Rajapur, Nepal – Present Day

With his hand shaking slightly, John depressed the button and dropped the SAT phone into the bag. He moved it off his cot and kicked it underneath, even if the crossbars provided little concealment. It would prove an extra minute of distraction if he needed it.

Part of him prayed he would not need it.

As he stepped back, straightening, John noted his hands. They still shook but he curled his fingers into his palms and held himself in place until the pain distracted him from the tremors. When his breath came evenly and his hands no longer carried a trace of a tremor, he stepped outside the tent and surveyed the bustle that accompanied the cacophony of sound.

Those who saw him stepped quickly out of the way. Not just because John took to ensuring a permanent scowl graced his features but because he was the man who killed Alex Green. If Vera had her way, John knew Green's rotting corpse would be stuck through with a stake, sticking him from ass to eyeballs, and left as a warning to all others in the camp. Instead, in the interests of public health and the ability to quickly move the camp, they buried him in a shallow grave out in the bush.

Working his way through the camp, avoiding natural pitfalls more than the people who made it their life's goal to get out of his way, John ducked under the edge of Vera's open tent. He rapped his knuckles against the metal pole holding the front upright and leaned on it when Vera turned to him. "Yes?"

"I'm here to report."

"What's the latest?"

"I've got news that the Indian Army's busying themselves with some problems in the direction of Kashmir so we should be fine for the meet." John pointed at a stool and sat when Vera shrugged her disinterest in the motion. "I figure we could pick a stop roughly equidistant between our camp and where they're making their headquarters these days."

"And why'd you think that?"

"Because it eliminates the worry that either side's trying too hard to upset the balance in the area."

"Even though that's precisely what we're attempting to do?"

"They don't have to know that."

"And if they're trying to do the same to us?"

John opened his hands as if to surrender and say 'not on me'. "I was just told to use my charm and intimidation in whatever combination was required to get them to the meeting. The location and intention after that happens is entirely in your hands and subject to your plans."

"You're not interested in know what those are?"

"I'm not here to take an interest in that." John pointed at Vera, "You're the boss. I do what you say. This is your plan and I'm simply here to follow your orders."

"Not very ambitious of you."

"I didn't think you liked ambitious people."

"I don't like enterprising people. Ambitious people I can twist to my advantage. Enterprising ones…" Vera shook her head, "They tend to make things worse for me."

"How's that?"

"Well," Vera turned in her chair to look at John. "You were enterprising enough to get me suspicious of Green."

"Is that a black mark?"

"It's a grey one." Vera pursed her lips. "Alex'd been with me for years. Longer than you. I trusted him with almost everything. I trusted him enough to let him get close to me even after he almost screwed me in Kabul."

"Seems mighty patient of you."

"When you choose not to kick a dog when he deserves it, he'll serve you."

"Will he?" John leaned back slightly, "I heard once, and I'll probably butcher this quote, that the one thing they find that always kills a relationship is contempt."

"Contempt?"

"That's right."

"And what the hell's contempt got to do with me talking about how loyal Green was to me?"

"Was he the dog, in your analogy?"

Vera's eyes narrowed, "I know you can be stupid but you're not stupid enough to press my buttons so you'd better get clearer with what you're saying real bloody quick or I'll decide I don't need you anymore."

"Then I'll make this clear," John cleared his throat, "I mention contempt because, from the moment you chose not to kill Green in Kabul for a royal cock-up, you bred contempt. You for him, and his buggering of the situation, and he for you in being eternally in your debt."

"Alex didn't think like that."

"When was the last time you told someone you despised that you found them contemptable?" John waited as Vera made a face, accepting John's argument. "I usually find that we don't know what people think about us. Even if we tell them, to their face, we're only expressing a fraction of what we feel."

"So no matter how often you told Green how much you hated him, he'd never truly understand the depth of your detestation for him?"

"There weren't words for how much I hated Alex Green, even when I threw quite a few of them in his direction." John checked his watch and stood, "But I did find it very bloody satisfying to break his back and neck."

"Our hero." Vera tilted her head to look up at John, studying him. "Which makes me worried about you."

"Because I'm not ambitious?"

"Because I think you're full of shit."

"About Green?"

"About everything." Vera stood and moved to stand nose-to-nose with John. "You've got a long game here. I don't know what it is but I think I've had just about enough of whatever it is you're trying to pull with me."

"I'm not trying to pull anything with you."

"No?"

"No." John paused, quirking his head toward the tent door. He craned his neck sideways and listened a moment more before smiling and facing Vera again. "Because it's already done."

"What?" Vera used her forearm to push into John's chest, shoving him to the side to see the trucks pulling in to surround the camp as a helicopter beat down to send canvas tents flapping. Her hand whipped around, catching John with a backhand that sent him stumbling sideways into the wall of the tent. "You bastard!"

