It was official. Colin hated the Navy. Specifically, he hated the SEALs, but he wasn't feeling picky about the specific direction of his hate. Sure, it had been Chief that had come to drag him from his bed half naked at the crack of dawn, accompanied by some random Irish guy like that made it better somehow. That woman with the dark skin and curls hadn't been a SEAL, and she'd been very eager to threaten him with imprisonment.

He wondered just what planet she was living on. Did she think he hadn't seen the inside of more jail cells than he could count already? She was only going to be able to stuff him into an American cell.

At least, they'd corroborated the story he'd already gotten. Chaos Tree was indeed involved with human trafficking abroad, as well as being behind the bombings in the States. That didn't make a lot of sense, given the limited scope of the organization, but he would cross that bridge when he came to it. He had time.

He wished he could say he was surprised that Ed had been involved with that whole mess. At this point, the only surprise had been that Ed had stuck up for him. Ed had about as much respect for Colin and what Colin did as he did for sex workers at this point.

Or maybe it was more complicated than that. Colin stepped into the shower. He couldn't untangle the complicated web of Ed's feelings. He didn't think anyone could manage that, no matter what kind of equipment they might have. Five months, that was all Colin had to survive, and he could go back to his usual assignments. Hopefully the platoon wouldn't get deployed between now and then.

If he had any thoughts that the tension around base would ease or that anything else would get better, he'd been sorely mistaken. He was still exiled to his outsider's position in the briefing room and in all of the classroom training sessions. He still took his lunch and his breaks in silence. He was starting to wonder if this whole assignment was supposed to be an exercise in solitude. How much silence could one man endure?

On Wednesday, he found out the platoon was deploying. He was given one night to pack and make his arrangements. No further information was provided, but at least Colin wasn't alone in that. They didn't exactly address him on the subject, but he overheard them speculating about their destination the way they had in Arizona.

He went back to the hotel and called Bradley, who positively crowed at the possibility of Colin "seeing action" while with the SEALs. "That's an opportunity you can't pass up, brah. I mean, these are seriously covert ops. For real. You'll be right there in the thick of things."

Colin wondered if Bradley spent any time at all sober. He wouldn't bet on it. "Bradley, they've already kidnapped me half-naked from my hotel room once. What in the hell makes you think this is going to end well for me?"

"Okay, I can see your concern, but you'll be fine. They didn't hurt you, did they?"

Colin closed his eyes. He could remember Baldinotti getting up and in his face, and Chief's menacing glower. And then there was that random Irish guy. Nothing good could come of random, non-Navy guys showing up to an interrogation. "No. Not this time."

"So you're fine." Bradley's tone brightened. "They're not going to let anything happen to you. Just remember, you have a duty to the American people to tell the truth. And get me stories whenever you can, okay?"

"Got it." He hung up the phone and wondered if Bradley would even investigate if he got killed over there.

Chief showed up the next morning at four a.m., but he'd given Colin enough warning. Colin was checked out, dressed, and ready. They didn't speak on the way back to base. Was Chief regretting his decision to abduct Colin, or was he just tired and cranky at this hour? Whatever the reason, they passed the ride to base in silence and got on the bus to the Navy Yard.

Apparently they were going to Egypt, and they were going by boat. Colin guessed that made sense, since this was the Navy and all, but it still seemed dreadfully inefficient. If a situation was sufficiently dire to call for the deployment of Special Forces personnel, wouldn't it be bad enough to send them by plane? He supposed equipment was an issue. These guys could always pick up just about anything that was lying around and turn it into something useful, but sending them in fully equipped would probably be better.

He would rather contemplate naval inefficiency than Egypt. He'd rather contemplate anything in the world than Egypt.

The next two weeks were the dullest weeks he'd ever spent in his life. It reminded him of the time he'd spent in solitary in Russia. He wasn't trained on any of the ship's systems, and apparently someone had gotten word to the crew that he was being given the silent treatment. Anything he picked up about their destination or anything else going on, he picked up by accident.

