Reading Time: 84 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
Part Nine – The Fish in the Deep
Chapter 25
14-3
13th Street
Little Gables
Miami
Working a long-term undercover job was all about learning to live with uncertainty– the uncertainty that came with chasing something you could never really see. You were often going after a target you knew little or nothing about. After a while, that uncertainty had a way of gnawing at you… affecting you no matter how well-trained you were. That was usually when you realised that the real battle happened within yourself, to keep your doubts at bay, and keep your end goal front and centre, so that when the day arrived to take your target down… you were ready.
Those were the thoughts that were tumbling around in his mind when Michael practised his shooting with a makeshift target pinned to a couple of bound-together yellow pages. The first few shots were still within the target, not buried in the wall behind the pillar of the house he was illegally using, but nowhere near the cluster he wanted them.
But, gradually, after the first few rounds, his mind started to clear, and his aim improved. By the time he was done with the second magazine, he was back to clustering all his shots inside the tiny red circle at the dead centre.
A week had passed since his return from the DR. Reloading his gun for another round, Michael idly wondered when he would receive a call for the next job.
As if summoned by his thoughts, there was a sudden, sharp knock on the door.
“Can I help you?” Michael asked the two armed men standing under the awning. He had no idea how they had managed to find his place.
“James has asked that you come with us.” One of them said.
“What’s this about?”
“We’re not at liberty to discuss that, sir.” the other one said, “We’ll need your gun, and your phone.”
Michael sighed, and did as he was so politely asked. The ride in the SUV took an hour, and he had no idea where they were going due to the hated headcover that was once again over his head.
Unknown Location
Miami
He found Jesse, Fiona and Sam already waiting for him when he was escorted inside what looked like an abandoned warehouse. There were also about ten heavily armed gunmen scattered around inside as well as the outside perimeter, which made Michael think that they had secured the entire building for something quite important.
“Hey, Mike,” Sam called out loudly when he saw him being prodded into the area where they were sitting. “Want to tell us what the hell is happening?”
“I don’t know, Sam.”
“I was with your mother and Charlie when they dragged me out.” Fiona’s glare bounced off of Michael to land on the two guys with their Mac-10s behind him.
“They took away your phone and gun too?”
“Yeah, they did.”
Michael dragged in an empty folding chair to complete the circle and dropped heavily onto it.
“Okay,” Jesse said, lowering his voice so only the three of them could hear him, “I’m just gonna say what we’re all thinking. What if James didn’t bring us here to talk? Maybe it’s time to start game-planning a way out of here.”
Fiona let her gaze land on the table that was only a few feet away, where one of James’ men was busy cleaning and reloading a veritable armoury’s worth of rifles and machine pistols. “If I could get my hands on one of those–”
“We’re outnumbered three to one.” Michael reminded them all in a quiet voice. Although he was almost used to being snatched away at a moment’s notice, and at times without even that, he knew his three friends were vastly uncomfortable with the uncertain situation. “Besides, if this was an execution, we’d be dead already.”
“This James guy is not making it easy to trust him, Mike.” Sam grumbled.
“I know, Sam,” Michael murmured placatingly, “Trust me, instead.”
The entire security detail scattered around the area moved as one and closed in when the distinct sound of a growling engine came to a rolling stop outside. They all perked up, and some adjusted their ear pieces, reacting to whatever they heard through the comms.
The reason for the commotion became obvious when James strode in with another heavily armed, five-men entourage.
“James,” Michael stood up when he drew closer. “What the hell is going on? You ask us here without a moment’s notice, no communication, no warning–”
“I needed to talk to you,” James said easily before letting his gaze sweep over Jesse, Fiona and Sam. “I apologise if my arrangements caused you any anxiety. Security precautions. Couldn’t be helped.”
“You could have just told us where to meet you.” Michael pointed out.
“Well, a man in my position doesn’t last very long by announcing where he’s going in advance.”
“I understand that,” Michael said, trying not to let his frustration bleed into his tone, “But what were we supposed to think?”
“I’m more concerned with what you do,” James flashed a knowing smile. “And you all did fine.”
“So this was a test?”
“We may not have worked together that long, but you should know by now everything’s a test, Michael,” he said with a tone bordering on patronising before walking over to the table where his operative had already cleared away all the weapons. “Now, lady, gentlemen, I have heard a lot about your skills and talents when it comes to running covert operations. I even had the pleasure to witness one last week, of course. A situation has presented itself that I must request all your involvement to make it a success. We have a lot to discuss.”
***
The job, as it happened, turned out to be a personal security gig for a man named Dr. Omar Hamad. He was a lead reformer of the Middle East according to the bio that was shared with them, and had even run the Tripoli Peace Accords the year before.
The job was to provide him with close personal protection during the time period he was participating at the Economic Development Conference in downtown Miami, which was scheduled to kick off in only two days.
The good doctor had no clue that James and his organisation existed, or that they had information about a planned assassination attempt by a Libyan radical group with local ties. He also had no idea that the said organisation was very much invested in keeping him alive, well and safe to avoid a war that would rage if Hamad died.
Ben Snyder, one of James’ most senior men, had the responsibility of running the op. It was his first time running a field op, and his nerves showed when he handled the briefing. Michael decided to keep his reservations about the man and his lack of experience to himself, reasoning that he could always speak up and take over if Snyder screwed up badly at one point or another.
Besides, he had a feeling it wasn’t just a test for him and his friends, but a major one for Snyder himself as well.
Two Days Later
The mark of a good security setup was that it stopped the threats before they ever got close. With a combination of human spotters, computerised facial recognition, and electronic surveillance equipment, the goal was to find the bad guys long before they made their move.
Which was why, on the day of the conference, Fiona and Jesse did the walk around, covering the east and west sides of the perimeter respectively, both scanning the entrances and exits in case their presumed targets showed up at the location. Snyder was stationed inside the van, which was parked just behind the service entrance to the main venue, constantly checking the surveillance feeds and the facial recognition software he had running to scan the incoming and outgoing crowds.
Michael and Sam were part of Hamad’s personal security detail, and they both arrived with the primary to the location in his own armoured SUV. They were both supposed to be in Dr Hamad’s vicinity the entire day until he got back to his hotel after his keynote delivery and the reception.
“We’re all clear out here.”
Michael heard Fiona’s voice on the comms as he slowly walked towards the back of the audience through the leftmost aisle.
“And cell phone activity isn’t picking up any red flags.” Snyder joined in. Michael had to admit that, so far, despite the bouts of anxiety, the man had done an adequate job of keeping them updated in a timely manner. “Are you seeing anything, Westen?”
Most of the time, personal security used a method called ‘arm’s reach.’ During an attack, if you were closest to the client, you shielded them. If you were closest to the attacker, you focused on the threat. Usually when a team of two was involved, one tried to defend against danger by staying closer to the client, while the other waded into the crowds to find it.
“No. All clear.” Michael subvocalized as he continued his path, scanning the seated listeners for any threats.
The crowd burst into applause as he reached the final rows of seating. He made it back to the front of the stage just as Dr. Hamad finished thanking his listeners and stepped down from the podium.
“He’s on the move,” he said over the comms, and took the lead to escort Hamad to the banquet area, where he was supposed to be mingling for a while. “Let’s stay sharp.”
“This reception should last about an hour.” Hamad said when he and Sam entered the reception area with him. “If you gentlemen would like to grab something to eat in the meantime…”
“Thank you, sir, but we’re fine.” Michael cut him off gently. They were there to get him out of the conference in one piece, not to mingle and have a good time.
“Sir, please don’t worry about us.” Sam added much more cordially than Michael ever could. “Anything you need, we’re right here.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.” Hamad shook his hand and stepped towards the nearest food arrangement with an empty plate.
“Too bad. Those hors d’oeuvres are looking good.” Sam started complaining in his ear the moment Michael resumed his perimeter check. Sam had the responsibility of staying close to the primary while Michael kept an eye on the crowd. “Did you see those crab cakes?”
“Let’s get through this, Sam.” Michael murmured, his eyes scanning everyone in the area for any suspicious behaviours, “Just one more hour, and I’ll buy you all the crab cakes you want.”
“Hey, fair warning. That could get pricey.”
“Okay, just checking in.” Snyder’s voice piped up over their shared comms network.
“We’re not seeing any hit teams out here,” Jesse added, “Not even seeing any Libyans.”
“Keep looking,” Snyder reiterated, sounding a little agitated again, “My intelligence on this is solid. They’ll be there.”
“Look, I know it’s been a while since you’ve been in the field, but maybe security scared ’em off.” Jesse added, trying to calm their handler.
“No one’s been in for two hours,” Fiona also joined in, sounding more bored than anything. “This thing should be over pretty soon. When are we off duty here? When’s Hamed officially dodged the bullet?”
“When the mission is done,” Snyder replied, “We just need to get him safely to the airport, and then the U.N. security will–”
Michael thought he heard a faint beeping sound. He didn’t like the way Snyder cut himself off mid sentence, and went quiet on them all of a sudden. “Will what? Snyder, everything okay?”
“Jesus! I think we have something.”
“Something? What kind of something?” Michael prodded, “How about a little detail here?”
“Just give me a minute!” Snyder snapped, and more beeps and sounds of a rapid typing on a keyboard flowed through the comms. “It’s an encrypted phone call coming from inside the hotel.” he reported tersely after a few seconds.
“Can you pinpoint the signal?”
“I can triangulate the towers down to one thousand feet, but that’s about it,” Michael could almost hear the rising panic in his voice, “Do you see anything?”
“There’s lots of convention folks talking on phones. Could be any one of ’em.” Sam pointed out. When Michael looked back, he saw Sam was once again standing next to Hamad, his gaze sweeping over the attendees vigilantly.
Michael did the same thing. A lot of people were on their phones, some talking and some texting. Nothing immediately jumped out at him as suspicious, until his gaze landed on one of the servers with an earpiece. What drew his attention was the way the man was hunched over himself, doing his best to avoid looking like he was checking out Dr. Hamad.
“Sam, there.” Michael said, and nodded to his left when Sam made eye contact with him. The server had a direct line of sight to Sam and Hamad from where he was, which was only about fifty yards away from them. Michael was slightly behind him, to his right, and therefore out of his sight.
“Where?” Sam frowned.
“Your 12 o’clock,” Michael murmured, and closed in on the suspicious man slowly. “Server with an earpiece. He seems very interested in our guy, too.”
“He could be calling in a location for a hit.”
“Get Hamad to a secure area.”
“Excuse me, sir, sorry to interrupt–” he heard Sam over the comms. “You need to come with me right now.”
“What’s going on?”
“No time to explain. It’s for your own safety.”
The server took off like a wild rabbit through the service entrance the moment he saw Sam escorting Hamad outside the banquet area. Michael broke into a run, hot in his heels.
“He’s running,” he reported over the comms while in pursuit, barely dodging an empty cart that came careening his way, and smoothly vaulting over a table the server had left behind in the middle of the hallway to obstruct him. “I have a target running through the laundry room towards the service elevator.”
“I see him. He’s moving towards the east exit.” Snyder said. “I’m on my way now.”
“We’re coming around the south side.” Michael heard Fiona’s voice as well.
“What is this? Tell me what’s going on!” That was Hamad, clearly agitated about having been moved so quickly and with no clear reason. “Is someone coming?”
“Honestly, sir, I have no idea.” Michael heard Sam explaining as he barely dodged another obstacle in his way. “Someone is looking into it, all right? In the meantime, just stay back and away from that door. Don’t make a move.”
Michael caught up to the target just as he flew out of the exit over the ramp. He pulled out his gun and screamed at the man to surrender. Snyder came running around the corner at the same moment he saw Fiona and Jesse from across the small alleyway. They now had their target trapped with nowhere to run.
“Please don’t shoot–” the man raised his hands, and yelled nervously, “It’s not my fault. They made me do it!
“Made you do what?” Michael demanded, keeping his gun level at his torso, “What did you do?”
“I can’t say. I can’t!”
Sounds of screeching tires and a growling engine drew Michael’s attention to the alleyway behind their target. An SUV took the corner only two blocks away at a speed that nearly sent it flying as it came down the road towards them. A flash of a gun barrel sticking out the back window was more than enough for him to realise that they were about to be gunned down in a drive by.
