Reading Time: 91 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 Eight – Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole

Chapter 22

Unknown Location
Unknown Time

As a spy, you were vigorously trained to deal with a wide range of external threats– combat, pursuit, capture, interrogation, even torture. Training was designed to expose you to as many situations as possible so that when you encountered them in the real world, you were ready. There were, however, situations you simply couldn’t prepare for no matter how thorough your training was. Because, no amount of experience or training could help you when the threat came from inside your own mind.

When Michael was taken back out of his loud, too-bright, too-hot torture chamber for the fourth time – or it could have been the third or the fifth, he had lost track – he didn’t put up any struggle. He didn’t even have any strength left to walk, even with the two beefy, armed guards holding him up with their grips on his shoulders and elbows. He just hung limp between them, and didn’t make a sound when they dragged him out to the lounge to drop him back on that hated couch.

He hardly noticed when the man took his arm again to inject the hallucinogenic serum. He just stared dully at the needle point sinking into a barely pulsing vein in his inner elbow, not really caring whether it was the second, third or the fourth shot.

“Relax,” he said, and when Michael didn’t react, he tapped him on the cheek, breaking him out of his stupor. “Breathe.”

Michael inhaled, grimacing at the way his chest and ribs hurt when they expanded. He let his breath out slowly, wondering why his insides were starting to feel like fire.

“There.” The man said, “Just let it wash over you.”

Michael breathed in again, held the air in for a moment before letting it all out again. The fire in his veins felt a little less agonising with each passing inhale and exhale. So he kept breathing, and tried not to worry too much about why his arms and legs felt so heavy, and numb.

“One of the reasons you are here is because your career is marked with an extraordinary degree of loyalty,” the man said, smiling down at him. Michael stared at him, and wondered why he could suddenly smell cigarette smoke when no one was smoking in the lounge.

“Loyalty to the agency, loyalty to your fellow operatives and loyalty to your friends,” the man continued with an air of praise. “That is a good thing–”

The hallucination hit him without warning. Suddenly, he was twelve again, and he was herding a little Nate out of the back door in a hurry. He almost tripped and fell on his face on the last step in his haste to get his brother out of the house.

“Frank, stop it,” he heard his mother yelling in a shrill voice, “You’re drunk. Just calm down!”

“Nate,” Michael said urgently. He wasn’t sure whether it was he or the younger version of him that was talking to Nate, and he couldn’t really seem to care about the distinction just then. “Go next door, now.”

“Why?” Nate whined.

“Just go.” he urged, giving him a little shove.

“What about you?” Nate stared up at him with big, round, fear-filled eyes. The sight made Michael want to cry.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, biting back a sob. “Now go.”

“Get outta my way, bitch!” Their Dad roared, and soon the sound of flesh hitting flesh followed, just as Nate jumped over their mother’s flower bed to get to Mrs. Reynold’s house.

“…but it’s also a problem,” the man’s voice broke through just as Michael turned back to go inside. “Old loyalties die hard. And I need to know that you’ve left yours behind. Your friends are as loyal to you as you are to them. We also need to find out if you’re still loyal to your old company, because where you go, your friends tend to follow.”

“They’ve moved on.” Michael said automatically, staring at the way his father grabbed his mother by the back of her neck through the kitchen window, “I’m on the run now, and I’m all alone.”

“That’s an easy thing to say.” the man said, unconvinced. “‘Cause I know how hard it can be to cut ties. Especially when you’ve been in the game as long as you have. Otherwise, there’s no reason for your friends to show up in Red Bay where you supposedly died, looking for clues.”

Michael blinked. For a precious moment of respite, the hallucination faded to make space for the man’s face to become a little clearer in his vision.

“Red Bay?” Michael asked softly.

“Serenity Resort in Red Bay, Bahamas,” the man replied, shrugging. “That was where you permanently left the attention of everyone who was hunting you.”

Michael thought back, slogging through his scrambled mind to find the memory. “The conference room… the gas,” he murmured with effort, when a few hazy images did their best to recreate a fuzzy version of the events, “Everyone died… My friends, why were they there?”

“Trying to reconcile with what they saw on the news? Trying to find closure?” The man speculated. “Either way, they have shown their willingness to care for you and look for you when you claim otherwise. Like I said, the loyalty you share goes both ways.”

“I have no sympathy for Randall Burke,” Michael said, deciding to follow the miniscule part in him that urged him fearfully not to let the man focus on his friends. For some reason, it was important.

“He got me in this mess,” he continued, his voice hoarse and every word requiring a lot of effort. “But Sonya – she, uh, she reminded me of something I had forgotten…reminded me what it was like to live with a p-purpose again. For that I–I’m grateful to her, and I owe her for saving my life–” he then looked up and did his best to lock his gaze with the man before him, “And I trusted her to lead me to you.”

“You need something, something to hold on to that is meaningful,” the man picked up when he trailed off. “You were right to trust Sonya, because we can give you that. Loyalty and need, however, aren’t the same thing. You don’t know our cause. You can’t blindly dedicate yourself to something that quickly. Not yet, anyway.”

“What do I have to do?” Michael sighed, feeling very tired, and very defeated.

“Michael, if you’re a part of something else, then you need to tell me. Now.”

“Michael!”

The growl of his drunken and enraged father reached him a moment before the hallucination of his home slammed back to him. He was in his room, trying to glue together the front bumper of a model Charger.

“Michael! Where the hell are you? Michael!”

“Michael?” The man’s voice was a soft caress next to his ear against his father’s roar. “I know it’s hard. Just trust me. It is better for both of us if you just tell me now.”

“Michael!” his Dad burst through the door with another growl, “Michael! Damn it, look at me when I am talking to you, son!”

The slap caught him off guard, and he dropped the toy on the floor.

“Dad?” he said, holding his face. It felt like fire after the back-handed blow. “You can’t be here.”

“Why? ‘Cause I’m dead?” He saw the second blow coming, but he was entirely unable to block it, or even brace for it when it landed on his face with even more force than the first one. “You can’t get rid of me that easily, Michael.”

“Michael! You’re holding on to something.” The man insisted. Michael licked his lips and tasted blood. “What is it? It’s just me.”

“I don’t–”

“Just tell him.” His father’s hands clamped around his shoulders with enough force to leave bruises, “Go on, tell him what you care about the most. It sure as hell ain’t your family! You never gave a damn about me or your mother or Nate–”

“No.” Michael let out a feeble protest and tried to wriggle out of the painful hold. He couldn’t.

“So what is it, Michael?” his Dad shook him, and he felt like his brain was rattling inside his skull. “Come on, I want to hear you say it out loud!”

“I am not doing this.”

“You’re not doing what?” The man wouldn’t leave him alone. He was persistent. “What are you resisting?”

“You dedicated your entire life to that agency.” his Dad started yelling, his spit flying everywhere, “That goddamn agency! And now it is time to come clean!”

“No!” Michael yelled back even as his head snapped back painfully with another blow to his jaw.

“Hey! You will listen to your father!” his Dad shook him again, once, before pulling him out of the chair. “You wanna play tough with me now? ‘Cause I don’t mind pounding the truth out of you.”

The next blow caught him in the gut. Michael folded in on himself and fell to his knees with a muffled groan.

“You left home for the CIA,” his father accused, catching him with a punch to the face that sent him fully to the ground, “And you got your own brother killed for the CIA. You lost your goddamned friends and the woman you love for the CIA. You left your worthless life for the CIA. And now you’re sure as hell gonna give them credit for it!”

He ended his rant with a kick to his gut, causing Michael to curl around himself in a miserable ball and bite back a whimper.

“Michael, talk to me,” from his left, the man placed his hand on his shoulder.

“Stop!” Michael said, his voice a barely audible whisper.

“So tell them, Michael!” his Dad glared down at him, “You tell him!”

“Don’t do this!” Michael groaned, “Stop!”

“This all stops when you start talking.” Michael didn’t know if it was his father or the man. But the kick he felt at the back of his spine was definitely his Dad.

“Michael…”

Someone was calling and someone was screaming. It was all starting to blur because the punches and kicks that were raining down on him were too much to handle. A sort of blackness was fast approaching from all around, and Michael did the only thing he could to escape all of it – by lunging forward to embrace it with both hands.

His Dad and the man were still roaring at him when he finally, blessedly passed out.

***

“What did you tell him?”

Michael woke up with a jerk, and stared uncomprehendingly at Sonya’s face hovering very close to his own.

“Michael, what did you tell him?” She shook him by the shoulders when he stayed unresponsive.

“What?” He blinked, wondering why she looked so worried.

“Before you passed out…” Sonya said urgently, “Before they threw you in here. You said something. What did you tell him?”

A cold dread of fear bloomed in his gut, and Michael felt a jolt of adrenaline run through his system, clearing his foggy, drugged mind a little.

“I don’t know.” he gasped. “I don’t remember.”

“Whatever it is, it’s bad.” Sonya exclaimed. “He knows, Michael. He knows you betrayed us. He’s going to kill you. We have to go.”

That sounded bad. He didn’t put up a fight when she pulled him to his feet, and followed her like a drunkard to the best of his ability when she dragged him out of the white padded cell to the hallway outside.

“We have to keep moving.” she snapped when he leaned against a brick wall and tried to enjoy the cool, smooth feeling on his too-warm face. “It won’t be long before somebody realises that you’re missing.”

She took a few steps forward to check if the way was clear. Michael stayed where he was, gladly letting the wall take his weight.

“I can’t walk,” he said weakly when Sonya grabbed his arm to lead him out. “I can’t make it.”

“You can and you will,” Sonya said, and started to drag him anyway despite his protest. “Otherwise, we’re both dead.”

“Why are you risking your life for me?” Michael mumbled as he followed her unsteadily, struggling to follow her blurry form on a pair of legs that felt like jelly. “Again?”

“I don’t know, Michael,” she said without stopping or turning back. “There’s something about you. I can’t let you die just yet, now come on.”

They made it out of what looked like an abandoned mansion into an overgrown backyard. A few more stumbling yards took them deeper into the thicket grown around the property. Sonya ran ahead of him, calling him to catch up, and he saw her coming to a stop near a tarp-covered boat. Beyond it, he thought he could see the ocean.

“Michael, come on!” she waved at him when she saw he was leaning against a tree, unable to continue. At her urging, Michael let go of his crutch, only to fall flat on his face to the ground.

“Is that it?”

When he opened his eyes, he was back in his old room. His father had him by the hair, forcing him to look up at him. “You’ve got nothing else to say to your father?”

“No, sir,” Michael mumbled.

“What’s that?” the grip in his hair tightened painfully with his father’s growl, “Speak up. I can’t hear you.”

“No, sir!” he yelled.

The vision before him rippled and blurred. Michael found himself staring at his younger version, somehow split into two as if they were mirror images of one another.

“What did you tell him?” he asked himself.

“I didn’t tell him anything.” the twelve-year old with a split lip and a black eye glared at him as if he had insulted him. “I never tell him anything.”

“Michael, come on.”

He came back to himself when he felt Sonya yanking him up by the shoulders again.

“Let’s go. Come on.”

Michael let her help him up because he couldn’t manage it by himself. But, once he was on his feet, he knew that running was the last thing he wanted to do. There was no need.

“I’m not leaving.” he said, swaying from side to side.

“What are you talking about?” Sonya glared at him, her eyes wide with fear. “You need to help me with the boat–”

“I have to go back.” Michael declared. He hadn’t been that sure of anything in a long while.

“You can’t go back.” Sonya threw her hands up in the air, exasperated.. “He’ll kill you. Michael, please, you’re not thinking–”

“Sonya, listen to me. I’m sorry.” He said, and turned around. He could hear the sounds of men running. He started putting one stumbling foot in front of the other towards those rapidly approaching sounds. “I’m sorry.”

“Michael–”

Whatever Sonya was about to say got cut off the next moment because they were surrounded by ten armed men by then.

“Stop right there.” One of them barked at Michael. “On your knees.”

Michael raised his hands in surrender and did as he was told. He heard Sonya being grabbed by another guard behind him.

It was a short walk to where the man was waiting at the foyer of his mansion. The guard who had him pushed him forward, and Michael ended up on the floor on his side.

“Oh, Michael.” the man said, looking down at Michael with his head cocked to the side, his eyes full of pity. “I didn’t want to do this. You are an impressive operative. You lied to me. You betrayed me.”

He extended a hand and one of his guards placed a Glock in his open palm.

Michael rolled to his knees, and with what felt like monumental effort, got to his feet. Once he was sure he could stand without falling on his face again, he locked his gaze with the man, ignoring the barrel of the gun pointing at his face.

“You won’t pull that trigger,” he smiled.

The man raised an eyebrow at him. Michael wasn’t sure if he saw a glint of amusement in his eyes, or if it was another one of his hallucinations.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I’m here.” Michael said, mustering as much confidence he could, “I have no reason to run. And I have nothing to hide.”

“Wish I could believe you.” The man said, and clicked the safety off.

“Oh, you can,” Michael said, ignoring the gun.

For the first time in a long time, he knew he had the upper hand, and that was a good feeling. He knew that he’d held out, and made it through the brutal interrogation without giving out the one secret that mattered. And he knew this was the final test he had to pass in order to accomplish the mission.

