Nursing school had prepared Nick for a lot of situations. He learned to handle a code. He learned to deal with combative patients. He learned to deal with combative relatives, too. He learned to take all sorts of tests, and how to comfort patients after the results came in. He could deliver someone else's baby in a pinch, and he could put in stitches like there was no tomorrow.

None of Nick's training had prepared him for an FBI investigation.

The agent sat across from him and gave him a cool smile. She was pretty, as these things went. If Nick had any interest in women at all, he'd probably be all over her, or at least he'd imagine being all over her while keeping his hands strictly to himself. As it was, he could admire her from an aesthetic standpoint without losing sight of the fact that she had the power to destroy his life with a single keystroke.

She cleared her throat. "Mr. Kosloski, I'm not here to go after you or try to ruin your life. You're not in any trouble."

Nick hung his head and blushed. "That obvious?"

She smirked. "Let's just say some conversations I can get through on autopilot. The fact that I'm here makes it obvious we have some suspicions about the nature of the explosion over at Douglass University. Whenever something of that nature happens, it's normal to do some digging. We've got investigators at all of the hospitals to which victims were sent, and we're collecting evidence from all of them."

Nick took a deep breath and put his hands on the table to steady them. "Of course. Sorry. It's just a little intimidating. I mean I know there's a procedure, and you're still investigating. I'm just—my son's father deployed not long after things blew up. That's probably a coincidence, though.” He didn't meet her eyes. He couldn't, not if he wanted to pretend he didn't know what was going on.

He didn't want to get anyone in trouble, after all.

She paused for a moment, like she was looking at him. "I'll admit we're working closely with Navy Intelligence on the subject," she said after a moment. "That doesn't go beyond this room. I shouldn't even be saying that much, but I know your son's father is in Lt. DeWitt's platoon. And I know you work closely with Malachi Kelly. Things are a little different with that crew.” She shuffled some paper.

Nick sat up a little straighter. He couldn't think of a reason why things would be different with Mal or the platoon, but he didn't need to know that right now. He just wanted to get through this meeting with his skin intact.

"To the best of your knowledge, were all of the victims brought into this hospital part of the Douglass student community?”

Nick thought back to that awful day. "They honestly start to run together after a while," he told her. It didn't occur to him to lie. He had no reason to. "I don't remember anyone who didn't fit the pattern, if that's what you mean. I don't remember any middle-aged white guys in that sea of faces."

She nodded and made a note on her tablet. "Okay. Did anyone say anything that seemed a little odd to you? Anything at all. It might not make sense to you, but it might fit in with something said by another victim at another hospital."

Nick nodded and tried to remember. "Honestly most of them were kind of delirious.” He closed his eyes and tried to sift back through the groans of pain. "It was mostly things like, 'My leg!' and 'I can't see!' But a couple of patients were talking about groundskeepers.” He licked his lips and tried to ignore the way his body was suddenly sweating.

"Groundskeepers.” Aliprandi leaned forward. "Are you sure?"

Nick nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure. It stuck out in my mind because it seemed like an odd place to talk about groundskeepers, you know? Like, who cares about the groundskeepers, you've got a hole in your stomach the size of a grapefruit. But a couple of them mentioned the groundskeepers and how the groundskeepers would probably be doing a dance."

"Huh.” She leaned back. "That's interesting. I wonder what they meant by that."

"I guess the school had hired some new groundskeepers or had brought them in on a special contract.” Nick scratched at his cheek as he tried to piece together what he'd heard. "I'm not entirely sure. I don't know if a bunch of typical freshmen would know, you know? But these guys were locals, and, er, not exactly on board with the skin tone around Douglass University.”

"They were racists.” Aliprandi nodded.

"I don't know. I didn't speak to them.” Nick didn't want to brand anyone with that label, especially given the turmoil the country had been in lately. "Even the kids who were talking about them hadn't spoken to them. But the kids who mentioned them thought they'd been looking at them with a lot of hostility. Enough to stick out in the brain."

