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jaybee65Title: Succession
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Rating: Probably a hard R, for sexual situations and violence.
Pairings: Contains Madeline/Paul (Operations) and Charles Sand/Madeline as well as references to Adrian/George, but this doesn't fit comfortably into "shippy" categories.
Length: The whole thing is 120k-plus words. There are 31 chapters, which are distributed among four "Parts."
Warning: Michael and Nikita do not appear in this story, except as minor references at the very end.
Summary: Set during the 1980's, this story traces the events that ultimately led to the overthrow of Adrian as leader of Section One and to her replacement by Paul Wolfe (Operations).
Chapter Nineteen
Paul strode into Munitions, hands shoved into the pockets of his thick wool jacket. At first, Walter didn't seem to notice Paul's approach; he hunched over a narrow worktable, muttering to himself as he connected a mass of hair-thin wires to each other. But as Paul reached the table, Walter straightened up and grinned.
"Well, if it isn't Section's number one dispatcher of bad guys. I suppose you're here for your weapon, huh?"
"That might help, yes," Paul remarked dryly. "Killing them with my bare hands can be fun, but it's a little time-consuming."
Walter strolled over to a cabinet, withdrew a pistol and belt, and plunked them heavily onto the table.
"Here you go, then. We wouldn't want you to have too much fun out there. It's against the rules, you know."
Grunting in thanks, Paul strapped on the belt and reached to pick up the pistol. He was about to holster it when he stopped and frowned. He lifted the gun and scrutinized it, turning and aiming it in several directions.
It looked all right: a standard P220, normal grip, nothing custom. He'd used that model for years, depended on it, to the point where it functioned like an organic extension of his own body, as if it were made of nerves and flesh instead of metal and screws. This one, however, felt wrong somehow. Unnatural. Like a stranger, instead of his best friend.
"What did you do to this?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"The weight's off."
"Oh. That." An embarrassed look passed across Walter's face. "New ammo. It's a little lighter."
"That's going to throw off my aim."
Walter lifted his shoulders in a weak shrug. "You'll get used to it."
Something about Walter's attitude -- a blasé indifference that seemed more forced than genuine -- inflamed Paul's annoyance into full-fledged anger. Walter knew full well what a problem such a change could cause, if not phased in properly. If he thought he could get away with playing dumb, he was insulting Paul's intelligence.
Paul leaned forward across the table, his face so close to Walter's he could feel the other man's breath against his skin. "This isn't the time to be screwing with my gear, Walter," he growled. "We're undermanned as it is. I don't want to have to worry about getting my shots off fast enough, too." He glared until Walter looked away, red-faced. "Now, give me some of the old clips. I know you've still got some around."
Walter tightened his expression and shook his head. "No can do, amigo. Adrian's orders. Budget cuts, or something."
Adrian's orders? Amazing. Was there anything left she wasn't interfering with?
"So Adrian's choosing our ammunition now? When was the last time she even touched a gun?" Unable to suppress a sneer of disdain, he scoffed, "She probably thinks dum-dum bullets are manufactured by high-school dropouts."
Walter wrinkled his face and glanced around nervously. "You might want to lower your voice a little when you start talking like that."
Paul snorted. "I hope she's listening. She needs to know there are some things better left to experts. Why, that old--"
Walter seized Paul by the arm and pulled him forward. Leaning in toward Paul's ear, he whispered, "Look, I can't help you with the ammo. But I slipped a few extra toys into the van for you. Comprende?"
Startled, Paul nodded. He should have known. Walter was no fool, after all, despite the simpleminded appearance created by that idiotic counterculture act he insisted on putting on. The man couldn't have survived longer than anyone else in Section merely by luck. No one's luck was that good.
Anyway, some extra toys? Interesting. He'd have to remember to pay Walter back for the favor. Come to think of it, he owed the man several. Well, he'd get around to taking care of that one of these days.
Walter released his grip on Paul's arm.
Paul straightened his jacket and cleared his throat. "Yeah, okay," he said, deliberately loudly, "I still don't like it, but I'll deal with it."
Walter winked. "Atta boy."
As Paul finally holstered his pistol and turned to leave, Walter returned to his work. Paul paused, staring at the tangled mess of wires that Walter started untwisting.
"What the hell is that?"
"This?" Walter chuckled. "It's part of that project Madeline's working on. You know, remote controlled brains or some nutty thing like that."
Some nutty thing like that. Walter always had the most eloquent way of expressing his opinion.
