The Librarians Fanfic: By Paths Coincident 5/?
Title: By Paths Coincident 5/?
Author: Honorat
Rating: T
Crossover: Leverage and The Librarians
Characters: Jenkins, Eve Baird, Jacob Stone, Cassandra Cillian, Ezekiel Jones, Parker, Alec Hardison, Eliot Spencer, Others TBA as needed.
Pairing: Parker/Hardison, Cassandra/Jake, Cassandra/Eliot, just a touch of Eliot/OC
Disclaimer: Dean Devlin, John Rogers, TNT own these characters.
Description: The Librarians discover Leverage International. Jacob Stone and Eliot Spencer have a family past, but they aren’t the only members of the two teams who’ve met before. Expect whiplash between light and dark. Lots of backstory in this chapter.
Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence-this chapter is a specific description of what Eve described generally in the last chapter. Steer clear if you don’t want to watch beloved characters do and experience bad things.
Previous chapters HERE.
* * * * *
By Paths Coincident
* * * * *
11 Years Ago
Port of Algeciras Bay, Strait of Gibralter, Spain
Captain Eve Baird parked the rented BMW SUV by the base of one of the post Panamax ship-to-shore cranes that the Port of Algeciras Bay boasted. In her side mirror, she could see headlights telling her that Fortinsky was pulling up behind with the other half of the team. NATO had no airbases in Spain, so they’d flown commercial from Brussels into Aeropuerto de Jerez late that night, acquired the vehicles, and driven the hour and a half to the Port. The night was still moonless and dark, but the Port lights cast everything into a contrast of glaring white and black shadow.
So far their cover story was holding. As representatives of Langdonne Enterprises, Inc. they were to meet an agent to negotiate the purchase of cargo loaded on the same ship as their target. The burner phone, resting in her pocket, contained a single text with cryptic numbers that translated to a time and berth at which the off-loading would occur. Forged bill of lading papers, which would allow them to depart with Moreau’s merchandise, crackled in her other pocket.
They had time to get into position before the ship would dock.
Her team members were professionally subdued in their behavior, but Joscin and Derya were staging a whispered debate about whether, when the mission was complete, they could wrangle a day’s leave to run down to Costa del Sol for some R and R.
In the shadow of the great crane, they stripped out of their bulky civvy camouflage, into the leaner silhouettes of their combat gear-Teresinha joked that it was the fastest-working diet she’d tried. Not that Interceptor Body Armor was so very figure-flattering.
Lieutenant Brader was unpacking their weapons from the suitcases, muttering under his breath about Poptart’s Mickey Mouse boxers.
“What can I say?” Poptart shrugged as he accepted his M-16 and ammunition from the Lieutenant. “Father’s Day present. My strength is as the strength of twenty because my shorts are licensed by Disney.”
“Twenty mice!” Fortinsky teased.
“Hey!” Poptart sniffed loftily. “That mouse rules half the known world.” He checked his pockets for his lucky four-leafed clover and his photographs of his wife and son. “All set.”
“All right, you chuckleheads.” Eve tried to sound like she wasn’t laughing. “Get your helmets on, and let’s move out.”
“Yes, sir, She Who Must Be Obeyed,” the Terrible Twosome chorused, donning their helmets.
As her team split up into their designated groups and melted into the shadows where they would assume their agreed-upon positions, Eve did not feel any chill of premonition. Fate sent her no sign that she would never see her whole team alive again.
* * * * *
Perched high on the beam of the post Panamax crane, Eliot Spencer watched through his infra-red scope as the NATO team separated, crept from shadow to shadow until they had reached their positions, and established their hiding places. Even from this short observation, he was enumerating weaknesses, developing strategies for dealing with each of the individuals in the team. There was a phrase for this sort of operation, he decided. It was called shooting fish in a barrel.
In the east, the night was turning imperceptibly into pre-dawn grey, and he could see the dark blot of the ship as it approached this side of the Strait.
First he would deal with the traitor. Then he would go collect his prey from the places they had so conveniently stashed themselves. He would start with the group farthest from their commanding officer. NATO didn’t put officers in charge of teams like this because their granddaddies went to private school with the right brass. Whoever she was, she would be a formidable opponent. If he took her on first, he ran the risk of being injured and compromised in his ability to go after the others. This way, they might bust each other into pieces, but all that would matter would be that his pieces would be living and hers would be dead.
