Mal looked up at the ceiling, as what sounded like a herd of zebras trampled by overhead. "We should have sprung for the better housing," he grumbled, as he booted up his laptop.

 

Morna scoffed at him. "Are you kidding me? After how much it took to replace your laptop, I'm surprised the old man didn't want us camping out in the woods."

 

Mal pursed his lips. He couldn't deny the truth of her words. "It's Alexandroupoli," he said with a shrug, instead. "The woods around here are kind of scant, yeah?" The zebras overhead stampeded in the other direction. "Do you think the ceiling is structurally sound, or is the place going to come crashing in on our heads?"

 

"Get a helmet." Morna stuck her tongue out at him. "Have you found the specifics for the attack yet?"

 

He mimicked her higher voice. "Have you found the specifics for the attack yet? Jesus, woman, I've only just got the computer open. Would you let me log into the damn network before you start hounding me about tracking down terrorists?"

 

"The sooner you get on it the sooner we can get away from the holiday crew upstairs." She looked up at the ceiling, just in time to see a little piece of plaster crumble to the ground. "My God this place is a dump. Make it snappy, before the neighbors invite us to their kegger."

 

Mal didn't need to be told twice. He found a signal he could use to get onto the net, and from there it was all over. He knew more or less where to look already. His contacts were good enough to keep him in the loop. He found a local hotel's website and slipped into their employee pages. Once there, he slid into a two-year-old policy discussion thread related to the dress code. Deep inside, he found a section about overt religious symbolism while in the company uniform and followed a link to another, theoretically more secure discussion group. That led him to yet another website, this time in Arabic.

 

Fortunately, Mal knew Arabic, better than he knew Greek. “Well, I'll be damned." He sat back and let out a long, low whistle. "Well. This was unexpected."

 

"What? Porn?" Morna popped up over Mal's shoulder. "You find porn in those guys' files all the time. It's usually terrible porn too. They need to start paying for some quality stuff."

 

"Well, yeah, they do. You always get what you pay for. But seriously, not the point here. The way this stuff here is phrased?" He pointed to a handful of messages on one side of the screen. Morna didn't speak Arabic. She was better with Slavic languages.

 

"Yeah?"

 

"No native speaker of Arabic would phrase things like that." He wrinkled his nose. "They're not even trying to fake it. Like when I go into a discussion group and pretend to be one of the bad guys, I actually try to be one of the bad guys. And I'm pretty good at it, if I do say so."

 

"Oh my God, Mal, stop fluffing yourself and start making sense, would you?" Morna elbowed him.

 

"If I had to make a guess, I'd say these guys here are English speakers." He sucked in his cheeks. "This is probably a lot more complicated than we thought it was."

 

"Should we call in the big guns?" Morna worried at her lip. "We're just two people."

 

Mal tapped his fingers on the table as he considered. "No," he said after a moment. "I don't think we need to do that." He scanned over the rest of the messages. "No, I don't think we need to do that, and I'm not sure that we have time, either."

 

"Why is that?" Morna sat up a little straighter. "We don't have to be done with this job for another week. Liam and Sean are just up in Sofia. They can be down here in a couple of days, tops, and they can pull in a few other folks who wouldn't mind getting their licks in."

 

Mal made a face. "Good Lord, it's hardly getting their licks in, is it? It's not a street brawl in Belfast, it's a targeted strike against a bunch of people bent on destroying the world as we know it." He shook his head a little. "But it says right here that they're looking to move faster than we'd expected. The English guys want to get back to their base before Ramadan starts, which is next week. Apparently they don't want to 'interfere' with their partners' observance."

 

Morna sneered and stepped away from the computer. "I suppose that's nice of them."

 

"Sure." Mal stood up. "I'm pretty sure I know where they are. We should be able to get in and get out over the next couple of days."

 

"Why take so long?" Morna looked up again, just as the herd of holidaymakers thundered across their flat again. This time, their door slammed open and the stairs groaned ominously. They were apparently going out to enjoy the nightlife in Alexandroupoli.

