You started off in the army dreading the prospect of actual combat, but little by little the hard training and discipline of DEVGRU made you start wishing for it. And here it was.

War.
The real thing.
Only, I was held back. There was no escape from the reality that was.
The loss of my former team mates, and the lives of ten perfectly good men.
Why would anybody want to go to war? It would be like that. You want to find out if you can really do the job. They'd been tested and proven.
It was another generation of Seals turn now.

I knew I was fully capable, having enough to time to recover from festering stab wounds.
I didn't care for our President, but hey- I signed a contract-no matter who it was behind the big desk.
My fists pelted the punching bag, thinking nothing of my gashed knuckles. The pain didn't bother me-not as much as my heart aching for those guys MARSOC had just lost.
A man in urban fatigues walked up beside me, hands behind his back. His hair was grey-only his face wasn't wrinkled and war-torn like most men on base.
I turned to look at him, bothered by his presence. One arm kept punching the bag slowly, but not forcefully. "Can I help you?" I asked bluntly.
"I come bearing gifts," He handed me a piece of paper.
My eyes panned the paper, seeing my name and the word accepted. It made me grin. "Great. I'm cleared to do my job again?"
He folded his arms, saying nothing.
I turned back to the punching bag. "Sweet." I punched a couple times, but the man didn't leave. He wanted something in return. "Wait, are you the shrink?"
"I'm Captain Martin. Or you can call me Zander, if you prefer."
My eyebrows shot up. "Zander?" I looked at him in pity. "Didn't your parents like you?" I turned back to the punching bag.
He didn't reply.
I left one fist on the punching bag as I stared back in repulsion. "Oh god, is this a thing? I have to talk to you so I can keep those?" I looked at my report in his hand.
"Nope," he sighed. "Before I became a counsellor I was on a team like yours. You don't have to do anything to earn these papers. I read your file, I believe you're okay, but I'd like to talk to you about what happened in Iran. If you'd like to call me, and if not, maybe just some small talk and a coffee?"

I rolled my eyes and pointed at the coffee machine at the back of the room. "Coffee." I went back to my punching bag.
"Look, I know your team is on a mission and I know how much that sucks, so… what do you say?"
Arrogantly, I walked in front of him and turned my attention back to the punching bag and continued to pound it.
"Can I join you?"
I ignored his question. "Said you were on a team. What happened?" I asked.
"Some Syrian ass-wipe took a shot at me." He turned away from me, showing a large melted scar on his neck. "I forgot to duck."
I cringed. "Oooh."
He exhaled heavily. "Yeah. Lucky to be alive. Although, for the first year, you couldn't have convinced me of that if you tried. I felt sorry for myself. And then finally one day I realized, it was it was like in that movie Shawshank."
I looked at him, confused. Where was this going?

"I had to get busy living or get busy dying. So I decided helping people like myself was the best way to stay sane." He fell silent as I took off my gloves and sat on the couch. "Did they hurt you? I read the brief."

I looked at him, not wanting to reveal a single detail. There are some things better off unsaid.

"I'm not asking a piece of paper; I'm asking you. I'm a survivor, Chapman, I know. I know no matter how well you got through it, there's something that got you. Maybe not then, maybe it's now. But the thing is, better to say it out loud now to me than let it haunt you. So? What is it that is haunting you?"

I pretended to ignore him.

"What do you want to talk about about?"

"I don't know, it's your nickel."

A bone-deep tremor that felt suspiciously like panic ran through me. Desperately, I reached down into the paralysis for some sign of impending recovery. My nervous system was still reeling. I could feel my eyes drying out from the lack of a blink reflex.

I couldn't walk as slowly as I should as I darted across the room. If anyone had been looking at me, they might have suspected that there was something not right about the way I moved. Only Zander was here to pay attention to me. There was no where to else to go, and now I had to face the music. I didn't like to think of myself having to hide. How cowardly that sounded. But it was unquestionably the case now. I didn't have enough discipline left to be around anyone right now. Focusing so much of my efforts on not killing someone left me no resources to resist the others. What a waste that would be. If I were to give in to the monster, I might as well make it worth the defeat.

