Mal opened up his laptop and logged in. No one else in the small, dark, nameless bar noticed him. He didn't expect they would. He'd been coming here for a few weeks now, telling people he'd taken a flat in Empuriés just up the road. They accepted that easily enough. Who could blame a man for wanting to do whatever internet things he was doing there, rather than in a crowded tourist bar in the bigger village just up the way?

 

The bartender, Pau, brought his usual drink. "Early night for you."

 

Mal grinned. "Ah, you know how it is. The neighbors rented out their place to a bunch of German tourists."

 

Pau shuddered. "So many Speedos."

 

"Right?” Mal took the drink and gave Pau a few euros for it. He never paid with a credit card if he could avoid it.

 

He checked all of his cameras. As near as he could tell, everything in Rosas was exactly where it had been the last time he'd looked. He and Morna should be able to get into the Daesh facility, hook up to what they needed, and get out without any kind of fuss.

 

Of course, plans went awry all the time. That was why they were called plans, not certainties.

 

He reviewed the building plans one more time. Bunkers on crime dramas on the BBC were always these huge, high-tech, elaborate affairs that made Mal’s techie nature drool. He’d never seen one that actually looked like that, but he kept hoping.

 

It all looked good on screen. Pretty much all that did was provide employment for special effects crews and ensure the average civilian wouldn't know what a real threat was if he tripped over it. Did nobody think to wonder how much of a power draw that would be?  If the schematics were correct, this bunker would be no different. It looked small, with room for a couple of people and a machine. Oh well. He’d find that high tech bunker eventually.

 

He checked the time again. It was time to move out.

 

He finished his drink and packed up his things. He hadn't left anything behind at the table, nothing to indicate he'd been there at all. Mal headed out and walked down the quiet country road to the place where he'd hidden his motorcycle. Twenty-eight minutes later, he was standing in front of a health clinic.

 

Morna was waiting for him, arms crossed over her chest. "You're late."

 

"You need your watch checked. Why don't you get a watch that syncs to the same time everyone else uses, you Luddite?" He sniffed at her and parked the bike in her garage.

 

She threw up a two-fingered salute and led the way down into the clinic's basement.

 

Mal followed her. They stopped to suit up along the way. They didn't dare ride through the streets of a tourism-heavy town like Rosas, even after dark, with a bunch of weapons strapped to their backs. This was Europe, a more civilized space than some other areas he could name. People didn't just wander into big box stores with assault rifles slung over their shoulders like some sort of post-Apocalyptic film.

 

They saved that for the underground.

 

Once they'd gotten their gear together, Mal led the way to the hidden entrance of the tunnels underneath Rosas.

 

Most of the people up above were tourists. They came for the beaches because it was cheaper and more family friendly than Ibiza. Plenty of them knew Rosas was an ancient city, occupied since before the Classical era. Some of them, mainly locals, knew the site had been continuously occupied and that under their feet lay the remains of what came before.

 

A few of them might have gone to see the occasional archaeological dig here and there. They might have been aware of the occasional vault or have fallen into a cistern during a raucous celebration.

 

Very few people knew about the vast network of tunnels running underneath the town. It didn't go everywhere. It was the work of centuries. The vault under the altar of a small Gothic church might connect to an old Roman sewer via a tunnel dug in the 1930s by guerrilla fighters struggling to resist Franco.

 

Mal and Morna knew. It was their business to know.

 

They snuck from the clinic, which stood near the beach, over to the stream. Mal didn't know what the name of this particular stream might be, but he knew where they were going. Above, there were roads, houses, and empty farmland. Mal and Morna were headed to the ruins of an old church that once upon a time had been a pilgrimage site.

 

Now, it was a data center.

 

The terrorists who had built it were smart. They'd put up solar panels, hidden by the ruins themselves. Morna had found those while "exploring" with a bunch of tourists one day. They almost certainly had backup. Mal would find out when he went in.

