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Title: Need to Know
Author: heartofslash
Fandom: post-Black Hawk Down (The Long Haul)
Pairings: Nothing that Kurt Schmid has figured out yet, but as usual there is Hoot/Sanderson and Grimes/McKnight.
Rating: This is mild. Really. PG-13 ish. *shock!*
Warning: Will make no sense in the fucking world if you're not a D-Tech/Army of Two reader. Seriously embedded in my own private universe. And I like it that way.
Disclaimer: Hey, it's my brain and if I want to share it, I'm allowed. Some of the characters were at some point based on characters from Black Hawk Down, but I think we've moved beyond that by now.
Need to Know
Kurt Schmid stared at the Rolodex in vain, straining to make sense of the mishmash of letters and numbers. He tried squinting. He tried flipping the text over in his mind's eye, but it made no sense. The jumble of Grimes' neat black print must have jumbled his brain. He watched Grimes punch ten numbers on the phone. They bore no resemblance he could discern to what was on the card. Grimes did this casually, as if deciphering cryptograms in your head is something you do every day and, perhaps, it was, for Grimes.
"Negative," Grimes said into the phone. "Alpha, tango, one, seven. Chevrolet."
Schmid tried to look like he wasn't listening.
"That bird will not fly," Grimes said. "Big Dog will advise. Take the slow train until evening. Contact imminent."
Schmid wondered which one of his bosses was "Big Dog", and if it really mattered which was Big Dog. Ciphers, code names. Very spy-versus-spy.
Grimes scribbled something on a post-it note. More codes probably. "Copy that," he said.
The thing about the Rolodex was that there didn't even seem to be a pattern. Nothing that looked like one, and no spaces between words, either, which made working out a substitution code that much more difficult. Schmid put his fingers over the bottom three lines of text, hoping that isolating the first line would make it easier to make out.
Grimes hung up the phone. "That's not name and number," he said with a jerk of his head toward the Rolodex. "That line is the street address of a rendezvous point."
Schmid snatched his hand back, burned. "I was just wondering abut the code," he mumbled. Curious, that was all.
"It's my own crypt. I invented it," Grimes said with narrowed eyes. "Sergeant Sanderson and I are the only ones who can read it. We like it that way."
Ah. Schmid understood. Low tech is safest, sometimes. "People who don't want to be found," he said, nodding.
"Some people," Grimes said, "aren't even supposed to exist."
Fair enough. Hoot and Sanderson had probably amassed a lot of contacts over the years. A lot of friends. A lot of enemies. Best not to know too much.
"Which one of them is Big Dog?" Schmid asked, unable to contain all his curiosity.
"Which what?"
"Hoot or Sanderson?"
"Neither. Big Dog is our New York City operative."
"Oh. So what do you call Hoot and Sanderson."
Grimes deftly spun the Rolodex to a blank card. "I call them Hoot and Sanderson," he said blandly.
That made sense.
"Or Sergeant Gibson and Sergeant Sanderson."
Made more sense.
"Or sarn't."
Simple. Easy.
"Or slu…"
Hoot burst through the door and waved a blue cardboard tube in the air. "Mission accomplished," he announced.
Hoot was wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, dark burgundy tie and sunglasses. The several days of stubble and tousled hair made him look like a movie star on the red carpet. Except for the way he loosened the tie, ditched the blue prints on the desk and kicked his shoes off onto the mat in the corner, all in one move, while flipping the rolodex to the exact same card Grimes had been using, even though there were no divider tabs to indicate the first letter, or whatever criteria by which the data happened to be organized. Most people can't move that fast with that degree of accuracy.
The lack of tabs made sense, since an indication of the first letter would give the first clue toward solving the substitution code, if it was a substitution code. For all Schmid knew, it wasn't a substitution code, but some cipher based on Grimes' favorite TV show, or the song he was listening to when he lost his virginity, or something equally obscure.
Grimes was looking at Hoot's suit critically. "Did you really have to wear a suit just to get a building permit?"
"It wasn't just a building permit. I had to get a variance approval," Hoot said, almost defensively. "It wasn't easy."