"I see.” Aliprandi flattened her mouth out and made another note. "That's good to know. I'll interview survivors and see if they remember a logo.” She gave Nick a tired smile. "That's a good lead. Good memory, especially given how tired I'm sure you were that day."

Nick huffed out a laugh. "I'd say you don't know the half of it, but you probably do in your line of work.” He rubbed at his face. "I've only been out of nursing school for a few weeks. That was kind of...it was kind of a lot."

"A mass casualty incident would be a lot for anyone, at any point in their career. It's okay to be shaken up.” She gave his hand a squeeze. "Did you pull a lot of debris out of your patients?"

He grimaced and clutched at his stomach. "Oh yeah. Those kids were torn up. There were all kinds of things in those kids. Nails, screws, even ball bearings, and I couldn't figure out where those had come from.” He lifted his head. "Oh."

Aliprandi nodded. Her eyes were wide and soft, even though her mouth had hardened. "Yeah. Oh."

"That's...” He trailed off. What was he supposed to say? That's evil? Of course it was evil. Evil was the whole point. A person didn't build a massive bomb full of shrapnel if they didn't want it to be evil, for crying out loud. "Sorry. I'm not used to that kind of evil. I mean I've seen violence before, sure. I've seen people do some evil stuff, but it was stuff you could wrap your head around. It had a cause and an effect. You could say, 'Oh, that's Bob, Bob has a real problem with women, and Jane didn't do what she was told, and it's not like they're going to keep the mayor's son in jail, and here we are.'  Not, 'Oh, I'm going to blow up a thousand kids because I've got some kind of existential angst about race.'“

"Right?” Aliprandi snorted. "I wish I could say something to make you feel a bit better about it, but I'm coming up blank right now. All I can think of is to tell you that people like that are few and far between. They're...they're outliers. They cause a lot of damage, yeah, but the average guy you meet on the street isn't going to do that.” She rolled her shoulders, like she was psyching herself up to go back outside. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Kosloski. If you think of anything else, give me a call."

He took the card she offered him and escorted her out into the hallway. Other members of the ER team were waiting their turn to speak with her, so he got back to work.

Mal was waiting for him around the corner. "It's a good thing our pay comes out of the Department of Defense budget," Mal commented as they headed back to work.

"What's that?” Nick hadn't given the slightest thought to their pay, beyond making sure they got it. He'd been burned that way, too.

"Come on. All the overtime we pulled on the night of the bombing, and all of the extra time they had to pay to pull people in for coverage during interviews today? It must be costing them an arm and a leg. If it was coming out of a regular hospital budget, or out of the VA budget, they'd be squawking about it left and right.” Mal shrugged. "Not that I'm complaining. I'm definitely not complaining about staying at work that day, because we needed every set of hands we could get our hands on."

"So your problem is?” Nick frowned, trying to understand exactly what his friend was getting at.

"It's not a problem.” Mal snickered. "I'm just saying, we're lucky our salaries come out of the bucket they do.” They headed back to the nurse's station and checked in. There was plenty of work to do, but nothing terribly urgent yet. "Tell me, what did you think of Agent Aliprandi?"

Nick shrugged. "She seemed nice enough. You know, for someone who can basically make you disappear on a whim."

Mal rolled his eyes. "That's the CIA or NSA. The FBI are a little more constrained. Laws are an actual thing, for them.” He rubbed at his fingers, like they ached. "I just don't know if she'll be allowed to do anything."

"Why wouldn't she?” Nick scoffed. "I don't know how it works in Ireland, or France, or wherever, but this was a deliberate bombing of US citizens on US soil. They're not going to just turn a blind eye to it."

Mal shrugged. "Maybe.” He straightened up. "Hey, listen, Chief's omega invited us to come up to Richmond with the kids next weekend. Tony has five kids, with the oldest being close to the same age as Sam. What do you say?"

