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Guilt
by Lianne Burwell
March 2001
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Carl rolled over on the tiny mattress and just barely 
managed to avoid landing on the concrete floor. Again. The 
room had been designed as a storage room, not a holding 
cell, and while he had an air mattress and a sleeping bag 
for comfort, as well as a couple of books for distraction, 
the mattress hadn't been designed with an eye for someone 
over six feet tall and a couple hundred pounds plus. And as 
for the books, distraction wasn't going to work any better 
than sleeping.

How the hell could he be distracted from the fact that he'd 
been locked up like an animal by his own people? And worse, 
he deserved it.

Giving up on his latest attempt to get some sleep, Carl sat 
up and leaned back against the wall, wincing as bruises 
made themselves felt. There'd been no medical attention for 
him or either of his partners in the neighboring storage 
room-cum-cells, but that was to be expected. After all, 
they *had* attacked the farm that housed the StonyMan 
organization. Pol had been stopped before reaching the 
farm, but Gadgets had almost made it into the computer 
center of the farm and Carl...

Carl had made it all the way to Hal's office and had nearly 
killed him and Barbara Price. Without them, the whole place 
would have fallen apart. They were the heart and soul of 
the organization, while Mack Bolan, the man known as the 
Executioner, was its conscience. If not for Mack, he might 
have destroyed everything he held dear, and Mack had nearly 
had to kill him to stop him.

Of course, he hadn't exactly been in his right mind at the 
time. A simple field trip to check out a virtual reality 
training center had turned into an unexpected disaster. The 
Kumo Shima VR training program was actually a cover for a 
plan to brainwash the bodyguards of the rich and powerful. 
Thanks to them, several businessmen and politicians who 
opposed their masters' plans were dead, and who knew how 
many other men and women out there had been primed for 
murder?

So here he sat, stuck in a cell until they could make sure 
that the programming planted in his brain and the brains of 
his two partners had been completely burned out. Until 
then, they couldn't be set free for fear that the 
programming might be set off again. There was no guarantee 
that they could *ever* be let out. Carl didn't want to 
think about what would happen to them if that happened. 
Mack and the others would figure it out. They *had* to.

In the meantime, sleep was not going to happen.

>>>~~~<<<

Carl had actually managed to doze off when he heard the 
familiar squeak of a wheelchair and the lighter tap-tap of 
a woman's shoes on the concrete floor in the hallway 
outside. Immediately, he was on his feet by the door, 
peering out through the tiny window covered over quickly 
with a heavy metal screen. He couldn't see much though; the 
window was too small to provide much of a view of the hall.

Finally Aaron Kurtzman, aka the Bear, head of the Farm's 
cybernetics team, came into view, accompanied by Barbara, 
the team's mission controller. Carl held his breath, 
waiting for some indication of a verdict. Either they were 
clean and would be released or they were still compromised 
and would stay where they were until some alternative could 
be found.

Barbara smiled faintly and held up the keys for a moment 
before moving to unlock the door of the room he was in. 
Since there was no sign of heavily-armed blacksuits, Carl 
took this as a good sign.

"We're clean?" he asked, exiting his make-shift cell.

"You're clean. The research boys have been going over what 
little Mack and Akira managed to get from the Kumo Shima 
headquarters, and based on that they say that the three of 
you should be fine now that you *know* that you were 
brainwashed."

"Like hypnotism," Gadgets said, emerging from his own cell. 
"You can't really be hypnotized against your will. It only 
worked because we were drugged, so not really aware that 
we'd been affected."

"Exactly what the experts say," Bear said, deftly 
maneuvering the wheelchair that had been his sole form of 
transport since an attack on the Farm had left him 
paralyzed from the waist down. Carl had to resist the urge 
to hug the man, he was so relieved. "So now that you know 
what they've done, you can control it."

"How's Hal?" Carl asked. While his memories still said he'd 
been attacking a Korean general instead of their liaison to 
the White House, he knew he'd done the man damage. The 
careful way that the man had been moving earlier when he'd 
come down to question them had told him that.

"A couple cracked ribs and a lot of bruises, but no worse 
than any of you," Barbara said in a tone that was meant to 
be reassuring, he supposed. Instead, all it did was make 
him wince. "Anyway," she continued, "the three of you are 
to report to the doc for a check, then get some rest."

"Where's the Sarge?" Gadgets asked as he limped towards the 
elevator. It had taken the combined efforts of Grimaldi and 
Bear to take him down and considering the lump on the back 
of his head, he probably had a concussion. Truth be told, 
Carl didn't feel much better.

