'For his first trick, the terrorist presents....' Ch. 6

[JHyde]

I'm back. For those who missed my abject apology elsewhere, a confluence of ugly life events has prevented me from posting this marathon chapter. It's exactly as it was planned about two months ago....it just didn't get written (forgive my use of the passive tense). I really do apologise, especially given this chapter may seem more haphazard unless you're prepared to read again all which has come before.

An action heavy chapter too, but hopefully there's enough to make up for it. Also, the next chapter is all about the personal.

Hope I haven't lost you all. As always, I could really do with reviews, even if they're negative.


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Lucas and Ros rifled through various photographs that came with files created over time. The Section Chief felt a pang occasionally as she came across Adam's signature at the bottom of a report - he had recruited Abehsera only a month before his death. Information compiled painstakingly on each member of Quatari as they knew it; members' biographies and monthly reports flicked through hastily in their search for information.

"Good file!" murmured Ros, skimming down one of the earlier reports on political tendencies of Abehsera's flatmates. "More thorough than usual, some of them have been a right proper mess."

"The Service is only as good as its records, Ros," Ruth said softly, as she approached the pair. "Harry wants to see you in his office. I'll keep scouring the files with Lucas and Tariq."

Ros stepped away to Harry's office, thinking nothing of it, even after she saw Harry's sombre face.

"Sit down, Ros," he said quietly. She complied and looked at him, waiting for an answer to her unspoken question. Harry walked around from behind his desk and tried to find the words.

"I just got off the phone with the doctor looking after Piggins. What he brought in with him on the train was sealed in a steel canister, but he did open it. Twice."

"So?" Ros asked. "What are you saying, Harry? That I might be infected?"

Harry was startled at her direct question so early in the conversation. "It's a remote possibility, Ros, but yes. If it is strontium, if there was anything on his hands, anything in the air......he didn't have time to open the canister in his house, for that we can be grateful, but....there is a possibility that your chances of developing cancer later in life may have increased. They can run tests...."

Ros cut him off. "Harry. Given the life expectancy of field agents in this department these last few years hasn't exactly been high, what makes you think that some stronger odds of developing cancer in twenty years' time will bother me so very much?"

"Just take the tests, Ros," Harry sighed.

"When the operation's over." Ros walked briskly to the door and then turned around, softening her tone. "But thanks, Harry."

Her boss sighed again. "I'm sorry to say I didn't think of it. Thank Ruth."

"Of course," Ros smiled.


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Tariq leant back in his chair and stretched. "I can't get any further with the money trail, I'm afraid. I've traced it to Morocco, but that's it. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang."

"In terms of hideaways, I can't find much." Ruth looked up at Ros and Lucas, who were still passing sections of the file between them as they absorbed identities and details. "The obvious answer is to check out the community centre where Vafa works - he's the one who Abehsera said had the material last."

Ros and Lucas looked at one another.

"Makes sense," Lucas said.

"Here." Tariq passed him a USB. "Get the contents of the hard drive. Make yourself useful."

Ros smiled. "I might end up liking the scruffy kid after all."


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Ros parked the Lexus across the street and a few hundred yards down, while Lucas pulled the kit from the back seat. Having guns again in the field was quite the novelty for him; personal firearms had been phased out in Section D within a year or two of him starting with the Service and had reappeared a few years after his capture in Russia. He loaded the gun cautiously and passed it to Ros - who immediately emptied and then reloaded it. Lucas smiled into his window as he checked his own equipment; it was not that Ros didn't trust him, it was that she trusted herself more. And he didn't blame her. There was a confidence that came in the ritual of making sure a firearm was ready for action, a security in the knowledge that the dead weight of a gun would fire if needed. He slipped a knife in his pocket and then turned to his partner in arms.

"These guys will be dead inside of a week or so after handling this stuff, so it's possible that if they made the bomb here there could be traces in the air, right?"

