Chapter Text
"I'm so sorry, sir. I thought you authorized it. I got a memo about it right here. I thought you must have signed off on it."
Amos looked helpless in front of the freight pallet that rested in the cargo bay just inside Paladin's ramp, shoving his tablet at Sam as if it could plead his case for him. Sam ignored it.
"We checked it over a dozen times," said Amos, turning to follow Sam as the Fourth Echelon commander walked over to the stacked cardboard boxes with a flat, closed expression. "There's nothing obviously dangerous on it. As far as we can tell, it's just..."
Sam picked up one of the ovoid yellow-orange shapes that filled the boxes.
"...Fruit," said Amos with a sigh.
Sam dropped the fruit back into the box and let his breath out slowly. When he turned back to the cargo chief his face was calm.
"They're persimmons," added Amos.
Sam's eyes narrowed a fraction.
"We, uh, no idea who sent them," said Amos hurriedly. "Well, I've got the freight company right here, and I've got the manifest for the fruit proper - there's a surprising amount of paperwork for produce import/export - but so far no leads on who sent it."
Grim should be handling this, thought Sam unhappily, watching Amos' anxious face. But at the moment Anna Grimsdottir was somewhere out in Singapore negotiating an intel swap with the local CIA bureau chief, Charlie was absolutely blissed-out on a grey-market electronics binge, and Briggs was out for some well-deserved R&R after two days straight lying awake and motionless on the stern of a cargo freighter, keeping his sniper rifle company while he waited for a particular ship to dock in Jakarta harbor. After a month living in each other's laps in Paladin's cramped quarters even the most dedicated team needed some time to themselves. So it was Sam's problem, now, that 48 cardboard boxes full of fruit - persimmons - had been delivered to Paladin's hangar without so much as a note. And they had done so well with their first three days off.
One hell of a fruit basket.
"Trash it," ordered Sam.
"Yessir." Amos called over one of the cargo handlers.
"Wait! Wait! Don't touch that! Don't fucking touch that!"
The source of the voice was running across Paladin's hangar waving his hands frantically in the air. About halfway across the tarmac he had to stop and breathe for a moment before continuing on at a much slower walk. By the time he reached the plane he had almost gotten his breath back.
"Kobin," said Sam flatly. "I should've known."
"Hey Fisher, nice to see you too," Andriy Kobin tossed over his shoulder as he walked over to the freight pallet. "How's your week off, you been practicing your death glare?" After reassuring himself of the pallet's integrity he turned and spotted Amos. "Did you touch this?" he demanded.
"Uh, well, no," stammered Amos.
"Good," snapped Kobin. "Get it inside the plane, you idiot, they're gonna go bad in the heat. I know we have a forklift around here somewhere."
"What the hell is this, Kobin," growled Sam.
"Easy, Fisher. Bring it inside, close the ramp and I'll show you."
"Why?"
"Cause I'd rather not show the whole fucking airport is why. Come on, man, it's an oven out here," wheedled Kobin. Sam glared at him for a moment longer, but he read only annoyance in Kobin's expression.
"Do it," he told Amos.
"Thank you," said Kobin, stalking up Paladin's ramp. Despite his pleas the converted C-147's cargo bay wasn't much cooler than the outside. Even so Kobin paced back and forth at the rear of the cargo bay, occasionally darting forward to harry Amos' cargo jockeys as they guided the pallet up the ramp. Sam leaned against the side of the plane and watched him move. Kobin had picked up a tropical outfit as soon as he'd hit the Singapore street malls, a purple shirt made of some light fabric worn open over a white tank and shorts that showed way more of his legs than Sam was sure anyone wanted to see, but even so a sheen of sweat glued the cloth to his skin and stuck his dark blond hair down to his skull. After four months hearing him complain it wasn't hard to figure out that Andriy didn't handle heat too well, but the size of his pupils and the tremor in his hands argued for a much more immediate, chemical reason.
Illegal stimulants, tension, and a slight measure of anxiety, concluded Sam, but not the sort of fear he knew would be there if Kobin were planning to make trouble.
The cargo ramp began to lift with a groan of hydraulics. The slab of steel rose back up towards the plane's tail, its shadow slowly covering the bay. When at last the shudder of the locks engaging rippled through the fuselage Kobin dashed to the pallet. He lifted one of the cardboard boxes of fruit off the top and set it down a short distance away, then returned for another.
"Little help here, Fisher?" he called over his shoulder. "It's gonna take a lot longer otherwise."
"Talk," barked Sam.
