From the Ashes
an unfinished Inferno/Without a Trace crossover by Setcheti
Martin wasn’t exactly sure
why he’d come to the beach, unless it was because he simply couldn’t think of
any other place to go. The beach was
empty of life under the still-hot sky, the water flat and restless and colored
like old blood, and there was a stench in the air compounded of rot and salt
and drying dead fish. The tide had yet
to recover enough to clean the littered sand, might not come back for years the
way it had been, much like the city he’d just left – like all the cities,
everywhere. He wondered idly what it was
like in
If anyone he knew was still
alive. And if he cared all that much if
they weren’t.
He didn’t really know how
long he’d been sitting on his rock, staring blindly at the sickly ocean, but
he’d been sitting in silence for long enough that the voice from behind him
felt like a violation. “You look like
you’d rather be alone, but I don’t really want to pick another favorite spot.”
Martin snorted softly. “You must not have been here in a while.”
“Nope, but it’s still my
favorite spot.” The man that came around
and lowered himself stiffly onto the other side of the rock was both shorter
and stockier than Martin, and the fading but still colorful bruises on his face
spoke of a fairly vicious fight in his recent past. “You’re working on one hell of a sunburn, you know.”
It was then that Martin
noticed how tight the skin on his face and arms was feeling, but he couldn’t
rouse himself from his inertia enough to care all that much. “You don’t look so hot yourself.”
“Most
likely not.” The man almost chuckled – almost. “I just had to get away for a while, away
from all the people who think they’re going to rebuild the city and make
everything all right again.” He picked
up a stick and chucked it out onto the sand with the other debris. “Like it can ever be all
right again.”
“Know what you mean.” Martin sighed and tossed a pebble after the
stick. “I feel like…like the world
ended. And now I don’t know what to do
with myself, or if I even want to do anything.”
“Yep.” The other man
took a deep breath, then made a face at the
smell. “I’m Will, by the way.”
“Martin.” Another pebble. “Do you…did
you live in LA?”
“Yeah. You?”
Martin shook his head. “Nope. But it looks like I do now.” A rock this time, and he threw it
harder. “Even if I could go home, I
don’t think I want to.”
Will looked sideways at him,
and Martin saw that his eyes were pale green, like the jade pendant his mother
had brought back from
Martin arched a skeptical
eyebrow. “You want to hear about it?”
“Sure.” Will shrugged and returned his attention to
the ocean, sending a rock of his own after Martin’s. “I’d rather hear about yours than think about
mine.”
That got a laugh, although it
was a pale, rusty imitation of Martin’s usual one. “My…partner was here with me, and when all
hell started breaking loose she left me and took off.” He snorted.
“I’m pretty sure she figured she was leaving me here to die, she’s
probably told the…well, the office that I’m dead. Not that they’ll care much. I pitched in wherever I could while it was still
bad, but now…”
“But now you’re a dead man
and job opportunities are looking scarce,” Will finished for him. “I’m kind of in the same boat, actually. I was…well, I can’t go back to what I was
doing before, not after everything that’s happened. And it won’t be long before the Guard tells
us all to go home.” His sigh came from
somewhere deep and lonely. “But I don’t
have one any more. Any more than you do,
it sounds like.”
For some reason, that made
Martin feel better. He felt a stirring
of life inside him that he hadn’t felt in more than a week. “So what’s a dead man to do?” he quipped.
Will started, and then a faint smile quirked up the corners of his mouth. “Besides sit on a rock and add to the mess on
the beach?” he returned. “I have to say
I haven’t given it much thought. These
days all I can see is the mess.”
“Yep.” Neither of
them were talking about the debris and they both knew
it. “You sure the National Guard won’t
try to keep some of you on?” Martin asked after a moment of silence. “The city is still under martial law.”
“Only until tomorrow night,”
Will informed him.
“They’re going to let the local law take over from there, now that the
LAPD has had a chance to get its ducks back in a row. I wish I could put in for my unit to stay on cleanup
for another week or so, but the others all want to start picking up their own
pieces and it wouldn’t be fair of me to keep them from it.”
“Nope. Not everyone
would think of that, though.” Martin
looked at him sideways again. “You must
be a pretty good commander.”
