I never have been too thrilled with that first chapter so I'm continuing with this one much quicker than I usually post. As usual, thanks to all my reviwers, you rock my world!

Booth yawned again and tightened his grip on the steering wheel as navigated the deserted DC streets.

He hadn't gotten almost any sleep last night.

First thinking about the summons kept him up until midnight. Then Parker had a nightmare and was up for an hour as he tried to rock him back to sleep. After that he'd spent hours tossing and turning in his bed as images of Bones that he should not be thinking kept playing in his mind. Finally he'd drifted off to sleep around three thirty, only to wake up an hour later so he could drop Parker off at one of his neighbor's homes and head out the door to find out what the call had been about last night.

He pulled up in front of the address and tried to steady his heart rate, he hated the fact that he was this nervous. Why was he acting like everything was about to change? Nothing had even happened yet.

Booth got out of his SUV and unconsciously felt for his piece there on his hip. Having it sort of brought comfort to him. He was in one of the worst corners of DC and the address just happened to belong to an abandoned looking warehouse that was surrounded by a high barbed wire fence.

Cautiously moving through the open gate, Booth allowed his sniper trained eyes to take in every movement within a three-block radius while moving swiftly through the yard to the warehouse. He finally found an opening and was barely able to squeeze his broad chest and shoulders through a crack in the doors. Inside the warehouse it was pitch black dark, the sun that had barely begun to peek over the horizon gave him no help in the light department.

Booth walked in a few feet and then stood still as his eyes to adjusted to the darkness. His ears tuned in to everything around him, he would have been able to hear a whisper in Times Square at that moment, but there was nothing for him to hear.

Then the space was suddenly lit with large overhead lamps and Booth squinted and his pupils dilated.

That was when he realized he wasn't alone. Two men stood twenty paces in front of him in full military uniform. He recognized the rank insignia and automatically saluted a General and a Colonel, both sporting the old fashioned black berets.

"Major Booth, you're on time. That's good." The General spoke first.

"Well you're message sounded official enough that I decided not to take any chances." He waited for a reaction.

"You will address me as 'Sir', Major Booth." There it was.

"All due respect General, it's the crack of dawn, I don't know what I am doing here and I am not in the Army anymore."

The General tilted his head to the side slightly, surprised by Booth's candor. "Fair enough."

He clasped his hands behind his back and began to walk in a slow circle around Booth, who remained standing looking straight ahead at the other man, a Colonel.

"You were a Sharpshooter in the Army, were you not?"

"Yessir." Booth decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and added the 'sir' for his benefit. "One of three in our infantry."

"Any good?"

"The best, sir."

The man stopped moving and looked Booth from head to toe. Sizing him up. He was still in shape, relatively young, and seemed to have moved passed the horrors of war so many soldiers were haunted by. He could be the one.

"Do you still have it?"

This time Booth looked the General in the eye, debating on how to answer. Did he lie, say he wasn't as good a shot as he had been and most likely get out of whatever was about to go down? Or did he tell the truth and admit he could put a bullet between a man's eyes from 70yds away only using his FBI standard-issue 38 Special.

"Yessir I do."

The General searched his eyes for a moment, gave a quick nod and returned to his spot beside the Colonel.

"Major Booth, we have an assignment for you. We need a good sniper with enough years as a civilian that he will not easily fall under suspicion. You seem to be the man for the job." The General noticed with pleasure that Booth did not seem intimidated, only cautious and confident. That was good.

Booth stared at the men, he hoped they planned to tell him more than that before he got knee deep involved in this. Whatever 'this' might be.

"It wouldn't be permanent, but I can't tell you how long it would last. This is concerning highly delicate information that I cannot brief you on until you agree to help. It's a matter of national security."

Booth took a deep breath and looked at both men. Their faces stoic and unreadable. This had to be official, top secret yes, but official.

The General was the first indicator. The way the man had looked Booth up and down made him feel like a Maggot on his first day of Basic Training. When the General nodded in approval, it had made him want to puff up with pride.

"Matter of national security?" Booth queried, still weighing his options.

"Yes."

"And no one else can do it?"

"Not as good as you can Major."

Booth contemplated the cement floor.

"We need an answer now Major Booth."

Booth looked up.

"I'll do it."

He hoped he wouldn't live to regret those words.

---------------------------------------------------

Temperance Brennan sat at her desk staring at her computer screen. The reason she'd come back to her office had completely slipped her mind. That annoyed her to no end.