 

"Because, little sister, only a fool thinks they're going to just waltz in and make things go the way they want because of some plans they saw on the internet." He cleared himself out of the site and opened up town maps. "It's a new town. We don't know our way around, and we don't know what their final plan is. We should do what we can to figure it out, yeah?"

 

She stuck her tongue out at him. "This is why they pay you the big bucks, big brother. You think of these things."

 

"Someone has to. We can't all be impetuous gingers, you know."

 

She flipped him off. "You're just as ginger as I am."

 

He chuckled and focused on his maps.

 

The next morning, as their neighbors slept off ouzo hangovers, Mal and Morna went out to explore the town.

 

They looked like any other tourist pair out to enjoy some sun and take pictures. They made sure of it. Morna wore a bikini top over low-slung shorts. No one attracted to women would remember seeing anything more than a cute, if pale, young redhead with a better than fit body out to see the sights. If anyone noticed Mal at all, they'd see the most garish tourist ensemble he could think up. His button-up shirt even had pink flamingoes on it.

 

Mal could have put light-up signs over their heads that said ‘We're harmless tourists’, but he'd decided that might be overkill.

 

They explored some old ruins — nothing fancy, since Alexandroupoli was only about a hundred and fifty years old. This was still Greece, though, and if a place was habitable there was a good chance someone had inhabited it at some point in history. They saw monuments to the interminable wars suffered by inhabitants over the course of the past century and they looked at a wide variety of sport facilities and educational institutions. They got pictures, and plenty of them.

 

They even had dinner at the restaurant where Mal had found the original link he had used to get into the terrorists' message board. It was a fairly standard seaside restaurant, intended for tourists with a menu in six languages, and none of them Greek. Their waiter's name tag proclaimed his name to be Yiannis, but he pronounced it more as Yunus and spoke English with an accent that sounded like its origins were much more Eastern than Greek to Mal's practiced ears.

 

But proximity to something suspicious didn't necessarily mean the waiter himself was suspicious. Mal resolved to look into the man later and put his heart and soul into playing the role of a good brother out on vacation with his sister. When a couple of other pale-complected tourists approached their table and offered to buy them drinks, Mal and Morna agreed heartily.

 

Their new companions were in their thirties or forties and seemed affable enough. Both of their eyes were glued to Morna, but that was the intent behind her outfit. The older-looking man had a slight accent, maybe Australian. His name was Piers, and the most memorable feature in his face was his perfect, bright white teeth. The other man had a dark tan, a stark contrast to his shocking blue eyes, and sounded American. His name was Phil.

 

Yiannis brought their drinks, along with little paper coasters from Mythos Brewery. He gave Mal a little nudge as he passed by. Mal had been in this kind of situation before, so he discreetly checked the underside of his coaster.

 

Someone had written, in clear and careful print, Do not leave your sister alone with these men.

 

All right then. It was good that Yiannis, or whoever he was, looked out for his customers.

 

He paid closer attention to their drinking companions as they chatted. They were in town, they said, on a consulting gig related to the airport. They didn't give a lot of details, and Mal wouldn't expect them to. They did make sure to hint they were getting paid a lot of money to be there, especially when they spoke to Morna. By the time they left, Morna had both of their numbers and a probable date for Saturday evening.

 

Of course, both of the O'Donnells would be long gone by Saturday.

 

Mal made sure he left an extra tip for Yiannis. It wasn't necessarily customary, but Yiannis had given him a good lead.

 

When he and Morna got back to their flat, they put their photos onto the laptop and considered their options. "What are the odds that those guys are actually working on a consulting project at the airport?" Morna asked, toying with a short lock of her hair.

 

"Nil." Mal sifted through the pictures when an idea struck him. "Here, let me have their numbers, would you?"

 

"I didn't think they'd be your type." She wrinkled her nose, but passed over the napkin on which they'd written their phone numbers.

 

"They're not. I mean really, what kind of useless consultant doesn't even have a business card?" He scoffed and set the napkin down with a bit more force than necessary. "They've been around the area quite a bit, long enough for our waiter to warn me not to leave you alone with them. Let's see where they are right now."