Through smearing vision, I watched Zander following me to the couch, but seating himself in empty chair opposite me.

I didn't answer. I couldn't think of a way to protest, but I instantly knew that I wanted to. I followed along unwillingly, trying to think through the panic. It was what I need, I reminded myself.
The chance to talk it all through.
So why was the panic choking me?

I gnawed on my lip for a second. Was this a secret, or not? And if it was, then how much did the shrink know?
Would the doctors and surgeons tell anyone else the extent of the damage so they were able to figure it out? Of course they would.

The wounds were no longer fresh, nor did they bother me, but still, i fought the urge to place hand on them defensively.

"You don't need to see me like this. Go away."

"Not likely, Chapman." Zander replied anxiously.

At the same time, a sudden pain twisted in my stomach, almost like the aftershock of catching a punch in the gut.

My head swam, but I fought the spinning. I would have to get used to this, if I were going to attempt any kind of normality. I took another deep, burning breath

It was too hard to keep secrets, I decided.

He couldn't see into my mind, though, the way he saw into everyone else's.
Who knew why—some strange glitch in my brain that made it immune to all the extraordinary and frightening things some terrorists could do.

It was just too embarrassing to consider the alternative. Maybe just give him what he needed to hear, i decided.

Zander hesitated.

I felt something drop, like a tiny piece of ice thawing from the frozen block of my central nervous system. My eyelids scraped slowly down over my eyes, once, and up again. The cleansing contact brought tears.

Zander saw it and stiffened.

The fingers of my right hand twitched and curled. I felt the beginnings of tension in the muscles of my stomach. My eyes moved.

Zander's face stayed impassive. His eyes lifted from me. "It's okay, nothing leaves this room," he said loudly.

I was coming back. Something was forcing my nerves back into sparking, fizzing life. I could feel the shakes setting in, and with them a soupy, suffocating quality to the air in my lungs that meant I was beginning to gain control. My limbs were moulded in lead and my hands felt as if I was wearing thick cotton gloves with a low electric current fizzing through them. My options were limited.

I sighed, trying not to over-do the troubled farce i put on for his benefit. "I'm terrified that I could lose them. You know, being grabbed, being tortured, I can handle that. The Corps hated me the second I walked in here a girl. And then I was assigned to Alpha Dogs. I was wanted. I was in a team who wanted me. Then I lost my best friend, I remember how I felt when I did. The Colonel was there-he was the first one to see me as a Tier One operator, and not a woman. Up until then, I felt nothing. I would lose a team mate and not feel a thing. My team were all there for me after the attack in Midway City. They cared. And when my guys rescued me…. I just…" I looked down and tried to breath without my chin shaking. What came out of my mouth was sounding more like an open confession than a lie.

"It was the first time anyone came to help you. First time in your whole life." His last words died as he realised the truth on my face.

"Yup." I nodded, not wanting to say anymore.
"You might lose them, Trig. You know that now, I mean in your gut. And I get that is the worst feeling in the world. It's like it's like falling but hitting no bottom."

"So what do you do?" I croaked.

"You get used to it. A little each day. And maybe you find a way to think about the other side. Anytime you find yourself scared you might lose 'em, focus on how lucky it is to have 'em. That's what I do." Martin said, keeping his eyes on me.

"Yeah. Thanks."

Martin handed me the clearance papers. "No charge. It will pass, soldier. And if it doesn't, you know where to find me."

"Hey, uh, don't take it personally." My eyes darted at the punching bag. "No one beats me."

Martin laughed. "We'll see."

o*o*o*o*o*o

"So good." Adam McGuire approved his horse shoe throw.

"So good. We're rocking it." I answered with a grin.

"You go." He said.