John ducked her next blow and parried the one after that with his left forearm. The shift in his bodyweight allowed him to counter by bringing his right fist around to catch Vera on the cheek. Shaking off John's response, she ducked another blow from him and returned with a wild haymaker that landed two punches to John's back. Contorting with the motion, John brought up his elbow to block a fist aimed for his face and drove his right fist into Vera's side.

She staggered away from the blow and snorted as they circled one another. "I always took you for a South Paw."

"My father made sure I could fight with either hand."

"In case one was tied behind your back?"

"In case I needed to put my opponent off guard." John brought his elbows in and leaned back to dodge a wide swipe from Vera. "It's all about surprise."

"I'll admit, this is a surprise." Vera lashed out again but John ducked and dodged to the side. The moment he did he realized the mistake as Vera could now reach her desk. She seized the khukuri there and unsheathed it. Holding the blade along her arm, the hilt forward, she moved into attack pose. "I thought you were here to take my business. But now…"

She snorted, "I could kick myself for not seeing you for the narc you are."

"You always thought I was too dumb and uptight to be working for you." John shrugged, "I guess doubling down on that played to my advantage."

"And now I'm going to double down and gut you like I should've the moment you got into this camp." Vera lunged out and John dodged the swipe, smacking her arm to knock the jab wide so he could get back toward the tent door.

Before Vera could make another move toward John, two forces collided with his midriff from different directions. He hit the floor of the tent on his chest, his chin smacking against the ground with the force as someone twisted his arm. They held him prone a moment as John sucked air to his lungs and craned his neck to find Vera.

However, trying to move with the blow proved fruitless as whomever took him down had two different motives. One of them wanted him flat while the other seemed intent to pull him up. When John tried to follow the force to ease the strain on his arm, a knee dug into the small of his back and drove what little air he managed to salvage from his lungs. But when he moved back into that motion, to try and stop the surge of pain from starving lungs, John almost bit through his tongue when his right arm popped out of his socket.

The pain drove John to buck at his hips. Despite the weight on his back, the motion upset whomever was back there and allowed John the leverage he needed to shove himself toward whomever sill held at his arm. A rush of adrenaline and the benefit of surprise proved his allies.

At least for the few seconds he needed to move.

Lurching to his knees, John shot his left arm forward and caught a smaller Nepali man right between the eyes. The crunch of his nose flared pain through the small bones of John's hand but he ignored it to bring his forehead down to fully break the man's nose with solid headbutt. His right arm released from the man's grip and hung from his socket for a moment until John, turning his arm to align the muscles despite the screaming lightning through his arm, knocked himself against the metal pole of the tent.

With his eyes watering from the pain of putting his arm back in its socket, and his lungs still struggling to fill, John staggered from the tent. Someone shouted at him but John ignored them. He stumbled through the camp, holding his right arm to try and keep the strain off his already screeching muscles, but each step proved an exercise in pain. And keeping his feet proved even more difficult when another force hit him in the side. They struggled a moment before John brought his left elbow down on the man's back and dropped him to the ground.

Almost tripping over the ground as he moved away from the man, John made for the helicopter. But a pain flared in his leg and he stumbled as the sound of the shot filled his ears. The pain rose exponentially and John hit the ground as the echo of a second shot filled his ears.

With the pain radiating through his body, John fell forward.

His arm groaned as the already strained muscles took the brunt of a fall John could not control with his hands. Trying to move proved useless as his legs would not respond to his commands and when John tried to shift upward a weight landed on his back. But the weight was nothing compared to the blows that rained down on him from fists and wooden rods.

One of them caught John in the temple and his vision swam. He curled, or attempted to, as boots kicked viciously at his abdomen and back. The blows left him spasming on the ground in an effort to avoid them. The shouts and calls from the soldiers and people in the camp filled his ears to the point of deafness as his body succumbed to the beatings with a slow shut down.

The last thing John saw was a boot, possibly claiming to aim for his stomach, as it caught him in the nose and chin.

For a long time he was conscious of nothing. Given the memory of the pains racing through his body as if competing for his attention, John was grateful he could feel nothing. But the illusion of safety in the dark of unconsciousness tweaked the edge of fear about his surroundings and the situation he left. With whatever effort he could manage, not that he would remember it, John found to find consciousness again… whatever semblance of it he could.

His body rattled and shook. Vague images of canvas coverings and metal rivets swam through his dozing dreams. Voices floated around him in English, Hindi, Nepali, and something that sounded vaguely like Punjabi but John followed none of it. The languages simply floated through his ears like cacophonous music he could not understand even if he could pull a line of melody from it. Swimming and swirling, intwining until it was nothing but a confused harmony.

All he could really find to center him was pain. Pain was his constant companion until a soothing sensation took over his whole body and allowed him to sink into its welcoming embrace. An embrace that took him back to the dark.

