G. I. Joe 1. Chapter 1: Assignment

**PART I:****G.I. Joe Special Missions: DRC**

**Chapter 1: Assignment**

"I need your help," the man on the vidphone screen said again.

Clayton Abernathy, otherwise known as General Hawk to his subordinates, gritted his teeth, silently counted to ten and back, then repeated his question. "And I ask you, again, what right do you think you have to call me and request my team's help with your petty problems?"

"Look, Clayton, I know we aren't the best of friends—"

"That's a friggin' understatement. Give the man a beer, he sure knows how to read minds," Hawk said sarcastically.

"—I know we aren't the best of friends, but your team is the best there is at what they do, and right now I need the best." Major Clancy forced the words out in a rush, as if desperate to get them out before he either lost his nerve or General Hawk cut him off.

Hawk took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down, now slightly intrigued. In the years since he and Clancy had attended Academy together, he'd learned that the man hated asking for help. The fact that he had now meant something likely was going on that he wasn't able to handle, either in personal capacity or in 'official' military capacity. "So what is it that you need my guys to do?" he raised a hand. "I'm not agreeing to this, not yet. I want to know exactly what this is that I'm getting my team into."

Clancy sighed. "It's an escort job."

Hawk rolled his eyes and reached for the off button. "Your people can handle that—"

"Wait, it's not like that! Have you heard of the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo?"

Hawk stopped. Thought. "Speak fast. I'm a very busy man and my time is short."

"The International Criminal Court, the ICC, based in The Hague, Netherlands, has this major case coming up against a high-ranking lieutenant in the Army of the DRC. The Office of the Prosecutor's trying to build an airtight case against this lieutenant, and in order to do so they've got this victims advocate to go out to one of the far-flung villages in North Kivu, a province in the eastern part of the DRC, and speak to some of that lieutenant's victims. She set out for the village about two months ago with a full military escort and they were ambushed just outside of Shungo, halfway to the village. She reached safety but a lot of the team didn't. I had her flown back to Goma by bush pilot but she still needs to go out there and talk to those victims—and there's a doctor there, a Dr. Kristophe Lavigne, works with the charity organization MSF, Medecins Sans Frontieres or Doctors Without Borders in English, who had to leave the area when two of his teammates were wounded out there late last year. Dr. Lavigne wants to travel with the prosecutor and your team out to that area to tend to some of the villagers—there were some villagers who had wounds requiring long term care, and he's anxious to see how they're faring after his abrupt departure last winter. I just need a team of your people to go out there with the prosecutor and the doctor, ensure their safety while they are out there in North Kivu, and then get them to the UN peacekeeping base in Kirumba."

Hawk thought. He'd heard some of what was going on in the DRC—who hadn't?—but hadn't paid it too much attention. "It sounds pretty straightforward. So how come your soldiers couldn't handle the job?" he asked.

Clancy blew out a breath. "Because in addition to the Lord's Resistance Army led by that maniac Joseph Kony, the DRC's army aren't playing the 'good guys' either; their leader, Kibibi Mutwara, was arrested a few months back for human rights violations. Supposedly Mutwara's forces are there to help keep the peace but all they're really doing is abusing their power and the terrorizing the locals. That ambush—we're still not sure if our escorts got caught in between the DRC army and one of the rogue militia factions as innocent bystanders, or if they were a target—our intel sources didn't have info on that. But the UN wants the doctor to go back out, and the ICC needs whatever testimony this prosecutor can dig up to convict their guy, and both the doctor and the lawyer are willing to go back out there, so I thought I'd call you and see if your team would be willing to provide a small—and I'll stress small—escort."

Hawk smiled grimly. "So what you're telling me is that your intel was faulty and your people weren't capable of handling the assignment. That's not a worry; my people don't work under any such handicaps." Clancy opened his mouth to say something, but Hawk held up a hand. "No. Here's what I'm going to do. You send me what information you have. I'll look over it when I get it, then show my troops. I'm going to let them make a decision. The Congo isn't a joke, I've heard of the unrest over there, but at the same time there's no official US presence in there, so my people will be working with no support. I'm going to let them decide whether they want to do this, and I'm taking volunteers only. I'll have your answer for you in a few days. Now, send over whatever intel you do have." And without further word, he snapped off the videophone, turned on his own computer and started doing his own research into the country and the specific area of North Kivu that was the focal point of the trouble.

The intelligence he'd asked Clancy for arrived the next morning , and he spent the morning

looking through it. The intel _had_ been faulty; what he'd been able to research on his own was far more complete than the packet Clancy had sent over. Which made Hawk shake his head; a good leader never trusted the intel, not completely; one had to plan for contingencies, and where possible corroborate with other sources. No wonder Clancy's team had been caught flat-footed.

But his team would go in with eyes open, with as much information as he could give them, and they would be expecting trouble. And they'd be volunteers; he'd wait until everyone had the same info and then take volunteers; out of the volunteers he'd decide who would go. He already had a pretty good idea who would want to; there were a couple of jungle specialists here at HQ at the moment who hadn't been out for a while and would be itching for an opportunity…he ran down a roster of everyone who was currently here at HQ, then made sufficient copies of all available information for everyone. The considerable amount of paper surprised him; the contents of the folder disgusted him. The photos and reports from various international human rights organizers made him angry, and he knew it showed on his face as he strode toward the briefing room. He'd made an announcement last night at evening roll call letting everyone know there'd be a mission briefing at fifteen hundred today.

By the time he got to the briefing room most of the Joes who were already currently at Headquarters were waiting for him already. There was some whispering between them, but that ended as soon as he took his place behind the podium. Warrant Officer Dashiell Faireborn, codenamed Flint, took the huge pile of neatly-stapled handouts Hawk handed to him and wordlessly took the top one off the pile, then handed the stack to Staff Sergeant Alison Hart-Burnett, codenamed Lady Jaye, next to him. She also took one and handed the rest to Master Sergeant Shana O'Hara, aka Scarlett, sitting next to her, then flipped hers open and started scanning the pages.

Hawk waited until all the assembled Joes had a packet before he cleared his throat for attention. They sat up straight in their chairs, looking alert; some, like Lady Jaye, were already angry. She read fast and she'd skimmed the packet—she could hardly have missed the photo on the bottom of page ten.

"I got a call from General Clancy," Hawk started without further preamble. Around the room he saw several rolled eyes and heard not-quite-muffled groans; they all knew Clancy, knew what a pain in the ass the guy was. The last mission he'd asked General Hawk for help on had been a relatively boring jaunt to New Zealand, made memorable only by the inadequate handling of flight arrangements and loss of baggage. Not that Scarlett and Snake Eyes had seen any problems with lost luggage on a tropical island, and they'd certainly not had a problem with the delay in flight arrangements that 'stranded' them on said island for an extra week…he suppressed a smile and turned his attention back to the business at hand. "Clancy has a little job he requested our help with. It's in the DRC, which, as we all know, is a hotbed of unrest at the moment. The job itself is simple; escort a doctor working with MSF and a lawyer with the ICC out to a village in the DRC jungle, ensure their safety while they do their work, then escort them out again."

"A babysitting job," Wayne Sneedon, aka Beach Head, commented. Corporal Courtney Krieger, codenamed Cover Girl, sitting next to him, punched him none-too-gently on the arm. He shot her an injured look; she responded with a poisonously sweet smile before she turned her attention back to Hawk, who'd decided to ignore the little exchange.

"A babysitting job made more complicated by the hostiles in the area. I'll recap a little about the DRC for those who might not know what's going on, then I'll brief you on the possible hostiles in the area in which this mission needs to be carried out." He turned and switched on the projector, which he'd hooked to his laptop while the packets had been passed around.

"This," he said, switching on a laser pointer and indicating the large colored map on the white screen, "Is the Democratic Republic of Congo, otherwise known as the DRC. Back in the 80's, it was known as Zaire. It's the third largest country in Africa, and the twelfth largest in the world. There's nearly 71 million people in the country. The capital is Kinshasa, here on the western border of the country, and despite the fact that its people are among the poorest in the world, there are vast deposits of minerals and raw manufacturing materials.

"The Second Congo War, also referred to as the African World War, broke out in the early 90's and devastated the country, resulting in the death of about five million people. The then-president Mobutu Sese Seko finally fled Zaire in 1997, and the new ruler, Laurent Kabila, renamed the country the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, in order to become the president, he invited fighters from the neighboring countries of Rwanda and Uganda to help him get there, and they didn't take it too well when he thanked them for their services and told them to go home."

Someone snickered. Beach Head, it sounded like.

Hawk ignored that too. "To say that they didn't take it kindly is an understatement. They wanted to control the country with him as the figurehead. When their attempts didn't work, they assassinated him in 2001, and he was succeeded by his son Joseph Kabila. The younger Kabila brokered a peace talk that ended the war and apparently withdrew the foreign troops."

"By 'apparently', I take it they didn't leave. Or didn't leave quietly." Lady Jaye commented, following along with his presentation via the packet in her hand. It contained the same information Hawk was giving them now, just in greater detail.

"No, they didn't leave. At least, not all of them. Most of them withdrew, but the eastern region of the DRC, in particular two provinces named North Kivu and South Kivu, border Uganda and Rwanda and are therefore prey to foreign militia and rebel forces left over from the Second Congo War. When democratic elections were held in the DRC in 2006 Joseph Kabila won over challenger Jean Pierre Bemba, 45% to 20%. Bemba chose to dispute the results. Sixteen people died in the ensuing riots in Kinshasa from August 20-22 that year. The UN finally took control and ended the dispute, then oversaw another election, in which Kabila won 70% of the vote. That still didn't end it for the majority of Congolese; those contested provinces of North and South Kivu are still plagued by multiple military factions." He clicked on to another image, this one two thumbnail photos of two African men.

"Faction one. The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda. FDLR, as they're known. Led by a renegade General named Laurent Nkumba and militia 'president' Gaston Iyamuremye," click to another slide, "with two other men named Felicien Nsanzubukire, his arms procurer," click, "and Leodomir Mugaragu as his militia planner. The last three have had sanctions placed on them by the UN for crimes against humanity, genocide in their attempt to exterminate some of the native Congolese tribes, and mass rape, pillage, torture, and killings, and it's expected Nkumba himself will receive sanctions before much longer."

"Some President." That was First Sergeant Conrad Hauser, aka Duke, sitting next to Scarlett.

Hawk nodded and went on. "Faction two. The Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, the FPLC. Despite their initial assertion that they stand for the people of the DRC and they want nothing but what is good for their country, they too have been accused of the same things the FDLR are accused of. There is an international warrant for the arrest of their 'deputy chief' Bosco Ntaganda with the ICC, he's been indicted of war crimes and is currently a fugitive."

"What's the world coming to when you can't even trust the people who are supposed to be protecting you?" Scarlett wrinkled her nose.

"Oh, it gets worse. Faction three, the Army of the Democratic Republic of Congo, headed by Lieutenant Colonel Innocent Zimurinda." Hawk nodded grimly at the widened eyes throughout the room. "Yes. The army under the control of the man who was elected president is going around murdering and raping men, women and children, burning villages and houses with people still inside them. The photo at the bottom of page ten is a graphic illustration of what their own army is doing to the people." All around the room, people who hadn't yet seen that picture gasped and made expressions of disgust and dismay and anger; the photo was of an ethnic house that had been burned, and the center of the photograph was a charred mattress with what was still quite clearly three small children twisted grotesquely on it. Cover Girl placed a hand over her mouth and nose, as if she could smell the stench of burned flesh. "Zimurinda has been sanctioned by the UN for war crimes and crimes against humanity—the same things the other people whose names and photos I have shown you have been sanctioned for. However, the president of DRC has taken no steps to stop the man; Zimurinda continues to head up military operations from a camp somewhere in North Kivu." He clicked to the next slide.

"Faction four. The Lord's Resistance Army, the LRA, led by a man named Joseph Kony. He is a religious fanatic who believes that God's telling him to build a pure Africa based strictly on the Ten Commandments and he's raising an army to enforce those beliefs. His modus operandi, however, is children. He has an army of brainwashed child soldiers, kidnapped from villages, forced to watch as Kony executes their parents and burns their homes. Then they are marched into the jungle, only to come out as child soldiers, in the case of the boys, or as child sex slaves, for the girls. There are rumors of Kony taking child wives as young as nine or ten, and medical professionals tell horror stories of seeing starved preteen girls giving birth to babies the mothers say are Kony's." Open disgust and growing anger.

"Faction five. The FLNK, or Front for the Liberation of North Kivu. Led by a guy named Maj Kasereka. He says he's protecting the DRC from Laurent Nkumba and the FDLR, but refuses to disarm. Fortunately, there are no reports of this faction terrorizing the country side and murdering the citizens, but they do have guns and armament in a region that has entirely too much of it already."

"Ánd we're supposed to escort a doctor and a lawyer through this? Are they crazy?" Corporal Daniel LeClaire, aka Recondo, spoke up from where he'd been sitting toward the back of the room.

Hawk clicked to another picture, a tall smiling African man with glasses. "One of the civilians we are being asked to escort is Kristophe Lavigne, a doctor volunteering with the organization Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF, otherwise known here as Doctors Without Borders. He is a French national volunteering with the organization. He was part of a medical team operating in north Kivu when several MSF workers were ambushed in their vehicles and shot. The MSF suspended activities in the region, and Mr. Lavigne had to be dragged out kicking and screaming; he was working in one of the remote villages, called Nzoka, in North Kivu and there were several patients gravely wounded who needed long-term care. According to Clancy he's demanding that he be allowed to return to the village. That's part of the reason why we were called."

"So who's the lawyer?" someone in the back of the room asked.

Hawk clicked over to the last picture, a blond woman with a confident smile. "This is Alexandra Cabot. She's a former Sex Crimes prosecutor with the Manhattan District Attorney's office, on sabbatical so she can pursue volunteer work with the ICC. She hasn't risen to the level of deputy prosecutor—yet—but right now she's handling witness and victim testimony and playing victim's advocate with an impressive amount of success."

"Why would a classy _femme_ like that want to come grubbing in the dirt with us?" Marine Gunnery Sergeant Ettienne LaFitte, aka Gung Ho, drawled. The big Cajun was staring at Alexandra's photo like he was looking at a goddess. Hawk suppressed a smile.

"Okay, here's the deal," Hawk said, switching off the projector. "I'm not going to order anyone to do this. I want to take volunteers only, because this isn't going to be a cakewalk. This could potentially be very dangerous. Our orders are for a small—and Clancy stressed the 'small'—so we're looking at five soldiers, tops. The two working languages are English and French, so I want personnel who have at least a rudimentary knowledge of both, and any experience with African dialects will also be helpful. The US has no official military presence here in the DRC, so if something goes wrong we can't get you out in a hurry. The tensions in the region are also potentially explosive. There is a UN peacekeeping base in Kirumba, North Kivu, but that's about a hundred thirty miles from the village the lawyer and the doctor want to get to, and that's 130 miles of extraordinarily hard terrain; it can take a wheeled vehicle as much as five hours just to get ten miles. The DRC only has about 300 miles of paved road in the entire country, and the roads double as runways for the local bush pilots, which are literally the only way into and out of some of these villages. I'm told a local pilot would have more experience with local weather, takeoff and landing requirements, as well as which areas are to be avoided, so we'll have a local pilot take you guys in and bring you guys out. So only volunteers, only as much armament as you can carry, and this will be a quick, surgical, precise operation. A week at most and you'll be back here."

"I'll go." Lady Jaye was the first to raise her hand. Of course. She was their expert at covert ops. Hawk had known she'd want to go, and yet he didn't know how to tell her that it might not be a good idea. He'd been wrestling with that all night.

"I'm in." Flint. Naturally. Where Lady Jaye went, there went Flint also. Hawk had long ago gotten over being upset about fraternization between officers and subordinates. Technically, Flint ranked Lady Jaye, but Hawk rarely stood on rank here at HQ. Everyone, from him, a five-star general, to Cover Girl, a corporal, had something valuable to add to the team or they wouldn't be here. And this group of people he'd surrounded himself with were The Elite of the US Armed Forces, and they wouldn't be The Elite if they allowed personal feelings to interfere with their jobs. They were all consummate professionals, and the pairing of Flint and Lady Jaye had proved to be a distinct advantage many times on different missions.

Gung Ho grinned. "I'm in. Want to meet her." He gestured to the white screen, which moments ago had displayed the photograph of Alexandra Cabot. It was plain to anyone who knew him that the Cajun was intrigued by the pretty blonde lawyer.

"I'm in." At the back of the room, Big Brawler stood. Hawk was again surprised at the Joe's ability to disappear into the background. "If you're going into jungle, you need me."

"Me too." Recondo, which didn't surprise Hawk at all; Recondo was their expert at jungle missions. It was a toss-up, between him and Big Brawler; they were both evenly matched and constantly seeking to outdo each other; but they were both good team players, and the rivalry could stop at a moment's notice for the greater good.

At the moment, that wasn't what was worrying Hawk. It was Lady Jaye.

"Let me consider this," he nodded to the guys, but let his gaze linger on Lady Jaye. She'd served under him long enough that she understood the unspoken request for a quiet meeting, and nodded ever so slightly. "A team of five should be good enough to guard two civilians from a band of militia, and I'll need to make travel arrangements." He realized what he'd just said, and sighed; mentally, he'd already included Lady Jaye in this team. But for his peace of mind, he still had to at least try and talk her out of it.

He unhooked his laptop from the projector and started to gather up the papers, but Lady Jaye was there, collecting the papers for him. "Your hands are full. I'll get this, you get that," she said, her lips twitching a little at the sight of the laptop dwarfed in Hawk's calloused, weapon-hardened hands.


	2. Chapter 2: Decisions

**Chapter 2**

He spent a few minutes fussing with the placement of the laptop on his desk, trying to figure out how to say what he wanted to say, _needed_ to say, without Lady Jaye blowing up at him. Correction, it wouldn't be Lady Jaye, a military professional, who got upset with him; it would be Allison Hart-Burnett, the woman, who might get upset over what she might perceive as male overprotectiveness. But for his peace of mind, he still had to talk to her…

She stood for long moments watching him putter around, then chuckled and put him out of his misery. "General, if you're about to ask me to reconsider, you can save your breath. I'll stay behind if you order me to, because I know _why_ you feel that way, but I won't be happy about it."

His relief was almost palpable as he sat heavily down in his chair and looked up at her. "Allie, I'm not questioning your judgment," and she knew that what Hawk was going to say wasn't going to have any bearing on the military aspect; this was personal, because the only time he used her real name was when they were discussing something 'off the books'. "I'm actually glad you're going, in an odd sort of way, because you're the best we have at covert ops. But I'm trying to balance this out with what I know is a real risk to you, personally, physically. You can get very single-minded, sometimes; you'll think of the mission before you think of yourself, and it's gotten you in trouble in the past. The problem here is that with this mission, you can_not_ get that single-minded focus; there is a _long_ history of human rights violations and the status of women is pretty low in the region. STDs spread like wildfire down there because out-of-control militia are gang-raping the women, and for God's sake, I don't even want to _think _of you, or Shana, or Courtney in a situation even _close_ to that. I shudder at even the thought of that blond lawyer ending up in those bastards' hands. And I don't even like lawyers." He sighed. "I just didn't know how to say that without sounding like, as Courtney said about Wayne, once, 'a thickheaded male'."

Allie put her armload of papers down on Hawk's desk carefully so as not to disturb them, planted one hand on top of the pile so she wouldn't accidentally knock the pile over, and laughed for a very long time. "Oh for Pete's sake," Clayton said irritably just as she got herself under control, and that set her off again. Finally her laughter infected him, and he grinned, then grinned broadly, then guffawed with her until both their sides hurt from laughing.

"Okay," she seated herself on the edge of his desk, wiping tears from her eyes. "I haven't laughed like that in a while. Oh my." She got herself under control. "Seriously, though, Clayton, I appreciate your concern. Believe me, I'm not unconcerned myself; I've seen some of the stuff in the news about the things the various militia members do to the civilians and it gives me shivers. But if my being there can make a difference, even just a tiny one like escorting a doctor to look at a woman who's healing from that kind of treatment, even if it's just escorting a victim's advocate to talk to a traumatized woman, I'll have made that difference. And you have to think about those people, Clayton. They've seen uniformed, armed men all their lives, and none of those uniforms have ever done anything but hurt them. Maybe seeing a woman in uniform could get people to open up to us when no one else can."

"I hadn't seen it like that." Clayton looked thoughtful.

"Those women and children don't trust anyone carrying a gun. Those children don't even know that a uniform can mean security, hope, comfort. I hope maybe I can change that."

Hawk nodded. "All right. You have my official permission to go on this mission, Lady Jaye." They were back to business with his use of her codename. "However, even though you're the specialist in covert ops, I'm placing Flint in charge on this mission. If he makes a decision, you will follow it even if you don't agree. Am I understood, Staff Sergeant?"

"Aye-aye, Sir!" She snapped to attention and saluted. Hawk rarely stood on rank; when he did use your title, you'd damn well better pay attention. It wasn't that he was strict, he just worried about the people under his command. It was part of what made him such a good commander.

"Dismissed."

But of course that wasn't the end of it. She knew someone else was going to have something to say about her going on this mission, and she tried to figure out what she'd say to him, how she'd ease his fears for her safety, as she went for a swim in the pool. Because he wasn't about to let it go that easily.

And just as she'd known he would, he was waiting by the door to her room when she came up

after her swim. However, his tentative "Can we talk?" indicated he was more worried than anything else, and he was worried about Allison Hart-Burnett's personal safety, not Lady Jaye the Covert Ops Specialist. And it touched her even while a part of her wanted to roll her eyes at the 'thickheaded male'. Had Scarlett heard that one? She'd have to tell Shana later.

"Come on in." She led the way into her room, waited till he'd closed the door behind him, then started peeling out of her bathing suit.

Behind her, she heard him swallow audibly. "Umm…"

Naked now, she grinned as she padded across the floor to stand facing him. With her face only inches from his, she could see the worry lines starting to crinkle the corners of his lips; when he worried, particularly about her, he got those frown lines. "Dash?"

With an effort, he wrenched his eyes from somewhere south of her neck and met her gaze squarely. "Y-yeah?"

She kissed him. It effectively silenced whatever he'd been about to say.

Much later, as they lay tangled in the sheets, sweaty and happy, she broached the subject with him. Her room, her conversation, her terms. He'd be able to think through her arguments logically, now. She hadn't wanted to start this conversation with him earlier; he'd still be caught in his knee-jerk reaction of 'No!' and he wouldn't have listened. Now he would.

"If you really don't want me to go, Dash, I won't." He took a deep breath, started to say something. She rolled over onto his broad chest, placed her finger against his lips, hushing him. "Listen for a moment. I spoke with General Hawk. I think he was thinking the same things you are right now; it's not my skills and ability to carry out the mission he's worried about, and he doesn't doubt my ability to stay professional and objective, but he's worried about my personal safety. And so are you. Right?"

He nodded—mutely, as her finger was still planted on his lips.

"With that being said, he told me that even though this is my specialty, he says he knows that I'll focus primarily on the mission and not so much on my own safety. And I admit that too. I can get single-minded sometimes. So he's placing _you_ in charge of the mission." Dash froze as he thought through those implications. "And I've agreed to follow your orders on this mission. Particularly where it concerns my safety. I may still disagree with you, but we can fight about it when we get back. Okay?" she took her finger off his lips, rolled back over to lie beside him, and waited to hear his reaction.

He was silent for so long that she was about to start arguing again when he flipped over so he was straddling her hips, and leaned in close, bracing his upper body on his own elbows so she could breathe without having his weight crushing her chest. "We can fight about it when we get back?" he asked.

"Yes."

He leaned in close. "Can we make up after we fight about it when we get back?" His breath tickled her ear as he dropped soft, feather-light kisses down the side of her neck.

"Jesussss…yes, whatever," she moaned, "as long as you keep doing that…"

"Welcome to the mission," as his lips claimed hers.

"I think a week might be too optimistic," Hawk said soberly.

Flint, looking over the three-dimensional holographic projection of the provinces in the Eastern half of the DRC, grunted assent. "With terrain like that, it'll be longer. And who knows what sort of vehicles will be available to rent for the trip?"

"It wouldn't be a week if you'd let me take you guys there in a G4," wild Bill, one of their helicopter pilots, grumped from where he sat off to Hawk's left. "Scramble into a G4, land at Entebbe Air Force Base in Uganda, take a smaller transport to Goma International airport, where we can pick up this lawyer and this doctor. Land at the village, do what you gotta do, and take the same route back. A week, tops, depending on how long the doc and Miss Lawyer want to stay." He shrugged at the look Hawk shot him. "Hey, it's fast and quick. And Clancy owes us somethin' after we went and agreed to take on this li'l job for him 'cause his people couldn't babysit a coupla civilians."

Although Hawk agreed with him, he felt he had to rein in Wild Bill's enthusiasm. "There is no official US force in the DRC. In order for us to maintain plausible deniability, we have to get there as paramilitary subcontractors. No one is supposed to know we are American military; Clancy specified that because the last group of American military was ambushed, we want to maintain a low profile in case those ambushers, whoever they were, are deliberately looking for American forces."

Wild Bill waved a hand dismissively. "They were just lookin' for the closest pushovers. Clancy's men just happened to look like pushovers. Doesn't mean we're gonna get the same reception. Heck, I can pretty much guarantee if we went an' made a show of it, we ain't gonna be bothered 'cause we're too visible a target."

"I agree with you, but those are not the parameters of the mission we've been given." Privately, Hawk was already questioning why they'd been handed these orders. It would have made more sense to do it Wild Bill's way, which would ensure the success of the mission and be quicker and easier. He'd studied the directives that had come down with this set of orders once he'd let Clancy know the Joes were taking this on, and he had some misgivings about the plans they'd been handed. Okay, a lot of misgivings. Looking at the bigger picture, he wasn't entirely sure this wasn't part of a much larger plan, one that he wasn't aware of, because there were certain aspects—the largest and most glaring of which was these travel arrangements. However, the fact remained that he'd already agreed to take this on, and now the only thing he could do was to make sure the team he sent was prepared to handle anything.

"Flint, you're going to take your team to Goma International Airport here on the Rwanda/DRC border. According to Clancy, you'll meet Dr. Lavigne and Miss Cabot there, then journey with them to Sake, on the southern border of North Kivu Province. Once in Sake, there will be a vehicle there arranged by the UN to take your team and the civilians up the main road to a village called Lutiba, about 30 miles from the UN Peacekeeping base at Kirumba. There will be a bush pilot waiting for you who will fly you out to the village of Nzoka. The doctor and the lawyer are planning on being there for five days; the UN will send one of their pilots out at that time, and you'll fly back to Kirumba. The lawyer and the doctor will disembark there, you'll stay on the plane to Goma, and come back via civilian international flight."

Lady Jaye nodded, but looked troubled from where she sat in a chair on his left "General, if I may…I want to go on record as saying something doesn't quite sound right here. If the first attempt at this mission was conducted by American military on DRC soil, and this lawyer is an American citizen, why do Clancy's orders insist that we maintain plausible deniability? If it weren't for that, we could do this faster, easier, and with much less risk if we went in under our own flag. No one would question why the US military was involved, because Miss Cabot is American working under the jurisdiction of the ICC."

Flint jerked a thumb in Lady Jaye's direction without looking up from the map. "What she said." She grinned wryly at him, then focused her attention on Hawk.

"To tell you the truth, I've been kind of wondering about that," Hawk said slowly. "Far be it from me to question orders from my superiors, but something doesn't seem right about this to me either. I get the feeling that this small part we've been given is one puzzle piece out of a much larger puzzle, and I'm not very happy about sending you guys in without having a complete picture. I'm having some of my contacts at the Pentagon do some discreet digging, just to see if this is indeed part of something bigger, but in the meantime we've already committed to this and I don't see a way to back out of it now. I am planning a contingency, though."

"I rather thought you would. So what's Plan B?" Flint leaned a hip against the holographic table and folded his arms, giving General Hawk his complete and undivided attention.

"Initially I'd thought that arming your team with sat-phones would be a good idea, in case there was some trouble and you needed help. I'm still going to do that. But I'm also going to have additional weapons sent out to you—when you get to Sake, the UN contact who meets you there is going to have an all-terrain jeep specially stocked with heavier armament than you'd be able to take on a civilian flight, and they'll be hidden all over the vehicle. I also pulled some strings over at the Pentagon and got permission for a small extraction team to wait at Entebbe with two of our fastest heavily-armored aircraft—one for the extraction team and one for you. As much as I'd wanted to have the extraction team wait at the Kirumba UN base, they won't give us permission for that because the base itself has been attacked several times in the last few years, and there were fatalities."

Flint gave a low whistle. "You have to be pretty bold to attack a UN base," he said.

"There is no respect for law and order over there. There is no respect for any kind of authority. There's no respect for the military, because they're just as bad as the people they're supposed to be protecting you from. There's little respect for Americans, because the Congolese have been trying to get the US military to look this way for a long time, settle the region down and return peace, and it hasn't happened yet. The only respect out there is respect for a gun."

"No, not respect. Fear. There's a difference." Lady Jaye said quickly, and Hawk tipped his head her way slightly, acknowledging the truth of what she'd said. "And that's no way to run a country."

"So, are we agreed?"

Flint nodded, but his face still had those deep frown lines on it. "I can't say I'm happy. I'm not. I have a really bad feeling about this whole mission, and I have my doubts, not the least of which are about these so-called travel plans. But knowing we have contingencies makes me feel better. Sort of." He pinned Hawk with a glare. "I still say Allie shouldn't go."

Allie started up in her chair, fuming. She'd thought after their discussion of last night that the topic was closed. Talk about thickheaded males! Then she saw the glint of humor in Flint's dark eyes even under the frown lines, and sat back down, folding her arms defiantly, waiting to see what General Hawk would say to that.

Clayton opened his mouth to say something. Stopped. Looked at Allie, glowering but her lips twitching; then at Dash, frowning but with his eyes glinting with suppressed humor, then decided he didn't want to get in the middle of…whatever it was. It hadn't escaped his notice that neither Allie nor Dash had been in the mess hall the night before—and he certainly hadn't been able to miss hearing Conrad ask Shana if she'd seen Dash sneaking out of the women's dorms. Two and two made five.

No, he _really_ didn't want to get in the middle of this.

"Um…I think my desk phone's ringing," he said, rather desperately, and before Allie could point out that his office was on a separate floor entirely from the briefing room and it was therefore impossible to hear his phone, he fled.

The door didn't close fast enough behind him to block out the sound of Allie laughing.


	3. Chapter 3: Meeting

**Chapter 3: Meeting**

Goma International Airport was an eye-opener.

For the Joes, not used to traveling on civilian flights, the mixture of French, English, and native tongues was a dizzying mélange of sounds. This close to the equator, it was also hot, sticky, and muggy, and five minutes after getting off the plane Lady Jaye's shirt was soaked with sweat. She was thankful that Recondo had requisitioned jungle-wear clothing; light, cool, thin material that didn't stick to the body and wouldn't impede airflow next to the skin. The problem, however, was that it was thin and light—and it showed the pallor of her skin, which, here in the heart of Africa, made people stare. She had to apologize as she almost bumped into a toddler who was standing in the concourse with his mother, staring at the white woman flanked by four men.

"Don't worry, you'll get used to it," came an amused voice from behind them, and the team turned.

Lady Jaye's first thought was envy; how could this other American woman look so cool and poised when it had to be a hundred degrees out here? Her second thought was _wow, that photo didn't do her justice._

"Hi, I'm Alexandra Cabot. I take it you're the new escort?" The woman held out a hand, smiling warmly, and Flint stepped forward and shook it.

"Yes, we are. Tony Thompson. Pleased to meet you." And he flashed his forged UN military contractor ID card. They had all been traveling with assumed identities; Clancy's orders for absolute plausible deniability had extended to a full set of travel papers for each of the five Joes in assumed names; Flint was 'Tony Thompson', Lady Jaye was 'Laura Evans', Gung Ho was 'Remy Lafayette' and Recondo and Brawler were 'Greg Bern' and 'Kevin Costello', respectively. When they'd received the forged travel papers Lady Jaye's feeling that something didn't add up had gotten very strong indeed.

Alexandra Cabot froze for a moment, searching their faces, then she smiled, although the smile didn't touch her sapphire eyes now. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Thompson." One by one she greeted all of them, Gung Ho being last.

"_Enchante,mademoiselle,_ Remy Lafayette at your service. Whatever you require," Gung Ho swept an elaborate, old-fashioned bow over her hand, causing Lady Jaye to have to choke down her giggle.

Alexandra Cabot looked nonplussed for a moment. "Mr. Lafayette, if you really wanted to do whatever I required, you would turn into an athletic brunette female with a nice figure," she said crisply. Gung Ho's jaw dropped; he stared at her, caught completely off-guard, as Flint, Lady Jaye, Recondo, and Brawler broke into hysterical laughter at Gung Ho's expense. As they were struggling to recover their composure she turned and started walking away, toward the end of the concourse, assuming they would follow her. They started walking with her, their long strides matching hers easily; she was about the same height as Lady Jaye.

"Let's get out of here. I hate airports." She led the way out of the terminal to where a beat-up old jalopy that might possibly have once been a van and definitely had seen better days—probably half a century ago—sat waiting by the curb. To their utter surprise, she got behind the wheel of the vehicle and waited for them to squeeze in with their few bags; they had traveled light because Hawk had said he was going to provide extra items for them in the Jeep the UN would have waiting for them at Sake.

The blond lawyer expertly peeled out into the traffic, then revved the engine and soon they were puttering along. Lady Jaye noticed that she kept checking her mirrors to see who might be behind them, taking sudden, inexplicable left and right turns, until they were probably a mile away from the airport. Then she pulled over next to a roadside restaurant and stopped. "We are not being followed," she said. "And I know this van is safe because I bought it just this morning and it hasn't left my sight—I could see it from where I waited for you in the airport. Now. If you're going to be escorting me out into that hellhole of a jungle for me to do my job, I have to trust you to do yours. And in order to trust you, I need to know who you are."

She turned and faced Flint, squarely, and her eyes were no longer warm, or merry. They were cold and full of suspicion. "I was in Federal WitSec—witness protection—for five years until the Colombian druglord who threatened my life and tried to have me murdered was…dealt with. And I'm a lawyer, sworn to client confidentiality. I can keep a secret. I can keep your secrets. But if I'm going to trust you I need to know who you really are. Those IDs you showed me are so new they haven't even cooled from the laminating machine."

