by Gary Hancock
Underground in New York 2017.
I was put in a room with a bed and bath and the cuffs were removed. "Get a good nights sleep and some food in you. Tomorrow will be long and stressful." He was being kind to me and that made me more nervous than if they had use the water board. There was a table with paper and pen and I started getting a list of all the people that would want me dead. Also I tried to organize some thoughts on what must be going on. I knew they were watching me while I wrote and would be researching each word I scribbled. Maybe one of the brainiacs would beat me to the reason for the hit put out on me. I knew several agents from other countries that wanted me dead at various time during my life, but what had made someone take the time and effort it would have taken to find me and why now?
24 April 1980.
I had my face buried in the sand. There were helicopters and aircraft burning all around me and soldiers, with the life slowly flowing out of their bodies, lay in the smoke and fire of a complete failure of a rescue attempt. I could see that there was not going to be a ride out of here for me, so I crawled as far away as I could and then started running. I was wearing the dark long dress with the headscarf and that helped. I had been tanning on the carrier flight deck, much to the delight of the sailors, to get as dark as I could. By the time of the attack, I was as dark as most of the Iranians. I am not a really pretty woman, just kinda ordinary and this should be to my advantage passing myself off as one of the Iranian women we might encounter.
Now as I ran I thought I was going to have to put all of my great grandmother's knowledge to work. I knew her Persian last name and the town where she was born. This would now be my history. When the dawn broke, I could still see the smoke over the horizon, but it didn't look like anyone was chasing me. I had the name of two contacts in Tabas but that was over fifty miles away. I sat down on a big rock by the side of the road and just waited for an idea. It arrived in a old bus rambling down the road. I stood up and he stopped. I lowered my gaze and spoke to a woman sitting beside her husband. I spoke in Farsi, "I would like to travel to Tabas please." In this roundabout way I paid my way onto the bus with no questions asked.
I found one of the agents and he smuggled me out of the country and I was then order back to the U.S. to give my report. They had written me off a dead and were preparing to notify my parents about a flaming car wreck with only ashes remaining of their daughter. The report I gave of the things that had happened in Iran, didn't quite agree with the military version and with a few raise eyebrows, it was filed away and declared top secret. I was forbidden to talk about it or even let anyone know I had been out of the country. It was almost summer and I was sent home with a report card from the special college with me passing all my subjects with a 3.8 point average. The folks were proud of me and bragged to all the neighbors. I told them that I had made contacts with a large company and thought that I had a job as soon as I graduated next year. They wanted to know the name and I said that I was not suppose to tell anyone, but if they promised to keep it a secret it was "United Fruit". I told them that they shipped bananas from South America to all the world and it would be a great opportunity to travel if I got the job. I left them happy at the end of summer and headed back to Virginia.
Team interrogation 2017.
For the next three days, I was rotated between four agents that non stopped asked questions. They hooked me up to a polygraph but no one in my business really believes that it can tell if an experience operative is lying. It is use as a distraction while they watch your body language and micro expressions on the face. I didn't have to worry as I was telling the true as I knew it.
The forth day I was taken to the office of the director of the New York station. He shook my hand and pointed to a seat. His only question was "Have you figured out who and why." I looked as disgusted with myself as I could. My only answer was, "Most of my time was spent in the middle east. This is a hotbed even today and that must be the place, but I don't know the incident. Someone has a secret that I know, but don't realize its importance. As long ago as much of my assignments were, they would have to have been young during that time if they are still active. It smells like a politician to me, but I don't have a shred of an idea of who it is."
February 1986
NSA'S Director for the Near East and South Asia, an Israeli diplomat and I, acting as a translator, arrived in Tehran in an Israeli plane carrying forged Irish passports on 25 May 1986. I had been briefed on the exchange of weapons with Iran before I left the U.S. and mostly held my breath the whole time we were in Iran. The deal fell thru and we returned to some very angry senior heads of the intelligent agencies. Oliver North had much better luck with what was called later, "Iran Contra". This was mainly in South America and my skill set was not called upon. I became familiar with the arms dealer in both cases, Manucher Ghorbanifar. He made millions and millions off the deal.
December of 1990.
I was with a group of Navy Seals in Israel as a translator. They were all business while we were in the field, but they showed a plain and simple looking girl a good time when we were off duty. They called me "Secret Squirrel" like in the old spy cartoon. Little did I know that the nickname of mine would be used in the first strike of Desert Storm. The mission almost didn't start due to an infiltrator that got into the "safe house" in Tel Aviv. Posing as a caterer for our Christmas Party he managed to shoot one of the Seals in the leg. I killed him with two shots from the forty caliber Glock I carried the whole time I was in the middle east. Red Dog was the team leader and he picked me up and said, "You are our lucky squirrel."
