Potential identities for Ted:
1. Jase Hamilton
2. FBI contact
3. ProtoComm contact
4. Unknown entity
5. Liam Monroe?
6. Mission marks
* Notepad on Briel’s phone
Yeah, I was pretty shocked that you invited him on this mission. I wouldn’t have done it. – Nessa’s text to Briel after Liam arrived at the briefing.
Finally, the day had settled to dusk, and Briel strolled to the door so she could let Nessa in. Liam, Adam, and several other team members followed close behind. Only moments before, Briel had finally succeeded in suppressing the conversation with Kernal.ted and relegating it to the back burner of her brain, Too, her newer struggle against far-distant flashes from her childhood had settled back into its proper place – beneath concern for her current client.
Looking around at her teammates, Briel noted with satisfaction that they all sported unobtrusive black t-shirts and black jeans or pants. Individually, none would seem notable, but as a group their presence looked intimidating.
“Are you all ready?” Briel began.
“Mostly,” Nessa replied, her brow crinkled in thought.
Adam continued for her, “Who exactly is going to get us past the security systems we run into? You didn't bring a specialist.”
Briel bit her lip in frustration, “I don't expect to run into anything high tech, and I can get us past any standard system. Besides, we can call back to headquarters, and they can help us with anything I can't solve myself. I doubt that with ProtoComm's current state of operations Jack Buckley has the resources to install a high-dollar security system.”
Briel downplayed her team's concerns, but the reminder made her again irritated at herself for choosing Liam over Jase, or at least over one of the electronics specialists from the greater Team. With all of her self-doubt regarding him, she found that his presence made her rather awkward about having him around, and she found herself avoiding his gaze as she looked around the group of faces.
Of course, Liam would keep the mission interesting, and she really didn’t like to be bored. I really am a masochist, she sighed silently.
“Let's go,” she commanded aloud into the expectant faces of her team.
A moment later, they all piled into Liam's jeep and Nessa's sedan, heading through the deepening twilight to the private airstrip northwest of town. The military transport planes from the nearby air force base droned loudly overhead, drowning out the hum of the team's small jet from curious ears.
Fortunately, the military launched so many transports in San Antonio airspace that no one noticed the small ten passenger plane as it took off into the dusk.
As the plane made the four-hour trip to Mexico City, the sky deepened into a rich indigo blanket sprinkled with stars. The sight of the stars always stirred up a strange, painful sentimentality that took Briel away from her present and back to her childhood. For a part of her youth, she had existed in a blissful utopia, and one of the recurrent images from that time lay in the evenings her father would take her outside and show her the constellations in the black sky over Normandie. She didn’t let herself ask whether the ache were from a longing for that time or from another, more tragic memory of the stars. She just let herself love the stars, a strange, irrational sentiment that did not mesh with her general paradigm of life. She especially loved flying at night, and she forcefully cleared her mind of all the stress that had built up over the past few weeks.
As she rose above the clouds, the expanse of the sky seemed to grow exponentially. Her constant suppression of emotion rendered her all the more susceptible to beauty when she allowed it to touch her. Soaring above the sky was one of those few places where she relaxed her control.
As if in accord with Briel's thoughts, the rest of her team either sat quietly staring out the windows or closed their eyes in apparent sleep. Briel closed her own eyes and willed herself not to be rational, not to think at all. Before she had entered the plane, she had planned her entire course of action, so she need waste no time on it now. In reality, the team had managed a simple extraction so often in the past that everyone felt complete confidence in his own ability to carry it out.
The gentle jarring of the landing sent the team into motion, each grabbing his weapons and communicator. Unlike on her typical mission, Briel decided to take not just her communicator, but also her phone. She didn't let herself ask why. If someone had enough desire, he could track her GPS, but Briel it would be highly difficult since the phone was a burner.
As on Briel's previous trips to Mexico City, a variety of choking scents filled her nose when she steered the black van toward the center of the town. The pungent smell of rotting garbage from the dumps that doubled as shanty towns gradually surrendered to the musky fumes from the buses.
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Despite the apparent liveliness of the city, few brave souls ventured out into the darkness. A recent spate of violent cartel crime prevented the general excursion of the average person at night, and flashing neon signs lit the entrance to nearly uninhabited establishments.
Stepping to the edge of a pool of light, Briel signaled her team to commence their searches. She had established a rendezvous in six hours at the appointed location about eight miles further into town. Though she felt little hope that she would find Emilia immediately, Briel engaged in a thorough and diligent search.
She knew she would likely need research and interviews to determine her target's location, and interviews would need persuasion. In a town where people had accepted the monolithic dominance of the cartels, brave souls did not last long. All intel would come under cover of darkness. Six hours later, Briel rounded up her team to catch two to three hours of rest.
