Air Mobility Command air passenger terminal
Naval Station Norfolk, Chambers Field
8225 Patrol Road, Norfolk, Virginia
1815 local time
Katie followed the driver, whom she’d expected to drop them at the front of the terminal rather than escort them through the small, tile-floored reception area to the private room, where they were meeting the rest of what Conza kept calling their “stick.” The former SEAL followed behind her as she dragged her wheeled duffel across the floor, where it made a click…click…click sound as she walked. The driver, Petty Officer Deneen, was eyeing the coffee kiosk in the lobby of the air terminal, rubbing his hands together.
“Gotta get caffeinated, ma’am,” he said sheepishly when she glanced at him.
Pettigrew and Conza had, predictably, hit it off immediately. She wasn’t being a misandrist, and it wasn’t because they were both men. It was because Pettigrew and Conza were both country outdoorsmen, hunting, fishing, and camping types.
Is it uncool to think of them as rednecks?
She didn’t think so, since Bubba always referred to himself as a redneck with great pride, and Conza had already referenced himself as a redneck with a degree.
“Here you are, ma’am,” Petty Officer Deneen said, gesturing with a hand at the door he opened for her. She had no idea if he was from NOB Norfolk, the AMC terminal, or perhaps from the ONI office.
“Thank you, shipmate,” she said, and the sailor spun on a booted heel and hustled back across the tiny terminal, making a beeline for the coffee kiosk.
She entered the room, which turned out to be a combination conference room and lounge, complete with a government surplus–style conference table across from a well-worn, faded leather sofa, matching love seat, and two matching chairs surrounding a square coffee table. She met the eyes of the man seated at the head of the conference table. He was flanked by two men on one side and a woman on the other, all wearing blue jeans, sports shirts, and hiking boots.
Our CIA contingent…
“You must be the ONI gang,” the man at the head of the table said, shooting her a pleasant-enough smile.
“What gave it away?” she asked, reaching out a hand and laughing, since her team was all dressed in the Navy’s latest iteration of BDUs—the Type III uniform, which had a camouflage pattern that shared a color palette with guacamole. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Ryan.”
“Ted,” the man said after a short, firm handshake.
“John Conza,” Conza said, shaking the case officer’s hand next, and then introducing Bubba. “This is Petty Officer Pettigrew.”
“People call me Bubba,” Pettigrew said.
“I’m sure they do,” Ted said, gesturing for them to have a seat at the table and then glancing out the row of windows, where the ramp sat empty. “I don’t see our ride, so we may have a little time to kill.”
Katie took a seat at the opposite end of the modest table, with Conza and Pettigrew flanking her as Ted made introductions to the rest of the CIA team.
“This is Andrew and Ben,” he said, indicating the two men beside him, who both gave small waves.
“Call me Drewski,” said the handsome man on the left, whose long and unkempt curly black hair and patchy beard made him look more like a blues singer than a CIA case officer.
“Good to meet you, Drewski,” Katie said.
“And this is Sam,” Ted added, gesturing to the woman beside him—whom Katie decided must be a triathlete, based on her build.
“Simran Bakshi,” the woman said with a nod to Katie, smiling with both her mouth and her mocha-colored eyes. “These guys call me Sam.”
“Why?” Conza asked.
“I suppose because my name wasn’t Beth, or Jessica, or Amy, but mainly because they’re morons,” Sam said, delivering the line perfectly.
The laughter that followed broke any ice remaining in the room.
“So you’re the OGA team,” Conza said, using the other-government-agency acronym usually reserved for CIA. “Where is the DIA contingent?”
“Arriving with the plane,” Ted explained. “No sense hiking down to Virginia Beach to meet up when Andrews is so much closer.”
“Aren’t you guys up in Northern Virginia, too?” Bubba pointed out as he slipped a can of Copenhagen from his blouse breast pocket and an empty soda bottle from his cargo pocket.
“Yep,” the man called Drewski said as Bubba packed a dip into his lip. Katie watched Conza raise a finger and an expectant eyebrow, and Bubba slid the can of smokeless tobacco across the table to him. She might be in charge, but she was already feeling the odd man out with the blossoming bromance. “We were in the area already, if you know what I’m sayin’.”