I threw it, but it landed just beside the stake, and fell off the pit made from wooden pallets. I grunted in disappointment.

"Coming out a little wonky there though, I mean for being a sniper, I expected a little more." McGuire, had come to grow on me in the last few days. He reminded me a lot of how Andy was before the Afghani desert drove him over the edge. The newly appointed tier one looked alot like him, too. The shaggy black, curly hair and the cropped but well-groomed beard covering the childish shape of his face. His eyes were still young as he towered a little above me, sniggering.

Amir Al Raisani basked in the sun beside Flag, who seemed deeply focused on his Chinese takeaway. He watched McGuire and I fooling around, and sat on the picnic table, one boot leaning on the seat. "I don't know, Boss. All those years, I thought working undercover was the hardest thing I'd ever do, but this… this doing nothing is harder."

"Amir, you're still new, buddy." Flag mumbled.

"Ten servicemen dead, and here we sit two weeks later, like it didn't even happen."

"Do me a favour." Flag sounded faintly regretful, like someone who'd had to put down a good book just before the climax. "Look out there. What's happening? You got Jaz and McG talking smack, bitching about horseshoes, you got Hayes talking to his family. That's not ignoring what happened. Okay? It's called moving on, which if you're gonna be on a team like ours, that's exactly what you gotta do."

"Even after Afghanistan?" Amir asked, his busy eyebrows furrowing over his deep-set eyes.

"Yeah, especially after that. Listen, the fantasy is that we go rogue, we go out there, we grab the guy that did this, and we get our revenge. In reality, we follow orders. In reality, our job is always the next mission. We are not the investigators, Amir. We're the tip of the spear."

"You know, where I come from, throwing horseshoes was called corn hole." I said to McGuire, who was retrieving the horseshoes from the pallet.

He looked at me suspiciously. "Bullshit."

"I'm not shitting you. It's practically the same." I argued.

"Who would even all it that? Bullshit, you made it up." McGuire turned to Flag, one horseshoe in each hand. "Colonel, can you please settle this argument? Is there or is there not a game called corn hole?"

I laughed as Flag merely raised one eyebrow nonchalantly.

"Are you sure we're the tip of the spear?" Amir said, skeptically.

Flag's phone rang loudly, and we all turned to look at it. We knew what it meant. We dropped everything and headed to the gator cages.

"Corn hole, come on." McGuire repeated as he followed the rest of us toward the barracks.

"What did the new guy want?" I asked Flag lowly, folding my arms.

Flag sighed. "Same as the rest of us. Justice." He punched in the answer key on the laptop, and stood over the table as Blackburn's face appeared. "Lieutenant General Blackburn."

"Flag, gear up. We need your team in Ukraine." Blackburn said.

We crowded around the screen, and saw a photo of an auburn-haired woman.

"Cassie Conner, CIA officer out of Ukraine, sent an SOS twelve minutes ago. Now she's operating out of a warehouse in Sverdlovsk, its deep in disputed territory. Whole place is crawling with Pro-Russian rebels."

"A direct attack on a CIA officer? That's a major violation of the unwritten rules of espionage." Amir interrupted.

McGuire crossed his arms. "We'll make sure to send them to bed with no dinner."

"Is this mission official or unofficial?" Mike Dalton asked, another one of the new Alpha Team rainbows (new recruit).

"Officially unofficial." Flag replied. "We hop on a One-thirty across the Black Sea; we helo to the target. ETA a hundred ten mikes, so let's get after it."

UKRAINE

"Ms. Conner, we're friendlies. Okay? I'm just gonna ask you a few questions. Is it all right if my medic examines you while I do?" Flag asked the woman, sitting on the floor, leaning against a desk as she cowered away.

Dead bodies were littered on the floor around her, which made me surprised she was alive.

"Yeah." She nodded. Her long, stringy red hair clung to the sweat on her freckled face as her eyes panned our faces.