"So does it work?"
"Damned if I know. My job is to make sure this component responds to the radio signals properly. The rest of it's not my problem."
Easy for Walter to say. Recruiting the scientist to do the work in-house hadn't been his idea. Nor would it be his failure if things went wrong. That, however, was not a thought Paul wanted to dwell upon.
"Speaking of which," Paul said, "have you seen Madeline lately?"
"Sure. We meet every so often to coordinate the work on this thing."
"How is she?"
Walter frowned, looking confused. "How do you mean?"
Paul felt his face warm in a sudden flush. He ignored it. "She's been so busy with that project lately, I never see her. She's not even doing my profiles anymore. So, I was just wondering whether...uh...how she was doing, that's all."
The confusion in Walter's expression gave way to sympathy. He smiled cheerfully. "She seems fine. Same as ever, anyway. It's hard to tell with her, you know?"
Paul nodded to conceal his disappointment. Walter couldn't tell him what he really wanted to know, even if he could somehow bring himself to ask the real questions: Had she asked about him? Did she miss working together as much as he did? Did she miss him the way he did her?
Unable to voice these thoughts, he channeled his frustration toward another target.
"Adrian has Ottmar doing the profiling for my missions," he complained. "He's useless. His profiles need to be completely rewritten, but I don't have the time to fix them all."
"Ottmar's new. He'll get better."
"I don't have time for him to get better," he snapped. "Madeline knows my strengths and my weaknesses. She knows how to write profiles that work for my teams. But instead, I've got an incompetent profiler, my team's been cut in half, and now I don't even have decent equipment. How the hell am I supposed to do my job?" He stopped, noticing that he had clenched his fists, and tried to calm himself. "Next thing you know, Adrian will start reassigning the handful of team members I have left. If that happens, I might as well just shoot myself in the head and get it over with."
"Look here," said Walter, his tone stern, like a chastising uncle, "I know you had things set up the way you like them. But life goes on, and things change. You've just got to roll with it."
Oh, lovely. Walter's homespun wisdom. Just what he was in the mood to hear.
"I'm all in favor of change, Walter," he said irritably. "My problem is with people who don't know the difference between good change and bad."
Walter laughed. "Well, when someone makes you God, you can arrange the universe any way you want. Until then, you'll just have to deal with the bullshit like us lesser mortals."
Feeling his mood lighten with Walter's jibe, Paul cracked a smirk. "Oh, when I get to be God, I'll do just that. Trust me."
***
With a slow, steady blip, the red dot blinked along the blue grid on Jules's computer screen. The dot marked the progress of a caravan of automobiles through a city halfway across the world; it wove along tangled, nighttime streets, heading steadily closer to a hidden roadblock -- and a Section ambush.
Adrian leaned in, looking over Jules's shoulder. The rhythmic blinking matched the beat of her heart; her mouth grew uncomfortably dry as she contemplated what was about to take place.
Finally. Her opening blow against Phillip. One designed to smash the chains that bound the Sections to Center, that kept her organization in financial thrall to a man who would turn it into his plaything. Independence, autonomy, freedom to fight evildoers as she saw fit, without Phillip's intolerable meddling: all now within her grasp.
Visual intel had confirmed that the third car in the caravan carried none other than Cyrus Norasty, co-founder of Red Cell. It was the perfect opportunity to intercept a key player in the fastest-growing terrorist movement of the day; hence, it was the perfect mission to sacrifice to bring her plight to the attention of the Council. The original profile had called for overwhelming Norasty's escort with superior numbers and firepower; unaltered, that profile almost certainly would have succeeded. But by eliminating aerial support and reducing the size of the team due to "budgetary constraints," Adrian had ensured that Norasty would escape -- and that she could pin the blame on Phillip and his stinginess.
Once upon a time, back when her youthful idealism blinded her to the more distasteful aspects of real life, she would have been appalled to think that she would deliberately sabotage a mission. That she would let a monster go free when she had the power to stop him. Then again, in those days she had also believed that everyone who claimed to be fighting terrorism was on the same side. Phillip's controlling behavior had shattered that foolish illusion.
Sometimes the worst enemy was not the opposition, but one's allies.
As the dot neared the target zone, she placed her hand on Jules's shoulder. He tensed at her touch, and she glanced down at him briefly. She disliked him, and he clearly knew it: he was rude, arrogant, and far too Gallic for her tastes. Nevertheless, his ego demanded that he prove himself whenever given a challenge, and she had always found that useful. So long as he was kept in check.