 

The church had fallen down during one of the wars that had plagued the region over the centuries. No one knew which. Maybe it had been the Reconquista, or the Spanish Civil War, or the War of Spanish Succession, or whatever. Mal didn't care. The only thing he cared about right now was the vault.

 

The vault had one guard. Morna put a bullet in his head without even thinking about it. Her gun had a silencer, of course, but even with the silencer it still made a sound. The pair waited to see if there was going to be any kind of backup, but the vault remained quiet.

 

The unit they sought wasn't in the vault. Mal's brain raced into overdrive. The church had been a place of refuge for people in times of war. They'd have needed a secure source of water, right? He pointed to a small door in the corner — a well.

 

Morna gestured to him, graciously allowing him to go first.

 

The well was dry, or at least the well had gone dry to this level. The ladder was new, though, and it was steel. Mal lowered himself quickly.

 

Halfway down the well, he saw an opening to a small room. The room had probably once been used to store valuables during times of strife. Now it was being used to store something much more dangerous.

 

He slipped inside. Yes, this was it. He recognized what he was dealing with immediately. This was the dedicated machine he needed. It wasn't connected to the internet in any way. Someone wanting to get into it and to crack its secrets would have to physically access it.

 

Like Mal was doing, right now.

 

It wasn't anything special, just a standard laptop. The passcode took him three seconds to crack. The person setting this up had counted on physical security, not electronic. Mal pulled a flash drive out of his pocket and set the machine to download all files, then they sat back to wait.

 

Mal's phone beeped at him, the noise echoing from the hewn walls of the chamber like a gunshot. He jumped, and pulled out the phone. "Awesome," he said with a sneer.

 

"What is it?" Morna turned to him and tilted her head to the side.

 

"We've got company. Coming in from the top. I don't know if they're local or outsiders, but the place is getting raided." Mal passed his phone over to her.

 

"Shit." Morna glanced at the laptop. "What if we take that piece of crap with us?"

 

"It won't work. For one thing, most of these systems are setup to self-destruct if they're removed from their location. We want that, but not until we've secured the data." Mal wiped a bit of sweat away from his forehead. "We have to wait. It's all we can do."

 

Morna made a face. "You couldn't have told me that the place was getting raided?"

 

"How was I to know?"

 

"I don't know, maybe one of those alphas you keep picking up?"

 

"Oh my God, Morna. I don't date alphas. They're dangerous!" He shook his head. They kept their bickering to a whisper, so they could hear if they were in any danger, but Mal truly wanted to bash his head against the wall sometimes. If he had a word of advice to anyone else interested in being involved with a global insurgency, it would be not to take a job with their sister.

 

The door at the top of the vault swung open. "I see an aperture." The speaker was male, and American, by the tone of his voice. His tone had that clipped tone military men use when they're on the job.

 

"Roger that," said another voice. "Scanning. Seems to be a tunnel, maybe an old well."

 

Crap.

 

"Possible escape route, Master Chief?"

 

"Check it out." This voice was older, more grizzled. Possibly a smoker.

 

Morna prepared her gun just as the footsteps rang out on the ladder.

 

A ping told Mal the flash drive had finished downloading. "Well, here we are." He took his flash drive and hid it in his things. Then he took another one and uploaded a virus into the machine.

 

It started to smoke.

 

Morna rolled her eyes. "Good thing we're not trying to surprise the bastards, isn't it?"

 

"Oh my God, would you please shut up?" Mal stood up.

 

A man swung into the room, gun drawn. He wore full U.S. Navy battle dress uniform. He had a chiseled jaw and piercing green eyes. "Hold it right there! Reach for the sky!"

 

Mal snorted. "Has it occurred to you that we're in a cave, sailor? I’d be happy to reach for whatever you wanted some other time, but time is of the essence and I’d hate to be rushed with you.”  He tried not to think about nibbling along the sailor's jawline. He didn't have time for that today. Besides, he didn't want anything to do with the U.S. Government, not today, not ever.

 

Morna shared his feelings on that subject at least. "Could you maybe not flirt with the sailor while we're in a cave that's filling up with toxic smoke? Please and thank you."