He'd been given a bunk with the rest of the platoon, and that should have been good. He picked up a lot of news by pretending to be asleep, or maybe they just forgot he was there. He wasn't foolish. He half suspected anything said while he was in the room was being said to mess with him, or worse to sabotage his reputation, but he'd been through that before. He could handle it. Fact checking was a thing, after all.

He was downright grateful when they put into port in Egypt. Sure, Egypt was a kind of shitty place to be a journalist even at the best of times, and for him specifically. He was determined to make the best of it anyway. At least here, unlike on board ship or in Virginia Beach, he had contacts. He could call some people for information or just to hear a friendly voice.

They disembarked and loaded their equipment and some supplies into a series of trucks, and within a few minutes they were in their temporary quarters at the Naval Medical Research Unit. DeWitt made sure to introduce Colin to the Unit Commander right away, and Captain Leary stared at him with undisguised disgust. Great. More of the same.

Colin plastered a smile onto his face and pretended he could sell his job to the harsh-faced officer. At heart, he knew he wouldn't get far. A Medical Research Unit just didn't sound like the kind of place that a journalist should go unless there was a problem. He wanted to highlight heroes and call attention to deficiencies. He didn't want to parade private pain and suffering across people's screens for titillation, and he said as much.

He couldn't say that it made much of a difference to Leary, but he thought he saw the captain's shoulders relax just a little bit.

At least here he had a room of his own. It was small, not much bigger than a closet. He didn't trust it, either. He suspected that staff at the research unit would be going through his things the minute he headed out into the field with the rest of the SEALs, but that wasn't the important thing here. He'd hidden anything incriminating long ago. Here, at least, he could hide from the damn alphas and not have to be on and stoic all the time.

The Navy Medical Research Unit was in Cairo, a city Colin had always liked. He relished the warm, dry air on his skin, so much more comfortable than Virginia's swampy mess. He'd been tempted once to stay here and take on a long-term correspondent's role. He'd turned it down, and with good reason, but now that he stood in the sun and remembered what had come before he couldn't help but wonder what might have been.

His hand went to the tattoo on his hip, and he rubbed absently at it. Mansur was probably still out there somewhere. At least, Colin hoped he was out there somewhere. Things could get pretty dicey for journalists in Egypt sometimes. Colin had the thin protection of being foreign born. Mansur did not. Colin liked to think he'd have heard somehow, through the grapevine, if something had happened to his friend. He knew life didn't always work that way.

Life in the MRU was almost as dull as life on board the ship. Colin felt a little bit like a ghost as he made his way between the buildings. Guards would glower at him, and they would carefully block his access to buildings, but they wouldn't acknowledge his presence directly. Oh well—he had four and a half months left to get through.

The monotony was broken up by the first field missions Colin got to observe. He'd started to wonder if they were going to head out into the field at all, or if they were going to sit there and make him run with weights in a backpack for six months. A week after he first arrived in Cairo, Chief brought them all into the room they were using for briefings. "All right, boys. ISIS has taken a handful of Swedish missionaries hostage near Al Minya. Our job is to get in, rescue the hostages, and get out." He glanced at Colin. "Your job is to stay out of the way, not die, and not get anyone killed."

"Got it." Colin didn't bother expressing his disdain. He had no intention of getting himself killed, and he knew enough to stay out of the way. He pulled out his notebook and waited with his pen as Chief sketched out a plan.

It did occur to Colin to wonder why the Egyptian army wasn't taking care of this, but he kept his mouth shut. He could look into that one later, if he could work up the energy. For now, he needed to know where to go and what to do so he didn't get in the way.

The plan, as these things went, was fairly simple. They would travel down mainstream roads for the first two and a half hours of their journey. The terrorists would know they were on their way, after all. Once they were close enough to the suspected ISIS location, they'd disperse into the countryside and search. They thought they had a good line on the hostages' location, so they should be able to extract the victims without a major problem. The Egyptian authorities would be standing by in case the hostages needed medical attention.

