These things get louder (or, five times the losers met the a-team)

storm_petrel

1.

Persian Gulf, 1991

The USS Princeton has been inching along under her own power for the past hour. Clay’s been on-deck since the explosions started, and now he’s watching the lights blink across the stern of the USS Adroit, maybe half a mile ahead of them, leading a path through the minefield, leading them to safety.

Clay has to laugh, a little, because who ever joined up because they thought it would be the safe option? Safe is married at nineteen to Susan Hawkins, dinner at his mother’s every other Sunday. Safe is a nine-to-five job and a garage full of power tools and a house he’ll never pay off. Clay blinks, turns his face into the evening wind, because he’s been awake for more than thirty hours and it’s starting to tell.

His men are belowdecks with the rest of the platoons and he could have lost them all today, just like he could lose them in Kuwait—if they ever get there, which is looking less and less likely— and it’s a bad idea to think about this. There’s not even his own would-coulda-shoulda to dwell on, because he didn’t drive this ship into a damned minefield, and if they’d hit at a slightly wider angle, maybe they’d all be in the water now, watching the ship go down and wondering when the surface is going to catch fire. There’s still oil all over the Gulf, after all.

Someone clears their throat behind him, and Clay pivots around, pulls himself to something like attention. It’s one of the Army Rangers, a captain he’s seen in the officer’s mess once or twice. Older than him, hair starting to grey a little at his temples. Lopsided smile. Two beer bottles, condensation glistening on their sides, blue foil labels catching the low evening light. Clay hasn’t had a cold beer since Christmas, and his fingers actually twitch before he steels himself.

“Courtesy of the Athabasca,” the other man says, holding out a bottle. Over his shoulder, Clay can see the Canadian destroyer, her lights winking companionably as she sails away from them. Canadian beer, on a day like today. There might actually be a god, after all.

The captain smiles at him, easy, well-practiced. Clay smiles back, knows it’s not half as steady. The captain raises his bottle. “To well-laid plans,” he says.

Clay raises his own beer, clinks the rims together. “If we’d had one of those,” he says, and god damn it, his voice sounds too young in his own ears, so he pitches it lower, “Maybe we wouldn’t have sailed straight into a goddamn minefield.”

The captain laughs. “To luck, then,” he says, raising one eyebrow. “Or to well-placed allies who are generous with their beer.”

That, Clay will drink to, and the beer is cold and perfect against his parched throat. The captain downs half his bottle in one long swallow, then extends a hand. “Hannibal,” he says. “Hannibal Smith. Army rangers.”

Clay shakes it. “Lieutenant Frank Clay,” he says, “Marines.”

Hannibal Smith looks knowing. “First command,” he says, and it’s not a question. “You boys bound for Kuwait?”

Clay nods, fixes his eyes on the horizon, where the little minesweeper is leading the way. “If we even get there,” he says, and there’s a lot of weight in those words. A hundred thousand things that could happen, that could go wrong, and Clay is quietly desperate for the day when he won’t be twenty-one anymore, his commission so fresh that anyone could spot it a hundred yards away. For the day when he’ll be steady, in control, and always know what to do.

Smith joins him at the railing, mouth pulled up in a half-smile like he can tell exactly what Clay is thinking. Maybe he can. God knows Clay feels like it’s written across his skin, some days. “You’ll do all right,” he says, and his voice is confident, like Hannibal Smith can see the future and maybe everything’s not going to be a complete clusterfuck.

Clay hopes he’s right.

2.

Nicaragua, 2000

The Sikorsky S-76 controls under his hands are causing a pleasant flashback to the brief period he spent piloting for the British Royal Family, so it takes Murdock a moment or two to register the insistent squeal of the GPS, blinking out the last known position of the American unit.

The Queen was always a great lady, and Murdock sings, “God save the Queen! She ain’t no human being!” but means it in a nice way, really, as he swings the chopper around in a great swooping arc. The Panama colours on the body flash in the sunlight, but Murdock’s spray-painted USA!!! on both sides of the tail in black, drippy letters, so hopefully that’ll bring them out.

