One thousand feet below the surface of the Earth in a repurposed tungsten mine in rural Virginia, the uber-elite ANON team assembled in the debriefing auditorium to review their last mission.
No one, not even long-time locals, would have guessed that the abandoned-looking mining payroll office on the outskirts of this one-stoplight town actually disguised the main entrance to the single most sophisticated Intelligence Gathering center in the world.
The cracked and faded macadam lot and the adjacent 4-acre weed-strewn field were filled to capacity with cars, trucks, dirt bikes, four-wheelers and any other motorized vehicle you care to name. Several exhausted besaddled horses picked through the moonlit scrub around the cooling Chinook helicopter and ultralights that had converged on the spot over the past several hours. A few discarded parachutes drifted lazily like the ghosts of tumbleweeds to the nearby canal, where they became entangled on a host of moored speedboats and jetskis.
Each of the team members, at a moment's notice, could be recalled to HQ in less than 14 hours from anywhere on the planet should they be summoned to active duty. Twelve hours and eleven minutes ago that call went out and now the last of the 637-member team to arrive settled into his seat.
"Excellent time, ladies and gentlemen,” Brigadier General Vic Steel slurred gravelly and nearly incoherently into his lapel microphone. Six decades of saving the world had taken a heavy toll on his once athletic frame, leaving in its place a wheelchair-bound mass of scar tissue and hard-core experience. Even at 84 years of age, his tactical mind was as sharp as ever and he would be damned if some know-nothing Washington bureaucrats were going to force him to retire. His country came before any silly fishing holiday.
The susurration of the crowd halted as the amplified sound of his voice echoed around the stone walls of the former cavern. He cast his good eye around at his hand-picked team with something akin to affection. He had personally saved each of their lives during one mission or another, and they had saved his bacon more times than he could count.
There was no stronger bond than that.
He pushed a button on a remote control and the fifty-foot American Flag behind him on the stage parted to reveal a movie screen. “Let's get through the debriefing of the Milan assassination as quickly as possible so we can get down to the real business at hand.”
The lights dimmed and the screen lit up as the ANON team members looked around at their comrades, puzzled as to what “real business” the General had in mind.
(To be continued)
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