Colin raised a hand. He saw Chief's jaw clench, but he didn't care. Asking difficult questions was Colin's job, after all. "How good is your intel about the hostages' location?" He tugged at his collar. "I only ask because the community around Al Minya can be pretty close-knit. If we get spotted, the terrorists will know about it in seconds."

Chief stared at him for a good ten seconds before he replied. "You're familiar with the area?"

"I've spent some time in Egypt."

"All right. We've got three different sources pinpointing the location of satellite phones belonging to more than one hostage, to include the phone the terrorists have been using to communicate with authorities. It's a bit of a risk, but we've had proof of life for the senior male of the missionary group so we're hopeful." He pushed a button on the small black laptop before him.

An image appeared on the wall. Colin hadn't noticed the projector in the ceiling. He was getting too used to these Navy buildings.

"This is the building in which the hostages are being kept." The building was a bland-looking, beige apartment building. It wasn't easily distinguished from any of the thousands of other cheaply built apartment buildings Colin had seen throughout the Middle East, standing about four stories tall with shops on the ground floor and balconies jutting out from the residential areas. "It's impossible to say where the hostages are being kept."

"They'll be on the top floor." Colin spoke without thinking.

Kelly rolled his eyes. "And you're an expert on these things now?"

Colin shrugged. He'd already spoken more today than he had in weeks. His throat hurt from the effort. "These buildings are all basically the same. I lived in a place like this for a few months up in Cairo. The top floor is easiest to secure. The apartments on the north side will be farthest away from the stairwell. I don't know why that is, but they're all designed the same way. They might be pre-fab, I don't know, but that's just how they are. They'll have a few guys on the roof, but not many."

Tinker's lip curled. "Spoke with a lot of ISIS operatives, did you?"

"Well yeah." Colin put a hand on his chest. "Journalist, remember? It's my job to tell the story, and that means talking to people on both sides. Even when that means dealing with some pretty unsavory characters." He could still remember the intensity of the last time he'd spoken to a Daesh commander. He wasn't about to side with them, not in this lifetime. He still didn't think their leadership had anything at all to do with religion. Their rank and file followers, though—they were believers, if misguided.

DeWitt had been watching the exchange in silence. Now he scratched his chin. "Do you still have contacts in the area?"

Colin blinked. Would it be ethical to help out in a SEAL operation? He gave himself a mental shake. It wasn't about helping SEALs or not. It would be unethical to let those hostages suffer. "I didn't spend a lot of time in Al Minya, but I'll see what I can do."

The level of tension in the room ratcheted up by a factor of ten while Colin got on the phone and called three different contacts. He called an old buddy of his, a shopkeeper who'd moved down to Al Minya after he retired. Omar was a terrible gossip, but he always knew what was going on in the neighborhood. He called the priest at a local Coptic church, Father Michael, who Colin had helped out of a jam back when he'd last been in Egypt. And he called Nour, a local nurse.

Sweat poured down his back by the time he got done with his calls. It was hard enough to call and make these kinds of inquiries without having fifteen armed men breathing down his neck. Still, some things were important. "They're not in that building." He turned to Chief.

"Are you calling all of our intel services wrong?" Chief crossed his arms over his chest.

"Are you pretending they're infallible?" Colin refused to be intimidated. "According to Omar, who lives across the street from that building, there isn't nearly enough activity there to suggest a Daesh presence. Also, there's no one on the roof. Everyone in that building is Christian; they'd squawk louder than anything if they suddenly got a bunch of religiously intolerant Muslim neighbors with big guns."