There’s little dark figures running out of the treeline, out into the clearing where the long grass is being beaten flat by the chopper’s wash. Two of them are moving slow, supporting another man between them, and Murdock clicks his tongue between his teeth. This isn’t anything like a cas-evac, he’s got maybe rudimentary first-aid supplies in the admittedly plush cabin.

The sliding door is missing, so the cabin’s going to a bit breezy. Murdock hopes the comfy seats make up for it. The first commando’s made it to the chopper, eyes wide. He looks about twelve. Murdock grins at him through the cockpit window and taps his headset. The kid gets with the program, and grabs a headset from the backseat. He’s yelling into the mike before he’s even got the headphones in place. “PFC Dan Kauffman,” he yells, “Who the hell are you, sir?”

Murdock laughs. “Lieutenant Murdock,” he says, “Officially, Army Rangers. Unofficially, here to save all your asses.”

The kid goggles at him for a moment, and then the rest of the squad reach the chopper in quick succession. One of them grabs the headset. “Captain Garrett Lim,” he says. Lim’s eyes rapidly assess the chopper, Murdock and he apparently comes to several, not-unwarranted conclusions. “You don’t look like an official pickup, Lieutenant,” he says.

Murdock tosses off a quick, sketchy salute. “I’m the best that’s coming for the next fifteen hours or so, Captain.”

Lim takes about three seconds to think it over, then nods. “Good enough,” he says, and turns to his men. “Rhames, Kauffman, get Henderson into the chopper and get him stabilized,” he says, and tosses a look to Murdock. “Small-calibre bullet to the leg. We stopped the bleeding, but we need to get him out, fast.” Lim grabs a radio off his belt, brings it to his mouth and starts shouting. “Alvarez, get down to the clearing. We are airborne in one minute, acknowledge.” The radio clicks, and Lim runs low around the nose, then climbs into the co-pilot’s seat. He turns to Murdock. “We have hostiles in pursuit,” he shouts. “My sniper was covering the retreat.”

There are five men piled in the cabin around the injured Henderson, who groans as they distribute into surrounding seats. “Captain,” one of them yells, running his hands over the smooth wood panelling. “This doesn’t look much like military-issue.”

“Watch the door,” says Murdock, indicating the open space where it should be. “In a minute or two, there’s gonna be a bit of a drop there.”

From one of the bluffs surrounding the clearing, there’s the flat crack of a rifle, though Murdock can hardly hear it over the engines. Then a figure comes skidding down the scree slope, rocks kicking up under his boots, a big rifle swinging over his shoulder. When he hits the grass of the clearing, he picks up speed again, and as he gets close, Murdock gets a better look at him. Young twenties, maybe, hair buzzed brutally short. Dark, intense eyes that meet Murdock’s for a quick instant. Then the guy drops as bullets start slicing through the grass.

“Oh, I hate this part,” says Murdock, as men start emerging from the treeline. Machine gun fire rakes close to the chopper as Lim’s men crowd the door and fire back. Murdock revs the engine, once, twice and the guy—Alvarez—pops up like a jackrabbit and runs towards the chopper, somehow dodging fire without slacking speed. He grabs the door frame and one of his buddies hauls him in while Captain Lim yells, “We’re clear, go, go—”

Bullets ping off the tail rotor as the chopper charges forward across the clearing. Murdock tips the nose low, gains a little air and just clears the trees. Alvarez grabs a headset. “Thanks for waiting,” he rasps, breathlessly.

Murdock grins. “Anytime. Now, boys and girls, please keep your arms and legs inside the chopper while we conduct a brief aerial tour of the Nicaraguan and Costa Rican rainforest enroute to Panama.” He turns to Captain Lim, keeps his voice amiable. “So tell me, why did the CIA send you and your bunch of fine upstanding young men out in the Nicaraguan bush?”

