Osama's Last Stand

by fireand'chutes777

Late April, 2007. The terrorist cell al-Qaeda has launched a second devastating attack against the United States. ... With Special Forces scrambling, there's only one who can step up to this sitch...

10. Zero Hour

10. Zero Hour

Cry Havoc! And let slip; the Dogs of War!
-William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

There's gonna be a SMACK-DOWN in this town! I am the big dog- WOOF, WOOF, BARK!
-Ronald Stoppable

April 26, 2007
Middleton
Stoppable Household
Ronald Stoppable's bedroom
12:00 AM (local time)
T-minus 2:00 hours

Be-eep-eep… Be-eep-eep… Be-eep-eep…

The shrill voice of a wristwatch alarm sliced like a knife though Mrs. Possible's dreamy bliss, untroubled by war, hate, or heart-wrenching separation. She groggily rolled over and examined the luminous digital display on her arm. Realizing the significance of the indicated time, the woman swung her feet out of bed, careful not to disturb her sleeping husband. Easing into her slippers, she shuffled down the unfamiliar hallway and short flight of stairs, clinging to the banister and blinking away the fug accompanying a middle-of-the-night awakening. Padding across the darkened living room, she glanced at the iridescent clock over the fireplace mantle.

12:01. I wonder if she's up yet.

Anne walked into the kitchenette and flicked on a low-powered light beneath the stove-hood microwave. Pulling a ceramic mug, faded and scratched from years of dishwashing, from the hanging cupboard, she busied herself with the kettle. After a few minutes, the kettle began to steam and whimper. She quickly removed the pot from the stove to prevent its wail from awakening the rest of the household. As Mrs. Possible poured the scalding water into her mug, she let the steam flow over her face. It gently warmed and soothed her sinuses, dissolving the night sand from her eyes. She deposited an extra teabag of Aunti Jama's Extra-Strong Herbal Honey-Lemon Tea into her cup and ambled to the family-room couch, careful in her footsteps to keep the hot liquid from sloshing over the rim. She sunk gratefully into the couch's comforting embrace and laid her mug on a side table with a gentle clunk. As Mrs. Possible waited for her tea to steep, the early-morning chill wafted through her thin flannel pajamas. She shivered and rubbed her arms vigorously.

Me, a doctor, and I forget my bathrobe…

She glanced at the clock again.

12:03. Is it colder there, with the higher elevation?

She sighed and lifted her drink, aerating the teabag with her pinkie finger before taking a long, slow sip, basking in the flavor as the warm tea flowed down her dry throat.

Mr. Possible sensed an odd emptiness to his left and eased himself up in bed. He had felt the mattress sink and then ease slightly, but took a little while for his sleep-starved brain to engage. Rolling groggily over and looking where his wife should have been, he saw only rumpled covers and a heated depression in the bedspread. Throwing his bathrobe over him against the cold, James wandered to the top of the stairway. Gazing down the steps, he saw his wife sitting on the couch, taking slow pulls of a drink and staring intently at the clock.

Anne heard a creak on the stairs and looked up. She saw her husband standing in the stairwell with a robe on, looking caringly down at her. "Hon'?" he called gently.

"Oh, hi, dear," she replied quietly, patting the cushion next to her.

He trotted down the steps and took the seat. "What're you doing up so late?"

The auburn-haired woman pointed to the luminous clock, now reading 12:05. "Wade left a message saying Kimmie-cub would be waking up to 'go in' 9:00 their time, 12:00 here. I set my alarm to get up and wait with a Kimmunicator so that if anything… develops, I'll be one of the first to know," she said softly.

"Ahhh, I see," said Mr. Possible, embracing his wife tenderly in a sideways hug.

The upper hallway light clicked on. Mr. and Mrs. Stoppable's silhouettes appeared at the top of the stairs. "Whazzat?" asked Mr. Stoppable sleepily, "What's going on?"

"It's your son and our daughter. Wade said they'd be getting up around this time, locally."

The second pair of husband and wife positioned themselves behind the Possibles. Together, they watched in silence as the second hand swung mercilessly around, and waited… waited… waited…

Afghanistan
American Foreign Base
Barracks 51-B
9:00 AM (local time)
T-minus 2:00 hours

Peep-peep-be-deep…. Peep-peep-be-deep…. Peep-peep-be-deep!

The familiar notes of the Kimmunicator prodded at the teenager it snuggled against, hurling the sleeper from a pleasant dream of home to the present, chilly reality. Kim gritted her teeth and swore inwardly as the realization of the dawn slowly trickled inward. Her nerves began to hum and spark, reminding her of the morning of the SATs. Her mind knew, however –and it was a fact she was dreading- that this morning's test had an extremely unforgiving, pass/fail grade.

She blearily opened an eye and pressed the magenta center button.

"Hi, Kim! This is your wake-up call!" uttered Wade's voice out of the small speaker, infuriatingly cheerful to her barely-conscious state.

"BRRaaHAummm…" she yawned grumpily, lifting her head a few inches. "Whaa' th' siiitchh?" She rubbed the side of her face slightly, having slept in such a position that the coarse fibers of the standard-issue wool pillow had left pale brands across her cheek. "Just wait till puberty really hits, kid, and then you can talk to me about early-wake up calls," she spat.

"Oh, I'm not Wade," said the device brightly, "I'm his hologram, designed to look, think, and react just like my creator. The real Wade is crashed on the bed behind me- it's midnight here."

"Well, goodie for him..." she growled. Kim flicked off the handheld and levered herself up in bed, yawning and raking her fingers through her waves of tousled hair. She had almost gathered her wits together when-

BANG!

The barrack door exploded inward, nearly blasted off the hinges, and slammed into the wall. Slowly it swung back out, wavering almost to the point of dislodging the pane of glass.

Kim sat ramrod-straight in her cot, adrenaline thundering through her veins, all ramifications of sleep forgotten. Ron awakened in a terrified yelp and nearly slammed into the upper bunk in his surprise. Rufus scurried up his shoulder and buried himself in the blonde's messy hair.

A rugged black combat boot, followed immediately by the square form of Gen. Simms, barreled into the room. "UP AN' ATTEM!!" he bellowed like a bullhorn, clearly feeding off his days as a drill sergeant. "IT... IS… 0900… HOURS! ON THOSE FEET! MOOOVE IT!"

He was dressed in full brown-and-tan combat gear. The extra amour and miscellaneous belts, canteens, grenades, and pouches swelled him to twice his normal size. Black and menacing, the barrel and sights an M-16 spiked from behind his back like a minaret.

Ron sunk back to the bed, exaggeratedly clutching his chest. Kim's flight-or-fight instinct ebbed, and she looked around. They were the only ones in the barrack; Jonathan and Dr. Director were nowhere to be seen, their beds made as if to pass an admiral's review.

As the warm embrace from her bed ebbed, a cold bite settled on her skin. Kim glanced out one of the hut's small square windows and found it wreathed with a light layer of frost. She shivered and rubbed her arms, discovering as she did so that she had slept in her flight suit.

She coughed slightly, and the men turned around. "Err, guys," she said pointedly, gesturing across her body, "I've got to, um, change, so if you, uh, don't mind…" She made a spinning motion with her index finger.

Simms caught on immediately, and discreetly strode to the far end of the barrack. She waited until Ron had turned squarely to the wall and lightly shaded his eye with a hand (catching a slight grin as he did so and hurling a pillow at him) before grabbing the box of her mission clothes and squirming beneath the sheets. As she wormed into the new pants and top, she studied their texture as it slithered across her skin. They felt a little rougher and stiffer than her old cotton things, but stronger, lighter, and more resilient as well. The ink-black top was familiar and comforting, but the new kaki cargos were offensively bright and foreign in their originality. Hoisting herself out of the bed, she slipped on her gloves. The supple leather molded to her fingers like a second skin. She coiled and uncoiled her hand, marveling at the sinewy power of her body. She punched her right fist into her left palm, grinding the resistance of a sandpaper-like grit covering the knuckles and palms.

Ron unzipped his flight suit, and Kim quickly diverted her eyes downward to lace her steel-toed onyx shoes. She looked up in time to see him with his pants half on, bouncing on one leg, try to shove the other through an awkwardly folded section, teeter, and crash to the floor.

Nothing I haven't seen before, she thought, glancing at his smiley-face boxers, and quickly had to subdue a rush of hormones.

"Hey…K…P…little…help!" grunted Ron from the floor, finally stuffing both legs through his pants.

The redhead laughed, and pulled the blonde to his feet. "Ron, after a stunt like that, I'm worried about you getting shot, or worse, tripping in front of the President when it's all over!"

He wriggled into his black turtle-necked shirt and chucked grimly. "I may be uncoordinated, but I'm no idiot. I've got the Ron Factor on my side… it's all about the intangibles, baby!"

Kim snorted. "For your ass's sake, you'd better be right. Just hope that "Mystical Monkey Power" doesn't decide to fade out on you…" She turned to sling on her backpack and discovered a cardboard box beside her bed, inked in same printer watermark as the clothes boxes. She slit through the tape with a hairpin, and discovered a thick, synthetic olive belt folded neatly inside. She slowly withdrew the new accessory and discovered it identical to her old belt except for two key features.

This new belt had a holster at each hip; the left was cloth with a red snap, and the other was black, full-grained leather. The individual fabric pouches were now bigger and squarer, and looked of a specific size. Kim hesitantly drew a .40 clip out of her backpack, and slipped it into a random pouch. It fit perfectly. Realizing now what she had to do, she slipped her Smith and Wesson from the backpack and into the leather sheath and eased the grappling gun into its corresponding cloth pouch. She extended her arms and looked herself over, slowly exhaling as she did so: new weight, new weapon, and new unnatural mission color. This is… SO the drama… sooo the drama! Her emotion began to race, to overrun. She mentally smacked herself. Get a grip, Possible… remember Simms – Don't think; do. You can take this... You can do this… It's time to go mission mode!

Beside her, Ron snapped on his belt and urged Rufus into his shoulder.

At that moment, the Kimmunicator chirruped. Kim lifted the blue communications device from her bedspread and turned it on. "Sitch me, Wade."

"Kim, I was warming up the scanners and discovered a low-orbit imaging satellite had passed the target zone overnight. It got more detailed map of the upper floor of Osama's base than mine. I'm streaming the images right now and compiling them into the database. I should have it to you by the time the chopper lands."

"You are golden, Wade… Kim out!" She flicked off the Kimmunicator and pocketed it.

Simms noticed they were dressed and treaded toward them. "Ah, you're done," he said. He had lowered his voice back to an acceptable level. "Your belts arrived early this morning… The deliveryman stated Wade had sent them. They hadn't arrived with the rest of your stuff because they got hung up at customs…" Simms paused and gestured to the front of the barrack. "C'mon… everybody else is warming up before we all go to the helipad." He opened the now slightly warped door and walked out.

Kim followed him. As she stepped over the threshold, the frigid air hit her with a shock. It was even colder outside than she had thought. The early morning light gave the landscape a textureless appearance, making objects flat and bold as if silhouettes. It deepened the far mountains to a velvety chocolate and the sandy, dusty ground to a rich tan. A waxing gibbous moon, tinged with a faint golden halo from the morning sun, hovered faintly on the horizon.

She gasped, and razor-sharp air sliced at her nostrils and throat. Her exhale swirled away like steam to intermingle with the pale whitish-blue sky. The chill sucked at her exposed midriff, neck, and forearms, making her skin tingle. Shuddering, she clasped her arms to her body. Damn, why didn't I think to bring my red Club Banana coat?! Her mind paused and reconsidered. But… considering the coming action, maybe a coat wouldn't be a good idea. It's bulkier, for one thing, and means more fabric to be carried into a bullet wound… She mentally winced.

Simms ushered them into a burly Humvee crouching in front of the Quonset hut. After slamming the rear door shut, he strode around to the driver's side door and collapsed solidly into the worn leather seat. Geysers of faint gray dust erupted along several tears running perpendicular to the seam across the top of the seat. The general sat for a moment, blowing sharp, forceful bursts into the cup of his hands, before reaching for the mike of a battered CB radio lying on the dash. He keyed the mike and static hissed faintly through the interior. "This is CT220," he said, "Does TO copy?"

::This is TO:: squawked the radio, ::We read you loud and clear. Continue with transmission, CT220.::

"I have code four clearence and am moving to niner-niner-zero."

::Rodger on that code four. Carry on.::

"Semper fi!" Simms clipped the handheld unit back to the receiver and awakened the truck's engine. He maneuvered the gently growling vehicle through the maze of dull silver huts until reaching their outskirts. Clearing the last rows of sleeping quarters behind the base, he gunned the accelerator and soon they were barreling along a pitted dirt road across the wide, desolate plains of Afghanistan.

