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 28
1.5 Kilometers East of Target Safe House
Somewhere South-West of the Target Compound, Along the Ethiopian Border

At the top of the rise, Edward dropped to his stomach behind a line of low, scraggily vegetation and peered through his rangefinder at the handful of small, white buildings that occupied the shallow valley below.

Dead center stood the primary target, and to the untrained eye, the cube of unfinished concrete with crumbling bites taken out of the corners and streaks of rust from protruding rebar staining the walls looked like it'd been abandoned for years, if not decades. Tall, dry grasses fenced the structure, shooting up through the cracks and crevices. Tattered curtains hung limp in the lone visible window, and out in front, there were the remnants of an old, beaten up, wheel-less Izuzu that'd probably been sitting there longer than Edward had been breathing.

They'd all seen the overhead images, however, and when the captain's rangefinder skimmed left across the roofline, his lips turned up as he picked up the small gray satellite receiver slowly rising above the rear wall, already cocked toward the gray-orange western sky.

"Gotcha." Without looking away from the scene below, he motioned to Jasper, who crouched between a pair of waist-high boulders a dozen yards to his right. "You see that shit, Jazz-man?"

"Already on it, sir." Amplified through the throat mike, there was a soft, metallic click, and by the time Edward glanced over, a trio of thin, black intercept antennae were already up and angling toward the valley. "Gimme a sec, and I'll see if we got any new traffic."

Nodding, Edward shifted his attention left and down the ridge, where he could just make out the familiar MARPAT desert camouflage patterning against the slowly darkening rocky terrain. "What you got, Blondie?"

"Still don't see shit out of those other buildings." The gunny signaled him a quick negative and spat. "If any of those fuckers are in there, they must be takin' a nap."

"Bear-man?"

Thirty yards beyond Rosalie and hunkered down behind a mound of rolled-up earth and debris, the big man grumbled something unintelligible to the scientist positioned behind him, chuckled at something she smarted back, and then replied to Edward with a quick, "Doc and me got nada, 'cept a pair of sore asses."

A reluctant smile tugged at the corners of Edward's mouth, even as he scanned a flat, grassy sector of the valley below for his lieutenant. A few long moments passed before he finally picked her up low-crawling out of the grass line toward a stand of low, brown brush 400 yards east of one of the small buildings that ringed the main target. "Tink? You having fun down there?"

There was a beat of silence before Alice responded. Rolling on her back to face them up on the ridge, she tilted her Kevlar up and stuck out her tongue. "Infrared's showing at least three definites inside the center structure. Probably more, but it's hard to tell." She twisted back to her stomach and stared through a long-range thermal scope. "Concrete's too thick and it's too fuckin' hot out here to show any decent heat contrast. You want me to keep goin' in?"

Before answering, Edward swapped over to that supposedly vacant cube of concrete, to the other equally silent buildings surrounding it, and then back to the center building again, just as a light breeze moved across the valley. The tattered beige and brown curtains in the front window fluttered, but only enough to reveal a momentary sliver of a pitch-black interior. The pitted metal door beside it sat still and unmoved.

As far as Edward was concerned, the scene was too calm and way too quiet. A fat bead of sweat rolled down his neck, and the tiny hairs there lifted, because experience said this was that same kind of eerie silence that always seemed to precede a whole lot of loud.

Forefinger hovering over his trigger, Edward grimaced. "Negative. You stay right there. Keep low and keep watching. We're going to make our way down to you." He looked back over his shoulder to the corporal, who was now hunched over a small laptop and concentrating on whatever was coming through the receiver. "Jazz?"

With a short, succinct dip of his chin, Jasper pulled out one of his earpieces. "Arabic." He paused, listening for a few more seconds. "Sounds like they've got at least one local in there. Can't tell if he's one of the ones Tink's seein', though. He's on a late model sat phone."

Edward's grimace deepened, as he willed those curtains in the front window to part again. "Can you make any of it out?"

Jasper didn't answer at first, but then he came back with an annoyed grunt. "You know my Arabic's shit, but I think he's just talkin' some bullshit to a brother or someone. Something about a soccer game last weekend."

"Fuck. Is tha– "

"Hold up…" The corporal abruptly went silent, so silent that Edward lifted his head from his rangefinder and turned toward the pair of boulders once more, just as the younger man gave a low whistle. "And that's Bingo, assholes." Still staring down at the screen, Jasper flashed his commander a thumb's up. "Ghost, I got at least two others going back and forth in the background, and they are not speaking Arabic. It's somethin' else… can't understand a word of it, but…"

"Lemme guess…" The captain's muscles coiled and his expression transformed, turning into something dark and ruthless as he repeated Bella's earlier description. "It's something short on vowels and heavy on the consonants."

When the two Marines made eye contact over the boulder, Jasper nodded again, and this time he sported an eager, got-you grin that required no explanation whatsoever.

"How sure are you?"

"Bet my fuckin' paycheck."

Through the radio, Rosalie choked out a laugh. "Your paycheck ain't much, Corporal."

Jasper's grin widened, stretching across his entire face as he raised his hand to flip the gunny off – never mind she was too far away to see it. "Fine, Gunnery Sergeant… I'd bet Doc's." He snickered. "Hers is probably more than all ours put together anyway."

Before Rosalie could agree, a quiet, feminine snort cut in. "Pfft, you do know who I work for, right?"

"Shit," Emmett swore. "There goes my dreams of gettin' me a sugar momma."

