LHTF Fic: Learning Loyalties (Covert Affairs and Suits Cross)
Season 3ish of Covert Affairs and Mike Ross's introduction to the Program
Please see sticky post for chronological events.
*lhtf*ca*suits*
Eyal had a number of traps and trips for any unannounced visitor to his boat. None of them had been activated, so the older teen making himself comfortable in front of Eyal’s TV was a complete surprise. The teen was armed with knives, a gun and something more. He didn’t telegraph his unease at having Eyal at his back, but he was smart enough to be wary.
“Bored yet,” the teen asked in an Eastern German dialect.
“Who’s asking?”
“Just answer the question,” he grumbled. “I’m not going to tell you anything until you’re ready to leave.”
“Are we talking a short job or an extensive one?”
The teen grinned, “the kind that few want to leave voluntarily. People either opt out in the first six months or they never leave. There’s not a lot of middle ground and it’s that important. You haven’t heard of the base or the mission, all very hush-hush.” There was a certain turn of phrase that had Eyal thinking that this kid had spent time in Poland. He was just a kid but he was offering the job like a spymaster. How old had this child been when he had started the spy craft lessons?
“Why me?”
“I’m heading a new department and I need a darker skinned, dark haired polyglot chameleon with experience with prison escapes. I liked what you did in Russia and your escape from Khalid.”
Eyal raise an eyebrow at the teen’s access to intelligence. “I had help in both cases.” Eyal leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what, if you can hire my help, I’ll come too.” Annie would say no and Auggie wouldn’t go anywhere without Annie.
The teen’s eyes were both amused and annoyed. He knew exactly who Eyal was discussing. “You want me to pry Anderson and the bright, rising star of the CIA, Walker, away from the DPD?” Very well informed.
“I’ll come if they come.”
The teen tossed him a passport, Israeli, absolutely perfect and clean if Eyal’s eyes weren’t betraying him. “You have a flight at seven to DC. Tomorrow at noon at that café you like, we’re meeting with the others.” He stood to leave.
Eyal pocketed the passport. He’d treat it with suspicion but it could be useful. “Who’s signing the paycheck?”
“Uncle Sam.”
Eyal blinked. American? He needed to do some research. “Who are you?”
“Call me Jack.” And then he was gone with skills Eyal considered above average.
*lhtf*ca*
Eyal went to the meet more because he wanted to learn about the intelligence leak than because he wanted a job. Seeing Annie -and Auggie- was just icing on the cake, as the Americans would say. The couple -and they were more than pretending to Eyal’s experienced eye- was waiting in the corner of the café by the time the Israeli arrived. The café was busier than normal, with two separate business meetings and a large group of mothers with babies in the corner. Two college students were trying to study near the spies, but nothing seemed out of place.
Eyal greeted both spies with a hug. He was genuinely happy to see them. Once he was confident that the college students were occupied, he asked, “A teen named Jack been causing a splash?”
Auggie answered him. “The best we can tell, he goes by Jack O’Connell and he’s very well connected. He’s met with the President, at least once. On paper, his background is flawless, but in truth, he doesn’t exist. The CIA doesn’t know his origins and no one is filling us in. He sprung into being four years ago when he walked onto the US Air Force Academy campus. He completed top of his class and vanished again. He’s been doing somebody’s dirty work all over the globe and messing up the plans of nearly everyone. He’s been exposing secrets that many would prefer stayed buried. He has been given a department of special operations on some mysterious base as a way to keep him out of everyone’s hair, but no one knows who is in the club.”
“I got an invite as well.”
“What do you mean, as well?” asked Annie.
“That’s what this meet is for. I told him I wasn’t interested until I could depend on my back-up.” At the continued blank looks, Eyal added. “He arranged this meeting between the three of us.”
“No, Eyal, you did.”
“He spoofed my e-mail?” he guessed.
The American spies nodded.
“Ahh.”
“What do you know?” asked Annie.
“Only what he told me: that he was looking to hire a dark skinned, dark haired polyglot chameleon with experience with prison escapes. He knew of our escapades. He speaks German and Polish and probably more. He knew his spy craft better than any I’ve seen at that age.”
