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The Sentinel Project Part 2
by Lianne Burwell
August 2002
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Suzanne McCullough had been terrified when she'd been 
separated from Harrison and Ironhorse. She hadn't been told 
a thing; just loaded into a plane and flown God only knew 
where. The window shades had been kept down, so she didn't 
know even which direction they'd gone. However, when she 
got off the plane, the heat and humidity told her she was 
probably somewhere in South or Central America. They hadn't 
flown long enough to reach another continent, and it didn't 
*feel* like any place in the States.

From the airport, she'd been driven in a car with the 
passenger seat completely blacked out so that she couldn't 
see the surrounding landscape. When they'd come to a stop 
several hours later and the car door had been opened, she'd 
found herself in an old-fashioned courtyard in front of an 
elaborate Spanish-style mansion, complete with red tile 
roof. It looked like a high-class resort or a millionaire's 
holiday getaway.

But despite the old-world exterior, the interior was 
completely modern. The hum of a generator filled the air 
and the air-conditioning was cranked up high, making her 
shiver. There was something about the place that said 'lab' 
to her; an antiseptic smell that was more psychological 
than real.

She'd been taken down one wing overlooking a large garden 
that filled the area between the two wings leading off the 
main part of the building, then gestured into a room. It 
was a pleasant sort of room, full of sunshine from the 
large windows, with furniture made of wicker painted white 
and brightly colored cushions. The seats looked 
comfortable, but she'd stayed standing. She didn't trust 
the people who'd brought her here, and she wasn't about to 
let down her guard. Instead, she'd ended up pacing for what 
felt like an hour, wondering when she was going to find out 
why she'd been brought there.

Then the door opened.

The first thing she noticed was the man, assuming he 
actually *was* as male as he looked. He was very tall and 
muscular. He was also covered with black fur. His face was 
more cat that human and he had a tail. He looked fearsome, 
and yet there was a gentleness to his face. Somehow, he 
reminded her of Vincent, the half-man, half-lion whose 
people had helped them during their long fight with the 
Mothren, offering them refuge and support.

"Mommy?"

Then she noticed the girl next to him, dwarfed by his size, 
and all speculation faded.

"Debi?" She found it hard to believe her eyes. Her daughter 
looked pale and thin, but otherwise healthy.

"Mommy!"

The daughter she'd worried about for weeks flew into her 
arms and Suzanne burst into tears, holding her daughter as 
tightly as she could.

>>>~~~<<<

The leader of the squad checked his men. They were all 
dressed to blend into the scenery. All were alert, and 
weapons were ready, both lethal and non. Masks were waiting 
to be drawn down over faces. Good. In the unlikely event 
that there were witnesses who escaperd, they would be 
unable to identify anyone.

"The targets are in place," he said, pulling his own mask 
down over his features. The patches over his eyes were 
perfectly clear to him, but the same flat black as the rest 
of the mask to anyone looking at him. The others followed 
his example. "Remember, they are to be taken alive. If 
anyone kills a target, it's worth *all* our lives. 
Understood?"

His team all nodded. It had been well-explained to them 
that their targets were worth more to the organization than 
they were. That was fine. They were soldiers. They would 
get the job done. It was why they were paid a small 
fortune.

"All right, let's go."

With that, the men melted into their surroundings, headed 
towards where the targets waited. The plan was perfect. 
They had practiced, taking every contingency into 
consideration. All that was left was to do it.

Failure was not an option.

>>>~~~<<<

Stanley Raymond Kowalski, former Chicago cop and current 
explorer/adventurer/unemployed bum woke up not long after 
dawn. Back in Chicago, he rarely woke up before eight in 
the morning and not even then if he could at all avoid it. 
But now that he didn't have a job, he was waking up at 
ungodly hours and *enjoying* it.

The main reason for that sat out in front of their tent, 
cooking a large breakfast over an open fire with a pot of 
fresh coffee sitting on a stone next to him.

"Morning," Stan said, heading towards the nearby stream to 
brush his teeth and wash his face before kissing his lover. 
Fraser said that morning breath didn't bother him, but it 
did bother Stan. He wanted to be as fresh as possible for 
that first kiss of the day.

Returning from slaying the evil mouth beast, his face clean 
if not shaved, Stan grasped Fraser's face between his hands 
and pulled him in for a long, deep kiss. He really liked 
being able to do that without wondering what people would 
think. They hadn't seen another soul in nearly a week.

"Morning, Fraze," he said when he finally pulled back, 
echoing the bright smile on the Mountie's face. "What's up 
for the day?"

"Well, I thought that after breakfast that we should go 
into town. We need a few more things if we're going to get 
the cabin ready for winter. As well, your citizenship 
papers should have arrived by now."

"Sounds good to me." Citizenship papers meant that 
*legally* he could stay here with Frasier. After that, they 
might take a quick trip back to Chicago long enough to grab 
the few possessions he wanted to hang onto out of storage 
and ship them north. By that time, the cabin would be 
completely finished.

