"Who do you work for?" Michael asked menacingly. His words confirmed it: this was the test.

"Wal-Mart," she answered sassily. Michael slapped her hard across her cheek, uncaring of any damage he caused. Madison lurched helplessly with the force of Michael's strike. As the op behind her jerked her upright again, she used the motion to cover her own small movements of hand returning to pocket. She could feel the flat key hooked to a flat metal disk and curled her fingers around it.

"Tell me: who do you work for? You can end this easily and avoid any more pain."

Like hell, she thought. Play-acting or not, Michael wouldn't pull punches at all, and she needed another few seconds to decide how to play the rest of the interview.

"I told you, I work for Wal-Mart," she repeated caustically. "You know, the greeter at the front door?"

Crack! His fist smashed into her other cheek, rocking her back. Given the comparison, she preferred the slap.

The man behind her easily supported her body as she slumped, jamming her hand surreptitiously into her pocket a third time and entwining the key in her fingers just as she needed. Although Bear handled her with casual strength she could not hope to overcome she had not shown any real resistance yet. She counted on surprise to be her intimate ally.

Madison feinted, allowing her body to droop, slack; disorientation not hard to feign after that blow, but there would be only one chance. He wrenched her to her feet, but as he did she stomped on his foot full force with the blocky two-inch heel of her boot.

She hadn't expected him to release her, but her goal wasn't bodily freedom. All she needed was her right hand. She gained it when he swore and flinched, shuffling his feet awkwardly. She snaked her shoulder free and struck, aiming for Michael's throat, the key protruding like a single claw from between her fingers.

The entire maneuver took scant seconds, but it was enough for Michael to step back quickly, avoiding Madison's lashing fist. She felt intense satisfaction when the protruding key grazed the edge of his jaw.

Michael's hand instantly imprisoned Madison's wrist in a crushing grip, twisting it until her hand opened and the key fell with a metallic tinkle.

"Good use of resources, but I could tell you were hiding something," he said calmly.

He nodded to Bear and her other arm was suddenly free.

"Dismissed," Michael said to the two operatives. He nodded to the larger one as he favored his foot. "Get to medical and make sure that's not broken." He ignored the tiny scratch on his own face, slowly oozing blood.

Madison almost said she was sorry, but didn't know where that impulse came from. "Never regret success." With a pang she remembered Seth saying that once. "We all know to expect a few scars in here."

As the door opened, Madeline stepped in. The two operatives exited past her, the larger one limping. She spared them no more than a glance as she walked up to Michael and Madison. She looked intently at Madison's face, reached out, grasping her chin with one hand and turned her head one way then the other.

"Good work, Michael," she said. "This will look quite spectacular in a day or so."

Michael nodded, silent, catching Madison's eyes with a look that may have been an apology, but she doubted it.

"How did I do?" Madison asked.

Madeline leveled her gaze like a weapon at Madison. Eyes that could be sweet and warm now flashed at her with a flinty gleam. "You have been an operative for almost three years now, and you persist in asking foolish questions you know will not be answered?"

"I--I'm sorry." Madison dropped her gaze to the floor in confused shame.

"Or . . ." Madeline tilted her head. "Maybe you're used to getting such answers."

Madison chose to remain silent.

"You should know by now that test results are the domain of management and disseminated on a need-to-know basis." Her stony expression softened. "However, there is no reason not to tell you that you did well. You seem to have overcome your propensity for reactionary violence."

"What do you mean?" Madison asked.

"You tried for the proper target instead of attacking the men holding you." Michael turned his face, better revealing the clotting nick on his jaw. He stooped down and picked up the key on its chain and handed it to her.

"What did you mean about my face?" she asked, gesturing to her injured face, careful not to touch the inflamed flesh of her cheek.

"Ah, very good! A useful question," Madeline smiled. "You will be deployed on a mission, either tomorrow or the next day. Your bruises will be part of your cover. In fact, I want you to leave the injuries as they are. Don't bother with ice or compresses."

Madison nodded slowly.

"Go. You're on close quarters standby until the mission departs. You'll be called for briefing as intel is gathered." She indicated the interview was over silently with a graceful gesture of one hand and exited the white room, walking briskly with Michael down the hall.

Madison walked in the opposite direction, one hand gingerly covering her swelling eye, grateful to be away. She lengthened her stride as she entered the vast open area under the glass box of Operations' command, desiring only solitude, but Walter hailed her as she hurried past his work area.

"Madison," he called. "Madison!"

She looked around, at once annoyed at the interruption and alarmed at the attention Walter was drawing to himself. However, her quick survey showed very little activity. The glaring eye of Systems above them stared with empty malice on the deserted space below.

"What?" Madison said, her annoyance plain to see as she sidled over to Walter.

"Hey, what happened to you, babe?"

"Don't call me babe!" she reproached him. "It's nothing."

"It's not nothing--you're bleeding."

Madison touched her cheek and looked at her fingertips smeared with rust.

"Shit," she swore with half a sob of exasperation. "That bastard had better not have given me a scar."

"Who?" Walter fetched a clean rag and pressed it into Madison's hands.

"Never mind, Walter," she replied, gently blotting the drops of blood. "Just chalk it up to experience, okay?"

Walter's lips thinned, pressed together, but he let the matter drop.

"What did you want, anyhow?"

"I wanted to talk to you about something-."

"So talk," she interjected.

"Not here." He gestured, indicating he wanted her to accompany him into the recesses of weapons storage.

"Walter--," she sighed, shifted one way and another, rolled her eyes then reluctantly followed.

Amid shadowy stacks of bins filled with destructive equipment Walter stopped. He pulled a stepstool out from under a shelf and offered it to Madison to sit on.

She sat.

"You don't look so good," Walter rumbled, standing above her, arms crossed.

"Thanks," she replied sourly. She pressed clean corners of the cloth to her wound and checked the resulting bloodstains. Each blot was smaller than the previous, maroon in dim light.

"I hear you've given Nikita a hard time these past couple of weeks; Birkoff too."

She sucked in a lumpy breath, her lungs still not reconciled with the abuse they were dealt. "Yeah, I know."

Walter heard the regret, but he remained relentless. "I haven't had much time to see you myself. From what I hear, I should avoid you--or duck."

"Oh." She blushed in shame. "That. I wish I had known better."

"I'm sure Birkoff wished you had, too. Hitting your friends, defying your teachers when they just want to help . . .. Well, I just don't see the kind of young woman that people have stuck their necks out to protect."

"What do you mean?" The false front of cynicism was wearing thin.

Walter overturned an empty crate and settled himself next to Madison. He backed his tone down from the chastising growl he began with. "Seth came to me, just before you left here last year. He was worried about you."

"What?" she exclaimed, incredulous.

Walter recounted the visit Seth paid him in a bar, months before.

"Oh, god, Seth," she moaned. She covered her face and bowed her head. It seemed the reprieve was over.

"You really cared about each other, huh?" "Y-yes."

"Oh, babe," Walter ran a sympathetic hand over her back. He sighed.

"Seth was, he was--." She groped for words. "Sort of like a father, a big brother, and a friend all rolled up into one." Madison's hands flopped, useless, into her lap. "Now he's just dead."

The first tears welled up and spilled over her lashes to tumble into her upturned palms. Once started, they rose into a torrent of anguish and she sobbed wretchedly. Walter put his arm around her and drew her in a steady embrace, the leather of his pants creaking and the smell of his cologne filling her with comfort.

She sniffed noisily, all hot and damp from liberated grief, and shrugged off Walter's arm to sit up straight. She used the bloody rag to dry her face and wipe her nose.

"That's the first time you've cried about this, isn't it?" Walter asked, his voice gentle. "Feel better?" She nodded. She managed to find one corner of the cloth still unsoiled by blood or tears and pressed it to the cut on her cheek.

It came away clean.

"Thanks, Walter."

He cupped the uninjured side of her face in a benevolent caress.

"Walter?" Nikita's unmistakable voice rang from the outer parts of the room.

"Stay here." He patted Madison's knee, levered himself off the crate and went out to talk to Nikita.

"Walter, have you heard anything? I've been called in for close quarters standby, but no one's told me anything."

"No, Sugar, not a thing."

"Oh. Have you seen Madison, then?"

"No. Should I tell her you're looking for her?"

"Never mind, Walter," Madison emerged from the back. "What do you want, Nikita?"

Nikita flashed a look at Walter. Then she noticed Madison's face. "What happened to you?"

"I think it's supposed to be wardrobe, actually," she replied ironically.

"What?"

Madison shrugged. "I'm fine. It's nothing, really."

Nikita nodded thoughtfully, absorbing not only the tear-rumbled hair and total lack of defiance or anger in Madison's demeanor, but also Walter's damp shirtfront.

"Madeline told me you got an apartment. I wanted to see if you needed help with anything," she said. Actually, Madeline had ordered Nikita to keep tabs on the girl, but that bit of information seemed counterproductive to mention.

"I think I'll be fine. Besides, I'm on standby; it's not like I can do anything about furnishings anyhow. The ready room will just have to do for now."

"You're on standby, too?"

Nikita and Walter mused about the possible scenarios. Madison wanted to find a place and lay her head in quiet, but she also wanted to know what mysterious mission might suddenly call her away. All three of the operatives periodically glanced around, casually looking for trouble on the horizon, always looking first to Systems.

"Hey, there's Birkoff, he might know more," Walter raised his hand and gestured. Birkoff saw the signal and changed his trajectory, performing his own sidelong sweep of the perimeter.

"Hey, what's up?" He looked around, a puzzled twitch curling up one side of his mouth until he saw Madison.

"When the cat's away, the mice will play," Walter retorted. "Operations ain't been around all day."

"Where are Operations and Madeline, anyway?" Nikita enjoined Birkoff insistently.

"What happened to you?" Birkoff asked in dismay, ignoring Nikita's question as he spied the damage on Madison's face. He moved closer to her and raised his hand to her cheek but did not touch it.

"It's nothing, damn it," she said sharper than she meant to. She felt shy suddenly, meeting Birkoff like this, surrounded by other Section personnel and swollen with the painful reminder of the morning ordeal.

"It's not nothing," Walter rejoined her soundly. "You need some ice on that."

"I'm not supposed to put ice on it," Madison said angrily. "Madeline said so. She wants the bruises to look 'spectacular'."

