Disclaimer: I do not own either of the Mission: Impossible series or any of the characters therein. I receive no compensation or any other tangible benefit from this story. I am just a fan who enjoys taking the team out for an adventure every now and then. 🙂
*****
Nicholas was watching the monitor intently when the free-hanging end of the large American flag rippled outward and something tumbled to the ground, causing two bystanders to topple as well. At about the same time, Jim, returning from his rendezvous with Arthur Six, opened the door.
Nicholas quickly glanced over his right shoulder at his team leader, then turned his gaze back to the monitor.
“Jim!” he exclaimed. “Something’s gone wrong.”
Jim followed Nicholas’ gaze as he closed the door behind him. Grant was lying unconscious between the two strangers. Jim cast a concerned glance at Nicholas, then looked back at the monitor.
The elevator door opened, and Arthur Six emerged, with Max at his side, just as the bystanders were getting shakily to their feet. But Grant remained still.
“Is he all right?” asked Shannon, approaching Grant at a rapid clip. A small crowd began to gather behind her, including Doyle.
Shannon kneeled down beside her teammate and laid her hand gently aside his neck. She was relieved to feel a weak but steady pulse. “He’s alive.”
Jim and Nicholas, looking on, also breathed a sigh of relief.
“Then he’s lucky,” said Six as he and Max stood looking down at the fallen agent. “Two-hundred twenty volts can be quite lethal.”
Doyle jerked down the flag and closed the open door to the small red safe.
“He’s obviously a pro,” Six reasoned.
“Oh, we’ll take care of this, Mister Six,” interjected Max, and he started to reach down and offer assistance to his teammate.
“Yeah, not yet.” Six stopped him. “I want to see what he’s been looking for.”
The journalist knelt down beside Grant, who was still unconscious.
“Hey!” he exclaimed, gripping Grant’s chin and shaking it, then slapping his cheek hard and shaking his chin some more. “Hey! What are you looking for in the safe?”
“Not now, he needs medical treatment,” urged Shannon.
“He’s a thief. He’ll be treated like a thief,” Six vowed. He slapped Grant’s cheek hard a second time, and the Black agent winced and groaned as he began to come around.
Max gazed at Shannon. His blue eyes, normally bright and sparkling, were now dark and piercing. His jaw was set, and his mouth drawn into a thin line. He lowered his gaze back to his teammate and the corrupt journalist, as Six continued his interrogation.
"What are you looking for?”
“I wasn’t taking anything out,” Grant answered weakly, as he moved his left hand across his chest. “I was trying to put something in.”
Six snatched the manila envelope from the Black agent’s grasp and stood up quickly. He moved to an area halfway between the chaos and the gathering crowd, then ripped open the flap and extracted its contents as Doyle approached him.
Shannon stood still, her back toward the journalist, arms initially crossed but then raising one hand to rest beneath her chin. Max glared at Six and Doyle, a slight satisfied smile tipping one corner of his lips as he watched them realize just what they were holding.
Six looked up at Doyle, a look of disgust on his face. “Get him out of here,” he ordered.
“Don’t you want to at least take him down…?” Doyle began.
“Out!” Six interrupted sternly. “Do it. Now.” He began walking towards the crowd. “All right, come on,” he said to them. “The show’s over. Get out.”
Doyle turned toward Max, eager to pass the order further down the chain. “Get him out!”
Shannon watched as Max carefully lifted Grant to his feet, his strong arm around his teammate’s waist. The Black agent slung his right arm around Max’s broad shoulders, and the two men made their way toward the team’s command post in the back room of Shannon’s flower shop.
Nicholas and Jim, still watching everything unfold on the monitor, exchanged glances. Jim sighed heavily, while Nicholas pensively raised one hand to his lips.
*****
The rear door to Shannon’s studio was ajar, and Nicholas was peeping out of it as Max and Grant approached. The dark-haired agent opened the door just wide enough for the two men to walk inside -- Grant moving mostly under his own power, but with an arm still slung around Max’s shoulders for support.
As they entered, Grant tried to pull his arm free, but Max was holding on tightly.
“Come on, Max, I told you, I’m fine,” the Black agent said in mild protest.
Max let out a loud, “Humph!” as he led Grant to a nearby chair and lowered him gently into it.
A moment later, Shannon also arrived, and as she and Jim anxiously gathered around Grant, the blond agent moved inconspicuously to the other side of the room. It was just as well, he thought to himself, still seething at the way Six had treated his friend. He didn’t really trust his voice to talk to anyone, right now.
Nicholas was watching Six and Doyle on the monitor while listening intently as Grant recounted what had happened with the safe. He cast a thoughtful glance toward Max, who was pretending to busy himself with the camera he would be using later, but said nothing.
Suddenly, a new activity caught his eye. “Jim,” he said, and the other four team members gathered around the monitor. Senator Oxenford was giving a statement to the media regarding the upcoming committee vote.
“Well, the senator’s done a good job, but he’s still not sure his committee will back him up,” Jim deduced, turning off the monitor. “It’s time we had a talk.” Jim glanced at his watch, then turned to his teammate.
