They found the enemy camp nestled against the opening to several caves on a rocky hill-side - a parting in the sand-dunes, full of grit and the occasional hardy fauna. A geophysical scan of the area had identified a number of interlinking caves which looped back to this same place, but there was more than enough activity on the surface to be sure of what they were looking at. It was more military than civilian; everything had a hostile air to add to the impermanency. Around the main honeycomb of entrances, in the face of the rock, stood several well-worn tents, patrolled by men with guns like the ones on the videos – the latest automatics strapped to their hips just in case.
Nikola walked right up to the entrance as though he was meant to be there, conspicuous silver briefcase in hand – and it took them a good long while to notice him despite all that.
Maybe it was the heat? He smiled cockily as the grunt waved a gun in his direction and addressed him in Arabic.
"Hey, hey," Tesla eased, the pedantry dripping from an untrustworthy smile even as he flung his hands up in a gesture of harmlessness, "Let's not get our camel pants in a twist. Okay?" He switched to Arabic, "Take me to Mujahid."
The heavily muscled goon squinted dully at him down the sights of his weapon, "Mujahid is a busy man, white-boy. Go home to your mother."
Tesla raised his eyebrows at that one, unable to keep the surprise from his face. "Fine," he deadpanned, "guess I'll take this great big wad of cash elsewhere then. I'm sure Mujahid will thank you for turning away a million-dollar deal."
"Rachid?!"
Nikola had already turned away, but he was counting on 'Rachid' looking flummoxed between the fellow gang-member shouting his name, and the stranger bearing gifts who'd just dared turn his back on a pretty ferocious-looking hard-ass, with a gun.
"Hey!" the other gang member called out, "You! Stay right where you are."
Rolling his eyes at the fact that they'd clearly missed his purposefully slow amble away from the encampment Tesla nonetheless slowed to a halt at the no-nonsense tone, and, in his own good time, span around to regard the more dextrous-looking man who'd now trained his gun on him.
"What the hell Rachid?" the new guy said under hushed breath, "What were you going to do, let him go and tell the world where we're camped tonight, God protect us."
The bulkier man shrugged, bringing his weapon up like a comforter, "Sorry Issa."
"What's your business here scrawny?" Issa directed more confidently.
Despite the moniker, Tesla's amusement never faltered. "What do your visitors usually want, pink frilly dresses from Third-World sweatshops?"
"Who sent you?"
Tesla sighed impatiently, "Really, we're going to do this?" he spun his finger at them, "Look, kiddos, you've got the tactical advantage here," he started to approach them, "It's 86 degrees – in the shade – I've got a case-load of cash, and an offer your boss is going to cut your left toe off for putting on hold. Now, show me to Mujahid, or kill me… but either way-" he pushed at the tip of the man's weapon with a little shark-toothed grin, "you might wanna hurry this up."
They looked at him for a moment, stunned by his distinct lack of fear, and quickly rationalising their position just as Nikola had intended them to. He was one man, in a camp full of armed mercenaries. There was no competition here – he tried anything he was dead, Mujahid would see to that. Issa smirked back as he worked it out all by his little self, and nodded briefly towards the stranger, lowering his gun.
"Alright, you think you got currency? We'll see, huh. Rachid, stay on task, I'll take our… valued guest," the grin belonged in some bazaar across an over-priced Persian rug, along with all the other stereotypes it could embody, "to the boss."
0
The darkness inside the tunnel Will and Magnus were crawling through was thick, neither of them daring to turn on headlamps now that they were close to the rear of the encampment. They were pretty certain from the satellite photos and magnetic scans that the cartel were using the tunnels to store their merchandise – the most valuable weapons – just like rum-runners in America during prohibition: as Helen had already pointed out with her usual 'been there done that' aplomb. No one was on guard though, and as they reached a more open space, light started to filter through from up ahead – a pale trickle from service lights leading back to the head of the caves. They probably hadn't realised the tunnels connected up to another entrance, Magnus mused, still clutching warily to her gun as she felt a light tap on her shoulder.
Will caught her wrist and directed her palm to the wall on their left, only it wasn't a wall at all but cold steel, and plastic, in various shapes and sizes – crates. They'd found the store. She glanced back towards the light, straining her ears for any sound or movement beyond the scuttle of spiders and reptiles, and their own nervy breathing.
