that community for a period of time, but our new 'ally' hasn't removed them. No one's moved away from the community. If I prove that their agents are within the country, then I get to ask for a lot more on the bargaining table."
Jackson grimaced. He understood the power of having the upper hand. Keefe was looking for an edge, and seemed to have determined that he'd find that in two sleeper agents. The man obviously used his lemons to make lemonade.
"I want you to masquerade as part of a young couple moving into the neighbourhood. The plan is to…"
"Hang on, hang on just a moment." Jackson broke in, interrupting the flow of speech. Keefe looked annoyed. "Yes?"
"Heh, I'd like to know how you expect me to pretend to be a couple?" Jackson lifted a manacled hand and pulled at his suit jacket. "As you can see, there's only one of me."
"You'll have a female counterpart, of course," Keefe explained. "The President is holding another meeting with this country in a little more than a month. I'll be attending as well. Before that meeting starts, I need you two to ferret out the agents and inform me of their identities. Contain them if necessary. Do not terminate. At any cost. That could prove messy."
Jackson listened intently. "Who is going to be the female agent?"
Keefe cleared his throat. "In fact, I haven't…"
He didn't even see it coming.
Jackson sprang from his chair onto the table, sliding across its shiny surface, twisting in mid-air and coming to a full stop behind Keefe, his manacles pulled tight around the senator's throat in one swift move.
The two guards already had their guns trained on him, but Jackson ignored them. His head turned, and he regarded the two-way glass impassively.
"You! Inside. Don't even THINK about calling anyone, or Keefe strangles on my handcuffs very quickly. I can hear you if you speak."
In the small room behind the two-way glass, Johnson sweated, a gun clutched in one hand. He lifted it carefully, but Jackson was using Keefe's body to cover himself. No way he could get a clear shot in. Could Jackson really hear him? He considered contacting his compatriots anyway, especially because Jackson was pulling Keefe along with him to the exit. But before he could make a decision, Jackson gasped and jerked. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he sank to the ground. Keefe freed himself and moved away, showing his guards the mini-tazer he had secreted in his pocket.
"You see, Johnson?" he called through the glass. "Thinking on his feet. I'd have been disappointed if Mr. Rippner hadn't tried something. It's just his bad luck I came prepared."
As Johnson hurried into the interrogation chamber, Keefe looked down at his fallen prisoner. "I think Mr. Rippner will be slightly more amenable now. Finish the briefing when he's awake. It's time to recruit the female half of this team."
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Lisa Reisert paced the living room of the safehouse impatiently. It had been three weeks since the red-eye incident and she was eager to get back to work. Anything, to stop her mind from re-playing the events of that Miami flight over and over again.
Sometimes she woke up in the middle of the night, convinced she hadn't been in time to save the Keefes. There was something strange about that time of night. At that time of night, her brain refused to believe her assertion that everything had ended well, that the Keefes were safe. She'd wake up with her heart pounding, and had to repeat to herself over and over again- The Keefes are safe. The Keefes are safe.
At other times, she was convinced someone was following her, tracking her every movement the way her seatmate claimed he had for eight weeks.
Of course, this second conviction turned out to be true when she was assaulted outside a strip mall on her way to buy groceries. And that's how she had ended up in this safehouse. Keefe's men had whisked her away, forcing her boss to put her on 'indefinite leave'. They'd looked quite put out by the whole thing, she remembered. She huffed. Well, sorry to inconvenience you, Mr. Bodyguards. If it wasn't for me, you all wouldn't even have jobs anymore.
She was bored out of her mind. Worried, and bored. Why had she been attacked? Was it a coincidence? The media hadn't really made the connection between the Miami flight and the destruction of Keefe's hotel room. As far as they were concerned, Cynthia was the heroine of the day. And Lisa was happy for it to stay that way. She certainly didn't crave attention. She was just glad she'd escaped with her life intact. From that maniac.
But someone seemed to know that she'd been involved. And they were striking at her. She put her hands to her forehead. When could she go back to work and stop theorizing about all this? It was way over her head.
Through the window, she saw two cars come gliding up the drive. They were stopped by a man dressed as a gardener, in reality a secret service agent. He spoke to the driver briefly, and let them through. Visitors!
Lisa figured it was Keefe. He was the only one she was allowed to see. She waited as the bodyguards emerged from the car and escorted Keefe in. He looked as handsome and debonair as ever, dressed in a deep blue suit, his silver hair brushed back. He smiled a greeting.
"Lisa!" He strode forward and smiled down at her. "How are you?"
"I'm fine, Mr. Keefe," she replied, smiling back. "Would you like a seat, and some coffee?" Hostess training kicking in, but then, she also genuinely admired him.
Keefe took her up on the offer, seating himself on the tan leather couch. "Coffee would be great."
Lisa seated herself, knowing he'd been heard and that coffee would magically appear within a few minutes.