Kim leaned against the window (a difficult feat considering the vehicle was rocking and skipping across the desert) and settled on the sill. Distant, rugged, white-streaked mountains ringed her viewpoint, reminding her strongly of the arid salt flats of Utah. A solitary jet winged across the wide, empty dome of sky, its path as straight as a ruler. The wispy contrail created by high altitude and cold air streaked behind like a comet's tail.

Gradually, she began to hear a slight snapping over the pinging of stones against the vehicle's undercarriage. As a small black building rose on the horizon, the snapping grew to crackling as Simms slowed and pulled beside the structure. She strained to the right to see the rear of the building, but anything that was behind it was blocked except for the edges of a flat concrete pad and a windsock. Roughly 100 yards to her left rose an earthen berm, alien to the flat landscape. About a half-dozen humanoid shapes grouped in front of it. As Kim climbed out of the Humvee, the crackings started again, and unblocked by the Humvee's skin, were now blasting retorts. Startled, she snapped her attention to the hummock and realized she was hearing calculated pistol shots. Ron clambered out the opposite door and jumped involuntarily at the noise. Simms took no notice and carefully scanned the horizon surrounding them.

Kim walked cautiously toward the bullet stop, for that is what it was, and noticed Dr. Director firing a large-caliber handgun. She was dressed as Simms; tan flecked with brown replaced her usual navy jumpsuit. Presently her short brunet bob gleamed in the wan sunlight. A helmet with mike and an American assault rifle lay 25 feet behind her position.

Her arms jerked visibly from the force of the recoil, which sent a flaming tongue from the muzzle and a sharp crack to shаtter the still, cool morning. Bites of earth kicked up in the berm almost simultaneously with the report.

Looking over her shoulder, the eye-patched woman noticed Kim's approach, ejected the magazine, and cleared the firing chamber. "'Morning, Kimberly," she said in a conversational tone, "Glad to see you up and around."

"You too, ma'am," replied the auburn headed girl. She looked around the intelligence head. Behind her grouped the remaining squad members.

Wilson, Johnson, and Michaels sported their traditional eye paint, mission grab, and surly expressions. Each toted an M4 carbine, the smaller cousin of the menacing M16 and weapon-of-choice of the US Special Forces. A stubby, wide-mouthed M203 grenade launcher hung beneath the main barrel of their rifles in order to facilitate their hip grenades. Oliver and Matt Whithers each hoisted a Javelin anti-tank guided missile. The weapon looked like four-foot bazooka with a black bulge at the rear. A large, boxy, computerized scope stuck prominently from the left side of the barrel. The twins also strained under dozens of grenades and several munitions belts.

Mr. Barkin grimly clutched a M249 SAW machine gun, capable of devastating suppressant fire. Jonathan was relatively light, carrying only an M4, several red bundles of C4 inert high explosive, detonations equipment, and a hand-held PDA. Ben carried nothing at all, performing stretching exercises to the side. When asked, he glanced at Simms before stating simply that his rifles were already taken care of.

Kim scanned the crowd and noticed with a hint of foreboding that she and Ron were the only ones not in fully armored combat gear.

Simms paced up from behind Kim and thrust more than a half-dozen palm sized leaden boxes into her hands. "There you go. Ten magazines. Five rounds each, giving you 50 shots total. Forty of them are the Jacketed Hollow Points I mentioned back in Washington, and the remaining ten are Full Metal Jacketed if you run into a locked door or body armor…"

After Kim slipped the ammunition into her hip pockets, resignedly placing her old favorites, the knockout gas container and constricting paste canister, into her backpack, Simms handed her another two magazines. "Get yourself warmed up," he said, pointing to the crude firing range. He tossed a M4 to Ron, who inelegantly caught it with an air of grim finality. "Don't worry about using ammo; Uncle Sam has more than enough to go around!"

Kim trudged to the firing line, feeling the slight burn of 22 eyes against her back.

"Fire when ready!" Simms called from behind.

She smoothly loaded the clip with a precise ka-chick , unlocked the safety, and took stance. She paused and looked down at the powerful weapon held in her hands. Closing her eyes for a second, she slowly inhaled. After holding for a moment, she deeply exhaled in a slow rush, feeling the warm exhaust play across her lips. Snapping her eyes open, she leveled the gun to firing position.

Loadstanceaimsafetydeepbreathherewego, her mind reeled off, onlyonethingleft… fire. It's all about fire.

She gently squeezed the trigger. A penetrating blast echoed around her ears as her arms kicked upward. Instantaneously she brought the muzzle back to the firing plane, set her teeth, and rapidly fired the four remaining rounds. The muzzle sent pyrotechnic flashes searing across her vision. As the spent clip ejected, she reflexively whipped to her ammunition store, jerked another clip from its pouch, slammed it into the weapon, and resumed firing.

Whoa, she realized as the gun barked in front of her, I'm… I'm… not afraid anymore! I can feel my hands oozing sweat, but I'm not blinking or starting… It's become another gadget, a-a part of me…. I can fire mechanically and effortlessly…. and I'm quite not sure I like that.

The second clip ejected and using adrenaline as fuel, she whirled, jammed the gun into the holster, and dropped to one knee. Performing a sweeping roundhouse kick, she transferred the centrifugal force into upward motion.
She leapt skyward, executed a 360-degree front flip, causing bars of sunlight to swirl dizzyingly into a pinwheel, and stuck the three-point landing.
Fully reaching her climax, she hurled herself into the air as high as a grown man's chest with a guttural yell while snapping her legs outward to neutralize two invisible opponents.
Spent, she fell panting to the sand.

Looking up she saw the squad staring at her, many in slack-jawed amazement, and caught Ron's complimentary, seen-it-all-before grin. Simms was the first to close his mouth. He walked to Kim and gave her a hand up, at the same time murmuring to her ear, "Oo-rah, Possible, oo-rah.... God, I'd hate to be the poor a**hole that gets you p*ssed off…"

Wiping sweat off her brow, she walked back to the group as Ron moved forward to the firing line and braced. He deliberated for a moment before swiftly checking the gun and coolly loaded a box into the magazine port.

He's not my little side-kick anymore... thought Kim as Ron swung the M4 to his shoulder, sighted, and unlocked the safety, I thought that his behavior in the Lil' Diablo crisis was a fluke, but maybe... maybe there's something in him I don't see… Her thoughts were cut short as Ron opened up.

He fired in quick, 5-shot bursts. Flashes of light, like strobes, flicked across the sand as they competed with the sun for dominance. Sharp and staccato, a tattattattattattat rattled the air with each salvo. The recoil trembled through his body, but he ground his feet in the soil and fired on. Kim saw his face screwed into a snarl of concentration against the noise and force. His expression was so transported from his go-lucky attitude that Kim was slightly frightened.
After roughly 15 seconds, the gun stilled and Ron let the rifle drop from his arm. He ejected the empty box and slung the gun crosswise over his shoulder. Beckoning Rufus out of his pocket, where the pink rodent had dived when the noise had started, he strode back to the group.

"Ahhh," he said as he reached them, "I've built up a powerful need for a Naco!"

Rufus chittered "Mmmm-hmmm" and rubbed his tummy.

Ben chuckled and divulged a handful of insipidly wrapped bars from one of his many cargo pockets. "Only energy bars for right now," he said, giving them to a dismayed Ron. "It'll give you energy, but digest before combat makes you barf." He handed several to Kim as well. "Follow us… our ride's this way."

The party grabbed their weapons and marched toward the small black building next to the Humvee. Jogging along, Kim opened one of the unmarked silver wrappers. The bar inside did not look like much; it was pasty brown, vapid and rather unappetizing. She gingerly nibbled on a corner. It didn't taste like much either, but as she swallowed, she felt a pang of hunger biting at the edge of her stomach fade away and vitalizing energy surge through her body like a fluid.

As they walked into the shadow of the building, Jonathan strolled over and fell in step with her. The jangling of many clasps and buckles on his outfit added a background to their footsteps. "The helipad is just behind this building," he said, "It's the remote strip we use for special operations like this one."

"Thought so," said Kim. She paused and looked around before continuing. "…So, what chopper are we using? A Blackhawk? I would think a Chinook would be too big for-" she broke off as she saw Jonathan starting to grin and rolled her eyes. "Oh, great! Is this another case of rattle-Kim's-reality?! I hate it when you do that!"

His grin widened further. "Sorta… The chopper's warming on the pad as we speak."

"Wha-? R-Right now?! We can't be more than 100 feet from it! I shoulda heard it!"

She turned the rear corner of the building and froze.

"…Whoooaaaa."

Before her on the sun-baked concrete, its accelerating rotor blades sparking in the morning light, stood a helicopter the likes of Kim had never seen. It was long, raked, and sleek. Its skin was deep, dark green, almost black, in color. Roughly 50 feet long and 12 high, the streamlined shape was a result of the sides of the airframe angling together to form a sharp ridge along the equator of the craft. A beaklike nose gave way to a spacious canopy, which flowed with the angled lines of the craft. A rotating .30 caliber machine gun dangled beneath the nose. Gull-wing doors opened behind the canopy in the beam, revealing benches for sitting and olive drab ammunition boxes. From the hump of the rotor, the angled tailboom swept deeply back, almost touching the ground, into a bulbous end with the rear vertical rotor mounted amidships. A rudder like an airplane's stuck up from the bulb like a "T."

If a sportscar could be modified with a helicoper, she thought in amazement, this was probably it.

Oddest of all, even though they were less than 75 feet from the helicopter, the backwash from the blades rippling though their hair, they could still speak normally. Instead of a racking phupah, phupah, phupah common to most helicopters, this one was making a relatively quiet whuping sound as the rotors sliced the air.

She turned to Simms, still dazzled by the unconventional sight and sound of the chopper. "Lemme guess," she said wryly, "Skunkworks again?"

He grinned. "Correct. You're looking at the RAH-80, Transport Class. Holdover from the RAH-66 Comanche. The boys in Washington cancelled the Coman' project back in '04, but some private sectors gave us the moolah to continue development underground."

"How does it-" she began, but Jonathan cut her off.

"-fly so quietly?" he finished. "Thought that was coming. We used 5 rotors instead of the normal two or three, and made them super-efficient. Then pods (Can't tell you specs 'cause that Kimmunicator might have a recorder) were placed on the blade tips. A lot of chopper noise comes from the high speed of the blades, not the engine; they go so fast that the tips and leading edge go supersonic and make a boom. The pods disrupt the shock waves."

Ron was gazing at the new vehicle with a continence of rapture. "Ifsh deffnly mot ike moy gfheuy igf mphown!" he said though a mouthful of powerbar.

"Come again?" said Kim sarcastically.

The blond swallowed heavily. "I said, 'This is definitely not like my Huey I've flown!'"

"You...? Flown?" asked Jonathan, arching an eyebrow.

"Uhhhh, Vietnam: Redux," he said hurriedly with a sheepish grin.

As they walked toward the helicopter, raising hands to keep the slight blowing dust from their eyes, the pilot emerged from the opposite side of the craft. He was dressed in the standard olive flight suit for the US Army. A helmet with a large, mirrored visor obscured his face above the cheekbones. A coffee-colored mustache flicked with grains of wind-driven sand, probably put there by the chopper backwash, shielded a weak upper lip.

"OK, people," he said over the whining turbocharged engine, "get your gear stowed quickly; We power up this bird in 5." He extended a hand, "Simms, Director, Leigh, welcome aboard."

Ben popped a hatch to the left of the open passenger compartment with a low thud. Kim immediately realized why he had previously glanced at Simms before answering her question; she saw two long, menacing rifles with intricately detailed scopes gleaming in the dim light of the cargo hold. As Mr. Barkin and the Whithers brothers handed him their weapons, he contemplated for a moment before grunting here, nudging there, and then sliding the heavy support guns into a bit of space that seemed made for them. After wedging the guns into the small compartment, he picked up steel ammunition boxes and edged them into position. As Kim observed him place the eighth box into the space, making a wall nearly flush with the opening, it began to dawn on her the terrifying length and probably intensity of the upcoming battle. As she stood, the slight fuzz of panic from earlier that morning began to make itself known at the edges of her brain.

Meanwhile, Ben, which some difficulty owning to equipment stacked within an inch of the door lip, shut the hatch with a bang and locked it down. He took a step back and admired his handywork with a self-congratulatory smile. "My family used to travel across the country in a covered pick-up, and we didn't have the money to sleep in hotels every night," he said, as if answering a question to no one in particular, "My sister and folks slept in the cab, and I slept in the bed with the gear… I was in charge of packing, so if I didn't use every available space, I wouldn't have a place to sleep that night."

The helicopter blades began to pick up speed, and Dr. Director beckoned the squad into a packed huddle away from the growing air wash.