He wasn’t going to use guns-too noisy. His plan was to be long gone before the Port authorities discovered the bodies. Even his victims would not know he was there until they were in the process of dying.
* * * * *
Usually Eve Baird had a sixth sense about when she was about to lead her team into an untenable tactical situation, but her first inkling of trouble on this mission came after they had acquired the target and neutralized the security guards. Their informant had not showed. Her only evidence that he had even existed was the single text on her phone. Nor did he reply to her return text. While it was possible that he had bolted, Eve considered his disappearance an anomaly that bore consideration.
While Joscin and Derya secured the merchandise and their bound captives in the transport vehicles, Eve paced the length of the cargo container and back, trying to refine the cause of her unease. As the sky grew lighter, her worries took a more definite shape.
Derya contacted her with the news that their lookouts, Torbjørn and Fortinsky, had failed to report in.
“They’re not answering their comms, and that’s just weird,” Derya said. “One of them might have power issues, but both?”
No one else on the team had heard anything from their missing members.
“They’re not down here by the docks,” Poptart reported.
“Keep trying to raise them,” Eve ordered, scanning the area for any sign of a threat.
She could hear Derya quietly trying to make contact over comms, “Dammit, Fortinsky, Torbjørn, pick up the phone.”
The pale dawn was suddenly breathless. The air grew chill, and her heartbeat accelerated. Nervous pricklings marched up the back of her neck. There had to be another element present here which she had not factored in to her mission calculations.
“Joscin and I are done here,” Derya said, her voice tighter now and more intense. “We’ll swing around where we know they were supposed to be and see what’s going on.”
Eve concurred and gave the order.
Moments later, Joscin’s strained voice came over the comm, “Captain, we have a situation here. Someone attacked Torbjørn and Fortinsky. I think they might be dead.”
Beside her, she sensed Lieutenant Brader stiffen. Her heart clenched, and she felt her mind frantically attempt to reject what she had heard.
In the background, Eve could hear Derya’s voice, ragged and panicked. “No, no, no, hayır! O ölmedi! O ölmedi!” and Joscin’s, gently correcting, “I can’t find a pulse. I think his neck is broken. Derya, chéri, Je suis désolé. Il est mort. He is dead.”
“Captain,” Joscin said. “Torbjørn has had his throat cut, and Fortinsky’s neck is broken. Their weapons are here, but the ammunition is missing.”
They had gone so silently. Eve had heard no movement, no shouts, no sounds of a struggle. It seemed impossible, as the rose and gold sunrise lit the tops of the highest containers, that two of her team, her family, had crossed death’s threshold. It was always a chance inherent in the jobs they did, but it should not have been a mystery. It should not have been something she could not fight.
“Get back, here,” Eve ordered suddenly, not sure why she was so certain that they needed to be together. “Joscin, Derva, get back here now. Leave the bodies. We’ll pick them up later.”
If there was a later, she thought. In the back of her head, a niggling thought was trying to destroy her control: Damien Moreau never loses.
For a moment, she thought Derva would object, but her team knew her well, and when she spoke in that tone, they obeyed. Time enough to fight over orders after the situation was contained.
Brader was calling in the other members of the team who had been scouting for their informant down by the docks. Eve was grateful for his initiative.
However, it was already too late.
This time, she heard the fight go down when she lost the next four members of her team-muffled grunts, the thudding of fists on flesh, a cry of pain that cut off too suddenly, the sound of someone choking, the unmistakable crack of shattering bone.
Terror and anger surged in Eve’s blood. She skidded around a bank of cargo containers, pelting towards those sounds. Behind her, she could hear the percussion of Brader’s footsteps matching her own.
By the time they located the ruined bodies of their team mates, their adversaries had already vanished. Eve had no one to fight and everything to lose as she stumbled to her knees beside Teresinha, barely in time to feel the life draining from the young woman as she gulped for air that would never come. Her body armor had been inadequate to turn aside what must have been an exceptionally crafted blade. The single stab wound in her chest had nicked her pulmonary artery, and she bled out, drowning in her own blood while Eve tried in illogical grief to staunch the red tide with her bare hands.
Lieutenant Brader’s rush to the other victims was equally in vain. When he returned to Eve, the hand he placed on her shoulder was shaking.
“Poptart’s already dead,” he said as though the words were knives on his tongue. “His throat is cut like Torbjørn’s.”