Lim actually looks a little resentful of the stock answer. “Classified, Lieutenant,” he says, then narrows his eyes. “Official pickup wasn’t coming, was it?”

Murdock shrugs. “Oh, it was coming all right. Maybe a few hours too late, but it was coming. Way I heard it, from a friend of a friend of a friend,” he smirks, and taps his nose. Lim just stares at him, so he keeps going. “Way I heard it, someone at the Company was maybe losing their jobs over this little jaunt, and maybe wanted a bit less paperwork to fill out. Live ground operative testimony can be a real drag when you’re spinning stories to some budget sub-committee, right?”

Murdock can practically hear Lim’s teeth grinding, so he keeps his tone cheerful. After all, no one wants to hear that they and their men have been fucked over and left high and dry, so he might as well tell the story in the happiest way possible. “I was on the ground in Panama, so I borrowed this baby and came running.”

Lim’s mouth works over the word borrowed for a moment, then he closes his eyes. “Lieutenant,” he says, very carefully, “Who did you borrow this helicopter from?”

From whom did you borrow this helicopter, Murdock automatically corrects in his head, but now is probably not the time. “The Presidential flight wing. But don’t worry!” Murdock gestures at the missing door. “It was in hangar for repairs, so they definitely weren’t using it.”

“You stole a chopper from the President of Panama?” and really, there’s no reason for Lim to yell so loud. Murdock’s sitting right next to him.

Bright red tracers streak past the cockpit window, suddenly, and one of Lim’s men yells, “Captain, we got hostile pursuit, eleven o’clock!”

Lim jerks around in the seat. “They have a chopper,” he says, disbelieving. He swings around. “Sit tight, guys.” Turning to Murdock, he says, “Lieutenant, I already owe Intel a boot up the fucking ass for this, but if you can get us out of here, I’m also going to owe you a drink.”

“I like mai tais,” says Murdock, and banks hard left.

The President of Panama probably didn’t like the idea of rocket launchers ruining the nice aerodynamic lines of his helicopter. If they get out of this, Murdock’s going to write him a polite letter recommending the addition of many, many guns. Crazy evasive flying only gets you so far.

Murdock shakes his head abruptly, because that’s defeatist thinking. He is the king of crazy evasive flying. He jukes left, right, then drops altitude abruptly as a missile streaks past. The green forest below blurs dizzily around the cockpit window as he dives, contrasting sharply with the red digital numbers on the altimeter, flickering crazily.

Whoever’s flying the other bird is good. Not as good as he is, obviously, but he’s just got to line up straight enough to get a shot off. Machine gun fire grazes the co-pilot’s window, and Lim jerks sideways. He glances at Murdock. “Thank you, Lieutenant. For coming to get my men. I mean that.”

Suddenly, back in the cabin, someone yells, “Alvarez, you crazy motherfucker, what the fuck are you doing?”

Murdock knows that tone of voice. It means someone’s just done something unexpected and interesting. People use it around him all the time. He glances in the cockpit side mirror, and there’s Alvarez, hanging out the open door frame. He’s hooked to the chopper by his leather rifle strap, and he’s got the gun to his shoulder. Even in the wild slipstream, his body is almost steady. Murdock can’t see his eyes, but he can use his imagination.

Murdock grins, and drops forward thrust so fast, the chopper almost stops in midair. There’s the flat report of the rifle, once-twice-three-shots, and then Alvarez bellows, “Go!”

Behind them, the other chopper is losing altitude fast, its canopy glass a mass of spiderwebbed cracks. Perfect killshot on a chopper pilot from another moving chopper, Jesus Christ. Murdock can’t believe that fucking worked.

Alvarez’s buddies latch onto his belt, his rifle strap, and haul him back in. Lim swings around, taps his headset until Cougar grabs one of the spare sets. “Corporal Alvarez, officially, that was a very novel manoeuvre and I commend you on your quick thinking and exemplary aim.” Lim’s voice drops to a low growl. “Unofficially, you pull that kind of fuckhead stunt again, you’ll feel the back of my hand. Understood?”