Silence for a long moment. "How did you know, Ms. Cabot?" Lady Jaye asked, finally. This was definitely not what they'd expected from a lawyer!

Blue eyes rolled. "I'm a lawyer. A prosecutor. I've been trained at spotting lies from a mile away. You guys aren't military contractors—mercenaries, let's be blunt about it. You all scanned the airport for any kind of threat before you even set foot off the plane. You walked through the airport as a team. You match each other's strides. You're used to working with each other. But you're not used to these new names and ID's you were given, and I know that because you hesitate for a moment before you speak to each other using those assumed names. I'm willing to bet you each have probably a half dozen other names you could travel by, but Clancy—" Flint barely controlled his startlement at hearing the name," –probably issued you other ID's, ones you weren't familiar with. And the plan he outlined to me—and swore me to secrecy about—has holes that you could drive a tank through." She looked at them, and her eyes were serious. "I'm taking a chance right now; when Clancy told me he was sending a team to escort Kristophe and I, he told me I was not to ask you questions, that you wouldn't answer anyway. But I also don't trust _him_. I can't go out there," she gestured to the jungle visible on the hills on the horizon, "and not trust the people who are going with me. I did that when Clancy sent the last team; I didn't question his people, his motives, and his reasons. And as a result, we went completely unprepared into a war zone and I saw a lot of people die who didn't have to. For me." Her eyes grew distant. "If I'm going to be stupid, I will pay the price. No one else."

"So who do you think we are?" Flint took the lead in the questioning. Lady Jaye saw Ms. Cabot take a breath to answer, her eyes icy, but Flint explained. "We're under orders too, Ms. Cabot. General Clancy may have given you orders, but you're a civilian. You aren't compelled to follow them. Us, though… there are far more consequences for us if we tell you who we are than there are for you."

"True. He can't fire _me_, after all." Alexandra smiled dryly. "All right. I think you're American military. Career military, not grunts who signed up in order to get Uncle Sam to pay for college because the Bank of Dad doesn't have enough money." Lady Jaye had to hide a smile. "You're all high-ranking, and experienced. Miss Laura seems to have a lot of experience with situations like this, but you," her eyes flicked to Flint's, "are the one in charge, and I'm guessing that has to do with the local militia's standard operating procedure of raping women. So the two of you are 'sharing' command but she has orders to follow yours." She smiled, and the corners of her eyes crinkled. "Laura started speaking first, so she's the real specialist here."

Flint relaxed. Lady Jaye figured out that he'd just made his mind up about Miss Cabot. "All right. I accept that you need to trust us, and to be entirely truthful, we had our doubts about the orders we'd been given. However, our orders are also pretty specific. We can't let anyone here know what organization we're with." He held up a hand as Ms. Cabot opened her mouth to speak. "Let me finish. You are right about our IDs, they aren't our usual and yes, they were assigned to us. So, on the basis of mutual trust, we will give you our names. But that's all you're getting. I'll have to ask you to trust us, trust that we're professionals, we know what we're doing, and most importantly, trust that we will get you in and out."

She thought that over for a moment, then gave a short nod. "All right. I'll accept that you have orders too, and thank you for trusting me with this much." There was no sarcasm; she really did understand they wanted her to trust them but were constrained by their orders.

"Warrant Officer Dashiell Faireborn." Lady Jaye almost choked. By giving his rank, Flint had just informed Miss Cabot that they really were American military, and definitely not the soldiers-for-hire that their IDs said they were. It didn't violate the letter of their orders—which had been to not tell anyone that they were American military—but giving her their rank definitely trampled all over the spirit of those orders.

"Staff Sergeant Allison Hart-Burnett." Allie decided to take Flint's lead. Staff Sergeant was a rank used in several different countries, but Lady Jaye was willing to bet that Ms. Cabot knew they were American military by now. She didn't miss much. Even if she was a civilian.

"First Sergeant Brian Mulholland."

"Corporal Daniel LeClaire."

"Marine Gunnery Sergeant Ettienne LaFitte, at your service." Gung Ho tipped his head to Miss Cabot; as close to a bow as he could manage while cramped into a vehicle seat.

"Alexandra Cabot. Which you already knew. I guarantee you know more about me than I know about you. But please, call me Alex." She turned her attention to the road again, and they started driving. Beside her, Lady Jaye heard Flint let out a tiny breath of relief; they'd been able to follow the letter of their orders without compromising the mission. And Alex trusted them.

They'd learned several things from that exchange, though, and although she badly wanted to discuss the incident with Flint, Lady Jaye waited until they were all settled into their hotel rooms for the evening before venturing across the hall to Dash's room. When she knocked, she tapped softly, and used the old code from back when they'd first started seeing each other, when they still had to hide because they weren't sure Hawk would be okay with it. At her third repetition of the knock, the door opened, he pulled her inside, and closed the door firmly behind her. "What's wrong?" she asked, seeing his face.

"Take a peek out the window there." Lady Jaye flattened herself to the wall, inched around it until she was beside the window, and peered around the window frame. Her room didn't have a window; Flint's did, and it happened to overlook the parking lot. And down below, trying to look inconspicuous, were two African men in a Jeep that still looked in relatively good condition. To a casual observer, they looked like they'd just pulled in for a cigarette; Lady Jaye's trained eye, however, picked up the distinctive shape of a large automatic weapon, old AK 47 if she had the shape right, under a blanket draped over the back seat. She cursed.

"Yeah, that's what I said." Flint joined her, flattening himself to the wall and peering quickly over her shoulder before pulling his head back. Lady Jaye ducked too, as she saw the telltale glint of streetlight on the lens of what had to be a pair of binoculars—aimed at Flint's room window. Or…was it? Alex Cabot's room was beside Flint's, with Gung Ho's room on the other side of Alex's. Lady Jaye, Recondo, and Brawler had rooms across the hall, effectively surrounding Alex's room. Her only vulnerability was the window.

"I don't like this." Flint shook his head. "They're watching her. Not us. We aren't the targets. She is. I'm really starting to get a bad feeling about this."

"I agree," Lady Jaye dropped to a crouch beneath the window. "Come on. They obviously think that we're settled for the night. Let's give them the slip. I think the van's parked in back; we can get Alex out and head for Sake tonight. I'll feel better when we can get our weaponry from our contact in Sake." Staying low, the two headed for the bedroom door. Flint grabbed his bag on the way; they cracked the door open just enough to slip through, and closed it.

And found Alex in the hall, back against the wall, sandwiched between Gung Ho and Recondo, with Brawler at the end of the hall watching the elevator. "She saw the jeep and the guys, Flint," Gung Ho said. "She said she figured you'd want to get moving." There was new respect in Gung Ho's voice for Alex.

"I sent a message to Kristophe," Alex said quickly. "He's in Sake right now; he was going to meet us here tomorrow, but I told him to stay put, we'll meet him there tonight. If we move fast we might be able to give them the slip. The van's parked in back." She pointed down the hallway in the opposite direction Brawler was guarding. "There's a huge two-story old grand ballroom that way down the hall. There are stairs. If we can get down those stairs we can slip out through the kitchens in back of the ballrooms." She was wearing a dark backpack, dark clothes, and sensible shoes. Allie was impressed. She was even more impressed, a moment later, when Alex pulled a gun out of the back waistband of her cargo shorts. "You shoot?'

"Gift from an old friend. Yes, I shoot. Rather well." The two women exchanged quick smiles as Flint dug his own weapons out of his bag. Recondo and Gung Ho already had their guns out.

Flint spoke crisply. "All right. Down the hall, stairs to the ballroom floor, out through the kitchens in back to the van. Gung Ho, Recondo, you take point. Lady Jaye, next. Alex in the middle, Brawler and I will take up the rear. Move out!"

In single-file line, hugging the wall, they headed down the hall. Everything seemed quiet; this late at night (or rather early morning, as Lady Jaye found when she checked the luminous dial on her wristwatch) everyone seemed to be asleep. Tense and silent, they followed the curving stairs down to the once-lovely old ballroom, then proceeded across the floor to the kitchens in the back. Lady Jaye reflected that this must have once been the most expensive hotel in Goma; their rubber-soled shoes made little sound on the cool marble, once polished smooth, now pitted with age but still retaining some of its original beauty. Recondo braced himself as they pushed through the swinging double doors to the kitchen, expecting to see a kitchen full of staff cooking and preparing for another day at the hotel, but to their surprise there was no one here, and a light layer of dust lay on the countertops and stove.

Flint was just starting to wonder about the dust and apparent desertion when Lady Jaye nodded to one side, where another set of swinging double doors led to what looked and smelled like a much busier kitchen. And he understood. This little kitchen was simply used to keep appetizers warm until they were required in the ballroom. Fortunately, there was also a heavier exterior door that, from the faint light coming through the wired-glass pane set in the door, apparently led outside, presumably for caterers to enter with food meant for events in the ballroom. Though it had a wired security sensor on it that would sound an alarm if it were opened, Gung Ho made short work of the wiring in the alarm and the door opened quietly outward on its hinge, letting a cool night breeze into the room, welcome after the heat of the day.

There was no time to enjoy it, though. Recondo swept the rear parking lot with his eyes, looking for any other vehicles, anything that seemed out of place, but there was nothing. They inched out toward the van, but as Alex placed a hand on the door handle Gung Ho pulled her back. From his pocket he took a gadget that was dwarfed by his hand, pointed it at the vehicle, and swept it for bugs, listening or tracking devices, or traps. There were none. Only then did he motion the others to enter the vehicle.

The sound of the van starting up shattered the silence and peace of the night, and as they pulled out of the lot, they saw the two watchers from the Jeep came running around the side of the building behind them. There was nothing they could do, though, but watch Alex and the Joes drive away; they were on foot, and by the time they got around the side of the hotel, back into their jeep, and chase the van, the van would be long gone.

"I wonder how long it took them to realize we'd flown the coop?' Brawler mused from the back of the van.

Alex, driving, snorted. "Probably as much time as it took for them to go up to my room and get pissed at the decoy," she said.

"Decoy?"

"I stuffed a pillow into one of my nightdresses and laid it on the bed to look like me," she said. "I saw them look up at my room through binoculars, then they climbed out of the car. Everything about them just screamed 'assassin' to me so that's why I came to get you guys."

"Uh, yeah. About that," Lady Jaye cut in, deciding it was high time they got some answers. "They weren't after _us_. They were after _you._ You _specifically_, Alex. Why?"

"You mean Clancy didn't tell you?"

"Tell us what?" Flint shot back.

"Why the first team didn't make it."


	4. Chapter 4: Understanding

**Chapter 4: Understanding**

Flint gritted his teeth so hard he thought they'd shatter. "No. He didn't provide us with any details. Can you enlighten us?" He tried to keep the anger out of his voice. It wasn't Alex Cabot's fault that Clancy was an ass—and every instinct he had was screaming at him to pull everybody out, _now_, and sort it all out later. However, he still had his orders.

"I'm trying to build a case against Innocent Zimurinda. He's the Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the Army of the DRC—"

"I remember seeing his name in the information packet we were given," Lady Jaye interrupted. "He's the one responsible for that photo of the burned children, the one we all looked at on page ten of our briefing paperwork?" Nods all around as Recondo, Brawler, and Gung Ho remembered the photograph.

"Yes, and he's guilty of a lot more than that. Anyway, the doctors with MSF—Kristophe, in particular, came back from Nzoka with another horror story—but this time he said the women who'd been beaten and raped there were willing to talk, to testify. I'm not only a victim's advocate and immigration specialist with the ICC; I also assist the deputy prosecutors by going out in the field and interviewing witnesses, talking to villagers and trying to get swearable testimony. Apparently word got out in the DRC and suddenly the army's got me on their shit list because I'm daring to go after one of their own."

"And so the DRC's army is going after you. _Mon Dieu_, woman, why are you still here?" Etienne was the first to find his voice after that shocking revelation. "Your file says you're from New York City. Why are you here, doing this? Go home!"

"Why are _you_ here, doing this?" She challenged him, locking eyes with him in the rearview mirror for a moment before returning her attention to the road. "That's not a rhetorical question, I want to know why you are here, doing this, Gunnery Sergeant LaFitte?"

"Because—because—" Lady Jaye had never seen Ettienne speechless. "Because—this is what I know how to do. I'm good at this stuff. There's nobody else."

"Exactly. You just answered your own question, Gunnery Sergeant. There is nobody else. Because I have a lot of experience coaxing testimony from rape victims in New York. I have a damn good conviction record, too. And they need that here, in a country where the women have been brutalized for so long that they don't even want to talk anymore. Rape, for them, occurs every day. More than sixty percent of the girl children in this country have had or will have a first sexual experience that won't be consensual. And every one of that sixty percent is going to have that experience while still in their teens, many of them in their preteens. The men who commit these crimes are getting away with it because there's no one to speak for these victims. These children. These women. This country. I recognize that and I am willing to place my life on the line for this reason."

On the steering wheel, her knuckles went white. "Every time I go back out into this hellhole of a jungle, I wonder if it's going to be my turn this time. Will I get hurt. Are they going to get me this time. And yet, when I go into one of those villages and see the children—the five year old with a prolapse, the eight year old girl whose legs were broken so she couldn't escape her rapist, there's nothing else I can do but keep going back. Because there's nobody else." Her voice broke a little on the last word. "There's nobody else."

Gung Ho reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. No words. They didn't need to speak. They all understood each other, now, on a deep, instinctive level. Alexandra Cabot was a fighter, a warrior, like them. Like them, she'd also had a choice between her own comfortable life or risking herself to make life better for someone else, and she had made that choice knowing the consequences. It didn't matter that she didn't fight her battles with guns and ammunition on a battlefield, like the Joes did; her battles were with words in a courtroom, and doing that job here in the DRC meant the risks for her were much higher. The Joes knew, every time they went out, that injury or death or capture were possible. And they all knew there were things worse than death. They couldn't imagine how it felt for Alex, going out there knowing that death was the kindest thing that could happen to her if something went wrong, and that if she were captured, she would suffer, long and horribly, before death released her. And yet she still went out there. Because there was no one else. Lady Jaye couldn't think of a single other person who would do what Alex Cabot was doing.

But the gesture of unspoken support seemed to help the blond lawyer; she took a deep breath, straightened her spine, and looked up. "Do me a favor and keep your eyes peeled for another van like this one."

"Huh? What for?" Brawler looked puzzled.

"We need another vehicle. They know what this one looks like now. I have to buy another one."

"Just leave this one with whoever owns the next one," Gung Ho said.

"No." Alex shook her head firmly. "They know what this one looks like. If I leave it with someone else, another family, they army will massacre that family because they'll be absolutely sure that family is hiding me. I won't do that to anyone, Gung Ho." Her eyes clouded, and Lady Jaye was sure, for a moment, that she wasn't seeing the road ahead. "I did that once, a long time ago. I stirred up trouble, then let some idiot Feds talk me into running away from it. Into Federal Witness Protection. And two of my best friends paid the price for my idiocy. I made a vow, after that. From now on, no running. If I make a mistake, I pay the price for it. No one else."

Silence reigned in the van for a time, each person busy with their own thoughts. Lady Jaye kept looking at the back of Alex's head and wondering; if she'd been in the other woman's shoes, would she have had the guts to do what Alex was doing? Could she do this? Yes, she'd volunteered for this trip, but this was _one_ trip. Alex had, according to the file Clancy had given them, been doing this for _three years_. Three years of not knowing whether she would return from this trip, or the next one, or the next one. Three years of seeing children burned to death in their beds, in their homes. Three years of talking to women with horror stories. Did she ever wake up at night with nightmares about the unthinkable happening to her? And, something Allie was getting more and more curious about—did Alex have anyone who would mourn her, who would care if she didn't come back? Surely someone this young, this pretty, with this good a heart, would have found someone by now—wouldn't she?

Flint stared out the window, deep in thought. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to get out, to get out _now_, take this blond lawyer back with them and lock her in a padded room until she came to her senses—but he knew he couldn't, wouldn't. It wasn't just that they had orders—screw the orders, if he really thought this was a suicide mission he'd have called the whole thing off already. But he found himself intrigued by Alex at the same time that he was horrified at her stubbornness. He found a lot in Alex that he saw in Allie; stubborn, single-minded, tough, but with a big heart and a protective instinct a mile wide. _She'd have made a kick-ass Joe,_ he thought ruefully, then smiled a little at the thought. She'd have had to get through basic training and the service first, and there was very little chance she'd make it through that; she would have been discharged for bucking orders and sassing her superior already.

Not that that didn't make for a good soldier, sometimes; he stole a look at Allie, looking thoughtful in the seat next to his. And that was another worry. Allie. He didn't want to see Allie here. Not at all. Now, more than before, he wanted her out of here. He just didn't know how much of that was his affection for her personally, or how much of that was really a commanding officer's worry for his subordinate. And he wondered if Alex Cabot had someone who cared for her like that.

Her voice broke into everyone's thoughts. "There's one." Alex pulled over to the side of the road, and in the gray, pre-dawn light, they saw another van much like the one they were in, but a different color. "Stay here. A single white woman won't raise alarm, but if they see you guys, they'll be terrified." She got out.

Fifteen minutes of rapid-fire French and a roll of bills later, she came back to the van. "Okay. I didn't really feel like haggling with them, so I just gave them what they asked for. It's highway robbery, but at least I know it was worth it. I gave them enough of the UN's money to buy them food for a month. Lady Jaye, can you drive the other van?"

Flint got into the new van with Lady Jaye, leaving Gung Ho, Recondo and Brawler in the first van with Alex. Alex led them out of Goma, up a twisting, winding hilly path that finally ended overlooking a ravine, and the Joes got out. "Now what?" Lady Jaye and Flint looked at Alex. It seemed strange that they'd be looking to a civilian for input, but Alex—she didn't feel like a civilian. She felt like one of them. It was …strange.

"We need to make this look like an accident." Alex put her hands on her hips and surveyed the van that had taken them this far.

Gung Ho grinned. "Sure thing." Five minutes later, their former vehicle was a flaming ruin rolling toward the bottom of the gorge.

"Let's get out of here. Faster the better. They'll send helicopters out to check the wreckage." They all piled into the new van and roared up the incline to the top of the hill, then she turned the vehicle west, passing a sign that said 'Sake-100 km.'

"Buckle yourselves in. We have a long way to go."

They stopped for fuel at the only town they'd encountered on this road, a place called Keshero. And here the Joes got a surprise; Alex was recognized by a little boy, who popped out of the bushes by the side of the road and hailed her in enthusiastic French. She responded in kind, and they took a detour through the narrow streets of Keshero until they got to a single thatch-roofed dwelling. An older woman came out, teeth flashing whitely in a face that otherwise seemed like a mass of wrinkles, and she and Alex hugged. It was a strange sight to the Joes, but Alex was obviously happy to see them, and they equally happy to see her. Until the Joes got out.

The woman whisked the little boy behind her, eyes wide, plainly frightened; the Joes were wearing their guns openly in holsters so they'd be available at a moment's notice if required; the sight of weapons scared her. Gung Ho took a step toward her, tried to speak in French; the woman backed up against the wall of the hut, keeping the little boy behind her.

"Guys, maybe we should go back in the van…" Flint was plainly uncomfortable with the idea that these people were afraid of them. Lady Jaye just found it extraordinarily sad.

"Here," she said gently, stepping out from around Flint's bulk. The child's eyes widened as he took in the fact that she was female, and wearing weapons, and obviously not a prisoner of, or abused by, the guys standing around her. His incredulous look touched her even as it made her angry at the state of things in this country where a child this young would think that abuse of women was commonplace, and she fished around in one pocket, then extracted half a chocolate bar she'd purchased at the airport in the US and completely forgotten about until now. It was very soft, now, and squishy, but he grabbed the candy eagerly, stuck a finger in the melted chocolate and licked the finger, then giggled and threw his arms around her for a brief moment before vanishing into the house.

The old woman smiled broadly at them now, her fear gone. Alex gave Lady Jaye a grateful smile and then ducked into the hut after the first child. The old woman went inside too, gesturing the Joes to come in behind her, which they did.

The hut was small, and plainly furnished. A small fire burned in the fireplace, and assorted cooking utensils, a weaving loom, and hand-carved wooden children's toys littered the floor. The Joes watched their steps, carefully trying to avoid breaking any of the children's toys as they looked around.

Lady Jaye stopped paying attention to their surroundings when she saw Alex. The blond woman was sitting beside a cot in the far corner of the hut, next to a little girl. The girl was babbling excitedly to Alex, and Alex, in turn, sounded just as excited back. The little boy was sitting on the cot next to the little girl, and the two children were sharing licked fingerfuls of melted chocolate. Although Lady Jaye spoke French, she could only pick out a few words here and there; Gung Ho seemed to understand a little better. "The language is a mix of French and native African. It's hard to understand."

"Alex is obviously used to it," Lady Jaye pointed out with gentle amusement.

Alex stepped back to the old woman, asked something. The old woman shook her head sadly and reached into a shadowed corner, bringing out a pair of what looked like plastic splints. As Alex stepped into the center of the room carrying the splints, presumably so she could take advantage of the light coming in the open door, Lady Jaye saw they were leg braces sized for a small child.

"They're for Kashandi," Alex indicated the little girl on the bed. "Her legs were badly broken a while back, and these braces are the only way she can get up and walk. They're broken. She hasn't been able to go outside for weeks because Grandmother can't carry her and her little brother is too small." She spent some time looking at the braces, finally shaking her head at the old woman, who seemed to wilt where she stood. At the Joes' questioning look, she said quietly, "They're broken beyond repair. I can't fix them."

Lady Jaye's heart ached. From the look on the guys' faces, they all felt the same way. Gung Ho stepped past Flint, took the braces from Alex, and stepped outside with them wordlessly.

Brawler's mind was already working. "If she can't go outside, can't we at least give her a window?" he asked Alex. "There's nothing on that wall there; if we knock a hole out we could make a window, so even if she can't go outside, she could still look."

Alex turned and explained Brawler's idea to the old woman. The woman's eyes lit up, and she nodded enthusiastically—almost as enthusiastically as Kashandi, sitting on the cot following every word.

It took an hour to scour the village for the necessary tools. Everywhere the Joes went they were met with fear-widened eyes and terrified silence until they saw Lady Jaye, walking with the guys and apparently unafraid; until they saw Alex, who many people evidently recognized and liked; and Grandmother herself (Lady Jaye never did get her name) spoke to them and explained what they wanted to do. Then they were greeted with wary politeness, and half the village gathered to watch the Joes cut a hole in the mud-and-plywood of the side of the hut, use their tools to create a 'window frame' from some large branches that had been dragged out of the jungle, and then stretch a piece of plastic sheeting over the newly created hole. The result was a poor substitute by American standards; the plastic sheeting was not transparent and one could only see slightly-fuzzy outlines of people going by outside of it—but Kashandi was enchanted by the widow and babbled in her native African.

"She wants to see what it looks like from outside," Alex said quietly; her eyes weren't quite dry at the little girl's enthusiastic wistfulness.

"I think we can manage that," Flint said, and crouched beside the little girl, holding out his hands. "Will you let me carry you?" Grandmother looked alarmed, but the little girl, after a long look at Flint, threw her arms around his neck and allowed him to carry her outside so she could look at the window. As he lifted her, the thin blanket that had covered her lower legs until now fell away, and Lady Jaye clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle her gasp of dismay. The little girl's legs looked straight enough from the knees up, but from the knees down the thin bones looked warped, twisted; like they had been broken and never healed straight.

And they'd been broken in multiple places too.

Alex laid a hand on Allie's arm and gave her head a tiny negative shake. _We'll talk later,_ she mouthed silently, and Allie nodded and followed Flint and Shandi outside.

The villagers burst into cheers and clapping as Flint set the little girl down outside on a rough wooden stool that Grandmother hastily brought out. She clapped her hand, exclaiming excitedly, then threw her arms around Flint and gave him a huge hug. Lady Jaye smiled at the spontaneous reaction, but couldn't stop looking at the twisted, broken wreck of the child's lower legs. No wonder she couldn't walk—and no wonder those braces were so important.

Gung Ho suddenly reappeared around the side of the hut, carrying the old braces in his hands. He dropped them beside the front door of the hut and continued toward them, and only then did Lady Jaye see that he held…something…in his hands. He dropped to a crouch beside Shandi, said something to her in French. The little girl nodded, and he laid out what he'd been holding on the ground.

At first, to Lady Jaye, it looked like junk. She recognized pieces of trim from the van that they'd used to get here; saw strips of fabric that looked like it might have been nylon straps pulled from the side of a duffel bag, and padding from the inside of a quilted vest she remembered seeing him wearing at the airport the previous day. Then, as he picked up what looked like half of the pile of 'junk', she realized that he'd stripped the trim from the van and cannibalized his own clothing and bag straps to create padded, durable makeshift braces for Shandi. Behind her, Allie heard Alex give a soft sob; she stepped back and wrapped an arm around the blond woman's shoulders as Gung Ho finished buckling the straps around her lower legs. The he held out a hand to help her stand. She climbed gingerly to her feet, frowning in concentration at her legs. Then took a step.

And another.

And the next moment she had flown into her brother's arms, crying and laughing at the same time, and the villagers were cheering, clapping, whistling, hollering, in a mix of French and English and several native tongues. Alex caught the old woman in her arms, and both women were crying, really crying; Lady Jaye's own eyes weren't quite dry, and she knew that Flint, Brawler, Recondo, and Gung Ho weren't much better either. The old woman finally left off clutching at Alex and ran to the little girl, now making the rounds of the villagers and other village children, and Alex ran to Gung Ho, grabbed both sides of his face, and planted a big sloppy kiss right on his lips. This brought another round of cheering and laughter and clapping from the watching villagers.


	5. Chapter 5: Choices

**Chapter 5: Choices**

"I can't thank you enough," Alex said as she relaxed in the back seat of the van. Flint insisted on driving this leg of the journey; she looked exhausted, and since nobody had gotten much sleep the night before due to their precipitous flight from Goma, Flint decided to take the rest of the driving in stages, with everybody taking a turn. And since he was the leader, he went first.

"Who is she? And how do you know her? Know them?' Lady Jaye finally gave in to the curiosity she'd reined in while they were at Keshero.

"Kashandi and her family lived in another village further to the east, about three years ago when she was five," Alex gestured at the impenetrable jungle out the driver's side window. "Their father finally decided to move the family back here to where Grandmother lives; Keshero is on the road, and there are a lot of travelers between Goma and Sake, many of them foreigners, so Keshero is safer than that jungle out there. They were ambushed on the road by militia. Shandi's father was killed and Shandi and her mother were forced to become slaves to the militia group that captured them. Her brother was sent to live with the child soldiers at a different camp. Shandi fought back when the first guard came to rape her. She kicked him. In retaliation, they broke her lower legs in three places, then raped her while she was unconscious. The broken legs got infected, and when the group moved on, they left her behind. A UN force found her, airlifted her to Goma hospital. She was traumatized and wouldn't speak to anyone; when I got here three years ago, she was one of the first child victims I met." Her voice was haunted by the memory.

"I talked to her. Found out what happened to her mother, and eventually found out they'd been trying to reach Grandmother in Keshero, so I took her the rest of the way home. I asked the UN people to keep an eye out for her brother; one evening I got a call from the Kirumba peacekeeping base that they'd found him. He was one of a large group of child soldiers forced to attack the UN base, and he'd been wounded. While he was at the hospital I talked him through the brainwashing and then I took him home. He lives there with his sister and Grandmother while I try to find their mother." Alex's voice dropped. "I don't think I'll ever find her. It's been three years since they were separated, and women taken as sex slaves don't have a very long life expectancy. But I still hope, someday, I'll find her." Her hand crept to a small hand-carved wooden flower-shaped medallion on a leather thong around her neck.

The Joes had seen it before and thought it was just a lovely souvenir, but upon their departure from Keshero they had each been given one, by the headman of the village. He spoke only native, and an obscure dialect at that, but they had understood that it was an honor, and that having now received the token, they were now considered part of the village. Lady Jaye held it up now, looking at it. It looked like one of the common jungle flowers they'd seen along the road, but this was painstakingly carved out of a small knot of wood, and the details—right down to the veins on the petals—were exquisite. "This is gorgeous," Allie said. "I wish I had another one. Shana—a friend—would probably love one."

"I can get you another one if you like. Shandi makes them," Alex said, stifling a yawn. "She's very artistic. It's a good thing; she doesn't have any other marketable skills that would make her acceptable to someone else as a wife, and since she also can't walk, has no dowry, and is also no longer virgin, her status is pretty low. It's not," another yawn, "fair."

"Why don't you take a nap?" Flint suggested gently. "I know you have to be tired after driving all last night, plus all the running around we did yesterday. We can take turns driving."

"It's my van," Alex tried to insist, stubbornly, but then sighed as another yawn overtook her. "All right. I trust you, and you're now officially part of my village, so…" She gave them a sleepy smile, drew her feet up on the seat and tucked them under her, and was asleep in moments. Gung Ho reached into the bag at his feet (now minus its nylon straps) and took out a thin jacket, draping it over the somnolent lawyer. Alex mumbled something unintelligible and snuggled into the jacket.

"Stop."

Gung Ho applied the brakes immediately, despite his first reaction. "Huh?"

Alex was sitting up in the back seat, looking conflicted. She'd been looking that way for the last hour, and been unusually silent.

Now she sighed. "I've been wrestling with this for the last few hours, but you're going to have to know. If we're going to trust each other, we have to be honest."

Flint was instantly alert from where he'd been drowsing in the seat beside her. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know." Alex chewed meditatively on her lower lip for a moment. "I just have a few suspicions and I want to make you aware of them now before we meet Kristophe."

"Let's have it." They all sat up alertly.

"Several things. One, Kris was supposed to meet me in Goma the day before yesterday. Given the condition of the roads, and that he was coming in from Kinshasa, on the other side of the country, a delay isn't too surprising. What is surprising is that he didn't let me know. I've worked with him for the last few years, talking to his patients once he was done with them—they're slightly more inclined to trust someone who's just helped to splint their broken limbs and given them pain meds. Every time we go out, we always let the other know if travel arrangements have changed, if we're going to be late, delayed, whatever. But this time he didn't let me know. He didn't keep me apprised of his movement across the DRC. I know he was in Kinshasa ten days ago; I hadn't heard anything until last night. I sent him a text message telling him we were being ambushed and he texted back that he was in Sake. It surprised me but I didn't have time to think through the ramifications until now."

"So what do you think happened?"

Alex shrugged, looking frustrated. "I don't know. That's what's bugging me. He's normally very conscientious about this; it's drummed into all MSF doctors before they even leave their home country. They have to file travel itinerary plans and are told to always let someone know, particularly your working partner, if your plans change. The fact that he didn't bothers me. It could just be that communications were down and he couldn't, but I don't want to bet on it because it's not a sure thing."

"All right. If this lack of communications is deliberate, is there any particular reason that you know of why he would have done so?"

Alex nodded—and the unhappiness in her eyes set off alarm bells in Lady Jaye's head. "He has a wife and stepdaughter in Kinshasa. They got married last year—she's a local girl—and he was going to spend this summer trying to get immigration arrangements for them to leave the DRC and come live with him in Marseilles. If he could accomplish that he was going to leave MSF and stay home."

There were nuances to a woman's voice that would only be understandable to another woman. Lady Jaye understood far more than Flint or the others would; Alex was in love with this doctor. But he was married. And she was heartbroken over the fact but hid it well. Except to another woman—and Lady Jaye was positive that Alex had been in love with him for a while but had never told him. And then he'd gotten married and it was too late. And it was killing her now, thinking that she couldn't trust the man she still secretly loved, but her need to be honest with this group of American soldiers she'd just met overrode her reluctance to think the worst of him. Lady Jaye had to respect that even as she cursed this extra complication.

"Is there a possibility that the government would use his family against him to get to you?" Flint didn't like this. Didn't like it at all. If Alex was right, they could be walking into a trap. He was positive his team would make it out intact and alive, but it was looking more and more hopeless by the minute for this determined lawyer. How could she even hope to survive when the government of the country had set its entire army against her?

"It is possible." Were those tears in her blue eyes? Had she been in love with this doctor? "Kris really loves her; he would do anything for her, and her—now his—daughter. Our work relationship takes a poor backseat to the love he has for her and his desire to keep her safe. So yes, it is possible; if the government threatened to 'lose' their immigration paperwork, or worse, threatened their lives, if he doesn't do something for them, yes, he will do it. Their lives are more important to him than anything else, including his own." Alex cleared her throat and blinked hard—yes, those had been tears, and Flint needed to find some time to talk to Lady Jaye about this very, _very_ soon—and straightened in her seat. "I think you should go back to using those assumed identities. And I'll have to get used to calling you guys by those names. Don't tell him anything you've told me. No real names, no rank, no military affiliations. Nothing. Stick to the cover story Clancy cooked up for all of us." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "Use those codenames. Mercenaries use them too, and you're used to them so you'll respond if I call your codename in an emergency faster than if I called you by your assumed names."

"Give me one reason why we shouldn't just scrap this and get out now." Flint wasn't angry, or sarcastic; he really wanted to know what Alex was thinking.

"I wish we could." Alex said it with feeling; she was being entirely sincere. "But one, I have a mission. I have to get that testimony from Nzoka or the ICC doesn't have a case. Two, Zimurinda has to be stopped, and everything and everyone is expendable to reach that goal. Three, if Kris's wife and daughter really are being threatened by the Army of the DRC, if we pull out now they will definitely die. I have met Kris's wife; I was there at the wedding. She's a wonderful, caring, warm woman. They'll let her live long enough to rape and mutilate her daughter and then they'll kill her. Slowly. I will not be party to that." She faced them squarely. "I will understand if you want to leave. If you really want to get out of this mess, we can turn around right now, drive back to Goma, and you can arrange to leave. I wouldn't blame you if you did."

"And what will you do if we aren't here?"

"Hire a bodyguard on my own nickel and go back out."

Silence for a moment. Then Gung Ho grinned incredulously. "You're crazy. That's crazy talk there. We can't let her go alone, right, Flint?"

Flint looked grave. "Alex. I need to talk to the team. Privately. Please."

"I need to use the little girls' room anyway." Alex smiled sadly and popped the van door open, disappearing into the bushes beside the road.

"Before you decide, you need to know something." Lady Jaye sat back in her seat. "She's still in love with him."

"Still? But he's married!"

"He might be married. She might have been at the wedding. But it doesn't change the fact that she's been in love with him for a long time, is still in love with him, and her concern is for his and his family's safety as well as ours."

"Does she even care about her own?"

