Either way, his awareness of the other man trembling and shivering against him made it difficult not to feel genuine pity for him, regardless of what a twenty-four carat tosspot he truly was.
A distant yipping sound jarred him sharply back into the moment. Elliot’s body went rigid against his side. The shivering stopped, as did the occasional fidget, and both men completely froze in place, almost as if their blood had turned to concrete and then set within seconds.
Was that...?
“That was a dog,” came Elliot’s muffled voice. Even though it was softened by the thick wool coat he was currently bundled up in, Cabe could tell the tone attached the man’s words was one of simultaneous terror and hope.
“Sounded like it.” Careful not to jostle his client about too much, Cabe inched away from him, sliding both feet out of the sheepskin blanket and into his waiting boots. “Stay still.”
The raft squeaked in protest beneath his dress slacks as the W.A.R.D. agent crawled closer to where the two loose tarp flaps draped across one another, providing them with an easy exit whilst still keeping the chill out. There was a second one beside Elliot, cleverly and deliberately concealed by what Cabe was convinced was the only tree that existed in the province of Alberta. It was here that Cabe took up his defensive position, extending part of his arm from the flap as he drew it back for vision.
“See anything?”
“Ssh.”
“Is it us or them?”
“With all due respect, sir, shut the fuck up.”
The scenery beyond their little snow trench was the same as it had been every time he’d checked for the past five-and-a-half hours. A blanket of pure white snow had been draped over the area where the mountains met the Canadian countryside on the east, flakes the size of his fist drifting lazily down on the occasionally blustery breeze. The sides of the tarp were buried in a good few inches of fresh snow, along with the rocks he’d used to pin them taut hours earlier. Even as he gazed out, squinting against the light, a light frost was building up on his head and shoulders.
It was... difficult... not to revisit that time in the Mojave.
It was the same adrenaline that was being fired like steroids into every muscle of his stiff, aching body. The same gusty chill biting at his face, blurring his vision. The same instinct to survive.
Because if someone was out there, if someone had found them, there was a sixty-seven per cent chance they were there to rescue them, and a thirty-three per cent chance they were there to ensure they would never be rescued.
Breathe, Sparrow...
Another yip, this one louder. It was definitely a canine of some description, and it was signaling. The vast expanse of space around them made it next to impossible to locate where it had come from; sound had a tendency to echo and bounce, more just to fuck with you than anything else, Cabe was convinced. He always tended to gripe and get angry at science whenever he was in a situation like this, probably because Ronnie spent so much time praising it.
Elliot remained obediently quiet. No doubt, he was just as anxious as his bodyguard to know where the source of the sound was, and whether their visitor was there to help or hinder them. Cabe’s hawk-like eyes scanned every inch of the countryside that was visible to him at his current position before he dared to slide out of the shelter a little on his belly, into the thick dunes of snow.
Just like in the desert, every movement he forced his muscles to make was a struggle. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to fight enemies when he was having to fight with his own body as well. The Albertan air was arid and icy in the same way it had been before, only this time there was the additional pleasure of the wet snow soaking into his coat and trousers. It was times like this he repeatedly thanked his mentors for all of the environmental training he’d been subjected to; it made it easier to zone everything out when it actually mattered, and laser-focus on what he had to do to get both of them out of here alive.
Another bark, to his left. Behind the goddamn tree. Keeping the gun in front of him, Cabe crawled out on his stomach, using his legs to push himself through the snow. If it was a wolf or coyote, he was going to end up very wet and cold and miserable after nearly having his face bitten off for nothing. He paused close to the pine, reaching in with one gloved hand to draw down several branches and create a line of sight through his cover.
It had to be a dog, it had to be a dog, he told himself over and over. Wolves didn’t make noises like that, not that he’d ever heard before anyway.
Another bark, and another, and then the sound of snow shifting, and the animal came into view closer than he’d been anticipating between the branches: a gorgeous creature, all muscle, with a short silky coat that glistened black and copper in the setting sun beneath a reflective thermal vest.
