An Uninvited Dinner Guest

As his adversary dangled the key mockingly, apparently taking a moment to enjoy how he had tricked the imposter, Sherlock's eyes darted around the interior of the vehicle in order to strategise how to escape this situation. He calculated the distance between the two of them, and knew that the length of the rifle barrel in combination with the man's arms was a longer distance than his own armspan, meaning he would have to compensate for reaching the man with additional time—time he didn't have, considering it would take a fraction of a second for the insurgent to pull the trigger. He would have to cause a diversion somehow, then, to buy him those necessary additional seconds. And it would have to be caused by something in his immediate vicinity, so that he could pull it off before the man could react. . .

Now he glanced at the insurgent, sweeping his eyes from his head to feet, and smiled a hard, triumphant smile. Oh, this was almost too easy. How could he have thought that his life was in danger, only a moment ago? What utter rubbish.

Runny nose, watery and bloodshot eyes, in combination with swollen fingers, the man's slight wince when the key made a jangling sound, and his squint in attempt to avoid the single but bright bare halogen lamp above, all pointed to one thing.

Migraine sufferer.

Even better, a migraine sufferer with phono and photophobia. But just as Sherlock was about to lay hard on the horn and simultaneously grab and jerk the butt of the gun upwards, forcing his foe to instinctively look up (only to stare directly into the overhead light), the man's arms went lax, and his head tipped back, one bright red pucker centred in the middle of his forehead. Fatal pistol wound. And not from Sherlock's still-unused Marakov.

Sherlock stared at the body, momentarily stunned, but recovered his wits almost immediately and looked around, with approximately six possibilities flying around his head. 1. Had Ms. Adler returned? 2. The shot seemed perfect, but had another insurgent risen and been aiming for him? 3. Had the explosion summoned some sort of police force? 4. Had. . .

And then he saw the cameraman, who had apparently picked a gun off of one of the unconscious men lying between them. Option number four it was, then.

His blood roaring in his ears, he made a noise of shocked outrage, and barely managed to bite back the shout,"I had him!" He had never disarmed a man by using his sensitivity to light and sound against him, and he was bitterly disappointed that he had been deprived the opportunity. Not to mention, he did not need anyone's help in his own escape.

The man simply shrugged, unfazed, and Sherlock assessed him calculatingly, then looked around and to ensure that none of the insurgents were conscious, or, at least, observing them.

"SSG," Sherlock mouthed with narrow eyes, looking across the body up at the final figure standing. I was right, he added to himself. But he was clearly not former; he was active. Embedded on assignment. Of course, Sherlock rolled his eyes. Obvious.

The man nodded gravely, then gesticulated towards the exit.

And you were going to let them go ahead with the execution? Sherlock thought, assessing the man, before interrupting that thought with a slight shake of his head as a realisation slotted into place.

"Source," he silently enunciated. The agent was clearly his Karachi source's inside contact here, and so he had been made aware that Sherlock would appear like this, and intervene.

The man nodded again impatiently, but then jerked a finger to the sentry guards who had joined them midway through the confrontation, then mimed them calling a radio, and finally made an impatient gesture towards the door. He was clearly stating, There's no time now. These men will have radioed for assistance after the detonation of the bomb. Go now.

Sherlock resentfully acknowledged that the SSG man was correct, but needed to do one final thing to help ensure the agent remained embedded, in case he should need someone in such a position again.

He jumped out of the vehicle and made his way towards the other man, shouting, "Don't move, or I'll shoot you between the eyes, cameraman. You know I'll do it; you saw what I did to the driver." Sherlock knew that even if any of the men could hear him they probably didn't speak any English, or enough to understand him. Still, he felt that the threat and fury colouring his words were sufficient to get the intent across.

The agent immediately cottoned on and cried, "Barai mehrbani. . . mujhey samaaj nahen ai, mujheh arngrezi nahi ati!" [Please, I don't understand, I don't know English!]

Sherlock smirked, then mouthed, "Apologies," before he head butted the man so that he crashed to the floor like a sack of bricks.

It was slightly more satisfying than it perhaps should have been.

He whirled on the spot, took one last moment to drag the body of the migraine sufferer (who would never suffer an episode again) out by the arm to let him fall to the ground, before grabbing the key from his hand and leaping back up behind the wheel. He jammed the key into the ignition slot, then, taking two final seconds to familiarise himself with the transmission and gears of the military vehicle, he threw it into drive and peeled out of the room with a screech of tyres. He did not look back.

As he barrelled through wide but dilapidated dark tunnels, heading for the exit, he was satisfied to see that the combined strategies of bombing and getting the insurgents to draw personnel to the chamber with machine gun fire had cleared the other areas, and The Woman was no where to be seen.

The entrance yawned open in front of him, a slightly lighter patch of black that grew bigger as he approached it, and he saw and smelled the evidence of his fulminated mercury and magnesium bomb. There were scorch marks on the concrete floor and walls, an acrid smell of chemicals and smoke in the air, and two unconscious figures were slumped on the ground (possibly dead, but unlikely considering their distance from the detonation versus the percussive force emitted by the bomb).

