Twenty-Nine Cozy Bears

28

Washington D.C. USA  CISA Building, Monday morning

Mark, Hank's secretary, was at his desk so they let him instigate the introduction. Once past the gate, with the keeper pacified on the other side, they took their seats.

Hank looked grim. There was a bunker feeling about the way his shoulder line had a hunch to it at the neck. Doug checked the time. It wasn't even eight-thirty yet. Samantha believed they would be up the rest of the morning, but it turned out cuddling the stressed-out homo sapient makes them sleepy.

"I'm guessing you know about the Israeli attack on Iran this morning," Hank began.

Doug glanced at Samantha and then promptly raised a finger, "That would be a swing and a miss baseball fans. What was that about an attack?"

Hank raised an eyebrow, then after shifting his attention from Doug to Samantha and back again, he adjusted his posture in his chair and offered a grin. "Damn, what the hell were you two doing at three-thirty AM?"

"No, fuck that," Doug said, a growl of seriousness deep in the consonants of his words. "That's my ground. What's going on?" Samantha was leaning forward, eager to hear as well.

Hank's expression turned into a mask of business sense and appraisal. "Alright, very briefly, Iran was hit with several hundred missiles, drones and similar munitions at about 0330."

Doug shifted his gaze to Samantha who was doing the same to him. Then Doug said, "Targets?"

"We aren't sure, actually. The barrage was met with resistance in the form of counter fire which only allowed two or three to get through — again, not sure exactly how many yet. So we know the trajectory but nothing else."

"Iran retaliated with...?" Samantha asked.

"Nothing yet." Hank reported, then shrugged his shoulders.

"No, it makes sense," Samantha said. "No casualties? Injuries? Property damage?"

"None that we know of," Hank answered, relaxing a bit.

"Then, '...punish with an equivalent of that with which you were harmed.'" she quoted.

"Eye for an eye," Hank nodded.

"No, that's not what that means. It means 'equivalent', nothing more or less."

Hank looked impatient, "An eye is equivalent to an eye."

"Is it though?" Samantha asked. "Is the loss the same for an artist as it is for an accountant?"

"What's wrong with being an accountant?"

Doug looked at the ceiling as if the Saint of Patience might intervene instead of making him do it. "Let's go back to 'why are we here?'"

Both Hank and Samantha took a moment to adjust themselves. Hank took a sip of his coffee, "You two want coffee?" he asked them.

"Is the answer that long?"

"No, I just like annoying Mark," Hank said. "Your Russians, they are in Iran now, right?"

"Yes, and you were wondering what we were up to at 0330. It appears that one of them is Him."

Hank relaxed into the back of the chair and let the seat pivot slightly with his shifting. "No shit," he said, letting the breath fill up the two words with disbelief and wonder. "I thought we killed him, a few years ago."

Samantha recrossed her legs, the flash of her inner thigh attracting Doug's attention as she said, "The rumors of his death appear to have been exaggerated."

Doug's mind filled with the scene of the man walking down the sidewalk in Moscow. The man half turns, he is about to smile when his head jerks with a violent torque, then it jerks again. Part of the forehead is now an exit wound. The man's body falls to the ground in a lifeless heap. "We killed someone," he said softly.

Hank refocused back into the room with his employees, "That's right. You were caught up in all of that."

Doug nodded, "First assignment. First wet one anyway."

Hank processed that, "Well, thankfully we don't have many of that type."

"Just the one is enough," Doug said.