“The Twosome?” she asked, seeing the answer in his eyes as he gestured to where they lay together in a mangled twist of limbs, their necks identically broken, inseparable even in death.
“No,” Eve whispered. “No. This can’t be happening.”
“Captain, we need to get back to the transport,” Brader insisted, dragging her to her feet from where she was still holding Teresinha. “We have to get back to Derya and Joscin.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Eve drew command around her like armor. She was a soldier. She’d seen men and women die in battle before. The important thing was to go on. Always go on.
She still had two other members of her team there. They needed to get to the transport vehicles and try to run. They needed to complete the mission that had already cost them too much.
Backup-they needed to call in backup. NATO had no forces in the area, but she could mobilize local law enforcement. Fumbling at her pocket with blood-stained fingers as they ran, she managed to extract the burner phone. “Spain. Emergency number,” she panted. “It’s 112, right Lieutenant?”
“Yes, Captain. Hurry!”
The five seconds it took her call to go through seemed like five thousand, but at last Eve was able to explain in Spanish from which all semblance of grammar had vanished that there were assassins at the Juan Carlos I Dock and officers were down.
The dispatcher on the line assured her that help was on the way.
It would come too late. Eve heard the transports roar to life before she rounded the corner to see that their captive guards had somehow been released and had hijacked the cargo her team had died to secure.
On the ground, obscured by the cloud of dust churned up by the departing 18-wheelers, lay the bodies of Derya and Joscin, hands reaching towards each other but not touching.
Beside her, Brader gave a choked cry, and she turned to him, never having heard him express an emotion under fire before. In horror, she saw his hands clasped around the hilt of a knife in his throat. His eyes pleaded with her, but she knew she dare not let her guard down one moment to help him.
Their enemy was here, and she had to find cover. As she sprinted towards the doubtful shelter of the cargo containers, she heard Brader’s body hit the ground with a lifeless thud that broke her heart and set off such an eruption of rage and pain that she thought her body would ignite.
She needed to shoot someone so badly, to destroy whoever it was that had destroyed her team. But the dust settled over the three motionless bodies of her friends in silence. No adversary appeared on whom she could visit her wrath. Eve remained vibrating with tension against the long side of the container that was guarding her back. She could see more than 180 degrees, and if anyone came around the ends of the container, she would have time to prepare for the attack.
Far away and faint in the unearthly stillness, she could hear the sound of sirens, still minutes from the Port. Her traitorous body demanded she react to the deaths of her team, but Eve knew she could not afford to grieve. She needed clear sight and steady hands. She had to keep a cool head. Somewhere, nearby, death was stalking her.
In the end, all her anticipation did not prepare her for the abrupt appearance, right in front of her, of her enemy-not a team, just one man, like one of the dark shadows come to life. He had dropped from the top of the containers, which had to be at least 15 feet, and landed light and balanced, poised for his attack, a knife stained with gore in his hand.
She could not see his face-this lone man who had been able to take out a NATO counter-terrorism team single-handed-because he was wearing a helmet with a face shield spattered with the spray of arterial blood. But she knew she would never forget the way he moved-catlike and predatory, inhumanly swift.
He was well inside of the effective range of her weapon, but Eve didn’t even care. Shooting him from a distance would not slake the vengeance thrumming in her blood. She wanted to crush him in her teeth, rip him to pieces with her bare hands, trample his body into the dust with her boots.
With a berserker battle cry, she launched herself at her adversary. Using the stock of her M-16 as a battering ram, she smashed it into his face shield with the entire force of her weight and momentum, hearing the crack, first of shatterproof polycarbonate, then of bone as his jaw snapped.
The two of them crashed to the earth, Eve driving her knee into his rib cage-not enough force left to break ribs, but crack them, maybe. His fist connected with the side of her head like the flash of lightning, and an intense narrow discomfort troubled her abdomen. His knife, she realized. He’d stabbed her.
She had to get that knife away from him before he slit her throat like the others. She was bleeding. Way too much. Rolling free of him, she kicked out, striking his wrist and sending the knife he held flying.
Eve tried to get to her feet, but the pain in her gut was slowing her, and her opponent was faster. She would have to work with what she had. Escape was not possible, so she threw herself at his leg, gripping just below the knee and somersaulted sideways, throwing him off balance, and-there it was, that had done some real damage. If she wasn’t running anywhere, neither was he.
