Ben Forsythe was having a crappy day. He'd been in meetings virtually all day and then when he finally had a free moment and dialed Tory's number he got her voicemail. He rubbed the back of his neck and almost hung up without leaving a message. He couldn't tell her where he was, didn't know when he could call again. But he needed to hear her voice. Needed for just a second to remember who was waiting for him at home.

"Babe," he said, just to needle her. "It's me. Don't know when I'll be able to call again. Be good."

He hung up. They had email available to them but seldom used it because his team was always on the move and no one wanted an electronic trail of where they'd been.

It was dry and hot in the desert of Bezrhaan and he was sick to death of sand. He shaded his eyes and wished for a minute he was a different man. The kind who could walk away and never look back. The kind who could blithely go about his everyday life and never know that there were men and women who were risking their lives to enable that.

But he wasn't. Ben's father had been an undercover CIA agent--a man whose government's only acknowledgement of his dad's death overseas while on an assignment was a star and a date on a wall in a government building. Ben was starting to think that he wanted more than that at the end of his days.

He entered the make-shift command center and awaited his orders. He worked for an exclusive government group called LASER. Their mandate was simple and focused--they rescued service men who were lost. They used whatever means were necessary.

With the help of aa.gov he'd embedded one of his men with a television news crew. Andrea Jancey was Tory's protégé at UBC--she'd also attended the prestigious Athena Academy. Andrea had the same skills that Tory did which meant she could handle herself in any situation. Ben had a lot of respect for the Athena grads he knew, including his sister Alex.

For this mission Ben was using Andrea and her news crew to get close to the insurgents fighting in the desert of Berzhaan. His intel had identified the group under Abbas leader Al Ahib as having captured two Marines. Ben's team was in country to get them out. He had a small team of seven men. They worked together for a long time now and they knew each other well.

Ben's cover was has an international playboy and he fit the role well. He was from an old-money family. His mom was a jet-setter as was his grandfather. Ben's father died when he was a boy and it wasn't until he'd joined LASER and gone to a briefing at the CIA that he realized his father had been a government agent similar to him. It made Ben feel closer to the father he really didn't have the chance to know.

"Any word from Manning?" he asked Lewis Salvo their communications guru.

Salvo didn't glance up for the frequencies he was monitoring on their personal radios. He was also charged with managing the satellite, navigation/GPS and emergency radios. Ben had seen Salvo coax a waterlogged radio back into action. If anyone could raise a signal on Manning it was Salvo. "Nothing, yet, he missed the last check-in."

Ben leaned over the shoulder of Paul O'Neill their computer expert. He was using satellite images to search the location where Manning should have been as well as running a GPS trace. Everyone on the LASER team had a GPS homing beacon in their cell phones. Manning's cell phone was still in-country but not where he should be.

The itching at the back of his neck said that his crappy day was about to get worse. And there was nothing he could but wait for Manning to check in. To be honest this feeling right here was the main reason he'd always resisted a desk job. He couldn't stand to not be doing something.

What the hell was going on?

"Sir, I think you should see this."

Ben turned to Robert O'Neill who was currently monitoring the cable news networks as well as watching all the satellite monitors. Ben leaned over Robert's shoulder. Shannon Conner appeared on the screen.

Ben knew Shannon through his younger sister Alex and his girlfriend Tory. They'd both gone to school with Shannon at the Athena Academy. Shannon bore the unlikely title of being the only student ever expelled from Athena. He knew that she and Tory didn't really get a long. Though Tory wouldn't say why, Ben had always suspected it went deeper than mere competitiveness.

"ABS news sources have learned that UBC reporter, Andrea Jancey, a translator and her cameraman have been taken hostage. Here is the exclusive video that we've obtained."

Shannon's image faded to be replaced by a video feed that showed Andrea, Paul Manning and Cobie McIntire.

The three said nothing only held a copy of today's newspaper underneath their faces that said showed the date. Andrea had a bruise along the side of her face and Paul's nose was bleeding, Cobie just looked up in shock. The video went black and Shannon was once again back on the screen.

"ABS news will be following this story and will keep you up to date."

Ben tossed the head phones down and paced back to the command center. Well now they knew why Manning hadn't checked in. "When was this video shot?"

Robert and Lew both scrambled to get the information. Ben cursed under his breath. He had to contact his CO and find out what was next. Manning was one of his guys...more than that Paul was a friend. Ben's gut said to go after Paul now and retrieve him.

But they were already on a mission and he couldn't make that type of decision without orders. He put a call into his CO and set up an in-briefing with the field general in Berzhaan. Ben knew that their mission wouldn't change in essence they still had to find those two chopper pilots who'd gone down in the mountains only now they were going to have to retrieve Manning and the t.v. crew he'd been using as cover.

Immediately he started processing information. Their mission was still to get the Marines out but now they'd have to find and retrieve Yancey, Manning and McIntire as well.

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