"On his way to Japan to take out the bosses behind Kumo 
Shima," she replied. "John Trent went with him," she added, 
referring to the ninja who was a StonyMan ally, although 
seldom called on.

"Anything we can do?" Pol asked. He was in better shape 
than Carl and Gadgets, having been taken out fairly early 
with a massive jolt of electricity from a rigged net. 
Still, he had the same haunted look brought on by the 
knowledge that he'd tried to kill their own people.

"Get you injuries taken care of," she said gently. "Get 
some rest."

Stay out of it, Carl filled in mentally. They were too 
personally involved to be allowed anywhere near this case, 
although knowing Mack it was probably all over except for 
the fat lady. No matter how much he wanted to take off 
after the man so that he could get his own lumps in, he 
knew it wasn't going to happen.

The only thing was, that left him with nothing to do but 
remember what he'd done and that was the one thing he did 
*not* want to do. He needed something to do, something to 
erase the guilt.

But he wasn't going to be given that escape. So, instead he 
headed for the docs, the picture of not-quite-cheery 
obedience, hiding his true feelings.

>>>~~~<<<

The next few days just gave him more time to dwell on it. 
Mack had returned home with the news that the men behind 
Kumo Shima had been dealt with. Once again the Executioner 
had lived up to his name. However, before Carl could say 
more than two words to the man Mack had left on yet another 
critical mission for which he was the best person. Carl 
found himself almost irrationally jealous of the man's job, 
even though he still wasn't sure what he actually wanted to 
say to him. Somehow 'sorry' just didn't seem enough.

And Mack wasn't the only one to disappear. Pol had headed 
off to St. Paul to spend time with his sister and Gadgets 
had gone with him. Carl had turned down an invitation to go 
with them, but didn't begrudge them that: after all, they 
did own a detective agency with her there and they should 
deal with some of the running of it from time to time. 
Phoenix Force was out on a mission of their own and Hal was 
in DC of course.

That didn't leave many people at the farm. Barbara lived in 
her office for the duration of any missions so she wasn't 
in evidence and the cyber-team was also on constant call, 
covering both Mack and Phoenix. That basically left the 
Farm's blacksuits -- the in-house security and field backup 
-- and they were avoiding Carl.

He didn't blame them, either. Seven blacksuits were still 
in the hospital, recovering from a variety of injuries 
inflicted by three men who were *supposed* to be on their 
side. The only thing Carl had to be thankful for was the 
fact that no one was seriously injured in the fight. 
Everyone was going to heal. Eventually.

So that left Carl alone to brood. He could have left the 
Farm for a furlough, found something to distract himself, 
but he couldn't think of anything that he was interested in 
doing. So he brooded.

And that was why he found himself in the gym after hours. 
His sleep had been broken by nightmares ever since the 
incident, of the attack and older incidents like Unomundo, 
so he'd taken to getting up late and coming down to work 
himself to exhaustion. Then he'd go back to his room to get 
some more sleep. It wasn't particularly restful, but he was 
surviving. Hopefully, when Able Team was sent back into the 
field he would get over this a little faster. Until then, 
the faces of Farm guards overlaid with twisted Korean 
features kept him up at night.

The gym was deserted, as it had been the last several 
nights, and Carl didn't turn all of the lights on. A couple 
small lights in the corner with the punching bags was all 
he needed.

He stripped off his shirt and tossed it in the corner, then 
start a series of warm-up stretches. Without them, he would 
have been in a lot of pain in the morning. He didn't really 
care much, but there was always the chance that an 
emergency might send him out into the field without warning 
and he wasn't willing to risk not being at his peak 
condition.

Once he was warmed up and developing a slight sheen of 
sweat, he started in on one of the heavier punching bags. 
At first he went with just a light right followed by a 
left, but as time went by he increased the power of his 
punches until the bag was swinging like a pendulum under 
the force of his blows. The sweat was dripping in his eyes, 
making them sting fiercely.

He could feel the strain when he gave the bag one last 
flurry of punches, followed by a right that made the bag 
swing wildly. He stood staring at it, breathing heavily, 
wondering if he'd done enough to guarantee a few hours of 
dreamless sleep.

He was so focused on bag that the sound of slow applause 
caught him off-guard. He spun around, almost toppling over 
in his exhaustion, to find John "Cowboy" Kissinger standing 
there, leaning casually against the doorframe. "Much 
hostility to work off?" the big man said casually.