The sirens were louder now. Perhaps, if she could not win this fight, at least she could avoid losing long enough. If she could just keep moving . . . the loss of blood was making her light-headed.
Then he had her in a grip like jaws of iron. Eve felt her left shoulder dislocate, and then her other arm break. Her assailant followed those up with a blow, swift as a cobra, to her neck. Cartilage crushed, and her larynx collapsed.
Eve gasped in desperation, her hands, in spite of her injuries, scrabbling at the air as though she could clasp the oxygen in her fists.
She knew she was dying.
The last thing she remembered, as her final breaths rattled and gurgled in her chest yet brought no air, and the live fire in her skull narrowed her vision to a dark tunnel, was the impassive mask of her killer, crazed fractures running through his face shield, his own blood dripping steadily off his jaw, waiting, watching with inhuman patience for her to die.
* * * * *
Eliot Spencer knelt beside the woman in a parody of tenderness, watching the life fade from the blue eyes that never left his, although he knew she could not see beyond his visor.
The first time he had seen that awful glaze turn living eyes to dead and known that Death was taking a life by his hand, he’d been sure his own life would follow it-that he could not survive the pain. At that moment in time he would have given anything to have been able to have taken it all back, made another choice, even if it was only to die rather than kill. But he had brothers depending on him, a mission to accomplish, a nation to which he had sworn an oath.
In the end, he’d bricked up and plastered over the pain again and again so that no one, especially himself, would know it had ever been there. Eventually everything that had made him human was behind that wall.
He was an asset. Used by his government increasingly to do what no one else could do, what no one would admit had been done. Eventually the distinction between good and evil blurred, because he was always brutally honest about what he did. Any organization that crossed the lines he crossed, that turned a boy into a man who would cross those lines, did not deserve his loyalty. He still worked for them, on occasion, if the price was right. But there were others willing to pay more.
Now he killed clinically, mechanically-with carefully chosen force. That was why Damien Moreau trusted him. The others, like Chapman, were vicious brutes, getting pleasure out of the violence they committed and inclined to go to excess. Eliot Spencer got the job done. No more. No less. To exact specifications.
Now the creep of eternity over mortal features was merely a marker that he had completed the job. Painless. Irrelevant.
The crescendo wail of sirens and the sound of vehicles braking fast cut short his vigil. He had to go. The stubborn woman was still refusing to die, so he aimed one last precise blow to her head.
There now. She had ceased to fight. Her hands slumped limp to the earth. On sudden, irrational impulse, he brushed gloved and bloodied fingers over her eyelids, closing them.
With deft, dispassionate hands, he searched the NATO Captain’s body and found the keys to the SUV.
“Thank you, darlin’,” he murmured through bloody teeth. “This’ll speed things up just fine.”
Getting to his feet was an exercise in the power of his will over the reluctance of his body. For a minute, his stomach nearly raised an insurrection, as pain and nausea struck with double-fisted blows. Bent over gasping, Eliot fought grimly for the control to move. Slamming all acknowledgment of his physical condition behind barricades raised by sheer determination, he straightened, turned for the docks, and moved off at a limping run.
He needed to collect his prisoner and get back to the helicopter. Fortunately, with the gift of NATO’s Beamer-he twirled the keys with satisfaction-he’d be in Morocco before the local LEOs had found half the bodies he’d left in his wake.
* * * * *
As the shoreline of Spain fell away behind him, and the coast of North Africa loomed ahead, Eliot let the coils of tension binding him relax slightly. The traitor was trussed up and unconscious in the back of the helicopter. He had a brief visit to make at the fellow’s home to leave Damien’s signature warning to all other potential insubordinates. It was still a long and arduous day before he would reach Panama and the lovely Siobhan, although in his current condition, he was going to be a bit of a disappointment to her. But at least now he was sure he would make it.
Damn, he hurt though. His jaw was probably going to require an actual doctor. He was going to demand a bonus from Damien for taking on that NATO Captain. She’d been a foe worthy of his talent as so few were these days. By the exertion of her valour, she had added a greater lustre to his accomplishment. No friend could have done more. He sent a mental salute in her direction.
In another life, under other circumstances, he would have liked to buy her a drink, find out what fire other than wrath could burn in those blue eyes. But Fate had decreed they meet in war, severing all chance of human fellowship, and only this subtle bond of association could remain between them-that the final testimony to the value of his victory he received at the hands of her whom he had vanquished.
