Journey into Darkness

Michael's eyes blinked open, then quickly closed again as the bright sunlight skewed his vision. *Damn it.* Double vision might be one of the more benign aftereffects of a fractured skull, but it was still aggravating as hell. His doctors had promised him that they would eventually figure out how to fix it. *Yeah.* They'd already done surgery. *Twice.* There were days when he was convinced they were simply using him as a lab rat. He dug the cloth patch out of his pocket and slipped it on.

He sat up, and looked over to where Caitlin was playing solitaire. “Good morning,” she said, the slightest of smiles curling her lips. “How'd you sleep?”

Michael glanced at his watch, confirming what the stiffness settled into his knee had already told him. It wasn't morning, it was nearly one o'clock. “Like a rock.” It was longer than he usually slept, and judging from the fact that she had got up and changed without waking him, he'd slept considerably more soundly.

“Good. I'm glad to hear it.”

He stretched his knee, working out the dull ache. The wooden bench he'd been sleeping on certainly wasn't helping it. He caught the concerned glance that Caitlin threw his way, and decided to ignore it. She was entirely too worried about him already. That attitude was likely to get her killed.

There had been a number of reasons why he had been reluctant to bring Caitlin into Cambodia. If asked, he would have said that she lacked the experience and training that his people had. In truth, at least a part of the reason was more personal. Michael felt he had already pulled Caitlin into too much danger, and he hated the idea of exposing her to even more.

If he hadn't chased after Maria, Hawke and Santini wouldn't have been forced to enlist Caitlin in his rescue. While she certainly suspected even before that, perhaps she wouldn't have managed to confirm Airwolf's existence. With luck, Hawke would never have allowed her near the Firm, and she could have remained blissfully unaware of the government agent who sent them off on missions in the name of the national good.

Michael gathered fresh clothing and went into the head to change. When he came back, there were cups waiting on the table. “Lue brought tea.” Caitlin sipped from her cup.

“You didn't have any trouble with him?”

She laughed. “No. He took one glance at this,” she raised the engagement ring, “and got out of here just as fast as he could.”

He chuckled with her. “It's truly amazing how effective a threat to one's manhood can be.” He grabbed a snack and sat down to enjoy the tea. Iced would have been better, but he wasn't about to complain. At least the weather wasn't as hot as the previous day. It was still too warm to be comfortable, but somewhat less oppressive than it had been. “So, are we playing poker today?”

Caitlin grinned. “I don't know. Do you feel like getting beat?”

“You can try.” Despite the bravado, he knew she might very well best him. It surprised him how good she was. Even with the Firm's training in picking up on non-verbal cues, it was nearly impossible for him to tell when she was bluffing. Upon further reflection, perhaps he should have expected it. Caitlin had found a creative but effective way of dealing with the security guard at LAX. She had reacted more quickly than some of his own agents might have responded in a similar situation. The kiss had been unexpected, but resourceful. It engendered a newfound respect for her.

Caitlin had changed since that trip into Germany. It was hard to believe it had only been two years. She had seemed so young then. Airwolf had stripped away much of her innocence. Whatever was left would be gone by the time they got home. *That was a damned shame.*

He knew what he was going to have to do to her, and he hated it. Caitlin would know everything before she got off the boat, she had to. She was someone who wouldn't think twice before doing something noble – and stupid. She had to know that some things and some people weren't worth that sort of sacrifice.

Thankfully, it wasn't time for that. Not today. He moved his cup out of the way. “So, are you going to deal?”

-*-
-*-

Time passed. Days blurred together as they moved slowly down the river, closer and closer to their goal. They played cards, and when it got too dark, they talked, sleeping as the first light of dawn touched the sky.

Caitlin sat quietly, watching Michael play solitaire. He had already told her that this would be their last night on the boat. As they neared the camp, Lue would drop anchor, and they would wait until it was nearly dawn. Just before sunrise, he would bring the boat to shore to drop them off. They would be on their own until Marella's Huey arrived.

She shivered, despite the heat. They had gone over the plan, and the equipment. Michael had stripped and cleaned the rifles, and had double-checked everything else. They were ready, at least as ready as they would ever be.

Absorbed in her own thoughts, she didn't realize that Michael had put the cards away until she looked up . He sat gazing out of the window into the setting sun, unusually pensive. “A penny for your thoughts,” she offered.

He didn't turn. “Nelson Fitzpatrick.”

“Who?”

“Major Nelson Fitzpatrick. Fitzi, to those who knew him.” Michael rose, and fetched water from the cooler. He raised the bottle, silently asking if Caitlin wanted one.

“No thanks.”

He returned, and sat back down. “Have you ever seen the movie 'Apocalypse Now'?”

“Yeah.” Since going to work at Santini Air, Caitlin had read about Viet Nam, and had watched every movie she found about the war. She wanted to understand String, and what he had gone through. “It was taken from a story by Joseph Conrad, wasn't it?”

