Chapter Text
The heat was oppressive on such an arid day, the soldiers practically sweating through their gear. There wasn’t a cloud in sight to block the scorching sun, and the air was sticky and breezeless.
Alejandro and Rudy were stationed at a sell point twenty klicks East of Las Almas with six other operatives on the lookout for a buyer of a new experimental drug rumored to be distributed and then sold to towns all around South Mexico. They were assigned to locate the buyer of the drug at the sell point, an unoccupied oil warehouse, and then watch the deal be facilitated. They would then follow the buyer and meet with a larger team at a second location.
It was supposed to be a simple recon mission. So easy that it was almost boring. The only true danger being the sweltering heat.
It hadn’t been easy.
Unbeknownst to them, new security precautions had been taken to prevent the buyer from getting scared off and halting the deal. The vendor had installed advanced security cameras with images so clean it was practically like watching a movie. They had been spotted almost immediately.
They were forced to split up into two teams; one led by Rudy and one by Alejandro. They couldn’t wait for the larger team and since they were spotted, they had to intercept the package or they risked losing it.
The mission, though successful, had gone by in a blur, and Alejandro has more questions than answers.
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Which leads him to now. Trying not to doze off on the ride back in one of their armored cars. One of his officers has mercifully offered to drive to the exfil point, so he gets to relax in the passenger seat.
“You okay?” he whispers to Rudy, who’s in the seat on his left.
Rudy has a faraway look on his face. His body is turned away from him towards the window.
The view outside is unsettling. The warehouse was destroyed, as one of their demo specialists had placed explosives on key support beams so it couldn’t be used again. The building had collapsed in seconds. The formerly peaceful landscape is decimated, with none of the surrounding vegetation or trees remaining. There’s only concrete rubble with bent pipes and scraps of metal sticking up at odd angles. The debris coated the ground with a layer of dust, casting a dim filter on the terrain.
“Rudy,” He says a little louder than before, tearing his gaze away from the window.
“I'm fine Colonel,” He replies, in a clipped tone that doesn't sound like him.
“Did something happen?” Alejandro asks, his voice a hush. Sargent Flores and Officer Cortez are talking idly to each other in the front seat, and Alejandro is grateful they’re occupied and not paying attention to his conversation with Rudy.
“I heard a gunshot over the comms, and then a shout. Was anyone hit?” He urges Rudy, leaning forward slightly with arms crossed.
Rudy, for the second time, ignores his question. He settles back in his seat and closes his eyes. “Wake me up when we reach exfil.”
Okay. Weird.
He’s tired. It's fine. But it's not really. For as long as Alejandro has known Rudy, he’s never acted like this, even when they were teenagers. Is he ill? There was a flu going around the base a few weeks ago…
For all the difficulty of the mission, reaching exfil is blessedly simple. The flight back is also pretty painless, with only a few rounds of bumpy turbulence.
When they arrive at base, his team gets a half hour to eat and wash up before debrief. He goes straight to his quarters trying to scrub the soot out of his hair and change into something clean.
He picks out a dark green long-sleeved shirt, black cargo pants, and a pair of tan sneakers that Rudy has not so subtly offered to replace half a dozen times. But it took him forever to break them in, so he’ll wear them out till they fall off.
Debrief is productive, the small team all filing in a few minutes early. Both teams made it out with no serious injuries to report, even without the additional help that had originally been planned. Alejandro’s men relay valuable intel from the data gathering which he types out on the debrief report. There was a data cache in one of the operation rooms that Sargent Flores was lucky enough to stumble upon, which supplied most of their intel on the possible suppliers and the makeup of the drug. Rudy’s team had secured the buyer and the drugs, while the vendor had escaped.
He should be elated, they all made it out with a quarter of the personnel they originally planned on and still pulled off a successful operation. But-
Rudy isn’t at the debrief. He never misses debrief, unless it's an emergency or he’s held up. Even then he always shoots Alejandro a quick message to keep him up to date with a few times he’s free later so he can submit his statement for the debrief.
But when Alejandro asks his team if Rudy had sustained injuries during the mission, they confirm that they hadn’t seen any injury occur.
There were a few seconds that Rudy and the buyer were alone and no one had visual. But even though they all heard the gun go off, it was clear the gunshot had missed, no one had seen any injuries on either party.
Alejandro nods, and thanks the group for their thorough information. He tells them to get some rest, and that there will be no active missions for the rest of the week. He holds back a laugh at Officer Cortez’s obvious relief as she tiredly salutes with the rest of the team and not so subtly hurries out, probably to go and sleep for the next twenty-four hours. He’s sure most of the group also appreciates the lull in between missions to rest.
He checks up on a few people in medical, stopping to chat about their healing process. He doesn't find Rudy, even after checking in with the medical staff. He knocks on the door of Rudy’s quarters and when he gets no response he looks inside. It’s empty, same with his office.
He goes to the training field to see if he got roped in to helping the new batch of recruits. Checks the guardhouse to see if he chose to observe the handoff of the buyer to the authorities. Stops by the research facilities, in case he wanted to oversee the testing of the new drug with the base scientists. But he’s nowhere, not in any of the usual places.
He’s already sent an embarrassing number of texts to Rudy’s personal and work numbers, but he’s gotten no response. He takes a deep breath. He has to be on base somewhere, he wouldn’t leave without notice, and even if he did, someone would have seen him.
After two hours of searching nearly every location on base, and asking over a dozen personnel about Rudy’s whereabouts, he finds him lying on the ground near the airfield, holding a shiny zippo lighter. He’s wearing all his mission gear, some soot still staining his hands and face.
“Rudy,” He says in lieu of a greeting, “I’ve been looking for you.”
Rudy is looking at the sky, the yellow-blues swirling together with a few clouds dotting the horizon. He responds curtly, “Well, you found me.”
Alejandro lets out an annoyed noise, trying not to react testily. Rudy deliberately missed a meeting to do what? Cloud-watch? Something wasn’t making sense.
“You need to go to medical. You aren't acting like yourself. You might’ve caught the flu that's going around base. And you still haven't been checked for mission injuries.”
Rudy glares at him, and Alejandro feels a wave of nausea hit. What happened on the mission?
Rudy flicks the lighter open, then shuts it with a click, “I made it out Colonel. Anything else is none of your concern.”
Alejandro feels like he should be angry. At this point Rudy's clipped remarks border on insubordination, not like he’s ever really cared about that before. But the only thing he feels is shock, like he’s breaking through a thin layer of ice and being dunked into the frigid water below.
He stares at Rudy for a few moments before giving up hope of any productive conversation.
He’s going to let him sleep off whatever bug he picked up, and try again tomorrow. He’ll even graciously pretend this never happened and hope Rudy is too exhausted to remember, so things can go back to normal.
As he walks away he feels a strange prickle on the back of his neck. His gut instinct screams danger at him but he’s not sure why. There’s an aching tension in his chest, like the moment before infil where he has to rope down from a helicopter from hundreds of meters up. The moment when your stomach drops, and every muscle tenses in anticipation.
But when he looks back, he sees nothing amiss.
Just the faint rhythmic clicking noise of Rudy’s lighter. Almost eerie against the silence of the empty airfield.