I had no intention of posting this until maybe this weekend, but I got off work an hour early and finished the first chapter and figured I might as well put it up now. It also kind of got away from me so it's pretty long. Oops.

Honestly, Summer kind of suspected from the start that this mission was probably going to suck. He just failed to anticipate how much it was going to suck.

Getting assigned to accompany Romeo team to rural Africa to help them take down a prolific and notorious bomb-maker believed to be hiding out in a likely rigged home? Not a big deal. That's Summer's job, the role he plays, and he's good at it and enjoys it.

The point where the mission started to go haywire was when Clay Spenser unexpectedly got appended to it.

That's not because of anything about Spenser himself, really. While Summer doesn't know the man particularly well, he respects him, and they've always worked well enough together in their limited interactions. No, the problem is more the rest of Bravo, and their reaction to having their youngest team member sent off on a mission without them - particularly when he isn't fully healthy.

At the moment, Summer is starting to get a headache from listening to Eric Blackburn go in endless conversational circles with a very frustrated Jason Hayes. Blackburn keeps reiterating the same basic facts: while Spenser hasn't officially been cleared for duty after sustaining a moderate concussion, it's been almost two weeks since his last reported dizzy spell; he's accompanying Romeo in an interpreter capacity only and will be protected just as any other 'terp would be; his role in the mission could be crucial to preventing civilian casualties, as he is the only available outsider who speaks the local language.

Hayes keeps responding with the basic equivalent of 'La la la I can't hear you.' Bottom line is that he does not want his injured team member, rookie really, going into the field without him and the rest of Bravo to watch his back.

Blackburn: He's not technically even going into the field, Jason. He's interpreting. That's it. Not a combat role.

Hayes: Yeah, but…

Finally, mercifully, before Summer's headache can finish escalating, Blackburn tires of the discussion, probably well after nearly any other commander would have, and puts his foot down: The choice has been made, and he doesn't have the power to change it. Given that the bomb-maker is believed to have married a local woman and to have had multiple children with her, Clay is possibly the only person who can prevent this op from turning into a very ugly tragedy. Clay will not be required, expected or allowed to do any actual fighting. The conversation is now over.

Summer's relief at that proclamation is short-lived, because Hayes's attention immediately turns to him. In a clipped tone, Bravo's team leader says, "You watch out for him, you got it?"

Summer manages to keep his sigh internal. "I'll do the best I can, but if this place is rigged like we expect, I might be a little busy." He hesitates, then goes with full honesty: "I can't split my focus when lives depend on me getting my job done, and doing it right."

Jason backs off a little, apparently seeing the truth in that. "I get it. Wouldn't expect you to. Just ... as much as you can, okay?"

Summer's answering nod draws an approving clap on the shoulder from Hayes, and then they both move on. Summer spends the next few hours poring over every piece of information he can find regarding the target's known methods. He commits diagrams and details and materials to a memory that borders on photographic. Summer may give off a chill, laid-back vibe (especially when it annoys uptight Texans), but part of the way he maintains that calm is by making sure he is always as prepared as he can be.

And when surprises do arise (because in this line of work it's not always possible to be fully prepared), well, he handles those too. His mama was a trauma surgeon back in the day and a damn good one. He inherited her steady hands and her ability to adjust on the fly, to slow a critical situation down and think through it.

He knows she's proud of her son, of the way he has put into use the gifts she passed down. He is also aware that his job terrifies the hell out of her because she knows in such gory, wrenching, vivid detail exactly what could end up happening to the baby she bore and raised.

She never tried to stop him, though, because that's not who his mama is. His father is the free spirit, the kind, sensitive hippie; his mother raised her children to stand on their own two feet, to build their own lives, to make a difference.

Summer is trying his best to honor both of those legacies.

After the long flight to Africa, he and Spenser meet up with Romeo team to go over the details of the mission. Summer is not overly familiar with Romeo, though he has met them all a few times before. The team leader is named Bridger: medium height, salt-and-pepper hair, entirely average-looking but for the unnervingly intense gaze. He doesn't talk much but gets listened to when he does. Seems to run a pretty tight ship.

Summer can roll with that for a few days; just has to hope Spenser can too. He has picked up the impression that Hayes maybe gives the kid a little more leeway than some team leaders might.

That hope lasts about 30 seconds, right up until Bridger lays out the infil plan.