Alas, they all needed to be kept in check. Power-hungry colleagues, unruly subordinates -- it was all rather tiring.
So very, very tiring.
"Target on final approach," Jules murmured into his headset. "Everybody on their marks."
Blinking to clear her mind, Adrian took a seat beside Jules and donned her own headset. The radio burst into life as the team members confirmed their readiness. Then she watched, concentrating to maintain an outward calm, as the blip reached the blockade.
She winced as the high-pitched sound of squealing tires filled her ears, followed by rapid blasts of gunfire. After several minutes passed without the rate of firing slowing down, she frowned in concern.
The skirmish should have been brief. Norasty, safe in his bulletproof limousine, ought to have escaped almost immediately -- the undermanned team was simply too small to box him in. Why, then, did it sound like a full-fledged firefight had broken out?
A firefight would be a disaster. With Section's team outnumbered, a genuine gun battle would essentially guarantee the loss of all personnel. But this team was not expendable: she had carefully chosen the best available operatives, with nearly perfect records, in order to convince the Council of the sincerity of the retrieval attempt. I used my best people, she planned to tell them. But without adequate resources, even they can't succeed. That's why the Sections must have autonomy.
She listened in silence, stonyfaced, ignoring the anxious glances Jules flicked her way as team members started dying. Sergio. Yong-jun. Ingrid. Patrick. Within fifteen minutes, half the team gone.
"The target is fighting his way out," shouted Paul, barely audible over the deafening noise. "We can't hold him much longer."
"Abort," she commanded. "Save the rest of the team."
After a brief burst of static, Paul's voice sounded again. "If we detonate, we can take him out. There aren't any collaterals in the vicinity."
Adrian sat forward abruptly. "Detonate what?"
"There's C4 and a timer in the van. We'd have just enough of a window to get the team clear."
What in God's name were they doing with explosives? She hadn't authorized any such thing. In fact, she had gone to great lengths to ensure they were inadequately outfitted. Her eyes darted toward the entrance to Munitions. Walter. That longhaired fool.
"Request denied," she said. "Abort the mission. I want Norasty alive, not dead."
"You didn't provide us with enough personnel to retrieve him alive. But we can take him out, and we should. Otherwise this entire mission will have been an exercise in futility."
If she could have reached through the computer monitor and throttled Paul, she would have. His obstinacy would ruin everything. What made it worse was that, strictly speaking, he was right. By any rational analysis, they should take Norasty out while they had the chance. Paul couldn't be expected to know that higher stakes were involved.
"You heard my order," she said grimly. "Abort."
There were several moments of silence, broken only by the steady sound of gunfire. "You know what, Adrian?" he finally replied, the cold disdain in his voice withering even over the noise of the transmitter. "You're an idiot. You must have slept with someone to get your job, because you don't know the first thing about counter-terrorism."
She froze, as if she had been slapped, her mouth dropping open but no words forming. In the periphery of her gaze, she noticed Jules and several other operatives turn and gape; she did her best to ignore them, although she felt her face flush.
She breathed deeply in an effort to maintain her composure, unable to ascertain whether she was outraged or proud. His blatant show of disrespect was intolerable, unacceptable -- and yet, most aggravating of all, admirable. Unlike the other operatives -- a craven, cowardly lot, all of them -- he had the courage to speak his mind and face the consequences. This was the side of his character she had admired so much, the side that had led her to recruit him in the first place. Unfortunately, it wasn't his only side, as she had discovered the hard way: the courage was one face; the other was cruelty.
Finally, she found her voice. "You can critique my command when you return to Section. I gave you an order, and I expect you to comply."
"You heard her," he called to his remaining team members. "Abort. We lost half the team for nothing."
As the sound of gunfire tapered off, Adrian focused her attention back on that blinking red dot on the monitor. Once again, it began to move, pulling past the roadblock, and then disappearing off the edge of the screen.
Norasty had escaped. But would it be enough?
***
Madeline fingered the sheets of paper as she turned the pages of the report, reviewing the tables of data for what felt like the hundredth time. Page after page of meticulously documented figures, graphs and diagrams: she stared at them intensely, as if their contents might miraculously change if she checked just once more. But stubbornly, obstinately -- almost insultingly -- they remained the same.