"Is Tony a good guy?” Nick frowned. He wasn't sure how he felt about spending more time with other Navy partners, given that he wasn't actually partnered with a Navy man.

"Oh, yeah. You might have heard his name a time or two. He's got a few Olympic medals for ice skating, and he runs a website for folks involved with Navy guys. It's a funny one. He's not one of those gung-ho types either. We're not best buddies, but I like him. And it might be good for Sammy to get to know another kid his own age.” Mal flashed him that model-perfect grin again. "I mean Danny adores him, yeah, but he's a little light on conversation at this point in his life."

Nick had to chuckle at that. "You're not wrong. Sure, we can head up there. It's historical and stuff. We'll see all kinds of, uh, old things."

Mal laughed, and they parted to go take care of patients.

Nick almost got over the atrocious start to the day by the time he left the hospital. The cases he'd taken on had all been fairly mild as ER cases went, and he had a concrete plan for the weekend that should work out well for Sammy.

Then his phone rang. Caller ID told him it was Serena, his lawyer.

A knot formed in his stomach. "Hi, Serena. How are things?"

"Well, my bank account is about to get better. That doesn't mean they're about to get better for you, but you know. Silver linings and all that.” Serena sipped from something on her end. "I just got a notice from Tom Fitzpatrick's parents seeking an injunction against any child support payments or changes to instructions regarding his death benefits."

Nick's heart leaped into his throat, and his limbs went cold. "I—wait. What the hell?"

"There's a legal term for that, but it's impolite to use it outside of court. I used it anyway, when I called Darrell Green. For what it's worth, I don't think he was lying when he said he didn't know anything about him.” Serena inhaled slowly. "Nick, I need to know. Did you guys have a fight or something?"

"No. No, we've been getting along just fine. He deployed not too long ago. We spoke via video chat. We can't speak again, because he's doing things we're not supposed to know about, but I can't think of a reason he'd ask for that.” Nick rubbed at his face and thanked any divine powers that might be listening that he hadn't started the car up yet. "Why would he do that?"

"He wouldn't have done that without going through his lawyer. He couldn't have done that without going through his lawyer, and he knew that.” Her tone loosened up, just a bit. "If he didn't do it in a fit of pique—which doesn't seem like something he'd have done, and if you didn't have a fight then he wouldn't have—then he wouldn't have asked this of them."

"So they just sought this on their own?” Nick scratched his head. "That makes no sense."

"Sweetheart, they lied to him. They outright lied to him when you told them you were pregnant. I don't pretend to know exactly what was going through their little heads, but I can tell you I've been doing this work for a long time. I can promise you, when it comes to family there is no bridge too far. Okay? They've shown you what they think about your child. Don't expect it to change now that ten years have passed.”

Nick squeezed the phone so hard he thought it might break. He took a deep breath and tried to force the rage back. "I'm not trying to shoot the messenger here."

"Good. I mean I get paid either way, so if you need to get mad and yell and scream, you can do that. I'd be pissed off too. As your attorney, I'm going to advise you not to reach out to them, though. They're not going to be receptive.” Her voice shifted, becoming predatory.

"They're expecting you to roll over and submit. They think you're just going to go away and fade into obscurity. And something tells me that they did this during his deployment for a reason."

"Because he can't fight back.” Nick punched the seat beside him. "Like they didn't pass my message on when I reached out, while Tom was in basic."

"Bingo.” Serena was purring now. Nick completely understood why they called lawyers sharks. "The thing is, they don't understand that Tom has a lawyer too. Or that your lawyer is damn fine. We're going to take care of this for the two of you. And for Sammy, because he deserves more. I just wanted you to be aware of the situation.”

"Thanks, Serena. I appreciate this.” He forced his hand to unclench. He couldn't show up to pick Sammy up from camp in this kind of a rage. Sammy wouldn't understand it wasn't directed at him.

"I know you do, sweetie. Are you going to tell Tom?"

