A/N: NEW STORY! Hahaha I should NOT be starting a new story right now because of school, but I miss writing. I told myself I was going to hold off. But here we are.

I bring another AU-ish story to you. I hope you enjoy :) let me know what you think!

He looked down as he strapped his gear on, tugging the strap of his pack until it squeezed him, sweat beading around his eyebrows underneath his helmet.

"McCord!" His major's yell caused him to jolt, something he wouldn't normally do had he not been on edge from only having four hours of sleep total in the past four days.

His head shot up and looked around for where the voice was coming from, "Sir," he replied, laying eyes on his major walking through the tent's opening. He had a look on his face that made the sweat drip into Henry's eyes, but he didn't rub them, he only blinked and felt that sour burn as he refused to blink again.

"You're on the ground tonight," he barked at Henry, and he blinked again, resisting the urge to rub his eye.

"Sir?" He didn't mean to say it, but it came tumbling out of his mouth anyway. When he remembered who he was speaking to, he immediately backpedaled, "I mean, yes sir, Major Grayson," he said, taking off his flight helmet and putting his ground helmet on quickly while someone else yelled for them to move out.

They had just been briefed on their mission for the night—the President of the United States was in on this, even, and they listened to him from the Sit Room of the White House while they all stood in a group. "This is an extraction," he'd said, and Henry crossed his arms. Extractions always made him more nervous when he was up in the air—it made him uneasy to think of having to get bodies out alive rather than bodies out that were not alive.

The president moved to the side of the flickering television screen and the director of the CIA came on. Henry grimaced because he's never been able to stand that guy, Conrad Dalton, but he also just knew that as soon as the CIA was involved, it always meant a shit show to follow. They rarely ever give enough intel, and this was no exception.

"There is an asset in there who is in danger, and it is with great stress that I remind you her life is invaluable, and she must be gotten out alive." Dalton said, and Henry felt his heart in his throat. No pressure, he thought. Usually in situations like these, his plane is used as a distraction technique, but in some situations, he has to deploy weaponry. Weaponry and making sure their people get out alive don't always mix.

When they were leaving the briefing to go get the rest of their gear on and load up the helicopters, and in his case go to the planes, he realized the weight in Dalton's voice, the way it sounded like it was dragging at its lowest. He sounded tired, defeated almost, but it didn't make Henry feel any better about the fact that the CIA always, always holds intel back from them. He knew even underneath the weight of Dalton's voice that there was something else, something that he wasn't completely saying.

Aside from the weight in Dalton's voice, he also knew that the Marines don't usually get sent in unless the job is hefty, dangerous. This wasn't just a mission for the Marines because they were close by to the rescue op.

Henry hadn't been on the ground for a mission in a while though, his first few missions excluded. This was his second deployment since graduating, and he had been up in the air this entire tour. He was glad for it, though—he hated the sand in Kuwait. He felt much more at ease above the desert than in it.

Once his gear was on, he got his platoon ready and briefed them quickly as they were headed out to the helicopter to be dropped in to the area the warehouse was in. The major had made it clear: he was in charge this mission, and Henry felt the tension rubbing against him like sandpaper whenever he would think about why Major Grayson would be taking over.

The thumping over his head of the helicopter's blades made Henry's eyes close for a moment—helicopters always seemed so much louder than jets. The vibrations were pounding into his chest, too, as he looked across at the row of men and women sitting. Major Grayson was sitting next to him, and he looked over as he pulled out a map and spread it across his lap. "Is that the warehouse?" Henry asked.

"Yes," Grayson answered, not looking over at Henry. His voice was calm and methodical, but Henry also sensed some unease in it, too. He heard the way it cracked occasionally. This was serious.

"This is the target," Major Grayson continued, tapping a red circle on the map, "A warehouse just outside of Al-Mutanabbi airfield. We're going in quiet—the CIA says it's a high-priority retrieval, but they've been vague on specifics."

"Yes sir," Henry agreed quietly as he studied the map.

"Expect hostiles inside," Grayson said, "Likely guards and lots of guns, explosives, too."

Henry's mouth felt dry suddenly and he peeled his eyes away from the map, looking at the row of men and women again. Stay safe, he thought, wanting to say it out loud but knowing it was pointless. They knew what they'd signed up for, and so did he.

"Our job is simple: retrieve the package and get out."