"Alright, alright. Well. So there I was in Singapore, with nothing to do and a pocket full of petty cash - thanks for that, by the way, glad to know I rate an allowance out of my own damn money - so I get to talking to a few folks, you know, we have some drinks, we have some good times, and lo and behold I find out there's a hell of a deal sitting down at the docks."
"You bought half a ton of fruit."
"See, Jakarta's totally locked down right now, because of the thing with the thing and Briggs shooting that guy, right, so not everyone can make their usual itinerary, and a cargo like this is gonna go sour in the meantime. They were looking to cut their losses and unload, I mean, they were already in the red on this, so I got it for an absolute steal, man, only five hundred. Gonna need to tap a couple more of my old accounts, by the way."
"You spent. Five hundred thousand dollars. On fruit."
"First of all, these are not fruit," snapped Kobin. He brandished one of the pale orange globes like a grenade. "These are Hyakume varietal brown sugar persimmons, hard to find in Japan and impossible to get outside of it, and I just scored a clean half-ton. And second..." Kobin leaned over and pushed aside more fruit to expose the last layer of cardboard boxes.
Except that it wasn't cardboard underneath, it was matte steel, with a small glass square set into the center. Kobin started clearing off the rest of the second layer, and this time Sam moved to help. The flat metal container occupied the entire middle of the cargo pallet, measuring about a meter on each side.
"Second of all," continued Kobin as they cleared away the boxes, slightly breathless, "I spent five hundred thousand dollars on this."
Kobin pressed his left thumb against the glass square. A white light flashed across his skin, then turned green. Something rattled and clicked deep within the box and the entire top lifted up a centimeter. Kobin grabbed the edge and pushed it up further on trim folding hinges. The lid swung to one side to reveal a deep foam-lined recess and within it a precise and brilliant assemblage of polygonal pieces, all painted a sleek matte white, like some great shattered ceramic whose shards had been neatly repackaged.
Kobin backed off to lean against the side of the chopper, smirking, tossing a persimmon up and down. Sam knelt to inspect the disassembled drone. He didn't recognize the model, but the exquisite craftsmanship was obvious. He brushed his fingers along one segmented wing: machined titanium beneath, some texture he couldn't identify over top. Explosive rounds the size of fat crayons lay in a neat row in the foam. Despite himself he gave a long, thoughtful whistle.
"Merry fuckin' Christmas, Fisher," said Kobin with a smug grin, and bit into the fruit.
* * *
"Is that an RQ-275 adaptive-camo dual-mode tactical combat drone!?" shrieked Charlie when Sam managed to distract him from the piles of new integrated circuits that covered his workbenches. "Oh my god oh my god oh my god!"
"It's a good model, then," said Sam.
"Holy shit are you kidding? Holy shit," whispered Charlie reverently. He tore his gaze away long enough to look up and say, "Sam, this is Mossad hardware. It can hover, it can do forward flight, the onboard algorithms are killer. The whole thing is covered in low-power fast-response OLED panels! This is, like - this is beyond cutting-edge. CIA isn't even sure they exist yet." He stared into the case with a rapturous expression. "Who'd you have to kill to get it?"
Sam frowned. "Kobin bought it," he muttered finally.
"Kobie got one of these!?" blurted Charlie incredulously. "How in the fuck."
"He ran off with five hundred thousand in cash and came back with it stashed in a fruit box. Said something about someone not being able to make their intended destination." Charlie wasn't listening anymore, tracing the line of a wing with one finger.
"How long before you can get it into the loadout?" prompted Sam.
"Oh, right, uh. Well, I'll have to hang on to it for a couple of weeks, you know, interface it to the OPSAT, test everything out, but... Should be ready to go for overwatch, urban combat, whatever you need, I mean, this baby can do it all."
"Good. Keep me posted." Charlie didn't even bother to respond.
* * *
Sam was digging through all the email he'd managed to avoid in Jakarta when he heard the tread of Grim's boots returning. She tossed a satisfyingly heavy duffel onto her ops console, then spotted Sam.
"Why is there a half-ton of fruit in the cargo bay?" she asked.
"They're persimmons," said Sam absently. "Kobin went shopping."
"He's in the fruit business now?"
"He's in his usual business. The persimmons are just a cover." I think. After Kobin had staggered off to crew quarters with a carton of fruit under his arm to shower and sleep off whatever chemical was percolating through his bloodstream, Sam had snuck one himself. Now he had five of the golden fruit wrapped up in a napkin.
"And...we've started sending him shopping." The edge in Grim's voice promised consequences if he'd made that kind of decision without informing her.