“Get down!” His shouted warning was almost not needed for his two friends, who had already come to the same conclusion as he had, and were already diving behind the closest parked car on their side of the road. Snyder was already crouching behind the east wall, only his gun sticking out from behind cover to aim at the server.
Michael took it all in within that split second he had to heed his own warning, along with the fact that their target was the only one who wasn’t reacting the way he should. The utterly terrified man stood where he was with his hands still in the air, frozen in shock.
So, instead of diving behind the nearest wall as his instincts screamed at him to do, Michael changed his trajectory at the last millisecond and dove towards the man. He tackled him bodily to the ground the moment the unknown gunman in the rapidly passing vehicle opened fire.
***
Sam heard Michael’s shouted warning through the comms a moment before the sounds of squealing tires and automatic gunfire filled his ear. He flinched reflexively, and took a step back from the door he’d just barricaded with an empty wooden shelf. Hamad leaned against another cupboard that was filled with cleaning supplies, and fumbled with his tie with weak, fidgety movements.
“What’s the matter?” Sam asked, concerned, not liking the way Hamad’s eyes were bulging, or the way he seemed to be struggling to catch his breath.
“I don’t–I don’t know,” Hamad stuttered and gasped, “Can’t breathe.”
“What?”
The man dissolved into hacking coughs instead of answering, sending the concern Sam was feeling up a few notches. He placed the back of his palm against Hamad’s forehead, and realised the man was indeed not doing so well.
“You’re burning up–”
The rest of his assessment was cut off by Michael’s voice in his ear. “Sam–”
“Mike,” Sam said, letting the relief that his friend was not lying outside, his body riddled with bullets, wash over him. “Glad you’re not dead–”
“You’re bleeding!” Fiona’s shrill declaration brought the worry right back in full force.
“I’m fine! Just a graze, Fi,” Michael said quickly, “Sam–”
“Yeah, Mike,” Sam said, figuring he wouldn’t sound that demanding if he was terribly injured. Same could not be said about the man they were supposed to be protecting, however, “We do have a problem. Our guy is not good. He’s having problems breathing.”
“Problems breathing, how?” Michael asked, and then Sam heard him directing the question at the perpetrator, “Hey, what the hell did you do?”
“Please, I can’t–”
“Mike, He’s running a fever,” Sam said, ignoring the sounds of frantic pleading he could hear through the comms, “And his pulse is weak.”
“Did Hamad eat anything?”
“Well, food, yeah. He had a little plate of–” Sam started answering, and paused when the implication of his friend’s question fully dawned. “Oh, Mike, you’re not saying– not the crab cakes.” Sam felt terrible about Hamad, who had trouble holding himself upright by then, he really did. But having to entertain just the notion of someone poisoning something so fantastic as crab cakes! It just wasn’t right!
“This asshole didn’t call in a hit,” Michael’s low growl through the earpiece pulled him out of his funk, “He was confirming it. Hamad was poisoned.”
“Son of a bitch.” Sam cursed, and jumped forward just in time to catch Hamad when the man chose that moment to lose consciousness.
The Abandoned Warehouse
Downtown Miami
“His liver’s failing–” the doctor, whose name tag identified him as Dr. Miller, said, causing Michael to look up from Hamad’s unmoving form to focus on him, “I gave him beta-blockers to slow the poison, but his systems are shutting down.”
“What can you tell us about the poison?” He asked, “Our guy doesn’t know anything about it.”
“He was poisoned with a custom-made toxin we can’t reverse-engineer,” Dr. Miller replied, revealing the direness of the situation. “Not within the time frame we have. He’s not responding to the broad spectrum antidote we tried. You want to save him, find the antidote. Without it, I give him twenty-four hours, tops.”
After the doctor took his leave, Michael turned his attention back to the heart rate monitor connected to Hamad. They had brought Hamad back to the warehouse which was located only thirty minutes away from the conference hall. By that time, Snyder had managed to get the entire place turned into a combat support hospital, which was an emergency response medical set up with portable operating rooms that could be set up anywhere within a moment’s notice.
If James was right, the frail life that hung by the proverbial thread was what kept a war from happening between two highly volatile countries. Hamad’s death could also jeopardise Michael’s own standing with James and his organisation, thereby leading to the possible failure of the entire op, which was the more immediate consequence compared to a future war.
Both were outcomes that Michael simply couldn’t let happen. That meant Hamad had to live, one way another.
“Hey,” Sam called out the moment he walked out of the curtained off area where Hamad was being treated, “How’s the arm?”
Michael looked down at his right arm, which was in a sling, and grimaced. “Hurts. But I’ll live.”
“It was a through-n-through, right?”
“A ricochet,” Michael corrected, “Bounced right off the asphalt and clipped me.”
“Mikey, you have a way of attracting those.”
Michael sighed. He had to admit that his friend did have a point there. “I know, Sam.”
“How’s the doc?” Jesse called out from where he was sitting in front of a workstation alongside Fiona and Snyder.
“He’s not so good,” Michael replied, and walked over to join them with Sam in tow. “We have a day to find the antidote. Did our guy have anything to say?”
“He was the cut-out,” Fiona said, and nodded at the information displayed on the screen. “He just collected the drug from a club down by the Miami river, the owner is one Dr. Khalid Maziq.”
“Immigration papers list him as a chemical engineer from Libya,” Jesse added, “That’s our guy.”
“We have a problem though,” Michael said, scanning the image of their possible target, “They know that Hamad was poisoned, but their cleanup was interrupted. It’s logical for them to assume that it’s just a matter of time until we find out.”
“He’s going to tie up his loose ends in a hurry and bolt, isn’t he?” Sam said grimly.
“Yeah,” Michael agreed, “But, he’s going to be expecting cops. So, if we make the right approach–”
“What?” Snyder, who had been quietly listening until then, jumped out of his chair as if he had been zapped, “The right approach? How about a gun to his head?”
Michael cocked his head to the side, and took in the panic in Snyder’s eyes, his reddened, sweat-drenched face and the throbbing vein on the side of his forehead. He looked very serious about his drastic suggestion.
“Snyder, he’s a drug dealer,” Michael said calmly, trying to get their handler to see reason, “He’ll be very well-armed. If this turns into a gun fight, you can forget about saving Hamad.”
In his periphery, he saw Jesse and Sam exchanging a concerned glance. Snyder wasn’t taking the setback to the mission very well, and he was visibly having a hard time keeping his head in the game.
“The Libyans didn’t see me or Jesse, but they definitely saw you back at the hotel.” Fiona, who had noticed the same thing, added before Snyder could storm off to wage an all-out-war with a drug dealer. “We’ll make contact.”
“If we could get in, get some alone time with Maziq, we might be able to do this.” Jesse joined in.
“He’s a spooked man,” Michael said, and turned to Snyder, “We’re going to have to give him an awful good reason to talk to us.”
Snyder held his gaze for a long moment before letting out a long exhale. “Fine,” he said, nodding once, finally agreeing to do things their way. “Fine, tell me what you need.”
***
The call came in an hour later just as Dr. Miller finished delivering more bad news about Dr. Hamad. His electrolyte count was apparently climbing higher at a rate they couldn’t keep up with, and he was at the risk of crashing if the poison wasn’t counteracted as soon as possible.
“We have good news and bad news,” Jesse said the moment Michael answered the call and put it on speaker.
“Good news first.”
“We got Maziq.”
Michael didn’t quite like the tone of his voice as he said it. “Alive?”
“Yeah,” Jesse muttered, “Sort of.”
Michael exchanged a glance with Sam who looked equally confused. “Jesse, you’re going to have to explain that.”
“Look. We made our move,” Jesse said, obligingly, “There was a bit of scuffle. He wasn’t happy we crashed his post-assassination political planning session, but we got him out–”
“Does he have the antidote?”
“Well, not on him,” Jesse replied, sounding a little hesitant again, “But he’s going to take us there now.”
“What aren’t you saying, Jesse?” Michael asked, frowning.
“Snyder wasn’t in the mood to waste time interrogating him,” Jesse said, his voice dipping low, “He injected the guy with Hamad’s infected blood. The virus took effect on Maziq way faster than it hit Hamad. So he has to take us to where he’s stored the antidote if he wants to live, and he very much wants to live.”
“Jesus,” Sam cursed, “This guy is out of line, Mike!”
“I know,” Michael said, and he fully agreed. But they didn’t really have time to waste arguing about Snyder’s work ethics. They would have plenty of time to do that after they had taken care of the dying man first.
“Send us the address,” he said to Jesse, “We have to bring Hamad over to you because he’s declining faster than the doctor here can keep up. He needs that antidote now.”
“Maziq’s got a drug lab out in Hialeah. It’s 405, East 87th Street.” Jesse said, “We’re on our way there now.”
Michael knew they were much closer to the location than he and Sam were. If everything went without further unexpected disasters, they had more than enough time to retrieve the antidote.
“We’ll be there in forty.”
***
They were about fifteen minutes from the location when the next call came in.
Michael was seated at the back of the car with Hamad’s prone body propped up against his immobilised shoulder so he could check on the man’s pulse, which was weakening every passing minute. It hurt every time Sam took a turn, hit the brakes or accelerated, which caused Hamad’s head to roll against his injured arm, but he gritted his teeth and stayed silent, focusing on the job at hand, since Hamad was in a much worse situation than he was.
“Jesse,” Sam said, answering the call through the car’s speaker system, “We’re almost there.”
“Okay, listen, we got into a bit of a situation with Maziq’s guards–”
“Jesus,” Sam cursed as the sounds of gunshots echoed inside the car alongside Jesse’s voice. “Did I just hear gunshots?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jesse said in between gasps, and it sounded like he was running, “We’re handling it, sort of–”
“Jesse–”
“Listen,” Jesse interrupted, cutting Michael off, “We’re gonna have to come out to you guys. There’s a clearing about a hundred yards behind the lab. Wait there. Have Hamed ready.”
“He will be.” Michael said, catching Sam’s worried gaze over the rearview mirror, “Just get to us as fast as you can in one piece.”
***
Sam made it to the location in ten minutes. He parked the car right next to an opening in the chain link fence and came back around to help Michael to lay Hamad fully on the seat. Jesse came flying out around the one story building that was only about fifty yards away from the fence just as Michael got out of the car.
“Here.” Jesse managed to slap the syringe on top of Sam’s waiting palm before bending over, panting to catch his breath.
Michael stayed where he was by the opening, splitting his attention between the building and Sam who injected the contents of the syringe into a vein on Hamad’s inner elbow.
“His breathing is picking up,” Sam reported a moment later, “Looks like it’s working.”
Michael wanted to be relieved at the good news, but he was more concerned about the time the other two were taking to leave the building full of shooters.
“Jesse–”
“They were right behind me, Mike.” Jesse muttered before he could even complete the question, equally worried.
Snyder came stumbling around the corner then, and Michael felt the first real sense of unease pool in his gut when he saw how unsteady the man was on his feet as he almost fell through the pried open fence.
“Snyder!” He said, and caught the man by the shoulder when he almost collapsed, coughing, “Where’s Fiona?”
Snyder looked up, flinching, and coughed some more. Michael shook him, his worry increasing by the second when Snyder averted his gaze and continued to pant. “Snyder, where is she?”
“She didn’t make it,” he said finally in between bouts of coughing, and clamped his hand around Michael’s uninjured arm in an attempt to drag him towards the car. “The whole place is on fire. We gotta get out of here, Michael.”
Those words had the cold, terrible effect of freezing him on the spot. Michael didn’t move an inch the way Snyder wanted, and glared down at the shorter man with the almost unnatural calm that descended on him whenever he had to deal with an impossible situation.
“What do you mean, she didn’t make it?” He had a hard time recognizing the low, quiet tone that came out of him.
“I-I mean she’s gone,” Snyder stuttered, and looked away guiltily. “There was an explosion.”
“Jesus!” Someone cursed in the background. Michael didn’t quite register whether it was Sam or Jesse. All his undivided attention was focused on Snyder at that moment, the only man who knew exactly what had happened to Fiona.
“Did you see it happen?” His words were still quiet and sharp, despite the way his throat seemed to tighten in fear, “Did you see her die?”
