When I woke up the next morning, alone in bed, but still able to see Morgan sleeping not far from me, my heart hurt. So close, but yet so far apart. This is going to be the new normal over the course of this deployment and I have a fear the longing will only get worse when we get moved to Poland then later Ukraine. I tried not to let it get to me as I slowly woke myself up and got out of my bunk.

The common room was blissfully quiet with only Rob awake sitting at the table. I got myself a cup of coffee before joining him at the table. Just as I settle into my seat, Rob patted my forearm and I looked over at him.

"I'm proud of you for finally getting your head out of your ass about her. I could tell she is just as into you as you are of her." Rob said. I gave him a watery smile before leaning into him. Rob wrapped his arm around my shoulder to pull me in closer and melted in his arms.

"I bet you're happy you won't have to hear me complain about the situation constantly anymore." I said when we broke away from each other.

"Oh definitely. Now I'll just have to put up with how sickening in love you are." Rob said as I took my first sip of coffee. I almost choked on it as Rob laughed.

"The boss is in love?" Corporal Dexter Herrera asked while rubbing the sleep from his eyes startling both Rob and myself. Well, I guess that's what we both get, Dexter is our lead scout and reconnaissance expert. He always calls me boss even though I always try to get him to just call me Daniella and he always refuses. Now I know he means it as a sign of respect. When he first started on the team, it took a few months before he felt comfortable telling me that.

"We talked about this last night Dex, were you not paying attention?" Rob asked as I got a good breath in my lungs.

"Oh I was, I was just trying to see if I could get the boss to admit to it again." Dexter said with a smile on his face.

I couldn't help but throw my slide at him. Dexter easily got out of the way of the incoming projectile and laughed on his was to the kitchen area. Rob just snickered as I finished off my coffee. When I was finished I washed my mug out and grabbed my slide back from the where Dexter put it. Once it was back on my foot, I walked into the bunk room and tried to be quiet while getting dressed in my range gear then grabbing my ID and phone on the way out the door. Once I had everything I returned to the common room and found Rob sitting in the same place I left him.

"Any chance you want to come check out the range with me?" I asked as I finished tying my hair up into the tight bun that has become my default hair style.

"Yes, I heard good things about the outdoor long range here. I'll met you in the gear room in a minute." Rob said and stood from his chair.

I walked over to the gear room and started to pull on my vest and and helmet when I heard someone put the passcode into the door. The buzz sounded and Rob came around the door and went over to his gear locker to get ready.

"How much more time is left on your contract?" I asked as I unlocked the cage in my locker to pull out my sniper.

"Same as you, we re-enlisted at the same time, two more years." Rob said as he put on his vest.

"I'm not renewing when the two years are up." I said and turned to look at him.

"What brought this on?" Rob asked as he attached a knee pad to his pants.

"Dad, he wrote a letter for me to read. I think it's finally time I stop running from my life and actually start living it. The Army will always be family, but I think it's time I start to make one for myself." I said and nodded finally sounding sure of myself.

"Look at you finally thinking about something other then Gold team." Rob said and flashed me a smile.

Before we could continue our conversation the door to the gear room opened and in walked PFC Lionel Chapmen and PFC Micah Allen. Rob and I gave each other a look that we'll finish this conversation at a later time as the two younger members of the team started to go through and assemble their gear. Rob and I took our leave and it didn't take us long to find our way to the armory on base to get some ammunition. After we got what we were looking for, one of the MPs was kind enough to drive us over to the sniper shooting range.

The drive was less then five minutes and when we got there Rob and I were pretty happy to find it mostly empty. We both took up our own shooting lanes and assembled our gear. I took some time to load a few magazines while the range workers started to flip up some far targets and put new papers on them. After the range workers cleared out, I got into a prone position and started to look at the targets. I laid still for a few minutes getting a feel of the conditions today, mainly the wind speed and humidity before I made a few adjustments on my scope. Once they were taken care of I started to lock in on the farthest target on the range. Slowly I moved my finger to the trigger and pulled.

My rifle kicked back into my shoulder as I sent the shot down range. The bullet hit my mark and I couldn't help but feel a little bit more content back in the snipers mindset. Over the course of the next hour, nothing came in between myself and hitting targets. All four of the magazines I prepared were spent with all of the bullets finding homes in the back of the targets. By the time I was finished I knew my shoulder would probably be sore for a bit I didn't care. Right now I needed this time on range to get fully back into mission mindset. My three-foot world started to finally snap into place and now that it has, nothing is going to pull me off of it.

