Christmas Round Robin - Chapter Three

[lee-the-t.livejournal.com]

~*~*~
“Dear, I’d like you to meet Mr.—”
“Shiv,” the man said.
Marjorie didn’t offer to shake hands; she wasn’t confident she’d get hers back. The man wasn’t large – medium height, but solid and trim and hard all over, with a face like a chip of granite and stony, dead eyes that measured the world through one filter: prey.
A cold chill snaked up her spine. We’re in over our heads. She shook it off and forced a smile. “How do you do, Mr.—”
“Just Shiv.”
A long scar traced his left jawbone and another zigzagged under his right eye. What could have cut into this man, she couldn’t guess.
Randall forced a jauntiness that she knew he wasn’t feeling. “Well, old man, our sources say you’re just the fellow for this task. Say … by the way … how did …?” He traced his own jawline, and she saw his hand tremble.
Shiv smiled and Marjorie nearly fainted.
“Some punk took his best shot,” Shiv said. “Then I took mine.”
White-faced, Randall rubbed his hands together. “Well. Excellent. Let me tell you what we need from you…and you can tell us, perhaps, the best way to achieve that.”
~*~*~
Alexander Waverly, eyes distant, puffed thoughtfully on his pipe as his two agents patiently waited. He’d already indicated his indifference to their meeting with the Claibornes – what could he want now?
Waverly removed the pipe. “Gentlemen, on reconsideration, I think it’s a good idea you meet the Claibornes. A very good idea.”
Napoleon felt his eyes pop. He glanced at Illya, who said, incredulous, “Sir?”
Waverly tapped a slim file on his desktop, spun it so that file stopped in front of his agents.
“It appears there is more to the Claibornes – and their business – than meets the eye.”
Napoleon scowled. “Oh … not THRUSH?” He couldn’t believe it. He picked up the folder, opening it so he and Illya could both scan it.
“No, no, not THRUSH. But it appears that their trade is not entirely, shall we say, above board.”
“They own a restaurant,” Napoleon blurted, but he was already calculating in his own mind. “What on earth could they be doing wrong?”
“Slave labor?” Illya suggested.
“On the nose, Mr Kuryakin,” Waverly stated. “They are engaged in human trafficking. Not simply for their restaurant – that would be, as they say, small potatoes, hardly rising to the level of UNCLE intervention. But I’ve learned that they are in fact a hub, a distributor of forced labor for multiple businesses in and around the Eastern Seaboard. To make matters worse, their primary … source is upsetting our relations with the already unstable government of a South American nation that is struggling toward democracy.”
“So you’d like us to find out how they’re doing what they’re doing, and stop it,” Napoleon cut to the chase.
“Precisely.” Waverly turned back to his control panel as if he’d said all he needed to. After a second, Napoleon realized that he had. He collected his partner with a glance and they departed.
As they walked side by side to the UNCLE motor pool office, Napoleon saw his partner shaking his head.
“Something bothering you?”
“Hard to believe such a nice girl could have such nefarious parents,” Illya observed.
“Let’s go get some coal to put in their stockings,” Napoleon cracked, and his partner almost smiled.
~*~*~
They drove their UNCLE sedan out of the underground parking lot and straight into holiday-weight traffic.
Napoleon sighed. “Why did we agree to this again?”
“Because we were ordered to.” Illya’s tone was flat, no-argument-permitted.
“Oh. Right.”
“The upside is we don’t have to pretend to be nice to them,” Illya added.
“When have you ever bothered to pretend to be nice to anyone?” Napoleon cracked, grinning at the pout on his partner’s face that admitted he’d scored a minor goal. “But I do see your point. I doubt, however, they’re in the sort of mood that would make them let us peruse their books or their kitchen.”
~*~*~
Napoleon cursed mentally and eased the hold of his gloved hands on the wheel. They’d managed to get a few blocks in only, by his estimation, 17 years, but they still had a way to go and the traffic seemed to be getting worse. For the third or fourth time he found himself instinctively reaching to turn on the heat, then stopping himself. It was easier to keep his coat done up than listen to Illya’s snide remarks about soft Americans who couldn’t stand up to a mild winter chill.
His own coat over the seat back, Illya sat comfortably beside him in his suit coat only, eyes on the traffic.
“The restaurant is right up here …” he said, sitting forward – and the light changed.
Damn.
They were at a busy intersection, chock full of both cars and pedestrians, and nothing was moving.
“Can you see?” Napoleon craned his own neck.
Illya was doing the same. “I think … a fender bender, as you call them, in the intersection.” He sat back. “Might as well relax.”
“Easy for you to say. It’s cold in here.” Napoleon offered up a dramatic shiver and hunkered down into his coat. Illya rolled his eyes.
Before long the honking and shouting, typical of bottlenecked city traffic, began.
Amongst the racket, the agents only heard the sound of the helicopter until it was directly overhead.
“What the hell?” Both men stretched to try to see what was going on.
Something – at first they thought it was the chopper – crashed into the roof of their car. Then four metal claws came down and smashed into the sides, pinning the doors to the tune of groaning metal and shattering glass.
Both men instantly tried to scramble free of the car but the metal arms, by chance or design, blocked both front and back seat egress. Napoleon braced himself in the rocking car and set both heels to the shattered windshield, kicking with all his strength.
“We’re going up!” Illya shouted over the noise of chopper and the grinding crunch of metal-on-metal.
The windshield buckled and flopped onto the hood, but by then the car was swaying about 10 feet in the air and rising swiftly. Napoleon crawled partway out onto the hood, in time to see the traffic below still in a quagmire and dozens of heads craned out their car windows, looking up.
He too looked up, took in a large Chinook-type chopper hovering in grey, cloud-covered skies, then pulled himself back in as the car swayed in the icy wind.
The partners looked at one another. Illya shrugged.
“I guess we’re in for a ride,” Napoleon called out. He pulled out his communicator and tried to contact HQ, but got only static. Illya did the same and got the same result.
“Some kind of jamming?” Illya suggested. “From the helicopter?”
“Maybe.” They both continued trying for a few minutes before setting their communicators to tracer function and putting them away. It was the most they could do.
Keeping their their eyes peeled to the landscape in order to get some sense of direction, they managed to get a sense that they were headed north before the cold and wind forced them to huddle inside the car, close together, their coats pulled tight around them (Illya had finally been forced to don his). The sun was sinking into the cloudy West, and it was bound to get even colder very soon.
Napoleon found himself lost in thought. Who could it be? Did it have anything to do with the Claibornes? They had so many enemies it was impossible to guess, except that this enemy obviously had the wherewithal to hire or buy a military style chopper – and the chutzpah to use it to hijack them off a busy city street. Napoleon smiled – you had to give whoever it was credit for style.
“I don’t see anything to smile about,” Illya called out sourly over the sound of wind and chopper.
Napoleon shrugged – Illya probably couldn’t see it, they were snuggled so close together, but he’d feel it. “Call me an optimist. Where there’s life there’s hope.”
Illya snorted. A few minutes later he stiffened – Napoleon felt it a moment before he, too, felt the cause.
“We’re going down,” Illya confirmed. Both men instinctively edged to the windows to try to see what was happening but it was already to dark to make out more than indistinct landscapes below. The ride grew rougher as the chopper descended, still at speed, and both men grabbed hold of whatever they could as they plummeted toward … whatever was coming next.

