Last time: Closing the folds carefully, he took the cloth and slid it into the farthest and darkest corner beneath his bed, while in his mind already planning ahead. Like last time, he would have to choose his next steps carefully...
xoxoxo
As night had fallen over the small city of Banff, Alberta, a sense of calm had taken over the streets, shops had closed, parking lots emptied and most people had gone home to their loved ones. Every once in a while a single car would drive down the main-road, breaking the stillness with the dull rattle of its exhaust. It was, as if the city itself had fallen asleep. But appearance could be deceiving. At least three people weren't safely slumbering in their beds.
"Stop!" Felicity's command crackled through the com-link in his ear, making Roy freeze instantly. He didn't ask why. If Felicity told you to do something, you just did it. He had learned to trust her - instinct was the wrong word, that had been Oliver's forte, he had lived and breathed instinct like it had been his second nature; it probably was – but she was the all-knowing, all-seeing eye in the sky. Felicity guided their steps on their missions, and so far she had never led them... led him wrong.
Retracting his foot, he squatted down to minimize his height, leaning his back into the, coincidently, red dumpster at his back. Cold instantly seeped through the thin, skin-tight leather of his jacket, which really wasn't made for this climate, making him shiver. He ignored it and threw a glance at Diggle, who had mimicked his pose, crouching next to him. They had left Felicity back at the hotel, when they had gone to the airstrip at midnight, wanting to operate under the cover of darkness, when most other people where safely slumbering in their beds.
Pressing on the com-link in his suit, he spoke in a whisper. "What is it?"
When she spoke, both men heard her tense voice. "There is a guard patrolling this section of the fence as we speak. But that's not the problem. He has a dog. The guard you don't have to worry about. But the dog can sense you a mile-off. Probably already has. The only reason it hasn't sounded the alarm, is, because it doesn't perceive you as intruders yet. You're not on its territory."
"Damn!" Dig cursed under his breath. These hillbillies had guard dogs? Really? He looked a Roy. "Do you have your tranquilizer darts."
Roy rolled his eyes, before hissing exasperatedly. "And how do you suggest, I should have done that? Us flying and having to go through customs and all?"
John raised his hands to placate the young archer. "Okay. Okay. I get it. You're right." He whispered, exhaling a frustrated puff of breath, which instantly froze in the chilly night air. Hovering like a cloud of doom, before it slowly dissipated, only to be replaced by another seconds later.
All three, Dig and Roy on their side of the com-link and Felicity on the other, sunk into contemplative silence, trying to come up with a new plan of action. It was Dig who finally did. He'd been staring down at his feet, when a brown beer bottle rolled out from under the dumpster, only stopping, when it made contact with his right foot. He nudged it slightly with the toe of his boot. It rolled back a little, before returning. He did it again, his mind slowly but surely formulating a plan. During his time in the military, if they couldn't enter from the front or they didn't want to engage in direct combat, his platoon had usually used diversion tactics. They bore their own risks, of course, but they had been successful... mostly. His fingers kneaded a spot on his thigh, the knotted scar tissue of a bullet wound aching in remembrance of one mission that hadn't been quite so successful.
"One of us has to distract the dog." It was as simple as that, really, or as hard. Depended on which angle you looked at it. But they had to distract the dog in such a way, that all its senses were focused on one of them, so the other could slip unnoticed over the fence and enter the building.
"Okay, I am going to do it." Offered Roy instantly, already standing from his crouch, but Diggle put a hand on his shoulder, pulling him down again and shook his head.
"No, not you. In your getup you're too noticeable." While saying that, he picked up disregarded beer-bottle at his feet and pulled off his balaclava. "I, on the other hand, am not. I can pull of being a drunken tourist, having ended up in the wrong part of the town. Not having found my way home."
Roy nodded. Dig's plan was sound and he was right.
"Be careful, boys!" Felicity whispered in their ears, both heard the unspoken my in the tone of her voice.
"We will, blondie." Roy assured teasingly, knowing how much Felicity hated that nick-name… or pretended to hate it.
With a last nod to Roy, Diggle went on his way, taking the empty bottle of beer with him. After all, what was an actor without his props? Roy stayed behind the dumpster, hearing Diggle's strained breathing in his ear, as he jogged half a block over to near Banff's airport from the other side. It took several tense minutes of waiting, but then he finally heard Dig whispering. "I see him. He's nearing my position. Are you ready? Felicity? Roy?"