Sanderson walked in, looking a touch disheveled. He sorted through a pile of mail. "He scared the crap out of the county clerk," he said as he ripped an envelope open.
"Officious little prick," Hoot muttered.
"But we have approval to build a garage attached to the house, as long as we remove enough shrubbery along the back property line to allow passage of emergency vehicles. They're worried the guy next door will set his house on fire again, and the only way to get through is our yard."
Hoot snorted. "Remind me again why it's a good idea to live next to a sloppy drunk who turns pyromaniac every anniversary of his wife's death?"
"He's not sloppy; he's loose-limbed. And it's only once a year. Plus, it keeps the property values down so the taxes aren't so high. Besides, this year you had that fire put out before we even heard the sirens." Sanderson passed Grimes a hand-written note on the back of a Chinese take-out menu. "Could you take care of this list?"
Grimes wrinkled his nose and handled the menu the way you might pick up a suspicious kleenex. "You want me to deliver it to the same location as last time?"
"Yes, please."
"I'll do it," Hoot said. "Doesn't bother me none. I happen to like mail drops…"
Sanderson, for some reason, looked irritated by that.
"Thank you, sarn't." Grimes looked ridiculously relieved. Schmid knew he did not want to know where the dead drop was.
"I'll start on the shrubbery when I get back from delivering Mr. Midnight's payment," Hoot said.
"I can call a landscaper," Grimes offered.
"Rather do it myself. I need the exercise."
Office, suit, meetings at city hall – yeah, Schmid could see why Hoot needed to do something destructive, all right, burn off some energy. Get back to what he did best. The suit looked fine on him, but it was not his style.
"Don't ruin your suit," Sanderson said, like it was Hoot's only suit. It probably was.
Sanderson wasn't in a suit. He was in dress pants and a shirt that might have been a little bit shiny, but it was hard to say for sure. Black. All black. It suited him. He looked kind of badass for a guy who was out of uniform.
Schmid realized that Sanderson was not talking about the shrubbery when he said not to ruin the suit. He was talking about the dead drop.
Schmid really did not want to know…
"Mr. Grimes, could you put in a call to the contractor who did your basement?" Sanderson asked. "We'd like to get started on this as soon as possible."
"I left a message with Ravi this morning." Grimes grinned when Hoot looked surprised. "I had every faith in your ability to charm the zoning department, sarn't. Also, I placed the other call. Big Dog will advise. The Ear is on ice."
Hoot looked pleased at that news. Whatever the fuck it meant.
"Good. I'll go get changed before I deliver the package."
Hoot went into the hall. The Schmid heard him go upstairs. So, he did live up there. That had to be a terribly cramped apartment, unless the living room was doubling as a second bedroom. Maybe there was no living room. What use would Hoot or Sanderson have for a living room? They seemed to work all the time. When they weren't out on jobs or in meetings, they spent all their time in the office with the door closed, probably dealing with sensitive information or doing more of spy-versus-spy shit.
Schmid didn't really care. He'd been on the job for a week and was loving it. He'd been given almost free reign over the workshop, except for Sanderson's desk, which was the one with the wood counter. Sanderson was protective of his space in the workshop.
So far, Schmid had reconfigured the operating system of one computer and installed an encryption program straight out of a William Gibson novel on the other. That had been fun. He'd designed a motion-activated surveillance system for the executive suite of an unnamed television news station, for undisclosed reasons. It was cool work. Challenging and fun. It was a little like being back in the army – everything was on a need-to-know basis, and, apparently, Kurt Schmid had very little need to know.
Some things he suspected, he'd never need to know. There were some things even Grimes didn't know. Hoot didn't seem to care about the whys and wherefores of anything. Only Sanderson was fully in the know, and that was the way he liked it, so Schmid wasn't about to complain. He liked the job too much to worry about the petty annoyance of not being entirely sure what he was doing.
Grimes' computer beeped. "It's here," he announced. Fingers flew over keys and there was a subtle grinding noise from the CD burner. "Four minutes and you'll have everything you need to know. I'll make coffee."
That was another good part of the job. Schmid had never been a big coffee drinker, but working at D-Tech was changing that.