Lady Jaye considered. "I'm kind of getting some mixed signals from her right now. I think she does, but not to the extent that she'll push aside what she perceives as the greater good. I don't know what the focus is to this single-minded tunnel vision she has, but if it is this Zimurinda, it probably borders on obsession and everything else, even her own safety, comes second to that. I'm willing to bet Zimurinda is responsible for what happened to that little girl Shandi—it would explain why she's so driven to get this one guy in particular."

"If he really is responsible for what happened to that little girl, I want him too," Gung Ho said suddenly, unexpectedly.

Flint turned to look at him. "This is not our fight, Gung Ho."

"All due respect, Flint, but the way I see it, it is. We're not fighting just for America. It's truth and justice as well. There's none here in this godforsaken hellhole except for Alex back there," and he jerked his thumb back toward the bushes where the blond lawyer had disappeared. "And I'm all for protecting that bit of justice she's fighting for."

"You're serious." It wasn't a question, but Gung Ho nodded anyway. "And if I told you my decision is that we pull out now, take all of this information back with us, and have General Hawk scrap the mission?"

"I'm resigning my commission and staying here. Sir."

It took a long moment for that to sink in. Flint was actually left with his jaw hanging open for a long moment. "You're serious?"

Gung Ho shrugged unrepentantly. "Sorry Flint."

"How much of that is because you want to get in her pants?"

Gung Ho tensed indignantly. "Flint, that's none of your business—"

Flint waved a hand. "Never mind." He turned to Recondo and Brawler, who had until now been silent. "What do you say?"

Recondo shrugged uncomfortably. "I'm with you, Flint, whatever you say, but I don't have to be happy about it," he said.

Brawler rumbled, "How often is it that we get to be part of something good and special, like what we did back in that village for that little girl? Most of our job is destructive in nature. If we stay, we can protect and help rebuild some of these peoples' trust. I like the thought of that."

"Lady Jaye?"

She chose her words carefully. "I understand why you want out. I also understand why she wants to stay. Even knowing that my personal safety could be at risk, maybe now more than before now that we know there are other…potential threats," she didn't say 'traitors', "I would still suggest we stay. At this point we would do more harm leaving than staying. And one other thing. Alex. I like her. I don't know if I'd ever feel right about leaving her right now. At this point _we_ are her only chance of making it out of this country alive. The minute we leave, no matter how good she is at spotting liars, no matter how many friends she has among the villagers and tribes, she's dead." She thought for a moment. "Or worse. Flint, think about her, in this country, alone. In the army's hands. How long do you think they would be able to torture her and keep her alive? What do you think they would do to her, physically, emotionally, psychologically? She's a civilian, she's never had the benefit of military survival training—those SERE courses we all took. How long do you think she'd last? Do you think they'd let her die, let her escape them that easily? I say we complete this mission. Get her in to do her job, get her out. I'm sure once we get back to HQ, General Hawk can lean on someone to revoke her travel papers and force her to return to the US, ending this threat to her life. But until that happens, we are her _only_ chance for survival."

Flint sighed. "All in favor of leaving?"

No hands.

"All in favor of staying?" All hands.

Even his.

"Well, I guess we're agreed then."

The satellite phone in his bag rang.


	6. Chapter 6: Intelligence

**Chapter 6: Intelligence**

"What you're holding is everything I've been able to find out." The shadowy figure on Hawk's vidscreen spoke in a high, tinny voice, courtesy of the distorter being held in front of the figure. The room was so dark Hawk couldn't make out more than a dim outline.

But he was used to it. He'd used this particular informant for a very long time, knew that whatever this informant gave him would be true. He didn't have to use this one often, but there were times when he had to question orders he'd been given to ensure the safety and survival of the people he would pass those orders on to. And this time when he'd approached this informant, he'd known for sure there was something behind Clancy's orders that he wasn't being told.

"Thank you." Hawk spoke absently; he had already opened the folder and skimmed the contents.

"I couldn't find anything on the actual mission, which is strange, it's like there isn't even anything there to find. So I tried to find anything with Ms. Cabot's name in it, and practically the only thing I was able to locate was paperwork requesting some new recruits for a 'training exercise' in the African jungle that ended with those recruits dead. Whatever is going on over there is dangerous and it has to be so deepcover even I couldn't find any paperwork on it, and I strongly recommend you pull your soldiers out now."

"Wait a minute." Hawk gave the shadow his full attention. "My people are already on the ground out there. There are consequences if I pull them out now, not the least of which is that I'll have to explain why I did so to General Clancy and the UN—and they'll ask me where I got this information."

"Do you consider your people expendable?" the shadow asked.

"No." Hawk said immediately.

"There are rumors that the Prosecutorial branch of the ICC has a little too much prosecutorial discretion, they they're willing to do whatever it takes to get the conviction, up to and including placing their people in harm's way. And this lawyer they sent out, Ms. Cabot—it appears that she's on a vendetta. A year and a half ago she applied for immigration papers for two Congolese children, but was denied because their mother hadn't officially been declared dead; she was listed as 'missing' after being attacked. The guy she's going out into the jungle to get testimony on was the one responsible for the attack, which makes it look likely that Ms. Cabot's purpose here is a thinly-disguised attempt to obtain the necessary proof she needs to get these two children out of the DRC."

"Captain Ahab chasing his whale."

The shadow nodded. "Exactly. So pull your soldiers out while you still can, General. The American military are not pawns to be used in a personal feud." The screen went dark.

Hawk looked at the papers he'd been given grimly, seeing the puzzle pieces fall into place. The lawyer was obsessed with Zimurinda, supported by the ICC and the UN because it happened to dovetail with their own agendas; the doctor was being blackmailed by the Army of the DRC into keeping tabs on the lawyer by threatening his family. Hawk's team had been brought in because this blond lawyer needed military force to hunt down this Zimurinda, but because it wasn't an 'official' US operation, they had to maintain plausible deniability.

He gathered up the paperwork, slid them in the locked drawer of his desk, then headed for the communications center. "Get me Flint," he ordered grimly.

The satellite phone rang.

Lady Jaye dug into Flint's bag, coming up with the phone, handing it to Flint wordlessly. She didn't have to tell him who was calling; the phones were keyed to only one frequency, and that was the frequency reserved for the Joes' field mission communications. As they were the only field mission currently on assignment… "Flint here."

"Are you private?"

Flint put the phone on speaker so that everyone could hear, then closed the van door. "Yes."

"I'm scrapping the mission." General Hawk said as soon as he heard Flint's voice. "Get back to Goma International, and I'll have tickets waiting for you by the same airline you arrived on."

"Why? What's going on, General?" Flint asked, trading looks with the other Joes.

"You got a hothead maniac lawyer obsessed with the colonel of the DRC armed forces, and the ICC and UN are taking advantage of her private agenda because it fits in with their goals; you have a possibly compromised doctor also on the team, and I don't want you five on the ground there."

Lady Jaye frowned. Hothead? Maniac? Huh? Gung Ho spoke before she could ask, though. "All due respect, General, but we haven't been seeing a hothead maniac lawyer on a vendetta here. She's been very rational and reasonable, and she's pretty sharp, for a civilian. We haven't seen any signs of instability."

"That's not the information I was given. This lawyer's determined to get this colonel because of what he did to a couple of kids in the DRC; she's trying to get immigration papers to get them out, but she needs their mother's permission to do so and their mother's out in the jungle with Zimurinda's forces. So this lawyer's going out there to hunt for the colonel."

The Joes exchanged looks. Yes, Alex had been upfront with them about her reasons; she'd been truthful about her desire to get the Colonel. She hadn't told them she'd been trying to get Kashandi and her little brother out of the DRC—but then, she might have thought that was a private thing and not felt that it was relevant to the mission.

Lady Jaye spoke firmly. "General, we haven't seen any signs of mental instability. And so far as I can tell, she's not on a vendetta. She is determined to get out to this village and get this testimony, but she's equally firm about getting the information back to the ICC. She's said absolutely nothing about going out into the jungle to hunt for Zimurinda; in fact, she told us she wishes she could go back to the ICC but they really need this testimony. She's under orders from her superiors to get this. And we have our suspicions about the doctor; she told us normal procedure is to alert the working partner of changes in travel plan but this doctor, who she's worked with for about two years now, has not informed her of his movements through the DRC, and she found that suspicious enough that she warned us about it. And we knew about the children—well, not that she'd filed papers for them but we knew she was close. We've met them. They were moving from their home village to their grandmother's when they were caught by militia forces. Father was killed, mother and daughter taken as sex slaves, brother brainwashed into being a child soldier. General, the little girl Alex is worried about was five when the soldiers tried to rape her. She fought back. In retaliation, they shattered both her legs—she's eight years old now and she can't even walk straight. Alex stays in contact and tries to help them where she can."

Silence from the other end for a moment. "This doesn't sound like the maverick I was told she was."

Flint shook his head, even though he knew Hawk couldn't see it. "She strikes me as being very determined, very forceful. But she's not obsessed, not blind to possible dangers. She's very careful. She takes safety seriously, and she's been absolutely honest with us every step of the way so far."

"Lady Jaye says she didn't tell you guys about the immigration papers."

"Honestly, General, I don't know if she would have even thought it was relevant to this mission, right now. We're all focusing on the danger out there. But she did tell us she's an immigration specialist with the ICC; I'm guessing she fills out dozens of immigration forms for dozens of people who want to get out of the DRC."

Gung Ho chimed in. "It would be easy for someone to take that out of context and twist it to make her look worse than she already is. The Army of the DRC here don't like her much, so if any of this intel you're looking at could have come from the DRC government, it's likely not true."

Hawk was silent for a moment. Then, "Flint. You're the commanding officer on the ground over there. What's your viewpoint on this situation and what do you recommend?"

"It's funny you should ask that because we were just coming to the end of a discussion on this when you called." He grinned. "And we're all in favor of staying. All of us. A unanimous decision. All due respect to your Pentagon contacts, but I still think we're missing some puzzle pieces here. Alex was ordered to go out here to collect this testimony by her superiors at the ICC. Why? What motive do they have for placing one of their low-ranking functionaries in danger just to get this one person? Out of all the people they could have sent, why Ms. Cabot? Knowing that the Army of the DRC has her on their shit list, why send her out? She's a civilian with no military or combat training or experience. Our decision, General, was that if we pull out of here, now, she'll die. There are enough people out here who don't like her that I'm wondering if someone at the ICC doesn't like her, to send her out here knowing death is a more-than-likely possibility." He thought for a moment. "Actually, death would be the kindest of the possibilities if she were caught here without military protection. We all know there are things worse than death."

"I need more intel." Hawk sounded frustrated. "All right. If you've all decided you want to stay, we'll continue. But I want an update call every day. If I don't hear from you one day, I will assume the worst has happened and believe me, I will tear that country apart if I have to in order to get you guys out of there. I don't trust this lawyer. I don't like lawyers. But you're the ones on the ground, and your personal safety is what's at stake here. If you decide to go on, I'll defer to your judgment."

"We've decided, General. We're willing to keep going. In fact, at this point, we need to. I don't like lawyers either, but I've developed a healthy respect for this one. She reminds me a bit of Allie." Lady Jaye rolled her eyes at him; he just grinned.

"I'll leave this up to your discretion. But I still want an update call. _Every day_." He emphasized the last word.

"Will do, General." Flint disconnected the call, then opened the van door. "Alex?"

She looked at them apprehensively as she reappeared from the bushes beside the road. "Please be aware that I'm not being insensitive to the dangers out there; I know you guys would have been putting your lives on the line out there for me, and I understand your decision to leave completely. It's not going to be as easy a mission as I believe you were told to expect—"

Flint held up a hand for silence; she shut up and sat down in the empty van seat, her shoulders hunched and tense. Lady Jaye knew she was worried, even though she was trying very hard indeed not to show it.

"We're not leaving," he said bluntly, and some of the tension drained out of the blond lawyer's shoulders. "At least, not yet. We're committed to this mission, some of us maybe more than others," his eyes flicked to Gung Ho and back again, "but we're all agreed that it looks very much like our leaving will spell your death. And I don't want that. Even if you do have a private agenda and an obsession to get this Army colonel—"

"Hold it right there." She sat straight up, tension replaced by anger, her blue eyes fairly snapping sparks. "Who told you I'm obsessed? And what private agenda?"

"You filled out immigration paperwork for two children here in the DRC—I'm guessing that's Shandi and her little brother—but you can't take them out of the country until their mother is found and gives her permission. So you're obsessed with getting this Zimurinda because once you find him, you can find out if their mother is still alive or not, and get her permission to take the kids out of the DRC."

"I fill out hundreds of sets of immigration papers for people trying to leave the DRC, and dozens of them are for children who have no formal schooling and can neither read nor write, and who either are orphans or have parents similarly illiterate in French and English," Alex snapped. "And yes, I did fill out immigration papers for Shandi and her little brother. Did whoever your informant is tell you I also filled out one for their grandmother? And half the people in Keshero? Did it occur to you to wonder how they all knew me? Keshero was a truck stop before the ICC got involved; we now stash victims and those awaiting final immigration dispositions there until they have somewhere else to go."

Well, it did explain her familiarity with the locals. "No, we didn't," Lady Jaye told her, trying to soothe Alex. "The information we got was—rather one-sided."

"And as for this 'obsession' you say I have," Alex said, refusing to be soothed. "Yes, I'll admit it's one of the reasons I keep going out there. And because of the work I'm doing out there my life was threatened. One of the indicted criminals sitting in The Hague right now has put out a contract on my life. I'm worth a million and a half euros. You don't think that bothers me? But I'm under the ICC's jurisdiction. I go where they tell me because I am the only one willing to spend this much time empathizing with these victims to get a testimony. I remember you asking me about this," and she pulled the gun Allie had seen her carrying in the hallway at the hotel from the rear waistband of her shorts. "The man who gave this to me is someone I consider a surrogate father. A Captain with the New York City Police department. This was his Academy piece, and he expedited my permit to carry too. He would mourn me if I didn't come back. So would a lot of my friends back in New York, both with the NYPD and the DA's office. And my best friend would go out and hire a medium to bring me back just so she can kick my ass for dying on her. And Liv is not someone I want to have mad at me."

A small smile. "So no, I'm not obsessed. Obsession would imply that I have a single-minded focus on one thing, one goal, to the exclusion of all else—and that's not me. I have a healthy fear of what's out there, I do actually like living, and I would like to continue doing so, thank you very much. But I have my orders, just like you do. I go where I'm told. And right now I'm being told to go out there." She crossed her arms with cool finality and sat back in her seat.

Flint sighed heavily. "What you're telling me fits with what we've learned about you in the time we've known you. What we heard—no, don't bother asking, we couldn't tell you—didn't fit with what we knew of you, personally. I just don't like getting surprised." Then, candidly, "I just have a really bad feeling about this whole mission."

"I knew something else was going on since I left The Hague six months ago, before that first mission went awry. The emphasis Clancy and the ICC placed on getting this testimony would have told me volumes even if I wasn't normally the suspicious type and if I wasn't so good at spotting liars. I just still haven't put all the pieces together yet." She shrugged. "All right. If we're done talking, let's go meet Kris in Sake."


	7. Chapter 7: Compromised

**Chapter 7: Compromised**

Dr. Kristophe Lavigne was a small, slight French African, as different from tall, blond Alex as it was possible to be. Nevertheless, he greeted her with a great deal of unfeigned warmth. "Alex! It's so good to see you! How are things going?" He greeted her in the French tradition, with a hug and a kiss on each cheek, and if the Joes had any doubts remaining that Alex was still in love with the French doctor, they were dispelled by the sight of the blush on Alex's face.

"Going as well as they could be expected to, Kris," Alex said easily, her eyes shining happily. Her smile was the brightest Allie had yet seen on the lawyer's face; Alex was practically glowing. "Come and meet our new bodyguards. This is Tony Thompson."

Kris smiled politely as Alex introduced them, but his gaze lingered on Alex. There was—a slight uneasiness?—lurking behind the man's eyes, doubt and unhappiness. Seeing it, Lady Jaye was certain that Alex had been right, that he was being blackmailed into doing something he didn't want to do, and it was something to do specifically with this mission. And she guessed that Alex saw it too; Alex's eyes glittered with unshed tears, but her eyes and voice had a forced cheerfulness when she took Kris's arm. "Come on. I want to grab something to eat while Tony arranges our transportation." She let him away, still chatting, but her eyes looked sad.

"He's been compromised," Flint said as he turned to the team. '"Stay on your toes, people. Let's go grab our vehicle."

General Hawk had arranged for the jeep to be left at a UN-sponsored hospital in Sake; the vehicle had been flown to Entebbe, then driven to Sake while the Joes were on the civilian transatlantic flights. The UN representative looked askance at them but nodded when they showed him their IDs. "Mr. Thompson. We've been told to expect you." He led the way from the front desk to the rear lot of the hospital, and pointed them toward a slightly-battered jeep in a gated, secured parking lot.

There wasn't much on the outside to distinguish it apart from the other vehicles in the lot. Yes, this one was much newer, but driving it over rough road from Entebbe to Sake had put some wear and tear on it, and it didn't stand out as much as it would have if it had gleaming, untouched paint. What did make it unusual was the 'extras'.

Flint checked the dashboard glove box and found two small, snub-nosed small-caliber pistols. There was a larger handgun under the front driver's seat, and two under the front passenger seat. As Lady Jaye found when she checked under it. Brawler and Recondo were enthusiastic about the four large machine guns in the back, stashed in two hidden compartments over the rear wheel wells, and there was an even larger assortment of handguns in holsters stashed under the rear seats. Gung Ho looked positively cheerful as he strapped a matched pair of Desert Eagles to either side of his muscular torso, then shrugged into another of his trademark ubiquitous vests, which hid the weapons pretty effectively. Lady Jaye strapped a small automatic to her right thigh, then quietly fitted a small pouch with her own signature javelin heads to her belt. "There's plenty of wood out there to make javelin shafts," she told Flint as she fussed with her clothing, trying to hide the pouch. "They could come in handy. You never know." She silently thanked Hawk for including them; while they weren't traditional GI weaponry, they'd come in handy many times before, and when she'd approached him with the pouch and asked him to include it in the armament sent with the jeep, he hadn't denied her request. She'd carefully chosen these from among the different heads she'd created over the years; some had nets that could expand outward, entangling a pursuer; many of them were explosive heads, either set up to detonate on impact or to detonate after a preset time delay. All of which could be useful if things went south here.

As it looked more and more likely to do.

Flint was arming himself with a belt knife/multi-use tool, various handguns and semi-automatic pistols. Unlike her, he'd worn long baggy pants not only on the flight, but also once they'd gotten here to the DRC. Now she watched as a flat hunting knife in a thigh sheath was strapped flat to his upper thigh, tucked into a slit created in the pant fabric specifically for that purpose. Smaller pistols hid on his other thigh and in the hollows between his torso and arms, then, like Gung Ho, he shrugged into a button-down sleeveless shirt. By leaving the buttons undone, he could effectively reduce the visibility of the weapons (even if their size made them impossible to hide completely.) And Allie had to admit, the way the shirt hung on him somehow emphasized the play of muscles across his powerful chest. She smiled reminiscently.

"Whatcha lookin' at?" Dash growled, catching her by surprise and sweeping her into his arms.

She giggled as she pounded his shoulder with her fist. "Put me down!"

"Me Tarzan. You Jane," he joked, playing off the sound of her codename.

Allie giggled again and pressed in close, cupping her hands under his chin. "I'll be fine, Dash," she said softly, seeing those worry lines at the corners of his mouth getting deeper despite the fact that nothing had happened to any of them yet. "You make sure nothing happens to you, too, okay?"

"Uh-huh," he said, not even listening.

She grabbed his head in her hands, making him look at her with those incredible warm eyes of his. "I'm serious, Dash," she whispered.

"I will, Allie." He captured her lips with his, in a kiss that had just enough passion behind it to remind her how much he loved her, but not enough to awaken her body.

"A_hem_," came a voice from behind them, and they broke off the kiss, to see Gung Ho, Recondo, and Brawler hovering around the back of the van. Recondo was staring at something very interesting on the ground; Brawler had found an absolutely fascinating insect on the rear window of the jeep. They were studiously trying to ignore Flint and Lady Jaye; Gung Ho was making no such effort. Lady Jaye felt a blush color her cheeks as she broke off her embrace with Flint and climbed into the front passenger side of the Jeep. "Come on, let's go," she said, fumbling with her seatbelt to hide her reaction.

"Sure let's go," Gung Ho said with cheerful blandness. "Let's go find you two a room." Brawler and Recondo burst into outright laughter at Lady Jaye's glower and Flint's glare as they headed out of the parking lot.

"So how are you and Severine doing?" Alex asked as she and Kris walked away from the Joes. She knew they'd picked up on his stiffness and she was pretty sure they knew, as did she, that Kris was compromised. She could see the sadness and the conflict in his eyes; he didn't like what he was doing, but for Severine and Dena's life, he would betray Alex. It would hurt to betray someone he'd worked very closely with for this long, but he would do it to save his wife and daughter.. And she understood that, respected that, even as her heart pounded in her chest. With the Joes and Kris helping her on this suicide mission, she'd known she had a chance of making it out of here alive. With Kris compromised…

This would be her last trip into the DRC. She knew she wasn't going to make it out of here alive. Clancy had known Alex had gotten under Zimurinda's skin. By making her a part of a very conspicuous information-gathering operation, he'd set her up; Zimurinda wouldn't be able to pass up the opportunity to capture her, and with Kris blackmailed into delivering Alex, a team of five American GIs wouldn't be able to stop the Army of the DRC from getting their target. And as Clancy had told her, when Zimurinda had Alex, then the UN forces would pinpoint the location of the camp via the implanted transmitter Alex carried under her scalp, just behind her left ear, and then strike in an attempt to wipe out Zimurinda's camp and capture the Colonel. It was something that Alex had wanted for a very long time; for him to pay for what he'd done to Shandi, to her brother and mother and father, and to countless other children women, boys and men in the DRC.

But Clancy hadn't been entirely truthful with her. Alex had been checking for any sign of the larger, surrounding military forces that Clancy had promised her would be waiting out thereto sweep in at the moment of her capture, and there had been none—and these soldiers didn't seem to be aware of any other operation than their own. Alex knew now that she wouldn't live to see the Colonel behind bars, wouldn't be able to see the peace on Shandi's face when someone told her Zimurinda had been caught—he'd haunted the little girl's nightmares for a long time now. Alex wished it could be her; she'd wanted that for a very long time—but there was little chance she'd survive Zimurinda's camp. Not intact, and not sane. She knew that they would torture her, horribly, and that by the time the UN forces got there, if she was alive she wouldn't be in any condition to appreciate it.

And now with the knowledge of her own certain death weighing down on her, a new worry; the Joes. Lady Jaye, in particular, and all of them in general. Despite her initial distrust of them because of their supposed connection with Clancy, Alex was now certain they were entirely in the dark about the whole big picture, that they didn't know even the half of what she knew. They were innocents and they were about to be drawn into this deadly chess game being played out with Clancy moving pieces around the board for his ends. Alex would have to make sure they weren't captured with her. Had to make sure they made it out, if only to carry the news of her death home with them. To New York, to her friends at the DA's office, and particularly, her detectives at the Special Victims Unit. Don Cragen. Elliot. And especially Olivia. They would miss her—God, but she would miss them too. She'd written a letter, three days ago while waiting for her 'escort' to arrive at Goma International; written it to Olivia, explaining the situation and begging her friend to understand. She'd written it knowing that she would send it only when she was certain there was no hope of her leaving the DRC alive. That time was now.

She slipped it into a mailbox on a street corner with an aching heart, knowing that by the time it reached Olivia she would be dead, then pushed all her regrets and everything aside. She had to focus on her job, focus on what she had to do instead of what was going to happen, because if she stopped to think too hard about it she'd chicken out and tell the Joes everything. And she was certain that if she did, they'd scrap the mission, pull her out with them, and she would never return. But that wouldn't accomplish what she'd set out from the Hague to do; while she didn't like Clancy's methods, using her to get Zimurinda, she understood that this was in all likelihood, the only chance they would ever have to get him again. There'd been one attempt to arrest him already; he'd fled into the trackless wilderness of North Kivu and set up camp there. The only way to find him was to let herself be captured with the implanted tracker; it would lead them to Zimurinda's hideout and it would be over. For him, as well as for her. And Alex found, strangely, that she didn't mind the thought of her own death as long as she could take him down.

She supposed that made her obsessed. Fine. She was obsessed.


	8. Chapter 8: Roles

**Chapter 8: Roles**

"So, you married? Wife? Kids?" Recondo quizzed Kris.

Alex had to admit they were playing their roles well. They'd stuck to their codenames; it was the one easy part about this whole bizarrely complicated trip. But they were now acting the part they'd been assigned, of mercenaries being paid to babysit two civilians. Gung Ho even managed to look disinterested and bored; a major feat, for him, after the attraction Alex knew he felt for her. And she had to admit, he wasn't bad-looking, and even though she'd cut him off when he'd tried his first pick-up line, what he'd done for Shandi back in Keshero had made her see the man under the military exterior…and she liked what she'd seen of the man so far, and wished that she would have had time to see more.

"Yes. I got married to one of the local women here, Severine Nkumba, last year. She has a little training as a nurse, and she was working at a makeshift hospital in a town that had been raided; she was the only source of medical care they had until I and my friends at MSF arrived." Kris's eyes were distant as he remembered. "Alex was there too. She came with us to see the village and speak to the survivors." He looked at Alex. "I think it was the first time she was that close to the tragedy. I remember her walking through the village that first day looking shocked—and then the second day she was helping Severine and I bandage the wounded. Severine has a daughter, Dena, who was only two at the time. When Alex found there was nothing she could do to help us, she appointed herself babysitter over the village children and helped them by telling them all kinds of funny stories to help them try and forget."

"Laughter was the best medicine." It was Alex's turn to remember. "I told them all the stories I read as a child, then all the silly songs I could remember. I don't think they understood the words, but it helped take their minds off things while Kris and Rine bandaged their parents and splinted broken legs and arms and the remaining villagers buried the dead."

"And that set the tone. Whenever we go into a new village, she immediately goes to the children. They trust her instinctively, and she is very good with them. My Dena adores her." Kris grinned. "She is the first one they trust, the first one—sometimes the only one—they will open up to. I have always told Rine that we are blessed to have Alex working with us."

"Thanks, Kris." Alex's eyes shone with tears. He, suddenly awkward, fell silent. The Joes were silent too.

They had been on this road from Sake for a day and a half now, on their way to Lutiba where they were to meet the bush pilot that would be taking them the rest of the way. The pilot would have a passenger, a UN member coming back in from another village; he would take the Joes' Jeep to the UN Base, to await their return. The pilot would take them out to Nzoka and come back for them in five days, drop all of them off at the UN base at Kirumba, then refuel and fly the Joes back to Goma International, where they would board the flight that would eventually take them home. In preparation, the Joes had already stripped the hidden weaponry from their vehicle, not wanting it to fall into other hands if they were ambushed along the road. So far, though, there had been no sign of pursuit, no sign that anyone was following them.

Not that they would need anyone following them, not with Kris in their midst. Their first night out, a small battered pager had fallen out of his pocket as he'd gotten out of the Jeep to go use the bushes. When Brawler had picked it up to hand back to him it had been much lighter than a pager should be. They were all convinced that Kris's 'pager' was in reality a tracking device meant to keep their unknown pursuers aware of their location. And yet, even knowing the man was playing a dangerous double game that threatened all of them, they found it very hard not to like him. Alex and Kris had been keeping the Joes entertained with stories of their work here in the DRC. Some stories were good. Many of them were bad. Some were outright heartbreaking. But Kris had a unique way of looking at things, an ability to see the funny side of some of the good things, even if it was just a village dog throwing up after drinking too much of the peacekeeping forces' alcoholic beverages— "spreading goodwill," Kris called it; Alex called it an excuse to get the men drunk so the women could be left alone in peace to gossip to her. The stories both Kris and Alex told were both heartbreaking and heartwarming—and the Joes were reluctantly seeing the good side of the man who they'd already known was the worm in their apple and the reason why their mission was much harder than originally planned.

Alex knew she and Kris were probably the only ones who knew the mission was doomed. She knew that it was likely Kris wouldn't make it, either; in her experience, criminals didn't want to leave loose ends like Kris untied. They might or might not do it right away, but sooner or later Kris was going to be on their shit list, just as Alex had. She only hoped that they would at least allow him to get Severine and Dena out of the DRC before they killed him; Kris wouldn't feel so bad.

She, on the other hand…

There hadn't been any villages this evening; they'd been forced to stop when it got too dark to see the road and make a rough sort of camp. There had, miraculously, been no rain yet, so no one objected to building a small fire—the smoke helped keep the mosquitoes and other biting insects away—and with various jackets rolled to make pillows, things were tolerably comfortable. Flint decided not to wake Alex, even though she'd tried to insist on taking a turn at standing watch; one, she was a civilian and it was not her job; two, she might have that little gun in her waistband but he doubted she'd be able to handle the heavy weaponry the Joes carried (and which Flint, overcome by a sense of impending doom, kept close to hand at all times now) and three, if she took a turn at standing watch Kris might insist too—and there was no way that was going to happen. You didn't leave the wolf to guard the henhouse if you knew the rest of his pack was waiting just over the next rise.

The jungle was full of sounds alien to him, as an American, but as a GI Joe, and one who had been on missions in jungle terrain before, he knew those sounds were supposed to be comforting. Only the absence of sound would alert them, or a strange sound that shouldn't be there. So when, around midnight, he heard a sudden, soft, quick whisper of sound, he was instantly on the alert.

He circled the Jeep. Nothing. Checked the road in both directions. Still nothing. It was only as he was coming to the rear of the Jeep for a second check of the Jeep that he heard the sound again. And this time, he identified it; a soft sob. And he knew who it would be as he slipped quietly over the small hill at the side of the road, just out of sight of the campfire. Blond head dropped on folded arms, long fair legs hugged tightly to her chest, shoulders shaking with sobs she was trying to keep silent. Alex.

He stopped for a moment, wondering if he should disturb her, but she was obviously miserable, and he absolutely hated seeing a woman cry. And she shouldn't be here, out of sight of the campfire. Out of reach of the smoke, the insects were biting ferociously, annoying even him, with his long pants; they had to be positively delighted with Alex's bare arms and shorts-clad legs. He came up behind her, softly as a cat, and touched her shoulder. "Alex…"

She stood and spun in one smooth motion, ending facing him with her pistol in her hands, cocked and ready to fire. He stopped where he was, hands held in a placating gesture even as he marveled at her reflexes, at how fast she moved and how smoothly. She was obviously experienced at self-defense and knew how to use the revolver she carried; his respect for her went up a notch even as he felt a stab of pity for the tear tracks on her cheeks. "It's just me. Relax."

"You're lucky I don't shoot first and ask questions later," she said tartly, lowering her gun, uncocking it, and returning it to its place at the back of her waistband before wiping the tearstains from her cheeks. "Came to herd the wandering sheep back to the fold?"

"I came to see if you needed a friend." For some reason, that brought another upwelling of tears to her blue eyes, which she tried to blink away. "I…heard you."

"Sorry." Unapologetically. Then she sighed and sat down abruptly, back to Flint; he took that as an unspoken invitation and sat down beside her, keeping one ear on the camp behind them, one eye on Alex, and the rest of his senses on their surroundings in case they were ambushed. They sat beside each other in silence for a while; she was looking around her. "You know, with all the stuff going on around here, sometimes it's hard to see the beauty of this place."

"Beauty?" Flint looked at the surrounding jungle, trackless on either side of the road; back down the empty stretch of road they'd come, and then down the empty stretch of road they would go in the morning, and shrugged. "If you say so."

A small chuckle. "You wouldn't know it to look, but there are tons of raw minerals and ore directly under our feet. If they could all stop fighting long enough to build some infrastructure and bring in some equipment, the DRC could be very rich indeed. But right now, you look at all of this unspoiled jungle, a variety of plants, and several national parks and preserves, and it's very different from New York City. There are no cell phones going off here, no middle-of-the-night calls to visit a crime scene. In many ways it's a lot simpler out here."

He could see what she meant. "It'd be easier to see the beauty if you don't think about the conflict, about the war, about the people being slaughtered for no reason whatsoever."

"Yeah," she said, wistfully, staring out at the jungle. "It would. Sometimes I wish I could bring Liv out here to see this. She'd love all this wilderness." A chuckle. "For all of about ten minutes. Then it's back to air conditioned buildings and lattes. I'm really going to miss her."

"You don't think you're coming back?" Well, that would have been one reason why she'd been crying—and why the thought of her friends would make more tears spill down her cheeks.

"No. Up until the afternoon you guys got off the plane, I still thought I'd make it. Now…no." She no longer sounded like she was going to cry; it was a sorrowful acceptance of something she thought was inevitable.

"Our coming changed that?" Flint frowned. Was he missing something?

She sighed. "I'd hoped Clancy would send a significant military force. When I saw the five of you come off the plane, and there were only five…not that I'm doubtful of your abilities to protect yourselves, but you'll protect each other before a civilian. Especially with the reputation this place has with women." She looked at Flint, and the smile on her face belied her next words. "I've seen you with Lady Jaye and the two of you are so in love it'd make a cat sick. You guys are a close-knit group and I'm the outsider. The entire army of the DRC's after me; the five of you can't possibly hope to get yourselves out intact and me, too."

"We can do it." Flint caught her arm, forcing her to look at him. "Alex. We can do it, and we will. I don't give a damn about the army. We _will_ get you out."

She smiled, but it was the sad smile of someone who was humoring a madman. "All right. But, just in case you don't, I already mailed a letter out to Liv, back there in Sake. By the time she gets that letter, this mission will be over, one way or another." The tone of her voice left no doubt as to how she expected this mission to end. "Please…if I don't make it back, please tell her I love her." The last was said in a voice so low Flint barely heard her.

Ah. That explained a lot. Her indifference to Gung Ho, her imperviousness to the rough Cajun charm that had overwhelmed many other women before her…Flint understood now. "You'll tell her yourself. First, I have no idea, where to find her. And second, you're not going to die." Forget his own doubts about this mission; she was _not_ going to die. He would make absolutely _sure_ of it.

"Detective Olivia Benson, Manhattan Special Victims Unit, Precinct One Six in New York City. The street address is—"

"No, I don't need to hear all that. You'll tell her yourself that you were wrong when all this is over." Flint grabbed her arm as he stood, forcing her to stand with him. "Come on. The bugs are absolutely killing me, and you have more bare skin showing than I do."