A muffled thunk came through Edward's earpiece, followed by a low, "Damn it, Doc, you're as bad as Blondie," that almost made him smile again. Instead, Edward took one last look down at the valley, checked the darkening sky, and said, "Time to move to forward position." He signaled Rosalie. "You ready?"

A hard, metallic click-clack echoed through the radio in answer. "You really askin' me that?"

"Roger that." Shoving his gear back into his pack, Edward ran through a quick series of commands. "Alright, I got right. Blondie, you take left and just like we planned, you stick to that washed-out ditch to your east until you hit that run of dead trees two hundred yards down. There, stop and wait for my signal. Jazz, Bear-man, you take cover duty and keep your eyes on that fuckin' valley. Once Blondie and me reach that line of trees, we'll return the favor and then we'll leap frog it down. Tink, you hold tight. We're on our way. We clear?"

There was a quick echo of, "Yes, sirs."

Just before giving the go signal, Edward wavered, however. Fists balling, his gaze skipped past Rosalie's position to the mound of dirt that hid his staff sergeant and the soft, too-pretty woman he'd held until the sun rose that very morning.

More than half a day later, the faint hint of lemons still clung to his shirt, and when the breeze kicked up again, he swore that he could smell her. At the same time, the air tickled across his skin just like those slow, warm pants of breath against his neck when Bella had finally closed her eyes and passed out. He could feel it like she was right there, right now, curled up against him, small and soft and turning his head inside out. Before Edward knew it, as he sucked in yet another lungful of lemon-scented air, another one of those uncomfortable pangs hit him square in the chest, this time worse than all the others combined, making him grumble a pissed-off curse and wish all over again that he'd have just left her there in that cave.

Or better yet, back in Virginia.

Scowling at the dirt, Edward rubbed his chest plate. "Doctor?"

Bella's head popped up from behind the wide wall of Emmett's shoulders. Hands shaking, she fumbled with the set of binoculars she'd sat behind all afternoon. "Yeah?"

"Are you ready?" Edward asked her, and like that, the growl in his voice vanished and he went quiet in the way he always did when he spoke to her.

And right on cue, the image of his broad, calloused palm splayed out over her bare stomach flashed across Bella's vision like wild fire, and the near-constant knot in the pit of her stomach cinched tight. Without thinking, she licked her lips, and that image instantly morphed into that hard, no-nonsense mouth of his hovering, almost on hers. And then it turned into him laughing and his body shaking all around her. And then to his arms gathering her even closer, until there wasn't an inch of space between them and the day-old stubble on his chin rasped against her cheek when he whispered in her ear. Despite where they were and what they were about to do, Bella's skin went from clammy to hot.

"Wrong, wrong place," Bella muttered under her breath, wiping her forehead with her sleeve and doing her damnedest to tamp that shit right back down. When she looked up, ignoring the now-smirking, smart-ass Marine beside her, she took a slow, even breath and shook her head. "Don't worry about me. I'm ready whenever you say."

"Yeah..." Throat mike muted, Emmett threw her a wink that would have made El'azar proud. "I bet you–"

Bella's fist flew at Emmett's tree-trunk bicep for what had to be the fifth time in so many hours. But this time her aim was off, and a split second later, her hand bounced off his ribcage with a not-so-muffled noise that had her flinging her fingers and mouthing a silent, "Ow!"

The big man's eyes twinkled as he Tarzan-thumped the same spot she'd just smacked. "Told you, you gotta avoid those plates, Doc." He winked at her again. "Good way to break something."

When Bella would have shot him a very un-amused glare, Edward was back in her earpiece, still so calm and so quiet. "You remember the drill?"

"Stick close to Emmett," she said, a little breathless. When she peeked over to the man beside her, that playful, mischievous grin of his had disappeared, replaced in another one of those complete 180s of his with a carved-from-granite mask that made her blink at its severity. With a curt, all-business nod, the staff sergeant slid on a pair of slick, anti-glare ballistic wraparounds and lifted his balaclava over his chin. As he repositioned the heavy 240B at his shoulder, he oozed the same kind of barely leashed aggression as Black's Deltas.

"No matter what, you stay with Em," Edward told her. "You got that?"

Swallowing past the sudden ball of nerves at the base of her throat, Bella fingered the edge of her thigh holster, brushing against the roughened grip of the captain's sidearm. "I got it."

"Bear-man? You know what to do. Just like we talked about."

Still wearing that nail-spitting expression, Emmett leaned forward against the hill of dirt in front of him, dialed in his scope, and scanned the flat, open terrain surrounding their target below. Spotting their pilot at the meet location, he then ticked off half a dozen locations for cover on the way down. "Yes, sir." He glanced at Bella with another pointed nod. "No one's gonna touch her."

"Good. You make it so they don't." There was a long, tense second of silence before Edward spoke again. "And Doctor?

Following the line of Emmett's rifle, Bella mutely stared at the handful of small, white buildings in the bowl of the valley, not really sure what the Marine beside her had been watching – or just who her was or what that glance was all about. When Edward said her name again, Bella's gaze swept back up the ridgeline, to the distant stand of low shrubs where he had been positioned all afternoon. She swallowed once more, harder, trying to keep her voice from shaking. "Yeah?"

"One last thing…" Edward took a long, deep breath. "If shit hits the fan and they start shooting, you will keep your head down and you will stay behind Emmett and do whatever he tells you, no matter what."