 

It didn't take much to trace the phone numbers the men had given. Technically, this was illegal. Pretty much everything else Mal did was illegal, so he didn't worry about it more than he had to. Finding their phones only took a few minutes. Getting a fix on their position took a few minutes longer, but Mal was good at what he did. He turned to his sister with a look of triumph. "I think our job just got easier."

 

"Why's that?"

 

"What kind of consultant goes and camps out in an olive grove, hm?" He gestured to the screen. "Especially if they've got money to throw around like they were saying? I think we might have just found our boys' bunker."

 

Morna raised an eyebrow at him. "Okay. It's possible that we've found our boys' bunker. If people put bunkers in olive groves around here, which seems a little nonsensical to me. I thought we were going after Daesh-linked terrorists, not sleazy Yanks and Aussies."

 

"Remember how I told you yesterday about the Anglophones on that chat board?" Mal took a deep breath. "And now we know what they're planning."

 

Morna nodded, staring at the screen. "An attack on the airport. Greece will blame Turkey."

 

"It will be war. Again." Mal stood up. "We need to plan. I don't know how many of them there are."

 

"Well, figure it out, genius." Morna flicked his ear. "Do you want to do this tonight or what?"

 

Mal rolled his eyes, but he stopped pacing. "No, I don't want to do this tonight. We need to figure out how many there are, how well-armed they are, what their plans are — although we can be pretty sure they're not going to move until after Saturday."

 

 

 

Morna's cheeks turned almost as red as her hair. "Oh good Lord, Mal, I wasn't going to date them."

 

"Of course you weren't. You know better." He grinned at his sister. "And they're no more your type than they are mine. Let's get to work. We were out in that part of town today, weren't we?"

 

Morna took Mal's seat at the rickety old table. "Yeah, I think we were. That grove is right by the old elementary school, the one with the Armenian name."

 

"Right." Mal leaned over her shoulder. "Okay, so that building was built in what, the fifties? It wasn't unreasonable to have some kind of fallout shelter, bunker, or something. Just in case."

 

"So maybe fifteen to twenty people?" Morna looked up at him.

 

"Maybe." Mal pulled on his ear. "I don't like the idea of going into a fight with odds like that."

 

Morna's slow grin split her face. "Oh, I do," she purred. "Think about it, Malachi. We've come out on top against worse."

 

Mal snorted. "That doesn't mean I liked it. And this is a low-tech operation. I'm not seeing anything out there connected to any kind of network. I'm not even seeing their bunker connected to any kind of electrical grid I could shut down."

 

"That's fine, big brother." Morna stood up. "We can do this. If they built a bunker, they've got to have plans, yeah? So you get in there, and you find those plans. We'll figure out a way to get in there, root out the rats, and take them down. And then we'll be on our merry little way, maybe to Italy. You've always liked Italy."

 

"Oh, let's massacre twenty people and dance off to Italy, she says." Mal shook his head, but he sat down and pulled the laptop closer to himself. If plans for the bunker were stored electronically, anywhere, he'd find them. If he could find anything that would bring him and Morna out of this alive, he'd do it.

 

An image sprang to his mind, unbidden and more or less unwanted. He remembered a tall American with straight brown hair and a chiseled jaw. He could do with a team of SEALs right about now. Sure, Mal had a lot of moral problems with the US government and the way they went about things. He could put a lot of misgivings aside, on a temporary basis, to have a squad of highly trained and experienced warriors to back him up.

 

Ah, well. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride and all that. He'd probably get very tired of all the baggage that came along with those highly trained and experienced warriors in about five minutes. No, there was a reason Mal and Morna worked alone. Mal would have to do his best to make sure they could keep working alone for a long time to come.

 

~

Trent ducked into the boiler room as another explosion rocked the old school. "Guess we're not getting out over the top," he muttered.