“Williamsburg?” Conza asked, packing his own lip with a generous helping of tobacco.
Operated by the Department of Defense as the Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity, Camp Peary outside of Williamsburg was the world’s most poorly kept secret. In its current incarnation, Peary hosted the CIA’s covert training facility known as “the Farm,” used to train CIA officers from the Directorate of Operations, as well as the DIA’s Defense Clandestine Service. The CIA also planned and trained for specific operations at the facility, with partner organizations such as the DIA, FBI, and the SEALs and Army Special Forces from the JSOC.
“That was convenient,” she noted.
Ted just smiled.
“I understand that you’ll be heading up the intelligence section of our little task force here.”
Katie studied the man carefully, but he remained smiling and relaxed. She expected there might be some sort of turf battle over who had authority over what, but hoped that wouldn’t be the case. Teams worked best when they put mission over whatever political rice bowls might exist outside of their mission, especially up north “inside the Beltway.”
“I’d like to approach this as a collaboration, Ted,” she said. “Each of our task force components bring unique skill sets to the team, but we also have our individual charters from our parent commands. I say we take a team approach here to make sure everyone shares intel and collaborates on analysis, but also gets what they need so we can complete all aspects of our individual missions.”
“That’s cool,” Ted said. “Glad to be working with a famous sub hunter. I’ve heard, well, read a lot about you.”
She felt herself blush. Surely there was some wall of secrecy around her exploits in the covert mission to stop the Belgorod that had not been penetrated. The idea of people at the CIA reading about her felt horrifying.
“The most important thing for us to be successful is the unfiltered sharing of both information and opinion. Do you agree?” she asked.
“Completely,” he said. “And I know Lou Donatelli, our DIA lead, very well. He’s a former Army JSOC guy, so he knows about how things need to work in a joint task force environment. And his teammate, Lorie Tengco, is a total badass, but also a solid team player. I deployed with her before.”
“That thing in Mariupol?” Sam asked, and Ted nodded. “I heard she’s the real deal.”
“And I heard Mariupol was a total shit show,” Drewski said, and then fist-bumped his partner, Ben, as they laughed at some inside joke.
“Well, sounds like we’ve got the perfect team,” Katie said, hoping the lovefest continued once they got in the thick of things.
“The challenge will be working with the Group Eight team,” Ted warned, his voice lowering after glancing over at the closed door. “They’re talented and professional, but I hear they tend to stay a little more to themselves.”
“Group Eight, like Naval Special Warfare Group Eight?” Katie asked, surprised, keeping her own voice low. “I wasn’t briefed they were part of Task Force 25.”
“Technically, they’re not—not formally,” Ted said. “They’re going to be with us at Penghu, working with the Sea Dragon frogmen and the other NSW elements. But we’ll want to loop in close with them for information sharing.”
“I can help with that,” Conza said, and then dribbled some tobacco juice into a Styrofoam cup he had fetched from the small coffee station beside the table. “When Big Navy folded SRT 1 and 2 in with the intel collection elements from Group Three, they became an intel gold mine. Their charter might be to provide signals, HUMINT, and covert ops to prep the battlefield for JSOC and Navy elements, but they are very much team players in the joint environment, I promise. More so probably than the DEVGRU guys, who are highly compartmentalized because they’re all direct-action oriented.”
“Sounds like you’re a frogman?”
“Former,” Conza said with a shrug. Katie knew that was like being a “former” Marine. “I have a close buddy over at SRT 2 and I augmented at DEVGRU for a time. By the way…” He glanced over at Katie. “The details of their work is obviously SCI-level shit, but the existence of Group Eight is open-source, so it’s okay to talk about them.”
“Where did the orders for Group Eight come from?” Katie asked, feeling annoyed now. It seemed odd that Captain Ferguson hadn’t briefed her on the NSW covert intelligence team joining them. She was the ONI component, for crying out loud, so why was she hearing about Group Eight from the CIA?
“We heard about it from our ODNI brief,” Ted said. “So, my guess is it came from the White House.”