"I know this is gonna sound cliché," she said, "but…but… before we take off, I'd like to have a moment for prayer." She reflected for a moment, gathering her thoughts, and the members quieted, bowing their heads respectively. "Dear Lord-" she began, breaking off suddenly and quickly glancing at Ron. He nodded consentingly, and she continued. "Lord, please watch over us on our endeavor… Keep us safe. Let us finish what we have come to accomplish." She paused, and continued in a slow, choked voice. "…God, I know there's a-a good chance t-that some of the people standing around me may…may not be here this evening. May luck prove me wrong, but please… if they must depart, let them have peace, and meet their Maker quickly…" She sniffed, loud in the dead silence of the group.

To Kim, the noise of the helicopter had become a faint background distraction. She was praying too, from a cavern in lowest point of her heart. To what, she had no idea. God had never come much into her thoughts on missions, not even as she stared up the sights of Drakken's latest super weapon or death ray. But now, after what she had trained with and was fearing to expect, it was different; different indeed.

Dr. Director's pronounced English accent cut into her thoughts again. "A-and finally, I know we're about the see things… do things… that totally defy codes of brotherhood and morality… We only ask for Your forgiveness and the hope that we can somehow, somewhere make reparation for what we are going to do..... Amen."

After a few seconds of silent contemplation, the group rumbled "Amen." Standing beside Ron, Kim heard him whisper "Emuna" in the same dialect she had heard him read the Torah at his Bar Mitzvah.

Behind them, they heard the pilot yell, "Letta' get a move on!" Johnson, Wilson, and Michaels checked their watches, set their faces while snicking down their rifle straps, and broke away toward the helicopter. The rest of the group dispersed and followed their lead.

Kim and Ron turned to do the same, but before walking a few paces felt a forceful hand on their shoulders, swiveling them around. When Kim stopped, she found herself staring into the face of General Simms.

"Here, you two," he said in a low, quick voice. He shoved a rattling, nondescript, white-capped amber pill bottle, a swath of fleshy-tan colored bandages, and a small, transparent Nalgene canister containing an off white, granular substance into their hands.

Kim held the container to the morning glare; in the strong light, the powder looked a bit like sugar.

"There's high-strength aspirin in the amber bottle," explained Simms. "The bandages are made of chitosan – funky kinda stuff in 'em that stops a gooshing artery in seconds. The canister is filled with QuikClot; it's something you can put on a wound to make it stop bleeding." He stopped and looked almost pleadingly into Kim's emerald orbs. "...Try not to get yourselves killed today, alright?"

She was taken slightly aback by the paternal attitude from the normally hard-bit commander she knew from Area 51. After a pregnant pause, she gave a weak smile. "Try to, sir."

"Ditto, man," intoned Ron.

"Thank you… Semper Fi," said Simms, and he steered them toward the waiting chopper.

Crouching low, hair streaming behind her like a phoenix's tail, Kim swung herself into the open bay of the passenger compartment, avoiding the impatient glare of the pilot. The other team members sat in olive-webbing bucket seats strapped to the rear bulkhead facing forward and several seats behind the flight deck bulkhead, facing the rear of the plane. The array reminded Kim of the interior of the Blackhawks she had flown in during her Iraqi mission. Seeing all the seats filled, she dangled her legs over the lip of the compartment, strapping herself in with a convenient restraint belt imbedded into the floor. Ron sat to her right, using another floor belt.

Simms dashed to the other side of the helicopter and rolled himself in. He quickly double-checked their radius around the machine before yelling to the seated pilot, "Beam us up, Phil!"

"Will do, sir!" said Phil, giving final, irritated scowl to his watch, and slowly nudged the collective pitch control lever with his left leg.

The skids gently kissed the ground before the turboprop whined in earnest and the craft clawed skyward. Kim felt a swooping jolt in her stomach at the sudden rise, familiar to her unorthodox lifestyle, and an odd, dangling sensation in her legs as fifty feet of crisp air replaced the ground below her feet. Despite the rotors swirling into one continuous blur, there was little mechanical sound besides a slight air whup from the blades and the growling engine.

She twisted to Jonathan, sitting in the seat behind her. "Blade pods are so doing their jobs… besides parachuting and hang gliding, I don't think I've ever been this quiet in the air."

The blond-haired man smiled serenely and craned his neck out the door to better observe the vista. "Beautiful out here, ain't it? Solitude and free views – it's the part I like best about flying. I'd do this every day if it wasn't for-"

He was interrupted by a grating screech as Simms locked his M16 into a pintle beside his door. Mr. Barkin's SAW cut a corner off Kim's view as he stuck it out her bay. Humming gently, the .30 caliber beneath the Comanche's beak warmed up and quested its surroundings like a curious nose.

"I got the nose gun calibrating, Barkin," called the pilot from the flight deck. "Do you and Simms have our flanks?"

"Yessir!" replied Kim's high school assistant principal.

"Good, then." He rotated joystick-like arm sticking in front of him with his wrist. The helicopter floated, as if supported by a giant, invisible hand, to point to the west. Phil kicked the cyclic forward with the heel of his hand; the craft pitched downward, forward, and whirred toward the distant, forbidding mountains.

After a minute or two of fast, level flying, a radio imbedded in the intricate control panel squealed to life.

::This is TRACON!:: said a gruff, authoritative voice, used to instant compliance to orders. ::Unidentified craft, you are leaving secure US airspace. Please state clearance code and intent or we will scramble!::

Phil tapped his headset microphone. "This is RAH-72, over. ZIP number 36-R. I have niner-niner-zero clear, and am in transit to waypoint Charlie-Charlie-Foxtrot. I repeat: Charlie-Charlie-Foxtrot! Requesting transfer from frequency Calpa to TAC-2. Over."

Silence hovered in front of the radio before the air traffic controller gruffly cleared his throat. ::Uh-ha…. Sorry for that, 36-R. Carry on; you have clearance… You are now being transferred to TAC-2:: He paused for a second. :Oh, and one more thing…::

"Yes?"

::Give 'em hell.::

"Will do, Sergeant," said Phil, cracking a smile, and snapped off the radio.

-1:31 hours

***

Roughly ten minutes later, scragged mountains, pasteled with hues of sand, light brown, dark brown, and occasionally black from a missile strike, rose and fell beneath their feet. The air had grown colder, crisper, and clearer with altitude, and again Kim wished she had brought her coat. Sharp relieves of startlingly white, fresh snow clung to the north side of selected rocks in small patches. The helicopter knifed though the air, eerily quiet, the slipstream playfully dancing with Kim's hair and turning her legs, extending into the airy abyss, into footicles. She snuggled closer to the body heat radiating from Ron's shoulder. As she did so, she saw Dr. Director glance sharply at the landscape flowing beneath them and then glare at the altimeter. After several repetitions of this, her mouth hardened into a thin line.

"Pilot!" she barked.

"Mm'hmm?" he replied, raising an amiable eyebrow.

"I thought that when we agreed to your services as our transportation, it was clear to you that this bird was not to climb over 150 feet!"

"But…but… to my knowledge, we're well under any type of civilian radar!"

"I… don't…care, dammit! I'm not taking any chances; al-Qaeda may have no radar whatsoever, or they may have military-grade equipment from sympathetic oil cartels. And if they do, they'll be waiting for us with RPG's the way you're going!" She leaned into the pilot's face, an ugly expression crossing her mouth. "Now…Take us down to 150 and not a meter more!" she snarled.

"Y-yes, ma'am," squeaked the pilot as he leaned away from Dr. Director, an alarmed, fearful expression across his face. He nudged the collective, and Kim felt a sudden upward pop to her stomach as the ground reared below them. Dust directly below the helicopter swirled into a miniature dust devil as the helicopter descended. She could now see facets of individual rocks and coarse, wiry, dark olive plants flicked across the terrain. Squinting, Kim found them very like anchored tumbleweeds. Reflecting on the recent dialogue, she was shocked at Dr. Director's behavior.

Jesus, she thought, if the Director I know - cool, suave, in-control Dr. Director, is getting tense, then… then I don't even want to think about what I might do… She scanned the horizon, fearfully this time, and made to load a magazine into her pistol. Instantly, a hand knocked it out of hers, spinning it almost out the open doorway. She caught it with her fingertips just before it would have tumbled over the edge.

"Whadd'ya tryin' to do, Possible?!" Mr. Barkin's voice hissed in her ear. "Don't you know not to carry a loaded, unfixed gun in a helicopter? The thing might go off, ricochet in here or give away our position!"

Started, Kim quickly slipped the offending magazine back into a pouch. Nevertheless, she pointed the weapon out the door between her thighs to bring it closer to her ammunition.

"Hey, Possible," said Michaels, his eyes roving the holster on Kim's left hip, "I've always wondered: how does that hair dryer thingy work?"

Kim popped the snap and pulled the dark red grappler out of its pouch. "It's not really a hair-dryer anymore… After a certain point, the villains figured out that whenever I pulled out a red hairdryer, a smackdown was in progress. Wade did some diagrammic speed trials on me, and reduced the bulb shape in the rear to make it easier to pull out. The vents actually work, because they vent a CO2 cartridge stored in the handle - that's why it's so bulky. The cord retracts into bulb, the hook folds down to store in the barrel (more in my backpack), and the silver thing on the muzzle is a cord cutter. "

"I've noticed that the hook sometimes springs open at different speeds."

"Yup." She turned the grappler sideways to show what looked like an incremental wind speed controller running along the top. "The hooks have spring-release timer built into them. If I push the switch forward, it delays the spring in case the hook has to fly a long distance or puncture a bulkhead. If I pull it back, and it opens almost immediately after release, so it can grab soft things or when I'm freefalling. That feature came in handy in the Cheese Wheel…"

Michaels sat back into his seat, and the conversation died. Kim returned to gazing at the breathtaking expanse of imperialistic mountains stretching to the horizon.

Twenty minutes later, she noticed the tempo of the engine slow and the rotor blades drop to a low thup-thup. The helicopter had fallen to less than 75 feet off the ground; Kim could see crisp details of her own shadow, flecking upward as it mounted a small ridge. Looking forward, she saw a sharp, U-shaped lip slicing through the landscape. From her low vantage point, she could only see from one lip to the other, making the depression appear bottomless. She saw Phil's hands tighten on the controls as silence fell in the compartment. As Mr. Barkin swept his machine gun across the opening with more urgency, his knuckles a faint shade of white, Kim's heart began to drumroll and a faint slick of perspiration moistened her forehead.

Phil jerked the cyclic; the craft turned a long, slow, banking arc. Instead of coming head-on to the target, the chopper swung away from the edge and about fifty yards to the left. Just as Wade foretold, the crater disappeared completely as they sunk behind a low earthen hummock running along its edge. The skids licked the ground, cackling on the loose sand and gravel, and settled to the hard-packed ground with a gentle bump. Dust sprayed in a blinding veil for a second as the whirring rotor blades spooled down before settling back down. Kim unsnicked her seatbelt and tentatively lowered one boot, breath a cautious whisper, to the rocky ground.

Zero Hour
-1:00:00

The Kimmunicator rang in her pocket, startlingly loud in the expectant silence. She flashed to her thigh pocket, wrenched it out, and turned the volume down with the same embarrassed smile of one turning off a cellular phone during a movie. Quickly glancing at the disapproving frowns of every leader present, she activated the device.

"What's the sitch, Wade? Can you make it quick?"

"I completed the computerization of the new route images."

"Right on time, Wade! You rock."

The young teen pulled at a morsel of raspberry Slurpster. "I try… Would you like me to upload it to your side now?"

"Please and Thank You…"

A second later, Wade's face was replaced by a shaded, 3-dimensional map of the upper quarters of their pending target. Small red dots paced the halls.

Ron peered over Kim's shoulder at the map. "Ooooh, Wade, where'd ya get the skin?"

"SplinterCell: Nightshade," came the smug voice behind the screen.

Kim shoved Ron off her shoulder and glared a deadpan at him before turning back to the Kimmunicator. "Right… Well, thanks. Wade!

"Keep yourself safe, Kim."

"I will."

"Wade out."

Kim pressed the red button again, and the little screen flickered into darkness. Pocketing it, she walked to the main group, where Simms and the pilot were shaking hands.

"Thanks a lot, bud," said Simms.

"Nooo problemo. Never hurts to help out the U.S. of A."

"Hang around till we know what's what and we get the ammo out… if this first part goes south, it might be handy to have a helicopter gunship around."

"Gotcha."

Simms turned to the group at large. "Weeeell, let's do this thing."

