The noise of a disturbance drew him towards the main gates, it was very early in the morning, not yet fully light and the overcast sky and intermittent sleet of the day before had turned into a heavy drenching downpour which was adding considerably to the misery of the newly arrived refugees massing outside the gates of the compound which had, as usual, been closed and locked overnight. Despite the fact that dawn was only just breaking, the aid workers were already hard at work, busy moving about between groups of people, talking, listening and occasionally crouching down as they did their best to assess urgent needs and priorities, and all of the workers, with one notable exception, were wearing their blue bullet proof vests.

"Silly bitch"

His irritation with her quickly escalated to the same level as it had done every time he'd seen her walking around totally ignoring him and his advice, behaving as if she was making some point or other. As he watched her she began shepherding a woman with a baby and two other very small children out of the crush of people and onto the road leading them through the recently opened gates and into the camp. She bent and picked up one of the children and held a hand out for the other to hold, and then the little trio walked straight past him, with her apparently ignoring him completely, determinedly looking the other way and concentrating all her attention on the woman walking next to her with a baby in her arms. For some reason he took great pleasure in knowing that she'd just done that deliberately in order to make some sort of point, a childish action that made him put his head down and give a little wry smile to himself, little Miss Attitude wasn't quite as indifferent as she would like people to believe.

"What's going on, Boss?" Corporal Easter had arrived at his shoulder, curiosity written all over his face.

"I have no idea" He went over to speak to one of the women wearing an aid worker's vest, not Miss Attitude, but a much older woman who, he assumed, had more seniority and was therefore more likely to have better manners. After a few minutes conversation he returned to Easter who was now surrounded by a group of the men who were all standing together to one side of the muddy pathway.

"Some bastards bloody bombed Aleppo last night, pretty sure it wasn't us or even the yanks, but I'll need to find out for sure just in case they did it without telling us which would be pretty cretinous even for them. Anyway, Christ knows what they were aiming at, because all they've achieved is to make another few million people homeless by the looks of it" He pulled a face "Ops Room, briefing, thirty minutes"

-OG-

"Watch their faces, especially when they catch sight of you, see if anyone has a look of, I don't know, being wrong, being uncomfortable because you're there watching them, it's unlikely that it's going to be a family with children, but not impossible obviously, or for it to be one of the old people, but again not impossible. Do not assume that because someone is female and smiles at you nicely that they're not a terrorist, same goes for anyone who's crying, so particularly watch the young, single people, the blokes and the girls arriving on their own, check their papers if you're in any doubt at all, and if you're still not sure, get them to stand off to one side until one of us can come and take a look" He indicated Corporal Easter "It doesn't hurt to let them see that you're a bit suspicious, but polite at all times please gentlemen, they're not suspected terrorists"

"What, even if we think they are?"

"Yup, even if we think they are, so stay focussed, stay alert, stay alive, it's just as bloody important here as it was in any FOB, maybe more. Watching, being as sure as we fucking well can be that ISIS aren't infiltrating is as crucial as keeping the Taliban away was in Afghan. Any questions?" He looked around at the faces staring at him, they could all recognise the enormity of the task that was facing them, most of them had seen the crush waiting outside the main gates half an hour or so earlier "Oh and it was the Russians that bombed them last night, not us."

"Shit, are we fighting them or are they on our side?"

"God only knows, the liaison Major at Command obviously didn't when I spoke to him, not that he'd admit it, being a Yank, so it's the usual sort of Anglo-American co-operation, officially a so-called 'need to know' basis and apparently I don't need to know" He laughed ruefully at the expressions of resigned deja vu on the faces of the men who'd taken part in joint operations with the Americans when they'd all been in Afghanistan. Nothing changed.

-OG-

The pounding rain had been relentless all day, so that by late afternoon the untarmacked surface of the road was the consistency of soup as the steady flood of people kept on walking through liquid mud. The aid workers kept on going backwards and forwards tirelessly sorting the highest priority groups from the rest, even though, and in spite of their plastic ponchos, they were all soaked from head to toe and had filthy muddy legs and feet and they all shared the same look of total exhaustion on their pale faces.

