Mal set up his connections the safest way he could. No connection was completely untraceable, but Mal made a career out of setting up the next best thing. The Navy wouldn't be able to listen in on their conversation. Neither would the Wolves. White Dawn would have to have a much more sophisticated hacker than they'd shown themselves to have so far if they wanted to get in on this discussion.

 

Once he was confident that his conversation would be private, he made the connection between his computer and Trent's. They hadn't done much of this kind of thing. It was hard to get the schedules to line up, and even harder to get the schedules to line up when Mal had the right infrastructure in place. Right now, he and Morna had some downtime. It was downtime someplace chilly and unpleasant, but Trent didn't need to know that.

 

A window opened on Mal's screen, and there he was. Mal hadn't seen Trent in a month. His heart melted. Trent didn't look much different. He was still beautiful, still so clean cut it made Mal want to do something criminal just on general principle. "Mal," Trent said, in a voice that sounded on the verge of tears. "You look amazing."

 

Mal did not look amazing. He'd put a ton of concealer on his face to hide a bruise from his and Morna's latest adventures with White Dawn, and his clothes didn't fit the way he liked. It was kind of Trent to say so, though. "So do you. Life in Virginia seems to agree with you."

 

Had he already found someone new to keep his bed warm? Someone better looking, without the baggage of having been raised in a virtual cult?

 

"Wait until you see how it works for you, Mal." Trent grinned, slow and easy. "You're not going to believe it. You'll feel so good, and so safe, you'll wonder what took so long."

 

Mal didn't ask if they'd found a way to bring him over. If he had, Trent would have started with that. At least he was pretending he still wanted Mal at his side. Mal didn't blame him for giving up hope. There was no way it was ever going to work.

 

Instead, he changed the subject. "So how is everyone back there? I know Chief had concerns about the whole thing, with you all getting called off the case with White Dawn."

 

"Yeah." Trent ran his hand through his hair. "That threw us all for a loop, to be honest. I have no idea what's up there, but we're not going to take it lying down. We just have to be circumspect about how we handle it." He looked away for a second. "I'm not sure how high this goes, man. But I'm getting an impression that it goes pretty high."

 

Mal waved a hand. "American politics. Not much different than anyone else's politics, when you get right down to it. At the end of the day, it doesn't change what I do, you know?"

 

Trent's whole on-screen demeanor changed. He went from relaxed to on alert in about a second. "You're not putting yourself in harm's way, Mal. You're pregnant. You have other things to think about right now."

 

Mal rolled his eyes and shifted his position. "No, no, I get that. Most of my job involves sitting behind a computer, yeah? The only danger there is carpal tunnel." He carefully kept his bandaged left wrist hidden. "Anyway, I'm sending you a file. I don't have a more secure way to get it to Chief and I don't want him to get into trouble for getting things from me, all things considered."

 

He hit send. "It's photographic evidence from an attack on Syrian refugees in Denmark. As near as anyone can tell, no actual Danish people were involved with this attack. Four men were arrested in connection with the killings, all with identical tattoos. They broke out of prison twelve hours after their arrest."

 

"Fuck." Trent looked down. Of course he'd opened the files. Mal would have done the same thing. "Four guys did this?"

 

"They're vicious buggers, Trent. I'm just glad I didn't have to go in with the cleanup crew." He shuddered. It wasn't entirely voluntary. “I've seen a lot of terrible things in my time, Trent. I've done some pretty bad things, too. That…that's more than I can wrap my head around, you know? It's just terrible."

 

"Yeah." Trent swallowed, and he looked slowly back up at Mal. His eyes leaked tears. "Did your guys get them?"

 

"All but one." Mal clenched his jaw. He'd fired right at the motorcycle as it sped away, consequences be damned, but none of his shots landed. "I guess the silver lining is that they'll know someone's onto them now."

 

"Would that be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?"

 

Mal tried to keep a stern expression, but he couldn't keep a smile from turning the corners of his mouth up just a little bit. "Leprechaun jokes. Adorable, really. Do go on."

 

"I bought a whole book of them. It's going to be our kid's first book." Trent waggled his eyebrows up and down.

