The Archer

Three days after their initial meeting, Carl Travers thought he might like to kill each one of these blokes in their sleep while on watch and slink away into the horizon. He'd be done with this whole disaster waiting to happen, and no one would ever be the wiser.

It was an idle thought, though, caused by the fact that they were all going a little stir crazy. The safe house Remy Bergeron mentioned upon their first meeting was simply a small cabin in the middle of nowhere. There were four bedrooms, each roughly the size of a matchbox, each with submarine-style bunks. They'd drawn straws for their beds. Carl had wound up sharing a room with Bergeron, the crazy Cajun who talked too fast.

Being cooped up with five other very active trained agents was not helping Carl's sanity. He was pretty sure he wasn't the only one.

That big Australian bastard with the explosives wouldn't stop blowing up the tree stumps behind the cabin or anything else he could get a hold of, for that matter. Carl was fairly certain it wasn't the captivity driving Brandt Everett insane, though. He seemed generally unstable regardless of the circumstances.

For the past two mornings, Carl woke to the sounds of small explosions followed by maniacal laughter and whoops of delight. Carl would jump up, gun at the ready, and hit his head on the top bunk without fail. It was a bit disconcerting, to say the least. And painful.

Carl was also slightly befuddled by the general tone of the group. He'd expected an atmosphere of reticence and suspicion, something befitting some of the most highly trained black ops agents in the world. But this had to be the most open, trusting, ridiculously good-natured group of spooks in the history of covert operations. With the possible exception of Thiago, who was still slightly suspicious of everyone and generally grouchy, they seemed to be trying to accept they were on the same side of this particular fight and become chummy.

Carl had never been chummy with anyone. He hadn't personally given a flying pigmy fuck about any of these blokes at first, either; he hadn't expected this assignment to last long enough to need to care. Now it was three days later, and he found himself not only wanting to kill each of them, but actually enjoying their company at the same time. It was an odd mixture of feelings, and Carl wasn't accustomed to the latter, but he didn't really care about that. What he did care about was the fact that not a fucking thing had been done yet, and despite his notorious sniper's patience, he was ready to get started. You couldn't finish something until you got started.

He allowed himself to grumble this particular observation as he prowled back and forth in front of the fireplace, thinking he would simply implode if he didn't start to feel useful soon. The others sat in various stages of relaxation, ranging from Everett leaning forward on the edge of his seat looking ready to set fire to anything that moved to Bergeron sprawled along the sofa with his eyes closed. Carl glared at the younger man as he made a pass by the stone fireplace and snorted like a bull preparing to charge.

"Calm down, lad," Bennett said in his soothingly gruff voice.

"Don't 'lad' me," Carl grumbled testily. "What are we waiting for?" he demanded

"Weapons. Communications. Mobility. Intelligence - "

"Remy."

Bennett's stern admonition cut off Bergeron's droning monologue. The younger man never even opened his eyes as he spoke, simply ticking off his words with long, slender fingers as he reclined.

Shawn Bennett's piercing green eyes pinned Carl with a hard stare, and Carl stopped his pacing short as Bennett began to speak calmly. "We don't know one another, Mr. Travers," he said in a low, soothing voice, the type usually reserved for small children and irate animals. "We have no idea how we'll operate as a team or even if we'll operate as a team. We have very little information to go on at the moment regarding our target, and even if we knew exactly where he was or what he was doing, going after him in the state of disarray in which we find ourselves at the moment would be suicidal."

Bennett looked at them each carefully as he spoke, as if he were making sure that his words were sinking in, and Carl's ire began to noticeably ebb. His shoulders slumped, and he sat down heavily on the hearth as Bennett continued speaking.

"The next two weeks should be considered a crash course for us all in how to work as a team. I know the other Classes are more accustomed to working in groups, Mr. Travers, but I for one have never done something even remotely similar to this mission."

"Is that why we were told to meet way the fuck out here?" Everett asked curiously.

"If by 'here' you mean in the middle of North Dakota where no one can hear you and your explosives," Bennett drawled with a smirk, "then yes, I would assume so. We're free to train out here without much chance of showing up on anyone's radar."

"How much more do you know about this situation than the rest of us do?" Thiago asked, leaning forward and unconsciously mimicking Everett's stance. Bennett looked at him blankly for several tense moments before responding.

"Well, that's difficult to say, isn't it?" he finally answered with infuriating calm.

Thiago harrumphed unhappily and leaned back into his chair. Bennett looked back up at Carl and continued as if he had never been interrupted.

"Now this Archer bloke isn't going anywhere in two weeks, and in all honesty, we all know whatever damage he can do has long since been under way. And all that's not to mention the fact that our mobile hub isn't even up yet."