I put my pack down beside her, and inspected the gunshot wound to her side. Her white shirt was soaked but she had already bandaged it. "She knows what she's doing. Patched herself up pretty good."

"All right. What is the name of your neighbour's dog?" Flag asked, scribbling in a notebook.

"Lola."

"What street was your high school on?"

"West Oak." She looked up at Flag, relief on her face. "My turn-ons are long walks on the beach. My turn-offs are people who kill my friends."

I looked at the women slowly, raising one eyebrow in surprise. Was she serious?

"Oh, you too?" Flag laughed.

"Okay, pulse is strong." I informed the Colonel. "One through-and-through in the side. Missed her vitals. Lucky girl." I began to write her stats on a strip of white Velcro., dismissing my earlier thought.

"I'd say it was more than luck. Girl's got skills." Dalton replied, taking photos of the soldiers she had shot down.

"Let's get this on you. All right, she's good to go." I wrapped the Velcro around her wrist.

Flag grabbed Cassie's arm and pulled her off the floor "Mortem One, we're coming out. We have one PAX for immediate dust-off (Personnel for emergency evacuation)."

"I got it, I got it." Cassie snatched her arm from Flag, and she stared down at the bodies of her two co-workers as they lay on the floor in a pool of blood.

Cassie was in shock as her eyes focused on her dead colleagues. His skin was pasty pale. She obviously lost a tremendous amount of blood. It was amazing that she was still alive, given the level of devastation in the room.

Desks had been moved ajar of the rows they would have sat in, and papers were scattered to the floor with the chaos. Some entire folders were coated in blood. To someone who hadn't been exposed to a firefight, I'd say she was going into shock as her eyes widened.

"All right, hey, Ms. Conner? You did good, all right? Now let's get you out of here. Come on." I put my hand on her shoulder and guided her out the door.

Dalton began grabbing folders on the desk, stacking them in his arm. "Proceeding with our visual sweep. Cleansing safe house."

"Ellis, does it look like anything was taken to you?" Blackburn's voice resounded in my ear. I readjusted the earpiece.

"Impossible to say, but the high value stuff, laptops, lock cabinets, those all seem to be there." Ellis replied.

Blackburn paused. "You hit an unsanctioned CIA station, you kill or incapacitate everyone, but you don't take the treasure? Why?"

Ellis hummed. "Maybe she scared them off."

"Bringing Conner out." Flag said.

I helped Cassie into the chopper, and stood back several yards, taking cover behind a brick building.

"We're in Conner's bird. We're sending it now."

The chopper took off, heading away from the city.

"All right, Mortem One is outbound." Flag said. "Let's finish sterilizing the station so we can get the Hell out of here." He trudged back toward the building, and I stayed by the Landing Zone, keeping the area secure.

"All classified info in flames." Dalton replied over the comm.

There was the distant sound of bullets rattling off in the chopper's direction.

Amir looked at me as I tried to see what was under attack, but I could only see about fifteen yards down in either direction, and all I saw was buildings.

It would most likely crash-land right there on the road. Either way, the men on the ground would get to Cassie before we do.

There was indistinct radio panic. "Colonel, Mortem One is down! I repeat, Mortem One is down! Looks like it landed half a click to your South-Southeast."

Blackburn overlapped Nicole's. "Alpha One, get me a visual on that crash."

"Yeah, we got eyes on. Sounded like a 50 cal brought them down." Flag replied, marching back toward me.

"This is insane." Amir said to himself, taking position behind me. "First they hit a station, now they take out one of our birds? Even unmarked, that's practically an act of war."

"What the hell's going on here?" Craig shouted.

"The Russians are doing whatever they can to get their hands on Cassie Conner, that's what the hell is going on. The question is why?" I replied, gripping the metal of my rifle.

"All right Mortem 2, stay away from that LZ, and out of range of those 50 cals." Flag instructed the second chopper that was meant to extract us.

"Copy, Mortem Actual. Mortem 2 is out." The pilot responded.

