Talon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
talonkarrde) wrote2013-03-25 07:08 pm
talonkarrde) wrote2013-03-25 07:08 pm
Entry tags:
Snake
She hears footsteps coming closer and quickly leaps over the edge, catching the railing with one hand to avoid plummeting down the fifty-foot fall into the atrium. She lets go as soon as her momentum is halted, falling for a second before grasping the edge of the walkway, now almost hidden from sight, with only her fingertips barely showing. Black gloves on a black floor, though, means that she's almost certain she'll pass unnoticed.
Still, as the footsteps come closer, every click of the guards' boots on the tile makes her nervous, wondering if by chance the guard will see her and sound the alarm. Click... click... click... until finally, the sounds pass her and start receding to her left.
She grunts softly as she pulls himself up from the straight-arm dangle she's been in, feeling a light sheen of sweat over her forehead, under the mask. Just something to keep the operation fun, she thinks, and continues heading to the right, out of the main lobby.
Eventually, after six more guards and two infrared cameras that she's careful to stay out of the way of, she gets to the target — the ambassador's office. It's not an easy job, but for her, it's not too difficult: the small desert country simply doesn't have the security systems in place to match the training that she's had.
And so, with no alarms raised and nothing out of the ordinary on any of the monitors some diplomatic security guard was sure to be monitoring, Agent Poulson slips into the ambassador's office. She pauses for a moment to slip on infrared goggles, peering about, and then heads for the desk — after checking the corners, of course.
The papers are there, locked in a drawer that takes her all of ten seconds to crack. She's good, of course, and smiles as the prize comes into view.
And then she blinks, hard, as the lights turn on and blind her through the night-vision goggles, her instincts screaming as she drops into a crouch behind the heavy mahogany desk, gun out before the papers even hit the floor.
"Relax, Miss Poulson. If we wanted to do something with you, you'd already be incapacitated," a voice says. It's not one that she recognizes, but she categorizes it for future reference: normal inflections, no accent, baritone, likely middle aged.
She also doesn't move.
"That being said, I'd also appreciate if we had this conversation face to face," the man says, almost warmly, without any hint of a threat in his voice.
And yet, she knows the implication, the 'or else', and slowly rises, not yet turning to face him.
"Ah, do you not want to look at me? I promise I'm not ugly," he says, laughing, and she can feel the smugness in his voice, the cat who has caught a particularly deft mouse. "Or is it that without seeing my face, you think I'm more willing to let you go alive?"
"I'm not a fan of unannounced meetings," she responds, looking out the floor-to-ceiling glass windows in front of her and thinking furiously. Not a sheer drop, but rather a sloped roof...
"Ah, yes, I'm sure the CIA has your schedule incredibly regimented. Nothing ever unannounced, if my sources inform me correctly — no meetings, no assignments that aren't given in advance. Even the —" he pauses, searching for a word, "- 'blip', shall we say, in China; that was planned too, wasn't it? Though your jobs in Kabul and Panama City and Havana and St. Petersburg have all been stellar, of course."
She keeps completely still but can't help blinking in surprise, glad she's not facing him now. No one was supposed to know about the failed mission in China; much less all of her other operational assignments. But China, especially; that one that had been long planned and was certain, according to all the operations vets, to succeed. Just an easy-in, easy-out. Until it went sour sixteen different ways and ended up with three agents dead, only one who got out, and no intel at all to show for it.
She feels the man behind her nodding, reading the small, uncontrollable tension in her fists, and tenses even more. She resists acting, though — he was still giving her information about his sources, and she was still alive.
"The longer I talk, the more I reveal, don't I? I must stop talking, then, of course. I'll just leave you with this one thought, then, and one suggestion, if that's alright, Agent Poulson."
She waits, but he doesn't say anything else, and eventually, she reluctantly gives a small nod, her escape plan coming together. The window was going to be her chance, and she needed to cover two meters in a second, with the bullets started flying towards her. Crashing through would hurt, but if she spared three shots back and two forward, it would weaken the structure, and...
