Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I'm borrowing her characters, dressing them up in MARPAT, and giving them some guns. BilliCullen and Scooterstale are making sure they're ready for inspection.

June 18
Tactical Command Center
30° 21' 1.5660"
34° 50' 48.7428"
Negev Desert, Israel

The room went absolutely silent, and every pair of eyes shot to the front. A long, tense second passed, during which not a soul moved or spoke or even breathed, where even the air seemed to have frozen. Another ticked by, and then another, and another, each one longer and tenser than the last, until a single, quiet command broke the stillness.

"Explain."

Clipped and low, the captain's voice held an undercurrent of something indefinable and dangerous that set Bella's teeth on edge, like a blade slowly raking across her skin, pressing down just shy of breaking through.

Forcing herself not to shiver, Bella dropped her hold on Edward's arm, vaguely noting that the sinewy muscle beneath his long sleeve tee gave an involuntary flex when her grip loosened. Eyes glued to the screens, she moved forward, haltingly, stopping less than a foot away.

"Jasper?" Bella asked as she lifted a hand to skim her fingertips over the half-hidden face framed by familiar fire-red curls.

"Yeah, Doc?"

She spared a quick glance over her shoulder to the corporal, who, like the rest of them, stared back at her with open speculation. "The coloration in these images… it's close, right?"

"Yeah, should be." Jasper frowned, tilting his head as his focus shifted from her to the pixels. He clicked one of the tabs at the top of the frame and brought up a new, smaller window in the upper left corner. In it was a complex yellow on black graph with an array of multivariate inputs. "Maybe just a little off." With another quick double-click, he dragged one of the lines on the graph, reshaping the upper curve. "There's a little bit of skewing in the gray balance, but not much. Her hair's about as red as it comes, if that's what you're asking."

Chewing her thumbnail, Bella nodded slowly before turning back.

"Doctor?" Edward stepped up beside their scientist, his gaze moving back and forth between her expression of wild confusion and the screen. Leaning in close, his arm brushed Bella's as he reached past her and tapped the space just over the woman's head. He said again, this time even softer but still with that hard, razor edge. "I need you explain just how you know this woman. Right now."

A deep crease appeared between Bella's brows, and her eyes, dark and alive, flew to the captain's. Shadows formed by the glow from the screens slid across his face and hollowed out his cheeks, making the sharp, masculine lines all the more severe.

"I don't know her," she answered after another long, uncomfortable second. "We weren't friends or colleagues, or anything like that." Bella's lips mashed together as she rolled her fist up in the fabric of the captain's jacket to keep from ripping off yet another nail. "But I've seen her before – a few times. And I talked to her once."

"Are you sure it's the same person?"

She nodded quickly this time, biting the inside of her cheek. "I'm sure. It's definitely her."

Instead of pushing, Edward took a step back to give her some space. As he leaned against the edge of the table behind them, he stole a quick, hard glance over to Rosalie and mouthed, "You getting all this?"

The gunny nodded once, a short, curt affirmative.

"Riley…" Bella fell back to copy Edward's position against the table, hugging her free arm tight across her middle. Her opposite fist wound tighter in the captain's fleece. "He was friends with her… but he wanted to be more than that."

Edward's bearing didn't change. Nor did the sharpness of his tone. "Were they close?"

Bella grimaced. "I'm… I don't know. I'm not sure how much of it was him hoping and how much was real, if that makes sense. He didn't date much. But he seemed to really like her, so I didn't want to jinx anything by overanalyzing or interfering." Her forehead crumpled on the last word and her eyes dropped, and then the rest came out so softly that Edward wasn't 100% sure he heard her right. "I should have. I should have given him the third degree like he would have given me."

Something tense and unnamable slowly uncoiled as Edward studied the woman beside him, watching the way she fidgeted inside of his oversized jacket. The damned thing swallowed her whole, making her seem smaller than she already was. That uncooperative strand of hair fell again, gently curling against her cheek in open temptation. Something hot panged inside his chest, so he shoved his hands into his pockets to keep from doing something stupid. "It's probably a good thing that you didn't," he finally told her, staring over her head and into the dark. "If you had gotten in their way, you would've made yourself a target."