* * * * *
TBC
Author: Honorat
Rating: T
Crossover: Leverage and The Librarians
Characters: Jenkins, Eve Baird, Jacob Stone, Cassandra Cillian, Ezekiel Jones, Parker, Alec Hardison, Eliot Spencer, Others TBA as needed.
Pairing: Parker/Hardison, Cassandra/Jake, Cassandra/Eliot, just a touch of Eliot/OC
Disclaimer: Dean Devlin, John Rogers, TNT own these characters.
Description: The Librarians discover Leverage International. Jacob Stone and Eliot Spencer have a family past, but they aren’t the only members of the two teams who’ve met before. Expect whiplash between light and dark. Lots of backstory in this chapter.
Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence-this chapter is a specific description of what Eve described generally in the last chapter. Steer clear if you don’t want to watch beloved characters do and experience bad things.
Previous chapters HERE.
* * * * *
By Paths Coincident
* * * * *
11 Years Ago
Port of Algeciras Bay, Strait of Gibralter, Spain
Captain Eve Baird parked the rented BMW SUV by the base of one of the post Panamax ship-to-shore cranes that the Port of Algeciras Bay boasted. In her side mirror, she could see headlights telling her that Fortinsky was pulling up behind with the other half of the team. NATO had no airbases in Spain, so they’d flown commercial from Brussels into Aeropuerto de Jerez late that night, acquired the vehicles, and driven the hour and a half to the Port. The night was still moonless and dark, but the Port lights cast everything into a contrast of glaring white and black shadow.
So far their cover story was holding. As representatives of Langdonne Enterprises, Inc. they were to meet an agent to negotiate the purchase of cargo loaded on the same ship as their target. The burner phone, resting in her pocket, contained a single text with cryptic numbers that translated to a time and berth at which the off-loading would occur. Forged bill of lading papers, which would allow them to depart with Moreau’s merchandise, crackled in her other pocket.
They had time to get into position before the ship would dock.
Her team members were professionally subdued in their behavior, but Joscin and Derya were staging a whispered debate about whether, when the mission was complete, they could wrangle a day’s leave to run down to Costa del Sol for some R and R.
In the shadow of the great crane, they stripped out of their bulky civvy camouflage, into the leaner silhouettes of their combat gear-Teresinha joked that it was the fastest-working diet she’d tried. Not that Interceptor Body Armor was so very figure-flattering.
Lieutenant Brader was unpacking their weapons from the suitcases, muttering under his breath about Poptart’s Mickey Mouse boxers.
“What can I say?” Poptart shrugged as he accepted his M-16 and ammunition from the Lieutenant. “Father’s Day present. My strength is as the strength of twenty because my shorts are licensed by Disney.”
“Twenty mice!” Fortinsky teased.
“Hey!” Poptart sniffed loftily. “That mouse rules half the known world.” He checked his pockets for his lucky four-leafed clover and his photographs of his wife and son. “All set.”
“All right, you chuckleheads.” Eve tried to sound like she wasn’t laughing. “Get your helmets on, and let’s move out.”
“Yes, sir, She Who Must Be Obeyed,” the Terrible Twosome chorused, donning their helmets.
As her team split up into their designated groups and melted into the shadows where they would assume their agreed-upon positions, Eve did not feel any chill of premonition. Fate sent her no sign that she would never see her whole team alive again.
* * * * *
Perched high on the beam of the post Panamax crane, Eliot Spencer watched through his infra-red scope as the NATO team separated, crept from shadow to shadow until they had reached their positions, and established their hiding places. Even from this short observation, he was enumerating weaknesses, developing strategies for dealing with each of the individuals in the team. There was a phrase for this sort of operation, he decided. It was called shooting fish in a barrel.
In the east, the night was turning imperceptibly into pre-dawn grey, and he could see the dark blot of the ship as it approached this side of the Strait.
First he would deal with the traitor. Then he would go collect his prey from the places they had so conveniently stashed themselves. He would start with the group farthest from their commanding officer. NATO didn’t put officers in charge of teams like this because their granddaddies went to private school with the right brass. Whoever she was, she would be a formidable opponent. If he took her on first, he ran the risk of being injured and compromised in his ability to go after the others. This way, they might bust each other into pieces, but all that would matter would be that his pieces would be living and hers would be dead.
