Never Broken
By cheeky-chaos
Chapter Two:
Los Angeles
The next morning, I got up feeling tired and grumpy. Thanks to the events of the night before, I hadn't slept very well, images of Isabella Rambaldi floating around my head and Bennetti's words ringing in my ears. And now I had to get up and face all the strange looks, anger and angst-filled looks from Vaughn. Yipee.
It was enough to make me want to go back to bed – or take a permanent vacation.
Dad and I had decided to focus on finding out who Bennetti was before we got too worried about the diary (too late, as I was already worried), but I was keeping it with me whenever I could, just in case. I didn't have the courage to read any of it yet.
I sighed and walked to the bathroom to grab a shower. At least there would be two bright spots in my day. Weiss and Marshall. Both men had proven to be true friends of mine and had each tried in their own way to cheer me up and help me adjust. Marshall, in his usually cute but nerdy way, had made me a CD to try and jolt my hippocampus (long-term memories) and Weiss had given me a copy of Alice in Wonderland. Both gestures had touched me deeply and I was glad to have them as friends.
After a hot shower, I wandered into the kitchen for a strong cup of coffee. I was dressed in my usual black, conservative suit and today I wore my hair loose. I had glanced at me reflection in the mirror and had been surprised at how boring I had felt. I looked like a hundred other agents at the JTF – which I guess was the idea. Something about it bothered me.
I was on my second cup of coffee when there was a knock at the door. Smiling, I opened the door to a brightly grinning Weiss. "Good Morning." He greeted cheerfully.
"Morning, Eric." I smiled back. "Want a cup of coffee?"
"No thanks." Weiss replied. "I've already had three."
I chuckled softly. "Alright, then." I sat, finishing my coffee and grabbing my purse. "Shall we go?"
Weiss and I drove to work in his car (we had started travelling together in the mornings) and tried to keep up the bright chatter. Vaughn's marriage to Lauren and my subsequent return had caused some tension between the three of us and none of us were sure what we wanted to do about it – so we just ignored it for the most part.
The drive past quickly and, almost before I knew it, I was standing in front of my desk and switching on my computer. Marshall whizzed by at that moment, running late as usual, his arms filled with files, wires and what looked like a broken PDA. "Hey, Syd." He said, stopping at my desk and giving me a smile.
"Hey, Marshall." I smiled back.
"I…uh, I'll talk to you later." He added, catching sight of Dixon walking towards us.
"Sure." I replied as Marshall resumed his mad dash to his office.
"Morning, Syd." Dixon greeted, his eyes still following the tech's wild rush.
"Morning, Dixon." I returned the greeting.
My old partner seemed rather tired this morning and, judging by the coffee in his hand, had already been here for hours. He turned to me and smiled, although it never quite took away the sadness in his eyes. "There's a mission briefing as soon as everyone gets here." He said.
"That bad?" I replied.
Dixon gave a small half-smile at my feeble attempt at a joke. "It could be." He answered.
And didn't that just get the day off to a rosy start?
Half an hour later, Marshall, Weiss, Dixon, Vaughn, Lauren, Dad and I assembled in the meeting room to await the bad news. It was always bad news.
"Three hours ago, we became aware of the Covenant's interest in this man," Dixon said as the image of a shrewd looking man with dark hair flashed up on the monitor in front of me. "Richard Deveraux."
"Deveraux has devoted his life to locating lost artefacts that people will pay a lot of money for," Dixon continued. "And he claims to have recently found the location of a lost Rambaldi manuscript."
I sucked in a breath at the mention of Rambaldi. I had thought I had left that madness behind years ago. Obviously not. Yippee.
"And the Covenant wants it." Vaughn stated.
Dixon nodded. "Yes. Deveraux is planning to auction off the location to the highest bidder in three days."
"And you want me to pose as a wealthy bidder?" I asked, my mind already sorting through the options.
"No. It's not quite that easy." Dixon said, getting my attention. "We've learnt that the Covenant plans to steal the information before it can be auctioned off. The theft is supposed to happen in a little over fourteen hours from now."
"So I get we have to get it first." Weiss said dryly. "Do we have any idea where it is?"
Dixon shook his head. "All we know it that Deveraux keeps the information on his computer. Unfortunately, his computer is with him at all times."
"So where is Deveraux?" I asked.
"That's where it becomes difficult." Dixon said. "Deveraux owns a large yacht that sails all over the world. He's going to be on his yacht until the auction. However, we were able to find out where his yacht will be in ten hours. Sydney, it's your job to get aboard that yacht and get the coordinates to the manuscript before the Covenant can."
