Daria's People

As Daria walked down the stairs, she could hear her mother and Quinn talking at the breakfast table. Apprehensive, she strained to make out their words, but they were only talking about school. Quinn had recognized her last night. That still sent a chill down her back. One little slip, wearing the fake pearls containing her radio microphone--the ones that Quinn had seen earlier--with her supposedly anonymous fatigues. It was the sort of mistake that got agents killed. Not that this one would, but if Quinn broke her cover they could both wind up making an extended stay in a Federal penitentiary. Well, at least they'd have each other for company, and it would be less nerve-wracking than her life had been lately.

If Quinn were only older, this would be simpler. Angela wanted to recruit her anyway. But she was only sixteen, and agency policy prohibited recruiting minors. It was only policy, not law, and could be ignored if necessary. That was Angela's call to make. Meanwhile, Daria worried if Quinn understood the need for secrecy. She'd seemed to understand last night, but they hadn't really talked. They couldn't really talk; anything Daria said would only divulge more information, make the situation worse.

She rounded the corner into the kitchen, trying to look like it was just another morning before school. Her mother broke off and looked up. "Good morning sweetie, would you like some waffles?" She gestured at the plate in the center of the table, piled high. It looked like Dad had been cooking again; he always made enough to feed a small army, probably some kind of flashback to military school. Daria suddenly wondered if her new life gave her more in common with her father. She'd have to find some way to ask him if his school had had any classes in Military Intelligence.

She realized her mother was still looking at her, waiting for an answer. What was the question? Oh, breakfast. "Sure, looks good. Dad cooking for the Army again?"

"Yeah," said her sister. "And after he ate one, he realized he was late for a meeting, and ran off. It's a good thing I'm starved." She forked another two onto her plate, which was already smeared with syrup from a previous occupant. Daria wondered, not for the first time, how Quinn kept so slim. Of course, she usually didn't eat so much. Daria slid a lone waffle onto her own plate, and poured syrup over it.

"Sweetie, are you sure you want another two?" her mother asked Quinn. "How can you eat after your ordeal last night?" Helen looked suddenly hesitant. Wondering, no doubt, if reminding her daughter of being taken hostage by a terrorist had been the best thing to do in the middle of a meal.

Quinn, however, seemed unaffected. "Ordeal? Mo-om, nothing happened. This guy tied me to a golf cart and drove around the course, then some soldiers rescued me, and a cute guy in a wheelchair gave me a lift home."

"But Quinn, the terrorist threatened you with a gun, and then he was killed right in front of you." Helen, apparently abandoned by her own appetite, looked down at her own plate and pushed it away. "How can you eat?"

"God, Mom, don't be so dramatic. He didn't DO anything; he just waved a gun around. And he was a bad guy. Why should I care if the good guys killed him? Serves him right. It was gross, but that was yesterday. It doesn't bother me now."

Daria thought Quinn's protest sounded slightly forced. Her mother apparently thought the same. "Sweetie, will you at least talk to the school psychologist about it today?"

"Ugh, Mom, no way. Mrs. Manson's a real freak. I'll be fine."

Helen gave up. "Okay, but I'm going to drive you to school, and your father's going to pick you up at the end of the day. I want to know you're safe."

"Hey, whatever makes you happy." Quinn's uncharacteristic acceptance of the prospect of being seen in public with her parents convinced Daria that she was still upset by what had happened.

Helen looked at the remains of the waffle on her plate, and apparently had had enough. She stood. "I'm going to warm up the car. Finish your waffles and hurry out, we need to leave soon if I'm going to make my first meeting." Quinn grunted a vague assent, her mouth full of waffle, as their mother left the room.

After the door closed, Daria set her fork down. "Quinn, you're still bothered by last night, aren't you?" Quinn looked up with denial in her eyes. "Look, you might fool Mom, although I don't think you did, but you can't fool me, so don't even try."

Quinn chewed her waffle, and swallowed, spearing another chunk with her fork. But as she raised it to her mouth, she apparently changed her mind, and began to talk, waving the laden fork around for emphasis. "Of course I'm still freaked out. One of your friends killed someone right next to me. I spent hours washing the blood out of my hair. Maybe you're used to death, but I'm not."

"He's not dead," Daria said. "It was only a superficial wound."

"Oh. The paper this morning said he was killed." Quinn seemed relieved.

"Don't believe everything you read. But don't tell anyone he's alive. Officially, he was killed in a shootout." Daria was nervous. She shouldn't be telling Quinn this. But she'd be damned if she'd let her sister think she went around killing anyone who got in her way, even if she had wanted to kill the bastard for threatening Quinn.