After I finished with the last magazine the range worker brought up what was left of my paper targets for me to review. The spread was excellent and I knew that I hit all of my marks once I had the paper in hand. Once I folded up the targets to take back to the barracks with me, I saw that Rob was still shooting. It looked like he was aiming for center mass on a moving target at about mid-range. I lifted my rifle up and used my scope to see he has missed center a few times now.

"How many rounds left?" I asked as I lowered my gun.

"One in the camber, one in the mag." Rob answered as he adjusted his scope. I took a step back from Rob and asked one of the other shooters who were standing around watching us for a round. They quickly found me a bullet and I loaded it in the camber of my rifle before I took a standing position just off to the right of Rob.

Before I could say anything Rob let one of his round fly and it hit just a bit left of center mass. I found a comfortable position and started to make my adjustments as I watched the target move west to east. Just as I was starting to get the timing down, Rob fired his last shot and hit center mass. With one long deep breath I put my finger on the trigger, counted out the timing in my head and let the single round I had fly. To my great amusement, my shot hit smack center of the head on the target.

"Couldn't let me have just one, could you?" Rob asked as he rolled away from his rifle.

"Never" I said as I checked the safety back on my rifle before raising it to rest over my shoulder.

All of the guys standing around cheered us on as we finished up our rounds. Rob got his paper targets and we walked back to our barracks. When we arrived the common room was buzzing with our teammates lingering around. They all didn't mind us entering and quickly went back to what they were doing as Rob and I went to our respective bunk rooms. I pulled the targets out of my back pocked and unfolded the one I took from Rob. The hole in the head really stood out in comparison to the others on the chest. I managed to find a roll of tape in the gear room when we put our gear away so I grabbed it and brought it back here so I could tape up this target. I wanted the reminder.

Once it was up on the wall I checked the time and saw it was almost the time I said I was going to run today so I grabbed my hat and went back into the common room. I didn't bother changing into PT gear as I knew we would most likely be constantly in camos once we leave base. I wanted to run in this to get used to the feeling again. With the gentle ache in my shoulder as a reminder of the start to our training, I downed a bottle of water and a protein bar before I looked around the common room.

"If anybody is going to be running with me, I'm leaving in five minutes." I announced to the group loudly to cut through most of the chatter. The group mostly nodded and I made my way outside to stretch.

It took a few minutes before teammates came outside to meet me. I was also surprised to see Morgan along with them. It made me happy to know that she is going to put in some time to train. Once the five minutes were up, I looked around and saw almost everyone was here with me, the only three that weren't were Rob, Monica and Corporal Felix Decker. They were the three I guessed weren't going to join anyway. Rob and Monica constantly train on there own and Felix was a track star in high school and college so I wasn't concerned about his stamina.

The 5K wasn't bad. Almost everyone kept up a pretty good pace. The only one who was lagging behind a bit was Morgan. I expected it as she doesn't constantly have to be in shape for her job behind the scenes. By the time we came to the end of our run, I was already thinking of having her work out with either Felix or Monica to try and get her speed and stamina up a bit.

After the run, most of the team went into the weight room to get a lift in while I went to shower and get some food for lunch. It didn't take long to get some food and eat and when I was done, I ventured back outside with a notebook. Luckily this base has a lot of lovely grassy area's. I was able to find a big tree and sat underneath is to start drawing up the final training schedule for the team.

It took me about an hour to get everything ironed out in an order that wasn't a mess. Then it took another twenty minutes to re-write it out so it's nice and neat. With the list final, I got up from my seat and made my way to the office and made a few copies of the schedule for everyone. While I was in the office I ran into Major Collins. She informed me that she wasn't able to secure an extra team for this mission so she will be joining us on the ground. With that news I gave her a copy of the training schedule so she can join us out in the field.

When I made my way back into the common room I found that the team was back from their workout so I called a team meeting to hand out the schedule. After everyone had a copy, including Morgan, I went over it with them and any questions they had. There weren't many and the meeting soon came to an end with the selection of a new deployment question. The question this time around is "What is a hobby we don't know about that you love to do and wish you had more time to do it?". The question was asked by PFC Warren Thompson. It was a good question, something I don't think I ever discussed with the team before.