Snyder didn’t answer. But the way he refused to make eye contact was an answer in itself. Michael didn’t waste anymore time with the useless coward. He didn’t even say anything else before diving through the opening of the fence and breaking into a run towards the exit that was on the other side of the wall.
He could hear both Sam and Jesse calling out to him even as he took the corner to find the door that led to the small storage room at the back. He ignored them both as he burst through the door, only to find the entire room engulfed in fire.
“Fi!” he screamed, letting out all the terror that had been mounting inside him the moment he had heard Snyder’s words. The fire, smoke and heat barely registered when all he could feel was cold, horrific dread and the panic in his rapidly unravelling mind.
“Fi!” He yelled again and looked around frantically, trying to catch a glimpse of the woman he simply refused to see die through the licking flames.
It was the same, soul-deep desperation that clawed at him, the very same feeling he had felt way too many times when he had been way too close to losing her for good…like when she had taken that last stand with him, holding onto an explosive device he had in his hands, willing and unafraid to die alongside him…or when she had almost drowned before his eyes when she had been shot by her own countrymen who had hunted her…or when she had almost plummeted eight floors to the ground when her anchor point had failed…
It was the same cold fear that gripped him at that moment, repeating the same terrified sentiment over and over again… I can’t let her die, not now, not ever.
It just wasn’t an option. It had never been since that day all those years ago when he had danced an entire night away with her in a forgotten bar in Ireland.
“Fiona!”
There were rows of shelves scattered around haphazardly in the small space, along with pallets, a few chairs, and a table, all on fire. A crossbeam had fallen across the room, balancing precariously against a wall, separating him from the other side, where more storage boxes were also going up in flames.
Behind those, near the window that looked to be sealed shut, he finally caught the sight of a bent leg on the floor, where Fiona had fallen after passing out from smoke inhalation.
“Fiona!” He roared again, hoping his voice would reach her, and dissolved into painful coughing as he inhaled a lungful of smoke in panic when she failed to move.
“Shit,” he cursed when he managed to catch his breath, and scanned the area again to see if there was something…anything he could use to get to Fiona, or kill the fire. His desperate searching gaze caught a fire extinguisher on the floor that had rolled under the table only about ten feet away from where he was.
There was nothing in the room that wasn’t already burning that he could use to drag the silver cylinder, and he didn’t even have his jacket since he’d had to discard it in favour of his sling, which he had taken off before running inside the burning building.
Michael didn’t waste time thinking about it. He just reacted. He dropped to his knees and crawled under the table, ignoring the heat he felt through the floor and the material of his pants. He didn’t even pause to think about how it was going to feel having to touch something that was going to be scorching hot with his bare skin. He just gritted his teeth instead and extended his left hand determinedly to grab the fire extinguisher.
“Aah!” He couldn’t really help the scream that escaped him as the skin of his hand practically melted onto the red-hot cylinder. Every nerve ending in his palm screeched at him to drop the damn thing and get out. But he couldn’t, not without Fiona. So he shut down all thoughts and gathered every bit of stubborn will he had left to roll out from under the table and get to his feet with the extinguisher.
The entire room was completely engulfed in flames, and he knew right away that he couldn’t just break the seal and start pointing the spray of foam in every direction. Instead, he took a few more stumbling steps towards the centre of the room, closer to the beam that had fallen sideways to block his path to Fiona. Then, gathering all the strength he had left, he threw the extinguisher to crash on the floor.
The seal broke on impact, and the suppressed foam spewed out in all directions on the floor, killing most of the fire surrounding Fiona instantly. Michael crawled under the beam and stumbled towards Fiona in the wake of the clear path the liquid left behind, and heaved a sigh of relief when his fumbling fingers could feel a faint pulse in the vein of her neck.
“I got you, Fi,” he mumbled over and over again as he hauled her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. It was more for himself than for her, to counteract the irrational fear that she would fade away if he stopped speaking to her.
It was also what kept him from thinking about the reopened, bleeding wound on his arm, or the new one that was searing the flesh of his palm, or the suffocating heat and the raging fire that surrounded him from all around as his entire world narrowed down to putting one step in front of the other to get them both out of the building.
He didn’t realise that he never let go of her hand, even when he was finally inside the backseat of a car Sam and Jesse had managed to find for them, repeating the same words in his mind in an endless loop all the way back to the warehouse towards the relative safety it offered.
Chapter 26
The Abandoned Warehouse
Downtown Miami
In that strange grey and gloomy limbo where the waking world never quite touched the serenity of the blessed emptiness of sleep, or unconsciousness, an irritating sound drew Fiona a little bit more towards the land of the living.
It took a moment longer than it should have for it to register as the faint beeping of a medical monitor, and the realisation that it was connected to her took even longer to dawn on her.
Her thoughts were sluggish, since she was still mostly asleep than awake, and they tugged at her to drown in the pitch black nothingness for a little while longer.
She did drift away for a while, it could have been a few minutes, or hours. The time was somewhat out of joint where she was. But the insistent and non stop beeping kept nagging at her, disturbing the peace and calm in the limbo and urging her to surface.
The annoyance at being disturbed brought a bit more clarity, along with concern why she was being monitored, or why everywhere on her body ached. The moment the pain registered, a memory of being stranded in a burning building floated to the forefront of her mind, finally jolting her fully to wakefulness.
The quick breath of air she dragged in as she opened her eyes was liberally saturated with the sharp scent of antiseptic, giving her an instant headache to add to the existing list. It was also terrible on her throat, which hurt like she had been screaming for hours, or more likely, inhaling smoke.
The hazy film blurring her vision cleared after a few determined blinks, and more things came into focus, confirming the fact that she was lying on a cot in the same mobile hospital they had set up earlier for Dr. Hamad.
It was then her wandering gaze landed on Michael. He was sitting on one of those uncomfortable folding chairs he had dragged as close to her bed as possible. He didn’t seem to realise that she was awake – a rare occurrence for someone with exceptional situational awareness, she knew – and stayed unmoving with his head buried in his hands.
She stayed quiet, using that moment to study him. His white shirt was stained with dirt and grime all over, and the rolled-up sleeve that covered his right arm had a few darker stains that she knew was dried blood. She also noticed that he had a fresh bandage around his left hand, and a sliver of a distorted memory gave her the vague sense that she knew how he’d acquired that injury.
Maybe it was the change of her breathing pattern, or the slight rustle of the blanket that covered her when she moved to turn on her side so she could continue her silent observation without giving herself a crick in her neck, but Michael’s head jerked back with a soft gasp as if he had just woken up from a light doze.
“Michael.” She called out softly while he blinked himself awake. The way his slightly longer hair stood up in all directions in a tousled mess made him look young and confused, and the notion was enough to bring an amused smile to her lips. “Hey!”
“Hey, Fi,” Michael flashed a weary grin at her, and leaned forward to cover the back of her hand with his own.
Fiona liked the warmth that seeped into her skin, even through the thin bandage that covered his palm. It was only then she realised how much she had missed it.
“How long have I been here?”
Michael checked his wrist watch and swallowed a half formed yawn before answering. “Just a few hours.”
He looked exhausted, and she could imagine exactly how he felt. She wasn’t doing any better. Everything still hurt and speaking was rather difficult with how hoarse her throat felt. Michael retrieved the glass of water with a straw in it from the table next to him and handed it over to her as if he had heard her thoughts.
The cool sensation of the water was an immense relief, and she let out a long sigh of appreciation after finishing half of it with a few long gulps.
“How’s Hamad?” She murmured, handing the glass back to Michael.
“He’s gonna be okay. We got him the antidote in time.”
That was good news. They hadn’t gone through all that trouble for nothing then, she thought.
“What happened?”
Michael’s expression turned darker. “Snyder left you to die,” he said quietly, but she could hear the suppressed anger in his low voice as if he had screamed it at the top of his lungs.
“I remember that part,” she said, smiling, “I meant, what happened to you?”
“Nothing.”
She turned her hand around, so that she could hold his injured hand in hers, and raised an eyebrow at him. “Then what’s this?”
Michael shrugged, and stared at their joined hands without saying anything.
“I didn’t think I was gonna get out,” Fiona murmured, “But you came in, and you got me out of there…”
That got him to look up and lock his gaze with hers. “Wasn’t going to leave you behind, Fi, you know that,” he said simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. She felt her own smile widen at the admission.
“Thank you.”
The look in his eyes intensified in a way she hadn’t seen in a long time, and she saw a lot of things in there that she knew he wouldn’t say right then. She didn’t really need him to anyway, because she knew him in a way that not a lot of people did, and he was aware of her in the exact same way. They held each others’ gazes for a long time, comfortable and safe in that knowledge, and enjoying a moment of peace in a world known to only the two of them before Michael murmured the soft words she knew all along.
“I can’t lose you.”
***
“Hey, Mike,” Sam greeted him as he joined the rest of the team outside the infirmary area. “How’s Fi doing?”
“She just woke up a few minutes ago,” Michael replied, “She’ll be fine.”
“Good,” Sam grinned, “Can’t keep her down for long, huh?”
“The hive is starting to buzz again,” Jesse remarked as he joined them, and Michael heard the sounds of approaching footsteps that their friend had noticed.
James arrived at the warehouse the same way he had earlier, with an entourage of armed guards.
“Heard about Fiona.” he said as he walked over to where Michael was waiting with Jesse, Sam and Snyder near the workstation. “If she needs anything, you don’t hesitate to ask. You understand? I’m sorry we couldn’t take her to a real hospital.” He sounded genuinely concerned.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Michael murmured, sparing a glance at the cordoned off area where she was before turning to James, “Besides, they’d ask too many questions.”
“We owe her, you, and your entire team a great debt of gratitude for today.” James reiterated.
Michael nodded, keeping his expression pleasantly blank to hide the unease he felt at how intense James’ entire demeanour was, and decided to change the subject. “How’s Hamad? What happened to him?” He hadn’t seen the man since their return from the Libyan drug dealers lab.
“He’s more than okay,” James said, smiling brilliantly. “He’s on his way to Tripoli now for the second round of peace talks. I know it wasn’t easy, but it was a successful mission–” his smile dimmed when he turned to face Snyder, who was standing a few feet apart from the rest of them, “For the most part.”
“James, I–” Snyder stuttered, instantly aware of his leader’s displeasure.
“Ben, don’t.” James cut him off with a raised hand, “Just don’t make excuses.”
Snyder clamped his mouth shut, and ducked his head in defeat.
“Do you remember when I first invited you to join me,” James asked in a soft voice that didn’t quite hide the threat laced into it, “To join us?”
“Of course,” Snyder nodded eagerly, “I’ll never forget it.”
“And do you remember the promises that we made to each other that day?”
Michael shared a subtle glance with Jesse and Sam when Snyder stayed silent, his terrified gaze locked on to James’ calm one.
“Ben–”
“That we would always stand together.” Snyder mumbled.
“Stand together.”
“Yes.”
“What else?” James was relentless. “What did I tell you when you asked to run a team in the field?”
Michael was starting to have a bad feeling about where the conversation was heading. Sam and Jesse both shifted at his side in a way that suggested they were feeling the same.
“That we’d never leave anyone behind…” Snyder’s words were barely audible.
“That’s right,” James said, “Never.”
“James–” Snyder pleaded desperately, “You have to understand, I didn’t think that there was anything I could do to save her.”
“I understand that.” James said, and calmly unholstered a handgun from his hip holster. “ I understand it. I can’t forgive it.”
“James…” Snyder gasped and took an involuntary step back when the gun cocked loudly in the otherwise silent warehouse.
“That’s enough,” Michael said, and only realised that he had taken a step forward, almost covering Snyder, when Sam’s hand clamped around his shoulder in warning. “James, what the hell are you doing?”
A faint smile appeared to change the disgusted expression he had on his face as Michael watched. “What needs to be done, Michael,” he said simply.
“He made a mistake.” Michael said,
“A mistake?” James tilted his head to the side, and raised an eyebrow, “A member of your team almost died today because of this man’s lack of action. I don’t call that a mistake. I call it cowardice. I call it betrayal.”
“James–”
“He made a promise, Michael.” James said, cutting him off, “And promises must be kept. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“James–”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re not wrong,” Michael said, but stayed where he was, his own body in between the gun in James’ hand and Snyder. “Promises must be kept. But that doesn’t mean you have the right to kill someone in cold blood when they made a mistake and broke that promise.”
