Author's note: Onward the story plunges with its own crazy plot twists! I hope you all enjoy the story; I know it is a little far fetched at this point, but it's all in fun (and I'm still a beginner writer, so...). Thankfully, the plot will thin out after this chapter. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Covert Affairs.
Auggie scowled as he felt himself be thrown into yet another room; this one with cold smooth tile. "Enough with the flinging me around!" he shouted out. Hector gave an unkind laugh and left the room. Auggie heard the door slam and a bolt be drawn across it. Then, footsteps faded again in the hall. Auggie stood and took a deep breath. If this was the same room in his dreams, and the door was behind him, then... Auggie drew a mental picture of the room in his head. Annie would be to his right, and the window would be to his left. Auggie wanted to run straight to Annie's bedside, but he had the feeling the room was bugged (despite Annie's previous claims that no one could hear them). Quietly, Auggie began to drag his hand around the smooth adobe walls. If it were him placing a microphone, where would he put it?
Auggie walked to the likeliest of places, and darned if there wasn't a mike there (placed for optimum catching of sound waves). The mike was mounted in a corner, but it was low enough Auggie could still reach it with ease. He pondered what to do with it; if he smashed it, people would come running right away to take care of their damaged equipment. No, he needed it to still be recording (but needed it to be muffled). Auggie felt extremely frustrated. A band-aid would have done the trick, but his pack had been taken. Chewing gum also would have done the trick, but Auggie had none on him. Auggie checked his pockets anxiously. He still had his knife (which was very good news), some coins, a few pieces of paper he thought were money, his key, and a stale piece of beef jerky. Nothing was of use; nothing... except maybe...
Auggie put the piece of beef jerky in his mouth and furiously chewed. After a while, the jerky became a salty lump of mashed up protein. Auggie grinned as he took it out of his mouth and covered the microphone in it. "There," he thought with glee. "That'll mess up the sound!" Then, he turned towards Annie.
The whole time, Auggie's ears had been listening for the sound of her breathing. He was measuring her heart rate in his head while he was messing with the microphone; her raspy, uneven breathing made her heart rate alarmingly thready. He wasted no time getting over to her, and, finding her bed the hard way (he ran straight into it and bruised his shin), Auggie took his customary seat at her side.
"The trouble is I like you way too much, Annie Walker," he whispered fondly. "This relationship is going to have some very strange twists and turns in it."
"Auggie?" Annie whispered. Auggie had never been so happy to hear her voice.
"I'm here, Annie," he said gently.
"You left for the longest time," Annie said tiredly. "And even the shadows left. Everything is shimmering now, as if it was making it's own light."
Auggie grinned at her, pleased to see that her command of language hadn't deserted her even when she was deathly ill. It made his heart hurt all the more, though. "I won't be gone so much anymore," he said. "How are you feeling?"
"Like my skin is burning and every muscle I have is burning. And my head feels funny; I feel like I'm not even here anymore. I don't know what's here anymore. Was I ever really here?"
Auggie cringed as he listened to Annie's strange babblings and gripped her hand all the harder. "You are with me now; feel my hand?" he asked.
Annie sighed. "Oh, well, I suppose. Did you bring Prussian Blue, Auggie? I need the paint... well, maybe not the paint. The floors are already blue. Hey, when did you become blind? "
Auggie thought his heart would break. Annie was much worse off; she needed to be under the care of a doctor as soon as possible. "I've been blind for as long as you've known me, Annie. Four years, remember?"
"Hm, that's odd. You could see me before," Annie replied. Then, she slowly drifted off again into a restless sleep.
Throughout the rest of the day, Auggie fretted and worried about Annie. He had to somehow, someway get her out of the house and on her way to a doctor. He wondered if Jai was now preparing an extraction team; clearly, Annie wouldn't be able to coherently respond to any of their inquiries. But if Jai was really involved in the whole mess... then Auggie feared an extraction wouldn't be coming.
Several hours later, it was dark. Auggie felt the change in the air before their supper was brought in. Though it smelled tempting, Auggie refused to eat it, knowing that they would have put in some form of poison. Something odorless, tasteless, and undeniably deadly.
Annie woke up to the sound of the door being closed again, but she wasn't anymore coherent than she was before. Auggie was just wondering whether to chance giving her water when the keys clanked again and the door opened. "Marco?" Auggie asked, recognizing the tread of his footsteps.
"Yes, it is me. We don't have that much time, though," Marco said hurriedly. "Here," he began, putting a small cloth bag into Auggie's hand and a large gallon of water by his side. "The bag contains two capsules of sleeping powder. It makes you look like you are dead. Valmor knows you are a spy; he will not think it strange that you decided to kill both yourself and the other agent. He will not be pleased, but he will have nothing better to do with you than to send you to the graves. Take them tomorrow evening; I will arrange passage for you two back to Rio Branco. Can you make it back home from there; you obviously had no problem getting here."
"Yes, I can get us back home," Auggie replied.
Marco nodded, then sighed deeply. "And now, about your leader Jai."
