She also had, and what the Agency had desperately needed at the time of her recruitment, a penchant for languages. She had attended Harvard University and double majored in both Arabic and Russian—and graduated summa cum laude in each. She’d also studied six other languages including Slovak, French, Kurdish, Urdu and Spanish—and was fluent in four of them.
She joined the military when she was eighteen years old and then was recruited into counterintelligence. At the time, it had been a way for her to escape her troubled childhood. After joining the Agency, she had trained in two different types of martial arts. Her training spanned over the course of years, and was still ongoing, but she had already earned first-degree black belts in both. In a fight, she could without a doubt handle herself.
Colleen’s first mission had been an undercover assignment as an au pair for the young sons of a prominent Slovakian businessman, Marco Vladzick. Marco had caught the CIA and the NSA’s eyes when he began consorting with an Islamic extremist group that was located in Mali called Jahaat ul-Mujahideen.
The Slovakian businessman couldn’t have cared less that he was working with an anti-American terrorist organization. His personal sentiments weren’t necessarily anti-American, so much as they were pro-money.
Marco had built his entire empire off the backs of young girls and women forced into the sex trade and through a lucrative narcotics trafficking business in Eastern Europe. It was through the drug trade that he had linked up with the radical Islamic group. Helping to bring down Marco Vladzick had been one of the highlights of her career.
She’d had the distinct pleasure of putting a bullet right between his cold, brown eyes.
That was seven years ago, and now she had received both an order from her bosses at the NSA and a separate request from an old friend—if she could call him that—to gather as much intel as she could about a new terrorist cell coming out of Pakistan called the Haqqai network. Whatever sordid stuff this group was involved in, a lot of people were certainly interested in finding out more about them.
This assignment was more difficult because she wasn’t actually on the ground, but she had been in contact with NSA agents who were. Per protocol, they referred to one another as numbers—agents were never told the names, real or fake, of other agents. Colleen was number “Four” and had been in frequent contact with number “Seven” for about two weeks now. Seven was on the ground and had been on assignment in Pakistan for about three years.
Her cover as Colleen Bradshaw had been one of the easiest assignments that she had had so far—but she did miss the adrenaline rush of working out there in the “field.” She was currently employed at the undergraduate school of Brevard College, an elite, private women’s college, in New York. Brevard College also had just opened an international campus in Rome, Italy.
Colleen’s role at the university was as an undergraduate school fundraiser. As a fundraiser, to the outward world, she led an unquestionably dull life. This cover was very flexible and allowed her ample opportunity to conduct research and analysis for the Agency.
Brevard College was a mecca of sorts when it came to the higher education of the daughters of the American elite. Naturally, the college was not off limits to the international elite. There were plenty of Saudi and British businessmen who sent their daughters to the prestigious university every year. Colleen was sure that many of those fathers hoped that their daughters would graduate with a MRS. Degree that would enable them to turn off their financial faucets. Or at the very least, reduce the flow of money to their incorrigible offspring.
Fittingly, the gothic halls of the campus were always busy with preparations for one gala or another. It was through these events, that Colleen was able to make valuable connections.
Colleen’s job was to speak with foreign subjects who were under close watch by the NSA and CIA. It was within these contacts as University Fundraiser that Colleen helped other analysts at the Agency build complex TSPs (Terror Suspect Profiles).
This type of work was tedious and required her to engage in extensive quantitative and qualitative analyses by utilizing her points of contact. While it was interesting to engage in this type of study of terrorist behavior, Colleen missed the excitement that came with working in the field.
Earlier yesterday, Seven had emailed her triple secured email account and attached an encrypted 300-page computer file. It had taken her five hours to un-encrypt the document and she was just starting to make headway through it. It had seemed like a bust at first, but she’d finally come across a few interesting photos.
The first was of Richard Henning, whose dramatic rescue by Special Forces had been widely discussed by talk show hosts, radio show hosts, and television news pundits. The photograph of Henning had been taken while he was in Afghanistan. His picture had been snapped just as he was entering a black SUV on his way to speak with the President of Afghanistan.
The photo was remarkable because in it was another familiar face: Dr. Saverin Tarasov. Both Henning and Dr. Tarasov had family members who were juniors at Brevard and both men had attended a spring fundraiser held at the college. Colleen had introduced herself to Dr. Tarasov at the spring gala. Dr. Tarasov was a well-known chemist for a Russian pharmaceutical company named Nava Drug Corp.
Dr. Tarasov, however, wasn’t under the watchful eye of multiple international intelligence agencies only because of his employment with the drug company. He had a friendship with key players in the Al-Jaazeez terror network—an extremist group that had emerged out of Iran in the 1990s.
More recently, Dr. Tarasov’s friendship had expanded from Al-Jaazeez to Dr. Haseem Adil. Dr. Adil was an Afghan scientist associated with the Taliban, and who had participated in the mujahedeen’s asymmetrical warfare against the invasion by the Soviets in the 1980s. Like Tarasov, Adil was tall and thin, but those were the only commonalities of their appearances. Adil was brown-skinned with brown eyes and Tarasov had brown hair and had a pasty appearance.
