Reading Time: 127 Minutes

Title: To Fix What’s Broken One Last Time
Author: ImaliFegen89
Fandom: Burn Notice
Genre: Angst, Action Adventure, Crime Drama, Episode Related, Het, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Relationship(s): Michael Westen/Fiona Glenanne
Content Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Canon-level/graphic violence, canon-level mental/physical torture, mild suicidal thoughts, non-consensual drugging, non-explicit sexual content, canon-level discussions/hallucinations of child abuse, DIscussion-domestic violence , death-minor characters, canonical deaths, kidnapping, explicit language, canon-level alcoholism, use of bio-weapons.
Beta: Rangersyl, Taiamu
Alpha: Aethir
Word Count: 187,781
Summary: After killing his mentor, Tom Card, Michael decided to surrender instead of running away. He thought that was the best way to keep his friends and what was left of his family safe. Little did he know that fate had other plans.
Artist: AngelicInsanity

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Part Three – Fate Always finds its Way

Chapter 7

Temporary CIA Command Post
Miami

Two days Later

9:26 Hours

As a spy, when running surveillance, you were trained to view your targets not as people, but as a list of details in an activity log: time they came home, time they left, number of calls they made and who they met. You had to discipline yourself not to get emotionally involved in the life of the subject you had to observe. But when your subject happened to be someone you knew, that made the already unpleasant task borderline impossible. The hardest part about doing that particular surveillance was staying objective. Work quickly became very personal when everything about the person you were watching, every look, every gesture and every word, reminded you of the past.

Strong and his team had commandeered an old warehouse located in the middle of the fifty mile radius they had tracked down the activities of Burke and his associate to set up the temporary command post.

There were more than ten screens up and running with live feeds they had tapped into via traffic cams, offices and a satellite, all of them constantly being scanned by advanced facial recognition software to catch a glimpse of the wanted terrorist, Randall Burke.

Michael’s attention, however, was perpetually caught by the four screens to the right. They were the feeds from the bugs Strong’s team had planted in the homes of Sam, Jesse, Fiona and his mother.

On the screen on the top right, Sam sat by the kitchen island, his hands wrapped around the mug Elsa – the tall, dark-haired, rich woman Michael had only met once – handed to him with a kiss on his cheek.

“Jesse found a possible location for this guy, we are going to check it out later,” Sam said, checking his phone.

“How are the others taking it?” Elsa leaned against the counter and asked. She looked concerned.

“As well as can be expected,” Sam replied, shrugging. “Fi is keeping an eye on Maddie and Charlie, so that’s something.”

“You’re worried.”

“You know I am,” Sam had a rare, grave look on his face. “I don’t know what the deal with Mike is, but this man smells like trouble.”

“You’ll be careful, whatever you do, Sam Axe.”

Sam gave her an infectious smile, which made her shake her head and chuckle in return. “Careful is my middle name–”

On the screen next to Sam’s, Jesse’s home feed had already switched to one from his office. Michael saw him making a quick stop at the closest desk to his office.

“Sir.” The guy wearing a pair of glasses looked up from his laptop when he felt Jesse’s presence.

“I’m going out for a few, call me if something urgent crops up.”

“Will do, boss.”

On the screen below Sam’s, his mother was watching the morning news, while Charlie, his nephew, sat quietly next to her, scribbling something on a book. He wore a way too serious expression on his three-year-old face.

Michael had learned during the past two days, mostly from the conversations on the feeds, that his mother was working hard on gaining the legal custody of Charlie, since the boy’s mother had fallen off the wagon, succumbing to her illegal substance addiction. Both Charlie and his mother seemed happy in the black and white series of snapshots, and it made him feel guilty all over again to see his past darkening their lives.

Strong had ordered him to sit and watch, and learn about their progress. Michael had initially protested the blatant invasion of their privacy, and had gone nowhere with the headstrong agent. Then Michael had tried his best to make him contact the team, to make their presence known and work together with them to find and capture the man they now knew as Dexter Gamble – a man suspected for smuggling, arms dealings, assassinations and every other criminal enterprise in between. Strong had of course declined, saying that he was more than happy to shadow Sam and Jesse’s investigation, waiting for their moves to draw Dexter and Burke into the open. So, Michael had to sit and watch the feeds as he had been told if he wanted to stay updated on what was happening outside of the warehouse.

Watching their lives unfold before him in the grainy feeds was a kind of torture he had never imagined putting himself through. They were all worried in their own way, about him and the appearance of this mysterious man looking for him. It was obvious to him by the way they put their own lives on hold to get to the bottom of it.

There was also an undercurrent of blame, an irritation at yet another appearance of trouble in their otherwise peaceful lives, another meandering ghost from Michael’s eventful past that didn’t have the decency to lay where it had been put to rest. It was subtle, but Michael saw it all the same in their expressions, and heard it in their voices, sometimes spoken and sometimes implied.

It was most obvious in the feeds from Fiona’s new home, the one she shared with a man she seemed to care a lot about, which made that particular screen the most painful for him to watch.

Yet, he gritted his teeth and did exactly that, paying the wretched price for spying on the lives of his own friends and family, doing his best to learn what was going on. Because that was the only way he could make sure that nothing happened to them when the layers of traps laid side by side by Burke and Strong started to snap close all around them.

Fiona sat on a chair by her dining table, idly shaking one of her snowglobes. The angle of the camera, which must have been snuck inside one of the lampshades, was not good enough for him to catch the name of the city on it.

“Are you all right?” The man, Carlos Cruz, came through the door and wrapped his arms around her from behind. Fiona not only allowed it, but leaned into it.

“Yeah. Just got a lot on my mind.” She said to the snowglobe.

“Sam and Jesse are making progress on this guy poking around, aren’t they?”

“They are going to check some leads out while I stay with Maddie,” she said, closing her eyes while Carlos rested his chin on top of her head. “She has another meeting today, about Charlie’s custody.”

“You want me to tag alone?”

“No, it’ll be fine. Besides, you have to go do your own thing–”

“Lou is a big boy, he can do a stake out by himself for a few hours.”

Fiona patted him on the arm he had around her shoulders and said it was fine. Her smile was dull and the look in her eyes was distant, weary, and Michael hated it. The reason he had given it all up was so that these people, the people who meant more to him than his own life, could finally move on and live their lives without the constant danger that came attached to him.

“Wish I could help more to get rid of this guy,” Carlos murmured against her hair. “I hate seeing you like this, all torn up and tired, having to deal with this Michael business even after the man is long gone. It’s pissing me off.”

You and me, both, Michael sighed.

“That’s how it’s always been, Carlos.” Fiona said, and Michael couldn’t detect any heat in it, just resignation.

“I’m going for a shower, you wanna join?”

Michael took the headset off, closed his eyes and turned away without waiting to find out. He needed a break.

Rooney’s Auto Shop
Little Havana
Downtown Miami

12.30 Hours

They caught a break in the investigation the next day when a contact of Fiona’s came through, saying Dexter might be at an autoshop. Strong had his surveillance van set up near a delivery van compound where a stationary black, tinted van seamlessly blended in with the hundreds others like it. He even let Michael tag alone, and Michael thought that was for the sole purpose of luring Burke in just in case he was in the vicinity of his associate.

Sam, Jesse, Fiona and Carlos all showed up in her car shortly after the CIA did. Fiona made another call and seemed to get no answer. There were no signs of anyone present, and the garage door had a ‘closed’ sign hanging on it. They advanced slowly, cautiously, suspicious of the lack of activity.

Then, without warning, the barrel of an M16 rifle took a peek out of a broken window from the second floor of the auto shop, sending everything to hell.

His friends managed to run back and take cover behind Fi’s car, which started getting perforated along with the pavement they had just been on. The man with the gun had more than enough ammunition, cover and range to pick them off one by one, if they decided to close in or draw back. There were no other places for them to retreat to and the gunman knew that. They were trapped.

“Call your damned backup team!” Michael yelled, feeling utterly helpless while the bullets rained all around his friends.

“Not now,” Strong grunted, glaring at the live feed of the situation unfolding outside about a hundred yards away from them. “If I do that, Burke will know we’re here and he’ll go to ground.”

Michael wanted to throttle the man. He took a deep breath and let it out, considering his options. Strong had three other agents inside the van, all of them armed with guns and tasers. He knew he could take them all out without seriously hurting anyone. If he acted fast enough, the confined space inside the van would even make it easier. Only downside to the plan was the four agents all knew about him. Even now, two of them were eyeing him warily, their hands inches away from their tasers. He could have pulled it off with the element of surprise, but the chances of his success went exponentially down when he was being watched by trained operatives like a caged animal.

He had to dismiss the thought. He wouldn’t be any help to his friends if he were passed out from a few thousand volts shutting down his systems. So he had to give his best shot to the second option, which was using his words and logic to make the senior agent see sense.

“My friends are being gunned down from high ground and they have four handguns,” Michael said, restraining his emotions enough to let his voice come out sounding calm and reasonable. “If they die, the investigation you’re shadowing dies with them. Do you understand that?”

Even as he spoke, a shot took out the side mirror close to Sam’s head, making it obvious that they were running out of time. Strong watched the feed, a muscle in his clenched jaw ticking as he saw exactly what Michael pointed out.

“What do you suggest?” He asked after what felt like a lifetime.

“Let me go even out the playing field.’ Michael said promptly.

“Westen–”

“What am I gonna do? Run?” Michael spoke over him, without giving him a chance to protest. He had a monitor clipped around his left ankle that had enough bandwidth to alert the entire Miami PD at the touch of a button. He even had an RFID microchip implanted in his upper right arm. And those were the trackers he knew about.

“You have me tagged to hell and back. And I won’t dare go near my friends with the bullseye on my back.” Which was the truth. No matter how much he ached to see them and speak to them, he really couldn’t. “Give me a gun and I’ll circle the building from the left. See if I can draw the fire to clear their path.” There was another small door on the left side of the building, closed, but out of sight of the gunman and his friends. If he could enter the building from there and distract the shooter, his friends would have the chance to get in from the front.

Strong took a moment to think about it. “Fine.” he said finally and crouched down to pull a duffel from underneath one of the surveillance stations. “You don’t have to get too close. This’ll get the job done.” He pulled out a sniper assault rifle – a custom AR-15 type with a fitted suppressor at that – as Michael watched, feeling furious all over again. The man had waited until it was almost too late.

Before Michael could grab the gun, he pinned him with a look. “Westen, stay out of sight for now. I won’t have this op jeopardised, not now, not after all these years.”

“Don’t worry,” Michael said, jumping out of the van to get moving. “I’ll be a ghost.”

***

By the time he found a perch inside an abandoned car a few yards behind Fiona’s wrecked Hyundai and drew a bead on the gunman, his friends had come to an agreement. He saw by the way they moved, that Sam and Jesse were going to shoot at the man together while Fi and Carlos made a desperate run for it. He waited until Sam and Jesse popped up to shoot, and timed his shot with theirs.

With a rifle that had an accurate range for over five hundred yards. Michael didn’t really need more than one precise shot to hit the gunman who wasn’t even a hundred yards away from where he was. Sam looked perplexed that their ruse worked, and Michael heard him commenting that one of them must have hit the man with a lucky shot.

Fiona stopped and looked around, her gaze scanning over the perimeter as if she had somehow sensed that the shot hadn’t come from Sam’s handgun. Michael had to duck his head down and huddle on the backseat to avoid giving his presence away.

Things went much calmer after that. Michael returned to the van without being seen and watched as they called on Sam’s buddy, Dixon, to hack the laptop they found, which led them to another house Dexter had rented.

87
West Street
Brownsville
Miami

13.45 Hours

When they realised Dexter wasn’t home, they decided to set up camp and wait, and grab him the moment he showed up. Sam and Jesse found cover behind a dumpster while Carlos and Fiona split up to cover the north and south sides of the house.

Michael was once again sitting next to Strong, listening to their conference call. He was starting to hate being on the sidelines, eavesdropping on his friends.

“I’ll tell you what, if that bastard knows what’s good for him, he’ll come back home in the next thirty minutes,” Sam started to gripe after an hour spent crouching behind the trash cans.

“You’re not gonna make it to happy hour, Sam, let it go.” Jesse advised.

“If I don’t, there’s gonna be a lot more snatching and grabbing. I can tell you that much.”

Carlos piped up then. “What the hell does that even mean?”

“You’re gonna find out.”

“It’s the sitting and waiting Sam,” Jesse said. “You’re not used to recon anymore. It’s making your old joints hurt, which in turn makes you grumpy.”

Michael held back a snort. The ex-counterintelligence man was about to kick a hornet’s nest.

“First of all, I’m not old and my joints are just fine,” Sam promptly protested just as Michael knew he would. “Second of all, I’m not used to this shit anymore. I haven’t sweated my ass off in this kind of heat since–”

“Since Mike left,” Jesse said quietly.“Miss him too, huh?”

“Just that if we knew what the fuck happened to him, all the better,” Sam said, sounding pensive. “Is he really running black ops in some backwater hellhole pissing off all kinds of people like Dexter’s been saying or rotting in some jail?”

Michael turned his head, and raised an inquiring eyebrow at the silent agent next to him.

“Your status is classified,” Strong muttered without looking at him. “Your friends have been making a lot of inquiries over the past year about you. They weren’t going anywhere with those.”

“Is that the story Dexter’s been spinning? That I’m running black ops?” He hadn’t heard any of them mention that on the feeds he had been forcing himself to watch for the past three days.

“Yeah,” Strong grunted. “Now, everyone is confused about exactly where you are and what you do.”

Before Michael could say anything else, Sam’s sigh rattled through the headphones he was wearing. “It’s the uncertainty that’s hard to take.”

“I feel you,” Jesse sighed. “We’ll make sure someone tells us when we gift-wrap this bastard and hand him over.”

Michael saw Jesse’s point. Dexter was on the wanted lists of several national and international agencies. He would be a great bargaining chip for information, especially since the said information had such little value.

Strong, however, had other ideas. “And we’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

***

“Anything on your street, Carlos?” Jesse checked in again after about twenty minutes..

“Just a neighbour walking a dog, a couple of kids making out in a car.” Came the reply.

“How about you, Fi?”

“I’ve got a bogey problem,” Fi said, drawing Michael’s attention instantly. “The gardener next door is about to start working in the middle of our little surprise party.”

“You sure?”

“Yup. He’s pulling out hedge trimmers. He’s planning to stay for a while. I’ll get rid of him.”

“Need help?” Carlos offered.

“Nah. I got this.”

“Alright.”

***

Something wasn’t right. Michael felt a tendril of dread creep down his spine after a few minutes passed in complete silence.

“It shouldn’t take her this long to get rid of a gardener.” Michael muttered, standing up.

“Westen, calm the hell down.” Strong ordered, pointing at the chair.

“No, listen–”

“You know what? Fi should have bounced that gardener by now.” Sam’s worried voice came over the audio feed, confirming Michael’s suspicion.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Jesse added. “Fi, what’s going on over there? Fi?”

There was absolute silence from her end, which sent Michael’s worry up a few notches.

“Fi?”

“Fi, son of a bitch, Fi–”

That was all they needed to confirm that she was in trouble. Michael closed his eyes and listened to the heavy breathing filtering through the headphones, utterly helpless once again to do anything to help his friends. It was starting to grate on his nerves.

“Carlos, we’re in trouble, let’s go.” Sam’s urgent voice added even as the running footsteps filled the ambient noise.

Carlos’ rage-filled voice cut through the feed the next moment. “He got her. The son of a bitch got her.”

***

“Not another step, Westen.”

The clear threat in the agent’s voice made him stop. Michael hadn’t even realised that he had opened the van door half way to run out and join the rest of his team. When he turned around, Strong had his gun in his hand, aiming at him. “I’ll shoot you in the leg if I have to. You’re not going anywhere.”

Michael turned around slowly. “Dexter’s got Fiona–”

“I know, I heard. Sit your ass down right now.” Strong barked. When Michael stubbornly stayed where he was, he sighed. “You running off to join your bandwagon now is not going to solve the problem, that’ll only make it worse.”

“Strong–”

“He kidnapped her because they’re also sick of the waiting game.” Strong said, sounding so calm and reasonable in a way that made Michael want to punch him. “This is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for. Let him make contact, and make the demand, which we both know is going to be you, and then we’ll go get him.”

Even when he hated to admit it, Michael knew Strong had a point. He knew the bastard Dexter was going to do everything in his power to find a location to his advantage to stash Fiona. And he was trained enough to make it impossible for them to find. There was nothing they could do but follow the team and wait for him to make contact.

“I won’t let her get hurt, or get caught in the crossfire,’ he gritted out through clenched teeth, meaning every word. “Do you understand me?”

“Perfectly.” Strong said, confidently. “But, it won’t come to that. We have a response team on call for this exact reason. The moment he makes the call, he’s ours. I’ll even let you have a little reunion once we have the asshole in the bag.”

Michael closed the door and slumped on the nearest chair, hoping and praying that Dexter wouldn’t hurt her until he got what he wanted. Or that Fiona wouldn’t get hurt by trying to do something reckless.

15:15 Hours

The call came through to Sam’s line after an hour.

“Fi, where are you?” Sam’s hopeful voice filled the interior of the van as Strong put it on the speaker.

“This is not Fiona, Mr. Axe.”

“You bastard. She better not be hurt.”

Michael silently echoed Sam’s sentiment.

“Oh don’t worry. She’s still breathing… for now.”

“What do you want?”

“We got the location, sir,” one of the agents piped up from where he was glued to the screen of the cell network, two seats away. “It’s a warehouse. Twenty two miles from here.”

“Start driving.” Strong snapped.

“What do you want?” Sam demanded.

“I know you can put me in touch with Michael Westen.”

Michael studied the overhead map Strong pulled on his screen over his shoulder. As far as defensive positions with sightlines went, it was the perfect place to stash a hostage. Gamble had chosen the big, empty building that stood isolated in a corner, with its back to the river bank. He had an unrestricted, 360° view of everything around him. The closest building they could get to without him seeing their approach was about four hundred yards from his position.

