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Chris Larabee sighed as he stepped from the elevator and into the chaos that was team 7's bullpen. His youngest team member and techie, JD Dunne, seemed to be stuck under his table. One hand was waving away Buck Wilmington, demolitions and weapons expert, while he searched for something under his desk.
"I can't believe you let my phone get under here, don't you know how much stuff lands here? God dammit Buck!"
"I'm sorry your table is doubling as a trash can. If you'd just get your stuff in order, you wouldn't have a problem finding anything, kid."
"I don't think you get to say anything about that Bucklin"
The quiet comment came from the team's sniper Vin Tanner, who then, being the only one to notice him, nodded over to Chris in greeting. The team's leader returned the greeting and then said
"Conference room, five minutes."
Loudly enough for all his men to hear.
Josiah Sanchez, team profiler and unofficial counselor and Nathan Jackson, team medic, acknowledged him with a nod and he got a thumbs-up from Buck. Since he was unable to see the last member of his team, undercover agent Ezra Standish, he walked further into the room and checked the southerners desk. It was empty. Chris looked over to Vin, who shrugged. He hadn't seen the southerner either.
Annoyed, Chris asked Josiah
"Where is he? It's 11. He should have been here two hours ago."
"Mr. Larabee, I resent the implications. I've never been more than an hour over the agreed upon time. And to your information, esteemed leader, I have been here for one and a half hour. I was merely copying something."
"Sorry Ez. Conference room, five minutes."
Ezra gave him his typical two-fingered salute. Chris hoped he hadn't insulted him too bad. You could never know with the southerner. Even though he talked a lot, he never said a lot about himself.
Chris moved into the only room that could fit all his men and waited until they had all entered. Buck and JD entered last, shoving each other and laughing along the way.
Once Chris was certain they would all be listening to him he started to speak
"Orrin wants us to represent the Denver Atf in the inter-agency terrorist drill from Homeland in New York."
He waited out all the complaints from his team and then continued.
"I know we represented the Atf the last three years. I know we won every time. But Orrin still wants us to do this. Three other branches will also be sending teams. You will all behave and we will try... to go along."
"Are we allowed to break some rules?"
"No Buck. No you are not. And I mean all of you. We leave on monday."
With a lot of groaning the six men left the room one after another and started joking about wiping homelands asses for the fourth time.
Chris stayed sitting for a while longer and was tempted to pray for one normal journey. Not that that was very likely.
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When they arrived in New York none of the seven had any energy for the drill. The flight had taken way too long. The moment they entered the building and saw all the other agents, at least three of them were ready to go back home. Ezra hadn't really started to complain yet, but Nathan was sure he would stop being so considerate at some point.
While trying to keep his team from wandering off, Nathan eyed the other teams. Most had arrived prior to them, homeland, the marshalls and the other Atf teams were already present but he couldn't see the DoD anywhere. Just as he saw Buck start to drift towards a brunette woman from the Atf in Miami, another team entered. Five men and two women all wearing vests proclaiming them as NYPD. Two dark haired young men lead the group and were talking rather animatedly.
NYPD? That was weird...they weren't normally a part of this thing.
One of them approached Kendrick who was leading the operation again. The guy had been in charge for the last year, too. He had not left an impression. Nathan briefly recalled the guy's shocked face when Vin had taken him out with a paint gun from way behind him and won them the round. That had been fun. Even though JD had managed to sprain his ankle during the drill, which Nathan still wondered about to this day. Even if he expected nothing different. Maybe they would get away without an injury this year. Or not. Buck had just been slapped. JD was laughing and Chris seemed uninterested in helping his friend.
Kendrick demanded everyone's attention and Chris made them sit down, sending the now puppy-eyed Buck an extra glare for good measures.
"My Name is Agent Kendrick, and I am in charge. Our scenario today is a bank controlled by thieves. They are armed and have taken hostages.
"Like that wasn't the plot the last fifty times." Nathan heard Ez mutter and had to suppress a chuckle. True. Last time they had been in charge of negotiating, Homeland as the thieves. When the homeland agents had been too good for the other teams, they intervened.
"...gets air support, Atf you're our thieves. NYPD...hostages."
While the NYPD team started complaining, Nathan turned to his leader and awaited his reaction. Chris' scowl told him that he was not happy with their assignment. Meanwhile, and carefully behind Chris' back, Ez and Vin were already exchanging excited grins. They had never gotten to play criminals. Well, Ez had, but never in this drill. Chris was most likely also excited...he just didn't want to encourage their troublemakers. Nathan allowed himself a quiet hope that it might not end disastrous.
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Having tied up the NYPD officers in two different rooms, Josiah and Vin had been stationed in front of the first one, where the sergeant and two male officers had been tied to chairs.
The NYPD had seemed really unhappy with being hostages, so neither Vin nor Josiah reacted surprised when they heard shouts from inside.