Her second in command approached the entrance to the room, checking the origin of the light and making sure there weren't any signs of a patrol. To his relief the corridor had in fact been blocked with a wooden panel as a makeshift door. The light, it seemed, was merely seeping through the cracks.
Returning to his boss Will turned on his headlamp, directing it away from the entranceway, so as to illuminate the scene. Rows upon rows of stacked chests which, upon opening revealed precisely what they had expected to find – illegal weapons, the most dangerous constructions ever designed for use against abnormals. They looked at each other silently, both appreciating the severity of the situation and its implications on what would follow. Both knowing precisely what needed to be done. Silently, swiftly, they started taking photographic evidence, particularly of the weapons they'd never seen before; diligently cataloguing the crime for their investigation, before the necessity of its destruction.
0
Outside of the largest tent Tesla had waited with an amused smirk, as they searched him for weapons. He'd been patted down, his case checked for a secret compartment under the wads of cash, and after those paltry, predictable measures to secure their safety they had escorted him into the company of a man they'd addressed as 'Jackal'. As cute as the name was, Nikola wasn't laughing. His face was a mask of interested nonchalance: just enough to remind them he was not afraid of them, nor stupid enough to outright insult the stocky cartel leader currently bearing holes into his soul… for now.
"They say you have brought a small fortune with you," Mujahid began with a deep resonating bass, "does a man with that much currency in the desert have a name… or is he just meat for the vultures?"
"Well," Tesla sighed whimsically, "I'd like to see you piss off the owner of that currency sometime and see how long it takes you to regret it."
The Jackal seemed uncomfortable with his lack of intimidation, shifting in his seat as though to make himself bigger, and conspicuously realigning the gun resting on his chair with Tesla's balls. "I asked you your name."
"Joe."
He gave an unconvinced snort, "Sure it is."
Tesla shrugged, "About as convincing as the Jackal don't you think? Look, it isn't going to matter once you have your money, and we have your weapons, so let's just skip the preliminaries and get to business, shall we?"
Mujahid stared at him for the longest while, that angry twitch Nikola was so adept at provoking in people tickling the corners of his eyes and lips as he wrestled with the situation. His men seemed to quiver momentarily in the tension, holding their collective breaths, and then, finally, the big man laughed – and it was like waves crashing into the shore.
"Joe eh?" he laughed again, putting his gun aside, "I like it – and I like your money even more. What are you planning to do, equip an army?"
He gave a canny smile, "Oh sure, because I'm going to start monologuing, and tell you all the juicy details of my plan to take over the world."
The Jackal chuckled again, when a commotion outside started to draw his attention. Nikola listened closely as another guard blustered in and reported quickly in Arabic: "We have an honoured guest."
The words had a marvellous effect on the cartel leader, smugness starting to ooze from him and straightening him up… though why, exactly, Nikola wasn't sure.
"Send them in, immediately." The Jackal insisted, "A little competition is always good for a deal."
Nikola instantly went into high alert, ears pricking, eyes shifting to catch the new arrival as he swanned in through the front door – black suit, white shirt, with the words GOVERNMENT AGENT practically stamped across his forehead.
"Good God," he scoffed before he could stop himself, "could you be any less subtle?"
Then the, presumably SCIU, agent turned towards the unexpected voice, cold green eyes catching him with an unnerving familiarity, and not so much as a glimmer of surprise. "Well, well, well, it looks like we have some competition."
"What, you think you're the only ones up for a little death and destruction these days?" Nikola quipped, but his eyebrow didn't twitch with it – the sort of tell only Helen, or maybe Will might notice. He was keeping both eyes fully trained on the enemy.
From his audience chair Mujahid looked between the two of them with interest, "You are… familiar with each other?"
Tesla's head snapped to the cartel leader, "Are you kidding? The whole standard issue suit is about as obvious as a fire truck made from pink neon lights. If I'd realised you dealt with the authorities, I'd have taken the money somewhere else. Last thing I need is for Washington to hear about this."
"I have to admit Tesla; I'm just as surprised to see you."
