[stmercy2020]

Yay.  Students.  Real life is catching up with me and seriously slowing me down.  Still and all, I think this chapter came out pretty good.  The fight's a little different, but cool in a nasty, brutal sort of way.  And I get to reintroduce a couple of people who we haven't seen for a while…

Cold Fury
by: stmercy2020
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Chapter One: http://amaz0ns.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,135/topic,5697.0/
Chapter Two: http://amaz0ns.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,135/topic,5705.0/
Chapter Three: http://amaz0ns.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,135/topic,5731.0/
Chapter Four: http://amaz0ns.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,135/topic,5767.0/
Chapter Five: http://amaz0ns.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,135/topic,5883.0/

Chapter Six
Tris races to rescue the man she’s supposed to kidnap from an assassin.

November, 2000
“So you think Renaldo is here to kill Kim Yong-Sook?” Jun asked worriedly.

“I don’t think he’s here to take in the sights,” Tris snapped.  Her chance meeting of him in the airport was a stroke of luck.  It meant that Jun had been able to get a couple candid photographs to feed to the Agency’s databases.  The information she had uncovered about the man Tris knew as Renaldo was disquieting, to say the least.

He had first appeared as Aniceto Muñoz in the Fuerzas Armadas Españolas.  He served as a first lieutenant and was placed in a number of hot zones during his first tour.  According to his record, he served with distinction and was quickly selected for placement in the Grupo de Operaciones Especiales “Valencia” III.  His service record there was classified, and nobody had bothered trying to uncover what was underneath the government seal.  Several years later, however, he reappeared, looking the same but using a new name, Renaldo de Arraso.  Under his new name, he no longer worked for the army and, instead, sold his services to the highest bidder.

Most of his work was fairly low-level intelligence gathering- operations that focused primarily on acquiring data and files from supposedly secure locations.  Similar, in fact, to the sorts of operations Tris had been trained to handle.  Somewhere along the line, he must have achieved some phenomenal successes, although the nature of those successes wasn’t recorded, because his prices suddenly skyrocketed about three years ago.  He also started doing wetwork- not often, but enough that it was clear that he was a serious and skilled operator.  As far as Tris could see, he had never botched a job.

Tris sighed.  “Look, Jun, I’m sorry.  Let’s assume that Renaldo is going to attack Kim this morning.  How would he do it?

“He couldn’t just walk up and kill him, right?  Too public, too much chance of being apprehended or arrested- everything we have says he’s a very careful operator.

“He couldn’t set up a bomb, could he?”

“He probably could, but it goes against his M.O.  He likes to perform his operations with as little collateral damage as possible.  Bombings are always unpredictable- innocents too close to the blast end up getting injured or killed.  I think we can rule it out.”

“Sniping?”

“That’s a serious possibility.  There aren’t a great deal of good places to set up a blind, though, and he’s have to be certain that Kim was going to enter the kill zone at some point.”

“More than that- he’d have to know that he’d have an unobstructed line of sight to his target for long enough for the bullet to travel the distance and he’d have to know that Kim was going to be basically stationary for the entire time.  Kim has bodyguards, so a missed shot might eliminate any further opportunities.”

“Mm.  Okay- there are a couple of places where people typically visit in the palace, and where they would want to get pictures taken.  I’ll mark those on a map for you and you can try and figure out what suitable places to set up a blind would be.”

Tris suppressed a groan.  “So much for sleeping,” she muttered.

*****

It hadn’t been easy breaking into the Detroit field office of the FBI, but Duncan was a thoroughly professional operator.  Once inside the building, he’d made his way to the offices of one Special Agent Mitchell Brody.  Inside his office, he’d quickly gone through the paper files, photographing each of the pages of data in several files he’d been told to retrieve.

He’d then followed the phone cord back to a plate on the wall that he carefully removed.  Placing a bug on the line was risky, especially given the degree to which signals intelligence and counterintelligence had advanced during the Cold War.  Any line bug would almost have to cause a microsecond delay and the NSA boys would latch onto that and track it down quickly.  Instead, the device he planted was a shielded digital recorder.  It would record up to twenty gigabytes of audio data each day and transmit it during down time over the FBI’s own dedicated channels.  A routine bug sweep would find it in a month if Duncan wasn’t able to get back and remove it, but if it were removed without disarming it first, a small thermite charge would melt the disc and all internal circuitry to slag before it could be dissected.

His next stop was in accounting.  Again, he made his way purposefully to the paper files and photographed the last two years of records kept on Special Agent Brody- his paystubs, his expenditures, his line-of-duty claims, and his phone records.  Duncan shook his head in wonder, noting in passing the degree of rigor the FBI bureaucrats engaged in tracking the dealings of their senior agents.