Flag lead us back into the building. "Okay, everybody change out, stash gear. We're gonna head to the crash site on foot."

The guys prepared with a heady mix of hope and dread. They ran through last-minute mental checklists, saying prayers, triple-checking weapons, rehearsing their precise tactical choreography, performing little rituals... whatever it was that prepared them for battle. They all knew this mission might get hairy.

I kept watch on the door as they guys took off their armoured vests, and put on civilian clothes. They began to switch weapons, checking them for fresh mags.

I took off my vest and shoved on a jacket, taking only my handgun. Then I followed them outside.

It wasn't long before we arrived at the wreckage, still burning. Locals were crowing around, trying to get a good look at the pilots who were slumped over themselves.

Around the wreckage they found pools and trails of blood, torn bits of clothing, and many spent bullet shells, but no weapons and no sign of Cassie Conner. Taylor and Dalton searched the huts around the crash site, demanding information about the downed American through a translator, but no one offered any.

Flag and Amir began speaking Russian, yelling at the men who were slowly backing away from the chopper.

I stared at the wreck, as the Seals began to surround it.

It looked eerily similar to the Chinook-1 in Midway City.

The rotors had pounded themselves off on the asphalt, and the cabin was unnaturally tilted to one side. The tail was missing completely.

I felt green.

Panic overwhelmed me, closed my throat.

"Chapman?" Hayes yelled, turning back and pacing toward me.

I couldn't answer, I just stared at him in horror.

The fear was squeezing my chest, making it hard to breathe.

He deliberated for a short second, and he began talking so fast that I couldn't understand the words. It was over in half a minute. He started pulling me toward the chopper.

"Come back to me, Trig." he whispered when he felt my resistance. "You're okay."

I let him drag me along then, too panicked to think clearly.

Flag met my frightened eyes with a smug grin, which suddenly turned to confusion. "Jaz!"

"I-I think she's having an attack!" Hayes yelled, right beside my ear. "Trig! Talk to me!" He shook me as his face moved directly in front of me, blocking my view of Flag running toward me.

"N-no," I stammered finally, coming out of my stupor. "I-I'm fine."

Hayes frowned. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," I shrugged his arm off. "Yeah, I just drifted off." My head was spinning. I was too lightheaded to control my wildly random thoughts. I frowned at him.

Hayes watched me carefully. "There's no time to consider you sitting out." It was easy to read in his face how difficult the words were for him.

I took a deep breath and tried to make my tone more reasonable. "I'm sorry, I'm okay now, I promise. We can't afford to lose focus." I was sorry. I hated to make him do this. Not enough that I could fake a smile and tell him to go on ahead without me. Definitely not that much.

Two voices struggled inside me. One that wanted to be good and brave, and one that told the good one to keep her mouth shut.

Flag eyed me with a look that was much more speculative than it was resigned. His lips were set in dissatisfaction. It looked like he'd made his decision. I wondered what it was. "You alright?" He almost shouted at me.

I nodded. "Hayes is making a big deal out of nothing."
"Any issues, you tell me, yeah?" His eyes quickly flicked to Hayes. "Watch her." He walked back toward the chopper, leaving me to face Hayes alone.

Danny glared at me.

"I'm sorry," I apologized again.
"Do you think this will make it more dangerous for you?" Hayes asked gruffly.

I snorted. "You worry too much, Danny Boy. You're going to go prematurely gray." I jumped inside the wreck with a new found energy. I lowered myself into a crouch beside one of the pilots and reached down his face with the fingers of my free hand. Warm breath stirred around my fingertips. I felt blindly towards the neck of the co-pilot for a pulse and found it, weak but stable.

"So we got two pilots still in their seats; we got negative contact, repeat negative contact, on Officer Conner." Flag reported back to Tac from outside. He was still watching me closely.

"Pilot's condition is grave. Co-pilot's not much better. We've got to get them out of here, or they're going to die." My heart was still racing, but slowing. "And we're next, if we don't get off the ground right now."