Auggie knew just how young Mossad started training, Annie did not. Auggie opened his watch to check the time. “When was the meet supposed to occur?”
“In five minutes.”
Auggie grimaced. “Did you see any extra eyes on the shop?”
“Nothing.”
“Any extra attention within the shop?”
“Nothing,” Annie answered confidence. Eyal had to agree, nothing pinged his radar. She checked her phone. “No electrical surveillance either.”
“He’s here with eyes on us.”
“Agreed.”
The teen in question stepped through the door, on cue. He had to have some sort of electronic surveillance on them. Jack walked through the coffee shop and stopped in the space between the spies and the college students… that were suddenly more visually attentive than students. “Kids, why aren’t we sitting together?”
“The cool kids didn’t want to share,” the young woman blamed the spies with a playful smile.
“Huddle up,” Jack ordered and the two gathered their materials to move to the spy table. The woman was the first to sit. “Cassandra Frasier,” she introduced herself.
“She’ll be an MD in the spring,” Jack explained. “She’ll have a year interning stateside and then she’ll be our on-site doc.”
“How old are you?” Annie asked.
“Twenty.” She was young to be finishing med school.
“Are you a genius?” Auggie asked.
“Nope.”
“But before you get comfortable,” her study partner said, “the lawyer Jack just hired is one, certified.”
“This is Dean Winchester, our explosives expert,” Jack offered.
Eyal was still mulling over the medical prodigy in front of him and the law genius that they claimed they hired to put together ‘Winchester’ and ‘explosives.’ Once the words clicked, the former agent leaned forward to stare at the young man. “You’re the Marine that mixes his own explosives, subtle enough that you can retain them through a Mossad pat-down and potent enough to take out a cement wall without much noise.”
“Guilty as charged,” Dean quipped.
Mossad wanted access to this man and his lab, but he had vanished from their radar just as quickly as he had appeared. Suddenly, the influence that Jack claimed didn’t seem to be outrageous. Winchester had to have a secret lab somewhere but no one had a clue where. Jack claimed to be stationed out of a secret base and it made sense that the two were the same.
Jack emptied his pockets. There was the strange metal ball, a yo-yo, the computer tablet and stylus and gum. “Levine said he wouldn’t join up without you two.”
Annie looked at Eyal and the former Mossad agent almost blushed. “I want to be able to depend on my back-up.”
“We don’t leave anyone behind,” Jack told him shortly.
“Not even when we should,” Winchester muttered.
“What the?” Auggie’s voice trailed off as he lifted the ball that had been bumping his hand. Eyal blinked. How? When had that moved across the table?
Winchester was smug. “You were more than right, Jack. Our Girl’s going to have a new favorite.”
“Sheppard’s Her favorite,” Jack argued.
Winchester lounged back in his chair with an insolent smile. “Please, She had several favorites. Sheppard’s Her Prince Charming, that kissed Her awake.” He ended the comment with a falsetto that had Cassie out-right laughing. He managed to surprise a chuckle out of Jack as well.
“Then who are you to Her?” Cassie asked.
“I’m Her next door handyman. She surprises me with meals so that I’ll take care of maintenance issues when they crop up.”
“And Jack?”
Now Dean really smiled. “He’s the crotchety old man that She corners in the park for him to teach Her new ways to play chess.”
From the way that Jack sobered, Dean was incredibly on the mark with his assessment. Obviously, Dean was speaking in code. So who was this woman that Jack was teaching strategy? “I’ven’t been to base yet,” Jack reminded Dean.
The Marine shrugged, “Oh, that’s right.” Eyal bet that they meant officially, because he personally knew how Jack could be in places he shouldn’t have been.
“If you all three of you want to be my active agents, e-mail Cass,” Jack ordered. The girl handed out business cards obediently. The e-mail was .harvard.edu. He took back his toys, stood and his subordinates stood with him. He leaned over to whisper in Auggie’s ear and then the trio left.
“What did he say?” Annie asked.