Grimes busied himself at the coffee maker, and then busied himself stuffing seemingly random things into an oversized envelope. Cash. Papers. A flat cardboard box. Some small objects. He was sealing it with packing tape when Hoot came in, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.
"Got everything?"
Grimes nodded. "Tell Mr. Midnight he should get a bank account like everyone else."
Hoot laughed as if that was the funniest thing he'd heard all day. "Good one. Like he'd ever walk in the front door of a bank."
Grimes handed over the envelope. "I understand the cash and the gift certificates, and the… you know. But I don't get the dental floss."
The CD tray popped open with a whirr. Schmid grabbed the disc and headed for the workshop as Hoot was explaining something to Grimes about Mr. Midnight's impeccable dental hygiene and the fact that, for some people, money wasn't everything. Hence the paper clips.
Schmid suspected that Mr. Midnight was the nervous old guy who'd shown up several days before bearing a tattered shopping bag that smelled like formaldehyde.
Nope. Not going there. Need-to-know did not have to include weird shit like that. He had no need to know sort of lowlife shenanigans Mr. Midnight was up to on behalf of D-Tech, and he had no desire to know.
What he did know was that for a fairly new company, D-Tech had a surprising number of clients, most of who required surveillance or reconnaissance of some sort, and that Sanderson kept a full set of lock picks and a burglary tool kit in the case beside his workbench. And that the network of contacts included a lot of ex-military types with sketchy civilian lives.
But what else were guys supposed to do after they left the army? Schmid knew he'd been at a loss. He knew a couple of guys who'd gone overseas to do "security" work that amounted to little more than joining a private army. Better pay, more leeway, one guy had bragged. Schmid didn't want to be a merc, and he sure as hell didn't want to be patching up mercs. D-tech suite him just fine.
He unzipped the file and studied the matrix. Grimes brought him a cup of coffee.
"You're on the thing with the firm?"
"Like flies on shit," Schmid said as he opened the database. "I am all over this one."
"You need anything else? Because I have a thing to go to…"
A thing? Sometimes Grimes took this clandestine thing a little too far.
"I'm okay. You need me to answer the phone for you?"
"Naw. Sarn't Sanderson is here. He handles the phones when I'm not here. I'll be back right after class. Won't be more than an hour and a half."
Class? What the hell was that secret code for?
Grimes took a cylinder out of the hall closet. It looked like a yoga mat. Schmid's ex-girlfriend had been into yoga. It had kept her limber. Very limber, as Schmid recalled.
Grimes went to yoga class?
"Leaving," Grimes called out.
"Have fun at yoga," Sanderson called back.
Schmid shook his head. Stranger things had happened. But an ex-Ranger doing yoga - Who would have thought that? But then, Grimes had always been a little peculiar.
Maybe the yoga was why he looked so healthy he practically glowed. Although, the glow may have been an optical illusion caused by the beard Grimes was growing. He'd been perfectly clean-shaven the week before, but did not seem to have touched a razor since, so his lower face was covered in coppery stubble. Schmid hadn't realized Grimes' hair was so reddish, not when they'd all had Ranger cuts.
You never get to really know people in the army. You become closer than brothers, willing to give up your life for each other, living on top of each other, sharing everything up to and including your mess kit at times, but do you really know them?
Hoot and Sanderson had worked together for ages, but Schmid would not have predicted they would go into business together and share an apartment. Or that they'd hire Grimes as their… what the hell was Grimes anyway? He was more than a secretary. He practically ran the office. That wasn't too surprising, that he was managing the office. He'd always working in the office in the army. But he'd never been so efficient. He's always struck Schmid as a bit of a slacker. Or a scammer. Or a schemer. But here he seemed very competent and hard-working and honest.
You never can tell about a guy…
Schmid figured he'd be happy at D-Tech. He liked the work. He liked the men. He was getting a small apartment on Friday, nothing special but it was a place to got if the date with the brunette with the great tits worked out on Saturday night.
He would have to ask Grimes if he knew any restaurants good for dates. Schmid wasn't rich, but you have to take women somewhere nice, especially on a first date. Grimes might know about stuff like that.
