Notes: Hello all, just a heads up: nfortunately next weekend's chapter will probably be late. I've out of town guests, so free time will be devoted to them.
"Well at least you didn't get hit by any bullets. You're obviously a letter of the law kinda guy though. Are you going to make me read you a list next time?"
Lena stands just inside the door, ready with an excuse to go should her presence be unwelcome.
Tim looks at her instead of pretending to be asleep and scoots back, trying to sit up straighter. The effort causes him to cough in the process, and Lena winces. Hoping the macho act is a sign of welcome, she steps inside, though by the guarded expression on his face, like he's preparing for an assault, perhaps it's best to temper her expectations. It's hard to tell with him what she's going to get sometimes.
His throat works; he's trying not to cough again. There's an empty cup on the stand next to him, which she takes.
"I'll be right back." She fills it with water and nips a chair from the hall on the way back in.
Lena's not sure it's the right thing to do, coming to visit like this, doesn't know if he'd rather be alone, or if his buddies would be here, but the idea of not coming at all seems heartless. More selfishly, she simply wants to see him. She stays standing at first, just leaning on the chairback. He could tell her to go.
He eyes the thermos in her hand. "Do I get any coffee?"
She smiles and plops herself in the chair, taking a long, slow swig. Then, just to be difficult, "You allowed to have coffee?"
"I thought you weren't big on rules."
"On some."
"They didn't tell me I couldn't." She hands it over and he takes a sip, narrowing his eyes over the rim.
"Yes, it's decaf. Sue me."
"I didn't say anything."
"Then don't look at me with that tone of voice."
Tim inhales, ready to retort, but aborts at the last moment as a cough escapes instead. He settles for pulling a face and takes another drink.
"Hey, you're not supposed to make me do that. I'm convalescing."
"You told me every friggin' joke under the sun when my ribs were still cracked, so tell karma I said hi."
He flips her the bird. She smiles back, content.
"Well, other than inhaling enough smoke to kill a chimney, how did it go?"
"How do you think it went?" This time the sarcasm comes with bite instead of sass. Aaaaand it all goes to hell. Talking to him is like walking through a minefield. It's been thinning out lately, but you have to watch your step.
"Don't know, that's why I'm asking." Getting a man to tell her what she wants to know whether he likes it or not is one thing. Getting this particular man to have a normal conversation is a different animal. Although at this point normal is a bit of a warped term.
"Well then it was fan-fuckin'-tastic." He sets the mug down between them and crosses his arms. "I got to sit and watch a guy get his arm sawn off while we waited for the real bad guy to show up. Happy?" He says it like a challenge, like he wants to get a rise out of her. Or maybe this is just him telling her to fuck off. Jesus. But she can be a stubborn little shit too.
"The 'real' bad guy? You guys set some high standards."
He stares at her a moment, long enough that she almost leaves, graceful exit or not. "You know I can't discuss the mission with you."
"Kareem bin Adani? Don't worry, I know what kind of bad guy he is. Torched a village a couple months back. Friend of the crazies trying to declare Iraq a caliphate and all that. Did you get him?"
Tim continues eyeing her, and Lena belatedly realizes she ought not to advertise her fingers being in so many pots. State department employees only have access to so much. "Yeah, he's got a fourth-class ticket to gitmo."
"And the guy who sawed off someone's arm?"
"You always have to know everything?"
Watch out for the man meat. Glib mouth or not, Oona had a point. Don't get involved with a soldier. You'll always be second chair to his friends. They get him. You don't. Lena's plenty used to how men act on deployment. They flirt, but it's mostly harmless, usually nothing to get riled up about. Men are like a girl at her sweet sixteen; they like attention and just want someone to think they're pretty. Tim doesn't flirt though. He'll sass, but he respects personal space and keeps his eyes above board. And since she's an idiot and reverse psychology is a thing, Lena sometimes thinks she wouldn't mind if he wanted more attention. But it's hard making friends when you're tiptoeing across glass.
"It's my job to know everything. I'm used to it."
"Well I ain't your job." Gosh damn, dude, that's not what I meant, and you know it.
Lena doesn't like having to be so careful. "I only meant that my propensity to ask questions is something I haven't had to reign in in a long while. It's habit now." He has a disturbing, discomfiting ability to maintain silent eye contact for long stretches. She wonders if it's a special forces thing or a Tim thing. She babbles on with, "I'm like a four year old who keeps asking why, except my boss encourages it." It would sure be nice if he could say something while he stares.
"Do you know how long it takes to cut off someone's arm?" Flat. He may as well be asking her how much battery life her phone has left.
"No," seems safe.
"Well if you do it with a bowie knife and have no idea what you're doing it takes a good ten minutes." Holy fuck. "So yeah, that fucker is dead." He makes a little explosion sound, miming a head blowing up.
"And the guy who had his arm cut off?" The question is out of her mouth before she has a chance to consider how intrusively crass it sounds.
His lips pull in on one side. Shame. "I shot him too."
A normal person would reach out and put a hand on his shoulder or arm or something, but even if she were like that, it seems trite.