He wasn’t going to use guns-too noisy. His plan was to be long gone before the Port authorities discovered the bodies. Even his victims would not know he was there until they were in the process of dying.
* * * * *
Usually Eve Baird had a sixth sense about when she was about to lead her team into an untenable tactical situation, but her first inkling of trouble on this mission came after they had acquired the target and neutralized the security guards. Their informant had not showed. Her only evidence that he had even existed was the single text on her phone. Nor did he reply to her return text. While it was possible that he had bolted, Eve considered his disappearance an anomaly that bore consideration.
While Joscin and Derya secured the merchandise and their bound captives in the transport vehicles, Eve paced the length of the cargo container and back, trying to refine the cause of her unease. As the sky grew lighter, her worries took a more definite shape.
Derya contacted her with the news that their lookouts, Torbjørn and Fortinsky, had failed to report in.
“They’re not answering their comms, and that’s just weird,” Derya said. “One of them might have power issues, but both?”
No one else on the team had heard anything from their missing members.
“They’re not down here by the docks,” Poptart reported.
“Keep trying to raise them,” Eve ordered, scanning the area for any sign of a threat.
She could hear Derya quietly trying to make contact over comms, “Dammit, Fortinsky, Torbjørn, pick up the phone.”
The pale dawn was suddenly breathless. The air grew chill, and her heartbeat accelerated. Nervous pricklings marched up the back of her neck. There had to be another element present here which she had not factored in to her mission calculations.
“Joscin and I are done here,” Derya said, her voice tighter now and more intense. “We’ll swing around where we know they were supposed to be and see what’s going on.”
Eve concurred and gave the order.
Moments later, Joscin’s strained voice came over the comm, “Captain, we have a situation here. Someone attacked Torbjørn and Fortinsky. I think they might be dead.”
Beside her, she sensed Lieutenant Brader stiffen. Her heart clenched, and she felt her mind frantically attempt to reject what she had heard.
In the background, Eve could hear Derya’s voice, ragged and panicked. “No, no, no, hayır! O ölmedi! O ölmedi!” and Joscin’s, gently correcting, “I can’t find a pulse. I think his neck is broken. Derya, chéri, Je suis désolé. Il est mort. He is dead.”
“Captain,” Joscin said. “Torbjørn has had his throat cut, and Fortinsky’s neck is broken. Their weapons are here, but the ammunition is missing.”
They had gone so silently. Eve had heard no movement, no shouts, no sounds of a struggle. It seemed impossible, as the rose and gold sunrise lit the tops of the highest containers, that two of her team, her family, had crossed death’s threshold. It was always a chance inherent in the jobs they did, but it should not have been a mystery. It should not have been something she could not fight.
“Get back, here,” Eve ordered suddenly, not sure why she was so certain that they needed to be together. “Joscin, Derva, get back here now. Leave the bodies. We’ll pick them up later.”
If there was a later, she thought. In the back of her head, a niggling thought was trying to destroy her control: Damien Moreau never loses.
For a moment, she thought Derva would object, but her team knew her well, and when she spoke in that tone, they obeyed. Time enough to fight over orders after the situation was contained.
Brader was calling in the other members of the team who had been scouting for their informant down by the docks. Eve was grateful for his initiative.
However, it was already too late.
This time, she heard the fight go down when she lost the next four members of her team-muffled grunts, the thudding of fists on flesh, a cry of pain that cut off too suddenly, the sound of someone choking, the unmistakable crack of shattering bone.
Terror and anger surged in Eve’s blood. She skidded around a bank of cargo containers, pelting towards those sounds. Behind her, she could hear the percussion of Brader’s footsteps matching her own.
By the time they located the ruined bodies of their team mates, their adversaries had already vanished. Eve had no one to fight and everything to lose as she stumbled to her knees beside Teresinha, barely in time to feel the life draining from the young woman as she gulped for air that would never come. Her body armor had been inadequate to turn aside what must have been an exceptionally crafted blade. The single stab wound in her chest had nicked her pulmonary artery, and she bled out, drowning in her own blood while Eve tried in illogical grief to staunch the red tide with her bare hands.
Lieutenant Brader’s rush to the other victims was equally in vain. When he returned to Eve, the hand he placed on her shoulder was shaking.
“Poptart’s already dead,” he said as though the words were knives on his tongue. “His throat is cut like Torbjørn’s.”