"Deveraux's yacht will be stopping to take on fuel at a remote port in Argentina. This will be your best opportunity to get on board undetected." Dad added, as a picture of the port flashed up on screen.
I nodded, as Dixon indicated for Marshall to take over the briefing. "Okay, so I guess you're wondering how you're going to get on the ship, right?" Marshall said, with his characteristic nervous rambling. "Well, parachutes would be the obvious choice, but, well, the drop's too short and Deveraux might notice, which, is like, not what were going for, right?"
I nodded and smiled, which was my standard Marshall-is-rambling response. Don't get my wrong, he was really sweet and a great friend, but he really didn't do public speaking very well.
"So, anyway," Marshall hurried on, as if seeing the impatient expressions of the other agents. "This is where my genius comes in, if I can say that. I mean it sounds a bit conceited, even if it was really cool…"
Marshall made an obvious attempt to get back on topic. "Well, I designed a glider that should get you from the cliff to the boat, built into a stylish jacket, because I know how you like to look nice…"
I smiled wider at Marshall's compliment. "Okay, so once you get on board and do your thing, you'll need a way to stop the Covenant getting the coordinates of the manuscript. Well, I've designed a worm that will get into the precise data we want and stop the Covenant accessing it."
Dixon cut of Marshall quickly, before he could say anything else. I was a little sad actually, because listening to Marshall talk had been like the last two years never happened. It was nice to know that not even me going missing could change Marshall too much, strange as that seemed.
"You leave in an hour, Syd." He said.
Argentina
The warm night air gentle riffled my ponytail and brushed against my cheek, as I quickly and efficiently checked over my equipment one last time. The adrenaline was already thrumming through my blood, the heady sense of excitement I got at the start of a mission humming through my body. Once again, I realised one simple fact: I lived for this – the challenge, the sense of achievement and the excitement of potential danger.
"Mountaineer, are you in position?" Dixon's voice echoed through my earpiece, bouncing from the CIA offices back in LA.
"I'm good to go." I replied quietly.
"Copy that, Mountaineer." Dixon said. "Deveraux's yacht's ETA is two minutes."
Back at the offices, I knew Dixon, Dad and Marshall would be monitoring Deveraux's yacht via a satellite feed. "Copy that." I confirmed, echoing Dixon's earlier words as I secured my repelling harness. "Going radio silent."
"Good luck." Dixon said softly, before the line went dead.
Stepping backwards, I let out a slow breath and leapt backwards off the cliff. This was not the first time I'd repelled down a cliff (it happened surprisingly often, actually), so the sight of the ground so far below gave my nothing more than a momentary feeling of apprehension. Heights had never bothered me all that much, which was good, because you had no idea how many missions required me to hang upside down or jump off tall objects.
A soon as I got to the right height below the cliff, I tied off and waited for the yacht. I was positioned on the cliff face not all that far from the little bay in which the yacht was supposed to stop for fuel, and just far enough along that they would have to pass more or less below me to get to the open ocean. I was dressed for the occasion in black (naturally – it seemed to be the only colour ever considered for this sort of thing), including boots, stylish jacket designed by Marshall and fingerless gloves to protect my palms from rope burn.
About half a minute after I tied off, the yacht came into sight. I watched its progress, noting it was exactly as I had expected. None of the bad guys we came across happened to be poor bad guys – which kind of sucked, because surely they couldn't be paid that much more than me?
The massive yacht was at least 80 feet long, with enough space to house at least ten or more people. According to the reports I had seen, however, there were only supposed to be seven men onboard – Deveraux, two bodyguards and four crewmen. Unless something had changed, I wasn't expecting too much resistance. Even though everyone back in LA had emphasised getting in and out without being seen. I didn't think it mattered if we got what we came for.
Judging the path of the yacht carefully, I waited for another moment, before quickly unsnapping my harness and pushing away from the cliff. I dropped in freefall for a second, adrenaline in overdrive, before the glider popped out of Marshall's cleverly designed jacket and I glided towards my target. Almost immediately my rushing fall stopped and turned into a more gently drift downwards. With barely a sound, I landed on the top deck of the yacht about a minute later.
Grinning at the ease of getting onboard thanks to Marshall, I slipped out of the jacket and stuffed it into the back I carried at my side. Staying crouched, I moved to the end of the deck (it seemed to be originally designed as some sort of entertaining area) and peered over the side. Then I cursed loudly in my head. There was at least one guard patrolling the deck below. I quietly moved to the other side and noticed a guard similarly patrolling on the other side of the yacht too.