Sam saved the most recent draft and spun his chair to face her. "He seems to have done it on his own dime."
Grim looked nonplussed. "Why?"
"Not sure yet," said Sam thoughtfully.
"Could be a trap." Grim sat on the edge of her console, mulling it over. "Or he could still be worried we're going to give him back to CIA."
"You and I both know the only way he's leaving Fourth Echelon is in a box." Sam crossed his arms. "I don't trust anyone else not to let him weasel out of custody."
"We do, sure, but he may not know that yet," said Grim. "Or, he did it because he's Kobin, and he's insane."
"Either way, he did it. Even seems to have made a good buy."
Grim snorted in amusement. "I assume we're not just taking his word for it."
"Charlie's checking over the merch right now. But so far it looks legit."
"He got something worthwhile?"
"An RQ-275 Mossad tactical drone, if Charlie's correct."
Grim's eyebrows shot up. "Are you serious? CIA isn't even sure those exist yet."
"That's pretty much what Charlie said."
"How the hell did Kobin get his hands on one?"
"He didn't give too many details. I'll press him when he sobers up."
Grim shook her head in weary disgust. "Singapore's got the death penalty for drug possession. How does he keep finding shit to shove up his nose?"
"Same way he found a Mossad drone."
Grim sighed. "At least we shouldn't need him in the cockpit anytime soon. Speaking of which, now would be a good time to catch some shut-eye, Sam. The CIA courier shows up in four hours and I'm fairly certain we're going to have to move on what he's got."
"You know what it's about?"
"Loose tech in former Soviet satellites. Centrifuges to enrich nuclear material. CIA thinks a Red Army unit's auctioning them off to the highest bidder."
"We can't take out Red Army personnel quietly."
"We don't have to. Centrifuge technology is highly sensitive. A little light sabotage and the buyers will get way more than they bargained for."
"Then why are we handling this? We're not CIA's errand boys."
"Relations with the Russians aren't good right now. If a CIA team got caught we'd have a serious incident on our hands."
"Then they should try not to get caught."
"Sam. We're still in CIA's bad books after Blacklist. Hell, we're in everybody's bad books. If Fourth Echelon is going to survive as a permanent team, we need intelligence relationships, and that means that sometimes you have to be nice to people you don't like."
"Still doesn't explain why us."
"We're deniable. As usual." A frown scored Grim's face that hadn't been there when she'd left to meet the Company's representative. "Get some rack time, Sam. I'll have options ready by the time you're back."
"Thanks. Oh, and Grim. Try the persimmons." He tossed her one; Grim caught it one-handed.
"Like an apple," he added when she stared at it in puzzlement. Grim gave him a skeptical look, but took a bite. Instantly her expression slid into surprise.
"Damn," she said, and took another bite of the sweet brown flesh inside.
"Pace yourself," said Sam. "We've got half a ton to go through."
* * *
The CIA courier arrived five hours later, and half an hour after that Sam's radio trilled. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and tapped the skin behind his left ear.
"Briefing in ten," Grim told him.
"On my way."
"Get Kobin while you're up there."
"Will do." Sam cut the connection and started looking for clean clothes.
He banged on Kobin's door five minutes later and declared, "Briefing. Put on something normal."
No response. Sam sighed and not for the first time cursed the fact that Charlie still hadn't had the time to make a sufficiently crippled smartphone to trust Kobin with it. For that matter, life would be a lot easier if they'd kept Kobin in the holding cell like he'd intended. But then there was Kasperov, and they had to lock that psycho Russian up somewhere, so Kobin had found himself an open bunk and it had just...never really seemed like the time to kick him back out.
Silence from inside the room. He banged on the door again and was just about to go in and haul the man out of bed by force when one of the crew members who shared the hallway stuck her head out and said, "Commander? You looking for Kobie?"
"Yeah. You seen him?"
"Infirmary."
Sam's brows knit together. "He sick?"
"Found him passed out in the hallway, sir. Addison took him down to the doc."
"Thanks."
The woman nodded and withdrew back into her room.
"Grim, Kobin's in the med bay," radioed Sam as he walked back towards the ladder to main deck. "Let's just do this without him."
"Sorry, Sam. He's got a hand in this one."
"Alright. There in a bit."
