by Margaret Kay
Operation: Departed Angel
Shepherd Security Book #5
Margaret Kay
Copyright and Disclaimer
Copyright © 2019 by Sisters Romance
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expressed written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This book is dedicated to all of you who practice kindness to others. It takes so little to be nice to others, to be kind, and offer a smile or an encouraging word. You never know how much your small act of kindness will mean to someone whose struggles are hidden. Pass it on. It costs nothing.
Margaret
A Favor…No spoilers Please
I ask that if you enjoy this book, that you consider leaving a review or a rating on Amazon or Goodreads, but please, don’t include any spoilers of the plot so the next reader will have the same experience as you did reading this book. Suspense and twists in a plot are only good if you don’t know them before you read. Thank you, dear Reader, for choosing this book. I hope you enjoy it.
Margaret
Shepherd Security Organizational Chart
Classified: Top Secret
Colonel Samuel ‘Big Bear’ Shepherd, Retired US Army
Alpha Team
John ‘Coop’ Cooper
Alexander ‘Doc’ Williams
Anthony ‘Razor’ Garcia
Ethan ‘Jax’ Jackson
Madison ‘Xena’ Miller
Delta Team
Landon ‘Lambchop’ Johnson
Danny ‘Mother’ Trio
Gary ‘the Undertaker’ Sloan
Brian ‘the Birdman’ Sherman
Charlie Team
Jimmy ‘Taco’ Wilson
Mike ‘Powder’ Rogers
Rich ‘Handsome’ Burke
Carter ‘Moe’ Tessman
Bravo Team
Tommy ‘Louisa’ Flores
Eddie ‘Needles’ Winston
Kenny ‘Ducky’ Gallup
Elijah ‘Kegger’ Robinson
Operations Center Analysts
Yvette ‘Control’ Donaldson
Brody ‘BT’ Templeton
Anthony ‘Wang’ Miraldi
Caleb ‘Hound dog’ Smith
Other Agency Staff
Michaela Karras – TechLab Manager
Requisition Ryan Grant – Supply Chain Manager
Angel Jackson – Office Manager
Elizabeth Williams – Receptionist (PT)
Dr. Joe Lassiter – Team Mental Health Professional
Alpha
She gazed at her reflection in the kitchen window over the sink. The dim overhead canned light cast an eerie glow on her face and made her long blond hair look almost ashen. It was pitch-black outside, a heavy layer of clouds blocking out all heavenly light. She sat her empty coffee cup on the counter. She knew she should have opted for something decaffeinated. She still had some hope of getting sleep. It was past midnight and even though she was exhausted; she was still keyed up.
She heard footsteps on the ceramic tile floor a split second before the window’s reflection showed a man’s face behind hers. A startled gasp was all that she got out before he grabbed her by her hair, yanking her head back as his other gloved hand clamped so tightly over her mouth that no other sound could escape.
“You stupid bitch!” He growled in her ear. “All you had to do was play ball and keep your mouth shut.”
He spun her around and forced her to her knees, holding her firmly. Her terrified blue eyes focused on a second man who stood in front of her, gun pointed at her forehead. She didn’t know either of these men, but she knew who had sent them.
The man behind her released her mouth. “Don’t scream or we’ll make it worse for you.”
“I won’t,” she said, her voice pleading.
“Who else did you tell, Kennedy?” The man in front of her demanded.
“No one, I swear.”
“Who the fuck else did you tell?” He demanded again.
“I promise, no one.”
“One last chance, Kennedy,” the man in front of her yelled. “Tell me who else you told, and we won’t hurt you.”
“I promise. I told no one and I won’t tell anyone, ever.”
The man in front of her dropped his arm with the gun to his side. “That’s right. You won’t ever tell anyone.” He nodded to the man behind her.
“I promise. Please tell them I won’t.”
The man behind her drew his gun and squeezed off one round, the muzzle but an inch from the top of her head. She never saw it coming. She fell forward, face-planting into the beige ceramic tiled floor, her blood staining the light-colored grout as it flowed out of her.
Three hundred forty-three miles away, a full moon glowed brightly on the Shepherd Security Building and the surrounding area. It was straight up midnight, zero hundred hours. Delta Team had been scrambled thirty minutes before and reported to their headquarters, the unassuming ten story building that faced the large Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois.
Both the agency’s head, Colonel Sam Shepherd, retired on paper only, and his number two in charge, John Cooper, were there. A West Point graduate, Shepherd had a distinguished career in the SpecOps community. He’d logged time in DC before his ‘retirement’, establishing the necessary contacts to make this agency a reality. Cooper was formerly with Delta before he did a stint with Military Intelligence, prior to his recruitment by Shepherd.