"Babe, you're gonna be a goddamned rainbow come tomorrow no matter what you do," he said, looking hard at her and noticing how still she held herself and how her shoulders were rounded. "You got it in more than just the face, didn't you? And here I am, keeping you from your rest." He shook his head in self-disgust.

"But what happened to you?" Birkoff asked again, still hovering.

"I don't want to talk about it," Madison said softly, her feelings still raw.

Walter saw Birkoff's hurt confusion and Madison's blushing pain and began to suspect there was more going on than he knew about. He decisively opened the first aid box hanging on the wall nearby and handed a disposable cold pack to Birkoff.

"Birkoff, walk Madison to the ready room," he said in a firm voice. To Madison, he said, "Use this for ten minutes to help with the pain, then have Birkoff throw it away someplace else. Madeline will never know, and trust me, it won't make those bruises any less colorful."

"I--," Madison began to protest, but Walter stopped her.

"Just do it, Madison. If you're going on a mission anytime soon you'll need the rest now." Nikita looked on with frowning sympathy and nodded her agreement with Walter.

Madison handed him the bloody rag, too fatigued and in pain to object further. She turned on her heel and left, Birkoff at her side.

Birkoff wisely said nothing as they walked through the halls, sensing that anything he might say would only irritate her. She led the way in, still silent, and walked to one of the wide, undressed bunks lining one wall, sitting down then lying on her side in a ball.

"You don't have to stay, really. I could get rid of that later."

Birkoff stood by the closed door for a moment, contemplating her abrupt manner. He decided that whatever happened to her this morning was responsible, not anything he did, then came forward, ice pack in hand. "No, Walter had the right idea."

Madison closed her eyes. "Whatever."

Birkoff sat on the edge of the bunk, broke the seal inside the ice pack, and mixed chemicals back and forth in his hand until the cold radiated.

"Here," he warned her before he lay it gently on her cheek. A split had opened on the highest point of her cheekbone from the impact of a fist. Less than a centimeter long, it no longer bled but stood up defiant on the raised red swelling surrounding her eye.

She made a small sound, of pain or relief or gratitude he could not tell.

"You okay?"

"I will be. I'm starting to think it looks worse than it is." She slit open her eyes, the injured one no longer able to open as wide as the other could. "It's nice of you to do this."

"Well, I know what it feels like to get belted in the face," he said wryly.

She groaned, embarrassed. "I will never live that down, will I?"

Birkoff shrugged. "I wish I had told you that Madeline put me up to that stupid e-mail link. Maybe I deserved it a little."

"Don't start that! We don't have much luxury of freedom in here--I know that just like you do." Madison pushed herself slowly to sitting again. The ice pack slid to the bed. She picked it up and held it to the side of her face. "Besides, I value your friendship too much for you to do something stupid and get cancelled."

"Are you about to give me the 'let's be friends' speech?" he asked, his voice half-kidding and half-hard with defensive cynicism.

"What? No!" she replied. Suspicion turned her head. She lowered her hand with the ice pack. "Why? Are you gonna give it to me?"

"No."

Madison sighed heavily. "Well, this is a whole lot more complicated than I ever anticipated. Ah, I can't even think; how long has it been since I was here last year?"

"Six months." He thought a second. "Almost seven."

She lay down again and resettled the compress over her swollen eye. "Birkoff?"

"Hm?" He looked down at her.

"I wanted to ask you out seven months ago. You want to catch a movie together after we're off standby?"

"Yeah," he replied softly.

"I'm gonna sleep now. Toss this for me, would you?" She held up the pack.

"Sure." He got up quietly and dimmed the light from the switch at the door. "I'll see you later."

The door closed.

************

The ARM mission reached critical mass. A team was brought in for final briefing before deployment and the day after her methodical beating Madison converged with the others at the table. She joined Madeline, Griffin, Birkoff, Michael and two additional operatives: men in their late thirties as alike as twins with conservative haircuts and muscular builds. As Madison sat down, she caught Birkoff looking at her from down the table and flashed him a small smile. She missed any response he might have made as Operations assaulted the room and began the meeting.

"ARM is becoming a problem," Operations said, unusually thoughtful. "Since the unfortunate . . . mishap . . .last year, we've seen half a dozen manifestations of this weapons supplier. " He alluded to the explosion of exotic detonators in Walter's work area the previous summer. "The real puzzle is why they seem to deal only with the smallest and most ineffectual terrorist groups. We have some theories, but nothing solid yet."

"We've seen this nine times now since the beginning of last year; large caliber or highly advanced weaponry somehow getting into the hands of near-amateurs," Birkoff said. "These are groups that we almost never have to involve ourselves with because local or federal law enforcement groups get to them before they ever become a problem. And, even with increased access to weapons, they've been easy enough to contain."

"This, however, has escalated our priority," Operations took up the narrative with a decisive click of his remote controller. The holo-imager drew up out of the table, displaying dull pages of texts and diagrams that scrolled quickly past. "I'm sure you all remember the engineered anthrax infection we encountered last year." He grimaced tightly and briefly. "We thought we had the thing completely contained, the bacteria safely stored away from harm and its inventor securely isolated, but in the last suspected ARM-supplied bust we found a sample on site. Fortunately it was properly sealed in appropriate bio-containment; we avoided public contamination." Although the specific remedy was archived in Section, everyone at the table knew many innocent people would have died before the cure was synthesized in enough quantities if the bacteria were to be let loose on an unsuspecting public.

"The trail is heating up. Four days ago, Michael brought in the Reed brothers. It seems they have been in direct contact with ARM," Madeline continued the thread of information. She had deconstructed Christopher Reed and his younger brother Daniel, easily stripping away vital stratum of spirit along with information until only salacious leftovers remained. Housekeeping took care of the result.

In the past three months Daniel had met four times with men from the shadowy organization ARM to purchase necessary ingredients for making bombs. Each time he had met the same two men in a dark car at a different location. Each time they would take his money and direct him to a different drop--usually a commercial warehouse--to pick up the merchandise. Daniel would then contact his brother Chris and his wife with the location. They made the pick up.

"I have constructed a plausible profile for Griffin to emulate Christopher Reed. Since Chris has never been seen by ARM contacts, Griffin should have no problem taking Daniel's place with the cover story we have provided. Madison will take the place of Mr. Reed's wife, Tracy," Madeline explained. Tracy, occasional driver for the Red Hawks and Chris' domestic punching bag, was dead, nearly decapitated by a Section operative's garrote on Michael's order while waiting in a truck for her husband. At the time of her death, two of her ribs were still healing from Chris' last beating.

"Griffin, Madison, you're now Chris and Tracy Reed. You'll be meeting Reed's contact with ARM tonight. Bring him in. Michael will be running things from the van, Reeves and Theo will be primary floating backup. Team B will be provided locally and take care of the perimeter," Operations summarized. "The rest of you have mission parameters on your pads. Get going."

As the crowd dispersed, Madeline stopped Griffin as he followed Madison, briefly addressing them before walking crisply away. "Wardrobe is waiting for you two. After they are finished with you both come see me before you go."

They nodded in unison.

"Hi, honey, I'm home," Griffin lay his arm around Madison's shoulders once Madeline left. "Long time no see, huh?"

"Long time," Madison agreed. Twenty-four hours since it had been forcefully planted, her black eye lost most of the swelling but gained a full spectrum of colors, just as Walter predicted.

"Nice eye there," he said. "You sure know how to make an entrance, Supergirl." She knew he referred to her rooftop leap last year. He and Nikita had dragged her the last few yards to safety that night. Madison had endured plenty of his merciless teasing ever since.

"Mm," she grunted in response. He certainly hadn't changed in the past months, except for his hair. Last summer it had been bleached nearly white, short on the sides and standing up in stiff fingers on top. Longer now, the tips of his hair were platinum on top of a thick carpet of dark ash blond. She spared him another glance. His nose was peeling from mild sunburn.

"So quiet! C'mon, we get to be man and wife. It'll be fun."

"Eh, I'm still sore. Had a rough day yesterday."

"I heard about that. Hey, I promise to be gentle."

She chucked. "Quit it. It hurts to laugh."

"God, how much did they give you?" He removed his arm from her shoulders.

"More than I wanted."

"I mean, I only know what I heard from the rumor mill, but did they really put you in the white room with Rickham?"

"I didn't ask names. It was some big brute and this weasel of a guy with a moustache."

Griffin opened the door to wardrobe for Madison. "Weasel with a moustache? Yeah, that's him all right. He's one of Madeline's pets. Not a pleasant fellow."

She could only agree.

Clothing was provided for them once they entered wardrobe, chosen earlier by Madeline, or perhaps one of her people, based on the profile. Either way, neither Madison nor Griffin liked the choices. An older woman efficiently slicked Madison's hair back into two girlish ponytails and bade her wash off her customary eyeliner. Then she turned to Griffin and ruthlessly shaved his hair close to the skull in a severe military cut. They changed quickly and proceeded directly to Madeline's office where they entered, transformed.

"Good, good," Madeline said, examining the results. Griffin had rubbed his hand over the stubble all the way down the hall, but he stood still for inspection now. "You bear a close resemblance to the late Mr. Reed. Have you memorized all the data?"

"Yes. It's all here." He tapped his shorn head.

"Don't hesitate to be brutal. You should not have much trouble recalling how a domestic abuser behaves."

"No." His tone was clipped.

"Will you be able to handle it, Madison?"

"Yes," she replied softly.

"Good. Not many people will take much notice of you, so chances are you will not often have to act the victim," Madeline said. "Mrs. Reed was fourteen years old when she married five years ago, and it's well known that Mr. Reed was a wife beater. Don't talk unless spoken to first; Tracy had a reputation for being a quiet person." Madeline pointedly looked at Madison's exposed midriff where the bottom half of a bruise showed under her cut-off tee shirt. "How are you feeling?"

"I can do the job. I'm a lot better today."

"Excellent. Gather your equipment from Walter and report for transport."

The weapons cache Michael and his team discovered in Arizona had been driven from Texas by Tracy Reed and her easily angered husband, Chris, after the happy couple picked up the delivery at a blind drop in Dallas. Now Section One's primary team rode in the van down highways in Dallas, Texas, on the way to rendezvous with ARM's contact to the Red Hawks. This time they were after more than weapons.

Madison, for one, was glad the van had no windows. She had spent time here in Dallas, the last months she ever experienced drawing air as a free person. It had not been a happy time at all. When the van reached its destination, the team deployed and Madison welcomed a chance to occupy her mind with something other than memories.