The moment Gamble saw any kind of approach, all he had to do was pull the trigger and take his revenge before he was taken down.

“Michael Westen. That’s a pretty tall order. He’s not even in the country.” Sam pointed out.

“Do I need to remind you I have a gun to Fiona’s head?”

“Just listen to me–” Sam interjected, trying to placate the man using every trick in the Hostage Negotiator Textbook. “He can’t offer you anything I can’t. I mean, what do you need? Money? Transportation? New identity? Whatever you can think of. You name it, we’ll figure it out.”

Gamble didn’t take the bait. “I’ve already told you what I need. Give me Westen now or this conversation is over.”

Come on, Sam, play for time. Michael wordlessly urged. They were already on their way and would be there within half an hour.

“Alright. Wait, wait… Just calm down, here’s what I can do–” Sam said, thinking quickly on his feet.“I can get you, um, a secure line with him. On a sat phone we use for emergencies. I can bring that for you, how’s that?”

“Burke must be there at the warehouse,” he heard Strong mutter next to him. “Your friend is clever. I’ll give him that.”

“There’s an old Marine warehouse at the end of Deer Run Avenue, at the river. Come alone. Unarmed. You have an hour.” Gamble gave the address to where they were already heading.

“Fine, but I’m not going anywhere without proof of life.”

Good man, Sam. Michael thought. He needed that just as much.

“You’ll have it.” Gamble said. “Oh, and by the way, Mr. Axe, just in case you were thinking about trying something, the view from here is spectacular. I can see in every direction. And If I see anything I don’t like, I put a bullet in your friend’s head.”

Before Sam could say anything else, the call cut.

“Proof of life of Glenanne,” the agent next to Strong turned a screen towards Strong and Michael. “Dexter just texted a photo.”

Fiona glared at the camera with blistering hatred shining in her hazel eyes. She was gagged, had a small cut on her forehead and her hair was a mess. Other than that, she was alive and well for the moment. For the first time since she had been taken, Michael finally could breathe without fear squeezing painfully around his chest.

“See,” Strong sneered. “Just like I told you. We’ll get there before the party even starts.”

“That’s the only place I can see we can get to without being seen,” Michael pointed out the building on the screen.

“We’ll set up a sniper,” Strong said, nodding. “Once we’re there, you can walk out, and try to lure him out–”

“Sir, CP on the line for you,” the first agent, the one who had traced the call earlier, signalled urgently at Strong’s headset. “It’s urgent.”

“Strong here.” He said, and Michael watched his entire demeanour change as he listened to whatever the other man on the line said.

“What? When?” Strong snapped, “Patch it to me.”

The map of Gamble’s warehouse changed into that of an airport, one that was about forty miles roughly north from where they were heading. Michael recognized it as one of the private airfields out of Lauderdale that mostly dealt with cargo planes.

Michael felt a chill run down his spine as a sudden feeling of unease overtook him. He didn’t like the way Strong focused on a random airfield in the opposite direction when they were heading towards Fiona.

“How sure are we?” Strong grunted at the man on the line, before ordering, “Tell me everything.”

For the next two minutes, he listened without interruption while Michael’s suspicion and dread continued to grow.

“No. Get the team ready,” Strong said, breaking into a satisfied smile that did nothing to alleviate Michael’s concern. “This is perfect. The son of bitch thought this stunt was going to distract us from the real target. Good work.” He cut the call and banged on the panel behind the driver’s seat. “Change of plans, Grant. Get us on the highway. We are going to Lauderdale.”

“What’s happening, Strong?” Michael had to fight to keep his voice level and calm. “What’s going on? Why are we going the opposite direction of where we need to be going?”

“Westen, we got Burke,” Strong grinned, confirming Michael’s worst fear. “He is in this private airfield right now. The facial recognition got an eighty seven percent hit. CP is tracking him live.”

“No!” Michael lost control of his patience and roared. “What about Fiona? That bastard wants me in exchange for her. He’ll kill her. And he’ll kill Sam too when he shows up without a way to contact me.”

Strong took his gun out of the holster. Michael was getting sick of having the damned thing pointed at him. “Not our problem, Westen.”

“At least, let me make a call, let me speak to Gamble.” Michael pleaded, doing his best to think clearly despite his racing pulse.

“No.” Strong said with finality. “We don’t need him when we have our sight on the original target, Westen. Stand down.” Then he sneered again. “We’ll have you back in your cell on time for dinner.”

Michael stayed where he was, acutely aware of the gun pointed at his face and the closed double door at his back. The van was travelling slightly over fifty miles per hour, and he knew they’d pick up speed the moment they cleared the afternoon traffic. If he wanted to put the rash, desperate plan that had popped up in his head without breaking his neck, he had to make his move before the van merged into the highway.

Michael put his hands down slowly and nodded, indicating that he heard and understood the agent. He planted his ass on the seat closest to the door without a complaint when Strong gestured. The agent holstered his gun and returned his attention back to his screen, his gaze firmly on the grainy images of Burke he was receiving from the command post. The van slowed as if in answer to Michael’s silent urging, either due to a traffic light or a stop sign.

He made his move without wasting a second.

He uncoiled from his perch at lightning speed and threw himself at the back of the van, letting the double doors fly open outwards. The car behind them screeched to a halt and the enraged driver blared the horn. The van veered dangerously to the left, while the driver of the van tried to compensate for the sudden change. Michael took advantage of the gap between him and the vehicle behind them, and threw himself over to the rapidly passing road before the three agents at the back could snap out of their shock and haul him back inside.

Landing hurt like a bitch, just as Micahel expected. He rolled twice before he could pull himself to a slide on his left side. That move saved him from breaking any bones. But, his entire left shoulder, arm, forearm, hand and hip lost a layer of skin along with half of his jacket to the heated asphalt. On the positive side, he managed to halt his excruciating slide against the sidewalk before any of the afternoon traffic could run him over.

He didn’t have time to celebrate surviving his mindless stunt, or bemoan the bloody mess that covered his entire left side, however. He got to his feet, swayed precariously to the side before righting himself. There was a sizable crowd already gathering around him, equally dumbfounded how he was alive after jumping off the back of a moving van. The said van hadn’t stopped, just as he expected, continuing on while Strong glared at him through the opening before slamming the doors closed.

Michael stood still, and took a few deep breaths until he was sure he could move without falling flat on his face. Just as one of the braver souls took a step closer to ask if he was okay, he turned around and took off at a slow, unsteady jog, leaving the flabbergasted audience of his madness behind.

Find a car, find a phone, call Sam, the three things went around in his mind in a loop. That was the plan. In that order. Just three blocks more and take a right. Then he would be in the Cuban neighbourhood, which was a target rich environment for his needs. With that in mind, he firmly pushed the fire burning his left side to a corner in his mind and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

He was on the clock, and he had an appointment to keep that he couldn’t afford to miss.

Chapter 8

The old Nissan he found parked under a tree wasn’t even locked, and succumbed to Michael’s fumbling hotwiring efforts without too much resistance. Its upholstery was old and worn enough, he didn’t feel an ounce of guilt about bleeding all over the seat. His luck held when he noticed the car still had half a tank when the engine coughed to life.

Michael held the wheel with his right while his bloodied left hand took forever to punch the number on the Nokia he had pickpocketed on his slow hobble to steal his ride.

“Hello?” Sam said after the second ring.

“Sam.”

“Jesus Christ!”

Michael smiled. “No. It’s Michael.”

“Jesus, Mike, you–”

“Listen, Sam,” Michael cut him off before he could dissolve into more cursing. “I don’t have much time to explain, but I’m on my way to the warehouse where Gamble is keeping Fi. I need you, Jesse and, uh, the new guy to show up with the big guns. I have a plan.”

Sam didn’t speak for a full twenty seconds. Michael figured he needed a moment to deal with the highly unexpected shock to the system.

Then he found his voice. It wobbled a little. “Mike, first of all, I’m so freaking glad you’re alive and somehow miraculously here when we need you the most. And, second of all, brother, we’re going to have a good, long talk after this shit is over. You mark my words.”

Michael let his smile widen. It felt really good to hear Sam’s voice after all those months. Underneath the shock and incredulity, the relief he heard in his best friend’s voice was like a balm to his fractured soul.

“Can’t wait,” he said gruffly, not wanting to let the sudden burst of emotions leak through the call to Sam. Maybe it was just the flaring agony of the fresh road rash that had him feeling off kilter. Either way, it was not the time to falter. “I’ll see y’all in a bit.”

The Warehouse
Westside Miami

15:53 Hours

Sam’s Cadillac pulled in behind the building Michael had parked the Nissan only fifteen minutes later. Michael had already done a cursory search of the empty building by then and had an idea how to approach Gamble when he called.

He was leaning against the door frame of the building’s rear exit with his left arm cradled in his right when Sam turned to park his car next to Michael’s stolen one.

Carlos jumped out of the Cadillac while it was still rolling to a stop and came charging at Michael with a furious roar.

“You fucking bastard!”

Michael saw the fist swinging in his direction a fraction before his instincts took over. He ducked under the punch and turned his body, with his legs extended. Carlos’ momentum worked against him and he tripped over Michael’s foot. Michael swung with his right, and connected solidly with the man’s throat, sending him to the ground in a heap on his back. Michael didn’t stop there. The survival instincts honed to a cutting edge during the harrowing fourteen months spent in the prison wouldn’t let him. He followed up the attack by going down with Carlos, landing on top of him with his knee pinning the man to the ground. His right hand wrapped around Carlos’ throat, thumb and forefinger applying pressure on the pulsing veins, and started to squeeze while the man bucked under him like an animal. Carlos struggled, and clawed at his arm to gain purchase and push him off, to no avail.

Sam’s oddly fluctuating voice reached him through the narrowed tunnel in his mind after an unknown amount of time.

“…Mike, Mikey, It’s alright, he’s not a threat,” his friend was saying over and over again from behind him. “Let him go, Mike, let him go.”

It took time for him to parse the meaning of Sam’s worried words. It took even longer to pry open the fingers that had locked around the man’s neck. When he finally did release Carlos from his grip, Sam pulled him to his feet by his right shoulder and tightened his hold when he stumbled.

“Michael,” Sam used his full name in a low voice that had Michael snapping back to reality instantly. When he blinked, he saw a pair of brown eyes staring back at him with concern. “Are you with us, buddy?”

There was no accusation or blame in his intent gaze, and that helped Michael find his focus. Then he saw Jesse pulling a wheezing Carlos off the ground and grimaced, feeling suddenly very tired, and guilty.

“Mike?” Sam called softly.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, pressing the heel of his palm against the bridge of his nose, and squeezing his eyes shut, “Uh, sorry.” Although he wasn’t looking at either of them, he was directing the apology to both Sam and Carlos.

“It’s okay,” Sam said, displaying a surprising amount of understanding. “You saw a fist and reacted. It happens.” Then he made a hissing sound, causing Michael to open his eyes again in confusion.

“What the hell happened to your arm?” His voice went up a few decibels when he saw all the blood and grime on Michael’s left side. “And the hip, and the back?”

In the periphery, he saw Jesse giving Carlos a once over. “Man, were you trying to get yourself killed?” he scolded.

“Fiona is a fucking hostage of a madman because of that man.” Carlos spit out. Michael winced.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Jesse snapped. “And you were trying to slug the only man who can get her out. Now take a deep breath and pull yourself together. Fiona needs you at one hundred percent.”

“Michael, hey–” Sam shook him a little to get his attention.

“I fell off a van, Sam.” Michael murmured.

Sam’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline. “Fell off?! How fast was it going?”

“Forty, fifty miles per hour? I’m not sure.”

“Jesus.”

Jesse walked over to them with a grin, leaving Carlos leaning against the Cadillac to catch his breath. “Michael, man, I’d say good to see you, but you look like hell. you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Michael said, extricating himself from Sam’s hold slowly. “I can still walk, talk and think. The rest we’ll deal with later. How long do we have?”

“Twelve minutes, if Gamble is punctual.” Sam said, taking his phone out of his pocket.

“Did you bring the guns?”

Jesse walked over to the Cadillac and opened the back door and the trunk. Michael was treated to the sight of two M249 machine guns and a few .50 calibre rifles packed neatly into all the space the car had to offer.

“Will that do?” Sam asked.

“That’s more than enough,” Michael said, turning towards the building. “Bring them and let’s go inside. I’ll fill you in on what we’re going to do.”

***

Dexter Gamble turned out to be the punctual sort. The phone rang exactly after an hour from his first call.

“Mr. Axe.” Gamble said when Michael pressed the call button.

“Guess again, Gamble,” Michael said, “You’ve been a busy man. Looking for me all over Miami, I hear.”

There was a sudden, surprised intake of breath on the other side. “Michael Westen. You’re here. Your friend’s been lying.”

“Oh, he had no idea where I was.” Michael said easily.

“Come on out, Westen,” Gamble ordered. “I need to see the man of the hour.”

Michael looked up. Sam, Jesse and Carlos were set up on the next floor, with clear sightlines to the building where Gamble was hiding. Jesse and Carlos had the belt-fed machine guns, and Sam was armed with the semi-automatic rifle that could switch from single burst to full auto depending on the situation. Thin planks nailed against the broken, dust-covered windows covered their perches, so that Gamble wouldn’t see the barrels of the guns peeking through the openings.

Sam gave a thumbs up, signalling that they were ready. Michael had a bluetooth earpiece in his left ear, through which he was connected to a call with Sam’s other phone.

“Alright. I’m coming out.”

Michael walked out of the building with his hands up, phone held between the thumb and the forefinger in his right hand for Gamble to see that he was unarmed. The glare from the sun brightened the ripples of the surrounding river to such a painful level, he immediately wished he had stolen a pair of sunglasses along with the car and the phone.

The warehouse that stood before him had its door closed. There were two windows on either side of the door, and he figured Sam, Jesse and Carlos had all three covered.

“You are Michael Westen,” Gamble’s voice said on the phone. Michael took it as a sign to slowly put his left hand down and hold the phone to his right ear. “A bit worse for wear, but you’re him, alright.”

“Thanks,” Michael grinned at the general direction of the door which was located about three hundred yards from where he was. Gamble was probably using binoculars, and Michael needed to keep his attention on him. “I just had a bit of trouble getting here. Why don’t you come out and introduce yourself?”

Gamble laughed. “Nice try, Westen. That’s not how this works.”

“Oh, please, then by all means, tell me.”

“Start walking towards the building. I’ll open it when you are here. When I have you with me, I’ll even let you untie and release your girlfriend yourself.”

He heard Sam’s quiet voice in his ear. “Mike, don’t.”

Michael moved the phone away from him for a moment so that Gamble couldn’t hear him talking to Sam. “I’m not planning to, Sam.” he murmured, thinking rapidly.

It would have been much easier if he could lure Gamble out, so Sam could take the shot. But, Gamble wasn’t about to do that. Michael had a feeling the moment he handed himself in, Gamble would take him out through a back door, possibly into the river on a boat from the pier at the back. But there was no guarantee he would let Fiona go if he did that. Besides, Michael was angry, and he had no intention of sparing Gamble’s life. Strong would have needed him alive to interrogate him about Burke, but Michael had no such compunctions.

Since the man wasn’t playing ball, he had to find a way to warn Fiona that they were about to spray the entire warehouse with heavy fire.

“She’s not really my girlfriend,” he said quietly.

His mind took a stroll back to the time when he first met Fiona in Ireland all those years ago, drowning him in the tangle of emotions the memories brought along with them. It had been one of the most dangerous periods in his life, but it was also tinged with bright, vivid memories of Fiona, wrapped up with layers of the rush, excitement and thrill that always came along from being around her.

Michael had been there to do a job, and people had been hunting him all around the city while he had run along with Fiona, shooting back and blowing things up in their wake. He had come close to dying more times than he could remember, and he hadn’t even stopped to think or give a damn even for a second. Because for the first time in his volatile life, Michael had met his match, the woman whose jagged edges had fit perfectly into the spaces left behind by the damage of his own, and he had been in love.

He took a deep dive into the beautiful, precious and painful memories, sorting through them until he found the one he needed. Even more than a decade old, the images that sprang into the forefront of his mind were bright and clear, as if it had only happened yesterday:

It was Dublin, 2001. They were in a rented apartment above a small restaurant, overlooking a bank which was their next target. Fiona leaned next to the window frame, watching the rain. The yellow glow from the streetlamps below made the skin on her bare shoulders shine an enticing shade of gold.

“I saw my dad get beaten up and shot at…” she said out of nowhere. Michael was sitting on the bed, cleaning his gun. But something in her quiet tone made him stop what he was doing and focus on her. He couldn’t see her face because of the way she had her hair down, which was thick black then. But even the drooping rivulets of water against the window couldn’t distort her reflection enough to blur the melancholy in her gaze.

“What happened?”

“Not sure, exactly, but he said he was protecting his family, his beliefs and what he stood for. I never saw him afraid of any of it, you know, if he was, he never showed it. You know what he said when I asked him if it was worth it?”

“What?”

“That there was a difference between livin’ and livin’ free.” Fiona murmured, smiling a little at the memory. “He was full of those…little life lessons.”

Gamble’s impatient words came through the line, reminding Micheal of the dire situation outside, “You can sort it out when you’re here.”

It did nothing to wrench Micheal out of the curious moment in time he found himself stuck in, however. The reality and the memory from back in time laid over each other as they played out in real time while he existed in both, caught in between.

“Now walk.”

“Okay,” Michael said, knowing that he was still staring at a warehouse but only seeing the empty, rapidly flooding street down below, back in Ireland. “But first, I need to talk to her. There’s no point of me handing myself over if she’s already dead now, is there?”

Gamble’s voice reached him through the sound of the pitter patter of the rain against the window. “She’s fine and she’s right here, sitting on the chair next to me like a good little girl.”

“That’s nice,” Michael said, breathing deeply to revel in the memory of her scent – something floral and cordite mixed with the rain-tinged petrichor. “However, I don’t trust you, Gamble, so put her on the phone.”

He left the bed to go stand behind her, resting his chin on top of her head, and smiled to himself when she leaned back against his chest, welcoming his presence.

