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Chapter XX - Higher Ground

Aboard the air ambulance, Buck laid flat on the gurney, his left leg held up by being braced on Arlen's shoulder. Around his calf, a pressure bandage had been clamped to keep him from bleeding out thanks to the rifle round that had passed through. Despite the pain and blood loss, he'd waved the doctor off after that basic treatment, telling him to keep their pilot alive and flying until they could find a place to land.

Next to him, Sato was asleep again, and Buck could see how badly his leg had swollen thanks to being removed from the traction and jostled around...It looked like a gigantic bandage-wrapped sausage. Luckily Arlen hadn't let himself look too closely yet, Buck thought, or he'd probably be either having hysterics or demanding to go back for that sniper.

"Arl, do me a favor?" Buck's voice was gritty, choked, though he wasn't going to let himself thrash or cry out with the pain. It wasn't his first time getting shot. Not even his tenth.

"Yeah boss?" The tiger kept his paw firmly on the bandage, ignoring the wetness that was seeping into the fur there.

"Call Zebra. Ask him about safe places to land this bird. Discreet hospitals, that kind of thing. Don't stop till you find what we need, then tell Rene."

Arlen growled at him, glaring hotly, the anger at Buck's implications cutting through the post-combat haze.

"You don't get to fucking die on me. That sounded like you're putting me in charge. Fuck you, that's your job."

Buck blinked at him in surprise at the sudden turnaround, then let out a roar of laughter, letting his head back down to the gurney to do it.

"Okay okay, because you asked so nicely!" The stag was snickering, maybe a bit from shock, but mostly from amusement. "Just do it okay?"

Arlen's scowl broke a bit, as he nodded, feeling better for having perked up the wounded Captain.

"You got it boss."

Within an hour of leaving the room, Tristan was sitting nervously in an idling cab under the driving tropical rain, watching the façade of a filthy, broken-down concrete building, waiting for Tasha and wondering if the cabbie was looking nervous for any good reason.

He was on his fourth chewed-down claw when Tasha finally re-emerged from the building, looking for all the world like a foreigner gone native. The clothes were perfect for her figure, he thought. Loose-fitting, open, tightened in at the waist in a way that showed off her athletic but slender figure by concealing all but a few details of it.

Tristan let out a relieved smile and waved to her, shyly, from the cab. He still couldn't believe his luck. A beautiful woman who actually seemed to like him back, a chance to get away from his horrible uncle, and now she had the passport they needed, if the little green booklet she was fanning herself with under her umbrella was any indicator.

The scarlet-furred vixen got into the cab, stepping up nimbly and leaning against Tristan as soon as she had the umbrella folded despite the humidity and heat. He half-understood the words she spoke to the cabby, but he evidently knew just what she was saying, and within moments they'd pulled back into traffic and were headed away from the city center.

Tristan slipped an arm around the pretty fox, and lowered his snout to take a long sniff of her hair, then nibbled an ear tip to watch it twitch. She giggled in a fashion that seemed somehow uncharacteristically girlish, and tilted her head to look up at him with a smile that was tight around the edges but passable enough to fool strangers.

He didn't miss the opportunity to kiss her, though their lips didn't linger long, since he was already sweating from the heat in the un-conditioned cab.

Tristan whispered to her while nuzzling her ear again.

"Where are we going? The airport's not this way?"

She smirked, the smirk he associated with her 'tricksy' moods, and laid her head back against his chest while stretching her paws up over her head. Tasha watched amusedly as his eyes went to her bust, pushed forward as it was.

"Patience, my dear."

Gecko hadn't enjoyed the operation, and that made him more angry than anything. His personal fun, stolen away by a bunch of Goza's little goons. Worse yet, the target hadn't been killed and there was no sign of Kiyosato himself.

He had thought about looking for and punishing Tasha, as that seemed to always be worth a laugh. However, her information had been good, and she wasn't currently at his location. So, the secretary had had to do.

When the pickup team arrived to get him, the black canine and his two rat hirelings were given pause, finding Gecko inside the office wearing a blood-spattered suit and cutting on a naked woman he'd tied down to the executive desk there.

He was petting her face, shushing her as he carved into her ears with a pen knife. As his men approached, he held up a paw to pause them, leaned down, and kissed the bloodied, sobbing fur on the forehead.

"We can go now. Is there any sign of Black leader?"

The dog shook his head mutely, unaffected by the disturbed scene before him. It wasn't the first time.

"No, leave this one be. Get me to the airport. Goza will retaliate as soon as he can arrange for his Yakuza to get involved. I was hoping to avoid that kind of mess."

The black dog nodded again and turned, holding the door as his boss exited, wiping his paws on a white handkerchief.

Gavin had no trouble hiding in the ducts. At that moment, police special forces teams were moving through the hospital in force, having blown the front doors right off the hospital.

He laid calmly, unmoving next to a register over a shaft that lead to the first floor, and he could hear the police chattering, telling him everything he needed to know to get ahead of them. Or rather to get Collin ahead of them.

The lion had abandoned his men during the chaos, and was now rushing through the back rooms of the hospital, dodging staff and looking for somewhere, anywhere to hide that he wouldn't be pointed out.