He got up and took over the laptop. "This is the Church of St. Mousa. They've been losing membership, with members slipping into the pews at churches all over the city. Father Michael, from St. George, said they've been complaining the parish priest is a drunk who gropes their daughters given half a chance. And, this part is significant, he's been letting some 'unsavory characters' use space in the basement." He found an image of St. Mousa's church, sending up an aimless prayer of gratitude for the power of street-level imagery on the Internet.

"Finally," he told them, "my friend Nour told me she'd been brought over to St. Mousa to take care of some pale-skinned Westerners who'd been injured." He stood up straight and met Chief's eyes. "I'm not trying to undermine you in any way. If you want to go for that apartment building, go ahead and do that. It's all a matter of who you trust—locals or satellites."

He and Chief locked eyes for another long minute. Then Chief looked away. "Suit up. Looks like we're making a detour."

* * *

DeWitt split the squad between the apartment building and the church. He said he trusted Colin's intel, but he trusted Navy intel too, and he wanted to cover all of their bases. Ed got assigned to the church. So did Colin. He half expected Chief to demand Colin be assigned to the apartment building, but he didn't make any issues at all. Ed had to admit to a certain level of pride about that. Apparently they trusted Colin enough to believe him.

They raided the church after dark. Something deep inside Ed recoiled at the idea of raiding a church. He'd grown up in Tennessee. They didn't desecrate churches in Tennessee. Storming the place, firing guns, setting off smoke grenades, and generally making a mess of things came under the heading of desecration in Ed's book. Of course, he wasn't going to have to do any desecration himself. No, he was going to set up on the roof of a building across the street and pick off anyone who tried to escape.

It was the principle of the thing, really.

He wasn't going to be alone on that rooftop, either. Chief and DeWitt absolutely insisted that Colin sit up there with him. Ed hadn't tried to shoot with that level of distraction before. He had no idea what it would do to his concentration levels, but he would cross that bridge when he got to it. He grabbed Colin and pulled him aside. "Look. I don't want to be a dick."

"No one ever says that without being a dick in the absolute next sentence." Colin met his gaze coolly, without showing the slightest glimmer of the friendship that had once existed between them.

Ed sighed. "Okay. Probably not. I'm up there on the roof because I'm a sniper. It looks easy, but it's not. I have to focus. I have to keep my mind on the job, or I could let one of those bastards get away. Worse, I could screw up. Instead of taking him out clean and quick, I could make him suffer." Ed shuddered. He could still remember his first kill as a sniper, and how long it had taken the man to die. His teacher had made him stand there with the mark too and watch, so he'd learn.

"Yeah, okay." Colin scratched his head. "What exactly is it you think I'm going to do up there, Adami? Do you think I'm going to be firing off questions and trying to interview you in the middle of the job? Or do you think I'll be so overcome with my uncontrollable omega lust for every alpha I meet that I won't be able to stop myself from sticking my tongue into your ear?"

Ed smacked his hand against the wall. "Can you maybe take this seriously? This is exactly what I'm worried about. I need to be thinking about that church, about what's going on with my brothers in that church, and not fighting with you."

Colin's mouth tightened, and his hands clenched into fists at his side. "Well maybe assume I'm a professional that knows how to do his job, and that'll be easier for you." He slipped away and headed back to his single bunk.

Ed let his head bang against the wall. Every time he opened his mouth this rift with Colin got worse and worse. If Colin weren't an omega, it wouldn't be a problem. Of course, it wouldn't be a problem because Ed wouldn't want him, but right now Ed would take that.

He found his body armor and grabbed his equipment. He had time to check it over, not that he didn't check it over on the regular anyway but it didn't hurt to be extra careful. Once he'd loaded up, he headed down to the trucks and took his seat.

The ride down took about three hours. Some of the guys had routines they liked to go through before a fight, when they had advanced knowledge. It helped them to get into the right mindset. Most of those guys had played a lot of sports in high school. Ed wasn't one of them. He didn't need a war chant, or some kind of special song he had to listen to. He wouldn't get that if they got ambushed, so why should he let his performance be different if he had advanced warning?