Once the new question was written up on the white board, the team was dismissed to take in the new schedule that promptly starts tomorrow. The rest of the day was spent cleaning out my sniper rifle and helping Morgan assemble her new rifle. When dinner time came, the both of us took a break and went down to the mess hall and got some food together before taking it back to her office for some time alone. We had a nice little dinner date together and then relaxed on the couch in her office. When it started to get late, we headed back to the bunks and slipped into our separate beds.

The next morning I was up early before the team, just like I wanted. Just because I gave them a schedule, didn't mean I wasn't going to throw them some surprises. I was able to get dressed in my gear without anybody waking up. I did wake Morgan up though quietly and told her about what I was about to do and also snuck a kiss from her before getting up and closing the door to our bunks before going over to the guys room. I slipped inside with my airhorn that Major gave me with an evil smirk yesterday then closed the door.

I laid on the airhorn for five long seconds and watched as the men startle awake and jump from there bed. Once I saw most of them awake and looking around I started yelling and getting in each other space to get up and start getting ready. I gave them three minutes to meet me in the common room before I left them and went back over to my bunks. I found Morgan was sitting up in bed with a pair of noise canceling headphones on. She gave me a thumbs up and I hit the airhorn. All of the women jumped awake and I repeated the process.

After they all assembled in the common room I didn't waste any time in getting them out the door and over run the obstacle course. I was pleasantly surprised to find Major Collins waiting for us when we got over to the course. She ran it pretty well with the rest of the team and I think I underestimated her physical ability. Because of this, instead of running a 10k, I only made them do a 5k. When that was over, I released them all to get some food for breakfast before we reconvened for a lift session. While Morgan joined us for the lift, Annabelle left us for afternoon meetings with the brass.

The lift was good, I missed the cathartic feeling of just pushing myself to the limits during the session with my team behind me. After the session, my training for the day was complete and everyone complained about rude awaking this morning. I just laughed at them and was looking forward to other rude awaking's I had planned for them during the next three weeks.

That is how most of the next three weeks went. Constant trainings with some meeting in between with myself, Morgan, Major Collins, Rob and Monica. The first two weeks of training I pushed the team more then I probably should have. Pushing them to their very limits almost making a few of them pass out. But in doing so, it gave me a lot of information about who can keep it together in a battle and when exhaustion has taken over. I wanted to do a lot of the heavier trainings first before I had us start to switch over our sleep schedules. In between the trainings and meetings, Morgan and I have been able to sneak away for some time to ourselves. Most of the time, they were dinner dates that ended with us cuddling and making out on her couch.

There were also a handful of calls home to Mom, Peyton and Dominic. It was nice to hear there voices and let them know what we were up too so far while I still can. Then there were a few calls I also made to Mallory. At first I thought it would be weird to just call her and things were a bit awkward before I apologized for just walking out on her that last day we spent together. After we moved past that moment, things got easier, conversations flowed better, and I even got a care package from her and Logan. It was nice to just talk to Logan and bask in his innocence for a while to forget about everything my team and I were working towards. Those phone calls were the highlights of these three weeks.

When it came time for the final week of training it took a good two days to get used to the change in sleep pattern. Once the team was mostly adjusted to the difference, we started training on the third day with Alpha team. We got a few trainings in with them last week during the day in the training complex that was built for this mission which was nice. But now it was really time to put our teams to the test.

We ran through many different varieties of the mission details just to give ourself some other plans incase we needed to adjust on the fly. We really started to click on the fifth day of training together. Our teams meshed wonderfully and Ryan and I were pretty impressed. We were both pretty happy to have Major Collins join us in the field as she made a wonderful addition to the team.

As we finished training on the sixth day Morgan met us down at the training grounds as the sun was coming up. She didn't even have to say anything for all of us to come to realization that it was time.

"We got the green light about an hour ago. Mission is a go for tomorrow night." Morgan announced to everyone. Ryan and I looked over at each other and took a breath, both of us with one thought in mind. Let's go get this bastard.

a/n: time jump, nobody needs me to write about three weeks of training right? Mission is next chapter. how do you guys think it is going to go?

so for the surprise I mentioned on Friday, if this chapter gets to 15 votes by the end of today, I'll drop the next chapter on Monday. Some comments will also go a long way. I see you guys reading, please get the votes up on these chapters.