by JT Sawyer
He heard the phone click, then tossed the device on the counter while looking back out the rear door at the dangling gutter. Get to you next time, I guess.
He turned off the stove and gathered up his wallet, keys, and Glock 19 off the counter. Then he headed down to the basement to resupply on some tactical gear and secure his concealed vault, which was tucked away at the back of an old root cellar. Maybe I should watch the TV more or listen to the news once in a while so I’d know what’s happening in the rest of the world.
He got all of his intel on global events from Runa and their team of analysts, but it was only related to the current assignment. He didn’t get paid to study geopolitics. His work involved precision extraction of key U.S. personnel from hot zones around the world, recovery of classified data and, on occasion, rendition of enemy combatants. Reisner wasn’t sure which one of these Runa had in mind, but he had the unpleasant feeling that it was going to involve higher stakes than what his team normally faced.
As he locked down the vault door and tapped in the security code on a hidden digital keypad in the rafters, he took a deep breath. His gut was telling him he was about to disappoint his sister again.
Chapter 2
The drive to Langley was uneventful, and Reisner arrived before his team. En route, he had tuned into the news briefly, hearing a drivel of talk about the ongoing public healthcare debate, a new Saudi oil merger, and the latest on the NFL fall lineup.
Parking his F-250 pickup at the east end of the airfield, he walked over to a hangar where an unmarked jet was fueling. He and his team normally flew individually on commercial airlines or were attached to a military flight. He’d only used the Agency’s contract pilots at this location a handful of times, and it was usually when the director wanted to cloak their coming and going from the DOD. Reisner already suspected that this was going to be an off-the-books assignment, and the fewer questions he asked, the better.
To the rear of the bay was a small conference room with two men standing outside the door. Reisner recognized them as Agency security personnel who worked on the same floor where Runa’s office was located. They looked uncomfortable in their dark suits, which clung to their muscular frames in the humidity, and he wondered how often they stepped outside of the air-conditioned environment of Langley.
He nodded at them then stood still, shouldering his pack while the guard to the right examined his ID badge as if for the first time. The short man then stepped to his right, sliding a key-card along the side to open the door. Runa was inside, his tie loosened slightly as he paced at the front of the room before a mahogany table that held a single laptop.
“Will—on time, as always.” He moved forward and patted him on the shoulder, then nodded to a coffee dispenser in the corner. “Grab yourself something to drink.”
Reisner shrugged off the offer. “Thanks, but I stopped for some cheap gas-station coffee on the way.”
He had always looked up to Runa. The man had built a solid career in his field ops, spending much of his time in Africa and the Middle East before transitioning to his current position, where he oversaw dozens of operatives around the world. Runa was one of the lead agents on the ground in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11, and had spent years there establishing rapport with and fighting alongside the rebels. In recent years, Runa had pushed his superiors to create the rapid personnel recovery teams, and Reisner was amongst the first class to graduate from that grueling training pipeline. After Reisner had served six years as an agent under Runa, he was asked to lead his own team.
The door behind Reisner opened, letting in a rush of humid air as two men in black fatigues entered. Gabriel Nash was a tall figure with sandy blond hair and the golden face of a surfer. He had been one of the first men Reisner selected from the pool of potential applicants when the team was formed. Nash was a former Army Ranger and had been an MMA champ in his twenties. He was always clean-cut, and constantly had a thick wad of chewing tobacco wedged under his lower lip. He was also Reisner’s closest friend and one of the few people next to Runa that he let into his world beyond the professional realm.
The second man was Jim Porter, whose broad shoulders made him seem twice as wide as Nash. He had a thin goatee and curly black hair. In his right hand was an energy drink, which he quickly finished then tossed in a corner trash bin. With Porter’s looks, he could have doubled as a stand-in for one of the lead singers in Metallica. Porter had previously been recruited by Runa out of Stanford for his background in Arabic and Farsi. Having spent his teenage years growing up in Dubai and possessing an innate ability to pick up language skills, he more than matched the profile of someone the Agency sought out for field operations. After passing initial selection, he spent his first year at the Farm, where he underwent intensive training in firearms, combatives, evasive driving, and the unique tradecraft associated with covert operations.
“You miss us already, boss?” whispered Nash as he dropped his tan backpack.
“Not you—just Porter. He’s got all those tall tales he can’t stop telling. You’d think after all this time together, I’d have heard them all, but he still keeps surprising me.”
“Something to be said about being a good bullshitter, and Porter scores off the charts in that realm,” said Nash with a chuckle.
“You’re just jealous I had such a rich and colorful childhood abroad, unlike you, growin’ up jumping across gullies in the backwoods in search of the next acorn grove.”
Reisner shook his head. “That’s all it takes, is a thirty-six-hour break from each other, and you’re back at it again.”
Runa walked up and nodded at each man. “I appreciate you fellas coming in on such short notice.”
“Sir,” said Porter with a nod as he hoisted his gear bag onto the table.
“Always good to see you, sir,” said Nash, extending his hand as the two men shook.
As the others took their seats at the L-shaped configuration of tables, the door swung open again and Jessica Connelly and Eli Byrne entered.