“Acknowledged,” says Alvarez, and shoots Murdock a quick, conspiratorial look in the pilot’s mirror. Murdock grins, because he knows that look. That’s the expression of a man who’s done something shitcrazystupid and had it succeed beyond his wildest expectations. Murdock loves that feeling.

Over the roar of excited voices in the cabin, Murdock glances at the mirror and mouths, Nice shooting, cowboy.

Alvarez grins, and tips an imaginary hat.

3.

Georgia, 2001

Pooch is pretty sure he doesn’t have any of the right security clearances to be flying jump training flights at Fort Benning, but the army stuck his ass in the cockpit last month, and he’s been in the air ever since.

In a way, it’s almost soothing. He’s between assignments right now, and a little bit of mindless boredom, circling above the green Georgian countryside with no one shooting at him, is just what he needs. Pooch has spent too much of the last two years either sitting on his ass or running for his life in every hotspot on three continents, generally while under fire. He could get used to the quiet.

He could also get used to staying in one place long enough to land a proper date, because Clint’s wife Lynn wants to set him up with her friend. Jolene King teaches accounting courses at Columbus Tech, likes Italian movies, and is apparently looking forward to dinner tonight. Pooch grins.

He could almost forget the rack of kids in the back, and this is a new group, up for their very first jump. Once he tunes in, they’re hard to ignore. Pooch eyes them in the pilot’s mirror. Young, mostly, in a way he can’t really remember being, although, intellectually, he knows it wasn’t that far back. Driving in war zones for twenty months will do that to a man. The kids are loud, that heady mix of bravado and guts and pants-pissing terror which is probably the one uniting characteristic of all young men everywhere. The tension’s so thick it’s practically a physical thing in the air.

Pooch steadies out as the jump instructor starts bellowing and the kids do the final check on their gear. Terror’s taken over as the primary feeling, now, although the kids are fronting hard, trying to hide it. But they’re practically sweating adrenaline. Pooch almost feels drunk on it.

The first kid’s at the door now, strung tight as a wire, and Pooch wonders if he’ll choke, but no. He shoves himself outward and the slipstream yanks him away in a second.

Like it’s a signal, like someone’s flicked a switch, the rest of the kids are suddenly primed, and they go out the door, one by one like bullets out of a chamber. Maybe they’re trying to prove something. Pooch was so wired on his first jump, he honestly can’t remember anything except the second he pulled the cord, and his chute unfurled like a thunderclap, like the loudest sound in the world.

The last kid is getting prepped to make his jump. Pooch glances back, sees him pulling on his gloves, a quick flash of a tattoo over his knuckles. Fool, Pooch reads, before the kid gets his gloves on and steps up to the door, hands planted solid outside the frame. Pooch sees a fine tremor run through his big frame.

Only fools jump out of perfectly good airplanes, thinks Pooch, and laughs a little to himself. The jump instructor’s shouting something unintelligible, his words snatched away in the roar of the wind. Pooch flicks a look over his shoulder, and the kid meets his eye for a brief moment. “Go!” Pooch yells, and grins. He mouths, it’ll be all right.

He has no idea if the kid can hear him, but he steadies, suddenly. The kid flashes a quick thumbs up to the jump instructor, and then he’s out the door. His silhouette’s dark against the bright sky for a second before he drops out of sight.

Pooch grins, and banks around in a wide curve. Below him, there’s a billow of white chutes, like a school of gently pulsing jellyfish. He can’t see the last kid, but he’s out there somewhere.

It’s beautiful, really, and Pooch wonders whether Jolene likes flying.