“Thank you for reporting so quickly, gentlemen,” Shepherd began. His words were a formality. When a team was on call, they were required to report within thirty minutes or less when activated. Shepherd sat in his wheelchair at the head of the conference table, his hands on the keyboard. “Our assistance in recovering a CIA Operative was received through official channels.” He pointed this out as it wasn’t always the case.
“The U.S. has no official presence in Venezuela, so official U.S. assets cannot be used to go in and extract him. It would be a major cluster if they did and were unsuccessful,” Cooper added.
“The Orinoco Oil Field in Venezuela produces a shit-ton of heavy crude each year. U.S. refiner, Citgo Petroleum, imports on average nearly two-hundred thousand barrels per day. That’s a lot of oil, so even though the U.S. has no official ties with the government of Venezuela, we keep close tabs on everything going on in that country. One such way is through embedded Operatives in various and strategic locations,” Shepherd continued.
“Our target is one of those Operatives, Julian Aguilarte,” Cooper said as Shepherd clicked a few keys and his photo displayed, a middle-aged Hispanic man with a round face and black hair on the longer side. “He is U.S. born, but has family in Venezuela. He has been in his role as a petroleum geologist for six years. He worked primarily in the Orinoco Oil Belt which lies south of Caracas and extends east past Trinidad and into the Atlantic, but recently he’s been working further south east, in the Canaima National Park in the state of Bolivar, near the border to Guyana. Earlier this evening, he phoned into Langley from his satellite phone with a cryptic message requesting extraction from the Paraguana Refinery Complex in Punta Fijo at midnight tomorrow night.”
Shepherd clicked through a few dialog boxes. The map of Venezuela displayed showing each point on the map that Cooper mentioned. “That will b
e a six-hundred eighty-mile trek to get to the oil refinery, a thirteen-hour trip. It begs the question of why he will travel there for the extraction. Sat phone records show he was still smack dab in the middle of the Orinoco River Basin when he placed the call,” Shepherd said.
“Does he have family up near the refinery?” Gary ‘the Undertaker’ Sloan asked. “Maybe we’re extracting more than just him.”
Brian ‘the Birdman’ Sherman laughed out loud. “We ain’t bringing no minivan for his soccer momma and brood of kids to evac.”
His teammates laughed with him.
The corner of Cooper’s lips tipped up. “We have little intel on him over the six years he’s been embedded. He makes his reports, handles assignments, and makes contact with assets as required. Otherwise, we don’t have jack shit on him.”
“Gotta love the CIA,” Sherman’s Cajun drawl dripped with sarcasm.
“You will work out any other factors that may present themselves,” Shepherd said.
“Like a wife and brood of kids,” Sherman repeated.
Shepherd nodded. “Yes, any other factors. Don’t forget, he’s one of us and he’s been under deep cover for six years.”
Landon ‘Lambchop’ Johnson, Delta’s Team Leader, pointed at the monitor. “You got a more detailed location within that refinery? If memory serves me correctly, we’re talking a good-sized piece of real estate.”
“That we are. It’s the second largest refinery in the world,” Shepherd replied. “The facility is massive.”
“Security there has to be tight,” Sloan said. “It won’t be the friendliest place to breach.”
“We are hoping he makes contact back with Langley with an exact location, but if he doesn’t, we have to be prepared to find him by any means necessary,” Cooper said.
“A needle in a fucking haystack,” Sloan remarked.
“Why can’t this asset get himself out?” Danny ‘Mother’ Trio asked. “He’s in Venezuela, not North Korea for fuck’s sake. It can’t be that difficult. The last I heard, over four million people have fled Venezuela. They just walked out and across the border, mostly to Colombia.”
“He may be burned and in hiding,” Cooper said.
“Another unanswered question. As I said, his message out was cryptic. It was a short-burst communication, not a dialogue by any means,” Shepherd said. “We have to assume this asset is in a dire situation given the circumstances.”
“You’ll fly into FOLs, Aruba, immediately where you’ll be transported to the USS Washington, board her, and hold position until twenty-two-hundred. If the asset calls in for an earlier extraction, be ready to move. Otherwise, your scheduled insertion will be at twenty-three-hundred hours via an SDV. The sub’s commander will have your landing coordinates,” Cooper said.
Gary Sloan wasn’t aware his lips had curled into a grin until his partner, Sherman, clasped him on his shoulder. “Someone can’t wait to get back into the water.”
Sloan laughed. “It has been too long.” He always enjoyed the training and the challenges operating under water. It was peaceful and serene in the water, which never failed to energize him.
Sloan glanced over at Lambchop. Lambchop was a mountain of a man, topping off at six-foot five inches of solid and well-developed muscle mass beneath medium mocha skin. His face also showed delight. Sloan, Sherman, and Lambchop had all been Navy SEALs. Mother was the odd man out on their team, a MARSOC Marine Raider, when he was on active duty. The combination of the four of them made an effective team though.
