A/N Poor Ellie. Again. I also really hate it when they give characters such great lines, and I have to either ignore the scene because of them or overwrite it and erase them. On the other hand I get to fix glaring plot flaws.
"He's an amazing man."
"It happens, big guy."
"Way ahead of you, Ellie."
"Neither can I."
General Beckman was wearing a dress. Not a dress uniform. A dress. Was everybody at a party tonight? Not that the gala in the consulate had been much of a party either, when they got back to it. Almost as soon as they'd been settled to give their statements something happened that made the entire security force go on alert. The protester was ejected, and they went back to find Devon being publicly lionized.
It didn't take them long to find out why. It took longer to get out of the party without arousing suspicion. They skipped the limo, that was for Devon. The van was where it was supposed to be, and they took that. Casey hadn't put in an earwig, or anything else that would link him to another group, so there was nothing to look for or listen to. They had to leave him on his own until reinforcements arrived.
Or not. Maybe it was the dress, but it didn't seem to Chuck as if the General was taking the matter as seriously as she ought to. "We've got a man down!"
"I appreciate your loyalty," said Beckman, and she did, although it was not a soldier's loyalty, but something stronger. Something that would result in stupid chances taken, risks run, in the absence of special forces staging a frontal assault on the place.
An absence there would be. Officially, relations between the two nations were newly cordial, and about to become more so. Costa Gravas would come in from the cold, nothing could be allowed to interfere with that. There must be no official knowledge of any mission, rescue or otherwise. Unofficial knowledge would have to do.
Casey heard them coming long before he saw them. He was strapped to a chair in a stone cellar at the base of a flight of stairs that someone was walking slowly down. He wasn't intimidated. He knew that Goya's ponderous pace came from too much fancy living and a knee injury from the bomb that almost got him in '88.
It did get his dog, that was the only part that bothered Casey.
Goya entered the room, a shadow in the dark. And a smell. Casey was mildly jealous, that this commie got the best cigars. "I knew you would come," said Goya.
Shrugging was hard to do with his arms in that position. "I'm supposed to be impressed?"
Goya stepped forward, his belly edging into the light. "When will you learn you do not have the strength to kill me?"
Casey ignored the dig. This wasn't the time to antagonize the guy with the guns. "I'm not here to kill you, I'm here to protect you."
Goya chuckled. "If you protect as well as you assassinate I'm better off with my guards."
"Your guards, one of them anyway, are the ones trying to kill you, idiot."
"I don't know, maybe I'm just a humble dictator, but how stupid do you think I am?" Goya made a gesture at a guard, who promptly stuffed a rag in Casey's mouth. "Trying to make me suspicious of my own guards is a child's ploy. I expect better from you, Angel."
Another guard came down the stairs with a tray. "Your cigar, excellency." Casey recognized him as the assassin, right down to the syringe.
Casey watched the traitor poison the cigar right in front of him, taunting him, as Goya spouted off. "I need sleep. Tomorrow I will conduct the interrogation myself."
The Premier took the cigar, as the guard held a lighter for him. Casey swung his legs up and tried to smash it, but failed. Goya moved in reaction, and the cigar was merely batted from his mouth. Goya picked it up. "Your attack was feeble. I can understand why." He rolled the cigar in his fingers. "Genuine Costa Gravan tobacco. Rolled on the thighs of virgins. You are a man like myself, you appreciate a fine cigar." He signaled to his man, who held the lighter for him again, and he puffed the cigar to life. "For you, Angel. A final smoke." He blew smoke in Casey's face and turned away, walking toward the stairs, but he never got there.
The apartment door opened, and Devon and Ellie stumbled inside, joined at the lips, but still somehow managing to miss the boxes lying around. "Mm, wonderful," she said, in between kisses. "My hero."
Devon thought of that mustache. "I'm a doctor, El." Not a spy.
She pulled off his jacket. "My doctor. My–" she tugged him in with his tie "–medical student. I think we have some nice closets here, too. Want to find out?"
Devon's phone rang. "No," groaned Ellie. "We are officially off, the hospital said so."