Noting movement in the hall, Duncan quickly hid at the back of the room, quieting his breathing so that he barely moved the air at all.  A woman slipped in the door, but did not turn on the lights.  She glanced furtively around before walking over to one of the terminals near the front of the office.  From where Duncan stood, concealed in the shadows, he could see her clearly.

She appeared to be of average height, although her erect posture actually made her seem a little taller.  She wore a business-like suit in either dark gray or black, and her hair was so blonde that it had to be bleached.  She sat in front of the terminal, the glow from the screen illuminating her pretty face.  Surprisingly, it looked as if her nose had been broken at least once and reset.

Duncan tried to see the screen, but couldn’t make out the text from where he was standing.  She appeared to be reviewing someone’s personnel file and accounts, which made sense, but Duncan couldn’t help but wonder why she was doing it after hours and so surreptitiously.  After a bit, a picture appeared on the screen.  Duncan recognized it from a lifetime ago- Devin Andersen, the man who’d sent his daughter away.

“Shit,” she breathed aloud.  She took out a small PDA and quickly jotted some notes, then backed out of the system.  All business now, she quickly stood and extricated herself from the room.  As soon as she was gone, Duncan went over to the computer she’d just left.  He plugged in a USB cable, allowing the terabyte shielded hard drive he carried to quickly copy over the contents of the machine’s memory, then, on a hunch, accessed a program that would record a keystroke log for the terminal.

Information in hand, Duncan disconnected his tools and left the building.  This evening’s entire operation had taken him just under four hours to execute, although it had taken several days in the planning and, he suspected, weeks more by the faceless minions who’d contracted him to do it.  It was, he thought, a good operation.  He had gotten the information, planted the bug, and was out with no one the wiser.

*****

Despite the chill in the air, Renaldo was starting to sweat as he made his way up the slope from Seoul’s Blue House.  It was still dark, fortunately, and he was confident that, between the concealment offered by his ghillie suit and his own unusual physical makeup, he was still unobserved.  He’d had to stop twice to avoid the random sweeping patrols that provided security for President Kim Dae-Jung, but he was pretty much outside their regular security perimeter, now.

He was starting to regret having accepted this job.  His employer had insisted on too many specifics, micro-managing the operation in a way that suggested middle management with the ambition to be more, but without the necessary skills to back it up.  Additionally, it was wetwork, and Renaldo didn’t really enjoy assassination as a rule.  If things hadn’t twisted in his last big job, he probably would have refused this one.  But the bills were piling up, and not all of the people he owed money to were understanding when it came to delays in payment.

Renaldo was nearly to the place he’d selected, now.  Taking out his canteen, he took a long pull of the specially formulated drink he used.  He rolled his clothes on the ground, making sure to get them as dirty and earthy as possible, then set about weaving in layers of twigs and leaves, replacing the masses of vegetation that had started to wilt during his long trek up the side of the mountain.  Finally satisfied with the quality of his work, he edged forward on the bluff and set up his rifle, a Sako TRG-42 in the heavy .338 Lapua that he’d used during his time with the army.

Taking out his field glasses, he arranged himself and got his rifle aimed in the right direction, then settled down to wait.  It would be several hours before the palace grounds opened far below him, and more time still until his target would present himself in the ideal location.  He had been assured that it would happen, though.  All he could do now was wait.

*****

Jun had suggested several places within the palace that a man was likely to stop.  None were certain, though, and that worried Tris.  She pored over the satellite maps, taking careful note of elevations.  She cursed the fact that the high angle of inclination made it difficult to judge what terrain features were likely to block sightlines from prospective killzones to blinds.

Ultimately, Tris found two sites that offered the combination of elements she would want in planning a long-range operation of this sort.  She prayed she wasn’t overlooking anything, but it was time to play the odds, now.  She sent Jun to scout out the National Folk Museum, actually located inside the walls of the palace on the Eastern side.  She grabbed her gear and started up Bukhansan’s Easterly slope from a service road.

Her first destination was just over a tenth of a mile away in a horizontal line, although most of that was at an angle of ascent of about forty degrees, with some areas being as great as sixty-five or seventy.  She gritted her teeth, hoping against hope to find Renaldo in place before he had a chance to set his plan in motion.

The hours were slipping away much quicker than she liked.  It was nearly nine in the morning, and the grounds would open to the public very shortly.  She figured Renaldo would probably have to wait until after the changing of the guards ceremony at half ten, but she didn’t dare to count on that.