"Oka–"

"That's not a request, Doctor Swan." The softness in the captain's voice abruptly dropped into something harsh and gravelly, brewing with an intensity Bella didn't quite understand, other than she knew the last time she'd heard it was when he'd pushed her up against the truck in Mogadishu and yelled at her for not being there. "And don't you dare unload your weapon again, not unless it's into one of those fuckers in that building. Are we clear?"

Fear, spiked with something else altogether, sent a shiver down her spine. "Crystal."

June 28
Just outside Target Compound
Somewhere in West-Central Somalia, Along the Ethiopian Border

"What you see, Scooby-doo?"

Throwing his knee over the sharp lip of the rock, the younger man hauled himself up to the ledge and then leaned over to scowl at the two men seventy feet below on the ground. "Jesus, will you give me a minute?"

"Aw, come on, now," Paul drawled, even as he advanced the last few yards down the narrow path below – really, just a long, jagged split that cut a haphazard goat trail through the mass of rock northeast of the target compound. He stopped at its mouth, where the canyon-like walls on either side of them ended and where the flat, sparse kill-zone circling the compound started. "Quit whinin' and speed that shit up, will ya?"

"I'm goin' already."

"Yeah, I see you are." With a cautious glance back, Paul dropped to a knee. Rifle in the lead, smooth as silk, he swung his upper body around the rock to check the compound.

Almost twilight – still plenty of light left to see without augmentation – the staff sergeant checked the beaten-down dirt path at the base of the compound's outer wall fifty yards dead ahead, pausing at each shadow and shrub, watching for any hint of movement on the ground.

A slow second passed, then another, but there was nothing – not even a swaying blade of grass.

Satisfied, Paul signed back to Jacob, before scanning up and zeroing in his reticle on the pair of black-clad mercenaries that'd been lazily strolling the top of the wall for the last three hours. Rifles hanging low and useless at their hips, the two men made another circuit before slowing to a crawl. When they stopped in the center and turned toward the inside of the compound, laughing at something he couldn't quite make out, Paul flashed another hand signal to his commander. He sent a second one to the sniper team hidden a thousand yards away on a small square of dirt cut into the plateau to their south, and said to the baby-faced lieutenant above him, "Don't tell me you're afraid of heights..." He smiled when one of the mercenaries reached into his knee pocket and pulled out an old, dinted up flash. "Oh, and you're clear, so get your shit in place."

Seth made a half-grunting, half-snorting noise as he crawled along the narrow ledge toward the same bend in the canyon wall. At its arc, where the ledge narrowed even further and one missed step meant a very, very bad day, he plastered himself against the sheer wall of limestone behind him, ignored the gust of hot, dry wind that tickled his neck, and mimicked the staff sergeant's smooth, careful movements below. Body stretched half-way around the corner and with one eye glued to the same pair of bored mercenaries, ever so slowly, Seth began mounting their surveillance – a pair of high-powered special ops cameras, each equipped with thermal, low-light, full range radio, and the most sensitive motion detection not on the market – in a dark, fist-wide fissure in the rock face. Way too exposed for comfort, sweat trickled down his back as he adjusted the finicky controls and checked all the frequencies against the dimly lit handheld tucked in his chest pocket.

Once finally secure and transmitting, Seth carefully reverse-crawled, slid back around the rock, and blew out a slow breath as he slumped against the sheer wall behind him. "And just so you know, I'm not afraid of heights, asshole. I just prefer to be in a cockpit," he said to Paul. "Not perched up on some skinny-ass ledge without a lick of cover. You try it and see how you like it."

Paul laughed. "Fuck that, man. I'm all the cover you need." Patting his 416, Paul glanced back to Jake and grinned a toothy grin. "LT's kinda cute when he's about to piss himself."

Moving forward, Jacob's shoulders shook. Before he could agree, though, their pilot thumped his throat mike loud enough that both of them winced.

"Yeah, fuck you, Sergeant."

"You wish, Poky." Still chuckling, Paul tracked the soldiers on the wall. He waved behind him. "Wolf, you're clear to advance."

With a clipped nod, Jacob shouldered his carbine and took position opposite Paul. "How's it lookin'?"

"Those two tangos up top are still doin' jack shit." He adjusted the wad of dip in the pocket of his lower lip and spat to the side. "Fuck, man, I doubt they'd catch an Abrams rollin' in."

Jacob nodded again, and then without another word, he whipped out of the narrow crevice. Going right, he darted behind a car-sized slab of limestone for a handful of seconds before moving to a pile of broken mud-bricks thirty yards away, where he could easily monitor the route from the northern side of the enemy compound. Crouching low, he scanned the wall and found those same two mercs, still oblivious and chatting away. He signaled back to Paul. "Trick, what's your location?"

There was nothing but radio silence for several moments, but then a bleep of static finally answered, followed by the eerily silent sergeant first class a second later, barely audible, even with amplification. "One hundred fifty yards to your north. Wolf, be advised I got a patrol here on the ground. ETA to you 3 minutes."

Swinging toward the northern side of the compound, Jacob adjusted his sights and grumbled a curse. "Local or pro?"

Another whisper of static came through his earpiece. "I'm seein' pro-grade fatigues out of somewhere in Eastern Europe. Pale fucker. Packin' some decent heat, too. Could be Doc's Spetsnaz, but can't know for sure unless I get up close and personal."

With another muttered curse, Jacob asked, "Scooby, cameras pickin' 'em up yet?"