She giggled, her mood lightening. "Wait. Didn't those jungle specialists of yours tell you about the natural insect repellant around here?" She headed for the closest stand of trees, inspected them by the light of a small pocket flashlight she'd pulled from her pocket, and then grabbed a handful of leaves. As she walked back to him, she crushed them in her hands until they oozed a strong-but-not-unpleasant odor, then rubbed the leaves up and down his arms. And, like magic, the insects fled Flint's general vicinity, and even the stinging itch from his existing bites eased.

He stared at his arm. "Wow."

She giggled again and smeared her own arm. "The sap goes on green, but it'll dry clear once it soaks into your skin. It acts as a natural histamine blocker—there's a chemical in there that's the main ingredient in over-the-counter calamine lotion back in the US." She looked wistfully again at the jungle. "There's so much potential here if we could all just stop fighting."

"I agree. Show me that plant again?" She led him over to the treeline and started pointing out various leaves.


	9. Chapter 9: Nzoka

**Chapter 9: Nzoka**

Kris heard Alex and the military man's voices move off, and released the breath he'd been holding. He'd heard Alex get up and move off to the other side of the hill, and he heard her crying. He'd lain awake in the dark, staring at the inside of his eyes, fighting the sadness welling up in him.

He'd known he wasn't going to come back from this one, either. Alex already suspected his duplicity; her complete lack of anger when they'd met in Sake told him she'd known something was wrong when he didn't keep her apprised of his travel progress through the DRC from Kinshasa. And that was part of the reason why he hadn't told her. He could have. He'd had to stop himself from instinctively dialing her cell phone when his car had broken down. But if he didn't update her, she would know something was wrong, and she could—maybe—prepare herself for the worst.

He stared up into the dark treeline, no longer fighting the tears in his own eyes. He loved Rine and Dena. He was doing this _for_ them. He had to keep telling himself that, because if he stopped to think about _what_ he was doing for them he would break.

He loved Alex; had loved her, for a very long time. Loved her even as they hunkered down in the foliage trying to evade roving bands of militia; as they labored in makeshift hospitals all over the DRC, she holding his patients' hands as he caused them pain in order to heal them; loved her as she sat with patients who were too badly injured to survive; loved her as she sat and told silly stories to children in the villages they passed who had little enough to laugh about in their short, hard lives.

He'd never told her. He loved Rine, but the only reason he'd married her was because of Dena. When he'd first met her she was a sickly infant; it had only taken a short time to find out she had early-stage leukemia. It became imperative that he get her out of the DRC and to a 'civilized' country, where she could get help, and with him on her adoption certificate, Dena could become a citizen of France, with all attendant rights, including access to medical care. But then the DRC came to him, told him that unless he did this for them, they would make sure Dena never got the treatment she needed. And he had found out the terrible truth when he went to get the medicine she needed to keep her symptoms and her pain under control. The government controlled the dispensaries and all medicines and aid coming in from foreign countries, and they mysteriously 'lost' the forms and prescriptions that entitled her to those medications. And he simply couldn't afford to pay the black market prices, not on a volunteer doctor's pay. It had been a terrible two weeks listening to Dena cry with pain before he went to them, conceded defeat, and told them he would do what they wanted.

And they gave him Dena's medicine on the spot.

And in return all they wanted was Alex. Give them Alex, and they would expedite Dena and Rine's papers. He could take them home. Dena would get the treatment she needed.

He agreed. He agreed because hearing a child cry with the pain her own body inflicted on her was worse than the thought of Alex being shot. Agreed because as much as he loved Alex, he loved Dena more. Agreed because he told himself Alex was an adult, and she had a better chance of being able to escape, evade, the army of the DRC. He'd agreed to get Alex within reach of the Army. He hadn't agreed to just hand her over to them regardless of what they thought.

When Alex had returned alive from the first attempt at her capture, that disastrous first failed mission with General Clancy's military grunts, his heart had soared. He'd assuaged his conscience by telling himself that this second try would fail too, would fail because the Americans would send more military to protect an American citizen, and because he knew that she'd already decided she wouldn't be coming back. Previously, Alex had figured the personal risk to herself was balanced against the potential good she could do; but after seeing those young American soldiers slaughtered in front of her _for _her, she'd taken a different view of the whole thing. The second attempt would no doubt be carried out by a huge American military operation—the Americans were famous for avenging the deaths of their own with more-than-sufficient force, as the Japanese had found out when the deaths of servicemen at Pearl Harbor had been avenged sevenfold with the nuclear bombs on Hiroshma and Nagasaki.

And then he'd seen the small force with Alex meet him at Sake. Four men and, incredibly, one woman. None of them wearing military uniforms or insignia, and, according to their travel papers, none of them were serving military. There were paramilitary mercenaries, just hired to babysit a civilian. When the ambush came—and it _would _come, Kris was certain of that even though he didn't know exactly _where_ they planned to ambush the Americans—these mercenaries would protect their female companion and Alex would be lost to the hands of the enemy. The guy—Tony—who led these mercenaries was involved with Laura, his female second-in-command—and that, in Kris's experience, usually spelled trouble. The others didn't even put up a front of caring about either Alex or Kris. With every step he took he felt worse and worse, and he knew Alex suspected something; she wasn't talking to him much, and waking to hear her crying to herself just made him feel worse. But there wasn't anything he could do; all the elements were already in place. Alex was going to die. He would die, but that wouldn't matter; he deserved it for what he was doing now.

But Dena—Dena would be alive. And she would be in France. He had the word of someone very high up in the government assuring him that Dena and Severine would be able to emigrate to France.

And that was all that mattered to him.

"There's the plane!"

Lady Jaye shaded her eyes from the bright Congolese sun and looked in the direction Gung Ho was pointing. Sure enough, there was a small bushplane coming in for landing on the road ahead of them.

She watched, her heart in her stomach, as the plane jockeyed for position to land on a strip of road barely wider than the plane's wingspan. Very few of the pilots in the Joes' ranks would have been able to make that landing, much less walk away from it intact, and as the door opened and the pilot and the passenger got out, she wondered whether the village they were going to be landing in would even have a road or if they were going to have to use parachutes. She wasn't a real big fan of plane jumps, despite having had to do many in her career as a Joe.

"All aboard who's coming aboard!" the pilot called cheerily in French as they came up, and Alex's long legs made short work of the distance between them to hug the pilot. "_Merci_, Henri, thank you," she replied in kind as the Joes came up. "Tony, Laura, this is Henri Adekunle, he's been a regular pilot around these parts for a while. He's taken me out there several times." They briefly shook hands with the pilot, then Flint handed the jeep's keys to the passenger and the Joes started loading their gear into the plane.

"Just a short hop to Nzoka, Henri," Alex told him. "Just for a couple of days, and then you'll be coming to pick us up."

"_Non_, Madame Alex, this is not good," Henri was shaking his head. "You turn around go home, _oui_?"

"After this trip, Henri. This trip will be my last one. But I have to get out there this time."

"No. You not go this time, Alex." He was very emphatic. "Big trouble North Kivu. Lot of people running around. Many people. More villages burning than usual. And we been having small earthshake up there, too. You not go this time, Madame Alex."

"I have to go, Henri. But this is the last time, I swear. Besides, I have bodyguards. What could happen?" She tried to make light of it, but something had the experienced old bush pilot spooked; he was distinctly unhappy as he got back into the pilot's seat, and he looked at the Joes in mute appeal. "You tell crazy woman she no go, _sil vous plait_?"

"She's got her orders. We have ours." Flint wished Kris hadn't been there—the old pilot was plainly worried about Alex, and Flint would have liked to reassure him that Alex's safety was their—his—top priority. Because, after two days of driving with Alex and Kris, he'd come to the conclusion that Kris was going to be on his own. He was in bed with the enemy—and if you were going to willingly step into the cobra pit, you had to expect to be bitten. The Joes' mission was to protect Alex and make sure she got out alive. He'd made that clear when they had their morning 'strategy meeting' and made their daily call to General Hawk to update him on their progress.

Nobody argued with him, which meant they'd all come to the same conclusion separately. Gung Ho was putting up a good front of not caring, but his eyes were on Alex every time Kris wasn't looking, and Flint knew the Cajun felt that unshakeable sense of impending disaster Flint did. In fact, all of them did; they were sleeping with their weapons now.

Alex touched Henri's shoulder. "Thank you for caring, _mon ami_, but I'll be fine. Let's go. Please?" The old man stared at her for a second, then muttered something in French under his breath and started the plane.

Despite their wariness and sense of doom, Alex was right; the DRC was beautiful. Once in the air, away from the muggy humidity, biting insects and sticky heat on the ground, they could relax and truly take in their surroundings. The lush greenery of the jungle below them sped by under the plane's wings as they headed east, into the sun they could see rising over the expanse of trackless green. The air was cooler, and several times the plane's passage startled flocks of brightly colored birds, which Alex pointed out and named for the Joes.

They stopped at midmorning at a village called Mweso, because Henri was also delivering supplies to various villages. Kris slipped out of the plane and headed toward the village with a muttered excuse about needing to see one of the village children who'd been injured the last time he'd been there; Flint gave a perfunctory nod and ignored the Frenchman as he sped off. They suspected it wasn't for medical reasons; the wolf just needed somewhere private where he could update the rest of his pack on the whereabouts of the sheep.

It didn't surprise the Joes at all to see Alex start helping Henri carry plastic crates of canned foodstuffs, clothing, shoes, and plastic children's toys off the plane; what did surprise them was seeing a string of small children yelling greetings happily in French as they ran across the small area of cleared grass in which Henri had landed the plane. Alex put down the crate she was carrying, scooped one little boy up, and hugged him, grinning; the other children eagerly descended on the crate she'd put down, swiftly relieved the crate of its contents and ran back to the village with the plastic toys they found in it. Alex picked up the empty crate and came back to the plane, laughing. "They always love whatever they're given. They're very different from American children." Privately, Flint thought she looked beautiful when she laughed; she'd barely smiled since she'd met them. Granted, the current situation being what it was, there wasn't much to smile about, but it was still nice to see her enjoying something with no irony or sadness, just pure enjoyment. He thought it must be a rare moment for her.

They finally reached their destination, Nzoka, around three in the afternoon. They'd flown over a couple of other villages, but the pilot had refused to stop, saying only that it was dangerous. And this time there were no happy greetings. People gathered at the edge of the cleared field to watch the plane land, but as soon as they saw Kris and Alex (obviously a well-known team, judging by their reactions) an older woman ran up to them, babbling in French. She spoke too quickly for the Joes to understand her clearly, but Alex and Kris didn't seem to have any problems; they jumped out of the plane as fast as they could and headed into the village without a backward glance. The Joes, however, figured from the subdued crowd and the crying women that something was wrong and they jumped out, armed and ready. The watching villagers shrank back in fear when they saw the heavy weaponry, but there was nothing Flint and his team could do about that. Alex was their priority and nothing was more important right now, so they headed after her.

Alex headed at a dead run for a hut at the center of the village. She and Kris had both been here before and were familiar with the layout—and anyway, most villages were set up in similar fashion. The larger huts at the center of the villages, normally reserved for the village headman and their medicine man/shaman, would be where wounded were kept. The crying woman who had spoken to them hadn't been very coherent, but Alex gathered enough from her disjointed speech to know that there were five casualties from the last militia raid and they were in the medicine man's hut—the village's medical clinic.

Once inside, her heart twisted in her chest with a sight that had become, over the last three years, far too common. Four young girls, the smallest about nine, the oldest about twelve, lay on pallets on the packed-earth floor. The fifth victim lay on a pallet to one side, covered in a threadbare white sheet; the shaman was praying over the body, so the child must have just died. There was nothing she could do for the dead, so she grimly focused on the living.

The girls were feverish, sick; when Kris pulled down the sheets that covered their lower bodies, Alex blew out her breath in a silent sigh of despair. They'd been raped, all four of them, and it hadn't just been physical. 'Rape with a foreign object' was the clinical description of what had been done to these little girls; but it was a sterile term to describe the hell they'd been through. Something—a stick, likely; the militia bands had heavy wood cudgels that they used to beat vegetation back with when they didn't have machetes, and it looked like the girls had been raped with those cudgels.

One of the girls, the oldest, half-roused when the sheet was pulled off her, clutching feebly at the thin covering preserving what was left of her modesty. Then she saw Kris, and screamed and tried to crawl away, and Alex did as she had become accustomed to doing. Delirious and feverish, the girls wouldn't be able to distinguish Kris's dark-skinned features from the men who had raped them—but they'd certainly know she was different. She started talking to them, soothing them, keeping her voice low and soothing even while she wanted to scream and throw something at the horrible ordeal they'd endured.

Her voice got through the fever, the pain. The girl soothed, and she kept talking, low and quiet, as Kris readied a needle with painkillers in it. Alex bent over her them, blocking out the sight of the needle even as she reached for the girl's wrist, holding her arm steady. Between the damage and the pain from the infection, she barely felt the prick of the needle in her arm. Moments later, her eyes closed and she slipped into sleep.

Alex and Kris repeated the procedure for all four girls, then went back to the first one. It was Alex who cleaned the blood and body fluids from the child's skin, then sterilized the pelvic region for Kris's surgery. Working with speed borne of long familiarity with the whole process, Kris made sure internal bleeding had stopped, stitched tears in her soft tissue, then doused the whole area with antibiotics to combat infection. They took a brief moment to wash their hands and arms in a bucket of water, using antibacterial soap that Kris always carried, then repeated the process with the next victim. And the next. And the next.


	10. Chapter 10: Friends

**Chapter 10: Friends**

The Joes hadn't been quite sure what to expect when they walked in, but when Kris pulled the sheet off the oldest girl, Flint had been transfixed by the sight. The girl's pelvic region was so blood-smeared that he couldn't see the individual features anymore—and he didn't want to. Beside him, he heard Lady Jaye gasp in horror and shock, and he quickly turned his team around after sweeping the hut with his eyes to make sure there were no hidden threats and no other entrances or exits, then he silently gestured his team out, to wait outside as Alex and Kris did their work.

"Holy Mother of God," Brawler breathed as they stepped outside. "Flint—did you see—?"

Flint nodded absently as he turned to Lady Jaye. "Allie, you okay?"

Allie leaned against the wall of the hut, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to block out the horrible image now indelibly burned into her brain and memory. "I'm—okay," she finally managed, opening her eyes to see Flint's face barely inches from her own. "Oh, God. What kind of monster would do that to a child?"

"De monsters dat would burn children alive in their beds," Gung Ho said grimly, flatly, his Cajun accent becoming thicker and more pronounced, as it did whenever he was disturbed. "If Zimurinda did dat to t'ose little girls, it's no wonder Alex wants him bad. I want him too." Brawler, Recondo, and Flint nodded grimly.

Lady Jaye suddenly, badly, wanted to know what had happened. She stepped forward, toward a knot of villagers, motioning to Flint and the guys to stay put. Guys with weapons frightened these people, but apparently they were willing to give _her _the benefit of doubt since they didn't run away at the sight of her. They did keep a wary eye on Flint, Gung Ho, Recondo, and Brawler—or, more specifically, the weapons the guys were carrying.

"What happened?" The woman Lady Jaye spoke to seemed to understand the question, but Lady Jaye had a hard time understanding the rapid-fire, excited, half-French-half-native explanation . Lady Jaye turned. "Gung Ho. Put the gun down and come here. You speak French." The woman didn't flee when Gung Ho put his gun down, and Lady Jaye kept hold of his arm. It seemed to soothe the woman.

Bit by bit they got the gist of her story. Armed militia from one of the warring factions—the woman didn't know which one, and obviously didn't care; all of them were the same to her, and Lady Jaye had to agree—had burst into the village about a week ago, and although the villagers tried to hide the girls in the jungle, five of the youngest ones had been caught. The woman described what happened next in a flat, matter-of-fact monotone that horrified the listening Joes.

It wasn't just the story; it was that these women, these villagers, had been caught like this so often and so savagely that this was just one of life's hazards for them, in the same way that the risk of a car accident in the United States would be for the Joes. And that was unimaginable to Lady Jaye. She couldn't imagine what life would be like if she had to worry about this constantly, all the time. Life was hard enough here without these wandering militia members making it harder. She knew Flint was thinking the same things when his hand sought hers and gave her a comforting squeeze.

The flap covering the door to the hut finally opened, and the Joes turned. Alex was almost fainting with exhaustion, her clothes plastered to her body with sweat, her hair hanging limp around her ears, and the front of her shirt stained with blood. Not hers; the little girls'. Her face was sweat- and dirt-streaked, and she'd obviously been crying, by the two clean tracks on her cheeks. Flint caught her as she stumbled. "You need to rest," he told her gently.

"Have to bury the other girl first," Alex shook her head as two of the villagers came out, carrying a makeshift stretcher with a still form under it. Too small, too still. She followed after the stretcher, and the Joes followed her.

The ground seemed to be hard; Flint frowned as he saw the villagers struggling to drive a crude spade into the ground. "It hasn't rained in a week. The ground's hardened," Alex said wearily.

Gung Ho stepped forward wordlessly, leaving his gun on the ground, and held out a hand for the spade. The man who'd been trying to dig looked up at him incredulously, then at the open hand held in a wordless 'gimme' gesture. There was a moment of incongruity when the old, wrinkled dark hand met the callused ones of the white American soldier, then Gung Ho bent wordlessly to his self-appointed task. Moments later, Flint had found a shovel leaning against the side of another hut, and had joined him.

Silence reigned as the villagers watched the two Joes dig a hole in the ground large and deep enough for the body of the child, then stepped out. Recondo and Brawler helped them lower the child in, and then, as they stood there not knowing what to do next, each of the villagers grabbed a handful of earth from the pile disturbed by the digging and tossed it in over the shrouded body. Taking that as a sign, the Joes stood back until the villagers were done, then they took their shovels and shoveled dirt back into the hole, covering the little body until only a smooth mound of dirt remained. The headman started a singsong chant, which the other villagers, Kris, and even Alex joined in; the Joes stood by, silent and respectful, until the chanting finally stopped.

Gung Ho caught Alex before the unconscious blond hit the ground.

"I did _not_ faint," Alex grumped.

Lady Jaye had to try and hide her smile—which the old woman sitting across the blanket spread on the ground apparently noticed, and smiled back, then released a string of rapid French at Alex.

"She says Alex worries too much and doesn't eat enough. She should find herself a man and settle down, and let him take care of her." The woman grabbed Gung Ho's hand, pointed to him, gestured to Alex, then grabbed Alex's hand and put hers in his.

Gung Ho actually blushed.

"What did she say?" Flint grinned maliciously as Alex and Gung Ho both withdrew their hands and returned their attentions to the bowls of rice and vegetables sitting in front of them. Gung Ho suddenly found his bowl the most fascinating thing in the world, mumbled something unintelligible, and ducked his head to hide the blush.

Lady Jaye grinned. "I take it Grandmother there is playing matchmaker?" Alex refused to meet her eyes; her cheeks were pink too.

In contrast with the blood and horror that had started their visit here, burying the child for the village seemed to have broken the ice as far as the Joes were concerned. Alex's rather dramatic faint by the graveside had alarmed the villagers, and they had suddenly started bringing out blankets and bowls, cooking pots and utensils, and in what seemed like a very short time to the Joes, the headwoman of the village was ladling out bowls of some sort of steaming rice and vegetable soup. The Joes had taken small portions out of politeness, because they didn't want to offend their hosts, but to their surprise the food had been good and filling, and they declined further helpings only because they were sure that the villagers needed whatever they had for themselves and couldn't bear to take anything that the villagers might need later. More joy when Kris had announced that the oldest girl had awakened and her fever had broken; she was now sitting up and eating her first bites of food in days, and the others were expected to wake soon too.

Alex insisted she was fine, she'd just gotten a little dizzy, but the village women had hustled her off with them, shooing the Joes away. Flint had kept one eye on them as they disappeared into a nearby hut, but Alex emerged a short time later, hair swept back in a ponytail, face clean of grime and sweat and dirt, wearing another change of clothes from her pack. The old grandmother had offered her food when she sat down, and had apparently decided to offer marriage advice as well, which, to judge from the blush on both Alex and Ettienne's faces, had been heard and understood. The gentle teasing between the villagers and Alex went on throughout the meal; the Joes didn't understand the words, but the intent was clear, as was Alex's growing embarrassment. At one point, Lady Jaye poked Gung Ho in the side and said, in French and loud enough for the villagers to hear, "She's cute when she turns pink." The laughter that greeted that comment cemented the growing friendship between the Joes and the villagers.

After the meal, Alex closeted herself in the hut with the girls, who had woken up from the anesthetic now, and showed them pictures of various people that she carried around with her in a pocket photo album. Gung Ho sat with her as she wrote down testimonies, identified the men who'd attacked them, and got their names and ages and parents' permission to use the children's testimonies. Only the littlest girl, the nine year old, didn't speak; traumatized and terrified, she'd withdrawn into herself. Alex noted her name and village in a separate notebook.

"Zimurinda did it," she informed the Joes that evening, once they were in a small hut that had been given over to their use. "The girls all identified him as the leader of the men who attacked their village. Some of his subordinates also participated in their rape and torture." She opened the pocket photo album and showed them Zimurinda's photo. "That's why I carry this around."

"And this is your evidence?" Gung Ho took one of the battered notebooks from her and opened it as she nodded.

"I write down testimony for them as they tell it to me. The ICC has declared it is a valid form of testimony so long as I swear that this is the truth when I stand before the court to give the evidence. They know many of these victims are barely able to speak in their native tongue, much less read and write in French or English. And those are the ICC's two working languages, everything has to be in one of the two, or preferably both."

"Dis is….dis is…" Gung Ho shook his head as he closed the notebook and stared at it. "How do you sit there and listen to dis? To t'ese stories?"

"Because there's no one else. Would you sit and listen to a terrified little girl tell you what she felt, what she went through? Could you?" Gung Ho slowly shook his head as Lady Jaye took the notebook from his hands and opened it. Page after page of atrocities. Name after name. The conflict in the region had started in the 90's with what was commonly known as the African World War, and despite the war being 'officially' over, the conflict had never ceased, and civilians caught between the millstones of the opposing factions were being ground into very fine, bloody dust. "The Congolese have been trying, for a very long time, to bring American attention to this region. We have so much, and they have so little, and they are angry because we don't do anything to help them. We've gone into other countries before on peacekeeping and humanitarian missions, where the government in power is so corrupt, so flagrantly violating the rights of the people they are supposed to govern—they just don't understand why we don't come here. And to be entirely honest, I don't understand why we don't either. There is a source of untapped potential in this land, both in the minerals and resources in the soil, the people, the heritage and the culture. So much going to waste, in resources and human potential, to senseless violence and stupid losses. That child back there—she shouldn't have died." Tears came, hot and angry. "She shouldn't have died. She lay like that for a week. A week. Her last hours of life were blinding pain and absolute misery." And now she was crying, hard, unashamed. "She died right before we landed. If we'd gotten here a day earlier, if I hadn't stopped at Shandi's village—she might have lived." Alex wrapped her arms around her shoulders, hunched in misery. "We could have saved her. Damn it, we could have saved her."

Gung Ho wrapped his arms around Alex as she cried. Kris sat silently in the corner. No one could think of anything else to say.


	11. Chapter 11: Raid

**Chapter 11: Raid**

As if in response to the death of the child Alex mourned, the skies opened up the next morning and poured rain down on them. Buckets of rain. Sheets of rain. Standing in the doorway of the hut, Lady Jaye couldn't even see the headman's hut in the center of the village; it had disappeared behind a gray, misty curtain of rain.

The dirt paths through the village turned into muddy rivers. It didn't seem to deter the children; they shrieked and played and ran about, probably happier than they would be if they'd been dry. And the driving rain had an added, unexpected benefit; even though the humidity jumped up, the insects vanished, to Flint's relief; he hated the insects more than anything else about this godforsaken jungle, and he didn't care that Allie and Alex both seemed to find his complaining amusing.

Kris vanished out the door early, saying something about needing to check on the girls in the clinic. The Joes let him go; he wasn't their primary concern. As soon as they'd gotten up and eaten some of the field rations they'd brought (Alex had told them that when militia came through, often they would take whatever food the villagers had with them in a Chicago-mob type tribute, and that meant that they probably wouldn't have enough), Alex said she wanted to go back out to visit another family.

"It's pouring buckets out there," Flint stared at her.

Alex shrugged. "Best time to catch someone at home. Look, the sooner I get this done the sooner we can leave. It turns out that one of the people the ICC wanted me to talk to moved to another village right before the last attack a week ago, so that leaves me with only four people to talk to. And Henri is coming tomorrow around noon to pick us up and take us to Kirumba, and all of this will be over. By tomorrow night you'll be at Goma eating real food and sleeping in a real bed waiting for a red-eye to take you guys home." Her smile was amused.

"Gonna miss you." Gung Ho looked wistfully at her.

She tipped her head thoughtfully. "I live in New York. Before we part ways at Kirumba, I'll give you my number. I don't know where your base is, but if you're in the New York/Manhattan area sometime, look me up." She grinned brightly at him before ducking out the door. "I'll stop at the clinic, first, and then I'm going to see the headman. After you get done updating your boss, come find me."

General Hawk breathed a sigh of relief when they told him they were almost done. "I've been on the edge of my seat worrying about you guys down there," he told Flint—or at least that was what they got from the bursts of sound on the satphones. The weather seemed to be interfering with the signal and they were communicating between short bursts of static and periods of dead air. "So you're set to leave tomorrow around noon?"

"And in Kirumba by afternoon. She said we should get back to Goma in time for a red-eye flight back."

"Good. Let me know if there's any change in plans." And then the satphone stopped working altogether, just as the rain got harder.

"I can't believe how hard it's raining. It's like a monsoon out there!" Recondo groaned.

"There's no sense in all of us being miserable," Flint said decisively. "These villagers are obviously friendly, they know Alex, and it's raining so hard out there that I can't see anybody moving out in this if they don't have to. All the locals seem to have stayed in." Sure enough, the only thing moving out there were the children playing a game of kickball out in the mud.

"Looks like fun," Brawler grinned. "If I'm not needed for guard duty, mind if I show them how to play some real ball?"

Flint nodded, grinning. "Can't hurt to foster some goodwill with the natives. Have fun. Just don't go too far. I'll escort Alex around the village to talk to whoever she needs to, bring her back here when she's done. We have a little less than twenty-four hours left here, and this will all be over." Nods all around; Lady Jaye still had one of Alex's notebooks, and seemed to have settled in to read, so Flint felt relatively safe leaving her.

The cool rain pelting his heated skin as he stepped out actually felt good; he stopped and let it soak him for a moment, idly thinking that if he had a bar of soap, he'd be able to take a shower in the downpour. Then he grinned at himself and headed for the village's clinic.

Alex and Kris were busy inspecting, cleaning, and re-bandaging one of the little girls. Flint decided he'd wait outside, and took up a sentry position beside the door, scanning the gray rain. The soft monotonous drumming of rain on the puddles in the mud covered up a great deal of sound, and the gray curtain of rain cut visibility down to maybe fifty yards, if that. He couldn't see anything threatening, couldn't hear anything threatening, but all of a sudden he had the distinct feeling that something wasn't right. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and he straightened up, peering intently out into the surrounding jungle.

And then a bullet whizzed past him, burying itself in the mud wall of the hut.

"Alex!" He yelled her name at the same time he yanked his guns out of their twin shoulder holsters, cursing the rain that had made him leave the heavy weaponry back in their hut. Around him, he heard the sounds of other bullets as dark shapes broke out of the treeline and started hurtling into the muddy village streets. Bullets flew, and around him, people started screaming.

"Alex!" He ducked his head inside the hut, to see Alex helping the children to their feet. "We gotta go, now! We're being attacked!"

Three of the village men burst in. One scooped up the oldest child; the other two grabbed two of the other children. The youngest one was already in Alex's arms, crying in terror and refusing to let go. "Bring her with you. Come on. We gotta go meet the others. We gotta get you safe."

Kris ran with them as the four of them ducked out the doorway and out into the blinding rain. Flint pushed her along in front of him, urging her to try and run as best she could with the crying child held tightly in her arms. The villagers seemed to have the same idea; they were running into the surrounding jungle, hoping to lose pursuit once they were in. Flint took a quick look at the hut the Joes had occupied; it was empty. He didn't know if their gear was still in it, but the heavy dark waterproof nylon carrying bags that had held their heavy guns and weaponry lay empty on the ground in front of the hut, so he assumed they'd grabbed their guns before following the villagers. The ball that the children had been playing with lay forgotten in the mud; Flint knew that if Brawler had been playing with the children when the bullets started flying, he would have taken them into the jungle to keep them safe.

"Come on, sweetie." Alex put the little girl on the ground. "I can't run carrying you. Can you run?" The child suited action to word, running on ahead toward the treeline, glimpsed through the gray curtain of rain. Kris and Alex followed, with Flint bringing up the rear, turning to fire occasionally at the gray shapes of people pursuing them.

And then almost ran right into Alex as she stopped. He looked up—and cursed. There was a dark-skinned African standing behind the child Alex had been carrying, and rain dripped off the gun barrel held to that child's head.

Kris stopped running. It was over. They'd lost. He had hoped, when they got here the day before, that maybe Zimurinda would get the timing wrong, get the day wrong. They had gotten here a day earlier than had been originally expected, due to Alex and the Joes' sudden precipitous exit from the hotel in Goma. He had hoped that the Colonel's forces would get that wrong, wouldn't know that, would wait until the day they were supposed to wait—if they'd come at the prearranged time (which had been tomorrow afternoon) they'd have missed Alex. The old pilot Henri had planned to come for her tomorrow.

The Joes had surprised him too, given him hope. The way the old grandmother had teased Alex and the big Cajun Frenchman—and their reactions to them—had made him hope that maybe they would care about her, protect her, get her out alive. Now, as he saw Lieutenant Colonel Zimurinda's right hand man Jacques Owusu holding a gun to the child's head, he knew Alex would give herself up to save the little girl.

"Let her go, Owusu. It's me you want." Alex raised both her hands slowly, in the age-old gesture of surrender.

"Tell soldier behind you to put weapons down." The man spat back in badly-accented but still recognizable English.

Flint hesitated. Putting his guns down now would mean the difference between failure and success of this mission—and most importantly, Alex's life. Could he let a monster kill a child to save hers?

And then fire erupted in his back, behind his left shoulderblade, and he howled in pain as the impact of being shot drove him forward on one knee. "Flint!" he heard her cry out, and in that smooth motion, she whirled, her hands going to the concealed revolver in the back waistband of her shorts, drew, cocked, and fired.

The man standing behind Flint with the gun never knew what hit him.

She whirled, her gun now aimed at the man holding the gun to the little girl's head. "Let her go."

"Put your gun down." He snarled.

"I'll put mine down when you let her go."

Flint heard Alex's scream, and struggled to his feet. The child lay in a crumpled heap at the African soldier's feet, and his gun was now trained on Alex. "There. I let her go."

Alex's gun was shaking as tears streamed down her face. "You son of a bitch, you didn't have to kill her!"

The guy—Alex called him Owusu—laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound. "Put your gun down." He waved a hand, and another man came out of the underbrush beside him. Before Kris could react, the man had an arm across his chest and a knife held across his throat. "Put it down or I kill him now."

"You'd kill him anyway. He's your operative, isn't he. You blackmailed him into this." They were now surrounded by African militia, and Flint knew they were going to die. He could feel hot blood trickling down his back, between his shoulderblades; his left hand was numb, but his right…he carefully maneuvered his hand so that he could reach the gun strapped to his thigh.

"No." Owusu said calmly, and fired.

Alex's scream pierced Flint's ears a scant half-second before fire blossomed in his right. Owusu had fired at Alex, and the bullet had passed directly through her left shoulder and into his chest. It as a flesh wound, on him, but for Alex…her gun splashed into the puddle at her feet as she screamed in agony, clutching at the red flower of blood that blossomed just under her left collarbone.

Flint grabbed her to keep her upright as the militia members swarmed over the both of them, picking up Alex's gun from the puddle where it had fallen, Flint's guns from the mud, and then they swiftly disarmed him of the rest of his weapons by the simple expedient of holding his own gun to Alex's head and waiting until he took them all off. She was crying, tears pouring down her face mixing with the ran pounding down on them—and then suddenly one of the militia members jerked, screamed, and went down—and Flint's heart surged in his chest. Lady Jaye was out there with Gung Ho, Recondo, and Brawler, and they were coming for him and Alex.

The shot and the fallen militia member galvanized the entire troop into action. Several turned and fired into the jungle behind them; and, under cover of that fire Owusu and a knot of men gripped Alex's and Flint's arms, propelling them into the jungle on a different path than the direction of the concealed Joes' bullets. Flint tried to fight the hands, yanking away and fumbling for the concealed knife strapped to his upper thigh under his pants, but the bullets he'd taken to the shoulders made his grip weak, and he couldn't get a grip on it fast enough. The last thing he saw was the butt of an assault rifle coming down on his head, and darkness descended.

Alex had forgotten just how much getting shot hurt. Memories flashed back—a cold rainy Manhattan street, Olivia's hands on her right shoulder, trying to staunch the blood from the bullet Velez's hitman had just hit her with, her best friend's desperate pleas to _stay with me, Alex_, but she hadn't, and it was all happening again. But this time, she was responsible for another life, too…Flint. Despite being as hard as his codename, she did like him.

She cried out, a short, sharp sound, as she saw one of the militia members club him brutally in the head. He went limp, didn't move; two men walked on either side of him, half-carrying, half dragging his dead weight, as more people laid down cover fire, keeping Gung Ho and Lady Jaye and the other Joes from recuing them.

And then, with a sudden heave, she was almost thrown into the bed of a rusted, battered truck. She screamed as her injured shoulder hit the bed, and the pain almost made her black out. She fought for consciousness, hanging on as her vision grayed, dimmed, grayed, and came back. By the time she could blink the tears of pain out of her eyes, something heavy had thudded on the bed of the truck next to her and she reached out blindly with one hand, encountered heavy military fatigues. Flint.

She knew it was hopeless, then, as the driver floored the pedal and the truck sped away. The Joes and the villagers would be on foot; they couldn't chase a speeding truck. Several trucks, her mind corrected fuzzily as she heard the sound of several engines around her, and she squirmed on her side, gritting her teeth against the anguish in her shoulder, to try and see where they were going.

Hands grabbed her right wrist, then her left one, and she cried out in pain as her arms were wrenched behind her and her hands were cuffed. Whoever it was behind her did the same to Flint, but she was in no condition to really notice. The strain that being handcuffed put on her shoulder caused the bullet wound to start bleeding again, and no matter how she fought to hang onto consciousness again, this time she couldn't manage it and she spiraled down into darkness.


