MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

My name is Alice Parkington and I am on a top-secret mission with my partner Meg Reese. Our mission is to break into Professor Jefferson’s lab, file data and take the formulas of the chemical bomb, and then bring them back to the CIA without being detected. After the formulas and data are collected we are supposed to blow up the lab so that the chemical bomb cannot be assembled and destroy a city. This is all easier said than done.
Step #1: Crash the party the Professor is having for his wife.
Step #2: Meg is to get to security and knock out the guards and turn off the alarm system.
Step #3: I am supposed to get to the lab.
Step #4: Break into lab with lock picks.
Step #5: Get Data, formulas, and set a C-4 bomb.
Step #6: Get out and blow up laboratory.
Step #7: Write report.
Step #8: Fly home.
Step #9: Turn in Report.
Step #10: Relax.
It’s easier said than done. It was supposed to be an in and out job, but it did not turn out to be so.
“Parkington! Parkington! Where are you? We are going over the debrief now!” shouted my boss, Jeffery Cattleson. He was as rude as his name. “Agent Parking-TON!” was shouted as I came running into the conference room.
“Stop shouting now. I am here, Mr. Cattleson.” I said with a bit of dignity. Then I sat down and smirked at Meg. This was going to be an easy job ahead. My boss was harsh in general, but his harshness varied with each job. If it was an easy job he was kinder, but if it was a difficult job he was on edge. Today, he just shouted at me; he did not say rude words this time. It was an easy job, so I thought.
Meg smiled back with a hint of irony as Stuart Davis came dashing in. He is our tech guy, meaning he takes care of all the equipment we will ever need during our missions.
“Have I missed anything?” Stuart was out of breath.
“No, we have barely begun. “ Meg spoke with a widening smile. I’m sure she was thinking of her fiancé. She was to be married in two weeks to Henry Archer, an F. B. I. officer. I couldn’t help but laugh. If we were going to do our job she’d have to stop thinking about him. Meg surveyed me with a look that crossed between anger and laughter. Then she too laughed at herself.
Our final member, Henry James, came in. He was the boss’s apprentice. “Ok. Let’s get to business. We only have an hour before you two have to leave.” Cattleson spoke quickly, “Meg, this assignment cannot have any mistakes. It can only have perfection.” My boss carried out the ins and outs of the missions for a half an hour. When he finished we hurried to get ready and leave.
Op-tech was the basics this time: simple lock picks, a card to override the system and a C-4 bomb. Oh, yeah, and earpieces so that my partner and I could talk.
Once on the plane, Meg and I hurriedly chose our costumes and went over the mission. It sounded easy: retrieve important data and formulas, not get caught, and blow up the lab.
Meg and I were now in play, on the mission. We had to play it right to not get caught. That part was easy, but then we noticed the number of people.
“400 came out of 450 people. That is a healthy chunk to feed and plan for!” An old lady spoke to her little group of friends. It was a gossip circle. She then started to ramble about the “pricyness” of the drapes.
$1500 is an utterly foolish price for drapes. My drapes in my apartment cost $4 at max, I thought to myself.
“I’m going in, Alice.” Meg spoke into the earpiece. “I’m going to security and I need five minutes stalling time.”
I hoped she’d be okay. If her mind wondered for a second it could ruin the mission. When I heard her call in I hurried to Professor Jefferson to try to learn where the location of the lab was, here, or across the street. I also would try to get him to invite me into it so that I could skip step #4.
I made dilly-dally talk with the professor. Ha! That was easy. I got the location of the lab, but it contained a slight a problem: the lab was here! If I blew it up I’d kill 400 innocent people.
“Meg, do you copy?” I spoke into the earpiece.
“Yes, I copy, Alice. I’m just about the override the system’s security.”
“We can’t blow up the lab! If we do we will kill 400 people.” I spoke with slight worry.
“I don’t think I can override the system without setting of a failsafe. Plus, the computer says the formulas in the lab are decoys. We have abort and now!” Meg sounded with true worry.
“Okay. Does the system say where the real data and formulas are?” I asked as I hurried to her.
“No. It’s just says that the lab is a decoy. Oh dear! Someone is coming.”
“Meg, that’s me!”
“No, it’s not. I know where you are. The person coming is Professor Jefferson. I need to scramble!” she almost screamed in a whisper.