 

"Nah, that would be too easy." Floyd patted him on the shoulder and held up a hand. All four of the SEALs stuck in the room watched Floyd countdown, even Floyd himself. Thoughts chased one another through Trent's head. Maybe the boiler room hadn't been the smartest place to duck into. Maybe they should look into why their intelligence kept failing them like this. Maybe the boiler itself was rigged to explode. Maybe the local authorities were already on their way, and Trent was about to have an international incident on his hands.

 

Floyd folded the last finger into his fist. There was no more time for doubt, only for action. Trent eased his way out into the rubble-strewn corridor first. The building hadn't been maintained very well. It might have even been abandoned. At least no one would be too broken up about the property damage. Huge cracks marred the plaster, but the walls hadn't buckled yet. That was good. It was always kind of a bummer when the building collapsed in on the team.

 

One by one, the rest of his crew followed him down the hallway. They'd been sent to search the basement, while other crews had other floors. The whole building only stood two stories tall. Given how seismically active the region could get, Trent had to approve.

 

His radio crackled to life, just inside his ear. "Team One is evacuating. Too many casualties." The voice belonged to the Master Chief. Chief wasn't a big fan of waiting back on shore, but someone had to coordinate the different teams.

 

"Copy that." Trent kept his voice quiet. Later on, he could freak out about the fact that one of the other teams had taken so many casualties that they had to retreat. Right now, he needed to worry about his own crew and keep them from meeting the same fate.

 

They crept down the hallway until they heard voices. There, Trent held up a hand and halted his men. He crept forward so he could hear better.

 

The two men spoke in Arabic. Trent's experience was mostly with speakers from North Africa, and these men sounded more like they were from Syria or maybe Iraq, but Trent had trained well. He could understand them, for the most part.

 

The first speaker had a deeper voice, with a harsher tone to it. "The Americans are here, but there aren't many of them. We can take them out easily."

 

"Umar, they're already all over the building! Shouldn't we move up the operation?"

 

"Don't be a fool. There aren't any flights coming in or out of the airport right now. We don't need to move anything up. Just get your gun and get ready to fight. There aren't many of them here, and Saif's team has already chased them from the ground floor. They run like rats."

 

Trent saw red, but he choked it back. He was a professional, damn it.

 

He slunk back to his buddies. "Two men," he reported. "More in the building somewhere. Whatever's going on, we have to take them out tonight. They're pretty confident." He tried not to think about the fact that those men had reason to be confident. Their buddy Saif had already taken out four SEALs.

 

Baudin nodded once, mouth folded into a grim line. "Okay. Let's finish it then."

 

Trent glanced at the others. Technically it didn't matter. They would do the job in front of them, no matter what. He still liked to know that everyone was on board and no one had any qualms or misgivings. When Floyd and Lupo both added their assent, they moved out.

 

They got to the next room. It had probably once been a storage room. Trent couldn't read Greek, or Armenian, but the labels on the shelves lining the walls had faded a while ago anyway. He didn't have time to do more than glance at the space before he had to step back.

 

A bullet whizzed past him, scorching the air where his face had been. It buried itself in the wall, leaving yet another spider pattern in the plaster.

 

He turned back to the room and fired. He could barely see a shape in the dim light, but he could see enough to aim. Umar's voice called out a vile curse in Arabic, and he fell to the ground. The other man got a shot off, but the bullet only grazed Trent's arm as Floyd stepped in and shot the enemy in the head.

 

Lupo and Baudin stepped into the room. Baudin checked Umar and calmly slit his throat. Trent didn't like it, but he saw the need. They weren't going to be able to take many prisoners, if any, back from this job. If they did, they'd take them near the end. They didn't have personnel to babysit them while they ran around looking for the rest of these guys' buddies.

 

While Baudin went about his grim task, Lupo and Floyd searched the room. "I think we've got a bunk here," Lupo told him when they'd finished. "We've got bedding for twelve, bags for eighteen."

 

"What are the odds that we've only got eighteen men to deal with?" Trent made a face and radioed Chief. "Two enemy casualties, Chief."

 

"Keep 'em coming, Kelly. We're burning moonlight." Chief's voice had an exceptionally tense sound to it, and Trent knew his commander hadn't seen the upstairs party yet.