"Okay, do that, get them out of here. Taylor, green light. Rig this thing."

Taylor was already crawling around on the roof, and something slammed onto the metal, making me jump. "On it."

"Blackburn, we got two pilots in need of immediate EVAC. Request Mortem 2 gets these guys out of here, and then my team and I will go after Conner." Flag said into his comms.

"Stand by, Alpha One."

I looked at Flag over my shoulder, who scanned the perimeter.

"Right now we have two choices, we either send in a full-blown QRF (Quick Reaction Force), which immediately escalates this into a major international incident or, we trust that Tac can find Conner quietly. Knowing how good Conner is at handling herself lets me know which the right option is." Flag said.

"Cassie is a rare breed." I said.

"Yeah, she's kinda tough." He mumbled, turning to watch me set up drips to each of the pilots.

The other chopper soon arrived, and we loaded the unconscious pilots on-board. It flew away, and I held my breath that one didn't get shot down, too.

Thibault's heavy hand came down on my shoulder as Flag watched from the other side of the wreckage.

"Mortem 2 is airborne with both injured pilots. They're clear out of the city. Out of danger." Flag said into the comms.

"Copy, Alpha One." Ellis replied. "Proceed as planned."

"Copy that." He turned to the rest of us, waiting on our next order. "Conner's lost enough today. Let's make sure she doesn't lose her life."

As we walked away from the wreckage, Taylor held up his remote detonator. I always enjoyed this part, but my recent panic attack, I decided it was best not to. Flag strode up beside me, and gave me a reassuring smile.

I nodded slightly and looked ahead, trying to keep any emotion off my face. It used to work, and no one would have ever guess something was wrong… but everything had changed since then.

The chopper detonated with an ear-popping explosion, and big chunks of it flew off in the explosion.

"I can't see faces, but it's definitely two rebels." Amir said through the comm.

"Yeah, well, that's okay, judging by the mood, seems like Conner is still in the wind." Flag looked as an engine revved across the street from us. "How many trucks is that?"

I strolled casually beside him, hands in my pockets. "We're up to six now."

"There's at least 30 rebels after her, maybe even 40." Dalton replied through my earpiece. "Against us five, we're gonna need a break."

"Maybe not." I replied. "Before I put Conner on that bird, I attached a medical RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) bracelet to her wrist. If we can get within 500 yards, Amir should be able to track it."

"That's great, but first we have to get within five hundred yards of her and she could be anywhere." Flag said.

We stopped walking and looked around at any suspicious behaviour from the locals, going about their daily business.

Flag looked at a bald man in the door of a store, who gazed back. His face was unfriendly as he turned to go back inside. "All right, everybody, stand by. I'm going shopping." He went inside the store after the man, and I waited outside, scouting the streets casually.

The man inside spoke something in Russian.

"I think you know I'm looking for my friend." Flag replied, his voice muffled through the walls. "I also think you know these Russians. They're no friend of yours." Then he said something in Russian.

The man spoke more Russian in reply, and added, "Are you bad for business?"

Flag paused, then said something back in Russian again.

Their voices got lower, and I couldn't hear what they were saying, no doubt in Russian anyway.

He finally came back out of the store. "Shop owner says she fled West." He put his arm around my shoulder as we continued walking. "She had five minutes on the rebels, so we start a grid search, see if we can't catch that RFID signal."

Amir appeared around the corner, and followed us.

"Colonel, that makes ten trucks." Ellis said. "With the sun going down, Alpha team will have to get off the street. Zbarov will make you easily."

"There's no way the Russians would make a direct move against us," I replied.

"I think Zbarov's been let off the leash, which means there's no telling what he might do." Ellis said.

She must have forgotten to turn off the comm, because I heard another voice on the end of the line.

"Eric, a word?"

"Neil, we have known each other way too long for you to pull this intra-service crap. If you want to put my team in danger, I deserve a heads up."