"We didn't kill you today, though we could've. We didn't torture you for information either, though my bosses will be quite angry with me when I tell them that. I may even suffer for it — not that you care, I'm sure."
"But simply think about it. We had one of the best agents the Agency could throw at us, caught her neatly and deftly, and yet we let her — we let you — get away. Why would we do that?"
Why indeed, she thinks for a moment, and then slowly shifts her weight forward, just a touch, getting ready to spring through the glass.
"Take the documents with you. But before you hand them over to Uncle Sam, to your handlers, to good ol' Langley, just take a quick glance through them, and see what they reveal. Of course you'll think we edited them, that they're trash and not to be trusted — but they're not. I'm sure you have the skills to do the research — discreetly — to see that I'm speaking the truth."
"So read them, Agent Poulson, and then ask yourself if you're fighting for the right side."
The smile, again, a smugness tangible in the air, and she crouches right as he finishes, drops and rolls and shoots forward twice, grabbing the papers with her empty hand, and then springs forward, feeling more bullets fly around her, and charges through the now shattering glass.
The alarms are ringing, and she's falling, but the slope is gentle and the night is dark. When the security guards burst onto the roof less than a minute later, they see only the shards of broken glass.
She's gone, and so are the documents.
-
Somewhere else, a man, also dressed in all black, smiles.
--
A/N: I love spy stories, immensely, and I felt like this topic was an excellent chance to write (part of) one. When I say spy stories, though, I don't mean the James Bond type, which is about shooting and sex more than spying; but instead something closer to Argo or Tailor, Tinker, Soldier, Spy. As such, I tried to lay out a situation where the agent is caught and a gamble from someone who dances this dance misinformation and lies, and wraps it up in a poisonous conversation. Of course the information has been tampered with, but that's the beauty (and uncertainty) of it: if the enemy has agents on the inside, he can edit records to make it seem like the information is not manipulated, and possibly corrupt her to the point where she defects, and starts supporting his side. This is what I find deeply interesting about spying; it's much more a chess game than a shooting match.
Oh, and Agent Poulson is a bit of a shoutout to Agent Phil Coulson, for those comic fans out there :).
Still, as the footsteps come closer, every click of the guards' boots on the tile makes her nervous, wondering if by chance the guard will see her and sound the alarm. Click... click... click... until finally, the sounds pass her and start receding to her left.
She grunts softly as she pulls himself up from the straight-arm dangle she's been in, feeling a light sheen of sweat over her forehead, under the mask. Just something to keep the operation fun, she thinks, and continues heading to the right, out of the main lobby.
Eventually, after six more guards and two infrared cameras that she's careful to stay out of the way of, she gets to the target — the ambassador's office. It's not an easy job, but for her, it's not too difficult: the small desert country simply doesn't have the security systems in place to match the training that she's had.
And so, with no alarms raised and nothing out of the ordinary on any of the monitors some diplomatic security guard was sure to be monitoring, Agent Poulson slips into the ambassador's office. She pauses for a moment to slip on infrared goggles, peering about, and then heads for the desk — after checking the corners, of course.
The papers are there, locked in a drawer that takes her all of ten seconds to crack. She's good, of course, and smiles as the prize comes into view.
And then she blinks, hard, as the lights turn on and blind her through the night-vision goggles, her instincts screaming as she drops into a crouch behind the heavy mahogany desk, gun out before the papers even hit the floor.
"Relax, Miss Poulson. If we wanted to do something with you, you'd already be incapacitated," a voice says. It's not one that she recognizes, but she categorizes it for future reference: normal inflections, no accent, baritone, likely middle aged.
She also doesn't move.
"That being said, I'd also appreciate if we had this conversation face to face," the man says, almost warmly, without any hint of a threat in his voice.
And yet, she knows the implication, the 'or else', and slowly rises, not yet turning to face him.
