I find myself once again in Scotland. One might think that I am waxing nostalgic for the land of haggis and heather, but I assure you I am not. Unfortunate circumstances have led to this but that’s actually a report for another day.
While I am ‘enjoying’ the hospitality of
It seems that Rossi is leading a team to do a simple recover and terminate mission. His team is comprised of Claire, a good start, Karin, an ominous addition and Alex, a recipe for disaster.
Rossi invites his victims, I mean team, to a Pizza Hut.
Claire eyes the pizza with caution while Alex and Rossi dig in. Karin tells him that no self-respecting anorexic would ever put that in her mouth, to which Rossi informs her that he foresaw that and ordered her a calzone. She promptly refuses to eat that, as well.
Rossi tells his team that their mission is to find out whether one Edward Douglas, the owner of a company that designs and provides contracting for physical security to sensitive facilities, such as nuclear power plants, is keeping copies of the plans on completion for nefarious purposes. They are given his home and office addresses and the blueprints for both.
Dude Rossi also informs them that eating the pizza constituted an oral (of a sort) agreement to accept the mission. Claire points out that nearly every patron in the restaurant is eating pizza. Rossi falters in the face of such reasoning. In a hushed tone, he informs the team that the other patrons are on different missions.
After some arguing over why the team has to complete this mission, he asks if they need any equipment. Alex seems to be satisfied with the pizza, but takes the calzone along in case Karin faints from hunger. Claire asks for a car. Karin asks for more Dexatrim.
Rossi drives Claire to the nearest Budget to rent a car while Alex and Karin go bowling. I know, there seems to be some sort of logical loop problem with that but, apparently, it had something to do with the pair not wanting to wait at a food establishment and Karin’s professed skill with balls. Oh fuck it; I’m still confused, too.
Anyway, Claire rents a Nissan Altima and she and Rossi return to the bowling alley to pick up Karin and Alex.
Karin gets annoyed at Rossi’s weaving in and out of traffic, especially since Claire and Alex keep ending up right next to them in traffic.
Eventually, they arrive at
They are relieved to see that there is a bar on the first floor, underneath the office. Karin is in need of sustenance and greedily eyes the door to the bar. Rossi, suddenly realizing that he had no beer with his pizza runs past Karin and slams hard into the door before flatly sliding to the ground like a cartoon character. It seems the bar is not open on Mondays…
Karin is not deterred by a little thing like normal business
operating hours and picks the lock in record time. The team enters the bar. Alex pours some
refreshing drinks for them. They notice
a backdoor that leads to a courtyard with access to the backdoor of
Hmmm, thought Rossi, we need a distraction. Suddenly remembering that this is his neck of the woods, Rossi phones an old friend.
“Dude, fifteen bucks entry and all you can drink at the Watering Hole Ale House.”
But Stevie isn’t biting.
“Okay, you get four dollars …”
“What a ridiculous number. Why do you not pick five dollars so it is easier to figure out?” More logic from Claire has Rossi’s head reeling.
“Five dollars out of every fifteen.”
“I’ll spread the word.” Stevie’s in. And he’ll probably need all of that money and then some for bail.
Claire decides she needs to be in a safer location with both
an egress route and a clear view of the unfolding events. Karin decides she needs to be in
disguise. She takes a shirt from Rossi
(who almost always has both a t-shirt and a plaid shirt on), rolls it up and
stuffs it under her shirt. She applies
some God awful blue eye shadow to every inch of what could be considered her
eyelid, and puts sunglasses on. Rossi
puts a cap on her head and she turns it backwards. Alex is standing close by with her beer and
the calzone at the ready. With disgust,
she stuffs the calzone into her bag and takes the beer. Since she is obviously
not going to eat the calzone, Alex offers her a salad.
Claire has managed to put the car in an open garage with an excellent view of the courtyard and takes a picture with her cell phone before pressing email to five friends. (Thus my awareness of the mission.)