What the figures told her was precisely what she didn't want to know. The mind-control program -- the one Adrian had charged her with overseeing -- was a failure. The device Section's research team had copied from Red Cell did work, to a degree: it was possible to implant it in a subject and generate emotions with a surprising level of finesse. They had even significantly improved upon the rather crude design, eliminating the erratic mood swings they had observed in the Red Cell captive. However, it was not possible to control enemy agents implanted with the device by their own organizations, which was what Adrian had wanted. The variables were just too numerous, the technology insufficiently advanced.
There was no choice, then, but to shut the project down.
Unwilling to accept that conclusion, she was about to turn back to the first page yet again when she heard a tapping sound. She glanced up to see one of the lab workers at the door; he peered through owl-like glasses into the office, not quite daring to cross the threshold, his manner reminiscent of a nervous supplicant approaching royalty.
"Madeline?"
"What is it?" She bit back on the urge to be curt, instead making an extra effort to sound courteous, even warm. Maintaining an even temper reinforced one's authority with subordinates: it was a practice she had observed Adrian employ to great effect and had decided to adopt herself.
There were a lot of things to be learned from Adrian, as much as she hated to admit it.
"Would you mind if we went home for the evening?" He added, as if in apology, "It's past eight already."
"Not at all." She smiled politely. "Good night."
His round face filled with a look of relief. "Thank you. See you tomorrow."
When he withdrew, she looked back down at the report, but then she pushed it away in exasperation. The strength of her disappointment surprised her. After all, she hadn't wanted to pursue the research in the first place -- had been certain it was utterly futile -- but now, the prospect of giving up filled her with anger and dismay.
Terminating the project would be an absurd and illogical waste. She had built up a stellar team of scientists and collected a wealth of intriguing data. While they couldn't achieve Adrian's specific objective, they had gained substantial, practical knowledge of the workings of the human brain. Knowledge that could be applied to improving the performance of Section's operatives, if only Adrian were less squeamish about using it internally.
As much as she disliked waste, however, that couldn't possibly explain the depth of her anger. There was something else, something she was almost ashamed to admit to herself. Something personal.
Within the R&D facilities, within the neglected and unglamorous support departments, she had created a real place for herself. A place free from Adrian's overbearing presence, where she had influence and power in her own right, where she was treated with respect and even deference. Where, for the first time in her life, she had real control over something and felt the confidence that came with it.
If the project terminated, all that might be lost.
She rose to her feet, a burning feeling of resentment tightening her muscles. She walked to the doorway, where she came to a halt, hands clasped; there, she stood for several moments and surveyed the lab outside. White-coated operatives moved about purposefully: cleaning their work areas, gathering their belongings, preparing to leave. Their movements were quick and orderly, a reflection of the operation of the lab itself.
When she arrived, several months before, the research facilities had been a haphazard collection of independent fiefdoms, their productivity subject to the ever-changing whims of the scientific prima donnas ensconced therein. Now, thanks to a judicious application of charm, threats, rewards and even blackmail, she had transformed them into a functional, efficient -- and obedient -- unit. She had transformed Containment and Interrogation in much the same way when she first came to Section One: streamlining practices, disciplining and weeding out personnel, imposing order and rationality. These were tasks in which Adrian had failed, and she had succeeded. Where she knew what was right, and Adrian didn't.
I'm good at this. Very good.
And wasn't it Adrian herself who said she should find what she did well and pursue it?
She clasped her hands a little more tightly. She couldn't allow herself to continue thinking along those lines. Other, weaker people succumbed to that kind of self-interested temptation. She had to push herself beyond that. She was a soldier, a cadre, a public servant who had proven her devotion to the cause by costly, painful sacrifice. Her reluctance to terminate the project had nothing to do with personal ambition, and everything to do with a desire to complete her assignment successfully if it were at all possible. If she could find a way to save the program, she would be fulfilling her duty; that was all. If she couldn't, then she would face that fact, too.
Perhaps the report had omitted something. If she could review the original test data, instead of the summaries contained in the report, perhaps she could be more creative than the cautious technicians who wrote it. However, with Ulanova having departed for the evening, such a review would have to wait until the following day.
There was one avenue she might not have to wait to pursue, she thought, straightening her shoulders and drawing in a long breath of realization. Walter. He would have notes documenting his tests of the device, and he was rarely gone before late evening. If she could catch him before he left for the night, she could borrow his original notes and study them at home.
Without bothering to switch off the light in her office, she turned and began to make her way toward the elevator.
There had to be a way. And if there were, she would find it.
************
To go on to Chapter Twenty, click here.