From the corner of his eye, Summer sees Clay start to fidget like he's got fire ants on his ass. Spenser holds out for a minute, then finally comments, "Lot of open ground to be crossing right at the end there, isn't it?"

The entirety of Romeo team looks at him. Bridger straightens up, and for a moment there's tense silence. Then Romeo's leader asks softly, "You got a better idea?"

Everyone in the room knows that the answer he's looking for is 'No.' It's not the one he receives.

Spenser gives that insolent shrug and half-smirk he's perfected. "Personally? I'd come in through the gully and then the trees, back here. Better cover. Less likely to get picked off from a window."

Bridger stares him down. The man's stillness is unnerving; Summer is good at reading body language, but Bridger holds himself so neutrally and precisely that he has almost no tells to read.

"Believe it or not, I am aware of the benefits of cover. If you had looked more carefully, you might have noticed the goat pens right on the other side of those trees. Have you met a goat before, Spenser?"

Clay isn't smirking anymore. He gives a short nod.

"Then you'll know that they are loud and tend to notice the presence of strangers. Now, something else you should probably know is that interpreters don't make tactical decisions." Bridger's tone is calm as steel. "Do you understand that?"

With visible effort, Clay clenches his jaw shut on whatever response he wants to give. "Yep," he says through gritted teeth.

"Good." Bridger holds his gaze for a moment longer before turning away, leaving some awkward shifting in his wake.

Damn.

Summer sends up a silent (and probably futile) prayer that Spenser will keep his mouth shut until he needs to use it to interpret.

The mission is scheduled for just after dusk, with a two-hour truck ride leading up to it. There's a sort of frosty, silent truce that holds up until about halfway through the journey, when Bridger suddenly looks over at Clay and says, "I knew your dad. Back when he was operating."

A beat, then Spenser responds sardonically, "I'm sorry."

Bridger nods almost imperceptibly. For a moment, Summer thinks maybe that will be the end of it, but then the master chief adds, "Must have been nice, starting out a step ahead like that. Second generation."

A muscle jumps in Spenser's jaw. He asks with an edge to his voice, "Have you met Jason Hayes?"

Even Bridger's impassive face shows a hint of surprise at the seeming non sequitur. "Sure, plenty of times. Operated with him before."

"He strike you as a guy who'd draft somebody because of who their father was?"

Bridger's eyebrows go up a bit. "No. Never said he did."

Spenser isn't having it. He crosses his arms over his chest, leans back, and closes his eyes. The conversation is clearly over.

Bridger watches Clay for a minute, wearing a barely perceptible crease on his forehead. Then he gives a faint shrug, apparently decides to let it go, and joins the kid in napping the rest of the way.

All this secondhand tension is straight-up unhealthy. Summer meditates to clear his mind of it.

The village where Romeo's target resides is really more like a compound, just a scattered collection of houses nestled up against the base of a small range of scrubland hills. There's only one way in or out: a loosely graveled dirt track that barely qualifies as a road.

As dusk falls, they slow to a crawl, ease the truck off the road, conceal it in a thick stand of brush and trees off to the east, and then hike the rest of the way in. It's full dark by the time they reach the village.

The house where the bomb-maker reportedly lives is dark and silent, with only maybe the faintest hint of light emanating from somewhere deep inside. Getting in and out quietly may be a tall order, but it would be ideal; they've got no sure way of knowing just how many hostiles these houses hold nor what said hostiles might be armed with, and would rather not find out by being forced to engage them all.

As expected, the bomb-maker's house is rigged.

And there's a problem. One Summer very much did not anticipate.

It's much too simple. This asshole bomb-maker, he knows what he's doing. Some of his designs might even be called elegant if he didn't use them to blow the limbs off innocent men, women and children.

This? This almost looks perfunctory. Takes Summer all of maybe 10 or 15 mikes to defuse.

He sits back, trying to shake the sense that something is very off, and announces that he's done. Bridger tries to call in their pending entry and discovers that, while local comms seem to still be working, he can't contact base, a revelation that twists the vague uneasy feeling under Summer's breastbone into a hard knot. A glance at Clay shows that he looks just as unsettled as Summer feels.

Bridger shrugs it off, saying some long-range interference isn't unexpected. Summer checks and re-checks to make sure he didn't miss something, and then in they go, leaving a couple members of Romeo outside as security.

The house doesn't contain any further bombs. It also doesn't seem to contain any people.

