by Harper Steen
Gray shook his head. “That’s not possible, Liz. They’ve removed the electronic units, but luckily, since their buyers will need the units, they didn’t destroy them. That’s why we’re at least able to locate them. Explosive charges have to be attached smack on the missiles, and to do that, you have to go in. There isn’t any other way.”
“And what kind of an explanation are you going to give the diplomat and his wife when we leave an enormous hole in the ground? That could be a problem and could eventually lead to the kind of open conflict you’re hoping to avoid.”
“He and his wife will receive a geographical survey that explains that a subterranean washout triggered a partial landslide, which in turn caused the explosion of a methane gas pocket and the ensuing fire.” Gray’s idea was simple, but ingenious. It could work. The simpler the explanation, the better.
“How many people are we dealing with, and what kinds of weapons do they have?” asked Jennifer.
“From the satellite images we’ve learned that there are fifteen people located at the target, and they are equipped with submachine guns, assault rifles and portable firearms. We don’t expect you to face more powerful armaments. Apparently they feel pretty invincible. The precautionary measures they’ve taken against intruders are pretty insignificant, which suits our purposes quite well. There are four surveillance cameras set up around the target, but that’s about it.
“We’ve faced a lot more serious situations than that, haven’t we Jenny?”
“You can say that again. When do we get started?”
“In a half an hour. You’ll be taken to the location in a civilian KIOWA. That shouldn’t attract any particular attention; there are always choppers and helicopters flying over the surrounding areas. To be on the safe side, the pilot will drop you off eight miles from the edge of the property.” Gray indicated a spot on the map and Liz and Jennifer nodded. “If you rappel in at this point, you shouldn’t attract any attention.”
Gray looked from one woman to the other. No wonder Townsend had been so secretive on the telephone. They were approaching the assignment with almost an air of detachment, seeming as unconcerned as if they were going to a tea party. And yet they were both risking their lives with this mission. He didn’t understand why Townsend had decided to only assign two people to the mission, but it wasn’t up to him to approve or disapprove of his superior’s order.
Gray examined Liz and her partner as inconspicuously as possible. Since Liz and Jennifer belonged to a Special Forces unit, they obviously were good at whatever they did, but they still would be outnumbered by their adversaries. With a ratio of fifteen to two, they’d have to make themselves invisible just to get into the bunker-like building. Gray wasn’t even sure that it was possible. He sensed in his gut that this would not be an easy job for them.
“Then there’s still enough time for us to get a cup of coffee,” said Jennifer. “If there’s even something to eat here, that would be even better! I’m starving, people. Aren’t you, Liz?”
Liz rubbed her stomach and rolled her eyes. “I’d do just about anything for a great big sandwich right now.”
“I’ll get you something.” Chris hurried out of the room and came back a short time later with a fully-laden tray. The women helped themselves and clearly enjoyed every bite.
Gray glanced at his watch and grabbed the dark box that was on the table. Liz and Jennifer had to get going and he wanted to go over their communication equipment with them, as was his regular routine.
The tiny infrared cameras would enable Chris and him to accompany the women on their mission, in a sense, and to assess the situation as it unfolded. To the untrained eye, the items looked like simple, inconspicuous black buttons, but in fact they were very powerful cameras that delivered high-quality images. The research division had designed the Infrared Camera Next Generation, or IRC-NG, cameras specifically for assignments that required the use of equipment that could be relied upon to work flawlessly under extreme conditions.
Gray clamped the small device onto the black, pocketed vests that Liz and Jennifer would wear over their black long-sleeved shirts. Then he handed each of them an IAD-audio unit, also known as an Invisible Audio Device.
“Everything that you see and hear, we’ll be able to see and hear too. And you’ll be able to hear us. You must follow our instructions without question, because we won’t be giving them to you for fun. Do you understand?”
“No problem. This isn’t the first time we’ve done this.” Liz affixed the inconspicuous, skin-colored audio receiver and microphone behind her ear, where it was practically invisible.
The combined receiver and transmitter was another new development by the research division, one that didn’t have to be put directly into the ear to work. Although the piece of equipment was small, it was able to do powerful things. The engineers had developed an extremely durable means of communication that had the ability to broadcast aural signals in both directions, without interference, even under the worst weather conditions.
Liz checked the fit of the camera and walked out of the command center with Jennifer. She stopped in front of the door and asked softly, “Can you hear us?”
“Loud and clear!” answered Chris through his headset.
“You’re coming through clearly,” Jennifer relayed. “OK, then. Let’s get started!”
“We might as well. I didn’t have anything else planned.” Liz gave a soft laugh. She and Jennifer reentered the room, shouldered their equipment and then walked out again.
“I can’t wait to see how good they are.” Chris crossed his arms.
Gray didn’t respond. He looked at his monitor and watched as the women climbed into the waiting KIOWA. They sat down on two narrow benches across from each other, set their backpacks between their feet on the floor, and put on headsets to protect against the noise of the blades.