Comments

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

Wow, fabulous chapter! Lots of fodder for the following writers!

[lee-the-t.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I wanted to leave a very open cliff-hanger for the next person.

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

Are you kidding me? I am reminded of the sort of outlandish and highly satisfying scenario that David McDaniel might have written for the Ace book series.
Stellar chapter.

[lee-the-t.livejournal.com]

The chopper thing just came to me - totally wacky, but in keeping with the more wacky of the actual episodes. So I ran (or flew) with it.

[ssclassof56.livejournal.com]

A sinister villain and a very cinematic capture!

[lee-the-t.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Heck, I might recycle Shiv someday. I like him. The chopper thing just came to me. I almost discarded it as too wacky, then went "What the hey? Let's do it."

[laurose8.livejournal.com]

Both the action and the dialogue are most engrossing.

[lee-the-t.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I think I really like my new villain. :-)

[alynwa.livejournal.com]

I'm loving this! It reminds me of something out of a James Bond movie or Our Man Flint. I loved the character of Shiv as he had my favorite lines. “Some punk took his best shot,” Shiv said. “Then I took mine.”

Great job!

[lee-the-t.livejournal.com]

I totally visualized Shiv for some reason. I also figured the Claibornes too delicate to do their own dirty work -- although the next writer might have a completely different vision. The chopper was too over-the-top to not do. :-)

[selyndaep.livejournal.com]

Wow...just wow! So wacky and over-the-top while at the same time so evil and deadly! I really like an evil villain with imagination; so satisfying when (hopefully) he is defeated!

[lee-the-t.livejournal.com]

I might even use Shiv in another story, if I ever manage to write one. I like him - I can see him in my mind's eye.

[selyndaep.livejournal.com]

He is a rather...memorable villain! I would definitely like seeing him in action in another story.