"How are you doing, Lisa?" Keefe inquired again, concern showing in his eyes. He took her hand, and placed it in his. "I understand there was an attack on you. In broad daylight."
Lisa nodded. "Yes." Even thinking of it was difficult. It made her feel helpless, as though she was being targeted by some unknown enemy whose face she couldn't see.
Keefe briefly glanced up at one of the guards behind him."We've been able to trace back something of this attack." He turned back to her. "I fear you're in grave danger, Lisa. The people who ordered the hit on me aren't happy with Jackson Rippner, and more unfortunately, they're not happy with you."
Lisa trembled, but forced herself not to show it."What do you mean? Why would they care about me?"
"Because you stopped them. They know you're a civilian, and yet you still stopped them. They must show that they won't tolerate that."
"Who is 'they'?" Lisa asked desperately.
"That's something we hope to find out very soon," Keefe replied with the smooth reassurance of the politician.
"Surely I'm safe here," she protested.
"Yes, but for how long? They'll keep trying to find you."
"Can't you…provide me with some other kind of protection? Perhaps…leave the country, or…"
Keefe looked away. "There is one thing. It's fairly nebulous, however."
"Yes?"
Keefe looked back at her. "Are you aware of the state of Khrygia?"
"It was in the news," Lisa replied instantly. Nowadays, the papers were one thing that kept her mind busy. "They're looking into developing nuclear power."
"That's right. It's a small country between Armenia and Iran, not really a part of Europe but not really the Middle East either, according to them. At the moment, the U.S. is treating with them. They've had strong ties with the U.S.S.R., and now Russia. So some of their alliances are suspicious."
"As you know, during the cold war, Russia placed sleeper agents throughout the United States, most of them with a particular mission in mind. They haven't really stopped, simply because the war is over. We strongly suspect that there is a pair of sleeper agents living in Miami, and we need to find out who they are."
"Why now?" Lisa asked.
"We think something's going down, so to speak. Or it will very soon. I've been told that the attempt on my family's life was a part of that. And this particular pair of agents will be involved in whatever is about to happen. And we have to find them before that happens."
"Are they targeting me now as well?" Lisa asked.
"You're a loose end," he explained gently. Lisa nodded absently.
"Why are you telling me this?" she wanted to know.
"You're not going to be safe here much longer. I figure you have a vested interest in this, and I'd like to assign you to my team of agent retrievers."
Lisa stared at Keefe. Surely she had misunderstood. "Excuse me? You want me to what?"
Keefe beetled his brows. "I'm sending a team of agents to the town these agents are in- Acacia Heights, here in Miami. I'd like you to go with them. You're smart, you're a quick thinker, and you don't have the look of a secret agent whatsoever."
"Um, that's because I'm NOT one, Mr. Keefe," Lisa couldn't believe she had to point this out. "Don't you have an entire stable of agents who are more than capable of doing this?"
"Of course I do, but you have one important advantage that they do not."
"And what's that?"
"You're trying to stay alive. It will be the last place the Khrygians look for you. All you have to do is act a part. The part of the loving wife. You and my agent, posing as your husband, will move to Acacia Heights as a newly-wed couple, and you'll have two other agents guarding you at all times. Once you find these agents, you'll have nullified the threat against yourself. We'll interrogate them to find out what's happening. Then, you'll be safe."
"This is insane." Lisa stood, and Keefe followed suit.
A tray of coffee appeared almost magically, and Keefe helped himself to a cup. "You two will have less than a month to find out who the agents in Acacia Heights are. For that, I need a bright, personable young woman trained to be courteous and polite. You're that in a nutshell."
Lisa gripped a cup of coffee to warm her suddenly bloodless hands. She turned away to think. Was Keefe serious? Apparently. He knew her background. He thought she could charm her way into the lives of a small town community and play detective? Didn't he know what a loner she'd turned into? Yes, and where had that gotten her? Nowhere, that's what. And all this inactivity was driving her bonkers.
"I've never had any sort of defense training," she said, and Keefe knew he was close to victory.
"Don't worry, your counterpart is well trained to handle that sort of thing."
"I see." Lisa thought for a few minutes. "If I did take this job…I'd like to learn some self-defense from your agent."
"Agreed."
Keefe watched Lisa battle herself. He suspected she had a warrior streak in her. Why else would she have fought Rippner when so many others would have given in to his manipulation? And that was one more crucial reason he needed her in particular to be paired with Jackson Rippner. No one else he knew had ever outwitted Rippner.
Lisa sipped her coffee, and wrapped her fingers around the handle. She turned around. "All right," she said, unknowingly echoing Jackson. "I agree."
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Author's Notes: I'm glad you liked the beginning. I hope you liked this chapter. It was more of a set up. Lisa and Jackson will meet in the next chapter.
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