indigo_angels

BA woke them as soon as the first fingers of daylight were creeping through the broken windows. He could have woken Murdock, shook that thin shoulder gently with his hand, but he chose to kick Face awake instead, one hard kick to the sole of his boot, not painful, but enough to shock him awake instantly, pulse racing, heart pounding.

“Get up, Pretty Boy,” he growled, anger evident in every syllable, “We got to get the boss back,” Face could clearly hear the, ‘Before you get any more out of hand...’ tagged on the end of the sentence.

Face struggled to his feet, helping Murdock up behind him and returning BA’s cold stare with one of his own. “Ignore him,” Murdock whispered, squeezing Face’s hand before he let go, “He’s just worried ‘bout the boss.”

So was Face, but he was in no mood for going through Round Fifteen with BA, so ignoring him was just fine by him. “I need a piss,” he answered instead, squeezing out of the gaps in the wall and heading for the nearby bushes. He’d just finished up, fastened his fly and turned when Sasha appeared like a ghost from the lingering shadows.

Face opened his mouth to speak, but stopped as the unfamiliar sunshine flashed silver on the blade of a knife. He froze, and Sasha took another step in. “You touch any of my kids again,” he threatened, “and I kill you while you sleep. Understand?”

For a second Face didn’t answer; a thousand different responses were running through his head while being threatened by a thirteen year old. He knew he could take the kid down before he even realised what was coming his way, could think of half a dozen smart assed comments that would make Sasha squirm... but then he remembered Anya’s sobs and Georgiy’s white face and knew he deserved this. Instead he held his hands up in front of him, the universal gesture of peace and tried to look as earnest as possible. “I know. I’m sorry. I won’t go near any of them, I swear.”

For a second Sasha looked taken aback, but then he nodded, fingers white around the hilt of the dirty, blunt knife, “I’m watching you...” he whispered instead and backed up to the hole in the wall.

Face let him go before searching out some water to wash his hands and face in, unaware of BA watching the whole thing through a broken window.

_____________________________

It took them ten minutes to drive across town, BA at the wheel of the hire car, Murdock and Face in the back, Sasha insisting he needed to ride shotgun to direct, and Face just shrugging before sliding in next to Murdock.

Sasha got them to park out the back of the house, and then a quick scramble through a scrubby field filled with goats and they were there. Face checked the house out over the wall at the end of the garden. It was a large, austere looking mansion, a bit tired and grey looking, not architecturally stunning, more like a cube with a roof. Three stories, double glazed windows, basement, attic. He frowned, Fort Knox it wasn’t, but there was no obvious way in either.

He turned back, “Okay guys, recon op first. Murdock, take the left, BA, the right. Don’t go in unless it’s a gift. All clear?”

They nodded, “Are we engaging at all?” BA queried and Face’s brow creased in indecision.

“If we need to,” he replied, “I’ll leave it up to your judgement, but I would rather do this right, get the intel we need this time and come back if we need to rather than just storm in and frighten them all away.” He couldn’t help thinking how a set of comms links would go down great just about now...

“What you doin’?” BA asked him.

Face smiled a flat smile at him, “Going up, big guy,” he said, pointing at a thin ledge that ran right around the house between the second and third stories, “Really need to get us some flying reindeer for this job...”

Murdock grinned at him.

“What about me?” Sasha’s voice, over loud and petulant, broke into Face’s concentration.

“You?” he asked incredulously, “Nothing. You stay put and keep quiet and do nothing.”

“Not fair...” he spat, eyes flashing at Face.

Face rolled his eyes and felt his fists tightening up in frustration as he turned to meet Sasha’s glare head on, but it was BA that spoke first, “You do as you told, Sasha! You got that?” Both Sasha and Face turned to him in shock, “A place with guns is no place for a kid!”

“I can use a gun!” Sasha spat at him.

“Yeah? Well that don’ make it right! Now you stay here an’ you stay outta trouble or you have me to answer to. Clear?”

Sasha nodded sullenly and Face tried really hard to keep the smirk out of his expression. Leaving a seething Sasha behind, they moved out.

