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Off-the-books Operations Center
Outside Bethesda, Maryland

 

“I found her!”

Leroux snapped awake in his chair, wiping away a bit of drool with the back of his hand. Sonya was already scooting toward Tommy’s workstation, and nobody seemed to have noticed his body’s embarrassing betrayal. “What was that?”

Sonya glanced at him. “I should have woken you to tell you to go to bed, but you, umm, looked so peaceful.” She blushed then pointed at the screen. “Tommy’s found her!”

He yawned. “Who?”

Tommy grinned. “Our blonde. Her name is Natasha Ivashin. I’m running her name now, but it’s definitely her.”

Leroux scooted closer. “Where did you find her?”

“In some old photos from an MMA group in Moscow. They have thousands of photos on their Facebook page, and she’s in quite a few of them by the looks of it.” He tapped his keyboard, bringing up several photos his program had matched with their suspect’s facial recognition points. “As you can see, she was an MMA fighter a few years ago. These photos I’m finding her in all date back five to ten years.” A photo appeared showing a rather muscular looking woman. “Jeez, looks like she could have been on the East German Women’s Wrestling team.”

Leroux chuckled. “Good reference.”

“Top Secret. Awesome movie. Still holds up.”

“I forgot all about that one. I saw it as a kid. Val Kilmer in his prime.” Leroux made a mental note to watch it again soon. “Okay, hit every database we can. We need to find out everything about her. I want to know where she lives, where she lived, who she works for, her complete résumé. I want to know about relatives, especially her father. Who’s alive, who’s dead. Everything.”

“Got it.”

Sonya turned to him. “What databases can we tap?”

“Tap them all, including CIA. I spoke to the Chief, and now that we know our side’s involvement was limited to Agent West, he feels confident we can trust our people. He still wants to minimize exposure, though.”

“Can we move to a proper location?” asked Sonya, hope in her eyes.

Leroux nodded. “We can, but if we do, we lose Tommy because he doesn’t have clearance.”

Tommy appeared crestfallen at the notion, and Sonya noticed.

She smiled. “Well, I guess we can keep going here.” Then yawned. “Can we bring in somebody, though?”

Leroux chuckled. “Nope. Nobody can know about this place, remember? And like I said, the Chief wants to minimize exposure.”

She cursed. “Oh well. Being wedged in here is good training for the upcoming apocalypse.”

Leroux smiled. “That’s the spirit!”