“What else did he say?”

“Michael?” She sounded tired, angry and shocked, but not hurt. Michael breathed out in relief.

“Fi, are you alright?”

“Still here.”

“When he knew trouble was coming, he’d say, ‘Fiona, time to be brave, little angel.’” She said, “What it really meant was, ‘Get down on the floor, close your eyes, and start praying till it’s over…’”

Michael opened his eyes he hadn’t realised he had closed as the memory of him kissing her faded back to the deepest recesses of his mind.

“Fi, It’s going to be okay,” he said, before letting himself effortlessly slide back to the man he had been when he met the only woman he had ever loved. “It’s time to be brave, little angel.”

He let his knees fold and hit the ground hard, and went flat against the heated asphalt for the second time of the day. Sam, Jesse and Carlos opened up with everything they had at the signal, obliterating the warehouse that stood before them.

***

Fiona stared at Gamble as he paced back and forth, talking on the phone with a man who claimed to be Michael. He seemed sure enough that it was Michael. But Fiona had her doubts. Instead of dwelling on it, she continued to memorise every wrinkle and contour on Gamble’s face, imagining the satisfaction she would take in carving it all into ribbons when she was finally free of the restraints.

“Here, it’s Westen,” Gamble stuck the phone in her face with a snarl. “Say Hi.”

“Michael?” She said dutifully, letting whatever game Sam and the others had cooked up play itself out.

“Fi,” said the man on the phone, delivering a massive shock to her system because he was, in fact, the real deal. She would never not be able to recognize that drawl, ever. She tried her best to cover her reaction to hearing that voice after more than a year, but she knew Gamble saw it in the way her eyes widened, nevertheless. “Are you alright?”

She had to swallow hard before she could find her voice. “Still here.”

“Fi, It’s going to be okay–” Michael said before Gamble could wrench the phone back. Then, he did the strangest thing, and changed his voice into the thick Irish accent she had begun to yearn all those years ago when she had fallen for the spy.

“It’s time to be brave, little angel.”

Those precise words were intrinsically woven to a set of reflexes and instincts that had been instilled in her since childhood. Before her mind could even comprehend what was happening, the rest of her body wrenched itself sideways, along with the chair she was tied to, and she fell to the ground hard on her side.

Sha hadn’t prayed in a long time, so she didn’t really call upon a higher power to make sense of what was about to happen. But she had all the faith in the world in her friends, and had trusted the voice she heard on the phone before she had even known the real name of its owner.

That was more than enough for her to stay as close to the ground and curl around herself as much as the slack from her bindings allowed.

Gamble did the one thing he really shouldn’t have done in his situation. He turned around to her and froze, unable for a split second to understand what was happening.

That split second was all that was needed to turn the tables.

Fiona smiled ferally at Gamble from the floor and mouthed the word she’d wanted to say since he had slapped a cloth full of chloroform in her face: “Die.”

It was as if it was her command that had summoned the barrage. The entire wooden wall and the barred windows behind him obliterated into a million shards and splinters as machine guns and assault rifles opened up on full auto, raining down hundreds and thousands of bullets inside the warehouse.

Gamble, a mere man made only of flesh and bones, stood no chance as some of those bullets carved paths through him to continue their journeys. His body danced a macabre dance in the thunderous rain of death for a few seconds before a bloody corpse full of holes fell on the floor next to Fiona, its eyes open in shock and its mouth wide open in a scream forever silenced.

There were wood splinters and glass shards in her hair, clothes and on her skin. There were also scrapes and cuts on her exposed arms, neck and forehead. But Fiona hardly felt any of that as she laughed mockingly at the dead body before her, feeling alive and invigorated and free for the first time after a long, damn time.

***

Michael stayed where he was even after the ear splitting sounds of the gunfire faded. The ground was starting to feel cold for some reason, or maybe it was his body, he wasn’t sure. The smell of gunpowder was thick in the air all around him, and it burned his nose and throat when he breathed. His hearing had acquired a weird buzzing, possibly due to the proximity of the thousands of bullets that had flown past him, or something else. His vision also had a blurry quality to it no amount of tired blinking could fix.

Intellectually, he knew that he was finally starting to crash from the adrenaline rush he had been riding since jumping off the CIA surveillance van. The rest of him, however, was convinced that he had caught the worst flu the sunshine state had to offer, and the only way to get rid of the fire engulfing his entire left side was to stay where he was and take a long nap.

Sounds of footsteps running past him made him blink open his eyes again. Jesse and Carlos both ran past him towards the warehouse they had shot to hell and back. A small part inside his mind screamed at him to get up and run with them, to find out if Fiona had gotten the message as he hoped she had. But his body refused to obey any commands that needed more strength than shaky breathing.

“Mike, hey,” it was Sam again, his hand closing around Michael’s shoulder gently. “Buddy, it’s over.”

He couldn’t form a coherent reply than a grunt. Sam tightened his hold on his shoulder and pulled him to his feet, and kept him standing more or less straight when he started listing to the side.

“You okay?”

It felt like it was the only question Sam had been asking him since they had made contact.

“I’m fine,” he grunted again, and looked up just in time to see Carlos bringing Fiona out through the door that really wasn’t a door anymore. He blinked rapidly to clear the fuzziness in his vision.

“Looks like she got your message in time.”

Michael let his gaze take her in as they both walked towards them slowly. Her hair was loose and a mess, and her clothes were dirty and torn in places. There were a few bleeding cuts, mostly on her forearm and one on her forehead. Apart from that, she was fine, alive and in one piece.

The relief at seeing her hit him like a freight train, sapping him of the scant strength he had left to hold himself up. He would have fallen to the ground again if it hadn’t been for Sam who was letting him lean against him and taking most of his weight without any complaint.

“Yeah,” he murmured, unable to look away from the way she had her entire attention focused on him. “She did.”

***

Fiona desperately took her fill with her eyes as Carlos took most of her weight and slowly guided her out of the ruined warehouse. A part of her was convinced she had just hallucinated the whole thing, that Michael couldn’t have been the one she had heard on the phone.

The man in the black t-shirt, jeans and military boots leaning against Sam looked taller, thinner, and hungrier, somehow. Then there was the full beard that covered most of his face, something she had never seen on him before and couldn’t quite decide whether she liked it on him or not.

What convinced her that she wasn’t seeing some sort of an apparition her shaken mind had conjured was the look in those blue-green eyes. That was a gaze that would never belong to anyone else other than Michael Westen…the calm, serene gaze that deceptively hid the wild, unrestrained destruction it promised and delivered without holding anything back. A look that had never failed to drive Fiona a little insane whenever she had caught a rare glimpse of it.

“You remembered…” the words slipped out before she could sensor herself when they came to a stop a few feet before him.

Michael flashed a tired, half-smile, focusing on her in a way that made her feel like she was the only living being standing on Earth. “I’ll never forget, Fi.”

Carlos pressed closer and held her arm up, breaking her out of the spell Micahel had once again effortlessly snared her in. “Fi, we need to get these cleaned.”

“I know,” she snapped, wrenching her arm back. “Stop poking at it.”

Jesse came jogging out to join them then as well. “Dexter Gamble is very very dead.” he said, “We gotta scram before the cops of the entire damn state descend here. I’m pretty sure they heard the shooting at the precinct.”

To punctuate his prophetic words, they heard the wailing of the sirens in the distance.

Fiona turned back to Michael, and was confused to see that he looked a little out of it, his head hanging down and looking for all the world like he wanted to fall asleep then and there tucked against Sam. Before she could say anything, Sam threw a key at her.

“That’s the key to the Cadillac,” he said when she caught it, mostly in reflex. “I’ll drive Mike’s borrowed car. Jesse, you’re with us. We’ll meet at the safehouse by the South Beach.”

Without waiting for any of them to say anything else, he manoeuvred a silent, checked out Michael back inside the building they had used as their perch for shooting. Jesse joined them without further urging, and followed along.

“Shall we, Fi?” Carlos’s quiet words brought Fiona back from her thoughts

“Yeah,” she said, and narrowed her eyes when Carlos didn’t move. “What?”

“I can drive if you want?” he asked, gesturing at the key in her hand.

“Try it and I’ll break your hand.” She threatened with a sweet smile before striding towards the door that was left open. She figured she could use a little adrenaline dump after the past few hours she had been forced to endure.

Chapter 9

No 1421
Lincoln Crescent
South Beach

17:30 Hours

Sam went past from mild concern to full-blown worry at the end of the half hour drive to reach the safe house. It was one of Elsa’s beach houses that she had graciously allowed him to stock up with emergency supplies. Michael hadn’t made a sound throughout the entire drive, and was now sitting on the bar stool Sam had manhandled him to, like a statue. He hadn’t moved or looked up from the marble counter for the past few minutes, during which Sam and Jesse had spent gathering up the fresh water and first aid kit.

“Mike,” Jesse said, touching the man on the arm slowly to bring him out of his stupor. “This could go easier if you took the t-shirt off, buddy.”

Sam watched the way Michael slowly looked up and blinked, noticing for the first time the assorted medical supplies they had piled up on the counter before him. Then he looked down at himself, taking in the dried blood and the material of his clothes stuck to it.

“Shit,” he grimaced. “That’s gonna hurt.”

“Cut it off then?” Jesse suggested.

“If you can find me a spare?”

Jesse turned around and gave him an inquiring look. Sam nodded to his left. “The second room down that hallway. There should be something that would fit him.”

“On it.” Jesse declared and went off on his search.

Sam turned his attention back to his unnaturally silent friend. “You lost a little weight, Mikey.”

“Prison fare is hardly five star cuisine, Sam.” He said with a crooked smile, and started playing with a painkiller pill container.

Sam couldn’t think of anything to say to that, to his surprise. He had known that it was the most likely place Michael could have been for the past year. But a part of him had always hung on to the hope that the man had somehow managed to pull an impossible stunt out of his ass and had stayed out in the open. Hearing the confirmation contrary to what he had been hoping left Sam wordless for a moment.

He started to cut the dirty t-shirt. He wasn’t prepared for the patchwork of old and healing bruises, scars and wounds Michael had on his back when one half of the material fell apart.

“Jesus, Mike!”

His trained gaze took in the details despite his shock at seeing them. Most of the bruises were still dark yellow, which told him that those had been recent. The jagged, long gash that went from the back of his hip across his spine was new enough it still had stitches that hadn’t yet popped out.

“It was just a brawl, Sam,” Michael murmured. “It’s fine.”

Sam started to cut off the rest of the t-shirt, pulling off the right half that wasn’t stuck to Michael. “I don’t even want to know what the other guy looks like.”

“Best not.”

The admission sounded like the other guy had ended up in the morgue rather than an infirmary. Sam said nothing to that, and scratched his head instead to figure out a way to remove the material that was left on Michael in the least painful way.

Michael sensed his hesitation and pulled it off himself with a barely audible grunt, causing most of the dried gashes to start bleeding again. It was then Sam witnessed that most of the skin on his bicep and forearm was torn and badly scraped. There was a patch of skin missing on his side just above the hip, as well.

“Yikes! That looks nasty.” Jesse made a face when he came back with not just a spare shirt, but bottles of beer for the three of them and a big tub of yoghurt for Michael. The man broke into a bright grin as if Christmas had dawned and grabbed the dairy product with both hands.

“I was going to take it off slowly,” Sam scolded, starting to wash off the blood with a hand towel that rapidly changed from white to red. “Now you’re bleeding all over Elsa’s furniture.”

“I won’t for long if you’d just get on with it.” Michael had the audacity to advise him in between spoonfuls of his yoghurt.

“Bossy, aren’t you?” Sam muttered, but got on with it as he had been told, while Jesse drank his beer perched on another barstool to Michael’s right. After three towels and an entire bowl of fresh water later, Sam decided he was clean enough for antiseptic and bandages. Michael’s luck had held when he hadn’t broken any bones with his crazy stunt, or opened himself up deep enough to need stitches.

“You know, you had us worried all this time.” Sam remarked after sticking the last bandage on his side with an adhesive, finally finished with patching Michael up.

“Sorry.” Michael ducked his head.

“I’m not trying to blame you, buddy–”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Sam frowned, because from where he was standing, it sure as hell didn’t look like it. Michael shrugged half-heartedly and scraped the last bits of yoghurt into his spoon.

“Where were you exactly, anyway?” Jesse interjected.

Michael raised an eyebrow at him, the one Sam knew he used when he tried to deflect a line of questioning. “Today?”

“Yeah,” Sam said before Jesse could, and added, “Let’s start with that.”

Michael sighed in a resigned sort of way. “Stuck in a CIA surveillance van, following you guys around.”

“That’s what I thought,” Jesse said, “Were you shadowing our investigation?”

“Yeah,” Micheal’s admission was very quiet. “They have all your phones, homes and offices bugged–”

“Really? You were spying on us?!” Sam couldn’t help but yell indignantly at that, and regretted it immediately when Mchael flinched away from him with a wince.

“Wasn’t my call, Sam,” he said, averting his gaze to fix it on the beer Jesse moved towards him. “Andrew Strong, one of the senior agents, is running the show. I hated doing it just as much as you do hearing about it.”

“Why couldn’t you just call?” Jesse asked. “Things could have gone a lot easier if you had, don’t you think?”

“I know. I tried to make that asshole listen. But, hey! I was just here to play bait. So I was told not so nicely to shut the fuck up and sit aside.”

Play bait? Sam frowned. What the hell did he mean by that? Jesse looked over Michael’s head and gave him a confused head shake.

“Mike, why don’t you start from the beginning?” Sam said, settling on the seat next to Michael with the final beer. He had a feeling there was a whole separate layer to the situation they had yet to learn about. “And I mean the beginning, as in from the moment you handed yourself to that bloodhound they sent after you.”

“I will,” Michael said, finally opening the beer to take a sip. “But let’s wait for Fiona too, shall we? I don’t feel like repeating that story twice.”

“Fair enough.” Sam agreed.

They didn’t have to wait long. The sound of squealing tires just outside the driveway announced her arrival.

“Well,” Jesse said. “Speak of the devil–”

“You think I can have another, yoghurt?” Michael said. “Please?”

***

Carlos exited the car and followed a seething Fiona at a much more sedate pace into the nice beach side villa Sam had charmed out of Elsa.

Throughout the drive there, he had witnessed her going through a tangle of emotions:

First, it had been a form of dissociation, as if she had been caught in a trance where only her and that man, Michael, existed. It had happened the moment she had laid her eyes on him outside the warehouse, their gazes locking onto each other as if they had been connected by an invisible tether. Carlos had been quite taken aback to realise how everything around her, including him, had completely faded from her consciousness to make space for a man she insisted she had long gotten over.

She had been in that almost dreamlike state until she had started Sam’s car. Then, as he watched, her expression started to change, twisting into something filled with hurt and hate as the inevitable memories of the past year intruded, reminding her of the mess he had left behind.

It had been a thing of beauty to witness the raging fury that had followed hot in the wake of those memories and the realisation.

She was still simmering in it as they pulled over to the meeting place, and Carlos had no idea what to expect when she finally confronted Michael.

They found the trio seated around the L shaped kitchen counter just to the left of the foyer. Michael had a different shirt on, a fresh one that looked a few sizes too big, which made Carlos think that it must belong to Sam. It hung on his thin, almost skeletal frame as he continued to calmly eat what looked to be a yoghurt, supremely unconcerned. Carlos knew that loose, indifferent posture was not to be trusted, not in the least. He had already found out the hard way that it was a cover for deceptively fast reflexes, strength and, if he were honest, a touch of madness.

Fiona walked up to the marble counter and came to a halt across from Michael with a stormy glare in her face. He stayed completely still when she grabbed the yoghurt he was eating right out of his hands, but Carlos saw his gaze track her movements like a predator as she chucked it into the nearest waste bin. Jesse and Sam, who were flanking him, shuffled in their seats, displaying great discomfort, as if they were about to become front row audience to a fiery lover’s spat. That particular notion made Carlos feel rather awkward because, as things stood, he was the one who was supposed to be Fiona’s boyfriend.

“So, how’s the new gig, huh?” She planted her hands on her hips and snarled at Michael. “Are you enjoying yourself? Tell me, Michael, how did you talk yourself out of that one?”

Michael looked up and met her heated gaze with a calm one of his own. “What new gig?”

“Oh please, don’t even try that, not with us,” Fiona scoffed. “Aren’t you busy running black ops for your precious CIA in hellholes all around the world?”

Carlos walked over to the fridge he spied in the corner and grabbed two cold beers. He had a feeling he was going to need it.

“Is this about what Gamble’s been saying?” He heard Michael asking in a quiet voice.

“He couldn’t shut up about it,” Fiona bit back. “What sort of a deal could possibly get you clean and free out of murder, Michael?”

She wasn’t pulling any punches. Carlos walked back to stand next to her, and tried not to sigh when she grabbed one beer out of his hand and started gulping it down like a woman parched.

“Absolutely nothing,” Michael said, staring at her angry display with a zen-like calm that frankly scared Carlos. “There was no deal, Fi, Gamble was lying.”

Fiona slammed the half empty bottle on the counter, somehow managing not to break the glass bottle into pieces with the force behind it. “Oh yeah? Prove it.”

“Check my left foot,” Michael said, inviting all of them to duck under the counter to do as the man suggested. Sure enough, there was a police-issue ankle monitor strapped just above his boot, complete with a blinking red light that announced it was actively broadcasting a signal.

“I don’t have to explain what that is, do I?” Michael went on, ignoring the surprised mutters that erupted from both Sam and Jesse. “It’s there for the show, so the bad guy can cut it off and feel good about himself. I also have an RFID chip in my upper arm so I can tell him all about it and get on his good side. Then there are at least two more implanted somewhere on me, which I don’t know about. That’s going to lead the agency right into the bad guys’ front yard, in which case I catch a bullet in between my eyes for being a two-timing bastard before he’s taken down.”

As far as tirades went, that was delivered calmly, clearly and with a low, level tone, Carlos reflected, which was what made the meaning of what he just shared all the more terrifying.