Seth came back after a handful of long seconds. "Yes, sir. Just coming into range now." The lieutenant paused, studying the small handheld screen synced to one of the low-light cameras he'd just mounted. On it, he watched the patrol – blond and pale, just like Jared had said, upwards of 6', and definitely packing military-grade equipment – slowly wind his way along the beaten trail from the northern corner of the compound, heading straight for them. Tracking a couple of dozen yards behind him was the near-invisible outline of Jared against the rock and brush. "He's got a clear line. Captain, how you wanna call it?"

Jacob trained his rifle back up the compound wall, targeting the flat, uncovered forehead of the unaware soldier on the left. Taking a long swig from his flask, the man yelled something obscene to someone down inside the compound. "Trick, your call. You up for givin' Cullen a little of what he asked for?"

The sergeant tapped his throat-mike twice.

"Alright then… it's show time," Jacob said, as his forefinger hooked around his trigger. Like a lion rising from rest, the muscles in his shoulders flexed and uncoiled, and his teeth flashed a dark grin. "Listen up, I want all eyes on that wall. If they turn, or even blink wrong, Quil, you and Embry, you take those motherfuckers down with extreme prejudice." The captain issued the same fast round of orders to Seth, and then to Paul, before growling into his mike, "No noise, no evidence of nothin'. Trick, I want you to make that pale son of a bitch fuckin' disappear. I want to see these assholes start to squirm."

Now eighty yards away from the target, without answering – without even making a sound – Jared eased his gear to a patch of thick grass behind a rock, flipped his carbine to his back, and unclipped the combat knife strapped to his thigh. Eyes always on the patrol in front of him – watching the man's stance for any hint of recognition or reaction – he then slid out of the shadowy brush-line and began tracking the slow, seemingly meandering gait.

Unlike the mercs on the wall or the seemingly endless supply of amateurs and local hires crawling around the compound, the loose line of this guy's shoulders wasn't by accident or inexperience. Neither was that lazy path. No, Jared thought, as he angled right when the patrol's head swung left, it was purely by design. This wasn't some hack playing soldier.

An almost feral smile ghosted the Delta's camouflaged lips.

Jared trailed the patrol like this for a few hushed, tense seconds, creeping from cover to cover as he ate away the remaining yards between them with long, noiseless strides borne from decades of stalking big game – both animal and man. When the soldier stopped, he slid into a dark pocket of dry summer foliage, blending effortlessly into the shadows until only someone who knew he was there could hope to find him. When he started again, Jared moved, too, still tailing and still closing in fast. Seconds later, when the man spun and scanned the rocky perimeter behind him, the sergeant simply wasn't there.

Forty yards from the Delta team's position, the patrol slowed, eventually stopping on a flat, barren circle of dirt between a stack of sun-baked cinderblocks and a pile of old construction debris. Resting his barrel in the crook of his elbow, he tugged on his chinstrap to loosen his helmet and then wiped a heavy line of sweat off his forehead. When he moved, his dampened shirt stretched taut under his armor, and the collar caught, revealing an angry pink rash line of sunburn against the bone-white skin on the back of his neck.

Without looking away from his prey, Jared slipped behind the stack of cinderblocks, ducking low and out of sight. Once in position, he signaled Seth.

"Wolf, Trick is in position." Seth swiped the handheld controller, zooming one of the cameras in on their target. "Waiting for your order, sir."

"Hold…" Jacob said, as he tracked his black-clad merc on the wall through his scope. When the guy squatted, still oblivious and yakking to someone in the compound below, and pulled out a brown, hand-rolled cigarette, the captain looked back to Paul, who issued a quick clear when his target began digging through his pockets for a lighter. "Trick, you have a go. I repeat, you have a go."

The sergeant didn't waste a second. As soon as Black's voice whispered through his earpiece, Jared was already moving, skirting the cinderblocks and crossing those last few feet in lightning-fast, purposeful strides, no longer even bothering to hide his footfalls.

Fifteen feet away, the patrol's left arm twitched.

Eight feet away, his back straightened.

By the time the man fully registered the Delta's presence and began to whip around, Jared's forearm was already looping over his shoulder and threading underneath his blond, scruffy chin.

The soldier's rifle dropped in its sling as his arms flailed out and over his head, instinctively trying to grab at the attacker behind him. The professional training kicked in a split-second later, however. In a precise, well-trained move, his right elbow abruptly jabbed backward, aiming for Jared's ribs with enough force to stop a horse.

But Jared was faster. He spun sideways, easily dodging the blow, even as his arm cinched its hold around the man's throat.

Red-faced and panting, the patrol threw an elbow again, and again hit nothing but air, just as Jared's opposite palm clapped over his mouth. Scrabbling at the iron grip, he bit into Jared's glove hard enough to break the suede and then kicked back with the heel of his boot, banging against Jared's kneepad. The sergeant didn't even flinch. Instead, his chokehold just tightened, crushing the man's windpipe as he simultaneously slammed a knee into the center of his spine. With a muffled scream, a balled up fist flew back in another desperate jab, this time glancing off Jared's SAPI plates. His remaining hand pried at the suede glove still covering his mouth.

Before the patrol could make another sound, Jared drove his knee in deeper and adjusted his stance, and then with a hard, quick jerk, he wrenched the man's neck to the left until bone snapped with an audible crunch!

