Page 1 of Operation: Silent Angel
Alpha
The Syrian Desert was an unforgiving environment. Scorching hot in the summer and below freezing in the winter. CIA Analyst Yvette ‘Control’ Donaldson sat on a wooden bench just outside of the Operations Center at al-Tanf Garrison, smoking a cigarette. She’d been assigned to this high-pressure, fast-paced Ops Center for six grueling months.
The sun was just touching the horizon. It was a pleasant sixty-seven degrees. To the west, the sky was still dark. A crescent moon was still high, surrounded by millions of stars. This was her favorite time of day, and she enjoyed the quiet here on the bench daily, as she was either just finishing a shift in Ops or was about to start one at this hour.
That morning, she was about to start her twelve-hour shift. She took a deep drag as Brad ‘Circles’ Dupont, her Ops partner for the day, approached. Brad had only been on-site for two months. He was sharp and more than competent. He was more suited toLangly, which he’d been at before arriving. He was ten years her junior, but the two of them had become good friends, and they worked well together.
She gazed over his bald black head as he took a seat beside her and lit up. “That has to be cooler,” she said, nodding at his head. His thick, curly black hair had been long, grown out over the past two months. She’d told him the day before that he should consider shaving his head.
“Yeah. It’ll grow back. I didn’t like it as long as it was, but my hair options are limited here.”
Yvette ran her fingers through her short red tresses. She kept her hair clipped, so she had no more than an inch or so of growth, and she wore it spiked up in the front. Most of the men thought she was gay from her hairstyle as well as her no-nonsense, distant manner, and she never corrected them. She didn’t want any of their male attention in that way. She knew too many women who’d made the mistake of getting into either relationships or just sexual entanglements that blew up in their faces while deployed. It made things more complicated, and she didn’t need complicated. She was there to do a job, to make a difference.
Besides, only one man had her heart. Unfortunately, their careers would not allow them to co-exist in one location for any length of time. It was a complex relationship fraught with unfulfilled dreams, sacrifice, and an incredible passion that seared her soul whenever they were together. They’d both decided it was better this way. No commitment, no expectations, but an incredible love that neither would deny and never faded.There was always just the hope that perhaps in some future the timing would be right for a relationship that would work.
On each occasion when they found themselves together, the mutual desire, which never waned, would draw them together for a night or two of incredible passion. It wasn’t just physical, though. There was also an appreciation of the other person’s intellect, and a mutual respect for the dedication each brought to the job, which was where their relationship had begun. On the job. The simple fact of the matter was, Yvette liked the person he was. She had been attracted to him since the moment she’d met him. If they did any other job, they would have gotten married and lived happily ever after. But for two people who worked for the agency, there was no happily ever after.
Yvette crushed out the last embers of her cigarette. “We’d better get to it,” she said, coming to her feet. “Henning’s team is already in the area and is out on an Op this morning,” she added.
“So is Shanahan’s,” Dupont said, also standing. He took one last drag and then broke the lit part away from the unburned section, which he then tucked back into his pack. No sense wasting any of it. “Looks like today will be busy.”
“Word is we have a VIP arriving later this afternoon too, some full-bird colonel from D.C.,” Yvette said.
“Great, another tourist,” Dupont complained.
They pushed through the doors and made their way to the secure Operations Center, which was located in the middle ofthe building. There, they received turnover from the two Ops Analysts who’d been on duty for the last twelve hours. It was already busy. Henning and Shanahan’s teams were fully engaged in their Ops.
Henning’s Team was a QRF Team, military and intelligence agency speak for Quick Response Force. A high-value ISIS target, Yussef Habib, had been spotted the day before. Henning and his team arrived in the area via chopper overnight. They set up two hundred yards outside of the fortified compound Habib was at, with two team members with high-powered scopes, camouflaged in ghillie suits, blending in with the scrub and native dry grass outside of the gate to the compound to watch for that target to leave the compound.
They knew Habib’s departure would be done by armored vehicle as it was known he feared flying. Nearby, the rest of the team sat vigil under a camouflage netting that was draped over their two armored vehicles, waiting for word of his exit and the direction he would travel. They would attack the convoy en route with Yvette’s help, calling in a targeted drone strike to take out his escort vehicles. They needed him alive to extract valuable intel.
Shortly after Yvette and Dupont came on shift, the target left the compound. Habib was inside an armored vehicle, the center vehicle in a five-vehicle convoy, was the report from the two spotters. The caravan headed north by northwest on a rough-worn road, headed towards Maqhá ash Shami.
“Give me your ETA to intersect, Bulldog,” Yvette transmitted, speaking into the mic of her headset positioned just below her lips. Bulldog was Bobby Henning’s callsign. He was a squatguy, built like a fireplug, with a crooked nose, which had been broken several times in bar fights. He was as tenacious as he was dedicated to the mission. Yvette knew him well, as he and his team operated in the area frequently.
“Approximately thirty minutes, Control,” Bulldog answered.
“Negative, Bulldog. Pick up the pace. You need to be on them within twenty. You have company coming in from further up the road to the northwest that you’ll want to avoid.”
“Fuck me,” Bulldog murmured.
That was when Yvette knew the timing of the mission had just gone to shit. She viewed the satellite feed that showed the locations of Habib’s caravan, of Henning’s team, and of the heavily armed, six-vehicle caravan that had just left Maqhá ash Shami, heading towards, and most likely planning to rendezvous, with Yussef Habib’s group. Yeah, Bulldog’s team with Yvette’s help could take on the five-vehicle convoy, but there was no way in hell they could complete their mission if the additional six-vehicles were in range when they engaged.
“Not today, Bulldog,” Yvette replied. “You can make it in the needed window if you kick it into high gear. I’ve got you and both forces on my screen. The drone is already in the air, and the chopper is on standby to extract your sorry asses.” Even as she said it, she knew it was going to be close, too close. Bulldog’s Team was traveling at its max speed over the rugged terrain.
“Negative, Sherlock,” Yvette heard Dupont say. Sherlock was Jerry Shanahan’s callsign. Dupont’s eyes were fixed on the second large monitor in the room that showed the feed. “Do not approach the structure. Something is really off with what I’m looking at.” Shanahan’s Team was on a reconnaissance mission in a sector that had seen an increase in ISIS fighters, suggesting a new training facility had been set up or it was a staging ground for a new campaign.
The atmosphere in the Ops Center instantly intensified to a serious level as Yvette and Dupont knew both missions were about to be paid a visit by Mr. Murphy to totally fuck up everyone’s day. Yvette kept her eyes on the monitor dedicated to Henning’s mission, resisting the temptation to look at the other monitor to see what had Dupont on edge. She heard it in his voice — the edge, the caution. She trusted him to keep that team out of harm’s way and knew her focus had to be on Henning to do the same.
The seconds ticked by. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Dupont murmured. “What am I not seeing?”
Yvette calculated that the scene playing out on the monitor for Bulldog’s mission had three to five minutes before things would get hot. She tore her eyes away and focused on the other monitor. “What concerns you, Circles?”
“The size of the building and the seven trucks parked there, plus all the tire tracks. There’s no indication we’re looking at an underground bunker, and there’s nothing else in the immediate area. That’s a plateau, not a mountainside. Something’s wrong with this picture.”
Yvette focused on the image. “Have the satellite pull out. Let’s see the bigger picture.”
Dupont clicked keys on his keyboard, and the view widened. Yvette studied the land. He was correct. There were no other structures within a klick. But the topography shifted, and the landscape became more mountainous, less than a half a klick, or about a third of a mile to the northwest.