“Mike,” Sam urged when Fiona just stared, shocked into silence. “What bad guy?”

“His name is Randall Burke,” Michael replied after a sip of his beer. “He’s a known terrorist wanted by almost all the alphabet agencies around the world.”

“Mike, I’ve heard of that one,” Jesse piped up, his face going white in alarm. “He went rogue about a year before your burn notice went up. He’s bad news, man.”

“Yeah, I know,” Michael let out a weary sigh. “I worked with him once in Afghanistan before he changed sides. He wasn’t a crazy bastard then.”

“What do you have to do with this guy, Mike?” Sam asked.

Carlos watched Fiona while she continued to stay silent, her gaze locked on Michael. Michael, for his part, answered all the questions without breaking eye contact with her, as if he was speaking to her alone. To Carlos, it looked like they were slipping into a world of their own all over again, and it made him uneasy to stay and listen to the unravelling history of Michael Westen.

“Nothing that I’m aware of.” Michael replied softly. “But for some reason, he decided to show his face here in Miami about five days ago with Gamble, looking for me, which in turn led agent Strong and his team out on a manhunt.”

“And you just let him tag you like this?” Sam’s voice was loud with anger and indignation on his friend’s behalf. “What was he planning to do, huh, Mike? Throw you in the streets like a piece of meat for a rabid dog?”

“Pretty much, yes.” Michael shrugged and drank some more of his beer.

“Why on earth did you let them do this to you?”

Fiona finally found her voice, which came out soft, quiet and full of worried concern. It was as if her previous burning anger had vanished without a trace, gone back to cool inside the volcano that lived inside her as if it had never broken out to wreak havoc.

Carlos had no idea that Michael could turn her volatile nature around like that with a few calm, reasonable words.

“It’s not like I had a choice, Fi,” he flashed a small, crooked smile at her, one that coaxed out a tiny tremble on her chin. It was one of Fiona’s tells that Carlos had only seen making an appearance when she was truly upset. The unease he had been feeling continued to grow into rather uncomfortable levels.

“I’m a detainee in a place where there aren’t many laws,” Michael continued, drawing more surprised looks, raised eyebrows and a few muttered curses. “When Strong showed up outside my cell, he came with two choices. Either I came along willingly to make sure things went according to his plan, or he just brought me along anyway and stuck me in the local jail until he found a use for me. I chose the option that let me keep an eye on you guys and keep the collateral to a minimum.”

“Fucking hell, Mike.” Sam sounded like he wanted to go find the man named Strong, and shoot him in the face. Jesse looked like he wanted to wrestle Sam for the first shot.

“We were on our way to get you out when Strong got a call,” Michael said, looking directly at Fiona again. “They found Burke in some private airfield back in Lauderdale. He diverted the van. Said whatever happened here was not his problem.” He shrugged again and tipped the bottle in his hand all the way back, gulping down the last of his drink. “I disagreed.”

“Hence your swan dive out of the moving vehicle.” Jesse muttered, shaking his head resignedly.

“But you were out in the field before that too, weren’t you? Back at that auto shop?” Fiona asked, cocking her head to the side, recalling their adventure back at the garage where they had been pinned down by automatic rifle fire. “You took that shot, didn’t you?” There was no accusation or anger in her tone, only curiosity.

“Yeah.” Michael admitted. “Strong had some common sense left then and let me take the shot.”

“Michael–”

“None of this was supposed to happen,” Michael sighed wearily and buried his head in his hands, cutting off what Fiona was about to say. It was a long moment before he spoke again, and when he did, his tone was low and heavy with a level of self-recrimination Carlos had never imagined he was capable of.

“I thought my past would follow me to jail and stay there with me. The point was to let you guys move on with you lives without my shit throwing curve balls at everyone at every fucking turn. I had enough of seeing people get hurt because of me. I hated that Nate had to bleed out in my arms to drive the fucking point home.”

“Mike,” Sam was the first to shake himself out of the disbelief and utter shock Michael’s quiet admission managed to engulf the rest of them in. He placed his hand on his shoulder and squeezed, desperate in his attempt to reassure him. “That wasn’t your fault.”

Michael let his hands fall back on the counter and turned to Sam, pinning him with a tired, reddened gaze. “It was though, Sam, wasn’t it?” He asked a little brokenly. “Mom’s never going to forgive me for that. When Nate died, most of her died along with him. I don’t have a family anymore.”

Carlos had heard that Michael’s brother, Nate, had died during an operation gone wrong. Other than that, he had no knowledge of the relationship the two brothers had shared. Judging by the way the others reacted to the claim as if the man had dropped a frag grenade in the middle of their conversation, he thought they may have been close enough for it to mess the remaining brother up quite a lot.

Fiona reared back with a gasp. “Michael–”

Jesse almost fell off the bar stool in shock. “Mike–”

Sam shook him, letting his head snap back and forth like a puppet’s. “That’s not true!” He yelled angrily. “Are you insane? That’s not true at all!”

Michael smiled resignedly and shook his head, letting all their intense reactions wash over him without reacting any further. Carlos had a feeling this was something he had never shared with the trio before he had gone to prison.

“In any case, now you all know everything there is to know,” was all he said when others continued to stare at him in various states of disbelief.

“What happens now?” Jesse was the first to regroup and get back on track.

“Strong should show up any minute,” Michael said, checking his watch. “After he’s done bagging Burke like he said he would.”

Sam frowned. “You don’t sound so sure.”

“I’m not,” Michael said, back to sounding like the trained spy that he was. It was alarming how he changed from one intensely emotional layer to a vastly different, calm, professional layer so easily, and seemingly without much effort.

“The timing was suspicious. I have a feeling Burke was yanking Strong’s chain around. I think all this drama involving Gamble and you guys was a set up,” he continued as if he was thinking out loud. “Burke needed to lure me out, or maybe find out where I was like you all did. When he got what he wanted, he went back to ground. There’s no way he would have been careless enough to show his mug around in an airfield of all places–”

“Do we have any idea why this guy was looking for you?”

“I don’t know, Sam, and nor does Strong,” Michael said, sounding frustrated. “I just have a feeling he’s not done. He’s going to finish what he started.”

“But, Mike–”

“I’ll be fine,” said Michael, in a light tone of voice meant to put his friend at ease. “Strong will just take me back to Cuba. That place is as secure as it gets. Burke can’t break me out.”

Before the other three could talk all at once to tell him exactly how ridiculous that claim was, they all heard the sudden sounds of growling engines just outside, announcing the arrival of Michael’s jailors.

Michael wordlessly slid off the stool in a smooth motion and walked out of the kitchen towards the entrance of the house. The rest of them followed him out.

“That’s not the face of a man after a successful mission.” Jesse commented when a man in his early fifties climbed out of the passenger seat of the lead SUV and slammed the door before walking towards them.

“Nope.” Sam agreed.

“Westen, wrap up your little meeting,” the man, whom they all could guess was Strong, growled, “Visiting time’s over.”

Michael flashed an insolent smirk and leaned lazily against the door frame. Carlos privately thought that the man had perfected the method of pissing people off to a finer art.

“You got Burke?” He drawled.

“The tip was a dupe.” Strong spit out through clenched teeth. “I saw what you all did back there with Gamble before I came over. The only other lead we had on Burke, now dead and gone. It’s all your fault.” he ended his diatribe, pinning Michael with an accusatory gaze.

Michael straightened to his full height and narrowed his eyes. “I told you I was not going to let anything happen to any of my friends.” he said calmly as if it had been a foregone conclusion. An uncontested truth. A promise he had meant to keep. “You should have listened to me.”

Strong smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant one. Carlos saw it putting everyone on their guard as they closed ranks around Michael.

“Yeah, well, you can commiserate about your good deed back in the camp,” he said, waving a hand gesturing to Michael to join him. “Let’s go.”

Michael took a deep breath and stared straight ahead, not making eye contact with anyone. “This is it, then,” he nodded to himself. “I probably won’t see any of you again. Take care.”

With that, he climbed the small step down to the patio and strode towards Strong without a backward glance.

Sam, Jesse and Fiona watched Michael climb into the second SUV until Strong closed the door behind him. The black tinted windows on the SUV finally hid him away from the rest of the world. Carlos watched their expressions.

Jesse’s face was twisted into a grimace equal parts angry, frustrated and pained. Carlos figured his own knowledge of Michael’s final destination made it painful for him to watch his departure.

Sam had a lost, distant look in his eyes, his face as pale as a ghost’s, as if he had just heard his best friend say goodbye for the very last time.

However, it was Fiona’s expression that scared and upset Carlos the most.

In the course of the seven months he had known her, Carlos had realised that Fiona used her anger as a means of keeping her true feelings hidden, refusing at every turn to let anyone see what was really going on with her. From the moment of their arrival at the safehouse, he had seen her anger slowly dissolving into genuine concern, which had then led to the feeling of utter helplessness. Michael had disarmed her fury and gotten through to all the vulnerable, caring and loving parts of her with nothing but stark sincerity.

She had folded like a house of cards in the face of it, ending up where she was now, staring into the distance as if all her hopes and dreams had just been cruelly stolen from her.

“You had to go and do the damned right thing, didn’t you, Michael–” Fiona’s quietly murmured words were unnaturally loud in the thick silence. “Take it all on yourself and not give us a fucking chance to have a say in it…”

“Fi–”

“Tell me something, Sam, Jesse…” She whirled around to face them angrily. Carlos saw the watery sheen in her eyes that threatened to betray her true hurt. He also noticed that she didn’t include him in her address. “Wouldn’t we have followed that bastard to the depths of hell if that’s what it took, had he chosen to run? He didn’t have to give up like he did, did he?”

“Maybe that’s exactly why the self-sacrificial idiot did what he did,” Sam sighed, slumping in on himself as if he had aged a decade in the past few hours. “Did you think about that?”

“He was trying to put an end to all of it, Fi.” Jesse added in a barely audible mumble.

“Remind me to throttle him when we see him again, Sam,” she said, as if she was convinced that they would be seeing Michael again even when he had made it sound like they wouldn’t. “I’ll probably shoot him too, you know, just so he learns this kind of bullshit is not acceptable.”

“Whatever you need, Fi.” Sam said, dejectedly.

Carlos felt like an outsider as he watched them standing together – Fiona in the middle with Sam and Jesse flanking her – a subtle, almost invisible barrier separating him from the trio as they quietly dealt with their shared grief.

A memory surfaced then, something Madeline, Michael’s mom, had said to him when he had first met her after two months of dating Fiona.

“Are you really okay with me being here?” Carlos asked, watching Fiona pushing Charlie on the swing. Madeline sat on the bench next to him.

“What do you mean?”

Carlos smiled at the cagey look she gave him. “You know what I mean, Madeline.”

“Fiona is family,” she said, waving a hand in an unconcerned manner. “And anyone she trusts enough to bring into my home, I have no issues with them.”

“I’m not just someone she trusts, you know,” he pointed out. “I’m the guy dating the girl your son brought home first.”

That earned him her full attention. “Ah, Carlos, is that what this is? Are you asking me how I feel about that?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Let me tell you a little something about how I see things,” Madeline said with a small, private smile, her gaze fixed on Charlie’s joyous laughter and Fiona’s grin as they played together. “Fiona – I’ve always seen that girl like a hurricane. She will come sweeping in, turn everything around you inside out without you ever realising what is happening to you, and will leave you reeling in shock once she’s gone.”

Carlos thought it was an apt description of the women he had begun to fall for in earnest. More importantly, he was certain that the feeling was mutual.

“Is that what you think your son will feel now that she’s with me?” He had to ask, to gauge how Madeline felt about that.

To his surprise, she let out a ringing laugh. “Carlos, Michael’s never been a port of call she pays a visit now and then to see how much destruction she could leave behind once she’s done,” she said as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. “My son had always been the eye of her hurricane, the calm centre in the middle of the storm, you realise? The only safe place a storm can never do anything other than anchor itself and revolve around…”

She hadn’t meant to drive a wedge between him and Fiona, or meddle in their relationship, and that much had been obvious. She had gone on to tell him that he probably stood a real chance with her since Michael was well and truly out of the picture. And that Fiona had begun to settle and enjoy more mundane aspects of life.

All the same, Carlos hadn’t really heeded her caution for what it was, confident that he was the one Fiona would choose in the end, since he knew he would never disappoint her the way Madeline’s son had. He had thought that her tumultuous past with Michael wouldn’t stand a chance in the face of a true, committed and loving relationship he could offer her, something he had been sure she had never really experienced with Michael.

It only took a single glance at Fiona’s direction, the look in her eyes, to make him realise how absurdly wrong he had been in his convictions.

The Westen Residence
Miami

The Next Evening

Fiona watched Michael’s mother fiddle with the nicotine patch on her inner arm, the mug of coffee next to her, entirely forgotten. She had just finished telling her about Dexter Gamble and…Michael.

“He didn’t even call…” Madeline muttered, mostly to herself.

“I’m sorry, Madeline,” Fiona said, covering the back of her hand with her own, “Yesterday was a rollercoaster ride. He never really had the time before they hauled him back out.”

Fiona thought that Michael wouldn’t have called even if he’d had the time. There had been something in his tone when he had mentioned Nate and Madeline, something full of grief and sense of finality. It had caught them all by surprise when he had revealed that little insight.

She didn’t know exactly what Maddeline had told him that day, before they had gone to confront Card. She figured it must have been something irrational and cutting… something hurtful that may have felt satisfying at the time to lash out at the neatest target. It was obvious to Fiona that whatever it was, Madeline was regretting it all. Fiona had seen guilt take her over the moment she had learned how Michael surrendered that day. While Michael had his own way of dealing with his mother, especially when he was exposed to her cruel side, Fiona thought it couldn’t have come at a worse time, when he had already been blaming himself for Nate’s death. Madeline’s wrath would have found its way to cut as deep as it could when all his armour had been fractured.

“How… how is he?”

It was Fiona’s turn to look away, unable to face the reluctant hope in Madeline’s dulled gaze. No amount of swallowing brought forward the words she could use to describe how her son had looked without making her feel even worse than she was already feeling.

She was saved then by the arrival of Sam and Jesse, as they had called half an hour ago to let her know that they were dropping by to share some news.

Sam went straight to the fridge to grab a beer and Jesse took his time closing the door and walking towards the dining table to find a set across them.

Their demeanour told her that whatever they had to share was nothing good.

“Just spit it out, Jesse,” Madeline snapped when the man continued to shuffle on the chair, holding onto a thin folder he looked very much reluctant to show them.

“Alright then, here.”

Fiona took the file and opened it. It was a copy of a police report written in Spanish. It was basically a detailed incident report on an attack that happened at a private airfield, along with a collection of crime scene photos of the wreckage of a still burning cargo plane.

“What is this?”

“I still have some contacts in Cuba from my counterintelligence days,” Jesse said, nodding at the file Madeline snatched from Fiona’s grip. “That’s a police report. There was an incident on the air strip next to Guantanamo Bay–”

Mention of Cuba was enough to send a chill down her spine. That was where the CIA was keeping Michael. “Jesse–”

“A military cargo plane was attacked by a group of what looked like trained mercenaries, ex-special forces,” Jesse went on, hiding his own unease behind a recitation of facts. “Four fatalities, one casualty. They set the plane on fire before they left. All of it took only twelve minutes in total, according to the witnesses and the surveillance feeds. They moved in, hit hard and then took off like clockwork.”

“What’s not on the report is that Strong is the casualty,” Sam added from where he was leaning against the kitchen counter. “I contacted a buddy of mine when Jesse showed me that. According to what he could find, agent Strong’s on life support. They’re keeping him there for now since he’s too unstable to fly home.”

“What about Michael?” Madeline asked, her words barely more than a whisper.

“Not dead,” said Jesse, “Or in the hospital.”

“So Burke did finish what he started after all, didn’t he?” Fiona said, closing her eyes.

“Yeah,” said Sam. “They got Mike.”

Part Four – Behind Enemy Lines

Chapter 10

Undisclosed Location
Cuba

Meanwhile…

Waking up gradually from what felt like a mother of a hangover was a slow, cautious process, one that took time, courage and a lot of self motivation. His ingrained instincts came online before the rest of him did, and started supplying him with data they thought he needed to parse out exactly what kind of a situation he was waking up to.

First thing Michael realised was that he was lying flat on his back, on what felt like a thin mattress. He cast through the memories in his dark, muddled mind, and dismissed the notions that he was sleeping on his bed at the loft or at his mom’s. The hardness he felt underneath his back was all wrong, and more to the point, he hadn’t slept in those places for more than a year, since he had been spending that time in a prison.

For some reason, the cot beneath him didn’t feel like his prison bed either, and try as he might, his sluggish brain had no possible conclusion to offer.

Then he registered the cloying smell he had been breathing in as the scent of antiseptics, the one that was usually a constant in the hallways of hospitals. The realisation was enough to spike his pulse a little, but not by much in his largely unconscious state. Besides, the absence of the sounds of any monitors or medical staff pointed to the fact that he probably wasn’t in a hospital, despite the fact that he may have been hurt.

He didn’t know whether that was a good or a bad thing yet.

Before he could delve further into the feel of his surroundings, a door opened and closed somewhere to his right, close enough that it made him draw in a quick breath and open his eyes.

Few more things became very clear when he did.

The room he was in was small and dark, with only a dim light hanging on the ceiling above him. Apart from his bed, an empty chair and a short wooden table with a jug of water and an empty glass, there really wasn’t much in it.

Those were the non-concerning things.

The first concerning thing he noticed was that the sudden move he made in response to the sound of the door seemed to have stirred up a headache that made him wish he were unconscious, or dead.

It was that bad.

It was also concerning the way the rest of him felt. His entire left was still hurting, but in a muted, dull way, which told him that Sam’s first aid from earlier was holding true still. There was also a sharp pain in his upper arm, where the chip had been, and quite possibly dug out. A spot on his left thigh and the left shoulder blade hurt the same way, leading him to conclude that whoever had him, knew what they were doing when they de-tagged him.