When John finally did open his eyes, the immediate rush of sensation had him twisting away from his sweaty pillow and trying to escaping the trap of the blankets stifling him. Hands clamped down on his wrists and despite John's thrashing, they held him steady until the soothing rush of a sedative calmed John's nerves. Part of his wanted to fight, to break free from it, but the rest of him succumbed to the call and fell back below consciousness. Back to where there was no pain and he could finally feel safe.

The illusion, like the drugs in his system, eventually faded again and a dull throb woke him. John's eyes fluttered open to take in the listless beating of a fan above his head. It explained the light beading of sweat prickled on his forehead but not the thin sheet covered his body. John's hands, freed but bearing the slight bruising of restraints, plucked at the sheet in curiosity until someone spoke.

"For a dead man you put up quite a fight."

John frowned and turned his head toward the noise. A lanky man with carefully controlled black hair sat there. With one of his long legs pulled over the other, he supported a tablet on one leg while the other propped up a notebook that bore scribbled marks and shorthand. The man pushed his glasses up his nose and made another note before turning to John.

"Because, technically speaking, you are dead."

"I feel a bit too alive to be dead."

"Well, the John Bates as you were is dead… Legally speaking." The man closed the notebook and switched off the tablet, stowing both in his bag. "We thought it the best response to your… adventure in Rajapur."

"And how'd the adventure end?"

"With the Indian and Nepali authorities screaming at us to stay the hell out of their countries without permission and looking rather foolish when they arrested some of their own government officials for being involved in Vera's network." The man shrugged, "They took it on the chin when they realized they weren't the only ones with media having to backpedal to explain the corruption charges their ministers faced."

"How bad on our end?"

"Bad enough that it might be the first time in the history of the parties that the two sides can't sling mud at one another without admitting to the shitholes they occupy and the shitholes they facilitated to provide cover for the assholes in their midst." The man shrugged again, "That being said, your work definitely had us stepping on some toes we then had to try and repair."

"That explains why you're here." John shifted on the bed, "Trust Henry Talbot to turn on the charm and smooth things over."

"It worked well enough for Miss Smith."

John turned to face Talbot. "You got her?"

"She followed your instructions to the letter and I found her just where you said I should." Talbot winced, "She was… She was a sight, I'll tell you. Looked much worse for wear than I was expecting but I found her."

"Is she…"

"Safe?" Talbot winced again, "Safe as I could make her. She's back in England last I heard but that's an MI5 problem."

"And that's safe?"

"It's as safe and sound as I can make her without wrapping her in bubble wrap… In a non-sexual way."

"There's a sexual way to wrap in bubble wrap?"

"Anything can be sexual if you try hard enough."

John shook his head back into his pillows, "As long as she's alive enough to be a problem, then that's all that matters." John took a breath. "And as long as Vera can't get to her then it wasn't for nothing."

The pause on Talbot's end had John frowning and facing him again. "Henry?"

"Yes?"

"They did get her, right?"

"I just told you, Miss Smith is-"

"I'm talking about Vera."

"Oh." Talbot cleared his throat, "What about her?"

"I'm asking if Vera's in custody." Talbot rubbed at the back of his neck as John pushed himself to sit up in bed. "You've got her locked away, yes?"

"We… It's… In the commotion… The complicated nature of the joint force…"

"Did they let her get away?"

"It's not so much as a 'let' as a problem of focus and-"

"Answer the damn question!" John's fist pounded on the bed. "Did Vera get away? Did they let her get away?"

"They've not located her, no."

"Dammit!" John beat his fist against the side of the bed. This time in frustration more than intimidation.

"It's not all bad."

"That woman is loose and you've got the audacity to tell me 'it's not all bad'?" John practically spat at Talbot. "Are you having me on right now?"

"I'm being serious."

"About Vera being in the wind?"

"How far can she get, really?" Talbot pressed but John only scowled. "We froze her accounts so she's got no money and given the rather public nature of the sting there's not a single contact she could reach out to that won't consider her radioactive and avoid her like the plague."

"And that's enough?" John scoffed, "You think that's enough?"

"It is for at least three governments." Talbot leaned forward, "And besides, if you think about it like-"

"Like nothing. It's shit. It's less than shit." John gritted his teeth against the pain and slapped Talbot's hand away as the man tried to put it on his shoulder to calm him. "You let her get away."

"There's no 'let' here, I told you-"

"You let her get away," John repeated. "And now Vera's in the wind and she…"

John flung out his arm and knocked his IV pole back before bruising his hand where it impacted a machine. Hissing at the pain, John leaned back on his bed. "All that work for nothing."

"You say that like we didn't stop an international drug dealer from getting into human trafficking on an international scale."

"She's still out there." John fired back, "All you did was delay her."

"I think that's being a little generous."