Carl straightened up, brushing the sweat out of his eyes. 
"Do you want something?" he asked, reining in his temper. 
Kissinger was an okay guy and he got along well with the 
man even if he had joined the Farm as a replacement for a 
man that Carl considered irreplaceable in so many ways, 
Andrej Konzaki, the Farm's late weaponsmith. But at the 
moment, he was just about the last person Carl wanted to 
see.

"Just checking who's using the facilities so late. Most 
people are asleep at one in the morning."

"You aren't," Carl pointed out, reaching out to the stop 
the last of the bag's spin.

Cowboy shrugged. "Just came off patrol. We're a little 
short-handed at the moment."

Carl winced, even though there was no accusation in the 
other man's voice, knowing that *he* was the reason that 
the Farm's weaponsmith had to walk the fences like a lowly 
blacksuit. Hal was pushing through a rush recruitment 
drive, but that took time and only so many of the standby 
team could safely be recalled. "I won't keep you up then," 
he said turning back to the punching bag.

"You're just bound and determined to wallow, aren't you? 
This isn't hostility, it's self-pity."

Carl spun back around at the mocking tone in the man's 
voice. "Self-pity?!" he said in disbelief. "I nearly killed 
our own people! Three of them are still in the hospital 
because of me! What do you expect me to do, just shrug it 
off?"

For the first time, Cowboy moved into the room. He was 
still dressed in the all-black of the night patrols. Even 
though they were the same height and nearly the same 
weight, the black, combined with the oversized mustache and 
the bronze skin of his native heritage, made the man seem 
even more massive than he was. "No," he said, "I don't 
expect you to just shrug it off. But I do expect you to 
deal with it, which you obviously aren't."

Carl snorted, refusing to meet the other man's eyes. 'Deal 
with it,' the man said. Easy for someone else to say, 
especially when he didn't have a clue.

Because he wasn't looking at Cowboy, he didn't see more 
than a flash of movement before he found himself slammed up 
against a wall. Then the weight was gone and he landed on 
his ass on the practice mats. He sat there for a moment, 
trying to remember how to breathe after having the air 
knocked out of his lungs. "What the fuck was that?" he 
finally gasped.

"Well, you seemed to be looking for punishment, so I 
thought I'd give it to you. Was it enough?" Cowboy said 
mildly, although there was a dangerous glint in his eye. 
Carl's jaw clenched as he pushed to his feet. "Guess not."

This time it was a fist that was headed for Carl's jaw and 
he blocked it automatically, then followed through with a 
punch that the other man blocked just as easily.

They froze, staring at each other. Carl couldn't tell what 
was going through the other man's mind and suddenly he 
didn't care. He bared his teeth in an imitation of a grin 
and swung again.

This punch didn't come any closer than the last one and 
Cowboy just laughed. "That the best you can do, boy?" he 
said mockingly.

With that, Carl lost it completely. He waded in, fists 
swinging, and Cowboy met him blow for blow.

>>>~~~<<<

Carl collapsed to mats, even more covered in sweat than 
before and breathing as heavily as if he'd just run a 
marathon. He felt like he was one large muscle ache covered 
over by a solid bruise. One of his teeth was a little loose 
when he probed with his tongue and he could taste blood. 
His shoulder was wrenched, and if Cowboy's judgment hadn't 
been dead-on it probably would have been dislocated.

Cowboy landed next to him, breathing just as hard he was 
pleased to note. The left sleeve was ripped off his one-
piece suit and he'd lost so many buttons from the front 
that it was open almost to his navel, showing off an 
expanse of chest. Carl watched as a bead of sweat slid down 
the center of that chest, contouring the man's pecs.

"Feeling better *now*?" the man gasped.

Carl thought about it and was surprised to find that he 
did. The heavy load of guilt he'd been feeling was still 
there, just not as intense anymore. It was like the guilt 
he still felt over Flor's death, years ago: An ache, but no 
longer paralyzing. "Yeah," he gasped, nodding his head.

"Good, because I don't think I've got enough to keep 
convincing you."

Carl laughed as the big man toppled backwards, landing on 
his back, arms and legs stretched out. Not feeling strong 
enough to move anywhere, Carl followed his example. He 
stared up at the ceiling, noticing for the first time that 
it was a series of drop tiles and wondered if there were 
cameras behind them. It wouldn't surprise him, after their 
recent experience with a traitor in their ranks. He 
wondered if anyone had been watching their fight, and what 
they'd thought about it. If so, they couldn't have been too 
worried, since no security personnel had come bursting 
through the doors to drag them apart.

"They are going to be alright, right?" he asked again, even 
though he'd already been told more than once over the last 
few days.

