Dagaz/WW Crossover

Leo sat just to Jed's left at the head of the conference room table. He scanned the faces of the other men and women seated at the table, all career military leaders and advisors, all decorated and well-respected, intelligent and prepared. They all looked terrified.

"So our only option is to, what, just let them keep on slaughtering their own people?" Jed demanded.

"The resources it would take --" one general began.

Another shook her head. "The international relations we would be straining --"

"What makes their people less worth our military protection than our people?" Jed asked.

One young man at the other end of the table, so low-ranking he wasn't even seated, cleared his throat. All gazes fixed on him. He was a good soldier and didn't even flinch.

"If you really want to do this without spending our military forces or causing an international incident, there may be another option."

Jed raised his eyebrows, cast a glance at Leo, but Leo could only offer a minute shake off his head; he had no clue what the young major was referring to.

The young man reached into his pocket and drew out a business card, slid it down across the table. Jed caught it and turned it over, and Leo leaned in to peer at it. There was no name, just a phone number. An international number.

"What is this?" Jed asked.

"They're freelancers," the young man said.

Jed's jaw tightened. "You mean mercenaries. What will this cost me?"

"You'll have to ask them," the young man said.

Jed scanned the other faces at the table. "Why do none of the rest of you know about this?"

The two generals exchanged pained expressions.

"It's a last resort for us. They rescued Harper, so he knows them. But --" The woman shook her head. "It's very last resort."

"What did they want from you?" Jed asked.

"To shut down an old military weapons testing program from the sixties that was basically defunct anyway." She pressed her lips into a thin line.

Jed turned to the man. "And you?"

"Access to some old Civil War service records."

Leo watched the gears turning in Jed's mind. Neither of those requests sounded particularly dangerous, although he suspected there was more to the defunct military weapons testing program than the lady general was letting on.

"So I just…call this number?" Jed picked up the card.

"It's a video conference line," the lady general said.

Jed took a deep breath. "It couldn't hurt to ask."

The lady general rose up. "I'll set up the connection, and then everyone else will need to clear out of the room."

"This is something out of a spy movie," Leo muttered.

"If something's too good to be true," Jed murmured back.

Once the line was ringing and the video conference was set, all of the uniforms shuffled out of the room, including the young man who'd given them the information in the first place.

Only Leo, Jed, and the two general remained.

Despite having seen far too may action and spy films, Leo wasn't sure what to expect of a mercenary team so secret not even the president knew about it (and Jed was probably stewing about that fact as the line rang). Leo certainly didn't expect to see four male models in cammo gear sitting on ammo boxes playing a game of cards while a fifth model adjusted the camera and tapped the mic.

"Hey, we have an American number coming in," the dark-haired, dark-skinned man said. He spoke with a smooth British accent, upper-crust and well-educated. "English mode, lads."

He settled back so they could see the rest of him. He looked barely older than twenty-three and had Indian features, dark eyes and a white-toothed smile. Like the rest of his compatriots, he had military-short hair. Judging by the expanse of green foliage around them, they were in a jungle, perhaps South American, since it didn't look like any jungles he remembered from Vietnam.

Several languages were being bandied about the card game, none of which were English, but as soon as the man whistled, the cards were abandoned and six young men were crowded into the frame, peering at whatever screen.

"Isn't that --?" the blond one began.

"Aye," said the redheaded one. He had an Irish accent. "The American president."

Another dark-haired one - pale-skinned, with an Eastern European cast to his features - tilted the camera up a smudge. "What we can we do for the esteemed POTUS?"

"Are you aware of the situation in Kundu?" Jed asked.

"Tobias? Gabriel?" the British-Indian one said, glancing over his shoulder.

What happened next was bizarre. The curly-haired boy grabbed the Eastern European boy by the shoulder, and both of their faces went slack, their eyes distant.

"How'd you get this number?" the Irish one asked.

"One Major Harper suggested you might be able to assist us," the Lady General said, and when the Irish one saw her, he smiled.

"Well, hello again, General Mullally. And you, General Ostroff."

Ostroff nodded his greeting tersely.

Tobias and Gabriel came back to the present with twin gasps of breath, their eyes bright with horror. They exchanged a wordless look with their leader, and his expression turned grim.

"Kundu," the British-Indian one said. "Horrible situation. You're hesitant to send troops in, I assume?"

"The international relations ramifications are more than a little troubling," Jed said.

The British-Indian chuckled. "Spoken like a true politician. So you want us to go in there and fix things, then?"

"How can you fix them?" Leo asked.

The young man shrugged. "How would you prefer - mercenary strike? Dissension in the ranks? Populace revolt? Natural causes toppling the leader and an imbecile replacing him?"

Jed blinked. "You can just - go in there and take care of the problem however you want?"

"We're the best," the British-Indian said.

This was too much like a spy movie.

"What would you want for payment?" Jed asked. "Because no one does anything for nothing."

"That's not true, and also terribly cynical," the British-Indian said. "But you're right - our jobs come with a price." He glanced over his shoulder at the others. "Who's up next for a little clean-up? DJ? Keith?"

The blond and the Irish one shook their heads.

"What about Christian? Wait - where is Christian?"

A crashing through the undergrowth startled everyone. Leo flinched, momentarily thrown back to a jungle in Vietnam.

