Yes!
Which is how, exactly one month later, I was watching my wife dressed as a surfer saunter into a beach bar.
Chapter 3
The Windjammer had been an Isle of Palms institution for over five decades, earning a place of reverence long before the island had been swarmed by McMansions and rich out-of-towners fleeing COVID lockdowns. It was the place where I’d originally met Jennifer years ago, so I found it fitting to include the bar in the scenario play.
My team was in the Veterans of Foreign Wars post right next door, another establishment that had been around since Christ was a corporal. Like the Jammer, it had refused to sell its beachfront property when everyone else had, and was now surrounded by condominiums and hotels, a last outpost of sanity from a bygone day.
I was a lifetime member, so I’d asked the post commander if I could use it before the regulars showed up—without explicitly telling him why. I only needed the space for about an hour, and he’d graciously given me the keys.
The entire exercise was simply designed to give the new hires a taste of what it was like to operate when someone might be hunting them. Show them how to exist as the gray man in a foreign environment while using tools, that if found, would raise questions from host nation authorities. Since I couldn’t take them to a place that didn’t speak English, I had to develop other ways to make them uncomfortable. In this case, I was using my partner in crime, Jennifer, and my adopted daughter, Amena, to create some angst.
They had a three-man team all working as singletons, and their missionwas to locate and get positive identification of a terrorist—in this case, me. Each of them would gather a piece of the puzzle to my identification and location, and then they’d report back to Creed with the information, where he’d deploy an imaginary Omega team.
We’d tossed around who would play what role, and the team had decided that I fit the terrorist mold the best. Which wasn’t saying much for their opinion. At over six feet with a nasty little scar running through my eyebrow and into my cheek, I would say I looked more like a pirate than a terrorist, but given the composition of my team, I had to admit I was the best choice.
Knuckles looked like a hippy fashion model, with ropy muscles and shoulder-length black hair belying his SEAL pedigree, so I told him he’d be a terrorist facilitator at best. Maybe the terrorist’s drug connection or a male escort, I hadn’t decided yet.
We’d flown the candidates in one by one and, acting as the “security services” of the “host nation,” had picked each up outside of the Charleston airport, the “arrest” designed to immediately knock them off their game. Brett Thorpe and Nicholas Seacrest had handled those interrogations. Thorpe, because he was built like a fireplug, short, but full of muscle with an intimidating glare that would cause them to immediately comply. Seacrest because he just looked like a stereotype of a G-man. A Waspy Caucasian with a neat haircut, he resembled a HollywoodMen in Blacktype.
An African American, Brett had said he was going to fake a Jamaican accent during the interrogations just for the fun, but I’d forbidden it. He was actually one of the most laid-back Operators I’d ever worked with, but he could come on mean when he wanted to, and between them they’d played good cop/bad cop with the candidates, trying to get them to crack from the cover story we’d given them.
From that initiation, they’d begun to unravel the threads for the desperate terrorist “Carlos.” Creed had given them breadcrumbs to start with, and now they were building the picture trying to locate me. One was setting up a safe house for future planning. Another was meeting Amena for a deaddrop to pass off a selected piece of kit Creed wanted tested. The final one was conducting an asset meet with Jennifer next door at the Windjammer.
She was playing the mistress of the terrorist—which fit, since she was my wife—and her plan of action was to come on to the participant very overtly, to the point he would feel uncomfortable in her presence, which was why Creed thought this would be hilarious to watch on the camera.
I wanted to see if the new hire would fight through the distraction and get the information to my whereabouts, and I was honestly surprised that Jennifer had agreed to play the role. She was usually pretty modest, so I figured she’d tell me to pack sand. To my surprise, she was all in, to the point she was bouncing ideas off Amena about what clothes she should wear and how she should act, which was a little annoying. It had been my idea for her to act like a floozy, but there was no reason to go overboard.
From our crooked camera placement, I saw her scan the room and saunter over to the candidate, who stood. Creed said, “Man, I wish we had audio.”
I said, “Don’t need it. She knows what information to give. It just remains to be seen if your new hire is smart enough to ask.”
She leaned in, giving the candidate a shot of cleavage and a kiss on the cheek. He looked like he wanted to run from the room. Creed said, “Oh yeah, here we go!”
I turned to glare at him and noticed Knuckles had come over to watch as well. I said, “What are you doing? Amena’s almost in play.”
He looked at his watch and said, “She’s not doing the meeting for another ten minutes. Glasses are working and commo is five-by.”
I pointed at Seacrest and said, “You don’t see Veep running over here.”
Seacrest had the callsign Veep because he was the son of a onetime vice president, now the actual president. He was reading a book next to a monitor showing the inside of the terrorist “safe house” we’d created at the Embassy Suites downtown.
Knuckles said, “He’s afraid of you.”
Veep said, “Nope, just not a man-whore like you. I don’t need to see Jennifer in a bikini for a rise.”
I started to reply when I saw Creed’s eyes widen. I went back to the screen in time to see Jennifer placing her hand on the candidate’s thigh and begin rubbing.
What the hell?
The candidate looked as stiff as a board, his eyes like a cornered rabbit, darting back and forth searching for an escape. Jennifer leaned into him and Knuckles saw my face.
He glanced at Creed and said, “Sorry you put so much effort into hiring him. He’s a dead man.”
I gritted out, “Come on, quit it. She’s playing a role here. She’s supposed to make him uncomfortable.”
Now enjoying himself, Knuckles said, “Oh, yeah, he’s uncomfortable because she’s enjoying the role so much. Maybe that guy is more her type. I could never figure out what she saw in you.”