Ros smiled and opened her door. "Let's hope they were lazy enough to leave us a different calling card if they were here."

They walked towards the front driveway of the community centre, which had already closed for the evening. Ros grimaced.

"I don't like how much notice we might be giving anyone inside, Lucas."

"All the lights are off - d'you really think they're all hunched inside waiting to pop out and sing 'Happy Birthday'?" Lucas stood on his toes, trying to see if the fan on top of the roof was circling. It was usually a good indicator that a building was occupied when the exhaust fan was making its revolutions. "None of the fans are on, so I doubt there's anyone in the building at least. Maybe out the back?"

"More informal," Ros agreed and they turned to walk around the block. "Tariq's map had a timber yard facing off at the back yard of this place - we can scout from there I think. Back door might be the best way in."

"I'll resist the urge to make jokes about back entrances and surprises," said Lucas softly, but he heard Ros' chuckle from in front and he jogged to catch up to her stride.

They scaled the fence between Grace's Timber and the outside world with relative ease. Sunset was taking over and Lucas cursed the darkness. It might make them more invisible, but it also made things much harder to explain if they were caught. They walked quickly through the yard and found an easy vantage point through a hastily mended fence.

"The timber man is foolish. Broken fences will get him into trouble," Lucas murmured as he pulled out the binoculars.

"Trouble like facing off properties with terrorists? " Ros pulled the glasses from his hands and adjusted the magnitude. There were a few moments of silence before Ros wriggled through the fence, Lucas following behind her, and then they set off towards the building.

"I don't know about women, Ros - but a shed is a pretty good place for a guy to hide something," Lucas pointed at the structure in question as Ros went to work with the skeleton key. She frowned and then busted the door open.

"It doesn't surprise me that you want to search the shed, certainly. Give me the USB and I'll deal with the hard drive."

The exchange was made and they separated. It was with little difficulty that Lucas gained entry to the shed and found a mechanism similar to the one Ruth had shown them in the briefing. There it sat, miserably solo on the workbench, but the canister Piggins had described was nowhere to be seen.

And then the door to the shed opened and Lucas looked into the eyes of two Quatari operatives. He barely had time to sigh.


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The only warning Ros had received of the Quatari intrusion had been the two men speaking in an Arabic dialect (she couldn't identify which) as they walked beneath the window of the office she was searching. She gambled on them not shooting Lucas on sight and pushed the window sash high enough that she could escape out the side of the building. Ros fell hard as she clearly heard the two Quatari men laying into Lucas and she winced in sympathy, then held her breath. Lucas groaned. He was still alive.

Ros assessed the yard quickly. From where she was, she had no hope of sneaking up behind the two men, nor could she see how badly hurt Lucas might be. Perhaps most importantly, she had no way of knowing where the strontium might be; the equipment she and Lucas had to check likely hiding places was only capable of identifying nuclear material at a range of a few feet.

One of the two men was shouting at Lucas - Ros recognized him as Vafa, the last man known to be in possession of the strontium. The other man was unknown, certainly not anyone who had come into contact with Abehsera over the last year or so.

Ros brought her phone out and dialled Thames House quickly under cover of the noise being made in the shed, Ruth's line.

"Ros?" Ruth was business-like, assured.

"Ruth, Lucas and I have been split up at the centre and he's being held by two men, one of whom is Vafa. We'll need a Broken Arrow unit on stand-by for any nuclear fall-out."

Back at Thames House, Ruth waved to get Tariq's attention. "Do you have a plan, Ros? Or do I need to get Special Forces down there?"

Ros retreated into the bushes further as Vafa strode out into the garden. "I don't yet, but you can't get the CO19 down here. Not until I know where the bloody strontium is and how quickly these two renegades can release it."

"Fair enough." Ruth had scrawled 'GET HARRY' on a post-it by this stage and shoved it in Tariq's face. He dialled Harry, who moved quickly to the Grid, where Ruth already had Ros on speaker. "There's two of them", Ruth said quietly by way of explanation to her boss and lover, "and they've got Lucas."

