Disclaimer: Guess what I don't own Alex Rider

AN: Had the idea for this story kicking around in my head for a while. Essentially, Alex saves a girl his own age, and then she shows up at his school, causing all sorts of havoc in his life. Ghost by John Ringo is a large inspiration for this story and I can't help but feel that Alex Rider would grow up to be disturbingly like Mike Harmon/Jenkins. For anyone who hasn't read John Ringo's books especially the Ghost series check them out. They are the Pantheon of military fiction. Reviews are always appreciated.

The entirety of K-unit, a military helicopter pilot, and a sixteen year old were sitting in the passenger section of a Blackhawk helicopter waiting for the go ahead. The tension was palpable and Alex Rider was getting more and more irritated with every passing second.

After another five minutes of pained silence Alex Rider stood up and said, "I'm going."

The pilot was nervous and said, "You can't. We haven't been given the go ahead yet. You'll get court-martialed."

The teenager just shrugged and said, "They can't court-martial someone who doesn't exist, and even if they do decide to have me thrown in jail, I can't sit around knowing that those women are probably going through hell while politicians bicker. I'm going to rescue them."

K-unit seemed to agree and turned to Wolf for their orders. Wolf was sick of waiting to, and said, "If he's going were going. We can't just leave them there. You know what terrorists do to women they've captured." Each member of K-unit nodded. They were getting their game faces on.

Alex interrupted them, "No I'm going alone."

"With all due respect Cub, that's bullshit. We're coming with you." Wolf said in a hard voice.

"If you come with all of us and all the hostages are going to die. We don't have enough men to take the compound, so the only available option left to us is to sneak in. I can't do that if you guys are with me. You stick out, and you don't know the language, We'll be dead within a hundred feet." Cub explained in a no nonsense voice

Wolf seemed to be struggling to find a hole in Alex's logic but was finally forced to admit defeat. The teen had been doing recon in the area for several weeks and he could now blend into the crowds of militants perfectly.

Wolf was almost jealous of Cub. He was the perfect spy. Trained by his uncle, MI-6, the SAS, and then Scorpia, Alex had been turned into one of the most dangerous men in the planet. He was better at being a spy than Wolf would be at anything in his life. If Alex dyed his hair black and grew a little bit of facial stubble he looked anything from an Afghan to an Arab.

Wolf watched Alex close his eyes and take a few deep breathes. His posture and facial expression changed slightly but the overall effect was vast. With hunched over shoulders and an almost vacant look on his face he went from being a British Special Operations specialist to a slightly dim oppressed native. He grabbed one of the stolen AK-47s and he looked exactly like a young mujahadeen.

Wolf watched Alex grab the gun and he couldn't help but feel slightly useless. He was one of the best soldiers in the world and he was stuck watching a teenager empty the gun-rack and walk off about to enter the sharp end while he was stuck sitting in the damn chopper.

Alex wandered through the sparse foliage and onto the sharp sand of the Syrian Desert. The run was hell. The only cover within a hundred miles from the target site had been a small oasis about eight miles from the site. Without a vehicle that meant that Alex had to run the distance.

Under normal circumstances an eight mile run, for Alex was a nice warm up before he got down to doing some real running. He wasn't under normal circumstances. Eight Miles at Breacon Beacons wasn't in the same universe as eight miles through the Syrian Desert with a hundred degree heat pounding down on you.

He got to the fenced off compound in about an hour, and he was sucking wind as he got his first real life look at the place. He'd seen satellite images and the pictures that Wolf and his team had taken while reconnoitering but nothing measured up to a personal investigation.

The perimeter was fenced off and had barbed wire along the top. Fuse boxes every a hundred feet, meant that it was probably electrified also. The gate was flanked by two towers and both had a guard holding the standard Ak-47 of a Muslim militia.

The compound was big, about half a million square feet, and had three buildings. One looked a lot like a barracks/guardhouse complete with fire-ports to fire on anyone who broke through the gate.

The second building looked like an administration building and was run down by the harsh desert weather, it had a few windows that were boarded up but the doors had new doors that looked armored.

The third building was obviously the only original building. According to the report he'd read on the facility it had originally been a Soviet weapons factory. The smokestacks were still bellowing out toxic gasses and from the air quality scans MI-6 suspected it was a current WMD production building. Which was why as soon as the hostages were clear, A B-52 was waiting fueled on an airstrip in Israel ready to fly over the facility and MOAB it until it was nothing but a large crater.

Alex tossed the friction strap the AK-47 had had in the chopper. Muslim militias couldn't afford such things, and it would make him stick out. He jogged up to the gate and waved his arms.

The man on top of the right tower lowered his sunglassed eyes at Alex and shouted in harsh Farsi, "What do you want?"

Alex answered back in his best Farsi, "I come with a message to the warriors of Allah."

The man on the watchtower just nodded slapped the button opening the gate. It wasn't really his fault that he'd just let an enemy agent walk into the base. They were told to look for a whole convoy of vehicles and Black Ops soldiers, not a young looking mujahadeen. Several similar kids had been used to deliver messages when the radios had gone out like they were prone to doing in the poor Middle Eastern countries.

