A/N First off all I do not own any claimm to Covert Affairs, I just enjoy playing around the characters.
Hope & Cary, thanks for letting me kidnap you for the fic.
Next update in a day or two.
Soon the action really begins.
SAVING AGENT WILCOX
"Do you want to talk to the students together or separately?' Mike asked as he drove toward the Embassy.
"Separately would probably be better," Jai answered.
"That can be arranged. I might warn you they could be just a little bit cranky because they've had their phones and other internet accessible gadgets confiscated. Didn't want this whole thing ending up as their statuses on Facebook," Mike warned.
"Probably a very good idea," Annie commented.
"What can you tell us about them?" Jai asked.
"Not a whole lot. They attend Midwestern universities although they're spending a semester here in Belarus. It was the weekend and they claim they were just there on a backpacking adventure," the older man replied.
"Sounds innocent enough," Annie commented. But they all knew in their line of work what appeared to be innocent was often the opposite.
The two college students were being housed in a rather comfortable three room suite that was surreptitiously being watched 24/7 by way of a closed circuit camera.
"Do they know they're being observed?" Annie asked.
"I don't think so. Anyway the camera is only in the main room of the suite. Let me introduce you to our reluctant guests," Mike replied opening the door.
"Didn't you ever hear about knocking first," a petite spiky haired blonde demanded.
"Ms. Bannister, these people would like to talk to you and Ms. Liang. Now if you'll just follow us," the agent said.
"Do we have a choice?" the blonde asked. She glanced at the petite Asian who had moved over to her side.
"No you don't," Annie answered.
"They're all yours," Mike said. "If you need me I'll be down in the office."
Ushering the girl into a small room with a only a desk and a few chairs, Jai motioned for her to have a seat as he took the one directly in front of her. "Now, Ms. Bannister, can tell me exactly what you were doing when you claim to have came across the weapons installation?" he asked pleasantly.
"Hope an' me were just hiking along minding our own business you know when suddenly there was this fence like about ten feet high. Inside the fence were these metal buildings and there were men patrolling around and taking in what looked like big metal drums," the student said rapidly.
"Was there some kind of a road leading up to it?" Jai asked.
"Looked like it. I told Hope "Oh wow, this looks kinda looks like something we'd see in Lost." She told me that we needed to get the hell out of here. So we snapped pictures and made tracks here to report what we saw," Carrie answered.
"Do you think you could pinpoint on this map exactly where you were at when you came across the installation?" the agent asked setting the map in front of her.
"I think it was pretty close to here," the student said and circled a spot on the map. She looked up at the agent. "Is that all?"
"I believe it is for now," he replied.
"Now when can we get out of here?" Carrie asked. "Not that this place is bad and all but Hope and I have classes to attend. I'm double majoring in Psychology and Communications."
"I'm sure the university has been informed that you'll not be attending for a few days," Jai answered.
The blonde sighed in frustration.
He picked up the map and headed for the door saying, "Someone will be in to escort you back to your rooms."
"Please have a seat, Ms. Liang," Annie said indicating a chair in a similarly furnished room.
The younger woman took a seat and calmly regarded Annie. "Since Carrie and I am being interviewed separately I take it you want to know how well our stories match up."
"Something like that," Annie replied.
Once the two girls had been returned to their rooms, the two agents sat down to compare what they'd been told. Annie set her map down on the desk and indicated the marks that was all identical to the other one. "They both had the same location," she pointed out.
"Looks like we need to investigate farther. Time to call Langley and let them know what we found out," Jai agreed.
"It's still pretty early back home," Annie pointed out as they headed for the .downstairs office.
Down in the office Mike saw them arrived and quickly got to his feet to make introductions. "This is the rest of my team-Dr. Nathan Marshall, Kelly Radclyff and Andrew Malone. Guys, meet Annie Walker and Jai Wilcox from Langley. They're in charge of getting a closer look at the weapons installation."
Jai shook hands with each one in turn before moving to an empty desk and asking, "Is it okay to set up shop here?".
"Go right ahead," Mike answered.
Sitting down at the desk the younger man quickly made contact with Langley and was transferred to the DPD.
"Hey, Auggie, can you get a rundown on a couple of names for me?" Jai asked.
"Sure. Go ahead. Who are you looking up?" the tech op replied.
"Our two college students. Okay, name number one is Carrie A Bannister. She's a junior at the University of Missouri in Columbia," Jai replied flipped through his notes
"How do you spell that name?" Auggie asked.
"Carrie-C-A-R-R-I-E," Jai spelled out. "And the other name is Hope Liang-L-I-A-N-G. She's a junior at the University of Kansas in Lawrence."
"And those two are friends?' Auggie commented as he typed in the names.
"What?" the other man asked sounding perplexed.
The tech op chuckled. "MU and KU are big rivals especially in sports. One of the guys I served with in Iraq went to school in Missouri and was always talking about the rivalry."
"Kinda like Yale and Harvard. I remember when there was a game coming up with Harvard you didn't want to be caught dead wearing crimson," Jai replied.
Joan abruptly interrupted the conversation saying, "If you boys are done talking about sports, can we get on with the subject at hand?"
"I making a fast database search on both names and so far they come up clean. Not even a traffic ticket between the two of them," Auggie told the DPD director.
"Do think they're credible enough to require further verification?" Joan asked.
"I believe so," Annie answered. "Both seemed to pinpoint the location of the installation with near identical results. And neither of them had any reason to be making the whole story up. "
"Granted Ms. Liang I believe was a little less enthusiastic in her replies to our questions," Jai said dryly.
"All right. I'll have Foster give you whatever support you need," Joan told them.
"We'll head out first thing in the morning," Jai spoke up.
"Why the morning? Why not now?" the older woman demanded.
Jai wearily rubbed his forehead as he replied. "We need to get a hold of the most detailed maps of there area we can, plan out what we're doing. And get some definite sleep before we try and pull this off."
"All right," the DPD director agreed knowing the last thing she needed was sleep deprived agents running a possibly dangerous op.
"By the way, what exactly is Lost?" Jai was asking Auggie.
The tech op chuckled and replied, "Only the world's most confusing TV series. I caught a few episodes but it never made sense."
"That explains it. I never had much time for TV anyway," Jai answered.
"We'll be working on this from our end. From now on we'll expecting regular check- ins every six hours from you," Joan instructed.
"You have access to a computer.? I'll send you what I have so far," Auggie added.
"We've got access," Annie told him.