In the meantime, he turned back to the computer screen, settled into his chair and flexed his fingers. He had a database to break into…
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Grimes headed back to the office stretched, relaxed and refreshed, ready to handle anything. As long as he didn't have to go to that alley to do the mail drop. The smell... He had to stop remembering it, or he'd be imagining it all day.
With things so busy at work, he only had time for two yoga classes a week, but it was enough to keep him limber, when added to the practice he did at home and whatever gymnastics McKnight felt like putting him through. But he hadn't seen McKnight in over a week.
He hoped everything was cool. That last night, with the uniform and the lipstick and the fucking – him fucking McKnight. That had been intense. He hated not to be with McKnight to make sure everything was okay physically and otherwise.
He rubbed his hand over his fresh beard. It would be nicely grown in by the time McKnight returned. Enough so he would want Grimes to rub it all over him. That would be worth the wait.
There was an awful racket coming from the backyard. Grimes looked over the fence. Hoot was shirtless, just wearing jeans and boots and a pair of safety goggles. In the heat of the afternoon he was all sweat and muscle, with bits of leaves stuck to him from the way he was hacking at the shrubbery with the trimmer.
Watching him work like that, Grimes could kind of understand what people would see in Hoot. Physically he was a magnificent specimen, but also, he was focused and determined. Those were attractive qualities.
Grimes knew he'd been a little harsh with Hoot over the last little while. Not mean, but a bit sarcastic. Grimes didn't dislike him, but he did find Hoot exasperating at times.
Mostly, he couldn't understand why he was such a slut. But Hoot had been much more discreet lately, especially since Schmid had been hired. And Roe was out of country.
It was obvious that Schmid was about as straight as a guy can get – not in the obnoxious, whistling-at-girls-on-the-street and telling dirty jokes sort of way, but by the way he was completely oblivious to the soup of homoerotically-inclined pheromones that oozed out of Sanderson and Hoot's office. Grimes couldn't help but notice it. Hoot put out some powerful pheromones… not that they affected Grimes, other than to irritate him.
Grimes would have to examine why that was some day. He suspected, in the very back of his mind, that they actually did have some effect on him. That was probably what irritated Grimes. But it wasn't Hoot like he was as he cut down the shrubbery that irritated him – that didn't do anything to Grimes at all. It was the sex. Constant. Almost habitual. Sanderson was just as involved in the sex, but somehow he didn't bother Grimes as much. Strange…
And it didn't bother him to walk in on the sarn'ts every now and then, not in theory, but when McKnight was away he liked to keep the sexual titillation to a minimum. He was only allowed to jerk off once a day.
Grimes stepped into the back yard and looked up. There was Sanderson, looking out the window at Hoot. Looking hungry.
Insatiable. You would think they'd would have been satisfied after whatever they'd been doing in the truck after the meetings at city hall. Or maybe not in the truck. Maybe they'd done whatever they'd been doing at city hall. He pictured Hoot, in the suit, in a little-used corridor, quiet but still risky, and Sanderson, who seemed to really like Hoot in the suit.
McKnight really liked it when Grimes wore his suit.
Did the same sorts of things happen when Hoot wore a suit? Grimes tried to picture Hoot in the suit and Sanderson going down on him. He knew Sanderson went down on Hoot, because one time he'd gone down into the basement to get paper for the laser printer, and there was Sanderson on his knees, and Hoot leaning back against a washing machine, which had been in the middle of the spin cycle. It had been noisy enough, and they'd been preoccupied enough, that they'd not noticed Grimes. Or so Grimes had thought until they'd come upstairs, fully dressed but Sanderson had red lips and Hoot had a silly grin on his face, so it would have been obvious even if Grimes had not seen them in the act, and Sanderson had muttered something about cleaning the drop cloths from when he painted the camouflage on the client's outdoor camera equipment, and Hoot had smirked and said something about the vibrations from the washer making things really clean.
Oh, yeah. Hoot would wear the suit and Sanderson would go down on him… in a disused corridor of city hall…
Damn. He wasn't supposed to think about stuff like that. He'd already had his jerk off for the day, that morning in the shower.
