Chapter 5
Author's notes: Don't you hate it when the characters won't do what you want? These guys are begining to give me problems. Yassen's being the silent assassin and not giving me anything to work with, Ben wants more screen time, Eagle is hogging the show, Snake is being all pensive and quiet, Hawk keeps saying 'I'm going for a walk and I may be some time' and Wolf is in a corner somewhere sulking. I don't know why. I guess he didn't want to be in this after I called him a mother hen.
I'm also a proud member of 'Everything I know about London, I learned from Google Maps', so please forgive any inaccuracies about the Thames river and things. But if there are any point them out and I'll see if I can think of a way to fix them. Most of the information on heroin and drug trafficking came from Wikipedia. I'm very happy to confess that I know next to nothing about either of those topics.
--
--
"So, Fox said you had a run in with the Australian SAS," Eagle said without preamble, sitting down on the couch beside Alex. Ever since Ben had left, the SAS team had stepped up the security. There always seemed to be two or three of them around and Alex beginning to find it irritating. Currently both Eagle and Snake were in the living room with him and he could hear Wolf prowling around the house. Hawk was somewhere outside.
Alex heaved a sigh and glared at him. "Do you mind?" he demanded. "I'm trying to read."
Eagle settled himself more comfortably on the sofa. "Not at all," he said. "So what happened?" Over by the window, Snake's lips quirked into a smile.
Alex gritted his teeth. "Nothing," he said curtly, hoping Eagle would go away. He should have known better.
"Uhuh. I don't believe that. What'd they do? Beat you up? Or shoot you?" Eagle sounded like he could keep guessing for a long time, his suggestions getting more ludicrous each time.
"Shot at, more like," Alex corrected, giving up. He didn't put his book down, but he did turn to face Eagle.
"With what?" Snake asked quietly. Alex glanced at him, but he was still looking out the window.
"Machine guns, missiles. Oh, and there were landmines," Alex said. They had been directed not to hit him, but he hadn't known that at the time.
Eagles eyes widened. Whatever he had been expecting that wasn't it. "That's pretty full on. What on earth for?"
Alex shrugged. "A test," he said bitterly. They had cajoled and manipulated him into working for them with the promise of meeting one of his father's friends, then they had tested him by throwing him into what had appeared to be a full scale weapons practice.
"That's rather extreme," Snake said. Alex was surprised to hear sympathy in his voice. K-unit had probably operated under the same conditions, only theirs wouldn't have been harmless.
Alex shrugged again. "They were tracking me. None of them would have hit. Even the mines were remote controlled."
"But you didn't know that," Snake said perceptively. Alex shifted uncomfortably. Couldn't they just let it go?
"Yeah, well." He couldn't think of anything to reply to that. He wished they'd talk about something else.
Eagle seemed to pick up on his unspoken wish. Or maybe he just had more questions that he wanted to ask. "So how many of these assignments have you been on, anyway? There was Point Blanc and obviously one in Australia, but how many others?"
"Err," Alex stalled. How many actually counted as MI6 assignments? Herod Sayle, certainly, and Point Blanc. Wimbledon had been because of Crawley, but not directly MI6 and the CIA had been the ones to take him to Skeleton Key. They hadn't been involved with Eagle Strike, though and he had found Scorpia on his own, even if he had ended up working for MI6. ArchAngel had been a mixture of himself and the CIA, and the ASIS had been the ones to send him through the Snakehead.
"He can't answer that, Eagle," Snake answered for him. "That's classified information. We aren't privy to it."
Eagle's eyes gleamed with satisfaction. "Actually, as part of his security detail, we have the right to know anything that may affect our ability to protect him. So, we can be told just about anything."
"That doesn't mean I'm going to tell you," Alex said, miffed that Eagle had implied he would tell them everything.
"Oh, Alex, don't be cruel," Eagle said earnestly. "We're only doing this to help you."
"Oh, and I suppose that being your amusement is for my own good, is it?" Alex pointed out dryly.
"Well," came a voice from the doorway. "You probably don't want to know what he gets up to when he's bored." Alex craned his neck to see Wolf entering the room. "House is clear," he told the other two SAS members.
"See, Wolf agrees," Eagle said triumphantly. "Now you have to tell us."
