[Fic] International Relations 6/7

[kittydesade]

Title:International Relations
Fandom: Night Watch/Human Target
Characters: Tiger Cub, Guerrero
Word Count: ~28,000
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When children who have yet to make their Choice go missing up and down the West Coast of the United States, the head of the Moscow Night Watch sends Tiger Cub to help the Americans investigate. Her encounter with the assassin Guerrero seems to be a coincidence, but the deeper she goes into the investigation the fewer coincidences there seem to be.
A/N: Written for scifibigbang and beta'd by the ever-tolerant kikibug13



One of the techs in the Day Watch of San Francisco had tripped over something in the Tenderloin. Close enough to home that it was making Chance and his friend nervous, not close enough to anything like a lead to force them to explain to Winston what they were doing. Chance and Winston were playing plain clothes detective and going door to door, apartment to apartment. Alisa was pretending to be a prostitute, which caused Tiger Cub no end of amusement and her Day Watch counterpart no end of grief. The shapeshifter herself was up a pole and poking in a power box, using their old ruse of working for a utility company as an excuse for why she was around.

Chance knew she was there. So did the short assassin, but Winston had no idea. She wondered if they should let him know.

Too late now.

"Why the electric company?"

That was Guerrero's voice in her ear. They'd insisted on equipping her with their own listening equipment, which she couldn't argue against. It made good sense. She disliked the necessity, but that was more on her boss than the man.

"Why not? People are used to seeing maintenance and utilities in out of the way places at all hours of the day or night. Sometimes they are even grateful to see us." Though sometimes the power outages were of their own doing. Not that she was going to advertise that fact.

On the street, Chance and Winston had found someone who was at home and were taking statements.

"Have you noticed anyone new or different in the area? Maybe someone paying an unusual amount of attention to the children?"

Now that was a question that would alarm every parent in the neighborhood. Which might be good, it might put the community on the alert and make another kidnapping less likely. If the child had a sibling or something, and then that made Tiger Cub frown a little. Had there been any kidnappings among families, all the children taken? She didn't know straight off, but she didn't think there had been. And given that families tended to stick together that way, that was at least a little odd.

Maybe not. Maybe they were only going for inborn talent, and who knew where that could or would strike. Not necessarily in family bloodlines, unless both parents were awakened Others.

"You actually know how to do maintenance on wires and electrical?"

For some reason that made her laugh. "Where I live, if I don't do it myself, it would take them a day or more to come out." Tiger Cub didn't elaborate; he didn't need to know where she lived. An the likelihood that he would come out to visit was vanishingly small, but he took her meaning.

"Fair enough."

"Look, we'll tell you what we can, and if you tell us what you know, we ..." she missed the next part. One of the children was coming home, and his aura was churning. Bright and parti-colored, not quite an Other but with more shining potential in him than most children his age. She stared out of the corner of her eye as she pretended to tinker with the box.

Guerrero was trying to talk to her, but she snapped out that she was busy and then the only voices she had to shut out were Chance and Winston's.

"Look, lady, we're trying to help."

As if that ever worked. Everyone who lived in this kind of a neighborhood, regardless of country, had had at least one organization or person, or set of people coming around trying to help, and only succeeding in messing things up further. Tiger Cub had seen that first hand. Even at home, even now, those who entered into the government trying to help only wound up creating a different sort of mess.

To be sure, she agreed with the Night Watch's mandate to make the world better, to help people, but she disagreed on some of its methods. Look at the wars that had resulted from trying to change people to make them better.

You couldn't change a creature's nature, you could only work with it to achieve the best result. That was all you could do. Tiger Cub firmly believed that.

"All right. Thank you for your time." The two men walked out, Winston shaking his head, Chance with that easy swagger of his. Tiger Cub kept half an ear on their conversation and most of her attention on the boy.

If this neighborhood was a safe territory for the kidnappers, he would be one of their choice targets. If they were taking children for the reasons everyone in both Watches suspected, the magical potential, the power involved, this boy would be one of the ones they wanted.