Captain James stood with Corporal Easter and watched for some time as they carried out the same task as the men and, as he'd instructed the men to do, concentrated on looking closely at the faces of the people trudging past. They both knew just how difficult it would be for anyone, themselves included, to isolate a potential terrorist as the people passing them nearly all had an identical look on their faces, a sort of weary resignation which would make it very difficult, if not well-nigh impossible, to identify anyone who might have trouble as a motive.

As he watched the hundreds of people walking past he noticed the Dawes girl walking away from the porta-cabin, she was easily identifiable amongst the aid workers, she was not only much smaller, looked almost like a kid from this distance she was so much shorter than any of the others, but she was, to his utter frustration and he admitted to himself, fury, still determinedly risking her safety by mingling with the huge crowd without wearing any form of body armour at all, unlike all the others who obviously had more sense. He had no intention of saying anything else to her about it, there was no way he was going to give her another opportunity to get abusive, and as things stood she was quite right, it was totally her own choice, even if it was a remarkably stupid one, but she wasn't one of his, so if she chose to ignore his advice he could afford to smile about it, at the same time as being very grateful for small mercies.

"What you done to yourself?"

He hadn't noticed her coming and standing anywhere near him; he had been concentrating solely on looking at faces for, well, who knew? Just that indefinable something that would set the alarm bells ringing.

"Pardon?"

He turned sharply to look at the pale face with its green eyes which were red-rimmed, the hair that was so soaking wet and limp that it was clinging to her neck with the rainwater dripping down her back and a face that was covered in splashes of mud. She looked totally exhausted, but then they probably all did, the aid workers had started their working day well before dawn and it was almost dark now. He had a feeling that there hadn't been much opportunity for them to take breaks, unlike the lads, who had done shifts of two hours on and half an hour off, these workers had been helping the relentless tide of people all day, apparently without stopping. He wasn't being difficult or pretending that he hadn't heard her as some sort of pay-back for her previous behaviour, he had genuinely been paying such close attention to what he was watching that he didn't know what she'd just said.

"I said, what you done to yourself? But it don't matter if you don't wanna say, I were just asking"

She turned as if to walk away as he wondered what the hell she was talking about.

"I'm sorry; I haven't got a clue what you're talking about"

"Your leg, what have you done to it? It seemed like it might be hurting cos you was rubbing it just now and you was limping earlier, so I wondered if you'd been to the medical tent, they can have a butcher's for you, give you some pain meds or a plaster or whatever"

"Oh that, no, it's fine, it's just an old injury that hurts a bit sometimes, that's all, nothing to worry about, thanks for asking"

He was surprised that she'd noticed him rubbing his leg or limping, he hadn't been aware he'd been doing either, and he'd have put money on her being completely unaware or, if she had noticed, being totally disinterested.

"I weren't worrying, I were just saying that's all, but you know what, it's nothing to do with me, mate"

By the time he realised that she'd misinterpreted what he'd said, or the way he'd said it anyway, she was already walking away so that he was left with a choice of letting it go, or trying to explain the historic nature of the pain which still afflicted him from time to time, especially when he'd been standing still in one place for too long or when the weather was as cold and wet as it was at that moment. It was a pain that he usually went to great lengths to disguise and he hid it because he had no wish for any of the powers that be to find out about the residual problems he had with that leg. The fact that a stranger and one who patently disliked him for some reason, in fact, as far as he could tell she'd avoided looking at him at all, had noticed it so easily and so clearly was more than a little troubling.

He walked after her as fast as his leg would let him, he was doing his best to ignore the fact that the dull ache he'd had most of the day had now turned into a real pain as he struggled to catch her up.

"Miss Dawes, wait out a second"

She slowed her pace but didn't actually stop and look at him, just slowed right down. The mud was extremely unpleasant and difficult to walk on, alternately sucking his boots down into it or allowing them to slip and slide as he attempted to stride out and catch up with her, so that he wanted to shout "Oh, for fuck's sake, just wait a minute, will you?"