“That's what Coppola claimed. I suppose it was, to an extent.” He turned sideways, looking out the window, and sipped from the bottle. “I don't know how Coppola found out about it, but Kurtz was loosely based on Fitzi. Fitzi went renegade. He never committed a quarter of the atrocities that Kurtz was credited with in the movie, but he did go into Cambodia and start his own war against Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.”

There was a connection. She was certain of it. “You knew him?”

“We went to college together.”

*And here they were, in Cambodia, on the Mekong.* No wonder Michael was thinking of his old acquaintance. “The Army killed him?”

Michael shook his head almost imperceptibly. "Assassination is outside of role of the military, even when it is one of their own. The government has another organization that takes care of such matters."

*The Firm.* Caitlin started to put the pieces together. "You tried to intervene?"

"No." He looked up sharply, meeting her gaze. "I'm the one they sent here to kill him."

Caitlin sat in stunned silence. Michael might be many things, but she never would have guessed that he might be a killer, at least not by that definition of the word. As she stared at him, he broke the eye contact and turned back toward the window.

It was growing dark. Caitlin lit a candle, shoving it towards the center of the table. She tried to find something to say, but she wasn't even sure what she was feeling. Silence stretched uncomfortably, broken when Lue came to the door with their dinner.

She watched while Michael talked to him. Her mind churned, logic conflicting with emotion. Logic told her that what Michael had done might have kept America from becoming embroiled in another conflict they couldn't possibly win. Emotion wasn't so sure. Assassination, whether sanctioned or not, was not so far removed from murder.

Who was this man she was about to follow into the jungle? A week ago, she had thought that she knew him. Now, she found she didn't really know him at all. She needed to understand what he had done, and why.

Lue departed, and Michael brought the food to the table. Caitlin picked at it, knowing she should eat, but no longer hungry. “Michael, I --” She wasn't sure how to continue.

"When I joined the Firm, they found out I was an expert marksman. They put me in the Zebra Squad. I was an assassin, Cait. What the mob would call a hit man. It just happened that I worked for the government and not the Mafia. I did it for almost five years, by the end of which, I was running the squad. I finally got out. I thought it was over. Three years later, they asked me to make one more kill." His voice was low, barely audible over the dull rumble of the boat's diesel. "Fitzi was no fool. He knew the Firm was after him, he moved his camp every other day. The first two men they sent never found him. That's when they came to me. I knew him well enough to have a pretty good idea how he thought. To anticipate what he would do and where he would go." He paused to finish the bottle of water.

“How accurate was the movie?” *Willard,* she remembered. *Captain Willard.* The officer they had sent after Kurtz had been almost as insane as his quarry.

“Not particularly. We took a PT boat up the river. The similarity essentially ended there. I imagine someone heard a rumor about Fitzi, and built the story around it. When I finally found him, his little group of guerrillas had a local man and his family tied to stakes. The wife was pregnant, and there were three small children. Fitzi claimed the man was a Khmer Rouge spy. He was about to shoot all of them as an example. I ended it, then and there. When I cut his family loose, Neang Choi told me that he was forever in my debt. I didn't think that meant much at the time."

"Choi?" Caitlin was certain she recognized the name.

"The reason we're here. Because of St. John, I've kept close tabs on this part of the world. I recognized Choi's name and photograph from a newspaper article about a year ago. It seems that he has risen to a position of some influence. Fitzi was right about one thing. Choi was with the Khmer Rouge. He still has connections. It took a bit of doing, but I got in touch of him and called in that debt. Choi came up with information on the camp, and he provided the boat and supplies. I figure we're even."

Caitlin rolled it around in her mind. Michael was an assassin, but in this case, the man he killed had been about to shoot an innocent woman and her children. There were too many factors here, too many angles. There was no simple answer, no clear cut wrong or right.

Michael's thoughts seemed to follow hers. "You know the worst part of it? Looking back, I'm not so sure Fitzi was wrong. If I had it to do over again, I might have stayed and fought beside him. His main target was the Khmer Rouge. If he had gotten to Pol Pot, perhaps the slaughter that happened here could have been avoided."

"He was killing innocents."

"So were they. And they killed a hell of a lot more than Fitzi ever did." He sighed deeply. "I want you to promise me something. If the rescue doesn't go according to plan tomorrow, if things start going bad... don't be a hero, Cait. Get your ass out and don't look back."

"Michael, I can't promise..."

"Caitlin, this isn't your world. Don't take this wrong, but you don't belong here. That's why I didn't want you to come. It never had anything to do with doubting your capabilities. So promise me that you're not going to try to do something noble and get yourself killed."

She finally nodded. "All right. If that's what you want." Caitlin felt the boat's movements slowing. Lue was shutting the diesel down. They would spend most of the night here. She finished her meal. *With luck, tomorrow she would be eating her dinner at the base in Manila.*

Michael collected the dishes. “You want to go out for awhile? Lue said it would be safe.”

For a moment, she considered it. “No, I don't think so. I think I'll catch a nap. Dawn is going to come early.” What she didn't say was that she really wasn't prepared to spend the evening chatting with him. Not now.