Connelly, the newest member of the team, was a lithe woman with dark hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She stepped in and swiveled her head around the room, then confidently strode forward to greet Runa, offering him a firm handshake. Then she gave everyone else an expressionless nod and sat down next to Nash after depositing her duffel bag on the ground. She left her sunglasses on and folded her arms, staring straight ahead.
Connelly had joined Reisner’s team one month earlier in Syria, after another team member suffered a back injury. She was one of the only people on his team he didn’t have the luxury of personally vetting, and her inclusion was at the behest of Runa, who vouched for her skills and professionalism. She had proven to be a solid operator under duress in Damascus when they had to remove a high-level asset, and Reisner was impressed with her mental fortitude. Connelly rarely spoke, and when she did it was usually in relation to some pop-culture reference, which reminded everyone that, despite her hardened exterior, she was the youngest member at only twenty-six. Her dark features and fluency in Arabic allowed her to blend in well during their time in Syria, and Reisner figured she would remain a considerable asset in the Agency’s Middle-Eastern operations. Like Porter and many other field agents, she had been recruited straight out of college for her academic performance, linguistic skills, and athletic abilities.
Eli Byrne had been a combat medic with the 3rd Special Forces. After he left the military, he worked as a contractor overseas, eventually getting on Reisner’s radar through a mutual friend. When his contract was up, he joined Reisner’s team. Despite his massive frame and burly appearance, he was quick to smile, and looked more like a high school football coach than a clandestine warrior.
Eli Byrne’s six-foot-five frame had barely cleared the doorway, and he huffed out a breath as he sat down next to Porter.
“Did you jog here or what?” Reisner said.
“He’s just out of shape,” quipped Porter.
Byrne gave Port
er a sideways glance, whispering out of range of Runa, who was busy typing on the laptop up front, “Your mom wore me out last night, is all.”
“So, you visited the women’s correctional facility?” said Nash.
Porter slugged Nash on the arm. “If you weren’t my friend, I’d stick ya.”
“Alright, let’s save it for the flight over to wherever we’re going,” said Reisner. Despite their usual banter, he could tell his team was not happy about being back together again after three months of intense fieldwork abroad. They had spent so many nights living under grueling conditions in war-torn regions that thirty-six hours off wasn’t going to soften their edge. He also knew they were professionals and would fall back into line once they were underway on a mission. And Runa had said to plan for a three-day operation, though Reisner knew how three days could become three weeks with one phone call.
The large African-American man turned around and swung the laptop to face them, then he took a seat, his fingers nervously tapping the table as he waited for the screen to activate.
“What you’re about to hear comes all the way from the top. This briefing is something only your team is privy to.” He gave Reisner a serious look, his eyes revealing worry mixed with what seemed like regret.
The laptop audio crackled and the screen gave way to an image of CIA Director David Siegel. He was sitting in a black leather chair behind his desk at Langley.
“Good morning. Thank you all for being here. I understand you’ve just returned from a long deployment.” He looked directly at Reisner.
“That’s correct, sir, but we are good to go,” Reisner said, sitting up even straighter than he had been.
“Excellent, then let’s get right to the heart of the matter. What I am about to tell you is something that only a handful of people know about even here at Langley.” He cleared his throat and seemed to glance over his laptop, as if checking that he was alone.
“At 1930 last night, one of the Agency’s bioweapons research vessels, the Atropos, went dark in the South China Sea.”
Chapter 3
“The Atropos is a Class M freighter that had been deployed at sea for the past seven months with a crew of eighteen,” said Siegel as the laptop screen changed to an image of a nondescript cargo vessel, whose rusted deck was filled with metal storage compartments stacked three-high. The satellite imagery was grainy and showed an aerial view of the ship. The one-hundred-twenty-foot-long vessel reminded Reisner of a smaller version of a US Navy hospital ship, but this one was painted to look like a weathered freighter.
“This image was taken only a few hours ago. We’ve had no radio reports from the crew despite hailing them on several frequencies, and thermal imagery shows no signs of life on board.”
Reisner noted that there weren’t any maritime registration numbers on the hull, nor was there any movement of personnel on deck or in the command center, whose windows were shattered and metal frame charred as if from an explosion. Reisner squinted and thrust his head forward to study the deck, which appeared to have streaks of a red substance, as if someone had recently dragged a bloody mop across the deck.
“Can the image be enhanced?” Reisner said.
There was a long pause by Siegel, followed by a muffled exhale. “That’s the highest resolution we have on this end.”
Reisner felt his stomach tighten. Suddenly, being back in the Middle East sounded more appealing compared to what he knew Siegel was about to propose. Being dropped onto a ghost ship in the middle of nowhere sent a chill down his spine. He could tell the rest of his team was as nervous as he was, but he kept his gaze fixed on the laptop. An unflagged ship of ours in the South China Sea—what the hell were they doing there? And is the crew dead or did they abandon ship and perish at sea?
As if reading his mind, Siegel spoke as the screen reverted back to him. He seemed suddenly exhausted, and the furrows on his forehead had deepened.
