Checkmate

Setting up the Board

 Ears ringing, breath ragged, Alex Johansen crouched behind a car. His body taught with tension, he watched his partner Emma poke her head from behind her hiding spot. He shook his head furiously. Next to him sat a couple of local police investigating civilian deaths connected with three open NCIS cases. On the other side of the parking garage, two women waited patiently for the federal agents to come after them. They were poised so that James Mitchell, the technology specialist on their team, was in the way of any shots fired at them.

Alex caught the eye of the taller women. Cecilia Capris, he thought. Assassin. Murderer. She was supposed to be meeting a new client here today. Yet she is wearing heels. Honestly no one would have been surprised if those heels concealed some sort of deadly weapon. Her sister Athena stood beside her, looking confident and nearly as beautiful as her sister. The two shared their olive skin and brown hair, common in their native land of Greece. These two hadn’t lived in Greece for quite some time though. Alex knew; he had been tracing their steps through their entire lives for the past two months.

After the death of their father, a specially trained soldier, the two grew up nearly alone. They were offered passage to Russia but too late realized the mistake they had made. The Capris sisters were held captive for the rest of their childhood. Finally, they escaped. Without the means to go far and a new hatred for men in general, they joined the army. Russia was looking for women like these who could easily blend into other cultures and were not distinctly Russian looking. The sisters were trained in hand fighting and gun handling. Each was supplied with enough weapons and spy gadgets to make James Bond jealous. Assigned to live in America, they were placed in high ranking jobs. But they never arrived. Almost as soon as their plane landed, the two were on the run. They were not about to be controlled by a government, just after escaping the control of a man! Cecilia and Athena crossed state borders and changed their names multiple times until they were sure the government had given up.

Now here it got really interesting. Once they were in America, they became very hard to track. And that is where James came in. Tracing cell phones, credit cards, bank accounts, and almost anything else you could think of produced no results. The director of NCIS, Marshall Grant, had pleaded with the Russian government to give up their last known locations. But nothing came up. Except the bodies of course. The Capris had become freelance assassins. 3 bodies showed up at Quantico marine base within a month. Before that, unsolved civilian cases showed a similar killing technique. A bullet behind the ear with a small caliber weapon, then a cleanly broken neck for good measure.

Anyway, no prints or other forensic evidence had come up on the bodies. Nothing inside the bodies said anything about the killers except that they were good. Unwilling to let this case go cold, team leader Supervisory Special Agent Joseph Benton kept digging. Finally, a tip called in this morning. The voice was heavily disguised, low-pitched and ominous. The voice said that the people they were looking for would be meeting a new client at the parking garage underneath a nearby shopping mall. NCIS assumed this was the Russian government assisting them, though they didn’t understand the secrecy. The team cleared the area and set up their stakeout around the parking lot, the lack of people giving it a surreal feeling. The Metro cops had joined them in a car beside James’.  Sitting with his hand on his gun, Alex and James idled there for hours. Losing focus, the agents began finding simple ways to pass time. James tidied his car, leaning back over the seat to gather papers and garbage. Alex started doodling. He drew Samantha Wren, their forensic specialist, with a hunting rifle and a buck tied down on the hood of her eco-friendly hybrid car. That would bother her. Sam was a nature lover and against hunting and other things like that. James looked at what he was doing and snorted in disgust. Alex almost said something but stopped himself. This was just James being James. Having been stuck in this cramped car with him for the entire day, Alex was fine with sitting in silence. Just as he was putting the finishing touches on the gory wounds on the buck, he felt a sharp pain in his neck, then nothing.