 

Something inside of Mal shifted uncomfortably. Was he delighted Trent was showing such an interest in their child? Annoyed that Trent was making such an assumption when Mal was still forced to give birth alone, risking his life? Both? Neither? He had no idea, which he supposed was a natural consequence of being raised to think emotions were for other people.

 

"Is it really?" He hoped he didn't sound too off. If he did, he could always attribute it to the connection. "That'll be lovely. Will you dress it up as a leprechaun to go to school, too?"

 

"Maybe. That'll be your decision, once you're here." Trent winked. "So are you showing yet?"

 

Mal groaned and made a face. "Honestly, probably not. I'm only what, twelve weeks? Fourteen? My clothes feel a little tighter, but Morna says she wouldn't be able to tell if she didn't already know. I, of course, already feel as big as a house." He pressed his right hand to his chest. "I'm sure I'll be in fine shape by the time I'm seven months in."

 

Trent laughed. "You'll still be beautiful, Mal. You always have been, even grimy from an op against ISIS."

 

"On a dusty old abandoned hotel bed." Mal shook his head at himself. "Yeah, I remember."

 

"You should. It was our first time. We'll have to tell that story to our kids someday."

 

Mal knew his face had just gone as red as his beard. "We will not be discussing our sex life with our baby, thank you very much."

 

Trent snorted. "Well, no. But we'll tell them all about how we met, and how you saved a bunch of Navy SEALs from certain doom."

 

"I thought for sure that part would be classified," Mal teased. He wrapped an arm around his middle. Maybe, if they succeeded in getting the baby out of him and back to America, it would be something Trent could tell the baby when it asked about its other parent.

 

"Oh, well. You know. It's not something we'd want the general public to know." Trent huffed out a little laugh.

 

Mal's satellite phone rang.

 

"Is that your dad?"

 

Mal sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, it is."

 

Trent sighed. "Well, I should probably be going anyway. Got a really intense day of training tomorrow. I'd hate to be dragging for any of it. The fact that Chief likes you doesn't mean he'd go easy on me."

 

Mal raised his eyebrows. "Chief likes me? Huh. Well, wonders never cease." He bit his tongue. He wasn't ready to hang up or to lose sight of the man he loved. He supposed it was time, though. He didn't need to keep filling his head with what-ifs and maybes. "I'll send you a note in the next couple of days. I don't know what Da has in mind, but it's not going to be fun."

 

"Yeah. Take care of yourself, okay? I love you."

 

Mal blushed again. "I love you too." It seemed like the right response. Mal wasn’t sure that “love” was the right word, not yet. He appreciated the way Trent seemed to be trying to work on his behalf. He cared for Trent. He valued Trent. It could grow into love, he supposed, with time and care.

 

Explaining that would get too long, too technical, and probably wouldn’t be well received. I love you came the closest.

 

Mal terminated the connection and bowed his head. His pulse thundered in his ears. He needed to calm down before he called Da back.

 

When he did, Da was furious. "When I call you, you answer the damn phone!"

 

Mal sighed. Never mind that it was five in the morning, and even other Wolves would be in bed and asleep. If Da called, Mal was to answer. "Sorry, Da. I was busy."

 

"I am your first priority. Do you understand that, son?"

 

Mal reached for a lie his father would buy. "Of course, sir. But I'm still not going to answer the phone while I'm having a shit, sir."

 

Da choked on his own rage for a second. "Don't be vulgar, Mal. I raised you better than that." He took a deep breath and seemed to settle himself. Mal could relax, just a little bit. "I have a job for you. It looks like a big telecommunications company not too far from where you are right now has been handing user data, to include messaging and call data, over to police and spy agencies."

 

Mal recoiled. "In the course of an investigation or…"

 

"Does it matter? I didn't ask you to think about it, and they haven't been doing it for an occasional suspect here or there. They've been doing it across the board. Look into it, see if this is true, and then stop them. Make sure they know it was us, but not necessarily you."

 

Mal smirked. His father's phrasing didn't escape him. He assumed Mal would find the allegation to be true. Mal assumed he would too, but at least he was honest about it. "Yes, sir. Time frame?"