The squad nodded grimly, and Kim saw Ron hug his M4 closer to his chest. Ben gave a silent "follow me" motion with his fingertips, and the rest of the group silently spread out behind him. Crossing the remaining forty yards at a quick, stooped run, he slowed and sunk to his knees upon reaching the berm. Roughly halfway up, he lowered himself to a belly crawl, the rest followed suit. Kim felt cold stones grate across her bared midriff, poking into her gloves, and heard the heavy breathing of her surrounding comrades. The silhouette of Ben's helmet appeared for a moment against the pale sky as he gained the top before he spread himself as flat as a rug. Kim inched beside him, using just her fingers and toes for movement. Watching Ron collapse just below her after using a rather silly inchworm effect for locomotion, she mentally thanked herself for perusing a copy of The Infiltration and Deception Manual during Library Lockup. The other members slithered into position, more or less looking over the berm. Kim inched forward until just her eyes cleared the ridge and sharply inhaled in a long, low gasp.

Below her stretched a huge, quarry-like valley, half a mile wide and at least a hundred feet deep. Roughly fifteen feet from her position the ground dropped into a sheer cliff face running to the bottom the man-made bowl. Various shades and bands of rock rippled through the walls, shale layering with sandstone and granite with quartz. Winding its way out the northeast corner was a pitted dirt road, almost lost in it deep slice through the rock. Panning, Kim saw a large blast door glinting in the western rock face. The metal sheen was unnatural against the dry, dusty hues of native rock. Looking closer, Kim saw several upright, black shapes, fuzzy at such distance, placed in pairs at strategic intervals around the lower rim and clustered near the door and road.

"Al-Qaeda?" Kim muttered out the corner of her mouth.

"Yeah…" grunted Ben, not taking his eyes off the scene. His vision danced to each group and stopped there, quivering, as if counting. "Possible," he mouthed again, "Think you could hand me those binoculars?"

"Sure," murmured Kim, rolling softly onto her side and smoothly unzipping her backpack. She pulled out her favorite pair; the gray computerized ones with infrared lenses and a LCD touch screen imbedded into the top, and handed them to Ben.

He carefully took them from her, calibrating them as he glued them to his face, and scanned what Kim was certain to shortly become an arena. After a few seconds of observing, his teeth bared.

"Damn...." he hissed, skin around his eyes furrowing into wrinkles.

"What??"

He did not reply, instead handing back the binoculars and inching backwards, sitting up facing the helicopter once out of view from below. He beckoned the others to follow, and Kim slid down beside him.

"How many sentries, exactly, did Wade predict there would be?" he shot.

"Uhhh, I dunno… 'bout ten or twelve."

"Well, I counted twentyish. You sure this thing was kept under wraps?" He glanced at Simms.

"Positive," the general replied tersely.

"By the looks of it, they're just out of sight of each other," Ben settled into the gravel, nervously clasping and unclasping his hands in front of him. "Another thing – I picked up either blue or black antennae boxes clipped to their sides. I have a feeling they're walky-talkies… can I get Wade to scan for wireless communications?"

Kim again pulled the Caribbean blue transmitter out of her pocket. "Wade, it's Kim… Can you sweep for walkie-talkie transmissions?"

"Sure thing," said her tech friend. He sat bolt upright in his chair, eyes closed and hands palmed in a moment of Zen-like meditation, before pouncing low on his glowing machines. His hands blurred into brown streaks on the keyboards, a rustling cacophony erupting beneath them like rain pounding a tin roof. After a second of white-hat hacking, muffled beeping rang from one of his monitors and a printer regurgitated a swath of inscribed paper. He ripped it from the output slot, dryly shuffling and stacking the sheets before his eyes as he scanned the results.

"Yup," said Wade slowly, reading the printout, "I'm definitely picking up on short-range wireless encrypted 462 MHz frequencies of the handheld category. Looks like they've got… Motorolas and Radioshacks…Using two-mile range." He growled exasperatedly, cupping his index and thumb below his lower lip in deliberation. "This makes things a bit more difficult… Disruption is no problem; I could crash the network sleepwalking -"

"So why don't you?" piped up Ron.

"Not that simple, dude," explained the African American, "Long transmission breaks get noticed; puts them on their guard. What would be best would be 30-second-tops scrambles while Benjamin took pairs out at a time, then reinstating the network while he acquired another target," he finished, pausing. "…Ben, what's your professional opinion?"

Ben contemplated for a moment as everyone's gaze swung to him. "Johnson," he said suddenly, "Go pop the armament hatch. I need one M24 and one M82, please." He turned back to the group as Johnson scurried off. "Well," he said at last, "we'll have to change our plans a bit… there's too many for just me alone to take out. I'll have to have a partner, taking down the second man before he can radio assistance."

A nearly palpable sharp intake of breath ringed the group. Kim almost felt her insides take a surprised step back; she hadn't counted on this new development.

"So," Ben continued as his hazel eyes recorded the reaction, "I need the second-best marksman in the group… someone who can aim and take the recoil and not miss… someone who's used to high-pulse situations…" His pupils traveled the group to come to rest on one member, and the others followed his gaze.

It took a moment for Kim to register why everyone was staring. What… XYZ…? Or...... or..... ah....... crap.

"Kimberly," began Ben, "Besides me, you are the best shot in the group. I'd like you to use-"

"B-but, but, why… m-me?!" burst out Kim. "I've no former sniper experience! I-I haven't e-e-ever used a sniper rifle before! W-Why not… Director, or Simms, or… or Mr. Barkin?? They're older; they've more experience with shooting and weapons!" she said, desperately gesturing toward each in turn.

"Kim," said Dr. Director coolly, "I've seen you execute maneuvers with your grappler I didn't think possible, if you'll excuse the pun."

"I agree," said Simms. "You've been able to fire that hook, the recoil jerking the thing almost into your nose, look away from the target while the hook was still in-flight, and hit your aim point dead-on. Remember Area 51- I've seen you in action. Don't deny it, girl; you've got skills."

"And, and!" chimed Ron, "You've blown up –what's the count now?- a lair and a death ray using only your compact mirror-"

"Ron, you know that was only a fluke," pleaded Kim, "Drakken's lair blew up because I was really, really lucky and he had polished his lamp fixtures the day befo-"

"Case in point:" said Ron, overriding her. "Drakken. Magmachine . Cheese Wheel. You pulled that grappler out your backpack while in freefall, and got a solid shot into a prime section of Wisconsin Swiss!"

Kim looked around. Those who had seen her in action were grinning knowingly, and those who hadn't looked positively amazed. She saw that her feeble argument was slashed apart like a $1 beach ball. She had lost. Her shoulders sagged slightly from the realization and she took a deep, steadying breath. "…Alright," she said softly, "Let's get this over with."

She woodenly accepted the smaller M24 rifle from Johnson when he returned. Roughly the shape of a .22, it was flat black with a stock and front grip of composite plastic. The normal peep site had been replaced by a large, glinting scope. Clamped to the end of the front grip was a midget bipod with rubber feet. Kim glanced at Ben's weapon. His made hers look like a pop gun. The small, hollowed butt was almost nonexistent. The action looked ripped straight from an automatic weapon– downward pointing grip, angled magazine, perforated heat dissipater. Atop the action was a complex-looking scope, resembling a flashlight in shape. A lengthy barrel, at least the width of Kim's thumb, protruded from the dissipater and ended in an odd box at the muzzle.

Ben caught Ron ogling the giant rifle. "The M82," he said with a grin. "Anti-personal-and-machinery weapon; fires a .50 caliber bullet. 10-round semi-auto magazine, 1,800 meter range. It's loud and bright, and the box on the end of the barrel is a flash suppressor." He took a thin black tube about six inches long from one of his pockets and screwed it into the muzzle. Reaching into another pocket, he pulled out a shorter tube and tossed it to Kim. "Noise suppressor...." He paused and turned to the girl. "The M24's maximum range is just under a half-mile, and I don't want any chances of anyone reporting in..... Possible, I want you to help me take out opposition grouped near the door and road and under the cliff face. I think the M82's reload time will allow me to take out sentries on the far wall. Got that?"

"Y-yes, sir."

"Good. Follow my lead... The rest of you, stay out of sight."

She crawled up the berm after Ben, her mind hovering in a state of numb shock. As her view narrowed to the bottom of Ben's combat boots as he inched upward, her mind began to scream in protest from the action of her muscles, afflicted with a tinge of hysteria.

Wha'?! What do you think you're doing?! I'm Kim Possible, dammit, Kim Possible! I've... I've built my whole life around helping people! HELPING!!!

She and Ben took the ridge. In small, fluid movements, he gently unsnapped the bipod on the front of his gun and settled into a prone position. Kim mechanically sunk beside him and clicked out her bipod's legs. Releasing a pent-up breath, she let the weight of her body and the rifle sink into the dirt through her bones, not muscles. Sharp pinprods developed from small, edged rocks sunk into her arms and gloves. Ignoring the wet, cold ooze of groundwater though pressure points in her pants and elbows, her mind continued its struggle of wills.

...I-I'm not a sniper! Close-quarters-combat; fine. A few seconds of pressure, heat, blood, punches, in-your-face action that doesn't give me much time to think, and then I'm on to the next goon... it's what I was made for, grew up with. But I'm not made to sit on some lonely ledge, learning my enemy, his attributes, his idiosyncrasies, and then deciding the when and where of his death by the pull of my trigger... like some... some cold-blooded killer! Like a sociopath! I don't DO that! I'm Kim Possible!

She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them, and looked at the rifle mechanisms before her, trying to clear her mind. Her extended left hand disappeared behind the front grip. Her right rested upon a knob protruding from the right side of the action. She saw it connected to a small sliding hatch at the top of the gun, surrounded by a budge of black metal. The cool bulb under her gloved fingers felt oddly familiar, almost natural. She let her attention drift, and a recollection swam in her minds eye.

It was several years ago – sophomore summer, if she remembered correctly. Bored, not yet able to drive, yearning for involvement with an ache. She had graduated from the Pixie Scouts years before due to age, but her love of the outdoors remained, along with her natural inclination for teaching and leadership. A local Boy Scout camp had had a shortage of staff, and she gladly signed up as a counselor for the Environmental Science and Personal Fitness merit badges. Once, during free time, she had wandered down to the archery/rifle range. A kindly instructor had showed her the basics of firing a bolt-action .22 rifle, and soon she was plugging bulls-eyes into paper targets. Later that week, much to his chagrin and embarrassment, she had run into Life Scout Will Du attempting to finish the Rifle Shooting merit badge. Their naturally competitive heads clashed, and quickly they were deep in a fierce, heated battle of marksmanship. Both secret agents were excelled shooters, Kim with grappler experience and Will from GJ basic training. The results were very close, but in the end it was Kim who won, quite literally, by a cross-hair.

A gentle nudge to her leg slammed her back to reality, the daydream disappearing in a puff of smoke.

"Kim....Hey, Kim! You with me?" muttered Ben, giving her a puzzled look. "You were staring... frosted."

"Yeah... I'm here."

"OK.... Here's your ammunition," he dug silently in his pack and pulled out a wood block with two dozen 7.62mm bullets stuck upside down in it. "We're gonna aim for the door guards first."

Kim picked one up, twirling it slowly between her fingers, examining her blurred reflection in the golden brass casing. She gazed from the round to the rifle bolt and exhaled.

Let's see if I remember how to do this... Uhhh, it was lift, pull, insert... um, push, press, sight, err, control the breathing.... and... and... pull the trigger.

Flattening beside the gun, she lowered her left eye to the sight and kept the right squinting toward the action. She pulled the knob upward with a gentle click and slid the breech past her eyebrow. The metal door slid back to expose a small box a little bigger than a AA battery. Groping beside her, she grasped a round and dropped it into the dark cavern. Keeping her eyes in the sight, she fumbled to slide the round into the pitch-black firing chamber by touch alone. Tense seconds followed as she scrabbled the bullet with her thumb, only to repeatedly strike a wall.

Uh-oh... this is the part I always had trouble with at camp...

As the thought crossed her mind, Kim felt a sudden lack of resistance and the ball of her thumb kissed the far side of the box, the end of the bullet flush with the wall. A heavy cold flowed from her hand, down her arm and though her body.

There's a bullet in the chamber... I'm about to become a... killer.

The icy chill flashed down her spine.

She smoothly rammed the bolt forward and slapped the bulb down, the rifle gently ca-ca-klicking in her ear. Swinging her right eye to the sight, she tentatively peered though. Her vision narrowed to round circle surrounded by a square of solid black. A crosshair with a glimmering red dot in the middle was transposed across her sight. A small Heads-Up-Display consisting of a needle swinging though an arc of degrees glowed in the upper right corner. The image blurred beyond a hundred yards, rising and falling minutely with her breathing. A bubble of panic rose in her throat as she realized she did not know how to adjust the scope.

"Ben!" Kim squeaked, her voice tinny with nerves, "I-I-don't-know-how-to-make-it-sharp!"