“You can question me, drug me, torture me,” he said, ignoring the way his entire body was starting to wrack with shakes. The adrenaline was leaving his system, and he was going into shock. But that didn’t matter. “It won’t matter. Because I know who I am.”

“A man who has no secrets can trust himself,” the man said, and stared at him for a long moment before turning the safety back on with a slow, deliberate movement. “I’m glad you’re that kind of man.”

“I told you.” Sonya said, grinning. “This one’s a keeper.”

Michael took the hand that was offered with his trembling one, and shook it with all the strength he had left.

“Michael… I’m James.” the man said, smiling warmly. “Welcome to the family.”

Westen Residence
Miami

Fiona pulled into the driveway and got out of the car with Madeline. Charlie was at kindergarten and Madeline had invited Fiona to spend the day at her house. She had noticed Fiona’s burning need to move, to do something…anything to get her mind off things. Madeline had decided rounding up all her friends for a round of poker was the best way to keep her distracted.

The others weren’t scheduled to show up for a few hours yet. Madeline thought it was best that Fiona helped her make the margaritas and the sandwiches they needed for the game night.

Fiona noticed the slightly open door to her house before Madeline did.

“Maddie, wait,” she said, stopping the older woman from walking any further. “The door’s ajar. Get behind me.”

She pulled out her handgun from her handbag and took the lead. It was a bad day for breaking and entering, and it was a bad choice of house. Fiona was in the mood to shoot someone before asking questions.

She entered the house slowly, and ran a visual sweep, clearing the lounge, the kitchen and the sun room. Charlie’s room, which used to be Nate’s old room, was to her immediate left, and a quick visual scan revealed that it was empty. Maddie’s bedroom door was fully open, and so was the door inside that led to the bathroom. She cleared them quickly before approaching the guest room that was down the hallway, the one that had its door only half open.

“Open the door all the way in at my signal and get behind the wall,” she whispered the instructions and advanced slowly. Maddie followed closely behind, hovering over her shoulder.

At Fiona’s nod, she did as instructed, leaving Fiona to enter first, leading with her gun.

For a strange, uncomprehending moment, Fiona froze, unable to reconcile what she was seeing.

“Oh, my God!”

It was Maddie’s sudden, loud exclamation that broke her from her stupor, and caused her to put the gun down to close the distance to the bed that was now occupied. Maddie reached him before she could and lifted a trembling hand to touch her son’s face softly.

“Michael.” Fiona felt her voice waver as she sat on the edge of the bed, placing her own unsteady hand on his neck to feel his pulse.

“Is he?” Maddie’s voice broke with a sob.

“Yeah,” Fiona swallowed thickly. “There’s a pulse. Weak and thready, but there.” She couldn’t believe that he was actually here, as real as real could be, warm and breathing, and alive. It didn’t matter how he got there, from where, or that he was unconscious. All that mattered was he was there.

“Oh, Jesus!” Maddie murmured again, drawing Fiona’s attention from Michael’s face to the arm that Maddie was holding. “What’s this?”

His right forearm was wrapped in a clean, white bandage, and Fiona had no idea what kind of an injury was underneath it. On his left inner elbow, there was an ugly, dark bruise she had only seen on addicts. She ran a finger softly over the mark, and grimaced.

“He was drugged,” she said, drawing another gasp from Maddie. “Let me call Sam.”

Sam picked up the phone on the second ring.

“Hello.”

“Sam, it’s Fiona,” she said, refusing to turn her gaze away from Michael’s unmoving form even for a second, “No time to explain, but I need you and Jesse back here now. Get to Maddie’s house as soon as possible.”

“Fi, What happened?”

“We just found Michael,” she said, uncaring at the way her voice shook when saying his name.

“Jesus, how?”

“Don’t know, Sam! When we came home, he was already here.”

“How is he?”

“Unconscious, drugged. I don’t know what kind,” she said, “We’re going to need a doctor.”

She hoped Pearce was listening in on the call, and that she would find a doctor to fly back to Miami with Sam and Jesse. Fiona had no idea if Maddie’s house was bugged, which they easily could have done while depositing Michael. But clearing the house could wait until Sam and Jesse returned. For now, she was going nowhere from her perch at the edge of the bed, and she had no intention of letting go of the cold, clammy hand caught firmly in her grip until Michael woke up.

***

The rental pulled in behind Fiona’s car three hours after the call Sam had received from her, telling him that they had found Michael. Maddie opened the door on the first knock. The look in her watery eyes alone was enough for Sam to realise that his best friend might not be doing so well.

“How is he?” He asked as he followed her in with Jesse, Pearce and the physician she had managed to pull out from the investigative team that had been dispatched to look into the mess in Red Bay.

“Still hasn’t moved an inch,” Maddie reported softly, “Fiona is with him.”

“This is Ben,” Sam said, pointing at the white haired man in his early fifties. He had been introduced to them by Pearce as Dr. Benjamin Sotto from the CDC. He figured it was best to keep things short and vague in case the place was bugged. “And Dani, his wife. They’re friends of Elsa’s.”

Maddie’s gaze swept over them with a polite nod before settling on Sam again. She was wise enough not to call out on Pearce’s presence.

“I have to go to get Charlie,” she said, glancing back towards the hallway that led to her guest room. “Sam, please…”

Sam nodded at the doctor and the agent to proceed to where Michael was before turning to Maddie. She was clutching onto her handbag in a desperate grip as if it was the only thing helping her to keep it together.

“It’ll be okay, Maddie.” He said, willing his words to be true.

She nodded, and glanced back one more time before reluctantly taking her leave.

“I’ll sweep the house before anything else,” Jesse volunteered and pulled out one of the new CIA-issued toys they had piled into a duffel bag before they had left the Bahamas. He then went off to start a thorough scan to look for any surveillance devices.

“His heart rate’s been slow and fluctuating between fifty five and seventy–”

Sam heard Fiona updating the doctor before he stepped into the room. Pearce stood in the corner at the foot of the bed, leaning against a wall with one hand over the lower part of her face, as if she had a hard time believing what she was seeing. An agitated, pale-faced Fiona sat on the wooden bedside table. The lamp that had sat on it before was now on the floor, out of the way.

Michael was on the bed, flat on his back. He had a black t-shirt and a pair of black pants on, instead of what they had seen him disappear in. Apart from the mostly-healed cut on his forehead, the bandages covering most of his right arm and the massive, dark bruise on his left inner elbow, there were no other visible injuries. But the grey, sickly pallor to his skin and the layer of sweat on his forehead, neck and armpits were enough indications that whatever damage he was still suffering from was internal.

It was much better than seeing him in his death throes on live television. But, it was still a hard thing for Sam to witness his best friend lying on a bed unmoving and barely breathing, seemingly dead to the world.

“How long has he been unconscious?” Benjamin had a stethoscope on, checking Michael’s pulse with a frown.

“Don’t know,” Fiona murmured, “We found him like this, so probably more than three hours.”

“I need to draw some samples to send to the lab,” the doctor said, and started to unravel the top half of the bandages on Michael’s right arm.

“What the hell is that?” Sam hissed when he caught a glimpse of a dark, black stain on the bandage.

“Is that a tattoo?” Pearce asked at the same time, leaning forward to get a good look.

“Just a number written with tattoo ink,” the doctor said, unravelling the entire bandage to reveal the eight digit number on his forearm. “Not an actual tattoo.”

“Another bank account?” Sam frowned, glancing between Fiona and Pearce.

“Guess he’s in business then.” Fiona said, rubbing a hand across her forehead. “They sure went through a lot of trouble to make that happen.”

“And until Mike wakes up and tells us all about it, we only know half of it.” Sam said.

***

Fiona perched on the adirondack chair in Madeline’s backyard and stared into the distance, her open bottle of beer forgotten on the ground next to her feet. Sam was sitting on the last step down from the porch, a mug of coffee in his hand instead of a beer, which was more than enough indication of his own mounting agitation. Jesse grabbed a cold one from the fridge for himself and stepped out of the back door to find space next to Sam on the same step, and opened the cap with a soft click that drew both their attention.

“The kitchen, dining room and the guest bedroom were bugged to hell and back,” he reported when Sam raised an eyebrow at him. “The place is clean now.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Swept the entire house and the garage, twice.”

While there weren’t any cameras, there were several listening devices carefully spliced into the outlets, circuits and batteries in the areas he mentioned. It was a neat, professional job, and Jesse knew he would have had a hard time finding them all if it wasn’t for the nifty gadget Pearce had let him hang onto for the moment.

“Did you take care of it?”

“Yup,” Jesse replied, showing him the thoroughly destroyed remnants of the bugs Michael’s captors had planted before leaving. “This should send the message sufficiently enough that we don’t appreciate this blatant invasion of his privacy.”

“Good,” said Sam “Now, if the doc could work some magic to wake the sleeping beauty–”

That seemed to draw Fiona out of her thoughts to join their conversation. “Sure would like to know when that’s going to be.” She scoffed.

The back door opened again to let Pearce out before she closed it behind her. She stepped off of the porch to sit on the edge of the small, round table that was next to Fiona’s chair.

“Where’s the doc?”

“Checking on Michael.” Pearce replied to Jesse’s inquiry.

“Any news?”

“The report on his blood work isn’t good,” Pearce said, her expression twisting into a grimace, “Apart from the chemicals, the synthetic drug and the hallucinogenic, he still has traces of foreign pathogens left in his system. According to the analysis, what they used to kill those people back in Red Bay was a chimaera of a sort – two deadly viruses of unknown properties fused together–”

“In other words, a lab grown nastiness,” Sam said, “A bio weapon.”

“Yeah, a never-before-seen-or-heard-of variety. Sotto’s worried that all that strain on his system might lead to serious side effects.”

“Such as?”

The door opened again, this time letting the doctor out to join them.

“Well, let’s ask him,” Pearce nodded at him, “How’s Michael?”

“I’m not happy with his heart rate,” said the doctor. “It hasn’t stabilised as much as I’d like. If this continues, the cardiac arrhythmia is going to lead to a stroke or a seizure, which then puts him at risk of internal organ failure. We can’t deal with that kind of serious condition here with what I have.”

“Is there anything that you can do?”

Jesse didn’t like the way the man avoided Pearce’s gaze and started to rub his forehead, visibly hesitant about whatever he wanted to say.

“What aren’t you telling us?” He asked.

At Pearce’s nod, the doctor started to speak in a quiet voice. “Flushing his system as quickly and aggressively as possible might improve his condition. The only snag to that plan is the few options we can use are still at the final stages of approval, although two types of those synthetic solutions have been in use with the company for over a year.”

That sounded like a drug that was never going to enter the circulation for public consumption. The CIA and other intelligence agencies were known to fund research programmes of the bio sciences, which was why there were so many truth serums, hallucinogens and mind-altering drugs popping up throughout the world. Jesse just wasn’t sure how he felt about watching their friend getting pumped full of more drugs, in addition to the crap he already had in him. Glancing to his side, he could see Sam was also uncomfortable with the notion. Fiona looked downright outraged at the suggestion.

But, since it was also true that none of them had a medical degree to understand what was really happening, they had to trust Sotto knew what he was talking about.

“Is that your professional recommendation?” Pearce inquired, “Can you guarantee that would work without making him worse?”

“I’d say so,” Sotto said, not sounding as confident as Jesse would have liked, “The trials have shown a 97% success rate so far. But, I cannot guarantee a definite outcome here, especially because of the traces of the chimaera already in his system. They might react differently to a whole new set of agents. Unfortunately, We have no way of knowing because we don’t have enough data on that strain to predict its behaviour.”

“Can we just think this through for a second?” Fiona said, “What if this is some kind of a test? What if we’re supposed to let the drug work out of his system on its own? These people went through a lot of trouble to put him in the spotlight, wipe him out and then drug him to oblivion before dropping him at home, right in our laps. They know us. They know we wouldn’t take him to a hospital and they know what kind of access we’d have when it comes to medical attention for Michael. This was a calculated move, and they wouldn’t have done what they did just to see Michael die on us.”

“She’s got a point.” Jesse agreed.

“If they are testing to see if Michael is deep undercover, introducing a classified drug might be the wrong move here.” Pearce added thoughtfully.

“I’ll give him twelve more hours,” Sotto said. “If his system doesn’t clear up within that time frame, I’m going to have to make the call. Otherwise, I won’t take responsibility for what happens.”

Westen Residence
Miami

The Next Day

Waking up was starting to become quite the harrowing experience. If this irritating trend were to continue, either he would have to stop going to sleep or stop getting back up altogether. His mind was still sluggish, and there were no coherent memories as to why he was feeling so tired and worn out even before opening his eyes. There was sort of a dull ache emanating from everywhere on his body, which made him want nothing more than to go under again, and stay there until all those awful sensations disappeared.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible. Something had woken him up, had urged him to surface and pay attention. It could have been the distant sound of the chirping birds, or even the touch of warmth he could feel on the side of his face from the sunshine streaming through closed curtains. It could also have been the faint sounds of music and chatter of people, which he was reasonably sure was coming from a television.

Something about it all, even the scent of toast and coffee in the air, was maddeningly familiar, and trying to place it in his fatigued mind was taking way too much effort he didn’t really have strength for.

