Homecoming (Complete)

Chapter Seventeen

Alex had set up the Servare Foundation more than ten years ago to be the public face of the work she did rescuing women all over the world. (Truthfully the work was done mostly by other people these days since her life had become so hectic—she only assisted when a rescue team called for help.)

Servare swooped in to collect the women and children that were saved by Alex's teams, then gave them new lives, reunited them with families where possible, and provided what aid, education, and psychological assistance it could. Servare was who came in during the aftermath to help the communities affected—they set up schools if there were none, provided teachers, dug wells, taught farming and animal husbandry—if these things already existed, then they assisted in whatever other capacity they could. The hardest hit communities tended to be the poorest, and if they could be taught to take care of themselves, to feed themselves, and weren't in a constant battle with the world around them just to stay alive, then they became less susceptible to the whims and vagaries of those who wished to use and abuse them for their own personal gain. It wasn't a perfect solution but it helped.

The 'not public' part of Servare was the part Alex worked with as closely as she could. It was what the military would refer to as 'black ops'—it had no traceable ties to Servare, and the only people who knew of its existence were those who worked directly with it—a few extremely well trusted employees embedded in the foundation itself, who weren't even aware of each other, and a mishmash of freelancers and mercenaries of varying nationalities that Alex had researched intensely before bringing on board. Each of the freelancers and mercenaries were only part of the occasional mission—Alex made sure that most of them never worked more than one mission with the same team, and that it was always a different company or individual that hired them. They were all good men and women who, even if they suspected where their payments came from, had plausible deniability—nothing could be traced back to Alex or Servare. She had laid too many false trails for that to be possible.

On occasion Wonder Woman had shown up to help them out. Alex couldn't figure out how she found out about the missions, and it worried her a little, but she couldn't find any mistakes in her false trails and diversions, or any leaks from the few—very trusted—individuals that helped her keep the black ops running. However she found out, Wonder Woman was always a welcome helping hand. She sometimes came in the middle of a rescue, and other times during the final stages when Servare was actually on site for the cleanup and aid portion of things. If she showed up while they were in the thick of a rescue she was never in her regular 'work' clothes—you knew who she was (how could you not), but it seemed that if she wasn't in her armor then no one was willing to call her out on it.

Wonder Woman had helped them out immensely more than once, and always managed to pull it off without causing some sort of international incident. She had even pulled Alex's bacon out of the fire once (actually it was more like pull her sinking ass out of the freezing ocean) when the boat they had just unloaded a handful of children off was hit by some sort of explosive projectile. They were in international waters so a Servare ship had been there to collect the children, and Wonder Woman had shown up in full regalia to assist with the transfer between the boat and the Servare ship. Alex had just been climbing up the side of the ship from the creaky, and leaky, old boat they had used to get the kids out to the ship when the projectile hit. The force of the concussion had slammed Alex into the side of the ship with enough force to knock the wind out of her. She was dazed, and out of breath, when she hit the water and the weight of her cold weather gear had quickly dragged her under. If Wonder Woman hadn't dove in after her, Alex was pretty sure she wouldn't have survived.

The call to the burner phone was to ask Alex for help. There had been a mass kidnapping of nearly three hundred schoolgirls in Nigeria. The girls had been taken across the border into Cameroon, and any public attempt to retrieve them would result in political repercussions that could launch a war in an area that would be hard pressed to survive the violence. Alex asked Kate, Dinah, and Babs for help because she feared what would happen to the girls if anything went wrong—the four of them worked so well together that she knew she could count on them in a pinch.