Holy shit, that looks like...
“ANGUUUUS?”
The enormous Rottweiler howled in response, long and low and loud. The familiar call actually brought weakness to Cabe’s joints and his form sank a little, muscles giving out beneath him in the snow.
Angus.
And then the dog was charging at him, and even though he knew it was going to hurt, he closed his eyes and removed his finger from inside the trigger guard, and just accepted his fate.
It was the second time Angus had found one of his favorite humans after being sent out to recover him from somewhere in the extreme wilderness, but his reaction was in no way any less passionate. One-hundred and twenty pounds of pooch was on top of Cabe in a heartbeat, driving him deeper into the cold snow as he licked and slobbered at his face and hands and arms and anything else he could reach. This was the moment where Angus forgot the part where he was supposed to be assisting with search and rescue, and was just overly relieved to see his buddy.
“ANGUS! Angus, HEEL!”
There were footsteps kicking through the snow now, a single set of them, but Cabe’s eyes remained closed, even as the Rottweiler obediently withdrew and gave him some breathing space. He recognized the voice, and for the first time in what had only been hours but had seemed like an eternity, he really felt he could entrust his safety to another human being.
“Good afternoon, sir. Please tell me this well-constructed survival shelter contains a Mr. Elliot Wright of WrightTech Incorporated, because Game of Thrones starts in like two hours, so I really don’t wanna have to go back out again.”
“Ssh, he’s inside,” said Cabe quietly, eyes still fully lidded. Maybe he was frightened that if he opened them, his former handler wouldn’t actually be standing there with his trusty (if not annoyingly affectionate) mutt, and the whole thing would be nothing more than a hallucination.
“Hakeem Faraj, Parks Canada Search and Rescue, sir.”
And he did look exactly like a Parks Canada search and rescue specialist, too. The young Saudi Arabian man, a year or two Ronnie’s senior, was clad in a fluorescent orange parka and climbing safety harness, dappled with straps and carabiner hooks. Cabe had to admit, the agent handler looked legit, even down to the cute little maple leaves on his uniform.
Angus barked again, impatient and annoyed that he wasn’t allowed to continue bathing the recovered agent in affection. Cabe cleared the dryness from his throat and hollered back to the shelter just loud enough to be heard, “Mr. Wright, it’s Parks Canada! We’re all good.”
Agent Faraj extended a hand to his friend, helping Cabe get both feet under him and not releasing him until he was sure the older man was stable. No doubt he would’ve pressed the silent alarm letting W.A.R.D. know he needed an extraction, and fast, the second Angus found Cabe in the snow. They would only have minutes to wait before they would be airlifted to safety.
“You okay, sir?” Faraj asked, one arm hovering with paranoia by Cabe’s trembling shoulder as the two of them began to trudge back to the shelter, Angus charging ahead to lead the way.
“Fine. Chassis damage.” Cabe shook his head. “Don’t ask him, he’s sensitive.”
“Hey, man, I got a part to pl
ay here.”
“Going for that BAFTA?”
“Bro, could you try to be more British? Seriously?”
Angus was sniffing at the entryway to the shelter, no doubt finding Cabe’s scent smothered all over it, along with the scent of the C.E.O. he’d been tasked to help find. He barked again several times, tail wagging happily as the snow continued to dust his back and muzzle.
And then, there were chopper blades. Cabe could recognize that racket anywhere, given the fact that it usually either heralded blessed safety or ungodly suffering. He threw his head around to try and locate the helicopter, not even noticing when he lost his balance and the smaller, younger man had to move quickly to help him remain upright.
“Hey, Cabe,” Faraj murmured, low enough that Elliot wouldn’t be able to hear him from inside the shelter with the din the helicopter was now creating, “can you do me a favor next time you disappear?”
“Yeah, mate, sure. I owe you one. What?”
Faraj gave him a blank stare. “Will you please stop making yourself so damn difficult to find? It’s actually starting to piss me off now.”