The smile James had on his lips widened, as if he was humouring him. “Are you telling me this because you never killed anyone in cold blood for betraying you?”
“I did, and I willingly paid the price for it,” Michael reminded him, knowing that he was toeing a dangerous line yet unwilling to back down, “Because it wasn’t something I had the right to do, no matter how justified I felt doing it.”
“What do you suggest I do, Michael?” James asked softly.
“I don’t know, James!” Michael said in exasperation, “Keep him out of the field, throw him in a hole somewhere, demote him… Hell. Banish him. Let him live with the guilt of his mistake and learn from it so he won’t repeat it.”
“I hear you,” James said, and stayed quiet for a long time before lifting his gun a fraction over Michael’s shoulder to aim at Snyder, who was still behind him. “But I don’t agree with you. Goodbye, Ben.”
Michael barely flinched at the sensation of heated air near his face as the bullet flew past him to bury itself between Snyder’s eyes. He knew the warm, wet drops he felt on his back and the shell of his ear was Snyder’s blood, and let his eyes fall shut when the muted thud of Snyder’s body hitting the floor soon followed.
“What he brought into my network – my family… was a cancer, Michael,” he opened his eyes to find James staring at him with a gaze full of heartbreak and turmoil, “I will not allow traits he displayed today to infect the only thing that matters to me the most. I have built all of this from the ground up with nothing, and I will not see it destroyed by the likes of him. You would do well to remember that.”
The Westen Residence
Miami
Later that evening
Madeline Westen sat by her dining table, the mug of coffee she had made for herself forgotten as she stared into the distance. Charlie was finally asleep; he couldn’t keep his eyes open, no matter how determined he was to stay up until his uncle returned. The thought of her grandchild brought a smile to her lips, and she made up her mind to make Michael stay the night when he eventually showed up. The boy was dying to see him again and it was about time Michael stopped making excuses to avoid being around his own nephew.
The back door opened and closed with a soft click, drawing her attention back to the present. Michael came through the kitchen to the dining table without making any other sound.
“Ma, sorry I’m late,” he apologised softly as he settled on a chair across from her, “I got your message. Is everything okay?”
Madeline forgot about what was on her mind for a moment when she took in his appearance. Even in the dim lighting from the living room, he looked dirty, exhausted, and injured.
“What happened to you?” She asked in alarm, staring at the fresh bandage covering his hand.
“Ah, um–” Micheal hesitated, and stared at his hand as if he had just noticed it, “Nothing really, just touched something a little too hot.”
Madeline held back a sigh. It was nothing new. Getting her oldest to answer a question without deflecting or sticking to the bare minimum was an exercise in patience, and endurance. Especially when he was under the impression that his answers would cause more worry than assurance.
“Where were you, Michael?” She asked instead when he started to fidget in his seat, “Were you doing a job for that man, James?”
“Something like that, yes.”
‘I met him today,” she said, “He came for a visit.”
“What?” Michael’s head snapped up at the news, “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Madeline said, shrugging evasively, “Probably because I pulled a revolver on one of his men who was watching me and Charlie–”
Michael’s eyes widened in alarm, “Ma–”
“What was I supposed to do, Michael?” She said defensively, “I was starting to see these people everywhere. Something had to give–”
Michael sighed, and rubbed his uninjured hand across his forehead tiredly before looking up at her again, “I had a word with him about bugging this house too,” he admitted quietly, “He said something along the lines of doing it all to protect you, the ones I care about…”
“Yeah, he told me the same thing,” Madeline scoffed, “Told me that his methods might seem extreme, but he was a man who’d go to the extremes to protect me and Charlie, because he made a commitment to you.”
“Yeah, he’s all about extremes, alright,” Michael muttered, “I’m sorry you had to go through it, Ma. I’m afraid he won’t stop, not until… well, you know–”
“I know, Michael, and I understand,” she said quietly, “But that’s not what has me worried…” he looked up at her words, frowning, as she continued, “This man, James – he said something about you when I asked him whether he was protecting us because you were working for him now.”
“What did he say?”
“That you weren’t just an employee,” she said, thinking back to the obsessive expression she had seen on the man’s face when he had talked about her son, the look that had made cold dread pool in her gut, “That to him, you’re a great deal more. Michael, he said he had plans for you – he sounded like he owned you…”
Michael closed his eyes and let out a long, weary exhale before opening his eyes again. “Ma, you know what he is, and what he does.”
“Michael, I’m worried,” Madeline said plainly, truthfully, “I didn’t like the way he talked about you. I just… I need to know you remember what you promised me.”
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her son, she did, with all her heart. But that man, James – he worried her because she had sensed something primal and dangerous hiding underneath his pleasant and protective demeanour.
“I do, Ma,” Michael said, “You know I’ll do my best to come back after everything is over.”
“Do better, do anything, whatever it takes to get back, Michael,” Madeline insisted, “You hear me?”
“Yeah, Ma, I will, I promise.”
She held his gaze for a beat, to reassure herself that he meant it before changing the subject. “Have you had dinner?”
“Yeah. I did before I left.”
“Alright then,” she said, smiling, “You can crash in the guest bedroom.”
The protest was immediate, just as she’d expected.
“I– no,” he stuttered, “I have–”
“A dump in nowhere to get back to,” Madeline completed his excuse for him, and pinned him with an expression she knew would convey that she wasn’t asking, “Stay the night. It’ll be a nice surprise for Charlie. He couldn’t stay awake any longer, but it wasn’t for the lack of trying. Please, Michael.”
His mutinous expression softened at the mention of his nephew, and after a moment, he sighed again with a faint smile. “Alright, fine. I’ll spend the night.”
Carlito’s Restaurant
Miami
The Next Morning
“What else did he say?” Jesse asked.
They were sitting inside a rental parked across from Carlito’s where they had a good view of Sam, who was sitting at one of their outside tables, already halfway into his second mojito.
“Nothing,” Sam’s voice came clearly through the comms, accompanied by a loud burp. “Only that he wants to meet in person, that it’s urgent, and that it’s regarding an ongoing investigation on a certain senior CIA agent who died a little over a year ago under unexpected circumstances.”
“How can you be so sure it’s about Tom Card?” Jesse’s next question was directed at Michael.
“Because Bly told me he was looking into his activities.” Michael shrugged, “Apparently, Card wasn’t as clean as he was on paper.”
“Glad to know you didn’t off him because your trigger finger slipped,” Sam piped up, drawing out a chuckle from Jesse and an eye roll from Michael. “How the hell would you know what Bly’s investigating anyway?”
Michael shrugged again, “He told me.”
“He what?”
At Sam’s demand and Jesse’s pointed glare, Michael relented. “He paid me a visit a few days before Strong came up with his brilliant plan.”
“Why was he investigating Card in the first place?” Jesse wanted to know, “What made him do it? If I understood it correctly, the CIA covered it all up before sending you to Gitmo, didn’t they?”
“They did,” Michael explained, “For some reason Barry decided to send the files I left with him to Bly, and he managed to trace something from Fullerton’s files all the way back to Card–”
Michael could feel that both his friends wanted to hear more about it, but Bly’s car pulled up at the entrance to the restaurant at that moment, and they had to wrap up their conversation in order to focus on why the agent was there.
“Right on time, at least,” Sam drank some more of his mojito to cover his mumbled comment, and stood up from his chair when Bly approached him with a hand extended.
“Sam Axe,” Bly said, settling on the chair across from Sam. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“Anything for our favourite CSS agent,” Sam grinned, and raised his almost empty glass in a salute.
“I’m also very sorry for your loss,” Bly said, his voice low and genuine, “Please accept my condolences.”
“He’s talking about Mike,” Jesse snapped when Sam stared at Bly uncomprehendingly, “Look sad, man!”
Micheal saw him twisting his expression into a pained grimace. He had almost forgotten Michael’s fake death, which had been aired all over the world.
“Ah, yeah,” Sam muttered, and tilted his glass back to gulp down the rest of his drink before flagging down a server for another, “Talk about a goddamned shock, huh?”
“I’ve seen some pretty fucked up shit in my life,” Bly said, shaking his head in a negative when Sam offered to buy him a drink. “But that was something. I know we had a rocky relationship, but Michael could have become a friend, given enough time…”
Michael was shocked to hear the sincerity in the agent’s admission. Even Sam looked taken aback that he would say it out loud, like he meant it.
“Aww,” Jesse snorted, “He actually likes you.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Michael said, aiming a mock glare at him, “I’m a likeable guy.”
“Did they ever find out what happened? Who was behind all of it?” They heard Sam inquiring, “We went nowhere with our own digging.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Bly said, and looked around nervously, as if he was worried about being watched. “I need your help. I may have discovered something that might possibly be the reason for Michael’s death–”
That was so unexpected, all three of them froze for a moment.
“Mike–” Jesse was the first to snap out of it.
“I’ll help you with anything you need to find who killed my best friend, Agent Bly,” Sam vowed, recovering from his own bewildered stupor.
“I have reason to believe that what started with Fullerton didn’t end with Tom Card–”
He thinks someone from the agency was responsible, Michael felt his own confusion clear with the realisation.
“There’s still someone inside the CIA that’s working hard to make sure my investigation goes nowhere,” Bly went on, confiding in Sam, “Michael was easy to get to, since he was in Cuba. Maybe he broke out of the detention centre because he found out–”
“What the hell is he talking about?”
“I don’t have a clue, Jesse–”
“Wait, you think Mike’s death was arranged by someone on the inside?” Sam frowned, doing a good job of covering his surprise with a healthy amount of anger.
“I–”
They never heard the rest of what Bly had to say because his body jerked to the side as if he had been hit in the back by an invisible force. The next moment, a dark red stain bloomed right above his chest. Sam dove to the ground just as Bly’s body slumped to the ground next to him, and he managed to topple the table to its side as he went down, to use it as a temporary barrier between himself and Bly against the sniper.
Michael was already pulling out from where they were parked even as Sam took cover, yelling at everyone to get down. People screamed and scattered in every direction as the horror of the unexpected sight dissolved into mindless panic. Michael brought the car to a screeching halt, to where Sam was already crawling towards the CSS agent, putting the car in between his friend and the crosshairs he couldn’t see. Jesse jumped out to help Sam drag Bly’s bleeding body inside the car, and Michael had to duck when another shot took out the side mirror on his side.
“Hurry!” He leaned over the passenger seat and yelled, knowing that it was a matter of seconds before the sniper corrected his aim and targeted him, next time.
“Go, go, go!” Sam yelled back, just as Jesse jumped back in next to him, and Mchael didn’t waste any more time in pulling away from the exposed position.
“Is he alive?” he asked as he took an illegal turn over a sidewalk to get to the main road.
“I think so,” Sam muttered, and used one hand to check Bly’s pulse while he kept his other hand pressed against the agent’s wound. Through the rear view mirror, Michael could see his entire front was covered in Bly’s blood.
“There’s a pulse, weak and dropping. Hurry, Mike.”
***
“How is he?” Michael asked first, answering the call and putting it on speaker.
He was sitting inside the car in an obscure corner of the hospital’s parking lot with Jesse and Sam. They hadn’t hung around after handing Bly over to the staff at the ER, not wanting to answer questions from the police.
“In surgery,” Pearce’s strained voice came through the speaker. “We’ll know in a few hours.”
She had arrived half an hour after Michael’s call to her.
“Anyone care to tell me what the fuck happened?”
“Easier to let you listen,” Michael said, and nodded at Jesse to play the recording of the conversation between Sam and Bly.
“So let me get this straight,” Pearce said after the recording ended, “He thought that someone inside the agency arranged that execution? How did he come to that conclusion?”
“Don’t know,” Sam said, leaning forward from the back seat, “He seemed pretty convinced, Pearce, and the fact that he got shot right in front of my face…”
“You need to find a way to get his investigation files,” Michael added, “Before someone buries them along with his body.”
“Michael–”
“This is about something much worse than just Card, and whoever else was behind this thing, along with Anson Fullerton–” Michael stressed.
He understood Pearce’s reluctance to get involved in another mess on top of the deep cover operation they already had going. But, the fact that an agent of the CSS just got gunned down in broad daylight was more than enough indication that it wasn’t something they could afford to ignore.