That hadn't been planned. He'd been innocently thinking about getting a slipcover made for the couch and then he'd thought about why the couch needed a slipcover, and one thing had led to another…
Grimes heard the faint ring of the phone, and Sanderson disappeared from the window. Grimes should get back to work. He asked Hoot if he needed anything.
Hoot growled at him. No. He was fine.
That was unfair. Grimes was only being helpful. He wondered why Hoot was in a tense mood.
Grimes went in the back door, through the workshop. Schmid was standing at the computer, staring down at the monitor fixedly, with his legs spread slightly and his hands buried deep in dark honey-colored curls. That made the shape of his arm muscles stand out clearly, and it also lifted his t-shirt so there was a little bit of skin showing above the waistband of his jeans, which rode a little low.
That explained why Hoot had growled.
Must be terribly frustrating for Hoot to be so close to an utterly unavailable man who looked like that.
Schmid wasn't Grimes' type, but he could easily be Hoot's type. Especially since Hoot's type seemed to be determined by a fairly broad range of characteristics. Grimes knew that Hoot had a particular thing for the pretty, and Schmid was quite pretty. Plus he had a very nice, tight ass, if you like nice, tight asses. Of course, as a straight man, Schmid had no clue how to show off his nice, tight ass. His jeans fit terribly. But that wouldn't fool Hoot. Hoot was the kind of guy who could spot a nice, tight ass through ill-fitting straight-boy jeans, no problem.
Schmid clenched his hands in his hair and the curls bounced around a bit.
Hoot would like that, too.
It probably pissed him off that he couldn't grab what he wanted.
Or maybe Grimes was being too harsh again. Maybe Hoot was growling because the shrubbery was more difficult to trim than he'd anticipated. Or because the alley where Mr. Midnight insisted on receiving his pay packages had been even more unpleasant than usual. Or maybe it hadn't been Sanderson going down on Hoot, but Hoot going down on Sanderson, that had made Sanderson look so disheveled and slightly dazed earlier.
Schmid clenched his hair slightly tighter, as if the tug of the hair would make his brain work better. Grimes did that sometimes. Not to make himself think better, but just as something to do while thinking. He didn't know if it made him look like that, but Schmid looked a bit exasperated, a bit befuddled, and a whole lot sexy, by the standards of most people.
Grimes had different standards than most, but that didn't stop him from knowing what most people's standards were.
Schmid let go of his hair and made a noise that would have been "Eureka" if he'd been in a bad science fiction movie, and typed a few lines on the keyboard. Data spilled out over the screen in chart form. "Gotcha," he said triumphantly.
"Data base cracked?"
"To the foundations. I probably have the chairman of the board's laundry list in here somewhere." Schmid looked gleeful as he sat down and typed commands furiously. "You don't happen to know why I'm doing this, would you?"
Grimes shook his head. He didn't need to know the specifics on this one. It was purely a cyber smash-and-grab job. Not his forte.
Schmid cackled. "Look at this - the private financial reports of every executive… what was that guy's name now?" He scrolled through a list. "There he is. I'll copy it on an encrypted disc, and then get the hell out of Dodge before anyone knows I was ever here… "
"That was quick," Grimes observed. And very efficient.
"Not so difficult once you find a doorway in. That's what I needed that credit card report for. The trick to cracking passwords is psychology."
Grimes thought about his own password.
Yeah, that was probably pretty psychological.
"Some damn secretary decided a password named after her favorite movie star would be secure. Pffft. Piece of cake. She must have bought every one of his movies online. How was yoga?" Schmid asked.
"Very fluid," Grimes said. The class had focused on transitions, from movement to movement, pose to pose, thought to thought. Grimes like the idea of fluid movement. He wasn't always able to achieve it, but he liked to think he possessed a degree of grace, even if it only showed up in private. And he'd always been fond of transitions.
He looked up to see Sanderson standing in the doorway, looking very serious. "Mr. Grimes," he said.
The hair on the back of Grimes' neck stood on end.
"That was Linda McKnight on the phone. There's been an accident."
Back to Soldier Porn or on to the next Long Haul fic, Operation: Under the Radar
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