Nine
The smell of fresh pizza was a welcome one as Cabe exited the hot, steamy bathroom of the hotel suite in a pair of sweats and mismatched cotton socks. His hands were wrapped in a towel which he tousled about his short blond hair carelessly. This caused him to almost trip over the giant Rottweiler who waited eagerly at the foot of one bed, waiting impatiently for the stack of steaming pizza boxes to be broken into again.
“Just in time,” Dasilva greeted him, flicking a can of root-beer sharply in his direction. Cabe caught it with his gut, grunting from the impact. “The pizza beat you.”
“The pizza didn’t spend all day in the Arctic,” Cabe replied dryly, finishing off the rest of his hair one-handed so that he could cradle the unopened beverage in the other.
The hotel was one of a broad and famous luxury chain which, for obvious reasons, Cabe would never divulge the name of due to the close nature with which they tended to work with the United Nations on... Anomaly-related matters. Whenever they travelled, they typically stayed at the same chain of hotels and were treated with platinum-level customer service, unless some undercover role meant they needed alternative accommodations. Until they were ready to disclose the true nature of Cabe’s interaction with WrightTech to the C.E.O. himself, this hotel suite in downtown Portland (where he and Elliot had been shipped back to immediately following their air rescue from the Rockies) would serve as their command centre and main office of operations for the Elliot Wright case.
If you could even call it something fancy like a ‘command centre’, Cabe thought. Almost every single flat surface in the room was currently occupied; this included the marble bathroom countertop, upon which sat charging half a set of twelve headset and handheld radios because (quote Ronnie) ‘there’s no more effing room in the living area’. Cabe had been polite and draped a towel over them to protect them from steam and condensation before hitting the shower. The flatscreen television that came with the room had been hijacked and hooked up for use as another computer monitor; the dresser it sat upon and the desk beside it were both covered in laptops and cables and other weird gadgets the Geek Squad (Flint’s pet name for the handler team of Ronnie and Faraj, which had caught on by now among the rest of the operatives) had set up. A second large flatscreen currently showed a realtime display of the WrightTech building’s security feed, which Ronnie had been hacking into while Cabe was getting acquainted with the building and their new client the day before.
Several paintings had been taken down from the walls, and in their place were a whiteboard and cork-board, both of which were busy with case details. The windows were blacked out by bulletproof L.E.D. screens projecting an image of the ‘suite interior’, for anyone who happened to be surveying the room from outside. The garbage cans were stuffed with Chinese takeout boxes from the previous evening, and there seemed to be a designated corner of the room where dirty clothing was being tossed. Cabe made sure his old socks and shorts wound up in the general vicinity of that pile – any day he could avoid doing his own laundry was a good day.
Glancing around, Cabe couldn’t help but note that not a single device operating in the room was WrightTech. Given that it was Ronnie’s personal favorite brand, he had to wonder how long it had taken her to convert everything over to different systems.
“Hey, it’s the hero!” teased Ronnie, as she came into view around the corner. She was sitting on one of the beds, her toenails freshly painted and separated by those weird little foam things, a massive laptop sitting on her thighs. Or maybe it just looked massive on top of her. Beside her was a propped-up tablet (whatever the leading competitor was for the WrightPad) streaming what appeared to be CNN.
“We waited on you before starting the pizza, hero guy,” she added.
“We’re awesome like that,” came Faraj’s voice from down between the wall and the bed Ronnie was laying on. He was probably adjusting a set-up... or just trying to find another damn plug socket.
“They waited.” Dasilva gulped from her own can of root-beer, a balled-up napkin sitting on the cluttered desk beside where she sat in a wheeled desk chair. “I’ve had a long day.”
“I feel terrible for you,” Cabe retorted, ducking the lash of her hand which he knew was coming his way. She always tended to get a little rougher with him right after he almost killed himself, so he expected it by now.
“Shut up. And eat your pizza so the kids can have theirs.”