Alex decides that he needs to be in the kitchen preparing hot wings.
Down on the street, Claire is stunned to recognize James Douglas, son of Edward Douglas, arriving at the party with a scantily clad young woman. She erases the picture and phones Rossi to tell him.
“James Douglas is here.”
“Is he with anybody?”
“Some slut.” Rossi’s hormones go into overdrive.
Rossi tells Karin he has to go downstairs.
“Why?”
“Because the son is here.”
“Ja, but it vill be setting zoon.”
“Whatever.”
Karin picks the lock on the backdoor but waits until the party starts before breaking the glass of the small window. She disables the door contacts, opens the door and enters the office. She is halfway down the hall when she realizes that she walked by the alarm control panel. She returns and disables it.
Meanwhile, Rossi finds James Douglas standing very close to Stevie, who is clutching wads of small denomination cash.
The ever vigilant Claire notices a police car arrive and stop at the entrance to the bar. She phones Rossi again to tell him. Rossi finds Alex and tells him they have to get upstairs to Karin.
Karin has booted the computer up and searched the
office. She finds tons of blueprints,
but all seem to belong in the office at this time. Rossi and Alex arrive. Rossi helps search the closets while Alex
checks out the computer. He notices that
the engineering program’s recent document list contains items that were all
written to a zip drive. Since they found
no zip disks in the office, they assume that the media is at
Karin takes the new beer Alex brought her and heads to the back door. Neither Rossi nor Alex thought to mention to her that the police were there. As she is approaching the door, she hears people outside mentioning that the detectives were on their way. She whispers to Alex and Rossi that they have to go out the other way. However, they don’t seem to hear her. She whispers it again. Still nothing.
Karin, not the most patient of agents, gives up and runs to the front door. The sight of a sunglass wearing, hat sporting, horribly made up, anorexic pregnant blonde in high heels running toward the other door spurs the boys to action. They follow.
She runs down the front steps, but slips and to her utter and complete horror, spills her beer. She mourns its loss for a few brief seconds before opening the door and leaving with Alex and Rossi following.
Claire watches their entrance onto the street in amusement, while capturing a few more images for the viewing enjoyment of others (such as Paris, the agent not the city, and me).
Rossi leaves Stevie in the care of
She tells the policeman that she was following someone but lost sight of him. He warns her about how dangerous the roads can be and tells her he will wait while she calls her friend to come to get her … after he gives her a speeding ticket.
She then tells the cop that she has changed her mind, she is
returning to
Rossi has received a phone call from a terrified Stevie. Unfortunately, he gave Rossi’s name to the police because he was under the impression that Rossi had rented the pub for the evening. Oops.
Rossi hangs up with Stevie and
phones Claire to see where she is. He meets
back up with Claire and they, once again, drive to the
They quickly realize that any car parked on the road here (especially a rental wreck) will attract an inordinate amount of attention, so Rossi hides his car nearby and Claire drops the whole group back off at the house. She drives away so as not to bring attention to her destination.
As the terrible trio are staring at the gate, they notice a car approaching and they dive to the ground. When they arise, they are covered in leaves and sticks, which makes Karin (who is seemingly into disguises at this point in time) happy. While Alex and Rossi are brushing themselves off, Karin is stuffing small leaf-laden branches into her hair and shirt.
Alex, Karin and Rossi then turn to stare at the gate leading to the guesthouse. Rossi and Alex are trying to see what kind of lock it is, but Karin is tired of picking locks and climbs over the seven foot wall despite wearing four inch heels.
The boys ask her what she sees.
“A fountain filled with gold.”
Alex leaps over the wall.
Karin is slightly alarmed at the speed with which his falling mass is approaching her anorexic frame and ducks for cover. Thus, neither Alex nor Karin was looking as Rossi executed a high jump and perfect landing that would have made both the Olympic track and gymnastic teams jello-green with envy. Rossi, disappointed that, not only did the team not see his perfectly executed move, but there is also no gold to be found, starts walking toward the guesthouse. Karin picks the lock on the door and the trio searches it. They find nothing, but Alex looks out the window and sees movement in a back and forth pattern in the distance by the main house.