Instead Lena cocks her head, raising her eyebrows in question, careful to keep all trace of judgment from her face. His choice.
"He went after Pascal."
"Then I'm glad you shot him," are you supposed to say that? "and that you all came back safe," she waves her hand at him, "mostly safe."
"Mm."
"So when are they letting you out?"
"They gave me two days." His voice has lost the bite. He's also relieved at the change in subject.
"You make it sound like a prison sentence."
"They won't let me leave my cell."
"Need someone to break you out?"
His mouth twitches – barely – and with that simple reaction she unclenches. "How you gonna do that?"
"Did you know they leave the keys to all those helicopters just lying around?"
"You can fly a helicopter?"
"You just move the stick thing around right?"
"I recall you saying some similar dipshit nonsense about shooting guns, and we both know how that turned out." He settles back onto his pillow. "I think I'll stay here. They have chocolate pudding and a smaller chance of crashing."
"Suit yourself." Lena swings her bag onto her lap. "I uh, I brought you something to pass the time." At this point she's not sure whether he'll like it or think she's a moron.
"More whiskey?"
"Haha, no, the general went home. Our supply has been cut off." She pulls out a couple books. "I know you like reading, and Carter said you like –"
"What's this?" Tim goes for the wide, flat book on the bottom of the stack. "You gonna read me a bedtime story?"
"Well since you asked…" he didn't, not really, but there was a smirk in there somewhere, and she latches onto that like a barnacle to a rock. Lena takes the book back and settles herself in the chair, pulling on her serious face. "Now then," she clears her throat dramatically in preparation, "The cats nestle close to their kittens, the lambs have laid down with the sheep. You're cozy and warm in your bed, my dear. Please go the fuck to sleep."
Lena hears a snort, and with that encouragement she turns the page and continues. "The windows are dark in the town, my child. The whales huddle down in the deep. I'll read you one very last book if you swear you'll go the fuck to sleep."
"You know what helps people sleep? Whiskey."
She smiles at the next passage. "The eagles who soar through the sky are at rest like the creatures who crawl, run, and creep. I know you're not thirsty. That's bullshit. Stop lying. Lie the fuck down, my darling, and sleep."
She's about to continue, but a knock and an opening door interrupt. "Lena?"
"Clarence," she lets the book fold closed, "what's up?"
"I have something for you." Damn.
"Sure, I'll be right out."
Clarence lets the door shut, and Lena turns to Tim. "Sorry. Um, if you need anything…" Christ, he's in here for two days, and has a whole unit of guys to look after him.
She gets a head-tilt and a sly half-smile. "Well, they don't serve coffee with my pudding."
"Yes, sir." She's not sure if the flippant mock-salute is pushing boundaries, but it's fun to do.
"It's Tim, ma'am."
"Like I said, tell karma hi for me."
o.O.o
Clarence is doing the thing. The thing where he sits in her chair while she sits in the less comfortable, slightly lower to the ground chair across from him. He leans forward on both arms with an expression of mild, unalarmed concern. It all makes her feel like she's been called into the principal's office. In fact, Lena is fairly certain that Clarence used to be a principal, or a teacher, or something involving authority over a bunch of delinquent high school kids before he joined MI6. It would explain how easily he's able to command attention when he's an intelligence analyst in a room full of military men, one man in a room full of men who all like waving their dicks around like someone's got a measuring tape at the ready. She's always envied him that. Maybe it also helps that he looks like one of them. She does know he used to be a boxer, and in Oona's starry-eyed words he is a 'taller, darker, more gravelly Idris Elba.' Come to think of it, minus the easy homicidal tendencies, one could squint and see a real life James Bond, if James Bond had a desk job. No way she's going to convince a room full of soldiers to think of her as James Bond. C'est la vie.
Whatever it is Clarence has, it's turned on her, and it's uncomfortable. He has enough of authority in his air and handsomeness in his features to make people want to sit up straight in his presence. Lena leans back slightly instead, an unconscious readiness to deny whatever unpleasant demands are about to be presented.
"Alright, do you want the good news, the bad news, or the other bad news?"
Oh lovely. "How about the other bad news."
"Your housing unit wasn't hit by a rocket. It appears to have been a grenade."
"Appears?"
"The explosion came from the middle of the room, like someone tossed it in rather than from the outside, which would be consistent with an impacting rocket."
"And I'm assuming that the Taliban can't launch those from miles away."
"That's right."
"Fudge." Well, rocket or grenade, it didn't really matter. She already knew whoever did it had a specific target in mind – her. But someone on the inside of the walls was willing to make a direct try.
"You need to stay inside the bunker Lena, and when you're outside, you need to be in a group."
"Yes, yes, Gutterson already yelled at me about that. I know."
"Gutterson?"
"He was the ranger who helped me in the prison."
"Ah." Lena doesn't quite like the way he says that, but pretends to be oblivious.
"Speaking of…any progress on who in the ANA wanted Hadid dead badly enough to make a go of it in the prison?"