Cowboy snorted. "Alvarez is being released before lunch. 
Martins and Gross are going to be a little longer, but the 
docs say that with a little physio, they'll be good as 
new."

"Good."

Cowboy rolled over to face him. "Of course, I still can't 
believe that the three of you screwed up your assault that 
badly."

Pride stiffened Carl's back. "What do you mean?" he said 
suspiciously.

"Oh, come on. If you guys had been in the field, we'd all 
be dead. Instead, none of you killed a single guard. Pol 
was taken down way too easily. Gadgets shouldn't have been 
taken out by a bunch of techies. And you--" Cowboy smirked. 
"You gave Mack a run for his money, but you thought you 
were going after a Korean assassin, while he knew he was 
going up against a friend."

"Would you just get to the point?" Carl snapped.

"I'm saying that you guys were fighting the programming. 
You went easy on us."

"You call that *easy*?"

"Yep."

Carl thought about it for a moment. "Shit."

"Yep."

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that 
Cowboy was right. If they'd been going up against a *real* 
enemy the way they had in their assault on the Farm, they'd 
all be dead. "Shit," he said again, softly. A tight knot 
deep inside his gut loosened.

"Does this mean that you're going to stop making midnight 
visits to the gym?" Cowboy asked, getting to his feet. He 
held out a hand. Carl took it and was easily pulled to his 
feet. Cowboy didn't go into the field often, but maintained 
himself as if his life depended on his physical condition.

Carl swayed on his feet, suddenly completely exhausted. 
"Yeah, I think so," he said, then yawned widely.

"C'mon. A hot shower before you head to bed will do you a 
world of good."

Carl followed Cowboy towards the locker room just off the 
gym. "Are you going to wash my back for me?" he asked, 
grinning suggestively.

Cowboy snorted. "Ironman you may be, but I doubt you've got 
the juice in you for that, boy."

"I might surprise you."

"Well, *I* certainly don't."

The spray of the shower felt unbelievably good against his 
bare skin, and Carl realized that he didn't even remember 
stripping. He must have been more tired than he thought. He 
turned his face up and sighed, not caring that he got a 
mouthful of water in the process.

Then suddenly he found himself pressed face-first against 
the tiles, a warm, wet body pressed against his back. A 
soft cock rubbed against his rear and his cock twitched 
hopefully before subsiding again. Yep, no juice there. He 
definitely needed some rest.

He shivered as Cowboy's mustache tickled the flesh directly 
under his ear. "I will take a rain-check, though," Cowboy 
said, then nipped his earlobe. "Soon as you're rested, this 
ass is mine."

He pulled away and started soaping himself. Carl followed 
his example, grinning in anticipation.

>>>~~~<<<

Barbara Price knocked on the doorframe and waited until 
Cowboy Kissinger looked up from the paperwork that was the 
bane of both their existences. For an outfit that was not 
supposed to officially exist, they still had to file a ton 
of paperwork.

"What can I do for you today?" Cowboy asked, sitting back 
in his chair and picking up his mug. He took a sip, then 
made a face and put it down again.

"I saw the tape from the gym last night."

Cowboy's mustache twitched. "And?"

Barbara sat down in the chair opposite the desk. "Is he 
going to be okay?" She had a team of psychiatrists that she 
would ask that question, but this time she wanted a 
warrior's opinion.

"Where is Carl right now?"

"Last time I checked, he was still asleep."

"And it's past noon. I think that's a good sign."

"Maybe," Barbara said. She knew that Carl hadn't slept much 
since the attack, but she was still not sure.

"Don't worry, pretty lady. The Ironman is going to be just 
fine." Cowboy's expression was confident, and she breathed 
a sigh of relief.

"Good, because there's a situation brewing in Washington 
state that Able Team is perfect for."

"Then send them."

>>>~~~<<<

Cowboy headed for his room, and more importantly his bed. 
It had been another long day, but tomorrow they would be 
back up to full strength again and he could go back to his 
regular duties.

He stripped his black suit, then turned to the bed. There 
was a piece of paper pinned to his pillow.

He looked around the room and frowned. His people knew 
better than to invade his private space and no stranger 
would have made it this far. He pulled out the pin, then 
picked up the note and read it.

"When we get back, I'm holding you to your promise." There 
was no signature. It didn't need one.

Cowboy balled up the sheet and tossed it at the wastebasket 
with a grin. Carl had flown out before dinner to join his 
partners on the west coast.

Not bothering with PJs, Cowboy climbed into bed and closed 
his eyes. If he was going to satisfy the Ironman, he was 
going to need his rest.

THE END