The other concerning thing was the restraints. His wrists and ankles were secured to the bed railing with thin, braided nylon ropes, the ones that tightened to painful levels and cut off his circulation when he tried to pull against the bindings.

The third concerning thing, perhaps the worst of all of them, was the man who stood silently next to the closed door. He had his arms crossed against his chest, his head cocked to the side, and he studied Michael in a way that sent a cold shiver of dread down his spine.

Seeing Randall Burke watching him like a predator made him flashback to exactly how ended up in the current, seemingly hopeless situation.

The old army cargo plane smoothly changed from its level cruising to a sedate descent, alerting Michael that they were about to land. Since the cargo bay had no windows, they had to rely on the movements of the flight and the announcements from the pilot to know what was happening outside.

“Secure for landing,” the pilot said over the PA system.

Strong tugged his seatbelt while Michael did the same. At least, they had handcuffed his wrists in front of him, which made it easier to do it.

“Home sweet home, Westen.” Strong sneered, shouting over the sounds of rattling and vibrations of the old frame to be heard.

“Thank you for the field trip, Strong,” Michael yelled back with an insincere grin. “Wish it could have gone better, truly.”

Strong shook his head. “No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t.” Michael had to admit.

“Maybe I’ll make a suggestion to the commander of the base,” Strong shouted at him, looking extremely pleased with himself. “Tell him how much you’ve been missing your old buddies from your EU days. He’ll probably let you spend a day or two with them before sticking you back in the solitary, you know, if you manage to walk out alive of that one. I hear Siberians are a wild bunch when it comes to throwing parties, especially reunions.”

Michael said nothing. He had no control over how the camp was run. What Strong implied was a very real threat. The chances of him walking out of that part of the camp was very close to zero. Michael knew the agent was thoroughly pissed off at his failure at capturing his target. He had a feeling that it may have left a mark against Strong’s career, for him to be planning Michael’s possible murder in that manner.

The plane touched down without too much of an incident, only bouncing three times before sliding into taxiing on the runway. The surprise came when the plane made a sudden, hard turn to the left without any warning from the pilot.

“Whoa!” Strong exclaimed before slamming the overhead call button that opened up a line to the cockpit at the front. “What the hell was that?”

“Sorry about that, folks,” the army pilot’s southern drawl came through the speaker. “Somebody closed off half the runway for maintenance. The moron at the tower never told me.”

Michael turned to stare at Strong, who had the same look in his eyes.

“Shit!” Michael wasn’t sure which of them yelled. It was an ambush!

They were on the plane before it even came to a full stop after its sharp, awkward turn. Michael thought they may have used a few humvees to flank them and match their rapidly dwindling taxiing speed. Thunderous bangs erupted on the outside, centering around the closed ramp at the back. The door flew off its hinges outwards as the magnetic clamps wrenched it off the plane’s frame.

There were ten of them, Michael counted, all dressed in black combat uniforms, boots and masks, weidling a wide range of semi automatic rifles. They stormed in before the three agents could unholster their guns. Two mercenaries continued without stopping at the bay to reach the cockpit. The twin, simultaneous bursts from their rifles spoke of the fate of the pilot and the chief.

Two remained at the back, covering the runway while the remaining six dispersed around the bay to cover Michael and the three agents. One of them did quick work on the seatbelts before another one started screaming at them in Spanish, “On the ground, now.”

In the face of six attackers actively tracking them with a collection of AK-47s and Uzis, they had no choice but to do as they were told. The one who undid their belts knelt next to Michael and grabbed a handful of hair to lift his head back.

Through the black facemask, a pair of blue eyes bore into Michael’s. “Found him.”

Michael took a moment to be grateful about the decision he had made to make use of his ample free time by learning Spanish. Now he could actually understand what their attackers were saying.

“But, the beard…” the one next to the man Miahel had pegged as the leader of the team gestured, frowning. “You sure?

The man who had him by the hair pointed to Michael’s handcuffs and nodded. “Yes, him.”

Then he let go of his hold and proceeded to haul Michael up from where he lay prone on the deck. In his periphery, he saw an agent make a move to stand as they did, and was swiftly dealt with by a bullet to the back of his head.

“Hey,” Michael struggled, trying to distract the three mercenaries so that they wouldn’t do the same to Strong, who had moved as well. Strong was subdued by a strike to the back of his head with the butt of a rifle while Michael caught a vicious fist to his ribs.

Micheal doubled over, and went down on a knee. He was still trying to catch his breath when he felt a cold, thin piece of metal touch the back of his neck. Before he could duck away, a hand clamped around his shoulder to keep him steady. The commotion around him dimmed when the sedative they injected him with acted alarmingly fast to knock him out.

He was already entirely blacked out by the time he was carried out of the back of the plane, and never saw the others shooting the agents and setting the plane on fire before they took off with him.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Michael,” Burke said genially, greeting him like an old friend as he walked over. “How are we feeling?”

Michael decided to be honest. “Like crap, Burke.”

“Oh, come on, now,” he shook his head at him in disappointment. “We broke you out, cleaned you up, and treated your injuries. What you should be saying is, ‘I’m great, thanks, Burke.’”

It was then that Michael realised he was in an entirely different set of clothes, and shoes. He was also free of the infernal itch all over his face that had grown along with the beard. It made him feel uneasy all over again to realise he had been completely out cold while they had done all of that.

“Where the fuck am I?” He covered his discomfort by snapping the first thing that came to his mind.

“Why, Michael?” Burke continued to piss him off with the mock familiarity. “Missing your cosy little six by eight in Gitmo?”

“Can’t call this dump an improvement, now, can I?” Michael bit back, casting a glance around pointedly.

“Nah, you’re right,” Burke flashed a smile and settled on the chair next to him, forcing Michael to turn his head all the way to be able to look at him. “You can’t.”

“So, you’ve been looking for me, and now you’ve got me. Care to tell me what’s going on?”

“Happy to,” Burke said cheerfully. “First of all, I’m sure you’ll be delighted to learn that you’re completely free of your former jailors. They tagged you good, but we took care of it. Now that you’re clean, you’ll even be able to start over somewhere nice, exotic and free of extradition laws.”

“Doesn’t sound like you unlocked my metaphorical chains out of love and goodness in your heart, Burke,” he said out loud. “And I have a feeling you expect me to pay for your generous deeds.”

“Astute as always, Westen.”

“I’m waiting.”

Burke studied him for a long minute with an unreadable expression before spitting out a name Michael hadn’t thought of for years. And if he were honest, it was a name he had hoped never to hear again as long as he lived.

“Oksana Zhirkova. The name rings a bell?”

It rang a several. Michael did his best not to react to the name and the rush of images and flashbacks that surfaced in his mind with it. But, Burke had been watching him intensely, and Michael knew he saw the instinctive grimace before he could hide it.

Burke hummed. “The look on your face says there’s a story there, or three.”

“Is she behind all this?” Michael asked, thinking about a number of possibilities. “Was that why you showed up in Miami with your associate looking for me?”

“In a roundabout way,” Burke shrugged and turned sideways to fill the empty glass he had near him with some water. “Although, I’m sure you didn’t quite have to turn my late-friend into a sieve, Westen, that was a bit much.”

Burke’s casual act of sipping water made Michael realise how thirsty he was. He had a feeling it had something to do with the still fading drugs in his system. Since Burke showed no signs of sharing, he decided to keep the man talking, to learn exactly what kind of a mess he had just woken up in.

“Yeah, well, he shouldn’t have kidnapped one of my friends and threatened to kill her. We all have to deal with the consequences of our actions sooner or later,” he pointed out, shrugging as much as the restraints allowed. “Back to Zhirkova, did she contract out to you?”

Michael had a lot of enemies from his days back in eastern Europe, and he was on the kill-on-sight list of many operatives in many nations in that hemisphere. Oksana Zhirkova just happened to be the most viciously driven one out of all who had sworn to accomplish that very task.

Michael had to admit that it was a reasonable feud. His involvement in jeopardising her operation had made the Russian government send her remaining family to the gulags as a punishment for her shortcomings, after all.

Nobody ever survived for long in those prison camps in those days.

“Not really, no,” Burke said. “But tell me, what’s your worth to her?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Michael lied cheerfully. “We had a few misunderstandings, all of which we sorted out through sincere communication with each other before going our separate ways.”

Burke laughed, taking his bullshit in for what it was. “Not according to what we hear,” he said easily.

“Ah, well, don’t believe everything you hear.”

“Good advice,” Burke agreed. “That’s why I’m going to ignore what you just said. You’re just coming out of drugs, you can be excused this one time. What you are going to be, is a peace offering to Zhirkova, in exchange for something she has that belongs with us.”

“An exchange, huh?” Michael said, trying to swallow past his suddenly very dry throat. He could just about imagine the former Spetsnaz soldier frothing at the corners of her mouth at the chance to get her claws in him. He was fairly sure that there was very little she wouldn’t give up for that chance. He really was that good at pissing people off in those days.

“Yup.”

“For what?”

“Not a what,” Burke said, his voice dropping low. “A who. Someone who means a lot to me and everything I stand for.”

They way he said made it clear that Burke had a very important stake in this transaction, and naturally, that meant Michael would be the one holding the shortest stick at the end of the day. Michael wasn’t even surprised. He had known things weren’t going to end well for him the moment Strong had shown up with the news.

“Oh, okay,” he said, nodding, since Burke seemed to be expecting an answer. “You’re just trying to spring another terrorist out of her claws, then.”

“Be that as may, she’s worth a lot more to us than you,” Burke said calmly. “So, as the guy who’s basically on everyone’s shit list right now, I’d suggest you start thinking about your words and actions a bit more cautiously from now on.”

“Whatever you say, Burke.”

Michael turned his head back to stare up at the low ceiling. He had a feeling they were still in Cuba, and wondered where his next exciting destination would be if Burke and his merry band made good on his threat.

The trained part of his brain insisted on parsing together everything he had learned, through his trip to Miami leading up to his current situation. All things pointed to the fact that Burke was organised, had more than enough men and weapons, along with a generous scattering of contacts and moles in a lot of places. It meant that he wasn’t just a freelancing terrorist, but part of a much more widespread, and deeply hidden network. Since he seemed to have gone to a lot of trouble to acquire Michael as a bargaining chip to negotiate with the GRU, it also implied that he was on an unorthodox rescue mission to free yet another terrorist of his organisation. Although, with someone like Zirkova holding the reins, Michael personally thought that Burke’s associate might have gone past the reasonable limits of being saved intact.

There was a time when Michael would have thought that he was in a perfect position to run a deep cover infiltration operation. To make a plan to insert himself into the enemy territory willingly by convincing Burke that he was done with his past patriotic life and was in need of a different, better purpose, such as becoming a freelancing terrorist. To gain Burke’s confidence while learning more about his network and its operatives so that he could delve into the more satisfying stages of planning its demise.

It was concerning that he hardly even wanted to think about devising an escape plan, a getaway, before he could end up in an even worse situation. As it was, all Michael felt was a bone deep exhaustion…an apathetic sort of resignation towards his fate at the hand of a woman who had sworn a long time ago to make him pay for destroying her life.

“Enjoy whatever time you have, Westen,” Burke said, standing up, unaware of what was going on in his head. “We have already put the word out, with a nice photo of you sleeping like a baby. It won’t be long until your lady friend from Russia comes calling.”

***

His words turned out to be prophetic. The GRU made contact within three hours. After a lengthy negotiation of terms, which Burke filled Michael in on later with only the bullet points, they had an agreement to conduct the hostage exchange in a barely crowded, industrial area hugging the sleepy east coastal line.

Mid-morning the next day, they waited in an unmarked SUV a few hundred yards away from the supposed meeting area. Michael was in the passenger side, his hands once again zip tied and secured to the handle above his seat to make sure he stayed put. He was getting sick of being tied up and being hauled around according to others’ whims, but, as things stood, there really wasn’t much he could do about it. Burke was in the driver’s seat, his attention firmly only the comms radio which was silent for the moment.

From where they were parked, in the alley between two warehouses, Michael had a decent view of the open field where the exchange was arranged. The area was surrounded by an abandoned factory and four equally empty warehouses, all completely surrounded by barbed wire fences. To make it worse, the open arena only had two exits, unless one showed up with a reinforced vehicle and was willing to run through the fences and solid brick walls for a few miles until they found a serviceable road.

It was a terrible place for such an exchange, Michael thought, wondering why Zhirkova would willingly walk into an absolute death trap like the one he was staring at, even with an irresistible bait such as him. Oksana Zhirkova, Michael remembered, wasn’t that stupid, even when driven by revenge. He had to believe that Burke knew that too.

“Something doesn’t feel right.” He remarked casually as they continued to wait.

“I know. It’s not the best choice for an exchange,” Burke shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. “But the area is entirely isolated and miles away from civilisation. Besides, I have a team of snipers covering the entire one mile radius and I’m pretty sure she has the area covered just as well as I do. We’re just making sure we don’t pull anything on each other.”

Michael stared at the view, and the positions of the factory building and the warehouses, mentally positioning snipers from both teams like pieces of a chess game. Unfortunately for him, he was the pawn in the front line, with the honours of the opening move that was guaranteed to be a very brief one.

“What a lovely beginning to a relationship,” was all he said as he continued to mull over the pending exchange.

“Isn’t it, just?”

“What happens if she doesn’t show?”

“Oh, she will,” Burke said confidently. “That’s the deal. She shows up with our operative like I did with you. Otherwise, no deal.”

He received a call then, presumably from the man who had set up the deal, confirming to Burke that the GRU operative was arriving at the site.

“She’s on the way,” Burke said, smiling as he started the vehicle. “Relax, Westen. This is almost over.”

“Target approaching from the South.” A gruff voice with a European accent announced over the radio. Burke manoeuvred the SUV out of the alleyway and started rolling towards the prearranged destination.

“We’re moving in.”

An unmarked Crown Vic came speeding down the road which led to the open lot from the opposite side of theirs. Both vehicles stopped a few yards across from each other. Through the dust-covered windshield, Michael saw two passengers in the front, one behind the wheel and one with a black bag over their head. He took a moment to feel grateful that Burke hadn’t thrown a bag over his head, something Michael would have hated in the Cuban heat.

Burke and the Vic’s driver both stepped out of the vehicles at the same time. Michael got his first look at Oksana Zhirkova after more than a decade. She was taller and leaner than he remembered, or it could have been the sharply cut jacket, shirt and the pants she was wearing. Her blond hair was cut very short compared to the long cascading hair she had worn in a tight bun when he had crossed her path back in Kiev.

The hatred gleaming in her icy blue eyes and the disgust twisting her sharp, angular features was exactly the same, however.

“Randall Burke.” She greeted in a heavily accented voice.

“Oksana Zhirkova.”

“Is that him?” She asked, nodding at him, even though they both knew she had recognized him the moment she had seen him.

“The one and only.” Burke smiled.

“Bring him out.”

“We do this together, Zhirkova.”

“Of course.”

Michael watched her pull the bag off of her passenger to reveal another younger, blonde-haired woman while Burke cut the restraints that secured him to the handle bar. Burke manhandled him out of the SUV by the shoulder and guided him out while Zhirkova did the same with her charge.

“So we meet again, Westen.” she said, her voice going deeper and rougher with the sibilant consonants and consonant clusters of her mother tongue.

“Can’t say it’s a pleasure, Major,” Michael replied in Russian as well, calling her by the rank he had known her, knowing very well it would piss her off into revealing her current rank.

“Shame,” Zhirkova continued, unconcerned about how her own hostage was paying close attention to their exchange. “It is very much a pleasure for me. And it’s Colonel, now, Westen, despite your interference.”

“Well, good for you.”

“You two can catch up later,” Burke snapped, drawing her attention back to him. “Send Sonya over.”

Oksana flashed him a smile that Michael knew meant trouble. “I’m afraid there’s been a change of plan,” she said, switching back to English again. “Here’s the new deal. You give me Michael Westen and you get to walk away alive. Or else, I’m just going to kill you and take him anyway.”

“Nice try,” Burke smiled back, confident he had control of the situation. “You try to kill me, he gets a bullet in his head. He can’t be of much use if he’s dead now, can he?”

A small red dot of a laser appeared on Michael’s bound wrists and travelled slowly up his arm as he watched, which he assumed came to a stop somewhere on his forehead as one of the snipers followed Burke’s cue.

“And who is going to do that, Burke?” Zhirkova lifted one well-sculpted eyebrow in disdain. “Is it going to be Travis, Howard or Ackerman, hmm?”

Burke’s eyes narrowed. Michael had a sinking feeling that those were the actual names of his snipers. That only meant one thing: Burke had been sold out by his own team.

“You hired a good team, no– a great team, with a sterling reputation,” Zhirkova continued to gloat. “But even they have limits to their loyalty, especially when the GRU calls their parent company directly to express their displeasure at a certain client of theirs…”

Burke retaliated to the change of plan by pulling the gun he had at his back and bringing it up to aim it at Michael’s head. Zhirkova did nothing but let her predatory smile widen in response. Michael saw new red dots appear on the foreheads of her hostage, Sonya, and Burke at that moment, showing exactly how the GRU operative had planned for the deal to play out.

“Sonya dies the moment Westen dies, closely followed by you. While it really isn’t much of an issue to me other than getting the local police to deal with the bodies, whom I’ll convince are three very bad terrorists, I know for a fact your leader feels differently. He wants her alive and unharmed, and that’s your mission. So, let me make it clear. Again. Your options are to hand him over and walk away, or die a failure.”

Michael stood motionless where he was, hardly paying attention to the gun muzzle that minutely trembled against his skull just above his left ear. He wondered idly what the CIA would have given to learn all the information he had just learned.

“Is it a good time to say I told you so?” he asked Burke, just because he felt like being an ass. It was his life that was on the line either way, and he felt justified to point it out.

Burke stared at Zhirkova, a muscle in his jaw twitching as he thought hard. Sonya had her gaze fixed on Burke, shaking her head minutely, as if trying to communicate silently to let her die. Michael wondered what kind of torture Zhirkova had been subjecting her to, if she was willing to die rather than go back with the Russian Colonel. He had to stifle a sigh at the thought, because there was a great big chance he would soon be joining her in that horror show.

