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. 🙂
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Nemesis Chapter 41
The team spent most of the next morning at the hospital, waiting as Grant was released and Shannon was transitioned from the critical care unit to a private room. Once Shannon was settled, her four teammates paid her a visit. Nicholas, wearing headphones, sat quietly in one corner of the room, listening to the receiver monitoring the wiretap that he and Max had installed on Christie's telephone.
It was the first time in four days that all five of them had been together - the first time that Shannon had been able to hear what had actually happened to the other three agents. Nicholas and the others had purposely kept the information from her; they wanted to wait until she was stronger, until she could see for herself that everyone was all right despite what they'd been through.
Even so, Shannon found her eyes filling with tears as she listened to what had happened to her three teammates.
"We were so lucky," she breathed. "We all could have died."
"Don't I know it," echoed Grant, squeezing her hand in comfort and shooting a look of gratitude toward Max. Max just smiled.
"But you are going to finish the mission, right?" Shannon asked, her gaze settling first on Nicholas, then Jim.
Jim and Nicholas exchanged knowing glances. Despite her obvious concern for everyone's safety, Shannon clearly felt the same way as the rest of them.
"Oh, Christie is going to get what's coming to him, there's no doubt about that," Jim promised.
Suddenly, Nicholas held up his hand for silence. "Shhh, guys," he said tensely, as he jerked the headphones out of the jack so that the others could hear. "Christie's making a call."
Nicholas jotted down the outgoing telephone number that was displayed and gave it to Grant, who entered it into the IMF laptop as everyone listened in.
"Yeah, I want to place an order," growled Christie once the voice on the other end answered. Then, as the team listened, Christie rattled off a list of ingredients that could only be the precursors to the manufacture of cocaine. Then they listened as Christie gave the address where the order was to be delivered just before sunset that night. It was the gray warehouse.
Once Christie broke off the connection, he quickly made a second call to a different number, where he ordered several hundred bags obviously intended for packaging rice in bulk, to be delivered to the warehouse in an hour. Again, Nicholas wrote down the outgoing telephone number and handed it to Grant.
Within a few moments after the second call ended, Grant had traced both telephone numbers in the IMF database and had addresses for both suppliers.
"So what now, Jim?" Shannon wanted to know.
"We can't let Christie get his hands on those materials," Jim vowed, "and we must make sure the rice gets packaged before he can interfere, so it can be distributed to the villagers who need it. So we're going to mess with his timeline."
His teammates nodded, and then they set about formulating their plan.
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(c) 2016
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