Will dropped his head. “I’m only a sergeant by default – field
promotion. My unit’s lieutenant…well, he
kind of lost it, started trying to make it his own little war out there. I took one of…of the casualties back to the
aid station, and while I was there I ran into a general.” He kicked his foot against the rock. “Nice guy, the general. Found out later he’d lost his wife to this
mess. But when I told him what was going
on he gave me a promotion and told me to go stop the lieutenant. So I did.”
Martin blinked. “I’m guessing he won’t do it again, huh?”
“Nope,
never.” Will’s bleak gaze resettled on the restless
ocean. “I made the men leave him there,
after. What he did, what he was trying
to do when I caught up with him again…he didn’t deserve to be treated with
respect, not even in death.”
“I know that feeling.” The other man gave him a disbelieving look,
and Martin shrugged. “I’m…I was with the FBI. Missing Persons. Before.”
Will whistled. “You’re going to have a hard time staying
dead, then.”
“It’s possible.” Martin shrugged again. “But I don’t think my team will be looking
for me any time soon. I’m sure they
think I died out here, and they’ll have too much to deal with where they are to
worry about it.”
“Probably,
yeah.” A pause. “I was a high school teacher, I taught
history. The kid the lieutenant killed
was one of my students. One I’d been
trying to help. Didn’t think it took…and
then he saved my life.”
“Oh geez,
that’s rough.” Martin’s sympathy was
genuine, a weight of experience behind it.
He took a deep breath. “My…well,
the member of the team my boss sent me out here with, when things started to go
sour she ditched me in the middle of the city.
She had the plane tickets and everything, even my badge, and she left
behind a message that said I died in a riot.
I think she saw me as…competition.”
Will had the feeling the
younger man wasn’t just referring to the job, but he didn’t say anything. “What a bitch.”
Martin smiled and tossed
another stick. “Yeah, she was. I think she and Jack are a matched set, they
deserve each other.”
“Your
boss?”
A sigh. “Yeah.”
Yep,
definitely about more than the job. Will wondered offhandedly how long the
younger man had been on the ‘team’ before figuring out he hadn’t been hired for
professional reasons – and how much shit he’d put up with in the meantime
without understanding the reason behind it.
He didn’t seem angry, though, just…resigned.
Resigned would kill you a lot
faster than angry would. Will pitched a
pebble after the stick, hitting it and bouncing off across the stinking
mud. What a damned waste.
He decided abruptly that
there’d been too much waste lately, and he was tired of it. He couldn’t clean up the big mess, couldn’t
put the world back the way it had been two weeks ago, but…“You have a place to
stay, Martin?”
Three days later, Will was
let into the general’s temporary office and straightened to attention, saluting
sharply. General Maxwell had kept tabs
on him in the days following the flare, had kept Will’s unit close and kept
them together during the cleanup, and he was glad to see the younger man. “Something I can do for you, Sergeant? Decide to reconsider my offer?”
“No sir.” Will was apologetic, but firm; he might not
be able to go back to his old life, but life as a professional soldier wasn’t
what he wanted either. “Well, General, not exactly.
I was wondering…I was wondering what sort of options the Army might be
willing to offer me, and if there were any that would let me stay here in L.A.”
“Maybe,” the general
acknowledged slowly, although inside he was crowing; they were short on good
men right now. “Don’t want to leave
home?”
“No sir, I don’t. There’s a lot of work left to do here, and I
don’t see a lot of it being done right.”
“Neither do I,” Maxwell agreed.
“Tell you what, give me a couple of days and I’ll get hold of you about
the job, I think I can find something. I
know your unit has been disbanded and sent home, but I’m sure you could use
some downtime.” The younger man was
still standing stiffly. “Something else
you wanted to talk to me about, Desmond?”
“I’m not sure, General.” Will
swallowed; he could be opening a can of worms he wouldn’t be able to close with
what he was about to ask. “Sir, I…met
someone a few days ago, and I was hoping you might be able to help him.”
Maxwell frowned –
contemplatively, not irritably. “At ease, Sergeant, and tell me about it.”
