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Madison pulled a nondisclosure form from the folder. “Before we continue this conversation, I need to have this form signed. It is binding, and criminal prosecution will result if you disclose any of the information that will be shared with you.”
Laura Lee calmed her breathing as she read the form. The nondisclosure had no expiration. It was for the rest of her life. She didn’t know why, but she signed it and handed it back, knowing full well that she should probably decline at this point and walk away.
“Thank you,” Madison said, tucking it into the file folder. “We are an entity separate from the Army. But we do get a lot of our work from the Department of Defense as well as all the alphabet agencies, plus private, civilian clients. We are mostly all from advanced military units, and transfer to our team can take place at any point during your commitment to a specific regular military unit. We run off the books missions as well as private contracts, such as the one with Homeland for this job I’m recruiting for.”
Off the books?That statement bounced around Laura Lee’s head, and she knew exactly what that meant. “You’re a Black-Ops Team.”
“If you must put a name to it, yes.”
Laura Lee glanced away and smiled a shocked smile.Black Ops, holy shit! And they were recruiting her?
“The position I’m here to talk with you about is, as I said, for an engineer to work installing proprietary technology on hackable computerized equipment in different cities in the U.S. at electrical generating installations. There have been ongoing attempts to hack and shut down our power grid by foreign entities. Besides stopping the hack, this technology theoretically will help the intelligence community track those hacks back to their origins.”
“Electrical generating installations,” Laura Lee repeated.
“Yes, nuclear plants, hydro-electric stations across dams, solar and wind farms, even oil and gas pipelines. We’ve installed our tech on all of these types of devices. We even install our equipment at electrical substations in major cities. The team of engineers usually work in a different city every week, unless they encounter a problem that extends their work. You would still receive the thirty days of paid PTO plus the five standard holidays off. But you would be onsite at jobs staying in hotels paid for by our agency the rest of the year.”
“You said it is a small team?”
“Yes, four to eight members will work on the installation, depending on the size of the given project.”
“Are any other women on the team?” Laura Lee asked.
“No. But I personally know all of them, including the team leads. You won’t encounter what you have in this unit. And if you do, you come talk to me and I’ll set whoever straight who needs to be,” Madison promised.
“So, the education required is the info on these devices and the installation specs?”
“That, and you will also remotely take coursework to obtain your FBI credentials. You’ll have one year to complete that coursework. All our team members carry federal credentials that enable us to operate domestically.”
“FBI?” she asked, more than shocked.
Madison’s lips curved into a smile. “A badge and gun give us official standing when it’s needed. Just over a year ago, one of our team members stopped at a convenience store with his wife. As they entered for her to go use the bathroom, they walked into a robbery in progress. The perp, jacked up on meth, grabbed his wife and held a gun to her head. Our man saw the opportunity and took the shot. It went a lot smoother because he carried an FBI badge.”
Laura Lee nodded, completely overwhelmed with all the information. Two thoughts ran through her head, not deployable and immediate transfer. No uniforms, not regular military filtered in next, followed by travel and hotel, so no barracks. No rent for an apartment. She’d be able to squirrel money away, she was sure. “Are all expenses, including meals, covered?”
“Yes, you will receive an allotment for meals and sundries based on the federal per diem rates. All lodging costs are covered, as are all education costs that are directly related to your job with us or a future job that you would sign an extension for,” Madison said.
Laura Lee discovered that her head was nodding. Before she knew it, she had signed the documents indicating that she accepted the transfer to the Shepherd Security Team. It would take less than a week for the paperwork to be processed. She may have made the worst career move possible. But it had to be better than where she was and where she’d be going if she didn’t.
1 Year Later
Laura Lee Saxton had academically excelled at everything she did. Always. She closed the lid to her laptop, wrestling with the decision she had to make. Disciplinary Probation. She couldn’t believe it. And it was because she hadn’t completed mandatory coursework. Correction, she’d completed it. She just hadn’t submitted it. Thus, the decision she had to make.
