Work Text:
“What’s cooking, good lookin’?” Jack asked Matty as he and Mac entered the war room.
Matty merely raised an eyebrow, suggesting she was in an unusually good mood. “This is Kieth Hansolov, up and coming tyrant in Ptuj. Intel says he’s taken possession of a new weapon he intends to use to consolidate his power.”
“Biological or chemical?” Mac asked.
“Unclear.”
“So the intel ain’t really intel. It’s a guess, a rumor, and we’re going in blind,” Jack concluded.
“I’m not going to tell you that I have a full picture when I don’t. You two would be going in to verify the intel, primarily, and secondarily to neutralize or recover whatever the weapon is before it gets used on any civilians. The thinness of the file is also why I’m keeping Riley and Bozer here.”
Mac nodded. “This is definitely not a mission for junior agents, though I doubt either of them would appreciate anyone saying so.”
📎
Mac opened the door at the end of the hallway. “No, oh no. No, no, no!” Mac declared, slamming the door shut. He stumbled back so fast, he ran into Jack.
Jack steadied him. “Biological or chemical?” Jack asked. The question was the reason he’d let Mac get even an arm’s length ahead of him in enemy territory.
“Biological. Definitely biological,” Mac answered, a little breathless.
“Man, I hate biologics.”
“It’s, uh, not a biologic.”
“You just said it was biological. What do you mean it ain’t a biologic?” They both jumped as something heavy thudded against the other side of the door. “The hell was that?” Jack demanded. The scraping at the door was straight out of a horror movie, too.
“Panthera leo,” Mac answered.
“They got a panther in there?”
“I wish. They’ve got a lion in there. One they don’t seem to be feeding anything but political dissent, based on what I saw of its ribs.”
“Holy mother of Texas,” Jack breathed. “OK, so good news, it ain’t a biologic, or nerve agent, or nothing. Bad news is, we ain’t going to be able to just recover it and bail. Even if we get Leo there out of here somehow, a lion’s way easier to replace than some exotic chemical or biological weapon.”
Mac nodded. “And how are we getting your new best friend Leo out, even if we wanted to? I don’t think ‘here kitty kitty’ works on pantherinae the way it does on felinae. I could probably whip up a tranquilizer but then how are we hauling upwards of 125kg of unconscious lion anywhere?”
“I can’t believe this word’s about to come out of my mouth, but I think we gotta abort, get back to the safe house, and regroup with the team.”
📎
“Yo, Matty,” Jack greeted her once he and Mac were safely out of Hansolov’s mansion.
“What did you do now, Dalton?”
“Me? Why do you gotta go assumin’ I done something? I – well, we; the wonder kid–”
“Wunderkind,” Mac muttered beside him, on cue.
“–found it – found this wannabe’s new toy.”
“Biological, chemical, or conventional?”
“Biblical, I think,” Jack answered. “Dude’s got a friggin’ lion chained up in one of the rooms.”
“Not chained up,” Mac corrected. “Just, uh, contained in that room with whoever they shove in and lock the door behind.”
“Well, that’s just lovely.”
“We’ve pulled back to regroup, but what do you want us to do here? We kill or rescue the poor thing, he’ll just replace it. We take Hansolov out, some deputy or rival steps in. We’re short-handed to rip out a whole local government, even if it's rogue.”
“The plan was to get proof of the plan to attack civilians and publicize it, forcing the federal government of Slovenia, Interpol, or the United Nations to step in and clean house. Riley, did you get into the network?”
“Yeah, once Mac’s and Jack’s phones connected, it gave me a path in. Where are they keeping this lion?”
Mac explained where in the building they’d found the lion.
“OK,” Matty said, “here’s what we’ll do. Riley, I want you to see if you can produce evidence that the lion is being fed dissidents, or otherwise used to terrorize opposition. Blondie, Dalton, get some rest. We’ll revisit the decision in the morning and see if we need to send you two back in to gather evidence and what the best angle for that is, or if we have a case to bring to authorities based on what you’ve discovered from your initial visit.”
“Copy that; Snakebite out.”
📎
Mac and Jack went through their usual post-action but not post-mission evening power-down routines, needing to relax enough to sleep without letting their guards down completely. “I’ll take the first watch,” Jack declared.
“If you promise you will actually wake me,” Mac said, like he wasn’t going to set an alarm. Jack had a bad habit of “losing track of time” when he took first watch and not waking Mac for his turn.
“We’ll see,” Jack answered, unrepentant.
Mac didn’t fall asleep particularly quickly, which wasn’t unusual for him.
“I definitely ain’t waking ya, if ya haven’t slept in the first place,” Jack pointed out. Mac raised a lazy hand in a one finger salute. Jack chuckled.
After a couple minutes he started to hum. “🎶 In the jungle, the mighty jungle–🎶”
“🎶 The lion never slept any night,🎶 because that's not its natural habitat. We teach generations of children bad science,” Mac complained.
“No lions in jungles? How’d they get to be King of the Jungle, then?” Jack asked. Science rabbit holes could get Mac settled enough to sleep, too.
“The going theory is that modern English got the word ‘jungle’ from a Hindi word that means empty land, devoid of humans. Savanna, steppes, the sort of places Indian lions live, so British colonialism on the subcontinent picked up the word, and the association. The meaning of the English word has migrated over the centuries since, but the association hasn’t.”