"These things always happen at night," Griffin sighed. He sounded almost thoughtful. On site, he and Madison left the van and hit their marks. Preparations completed earlier included parking a large American truck nearby, ostensibly belonging to Chris and Tracy, and it was inside the cab they waited.

"Not always. Sometimes it happens during the day."

"It was a just an observation." He grinned. "Don't make me beat you, now."

Madison rolled her eyes. "I'd like to see you try."

Michael's voice interrupted through the com units hidden behind their ears.

"Target spotted penetrating the perimeter. One minute to your location."

Griffin beat a rapid tattoo on the dash with his hands.

"Anxious?" Madison watched him drum enthusiastically.

"No, ready."

"Sic 'em, boy." She tilted her head and glanced at the low, dark car rolling slowly toward them.

"Arr!" He growled at her in fine mettle then opened the door and dropped out of the truck.

A lack of light hindered all players tonight. The moon was gone, hidden from the night sky on this night of the month. The meeting took place on the site of an old car dealership, abandoned almost six years ago and surrounded with a real estate financial disaster that put a prominent banker out of business shortly after the car dealership went under. Delinquent kids took over the décor, smashing out all the windows before a year had passed and crisscrossing the walls with territorial marks only slightly less noxious than those left by passing dogs. Unless he moved, Madison could barely detect Griffin's shape against the kaleidoscope wall of the garage.

He approached the car when it crunched to a stop next to the garage over the trash and debris of years, and leaned on the car door when the passenger's power window moved down in a controlled glide.

"Hey, there, fellas. I've got something for you. Do you got something for me tonight?"

The unseen man in the passenger seat speared Griffin with a bright flashlight, causing him to wince and raise his arm over his eyes. The glowing finger touched on Madison sitting behind the wheel of the pick up, transfixing her with wide eyes and a blank expression. The light dropped then disappeared, leaving red spots and total blindness.

"Are you Chris Reed?" Flattened through Griffin's com, the man's voice could be understood.

"That's me."

"What happened to your brother Dan?"

"Hey, you guys agreed to the meet. Is there gonna be a problem?"

The two men in the car consulted.

"Birkoff's having trouble with the scans. Get them to leave the car," Michael ordered over the com unit.

"C'mon, are we going to deal or what?" Griffin said. "I've got the money in the back of my truck."

"Bring it here."

Griffin looked pained. He turned to the truck and barked, "Tracy! Bring the bag. Now!"

"You didn't answer what happened to Dan," the driver demanded.

"He's laid up. He ran into a door."

Madison quietly walked up, carrying a nylon duffel bag slung over her shoulder.

"Could you move any slower, baby?" Griffin sneered and ripped the bag from her. He turned to the passenger again. "So, can we deal now?"

"Hand over the money and go get your stuff at the warehouse. It's the same drop as last time."

Griffin held onto the bag. "The same drop? Why? Tracy and I always do the pick up, and it's always a different place. Why the sudden change?"

"Just hand it over."

"No," Griffin said with escalating belligerence. "I want you to get out here and explain to me why you're doing things different."

Unknown to the two men in the car, Michael continued talking on the com, sending the primary team in closer and tightening the perimeter to lessen any chance of escape.

"Stall him another ten seconds," Michael ordered.

"Give me the money!" demanded the man in the car.

"Chris, just give him the money," Madison pleaded.

"Shut up! If I want your opinion I'll ask for it!" He shoved her hard, knocking her to the ground. "Go wait in the truck!"

"Scans confirm two in the car. Take them now."

Griffin dropped the bag and Madison dropped her cowering façade. She got up from the ground and took a support position for Griffin as he reached through the open window and grabbed the man by his forearms, pulling hard. An explosion of glass on the driver's side signaled the arrival of the rest of primary team. Griffin drew his opponent halfway through the open car window, hyper-extending the man's arms over his head, rendering him helpless as he flopped, suspended by his belt buckle and forearms.

"Binders!" Griffin called, and Madison obliged, wrapping plastic fasteners around the man's thick wrists while he dangled over the ground, hollering bloody murder.

"Finished."

"Okay. Let's get him out."

Inside the car more sounds of struggle ensued, rocking the car violently back and forth. The motion pitched the passenger out of his window. Rather than be entangled and dragged to the ground, Griffin and Madison stood back and let him land hard on his face.

"We've got our package secured," Griffin said for Michael's sake in the van. The car stopped heaving, and Theo's voice sent the same confirmation.

"Stay where you are. We'll bring the van up for transport."

Staccato light fanned out from the van as it approached across a dreary field, hitting ruts where dirt bikes had cut holes in the ground, steadying when the van jumped a curb and traversed the paved lot. Griffin and Madison pulled their captive to his feet just as the two operatives on the other side did the same with their prisoner, aided by the van headlights.

Another light flared up unexpectedly from the roof, blinding bright. Figures seethed around the corner of the building, coming from the open mouth of the garage itself, hidden by the glaring magnitude of intense illumination. Section team members found themselves in a sudden fight for survival.

"We've been breached!" shouted a voice over the com.

Michael's voice talked in their ears. "The secondary team is nearly here. Hold your positions."

Shots sang through the air, some close enough to feel the breeze of passage. Madison and Griffin immediately dropped to the ground, taking the captive with them and scuttling close to what minimal cover the car provided, weapons drawn and blazing. The bound man struggled to get up. Griffin leaped on him and pulled on his arms, twisting them up. The man jerked suddenly and melted back to the ground, a black hole suddenly in existence on the side of his chest.

Griffin cursed and rolled away, utilizing the body as extra protection. Pinned by the searchlight, the primary team dug in, helpless to do anything but defend their tenacious position.

"We're not gaining anything here," Griffin raised his voice over the noise. "A distraction would be useful."

"Yeah, get rid of that damned light," Madison wished aloud.

Miraculously, the beam began turning ponderously away, canting slowly to one side. It fell suddenly with an explosion of sparks.

"Get the prisoners to the van," Michael ordered.

"Let's go! Help me with this hunk of meat," Griffin called to Theo and Reeves.

"I'll knock down this incoming fire," Madison replied. She stood up and lay along the fender of the car, plastering her body as close as she could to the metal contours. She used the faint orange remnants of electrical fire from the fallen light and a slither of fluorescent flickering from the garage opening to sight and fire at anything that moved, assured by tactical that nothing but hostile targets were available.

The other team members surged forward, trained to take advantage of any opportunity while Madison stood her ground, covering their progress to the van. The secondary team arrived, having tightened the perimeter, and more hostile bodies fell. Pinned between the garage and fresh troops, the hostile attack became a rout.

"We've almost got containment," said Michael calmly. "Where are the packages?"

Between shepherding a surly living prisoner and dragging along one most likely dead, Griffin and the others moved slowly.

A sharp, metallic CLANG startled everyone. Heads turned to stare at the mouth of the garage. More people poured out, weapons firing. Griffin and the others went down. The secondary team engaged battle, returning automatic weapon fire in short, ripping bursts.

Com chatter increased.

"Where are they coming from?"

"We've got 'em contained on the east side."

"Griff's down!"

Gyrating figures locked in combat. Others crouched down on the periphery of darkness, sniping shots at the enemy. A small, round object bounced down into the fray from nowhere. Madison recognized what it was as the scant details converged in her mind, and she once more dived for the ground. A blast of sound on a register out of human hearing exploded, knocking people down in a classic blast pattern.

God, a concussion grenade! Madison thought. Her ears hurt from the pressure, but she had gotten under the car in time. Before she could wonder where it had come from, a cacophony of junk came tumbling down from the unwieldy mountain of trash heaped next to the garage. With controlled grace, Michael leaped down the unstable mass. His handgun was out and ready, picking off those hostiles still moving.

Superior skill had overcome superior numbers.

Madison ran up with other Section personnel, stunned but delighted.

"We're still not secure. Take positions," Michael ordered. He placed Madison by the remnants of the junk pile and handed the automatic rifle he wore slung over one shoulder to her, assigning her sniper duty. With her covering the area, he quickly divided the surviving secondary team, sending most to combat or restrain those hostiles still alive and directing four to take care of the two ARM contacts laying on the ground.

Surprisingly, Griffin popped up out of the still bodies. He waved, cocky.

"Griffin, what's going on?" Michael demanded over the com.

"When the shooting started, we all hit the deck. We've still got one of the prisoners alive," he replied.

"What about the others?" Madison interjected.

"Theo's dead. Reeves needs to get to medical."

Michael surveyed the site. The force from the concussion grenade rendered most of the hostiles unconscious. Those few able to fight back were quickly subdued as he watched. The mission had been breached--badly--but Section pulled out the victory.

From above, the skritch of fine roof-gravel pricked Michael's ear half a second before a falling body knocked him to the ground. He held onto his gun but could not bring it to bear. The assailant pressed his advantage, sitting on Michael's chest and grasping his gun hand. He repeatedly smashed it into the ground until the gun tipped out of Michael's pain-numbed fingers.

The man was big, over two hundred pounds, or so protested Michael's chest. He fought clumsily, but surprise and gravity had worked well for him, and his weight continued to limit Michael's ability to draw a clean breath of air. He heard a weapon discharge close by and processed this new data, trying to formulate a possible hostile attack plan so he could correctly counter it. The man holding him down sat up tall and dug his knees into Michael's shoulders, pinning him so he could think no further into the future than his next breath.

The old light from the garage jiggled and buzzed. It illuminated the towering ingot of flesh pressing Michael into the ground with hideous green waves and shadows. Caucasian, he had hair like an oily insect wing and grinned with teeth too large for his mouth. A faint whisper of air accompanied a flash of dark movement and the end of a rusty tire iron imbedded itself in the side of the man's head, messily bisecting his face. His dead weight toppled over, revealing Madison, hands still clutching the bar. Her arms dragged down with the body as it fell, for the metal bar was firmly stuck in bone. A fine spray of blood painted a crazy pattern of spots on all three of them, then stopped.

Michael disentangled himself and stood.

"Where is your gun?" he asked.

"It jammed." Madison shrugged, but a tremble in the voice betrayed her shock.

Another hostile lay dead with his chest blasted open next to the discarded rifle.

"Michael, Operations wants to know if you've got containment," asked Birkoff over the com units.

Michael calmly gazed at the area around him, turning his head slowly to visually confirm what the 'B' channel com chatter described.

"Michael?"

"Yes. We have containment. Send in Housekeeping." To Madison, he said, "Help load the prisoners in the van."