 

"Roger that." He turned to the rest of his crew. "Any other weapons or anything useful?"

 

"Nah." Floyd made a face. "Just a couple of the Qur'an and a two-year-old copy of Big Uns."

 

Trent shuddered. "Not here to judge. All right. Let's keep looking."

 

They left the bodies where they lay. If they had time, they'd come back and dispose of them properly.

 

The next door they came to contained canned goods, food storage from the cafeteria. Most of it came in industrial-sized cans, with labels in either Greek or Armenian, and dates going back to the 1980s. Alexandroupoli was home to a sizable Armenian population, according to the briefing. This school must have served them, until it had been abandoned. Not all of the food on the shelves was old and industrial, though. Some smaller packages of rice and packets of heat-and-eat halal dinners rested atop the giant cans. Someone else had stashed plastic jugs of water among the monuments to a bygone era.

 

The team froze as another explosion shook the ceiling. The foundation of the old school remained sound, but whatever just happened had been enough to shake even more plaster, all the way down in the basement. The lights winked and went out.

 

Trent got on the radio. "Iniguez? What just happened?"

 

Iniguez took his time responding. When he did, it was with a deep, hacking cough. "Fuck. Booby trap." He coughed again.

 

"Are you okay, Iniguez?" Chief's voice barked over the radio at both of them.

 

"A few bumps and bruises, but the second floor is not structurally sound." He hacked again, and then spat. "Uh, six confirmed enemy kills, Chief."

 

"Not too bad for one of their own booby traps." Trent grinned.

 

More coughing made Iniguez unintelligible for the first part of his sentence. "Not us. Outside actors."

 

"Fuck." Trent punched the wall.

 

"Exactly."

 

"All right." Chief sighed. "Iniguez, get your men out of there. Come back to the boat. Kelly, it's up to you and yours."

 

"Roger that." Trent looked up at his men. "All right. We've got a third-party running around somewhere. No one knows who they are or whose side they're on, but we don't need witnesses."

 

"Roger that." Baudin grinned.

 

"It's up to us to finish this. Let's do it." He stood up and led the men out of the storage room and down the hall.

 

The presence of a third-party complicated things. Those third-parties were never, ever good guys. They never turned out to be MI6, or French Special Forces, or anything like that. No, they inevitably turned out to be splinter factions, or even bigger jerks than the terrorists the SEALs were there to take out. The big scar on Trent's leg had been left by a bunch of ISIS guys who showed up to complicate things during an operation against the Gaddafi regime.

 

Or the third-party might be locals. America was on very shaky ground with her allies right now, so Trent doubted this operation had been sanctioned by Greece or the EU. That might make him squirm a little when he thought about it in private, but he was still going to do his job, damn it. The last thing he wanted was to create trouble with local authorities or to have to take out innocent local soldiers in pursuit of the greater good.

 

He pushed open a door. This door didn't lead to another small storage room. Instead, it led to a loading dock. Trent's jaw dropped when he saw what sat on that dock. What he saw was a loaded Hawk mobile missile launcher, in the Iranian style.

 

It was not alone. Ten men guarded it. They weren't caught off guard at the sight of four armed and ready Navy SEALs bursting into their lair. On the contrary, they started firing as soon as the door opened.

 

Trent had his weapon online before he pushed forward into the room. He fired once, twice, three times before running out of the way. Bullets whizzed past as the other guys joined him, and he saw two of the enemy fighters fall to the ground as he moved.

 

Lupo grunted as he dropped to one knee. He fired again, bracing himself with a grimace of pain.

 

"You okay?" Trent asked him.

 

"Peachy keen, Kelly." Lupo's teeth were clenched so tight Trent thought he might have cracked his jaw, and sweat already beaded at his temples. Right now was not the time to play surgeon, though.

 

Another man dropped, and then two more as Baudin and Floyd started firing. Trent wrapped his finger around his own trigger and squeezed off another round, and then another. Each one found a target, and most of those targets were good. A terrorist fell backward as a bullet hit him in the head, another in the heart.