"Uhhh - "

All eyes turned to settle on the German, Nikolaus Faust, who shifted uncomfortably under their collective gaze and cleared his throat. "The hub is up, actually," he said in clipped, precise tones. "Prepared for a test run whenever you are all ready."

Bergeron sat up suddenly and looked at the smaller man with interest. Carl watched him curiously and alarm bells began to sound in his head. Why, he wasn't quite sure yet. Something about the meerkat-like way the man moved. "What sort of test?" Bergeron asked with what Carl thought was undue enthusiasm.

Carl had always heard Class One agents were generally fucked in the head. Whether this condition was due to the stress of their job or to a trait with which most of them were born, Carl didn't know, but he hoped the rumors were exaggerated. He'd never had to deal with any of them for any extended period of time. Only one or two hour stints in the past, and then he'd been concentrating on his job, not his companions. If these three turned out to be half as mad as they were rumored to be, Carl could see himself having a hard time of it. Not to mention that Remy Bergeron seemed to be a bit of a livewire and Thiago the mysterious Argentinean was a sulky bastard. He had yet to find a fault with Shawn Bennett, unless you considered the ability to intimidate five men - all of whom were either bigger, younger, or both - a fault.

"Well, the easiest thing to do would be to take the radios out into the woods and - you know - test them," Faust said in response to Bergeron's query with apparent discomfort. Carl snorted in amusement. Of course it was that simple. Just - test them.

"That's it? Like they're fucking walkie talkies or some shit?" Everett asked incredulously.

"High tech doesn't always mean complicated," Faust replied defensively.

"Well, itâ's something," Carl said in exasperation. "Let's get to it."

"Now?" Faust asked in surprise.
"Why not? Have we got anything better to do?" Carl asked snappishly.

"Well," the German responded uncertainly, looking at Bennett first as if for permission to answer. "No, I suppose not."

"Good," Bergeron said as he unfolded himself gracefully from the couch and stood, stretching his arms to the ceiling. "This couch is chafing my ass end."

He winked at Carl as if to say he understood the need to get up and do something, anything, and Carl found himself reconsidering his opinion of the younger man. Being a livewire wasn't always a bad thing, especially if you could contain it well.

If the young Cajun felt half as antsy as Carl did, then he had an impressive amount of self-control. Perhaps that was why the kid was a field operative and Carl was a weapons specialist. In the field, they had to remain calm under any circumstances. Carl's duties allowed a little more temper to enter the picture. A flash of memory involving beating on a land-to-air missile launcher with an oversized monkey wrench accompanied Carl's thoughts, and he had to bite his lip to keep from grinning as the little group disbanded to gather equipment.

After almost an hour of what Carl thought was entirely too much discussion on the subject, they finally geared up for a little nature hike.

"We'll go in pairs," Bennett said as he tied a knife to his thigh. Carl listened to his orders respectfully, thinking it did the man credit that a group of headstrong warriors such as they were automatically accepted him as their leader. Even Thiago, who seemed a bit reluctant to head blindly into much of anything, hadn't questioned Shawn Bennett's authority.

Carl wanted to question that authority now, though, because Bennett had just told him to partner up with Everett and head off into the wild unknown. Carl gave the Australian a wary glance and a nod. The big man returned Carl's nod with a slightly snaggletoothed grin that made his eyes sparkle mischievously, and Carl wondered if it were too late to become a religious man.

In Carl's experience, some people were crazy, and you weren't aware of it until they opened their mouths to speak or tried to kill you. But some people were crazy and you could tell just by looking in their eyes. Brandt Everett's eyes fairly gleamed. Whether it was madness or something else, Carl wasn't yet certain. He almost hoped that it was madness, plain and simple. Madness he thought he could deal with.

"Nikolaus, you'll go with Remy," Bennett said. The two young men gave each other unreadable glances, and then Bergeron looked back at Bennett with a look that could only be described as familiar. Carl found himself wondering yet again about their relationship. He'd never heard of two Class One operatives being acquaintances, much less friends.

It was obvious just from the sour look on his face that Thiago wondered the same thing and didn't like the situation one bit. But Carl reckoned it was none of his affair until his life was on the line. Even if these two blokes shagged each other senseless every chance they got, he didn't see how that really affected him.

Carl shrugged into his coat and took the earpiece Faust offered him. "We're on one," the smaller man said as he turned each receiver to the correct frequency and handed them out."On we go then," he said, placing his own piece in his ear and heading for the door. Carl watched the smaller man with interest. He seemed nervous and a little shifty most of the time, but at other times he seemed cool and confident. It was a strange thing to observe.

Carl didn't know much about the different Classes of agent, but he knew each and every one of them had to pass rigorous tests, both physical and mental, every three months. Nikolaus Faust may be a glorified computer tech in many respects, but he was still a trained agent, Carl reminded himself.