It may have been different if he hadn't spoken Farsi, or even spoken it with an accent but it had sounded completely natural. Ian Rider and Scorpia didn't make mistakes when it came to training.

Alex strutted into the compound like he owned the place. That was one of the first things his uncle had told him. Act like you belong somewhere and nobody will stop you. The philosophy served him well. He walked through several more lines of security without even being stopped. These men weren't professional soldiers. They were desert rats being paid peanuts to hopefully get the chance to take a shot at the Great Satan and Europe.

As Alex passed the last line of security he was trying to figure out where the hostages were being kept. Knowing what Muslim militias did with female prisoners he was trying to decide if they would be kept in the administrative building for easier access for the high ranking officers or in the barracks which had more security.

He finally decided the Barracks was more likely. He made his decision based on the leader of this particular cell of Muslim nut-jobs. Sazar Zakoui was a true believer. One of the terrorists who would gladly have given his life in any of the various attacks against Western Civilization which 9-11 was only the most known about. He wouldn't put his own pleasure ahead of the chances of mission success.

No matter how arrogant terrorists were they knew deep down that a militarily superior force was coming to wipe them off the face of the earth. He knew that someone would come for the girls, just neither him nor anyone in his organization suspected it would be a teenage spy named Alex Rider.

He made his way to the barracks and nodded at the door guard. He adapted a weary smile like that of an enthusiastic young soldier of Allah ready to catch an hour of sleep on his break. The guard didn't question him.

He made his way down the stairs into the barracks and was surprised by how large the building was. It was at least three stories deep and he suspected the prisoners would be held on the bottom floor. Sazar Zakoui was a paranoid bastard.

Alex stepped through to the first set of rooms and noticed only one jihadist asleep. Making a decision that only months ago would have sickened him, he slipped into the room and quietly closed the door. He flipped open the concealed knife he always carried with him and slid it across the jihadist's throat severing the wind pipe. The man awoke only for a second gurgling and choking on his own blood. The slight noises the man made weren't heard through the heavy armored door of the room.

Alex quickly hid the man's body under the bed and hid it with a blanket. He didn't worry too much about the blood on the bed. It wasn't the first blood stain on the mattress but hopefully it would be the last.

He grimaced to himself. He didn't like killing people especially if they were defenseless, but he knew that part of his mission would be extraction and the fewer terrorists around when he had to do that the better. It would be tough enough on without allowing the enemy more men.

As he ghosted quickly and quietly through the barracks he fought the desire to open fire on the men on the barracks. They were the enemy. The only reason he didn't was that as soon as he did he would be swamped with Muslim bastards. He had to wait as long as possible, preferably until he was on his way out until he could use the weapon.

He jogged down the steps to the third floor and was met with a long hallway. There was just one man with an AK-74u, guarding the door. As soon as he saw Alex he pulled his gun up and shouted in harsh Farsi, "You are not allowed to be here leave here before I shot."

Alex let some of the real fear show in his face for the first time but kept walking before answering, "I have a message, I have to give it to you."

The man looked unsure for a second but nodded and barked, "Fine, but then you leave."

Alex nodded and just as he was in front of the man shoved the AK-47 into the man's chest and let out a three round burst. The man's body masked the sound well enough that Alex hoped it hadn't been heard through the even thinker steel walls of the room the man had been guarding.

Alex searched the man's body and finally found the key card that was used to open the door. He took a deep breath and opened the door. He counted five men, five enemies, five targets that needed to be serviced. They weren't men. They were animals that needed to be put down.

"Why can't we rape Satan's whores? It says in the Koran that women of enemy can be raped." one man argued in Farsi to another man.

The second man looked exasperated, like they'd had this conversation many times, before he saw Alex.

He turned and shouted, "You can't be here leave now."

He was answered with a three round burst to the chest from Alex's AK-47. The man he was arguing with met the same fate before anyone in the room even understood what was happening.

Two of the men struggled with their own AK's. One dropped his in shock and the other fired a couple rounds into the ground in his haste. Both died quickly.

Mahohamed hadn't had a gun but had snatched a knife from one of the tables and was holding it to the neck of one of the hostages using her as a human shield.

"Drop the gun or the whore dies." he shouted scared out of his mind. The men he had been in the room with had been some of the fiercest fighters he'd ever fought with. They were the highest ranking in the entire cell behind only Sazar himself, and they were cut down like maggots unworthy of the teenager's attention. He was quite the fighter himself and had survived many battles with other tribes in the region. He had an advantage he thought. All westerners negotiated for hostages.

"Drop the knife and you're paralyzed from the neck down, instead of dead on the floor." was the answer from the teenager. He wasn't expecting that. Westerners didn't answer like that

Mahohamed was thinking desperately but the only card he had was the hostage. If he killed her, the teenager would kill him. Eventually he answered with, "I know how you westerners work. You do not sacrifice innocents to kill Allah's warriors. Drop your weapon or the girl dies."

A look of defeat passed over the teenager's eyes and the teenager said, "Okay fine I'm putting the gun dow" And splattered the man's brains all over the wall behind him.