Authors Note—

So this story is actually supposed to be on hiatus but I thought I give you guys an update since I haven't gotten, like, any reviews for The Dirty Game and Military Intelligence: Special Operations. So those two basically won't get updates until I get a serious number or reviews but whatever. More time for me to be lazy and to do nothing. And I'm also thinking of another story where Alex stayed with Scorpia but "played" MI6. Anyone interested? Well, I'm still a bit iffy on the specifics for this story but I'll try my best. Review!

-Steph

Disclaimer: If you think that I am Anthony Horowitz then you are sadly mistaken. First, I am a girl, my name is Steph and I live in the US and am nowhere near as great an author as Anthony Horowitz. I am making no profit from these insane ramblings so please don't sue—I owe my mom quite a bit for all the soccer jerseys I've ordered and I can't quite afford a lawsuit at the moment.

Triple Threat

By: Steph

Chapter 6—Fair Play

"Blunt and Jones did this on purpose, didn't they?" Cub accused once they had left the restaurant. "They had to send us here; here of all the places in the world, because they knew that I would be recognized! They knew that they would be here!" here Cub pointed at the restaurant. "They kne—"

"Alright, Cub," Wolf cut into Cub's rant. "Do you want to attract more attention to yourself by yelling and gesturing wildly on the side of the street?"

Cub looked up and glared at the man that was watching him from over a newspaper at the bus stop across the street. "Fine," he muttered before he stomped forwards, leaving Wolf and Hunter behind.

"Um, Ben?" Hunter called. Cub paid him no attention and kept walking. "I'm not sure if you want to go wandering off down a dark alley."

Cub stopped and realized that he was, indeed, standing in the mouth of an alley way. He spun around and stomped back over to Hunter and Wolf, who were having quite a time of trying to contain their amusement and Cub's childish antics.

"What are we doing now?" Cub finally asked.

"There's a fair in town," Hunter said.

"And you know that how?" Wolf inquired.

Hunter pointed to the wall. "It says it right there on the wall." Sure enough, there was a colorful flyer for a local fair taped to the side of the restaurant they had just eaten in.

"Brilliant idea, Hunter," Wolf said. He looked down at Cub with a devilish look. "You know, Ben, I think what you need to feel better is a nice ride in those little, spinney tea-cup things."

Cub rolled his eyes. "Yes and then maybe I can win you a nice little dolly," he suggested.

"Point taken, Cub… we can all go on the spinney tea-cups."

"And maybe we could take a video and send it to Blunt and Jones," Hunter suggested wryly.

Cub and Wolf shared a glance. "Another brilliant idea, Hunt!" Wolf slapped his partner on the back. "You're just on a roll today, aren't you?" he teased in good humor.

Cub and Wolf laughed together at Hunter's expense.

Hunter shook his head in mock despair but his charade fell when he couldn't manage to keep a straight face.

The three men finally walked off down the street in the way the assumed the fair was.

If they had not been so absorbed in their day off and having fun then perhaps one of them would have noticed the man that had been reading the newspaper set down his paper and pick up his mobile phone as they walked away.

The man said only one thing on his mobile before he slipped it back into his pocket and moved off into the shadows of the backstreet.

"I've got them."

--+--

"So," Wolf said once they had been admitted into the fair, "what shall we do first?" Wolf turned his hand over and glanced at the stamp of a clown he'd had to get to come into the fair with a bit of disgust.

Wolf, Hunter and Cub looked around the bustling fairgrounds at the whirling rides and games and children running this way and that with cotton candy and stuffed animals, parents trailing and calling to their children ineffectively.

"How about something that doesn't attract anymore attention to us," Cub suggested as he looked around, hoping not to catch sight of his old friends again.

"So I guess that means a no to the spinney tea cups?" Wolf said.

"I didn't say that," Cub managed to crack a grin. "We may scare some of the parents though."

"How about we walk around instead of just standing here?" Hunter suggested.