Spenser calls out in the local language, loud enough to be heard but soft enough to hopefully avoid waking the neighbors. There's no answer from the darkness. They sweep through, clearing rooms. Still nothing.

Something is wrong here. Something has to be wrong.

There's an upstairs. Summer is helping clear it, debating whether he should give voice to his intuition, when Valdez, Romeo's 2IC, comes on comms sounding near panic. "Where's Spenser?"

Bridger stops. "What do you mean 'where's Spenser'?"

"I swear to God he was right here!"

Bridger mumbles something unintelligible. They finish clearing the final room upstairs and head back down. Romeo's team leader asks, "Is there a basement or something? How long has he been missing?"

"I don't know, and I don't know," Valdez responds tightly.

The group is just joining back up in the main room downstairs when the mystery of the missing Spenser is solved by his voice on comms, sounding breathless and urgent. "Romeo One, we've got a problem. Large enemy force inbound, ETA 10 mikes."

To Summer's surprise, Bridger doesn't stop to question or argue, instead immediately ordering his team, "Collapse positions. Fall back to exfil." His voice thrums with knife-edged tension when he asks, "Spenser, what's your location?"

There's a brief pause. "Ah, hill to the west. Had to go high to get a look down the road."

Summer is close enough to see the exact moment when Bridger's face goes a shade paler.

To get to that hill, Spenser had to cross the road ... the same road that's about to be overrun. They've got minutes before he's cut off from them.

"Get to exfil, now," Bridger snaps. "Run."

"Copy." Judging by his breathing, Clay is already on the move.

It's not good enough. He doesn't make it in time.

The rest of the team does. By the time the enemy force arrives, they've disappeared into the concealment of the trees to the east side of the road. They make it to the truck. Spenser isn't there.

They wait through a handful of minutes that stretch like hours. He doesn't show up. He doesn't answer their calls over the radio.

Summer says, quietly, "If he's trapped on the other side of that…"

"But he can just go parallel to the road until he passes them and then cross, right?" Valdez asks. "Right, Bridge?"

Bridger's face is grim. "Not much cover on that side. Hillsides are pretty barren. Unless he gets real damn lucky, they're gonna spot him."

Valdez rocks forward, then back. "Okay. Okay, then what do we do? We wait or-"

From behind them, down the road, there's gunfire. Bridger swears under his breath.

Summer's heart pounds in his ears.

You watch out for him, you got it?

They have to go back.

Clay couldn't just pretend to have a functioning brain cell for one single night and stay his ass where he was supposed to be, so now he's up against it, and they have to go back for him.

Bridger wavers, and for a moment Summer thinks he's going to give the order to pull out.

The moment passes. Bridger swears quietly again, orders two of his guys to stay with the truck; everyone else to come with him.

They can't take on the whole damn force. Everyone involved is aware of that. But the concealment on this side of the road is good, and if they can just get near enough … if Clay can somehow survive long enough to make it across to them…

As they get closer, the gunfire dies away to nothing, to a windswept silence. Nausea bubbles in Summer's stomach at the thought of why they might have stopped shooting.

The line of enemy vehicles has filled the road leading out of the village, parked all in a row. Everything is eerily silent. There's no one in sight. No Clay. No combatants.

They make it nearly to the edge of the road without needing to leave the trees. Gun up, Summer sweeps his night vision toward the village, up the hillside, back down the road behind the line of enemy vehicles. Nothing. It's like Spenser disappeared into a black hole and took everyone else with him, and it feels every bit as wrong as that empty shell of a house did.

Bridger takes a single step outside the treeline, and the night explodes into shrapnel and fire.

Summer comes back to himself shaking and semi-blinded, scrabbling through brush for his gun. There's shooting and yelling and the crackle of flames and he can't figure out where any of it is coming from. His ears are ringing.

VBIED. One of those trucks was a goddamn VBIED.

Someone - Valdez - grabs Summer by the arm, drags him back into the trees. One of the others has Bridger slung over his shoulder. Stumbling and stunned, they run, dodging bullets, tripping over branches. By some miracle, they fade into the jungle. They make it back to the truck, and the road ahead sits empty.

Valdez is 2IC. It's his call.

Fingers twisted in the hem of his shirt, the man looks down at Bridger, who's unconscious, a mess of blood and shrapnel.

When Valdez looks back up, Summer already knows what he's going to say to his teammate in the driver's seat. It's the only thing he can say.

"Go. Get us the hell out of here."