Sydney: 8 months later......
"Syd!"
I turned around toward the source of the voice. "Hey, Weiss," I beamed as the hurried up to me.
"So you find out what this op is about yet?" he asked.
"Not yet," I sighed sipping my coffee, "but the meeting with Dixon is in a few minutes so we should know soon enough."
He smirked slightly in agreement. "Hey, man," he said looking behind me.
"Hi," Vaughn answered, looking up briefly from the file he was reading.
"What about you? You know anything about this op?"
"No," he said, tossing the file down onto his desk, "Though I did hear some rumors about Israel."
"Israel huh?" Weiss asked.
"As I said, Weiss, they were just rumors," he reminded stiffly before picking up another paper and walking toward another side of the room.
I stood holding my coffee trying not to dwell on what just happened. It was hardly a rare occurrence anymore. After the incident, as everyone who was involved with what happened had taken to calling it, he was put on leave so that the agency could decide how exactly they were going to handle it. He returned to active duty after about a month and had been working just as always since then, but he was different just the same. He was still civil but decidedly distant and enervated.
Weiss tried not to take it personally. I couldn't truly criticize or take is behavior to heart either, considering the circumstances. Actually, I didn't really much care about my own part in this anymore. Vaughn and I hardly ever spoke to each other except about work. He was aloof to everyone, including me, and all thinking about it did was give me a headache. It mostly bothered me just because it hurt Weiss.
The two of us glanced at each other after a moment. I started to say something. Strike up a conversation to gloss over it but just as I was about to speak we saw Dixon walk through toward the conference room. Weiss and I smiled at each other and head toward the conference room.
Dixon took his place at the front of the table, Weiss and I on one side, and Vaughn and my father sat quietly on the other.
"The Covenant has resurfaced again," Dixon began.
"When do they not?" I muttered sarcastically. For past few months we'd been perusing them on and off. Following any leads that came up. We were making progress but it was slow.
Dixon sent me a quick look showing that he felt the same way about it that I did and continued, "Israeli intelligence discovered a transmission. Apparently The Covenant plans to rob a weapons base in the west bank. They plan to intercept the robbery while it is in progress. The Israeli government worked out a deal. They'll hand over the prisoners to the United States if it's kept off the record and CIA sends agents to retrieve them. Sydney, Vaughn, you'll leave in three hours."
Our flight was uneventful. We landed in Tel Aviv mid-morning the next day and went straight to an operations center in Nablus.
"The robbery's set to take place at 2:17 this afternoon so they told me they'd send a car to pick us up and take us to the base," Vaughn explained.
I nodded, "Yeah, okay, I got it."
He wordlessly stood up and walked off to go get ready. I sat for a second before doing the same myself. In the dressing room I changed into the uniform of an Israeli soldier and pulled my hair back into a tight braid. I left the dressing room and made my way down to the docking area. Vaughn was already there waiting, dressed in an identical uniform. An analyst walked over and informed us that our contact had arrived.
Our driver turned a single private with a non-descript military truck. After a few brief acknowledgements, Vaughn, the private, and I climbed into the truck and set out towards the base.
The ride took about two hours. Our driver, Private Moskoneh, made occasional small talk. I got the impression he was uncomfortable with silence. As far as he knew we were Israelis who were just returning after being stationed at the embassy in Washington DC, so he asked various questions about what it was like in America, talked about having relatives who lived in the US, and asked us a few questions about ourselves. I answered when required without encouraging the conversation, and Vaughn did the same, though was less patient with the questions.
Once we arrived at the base, he dropped us off at the pre-arranged location. Our ID badges got us past the guards outside. Inside the building we walked up to a receptionist who was filling out paper work behind a desk.
"May I help you?" she asked, looking at us skeptically, since our uniforms labeled us as low raking soldiers.
"We're to see General Avital," Vaughn answered.
"Follow me, please," she said standing up and leading us down a hallway. At the end she opened a door on the right and motioned for us to go inside. Once we stepped inside, she shut the door behind us, leaving us standing alone in a tastefully decorated office. It, no doubt, belonged to General Avital.
A door on the other side of the room opened and a dark haired man walked in. He was in his late forties and slight, but had an air of authority about him.
"You are the agents?" he asked in only slightly accented English.
"Yes sir, we are," I answered. He took a moment to look both of us over.
"I am General Yair Avital," He said and nodded politely to both of us, "If you'll follow me, we can get started."
General Avital lead us out the door he had entered and down a more sparse corridor than the one we were lead through to his office. He stopped in front of a door, entered a number into the key pad, and the door slid open.
Inside was an operations room, several soldiers monitoring various computers and equipment. General Avital walked up behind on computer.
"How is everything going?" he asked the soldier at it.
"Everything is in place, Sir, we're simply waiting for the order,"
General Avital nodded in approval. We watched the monitors for a little while before they suddenly went to static.
"General, our systems just went down," a tech said.
'Here we go.....' I thought to myself.