Auggie shook his head, his face blank with shock. “He said that for much of the base, it would seem like I could see. That I would be able to drive the transport.”
Eyal’s jaw dropped. What a thing to promise! It had to be impossible and was certainly something to make the blind man consider. It was not his sight, but perhaps something almost as good. They would ask their director and chances were good that the CIA wanted someone in Jack’s department. Eyal had a feeling that Jack could handle the various loyalties in his group. “If Joan agrees to loan you out to O’Connell, let me know. I will join you.”
“We will,” Annie promised.
Eyal had a feeling that he should pack for a deployment. He couldn’t wait to dig into O’Connell’s secrets.
*lhtf*ca*
Eyal was packed and ready to go when Annie sent out the acceptance e-mail on behalf of the three spies to Jack O’Connell. Jack replied within ten minutes with a set of coordinates and a time for the next day and told them to be prepared to be gone for six months to a year. Eyal called up Annie and offered to help her pack. She thankfully accepted. So Eyal and Annie spent the night packing and closing up her sister’s house. They dropped off Auggie’s car in storage and hired a taxi van to take them to Auggie’s and then the meet.
The meet was in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere Virginia. Their taxi driver was utterly confused at the fare. “It’s going to be a game,” Annie gushed like a college student. “It’s going to be an adventure.” Her smile eased much of his suspicion and Auggie and Eyal’s indulgent looks eased the rest of it.
Winchester was waiting in the middle of the field, surrounded by trunks. Some were official USAF trunks and others were the kind one would find in their grandmother’s attic. A skinny young man was sitting on one reading a tablet. He did look up when the spies arrived. “Hi!” he waved at them. “Welcome to Special Operations. I’m Mike Ross. You must be Annie Walker, Eyal Levine and August Anderson.”
“The law genius?” Eyal asked.
Mike nodded half-heartedly. “Kinda. Long story.”
“When is Jack arriving?” Auggie asked Dean.
Dean pressed a series of buttons on his non-regulation tablet. “As soon as I shut down the satellite overhead and your driver is far enough away.” He looked up. “Now.”
“Well?” Jack demanded and a spaceship shimmered into view. “Pack up kids, we’ve got a long trip ahead of us.”
“A spaceship?” Auggie repeated Annie’s explanation.
“Come aboard, Auggie,” Jack ordered. Auggie took the needed steps forward and Jack helped him the rest of the way to the pilot’s seat. Eyal gaped at putting a blind man in the driver’s seat but Auggie’s head was swiveling and his eyes were wide. He swore long and loud. Jack laughed. “The whole base will be like that.”
“I can’t see, but I know!” Auggie exclaimed. “I know where everything and everyone is!”
Somehow, Jack managed to fulfill a challenging promise. Eyal remembered the teen promising that the job was so important that most stayed forever.
“A space ship?” Mike was still gushing. “I want all the specs,” he demanded of Jack. “I want to know everything! Where are we going and why is it so dangerous and important and…”
“Information overload,” Jack warned. And that was probably a promise he had made to this genius. Jack kept all the important, seemingly impossible promises.
“I’ll take it!”
Jack rolled his eyes, sat Mike in the chair behind Auggie and put a computer tablet in his grabby hands. Jack pushed Annie and Eyal toward the exit. “We still have to load up. Dean, where do you want everything?”
Eyal followed the Marine’s instructions on a type of autopilot. His worldview had been smashed to pieces, it was good not to think. Then everything was packed away and Jack and Dean talked a blind man through the start-up procedures and lift off. Jack took the co-pilot’s chair, Annie took the seat behind him. Eyal stood between Annie and Ross. Dean puttered around the back. He didn’t even sit down during the flight and Auggie flew the contingent to an even bigger spaceship. Jack talked Auggie through several maneuvers (in space) while they had time and to let the revelations sink in.
When Eyal finally accepted all this, Jack turned toward him with a devious smile. “By the way, we’re going to the Pegasus Galaxy where our base will be the Ancient city of Atlantis. And those people back on Earth that said that you were only pretending to be loyal to me? That you had to report to them? They don’t have clearance for this. All reports go through me. I have the Presidential order for that.”