"The boy, there," she murmured. "Red jacket, blond, walking away from Chance and Winston with hands in pockets."

She barely heard Guerrero shift his position to fix the boy in his scope. "What about him?"

"He will be next." All right, it was a strong assertion for as many assumptions as were flying around through her mind, but she had the weight of experience and she had a hunter's instinct. She wouldn't have been able to explain how she knew if they asked. She also wouldn't have bothered even if she could have.

Guerrero didn't ask. He chuffed. "All right. What do you suggest we do about it?"

"We watch. We wait. We see who has an interest in the child, and we follow them back to their hideout." Which wasn't what she would have preferred to do. She would have preferred to leap upon the kidnappers with teeth and claws and terrify them the way they had likely terrified hundreds of children, but it was the practical thing to do, and it was what the Day and Night Watches did. You didn't get into the Watch by allowing yourself to do whatever you pleased. You got there by having the discipline to control yourself as befit an Other.

She grumbled to herself as Guerrero replied. "Not the worst plan I've heard. Can you set up other teams with the rest of your people?"

"Other teams... Yes." That gave her an idea. "I can set up other teams to monitor other areas that share traits with this one, based on... if you could give us an idea of what to look for. They would be able to see if there are any other children, and if we have several targets..."

"Follow them to the source. Not bad." He even sounded impressed, although she wasn't sure she should care about that.

"It would be a plan. It might even be a plan that could succeed." Several days working with the Americans had made her cynical. She wanted to go home.

Chance and Winston were almost to the car, having stopped to argue about something along the way. They reminded her a little of Bear and Semyon, though she couldn't put her finger on why. It soothed her. Guerrero was too much like her, too many solitary predators in one place made everyone edgy.

"It's worth a shot, anyway," he was saying, and she refrained from commenting on the irony or cynical metaphor within an assassin looking through a sniper scope saying "worth a shot." "I'll see what we can come up with for areas to watch. I guess the rest of your group will be able to do... whatever it is you do."

Her lips peeled back from her teeth as she started to climb down the pole, as she talked. "They're experienced at watching from a distance, unnoticed." If their disguises didn't do the trick, although it was strongly encouraged that they practice mundane surveillance with disguises and concealment, then suggestions could. Of course, each one used required paperwork and balancing it out between the Watches, but for this she had the feeling it would all be expedited.

"All right. Sounds like a plan."



"That's a terrible plan."

Tiger Cub pinched the bridge of her nose and walked out of the argument, leaving Alisa to defend the newcomers and wrangle the San Francisco Watch. If she were forced to stay she would bite the head off of someone, possibly literally.

They would do it. She knew they would, it was the best plan they had and it was simple, which was something not very characteristic of the Watches she had experience with. She didn't know how well that would go over here, whether it would make them predictable or make them more surprising. At least it would stand less of a chance of screwing up, if it was a spoken plan shared among many people. Simple was better.

Guerrero was out in the parking lot, to her surprise. Perched on the hood of his truck with one leg dangling down and his heel on the bumper, he looked very tiny and fragile against the oversized vehicle. No doubt she would get the eyebrow for thinking so if she voiced such thoughts. But to her perspective, most human life was fragile.

"Not a fan of meetings?" she asked, coming up with her hands in her pockets. They were going to work together at least a little while longer, they might as well make nice.

He shrugged. "I work better alone." No rancor and, more unusually, no boasting. Just a statement of fact. He had hit the point, she decided, in age when boasting was a waste of time and threats were empty breath. Statements and facts were more useful. She found her respect for him creeping up a notch or two, or at least her ability to tolerate.

"They'll argue about it for an hour or two, then they'll decide to work with us," she shrugged. And she got the eyebrow for that statement, or the phrasing of it.

"Us?"

"You know what I mean." But did she knew what she meant? It had just come out. All of them who were working to solve the problem, she rather thought.

He chuckled.

"I don't see why that's so funny," she glared, but even the way he had his head bowed, shoulders relaxed, nudged her to relax a little more. It was easier now that they were getting something done instead of going around in circles chasing their tails. "What's so funny?"