He tells Rossi and Karin that there are patrols.
Karin decides to go to the main house. She heads toward the front of the property where the stream that separates the property seems the shallowest in order to cross. The bridge seems too obvious and the thought of walking the slippery walls of the little dams in four-inch heels is not appealing.
Karin crosses the water barefoot and stops on the other side to put her shoes back on. Alex follows but loses his footing and winds up covered in swampy water.
Karin’s laughter stops as she hears a low growling from in front of her.
Dogs.
Fortunately, she has both training in animal handling and, thanks to the undying persistence of Alex and Roosi, a calzone. She splits the calzone between the dogs.
Rossi arrives at the stream and jumps across in a leap so graceful and spectacular in its execution that Barishnikov’s ballet moves pale in comparison.
However, since Karin is feeding the dogs and Alex is spitting out swamp water, neither team member sees his triumphant move.
Karin asks the boys for their belts and uses them to tie the dogs to a tree. The team makes its way to the house.
Although the lights are on, it appears to the team that the master of the house left in a hurry after receiving a call from the police that his business had been broken into.
Karin wants to enter through the garage, thinking that there will be less security than at the front door. She asks the boys to try and lift the door enough for her to squeeze under.
Unfortunately, the boys have mistaken anorexic for two-dimensional and she is unable to pass under the door. Although Rossi is nearly overcome by the swamp fumes being emitted by Alex, they finally get it up (the door, you perverts) enough for Karin to get in. There is a motion detector at the end of the garage, so she slowly makes her way to the house door.
Outside, the boys are arguing about whether or not something has happened because it has been so long since she went in.
Somewhere out on the road, Claire is dismayed to once again see the flash of police lights in her rearview mirror. She is even more dismayed to see that it is the same cop. He is surprised to see her and to notice that Alex is no longer in the car.
She tells him that Alex decided to stay with another friend and she had to drop him off. She adds that she is lost again. The cop leads her back to the highway. Claire does the sensible thing at this point and goes to a rest stop for coffee.
Karin has reached the house door and, to her delight, finds the control box for all of the alarms in the house. She disables it and heads to the front door.
By this time, Alex and Rossi have switched roles, but are still arguing over whether or not it has been too long.
Karin opens the door.
They begin searching the house. Karin finds a safe. It takes some time for Rossi and her to get the safe open and when they do, to their disappointment, there are no zip disks in it. Karin does find a Walther PPK in the nightstand.
They continue searching the house, Karin and Rossi are looking for the disks and Alex is looking for a new set of clothing.
Alex finds clothing and a hidden safe. While he changes his outfit, Karin and Rossi attempt to open the safe. It takes some time, but they do manage to open it. Karin takes the disks to the computer to verify that it is what they are looking for and Rossi takes the contents of the safe, including another pistol.
When they are sure that they have the right disks, Rossi
phones Claire and tells him that it is a go. If she gets back to the house
first, she will take care of
I am reasonably sure that, like me, you are hoping that Claire gets there first, because we have all read enough reports to know that if Rossi does the deed, it won’t be pretty, if Karin does it, decapitation will result and if Alex does it, he’ll spend the whole night apologizing to the corpse.
Claire does arrive first, but since there are headlights behind her, she pulls over, not wanting to bring attention to her destination, especially if it is that small town cop again.
Alex, Rossi and Karin are just leaving the house when
He listens to her tale of Alex’s fight with his girlfriend and a phone call in the middle of the night to pick him up. The policeman, only a little surprised that Alex is back in the car, dressed very neatly and stinking of swamp water, shakes his head and lets them go.
Well, at least they accomplished their mission and I have new photos to add to my fucked up missions and agents wall.
Thanks Claire!