“The crew was on a search-and-retrieval mission for one of our UAV drones that went down north of that region. It was successfully recovered twenty-eight hours ago. There was critical intel on that drone that cannot fall into the wrong hands, in particular the Chinese government.”
“Excuse me, sir,” said Nash. “How do we know that it hasn’t already fallen into their hands? I mean, what happened to the crew—the command center looks like it was damaged by explosives from within.”
Siegel glanced down for a moment then pursed his lips before continuing. “Let me back up a little. The Atropos contained a research lab headed by Doctor Trevor Hayes, who was working on developing a low-grade bioweapon—what we call a Nation Adjuster. It was designed to be deployed without detection and intended to create short-term illness that was non-lethal.” He stroked his chin with his left hand. “Imagine it as a biological dirty bomb used to infect a small segment of a population with the intention of having a ripple effect upon the economy without loss of life and, most importantly, without any trace back to the U.S. For instance, a few thousand people are infected in a given city and work output is disrupted for several weeks, which sends a small tremor through that country’s economy.” His right eye seemed to flutter involuntarily. “But nothing devastating that would affect global markets.”
Reisner looked back at the wide-eyed stares of the other team members and rubbed the back of his neck. He’d heard of these types of weapons, but only in war-game scenarios. Reisner lived in a world of tradecraft, firearms, and surgical strikes at close range. He preferred it that way, but understood the necessity for larger scale, unconventional weapons like Siegel was describing. However, with each word unfurling from the director’s lips, he found himself growing more uneasy as the man spoke with such aloofness about a weapon that had the potential for immense destruction if used incorrectly.
“Our research team designed a non-lethal avian influenza virus whose areal dispersal could easily be cloaked amongst the already over-strained poultry industry in China. There are yearly outbreaks there as it is, so a low-grade strain, introduced via drone when we needed to adjust minor economic trends in Asia, was identified as a useful foreign policy tool.”
“Only someone made a mistake along the way,” said Runa, shaking his head slightly. “Is that what this is about?”
Siegel took a sip of water from a blue glass on his desk. Then he cleared his throat again before continuing. “That’s what I believe happened—either someone suffered exposure to a more lethal virus in the lab or there was an inside act of espionage. That’s where your team comes in, Agent Reisner. I need you to extract the critical intel off the drone and gather any research Hayes was working on. The internal tracking device shows the drone hasn’t been removed from the ship. It’s secured on the rear deck.”
“Excuse me, sir, but what do you mean by more lethal virus?” said Porter. “Isn’t there a high risk of exposure for us if we were to board that ship?”
“This research vessel is one of several around the world that is involved in providing bioweapons research and support in the event that an offensive action is required against our enemies,” replied Siegel, as if he were reading from a brochure. “It contains a small sampling of pathogens to provide a drone with enough payload to disperse the bioweapon in strategic locations. An internal security system on level 3 prohibits any of the pathogens from being removed, and any breach would result in vaporization of the lab and destruction of the vessel, so we know that there weren’t any imminent threats from outside the Atropos. But you will still want to suit up with the appropriate protective equipment, which has already been placed on board your plane. Once you have completed your mission, you will undergo decontamination at one of our secure sites outside of Manila before returning back to the U.S.” He leaned back in his chair, his shoulders slouching. “SAT imagery we’ve studied from the past twenty-four hours doesn’t reveal another ship or plane rearing its head in the area, though we had a three-hour gap with retasking satellites.”
“Where is she situated at
present, sir?” said Reisner.
An image of a map pulled up on the screen, showing the Philippines to the east and Southeast Asia to the west, with hundreds of islands in between. A red arrow operated by Siegel came onto the screen, pinpointing a region near the Spratly Islands, a hundred miles west of the Philippines. “The Atropos is here. It’s a gray area, shall we say, that is hotly contested between Malaysia, China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, who all claim a stake in it.”
Reisner sat back, rolling his shoulders. Just like the Agency to operate in such murky waters. Easy to cover their tracks if no single country can claim jurisdiction and there are no governing maritime forces to patrol the region.
“That’s quite a tangled area to disappear in,” said Byrne. “Looks like a few hundred islands dotting the sea.”
“And that is what I am hoping will work to our advantage—to your advantage—in keeping the vessel secure until you arrive. I can’t stress the national security risk this presents if China were to get hold of the drone. Hopefully, your team will get what we need to prevent such action.”
Runa sat up in his chair, rubbing his chin. He seemed as surprised as the rest of Reisner’s team to be learning of the details. “Sir, what about contacting Pacific Command and having them dispatch a SEAL team to that region. Admiral McKenzie with the 7th Fleet has assets not far from the Philippines that can be there quicker than—”
“Reisner and his team are our best chance for recovering the data on that drone. Besides, it’s imperative that our military doesn’t have a visible presence in these waters, given the political tension besetting the region.”
Reisner nodded in agreement, knowing he did so for the rest of his team, who didn’t have to read between the lines to grasp Siegel’s rhetoric. What he means is deniability—same old story from Siegel, or any CIA director for that matter. We need to clean up the mess that was started and make sure it stays out of the headlines—and get there before any of our enemies do. God knows what kind of information was on that drone.