“And my Prime Minister?” Eyal asked snidely.
“You don’t answer to Mossad anymore. You’re retired, remember?”
“I’ll always protect my people and my country. I do my duty.”
“You’re in a space ship, dude, for a reason,” Dean argued from the back. “Our duty is to the whole damn planet.”
“And in protecting the planet, we protect our countries,” added Jack. “But there really isn’t any reason to tell them that.”
“But what are we protecting them from?” Annie asked.
“HA!” Dean crowed. “Pay up. Told you she’d question the omission first.”
Jack swiveled his co-pilot’s chair and kicked the law genius’ foot. “You let me down, Ross.”
Mike looked up from his tablet, eyes glazed and happy. He didn’t focus on Jack but on the spaceship through the front windshield. “Information overload.” And spaceship analyzed, he went back to his tablet.
“Dean,” Jack said.
“Yeah, I’m on it,” Dean answered.
“On what?” Annie asked.
“Baby genius is going to need a keeper,” said Dean. Ross was too involved in his tablet to be affronted at the comment.
“Dean’s good at it,” was Jack’s aside.
“But what is out there,” Eyal pressed. Auggie was listening but he was thoroughly enjoying being able to ‘drive’ for the first time since being injured in Iraq.
“The Milky Way has its own problems but our problems in Pegasus are space vamps.” Dean broke the stand-off.
Jack’s attitude changed from colleague to boss in a blink. “I’ll brief you on the cultures, our objectives and teach the language lessons. We’ve been setting up some cover identities for you that we’ll need to flesh out.”
“How old are you?” Eyal blurted out.
Dean cackled in the back of the spaceship and Jack rolled his eyes… and he still seemed too old for his body.
“We’ll cover that later,” Jack declared. Then he stole the tablet from the law genius.
“Hey,” Ross yelped.
“Nope. We’re going to cover safety SOPs. You need to hear this.”
“There’s an exam later,” Ross sniped, making a grab at the tablet.
“Yes, and the failing grade comes with a gravestone.”
*lhtf*ca*suits*
Please see sticky post for chronological events.
*lhtf*ca*suits*
Eyal had a number of traps and trips for any unannounced visitor to his boat. None of them had been activated, so the older teen making himself comfortable in front of Eyal’s TV was a complete surprise. The teen was armed with knives, a gun and something more. He didn’t telegraph his unease at having Eyal at his back, but he was smart enough to be wary.
“Bored yet,” the teen asked in an Eastern German dialect.
“Who’s asking?”
“Just answer the question,” he grumbled. “I’m not going to tell you anything until you’re ready to leave.”
“Are we talking a short job or an extensive one?”
The teen grinned, “the kind that few want to leave voluntarily. People either opt out in the first six months or they never leave. There’s not a lot of middle ground and it’s that important. You haven’t heard of the base or the mission, all very hush-hush.” There was a certain turn of phrase that had Eyal thinking that this kid had spent time in Poland. He was just a kid but he was offering the job like a spymaster. How old had this child been when he had started the spy craft lessons?
“Why me?”
“I’m heading a new department and I need a darker skinned, dark haired polyglot chameleon with experience with prison escapes. I liked what you did in Russia and your escape from Khalid.”
Eyal raise an eyebrow at the teen’s access to intelligence. “I had help in both cases.” Eyal leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what, if you can hire my help, I’ll come too.” Annie would say no and Auggie wouldn’t go anywhere without Annie.
The teen’s eyes were both amused and annoyed. He knew exactly who Eyal was discussing. “You want me to pry Anderson and the bright, rising star of the CIA, Walker, away from the DPD?” Very well informed.
“I’ll come if they come.”
The teen tossed him a passport, Israeli, absolutely perfect and clean if Eyal’s eyes weren’t betraying him. “You have a flight at seven to DC. Tomorrow at noon at that café you like, we’re meeting with the others.” He stood to leave.
Eyal pocketed the passport. He’d treat it with suspicion but it could be useful. “Who’s signing the paycheck?”