All five young men reacted instantly, armed with guns and knives and spread out in a defensive position so fast it was almost inhuman. Leo blamed it on the delay in the connection.

"Easy," another young man said. "If I were trying to ambush you, would I have made so much noise? I got that fish Tobias asked for, and some local herbs and spices. I think we deserve a nice meal after a job well done."

"Put the fish over there," the Eastern European once said, and Leo guessed he was Tobias, but he was confused because the young man's voice was familiar. Leo could only see his cammo pants and boots.

The young man tied the fish to a low-hanging bough, leaving them swinging and lifeless in the breeze, like Billie Holladay's strange fruit. Then he hunkered down with the others.

"We have a new client, then?"

"We're negotiating terms," the British-Indian one said. "Gabriel got scrubbed clean on both lives, so who's next? DJ and Keith say they're both clear, so I think that just leaves you."

The young man shuffled into position with the others, and when he finally looked into the camera, Leo's throat closed.

"Corporal Little?"

The young man - strawberry-blond, freckled, pixie-faced and compact - had served with Leo in Vietnam. Or the young man was a spitting image of the boy who'd dragged him, wounded and dying, away from the wreckage of his fallen helicopter. But the way the young man's eyes widened in recognition at the name was uncanny. Perhaps he was a relative?

The British-Indian sighed. "Christian. You know someone on the other end of this call?"

"Leo?" Jed asked.

Christian scrubbed a hand over his face. "I - yeah. Remember, I did a tour in Vietnam while you were busy sleeping your way through French diplomats?"

"I reckon this means Christian's the one who needs scrubbing next," Keith drawled, amused.

The British-Indian man grinned at the camera. He looked completely unruffled. "All right. In exchange for cleaning up the mess in Kundu, you need to locate the service records of one Corporal Christian Little - he served in Vietnam - and destroy them. Remove any traces of him from the system, carve his name off the monument if you have to."

Leo gaped. "Little? How? You haven't aged a day!"

"It's why we're the best at what we do," the British-Indian man said. "So, do you agree to our terms?"

"We can do that," Ostroff said. He glanced at Jed. "Mr. President?"

"Let me get this straight." Jed leaned forward. "You --" He pointed at the Christian -- "served in Vietnam with Leo? I'm supposed to believe that? You look like one of the punks from those boybands Zoey used to listen to."

"No one ever suspects a boyband boy of being a soldier," Christian said, shrugging one shoulder.

"Do you accept our terms?" the British-Indian man asked again.

Jed looked ready to ask more questions, interrogate Christian - and it really was Christian, all blue eyes and soft southern drawl - but then he reined himself in. "Yes."

"Then what are yours?"

"Peasant revolt," Jed said. "Let the people save themselves."

The British-Indian man glanced over his shoulder at Tobias. "You have something Kundunese to work with?"

"I can modify Gabriel a little," Tobias said. He reached out and grasped Gabriel's shoulder, and his face went slack, distant again. Leo and the others could only stare in wonder, confusion, awe, horror as Gabriel's skin darkened, his face twisted and morphed, and then Gabriel was gone and a native Kundunese man sat in his place, wearing Gabriel's clothes and Gabriel's amused expression.

Tobias lowered his hand. "Look authentic enough?"

"For now," the British-Indian man said. "We'll borrow a couple of actual natives once we land." He peered into the camera. "Give us seventy-two hours, and you'll have your peasant revolt. I'll send someone by to check the Vietnam Memorial."

And the connection cut out.

"That was bizarre. And insane. Does anyone else feel like they've gone insane?" Jed asked.

Mullally scrubbed a hand over her face. "Every time I talk to those boys. Every time."

"Who are they?" Jed asked.

"People we're systematically wiping out of our records," Ostroff said. "But wait, and watch. They always hold up their end of the bargain."

Leo stared at the blank screen where his former comrade's face had been moments before.

Sure enough, on the news that night, reporters were talking excitedly over footage of a citizen revolt against the military coup, strategically-planted homemade bombs followed by a wave of civilians armed with guns and machetes, and by the next morning, the coup was over.

Ostroff ordered someone down to the Vietnam memorial.

Seventy-two hours after that unbelievable phone call, Leo stood in front of the black granite wall, searching for Christian Little's name. There was a smooth blank spot where it should have been.

"I figured you'd be here," Christian said.

Leo spun around.

In person, Christian was just as Leo remembered, short and slender but leanly-muscled, only this time he was wearing jeans and a jacket instead of an army uniform, and he looked like an ordinary tourist instead of a seasoned soldier or a world-changing mercenary.

"How is this even possible?" Leo asked.

"The same way a peasant revolt against a military coup in Kundu was possible." Christian jammed his hands into his pockets, the gesture boyish, nervous. "I told you my rescuing you wasn't a big deal. You risked your life for this country. Me - I risked bullet wounds and pain. But not my life. Never my life."

"You still saved me."

"Looks like I made the right decision," Christian said. "Now, forget about me, all right? It's the only way I can get my work done."

"What is it you do?"

"Same as I did when you first met me. I'm a soldier. I fight."

"Why?"

"Because it's who I am." Christian smiled. "Good luck, Leo. Take care." Then he turned and walked away.