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Mizzay walked into the meeting room at FBI headquarters at exactly 2PM. She’d wanted to make sure all the players were already seated when she made her big appearance.

Of course, that meant not having seen the five suspected agents’ reactions to the SOS team walking in, but some sacrifices were worth making.

“Good morning,” she said briskly to the room at large as she slipped into a chair next to Del.

Special Agent Beranger’s eyebrows raised so high they looked like they were in danger of escaping his face. “What are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you, too, Beranger,” Mizzay relayed haughtily as she settled in.

A few others were giving her confused eyeballs, but nobody looked as downright hostile as her old DOJ associate, whom she did nothing to appease. Instead, she baited him.

“Howz about I let Director Baskin fill you in on my presence.”

The agent looked like he was about to jump up from his seat and go after her, but the two biggest guys in the room, Billboard and Prez, shuffled their chairs back as if to say, “go ahead, buddy. Try it”.

Beranger gave them a look, but judiciously settled back down, calming his features. At least for appearance’s sake.

“Well, now that all the hellos have been said,” Baskins cleared his throat with annoyed purpose, “let’s get down to it. Deputy Cavateral, would you like to take the helm on this, or should I?”

Cavateral sent him an acquiescent nod. “Since this is your home turf, why don’t you do the honors.”

“Thank you,” Baskins replied genially, then sat back, steepling his fingers. “As you can all see, we’ve included a few additional people in our briefing today.”

The FBI in Boston had used Del’s firm as an asset before, so nobody from that office looked shaken by the addition. But the DOJ operatives looked fit to be tied.

“Please welcome the team from SOS,” Baskins concluded.

Baskins went on to name each of the eight additional operatives in the room, even though most of the agents present—from the FBI—knew them from previous missions. Missy could tell that Baskins was going slowly, getting a read on everyone in the room.

Greetings were subsequently made; some more reluctantly than others.

“Now you also may have noticed we’ve welcomed Missy Andriopolos back into our office.”

Again, a few sour faces.

“The reason for that is two-fold. First, as most of you know, she’s been working with the SOS team for over four years, and has become an integral part of their operations; even being included in some of our activities as our two factions have collaborated. But second, and most importantly, she never actually left this particular case.”

“What?” The question snapped from Agent Georgio, but Beranger’s eyes were also shooting daggers.

“That’s right,” Baskins answered, ignoring the undercurrents. “After Sawyer Blue’s location had been compromised for the fourth or fifth time, we led everyone in both offices to believe that Agent Smalley alone would be the one in charge of keeping the man safe. That meant whoever was looking for Mr. Blue took to surveilling Smalley.

“They may have believed our agent was just so damned good that he always stayed one step ahead of them in his efforts, but in reality, Agent Smalley often had no idea where Mr. Blue had been placed, so he wouldn’t lead anyone to his location. Which is why the man’s whereabouts remained well protected.”

He looked around astutely. “What actually occurred was that we assigned Missy Andriopolos to become Mr. Blue’s guardian.”

“But…she was fired. Everyone heard you,” Agent Englewood looked suitably puzzled, and DAAG Cavateral took over.

“Yeah. About that.” He looked a bit smug. “Ms. Andriopolos actually never worked for the FBI.”

“What?” Several voices raised around the room.

Missy could barely keep the grin off her face.

“That’s right,” Cavateral confirmed. “When she purportedly left the DOJ to work for the FBI here in Boston, she was, in fact, undercover for the DOJ, seeing if she could rattle a few cages. Unfortunately, that didn’t pan out, but she stayed on here because it would have seemed too suspicious to take her back into the DOJ ranks.”

“So when Director Baskins fired her…?” Wiley posed.

Cavateral chuckled. “She wasn’t really fired at all, because she didn’t work for him. But she did , in truth, separate from the DOJ at that point—at least on the books—right before she went to work for SOS, because she was tired of sitting around looking unemployed.”

“Wow. That’s amazing, Mizzay,” Perk gloated. “Nice one.”

Missy knew that if he were close, he’d be giving her a high-five.

She would have enjoyed that.

“So where does that leave us now?” Agent Georgio questioned, still looking skeptical at what he’d been told.

Baskins got the ball rolling again, this time with a scowl.

“You’re all aware we finally uncovered some highly unethical things about Agent Tertia which I won’t be sharing, but happily it allowed us to find our rogue agent here at the FBI office. We’ve interrogated her several times over the past few days, but she’s maintaining her innocence, which means, unfortunately, we’re no closer to finding out who else in the Bureau could be involved, or who might be partnering with her from the DOJ.”

