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I silenced him with a glare and said, "You take front bumper. Let him get to the door. I'll stand up then you hit him with the taser. Any questions?"

Retro could smell my rage and simply nodded.

We waited on Bull to enter the courtyard, then melted into the shadows, me in the rear and Retro in the front. I keyed my Bluetooth, saying, "Reaper, we're set. Status?"

"Kranz is talking to the guy. No idea about what. I'm not sure it's the unknown. I'm still clean. What do you want me to do?"

"Read it. Make a decision. If he makes a move on Kranz, take him down. If not, you need to judge. If he's the unknown, we need to take him now that Kranz has engaged. We're compromised. But if he's not, then he's a civilian and taking him down will compromise us for real."

I heard nothing for a moment, then, "Roger."

Bull keyed his mike, and I heard a bunch of BS about not being here after dark, and then I heard a different voice. A female voice.

"What are you two doing? This is my area. My tour. You can't be here. I have permission from the owners."

You have got to be kidding me. What else can go wrong?

Bull transitioned seamlessly, saying, "Yes, ma'am. I'm with the park service. I was just asking this guy what he was doing here."

I heard the target say, "Nothing. Nothing at all. I'm leaving." Then the woman asked, "Park service? This isn't a park. It's a privately owned building. Let me see some I.D."

The microphone went mute, and I staged for assault. I caught a shadow exit the courtyard, then saw the target fumbling for his keys. I called Jesse as I rose. "Exfil, I say again, exfil. Get the van here now."

The target looked at me in fear, giving Retro his full back to fire upon. The taser required both leads to connect, and it wasn't that accurate, which is why I'd wanted the target focused on me. If one contact missed, we'd be in a fighting, screaming mess with Miss High-and-Mighty about fifty meters away.

I heard the dull whine, and the target whipsawed onto the ground, massive voltage going through him. I saw headlights splash behind me, then go dark. Jesse pulled the van in, and we threw the man into the back. Retro went in after, flex-tying and gagging the target.

I said, "Head to the Marina. Don't wait on Kranz or anyone else. Bull will be right behind you. Any trouble, leave it to him."

He nodded and began backing up while I jogged to my car. "Bull, provide coverage for the van to the marina. Retro' s staying with the target. Kranz, Reaper, what's your status?"

I got a "Roger" from Bull, but nothing from Reaper or Kranz. I rounded the corner onto Franklin and saw them talking to the unknown.

Enough of this bullshit.

The only proof we would get that the unknown was a roleplayer in the exercise was if he actually met our target at 0100 in the back of a deserted prison. Stopping this guy outside left a glaring hole. If he was just a bad-luck walker and they took him down, we would be in deep trouble. That type of thing would be impossible to explain or cover up.

I slammed on the brakes, threw the car into PARK, and strode over to them, mentally throwing the entire exercise out the window to protect the Taskforce.

Kranz saw me stalking toward him, and his mouth opened in surprise. He said, "Hey, we're just checking this guy out. Why he's walking so late. You know."

I said, "Shut the fuck up." I turned to the walker, a young black man with an attitude, and said, "Beat it. Now." He said, "Hey, bro, I got a right to be here. I was just telling them that. I done nothing wrong. Show me your badge."

He's not a roleplayer-he thinks we're cops. About to go Rodney King on us.

I leaned into his personal space and whispered, "You get moving right now, or I'm going to send you to the fucking morgue. Bro."

His eyes widened, and he nodded, then backpedaled before turning and jogging in the direction from which he'd come.

Kranz said, "What the hell are you doing? We might have gotten information out of him. He- "

I grabbed Kranz's shirt, lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the ground, knocking the wind out of him. He lay gasping like a fish, and I leaned in until our faces were inches apart. "You will get your ass to the marina. You will not do anything but drive. You will park, and then you will sit until you are told to get on the boat. You disobey anything I've just said, and I'm going to break two bones of my choice. Understood?"

He managed to nod. I let go and stood up, breathing heavily, still feeling the rage.