"Yes, sir," Madison replied, respect for her team leader and suppressed hysteria swelling her throat before she quickly turned to do his bidding.

Griffin and Reeves welcomed her help. Together they secured the surviving prisoner in the van and lay his lifeless partner on the floor next to him. Reeves remained in the van to guard them both. Madison and Griffin opted to wait outside in the night air.

Griffin wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "Goddamn that was something!" he exclaimed.

Madison agreed with a wordless noise from her throat, her limbs trembling with adrenaline saturation.

"And you! Who the hell taught you to swing like that? Babe Ruth?" He looped his arm around her and drew her close, enclosing her in a circle with his other arm. He, too, shuddered with the aftereffects of hard action and she could feel the muscle twitches all along his body when he pushed her into the side of the van.

"Griff, c'mon," she protested.

"We've got five minutes. Make the most of the moment, girl." He kissed her hard and his hands ran some competition to see how much of her body they could cover in the least amount of time. Madison felt her flesh respond in spite of the pain he inflamed from the bruises along her ribs. She blindly kissed him for a moment, succumbing to her flesh's demands, then broke away, suddenly repulsed.

"Griffin, I don't want to do this."

"Wha--?"

"It's just the adrenaline talking. I don't want to do this." She backed away.

"Besides, I'm seeing someone." Though her battle-stressed body thought Griffin would do just nicely to sink into mindless sensation, she never did think of him in terms of a romantic partner. Instead, she ached for a quiet corner and a chance to discover some chemistry with Birkoff with every jittery pulse of her shocked body and mind.

"What's that got to do with it?" he demanded. "Of course it's the adrenaline! It's always the adrenaline!"

"Get a hold of yourself," she barked coldly. A sudden realization dropped her stomach half a foot, and her relief was almost painful that she had mastered her own emotions. "Our coms are still transmitting; show some professionalism, for god's sake."

"So what?" Griffin paced to the rear of the van and looked around. "We're not on the loop anymore--no one's paying any attention to us. Some geek in Systems might get off on this bit of tape sometime next year. Big fucking deal."

"Damn it, Griffin!"

"Hey, I get the hint, okay? You don't want to fool around."

"No. I don't." She leaned against the side of the van once more, crossing her arms in front of her to ward off the chill she felt. Griffin moved to look out on the activities of the secondary team members as they performed initial housekeeping duties then re-joined Madison.

"Look, I'm sorry. I'm pretty keyed up. It happens."

"Mm. Whatever." He sounded genuinely sorry, but she felt too angry and disgusted not only with him but also with herself to forgive him.

Michael strode up out of the darkness.

"The warehouse drop needs surveillance. I'm assigning you two to cover it," he said.

"For how long?" Madison asked. She struggled to cover her dismay.

"For as long as necessary. You'll go with the secondary team back to their sub-station for supplies. The commander will have your mission profiles within the hour." Michael paused and looked at the couple, his laser perception reading antagonistic body language in the dim light. "Are there any questions?"

"No." Griffin said. Madison shook her head.

"Good. Get to the other team. They're expecting you."

Madeline missed having time for leisure reading. She snipped crumbs of time from her duties just as she snipped imperfections from her plants, but the increments were as flawed as was the debris from her gardening. She missed the lazy long afternoons where nothing and no one needed her and she could read all day and into the night if she wished, stare off into space and daydream, or meander away from home, rudderless.

She sniffed deeply. That is a dangerous path to tread, she thought. A precocious child, her dreamy days of literature and exploration came long before she reached puberty. She had been poor. There had been no limits on her world. She exhaled and pushed out the yearning with used breath.

Madison's eminent arrival was the cause, of course. The girl had been on surveillance in Texas with Griffin for the past week, had just arrived back in town and was coming straight to Madeline to debrief.

I should have had her cancelled right along with Jensen, she thought. But that would have been not only unnecessary and unfair to the girl, but also weak of Madeline. So many of the lost souls that flew into Section had sad histories that evoked something Madeline herself had experienced. Each time she faced one of these past reminders she always found more strength on the other side of welcoming them rather than avoiding them.

Her last such challenge had been Nikita, and she was still grappling with it. Not one to shirk from anything, yet when Nikita landed into Section's care Madeline had surprising difficulty setting aside barriers as she established empathy with the scruffy street kid. Facing the rejection Nikita felt from her mother aroused strong responses in Madeline, responses strong enough to lead her down into weakness when her own mother began the onerous process of dying.

Madeline learned the error of her ways. She should have used Nikita's unresolved issues to help gain insight into her own demons. Instead, Madeline had stumbled along clumsily asking inappropriate favors of Operations. Yes, well. Lesson learned, insight gained, she thought grimly. Nikita, too, would have to face certain truths about her own failed relationship with her mother, and Madeline realized it could be a chance for her to complete the exorcism of her own failing.

However, those plans would have to wait. Madison would soon come through the door with her scrubbed face and ponytails from her undercover role, looking like a teenager and in reality acting not much different from one. That flower face cast Madeline farther back than Nikita did, back to a time when Mother meant comfort and freedom was the blind acceptance of all that touched her senses.

The door chimed, then slid open.

"Come in, Madison, Griffin," Madeline said. "Take a seat."

They sat, and Griffin launched into his version of the surveillance mission, peppering his report with elaborate body language. Madeline watched but hardly listened, setting her mind on automatic so she could observe the subtleties. Madison still wore the bare face and clothing of a poor hillbilly wife, but she had removed the ponytails, obviously recently as the hair bore a kink where the rubber bands had restrained it. Ah, there were the bands--around her wrist. Her black eye had faded to a yellow smudge.

"After all that excitement, keeping a watch on the place was boring. Nothing happened," Griffin said, continuing his report. "In the entire week nobody even came near the building except when a kid performed a little graffiti on the wall."

"And you checked him out thoroughly?"

"I surveyed the entire site while he monitored the kid. It wasn't a diversion," Madison added. She scratched her head where the ponytails had been.

"I see. How did you deal with the boredom?" Madeline aimed the question at Griffin for she knew patience was a failing of his.

"I dealt with it. We managed to keep ourselves amused." Innuendo lightly flavored his tone. He had a reputation for being quite the ladies man.

"Oh. I see. I hope no more children with spray paint got past your guard while you amused yourselves."

Madison fired an annoyed glance at him and sighed in exasperation. "He's just being a pig. We did not sleep together. We followed a standard rotating shift to keep the area under constant surveillance."

"Good. I expect your written reports on my desk first thing in the morning." She did not have to look at the clock to know the time was nearly eleven PM.

They stood up and left. Madeline activated the camera in the hall outside her office before the door slid shut behind them and watched in her monitor as they walked down the hall.

"Nice kissing up to Madeline, Madison," Griffin accentuated the "mad" in both names and mock-punched her in the shoulder.

"I wasn't kissing up to Madeline!"

"You were, too, Maddy!"

"Shut up!" She punched him back, harder. "Don't call me that!"

"Why not? Why don't you use your first name?"

"Hmph. Why don't you? Half the people in here go by last names, so what?"

"Well, actually my girlfriends call me Dave. What can I do to get you to call me Dave?"

"I didn't fall for that all week, and I ain't gonna fall for it now, Griff," she parried.

Madeline switched cameras as they traveled out of the first camera's range, focusing on their fronts approaching rather than their backs receding. The sound remained crisp. From the joking tone with its sharp undertone, it seemed that the two were not lovers. They sounded like siblings.

"Well, this 'Madison' thing...it sounds too much like Madeline. Creepy. Hm, how about Cathy?"

"Not if you want to keep living, Davie."

He made a sound of distaste. "I see what you mean."

"Well, keep that thought in mind, and call me Madison," she warned him. "Are you going to leave me alone now?"

"Not when you're so easy to tease."

The light-hearted banter continued with them until they turned a corner. Madeline switched off the camera. The resilience of the girl--I used to have that, she thought.

Did she, ever? Could she ever have had that child-like buoyancy and still do the things she could do now? In many ways Madison was like Nikita, but Nikita was learning, evolving. Nikita had the potential to go far within the organization of Section. Where would Madison end up, if she lived long enough? An image of Walter flashed as Madeline made the connection in her mind. Yes . . . She could suddenly see the parallels between them. Highly competent. Unmoved by ambition. Able to fit in. Filled with a strong sense of survival. Madeline's vision of a possible level five operative evaporated.

Seth Jensen had been on the right track with her training, she thought ironically. Ambition was the glue that held Madeline's heart together. She could intellectually understand that others may not feel the draw but she could not completely understand--or trust--someone who did not dance to ambition's relentless song.

Still, that may be the best route anyone could take here. Ambition is a harsh taskmaster, she thought. If she recalled the wandering child deep in her past, she could almost muster regret for a path she could not tread. Ah, but then I wouldn't have what I have now.

As he scrolled through Michael's Dallas mission report on his computer, Operations re-settled himself in his chair several times. Alone, he gave his restless nature free rein of expression, and his chair was beginning to protest. He wore out as many office chairs in Section as Birkoff-an impressive feat since he sat down as little as possible.

Damn that Michael, he cursed to himself as he read and bounced the seat again. Michael could be so independent--too independent. Michael had submitted the report a week after the mission as he had waited for intel from the surveillance team. He never once requested help when his mission had been breached, and by such overwhelming numbers. The audacity!

Michael pulled an impressive victory out of a very real scenario for disaster. He lost one of the targets, but brought in six more. Four operatives died, but twenty-two hostiles had been eliminated. Operations had to respect Michael's phenomenal competency just as he fumed over his wild streak. He finished reviewing the report, occasionally shaking his head over this event or that detail. Michael certainly showed a penchant for attracting good people to his team. Griffin was a consistently solid performer in spite of his annoying manner, and it seemed Madison was becoming everything Madeline said she could be.

He must have learned that from me.

Operations sent off his summation of the latest reports to the Agency and decided he could not wait until his lunch with Madeline for refreshment. He seldom frequented the main cafeteria for he did not want to foster familiarity with the troops, but after sitting all morning his legs felt restless, so he walked there to get coffee rather than have his assistant bring it in to him.

As he entered the room, he expected stares from younger operatives and recruits. He took note of who stared, but he never acknowledged them. A burly man behind the counter quickly poured him a cup of coffee when asked. Operations took a sip from the cup and swallowed in approval. He turned to leave, but changed his trajectory when he saw Birkoff sitting at a table. He sat across from the young woman, Madison, talking animatedly and oblivious to Operations' approach.