	12. Chapter 12: Trouble

**Chapter 12: Trouble**

"We got trouble, General."

Hawk had been dreading those words for two weeks. Now that trouble had found them, he locked down his emotions and said tightly, "Lady Jaye."

"No, General, I'm right here," came Lady Jaye's voice a second later. "It's Flint. And Alex. We were at the village when militia forces invaded and they captured Flint and Alex." Her voice was flat, emotionless; she too had locked down on the roil of emotions that she had to be feeling with the capture of her longtime, all-but-married lover.

"You separated?"

Hesitation. They knew how Hawk felt about teams separating in hostile territory. Then another voice; Recondo. "General, we're in the middle of a blinding rainstorm out here. Can't see more than two feet in front of our faces. Alex went with Flint to one of the villager's huts to talk to a wounded child, and that was when the attack happened. Caught all of us by surprise."

"Except one." Lady Jaye again, and her voice was steel. "The doctor. Kristophe Lavigne. The government has his family and are threatening their lives if Kris didn't give them Alex. He knew they were out there. He knew the ambush was coming." Her voice broke. "Damn him to hell."

"Wait there. I'm sending the extraction team out from Entebbe." Thank God he'd been able to inveigle permission for that piece of security from Clancy. There was a carrier sitting at Entebbe right now with his hand-picked extraction team on it waiting for potential trouble.

"All due respect, General, but we don't have time. There's no way we can afford to wait that long. In this rain, any tracks will be washed away very quickly, and then we'll never find them. We're going to have to leave right away if we hope to track them down and get Flint and Alex back." Brawler, Hawk identified.

Lady Jaye, again. "They have Flint and Alex. Flint…they might…kill…him quickly; he'd be a liability to them. But Alex—they'll torture her. We've seen what they do to people they don't care about; I don't want to even think about what they'd do to someone they actively hated." Her voice was low but steady; whatever she'd seen was enough to disturb her, on a deeper level than she would admit right now, but she was a professional, and she'd deal with it later once there was no immediate emergency. Hawk understood but it didn't make him feel any better. He should have called this off the moment he'd known there were worms in this apple.

They _should_ wait for the extraction team; he could order them to, and he wanted to, badly. Hell, at this moment he wanted to pack everybody up here at HQ and go out looking for Flint and this damned lawyer. However, that wasn't an option, and what Brawler said was probably true; there were so many miles of trackless jungle out there that if they didn't start out right away tracking Flint through the mess, by the time the extraction team got there it might be impossible to find him. Brawler was right about having to go now.

"Turn on the GPS tracker in your satphone and your cell phones and whatever other personal gear you have. I want to be able to see where you are via satellite. I'm sending out the team from our carrier at Entebbe; they'll arrive at this village you're at right now in about four days. You try and find Flint and this damned lawyer and get them back to the village; if you can't get them free, pin them down and call. I'll send the extraction team out for you all and they'll have sufficient firepower to get him out of there."

"Aye-aye, General."

As soon as Lady Jaye signed off, General Hawk dialed the number to the satphone Duke had on the carrier docked at Entebbe Air Force Base in Uganda. He'd sent Ace, Duke, Cover Girl, Recoil, Wild Bill and Lifeline out there just in case things got out of hand; he was thankful for that now. "Duke. Scramble your team and get ready to go. We got trouble in the DRC." Briefly, he recounted what Lady Jaye had said about Flint and Alex's capture, their location, his decision to allow Lady Jaye to attempt a rescue, and his orders. "I want you on the ground there in the DRC," he finished. "Go to this village. Wait to hear from me or Lady Jaye saying that Flint's been located, then I want you wherever they are as fast as you can get there, understand? Have Ace take you in one helicopter, I want Wild Bill to take the other and leave it empty for Flint's team." He refused to even think about the possibility that the helicopter would only be picking up Lady Jaye, Recondo, Brawler, and Gung Ho; Flint was one of the best, even in this squad of elite soldiers, and if anyone could get out of this mess alive it would be him.

He didn't mention the lawyer to Duke; he'd already written her off as a loss. A soft civilian without the brains God gave a gopher? No. Just concentrate on getting Flint out.

"Ace!"

Duke spotted Brad Armbruster, aka Ace, conversing with a couple of Air Force buddies at the other end of the mess hall. It was the one good thing about their one week stay here at Entebbe Air Force Base in Uganda; Ace was not only their resident flight expert but also a USAF Captain, and the Joes' layover had been a chance to catch up with a few of his buddies. It had been slightly awkward for the rest of the team; Duke, Cover Girl, Recoil, Lifeline, and Wild Bill were army, and classified; they couldn't explain what they were doing here, and while the USAF guys here knew that some information was above their pay grade, and knew that sometimes you just had to do what you were told without knowing the reason why, it hadn't been easy for the Joes to share facilities with the USAF. Ace, however, had eased the tension; he was Air Force, and a captain; if he said these army guys he was with were okay, they were willing to take his word for it. And Wild Bill, their helicopter expert, had been finding friends among the helicopter pilots here and had fit right in.

Ace turned from where he was sitting, saw Duke, saw the other man's face, and excused himself quickly. "Trouble?" he asked.

"Flint and the civilian lawyer were captured by hostiles. Lady Jaye, Brawler, Gung Ho, and Recondo are tracking them. We're being ordered to set up a forward operations base at their last known location; as soon as Lady Jaye and her team find Flint, we're to get to her location with all possible speed, extract them, and get them home."

Ace whistled, low, as he fell into step beside Duke and Cover Girl. "Things sure went downhill quick, eh? What happened? We're told not to separate in hostile territory."

"I expect Hawk's gonna rake Flint's team over the coals for that one once they get back. Right now we need to concentrate on getting them out," Cover Girl said crisply as Wild Bill and Recoil joined their group. "Lifeline's prepping both our helicopters with what he thinks we might need. Hawk told us to expect…severe injuries."

Ace swore colorfully. "What about the civilians they were supposed to be escorting?"

"Hawk said the doctor was compromised. The government of the DRC had his family and told him if he didn't deliver the lawyer, they'd kill him. I guess we can't blame him too much."

"But this lawyer shoulda had more sense than to go waltzin' into a foreign war zone," Wild Bill chimed in from behind them. "I kinda get the feelin' that Hawk's already wrote her off as a loss. Collateral damage from her own stupidity."

"Our focus is on getting our people out. Everything else is secondary," Duke said as he rounded the corner onto the flight deck and led the way across the cavernous hangar to the two helicopters waiting in front of the doors at the far end. "Lifeline! We ready yet?"

"Almost done, boss!" said the half-a-person sticking out from the open door of the helicopter. "Just packing a few extra things I think we'll need under the seats—there!" And moments later the half-a-person turned into a whole person. Lifeline, their emergency medical officer.

Cover Girl peeked around him. "Goodness, what _have_ you done to this thing?" she said, her eyebrows raised in mild surprise. "Packed everything but the kitchen sink?"

"Duke said this was solely an extraction/rescue operation. He also said General Hawk says to expect severe injuries. I packed everything I could think that we could possibly need." He held up a clipboard. "Five stretchers—just in case everyone on the team needs a bed. Pulled the blood types of everyone on Flint's team and made sure we have extra packets of everyone's blood plasma. Bandages, disinfectant, sutures, splints in case there are broken bones, bullet extractors in case someone gets shot, scalpels, burn ointment, chemical burn attenuating solution, portable defibrillator—"

"Are we really going to need all that?" Duke blinked.

"Severe injuries, particularly in a war zone, can range from bullet wounds up to and including amputated limbs, gross physical injuries, soft tissue damage, burns, cuts, deep tissue bruising, infections, blood poisoning—"

Duke winced and held up a hand. "I got it. Let's hope we don't need all of this."

Lifeline nodded. "I hope we don't either."

Cover Girl shrugged. "You can never be too prepared. As they say, hope for the best, prepare for the worst."

"Yeah," Recoil interjected from behind them. "They also say battle plans never survive the first engagement." He peered into the helicopter. "Dude. Did you leave _any_ room for weapons here?"

"This is the second chopper for Flint's team. I don't know if they're gonna be in any shape to fight when we get to them, so I moved all the armament to the first chopper. Wild Bill will move in with this one while Ace hovers in the second chopper and you guys provide cover fire, then Wild Bill will lift off and you'll cover the rear."

Duke grinned. "Tactics are supposed to be _my _job." He sobered quickly as he turned to the team. "Okay. Chopper's geared up and ready. Time to go grab our stuff and get going."

_Don't cry. Don't cry_.

She had to keep telling herself that. There would be time, later, to let the reaction from the events of the morning get to her. Right now they had to get out there in that driving rain and go find Alex…and Dash. She stubbornly refused to allow herself to think of the possibility that they might not find him, just as she stubbornly refused to allow herself to think about what he'd look like when she found him.

_When. Not if_. There was no 'if'. She—they—_would_ find him.

"We'll find him, Allie," came a soft voice behind her, and she nearly lost it at the sympathetic tone of Ettienne's voice. She took several deep breaths before turning to face him; he, accustomed to her coping mechanisms after years of working with her, respectfully allowed her the time she needed to compose herself.

"Thanks, Ettienne," she said, dropping the professional attitude for just a moment, letting him know she really did appreciate his sentiments. He nodded and turned to go, and she caught his arm. "Hey. We'll find her too." Because, as much as she was worried about Dash, he was worried about Alex. Ettienne didn't fall for girls often; they usually fell for him and his rough Cajun charm. But this time he'd been the one to fall, and hard, for this blond lawyer.

He hesitated. Paused. Then shook his head as he looked at her, and she saw the pain in his eyes. "Allie—don't try to soften it for me. I'm under no illusions. She's not going to get out of this alive. And I think she knew it when we started out. She's been crying herself to sleep every night since we left Sake." He stared at the ground, his voice low as he said, "At least I could find her body, take her home to her lover."

"She told you she had someone?" Allie busied herself with packing the rest of the gear they had left strewn around the hut when they'd helped the villagers evacuate.

"She didn't have to. I saw her face when she talked about her girlfriend in New York. Olivia."

Allie froze. Blinked, as her mind tried to process what Ettienne was saying. "She's—she was—"

"I don't know for certain. But she'd cry herself to sleep whispering Olivia's name, and she carries around a picture of a brunette woman in that little round locket she wears." Ettienne shrugged.

"But…she loved Kristophe, and she _likes _you." Allie was still trying to wrap her mind around the idea.

"Just 'cause the batter hits for one team doesn't mean he can't hit for the other one later on."

Lady Jaye shook her head. "Whatever. Let's get going." She zipped up her bag. "We travel light and fast. We can leave the bulk of our things here; Duke will be here with the extraction team in a few days, and after helping the villagers evacuate and then guarding their return, they aren't going to molest our things." That had been the one good thing about the militia raid; at the first sound of gunfire Brawler had taken the children and hidden with them in the jungle, and because of that the villagers now put them firmly in the 'good guys' category, and Gung Ho's explanation earlier to the headman that they were going to have reinforcements coming in a few days was met with the promise that the extraction team would receive a welcome—and they'd be able to establish a rough forward operations base—an FOB, in military parlance—until Lady Jaye's team found Flint and Alex.

They met Recondo and Brawler outside, along with half the village standing outside in the pouring rain, waiting to see them silently off. A couple of the children were already crying, and Brawler was down on one knee in the mud trying to comfort one sobbing child.

The headman stepped forward, gesturing emphatically; Gung Ho, accustomed now to the half-French half-native tongue, translated for Lady Jaye. "He says the shaman wants to give us a token of protection. He says he's seen that we wear the flower symbol of the Congolese displaced," and his own hand came up to tap the carved wooden flowers that Shandi's village had given the Joes, "but these can get lost and he wants to make sure everyone knows we're friends even if we don't have the flowers. He says Alex has one already and everyone can see she's a friend to the Congolese displaced, and it will make sure everyone knows you are friends too. If we run across any tribal villagers while we're looking for Alex they'll help us even if we don't know them."

Lady Jaye nodded. "Tell him thank you. We can use all the help we can get."

The shaman stepped forward as Gung Ho finished translating, and held up his hand, palm out. Lady Jaye matched his gesture, and he held up a tiny knife. Before she could pull her hand back, he'd cut a small crescent moon shape onto the heel of her thumb. There was some sort of dye on the blade of the tiny ritual knife, and she watched as the dark dye spread under her skin. "Sort of like a tattoo," she said to Recondo and Brawler, who'd crowded in close to see what was happening. "I'm guessing after that heals the mark will still be there." Her guess was confirmed when the shaman held up his own hand, and she saw the dark crescent-moon tattoo-scar on the heel of his own thumb.

Recondo held his hand out next; the shaman took the time to pass the knife blade into water to wash the blade clean of Allie's blood, then through a lighter flame (presumably to sterilize the blade), and then into water again to cool the blade before adding more dye to the edge. Lady Jaye watched as he got the same mark, then Brawler, and Gung Ho.

"Thank you," she said simply, shouldering her gun and her light pack. The shaman smiled, nodded, and then the villagers stepped back and silently watched the four Joes file out of their village in the pouring rain.


	13. Chapter 13: Captive

**Chapter 13: Captive**

Flint came back to consciousness suddenly.

His first awareness was that his hands were tied; he couldn't wipe the rain out of his eyes.

His second thought was to grit his teeth against the almost unbearable pain sweeping through him. And that made him crack his eyes open, blink the rain out of them, and take stock of his position.

He was hanging by his arms from an overhead tree limb; his hands were cuffed and the chain between the cuffs was passed over the top of the limb. He was tall enough that his toes just barely touched the ground; he realized quickly that the branch had been deliberately chosen with his height in mind, because this was quickly going to become a stress position as he was forced to choose between having his body weight hanging from the cuffs digging into his wrists, or the strain in his leg muscles as they tried to support his full weight on the tips of his toes. He closed his eyes and took deep breaths, forcing himself to think logically through the fuzziness in his brain, the throbbing headache that radiated outward from the knot at the back of his head where he'd been clubbed by the rifle butt.

The Joes were soldiers. And one of the unpleasant realities of being a soldier was that capture in a combat situation was always a distinct possibility. Torture was likely under those conditions—it was one of those clauses for which they got 'hazard pay'. There were special survival courses taught at the various military academies that dealt with this kind of situation. Called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, they were a publicly controversial, universally disliked, but completely necessary part of every soldier's training. The Resistance portion of the course focused on what to do when in a prisoner of war situation; facing the reality of torture, various situations when it might be used, biofeedback techniques to help one endure it, and a particularly intensive course of study on various physical, mental, emotional, and psychological techniques that an enemy could use to break you. Dash remembered his with distaste, and had, on occasion, been glad that he hadn't known Allie back when she took it; it would have been…difficult.

He was naked—well, it had been one of the issues covered in those courses. _The enemy will try to dehumanize and break you; one of the quickest and most expedient ways will be to remove all clothing_. He could handle this. Not to be vain, but Allie had repeatedly told him he had absolutely nothing to worry about.

_The object of torture is to cause pain without killing the subject._ _The pelvic region and the genitalia of the human body are the quickest way to bring large amounts of pain without causing fatal injuries._ They'd been taught that. Although guys were taught separately from women, and this particular training was handled exclusively by members of one's own gender, he'd still privately thought the instructors for the courses were sadistic bastards. And in the years since he'd taken those courses, he'd never once been in a position where he needed to use the stuff he'd been taught. Not once.

Then another thought intruded on his pain-fogged brain, and he opened his eyes, disregarding the massive headache that simple movement caused.

Alex.

And there she was, hanging in an identical position to his from a tree to his left.

He pushed aside his initial, entirely male thought, which was _wow, she looks great_, and focused on assessing her physical condition objectively. She too was naked. Still unconscious. And the bullet wound in her left shoulder was still bleeding sluggishly, likely exacerbated by the fact that her feet didn't touch the ground; there wasn't a tree branch low enough. He was six foot five; she was shorter, about five foot eight or nine, and the trees here seemed to grow about six feet off the ground before branching out. It was going to become an intolerable position for her very, very quickly. And she wouldn't have gotten the same training he'd gotten in endurance and biofeedback.

Her hair had come out of its ponytail, and hung limp around her drooping head. Rain streamed from her hair, her chin, the tips of her breasts; a small portion of Dash's mind idly wondered if Ettienne would find those breasts beautiful. Alex wasn't Dash's type; he liked muscular and athletic, like Allie; but Ettienne might like Alex's willowy, slender strength, although there was something vaguely 'off ' about her slenderness; she seemed too thin to Dash, like she'd been under stress and not eating right for an extended period of time. Still, there was definite muscle under the smooth, porcelain-fair skin, practically unblemished except for a large scar high on her right shoulder. A bullet wound; he felt a moment of surprise, then remembered hazily that she'd told them when they met her that she'd spent time in Federal Witness Protection & Security because a Colombian druglord tried to assassinate her. Looking at the scar that bullet had left, he understood just how close 'tried' had come to 'succeeded', and understood also why WitSec had been deemed necessary. An inch south, and it would have hit her heart; an inch north, and it would have gotten an artery—in fact, depending on the trajectory of the bullet, it probably _had_ nicked an artery. She was damned lucky she hadn't bled out before help got to her—or help had reacted awfully fast.

Just looking at her made him feel like a peeping tom; but he reminded himself sternly that he was assessing her condition with an eye toward escape if the opportunity presented itself. _Figure out what you have by way of resources and be prepared to use everything to escape where necessary_. And, _If you are captured with a member of the opposite gender they will try to use your natural instincts against you._ He was realizing the truth of that now; although he didn't find Alex attractive beyond any human male's appreciation for a fit, in-shape human female, the male protective instinct (or, as Allie had called it once, jokingly, his Tarzan-to-Jane instinct) he desperately wanted to pull her down and cover her up, protect her from any more abuse.

Because there _was_ going to be more. A lot more.

He tried to look up at the sky, to estimate how long he'd been unconscious and get an idea of what time it was and where they were (they'd taken his field-issue, practically-indestructible watch) but the unrelenting rain pouring out of the unrelieved gray blankness of sky didn't give him many clues at all. This close to the equator, night was just a softer, shadowy version of day, not like the velvety, star-spangled darkness of the Staten Island night sky outside HQ.

A soft moan interrupted his musings, and he looked over, to see Alex stirring. Her face twisted in a grotesque grimace of agony, and for a brief second, he thought she would scream. But she clamped her lips closed, gritted her teeth, and took several deep breaths before opening her eyes. And the first thing she saw when she opened them was him.

Tears filled her blue eyes as soon as she saw him, visible even through the rain that soaked them both. "I'm sorry," she choked out. "Oh God, I'm so sorry…"

"It's okay," he said as comfortingly as he could; lamely, because he knew it wasn't, but he had to say something to her obvious grief. Oddly enough, he'd gotten the impression that it wasn't due to her finding _herself_ in this predicament; it was grief at finding him _with _her.

"I should never have dragged anyone into this…oh Jesus, I'm so sorry…" she was in what had to be a phenomenal amount of pain, and all she could think of was to apologize to him?

"Alex. It's okay. It's nothing I haven't signed up for," he said, thinking, _wonder if she ever thought she'd end up like this when she signed up to be an ICC lawyer? _"Are you okay?"

"Shoulder hurts…like hell," she got out through gritted teeth as she looked up. And Flint winced as he looked up at her hands. They'd locked cuffs _much_ tighter around her wrists than they had his—much tighter than was absolutely necessary—and already he could see the metal cutting into her wrists, drawing little droplets of blood that vanished in the river of rain streaming down her arms. It was only going to get worse.

"Ah, you're awake." Flint ignored the ache in the back of his head as he whipped around to see who was speaking.

"Zimurinda," he heard Alex breathe, and he studied the man with sharpened interest. So this was the monster who raped little girls with sticks and burned children alive in their beds.

"_Lieutenant Colonel_ Innocent Zimurinda. You will address me with respect, American whore!" The man punctuated his words with a hard slap to Alex's left cheek that snapped her head sideways on her neck.

She still didn't scream. When she turned her face back toward Zimurinda her eyes were blue ice; fogged with pain, true, but hard and cold. "Have to slap a woman around to intimidate her? Going to have to do better than that with me." Flint had to admire the courage behind that remark even as his training told him, _Don't taunt. It will make things worse._

Zimurinda smiled, teeth flashing whitely against his very dark-coffee colored skin. "As you wish, Miss Cabot." His English was flawless, only a trace of a French accent.

She stayed silent as long as she could, obviously not wanting to give the bastard the satisfaction of hearing her scream; but long before Zimurinda stopped her cries had started. Flint howled threats at Zimurinda, but the man didn't even hear him; his eyes were lit with sadistic satisfaction as he used fists and feet to kick the helpless body hanging from the tree limb, then when he tired of that, he grabbed a pistol—Flint noted just before he squeezed his own eyes closed, unable to bear the sight anymore, that it was Alex's own, the one she had told them a friend had given her—and used the butt of the gun to pistolwhip her. It was brutal—then beyond brutal. By the time he finished, Alex's blood spattered Zimurinda's hands, his clothes; blood matted Alex's long blond hair, bruises were rapidly darkening to black on her torso, and she hung limp, sobbing.

Zimurinda grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head back, and Flint could see her eyes blackened and swelling, her lip split, a cut on her cheek that Flint was absolutely sure had come from a fractured bone underneath her skin. She was barely conscious, her blue eyes unfocused and dazed, head lolling, gasping sobs rasping between harsh breaths. There was a thin trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth; Flint wasn't sure if she'd sustained internal injuries or if her teeth had just cut her lips.

"I'm going to kill you." Flint barely recognized his own voice, it was so distorted by rage and hatred. The logical part of him whispered in the back of his mind, _If you're captured with a member of the other gender, particularly one you know and care about, don't let them know you care, because it will give them another weapon to use against you emotionally. _The less rational, pure-protective-male instinct in him was howling for Zimurinda's blood, for Zimurinda's neck under his hands, for the pleasure he would find in snapping the sadistic son of a bitch's neck.

Zimurinda laughed, a harsh sound that had an edge of insanity in it. "You're welcome to try, American. Not before I get what I want out of her." He shoved the blood-stained gun into a pocket, flipped out a battered pocketknife. Flint screamed in anger as Zimurinda stabbed the knife toward the side of Alex's head that faced away from him—he couldn't see quite what the bastard was doing—

Alex screamed weakly, convulsed. And Zimurinda let her hair go, letting her head flop limply forward as he held up a tiny, bloodstained item. As rain fell on it, washing away some of the blood, Flint realized what it was; a microchip with one tiny, hair-thin wire hanging from it. "What the hell…"

"A microchip. Oh you didn't know? Yes, her superiors had the chip implanted under her scalp behind her ear before she started out on this mission. A failsafe, you see. If she didn't come back with the evidence they needed to convict me, all they had to do was activate the locator on this audiochip. Wherever her body was, they would pick up the chip and still have what they needed." He laughed, dropped the chip into the mud. "Their organization was easy to subvert. Everyone has a price." He grinned. "Like Kris here."

Two of the guards shoved Kris forward. He stared at the ground, unable to look at Alex, unable to look at Flint. "His family was more important than his lover," and he prodded Alex's limply hanging body, wringing a harsh moan of anguish as the touch made her body swing gently from her by now badly-bleeding wrists. "It was a trap. We have been working for this for months. The story that this doctor brought back to the ICC telling them that there was a victim willing to talk in Nzoka, but only to the blond American bitch; the ICC didn't have a choice but to send her out; my contact gave me the frequency of the chip, and it was easy to track her. She slipped away from me back in Goma." He looked at Flint. "It is too bad for you that she did; if I had gotten her in Goma you would not be here. She would have disappeared, and you would have gone home with your mercenaries."

It all made sense. Flint felt his heart fall into his stomach. Alex had been set up, from the very beginning. Her superiors had used her for their own ends; had sent her out _knowing_ that Zimurinda wanted her. Everything, every_one_ had conspired to make this her last trip into the DRC, the trip she would never come back from. The only wild card had been him and his team. Her only hope had been them. Zimurinda obviously still didn't know they were active American military, not that it did any good. They had still failed her.

But…she'd known this was going to be a suicide mission. She had to have known. Now Flint knew why she had told him about the letter she had mailed in Sake to her friend in New York; why she'd told them where to find the only person on Earth who would mourn her death. She'd known she would die. And yet she'd come anyway. Because she had been ordered to, and because her going would hopefully ensure that this monster standing here would be convicted not only of her death, but the crimes against a thousand other faceless people, women, children.

She'd have made a kick-ass Joe.

And it was all going to be in vain, her hope gone with that audio chip. Now she would die knowing she'd failed; failed herself, failed all these people she'd tried so hard for. Failed Shandi, the little girl who had won her heart.

_You won't fail_, he told her silently, willing her to hear his thoughts. _I _will_ get back. I will tell them what you tried so hard to do. I will tell everyone what they've done, what _all_ of them conspired to do to you. You will have justice if it takes the rest of my life to do it._

"Traitor. He is a traitor. And you know what the penalty for treason is in this country." Zimurinda raised Alex's gun. Pointed it at Kris's head. Pulled the trigger.

Alex's scream of heartbreak cut through Flint like a knife.

Zimurinda gestured to a man standing off to one side. The man stepped forward, slipped a key into the handcuffs that held Alex's wrists. One side opened, let go. She fell bonelessly to the muddy ground, still dazed from the beating, unable to coordinate her limbs enough to stand. She crawled instead, heedless of the rain, the mud, her own nudity; slumped to a sitting position beside Kris, crying and crying as she looked into the eyes of the man she'd loved. "Kris…" she whimpered, a sound that broke Flint's heart with the anguish in it, as her bleeding wrists and nerveless fingers smoothed the hair away from his face. "Kris, oh God, I'm sorry, I love you, Oh God, I'm so sorry…"

"Alex…" his voice was a bubby rasp; Flint couldn't believe the man was still alive. Bullet to the head…he should have been dead on impact. "Sorry…never told you…" his eyes focused on hers. "Love you too." And the light went out of his eyes.

Alex laid her head on his chest and cried.

They didn't even allow her time to grieve. The last thing Flint saw through his own tears and the curtain of rain was Zimurinda, grabbing fistfuls of Alex's hair and dragging her away from Kris's dead body. She screamed, fought; but, disoriented from the beating she'd received, she couldn't put up much resistance, and Zimurinda dragged her into a nearby hut, followed by his soldiers. Only one remained, a man with olive-colored, distinctly lighter skin, to drag Kristophe Lavigne's body into the jungle. Then he disappeared into the hut.

Flint hung his head to hide his own tears as the screams started.


	14. Chapter 14: POW

**Chapter 14: POW**

**Author's note: Chapter 14 not posted due to ratings compliance. Having the text of this chapter is not necessary to figure the story out; however, if you'd like to read it send an email request to** jaenelleangelline79 (at) yahoo (dot) com **and the chapter will be provided.**


	15. Chapter 15: Intelligence

**Chapter 15:Intelligence**

"Listen to me, General. You are not sending a rescue mission."

Hawk stared at Clancy for a full minute, trying to wrap his head around that. "What?"

"You heard me. No. Rescue. Mission."

"But…We never leave anyone behind. It's that basic."

"Your man is likely dead out there, this Warrant Officer Dashiell Faireborn you're talking about. Obviously your faith in his ability to lead this mission was misplaced—"

Hawk half-rose out of his chair, furious. "_Excuse_ me, Clancy—!" The other general's calculated rudeness was inexcusable.

"_General_ Clancy to you. You forget yourself." Clancy's voice was cold. "Your orders are clear, Abernathy. No rescue mission. Your Warrant Officer is dead and the lawyer is no longer your problem. The UN peacekeeping forces will decide whether to try and find what's left of her." Clancy cut off the vidphone feed before Hawk could say anything.

"Friggin' assholes like Clancy are the reason my mother didn't want me to be a soldier," Scarlett said, walking into Hawk's office after giving his door the barest, token tap. "Sorry, I was passing by and I overheard. There's something really wrong here, Hawk."

"That's a friggin' understatement." Hawk sat glowering behind his desk for a moment, then pushed aside his anger and thought out his next move. "Scarlett, stay here, but be quiet. I'm going to make another call and I want you to help me with your impressions after we're done."

"Sure." Scarlett perched on the edge of his desk as Hawk dialed another number.

"Can I help you?"

Hawk tried to keep his voice even, polite. "Yes. I need to speak with whoever it is that coordinates the movements of your people in the field."

"Do you have a name?"

He bit his lip on a sarcastic reply. "No, I don't."

"Then I'm afraid I can't—"

Hawk lost it. He was terribly worried about Flint and Lady Jaye out there in the jungle, Duke was just getting onsite of the last known position of the complete team, and this little government toady was giving him a hard time. Uh-uh. "Listen, you pompous little ass, I'm a two-star General with the American military and I have important information about the whereabouts of one of your advocates, Alexandra Cabot. I need to speak with whoever her supervisor is, immediately, so you get your ass in gear and find someone I can talk to!"

"Please hold." The line clicked to hold before he could say anything.

He cursed as he slammed his finger on the speaker. At least he hadn't been hung up on, he thought as he drummed his fingers on the top of his desk, for the moment miraculously clean. It was a sign of his agitation; when he was nervous or worried about something, he put all that nervous energy into cleaning his desk. It was a habit of his that he hadn't bothered to correct, since the Joes used the condition of his desk to gauge his response to them; when his desk was clean they tiptoed around him. Like now.

"Can I help you?" A different voice, female this time.

"I'm trying to reach Alexandra Cabot's supervisor."

"Alexandra Cabot?" The voice sounded surprised. No, Stronger. Shocked? Why?

"Yes, Alexandra Cabot. She works for the ICC. My name is General Clayton Abernathy, and my team was the one sent in to guard Ms. Cabot while she did her work."

"Uh, yeah, of course. What can I do for you?"

"Are you her supervisor?"

Hesitation. Very, very slight, so slight that only someone who was already suspicious would have noticed it. Then, "Yes."

Alarm bells rang in Hawk's head even before Scarlett, sitting on the edge of the desk across from him, put her finger on the 'mute' button. "She's lying," she breathed, her face set and angry, and Hawk was forcibly reminded that Scarlett's specialty was intelligence, that she could spot a liar a mile away, and even better, she knew lawyers because she was one. She'd taken—and passed—her bar exams, after all. Just because she'd chosen to join the military didn't make those skills useless. "Tell her you want to speak to her _real_ supervisor."

Hawk allowed some of his anger show in his voice when he spoke to the phone again. "I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but I want to speak to Alexandra Cabot's real supervisor. Immediately."

A very audible, nervous gulp. "Please hold." A click. For a moment Hawk thought he'd been put on hold again, but moments later the flat dial tone told him he'd been hung up on.

Hawk shook his head, staring at the phone incredulously. "What the hell is going on? I can't get a straight answer out of anyone! Not Clancy, not the UN, and now the ICC. And she works for them! They know she's out there in hostile territory, and they know those hostiles have very personal reasons not to like her. It's like they don't care."

Scarlett was silent for long moments, thinking. "I have an idea," she said slowly, chewing her lower lip thoughtfully, as she did when she was thinking very hard, "but you're _not _going to like it."

Hawk threw up his hands. "I didn't like this when Clancy first brought it to me. That hasn't changed at all. What is it?"

"They sounded surprised because they've already written her off. She's already gone, to them. I think they knew when she went out that she wasn't coming back." Hawk could see where Scarlett was going with this and he didn't like it. Didn't like it at all. It made a horrible kind of sense; why else would Clancy have told him not to try a rescue?

"Let me lay this out for you. One. I don't know if Alexandra Cabot really was that obsessed. Lady Jaye is a pretty good judge of character," And Hawk had to repress a tiny smile at that, because when the two women had first met there'd been some mutual hostility before they decided to band together against 'The Men,' "and so if she says Alex didn't strike her as behaving obsessed, and Alex said her superiors sent her out, I'll trust that. Two. We already know their intel is faulty. If what they're telling us doesn't jive with what our own people on the ground are telling us, I will believe what our people say."

She turned troubled green eyes on Hawk. "A story comes back from the jungle that a victim is willing to talk. They send out the best person they have for the job, the one who they know will get the testimony. But they know that person is wanted by the hostile forces in the area, on a very personal level. They send her out anyway, but they ask for American assistance because she is, after all, an American citizen. Then she leaves with this escort who," a small smile twitched her lips, "are nowhere near as good as we are," the smile disappeared, "and that escort is slaughtered. If you were in charge of this, at this point, you'd scrap the whole thing—you tried to scrap this last week, and Flint and Lady Jaye overrode you on it." Another small smile, which disappeared quickly. "But _they_ didn't. They pulled another escort team together—us, this time—and sent her out again. And this time, the militia got what they wanted."

Another bite on her lip as she stared into blank air, her eyes distant and unfocused. "And now we're being told to leave her there, to _not_ attempt a rescue. You and I both know that by the time the UN forces get on the ground there, she's going to be dead." She hesitated, made a face. "I remember those courses we all had to take on torture techniques and physical consequences of those techniques. They probably won't kill her right away but she's not going to last long. Dash will last longer than she will, just because of those training courses."

She got up and started to pace, and Hawk knew she was thinking very hard indeed. "Everything in me is shouting 'setup.' This lawyer got set up. What I can't figure out is _why_. What are we _not_ seeing? Who's the puppet master behind the stage pulling all the strings? Why are they doing this? What is so important that an American citizen—this lawyer—is expendable? Did this lawyer know that they set her up? Did she realize this is a suicide mission?" Scarlett sighed in frustration and plunked back down on the edge of Hawk's desk, toe tapping in agitation. "I wish we had our own intel source over there."

Hawk felt the prickle of an idea forming at the back of his mind, but he pushed it aside for the moment and dialed the ICC's contact number again. This time, the voice that answered was different. "Can I help you?"

"Yes. My name is General Clayton Abernathy with the United States Army. I'm the commander who sent out the team that went into the DRC to guard Ms. Alexandra Cabot while she acquired the testimony you needed?"

"Oh, Alex! Yes! How is she doing?"

"You hadn't heard?" Hawk shot Scarlett a glance; the redhead was looking shocked, like she'd just figured something out, but he didn't have time to find out what it was.

"Heard what?" the voice on the other end of the phone said. Hawk had a feeling this would be important, so he hit 'speaker' and motioned to Scarlett to stay silent.

"Alexandra and part of the team I sent out were captured by hostile forces in the jungle. Her whereabouts at the moment are unknown. And so is part of my team."

