What the hell are we getting called back for? This can’t be good, Ford thought.
PART 3
REUNION
The Chinese Aircraft Team at DIA Headquarters shared the Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling real estate in Washington, DC, with a variety of other tenants. Years ago, the base was the home to an assortment of aircraft on runways near the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, which separated downtown Washington from the military facility. Today, the land hosted the helicopters for the president of the United States, the Air Force District of Washington offices, the White House Communications Agency, and the DIA.
Emily Livingston, the MI6 representative from the United Kingdom, was assigned to the DIA Chinese Aircraft Team as a liaison. Petite, attractive, sporting long blond hair, and influential, Emily was trained as an expert in human intelligence and could collect information on nearly anything on anybody. Especially when it came to men, because many men loved to talk to a gorgeous, fit blonde with a British accent.
Although she fancied Air Force Reserve Captain Ford Stevens, Emily was well aware of her professional abilities, common sense, and clever academic degrees, but also of her beauty. In her career, she had used her attractiveness powers to her advantage regularly. As a career operations officer, it had helped on occasion to wear a low-cut blouse here, a miniskirt there, and some perfume, and men sang like canaries about a glut of items. Using both her brains and her loveliness, she was an influential and skilled team player to both the UK and America.
Eastern Europeans were especially attracted to her. A few years before, Emily was in Crete, Greece, assigned to a counterintelligence mission at the US Naval Support Activity in Souda Bay. The mission was hatched after gate guards noticed an increase in vehicle drive-bys whenever the British Air Force Maritime Patrol Aircraft were flying in. Between the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service and MI6, this was determined to be some strange behavior.
Precisely when the Nimrod MRA4, a maritime patrol and attack aircraft was being flight tested from the UK to Greece, the same vehicles would develop a pattern and circle the perimeter of the base. The Nimrod, initially designed and flown to replace the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod MR2, was new, and, of course, of interest to other countries. These other countries were attracted to the significantly improved aircraft, especially since they had been upgraded with more efficient Rolls-Royce BR700 turbofan jet engines installed. Flying from the UK down to Greece allowed some reasonable flight testing for the aircraft for distance and over water. A foreign country would have enjoyed getting their hands on the new detection systems, too, as well as the additional weapon systems for antisubmarine warfare. Because of these special military parameters and upgrades, and the strange vehicles and behavior, Emily got the call for a mission.
The decision to get Emily involved on this specific case was a simple one. Simple, because she was easy on the eyes. By drinking and dancing at night clubs in the waterfront city of Chania on the island of Crete, she was able to mingle with a variety of suspected international men seen at the base’s gate and fence line. She could collect information and intelligence by pretending to be attracted to them. All Emily had to do was smile and talk. By leading them on, they talked and drank and talked, more often than not about what they were doing in Crete and with whom. When it was time to go home at the end of the night, and the men thought they were getting lucky, she would excuse herself from the bar and head to the ladies’ room. Instead of using the bathroom, she would exit the premises through the back door, departing with the information she and the MI6 team needed. It was a classic “honeypot” move, famous since the beginning of recorded time thousands of years ago.
Only a short three months ago, Ford thought Emily worked in finance at the International Monetary Fund and previously the World Bank. It was her cover story, the public persona that allowed her to move freely throughout the world conducting business for MI6 while maintaining a low profile. Emily’s training made her an excellent collector of information. She had perseverance, had tremendous patience and tact, was creditable in her work, and could adapt to nearly any situation.
The condition that unfolded recently was when Ford was brought to DIA Headquarters unannounced for a video teleconference and coincidentally ran into Emily. Her hand was forced to fully reveal her intelligence background, and while Ford understood, their relationship was slightly strained for a bit. Ford was bothered at the deception and questioned her honesty but comprehended the nature of her work. In the back of her mind, she would love to marry Ford Stevens at their earliest possible convenience, but knew he was not ready to settle down just yet.
Concerning Emily lately was Ford’s newest habit of drinking. His latest choice of alcohol was whiskey, and it only started after he came home from burying Wu Lee. Ford was on a brown bottle kick, or sometimes it was something West Whiskey, or even the white-and-blue label kind, but no matter what brand, she noticed the drinking had increased.
Many times, Ford called it whiskey tasting, consumed with single-malt at times, high-end brands at thirty dollars a glass during others. He liked the colored labels ranging from white and blue to gold, and glass bottles of all shapes and colors lined up behind a bar, and he would simply order them with just a splash of water or ginger ale. His favorite was when they were lined up behind a bar on multiple shelves with a white light as a background, enabling him to see all the liquid colors. What he actually laughed out loud about were the descriptions in magazines, such as “round and buttery with almond” and “signature rich sherry accented with citrus,” or his favorite: “soft, gentle peat, but thick with floral and sweet chestnuts.” What the heck does that mean? Don’t care about the description or age, just pour it already.
Because Ford rarely talked about the secret mission, even with Emily, she knew he was harboring the stress of the event inside. Ford seemed to be turning to drinking daily and had all the classic signs of some type of post-traumatic stress. His drinking, combined with the recent loss of Wu due to terminal pancreatic cancer, was a deadly combination.
Also, on the team was another crucial member, Robert Dooley, a DIA intelligence officer and expert in operations. Robert, a deep-voiced man of few words, was also focused on the human collection of information from other countries. Robert liked being outside in the elements, conducting hands-on kinetic operations rather than being stuck indoors in an office environment and sitting in meetings.
If a real-world mission needed, for example, a specific eighteen-wheeler truck, he obtained the team a truck. If a mission needed a listening device in Rio, a white three-ring binder prop in Rome, a Manhattan-style pizza box, a Maine lobster tail in Paris, or a Bertram 35 Yacht positioned off Ireland, he could get them all. Because Robert was a classic stoic, he rarely smiled but always dug down hard into his work and came through for the team.
Born in Rochester, New York, but raised in North Padre Island, Texas, he was all about Syracuse sports and the University of Texas Longhorns. A veteran soldier of the army, he joined the DIA team from the Signal Corps. Robert was a principal teammate and was relied upon by Calvin Burns, Mark Savona, and Emily Livingston to make things happen.
The phone rang in the DIA China Desk area, and Emily walked over to Mark’s phone to answer it. “Hello, this is Emily,” she said with her British accent. It sounded like “Hah-low, this is Emm-a-Lee.”
“Emily, morning. This is Jason from Calvin Burns’s office. Mr. Burns would like to talk with you and the team at eleven thirty this morning. Your conference rooms. He has Savona coming back from leave, and Captain Stevens is on his way in from out west.”