A/N: So you're getting this for one very simple reason: Another Alex-joins-the-SAS-in-secret fic has come out, and I want to be the first to finish! And yes, I know that makes me sound like a brat. On the other hand, seeing as you'll now be getting at least 2 updates from me a week, I'm sure you won't complain. :)
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing that you recognise.
-o-O-o-
Gull rested his back against the barracks wall and sighed. Something was wrong with Jaguar. Before the mission he had been golden, straight through. Now he was more like diamond.
He sparkled and shone even more, but you could never see inside. You would be deflected and deceived by that beautiful, glistening light. And if you did get close enough to touch it, it was hard and cold and unforgiving.
He was worried about him, and he was pretty sure the rest of the team was too.
Gull started as Jaguar approached the barracks.
"Jag!" he said, clambering to his feet. "What did the Sergeant say?"
"Not much," answered Jag. "I mean, there wasn't much he could say, was there? It's not illegal. It's not even written down that they don't teach it."
"So he's not mad?"
Jaguar shrugged. "He knew I had secrets when he recruited me. Can't change that now."
What Alex didn't say was that he had only learnt what he needed to survive, nothing more, nothing less.
"So you're back then?" said a voice.
It was Panther, from C-Unit. He and Alex had never gotten on. Alex turned and looked at him wearily.
"I am," he said quietly.
"Where were you?"
"Classified, sorry."
"You don't look sorry," muttered Gull behind him.
Alex smirked at him.
"Come on," said Gull, "Bear will want to know how it went."
Alex nodded and the two walked off, leaving a scowling Panther in their wake.
-o-O-o-
After a few days, everyone accepted Alex back. They stopped asking him where he had been, what he had been doing and left him in peace. It was as if he had never been gone.
Of course, the fact that he could simply answer classified was a huge help – much easier than his 'illness' excuses back at Brooklands.
He started training exercises the day after he first got back, completely ignoring Gull's protests. Three days after that, they went on another survival trek and Alex finally persuaded them to stop treating him like glass after he dived off a waterfall to retrieve a piece of fallen equipment. It had probably been a bit over the top, he had to admit, but he was trying to make a point and anyway, it was only a short waterfall. He'd gone over a taller one and survived.
Despite Alex's many logical arguments, Bear yelled at him for almost an hour, and then he had to sit through a lecture three times that length from Gull, but it worked so it was a small price to pay to stop them giving him the lightest pack and the easiest tasks and in his defence, it was a vital piece of equipment... they just had three spares. The SAS always had spares. It was why their packs were always so damn heavy.
They should get back to Beacons tomorrow, though. They had been in the wilderness for three days with no food but what they could hunt and no water but what they could purify. And no map. That had really sucked. Alex had taken the stars as a rough estimate and they had headed due South, walking for as long as they could before setting up camp. Out of habit, Alex had erased all signs of them as they passed. If someone was tracking them, they would find it almost impossible.
They didn't know it, but they were making a training unit, on a tracking exercise, hate them for life.
Over the laboriously lit fire, Alex stared at his team mates.
"We're about eighteen kilometres from camp," he said eventually.
"If we leave, we could be back by morning," suggested Cobra.
"You're joking right?" asked Bear. "We've already walked for twelve hours today. You seriously want to walk into the dark?"
"It's eighteen kilometres," shrugged Cobra, "We could dawdle it and still be back in four hours. At our normal speed... I'd say two, tops."
Alex shook his head. "No, we could be back in two hours – though I'm more inclined to say three with packs and after today – but we have the Cliffs tomorrow. I don't want to do them in the dark unless absolutely necessary."
"I'm with Jag," said Gull. "The Cliffs are dangerous."
The cliffs were a series of narrow ledges that provided a treacherous path across the face of the southern cliff. Most of the SAS troops avoided it, preferring to take the longer, safer, root, but none of D-Unit were afraid of heights and with Jaguar doing back flips between the ledges just for the hell of it, they had quickly lost their fear of the narrow pathway.
But just because they weren't scared of going there, didn't mean they were happy crossing it in the dark.
"And I want it to hopefully dry up a bit before we go that way. It's been raining all day. If it doesn't stop, we might have to go the long way," said Bear.
Alex sighed and moodily poked the fire with a stick.
"Sorry Jag," said Bear. "We all know you're impatient, but it's too dangerous to cross when the ledges are slippery."
"I know," sighed Alex. "It's just annoying."
He stood up and stretched.
"Where are you going?" asked Gull, curiously.
"Scouting," said Alex shortly.
Gull snorted. "Scouting? This is a training exercise. No-one is going to be following us."
