Chapter Text
They load Reed’s bag of weapons, Julius’s suitcase—and the typewriter, he notices with absurd fondness—and another suitcase into the trunk of that sharp-edged blue Impala he and Polly stole. Julius slides into the backseat, where he finds a long rifle.
“When we get there, stay behind me and stay quiet,” Garak says. “Look for someone alone who’s a little bigger than you are. I’d hoped to have uniforms already, but it seems we’ll have to obtain them as we go.”
“Yes, sir.” Reed’s syllables are clipped. Julius’s adrenaline is surging—every detail of the smell of the air, the slide of the seat beneath his thighs, the shape of the gun he’s carrying feels hyper-real, every color hyperpigmented, every sense so sharp that the information is pouring into his mind, and he’s never struggled to keep up but he’s also never been so focused on being aware before.
Garak turns off the headlights, then puts the car in neutral and they coast to what Julius assumes will be their hiding spot. “Follow me.” His voice must be barely audible to Reed. As they creep closer, he points to the fence. “Gap in the fence, blind spot in the patrols.” Somehow Julius had expected something more like the camps, but this is so much more open, the few guards that he can see looking bored or smoking or chatting—it helps to dissipate the nauseating coil of dread that had been forming in his stomach.
“Tucker and Polly should be in already,” Reed says.
Julius spots a faint red light flashing out G-A-R-A-K in Morse code further down the fence line. “I’m guessing that’s them.”
Garak snorts very quietly. “Through the fence, then.”
“Once more unto the breach,” Julius murmurs, and follows Garak through the gap in the fence. Reed brings up the rear.
“The majority of the explosives will be set at the fuel tank there,” Garak says, pointing toward one end of the base. “There will be others at the barracks.”
“Tucker and I will handle the fuel tanks.” Reed has spotted Tucker and Polly, baggy green uniforms buttoned over their clothing. “Fuel tanks?” he says to Tucker when they meet.
Tucker nods. He passes a stack of clothing to them. “Get ready.” At least they won’t need to knock anyone out to blend in.
It feels like stepping back in time twenty years, buttoning that coarse green jacket over his shirt and belting the pants around his waist. He adjusts the placement of his gun and his knife and the world is narrowing around him until Garak says “Julius!” and puts a hand on his arm.
Julius stiffens. “I’m ready.” He keeps his voice to the barest whisper.
“We’ll take the barracks,” Garak tells him. “Polly—”
“Understood.” She disappears into the darkness toward the hangar. Reed and Tucker walk—casually, but briskly—toward the fuel tanks.
Garak looks at Julius. “Can you do this?”
Julius forms his words into an imitation of Garak’s bland American accent. “I’m ready.” He watches the affect of the soldiers patrolling, of the ones smoking, and lets his shoulders mimic their posture. “Any chance you’ve got a cigarette?”
There’s something very affectionate and a little wondering in Garak’s face. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring something burning where we’re going.”
Ah. No. Probably not. Julius wouldn’t have minded it to calm his nerves a little. They walk even more casually toward the barracks. Out in the distance, past the hangar, he can see the broad expanse of runway, illuminated. He can’t hear anyone up there now.
It’s at the far end of the barracks that things change. Julius sees the shapes lurking, crouching at the base of the wall, and touches Garak’s elbow slightly. Garak nods. A third man appears—somehow Julius missed him—and throws Julius to the ground in pursuit of Garak. Julius’s reflexes save him from hitting his head, but the concrete is unforgiving and it stuns him for a minute, long enough for the man to hit Garak brutally. There’s the flash of a knife in his hand and Julius sees it cut into Garak’s forehead, can’t tell how deep it went, but as the man goes to strike again, Julius takes his own combat knife, feels the balance, and throws it.
The knife strikes the man’s neck with a wet crunch that Julius hasn’t heard for a long time, had hoped never to hear again, and the man collapses. The other two come at them—in the reflected light, Julius recognizes one of them as Yevgeny, the man from New York. Yevgeny has a gun but Julius can tell he doesn’t want to use it, doesn’t want to attract the attention that a gunshot would bring now. Half of Garak’s face is bloody as he fights Yevgeny—the other man is scrambling at the base of the building now, and Julius can just barely see the flashing red light of a countdown clock. He hits the man across the back of the head with his gun, as hard as the can, and the man goes down hard. When Julius kneels, the timer is at 30 seconds.
“Julius!” That isn’t Garak’s voice. Julius turns his head and sees Yevgeny bringing a gun to Garak’s head. “If—”
Time slows. Julius can almost see what will happen next. Yevgeny will try to use Garak as leverage—will tell Julius that they have just enough time to get away before the building explodes, that he’ll release Garak if they both run now—will say, “Are you fast enough?” and “you can't save them all—”
There’s no time for that. No time to let Yevgeny rest the gun comfortably against Garak’s skull, no time—
Julius shoots Yevgeny before he can make the threat. The sharp crack of the gunshot echoes out in the emptiness and he knows he hit his target but he doesn’t have time to look, only registers the sound of a body falling and the clatter as Yevgeny's gun falls to the concrete. Distantly, he knows that the lack of a second gunshot means that Garak is still alive, but the whole of his attention is devoted to the timer clicking down. Twenty seconds now. “Garak, run,” he says reflexively, and touches the casing very delicately.
