Page 74 of Operation: Silent Angel
Mac took the public stairs to the fourth floor and pushed through the heavy black door with gold lettering that led into Lassiter’s office. The door to the inner office was open. He went to it and knocked against it. “Hello?” he called into the space.
He recognized Joe Lassiter right away from Yvette’s description of him as he stepped into the hallway from a room across the short hallway. He had many scars on his face and neck.
“Hi sorry about that, come on in.” He took a step towards Mac with his hand out. “I’m Joe Lassiter. Nice to meet you, Mac.”
Mac shook his offered hand. “Nice to meet you too. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Mac followed him into the room, a small kitchen, noting the slight limp Lassiter walked with. The smell of fresh-brewed coffee was in the air. A cup sat on the dispensing area of a Keurig coffee maker on the counter. It was nearly done dispensing the hot liquid.
“I was just brewing myself a cup. Can I make you one?” Joe asked.
“Thank you, yes.”
Joe pointed to the upper cabinet. “Grab yourself a cup.”
Mac swung the cabinet open, overwhelmed by the number of cups stacked on the shelves. He grabbed the one closest to the edge on the bottom shelf in front of him, a solid black mug. He handed it to Lassiter. Joe switched it out on the platform where the cup sat and put in a fresh pod. Then he sat his own cup onto the table.
“How do you take it?” he asked Mac.
“Black is fine, thank you,” Mac said.
“Most of the Operators take it black,” Joe said. “Have a seat.” He pointed to the far side of the table.
Mac wandered over to the window and looked out. It was a cloudy fall day. The sky looked like it wanted to snow, but none was in the forecast. There had been a few flurries one day the previous week, but it wasn’t cold enough for them to stick or accumulate on the ground yet.
“So, you’re getting ready to deploy on your first case with the agency,” Lassiter said, setting his cup onto the table. He took a seat across from Mac as Mac settled into his chair.
“Yes. We have the mission briefing a bit later this morning, and we’ll leave shortly thereafter,” Mac said.
“As I’m sure you’ve been told, I’m on staff because Shepherd appreciates that mental health is just as important as the physical health of his people. The job you guys do is hard, physically and mentally. You see a lot of shit that most people don’t, shit that can really mess up your head. That’s where I come in.”
Mac’s lips unconsciously ticked into a smirk. He’d never had any mental health counseling, and he’d seen a lot in his decades of working in intelligence. “So, how does this work?” He couldn’t see himself spilling his guts about his feelings of seeing anything while working. You deal with it and move on.
“I have regular meetings with everyone just to get to know them and for them to get comfortable with me. We touch bases occasionally. After a rough mission, I come in and meet with anyone who is referred to me immediately upon the team’s return or the next day depending on the situation. And I do have full mental health oversight over the team. I can have anyone removed from duty if I don’t think their head is screwed on straight.”
“I see,” Mac replied, though he really didn’t understand the need for a team shrink. Most men he knew were mentally tough and didn’t require someone’s shoulder to cry on.
“You can reach out to me at any point as well to schedule an appointment if you want to talk. The meeting requests go both ways.”
Mac smiled and nodded. Yeah, that probably wouldn’t be necessary.
“So, how are you liking the team environment? It has to be different from the solo work you’re used to,” Lassiter said.
And now came the part of the meeting that Lassiter was going to evaluate him and try to get inside his head. He was ready. “I’m surprised at how comfortable it feels. It is a different atmosphere, akin to what active duty members experienced, I’m told, which I’ve never experienced. As you know, I never served in the military, went to work as a field agent for the CIA right out of college. That was a very different environment.”
“You had quite the record with them, pulled off a lot that no one else could have. You were known for achieving the impossible,” Lassiter said. “You had to have had counseling when you came in after assignments with the CIA.”
“I guess you could call it that, but it was more like monitoring to be sure I was still loyal and had disengaged from the undercover persona, the Legend. I was usually sent back out pretty quickly. For the last five years I was with the CIA, I was at London station in the embassy. It was a pretty normal, safe environment for me.”
“You oversaw assets in the former Soviet bloc countries.”
Mac wasn’t sure how this man knew that. It was all quite classified. “You have a high security clearance to know that.”
Lassiter nodded. “You tendered your resignation after a young woman you’d advised was not ready for her undercover assignment was killed after your superiors over-ruled you.”
Mac took a drink of his coffee to stall. “Yeah, she wasn’t ready, and I knew it.” He hadn’t thought about her in years.
“That’s one thing that will never happen at Shepherd Security,” Lassiter said, eyeing him closely.