"Not while he's on deployment.” Nick didn't even have to think about it. "He's got enough on his mind without adding to it. Let him worry about the enemy shooting at him, instead of the enemy at his back. We've got this."

***

Tom headed out of his tent and into the blistering desert sun. Back in Virginia, the weather was probably starting to turn. At least here, the heat was a dry heat. Back in Virginia, the air would be thick enough to cut with a knife, and nigh unbreathable.

"Get your head out of the swamp, Fitzpatrick," DeWitt ordered. Sweat dripped down his temple. "We got some good data last night, both from Baldinotti and from Mal. We've got a new direction to move in. We might as well get down to it."

Tom accepted the tin cup of coffee Kelly passed to him. "Since when is Mal working for Navy Intelligence?" he muttered, so DeWitt couldn't hear him.

"Since someone blew up a hall filled with a thousand college freshmen.” Kelly shrugged. "You didn't think he'd ever be completely out of the game, did you?”

Tom went to go sit down with the others. It was too early in the morning to think about the implications of that statement. Well, it was too early in Tom's morning. He'd put his head down a few hours ago, just as the sun poked its head over the horizon.

Chief looked around at the rest of them. "All right. Now that we're all here, we can get started. It's good intel, but not so exciting I want to go through it more than once. We got word that some students who survived the blast at Douglass spotted groundskeeping trucks with this logo on it.” He opened up his laptop to show them an image of a pickup truck with a logo painted on the side. The logo was a stylized tree, with some sort of rune superimposed over it.

"That logo makes my head hurt.” Buelen scratched his head. "Like just looking at it makes my head hurt. Who okayed that for a corporate logo?"

"No one.” DeWitt rolled his eyes at Buelen. "It's not a groundskeeping company. And Douglass University didn't hire them. That's the logo of a white supremacist group operating out of North Carolina. They call themselves Chaos Tree, and their goal is simple. They want to return America to its 'roots,' by spreading chaos until the 'masters' take back what's rightfully theirs."

Lupo drew back, a sneer curling his lip. "Well that's remarkably simple of them. Why can't they just go around and turn all of the traffic lights upside down or something like that?"

"I don't know, Lupo. I don't follow the same logic white supremacist terrorists do. I can't explain them.” DeWitt rolled his eyes. "I need to be able to explain them just well enough to be able to hunt them down. Beyond that, I don't give a flying fuck. Anyway, Baldinotti did an image search through some of our satellite imagery, and she found that same image here in Libya. Not too far from our present location."

Toledano raised his hand. "Sir, I understand what you just said, about not giving a flying fuck, but seriously—what's up with them being in Libya? These Chaos Tree weirdos are looking to kick all us non-WASP types out of the US. They care about the United States. They're based in North Carolina. From the way you made it sound, they only operate in North Carolina and Virginia."

Chief nodded. "They've pulled a stunt or two in Maryland, but for the most part you're right."

"Libya is pretty damn far from Mom and apple pie, Chief.” Hopper snickered. "And they can't get away from the non-Wasp types around here. Unless they come look for us SEALs, and I don't think they'll like what they find when they do.” His grin was positively lupine.

"Follow the money.” Baudin waved his cast around.

DeWitt nodded, once. Apparently Baudin was still on his shit list, but he couldn't deny the logic of what Baudin was saying. "That's right. They have to fund their activities somehow. According to Mal, they'd previously been funded domestically. Members chipped in, or they held fundraisers in bars. Recently, that became not enough. So they made an investment."

"Human trafficking.” Iniguez turned his face away. "That's repulsive. Why all the way over here, though?"

"Why do you think?" Baudin snorted. "They're certainly not going to do anything that might risk bringing actual black or brown people into the US. So they got involved with the human trafficking trade in North Africa and Europe. It would be kind of genius, except for the whole human suffering, death, and racism angle.” He tilted his head back to look at the bright blue sky.

"Weren't you a finance major?" Tinker asked, eyes narrowed.