"Birkoff."

He turned, startled.

"Any word from Madeline about South Korea?"

"No, not yet." He seemed as uncomfortable as the recruits did.

"What about the profile for ARM?"

"It's cycling now. We'll have results within the hour."

"Hm. Inform me when it's ready."

"Yes, sir."

Operations swept another annoyed glance over Birkoff. The young man's nervousness irritated him now as it always did and he wondered what strange neurosis was plaguing him now. He hated to depend on anyone with such gaping flaws, but computers were vital to what Section did everyday and the fact was only a very few people were qualified to oversee the system. Some of the recent recruits seemed promising, at least. Maybe soon there would be more choice.

As Operations left the cafeteria, he glanced back. Birkoff once more leaned forward, elbows on the table, intent on his companion. Is being caught with the girl making him anxious? he thought. He made a mental note to mention the possible liaison to Madeline. Operations looked at Madison with new respect after reading about her performance. That slip of a girl had nearly decapitated a man twice her size with an old tire iron. As he walked away, he pondered in sardonic amusement if Birkoff knew what he was getting into. He never got to finish the thought for his assistant marched up holding a PDA and demanded his attention.

Sunrise had been glorious. Madison seldom saw it, for she preferred to drowse tangled in the sheets most mornings. Today, however, exuberant birdsong had invaded her open window and her sleep as the east brightened. Last night was the first night she had spent in her apartment; every noise was still something new. As dawn light grew, bare windows allowed that invasion as well.

The pride of ownership and curiosity piqued, she had risen despite the early hour. After accepting the key last week, she had bought a few foodstuffs, but only the bottled water remained fit for consumption. She opened one and leaned against the kitchen windowsill, watching noisy birds flit from tree to tree.

She had opened the window wide and sat in the opening clad in flannel pants and an old tee shirt. Spring air felt bracing rather than cold. Gradual lightening of the heavens described a perfectly smooth emergence of the sun into the birth-waters of a perfectly smooth sky. Envious green streaks of finished night retreated before the gold of morning.

Madison sighed, content. After reveling in this morning's silent natural wonder, she had showered and dressed and sought breakfast in the nearby shops. She had read the paper, shopped and puttered about her new home until mid-morning, then returned to Section and made sure she ran into Birkoff. He nearly leaped at her offer of coffee in the cafeteria. They sat down, talked, and talked some more. Madison felt the old give and take return, a simpatico that seemed charged this morning when they discovered both had the night free. When Operations had interrupted them unexpectedly, they both started, guilty as if caught red-handed, but then dived back into conversation before he left the room. It seemed as though the magic of daybreak was still with her.

"So, you offered a movie," Birkoff said. He leaned forward, elbows on the table.

"Yeah, something like that."

"No, it was specifically a movie. I remember."

"Sure. A movie. But . . . which movie?"

He smiled. "I don't care. No chick flicks, though."

"Okay. Nothing weepy," she agreed.

"Your eye looks a lot better." Birkoff reached across the table to brush her cheekbone gently with the back of his fingers.

"I--. It is better." She froze at the touch. Whereas before with Griffin she had been racked with the tumultuous spasms of shock and adrenaline, now she felt a response born of peace and clarity of heart that spoke to something normal and real buried deep within her soul.

"Good." He withdrew his hand and rested it on the table inches from her own.

"Maybe before the movie we could get something to eat?"

"Uh, sure, that sounds nice." Nice. Inadequate word! She mentally kicked herself, irritated with her own girlishly coy feelings. In the past, she would have responded to the unspoken invitation, consummated the sexual tension, then moved on--or taken advantage of the situation for an enjoyably light liaison. The trouble was, the chance had never come up--until now.

"What time do you want to go? I could get you at your place . . ."

"Whenever you get out would be great. They do let you out once in a while, right?"

"Sometimes," he snorted.

She chucked and lay her hand over his, finding strength in humor. "Well, they're gonna let you out tonight and we're gonna have some fun."

He grinned and clasped her hand back. "I'd better get back or I won't get out tonight. I've got a ton of stuff to do."

Madison withdrew her hand and stood, smiling broadly. "Okay. Just come get me when you're ready. Do you want my address?"

"No, I entered the new residence on your file." He got up and followed her out of the cafeteria, nearly bumping into her when she stopped and turned abruptly, hands on hips.

"Oh, unfair! You've seen my file?"

"Well, only parts of it," he said, abashed.

"If you've seen mine, then I want to see yours," she threatened.

"That's a deal I don't want to refuse." He grinned wider than before.

Momentarily confused, Madison frowned, then realized the double-entendre she had just stepped in. Speechless, all she could do was utter angrily, "Oh! Oh!"

"I'll see you tonight." Birkoff walked away, still smiling a fat self-satisfied smile.

"I might not let you in, you . . . you . . .!" Madison sputtered, choking with irate laughter. She finally spit out, "You pig!" but he had already turned a corner.

He found still waters at the end of the day in the oblivious beauty of sunset. Geoffrey paused from his late afternoon jog and stood staring with the vacuous fascination of a child as colors from a tropical coral sea lifted up into a northern spring sky.

Angry confusion had driven him to run down this dirt lane, trying to find clarity in physical motion. He felt his grasp on the wheel of his own destiny slip as he gathered the reflected results of his actions in secretly gleaned reports. Things were going as planned, but not without a price paid. All twenty-eight men he had sent to Dallas captured or killed! They were the dregs, no doubt, but he could not afford to spend them so quickly. He found himself wanting to strike out for the quick sweetness of blind reaction and kill the operative responsible--Michael.

No. A sweeter reward waits, he thought, but the mellow light of early evening had drained him of purpose and he forgot his drive as he lost his forward momentum. Clouds sailed out into a lagoon of light like islands sped up to God's perception of time, looking as permanent as they were ephemeral. Gusty wind from the afternoon gentled to a balmy caress that promised warmer weather as well as flowers from the growing perfume embedded in its touch.

Where is it? Where is the center? Geoffrey shook his head and closed his eyes, attempting to escape the serenity laid out before him. What happened to my purpose?

The gentle inevitable death of day touched him in a penetrating way he refused to see, even as he felt a change in the air heralding the stars as profound as the change in his wintry body. There should be a way to prolong the day, hold back the night. Another day might come, but he had not prepared for it, and he was lost, pitched back in time to a place and a woman and human treasures misspent. She was pregnant with our child when she died!

Geoffrey shook his head again and he was just a man standing on a quiet lane. He started jogging once more, ruthlessly ignoring the twinges of age and distancing himself from disturbing memories and confusion. He felt annoyed with himself that he fell into sentimental reminiscing without warning, and forced his mind to continue planning for the revenge he so desperately wanted. As stars punctured the serene ocean overhead, he mentally cut his losses in Dallas and began contemplating how best to hamstring Section One.

Nikita walked wearily down the hall to Walter's workshop. How many times had she traversed the same path? There should be some wear to the floor, some evidence of her passage through these dull halls taken hundreds of time, but there was none. Only smooth neutrality stretched from wall to wall and up to the ceiling.

Walter greeted her with a smile and a kind word as she approached.

"Hi," she replied.

"You look tired."

"I am."

"How was the Riviera?"

"I wouldn't know. I never got the chance to get out," Nikita said sourly. She had spent the better part of a week tracking a middle-man who played both sides of the law around Europe, eventually settling into a basic surveillance job on the French Riviera. Her subject hardly ever left his room, however, so Nikita never got the chance to sightsee.

"No?" Walter said, disappointed. "And I so wanted to see an all over tan on you, Sugar."

Nikita grinned in spite of herself. She divested herself of the com equipment and weapons and lay them on the bench. "Maybe next time."

"It's a date, then."

"Don't hold your breath, Walter." Nikita flashed him an affectionate smile from under her hair.

"If you say so."

"I just did. Good night." Nikita left, following another well-worn invisible path that led out of Section. Before she traversed it far, Birkoff joined her. After seeing Walter, she realized how familiar faces buoyed her spirit.

"Hey, Birkoff," she said warmly.

"Hey."

"You heading out?" Nikita was mildly surprised. She knew that he had moved out of Section's walls, but considering how much time he spent inside working, it still seemed an event to see Birkoff leave.

"Yeah."

Nikita walked with him. She looked at him again; happy for the company and feeding her need for the dysfunctional family Section gave her. Besides, Birkoff was the safest person she could seek out to inquire after Michael.

When she was called to remain inside Section on standby last week, she assumed it would be for the same mission Michael led, but she was wrong. Nikita had been sent by herself to track her target--a strong positive statement on her ability as an operative. Michael and his team had been sent to another part of the world after ARM middlemen that very same day. Gently teasing Walter and catching up with Birkoff helped her re-center herself after being away but the process would not be complete until after she confirmed Michael's well being.

"So where are you going?" Nikita asked.

"Out."

"That narrows it down," she said mockingly, then sweetened her voice to ask,

"Have you seen Michael today?"

"He was in his office all day. I think he's left already." Birkoff looked at Nikita from the corner of his eye, recognizing her efforts at nonchalance. Some things never change, he thought.

"Ah." Something inside her stretched loose. "So, really, where are you going?"

His eyes slid away. "Home."

"You said 'out' before."

"Uh," he hesitated. "Out, then home."

"Oo, going out," she teased him. "Who's the lucky girl?"

Birkoff stewed, irritated with the taunting. He loved Nikita--everyone loved Nikita--but the way she insisted on treating him like some kid brother when they were not working rankled. She was not much older than he was and he had been legally an adult for nearly half a dozen years now. He could reconcile himself to the fact that he looked young. He never hesitated to present his ID when buying beer or going to a bar, but his friends knew better and should treat him accordingly.

"I'm just going to a movie with a friend," he replied.

"It wouldn't happen to be a certain female op recently come back to the fold now, would it?"

"Don't you have to debrief or something?"

Nikita grinned. "Report finished and on Madeline's desk."

"Good for you," he said sourly. The corridor ended at a T-junction. "Which way are you going?"

Nikita cocked an eyebrow and gestured to the right.

"Fine. Good night." Birkoff walked quickly down the left-hand hall.

Nikita shook her head at the back of his jacket, still smiling. She knew he hated her ribbing, but she enjoyed it too much to stop. She felt no guilt about making him take a long convoluted course out of Section, either. He had been in for so long he must know every bolt hole and shortcut.