“Okay, you know what equipment you’ll need, be ready to move out within the hour,” Shepherd said. “Go get this man. He wouldn’t have made the call if he didn’t need help.”
The four members of Delta Team stood. They knew they’d just been dismissed. At the stairs, Sloan went down, the others went up. Gary Sloan was the unit’s medic as well as a sniper. His office was on the fourth floor in the medical suite area that held the offices for the four medics, from each of the four teams that currently made up Shepherd Security. It had just been announced that Shepherd was looking to recruit for a fifth team. Things at the agency had been changing over the past few years, but none of the changes directly impacted Sloan, so he was fine with it.
Lambchop and Mother both pulled shifts in the Operations Center when they weren’t away on missions. Their offices were on the eighth floor, down the hall from Ops. Sherman’s office was on seven with the other Operators that made up the teams. There were a half a dozen empty offices on seven, planned growth by Shepherd.
After collecting everything he’d need from his office, Sloan rejoined his teammates in the Team Room on the second subbasement level. Dive gear, fatigues, waterproof backpacks, and weapons were packed. They fit everything they needed into the back of one Suburban and then drove to O’Hare International Airport’s cargo area, where a specially modified McDonnell Douglas C-9, the military version of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 airliner, waited for them. It had no military markings and blended in with the other cargo planes parked nearby.
They transferred their gear aboard and settled into the less than comfortable sidewall seats for the six-hour flight to the Forward Operating Location, Aruba. They landed at dawn, the tropical air feeling the same as the humid August air they’d left in Chicago. The base commander had the speed boat ready, and they were immediately brought to it for the ride out to meet the Washington.
The air whipping through Sloan’s hair as the boat sped through the waves, brought the occasional refreshing spray of ocean mist up to moisten his face and hair. He loved the ocean, the waves, the breeze, everything about it. He felt at peace, unlike he had in a long time.
The submarine surfaced for them to board. There was always something magical about the hull emerging from the waves that brought an excitement to Sloan. He glanced at Sherman, his dive partner, well, his spotter when he was acting as a sniper too, his partner in every way. He’d often thought if he could find a woman who fit him as well as Sherman did, he’d be one happy man. He thought he’d found her once, in his youth, but after six years together, they went their separate ways when he’d joined the Navy.
The sub dived and headed towards the Venezuelan coast once the team was on board. The four of them sat in the wardroom going over the lack of mission details. Even Lambchop, who normally took everything in stride, was anxious about the unknowns. If the CIA Operative did not get back in touch with anyone with a specific location for extract, it would be nearly impossible to find him.
Finally, at twenty-one hundred, just an hour before go-time, the four men were summoned to the command passageway for a briefing. The Operative had made contact with Langley and set the pickup location as four klicks west of the western edge of the refinery in a rocky cove. Ron White, the sub’s captain showed them charts and satellite footage of the area.
“We’ll get you within five miles of the coast,” Captain White said. “We’ll launch you in the SDV here,” he said pointing to a chart. “The current is relatively calm in that area.”
“Looks like the ocean floor here,” Lambchop said, pointing to the chart as well, “is shallow enough that we can leave her bottomed out and swim the short distance to shore.” He made eye contact with the sub’s captain. “What time is low tide?”
“About one-hundred-thirty hours.”
“We should be in and out before then,” Mother said.
“What kind of recon can you give us of the vicinity as we emerge from the water?” Lambchop asked Captain White.
“We’ll be at periscope depth. I’ll keep my eyes on the cove and surrounding area. And I was told your Operations Center would have a satellite dedicated to the area as well. I’ll have them dialed in.”
Lambchop nodded. “What is the weather forecast?”
“Unfortunately, we’re looking at a nearly full moon with little cloud cover,” the captain replied.
“Let’s just hope the area is vacant,” Sloan remarked.
“The rockiness o
f the area doesn’t make for good swimming, so it’s not a popular spot. You may have to worry about the occasional couple out to enjoy some alone time in the remote cove,” Captain White replied. “It’s quite far from the nearest road though, so maybe not.” He brought the satellite footage back up.
The four men studied all available images, maps, and estimates of the current and tide.
“Looks like a nice night for a swim,” Sloan said with a smile.
Mother sighed and shook his head. He didn’t share Sloan’s love of the ocean, diving, or cramming himself inside the hull of the small SDV at nighttime. “Okay, let’s go do this.”
Within the wardroom, after they changed into their black diving fatigues, and while gathering their gear, the team took a few moments to run through each man’s pre-mission ritual. Brian ‘the Birdman’ Sherman openly professed to being superstitious. He kissed his dog tags three times and then tucked them away. He checked each weapon, and then he kissed his dog tags one last time, followed by making the sign of the cross in classic Catholic fashion, spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch.