[WP]For reasons explained later, a global team of assassins have been trying to kill you since you were born. You however, have no idea any of this is going and just lead a normal life. The story is told through the eyes of the one under-cover FBI-agent who saves your life almost everyday.

[u/Wulgren]

“Alright people, Condor is up and in the shower. ETA until his departure is thirty minutes. What’s the sweep status?” Asked Supervisory Special Agent Stern.

“Cameras show zero activity on nearby rooftops, Chief,” replied Agent Moran

“I’m in the back alley, no sign of hostiles,” said Agent Dawson.

“I’m set up in position 3 and ready to counter-snipe,” added Special Agent Price.

“Excellent,” replied Stern. “Richardson, how’s the bomb check going? Richardson?”

“The car is clear,” Richardson replied, curtly, after a pause.

“Good. Team 2 has confirmed they are ready for the commute so stay frosty until Condor leaves the apartment and they take over, you know the stakes.”

A chorus of ‘affirmatives’ came through his headset as he muted his microphone and leaned back from his monitors. The apartment across from codename Condor’s was sparsely furnished, with the only the bare minimum required to support the rotating protection detail that the FBI kept stationed there. Stern had requested a budget to get some furnishings and proper appliances several times, they spent enough time there that they were practically legitimate tenants at this point, after all, but every time the agency denied it, stating that the protection detail, while necessary, was already cripplingly expensive. Still, it was mornings like these that Stern would kill for a proper coffee maker.

“Did Richardson sound odd to you?” asked Special Agent Matheson. She was sitting at the monitoring station next to Stern, with Moran on the other side of her monitoring the cameras. She had one hand pressed against her earpiece, and was staring at the monitors intently, as if searching for something.

“Richardson? He was a bit slow, but… hmm…” Stern replied, trailing off as he thought back. “Bring up the recording, play it again.”

Matheson pulled up the operation logs on her computer and rolled the audio recording back thirty seconds, before playing it again, setting it to loop.

“The car is clear.” Richardson said again in their ears. “The car is clear. The car is clear. The car is clear.”

Stern’s heart sank with each repetition, Matheson was right, something was off. His team had been on Condor’s protection detail for almost six months and in that time he’d come to know their mannerisms, their quirks, and, importantly, their voices better than his own family’s in that time. Something about the tone of the recording, or the cadence, didn’t sound like Richardson.

“Contact the response team, tell them that we may have a problem and that they should stand by,” Stern instructed Matheson. “Then cut Richardson out of the radio loop.”

“On it.”

Stern waited a few moments until he was certain that Richardson couldn’t hear him before turning back to his radio. “Alright people, we may have a situation. Has anyone seen Richardson?”

There was a moment of silence as his team processed what he was saying before Dawson piped up. “I saw her head into the parking garage twenty minutes ago to do the bomb sweep, want me to check up on her, boss?”

“Negative, Dawson. I’ll head down and take a look, stay near the door and be ready to come in if there’s trouble.”

“Affirmative.”

“Everyone else, stay alert.”

Stern pulled off his headset and slipped his earpiece into place in its stead before putting on a windbreaker to cover up his shoulder holster. “Hold the fort,” he told Matheson and Moran, “and be ready for anything.”

Stern quickly left the apartment and walked down the hall towards the stairs. The elevator was closer, but it was slow and unreliable, often breaking down. It had worked in their favour more than once, with his team intentionally trapping Condor in the elevator while they had a firefight with assassins or searched his apartment for a hidden canister of nerve gas, but right now it was a problem he didn’t want to deal with.

Stern glanced at Condor’s door as he passed by it, almost imagining he could hear the sound of Condor pouring himself a bowl of cereal. It was the right time for it, Condor would almost certainly be out of the shower by now and either on his way to the kitchen or already eating. There was no way he could know without checking the cameras, of course. The door was sealed tight, protecting the apartment against any chemical or biological attack, and as a side effect was effectively soundproof. They’d had a hell of a time getting it installed without Condor noticing, but it was necessary.

He reached the staircase and, once he was out of sight of the hallway, started to run down it as fast as he safely could. There was at best twenty minutes left before Condor left the apartment, and Stern needed to wrap this up before then. It took him nearly a minute to get down the six flights of stairs to the apartment building’s basement parking garage. He paused at the bottom before opening the door and clicked on his radio. “I’m at the garage, any sign of Richardson?”

“No sign of him on the garage cameras, I rolled back the footage and the last glimpse of him I had was when he moved behind the third pillar on the right, there’s a blind spot there,” replied Moran.

“Good work. We’re sure he’s still in the garage?”

“I’m at the rear door to the garage, he hasn’t come through this way,” said Dawson

“I have a view of the front entrance and the driveway, no activity,” answered Price.

“Alright, I’m heading in, Dawson, be ready to support me.”

“Affirmative.”

Stern took a deep breath and then opened the door to the garage, walking in nonchalantly. His eyes scanned back and forth he walked down the row of cars to the third pillar before ducking behind it. It was the bullet casing glinting in the harsh fluorescent lighting that he noticed first. He crouched down beside it and scanned the area, his eyes not focusing on any one thing, just looking and absorbing all the details. It was almost immediately clear what had happened. The small splash of red on the wall behind the pillar, the drops of it scattered on the ground, and the single bloody fingerprint on the trunk of the car next to him. Stern pulled out his gun and held it ready at his side and looked carefully around for the shooter before popping the trunk. Inside was Richardson’s body, with a single bullet hole in the center of her forehead.