Colleen spent another five hours shifting through the rest of the documents in the file. While the connection between Richard Henning and Dr. Tarasov was interesting it was still quite tenuous at best. There was nothing to suggest that Dr. Adil was acquainted with Henning or conspiring with him in any way.
Moreover, there wasn’t anything in the record to imply that either party worked with the Haqqai network. Blowing out a frustrated breath, Colleen got up from her sofa and went to take a shower. It was past ten o’clock p.m. and she had a lot of moves to make tomorrow.
****
There really was nothing quite as liberating as free falling down from the heavens and barreling toward the earth at 120 miles per hour. Joshua pinned his arms to his side and plummeted downward through the darkened sky.
Over the length of his career, he’d probably been on over two hundred plane jumps. But Joshua enjoyed it every time. It was currently around 2100 hours. He and his team were practicing HALO jumps under the cover of darkness. Because of the covert nature of their operations, nighttime was the most opportune time to catch their targets at their most vulnerable moment.
Pulling the activation handle on his pullout pilot chute to deploy the parachute, Joshua coasted in the air for forty seconds before he made a running landing onto the grassy ground below.
Team Fourteen had spent the earlier part of the day running through demolition exercises and hostage rescue courses. The Team had been in Germany for four weeks since their rescue of former Congressman Richard Henning. Per their usual practices, they would maintain a continual schedule of practicing both plane jumps and rescue tactics until their CO gave them the order to move out. They started every day out with a run and they ended the day in the same way. In addition, throughout the day they did various weight-training exercises.
“Pope!”
Joshua looked up from unhooking the parachute from its harness, to see Luke heading toward him at a fast clip. Luke broke away from the rest of the soldiers who had already finished their jumps and were
patiently waiting by their vehicles. Per usual, Luke’s unruly hair was standing on ends as if he had had an electrostatic shock. Someone should really bless him with the gift of a hair comb.
“Hey man, what’s up?” Joshua asked. Joshua and his team had had an extremely long day of carrying out hostage rescue and demolition exercises. Joshua wanted to do nothing more than to go home and crash—hop into a nice cold shower and hit the sheets for ten straight hours. However, they were in Germany, which was a real treat considering that many of their assignments were to exotic desert locales ending in “Stan.” Most of the guys wanted to hit the town hard tonight.
Luke liked to party with the best of them, and that gleam in his eye told Joshua that he was going to see if Joshua wanted to go out with the crew.
“We were all talking while you were up, and we think that we’re going to head over to O’Malley’s later.”
O’Malley’s was, ironically, a local Irish pub. The team had been there on several occasions since their deviation in Germany. It was located less than five miles from their housing at the Ramstein Air Base.
“Sure, man. I’m game,” Joshua replied, mentally kicking himself as he did so. They were all going to pay for it tomorrow. They were scheduled for an early morning jump exercise. Joshua turned his head toward the parked jeeps, and saw his best friend standing in the middle of the group of the soldiers. Will’s hands were gesticulating wildly. No doubt, he was telling one of his epic stories. Will always had a way of drawing in the people that were around him. Where Joshua was more of a listener than a talker, Will typically was much more garrulous.
Finishing his story, Will walked over to where Joshua and Luke were standing.
“Yo! You all ready see what fine ladies are out this Saturday night, here in this wonderful hinterland?” Will yelled.
This part of Germany wasn’t exactly the backcountry, but it wasn’t exactly New York City either. Will had grown up in Texas (he even had the cowboy boots and line dancing skills to prove it), so he wasn’t exactly a stranger to rural-living. However, after almost a decade of living in sunny Southern California he preferred big cities to small towns.
“Yeah. You can count me in,” Joshua said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. To tell the truth, Joshua wasn’t all that up to drinking and carousing around tonight. Tonight, was the first year since he and Victoria Sanchez had officially called it quits. He shouldn’t have even been thinking about her. He sure as hell didn’t have a reason to. He hadn’t spoken to her since she’d burned half his wardrobe—she did at least spare his military uniforms.
“Excellent. By the way, what’s the problem with your doctor friend?” Will asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been running into her almost every day now for the past couple of weeks. You know that jogging route by our housing complex that goes by the hospital and ends up at the river?” Will paused just long enough to register Joshua’s nod in the affirmative. “Well, I’ve been running that route in the morning. You know, I always run a few miles when I wake up. Well, apparently Doctor Lewis also runs that route. A few times now she’s almost run smack dab into me, and I swear that chick hasn’t even said as much as a hello or a get the hell out of my way. Wait, I take that back. She did flip me off onetime, but I do admit I definitely deserved it.”
The very fact that Will was even asking about Olivia was telling. “Yeah man. That sounds like Olivia. She can take a while to warm up to people.”
“Yeah, well Miss. Priss seems pretty ice cold.”
Josh laughed at his friend’s exasperation. He had an idea about how to make this evening out on the town a little more interesting. He picked up his phone and dialed.
****
Olivia Lewis was in a dark mood. She hardly ever drank, but here she was, well on her way to tipsy in a dim, rinky dinky little pub in Germany.