Her partner looked up from his own rifle sight and glanced over at hers. "Just turn the little white knob on top to bring it in focus," he said in a quiet, soothing voice. "A computer in the scope calculates your range-to-target and barrel elevation, and the HUD flashes green when you've got the right trajectory."

Kim reached forward and twiddled the gauge. Instantly, her vision cleared and her man leapt onscreen, as sharp and clear as if she was standing within 25 feet of him. Behind him, she could see individual rivets in the blast door and the edge of his partner's shoulder.

"Thanks," she muttered, crushing her left eye shut and squinting though the scope at her target.

Funny, she thought, He's not covered with a hijab like fighters in the media. Only a beret-thing on his head. Normal cloak over his shoulders. Tan slacks. Odd, squashed nose – bit like Drakken's, really. Needs a shave... I can see the stubble. Let's see... Slug's holding an AK-47 – too short range to hit us here. Wonder what that bulge to his back pocket is... gun, maybe? Wallet? What could it contain? Visa, Mastercard, ID... pictures of his buddies... wife... kids.... howmanykidsaregonnalosetheirfatherstoday?

Kim trembled involuntarily. The shudder coursed though her body and into the rifle, making the bipod legs rattle on the hard stone and dislodge several pebbles with a clatter.

"Kim... You all right?" asked Ben, raising a worried eyebrow.

"I'm... fine!" Kim snarled though gritted teeth, more to herself than to Ben. She angrily wrenched the rifle back on target, ashamed at herself for losing control.

C'mon, Kimmie! You gotta get a grip, girl! She peered back though the sight at the man whose time in this word was rapidly counting down. You gotta do this thing... even if you hate to. Remember: Don't think – do... Immediately after thinking Simm's maxim, her conscience gave her a punch that, had it been physical, would have staggered even Shego.

No! the other half of her brain screamed, No! I'm not going to follow that like a mule! I'm not going down that path! It's damn brainwashing – soldier talk! How many -How many?- friggin' people at Nuremburg used that excuse?! 'Oh, I wasn't thinking; I was just following orders,' and killed six million people in the process?!

Cool it, both of you! broke in a third, meditative party. I know you don't want to do this, and you can't fool yourself into killing because someone says so, but... if you don't help, who will do it? Who will? No one besides you, Ben, and possibly Dr. Director have the needed marksmanship skills. The lives of twelve people, including your own, including Ron's, are at stake here, Kim. I'm sorry, but it's an obligation you have to make.

Fine... said the second voice.

All right, All right.... Let's do this before my nerve runs out. muttered the first.

Kim exhaled deeply and felt her insides tighten. She flicked on the Kimmunicator. "Wade, are we ready to run the scramble signal?"

"Whenever you are, Kim."

Ben looked over at her, relieved. "Ok... You fire at the near one, and I'll get his buddy a second later... On my count."

Kim nodded and squared her shoulders, not trusting herself to open her mouth.

"One... Wade, scramble!" he breathed.

The flurry of activity on the Kimmunicator's was unheard; Kim felt as if in a silent bubble that only Ben's voice could enter. Her fingers tightened white on the grips, her index burning on the cold steel of the trigger.

"...Two...!"

She exhaled slowly and held, keeping the sight steadily on the center of the man's chest.

"...Three..." he hissed.

Making sure the red dot pointed squarely at her target and that the rifle was rock-steady, she raised a slightly watery eye from the scope. In the one second her vision was unfocused and blurry, she squeezed back on the trigger.

Tiifffff! The silenced rifle reported flatly like a blow gun as a small puff of grayish-white smoke exploded from the barrel. She automatically wrenched the bolt up and back, the brass casing whizzing past her eyebrow and a wisp of acrid smoke lingering in the chamber wafted into her nose. Ducking down to the lens, she saw her man slumped on the ground, a claret pool darkening the sand below him. His rifle lay discarded a foot away. Blinking back a tear, Kim swung the sight an inch to the left to observe his partner. He was stumbling backward, a petrified expression on his face, sweeping the area frantically with his AK-47. A walkie-talkie was halfway to his lips. With her eye still cemented to the scene, she heard Ben pull a trigger.

Tiiffff-OWWW!

It was like watching a sledgehammer crack open a watermelon. Reddish-gray brain matter and cranial fragments sprayed as the left section of the second man's head exploded. What was left of his skull snapped round from the shock, his body following as the gun flew out of his hands. The body spun once and collapsed.

Kim was rooted to the spot in blank horror, brain jammed. In movies, when someone was shot, they normally arced gracefully clutching a wounded body part if a main character, or staggered a few paces before falling if not. This one... this one... just crumpled like a dropped wet towel.

She twisted her head down and sideways, blinking rapidly, trying to clear the image that flared whenever she closed her eyelids. Glancing over, she was astonished to see a smirk across Ben's face as he ejected the casing.

"Got 'im," he murmured in savage triumph, and Kim thought she saw the flicker of a red predatory gleam in his eyes. He caught her wide-eyed stare; the grin faded, taking the primal look with it. "Sorry... I have to get into a mindset for this sort of thing..." He paused. "...That took a lot of courage, Kim... Hellava lot of courage. Not many people can do this... Thank you. Think you're gonna barf?"

Kim shook her head, not trusting herself to open her mouth. Her insides were still in anarchy at what she had just witnessed.

"That's rare. Even I did... on my first job..." his gaze detached and he stared into space for a moment before giving himself a shake.

Wade's voice came over the line. "Okay, scramble is offline... Kim, you all right?"

"Y-yeah..." she said at last. "Hold on..." She inserted another round and slapped the leaver down again. She took another deep, steadying breath and squeezed her eyes shut for a second before turning to the Kimmunicator. "...R-ready."

"Right," said Ben, his tone more clipped. "We're gonna move faster now once they start realizing we're picking them off. Kim, you take the guy in front of that squiggle of shale; I'll cover his pal."

She swiveled the rifle round. "I g-got a bead."

"On my count: one...

... two... –Wade, start the scramble!"

"Scrambling!" said Wade.

"...Three."

Tiifffff!

Eighteen guards fell in the next ten minutes with ruthless efficiency. Ben easily picked off fighters along the distant perimeter as Kim eliminated her quota, feeling something wither inside every time she pulled the trigger. She surreptitiously positioned her eye a hair above the sight's view whenever Ben fired.

As the last man collapsed into the dry dust, toppled by Kim's own shot, she took a long, gasping breath and let the rifle clatter from her tight grasp as if the cool metal seared. Half-scrambling, she clawed up the embankment and fell into Ron's surprised arms.

"H—hey KP? You al'right?" murmured Ron falteringly, jerking his head at the grouped squad members over the phoenix plume buried into his shoulder. His message couldn't have been clearer: Give us a sec.

"R–r–r–ronnnn!" Kim raggedly gulped into the stiff cloth near his neck. "...I...I... shot people like a c–coldblooded killer, Ron! S–s–hot them! ...Li–Like a video game... No adrenaline, no fight for my life, n-n-no... nothing! I'm–I'm not meant to take them out like th-th-hat!"

Ron was momentarily stunned. He had seen Kim go to pieces like this only a few times in his life... Maybe the Moodulators had some long-reach aftershocks? He pushed the thought aside, wracking his brains for some sort of comment to lift Kim's spirit. He looked down at Rufus, who was hugging Kim's thick hair and chittering gently. Ron doubted anything could truly erase what his friend had just seen, but he took shot anyway. He smiled wanly. "K-Kim, this isn't going to leave some sort of Wannaweep flashback, is it?"

"RON!"

The blonde winced. Oops. Not quite. "Sorry, KP," he said, backpedaling hastily, "Just trying to spread a little Ron-shine."

Kim lifted her head off his shoulder and looked into his hazel eyes, her own pair rimmed with red. "It's n-no big... Thanks." She stood up and flecked her index across an eye rim, snerting in a way that would have been adorable had the situation been less serious.

"Any—any thing I can do?"

She sighed, eyes glazing. "Not really," she said softly.

"You gonna be all right?"

Her eyes cleared. She gazed at him for a long moment and smiled. "Yeah."

They turned back to the group. Mr. Barkin and Matt had unloaded all the ammunition from the helicopter and were now forcing gleaming titanium spikes into the ground. Dr. Director supervised, checking the embedding angle against Jonathan's PDA. Ben had exchanged the rife for a M4. Simms noticed her return.

"Are you going to be able to do this, Possible?" he asked softly.

"Yeah– uh, yes, sir... S-so not the drama," she replied.

"Good."

Behind him, Mr. Barkin called out, "Sir, we've got the anchor sunk!" He and Matt immediately began tying the ammunition boxes, Javelin tubes, and heavy machine guns to a long, black, thick cable connected to the heftiest anchor with a large carabineer. Everyone else cinched on climbing harnesses.

Simms watched for a few seconds before turning back to the teens. "I've heard you guys do a little rappelling," he said, cracking a rare smile.

Kim grinned. Ron groaned.

"Now, watch this little trick. It's what we use to get our gear off the chopper in a HRS."

"HRS?" asked Kim.

"High Risk Situation. Mid-air drop," he said hurriedly, locking on Jonathan. "Is this green, techie?"

Jonathan kneed by the cord, scanning, briefly picking it up and running it through his fingers. He gave a few quick, sharp tugs to each of the knots holding munitions. "This looks green-to-go, Commander," he said at last to Simms. "Give a 'Nice job' to whoever tied this baby up."

"Thank you, sir," said Barkin.

With a nod at Mr. Barkin, Simms gruntingly picked up the arms and olive boxes containing extra ammunition, tottered to the cliff edge, turned to look back at Kim, and grinned at her petrified face as he heaved the lot into the abyss.

Kim dashed open-mouthed to the verge, careful to avoid from the deadly ffffiissssssssk of flashing cable. She looked down at the bobbling weapons, almost floating in the air resistance from their downward plunge, the line screaming shrilly. A chunk, a pop; the line beside her twanged tightly on the anchor, and they stopped with a jerk before heaving up and down like an overweight bungee jumper. The surprisingly elastic cable gradually settled the motion, stretching like taffy, until the equipment gently scraped the bottom in a small dust cloud. The whole procedure had taken about two seconds.

Simms peered over the ledge beside her, seeing the gear safely on the ground. He chortled, pumping his arm. "Ooo-rah, I love it when it works!"

Dr. Director tied one end of a black climbing rope onto an anchor and the other to an unflattering climbing harness. She backed expertly to the edge of the sheer cliff and leaned outward, balancing on the arches of her feet. "See you at the bottom!" she called airily, and with ropes sighing, disappeared.

Wilson, Johnson, and Michaels vanished a minute later with stolid military efficiency. The twins, Ben, and Jonathan climbed more slowly; the last thing Kim saw of the blonde was his tongue sticking out in concentration. Mr. Barkin walked himself hesitatingly over the ledge, and Kim overheard him grumble, "Getting too old for this... Grading some whiney kid's English essay will seem like MP duty after this... Yes sir-ree..."

Kim laughed and turned to Simms, gesturing with her arm for him to go ahead, as if letting him take the last place in an elevator instead of scaling a sheer face.

"No, Ms. Possible," he said, "You and Ron go first. I'm making sure the area's clear before I come down."

"All right, then," she said, sliding her crimson grappler out of it holder. She spun and fired into a promising section of dirt. She heard Ron do the same to her left. Stomping the embedded claw deeper into the ground, she gave it a check tug. It held. Curling one arm firmly around the barrel and locking another into the "L" of the grip and main body, she backed slowly to the edge. Rocks cracked under her feet and she lurched backward; leaning back, she felt nothing but a gulf of air behind her back. With a smile and "Come on!" to Ron, she kicked off.

Exhilaration. Chill wind snapped her hair upward as she bounded and rebounded. Man, I love this job, she thought momentarily as she swung in, tensed her legs against the rock face and sprung out and down. Adrenaline from the effort washed her brain, and she experienced a clarity and purity of thought she had not had in days. I was born for this... and after rappelling Taipei 101 to rescue a window washer, this traction is making this so a walk in the park.

In what felt like a disappointingly short time, she felt her body hit the dirt floor and the ecstatic ride ended. The rock face now frowned imposingly down at her. This place must've had a growth spurt when I had my back turned, she thought, for the opposite wall now looked far more distant than she remembered. Standing, she tried to shake a nag of eeriness. She revolved slowly, quickly discovering why the place felt unsettling. Apart from the low whisper of wind across the ridges and the clinks and murmuring from the other squad members situating themselves, the wide expanse was silent as the grave. With a shiver, Kim turned back to the wall and whacked a round button on the butt of the grappler. The cable release popped and seconds later the carbon-fiber wire, sans hook, was rattling in the hairdryer's bulb like a runaway tape measure. She fished in her pack for another steel barb, stopped the cable as it reached the end, screwed the new grapple on the threaded tip, and allowed the wide-mouthed barrel to swallow the entire assembly whole.