Devon checked the screen. "It's not the hospital. It's the consulate, the Premier's down again. They want me."
"I want you."
"Hold onto that thought," he said apologetically as he went out the door. "I'll be back soon." Once he was away from his door he got on the phone and ran to his car. "Chuck, something's gone wrong. Okay, more wrong, Goya's down again, he requested me specifically to be his doctor… Absolutely no spy stuff, I'll leave that to you guys. I'm just a doctor. Right, where do I go…?"
"I can't believe I'm doing this," said Sarah.
"Breaking into sovereign territory a second time, with a civilian for cover?" said Chuck.
"No, wearing this hideous outfit." Sarah adjusted the skirt again, but now it didn't fit in a different way. "And these glasses." Plastic lenses inside huge ugly frames.
Chuck looked into the rearview mirror and said, "We need the outfits, especially you. You're too memorable." Sarah smiled. He added, "That's not always a good thing."
She lost the smile, and he nodded. "We're here. Doctor faces, everybody."
John Casey was patient. He knew the man would come, to tie up the loose end he represented. Eventually the routine of shift change brought them together. "Hello John Casey, NSA assassin."
Two could play at that game. "I'm a lot of things for the NSA. You're Artman, right? Ex-KGB. Working for some third-rate wannabes now?"
Artman answered calmly. "There's nothing third-rate about the Ring." He pulled his syringe from his pocket.
The room was more lavish than any infirmary Devon had ever worked in, but the machines made the same beeping noises. Quick, irregular beeping noises. There was more to modern medicine than monitors. "He needs a hospital."
"Where any nurse can be an assassin? I control the room here," said the same officer as before.
"Then you're gonna control him to death," said Devon, with absolute authority in his voice. He pointed at the beeping machines. "That is the sound of acute arrhythmia. We'll need blood tests, lab work. Unless you've got that in house too, we need to get him someplace that does."
"I will make those arrangements," promised the officer.
"You do that," said Devon. "We'll try what we tried before, see if that helps. Nurse, bring me that IV stand." He pointed at the item in question, so Sarah wouldn't have to ask.
Down in the dungeon…
"They must be third-rate. I've heard of them, and you work for them," snarked Casey. "Who else would bother with a dinky little country like Costa Gravas?"
"Who indeed?" said Artman. "An aging NSA agent, perhaps? If your own orders are beyond your understanding, then surely our overarching plans will be also. I will spare you the labor of trying to understand them, beyond saying that the present situation in Costa Gravas suits us." He lifted his syringe. "So Goya must die."
"Nurse, get me 10 ccs of Insulin." The code phrase. Goya was stable.
About time. About Showtime.
"You must die as well, of course." Artman made a mocking gesture, flicking a finger against the syringe, as if a safe injection was in anyone's thoughts. "Thanks to you, this toxin can be much more direct than the last."
Chuck and Sarah ran through the halls of the consulate, taking the quickest route to the cellar room most likely to contain their partner, weapons ready but hopefully not to be used. Gunfire up here would certainly drown them in guards.
Casey stepped away from the fallen body of his enemy, pulling the syringe from the pocket on his pants leg. He'd put a Bible in that pocket, something his enemies might not confiscate, which they hadn't, but a good place to jam a knife, or in this case a needle. Artman assumed his toxin would weaken Casey, and let down his guard. Too bad.
Casey rubbed his forehead, sore from hitting Artman with it. "I'm pretty good with 'direct' too."
Somebody shot him. A pretty bad shot, too, no wonder he was on consulate duty. Whoever he was, he should have been aiming for the center of Casey's chest, but somehow managed to hit him in the leg. Casey fell against the small table, the only other item of furniture in the room, as the guard fell with a rifle butt to the head.
"Casey!" Chuck handed his machine gun to Sarah and ran to support his comrade.
"Let's get out of this banana republic." They'd done what they'd come to do, caught the poisoner. Then he noticed their uniforms. "Don't tell me…"
"I can't go," said Devon, working over Goya, who was no longer stable. "He's my patient. If I leave he'll die."