Will fished
a piece of paper out of his pocket that contained Martin’s personal information
and handed it over. “He was an FBI
agent, here on assignment from New York, and his partner ditched him and left
him this,” he handed over another piece of paper, this one creased and dirty –
the note Sam had given Martin. “He’s a
good man, General, and he can’t go home.
His father is…”
“Senator Fitzgerald,” Maxwell
said, frown deepening.
He’d met the senator, knew more about him through the political
grapevine, and knew that the man had barely acknowledged the loss of his son at
a time when all the other pundits were playing up their grief for what remained
of their constituency. Couldn’t go home indeed.
“I’m guessing you have a solution in mind?” Will hesitated, and the general leaned
forward in his chair with a raised eyebrow.
“This room is secure, son – and you know I like people who speak plainly
and don’t waste my time. Tell me what
you want me to do.”
“He needs a new identity and
a new job,” Will blurted out. “I thought
he could take on my last name, become Martin Desmond. And if the Army could use me…”
“We could for damn sure use
an ex-FBI agent, I won’t deny that,” Maxwell agreed. Wheels were turning, but before he could make
any promises he needed to do a little cautious poking around and talk to some
people – he had connections in New York.
“All right, in two days bring him here for a meeting and I’ll tell you
both what I’ve come up with. Until then
stick close to home and keep a low profile, we don’t know if everyone at his
old office believes he’s dead or not.”
“Understood,
sir.” Will stiffened to
attention again. “Thank you, General
Maxwell.”
“Don’t thank me until we’ve
seen if I can do anything to be thanked for,” the general told him. “Until Thursday, Sergeant. Dismissed.”
Will saluted and then marched
out of the office, but Maxwell could tell that a weight had been lifted off of
him and he felt good about that. He sat
back in his chair and thought for a moment, and then buzzed for his aide. They had a lot of sneaking around to do and
only two days to do it in.
Martin was understandably
nervous. “What if…”
“Stop that.” Will reached around him and tugged his tie
back straight, then stepped to one side to check the result. “That’ll do, now leave it alone. Are you sure you used to dress like this
every day?”
“I want to make a good
impression,” Martin fussed. “This
general of yours is holding my life in his hands.”
“It’s in good hands,” Will assured him. He
checked his own uniform in the mirror and buffed a button with his sleeve. “Come on, we don’t want to be late – and if
you reach for that tie again you’re going to find out what else I learned in basic training besides how to shoot
straight. Now let’s not keep the general
waiting; after all, he is holding
your life in his hands.”
Martin cuffed at him
playfully and Will swatted the hand aside before it could mess up his
hair. The two of them had gotten
comfortable together over the past week, each man finding a piece to replace
something he’d lost in the other. And
now they were about to find out if they were going to lose that again.
They took a rickshaw to the
general’s office, the bicycle-drawn conveyances having temporarily replaced
cabs which were currently too damaged or too expensive to operate, and they
paid the driver with two cans of peaches which he slipped into the locked
‘saddlebags’ behind his seat. The office
was a hive of moving activity, boxes sealed, flat and half-full stacked
everywhere, but the general’s aide greeted the two nervous men in place of the
secretary and ushered them through the bustle and into Maxwell’s office.
The general was waiting
behind his desk, which had been cleared except for a single folder and a
pen. He smiled when the two younger men
both straightened to attention. “At
ease,” he told them. “You can salute the
next time you see me.”
Will’s face lit up with
hope. “Sir?”
“Sergeant Desmond, you’ll be
happy to know that I found a job for you that met your…requirements. I checked your records and experience, and I
found that you were well qualified to take on the position of military liaison
for the Southern California Reconstruction Agency. I’ll send you the particulars and you’re
going to have to take officer training to get your lieutenant’s bars before you
can officially take the position, but basically you’ll be the go-between for my
office and the local government.” He
made a face at Will’s raised eyebrow.
“Yes, I’m afraid that after this it’s been decided that the U.S military
needs to maintain a stronger homefront presence – how
strong that presence needs to be here in L.A. will depend on your reports. Think you can handle it?”
“I’ll do my best, General,”
Will told him seriously, and received an approving
nod; Maxwell appreciated honesty as well as plain speech. “When will my training start?”