Poor Tertia , Missy thought. Sitting several floors below in a cell. Although she had Sloane Vessers for company, which probably meant the two were playing some cutthroat games of poker right about now.

“We’re still fairly certain, however, that Elody Tertia has one or more accomplices who are still at large,” Baskins continued with a sigh. “But here’s the bottom line. Since this case has gone on for so many years, we’ve finally decided to take our chances on moving forward and wrapping things up.”

He regarded his watch. “As of an hour ago, my counterpart in the CIA will have located and taken El-Umar into custody.”

Mizzay looked around for any over-the-top reaction, but saw none.

What a shame .

Baskins was still speaking. “We’ll be sending a team from here to extradite him to the States. Concurrently, we’ll be taking Sawyer Blue out of hiding to debrief him before he testifies that El-Umar was the one to order the killings at the UN office so long ago.

“Our primary goal from here on out is to keep both men alive until we can see justice done, which may sound simple, but as you know, every person we’ve uncovered so far, has met with an untimely death. That is why we’ve asked SOS to assist. There are very few Bureau agents whom I trust implicitly; the few of you here being among that number. But that won’t serve our purposes for adequate protection. We obviously needed more able bodies to make sure nobody gets to El-Umar or Blue before our as-of-now unspecified court date. So here we all are.”

Missy bit back a smile. She thought it was a nice touch for Baskins to say that all agents in the room were trustworthy.

“On that note,” he plunged ahead, “we’re going to split you into three teams. For obvious reasons, Deputy Cavateral and I will not be boots-on-the-ground. We’ll be coordinating from our respective offices, which means fifteen of you will need to be on your toes to pull off this very sensitive operation, hopefully without a hitch.”

From his tongue… Missy sent up a short prayer.

“Special Agent Beranger,” Baskins delivered. “You’ll be partnering with Agent Englewood, as well as SOS operatives Songen, Perkins, and the Devons brothers. You’ll be called Team A. The six of you will be tasked to travel to South Sudan, take custody of El-Umar from the CIA’s hands, and bring him back here.

“Once we have him stateside, for security purposes, he won’t be held in our offices. We don’t want to make it easy for someone to get to him. Instead, he’ll be placed somewhere remotely where Team B, consisting of Special Agent Oliphant, Agent Smalley, and SOS members Balshir, Montverra, and Seingold will take shifts watching him.

“The rest of you, Team C, consisting of Agent Georgio, Agent Fleischerman, Operatives Prancingdeer, and of course, Missy, will be tasked with keeping Sawyer Blue safe.”

“Where will we all be holed up?” Agent Georgio asked. “Us watching Mr. Blue, and Team B taking shifts on El-Umar?”

Ah. Wasn’t that the question one or more of those assembled would want the answer to, badly, so their dirty deeds could be planned. Missy knew the guilty party or parties wasn’t necessarily Georgio, because his was actually a valid inquiry that any one of them could have made.

Baskins answered with what had been predetermined by their previous, secret meeting. “Until El-Umar is on American soil, that information will not be released. We don’t want his position or Mr. Blue’s inadvertently leaking before everything is in place and our terrorist gold-smuggler has feet on American soil.”

Baskins then looked around and met the eyes of Team A. “You six will be leaving Boston in two hours to fly to South Sudan. I hope that won’t be a hardship?”

All involved gave some form of a thumbs up.

The SOS team, of course, had already known the plan in advance, so the four involved with that part of the operation were more than ready to go.

Still, Baskins had to make it look good. “I’m sorry for the short notice, but we thought it would take more time for the CIA to track our man down. They were able to easily locate El-Umar, since he believed himself safe under the wing of the Vice President. It just goes to show, it never pays to get complacent.”

Missy was loving all the innuendoed-shade Baskins was throwing.

Baskins was still giving details. “Your tickets are being forwarded to your phones as we speak. And my suggestion is, travel light. You’ll be in and out fast. The turnaround at Juba International where the CIA will deliver El-Umar to you, is only two hours.”

Two hours? Shit .

Missy didn’t envy the travelers. Depending on the tickets the agency had procured, the flights might take twenty-one-hours each way, which bit the big one, but their trip could be as long as thirty-five hours per leg, which really sucked.

There were going to be some bleary eyes among the crew when they returned.

On the other hand, that prolonged absence gave Missy at least two more days with Cobble, although now she was really going to have to watch her ass. She’d be fully on the bad-guys’ radar from this point on, which was why Chuck, as well as the SOS guys who weren’t heading for the South Sudan pick-up, would be dogging her every step and keeping watch over Tucker’s bungalow.

Good, but…

Maybe no outdoor sex .