Germany, 2010

Face has got to get moving again, because Hannibal’s plan for stealing the hard drive with this month’s surveillance depends on him making his way out through the Lichtjahr Sicherheit building while the cameras go down for their five-minute maintenance cycle. The eighth floor is currently closed for remodelling, but halfway down the hallway, there’s a door with a shiny new deadbolt that looks like the Stone Age next to all the fancy computer scanners. The hard drive’s heavy in his vest pocket, but Face hasn’t gotten this far in life by ignoring his gut, so he digs around for his pick set, taps his throat mike and says, “Hannibal, keep an eye out for me? I gotta check something out.”

There’s a sigh from the other end. Hannibal is currently hanging outside the building with a directional infrared sensor, and that sort of thing doesn’t do much for his sense of tolerance. “Face, you’ve got four minutes before the cameras are back up. BA’s already waiting at the rendezvous point.”

“I know, I know, give me a few seconds—” Face has always been good with his hands, and this lock’s no challenge. Looks a rush job, too, and Face really wants to know what the Lichtjahr security boys wanted to stow out of the way of the rest of the building, up here where it’s nice and private—

The tumblers click, and Face grins, yanks the lock off and pulls the door open. The room is stripped bare, and empty except for the guy in black climbing gear, cuffed to an office chair, unconscious. Face has to pull up short.

His earpiece buzzes. “Face, what are you doing?” says Hannibal, his voice urgent. “I don’t know what’s so interesting that you want to risk being caught by the friendly German security experts, but you need to keep moving, your window’s closing.”

Face taps his ear absently. “On it, boss,” and for a half-second, he thinks about walking away, but under the blood and bruises and scruffy blond hair, the guy looks so young. Just a kid, practically, and someone’s obviously dedicated some serious time to beating the crap out of him. Face sighs, and twirls the wire pick through his fingers, absently.

The guy looks skinny, but Face has to revise his first estimate when he’s trying to boost six feet of wiry muscle over his shoulder. The guy groans, but doesn’t fight him. Face grits his teeth, and finally gets him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

Face and his unconscious friend avoid the guards more through a series of minor miracles than through any skill on Face’s part. Hannibal’s voice is low and irritated in his ear, because he’s perched outside with the infrared sensor, and Hannibal tends to get a little irritated when he’s hanging outside buildings in the middle of the night, in the rain.

The guy stirs against him, one hand coming up to brush a line along his back. “Cougar?” he slurs, and Face hear the quiet patter of blood on the floor.

“I’m going to try not to take that personally,” he tells the guy, and picks up his pace. You’re not that much younger than me, he thinks, a little vindictively, even if it does look like the kid should be playing Frisbee on some college campus, black eyes notwithstanding.

The whole thing about heroically carrying guys to safety? It looks much better on TV, where no one acts like their spine is telescoping under the weight. When he finally rounds the last corner, BA’s waiting patiently in the last camera’s blind spot, holding Face’s rappelling harness. He narrows his eyes when he sees the kid. “Where the hell did he come from?” He’s already at the window, scowling upwards at the jump line. “Rated for three-fifty pounds, tops, how the fuck we gonna get him out of here?”

Hannibal’s voice in his ear. “Face, BA, you’ve got guards on your floor. You’re going to have to move.”

Face says a couple of words that his mother tanned his ass for using when he was thirteen years old, and starts buckling on his climbing harness.

***

Back at the warehouse, Hannibal’s annoyed, and Face gets the inevitable lecture about deviating from the plan. It’s the abbreviated one, though, ten minutes tops, because he knows Hannibal wouldn’t have left the kid in there either. No ID, no weapons, nothing to indicate why he’d be tied up in a German security office in the middle of the night. They could have dropped him at the hospital, but the Lichtjahr guys could have just picked him up again. They certainly noticed he was missing, the way alarms started blaring two minutes after they cleared the building. Face grins as Hannibal hits the lecture’s nine-minute mark. “Look at it this way, boss, any data accessed, any hardware missing, they’re going to blame him. We’re scot free on this one.”

Hannibal tilts his head, considering. “A good point,” he concedes, and flicks his gaze over to the cot in the corner. The kid’s still unconscious, but mostly intact. They’re lucky he didn’t have a spinal injury. BA had to haul him up, hand over hand, so they could get him to the zipline on the roof.

