"What?"

I sat up, staring at Rebecca, not believing what she'd just suggested. "You can't be serious."

Rebecca never skipped a beat, "I'm entirely serious."

My kneejerk reaction was purely emotional. "You have two children, and you're all they have left. If you die, they have nothing, no one."

"Then I'd better put on a good show." Before I could answer again, she rested her hand on my thigh. "Listen Madison, I know it sounds a little bit out of left field, but I can do this."

I shifted my mind back to the position of an operative, brushed her hand off of my thigh, and looked at her with the eyes of someone who hadn't just had great sex for the past couple of hours. "Tell me why you're the best person for infiltration."

As I shed my skin, she shed hers for the veneer of consummate professionalism. Her shoulders shifted back, her spine straightened, and her gaze levelled. She looked confident, competent, and intelligent, not an easy look to pull off in this sense while naked. "I've been putting up fronts my entire life. Any girl can spread her legs, so can any guy for that matter. And plenty of both are willing for twenty caps or less, if you want to pull 200 an hour, you have to be more than nice tits and a firm ass, though I'm more than gifted enough in both regards."

She ran her hands over her, admittedly, generous bust. Personally, DD cups aren't my preference, marshmallow hell is fun, but I prefer something more manageable. Even as we were discussing this, my jaw still hurt. Ming had been a 34C. "You have to be able to give these people more than what they want, you have to be able to see what they want even if they don't know they want it. You have to make them forget they're paying you, make them believe the fantasy. That's all I have to do with these raiders, just make them believe the fantasy."

She levelled me with a hard copper stare, "I can do this Madison, trust me."

I met her gaze with an equal intensity.

For the play I wanted to make, it was important that none of the raiders see my face or hear my voice. Mikhail was too distinctive, Asher was too familiar, Ben was a ghoul, Preston was too… Preston, Marcy, Jun, Sturges, Murphy, none of them even came close to being capable of this sort of operation.

In the end, Rebecca really was the only choice.

"Alright, be ready tomorrow morning, we'll meet with Asher and go over everything you'll need to know. We're prepping you for two days minimum on this, we've got to get you briefed, establish a signaling plan, an emergency assault plan, a great many plans."

The grin was back, "Perfect." She got off the bed and began pulling on her clothes, "I have to go make sure that Marina got James to bed okay. We'll talk in the morning."

And then she was out the door.

And then I was alone.

Again.

…

"Can I make it clear how much I don't like this plan?"

"For once we're in agreement Preston, but this is the only real option that we have." I looked up from the hologram on the table, it was more detailed now that we had full access to the network, with only a four minute signal delay. The sat phones were up and they, thankfully, had no delay.

"What exactly is the plan again? We're better armed now, we can outfit two men with full suits of power armor and miniguns, back them up with Goris, and provide four people with normal weapons to back them up. They can't wall themselves in, we can get in through the sewer tunnel before they can blow it, if they can blow it." Preston folded his arms, glaring from his position in the corner. "Tell me how that's not better than sending literally the only person here with kids depending on them in alone."

He did actually have a point, but there was one problem he wasn't taking into account. A point Mikhail was happy to make as he strolled through the door. "She's not worried about them holing up, she's worried about them spreading out, Lexington's too big for us to do a full sweep, if we hit them in force, after the first dozen, the rest of the trusy will scatter. If they maintain discipline," that got a snort of derision from most of the room, "They could fall back to the city and launch fading attacks, then all they have to do is make a nuisance of themselves until, they get lucky, our fusion cores run out or we leave. Then they just move back in. Even if we were to hold position there, they could make large scale salvage next to impossible." He threw me a meaningful look, "Saigon all over again."

Preston was unmoved, "Yeah, but we both know they're not gonna do that. If they run, they'll just run."

Once again Preston was right, "But that's the problem, what's the point in just driving them out?"

And Preston gave me the, now familiar, look like I'd just asked the stupidest possible question possible. "They're driven out, they don't have walls to hide behind, they don't have a good position to base themselves out of. They're dealt with."

