Recruitment Drive: Reaching an Accord
By bissek
Chapter 6
The base was cold, haphazardly lit, and its personnel were underfed. This was unfortunately the typical state of affairs in the Playground. Commander Gonzales was hearing a lot of complaints about the conditions ever since they had taken the place. As he opened the door to leave his quarters, he quickly found that things had just gotten worse… again.
The hallways were clouded with blankets of fog. The only reason he could see ten feet was because some of the lights in the hall were still working. He didn't want to think of what it was like if the fog continued into areas where the power was out. As he started slowly walking, a noise like a whisper called out to him in a nonexistent wind.
Gonzales….
The commander paused and looked around. Nobody else was there. He continued on his way.
Give me Calderon, Gonzales.
The unfamiliar woman's voice called out to him again. Shaking his head, Gonzales picked up the pace. Odd, he could have sworn that the turn in the hallway was sooner than it was…
Moments later, he walked into a wall that looked for all the world like an empty hallway.
"This has got to stop!" Gonzales slapped his hand on the table. "Every day we have to expend more and more resources just to remain operational. If we don't deal with this soon, we won't be able to function at all!"
"The disturbing thing is that I think that Miss Carpenter is still holding back." Agent Weaver commented.
"Holding back?! Our agents now need to use canes to tell when they're about to walk into things!"
"And however she's doing it, can anyone think of a reason why she wouldn't be able to do it in a busy intersection?"
There was a pause as everyone considered the potential carnage that would have brought about. So far, the only person who had ended up in serious danger because of all the incidents was Calderon, who was both the person who their attacker had a direct grudge against, and someone who had been seriously injured for totally unrelated reasons shortly before the attacks began.
The entire affair had started because one of their agents wasn't willing to accept that Carpenter's people didn't recognize SHIELD's authority. Now it seemed that they also didn't take SHIELD seriously enough to actually attack them even though they clearly had the means. For an agency that was once one of the most powerful in the world, it was an infuriating thought.
"Is there any news on PENTAGRAM?" Gonzales demanded.
"Commander Murphy and several of her people appear to have dropped off the map in the past few hours," Agent Oliver reported. "It's possible she used some of those Way-Walkers to head out on a mission."
"Make sure one of the Quinjets stays in working condition," the Commander ordered. "Once we know where they're going, I want you to take a team and go after them."
The day after Commander Gonzales learned exactly how difficult an illusionist can make one's life if she puts her mind to it, Commander Murphy stood in front of a table addressing her people.
"Alright, we've confirmed that the dagger at the museum is the Athame. Now we need to secure it before anyone touches the thing and we end up with another Outsider infiltrating the planet.
"Doctor Petrikov has already visibly taken a flight out of town. Everyone who was part of the recon phase of the operation will also be heading out shortly. That should give them cover if the Athame's removal is discovered too quickly. The rest of us, should we not get caught during the mission proper, should be covered by the Ways. Nobody will believe we could get here and back home in the time frame in question without using some easily traceable form of transportation. In any case, if this works as planned, it should take some time before they even realize that it's missing.
"The museum closes at eight. We move in at ten. Everyone check their gear. If we don't get this right the first time, things could get very ugly for everyone."
All of the museum staff except for the security guards had left for the night, and they had settled in for the usual routine of pacing around the corridors and staring at video screens. None of them expected anything more than another dull evening of work, which was just how PENTAGRAM liked it.
"The security on this part of the building seems light." Will said as the breaking and entering specialist they'd borrowed from Westen's people in Europe worked on cracking the door.
"They probably assumed that anyone trying to rob a museum would be after the exhibits. They don't advertise what kind of things they have in the back rooms that haven't been put on display yet, so most thieves wouldn't know what's there to be stolen." Daniel pointed out.
"Their mistake," the third man concurred.
The door unlocked, and the three made their way inside, carefully avoiding the security cameras as they made their way to the storage area.
"Let's find that knife." Will said.
A few minutes later they found the case containing the Athame among all the other boxes holding various artifacts waiting to be appraised and studied. Will opened the metal box they had commissioned to contain the artifact, while Daniel got a pair of tongs out of his coat and proceeded to lift the Athame, case and all, into the box. After sealing the box, they set it aside and turned to their colleague.
"Track down the hard copy of their inventory and lift the records on the Athame. While you're doing that, we'll rearrange all the crates so that it'll take longer for anyone to realize that something's missing."
Two hours later, the store room had been sufficiently reorganized that it would take a full inventory of its contents before anyone could reliably find anything in there again. During that time, the file folder on the athame had also been located and removed from the file cabinet. With that done, they powered up the records computer.
"We don't have the access codes needed to log in." Daniel mentioned.
"We don't need them," the third man stated, holding up a small object. "Set this off and the EMP will fry the hard drive and everything on it. They're not going to have backup digital records of this stuff – that's what the hard copies are for, and we already took those. But we'll need to be ready to run the moment it goes off – the pulse will knock out power in a good part of the building, so security will know that something's up when that happens."