Murdock’s leaning in a chair by the cot, his boot periodically nudging the guy’s leg. “Wake up,” he says, leaning forward. “Wake up, wake up, the proverbial songbird gets the wiggly invertebrate. Hey. Hey. Wake up.”

The kid snaps awake so fast that Face steps back, instinctively. His eyes are bloodshot and unfocussed, his hands coming up to his face. Concussion, thinks Face, until the kid swivels towards Murdock, squinting hard.

“Wow,” says the kid, blinking hard. One of his eyes is half-swollen shut, so it looks like it’s an actual effort. “I really hope you’re rescuing me, because if the guy who was hitting me yesterday finds out I’m cheating on him with another guy who’s going to hit me, he’s going to be so pissed off.”

Face actually feels himself do a double-take. Murdock starts to laugh. “Take it easy,” says Hannibal, and Face knows that voice. That’s the voice he uses when someone’s been hit in the head but still has ready access to a sidearm. Not that the kid has a gun, but maybe he’s quick. The Lichtjahr goons didn’t leave him cuffed up and knocked out for no reason.

When Hannibal leans in, the kid startles backwards. “Wait a minute,” he says, “Holy zombie Jesus. I know you. You’re Colonel Hannibal Smith.”

Face feels his gut tighten, because this could go very bad, very fast. The kid, maybe not possessed of a properly-developed sense of self-preservation, keeps going. “Word was your team killed a general and tried to steal a billion dollars.”

Beside him, Hannibal is tense. “You should know better than to be repeating rumours, kid. It’s bad for your soul.”

The kid grins then, a little darkly. “Of course, where would I be if I believed everything I read in the CIA’s private emails?” he asks. “If you listen to them, I was involved in the death of two dozen kids and then died in a fiery and as-yet-unexplained chopper crash.”

Hannibal narrows his eyes, suddenly. “You’re one of Clay’s boys.” He sounds honest-to-god taken aback, and Face is surprised. Not much gets past Hannibal. “Way I heard it, you were all KIA in Bolivia eight months back.” He tips his head, considering. “I knew your CO a long time, you know. We ran a few missions together for the Company, way back. So when I heard he and his team was dead, I figured someone screwed up, and he paid for it,” here Hannibal pauses, “or someone at the CIA decided he was a liability.”

The kid shows his teeth. “I hear there’s been a lot of that going around lately.” Then something abruptly shifts in his expression, and Face can actually see the moment that darkness is pulled inward, and the kid smiles for real. “Okay, proper thanks for the save. And not to fanboy all over you, but can I say I’ve followed your team’s missions with extreme interest? By the way, you probably should tell your handlers that their report encryptions are garbage. Oh, sorry, I meant should have told. Sorry.” The kid looks conflicted for a brief moment, then sticks out his jaw, half-pugnaciously. “Jake Jensen,” he says. “I need to call my team. Please.”

Hannibal hesitates for a moment, then nods. BA, who’s been lingering in the door, ready to move if the kid looked like snapping, tosses him a phone. Jensen fumbles the catch a bit, still disoriented, but manages to punch in the number. “Pooch,” he says, and there’s a muffled bellow from the other end. Jensen winces. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m okay. Let me talk to Clay.” A pause. “What? Jesus, fine. I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar. Happy now? I am. Okay.” Another pause. “Clay. Yeah, Lichtjahr guys grabbed me. Must have thought I was casing their building. Idiots.” He winces again. “No, they worked me over pretty good, but I’m okay.” Now he rolls his eyes. “Jesus, no, I’m fine. No, I don’t have a concussion. Yes, I know I always say that.” He shoots Hannibal a slightly desperate look. “Clay. Clay! Look, I made new friends!” He shoves the phone in Hannibal’s direction.

Hannibal looks like he’s fighting back a smile when he takes the phone. “Frank Clay,” he says. “Why the hell aren’t you dead?”