A young soldier pushed the sliding door of the helicopter shut and sat down next to Jennifer. Surreptitiously he examined first one woman and then the other as the helicopter lifted off and the pilot carried them toward an unknown target. The soldier didn’t find any clue on Liz’s or Jennifer’s all-black clothing that would indicate to what unit they belonged. No chevron, no name plate. Absolutely nothing. And that was unusual—very unusual. What were the names that he had heard the pilot say? Gibson and Langner. The names didn’t mean anything to him. Nothing at all. Nor were they likely to. He resigned himself to the fact that as a mere soldier, he didn’t need to know what their assignment was, and he probably wasn’t going to find out, either.
***
Gray shifted from the exterior cameras, which were outwardly concealed on bases, to the tiny IRC-cameras which he had attached to Liz and Jennifer. As he watched over the monitor, Liz looked in Jennifer’s direction and grinned broadly into the camera at him, as if she had sensed his gaze. Gray smiled rakishly back, even though she couldn’t see him.
The scene that had unfolded between her and Gray, back on her father’s estate, now popped into Liz’s mind. That meeting with Gray now seemed to her to be something surreal, as if it had happened in another life. Actually, come to think of it, it did, Liz thought. In fact, she did lead two different lives.
Gray’s words pulled her back to the present: “Pay attention! You too, Jennifer!” Then there was radio silence.
Chris leaned forward, muted the microphone, took the earphones from his head and gave his friend a look of amusement. “Uh oh, you kind of like her. You poor guy!”
“How do you figure that?”
“Come on, I’ve known you for years. The look on your face says it all.”
“If you’re so good at reading minds, then tell me what I’m thinking right now.” There was no mistaking the look Gray gave his friend.
Chris ran both hands over his face, looked back wide-eyed and poured more coffee. “Sorry, pal. Should I just drop this subject?”
“I guess you can read minds after all.”
Chris burst ou
t laughing. After he’d finally stopped, he turned on the microphone again, picked up the headset from the table and put it on. He seemed pleased to have actually gotten under Gray’s skin.
Gray knew he could trust Chris with his life. There wasn’t much that the two men didn’t know about each other, but Gray wasn’t quite ready to talk about this chapter. He wasn’t sure, himself, what he wanted from Liz.
Gray tried to push these thoughts to the farthest recesses of his mind, so as not to be distracted from his work. Obviously fate had played a prank on him but he still had a job to do. Gray looked into his coffee cup for a moment then raised it to his lips and took a big gulp.
Liz was different from the other women with whom he usually surrounded himself. Certainly she was pretty. Well, not just pretty. To him, she was a real beauty, even if she was quite headstrong. And he felt drawn to her far more than he would have liked. When he had seen her on the landing field, he’d almost fallen over. She was the last person he would have expected to run into here. Was this, then, the secret she was hiding from her family?
He himself had gone on many similar missions, and he knew exactly what kind of danger Liz would be in and why she would want to keep the knowledge of that danger from her family. Gray shared a similar dynamic with his family, although his wasn’t as pronounced as Liz’s. Admittedly, he didn’t have a very close relationship with his parents, but he would do anything to protect Jeff—his younger brother, who tried to emulate him in everything.
Jeff wasn’t supposed to have wound up in a Special Forces unit in the Army, even though he had already served in the Army. But Terence Garber, a former member of Townsend’s Dozen, had frustrated Gray’s plans. After Terence left the TDAs and accepted a job as instructor in the army, he met Jeff, recognized his potential and brought him to Townsend’s attention. And so Gray and his brother wound up belonging to the same Top Secret Special Forces unit.
About a year after Jeff had been recruited as a TDA, Gray began to have misgivings about his own role. He had no intention of dying young, and the mortality rate in any Special Forces unit wasn’t exactly low. That’s why three years ago, at thirty-three he had decided to make a change. He was offered a position in a cross-jurisdictional intelligence Special Forces unit whose purpose was to monitor and run missions similar to those in which he’d already been participating. This was his big chance to make a change that could help prolong his life, and Gray didn’t have to think about it for very long before he accepted the offer.
After completing additional training, Gray was granted the SFSU-V classification and took over the supervision of the various Top Secret units. The experience he’d gained as an active TDA helped him to manage the assignments successfully and to defuse dicey situations that his men faced. Gray had been thrilled when his colleague Chris Robbins, the other half of his two-man TDA team, decided to change his line of work at the same time, and as they continued their work together, their previously companionable relationship developed into an even deeper friendship.
A hearty smack to the shoulder pulled Gray back to the present. “Buddy,” Chris said, “I don’t know what you have planned for today, but I’m looking into—”
He was interrupted by a knock on the door. Chris opened the door and took the sealed envelope handed to him by a man in uniform.
“Looks like we finally got their files. I’m curious about what’s in them.” Chris turned away from Gray to open the envelope. “You think she’s pretty special, don’t you?” He opened the envelope, pulled out two files, then promptly put Liz’s file on a chair and sat on it while pretending to first delve into Jennifer’s documents.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Gray forced himself not to react. His friend’s behavior rankled him, but made himself act as cool as possible. He knew that eventually Chris would have to get up from the chair—and he didn’t have to wait long. What Chris read in Jennifer’s file nearly blew him off his stool.