Grayson's voice pulled him back to the situation at hand again, no longer letting his mind wander to the origins of how these men and women chose the Marine Corps.

"McCord, Lacey," Grayson barked, and both men looked over at him sharply, "You're on the flank. Cover our six and hold the position if things go sideways. We don't need any hotshot heroics, which is why I'm asking my two fighter pilots to be on the ground."

Henry breathed a little sigh of relief. I hoped there was a reason. "Do we have a picture of our target, sir?" He asked, realizing the CIA never gave them one.

"No," he said, "We just know we're looking for a female in her late twenties. The CIA is protecting her identity, and they're not sure if she's going to have any other identifiable features."

"Oh," Henry murmured, and he heard Lacey do the same. They made eye contact with the Major sandwiched between them, and they quickly looked away.

It's never good when their target may not have identifiable features. That means this could easily turn into a retrieval mission of a dead body that's already dead.

He clenched his jaw and turned toward the row again. He had a bitter taste in his mouth from this entire mission, and he knew better than to do that—one bitter person who feels wronged can ruin the whole mission or put the whole platoon in danger. He knew that. But he wanted to be up in the air where he saw things best. He was relegated back to a grunt, and though the Major tried to make it sound like he and Lacey were there for a reason, it still stung.

The Major continued his briefing and Henry tried his best to listen, but he was struggling. He almost told the Major to take him off the mission entirely, that he wasn't in the right headspace, but he knew he'd be letting his country down—he was still tied to his sense of duty, above all.

But then again, something told him it was off—his gut said this wasn't right. The lack of intel. The vague directives. The rushed timeline. Nothing felt right. But this wasn't his op to run, and he wasn't one to go against directions, so he gripped his weapon tighter in his lap and stared at the floor of the aisle. When the helicopter jolted during its descent, he jolted, too, and he knew that they were here.

The helicopter landed hard, and as soon as it did, their boots were down in the sand. Other than the chopper's blades, the night desert was so eerily quiet that it made Henry's ears ring. He heard Grayson's voice barking orders, and then he heard his name and Lacey's, and they covered Grayson's entry along with some other Marines going through the right side of the fence. Once they were all in, Grayson motioned for them to spread out, and Henry felt naked there—just him and Lacey covering their six.

"Stand by," he heard in his headset, Grayson's voice ringing through loud and clear. He gripped onto his weapon and watched as one group of them filtered in through the door and then one group filtered in through a window they'd gotten open. It was so quiet, Henry wasn't sure how no one inside would've missed the inevitable squeak of the pane.

When Grayson gave them the motion to move again, he and Lacey followed them in. "Clear left," Lacey said into the headset.

"Clear right," Henry followed.

He felt like his heart was in his throat, or maybe as though he'd left his body back in the helicopter and he were just walking with all his organs outside of their home. He felt vulnerable, to say the least, but he knew he'd feel worse if he bailed. Especially now—Lacey had two kids at home and a wife pregnant with the third. He couldn't do that to him.

"Hold position," Grayson turned to them and said, and Henry bristled. That was the safest job here—holding position. He glanced at Lacey who seemed content, or at least wasn't showing his discontent the same way Henry was, and then he glanced back at where the team had just slinked off to.

He stood still for a few moments until he heard a clinking noise to his right, his head whipping around with his gun up. He slowly moved toward the sound, signaling back to Lacey to stay put.

"Where are you going?" Lacey hissed.

Henry put his hand up again in the air, a clear "stop" this time. He rounded the corner with his rifle up to his face, looking through the night scope to get a better view at everything. His whole body turned with him as he faced into a room, and his eyes immediately widened when he saw the red numbers.

"Grayson!" He hissed into the radio, "We've got a problem—possible explosive. Do you copy?" Just as soon as he finished his sentence, he heard gunfire begin, and he looked back through the door he'd just come in and felt the panic rising.

As he got close enough to see the numbers—04:52—he felt something hit him in the back of the head with a terrible force. His helmet got knocked sideways and he turned around as quickly as he could to fight back, but he was struggling to adjust his eyes to the darkness and also to let them adjust after the blow.

He quickly threw a punch—not the training he was supposed to use in this situation, but it was defense whether it was right or not. The man punched him in the cheek, causing him to stumble sideways and almost hit the bomb. He'd still felt too dizzy from the blow to really think it through.