That shinny penny dropped as he zeroed back in on the suit, linking the face in front of him to the memory at the back of his mind. He couldn't remember the man's name – it had been twenty years after all, and Nikola was never very good with the unimportant comings-and-goings of the minor people who featured in his life. The SCIU agent had been fresh out of college back then. Now he had a receding hairline and clearly moved up in the ranks. No doubt figuring out how to weaponise his 'dog fence' had been just the career boost he'd needed. A moment's notice, one word from him… and this charade was finished.
He shrugged nonchalantly, focusing on the agent all the while, "What can I say, I'm more of a one-man-show."
0
Will and Magnus had rigged the entire cave with charges, but they weren't done just yet. They might lop off the head of this hydra in one fell swoop, but they needed as much information as possible to prevent another two or three filling its place. That meant going in deeper – that meant sneaking through the door, and into the encampment, to the tents in which the mercenaries slept.
Ducking beneath the flap of fabric they started moving from bed to bed, looking for identification – names, nationalities, anything to indicate who exactly was involved with this gang. Going from bed to bed they appropriated a number of passports and cell phones, putting them into the backpacks which had been holding the charges before. Even if these identities had been bought and paid for, they might find the supplier, and thereby run them to ground. Either way, they needed all the information they could get.
Looking over his shoulder, Will gave Helen a quick nod to signal he was finished, which she returned with her age-old decisiveness. It was time to make a break for it.
Footsteps pattered outside the tent door, and Helen barely had chance to turn her head before she found herself face to face with a man, two feet taller and a whole lot bulkier than herself. Instinctively she rammed her elbow into his solar plexus with all her weight, dodging round whilst he gasped for air. She and Will attempted to high-tail it, before he managed to shout the alarm, but he was recovering too quickly - stumbling towards them and digging out a switchblade from his belt. Will hit him with the butt of his gun and Helen dived for the blade, wrenching it out of his hand until he cried out. Arms appeared out of nowhere around her midsection and Helen kicked, aiming for her assailant's most tender area and making complete contact. He howled, even as his friend managed to land a solid punch on Will, the noise starting to draw more than just a little attention from beyond the canvas wall.
0
"Where have you been all this time?" the SCIU agent asked, "Holed up in a cave?"
Nikola was too distracted to quip back quickly, his ears picking up the sound of a scuffle not too far away. He smiled slowly at the villainous bureaucrat, pedantically, as though he were about to explain to a child how they'd just screwed themselves over. Whatever he did, whatever he said, he couldn't let Mad Scientist Junior see Helen, or even infer her presence.
Clearly they had already started to piece things together in the few moments they weren't being pulled every which way by political agendas and Sanctuary meddling. If he saw her and lived to tell the tale, all that was over. It would be war, just like last time, and he wasn't about to watch her blow herself up – again – to escape it.
"Who broke ranks?" he countered, looking far too pleased with himself.
"Sorry?" the suit responded venomously.
Tesla could hear his pulse throb angrily as he shrugged his shoulders and attempted to ignore the distinct cadence of a brawl going on outside. "Well, the Geek Squad has more than enough bright lights to figure these out from the scraps left to them, so if you're not here to sell… then one of them was bright enough to bail before you knew what you'd lost. Right?"
The suit was trying his best not to glower, but it was obvious enough that he'd hit a nerve.
"Oh yeah... this is just damage control," he continued. "To make sure you hold the highest percentage of stock, instead of people like me."
Somehow the SCIU agent's demeanour shifted, focusing on that small little opening enough to ask, "People like you? Here I was thinking you were the only remaining vampire."
Nikola smiled at the recoil he sensed, more than saw, from the surrounding mercenaries.
"Vampire?"
"Come on Junior," Tesla teased the agent, not even acknowledging the hesitant mercenary with so much as a glance in his direction, "you don't think I have a vested interest in destroying every last one of these tinker-toys before you all hurt yourselves?"
"I don't think you'll be destroying anything… Tesla," the Jackal intoned authoritatively above them, levelling said tinker-toy threateningly in his direction. Nikola didn't so much as bat an eye, "least of all our merchandise."
The SCIU agent straightened up, eager to see where this was headed, his small eyes uniquely curious, at just how much pain and suffering his former employer could take.
"You sure about that?" Tesla teased, taking far too much pleasure in winding up a man currently aiming at his head, "Someone could lose an eye."