"Alex…has been captured?" the voice on the other end broke on the last word. "Oh my God…we told her…not to go…" the voice sounded like its owner was about to break into sobs.

"Can I speak to Alex's supervisor?" Hawk said gently. Whatever was actually going on, whoever this was on the other end was either putting on a performance worthy of an Emmy or they were indeed completely innocent. His money was on the latter.

"Yes, yes, of course…" and a moment later, no hold button needed, another, entirely different voice came on the line, a crisp, no-nonsense female voice. Older.

"What is this about Alex? She's one of our best Advocates."

"She's gone missing, Ma'am."

A harsh, indrawn breath. "And you are?"

"General Clayton Abernathy, United States Army."

The voice cut in. "Were those your soldiers that were supposed to guard Alex while she was over there getting testimony for us?"

"Yes." Hawk frowned.

"Why did you insist on going through with this after your first team was slaughtered? I read her mission report on that first attempt to go out. It was brutal and traumatic and she didn't want to go back out. In fact, she nearly quit on me right there. _Why did you make her go back out_?" there was a note of anguish in the older woman's voice.

"I think we're both missing some information here, Ma'am." Scarlett cut in, ignoring Hawk's unspoken order to stay silent. Hawk cursed her impulsiveness mentally in every language he knew even as Scarlett went on. "Master Sergeant Shana O'Hara, United States Army. I think we need to clarify some things on both sides. Are you private?"

"I will be in a moment. Here's my direct line; give me a call in three minutes. I want to set up a scrambler on my desk phone to make sure we aren't overheard." She rattled off a string of numbers which Scarlett jotted down on a piece of paper on Hawk's desk, then the line disconnected.

Hawk exploded. "Scarlett—!"

"Rake me over the coals later, General. I think we can trust her. This is important. There's something going on over there; the first people we spoke to didn't seem surprised that she was missing—like I said, it's like they already knew she wasn't coming back. This woman, Alex's real supervisor, didn't even know she was missing yet. I think the ICC could be compromised." Scarlett was counting the seconds on her wristwatch; at exactly three minutes she dialed the number they'd been given.

"I have your names; I haven't given you mine. I won't give you mine until I'm sure you are who you say you are." Brisk, with no formalities.

"Respectfully, Ma'am, if you hadn't decided you could trust us you wouldn't have given us your direct number and we would not be talking to you right now on a scrambled line," Scarlett said.

A pause, then the woman laughed—ruefully, Hawk thought. "Point taken. Damn, you remind me of Alex, Master Sergeant O'Hara." Scarlett smiled thinly as the voice resumed, humor gone. "Now. What are you not seeing?"

"I was approached by…someone higher up on the military ladder," Hawk said. "My team was not the first one that was sent, Ma'am. I didn't know about the first team until after I'd gotten my orders. It was not my decision to send a second team; in fact, if I had been the commander of the first team, I would have scrapped the mission right there if I'd sent people so poorly trained that they would not have made it out when your lawyer did."

"Don't underestimate Alex Cabot, General. She's a very tough, resourceful young lady. And while I never met the team that went out with her the first time, Alex's report said they were a fine bunch of young American men and they shouldn't have died. Her report blamed faulty intel for it, and she stressed in the strongest possible terms that she did _not _want to go back out there after that, that she wanted to give up her activities on the ground in the DRC." The voice took on a steel edge. "I was all for letting her quit, right there. What we do is not an easy job, and her role in the whole process is the hardest. While we weren't close personal friends, we did see each other socially outside of work, and I respect her enough to trust her when she says she's out of her depth. However, my orders were to keep her on this mission. I had to force her to go out again." Anguish. "Believe me, General, I didn't want to. She hated me for it, I know she did. But I didn't have a choice. I had orders."

"I think she knew that," Scarlett said, her voice unexpectedly gentle. "She knew you were under orders, just as she was."

"Judy Donnelly. Deputy Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court."

"Judy, then. Thank you. So. Alex didn't want to go back out? She wasn't obsessed with a certain Colonel Zimurinda?"

"Alex? Obsessed? Hardly. At least, not obsessed over any one criminal. She'd worry excessively over the victims, particularly the children, but that was part of her. That's what made her so good at her job."

"Our intel says she was obsessed with getting Zimurinda, and that was why she insisted on going back out."

"Your intel is wrong. Whoever gave that to you is lying or wants you to believe something about Alex that isn't true." Judy sounded mystified. "What I don't understand is why."

"I don't understand why either. I think we have two important pieces of the puzzle, I just can't see how it all fits together yet." Scarlett sighed. "I wish we could talk face to face, compare notes."

"I don't see how…"

The idea in the back of Hawk's mind swam fully-formed into his conscious brain. "Ms. Donnelly. Do you have room on your staff for a new assistant, a young, red-haired woman named Shana who has a law license in the US but hasn't practiced in a little while?"

A pause. Silence. Then, unexpectedly, laughter. "I see where you're going with this, General. If you can pull papers together, of course I can use another assistant on staff. And of course, being new and not having practiced law in a while, she will need mentoring and one-on-one personal guidance."

"We understand each other, then. I'll give you a call when we have paperwork ready and Shana gets there." Hawk tried to keep the satisfaction out of his voice.

"I'll make sure I let my staff know we're expecting a new volunteer." Then the voice paused. "General?"

"Yes?"

"Did you say your people didn't know where Alex is?"

"Yes. The team was separated and Alex and one of the team members were captured. The rest of the team are out looking for them now."

A pause. "Didn't anyone tell you about the tracker?"

"What tracker?" Hawk and Scarlett said simultaneously. Hawk's eyes narrowed to angry slits as he stared accusingly at the phone.

"Before Alex left we got orders to implant her with a tracking device. It's an audiochip, actually; it retains audio testimony. There's a hair-thin wire that runs down her auditory canal that's attuned to her pulse. If that pulse is interrupted for more than a minute, it's programmed to send her coordinates to a satellite and trackable by GPS."

"A homing beacon."

"Yes. We don't usually use it; it's painful to install and even more painful to get out. Alex had blinding headaches for two days after they put it in. But it was part of our orders that she be outfitted with one." She gave them the frequency.

"Have there ever been any other occasions when they had to be used?"

Donnelly's voice dropped. "Yes. An advocate we had a year ago He was caught up in a village raid and tortured. UN forces raided the camp and found him. He was taken to the hospital in Goma but he didn't make it. Died of an embolism incurred during his imprisonment."

"Clancy said not to attempt a rescue."

This was so unexpected that Lady Jaye stopped in her tracks, staring at the satphone, speechless. It took a moment to find her voice. "What the hell—General, we _never_ leave anyone behind. It's drummed into us as recruits!"

"Scarlett and I both think the whole thing stinks of a setup." Lady Jaye almost smiled. Knowing Scarlett's temper, she'd probably said a whole lot more. "So I'm officially bucking orders and telling you to proceed with the rescue attempt."

"Thank you," Lady Jaye said with relief. Because even if Hawk told them to follow the orders, well, she was definitely going to disobey that order. It went against everything she'd been taught as an officer of the Army and as a Joe.

"I think I got something that'll help you," Hawk said.

Lady Jaye paused in the middle of the tiny dirt track through the jungle. It wasn't a road—not much of one, anyway—but they had distinctly heard the sound of engines when they'd pursued the militia members into the jungle, and that meant trucks. No car could make it out here with no paved road. And not a van either; they wouldn't have been able to shoot back from inside a van.

So; trucks or a jeep. And those, while still better over rough terrain like a jungle, still had to leave traces of their passing in the form of a wide swath of crushed vegetation. Or, in the case of the spot they were standing on, a dirt track. There had been a few places where the track split; Lady Jaye, unwilling to split the team up (look what happened last time!) had followed each one until it had become clear to jungle specialists Brawler and Recondo that the trucks hadn't gone further; then they backtracked and took a different track.

Something was slowly become clear to Lady Jaye; these tracks were well-established. A single vehicle couldn't have made it by passing through once, or even twice; this was a well-traveled dirt road. When they'd left Nzoka, they'd spent the rest of the day pushing through about fifteen miles of dense, overgrown jungle. They had stopped only when it was too dark to see the path of broken vegetation that would indicate where the trucks carrying Flint and Alex had gone; they'd made rough camp, and when the rain stopped just before daybreak, they'd gotten going again. Then at midmorning, they'd broken out, very suddenly, into a dirt track. And these dirt tracks crossed and criss-crossed each other in all different directions. They'd spent most of the last day checking each of those trails, stopped last night at dark, and she'd spent a miserable, sleepless night until the light strengthened enough to get going again.

"I hope what you have can make this easier," she sighed. She'd thought she'd packed lightly; but every step in this jungle terrain was difficult, and every pound she carried heavier as a result. She wanted to dump the packs and keep moving, driven by a terrible urgency, a driving need to find Dash, now, before she lost the man she loved. It had already been forty-eight hours, and every moment was one that might cost Dash his life. And Alex…Alex was a thought in the back of her mind, too; it wasn't that she was unconcerned, but Flint was their main target. Allie was positive that when they found the militia camp, Alex would be dead. But Dash was tough; he'd make it. And their orders, and the orders given Duke's extraction team, were to find him.

"I think so. Scarlett and I got hold of someone over at the ICC. They told us Alex was implanted with an audio chip, equipped with GPS. They said they needed to have a way to keep tabs on her so they had one implanted just behind her left ear. They don't use them often, and only for extreme situations. If you plug the frequency into your instruments, you should be able to pick up the signal." Lady Jaye handed the satphone to Recondo, who tapped the frequency into his instruments before handing the phone back to Lady Jaye.

"What constitutes an extreme situation?" Lady Jaye asked curiously as Recondo started moving in a circle, trying to pick up a signal.

"The last time they used locators was on another advocate like Miss Cabot. A guy. Caught in a militia raid on a village, tortured. They found him alive but he died later in the hospital."

Lady Jaye tried to keep her voice steady. "We'll find him, General. Thanks for the heads up." She switched off the phone and stared at it for a moment, tears blurring her eyes. _Don't cry. Don't cry. You're the ranking officer here. Don't cry._

"I think I got a signal!" Recondo was at the other side of this tiny grassy clearing, waving the tracker. "This way!"

"We'll find him, Allie," Ettienne nodded firmly as they stepped off after Recondo. Allie nodded as she followed the guys, but her heart was in her stomach. What kinds of injuries would that other advocate have sustained that he'd die even after they got to the hospital? She was no stranger to torture; she, like all the Joes, had taken those SERE courses. Allie had hated them with a passion, but it was a requirement. She actually still had the course book sitting in the bottom of her footlocker.

She'd paid the absolute minimum of attention she could to the course, wanting just to get the whole thing over with, and she knew Dash had felt the same. Now she prayed that he'd remember enough of what they'd taught about endurance techniques to withstand whatever these monsters did to them.


	16. Chapter 16: Rescue

**Chapter 16: Rescue**

They'd taken Dash and Alex down from the trees after the second night; Dash had been relieved when they unlocked the cuffs, only to begin screaming as he hit the ground and overstretched, overstressed shoulder, arm and wrist joints flared into agony, to say nothing of tendons and muscles. His leg muscles were knotted and cramped from being used to alternately support his weight or hang, and he couldn't even stand when Zimurinda's men dragged both captives over to a large metal cage on the ground, like a small dog pen really, and threw them in. Dash quickly crawled to Alex's side and touched her.

She barely whimpered. Dash had grown increasingly frantic over the last half-day or so; she'd been mostly unresponsive. They'd beaten her with heavy wood staves as she hung from the tree beside his, but even then her reactions, her screams of pain and writhing, had seemed distant and perfunctory. And she hadn't spoken any words at all; it was like Alex wasn't even there anymore, just a bundle of human flesh and instinct blindly reacting.

Her appearance now wasn't even remotely pleasing, except to these sick sons of bitches, who still took her into the hut twice more that second day. When they brought her back out the last time, she'd simply hung limply from her tree branch barely alive; Dash had to pay very close attention just to see the rise and fall of her chest to see if she still breathed. She was incapable of screaming anymore, and the only intelligible word she was able to get out past dry, bleeding, cracked lips was 'water'. It had been two nights and two days since they'd been captured—this was just before dawn of their third day—and while he'd been allowed water, she hadn't. When he'd been given some earlier she'd roused just enough to weakly beg for some, but the man walked away without giving her any, and Dash felt guilt spear through him as he saw the helpless, defeated look in her eyes before she closed them and slipped back into unconsciousness. _Three days is the limit a human body can go without water_, said his training.

Dash prayed to every God he'd ever heard of that she would die soon. It was the kindest thing he could think of; even if she lived, she'd never be the same. Her skin was streaked with grime and filth, her dislocated shoulder and hip distorting her joint profile, bruises discolored her skin, the bullet wound in her left shoulder definitely infected. And right now he couldn't see how they'd make it out of this hellhole. He had no idea how long they'd been unconscious in the back of the truck, no idea how far the truck had gone, no idea what day it was, or how long ago they'd been taken. Aside from the whipping he'd taken when they'd forced him to hurt Alex, he'd been pretty much left alone but the whip cuts were hot and inflamed, he knew he was running a fever and his back was infected, and the insects had been feasting on both him and Alex for at least a day now. They hadn't been allowed clothes, and his skin was burned and tender; and he suspected that under the grime and filth and bruises Alex was burned too. He didn't understand just how she'd managed to take this much abuse and still live; no matter what his training said about how much the human body could take before dying and how strong the human will to live was, he still couldn't believe Alex wasn't dead yet.

All he could do now was try to make her comfortable; he pressed the raw skin of his back against the chain-link metal, ignoring the hot agony of pressure against the infected flesh. He deserved it, for what he'd done to Alex the morning of their second day here. Then he used his still cuffed-together wrists and hands to shift her around—she didn't react to the poking and prodding, didn't react as her dislocated hip scraped against the ground, and that both worried and comforted him; worried because there was no reaction, but oddly comforted because maybe that meant she was beyond reach of any more pain, at all. He shifted so her head rested on his knee, so that her head wouldn't have to rest on the hard ground, and tried to finger-comb her tangled, blood-matted blond hair free of her face. And he prayed. _Please God, let her die soon, it's too much, please, just let her go…_

"What the hell…?" Lady Jaye grabbed the trunk of a nearby tree as the ground seemed to ripple under her.

"Earthquake," Recondo said absently, not even looking up from the screen on the tracker in his hand. "We're getting close. Come on."

"_Earthquake_? In _Africa_?"

Brawler grinned at her and reached out to steady her as the ground rolled under them again. "Yeah. Lac Kivu is around here somewhere and it seems to be the focal point for a lot of the earthquake activity in North Africa." He frowned and reached for a nearby tree himself as the ground rolled again. "Damn. Is it me or is this getting worse?"

"Let's go." Recondo was totally absorbed in his tracker. He walked on the rolling ground like it was the deck of a ship and he was an experienced sailor; it didn't seem to bother him at all. "According to this, they should be just another mile ahead."

Lady Jaye had refused, for the last two days, to think, to even _consider_ what condition they would find Dash and Alex in when they got there; she was, therefore, completely unprepared when her team came to the verge of a large dirt clearing and she saw the metal cage in the center of it. Though the sun hadn't come up yet, it was still light enough for them to see one partially upright figure slumped over one completely prone figure. The partially upright figure was clearly male, white, and had his back to them, and Allie sucked in a harsh breath as tears filled her eyes. "Dash…" she whispered in horror, unable to take her eyes off the mutilated, bloody back of the man she loved. A sudden shift of the ground under her threw her to her knees, the wave this time strong enough even to send Recondo off balance.

And then this one didn't stop. The waves kept coming, stronger and stronger, and she heard the yells of the militia inside the huts as thatched roofs collapsed, as muddy ground heaved, roiled, rose, split, subsided. Mud walls of the surrounding huts collapsed, burying the occupants under piles of wet earth.

"If that cage collapses—" Recondo started, but Allie, blind and deaf to everything but Dash, was already on her way across the clearing. Not a headlong flight; she was still cautious enough to run from hut to hut, from tree to tree, but she wasn't as careful as she could have been, not caring when her booted foot skidded in the churned mud under one of the two trees standing in the center of the village, two trees with low-hanging branches.

Brawler, Gung Ho, and Recondo ran after her, staying in the shadows, guns out, ready to provide cover fire if she was spotted, but the militia members seemed to be in a panic, shouting, trying to dig their fellows out from under collapsed mud walls, wooden beams, roofs. Lady Jaye reached the cage barely seconds later, and her scream of anguish was fortunately lost in the rumble as the ground heaved again. "_**DASH**_**!**"

Dash heard the voice, as if from a million miles away. So tired…he just wanted to give in to the darkness, to float away, but that voice—he'd never been able to ignore _that_ voice. "A-Allie?" his head felt like it weighed a ton, and he could barely lift it, but the sound of her voice propelled him upright from where he'd slumped over Alex's body. He'd given up; there was no way Allie would be able to find him here, in the middle of a huge jungle; his ears had to be tricking him. He was delirious; he'd been drifting between deliriousness and lucidity for what felt like hours as he slid slowly down into darkness. He'd fought it, as long as he could, but he just couldn't anymore…

And then the cage was open, and cool familiar hands touched his flushed, hot skin, and _her_ voice, welcome, familiar, _wonderful_, was sobbing his name into his ear. "Dash, oh God, Dash, please, we have to go, please, sweetheart…" he tried to tell Allie he couldn't move because Alex's dead weight lay across his legs, but suddenly that weight was gone, and he had to move, had to stand, with a superhuman effort that left him sobbing with pain and anguish, to see what had happened to Alex, and his legs buckled, nearly collapsed as he saw with relief that Alex was lying limp in Gung Ho's arms. He was positive she had to be dead, but at least they could bring her body…

"Truck…" he croaked, pointing—or trying to point, with two cuffed hands, in the direction of the area where they'd kept the vehicles. Allie gasped at the sight of his wrists, raw and bloody from the cuffs digging into them, but there was nothing she could do about it now. Speed was, first and foremost, their immediate need.

Allie picked out one at random. Ignoring the available cover in favor of speed, they all ran, as fast as Dash could manage, for the truck, Recondo in front, Brawler in the rear, Gung Ho carrying Alex. They miraculously managed to get to the truck before someone spotted them, and a shout rose from the huts.

"In the back. Sorry, Dash," Allie heaved him up into the bed, and he crawled onto the bed willingly, lying down. No matter how he felt, they had to get away. Allie scrambled into the driver's seat; Gung Ho, after laying Alex carefully down in the side of the bed next to Dash, got into the passenger seat, face stony and hard. Most people, seeing him now, would have said impassive and focused; but Allie, stealing a glance at him from the driver's seat, thought he looked shocked.

Then there was no more time to think, as people started pouring out of the few huts left standing, and Recondo and Brawler, perched on the sides of the truck bed, opened fire as Lady Jaye peeled out of the makeshift parking lot and pointed the truck down the closest dirt road they could find. She drove blindly, not caring where she was going, what direction, so long as it was away from the monsters that had hurt Dash and killed Alex. She'd taken a quick glance at the blond woman as Gung Ho pulled her off Flint and out of the cage, but that glance was enough. No one could still be alive after being mutilated like that. Her stomach flipped, but she forced her reactions aside. _You're the ranking officer here. Hold on_. She knew she was going to pay for this iron-willed suppression of her emotions later, but it would be worth it as long as they got away.

The force coming after them seemed to be disorganized, and only two trucks were following them as they sped away. Recondo and Brawler were firing everything they had, trying to take out the militia in the back of those trucks and the drivers. Gung Ho grabbed the satphone and howled into it, "Duke! Duke, can you hear me!"

_"Jesus friggin' Christ…!"_ Duke sprang out of the helicopter seat he'd buckled himself into when the earthquake had started and grabbed for the satphone. "Gung Ho!"

"We got Flint and Alex but we got half the Army of the DRC on our tails! We need help, now!" The helicopter was already in hover; Wild Bill and Ace had decided it would be safer to get their birds off the ground when the earthquake started, so fortunately, they could respond quickly.

"We're on the way. Where are you?" Probably a useless question, since they could be anywhere in this jungle.

"Follow the satphone signal!" Cover Girl had one of her instruments in her hand, and pointed with the other in a direction roughly forty degrees to their right. "That way!"

Gung Ho was keeping the phone line open; they Joes, desperately searching from the air, could hear gunfire in the background noise. "Brawler! Left! Truck! Oh shit! _Lady Jaye_!" a gunshot very close to the sat phone, followed by the sound of Lady Jaye's choked-off scream. "Gung Ho, take the wheel! Lady Jaye's been hit!"

"Jesus, they're getting murdered down there!" Recoil cursed.

"Not for long!" Cover Girl shouted in triumph, pointing downward. They could see, below them, flashes of gunfire in the lightening jungle; could see the headlights of the vehicle in front—Lady Jaye's, they assumed; the taillights had been shot out but the headlights were still on.

Wild Bill angled the helicopter around and aimed a bright spotlight at the vehicle behind the fleeing Joes. Chaos reigned; the brilliant white light flashing in the eyes of those whose eyes were already dark-adapted caused massive havoc, and Recoil, Cover Girl, and Duke cut loose with strafing fire that cut the jungle foliage to shreds even as the men standing in the back of the truck went down in gouts of blood as bullets fired from the air cut through them like hot knives through butter. Ace was already flying off, the ground team's truck following the spotlight Ace aimed at the ground to guide them away from the combat.

"Just stop the pursuit and join us. We got critically wounded here!" Recondo's voice burst out of the satphone. "Flint's in really bad shape, Lady Jaye got hit by gunfire, Alex's—I don't even know if she's still alive!"

"Does that look like we stopped pursuit?" Wild Bill let his helicopter spotlight sweep over the carnage on the dirt road.

Cover Girl nodded grimly. "Yeah. Those trucks aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and they're blocking the road for any other vehicles that might pursue." She slammed the safety on her gun. "Let's go. Lady Jaye's team need help."


	17. Chapter 17:Assessment

**Chapter 17: Assessment**

Duke wanted to throw up.

Lady Jaye was bad enough. A bullet had caught her high on the chest and the blood in the wound bubbled with every breath she took. Lifeline was busy pumping blood into her even as he tried to close the gaping hole in her chest.

Flint was worse. Ace was busy helping Courtney, under Lifeline's terse directions, bandage Flint's body, lying on his side on one of the stretchers as an IV line pumped massive doses of antibiotics to treat the infection in his lacerated, bloody back.

Alex was the worst.

Duke cursed himself for seven kinds of a fool for not bringing more than one medical officer with him as he looked at the blond woman, lying still and silent on another stretcher. When he'd first gotten off the helicopter with his team, Lifeline, who had stayed in the hospital helicopter, as they'd called Ace's chopper, had been trying to staunch the blood bubbling from Lady Jaye's chest. Dash had been unconscious, being carefully carried off the truck by Recondo and Brawler. Gung Ho crouched at the back of the truck bed, and the brutalized wreck of a human body that lay in his arms made Duke run for the bushes and throw up. As he came back, tears in his eyes, Gung Ho said, quietly, "She's still alive."

The thought that anyone could still be alive in that mutilated body made Duke want to retch again. "Lifeline…Ed…" he said, but the medic shook his head.

"General Hawk's orders. Our people are our first priority. She'll have to wait until I get Lady Jaye patched up. Flint's wounds are mostly superficial. Probably hurts like a stone bitch, but he's alive and he's going to stay that way as long as Cover Girl can keep getting those antibiotics into him." Softening his tone, he said, "I'm only one person, Conrad. Courtney's got some first aid training but she's not going to be able to handle that." He nodded in Alex's direction. "I did take a quick look at her. At this moment, nothing I can do for her will make any immediate difference in her condition. I need to save the ones I can." His tone didn't leave much doubt in Conrad's mind that their EMO didn't think Alex was going to make it.

Ettienne had picked her body up off the bed of a truck as gently as if she were a newborn baby and took her into the helicopter himself. The villagers had stayed back, but he'd seen anguish in the eyes of the old grandmother as she brought a bucket of clean water over to them, which Recoil set on the floor of the helicopter. Unaided by anyone, Ettienne found a sheet to cover Alex's nudity with, then just sat beside her, using a scrap of cloth torn from his own clothing to try to clean Alex's skin. As Conrad came over with a bottle of water, he heard Ettienne humming a soft Cajun melody. _Goddamn, he fell hard, didn't he?_

"Thanks, Conrad," Ettienne said quietly, softly, as he took the bottle of water from Conrad's grasp.

With a gentleness that Conrad hadn't known the Cajun possessed, Ettienne's hands gently cupped Alex's head, tipping it back on her neck, then trickled some of the water into her partially-open mouth, from where the raspy, tortured breathing was issuing. For one terrible moment, the breathing stopped, the water trickled out the corner of her mouth, soaking into the mass of caked blood under her left ear, and Conrad was sure she'd just died. Then the throat moved convulsively, the water disappeared, and a harsh, barely-human-sounding croak came from the bleeding lips. "Mmm…"

_More, _Duke's mind translated it even as Ettienne carefully trickled another mouthful past the swollen lips. The throat, decorated with horizontal bruises as though someone had tried to strangle her at some point, swallowed convulsively, and the lips opened in a mute plea for more even as a croaking groan of agony came from the battered throat.

"Oh, Christ," Conrad felt his eyes stinging, and had to blink hard. It was very, very hard to look at Alex now and remember the smiling, confident blond in the photo in their mission paperwork; there was no trace of confidence in the battered body in front of him. Just a bundle of human flesh in intolerable pain, unable to even scream. "Ed—please, don't you have some painkillers or something? I can give her the injection…I just—I can't—" _I can't sit and watch as she suffers in front of me. I have to do something. Anything._

Without waiting for Ed's assent, Courtney selected a needle from the medkit beside her and handed it to him. "She really needs a massive dose, but this might help a little," Courtney said, looking at Alex with tears in her eyes. Courtney was female—she would know, better than anyone conscious at the moment, what Alex was suffering. She turned her attention back to Dash, and Conrad reached for Alex's arm.

It was so, so hard just to find a place where touching her arm wouldn't cause her pain; everywhere he touched he found more bruising, more cuts. Conrad felt nauseated by the sight of the wide bands of raw, oozing flesh on either side of the too-tight handcuffs; they had cut deep, wide furrows in her slim wrists. "Jesus," he swore again. "Can we at least free her hands?"

Ettienne reached across, took the short chain between the handcuffs, and with a sudden effort, snapped it. Alex gave a harsh groan of pain, and he caught her hands, knowing that letting them fall heavily to the stretcher surface would hurt her more, and gently guided them to lie at her sides. Conrad was surprised—he had known Ettienne was strong, but not like that…and then he saw the other man's hands shake, ever so slightly, as he carefully wiped a wet gauze pad over the swollen, broken cheekbone, and he understood that effort had been borne of desperation, his need to somehow relieve Alex's suffering in whatever small way he could. Conrad understood that, and he carefully took Alex's left elbow in one hand, trying to avoid touching any of the bruises and cuts, and cleaned a small spot with alcohol swabs before pressing the needle home.

She didn't react when the needle entered her skin, the small pain caused by the prick no doubt eclipsed by the much larger, overwhelming agony in her body, but as Conrad pulled it out, taped a piece of gauze over the puncture site, and dropped the spent needle in the pile growing between Courtney and Ed, he saw the lines of pain in her face ease, the corners of her mouth become a little less tight. Heartened at this small sign of success, he took a gauze pad, dampened it with water from the bucket, and started to clean around the oozing wrists.

The pile of bloodstained gauze was considerable by the time he got her arms clean. Apart from her wrists, her forearms were just scratched and bruised. Her left arm, above the elbow, looked all right too. Her right arm, however…

Ed came over and pulled the sheet off. He didn't say anything, but the grim set of his lips and the speed with which he yanked on another set of gloves was indicative of his assessment of Alex's condition. "Broken cheekbone," he said over his shoulder to Courtney, who noted it on a pad of paper. "Bullet wound through her left shoulder, clean exit, but infected. Dislocated right shoulder. Ettienne, hold her down, I think she's conscious on some level and this is going to hurt." He barely waited for Ettienne to place his hands flat on Alex's chest before he took her right arm, rotated it, then popped the joint back into its socket with an audible _snap_.

Alex's eyes flew open, and she screamed. At least, if she'd been capable of it, it would have been a scream; what it actually sounded like was a hoarse gasp. Ettienne lowered his head over hers, whispering soothing words in French to her, but she was beyond consolation. Wild, incoherent sounds of pain came from her lips as tears ran from her unfocused, unseeing blue eyes. From behind him Conrad heard Courtney's swallowed sob as she stepped forward and took up a seated position on Alex's other side to help Ettienne hold her still. It wasn't hard; her body was too weak to move much, and her writhing was mostly involuntary.

Alex babbled something incoherently, wildly, when Ed touched her breasts; Courtney hushed her. "It's okay, Alex. We know it hurts, but we have to see how bad it is. Hold still now." But Alex was beyond being able to hear them. Conrad, looking at her, wondered if she hadn't lost her sanity; there was no sense or reason, no consciousness, behind those blue eyes; just instinct and reaction.

"I'm going to put her in a light drug-induced coma so I can stabilize her enough to check her." Ed shook his head. "I can't check her out when she's like this." He reached for a syringe and a bottle in the medkit. "I didn't want to do this because I don't know if she's allergic. When I packed stuff for this trip I didn't plan for her, just our people. I don't even know what blood type she has and I can't risk giving her anything different. She's very fragile right now, her body's taken an enormous shock, and anything else right now could kill her." His voice was a flat monotone, a sign that he was keeping an iron-willed grip on his emotions. The Joes rarely saw injuries like this, even on their own. Perhaps especially not their own; Lady Jaye, Scarlett, and Cover Girl had never been this badly injured. None of them had ever been tortured.

Ed slipped a needle into the cleared spot inside her elbow where Conrad had injected her earlier. After a moment, her eyes fluttered closed and her raspy, tortured breathing evened into a more regular rhythm. Ed blew out his breath. "Okay. Courtney. Are you gonna be okay? I need you to help clean and patch her up." Courtney nodded firmly and scrubbed her arm in front of her eyes, wiping away the last traces of tears. "I need one more person in here, watching Lady Jaye in case her condition goes south. Ettienne, sit over there. Everybody else out." His tone invited no argument.

Duke climbed out of the helicopter with Ace, Recoil, Brawler, Recondo, and Wild Bill. "Are you guys okay?" he asked Recondo and Brawler. Even though Wild Bill, as a Warrant Officer, was technically now the ranking member of the team, Duke had natural leadership skills and had played co-leader so many times with Flint that no one even thought to question it now.

"Yeah," Brawler answered; Recondo simply nodded. Duke left them alone for now; they both looked like they were in shock and there would be time later to brief them, once they'd gotten settled…

A shout from the other end of the village caught their attention, and suddenly villagers were running past them, away from the shouting and what Duke now recognized as the sound of engines. "Shit. Engines. Probable pursuit. Wild Bill, get in the chopper. Send Gung Ho out and get yourself strapped in. If everything looks hopeless down here, fly the chopper out of here and head for Entebbe. Don't stop for us, don't wait. Get everyone in that chopper to safety, understand?" Left unspoken was the command; _especially Courtney._ The thought of Cover Girl, their former-fashion-model-turned-tank jockey, in the hands of the bastards who had tortured Alex Cabot made Wild Bill swallow hard and nod, getting into the chopper. Seconds later Gung Ho joined them, and they raced for the first helicopter, grabbed their guns and weapons, and took up a position in front of the medical chopper with Lifeline, Courtney, Wild Bill and their injured friends. They didn't speak; no words were necessary. After seeing what Dash and Alex looked like, there was no way hostile forces would get past the six of them until they were all dead.

Inside the chopper, Courtney pulled the door closed and latched it, then returned to where Ed was carefully stitching the bullet wound in Alex's shoulder. "Ed," she said hesitantly.

"It's okay, Court, I can multitask. What's wrong?"

She hesitated again. "If…the worst happens…if we get grounded and…they…come after me…please can you make sure…" she swallowed hard. "…they don't get me?"

Ed's hand stopped moving as he stared at her. It wasn't that he didn't understand what she was trying to ask; it was that he did and he couldn't answer her. "Courtney," he finally said slowly as he resumed stitching, "I'm a doctor. I don't take life, I'm sworn to help save it. What you're asking…"

"I just… can't," Courtney choked out, tears stinging her eyes. "I can't imagine what she felt, what she went through…I looked into her eyes and there's no one home anymore. She's not…there. I can't go through what she did."

Wild Bill joined them, his voice gentle but firm. "Court. Listen. The guys that did this to this lawyer, well…they got a lotta reasons ta hate her, an' that shows in what they did. Ain't no guarantees that they'll do the same ta you. They don't know you. Lotsa her injuries are personal." He gestured to the sleeping blond under Ed's hands. "And you're one'a us, so you got all the trainin' we did. She didn't get that. I doubt she ever thought this was gonna happen when she left New York to work for the ICC. And the ICC should train their people better, particularly the ones that're gonna be goin' out in the field like Alex." His tone showed his disgust for Alex's unseen superiors. "There's a heck of a lotta difference between trained professionals like us and civilians like her. I have every confidence you'll make it. Not to mention which, the whole point's moot because they ain't gonna get you." His tone was matter-of-fact, and his smile was wry. "No way, no how. I'm not gonna allow it and besides, that crazy boyfriend of yours is gonna peel my hide and use it for a scrubbin' rag if I let anyone touch you. He told me so before we left."

"Beach-Head _threatened_ you? Why, that little…" Courtney lost her worry in her indignation. "Like I can't take care of myself…"

Wild Bill laughed. "There's a girl. Now, come up front and sit with me. Let's let Ed keep working."

The sound of engines was getting closer, and Wild Bill and Courtney peered out the front window, tense. Courtney grabbed the controls of the gunnery equipment at the front of the chopper and aimed it at the treeline. Peering through the sights, she could make out vehicles—all-terrain vehicles, definitely not something the rogue militia factions could afford—and then she shouted in relief as she saw the flag flying at the front of the first vehicle. "They're friendly! That flag's UN!" she grabbed the radio. "Duke! Hold your fire! That's the UN out there!"


	18. Chapter 18:Evidence

**Chapter 18: Evidence**

"Hold your fire! Courtney says they're UN!" Relief stood out sharply on everyone's faces, and safeties clicked around his tiny group. He put his own gun down, strode forward with his hands up as the first vehicle broke the treeline at the far end of the village, rolled down the narrow, dirty street, and stopped in front of him. "Americans?" said the uniformed, helmeted figure in front, in American English with just a hint of Latin American accent. Duke was about to respond when a blast of air buffeted them, and seconds later a helicopter flying the UN flag settled to the ground beside Duke's team's chopper.