"Can't have that," muttered Casey. Sarah left her guns by the door. If they were captured she didn't want to be armed.
"No, we can't," said Chuck. He handed over the syringe Casey had captured. "Can you do anything with this?"
Devon took the syringe, frowning at the green glop inside it. "What is it?"
"It's the poison, dumbass!" growled Casey. "It was injected into a cigar."
"Does it have an antidote?"
"How the hell should I know? The guard shot me before I could wake the bad guy up nice and ask."
"Yes, and he will receive a commendation for that act," said Goya's bodyguard, coming into the room with a lot of men behind him. Sarah raised her hands, while Chuck raised his free hand.
"Why? His aim sucks," said Casey, dropping to the floor.
Chuck raised his other hand. "We're here to save your boss." He pointed at Casey. "He took that bullet in his leg trying to save Goya, not kill him. He needs a doctor."
"He has a doctor," said the guard commander. "You."
"Me?" asked Chuck.
"He's an intern," said Devon.
"Today," said the guard commander, unstrapping his holster, "He is a surgeon." With gun in hand, he directed his men to put Casey on a couch. He did not put the gun back in the holster afterward.
Hesitantly, Chuck directed Sarah to do the things he'd seen them do in a lot of those medical dramas his sister loved to watch, while heckling their shoddy procedures. He knew more than most, but eventually he was faced with a bloody hole in bloody flesh.
"You can do it, Chuck," said Devon. "You're a man, but you're not just a man. You're a doctor."
"I'm a doctor," said Chuck. He flashed.
One quick and dirty emergency surgery later…
"Good job, Chuck," said Devon, trying to keep the amazement out of his voice. What the hell did they teach in spy school? "I knew you could–" Goya's heart monitor started beeping.
"What is that?" said the commander.
"This poison, it's like a witch's brew, a combination of toxins," said Devon. "I can't stop them all."
"You cannot stop your own poison?"
"It's not ours," said Chuck. "We took it from the guy we left in Casey's cell."
"There was no one in the cell."
"Oh, spiffing," snapped Chuck, and the commander looked confused.
"Chuck, forget the guy," said Devon. "We need to stop the poison."
"How can we do that?" asked Chuck. He left the wound and a Costa Gravan corpsman stepped in to close it, Sarah continuing her charade as the nurse.
Devon looked at all the equipment they had, the supplies they'd brought. He'd used a lot of it and didn't want to guess on the rest. "We can do a transfusion," he said. "Casey said the poison was in the cigar, he can't have inhaled much that way."
The guard commander started looking at the floor. The cigar had long since gone out, but one of his men found it and gave it to him. In the side he found a small hole. He went over to the cigar box.
"Just this little bit of poison would probably kill a whole platoon," said Chuck.
"Army, maybe," muttered Casey.
The watch commander started looking at the cigars in the box. Every one had a small hole on the underside.
"We need to know his blood type," said Devon.
"O negative," said the corpsman and Casey simultaneously. Everybody looked at Casey funny.
"I got more," he said, slightly woozy. "If there was ever a Goya Jeopardy, I'd win."
"I think he's in more than enough jeopardy, Casey," said Chuck. He looked at the corpsman. "You, consulate-guy, where's your supply of O negative blood?"
"It was taken to the hospital yesterday," said the guard commander. "It has not yet returned. We will send for it."
"No time," said Devon. "We need some right now."
"Tag check," ordered the commander.
Every soldier in the room pulled his tags and checked. Devon, of course, knew his, and so did Chuck. Sarah even knew hers.
"Casey, how about you?" Silence. Chuck wasn't buying it. "Colonel?"
Casey ground his teeth so hard he almost bit through the piece of leather in his mouth. "Nuts!"
A/N2 Lots of shows got that blood type thing wrong. O negative is a universal donor, but a terrible receiver. AB positive is a terrible donor, but a universal recipient. Goya in canon could have received blood from almost anybody. The only show I know of that got it right was iZombie. I hope you'll drop me a line and tell me what you think of this rewrite so far.