Ros broke in. "I can hear Lucas talking and at any minute, one of them will come and search the centre, with it unlocked. That's my best chance of getting Lucas and the strontium. I'll call you back, just get that Broken Arrow unit down here and some transport for our two friends. It's too bloody windy."

Ros hung up abruptly, leaving Ruth looking at the phone and Tariq looking blankly at Harry.

"You heard the woman," said Harry, inclining his head. "But if Ros hasn't called back in ten minutes, reposition the satellite so we can get a read on who's where."


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Ros shoved the phone back into her pocket and waited, watching. Vafa appeared from the shed once again, this time dragging Lucas by the elbow. For now, the spook seemed to be playing along as a foolish thief; his protests as he and his captor approached the house all part of the ruse. Ros waited until they were inside the house before making her move, dashing behind the huge pile of firewood immediately to the shed's left, between it and the main building. The unknown man walked out of the shed too, gazing toward the now open back door of the centre. Ros seized her moment and rushed him, her stranglehold choking him silent as he flailed about uselessly. Momentarily, he went limp and she heaved him over her shoulder in a fireman's hold, barely staggering back towards the firewood.

"You never leave your back exposed like that, silly," she chastised the unconscious villain, panting. Vafa and Lucas had not yet reappeared but she could hear them. Ros gambled and made for the shed, grabbing a lean, but rounded stump of branch from the firewood heap. She fell inside, almost comically, as a slapstick character of old, praying that the door was quivering with the wind and not because she had nudged it as she flew past.

She breathed deeply, adrenaline coursing through her, peering slightly through the crack of the door made by hinges. Only Vafa was returning, and she was briefly still, terrified for Lucas. She gripped the wood, smooth and hard beneath her anxious fingers and shrank back against the shed wall, as thin as she could be. Vafa was calling, calling for the other man - -

Ros struck, just as Vafa knew something to be wrong. He caught the wood en route to his face and kicked out. His leg was caught by Ros, who sent him flying, the wood still in his grasp. This time it was Ros who used her leg, to wind him so that he lay on his back, unable to move, his eyes aflame, as she bent over and pulled the wood from his limp fingers. He was still kicking, jerking, as she rolled him onto his stomach and handcuffed him, before she dragged him to the side of the shed and propped him up.

"Well, that was startlingly easy. You're no better at kung-fu fighting than you were this morning, are you?" She slammed his head against the steel, ignoring the shouted threats and curses as she proceeded to tie up her first victim behind the firewood.

Piggins' backpack lay only a few feet away, and she pulled it with her over to the side of the centre, once again grateful that it was she and not Lucas who had been carrying the equipment. The nuclear detector went off like a child on Christmas morning and then she sprinted for the centre's back door, hoping that the last player was still alive inside.

He was. Lucas was half free of his constraints but still gagged and his eyes opened with relief as Ros entered. She pulled the handkerchief free of his mouth and he panted his thanks before saying, in response to her cool smile, "I won't be living this down, will I? Single handedly, Ros?"

"Single handedly, Lucas." She pulled the ropes from his feet and he pulled his hands free and flexed them.


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The Broken Arrow unit had been first on the scene; the prisoners could not be removed until the strontium was on its way back to government labs. They had ascertained quickly that although the can had been opened, there was no contamination of the area. Had they started making the bomb, presumably within minutes of their return, it all could have ended rather differently.

"Minutes," said Lucas to Ros.

"Hmmm?" asked Ros, looking up from her mobile screen. Ros often used these moments to clear her phone's memory of extraneous details.

"Today was a day where we made it by minutes. Sometimes it's hours. Or seconds. Today it was a matter of minutes."

Ros nodded and snapped her phone shut. "And sometimes we miss by the same margin. Today the numbers were in our favour."

She paused, that slightly awkward silence in which they both knew how close they had come to a failed mission. It was Ros who broke it, gesturing toward towards the road.