***

“Ooh,” says Jensen, sometime later, “That’s one of Lichtjahr’s next-gen high-security data drives.” He smiles, and makes what Face can only describe as grabby hands. “Can I see? Please?”

***

By see, Jensen clearly means hack.

***

Jensen’s hunched over Hannibal’s laptop when Face comes back, cables running to the drive. His nose is maybe eight inches from the screen—“Lost my glasses somewhere between the first smart remark and the second punch,” he says— but his fingers are flying over the keyboard. He’s also carrying on a spirited conversation with Murdock.

“I should never ask anyone who outranks me if they’ve been smoking crack,” says Jensen.

Murdock is grinning. “I am not allowed to let sock puppets take responsibility for any of my actions.”

“Self-modifying Markov process algorithms,” says Jensen. “Oh, now that’s just sneaky. Okay, um, I am not allowed to teach officers offensive things in Albanian, under the guise of learning potentially useful phrases.”

Murdock cracks his knuckles. “I am not allowed to wear a dress to any army function,” he says.

That actually makes Jensen look up. “Fuck off, you did not. I don’t fucking believe you.”

Murdock flutters his hands a little. Face shudders. “Blue sequins,” he tells Jensen, and adds, “It’s a good mental image for all those cold lonely nights in the field. Makes you really—appreciate them.” Face turns to Murdock. “You’re not quoting that stupid list again, are you?”

Murdock shrugs amiably. “Only the things we’ve actually done.”

From across the room, BA calls out, “We do not charge into battle, naked, like the Celts.”

Jensen starts snickering into his fist, the other hand still typing frantically. Murdock sighs. “I remember that mission. Good fucking times.”

***

“That was fun,” says Jensen, pulling Face’s grey sweater over his head. “My team’s waiting for me in Frankfurt, but listen, if you guys ever wanna do another playdate, you give me a call.” He slings his bag over his shoulder and walks out of the warehouse, whistling. In Face’s too-big sweater and his black climbing tights, he looks more like some twenty-something hipster than a Special Ops hacker that the CIA left for dead.

Face flips through the Lichtjahr surveillance captures of the Arab, fresh and glossy from the printer. Top-of-the-line security drive, DoD-issue equipment, cracked in forty-seven minutes. Jesus. “Hannibal, can’t we keep him? Please?”

Hannibal winces. “I only ever tried to poach one of Clay’s guys once. Once.”

5.

Now

Clay’s had days that have ended worse than this. The perimeter’s secured, the warehouse is wired up, and there’s food. Real, actual food cooked by hand. Possibly with love. Clay’s not entirely sure how that happened, but he’s not complaining.

“This is actually very good,” says Aisha. She’s sitting on a packing crate in the open doorway of the warehouse, the setting sun casting her shadow long across the ground. There’s a paper plate of curry balanced on her lap.

Murdock, Hannibal’s pilot—Cougar apparently met him in Nicaragua, years back, because Spec Ops is a small, incestuous world— hasn’t stopped staring at her for the last half-hour. It’s getting mildly worrying. “Lady,” he says suddenly, “If you marry me and take me away from all this, I will cook you curry every night and bake you pies and paint the white picket fence while you sharpen your knives, and it will be the best marriage ever.”

The face Aisha makes is hard to classify, although Clay remembers seeing it once before, a month or so back when Cougar and Jensen got drunk and Jensen stood outside Aisha’s motel room, holding a radio over his head and singing Peter Gabriel at the top of his lungs. Not entirely similar, because Aisha isn’t throwing knives this time. Possibly she doesn’t want to unbalance her plate. She’s right, the curry really is very good.

“Nobody’s marrying Aisha,” says Clay, because really, that’s a hundred kinds of wrong, then winces a little at the expression she levels in his direction, and quickly amends. “Okay, no one’s marrying Aisha unless she decides she wants to get married, in which case just—please don’t let it be any of these guys.”