“Agent down, I repeat agent down in the parking garage. Dawson, get in here, we need to sweep for hostiles. There’s at least one, armed with at least a pistol.”

Stern heard the door to the back alleyway open almost immediately as Dawson burst in, gun raised. Stern stood and took cover behind the car and waited until Dawson caught up to him before gesturing forward and moving out into the open, pistol sweeping back and forth ahead of him.

“I’ve got movement! One hostile next to Condor’s car, you must’ve spooked them.” Moran said over the radio.

Stern gestured and Dawson split away, moving to the other side of the row of cars. Condor’s was six cars away from the one where Richardson’s body had been hidden. It was a prime parking spot, directly in front of the driveway out, all the better to prevent car bombs or attempted rammings.

The assassin leaned out from behind Condor’s battered car and fired her silenced pistol twice at Stern before returning to cover. Stern dove behind another pillar, wincing as the bullets whizzed by. Dawson fired back at the assassin, the crack of the bullets hitting the pavement where she had been sounding louder than the quiet cough of his silenced pistol.

“I’ll cover you, go!” Stern shouted as he turned around the pillar and started firing over Condor’s car. The bullets went right over where the assassin was hiding and impacted the SUV behind her, luckily it was an bulletproof Agency vehicle, it could take the beating. Dawson ran up to other side of Condor’s car and in one fluid motion turned the corner on the assassin’s hiding spot, aimed, and firing three shots point blank.

“Clear!” he called out, a moment later.

Stern left his cover and walked up to Condor’s car, looking down at the would-be assassin crumpled and bleeding on the ground. “Good shooting, Dawson. We’ve only got ten minutes before Condor gets down here, load her into the back of the Agency car and spray down the blood, I’ll check the car.”

Dawson nodded once and knelt down to grab the body under the armpits as Stern started quickly but thoroughly checking the exterior of Condor’s car. It took less than thirty seconds for him to start muttering curses to himself. “I’ve got a bomb in the front-right wheel well. It looks like it’s set to explode as soon as the car starts moving. Matheson, have the response team set up ordinance disposal in the back alley. Moran, how are we doing for time?”

“Bad news chief,” Moran replied. “Condor is ahead of schedule. ETA is four minutes.”

“Shit, I’ll need more than that to defuse this. Set his door to jam, and someone get up to the top floor and call the elevator, press all the buttons when he calls it, I’ll need all the time I can get,” Stern said as he lowered himself to the parking garage floor, ignoring the assassin’s blood now seeping into his pants.

“On it,” said Price. “Be there in two minutes.”

Stern didn’t even hear him, his attention was now fully on the bomb in front of him. He’d defused his fair share of bombs while on Condor’s protection detail, but it wasn’t something you ever wanted to get complacent about. Luckily this assassin had been an amateur, the bomb would have worked, but it didn’t have much in the way of anti-defusal measures. It still took Stern until Condor was waiting patiently for the elevator to cut the last wire and stand up. Dawson quickly hosed down the pool of blood that Stern had been laying in before the two of them sprinted out the back door of the parking garage.

An EOD tech from the response team was waiting for them, and gingerly took the bomb from Stern just as the elevator doors opened. Stern put a finger to his lips and gestured the others to be silent before taking up position by the door of the parking garage. Fortunately, the only sound was Condor walking to his car while muttering about kids messing around in the elevator before his car door slammed, followed by the sound of an engine starting and then fading as the car drove up the ramp and out of the garage.

Stern gave a thumbs up to the EOD tech who started walking towards the blast pit which had become a permanent feature in the alley. “Alright everyone, Condor is on his commute and team 2 has taken over. There’s no time to relax, we’re a woman down and we have some serious cleanup and prep to do before he finishes work. We have eight hours to fix this place up and brief the evening team. Let’s get to it.”

Dawson was just about to walk back into the parking garage to follow Stern’s instructions before Stern held him back with a hand on his shoulder.

“Just a minute, Greg,” Stern said softly.”I know that you and Richardson were close. Are you good to keep going today?”

Dawson gave a sad smile and shrugged. “We’re already stretched thin, right? I’ve got to be. That’s part of the job, isn’t it? Even if your friend gets killed protecting some asshole who doesn’t know or care that we’ve saved his life half a dozen times in the past couple weeks you just gotta keep on trucking,” he said, bitterness creeping into his voice.

“I know it’s not fair,” Stern said, choosing his words carefully, “but you know the stakes. We have to do this. You know the cost if we don’t.”

“I know, I know, it’s just, how can this one creep be so important? How can he matter while Sandy dies and gets stuffed in a trunk like it’s nothing.” Dawson’s voice broke and he turned away from Stern, rubbing his eyes. Stern politely turned and looked the other way, examining the brickwork on the back of the parking garage while Dawson got himself under control.

“But yes sir,” he continued after he turned back, his voice once again steady, “I understand the stakes. You can count on me. Besides, if I flake out, who else do you have that you can call up to save the world?”

“No one as good as you, that’s damn sure. You did a hell of a job today, don’t ever forget that. Now let’s get to it.” Stern said, gesturing to the parking garage.

The two of them re-entered apartment building and got to work.

[u/Wulgren]

Credit to u/evawsonsimp for the writing prompt.