Then, with a sideways grin of self-satisfied glee, he zoomed through the open gate of the compound, past the empty posts of sentries who were now lying dead or unconscious inside, and onto the long dusty road that lead towards the city centre.

Not the most intelligent of insurgents, he thought with a sardonic laugh, to let not one but two imposters penetrate their ranks. The face covering had helped him, of course, as had his similar proportions to the man whose place he had taken, whose unconscious body was stuffed under a corner bunk in the dormitory room at the opposite side of the structure.

He tsked and shook his head slightly, still grinning, although his jubilant expression faded as he remembered his "help." He had to admit that he was in debt to the SSG agent for sharing with Sherlock's source the intelligence necessary to find The Woman, but he was frustrated that he had interfered during the skirmish itself. Perhaps to him it looked as if Sherlock was trapped in a mortally dangerous situation, but he had not been, not at all—far from it.

He narrowed his eyes and squeezed the steering wheel tighter. He would've liked to have taken full credit for the rescue and his own escape, and now he couldn't. And so he felt a strange conflict between feeling absolutely giddy from the adrenaline rush of the successful completion of a both physically and mentally challenging conflict, and feeling thwarted, left short.

He was still experiencing this vexing combination of excitement and agitation as he pulled over to the side of a lonely intersection just outside of the N5 Motorway and pulled off the remaining kurta attire. He retrieved his own clothing from his rented sedan that was parked on a soft shoulder, and quickly changed into a navy blue cotton shirt and dark charcoal-coloured trousers behind the hulking shape of the LuAZ-1302. Though he didn't mind appearing in clothing (or situations) that might cause raised eyebrows, he also didn't want to bring any additional attention to himself at this point. At the very least, he would like to keep Mycroft from ever knowing about this little trip.

He tossed the old apparel into the back seat of the discarded vehicle and simply walked away. In this stretch of road, it was going to be stolen or dismantled for parts before it drew any attention from the authorities.

The change of clothing and car did little to shift his essential mood, however, and his body was still thrumming with adrenaline and a sense of euphoria as he pulled into the dedicated car park of his centrally-located hotel forty-two minutes later.

He wondered idly how long the physical affects of the combat high would last, then recalled some text he had skimmed once of an article about war veterans trying to reintegrate into civilian life, when he'd glanced over at an issue of The Economist that had been left on the seat next to him in a cab (he'd just met John, and the subject had caught his eye). So at least for the night, then. And as such, the prospect of staying in the room the entire time was abysmal; perhaps he would take in the scenery of Karachi 'after dark,' and maybe he would try a little khat, himself. Despite the harmful effects of long-term abuse, he understood that the cathine and cathinone in the leaf provided for a stimulating high that increased alertness and thought-processes, and yet the drug reportedly had a had calming effect, as well. It sounded ideal considering his current agitated state, and he was actually shocked with himself that he hadn't yet experimented with it. It had similar properties as cocaine, and yet was milder—not to mention legal in the United Kingdom.

He recollected his key card from an attendant who welcomed him back with a "Good evening, Mr. Sigerson," then proceeded up the lift. His heart still pounded with what had transpired just the hour before, and he resolved to leave his room to procure the khat leaf as soon as possible. In fact, he was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he almost failed to notice the sign that someone had recently entered his room, and it was certainly not the custodial staff, unless they made a habit of wearing £600 footwear on their rounds.

Almost, but not quite. He paused just as he reached his door, with his arm poised above the room's card reader, and considered the plush blue carpeting with his lips pursed. It had recently been hoovered; the twisted yarns alternated in darker and lighter shades in a striped pattern, showing where the maid had pulled the machine back and forth. The pattern was perfect—except for where it was broken by prints of a UK size 5 woman's shoe, a high-end, stiletto-heeled shoe with a pointed toe, to be precise. Gauging by the depth of indentations and the distance between steps, they belonged to a woman with a weight of approximately eight and one third stones and a height of about 5'4". The Woman.

How quickly he had forgotten about her in his post-fight haze of adrenaline and exhilaration! But of course she had somehow tracked him here. How, though, had she known his alias? He blinked several times at the marks, then drew himself up to his full height and opened the door.

Inside, the lights were lit, and although she was no where to be seen, there had been no tracks leading out of the room, and a quick glance towards the window showed that she could not have exited through there. They were locked from within, and the shade was drawn.

"Miss Adler," Sherlock stated in a raised voice, not in question but in a knowing greeting.

Immediately a figure stepped out of the bathroom, and there she was, the person he had spent hours upon hours tracing across the globe, and the woman over whom he had spent even longer brooding. Longer than he cared to admit even to himself. He hadn't been truly certain that he could even pull this off—there were so many details to consider, many of which were somewhat out of his control—and yet, there she stood, alive and unscathed with her hair down and loose, and her eyes softer than he had ever seen them. And yet, there was determination and defiance in them as well as she regarded him from across the room.

"Hello, Sherlock."