“I'll take these out, then. I'll be back shortly, I need to speak with our skipper for a minute, anyhow.”

“Michael.” She stopped him just as he was about to step outside. “Does String know?”

He looked back over his shoulder and hesitated. "Yeah.” Michael answered, finally. “He knows. That's how we met. He's the one who flew me in."

-*-
-*-

Michael stood on the deck, drawing at a cigarette he had bummed off Lue. Other than the occasional cigar, he hadn't smoked in over twenty years, but tonight he needed that presence in his hand, the kick of the nicotine. He would have been pacing, but there wasn't room on the crowded deck. Instead, he stared at the moon, the shifting reflections that danced on the water. He could just make out the shoreline, and the hulking darkness of the trees beyond it.

With a flick of his wrist, Michael tossed the butt into the water. He checked his watch. *Almost midnight.* Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved the wireless transmitter. He slipped the receiver over his ear and keyed the device. The coded answer came minutes later, and Michael sighed in relief. He had never doubted that Marella would be in position, but there was always that chance that something unexpected could go wrong. The transmitter went back into his pocket.

He rubbed his hands together, impatient, eager for the dawn that was only a few hours away. Michael knew he wouldn't sleep; there was no reason to even try. Despite all his years in the field, he had never been able to rest the night before a mission. Finally, reluctantly, Michael went inside, moving with the easy silence of one long accustomed to stealthy work. Caitlin had dozed off. For a time, he sat on the makeshift bunk and watched her sleep, the even rise and fall of her chest.

She shouldn't be here. Caitlin was too innocent and too naive to be exposed to the violence that waited for them at the Khmer Rouge camp. He knew what killing would do to her, the effect it would have on her. She would never be quite the same person again. If only Marella had been able to get away. *But she couldn't, not without alerting Zeus and the committee.* It was the only solution, and he knew it. He didn't have to like it.

Michael slipped a set of jungle fatigues from his backpack and stepped into the john. He stripped in the darkness, changing quickly. More by feeling than by sight, he tucked the cuffs of his pants down into the paratrooper boots he wore and laced them, pulling the strings tight.

The simple actions brought a flood of memories. Other than the ill-fated trip into Germany, it had been a long time since he had done fieldwork. He had thought that part of his life was over, especially after Red Star. As far as the Firm was considered, it was. Michael went back into the main room and raised the cover of the bench, quietly removing equipment He cinched a web belt around his waist and fastened the bandoleer over his shoulder, then checked his watch again.. It was time to wake Caitlin. "Cait?" he called, softly.

"Hmm?" It took her a moment to focus, wiping sleep from her eyes with the back of her hand. "Is it dawn already?"

"Just about."

She rubbed hard at the bridge of her nose. "What I wouldn't give for a cup of hot coffee."

“Soon. Cait,” he promised. “As soon as we get those prisoners back to Manila.”

She pulled clothing from her pack, and went in to change. A few minutes later, she returned, dressed in the fatigues Marella had picked up for her. “I feel like I'm in the Army,” Caitlin complained, as she pulled her hair back, rubber banding it into a loose pony tail.

“You look it. Oh. One more thing. Come here for a minute." As she complied, Michael reached into his bag for a small kit. He opened it, and ran his finger though the tin, then reached for Caitlin's temple.

"What are you doing? What is that?" She started to pull away.

"Camouflage makeup. What they can't see doesn't make a very good target. I'm making you into a part of the jungle." He smeared a streak of dark green across her cheek, then followed with rough patches of green, brown and black until her fair skin was covered. Finished, he then turned his attention to his own face, laying a similar mosaic of color. "How do I look?"

She snickered. “You look like a tree.”

“Just the look I was going for,” he answered lightly. They both felt the diesel engine rattle to life beneath them. "Sounds like we're getting underway." He looked into her eyes, turning serious. "Are you ready for this, Cait?"

Caitlin took a deep breath before answering. "As ready as I'll ever be. I just want to get it over with."

Michael felt much the same way himself. Anticipation mixed with dread; the chance of finding Stringfellow's missing brother tempered by the realization of how difficult and dangerous it would be to free him and the other prisoners. Michael retrieved the rifles from their hiding place, passing one to Caitlin and keeping the second for himself. Grenades clipped onto to their belts, ammo magazines to the bandoleers. Extra ammunition went into pockets. Finished distributing the weapons, he reached into the cooler. Caitlin slung her M-16 over her shoulder and took the bottle of water he offered, sitting on the edge of the bunk to drink it.

Lue stuck his head in the door. “Ten minutes,” he said, in Vietnamese, before going back out.

Michael relayed the information in English. She nodded.

The boat started to slow, and Caitlin looked up at him. He could see the fear in her eyes, despite her attempts to hide it. He stood up. "Let's do it."

She rose to join him at the door, and he stopped her as she reached to open it. "You remember what I said? No heroics?"

"No heroics," she agreed. "We're just going to get in there, get the job done, and go home. With St. John," she added, hope filling her voice.

"With St. John," Michael echoed, stepping out of the door.

-*-