 

The SEAL would have killed them both with his eyes if he could have. "I said reach for the sky! Put the weapon down!"

 

Mal looked over at Morna. "Stow the gun, Morna. You know how these Americans get. Their fingers get so itchy on the trigger."

 

The SEAL's eyes bulged. "Master Chief?" he bellowed. "I've got two suspects in here. Seem to be Irish nationals."

 

"Irish, huh?" A tall, tan man with salt-and-pepper hair strode into the cave. If this guy wasn't an alpha, Mal would eat that flash drive. He made Mal want to bend at the knees. "What in the hell would the Irish be doing with Al Qaeda?"

 

"Oh for God's sake, we're not with bloody Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda isn't even part of this." Morna shook her head. "Where have you people been getting your intelligence, Cracker Jack boxes?"

 

"Morna, what was I just saying about Yanks and their trigger fingers?" Mal sighed. It was going to take some doing to get them out of this one. These guys had Special Forces written all over them which, considering the area, usually meant SEALs. SEALs were trouble. That wasn't to say they couldn't be beat, but it would be tricky.

 

"Yeah, yeah."

 

"I think you folks are going to have to come with us." Master Chief Boone narrowed his eyes at Mal and Morna. "We're going to have a nice, long chat."

 

"I don't suppose there will be whiskey involved?" Mal figured he might as well play up the stereotype. It might lull them into a false sense of security.

 

And if not, it might get him some whiskey.

 

"Afraid not." Chief put his hand on his sidearm. "But there might be a nice long vacation to an island in the Caribbean for you."

 

“Oh, good." Mal managed a weak little smile. "Hey, Morna?"

 

"Yeah, Mal?"

 

"Next time, I get to plan the logistics."

 

"No way. You'll run us right through every male strip club in Barcelona just for the hell of it."

 

Mal looked up at the ceiling. "Okay, true. But we still wouldn’t be sitting here with trigger-happy Americans waving ballistic over-compensations in our faces, yeah?"

 

"Good point."

 

Chief clapped his hands, just once. "I suggest you both get your asses up that ladder before you find out just how trigger happy these Americans can be."

 

~

 

Trent's boots clanged against the USS Syracuse's metal deck. He headed toward the brig, as he'd been directed, but he didn't have to like it. Master Chief Boone was giving the orders on this mission, and Trent didn't go against orders. He was too well trained.

 

Their two oddball prisoners sat in separate cells. The girl, whose flame-red hair had been cropped into a pixie cut, mostly sat there with a pissy look on her face and complained to the other one. She was the picture of innocence, or she would have been if she hadn't been found with three handguns, four knives, and three hand grenades.

 

In Europe. Christ. But it was the Americans who were trigger-happy.

 

The guy was a bit different. His hair was a little less flame-like, a little more of an auburn color, and it stood up from his head like he'd spiked it. Like the girl, he wore black. On him, it highlighted his narrow, sculpted physique. Trent tried not to look. Suspects shouldn't look like that, damn it.

 

He lounged on his bunk like a cat and responded to his counterpart with barbs of his own. He moved like a panther, watching everything around him. He'd been armed, too, but less heavily. He noticed Trent as soon as he walked in the door, as if something in him was drawn to the presence of an alpha.

 

Omega.

 

Trent exhaled sharply and tried to ignore the intrusive thought. He was on a mission and Ginger here was a suspect. He'd been trained to rise above his baser urges, damn it.

 

He turned to the Master Chief. "You asked for me, Chief?"

 

"Yeah. It's time to start asking our guests some questions, but I don't trust them. I think there needs to be two of us in the room." Chief looked over to the two cells. "What do you think?"

 

"Roger that." Trent did not want more contact with these bickering Irish people who hated America and Americans. He wanted to hit his bunk after a long and fruitless mission. He would do as Chief ordered, though.

 

"Grab the guy first. We'll see what we can get out of him."