“You have to look at this!” The two men both quickly rose to their feet. Gray scanned Jennifer’s papers briefly, then seized Liz’s file and scrutinized it. When Gray looked to see which classification Liz was put under, he drew a noisy breath and looked at Chris, who was staring at the papers in his hands with huge eyes.
Gray had been under the assumption that Liz held either a SFSU-II or III clearance; most of the agents within the various secret Special Forces Units that Townsend commanded had one of these two security grades. Only one unit was an exception—and Liz and Jennifer belonged to it. To the Dozen? he thought. Townsend’s Dozen? They were TDAs?
That can’t possibly be true. Gray reread the line in Liz’s file; there it was, in black and white. Definitive proof.
Gray couldn’t believe that his boss had recruited two women for the Dozen. There were obviously only twelve members in existence, if you didn’t count those like Chris and him, who had resigned and were still alive. Gray personally knew ten of the members who were currently active in the unit. Now he knew the last two as well. He twisted the microphone quietly in his hands and reached for the documents that his friend held, seeking further confirmation.
“My God,” Chris whispered. He appeared completely flabbergasted by what he’d just read. “I don’t get it. Never in my life would I have thought that Townsend would bring two women into the Dozen. How in hell did they both pass all of the tests so many tough guys have failed?”
“No idea. And I sincerely doubt they'd be willing to tell us.”
“Do you know what this means?”
Gray didn’t even bother to respond. They both knew very well what it meant to be an agent in Townsend’s Dozen—a friendly name for a unit that had no official domestic name, since it—like its agents—didn’t officially exist.
Liz and Jennifer weren’t members of just a “simple” task force; they were agents with the highest security classification that could be granted to an active agent. They were considered to be utterly trustworthy. If the need were to arise, they could bypass the President’s Secret Service detail and enter his bedroom without any problem.
“They’ve got their license to kill,” said Chris. “Just like we had.”
“We still have it,” came Gray’s terse reply.
“There aren’t many active agents with the SFSU-IV grade. Just the Dozen. How is it that we’ve never run into these two before?”
“I guess we just haven’t had the opportunity to work with them before,” Gray said. “Just the luck of the draw, I suppose. You know these aren’t the only missions we monitor with eagle eyes. We’ve had plenty of non-TDA missions to supervise, and there are plenty of other eagle eyes doing this same work.”
“We do have our fingers in a lot of pies,” said Chris. “Ready in every way when our help is needed!” He grinned and turned back to the monitor. “Looks like we’ll have to work hard to make sure they get through this in one piece. ”
“We always do. That’s why they pay us the big bucks.”
“True.” Chris switched the microphone on speaker mode again to establish contact with the women. “Mesdames, we’ll be arriving in Cannes shortly. Powder your noses quickly, put on your eyeliner and enjoy your visit. Don’t forget your carry-ons!”
“Already done.” Jennifer smiled into Liz’s camera, showing them a face painted in dark camo colors. She drew her eyebrows together in a look of annoyance when she saw what her partner was doing. “Are you nuts? We don’t have time for that! Those things will kill you!” With a quick movement she snatched the cigarette that Liz held between her fingers and threw in onto the floor of the helicopter.
“Every now and then I like to indulge. I’ve already cut back for your sake. Anyway, it won’t be the cigarettes that eventually kill me, it’ll be your moaning and groaning.” Liz grinned defiantly at Jennifer and stuck a new cigarette between her lips. Jennifer ripped the pack out of her hands and trampled it under her feet.
“Are you nuts? That was my last pack!”
“Even better.”
With difficulty, Liz tried to suppress her burgeoning aggression. Jennifer just had to go and ruin the fun.
“Are you two always like this?” Chris sounded stunned by their exchange, given the dangerous mission ahead.
“Of course. It’s just the adrenaline,” said Liz. Jennifer remained silent, apparently irritated. They were off to a good start!
“I hate to interrupt your pleasant little chat.” Through the radio on their headsets they heard the soft laugh of the pilot, who obviously had been listening in on their banter. “But we’ll arrive in two minutes. Get ready!”
Liz and Jennifer took off their headsets, set them on the benches and prepared to exit the helicopter.
Because the helicopter couldn’t land in the target area, it had been determined that the two agents would have to rappel down into the woods. Liz and Jennifer strapped on their helmets and sit harnesses. Each of them threaded a rope through a fixed guide on their harness that was attached and secured separately inside the helicopter. Then they stood in front of the open hatch of the helicopter, holding the ropes in their gloved hands. The pilot held the helicopter in position over the unloading point and when he gave Liz and Jennifer his okay to jump, both hurtled down their ropes and disappeared into the dark of the night. When they reached the ground, they released themselves with practiced movements from the harnesses and disappeared into the thicket of the forest as the pilot turned his machine around and the soldier hauled in the ropes.
“You’ll find the bunker about ten miles west of you, behind a knoll,” Chris said. Tensely Gray and Chris watched the two women. Although it was pitch-dark out, the two moved through the unfamiliar area with unimaginable ease, as if they had practiced their assignment countless times before.
When they arrived at their target, they crouched between the trees and studied the situation. There was only a single gate, which was closed and secured with a solid iron chain.