Briefly, Henry wondered why the man didn't have a gun. He tried to get a better look at the guy, and then he realized he'd hit him with the gun. Seemed counterproductive. The (seemingly) perfectly good rifle in the man's arms would've done the trick.

Henry reached for the pistol on his side and placed it on the man's temple after he yanked the rifle and threw it behind him. It hit the wall somewhere, and he nestled the gun in against his skin, holding it there for a moment. He paused, looking the man in the eyes, "Who are you?" He asked him, trying to get any intel he could—whether it was to report back to the CIA or not. When the man didn't answer, he pushed the gun into his temple harder, "Who are you?!" He yelled.

When he yelled the second time, his vision went black for a moment and came back. When he looked into the man's eyes again, he realized this was no man at all—this was a boy.

And this boy was reaching for the rifle on Henry's shoulder.

Before he got his hands around it, Henry pulled the trigger, watching the man fall to the ground. He hadn't done that since his first tour, and he hadn't been so close to anyone then, either.

"Grayson! Lacey!" He almost yelled into the radio this time, the adrenaline sinking in as the weight of what he's just done comes crashing down. His voice was more desperate, "Does anyone copy?" The gunfire continued almost as fast as the numbers were counting down, and he felt very dizzy.

He felt his legs wobble when he realized, then, that his radio must be down. Either that or something happened to the rest of his platoon while he was off following a sound he'd heard, leaving his post. Or they've all been gunned down—the constant gunfire told him that was definitely a possibility.

He lurched to his right to miss the bomb as he hurled onto the floor beside it.

"McCord," he finally heard, and he jumped up from his knees where he'd been down looking closer at the explosive. He wiped his mouth as he listened, "This is Grayson, we're pinned down at the south entrance. Engaged with hostiles. What's your status?"

"I'm with the device," he said quickly, "It's under four minutes now," he said, "This is going to blow, sir, we've got to—" He hadn't felt the blood trickling down his neck until just then, and he briefly wondered what the point of hitting him was rather than just shooting him.

"We have to retrieve the package," Grayson barked.

Henry, looking at the body, now looked at the device counting down—03:46—and he looked around the room and prayed to the God he'd studied so hard in college, the one who his mother brought him up on in his Catholic church on Sundays. He knelt down again and pulled the knife from his belt, swallowing thick as he studied the bomb.

Think, McCord.

Blood dripped down from what he assumed was his cheek—it had been pounding ever since the man—the boy—hit him, but he hadn't been able to think much about it.

It had been so long since he'd taken the explosives course that he felt like his knowledge was out of reach. He was hoping that if there were such a thing as muscle memory when it came to disarming explosives, but so far, there was nothing coming.

The minutes were counting down much too fast as he fumbled with the wires, trying to ignore the gunshots that seemed to be getting closer to him. The pounding in his face spread to his head, and he felt like he was going to throw up again while the back of his neck throbbed. His thoughts weren't helping, either—he thought too much about Lacey, and he thought about the picture he'd shown him of his wife. He thought, too, about how they were all about to be dead anyway if he couldn't get this bomb disarmed.

As the clock turned to 00:58, Henry heard a thud behind him and he startled, turning around quickly and almost cutting the bomb's wiring anyway. "Who's there?" He demanded, and then he heard another thud. How had he not noticed the closet back there? How had he missed that while this kid tried to brain him when he stepped into the room?

He looked at the bomb—00:47—and then back at where he'd heard the noise coming from. He felt like he was crawling through tar, his body was trying to move fast but instead he slithered over on his hands and knees. His rifle was in his arm as he opened the door quickly to see a supply closet with something that was clearly not supplies—a woman in her late twenties.

"Are you—" he murmured, but she was screaming something at him. Her eyes—barely opened at all—were darting behind him, and he realized she's trying to talk about the bomb. He reached out quickly and ripped the tape from her mouth, a move that normally would've made him grimace had he not been under so much adrenaline and the effect of a definite concussion.

"Blue wire and then red," she said, her voice cracking as she almost screamed it out to him. Her words seemed like she was speaking them through a plexiglass wall, and she could barely keep her eyes open and on him. "Blue and then red!" She screamed this time, and he panicked and slid back across the floor as fast as he could.

00:21.

