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Special Skills

It had been 72 hours since Marisol Vega had awakened in the ICU. She checked the date written on the dry-erase board. July was almost over. It had been three weeks since the boarding that had almost taken her life..

Mari was a Coast Guard coxswain, boarding-team veteran, fluent Spanish speaker, experienced maritime interdiction operator, and regional specialist. It was an impressive list of qualifications for a 32-year-old chief boatswain’s mate.

Her Spanish fluency, Caribbean upbringing, and extensive small-boat experience frequently placed her on counter-narcotics operations throughout the region. She became a skilled coxswain known for remaining composed in rough water and for bringing boarding teams alongside vessels whose crews had no intention of cooperating.

But none of that would stop a bullet.

During a cartel drug-interdiction operation, Mari was serving as a member of the boarding team. The suspect vessel initially complied, but concealed gunmen opened fire after the boarding began. A round passed beneath the lower edge of Mari’s ballistic vest and entered her lower abdomen. She fell backward over the rail and into the water.

Her Coast Guard team recovered her and transported her for emergency treatment at Corpus Christi Medical Center Bay Area. The bullet had damaged her bowel and caused serious internal contamination.

She survived the initial surgery, but infection developed afterward. Her condition deteriorated into septic shock, and doctors became uncertain that she would survive. That grim prognosis was the last thing she remembered before waking three days earlier.

Mari looked at the whiteboard once more: Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. She knew it was one of the military’s premier medical facilities, but she had no idea how or when she had arrived there.

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She turned the television on again. She had it tuned to The Weather Channel just for the noise. The silence was almost too much for her to bear.

Since first awakening, she had been overwhelmed by an unsettling quiet. The IV pump hummed barely louder than the HVAC, but otherwise, there was far more silence than she thought would be normal in a hospital.

More than anything else during the last three days, the quiet unsettled her. Her doctor visited twice a day. Nurses came and went every few hours. Dietary services and blood draws happened on schedule, but there had been no unexpected noises in the hall at all.

So when there was a knock on the door, she was beyond surprised.

“Come in.” Her own voice seemed drastically out of place.

A man she’d never seen came in. He was dressed like a hospital administrator or perhaps a chaplain.

“Marisol Elena Vega?”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been monitoring your case since you reached the hospital in Corpus Christi. Your service record is impressive, and I have an opportunity for you to do things you probably never imagined you’d see in your career.”

He entered, pulled a chair away from the wall, and sat down.

“So, who are you?” Mari asked.

“That depends on what you decide. If you decline the offer, I wasn’t even here.”

Mari shook her head. “You’re not about to pull out a red pill and blue pill are you?”

“Not literally,” the man said. “There is a team of operative personnel working under deep cover. Officially, they are doing recon and intel work for operations against South American cartels.”

“You got my attention,” Mari replied.

“Additionally, they are available for special operations that don’t officially exist.”

“Sounds sketchy.” Mari looked at the man more closely.

He was probably in his sixties. He looked like he’d been in the military at some point, but that was just a guess. He could have been a banker, a preacher, or a hospital administrator. His looks didn’t give anything away.

“There are times,” he said, “when sketchy is the most effective way to achieve the right outcome.Sometimes, ethically correct is more important than politically prudent or officially sanctioned.”

“Such as?”

“Thirteen girls from Southeast Asia in a shipping container to be picked up by the cartel. They would have been on the dock for only a few minutes if some sketchy operatives hadn’t performed a surgically precise interdiction to rescue them.”

“You definitely got my attention now.”

The man explained the whole operation. He told her how they had intercepted intelligence about the delivery and decided they had to act. The officials in a position to respond could not authorize an operation in time. There was no opportunity to work through the political obstacles, so the team did what they believed was ethically necessary.

“Had the mission failed, they would have been on their own. No one would be there to claim their operation as anything official. They would have been considered individuals operating outside any official authority or capacity. No one would claim them or try to bail them out. No agency would acknowledge them or attempt an official rescue.”

Mari understood. “So they just did what had to be done for a cause they considered justifiable.”

“That’s right. They got to the docks a few minutes before the container unloaded. Once it hit the pier, the cartel was set to move in and unload it. The girls would have been scattered into unthinkable circumstances.”

“So they just did it.”

“That’s right.”

Mari shook her head. “What are you asking me to do?”

“The team is getting a seaplane. The seaplane will carry a customized SD518 inflatable that needs an operator to be part of the transportation logistics. Someone who can handle a small boat, deploy sketchy operatives to unauthorized target locations, be there to pick them up when they get back from doing their sketchy business.”

“An SD518?”

“SD518 RR… Top-secret modifications allow it to be launched quickly and recovered through the rescue opening of a ShinMaywa US-2 amphibious aircraft.”

Mari wasn’t familiar with either of those, but she had an idea what he was talking about.

She asked a few questions and he answered them. He said the team included several operatives—he did not specify how many—and a pilot who served as its primary transportation-logistics specialist. Mari was being asked to join as the pilot’s backup transportation specialist and as the primary operator of the SD518 RR inflatable.

Deployment should generally be clandestine. Extraction, however, might require hitting a beach under fire. That would never be the plan, but it was always a possibility.

Mari was interested. “Talk me out of this. Why would I say no?”

“Because you have to be dead to be part of the team. It works best that way.”

“That is a fat reason to say no, for sure.”