Their plan was simple enough; just a little hike through the woods to make sure the comms worked. Regardless of simplicity, each of them went out armed. Carl and Everett were ordered to go west, Bergeron and Faust were ordered to go east, and Bennett and Thiago set out to the north.

"Go one kilometer," Bennett ordered as they stood in what Carl had come to think of as the courtyard, the area in front of the porch trampled to mere dirt. "Don't shut off unless you give us some forewarning." They all acknowledged the order and set off walking in their various directions.

"If you see dinner, don't be afraid to bring it back with you," Thiago added quietly, speaking through the comm unit.

"Dinner?" Carl heard Faust murmur questioningly.

"This should be interesting," Carl muttered to Everett as he tapped his earpiece and they headed west together.

"I think he means small, innocent, fuzzy creatures," Bergeron's voice supplied gleefully in Carl's ear. "Leave dem bunnies alone, couyon," the Cajun chastised, his accent deepening as he allowed himself to grow comfortable in the outdoors. It was apparently his natural habitat. "Go for them mean critters," Bergeron advised. "My maw maw used to walk into the bayou, whack a caimon with a wooden spoon, and make us skin him for dinner."

"Caimon?" Faust echoed questioningly, his voice tinged with dread as if he thought he didn't want to know the answer.

"Alligator," Bennett voice supplied with amusement. Carl idly wondered why Bennett would know that so readily.

"Gator's mighty tasty, couyon," Bergeron crooned.

"Stick with the bunny, lad, they don't bite as hard. You like bunny, young Nikolaus?" Bennett's gruff voice questioned teasingly.

Carl and Everett shared a look and kept walking, trying to drown out the other two conversations and concentrate on getting to know one another as they walked. They spoke idly about their own specialties for roughly half a kilometer, and Carl began to genuinely worry about Brandt Everett's sanity as the man joyously recounted many of the various things he'd blown up in the past.

At least he enjoyed his work.

As a Class Four operative, Carl Travers's job was to provide and operate the various armaments available, either for a group operation or working on his own. While all operatives were entirely capable of handling weapons of any sort, Carl was more than merely competent. He knew almost everything there was to know about almost every weapon ever created. He could just as easily work a medieval catapult as he could Darth Vader's Death Ray, if the occasion called for it.

As a Class Seven operative, Brandt Everett served much the same purpose. But instead of wielding guns or knives or whatnot, Everett blew shit up. Carl knew the basics about explosives. Carl had limited experience with C4 and nitroglycerine and dynamite, but Everett could probably blow up their cabin with a coffee mug and a pinch of salt if he felt so inclined.

Just the thought of what Everett may or may not be inclined to blow up made Carl shiver as they walked. They came to a stop as the path they followed forked, and they stood in the middle of the path listening to the chatter of the other four men. Bergeron and Faust were arguing over whether the tree they were walking past was an oak, and Thiago seemed to be trying to coax Bennett into telling him more about how he'd met the young Cajun. Carl blinked at the two paths and looked at Everett as the man began to hum slightly.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," Everett murmured to himself. Carl cocked his head at him in concern, and Everett glanced over at him. Carl had to force himself not to retreat under the gleam in the large man's black eyes. He watched Everett's gaze slowly return to the fork in the road with growing concern. "And I," the Australian continued in a theatrical voice. "I took the one less traveled by - and I blew the other one all to Hell."

Carl heard the other two conversations grind to a halt, and the silence in his ears was tense and expectant as Everett looked at him again. He could just imagine the other four men standing frozen in the middle of the woods, listening intently for an explosion.

"Robert Frost," Everett offered before setting out once more and veering off toward the tree line. He stooped to pick up a pinecone as Carl took a cautious step forward.

"I'm not sure that's exactly how it goes," Carl offered carefully. Everett responded with a joyous laugh.

"It's how it goes in my world," he called over his shoulder. He tossed the pinecone in the air and caught it again. Carl followed him slowly, wondering just how far gone this bloke really was. Everett turned suddenly, and Carl tensed, expecting a blow."Did you know that pinecones are explosive?"

"What?" Carl asked warily, not sure he'd heard correctly and almost hoping he hadn't.

"Yep," Everett went on, oblivious to the discomfort he was causing his companion. "You have to get them before they seed, of course," he said, holding up the sticky cone as an example. Carl could see that it had yet to open up and was covered in goo. "The pitch is flammable, you see. Add a little flame and bam!" Everett informed him with a delighted flurry of hand movements.

Carl knew he was gaping at the other man, but he simply couldn't help it. In his ear he heard Thiago asking Bennett if he was hearing correctly, as well as an amusing dialogue between Faust and Bergeron.

"Did he say pinecones?" Faust asked.

"I think so," Bergeron answered. "Seems like I heard about that before - never had need of using it, though. Thank God. Fucking pyromaniac. Crazier'n a male crab, that one."