Even in the dark, he could see the color leave her cheeks, and worse, the telltale shine of her eyelashes.

Eyes always moving, the captain's gaze slid over to the sand table and to the unforgiving terrain he'd already seen too many times first-hand. In a better world, he'd have given their scientist a moment and let her compose herself when she was good and ready. But then again, he thought as he dug deeper into his pockets, in a better world, she wouldn't be here to start with, her formula would still be safe in Virginia, and there would be no need to drag her or anyone else into the heart of hell itself.

His thumb flicked across the worn grip of the pocketknife he'd carried for ages. But they were here, in a world where he'd already had to pull one tortured scientist out of a bloody pit in the middle of the Iranian desert, and that meant that time was something they just didn't have.

"Doctor." Edward paused for a beat when she started, but then went on, his focus moving between her and the screen. "Look, I need you to tell us everything you remember. Even small things that you may think mean nothing. Anything is better than what we have." He bent at the knees until they were eye level. When Bella followed his cue and looked up from the floor, there was surprising grit in the brace of her jaw line, and when she gave herself a little shake and straightened her shoulders, the corner of Edward's mouth lifted without permission. "Good… Now, let's start with where you met her."

The crease in her forehead deepened as she thought for a minute before finally asking, "Do you know where our building is?"

When Edward shook his head, Alice suddenly piped in from behind them, "You guys are right across the street from the Capitals on North Randolph, right?"

Bella angled toward the lieutenant, where she was still perched on top of one of the desks, swinging her legs as though they were on a picnic instead of inside a war room. Beside her, the Israeli major sat silent and still as death, no doubt cataloguing every word.

"Yeah, that's right," Bella said, slowly and to them both. "And there's also a bunch of shops–"

A grumbled, "So that's how she knew," came from the other side of the room.

Alice rolled her eyes with an irritated chuff… a split-second before the staff sergeant yelped when she chucked something heavy, nailing him in the chest. "Doofus, I live in Virginia Square. Remember? My condo is all of two miles away. I know everything that's there."

Fighting a grateful, unexpected smile at the two Marines' never ceasing banter, Bella turned back to Edward. "Anyway… there's a mall with several restaurants across the street. It's a pretty common spot for us to go for lunch or to grab some coffee. Just to get out of the building for a little while."

The soft, rubbery pad of Rosalie's boots came from their right. "That whole area has to be crawling with cameras. How'd they not pick him out?" She looked over to Edward. "The CIA had to have gone through all that shit, right? They can't be that stupid."

Edward crossed an arm over his chest and dropped his chin into his palm. "Agreed." His eyes cut over to Bella. "Any reason why they wouldn't have spotted him?"

At first she didn't answer. But then, scrubbing her face, Bella laughed a brittle, humorless laugh behind her hands and muttered a bitter, "Maybe because Riley didn't want them to."

Rosalie opened her mouth to question, but Bella's hands dropped back down to her sides and she stopped the other woman with a shake of her head and a heavy exhale. "Understand, neither one of us have really gotten out too much over the past couple of years."

"What does tha–"

"We were working all the damned time for one thing." Bella scrubbed her face again, this time slower, inhaling the lingering scent of the captain's aftershave. "And, well, let's put it like this, it's not exactly comfortable to go out when you're being followed all the time."

"Followed?" Rosalie's voice was sharp as a blade, but the instant glint in her blue eyes was sharper, piercing despite the darkness.

Offering her a bland smile, Bella waved at the air, at nothing and everything all at once. "Security detail. They kept their distance, never interfered or anything, but we knew they were there."

The gunnery sergeant's ponytail whipped across her face. "The fuck?"

"Look at what we were working on." Bella shrugged. "Not exactly stuff you want getting out."

Without a sound, Jasper took position opposite Rosalie, wearing a matching, tight-skinned mask of quiet outrage, and behind them, a palm simultaneously smacked against wood, followed by a fast volley of curses in both Hebrew and English.

