It had been a hectic couple of days.
Her few days’ briefing had been intensive, yet hardly scratched the surface.
“Knowledge is power, but a little knowledge is dangerous,” Sean had told her.
“You are not a special agent; you are simply a member of the public doing her duty. The island is a veritable fortress and no amount of training could prepare you for the task ahead. We have got to simply hope you are innocent enough for them to accept you at face value and somehow you can get lucky.
“The power system is the key. If the power goes down, then their computers, their surveillance systems, their radar and anti-aircraft missile systems will be next to useless. All we need is twenty minutes and we can get on the ground. Once we are there, we have won. But it’s the four minutes that it takes to get into range and onto the ground that we are most vulnerable.”
“So, how do I shut down the power?”
“My honest answer is I haven’t a clue. All our intelligence is useless and we cannot trust anything we thought we knew. Five brave and skilled covert operatives have died trying. So we have to assume that all our information was deliberately fed to us knowing we would fail.
“Somewhere on the island is a power room. We know that the power comes from a mixture of solar and wind power generators. There will be a back-up generator, probably of diesel, oil or gas. The huge reflectors cover the small hill to the north of the house and seven large wind turbines are at the top of the hill making the most of the almost permanent breeze.
“Somewhere, there has to be the necessary control room and a switch to turn the power off for essential maintenance.”
“So, my mission, if I choose to accept it, is to locate the power room, identify the switch and at a given time, turn it off, giving you a window of twenty minutes in which to assault the island and do whatever you feel you have to do? Isn’t this rather like Mission Impossible?” she asked.
Sean smiled and Ryan laughed. She looked over to him and he smiled at her. She looked down, as he made her feel uncomfortable. In a way she’d rather have men like Sean who were business-like, detached and professional about everything. Not that Ryan was unprofessional, it was just he treated her like the girl she wanted to be and that made her feel very strange.
“Michelle. It is important that you are simply you. Albeit you have a different name, but just be yourself and act as you would in any case. If you don’t get the opportunity, then try to find out what you can and get the hell off the island. The fewer lies you tell the better. As the truth will never trip you up. Do not put yourself in any danger and if in doubt, the rule has to be – DON’T!” Sean said.
They fitted her with a micro-transmitter/receiver in the heel of a pair of shoes.
“Nothing complex. Simply press the back here, once, and it will cause a bleep to sound at our end. Hold it here and you will get a vibration back, no sound. That means you have identified the switch and can give us an hour to get the team together and to get into position. We can stay ready for up to twenty four hours if necessary.
“Press it twice when you are about to turn off the power and three times when the power is off. If you have to abort, then press and hold it down for the count of five. Then we will know we have to pull back.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. No poison pills or hidden guns. Once you have turned the power off, then if you can make for a high point. The codeword is ‘Goldilocks’. So if you say it, then any of our guys will say ‘porridge’. If they say anything else, then they aren’t one of us.”
They took her to a range and taught her how to point and fire a self-loading pistol and also a revolver.
“Okay, don’t worry about aiming, just hold it in both hands, thrust your arms straight out in front of you, and use both eyes along the top of the gun into the centre of the chest. Fire until whoever is there is lying down and not moving,” Ryan had told her on the range.
“What about safety catches?”
“All weapons have buttons or slides. If there is hatching on a button, then it means it can be moved.”
He then showed her the difference between several different types of handgun. For example, on the Glock, the safety feature was a fillet in the trigger itself.
“Don’t bother trying to aim, and forget the movies, where they fire with one hand. You must create a solid triangle; hold the gun in your strong hand supported by the other, with both arms rigid so locking them at the elbow. Simply get a sight picture by looking along the top of the barrel and keep firing until your target isn’t a danger to you any more. If there are more than one, then fire and move, fire and move. If you can, get down behind something large and thick, like a boulder or wall. Many high velocity rounds will penetrate cars and even some buildings, so being hidden from sight isn't necessarily safe from fire.”
Ryan helped her adopt the best position. She found his proximity and physical touch reassuring while disarmingly distracting at the same time. She smiled as he seemed to find excuses to touch her to ‘help’ her find the most effective position.
She stood on the range and practised with about a hundred rounds at seven yards, finally managing to place loads of holes within a hand’s spread in the middle of the target.
Ryan grunted, feeling that that would have to do.
“When you shoot at someone, their reaction is usually to fall to the ground. This does not mean you’ve hit them, so you must move position and follow them down with your gun and keep firing all the way until you know they’re no longer able to shoot you.
After the range, Michelle went to the medical centre. A doctor gave her a complete physical and even surgically inserted a hormone implant in her thigh.
“We don’t know where or when you will get access to your treatment from here on in. So Uncle Sam is taking over and you have six months worth there. Hopefully, by the time it comes up for renewal, you’ll have had the operation,” Sean explained.
The yearning in her eyes caused Ryan to feel a lump in his throat.
But now it all seemed a lifetime away, as she looked down from the Lear jet. All she could see was blue ocean.
Chapter 6.
The DEA agents regrouped back at their office. Sean went to brief his director, Carl Oberon. The only people who knew the truth about Michelle were Ryan and Sean. The others from the telecom van didn’t know her true identity or that she was a transsexual.
Sean intended to keep it that way, as he suspected that there was a leak either in the office, or in the Justice department somewhere.
His boss was not happy about placing an unknown person at risk, but he accepted that Sean was using a weakness in their target to his advantage. Sean stressed that she was simply being used to obtain intelligence and then get out. However, if the opportunity existed to turn the power off, then she was instructed to take it, as long as no danger or risk was caused to her.
All they could do now was wait. The strike team was in a hanger on the nearest island and were bunked down and already in their specialist gear. It was, after all, something they were used to and they were paid to sit on their asses as well as to launch assaults. Sitting was a whole lot safer.
The communications team was the hub for the time being, waiting for any signal, but they knew that it would probably be days before whoever was undercover could contact them.
The lack of activity did not go unnoticed by a junior legal researcher in the Federal DA’s department. The fact that the DEA seemed to have given up was very obvious, as Sean went to great pains to make it look that way. Indeed a short telephone message was tapped between Gabriella Sanchez and the island.
A surveillance team swung into action and Sean was pleased to have identified one leak, so was going to make the most of it. Aware that there may be others, he was careful not to become complacent. For the moment, he was happy to let her think that she was not under suspicion.