"You're right, they are, but tell me Preston, you've been knee deep in this sort of shit since you were a kid. What happens after you drive them out? After they run, after you've cleared the area and left?" I already knew the answer, but as I'd learned, engaging with Preston was an exercise in rhetoric.

He knew the answer I was looking for, he also knew that it was the only answer that he could give. "Eventually another bunch would move in, and eventually we'd have to come back and do it again."

"And even disregarding that, even if they don't come back, they will splinter into smaller groups, and some of those groups will be reabsorbed into larger groups in other fortified locations, and those that don't will still menace caravans and isolated travelers. Until we have the resources to hold locations like the Corvega factory and Lexington, and to sweep up the splinter groups, then we have to wage a war of annihilation, no survivors." It was a hard truth, and it was in direct conflict with a directive I wanted in place before I left, but for the moment it was important. I was expecting resistance from Preston.

And surprisingly, I found none. "Alright, I agree with you, letting them go would only leave them to kill innocents." I won't lie, that actually knocked me off balance for a half second. Before I could respond though, he continued, "But that's not all this is about, you're never that simple, what's the game?"

That actually got a smirk out of Mikhail, "He is learning."

I hit him with a quick glare at the betrayal, but moved on quickly. "Asher tells me that Jared is one of the major players among the raiders, his group is indisputably the largest concentrated group, and at the point of Asher's defection had steady recruiting numbers. If he actually had some leadership skills, he could turn his group into a force to be reckoned with." I waved a hand dismissively, "but that's beside the point, basically, we need an example, and he's perfect for it. If we want people to believe that the Minutemen are back and we're for real, we need something that we can point to and say, look at what we can do, look at what we bring to the table."

Surprisingly, Preston was nodding along with me. "Good, you're right, we need to let the people know that we can keep them safe." He paused, "But I still don't like the fact that we're putting a mother at risk."

This was actually weird for me. Maybe my arguments were actually getting through to him. I was about to remind him that there would be other mothers and fathers under his command in the future, but I thought better of it.

Mikhail broke in before an uncomfortable silence could fall. "Where is your malen'kiy volk anyway Madison?"

Little wolf, well, it was better than little defector at least. "He's with Rebecca, filling her in on every possible detail that she might need to know. This meeting is strictly to run through the military portions of the operation. We'll fill Rebecca in on all of the details after we have worked everything out, she needs to focus on preparing her cover." I gestured to the table, "Mikhail, I brought this to you last night, what have you got?"

Mikhail was spetznaz, he was more adept in handling the armed support aspects of this sort of operation, thus I put him in charge of handling this portion of the planning. "Da, I spent the night working up an operational plan."

He gestured to the hologram on the table, currently showing the layout of Lexington, with red dots marking moving figures. "Goris will move in from the northwest, drawing in as many raiders as possible, in the confusion, our operative will join the fight, and at a signal from you Madison, he will break off contact. Then he will retreat and evade the enemy until he is certain that they have given up pursuit, then he will rendezvous with the rest of us here."

At his cue, I moved the hologram out, bringing the focus over a larger area. He pointed to the dump above Lexington, "The assault group will be positioned to the northeast, using this landfill for concealment." He gave us both a meaningful look, "If things go wrong, it is highly unlikely that we will be able to carry out a rescue."

It was true, this was the reason I didn't want Rebecca here for this. She didn't already knew this was going to be dangerous, she knew what could happen, she didn't need to be psyched out by odds.

Mikhail continued, pointing to the skyway, "Madison, you'll act as forward observer, I've looked at all the angles, unless you have any ideas, we're just going to have to work on a deadline system."

I moved across the table from him, tradecraft was my expertise even more than his. "I agree, we'll play this like Hollow Temple in Vilnius, at eight hours we go on alert, at twelve, we assume the worst and go in hot for recovery."

Preston looked at us both in confusion, "I thought you said rescue was unlikely?"

Mikhail turned to him with solemn eyes, "It is, we're talking about recovery."

The minuteman shrugged, "What's the difference?"

"You rescue a person, you recover a corpse."

"Oh," The minuteman retreated, fairly subdued.

I ignored Preston and focused on the operation, "I'll keep in contact with you over the comms, if things seem to be going insane before the deadline, I'll put the assault into motion early."