As for the man in front of her, while his voice betrayed nothing, the lean muscles that roped the tops of Edward's forearms flexed and rolled with rigid control. "Go on."

"It annoyed Riley a lot more than me." Bella hesitated. "It's why he'd leave simulations running like he was still there and why he'd cut through the labs instead of the using the main halls. He used to go through the entire building to the south service entrance just to cross the street … And he'd wear hats and throw on a jacket… And he always paid attention and knew exactly where the cameras were." She glanced up. "We used to joke about it. It was almost like a game for him. Like a crazy adult game of hide and seek." She laughed another one of those bitter, humorless laughs. "Thing is, Riley was smarter than they were… and he knew it."

Across the way, Jasper rocked back on his heels, and Bella knew, from the way his features narrowed in thought, without a doubt, the engineer-turn-Marine sniper would have done the very same. Only, considering the way he'd torn her NVGs to pieces, only to put them back together again, he'd have dismantled the cameras altogether. Or maybe he'd have just shot them down.

Bella paused and peered over the captain's shoulder to the woman on the screen, staring at the red curls caught scattering in the breeze. "That's where she worked – in a coffee shop there on the bottom floor of the mall. I remember seeing her there a few times when I met him over there. He said she was a grad student in the Physics department at Georgetown. She was supposedly working part-time to help pay for school." Her tone turned distant and hollow. "He thought she was beautiful and brilliant. He was even thinking about talking to our boss about offering her a study position."

Edward motioned for Jasper to kill the screen. "When did all this start?"

With a single click, the screen turned black, and Bella blinked against the darkness. "Hard to say," she finally mumbled, still lost in thought. "At least a few months before he disappeared." Her teeth came together with an audible snap. "It took him two just to get up enough nerve to ask her to dinner, and that was back in March."

When the captain sent the corporal another quick, unspoken gesture, the younger man spun back toward the workstation. To Bella, he said, "We need to get the name of that coffee shop to the CIA and the times he might have been there. Maybe they can grab security shots and employment records. I'm sure it was all fake, but it's something. More than we had." Edward raked a hand through his hair, his mind already moving a mile a minute. "You said you talked to her? What about?"

"Only once for any real length of time. I really don't remember what about… probably something stupid and typical, like the weather. Maybe I asked her how her thesis was going. Honestly, I just don't remember." Anger and the same hint of unspent violence that Edward had seen in the General's office swam in the shadows of her eyes. "I'd been working on solubility parameters all day, and it was all I could think about." Bella shoved off the table and paced half way across the room and back.

She froze, however, when she heard the whisper of an Israeli's inflection through a radio sitting on one of the desks. "She had an accent…" Glancing around the room, she pieced together the few memories of the woman she had. "Irish or Scottish maybe. It wasn't strong, like she'd been in the U.S. a long time. But I remember it. And she was educated and very articulate, which she would have had to have been to convince Riley that she was studying Physics."

"Age? Height?"

"She was… I don't know… I'd assumed late twenties or maybe early thirties, but it's impossible to say for sure. A couple of inches taller than me, so maybe 5'8"?"

"Build?"

"Slim, but still athletic. I could tell she ran or biked or something like that."

Emmett's head popped up just over Rosalie's shoulder. "Anything unique about her appearance? Any weird birthmarks? Tatts?"

Bella's lids slid closed. "Pale green eyes, like those York Peppermint commercials. Narrow chin. Bone white complexion. And … and she had a tattoo on the inside of her left wrist." As she spoke, in the background, Jasper's keyboard clicked at breakneck speed. Her eyes scrunched together. "Don't know what it was. All I remember her wearing was long sleeves, but once I saw red and black lines peeking out from under her cuff. Whatever it was looked pretty… professional? Like the lines were clean and the color was deep. Does that help any?"

The clicking abruptly stopped. "Absolutely." And when Bella finally looked at him again, Edward nodded in agreement. "Do you have a name? What did Dr. Biers call her?"

"Riley just called her Vicky."