"Yeah, we're Americans. We came in to rescue our escort team."

"But…weren't you told not to attempt a rescue?"

Warning bells went off in Duke's head, but he forced himself to say calmly, with a laugh. "We never leave anyone behind. Standard operating procedure. You know."

There was no trace of friendliness in the man's face. "Bucking orders is a serious offense, soldier."

Screw calmness and politeness. "That's First Sergeant Conrad Hauser to you. And orders be damned, I wasn't going to leave my team here. _Any_ of my team here."

"Did you get the lawyer?"

This was getting stranger by the minute. "Yes, we brought her back with the team. She's been unconscious or incoherent, and our team isn't much better." Duke cocked his head. "What's this about?"

"Wait here. No sudden moves." And before Duke could react to that, there were UN soldiers surrounding him and his team. Their weapons weren't raised, but the safeties were off and Duke didn't have a single doubt that they would fire on his team if they were told to. He cursed under his breath; what the hell was going on here?

The jungle had gone silent; the villagers were hiding, unsure what to expect. In the silence, he could see the man he'd spoken to, clearly the leader of the UN team, dial a number on his satphone. "We're at the tracker location, sir. There's a group of armed Americans here who say they went to rescue their team. And they have the lawyer." A short silence. "Yes sir, I understand, sir, but there's no help for it. The lawyer's chip frequency led us right here." Another silence, slightly longer, then he came forward with the satphone. "Here's the commander of the American team, Sir."

Duke took the phone, feeling anger crystallize. "First Sergeant Conrad Hauser, United States Army. Who am I addressing?"

The voice on the end had a thick accent he couldn't place; it was unfamiliar, but at least the voice spoke English. "First Sergeant Hauser, I want to know what you're doing there when your General Abernathy was specifically ordered to tell you not to attempt a rescue."

How the hell did he know what General Hawk's orders had been? Duke felt anger solidify into a hard, cold certainty that Scarlett and General Hawk were right; there was something else, something larger going on here. So he parried the question with another one. "Who are you that you know what orders were given to my superior?"

A hiss. "That is not your concern. First Sergeant, were you aware that the lawyer your people were protecting had an implanted microchip with a GPS tracker?"

That mention of a chip again. What chip? He turned, caught Gung Ho's eye; the big Cajun blinked twice. Yes, he knew about the chip but they hadn't had time to debrief yet. "I'm not answering that."

The UN soldier ripped the phone from Duke's grip. Before Duke could flare up in outrage, the man pointed to three soldiers. "You, you, you. Come with me." He turned to the rest of the team and pointed at the Joes. "Keep an eye on them. No talking. Keep this one," he pointed to Duke, "separated from the others." The UN soldiers surrounding the Joes brought their weapons up to attention, though not pointing it at the Joes…yet. Duke watched as the man, with his three handpicked soldiers, marched up to the hospital helicopter with their injured—and Alex—in it.

Gung Ho blocked the way. "Can't go in dere." His accent was so thick with fury that he had to repeat himself twice to make the guy understand them.

"Get out of my way." But Gung Ho refused to move. The man put a hand on Gung Ho's sleeve, intending to push the man aside, but he might as well have been trying to move a mountain. Gung Ho wouldn't move.

"Soldier, you are dangerously close to insubordination. You will move, or I will place you under arrest…"

Out the corner of his eye, Duke saw a flash of movement at the helicopter window. Cover Girl and Wild Bill had been in the cockpit when the UN folks came out of the treeline; they had disappeared when the confrontation started, though Duke knew they had to have heard every word. Now, with everyone's attention on Gung Ho's tete-a-tete with the UN mission commander, he could see Cover Girl give him a brief thumbs-up. He had no idea what they were going to do, but sometimes in these situations you just had to trust your people to get your back. So he spoke. "Gung Ho, it's okay." Gung Ho stepped aside, and the UN commander grabbed the door handle and yanked the helicopter door open.

The calculated rudeness of it made Duke's blood boil. There was a clearly marked large red cross on the side of the helicopter, and professional courtesy practically demanded that they at least knock before entering. But they didn't; the four men disappeared inside as Gung Ho stood back, body rigid with anger.

From the sounds coming from inside the copter, they weren't finding what they were looking for. Moments later, they emerged from the chopper with Alex's stretcher, and Lifeline was shouting in fury.

They laid the stretcher down on the grass outside the helicopter, and Duke was glad Lifeline had put her to sleep because these UN guys weren't gentle about it. Moments later, even he had to yell with fury because they stripped the sheet off Alex's nude body; he stepped forward and the UN soldier closest to him pointed a gun at him. "This is completely unnecessary!"

The UN commander, stoic and silent, apparently unmoved by the brutalized body in front of him, ignored Duke, going to one knee beside the unconscious woman and pushing her head to one side. Duke remembered, with a start, the blood-caked mass of hair clumped under her left ear—he'd thought it was an unusual place for a wound. Apparently Cover Girl hadn't gotten to clean there yet, because the commander cursed. "Can't see a damned…" he pointed at Cover Girl, standing beside Lifeline in front of the chopper. "You. Clean all this blood from under this ear." Apparently he saw Cover Girl as a nurse, and not part of the regular team; good, because enemies constantly underestimated Cover Girl; this time would be no different, and that was partly what made her so effective in the field.

The two soldiers had gone back in and come out with Lady Jaye's stretcher, putting her down on the ground beside Alex. Then Flint's. Duke saw that Courtney had apparently succeeded in getting at least her two teammates comfortable, or Lifeline had ordered her to out of concerns for the cleanliness of the makeshift hospital. Their boots were off—Lady Jaye's, in particular, had been caked with mud from her fall under a tree back at the militia camp—and their jackets were wadded under their heads.

Cover Girl came forward with a pad of wet gauze and carefully cleaned around it. That didn't seem to satisfy the man; he knelt beside Alex after Cover Girl was done, then grabbed for a knife in a sheath on his belt. Before Duke could howl his outrage, the UN commander had grabbed a handful of Alex's hair and hacked it off with his knife close to her scalp; then used the tip of the knife to flick away the blood-crusted scab still left on the wound. Blood ran, a steady trickle, from the revealed laceration; ignoring the general outcry of anger from the team, he slid the tip of the knife into the wound and probed it.

Duke was furious. "If you'd tell me what you're looking for I can tell you if we have it. This was completely unnecessary!" he spat as the UN commander strode up to him.

The man looked at him as if he were an insect, then said, "There was a chip implanted on her scalp with a transmitter wire inside her ear. It's not there now. Where is it? It's still here somewhere, we tracked it here. You must have it."

"I haven't seen it," Duke snapped.

The man turned away from him. "Search the others."

"THE HELL YOU ARE!" Fury boiled over and Duke lost it. "We are American citizens and we have rights. Per the Geneva convention, I'm invoking those rights and insisting that no further action be taken until I have obtained legal counsel. For both my people and Alexandra Cabot." Then, "What is so damned important about the damned chip anyway?"

The man started to walk away, then stopped. Turned. "The chip was to help us locate the main campo of the rogue militia. We came here expecting to put an end to that faction."

There was a sudden commotion as four UN soldiers tried to contain Gung Ho's three hundred pounds of rage. "You sons of bitches, _**you set her up**_!" he cried, his voice distorted by red fury. "She was _**bait**_! You threw a vulnerable innocent civilian into this hellhole of a jungle _intending _for her to be captured just so you could find your target!"

The UN commander strode over to Gung Ho. "Listen to me, Frenchie," he said, his voice cold. "The man who did this to the lawyer has done much worse to countless other men, women, and children. In the big picture, she was the most expendable. She has no family, no spouse, no close friends." He turned to Duke. "Yes, she was bait. And because of _your _team's insistence on not following orders and mounting a recue that was specifically forbidden, her sacrifice will be in vain. She's died for nothing."

"She's not dead yet," Cover Girl's voice dripped hatred as she spoke from where she was checking all three unconscious people.

"She will be soon." The commander picked up the sheet that he'd pulled from Alex's body and carelessly threw it to Cover Girl. "Cover her back up. We don't need to see that mess."

Duke thought Gung Ho was going to grab the man and strangle him. To prevent it, he said quickly, "If that's what you wanted, we can show you where we picked up our team."

Recondo spoke. "We'll show you where the damned camp is. There's no reason for you to go through this. We'll show you the camp and you leave us alone."

The UN commander shook his head. "You show us where the camp is. My main force will take it from there; you will be accompanied to Goma, where you'll be brought in front of the UN forces there for violating orders. As assurance that you won't try to escape, we'll take your wounded onto our helicopter."

"You can't do that!" Duke surged forward. "That's a hospital helicopter; it has what we need to keep our people and Miss Cabot, alive. You didn't come here expecting wounded; you came here expecting to kill." He saw a brief flash in the man's eyes. "In fact, you didn't even come here expecting Miss Cabot to be alive. She was dead to you already."

"The way she looks now, if I'd seen her when you picked her up I'd have put her out of her misery."

"Look," Cover Girl said from where she was crouched beside Flint's stretcher. "We promise we're not going to run. Our people are injured and we'd have no chance anyway against the massive force you've brought. We'll go with you to Goma. Just please leave our injured in the chopper."

The man sighed. "All right. Get your wounded back in and get ready for takeoff. But I'm taking your leader," he jerked a thumb at Duke, "With me. As hostage for your good behavior. And I want your satphones and gear with me too."

As Duke moved across the clearing with the UN soldiers toward the UN helicopter, he shot a glance across the clearing at Wild Bill, an unspoken transference of command. Thank God they thought he led this mission. While it was true that he did, he wasn't the ranking officer here and the UN people hadn't asked anyone else's names and rank, not once. Wild Bill was still capable of making decisions for all of them.

This mission was a nightmare.

"What the hell are they talking about?" Cover Girl hissed as she and Lifeline carried Flint's stretcher back onto the helicopter. "What chip? It's clearly not here, but they say we have it."

Flint stirred. "Chip," he groaned. She nearly dropped her end of the stretcher as Lifeline leaned in to hear his words. "Behind Alex's ear. Zimurinda ripped it out and dropped it in the mud…under her tree."

"Tree…mud…!" With an expletive that would have sounded more appropriate coming from a truck driver, Cover Girl dove for the corner of the chopper, where Lady Jaye's boots had been carefully bagged to prevent tracking mud all over everything. A brisk shake and a couple of knocks of the soles against the side of the chopper later, she'd collected a double handful of drying mud; and there, plainly visible in the clods, was a small black chip with a tiny, hair-thin thread of wire hanging from it. She cursed colorfully, at length, as the other Joes stared at it in consternation.

"Give it to them so they'll leave us the hell alone," Gung Ho snapped from where he was helping Lifeline tape a gauze pad over the newly-exposed wound.

"No," Wild Bill said. "We hang onto it. Can you take that thing apart, Cover Girl?" He already knew she had the tools necessary; she always carried them with her.

"Do dogs pee on brick walls?" she snapped, then fixed her tone—barely—at his warning look. "Why?"

"Take the GPS out. We have chips that look like that in our radios. Tuck that GPS into one of those chips and give that to them. Meanwhile, we figure out what's so important about this one."

"They told us that she was bait…" Brawler's eyes widened. "Flint said, 'Zimurinda took it off her.' The militia leader knew that she had it, what it was, and where it was. How could he know that unless he had someone on the inside, someone who knew not only who she was but where she was going and why?"

"I don't know. We're still not seeing the whole picture, but this is important so we're hanging onto it. Cover Girl, analyze it and see if it's more than just a locator chip. In the meantime, the rest of us need to keep our tempers and our heads down. Don't give 'em any reason to think we're doing anythin' suspicious. We'll follow them to Goma, let 'em do whatever it is they think they're gonna do."


	19. Chapter 19: Bait

**Chapter 19: Bait**

_Bait._

The ugly word hung in front of Duke. _Bait._ An innocent civilian used as bait for a military operation. Not an American one, but one that American soldiers were included in. The whole thing tasted sour in his mouth; while many members of the American military would have leavened what had happened with thoughts of the greater good, General Hawk wasn't one of them. One of the things that Hawk drummed into his people was that while civilians didn't carry the same priority as another Joe in an emergency situation, no human life was ever expendable, and the idea that Alex Cabot had been _deliberately _placed in an unimaginable position—it was reprehensible to him, as a Joe; a violation of all he had been taught and personally believed was right.

In contrast to the stoic callousness of the UN mission's commander, some of his troops looked distinctly shaken. One soldier, young, maybe twenty, looked like he'd been about to throw up when the commander had pulled the sheet off her. Apparently, the commander had decided to put Americans in charge of guarding the American, because it was this young grunt who was now sitting in the helicopter seat beside Duke.

"Name and rank, soldier?" Duke put every ounce of authority he had in his voice when he spoke.

The kid responded instinctively, as Duke had known he would. "Corporal Chris Simes, Sir." Then the kid flushed as he realized what he'd done. "But you're not supposed to know that, Sir. We were told not to give you any information."

Duke could have blessed the shoddy recruit training this kid had received. Good enough for him to respond to the note of authority, not enough to get him to remember long-term orders. "I won't tell. I'm First Sergeant Conrad Hauser. Call me Duke." The kid nodded. Then, when Duke didn't look inclined to bite his head off, and no one seemed to care they were talking—the rest of the UN force was aft on the helicopter, probably discussing strategy—he leaned closer. "Sir—that lawyer woman, the one you guys were talking about—"

"Her name is Alexandra Cabot." The first step in Duke's secret campaign to subvert this young man would be to get the boy to understand that Alex wasn't a mission target, or a name on a paper. She was human, with the same feelings and emotions he had. Hopefully Duke would be able to subvert him enough to get some information out of him.

There was, of course, always the possibility that this kid was playing a deeper game, that his innocent guilelessness was a front to get Duke to open up about his mission parameters and objectives. It was always a possibility. But Duke had met plenty of green recruits and wet-behind-the-ears grunts, and this kid smacked of one. Corporal? Well, he might not be a Joe; Cover Girl had made Corporal but had far better instincts and initiative than this kid—but as a source of information, Corporal Simes could be priceless. People rarely paid attention to the grunts; they were just there to carry out orders and it was easy to lose their individuality behind that green shirt.

"Her name is Alex?" thus confirming Duke's impression that the kid had been given Alex as an abstract target. "I-I have a little sister named Alex…" he was looking even greener around the gills than before. "Sir…what the commander did…just uncovering her…like that…"

Jesus, the kid was _blushing_. That couldn't be the first time he'd seen a naked woman before. "A bit of a shock, hey?" Duke made his voice sound sympathetic.

"Even….kinda looks like my sister if my sister was older…last time I saw her she had dyed her hair blond." Excellent. Duke could almost have smiled; this was working perfectly. Now that Alex was irretrievably linked in this young man's mind, when he thought of her he'd think of his sister. A shameless psychological tactic, but at this moment Duke didn't care; he had to figure out what was going on and bring that info back with him to the team. "What…what did they…"

"She was raped, corporal. Raped repeatedly by many, many people who hated her and what she represented; justice and freedom and compassion for the victims. And they didn't stop there; she was raped with foreign objects and also got a really bad beating that broke a few bones." Duke stopped because the boy was almost crying. "You okay, son?"

The boy nodded. "Grew up in foster care, sir, with my little sister. They didn't split us up, thank God, but some of those homes were mean. The second one we were placed in—they took us right back out because I beat our foster dad up so bad he had to go to the hospital. I came home from school early one day and he had Lexi in her bedroom with her pants down and was hitting her all over with his belt—I grabbed it from him and laid it on him myself. I remember him yelling, and Lexi was crying in the corner and I was just so mad…"

_Christ._ Duke hadn't meant to stir up a memory like that. Must have been hell for him, young himself with no parents and a little sister who he was responsible for. "Get in trouble for that?"

"They put us in a group home after that. Three years later I turned eighteen and I took her with me out of the system. Now she's waitressing her way through nursing school and I went into the military." He swallowed. "Anyway, First Ser—I mean, Duke—what the commander did, he shouldn't have just…exposed her like that. I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for. You didn't do it."

"But I was part of the force that did it. My father…he used to tell me that in order for evil to triumph, all people had to do was stand by and do nothing. I never, ever wanted to be one of those that stood by and did nothing. That's why I joined the Army, sir."

_Maybe he does have Joe material in him after all. General Hawk would like this kid. Green as spring grass and wet behind the ears, but he's got a good foundation. Must talk to General Hawk about him when I get back._ Aloud, Duke said, "Good thinking, son…the world could use more people like you."

The kid blushed, but his back straightened and he looked suddenly prouder in his uniform. _Yep. Have to talk to Hawk about him when I get back._ And then their conversation was interrupted by the UN commander coming back toward him. "Show us where you picked up your team."

In daylight it was easy to spot the twisted wreckage of the two trucks that had pursued Lady Jaye and Flint. He pointed downward to the tangle of charred metal and the wide swath of crushed vegetation. "Follow that back and you'll see the camp."

The Commander spoke something tersely into his radio; moments later, the jeeps and all terrain vehicles were making short work of the remaining mile to the camp. Duke, looking down, could see the path the pursuit had taken; Lady Jaye had driven blind into the jungle and had to follow the paths; they curved in circuitous routes around the body of the camp. With the heavier, semi-tank-like vehicles the UN force was driving in, they cut a straight swath into the camp.

No that there was much left. The earthquake that had rocked the Kivu region the day before had left a hefty amount of damage in its wake. Collapsed earth walls and wood-beamed roof thatch littered the buildings of camp; in one place the earth had opened up under one of the militia trucks and swallowed it, with nothing sticking out of the ground but a tailgate. It was going to take a hell of a lot of digging to get it back out, Duke noted distantly.

But there were no people. At least, not alive. There were bodies under the rubble, Duke saw as the chopper landed and the UN commander gestured him and Corporal Simes out. Here and there he saw a foot, a hand, parts of bodies sticking out of debris piles, but no people. Either the rogue militia forces had evacuated after the big earthquake or they had guessed that the American forces that had liberated their quarry might return with reinforcements and they had abandoned this camp. There was little chance that they would be found in the midst of this profusion of jungle greenery either.

There were only three buildings in the village that seemed intact, and Duke saw as he got closer that it was because the walls of these residences had been partly built of concrete. UN soldiers were running in and out of each of the buildings, but as Duke and the commander reached the center of the village, marked by two large trees and what looked like a dog pen, three soldiers backed out of the second-largest hut, looking pale. "Sir," one of them started, then shook his head as he gestured to the UN commander. "You have to see for yourself."

The smell hit Duke as soon as the commander in front of him parted the heavy blanket that covered the opening. Blood, and the unmistakable smell of male sex. He stepped in, blinked to adjust his eyes from the brightness outside to the dimness of this windowless, cramped hut, then wished he hadn't.

There was a table in the middle of the hut. Bloodstained leather straps lined stirrups initially designed for female pelvic exams that had been permanently fixed apart for a much more sinister purpose. The top edge of the table had stains where Alex's bloody wrists had obviously been secured. And, in a corner, blood covered the last third of a large wooden cudgel, more of a mace really, and dirt caked over the blood showed the blood had still been wet when the stick had been dropped in the corner. There were heavy leather belt-like straps and electrical cord also dropped carelessly in the corner along with articles of clothing. And one of those pieces of clothing was a pair of women's shorts.

Corporal Simes gave a choked gasp and fled the hut. The UN commander stepped forward, face impassive, and examined the table as Duke stepped to the corner unnoticed and picked up the shorts. Under that was a white cotton sleeveless polo, with delicate flower embroidery on the collar, now bloodstained and dirty and torn; a single strand of blond hair was caught in the top buttonhole. There was no doubt in his mind that it had been Alex's. A pair of shoes. And then, underneath, a gun. A small, old revolver, a pistol; Duke stared at it, then suddenly imagined Alex's slim, long-fingered hands wrapped around it. He picked it up, curiously, and on the other side of the walnut grip was a name, burned into the wood. _Alexandra Cabot_.

He took a quick peek around. No one had seen him; they were looking instead at the monstrosity of a medical table in the middle of the hut. He shoved the gun into the back waistband of his pants, where it should escape notice; then he heard, faintly, the sound of retching and he stepped back out the door. Simes was choking up the contents of his stomach beside the door of the hut. He looked up with watering, streaming eyes at Duke when the older man stepped out, and the anguish on his face twisted Duke's heart. "I didn't know," the kid looked ready to cry. "I didn't know. They said they'd sent a target into the DRC; they said the militia wouldn't be able to resist the bait, that their target was expendable and had volunteered for this. I didn't…" he wiped the corner of his mouth on his sleeve. "I never questioned them. Sir…if she volunteered…did she know that was going to happen to her?"

"I don't know, son." Duke shook his head. "I don't know what she did or didn't know. I don't think, at this point, that it even matters." All that mattered was that she make it. And now he was fervently hoping she would.

"See what your rescue team did?" the UN commander looked furious as he strode out of the hut, carrying Alex's discarded clothes. "That lawyer went through all that in there so we could get here and get the rogue who did this to her and your team messed that up. Her blood is on your hands, not ours!" He threw the shorts and shirt in the dirt at Duke's feet. "Now this guy is still out there, and he's angry. When we get to Goma you'll meet up with your team and you'll get the hell out of the DRC."

"We can't go anywhere until Miss Cabot's stable," Duke said.

"Negative. She is no longer your concern. My people will take charge of her once the rest of your team reach Goma. She'll go to the hospital there and your team will be going home. Your people aren't as badly wounded as she is, so you can leave immediately."

"No," Duke said firmly. "Leaving her in a native hospital, where she'll stick out like a sore thumb will be an invitation for this guy to come after—" He stared at the man as realization dawned. "You're going to hang her out as bait. After everything that's happened to her, you're going to hang her out as bait _again._" He stepped toe-to-toe with the UN commander. "Jesus friggin' Christ, you son of a bitch, how can you _still_ put her in harm's way after you saw what she went through in there?"

"She's the perfect candidate," The UN commander refused to look ashamed. "And as you point out, she's already been through hell. She's practically dead already. Between the infections she'll get and the STDs running around here—she's probably got HIV now—she's going to die. Get that through your head, soldier, and stop worrying about the walking dead. Worry about your team's wounded." His tone as he walked away left no doubt as to what he thought about Duke's concern for Alex Cabot.

Duke turned, gritting his teeth, and saw Chris standing there holding Alex's clothes. "How could he…how could he just…Sir, even if she is going to die shouldn't we at least try to save her?" He looked pleadingly at Duke. "There's got to be something you can do, Sir…I'll help however I can even if it means my career…"

Duke fought the urge to smile; the kid wouldn't understand. "I think the same thing, son. Keep that thought in mind; I'm going to talk to my people and we'll see what we can do."


	20. Chapter 20: Inadequate

**Chapter 20: Inadequate**

The only word Lifeline could think of to describe Goma Provincial Hospital was 'inadequate'.

For he and the rest of the Joes, accustomed to hospitals in the States with polished floors, multiple x-ray and MRI rooms, private rooms and armies of doctors, nurses, and administrative staff, Goma Provincial Hospital seemed inadequate. True, part of that perception was due to the fact that it was overcrowded right now with injured from the earthquake that had rocked Lake Kivu (Goma was situated right on the shore of the lake, and had been very close to the epicenter of what was now estimated to have been a six-pointer.)

But there was absolutely no denying that the actual building itself was inadequate. As Lifeline, Cover Girl, Recondo, Brawler, Gung Ho and Recoil carried Flint, Lady Jaye's and Alex's stretchers -through the door (marked with the flaking green-painted word "Emergency' in both French and English) they were confronted with absolute chaos. The most seriously injured people lay on ancient, rusted gurneys along the wall, and a team of three doctors/nurses circulated among them; more injured, those waiting for medical attention, lay on battered mattresses and flat sheets spread out on the floor. There was barely room to walk between these sheets, and it looked like several people had died waiting for treatment; two men were picking up the corners of a sheet on which a covered body lay; and beside that one, another covered body, also obviously dead. As soon as the first body had been carried out another person dropped down onto the floor where the body had been. There were not enough beds, not enough doctors or people…not enough of anything.

Cover Girl's description of the hospital was much more profane.

_Her command of invective would make a sailor blush_, Lifeline thought as Recondo tried to suppress the laughter threatening to bubble up out of him and just ended up choking. _Face of an angel, language of a truck driver, that's how Beach Head describes her. Pretty accurate_. He had to suppress a smile as he walked up to the tiny desk that served as the reception area and said, "Excuse me, does anyone here speak English?"

Their arrival was turning heads, and activity ceased abruptly. Down the hall ahead of them, a head poked out from around a cracked, peeling doorframe, and then a strong voice in a clipped British accent said, "Yes. I do. Can I help you?" And here came a tall, slim African woman with light-coffee skin.

"We have wounded here—" Lifeline didn't get any further; the woman had approached them and lifted the sheet that covered Alex Cabot.

And cursed. "Bloody hell. I don't need this right now, soldier." She looked behind him, saw the rest of the team and the two other stretchers, and spun on her heel. "Come with me."

She led the way to a room at the back of the hospital. Blood-stained pallets on the floor showed this was a patient room also, but for the moment it was blessedly empty. She closed the door behind her and indicated they should put their stretchers down on the pallets. "Keep your voices down. Is this the lawyer the UN was talking about?"

"Huh?" Lifeline blinked. How had this doctor known who they were and who they carried?

Wild Bill took charge of the situation. "And you are—?"

"Dr. Rohena Everingham, Doctors Without Borders." She stood from where she'd crouched next to Alex's body. "We got a messenger from the UN base two hours ago. They said an American force was on the way here with a wounded blond American lawyer working for the ICC. I assume that was you since I haven't seen any other blond women coming in horizontally with military escorts.."

"That would be us," Wild Bill confirmed.

"I rather thought so." She checked the door to make sure it was closed, then turned to face them. "Get her out of this hospital."

"What?"

"Get her out. If you want to save her life get her out. I don't know what is going on, but as soon as I saw her out there I knew that if you want to keep her alive you need to get her out of here." She looked troubled. "We were given orders to place her with regular patients in the emergency room—that room out there—and to keep an eye on her but don't treat her. That's a very peculiar set of orders, as I'm sure you know, and after looking at her out there," she peeled the sheet back again, peering under it, then shuddered and tucked it back around Alex's bare shoulders gently, "I am absolutely sure that if we do that she's going to die. She needs round-the-clock care, better than what she can get here, and we do not have the facilities nor personnel to do that."

"Bait," Gung Ho's voice growled out from behind Wild Bill. "Dey hangin' her out as bait again for dis Zimurinda guy. Like dey haven't done enough already."

There was a knock on the door behind them. "Dr. Everingham?" Male.

"I'm in here with a patient."

The doorknob rattled. "Open the door, Dr. Everingham. The staff said you have the blond lawyer in here. We're from the UN, making sure our orders are being followed."

Dr. Everingham's back was rigid in fury as she yanked the door open. "If you think I'm going to let a woman die on my floor—"

"You don't have a choice, Dr. Everingham. Those are our orders." They pointed to Cover Girl. "You. Get this woman out of here. Put her on the floor in the waiting room."

Cover Girl turned to Dr. Everingham. "Doctor, where would you like me to put her?" Her voice was a perfect mimic of Everingham's own British accent.

Give the doctor credit, she figured it out fast. "Find the closest empty pallet, Nurse Arrington," she said, and Cover Girl nodded as she turned to Lifeline. "If you could please help me with this, sir?"

As Lifeline and Cover Girl carried Alex's stretcher out, Cover Girl hissed "If they think I'm an English nurse I can stay here and keep an eye on her. If she really is being used as bait again I'll be able to see who comes and goes—and if they make an attempt on her life I'll be able to protect her." Lifeline nodded assent, thanking God that Cover Girl was in khaki shorts and a nondescript white t-shirt. With her blond hair pulled into a braided bun and a hat on top of her head, no one had yet seen her closely enough or clearly enough to identify her later as one of the American military soldiers.

The UN soldier turned to Wild Bill. "The hospital is overcrowded and you shouldn't have your people here. Take them back to your helicopter. As soon as your leader comes back you will depart. That lawyer is no longer your concern."

Gung Ho managed to keep his temper until they left, but as they carried Flint and Lady Jaye through the streets of Goma back to the small helipad they'd set down on, he lost it. "We not goin' to leave her dere, are we?"

"No, we're not. We're gettin' her out of there and we'll take her with us. I'll take responsibility for bringin' a civilian into HQ—Hawk's gonna have a fit—but it's the only way I can see to keep her alive long enough to find out what the hell's goin' on."

Once back inside their chopper, Wild Bill dug out his cell phone. Thank goodness the UN people hadn't even thought they might have gear in the hospital chopper; Cover Girl had, with her tools, been able to dig a chip out of her own cell phone and make a mockup of the chip that had been pulled from Alex's scalp. Once Duke got back, they would give the mockup chip to the UN officer, then figure out a plan to get all of them out of the DRC and back to HQ. Thanks also to those tools, Cover Girl had been able to pick the lock on the handcuffs and free Alex's wrists. They lay now in a plastic bag in one of the helicopter's lockers; he'd been unwilling to dump them—not with Alex's blood all over them, but he didn't know what else to do with them. Let Duke decide, he thought.

They strapped Flint and Lady Jaye's stretchers into their former positions; after seeing what Goma hospital looked like, Lifeline knew their fallen friends would get better treatment here than there. He could only hope that Cover Girl would be able to protect Alex until they could figure out how to get her out.

They all settled in to wait for Duke.

Cover Girl forced herself not to flinch at the nauseating smell of blood and burned human flesh. Having 'volunteered' herself as a triage nurse, she had a front-row seat to all the worst of the cases that were coming in from neighborhoods in Goma as the people of the city gradually dug themselves out from under the earthquake rubble. As 'Nurse Arrington' she could move around the room, unnoticed—no one seemed to notice the nurses except for the doctors. The other nurses didn't even comment; Cover Girl wondered ironically if they even realized there was one more here than there had been half an hour ago. For a Joe like her, not noticing a new addition would be inexcusable.

Dr. Everingham slipped a syringe into her hand as she passed on her way to an older man with bad burns. "For the lawyer," she said. "Painkillers." Cover Girl nodded, then navigated around the prone bodies until she got to Alex Cabot's side. The blond seemed to be doing better; the drugs Lifeline had given her to put her in that deep sleep so he could reset her dislocated hip and treat her pelvic injuries must be wearing off; she was curled up on her side now, a sign that normal body movement and rhythm had restarted. A quick crouch, she slipped the needle into Alex's arm, pressed the plunger, withdrew, and moved on.

"Nurse Arrington!" came Dr. Everingham's voice half an hour later as Cover Girl got done with the older man. Not that there was much that could be done; falling masonry had crushed his leg, and rescuers had had to perform a field amputation to free him from the rubble. He wasn't going to make it; the least she could do was make him comfortable. He was already comatose and wouldn't last the night. "To my office, please." Cover Girl nodded and made her way across the room, and Dr. Everingham led her to a smaller room, a closet really, to one side of the emergency room. There was a small electric fan on the cubbyhole desk here, and Dr. Everingham turned it on. It started to whir anemically, and Cover Girl thought idly that there was something wrong with it; it shouldn't be making that kind of noise.

"That was some quick thinking you did, putting that accent like that," Dr. Everingham said, offering Cover Girl a bottle of water. "I take it you're a soldier, not a nurse."

"Corporal Courtney Krieger, United States Army," Cover Girl responded, plunking her hat down on the desk and twisting the cap off the bottle before taking a long drink; the humidity was stifling in the overcrowded hospital.

"Courtney…Courtney Krieger. Wait. _The_ Courtney Krieger? The cover girl? Is that why I keep thinking I've seen you somewhere before?"

Cover Girl rolled her eyes. The pithy expletive slipped out before she could stop herself.

Dr. Everingham crossed her arms, leaned on the side of the desk, and laughed until she cried. Every time the giggles started to die off, she'd take one look at Courtney's annoyed face and that would set her off again. "I'm sorry," she said finally, waving her hand apologetically. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't laugh. I guess…I always wondered whether those who were born with perfect faces and bodies actually liked what they were doing."

"No." Courtney shook her head. "Just because I was born looking like every guy's fantasy didn't mean I was happy playing the role. I was always more interested in mechanics. I'm a tomboy at heart. I had the money to buy all the toys I wanted—my motorcycle, things like that—but then being told I can't ride it because it would raise the insurance my company had on my legs and my ass…" She rolled her eyes again. "Being a soldier is a lot simpler."

"Even when it means you see stuff like that?" Dr. Everingham waved her hand in the direction of the emergency room lobby.

Cover Girl swallowed. "Yeah. No matter how bad this shit gets, it's still better than the gilded cage, Dr. Everingham."

"Rohena. Please. And don't tell me what happened to that lawyer out there isn't bothering you, because it is me."

Courtney allowed herself the luxury of honesty. "Yes. Fucking Christ, I almost hurled back when we picked them up. I asked one of my teammates to give me coup de grace if I'm captured—I couldn't survive that. I don't know how she's still alive. I'm impressed right down to my birthday suit."

"Are you tired? Could you lie down and rest for a little while?"

"Huh?" Cover Girl narrowed her eyes at the doctor.

"I've been watching her sleep. She's starting to come out of it, and I don't think this hospital is the first thing she should see when she wakes up. It could send her catatonic. So I want to know if I could slip her out of the hospital as a body and have your team pick her up, could you play dead for a while?"

Cover Girl smiled. "I like the way your mind works. Let's do it."


	21. Chapter 21: Defiance

**Chapter 21: Defiance**

_Mass grave. Edge of town. Pick up body bag marked with orange x. It's Alex. CG_.

The terse text message was clear, even if the number was unfamiliar. Wild Bill swore as he got to his feet, nearly knocking his hat off in his excitement. "Cover Girl's come up with a plan t'get Alex outta there. See them mass graves over there?" he pointed out the chopper window. Recondo squinted.

"Yeah, got it. She's out there?" Gung Ho already had the door halfway open.

"Look for a body bag marked with an orange x!" Wild Bill hollered after him as Gung Ho set off at a trot down the hill toward the mass grave at the bottom of the ravine outside Goma. Perhaps he should pay some more attention to available cover, he reflected, but for the moment, there weren't many people about, and his dark clothing against the gathering darkness was hard to make out. Only someone who was looking for him would have seen him skirt the ravine till he got to the side closest to town, and stop as he got to the pile of black body bags.

Gung Ho checked all of them carefully. It was a good idea, but he didn't even want to think how much pain Alex would have suffered as her body bag was tossed down here. He was checking yet another bag for an orange x when he heard a muffled sound. A cry.

