Intelligence Support Activity Headquarters

Fort Belvoir, VA

December 18th, 2018

0900R

Alexander POV

It's too early in the morning for this shit, I thought to myself as I was finally cleared through security to enter the compound where the esteemed Intelligence Support Activity—nicknamed "the Activity" and "the Army of Northern Virginia"—was headquartered. They were the premier intelligence-gathering entity of the Joint Special Operations Command, the organization which also included SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force. And now, I would be a regular there... not permanently, but for some time.

"Hey! You lost?" a soldier asked, noticing my confusion as I tried to navigate the facility. He was completely bald, sporting a thick yet well-groomed salt-and-pepper beard—one of the Tier 1 operators not subject to the same grooming standards as the rest of the military.

"Looking for Lieutenant Colonel Hendricks," I replied.

"Oh, I know where he is. You with Brown Fox?"

Brown Fox, in this case, being the codename for a CIA/JSOC task force I'd been tasked to work for. I wasn't sure who came up with these weird names, but oh well.

"Yeah."

"Well... guess we're gonna be stuck together for a while. Master Sergeant Garner," the soldier introduced himself, reaching out.

"Alexander Hale," I replied, shaking his hand as we walked. "What's your background?"

"Special Forces, fourteen years. 3rd Group."

"That's out of... Fort Bragg?"

"Yep. You're OGA?"

"Yeah. Go ahead and get the jokes out now," I replied with an eye-roll, knowing all the wisecracks about being a member of the "Other Government Organization," the euphemism for the CIA.

"Mmm, nah. It's all low-hanging fruit."

"Well, come up with something original quickly then."

"I think we'll get along just fine," MSG Garner chuckled as he scanned me through a door labeled "CONFERENCE ROOM F; AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY; LEAVE ALL DEVICES OUTSIDE." It turned out to be the door to the sensitive compartmented information facility where TF Brown Fox was headquartered. We left our devices outside and entered, walking into what looked like a combination between a conference room and a computer lab. Inside was a mix of male and female personnel, soldiers and non-soldiers alike, talking amongst one another and discussing something or the other.

"Mr. Hale?" a raspy voice said, ubiquitous with that of a man who smoked a pack a day. A glance to my left revealed a clean-shaven man who didn't look under 50 years old, the rank patch his cammies designating him a lieutenant colonel.

"Colonel Hendricks," I realized as I read his nametape, shaking his hand. "You're the TF commander?"

"Yup. Welcome to the SCIF. Grab some coffee. We're hopin' you can take a look at this little issue: none of the other OGA guys are here yet."

"Sure thing, what's up?"

"Long story short, we're leaking intel," MSG Garner began. "Or rather: you're leaking intel. A lot of CIA ops have ended up compromised. And because the CIA has been crucial to a lot of JSOC stuff, you've got JSOC teams getting compromised as well."

"Where?" I asked as I poured myself a cup of coffee from the pot.

"Syria. You know anything about this?"

"In all honesty, I've never worked in that AO (area of operations). How do you know it's not coincidence?"

"Too many. We've had teams pulling some risky shit to extract some of your boys," LTC Hendricks explained as we sat down. "Delta's been racking up some casualties to get your guys out of trouble. D Squadron took some serious hits, and they're lickin' their wounds right now. No deaths and they got your boys out every time, but it's still bad—an entire assault team was hospitalized after one mission in particular."

"The fuck? So where is this intel being leaked from?"

"We were hopin' you knew, Mr. Hale."

"I literally have no idea. Maybe there's a traitor, but that doesn't add up."

"Maybe not, sir," a female voice said, with its owner sitting across from us with her laptop, her name tape labeling her as Captain O'Connell. "Our SIGINT (signals intelligence) guys have been intercepting some chatter about a prisoner that's being shuffled around between various locations by ISIS fighters. And the phrase 'Prisoner 138' keeps getting thrown around, even in some chatter that doesn't have anything to do with the prisoner's movements, like they're citing a source. This has been going on for a while, but we've never been able to link them with any of the compromised ops overseas until now. Maybe we've got an involuntary inside man situation on our hands—a captured gray man."

"That adds up," MSG Garner said. "We know al-Baghdadi's a smart guy—evil, but smart. Shuffling this prisoner around makes sense... 'specially given how valuable any intel would be in thwarting American forces in the region. If they keep moving him around, it'll be damn near impossible to mount a rescue."

"Do you have any other intel, Captain?" I asked.

"No sir. But we're working in conjunction with intel assets from Delta on the ground, SEALs off the coast, and other IC (United States Intelligence Community) assets. We'll find them," CPT O'Connell replied.

"Okay, keep me posted. I need to make some calls."

"We've got a secure phone over there in the corner," LTC Hendricks said, pointing towards said phone.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful as the other CIA officers assigned to TF Brown Fox trickled in and provided their input on the matter. There were also intelligence officers from other parts of the IC—including the NSA and DIA—and it didn't take long for the "captured CIA officer" theory to reign, but there was one major problem: we didn't know who was missing. We called up various CIA chiefs of base and chiefs of station in Syria and surrounding nations, but got nothing—either negative responses or no responses. Moreover, US Central Command (CENTCOM) and its subordinate Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) weren't of much help: they only knew as much about the CIA as the CIA told them.