"And you're being naïve." John shook his head. "Vera's… She the kind of woman that if it takes her a year, or five, or ten she'll get her operation off the ground. And running better than before."

"Then we'll get into it and stop her if that happens."

"There's no 'if' about it."

"We'll stop her when it happens then." Talbot muttered, "Pedant."

"No."

"No you're not a pedant?

"No to you thinking you'll get anyone else inside her operation without losing them. Either to a bullet or to her preaching." John could have spit in Talbot's direction. "This was supposed to get all the weeds pulled at once. Instead you let the most noxious of them all keep her roots."

"We've weakened her."

"You've only forced her underground." John shook his head, "She'll come back harder and stronger and spread like kudzu until she suffocates us all."

"I don't know what kudzu is but I know-"

"You don't know shit and neither do any of the people in suits more expensive than yours sitting on their asses in big rooms making these decisions like they're informed." John scoffed, "You all fecked this up."

Talbot was silent a moment and then stood, reaching for his things. "Be that as it may, we did the best we could."

"Do you really believe that?"

"I have to John." Talbot buttoned his jacket, "I can't solve every problem so I take the wins I can get and sleep knowing I'm trying again tomorrow."

"How touching." John shook his head, "I'm sure they teach you deflection like that when they take out your sense of responsibility and give you your fancy titles and interesting keycards."

Talbot ignored the jab, "Get well soon John."

"Sure." John went to move and noticed he could not turn out of the bed. When he looked down at his body and almost passed out from the shock. There, where the blanket should have bunched over his legs, it only draped over one leg. The other side simply… ended.

"What the hell…"

"Oh, that, uh…"

"Uh what?" John jerked his head toward Talbot. "What the hell happened to my leg? Where's the bloody rest of it?"

"There was…" Talbot grimaced as John looked from him to the lack of his right leg below the knee. "There was a complication."

"Did someone just forget to grab my leg when they took me from camp?"

"No. It…" Talbot shuffled in place. "There were some excited officers and they… They took it upon themselves to be exuberant when they detained you. They justified it as you resisting arrest so they shot you… Twice in the leg."

"They…"

"I also heard there was a significant beating and, based on the bruising I saw on you, that was true." Talbot swallowed, "But the biggest issue was their confusion on your role so they… They weren't quick to get you medical aid despite your injuries. The wounds, that shattered your tibia and fibula, became gangrenous and when the doctors operated they found too much necrotic tissue and muscle so…"

Talbot cleared his throat, "So they had to amputate your leg."

"They…" John stared at the empty space on the bed about the time his brain decided his right foot itched. "They took it…"

"It's… It was a mix up on our end John." Talbot shifted into John's view, catching his attention. "But your division's going to cover your medical bills and the recovery. Once we've got you on your feet again… Or foot, I guess, we'll get you into physical therapy and hooked with a prosthetic so you'll be right as rain."

"Right as rain?" John lashed out, knocking over the IV pole and sending a computer deck spinning away on its roller wheels. "You all royally feck up, lose me my leg, and it's right as rain?"

"It's what we could give John."

"You've all given me nothing but grief and pain." John snarled at him, almost snapping when Talbot tried to step closer. "Don't bloody touch me. You've already destroyed enough of my life, telling me it's for Queen and Country, and now you've taken literal flesh from me. What else've I got to give you until you're satisfied with your blood tithe?"

"John-"

"After everything I've done, Henry, it's a bloody pitiful showing." John shook his head, "You can go back to your bosses and tell them to stop pissing on me and calling it rain. Next time they do this I'll toss petrol on them and light a match."

"Then be grateful there won't be a next time." Talbot reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope. He set it outside John's reach on the table. "It's more than generous, in my opinion, for your severance."

"Does it buy me a new leg?"

"It'll buy you your family's estate and a comfortable living until you die of bitter old age." Talbot nodded at him, "I hope it's enough."

"Then you're an idiot and a fool."

"I've been called worse."

"How about a heartless toadie? Or a drone for people who play with the lives of others like they're pieces on a chessboard?"

"Even worse than those." Talbot gathered his things and himself. "And no one's playing chess, John. We're all playing 'Chutes and Ladders'… Except you and I are the ones being thrown down the chutes to land in the shit."

"You're looking clean from where I'm standing."

"Not everyone wears the shit on their clothing, John." Talbot nodded at him, "You'll get a call from the physical therapy representative to talk about when you'd like to start with them. Probably within the next week or so."

"I thought I was legally dead."

"That version of John Bates is dead but, wouldn't you know, you're name's not that uncommon." Talbot gave an exaggerated salute with two fingers. "Good luck John. Sorry this meeting had to be… So terrible."

"Just leave and don't come back."

"With pleasure."

John threw himself back down onto the bed just as the bottom of his right foot started itching again… And he had to remind himself it was no longer there.