“It’s not less important than the current mission,” he continued, “What good will it do if we take down a terrorist organisation while our own agency turns into one just like it from within? This is just as important, Dani.”
“Fine, I hear you,” she sighed after a beat, giving in, “I’ll see what I can do.”
The Next Night
In the spy world, often the only things you knew about a covert mission were your deployment orders and a list of equipment to bring. Sometimes, they told you nothing. And sometimes, they told you a lot. The make of your weapon, for example, could tell you if you’d be in open combat or firing from the shadows. The ammunition you were bringing could indicate whether you were there primarily to defend or to kill. When you were told to leave under cover of darkness under a false name, you could be sure that whatever the job was, it wouldn’t be pretty.
It was a cold, moonless night, and Michael found his transport tied to a protruding rock at a very secluded, mostly hidden part of the beach, as promised. It took him almost half an hour to hike through the overgrown thicket along the swamps to get there. He placed his two duffels under the seat of the boat, and used his flashlight to check it thoroughly once more, despite the assurance he had been given that it was ready for him to take off.
He was almost done with his inspection when the muted sound of footsteps over the wet sands reached him. He had his gun out and aimed at the direction of the incoming threat before he had fully turned to face the intruder.
“Fi!” He said in surprise when it fully registered that it was her.
“Hey!” She raised her hands in mock surrender and grinned. “I came to see you off.”
Michael reholstered the gun and closed his eyes, breathing the cool breeze deep into his lungs a few times to dispel the sudden rush of adrenaline from his system.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Fi,” he murmured softly after a moment and opened his eyes to find her studying him with a faint smile. “I was specifically told to come alone.”
“I know,” she said, equally softly, but decidedly unconcerned, “I wasn’t followed, and there’s nobody here. I checked just like you did when you arrived.”
Michael climbed back out of the boat onto the bank of protruding rocks, and accepted Fiona’s extended hand to pull himself over to the beach on the high ground.
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“I’ve got the coordinates to a spot in the middle of the international sea, a full tank and a reserve,” Michael said, revealing the results of his search. “The rest is a mystery.”
He noticed that Fiona hadn’t let go of his hand as he stood there in front of her, and he found that he didn’t mind it at all.
“Irritating, as usual.” She made a face at the boat. It ignored her displeasure in favour of rocking back and forth on the gentle swells.
“Tell me about it,” Michael agreed quietly before turning back to her, “Is everything okay?”
Fiona hummed, and visibly shivered when the breeze around them picked up a little. Instructions be damned, Michael thought as he drew her closer to his chest and wrapped his arms around her.
“Pearce called…” She murmured in the vicinity of his shoulder and wrapped her own arms around his waist.
Even through the material of her clothes, he could feel that she was cold. He was too warm, since he was dressed in a few layers in anticipation of a long boat ride. So the pleasant warmth their shared embrace created was as close to perfect as it could get. He could tell that Fiona agreed with him by the way she practically melted against his body.
It was a peaceful feeling, he realised as he held her, to be away from the chaos of the rest of the world like this, with just the two of them surrounded by nothing but the silence and darkness. It was an illusion, of course, a temporary one at that. They didn’t have all the time in the world to just forget everything and fade into the night under the gentle starlight. There were strings attached to their freedom, and neither of them could afford to let that reality slip away from their minds for too long.
“What did she say?” He asked reluctantly, wishing he didn’t have to break the moment. He was resting his chin on top of her head, the way he had done countless times before, when times had been different. The scent of her hair was stirring up all those melancholic memories.
“Who?” Fiona’s mumble was muffled against his chest, and she sounded like she was falling asleep against him.
“Pearce.” Michael reminded her, smiling. “What did she say?”
“That she spent the entire day yesterday going through Bly’s files.”
“Did she find anything?”
“Nothing worth killing him over,” Fiona murmured, shuffling a little and tightening her arms around him. “According to her, he was almost ready to close the case on Card. Apparently, he had all the proof he needed to connect Card with Fullerton and his nasty little organisation.”
“You’re right,” Michael said, “There’s no need to have him killed over a cold case. There has to be something he found connecting someone else, someone who’s got a lot to lose in case Bly kept digging.”
“Maybe Bly was paranoid enough to keep that information somewhere no one could access.”
“Probably. He had good reason to.”
“Anyway, none of it helps us much now,” Fiona’s long, weary sigh was a warm gust of breath against his shoulder, “CSS has him under guard 24/7 now that they know Bly’s marked for death. Pearce said she’ll talk to him when he wakes up.”
“Hopefully soon.”
Fiona hummed, and made no move to let go of him. Michael didn’t want to let go of her either, and he hated the fact that he had no choice in the matter.
“Fi,” he said softly, and took a step back, very reluctantly untangling himself from her. “I’ve got to go now.”
She didn’t look at all happy when she looked up at him, the earlier peace between them shattered at the face of reality, “Michael.”
“Yeah?”
She placed a gentle hand on the side of his face, “Take care.”
Michael covered her hand with his own, “Always.”
“And do try to stay away from that woman, if you can,” her gaze sharpened when she said it.
“I don’t know if that’s going to be possible this time.”
“You’re going on a job with her–” she frowned.
“She was the one who contacted me this time,” Michael admitted, and hurried to explain, “Listen Fi, I–”
“She likes you.” Fiona stated with conviction, cutting him off mid-sentence.
Michael looked away, blinking. He really didn’t want those memories to surface right then, not when he was enjoying a moment with Fiona.
“She was recruiting a lost soul to her mission,” he murmured.
“Maybe at first,” she said softly, drawing his attention back to her, “But I saw how she looked at you when she came to see you–”
“She also jabbed me with that goddamned virus and knocked me out before hauling me into that damned hotel,” Michael reminded her.
But, as loathed as he was to admit it, he knew Fiona had a point. While it was true that he had let his guard down during a time he hadn’t really been in a great place, he absolutely didn’t have any interest in Sonya that way now. Not when the only woman he ever truly needed and wanted was already in his arms.
“I’m not going to argue with you,” Fiona said, smiling.
“Good,” he said, grinning back, “We don’t really have the time.”
“You’ll see what I mean when you meet her,” she said, her eyes glinting with amusement and something else he couldn’t quite decipher, “And you’ll hear my voice in your head going ‘I told you so.’”
“I’ll keep it in mind, then.”
“Watch your back, Michael.” She called out when he climbed back into the boat, and released the rope tying it to the bank.
“I will, Fi,” he said, before firing up the engine, “See you soon.”
Chapter 27
Jamaica
Whenever possible, spies preferred to know what they were getting into before they left for a mission. When you were forced to ship out without detailed orders, you couldn’t really train or prepare. All you could do was wait and wonder what was coming your way. It was decidedly an unpleasant situation to be in.
When Michael finally disembarked at the Falmouth harbour in Jamaica, after a surprisingly pleasant cruise on a luxury yacht, all he had was a name of a resort in the Burwood beach and a suite number. The place wasn’t too far from where he had arrived, at least, and the cab ride to reach it only took ten minutes.
“There he is,” Sonya opened the door with a beaming smile when he knocked, and stepped aside to let him in. “Have a good trip?”
Michael dropped his duffel bags on the carpeted floor near the dining table before collapsing on the nearest couch. The king sized bed took up most of the space in the room, and it was already cluttered with a few open folders, a laptop and another duffel bag that was open to reveal even more guns. Along with what Michael had been told to bring along, they almost had enough of an armoury to storm a castle if they felt like it.
“It was fine,” he replied in answer to her question. It had almost become second nature to slip into Russian in Sonya’s vicinity, and he had a feeling she enjoyed the chance to converse in her own language, something he felt she didn’t really have the chance to do as often as she preferred. “No headbags or sedatives this time, so that was an improvement.”
“It means you’re truly becoming a part of us, Michael,” she said, winking, and settled cross-legged on the bed, “Did you bring everything?”
“Yes, I did,” Michael said, and leaned back on the couch, “Sonya, what is the mission?”
She opened up her laptop and turned it around so that he could see the screen. “You know this man?”
Michael stared at the familiar face that stared back at him from the bio page on display, “Roger Steele?” he said, frowning, “Uh, I worked with him several times. He was an acquaintance during my active days.” Roger Steele was someone he still considered a friend, and something stopped him from revealing that fact to Sonya.
“Michael, he’s been looking into you.” Sonya declared, “Into us.”
“What?”
“He was following the investigation into the attack in Dela Garcia, which led him to finding out about Burke,” she said, “He also managed to get his hands on the investigation files of Colonel Zhirkova and our prison break–”
“Well, that’s his job,” Michael interjected, tamping down the unease he was beginning to feel about the mission, “He’s a broker between intelligence agencies, and helps negotiate when things go wrong.”
“Well, he’s poking his nose into things he really shouldn’t, Michael…”
“I’m sure that stunt your people pulled to fake my death got him to drop it, didn’t it?” Michael asked, hoping against hope that was the case.
“Yes, it did get him to stop looking into you,” Sonya murmured, and grabbed a folder from where it was resting on top of a pillow, “But it was too late, because he found out about me, and he wasn’t as willing to drop it as he did with you. Look at this.”
Michael took the file obligingly, and opened it. There were transcripts of telephone conversations, snippets of emails and copies of police reports.
“We intercepted an interesting chain of correspondence between him and one of our old assets a few days ago,” she said as Michael kept on reading, “He’s relentless about pursuing these new leads. That female rogue Russian operative he refers to, is me. He’s too close, Michael. He has to go.”
Michael looked up at the finality he heard in her tone, “Well, that can’t be necessary.”
“It is necessary. I spoke to James myself. It’s top priority,” Sonya insisted. “We simply can’t allow him to keep digging, Michael, not about me. He knows way too much already.”
“What do you have in mind then?” Michael relented, only to bide his time and find out exactly what she was planning. There was no way he would kill a friend because of what he did for a living. Michael just needed some time to figure out a way to circumvent Sonya’s plan without giving himself away in the process.
“This is where he lives currently,” Sonya handed him another file, this time containing a bunch of surveillance images and aerial shots of a well-appointed mansion. It had a virtually impenetrable security set up that included high walls, security cameras, armed guards, and a single very narrow and easily defendable entry point.
“It’s practically a fortress, as you can see,” she said, “We need to find a way to go in, scout his security, and then come up with a plan–”
“A plan to take him out,” Michael completed her sentence, his gaze fixed on the castle she clearly wanted them to storm.
“Yes.”
Michael looked up to find her studying him. A sliver of an idea started to form in his mind, something that would get him in contact with Pearce and save Steele’s life without jeopardising the mission or risking his own life. For that plan to work, however, he needed to make contact with their target by himself.
“Do you trust me?” He asked, locking his gaze with hers.
“Yes,” she said, and Michael could see that she meant it by the way the look in her eyes softened. “Why?”
“Because I think I know a way to get inside.”
“How?” She asked, intrigued.
“I’m going to walk right in,” he said confidently, “Or rather, drive in…”
“Michael–”
“He’s going to see me,” Michael interjected before she could protest, “Believe me, this being dead thing apparently has a hell of an effect on people. And when he does, I’m going to tell him all about you–”
“What?” She snapped, her eyes going wide in disbelief.
“Just think about it,” he implored, “Steele very much wants to find you, and probably wants to sell you to the highest bidder, probably to Russia again, or even the CIA or MI6. We can use that to lure him out of his fortress into the open, and when he does… Well, a bullet to the chest is all it’ll take.”
She held his gaze with an incredulous one of her own for a long moment, and just when Michael started to feel she would discard his plan, she broke into a smile.
“I can see it,” she said, and shook her head, chuckling, “You want to use me as bait.”
“You are a very enticing bait,” Michael said, grinning back, “And I’ll be the one behind the crosshairs. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“That I already know,” Sonya said, and Michael had to tamp down another bout of unease at how trusting she looked. While he was crystal clear about the goals of his mission, which was to dismantle James Kendrick’s network, he still had mixed, confused feelings about Sonya, and how his ultimate betrayal would impact her life.
Lost in his own thoughts, it took him a moment to realise that she was also staring at him silently with a pensive expression on her face.
“What?”
“We studied you in training.” She said, out of the blue.
Michael knew she meant her GRU days.