A poke of the call button did not instantly produce the elevator for Nikita. She shifted her weight back and forth, hands on hips, mildly impatient. She felt less tired than world-weary and desired the comforts of her own home around her. The bland subterraneous tunnels of Section seemed to have greater power over her now that she was alone.

Ding.

The doors slid apart silently to reveal Michael standing in the center of the elevator, legs planted firmly and hands clasped behind his back. He wore black, and looked at her, his face stony at first, then formally pleasant. He walked out.

"How was your trip?" he asked softly. The rich familiarity of his voice bolstered her once more, just as her friends' presence had a few moments before.

"Long. Boring." She smiled. It seemed he was going to be polite tonight. "It feels good to be back."

"I won't keep you from getting home, then. Good night, Nikita."

"Good night, Michael."

She stepped aboard the elevator, turned around and adopted the very stance Michael used before. She smiled at Michael until the doors slid shut. Just before the dull metal slabs rejoined, she saw him smile back.

Michael allowed his smile to widen briefly when the elevator doors closed. He had returned to Section on Operations' request and he walked directly to Systems from his chance encounter with Nikita at the elevator. He had seen very little of her in past weeks, for he had been working hard on uncovering the motive behind ARM while Nikita had been used to take up his slack. She had become an excellent agent. Michael felt pride mingled with relief. Before he cleared his mind and walked through the last door, he allowed his heart to hope illogically. Maybe, just maybe she could beat the odds and survive.

"You wanted to see me?" Michael said upon entering the glass-fronted room.

Operations turned from reading text on a monitor. He stood while Madeline elegantly perched on a tall stool.

"It's ARM again; this time in Brazil. Our people stopped a delivery of experimental missile guidance chips from getting into the wrong hands."

Michael nodded.

"This is a transparent ploy," Madeline said. "Someone is trying to draw us out."

"Or attack us," Operations turned his face to her. It seemed they disagreed over possible motives. He turned back to Michael.

"It's a mystery where the hell this organization sprang up from-and I use the term "organization" loosely here. What makes them so dangerous is the incredible variety and numbers of weapons they have at their disposal. What makes them so hard to pin down is their people. We've found again and again that the caliber of people they use is far lower than the weapons. The mistakes they make are amateurish and they never have any useful information."

"Yes," Michael agreed. It was his own reports of encounters with ARM that gave Operations his information. "But the last time we encountered them was obviously a trap. It seems someone might be trying to draw us out so he can attack."

"What else have you found?" Madeline asked.

"My research suggests that they keep everything internal--no online information at all; nothing financial and no direct communications," Michael said. "It's most likely there's someone else behind them. We're not looking in the right direction."

"That fiasco in Dallas netted us several captives." Operations said. Michael ignored his implied criticism. "What did you get from them, Madeline?"

"They had little to offer; however one of them did divulge the location of the main depot."

"Ah!" Operations smiled.

"We're going to ignore the capture in Brazil and concentrate our efforts on this main base, then." Michael said.

"Yes. What we need is to get a team in and hack their system, find out what they're hiding."

Michael silently nodded.

"We've got an initial profile from this morning. I want to be ready to go live tomorrow night. I want some answers to this mystery and I want ARM shut down." Operations turned back to his monitor, effectively dismissing Michael. Madeline smiled and nodded genially. Michael nodded respectfully before he left.

As he glanced at his watch to marshal his thoughts, Michael already had a few theories of his own about ARM. He lacked evidence, however, and considered if and where he could find it. The missile guidance chips in Brazil might prove to be the best resource for now. Experimental computer technology had more identifying marks than mass-produced weapons and was far more easily traced. The time was five-thirty PM. He would ask the Section people in Brazil to put priority on analyzing those chips; perhaps he would find the answers he sought before midnight.

Four minutes past eleven PM saw the required information uploaded into the Section One database from Brazil, complete with diagrams and enlarged photographs. Michael made a note of the efficient work.

"I'm not sure," Simon said when presented with the data. "I recognize some of this, but my specialty is communications networks, not this telemetry stuff." He looked up apologetically at Michael. "Frankly Birkoff has a better grasp on this sort of thing and wider contacts in the industry."

Michael nodded. He slid his cell phone from an inner pocket and dialed a number. The phone rang twenty times before he hung up and dialed another number. By the ninth ring an exasperated sigh escaped his parted lips. The connection completed in the middle of the tenth ring.

"Yeah?"

"Come in now."

For a moment there was silence. Michael shifted his eyes, mildly puzzled. Usually the recipient of such a phone call would quickly signal affirmative and hang up. And usually Birkoff picked up before the second ring.

"Okay." The connection ended and Michael gave the slight aberration no more thought. He left Simon with a request to research as much as he could about missile guidance technology, focusing on the ones captured in Brazil, with the expectation that in the future he would not pass off such a responsibility so quickly to his superior.

"I'll be in my office. Send Birkoff to me when he gets in."

Although quiet and dark, the halls of Section rang faintly with expectation. The quiet felt good, however, and Michael turned on the minimum of light necessary to work in his office. Spreading out printed copies of all reports dealing with ARM, Michael was suddenly struck how none of them included Nikita.

He missed her by his side. Few operatives brought forth the trust in him that Nikita did. Few operatives were as good as Nikita, but he did not trust them as he did her. Somehow, she silently spoke to the animal inside him with the promise of guarding his back when the enemy was all around.

Michael stood over his desk and leaned on his hands, looking at the papers spread beneath his fingers. A report about the engineered anthrax dealt with before by Section One drew his eye and his mind into a daydream of just how it could re-emerge from thin air. He picked up another page, this one with a diagram of a trap-riddled detonator. Walter had personally traced the roots on this one; it had come from Iran. Highly advanced, the design had been intercepted by Section last year. Another graphic leaped out of the jumble--the latest in plastic explosives recently developed by the French and hardly known in the field. Section had taken it from the possession of pathetically drunk Scotsmen rallying around a cause lost hundreds of years ago. Something about it triggered suspicion in Michael's breast, but he had yet to ferret out the cause.

A soft knock on his door interrupted his thoughts.

"How is the mission progressing?" Madeline said as she came in uninvited. She stood across the desk and looked down at the papers splayed there.

"Fine."

"Good. I just wanted to share with you my own observations and a profile of a possible antagonist."

Michael nodded slightly. She would have her say no matter what he did.

"The loss of innocent life when dealing with ARM has been nil. Even the potential for disaster has been slight for the most part. For all these are dangerous weapons, they find their way into the most inept of hands. Someone does not want innocents harmed, nor does he want the lethal potential of the equipment used, except for how it attracts our attention. It seems that Section One specifically is the target of whoever is behind ARM." Madeline picked up a picture of Rhesus monkey, dead from nerve gas with lists of statistics printed neatly below it.

"The types of items we've intercepted are connected as well."

"Oh?" Madeline looked up, surprised. "How?"

Michael glanced at the papers and shuffled them with the tips of his fingers, secretly pleased that he had impressed her. Of all the pitfalls of Section One, he considered her to be the deadliest. "I . . . am not completely sure yet, but I could have confirmation before morning."

"Good." Madeline smiled with her eyes. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No."

"Good night, then." She turned and glided out, leaving a whisper of expensive scent behind.

Birkoff entered Michael's office and somehow knew Madeline had been there. If he had been willing to, he knew he could have puzzled out the reason why he knew, but he had no interest in that arena. He was still seething.

"What do you want, Michael?" he asked.

Michael looked up, mildly surprised at the aggressive tone. "I need you to identify some hardware we picked up in Brazil--guidance chips for missiles. I need to know exactly where they came from."

"Why didn't you call Walter? He's the expert."

"He's busy."

"Busy with what?"

"The South Korea mission prep."

"South Korea? That's low priority," Birkoff frowned, his ire growing. "It's not even going live for at least 72 hours."

"Just do it, Birkoff," Michael said. He stared at the younger man, using the deadly cold promise of dire consequences he could project with a look to emphasize his order.

Birkoff glared back, undaunted in the heat of anger.

"Is there a problem?" Michael asked, his voice glacial.

"No. There isn't. I'll go get your histories," Birkoff said insolently, turned smartly and left. He may have been too angry to care about Michael's silent threats, but he knew there was no choice about doing his job. As soon as he heard his cell phone ring earlier he knew he had no choice.

There had been a frantic scramble through discarded clothes as he and Madison hunted for the phone. They had dragged the blankets from the bed in their haste, confounding the search efforts, laughing at each other. Madison found her cell on the floor by the bedroom door and held it up to her ear.

"Nope, not mine," she shook her head as the faint ringing continued. "Where's yours?"

"In my coat," he said, tossing the sheets aside. He found his jacket in a heap next to the TV, rifled through the pockets and at last produced the phone. He opened it and said, "Yeah?"

"Come in now."

Birkoff had looked at Madison and his voice died. She stood next to the bed, clad in underwear and his tee shirt, her tousled hair black in soft light, face flushed and lips parted, looking back at him. They had been sitting in bed, eating late night pizza when interrupted. Madison had claimed it was to keep up their strength, promising him the night was far from over. They had spent hours in that bed already, laying inarticulate ecstasy on each other. He looked forward to more.

Then, duty called with Michael's voice.

Birkoff had almost said no. Screw the consequences! But he opened his mouth and reluctant agreement came out. "Okay." He snapped the phone shut and set it on top of the TV.

"That's it, isn't it? You've got to go."

Birkoff nodded. He wore only khaki cargo pants, having hastily donned them to pay the pizza deliveryman. Slowly, he began picking the rest of his clothes out from the snarl on the floor. Madison helped, retrieving his boots from under the bed. She set them on top of the bed and stopped Birkoff with a hand on his arm. He straightened and she slid her arms around his bare chest to hug him hard and tuck her head under his chin.

"Come back when you're done, okay?"

He engulfed her with his own hug and breathed in the fragrance of her hair. "I will."

Madison had stepped away. She crossed her arms, held the edge of the white tee shirt and pulled it over her head. She neatly flipped it right side out again and handed it to him.

"Here. You can have it back."

Walking to his work area, he dwelt on that moment and felt warm, surrounded by her scent. This had better not take long, he thought, resentful at missing out on his first night with Madison. He had dozed off in her arms earlier. As much as lovemaking he looked forward to sleeping next to her.

"Birkoff, I think I'm getting somewhere with these chips," Simon said when Birkoff approached the com.

"See how impressed I am," he replied cuttingly. "That might have been useful before I got called in, idiot."