The man's grip on his hand went limp, and the body immediately slumped. Catching the sudden weight, Jared silently lowered the soldier to the ground. Once down, a thin rivulet of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth and dotted the desert patterning of his shirt. Somewhere in his thirties, the man's face was that of a career fighter – lean, angular, and cut by deep lines from years' worth of stress and battle. Faint gray bruises ringed a pair of deep-set Slavic eyes, marking him one of Aro's as surely as the black-and-red scorpion patch sewn to his sleeve.

But not Spetsnaz, Jared noted, at least not according to the good doctor's description.

Without wasting any more time, he hauled the body up by the armpits and moved toward the Delta team's position, stopping only to grab his gear from its hiding spot. A few yards away from the narrow mouth of the crevice, a low, approving whistle came through his earpiece, followed by Seth muttering a low, "Fuck, man. Remind me to never, ever piss you off."

Right before slipping in between the sky-high walls of rock, Jared motioned to Paul to take over clean-up duty, glanced up at the ledge, staring directly where he knew his pilot's cameras to be, and shrugged like it was any other day.

June 28
Just Outside Target Safe House
West-Central Somalia, Along the Ethiopian Border

Bella's armor smacked against the pitted concrete.

Sweat pooling at the base of her spine, heart thumping inside her ribcage, she looked left to where Emmett covered the opposite end of the wall and whispered, "Where are they?"

The big man held up a single finger, and then slowly peeked around the corner of what had turned out to be nothing more than a half-empty storage building that served the main house. Down the line of his barrel, he scanned the terrain for a handful of seconds before finally zeroing in on a stand of tall, dry grass a few dozen yards away across the rear courtyard. The grass swayed, and his lips curved. "I see you, Dollface."

Voice muffled and straining, Rosalie growled through the radio. "Shut up, dick."

"Aw." Emmett grinned behind his balaclava, even as his eyes continued to roam the area for any sign of movement. At the far western end of the property stood another small building, and to the south, yet another. Like the one he and their scientist had just cleared, they were both dark and quiet, with busted out windows and vacant roofs. Directly in front, midway between their position and the gunny's sat a pair of tall, concrete pillars with a short half-wall spanning between. After a quick assessment, he signaled the pillars for Rosalie's next advance. "You know how much I like seeing you on your belly."

There was a hiss and a garbled curse in Bella's earpiece. "Don't make me come over there. You won't like what you get."

"Bear-man," the captain cut in, barely above a whisper. "Status?"

With another slow, meticulous sweep of the yard, stopping for a moment on a pair cream-colored Range Rovers parked beneath the sun-bleached canopy attached to the rear of the house, Emmett replied in the same quiet tone. "Back looks clear. Blondie, you're good up to that wall. Tinkerbell, hold til I can move around to check the right side."

"Take your time," the lieutenant muttered. "You guys know how much I just love wallowing in the dirt."

Crouched behind the rusted out Izuzu in front, Edward shot a quick look over to his left where Alice sprawled flat in a shallow dip in the ground, camouflaged by nothing more than a line of sparse weeds and a square of desert-pattern netting. The tip of her carbine peeked out, trained on the heavy door.

"Jazz?"

There was a pulse of static. "In position."

Edward's gaze automatically skimmed across the empty rooflines before moving over to the crumbling cistern forty yards beyond Alice. The corporal's thin intercept antennae peeked over the top. "Anything?"

"I got at least six or seven voices in there now that we're close… Probably more… no, definitely." Pausing, Jasper flipped through the equipment controls and then made an annoyed, chuffing sound. "Everything sounds weird, though. It's like they're in a fuckin' barrel or somethin'."

The grimace that hadn't left Edward's face since they left the cave that morning deepened. "Active interference?"

Jasper made another noise. "Nah, it's more like they're underground or like the walls are lined. Or some other shit like that."

"Damn it." The hard line of Edward's jaw ticked. "Can you get enough to compare against any of those voice samples Langley sent over?"

"Already on it. We're definitely pickin' up Serb." Sliding down into a low crouch, Jasper swiped the thin screen of his laptop and studied a pair of black, jagged lines moving across the small grid in the upper left corner. The panel to the side flashed a square of yellow fading into green. "Gettin' a 75% match on Aronović himself."

"Good work." Scooting across the dirt to the back of the vehicle, Edward peered around the bumper just in time to catch Rosalie sprinting from the tall grass line to the pair of concrete pillars. Once there, she bolted right, slipped behind the adjacent half-wall, and signaled Emmett a clear to move. The two Marines went back and forth for a short, strained moment, but then the staff sergeant issued a quiet affirmative, followed by an even quieter order to the woman trailing him. As they shot out from behind the storage building toward the wall, every muscle in Edward's body tensed, even as he simultaneously asked Jasper, "Anyone else in there we know?"

"Tough to say." With another quick swipe across his screen, the corporal plotted one of the voices picked out of the background. Distorted by the same reverb, specific words were impossible to capture, but the pitch was a stark contrast to the rest. "There's someone registering higher frequencies than the others, though."

Before Edward could ask, their scientist cut in, "Female?"

"Possibly." With a couple of keystrokes, Jasper replotted the voices, this time comparing to the set of recordings El'azar sent over before they left. The indicator panel flashed green as Aro's match shot up to 90%. The others remained too indistinct, but there was enough in the general inflection and speech patterns to guess who was in there with him. "Make that probably."

"You thinkin' Victoria?" Alice asked, peeking through the netting over to the Izuzu. "I got a smaller heat signature that'd support that."

"If she's there, safe to assume so's Walker. Watch your backs."