"You." He looked up at her, still with that upraised eyebrow. Maybe it was her belligerence or her apparent youth. Maybe it was just something from his past giving him a view of amusement on the present.

She made a face at him. "Didn't your mother tell you that if you make that face all the time you will stick that way?"

He laughed harder, slid off the front of the truck, but when his boots hit the gravel he just looked at her quizzically. It was the sort of look she got sometimes from Anton. Or Boris Ignatievich. She wasn't sure she liked that. He was measuring her against something, or looking at her to see if he could figure out what made her tick. And after all she had seen of him and the way his mind worked, analytical and shrewd, she thought that maybe he could. Come close, anyway. As close as an ordinary human could.

"What?"

"Nothing."

More silence. He was calm, and she was starting to twist up inside. After a moment she shook her head. "We need more information."

"How do you suggest we get it?"

Her smile was full of teeth. "We know that certain people in those neighborhoods are lying. I know they're lying. I know things that they don't know. And you probably know that they're lying ..." Just by intuition. She couldn't explain how he did it, but she knew people who were able to perceive that way, with no powers whatsoever. "We can find them. And we can get the truth out of them."

Tiger Cub watched him shift, not the way she did, but in a way just as inevitable and dangerous as her own. He took his hands out of his pockets, his body came to a kind of stillness even though he was walking. "So," he shrugged. His voice was a shade more gravelly, rough. "Let's ask."



Alisa wasn't happy about her Night Watch partner, or supposed partner, going off on her own. Especially not with an assassin, and especially not with a human they barely knew. She wasn't happy with the woman's performance this whole mission, a performance that was shoddy and distracted for a Night Watch operative who was supposed to be very highly thought of, if not highly ranked. She could understand why the Americans and their botched handling of this problem was a concern and would be cause for anyone's distraction, but this was just ridiculous. Dawn had come, and neither of them were back yet.

At least she was still able to go on surveillance without her. Instead of the blond partner, Alisha took Winston. Who still mistrusted both of them, but he would just have to live with it.

And his visible discomfort amused her. She didn't try to exacerbate it, she didn't really need to, but it did amuse her.

"Do you always sit in the van?"

Okay, maybe she didn't try very hard to exacerbate it.

"I do what's needed," he told her, in a voice that suggested that sitting in the van was a perfectly honorable past time and what the hell was wrong with that? Or something. Indignantion was the word of the day, for him.

"I only meant that..." and she shrugged and didn't finish that. Well, yes, she'd only meant that it was something she wouldn't have been able to do, but part of the reason for that was because it seemed like scut work. First-year type work. And because she got restless too easily.

Right now, she was getting restless. Antsy and impatient and as much as she knew that someone had to sit and listen in on the conversations that were happening around them, it was not the work she preferred. But they were already starting to spread themselves too thin. Two-person teams, at various points around the city that they'd determined were most likely to suffer a kidnapping. Even with the trio's help there were too many points, too much area and not enough people to cover ground.

Which was another reason to be irritated with Tiger Cub. They didn't have time or people to spare for her to go running off like this.

"That doesn't sound right..."

Alisa looked over as Winston adjusted his headphones. "What doesn't?"

"These street directions. They're not local..."

She had grabbed the other pair of headphones before he finished talking, settling them on her head and listening to the latter half of the instructions.

"At least they're clear," she muttered, pulling out her notebook computer and drawing up the windows to type in the instructions. It wouldn't take much to match the street names to a city. Winston's eyes slid over to her for a second, then focused on a point above his keyboard as he listened, too.

Tap tap click. One street name after another. It was a mapping program used to predict districts of activity in Moscow, but it worked with any city map she cared to upload. She started with northern California, then expanded her search to cities all along the West Coast of the United States.

"They sound..." Winston frowned. "Paramilitary."

Alisa looked up at that. She hadn't been paying particular attention to how they sounded or the words they used, only their street directions. Perhaps he would be useful after all. "Do you know anyone in Mount Shasta?"

