As Mea left the office, she checked her watch. Yousef was nearly fifteen minutes past due. She paused at the door when he finally appeared, her eyes narrowed slightly at the cigarette in his mouth, but she said nothing about it. Her face was normally like steel, emotionless and military...hard. But today, there was a paleness to her cheeks that leeched the color from her deep Mediterranean tan.<br/><br/>She was not a young woman anymore, but her face was well preserved and she needed little in the way of cosmetic artifice to be considered attractive. Her thick brunette waves were pulled back into a severe french twist, and she tucked this away beneath a low brimmed camouflage Army hat. One long fingernail clicked on the plastic of her watch face as she stared up at him, unblinking, from beneath the brim of the hat. She looked like a tiny drill instructor.<br/><br/>"Fifteen minutes late. If you were still in, they'd make you do PT for two hours for this. The Vatican and this company do not have time to wait for you. If this wasn't such an urgent matter, I'd report you. Understood, Captain?" There was a gravity in her eyes that begged for seriousness. She whipped the paper folder out from under captivity in her arm, and held it out to him.  "I'll brief you while we head back to the truck. Seems we'll be taking a flight to the States today."<br/>