--
--
Ben spent much of his time for the first few days talking to the rest of the men under the guise of learning the ropes. He learnt nothing that hadn't been part of his briefing. Either the people he was talking to knew nothing, or Gregorovich had them scared into silence.
It wasn't until the first shipment of drugs came in, that Ben had his first real breakthrough. The shipment had come in by boat. At first glance, it was merely a large shipment of Unwin Toys. Which was exactly what it was designed to look like.
It wasn't until the crates of toys were moved into the centre warehouse that the appearance began to break down. As soon as the doors of the warehouse were shut, men, moving with a sureity that spoke of many repetitions of the same job, pulled the crates apart with crowbars and removed the boxes that contained the individually packaged toys.
These boxes were then handed out to four designated 'leaders' who dispersed them to the men for opening.
"Just pull them apart," Mike, one of the leaders, advised Ben. "Sometimes they're inside the toys, sometimes they're just inside the boxes. Just don't miss any."
Ben nodded and took the boxes he was given. Like the other men, he began to pull them apart. It wasn't until he found the first bag that he realized what they were looking for. It was a small bag, perhaps a hundred grams of brownish powder. Heroin.
Infact, he realized, it was pure heroin. Later on, it would be diluted, or cut, to only 5 to 10 percent strength before it was sold on the street. Risking a look around the warehouse, he saw hundreds of bags being unearthed. There was over a million pounds worth of drugs in this shipment alone.
He shook his head and went back to pulling the toys apart. This wasn't why he was here. Certainly, he would inform MI6 about it, but his primary mission remained to gather intelligence about the new shipment of unidentified drugs.
He had found another several bags when something caused him to stop. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the 'leaders' casually slip a bag, not into the pile, but into his pocket. And he wasn't the only one who had seen it.
Gregorovich was there almost immediately, sliding fluidly across the floor like a cat.
"Turn out your pockets," he ordered. The coldness in his voice removed most of the resemblance to a school teacher with a naughty pupil. The gun in his hand destroyed the rest.
Trembling, the man obeyed. When faced with Gregorovich there was little other option. He removed four packets of heroin from his pockets. Ben squashed the urge to whistle. Four packets of pure heroin would get him anything up to seven hundred thousand pounds.
"That's all of it, I swear," the man said hoarsely. "I won't do it again!"
"No, you won't," Gregorovich agreed, and shot him. For a millisecond, all work in the warehouse ceased, then resumed with extra vigour.
Gregorovich looked away from the body. Ben realized he was staring a second too late; Gregorovich looked directly at him. He forced himself not to gulp, not to betray any iota of nervousness, even though he felt that Gregorovich must know, surely, that he was an MI6 agent.
But Gregorovich just inclined his head and holstered his gun. "Take care of the body," he ordered. And that was how Ben found himself promoted.
--
--
"So, Cub," Wolf said. "Been meaning to ask. What weapons did they give you?"
Alex looked at him, a tad confused. "Nothing."
"They didn't give you a gun?" Snake looked at him with polite disbelief.
"No. They never give me guns. I guess they thought that you guys would be enough protection and that I wouldn't need one." Alex didn't add that he probably wouldn't have taken it anyway. He would never be able to shoot anyone in cold blood. Scorpia had proven that.
"I guess they were worried you'd get carried away," Eagle joked. "Hold a gun to someone's head and all that."
"I've never held a gun to anyone's head," Alex said defensively. He thought about that statement and amended it, "and pulled the trigger."
"Whose head did you hold a gun to, then?" Eagle asked curiously.
"Yassen Gregorovich."
"We've met a few times, indeed." Eagle snorted. "How on earth did you manage to get close enough to him to manage that?"
Alex thought about it. The boat in the south of France, the henchman, the gun on the table. All that was luck. And Yassen apparently asleep in the other room... "He let me. He knew I was there and he let me walk up to him and hold a gun to his head because he knew I'd never be able to pull the trigger."
Eagle whistled. "That takes balls. I don't know about you, but I get all jittery when someone holds a gun on me, no matter who it is." He paused. "And he didn't kill you for it?"
Alex didn't bother mentioning the bull fight. "No."
--
--
So this chapter is a little shorter than the others, but it was hard to write, so it was either a shorter chapter or wait another week for it. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. Please tell me what you think (even if you didn't – actually, especially if you didn't).