Wait.

Was that the voice of his mother?

The jolt of recognition hit him with such force he jerked up on the bed, knocking over an empty glass that was on the table next to his elbow to the carpeted floor with a muted thud.

I’m home…the realisation dawned when his blurry vision focused on the familiar wallpaper of his mother’s guest room. He had absolutely no idea how that had happened.

Before he had time to wonder, however, the door to the room opened to reveal his pale-faced mother standing just outside. She looked exhausted, and if the dark circles around her eyes were any indication, she hadn’t been sleeping.

“Mom–” He tried, and his voice got stuck in his dry throat, making him wince.

“Oh, honey,” she strode into the room, and poured some water into the glass he hadn’t knocked over and handed it to him with a shaky hand.

“Thanks,” he said, and closed his eyes with a sigh, enjoying the cool sensation of water that he could feel all the way down to his gut. He opened his eyes again when he felt the mattress dip as his mother sat on the edge next to his knee.

“Ma, you okay?” He didn’t like the look she had in her eyes as she regarded him.

“Yeah, Michael, I’m fine,” she scoffed, much more like herself, “I’m more worried about you. How are you feeling?”

Michael considered. Apart from his body’s insistence that he had been run over by a truck a few times, and a headache that seemed to have settled permanently inside his skull, he was almost all there.

“I’ve had better days,” he said truthfully, “What happened? How did I get here?”

“Fiona and I found you passed out on the bed two days ago when we came back from dropping Charlie off–”

That wasn’t good. He held up a hand reflexively to stop her from speaking further. If James’ people had accessed the house, they could very well have left eyes and ears.

“Ma–”

“All taken care of, Michael,” she said, correctly guessing what had him concerned. “Jesse said we can talk freely.”

“Oh, okay,” he sighed, relieved that his friends seemed to have swept the house and gotten rid of the bugs.

“When Sam and Jesse got back, they brought your agent friend and a doctor along with them,” his mother continued, “He said you were drugged.”

“Yeah,” said Michael, and tried to hide a wince when a few of those memories back at James’ abandoned mansion floated to the forefront of his mind. “It wasn’t fun.”

His mother stared at him, her hand wrapped around his knee in a desperate grip and her eyes rapidly welling up with tears.

“Ma, what’s wrong?”

“Michael, it was horrible,” she choked out, “You died!”

“No, no, ma, I didn’t, obviously,” he said quickly, covering her hand with his own, feeling terribly guilty about what they had been forced to witness, “That was just an extreme way to get the authorities hunting me to back off. These people are insane in their own special way. I told you not to believe anything you saw on the TV–”

“That was a special kind of hell too, Michael,” she murmured, “But that’s not what I was talking about. Around ten hours ago, you had a seizure, your heart stopped–”

“Ah,” he blinked. He hadn’t realised that. “That explains why I feel like someone took a baseball bat to my ribs,” he muttered, absently rubbing his chest with his free hand.

“The CIA doctor wanted to give you an experimental drug,” she continued, “But Fiona and the others were against it since those people returned you to us, and they knew we couldn’t get our hands on things like that on short notice. So they all agreed to wait and see. An hour later, you stopped breathing–”

He hated the way her voice broke at the end. He couldn’t understand why James thought it was a great idea to drop him at home in his condition. Maybe it was another test of his to make sure that he really wasn’t a double agent. Either way, Michael resolved to have a word with him the next time he saw him.

The number on his right arm said that he would be checking in in the near future.

“I had a lot of crap in my system, Mom,” He murmured apologetically, “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“Anyway, Dr Sotto, that’s his name, I think, managed to restart your heart,” she said, patting his leg in a way that felt like she was trying to convince herself that he was actually there, “And later, when your reports came back, he said you were over the worst of it. It was bad, Michael.”

“It’s over now, Ma.”

“These people… why did they do this to you?”

“What day is it?”

“Thursday, the 22nd,” His mother replied, frowning at his seemingly random question.

“Well, that makes it eight days then,” he muttered to himself before gazing up at her again. “They took me to an old mansion on an island. Could have been here, even – I don’t know – and interrogated me. They tried to get inside my head. They wanted me to tell them everything.”

Her eyes widened at his frank admission. “You held out?” she whispered.

“Barely.” he admitted, unable to chase away the painful reminders of that terrible experience from flooding his mind, “The drugs they gave me – made me see things. I remembered moments I wanted to forget, the faces of people…”

She moved closer, and he felt her running a hand through his hair. It was then he realised that he had closed his eyes.

“Is that why you look so lost?” She asked, her voice quiet.

“I saw Dad.”

She grimaced. “I can imagine how hard that must have been.”

“Seeing him wasn’t the hard part, Ma.” He said, feeling at a loss on how to deal with that unwanted reality, “It was realising he was the only reason I survived.”

Chapter 23

Westen Residence
Miami

The long, hot shower had done wonders restoring Michael back to his old self. It had been an immense relief to get out of the sweat soaked clothes and change into a t-shirt and a pair of shorts, freshly laundered, and most importantly, his own.

It had been a while since he felt like a human, with the ability to think clearly without being constantly plagued by confusion and terror from a severely disoriented, fractured mind. For a while back there, he had truly begun to fear he would never regain clarity again.

A faint trace of nausea still lingered, along with the headache, which he knew was to be expected after recovering from all the drugs he had been injected with. He didn’t even remember whether they had fed him anything except for water. All of that led to a general feeling of weakness and a stomach that was still very much unsettled, which made the idea of eating something solid, even a yoghurt, a bit too much for the time being. The steaming mug of coffee he had before him on the table felt like a safer choice, and the first few cautious sips went down without too much resistance.

All in all, compared to the few horrible days he had lived through, he was in a much better place. The price he had been forced to pay was steep, but it was worth it. He now had access to the network, even though it was still conditional, which was the first part of the mission.

The familiar sound of squealing tires and a growling engine brought him back to the present from his reverie, and he felt his lips curl to the side. It seemed that Fiona was back from dropping Charlie off at kindergarten.

The smile he had on his face died when Fiona stormed inside the house, letting the front door bang closed loudly behind her. The blazing look in her eyes was more than enough warning that she was at the brink of an explosive breakdown.

“It’s not too late,” she announced resolutely without preamble, slapping the table surface with both of her palms. “I still have the ID and passport kit I got for you when we went to Cuba looking for you. Let’s just leave, right now, and not look back.”

Whatever Michael had been expecting, that was not it. It took him a moment to realise what she was actually suggesting.

“Fi–”

“Pearce would understand, wouldn’t she?” She let go of the table to pace around his mother’s living room like an agitated wild cat. “Officially, you’re dead and her cover job is done. As for this Sonya woman’s network, she has more than enough to go on by herself. There’s no need for you to go back there!”

“Fiona–”

“I watched you die, damn it!” She whirled around to glower at him with enough fury to match a volcano eruption. “Twice now!”

“I was told you all made the right call, Fi,” he said, keeping his voice soft in an attempt to calm her down, “Another new drug could have killed me for good. James, that’s the guy at the top, by the way, strikes me like a guy who’s every move is a test of sorts.”

“I don’t give a shit about how any of them operate, Michael,” she yelled. The rage in her voice did nothing to hide the despair and terror he knew she was truly feeling underneath. “I can’t keep watching you die like this!”

“I’m still here.”

“I know!”

Her words sounded more like a sob when she fell onto the chair next to his. Her anger seemed to have left her as abruptly as it had arrived, leaving her deflated.

“I’d like to keep it that way.” She mumbled in a barely audible tone.

“Leaving is not that simple, Fi,” Michael murmured quietly, “Before, it would have been just me. Now, everyone else is involved. If we run now, not only Pearce, but James and his entire organisation will be after us, and we’ll be on the run forever. If we get caught before we get killed, then we’ll all go to prison. I can’t let that happen.”

“If they keep testing you like this, there won’t be enough of you left to walk out once the job is done, Michael,” she said stubbornly, unwilling to back down.

“I have to see this through, Fi,” he said, holding her gaze with his own, letting her see the depth of that need and willing her to understand, “I didn’t survive all that fresh hell he put me through to give up now. Have a little faith in me.”

Her gaze softened when she leaned forward to take his hand in hers, “It’s not you I’m worried about, Michael,” she murmured, “I have all the faith in the world in you. But these people–”

“Are dedicated, loyal to each other and believe in what they do,” Michael interjected just as quietly, “And that makes them very dangerous. They answer to no one. There’s no one to hold them accountable for their actions and their consequences. They operate with absolutely no holds barred policies when it comes to getting their way. That’s why they need to be taken down.”

Fiona stared at him for a long moment, and her fingers tightened around his own as if on their own volition. Michael was quietly enjoying the warmth that seeped through to him through their shared contact. It was a simple, yet wonderful feeling.

The small smile that eventually broke out on her lips held an understanding and a promise. “Fine,” she breathed, before letting her voice sharpen. “I swear to God, Michael, if you get yourself killed, I’m going to find a way to bring you back so I can give you a piece of my mind. Know that it won’t be pretty or painless.”

Michael brought their joined hands up to his lips and placed a chaste kiss on her knuckles, grinning at her completely stunned expression.

“I’ll do my best, Fi,” he promised, “I’ve got a lot to live for. I haven’t forgotten.”

The Next Day

Dani knocked on the front door of Madeline’s house, and broke into a beaming smile when Michael opened the door to let her in. It was good to see him up and about, albeit still a little pale.

“Hey,’ she said, holding up a brown paper bag that contained a couple of cream cheese bagels. “I got your meds.”

“They smell nice,” Michael smirked and stepped aside to let her in. The guise was a necessary precaution they had to take in case he was still being watched.

The house was empty and quiet. Madeline and Michael’s nephew were out, as Michael had promised when he had contacted her, so they had the place to themselves for his detailed debrief.

“Coffee?” Michael asked over his shoulder, walking into the kitchen.

“Wouldn’t say no,” Dani said, and decided the dining room table would serve as their work space. “You sure you’re feeling better enough for this?”

“Yeah,” said Michael and returned with two steaming mugs which he placed in front of two chairs. “Let’s get it over with before I forget anything important.”

“Alright,” Dani nodded, and set up the recorder, her notepad and the laptop. She had to admit that what she was feeling was a mix of anticipation and dread, and she knew this debrief was going to be even more intriguing than their first. “Whenever you’re ready, then.”

Michael started from the beginning, and went on to describe his meeting with the initial contact, the less-than-warm reception inside the SUV and how he wasn’t even occupying any of them when the fleet of five identical SUVs slipped back into the traffic to throw off potential surveillance.

“Where were you then?”

“Inside a utility van with Sonya and three more armed guards,” Michael replied, “That was when she injected me with a sedative. Come to think of it, that probably contained the antidote to the virus they were going to kill me with later on.”

Dani made her notes with all the focus she could muster. Michael was a friend first before he was an asset. It had been hard to watch him suffer through that on live television. It was infinitely harder listening to him recounting his experience in such a low, emotionless monotone. She didn’t even want to imagine how it must have felt to go through it all by himself.

“Any chance you heard anything about the virus or the antidote?” she asked, mostly to distract herself.

“No, not even the name,” Michael said, “I didn’t know what was going on until the last minute. It was a bad shock for me too.”

Dani did a double take, horrified, “They didn’t warn you?”

Michael shook his head, shrugging, “All I had to go on was a fuzzy memory of Sonya telling me to keep my head down and let things happen, just before the drug knocked me out.”

“Jesus!” Dani cursed, and swallowed half her coffee in one go before wrenching her attention back to the debrief, “Then what happened?

“Woke up in a hotel room,” Michael said, and then frowned, “I can’t remember what the name of the place was.”

“Serenity Resort, Red bay, on the main island.”

Michael nodded, accepting that. “Two of the masked men dragged me out of the room to the conference room where the other seven hostages and the three hostiles were waiting,” he continued, “I never learned their names. All I know is that they spoke among themselves in a mix of Arabic and Farsi. Then they started calling out the names and crimes of everyone on the floor–”

“The names they gave matched with the doctors who were there,” Dani shared the information she had on the current investigation into that very public and very messy act of terrorism, “As for the alleged crimes they accused them of, the investigations are still ongoing. Some of the accusations seem to be true, though, especially the story in Lahore.”

“They started broadcasting just after we were all herded in there,” Michael said, picking up from where he left off, “I didn’t have time to learn anything other than what you all saw on the clip.”

“Do you know how they got you out?” Dani inquired. “They blew up the place almost at the same time the video clip ended.”

Michael took a few sips of his coffee, staring into the distance with an absent look in his eyes. “Bits and pieces,” he murmured after a while, a small frown marring his forehead, “I think I saw someone in a firefighter uniform and a gas mask? I think they carried me out through the flames. Pretty sure they came out of the wooden cupboard that was barricading the exit of that conference room.”

“The same person must have triggered the detonator,” Dani said, mostly to herself before addressing Michael again. “What happened after that?”

“Then I woke up on a couch in James’ dusty parlour.”

“James?”

“The guy who tortured me for a solid week before giving me his first name,” Michael said, his tone devoid of any emotion or inflection. “The man at the top of the pyramid.”

Dani clicked her pen, switched the recorder off and regarded Michael for a moment.