Looking up, she saw Ron inching down on a prone harness, grinning smugly. Rufus skittered around his back, adjusting ropes and frantically waving his arms like a Landing Signals Officer on a WWII aircraft carrier. Kim was surprised; she and Ron had used those types of harnesses before when dealing with pressure sensors, and the outcomes had never been pretty. She hadn't expected him to think to pack one, nor have the skills to manage it.

Ron had obviously thought the same, surprising even himself. "Ha-ha, K.P," he said when he had lowered himself to Kim's waist level, beaming self-satisfactorily up at her, "...And you thought you were the only one with mad skills! The Ron-dog came to play!"

Unfortunately, the harness chose that exact moment to jam.

"URRAAHHH!" screamed Ron, wrestling exasperatedly on the unbudging ropes, "I... was... this... *close...* this time! Rufus buddy, you gotta remind me to touch some wood before saying stuff like that!"

"O-kay! O-kay!" whistled the naked mole rat, tugging on various wires. He sized up a rope like a fine-dining connoisseur and began sawing it energetically with his teeth.

"Rufus, no!" shouted Kim abruptly, "That's the–!"

The rope snicked apart, sending Ron thudding dully to the desert floor three feet below.

Kim sprang forward, scooped a whirling Rufus, and deposited him beside her. "...Main... support... brace..." she said, wincing. Kneeling down, she gave a winded, sandy Ron a shoulder up.

"Kim," he gasped double, coughing from the dust, "W-when... my next naco royalty check... comes in..., it will be Ron-san's honor... to buy us... an elevator!"

Giggling, Kim helped Ron brush off the rest of the dust as Simms thudded beside her. Letting his climbing harness crumple to the ground, the heavyset man wiped a reddened, sweating brow and cautiously scanned the quarry floor.

Ron moved away, and the atmosphere of the place buzzed Kim like a mosquito, urging her to swat, to do something, anything, to relieve it. The back of her neck prіckled uncomfortably. She pulled a magazine from a pouch to do something with her hands and had it halfway to the pistol butt before she paused and glanced at Simms. He nodded, and she shoved the rounds into her gun with a ka-click that snapped in the silence. As if it was a signal, a clattering, clicking, and shuffling ran up and down the line as the squad shouldered weapons and locked in ammunition, faces draining of expression. Dr. Director advanced and silently shook hands with Simms, her single eye looking coolly down at Kim and her partner. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but Kim thought she saw a flicker of warmth in the blue retina as it registered her and Ron before hardening back to professional detachment.

Jonathan had approached the blast door and scanned it with his PDA. He was now standing back and considering his foe with intense concentration. "Matt! Oliver!" he barked, "C'mere!"

They detached themselves from line. "Yessir?"

He handed them six matchbox-sized blocks of C4 explosive and a laser ruler. "Place theses where I say." He stepped back from the door. Facing it squarely, he bowed his head into his hand. He stood absolutely still, crushing his eyes shut in deep, quick thought. His face became more strained; his teeth gritted; Kim was surprised she didn't see smoke pouring from his ears. After about thirty seconds, he pointed toward the door, not raising his head or opening his eyes. "One... charge... out 3.2 inches... down 7.23 inches... from the left top corner," he said in a low, strained voice. Matt and Oliver hastily found the coordinates with the exacting laser tape, exposed off the self-sticking wrap on the rear of the charge, and slapped it on the cold steel. "One charge... 4.7 out... by 6.2 up... from the bottom left.... 4.31 by 8.01 from the top right... 5 – 5.6... b-by 3.9 from bottom left... and two... 2.16 inches from the center lock." The twins completed the last placement and he stood back, visibly white and drained. He gave himself a shake, gulped a swing from his canteen, and his color returned to normal.

Ben put a finger under Ron's open mouth and closed it. "I know it looks weird... It's like he scans the door mentally or some hookey like that... But damn, you should see the results. He could bring down a parking garage and not break a cup in a china shop a next door until he trips over the threshold... He was a wonder in the Gulf War II and a lifesaver in the North Korean assassina---" he broke off, looking guiltily flustered. "Uh... Y'all didn't hear that."

Kim smiled coyly. "Mum's the word..."

In front of them, Jonathan held up a hand for quiet. Kim noticed he unintentionally used the three-fingered BSA sign.

"O—kay," he said to the hush, "The way I've got it, the large charge in the middle will create a vacuumal shock vortex as the rest of the door shаtters. The low-pressure zone should propel pyroclastic material internally with high velocity in an lateral direction."

He finished, his words meeting the kind of silence that follows a demonstration of a particularly grueling math concept. Kim had lost him at "shock vortex." Matt raised his hand as if in class. "...And in English...?" he asked, gesturing imploringly with his hand.

"That hunk of metal is now one mother of a fragmentation grenade," Jonathan said shortly.

Matt smiled humorlessly. "Now you're talkin' my lingo!"

A pall fell upon the group. They backed silently to the rocky wall. Johnson and Wilson in front with suppressant fire, then Kim with Ron to her back. Mr. Barkin slumped beside Ron, and Dr. Direction squeezed herself between the Lieutenant and the twins. Michaels fell in behind the two burly men, Ben behind him, with Simms rounding up the line in the rear. Jonathan drew a shining coil from a shirt pocket and spun a web of brassy silk from charge to charge until he had one wire left in his hand. He stepped back to the middle of the line and kneed. Pulling a gray object the size of a small flashlight out of a cargo pocket, he threaded the copper wire into one end and flicked off a translucent cap covering a red push-button on the other.

Kim's legs started to quiver, hard-run quiver, 100-meter-dash quiver, even though she was standing still. A hard edge, a sick edge, knifed though her stomach, the doom edge for a test unstudied, unprepared. Thank God all I had for breakfast were those energy bars, she thought. A raw, musty, damp, animal odor swirled in her nostrils, smelling like air surrounding a stagnant, mossy stream. She could not place it, surprised she could even smell over the tumbleweeds bouncing across her tongue and panicky static flaring in her brain.

"OK!" shouted Jonathan, kneeling a foot from Kim. His face had blanched again. "I'm gonna count down from three. When I say, "Hit the dirt," I really, really mean it!"

"...Remember, once you're in," bellowed Simms from the rear, "Say together, get to cover and lay out suppressant. Matt, Oliver, bring out the rockets! Kim, get out of there as fast you can; we'll cover you! ...And for God's sake people, keep your damn heads down!" He gave a go-ahead signal to the demolitions expert.

"Three!" called Jonathan, now squatting with detonator grasped tightly.

Labored, heavy, rasping breathing. Hunching, softly clacking weapons held tight, bracing like football players in the gridiron. Time slowed, senses heightening. Kim felt Ron's moisture-laden exhale play around her ears. The back of expert marine Michael's brown neck was almost white; of what she could see his eyes were wide and bloodshot, his mouth wide open and panting. The raw, earthy smell surged again, hanging like a heavy cloud, smelling of perspiration and wet underarms. Kim realized what it was, the smell rising from her own pours. It was the reek of fear, the terror of certain hell, waiting, waiting, waiting.

The wait is always worse than the action... she thought ruefully. Funny, when I saw newsreels of D-Day in 20th Century history class, I always wondered what was running though the soldiers' minds in the landing crafts... The ones standing right behind the flat bow, hearing light caliber rounds ping and skeet of the sheetmetal, heavier rounds slicing though the thin steel, tearing apart the buddy beside them, the Higgins boat so packed that the dead could not fall. Rounds ripping up the water in front, knowing what they're going to meet when the ramp falls, men vomiting their guts out behind... Now I know... Now I know... nowIknownowIknow... I'm not made to be a soldier, not made to be a soldier, not made to be a soldier...

"Ta-OOW!" The blonde's voice cracked.

Kim turned to Ron. He tightly clutched the rifle, too big for him, as the drowning man clings to a ring buoy, the composite grips gleaming wetly, blackly, where he had slid his oily, sweaty hands. His shock of golden hair jumped startlingly from a band of igneous rock behind him; it was too bright, too yellow, almost cartoonish, contrasting with a face gray as the cliff behind him. His eyes were just as glaring, bright white with only a contracted hazel dot in their centers. Rufus's florid pink was nowhere to be seen.

Their eyes locked. Kim wondered if her face mirrored his. He jerked his head an inch in recognition, left corner of his tightly pressed lips flecking upward. As if reading a sign of admittance, Kim rushed to him, melding her lips forcefully, deeply, passionately, with his. The unexpected force sent the back of his head thudding into the rock face a few inches behind him; he did not give inkling he cared. Closing his eyes, he returned the silky fire. Time hung as they kissed, passionately as their first one at the Junior Prom, perhaps for the last time on this earth. Kim mentally willed Jonathan not to utter the word now forming on his lips...

"...ONE!!" he screamed, smashing down the red detonator button and dropping flat to the ground in one motion. "HIT THE DECK!!"

Kim's world dissolved in a tremendous boiling roar.

She broke apart from Ron and spun, the scene moving in silent stop-action. Out from an opaque, rolling, ash-gray cloud obscuring the cliff sang a jagged piece of metal, zeroing in on her face as if personally selected. In what seemed like an eternity of snapshots, it slowly revolved, turning its greedy razor-edged lips toward her, thirsting for the warm blood pumping just beneath her neck. Reactively, she threw herself backward, halfway falling, almost in a bicycle kick, slowly arcing gracefully to the ground as if underwater; parallel to the shard, saw it skim over her body, slicing past an inch above her nose. She yanked Ron down by his shirt as she went. A blue-gray blur flashed over their heads, sighing angrily at missing its prey, embedding itself in the granite with a dull, sickening crack, precisely where Ron's head had been a split-second before.

As Kim hit the ground, the sound swirled back in a blasting howl of wind and grit. She pressed herself flat, flatter, flatter, clinging as if the ground threatened to rip away, as if she had claws. She screwed her eyes shut and twisted her head sideways from the explosion, feeling small grains of sand and metal sprinkle bright red glitter across her cheek and forehead. Larger chunks of rock and metal skimmed lethally over their heads. The wind flung her hair straight out behind her like a bonfire in a gale. Face crushed to the ground, Kim opened her mouth and screamed. Screamed to keep her eardrums from popping. Screamed to keep her sanity from popping. The blast tore the animal sound from her throat and screamed for her.

After another second that seemed to stretch years, the shockwave died. Kim laid flat on the ground, trembling slightly, the deafening blast still ringing in her ears. All at once, she heard Simms bellowing, voice cracking, "UP, UP, UP! LET'S GO! LET'S GO! LET'S GO-GO-GO!!!"

Ron hauled her up. Director, Ben, Mr. Barkin, Jonathan; all leapt to their feet. Kim snatched her gun, stomach tight; breath gasping. Licking parched lips with a tongue that held no moisture. Heart pumping ninety miles an hour. Thunder in her head - adrenaline ride. No fear anymore, only the burn of liquid fire flooding and pulsing through her veins, making her arms and fingers throb. Gun clasped in gloves bled through with salty sweat, hustling forward in front of Ron on legs that felt, weak, feverish, numb. She vaulted the ravaged lip of the once-whole entranceway, Oliver and Michaels rolling flash-bang grenades ahead of them. Shielding her eyes against illuminations brighter than the sun, she hurtled through a solid white smokescreen; weapon thrusting blindly, and burst out the other side into– dead silence. The rest of the team pounded out of the screen behind her like so many ghosts appearing from a fog and fanned; weapons leveled, ready. Kim's analytical, tactical fighter side took only a second to take in her surroundings.

They stood at one end of a gigantic atrium, sort of rock-hewn Great Hall, nearly 30 yards high. Naked light bulbs dangling by only by their power cords did nothing to illuminate the rough, dark ceiling, almost lost in the upper gloom. The equally rocky walls, lit by bare light bulbs placed roughly at fifteen-foot intervals, curved gently inward to form an arch at the top.

It never changes... They love the high ceilings! thought Kim, flicking her eyes right. At 2 o'clock, halfway up the wall, just as Wade had said, was a small, rusting catwalk. A concrete ledge sticking from the wall served as a floor. Through the metal railings, she could see snatches of a wide, doorless entryway that presumably led into another section of the underground complex. A narrow, steep, fragile-looking metal staircase gave access to the platform. She scanned back to the floor. Various heavy doors led off the side of the hall; a particularly sturdy blast door was located directly below the platform. Two large entranceways were placed on the distance rear wall of the cavern. Mounds and hills of equipment lay scattered throughout the floor. Kim saw boxes, crates, and sandbags, even a dirty pickup truck or two. Weapons caches lay haphazardly scattered over several piles. Overall, the place gave Kim the impression of a very badly organized warehouse.