As he descended the ladder Sam racked his brain for the woman's name. Maers, he ultimately decided; her name was Maers, and she flew the helo. He had managed to learn the names of all the primary crewmembers that kept Paladin functioning - Dr. Nozumi, in the infirmary, Amos the supply chief, Gabrielova, who kept everyone fed, and Ollie, of course, without whom Fourth Echelon would probably collapse - but the ten supplementary crew continually evaded his memory. Grim probably knew the entire life stories of her three intel coordinators, but the rest - Amos' two supplymasters, the pair of dedicated mechanics who doubled as armorers, Maers the helo pilot, and the three Paladin pilots -
Two Paladin pilots, he reminded himself. Rosen had wanted off after the near-disastrous viral systems crash during Blacklist. Escalona was this close to quitting, too. Sam had blamed the high pilot turnover on Paladin's constant travel, but Ollie said Escalona was just sick of dealing with Kobin in the cockpit. Apparently he'd gotten more than a little possessive of the aircraft. Sam ought to talk to him about that. Later, though. Right now there was a mission.
"What happened?" asked Sam as he came into the infirmary.
Noboru Nozumi looked up from his tablet. He hadn't bothered to change into his scrubs, so it couldn't be serious. "Kobin? Passed out in the hall. Somebody heard him hit the deck, brought him down here." He jerked a thumb towards the far corner of the infirmary. "Still out of it."
"Damage?"
Nozumi shrugged. "Nasty bruise but no concussion. Heat stroke. Just the drugs again."
Great. "What was it this time?"
"Coke and an amazing quantity of alcohol. I mean a truly staggering amount. I don't even know how he got back to the plane. I had to ice-pack him to get his core temperature down to a human level. Right now I got him on saline for the hangover and nitrates for his blood pressure."
"That's it?"
"Cocaine clears the blood fast. If he were anyone else I'd add a little diazepam, but with Andriy's tolerance it wouldn't do shit."
"Thanks, doc. Mind giving us a minute?"
"He's all yours." Nozumi slotted the tablet back into the med bay's mainframe interface and headed out the door. "When he wakes up, tell him to quit doing stimulants in hundred-degree weather. Next time he's gonna do worse than pass out."
Sam went back to the bed Nozumi had indicated. Kobin lay crashed out under a thin blanket, looking pale as his hospital gown. Sam stood next to the bed and drummed his fingers on the metal railing. After four months on Paladin without access to hair gel, most drugs, and dubious accessories, Kobin almost looked like a responsible adult. If you ignored the giant grey-shaded snake tattoo that wound across his collarbone, at least.
"Up and at it," ordered Sam.
Kobin stirred and groaned. He rolled to one side and pulled the pillow over his face. "Fuck off," he rasped.
"We've got a briefing."
"Go jump out the cargo bay."
Sam whipped the thin blanket off him in one quick motion.
"Agh, what the hell!" barked Kobin. He curled up reflexively in the cold air.
"I said, we have a briefing."
Kobin tried to reach for the blanket, but only got a few inches before he moaned in pain and dropped back onto the bed. "God, Fisher, don't you have a standing offer to shoot me? Because right now I'd really like to take you up on that."
"Believe me, no one's sadder than I am that I have to decline."
Kobin pulled the pillow more firmly across his head. "No more coke. Last time. I can't do this shit anymore."
"Pretty sure that's what you said in Buenos Aires. And Mexico City. And Halifax." Sam had honestly never thought Canadian cities had enough illegal substances to get that high.
"I mean it this time. I don't care who it is. I'm not doing it ever again."
"We'll take you to a 12-step group."
"This isn't fucking funny, Fisher."
Sam tossed the blanket onto another bed and found Kobin's ridiculous purple shirt and shorts neatly folded on the med bay's shelves. He chucked them at Kobin's head, still buried under the pillow. "Get dressed."
"I repeat my invitation to take a flying leap out the back of the plane."
"Hey, I got an idea. Stop doing so many damn drugs."
"Fuck you, man, you ever try to cut a deal like this?"
"Dress, or you're coming to ops in your med gown."
Kobin curled up tighter on the bed. "At least turn those damn lights off," he pleaded.
Sam rolled his eyes, but he found the med bay light switch and turned off the overheads. The pillow moved and Kobin emerged. Hazel eyes swam in a sea of pink veins. Sam glared at him until the man grabbed the clothes, then turned his back and leaned in the doorway.
"It's about trust, Fisher," said Kobin over the rustle of cloth, calmer now. "People trust you if you get fucked up with them. A guy offers you a bump, it's fuckin' rude not to. That's all it takes to kill a deal." A zipper closed. "Alright." Sam turned. Kobin had made it to the edge of the bed, fully clothed, but his shoulders sagged and he looked as though standing up were about as likely as sprouting wings and flying away.
"I hate coke," he muttered. "It makes you itch."
"You didn't seem to have a problem with it in Malta."
