**It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken - The Tragically Hip**
Danny looked out of the mullioned windows of what for all intents and purposes looked like an ordinary government building in an office park somewhere outside of Hamilton. Mulroney's men had brought them here, after a crazy dash through Windsor. There were apparently a network of tunnels connecting this building to its neighbors and instead of being tax and postal offices as they appeared, they were actually part of a network of ColdWar safe houses. Somewhere below, the President was taking tea with William and the rest of the team was getting some much needed sleep. Michener was adamant that they would re-group and press on. Danny was grateful they had such a place to retreat, but right now he wanted nothing more than to be back in the US.
The sat phone on the desk beside him must have been made in the ColdWar too. He picked up the olive green receiver from the desk and held it to his ear. His hand was shaking so much that he felt the earpiece vibrate against his skull. He didn't want to do this, but he knew it was part of the next steps in becoming a leader. Michener and Chandler needed leaders now, so no matter how much he might want to pass the ball to someone else, it was time to step up. He dialed the number of the sat phone in Kara's office. A series of clicks sounded as various communication systems switched the call, and undoubtedly a few failed and had to relay to their backups. After what felt like a million years he heard the voice he's been waiting for. "Hello?" He could hear the surprise in her voice. He wondered what the caller ID said. "Ah, Commander of the Navy's office. Commander Foster-Green speaking." He could still sense the question in her voice but her cool professionalism had taken over.
"Kara, it's me."
There was a pause broken only by the sound of Halsey's tail thumping against her desk. He supposed she'd been expecting something very official. And maybe he should have maintained a very formal, distant, manner for this. But he needed to hear her, just for a minute. He hoped it would give him courage.
"Danny? Where are you? Why isn't Mason calling." There was panic in her voice.
"I'm alright. I'm across the border, in Hamilton, Ontario. I need to make a formal report to Chandler. It's urgent." He didn't want to scare her with the details but he supposed she'd have to know sooner or later.
"Hold on." He heard her in the background, calling out in alarm to Chandler. "Sir, it's an emergency with Mitten's team."
The pause as he waited for Chandler felt like ages. Then he heard him give Kara a soft order. "Set office condition Delta." He knew she'd be alerting the guard and moving to Chandler's inner office. "Lieutenant Green. Please proceed with your report." Chandler's voice echoed slightly and Danny figured he must be on speaker phone. He hoped so, because he wasn't sure he could repeat his message twice to fill Kara in on the details.
"I regret to inform command of the losses and casualties suffered in this mission." Kara gasped. Chandler swore.
He waited for Chandler to tell him to proceed. He knew the drill. There was a very specific procedure to follow. There was a rustling of paper. "Proceed."
"Agent Betty Li, confirmed deceased from a gunshot wound sustained during an altercation with suspected Quebecois Separatists in Windsor, Ontario."
"Lieutenant Alisha Granderson, Lieutenant Junior Grade William Mason, Petty Officer First Class Javier Cruz, Petty Officer Third Class Eric Miller, Private First Class Sonny Chan, Senior Chief in His Majesties Royal Australian Navy, Wolf Taylor missing and presumed dead since 1300 Sir." There was absolute silence. He'd expected Chandler to ask him what happened or what they were doing to find the missing, or even how the exchange with Canada had gone, but all he heard was the scratching of a pencil.
Finally Chandler sighed. "I your position currently secure? Is the threat mitigated?"
He looked out the window again. As far as he could see, the streets of the industrial park were empty save the armed guards patrolling the fence line, their red parkas a glaring contrast to the leaden gray skies. "Ah yes sir. The Canadian delegation has provided a safe house. I do not believe our party was the target in this case. Burk is working on transpo back to our side of the lakes right now. Michener wants to eat and get rested and get back to it tomorrow."
Chandler sighed. "Very well, give me the details. Kara, take notes because we're going to have to prepare some kind of public statement about this."
Danny recounted the morning's events in as much detail as he could remember. "So you see sir, the Canadians believe the attackers were Quebec separatists who have been fighting William's rule ever since it was announced a month ago. Apparently he is even considering moving the seat of government further west to a compound in Alberta. But neither side knows how they knew about the meeting today. One of the attackers was heard saying that they got a message about it last night." The fatigue of the day seemed to catch up to him in that moment and he sat on the edge of the desk, leaning his head back on the wall. "We didn't set the time of the meeting until dinner last night and it was communicated to the Canadians via encrypted sat phone so there has to be a mole on one side or the other that knew about the meeting directly."
"Whether it's the mole we already know about, or someone on the Canadian side," Kara reasoned. "I have no idea why disrupting the spread of the cure would help the Quebecois cause."
"What do you mean mole we already know about?" God, could this day get any worse. This was supposed to be an easy trip, babysitting the president and doing something good for society. Gah, he just wanted to catch up on some sleep and then go home.
"I've already got people working on figuring out who it is. Someone has been sending messages about the President's location via satellite internet. They might be sending other info, but but so far that's all we've been able to decrypt. Have you seen any of the civies using a smartphone style sat phone?"
"No, but I'll ask Tex to look into it. I suppose it would have been the sort of thing Betty Li was equipped for."
"Could Betty Li have been the target?" Chandler ventured. "An agent like her has to have some enemies. Someone took out her husband a few years ago, after all."
Danny closed his eyes and pinched his nose. He didn't know. And he felt like such a failure for not even really knowing how she died. One minute she'd been sitting over the back of the pickup and the next he couldn't see her. By the time they'd gotten to William's compound she had bled out from a gunshot wound to her brachial artery. Findley had been in the back with her and all he'd said was a quiet "I'll need to wash up." Before disappearing to ask Mulroney's group about laundry and showers.