"His name is General Anatoli Grayevich, head of the GRU, one of Vladimir Putin's inner circle. He's also our asset, been so for 15 years. The single most important mole in the history of espionage. For years, Grayevitch's handler was Brett Matthews, Moscow Station. Brett died two years ago, heart attack, natural, but by then we'd already groomed his replacement."

"Cassie Conner." Blackburn replied.

Flag's mouth fell open, a stark contrast to the loop he was obviously kept out of.

"Zbarov's been hunting this mole for years. I don't know how he found out that Conner was running him, but if he gets his hands on her, Grayevitch will be dead. As for your heads up, I didn't give you one because I didn't know she was in play. Conner's assignment is so top secret that no one at Langley Ops knows. They called you in thinking this was just a simple extraction. It is, in fact, the most important intelligence exfiltration in decades. Your team must succeed at any cost." There was a long moment of silence. "Well, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go brief the Joint Chiefs. Preparing for the worst."

I shook my head in disgust.

"Boss, I got a fix on Cassie's RFID medical bracelet." Amir said behind us. "It's pinging to an abandoned warehouse." He paused. "Cassie knows the city like the back of her hand, yet according to this, she's decided to take cover in the middle of nowhere. Doesn't feel right."

"We think it's a trap." Ellis replied.

"Understood." Flag said.

"Alpha One, go to a private line."

"Okay," Flag agreed, and twisted a switch on his comm. "Go for Flag." He listened. "Okay… copy that. Switching." He turned the switch back.

I looked at him with one eyebrow arched.

He shook his head with a serious expression. He looked over his shoulder, and Amir had already crossed the street following from the other side.

"They believe every minute we are here, the enemy we are up against will grow in size and sophistication. They also believe the forces that are looking for Cassie Conner will not hesitate to kill us and our team no matter what the political cost. Last but not least, if Cassie Conner falls into the wrong hands, the consequences will be global."

We met the others back at the office building where we had stashed out gear.

"From here on out, it's Moscow Rules. Safeties off, fingers on the trigger. We're gonna make a play for the target indicated by the RFID." Flag ordered.

"Boss, it's obviously a trap." Amir said loudly.

"No one asked for your opinion." I snapped at him.

"Well, maybe you should." He retorted.

Flag put up his hand to stop the argument. "You're probably right. Odds are, it is a trap. See, the thing about traps is the people who set them tend to get tunnel vision. They fixate on their prey. They imagine everything turning out exactly how they orchestrated. And they don't stop to think for one second maybe they're the prey themselves."

We strapped on our gear and snatched up our weapons, ready to raid the warehouse.

Flag and I got there, it appeared to be empty.

Connie's RFID bracelet was on a chair on the second floor landing.

Flag began to climb the steel beams, and I followed suit on the other side of the room. "Alpha Team, come in? We are in position, stand by."

I crouched on a beam overlooking the chair, and waited.

"Copy, Alpha One," Taylor replied. "Standing by."

Now we waited for the Russians.

Amir hashed in. "I have eyes on," he said. "Five tangos coming to you,"

I braced, and stared down my scope at the top of the stairs, waiting for movement.

From the corner of my eye, Flag held up a clenched fist. "Hold," he mumbled through the ear piece.

Five Russian soldiers climbed the stairs, talking to each other lowly. I was hoping Flag's Russian was fluent enough to hear what they were saying.

"Alpha Three, its go time." Flag whispered.

"Copy that, moving in." Taylor replied.

The one with a black beret grabbed the bracelet and frowned. The four other men took guard around the landing, anticipating our decoy.

I aimed at the one with a clear shooting position as the team as they came up the stairs.

He raised his gun in their direction hearing their footsteps.

I pulled the trigger before I could see Taylor leading the others up, and his blood splattered over the wall as his body crumpled.

The other soldiers looked at him, unmoving.

One said something.

Another shouted back at him.