“The Twosome?” she asked, seeing the answer in his eyes as he gestured to where they lay together in a mangled twist of limbs, their necks identically broken, inseparable even in death.
“No,” Eve whispered. “No. This can’t be happening.”
“Captain, we need to get back to the transport,” Brader insisted, dragging her to her feet from where she was still holding Teresinha. “We have to get back to Derya and Joscin.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Eve drew command around her like armor. She was a soldier. She’d seen men and women die in battle before. The important thing was to go on. Always go on.
She still had two other members of her team there. They needed to get to the transport vehicles and try to run. They needed to complete the mission that had already cost them too much.
Backup-they needed to call in backup. NATO had no forces in the area, but she could mobilize local law enforcement. Fumbling at her pocket with blood-stained fingers as they ran, she managed to extract the burner phone. “Spain. Emergency number,” she panted. “It’s 112, right Lieutenant?”
“Yes, Captain. Hurry!”
The five seconds it took her call to go through seemed like five thousand, but at last Eve was able to explain in Spanish from which all semblance of grammar had vanished that there were assassins at the Juan Carlos I Dock and officers were down.
The dispatcher on the line assured her that help was on the way.
It would come too late. Eve heard the transports roar to life before she rounded the corner to see that their captive guards had somehow been released and had hijacked the cargo her team had died to secure.
On the ground, obscured by the cloud of dust churned up by the departing 18-wheelers, lay the bodies of Derya and Joscin, hands reaching towards each other but not touching.
Beside her, Brader gave a choked cry, and she turned to him, never having heard him express an emotion under fire before. In horror, she saw his hands clasped around the hilt of a knife in his throat. His eyes pleaded with her, but she knew she dare not let her guard down one moment to help him.
Their enemy was here, and she had to find cover. As she sprinted towards the doubtful shelter of the cargo containers, she heard Brader’s body hit the ground with a lifeless thud that broke her heart and set off such an eruption of rage and pain that she thought her body would ignite.
She needed to shoot someone so badly, to destroy whoever it was that had destroyed her team. But the dust settled over the three motionless bodies of her friends in silence. No adversary appeared on whom she could visit her wrath. Eve remained vibrating with tension against the long side of the container that was guarding her back. She could see more than 180 degrees, and if anyone came around the ends of the container, she would have time to prepare for the attack.
Far away and faint in the unearthly stillness, she could hear the sound of sirens, still minutes from the Port. Her traitorous body demanded she react to the deaths of her team, but Eve knew she could not afford to grieve. She needed clear sight and steady hands. She had to keep a cool head. Somewhere, nearby, death was stalking her.
In the end, all her anticipation did not prepare her for the abrupt appearance, right in front of her, of her enemy-not a team, just one man, like one of the dark shadows come to life. He had dropped from the top of the containers, which had to be at least 15 feet, and landed light and balanced, poised for his attack, a knife stained with gore in his hand.
She could not see his face-this lone man who had been able to take out a NATO counter-terrorism team single-handed-because he was wearing a helmet with a face shield spattered with the spray of arterial blood. But she knew she would never forget the way he moved-catlike and predatory, inhumanly swift.
He was well inside of the effective range of her weapon, but Eve didn’t even care. Shooting him from a distance would not slake the vengeance thrumming in her blood. She wanted to crush him in her teeth, rip him to pieces with her bare hands, trample his body into the dust with her boots.
With a berserker battle cry, she launched herself at her adversary. Using the stock of her M-16 as a battering ram, she smashed it into his face shield with the entire force of her weight and momentum, hearing the crack, first of shatterproof polycarbonate, then of bone as his jaw snapped.
The two of them crashed to the earth, Eve driving her knee into his rib cage-not enough force left to break ribs, but crack them, maybe. His fist connected with the side of her head like the flash of lightning, and an intense narrow discomfort troubled her abdomen. His knife, she realized. He’d stabbed her.
She had to get that knife away from him before he slit her throat like the others. She was bleeding. Way too much. Rolling free of him, she kicked out, striking his wrist and sending the knife he held flying.
Eve tried to get to her feet, but the pain in her gut was slowing her, and her opponent was faster. She would have to work with what she had. Escape was not possible, so she threw herself at his leg, gripping just below the knee and somersaulted sideways, throwing him off balance, and-there it was, that had done some real damage. If she wasn’t running anywhere, neither was he.