Garak doesn’t answer. Julius allows himself two seconds to look back and see that Garak has collapsed too—Julius could probably drag Garak to safety, if he abandoned the timer now. The bomb would go off, but he and Garak would be safe and he loves Garak, more than any of these anonymous men on this bsae—
He remembers Reed’s concern and it doesn’t matter, there’s no time to be selfish. He snatches the knife from the man that he’s knocked out and flicks the casing open. Four wires to the detonator—thank God for his improved vision, because they’re red orange yellow white, barely distinct, and he can still trace which one goes from the timer to the detonator. He takes the yellow wire between his thumbnails, tugs just enough to give himself the slack to cut it with the knife—
The timer stops. Julius drops it and scrambles across the concrete to Garak, whose eyelids are fluttering a little. His face is gory, blood pooled and drying and still flowing, and his heart is pounding when Julius takes his pulse. Julius wants to drag him away now, find a doctor who will fix whatever is wrong—but the explosives are still there, an unconscious saboteur lying next to them. He can’t risk the man setting them off and he doesn’t want to kill someone unnecessarily—
He cuts two strips of cloth off Garak’s jacket, folding one into a thick pad the length of the wound and tying it into place with the other. His own shirt shows through beneath the jacket, very pale in the dim light, and Julius squeezes Garak’s wrist briefly before turning back to the problem. He doesn’t think he can drag both Garak and the other man at the same time, and he doesn’t want to try to carry explosives one-handed.
“Garak!” Julius has never been so glad to hear Tucker’s drawl. He looks up to see Reed and Tucker hurrying toward him. Reed and Tucker both look worse for wear, one side of Tucker’s face swelling as though he’s slammed it into something. Been slammed, more likely. There’s blood trickling out of his mouth and he isn’t walking very straight.
“I cut the timer, but the bomb is still—live,” Julius says. “Yevgeny is dead, the other man is unconscious—for now.”
Reed’s face is very cold. “I will handle him.” Julius doesn’t want to ask. “Can you—disarm the bomb further?”
Julius considers. This is well beyond the realm of his experience with bombs, which mostly amounts to pulling the pin out of a grenade and keeping count in his head, but someone has to do it. He doesn’t think Reed would ask if anyone else could. There’s a kind of cold separation in his body now, the feelings thrust deep down where they can’t hinder him. “Yes,” he says, because “I can try” doesn’t inspire confidence. “Can you get Garak to safety too?”
“I can take him,” Tucker says, but from the way he slurs, Julius suspects it’s fortunate that Tucker is still walking around at all.
“Polly?” His mind is already back on the bomb, on the pathways of wires. He only needs to make it safe enough to carry it somewhere that it can’t do damage if it explodes. He has steady hands.
“She’s ready.” Reed taps his earpiece. “When we give the signal.”
Julius doesn’t even know what she’s going to do. “Have Tucker deal with the man, whatever you were going to do. You take Garak. I’ll handle the bomb.” If Reed objects, he doesn’t register it. The whole of his mind is focused on the bomb now. It feels like a dream, examining it further to find where each part connects. It’s crude enough that he can access every part of it with a little work—crude enough to be unstable, but he lets his fingers explore it very gently, beyond where his eyes can follow. He doesn’t know how long it takes before he separates the detonator from the explosives, and it’s a sign of how hard he’s focused that everything else has passed him by. Usually his sense of time is impeccable. He lets out a slow breath. “It’s—safe. We need to get it away from the barracks.”
Reed has dragged Garak a little ways away, back toward the fence line—not nearly as far as Julius wanted—and now is trying to help Tucker stumble away from the very still body of the other man. “Set it down there.” He gestures one-handed toward a wide-open space—Julius doesn’t know what it’s for but he assumes Reed does. “Then I’ll give Polly the signal.”
Once Julius has disposed of the explosives, Reed radios Polly. Her job seems to involve setting off a blaring siren and spotlights. “Couldn’t’ve waited another ten minutes?” he seethes. There are men emerging around them, and he says, “Garak, help me here,” and heaves Garak up as best he can and prays. Garak manages to get his feet beneath him, at least enough to help Julius walk toward safety. A soldier runs toward them and Julius yells, “There’s some kind of explosive over there, be careful!” The man slows a little, but keeps heading away from them. Reed is half-carrying Tucker in the same kind of hold, and at least it’s a little less conspicuous than dragging two limp bodies—no, Julius can’t let his mind go there.
“Garak,” Julius hisses, and gets no response. Garak’s body is very heavy and his head is lolling to one side. He’s less stable with each stumbling step.
They’re almost to the fence when two MPs in helmets confront them. “Who are you?” one of them demands. “What’s going on?” He starts to draw his gun.
Reed half-drops Tucker to the ground, grabs the gun in the MP’s hand, and disarms him with a move that—Julius winces—sounds like it breaks the man’s wrist. The other one is coming at Julius with a baton and Julius ducks down beneath his swing, lets Garak slide to the ground, comes up with a knee to the man’s groin. He gasps in pain but keeps hold of the baton and Julius has to dodge the next swing, punches him in the stomach like a schoolboy. As he stumbles, Julius grabs his gun and points it. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, and he remembers to keep his American accent. “We’re leaving.” He struggles to lift Garak again while keeping the gun on the man, and then—in a moment of immense relief—sees Polly approaching. She comes up behind the man and does—something that leaves him crumpling to the ground. She does it to the other one too, the one whose wrist Reed broke, and only then do her eyes settle on Tucker’s still form on the ground.
“We should leave immediately,” she says. “The danger to the pilots has passed, but we are at increased risk with every minute.”