Simon raised an eyebrow and said nothing. He had his own theories about genius and eccentricity; most of them proved by Birkoff on any given day. Birkoff stood next to his station and looked down at the preliminary work.

"Hm," he grunted. "I see where you are. Get out of the way."

Simon shook his head and vacated the chair.

George paused as he passed the open door to Geoffrey's office. Geoffrey sat at his desk, working at the computer. An expression leaned against his face, an expression that George could not put a name to. He stepped closer and knocked softly on the door. Geoffrey stared at him, blank-eyed for a moment, then his brow smoothed with a polite smile.

"George! You startled me. I didn't hear you there."

"You look concerned about something."

"Ah, it's nothing, really. Frankly, I think I've put off the last meal too long," Geoff shrugged.

"I could ask Claire to bring you something."

"No, no need. I could stand to stretch my legs as well." He blanked his screen, casting gray shadows on his face before he stood up. "I'm glad you came along, George. I was about to sprout roots in that damned chair. Would you care to join me for a light repast?"

"No, thank you."

"Then I will see you later," Geoffrey nodded and walked past George and down the hall, his pace energetic. Geoffrey wanted to sprint, but he checked his speed, smiling and nodding to those people still haunting the halls of Oversight. Running always attracted the attraction of the predator and he worked in a house of lions.

He had no intention of finding food, although he thought inviting George to join him was a nice touch of realism. He would need to leave the premises for longer than he could easily cover; leaving a trail of calm, cordial behavior might buy him enough time before he was missed.

Damn them! he thought. Somehow a leak formed, and Section One found the location of his base. The longer he ran the possibilities in his mind, the more he suspected security was lax in the lower levels of his organization. The possible flaws in his plans worried him less than his initial reaction to them.

Geoffrey had panicked and frozen when the preliminary mission profile flickered before his face--and not for the first time these past weeks. Confusion deviled him. Mentally, he had scrambled; tossing aside old memories of blue eyes that loomed sharp and clear from the past to obscure in his mind what should lay quiescent at his command. George's sudden appearance when he felt the most helpless fired a jolt of terror through him, but thankfully it had been no more than a hiccup of time. He found his balance and with it his purpose once more, but his upper lip was still damp with nervous perspiration. He rubbed it dry with lean fingers.

At a remote mainframe interface Geoffrey electronically covered his escape. With the protocols he activated, he could leave the auspices of Oversight for hours with none the wiser where he had gone. He left the building and drove outside the city to the dirt lane he sometimes jogged. From the trunk he retrieved a laptop computer and cellular phone and began taking action to save as much of this disaster as he could, standing next to his car and laying the equipment on the hood.

The base itself was eventually expendable. Section One's discovery of the main depot was not only inevitable but planned. However, he had his own timetable for their actions--and this was too early. A solution suggested itself when the mission roster caught his eye with a name: Birkoff.

Geoffrey flashed teeth in a smile of rapacious pleasure. Operations had a knack for surrounding himself with the best of the best. Geoffrey considered it a flaw as much as a strength, especially when he exposed his assets in such senseless ways. He read further: Michael would lead the team, accompanied by his best people.

I can get the systems man along with Operations' chosen successor in one blow!

He wished he could be there when the rockets flew. Savoring victory would have to wait. He scrolled through the rest of the profile, pausing when a startlingly beautiful woman looked blankly at him from her picture. Nikita . . . Her file had crossed his desk before. She had been identified not only as an operative with exceptional potential, but also as Michael's Achilles heel. Sober, her eyes hinted that they might have a familiar slant, although the color was too light. Geoffrey frowned and wondered briefly why Michael allowed her to live. He had divested himself of the same anchor decades ago, to good advantage.

Increasingly familiar fingers of past and doubt crept through his brain, seeking purchase on the present. He denied them and composed actions to take on the computer under an innocent spring morning sky.

Just how well could Operations manage if deprived of his key people? Geoffrey decided it was time to find out how much Section One's leader would bleed if bereft of his systems man and heir apparent to the throne. Perhaps it will be a wound mighty enough that I can tip the King into defeat.

Walter eased onto his stool, rounded plastic covers in hand. Bombs lay precisely arranged in two rows of five on the bench. He had spent the morning assembling them, testing them; now they awaited the cover with a green/red indicator light. He snapped them on one by one, then set each fist-sized bomb into a case. He finished and closed the lid on ten dull black eggs of devastation. For an instant, he wondered just who might be annihilated tonight, but his well-oiled self-preservation clicked into action and he stopped wondering. Most of them are evil, he thought. Most of the time this is way it should be. He set the case on the appropriate shelf and thought about it no more.

A soft-bristled whiskbroom tidied the top of Walter's workbench with a flick of his wrist sending snippets of cut wire and colored crumbs of insulation to the floor. Walter looked up in long-standing habit while he performed this chore, sensing the build-up of another mission in the quickened pace around com. It would be the mission to strike at ARM, he knew; the same mission he created the bombs for. Soon the shining table under Systems would fill with operatives.

Ah, I'm better than I thought, Walter smiled to himself as his prediction came true so quickly. He watched as Birkoff and Madison emerged from the hallway and sauntered across the floor. Each pulled back a chair and sat side by side. It seemed clear to Walter that they considered themselves unobserved, for they talked with heads close together. Although Walter could not hope to hear what they said, the conversation was peppered with smiles. Walter had seen that body language between two people before many times. Suspicions he had harbored before about the young couple seemed to have been true. I'm a goddamn psychic today, he chucked internally.

Madison nudged Birkoff and they straightened. Birkoff busied himself with his PDA. Nikita walked into Walter's line-of-sight, converging with Michael's trajectory before they, too, reached the table and sat down.

Walter sighed. He wondered if there could be another woman in the world as beautiful as Nikita. She walked tall, comfortable in her own skin and abilities. She wore a tight black skirt well above the knee and casually cut jacket with an accent of vibrant blue. She warmed a man's heart just to look at. It was a pity that looking was all that Walter could ever do. He had no compunctions about sex between people of vastly different ages, but clearly Nikita would never look seriously to him for more than fatherly comfort. The reason sat next to her.

Reservations clouded Walter's opinion of Michael. Michael was a good operative to work with. He pulled an impressive success rating and high survival rate. He cared about what happened to the people under his command, although of late that seemed harder to see. Considering what he had to sacrifice mere weeks ago, was it any wonder? No matter what tragedies he endured--or perhaps because of them--the man ran like deep water. Walter wondered what might swim beneath the deceptively calm surface. He wondered if anyone could know.

More operatives filled in the empty spaces. Madeline slid forward, hypnotic snake and unassuming--for now. Operations arrived last and orchestrated the meeting, catching the attention of all with an uplift of his hands. Walter could have sat in if he so desired, but he opted to remain in the background on this one since there was a choice. He enjoyed watching from a distance the subtle interplay between various characters at the table like an old man might delight in the view from his rocking chair on the porch.

Old man, ha! Walter snorted at himself. If there was one thing he knew for sure, it was that he was not old! He would never be old. One day, he would be shot in the head or blown to bits--he was convinced of it--and that would be that. He derived comfort knowing his fate, knowing that he would most likely seek it out. Waiting for death to stroll up to that old man on the porch seemed a terrible thing to someone who so loved life. Walter put an end to his wool gathering with an abrupt turn away from spying on the briefing table. Thoughts of death could not spook him, but he was superstitious. He wanted the mission to go well. He wanted all his friends to return safely.

At the briefing table, Ops activated a holographic map. Located miles from the nearest town, ARM's depot took over an abandoned strip mine in the middle of dense forest. Operations pointed. "It'll be easy to get the van up to the perimeter."

Birkoff shifted, unhappy as he remembered reports of earlier encounters with ARM. "Considering their heavy-handed tactics, wouldn't that put the van at risk?"

"Your own sims didn't show a significant risk." Operations leaned hard on the word "significant" as he stared hard at Birkoff for a beat before continuing.

"The mountainous nature of the terrain and the remote location will make communications difficult. We need the van there."

Birkoff nodded slightly and said nothing.

"According to intel, the main target is in the remains of the mansion. Old mine tunnels warehouse the actual weapons and other merchandise," Operations said. "Birkoff has more about the mine."

"The entire hill is riddled with tunnels; however, all but the uppermost passageways were flooded years ago. It's why they closed down the deep mining. A cave-in cut miles of tunnels from the inhabited ones, so a few well-placed bombs should close the shafts forever."

"While the larger team deals with that, a small four-man team could get into the data storage and download all the relevant information," Ops said.

"This is too far removed from any substation for a standard back up," Michael pointed out.

"A helicopter will provide airborne backup. It could also be the ace-in-the-hole if there's another ambush." Operations turned off the map. "You've got the profiles. Get the teams in, get the information we need, and destroy everything else."

"Destroy everything?" Michael asked mildly. "Tracing the origins of whatever we find there might be better than what's on the computers."

"No. Take only what's on the computers. Everything else goes under the flame."

************

Birkoff turned a corner and passed through the door to van access. Support personnel performed last minute preparations in the small space, some stacking weapons and tools, others moving them to transport. He inventoried his own stack of equipment leaning against one side of the hall, touching each case as he mentally checked off specific items before they were carried away.

"Hey, leave that one," he said as a tech picked up the last case. "I'll get it myself."

Walter arrived amid the hubbub with his own delivery. He set a dull black case on the floor by the wall.

"Hey, you ready for tonight?" Walter touched Birkoff's elbow.

"Just about."

Walter began to say something but forestalled himself, then said, "Be careful out there."

"I wasn't planning on wearing a 'shoot me' tee shirt," Birkoff fired back.

Walter's lips twitched in amusement. "Well, just be on your toes, okay?"

"Hey, what's with you, anyway?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all." Walter raised his hands and eyebrows in defense of his innocence, which was non-existent, as Birkoff knew well. Walter turned away before Birkoff could call him on it to watch Madison enter the passage.

"Hey, Walter," she said, smiling. "I just left you in the armory! I didn't think I'd see you again so soon. What did you do, take a shortcut?"

"As a matter of fact," he replied. "I did."

"Well, you've got to show it to me sometime."

"What, and miss out on ambushing you like this?" Walter joked. "How about I show you something more, ah, interesting later?"

She sighed, shook her head and refused to rise to the bait, instead directing her attention to Birkoff.

"Hey, nice outfit," she looked him up and down. "That's a lot of pockets, there."