When both his team-mates had answered in the affirmative, he started his acting. Roy listened for half a minute, hearing Dig's slurred words, asking the guard where he was and how he had come to be there? The man seemed annoyed and told him, he should leave and find his own way back. Diggle, knowing he had to keep the man's and dog's focus on himself, started telling the guard a fictional sob story about his unfair life and how his wife had left him. Roy almost cracked up and had to bite his lip, to keep from laughing at Dig's performance. He was really good at it, maybe he should change careers? He could hear the dog growling and barking at his friend through Dig's open com-link and decided now was the time.
"It's a go!" He hissed into is com-link, to led Diggle and Felicity know, that he was going in now.
Sprinting towards the wire-fence in a crouch, he used the momentum to catapult himself two-thirds of the way up, climbing the rest of the way and dropping down on the other side. From there he had to do another short sprint to reach the nearest building, which luckily also was the one housing the airports surveillance equipment.
He pressed his back next to the door, sweeping the area with his eyes, to make sure nobody he had seen him. When he was sure it was safe, he turned towards the door. There was a keypad with a slot for a keycard. But they already had known that and he came prepared.
"I found the keypad, Felicity." He told their tech-genius in a low voice, so as not to attract attention from the people that might be inside.
"Good." She answered calmly, this was her thing, she knew what to do. "Take the keycard and transponder I gave you and swipe it through the slot, hold it there. Then give me a few seconds to decrypt the keypad."
Roy nodded, but then remembered she couldn't see him. "Okay." He did as he was told. Pulling the keycard and small transponder from a pocket in his suit, he swiped the card through the slot, and waited. Suddenly there was a beep, then another, and the red light on the keypad faded out, turning to green.
"That was too easy. They really should update their system." Felicity mumbled, before adding "Door should be open, Roy."
Roy griped the handle, giving it a small, careful tug to test it, and it sprung open immediately on silent hinges. Thank god for small blessings, Roy thought. A narrow strip of warm, yellow light showed between the door and its frame. Roy held his breath, hoping that he hadn't been noticed and peered inside while straining to listen for people talking or other strange noises. Not hearing anything, he pulled the door open, slipped inside and silently closed it.
"Arsenal is in. Nobody's here." He let his co-conspirators know and could hear Felicity's quiet breathing in his ear through the opened com-link, and Digg was still in the process of telling the guard and his growling dog about his wife had dumped him and so one. Roy slunk along the corridor, passing closed doors with darkened windows to get to the security office at the end of the building where the blue prints had shown them to be.
When he saw the door he was looking for, he sprinted the last several feet in a crouch, kneeling next to it. It was the only one, where light shone from the inside through the small window. And he could hear a single voice talking to somebody else. Since nobody was answering, Roy could only assume that the person inside, a man, was talking to somebody on the phone.
"Yes, honey. I will stop by the store first thing in the morning and get it."
Silence.
"No… don't worry, I won't forget it. I promise."
Again silence.
"I know… I know… don't be a mad at me."
While the security officer had been talking to his wife, or so Roy assumed, he had slipped inside unnoticed by the distracted man, who had been striding up and down a phalanx of monitors and computers.
Now, he stood still, staring down at one of the monitors, as if he had seen something and mumbled a distracted answer into his phone. "No… no, I won't forget it again. I promise. I love you. Bye", before hanging up.
As he was about to sit down in his chair, Roy sneaked up to him and wound an arm around the man's windpipe, the other pressing down hard on the back of the man's neck. A chokehold Oliver had taught him. It happened so fast, the man didn't even have time to react. His eyes widened comically for a second or two, as if trying to understand what was happening, but he his eyes slipped closed only moments later and his body went slack in Roy's arms. The young archer lowered him gently the rest of the way into his chair, knowing the man hadn't done anything to deserve this treatment, other, than unfortunately being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
"Blondie, I'm in the security office. What do you want me to do?" He whispered.
Felicity thought for a moment, before answering. "Look around, tell me what you see. Describe their setup to me."
Doing as Felicity told him, he swept his eyes across the room, describing it as he went. "There is a phalanx of monitors, showing the airstrip and the hangar, one shows Dig and the guard. There are some computers and some kind of setup for DVD-recording, I think." His gaze wandered further and he found a rack holding at least a hundred DVD covers, sorted by time-stamp. He told Felicity what he saw.
