Reno knew the mission had gone horribly wrong when he found Vincent lying in a pool of his own blood on the concrete floor. Even though there was a gaping hole in the man's stomach, he still leaned down to check the pulse before calling it in. Vincent's skin beneath his fingers was cold, and there was no trace of a heartbeat. It was really no surprise that he wasn't breathing, as most of his lower torso was simply gone.

Reno grimly relayed instructions to his backup team, and settled in to wait. There were days when he thought it was probably a bad idea that they'd talked Vincent into returning to the Turks – if anybody deserved to enjoy a normal retirement, it was him – and this was definitely one of them. The backup team was a least an hour behind him, meaning it was just him and the corpse for some time yet.

It was just a few minutes shy of that when red eyes popped open, staring blankly at the ceiling for several seconds before a dry voice said, "Ow."

"Ha ha," Reno replied. "You have any idea how creepy that looks?"

"You want to try it from my position," Vincent pointed out. He looked down at his stomach. His shirt had a circle the size of a dinner-plate missing from it, the edges charred and blood-soaked. The wound, however, had shrunk to a raw-looking patch of skin about the size of a fist. "I don't think those were really designed for shooting people."

The sound of an approaching chopper filled the air. "That's for us," Reno said, relieved to get out of there. "You good to go?"

"I think my spine might need a little longer to heal properly."

Reno shuddered. Yeah, sometimes he really wished that Vincent had stayed retired.