Burke dragged in a deep breath and put the gun down, pointing it at the floor, sealing Michael’s fate. He saw Sonya visibly sag in on herself as he decided to give her a bit more time to live.

“Walk,” Burke said, giving Michael a push towards Zhirkova. She grabbed him hard by his bicep once he was close enough to her, her nails digging into his flesh, and turned him around.

The red dot on Burke’s forehead blossomed into a blood red flower when a silent shot buried a bullet in between his eyes. Sonya let out a shriek and started to make a run towards her comrade, only to be taken down by a vicious pistol whip to the back of her head.

Michael stared at the two bodies on the ground, one dead, one unconscious, and tried to figure out why he felt nothing but a deep sense of resignation at the sight.

“I thought you were gonna let him go,” he remarked softly in Russian.

“I lied,” Zhirkova smiled.

Chapter 11

Abandoned Warehouse

Baracoa Beach

Cuba

Life as Oksana’s prisoner turned out exactly as bad for his health as expected.

After she had thrown the unconscious Sonya in her trunk, Oksana made Michael sit in the passenger seat, his bound wrists once again secured to the grab handles on his side. After a two hour drive which continued further east, hugging the coastline, she took them into another abandoned warehouse in another vastly secluded area.

Once there, she handed him and the woman, Sonya, to a bunch of Russian special forces soldiers in plain clothes. She instructed them curtly to ‘have the prisoners prepared for interrogation’, and took off in her car to an unknown destination.

Russian Chief Vladimir Duboff had his own special interpretation of the term, ‘preparation.’ Michael discovered it after spending about five hours in the small, cramped, identical jail cell they had installed next to Sonya’s.

Most people always either picked up a baseball bat or a gun when they needed information. To Michael, that kind of heavy handed approach always seemed a little excessive, like getting groceries with a flamethrower – it only made a mess and almost never worked. That was usually why the trained operatives of any respectable military service would follow certain protocols that were suited to the information needed and the physical and phycological profile of their captive.

But, in the instances where your need for information took a backseat to your need to see the captive suffer – be it due to a past misunderstanding, a miscommunication or a plain accident that left hard feelings – professionalism had a way of flying out of the window.

That was when an interrogation session became more about how much pain and suffering you could inflict before you were forced to move on to such things as asking actual questions.

That was the reality Michael found himself in when his captor came to fetch him from where he was lying on the cot in his cell, staring at the woman in the barred cage next to his. She was either incredibly good at faking or quite possibly dead.

“Grab him.” Chief Duboff barked at the two giants he brought with him.

Despite having the appearance of two brain-dead meat mountains, they moved like a pair of well-trained soldiers. The one without any easily accessible weapons grabbed Michael by the shoulder while the other covered his comrade’s moves with a semi automatic rifle. Michael had to let them manhandle him the way they wanted unless he wanted to invite a barrage of bullets on his person.

“Hey, is there any chance we can talk about this?” Michael asked as he was being guided towards another section of the massive warehouse. The language rolled off his tongue easily, as if a good decade hadn’t passed since he had been deeply embedded in a complicated web of lies and deceit back in the rapidly dissolving Soviet Union. “Honestly, I can assure you, I was minding my own business in my jail cell when the other guy decided to bring me on this field trip. I haven’t been making trouble for you guys since…forever.”

“Michael Westen, I had heard of you, of course,” Duboff said conversationally as they arrived at a small room that was classically designed for torture. “For some reason, I thought you’d be more… bigger, and meaner somehow,” he said, glancing sideways at Michael with something akin to disappointment marring his scarred, wrinkled face. “Not this–”

Michael took in the thick concrete walls and the single light bulb hanging from the ceiling over a bolted, steel chair at the centre. There was also a utility table that was pushed to a dark corner out of sight. He grinned cheerily at the sight to mask his trepidation.

“You mean you weren’t expecting me to be such a polite, winsome and innocent-looking guy?” He batted his eyelashes at the Chief.

The Chief raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “You forgot annoying.”

“Listen, I know you’re already busy with what’s her name– Sonya. I have nothing to do with any of that. I swear, I only saw her today, and the guy Oksana killed, only about a day and a half ago.” Michael kept talking as the two soldiers secured the restraints on the chair around his wrists and ankles. It kept him distracted from the bad things he was about to experience. “What is their deal anyway?”

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with, if you don’t already know.” Duboff threw over his shoulder casually as he walked over to the table behind Michael.

“Aw, come on man! They basically kidnapped me and tried to sell me for that woman!”

“What can I say, Westen, sucks to be you.”

Michael had to agree that it, indeed, sucked to be him for the next couple of hours.

He had heard it said that, whatever failed to kill you, only made you stronger, which he wholeheartedly believed was utter bullshit when it came to torture devices. The Picana Electrica, or in layman’s terms, a cattle prod, for example, was capable of delivering shocks at only 1/1,000th of an amp. While completely non lethal, the absolute, excruciating agony it sent through a human body with its 15,000-volt shocks, made one wish for a quick death when introduced to the business end of it.

It wasn’t even just the cattle prod. Thug One and Thug Two took turns using him as a punching bag in between the shocks, while Michael could do nothing but pant and groan like a dying man to catch his breath. They were disciplined in their methodical beating. They changed between the two methods of pain delivery at measured intervals calculated to keep him awake to experience the whole thing for the longest time possible.

Michael grit his teeth and held back a scream the first two times the cattle prod made contact, once on the side of his unprotected neck and the next just above the left pectoral muscle. Thug One started punching him in the gut before the white hot currents faded from his system, while Michael was still struggling to breathe through it. The pain from the bruised muscles on his torso was almost a welcoming distraction from the electrical shock that set all his nerve endings on fire.

By the time they were past the tenth shock, Michael had difficulty seeing and his ears buzzed with a weird loud static. He tasted blood in his mouth, both from having bitten his tongue once and a throat abused from continuous screaming. One of the thugs had to keep slapping him on the face harshly a few times to keep him from blacking out from an overloaded nervous system.

“Jesus, fucking hell, stop!” his demanding words came out in a hoarse slur. One of the Russians had to hold his head up by his hair so he could speak to Duboff without slumping in on himself. He had to blink hard to reduce the sheer number of Duboffs dancing in front of his vision to bring the count down to a reasonable three.

“Aren’t you f-forgetting something?” He slurred some more at the hazy Duboff in the middle.

“Like what?” The Chief’s smile, distorted by Michael’s rapidly dwindling vision, was like something from a horror movie.

“I don’t know,” Michael panted, grimacing at the way he could feel his own drool starting to run down the corner of his mouth. “L-like asking me q-questions or something? This is getting ri-ridiculous.”

The way his heart was beating so erratically and painfully against his rib cage, he had a legitimate concern that he might end up having a heart attack if this specific torture continued.

“The way I see it, Westen, you’re still way too talkative,” the Russian Chief’s voice had a strange fluctuating quality that confused Michael. “The Colonel would prefer you to be silent, compliant and only speak when spoken to. I’m afraid that’ll take some work on our part.” He looked at the two thugs who did all the work while he watched, nodding at them to continue. “She asked us to have you prepared after all…”

The small reprieve Michael had managed for himself ended with another vicious shock that caught him in the ribs. His animalistic scream got caught in his partially shredded throat, and ended up turning into a hacking cough. He finally, mercifully passed out somewhere in the middle of it before the enthusiastic soldier duo could slap him back to his senses.

***

The sound of rushing water woke Michael a split second before a cold, harsh torrent of it made contact, drenching him from foot to toe in mere seconds. A surprised gasp made him inhale a lungful of water, which in turn made him dissolve into a bout of painful coughing.

A high pitched shriek from the prisoner in the adjoining cell made him aware that they were both getting the same treatment.

“Rise and shine, Westen, Lebedenko,” Duboff declared loudly from a few feet away while a different soldier Michael was seeing for the first time, continued to hose down the two cages. “Time to greet the day!”

Whether it was a morning, an afternoon or a night, Michael had no idea. There was no natural light inside the warehouse anywhere. Most of the areas, including the area where the cells were situated, were perpetually lit up by the fluorescent lighting embedded in the high ceiling.

Michael couldn’t even be sure how long he had slept after passing out in the middle of the torture session. For all he knew, it could have been several hours.

Lebedenko, Sonya, spat out some choice words Michael hadn’t even heard coming out of the Spetsnaz soldiers. The meaning of her cursing clued him in on the fact that this majorly unpleasant wake up call was going to be a regular occurrence for a foreseeable future.

Michael only saw Oksana standing next to Duboff after he had gotten himself back under control from the shock and the coughing. The freezing water clung to his clothes, making him shiver in earnest.

The Colonel studied them both, her gaze glancing back and forth between Michael and Sonya before she made a decision.

“Get her.” She nodded towards Sonya.

The water assault stopped the moment her order was received. One soldier opened the door to her cell and kept a rifle trained on her while the other went inside to grab her. To Michael, it looked like the second soldier expected the brutal struggle Sonya put up, and was more than ready for it. He managed to trap her in a headlock after exchanging a few swings, and dragged her sagging body out after she passed out in his hold.

“Always the same,” Oksana shook her head in disappointment as she watched the soldier taking her to what Michael presumed was her own interrogation session. “Wonder if she’ll ever learn.”

Duboff stayed back for a moment after his Colonel took her leave.

“Lucky you, Westen,” he said, flashing a sideways smirk at him, “But not for long.”

***

Michael lay in his cot, his clothes still wet, staring listlessly up at the mould-covered squares of the ceiling.

He was tired, and everything hurt.

The pain from the road rash and the wounds Burke had inflicted digging up the subdermal trackers, was down to manageable levels, which was a relief. He was reasonably sure he hadn’t split open any of the healing scabs, causing them to bleed all over again, which was probably the only silver lining in the very dark cloud he found himself trapped in.

He didn’t even want to think about the bandages that covered all those said wounds. The last time they had been changed was by Burke, while he had been unconscious, which was more than forty hours ago, if his gut feeling was to be believed. His captors were yet to show any worry over a potential infection he might catch due to gross and filthy bandages.

But those were nothing compared to the constant dull ache that pulsated along to the rhythm of his heartbeat, sending occasional currents of white-hot agony all over the muscles of his newly tenderised chest, ribs and abdomen. It made him wonder if breathing was worth the effort to suffer through that particular ever-refreshing agony.

What concerned him even more were the tremors.

While he knew the shock weapon wasn’t lethal, he wasn’t sure about the after effects of long-term exposure. His hands still had minute trembles and he felt muscles in his legs and back twitch and cramp at unexpected intervals. He wasn’t sure whether it was a result of all the volts that had run through his system earlier or just pure exhaustion.

His internal clock, which hadn’t been online since his special forces days and therefore not the most trusted source of date and time, was convinced it was well into the night, and that Oksana and her men had been interrogating Sonya for close to three hours.

Michael didn’t even want to imagine what they were doing to the other Russian woman, or what she had done to end up on Zhirkova’s bad side. The lack of any sort of surveillance, cameras or audio pickups, increased his misgivings about their captors’ motivations and goals in general; it meant they weren’t really after information from either of them, just plain old revenge.

As if summoned by his thoughts, the two soldiers dragged in a much subdued Sonya through the door towards her cell. From where he was, Michael saw that the entire left side of her face was swollen, and she was still bleeding from a split lip and an open cut on her chin.

They more or less threw her on the floor inside her cell and locked the door before leaving. Sonya didn’t move for a long time even after the wooden door separating them from the rest of the warehouse banged closed.

Just as Michael was starting to wonder if she had passed out, Sonya uncurled herself from where she was on the ground and sort of crawled towards the shared wall of vertical bars of their cells. Then she pulled herself up to sit with her back to it, letting the steel bars take her weight and hold her up as she drew her knees close to her chest.

Even though she had her back to him, Michael felt like it was a sign of reaching out, from one miserable prisoner to another. He stayed silent and where he was, waiting to see if she would actually talk.

“Fucking Zhirkova and her fucking GRU…” Sonya mumbled after several long minutes, her gaze fixed on the drab wall outside her cell. “Fuck you too, Burke, you bastard. Hope you can hear me in hell, or wherever you are.”

Her spiteful fury and pain made the already harsh consonants of the language sound even more grating and guttural.

“That bad, huh?”

His quiet comment got her to crane her neck to glance at him before turning away again. “Don’t worry,” she said, with a humourless chuckle. “You’ll have your fun soon.”

“I’m pretty sure your friend was trying to save you.” Michael said, trying not to delve deep into why he was trying to connect with a terrorist, or why he was defending the other terrorist who was responsible for his current situation in the first place.

“I know,” Sonya murmured quietly. “He should have let me die. He didn’t have to show up and get himself killed for nothing.”

There was a lot of genuine, heartbreaking grief in her voice, which she was trying to hide with a thin, transparent layer of anger. Michael knew something about that.

And I’d have been in a much cosier prison if he hadn’t, Michael thought to himself, grimacing. He had never imagined actually missing the six by eight back in Gitmo, on the other side of the same damned island.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Was all he said, breaking the silence.

“Was he a friend of yours?” Sonya turned a little again to look at him with a sceptical frown.

“Oh, no.” Michael said emphatically. “He went to my hometown looking for me and almost got a friend of mine killed. When he did find me, he kidnapped me to exchange for you. From where I’m standing, he deserved what he got.”

Sonya flashed him a smile, one that reminded him of a shark. “Then why lie to me with your false sentiment?”

“It isn’t a false sentiment,” Michael shrugged, and turned his head back to stare at the ceiling. “One man’s kidnapper is another woman’s brother in arms. Wasn’t that what he was to you?”

“Yes.” She looked away.

“I’ve lost people whom I fought with side by side,’ Michael said, trying and failing to stop all those decades-old, fading faces from surfacing. “I know how it feels. It hurts. Blood, sweat and tears are all the same no matter which side you’re on.”

“True enough.”

“Do you know what the good Colonel is planning?” Michael asked in a bid to change the subject. “Is she going to keep us here forever till we die or–”

“We have about a week until one of the 641s arrive. I heard them talking about it a few days back,” Sonoya shrugged. Foxtrot-class, or Project 641, was the name for Russia’s large, diesel-electric patrol submarines. Those usually showed up with nuclear capabilities and units of Russian commandos. The GRU having one of those under their command for support and transport meant they weren’t taking chances with Michael and Sonya. “We’ll be shipped back to the motherland.”

The fact that they hadn’t even tried that hard to keep that information hidden increased Michael’s earlier misgivings. That meant they were quite confident that their prisoners had absolutely no means of escape.

While Michael tried to wrap his mind around their shared, fast-approaching doom, Sonya continued in a low voice.

“You’d be a propaganda tool, the spy they caught–”

It didn’t matter that he wasn’t even a spy anymore, or a former-detainee at Guantanamo Bay. Michael was sure they had detailed records of every operation where he was the main suspect of sabotage and subsequent death toll. The trial they would put him through for crimes against Russia wouldn’t be pretty. He didn’t even know how the Company would react if they had any idea what the GRU had planned for him.

“You’ll be found guilty and executed publicly for your crimes against the motherland.” Sonya confirmed what he had concluded.

And the CIA would receive a clip of the video after the fact, Michael thought, to serve as a warning. It was how it worked. There wouldn’t even be any retaliation, since he was already blacklisted, denied and discarded.

God forbid if a copy of something like that ever found its way to the hands of my way-too resourceful friends,…or my mother, Michael felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wet clothing wrap around him.

“What about you?”

“Oh, my list of crimes is worse than yours,” she replied, sounding a little proud about it for some reason. “You’re a spy. You did what you did because of your loyalty to your country. It was what your country demanded of you. I, on the other hand, am a traitor. I betrayed my country–”

“Why?”

“Because I found out that it was all a lie,” Sonya spat, her face twisting in disgust. “The country I’ve been serving, gave my life to, lost all its values. It is not better than others, it’s worse.”

Micheal didn’t want to let her words resonate with him. He may have lost his faith in the agency he had idolised once, but that didn’t mean he had completely lost his love and patriotism for his country, or his faith in the men and women who called it home. He didn’t even want to imagine what kind of realisation or indoctrination she had to have gone through to turn her back on her own country like that.

“So you what?” He asked, uncaring that his tone sounded judgemental. “Sold out to the highest bidder?”

Sonya laughed. “No, Michael Westen, I found a better purpose, a meaningful way of life, a true vision to follow and dedicate my life to. I’ve never regretted that decision for even a moment. What I work for, what I stand for… I have done for the good of this entire world more than any of these petty, rotting, decrepit intelligence services around the world combined.”

“Well, good for you,” Michael said, deciding to let the terrorist hang on to her delusions. There was a reason he started talking to her. “The way I see it, no matter the differences we would have outside this prison, here and now, we find ourselves with a common purpose. One that could serve our immediate needs–”

“That we do,” she nodded, and drew away to let her head rest on top of her bent knees. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled, but Michael could still understand her. “We need to get out of here before they ship us back to Russia.”

“Can I count on you when the time comes?”

“I need to escape just as much as you do, Westen. You have yourself a deal.”

Michael let out a sigh and turned on his side, changing his view from the ceiling to the wall through the steel bars. Trauma bonding did have its advantages.

“Great.”

***

They decided to mix things up a bit during the session on the seventh day.

It was the same room, and Michael was tied up to the same chair. Even the two guys who tied him up before taking their positions on either side of him were the same. Instead of checking Michael’s resistance to electrical shocks, however, they decided it was time they tested his resistance against another one of their preferred torture methods: waterboarding.

Colonel Zhirkova was also present, and she watched the proceedings silently, standing next to Duboff.

Thug One wrapped a thick rag around Micahel’s face and held it tight while Thug Two poured the water all over his nose and mouth from an upended gallon. Holding his breath was difficult due to the way the first thug dug his thumb and forefinger against his lower jaw, forcing his mouth open.

“Stop.”

In the middle of frantic wheezing, coughing and suffocating due to all the water that was flooding his lungs through his nose and mouth, Zhirkova’s unhurried command reached Michael in a fluctuating wave.