"Good idea, mate,'" Wolf said and they walked away from the entrance and into the crowd.

"Come, Benny," Wolf said after a bit, "you're the youngest here so I suppose you would have been to a fair before with your mates. What did you do? Come on, give us some ideas."

"Uh," Cub said looking around. "We used to just walk around and hang out, I guess, we went on some of the rides, played some of the games, ate. You know, just what normal people do while at a fair."

"I have an idea," Hunter said. "How about we make up a game?"

"Would you like to play hide-and-go-seek, Hunt?" Wolf laughed. "Or maybe tag?"

"I meant," Hunter rolled his eyes, "something like what we did in training."

"If you're talking about long distance target practice then I don't think that that would be such a good idea beca—"

"I'm not talking about target practice, Cub," Hunter shook his head and laughed.

"Well then what are you talking about?" Wolf said.

Hunter surveyed the fairgrounds quickly and thoughtfully and thought for several moments. "Actually," he said eventually, "never mind. I don't think my idea would have worked. I forgot for a moment just how many people were here."

"What were you planning on doing?" Cub chuckled. "Massacring the poor, innocent people that just wanted to spend a day at the fair?"

"Ha-ha, funny, Cub," Hunter said. "I was just thinking about how they sent us on those fake missions to find someone. I was going to say that one of us could go off and hide and the other two would have to find the other."

"That sounds suspiciously like hide-and-go-seek, Hunt," Cub laughed. He stopped suddenly and a look of horror spread over his face. "Oh my God, I just realized… they had us playing hide-and-go-seek for two years!"

"Yes," Wolf agreed, "extreme hide-and-go-seek."

"Isn't what we are essentially doing hide-and-go-seek? I mean we have to find the bad guys and stop them and all that," Hunter added thoughtfully. "Okay, I definitely take back my idea now; we don't need to relive training on our day off. We should be able to think of something else to do."

They walked past the colorful booths with various games.

"Maybe we should skip the shooting game," Cub suggested as the past by a booth where a little boy was holding a rather large and fake gun, trying to shoot down rubber ducks. "Or help the poor kid," Cub suggested as the little boys shot came nowhere near the duck, "he's doing a horrible job."

Wolf grabbed Cub's arm and pulled him along. "Or perhaps we should just keep on walking."

They continued walking and stopped only once they had reached the end of the fair.

"Anyone still up for that ride on the spinney teacups?" Wolf suggested because they had come to a stop right in front of the ride in question. Children lined up along the fence to wait for their turn and the children in the teacups screamed and laughed as they spun around and around.

Cub, Hunter and Wolf exchanged a glance.

--+--

The man on the cell phone stood behind a row of portable toilets. He tried to ignore the horrific smell that grew worse as time went on and concentrated on the task on hand.

The man slunk over to a cart that was selling balloons. The cart was empty, save for brightly colored balloons drifting above the cart in the light wind. The balloon cart had not been opened yet and it was the perfect cover for the man.

He peered through the balloons and watched in a mix of surprise, humor and disgust and the three men he was targeting handed a man their tickets and picked out a spinney teacup.

This was what had his company in such a twist? This was what needed eliminating? He could scarcely believe it! They were riding on the spinney teacups for goodness sakes!

The man sighed and watched.

The piece in his ear crackled to life. "Are you there, Agent Strasse?"

The man's hand flew briefly to the side of his face before he quickly let it drop back down to his side. "I am here," he responded in a robotic voice.

The voice coming through the speaker in his ear was so fuzzy and distorted that he could not be quite sure if it was a man or a woman that was speaking to him. But that would have been only if he hadn't known who was speaking to him and he had a fairly good idea.

"Do you have them located?"

"Yes."

"Is your cover secure?"

"Yes."

"Very good. Keep them under surveillance the rest of the day but do not jeopardize your cover."

The man—Agent Strasse—crept along the back of the line of portable toilets. The twitched his nose—he'd never known the things smelled that bad before! "That shouldn't be too difficult," he muttered to himself after the crackling in his ear had abruptly shutoff. Lethal weapons? Was that seriously what anyone thought these people were? Why, they all looked like… like eleven-year-old boys!