“Yeah, Sparrow,” Faraj interjected as he rose up next to Ronnie, a tiny little floof from the carpet clinging to one side of the dark facial hair that made him look several years older than he actually was. “You’re kinda the glue holding this whole pizza operation together, apparently.”
Cabe grinned at him and plonked down onto the bed beside the stack of boxes, pulling the top one onto his lap. Hakeem Faraj had been his handler for the first year and a half of his time with W.A.R.D., a talented young university dropout with a knack for tinkering and fluidity in eight different languages (conversational in four others, but in his own words, he ‘didn’t like to brag about the stuff he hadn’t yet mastered’). Despite his confidence on the job, he had a tendency to doubt and second-guess himself constantly when it came to personal matters. Maybe that was why Cabe saw so much of himself in the tech handler.
From the floor beside him, Angus whined. The ridiculous mutt’s chin was right on the edge of the bedspread, splotchy brown eyebrows sloped dramatically as he begged Cabe silently for some of what was in the box. Dasilva nodded her head at the pooch.
“I’ve seen you do that to guys in bars, Pigeon.”
Cabe pointedly ignored her. “Hawaiian?”
“Me, me, me.” Ronnie extended a hand to take the box without looking away from whatever numbers she was running on her screen.
“Something with a crap tonne of meat on it?”
“I think that’s for you and Hakeem, actually.”
“Oh, neat-o. Well, help yourselves then, I’m not your goddamn waiter.”
“No.” Ronnie finally blinked up at him as if doing an impression of an enthralled, sparkly-eyed Anime character. “You’re our hero.”
“I honestly and truly hate you all.”
It was at that moment that a keycard was inserted and the door was opened in a manner that clearly meant business. The fact that the safety lock had been left off meant SSA Flint hadn’t been gone long, otherwise he no doubt would’ve instructed someone to latch it. There was nothing more awkward than trying to explain something that looked like an F.B.I. terrorist lockdown control centre to a shocked maid.
“Fox News, now.”
“Aww, boss, do we have to?” Faraj complained aloud, and Ronnie was snickering about it even as she picked up the tablet beside her and loaded the stream Flint had requested upon his entrance – which probably meant he’d just heard about it, or seen something on the lobby T.V.s. As soo
n as it was buffering, she Bluetoothed it to the screen on top of the dresser, which had previously been displaying realtime updates of twenty-four various social media feeds (including all of WrightTech’s and their competitors, A.R.M.’s North American channels, @OurPriorityOfficial, and many others) and several different charts keeping track of WrightTech’s stock market position.
“– have committed a terrorist attack against three American citizens, leaving one of them dead,” a graying man was saying to his co-hosts. Two men clad in immaculate suit-and-tie combos and a young blonde woman in a red blouse were seated in front of a royal blue screen. “That’s the fact we need to focus on here, that this attack came not from Libya or Syria, but from our polite and friendly neighbor to the north. Now what we need to be asking ourselves here is: is the Anomaly crisis driving us to a point where we can’t even trust our allies to have our backs anymore?”
“Anomaly crisis...” Ronnie snorted bitterly, but Flint hushed her sharply and turned the volume up on the television several notches. Angus nudged Cabe’s knee with his nose, paranoid the pizza had been forgotten with the Alpha of the group’s return to the den.
“Well, Mark, I mean, I don’t think it’s quite as bad as that,” the woman was replying. “I think that a lot of people in Canada, like a lot of people all over the world, are getting to a point where they’re scared and they’re lashing out.”
“Lashing out at American citizens,” the first guy, Mark apparently, responded with the usual amount of aggression one would expect from this type of programming. “Which is what the Priority are trying to promote, a message that we, as Americans, have a duty to stand by one another when an attack like this occurs.”
“Well, I think Mr. Wright missed a valuable opportunity to really unite our country with his statements on the attack –”
“He’s made statements!?”
It was Cabe’s turn to be hushed by an angry Flint; apparently, this was the first any of them had heard about it.
Black Tie: Book One of the Sparrow Archives Page 14