A warning that the next few chapters will feature violence that some may find disturbing, so read at your own risk. It will also feature "Action Harry!"

Chapter 5

Beth watched Ruth stare at her computer screen, tears still streaming down her face. She stood and walked over to Lucas, leaning into his ear.

"Send her home, Lucas. She can't concentrate; she's no good to us like this… and she's no good to herself."

"I tried that, Beth. She isn't budging. Just leave her be. At least this way we can keep an eye on her."

"You don't think she'd actual do anything, do you?"

Lucas shrugged. "She's devastated Beth, and the way the two of them were going at it right before he…" Lucas' voice caught in grief and he swallowed down the lump in his throat. "I'm sure she regrets a lot of what she said to him."

Their conversation was interrupted by Tariq. "Lucas! Lucas!"

North walked quickly over to Tariq's desk. "What've you got?"

"I give you Operation Oil Rigger."

"Oil Rigger?"

"Yes," Tariq smiled for the first time since Harry's body was taken from the Grid.

Lucas scanned the page. "What has an oil conglomerate got to do with 20 Middle Eastern time bombs in London?"

Beth had walked over to join them as Tariq explained.

"It seems that 20 or so years ago, intelligence officers from the UK, America, France, Germany and Japan hatched a plan to ensure an oil deal from five smaller countries. The trade-off was secured oil in 20 year's time in exchange for weapons, arms and an unidentified helping hand now and again when some of the larger conglomerates that belong to the UAE tried to muscle in on the smaller countries. As Ruth stated in our briefing, what the allies didn't realize was that the UAE figured it out awhile back and planted human triggers in each of the allied countries as a sort of counterbalance to any kind of coups real or imagined."

"And it's called Oil Rigger?"

"Yes, and you'll never guess who the signing British intelligence officer was…"

"Harry," said Ruth as she walked slowly over to them.

"Are you better now, Ruth?" Lucas inquired.

"I'm fine, Lucas," she lied. "Let's just get to the bottom of this mess and quickly. Harry will be very disa—" Her voice caught as she realized that she used the present tense. She continued softly, "He would have been disappointed in our slow progress."

Lucas nodded at Tariq to continue.

"Well, Ruth is right, Harry was the officer who signed on behalf of security services. The other thing is that the UAE wasn't bashful at all about letting the allies know they had placed sleepers within each country, but everything has been more or less status quo for 20 years."

"So what brought this on now?" Ruth queried.

"That's the golden question isn't it," Lucas stated.

"But we're running out of time," Beth reminded them. "In less than 24 hours, these supposed sleepers will somehow launch a biological attack on the UK, and we have no idea who they are."

"What if," Ruth wondered aloud, "someone or some government leaked a partial list of Middle Eastern assets that the allies have in place… and what if their real mission in these countries was not really just to broker a deal for oil?"

"Where are you going with this?" Lucas asked.

"Hear me out," Ruth said. "It doesn't make any sense that any one of the allied countries would have a complete list of either the assets in the Middle East or the sleepers in their own countries…"

Beth's brow furrowed. "I'm not sure I'm following you…"

"Well, it wouldn't do to have Britain knowing who the UAE assets in their own country were because what would stop us from just locking them away somewhere and throwing away the key? The same can be said for the Americans or the Germans… you get the idea."

"So," Lucas continued, "someone from each allied nation had the list of UAE assets for another nation, and the countries within the Middle East had lists of allied assets but none complete."

"And no one wanted to trade with anyone else for fear that it would send one of the others gunning for them!" Beth finished.

"It would be the only way to truly keep the entire brokered deal balanced," Ruth said, "wouldn't it?"

"You're thinking that one of the Middle Eastern countries sent out false intel along with an allied partial list as a way to upset the balance of power…" Tariq smiled as he realized it.

"Yes," Ruth said, "it's the only thing that makes sense."

Lucas looked at his watch. "Well, now we have the why and the major players. How are we going to get at a list of UAE assets in the UK?"

Beth smiled. "If I were the UAE I would have given the UK list to the cousins. There's no way the cousins would give up their list unless we gave up ours, and we wouldn't agree to it for fear that the Americans would just use it to start another war in the MIddle East…"

"We wouldn't" corrected Ruth, "unless our backs were to the wall."

"Which they are now," Tariq finished.

"This sounds like a job for the CIA," Lucas said as he picked up the phone…

Harry drove the grey rental car through the darkened streets of London. He used a back door that he had left in the MI-5 system to hack into the intelligence network and download a list of the addresses and pictures for all the names on the list Jack had given him. He felt a slight pang of regret to have done something like that to his own team, but using the codes of anyone he knew was not an option. The GPS led him into the South Kennsington area, to a house about in the middle of the block. Harry went past it and around the corner, parking the car a good block away, far enough away from a CCTV feed.

Grabbing the Glock and its silencer, Harry pulled a black ski mask over his head and approached the mark from the house behind it on the next street over. He scaled a fence, and dropped down into the garden of the house of Randall Baldwin. Harry felt his stomach turn at the thought that he was simply going in geographical order, and Mr. Baldwin was unfortunate enough to live nearest to where Harry rented the car. But then, in the end it wasn't going to matter for anyone on the list he had in his pocket.

That thought made him feel ill, but he shook it off; there was no room for emotion on this op and Harry knew it.

He carefully picked the lock of the back door and let himself in. He quietly and surely made his way through the lower level and up two more until he found the largest bedroom at the top. The quiet movements required for such an op came back to him with a fair amount of ease and neither Randall nor his wife stirred when he entered their bedroom. He made his way over to the man asleep in his bed and took a good look at his face with a soft red light, making sure it was the right man. And taking a deep breath, Harry pointed the silenced Glock at Baldwin's forehead and squeezed the trigger.

TBC