"I'm going to call Harry, let him know we'll be out of here soon."

Lucas nodded, and she walked away, leaving him restless and anxious. This was his least favourite part of the job, the waiting after safety resumed regular programming. Uncertainty still lingered in his mind and in the air, which so easily could have been contaminated. The two prisoners were now gagged themselves as well as bound. Lucas was massaging his wrists when the two CO19 officers walked towards him, holding their helmets and still wearing their protective clothing.

"We're gonna take these two down to the Heap," the first of them said, referring to the Special Branch holding facility. He and his colleague flashed their IDs. "The van's out the front - would you mind helping out?"

"Sure," Lucas shrugged. "We haven't quite got the all clear to leave yet."

It was Vafa that Lucas dragged to his feet and pulled the gag from his mouth. It was Vafa who started cursing policemen and England and the West. It was Vafa who kicked Lucas several times between the yard and the van. Lucas smiled, thinking it was the closest Vafa would ever come again to freedom.

But as he wrestled with Vafa before locking him into the van, the Quatari man began to curse out Ros and then spat in Lucas' face. And suddenly Lucas was back in a cold, concrete prison with Darshavin spitting in his face after cursing in a Slav dialect with which he was not familiar.

When asked later, he could remember nothing more. Just the dark, and Vafa's eyes, and the violent joy that coursed through him as he slammed the captive's head against the back door of the van. He couldn't remember the CO19 officers shouting or Ros' bellowing as she ran to his side and wrested his hands from Vafa's neck. He did register the blood, so much of the blood, running everywhere and its smell permeating the air with its bitter, iron smell. But he didn't remember the way his captive dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes and only the reflection of his manic eyes in the side mirror of the van stayed with him as one of the CO19 officers pulled him away.

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Please review! I could really do with the feedback on the action sequences.

[Aria]

Lovely chapter, well worth the wait. Loved Ros single handedly saving Lucas and his wry acknowledgement that he wouldn't be hearing the end of it soon. Slightly surprised by Lucas losing it at the end but a brilliant twist nontheless. The action scenes were very believable and you write them well. Looking forward to the next chapter already. Hope RL gets better for you.

[Beatriz]

Great action chapter, love Ros in this one!! she's a tough woman, saving Lucas on her own woohoo!

[Lukyan Lyubof]

Loved this fic so far, really well written and a great plot!
Really liked the action, and thought the ending of the chapter was really interesting!

[JHyde]

(By the way, it's very flattering that someone is rating my fic threads with five stars. For the rest of you, I promise it's not me doing it!)

[Silktie]

Great action-packed chapter, you write the action stuff very well. Nice interplay between Ros and Lucas, and another great ending. Very interested to see what happens to Lucas now.

[TygerBright]

have patiently (?) waited for this, as usual skimmed it, and filed with the previous chapters.. I've decided to collect all (patiently ) and read the whole story cover to cover when the last words are THE END
great chap tho at first glance, good pace, and wicked cliffhanger. I do hope Lucas gets a chance to reciprocate Ros's favour, would hate him do be in debt.. and I'm intrigued but not too surprised by his snapping. Have been thinking about his breaking point and the possible circumstances a lot lately.
thanks for the update, will wait and wonder what next

[Tea Lady]

Thanks for chapter 6. I missed it.

Really good action sequence. I could visualise where they were and what they were doing. Ros really is the ice queen most of the time. I liked the fact though she was a little human remembering Adam.

So is Vafa dead then or just got a headache??
So is Harry still Ruth's lover??

[YourFutureMuse]

Have printed it off so I can enjoy properly (bloody sisters - I miss my laptop ) But I shall return shortly with a review Yay

[lwhite53]

Single-handed Ros -- you go girl!! Great chapter -- action sequences worked really well. And Lucas losing it rang very true -- the flashback brought on by curses and the spitting -- and then he lashes out. Very believable.