“Grant, how are you doing?”
Grant sighed and managed a smile. “For a guy who feels like he just went ten rounds with Mike Tyson, terrific,” he quipped, putting his ball cap back on.
“Is Six on his usual schedule?” Jim asked Shannon, who smiled at the Black agent before nodding in response.
"Should be having drinks at La Francois.”
“Then if we’re gonna find the hidden file,” Jim advised, “I think it’s time we turned up the heat.”
*****
With that, the team moved into position for the next stage of the mission. Nicholas was the first to exit, heading for the men’s room to don a suit and prepare to meet Six and Doyle at La Francois. Max threw on his own suit coat and followed him out. Shannon was close behind, as she, too, prepared to make an appearance at the upscale café. Jim and Grant remained at the command post.
Before Shannon could dart into the ladies’ room, she caught sight of Max, lingering hesitantly near the doorway that would lead him back out into Arthur Six’ territory. Mildly concerned, she walked over to him.
“Max?” she called softly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Max growled hastily. But there was something about his tone that caught Shannon’s intuitive attention. She reached out and caught his arm.
“You sound angry,” she observed carefully. Then, she suddenly remembered the look on Max’s face when they were gathered at the electrified safe. “At Arthur Six, I imagine,” she ventured.
“He shouldn’t have smacked Grant around like that,” Max muttered in confirmation. “I’d like to smack him around a few times.”
Shannon squeezed Max’s arm, smiling to herself at her friend’s protectiveness. “Take it easy, Max,” she said softly, meeting his eyes with her own. “Grant’s fine. And remember, we still need you undercover.”
She’s right, Max realized, as he considered the next role he would be playing – a role that would be next to impossible without his cover as a security guard.
He nodded. “I’d better go make an appearance before I’m missed,” he reasoned.
But Shannon was still holding tightly to his arm. She squeezed once again, and Max finally met her eyes. “We’re going to nail him,” she promised.
Max gave his friend a sideways hug. “Thanks, Shannon,” he smiled. Then the two agents went their separate ways.
*****
At precisely ten-thirty the next morning, Nicholas was watching as Doyle descended the stairs to the bottom floor of the parking garage, briefcase in hand. He paused at the bottom of the steps, fifty feet away from the dark-haired agent. The two men watched as a car drove by and then disappeared.
“Bring the money,” Nicholas said by way of greeting, as he and Doyle began to walk toward one another, the clicking of their dress shoes against the concrete echoing loudly in their ears.
Max, camera in hand, watched the meeting unfold from his hiding place behind a parked car.
Nicholas stopped beside a large blue sedan – a predetermined landmark that he knew would be in Max’s camera range. At twenty-five feet away, Doyle also came to a stop.
“Closer,” Nicholas urged, knowing that the angle wasn’t right just yet.
At six feet away, Doyle stopped a second time, extending his briefcase out in front of him.
“On the ground.”
Six’s blond associate set his briefcase on the ground as commanded and opened it, turning his palms up in front of him, as if to confirm that the money was in the case.
Nicholas cast a quick glance toward Max, who, unseen by Doyle, was snapping photographs in rapid succession. Then he looked back toward Doyle, watching as the blond retrieved a small handgun from the open briefcase and fired a shot.
Nicholas grunted and grabbed his chest, leaning backward and then forward, as Max continued to photograph. A second shot landed near the first, and Nicholas cried out and fell to the ground.
Doyle took one step forward, and Nicholas heard him pull back the hammer for a third shot. Not daring to open his eyes, Nicholas felt his heart come up in his throat. He couldn’t see where Doyle was aiming the gun, but he was willing to bet that this next bullet wouldn’t strike the vest.
Max, watching things unfold from his crouching position a few yards away, was struck by the same thought. Instinctively, he stood up and quickly yelled, “Hey!”
Startled, Doyle looked in the direction from which he’d heard the voice, and saw the bodyguard looking back at him from the other side of a parked car. As Max ran towards him, he abandoned his plans. Gun still in hand, Doyle sprinted toward the stairs, leaving Nicholas spread out on the concrete.
Max slowed his pace as he approached his teammate, watching Doyle disappear from sight. Then he reached down and grasped Nicholas’ right arm.
“He’s gone,” Max assured his friend, as he helped the shorter man to his feet.
Nicholas sighed heavily. “I should think so,” he answered, slightly breathless.
The blond agent chuckled and thumped Nicholas’ shoulder fondly. Nicholas returned his grin, and together they walked toward the team’s black sedan.
As Nicholas slid into the passenger seat, the close call from moments before was still heavy on his mind. “Thanks for the save back there,” he said sincerely.
Max started the car, then grinned at his teammate. “I couldn’t just let him shoot you in the head,” he quipped, deflecting the tension with humor in his typical fashion. “That would have been messy.”
Nicholas chuckled softly, and the two men headed back to the command post to prepare for the Patriot’s Ball.
The End.
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