The name echoed in the room, and those burned up tickets they'd dug out of the ashes shot through Bella's mind. Making an angry, unintelligble sound of frustration, she bit the inside of her cheek again, this time hard enough to taste copper, and she threw her hands up. "I can't believe I didn't see it…" she sputtered, grabbing the back of a nearby chair. "Back at that… place." A tremor raced down her spine. "It just… it didn't even occur to me…Fuck!"

Rosalie responded before any of them. "It's probably a fake name anyway. Not your fault, Doc."

"But–"

"But nothing." The gunnery sergeant's crossed arms and unyielding, iron bearing was a loud, no-nonsense dare for anyone present to disagree. "You've already done more than anyone here expected. If we nail these bastards, it's because you're here with us. So don't even go there."

The captain and the gunny shared a long beat of silent communication, ending when Rosalie pursed her lips and inclined her head toward Bella. Maybe a little surprised by his Marine's unexpected – and vehement – support for their charge, Edward responded with his own, near-identical agreement.

Grim, determined, Edward spun on his heel and crossed the handful of empty paces to their scientist. Stopping less than a foot away, seeing the way she damned near vibrated with self-directed fury and fear, he let his voice go soft as silk, and when Bella looked up, eyelashes still damp, he finally gave in and pushed that stray strand of shimmering hair away from her face one more time. "I have to ask. And I'm sorry I do…" His thumb ghosted across her cheek. "But is there any way that Dr. Biers could have been compromised?"

When Bella shook her head, it was hard enough her teeth rattled. "Never. No way. He may have slipped his minders, but that was just him wanting some privacy and wanting to screw around with them." She shook her head again. "Riley understood his role and its importance. He could have done R&D anywhere. Industry, academia… anywhere, Captain." Without conscious direction, her palm flew to his forearm like before and she squeezed as though she could physically force him to comprehend. "He chose DARPA because he got ulcers from watching the news at night. From watching people like you get hurt." Her fingernails dug in deeper. "He wanted to create something to stop wars before they started, to put something in our arsenal that would make anyone think twice. Something no one would ever have to actually use. There's no way he would purposefully put it in the wrong hands."

Making no effort to remove her hold, Edward's brows lifted. "But…"

"But he was… naïve," she finished, softer, recalling the pale pink blush that had colored her best friend's neck every time their twenty-something admin, Bree, walked his way. "And he liked Vicky so much and he was so lonely sometimes." Bella took a long, slow breath and her hand dropped back to the chair. "I could see… I could see someone like Vicky, or Victoria, or whatever her real name is, promising him things and him believing every word she said. I could see him happily agreeing to drive her home late after work. Or meeting her somewhere to help her with her thesis. He would have skipped into a trap, without even suspecting."

"Captain?" the corporal called from his workstation. "Sorry to interrupt, but we got incoming on the secure line from Quantico."

Edward didn't respond immediately. Instead, he kept his focus on the woman in front of him. Neither moved.

"Captain?"

Bella's gaze dropped first, and then, reluctantly, Edward turned with a muttered curse, reclaimed his previous position facing the bank of monitors, and waved the corporal the go ahead. A second later, the main screen lit bright blue. In the dead center, a familiar, white spread eagle design pulsed a handful of times before the blue background abruptly gave way to an equally familiar face and scene.

The atmosphere in the room immediately shifted. Bella watched as the already-straight line of the captain's shoulders morphed into steel. In the back of the room, a pair of boots hit the floor with a muted thud, and she didn't have to turn around to know that the lieutenant's previous picnic stance now matched her commander's.

Edward's chin dipped in automatic deference. "General."

At six thousand miles away and one in the morning, Lieutenant General Carlisle Cullen's pale blue eyes were as clear as any here in the Negev. In front of his own bank of sophisticated computers manned by a slew of junior Marines and wearing a crisp beige uniform shirt without a hint of a wrinkle, Bella quickly realized that, for the general, time was a meaningless entity.

"Captain Cullen." Carlisle performed a quick scan of the room. Wearing an expression carved from granite, he paused on each member of the team, finally cocking a single salt and blond brow when he landed on the Israeli in the back. "Shalom, Major."