 

Trent obeyed, although he thought Chief was barking up the wrong tree. The Master Chief had a blind spot when it came to omegas. Maybe it came from age, or from geography. Chief thought omegas were soft, pliant, and agreeable. He saw Gingerbread here, recognized his omega nature, and nothing else mattered. He didn't see the guy's sharp eyes following them around. He didn't see the guy's sneaky little smile.

 

They walked into the tiny room set aside for interrogation. It wasn't, properly speaking, an interrogation room. Most ships didn't have the luxury of an interrogation room. They had a room, though, and it was gray and dismal. It would work.

 

Gingerbread stood out against the battleship gray paint like a flame.

 

Chief took a seat at the table, and Trent guided Ginger to a seat in front of him. Trent remained standing behind the prisoner so he could act quickly in case of emergency.

 

"I'm sure you know why you're here." Chief sounded affable enough. He even looked affable, if you liked your men bearded and battle-scarred. Trent didn't think Ginger was dumb enough to fall for the act.

 

"I'm still waiting on my whiskey. I'll take rum, though." Ginger's lips curled into a smile.

 

Chief rolled his eyes, but he smiled. "Fine. Trent, would you mind grabbing a bottle out of the cabinet?"

 

"Chief?" Trent blinked.

 

"It's medicinal." He winked and turned to Ginger. "Technically, alcohol isn't allowed on Navy vessels. We are allowed to carry some for medicinal purposes. Since we caught you in an Al Qaeda base, armed, sabotaging evidence, yeah. I think you could use the fortification."

 

Ginger smirked. "Very generous of you, Chief." He held out his manacled hand. "You can call me Mal."

 

Chief chuckled. "That was easy." He shook Mal's hand while Trent fetched a bottle of rum. "Of course, that's just one of eight names we found for you in the system. Why that one?"

 

Mal blinked, nonplussed. "Well, it's me name. The one me mum gave me. And we told you before, the facility wasn't Al Qaeda. It was Daesh. They don't play so nicely together these days." He accepted the paper cup of rum Trent put in front of him. "Thank you kindly." He turned to meet Trent's eyes and curved his lips into a seductive little smile.

 

Trent blushed.

 

"We have reliable intelligence that says otherwise. Of course, you’re right in the middle of it, so I guess you'd know." Chief watched Mal carefully.

 

"Oh, I wouldn't say I'm in the middle of it. The guy who gave me the information is. He's not such a bad bloke."

 

"For a terrorist?" Trent snorted. "Tell me another one."

 

"Oh, big boy, I'll tell you anything you want to hear." Mal winked at Trent. "Seriously, though. The man in question is not a terrorist, but some of his relatives are. That's how I got the information, anyway."

 

"And you didn't bother to vet it with anyone." Chief's smile was indulgent, paternalistic. It was also a lie.

 

Mal didn't know that, though. Mal didn't know Master Chief Boone. "Oh, I vetted it." Mal sipped his rum. "Listen, gentlemen. You can believe me or not, but that was hardly a base. It was just a machine. It was a server room, basically, for a relatively low-tech solution."

 

"According to you."

 

"Well yeah. I'm the one I trust." Mal smiled, brilliant and beguiling.

 

Chief reached down onto the ground. "Your backpack contained a laptop. Open it up for me."

 

Mal opened it. The wallpaper was a scene from a gay porno.

 

Trent's face burned. Chief looked away. "Young man, that is repulsive. Pass me that machine."

 

Mal's face was the picture of innocence as he passed the laptop over.

 

Every file turned out to be gay porn.

 

Chief drummed his fingertips on the table. "I have a theory." He reached down into Mal's backpack and pulled out an impressive variety of sex toys. Trent was fairly certain some of them weren't even physically useable. "Would you like to hear it?"

 

"I suppose you're going to tell me regardless." Mal sipped from his drink.

 

"My theory is that no one sits around and uses a bodyguard, multiple false identities, and multiple weapons of his own to guard a porn and sex toy collection." Chief made a face at Mal. "You want to try again?"