Now positioned with Rosalie behind the concrete half wall in the back, Emmett dialed in his scope – head high and centered on the beige door in the back. With a quick check on the smaller woman crouched between them, he glanced over her head to the opposite end of the wall. Packing the same matte-black Benelli she carried when they breached that bolt hole in Iran, the gunnery sergeant wore a pissed-off, ready-to-shoot someone expression he knew all too well. He shot her a wink before flicking on his throat mike. "Ghost, just for the record, I'm not really likin' this shit, but what's the call? We goin' in or stayin' out here?"

"No change," Edward answered, at the same time moving back to the front of the vehicle where he had a clear line of sight to the front door and window. As far as he was concerned, it was still too quiet, too dark, and everything about this situation still made him itch. "Off the record, I don't like it either, Big Man, but Langley and Quantico both still say go."

"Awesome."

Rosalie tsked. "You gotta learn to embrace the suck, Staff Sergeant."

Brows at his helmet line, Emmett gave the woman a wicked, sideways grin over his shoulder. "What was that about sucking?"

Not looking away from her target, Rosalie's lips twitched. "One day, I really am going to shoot you, right in that smart ass mouth of yours."

"You keep sayin' that." Emmett whispered over to Bella, "Between you and me, I think she likes my mouth a little too much to actually do it."

"You wanna bet?"

Ignoring the two, Edward took a final look down at his sat phone. In the upper right corner, the led blinked twice, and when he scrolled to Black's latest update, despite everything, a reluctant chuckle spilled out.

"99 terrorist dogs on the wall, 99 terrorist dogs. Take one down, hide that motherfucker in the back of a cave a long-ass ways from town, 98 terrorist dogs on the wall…"

Shoulders shaking, the captain rolled his eyes and tapped out a fast reply. "I don't think that's how the song goes. And your rhyming blows."

No more than ten seconds later, Black came back. "Fuck off, Cullen, that's Top 40 material right there." Another text followed a moment later. "Bitches are already starting to squirm, though."

"Good, keep them that way while we take our turn."

The Delta replied with a simple, immediate, "Our pleasure."

Pocketing the phone with a final shake of his head, Edward signaled Jasper, and then Alice.

"Finally."

"Alright," he said, maneuvering to cover the lieutenant as she slowly peeled back her camo netting. Once exposed, she was up, moving, and out of her hole in record time. When she scrambled behind a nearby steel barrel, caved in and turned on its side a dozen yards away, and gave him a thumb's up, he nodded. "Tink, you and me'll hit the front. I'll take out the door, and the second it's gone, you light up that front room like the Fourth of July."

Alice patted her left hip pouch and beamed. "You know I love fireworks."

"Blondie, you and Bear hit the rear." The two Marines replied immediately, and then with a pointed dip of his chin, Edward shot a glance over the rusted-out hood to the corporal. With the sun now low and behind the ridgeline, the younger man was nothing more than a sand-on-sand outline against the ancient cistern. "Jazz, as soon as we move, you reposition closer and watch that set of windows on the east side. Direct traffic and bounce back any early departures. Up to you if they go back walking, crawling, or in a box."

"You got it, sir."

"Doctor?" And just like before, the captain's voice suddenly went quiet. The impact of it made Bella's heart jump in her throat. "You stay with Em, you hear me?"

Squeezing her fists together, Bella looked left, and then right, eyeing the pair of decked-out Marines on either side of her. "I will, I promise." When she added a soft, "Like I said, don't worry about me," she thought she caught him muttering something back, but it was too low to tell for certain, and before she could ask, that hard-nosed commander was back with a clipped, no-room-for-debate, "Check your clocks. We go in 30."

Eyes pinned to her wrist, Bella's breath came out in short, shallow pants timed to the passing seconds. When the digits hit 10, without a word – or even a single visible cue – Emmett and Rosalie fanned out to the edges of their respective pillars in a smooth, well-choreographed maneuver they'd likely done a thousand times. At 5, Alice whispered a quiet affirmative to an order from the captain, right as Emmett motioned Bella over.

Forcing herself to move, gripping the captain's sidearm with both hands like some kind of lifeline, Bella duck-walked over to the pillar, even though it felt like her lungs had stopped working altogether. Emmett glanced over his shoulder and, as if he could see her knees knocking, threw her a devious, up-to-no-good smirk that would have made her roll her eyes had they been anywhere else. "You stick close, Doc. When we move, we're gonna go fast." Her stomach dipped, and he gave her another flash of teeth. "Hey, nothin' you ain't done before."

Unable to speak, she nodded, right as the captain issued the final command. "Go!"

Like their trek through the dark streets of Mogadishu, the next few seconds flew by in a blur of motion and nerves.

Hot on Emmett's heels, Bella darted out from behind the pillar and raced toward the target building. Swerving around the nose of the one of the Range Rovers so close her sleeve brushed the dusty grill, she hit the outside wall only a heartbeat after the Marine. There wasn't a moment to recover, however. As she swiped the dust from her eyes, Edward barked through their earpieces, calling out a hard, "Bear-man, Blondie, now!"

Rosalie's shotgun went off with a deafening boom, its breaching round blowing out the lock in a spray of concrete and metal shrapnel. Before the debris even hit the ground, another explosion went off from somewhere around the front, rocking the building's foundation. Another followed, and then another, drowning out the muffled shouts coming from inside.

Unfazed, rifle in the lead, Emmett kicked the door inward, splintering it into a hundred pieces, and yelled, "Knock, knock, motherfuckers!"

There was a momentary pause – a split second where everyone and everything froze – but then all hell broke loose on both sides of the house, and a barrage of rat-tat-tat gunfire answered. Bullets whizzed past the two Marines as they rushed the room, biting off chunks of the doorframe. One ricocheted off the wall and out the door, singing past Bella's ear.

"Let's go, Doc!" Rosalie belted, as she spun right and fired at a dark-haired militant that materialized out of the darkness. Hit at near point-blank range, the man flew backward into the wall. His rifle clattered to the ground as he slid down, slumping on the floor and leaving a trail of bright red blood on the concrete.

Head down just like she was told, Bella crept inside what looked like a small, makeshift kitchen, lit only by the slivers of waning light peeking through the curtains and a dim, bare bulb hanging from a wire in the ceiling. An old, beat-up table and set of chairs sat on top of cracked and peeling linoleum. Lining the left-hand wall was a set of Formica counters straight out of the early '80s, covered in papers, glassware, and miscellaneous objects too difficult to name in the low light. A pair of hotplates took the place of a stove, and in the corner, a slim, out-of-place European-style fridge hummed.

Just inside, Bella hesitated, spotting a line of half-inch copper tubing running from the back of the refrigerator through the floor.

"Take the left," Emmett said over the non-stop heavy fire coming from the front of the house. He motioned Rosalie to a narrow, arched hallway in the back of the room.

With a clipped nod, Rosalie angled left, but right as she hurdled a turned-over stool to take the hall, another young, twenty-something in a set of ancient, faded jungle fatigues spilled out of the same dark hole. His brown eyes widened as soon as he saw the barrel end of the gunny's weapon. Whipping up an old, wood-grip .45, he managed to pop off a single wild shot before a penetrating round from Emmett's 240B slammed through his armor into his gut, dropping him instantly.

Not even sparing a glance at the downed man, Rosalie shot past him into the dark hallway.

Emmett huffed. "You're welcome!" Without waiting for the reply he knew wouldn't come, he waved at the wide-eyed scientist frozen by a small refrigerator in the corner and pointed to yet another dark, narrow hall, this one on the opposite side of the room.

Ears ringing from the close-range blast of Emmett's rifle, Bella's eyes darted from him to the fridge, to the floor, and then back up again. "Wait." She shook her head. "Something isn't ri–"

"Later. We gotta move! Captain's coming in from the front."

Stomach in knots, Bella took one final, fleeting look at the sleek white door with its seemingly untouched silvery handle and then raced across the ransacked room, skirting at least four men sprawled across the floor and doing her damnedest to ignore the blood splatter and vacant eyes. Halfway there, another boom rocked the building, followed by jumbled shouts and the bang of a door snapping back against its hinges. Deeper in the belly of the house, boots pounded against metal stairs.

At the other end of the house, Edward stepped through a curtain of smoke and swept the front room. Faded red and black rugs overlapped across the floor, and against the walls were matching pillows in a dozen shapes and sizes. Three soldiers lay motionless – two in all black, but one pale, sandy-blond, and sporting that now-familiar Eastern European camouflage patterning.

"That who I think it is?" Alice asked, toeing the man's shoulder until he rolled to his back. Angry red fragment wounds littered his face and arms, but it was the dime-sized bullet wound oozing from his throat that had taken him out.

Edward glanced down, his expression flat, devoid of emotion. "Close, but no cigar. Looks more like Jazz's Mr. 203 to me."

The lieutenant frowned as she reached down for the metal tags peeking out from the soldier's shirt. "Nah, not quite. Almost-203's named Feliks." She tucked the tag in her pouch and took a quick shot with her helmet cam for later ID. "Damn it." That frown turned into a rarely seen pissed-off glare. "Ghost, I really, really want that Spetsnaz fucker dead for what he did to B."

Recalling all too well the wild, frantic terror that had riddled their scientist's eyes and voice as she'd detailed her dash through the back alleys of Mogadishu, Edward's jaw popped, and he had the sudden, irrational urge to unload his entire magazine into the dead man on the floor. A soft, "You and me both, Lieutenant," was all he said, however, and then he wordlessly gestured for her to check the door off to the right.

Without looking back, Alice slinked through the cracked door, only to return a second later. "Nothing. Just some papers and a few stacks of books."

Edward's eyes quickly scanned the room, stopping on a still-smoking cigar dropped on the floor. European and expensive by the looks of it, its scent was lost in the stench of gunpowder and blood. His lips mashed together. "What you got, Blondie?"

"Four down in back. Just typical guns for hire from the looks of them." A trio of small caliber shots rang out, followed by the heavy blast of the gunny's breaching shotgun echoing through the hallways. "Make that five."

"You see our target?"

"Not yet." Rosalie ground out a curse. "These sons of bitches multiply like fuckin' rabbits. You notice the walls?"

Already at the door leading into the rest of the house, Alice knuckled the roughed up plaster. Instead of the usual hollow thump, the sound was dense and muffled. "Reinforced. Betting they're lined."

"Bear-man, what's your status?" Edward asked, taking the opposite side of the door. He gave the lieutenant a short nod, and then blasted a handful of rounds through the center of the wood before shouldering through. The moment the door gave way, Alice's flashbang arced over his head into the center of the pitch-black room, bursting into an explosion of light and sound the second it hit the floor.

After the initial detonation, Alice's broad-beam light swept the room, revealing nothing but an empty space with a flipped-over table and a pile of empty milk crates in the corner. A pair of gunmetal gray doors stood to their left. Pointing to the one closest to the corner – the one minus a layer of rust on the hinges – she mouthed a silent, "There."

"Bear-man?" Edward asked again, this time sharper, as he swapped out magazines in preparation for another breach.

This time, the big man came back. "Just checkin' out the west wing." In the background, Bella mumbled something, and Emmett added, "Doc's right. Intel was shit. This place is like a goddamned maze. Doors and hallways everywhere."

"This end, too. Anything?"

"Not much. Second ago, two of 'em – more of those little assholes in black – scrambled out a window when we stepped thro–"

A loud, piercing crack! rang out from somewhere outside, followed by another, before Jasper's low chuckle came through the radio. "Considering all the commotion in there, thought ya'll might prefer the 'in boxes' option."

"Works for me." Emmett's transmission muted for a moment, but Edward could still pick out the Marine's side of the quiet discussion between him and the woman trailing him.

"What?"

"You think so?"

"Shit, go ahead, tell him."

Muscles locking, Edward cut in, "Tell me what, Doctor?"

Soft as a whisper, Bella's voice shook when she spoke, and he knew without seeing that that too-pretty face of hers was ashen and damp with cold sweat. "Captain, I think they're under the building. When the first explosions hit, I heard steps, like people running down stairs."

Edward's and Alice's eyes dropped to the floor.

"Good ears. We knew it was a possibility," the captain slowly replied, signing Alice to go wide and stick close to the walls as she approached the metal door. Once there, she tested the knob, and then pulled out a small block of pale gray putty to fit against the lock.

"That's not all." Bella sucked in a long, ragged breath, and when she continued, the tremble in her voice disappeared. "Something else is going on."

"Elaborate."

"The kitchen in the back… I don't think it's a kitchen." She said something short and emphatic to Emmett. "They've got lines running through the floor. It took me a minute to realize what I was seeing, but I'm guessing it's for coolant."

Edward stilled, gesturing at Alice to do the same. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying they probably rigged it up to run in tandem with some other coolers or refrigerators somewhere else in the building." Bella paused, as if trying to figure out how to explain it in words he'd understand. Any other time, Edward would have smiled. "My old lab partner in grad school did that kind of thing… our group didn't have a lot of money for equipment, so sometimes he'd scrounge up old appliances and retrofit them to do what we needed."

"But why?"

This time it was Jasper who answered. "'Cause you can dampen temperature fluctuations by tying the boxes together and staging the compressors. I'm guessing you can keep it plus or minus, what, a degree?"

"Easily."

Edward's brow folded. "And you'd want that because?"

She didn't answer at first, but he could hear the woman's hard swallow, and the sound of it made him want to go right back in that front room and kill 203 all over again. "Because it's the safest way to store unstable compounds."

The captain swore under his breath, even as he went ahead and motioned for Alice to set the charge. "Like XR-5, right?"

"Exactly like XR-5. Captain, this isn't just a hideout… It's a second lab."

The radio went utterly silent for a too-long, drawn-out moment, until the sound of Rosalie's shotgun lighting off again boomed through the halls. Somewhere deeper inside, a man screamed bloody murder, silenced a beat later by a volley from the M4A1 she carried strapped to her back. "Make that two more for me," the gunny said, cool as always, completely unfazed by the Doctor's revelation. "Oh, and Ghost, I believe I got that set of steps. What you want me to do?"

Knowing they were in too far to get out now, the captain didn't hesitate. Eyes flinty in the dark, blood turning to steel, he said, "I want you to hold. We're coming to you." With a sharp swipe of his hand, Edward gave Alice the go-ahead to blow the door. "I want gas masks ready to go, Doctor Swan's syringes in your front pockets. No fucking around."

"Yes, sir."

"Anyone spots Walker or Aronović, I don't give a shit what Langley wants, you put a bullet in their brains first and the suits can ask their questions later. Especially if it's Walker."

A bright, showering spark lit up the darkened room, and a loud pop! went off as Alice's wad of C4 ignited, instantly obliterating the lock. The heavy metal door blew inward, banging off the concrete wall behind it, and as he and the lieutenant stormed the room, Edward growled, "But if you see Spetsnaz, that motherfucker is mine."

.

.

.

Notes:

Glossary:

99 Bottles of Beer – for non US/Canadians, this is probably the most annoying/fun song ever sung in history. If you do it thoroughly, you essentially count down from 99 bottles to 1 bottle. It's a great song to drive parents crazy on long car rides. Jake's little ditty above is just a badly rhyming play on that.

Abrams – refers to the M1 Abrams battle tank produced by the US. The current generation, the M1A2, is equipped with a 120 mm tank gun, plus a .50 M2HB heavy machine gun, plus a pair of 7.62 mm M240 machine guns. It's heavily armored and weighs in close to 70 tons. It's kind of a beast – something you wouldn't miss if it rolled up on you. Hence Paul's sarcastic comment above.

C4 – or Composition C-4, is a type of plastic explosive. It can be used in a variety of situations, big and small. It's particularly handy when one wants a controlled blast, like in the case of explosive breaching.

LT – is short for lieutenant

Poky – for those not from the US and perhaps those of you on the younger side, refers to the Poky Little Puppy, a character in a very, very popular children's book of the same name published in 1942 as one of the original Little Golden Books.