Strasse's hand twitched to the gun that was strapped at his waist. The only thing that stopped him from pulling the gun and blowing the three men he watching away were his orders.

"Do not let them no you are there. The time is not yet. We will let you know when the time has come."

--+--

Wolf, Cub and Hunter walked casually through the fairgrounds. They stopped briefly at the foot carts but they had all eaten so much for lunch that they passed them by.

Trying to act like normal guys turned out to be harder then any of them had expected and a good deal of time was spent on trying to find a conversation that would not get them in trouble if was overheard.

Several time Cub had to shake off the feeling that they were being watched. He glanced over his shoulder more then once but saw nothing out of place.

"What's up, Cub? You've been looking over your shoulder for the past twenty minutes," Wolf finally asked as he caught Cub looking over his shoulder yet again.

Cub whipped his head around to the front again. "Someone's been watching us," he said softly but confidently.

Wolf and Hunter shared a glance. "There's no one here, Cub," Wolf said. When Cub was about to protest Wolf stressed his point, "No one. But someone will be here if you keep looking over your shoulder like that all the time."

Cub made sure that Wolf and Hunter were otherwise occupied before be risked one last look. He looked only long enough to see what he knew was there before he quickly turned his head back around again.

There had been children and adults of course. Those weren't the people who stood out to Cub. Those were the kind of people you expected to see at a fair. The person that stood out to Cub was a man. Just one man. He was alone. The man had been looking off in another direction so he couldn't be sure if this man was actually watching them or not.

Cub didn't say anything to Wolf or Hunter. They may have been able to work together as a powerful team and they may have been close friends but Wolf and hunter were still older then Cub. Sometimes they thought that they were right just because they were older.

Cub managed to stop Wolf and Hunter at a stand that was selling sunglasses.

"What are you one about now, Cub?" Wolf asked as Cub tried on a pair of sunglasses in front of a little mirror.

"I need some new sunglasses," Cub said briefly. He took off the sunglasses but looked in the mirror an extra minute. The same man was there, standing a little ways off. The man was tall, broad shouldered and slim waisted. He had dark hair cropped close to his head. The man looked over and for a brief second his foggy gray eyes met Cub's in the mirror.

"There's a man watching us," Cub said out of the corner of his mouth.

Wolf and Hunter both stopped what they were doing and turned to look at Cub. "Are you still seriously on about that, Cub?" Wolf asked incredulously. "I already told you that there is no one—"

"Do you remember the man that was outside the restaurant after we left?" Wolf and Hunter nodded slowly. "It's him. He's been following us. I just saw him through the mirror…" the word 'mirror' came out very slow as Cub pointed to the mirror and looked back into it. The man was gone.

Cub whipped around and stalked away from the booth to where the man had been standing. Wolf and Hunter jogged after him.

"He was right here," Cub said in a casual voice as he tried not to draw attention to himself.

Wolf and Hunter shared a look but looked around all the same.

"There's no one here, Cub," Hunter said.

"He's gone," Cub said firmly. "But he was here. I saw him looking at—"

"You're paranoid, Cub," Wolf cut him off. Cub glared at Wolf. "There's no one here. Just enjoy the rest of the day. You can worry about people following us in a few days probably."

Wolf and Hunter walked in the direction they had been going before Cub stopped at the sunglasses booth. Cub looked at the ground but followed after the two older men anyway.

He looked around once more before he followed Wolf and Hunter. There wasn't anyone there. Cub shrugged and shook it off. Wolf was right, he was just paranoid. He hadn't been out in public in two years. Of course it would feel like everyone was watching him.

He loped forwards and walked in between Wolf and Hunter. It was their day off and nothing else matter.

a/n: pure and utter crap but it's an update (even though it is short). And no matter how bad it is it set up a plot that I'm going to go with. Review! –Steph