The otter's voice in his headset made him nearly cry with relief.

"Get about twenty meters from where you are. Look for a room labeled '125.' The ducts there are big enough to hide in, and I found us a safe spot."

Collin jerked the door to that room open so hard that it nearly broke the hinges. Wincing, he pulled it shut behind him overly carefully, knowing that damage to the door could lead the cops right to him.

Gav had moved in the meantime, and slid the vents open with a hiss of lubricated metal right over the top of Collin's head. The little otter reached down, bracing his legs against the sides of the narrow tunnel, and grabbed Collin's arms as the lion hopped up, helping him get a grip.

After a few moments of kicking, grunting, and struggling, the lion was stuffed into the ducting along with the much smaller otter. Who he currently glared at, for the affront of being small enough to fit into tight spaces.

Gav ignored his look, turning around with deft movements of his body, and fairly slithered back up the ducts.

"This way, and keep quiet. I found a hollow spot the construction workers must have used for storage."

Down below them, the straggling, wounded members of Black, White, and Green teams were being rounded up by swarms of furious policemen. Collin didn't suspect most of them would make it through their first month of prison. Then again, he didn't really care.

Gecko would always come up with more disposable soldiers. As long as Gav was around, he was good.

Kiyosato's paws were soaked, even through his formerly white gloves, and with his artfully rumpled suit and frantic-looking assistant, the police quickly assumed he wasn't a combatant, and got their medics on the injured ferret girl instead of wasting time arresting the two wolves.

Within five minutes, Kiyosato, Maasa, and Raven were all in an ambulance, wrapped in blankets, on their way to the local public hospital as the paramedics worked to keep the unconscious ferret stable.

The silver wolf looked to his compatriot and spoke in clipped Japanese.

"Her father died to help us."

"Ah...Mr. Goza, he died to save his daughter."

"Yes. And likely saved us in so doing. We will help her, as promised. When we leave her at the hospital, make certain she can contact us, and arrange guards to help her get home."

Maasa sighed and nodded, looking at the injured child. His business sense told him to pay her hospital bills and leave her without so much as a name. His heart told him Mr. Goza was right. Though it did surprise him to hear such a thing from a wolf with such a terrifying reputation.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Maasa-san?"

The younger wolf bowed his head, and let himself start to shake, finally, after all the energetic talking and shooting and running.

"What do we do now?"

Kiyosato looked at the ambulance techs, knowing they couldn't understand his Japanese by how they'd reacted blankly to a few of his questions earlier.

"I will find out where Captain Buck took my nephew during their rescue. At the same time, you will begin organizing the Family to hunt down Simon Gecko. We will go to the ends of the earth, and when we get there, we will commend him to his ancestors. Him and all of his servants."

That's more like what I was told to expect...

Tristan smelled so many things it made his snout burn. Sand, mildew, fuel, oil, Tasha's slightly spicy scent, over-ripe fruit - Which he was buying right then from a shoddy stall on a patch of dirt in a clearing in the jungle - and something that tickled his snout in a way that made him keep wanting to rub it.

His eyes kept to the stall vendor, as Tasha had told him to do, though he rapidly realized why. He was an outsider at a drug trafficking spot. The clearly amateur nature of the 'air strip', the skeazy look of the locals, that damn tickly smell...There was a drug lab nearby, and they weren't exactly bothering to hide it very well.

He jumped when Tasha's paw nabbed his tail and playfully tugged, and he whirled, dropping a couple of fruits he couldn't identify by sight...Then blew out a breath of relief at her grin.

She looked cute in a wicker hat, he thought.

She held up a passport, then tossed it to him. Catching it, he flipped it open to read.

"Um...Argentinian huh? Both of us?"

The vixen nodded, then started fastidiously dusting the linen shirt she'd bought him half an hour before.

"We're headed to Las Lenas. Little town in the Andes. Nobody will look for us there, and even if they do, we'll know well in advance. Also, it's a ski town, so it'll have internet."

Tristan blew a breath of relief. That was his worst fear about going to ground, he realized...a loss of all things familiar.

"Tosh?"

"Yeah?" She grabbed his paw and pulled him towards a waiting airplane and the capybara piloting it. Who, he noted, looked like a pirate or something, with scraggly teeth and a funny beard growing off his furry chin.

"What ...Um. What are we to each other?"

She slowed, then stopped, turning to look up at him. The look in her green eyes was confused, brow furrowed, lips pursed as if she was halfway to answering.

Tristan nearly didn't react, nearly didn't push...But some instinct in him told him to be bold, so he slipped his arms around her waist, pulled her close, and kissed her heatedly there on the makeshift tarmac, bending her backwards as he did.

The vixen panted, shivering in his arms, her paws stiff on his chest with her elbows bent. Her headfur, mussed by the movement, fell across her face, shielding her just long enough for her to speak, instead of getting lost in his eyes.

Tasha felt lost, scared. The feelings were stronger than she should have let them be, and she knew it.

"What else?" She spoke in a soft voice, unsure of herself in a way that made Tristan hold her tighter, straightening and putting her head against his chest.

"You're my boyfriend."