"He's not our leader," said Auggie. "He's just making sure the house doesn't burn while our leader is away."
Marco laughed gruffly. "You're house has more than burned," he chuckled.
"Yes, exploded," Auggie stated humorlessly.
Marco became thoughtful. "That's a funny choice of words you used," he stated.
"So, who is Jai?" Auggie asked after a moment.
Marco looked side to side (it was so deathly still he could hear the muscles in Marco's neck crack) and responded in a whisper, "He is an Equalizer."
"No. No, there is no such thing!" Auggie said in disbelief.
Marco growled irritably and was about to reply when Annie's groggy pain-filled voice spoke up. "What is an Equalizer?" she asked.
Auggie shook his head. "It is a spy legend," he said. "You know, every organization has their own stories and tall tales, and we have ours."
"An Equalizer," Marco explained, "is a Master Spy that fails their mission, but are too valuable to "let go" (either by being fired or killed off). Instead, they are "adopted" in a way by a bureaucrat or a department head. Their mistake gets covered up, and they spend the rest of their lives in service to that particular man. They kill whomever their boss wants killed, they protect whomever the boss want's protecting; they do whatever the boss wants done. But an Equalizer is more disturbing than any other rogue agent, for they still work among other agents normally. You wouldn't be able to tell even that your friend would be an Equalizer, and one day you and he could be standing side to side and he'd get the order to kill you!"
Auggie felt Annie's hand go limp once more; she had passed out again. "Jai is not an Equalizer," Auggie stated. "I mean, I have no love for the guy, but the kind of agent you're talking about is a psychopath who views every other agent as a potential target. Every agent cares for at least someone else!"
"Not so!" Marco objected. "Equalizers are the way they are because they view life as a game, whether in the spy realm or without. They are kept in check by the love of the game, and find it fulfilling to lead a double, sometimes even triple life. They are even worse than double agents, because they have no side and no conscience."
Auggie shrugged. "I'm telling you, Jai cares for his other agents, especially for Annie," he mumbled. "Why would he deliberately put her in danger?"
"Ben Mercer," replied Marco.
"And just what does he have to do with all of this?"
"Four years ago, a truckload cache of powerful nuclear explosives were stashed in Iraq. Jai Wilcox and Ben Mercer were sent to retrieve them. My government too knew of the conflict; I was sent at the same time to the same place as your friends so that I could perhaps buy the weapons back should they fail. Only about fifteen people knew of the cache, and at least three were on our side. But the other twelve people were terrorists; they intended on using the bombs as soon as possible. The weapons material was very valuable, and the two agents came up with a plan. Ben Mercer would reclaim the truckload and drive it to a base, while Jai Wilcox would execute the people with the remaining knowledge of the cache and stage an explosion to make it look as if the weapons were destroyed. But the plan did not go well. Ben Mercer and his cache of weapons simply disappeared. Jai's assignations went well, but the 'explosion' he set off without waiting for go-ahead from his handler. It cost the eyesight of one of the several agents who were sent in with the false intel that Jai needed backup."
Auggie felt his heart begin to race; he wanted to deny everything Marco just said so that the wall of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him would die down. But Auggie apparently wasn't a seething volcano on the outside, because Marco continued on without pause.
"By rights," he said, "Jai should have been forcibly resigned (at the least), but someone higher up wanted or needed an agent. The accident became a mysterious unsolved case, the blinded agent resigned to office work, and the agent Jai Wilcox continued to search for Ben Mercer with every moment of every day. As far as I know (this from my Washington leak), until recently, Jai's main priority was to catch Ben Mercer. When Annie came on, Jai was moved to your department in order to complete his mission using her as bait. That is why she was sent down here, and your department is in turmoil; whoever Jai's real boss is, they don't want the head of the DPD in any trouble. By leading her on a wild goose chase for the leak they effectively remove her out of the way."
Auggie shook his head in disbelief; it was too much to take in! This was a massive conspiracy, like something you would read about in a black and white magazine. It was like some soapy spy novel; something that was filled with plot twists that didn't make sense. Jai, a killer agent, and the one responsible for his blindness? Ben Mercer, a rouge with a truckload of nuclear weaponry? Annie, a piece of bait being thrown to the sharks over and over again, and Auggie her blind guard dog.
"It's impossible," Auggie stated flatly. "There is no way that any of that could possibly be true. Either your intel is wrong, your informant is crazy, or you yourself are crazy!"
Marco sighed tiredly. "Really, it doesn't matter what you think now," Marco stated. "But I believe I am right, and now I will just have to prove it. You will see if you are still around tomorrow; wait until Jai comes to Valmor's house."
"Is he supposed to be here?" asked Auggie tensely.
"I'd assume so, because Ben Mercer's on his way as well."
Auggie had had it! "How, how HOW do you possibly know all this?" asked Auggie.
Marco gave a wry laugh and stood up, heading for the door. "Common sense," Marco said as he began to walk out of the room. "After all, Valmor's the one who has been trying to sell all of Ben's weapons!"