Looking down at our team's twitching second-in-command without any trace of irony, Reaper said, "This is the strangest exercise I have ever been on."

Chapter 8

"I want him gone. Period."

Kurt said, "Pike, it's not that simple. There are equities here that aren't solved by firing someone. People who want to see this fail will assume we don't know what we're doing."

"Don't know what we're doing? Jesus, keeping that guy will prove the point. He's a walking menace."

"He came highly recommended from the CIA. We can't simply spit him back out. They'll turn off the pipe of people they respect because they'll think we don't know how to utilize them."

"Sir, we need an overarching assessment and selection process. Something we all agree on and nobody will argue is unfair. We don't get that, and we can throw all this away." I said it while sweeping my hand around the room, then said, "Well, I can't wait to throw this away, but you know what I mean."

We were inside a rented warehouse near Falls Church, our makeshift team room while the construction went on at the permanent Clarendon facility. The warehouse was set back in the woods, with a gated entrance, and it was swept daily for listening devices or other electronic monitoring. Other than the elaborate security and surveillance systems in place, it didn't have a whole lot of amenities. A concrete floor, some metal wall lockers, and a one-hole toilet. But it would do.

"So you're saying he's a total shit-bag? Does nothing right?

Didn't he do well on the surveillance aspects?" I grudgingly said, "Yeah. He's pretty switched on with all the spy stuff." Kurt smiled. "And that's our biggest weakness."

"But he always tries to go commando when it isn't necessary. It's like he wants the spy stuff to go wrong so he can start doing something stupid. You'd think he would be the last person to do that, but he's always the first. The worst part is, he won't listen to me. I can't trust him."

"You couldn't trust him before. I think you got your point across in Charleston. And you're going to need his skills."

He paused, looked me in the eye, and said, "Because that's the entire mission profile for Yemen."

It took a second to sink in. "The mission is a go? Oversight Council gave approval for Omega on the computer?"

He held up his hands. "No, no. Just Alpha. Introduction of forces and preparation of the battle space. Get an assessment of whether we can gain access to his data; then we'll go back for Omega authority. So you don't have to worry about Kranz going commando. It'll just be the spy stuff."

I tried one last time. "Let me leave him here. I've got Jesse and he's switched on. He knows tradecraft skills inside and out, and he's cool under pressure."

"No. Just keep Kranz under control and leverage his skills. It's more important than you think, beyond just the mission. We get this done and we'll earn some credibility. Afterward, if you still want to ditch him, I can thank him for a job well done and send him off as a hero."

I knew it was a no-win situation. I'd either say we weren't ready or take him along, and there was no way I was going to say we weren't ready and let the other team take the first mission we'd ever done. Even so, I decided to leverage my capitulation.

"Okay, on one condition: You give me an OPFUND and let me buy some gear."

Kurt said, "Gear's no issue. I can get you anything you want."

"No. I want to buy my own. The CIA is giving us old-school crap. They aren't opening up the double-oh-seven vault, because they don't want to compromise what they've got. The directorate of science and technology is giving us equipment that looks like it came from an Austin Powers movie set. Retro thinks he can do better by shopping on the Internet. Shit, we were using his personal kit in Charleston. And off-the-shelf stuff won't spike customs, since we'll be flying in commercial."

"I can get George Wolffe on it. He can break through the red tape at Langley."

"That might work but not for this mission. We don't have the time. What we really need to invest in is our own DS&T. Our own shop that does research and development instead of relying on the support of others."

"How much do you want?"

"Twenty thousand should do it."

"Twenty-thousand? What the hell are you going to buy?"

"Come on, sir. You spent more than that on the infrastructure in your office. If I don't need all of it, I won't use it."

He considered, then said, "I'll give you a line of credit of ten thousand, but you itemize what you want and run it by the logistics section first. If you need more, you'll get more, but no buying a bunch of gee-whiz gear just because you have the money. Only get what you think you need."

I agreed, knowing that what I thought I would need was a pretty big door to walk through. I could buy just about anything with that guidance.

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