“Uncle Sam.”
Eyal blinked. American? He needed to do some research. “Who are you?”
“Call me Jack.” And then he was gone with skills Eyal considered above average.
*lhtf*ca*
Eyal went to the meet more because he wanted to learn about the intelligence leak than because he wanted a job. Seeing Annie -and Auggie- was just icing on the cake, as the Americans would say. The couple -and they were more than pretending to Eyal’s experienced eye- was waiting in the corner of the café by the time the Israeli arrived. The café was busier than normal, with two separate business meetings and a large group of mothers with babies in the corner. Two college students were trying to study near the spies, but nothing seemed out of place.
Eyal greeted both spies with a hug. He was genuinely happy to see them. Once he was confident that the college students were occupied, he asked, “A teen named Jack been causing a splash?”
Auggie answered him. “The best we can tell, he goes by Jack O’Connell and he’s very well connected. He’s met with the President, at least once. On paper, his background is flawless, but in truth, he doesn’t exist. The CIA doesn’t know his origins and no one is filling us in. He sprung into being four years ago when he walked onto the US Air Force Academy campus. He completed top of his class and vanished again. He’s been doing somebody’s dirty work all over the globe and messing up the plans of nearly everyone. He’s been exposing secrets that many would prefer stayed buried. He has been given a department of special operations on some mysterious base as a way to keep him out of everyone’s hair, but no one knows who is in the club.”
“I got an invite as well.”
“What do you mean, as well?” asked Annie.
“That’s what this meet is for. I told him I wasn’t interested until I could depend on my back-up.” At the continued blank looks, Eyal added. “He arranged this meeting between the three of us.”
“No, Eyal, you did.”
“He spoofed my e-mail?” he guessed.
The American spies nodded.
“Ahh.”
“What do you know?” asked Annie.
“Only what he told me: that he was looking to hire a dark skinned, dark haired polyglot chameleon with experience with prison escapes. He knew of our escapades. He speaks German and Polish and probably more. He knew his spy craft better than any I’ve seen at that age.”
Auggie knew just how young Mossad started training, Annie did not. Auggie opened his watch to check the time. “When was the meet supposed to occur?”
“In five minutes.”
Auggie grimaced. “Did you see any extra eyes on the shop?”
“Nothing.”
“Any extra attention within the shop?”
“Nothing,” Annie answered confidence. Eyal had to agree, nothing pinged his radar. She checked her phone. “No electrical surveillance either.”
“He’s here with eyes on us.”
“Agreed.”
The teen in question stepped through the door, on cue. He had to have some sort of electronic surveillance on them. Jack walked through the coffee shop and stopped in the space between the spies and the college students… that were suddenly more visually attentive than students. “Kids, why aren’t we sitting together?”
“The cool kids didn’t want to share,” the young woman blamed the spies with a playful smile.
“Huddle up,” Jack ordered and the two gathered their materials to move to the spy table. The woman was the first to sit. “Cassandra Frasier,” she introduced herself.
“She’ll be an MD in the spring,” Jack explained. “She’ll have a year interning stateside and then she’ll be our on-site doc.”
“How old are you?” Annie asked.
“Twenty.” She was young to be finishing med school.
“Are you a genius?” Auggie asked.
“Nope.”
“But before you get comfortable,” her study partner said, “the lawyer Jack just hired is one, certified.”
“This is Dean Winchester, our explosives expert,” Jack offered.
Eyal was still mulling over the medical prodigy in front of him and the law genius that they claimed they hired to put together ‘Winchester’ and ‘explosives.’ Once the words clicked, the former agent leaned forward to stare at the young man. “You’re the Marine that mixes his own explosives, subtle enough that you can retain them through a Mossad pat-down and potent enough to take out a cement wall without much noise.”
“Guilty as charged,” Dean quipped.
Mossad wanted access to this man and his lab, but he had vanished from their radar just as quickly as he had appeared. Suddenly, the influence that Jack claimed didn’t seem to be outrageous. Winchester had to have a secret lab somewhere but no one had a clue where. Jack claimed to be stationed out of a secret base and it made sense that the two were the same.