 

"Quickly, but no specific deadline. The sooner you get that done, the sooner you can get to work on something more active. Can't have you getting soft, can we?"

 

"No, sir." Mal poked at his belly. His hard abs were already gone. Maybe he wasn't showing yet, but "soft" had left the stable a long time ago.

 

When Da found out, there would be hell to pay.

 

He washed off all the concealer he'd used to hide his bruises and got to work. He and Morna were in Finland right now, which wasn't necessarily a bad place to be. Their flat was a dump, and they'd already been there too long. They needed to get moving. He wouldn't mind putting it behind them and getting to someplace a little warmer anyway. It was only October. It was too early in the year for him to be this cold.

 

He explained the situation to Morna, who pouted. It wasn't a good look on a woman of twenty-three, but that didn't stop her. "Can you explain to me maybe why he's got a job that only involves you, but I'm supposed to just put my heels up and stare at the ceiling for a week or however long it takes you to do this thing?"

 

"This company is supposed to be very secure. It might take me longer than a week to pull it off. And no, I can't explain it." It would have been great if Dad could reach out to Morna and assign her to a job of her own, but he wasn't going to insult her by pretending that was going to happen. Dad hadn't forgiven Morna for falling in love with a traitor, and he never would.

 

"I suppose we could go to France," she said after a moment of sulking. "We can head to Lille, maybe. It's out of the way, but at least it won't be so obvious."

 

"Right!" He winked at her, and they were off within minutes.

 

Two days later, they'd found a comparatively inexpensive flat in Lille, and Mal set up a good network that would completely mask him from anyone trying to sniff out intruders. The next day, he got to work by sending out a couple of test attacks on the company's financial networks pretending to target customers using their mobiles to send money or pay for things.

 

The company never noticed he was there.

 

The following day, he started to sift through the telecom's data. They had, literally, billions of transactions that could fall under Mal's target. No human could sift through all of that information in one lifetime. Maybe a team of forensic analysts could, but Mal didn't have a team. He had himself and a resentful sibling.

 

He also had a talent for code. It took him half a day to create a program to mine the data and find transactions that fell within his parameters. He found monthly transactions to law enforcement and intelligence jurisdictions in seventeen countries with no specific customer as the target.

 

Mal's outrage would have burned the old apartment building down, had he the power. Sometimes, sure, government bodies needed to investigate communications records. Mal did it himself, to look into a specific case or to make sure he was going after the right people.

 

He didn't trawl through people's private communications in the hopes of finding something incriminating.

 

He sent a report to Da about what he'd found and his intentions. Then he sat down at his computer and carefully crafted two pieces of code.

 

One took the records the telecom company stored and turned them into gibberish. As near as he could tell, no one ever looked at the data until it wound up in government hands. No one would know he'd done it until the next transaction.

 

The next piece of code was more insidious. It followed the damaged records to the government agencies that purchased it. Once there, it would quickly erase any data from the telecom agency and replace it with little animated wolves running across the screen.

 

Mal did struggle with his action. This would impede legitimate criminal investigations that relied on telecommunications data from this particular company. Unfortunately, he couldn't see any way around it. The provider had knowingly helped to spy on millions of innocent people, leaving their private lives bare for anyone to exploit.

 

Five employers had terminated workers based on telecommunications information they shouldn't have access to. Mal could see it as clear as day when he did a little bit of extra searching. Twenty suicides coincided with accounts on Mal's list, names flagged by law enforcement or spy agencies. Those were just the consequences Mal could find with a few hours of searching.

 

He was all for keeping people safe, but there had to be a better way.

 

When it was all done, he routed a hefty sum out of the telecom's bank account too. He sent a million euros to relieve Syrian refugees. Another million went to fund the Wolves. And another million went into Mal's hidden accounts. He still didn't think he was going to get out safely, but if he got the chance he was going to take it.

 

 

~

 

Trent passed Mal's photos on to Chief with an explanation. Chief squirmed, and then he read the message associated with them. "Evidence of heroin?" He blinked. "What the actual hell?"