Previous Chapters
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Rating: Probably a hard R, for sexual situations and violence.
Pairings: Contains Madeline/Paul (Operations) and Charles Sand/Madeline as well as references to Adrian/George, but this doesn't fit comfortably into "shippy" categories.
Length: The whole thing is 120k-plus words. There are 31 chapters, which are distributed among four "Parts."
Warning: Michael and Nikita do not appear in this story, except as minor references at the very end.
Summary: Set during the 1980's, this story traces the events that ultimately led to the overthrow of Adrian as leader of Section One and to her replacement by Paul Wolfe (Operations).
Paul strode into Munitions, hands shoved into the pockets of his thick wool jacket. At first, Walter didn't seem to notice Paul's approach; he hunched over a narrow worktable, muttering to himself as he connected a mass of hair-thin wires to each other. But as Paul reached the table, Walter straightened up and grinned.
"Well, if it isn't Section's number one dispatcher of bad guys. I suppose you're here for your weapon, huh?"
"That might help, yes," Paul remarked dryly. "Killing them with my bare hands can be fun, but it's a little time-consuming."
Walter strolled over to a cabinet, withdrew a pistol and belt, and plunked them heavily onto the table.
"Here you go, then. We wouldn't want you to have too much fun out there. It's against the rules, you know."
Grunting in thanks, Paul strapped on the belt and reached to pick up the pistol. He was about to holster it when he stopped and frowned. He lifted the gun and scrutinized it, turning and aiming it in several directions.
It looked all right: a standard P220, normal grip, nothing custom. He'd used that model for years, depended on it, to the point where it functioned like an organic extension of his own body, as if it were made of nerves and flesh instead of metal and screws. This one, however, felt wrong somehow. Unnatural. Like a stranger, instead of his best friend.
"What did you do to this?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"The weight's off."
"Oh. That." An embarrassed look passed across Walter's face. "New ammo. It's a little lighter."
"That's going to throw off my aim."
Walter lifted his shoulders in a weak shrug. "You'll get used to it."
Something about Walter's attitude -- a blasé indifference that seemed more forced than genuine -- inflamed Paul's annoyance into full-fledged anger. Walter knew full well what a problem such a change could cause, if not phased in properly. If he thought he could get away with playing dumb, he was insulting Paul's intelligence.
Paul leaned forward across the table, his face so close to Walter's he could feel the other man's breath against his skin. "This isn't the time to be screwing with my gear, Walter," he growled. "We're undermanned as it is. I don't want to have to worry about getting my shots off fast enough, too." He glared until Walter looked away, red-faced. "Now, give me some of the old clips. I know you've still got some around."
Walter tightened his expression and shook his head. "No can do, amigo. Adrian's orders. Budget cuts, or something."
Adrian's orders? Amazing. Was there anything left she wasn't interfering with?
"So Adrian's choosing our ammunition now? When was the last time she even touched a gun?" Unable to suppress a sneer of disdain, he scoffed, "She probably thinks dum-dum bullets are manufactured by high-school dropouts."
Walter wrinkled his face and glanced around nervously. "You might want to lower your voice a little when you start talking like that."
Paul snorted. "I hope she's listening. She needs to know there are some things better left to experts. Why, that old--"
Walter seized Paul by the arm and pulled him forward. Leaning in toward Paul's ear, he whispered, "Look, I can't help you with the ammo. But I slipped a few extra toys into the van for you. Comprende?"
Startled, Paul nodded. He should have known. Walter was no fool, after all, despite the simpleminded appearance created by that idiotic counterculture act he insisted on putting on. The man couldn't have survived longer than anyone else in Section merely by luck. No one's luck was that good.
Anyway, some extra toys? Interesting. He'd have to remember to pay Walter back for the favor. Come to think of it, he owed the man several. Well, he'd get around to taking care of that one of these days.
Walter released his grip on Paul's arm.
Paul straightened his jacket and cleared his throat. "Yeah, okay," he said, deliberately loudly, "I still don't like it, but I'll deal with it."
Walter winked. "Atta boy."
As Paul finally holstered his pistol and turned to leave, Walter returned to his work. Paul paused, staring at the tangled mess of wires that Walter started untwisting.
"What the hell is that?"
"This?" Walter chuckled. "It's part of that project Madeline's working on. You know, remote controlled brains or some nutty thing like that."
Some nutty thing like that. Walter always had the most eloquent way of expressing his opinion.