This fight was a little bit different, in that he'd have a companion up on that roof that made him nervous. He did have to compose his mind for the fight first. He breathed in and out, looking to soothe his agitated heart. Matters of romance or the soul were for the US, when they were on base. Technically they were for civilians, but Ed knew better than to think that was a standard anyone could meet. He had enough self discipline that he could focus on the job in front of him and not on the gorgeous omega he'd always loved beside him, couldn't he?

By the time they reached Al Minya, he'd more or less composed himself. Colin didn't seem to be having the same problem. He didn't say anything when Ed gestured at the building across the street from the church, just climbed up the wall when Ed gestured.

The building was probably a school. It looked like it dated to the colonial era. That was convenient for Ed and Colin. European architecture of the period gave them plenty of handholds to use as they scrambled up the side. They found a good spot to rest, with a great view of the church, and Ed put his rifle together.

Colin took up a position on his belly a short distance away from Ed. He had a camera with a long lens, and he was already taking pictures with it. Ed curled his lip even as he got down on the ground. Would Colin be so crass as to take, and publish, photos of men dying from a sniper's bullet? Wasn't that against the Geneva convention or something?

The radio in Ed's ear clicked twice. They didn't know if their enemies could listen in on their conversations or not, so it was best to assume they could. The two clicks signaled that the team going in was in place and ready to go. DeWitt and Miazga walked in the front door of the church. Fitzpatrick and Floyd walked in the back. Ed knew they'd bar it behind them. Hopper and Lupo took one side, also barring that door since it was out of Ed's line of sight, and Kelly had the other side.

Ed hated the idea of Kelly going in that side, all by himself. He knew Kelly was more than competent, and that the others would be clearing the sanctuary, but he still hated it. He'd just have to keep an extra close eye on that door. It was all he could do from his little nest up here.

The cool night air kissed his face as Ed waited for action. The sounds of a normal city played out around them. People drove from place to place, although the late hour meant that traffic was kept to a minimum. Two men, one older and one younger, argued in a nearby apartment. Languages weren't Ed's top skill, but he knew enough Arabic to get by. The younger one was the son of the older one, and he chafed under restrictions put on him by his father. In America, he'd probably leave home soon. This wasn't America.

Ed waited, eyes on the two church doors he could see. The slate roof underneath him must have cost a lot of money to put on, back when the school was built. It had been indifferently kept up since then, like most of the rest of the neighborhood. He could feel the slate leaching the heat from his bones. With any luck, they'd be able to get out of here sooner rather than later.

Someone inside the church, a woman from the sound of it, screamed. Ed almost missed it. The woman must have been terrified beyond measure for her shriek to carry this far out of the church. Lights flew on in the surrounding apartments as sleeping people woke. At least they were paying attention, he thought as he prepared to fire. It wasn't the most convenient thing for the team right now, but at least people weren't indifferent.

Ed heard gunfire inside the building. Beside him, Colin stilled. Ed had almost forgotten about him—almost, but not quite. He continued to ignore his old friend and took a deep breath. Things were going south, and fast.

The front door to the church flew open and a man ran out. He dragged a woman by the arm. The man wore traditional clothing and had a beard. The woman had pale skin and her headscarf was poorly wrapped, sending light brown hair flying into her face. She tried to fight her captor, screaming, but didn't get very far.

He fired at the captor and caught him between the eyes. The man fell to the ground, eyes already vacant as a pool of blood spread out behind him. The woman covered her mouth with her hands and jumped away from the body.

Two tall men chased after her. Ed was ready to pull the trigger, but stopped himself in time. The tall men were Kelly and Hopper, coming to the aid of the former hostage. "All clear," Hopper said into the radio.

The fight was over. They could go back to Cairo now.

They weren't going alone. They had five Swedish missionaries to bring with them, two male and three female. All of them were shellshocked, and Ed didn't blame them one bit. The woman who'd been dragged by the terrorist didn't speak at all during the three hour drive back to Cairo. She just huddled in on herself in the back of the truck, crying in the arms of her female companions.

