Authors Note: This is a tie in story to Anything and Everything 4: New Horizons. This is actually going to be the first story in this series that only features Rose in the main echelon of Characters. I wanted to write this to fill in a crucial hole that hadn't quite explained right in the main story. It depicts Rose's first and only international assignment in Yemen. The only other character will be an original character of mine by the name of Terrence Newman who is also a CIA Agent. He made a short appearance in New Horizons already and it won't be his only appearance. In fact –I'm laughing right now- he'll play a role a larger role in a future story line arc, some of you might be able to guess what that will entail after reading this, but I'm not going to ruin it for you. I just wanted to establish their relationship. It will be divided into three parts. Enjoy the first part!
I have to warn you this first part is short, but the next two parts will feature the other part of this first night and the other seven days.
Anything and Everything: Absolution
Part I
"We have a short timeframe," Terrence Newman said as the plane drifted lazily over the darkened desert sky, "One Week and the plane will be back, we need to be here when they do that or we are going to have one hell of time getting out of this country. Most of the ports of entry are covered with Terrorist groups just looking to chop up some poor American."
The all black clad figure nodded, nothing was to be said between them until they reached the drop off point. She had been in the CIA for three weeks and they were starting her out with an assignment like this. Of course she had been in basic training for weeks, and she had caught on fairly quickly. And she had to admit that jumping out of a plane was something that she had wanted to try for years. Spending seven days in Yemen however sucked and she wanted to get this assignment completed quickly.
Grasping the parachute and fastening the clips around her stomach, she reached to her side and grasped the two backpacks full of equipment, weapons and food. Looking to Terry to see if he had his backpacks in hand, she turned back to the cockpit of the drop plane and looked at the large clock as it counted down slowly, one, two, three, at the ten mark was when they would drop. Two seconds now, she stood up and motioned to Terry.
The man nodded, and grasped the two backpacks tightly. In the manner of those two seconds, they jumped from slow moving plane and on cue, they automatically detached. Rose Long formerly known as the Huntsgirl was about to begin her first official assignment for the US Central Intelligence Agency. When she hit the ground however, she knew it wouldn't be easy.
Their camp was based a quarter of a mile away from the target's base camp, that was a tactical risk on Rose's opinion, but it was the most efficient. The terrorist camp was located at the bottom of a large, wide expanding ridge, and the CIA camp was located at the very top of it. As long as they didn't fly over the ridge with a helicopter, they would never know that they were there. And they had plenty of methods to take out the camp leader from their position, after all, she was one of the best shots in the world, she was sure of that. But she was the Huntsgirl, she could handle anything.
Peeling off the insulating mask, her blonde hair fell free from their bonds and cascaded over her shoulders. She shuddered at the thought of what it would look like when she returned home, an entire week of no running water and hair straightening would be bad. And if she woke up in the morning and found her hair curly from the sure desert humidity, she was going to walk straight up into that camp and kill everyone and everything that she saw. "Didn't your mama show you how to start a fire?"
Rose turned to her partner. He was a handsome man, deep gray eyes, soft looking black hair, and a rugged jaw line. If there was ever a man who would make her seriously consider cheating on Jake, it would be this man, Terrence Newman. Shaking off that quivering feeling in her stomach, she put on a smile, "No Terry, I didn't have a Mom. But my Uncle showed me how to start big fires, really, big ones."
"Yeah those Huntsclan people?" Terry asked stoking the fire.
The former Huntsgirl nodded weakly, apparently her new boss Allen Mansfield and had taken it upon himself to tell her new assignment partner all about her. She wondered what he thought about it. Did he judge her? Did he think that she was a freak? Wow, that was something that she wasn't used to thinking about her past in the Huntsclan. When she looked over at Terry, he was grinning.
"Relax Newbie," Terry said setting down next to the fire, opposite Rose, "Allen told me about it all. I think it's quite impressive, I mean I wouldn't expect someone of your body type and look to take down some three thousand pound mystical creature or whatever…"
Oh how Rose loved having her ego stroked, "I also married a dragon…"
"Oh," Terry asked, both of his eyebrows rising, "That's certainly an interesting choice in a significant other."
Rose was seriously surprised that the man was taking the news so easily. She expected the man's eyes to at least bug out of his head or something. But it was as if they were chatting about the weather, "Well it was a complicated relationship from the very beginning. He tried to kill me. I tried to kill him, yadda, yadda, yadda. We both figure out each other's identities and our lives are never the same."
He smiled and yawned heavily, "I haven't found mine yet. Though I thought I did once, she didn't like the idea of me being a CIA Agent."
"Was she a tree hugger?" Rose asked, she couldn't resist that.
"Yeah, I don't know why I even pursed anything with her," He observed pulling one of the backpacks closer to him and quickly unzipping it to withdraw something, "She was my complete opposite in every single way. Look at us talking about our love lives, I feel like we should be sitting on a bed with flannel pajamas, putting our hair in pigtails and painting our toenails."
Rose laughed, and then she laid eyes on the object that he had pulled out of the backpack, it was a nine millimeter Beretta, "Correction Terry, we should be sitting on a bed in PJ's, putting our hair in pigtails and talking about who's gun is bigger."
"You're a funny one," Terry smiled, quickly pulling a clip out of the same backpack and loading it into the gun, "Well, I'll take the first recon shift. Why don't you get some sleep? I'll map out the route that we need to lay the explosives on. Maybe we can wrap this up."