“Do you need a break?”

She felt rather apprehensive about having to make him live through what she knew was a traumatic experience, even though it had to be done. While she had been perfectly willing to give him all the time he needed, he had been the one to call and ask her to come to get it done. That still didn’t mean it was going to be an easy task for either of them.

“Nah,” Michael shook his head, and drank some more of his coffee, “Let’s keep going.”

Dani opened the paper bag she brought with her and moved it closer to his elbow, “Want one of these then?”

Michael contemplated for a moment, as if he was trying to figure out whether he was up to it.

“Yeah, sure, why not?” He said, shrugging, and took one out.

“Did Sam tell you about the old mansion that went up in flames on Star Island?” Dani asked as they both took a few minutes to enjoy the snack. “It was in today’s newspaper, too. A gas leak.”

“Yeah,” Michael replied, washing his bagel down with the last bit of his coffee. “I think he was onto something there. Could have been where they held me. The place had a wall of stone pitching at the edge of the property where it met the ocean, and a wooden pier with speedboat tied to it. The images prior to the fire looked very familiar.”

“So, this James is the kind of guy who’d just destroy a ten-million-dollar property just to get rid of evidence?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.” Michael remarked thoughtfully, “I mean, they didn’t stay this hidden for so long by being careless.”

Dani finished off her own bagel before switching the recorder on again. “What happened when you met James, Michael?”

For the next forty minutes or so, Michael described exactly what the interrogation session with the head of the organisation entailed. He told her all about the thorough questioning sessions, the disorientation and sensory overload techniques they exposed him to in between sessions to chip away his resistance and the repeated doses of drug injections. He also recounted how he had answered all the questions as truthfully as he could during the sessions, how he had struggled to keep focus in between hallucinations and how he had even been forced to admit to some deeper insights, regrets and rather painful truths about himself in order to gain James’ trust, to prove that he was exactly who he claimed he was.

As a senior agent with almost sixteen years with the agency, Dani had handled her fair share of assets and had conducted countless debriefs. She had sat through sessions for hours listening to all kinds of horror stories, and had even lived through some. Even she had to admit, Michael’s experience was one of the most gruelling ones she had ever had to listen to.

“How do you know you didn’t give up the mission?” Dani had to ask, since that was her job.

“Some terrible childhood memories kind of pushed me off the edge,” Michael said, rubbing a hand across his forehead tiredly. “I think I was at my limit, and I just shut down before he could keep probing into my remaining loyalties. When I woke up after that last session, Sonya came to fetch me in a hurry. She implied that I admitted to betraying them and that she had to get me out before he could kill me. I took a chance and went back. Confronted James with what I was fairly sure was true… that I didn’t break–”

“What did he do then?”

“He pulled a gun on me,” Michael replied, his words barely audible, “Said he could only trust a man without secrets. Then he put the gun away and shook my hand. Welcomed me to his family and gave me his name.”

He went quiet and still after that. The sickly pallor of his skin and slouching shoulders made him look completely worn out. Dani wordlessly collected their empty mugs and walked to the kitchen for refills. Coffee was hardly enough to combat the range of emotions that were warring with each other in her mind.

“Michael, where can I find something strong to spike this?” She asked over her shoulder, scanning Madeline’s pantry cupboards.

“Feel free to raid the liquor cabinet next to the dishwasher,” Michael threw back with a chuckle.

She found the good stuff and added a generous amount of the oldest bottle of whiskey she could find to her coffee. She left Michael’s mug undoctored since she knew his system was nowhere near in a condition to entertain alcoholic beverages just yet.

“You realise you could have died either way, right?” She remarked as she settled back in her chair.

“It was a calculated risk,” Michael said, wrapping both his hands around his mug with a nod of thanks. “I still had some mental faculties left to see it through.”

“I don’t have enough words to describe how glad I am that you did,” she said sincerely, trying her best to come to terms with how close they had come to permanently losing him. “I wouldn’t have been very pleased with you if you had washed up on the beach and I had to ID you.”

“Yeah,’ he said, smiling faintly, “I’ve been catching some heat over dying too many times on the op–”

Dani smirked. She could imagine how his friends and his mother must have reacted when he finally woke up. They were a tight bunch.

“So it would be for the best if you put a stop to that bad habit from now on,” she said teasingly. A quick look at her wrist watch told her the entire debrief had taken close to two hours. She had more than enough work to do with the information in Michael’s debrief, while he recuperated and waited until James made contact.

“Oh, one more thing,” she said, remembering that there was something she had to update him on, “Jesse’s been monitoring the new account number you came back with,” she nodded at his arm which was now free of tattoo ink, “We’ve been watching over his shoulder. Nothing yet.”

Michael’s expression twisted into a grimace as she watched. “Apart from all the fake killing, drugging and torturing, I have a feeling James is very invested in the well-being of his people,” he observed, “He’ll give me some time to recover before calling on me for a job.”

“You sound sure.” Dani raised an eyebrow.

That earned her a faint smile. “He wasn’t the only one learning things during those sessions.”

14-3
13th Street
Little Gables
Miami

Back in his place at Little Gables, Michael stared at the innocuous columns of numbers on the screen of his laptop, wondering what kind of a hellish surprise would be waiting in the wings this time. It had been two weeks since his return from the madman’s clutches, and now he had a summons for another meeting.

On the one hand, the more contact he made, their chances at cornering the paranoid bastard increased. But the downside was that he always had to show up for heavily compartmentalised missions armed with nothing but copious amounts of faith and healthy doses of luck – two things Michael hated depending on out in the field.

“Is that a message or did you just get paid?” Sam popped the cap of his beer and dropped heavily on the chair next to his before peering over his shoulder.

“Both.”

“What do they mean?”

“Latitude and a longitude,” Michael replied, pulling up a digital map with the corresponding location highlighted, “It’s a cafe in Hialeah about ten miles from here, in an hour.”

“Shit timing,” Sam cursed and tipped the bottle back to finish half of it in one long swallow, “Not much time to set up a snatch and grab, is it?”

“Nope,” Michael agreed, and got up to stretch his back with a series of loud pops. “I have a feeling James won’t be showing up anyway. The place is too public, and too exposed. Probably be another dead drop or one of his guards–”

He grabbed the phone off the table, intending to make the call to Pearce to let her know. But the phone started ringing before he could dial.

“I saw the numbers,” she said. They were monitoring the account from the field office back in Miami Dade county, “What does it mean?”

“It’s a location in Hialeah,” Michael replied, and recited the coordinates for the exact location, “I’ve gotta be there in an hour–”

“Will James be there?”

“Or one of his people. Not sure.”

“Fine,” Pearce said, frustration evident in her tone at the tight time frame, “I’ll be there with a team in forty five. Are you going by yourself?”

“Sam’s with me. He’ll drop me off.”

“Okay,” she said. “And, Michael, try not to disappear without a trace on us again, will you? That’s starting to get annoying.”

“Alright,” Michael said, smiling, “I’ll see what I can do. No promises though.”

“Or you could shoot the bastard in the head and save us all the trouble,” Sam said nonchalantly after wiping the last traces of the beer off his lips with the back of his hand.

Michael was pocketing his phone after the call ended, and Sam’s words caused him to look up and stare at his friend in shock. It was kind of hard to believe that this was the same man who had almost bitten his head off for killing Tom Card. Maybe his mother did have a point, Michael reflected, a lot had changed during the time he had been gone.

“You just sounded like Fi.” He said when he realised Sam was staring back at him with a defiant, unapologetic glare.

“As disturbing as the notion is, I stand by my point.” His friend shrugged.

“I get it, Sam,” he said quietly. But it was already too late to back out of the job, even though it was shaping up to be something far more unpredictable and dangerous than any of them had imagined. “Killing James isn’t the mission, is it? We’ll never learn how far and deep his network runs that way. We have to bring him in alive.”

Café Caliente
Hialeah,
Miami

They made it to Café Caliente half an hour before the meeting was supposed to happen, and Michael went inside while Sam chose to stay in the parked car, just outside where he had a good view of the entrance. He knew Pearce and her team would set up several blocks back when they arrived, out of sight, so they wouldn’t run the risk of being detected.

Michael chose a table near the window where he had a good view of the street below, and settled in to wait. A waitress with a cheerful smile placed a steaming mug of black coffee in front of him before he even opened his mouth to ask for one.

His phone rang a few minutes later. Michael put on his bluetooth earpiece and answered the call.

“Sam.”

“Pearce just arrived,” Sam said. “Her team is setting up now. They want me to tell you to be on your toes. They plan to move in for a take down if James shows up.”

Michael understood why Sam sounded on edge then, and he had to agree. “That’s a rush job.”

“I know. Pearce didn’t sound very happy either, but she was overruled by her bosses when they learned you were making contact. There are two ground support teams deploying to cover your location right now.”

“Got it.”

There were few things riskier than taking down a high priority target during a meeting in a public place. You usually operated alone, out of radio contact, and surrounded by civilians, while your support stayed out of sight until the best opportunity to strike presented itself. The hardest part of the job was that, until the target showed up, your job was to just sit there and try to act natural, since you weren’t just there to set the trap, but also to be the bait.

“Stay on the line as long as you can. They are tapped into our call.”

“I will, Sam.”

“How’s the food there? The smell is killing me over here.”

“I don’t know,” Michael said, sipping his coffee to hide a grin at Sam’s obvious frustration, “I haven’t ordered anything.”

“Have you ever had Cuban shredded fried beef, Mike? You should if you haven’t. I can tell you–”

Before his friend could get into all the details of what made that particular cuisine so wonderful, the waitress from earlier arrived at his table carrying a steaming pot of coffee.

“You got stood up, sweetheart?” She asked with a sympathetic smile as she topped up his hardly touched coffee.

“No,” he said, returning her smile, “I’m just early.”

“A customer found your phone, hun,” she said, pulling out a phone that was almost identical to the one he had in his jacket pocket. “You must have dropped it when you came in.”

“My phone?” He frowned, making no move to take the one she had in her hand, “Can’t be.”

The waitress chuckled. “Sweetheart, I’m pretty sure it is.”

She turned the screen around so he could take a look. Sure enough, the lock-screen was a photo of him, his mom and Charlie sitting on their front porch. A chill ran down his spine when he realised the photo was taken only the day before when he had visited his mother’s home in the evening.

“Sweet, little boy.” The waitress continued, unaware of his unease, “Is he yours?”

“He’s my nephew,” he said, and took the phone from her with a nod, “And, uh, yes, this is my phone. Thank you.”

“Mike?”

“I’m getting a call on the phone that was just delivered to me.” Michael said as the new phone started ringing. “I’ve gotta take this.”

“They are trying to trace it now.” Sam updated him. “Keep him talking, Mike.”

“A little late, James.” Michael said in lieu of greeting.

“I believe I’m right on time, Michael.” The man on the line said calmly.

“I thought we would have a face-to-face.”

“Don’t worry. We will.”

Michael closed his eyes and cursed in the privacy of his mind. He had a bad feeling he was going to have to annoy Pearce and worry his friends again.

“Let me guess. You’re changing the venue.” He sighed.

“There’s a car waiting at the corner of Collins and 7th.” James said. “It leaves in two minutes.”

Shit, Michael cursed again when he realised that he was almost a mile away from the location he was given. “What if I don’t make it?

“You will.” Was all he got before the line went dead.

“Mike, they couldn’t get a trace,” he heard Sam’s voice in his ear as he practically flew down the stairs and out through the kitchen amidst shocked and angry yelling, “What the hell’s going on? What is all that noise?”

“There’s a car waiting for me at the corner of Collins and 7th and I have about a minute and fifty seconds to make it.” Michael gasped into the air as he ran like a madman through the back alley to get to Coral Plaza.

“Shit, the team’s going to lose you, Mike, most of them are out of position–”

“I can’t miss this ride. Tell them to do what they can.”

“Mike, hey–”

“Gotta go Sam.” Michael said before cutting the call on the run. He had a deadline to beat and he needed all the focus and energy towards making it on time.

Overwatch

“Jesus Christ,” Dani cursed, and scanned the feeds they had on the streets around them for a glimpse of Michael.

“There he goes,” Shawn, the tech to her right, snapped and pointed at the feed they had from a traffic cam at a ‘T’ junction. “He’s running south on the 5th–”

Dani heard an engine firing to life on one of the sedans over the comms before a curt report came in. “Alpha team on it.”

“He just cut onto Main.” Dani updated the team just as Michael crossed the road without bothering to slow down. Several cars had to slam on their brakes and veer off to the sides to avoid running him over. She heaved a sigh of relief when none of the vehicles hit each other or any unfortunate bystanders.

“I’ve got a visual.”

She had to divert her attention from the near disaster back to the chase again when another hurried voice cut in through the comms.

“He’s taking the stairs at Coral Plaza. We’re cut off. Rerouting now.”

“Don’t lose him!” she barked, cursing the creative, yet very untrackable routes Michael was taking to make his deadline. “Bravo, where are you?”

“Heading north on Grant, ma’am.” The other two-man team in the second car reported over more sounds of squealing tires and angry horn blares. “We can’t see him.”

“He just cut out of a garage onto Bayview.” Dani said when she saw Michael suddenly come running up the flight of stairs on the opposite side of the plaza on their feed.