"Anyway.” Tom decided to step in before things could get heated. Baudin was still on his shit list too, but he didn't want to go into a fight with bad blood behind him. "That's all well and good, but how do we know they didn't just send their old pickup trucks to help out here? Everyone we saw on that job with the container trucks was local. I'm sorry to say I'm not sure they're connected."

Chief bobbed his head from side to side. "Well, Fitzpatrick, it's entirely possible that they're not. The great thing about it is that either way, we're going in and busting up the folks that are higher up the chain in this whole human trafficking thing. If they happen to be connected to the bastards that did the Douglass U job, then that's just icing on our cake now, isn't it?"

Tom grinned. "Yes, Chief!” He had no trouble cheering that order.

They packed up their things and moved out.

Tom hadn't been lying when he described his experience of deployment to Nick. They spent a lot of time waiting and watching, followed by bursts of rushing around. Right now they were rushing through the desert to get to the traffickers' location before they ran. How they got the traffickers' location, Tom didn't know. He had his suspicions, and they centered around the red-headed nurse that currently spent most of his time with Nick.

He had plenty of time to think about it while the platoon moved through the desert. It took them three days to get to their location. Most of Tom's brain power was taken up with being watchful, of course. It only took a second for things to go completely haywire, and no SEAL could afford to be anything less than perfectly watchful.

That didn't mean they didn't have things churning away at the back of their minds. Tom wondered how Nick was doing, back in Portsmouth. He wondered about Sammy. Did Sam still hate him, or was he starting to warm up to him? Had he already forgotten that he had a father at all?

Arriving at their destination, Tom noted that the place looked like any other village out in the desert, at least on the surface. There were tents. Men milled around, doing village things. They fetched water. They spoke with one another in the streets. They argued, and they made up. They bought and sold food from vendor stalls.

"No women.” Adami was already putting his rifle together beside Tom. All of them were good shots, and any of them could take on a sniper's role if they had to, but Adami had a gift for it.

Tom nodded and looked through his goggles again. Adami was right. There were no women in the little temporary village below them. "No livestock, either. Usually when we see a tent village, the people who live there are herders of some kind."

"Oh, they're herders all right. That big tent over there on the edge? It's got metal inside. I'm guessing container truck, but I could be wrong.” Chief flared his nostrils. "Our orders are to go in and take them out. Take prisoners if we can, but no one's going to be too broken up if we can't."

A tiny, rebellious part of Tom wondered exactly who was giving those orders. Someone would be upset if these men didn't come home. Human trafficking was wrong, of course, but surely at least some of them were only doing it as a way to feed their families. And what recourse would there be for the wives and children of men who died in a shootout with foreign soldiers, at the behest of the government? They'd have a hard time finding gainful, legitimate employment.

Maybe they'd die at Sammy's hands. He’d seen an article once, in a satire magazine. In it, a young man took over his father’s patrol post in Afghanistan. It was already happening, in that war.  Tom would do almost anything to make sure Sammy didn’t wind up doing what he did.

He pushed the thoughts from his head. He couldn't think like that. He'd seen the trucks himself. There was a difference between regular criminal activity performed to make a buck or two and deliberate mass murder.

Chief gave the order, and they headed into the fight. They usually tried not to fight this way. There were only fifteen of them—well, fourteen and a half, since Baudin was injured. They could have any number of enemy combatants hiding in those tents.

They didn't have a choice. They couldn't exactly text the enemy and tell them to meet up someplace a little more advantageous. Chief led the way, as he usually did when they all went in together, and the fight was on.

The traffickers' village fought back, but almost all of the same disadvantages the SEALs faced, the traffickers faced as well. The only advantage they had was in numbers, and while plenty of them were talented fighters, none of them were SEALs.

The first thirty or so fought back hard. They died in bulk. Tom fought with his knife, as he usually did. So did Floyd and Lupo. A few of the other guys preferred small arms, and Adami picked off others from the top of a nearby dune. As the first wave died off, their comrades began to re-think their position on death, dishonor, and profits.