The water stopped, and the rag was removed instantly. Michael bent forward as far as the bindings allowed and coughed like a dying man, trying to get all the extra liquids and fluids out. Before he could even catch his breath, the command was given to repeat the process.

It went on like that for a while, and the water that was flowing down through his gullet started to feel like liquid fire. Just as the black spots he was seeing in his vision were starting to stretch and expand into a total blackout, Zhirkova finally gave a command to halt the torture.

“Enough.”

The thug removed the soaked rag from his face and stepped back with his comrade. Michael let his head hang low after a bout of coughing that left a sour, coppery taste in his mouth. His pulse wavered and his entire body shook violently as he struggled to get some air into his abused lungs.

Zhirkova walked up to him and bent over, bringing her glare on level with his own burning vision. “I need you to think back to the year 1998. Westen,” she said in a low voice, and Michael had to concentrate hard to understand the words. “The time you were running around in Kiev, do you remember?”

Michael needed more time to pull himself together. So he hedged. “Vaguely.”

“You had already killed one of my teams and stolen the warhead,” Zhirkova said with a calm smile. “All you had to do was secure it and send it back to your own forces, and then you were done. But, instead of leaving, you made a detour to a place quite out of your base of operations in Belarus–”

Michael blinked a few times, partially to battle away the sudden lethargy that was making his eyelids feel as heavy as lead weights, and partially to buy time to deflect.

“I can’t say I remember.”

“Allow me to refresh your memory, then,” Zhirkova said, her gaze boring into him like two daggers. “The village’s name was Krichev, located in Mogilev Region, and you took great pains to cover your tracks to this little detour of yours. It took me years to backtrack your journey through our side of the world before you left…a task that required a lot of dead bodies–”

Michael knew what she was talking about.

He had been in the eastern European theatre closer to a year by then, and had done his homework on his target, then Major Oksana Zhirkova, to a point that he had known almost everything about her. He had learned about her career, family, her personality, habits and her thought process to the point he had, in a way of speaking, become her.

That was how he had been able to figure out the way she operated in the region and the movements of her troops, which had led him to successfully rescuing the wayward warhead that had no business skulking in the hands of the Russians.

The downside of having learned about someone so thoroughly was that he also knew the consequences Zhirkova would face for his interference. While he had no reservations about leaving the headstrong officer to her fate with her own superiors, it was the knowledge of what would happen to her family that made him unable to leave as he should have.

Instead, he had used another contact he had in their logistics division to move a few names in the records before arranging a local militia group for a kidnapping. It had been a terrible move on the family that had been forced to leave the lives they had known, but it had been a kidnapping that had actually saved their lives.

Since he had already given his word to take that particular secret to his grave, especially since the said contact was still in active duty, Michael couldn’t really speak of any of that to Oksana as she demanded.

“Belarus you say?” he squinted at her, “I’m really not sure. I was partial to the accommodation back in Kiev, to be honest.”

Oksana gritted her teeth. It was not a comforting look to gaze upon on a Russian Intelligence operative. “Why were you there?

“I wasn’t–”

She slapped him. It was an open handed blow that made his teeth rattle and jerked his head backwards painfully.

“I know you arrived there on December 12th,” she snarled, moving close enough that he could feel her warm breath on his face and taste the scent of her perfume at the back of his throat, “Exactly one day before the day you were supposed to leave, and stayed for two days. What did you do, Westen?”

“I wasn’t there,” Michael panted, craning his neck back as much as he could to get away from her predatory look. “I swear. You found bad intel.”

She let go of her grips on the chair and straightened. “Again.”

The two soldiers moved as one at her command and resumed their task. Michael’s lungs were starved of air to a point he was starting to forget what it was like to breathe, and was convinced that he would never drink a sip of water ever again.

His world was narrowed down to helpless struggling, panicked wheezing, gut-twisting coughing and frantic attempts to find air to breathe. It went on for so long, he never even realised when it all finally stopped, or how they untied him from the chair to drag his semi-conscious body back to the cell next to Sonya’s.

***

What woke Michael up from a blackout period of an unknown length of time, was the sounds of a commotion erupting in the cell next to his.

When he uncurled from where he was lying on the floor to lift his head up, he was greeted by the sight of two anxious Russians inside Sonya’s cell. Sonya was lying on the ground, her eyes frozen wide open while the rest of her body convulsed violently on the ground.

Before he was even fully awake, Michael’s instinct had him crawling towards their shared wall of steel bars. He used the bars to drag himself up to a standing position, and leaned against them to take a better look.

The first thing he saw was that she was wet, soaked to bone, and that gave him a pretty good idea where she had been. What had their captors panicking was the fact that she was struggling to breathe as her body continued to writhe on the floor. Her skin had already turned a pallid grey and there was a bluish tint to her lips.

The two soldiers were both kneeling next to her, looking at each other in confusion and panic because they had no idea what to do or how to help. Michael didn’t know whether that was because they were extremely inexperienced or scared of doing anything that went against explicit orders. All he did know was that they were never going to call for emergency services, and Sonya needed help immediately if she were to make it.

“Oi, she’s choking,” he barked at them, startling them both that they snapped their heads towards his direction. “She can’t breathe.”

“Yeah, we can see that.” One of them barked back, eyes wide with indecision and possibly a touch of fear.

“Then do something,” Michael yelled in exasperation, “She’s dying.”

“I know! But what?”

“Fucking hell,” Michael muttered through his teeth. “Are you dumb? No, don’t answer that. What happened? Was it the water or did one of you break a rib?”

If she were choking due to a broken rib sticking into her lung, Michael knew there really wasn’t anything they could do for her, since there wasn’t going to be any outside assistance arriving at all.

The duo exchanged a look and murmured something incomprehensible to each other. It looked like they were arguing whether or not to fill Michael in on what happened to her. Sonya didn’t have enough time left for Michael to let them argue it out.

“Let me help.”

That got both the soldiers to snap their mouths shut and gaze up at him with twin incredulous looks.

“Listen,” Michael said hurriedly, “Do you want to drag her corpse out when Zhirkova comes? Do you want to explain to her why her prized prisoner is dead? Let me fucking help.”

The reminded threat of their commanding officer’s wrath got them to move almost on reflex. One stayed with her while the other unlocked the door to Michael’s cell. A quick visual scan told Michael that they both had at least remembered to leave their rifles elsewhere when they had come running to help Sonya.

Too bad, he thought to himself as he quickly entered Sonya’s cell. This would have worked out as the perfect distraction.

Sonya’s convulsions were reduced to weak, sporadic twitching when he finally dropped on his knees next to her. When he opened her shirt, he was greeted by a number of black and blue bruises that could rival his own. As he carefully started to check her ribs for any breaks, he felt her left hand, which had been lying limp on the floor next to his knee, move out of sight of the two Russians to pinch his leg.

Years of training let him keep his expression from changing into one of shocked understanding. He had to admit, he was kind of awed at the lengths Sonya would go to keep up an act. She had actually been holding her breath to make it seem as convincing as possible to their rather inexperienced jailors.

Michael winked at her still unblinking eyes, and turned back to the Russians with a look of extreme agitation of his own.

“Alright. Something’s blocking her airway,” he said, thinking quickly. “We need to open it and stick a tube in so she can breathe again. An emergency tracheostomy. Do either of you know how?”

The two shook their heads just like Michael knew they would.

“Fine,” he said, turning his attention back to Sonya. “I need a knife and tube, now,” he said, pointing at her throat, “I need to make an incision to insert the tube, right here.”

“A knife?” One scoffed incredulously.

“A tube?” the other sounded even more confused.

“Yeah, a sharp one, Michael said, ignoring the sarcasm. “I need to cut into her, here, about two inches wide and an inch deep, and I need to make a clean cut. Tube is for the air to flow so she doesn’t get brain damage and die.”

When they both stayed where they were, Michael used his most demanding voice and barked, “Hurry!”

It was all he needed to get them moving. One ran out of the door while the other stayed behind, and he unsheathed a knife from his belt.

“Here.” he said, placing the knife, hilt first, in Michael’s extended hand. “Pavel will bring the first aid kit and the tube. We have a suture kit and bandages in there.”

“Perfect.” Michael smiled. Then he moved.

The soldier never saw him lashing out with his foot against his shin, breaking it instantly and bringing him down in a heap. He continued to stare uncomprehendingly at Michael with his mouth opening and closing with a bloody gurgle, his hand clawing helplessly at the gaping stab wound in his throat his own knife had been used to inflict.

Michael was on his feet in an instant. Then he looked down, intending to haul Sonya up as well. For an instant, their gazes locked.

Michael didn’t see Burke’s acquaintance right then, or another terrorist. What he saw was a kindred soul tortured by a common enemy, one who had been pushed to the edge and was now beyond fighting by any rules. Even though he knew, intellectually, Sonya was also an enemy, at that specific moment in time, she was his only ally, the only one who had shared the same agony. The one who had the same determination and drive to escape.

He saw the same understanding in her clear gaze – in the feral smile she had on her face that he knew was mirrored on his own.

He extended his hand. “Ready to get the hell out?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

The dead soldier had a hand gun strapped to his ankle, which Sonya promptly relieved from him. They had a combat knife and a gun with seventeen rounds, and two extra clips which she found in his pockets.

It wasn’t the best, but those were weapons in the hands of two very determined and very dangerous operatives. Without another backward glance at the dead body, they left the room with Sonya in the lead, and Michael watching their six.

***

There were thirteen guards inside the warehouse in total.

They managed to kill five in total stealth before Sonya had to shoot one that tried to take a shot at Michel while he stabbed another Russian in the chest. Although no sudden alarms blared to life, they both knew that the loud shot drew the attention of the entire base, and they had to move quickly before they got rained on by rifle fire.

They met with the last three armed Russians as they made it to the front, who were covering the only serviceable exit. The had glimpsed two other exits while moving through the building, both welded shut with steel bars barricading them for good measure. The front door was the only way out.

“Where the hell are the two bosses anyway?” Michael asked as he crouched behind the wall opposite the one Sonya was leaning against.

“They left earlier.”

“Neat time to pull the trick.” Michael grinned, and scanned the area they had to cross.

There was a distance of about ten metres they had to cover from where they were to the door, with absolutely no place to duck behind to avoid the H&K MP5K submachine gun fire that would rain hell from close quarters at fifteen rounds per second.

“These boys don’t even know how to breathe without orders,” Sonya said, making a disgusted face as she checked her hand gun. Most of them only had Glocks. Michael had the other sub machine gun they had liberated from another dead soldier. “I knew this was our chance.”

“We need to go through the three Rambos over there.” Michael said, nodding at the three soldiers who had hastily regrouped and found cover behind the two concrete pillars just before the door.

“I have fifteen rounds and a clip,” Sonya said, bringing her gun up in a ready grip. “That’s it.”

“I have half a mag,” Michael reported his own ammunition status.

Sonya turned to him with a raised brow. “I’ll draw them and you’ll take them out?”

“Works for me.” Michael confirmed.

Chapter 12

Abandoned Warehouse
Baracoa Beach
Cuba

Michael was again caught off guard by the brazen woman when she fully stepped out of her hiding place to shoot at a soldier she had just seen peeking out from behind the pillar to their left. Two machine guns spoke at the same time, obliterating the wall and the floor around the corridor Sonya stood on. Michael barely had time to aim and take out the one farthest from them with a round between his eyes. Sonya had dropped to the ground the moment they had started shooting, and Michael heaved a breath of relief when he saw her roll back to get behind the hole-ridden wall, unharmed.

“One down, two to go.” she said calmly as she loaded a fresh clip.

“A little warning next time?”

That earned him another half-crazed smile. “Fine. I’m gonna run over to that corner,” she said, pointing at another wall about five metres to their left, perpendicular to the exit. “Cover me.”

While she took her chances in the open it fell to Michael to nail the remaining two Russians. “Got it.”

Michael managed to kill another target as she took a mad dash towards her new cover. The remaining soldier ducked back behind the pillar before Michael could get him. He needn’t have worried. From where she was, Sonya had a shot, which she took, driving the man out of his hiding place. That drove the Russian straight to Michael’s crosshairs, who dropped him with a round to the back of his head.

“And that’s the last, I think,” said Michael, sweeping the area for any surprises. He had nine rounds left in his magazine until he could divest the three dead soldiers of their guns and ammunition.

“Let’s get out of here.” Sonya said, and took off running towards the exit. Michael followed close behind.

The final surprise came the moment Sonya unlocked the heavy reinforced steel door and started pulling it open. A soldier, a wounded one with his entire right side covered in blood, crashed through a side door to their left, firing his rifle on full auto.

“Get down!” Michael yelled, grabbing Sonya by her collar before crashing them both flat to the ground.

It was a short lived surprise, but somewhat costly one. The combined fire from both Sonya and Michael took care of the swaying shooter, but not before one of the rounds ricocheted off a concrete floor to bury itself in the side of Michael’s thigh.

“How bad?” Sonya snapped right after they had both crawled out of the warehouse and closed the door behind them. Michael put a round in the locking mechanism, making the process of unlocking that door a thoroughly messy and time consuming job.

Michael sat against the wall outside and took a moment to let the Cuban sun shine on his face after what felt like a lifetime, enjoying the sense of warmth and freedom. The bullet hole bled profusely to soak the material of his worn jeans, and made a dark puddle on the pavement beneath his leg.

“Well, he missed any major arteries, but it’s a bleeder,” he muttered after a cursory glance at the mess on his leg, and pressed his hand as firmly as he could against the wound. “We need a vehicle, can you–”

“Of course! Stay here. I’ll be right back.” Sonya scoffed, as he had almost insulted her, before jogging off towards the alley that curved around the warehouse.

Michael held on to the gun with his free hand and breathed through the pain, mumbling to himself, “Not going anywhere.”

***

True to her statement, Sonya found a car behind their prison, which she managed to hotwire in record time before bringing it around for him to get in. They drove for a couple of hours, alternating between small side roads and crowded streets, watching out for any kind of pursuit. Sonya was sure that they had killed the entire force Zhirkova had under her direct command, and that the GRU officer was going to have to depend on the local law authorities to provide assistance.

It meant that they didn’t have any immediate pursuers, other than Zhirkova and Duboff, but they did have to stay out of sight for the most part, especially since Michael was bleeding quite spectacularly even through the makeshift bandage he had improvised from the shirt he had been wearing.

Staying in the car proved problematic when the police blockades started springing up. They managed to avoid going through two of them, thanks to the alleyways and side exits, but one misjudgement of a turn later, they found themselves stuck in a line that went through a roadblock that checked each and every vehicle.

“Listen, I have to get out of sight.” Michael said as they moved together on a sidewalk of a street behind a line of stalls and apartments.

They were hugging the back alleyways as much as they could, but the residents who lived in the clustered apartment buildings were starting to peek from their windows, curiously watching the blond haired woman and the limping man carrying the oddly shaped bundle of clothes. Michael was aware that a discarded rag he had found on the floor of the stolen vehicle was not a great way to conceal a semi automatic, but he was reluctant to part with the weapon just yet.

“Yeah, you’re drawing attention.” Sonya agreed, forging a few yards ahead to scout their advance.

While most of the local population seemed quite focused on minding their own business, there was a great chance that one or two might always decide to speak to the police about the two strangers in their neighbourhood and their suspicious movement. The increased presence of the police meant that Zhirkova and Duboff weren’t far behind either.

Things took a bad turn when a police car came to a stop about two hundred yards from where they were, blocking the main street and the exit. It turned worse when another police car rolled into the alleyway from a side street and started slowly towards the direction where the two of them were hiding behind a stack of wooden pallets.

“Guess someone decided to be a responsible citizen after all.”

“We’re being boxed in.”

Sure enough, a marked van could be seen moving to block the street about four hundred yards behind them as well.

Michael took a moment to think logically. Between then, the sum total of their offensive power was restricted to a rifle with a half a magazine and a Glock 17 with about ten rounds left. Out of the two of them, Lebedenko was the only one who had a decent chance at getting out of the trap that had begun to close around them.

“We need to split up,” Michael said, making up his mind. It was for the better, he reasoned to himself. If he was the one providing cover fire, he could at least make sure there were no cops killed in the fast approaching battle. “I’ll cover you for as long as I can. Hug the wall and backtrack. I saw a fire escape ladder attached to a wall about two blocks back. If you get to high ground, you should be able to keep out of sight until you get in the clear.”’

Sonya crouched down to bring her gaze level with his own. Michael could just about hear what was going through her mind, since he was thinking the same thing.

Exactly how far did that earlier truce between them go?

Michael knew he would have been taken aback by the offer had he been in her shoes. He was essentially risking recapture or death by offering to stay behind and take potshots at the cops. He honestly didn’t know why he made the suggestion in the first place. Even though he was wounded, and had a hard time running with the hole in his leg, he really should have been concentrating on an escape for himself.

Maybe, in the middle of all their previous excitement, he had unintentionally slipped into the mindset of a soldier in the frontlines, where one never fought for themselves, but for the soldiers around them, for the ones who were in the trenches with them shoulder to shoulder.

Or maybe, it was due to a sense of loyalty and comradery invoked by the heat of the moment. It had been so long since he had actually fought alongside someone for the visceral goal of survival, and maybe it had an impact on him he hadn’t thought possible.

For all he knew, it could have even been the blood loss making him feel loopy and insane.

Whatever the reason, the offer was genuine. Maybe he was just tired of running, and surviving. Maybe he just wanted to do one last thing for someone else before things ended for him for good.

A slow smile stretched on Sonya’s lips as he watched, as if she had ridden a wave alongside his very thoughts.

“This is not the day you go down in a blaze of glory, Michael Westen,” she said, standing up to her full height while Michael stayed low.

“Sonya–”

“I’m going to give you one chance. Use it wisely and try to stay alive.”

“What are you–”

“I’ll see you when I see you.”

I’d rather not, Michael wanted to say, but he never got the chance.

Sonya leapt right into the middle of the alley, suddenly becoming visible to all three police cars that had them surrounded. As intended, her appearance caused all three vehicles to light up and blare their sirens. Calls wents out on speakers demanding her immediate surrender as she took off at a dead run towards the van that was behind them, shooting over the shoulder at the car that sped up to chase her.