After the business with Muldoon and his arms smuggling 
operation had drawn them up to the Arctic circle, Fraser 
had decided to stay in the north, and he'd asked Stan to 
stay with him. The expression on his face had been heart-
rending; he'd obviously expected his lover to say no. Not 
that there'd been any chance of *that* happening. Fraser 
was the best thing that had happened to him in his life, 
even better than Stella. If Fraser had announced that he 
was heading to the South Pole, Stan would have bought a tux 
and gone with him. *His* worry had been that Fraser was 
going to say that he *didn't* want him to stay.

They'd spent the next few months, until late spring, 
retracing the path of some old explorer that Fraser had 
told him about. They never did find the hand of Franklin 
from the old song, but neither of them cared. They'd spent 
the time learning to live with each other without the 
distractions of job or friends or even just the hustle and 
bustle of a busy city.

Once spring had come, they'd headed for the burnt out shell 
of a cabin that had belonged to Fraser's dad, years ago. 
According to Fraser, his old partner Vecchio had promised 
to help rebuild the cabin, back before he'd gone 
undercover. Then he'd vanished, first for the job, then off 
to Florida with Stan's ex-wife Stella of all people. His 
loss was Stan's gain. And he better not show up any time 
soon. Fraser was still hurting from Vecchio abandoning him, 
and he wasn't about to let the Italian hurt him any more.

Stan enjoyed working with Fraser on the cabin. He was 
learning all sorts of new stuff. Carpentry, plumbing, 
stone-laying -- he hadn't know how to do any of it before, 
but he'd thrown himself into it enthusiastically. He'd 
gotten bruised and scraped and he still ached in places 
he'd never even known he had, but it was been worth it. The 
cabin felt like *home*.

Now it was late fall -- they'd had a couple small snowfalls 
already, although they'd had quickly melted -- and the 
cabin was almost finished. In fact, they could live in it 
right now, but they were still sleeping in the tent. It 
might be a little colder, but it was so much fun to sleep 
snuggled up together in the one large sleeping bag, sharing 
body heat. Especially since the best way to share body heat 
was skin to skin.

In the meantime, Fraser was still on leave, although the 
RCMP had promised to post him locally. Stan had applied for 
Canadian citizenship, and as soon as it came through, he 
could find a job in town. It wasn't much, the local 
population being only a few hundred, but it was... nice. 
Definitely friendly.

They were nearly finished their breakfast of eggs, bacon, 
toast and coffee when the sound of frantic barking caught 
them off-guard. Fraser got to his feet, slowly turning in 
place, a serious expression on his face.

"What is it?" Stan asked softly, automatically dropping 
into the soft tones that that kid, Sandburg, had taught 
him. "What do you hear?"

For a moment, Fraser didn't answer. Then his eyes went wide 
with shock. "Down!" he shouted and tackled Stan, knocking 
them both to the ground.

The air was knocked out of him and his vision went black. 
Trying to remember just how to breathe, Stan listened as 
Fraser jumped to his feet and tackled something else. He 
could hear shouts that told him that they were no longer 
alone in the north woods.

And then there was silence. Through pure will, Stan forced 
himself up onto his knees, blinking to clear his eyes. His 
glasses had gone flying when he'd hit the ground, so he 
blinked, trying to focus.

What he saw stopped his breath again. They were surrounded 
by a group of men dressed in camo and ski-masks without eye 
holes, all well-armed. Off to the side, Fraser was lying on 
the ground unmoving. Only the rise and fall of his chest as 
he breathed told him that the man was still alive.

The gun held to Fraser's head told him whether or not the 
man *stayed* that way depended on him. Stan raised his 
hands and waited for the strangers to tell him what was 
going to happen next.

Two of their attackers pulled Fraser to his feet, easily 
supporting his weight between them. At a wave from the gun 
pointed at him, Stan got to his feet, careful to keep his 
hands in full view. Someone grabbed them and twisted them 
behind his back, cuffing them together with those 
adjustable plastic strips. The creep made no effort to be 
gentle about it either.

"Ow! Watch it, would ya," Stan yelped.

"Move it, boy, if you want to live," the one with the gun 
pointed at him said. An American accent, he noted. 
Definitely not local.

As he was herded towards the trees, an explosion nearly 
knocked him off his feet. Turning his head, he saw the 
cabin they'd been working on for so long going up in 
flames. "Pity about that," the man said with a smirk in his 
voice. "The two of you should have been more careful when 
working on the oil heater."

Stan felt a chill run down his spine. It would have been a 
while before anyone came looking for them anyway, but now 
it was going to look like they'd died in the fire. Somehow, 
he knew that these creeps were smart enough to put a couple 
bodies in the wreckage too.

No one was going to look any further for them.

As he stumbled through the trees as best he could with his 
hands tied behind his back, he could hear a mournful 
howling behind them. Diefenbaker would know the truth, but 
there was no one to listen to him.

>>>~~~<<<

It was a scene that was repeated several times across the 
continent.


In New York, a firefighter and his partner died in a 
tenement building fire, along with the family of four 
they'd been trying to rescue. Several of them were too 
badly burned to be identified.

Evidence later showed that the fire was deliberate arson. 
No suspects were ever found.