The sirens were louder now. Perhaps, if she could not win this fight, at least she could avoid losing long enough. If she could just keep moving . . . the loss of blood was making her light-headed.
Then he had her in a grip like jaws of iron. Eve felt her left shoulder dislocate, and then her other arm break. Her assailant followed those up with a blow, swift as a cobra, to her neck. Cartilage crushed, and her larynx collapsed.
Eve gasped in desperation, her hands, in spite of her injuries, scrabbling at the air as though she could clasp the oxygen in her fists.
She knew she was dying.
The last thing she remembered, as her final breaths rattled and gurgled in her chest yet brought no air, and the live fire in her skull narrowed her vision to a dark tunnel, was the impassive mask of her killer, crazed fractures running through his face shield, his own blood dripping steadily off his jaw, waiting, watching with inhuman patience for her to die.
* * * * *
Eliot Spencer knelt beside the woman in a parody of tenderness, watching the life fade from the blue eyes that never left his, although he knew she could not see beyond his visor.
The first time he had seen that awful glaze turn living eyes to dead and known that Death was taking a life by his hand, he’d been sure his own life would follow it-that he could not survive the pain. At that moment in time he would have given anything to have been able to have taken it all back, made another choice, even if it was only to die rather than kill. But he had brothers depending on him, a mission to accomplish, a nation to which he had sworn an oath.
In the end, he’d bricked up and plastered over the pain again and again so that no one, especially himself, would know it had ever been there. Eventually everything that had made him human was behind that wall.
He was an asset. Used by his government increasingly to do what no one else could do, what no one would admit had been done. Eventually the distinction between good and evil blurred, because he was always brutally honest about what he did. Any organization that crossed the lines he crossed, that turned a boy into a man who would cross those lines, did not deserve his loyalty. He still worked for them, on occasion, if the price was right. But there were others willing to pay more.
Now he killed clinically, mechanically-with carefully chosen force. That was why Damien Moreau trusted him. The others, like Chapman, were vicious brutes, getting pleasure out of the violence they committed and inclined to go to excess. Eliot Spencer got the job done. No more. No less. To exact specifications.
Now the creep of eternity over mortal features was merely a marker that he had completed the job. Painless. Irrelevant.
The crescendo wail of sirens and the sound of vehicles braking fast cut short his vigil. He had to go. The stubborn woman was still refusing to die, so he aimed one last precise blow to her head.
There now. She had ceased to fight. Her hands slumped limp to the earth. On sudden, irrational impulse, he brushed gloved and bloodied fingers over her eyelids, closing them.
With deft, dispassionate hands, he searched the NATO Captain’s body and found the keys to the SUV.
“Thank you, darlin’,” he murmured through bloody teeth. “This’ll speed things up just fine.”
Getting to his feet was an exercise in the power of his will over the reluctance of his body. For a minute, his stomach nearly raised an insurrection, as pain and nausea struck with double-fisted blows. Bent over gasping, Eliot fought grimly for the control to move. Slamming all acknowledgment of his physical condition behind barricades raised by sheer determination, he straightened, turned for the docks, and moved off at a limping run.
He needed to collect his prisoner and get back to the helicopter. Fortunately, with the gift of NATO’s Beamer-he twirled the keys with satisfaction-he’d be in Morocco before the local LEOs had found half the bodies he’d left in his wake.
* * * * *
As the shoreline of Spain fell away behind him, and the coast of North Africa loomed ahead, Eliot let the coils of tension binding him relax slightly. The traitor was trussed up and unconscious in the back of the helicopter. He had a brief visit to make at the fellow’s home to leave Damien’s signature warning to all other potential insubordinates. It was still a long and arduous day before he would reach Panama and the lovely Siobhan, although in his current condition, he was going to be a bit of a disappointment to her. But at least now he was sure he would make it.
Damn, he hurt though. His jaw was probably going to require an actual doctor. He was going to demand a bonus from Damien for taking on that NATO Captain. She’d been a foe worthy of his talent as so few were these days. By the exertion of her valour, she had added a greater lustre to his accomplishment. No friend could have done more. He sent a mental salute in her direction.
In another life, under other circumstances, he would have liked to buy her a drink, find out what fire other than wrath could burn in those blue eyes. But Fate had decreed they meet in war, severing all chance of human fellowship, and only this subtle bond of association could remain between them-that the final testimony to the value of his victory he received at the hands of her whom he had vanquished.
* * * * *
TBC