Cursing to himself, Michael moved as fast as he could while the police car on the alley was distracted by her stunt. He managed to get to the fire escape ladder he had told her about earlier and drag himself over to the roof of the two-story building. He crawled over to the edge of the roof just in time to see Sonya turn into the tiny space between two buildings only two blocks before the van that had her escape blocked. Michael took careful aim and shot the squealing tire of the car chasing her just before the cops in it decided to turn the car chase into a foot chase. The speed of the car sent it into an uncontrolled tail spin when the tire blew up, and it careened into the van, t-boning it before coming to a stop in a half crumpled pile of metal.

For the moment, the cops from the other unharmed car and the van were preoccupied with dragging their fellow officers out of the crashed car into safety. But, Michael knew the rest of them were fast approaching the scene, most possibly followed by Zhirkova and Duboff.

Sonya was in the clear and out of sight, and now it was his turn to do the same before every cop in the area swarmed in to search.

***

He stuck to the high ground for as long as he could, until the spaces between the rooftops became too far apart to cross with his injured leg. He reluctantly had to leave the relative safety of the high ground after covering a distance of roughly half a mile. He kept pushing himself until he couldn’t hear any more sirens, or see any marked cars. While a little over two miles wasn’t a great distance between himself and his hunters, he had to find a temporary shelter to hunker down before his leg gave out on him and he lost all his mobility.

The place he found was an empty shop with all the counters, cupboards and shelves cleared out. It had a small bathroom upstairs, miraculously with still running water despite the building’s clearly abandoned status. Michael took a moment to thank the previous owner who’d had the decency to settle their utility bills before leaving, the only reason he had access to clear, running water, which he needed badly at the moment.

After untying and discarding the blood soaked shirt he had wrapped around his leg, he took off his t-shirt and soaked it with water to clean the wound as best as he could. A closer inspection revealed that he needed to pull the bullet out and stitch it closed. For that, he needed to raid a pharmacy after it was closed for the day, a task which required him to wait until well after midnight.

The window had burglar proofing in the form of welded iron bars from outside. After rebandaging his leg with the wet t-shirt and drinking some water, Michael settled on the floor against the wall. From there he had the view of the streets below to a good five hundred yards both ways.

He decided it was the best he could do for the moment. He would keep watch until the night dawned to venture out to his next stop only three blocks from where he was. After that, he would make a plan to get to Havana without being caught by the local law enforcement authorities.

What he couldn’t prevent, even if he tried, was the pure darkness of the unconsciousness that crept up on him a mere hour into his watch, when the exhaustion, blood loss and pain finally caught up to him in the wake of fading adrenaline.

***

Michael took his time swimming back to consciousness, wondering why it felt strange and surprising to be waking up at all.

When he finally managed to get his highly uncooperative eyelids to pry open, the first thing he noticed was that it was very dark, and the room he was in was only lit up by the faint yellow glow of a street lamp that was quite a distance away.

Then he turned his head slowly, towards the opposite side of the window where the stairs led up to the second floor, and immediately wished he hadn’t.

Sonya was there, kneeling on the floor next to him, her face framed by her blonde hair, which she had let loose around her shoulders. She was staring intently at his leg, the sluggishly-bleeding bullet hole on the side of his right upper thigh to be specific, holding a wicked sharp knife in her hand with a blade that shined menacingly in the weak light.

The fact that he was completely naked registered a moment later, along with the cold, undeniable realisation that he was entirely under her mercy while she held a lethal weapon uncomfortably close to his very vulnerable parts.

The shock of it made Michael forget to breathe, and he froze under her intent gaze.

Sonya saw the rigid ripple in his muscles as he braced himself, and looked up to flash him a bright smile that looked slightly unhinged in the dim surroundings.

“You woke up,” she hummed, “Too bad. I was gonna do this while you were still out.”

Michael blinked, willing his foggy mind to clear up faster.

“Do what?” He mumbled hoarsely. For an insane moment, he thought she was talking about stabbing him, and ending his life. For reasons that he didn’t even want to comprehend, all he felt was relief at that thought.

“Dig the bullet out, of course,” Sonya’s expression morphed into a confused frown as he watched. Then she leaned forward a little to place the back of her free hand against this forehead. “Do you have a fever?”

Michael closed his eyes, willing his pulse to slow down. He felt like he had been run down by a mack truck, and the pain from the wound in his leg crested and ebbed along with the beats of his heart. Apart from the bone weary exhaustion that wrapped around him like a dark heavy cloak, he didn’t really feel like he had an infection to worry about on top of it all.

At least, not yet.

“Nope. Don’t feel like it.”

She took his word for it, removing her hand, and went back to staring at his wound. He saw a backpack resting on the floor next to her, and wondered what she had managed to scavenge on the run.

“You found a good place,” she muttered, almost to herself.

“I did,” Michael said, studying her curiously. “Why are you here?”

“Too many cops, too many roadblocks, too many gawkers,” she murmured distractedly, “Take your pick.”

Michael frowned. Those hardly sounded like valid reasons for an obviously highly trained operative like her to be unable to get the hell out of dodge. He had expected her to find a boat to stash herself and be smuggled out of the country by then, because that was what he would have done if he had managed to keep going. Instead, she was there with him, contemplating the bullet wound on his leg like it held answers to the meaning of life.

It just didn’t seem right.

“How’d you find me?”

“You didn’t leave much of a trail, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said, starting to pull stuff out of her backpack. Miachel stared in wonder as various medical supplies, pills, and a small flashlight piled up on the floor next to him. “I figured you’d hole up for the night somewhere closer to medical supplies. I was right. Found you passed out against the wall.”

“Sonya,” Michael said, pitching his voice low, “You didn’t have to come back.”

She smiled. “I know.”

Without further discussion, she opened a bottle of water and poured some of it over his wound, causing the dull ache surrounding it to flare anew. Michael barely had time to grit his teeth, swallow a scream and hiss in pain.

“I’m going to do this as quickly and cleanly as possible,” Sonya warned, all business as she sanitised the knife with an alcohol solution and the flame of a lighter, “It’ll help if you don’t make any sudden moves.”

True to her words, her movements were skillful and brisk. Still, it was a red hot knife digging into his naked flesh without the luxuries of a local or an anaesthetic. The leather belt between his teeth helped him not to bite his own tongue, and muffled the groans he couldn’t really hold back. He did his best not to jerk away in reflex, while his entire body rebelled against the agony being inflicted on his leg.

After what felt like a lifetime of clenching teeth, fisting and unfisting hands, straining muscles, choked up screams and profuse sweating, the ordeal was done. Sonya removed the bullet, cleaned the wound, sewed it up and had it bandaged in only four minutes, and that was only because she had to be extra careful not to nick the artery the bullet was lodged against.

“Thanks,” Michael panted, willing his body to stop trembling and the dark spots in his vision that had nothing to do with the night to fade.

“You’re welcome.” she said, still kneeling next to him even after she had packed her stuff back into the bag.

Michael really wasn’t sure what happened next, or the reasoning behind the thought process that led to it.

It started with her hand that stayed firmly wrapped around his thigh just below the fresh bandage, the skin of her palm on his cold flesh a warm, distracting and bright spot of keen awareness in his otherwise scrambled, foggy mind.

When he opened his eyes (he didn’t know when he had closed them) it was to find her face hovering above his own, her skin glowing a pale shade of gold and her blue eyes gleaming with a plethora of emotions he didn’t quite want to witness right then.

He stayed still – couldn’t move an inch even if he wanted to, caught as he was in the spell of that gaze. Most of him wanted to blink, to breathe, to do something to break the trance, unwilling to let himself drown in it any further. Yet, there was a part of him that was a fair amount intrigued by her, compelled to take the plunge and never look back.

“Sonya…” It was barely a breath, a question, a warning…a plea.

Her lips stretched slowly into a smile at the same time her hand on his leg started travelling up at almost the same pace, over his fresh bandage, across the skin of his bare hip and to a gentle stop covering his abdomen. The contact between them was almost non-existent, just the tips of her fingers dragging over his chilled, exposed skin. But, in the quiet of the night in a world where everything was narrowed down to just the two of them, the barely-there touch was monumental, all encompassing and was more than enough to coax out goosebumps all over him.

The words got stuck somewhere in between his brain and throat, hardly formed and utterly lost. A tangle of frantic thoughts warred against each other in his mind, one part wanting what was blatantly being offered and the other vehemently protesting for all the reasons why he really shouldn’t.

It didn’t help his situation when Sonya closed the distance between them to kiss him, or when his own lips responded in kind before the rest of him agreed to it. Then there wasn’t even enough air for him to breathe, let alone clear his mind into something capable of rational thought. His body eagerly revelled in the intimate contact, pulling her closer, his limbs wrapping around her on their own volition. The warm, alive body felt good in his arms, and the taste of her lips against his invoked sensations he hadn’t even realised he had been missing terribly, to a point of almost having forgotten.

He gasped when she finally pulled away from him, torn between enjoying the sweet air his lungs had been craving and instantly wanting to drown back in her presence again.

“Michael.” His name on her lips was a whisper, a command…a request.

Michael swallowed reflexively, unable to tear away from the demand written clearly in her gaze. “What are you doing?”

“Taking what I need.”

There was no hesitation, shame or confusion in her statement, as if it was a simple truth laid bare for him to accept. She needs, he reflected, not wants. There was a difference, a distinction, an important one. It was not about just a transaction of pleasure between two human beings, he felt the more he considered, but something a little bit more visceral, primal than that. It was something vital that she needed to get past a certain point he couldn’t really understand, but could provide for her nevertheless.

The expression she had on her face as she stared at him while those thoughts and realisations formed in his mind, gave him an odd sense that she was right there with him, resonating with him on a deeper level again.

She confirmed it when she leaned forward to resume kissing him. Michael closed his eyes, ignored the turmoil in his mind, and let go of himself, allowing her to take what she needed.

He couldn’t really tell how long it lasted. There were an overwhelming number of sensations, always tangled in a heady mix of gratification layered with an undercurrent of pain. There were sounds of curses, pants and moans underlying the slaps of flesh against flesh. At one point, he tasted blood on her lips, and couldn’t tell whether it was his or hers. Their touches oscillated from frantic, bruising and possessive to gentle, lingering and yearning, yet never quite in sync with each other as they continued to explore.

At the height of it, she threw her head back and screamed something he couldn’t really comprehend through the buzzing in his ears. The way she tightened around him like a vise was more than enough to tip him over the edge right along with her, his entire body twitching as it fought against the conflicting waves of pure pleasure and white hot agony. Both her hands were wrapped around his throat, squeezing hard in reflex until his vision started to blur.

When it ended, he didn’t quite know whether he passed out underneath her due to the lack of oxygen running through to his brain or from the force of the orgasm he experienced.

***

Michael woke up the next day just before dawn to find her gone. He had a feeling it was for good this time. She even left him a few fresh bandages and a spare shirt, along with a piece of paper that contained an eight-digit number and a simple, ‘Goodbye’ in slanted Cyrillic.

After a short internal debate, he decided he would reach the American embassy in Havana. It was the only place he could realistically hope to find refuge against the team of Russian commandos Zhirkova would soon have under her command with the arrival of the submarine. Between becoming a prisoner on his own soil against being a captive again in the hands of the Russians, it wasn’t even that hard of a choice.

From where he was to the capital of Cuba, the distance was roughly nine hundred fifty miles – a fifteen hour drive if he were to stick to the highways and obey the traffic laws. Since he wasn’t really a law-abiding citizen of the country, or even a bright-eyed tourist there to have a good time, his trip had to be a bit longer and filled with illegal activities.

Two days, five counts of B&Es, three stolen cars and one truck later, Michael stood in front of the tall, imposing wrought iron gate barring his entry to the US Diplomatic Mission in Clazada, Havana.

If you were a civilian in need of the consular services of your embassy, you followed a set of rules, which usually involved a lot of calls and emails, followed by a letter of appointment that granted you permission to enter the premises. Then you would show up on a specific day at a specific time to stand patiently in an allocated line until you were allowed inside and escorted into the specific section that handled your specific need.

When you were a burned spy who was supposed to be spending the rest of your life in a prison, however, you couldn’t really follow the procedure and hope for the best. You needed to change the rules in a drastic fashion to get the response you needed, without necessarily getting killed in the process.

That was why Michael walked right up to the gate of the embassy and stood there with his face almost touching the intricate design of the gate – an action that invited a squad of Marines to take firing positions from the other side.

He knew exactly how he appeared to the highly trained soldiers. With a face full of grimy, twelve-day beard, torn jeans, shirt a few sizes too large and dirty shoes, he looked like a hybrid between a homeless beggar and a suicide bomber. That was why he kept an easy smile on his lips and his hands up in the air in the universal sign of surrender, banking on the fact that the Marines would follow their training to do their utmost to avoid an international incident.

One Marine – the shift leader, Michael supposed – took a step forward, keeping her M4 Carbine pointed at a spot between the ground and his right kneecap.

“You can’t stand there.” She barked, eyeing him wearily.

“I know,” Michael widened his smile, “I’d like to come in.”

“You have an appointment?”

“No, but I do need to meet the head of security.”

She gave him a look that conveyed she didn’t give two shits about his needs, which she reinforced by lifting her gun up to his chest level. “You should leave.”

“My name is Michael Westen.” he said levelly, dropping the smile. “Make the call. I’m sure you’ll have a ton of problems if you don’t.”

The squad behind her took half a step forward, and the safeties of their guns went off simultaneously.

“That a threat?”

“No. It’s a fact.” Michael replied. “I’m a person of interest in both countries. Believe me, you really need to make that call.”

She did make the call, in the end, via the radio she had clipped to her tacvest. Another armed squad of Marines appeared, promptly followed by a tall, thin, bald guy in a suit and a tie. His face was a bright shade of red when he came to a stop a few feet behind the squad, and looked like he was about to have a brain aneurysm.

He was the spy Michael wanted to meet.

The arrest went about as expected. He placidly complied with the demands of the Marines as two of them cuffed his hands after a thorough pat down. He was escorted to the farthest building of the complex, where he was locked up inside a basement level holding room that had four grey walls, a cot, sink, toilet and nothing much else.

Two Marines glared at him from outside the steel bars of the cell door while he waited for the head of security to make his appearance. The man came down about three hours later, looking not much better.

The way he fidgeted, beads of sweat collecting on his forehead and darkening his shirt around his armpits, Michael concluded he didn’t have much field training to speak of, despite his age which Michael placed somewhere between forty five and fifty.

He looked like he was about to disarm a live bomb for the first time, not speak to a man locked up inside a holding cell.

“I’m agent Harry Ferguson, acting head of security,” the man stuttered, looking everywhere but at Michael.

That explains it, then, Michael thought, sighing. It was just his luck the embassy had a cubicle monkey minding a desk he had no business being anywhere near.

“I’ve been ordered to debrief you immediately on–”

“No, Ferguson,” Michael said, cutting the agent off, which caused him to gulp visibly and take a step back. The Marines behind him twitched. Michael didn’t want to get shot down before making the contact he needed. So he held his hands up again in an attempt to calm the nervous agent and show that he was not a threat.

“You don’t get to debrief me on anything, because, frankly, I don’t think you have the clearance,” he said in a reasonable tone. “I need you to contact agent Andrew Strong. That’s the guy who gets to hear what I have to share. He knows who I am.”

Ferguson pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face. “Listen, Westen, it doesn’t work like that.”

“Yes, it does,” Michael replied calmly. “The information I have is not something I’m willing to share with the guy they sent just a week ago so he can keep the seat warm for the guy taking a vacation back home.”

Ferguson’s eyes widened in alarm. “I–how?”

Michael did his best not to roll his eyes. It was just a random guess on his part. Ferguson wouldn’t last a second in a street in South Beach after five in the evening, let alone in the field on a mission. He sighed again.

“Andrew Strong, Ferguson,” he said instead, bringing the conversation back on track, “Make the call, ask for him. Don’t bother coming down without him.” With that he laid down on the cot, and turned his back to the sounds of Ferguson’s heavy, anxious breathing, figuring he could grab a nap before Langley scrambled to find Strong.

Two hours later, Ferguson returned with news.

“You can’t speak to him,” he said, watching Michael wash his face by the sink.

“Why?”

Ferguson swallowed and looked away. “Agent Strong didn’t make it,” he said so softly Michael almost didn’t hear him.

The declaration gave him pause. The bits and pieces he remembered of the assault on the cargo plane – which felt like a lifetime ago but only happened twelve days or so back – didn’t include the fate of the agents after he was injected with the drug. Michael didn’t know how to feel about the death of the agent, the man who had almost sacrificed him and his friends for his mission. Or what that meant for the information he had on Burke, Zhirkova and Lebedenko.

“A team of investigators are being dispatched as we speak,” Ferguson continued hesitantly. “I was ordered to detain you until they arrive to handle your interrogation.”

“No,” Michael shook his head, thinking quickly.

The speed of the agency’s response meant that the operation was still very much alive, despite Strong’s demise. Michael was not in the mood to play the same game with a bunch of different agents. He had absolutely no desire to participate in the operation in any capacity, and was determined to avoid another blackmail scheme that would involve putting the lives of his family and friends on the line yet again. No. He needed to make sure that didn’t happen, and the only way to do that was to control the leadership of the team. He was the one with the knowledge the company needed, and that put him in a position to dictate who got to learn it from him.

He needed someone he could trust in charge of this mission, and he knew just the agent for the task, someone he had come to consider a friend several years ago. Besides, this would be his chance to rectify what happened to her for being willing enough to wade into the complicated web of lies, deceit and betrayals woven around one Michael Westen.

“Fine,” Michael said, taking in a deep breath and releasing it slowly, “Senior agent Dani Pearce, then. She was stationed in an anti-counterfeiting post in Mumbai, last I heard. She’s my only other choice. Otherwise, tell the HQ back home to arrange my trip back to Gitmo. I have nothing else to say to anyone else.”

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