"You never know," said Alex, his face blank and unreadable.
Cobra rolled his eyes. "You're being paranoid," he said quietly.
Alex shrugged and slipped out of the camp.
-o-O-o-
Once out of earshot of the others, Alex paused and closed his eyes. In the dark he pressed his back to a tree and listened. He knew he was nearly invisible to the naked eye, relying on the camouflage paint to prevent his skin from glinting in the dark. He focused on his hearing, on his sense of the world around him. Filtering out the usual noises of the night, he concentrated on the out-of-place, the unusual. Nothing. He sighed in relief, and opened his eyes, now well adjusted to the darkness of the woods.
Stealthily, he began to flit from tree to tree, never more visible than a shadow.
An hour later, there was still no sign of any unusual activity, and Alex was about to turn back when he spotted a small light piercing the gloom ahead. It was too white to be fire, too strong to be a phosphorus derivative in an insect. He stalked slowly forward, instantly cautious.
"Turn that goddamn light off!" came a hiss from ahead of him.
"But we need to-"
"Now, I said!"
The light vanished. Alex crept forward. In a dark clearing, eight men were huddled together, just visible in the shadows.
"Look, this is Sanders. We have orders to kill him and anyone with him."
"Why are we killing him again?" asked another.
"Does it matter?" said the first. "We're being paid. He must have pissed someone off. He's SAS and they tend to travel in teams of four, so we should outnumber them. They just want him dead, no theatrics. We can sniper them before they even see us."
Alex didn't bother to listen to anymore. They weren't after him for who he used to be, so they were probably sent by the group he had just been entangled with. Strange, he thought the main guy he had met was dead. Maybe the second in command had passed word along to the higher ups or something.
Anyway, he wasn't going to risk a confrontation with eight men when his unit was tired out from a day's hiking, especially when he had no idea how well trained the would-be-assassins were.
Slowly, he crept away from the group then, as soon as he was sure he was safe, sprinted back to his team mates.
-o-O-o-
"I'm worried about him," said Bear finally. He, Cobra and Gull had been discussing there fourth team mate for almost an hour. Bear's statement pretty much summed it all up. They couldn't quite put words to how he had changed, but it was obvious that he had. Every second it was as if he were on guard, defending against himself and everyone else. It was in the way he had covered their tracks, in the way he had refused to tell them about his missions and in the way he had pushed himself even more than normal on this trek.
"Yeah, me too," admitted Gull, for once all humour gone from his tone. "But what can we do about it?"
Bear sighed, miserably, "Nothing, I guess, but-" he was interrupted by Jaguar reappearing.
"We have company," he said shortly.
His three team-mates looked at him in surprise.
"Eight men, armed with sniper rifles and god knows what else. They want me dead."
"Why?" asked Cobra, quietly.
Alex shrugged guiltily. "Being paid. They know me as Sanders, so it's no-one too serious, but we should probably get moving."
"Do we fight, or run?" asked Gull.
"They would pick us off before we ever saw them if they have rifles," said Bear.
"We have to get back to camp as quickly as possible," said Alex. "We need reinforcements if we're to capture them... and MI6 will want us to do just that, if we can."
"If we go the long way, we won't get back until morning. They could catch us easily, if we're moving with packs," said Bear.
"We decamp, hide our packs and just carry what we need," said Alex. He felt guilty for taking charge, but he knew more about these hunts than his team mates. That was a key difference between the SAS and MI6. SAS seldom got hunted by assassins.
"We move as fast as we can, but we are careful on the ledges," said Bear.
Alex thought for a bit. It was a good plan, but he had better. A shame that there was no way that Bear would allow him to implement it. He'd have to do it in secret.
He carefully blocked out the reminder that before he went back to MI6, he would never have considered it. Before he went back, he would never have had to.
-o-O-o-
A/N: So what did you think? I'll try and update again on Sunday but given that I have exams Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, it depends on how well my revision is going. Luckily, after that, I'm free for four months. Or relatively free. I'm going to have a job, obviously. Which kinda sucks. Actually, the best case scenario for me is having two jobs, one for experience and one for money, so I might be incredibly busy. But, I do this for fun, so you should still get a fair amount of updates. :)
Anyway, review and tell me what you thought?
Oh, and kudos to Tigertopaz-Titanium Banana for making me burst out laughing with their comment that the shooting instructor was a "meanie butt". :D
Thank you all for the wonderful reviews, from last chapter. I'm replying to most them, slowly, but am afraid that the links are still playing up, which is irritating, so it might take a while!
Anyway, yes, remember: reviews are love!