"Daria," Quinn began, hesitantly, "what was last night all about? What are you involved in?"

"I can't tell you. But we are the 'good guys.'" She hesitated. "Um, it's really important that you don't tell anyone about me, or about anything except what was in the paper. Someday I'll probably be able to explain, but not anytime soon."

"Yeah, I understand." Quinn looked at Daria, a shy, vulnerable expression on her face. "I really am glad it was you last night." She stopped, embarrassed. Daria felt the same, and couldn't think how to respond.

She settled for changing the subject, pulling the tracking bug Quinn had returned last night out of her jacket pocket and handing it to her. "Here, keep this. It'll let us follow you if something were to happen again. Although it shouldn't be necessary; he didn't have any accomplices around here, and he only grabbed you because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Quinn looked at the bug, then stood up and slid it into the pocket of her jeans. "Thanks. I better go, before Mom freaks. Um, she thinks I was at the club for dinner, don't tell her about the award, okay? See you tonight?"

"Your secret's still safe with me. I don't know about tonight. There's a chance I'll be spending the night at Jane's."

"Oh. Well, be careful," Quinn said, entirely too perceptive for Daria's comfort. Quinn grabbed her pack off the floor, and ran for the driveway. "Bye, Daria!"

Daria waited until she heard the car pull out, then reached into her pocket and pulled out the cell phone, dialing a number rapidly. "Hello, ops? It's Cynic. I want a twenty-four by seven audio monitor on tracker thirty-two seventeen." She paused, while someone objected. "I know you're busy. It's important." She waited some more. "Because I said to, dammit! Have you forgotten you work for me?" Another pause. "Yes, that Cynic, how many do you know? Right, out." She hung up the phone. God, now she knew why Angela called them puppies.

She turned her attention back to the waffle. Just time to finish it, then she could walk to Jane's and they could pretend it was an ordinary school morning, even if it wasn't. That was the essence of a good cover: to live it, no matter what was happening. She felt vaguely guilty for having Quinn's conversations monitored, but if Quinn was going to slip up, they needed to know.

As Daria walked up to Jane's house, Jane dashed out. Daria thought about rebuking her for her uncharacteristic energy, but Jane hadn't had any training in maintaining a cover yet, so she settled for a mild comment instead. "Whoa there, it's just another school day, slow up."

Jane halted, and looked around self-consciously. Daria groaned inwardly. They really needed to send her to the training camp, and soon. Jane realized what she was doing, and stopped, with an embarrassed look. Then she walked up to Daria. "Damn, I'm never going to get the hang of this. So, how's the princess this morning? Still freaked out?"

Daria turned and headed for school, Jane keeping pace beside her. "Not as much as I expected. There's one problem though." Jane raised an eyebrow in inquiry. "Quinn recognized the pearls I was wearing at the ambush." Jane stopped dead. Daria, perforce, stopped too.

"Did she tell anyone?" Jane asked.

"No. So far she's kept it to herself. Angela's going to kill me for making such a stupid mistake." Daria resumed walking. Jane followed.

"Why? You couldn't know Quinn would recognize a string of pearls in the dark. You'd think she'd have had other things on her mind, like the terrorist who'd been threatening to kill her."

"Yes, but I should have known. It is Quinn after all. If anyone's going to notice the way a hostage rescue team accessorizes it would be her."

"True," Jane assented. "Hey, Daria?" she asked, hesitantly.

"Yeah?"

"What do you think of Fingers?"

Daria looked over at Jane, whose eyes were focused on the sidewalk in front of her, apparently unwilling to look at Daria. She wondered where this was coming from. Jane had seemed interested in him last night, but it wasn't like her to ask Daria about a guy.

"Fingers? He's a good comm. tech."

"No, not that, I mean as a person," Jane said, still intent on the pavement.

"I don't really know him any better than you do, why?"

"Well, it's just... Last night, we were getting along really well before Quinn was kidnapped. And then, that whole shooting thing. It's got me all confused. I realized I don't know him at all. To be able to shoot someone down in cold blood like that, and he said it was his specialty. It just bothers me. Is he some kind of assassin?" Jane finally met Daria's eyes as she finished. Daria was reminded of a kitten she'd once rescued from some boys who'd been tormenting it. It had had the same look of fearful uncertainty. She'd never seen Jane afraid before.

Daria considered her words carefully, thinking back to her orientation course. "No. We don't do assassinations. He's a sniper."