They surrendered, first singly and then in droves. Tom and Buelen stood guard while the others secured their prisoners. Lupo radioed in for someone to come and bring the prisoners to base, and that was the end of it. The platoon got away with cuts and bruises.

Sometimes Tom wondered about the proliferation of television shows, movies, and novels about SEALs. Sometimes, especially after a big fight, he got it.

Prisoner transport vehicles arrived at their location a day later. Waiting for them might have been the single dullest thing Tom had ever done in his life. All he did was sleep, eat, and stand there to watch over a bunch of men who were tied together with rope.

The prisoners were pretty demoralized by this turn of events. Tom couldn't blame them. They didn't talk much, and he didn't mind. He still watched them like a hawk, though. Demoralized or not, they could still fight back if they wanted to.

Once the prisoners were removed, the SEALs could inspect the site for evidence. They found plenty of records, mostly transactions. These were records of the people who'd put their lives into the traffickers' hands. They'd trusted these evil men to bring them to Europe in safety. They'd known it was risky, but they'd had enough trust to take that risk. They'd hoped they could build a better life for themselves elsewhere, maybe even send some money home.

How many of these people had been dumped out in the desert? How many of their families were waiting for word of their loved ones, for remittances that would never come?

They found laptops and cell phones. These probably hadn't belonged to the victims. These had almost certainly belonged to the traffickers themselves. Lupo and Van Heel started to go through them, just in case the bad guys had left something useful in plain sight. Tom didn't hold out a lot of hope, but someone back at Norfolk would be able to do something with them.

Kelly found the shipping container in the big tent Chief had indicated, just as Chief thought he would. The container had been modified like the ones they'd found back near Darnah, proving a link between these traffickers and the homicidal bastards they'd been dealing with before. Any qualms Tom had felt about killing them evaporated when he saw that. Indeed, he only felt bad that he hadn't killed more of them.

Tom found their leader's tent, a combination of office and living space that had been kept scrupulously neat. Tom, who was distinctly not a neat freak, rifled through the papers he found there until he found something that caught his eye.

All of the papers he'd found had been in Arabic. The blueprints he found, on the other hand, were not. "Chief!" he bellowed.

It wasn't Chief, but Lt. DeWitt, who stuck his head into the tent. "What is it, Sailor?"

"Sir.” Tom stood up straighter and brandished the blueprints at his commanding officer. "These are blueprints for the assembly hall at Douglass University."

DeWitt paled. "Give me those.” He stepped forward and snatched them out of Tom's hands.

Tom didn't fight him. He'd have done the same thing.

DeWitt studied the plans closely for a full minute. "There are notes on this. Some of them are in Arabic.” He spread the notes out on the nearby desk. "And some of them are in English.” He pointed to a note.

"That's...” Tom swallowed hard. "This is a massive conspiracy.” He wouldn't lose it. He wouldn't freak out in here, not in uniform.

"Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it's a conspiracy we've already seen.” DeWitt tilted his head to the side. "Think about it, Fitzpatrick. What bunch of white supremacists have we seen who are more than willing to deal with folks they think are inferior to achieve their aims? Who do we know that already operates in this part of the world, that might be willing to make common cause with a bunch of white supremacists in the States?"

Tom's voice sounded like it was coming from very far away, even to his own ears. "White Dawn.” He closed his eyes. "It's White Dawn."

DeWitt licked his lips and stood up straighter. "I'm not going to lie. This is pretty bad. But Fitzpatrick, look at it this way. This is clear-cut evidence that White Dawn is involved with terrorism in the United States.” He wiped a little bit of sweat away from his forehead. "No one can justify pulling us off of jobs that relate to White Dawn now, not when we've got proof that they've been involved with killing Americans."

"No, Sir.” Tom couldn't be quite as sanguine about it.

"Come on. We've got a call to make.” DeWitt headed out of the tent.

Tom grabbed the blueprints, as well as the rest of the papers, and followed.