Jack emptied his pockets. There was the strange metal ball, a yo-yo, the computer tablet and stylus and gum. “Levine said he wouldn’t join up without you two.”
Annie looked at Eyal and the former Mossad agent almost blushed. “I want to be able to depend on my back-up.”
“We don’t leave anyone behind,” Jack told him shortly.
“Not even when we should,” Winchester muttered.
“What the?” Auggie’s voice trailed off as he lifted the ball that had been bumping his hand. Eyal blinked. How? When had that moved across the table?
Winchester was smug. “You were more than right, Jack. Our Girl’s going to have a new favorite.”
“Sheppard’s Her favorite,” Jack argued.
Winchester lounged back in his chair with an insolent smile. “Please, She had several favorites. Sheppard’s Her Prince Charming, that kissed Her awake.” He ended the comment with a falsetto that had Cassie out-right laughing. He managed to surprise a chuckle out of Jack as well.
“Then who are you to Her?” Cassie asked.
“I’m Her next door handyman. She surprises me with meals so that I’ll take care of maintenance issues when they crop up.”
“And Jack?”
Now Dean really smiled. “He’s the crotchety old man that She corners in the park for him to teach Her new ways to play chess.”
From the way that Jack sobered, Dean was incredibly on the mark with his assessment. Obviously, Dean was speaking in code. So who was this woman that Jack was teaching strategy? “I’ven’t been to base yet,” Jack reminded Dean.
The Marine shrugged, “Oh, that’s right.” Eyal bet that they meant officially, because he personally knew how Jack could be in places he shouldn’t have been.
“If you all three of you want to be my active agents, e-mail Cass,” Jack ordered. The girl handed out business cards obediently. The e-mail was .harvard.edu. He took back his toys, stood and his subordinates stood with him. He leaned over to whisper in Auggie’s ear and then the trio left.
“What did he say?” Annie asked.
Auggie shook his head, his face blank with shock. “He said that for much of the base, it would seem like I could see. That I would be able to drive the transport.”
Eyal’s jaw dropped. What a thing to promise! It had to be impossible and was certainly something to make the blind man consider. It was not his sight, but perhaps something almost as good. They would ask their director and chances were good that the CIA wanted someone in Jack’s department. Eyal had a feeling that Jack could handle the various loyalties in his group. “If Joan agrees to loan you out to O’Connell, let me know. I will join you.”
“We will,” Annie promised.
Eyal had a feeling that he should pack for a deployment. He couldn’t wait to dig into O’Connell’s secrets.
*lhtf*ca*
Eyal was packed and ready to go when Annie sent out the acceptance e-mail on behalf of the three spies to Jack O’Connell. Jack replied within ten minutes with a set of coordinates and a time for the next day and told them to be prepared to be gone for six months to a year. Eyal called up Annie and offered to help her pack. She thankfully accepted. So Eyal and Annie spent the night packing and closing up her sister’s house. They dropped off Auggie’s car in storage and hired a taxi van to take them to Auggie’s and then the meet.
The meet was in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere Virginia. Their taxi driver was utterly confused at the fare. “It’s going to be a game,” Annie gushed like a college student. “It’s going to be an adventure.” Her smile eased much of his suspicion and Auggie and Eyal’s indulgent looks eased the rest of it.
Winchester was waiting in the middle of the field, surrounded by trunks. Some were official USAF trunks and others were the kind one would find in their grandmother’s attic. A skinny young man was sitting on one reading a tablet. He did look up when the spies arrived. “Hi!” he waved at them. “Welcome to Special Operations. I’m Mike Ross. You must be Annie Walker, Eyal Levine and August Anderson.”
“The law genius?” Eyal asked.
Mike nodded half-heartedly. “Kinda. Long story.”
“When is Jack arriving?” Auggie asked Dean.
Dean pressed a series of buttons on his non-regulation tablet. “As soon as I shut down the satellite overhead and your driver is far enough away.” He looked up. “Now.”