"As far as we can tell it must have been financially motivated. Couldn't have been personal; none of them knew him or had any connection with him. And no one's families were being held hostage or threatened."
"Heck of a way to make money, especially seeing as they screwed it up badly. Must have been offered a lot to have tried something so risky."
"Well we all know they're a few crumbs short of a biscuit, or in your parlance –"
"Yes, yes, I'm American, not an idiot."
"There are those who would suggest those are synonymous."
"If those who would suggest such things are sitting in my chair, then they can, to use your parlance, go bugger themselves."
The corner of his mouth pulls up before he continues with the subject at hand. "We'll keep looking into it, but I don't know how helpful it will be. All I have so far isn't much more than we knew when we started. All in different ANA units, all local, no extremist connections. There's one thing though, probably far-fetched, but I'll run it down anyways." His voice loses momentum slightly at the end, cautious.
"Yes?"
"Look." Clarence draws his hands up, resting his chin on his knuckles. It's friendly, casual, like they're having a tired and lazy conversation about home or something instead of attempted murder. "When I was in Kandahar four years back, there was this one stretch of road they called potshot street. Imaginative huh? Leave it to the Americans to name something the least creative way possible…"
"Clarence."
"I'm getting there, bear with me. Anyways," he takes out a cigarette and a lighter.
"Clarence." He's trying to distract her, soften an impending blow with an easy argument, and she can see right through it.
"Yes, yes." The cigarette and lighter disappear back into his pockets. "It was along a main supply route out to the COPs in the eastern region, so they weren't just going to abandon it. Never a direct ambush, just long range attacks - mortars, rockets, or remote-detonated IEDs. They rarely seriously damaged the convoys, but constant. Funny thing though, they always stepped it up in late spring. Due to the danger, there were fewer supply runs around that time. Do you know what late spring is around here?"
She shakes her head.
"Poppy season."
Lena takes a breath, ready to refute his logic. There's been no connection at all between the names Hadid gave her and anyone in the opium trade.
"No, hear me out." Fine. "Don't you think it's funny? In Mexico, their drug lords are ruthless; you always hear all these stories about finding a truckload of decapitated bodies or something else terrible. But here," he lays his fingers on the desk, "in a warzone, in a place nicknamed potshot street, we have almost no casualties. Only one that comes to mind is a gunner who got crushed under his MRAP when it got hit by an IED and rolled. No one from direct fire."
"Really dang lucky."
"Is it?"
"Where are you going with this?" She'd rather just get the bad news over with and skip the story time theatrics.
"Turns out a small squad of American contractors was smuggling opium out of Afghanistan, used the local warlords to impersonate Taliban and mess with the supply routes when they had a shipment needed getting through."
"And you're saying…"
"The only thing any of these guys had in common was that at some point they were all translators for GenCorp."
"I…" Her first reaction is rage, not at him because she trusts Clarence and his instincts, but at GenCorp. She immediately checks that rage to give due consideration to both sides of the Clarence's suspicion. "How much trouble will I get in if I start bugging offices and phones?" She's already resigned to it the moment she says it. Anger aside, it's irresponsible not to check. In their line of work, people don't get the benefit of the doubt simply because you all salute the same flag.
"Lena, I think it might be a good idea to consider returning to Washington."
"And what? Let them get away with it? This isn't just about revenge, Clarence. Whoever Al'Faheen tipped off blew up a convoy of U.S. soldiers. I don't want to give them the chance to do it again."
"I'm not suggesting you give it up, but it is something you can investigate from the safety of Langley."
"Oh right, I'll just send someone else to conduct interrogations and interviews. What if something happens to them? Or we can just have all the local Afghan population take a short vacation to Gitmo. That'll help with international relations."
"Lena."
"I can't leave."
"You've got to make sure they don't see you as a threat. Pretend you're on the trail of some Taliban warlord or whatever."
She takes a steadying breath through her nose. In one, two, three… "Yeah. Yeah I'll do that. And the only people we use are the rangers from now on. And no translators. Given the prison incident no one can look at us funny for that. You and I will just have to handle it. And look out for anyone poking around where they shouldn't."
The look on his face says he'll argue this later, but for now Clarence nods.
Fuck. Fudge. No, fuck. Fuck. She can't tell if she's scared. She's been varying degrees of nervous since the bomb at the hotel, but that's mostly been on behalf of others' safety. They say the brain has ways of shutting down potentially debilitating stress. People can complain all day about the jackass who jumped their spot in line at Starbucks, but when your kid nearly falls out of a tree, you don't talk about it. You can't handle the what ifs of that situation, so your brain just says 'we're not going to deal with this anymore.' Maybe that's what's allowing her to stay in Kabul. Or maybe it's anger and a lust for vengeance. But she hasn't had the energy for anger lately, and it really doesn't matter what lets her sleep at night as long as she gets the job done.
Lena thinks back to that dirt road and the dead man lying on top of her. She will get the job done.
More Notes: The bedtime story is quoted from Go the Fuck to Sleep, by Adam Mansbach.