The citrus scent he had first noticed on her last year danced up from her hair. He knew what it was now. It was not some exotic perfume but just her shampoo--and he still liked how it smelled. He wanted to return her flirtatious jibe but even if Walter wasn't standing there grinning at him, other people kept pushing through to the van or out again. He opted for discretion. "Yeah, it is a lot of pockets. Real handy on a mission."

"I'll bet." She smiled and brushed past him. "Hey, I'll save you a seat on the bus."

Birkoff watched her vanish through the door. He looked back at Walter and caught the weapons master looking back at him.

"What?" he said defensively.

"Stay focused on your job," Walter said seriously. "It'll be the best thing for everyone."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play dumb with me. You and Madison got something going."

Birkoff opened his mouth to protest. Walter prevented him.

"You know I can keep a secret. It's just . . ." he sighed. "Madison isn't in administration like your other girlfriends were. She's a field operative. There's a difference."

"I can handle it," Birkoff said, annoyed at being talked down to.

"I hope so. No one has a good track record for hanging on to loved ones in here."

"Yeah, whatever," he said thoughtlessly and picked up his case. A sudden prick of conscience raised his head and he saw sorrow on Walter's face. "Oh, god, I'm sorry! I didn't mean . . ."

"I know exactly what you meant. I hope to god you don't ever have go through the kind of loss that rips your heart out, but you might want to prepare yourself for that possibility."

"It's not like that. It won't happen," Birkoff said, but he looked thoughtfully at the empty doorway leading to the van.

"I'll see you when you get back." Walter gripped Birkoff's shoulder in a rare gesture of sober affection then left.

Seating was filled to capacity in the van. Team members had to endure buffeting with knees or elbows whenever the road got rough. Madison sat on the edge of the bench that ran perpendicular to Birkoff's minuscule computer station so it was her knees knocking into his thigh. He wished they were alone again.

Re-examining the parameters of the mission gained importance to Birkoff as they drew closer to the site. Satellite scans gave a fuzzy, thermal-based picture of how the tunnels lay beneath the hill. He played with the frames again, refining them in as many ways as he knew how to gain the clearest picture of what the operatives would soon be facing. Many times he had gone confidently forward with far scantier intel. Walter had somehow filled him with a distracting sense of unease, and he resented it.

She's a sniper. Snipers are always placed advantageously, and usually protected, he thought rebelliously. He remained absorbed in his work the entire journey, however, and it seemed to him that they arrived far sooner than he expected.

"One minute to deployment," he announced.

The van jerked to a halt and the engine fell silent. Parked due east outside the perimeter fence, various sensors sprouted from the van, a deadly night bloom reaching out and seeking data. Michael sat straight and still by the door. Some of the others shuffled, expelling nervous energy.

"Okay, you're clear to go," Birkoff said.

Michael opened the door and leaped away, followed closely by Nikita, Madison and Paez. Birkoff smelled rain on the faint breeze that invaded as he watched the night absorb Madison's black-clad form without a splash. As their departure cleared the way, other operatives spilled out, quickly forming a fan pattern as determined earlier. Last man out, Griffin secured the door while the driver left from the cab.

Birkoff shoved his attention from the closed door to his sensor readings. Glowing green images refused to resolve into anything coherent as the enormous importance of this mission hit him hard in the heart. All the bravado he showed for Walter and all the reasoning that he had deluded himself with during transit evaporated in an instant as he realized the terrible price he could very well pay for trying to grab a little happiness. He knew he would lose operatives tonight for sure if he didn't start doing his job, so he focused on the task at hand until unintelligible chaos on his monitor finally transformed into recognizable information. Practiced in forcing focus to save his own skin, he realized he could do it for Madison, too.

In misty darkness, operatives melted into the surrounding vegetation until one shadowy form dashed up, nearly invisible, and cut the chain link fence in a daring thrust that Birkoff had seen dozens of times in his monitor. Something in the way this shadow moved suggested Nikita's lanky strength. Realizing Nikita led the wave gave Birkoff comfort; she had luck to go along with her ability--and she was Madison's friend. The others followed her through the rent in the perimeter, covert as germs.

Mineshaft openings pocked the northeast face of the hill, but only three were clear of rubble and led into the excavation. Strip-mined until barren, the southeast flank was a wasteland of rubble, an ugly scar the forest had laboriously reclaimed as the years lengthened. To the north, out of direct sight of the ruined land, a crumbling old mansion stood. Rich owners had lived there over a hundred years ago, while a short distance away, screened by trees, workers' cabins had melted into forest loam, leaving mossy stone foundations and bits of metal flotsam.

Section One operatives wormed along thick brush, following a shallow ravine up the northeast approach to the promontory. The entire team precisely penetrated the three mineshaft openings staring out from halfway up the hill, deposing guards with voiceless barks of silenced handguns.

Michael straightened once past the low heavy timber just inside the tunnel opening. Lamps were strung along the wall, connected by a snaking wire that fed them electricity. He motioned two ops behind him to penetrate deeper into the corridor. They passed him and with businesslike efficiency began placing bombs.

"We're in," Michael said.

"Confirmed," Birkoff replied over the com.

"Nikita, Paez, Griffin; fall in with me." Michael walked further in, handgun leading the way. The halls were interconnected and he soon met up with Griffin.

"Michael, there's hardly anyone here," Griffin said, perturbed. He pulled off his knit hat and scratched his head. "I thought we'd be seeing way more resistance than this. Maybe the semi-automatic weapons weren't such a stupid idea." When single-shot weapons were assigned at mission start, he had voiced his disapproval.

"Are your charges set?"

"Yeah."

Michael requested numbers from the other team members over the com and mentally tallied them. "Birkoff, we've only encountered eight hostiles. Are there any more?"

"I don't see anything else in there. Scans aren't penetrating well."

"What about the headquarters outside?"

"It's clear. Six hostiles there. They aren't moving."

Michael heard quiet but confused voices from the rest of his team as they converged in the tunnel. Something else tugged at his ear, a barely perceptible vibration existing beyond sound. He raised his gun arm on instinct.

"Michael . . . reading some movement near you," Birkoff said, his voice shredded by static and sudden dull thunder. "It looks . . . tunnels behind you . . . osing structural in . . . ity. Get th . . . eam out!"

Michael had no chance to issue a command for withdrawal as the back throat of the tunnel opened wide and a thick rock wall rumbled down. Hostile troops sprang out through rising clouds of dust and over tumbled rocks. Automatic weapons ripped the quiet and tore into unprotected flesh, punctuated by the pop pop pop of single shot discharges. Grimy dust rose higher, choking, while fine dirt slithered down when errant stones fell from unstable moorings in purposely weakened mortar. Michael spent one heartbeat assessing how the enemy emerged, then dove, handgun spitting selective death. One man dropped his Uzi as he died. A second staggered back, finger on his trigger still, and shot a fine line of holes in the walls up to the ceiling until he died and his gun fell silent.

Harsh cries of the dying mingled with guttural grunts of hand-to-hand fighting all interspersed with shouts and shots. Michael crouched low, covering his mouth with one arm to cut the heavy dust. He extended his other arm and fired repeatedly, thinning the hostile attack with surgical precision. His quick action eliminated the machine gun fire, but he estimated the Section team was outnumbered at least five-to-one.

"Birkoff, call in the backup. Now."

"Helicopter's deployed. E.T. . . . -en minutes."

"Ha!" yelled Griffin triumphantly. He made an opportunistic leap at the fallen enemy and gained an Uzi for his trouble. With a click of fresh ammo and a feral grin he sent the hostiles running, ruthlessly shooting any within sight.

"Michael!" Nikita called over the fray. He zeroed in on her voice and followed it to her side. Hostile fire lessened quickly under Griffin's onslaught.

"Are there any more of the team left?" Michael asked. Madison stood nearby; her brow furrowed as she squinted into the dull haze and economically felled the enemy - one bullet for each target.

"Paez had a couple with him. I couldn't see who. They went further in," Nikita quickly explained.

Shots whined about, throwing rock chips at them.

"Go!" Michael ordered, pushing the women in front of him and forcing them all deeper into the maze of tunnels.

Sound died quickly, swallowed by the massive weight of earth all around. They soon caught up with Paez, Holland, and Lei.

"Is there anyone else?" Michael asked.

"No," Paez said stonily. "They're all dead."

Michael took action quickly but unhurriedly. Counting himself and Griffin, seven operatives survived out of the eighteen he began with. Griffin remained missing and only the muffled sound of gunfire and the occasional shout over 'B' com channel bespoke of his status. None of them thought he would live much longer.

Michael asked for and received broken vocal intel over the com from Birkoff on the nature of the tunnels. He removed a radio transmitter from a zippered inside pocket and fingered it for a moment. With a deep breath, he drew in flinty air, detecting a note of mold and moss in the smell. Inexorably, fluid mercury flow of mental processes summoned up an outrageous plan but it left no margin for error. He felt he had little choice however: obviously the mission had been breached before transport ever left Section. He calculated how long they could survive caught in the tunnels, weighed the chances, and made a decision. He signaled the detonators.

"The bombs are activated. Lead the hostiles deeper in and get out before the charges blow. You've got ten minutes." He marshaled his people into groups of two and ordered each team in a different direction. With a twitch of his gun hand he indicated Madison and Lei go down the right hand tunnel. Paez and Holland he sent left.

"Nikita, you're with me."

"What about Griffin?" Nikita asked. Madison's face reflected the same question.

"If he gets out in time, he'll survive."

The teams scattered quickly.

Nikita's soft movements followed Michael, nearly as quiet as his deliberate stride. Denied her presence at his back so long, he found comfort in the stealthy noise she made.

"Michael, he hasn't acknowledged our hails. What if he's hurt?" Nikita asked.

"I'm not worried about Griffin," Michael replied. He switched com channels. "Birkoff?"

A three-second delay preceded his distorted voice. "I've got you, Micha--. . . Ten meters on your -ight the tunnel has hosti--. . . I can't tell how many. More than three . . . least."

"Can we lead them in?"

A crackle, then, "Yeah. Lead them down the --ext left tunnel, take . . . --irst right after that; it'll lead to the main passageway."

Michael relied on hand signals from that point. They advanced slowly. Michael picked up a rock, hefted it. He nodded to Nikita; she nodded back in understanding. He threw it hard past the occupied passage. The rock impacted stone with a flat clack but they were running along the left tunnel before the rock hit. Hostiles boiled out after them. Michael and Nikita flew down the next right-hand opening.