Angela's high pitched "flirty" voice sounded out in the lab and she looked out to see she and Booth talking near the platform stairs.

She noticed that Booth's posture was more slumped than usual, and his eyes kept drifting toward her door.

Finally his conversation with Angela ended and Booth continued on his way to Brennan's office.

"Hey Bones." Booth didn't bother knocking since he knew she'd already seen him and simply made his way to her couch.

"Hi Booth." She looked back at her screen and racked her brain. It was something important…

Brennan didn't notice that the Agent had found the first sense of relaxation he'd felt in almost twenty-four hours and was starting to doze on her couch.

"Aha!" She shouted, and began typing furiously to find the article she'd promised Zack and was startled when the equally startled Booth suddenly lept to his feet and was reaching for his weapon.

"Booth?" She questioned, wondering why he seemed so on edge.

Booth quickly realized his mistake and tried to make himself relax, at least visibly.

"Um…sorry." He looked away and sat back on the couch, first leaning on his knees and then putting his face in his hands.

His mind began going over, for the forty-third time in the last hour, what had happened at the warehouse.

After agreeing to help, the Colonel spoke up for the first time and handed him a folder with a picture, a plane ticket and a business card in it. On the business card was a phone number and the words 'Bogie' and 'Darby'.

"That is a picture of you're first target. That is a plane ticket to where you will find him." The Colonel had a much stricter military air about him, no use for pleasantries obviously. "You will go. You will wait. You will not return until the job is done. No one will know where you are. You're superior at the FBI will be informed that you are working leads on another case and are unable to give him updates personally because of situations beyond you're control."

"I have cases I'm working on."

"And you will continue to work them. In person when you are here, and it will be taken care of when you are not. You're first priority, Major Booth, is to get the job done. Quickly and quietly."

Booth nodded stiffly. He didn't like the idea of dropping everything to go kill someone, but he knew somewhere deep inside that he would. He had to.

"And the business card?"

"That is for you Major Booth." The General spoke up again. "You call that number and use the first word when the target has been taken out. You use the other when something has gone wrong."

Booth nodded.

"Major Booth..."

Booth looked up from the folder and ignoring the eminent headache already twinging in the back of his mind.

"I mean very very wrong."

"I understand Sir."

"Booth? Boooooth?"

He snapped out of his thoughts and looked up to find Brennan standing in front of him.

"So do we have a case or are you just here to sleep on my couch?" She had her hands on her hips staring down at him with annoyance and a twinge of worry.

Booth stood quickly, pushing the face in the picture out of his mind.

The face of the man he was going to be hunting in a few hours.

Immidiatly Booth changed the word. No. Not a man. He couldn't think about him that way. That face couldn't belong to a man, Booth needed to make him into nothing if he was going to do this. That face needed to be just that. A face. A paper target. Anything else and he knew he wouldn't be able to go through with it.

"Are you okay?" Brennen reached out to touch his arm and Booth jumped, he'd forgotten she was standing there.

"Yea, Bones, I'm alright." He nodded and then remembered why he'd come. "Listen I've got a problem."

Brennen folded her arms and waited, allowing him to continue uninterrupted. He loved that about her.

"Something came up and I, uh, have to go out of town for a while. A few days. I have Parker this weekend. I'd take him home but Rebecca and Drew left for the weekend and I need to get him somewhere to stay."

Brennen's eyes widened. "Booth I can't…"

"Yes you can Bones, he loves you." She looked at him with a pained expression. "Please Temperance. I really need you're help."

She sighed, looking at him hard. She noticed he didn't use his charm smile to get her to say 'yes', so he was obviously taking this very seriously. He really had no where else to turn.

"Okay." She nodded and he smiled for the first time.

"Thank you Bones." He turned to leave when Brennen called after him.

"Where do you have to go?"

He stopped, unsure of what to say. "I…have a case. Undercover work involved, I'll probably be gone all weekend, maybe longer. I can tell Rebecca to pick him up at you're place Sunday night."

She gave him a tight lipt smile and watched him hurry out. There was something up with him, she hoped he would tell her what it was eventually.

Okay...this one is a little better, getting into the suspense at least. What will Parker and Bones do? How will Booth react to his new assignment? If Booth tells Brennan whats gong on...when will he do it? Wanna know? Spank that button! lol.