Cliff Ryder - The Finish Line

David didn't move. "If it's all right with you, I'll stand, sir."

"Fine by me." Cody walked over to the chair and plopped himself down, rubbing a hand over his face. "Tell me what happened at the house today."

That was the question David had been dreading ever since they had returned. Nothing to do now but face the consequences. He stiffened against the wall, straightened his arms down at his sides, and stared at a point above his commander's head. "Sir, I disobeyed a direct order and compromised the security of the mission and my teammates."

"And in doing so, you learned valuable information that we wouldn't have known otherwise. However, I have to balance whether the risk taken was worth the reward. It is possible that we may have found out that the woman existed through other means, either on our own or through Room 59's other people. What is certain is that you forced us to expose ourselves and our vehicle to the enemy when we had to pick you up in the street. By rights I should have left you there to make your way back to the safehouse — and avoid the authorities — on your own. But that kind of lesson would carry too high a price if you had failed."

"I wouldn't have failed, sir."

"No, I don't believe you would have." Cody rose from the chair to pace the length of the small room. "Why was there a delay at the start of the operation?"

"Sir, I did not have all of the available evidence regarding the status of the house, and therefore made the decision to hold until I had gained a clearer picture of what was happening."

"By the time we had that picture, the hostiles were already inside and taking out our targets."

"Yes, sir. However, I did not want our team to rush in without assessing the situation and having a solid plan of action. I gave the order to engage the hostile team when I felt confident we could do so with the maximum chance of success."

"Our success rested on taking the people in that house alive, not dead. You and your other team members have to execute the primary mission and handle any other friction that comes up, regardless of what it is or how incomplete your data is."

Cody stopped at the window and clasped his hands behind his back. "I read your file, including your psych profile, before I agreed to take you on." He continued despite David's surprised look. "Unlike the armed forces, directors allow Midnight Team leaders more flexibility in assembling our units. I don't believe you're a cowboy — your actions in Afghanistan and your plan to stop those shooters in the park tell me that. And yet you jeopardized not only yourself, but your entire team by pursuing unknown hostiles against orders. So how do I reconcile that — do I have a very good operative in my squad who is prone to only occasional lapses in judgment?"

"Sir, you have an operative who will do whatever is required to get the job done…" David could have left it at that. It would probably have satisfied his leader. But he didn't want to leave anything in the air between them, even if that meant he would be reassigned. "Even if that means reinterpreting the directives of the mission at times."

"Or my orders?" Cody asked.

"Sir, at the time I responded in what I felt was the appropriate manner for the situation. I chose to follow the hostile team myself because — because I would not order another team member to do something that I wouldn't do myself."

Cody turned on his heel and came right up to David's face. "Is that the real reason you went off hotdogging by yourself? Or do you think you're just that much better than the rest of us? That you don't need a team to accomplish a mission?"

"Sir, I do not believe that. I rely on my other team members as much as I know they rely on me to get the job done."

"Do you, now? I wish I could believe that. But I don't know if I can. I'm sure your other teammates are thinking the same thing. For these units to be successful, each member has to know — without a shadow of doubt — that when they're going into a room, the person on their left will terminate every hostile on their left, and the person on their right will terminate every hostile on their right, without fail or deviation from their proper course of action. When doubt creeps in about a member, everything changes. They look at you differently, they act and react differently, and those different reactions — the ones that aren't in their training — are what gets hostages, them or you killed. In our line of work, there can be no hesitation, no doubt about any of us, especially about each other. If there is, then that member has to leave the team. I can't make it any clearer than that."

David had not moved an inch during his leader's words. "Sir, I understand."

Cody pulled back a bit. "If we weren't still on duty, I would have ordered you to stand down already. As it is, replacing you now with another team member increases the chances for more friction during the operation, so you're staying for now. When you have the chance, I'd advise you to give some serious thought to what you're doing here and whether this is right for you. That's all."

"Thank you, sir." David resisted the urge to salute, but instead walked to the door and opened it.

"David?"

He paused, half expecting Cody to change his mind and deactivate him. He turned back. "Sir?"

"For what it's worth, I think this is the right place for you. I just don't know if you believe that. Think about it — and that is an order."

David nodded. "Thank you, sir." He walked out into the living room slowly, aware of, but not meeting, the stares of the other team members.

"Hey, you all right?" Tara asked, ignoring the dark looks of the other two men.

"Hmm? Yeah, fine, thanks. I just — I'm gonna head out to the garage."

It was a lame answer, but the only reasonable one he could give. David walked down the short hallway, now fully aware of their stares boring into his back, and hating every second of it. Stepping into the single-car garage, he closed the door and leaned against it.

What am I doing here? At that moment, he felt trapped — by his situation, by the team, by the room itself. Normally David would have handled things by going for a long run, the mindless, repetitive exercise clearing his brain of everything else and allowing him to attack the problem with a clear head. But they had to stay put, ready to move out on a moment's notice. And that was the real problem.

David knew that Cody had done what he needed to do — address the breach in the team's operating procedure as soon as possible. However, their meeting had also intensified David's already growing feeling of doubt in himself, and he knew that could be even more crippling to a spec-ops member. Once he started doubting himself, the fear of screwing up, of putting another team member's life in jeopardy through his actions, could balloon until he became paralyzed into inaction, not wanting to do anything because it might hurt someone.

That's the risk that we live with every single time we go out, he admonished himself. Taking a deep breath to try to clear his head, David immediately realized his mistake. Although they had wrapped the body of the dead hostile, the enclosed space still smelled of him, still stank of blood and shit, even over the bleach cleanser the techs had used to destroy any evidence of his being there in the first place. The combination of odors was nauseating. He walked over to where the corpse had been placed and squatted down, seeing the lifeless form in his mind's eye as if it were still lying there, wrapped in the sheet they had stripped off the bed.

What if that wasn't a hostile lying there? What if it was one of my own? And what if he died because of my mistake? Those were the questions that David couldn't answer to his satisfaction as he stared at the empty concrete, seeing a sudden, terrible vision of his team members lying in front of him, their sightless eyes accusing him of the worst crime of all — failing them.