"I don't think so. She was shot from a sniper on the roof and he was after me too. I don't think individuals were targeted."
"You're ok though?" There was a tremulous note to Kara's inquiry. She knew what his work was like, and he knew she accepted it, but he also knew that didn't make it any less frightening.
"Yes, I'm fine. But we are lucky we did as well as we did. Now we have no secure communications ability and we may have lost seven of our best people."
They discussed the communications issues further for a while but eventually circled back around to the losses. "Are you sure they couldn't have survived?" Kara's voice was hushed, almost like she didn't want to hear out loud what she was saying.
He hoped so. He hoped so with all his heart. But he had also held out hope on so many missions before and he knew that losing communication, location, and seeing an explosion were all negative signs. There had probably been 50 or more troops in those tunnels by the time they sped away from the scene. He hated to think about Wolf's team being gunned down with out hope of cover or backup, but if he was honest with himself, he knew that was what had probably happened. In the end, he didn't want to give her false hope. "I am so sorry Kara. I am the one who assigned the team so this is on me." He felt the hot sting of shame at the corners of his eyes. He wished he could take back every time he'd been pissed at a commanding officer's decision in the past, every time he'd criticized and said he would have done something different after something had gone wrong.
"This is not on you Lieutenant." Her voice was firm and her message was echoed by Chandler.
"I agree that the loss of these seven hits us hard, both from a capability and a personal standpoint. But you are not to blame Green, and you know it."
He sighed. He did know it but that didn't stop it from hurting so much. It had been drilled into him practically from birth that officers make the best decision they can with the best info available and the rest is out of their hands. Still, it hurt. Yet another failed mission on his record. He didn't know anyone else who had lost so many so early in their career.
"How's Sargeant Simpson-Slattery taking it?" Kara asked. "From what Major Velasquez has told me since he started calling in, that team is pretty close. He must be pretty broken up about losing Specialist Goodwin and Private Chan."
God, there was another failure. He took a deep breath. "I haven't talked to him yet. I wanted to make the report before I did anything." If he had learned anything from Chandler over the past seven months it was that leaders succeeded by knowing their people and helping them get what they needed. He needed to get back downstairs with Burk and Simpson-Slattery and the others. They must be feeling just as rotten as he was. "Michener wants to press on, but I'm not sure I like the idea of working blind with the President in tow. It sounds like there could be more than one info leak, and we've lost our primary communication abilities. Do you think I should try to talk him out of it? Maybe we should just search Detroit for survivors and then come back in?" There was a part of Danny that really wanted Chandler to say the situation had changed and they needed to come home, re-group, make a new plan. But there was a small part that knew he'd be disappointed if Michener agreed.
"I know what you're thinking Danny." Chandler sighed. "But here's what you need to think about. If it was just you alone, would you continue to press on, bring the cure as far as you could, knowing what it could cost you?"
For the first time since he'd discovered he was in love with Kara, he wished she wasn't part of a conversation. "Yes." His voice was rough but certain. "Yes, hundreds, maybe thousands could be saved by receiving the vaccine."
"Don't you think ever other man and woman in your team feels the same?" He didn't answer. He knew Chandler was right, but it still hurt, knowing he was going to have to accept that he couldn't save them all, even if he just got a little better, trained a little more, was a little smarter next time.
He heard papers shuffling on the other end. "Everyone believes in this work. We need to accept the risk and move on." Kara's voice started out soft but gained authority as she spoke. "Val and I have an idea for how to limit the mole's access to information. Whoever they are, they've got specialized equipment and training to get their messages encrypted and transmitted, and without anyone noticing while you're all traveling so closely. So they are either someone whose history we don't know well or one of the more senior people in the group. So the likely suspects are you of course, Wolf, Tex, Burk, or one of the civilians. Simpson-Slattery's team couldn't be part of it because the first messages went out before you met up." Danny agreed on the list of possibilities but it had to be one of the civilians, right? Or maybe that nosy reporter had been tailing them all along? They had all volunteered. There was no way it was Wolf, Tex, or Burk and it sure as hell wasn't himself.
Kara pushed on. "You and Michener work out a tentative itinerary for the rest of the trip in private. Before you leave the compound and lose the availability of secure communication, I want you to pass the plan to me. You'll communicate the next steps to the rest of your group on an as needed basis. After that, you only check in if there is something to report or you change plans. That will cut off the flow of information to our mole."
Danny sighed. "Yeah. I suppose that's the thing to do. Still, I just can't believe it's any of those guys. Not after all we've been through."
Tom snorted. "Unfortunately, the things we've been through don't guarantee anything. Keep your eyes peeled, play your cards close, and watch your six."
"You know I will."
They said their goodbyes and Danny returned to the group downstairs. As Burk called him into a conference room filled with maps and aerial photos, he realized how uncomfortable he was going to feel keeping information from him. They'd faced Spetsnaz operators, pissed of Gitmo prisoners, immunes, and angry crowds together. For goodness sakes, Carlton had stood up as best man at his wedding. He used to love the high risk missions. In fact, he'd thrived on the idea of outsmarting an unseen foe. But now he had so much more to lose, including the friendship of a good man. He sighed and took a seat at the head of the table. "Give me a briefing on the resources and options, then I'll work out the next step." Once again, leadership wasn't turning out to be what it was cracked up to be.