At first, she’d tried to back out of hanging out with Josh and his military friends. It really wasn’t her scene, but he’d insisted and after two weeks of cajoling, and a text that she received from him tonight begging her to come out, she’d relented.
She decided to let her hair down for the occasion, after the day she’d had, she’d needed to unwind. First, her twin sister, Sienna, had emailed her to ask for a loan to bail her ne’er do well fiancée, Frank, out of jail. Sienna and she had always bumped heads together, even when they were younger.
Though they’d both had a history of having poor choices in men, Sienna hadn’t learned from her past mistakes, and was stuck in a train wreck of a relationship. As the older sibling, by a whole two minutes, Olivia felt that she was her sister’s keeper. Therefore, she usually ended up acquiescing to Sienna’s requests.
Second, she’d had an unbelievably busy day in the operating room. As much as she loved operating and “cut, close, suture” was very much her creed, thirty-six hours straight in the Emergency Department would exhaust anyone. Why she decided to come out after only seven hours of sleep, she had no idea—well maybe she did. Two words: Will Castle.
Her attitude soured even further when she looked over at Will Castle. She watched him grind on the bevy of nurses from the medical center that had inexplicably gravitated toward him, and were now eagerly waiting in turn to snag a dance with him. It was nausea inducing.
But seriously, why did she care? She hardly knew the man and he was clearly an egotistical prick. So what if he had dimples and eyelashes to die for? Or incredible pectoral muscles? Or a ridiculously tight butt? She’d met his type a million times before and so she shouldn’t have been impressed. But she was.
Since first meeting him, she’d literally run into him a half a dozen times. She had tried her best to ignore him on these occasions. She was a runner and so was he. Not that she was a very good runner, of course. She was a physician though, and she knew that exercise would help to keep her out of an early grave. So she ran a few miles every week, even though she didn’t have the form of a marathon runner.
Will Castle, on the other hand, was 100% pure ripped muscle and toned athleticism. He could run rings around her. He had tried to get her attention and yelled “Yo Doc!” too many times to count when he saw her. She would never tell him this of course, but she had almost tripped over her own tongue when she saw him running shirtless on an uncharacteristically warm day. Really, it just wasn’t fair. The muscles on that man should have been outlawed. He also had a tattoo sleeve on his left arm. She had only seen it that one time because he usually wore long shirts, but Olivia had a real thing for men with tattoos.
She’d dated a man like Will for a year in college—well at least Greg had been devastatingly handsome like Will. Unfortunately, Greg had also had the disgusting habit of belittling her. She was never quite able to be perfect enough for him. He was her first “love” and it had been hard for her to let him go. However, eventually she had.
So far, she’d only allowed Will to crawl under her skin on one occasion. He had definitely pissed her off with his insult, but she was even more disappointed that she’d lost her decorum and professionalism around him. She was still medical officer and an active Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. Therefore, she should have just let his statements roll right off her without a passing thought.
Pulling herself away from her annoying thoughts, she got up from her seat at the bar beside Josh and she walked over to the deejay table. The deejay had stopped the music for a moment to turn over the set. The deejay was a tall, thin woman who appeared to be in her early twenties.
She was seated on a small bench behind the deejay stand, flipping through CDs. Her name was “Gigi” if the name scrawled in different brightly colored pen marks on her shoulder bag was accurate.
“Hey, do you mind if I play the piano?” Olivia leaned down and asked.
“What?” Gigi asked her in a thick German accent. Well, since they were actually in Germany, it would be more correct to say that Olivia was the one that had the accent. Gigi had an assortment of pierc
ings on her face and arms, and her hair was dyed an interesting shade of purple.
“I noticed the piano in the corner. I would like to play while you turn over the set, if you don’t mind?”
Gigi looked up at Olivia as if she had just sprouted two heads, before replying, “Sure. I was about to take a five minute break anyway. Knock yourself out. But if the crowd rebels, that’s on you.”
Olivia walked over and sat down at the piano that was standing in a corner of the bar—a gem hiding in plain sight. The keys were dusty from non-use. She ran her hand lightly over the keys. She could imagine that sometime in the not so distant past, bar patrons had circled around this very piano and listened to piano players of varying skill levels entertain them.
She turned on an overhead light so that she could see the sheet music. Amazingly, there were classical pieces among the compositions.
Olivia had been playing the piano since she was five years old. Her mother had been a classical musician and had taught both of her daughters how to play the piano and sing. Sienna had gravitated toward singing, and she really had a very powerful, soulful voice. Olivia’s love had been the piano. Learning how to play the piano had probably been one of the best gifts that her mother had ever given to her.
From the very first moment that Olivia’s fingers touched the keys to play her very first song, she had been hooked. She had had an undeniable talent for hearing and feeling the music. It was hard to explain to non-musicians how it was possible to “feel” the music. To understand how the notes fit together in your head as you played.
For years, she had practiced for at least three hours each day. Eventually, she could play dozens of pieces by heart. She had even started to create original compositions herself. However, after her mother abandoned the family when Olivia was just ten years old, she had lost part of the passion that she once had for the instrument. Really, it had just hurt her too much to continue to play.
Pushed to the Edge (SEAL Team 14) Page 5