Still seated, El'azar's lips curved. "And to you as well, General Cullen."

"They're letting you play?"

El'azar barked a laugh and stretched to his feet. "Unfortunately, I have been relegated to but a spectator. For the moment, that is." His dark eyes flashed with the same kind of predatory anticipation Bella had seen in another man here in the desert. "As you well know, sometimes politicians are spineless creatures. And always, they are dense. Rest assured, it is being taken care of, however."

"Good to know. Your team is always a welcome ally." General Cullen smiled a ruthless smile before turning those ice blue eyes back to Edward. "Now, Captain, where are we?"

Wasting no time or breath, Edward immediately launched into a lightning-fast rundown of the last two days, using terms and phrases Bella had no hope of following. Five minutes in, however, as the soon as the captain uttered a terse, "SS-1," along with her name, she caught up quick.

"Impressive, Doctor." The general eyed her with the same shrewd appreciation she imagined Rosalie gave a brand new rifle. "How sure are you about the missile system?"

Bella swallowed but stepped forward. "I can't be absolutely positive, but based on everything I know about Dr. Biers, I'd say it's very likely." When she added a belated, uncertain, sir, at the end, Edward's lips twitched. So did his uncle's.

"Fair enough. Could you tell how far along they'd gotten?"

The papers she'd pored over the past few days burned bright in her mind. "I think they have most of the design. It looks like Ri– Dr. Biers tried to stall as long as he could, but still…" She blew out a puff of air before delivering the bleak message she'd tried her damnedest to convince herself wasn't true. "If they have someone who knows what they're doing – someone who knows chemical weapons – I think they could get it to work with what they have."

The general's skin pulled tight across his cheekbones as, behind him, a half dozen junior Marines' heads twisted toward them. His voice dropped in pitch and turned to gravel. "How long do you think that would take?"

"Depends on what, and who, they have at their disposal. If they already have the rocket… and if the cone has already been modified…" Inside her chest, her heart hammered a fast, painful rhythm against her sternum. The air in her lungs blazed like fire. "I'd say no more than two weeks to tweak and prep the primary precursors, less if they figure out they can use straight elemental sulfur instead of a polysulfide… That's all assuming their chemist is starting cold."

"If they're not?"

Bella's answer came hard and fast. "I could do it in a couple of days."

Carlisle spat a curse and then barked a command to one of his junior officers, who bolted up from his chair and sped from the room. In an all-too-familiar gesture, he shoved his fingers through his short-cropped hair before turning once more to Edward. "You said you had more intel on one of those satellite shots."

"Yes, sir. We have a new face, and a name to go with it."

Fingers steepled, Carlisle leaned forward. "Details."

As Jasper pulled up the images of the villa in Mogadishu, focusing in on the woman Riley had just called Vicky, Edward rolled into another lightning-fast round of updates, repeating the same conversation they'd had moments before. By the time he finished, three more of the general's Marines had vanished from the command center, not wasting a single precious second.

Through the monitor, the general's gaze swept the room again, and when his eyes locked with hers, penetrating and calculating, Bella recognized exactly where the captain had inherited that innate, unspoken magnetism she'd picked up within minutes of their first meeting. Her back automatically straightened and her shoulders pulled back.

"What's your plan?" Carlisle said, addressing the younger version of himself.

Fists dropping to his hips, Edward replied without a moment of hesitation. "We need to move quick. Ideally, I'd say we run through it a few times, to test for contingencies and to see where the stress points are, but we just don't have that kind of time. We're going to need to go now. With what info we have."

The general's forefinger tapped against his clean-shaven chin. "You have two targets."

"I do." Edward wiped a line of sweat from the back of his neck. "General, what I need is more people. Otherwise, we'll have the bad and worse choices of executing the two targets in series, which is shit in terms of strategy, and splitting up, which I refuse to do. I can't be at two places, but I need boots on the ground at that fuckin' compound doing heavy recon at the same time we're breaching that villa."

