Cliff Ryder - The Finish Line

He settled for fieldstripping and cleaning his weapons, making sure every part was clean, clear and ready for action. While he did that — his time spent in Marine recon ensured that any time he held a weapon for more than an hour, it got cleaned and reassembled so that he was sure it was working properly — he went over the mission, examining everyone's role and seeing how he could have executed better. After all, he was sure Cody was going to ask him that very same question later on, and he wanted to be ready with an answer.

It was hard enough coming into a team as a rookie, but so far David had been shown up by the first woman on a Midnight Team not once, but twice. Tara's composure when she had taken the burst on her chest armor, as well as her foresight in recovering the hidden camera at the entrance, had earned her high marks from their team leader and the others. David's impetuous move to pursue the hostiles, while gaining them useful intelligence, had also earned him the label of team cowboy, which was as much a curse as a nickname.

David knew cowboys were simultaneously admired and distrusted for their penchant to bend or break the rules of the espionage game. While they could be very effective in the field, they were also dangerous for the rest of the team, since they were often the only ones to survive their antics unscathed. That had inadvertently been the case with his last Marine recon team. The squad had been out on patrol when a shaped IED had detonated near the lead vehicle, flipping it and blocking the road. As the other members had moved up to assist, insurgents had completed the ambush by attacking with RPGs and AK-47s. In the ensuing firelight, each one of the other squad members was either killed or wounded so severely he would never fight again. David came through the entire ambush without a scratch, and was awarded the Silver Star for intrepid gallantry and courage under fire when he not only carried two of the wounded to safety, but also held off the insurgents until reinforcements arrived. After his second tour was over, he had been slated for Iraq, but had come to the attention of the folks at Room 59 first.

It was a different game, played with a whole new rulebook, one that, he had to admit, he was still learning at times. Although Midnight Teams had huge latitude in carrying out their missions — when they were on an assignment, only a director could alter their mission or recall them — they also had to maintain even more of a low profile than the standard operative. Each operation had to be accomplished with a minimum of fuss, muss and public visibility. And I suppose chasing an SUV through a public park qualifies as exactly what we don't want, he thought.

"Hey, I think I've got something." Tara's voice broke his musings. David reassembled his HK pistol before getting up and going over to her improvised desk, crowding around it with the other two men.

The brick had been cut away, and the small digital camera now lay in several pieces on the desk. A tiny memory chip was loaded in Tara's universal reader, which could access almost anything, even proprietary chips that weren't on the open market. Lost in her work, Tara looked up with a start. "Jeez, I didn't expect all of you to come galloping over."

"Well, since we're here, what do you have?" Kanelo gently prodded.

"Well, there wasn't a lot — they must have been replacing it daily, but it did activate whenever it detected movement, and kept going for about a minute after the scene cleared. But take a look at this."

She brought up a snippet of video showing a tall, lean, bearded man walking up the steps arm in arm with a shorter woman with long, dark hair. They talked and laughed, and at the top step both looked around furtively before sharing a lingering kiss.

"Yeah, so? That's the head bloke we were supposed to bring back alive, as I recall." Robert snorted his disgust. "Until those other bastards came in and bollixed up the whole op. Ruined a perfectly good smash-and-grab, they did. Dunno who the skirt is."

David leaned in for a closer look. "I think that's what Tara's pointing out — the woman. I don't know about you guys, but I don't remember seeing a dark-haired, female body anywhere on the premises."

"Hey, a couple of those tree-hugging hippies had long hair, so they all look alike to me," Robert said. The remark earned the wiry Welshman a cuff on the shoulder from Kanelo.

"Stop spouting kek, you dumb bastard, and pay attention." Instead of biting the tall black man's head off — like he most assuredly would have done if David had said something like that — Robert just shrugged and turned his attention back to the screen.

"Tara, please rewind it to where she's almost facing the camera." David leaned in for a closer look. "No, she's completely unfamiliar. I think you've just found our missing piece. Why don't you isolate that and send it to Primary for further analysis?"

"Right."

Cody came out of the back room just as his cell chirped. "M-One…Key word is 'isolate'…Go ahead…You're outside?…Great, we'll pop the garage door so you can pick up the package, just give us a minute." Catching Robert's gaze, he nodded at the door leading out to the garage. The smaller man slipped out. "When you see it open, come on in." He snapped the phone closed. "What's happening out here?"

"We isolated a photo of the missing terrorist group member." Tara waved him over. "Here she is."

Cody glanced at the monitor. "Okay, how are we gonna find her?"

David replied without taking his gaze off the woman's face. "With London's city surveillance program, now that we have a face, its possible they can pick up her trail from the house. Primary's biometrics program should be able to read her and track her down, even if she's tried to disguise herself."

"Except I got one question." Kanelo stood apart from the rest, fingers stroking his chin. "Just how did she get out of the building? All of us were there watching with thermal vision as we fought the other strike team. At no point did anyone sound off about another living heat source — they were either dead or shooters. She couldn't have hidden inside, so she must have left via another route."

"Over, under, around or through," David muttered as he stared at the screen.

Robert, who had come back from the garage, frowned. "The tech boyos have the package. What's he mumbling about over there?"

David didn't rise to the bait; he was still engrossed in the picture on the screen. "It's something we learned during recon training. There's four ways into or out of any situation. Over, under, around or through. Through wasn't an option, since we locked the ground floor down. Over wasn't possible, since everyone was on the roof at one point or another. She didn't go around us, either, unless she was able to turn invisible, which leaves…"

"Under." Tara's fingers blurred over the keys on her laptop. "I'll send this out to Primary and suggest that they find a map of the current sewer system in a three-block radius from the house. If the techs can get the data downloads of the cameras in the surrounding area, maybe we'll get lucky and spot her."

Robert's gaze flicked to Cody. "Hey, boss, you think it could be worth going back to the house and checking the basement level, see what we can find out there?"

The team leader thought about it for a few seconds, then shook his head. "Our profile is already too high as it is, and it's possible that nothing will be gained by snooping around a place we already shot up once. We'll let the eggheads at HQ run with this ball for a while, see what their super Cray mainframes can come up with. Good work, everybody. David, I'd like a word with you in the next room." He turned and walked back down the hall.

With a heavy heart, David followed him into the back bedroom. It was sparsely furnished, with a small table and chair, and a cot in the corner. Cody didn't say anything at first, just motioned the other man toward the chair.