Plop.

A wet splat squelched in the silence. Startled, Kim swung her eyes to center. A score of bareheaded men of Arabian descent sat clustered around a large metal table, eating lunch. Their turbans and weapons leaned beside them on the table. Currently they were staring as one, frozen, with shocked, nonplussed expressions, at the band of people who had just exploded through their supposedly impenetrable front door. One had even stopped with a sandwich halfway to his gaping mouth. Suspended, it slowly oozed its toppings and condiments onto the floor. The stunned silence held for a second, American staring at Middle Eastern and Middle Eastern staring at American. Then in one smooth, practiced, expert move, the terrorists flipped over the table, sending plates, utensils, and "lunchage" flying, slammed on headdresses, spun, and grabbed their assault weapons. A defensive line had been set up in a matter of seconds.

Chock-Chock-Ch-Ch-Choc-Choc.

One AK-47 opened up. Another. Another. Johnson, standing directly in front of Kim, let out a strangled yell and jerked backward. A bullet slammed into his left arm and he spun round. Kim saw five, six, more, crimson roses now blooming in his chest. Writhing grotesquely as more rounds slammed into his back, his legs gave out and he crumpled, screaming "MEDIC!" as he hit the floor.

Petrified, Kim watched him kick on the floor, a blank white scream flooding her brain, eyes wide as hubcaps. She wanted to help, do something, but everything was frozen; rooted to the spot, she passively let bullets snick up the concrete floor around her. She sensed a breath of approaching motion and suddenly something heavy bull into her from behind; she was falling; she was sliding, her assailant riding above her on her back, yelling in her ear, "Get down, Kim, goddammit, get down!" They skidded into the lee of a large, sturdy mound where the rest of the team had taken cover, and her lifesaver tumbled off. It was Ron. He leaned over the parapet of their cover and fired off a few rounds of suppressant as Kim clambered to her feet. With a grunt, Mr. Barkin threw himself flat on the pile beside them and immediately started to set up the heavy machine gun. The rest of the team advanced forward, firing, Wilson's and Michaels's M4's belching off grenades.

"Jesus... Thanks Ron!" she yelled over the din of gunfire. "I... I soo dunno what came over me... I just... froze."

The blonde broke off firing and leaned down to her. "No big... Oh! I've always wanted to say that...it tickles! ...Anyway, you saved me back there from getting a new Naco-eating hole... in my forehead. I'd say that just about covers your Christmas present debt!" Kim laughed. "...By the way, you're a lot softer ride than Mr. Dr. P's rocket sled!"

Kim shot him a wry look, rubbed her chest, and grimaced. "Tell that to my boobs!"

"Oy! Heads up, you two!" yelled Dr. Director, breaking their conversation and jerking her thumb at Matt and Oliver. Matt had hoisted the Javelin barrel onto his shoulder and was sighting in the computer.

"Got it!" he shouted, "Jonathan – it's that rock support column just above the far left door, hundred meters out, right?!"

"Yeah!" the older blonde yelled back, checking his PDA.

Oliver, kneeling at the other end of the barrel, rammed the projectile home and twisted down and away, plugging his ears as he did so. "Clear!"

Matt pulled back on the trigger. With a hollow, schloooping sound, a white missile flew smokelessly out of the barrel and over the pile. After dropping for a second, the rocket motor ignited, sending the Javelin hurling into the far wall. Kim and Ron threw themselves against the bunker wall as the warhead exploded. A blast nearly rattled their teeth out and a bright-as-the-sun flash lit up the facing wall. Screams and yells followed. The air momentarily sucked from Kim's lungs as the fireball ate up the oxygen, then rushed back, clogged with dust and smoke. As she took a step away from the berm, she heard a frenzied yell directly behind her. Spinning, she came nearly face-to-face with an al-Qaeda fighter attempting to breech the wall. He looked at her in slight surprise, but then started swinging down the rifle slung over his back during the climb. Kim automatically raised her .40 and fired. A gurgling, bubbling scream; the fighter tumbled backward, clutching his throat, shot through the neck.

Energized by adrenaline shock, Kim wheeled and started firing blindly, one-handed, at the flashing battle line across the hall. Ducking in between golden ribbons of tracers, she rattled off slugs, experiencing a disconcerting primal glee whenever she saw a fighter crumple.

Shiiiizzznit, what... is... happening... to... me?!! she thought, quietly appalled, as tracers tore by her. She saw a defender stand straight up on top of the terrorist's barricade in the final stages of arming an RPG, solidly aiming at her forces, silhouetted against the gray rock wall behind him. Errrgg... too late to think 'bout that now, though!

Kim swung her handgun on target. Blocking out the cacophonic rattle-rattle of automatics from both sides, she glared down the barrel and fired. An animal yell of triumph surged forward as she watched him twist and fall, but was quickly cut short when he inadvertently launched the RPG, sending a shrieking diagonally across the room. Kim snapped her head to follow it and watched it collide solidly with the ladder extending to the second floor platform. The lower half disintegrated in a fling of shrapnel, and in a grinding screech of tearing metal, the upper section slowly broke loose and crashed to the concrete floor.

Kim slapped a gloved hand to her mouth, mortified.

Dr. Director slowly turned her gazed from the destroyed stairway to Kim, sighed, and shot the redhead a single flat, exasperated glare.

Furiously, Kim turned to fire again and came face-to-face with fighter in a yellow turban leering down at her from the top of the mound, pointing at her a bayonet lashed to his AK-47 with a piece of dirty, hairy twine. He had wriggled to their side underneath a carpet of bullets.
With a yelp, she swung the gun to aim between his eyeballs and pulled the trigger.

Click.

She stared aghast at the gun in her hand and dumbfoundedly pulled the trigger again.

Click. Click. Click.

The empty magazine clanked at her feet.

With a frenzied, triumphant yell, the man leapt down the wall to her level and advanced on her, bayonet knife thrusting. Kim took several quick, terrified steps backward, tripped over a box that had fallen off the pile behind her, and sprawled. Rolling over, she saw the man standing directly over her, a crazed gleam in his eye, a cackle in his throat. He reared the gun back over his head for the strike, Kim saw his eyes aim for the middle of her chest, saw the knife point gleam and flash and begin to descend –

A deep, wet crack resounded behind them. Her would-be killer froze with the knife raised, a snarl etched on his features. Then his face softened, his eyes rolled up into his head, leaving only slimly white spheres, his legs quivered, and he slowly toppled across Kim, his dirty teeth cracking against her forehead as he went. The gun slid from his hands as he fell. With a dull thunk, it landed upright on the bayonet and stuck there, quivering, two inches from Kim's left eye. She took a long sideways glance at her reflection in the steel and then looked up. Ron was standing in front of her, snarl on his face, holding his M4 backwards by the muzzle as if in the follow-through of swinging a baseball bat. A fresh crimson stain gleamed on the rifle butt. His expression softened as he remembered Kim and pulled her to her feet.

"So, I guess, um, saving you is one way to spread a little Ron-shine."

"Right back at'cha, Brainswitch Boy!"

Ron laughed, remembering the old nickname. "Hooo boy, that was weird. And to tell you the truth-" he broke off, eyes widening as they fixed on something over Kim's shoulder. "—we might want to be imitating Rufus right about now!"

He dived for the ground, Kim following him on trust. Immediately afterward, an RPG round sliced above the makeshift foxhole and slammed into the near wall. Another tawny blast and suck of air followed, but this time accompanied with a heat wave; Kim smelt the edges of her hair searing. Do they have ANY idea how hard it is to pay tuition *and* keep your bangs in at least presentable order?! The rat-tat-tatting tempo of fire directed toward them increased. The team had broken into roughly two parts. Matt, Oliver, Ben, and Wilson had grouped in the lee of one large pile. Dr. Director, Mr. Barkin, Jonathan, Michaels, Simms, Kim, and Ron had gathered under a larger one, separated by a gap of roughly twelve feet. Kim looked up. Crisscrossing frenetically over their heads flew a hundred tracer comets, shredding the air with the sound of ripping wet canvas. All around them lead pinged and whizzed, skipping off the floor and their cover with the twang of ricochet. shаttering glass; cracking wood; a bronze streak exploded out of the conglomerate of the pile, six inches below Kim's arm. Seconds later, a second ripped through the rubble between her and Dr. Director's head. They quickly cast each other wide-eyed looks. Over the frenzy, a yell; Ben went down, clutching his thigh. Simms ripped a walkie-talkie from his belt and peered at the other half of the team across the veritable waterway of glowing rounds. "This is th' Gunny...! You alright, son!?" he shouted, anxiety-stricken, into the walkie.

"Y-yeah," floated back a strained, tight voice. "I – ahhhh! – ahh – ah – I think it's getting a bit hot in here, though."

Kim pulled out the Kimmunicator. Reaching into her backpack and popping open a tube of pink stiki-gloss, she put a blob on the bottom of the PDA and stuck it to the side of her gun. "Be my eyes, Wade!" she yelled, extending her gun above her head and over the wall, firing sideways. When the magazine ejected, she yanked the impromptu seeing-eye weapon back down.

"There's more in here than I predicted!" Wade said, typing furiously. "The Javelin round only weakened the rear doors; didn't bring them down. Musta called in reinforcements with walkie-talkies."

"Remember how you said you could crash the wireless network with your eyes closed?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, start sleepwalking!"

"I'm on it, Kim!"

The black boy started pounding on his computers as another RPG round screamed over and exploded into the rear wall, sending rock fragments slicing lethally through the air. A bright orange fireball crawled up the rock and rolled weirdly across the ceiling in a sheet. The team fell flat, covering their heads with their hands. As the scorching wind died, Simms crawled over the wreckage to Kim.

"How you doin'?" he yelled over the din.

"Explosions, flying projectiles, mass chaos... they're giving the Tweebs a healthy run for their money!" she yelled back with a smile.

Another RPG arced across their barrier. In the ensuing thundering blast, Kim saw, for the first time, a true haunt of fear in Simms's eyes. The harsh fiery light caught the strain on his features in sharp relief. Simms put a heavy hand on her thin shoulder. "Kim!" he said a few inches from her face, "This is getting too dangerous! You've got to get out of here now! We'll put down suppressant thick enough for those assholes to walk on."

She looked around at her fellow hunkered teammates, Mr. Barkin, Dr. Director, Simms, and lastly, Ron. "But... but... I can't just leave you guys!"

Ron put an arm around her waist. "Kim, ya gotta go! You can't stay here; not before you show that bastard what happens when he gets the Kim Factor tweaked! ...Besides..." he smiled, "My grade-sized ego dictates that you will never hear the end of my duo muy bueno rescues of you unless you do something to top it!"

Kim laughed, looked far into his hazel eyes for a long moment, and gave him a deep hug. "Take care of yourself..." she whispered into his ear. "Somebody's gotta buy Rufus is nachos."

"Right back at you, K.P... Hey, and I'll have you know, the little guy goes through a week of my allowance in three orders!"

Kim giggled, broke apart, slowly pulled out her grappling gun, and turned to Simms. "Let's do this thing."

"Right," said Simms, nodding tersely. "Since, well, you destroyed the main way out of this hellhole, you'll obviously have to use your grappler. Quicker, yeah, but it will leave you more vulnerable to fire while in the air. Get up there and away as fast as you can." He grabbed his walkie-talkie. "Okay, everybody, the Phoenix is leaving the Hornet's Nest! Repeat, the Phoenix is leaving the Hornet's Nest! On my count...!" He learned quickly back to Kim. "Ready?"

She fiddled with the time-release knob on the grappler, moving it forward, hearing bullets shаttering and tinkling on the front of their bulwark, and faintly nodded.

"All right; open up on my count!" he said in the walkie-talkie. "Wilson, Michaels, pop over some pineapples when I count to two... everyone else –" he broke off as bullet skimmed by his boot, "–Whoa! – open up on three!"

The radios crackled back in confirmation.

"OK!" he shouted. "...One! ...Two...!"

The surviving Blackwater ops canted their rifles and sent two grenades blasting toward enemy lines.

"THREE!!"

As one, the commandos exploded over the mound's lip and blurred the room with points of light just as the two grenades detonated. Mr. Barkin's jammed his Vietnam-era steel pot firmly on his head and skewed his automatic from left to right on its bipod. The heavy machine gun wracked boomingly, sending large, deliberate bolts of orange-gold belching from the muzzle. Kim stood up hastily as blazes streaked and crisscrossed over and around her, found a mark on the wall, and leveled the chunky grappler. As she held her breath to fire, a speeding round sliced across her forehead. She yelled and dropped her aim. Gritting her teeth against the searing pain and, seconds later, blood, she leveled again and fired. After seeing the hook slam home, she dropped to one knee and held a palm to her brow, gasping slightly at the contact. Warm, sticky liquid quickly ran down the sides of her nose and around the edges of her eyes.

