“I know, I know, Fleet Strike’s mission was and is human versus Posleen, not human versus human. They have almost no cloak and dagger operations, of course. The key word there is almost. They have, rarely, had some internal high drama — investigating misappropriation of funds, diversion of resources, corporate bidding scandals, things like that. There was a billing category for it, a protocol for the systems to deal with such an agent, and that was all I needed. Especially since I told it I was too secret for it to pay me, which let me, after the fact, disable the linkage to the payroll and accounting systems. When I got through tinkering, the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. I cross referenced against the standard reports… uh… your eyes are glazing over. I covered my tracks, okay?” When he talked about computer geeking, it was possible to see the skinny, dark-haired kid from Fredericksburg inside the linebacker’s son.
“If they hadn’t broken out their own data storage from the Darhel’s main AID network in 2019, I never would have been able to manage it. I’m sure it’s duplicated in the Darhel’s databases somewhere, but there’s never been anything to bring one insignificant sleeper agent to their attention. Not that I know of, anyway. I had dumped large chunks of AID code into some harmless-looking duplicate files on a first generation preproduction system right after the Rabun Gap incidents. I was pissed, Iron Mike was pissed, we were all pissed. The plan was to analyze it later and I had cooperation from the rest of the 555th ACS. We did some sleight of hand with partial files I don’t need to get into. Anyway, I used the back door I built to dump my files so I could use them in my private sector work. That’s the only time I ever accessed it, but I never shut it down. The system should, and I stress ‘should,’ still think I’m in Fleet Strike if we tickle it right,” Sunday said.
He took a chance and stole one of the really yummy smelling brownies Cally had sitting on a napkin in front of her, ignoring the dirty look she shot him. He’d have to ask where she’d found them, since chocolate was one of those luxury goods at one hell of a premium on base since the split. It was far more available on the island, given the proximity for smuggling. Maybe he could get her source to part with the recipe for Wendy. These were good.
“Unless they caught you last time, in which case it will bring all hell down on our asses.” The red-haired fireplug of a man spat neatly into a chipped stoneware mug that was missing its handle.
“Papa’s got it in one,” Cally said. “Our peerless leaders’ willingness to play this card should give you some idea of the importance of the mission. You all know we’ve been skating on the edge of disaster, as an organization, since the split. The take from this mission won’t come anywhere near putting us where we were, but it’ll make that thin ledge we’re on just a tad wider. If the device’s existence and location is confirmed, if this isn’t some elaborate ruse to give the Darhel a plausible excuse to eliminate Michelle as one more O’Neal, we can’t let them get it developed and in production. If they get something like this, we aren’t just on the edge anymore, we’re out of business. We don’t have a defense that would keep a captured agent from spilling his guts under this thing, and all of our agents know way too much. We aren’t nearly as compartmentalized as we should be. There won’t be anything to stop the enemy from running routine interrogations on all their people, potentially compromising every agent we’ve got inside.” She sighed. “We’ve been complacent, and it’s come back to bite us in the ass.”
“Okay, to make the explanation as simple as possible, the plan is a lame duck jenny with a charlie chatter and a right angle fake. Harrison, you’re charlie. Granpa, you do the fake out. Tommy steals the ball. George, you drive and babysit the Humvee. Jenny, obviously, me.” She pointed to her own chest.
“If nobody’s got any questions so far, let’s get to the positions and timing.” Cally picked up a fiberglass pointer. “The plane comes in nap of the Earth at oh-five-hundred and sets down on the flat behind this hill. I’ve allowed a generous twenty minutes for us to unload and get into the vehicle. I expect it to take half that. Buckley, start the hummer and the clock.”
“Hold that thought, buckley,” George said. “I do have a couple of questions.” If Isaac’s team lead objected to being interrupted, she didn’t show it. Not to casual inspection. Tommy knew enough to recognize the slight tightening of her hands after she folded them in front of herself and turned a deceptively open face towards the other man. There was nothing significant to anyone about her closed body language. Cally always kept her arms close in, defensively, when she wasn’t in character for a job. He didn’t know if George could read her closely enough to catch the Cally-specific facial tells.
“Yes?” Her tone of voice was pleasantly even. If Tommy hadn’t worked closely with her most of her life, he wouldn’t have been able to tell she was getting torqued. He was starting to wonder how tactful George had been, or hadn’t been, in their prior meeting.
“The jenny is fine, but in my experience it’s almost impossible to run an obvious diversion on a military base without the senior NCOs, at least, smelling a rat. Not to mention a security lockdown of the base. And Harrison sucks at field work,” he said, nodding to his brother. “Sorry, bro, but you do. Tommy’s conspicuously huge, and a fucking war hero. What if he gets made? Why not switch Tommy and Papa and send Papa in with a swipe card, since the system takes them. Or a grafted fingerprint. And why do you really need me if I’m just going to be sitting on my ass in the truck? No offense, it just looks like I’m extraneous.”
Cally’s expression got friendlier. Not a good sign. “Okay, first off, the diversion is anything but obvious. Operations training has a computer randomized Posleen attack drill approximately once a month. It’s separate from security lockdown drills because with Posleen that’s a waste of manpower that Fleet Strike may need. Don’t sell Harrison short. He’s charming, and can be made up to look inconspicuous, particularly in uniform. And he’s not going to make a fuss about changing his appearance. Right, Harrison?” It wasn’t really a question. “Everyone still alive who ever served with Tommy has either been riffed out or deployed off planet. He’s huge, no disguising that. His hair, eyes, and facial structure will look nothing like his original identity. Fleet Strike has helped us out, there, by liberalizing the length and grooming standards for hair in the past ten years. Papa can’t go in his place. A swipe card triggers a security review automatically, a graft is a dead giveaway under the most casual review, and the access end is the place most likely to need a sophisticated on-site hack. You, obviously, are our go to hell guy.”
It was impressive how she could say something like that without overselling or underselling it. It’d be interesting to know if she was fooling George or not with the Miss Friendly face. “You’ve just demonstrated why. You’re better than anyone I know at finding potential weak points in a plan, on short notice — even though we have those specific ones covered. You improvise fast and well even for a field agent. If anything goes wrong, you get to pull our cherries out of the fire.”
“Okay, fine. Why is Papa doing the hack for the diversion, and what if that’s not smooth?” he asked. “No offense.” He nodded to the older redhead.
“Tommy does the hack on the way. He’s got half a dozen canned routines set up in Papa’s buckley to cover contingencies. The only reason the hack isn’t already done is to reduce the chance that it will be noticed beforehand. We hope it won’t be noticed at all, but nobody wants a blown op, do we?” She smiled. “That it? Okay, buckley, start the Humvee moving.”