Daniel paused to think. "Okay, here's how we'll do this. You give me the EMP device and standby near the door. Will, you take the Athame to the car and start it up right now. I'll set off the EMP and follow. The moment I clear the door, you lock it behind us and make for the exit. The only doors we should need to lock behind us are this one and the exterior door we came in through. Once we've locked both doors, we drive back to the safehouse."
Will headed out the door. Daniel took the EMP device and stood next to the computer. When the third agent nodded that he was ready, Daniel pushed the button. There was a sharp whine as the device activated. The moment the noise stopped, he bolted for the door. The other agent was no more than thirty seconds behind him. Less than five minutes after Daniel had triggered the EMP, the three of them were in the car on their way out of the parking lot. Twenty minutes after that, they had made it back to where Murphy was waiting.
"You get the Athame?" Murphy asked.
Daniel held up the box. "Right here. All we have to do is take the Way back to Chicago and we'll be able to pay off my sister the fairy princess."
Will chuckled. "You know, when most people call a relative something like that, it brings up the image of a five-year-old girl in a pink dress with wings, not a twenty-something goth who could cause a global calamity if she put her mind to it." They all laughed at that.
Moments later, everything went wrong.
Agent Oliver and his strike team had been tailing PENTAGRAM the entire day. For much of it, all that the surveillance had achieved was to confirm the existence of the Way-walkers. They had tailed one man into a dead-end alley, only for the man to disappear without a trace. Three hours later, the man had reappeared from the same alley, accompanied by a man who according to SHIELD's records should have been in Europe. Given that it was impossible to even make a one-way trip to Europe in that time frame, Oliver had been forced to concede that Agent May's claims about PENTAGRAM's ability to rapidly travel anywhere in the world were true.
Reasoning that if Commander Murphy was bringing in outside agents, she must have an op in the works, Oliver had his team redouble their efforts to keep her people under surveillance. Using a sophisticated listening device to spy on the briefing Murphy gave her agents, he learned that they were going to make a grab for the knife that they were searching for for some reason. After sending word back to Commander Gonzales at headquarters, he received updated orders. He was to try to find out what they wanted the knife for, and if practicable, secure the knife for the Council.
Tailing people at an hour when virtually nobody is on the road is a very difficult task. If Oliver hadn't already known where they were going, which allowed him to just plant a team at their destination in advance, he might not have been able to avoid being spotted.
Then came the hard part – waiting.
"Bravo Team, what's your status?" Oliver asked on his radio.
"No change," came the reply. "They appear to be taking their time to make sure that nobody can figure out what's missing any time soon. Wait a minute – all the lights in the building just went out. I think someone just triggered a SHIELD pocket EMP."
"They're making their move. Get ready."
Five minutes later, Bravo Team reported in again. "They just pulled out. Probably heading back to your location. If they took anything out, it's in a metal box that they brought in with them."
Less than half an hour later, Oliver was listening in as the PENTAGRAM agents reported back to their superior. Listening in on a pair of headphones, he overheard something very interesting.
"All we have to do is take the Way back to Chicago and we'll be able to pay off my sister the fairy princess."
That knife was something the girl who was somehow sabotaging everything in the base wanted? Then the Council needed to get it. They could use it as leverage to lift the siege they were under.
"Team," he ordered. "Move in and secure that knife. ICERs only."
The team moved to the entrance of the safehouse. A small charge was placed on the door. The moment the lock blew, Oliver kicked open the door and tossed in a flash-bang. His people were through the door and firing the moment it went off. All the PENTAGRAM agents were down before the noise faded. Less than a minute after the door was first breached, they had secured the metal case holding the knife and were gone.
Later that night, all of Oliver's people regrouped at their Quinjet and it took off to return to the Playground. As they flew back, Oliver reported in.
"So the knife PENTAGRAM was after is something that Carpenter wants?" Commander Gonzales asked.
"Correct, sir," Oliver affirmed. "With it in our possession we should have some leverage against her." Popping the seal on the box, he removed the knife from the display case inside it and held it up to the viewscreen. "I'm not sure what the big fuss is over the knife, though," he commented as he drew the blade. "It's just an old dagger."
A/N: Molly once killed a dirty cop by using an illusion to create a "Shoot Him, He Has A Wallet!" situation. If she really wanted Gonzales and his people dead, there would be casualties by now.
The unnamed lock specialist I brought in was just somebody I created because none of the PENTAGRAM people are breaking and entering specialists – but Westen probably knows some people who are and could loan them one. He won't be appearing again.
The Council still doesn't really accept PENTAGRAM's mission brief, and thus has failed to respect a warning about how dangerous magical artifacts can be. Oliver really shouldn't have handled that knife.