“Hurry, Meg!” I spoke urgently. “I’ll met you at extraction point.” I hated leaving her, but I had to. I had no choice.
At the extraction point, I waited. It had been twenty minutes since I last checked Meg’s status. We had to leave in five minutes. “Meg? Megan?! Do you copy?” I nearly screamed. All I got was static noise.
I was left to one conclusion: Professor Jefferson kidnapped her. I had to leave and somehow create another mission. My next assumption was that wherever they took Meg would be the lab. And what I would hate most is not being able to go home and relax. I also hated being the one who told Meg’s fiancé the truth of her disappearance.
“WHAT?! The mission failed? Then my contact must have played us!” shouted Mr. Cattleson.
Who played us? I wondered silently. The boss’s apprentice was not in Cattleson’s office for some reason. “Where is James? Shouldn’t he be here?” I questioned my boss.
“NO! He is my contact! That mission should have worked! Jonson swore that the lab was there! Security section? Send James in this MINUTE!” Cattleson screamed into the phone. The puzzle still was in question for me.
Why and how was James a contact? I read his file. He was clean as can be. Could it be that he works for Jefferson? Was he planted here to get intelligence and get Agent Reese or myself caught or killed? I wondered in my head.
James sauntered into Cattleson’s office out of breath. Cattleson barely gave him time to catch it. “YOU LIED!! And to think I believed you!! Where is Agent Reese? Where is the intelligence we were supposed have gathered at that phony lab?” Shouted my boss.
“Wh-what are you babbling about, Jeffery?” James questioned with some innocence.
“YOU, sir, are no longer allowed to address me by that name. It is Cattleson to you! And you know exactly what I am ‘babbling’ about!” Cattleson was in full swing now.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” James matched my boss’s tone.
I now was utterly confused. “Cattleson? Do you think we could have misjudged Jonson?”
“NO! We are going to break him! Security Section? I need Patrick Donaldson. I need him to perform a common procedure on James.”
My eyes widened at the announcement. Common procedure? That is almost torture! My mind was screaming. James was screaming protests at Cattleson as Security Section handcuffed him and pulled him out of the office.
“Parkington, your next task to is to inform Henry Archer of Meg’s kidnapping. I know this is the last thing you want to do, but as Meg’s maid of honor and best friend it falls to you. NO! NO! No! I need to stay for the ‘Common Procedure’ and the breakdown of James! I thought as I backed out of the room.
I met Henry at a Coffee shop downtown. “Archer, I hate to brake this to you but Meg had been kidnapped.” I swallowed hard and I could feel tears forming.
Henry put his coffee down before he burned his tongue. “Call me Henry and what do you mean that Meg has been kidnapped? She works for a bank. At that job all she does is stand behind a counter and give people information. Did someone break into the bank?” This was the very reason I hated telling Henry. He did not know that we worked for a Top-Secret branch of the CIA. He thought Meg and I worked at a bank.
I sighed. “We don’t work for a bank, Henry. We work for a Top-Secret branch of the CIA. I had hoped Meg told you, but it looks as if I have to start from scratch.” The tears now were falling into my frappuccino. I missed my good friend Meg. She was the life of the party.
“What do you mean about not working at a bank? Do you mean THE Black-Ops CIA program, the one that I assign commissions to? I am manager of that organization. How long have you to been working there?” Henry’s voice was calmer than is should have been.
“Yeah. THE Black-Ops CIA program.” You were the one who assigned us our tasks? You? We have been working there for approximately 12 years. Well, I have been working that long; Meg has been working there for 5 years. What do they tell you when a task has been completed? So what did they tell you our names were?” I wondered.
“Well, to start with your names are the same, though they always refer to you both as Agents Reese and Parkington. I just never put two and two together. Yes, I’m the one who organized each mission. So Meg has been kidnapped?”
“Yep, it happened on Project: Chemical bomb. Cattleson has no imagination with names. We were sent in on false identities to break into a Professor Jefferson’s lab and gather data and formulas for a chemical bomb and then blow the lab up. However, that failed. The lab was a decoy. If it had been the real lab it would have killed 400 innocent people, and that’s what they wanted us to do. We did not even get to the lab. Meg couldn’t break the system without setting off a fail safe. I couldn’t get to the lab without being spotted, either. Then Meg found out that it was all-fake, so we had to abort. She did not make it out. And I had to leave, so I left her.” I said through tears.