 

Unfortunately, the third only hit the target in the leg. The target let out a yowl and fell to the ground, but fired anyway. His shot went wide and missed Trent, but hit Baudin in the ribs. It didn't kill him, but it would leave one hell of a mark underneath the vest.

 

He went to reload, but Floyd called his attention elsewhere. "Incoming!" he barked, and jerked his head toward the door. Trent listened, and he could hear six more booted feet coming at them over hail of bullets.

 

Seriously? There were eighteen terrorists running amok in Alexandroupoli and no one felt compelled to do anything about it?

 

He and Lupo focused on the remaining guards inside the room while Baudin and Floyd kept their focus on the incoming men. Lupo, of course, was immobile. He wasn't going to be able to stay upright much longer. He was going to have to get help soon. His blood collected around him in a pool. It was still small for now, but it was growing quickly.

 

Trent, though, could move around. He slammed a fresh magazine into the firearm and stepped forward, hoping to draw more fire away from Lupo and onto himself. A bullet slammed into his vest, up near the shoulder, but he pushed on. Pain was temporary, after all, and he'd deal with the rest when the time came.

 

He took a bullet to the left arm, and that was going to be more of a problem. Searing metal burned through the meat of his arm. He knew it was a through and through, but he wasn't going to be able to use the arm anymore. Not until he got some help, anyway. He could power through the pain for now, but he wasn't going to be able to drag Lupo out of here.

 

He could still fire, though. He aimed at another terrorist, and then another. They fell, firing wildly as they went. A bullet ricocheted off a wall and grazed his good arm, the second graze he had to the same bicep, and Trent had to bite his lip to keep from crying out.

 

Baudin let out a loud moan and doubled over. Floyd fired faster, a snarl marring his handsome face. Trent wanted to run over to his buddy, but he had to defend Lupo and he still had two more bad guys to take down. Unfortunately for him, both of those guys were hiding behind the launcher itself. Their cover was too good.

 

Another door swung open, and even Trent had to figure they were done for. Three of the four of them were injured, and they had a bunch of terrorists left to take out. They couldn't take more reinforcements.

 

The two people who sauntered — sauntered — through the door weren't likely to be part of Al Qaeda or ISIS. Last Trent heard, they didn't have a lot of omegas in their employ. And the tall, pale, auburn-haired Irishman who walked into the loading dock with a Stevens pump shotgun was most certainly an omega.

 

Mal O'Donnell, if that was really his name, took a cool look around the room. He fired once at the terrorist nearest to Trent. He turned, readied his gun, and fired again at the remaining terrorist. As he worked, his compatriot raced into the room with a handgun in each of her delicate little hands. She ran over toward Floyd and Baudin.

 

Trent knew he should object and step in to defend his men. He didn't. These Irish troublemakers, whoever they were, hadn't hurt them. Mal had executed two terrorists. Trent was going to have to go with his gut on this. He didn't think they were in any danger.

 

The girl and Floyd dispatched the remaining terrorists, and just like that, it was over. All of the pain Trent had been pushing aside hit him at once, but he couldn't focus on it now. "Who are you?"

 

Mal winked at him. "Oh, and to think you've forgotten me so quickly, sailor boy." He put a hand on Trent's shoulder and patted him. "Hurts me right here, it does." He used his other hand to pat his chest. "Let's get you and your friends patched up, yeah?"

 

The girl had already abandoned Floyd. She had climbed the missile launcher and busied herself stacking it with what looked like bricks. Trent knew enough to know they weren't bricks. "Mal, do we have time for that?"

 

"We'll make time, Morna." Mal gave the woman a dark look. "We're on the same side." He glanced at Trent. "For the moment anyway. We can at least get them patched up well enough to get them out of here."

 

"We don't need —" Trent stopped himself when he looked at Lupo, who had passed out.

 

"I think you do." Mal slid his hand away from Trent. "There's no shame in it. Don't worry. We can go back to resenting each other once your friends can walk on their own, yeah?"

 

Trent couldn't argue with that.