Judging by the presence of two extra guards, Deveraux had picked up some extra men when he stopped for fuel. Oh, well. Now it was a challenge. I knew the crew would be relatively easy to avoid. They would either be manning the helm or in their quarters, and unless I made a lot of noise, they would stay there. It was just those guards I had to slip past.
Briefly, I wondered if Deveraux had also taken on staff to clean or cook for him, but decided he would probably prefer more guards around him than servers. He seemed to be a cautious type of man. I brought the floor plan of the yacht into my mind, having spent most of the plane flight to Argentina going over it. There were at least three bedrooms on the original design of the yacht, and we knew for a fact that Deveraux had modified it since purchase. So it stood to reason that one of those bedrooms was now his office. Problem was, they were on the bottom of the ship and I was on the top.
Knowing I couldn't stay in one place for very long in case someone decided to take a walk, I slipped back towards the stairs that led down to the deck. Due to the late hour, Deveraux should be in bed and most of the bodyguards would be sleepy. I waited until both guards had turned away from my direction and slipped down the stairs, heading for the steps to the helm, galley and stateroom.
I paused in the shadows just below the stairs and crouched in absolute stillness as one of the guards drifted back down to this end of the yacht. I held my breath until both guards moved back towards the bow again, before slipping quietly through the door into the first level below deck. The door opened into the large and lushly decorated stateroom, with the galley visible in the dimness just beyond and the helm just beyond that. Thankfully, none of the bodyguards were in the stateroom, and I revised my opinion that Deveraux had taken on more men. Surely they couldn't be sleeping, could they?
Suddenly my attention was diverted by a soft clinking sound, and I immediately slipped into the deep shadows behind the door and just to the side of some of the large curtained windows. Moving the curtains quietly, I peered out towards the deck when I realised the noise had come from out there.
As I watched, I saw a grapple hook onto the railing of the deck and a figure in black pulled themselves up onto the deck. The man was dressed in a modified wetsuit, which also covered his head, and was obviously wet having swum up to the boat. He wore boat shoes, and as I watched, pulled out a nasty looking silenced automatic. As he prowled forwards to deal with the two guards, I frowned. Damn it, the Covenant was already here! That meant I had to move fast.
I crept quickly to across the stateroom, past the galley and to the stairs that led down to the lower level, just before the door to the helm. I noticed the light and muffled voices just behind the helm door and knew that at least two of the crew were in there, hopefully meaning the other was asleep.
The level below was almost completely dark, with the only light drifting down from the floor above. No light came out from underneath any of the doors and I slipped down the narrow corridor as fast as I dared. Hopefully the guards on the deck would keep the Covenant agent busy long enough for me to grab the location of the manuscript and corrupt the data with Marshall's worm.
Guessing that the middle door would lead to Deveraux's office and not the bodyguards' bedroom, I opened the door and slipped inside. I paused in the complete darkness a moment to listen, but heard no breathing or questioning shouts. That was good. Holding my breath, I turned on the small torch I had brought with me and looked around the room.
I grinned in triumph when I recognised the office. And there on the desk was Deveraux's laptop, containing the manuscript coordinates! I walked over and opened the laptop, before switching on the small lamp beside the computer on the desk. The torch didn't really give me enough light and the lamp seemed small enough that it shouldn't be too obvious outside the office.
A minute later, a window appeared on the screen, demanding a password. Since this sort of thing was not all that uncommon, I had come equipped with a small decoder from Marshall, and I plugged that in quickly, before typing in a short series of commands. The small device only took a few seconds to crack the password and then I was in. Disconnecting the decoder with one hand, I scrolled through the files on the computer, quickly locating the one I was after. Once I had that, it only took me a minute or two to download the information and upload Marshall's worm.
I typed in the series of commands to activate the worm, my fingers flying rapidly over the keys, as I probably only had a few seconds before the Covenant agent caught up with me… Suddenly I heard a sound behind me and I cursed loudly in my head, using as many languages as I could. I was too slow. I tensed, just as I heard the ominous sound of someone clicking the safety off an automatic right behind me.
"This is just like old times." A familiar voice said, almost conversationally from just behind me, in a British accent.
It just figures that Sark would be the one they would send. He's the only man I've ever met who can successfully sneak up on me like that and once again, I found myself on the wrong end of a gun barrel.
"Sark." I growled, angry at him for sneaking up on me and myself for letting him.