“Did you?” He asked, raising an eyebrow at her, “That explains a lot.”
He wasn’t surprised in the least to learn it. He did have a terrible reputation during his time in the eastern bloc after all.
“Everybody thought you were a monster,” she continued with a distant look in her eyes, “But for somebody with so many missions, your body count was abnormally low, and there were a lot of theories about why.”
“Yeah, like what?”
“My instructor thought it was a terror tactic. That you left people breathing to tell horror stories and spread your legend.” She said, shrugging.
“What did you think?” Michael wanted to know.
“I realised that you only kill when it is absolutely necessary,” she said, focusing her attention back on him with an amused sort of gleam in her eyes. “See, after a while, I could look at a diagram of one of your operations and predict who you would let live.”
“So, your theory was that I was noble?” Michael guessed.
“Or just weak.” She grinned.
Michael laughed. “Or maybe I’m just a clean freak who absolutely hates messes of any form.”
It was an easy, comfortable moment between them, like two friends sharing a joke at the expense of each other, despite the fact that they were there to plan an assassination of an unsuspecting victim, or that Michael wasn’t her friend in any way at all.
She was the one to break it with an expression that managed to wipe all the amusement from her face to replace it with a darkly serious one.
“Michael,” she said, her voice quiet, and layered with something very close to regret, “There’s one more thing–”
“What is it?”
“Steele is dangerous,” she said, “He might take the bait, or he might just decide to double his profits by selling you out first. I’ll give you half an hour to make your pitch, and if you’re not out of his place at the end of it, I’ll go ahead with plan B.”
“Which is what?” Michael asked, dreading the answer.
“Scorched Earth, Michael,” She said, sounding exactly like the extremist that she was, “This is not something we can leave to chance. He has to go, one way another. So you’re going to have to work your charm like you’ve never had to before to avoid the mess you hate.”
Michael thought about it. He could see that she would go ahead with what she said even if she hated having to do it. It was obvious to him that even if she did care about him up to a certain extent, the mission always came first.
“Have a little faith, Sonya,” he said, using the same words she had used on him before, “I’ll make it work.”
Roger Steele’s Residence
No one was more careful about security than a freelance spy. When you worked in intelligence and you didn’t have the protection of a government, you had to assume that everyone was a potential enemy, even your closest friends. A careful operative would have security as good as most military installations. Vehicles would be searched for explosives. And of course, nothing that could fire a bullet or send an electronic signal would make it past the gate.
Roger Steele’s justified paranoia and extreme security precautions only meant one bottom line for Michael: that when he finally made it inside, the only thing he had in a way of weapons were his own wit and a warm smile.
Michael was escorted by two armed security guards to the well-appointed parlour where Roger Steele waited.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” The sceptical expression Steele had on his face turned into one of pure disbelief the moment he saw Michael, “It really is you!”
The next thing he knew, he was encased in a bone-crushing bear hug by his friend, and Michael returned the embrace with a few pats on Steele’s back.
“Man, I don’t know how you did it,” Steele declared when he finally released Michael, still visibly shocked as if he couldn’t believe that Michael was really there. “But let me tell you, I’m so fucking glad you’re not dead, you crazy sod. I had nightmares after that shit I saw on TV. It was horrific.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” Michael said, wincing, wondering how many people he would have to apologise to for worrying after everything was said and done, “Listen, I don’t have much time. I need to use your phone, the encrypted one that can’t be traced.”
Steele took a step back at his request, his shock quickly morphing into instant suspicion. While Michael could see that his happiness at seeing him alive was genuine, his paranoia was still swimming very close to the surface.
“Don’t give me that look,” Michael said, ignoring the way Steele’s guards closed ranks around him with their guns not-so-subtly going up to aim at Michael, “I know you have several. Let me make a call to Langley. You can listen in. Believe it or not, I’m trying to save your life here.”
“Michael,” Steele said, unconvinced, “This is a bit unorthodox, you realise–”
“That woman you’ve been looking into, her name’s Sonya, by the way,” Michael said, cutting him off mid protest, “She’s only fifteen miles away, sitting in front of a laptop ready to call in an airstrike in half an hour if I don’t make it outside by then and give her the all clear. Either you hear me out, or this pretty mansion comes down in a messy heap on all our heads. So make up your mind fast, Steele.”
Almost a full minute passed in utter silence before Steele heaved a long sigh. “Right this way to the bloody phone, then.” he said, turning towards the hallway to their left.
“Thank you.” Michael said, and followed after him to his communications centre.
***
“Pearce,” Dani said, frowning at the incoming call from a blocked number.
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Michael,” she said, relieved that he was finally making contact after ten hours of radio silence, “Where are you?”
“Jamaica,” he said cheerfully, “I’m at Roger Steele’s fancy castle.”
“Hello, dear.” another voice greeted with a clear, British accent.
“Andrews–” she called out, signalling at the tech closest to her, and started typing on her computer to find out what they had on Roger Steele.
“Don’t even bother, dear,” Steele piped up again with a patronising tone, “This call is being bounced all over the world. I’ve got state of the art software keeping our conversation from the prying ears.”
“State of the art software, huh?” Pearce said, staring at the files the CIA server threw back at her in response to her request. “Is it from the batch you rerouted from Estonia or from the hit you arranged only two months back in Venezuela?”
“Do I know you?”
“Roger Steele, you’re not as subtle as you think,” Dani said, wondering what on earth had landed Michael in the home of one of the most notorious freelance spies. “We leave you alone because some of your extracurricular activities have a way of aligning with our own interests. Michael, what are you doing there?”
“This is the next job,” Michael explained, “Steele poked his nose into where he shouldn’t and popped up on Sonya’s radar. She wants him dead, and I’m trying to stop it. Since he wouldn’t believe what I’m saying, I was hoping you could convince him.”
“Are you convinced enough, Mr Steele?” She asked, scrolling down to skim more of his impressive bio, “Or must I start reciting what you’ve been doing for the past six months?”
“Alright, I’ll bite, Agent Pearce,” Steele huffed loudly before relenting. “Michael, lay it on me, old chap. Let’s hear it.”
“Well…” Michael drawled in a familiar tone Dani recognized instantly. She knew he was about to make a pitch for one of his rather nerve wracking plans, “I was thinking about giving you and Sonya what you both want at the same time.”
The Next Morning
“This itches–”
Dani took a deep breath and let it out slowly, reminding herself firmly that she couldn’t shoot the irritating man herself. It was Michael’s job.
“It would help if you quit touching it, Mr Steele.” She said, secretly proud of how level her voice sounded.
She had made it to Jamaica with her own team of Special Forces soldiers within the three hours of Michael’s call to set up shop at Roger Steele’s residence. She had made it clear to the spy that he wasn’t coming back home after the meeting they’d set up for the next day, and that he had until then to get his affairs in order and disperse his army of security guards. The CIA would take over his protection until the entire mission was over.
The man had accepted the terms and conditions with great reluctance, and made it his personal mission to let his displeasure known by complaining about everything in great detail ever since.
Now, sitting in the lead SUV and parked on the opposite side of the warehouse where Sonya was supposed to show up, he was fiddling constantly with the fake blood rigging attached to his kevlar.
“If something goes wrong, and I die for real, I’m going to be very upset with you, Agent Pearce,” he said sourly, letting go of his jacket.
“You won’t,” Dani said, and checked her watch. Sonya would show up in five minutes if everything went according to plan. “Michael’s pretty good with the Remington 700.”
Michael would be positioned on the other side of the small alleyway that stretched in front of the white, two-story building that served as their meeting spot. Her team had strict instructions not to target Sonya directly unless Dani made the call. If all went well, nobody would die except for Steele, which would be very temporary until Sonya was out of sight.
“I sure fucking hope so.”
“Grey SUV approaching from the north,” the voice of her lookout came through the comms. He was stationed at the end of the Loma Vista avenue, where he had eyes on the traffic exiting the main road to enter the industrial area. “Target confirmed. Heads up everyone.”
“There she is,” Dani said, starting the vehicle. The other SUV would stay behind as a backup while the rest of the team took positions to cover the meeting place in case Sonya decided to go off the script. “Right on time.”
“Tell me, how the hell did Michael get into this hornets nest?” Steele asked curiously as she took the turn to bring them to the other side of the warehouse. “I’ve been trying to find something on them for decades. None of my leads went anywhere.”
“Let’s just say he was at the right place at the right time.”
“Even when your people keep him in a hole, the man still brings the best scores home, doesn’t he?” Steele shook his head, chuckling, when she pulled into a stop.
“You don’t know the half of it, Mr. Steele.” Dani murmured, and got out of the car just as Sonya’s vehicle came to a rolling stop at fifty yards’ distance from them.
***
“Oh, look, Steele brought his bodyguard.”
Michael made yet another minor adjustment, and watched the visage of his target gain even more definition and clarity through the scope. He was perched on the rooftop of the three story building opposite the warehouse where the two SUVs were parked face to face on either side of the small alley.
“He brought five of his bodyguards,” he reported softly through the comms, “There’s two men on the rooftop, one behind the wall to your three o’clock, and the other covering you to your immediate left. Also, there’s another SUV behind the warehouse.”
“Well, that’s an asshole move, isn’t it?” she said conversationally, watching Steele and Pearce as they got out of the SUV to stand next to it. “This was supposed to be a one on one meeting.”
“He didn’t get to where he is by being very trusting or playing by the rules.”
“Hello, darling,”
Michael heard Steele’s voice clearly through Sonya’s earpiece and watched her unholstering her gun before stepping out of the vehicle.
“Sonya, I presume–”
“Roger Steele,” Sonya said in heavily accented English. Michael saw Steele stop when he saw the gun in her hand, which she was pointing at the ground. Pearce took a step closer to his left flank. “I heard you’ve developed an interest in me.”
“You are a very interesting person with interesting ties to a lot of interesting things that’ve been happening all over the world.” Steele said, smiling charmingly.
“Well, here I am, Mr. Steele.” Sonya said, baring her teeth in a shark-like grin. “Let’s talk about what I can do to get this interest to fade, hmm, shall we?”
Michael made another minuscule adjustment to his aim and took a steadying breath, knowing the next words out of Steele’s mouth were going to be his cue to take the shot.
“I’m afraid not, my dear,” Steele said, and took another step forward, which brought him a little bit closer to Pearce. “There won’t be any deals.”
Michael pulled the trigger the same moment he stopped speaking and saw a large, crimson blood stain bloom in his chest as he crumpled to the ground. Pearce reacted with lightning speed, and managed to pull her gun even as she jerked sideways, taking Steele down to the ground with her own body covering his. Her own team started shooting at Sonya, careful to hit the SUV and the gravel near her feet, never quite hitting her. Sonya took a wild shot in the direction where Pearce was on the ground covering Steele, and had to jump back inside when Pearce managed to clip her shoulder with a gazing shot.
“Shit, Sonya!” Michael shouted, partly angry that she would stand around shooting without getting inside the vehicle to drive away, and partly concerned that she was really hurt.
He took a moment to scan the area once more to make sure Pearce or any of her team weren’t hurt. Even through the dust cloud Sonya’s squealing tires left behind, Micahel could see the CIA team already converging around the two of them to move them out. Steele even managed to lift his head and flash a weak thumbs up in his direction, knowing that Michael could see him in his crosshairs.
“I’m fine,” Sonya’s curt voice came through the comms as he heaved a sigh of relief. “Status.”
“Steele’s dead,” he said, and started to quickly dismantle the gun to pack it back inside the carry-on. “They dragged his body back to the SUV.”
“Bug out Michael,” he heard her over the sounds of the rushing wind and growling engine. “Get back to the hotel. We’re clearing out in thirty.”
***
Michael was zipping the last packed duffel closed when Sonya burst through the door. “Alright,” she said, making a beeline for the closest bag. “Let’s go.”
“Let me fix that, at least,” Michael got to his feet and nodded at her left arm, which was still bleeding through the material of her sleeve. “Trust me, you don’t want to leave a trail of blood behind like that.”
“Michael–”
“It’ll only take five minutes, Sonya,” Michael said, ignoring her mutinous expression and motioning for her to sit. He already had the first aid kit ready on the bedside table. “Sit.”
“Fine,” she huffed before dropping on the edge of the bed. “Make it quick.”
