Killed in Action - A Spy School Story

Chapter 19: Update

Somewhere in Frederick County, VA

December 24th, 2018

0545R

Cyrus POV

"... and this is confirmed?"

"We confirmed it three times over the past six days. It's him."

"You're telling me that he's alive and being held by the Islamic State as a prisoner of war."

"Yes, Dad. And no, we don't have any sort of visual PID. We're just going on SIGINT."

Alex had called me to meet him in an unnamed forest in Northern Virginia (namely Frederick County) for a father-son hunting trip. I showed up with a 12-gauge Mossberg 870 and a hunting license, with my Colt 1911 on my hip. He had a .308 AR-10 and presumably his concealed pistol. But the "hunting trip" ruse wasn't real: since he gave no other information, it was code for him wanting to talk away from any suspicious eyes or ears. And now, we were skulking through the forest, hunting deer and talking as snow and leaves crunched beneath our boots and red light from our headlamps lit our path. After nearly 90 minutes of silence—presumably to make sure we were completely alone—Alex told me that Benjamin Ronald Ripley was somehow alive. And for the last half hour, I'd been battering him with questions to figure out what in the hell was going on.

"The sudden appearance of his middle name and mother's maiden name is odd," I admitted. "But it could be a coincidence."

"You always said there was no such thing as coincidence, Dad," Alex shot back.

"We saw Ripley's body ourselves. We visually and forensically confirmed it. It doesn't add up."

"Look, the ISIS cell wasn't some run-of-the-mill weekend terrorists. Those guys were smart: college degrees, sneaky-peeky skills, all that shit. Who knows? Maybe there's an ex-SPYDER guy among 'em somewhere."

"We already crushed those bastards, remember? 'Specially after Fox Hunt."

"Come on, Dad. It wasn't just that. There were a few other key words picked up by the task force."

"Such as?"

"'Smokescreen,' for one. Namely, 'Smokescreen has been with them long enough,' was one message. They also gave him another nickname: 'The Bane of Spiders.' That Caliph, al-Baghdadi, he's shuffling him around and having his guys switch up names. Sometimes they're using numbers too. It's all fucked up, but he keeps dropping bread crumbs: it's our boy."

Alex definitely seemed convinced that Ripley was alive and in the hands of ISIS... who would've had to get a body that looked like Ripley, faked a forensic test, and smuggled him out of the country... all the way to Syria. But as outlandish as it sounded, it wasn't impossible in the slightest. I'd done all sorts of ridiculous things during the Cold War to evade capture by the KGB. But there were still two problems: the fact that I'd actually seen Ripley's body and the fact that intelligence is always right 50% of the time.

It doesn't matter whether it's a basic intel specialist in the conventional forces, JSOC's Army of Northern Virginia (one of the many nicknames of the Intelligence Support Activity), or even the CIA: intelligence is such a tricky and treacherous field that something will always go wrong. And Alex seemed a little too hopeful for someone who'd been a gray man for over multiple decades.

"Don't get your hopes up, Alex. Maybe there's another agency in play," I suggested.

"Nobody knows as much about the CIA as a Company man, and the CIA have been the only ones taking major hits in Syria. Everything else has just been indirect," Alex replied. "I know, I didn't believe it at first, but it makes sense."