Within two minutes Face had lost sight of both of his team. He scaled a cedar tree growing next to the house and used it to scramble onto the ledge running around the outside of the house. It was just about light now, and Face knew that he stood out like a sore thumb against the pale pebble dash of the house, just hoped that no one was up and wandering around in the garden yet... The ledge was also thinner than it looked and very crumbly, he took a deep breath, flattened his back to the wall, and started edging around the house towards the first window.

Face’s heart was pounding hard against his ribs as he got to the first pane of glass, and breathing out through his mouth as slowly as possible, he edged his face up to the sill, creeping up on his toes to see in. The room was long, ran from front to back of the house, and was obviously a store room, full of dusty old furniture and sheet covered objects but nothing that looked like it could have anything to do with the boss. Face glanced at the floor around the door and saw the thick layers of dust. This room obviously hadn’t been entered in a long time, so he ducked back down and moved off, his feet edging carefully along the unstable ledge.

The next window was smoked and Face bit back a growl of frustration as he realised he couldn’t see a damn thing through the glass. The next two windows were the same and he could feel his heart beating out an even more frantic rhythm as he edged forward to the last window on the back of the house. This time, as he approached, he could see that the glass was clear, in fact one of the windows was even open a crack and it looked to him as though this was going to be another front to back room like the one at the other end of the house.

He crept forward, and raised himself on his toes to look in once again. He had been right, a huge front to back room, bare and empty except for... his breath froze in his throat, a dirty mattress at the far end of the room with a long figure sprawled out on its length. The curtains at the opposite end of the room were closed, throwing the mattress and its occupier into shadow, but if Face just squinted like that he could make out chains around the figure’s wrists, clothes that looked remarkably like stained, filthy army fatigues and, his heart somersaulted, cropped greying hair. He shuffled further over, stood right underneath the slightly opened window and prepared to call through it when he was forced to duck back down out of sight as the door to the room suddenly opened.

Crouching on the ledge, his head right under the crack in the window, Face stilled his breathing and listened.

For almost ten seconds there was silence, and then the sound of water slapping against something and running across a hard surface, quickly followed by a gasp and cold laughter.

“So sorry, Colonel,” Face felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise at that familiar voice from the train tracks. Baldy guy, it seems, was Mikhail Barsukov. “But I thought I would wake you and give you your early morning wash all at the same time today. It is getting very smelly in here,” the disdain in his voice was obvious, “I really thought you would have had more respect for yourself than this, lying in your own filth...”

“Well, maybe if you took these damn chains off once in a while, I might be able to do something about that!”

The voice was cold, and sounded tired, weak even, as well as more than just a little bit pissed off, but Face would know it anywhere. His knees sagged slightly and he grabbed at the walls with his palms just to try and stop himself from slipping. It was definitely Hannibal. They’d found him.

“I don’t think so,” Face forced himself to pay attention to Barsukov’s voice, “That’s what got you out of my hands all those years ago, Smith, and without you as my bargaining chip, poor Igor was sent away to die!”

“Poor Igor was stealing guns from the Red Army and selling them to your enemies,” Face frowned as he adjusted his assessment of Hannibal’s voice from ‘tired’ to ‘exhausted’, “You seem to be the only one who is at all bothered by his passing!”

There was a sharp ‘crack’ which had Face’s hands balling into fists before Barsukov spoke again, his voice cold and dangerous, “You will be bothered, Colonel Smith, once his brother gets here to see you!”

Hannibal was just a moment in replying and that told Face how much he was struggling with all of this, “Bohdan isn’t interested in me,” the voice was quiet and flat, “he hardly even knew Igor. The last thing he wants to do is get embroiled in some ancient revenge plot. He’s not coming, Mikhail, face it.”

Another sharp ‘crack’ filled the room followed by Barsukov’s furious voice, “Well, if he doesn’t then that’s bad luck for you my friend as I won’t be needing you hanging around here anymore!” Hannibal didn’t reply. “So enjoy your last full day of life, as if he isn’t here by tomorrow night, I’m putting a bullet through your head myself!”