Mikhail nodded, "Agreed, if that's all, I'll set to preparing the assault force and talk to Goris about the infiltration coverage."

"Good, while you're doing that, I'll brief Rebecca on exactly what her role in this operation is going to be."

Can I say again how much I don't like this plan?

…

If there is one part of espionage that I absolutely cannot stand, it is the waiting.

The majority of covert action is very similar to the majority of military action, hurry up and wait. Just as a soldier in the military learns this, I have learned it.

That does not mean that I like it.

"Avenger to Whisper, Aphrodite is in the sea. Typhon is returning to Etna."

Aphrodite was Rebecca, in the sea meant that she was in play. Typhon was Goris, returning to Etna meant that he had broken off engagement and was moving to the forward operations post at that landfill as soon as he was sure he had evaded any pursuers.

That had been roughly an hour ago, I had located her pretty quickly. To my pleasant surprise, it took me a few minutes to find her among the crowd of terrified raiders, if it was hard for me to pick her out, it would be even harder for the raiders. Then again, it's a lot more difficult to ID someone from a rooftop than it is when you're face to face.

Thankfully, she seemed to have integrated with the raiders pretty easily, or at least without incident. I lost site of her when they entered the factory.

So now all I could do was monitor the factory from my position on the skyway.

During these periods, operatives are trained to make the most of the time, go over your intel, remember your training, prepare your equipment, but all I could do was think of James and Marina losing their mother so soon after losing everything else. This never used to be a problem for me, but then again, I'd kept to a tight circle of comrades, most of us didn't have dependents, most of us were the closest thing to dependents for each other.

I went over the plan again and again, looking for ways I could have made it better, made it safer, made it where I didn't have to put Rebecca on the tightrope, but I'll be honest, I couldn't find any.

The plan was simple, at least relative to the kind of operation I was used to. Rebecca was made to look as similar as possible to the raiders in Lexington, not a difficult endeavor, we had plenty of bits of raider armor stripped off of corpses, dirty her up a bit, give her a pipe rifle, and she could fit the mold of a raider, albeit a very hot one, fairly easily. According to Asher, the size of the group and the steady stream of recruits made it impossible for everyone to know everyone. Once Goris did his thing and shredded a patrol or two, she just slipped in during the confusion. No problems there.

The part that worried me was what was going on inside. As far as undercover work went, her job was as low risk as it got. Still, when you're dealing with psychopaths, that's not saying much. She was to get inside, get a general idea of the overall psychological state, locate Lonnie, who Asher identified as best for my purposes, get a general idea of where she could usually be found, and get out. Secondary to that, I had provided her with one of the Robco master tapes, I'd noticed at least one turret they'd set up, if she could find the terminal controlling the turrets and insert the tape, once we moved to phase three, I would be able to take over the turrets myself, but that wasn't much of an issue.

She was armed with a pipe pistol and a med-x syringe with a fast acting sedative, if things went to plan, she wouldn't need either of them.

Still there were a million things that could go wrong and all it would take was one.

And if I was completely honest, there was nothing I could do to impact it. Nothing, but wait.

Another hour rolled by.

Then another two.

Then three.

It was just before the first deadline when I saw movement at the exfiltration point, the broken pipe that Asher had mentioned. I made my way down from my observation post, like I said, jet packs come in handy.

To my relief, I found Rebecca scrambling out of the pipe.

But she wasn't alone.

…..

Hey guys, This one was kind of rushed, I've been pushing like hell to get this done by my deadline. College is a hell of a time consumer.

It's not exactly what I was hoping for, but as is often the case, it's what I was able to come up with.

Tell me what you guys think, and if anyone of my readers is at University of Illinois Springfield, PM me and hit me up, I love in-person feedback. You can usually find me in the PAC or at my apartment in Bluebell.

Sidenote: any weirdos (not the cool kind), I feel comfortable presenting this info because, A:I'm a blackbelt just shy of my second degree, B: one of my roommates is a marine, the other just came out of a stint in the Republic of Korea Army. Try shit at your peril.

Either way, R&R people.