Ed, Colin, and DeWitt rode in the same truck as the hostages. The rest of the SEALs rode in the other truck, which probably made for a tight ride, but Ed wasn't worried about that right now. He tended to the injuries he could, although only one of the women would let him touch them. The senior male missionary, who gave his name as Phillip, wouldn't meet Ed's eyes but let him change the bandages on his wrists.

The long, deep cuts on Phillip's arms looked self inflicted. Ed didn't say anything, he just took things from the kit that Colin passed to him and worked to clean him up. "They attacked while we were having lunch," Phillip told him, after a moment. "It was sudden, and we were unarmed. We had no choice. We could hardly fight back against something like that, could we?"

Colin shook his head and offered a little smile. "No. You did what you had to do to get through. That's all. There's nothing wrong with it." He put a hand on Phillip's shoulder and spoke in a soft tone. "To be honest I'd have had questions if missionaries went around toting guns, you know what I mean?"

Phillip huffed out a little laugh. "You're Americans. I thought all of your missionaries had guns." Then his face settled back into its familiar melancholic lines. "We came here to try to make a difference. We wanted to bring enlightenment. We wanted to teach people to read and write. We wanted to bring them the Gospel." He sighed. "We didn't find many people who were all that interested in the Gospel, although we did make some inroads into improving the literacy rate."

"Yeah, Al Minya has a lot of Coptic Christians. They've already got the Gospel, and Muslims tend not to be all that into being prostletized." Ed turned to the younger male, who watched the conversation without comprehending. Was he too stunned by his experiences or did he not speak English?

Colin glared at him. "Not the time, Ed." He turned back to Phillip. "Anyway. You were saying?"

Phillip waved one of his cleanly-bandaged arms. "Your friend is right, if blunt. But that wasn't the worst of it. Our captors were cruel, yes. I'm going to have to pray for a long time to find forgiveness in my heart." He dabbed at his eyes. "They had friends."

Ed's stomach turned. "Friends?" He resisted looking back at the women, but only through heroic self control. He noticed DeWitt straighten up behind the wheel.

"Yes. Friends. They were Europeans. They were…" Phillip trailed off, working his mouth while he tried to find the word in what was probably a third or fourth language for him. "They didn't have much respect for our captors, and our captors didn't have much for them. But they had a lot of interest in us." He swallowed. "Especially in them." He kept his eyes on the ground.

Ed had to look. None of the women would look back. They, too, stared at the metal bottom of the truck bed.

"Did these men say what they were doing working with Daesh?" Colin asked. His tone was still perfect, soft and compassionate like it should have been. Ed couldn't have managed it. Ed didn't think he could manage speech right now.

Phillip closed his eyes and shook his head. "We couldn't figure it out at all. They were not converts, not Muslims. They were no Christians either. They wanted…" He took a deep breath. "They wanted to bring the women with them. Our captors wanted to trade us for some of their comrades who were in prison, but the Europeans wanted to only trade me and Karl."

Ed covered his mouth with one hand. "I'm so sorry you all had to deal with that." He glanced over at the women. He didn't let his gaze linger. He didn't want to make them feel worse than they already did. "My God."

"Did you hear the words White Dawn at all?" DeWitt asked. His voice was tight and intent, and his knuckles had gone white on the steering wheel.

One of the women, a younger woman with dyed black hair, sobbed and hid her face with one corner of her headscarf. It was enough confirmation for Ed.

"We're going to a US Navy installation," Colin promised them, moving closer. He switched to Arabic, since he knew they all spoke it. "You're as safe as you can be. We've got medical professionals there, and I can promise you that you'll be better protected there than anyplace else in the world."

Ed gave them what he hoped was a reassuring smile. DeWitt sped up, and they arrived in Cairo just as the sun was coming up.