Now, it's not like I was expecting this to be done by lunch or anything, but holy shit were we getting nowhere fast. It didn't help that I had another stressor on my mind: my daughter. You see, she'd been getting much better after continuing to see her psychologist and psychiatrist, and hadn't required much medication, apart from some sleeping pills. She wasn't some amped-up optimist, by any means, but at least she wasn't trying to kill herself.

However, on the downside, she hadn't dropped her idea of going down the paramilitary operations/specialized skills officer track... which would require her to go into the military. I didn't have anything against the military by any means—despite all its flaws, it was a fine institution with even finer people—but I wasn't willing to risk Erica like that.

Well, it's technically her risk, a little voice said in my head. Besides, she's not some gung-ho idiot. She's going to run for something a little sneakier: psychological operations, intel, and the like.

That little bit of info didn't help.

It's true though, isn't it? You can't shelter her forever. She grew up quite a bit without you, you know.

And there was my mind again, reminding me of my grade "F-" parenting.

Fate has its own plans for Erica. All you can do is stand by her and make sure you stay in touch and that she doesn't burn out... or go insane.

That didn't help either.

Fuck off, Alex. Get back to the real world.

Yeah, that little voice living rent-free in my head was a real treat.

"Alright, I gotta go," I said with a yawn, standing from my seat and stretching at around 7:00 PM. Beside me was CPT O'Connell, who looked similarly tired, but still dedicated towards her work. MSG Garner and LTC Hendricks had their own shit to handle, so I left them alone. "All good here, Captain?"

"Just fine, Mr. Hale. You have a good night," she groaned back as she cracked her neck, settling back in for more computer work.

"Alrighty." But not even before I could open the door, she called me back.

"Mr. Hale! Our interceptors have a name! Came up in the chatter between a courier and a commander!"

"What've you got?" I and a few other CIA officers asked, crowding around CPT O'Connell.

"Ronald Benbury."

If I was living in a TV show, that would be the perfect moment for a record scratch. Because while my colleagues seemed unfazed, I wasn't.

"What did you just say?" I asked, unsure if I heard her correctly.

The universe has to be fucking with me right now.

"Ronald Benbury," CPT O'Connell repeated, glancing towards me. "Know him?"

"I need a computer."

"Right here," LTC Hendricks said as he walked over, handing me an opened laptop. After getting permission, I accessed two databases: the first was that of the FBI, specifically an unsolved murder case. The second was that of the CIA, specifically a highly restricted section of the database, namely a special access program codenamed "GRAY CASTLE." GRAY CASTLE, in this case, being the SAP that was the now-defunct CIA Academy of Espionage... very few had access to this. Even officers who went to the Academy were limited in their access. But I was only interested in digging up a very specific piece of the past: a personnel file of a now-deceased student.

Oh, Christ help me.

It made sense. He knew plenty about the Agency, despite having only ever been an officer-in-training. He'd been in more shit than more than half of the Agency's field operatives. And the FBI cold case? The unsolved murder of a woman, along with her husband, her eldest son, and her little daughter. That woman was the student's mother, and the linking detail to the prisoner was the woman's maiden name: Benbury.

There's... there's no way. This has to be a coincidence...

"Captain... do you have any photos, or just chatter?" I asked, keeping my tone level.

"Just chatter, but it's a lot more solid: whoever this guy is, 'Ronald Benbury,' he's the prisoner. And he's where they've been getting the intel from," CPT O'Connell replied.

"Okay, tell your boys to keep tracking the chatter, and find out where he is. As soon as you have something solid, you gotta launch a rescue, ASAP. Night Stalkers, Delta, Rangers, everything. You need to bring him back alive. You gotta—"

"Easy, easy, sir. You know who the prisoner is?"

"The name you're seeing is fake. The first name is the prisoner's actual middle name. The last name is the prisoner's mother's maiden name."

"Send me all the intel you've got on this guy so I can pass it off to the CJTF-OIR (Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve)," LTC Hendricks ordered. With a nod, I quickly put all relevant intel into a zip file, encrypted it, and shared it via a secure network. "Alright, I'll send this over right now. We'll keep on the lookout for relevant traffic and we'll let you know if we get any hits. Watch your phone: we may ping you in the middle of the night if it's urgent."

"Thanks, Colonel... son of a bitch," I muttered, looking at the personnel file on my screen as LTC Hendricks walked off to talk to CJTF-OIR, SOCCENT, CENTCOM, or whoever in the hell Army doctrine dictated that he talk to. "And here I thought he was dead this whole time."

"Why?" MSG Garner asked curiously.

"I... I was in the vicinity. Same op as him. I didn't see him die, but I saw the body... forensic report confirmed it was him, but I should've known it was a trick."

"One of your guys?"

"A junior officer... baby-faced, real good with numbers and people, smart kid... my mentee."

"What's his real name?"

"Benjamin Ronald Ripley."

https://youtu.be/_zrMykBnidM

Sorry for such a delay in the update... I've been having some trouble filling the gaps. Sorry for it being super short as well. I'll try to make them longer. Don't forget to comment your thoughts: what you loved, hated, liked, disliked, all that.

While you wait, enjoy some dank memes:

Until next time,

- ADF-2