Tris used her whole body, climbing quickly and steadily, mostly on her feet, but sometimes vaulting low obstacles on her hands, often using her arms to pull herself higher along the incline.  Sweat steamed off her chest in the cool air.  If Renaldo was scanning with infrared, she knew, she would appear incredibly clearly.

Can’t think on that, now, she told herself.

Her shoulders were burning as she finally crested the last rise and could see over to a flat area with a gentle slope.  The palace grounds had already opened.  In the distance, she could barely make out people moving like ants through the great Southern gate. 

Jun should be in position by now,

she realized, but, looking in the direction she knew the museum to be, her sight was blocked by a building downslope of her.  Hope she’s doing okay…

Tris moved carefully along the slight plateau, keeping her eyes front and her pistol out and down, the heavy weight of the P226 Navy comforting in her hand.  He’s not up here, she realized, swearing.

Moving along the ridge, she eyed the narrow path through the vegetation that afforded a clear view of the palace.  She almost didn’t notice it, but then it moved- just a fraction, so little that she couldn’t possibly have seen it, but it was there.  There was a narrow bluff just over a hundred meters away.  Someone was down there, nearly perfectly blending into the ground cover, quiet and still.

The long, black barrel of his weapon couldn’t have protruded from his blind by more than an inch, but it was there.  Tris caught her breath as she saw the barrel slowly, smoothly slide out and angle gently down.

*****

Special Agent Marie Cunningham wondered once again what, exactly, the Hell she had stumbled onto.  She’d been worried about Mitch Brody- he’d seemed kind of distracted over the last year, and, recently, had made some amazingly bad judgment calls- rookie calls- she thought.  Then, a couple weeks ago, she’d overheard him speaking on the phone to someone named Felipe.  Normally, that wouldn’t have put up her hackles in the slightest, but her friend Romeo had been put in a wheelchair for the rest of his life trying to infiltrate the operation of someone named Felipe Dominguez.

Looking back on it, she realized she should have talked to her superiors right then, but she didn’t want to get a reputation as someone who jumped at shadows or made mountains out of molehills.  She’d opted, instead, to try and investigate on her own.

She hadn’t turned up much, initially, and she’d been about to dismiss her suspicions entirely when she’d happened upon a file that she’d never expected to see.  It was a file about one Trista Magritte Boyd.  It was dated less than a month ago, and it was CC’d to both Mr. Dominguez and to a government account that she hadn’t been able to identify.

Or, rather, she hadn’t been able to identify it until tonight.  The holder of that account was the European Station Chief for the Office of Clandestine Operations.  She was certain she’d set off alarms throughout the system hacking into that account, but something didn’t sit right.  The NCS occasionally worked through the FBI when they had a task that had to go inside the U.S. borders, but outside that jurisdiction they worked exclusively with the CIA.

This entire thing felt deeply dangerous.  Marie sat in her office shivering lightly, checking her gun over and over.  It was late, and she’d have to leave.  Soon.

*****

She was too far.  She scrambled down the hill, utterly unconcerned with concealment, now.  The air seemed to whistle in her ears as she sprinted downhill at a vicious angle, knowing that one misstep would mean death for Kim and probably for herself as well.

She raised her gun and squeezed off a shot.  It was too far, she was moving too much, and she’d never gotten a clear sight picture.  It was impossible to hit a man with a pistol at this range.

The bullet tore through what appeared to be a patch of earth and grass several feet from the end of the barrel and Renaldo jerked up, stricken.  It looked as if the ground itself had suddenly stood up, spewing a fountain of bright red.  He swung around to bring his larger weapon to bear, but she was already on top of him, bounding from the hillside in a hard tackle.

She felt her arm impact of the rifle with a painful crack, but it wasn’t close to enough to stop her forward momentum.  Her arms wrapped around his waist and she buried her shoulder in his belly- and passed through him barely slowing at all.  The rifle was catapulted several feet down the slope and Tris was forced to tumble and roll as her momentum drove her further and further down the slope of the mountain.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Renaldo demanded, outraged, “are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Tris finally managed to grab a passing branch and jerk herself to a stop.  She got to her feet only to see that he was already moving for his rifle.  She got to her feet and aimed at Renaldo, ready to fire.  “I can’t let you kill him, Ren,” she gritted through her teeth.

He stopped short for a moment.  “Ren?” he asked suspiciously, “Do I know you?”

With her free hand, she reached up and jerked her hood off.  “Recognize me now?” she growled.