"Raise your hands slowly and step away from the computer, Agent Bristow."
I knew if I was going to do something, I would have to do it fast, so I acted in an instant. I slammed the "enter" key to initiate Marshall's worm, a second before I pivoted to the right and away from Sark's gun. I was now parallel to the gun barrel and my sudden movement had caught Sark by surprise. I didn't have the advantage for long, however, as Sark hadn't lasted this long without having good reflexes (unfortunately for me).
I lashed out backwards with a kick directed at his wrist, wanting to force him to drop the gun. He did with a loud curse, as he turned his attention fully to me and away from the computer screen, where the worm was doing its job. I took the opportunity to strike out again, hitting Sark a few times in the face and chest. Admittedly, I did put a bit more force behind the blows than I absolutely needed to, but this was Sark – he deserved it.
Sark staggered back a few steps and snarled. Obviously angry, yet a trace of admiration in his gaze, he retaliated. This time it was me who gave ground, although very grudgingly. "I must say I'm pleased you survived Moscow, Sydney." Sark smirked as we fought furiously. "It's just not the same without you."
It figures that the one man who seems to want me around it my sworn enemy… if you don't count my dad, but no one really ever knows what he's thinking.
"You mean you've got no one to beat you up?" I shot back as I aimed a back fist at his mouth.
He blocked, but I was ready for him… a bit easier than I remember, but not bad for someone who, up until very recently, has been trapped in a cell for two years. I slammed his face into the desk beside the computer, bloodying his nose, and while he was still groggy, slapped some handcuffs on him.
With a slight grin, I left him slumped on the ground and moved back to the computer, just as Marshall's worm finished his task. Ejecting the disk containing the location, I pocketed the information and grabbed the disk containing Marshall's worm, putting it in a separate pocket.
Sark tugged at his bindings sharply, as soon as his head stopped ringing. "This won't stop me for long, Sydney." He taunted.
Mirroring the same smirk he'd been giving me for years, I looked at him. "I know." Turning, I headed for the door and my extraction point.
Thankfully, despite Sark's and my somewhat noisy fight, the corridor beyond seemed as deserted as it had been when I entered. I turned and headed for the stairs as quickly as I dared. Sark knew I had the information he wanted and I had to get off the yacht before he got to me.
Unfortunately, just as I reached the top of the stairs, there was a shout from behind me (not Sark's, so it could have been worse!) and light flooded the previously dark stairs and stateroom. I burst into a sprint as soon as I heard the man, my hand going for my gun at the same time.
As footsteps pounded behind me, I burst out onto the deck and found two crumpled bodies of the guards. "Retriever, this is Mountaineer!" I broke radio silence as soon as I was in the open air. "I've got the disk and request immediate extraction!"
"Copy that, Mountaineer." Dixon's voice replied, much to my relief. "We're in position."
Risking a quick glance over my shoulder, I noticed three men were pounding angrily behind me, but thankfully, Sark was no where to be seen. I sprinted down the deck, heading to the stern of the yacht and didn't even pause when I ran out of deck. In a swift, gracefully movement (probably so easy since I'd done it more times than I could remember), I leapt up on top of the railing and dived off.
My breath exploded from my lungs when I hit the freezing water, despite the fact I had been bracing myself. I surfaced quickly, and grabbed and mouthful of air while treading water, before gazing sharply around. I heard shouts and gunfire behind me from Deveraux's yacht, but I was far enough away by now that it didn't concern me too much.
Then I grinned as my ride emerged from one of the small inlets along the coast and sped over to me. I swam towards the small speed boat, even though it was heading straight for me. I wanted to get out of this freezing water as soon as I could, and besides, I wasn't going to hang around for Sark to find me – that wouldn't be too good for my health, as Sark was probably very pissed of by now. Oh, that thought just gave me warm tingles all over!
I dragged my wet, cold body onto the boat and felt the speed boat make a sharp turn and head back to the shore before the yacht could follow. I got to me feet, suppressing a shiver at the now icy feeling of the breeze as Vaughn turned around to look at me, from where he was standing at the wheel.
"You okay?" he asked me, with his now-characteristic sad and worried eyes.
Is it bad that in that moment I wanted to hit him? I suppressed the irrational surge of anger and forced a smile. "Just a little wet." I said, slipping a blanket around my shoulders.
"We'll be back at the safe house soon." He told me with one of those smiles that never reached his guilt-ridden eyes.
I nodded, keeping the smile in place. Oh, boy. This was going to be a long trip home.
To be continued…