Another pain rolled through her lower abdomen. This was the third day her menstrual cramps had been unrelenting. If she didn’t have a flat abdomen and still weigh one-twenty, where she’d tipped the scale at her entire adult life, she’d think she was pregnant and in labor. That’s how intense the pains were, not that she’d know, as she’d never been pregnant. But her sister, having three children, described what labor pains felt like and this was close.
She lay back down on the bed on her left side, which had helped the pains ease over the past few days. If this continued, she’d have to get in to a gynecologist. At least she was at headquarters, and she knew several of the wives of the other team members had a good one nearby they would recommend. She would not go to either her team medic, Sebastian ‘Crash’ Roth, or the lead medic for the agency, Alexander ‘Doc’ Williams, for cramps. She was supposed to see one of them for anything medical, but she would not for this.
There was no way in hell she was going to have a medical report filed on her because she had menstrual cramps. She felt like a total outsider to the team, as it was. Several of the guys thought she was either stuck up and unfriendly or that she had a chip on her shoulder, and maybe she did. But it hadn’t been her fault. The first few weeks of her team, named Echo, forming set the tone and separated her from her team mates. Things had not gone as she’d thought they would on this team when Madison Miller recruited her.
For starters, she was the last team member hired for the engineering team. By the time she reported for duty, the others were already working an installation job with Charlie Team, who’d been doing the job for a few years in between other Shepherd Security cases. The guys were fine. No one mistreated her. But the members of Charlie Team and her team lead, Brody ‘BT’ Templeton, were tight. And they’d all been special forces personnel who’d seen action. The team medic, Roth, had as well. He’d been a Navy SEAL, a corpsman, and he suffered a career-ending injury to his knee just a few missions in. But it hadn’t been career-ending for this gig. The last team member was Michael ‘Bubbles’ Cooper, who had been a nuclear engineer on a submarine. And he happened to be John ‘Coop’ Cooper’s younger brother. Coop was the second in charge at the agency. She was sure anything she’d tell Michael would get right back to Coop. No thank you.
As she was the only woman, she had her own room. The others bunked two or three to a hotel room. Occasionally, BT had his own room, too. But the guys spent so much time together without her. And she’d hoped to study with Michael Cooper and Roth as they both had coursework to complete to earn their federal credentials as well. But both men were so far ahead of her already when her access finally came through. And Roth would be getting DEA credentials. Michael didn’t eagerly respond to the two of them studying together when she suggested it, so she didn’t ask a second time.
They worked onsite sometimes for ten to twelve hours. Surprise! They were way behind on the install schedule the day she reported for duty. And during the training to get herself and the rest of her team up to speed, they worked long hours. Several members of her team and Charlie Team got pulled away for what they called traditional cases. Black ops speak for covert missions. But it allowed her to take the lead on several portions of the installs, and she did well. She was proud of herself for the expertise and knowledge she brought to the team. Her evals for the job she was hired for were all excellent. She could deal with not being anyone’s best friend on the team. She was used to that.
But two things happened in the last four or five months that made this job unbearable. First, Michael Cooper completed his coursework in an unprecedented short amount of time. He gloated and showed her the sign off and her heart nearly stopped beating when she saw the name of the FBI official who did the final review of his qualifications, including a final security review before he signed off on Michael’s credentials. Harrison West. A name that she’d hoped she’d never hear or see again in her life. A man, who she could not let know where she was. She couldn’t submit that coursework for review.
Second, the head of the agency, Colonel Sam ‘Big Bear’ Shepherd, announced that her entire team would receive full Operator training. Yes, Michal and Roth had both been pushing for it. She knew she didn’t make any points with anyone when she scheduled a meeting with her team lead, BT, and refused it. She was an engineer. BT and Shepherd arranged instead that she could receive training for their in-house Operations Center. It was just a backup function. If she didn’t want to work traditional cases in the field, she wouldn’t have to.