“We’re two blocks away, en route.” The Alpha team broke in.

“Where is he?” The split second she had taken her eyes off the feeds, the man had disappeared from view.

“Went underneath the bridge ma’am,” Shawn reported after a few long seconds when none of the six screens offered a glimpse of their elusive target. “We lost visual.”

“Who’s got him?” Dani called over the comms, feeling the same frustration she had felt back in the Bahamas all over again, “Somebody tell me we have eyes on Michael Westen.”

None of the ground teams had anything encouraging to report, just as she knew they wouldn’t.

“We lost him, ma’am. He’s gone.”

Unknown Location

24 Hours later

It was another mansion, one that actually looked somewhat lived in compared to the one where he had first met James. But, just as the last time, Michael had absolutely no idea where he was, save for the vague feeling that he had been travelling for just over twenty four hours to get to this place.

James seemed to have a preference for beaches, Michael reflected as he breathed in the crisp, salty air in the early evening breeze. Beyond the massive mansion with three wings that stood imposingly before him, he could see the rippling blue ocean. The courtyard that surrounded the living complex was in much better condition than the one of the previous mansion, with well-maintained flower beds, palm fronds and water fountains, instead of an overgrown thicket. None of the surroundings managed to offer any concrete clues about its whereabouts, however.

The man came down a winding staircase just as Michael was escorted to the foyer by the two men who had been his constant companions since he had gotten into the armoured car with tinted windows back in Hialeah.

“Michael. Welcome,” James greeted him with a smile that seemed quite genuine, and shook his hand with a sure grip. “How was your trip?”

For a spy, the strain of a deep cover assignment went beyond just being alone, surrounded by enemies who would kill you if they knew your identity. If you wanted to survive, you couldn’t afford to let any of that strain show. You had to project total confidence, total comfort, and greet your enemies like old friends.

“Car, boat, helicopter, car again,” Michael replied easily with a sideways grin, “You didn’t want to throw a train in for good measure?”

“It’s not a bad idea.” James chuckled, and put an arm around his shoulder to lead him towards the kitchen where a steaming pot of coffee was already waiting for them on the dining table. “Talk to logistics. See what they can do.”

Michael took the seat he was offered, and looked around pointedly, “A lot of trouble to get to– where am I, exactly?”

James opened up a cupboard to their left and found two ceramic mugs. “Wherever you go, there you are. Michael.” He said sagely and started pouring coffee for them both.

“Buckaroo Banzai,” Michael said, and made no move to take the mug the man placed before him on the table. “I did everything you wanted me to do – gave you access to my entire history, made a spectacle of myself on live TV and then passed your little loyalty test. Yet, you bug my mother’s house, lead me around with an invisible leash, change meeting places last minute, and kidnap me right off of the streets…why do I get the sense you still don’t trust me?”

James studied him contemplatively for a moment before answering.

“Well, your resourceful friends took care of the bugs,” he said, sounding somewhat amused by the fact, “They were quite worried about you, understandably. I just wanted to make sure you were in good hands until you fully recuperated from your rather unpleasant yet necessary ordeal.”

“I slept for two days straight. I’m fine now,” Michael replied, “You didn’t recruit a broken toy, James.”

“Of course not, Michael, you’re not broken,” James was quick to assure him. “Just a little lost. That’s why I had to dig deep to understand the core of you, what makes you tick, before letting you into the fold. As for the rest of the inconveniences, I’m afraid they are a necessary evil, considering who you were in your past life. You can never be too careful who’s watching. As for trusting you, you wouldn’t be within a hundred miles of this place if I didn’t trust you.”

“Then why keep me in the dark?”

“You spent your whole life in the dark working for the CIA,” James said and smiled benevolently before taking a sip of his coffee. “I’m just turning on the lights.”

“Are you?” Michael challenged, “Because from where I stand, it looks like you’re threatening me with what’s on the line if I fail– I’m here voluntarily, because I want to be here. I can live with paranoia, but you need to stay away from my family.”

James ducked his head and let out a long exhale before looking up at him again. “You misunderstood me, Michael,” he murmured quietly, almost apologetically, “I should have realised that you might not see it the way I intended.”

“Which is what exactly?” Michael narrowed his eyes.

“When you’re a part of my organisation, everyone that matters to you becomes a part of it too,” James said passionately, “And I protect my own. Sometimes the steps I take to do that may seem extreme, but I make no apologies for that. Life with us won’t be easy, or without its dangers, and if I’m having your friends and family watched, that is for their protection, because that’s the most important thing to you.”

Michael held the conviction in his gaze with his own, knowing he could believe each and every word that was said. It was crystal clear in that same gaze that the opposite was absolutely true too, that if he were to betray James’ trust, that protection would very quickly turn into complete annihilation.

He nodded firmly after a moment, wordlessly accepting James’ voiced explanation and the silent one.

“Now that we have an understanding, let’s talk about why you’re here,” James said, and went to retrieve the thick folder that was resting on the countertop behind them.

Michael opened the file and skimmed the contents with interest. It was a very thorough dossier of a prominent government official in the Dominican Republic.

“Nice.” He said, admiring the amount of comprehensive information presented in the file, “A very…thorough job.”

“In my experience, all you need to get things done is the right plan, right people and right amount of information,” James remarked and pointedly nodded at the coffee mug Michael still hadn’t touched, “Good cup of coffee doesn’t hurt either.”

Michael took the hint, and finally took a sip. He hadn’t lied. It was a fantastic blend.

“Do you know what I find intriguing about you, Michael?”

When he looked up, it was to find James studying him with an inquisitive gaze. “What?”

“Even after all this time, after everything you’ve seen, everything you’ve done… you still have a soul.”

“I don’t understand,” Michael frowned, wondering where he was going.

“Let me ask you something,” James said, “In your career, how many times have you had to execute an action that you knew was morally wrong for the mission? You made a deal with someone who you knew was a monster because you had to follow orders?”

Michael sighed, and closed his eyes. While he had held onto the one thing that mattered the most, preventing James from realising his true intentions, he had paid for it by letting the man pry freely into his deepest, innermost thoughts, emotions and demons…what made him tick.

As a result, now there were things James knew and understood about him, and that opened him up to manipulation in a way that made him truly uncomfortable. There was nothing he could do about it, however, since that was a price that came attached to deep cover missions.

“Too many times.” He murmured quietly before opening his eyes again.

“I was the same, once,” James admitted, his tone bitter, “Then one day I was done with that. I can’t fight and bleed for men without principle anymore. That’s why I’ve created this network… To be the conscience, to do the right thing. Now, when we find a monster, we don’t make a deal with it. We destroy it. Is that a purpose you’d be interested in?”

Michael held his gaze for a moment before smiling, “I wouldn’t be within a hundred miles of this place if I wasn’t.”

“Well…” James said, and nodded at the file Michael still had in his hand, “There’s your first monster. Marco Cabral. He was brought up in the DR, educated in England. Came back home and got himself a job.”

“Head of the Dominican Narcotics Police.” Michael said. That was the first thing he had noticed.

“Correct.” James nodded, “He’s also the DR’s biggest drug smuggler. He used his position to slaughter his rivals, exploit the less fortunate, and take over.”

“The file says he’s made a deal–”

“Yes, with the Brits. He gets a very comfortable retirement in England in exchange for his intelligence network. I want you to get to him first and I want you to bring him to me.”

“Alright.”

“Any resources you need will be provided,” James continued, “This operation has to be precise, quiet, under the radar. Usually, I’d send you with one of our seasoned operatives. But, since I did have you kidnapped off of the streets again, worrying your friends, I’d let you take one of them with you instead.”

Michael let his lips curl to the side in a faint grin, accepting the olive branch for what it was. “That’ll work.”

“And there’s one last thing,” James’ voice went low and heavy in a way that drew Michael’s complete attention to him. “I know your introduction to us was not the most enticing, and you were just a means to an end for us at the beginning. Yet, as fate would have it, Burke died, and you found your way to us. Before he embarked on the operation to save Sonya, he was working on this in the DR, and all of that you hold in your hand is the result of his dedication and diligence. Maybe you could finish what he started, as a way of forgiving him for what he did to you…”

Michael closed the file before looking up to meet James’ gaze with a serious one of his own, letting his expression convey genuine emotion to the best of his ability, “I’d also do it as a way of thanking him for letting me find you too.”

CIA Field Office
The Federal Aviation Administration Centre
Miami Dade county

Dani Pearce replaced the receiver back in its cradle slowly, carefully, and with monumental self restraint when all she wanted to do was slam it on repeatedly until it was reduced to its basic atoms. It was the fifth call from Langley she had fielded within the past hour – two from the HQ itself and three rerouted from different intelligence agencies – and all of them had questions she couldn’t answer and demands she had no realistic way of fulfilling.

It was three days since Michael’s disappearance for the second time since he had signed the contract, third if she counted when he was taken by Burke’s hired hit squad back in Cuba, and it was becoming a headache-inducing side effect of the operation already.

Yet, it was the hard reality of a deep cover infiltration op. She was his handler, and as such, had to sit back on the sidelines, out of sight, and let Michael wade into the enemy territory by himself. She couldn’t afford to hound him at his heels like a shadow, and risk being seen, thereby exposing his cover, which would ultimately get him killed.

Besides, she had a lot more work to do. The information she received from Michael after their run in with the Collective was still being analysed, and already there were discoveries and patterns emerging the more they dived into money trails around Lebedenko’s operational funds.

It also served as a great distraction from wondering what was happening to Michael, whether he had been called for a job or another public execution, for real this time. But keeping the impatient, demanding bosses off their backs, who were starting to act as if they had never run a deep cover operation before, was starting to wear on her nerves.

One of her techs finally appeared in front of her workstation with a triumphant smile and a file, “Ma’am, here’s the final analysis.”

“Tell me we have something.” Dani took the report and took a look, feeling impatient herself. She desperately needed an avenue to pursue other than worrying what type of international incident James would have Michael stir up as his first job for the network,

“We do,” said Price, and nodded at the file, “It’s all organised by date, going back eight years. The pattern is clear.”

She felt a smile threatening to break out when she saw what she was looking at. Finally, they actually had something tangible on the elusive man. “Same account, same amount… like clockwork,” Dani said, skimming the columns of numbers and the transfers to a number of mental hospitals all over the country. “Good. Good work.”

Her phone rang just as the tech left, and she answered it within the first ring when she saw who was calling.

“Hey, Jesse, any news? Where is he?”

“In the DR,” Jesse said, knowing exactly what she was asking, “He wants Sam to meet him in Santo Domingo.”

“What’s the job?”

“Don’t know,” Jesse sighed over the line, “He couldn’t get into details. He was being watched. Said he’ll fill Sam in when he gets there.”

“When’s Axe leaving?”

“In a couple of hours.”

“Alright,” Dani said, “He’ll call when he can. In the meantime, we have an op of our own. We’ve been quite busy going over the financial records you guys stole from the Collective–”

“You have a new lead?”

“We do.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“It’s not what, it’s who,” she said, looking at the hardly detailed bio page in her file. “Looks like James has a friend in Mississippi. A mental patient. He’s been paying his bills for years.”

“Really? Why?” Jesse asked, sounding just as intrigued as Dani felt. “What’s– what’s so special about the guy?”

“Well, that’s what we are going to find out,” she said, “Why don’t you and Fiona help me do that?”

“You know what, why not?” Jesse replied, “Can’t let Sam and Mike have all the fun, can we?”

“That’s the spirit. I’ll text you the details of your flight in a couple of hours.”

“Sure. I’ll go find Fi.”

Chapter 24

Sam Axe got out of the cab and almost stepped on a rooster that waddled away angrily after pecking him in the shin. The driver got out to bang on the trunk, which opened reluctantly at the vigorous pounding to release Sam’s carry-on from its hold.

The car rumbled away, leaving him in a cloud of dust, and twenty dollars poorer, a fare akin to a highway robbery as far as Sam was concerned. Even though the address Michael texted him was only about fifteen miles away from the Las Americas International airport, the afternoon traffic and the general poor conditions of the roads had made the journey stretch for an arduous hour and a half.

After making sure he was out of range of more poultry with attitude issues, Sam gave his abused back a good stretch. His spine and neck realigned with a series of cracks and pops that left him groaning in relief.

The place he was supposed to meet Michael was located in an L shaped, three-story apartment building. The small fruit stand, the bunch of playing kids, the lines of drying clothing and the few locals aimlessly milling about all pointed to the fact that most of the building was already occupied.

“Anybody home?” He knocked on the door of 311, gasping like a dying man after climbing three flights of stairs in the ninety degree heat. He was not a stranger to tropical weather, or humidity, but it seemed that he had gotten used to a lot of the creature comforts being a billionaire’s special friend had provided.

“Hey, Sam,” Michael opened the door to let him in. Sam felt Michael’s gaze giving him a careful once-over as he made it to the nearest chair to collapse. Michael went over to his fridge to fetch him a beer. “Here.”

“Thanks,” Sam said, and finished half of the cold brew in one long gulp. It was nowhere near his usual preferences, but it still felt heavenly going down his parched throat.

“Alright?”

“Yeah, I’ll live.” Sam said, and glanced around.