"So does it work?"
"Damned if I know. My job is to make sure this component responds to the radio signals properly. The rest of it's not my problem."
Easy for Walter to say. Recruiting the scientist to do the work in-house hadn't been his idea. Nor would it be his failure if things went wrong. That, however, was not a thought Paul wanted to dwell upon.
"Speaking of which," Paul said, "have you seen Madeline lately?"
"Sure. We meet every so often to coordinate the work on this thing."
"How is she?"
Walter frowned, looking confused. "How do you mean?"
Paul felt his face warm in a sudden flush. He ignored it. "She's been so busy with that project lately, I never see her. She's not even doing my profiles anymore. So, I was just wondering whether...uh...how she was doing, that's all."
The confusion in Walter's expression gave way to sympathy. He smiled cheerfully. "She seems fine. Same as ever, anyway. It's hard to tell with her, you know?"
Paul nodded to conceal his disappointment. Walter couldn't tell him what he really wanted to know, even if he could somehow bring himself to ask the real questions: Had she asked about him? Did she miss working together as much as he did? Did she miss him the way he did her?
Unable to voice these thoughts, he channeled his frustration toward another target.
"Adrian has Ottmar doing the profiling for my missions," he complained. "He's useless. His profiles need to be completely rewritten, but I don't have the time to fix them all."
"Ottmar's new. He'll get better."
"I don't have time for him to get better," he snapped. "Madeline knows my strengths and my weaknesses. She knows how to write profiles that work for my teams. But instead, I've got an incompetent profiler, my team's been cut in half, and now I don't even have decent equipment. How the hell am I supposed to do my job?" He stopped, noticing that he had clenched his fists, and tried to calm himself. "Next thing you know, Adrian will start reassigning the handful of team members I have left. If that happens, I might as well just shoot myself in the head and get it over with."
"Look here," said Walter, his tone stern, like a chastising uncle, "I know you had things set up the way you like them. But life goes on, and things change. You've just got to roll with it."
Oh, lovely. Walter's homespun wisdom. Just what he was in the mood to hear.
"I'm all in favor of change, Walter," he said irritably. "My problem is with people who don't know the difference between good change and bad."
Walter laughed. "Well, when someone makes you God, you can arrange the universe any way you want. Until then, you'll just have to deal with the bullshit like us lesser mortals."
Feeling his mood lighten with Walter's jibe, Paul cracked a smirk. "Oh, when I get to be God, I'll do just that. Trust me."
***
With a slow, steady blip, the red dot blinked along the blue grid on Jules's computer screen. The dot marked the progress of a caravan of automobiles through a city halfway across the world; it wove along tangled, nighttime streets, heading steadily closer to a hidden roadblock -- and a Section ambush.
Adrian leaned in, looking over Jules's shoulder. The rhythmic blinking matched the beat of her heart; her mouth grew uncomfortably dry as she contemplated what was about to take place.
Finally. Her opening blow against Phillip. One designed to smash the chains that bound the Sections to Center, that kept her organization in financial thrall to a man who would turn it into his plaything. Independence, autonomy, freedom to fight evildoers as she saw fit, without Phillip's intolerable meddling: all now within her grasp.
Visual intel had confirmed that the third car in the caravan carried none other than Cyrus Norasty, co-founder of Red Cell. It was the perfect opportunity to intercept a key player in the fastest-growing terrorist movement of the day; hence, it was the perfect mission to sacrifice to bring her plight to the attention of the Council. The original profile had called for overwhelming Norasty's escort with superior numbers and firepower; unaltered, that profile almost certainly would have succeeded. But by eliminating aerial support and reducing the size of the team due to "budgetary constraints," Adrian had ensured that Norasty would escape -- and that she could pin the blame on Phillip and his stinginess.
Once upon a time, back when her youthful idealism blinded her to the more distasteful aspects of real life, she would have been appalled to think that she would deliberately sabotage a mission. That she would let a monster go free when she had the power to stop him. Then again, in those days she had also believed that everyone who claimed to be fighting terrorism was on the same side. Phillip's controlling behavior had shattered that foolish illusion.
Sometimes the worst enemy was not the opposition, but one's allies.
As the dot neared the target zone, she placed her hand on Jules's shoulder. He tensed at her touch, and she glanced down at him briefly. She disliked him, and he clearly knew it: he was rude, arrogant, and far too Gallic for her tastes. Nevertheless, his ego demanded that he prove himself whenever given a challenge, and she had always found that useful. So long as he was kept in check.