"Mount Shasta?" He shook his head, expression and voice incredulous. "What are they doing up there? There's nothing up there."

The Day Watch agent was already tapping at her computer and frowning at the results as she looked for the presence, any presence, of the Watch in that area. There was none.

"You're right," she reached for her cell phone. "There's nothing up there. That's why they can get away with this."

To his credit, she didn't have to explain what she meant.



Alisa's results concurred with her own; Tiger Cub and her compatriot would be heading north. They consulted some with the San Francisco Watches, but no one wanted to leave their city on the grounds that more kidnappings might occur. Tiger Cub felt this was a pathetic excuse.

"If more kidnappings do occur, and they're not there to intercept them, then the children will be lost if we're off on a fool's errand," Alisa pointed out. "We may as well make sacrifices of ourselves."

Tiger Cub shook her head. "This isn't a fool's errand. We have their own words..."

"Which may have been faked. Until we find the children under the mountain, do not believe that they are there."

Winston looked back and forth between the two of them, skeptical. Neither Chance nor Guerrero looked up, most likely because they were listening and understood what the two women were saying. Instead they were readying weapons, guns of various kinds, Guerrero had a rifle that looked both well-maintained and very deadly. Tiger Cub couldn't identify the type but she knew there were at least two in the Moscow Night Watch's armory.

She shook her head, rising from the table and looking over to them, waiting until they raised their heads to look back at her before she said anything. "You ..."

And that was as far as she got. "We're coming with you, yeah." Chance nodded, shrugging a little as though it were already assumed. "This job isn't over yet. And it's not like we have anything more important going on here."

Guerrero only looked at her with that raised eyebrow of his, daring her to make an issue of it. Which immediately made her want not to, just to defy his expectations. He still raised her hackles, and she was still unable to explain why, except that there were too many deadly folk in too small a space, none of whom trusted each other. Well, Chance and Guerrero trusted each other. That did not extend to anyone else, or any other pair of people.

"Are you sure you want to come with us?" Alisha asked, in Russian, before Tiger Cub could come up with a more polite way to brush off their invitations.

Chance and Guerrero exchanged a look and a shrug. "Of course."

Tiger Cub kept her hands by her sides so she didn't rub her forehead out of irritation. "It will be dangerous. It will not be what you're used to..."

"And we won't be what you're used to," Guerrero said, calmly, and in Russian. "They won't see us coming. They don't think we're a threat."

Looking at him, she was astounded how anyone could not see him as a threat. Death coiled around him like a great pet cat at his ankles. But after a moment's thought she did realize what he meant. He was ordinary, human, he had become this out of a combination of determination and luck and ever-growing experience. And sometimes Others underestimated what that could do, even in an ordinary person.

"All right," she shook her head. Hadn't she done the same thing when she'd met them, and wasn't she still doing it? "But this is still our world. You listen to what we say, and if we say to do something, you do it. No questions, no arguing. No debate. If we have to tell you what to do, it will be because there is no time to explain."

Chance looked at Guerrero, and she understood why. He was not a man who took orders easily. For now, he would have to.

The smaller man thought about it, then nodded. "Deal," he shrugged. Light and easy, as though it was just that simple.

It wasn't simple. It could never be that simple with him, and yet it was. As Tiger Cub more than Katya, she knew that. She understood.

They finished packing up weapons, and Tiger Cub and Alisa conferred on spells and information, tools of the trade. Things like flashlights and glasses and little multi-purpose knives turned to different purposes and means, that got raised eyebrows when the other three saw the women tuck them away like weapons but no questions. That, at least, was a promising start. They were almost to the front door, heading down to their cars when her cell phone rang. She and Alisa were the only ones who jumped.

"Anton?"

His voice came through clean and clear. He wasn't calling her on the phone, only using it as a device. "Tiger Cub? You're headed north?"

"Yes..." she frowned. The question was less how did he know that so much as why, when he should have been on another case.

"Be careful, kitten. It's not quite what you think..."

She blinked, then waved them on ahead. "What are you talking about? What do you mean?"