"That is so obviously a trap, that it's kind of creative"
"You want to act on it, brother?" Josiah was getting too old for this. Maybe if they got captured they could sit this one out, watch from the sidelines, let the NYPD have their fun.
So when he saw his young friends grin he shrugged and together they entered the room, paint-guns raised.
Chris was bored. They were gonna win anyway, so could the teams outside finally get their asses up and attack them? As long as they weren't attacking, there was a very real possibility of his men growing as bored as he was. Which was never a good thing. Thinking of... "Ezra, where are you?" The undercover agent had gone to check on Vin and Josiah after a prolonged radio silence from them. He would have returned by now, unless something caught his attention. When he received no answer he cursed his luck and shared a look with Nathan. They had known this would happen.
Ezra stood in the captives' room, having decided to stay with the not-escaped officer, looking into his tiny hand-held mirror and gave another exasperated sigh. Sergeant Jeffords eyebrow twitched in response. "I really hope those terrible subordinates of yours didn't destroy this suit completely. If this color doesn't wash out, I will have to buy a new one"
He worriedly eyed the red and green markings on his suit jacket that the NYPD officers had left on him when he had come to check on Vin and Josiah. "If this can't be cleaned I will have to ask your officer to reimburse me." Another twitch.
"Could you possibly tell me their name? I think this shot was fired by the small thin one." He vaguely pointed at his stomach area, where a bright red spot was slowly drying. The sergeant looked about ready to pop off his bounds now.
"Of course I could always just take this to your Captain. Raymond Holt, was it? I think Josiah met him on a few occasions. He said he had a rather good impression. Maybe he will repair my suit... Are you alright, Sergeant Jeffords?"
"NO. Will you shut up for a minute, man? You've been talking ever since you've entered this goddamn room! You have been going on about your suit for over 15 minutes! I've about had it with you're talking" While talking the sergeant had unconsciously started standing up and snapped his bounds in the process. Noticing this he sent one last glare in the undercover agent's direction and stormed out of the room, still muttering about silly rich men and their suits.
Watching him go, Ezra smiled. This was turning out to be way more fun than anticipated. He tutted again at the color spots on his suit, dusted it off and calmly looked out the door. Seeing no one he started walking towards the roof entrance. He had to join his team to watch the finale after all.
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Vin had comfortably settled into one of the plastic chairs he and Josiah had dragged onto the roof after getting disqualified. JD had joined them shortly after getting shot and had been excitedly telling Josiah about the 'amazing' tactic the NYPD had used to take him and his temporary partner out. Apparently, at this point the hostages had managed to take out close to all representatives of the Atf. JD thought Chris was still standing, but Buck and Nathan had both said they were out over comm.
Vin leaned over the roof's edge, trying to spot the agents that were supposed to be rescuing the hostages. He couldn't see anyone, so Homeland must really be taking their time...
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Chris Larabee was very annoyed. The NYPD officers had decided not to be hostages anymore and to liberate themselves. To be fair, Chris hadn't wanted to do this from the beginning, but he would still have liked to shoot Kendrick. Currently, he was evading the four NYPD officers that were cleaning out the building and searching for Buck and Nathan, who had gotten shot and were now getting bored. Well, Buck was getting bored. Nathan was fine, and could most likely spend the rest of the training sitting around. But well. They had agreed to meet on the roof, so Nathan would have to come along.
According to Buck, the police officers had put all of them into a room and officer Diaz was 'a stunning beauty and completely immune to all charm'. Chris rolled his eyes as his old friend continued spinning poetry over the female officer. Reaching the room filled with downed Atf agents, Chris quickly surmised that one officer Peralta was the de facto leader of this batch of police officers and made a split second decision.
Entering the room, he pointed his paint gun at Peralta just as the younger man asked "So is that all the terrorists" and said "Not quite. Drop your weapons everybody. Drop 'em right now, it's over. You lost." And then was shot in the back by the sergeant he had been certain had still been tied up and with Ezra... Ah well. He shrugged his shoulders, gave the officers a quick nod and waved for Nathan and Buck to follow him. The NYPD officers watched them leave, a little confused but already busy with their own plans.
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Once all the seven had settled into chairs on the roof, they settled in to watch the show. They saw Kendricks approach the building and each enjoyed his confused expression when Peralta met him at the door. Sadly they couldn't hear what was being said, but Ezra and JD had fun ad-libbing along.
They watched with amusement as the NYPD took out one enemy agent after the other and made their way to Kendrick, Peralta and him having a quick but fierce battle involving a lot of standing around and talking that ended unspectacularly as Kendrick shot Peralta with a gun strapped to his back, a tactic Buck cackled over and compared to 'Die Hard'.
Chris' team left DC feeling slightly disappointed that the NYPD had lost, but delighted that it had been way more fun than the last three years.