The same time, a psychiatrist was killed by a car bomb. 
Police believed it related to the unrest after the 
assassination attempts, since the doctor was of Arab 
descent. Again, no suspects were ever found.

No one considered a connection between the two incidents, 
except for the select few who knew that the two men were 
lovers.


In Texas, a Marine Sergeant and her grade-school teacher 
husband disappeared without a trace. When asked, the army 
said that the marine had been transferred to a different 
base, but there was no record of her ever arriving. Neither 
had any family to keep up pressure on the police, so the 
case was eventually labeled unsolved and set aside for more 
urgent cases.


In northern Quebec, a small bush plane crashed, killing the 
pilot and both passengers, a park ranger and a Montreal 
therapist. An investigation found that recent repairs to 
the plane had been done with defective parts blamed for 
several other crashes. The families mourned, then went on 
with their lives after filing a class action lawsuit 
against the parts manufacturer and the company that had 
done the repairs.


In every case where bodies were found, they were too badly 
damaged for positive identification. In most cases, even 
genetic tests weren't possible. No one considered that the 
incidents could be related or that some of the victims 
weren't really dead.

>>>~~~<<<

Jim Ellison, could hear the pounding of his partner's 
heartbeat from down the hallway as he headed home from 
work. Worried, he quickened his steps, already reaching for 
his keys.

Inside the loft apartment that they shared, he found his 
lover Blair putting down the phone, an almost panicked 
expression on his face. "What is it?" Jim asked, dropping 
the grocery bag he was carrying on the kitchen counter. 
Mentally, he was going through the possibilities.

"I was worried about David, with all the tension right 
now," Blair said, referring to David Khalid, a psychiatrist 
he knew in New York, "so I gave him a call."

"And?"

"No answer. So I did some calling around. He was killed 
yesterday by a car bomb."

"Oh, God." Jim dropped onto the sofa next to Blair and 
wrapped his arms around him. Jim didn't know David very 
well, but he'd liked the quiet, dark man. "Blair..."

"It gets worst. I tried to call Brian."

Jim was starting to get worried. Blair's expression said 
that things were bad. Really bad. "And?"

"According to his captain, he and his partner got trapped 
inside a burning building that suddenly flared. They were 
killed, along with the trapped family they were trying to 
reach. They haven't identified the bodies yet."

Jim closed his eyes. In a way, it was relief. He knew that 
Brian wouldn't want to survive David's death any more than 
he would want to survive Blair's. "Blair, that's awful," he 
started to say.

Blair cut him off. "Jim, it's not just them. I've been 
calling all afternoon. I can't reach *anyone*." He didn't 
specify which 'anyones' he'd been calling: That was 
implicit. "This is not good," he added, unnecessarily.

Jim was already thinking, already planning. He reached over 
Blair for the cell-phone. "I'm calling Simon. If someone's 
snatching Sentinels and Guides..." He didn't finish the 
sentence. This was something they'd worried about for 
years. If someone found out about them, someone with an 
interest in *using* them, then they were all in danger. 
He'd already been worrying about this, ever since Dr. 
Gallagher had disappeared soon after she'd been visited by 
the newest Sentinel they knew of, Harrison Blackwood. The 
group's hotel room had been blown up, and while Jim knew 
that none of them had died in the explosion, they hadn't 
heard anything about the group since then.

"The only thing I don't understand is *how* they were 
found," Blair was muttering to himself as Jim dialed his 
captain. "We're the only thing they have in common, and I 
keep all my files coded." That was something he'd started 
after Alex Barnes had used his tapes to find out about Jim. 
That experience had taught him the importance of keeping 
everyone anonymous, even in his private notes.

"Blair." Jim put down the phone down.

"Did you get a hold of Simon?" Blair asked. The resigned 
tone in his voice said that he knew very well that Jim 
hadn't.

"Jammed," Jim said, getting to his feet. Already, he was 
scanning the building with his hearing. After nearly five 
years of working with Blair, using his enhanced senses was 
second nature, and he didn't like what they were telling 
him.

There were gunmen coming up the stairs and more outside in 
the alleyway beneath the fire-escape. There was even one on 
the roof, no doubt in case they tried to leave through the 
skylight. He couldn't believe that no one had noticed yet, 
but then the weather had been unusually wet and unpleasant 
for several days, so not many people were outside. That, 
combined with the twilight gloom, was working in their 
attackers' favor. Jim hoped it kept that way. Somehow he 
didn't doubt that these men were willing to kill any 
witnesses.

Jim cursed himself for not having noticed the trap as he 
came in. They had to have been around the building before 
he arrived, but he'd been so intent on getting upstairs for 
a little loving that he hadn't been paying attention to his 
surroundings.

"Jim?" Blair's heart was racing even faster than before, 
but he wasn't panicking. Despite the circumstances, Jim 
felt a flash of pride in his partner.

He shook his head, though. He wished he had a brilliant 
plan, but whoever was coming had covered all their bases. 
"We're boxed in," he said as the sound of a lock being 
forced came from the door. "And there's too many to fight 
off."

He gave Blair a fast hug and a hard kiss. Then they got to 
their feet.

It looked like their worst fears were about to be realized.

TO BE CONTINUED