Patricia closed the file she was reading with more force than was necessary. She used the term "reading" loosely as she had started skimming it multiple times but had yet to make it past the first paragraph before losing focus. Her mind kept drifting off to the status of the team in Mongolia, or China or wherever they were right now. They were long overdue to check in and everyone was feeling the strain behind the scenes as they waited to hear word. The last information they had to go on was status was the intercepted sat phone call to China that had scrambled the Chinese Military. She had been relieved at the time. Trusting that Dalton had done it on purpose with an end game in mind. That had been over 8 hours ago. With their borrowed horses they should have been out of China and back into Mongolia hours ago if they had been successful and been able to get out undetected. By Noah's calculations even if they had trekked the entire distance back on foot they still should easily have been back in safe communications range by now.
She trusted the team implicitly. They had come through for her more times than she could count. But the deck had been very stacked against them on this one, racing the ruthless Russians who out manned them significantly and had a head start to boot. Then there was the matter of entering Chinese territory and having to go dark cut off from any additional Intel that could help. Her and the team had been relegated to the sidelines. An entire team of specialists, analysts, support staff all twiddling their thumbs unable to do what they were highly trained to do.
Not wanting to sit in her office with her thoughts anymore, she rose and ventured down the hallway back to the ops room. Hannah caught her gaze as she entered the room giving an immediate shake of her head to the unspoken question. No change. Of course there was no change. They would have called her immediately at the first sign of news. Logically she knew this but she still couldn't help the disappointment that crept in anyways. She took a seat at her station and surveyed the room. Normally a hive of movement and activity she saw a room full of operators who like her had given up on pretending to be busy and were showing various tells of their stress. Feet tapping, pens chewed, key chains fiddled all in an effort to work out some anxiety induced restlessness.
The doors hissed open and she saw Noah re-enter the room. His eyes went straight to Hannah and she gave him the same negative indication that she had greeted Patricia with. Noah grimaced and opened a bag of pork rinds, evidently returning from the vending machine. Patricia didn't even want to know what number he was on. She had caught Hannah teasing him hours earlier and that had been bag number 4… at this rate she was going to have to give him a raise to be able to keep up with his habit. She chuckled to herself but sobered quickly as her gaze returned to the dark screen showing disconnected communications.
She knew what she should be doing right now. But she couldn't bring herself to be doing it. She should be putting her staff to work on scenario planning. Best case scenario they were just delayed and only a little patience was needed. But there were so many other worst case scenarios possible. Had the team been overtaken by the Russians? By the Chinese? Were they captured? Killed in action? By rights her team should be investigating these avenues, preparing strategies, preparing briefs for her superiors, but it felt like giving up on the team to do that right now. She had meant it earlier when she said she would take Dalton 50 times out of 50 in a fair fight. Hell she would still give him pretty close to the same odds as the underdog too. That said she recognized that some things were beyond his control. Even with the best planning, best tactics, best soldiers carrying it out, sometimes things just went wrong. An accident could happen, a bullet flies where it's not supposed too. Things could go from a-ok to fubar in a matter of seconds. On a regular mission she could at least try to help if/when things went sideways, but this time the team was on its own with whatever they were dealing with.
Suddenly Hannah called out, all eyes in the room snapped up to the board, excited murmurs as one GPS marker popped back up on the screen. Al-Raisani was back on line. Hope flared in Patricia's chest - they were looked expectantly waiting to see 4 more signals … nothing. Moments passed. Still nothing. And just like that her jubilation abruptly became dread in the pit of her stomach. Silence stretched across the room everyone straining, barely daring to blink waiting for another marker to pop up. 5 had gone out. Surely… no. She wouldn't allow herself to go there yet. Noah called out - his comm is up.
Her ear piece was in her ear before she knew it waiting tensly.
"Command, do you read" - Amir's voice came through the line
"Loud and clear Amir, its good to hear from you, what's your status"
She settled for a neutral question not wanting to ask the obvious and trusting the former spy to report what was needed soon enough.
"Command we completed the mission objective but ran into some trouble on the way out. The rest of the team is about 1 hour behind me en route in. Dalton was wounded and is in severe medical distress. We need immediate exfil to my location."
Patrica sat down in her chair, legs weak with relief that the rest of the team was alive, albeit not completely whole, but she could work with that.
"Acknowledged Amir. Standby we will work on it on our end and get you an ETA on transport ASAP."
She turned to the team around her. Okay people you heard him we need a chopper there waiting in 45 minutes. I don't know where our nearest bird is to Mongolia and I don't care. Find one and get it there. Move heaven and earth to make it happen.
She ignored the once again familiar buzz of activity around her. Trusting her people to get it done. Their operators risked everything and gave all they had to get whatever mission they were tasked with done. She would pull whatever strings, pay whatever cost to get them the support they needed when things went sideways.
Noah was catching her attention. There was a possibility of re-routing a chopper from a CIA mission in Afghanistan. That cut the distance in half rather than calling out a new bird all the way from Turkey. The CIA owed her a favour or twelve after the whole Cassie Connors debacle she had bailed them out on.
"Do it" she responded, not caring what feathers would be ruffled by her hijacking the chopper. She would deal with that later.
"Amir, ETA for transport is approximately 30 mikes out. Please advise when you have contact from the rest of the team"
She was itching to ask Amir more about Dalton's status but in all reality there was no point. None of them could do anything at this point except count on him to keep fighting whatever was ailing him and get him aid as soon as possible.
Minutes passed in a whirl of activity. Her teams was happy to be busy and to have things to analyze, numbers to crunch and feeds to monitor. There was a small but somber celebration when the rest of the team came into view on edge of their limited aerial view. They could just make out the team moving over land nearing Amir's location on the outskirts of the village. McG and Preach appeared to be carrying Dalton using a blanket slung between them as a makeshift stretcher. Jaz led the pair with her gun at the ready surveying the area around them. They soon joined up with Amir and were just linking up their communications and GPS when Amir reported he could hear the chopper approaching.
"McG how is Dalton?" She caved unable to resist asking after seeing him carried in still and silent. Clearly he was unconscious since they hadn't bothered hooking up his comms but she wanted to know, needed to know how bad it really was.
"He's hanging in there. Chest tube is draining what it can so his O2 levels have stabilized a bit. BP is too low though. I can't do anything for the internal bleeding. He needs blood as fast as we can get it to him and none of us are a match to transfuse."
The medic's grim, weary tone was more revealing than the medical jargon and she grimaced unsure how to respond. Rarely rattled, she was saved by the arrival of the chopper and settled for "Keep me posted" as the team wasted no time loading their injured leader and taking off.
She rose from her chair. It would be a long wait as they flew out and then she imagined rushed him straight into surgery. She might as well make herself useful - she had updates to provide and that report from earlier had many more paragraphs after the first one that still needed to be read now that she could focus a bit better.
Turning to leave the room, her eyes automatically skimmed the board - seeing 4 active GPS and communication markers illuminated once again. One empty box at the top of the screen caught her attention, A1-DALTON still dark and disconnected. 50 out of 50, he had kept the metaphorical streak alive achieving the mission objective apparently at great cost to himself. She was counting on him to find a way to beat the odds on this one too.