"Oh my god, I think I'm experiencing a heart-attack right now. These barbarians live in the equivalent of the middle-ages when it comes to computers. They store their video-footage on DVDs? Really? No wonder they're offline and there was nothing for me to hack." She ranted in her loud voice.
"Felicity!" Roy hissed.
She calmed down instantly. "Okay. Okay. I am going to stop ranting in three, two, one. Done! Roy, you have to find the DVDs around the time Nyssa left Starling and several days after… a week maybe?" Felicity suggested. "And oh… don't forget to take out the current DVD out of the recorder, you don't want yourself or Dig be caught on camera!"
Letting his fingers slide over the backs of the DVD covers, he finally located the ones that Felicity wanted. "Go them!" He cheered quietly, before moving back towards the computers and collecting the current recording. For some reason, though he hadn't been told to do so, he also chose to take the binder that held the flight manifests. Giving a last glance at the monitors, seeing Dig retreat as well, he slipped out.
xoxoxo
Half an hour later they were all reunited in Felicity's motel room, while Felicity was going through the video footage on the DVDs Roy had brought her. The young man had changed back into regular clothes and now stood behind her, same as Dig, gazing down at the monitor of Felicity's notebook.
Felicity was fast-forwarding the footage, until Diggle suddenly called "Stop!" He pointed a finger at the monitor. "Go back… yes there! It's her, Nyssa. And that man." Diggle couldn't remember the name, though he was sure Felicity had mentioned it.
Indeed, the video - now playing at a regular tempo - showed Nyssa and another man stepping out of a Cessna. Her face was half-hidden by a black cowl, but you couldn't mistake her. They eyes, the olive skin, jet-black her and the regal posture. It was Nyssa all-right. And she looked as if she didn't have a care in to world, eyes cold, features calm, collected, calculating. The video showed her speaking to the other man, before both walked off the camera. After that Felicity couldn't trace their steps, because the airport's cameras only covered parts of the air-strip and the hangars. Felicity cursed, frustration gnawing at her like a rapid dog on a bone, making her grit her teeth.
Diggle laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed ever so gently, it had become a habit of theirs, and she instantly calmed down, returning her focus to the camera footage. When it ended, she exchanged it for another DVD… and then another. Together with Roy and Dig she watched the coming and goings on Banff's airport, and if it hadn't been for her fourth cup of coffee, Roy kept plying her with, she might have fallen asleep. They were already sifting through their third day of video footage, the day after the duel.
So far, there was only that one sighting of Nyssa and her underling. Secretly she had hoped Oliver had chosen the same route and she would see him caught on camera, but she should have known that he would stay under the radar so she couldn't track him.
Dig had migrated to the table, intently studying a map of Banff and its surrounding area, analyzing its topographical layout with a critical eye. A second possible angle, he had told them, maybe he could find out, where the duel had taken place. Or find their base of operations in this area. He was sure they had one here… at least some kind of outpost.
He heard the low mumble of Felicity and Roy talking about recognizing the man that had come here with Nyssa al Ghul. But he was in no way prepared for the loud smash of a coffee-mug splintering into pieces of their motel room's garishly checkered linoleum floor. Nor the startled gasp, that came from Felicity's lips.
He sprang up so fast, his chair toppled over backwards. "What is it?"
Felicity looked at him with wide eyes. Then back at the monitor. A hand covering her mouth in a silent gesture or shock.
Dig, looked at Roy, wanting an answer, but saw the same shocked expression on the younger man's face. He was white as a sheet, looked as if he had seen a ghost.
"What?" He moved to stand beside Roy and looked down at the monitor. And what he saw there in the paused video, it literally froze the blood in his veins. He was staring at tall, dark-haired man who was wearing a black, ornate mantle. But what was more important was what was next to him. Four men carrying a stretcher with a man on it, covered up to his chin in blankets or fur. But there was no mistaking him!
Felicity looked up at Diggle. "John… it's Oliver. He's alive!" She whispered with tears in her eyes.
This changed everything! Their quest was no longer to find the League's outpost or their sacred duel ground to find and bring home a body. No, they had to find Oliver and bring him home, wherever Ra's had taken him.