A dull thud, sounding suspiciously like a kick, sounded in the room and then all was silent. Face raised himself on his toes once more and saw that Barsukov had left. Hannibal was laid out on the mattress and Face could tell at once that he was unconscious. He kicked his boot against the wall of the house in frustration and instantly began planning the boss’ liberation and Barsukov’s demise.

________________________

The others were already waiting for him when he got back to the wall. Their searches had provided good information on the layout of the house and grounds, but Face was the only one to have actually found any concrete proof that Hannibal was there. He relayed his findings quickly to them and Sasha looked at the men in surprise as Murdock bowed his head and wiped tears from his eyes and BA lifted his face to the sky in wordless thanks.

Suddenly the men were all totally focussed, any differences swept aside in respect of the job they had to do.

“So,” BA prompted staring intently at Face, “What’s the plan?”

Face let out a long breath as he tossed the options round and round in his head one more time. Every single nerve in his body was screaming at him to just run back into that house, shoot anything that moved, grab the boss and make a run for it, but... They had limited firepower with them, even though he had seen no evidence of guards and the others had only counted three, Sasha had said there were about twenty, so that needed some thought, they had no escape plan in place, hardly any gas in the car, they had Sasha here with them, they were right in the middle of a built up area... He didn’t have any idea what he should do, it was a classic case of his heart verses his head, so he fell back on the strategy he always used in situations like this; what would Hannibal do here? and then he had his answer.

He returned BA’s stare, “We do this properly. We go back to the warehouse, pack up, get a plan in place, make sure we have an exit strategy, then we come back tonight, get the boss, leave.”

There was a second’s silence and it was blatantly obvious from the look on BA’s face that he didn’t like that idea one little bit. Face kept his expression neutral, kept his eyes on the big guy but didn’t miss Murdock’s foot, just nudging at BA’s gently, reminding... So BA took a huge breath in and let it out again before saying, calmly, carefully, “You positive that’s the right plan LT, ‘cause leavin’ the boss and comin’ back for him sure as hell didn’t work out so well for us last time...”

Face made the effort to sit on his temper, “It’s the right plan. We have to finish this properly this time, BA, no loose ends, no room for error.”

Brown eyes fixed him with the weight of their stare, “But what if that mob guy does turn up? He could kill the boss or take him away and we would never know where he’d gone!”

A frown crossed Face’s forehead, he’d thought about that in depth, “Hannibal says he’s not coming at all.”

“But,” this was Murdock and Face’s gut twisted uncomfortably; if Murdock thought he was doing the wrong thing as well... well, where did that leave him? “Face... maybe the bossman was just winding that Barsukov guy up, maybe he doesn’t know anything about Bodhan Morozov?”

Face had thought about that as well, had thought really hard about the way that Hannibal had delivered that line, the flatness, the almost defeat he’d heard. It hadn’t been good to hear the boss like that, but it had convinced Face that Hannibal at least believed what he was saying. It was a risk, but Face was going to have to believe it too. “I don't think so,” he’d answered cautiously, the uncertainty in his voice forcing BA’s eyebrows together, “But, shit, Murdock, I just don't know...” his breath left him in a rush, “You think we should just go for it now? Take the risk?”

Murdock shrugged his shoulders, “I dunno Face, you’re the boss...”

Face screwed his eyes shut, But that’s just it! he screamed in his head, I’m not!

“You should wait,” all eyes turned incredulously to Sasha, “That man?” the boy hooked a grubby thumb back at the house, “He’s one bad man. Sells guns to go on the streets. Bad man. You will need lots of guns to get past him.”

Another loaded silence fell before Face finally moved back towards the car, “We wait,” he confirmed, and with nothing more than heavy sigh, BA followed.