“You just had to stick around and shoot, didn’t you?” Michael sniped as he used an antiseptic wipe to clean the wound after cutting off the sleeve. It was just a graze, but the cut was deep enough that she needed a few stitches. “This wouldn’t have happened if you had just jumped inside your damned SUV and driven off.”
“Aww,” Sonya said, turning her head to look at him with amusement, “Don’t worry about me. Besides, I couldn’t let you have all the fun, could I? I had a bad feeling about his bodyguard. She was trained–”
“Be glad she didn’t shoot you in the head,” Michael countered before turning his attention to the needle he had in his hand. “I’m pretty sure she was pissed you got her employer killed. People tend to take it personally when you fuck with their paychecks.”
Sonya laughed and then winced when Michael started to close the cut with the sutures. As promised, he finished it with four quick and neat stitches, and covered the sight with a fresh bandage within four minutes.
“All done,” he said, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. “We can go now.”
Sonya stayed where he was, and caught him by the elbow to halt him from stepping away from her.
“You know,” she murmured, looking up at him with a certain warm, gentleness in her eyes, “Working with you is fun. I could get used to this.”
“Great,” Michael said just as quietly, doing his best to hold her gaze without letting his inner discomfort show. “I’m planning to stick around for a while.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Michael.” She said and got to her feet without letting go of his arm. Then, with a quick move Michael didn’t quite see coming, she stood on tiptoes to grab his face and plant a firm kiss on his lips.
It was over before he could quite recover from the unexpected shock, or deliberate about reciprocating. She let him go with a smug smile and grabbed the nearest bag before heading out of the room, leaving him rooted to the spot.
Shit. Michael cursed, breaking himself out of his stupor, and grabbed the other three bags before hurrying out of the room. As promised, the sounds of Fiona’s laughter and her echoing words from the previous night hounded him in his mind all the way out of the hotel.
***
“Now that we’ve got that unpleasantness over with, what do you say we go back to my place and wipe this dreadful memory out of our minds with a glass of my finest bourbon by the pool?”
Dani counted to ten slowly in her mind, and kept the SUV steady on the road with what felt like herculean effort. Steele’s haughty accent and constant bitching was starting to grate on her nerves.
“We’re not going back there, Mr. Steele,” she muttered, keeping her gaze fixed on the road, “We’re going straight to Norrington airfield. From there, we’re going to fly you to one of our safehouses where you’ll stay put until our operation is concluded.”
“I promise I won’t do anything to jeopardise his mission,” Steele whined. “I’ll just stay in my place and keep my head down like a good little boy–”
“I’m sorry, I can’t take your word for it,” Dani said, taking the northern exit off the highway, “I don’t know you and I have no reason to trust you, especially with Michael’s life, given your career history.”
In her periphery, she saw his expression twisting into a grimace.
“I don’t even know why I’m surprised, you know,” he huffed after a while, staring out of the window on his side. “I should have remembered that this is one of those unavoidable side effects that comes attached to having Michael Westen in your life. You can always count on the bloke to wade in unannounced and take your entire life by storm at one point or another.”
“Just be glad that he did, Mr. Steele,” Dani advised, “Otherwise you wouldn’t be alive to complain about it. He didn’t really have to save your life. He did it because you’re a friend.”
That got him to snap his head around to glare at the side of her skull. “Whatever do you mean?”
“This operation to take down Sonya and the entire network she works for takes the highest priority,” she said, “I have carte blanche to let Michael proceed any way he sees fit to make that happen. He could have easily let you die, and I would have approved it as mission critical. My bosses upstairs wouldn’t have batted an eyelid about it.”
Steele stared at her with wide eyes for a full minute before breaking the silence. “That’s cold, Agent Pearce.” he said, shaking his head in visible disbelief.
“It’s the truth, Mr. Steele,” Dani murmured, smiling faintly, “You’ve been in the game long enough to know how it’s played.”
“Fucking hell,” Steele cursed before looking away again, “So, you mean I owe that bastard my life, again?”
Dani wasn’t the least surprised to hear that Michael had saved his life before. She had come to realise that it was how the man usually made friends; either by ruining their lives or saving their lives, and at times, by doing both.
“It seems so, Mr. Steele.”
“Alright, fine. You’ve convinced me,” Steele sighed and let a few seconds pass before going straight back to whining again, “But, do I really have to stay in one of your safehouses? Prior experience has taught me the amenities in those places are quite terrible. Is there maybe a way I could help? I’d like to get back to my life sooner rather than later, you understand.”
Dani bit back the first response that came to her mind, and gave it some thought. Although she wanted nothing other than to ship him as far away as possible before getting back to work, she had to admit that he might have some uses, considering his background and connections.
Besides, that would let her keep him in sight rather than worrying about what he would get up to when left unsupervised.
“Maybe,” she said, without committing to anything, but not discarding his request outright either, “We’ll see.”
Private Airfield
Miami
Sam’s text had been infuriatingly short, and non-detailed. It had served no other purpose than to cause a cold dread to pool in Michael’s gut throughout the two hour journey back on one of the private flights Sonya had arranged. At least, he had returned to Miami by himself, and there had been no one to witness him holding back a breakdown by the skin of his teeth, wondering desperately about what had happened to Fiona during his absence.
He saw Jesse waiting by his Porsche the moment he cleared out of the airfield, and broke into a jog to join him.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded the second he was within shouting distance. “I saw Sam’s message.”
“Get in,” Jesse said, and helped him to load the carry-ons at the back before jumping back inside the car. “I’ll fill you in on the way.”
“Alright,” Michael said impatiently as he pulled away from the parking lot onto the main road. “What the hell happened?”
“Carlos got into trouble,” Jesse said, and launched into the story.
Apparently, Carlos Cruz had a sealed record. He had been a star witness for a case against a drug dealer called Nando back in Hialeah, where he originally hailed from. Instead of staying in prison for a few more decades as he was supposed to, the gangster got out early due to an appeal on a technicality. And, as all gang leaders who were convicted did, the first thing Nando did after being released was to put out a hit on the witnesses who testified against him. According to what Jesse told him, Nando now had Carlos, and he was demanding the other witness – the guy who wasn’t even named in the first court case and could testify against him on a count of murder. He was threatening to kill Carlos if they failed to deliver him by the deadline that expired in about an hour.
“How the hell did you all get involved in this?”
“Carlos called, asking for help,” Jesse said, taking the exit to Coral Gables, “Sam and I went to get the other guy, Lloyd. We were all supposed to meet up with the cop, Detective Holloway, who was going to take Lloyd into protective custody. We hung back until Carlos showed up to speak to her. Then Nando showed up out of nowhere and the thing turned into a cluster fuck. We never knew that the cop was working with the bad guy all along, and he just killed her on the spot, grabbed Carlos and drove off. During that chaos, Lloyd did a runner and we were left behind holding the proverbial shit can–”
“Sam and Fi, where are they now?” Michael wanted to know.
“Scouting the warehouse where Nando is holding Carlos,” Jesse said, “It’s a few miles down the third street by the river. According to what they’ve seen, it’s Nando’s HQ, and they have about fifty guys there, all of them packing just in case you were thinking of doing something insane–”
“No chance of finding this guy, Lloyd, is there?”
“Not really, no,” Jesse shook his head in frustration, “The ransom call came through to Fi. They got her number off Carlos’ phone. She said we’ll get them the guy, just to buy time, and we got time until five.”
Michael checked his watch. It was four fifteen in the evening. “Fuck it.” He cursed.
“Is there anything you can do?” Jesse asked, “Fi was hoping maybe you could call in a favour with your new friends. We couldn’t get a hold of Pearce or you until you messaged us that you were on your way back.”
“She was back in Jamaica with me and she won’t be reachable for a while. She’s debriefing another asset.” Michael said, and pulled out his phone. He hoped Sonya hadn’t discarded her phone with the number he still had and the call would connect. “Tell me everything you found about this guy, Nando. If I can get a hold of Sonya, I’ll ask if there’s anything they can do.”
***
Both Sam and Fiona were standing outside next to Fiona’s red Hyundai when Jesse pulled up next to it.
“Michael–”
Fiona’s distraught expression was more than enough confirmation that Carlos wasn’t doing all that great. While he had no connection whatsoever to the man, Michael knew that Sam and Jesse considered him a friend, or at least, a close acquaintance. It was also obvious that Fiona still cared about him as well, although it wasn’t quite clear to Michael whether she still had any sort of feelings for him.
That meant Michael had to do what he could to help the man out of the terrible situation he was in.
“I talked to Sonya,” he said, getting out of the car, “She’s talking to her people. They’re working on it.”
“Working on it?” Sam frowned, “What does that mean? You think they can deal with this guy?”
“I think so. They’re contacting some of their people in the drug trade. They’re gonna go above his head to his supplier.”
“How long is that gonna take, Michael?”
“I don’t know, Fi,” he said apologetically, “They’re gonna call me when they have something.”
“Michael, Carlos is running out of time,” Sam reminded him.
“We’re going to have to do something to stall until they get back to me, then.”
“Okay,” Jesse said, “How are we going to do that?”
“He wants a witness? Let’s give him one.” Micheal said.
“Mike, we don’t even know where Lloyd is.”
“Nando’s never seen him, right? I’ll go in, instead,” Michael volunteered. That way, when the call came in, he would be in a position to use whatever leverage Sonya had acquired for him. “We can buy ourselves some time with that.”
“What if they don’t go for it?”
Michael let his gaze sweep over them, not bothering to hide the absolute absence of guarantees in the hasty, and dangerous plan he was proposing, “Then I’ll have called in that favour for nothing because we’ll all be dead.”
***
“I need to do this, Michael,” Fiona said with a preamble as she drove. Jesse and Sam were in the Porsche, following them.
“Fi, you don’t have to explain–”
“No, I do,” she interjected, her gaze firmly fixed on the empty gravel road, “We’re not together anymore, not after… well–”
Michael wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that when she trailed off, whether she had ended it with Carlos after her rescue from Gamble or when she had gone to Cuba with Sam, looking for him. He stayed silent, however, because he was quite familiar with the look she had on her face, which meant she was gathering her thoughts in the way she wanted to share.
“Anyway, I owe him,” she said after a while, just as the first glimpse of their destination came into view from the left. “He’s bailed me out a few times, and helped out Sam and Jesse too, with clients.”
“He’s a friend,” Michael said, and took out a pair of zip ties from her glove compartment. “I get it.”
“I don’t want his death in my conscience, that’s why I’m doing this,” Fiona insisted as she pulled out of the road to a stop, from where the warehouse was at about a hundred yards’ distance. “After this, we’re even.”
Michael nodded, accepting her reasoning before getting out of the car. She came around to where he was standing to help fasten the zip tie around his wrists. Since he was inserting himself as the witness, he had to look the part.
“So, how was your job?” She asked, looking up once she was done.
“Had to arrange the death of an old friend.”
She tilted her head to the side, studying him, “Permanently?”
“No, he’s fine,” Michael said, shrugging, “He just has to go off the grid for a while. Pearce has him.”
She hummed in acknowledgement, and continued to stare at him with a knowing glint in her eyes.
“Fine,” Michael sighed, knowing exactly what she was thinking, “You’re right.”
“Told you,” she grinned.
“She kissed me, and said something along the lines of wanting to get used to working with me,” he said quietly.
Deep cover missions had an inherent tendency to blur the line between the lie and the truth, and Fiona was the strongest life line Michael had to his real life out of the one he was obligated to live in until the mission was done. He wanted to be honest with her about his feelings, and the things he had to do, because he knew that she was the one who’d be able to drag him out if he was pulled in too deep.
“If things were different… if I didn’t get the chance to ground myself here before I had to go in, I think they’d have gotten to me,” he admitted truthfully, “And I would have lost myself–”
“Michael–”
“I guess, what I’m trying to say is that I’m glad I’m not in this alone.”
“Of course, Michael,” Fiona said, holding onto his bound wrists, “None of us would have let you. The plan is to get you out, for good, not lose you to another bunch of people who are just going to use you and discard you, like your beloved agency did.”