"You're sure on the villa?"

"Positive." To the captain's left, Jasper bobbed his head. "Looks like they're doing the planning out of there. Or at least that's where the heavy hitters are staying. We need to see what's in there – who's in there. Plus, all we got on the compound is Colonel Laurent's word. They could be staging in multiple locations for all we know."

"You think he was lying?"

"No." Somewhere buried in that single word, Bella heard the same mental exhaustion she'd seen when Edward emerged from the bunker deep within the Iranian mountains, but it disappeared the second he went on in explanation. "But if they left him to do the clean up… he was just on the periphery. We still don't know what group we're dealing with and just what kind of reach they have."

Carlisle leaned back and folded his hands in his lap. "What else do you need?"

"A carrier or a LHA offshore to coordinate." With a swift glimpse at Emmett, Edward added, "Short distance air transport from there – something quiet enough we can drop close and get into the city on foot. Same for that compound."

"Done and done." When the general looked to his right, a twenty-something, dark-haired Marine read off the screen in front of her. "Sir, the Bonhomme Richard is parked in the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt right now. She's the closest. Three UH-1s. Six available AV-8Bs."

"That'll work." Edward checked his watch. "Who's close?"

For a split-second, the general's eyes danced, and Bella swore she caught a hint of sudden amusement in the his stern expression. A low chuckle from El'azar in the back just cemented it.

She felt more than saw Edward abruptly stiffen, and before she could twist around, he looked away, growling a harsh, "Fucking Deltas," under his breath. His fists, now balled tight enough his knuckles stretched white, flew back to his hips as he slowly shook his head.

That hint of amusement fell away. "Not my call, Captain," Carlisle told him. "Just got off the phone with SECNAV, and he just got off the phone with the Secretary. It's a done deal. SOCOM wants in."

Edward's jaw worked back and forth until he replied with a stiff, controlled, "Yes, sir."

"They'll meet you on the water and will be briefed beforehard. Before you ask, it's understood that you're on point."

The air seemed to shift again, taking on an almost electrified charge. The tiny hairs on Bella's arms rose like waiting for lightning. A second of sparked silence passed before the general cleared his throat and spoke again.

"And Captain?"

Edward glanced up, his features stark, shadowed, and merciless. "Sir?"

"I know you two don't get along, but try not to break Captain Black's face again."

In the background, El'azar howled.

.

.

.

Notes:

Glossary:

AV-8B – or the McDonnell Douglas/Boeing Harrier II attack aircraft, also called "Jump Jets", which are capable of vertical take-offs and landings, are aircraft used by the USMC to provide close air support. They carry a range of armaments, including multiple hardpoints, rockets, air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles, as well as bombs. The AV-8B is currently slated to be replaced by the F-35B.

SOCOM – stands for Special Operations Command, and is the command charged with overseeing multiple special operations forces within the various branches, including: the US Army's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (aka Delta Force) and the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU, SEAL Team Six) which are part of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), as well as the Army's Rangers and Green Berets, the Navy's SEALs, the Air Force's Special Operations Command, and the Marines' MARSOC regiment.

Note: while Edward's team is technically housed under Force Recon, not MARSOC, and is directed under the primary USMC structure, when the MARSOC regiment was created, most of the members were actually taken from Force Recon battalions. You can consider (especially) his team to be no different than any other Special Forces team in terms of function, capabilities, and general badassery.

LHA – stands for Landing Helicopter Assault, and is a hull class of amphibious assault ships. They're essentially like (somewhat) smaller versions of aircraft carriers and are capable of transporting multiple helicopters (attack and utility), USMC MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, and up to six AV-8Bs.

SECNAV – Secretary of the Navy. The Corps, while a separate branch of the military, falls under the organizational structure of the Department of the Navy.

UH-1N – also called Iroquois / Twin Huey is a type of utility helicopter manufactured by Bell. It's used by both the US Navy and USMC to transport equipment and people. Its replacement is the Bell UH-1Z Venom, which, by the way, is the utility variant of Alice's AH-1Z Viper attack helo.