"Ah, do you not want to look at me? I promise I'm not ugly," he says, laughing, and she can feel the smugness in his voice, the cat who has caught a particularly deft mouse. "Or is it that without seeing my face, you think I'm more willing to let you go alive?"
"I'm not a fan of unannounced meetings," she responds, looking out the floor-to-ceiling glass windows in front of her and thinking furiously. Not a sheer drop, but rather a sloped roof...
"Ah, yes, I'm sure the CIA has your schedule incredibly regimented. Nothing ever unannounced, if my sources inform me correctly — no meetings, no assignments that aren't given in advance. Even the —" he pauses, searching for a word, "- 'blip', shall we say, in China; that was planned too, wasn't it? Though your jobs in Kabul and Panama City and Havana and St. Petersburg have all been stellar, of course."
She keeps completely still but can't help blinking in surprise, glad she's not facing him now. No one was supposed to know about the failed mission in China; much less all of her other operational assignments. But China, especially; that one that had been long planned and was certain, according to all the operations vets, to succeed. Just an easy-in, easy-out. Until it went sour sixteen different ways and ended up with three agents dead, only one who got out, and no intel at all to show for it.
She feels the man behind her nodding, reading the small, uncontrollable tension in her fists, and tenses even more. She resists acting, though — he was still giving her information about his sources, and she was still alive.
"The longer I talk, the more I reveal, don't I? I must stop talking, then, of course. I'll just leave you with this one thought, then, and one suggestion, if that's alright, Agent Poulson."
She waits, but he doesn't say anything else, and eventually, she reluctantly gives a small nod, her escape plan coming together. The window was going to be her chance, and she needed to cover two meters in a second, with the bullets started flying towards her. Crashing through would hurt, but if she spared three shots back and two forward, it would weaken the structure, and...
"We didn't kill you today, though we could've. We didn't torture you for information either, though my bosses will be quite angry with me when I tell them that. I may even suffer for it — not that you care, I'm sure."
"But simply think about it. We had one of the best agents the Agency could throw at us, caught her neatly and deftly, and yet we let her — we let you — get away. Why would we do that?"
Why indeed, she thinks for a moment, and then slowly shifts her weight forward, just a touch, getting ready to spring through the glass.
"Take the documents with you. But before you hand them over to Uncle Sam, to your handlers, to good ol' Langley, just take a quick glance through them, and see what they reveal. Of course you'll think we edited them, that they're trash and not to be trusted — but they're not. I'm sure you have the skills to do the research — discreetly — to see that I'm speaking the truth."
"So read them, Agent Poulson, and then ask yourself if you're fighting for the right side."
The smile, again, a smugness tangible in the air, and she crouches right as he finishes, drops and rolls and shoots forward twice, grabbing the papers with her empty hand, and then springs forward, feeling more bullets fly around her, and charges through the now shattering glass.
The alarms are ringing, and she's falling, but the slope is gentle and the night is dark. When the security guards burst onto the roof less than a minute later, they see only the shards of broken glass.
She's gone, and so are the documents.
-
Somewhere else, a man, also dressed in all black, smiles.
--
A/N: I love spy stories, immensely, and I felt like this topic was an excellent chance to write (part of) one. When I say spy stories, though, I don't mean the James Bond type, which is about shooting and sex more than spying; but instead something closer to Argo or Tailor, Tinker, Soldier, Spy. As such, I tried to lay out a situation where the agent is caught and a gamble from someone who dances this dance misinformation and lies, and wraps it up in a poisonous conversation. Of course the information has been tampered with, but that's the beauty (and uncertainty) of it: if the enemy has agents on the inside, he can edit records to make it seem like the information is not manipulated, and possibly corrupt her to the point where she defects, and starts supporting his side. This is what I find deeply interesting about spying; it's much more a chess game than a shooting match.
Oh, and Agent Poulson is a bit of a shoutout to Agent Phil Coulson, for those comic fans out there :).
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And I do find myself wondering what damning things those documents contain. :)
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Maybe it's just a copy of wikipedia, and he's just messing with her mind ;)
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