 

Most people quailed when they got that face from the Chief. Most people wouldn't have tried to pull one over on him in the first place. Then again, Mal had been found messing around in an Al Qaeda bunker in Spain. It was probably safe to say he wasn't most guys. Swirling the rum around inside his paper cup, he said, "I think you'd be pretty hard pressed to prove that there was anything at all besides porn on that laptop. And are you really all that suspicious of a single omega's sex toys, Chief?"

 

Chief curled his lip. "Get him out of here."

 

Mal chugged back his rum. "Can I at least bring the toys with me?"

 

Trent grabbed him and dragged him back to his cell. "You shouldn't flirt with the Master Chief," he said, keeping his eyes straight ahead and not on the hot body pressed against him.

 

"Why?" Mal snorted. "Too much of a straight arrow?"

 

"No. Because he's married. His husband's pregnant with their fifth kid back at base." He leaned down into Mal's ear. "This whole team? Alphas."

 

Trent expected Mal to cringe, flinch, or something. Instead, he just gave that little feline smirk of his. "Isn't that interesting?"

 

Trent locked him away again, and then returned to the Master Chief. "What do you think, Chief?"

 

Chief stared at the door the man had just gone through. "I think there's a lot more there than meets the eye, that's for sure. Who carries six sex toys around the streets with him?" He picked one of the toys up. "These are unused. This one still has the price tag on it."

 

Trent grinned, in spite of himself. "Seriously? You're kidding. That's…kind of brilliant, actually."

 

"What do you mean, brilliant? "Chief scowled.

 

"Think about it. So many people have ideas about omegas. He throws a few toys into his bag, fills his laptop with porn, and all the security agent or the border patrol guy can think to do is to close that bag up and go wash his hands. He could probably smuggle a whole kilo of heroin in that backpack and no one would ever know."

 

Chief nodded slowly, stroking his chin. "You're not wrong. Here's the thing. Of the eight different identities linked back to that set of fingerprints, none of them are linked to heroin. We've got Malachi O'Donnell, Demetrio Torres, Ignacio Felix, so on and so forth. They're all just normal guys. And they're all living and working around Europe and the Mediterranean right now."

 

"Wait, right now?" Trent sat down across from Chief. "Because I know he's in the brig. I saw him in the brig.”

 

"You did. And someone else is seeing him sitting in a cafe in Istanbul, in a restaurant in Beirut, and working in a clinic in Gaza too. He's probably been in all of those roles. No one seems to know who he really is, or was. What they do know is that large sums of money go missing from some exciting accounts when he's around." He pulled out a file. "After the Bank of Ireland Tracker scandal, money was mysteriously rerouted from the bank to a series of charities, who routed the money to a series of other charities and so on and so forth until the money was ‘donated’ to people who'd been scammed."

 

"Robin Hood. I see."

 

"That clinic in Gaza is now being funded by a major anti-Palestine lobbyist in the US, much to his chagrin. Every time he tries to stop the charges, he springs another leak. Money for food aid to Syrian refugees is getting funneled through Beirut, and money for people fleeing ISIL through Kurdistan through Istanbul. Which, for the record, Ankara is none too pleased about. The only thing we have to go on is that set of fingerprints."

 

"Which might be hacked." Trent tapped his jawline.

 

"Could be, but I doubt it. You saw how well he played us. Played me." Chief chewed on his fingertip for a second. "I guess it doesn't really matter. We know he's probably not Al Qaeda. It's a European problem. I'm tempted to just let Europe have at it. Call Interpol and let them deal with it."

 

"Right now?"

 

"No. Wait until we get to port. We'll worry about it then."

 

Trent accepted his dismissal. He didn't think waiting was a great idea. These guys were smart and resourceful. He'd rather transfer these prisoners to European control as soon as possible and have done with it.

 

He retreated to his bunk. His teammates were joking and laughing, but he couldn't join in. He was too worried about what these prisoners were going to do next.

 

When he got the call in the middle of the night that they'd escaped the brig and stolen one of the life rafts, he knew the other shoe had dropped.