"I didn't mean to make it sound as if I was being flippant or as if I'm some sort of martyr, I got injured when I was in Afghan and it really is fine most of the time, just sometimes when it's cold as it is today it plays me up a bit" which he thought must just about be the understatement of the century.

"What happened?"

"I got shot"

"Ouch" She screwed up her nose "What, your leg?"

"Yep, and in my stomach"

"Shit" She gave an exaggerated wince "Mind you, if you will keep on playing bleeding soldiers with real guns and real bullets" She shrugged "People are bound to get hurt aren't they?"

He found himself wanting to laugh even though she'd just done her best to insult him again with her attitude towards soldiers in general and him in particular, he had never before had anyone tell him that he was to blame for what the Taliban had done to him, that what had happened was his own fault because they hadn't been playing nicely. He started biting his bottom lip in an attempt to keep a straight face; if she saw him laughing she would almost certainly misinterpret it.

"First of all, we weren't playing with anything, especially not guns or bullets, nor were we playing at being soldiers; it was the Taliban that shot me and they don't play, end of story"

"Okay, calm down, keep your bleeding hair on"

He was slightly gratified to see what he thought was a little smile on her face as she speeded up and walked away from him, back towards the never ending stream of people that were flooding through the gates towards the reception centre, leaving him to resume his exercise in people watching. He was even more gratified when he saw her give a tiny fleeting glance backwards over her shoulder to where he was standing watching her walk away before he, too, turned back to watch the never-ending stream of faces of the people walking past, totally ignoring Easter's look of curiosity as he did so.

-OG-

It was almost pitch dark when another row broke out between the men and the aid workers, although it wasn't with Miss Attitude this time, she was nowhere to be seen. He had given the order that the gates had to be shut as usual, albeit very reluctantly, but it was a definite security issue that they couldn't hope to keep anyone safe if the gates were left wide open when it was dark. He knew that if he was in the shoes of an insurgent of any kind, he would use darkness as ideal cover for getting inside the camp, but unfortunately there were still crowds of people making their way towards them and the aid workers didn't want anyone to be left outside for the night.

He had an extremely long and frustrating telephone conversation with the UNHCR Chief who was based at the Centre in Ankara, a conversation that eventually resulted in a compromise which the woman obviously found deeply unsatisfactory. Anyone who was sick or who needed treatment for an injury, or anyone with children in tow would be identified by the aid workers and escorted into the camp by his men. Everyone else would be given food and blankets and sheets of plastic to give them some rudimentary means of sheltering from the rain that showed absolutely no sign of easing off and which was, in fact, turning more and more to sleet as the temperatures dropped.

Little Miss Dawes had re-appeared and was busy handing out food, blankets and plastic sheeting, together with bottled water to the people stoically queuing up outside the gates. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, furious that she was still obviously refusing to wear one of the bullet proof vests that everyone else was wearing. The risk to her personal safety was increasing with every degree of darkness and he had this feeling that she was now just being stubborn and obstinate about it, but also that she didn't seem aware of just how bloody stupid she was being or of how much danger she was putting herself in. He watched until he couldn't stand it a minute longer, went to the stores, picked up a UN vest and walked back to where she was standing, then risked an abusive mouthful as he tapped her on her shoulder without saying a word, and held the vest out towards her.

For a couple of moments she hesitated as she obviously considered giving him another outright refusal or a mouthful of Dawes style abuse, then maybe read something in the expression on his face and took the vest from his outstretched hand, and nodded.

"Thanks"

He nodded back at her and caught his bottom lip in his teeth, doing his best not to smile as she put the vest on, he didn't want to appear to be in any way triumphant because he didn't feel as though he'd won some sort of battle, he was just relieved that she'd finally seen sense.

-OG-

A/N: Thank you for the kind comments in your reviews, I suffered the usual doubts and agonies of indecision as to whether to publish or not, those of you out there who write will know what I'm talking about, I'm pretty sure that it's not just me, so, as always, I badly need the feedback to keep me going.

I meant to say yesterday that I received the bouquet in question, but mine was from my brother who'd missed my birthday, it was absolutely beautiful, and was a lovely thought and really sweet of him, but oh how I wish ….

-OG-