It was a small studio-like apartment. To his left, there was a kitchen, and a closed door, which he guessed was the bedroom. In front of him was a dining table with three chairs. Apart from the sofa he was sprawled on and the single couch Michael was sitting on, there was no other furniture. A small door to his right was half open, giving him a glimpse of the tiny bathroom.

His raised eyebrow was met with a small nod from his friend, which told Sam that they needed to be careful about what they said and did in this place. They were being watched.

“You know,” Sam said casually, slowing down to sip the rest of his beer, “This act your new boss is pulling – grabbing you outta streets in broad daylight and dropping you in shitholes in nowhere – It’s starting to wear on our nerves, buddy.”

“I know,” Michael said, smiling faintly, “I’m still the new guy. James needs to know if he can trust me first.”

Sam looked around, hoping they were watching, and listening, so that they could see exactly how serious he was, “As long as he remembers that trust is a two-way street.”

“I’m sure it’ll all work out fine, Sam.”

“So, you sent summons, and here I am,” he said, and set the empty beer bottle aside, “Do I get to learn why I’m here?”

“We have a job,” said Michael, and handed him a thick binder, “A snatch and grab.”

Sam took his time going over the file, while Michael stayed silent, giving him time to learn and absorb what exactly they were there to do.

“I’m not sure if I want in on this op, Mike,” Sam said after a long moment, playing the part of a reluctant, unconvinced friend, “We are talking about screwing up an extradition deal run by MI6 here, as in the security service of our closest ally.”

“They’re giving a drug smuggler a comfortable retirement,” Michael replied with just the right amount of zeal for a burned-spy-on-the-way-to-turn-traitor. “You read the file, Sam. Cabral has killed entire families. They may be our ally, but they are making a deal with a monster just so they can get their hands on his network. I’m not gonna lose sleep over this.”

“Well, when you put it like that…” Sam shrugged, figuring it was going to have to be Pearce’s problem to deal with the aftermath. “So what’s the plan?”

“Cabral is supposed to have his final sit-down with MI6 at a restaurant in his hotel,” Michael said, showing him a catalogue of a luxury resort. During the three days he had been missing, it seemed that Michael had been laying the groundwork for the operation.

‘Well, can we take him there?”

“That’s the idea, Sam,” Michael said, and then hesitated, “The challenge is that James wants this done quietly and we won’t have a team.”

“So a direct grab is out, then.”

“Our best bet is to beat MI6 to the punch and offer Cabral a better deal.”

“Are you sure that’s gonna fly?” He asked, unconvinced about the approach Michael was proposing, “Because, according to the file, he’s been talking to our friends across the ditch for a year. Why would he jump ship now?”

Michael walked over to the kitchen area to retrieve a silver briefcase from one of the cupboards. Then he brought it over and opened in on the table, giving Sam a good look at the contents inside.

“Well,” Sam muttered, staring at the neat bundles of hundred dollar bills, “That’s a start.”

“We’ll delay the British team with a fake bomb threat at the embassy,” Michael said, closing the case, “You’ll go in, make the offer, and I’ll cover you from the street.”

“Okay,” said Sam, wondering what else James had provided in the way of resources, “And you’ll cover me with…”

Maichael walked over to the closed door he had guessed was the bedroom when he let his voice trail off.

“Anything you want.” Michael said, and opened the door to reveal a bed that had been turned into a temporary armoury.

“That’s a lot of guns, Mikey,” Sam let out a whistle. The assortment of sniper rifles, machine guns, pistols and ammunition for all of them was a truly impressive sight.

“Should make our lives a bit easier.”

Sam turned his gaze away from the weapons and back to his friend, grinning, “You know, Fi’s going to be upset that you didn’t ask her over to play with these new and shiny toys.”

It was quite entertaining to watch how the colour drained a little from his friend’s face as he realised the implication of the possible oversight he may have committed. Fiona tended to take it very personally when she was excluded from anything that involved explosives, or guns with over a thousand five hundred yard ranges.

“Sam,” Michael said, pinning him with a pleading look, “You’re my best friend–”

“Of course,” Sam said, ginning wider.

“Let’s not maybe tell her about this part.”

Sam chuckled, and patted his best friend on the shoulder reassuringly, “Anything for you, Mike.”

Spring Hill Psychiatry Hospital
Biloxi
Mississippi

The Next Day

“Welcome to Biloxi,” said Pearce. She was waiting for them at the entrance of the Institute. “Hope you enjoyed the flight.”

“Yeah, not so much,” Jesse launched into the same harangue Fiona had been forced to endure the entire two hours of flight. “All your secret budgets, you can’t spring for a bigger plane? I’ve been in bumper cars with more legroom than that thing.”

“I’ll bring it up with Congress,” Pearce said seriously before handing them both two files. “Here’s the situation. Officially, our person of interest was transferred here for an outpatient procedure. We’ll do the interrogation in one of the surgery rooms and ship him back.”

Fiona opened the file and took a look. The subject was a dark-haired man in his late forties, about six feet in height and two hundred pounds in weight.

“Don’t we have a name?” She frowned when she couldn’t find one.

“We have about fifty,” Pearce said as she led them towards the reception. “Every time he got moved to another institution for the criminally insane, he got a new file and a new I.D. For now, he’s John Doe.”

“I’m not liking the ‘criminally insane’ thing,” Fiona said, making a face at the file, “Is he dangerous?”

“We have to assume he is,” Pearce replied, “He’s been in isolation on a double dose of Haldol since as far back as the records go. We’ve been taking him down off the drug since this morning.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Jesse frowned, “This guy’s got a special forces tattoo. I prefer my trained killers on the sleepy side.”

“I agree,” said Pearce, “But, we can’t have him zoned out and drooling when he needs to answer our questions. I’ll lead the interrogation, but I want you two backing me up. Filling in any blanks with what you know about James.”

The moment they entered the reception area, however, things took a turn for the worse, starting with a sudden alarm that blared into life, followed by frantic calls on the public address system for support.

“Code grey, code grey. Security to the west wing nurse’s station. Code grey.”

“West wing,” Jesse said, and had to jump out of the way to let a running security guard pass them, “Why do I have a feeling that’s where they’re keeping our man?”

Pearce cursed and took off after the guards, urging both Fiona and Jesse to follow her at her heels. When they got to the nurse’s station, they were greeted by a male nurse on the floor with a bleeding head wound, a doctor kneeling next to him, and an abandoned gurney, ominously devoid of an occupant.

“What happened?” Pearce asked the doctor as the hospital security started to surround them, “Where’s John Doe?”

“We were escorting him to the holding room, and somehow he got out of his restraints.” the doctor snapped hurriedly before turning to bark at the nearest nurse. “We need to take him to a CAT scan right away…”

Pearce stepped away to let them take care of the injured nurse. “We have to find him now,” she said, “If he gets out of this hospital–”

“You need to lock this place down.” Jesse said.

“The CIA is not officially here. If I order a lockdown, and the word gets out, we could expose the entire operation.”

Fiona knew she had a point. They could get both Michael and Sam killed if James found out that the CIA was sniffing around one of his men.

“We’re not gonna catch a Special Forces operative with hospital security.” Jesse added, glancing around in frustration.

“How about a quarantine alert?” Fiona asked, “You could contact the CDC, tell them there’s an Anthrax outbreak or something, can’t you? That’s the only way to lock this place down.”

Pearce stared at her for a moment, visibly weighing options before nodding once sharply. “All right, I’ll make the call.”

The Dominican Republic

When operating in third-world countries, a dollar was usually a lot more useful than a bullet. In a place where the government operated on bribes and connections, a lot got done with a nice suit and a bag of cash.

“Okay, Mike, I’m in place.”

Sam’s voice was clear through the ear piece. Through the crosshairs of the SVD Dragunov, Michael could see Sam sitting by one of the outside tables, dressed in an expensive, tailored suit. The briefcase full of cash rested on top of the table, next to a large bottle of champagne nestled inside a bucket full of ice.

“Any sign of Her Majesty’s secret service?”

“No.” said Michael, “MI6 has not approached the hotel. The lockdown at the British embassy is working.”

“Good, it sounds like our suspicious package did its trick.” Sam snorted, “And just so you know, I’m letting your spy friends buy me the good champagne. You know, just to help sell the cover I.D.”

“Knock yourself out, Sam.” Michael said, and watched as his friend proceeded to fill his second glass as he waited for their target to show up.

“Looks like we’re good to go. Cabral is right on time,” Sam said the same moment Michael saw the Humvee pulling up to the entrance. “You got me covered?”

“Yeah, Sam. I got a view of the entire courtyard.”

The driver stayed inside while four well-armed guards jumped out to scatter around the Humvee, creating a safety perimeter. Cabral only got out when one of his men signalled the all-clear. It was obvious to Michael that Cabral was taking all the precautions of a man who knew he was marked for death.

Their target walked over to where Sam was waiting, his security detail flanking his every step in a neat circle.

“Senor Cabral. Welcome,” Michael saw Sam getting up and extending a hand in welcome. “Encantado de conocerte, as I believe your countrymen say.”

Cabral frowned, and looked around without making a move to shake Sam’s hand. His four men closed ranks around him instantly, their guns pointing upwards in Sam’s direction, almost instinctively responding to their primary’s suspicion.

“What’s going on?” Cabral’s polished, British accent flowed over the comms. “Where are the British–”

“Oh, your British friends,” Sam waved a hand, and went back to casually sprawling on his seat again, “Well, they’ve been, um, delayed. I was hoping we’d have a little chat before they got here.”

“Who are you? And how do you know about–”

“About your arrangement with MI6? Well, let’s just say I make it my business to know such things,” Sam chuckled, and leaned back to gulp down more champagne before focusing his attention on Cabral with a serious expression. “I’ll get right to the point. My name is Charles Finley and I represent a major conglomerate with interest in the Caribbean. We were told that you’re looking for a fresh start. So we’d like to make an offer.”

“An offer, you say.” Cabral said softly. Michael could see he was intrigued, but the caution still remained.

“Yes, a very generous offer. Stock options, company housing, a seven-figure retainer per year, and that’s just to start–

“Interesting,” Cabral nodded and smiled. “Tell me something, Mr. Finley. What does a consortium like yours want with a man like me?”

“Well, we’re moving into this region and we need someone with influence, connections…” Sam said easily, “Someone who isn’t afraid to, as they say, get their hands a little bloody.”

“I’ve found that blood always washes right off.” Cabral’s shark-like grin widened.

“See?” Sam matched Cabral’s grin with a bright, cheerful one of his own, “Now, that’s the positive attitude we’re looking for.”

“You make big promises, Mr. Finley. Tell me why I should believe a word you say.”

Sam opened the briefcase with a dramatic flair and pointed at the bundles of cash sitting inside. “How about a million reasons? And that’s just the signing bonus. That’s yours right now if you go with us instead of MI6.”

“That is very tempting.” Cabral remarked, and Michael watched his gaze rake over the dollar bills before reluctantly going back to focus on Sam again. “But you know what’s more tempting? I take your money… and I go with MI6.”

Two of his guards stepped forward and aimed their rifles at Sam’s head while the other two flanked him on the sides.

“Remember, Mr. Finley,” Cabral smiled, as if to say ‘checkmate’, “I’m not afraid to get my hands bloody.”

Sam kept his own gaze on Cabral, not in the least fazed by the gun barrels pointing down at him. “Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Senor Cabral.”

That was his cue. Michael took a deep breath and focused. The wind hadn’t changed, but his target had. He made the minor corrections to his aim and waited.

“Oh, no?” Cabral said mockingly, convinced that he was about to make easy money,“And why not?”

Michael figured it was his turn to answer the drug dealer. He applied very light pressure on the hair trigger of his sniper rifle. The neck of the champagne bottle that was slightly peeking out of the bucket exploded. Since he had taken the shot from the same direction Sam was sitting, but from above him, the shattered glass rained on Cabral and his men, leaving his friend unharmed.

Cabral’s men reacted fast, and moved in closer to shield him with their own bodies. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get a clean line of sight on Michael, who was perched behind the wall of the balcony above them.

“You see, you could kill me, but then my sniper would have to kill you.” Sam said calmly, drawing Cabral’s attention back to him. “And that sounds like a bad start to a great business relationship.” He then placed his empty glass on the table, and grabbed the briefcase before standing up, signalling the end of the meeting. “Well, you’ve got my number. When you change your mind, you give me a call.”

Spring Hill Psychiatry Hospital

“Bought us one more hour of our quarantine.” Pearce said as she peered over Jesse’s shoulder to check the surveillance feeds. All three of them were at the security station of the Spring Hill psychiatry hospital, trying to figure out where their target had gone. “But we gotta wrap this up fast. What do we have?

“Well, the good news is he hasn’t left the building,” Jesse reported, “We have cameras at every exit, and nothing’s come in or out since the lockdown.”

“Have we swept all the floors yet?”

“Well, that’s the bad news. Security’s combed every inch, and there’s no sign of him.”

“What, he just disappeared?” Pearce frowned. “I mean, where did he go?”

“That’s what we were trying to find out,” Jesse said, and turned to the man seated to his right, manipulating the feeds. “Run it.”