“Well?” Jack demanded and a spaceship shimmered into view. “Pack up kids, we’ve got a long trip ahead of us.”
“A spaceship?” Auggie repeated Annie’s explanation.
“Come aboard, Auggie,” Jack ordered. Auggie took the needed steps forward and Jack helped him the rest of the way to the pilot’s seat. Eyal gaped at putting a blind man in the driver’s seat but Auggie’s head was swiveling and his eyes were wide. He swore long and loud. Jack laughed. “The whole base will be like that.”
“I can’t see, but I know!” Auggie exclaimed. “I know where everything and everyone is!”
Somehow, Jack managed to fulfill a challenging promise. Eyal remembered the teen promising that the job was so important that most stayed forever.
“A space ship?” Mike was still gushing. “I want all the specs,” he demanded of Jack. “I want to know everything! Where are we going and why is it so dangerous and important and…”
“Information overload,” Jack warned. And that was probably a promise he had made to this genius. Jack kept all the important, seemingly impossible promises.
“I’ll take it!”
Jack rolled his eyes, sat Mike in the chair behind Auggie and put a computer tablet in his grabby hands. Jack pushed Annie and Eyal toward the exit. “We still have to load up. Dean, where do you want everything?”
Eyal followed the Marine’s instructions on a type of autopilot. His worldview had been smashed to pieces, it was good not to think. Then everything was packed away and Jack and Dean talked a blind man through the start-up procedures and lift off. Jack took the co-pilot’s chair, Annie took the seat behind him. Eyal stood between Annie and Ross. Dean puttered around the back. He didn’t even sit down during the flight and Auggie flew the contingent to an even bigger spaceship. Jack talked Auggie through several maneuvers (in space) while they had time and to let the revelations sink in.
When Eyal finally accepted all this, Jack turned toward him with a devious smile. “By the way, we’re going to the Pegasus Galaxy where our base will be the Ancient city of Atlantis. And those people back on Earth that said that you were only pretending to be loyal to me? That you had to report to them? They don’t have clearance for this. All reports go through me. I have the Presidential order for that.”
“And my Prime Minister?” Eyal asked snidely.
“You don’t answer to Mossad anymore. You’re retired, remember?”
“I’ll always protect my people and my country. I do my duty.”
“You’re in a space ship, dude, for a reason,” Dean argued from the back. “Our duty is to the whole damn planet.”
“And in protecting the planet, we protect our countries,” added Jack. “But there really isn’t any reason to tell them that.”
“But what are we protecting them from?” Annie asked.
“HA!” Dean crowed. “Pay up. Told you she’d question the omission first.”
Jack swiveled his co-pilot’s chair and kicked the law genius’ foot. “You let me down, Ross.”
Mike looked up from his tablet, eyes glazed and happy. He didn’t focus on Jack but on the spaceship through the front windshield. “Information overload.” And spaceship analyzed, he went back to his tablet.
“Dean,” Jack said.
“Yeah, I’m on it,” Dean answered.
“On what?” Annie asked.
“Baby genius is going to need a keeper,” said Dean. Ross was too involved in his tablet to be affronted at the comment.
“Dean’s good at it,” was Jack’s aside.
“But what is out there,” Eyal pressed. Auggie was listening but he was thoroughly enjoying being able to ‘drive’ for the first time since being injured in Iraq.
“The Milky Way has its own problems but our problems in Pegasus are space vamps.” Dean broke the stand-off.
Jack’s attitude changed from colleague to boss in a blink. “I’ll brief you on the cultures, our objectives and teach the language lessons. We’ve been setting up some cover identities for you that we’ll need to flesh out.”
“How old are you?” Eyal blurted out.
Dean cackled in the back of the spaceship and Jack rolled his eyes… and he still seemed too old for his body.
“We’ll cover that later,” Jack declared. Then he stole the tablet from the law genius.
“Hey,” Ross yelped.
“Nope. We’re going to cover safety SOPs. You need to hear this.”
“There’s an exam later,” Ross sniped, making a grab at the tablet.
“Yes, and the failing grade comes with a gravestone.”
*lhtf*ca*suits*