His hands shook as he fingered the blue wire, putting the edge of his knife blade to it and waiting there for a moment.

What if she's here to blow us all up? What if she's not the CIA person we're supposed to be rescuing, and she's just a ploy?

When the timer hit 00:15, he snapped the blue wire in half with his knife, grabbing quickly for the red one. It was stuck underneath the others, though, and he was struggling to get a clean cut on it. When the clock hit 00:08, he took a chance and yanked the red wire, pulling it out from underneath the others safely, and then he snapped it in half, too. He hadn't realized, but he'd bit a hole into his tongue at some point. By 00:04, the clock stopped, and he could taste the blood in his mouth.

He stared at the timer for a few moments, wondering if he were imagining it or if it had actually stopped. His vision was blurry, and he noticed, finally, that he was struggling to see out of his left eye—maybe the boy had hit him higher than he'd realized. He counted his breaths—one, two, three, four—and only then did he trust that the bomb's timer had been stopped for certain.

Remembering the woman, he looked back at her in the supply closet and raced on his knees over to her. His gun was still strapped to his shoulder as he fumbled with the tape around her ankles. "I hope you're the CIA package," he murmured quietly to her as she attempted to maneuver her legs out of the tape, helping him the best she could. Which wasn't much help, he was finding.

She didn't say anything. When he looked up at her, he realized that she had a black eye and that her hair was covered in blood—indeed, she wouldn't have been identifiable by her features alone. Her lips were scabbed and some of them had opened, and he winced as he ripped the tape off her leg and balled it up behind him.

"Sir," Henry said into his radio as he watched the woman's eyes rolling back in her head, "Sir!" He almost screamed, "I've got her—I've got the package!" He hoped she was the package. If not, he realized he'd be in deep shit when they got back.

"Move out!" He heard Grayson's voice booming over the radio, over the gunfire in the background and all around him. He fumbled with the woman's tape on her hands, too, and then he finally decided when her head slumped over that he just needed to go ahead and pick her up and take her with him.

He positioned himself to scoop her into his arms, and then he threw her over his shoulder a little less than carefully. Her body felt dead already, but he could feel her pulse on the wrist he was holding to keep her steady on his shoulder as he exited the room. But first, he had to step over the body of the boy he'd shot to death, and it made him pause only briefly before his own preservation senses kicked in again.

When he turned the corner, he squinted through the darkness to try and see where the hell he was. He thought he remembered his way out, but the timer had thrown him off—defusing a bomb isn't something he's used to doing, exactly. Maybe the throbbing headache had something to do with it, too, or even the fact that he couldn't seem to see from his left eye.

He looked left and right, and then he heard gunshots coming from his left, so he went right. He went away from the fire, this time, only because he had her on his shoulder with her legs dangling in front of his torso.

He heard the chopper's blades whirring finally and he rushed toward that sound, his legs starting to buckle underneath him as he saw people rushing toward him. He tripped and stumbled, catching himself this time, but when he tried to put his other foot in front, he fell to the ground. He turned and landed awkwardly on his side, feeling a crunch underneath him. He immediately cursed and hoped that it wasn't her leg or her arm, something of hers, and then he got a terrible pain in his chest.

My ribs, he thought instead.

There was someone peeling the body off his, and then they were picking him up, too. He heard gunshots going over his head as he was limping to the helicopter, one person underneath his left arm and another coming over underneath his right.

"Lacey…" he murmured, suddenly remembering he was supposed to be covering with him.

"Not now, McCord," he heard a woman's voice say, but his eyes were rolling into the back of his head.

His head fell backward and at the same time he vomited, spewing on his face and shoulders as the fellow Marines picked his head up and kept walking him to the helicopter. Ahead of him, he saw two other people loading the woman into the helicopter.

"Is she gonna be…" he couldn't quite finish the sentence because his vision kept going black, and it was starting to make him nervous. He felt his heart flutter as he thought of her, and he wondered if it was always like this—the saving someone. He'd been too busy 30,000 feet up in the air to ever know what it felt like to be on the ground after a rescue mission like this. Especially to be the one to have pulled the target out.

"He needs a medic!" the female voice was yelling again as they pulled him up into the helicopter, and then he was being whisked away to another part of the vehicle where he could no longer see anything, and all he could hear was the terrible buzzing in his ears that had only gotten louder, louder…louder…