 

Trent could only shrug. "No idea, Chief. I only looked at the pictures, and I regretted that pretty much right away. But maybe the refugees picked up on that? Maybe they tripped over it? I mean those White Dawn bastards have to be funding themselves somehow, and they wouldn't be the first terror group to use drugs."

 

Chief grinned. "And if they're dealing, we've got an excuse to go after them. That boy of yours, he's smart." Chief pushed his laptop away for a second. "Has anyone from Personnel contacted you about him yet?"

 

An icy chill gripped Trent's chest. Was he going to get kicked out of the SEALs for getting someone pregnant? For getting Mal, specifically, pregnant? This kind of thing happened all the time, but this was a different administration. They had a narrow concept of morality and the wherewithal to enforce it on the rest of the country. What if Trent was the first to come to harm under some new policy?

 

"No, Chief." He swallowed.

 

"Hm. I wonder if we shouldn't seek representation on this. It's not like we're not working under a deadline." Chief made a sour face. "So. You spoke to him yesterday. How do you think he was doing?"

 

Trent licked his lips. "It's hard to say, Chief. He was trying to be cheerful, and he seemed healthy, but I don't think he believes we're really going to get him here. He's not the most hopeful guy in the world, and I guess I can understand that. It's not like that was something that could be useful to him, the way he was living, you know?"

 

Chief lifted his eyebrows and nodded. "I guess not. Anything else?"

 

"He said his job mostly involves sitting behind a computer, but he was wearing concealer."

 

Chief coughed. "Really? You knew that how?"

 

"It probably does a great job in person, but it doesn't come through as perfectly through the camera. I could see the difference." He clenched his jaw. "I think he's still out there, you know, vigilante-ing."

 

"Vigilante-ing isn't a word, Kelly."

 

"No, Chief." Trent kept his face straight. The Navy hadn't signed him on because of his exceptional grasp of grammar and usage. "Anyway, I think he's still doing his thing, and that makes me nervous."

 

"Well, hopefully he won't get caught while he's out there." Chief turned back to his screen. "We can't help him if he winds up in jail."

 

Trent knew that ominous pronouncement was his dismissal. He turned around and headed out to train.

 

Mal's plight continued to eat at Trent as he went through his training for the week, and he felt like he was going to itch himself right out of his skin. He got one note in all that time, simply telling him he was okay and someplace safe.

 

Trent might worry, but he didn't exactly have a lot of time to sit around and fret. Training was amped up to include close quarters, urban, and aquatic combat. Trent knew something was coming up, another deployment, and he couldn't exactly complain about it. Sitting around on base and worrying about Mal was starting to dissolve his brain. He'd rather be in danger himself. That way he wouldn't feel useless.

 

About two weeks after Trent's conversation with Mal, news came through that hackers had hit several targets around the world. When Trent found out that targets' data had been replaced with animated running wolves, he knew who'd done it before anyone made an announcement.

 

He didn't know if he was amused or angry. Who the hell was Mal to hack into government agencies in China, France, or Spain? Mal had even hacked the CIA! Maybe Mal wouldn't be a good fit in America after all.

 

Then the Wolves put out a statement, through a spokesperson Trent thought had to be computer generated. He and the rest of the unit watched the recorded statement at Trent's place that evening as they tried to shake the aches and pains of training with camaraderie and gin.

 

"Europa's Wolves learned, through an extensive investigation, that a certain telecommunications firm had been selling user data to law enforcement and intelligence agencies without any specific target. The use of this illegally obtained information has already destroyed lives. It has not rendered anyone's life safer. While we regret the negative effect on active, legitimate law enforcement investigations, it could not be helped.

 

"If your agency is not using this illegally obtained information or purchasing data from this telecommunications organization, you should be safe. If you have purchased data from this company, your data is already compromised. There is no counter-virus.

 

"We believe in keeping people safe. Handing people's private messages over to government agencies with no due process is a clear sign of encroaching authoritarianism. The Wolves were formed in 1945 to prevent exactly that, and we will remain eternally vigilant."