He grinned suddenly.  “Maggie!  Hell, girl, I was going to ask if you wanted a date later tonight!”

Her eyes popped and she hesitated for just a fraction of a second.  He grabbed the rifle and started to turn with it.

“Don’t!” she warned, but it was far too late.  As he turned the barrel on her, she fired off two more shots, double-tapping him in the chest.  She saw the impacts, saw them penetrate his camouflaged suit and send geysers out behind him.

He looked down at his chest, appearing mildly annoyed.  “I guess this means no date, then?”

She shot him again, this time in the face.  It looked as if his head simply exploded as the heavy bullet sent ripples of devastating force through his head.  A reddish mist seemed to hang in the air for just a moment before his head somehow regrew from the stump of his neck.

“Stop shooting me!” he yelled, almost comically.  Tris froze for a moment.  “Mary, mother of God, that hurts!” he complained.

“But…” Tris began uncertainly.

Renaldo shook his head.  “You gave it a good try, Maggie-girl,” he said gently as he started to readjust his aim, “but there’s no way a nat like you can ever stop me.  Sorry.”

He swung the rifle down so that the barrel was centered on her chest.  “I’m afraid this is goodbye,” he said.

*****

It was just after one in the morning when Andersen got Jun’s call.

“What,” he grunted, unhappy about being gotten out of bed.

He listened for a few minutes.  “Interesting.  Aniceto Muñoz, you say?  I’m familiar with the name, yes.”

He considered.  While it hadn’t been his group who had been responsible for Aniceto’s remarkable transformation, he was familiar with the details.  A being- a man, for want of a better word- whose body existed in a state of flux between solid and liquid, almost homogenous in composition.  Aniceto’s nervous system had become decentralized, as had all of his internal organs.  It seemed as if his cells were all capable of changing function by a pure act of will.  If it were possible to duplicate the bizarre circumstances that had created him in the first place, Andersen would have arranged to have it done, creating a veritable army of implacable, unstoppable soldiers and supermen.

“This really doesn’t change anything, Jun.  If Tris manages to neutralize him, of course, that would be the ideal solution.  Mr. Kim is still the main objective- try not to let Muñoz kill him, alright?”  He listened again.

“No,” he sighed, “I don’t think she can beat him.  But her death, while disappointing, would not compromise our operations.  She’s on her own.”

*****

Staring at that huge, black abyss, Tris felt herself go perfectly calm.  Somehow, despite her terror and rage and exhaustion, she suddenly felt completely at peace and in synch with the moment.

“You lose,” she said quietly, smiling faintly.

Renaldo looked nonplussed.  “How do you figure?  I have the drop on you.  Doesn’t seem too likely you’ll walk away from this unless I let you.”

“True,” she conceded, “but you didn’t come here to kill me.  Even if you kill me, you’ve lost your window of opportunity- Mr. Kim’s going to be moving on, now, and my people will have him before you can set up an alternative kill.”

Renaldo’s head twitched for just an instant as he glanced for just a fraction of a second down the mountain.  It felt like she was moving glacially slowly as she dropped her shoulder and charged up the slope, slipping right and left to force him to readjust his aim.

Renaldo was quick, skilled and competent.  The rifle shot echoed thunderously off the mountainside, a huge booming noise that could be heard clear down into the city below.  Tris threw herself into a twisting dive even as his finger tightened on the trigger and the huge .338 Lapua bullet rammed hard into the trauma plate over her heart.  Even as the shot ricocheted off into the scrub, Tris was biting back tears and gasping for air as she forced her body to keep climbing.

Before he could throw the bolt and chamber another round, she was there, grabbing the barrel of the gun with both arms and wrenching hard.  The rifle came free in her grip and she swung the butt of the gun hard in a whistling arc at the ground.  The scope shattered, precision-tooled glass exploding in needle-like splinters.  Something in the body of the sleek black weapon snapped, and the barrel twisted up in her grip, the broken back of a defeated predator.

“¡Mierda!” he barked in frustration.  Narrowing his eyes, he backed up a step.  “Fine.  You win!  But you owe me.”

Without another word, he turned and started walking away.  Tris hook her head.  Grabbing her hood and her pistols, Tris set off down towards the palace and her target.

[stmercy2020]

Gah!  I hate it when this happens.

Without another word, he turned and started walking away.  Tris hook her head.  Grabbing her hood and her pistols, Tris set off down towards the palace and her target.

should read

Without another word, he turned and started walking away.  Tris shook her head.  Grabbing her hood and her pistols, Tris set off down towards the palace and her target.

stoopid editing process.  derned no-modifying posts.  frig.

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