“Monday, 0800 hours,” the
general replied. “Someone will come to
get you, we’re not sure where the training is going to
be held just yet. Just wear your fatigues, you won’t have your new uniforms for a while
yet.” He turned his attention to the man
standing stiffly beside Will and looked him up and down. “Martin, you’ll be going with him to the
training – if the idea of a military commission is acceptable to you, that
is.” He had to smile at the startled
look on the younger man’s face – a very handsome face, almost pretty except for
the strong jaw and determined chin, and it was all too easy to see how the
situation at the FBI’s New York office had gotten out of hand to the point that
it had. Maxwell thought he probably knew
more about what had happened than the young agent did at this point, but most
of it was information he thought Martin was better off without. “If you’re agreeable, Lieutenant Desmond is
going to need an aide who he can trust and who knows the ins and outs of
politics. You’ll have the same rank he
will…and people can make what they want to out of there being two Lieutenant Desmonds in the office.”
Martin’s blue eyes
widened. “Sir?”
Maxwell pushed the folder
across the desk. “Everything you’ll need
is in there, including your driver’s license, social security card and a birth
certificate that says you’re from someplace where all the records were
destroyed during the disaster.” He
winked. “I got hold of your records,
son, and the FBI’s loss is our gain – the senator’s too. We were thorough in our search,
they all think Martin Fitzgerald died weeks ago.”
The ex-FBI agent swallowed
hard. “I guess I’m lucky I’m not him,
then, General.”
“I think the Army’s lucky
you’re not too,” Maxwell told him.
“You’ve got a good record, and I fully expect to see it get even better
as you grow into the job.” He stood up
and gestured to the flag still hanging in one corner of the office. “Now if you’d put your hand over your heart,
I’d be honored to swear you in. You too,
Sergeant Desmond; we might as well do you both at once. Just repeat after me.”
Martin solemnly repeated the
words of the oath, only vaguely aware of Will’s voice echoing him, and proudly
took the general’s offered hand when he was finished. “Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down.”
“If I had any doubts on that
score, we wouldn’t be doing this,” Maxwell told him. “Welcome to the U.S. Army, Mr. Desmond. We can use every good man we can get, and I’m
looking at two of the better ones.” He
fixed Martin with a serious look. “And
the Army takes care of her own, son, don’t you forget it. If you have any problems, now or later, that
oath you just took means we’ll be right there with you to solve them.” He turned to Will and held out his hand again
to receive another firm handshake. “I’m
glad you decided to accept my offer, Sergeant – and I’m glad we ran into each
other that day in the aid station. I
have every faith in you, in both of you, to help us put this country back
together.” He withdrew his hand and
saluted smartly. “Dismissed, gentlemen,
and enjoy your three day leave.”
Both men returned the salute,
Martin a little less confidently than Will but still with feeling. “We will, General. And thank you, for everything.” Will scooped up the folder and pushed it into
Martin’s hands and then steered him out the door and back through the moving
mess that was the outer offices. Once
outside the building he led his roommate to the nearest bench and pushed him
down on it. “Breathe, Martin.”
Martin looked up at him with
wide eyes. “He…”
“He’s a good man – maybe even
a great man,” Will told him, taking a seat of his own
on the bench. “I don’t know how history
will remember him, but he saved this city.”
“And me,” Martin said
numbly. He flipped open the folder and
sifted through the contents, transferring the personal identification into his
mostly empty wallet and carefully securing the rest so he wouldn’t lose any of
it. “If it wasn’t for you…”
“You would have figured
something out,” Will said quietly, putting a hand on
his shoulder. “I know you would have,
and so do you. You’re not the type to
roll over and play dead, Martin.”
The younger man snorted and
looked up at him. “I have been.”
Will grimaced and his grip
tightened. “Well, so have I – but
neither one of us are now. So what do you say we catch a ride back home
and then figure out something we can do with three days of leave?”
“Sounds like a plan.” Martin took one last look at his new driver’s
license, then tucked his wallet carefully back into the inside pocket of his
jacket and stood up. A twinkle appeared
in his blue eyes. “Want to go to the
beach?”
Will chased him all the way
down to the next rickshaw stand. At an
upper window in the building they’d just left, General Maxwell turned away and
went back to his office, laughing.
|
|