Alas, they all needed to be kept in check. Power-hungry colleagues, unruly subordinates -- it was all rather tiring.
So very, very tiring.
"Target on final approach," Jules murmured into his headset. "Everybody on their marks."
Blinking to clear her mind, Adrian took a seat beside Jules and donned her own headset. The radio burst into life as the team members confirmed their readiness. Then she watched, concentrating to maintain an outward calm, as the blip reached the blockade.
She winced as the high-pitched sound of squealing tires filled her ears, followed by rapid blasts of gunfire. After several minutes passed without the rate of firing slowing down, she frowned in concern.
The skirmish should have been brief. Norasty, safe in his bulletproof limousine, ought to have escaped almost immediately -- the undermanned team was simply too small to box him in. Why, then, did it sound like a full-fledged firefight had broken out?
A firefight would be a disaster. With Section's team outnumbered, a genuine gun battle would essentially guarantee the loss of all personnel. But this team was not expendable: she had carefully chosen the best available operatives, with nearly perfect records, in order to convince the Council of the sincerity of the retrieval attempt. I used my best people, she planned to tell them. But without adequate resources, even they can't succeed. That's why the Sections must have autonomy.
She listened in silence, stonyfaced, ignoring the anxious glances Jules flicked her way as team members started dying. Sergio. Yong-jun. Ingrid. Patrick. Within fifteen minutes, half the team gone.
"The target is fighting his way out," shouted Paul, barely audible over the deafening noise. "We can't hold him much longer."
"Abort," she commanded. "Save the rest of the team."
After a brief burst of static, Paul's voice sounded again. "If we detonate, we can take him out. There aren't any collaterals in the vicinity."
Adrian sat forward abruptly. "Detonate what?"
"There's C4 and a timer in the van. We'd have just enough of a window to get the team clear."
What in God's name were they doing with explosives? She hadn't authorized any such thing. In fact, she had gone to great lengths to ensure they were inadequately outfitted. Her eyes darted toward the entrance to Munitions. Walter. That longhaired fool.
"Request denied," she said. "Abort the mission. I want Norasty alive, not dead."
"You didn't provide us with enough personnel to retrieve him alive. But we can take him out, and we should. Otherwise this entire mission will have been an exercise in futility."
If she could have reached through the computer monitor and throttled Paul, she would have. His obstinacy would ruin everything. What made it worse was that, strictly speaking, he was right. By any rational analysis, they should take Norasty out while they had the chance. Paul couldn't be expected to know that higher stakes were involved.
"You heard my order," she said grimly. "Abort."
There were several moments of silence, broken only by the steady sound of gunfire. "You know what, Adrian?" he finally replied, the cold disdain in his voice withering even over the noise of the transmitter. "You're an idiot. You must have slept with someone to get your job, because you don't know the first thing about counter-terrorism."
She froze, as if she had been slapped, her mouth dropping open but no words forming. In the periphery of her gaze, she noticed Jules and several other operatives turn and gape; she did her best to ignore them, although she felt her face flush.
She breathed deeply in an effort to maintain her composure, unable to ascertain whether she was outraged or proud. His blatant show of disrespect was intolerable, unacceptable -- and yet, most aggravating of all, admirable. Unlike the other operatives -- a craven, cowardly lot, all of them -- he had the courage to speak his mind and face the consequences. This was the side of his character she had admired so much, the side that had led her to recruit him in the first place. Unfortunately, it wasn't his only side, as she had discovered the hard way: the courage was one face; the other was cruelty.
Finally, she found her voice. "You can critique my command when you return to Section. I gave you an order, and I expect you to comply."
"You heard her," he called to his remaining team members. "Abort. We lost half the team for nothing."
As the sound of gunfire tapered off, Adrian focused her attention back on that blinking red dot on the monitor. Once again, it began to move, pulling past the roadblock, and then disappearing off the edge of the screen.
Norasty had escaped. But would it be enough?
***
Madeline fingered the sheets of paper as she turned the pages of the report, reviewing the tables of data for what felt like the hundredth time. Page after page of meticulously documented figures, graphs and diagrams: she stared at them intensely, as if their contents might miraculously change if she checked just once more. But stubbornly, obstinately -- almost insultingly -- they remained the same.