The tech did as he was asked, and started playing back the feeds from the last hour in a faster loop while the three of them watched.

“Stop it there,” Jesse said suddenly, and the tech paused the feed. “Check that out. Run it at normal speed.”

“Third floor security corridor camera picks him up going all the way down the hall.” Fiona said as she saw what had caught Jesse’s attention. “And then poof. Kills the feed.”

“The only place he could’ve gone from there is the roof.” The tech added helpfully.

“But, if this guy’s hiding on the roof, why would he wait until he got all the way to the access door to kill the camera?” Pearce muttered, rubbing her forehead.

“He’s been sedated. Maybe he’s not thinking straight?” Jesse guessed.

“Or he wants us to think he’s up there,” Fiona said, staring at the frozen frame of the John Doe running towards the stairs leading up to the roof. “This guy was with Special Forces, he knows how many people we’ve got. He probably wants us to start pulling people off the exits to go check on the roof, so he can make his move.”

“But you know, last time I checked, even Deltas can’t turn invisible.” Jesse murmured, unconvinced.

“Then where the hell did he go?” Pearce muttered.

Fiona took a moment to think. There was a map of the building on the wall to their left. She got up from her seat and walked over to take a closer look. According to the map, the only place their target could have possibly gone from there was the roof…or the elevators.

“What about the elevator shaft?” She asked suddenly. They knew he wasn’t inside the elevator, since he hadn’t been picked up in those feeds. And the rooftop was where he wanted them to think he was heading. That only left one possible option for the man to hide, and bide his time. “It’s right where the camera went down.”

She saw the realisation dawn in the faces of both Pearce and Jesse at the same time.

“Son of a bitch.”

The Dominican Republic

“Mike, I don’t know how many times I gotta say this, but this mission is a bust,” Sam grumbled in exasperation, not caring about who was listening. “I mean, I don’t know if you were paying attention, but I was down there with a bunch of guns in my face and Cabral was very clear. He’s sticking with MI6.”

Michael opened the fridge and grabbed two bottles. One was water and one was beer. Sam snatched the beer out of his hand and went to collapse on the sofa.

“We can’t just give up, Sam.”

“This isn’t about giving up, brother, this is about facing reality,” Sam lowered his voice in response to his friend’s quiet tone. “This guy’s mind is made up. He’s gonna be on a boat back to jolly old England in, what, eight hours?

“Which means we have eight hours to change his mind.” Michael, the stubborn asshole, refused to acknowledge the reality.

“How do you propose to do that, then?” Sam asked, deciding to humour him, and opened his bottle to take a sip.

“There’s a reason why he took this deal,” Michael said, thinking out loud. Sam noticed that his eyes had acquired the familiar thousand-yard stare when was seeing an angle the others usually didn’t. “Cabral has enemies. He’s already survived two assassination attempts. We can use that.”

Sam let out a sigh, and accepted that they weren’t done with the op yet. “What are you thinking?”

“Well, we know the marina where he’s meeting with MI6,” Michael said, and focused on Sam with a gleam in his eyes that was just this side of manic. “If we can convince him the British can’t protect him, and our plan will be his only option…”

Sam had a feeling where the insane man’s plan was going, and he was definitely not a fan. “Mike, I don’t care how much cool crap those guys got you, we are not attacking two fully-equipped teams!”

“Not attack. Sabotage.” Michael grinned, “We sabotage the British boat, make it look like his political enemies did it.”

Sam held his gaze for a few seconds, and took that time to reflect that Michael, in fact, did have a point.

“I got a word for that,” he said glumly, figuring that he had no need to hide exactly how he felt about the plan, “Nightmare.”

“It’s either that or failure,” Michael said, very matter-of-factly, “And you know as well as I do, failure is never an option.”

Spring Hill Psychiatry Hospital

The elevator that led to the basement also led to the morgue, because the basement was where all the dead bodies were stored. Jesse knew his instinctive dislike towards the damned places was justified when he woke up sitting on the floor with a raging headache that told him his skull was cracked open and bleeding. It didn’t take long for him to notice that his hands were tied securely to a bolted gurney behind his back.

Inhaling deeply was a big mistake, which he realised the moment he did it. No amount of antiseptics in the air was enough to mask the smell of rotting flesh, now heightened with the sharp coppery scent of his own blood. The nasty mix was more than enough to stir up his nausea and make bile rise in his throat.

He had never even heard the John Doe rising from one of the gurneys like the dead rising back to life, and had never even felt his presence until he had gotten cold-cocked from behind.

The good news was, they now knew where their John Doe was.

He was right there, standing behind the empty gurney he had previously occupied, glaring down at Jesse as if he was the reason for all of his problems.

“Hey man,” Jesse said lightly, falling back on the training.

Since escape didn’t seem possible with the way he was restrained, the next best option was to try his hand at making a connection with his captor, find out what the man wanted, and do his best to talk his way out of the situation without any more bloodshed.

“My friends are outside,” he continued, nodding at the closed, reinforced door to their left. “They’re gonna be coming in here any minute.”

John Doe grunted and went back to doing whatever he was doing with his hands hidden behind the thin sheets of the bed. After a moment, he walked around it to get closer to where Jesse was sitting.

“I’d be still if I were you.” the man warned before carefully placing the transparent sealed bag filled with an equally transparent liquid on top of Jesse’s chest.

“What’s that?” Jesse asked nervously. It felt cold, or maybe it was the temperature of the morgue, he wasn’t quite sure.

John Doe produced a detonator from his back pocket and pressed a button. The bag sitting on Jesse’s chest beeped.

“This is ethylene oxide and perchloric acid.” The man said conversationally before walking away to stand behind the gurney again. Those words were more than enough to send cold chills down Jesse’s spine.

“It’s highly explosive,” the man continued, as if he hadn’t rigged a highly volatile, and equally unstable IED on top of Jesse. “And that’s gonna buy us some privacy.”

Jesse frantically tried to think of a way to reason with the man. That was the issue with the hostage negotiation rule book. It was generally written under the assumption that your hostage-taker would have most of his mental faculties, and not be criminally insane.

“Listen to me,” Jesse implored, doing his best to sit as still as possible while pleading with a madman, “You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m afraid I do,” the man laughed, and waved the detonator in the air, “Now I’m gonna ask you some questions, and if I don’t like your answers or if I think that you’re lying, I am going to take us to hell together.”

A knock sounded on the door then, followed by Pearce’s voice, “Can you hear me? We want to negotiate.”

“Just back off or I will kill him!” John Doe shouted back before turning towards Jesse again.

It was bad. Jesse knew the group outside was going to breach. And when that happened, he had to make sure that John Doe wouldn’t press the button in reflex and take them all out in a blazing explosion.

“Is he here?” Doe grunted, and started to pace around the gurney mumbling under his breath like the mental patient he was.

“Is who here?” Jesse asked confusedly. That was apparently the wrong thing to say, because in the next moment he was in Jesse’s face.

“I know who sent you!”

Jesse had to flinch back and turn his face to avoid the spittal flying out of his mouth.

“So what I want to know is…Is. He. Here?”

“Look, man, I would love to answer you,” Jesse said earnestly, willing the man to see reason, “But, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“James!” John Doe roared, “Where is James Kendrick?”

“James Kendrick?” Jesse blinked, and tried to put it together. “That’s his last name? Kendrick?” He went on while the madman continued to glare down at him like he was stupid. “Well, you just told me more about that guy than we’ve been able to find out for a couple of months.”

It was John Doe’s turn to frown. “What?”

“I’m working with the CIA,” Jesse said quickly, sensing his opening, “We’re after the head of a terrorist network. Up until about ten seconds ago we only knew him as James.”

The mad man shook his head, and resumed his agitated pacing. “No, you’re lying.”

“I’m not lying, man–”

“You’re lying!” He cut Jesse off with a yell before he could go on, “This is another one of his tricks. See, he sent you to get rid of me, and now that I’ve turned the tables, you’re pretending that you don’t know him.”

“Buddy, you got a bomb around my neck. I’m not trying to trick you,” Jesse said desperately, “I don’t work for James Kendrick. I’m here to help you.”

The man stopped moving and stared at Jesse for what felt like a full minute before bursting out laughing, confusing Jesse even more.

“Er…you wanna let me in on the joke?”

The man continued to laugh, and pounded on the gurney as he did, entertained beyond reason.

“Do you want to know why I’ve been rotting in a mental institution for the past ten years?” he panted in between laughs, struggling to get the words out, “Because that bastard put me there.”

“Wait!” Jesse yelled, alarmed, “What?”

“When he finds out that you–”

That was as far as John Doe could get before the door exploded inwards with a loud reverberating bang.

The Dominican Republic

The sabotage play worked, but with a minor hiccup.

They hadn’t counted on Cabral to show up at the marina ten minutes earlier, or that he would insist on having his own men check the boat that was supposed to take him out of the country. Michael had a small window between the time the MI6 agents finished their inspection and Cabral’s arrival to set the charges, which closed the moment the man decided to show up early.

That unexpected change of schedule had required Michael to make a call in the field. So, he had ignored Sam’s frantic yelling in his ear to abort and decided to plow right ahead with the plan.

He had taken a major risk, but it had been worth it, and he was fairly confident that it would pay off sooner rather than later.

The hiccup was the fact that he was now sprawled on the sofa Sam had previously occupied, with his entire body hurting so badly like he had just been caught in a – well… an underwater explosion.

It really wasn’t something you wanted to experience at close range, especially because water didn’t compress under pressure. A shockwave underwater could carry a long distance without losing kinetic energy. And if you were unfortunate enough to be floating within the blast radius when a bomb went off, there was a great chance the kinetic energy would shatter every bone in your body.

“You’re lucky that’s the worst of it.” Sam complained even as he tied off the final suture and cut off the thread with a clipper. “I still think we should check you out for a concussion too.”

Sam did have a point, Michael had to admit. But, as luck would have it, he had gotten off with only a few minor injuries. The largest open wound he had was on his right shin, a gash that required five stitches, which Sam took care of with a well-stocked first aid kit and his deft touch. Apart from his entire back being covered with rapidly darkening bruising, and the assortment of smaller, almost negligible cuts and scrapes spread liberally across the rest of his body, Michael was otherwise perfectly fine.

“The blast pushed me into some rocks, Sam,” he said placatingly, for what felt like the hundredth time. Sam hadn’t shut up about it the entire drive back to their safe house. “I told you, I’m fine.”

“Barely.” Sam sniped, and covered the sewed shut cut with a fresh bandage.

“Got the job done.” Michael pointed out.

“Maybe,” said Sam, still unwilling to let up, “There’s still no guarantee that Cabral is gonna call. Meanwhile, you’re out there risking your life, and for what?”

Michael understood Sam’s concern. He could see in his pinched, worried expression the need to talk about it. Michael wanted to reassure his friend that he wasn’t taking unnecessary risks because he was in a bad place mentally, or that he was losing his touch. It was actually the exact opposite. Michael hadn’t taken the risk out of recklessness, or to appease a hidden death wish. He had done it because he knew that they weren’t going to get another chance at taking Cabral down if he had backed off.

What he really wanted was to prove himself to James, worm his way into his inner circle and bring the bastard down with his entire network to the ground. What he didn’t want was to waste years of his life inching his way in and gaining the trust of the man. He wanted to get it done as soon as possible, and move on with the life of freedom that awaited him once it was all over.

“You know what it’s for.” Was all he said in a quiet voice, raising an eyebrow to remind Sam that they weren’t necessarily free to talk the way they wanted.

“I don’t know Michael,” Sam went on, nodding once to say that he remembered, and yet, wanting to get his point across one way another. “Are these people worth the risk you’re hellbent on taking? You came this close to ending up face-down in the middle of some God-forsaken marina on some cockamamie mission for a guy who hasn’t even had the decency to give you his goddamn surname–”

“I’m still here, Sam,” Michael reminded him softly.

“I can see that, and that’s great,” Sam said, and got out of his couch to pace around the small living room. “I know you miss your old job and all the rush and fun that came with it. But this… this is nuts. It’s still not too late for plan A–”

Michael cocked his head to the side, amused and intrigued by the creative way Sam was wording his scolding. “What plan A?”

Before Sam could reply however, his phone chose to ring with the number he had given to Cabral earlier.

“Oh, don’t get smug.” Sam made a face at him before pressing the call button. Michael schooled his features back to a bland mask and listened in.

“Finley here.” Sam said in greeting and put the call on speaker.

“Senor Finley, this is Marco Cabral.”

Sam glared at Michael, and then glared at the phone before speaking again. “How nice to hear from you, Mr. Cabral. How are you this lovely afternoon?”

“Circumstances have changed.” Cabral said, still a little shaken if the way his cultured voice wavered was any indication, “Your offer– is it still on the table?”

Michael couldn’t really hold his smirk back then, and felt it widen when Sam broke out into a grin as well, “Why, yes it is, indeed. Just tell me where you’d like to meet.

SpringHill Psychiatry Hospital

“Wait, wait, wait,” Jesse closed his eyes and screamed. “Don’t move!”

“Get back from him.” He heard Pearce’s yell a moment before Fiona’s voice joined in.

“Pearce, his chest.”