“We ran into a couple of people who had some promising information. It seems a 'gringo,' drunk and loud, had made the rounds of the neighborhood bars,” Adam informed Briel. “The phrase 'Indian moneybags' also came up several times. This pretty much proves our hypothesis. Nessa had no trouble encouraging the men to talk. I think we should proceed in our sector in the morning. It doesn't sound like our targets are going overboard to cover their tracks. I think you're right about their lax security, Briel.”
“He's right,” Nessa stated with confidence, “and I think our proceedings should go pretty smoothly. According to the time frame when they saw Mr. Buckley, he should still be in the area. Given his difficult position, he would most likely need at least twelve hours to develop viable terms with Mr. Nigam, plus more time to implement them. The bar patrons saw him less than twenty-four hours ago.”
Their logic seemed accurate. “Then that's where we start in the morning. Normally, I would suspect such an easy find, but Buckley has no reason to hide his actions in a town where the cartels own the government. Not if he is working with the cartels, as I'm sure he was when Henry ran the show.
Obviously, the bars will prove more sparsely populated in the mornings, so we'll have to bribe the local population with more than cerveza if we want any information. Liam, you and Ginny sweep the perimeter of the area and see if you find any evidence that Mr. Buckley has left town and when. The rest of us will concentrate inside the circle where we have direct evidence of Buckley's movement. For now, let's get some rest.”
Fortunately for them, plenty of indigents inhabited the numerous abandoned buildings in the city. No one would consider the presence of eight unknown people unusual in one of these dwellings. Briel had picked her team based on several factors, obviously including competence, but also including fluent Spanish and a complexion capable of blending in with the local populace.
Only Briel and Liam had anything but brown hair and eyes, and Briel's olive complexion made up for her green eyes and lighter hair. She did not appear American, just unusual for a Mexican. Liam’s irises were almost black against his pupils, and no one would mistake his hair for a natural color.
“Callate!” Briel yelled forcefully at the drunken cohabitants of her temporary residence; their grumbling would keep the team up all night. Within moments, silence reigned inside the building.
For some reason, Briel possessed the ability to command respect, even from those who did not know her. She heard chuckles from her teammates as quiet blanketed the room. Settling into a relatively comfortable position, Briel pulled out her phone, shielding her team from the glare of its light.
What would happen, she wondered, if she contacted Kernal.ted? Would he offer her some form of help in his presumptuous way? Would she betray her position to him and find him an enemy? Or would he just serve up some obnoxiously sentimental expression like “I miss you”?
The last thought brought a smirk to her lips, but she just turned the phone dark and stuck it back in her pocket. If she jeopardized her mission, she would never forgive herself. No matter her curiosity, she would just have to wait for another day.
++++++++++++++++
“You speak pretty well of him for a stalker,” the man insisted, and Briel chewed the inside of her lip.
Had she been talking about Jase or Liam? Jase was more of an impression than a memory, so it made no sense to talk about him, so probably Liam. One of the times she had needed to label him a stalker ex to explain his presence near her?
Back then, though, she had thought him sweet. He had been so concerned for her safety – was she in New York? There had been a good reason for concern. Yet, she labeled him a stalker? It felt like a betrayal of sorts, for him to be so worried about her and her to liken him to a criminal.
“He wasn’t bad when we dated,” she diverted the conversation. “It was only after we broke up, like he couldn’t let go – or maybe he didn’t trust me to take care of myself.”
That last part was true. If one thing bothered her about Liam, it was his kind of overbearing concern about the choices she made. Part of her understood – there were so many errors that cropped up on the lead up to a mission. In the hottest moments of a mission, her instinct kicked in, and she did well, but in any circumstance but the most dire, she struggled.
If she held any doubt of the morality of her actions, she froze. If an innocent my get hurt, she had aborted entire missions, with months of work wasted. Even worse, she would sometimes hesitate at the worst time when she needed to attack a criminal. Even the darkest heart held some small measure of light, and it was as if she felt compelled to give them every opportunity to turn away from their crimes. A horrible habit for someone in her occupation.
“Look.” A hand reached for hers, and it seemed to possess long fingers against her comparably dainty ones. “If you don’t think he’s dangerous, then I won’t push. But you’re a good person, and I’m just worried that you are too ready to give someone the benefit of the doubt.”
As they collapsed onto the couch together, Briel blew out a breath. She did tend to hold on to hope too long, and she had suffered for it in the past. It wasn’t Liam that had proven himself untrustworthy, though – it was Jase. If he showed his face again, she would tell Liam. Whatever their relationship, he didn’t like dangerous men around Briel, and maybe she shouldn’t either. Maybe she needed a team instead of going it alone. Jase Hamilton held the potential for danger, whatever his motivation for seeking her out. When money is god, everything else is negotiable.
Briel settled into a comfortable position next to the mark and turned unseeing eyes to the television screen. She had far too much confliction to figure out any clear answers at the moment.