I shot the Bald headed one next, and the others, leaving the one closest to Flag alone.

I winked at Flag, who grinned at me. He knew I was saving the last one for him. i figured that was about as close to action as I was going to get... and compared to manning the coffeemaker in the training room back at DC, it wasn't bad.

The leader stared at his dead colleagues, panicked. His rifle changed directions frantically, looking for the enemy.

Flag carefully swung down off his beam, and gripped the vertical pole behind the leader. He aimed his rifle at the back of the man's head, and waited as the man backed up towards him.

He whistled a yoo-hoo, and the man spun around to look behind him, but Flag was above. "Oye," Flag said.

The man dropped his rifle in fear and raised his hands in surrender.

Flag's nozzle was no more than one foot away from the insurgent's face. He sneered something in Russian.

The man replied, begging.

Flag shouted at him.

"We don't know. We don't know," He replied, desperation in his voice.

Flag pulled the trigger, and the man was hurled to the floor. He jumped down to the landing and stood over the man's bloody carcass. "Clear."

I climbed down, and began searching the bodies.

Taylor, Hayes, Dalton, Amir and Thibault reached the top of the stairs, and helped me look for anything useful on the soldier's bodies.

I found one man's phone, and threw it to Amir.

Flag grabbed the bracelet from the chair. "Well, good news is all they had was Conner's bracelet, so I don't think they have her."

"Better news is we got their phones." I replied.

Amir beeped on each phone. "Download metadata on each phone, then run mystic on every single number. Filter out anything beyond a ten mile radius."

"Smart." I said.

"Tac are gonna track all the rebels using their phones. At least now we can see the whole board." Amir grinned at me.

Ellis hashed in. "Alpha One, we're up to twelve trucks now. Make that fourteen. Colonel, you need to get to ground fast. You have multiple inbound targets, and are about to be totally surrounded."

Flag nodded, "Alpha Team on me. We're moving back to a secure location."

Back at our make-shift safe house, I watched out the window at the bustling street below.

Russian trucks passed, soldiers patrolled the ground, despite the sinking sun. Their radios were chatting as they searched buildings below.

"This is crap." Amir muttered. "We should be out there looking for her. And instead we're doing what exactly? "

"Being smart." I replied, folding my arms and leaning against the wall, not taking my eyes off the men below.

"We're doing nothing."

"Yeah, sometimes doing nothing is doing something." I replied calmly, knowing Amir was getting frustrated.

"Really, Chapman?" McGuire asked.

"Yeah, really, McG." I turned to look at him. Flag was watching from the other side of the room, cleaning his carbine. "Like when you're waiting, you're trusting that more will be revealed."

"By who? God? There's a woman out there fighting and dying." Amir argued.

"And us getting killed won't help her." I snapped.

"Wow. "You're such a team player."

"Hey." Flag interrupted. "That's enough." He growled, carefully placing his rifle on the table and standing up. "All right, you guys want to vent? That's one thing, but going at each other, especially while we're in the field, that's a non-starter. Now, if you would let Jaz finish her sentence, you would've heard her say we're waiting for our team back in DC. Unless of course you guys think you're so high-speed you can just do everything on your own. Right now, any move we make could put us further from Conner. Any move could get us captured, worse. Now, you heard Ellis. DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) says she's gonna reach out; it's our job to be ready when she does. Until that point, we will wait."

I straightened and gave Amir a stern look. "That is being a team player." I turned back to the window and my eyes scanned the manned trucks with their .50 cal machine guns mounted on the back. "You cannot ask Flag to find a needle in the haystack. Intel is Tac's job. At least we know Zbarov still hasn't got her."

"That is no comfort." McGuire said under his breath.

"Zbarov outnumbers us 20 to 1. He wins the war of attrition. Ellis has got to find out where Cassie is hiding." Flag added.

"Alpha One, this is Tac," Ellis said suddenly, making Amir and McGuire straighten with hope. "We found her."