“Hey,” say Murdock and Jensen, almost simultaneously. Aisha snorts, picks up her plate and moves over closer to Cougar, who laughs, quietly.

Murdock watches her walk away with a forlorn expression on his face. Clay watches as Jensen pats his arm consolingly. “We’ve all been there, brother,” he says. “At least she didn’t mention her ear collection this time.”

Murdock turns to Face, Hannibal’s de-facto XO. It’s hard to look at his and Hannibal’s easy manner without thinking about Roque, and fuck, that thought’s still raw. “Face,” says Murdock, “Come on, back me up here.”

Face shakes his head. “You’re just not great with the first impressions, man,” he says, then turns to Jensen. “The first time we met, he set my arm on fire.” Face swings back towards Murdock. “And really, no. No way. We’ll find you something less dangerous to flirt with. Like a tiger shark, or maybe a thermonuclear explosion.” He whistles, low under his breath.

Hannibal’s other man, BA—Clay’s positive that mohawk is too distinctive for covert work— looks up from the truck’s engine that he’s dismantling with Pooch, apparently for fun. “Not letting your cojones do the thinking for once?” BA laughs quietly, then shakes his head. “That chick is solid fucking steel.”

“I can still fucking hear all of you,” says Aisha, not looking up from the gun she’s cleaning.

Murdock is talking in a low, slightly agitated tone. “How is this fair? You guys get a sniper and a hacker and a gorgeous badass lady.”

“Yes,” Jensen points out reasonably, “But you guys got to fly a tank. We never got to fly a tank.”

Honestly, deep down, Clay is also jealous of the flying tank.

Hannibal leans against the table next to him, shifting a pile of surveillance photos deeper into the mass of bank documents, blueprints, files that Jensen’s pulled out of a hundred secure databases. All of it waiting for them to put it all together, to make a plan out of this mess.

Clay hasn’t seen Hannibal in five years, but after his team’s mess in LA—and really, they both probably owe the Los Angeles Port Authority an apologetic letter—it had seemed like a good time to touch base. They’re on the same side again, so to speak.

Hannibal looks older than he should, though Hannibal could probably say the same thing about him. Neither of them is young anymore.

Hannibal quirks a smile at him, that familiar lopsided expression he remembers from so many years back. Clay raises one eyebrow. “You remember the first time we met?” He keeps his voice low, though no one’s listening to them. Murdock ‘s captured most of the attention with an extremely detailed recounting of the time he met Cougar in Nicaragua, complete with expansive arm gestures and sound effects. Even Cougar is smiling, a little, with his hat pulled low like he thinks no one can see.

Hannibal raises an eyebrow to match him. “As I recall, you still owe me a beer.”

Clay snorts. “Put it on my tab. You know that was my first command? I was twenty-one and scared out of my fucking mind. Having men who all depended on me, who lived or died on my order—fuck scared, I think I actually was out of my mind.”

And he’d never tell any of his team this, but Hannibal Smith’s been a constant in his life for almost two decades now. Hannibal Smith climbed out of an incinerator and broke his whole team out of prison, took them away from the government and took them on the run, so Clay knows he understands. He’s been in that bad place too.

Hannibal’s not really smiling anymore, but the expression’s still there in his eyes. “You ever get over it?” Hannibal asks, but he almost certainly already knows the answer.

Clay watches his men, and Aisha, who’s actually laughing because Murdock’s convinced Jensen to hack into the Los Angeles Traffic Authority’s site and change every electronic billboard on the highway to read Fuck the Company and We’re Sorry, Port of LA, and they’re still breathing, still following him, even after everything that’s happened. “No, but who does?”

Hannibal actually laughs at that, and pulls out a cigar. “That’s just the way it works,” he says, from between his teeth, as he strikes a match. The tip of the cigar flares red, like a tracer round, and Hannibal exhales a slow cloud of smoke. He taps the files on the table in front of him, the results of two months of dedicated, meticulous research. Two months closer to their endgame.

Clay smiles, slowly. “Let me tell you about Max.”