He couldn’t really argue with her there, since she did have a point. There was a time he would have vehemently denied her accusation against the institution he had dedicated his life to, something he had wholeheartedly believed in. Throughout the years after his burn notice, he had come to the realisation that maybe being a spy wasn’t all that he was, or the only thing that defined him. The period of adjustment after his very much unplanned and unwanted return had slowly changed his mind about his own self-worth. That time had shown him that maybe there were other things in his life and things he could do to make living it worthwhile.
“It’s a good plan,” Michael said, smiling crookedly, “Let’s hope Nando won’t end it all with bullets to our heads.”
“Then let’s hope your Sonya will come through on time.” Fiona countered, and turned on her heels to walk towards the warehouse where the gangsters held Carlos, dragging him along behind her by the zip tie around his wrists. “Let’s go.”
***
They were greeted by two gangsters armed with machine guns when they reached the location. They stood silently in front of the closed, reinforced door, glaring down at both of them, making it clear that they were at the end of the line.
Fiona kept her gun pointed at the side of Michael’s head in one hand, and used the phone in the other to make the call.
“Fiona Glenanne. Just in time.” Michael heard Nando’s voice through the speaker. “You got my witness?”
“Yes, I do.” she said, glaring right back at the two men, “But I would prefer to hand him to you myself, in person.”
“Little girl, you are in no position to make any demands.”
“I think I am, if you want your witness.” she said, and made a point to take the safety off with a click Michael knew Nando heard over the phone, “You see, I have a gun to his head – a head that contains all the answers to your questions. So if you don’t want all that information splattered all over the place, then let us in right now.”
Michael only heard the soft click of the line going dead. But the answer to Fiona’s demand became obvious when the door in front of them opened with a beep.
Another armed gangster was there to escort them further inside to where Nando waited, surrounded by five more guards. Carlos was tied to a chair that was bolted to the floor. His bloodied mess of a face and torso held enough evidence that he had been worked over for a while. Fiona had to put her gun down when she saw the blowtorch the man closest to him held close to Carlos’ face, and one of Nando’s men took it from her before dragging her a few steps back from Michael by her arm.
“Wake up. I wanna show you something.” Nando, the guy with the blowtorch said, slapping Carlos on the cheek to snap him awake. Carlos jerked his head back, blinking hard to open his one eye that wasn’t swollen, and made a gasping sound when his gaze landed on Michael.
Michael stayed where he was, unmoving, hoping the man would have enough sense left in him to stay silent.
Nando clearly saw the shock in his expression, and drew his own conclusions. “You put up with all that pain to protect a name,” he said, taking a step away from him to focus on Michael. “But now, I don’t need the name.”
“You can let him go now.” Michael said, calmly.
“We’ll see about that,” Nando said, baring his teeth in a thin smile that held no humour. “’Cause I think you might be trying to play me.”
“Nando, you asked for–”
“Shut up,” the man snapped, cutting off Fiona’s instant protest before turning his assessing gaze back to Michael. “So you’re the pendejo who saw me cap that dude ten years ago, huh? Got to admit it’s kind of funny. Seems to me somebody would’ve noticed a white boy like you hanging around in little Managua. So I guess the real question is: Who the hell are you? ‘Cause my guess is, you ain’t no witness.”
Michael didn’t react to the sounds of the safeties going off as one on all the machine guns that surrounded him and Fiona. He had known all along it was a long shot. He just had to keep the man’s attention on him for a little while yet.
“You’re right, Nando. I’m not a witness,” he admitted, “I’m just a messenger, and I have something you need to hear.”
“Oh?”
“I think you should let go of your past, let bygones be bygones,” he continued, his voice level, “Hunting down people who stood against you is going to get you nowhere except an early grave. Just let the three of us go, and leave this town. Enjoy what’s left of your freedom.”
Nando stared at him for a long moment before dissolving into laughter. “This guy!” he said to his men in between gasps, “I mean, I don’t know whether he’s stupid, or crazy, or both! Some balls, though. Big talk from an unarmed man with a 100-pound pixie as his backup.”
The 100-pound pixie had already positioned herself in a way that a quick upward jab from her elbow would land on the unprotected throat of the man who held her, and Michael knew she could at least take two more down with that man’s gun before the rest of them could gun them both down. The only thing held her back from acting on her plan was the fact that Michael was still talking.
“I have friends.”
“Oh. You got friends, huh?” Nando mocked, and went around Michael to stand next to the gangster who was standing behind Michael. “Chacho, he’s got friends.”
Michael was fully expecting the pistol butt that landed on his shoulder blade, but the blow still hurt enough to drive him down to a knee with a stifled groan. In his periphery, Fiona twitched. He shook his head minutely, silently signalling her to let it play out for a moment longer.
“Friends? Well, where are they? Huh?” Nando continued, glaring down at him, “Because I don’t see these friends of yours. You wanna know what I think? I think you got nothing. That’s what I think.”
Michael took his time getting back to his feet, and met Nando’s triumphant grin with a soft, amused chuckle of his own, which had the effect of turning the gangster’s mirth into instant suspicion.
“What’s so funny, asshole?” He glared.
“You think I would walk in here with nothing?” Michael asked, smiling, “I’m the reasonable one, and I was hoping I could talk some sense into you. My friends, well, they aren’t as patient as me, or care to waste time negotiating with lowlifes like you. You’re dead. You just don’t know it yet.”
His words had the intended effect. Nando’s eyes narrowed, his irritation turning visibly into full blown hatred. “Chacho,” he snapped and took a step back, presumably to avoid the blood splatter, and gave a sharp command. “Shoot this fool.”
The call he had been hoping and praying for arrived at the same time the barrel of Chacho’s Mac-10 pointed up to aim at his forehead.
“That’s for you,” Michael said over the ringing of his cell phone. It sounded way too loud in the tense atmosphere. “You might want to answer that.”
Chacho took the phone out of his back pocket at Nando’s go-ahead, and answered the call. “Yo, who is this?” he barked, and Michael saw his eyes go wide at what he heard on the other side of the line. “Nando, you’re not gonna believe it. It’s Lopez.”
“Cual Lopez?” Nando frowned.
“Lopez from Colombia.” Chacho sounded agitated, almost scared. “He said to put him on speaker.”
“Ricardo. Que pasa?” Nanado pasted a hasty smile on his face and said loudly in greeting.
“Nando,” a low, gravelly voice with a thick spanish accent said through the line, “Forgive me for interrupting.”
“No, no, no, no. No–no problem,” Nando hurried to reassure him. Michael had a feeling that whoever was on the line had a lot of power over him and his gang, “What can I do? What’s going on?”
“The man who owns this phone, is he there? Is he alive?”
“Yeah,” Nando said, glancing sideways at Michael before focusing on the call, “He’s fine.”
“Good.” said Lopez. “Listen to me carefully. You’re going to let him go, him and his friends. You understand?
“Ricardo, no.” Nando objected, panicking. “I can’t. Listen, you don’t understand. These guys can pin a murder on me. I have to handle it.”
“Don’t worry, Nando. I’ll handle it.” Lopez said calmly. Michael shared a glance with Fiona who was watching him intently. He had a feeling where the conversation was going, and he knew she had sensed the same.
“Chacho–”
At Lopeze’s address, Chacho snapped to attention as if the man was there in person.
“You know who I am? What I can do? To your familia? To you?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Lopez.” The man swallowed.
“So, if I asked you to do something, you would do it no matter what, right?”
“Yes, sir.” Chacho’s affirmation was instant.
Nando seemed to have understood his own situation, because he broke in then, pleading, “Ricardo, por favor–”
“Shut up. I’m talking to Chacho.” Lopez snapped. “Chacho, I want you to shoot Nando now.”
“What?” Nando’s eyes widened in fear, and he took a step back when he noticed Chacho’s gun was now aiming at him instead of Michael. It was shocking how the man on he phone took control of his entire organisation with just a few words without even being there in person.
“Ricardo, por favor!” Nando begged, and took a few more steps back only to be cornered against a wall by his own people. Michael also took a step back towards Fiona, getting out of the way of Chacho’s aim.
Nando’s screams for his boss went entirely ignored, and his frantic pleading to his own men went equally unheard as Chacho emptied half a clip into his torso, silencing his screams with deafening finality.
“Thank you, Chacho.” Lopez said calmly, as if he hadn’t just arranged the execution of his own man in front of a complete stranger, “Now, make sure your guests get home safely. Get them out of there.”
***
The cool evening air felt heavenly on his broken and abused face, and Carlos dragged in a deep breath, revelling in the sense of freedom and the fact that he was still alive to enjoy it. Fiona stood next to him, shoulder to shoulder, and stared into the distance where Sam and Jesse stood next to their cars, flanking the man who supposedly had died in a public spectacle not too long ago.
“Thanks for getting me out,” he said hoarsely, wincing at the way his entire face hurt when it moved.
“I’m not the one you should be thanking, Carlos,” she said softly, her gaze still fixed on Michael, to his annoyance. “I did nothing. It was all Michael.”
“What did he do exactly?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” He felt his voice rise higher even through the pain, incredulous at how unconcerned she appeared by the whole thing they had just witnessed. “Don’t you care about the fact that he got Nando killed by his own men with just a phone call? Doesn’t that worry you at all?”
Fiona finally turned to face him, and tilted her head with a mixed expression of irritation and confusion. “Nando was trying to kill you and that guy Lloyd, if he got his hands on him,” she said, frowning, “And you’re worried about Michael?”
“He’s dangerous, Fiona, can’t you see it?” Carlos said, pleadingly, genuinely at a loss on why she seemed so dense when it came to that man. “God knows what kind of people he works for if they’re willing to execute him in public just to keep him off the radar.”
He had watched silently, even when he had been reeling in shock at the sight of Michael, followed by the frankly unbelievable, horrific turn of events, and he had been able to figure out that much.
All emotions disappeared from Fiona’s face, her features smoothing out into an eerily blank mask as he watched. It was a subtle change, but it was more than enough to deepen the unease he was already feeling in his gut.
“He’s always been a very dangerous man, Carlos,” she said very quietly, and he couldn’t help but notice that there was a previously unheard tone of warning underlying her soft words. “That’s nothing new.”
“Yeah, I guess so, huh?” Carlos muttered bitterly through clenched teeth, too hurt, both physically and emotionally, to spare an effort to mask the true loathing he actually felt, “Doesn’t even have the decency to stay dead for too long without storming back into your life to ruin everything…”
He knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment the words left his mouth. He knew, intellectually, that even if he hated the man’s guts, he still did owe him his life. Even more to the point, it did nothing to sway Fiona to his side, like he wanted, but did exactly the opposite.
For a terrible moment, he thought she would slap him for it. Even though her blank expression stayed frozen on her pale face, her gaze that held his own blazed with pure fury at his callous remark. He felt something inside him wail in heartbreak when he realised that he had sealed his own fate with those words, and that he had already lost her to Michael for good.
“Carlos, I think you’re a good man,” she said, her voice devoid of any emotion, “But someone like you will never be able to understand someone like me or Michael. It’ll be for the best if you just delete my number from your phone and move on. Maybe, one day you’ll find someone you deserve.”
It didn’t sound at all like the parting words from a friend. It sounded more like a threat, or a curse, and he knew that she had just broken all ties with him, with finality.
“Fiona–”
“We’re done, Carlos,” she said, cutting off his last ditch effort to backtrack, “This is goodbye. We won’t be seeing each other again. Take care.”
With that, she turned on her heels and sauntered straight to where Michael was standing without a single backward glance.
“How is he?”
Carlos heard Michael ask her with a jerk of his head toward him.
“He’ll live,” Fiona said with a careless shrug, her gaze never leaving Michael’s. “And he’ll find his own way back.”
“You sure?” That was Sam, who was glancing back and forth between her and Carlos with a confused frown. Carlos had a sinking feeling he knew what she meant, since Jesse’s Porsche was only a two-seater.
“Yup,” Fiona said, and dragged Michael by the arm towards her own car as Carlos watched, looking for all the world as if she had already discarded him from her mind and memory, “Dinner?”
“Your treat?” the man smirked at her.
“Fine.” Fiona flashed a mock glare before climbing inside the Hyundai, “Just this once.”
“Alright then.”
The next moment, she and Michael were gone, vanished in the wake of squealing tires and a thick dust cloud, leaving a defeated Carlos and their bewildered friends behind.