"What's the difference?"

"An assassin kills people because someone tells him to. A military sniper, like he was, kills enemy soldiers in wartime, the same as any other soldier. A civilian sniper only kills in defense of someone else, like in a hostage rescue. Neither is the same as assassination. Another part of a sniper's job is infiltration, observation and reporting. That part's very similar to what we usually do. It's not so surprising as you'd think for him to have come from that specialty. We get a lot of field agents that way."

"Oh," said Jane.

Daria decided that sugarcoating it wasn't fair to Jane. "I'm not saying it's nothing. Killing from a distance, calmly and in cold blood, isn't the same as killing in the heat of a battle, and military snipers are a form of legitimate terrorism; their job is to cause chaos on the battlefield by removing officers, and to demoralize soldiers by making them aware that being surrounded by thousands of their fellows is no protection. But that doesn't make him evil. I think you need to judge him on his own merits, not on the job he was trained to do ten years ago. If he was some kind of psychotic, Angela wouldn't have him on her team."

"But, why didn't he mention it when he told me about his military experience? That's almost like lying about it."

"Well, he shouldn't even have told you about the military. We're supposed to keep our real identities secret, even from fellow team members. You, Brittany, and I are a special case, because we know each other in real life. Unfortunately, because of the way I recruited you, he knows who you are too. I guess it's all right for him to tell you about himself, given that, but it's really risky if other agents know you. They might be captured and interrogated, and your cover could be blown without you even knowing it."

"All these secrets. I can accept the need for secrecy in the abstract, but it's harder when it comes between me and someone I like. But, I guess you know that even better than I do," Jane said.

"Yeah, between Tom and Quinn, I'm becoming an expert on lying to the people who matter to me. But that's part of the job, and I need to accept that if I want to keep on doing it, and I think I do. If you and Fingers are going to be more than simply fellow team members, you're going to have to accept that both of you will have to keep secrets from the other sometimes."

Jane didn't respond, and they walked on in a companionable silence for a couple of blocks. Finally, Jane spoke: "Yeah, you're right. When you come down to it, I was quick enough to stick a gun in the terrorist's face last night, myself. And I would have shot him if it had been necessary to save your sister. That's not really any different from shooting someone from across a field."

"No, you wouldn't", Daria said, with a grin, glad of the change of subject, "you forgot to cock your gun."

"I did?"

"Yep."

"I'm never going to get the hang of this, am I?"

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Daria replied. "I'm not sure I'm ever going to get the hang of the more active parts of this job, and I'm not sure I want to. I'm much better at the planning end. Working back in the ops center was more my style. You'll be fine when you're in an information-gathering role. We just need to get through this emergency first."

"Yeah. All we need to do is save the Capitol, prevent World War III, and keep our fellow students from noticing we missed class. Piece of cake."

Daria chuckled, and the two walked on, thinking about the day ahead.

Angela stood at the head of the table in the briefing room. She faced the team, except for Fingers who had returned to DC last night to prepare for today's mission. She passed out stapled pages containing Xeroxed copies of building floor plans, background information, and aerial photographs of the grounds of a small mansion.

"This is the target," she said, indicating the photograph of a late middle-aged man on the last page. "Rupert Lyle. He's a well-known Washington lobbyist, and a partner in a high-profile law firm. The same firm that employed the man you captured last night. According to our informant, he's due to return home today at four PM, to make the final contact with the people who have the bomb, which is due to go off at seven PM. You're going to watch his house. When he makes the call it will be scrambled, and we won't have time to crack his code, so you're going to listen in on his end with a shotgun mike, and signal us when he makes contact, so we can trace it. Between eavesdropping and the trace, we should be able to locate the terrorists. Once we're sure we know where they are, you'll collect him, while one of our other teams takes care of the weapon."

"Why don't I just bug his house in advance?" asked Brittany. "That's more reliable than an external mike."

"True," Angela said. "But we're pretty sure his home security system is state of the art. If you set it off going in, he'll switch to some backup plan we don't know. We can't take that risk."

"What if he doesn't return home to make the call?" asked Daria.

"I have another team covering his office, and his car has been bugged, but I don't think either of them will be used. He doesn't want any risk that he'd be detected, and virtually every phone in Washington is tapped by somebody. He knows his home phone is secure. He does government work, and the FBI sweeps it periodically. They just checked it last week, or I'd send you in disguised as FBI for a new sweep. Any other questions?"

The others were silent, flipping quickly through the papers in front of them. Finally, Daria made eye contact with each of them, receiving small nods. She turned to Angela. "Nope, we're ready to roll. I'll call you when we get to DC."