"Far as I'm concerned," the mercenary grunted, caressing the trigger, his men suddenly shifting, ready to follow suit, "your boss can have their money back with your fried insides." Without hesitating he fired the electromagnetic weapon in his grip, but the vampire didn't shift an inch.
Grinning from ear to ear like the cat that caught the canary, Nikola clicked his tongue in admonishment, grabbing the weapon of the nearest mercenary with a sudden spurt of abnormal speed and wresting it from his grip. As the others fumbled to fire on him Nikola landed a few choice smacks to the head, deftly depriving them of the automatic back-ups some had on them by bending the barrels, before they had chance to realise that all their high-tech merchandise was suffering from the same malfunction. The noises outside were getting louder, gunfire starting to sound as the entire camp cottoned onto their situation. Greed, thought Nikola, it really did make people blind to the jamming devices hidden in the sides of your briefcase. The money wasn't even real.
As the tent fell into chaos around him the SCIU agent moved to follow Tesla's example, arm himself with a blunt weapon so he could get out of the fray and closer to the pistol they'd no doubt confiscated from him at the door – but Tesla couldn't let that happen, couldn't risk him seeing Helen in the dust.
He smacked the presumptuous little shit hard on the back of his head with the butt of a gun, more than just a little satisfied by the grunt the weasel gave out as he fell to the floor.
The vampire glanced up, more than ready for the satisfaction of bringing the Jackal to his knees; finding, to his disappointment, that Mujahid had already escaped him. In fact, most of the tent had high-tailed it at the sight of their burly colleague, knocked out by a man who he should've been able to pull apart without breaking a sweat, let alone fire on. The three other men he'd managed to disable onto the floor gave out vague groans as he skipped over them, hurrying to join the fray, and tip the odds back into Helen's favour.
Peeling aside the flap, he instantly aimed the automatic in his hand at the one target Will and Helen just couldn't cover. All three of them silently daring the men who'd cornered them to just shoot first and see who survived. The three fierce gazes of the Sanctuary veterans matched with an uncanny similarity, a kinship their opponents couldn't match. Even as more of the mercenaries arrived, re-armed and pissed off, they hesitated to test their resolve. Not one of them wanted to be the first, all of them eager to save their own skin until the Jackal, kicking back the chamber of a semi-automatic rifle, approached the Mexican standoff their fight had become.
"I don't take kindly to people sneaking around my camp like little spies."
"Funny," Helen cut in, unfazed by the brute in front of her and more than ready to fight her corner, "I don't take too kindly to blood-thirsty militia hunting, torturing and killing for sport... Oh, wait, don't tell me," she smirked dryly, "you were being paid for that as well."
"And who the fuck are you? Bitch."
Helen glowered but Nikola beat her to it, "Ah a ah, manners... She would be the owner of all that money you were so keen to return with my fried insides," he dared a momentary glance at Helen and Will out of the corner of his eye, sporting a sardonic grin.
"Huh," Will chuffed, training a studious gaze and knowing smile on the camp's leader as he spoke to Tesla, "what did you do, insult his mother?"
The Jackal instantly bristled as the situation started to slip from his grasp, too angry to see the small device in the flat of Helen's palm as it shifted up to her fingers.
"Eh," Nikola shrugged, "too easy."
"Enough of this!" Mujahid fumed loudly.
"I quite agree," Helen intoned, pressing against the pad and firing into the shoulder of her nearest target simultaneously. The three of them made a break for it as the ground began to tremble, and their enemies clocked the horrifying roar of fire ripping between stone, devouring the hot desert air until rocks loosened from high upon their precipices. A few men screamed, others belatedly opening fire on the trio as they ducked and weaved towards the perimeter at full pelt. Behind them all the gun-runner's prized merchandise blew apart, in a blaze which was starting to belch black smoke through the tents like a poison, shielding them from further attack. It was a strategy worthy of a battlefield… Helen only hoped this wasn't the start of yet another war.
Author's Note: Oooh folks we're nearly at an end with this one already. I did say it was only gonna be a shorty, well… I meant it. Really loved writing Tesla's bits – does it show? Lol Thanks to those faving, following and taking the time to review!
Carmedsi – we are of likened minds! :)