Simms looked around distractedly as her red hair disappeared from the corner of his eye. "Kim?" He saw blood. "...Kim!?" He broke off from the fight and kneeled beside her, prizing away her hand. "Good God!" He whipped a towelette from a belt first-aid kit and wiped away the smeared red coating. "...Gusher, there. Not too deep, though... Hold still." He lifted a small jar of the same sugary substance he had given Kim and tilted her head back. "This might hurt a little..." He sprinkled the white, granular substance directly on the wound.

It bit hard. Kim yelled as a white-hot wire seared into her forehead; tried to twist away. Simms grabbed her roughly by the chin and held her in a vice grip for a full ten seconds, then let go. Kim brought a hand to her brow. The fresh wound was now a thick, sugary scab. She rubbed it, and it crumbled into a clot no bigger than a knife cut.

Simms helped her to her feet. "That's the same QuikClot stuff I gave you." He then pointed to the still-trembling grappler line and gave her a light, friendly smack on the rear. "Now get going, dammit!"

Simms spun his M-16 back to firing position with the precision of a drill rifleman. Kim wrapped her arms tightly around her grappler and punched the "recoil" button. Instantly the grappler yanked her forward, and she ramped up the sloping pile and sailed steeply upward through the air. Halfway across, a foreign voice some distance yelled angrily in surprise. A barrage of fiery lines swung in her direction.

Behind her, she heard a hollow ssslooop.... followed by a shrieking Whheeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiii! A blast of light in the corner of her vision, smoke, dying screams, and a sharp reduction of bullets flying in her direction told her another Javelin had done its work.

Miraculously, she reached the catwalk unscathed, flipped herself over its edge, half-tumbling, half-rolling until she was directly below the hook's strike point. Wrenching the concrete-piercing barb out of the wall, she recalled the last few feet of cord and threw herself flat, scrabbling desperately along a concrete pad that suddenly stretched for miles. Bullets clanged and rang hollowly off the metal railing, sending sharp, hot fragments flying erratically across her back and shoulders. They caught and pulled at her clothing. Her old cotton things would have torn to rags in seconds, but the thin Kevlar took the knife-edged bits with a sound like a zipper closing. A thin, lighter track in the black followed as the stitching unwove slightly.

Assault rifles turned, aiming toward her face, firing up at her. They rattled and kacked, a cacophony melding and melting, their profiles almost hidden behind yellow-white flashes. Her toe caught in a pithole; she lunged forward, half-falling, now belly flat to the concrete, hands splayed; a large slug impacted directly between her Y-ed index and middle and disintegrated, shredding the Gore-Tex glove and leaving tiny cuts on her fingers. Solid, unbroken traces of light sliced past her vision, skimming her hair, leaving spiderweb craters in the wall to her right. Bullets scooted upward between the floor pad and lowest railing, ricocheted off the low ceiling pad above the platform, and hurled back down at random angles. One grazed the skin of her right forearm, drawing blood; she did not care; did not feel it.

After an eternity, she reached the lip of the second story passageway, whipped herself around the corner, and crawled down the cool, dark protection of the twelve-foot-wide hallway. After wriggling about fifty feet, Kim collapsed against the wall, hugging her knees, panting. Her ragged breathing was loud in the relative silence; yard-thick walls blocked out the sound of battle. Only muffled, random, crump-crumping explosions and distant yelling floated to her. Her heart slowed. The smart of her cut arm seeped inward on her thoughts, followed by a new pain in her left thigh – dull, throbbing. She lifted away her hand from around her drawn-up legs to reveal a small, horizontal rip in the kaki fabric.

Must have bashed my leg on the platform on the way up, she thought, withdrawing an amber bottle from a side pouch of her backpack. Unscrewing the top with her teeth, she tilted her head back and slammed down two aspirin. She then wincingly scrunched up her pant leg, ruffled through her gear belt, and withdrew a packet of QuikClot and a chitosan bandage. Nicking open the ketchup-packet-sized dose of QuikClot with her front teeth, she dumped the entire contents into slash in her foreleg and plastered the bandage overtop. Her breath whistled sharply in her teeth and eyes widened as burning pain crackled along the wound. Kim laid her grappler across her lap and bowed her head. She waited for the painkiller to filter through her body, pulling deep, slow breaths.

Great Hall, West Side

Kasheme al-Budvark yanked his head down under a web of American bullets. He pressed himself tightly to his gravel bulwark, panting shallowly. He rolled his eyes until they hurt, looking upward and back at the edge of his cover. Large, tepid balls of sweat rolled down inside his turban. His left hand scrabbled at his side, questing blindly for another magazine. Feeling his ammunition belt, he ripped open a canvas pouch and wrenched out a boxy casing, prying up a few fingernails in his violent haste. Jamming it into his AK-47, he sputtered half a magazine at the invaders across the hall before a return wave of gunfire forced him to duck.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a puff of white smoke, different from the black and brown eddying around him, rise up behind the enemy lines. Something small and black burrowed into the side wall. About thirty seconds later, an unmistakable flash of red, black, and green soared through the air. Just as Kasheme had been dreading. No show of bullying infidel imperialism would be complete without that indecent skin-bearing hussy.

"Hey!" he yelled, pointing. Several of his fellow crusaders eagerly opened fire on the flying body. The man who brought down Kim Possible was assured two extra virgins in the Hereafter. A second later, a sharp Whheeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiii! filled his ears, followed by an explosion that lifted him off his feet. When he opened his eyes, he lay surrounded by ripped-open comrades. A large, smoking hole gaped in the barricade to his right.

Swearing with grief, he threw himself into a more protected position and lifted out his walkie talkie. "Osama," he began, "We're being invaded! Kim Possible is here –" He broke off, realized he was talking to a static hiss.

Shit... Must've busted in the explosion.

He threw it down disgustedly and tried some of his neighbors, squeamishly wiping congealing blood off the mouthpieces. They too were useless. He scanned the hall frantically for another sort of inter-base communication. His eyes picked up their last hope: an intercom mounted to the left wall under the platform to the high-ranking quarters. Setting his teeth, he charged through a hail of shrapnel and bullets, expertly rolling and diving, putting his years of Taliban training to the test. Just before the upper platform became obscured by its floor as he dived below it, he saw a flash of red hair disappear behind a main doorway. He arrived at the light tan speaker box with clothing shredded and hands bleeding, but with face triumphant, and lifted the black phone club. "Osama! This is al-Budvark!"

He squashed himself into the lee of a doorway as another smattering of bullets crinkled past. When they let up from his position, he resumed his transmission.

"Leader, we are under a surprise attack by an American strike force... Send in reinforcements!"

He winced as the results of a bungled amputation filtered above the noise.

"Worse yet, O Great One, they've brought Kim Possible with them...! Prophet Muhammad (may He live forever!) smiled not; your missile of retribution didn't work! She's in corridor 36-B as I speak. If you send reserves from Sector 3 now, they should deal with her... with her...... easily..."

He trailed off helplessly, realizing the bullet sweep that made him duck had also sliced the phone cord cleanly in two.

Great Hall, East Side

Through the pain in his leg, Ben's eagle eyes picked up a repetitive motion across the hall. If I didn't know better, it looks like somebody's trying to make a break for it.

"Hey, Director!" he yelled hoarsely down the battle line. "Bung me those 'nocs!"

Dr. Director deftly tossed him the binoculars Kim had left behind. He peered through. "Well, I'll be damned... Oliver, look at this!"

The grunt took the lenses. "The little sunahvabitch looks like he's trying to make a phone call!" He turned to Michaels. "Light him up!"

Shloop! A grenade arched through the air.

Great Hall, West Side

The second explosion just as many minutes sent Kasheme flying on his back. When the world stopped spinning, he could not feel his legs. He looked down.

There were none.

They disappeared beneath a large stone shifted by the blast.

He was trapped.

There was no pain. After a brief, futile struggle, he flopped back against the wall. His body felt shelllike. Devoid of emotion.

Great Hall, East Side

"Sir, I still see movement...!"

"Michaels, fire two!"

...Shloop!

Great Hall, West Side

Kasheme saw close friends who had been trying to free him scatter away. He twisted his head left and right.

Odd... what's that about? he thought detachedly, almost bored.

He looked up. An arcing grenade was zeroing in, directly between his eyes.

Drat. And I promised little Kia'na I'd fix her bike...

Corridor 36-B

Kim looked up from her bandaging as two nearly simultaneous explosions detonated directly in front of the opening. Instead of dampening the sound, the thick walls channeled it, forcing her to clamp her gloves over her ears. A geyser of flame shot upward from below the platform and upward out of view; the intense light momentarily bleached the corridor and her body white. Squinting, she saw that the flame contained small black bits that looked grotesquely like human body parts.

"Ewwww…"

Giving her head a small shake, Kim turned to pick up her grappler. As she did so, another dry salvo of gunfire chattered behind her, followed by a loud, strangled shout. She whipped around, frozen.

Seconds later, she heard her longtime teacher screaming, "It's gonna take more than a bullet to stop Mr. Steve Barkin! …aaaaaAAAARRRAAHHHHH…!" His war cry disappeared beneath the thunder of his gun, and the sounds of battle faded away again.

Kim half-opened her mouth, unconsciously reaching forward into the darkness to give aid. She slowly let her hand drop, biting her lip, torn between her friends and her duty.

She glanced at the seconds ticking by on her watch and realized she was wasting time. Grunting to her feet, she quickly swung on her backpack. Ruffling with the straps, she strode deeper into the complex to drown out the sounds of fighting behind her. Whispering along at a light jog, she looked down at her grappler to twiddle the time release forward. Satisfied, she slinked quietly down the corridor, oiled around the corner of a blind T-intersection at the end of the hall –

And walked slam-bang into a fighter hurrying in the opposite direction.

They lurched apart, Kim holding her sides. She looked up. Both her and the new man's eyes met at the same moment, and their quick, sharp intakes of breath combined. They registered each other in stunned silence for a long, long heartbeat. Then the man's hand plunged to a Glock at his hip. Kim's eyes snapped downward to follow it, and without thinking she raised her right arm.

At such close range, the hook never had time to spring open. It drilled straight through the robed man a foot from her and exploded out the other side, spraying intestines and chunks of spine against the opposite wall. Momentum spent, the claw opened, hung in the air for a moment, and clattered metallically to the floor.

The eyes of al-Qaeda fighter remained locked on her face. Then he blinked and looked down in surprise at how he had suddenly jumped forward in the alphabet from an i to an o. He panned back to stare at Kim, his color draining. His mouth twitched slightly, and with a small, pained gurgle, slowly toppled sideways, face frozen in a mixture of shock and agony. Behind him, his guts slid down the wall with a wet squelch.

The grappler tumbled from Kim's nerveless fingers. She stared in horror at the man stiffening in his own growing pool of stunning red blood. Her mind jammed onto a stunned scream echoing and repeating over and over and over again in her skull.

When she closed her eyes to block out the gore, it seared on the inside of her lids, as clear as if they had burned off. Feeling a heave to her stomach, she lurched to the near wall and supported herself with a trembling hand.

OhmygodOhmygod… I'm not gonna sick… I'm not gonna sick... OhmygodOhmygodOhmygodOhmygodOhmygodOhmygodOhmygod Ohmygod…!

Kim retched, doubling over. The acrid taste of vomit burned in her mouth. With difficulty she choked it down. Kim leaned against the wall, feeling as if she had a high fever. Her pulse raced quick, shallow; face pale and clammy from shock and sweat. She dry-heaved once, twice, three times before staggering back up again.

"Oh… God… Oh… God… N-no breakfast… Good thing…"

She raised an arm to wipe her forehead. The sleeve came back damp. Pull yourself together! she thought through gritted teeth. Remember what that Tibetan monk said… "Assume the Lotus Blossom." She closed her eyes, and the scene before her and a distant explosion faded away. She relaxed, her body feeling almost weightless. She mediated deeper, and it gently opened like an orchid at the light of dawn. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes. Her body was calm. She was back in control. Reaching into her backpack, she pulled out a small, slender black tube and deftly screwed the silencer into the threaded barrel of her gun. She bent down to retrieve the grappler. A millisecond later, she was flat against the wall, heart pounding. Roughly half of the black rope was tinted dull, sticky red… and she didn't want to think about what she'd have to do to get the hook back.

Glancing up, she looked directly onto the eyes of the man she had just killed. They were still open. Kim froze on the spot as if she had just received a giant electric shock.

Without a second glance at the mutilated body, she turned and fled down the corridor.

Corridor 15-B
10:33 AM

To be continued….