"Right. Good luck people, we're counting on you." She picked up the papers in front of her, and left the room at a brisk walk.

Daria turned to Jane and Brittany. "Go get your stuff, and sign out a motor pool car. I need to check on the bug I set on Quinn, just in case, and then we'll be off. It's a long drive to the city, and we need to be in position well before four, in case he's early."

The others nodded, and gathered their papers. Daria hurried out, intent on her unpleasant duty.

Outside the school, Daria joined the other two, with a serious look on her face. It had been nearly thirty minutes since the meeting broke up, and Jane asked if there was a problem with Quinn, but Daria shook her head. Jane decided to leave her to her thoughts, and watched the town go by outside the window as Brittany drove. It was so peaceful. Jane had never thought she'd be nostalgic for Lawndale, but now she couldn't wait for the mission to be over, so she could return here.

As Brittany pulled out onto the highway, Daria tapped her on the shoulder, and pointed to the next exit. "Turn here. We're taking a shortcut." Brittany nodded, and swung the car back off the highway. Jane raised an eyebrow in inquiry, but Daria shook her head. Once they were off the highway, she continued to give Brittany directions without speaking, until they arrived at Lawndale airport. It was a small facility, mostly used by private pilots, and a couple of commuter flights to nearby cities. A separate terminal building served several airfreight services that kept planes here, rather than in the more expensive city airports.

They left the car in a small parking lot next to the airfreight terminal, and walked into the building. On the far side of the room, Daria recognized a familiar figure, despite his lack of uniform. She walked over to Major Stewart and shook his hand. "Good to see you again. Glad you could make it."

"I'm happy to be of assistance. If you'll come this way, we're ready to go." He turned and led them out though a back door onto the paved apron of the airport. A U.S. Marine helicopter was waiting, with rotors idling.

They ran to the door on the side, and climbed aboard, closing it behind them. As soon as everyone was strapped down, the Major tapped the pilot on the shoulder and gestured. The engines reved, and they were airborne. The Major passed out headsets with microphones, so they could talk to each other over the engine noise.

"So, Agent Powers, we'll have you at Bolling in thirty minutes tops. Some of my men have already contacted your associate, and he'll be there to meet you. My team will wait at the airbase in case you need any more assistance."

"Thanks. We should be able to handle this on our own, but it's good to know you're backing us up."

They passed the rest of the journey in silence. Daria shrugged off the inquiring looks from Jane and Brittany, and they accepted the need for secrecy, keeping their questions to themselves.

At Bolling Air Force Base, just south of the White House, they joined the waiting Fingers in his van, and headed up the Anacostia Freeway towards the city. It was just past rush hour, and the roads were still quite busy, but not jammed. Daria picked up a clipboard and wrote a quick note to Fingers. He read it, and looked up at her in surprise, then began to fiddle with his communications equipment. Daria waved Jane to silence as she was about to speak, and they waited for Fingers.

Eventually Fingers finished his work, and turned to Daria with a puzzled frown. "Three bugs," he said, "how did you know?"

"Are they all dead now? Any transmissions going out at all?"

"All dead, and everything's shut down. If anything were transmitting, I'd have it. The only risk is a record-and-burst transmitter; I think I'd have found one, but I can't guarantee it since it wouldn't be transmitting."

"Okay." Daria pushed the door to the front of the van open, so Brittany could listen. "Here's the deal, folks. Don't ask how I know--there are some need-to-know issues involved and I can't tell you--but we've been set up. The fellow we captured the other night was a plant. The goal was to ensure that we waited to search the house until four. My bet is that the bomb's inside, and it's going to go off sometime before four PM, not at seven as we thought. We need to move in, and recover the bomb before then. If we need firepower, the Major's men are standing by, but I expect light opposition, if any. They aren't going to sit around on top of an atomic bomb if they can avoid it."

"So, who bugged us, and why the radio silence?" asked Fingers.

"The terrorists. There's a leak in the agency," said Daria. "We've gone silent to avoid tipping them off. They're not expecting us to be in position for several hours yet, so lack of contact shouldn't raise any suspicions."

"Does the Colonel know?" asked Brittany.

"No. I couldn't find a way to tell her without risking being overheard. We'll deal with the agency problem after we've disposed of the bomb. I have some ideas on how we can smoke our leak out. But for now, lets focus on disarming the bomb. That's our priority."

They lay the floor plans out on the communications console, and began making plans for entering the mansion without alerting any guards that might still be there.