“Gotcha,” Katie said. Ferguson may not have heard until they were already departed, and that was the kind of information not best shared on a phone call. She’d be grateful to arrive at their final destination and have access to a TOC for information sharing.
“We can discuss more details of how to structure the team during the flight over,” Ted said, maybe reading her mind. “We’re traveling on an agency asset, so it’s basically an airborne TOC. The aviators are organic to us, so they’re both TS/SCI cleared.”
“Great,” Katie replied, and meant it. “We should probably settle in and then get intel updates from our various head sheds, and then we can share information and brainstorm out an approach to…” She hesitated to say it out loud. “…Our mission.”
“By mission, you mean supporting the joint special operations exercise with Taiwan’s Navy and the Sea Dragons?” Ben asked, his eyes twinkling with amusement.
“Exactly,” she said. The rest would have to wait, and not much longer, it seemed, since the executive Boeing 777 that taxied now onto the ramp in front of the terminal was painted all white, with no markings except a civilian aircraft registration number, in this case beginning with a C, meaning it was registered in Canada.
That plane could literally only be CIA.
“JC!” a voice boomed from her left as the door opened. She looked over to see a mountain of a man standing there, a large duffel over his shoulder. Dressed in gray cargo pants, a flannel shirt, and a Hurley ball cap, he grinned through a bushy red beard as he stared at Conza, who was already on his feet and hustling over to the door.
“What’s up, bro?” Conza said as the SEAL operator dropped his duffel and they wrapped each other up in a bear hug, the new arrival lifting Conza off the floor.
“Oh shit, dude,” Conza laughed.
The burly SEAL stepped back and inspected Conza’s left leg, then put his hands on his hips, shaking his head in apparent disappointment. “Bro, you promised you’d do a peg leg, like an honest-to-God pirate.”
For no good reason, Katie blushed, remembering the thought she’d had about a peg leg when she’d been caught glancing at Conza’s prosthetic.
“No, asshole,” Conza said. “I promised if I lost an eye, then I’d get a peg leg and a black eye patch. If I can’t be a SEAL, then pirate is the only other viable alternative.”
“So…looks like I’m crashing y’all’s party,” the SEAL said, looking past Conza—whom he towered over by eight inches—into the flight lounge.
“Come on in,” Katie called out from her seat. “I’m guessing you’re here to join us on the flight for Task Force 25?”
“Can’t say, ma’am. But if so, we’ll have to connect on board,” he answered with a wink. “My team is staging gear. If we’re on the same plane, I look forward to meeting you all.” He turned to Conza again and pointed a finger at him. “Don’t drink the ginger ale, dude.”
“I won’t,” Conza said, and they both laughed at some inside joke.
“And keep that peg leg greased, bro,” the SEAL said as he turned to leave. “You never know when you might need to jam.”
“I hear that,” Conza said, and closed the door behind the operator.
She watched her new teammate’s face fade from joy to something else. She wondered just how hard it had been for the man to transition from a man of action with the elite SEAL teams to sitting at a desk analyzing intelligence data.
The human toll—it reaches everywhere…
“Commander Ryan?” a new, far-less booming voice called as the door opened again. Katie turned and saw a young female sailor standing at the door with a clipboard.
“Yes?” she answered.
“Ma’am, your aircraft is here. If I could get you to confirm the passenger manifest and have everyone present their CAC cards, please?”
“Of course,” she said and rose.
“We can then tag all of your bags and get them on the ramp.”
“Well,” Ted announced and stood as well. “Let’s show IDs to this charming young lady and then assemble our gear outside.” He looked at Katie. “We’ll get into a deeper conversation once we’re in the air.”
“Sounds good, Ted,” she said. “And please call me Katie.”
“All right, Katie,” the CIA officer said.
Her thought went to the burly SEAL they’d just met, and just outside the open door she saw him with more than another half dozen similarly clad men and one woman, though none the size of the man who’d hugged Conza. They stood surrounding a mountain of gear—duffels, backpacks, and two stacks of what she surmised were weapons cases.
Her thoughts drifted to her comfortable new office, swivel chair, and Josie sitting on the windowsill. She shook her head.
Just what the hell has Captain Ferguson gotten me into?