What the figures told her was precisely what she didn't want to know. The mind-control program -- the one Adrian had charged her with overseeing -- was a failure. The device Section's research team had copied from Red Cell did work, to a degree: it was possible to implant it in a subject and generate emotions with a surprising level of finesse. They had even significantly improved upon the rather crude design, eliminating the erratic mood swings they had observed in the Red Cell captive. However, it was not possible to control enemy agents implanted with the device by their own organizations, which was what Adrian had wanted. The variables were just too numerous, the technology insufficiently advanced.
There was no choice, then, but to shut the project down.
Unwilling to accept that conclusion, she was about to turn back to the first page yet again when she heard a tapping sound. She glanced up to see one of the lab workers at the door; he peered through owl-like glasses into the office, not quite daring to cross the threshold, his manner reminiscent of a nervous supplicant approaching royalty.
"Madeline?"
"What is it?" She bit back on the urge to be curt, instead making an extra effort to sound courteous, even warm. Maintaining an even temper reinforced one's authority with subordinates: it was a practice she had observed Adrian employ to great effect and had decided to adopt herself.
There were a lot of things to be learned from Adrian, as much as she hated to admit it.
"Would you mind if we went home for the evening?" He added, as if in apology, "It's past eight already."
"Not at all." She smiled politely. "Good night."
His round face filled with a look of relief. "Thank you. See you tomorrow."
When he withdrew, she looked back down at the report, but then she pushed it away in exasperation. The strength of her disappointment surprised her. After all, she hadn't wanted to pursue the research in the first place -- had been certain it was utterly futile -- but now, the prospect of giving up filled her with anger and dismay.
Terminating the project would be an absurd and illogical waste. She had built up a stellar team of scientists and collected a wealth of intriguing data. While they couldn't achieve Adrian's specific objective, they had gained substantial, practical knowledge of the workings of the human brain. Knowledge that could be applied to improving the performance of Section's operatives, if only Adrian were less squeamish about using it internally.
As much as she disliked waste, however, that couldn't possibly explain the depth of her anger. There was something else, something she was almost ashamed to admit to herself. Something personal.
Within the R&D facilities, within the neglected and unglamorous support departments, she had created a real place for herself. A place free from Adrian's overbearing presence, where she had influence and power in her own right, where she was treated with respect and even deference. Where, for the first time in her life, she had real control over something and felt the confidence that came with it.
If the project terminated, all that might be lost.
She rose to her feet, a burning feeling of resentment tightening her muscles. She walked to the doorway, where she came to a halt, hands clasped; there, she stood for several moments and surveyed the lab outside. White-coated operatives moved about purposefully: cleaning their work areas, gathering their belongings, preparing to leave. Their movements were quick and orderly, a reflection of the operation of the lab itself.
When she arrived, several months before, the research facilities had been a haphazard collection of independent fiefdoms, their productivity subject to the ever-changing whims of the scientific prima donnas ensconced therein. Now, thanks to a judicious application of charm, threats, rewards and even blackmail, she had transformed them into a functional, efficient -- and obedient -- unit. She had transformed Containment and Interrogation in much the same way when she first came to Section One: streamlining practices, disciplining and weeding out personnel, imposing order and rationality. These were tasks in which Adrian had failed, and she had succeeded. Where she knew what was right, and Adrian didn't.
I'm good at this. Very good.
And wasn't it Adrian herself who said she should find what she did well and pursue it?
She clasped her hands a little more tightly. She couldn't allow herself to continue thinking along those lines. Other, weaker people succumbed to that kind of self-interested temptation. She had to push herself beyond that. She was a soldier, a cadre, a public servant who had proven her devotion to the cause by costly, painful sacrifice. Her reluctance to terminate the project had nothing to do with personal ambition, and everything to do with a desire to complete her assignment successfully if it were at all possible. If she could find a way to save the program, she would be fulfilling her duty; that was all. If she couldn't, then she would face that fact, too.
Perhaps the report had omitted something. If she could review the original test data, instead of the summaries contained in the report, perhaps she could be more creative than the cautious technicians who wrote it. However, with Ulanova having departed for the evening, such a review would have to wait until the following day.
There was one avenue she might not have to wait to pursue, she thought, straightening her shoulders and drawing in a long breath of realization. Walter. He would have notes documenting his tests of the device, and he was rarely gone before late evening. If she could catch him before he left for the night, she could borrow his original notes and study them at home.
Without bothering to switch off the light in her office, she turned and began to make her way toward the elevator.
There had to be a way. And if there were, she would find it.
************
To go on to Chapter Twenty, click here.