Since the madman held himself back from blowing them all sky high, Jesse decided it was safe to open his eyes again. There were four of them altogether, Pearce, Fiona and two security guards, all pointing their guns at John Doe.

“No, everybody, wait! Wait!” he yelled again, drawing everyone’s attention towards himself, “We’re all on the same team here.”

“Back off,” John Doe piped up then, and held the detonator up in the air like a trophy, “Or everybody dies!”

“Jesse, you have an improvised explosive on your chest and he has the trigger. How are you on the same team?” Pearce demanded.

“Listen to me. He’s the victim here–”

“I don’t think she believes you–” Doe butted in again.

“Oh, she does because she trusts me,” Jesse said, keeping his gaze pinned on Pearce, and nodding slowly at her to follow his lead. “And she’s my friend. They both are. They are going to put the guns down right now.”

“Jesse–”

“Dani, Fiona, Please. It’s okay. Put the guns down. He’s not what we thought he was. He wants to see James taken down as much as we do, probably more.”

“Fine, guns going down,” Pearce said, and pointed her gun to the ground. Fiona and the two guards followed her lead.

“Man, you can put the detonator down now too.” Jesse said, and to his surprise, John Doe nodded, and placed the detonator on the gurney before taking a couple of steps back from it, making it clear that he was not a threat anymore.

“What did he do to you?” Pearce asked, collecting the detonator while Fiona sat next to Jesse to carefully remove the bag full of lethal explosives.

“He took my life away.” John Doe spat through clenched teeth.

“Well, help us with what you know,” Pearce said, “And I’ll do everything I can to give it back to you. I promise.”

The Dominican Republic

“How’s Cabral doing back there?” Michael asked as he drove the armoured limousine through the woods.

Cabral had smelled a rat at Sam’s insistence on getting him in their ride, and had almost caused an incident where Sam could have ended with a few extra bleeding holes on his torso. Michael had reacted before Cabral’s men could, and used the car to take down two of his men while Sam had managed to inject the man with the animal tranquilliser they had brought just for that purpose. He had then hauled Cabral into the back of their car while Cabral’s men were still recovering from being run over by a two-ton armoured vehicle. Then they had taken off through a rain of bullets, and had been driving as fast as they could ever since.

“Ah, he’s sleeping like a heavily-sedated evil baby. How much further to the rendezvous?” Sam asked.

“A few miles. James is meeting us at a commercial marina outside Santo Domingo.”

Extracting a high-value target from a foreign country was a challenge even under ideal conditions. If the capture of the target left witnesses and raised alarms, it got even harder. The problem was that high-value targets tended to have a lot of friends and allies who could alert local authorities, and set up search parties. If you were really unlucky, they showed up on those search parties and road blocks with some big guns of their own.

Which was the dire reality they faced just as Michael took a turn and saw the jeep and the truck that was blocking their way a few miles up the road.

“What the hell’s going on up there?” Sam yelled when he hit the brakes, and the car screeched to a halt.

“Crapshoot,” Michael said, “Looks like Cabral’s DCA guys.”

A man got out of the jeep. Michael saw that he had a rifle hanging on his shoulder. He called out loudly in Spanish to let them know that they knew Cabral was in the car, and they wanted him to be released immediately.

“Look, can we just hightail it outta here?” Sam asked, and Michael watched him in his rear view mirror as he twisted in his seat to check the road behind them, which was empty for the moment.

“No,” he said, and he had considered the option. “That .50 Cal mounted on that truck would shred us before we even turned around.”

More spanish yelling reached them, this time threatening with violence unless they complied with their demands.

“Well, it was fun while it lasted.” Sam said sourly, glaring at their sleeping target.

“Don’t give up just yet, Sam.” Michael murmured, smiling, as a glimmer of a plan took shape in his mind.

“Why? You got a plan?”

“They’re too far away to see into the car,” he said, scanning the unconscious form of Cabral sprawled on the seat next to Sam. “There might be a way out. What size shirt do you think he wears?”

More heavily armed soldiers piled out of the jeep as they got impatient. More angry Spanish phrases flew at them, letting them know that they had begun a countdown, and would open fire in case they failed to comply and produce Cabral before they reached zero.

“Okay, Mike,” Michael heard Sam’s voice over the thin material of his head cover. “You got fifty feet to cover. Your hands are tied, you’re wearing a head bag. You feeling lucky?”

Michael nodded and started walking confidently in the direction Sam pointed him. Since his head was covered, and his hands were at his back, the long sleeved shirt of Cabral covered all of his skin, making it impossible for the soldiers to tell him from Cabral.

What he was attempting, was one of the oldest tricks in espionage, which was called the ‘false surrender of a prisoner.’ It was a desperate move used only when you were completely outmanned and outgunned. It meant approaching your enemy alone and unarmed. It wasn’t the ideal play one had in his playbook, but it did get you close enough to launch into a surprise attack.

Which was exactly what Michael did the moment he felt a hand grip his forearm. He exploded into action and punched the soldier who tried to hold him in the throat with force not quite enough to kill, but more than enough to drop him where he stood. Then he took advantage of the way the soldier manning the Browning froze in shock, and slithered up the back of the truck before the man could think to defend himself. A quick combination of punches to his gut and side of the head put him out of the fight in seconds as well. There were two more soldiers on the ground, who were by then bringing up their rifles to shoot him at almost point blank range. One went down with a hole in his shoulder, thanks to Sam’s shooting from behind the car. Michael took care of the other one with a liberal spray of .50 cal bullets from the big gun he now controlled.

“Gotta say, Mike.’ Sam grunted as he dragged the unmoving form of the drug dealer towards their new ride, the truck, “Don’t always enjoy these little tropical vacations, but they’re never dull.”

The rest of the journey continued in relative peace, and they did not meet any more surprises along the way. James waited at the location he said he would, and greeted them both with a cheerful smile when Michael brought the truck to a stop.

“It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Axe.” He said, extending a hand to Sam who took it with a less-than-pleased expression he didn’t bother to hide. “I’ve heard good things.”

“Yeah. Right back at you.” Sam lied with a false grin.

“It was good work today.” James said, turning back to Michael. “The DR loses a murderer. And we gain access to the largest private intelligence network in the Caribbean.”

Michael watched two of his men carry Cabral’s into the boat that was waiting. There was a cage-like contraption rigged in the middle of it to transport the prisoner. He thought that at least two of the dark-skinned men who were already on the boat looked familiar. A glance at Sam told him that his friend had noticed the same thing. It seemed that James had his own men in Cabral’s security detail already, and they would have been able to deliver him even without Michael and Sam’s intervention.

Another damned test, Michael cursed mentally before turning to James with a sideways grin. “Nice boat, James,” he said, without letting it be obvious that he had noticed James’ men, “A little small to fit all of us and the box.”

“Yes. Yes, it is,” James said with a chuckle. “You two won’t be coming with us. Here are your passports, and tickets under these names. Safe travels, both of you.”

Michael looked down at the travel documents he held out, making no move to accept them. “James, I know Cabral’s file backwards and forwards. Whatever you have planned for him, I can help.” He said instead, pushing a boundary to see how far he could take it. “Take us with you.”

“I admire your enthusiasm, Michael,” James said, and patted him on the shoulder. “Your part in this is over. Now you’ve proven yourself to be everything I could’ve hoped for and more. Go home. Get some rest. You earned it.”

With that, the man turned on his heels and went towards the boat that was waiting. Both Sam and Michael watched silent as the boat sped away, leaving a trail of dirty, white foam at its wake.

“Well,” Sam said, letting out a long, tired sigh. “You heard the man. Let’s go home.”

CIA Field Office
The FAA Centre
Miami-Dade County

Later that evening.

Michael got into the elevator and pressed the button for the twelfth floor before leaning against the cold, steel wall tiredly. A coded message from Fiona asked him to arrive at the CIA field office right away. While Sam had gone home to his girlfriend, Michael had to endure another hour-long cab ride to get to the FAA office in Miami Dade County where Pearce had business that apparently couldn’t wait.

“Hey, look who’s home.”

Fiona’s bright, cheerfully smiling face was the first to greet him when the door dinged open, and he broke out into a grin when her arms wrapped around him a warm, welcoming embrace. He held onto her for a long moment before releasing her, and raised an eyebrow when she wrinkled her nose.

“You stink, Michael.”

“Yeah,” Michael chuckled wearily. He still ached everywhere, was exhausted and had layers of grime and sweat worth of two days clinging to him along with his dirty clothes. Fiona was absolutely right. “I just got back from an awful vacation and haven’t had the chance to shower yet.”

“Ah well,” He heard Jesse’s voice before the man suddenly appeared seemingly out of nowhere with two styrofoam cups of coffee. “We’ve been busy here too. Never let it be said we left all the work to you.”

Michael took the offered beverage with a grateful nod. It wasn’t by any means a great cup of coffee, but it was warm, and had caffeine in it, which provided him with the jolt he needed to keep his eyes open for a little while longer.

He only noticed the fresh bandage on the back of Jesse’s head after the first couple of sips. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Met a friend of James,” Jesse shrugged, “He’s clinically insane, hence the crack on my skull.”

They found Pearce at her work station, and she handed him a folder with a grin when she saw him. “Here’s our target’s new file,” she said while Michael opened up James’ file. A quick visual scan on his bio page revealed that they now had a surname and a brief history of the previously mysterious man.

“We have all the details of his service record and everything,” she continued as Michael kept reading, “I’m sure you’ll find it a very impressive read.”

“Delta Force no less. It’s always nice having our elite military training turned against us, isn’t it?” Jesse added sarcastically.

“You didn’t call me straight here out of the airport to give me more homework, Pearce, did you?” Michael asked, frowning.

“Of course not, you’re here to find out why he went off the rails.”

“Am I?”

“This new asset is a former Delta too.” Pearce said as she led him towards another closed door while Fiona and Jesse stayed behind. “Peter Millard. Same unit, and disappeared at the same time James did. Millard refuses to tell us any more. Says he wants to talk to the guy that was undercover with Kendrick.”

“Why?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

She opened the door and closed it behind him after he stepped inside. There was a table and two chairs inside the makeshift interrogation room, and nothing much else in the way of furniture. Michael took the empty chair and took a moment to study the bearded man who glared back at him with a pair of intense blue eyes.

“So, you the guy who’s working with James?” He asked without a preamble.

“No,” said Michael, correcting him, “I’m the guy working to stop him.”

Millard tilted his head to the side, and smirked. “Who brought you in? Let me guess. Leslie…Wait. Or was it Burke?”

“Guess you haven’t heard,” Michael said, his voice low. “Burke is dead. It was Sonya.”

Millard let out a soft whistle, and stared at Michael with renewed curiosity. “Must have been in a state when she found you then,” he remarked casually, his eyes glinting as if he was enjoying a private joke, “Lucky you. James has a soft spot for the rare strays she brings in.”

“Good to know,” Michael replied in the same casual tone, refusing to rise to the bait.

“The guy who’s working to stop him,” Millard hummed after a while, repeating Michael’s earlier words, “What makes you think you can do that?”

“Because I’m willing to do whatever it takes,” Michael said simply, truthfully, “To go as far as I have to go.”

“As far as you have to go?” millard scoffed, “Tell me, do you know how far James is willing to go?”

“I’m starting to.”

“I doubt it.” the man shook his head, “What do you know about Mogadishu?”

“I know you and James served together there,” Michael replied, recalling what he had just learned by skimming over the file, “According to the report, your unit was wiped out protecting a village. He was presumed KIA, and so were you.”

“Is that what the report says?” Millard sneered, and the disdainful look was back on his face.

“Why don’t you tell me what really happened, then?” Michael challenged.

For a long moment, he said nothing. Just as Michael was starting to feel like he was wasting his time, Millard suddenly started to speak.

“My unit was sent to take out a warlord outside Mogadishu,” he said, staring at a spot on the wall to his left, “Turned out the intelligence was bad. The warlord was a kid wannabe with a few rifles and some punk friends. The camp was a village full of women and children…”

“What happened?” Michael prodded softly when he trailed off.

“We radioed in,” Millard shrugged, his voice almost mechanical, lost in the memory. “Guess some suit up the line didn’t want a blotch on his record. Orders came down. ‘Wipe ’em out anyway.’ A lot of guys didn’t like it, but orders were orders.”

“Did you proceed?”

“I couldn’t do it,” Millard admitted quietly, “James was my best friend in the unit. I asked him to talk them out of it, and he said he’d try.”

“But it didn’t work?”

“No. They wouldn’t disobey a direct order. I told him we had to do something, he said he’d handle it, and I thought… God, I don’t know what I thought.”

“What did he do, Peter?” Michael had to cajole the man back to the present when he zoned out again. “If we’re going to help you, I need to know what I’m facing. What did he do?”

“He killed them all,” Millard whispered. “The whole unit. Slit their throats while they were sleeping.”

Michael felt a chill run down his spine at the soft admission. He knew James was capable of very dangerous things, yet it still shook him to the core to realise that he had been able to betray his own men in such a cold blooded manner, all because of an order he disagreed with.

“You think you can stop him?” Millard continued, unaware of the effect his words had on Michael. “No one can stop him. I tried. He put me away. Buried. Eight years. I loved that man. Would’ve followed him anywhere. And he led me straight to hell.”

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