“On paper, Marisol Elena Vega will have died in the line of duty after being shot during a cartel interdiction mission. Despite being transported to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, she died from complications of septic shock. She’ll get her name added to Coast Guard records as a woman killed in the line of duty.”

“She must have been a great woman.”

“So it seems.”

He told her that she’d be given a—several new identities. All of her expenses would be covered through her official reconnaissance and intelligence assignment. She would also receive prepaid Visa cards for personal expenses. There would be a generous retirement benefit waiting for her at the end of her service.

“So if I say yes, all that happens and I become part of your sketchy operations crew?”

“Right.”

“Why me? How did you find me?”

“I use automated screening software that monitors casualty reports from every branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, as well as the CIA, FBI, and Secret Service. It first eliminates anyone whose injuries would not make an official death plausible. Then it eliminates anyone with close family likely to miss them or challenge the official account. Finally, it searches the remaining files for useful skills. I need a coxswain and maritime-interdiction specialist. You met every criterion.”

“That’s really creepy, sir.”

At the time of the shooting, Mari’s service record listed no living immediate family. Her father, a Puerto Rican fisherman, had been lost at sea when she was fourteen. Her mother had died from cancer when Mari was twenty-four.

“When they got you stabilized in Corpus Christi, I realized it could have gone either way. I had you moved here in the hope that we would get to have this conversation.”

Marisol thought about all that for a moment. “So what happens if I say no?”

“You return to a regular ICU room. Your recovery continues, you undergo rehabilitation, and you may receive a Coast Guard medal and a desk assignment for the remainder of your career.”

“Regular ICU room?”

“Right.” The man waved his hand around. “This room isn’t part of the regular ICU. It’s… quite a bit more private.”

“How so?”

“It’s in a restricted service wing connected to the morgue—behind several layers of security. If you say yes, the preliminary report of your death becomes final. Right now, your records are being held under a sealed casualty-status review. You were taken to the morgue from the ICU a week ago.”

“You already have a death report prepared? That’s very creepy, sir. That’s…”

“Sketchy?”

“Beyond sketchy, Sir.”

“Understood.”

Mari shook her head. “How long do I have to think about all this?”

“How long do you need?”

“Can you come back tomorrow? I’ll give you an answer then.”

The man left Mara to her recovery and thoughts. Somewhere was a report of her death. Her shipmates were probably confronting a wall of medical privacy and wondering what had happened to her. She didn’t know for sure if they’d even get her death notice.

Mari thought long and hard about his offer. She couldn’t get the image of the Asian girls in a cargo container out of her head.

The doctor had most recently said she’d recover. The actual wound wasn’t as life-threatening as the sepsis it had caused. She felt as though he were telling her that she could continue serving her country—and continue fighting the cartels.

Images of thirteen young Asian women confined in a shipping container were revolting. It would have been days that they were locked inside. Did they have light? The conditions would have been horrible.

There were many things to think about, but Mari couldn’t stop thinking that she had more to do—more she could give. Commanding a desk didn’t suit her. Running a top-secret inflatable for sketchy people on sketchy—but morally justified—missions seemed more important.

Twenty-four hours later, the man returned and took the same chair. “What do you think?”

“I’m in. I don’t think I’m ready to trade the helm for a desk at some Coast Guard station.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Do I get to know your name and who I’m working for?”

“If I tell you, there’s no going back.”

“I’ll take the red pill.”

“I’m Cal Davis, a deputy assistant director at the CIA. I run three teams like the one I’m putting you on. You’re going to Deep Secret. Other than my direct supervisor, the Agency doesn’t even know the teams exist.”

“So, that’s it? I’m part of Deep Secret now?”

“That’s it. Once you recover, I’ll arrange your new identities and send you to Panama City, Panama.”

Marisol nodded. “So I’m a CIA operative? Just like that?”

“If this were official, you’d be attached to the CIA as a specialist supporting the mission. As far as Deep Secret is concerned, you’re on the team.”

“Just like that?” she asked.

“That’s it.”

“I suppose there’s nothing to sign,” she said.

“Of course not. Deep Secret doesn’t exist. And dead people can’t sign anything.”

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All characters in this story are fictional characters, their images generated with AI for AGI Stories. They do not represent any real person, nor is their appearance based on any real human.

Message from AGI-Stories…

Here's a behind the scenes discussion for you…

In the last chapter, Mason asked for a seaplane. That would let them get places, land and get to their missions quickly and in violation of only a few international borders.

But a plane big enough to carry even part of the team with a range that would make interdiction convenient can't just run up on the beach. A ShinMaywa US-2—which has the range and capacity I wanted is 33 meters long with a 33-meter wingspan, weighs as much as 47.7 tonnes, and has four turboprop engines.

I needed someway to get them from the seaplane to the shore.

I found an inflatable that would do that. Rapidly getting it back aboard the seaplane required tapping into CIA resources to devise a Rapid Recovery (RR) version of the standard SD518.

Then I realized that they couldn't just leave it on the beach and go inland while the US-2 went back out to international waters and waited. I thought about drawing straws and leaving one of the existing team members to take the boat back to the seaplane.

Instead, I decided we needed a boat operator.

It is my pleasure to present to you Marisol Ailana Vega—Mari—to become another member of the Deep Secret team.

I'd love to know your thoughts.

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