 

Trent looked around at the rest of the men. "I don't like it," he said after a minute. "They want to sit there and talk about how the company gave the information without due process, but the company doesn't have to use due process. They're a company. And the Wolves don't exactly use due process themselves."

 

Floyd grimaced and took a sip of his gin and tonic. "I don't know, man. I mean you're right that they don't use due process, but who are we kidding? Do we give terrorists due process when we shoot them? We've made mistakes. Our intelligence has been wrong, and how do we know it hasn't been wrong because someone misinterpreted something they pulled out of a crappy text message?

 

"And no, the company doesn't have to observe due process laws, but it does have a moral obligation to its customers. If the customers were given every reason to believe their information was private, then yeah. It's wrong to lie to them and put them in danger."

 

Lupo nodded. "And don't those agencies have more of an obligation to follow the law than the average person?" he added. "I mean, the average person has, like, no leeway when it comes to killing someone. Cops and spies? They can pretty much do what they want. So yeah, when they sit there and illegally get the communications data for everyone, then yeah."

 

"The Wolves went about it wrong." Van Heel scowled. "That's my thing with 'vigilantes,' man. They're terrorists with better PR. The Wolves should have gone to the proper authorities with their accusations and let things play out in the courts."

 

Hopper snorted. "Yeah, okay. What 'proper authority' is there to cover a telecom firm that sells data to China and the CIA, huh? The Wolves knew no one had jurisdiction, and even if anyone did, there wouldn't be any justice. They went and solved the problem, at the source. They didn't hurt anyone. The data was the problem, so they trashed the data and made it unusable."

 

"And fucked up how many criminal investigations in the process?" Iniguez tossed a martini olive at Hopper. "You're kidding me, right? 'Oh, sorry about your son's murder, but we were relying on telecom data to prove where the killer was and all we've got now is pictures of wolves sniffing butts because some bunch of privacy purists got their panties in a twist.' That'll be comforting, I'm sure."

 

Robson scoffed. "If their whole case relies on telecom data, their case was shit, and the jury will see right through it, okay? The fact is, the Wolves did the wrong thing legally but the right thing morally. That's all there is to it and I'm pretty comfortable with it." He leaned back in his chair. "Personally, next time I see your boy, Kelly, I'm going to buy him a drink and tell him good job."

 

Trent frowned and looked down at his drink. "He's pregnant."

 

"Isn't he Irish? He'll be fine, they're immune."

 

Trent shook his head. "I'm, like, ninety percent sure it doesn't work that way." He sighed and went to mix a refill.

 

That night, he messaged Mal on the secure channel. Seriously?

 

Mal messaged him back while Trent was sleeping. The message was waiting for him when he woke up. Twenty suicides due to information pulled out of those illegally obtained messages. I've dug into them. All blackmail. Murders, job losses, and lives ruined because this company wanted to make a bigger profit and because these agencies didn't want to do things the right way.

 

It wasn't illegal in China. Trent's stomach lurched at the thought of all the devastation. He still didn't like what Mal had done. He still thought only governments had the right to punish companies or individuals. That didn't mean he had to like what the company had done.

 

It was illegal in Norway. And it was wrong everywhere.

 

Trent went to work with his stomach churning. Chief calling the team into a briefing room didn't help.

 

They took their seats around the table. It was funny how they always took the same seats, no matter where they were. Trent always sat at Chief's right hand. Buelen always sat at DeWitt's. Lupo, Robson, and Floyd always sat together, along with Hopper. Everyone else filled into their customary places around them, just like always, and the meeting began seamlessly.

 

"Men." DeWitt cleared his throat. "It can't be a surprise to you that we're deploying soon. Our training regimen has changed. It hasn't been subtle."

 

A few of the guys shook their heads. Trent wasn't surprised at all. He'd already packed his bag.

 

Kulkarni raised his hand. "Can I ask where we're going, sir?"

 

"You can ask." DeWitt shrugged. "I'm not going to tell you, though."

 

The men exchanged glances. "A classified mission isn't exactly unheard of," Trent said, shifting in his seat.

 

"Are we going to find out where we're going once we're on our way, or will it be a pleasant surprise once the enemy starts shooting at us, sir?" Fitzpatrick blinked at DeWitt, all innocence.