_It might not be Alex,_ he thought even as his body sprang into movement, picking his way carefully across the field of the dead to where he could, faintly, see one bag moving, one person still alive. But even if it wasn't Alex, it was still a living person and no one should still be alive down here.

And then he touched the bag, and there was someone crying out inside it, and he found the zipper, yanked at it. And inside, blue eyes dazed and confused, was Alex. And it _was_ Alex; not the blank-eyed, agonized, animal-in-pain Alex that she'd been since they'd found her and Flint; she was coherent and aware, albeit obviously in a lot of pain. "Ettienne?" she whispered, and Jesus, his name on her lips was the most wonderful sound in the world, he thought as he threw his shirt over her bare shoulders. It was long enough to cover her to mid-thigh.

"Ssh. Let's get you out of here. Can you stand?"

Every step across that field wrung a whimper of anguish from her; she leaned on him heavily, and if the footing under his feet hadn't been so uncertain he would have carried her. However, since he was walking on the dead (even though he made every effort not to step on a body, it was hard to see black body bags in the darkness) and he knew he'd hurt Alex more if he dropped her.

As soon as they reached the edge of that nightmarish field he swept her up in his arms and ran, ignoring stealth in favor of getting her to safety as fast as possible. As he approached the helicopter he saw the door fly open, saw Recoil and Lifeline standing there, and he felt them take her weight from him, felt them pull her up to warmth and safety and friends who cared about her, and he climbed up into the helicopter after her and just took her in his arms, ignoring dirt and sweat and blood and everything else, burying his face in her hair so no one would see the dampness in his eyes. She clung to him, her own strength gone, sobbing hysterically; he held her and let her cry. Lifeline finally interrupted them; "Here, let's get her back on a stretcher, she's bleeding again."

Alex had woken to darkness. She'd panicked for long moments, crying out, pushing at the heavy stuff that wrapped around her like a cocoon; some distant part of her mind identified it as a body bag, but she was dazed from the drugs, her body was screaming in pain, and she couldn't think clearly.

Then the bag ripped open, burst apart; she took a huge lungful of air. The smell of death was thick in the air, the smell of blood and pain, but God, it was air and she was alive, and then her eyes focused on the face of the man who had pulled the bag open, and she saw Ettienne. Joy so sharp it almost hurt brought tears to her eyes, and she knew she was crying, and she didn't care.

Every step across the field jarred her body and caused pain. The cuts left from the whipping she'd taken on her chest, stomach, pelvic region; more across her back, and welts from the electrical cords they'd used on her thighs…she gritted her teeth, tried to endure it, but when she reached down inside herself to find the strength to fight the pain, there was nothing there. She couldn't even find the will to keep her cries back. And it was that, as much as the pain, that made her cry; she'd never before found that well empty; she'd never been tested this sorely in her life.

Ettienne swept her up in his arms as they reached the edge of the field, and she just gave up to the feeling of being dependent on someone else's strength. All her life, and particularly after coming here, she'd been ruthlessly self-reliant and independent, and she'd thought that was strength; now, drifting only half-conscious as Ettienne carried her, she thought that true strength was relying on yourself until you knew you couldn't, then being able to give up was another kind of strength.

And then she was inside a well-lit helicopter, and there were military fatigues around her, and she saw Recondo and Brawler there, and she gave in to tears of relief as Ettienne sat down right there and held her. Another man finally touched Ettiene's arm. "Here, let's get her on a stretcher, she's bleeding again."

As Ettienne put her down, she saw two other figures on stretchers on the other side of the helicopter. "What—" she tried to ask, but her voice wouldn't work.

She pointed instead, and the man who had spoken told her, "It's Flint and Lady Jaye. Flint's fighting infection and Lady Jaye got hit by a bullet. They'll be okay, it was you we were worried about." He tapped his chest. "I'm Lifeline. That's Recoil, Wild Bill, Ace, and Gung Ho, Recondo and Brawler, you already know." He said, gently, "Alex…you're bleeding from the stitches I had to put between your legs. When I did them I had Cover Girl here, but she isn't now, and I need to check them. Is it going to be okay if Gung Ho helps?"

She didn't want anyone to see her like she was…but damn it, half of the army of the DRC had already seen her, had already used her and broken her, and what did a few more people matter? At least this time, when they hurt her, it would be to help and not deliberately to cause her pain. So she nodded through her tears, not seeing Ettienne's anguish at the defeated slump to her shoulders, and lay back.

Wordlessly, the other Joes exited the helicopter; she felt tears burn her eyes at their thoughtfulness, and then there was nothing but pain as Lifeline replaced the stitches. He gave her a local, but it didn't come close to dulling the massive ball of agony in her loins, and she was so exhausted that all she could do was lie there, her hands gripping Ettienne's convulsively as she tried to handle the waves of pain, tried to force herself to keep her legs open when all she wanted to do was clamp them closed and curl up tightly to protect her sex from any more abuse. Several times it got too much, and she closed her legs; each time it happened Lifeline simply stood back and waited for her to regain control enough to open them again. By the time he was done all three of them were soaked in sweat and exhausted.

Ettienne brought over another bottle of water and helped her sit up. She was so weak, her hands and arms shaking with exhaustion and fatigue, she couldn't even hold the plastic bottle of water; Ettienne propped her up with one arm and held the bottle with the other so she could drink. As she did Lifeline inspected the cuts on her back; none of them were more than superficial, but some of them were seeping and the shirt Ettienne had thrown over her was already acquiring bloody spots. He tried to be gentle as he pulled old bandages off and replaced them with fresh dressing; she shivered in pain and sobbed, but she didn't had the same reaction as she'd had when he'd been between her legs, and he wished with all his heart that there'd been a female doctor here. He'd seen the defeated way she'd drawn her shoulders in when he told her he had to look; it was yet another violation on top of everything else. She'd been violated enough already; Christ, wasn't that enough? Events had all conspired to put her in an untenable position and she was still trying bravely to endure it.

"It's all right. You can lie down now." Christ, if the goddamn UN commandos hadn't taken their gear, he could have gotten a change of Courtney's clothes and given them to Alex to try and restore a little of her dignity. Courtney wouldn't have minded.

Alex lay back gratefully. Darkness swarmed at the edge of her consciousness, welcome, desperately desired darkness. Flint was safe, they'd been rescued by his team, and now she wouldn't die knowing that he'd died because of her. Now, if only she could see Olivia one more time…but Ettienne knew about her, knew where to find her, and she gripped his hand tightly, drawing his attention to her. She looked into his eyes, forced Olivia's name past her lips. "Tell…Liv…I love her." And she finally allowed the darkness to claim her.

Ettienne almost cried out, thinking for one horrified moment that she had just died, but Lifeline reassured him as he checked her. "She's just sleeping. Let her sleep. She's not going to die if I can help it. I'm not giving up."

"Jesus," came a harsh croak, and Lifeline spun, to see Lady Jaye sitting up on her stretcher.

He rushed to her side, smiling; he couldn't help it, even though he'd been most worried about Alex, the nicked lung Lady Jaye had gotten from the bullet had worried him too. The fact that she was conscious now was a good sign. "Easy. Don't sit up all the way yet; you almost didn't make it."

"I've been taking it easy. I woke up while you were checking Alex. I decided to stay down so you could take care of her first. How bad is she?"

Well, after Flint, Wild Bill, and Duke, she was the ranking officer here. "Hold on. Let's get everybody back inside." He tapped on the helicopter door, and the other Joes came in. Relief turned into pleased surprise that Lady Jaye was awake.

By the time everyone got settled, Flint was also miraculously awake. Though still weak from the infection in his body, he was alert enough mentally to sit in, and Wild Bill tersely brought him up to date on the current status of the mission and the current location of the team.

"Duke is still out with the UN commandos, and Courtney's at the hospital. I assume she'll follow when she can," Wild Bill finished. "Oh, and this is important—the UN commander let slip the reason why this mission went south for us. Alex was set up."

"Set up?"

"Bait. She was bait." Gung Ho's voice was thick with fury. "Dey sent her out wit' a locator chip implanted on her scalp so dat when Zimurinda captured her dey'd be able to track de bastard down and wipe him out. Dey didn' care dat she'd be tortured and die horribly in the process. In fact, dey didn't come expecting to find her alive at all."

"The chip." Flint's eyes hardened "Yes. The chip. That concussion messed my head up, but I remember that." He squeezed his eyes shut, and a look of anguish crossed his face for a moment before he hardened his features into an impassive mask. "They hung us there in those trees…and Zimurinda got a knife and it looked like he stabbed her in the head with it. It was on the side furthest from me so I didn't see what he did, but he jerked this chip off her scalp—"

"Out," Lifeline said, and all eyes turned to him. "Out. The chip itself was snugged flat against her skull; the knife was to cut the skin on top of it. The transmitting/receiving wire was implanted down one of her auditory nerves, so when Zimurinda pulled the chip off he literally ripped it out of her brain." Gasps. "It's too early to tell yet whether she'll suffer any permanent hearing loss from the damaged nerve; I need to wait until the soft tissue swelling and the bleeding in her aural canal stop before I can conduct a hearing test on that ear to figure that out."

"How could they put something that invasive into a living human being?" Lady Jaye shook her head. "And did she know—"

"She knew," Flint nodded grimly. "She knew this was going to be her last trip into the DRC. She knew she wasn't going to get out alive. I think she thought her death would be quick. And I think she believed that the long-term benefit—getting this rogue Colonel—was worth whatever price she had to pay." He finished softly, "I don't think she knew to just what extent this conspiracy went—and what both sides had planned for her. And it's not over. That chip isn't just a tracking device; it retains audio testimony. And Zimurinda wanted it destroyed because it has evidence that could convict him. And he knew about it, which means that he has a mole in the ICC. And that leaves her with her life still in danger. And mine; since we are the only two who he's certain knows about the mole, he'll come after us both. I'm not that worried about myself, we're leaving as soon as Cover Girl and Duke get back—but Alex…"

"We have the chip," Wild Bill said. "Cover Girl found it stuck in the mud caked in your boots, Lady Jaye." He held it out to Flint, who eyed it with revulsion before shaking his head. Lady Jaye took it, examining it curiously. "Cover Girl took the GPS tracker out and tacked it to a chip cannibalized from her cell phone. We mocked the cell phone chip to look like this one." He held up another chip that looked practically identical to the one Lady Jaye held. "The UN guys probably won't let us leave until they have it, so when Duke gets back we'll give them the mock-up and keep the real one. When we get back to HQ we'll analyze it."

"What about Alex?" Lady Jaye asked. "What do we do with her? General Hawk specifically forbids bringing civilians, much less mission targets, to HQ. Do we leave her here, to be captured and raped and tortured again? Do we drop her off at the ICC, knowing she'll be targeted for assassination? In fact, is there anywhere in this world she'll be safe, knowing that someone in the ICC is on the side of the people who want her dead? No matter where they are in the ICC, no matter what level, just being part of an internationally-recognized organization gives that mole a lot of options to strike at her, if they're desperate enough."

Silence as they all considered the possibilities.

Gung Ho was the first one to take a stand. "I'm not letting her go it alone. She been t'rough hell already, and no one's been on her side t'rough dis whole nightmare. Her employers, the ICC, are supposed to support and train t'eir people adequately to do de job de ICC asks dem to do. Dey haven't done that—she wasn't prepared for dis, and t'eir security is apparently so shoddy dat someone in t'eir organization was subverted. De UN, de ones who are supposed to keep de peace and protect and serve de global community—dey just hung her out to dry, sacrificin' her in favor of de 'greater good'." Oh, the bitterness in his voice.

"And us. We walked into dis lookin' at her as a mission. I saw her as a 'mission'. You know what? She's not a 'mission'. She's a human being who's endured more den anyone should have to in an entire lifetime. If we can't figure something out, I'm stayin' wit' her and resignin' my commission." A sound of tearing cloth, and suddenly his rank, insignia, and Joe identifiers were in the hand he held out to Flint. "I know you t'ink I'm just doing dis because I, as you said, want to get in her pants. After what's happened to her, if she ever even looks at a man again I'll be shocked. And dat's not de reason I'm doing dis. I'm doing dis because it's de right thing to do, because as a human being wit' a conscience and a soul, I can't stand by and watch dis slaughter happen wit'out doing somet'ing. If I have to die in dis Godforsaken hellhole to protect her wit' everyt'ing I have and everyt'ing I am, so be it." He dropped his insignia at Flint's feet and turned toward the helicopter door.

"Wait, Gung Ho." Flint sounded tired. "I agree with you. You forget—I saw what happened to her. Jesus…" his voice broke. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done, listening to her scream all night, and then seeing what they did to her the next day." His head dropped between shoulders propped on his knees; Lady Jaye reached out tentatively to touch his shoulder, to take his hand and squeeze it in a gesture of sympathy. He pulled his hand away and straightened up. "I'm going to buck orders and bring Alex with us back to base. General Hawk can't forbid it if he doesn't know. And once we get there, he won't be able to turn her away if she's already there." Gung Ho started to say something, and Flint raised a hand. "I'm not done. I'm well aware that I'll face demotion and court martial, probable discharge and possible prison over this. So be it. If anybody has a problem with my decision, let me know now. I won't hold it against you; anyone who agrees with me will likely face court martial and demotion too, if not discharge or, God forbid, Leavenworth."

"I'm with you." Lady Jaye was first to speak.

"Me too," Wild Bill raised his hand. All around the chopper, with no exceptions, hands rose. There wasn't a single Joe who didn't agree with Flint's decision.

"We're all with you on this, Ettienne. Here. Take your badges and stuff back." Flint handed Gung Ho's insignia back.

And the helicopter door opened.


	22. Chapter 22: Subterfuge

**Chapter 22: Subterfuge**

_No wonder these people don't get better. This bed's a bitch._ Cover Girl had to force herself, for the umpteenth time, not to fidget. _Just until dark, Rohena said. After dark, they take whatever patients are left into rooms and empty the emergency area so it can be scrubbed and cleaned for tomorrow. I can leave then. Once 'Alex' is in a separate room it would be easy for her to wake up and climb out of a window. Rohena won't get in trouble for helping her escape and no one will ever know I was here._ She had to resist the urge to fidget again. _Dark better come fast or I'm gonna chew holes in this damn bed._

She furtively checked her watch under the sheet that was draped over her in such a way as to hide her clothes and her face but still expose her blond hair. _Thank goodness because if I'd had to strip I'd've really been pissed._ The UN guard, dressed as an orderly (supposedly there to keep an eye on 'Alex') would walk by every half hour or so, nudge Cover Girl's still body with the tip of his boot, then walk on when Cover Girl didn't make a sound. _Son of a bitch. Kick me again and I __**swear **__I'll shove that boot up your ass._ _**Sideways. **_She really had to resist the urge when the guard did it again.

And then the hair on the back of her neck prickled. Someone was approaching, and it wasn't the tired, heavy footfalls of the doctors and nurses here. This was someone used to stealth, used to sneaking; the footfalls were light, with the toes coming down on the ground first, and the heels next, very lightly if at all. _Walking on the balls of his feet. Male, because there's weight behind those steps. Experienced. Assassin, unless I miss my guess. Where the hell did these sick DRC Army fucks find a goddamn trained assassin?_ She gathered herself under the sheet.

She'd left one hand, her right, hanging outside the sheet in an invitation to strike. Now the assassin took that hand, carefully, quickly; the other hand pushed the sheet back, trying to expose Cover Girl's elbow. Cover Girl saw a flash of a syringe in the hand. _Syringe-poison-keep-it-away-from-me_. She kicked that hand, a practiced self-defense move that sent the syringe flying. _Good thing they don't know I'm a lefty_. Chop with her left at the assassin's neck. The assassin ducked, blocked. Cover Girl wrenched her right wrist from the man's grip; not that it was hard; the guy had to be surprised at the liveliness of his supposedly comatose target.

The surprise wasn't going to last long, and the whole purpose to assassination was that no one knew the target was assassinated. The clinic was nearly empty; it _was_ closing time. Around the walls orderlies were moving the last few patients out, leaving her body on the floor for last. _Fucking hell. Another few minutes and I'd've been gone and no one would have known I was even here._

She pressed up her advantage with a side kick that should have taken out the assassin's knee. Almost did; apparently this guy was a little slower on the uptake than your average assassin. _Maybe I got lucky and this one got his assassin's license from a crackerjack box?_

_Yeah. And pigs might fly._ She pressed her advantage with a flurry of kicks, some of which did connect but none of them in places that would cripple him. He was quick; not the best she'd ever faced, but not the worst. One of his kicks caught her on the outside of her thigh; she snarled. _That hurt, you piece of shit, now you've made me mad!_ But she knew better than to let her anger show. She focused, concentrated, instead, channeling the anger into a flurry of kicks and punches that put his back against the wall.

And then it was over in a spate of gunfire. At the sound of the first shot she flattened herself to the floor, and the man jerked as three more bullets tore into his chest. _Damned UN commandos got to him in time!_ was quickly subsumed by, "Son of a bitch, you could have friggin' hit me!" Without waiting for the UN guard-dressed-as-orderly to respond, she strode forward to take a look at the assassin.

Only to be knocked aside by the UN commander; and standing in the doorway of the clinic, plainly just as furious as she was, was Duke. The only thing keeping him from jumping to her side was the crossed weapons of the two UN commandos on either side of him. "He's dead. He's no longer your concern." The commander poked the assassin's body with the barrel of his gun. "Take this one out of here."

Duke was only allowed to join her once the body had been carried out. Then the commander turned on her. "And what are you doing here? Where's the blond lawyer?"

"She died," came another voice. Rohena came striding across the floor. "She's dead. The American girl offered to play decoy in case someone learned the lawyer was here and came to get her. A smart move."

"She's dead? She died?" Cover Girl's heart ached at the desolation in Duke's voice. _She's not dead, Duke, she's safe,_ but she couldn't tell him that here, in front of the UN people. The Joes had gone to a lot of trouble to smuggle her out and Cover Girl was still trying to figure out how to talk the others into taking Alex back with them. As she lay under that sheet pretending to be Alex, she'd come to a few conclusions, all of which had solidified when she'd seen the trained assassin. _She's not safe. Here, or anywhere, except our HQ, which few people even know about._ _If we can get these UN fuckups to think she's dead, we'll have a chance at getting her out. Hiding her's another goddamn problem but let's concentrate on immediacies first._ And the best way to fool an enemy was to fool a friend. Duke would understand.

"We need to verify she's dead. Where's her body?" The UN commander stepped up to Rohena, clearly trying to intimidate the other woman.

It wasn't going to be easy to intimidate the formidable British doctor, however. She stepped toe to toe with the UN commander. "Your bloody orders to me and my staff were to leave her alone and not treat her. Since you've gone to all the trouble to make sure she died, _you_ can go out there to the mass grave outside of town and check all those body bags until you find her. You're absolutely mental if you think I'm going to make this easier for you; you didn't make my job easy for me. I'm a doctor, not a butcher, and you made me ignore a woman in pain because of your damn orders!" she pointed to the door. "Get the hell out of my hospital."

The UN commander looked nonplussed for a moment, then gestured to the men standing around. "Let's go." They stepped outside the hospital, followed by Cover Girl, still fuming, and Duke, who looked shocked and drained. Once outside the UN commander said, "The lawyer is dead. She's no longer your concern. I will not file charges of disobeying orders and violating UN sovereignty if you leave with your people now." He gestured to a pile of gear beside the UN vehicles. "Take your gear and go."

Duke seemed to shake himself out of his shock. "We're going. But you haven't heard the last from us. Miss Cabot was an American citizen under the care of an American military operation. Your refusal to allow her to receive medical aid could have been the direct cause of her death and is therefore a violation of her Geneva Convention rights. Our commanding officer will have a word with the UN about releasing her body to the US once you find her, so look to hear from us later." He sorted out bags and packs, taking the heaviest; Cover Girl falling into step beside him with the lighter packs and weaponry.

His indignation lasted until they were out of sight of the UN people, heading for the helipad where their choppers were sitting. Then he stopped and let his shoulders sag; Cover Girl, looking at him, saw him look suddenly years older. "She died. We failed. How do we tell her family when we don't even have a body?"

"She's not dead." Oh, the hope on Duke's face. "Ssh. We could still be monitored. Let's keep walking." As they walked through Goma on their way to the distant helipad, she said, her voice low, "Rohena—the doctor back there—had her placed in a body bag and sent out to the mass graves. Then I used her cell phone to send a text message to Wild Bill, telling him where Alex was. Her body bag was marked with an orange x. I'm hoping they've found her by now."

Dawn was just breaking, the first few rays of sun breaking the clouds of the horizon when they got back to the helicopters. Lights were on in the medical helicopter. "I hope that means they have her." He reached up and pulled the door open.

The entire team looked up at him and Cover Girl from where they stood or sat in a circle around the helicopter. Duke barely even noticed; his eyes were on the blond lying on the stretcher in the corner next to Ettienne. "Is…she…"

The smile Lifeline turned to him was radiant. "She's alive, Duke. She came out of her catatonic state to speak to us, then went straight to sleep. Right now sleep's the best thing for her; it'll keep her unaware of her pain until we can get somewhere with adequate medical facilities to care for her. Did you see the hospital in Goma? I realize for the people here it's probably great, but from my perspective it seemed…inadequate."

"I saw it. It's not somewhere I would want to leave my worst enemy, much less an injured mission target." Duke sighed and sat down on the floor as Flint got everyone's attention. "Hold on. We all need to get on the same page. What is this about a chip?"

"Here." Recondo handed him the fake chip Courtney had mocked up, then held up the real one. "We're going to give the fake you're holding to the UN guy out there, and then we keep the real one. Take it back with us an analyze it. Apparently it captures audio as well as serves as a locator beacon, but we can't let it out of our hands. Someone friendly to that militia bastard out there told him about the chip and he cut it out of Alex's head to get rid of it. It was a stroke of sheer luck that it got stuck in the mud in Lady Jaye's boot when she ran through it back in the militia camp during our rescue attempt. It has to be important if he went to that much trouble to get it."

"I'll take it out to the UN Commander," Courtney piped up. 'They already think I'm a brainless nurse, not a soldier, so they're less likely to ask me questions. The quicker I can do this the faster we'll be out of here." Flint nodded, handing her the fake chip, and she slipped out into the darkness. They carefully locked the door after she'd gone.

"How is Alex doing?"

"She's in massive amounts of pain and there's a very limited number of things I can do to relieve it. I'm only an EMT; she needs to be seen by a regular medical doctor. She's already had a bad reaction to the painkillers I gave her; I deliberately overdosed her because I thought she'd need it but it ended up shutting down her upper brain functions and left her with just instinctive reaction."

"So that's why she was incoherent."

Lifeline nodded. "Correct. I'm giving her the absolute minimum I can possibly give her and still keep her alive until she gets access to medical equipment and a regular doctor can figure out how much is too much, for her."

"Try and do the best you can, Lifeline. Ordinarily I'd seek help from the UN but right now, in this situation, we cannot trust them and we have to consider them hostile. I'm under no illusions as to what will happen to her if they get their hands on her. They're plainly not interested in keeping her alive—in fact they act like she's already dead and I cannot tell you how much that disturbs me, on so many levels. They're too willing to set her up as bait."

A series of soft taps on the helicopter door caught their attention, and they tensed for a moment before they identified it as Joe code. "You got back fast," Duke said as he opened the door and Courtney climbed in, then sat down on the floor.

"I ran," she said shortly.

Duke nodded, turning to Flint. "So now what? What are we going to do?"

Courtney burst out, "I can't believe we're even talking about this. It's a moot point, a fucking no-brainer. Screw our damn orders. If we leave her here and go home we're signing her death warrant. Yeah, they think she's dead now, but when they don't find her body out there in that mass grave you think they'll stop looking? They're gonna keep looking for her until they find her and I'm damned if I'm gonna let you guys walk away from her without at least trying to pound some sense into you all." Cover Girl folded her arms defiantly. "I say we take her with us. General Hawk will understand once we explain—and if we don't tell him we're bringing her, he can't object. And he can't turn her away once she's there."

"Bucking orders is a serious offense, Corporal Krieger."

Courtney couldn't help herself; she rolled her eyes. Someone chuckled—Lady Jaye? "Yeah. Tell me something I don't know. But in this case it's worth it."

"Worth a possible court martial? Dishonorable discharge? Leavenworth? Think about what you're saying, Corporal." Flint's voice was even. "You hated your former life. Is this one woman worth possibly having to go back to that life?"

"Worth? What is one life worth, Flint? Aren't we taught to respect all life, that no one person is expendable?" Courtney shook her head. "In answer to your question—yes. She's worth it."

"Duke?"

Duke jerked a thumb in Courtney's direction. "I'm with her on this one."

"Thank you, sugar," Courtney grinned at him. "Gonna throw both of us in the brig, Warrant Officer?"

Lady Jaye decided this had gone on long enough. "No, he isn't because that would mean he'd have to toss all of us in lockup. Including himself." She smiled at Courtney's nonplussed look. "We were discussing this before you walked in; if you'd waited just a few more seconds before running your mouth off, Courtney, you'd have found out that we'd independently come to the same conclusion." A hint of teasing but an undertone of seriousness; Courtney was the youngest of 'The Girls' and she tended to be hotheaded and impulsive, speaking before she thought. Lady Jaye and Scarlett had long ago decided to join forces to try to curb that habit of Courtney's before it got her in real trouble. Her rebellious attitude could occasionally be an asset to the team, but she'd been disciplined before for the eye-rolling and body language, particularly around her superiors, and that was part of the reason why she was still a corporal.

"Lesson later, Lady Jaye. Here's the bottom line, people, now that we're all together." Flint briefly recapped the conclusions they had drawn before Duke and Cover Girl joined them. "And so we'll take her back to HQ with us. Official story we'll tell Hawk is that we're bringing three wounded, no names until we get back to HQ on Staten Island. General Hawk will send a Gulfstream to meet us at Entebbe; we should be home before tomorrow evening," taking a look out the plane window at the early morning jungle sky. "Then we'll decide what to do."

"Put a change of my clothes on her," Courtney had knelt and started sorting through their packs after Lady Jaye's gentle rebuke; she knew she tended to speak before she thought and she knew it got her in trouble. "We have to hide her. If she's wearing my clothes she could pass as me—her hair is about the same length as mine, we're the same height, and with my name patch on the fatigues no one will look twice. And she can't keep wearing Ettienne's shirt." She paused in her rummaging. "Duke, right before you walked in—the assassin I was fighting—he had a syringe he was trying to inject in me thinking I was her," and she indicated Alex. "We scuffled briefly before the UN guard shot him, and he moved like an experienced fighter. I remember wondering where these sick DRC fuckups found a trained assassin, and even more curious, where the hell did they come up with the money? Assassins aren't exactly easy to find, and they definitely aren't cheap. Someone is behind this whole thing and that someone wants her dead. If this someone can hire an assassin to kill a comatose woman in an overcrowded African hospital, she's in a lot more danger that even she knows. If we really want to keep her safe we practically have to take her back with us."

Flint nodded. "Do it. In the meantime, Ace, Wild Bill, let's take off before the UN troops figure out that Alex isn't in that mass grave."

Corporal Chris Simes paused in the act of wiping his forehead. He'd been looking through the body bags for the last few hours, looking for the blond lawyer, and was starting to get a sneaking suspicion that maybe she wasn't here. Could they have lied to get her out? First Sergeant Hauser had seemed genuinely saddened by news of the lawyer's death, but Chris didn't really know him that well—he could just be a good actor.

What made him pause was the sight of a body bag lying on its side. It had an orange X spray-painted on it. Curious, he went up to it, poked it with his gun barrel.

It was empty. No body inside. He knelt to examine it, telling himself not to get his hopes up; some villager might have come out here to claim the body of a relative—but even as he tried to convince himself not to hope he saw a couple of long golden strands caught in the zipper.

His heart leaped into his throat. The inside of the bag was scarred, as if someone had been inside clawing their way out. The actual tear was to one side of the zipper; and that was what made his mind for him. The bag had been torn from the outside at the same time the person in it had been trying to get out, and the only one with long blond hair would have been the lawyer. He wanted to shout in jubilation, but that would attract attention.

He should report it to the UN commander. He _should_. He was liable to get in trouble if he didn't. But after knowing what she'd gone through, and knowing if the First Sergeant were caught with her, he'd be in trouble and Alex would certainly be dead, Chris decided he wouldn't tell anyone.

The ravine had been cut into the land by a fast-flowing river. During the rainy season it would no doubt flood the gorge, but right now it was a muddy run of water across the floor of the ravine. Chris located several large logs, chunks of rock and concrete from the buildings that had collapsed from the earthquake, and dumped them in the torn body bag. A quick heave, and he watched the bag sail out over the ravine, land with a splash in the muddy water, and sink from sight.

He was back in his assigned part of the mass grave when the UN commander walked past. Find anything yet, soldier?" he quizzed Chris.

"No sir, not yet," Chris answered. The man nodded, walked away, and Chris allowed himself a fierce, quick smile before he resumed his search for a body he now knew wasn't there.


	23. Interlude: The Way Home

Interlude: The Way Home

The Gulfstream Hawk had sent them was already waiting at Entebbe when they got there, and Lifeline wasted no time getting Alex, Lady Jaye, and Flint loaded into it. Duke exchanged rapid words with the Base Commander; no, their wounded personnel didn't need to be looked at, they were doing fine, thank you, we just want to get home as soon as possible.

Not that they were actually fine. Flint and Lady Jaye were stable, but Alex was the problem; and though Lifeline badly wanted to have a doctor look at her, they couldn't risk news of her presence reaching General Hawk before they did. All the Joes felt sure that once Hawk saw Alex, he would understand why she had to be brought back to base but until he actually saw her there was no way he would understand. So her presence among them had to be kept a secret. They loaded their gear into the Gulfstream as fast as they could, and were airborne in an hour. It was only after they got in the air that Lifeline thought to check the plane for basic medical supplies—he was running low on practically everything. He'd thought he'd packed enough supplies—gauze, painkillers, syringes, and so forth—in case everyone on the team needed attention, but he hadn't expected anyone to be in as bad a shape as Alex was—not and still be alive. Now, as he took stock of what was on the plane, his heart nearly stopped. "We have a problem," he said grimly as he came up to the front of the plane where the uninjured members of the team sat. "I've tossed the whole plane and there are no medical supplies beyond a basic first aid kit. That means no painkillers. I have enough for three more doses—four if I stretch it and give just the minimum, but afterwards that's it. We're out." Lifeline said grimly.

"Christ." Lady Jaye had woken up just in time to hear the tail end of that speech. "Don't use any on me. I can handle it. Save it for Alex, she needs it more than I do."

"General Hawk's orders were to care for our people first."

"Yes. And you've taken care of us. We're going to be home what, maybe tomorrow evening at the latest, tomorrow morning at the earliest? I'll manage." She pinned Lifeline with a hard stare. "I am hereby refusing any further pain medication."

"When you put it that way…" Lifeline sighed. "All right. I'll try and stretch out what I have as much as I can between Dash and Alex."

But by the time Alex woke around midnight, she'd received the minimum dosage and was still in agony. "Alex," Lifeline said as gently as he could when he gave her the last dose he had, bending over her so he could speak softly into her ear, the one that hadn't been ruined when the chip had been ripped out of her head. "Alex, I'm so sorry. We're out of pain killers. We can't stop and pick up anymore because it'll slow us down and right now we have to get to New York, and our base, as soon as we can. Do you understand? I'm asking you to hold on until we get back to base."

Alex closed her eyes as what he'd said sank into her mind, past the drugs and the pain. New York. They were taking her to New York. And once there—_Olivia_, she thought, _I have to hang on until I see her. One last time._ Wordlessly she nodded to Lifeline. The thought of lying there in agony for who knew how long filled her with fear, and she whimpered softly, tears running down her face. But she would hold on, if she knew Olivia was at the other end of it.

The next few hours were the hardest of Lifeline's life. He and the Joes watched as the painkillers wore off and Alex started to react to the returning pain. First moaning, then whimpering, and finally she started to scream—or at least if she had the voice to do so she would have been screaming. As it was, she was rasping harshly, gasping and croaking, her body jerking involuntarily in pain. The Joes were silent, helpless. There was absolutely nothing they could do to make it any better. Ettienne sat beside her bed, holding one hand, giving her what comfort he could. When her voice grew hoarse, he held the bottle of water for her; when her throat swelled and she could no longer swallow large gulps, he took a plastic spoon, poured a small amount of water into it, and slipped it between her lips so she could still drink.

She was fighting with everything she had, trying to stay conscious until they got to New York, but the agony was overwhelming and she could feel herself losing. "Olivia," she kept whispering the name to herself, trying to focus, but it was so, so hard…

"It's okay, Alex," came a soft rough voice, and she tried to focus on the face that entered her tear-blurred field of vision: Ettienne. "Go ahead and let go, and Olivia will be waiting when you wake up."

"Prom…ise…" She breathed; she badly wanted to let go, let the darkness claim her and take her away from this hellish agony, but she had to see Olivia again. One more time.

"Yes," and a large callused hand pushed sweat-soaked hair off her forehead, stroked a spot on her right temple that was practically the only place on her body that didn't hurt. "I promise. Olivia will be waiting when you wake up. Go to sleep now." She didn't have the strength left to answer, not even a nod; she simply closed her eyes and let the darkness take her into its soft, welcome embrace.

Ettienne saw the lines of pain in her face ease, and her tortured breathing became gentler, more even. His heart ached as he wiped his eyes, and when he looked up, no one else's eye were quite dry either. Lifeline stepped forward, and Ettienne stepped back wordlessly, letting him check Alex. Lifeline couldn't even look at the others as he said, his voice flat, "She's slipped into a coma. If we don't get her to base and real medical help soon, she's going to die."

Courtney surged to her feet. "It's seven in the morning now. If we push it we'll be home by noon. I'm going to have a talk with the pilot."

**Author's note: And this is the end of the first part, the first hundred pages of the book. I originally thought I'd just post the whole book into one file, but it turned out MUCH longer than I expected, and so I figured if I post each part separately it will be easier for readers to go back to their 'favorite' chapter instead of looking at a huge chapter list. Also, the focus in the second book is going to shift away from Flint and Allie since Scarlett and Snake Eyes will be spearheading the effort to uncover the conspiracy. The next part is titled 'G.I. Joe Special Missions: Scarlett Declassified' and it's going up concurrently to the last two chapters of this story, so look for it!**


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G. I. Joe, Adventure, Drama