In January when the B52s started their attack on the mission called "Secret Surprise", I was on the border of Iran and Iraq in the Qandil mountains. We were spotting for the huge bombers and I heard "Secret Squirrel clear" on the radio and my eyes got as big as saucers. It even made the dead serious warriors chuckle for the first time in combat with me. Somehow the bomber crews had used my name I had just recently got. Those Seals are horrible, but deep inside I loved it. The show we watched from the mountains was epic. The big bombers were taking out missile sites and Sadam's Republican Guard bases without any resistance. One hundred hours was the total length of the engagement. After it was over a Chinook came down and picked us up. Our commanders told us, "We were never there." The Seal Team gave me a little pin, I looked up at them and said, "If you every need backup, I am your girl." It was a miniature trident that will have to be pried from my dead hands before I give it up.
Underground New York 2017.
We have narrowed the list of names down to less than thirty people. Most of the foreign agents that knew my real name were dead long ago. That left my "friends" as the most likely employer of the assassin that shot at me in New Orleans. This was going to be hard to solve. The list had five Presidents and parts of their staff. One of the Presidents was also a past head of the CIA. That was before I became an agent, but as one old timer said to me, "You never quit the CIA". He had been President during Desert Storm, but I can't imagine knowing something damaging from that war. I had just watched from the sidelines.
I sat back and watched the news trying to relax and gather my thoughts. The usual anti this and pro that was all the news had to offer. Then all of a sudden a face from my past was staring at me from the idiot box. It was the face of Natasha the Russian spy. I never knew her real name and heard that she had been traded for one of our operatives in the 1980s. I looked closer and realized that it couldn't be her. The woman on the screen was about thirty five or so and Natasha would be older than me. I was almost eighteen when I escorted her to Gitmo and she was four or five years older than me at that time. So she would be sixty now. That must be her daughter in the news. "Hell" the apple in Russia doesn't fall far from the tree. I may be the only one alive that has seen Natasha in the flesh.
Turkey 1992.
I was in the country with two other agents, we were on the trail of a Russian agent who was setting up a deal with Turkey to buy severa
l helicopters and over a hundred APCs. The last team sent in had not reported back and so the task went to us. I was in Ankara staying at the JW Marriott Hotel. I had never been to Turkey and no one should have know me by sight. Any Russian delegation would be staying here also. Those Communists love the lifestyle of the rich and famous and they splurge every time they can. We had a room overlooking the large pool and with the small telescope poking through the curtains, I had a front side seat to every visitor to the hotel. I was to stay in my room and not be seen.
We had been there a week before I saw her. Natasha was quite beautiful in her one piece white v-neck swimsuit. That slim figure of hers had every guy and some of the girls at the poolside turning to watch her go by. She of course had on sunglasses and went to one of the cabanas and opened a book after she reclined in the soft chaise lounge. I knew that was probably a false cover for her real job , but she did it well. I took about fifty photos with the telephoto camera and tried to catch who was contacting her. The only people that approached were the pool bums and phony princes that always try to pick up the foreign ladies.
The next day she came out with a 8x10 valise and took up a chair that had its back to my window. The first paper she pulled out of the folder and held it in her hands like she was looking at it, was a picture of a well known cartoon moose. I gave a loud intake of breath that had the other two guys rushing to the window. The next was the over coated and hat covered cartoon squirrel. I knew that the moose I had made fun of her with, but where had she gotten the "Secret Squirrel" tag of mine. We just as well leave, because our cover was blown sky-high. The other agents we were looking for were never found.Later we found out what had been so important for her to have been there.
"Cones of Silence" 2017.
I didn't talk to anyone except to ask to speak to the director. I was escorted to a large office with him and a couple of aides. I looked at him and raised an eyebrow toward the other two and he sent them on a mission to find us some lunch. I waited till the door was closed and locked. He held a finger over his lips and turn on a white noise machine and we sat in two chairs with our heads practically touching. Then and only then did I start talking about what I had seen on the TV and what it meant. When I finished he turned on his computer, this guy really takes security seriously. He tried to pull up the code word Natasha and there were no references on any agent foreign or domestic with that name. No pictures or descriptions. I then realized why I was targeted. I was the only one who knew what she looked like. The director said, "Well "Squirrel" you are reinstated effective now."
January 25, 1993 CIA Headquarter Virginia.
I was called for a meeting with the CIA and was waiting in line to be cleared through the front gates. All of a sudden I heard the unforgettable sound of a AK-47 on full auto. It was coming from three cars to the rear. I bailed out of the car and bullets whizzed pass. I felt a tugging on my arm and just kept on moving. Finally the shooting stopped and I sat down on the grass. One of the guards was immediately at my side and told me to sit still the EMTs were on the way. I hadn't known I was shot. I found out that two agents in line behind me were dead and several move hurt like me. The shooter got away.
June 15, 1997 Pakistan.
There were FBI and CIA together in the Chevy Suburban outside a Chinese Restaurant in Punjab waiting for Aimal Kasi to appear for a meeting that had been setup to capture him. He was the shooter that had put a hole in my arm. I insisted that I be included and for once they listen and granted my request. I wish the FBI hadn't been involved, because if they had not been here , I would have made sure he didn't stand trial. Well Kasi received the death penalty, carried out by lethal injection at the Virginia State Penitentiary in Jarratt on November 14, 2002. That still didn't resolve the anger flowing in my veins, but it would have to do. We never knew who had paid him to shoot.