"Had to be alert, you know. Stay sharp in case someone was coming after me. Which someone was," he added with a pointed look in Sam's direction. "Now I stay clean for a few weeks then bam, all-nighter. And I wake up feeling like this." He buried his face in his hands, rubbing at his forehead. "No more coke, man. Never again."
"We'll see how long that lasts." Sam moved out of the doorway. "After you."
Kobin glared at him, but he didn't have the energy to keep arguing. He pulled out the IVs with a wince, got to his feet and emerged into the hallway, blinking in the light.
"On the bright side, I think you just made Charlie's year with that drone," said Sam as they started towards ops.
"Yeah?" Kobin perked up. "At least one person on this damn plane appreciates me."
"How'd you get ahold of it?"
"Like I told you, pretty much. Somebody picked it up, sold it to somebody else, they gave it to this cargo guy to take on his regular route. Then Jakarta gets locked down and he's left sitting dockside with the Singapore harbor police crawling all over. And you don't even wanna know what they do to you here if you get caught with hardware. He was desperate to get it off his ship, had no idea what it was worth. I probably coulda talked him down to four."
"So there's a buyer out there who's not going to get his extremely expensive drone."
"Yup."
"He's going to be pretty unhappy when it's missing."
"I sure would be."
"This doesn't concern you?"
"Cargo guy's problem." A door slammed somewhere and Kobin winced. "Not feeling too sympathetic."
They entered the center of Paladin's long fuselage, full of long shadows and thin beams of light from the portholes high on the sides. The ops center at the core of it glowed in shades of white and green above the swamp of cables and equipment.
"Sorry for the delay," said Sam as he entered. Charlie and Briggs had already assembled around the SMI and Grim was standing at its head paging through her tablet. Behind him he heard Kobin stagger up onto the raised decking and immediately drop into one of the high-backed console chairs. "What've you got for us?"
"Novouralsk," said Grim. She pulled up a satellite image of the city and focused in on a cluster of buildings near its outskirts. "Specifically, a Red Army unit stationed there. The town is one of Russia's four uranium enrichment facilities and the headquarters of the company that makes its next-generation separation centrifuges. CIA thinks the army unit swapped out some of the new stock and they're about to sell it off to the highest bidder."
"Why isn't CIA handling this?" asked Charlie.
"The Russians are jumpy. Last thing we want to do is spook the hardliners," answered Sam. "We're deniable."
"More or less," said Grim. "They suspect about thirty centrifuges have been stolen. CIA doesn't know yet who's going to win the auction, but anyone with an interest in that equipment is someone we want to keep an eye on. They want us to sabotage them and plant trackers inside."
"Do we know where they're being held?" asked Briggs.
"They've been moved as far as the Ukrainian border crossing. CIA forwarded the site intel." Grim tapped the glowing surface of the SMI to bring up satellite images of a small base, a scatter of buildings next to a crude airstrip. "We're putting together infil routes now. Sam, there's a technical brief for you and Briggs on how to disable the centrifuges. I've already forwarded it to your terminals."
A careful sweep of Grim's hand dismissed the satellite images and brought up another map, this time a network of nodes labeled with the names of major banks. "Charlie, Kobin, you guys have another job to do. We need hard evidence of the money being transferred into the group's account."
"Why?" said Charlie.
"Because we can't kill a Red Army colonel on Russian soil," said Sam. "We need evidence that the State Department can wave in the Russians' faces to prove that they were being very bad men."
"So you're going to be getting it. Charlie, you'll hack whatever banks they use for the transfer," said Grim. She slid her graph of financial networks over to him and Charlie swept it up onto his own tablet. "Kobin," she said, turning to where he slouched in his chair with a glazed expression. At the sound of his name he refocused for a moment, looked up. "You know how to hide money. Once Charlie gets you in, it's your job to follow it."
Kobin nodded, but said nothing more.
"Alright," said Sam, standing up from the SMI. "Grim, Briggs, let's work out a ground plan. I assume we can't use Russian airstrips, so we'll have to set down in Ukraine." Grim nodded "How long till we get there?"
"Eight hours or so. I have Ollie finding us a hangar."
"Excellent."
"Where in Ukraine?" Everyone started slightly at the sound of Kobin's voice.
Grim recovered first. "Most likely Donetsk," she told him. "CIA thinks the centrifuges will cross the border there by convoy. Then they head south to Sevastopol and ship out."
She paused, waiting for a reply. But Kobin only nodded again and returned to whatever dazed prospect was unfolding in his head.
"Okay," said Grim after an awkward moment. "Any other questions? Then let's get to work."