 

"Watch it, Fitz." Chief glared at him. "I suspect you'll be told once you're en route. You won't have to do a forensic analysis on the bullets coming at you to figure it out."

 

Adami elbowed him. "Oh come on, Fitz. It's not like it matters who we're fighting." He grinned widely. "All that matters is that we come out on top."

 

"I suppose that's technically true." Tinker scratched at his chin. "I mean it does kind of narrow down how we go at them, but you know. Details, right?"

 

"Fuck you, Tinker." Adami didn't have any heat to his words or to his casual flipping off of the man at his side.

 

"Anyway," DeWitt said, a little louder this time. "You have enough time to go home and get your things. Be back here at twelve hundred hours, sharp. Anyone late will be considered AWOL. It is permitted to tell someone you're deploying, but anything else is classified."

 

"We know, Lieutenant." Chief gave him a pissy look. "That's why you haven't told us."

 

"Right." DeWitt's cheeks turned pink. "You're all dismissed."

 

Trent bolted from the room.

 

He had enough time to get back to his condo. He sent a quick text to his uncles, so they wouldn't worry. Then he opened up his laptop and logged into his secure account. Deploying today, very sudden. Don't know where or for how long. Will send word when I can. I love you.

 

Mal didn't respond right away, and Trent didn't have time to wait around. He shut down his computer, turned off any unnecessary appliances, and headed back to base.

 

They headed out to Norfolk as a team, and from there they boarded onto a ship whose insignia had been disguised. That was something Trent had never seen before. Trent had worked on secret missions and top secret missions. If he had to pick one phrase to describe his military career, it would be, I can't talk about that. This took the cake.

 

Once the SEALs were safely on board, the ship pulled out of port and headed south. She didn't turn and head east until well after she'd passed Florida.

 

Trent could make a few assumptions about their destination. It wasn't rocket science. SEAL Team Twelve had responsibility for the Mediterranean and the Middle East. He'd suspected heading south was a ruse, and a ruse it was. All SEALs would be competent in other areas and environments, if necessary, but keeping guys in their area of expertise was always the best plan.

 

Sure, Trent could probably survive being dropped onto, say, Mindanao. He didn't speak such great Tagalog, though, and his grasp of local culture was iffy at best. Drop him in Tripoli, though, and Trent would be just fine.

 

So the team was headed somewhere in the Mediterranean. The Administration's top priority, in terms of global reach, was radical Islamic terrorism, but that didn't necessarily mean the team was going to a mostly-Islamic country. Their last two deployments had been to Spain and Greece.

 

Maybe they were going to go help Israel with their insurgent issues? He wasn't sure how he felt about that. For one thing, Trent didn't speak Hebrew. He'd follow orders, though. He hadn't joined the Navy to pick and choose his deployments, for crying out loud.

 

Maybe they were going up against more of those Islamic State guys they'd fought in Greece. Sure, they'd thwarted the attack they'd been sent to stop. The kind of people who were willing to bring a mobile missile launcher and use it at a tourist-centered airport weren't going to get thwarted and say, Oh darn, well, guess we'd better go back to our programming jobs and prayers now.

 

They had to be up to something, and if they were up to something it was up to America to respond. Sure, the Wolves were out there, and they were clearly not terrible at what they did, but that didn't make them the same caliber as an empire with virtually boundless resources.

 

There were other threats, too. Trent couldn't think, off the top of his head, of any threats that would demand such subterfuge. He wasn't a high-level strategist. He didn't have to be the one that thought of such things. All he had to do was execute. He could do that.

 

Different guys had different theories about their ultimate destination. Some thought they were going up against ISIS. Some thought they were taking out Al Qaeda. Some suspected they might be going after some of the lesser-known terror groups out there. Toledano even helpfully suggested they might be taking action against the Wolves, which just about gave Trent hives.

 

It was all speculation anyway. DeWitt, or Chief, would tell them what they wanted them to know, when they wanted them to know it. In the meantime, they would ride out the rough autumnal seas and look forward to reaching their destination.