The Beginning of the End

This was meant to be my entry into the MSDWC but some bad luck kept me from getting it finished on time so I thought I would post it here and work on it over the next little while. I have the rest of the story mapped out just need to get it back into words. So any way here it is....

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The air conditioning was on full in the black Suburban, it had to be. It was the hottest summer on record in Las Vegas and there wasn't any end in sight. The three men sat silently as the SUV moved towards it's destination. There was no need for words, they all knew their jobs. This was the 34th "pick-up" they had done together and they were confident that this one would go just like the rest. Although Terry wasn't with them this time, his wife's cancer finally caught up to her and he was at the hospital in New York to be with her at the end. But they had done jobs with a team member missing before and with the "low risk" attached to this particular pick-up, there wasn't any concern that the team leader would be absent this time round. It would be one of the easiest so far. All the preliminary surveillance said that Sonja would be home alone, asleep at 2:30am. And with the close proximity of the North Las Vegas Air Terminal, they would be back on the plane in a half an hour. As they pulled off North Michael Dr. onto Clouds Rest Ave., they did one more quick check to make sure everything was in order. The Suburban came to a stop 100m from the targets address and killed the lights. The extraction team exited and quickly, quietly moved into position around the back entrance. The lock was a standard Weiser deadbolt and the familiar click sound took about four seconds. With the silent 3-2-1, they turned the door handle......

Terry awoke at 6:45 in the visitor's lounge at Winthrop University Hospital startled. He had expected to hear from Jones by now. The pick-up should have been done and his team should have been back in New York. He had had apprehensions about being absent but Jones assured him it was fine.
"Look boss, your wife needs ya right now. This one can be done without you. Sonja is only a low level priority. If the three of us can't handle this, we shouldn't be in the business. This isn't Gaza City this is Las Vegas."
Gaza, why did Mike have to mention that. Terry's reasoning had been that he was team leader and he should be in Vegas. Not for lack of confidence in his team's ability, he knew he had some of the best the CIA had to offer, but out of responsibility. It was his team and he didn't like not being there to lead. But Mike Jones had said that his responsiblity was to his wife. In the end he relented, but the reference to what had happened in Gaza had set his nerves on edge. He flipped open his cell phone and checked for missed calls. None. He hadn't expected any, he would never sleep through a call with a job in progress. He started to scroll through his phone book to call MacAdam and find out what was going on. He reached for the remote to the tv and turned it on, flipping to CNN. He turned away to make his call when he heard the reporter talking about a natural gas explosion in Las Vegas. He turned and was greeted by pictures of the neighbourhood that Sonja Merdanovic was to be picked up in, black smoke billowing from the subjects address. He recognized it immediately. After three weeks of studying surveillance photo's and satellite images there was no mistaking that it was the house. He put the phone to his ear to hear MacAdam's voice on the other end saying hello.

" What the hell's going on Gerry? I'm looking at Merdanovic's house burning like a funeral pyre on CNN. What the hell happened?"

"Listen Terry, I think you should get over here as soon as possible. I'd prefer not to talk over the phone."

"Gerry, three of my men were going in that house and you don't want to talk over the phone. One more time Ger, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?"

"We've been breached Terry. That's what happened. Now get over here as soon as possible." With that the line went dead.

Forty minutes later, Terry was sitting in Gerald MacAdam's office in lower Manhattan with his field liaison, Ernie Thompkins, listening to the debriefing of the Vegas operation. After Thompkins finished reading the report from the clean up crew that the Company had dispatched, Terry said:


"Why didn't you call me? Three of my men are dead, our unit has been compromised and you let me SLEEP? What the hell's wrong with you Gerry?" He got up and started to pace

"We didn't think it would be wise to give you this information through the phone Terry. We know we've been infiltrated and we aren't sure who it is." MacAdam said."We also have reason to believe that you were the target."

"You don't do the thing's I've done and not make a few enemies. Whether I was the target or not isn't important. What is..... is who and why."

His mind was racing now, running through the possible list of people who would want to do this and be capable of pulling it off. It was a long list. In his seventeen years of service he had managed to piss off a lot of people. Russian oil baron's, Hamas, Mossad, Pashtun Warlord's, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China just to name a few. In the service of his country, he had managed to make an enemy of most of the players, both major and minor, in the global espionage game. And right now, his brain couldn't narrow the list down to less than ten.