“What?! I’ve never heard of that mission. When was it authorized?” He paused only long enough to catch his breath. “You left her? Is there any thing I can do to help?” An unbidden tear fell down his face.
“In answer to your first question, I don’t know. And I had to leave her. I had no choice.” I sighed in deep remorse. “There is nothing you can do at the moment. Just be there when we get her back.”
Back at the office, James broke. Apparently he told exactly where Meg was and that she was indeed at the lab. After hearing the news I was debriefed and immediately sent out to the location of the lab. The first priority of my boss was to get the formulas and data and then get to Meg. However, my first priority was to get Meg and then get to the lab. I knew she might be in a condition that would make the mission impossible. However, she was like a sister to me. It would be unfair for her to be left out of the mission.
Crack! I shot the lock on the door of the room Meg was being held in. “Meg!” I shouted in relief. I saw that, except for a black eye and an ugly bruise on her arm, she was okay.
“Alice?” Meg spoke drowsily as I removed the ropes off her hands, ankles and the scarf in her mouth.
“Shh! I know where the data and the formulas are. Do you think you can help me finish the job we started?” I ask of her.
“Um… Yeah. I think so. Where’s security?” she asked in urgency. I told her and then we headed off in our separate directions.
I had to knock down a few of the infantry on my way to the lab. When I finally reached the lab, there was Professor Jefferson. He made my job a little harder. Tying him to a chair was easy. Getting him to shut up was not.
“You? I thought you were just a simple minded brat at my wife’s party.” The Professor was trying to make small talk. He knew exactly who I was.
I rolled my eyes, “If you thought that, then you are dead wrong.” I thought it best to play along with this stupidity. Maybe if I keep him talking I could get what I needed and set the bomb.
“I see. Why is a pretty girl like you messing with the CIA? Couldn’t you just have fun?” His point of view of fun was wrong.
“My job is fun in a way. I get to see the world and get to do amazing things that some people just get to read about.” I said with a genuine smile.
“Sure. But wouldn’t you like to spend a day in a club with your best friends? Or go out to dinner with your family? Or even tell people where you work?” The Professor posed a question that hit me in the heart. I felt anger swelling in my chest. I had gotten the formulas. The data would be slightly harder and so would the bomb.
“Will you shut up? I have a job to do and making small talk with you isn’t one of them,” I said with as much control as I could. I could punch him in the face if I wanted to, but I held my anger. The bomb was planted and the data was now in my laptop. “Good-bye! I have to run now. Oh, and here is my gift to the missus.” And only then did I knock him out.
Back at the office Cattleson was going on and on about how amazing I had been in capturing Jefferson and getting all the things I needed to. I guess he hadn’t read my report. I rolled my eyes and thought, tomorrow he will have forgotten all about this and I will be having dinner with my family and Meg.
Just as I was walking out the door, my boss called me. “Alice? Alice? Come into my office for a minute.” I assumed he was going to hand out more praises but I followed anyway. Once in the office he sat for a minute or two before he actually started talking. “Alice, I want you to be my apprentice. Yes, you will still go on missions, but you will have authority to design them. Plus, you get more time off.” For the first time in 12 years, Cattleson spoke calmly.
“Okay, I’ll start on Monday then.” I smiled and then turned to leave.
“Alice. You are forbidden to come back to work for a week. You need a break. And if I see you here before a week from Monday then I will personally put you on a plane for Nepal.” Cattleson laughed at his dry humored joke. “Oh, and Alice? You now have permission to call me Jeffery or Jeff. All top rated employees get to call me by my first name.”
“Alrighty then,” I said as I walked backwards to the door, “Cat-Jeffery, I promise I will not come into the office until a week from Monday. That way you will not send me away to Nepal.” I had a smile on my face as I left his office.
On my way into the parking garage I spotted Meg and Henry. She was crying and laughing. I decided to walk over. I wanted to ask them to dinner in order to celebrate a completed mission. “Hey, Alice. Henry was just telling me what you told him at the coffee shop.” Meg spoke through her tears. Henry smiled at my response.
“Meg, I never meant to have told him without you or your permission, but I had to tell him why you were kidnapped.” I said with a bit of remorse.
“Alice, I don’t care. I am just happy that he knows now.” Meg was bouncing with joy.
I finally smiled then. “Do you two want to go out to dinner with me?” I asked as we started walking back to the parking lot.
“Alright. Sure.” They said as they got into their cars.