___________________________

Hannibal forced his eyes open and blinked through the sunshine coming in through the windows at the back of the house. The sight of blue sky coaxed a smile from his dry lips, he hadn’t thought the sun ever shone in this dreary corner of the world; it was nice to see a bit of blue sky. He shifted up on the mattress, trying to get into a sitting position so he could lift his hands high enough to feel his head where that bastard Barsukov kicked him earlier on. The way his wrists were chained together and then to the wall made it very hard to use his hands at all, for eating or drinking, not that he’d been given much of either since he’d been here, or for toileting, which he absolutely hated.

He eventually managed it, propping his back up against the wall as he got his breath back, feeling like an old, old, man and prodded about on his head, touching a lump and dried blood. He let out a sigh and let his hands fall back down into his lap, looking in disinterest at the swollen, infected skin on his wrists and knowing that he was in deep, deep trouble this time. All the hell holes in all the corners of the world he’d been to, all the certain death situations he’d squeezed out of, and here, a squalid bedroom right on Russia’s furthest edges, this is where he was going to breathe his last. He’d never have thought it.

The boys weren’t coming for him, Barsukov had told him where he was and he knew that Face would never be able to track him all the way out here. His ‘fifteen years ago’ clue was too subtle, of course the boys would never have picked up on that, and he’d seen the look of almost panic in Face’s expression; the kid probably hadn’t even been listening to him... He should have made it more obvious, or at least just told Face to call Bunter or one of the others, but Hannibal had been near panic himself, he’d been terrified that Barsukov would just turn that gun around and shoot one of his boys. He knew for a fact that if the poisonous old Russian knew even half of how much Face meant to him, the kid would have had a bullet in his forehead the second he’d caught them up. Hannibal shuddered.

Yes, he’d been well and truly played this time, and thinking of his boy, frantically searching that forest around Omsk, desperate to find the boss, all those old feelings of abandonment rearing their ugly heads again... it was pure torture. But at least the kid wasn’t completely on his own, at least he had Murdock and BA with him this time. Hannibal hoped against all hope that that would be enough for him, enough to keep him from that whirlpool of self destruction and despair that Hannibal had hauled him out of all those years ago...

There was no hope for Hannibal here. He knew Bohdan Morosov wasn’t coming, Barsukov was the only person in the world who felt aggrieved at the treatment Igor Morosov had suffered at the hands of the Russians. Hannibal remembered the guy from back then, he’d been Igor’s PA or something, always at his beck and call, always on the sharp end of Igor’s tongue, and Hannibal could never understand that fanatical loyalty, even then.

He’d gone absolutely off his rocker when Morosov had been arrested, yelling and threatening everyone around him that he would kill them for this. Even Hannibal. Especially Hannibal... But it had been Bunter he’d managed to get his hands on first, and Hannibal had had his turn of fury when he realised that Barsukov had dared take one of his boys. He’d gone in on his own, not waited for back up, not waited for a proper plan, and that bastard Barsukov had surprised him, had his own personal army just waiting to snap him up. So before he knew it, he and Bunter were in a cell together, Barsukov promising that Hannibal would have to watch Bunter die, slowly and painfully, before he could meet his own death, just like Barsukov would have to watch Igor die in jail.

But Hannibal had other plans, managed to con one of the guards into taking his chains off by pretending to be trying to hang himself with them. Broken the poor sod’s neck, freed Bunter and the two of them blasted their way out with stolen guns. He sighed as he remembered the mess he’d almost made of that op, and that it had been Bunter, only twenty three at the time, who had almost paid the price. At least he had that this time, at least he was here on his own without having to look at Murdock’s huge eyes, or BA’s scowl or... god, or Face as they hurt him...

No, at least it was only his own mortality he had to consider. He looked back at the little patch of blue once more, trying to lift his morbid thoughts, trying to make himself believe in a miracle that wasn’t going to happen, and then he froze, his breath stalling in his chest and his heart suddenly pumping wildly. There, in the grime of the window was a shape he was positive had not been there before. It was a circle, a crude circle made up of lots of tiny interlinking shapes drawn in the muck with obvious care, it almost looked like... like... a paracord bracelet. And there, right in the centre was a single letter F. Hannibal closed his eyes as hope surged through him with the force of a wildfire. His wonderful, resourceful, incredible boy had found him, was coming for him.

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