11:06 P.M. Wednesday

          It had been four hours and thirty-seven minutes since the duty shift began and none of us had bothered, aside from the bottled water, to stop and eat, drink or rest. With things still getting sorted out – Mason was yelling on the phone at somebody from INS, as they tried to come to terms – and Tony's team back from their exam run, my ops team was dismissed for a fifteen-minute lunch break. I sat in the break room drinking yet another really big Mountain Dew.

          Big mistake.

          Tony walked in and called us all to attention. "They just had an attack on the 101st Airborne. Pentagon says it's one of our own."

          I choked on my soda, sending it back up into my throat. Quickly, I swallowed, then followed it with another hit. Closing up the bottle and leaving it there on the table, together with Matt, Mark, Lex, Kevin and Paula, I ran back onto the main ops floor. Fox News was on our major vid screen and Shepard Smith was giving details to our horrified CTU staff. Right now I wasn't even in the mood to make one of my many jokes about how he didn't sleep. I just stood there staring.

          "… The suspect in custody is a Muslim-American who may have been disgruntled…"

          I shot a glance at Matt, Mark and Kevin, who were all showing the same emotion I was: pure mortification and anger, mixed with a certainty that this was our job. We couldn't do it for the guys all the way over in Iraq, of course, but it was our job to handle domestic terrorism so that situations like this didn't happen here. Still listening to Shepard, we raced back to our workstations because we knew that there would be operations going up again, and quickly. I swore as I was reaffixing my headset; things had just gotten very personal around CTU.

Send me an angel

Send me an angel

Right now, right now

Send me an angel…

          "All right," I yelled over the volume of the news channel and the unrest, "I want all available ops teams ready to go, we are making a full security sweep of the city. Ops teams Delta and Epsilon, stand by for instant action … everybody else, gear up and you launch in ten minutes!"

          People started obeying my orders, running to get their weapons and equipment, team leaders scrambling their teams in orderly and efficient fashion to make it back out into the field. Kevin, Lex, Paula and even Mark were clearing their dockets, bringing up their op-services software and selecting sweep zones for each field team. Since I had ordered two teams to hold back in case another raid or something happened, one of which was Jack's elite Team Delta, my boss approached me as I was checking my own software, preparing to run op-serv hands-on again for the first time in a while.

          "What happened with the Frenchman?" I asked. I'd gotten a little out of him, but not much – possible, not probable, locations, but he was basically scared to death. There was still a turf war going on over who kept custody. Jack exhaled. "Jackson went over to INS to talk to him, but I wouldn't hold out hope."

          I nodded, looking at my operations map where the locations the French national had suggested were marked with blue. "I'll make sure to clear those areas."

          "We'll stand by in case you get a hit." He looked over my shoulder at my panel. "You've got everything under control?"

          "Yeah. Don't worry about it."

          The teams had formed up, and I dropped into my chair as Matt issued them their standing orders and patrol zones: threat assessment, high alert. I was not at my usual station, instead taking the forwardmost one; when running op-serve we kept each controller separated so there was no chance of orders getting crossed or anything like that. Lex was back at our shared station over my shoulder and to my right, while Paula was over my shoulder to my left, and Kevin and Mark were at my back. Matt had his own station not too far from Paula. They would all be near me when I started needing them. As the teams headed out, we geared up and got into play.

Do you believe in heaven above

Do you believe in love

Don't tell me a lie
Don't be false or untrue

It all comes back to you

          "Team Beta, op-serv online, acknowledge." My fingers were flying over the keys as I isolated the portion of the city map that Team Beta had been assigned to cover. It was brought up onto my screen and I was able to examine it in much greater detail. Looking at the text labels I started assessment in my head even as Steve Claire's voice came back in my ear: "Team Beta acknowledges op-serv online. Good to have you with us, Brittany."

          "Good to have you with me," I echoed. "I'm bringing up your target list now. Do you have it?"

          "We have it." I brought up the team's target list on the computer; earlier in the day we had come up with a list of locations that needed inspecting, and now it had been partitioned by team. Chances were Steve and the guys had seen some of them already, but now they'd be going into them rather than making recon. I had each target marked in red on my map. Red for the targets, blue for the possibles, green for cleared areas.

          "Confirm your first target for me." So far it was all procedure.

          "Warehouse district, buildings four and five, left side."

          "Confirmed. Good luck out there, Stephen." Again I went back to the map, isolating the two former factories that the team would be hitting shortly. I'd have to be their omnipresent spirit out there, giving them an assessment of the building, keeping them safe. I needed to know what was there before they did. Some days, you had to be ahead of yourself just to stay in the game. I kept typing, accessing satellites and prior reports and anything else I could think of.

Open fire on my burning heart

My defenses are down

I can't survive on my own

          Ten or so minutes passed. I had read the initial reports on the warehouse district that had suggested it as a target in the first place, taken a look at satellite photos, cross-referenced with previous case files, essentially racked our database for anything that might have anything to do with those two buildings. Never mind that I'd be doing it all again when they moved to another target. Steve had heard it all from me, and I was sure he'd rolled it off to the other team members. Rule one was to keep information moving at all times. The only time you stopped talking was when it meant somebody died.

          I heard the faint purring in the back of my audio stop, followed by several clicking noises. The engine had stopped and they were getting their weapons loaded. Sure enough, Steve came over the line and told me they'd made their target. They were going for the nearest building, building four, first. I could hear them moving up, taking up defensive assault positions. There was some silence, some nonverbal communication, as I hung on the line, and then his voice came back.

          "Op-security check, if you would."

          I checked. "You're a go."

          "Acknowledged. We are taking target."

          The first sounds of contact…

Everyday we've all been lead astray

It's hard to be lucky in love…

          "I'll tell you this," Jason said, reaching behind himself to reload as the suburban went speeding on to its next target, "our girl knows to keep plenty of ammo."

          "You sound like a cheerleader," Derek quipped.

          "What? You make it sound like it's a bad thing," his friend said, slamming the clip home.

          "She hates cheerleaders."

          "Oh. Okay."

          "I mean, she hates cheerleaders."

          Chloe interrupted from behind them: "And so, this one time at band camp…"

          Lan cut everyone else off. "Our next target is that former patrol station about twenty minutes out."

          Derek nodded, gripping the steering wheel tighter, and drove faster.