The Agents

By Leon Dalton

The Agents takes you to the covert operations and seedy, often brutal, world of international terrorists and their continual threat to the civilized world. Their story is told through the lives and eyes of a seasoned CIA agent, Aaron Brighton, and his beloved partner and former French intelligence agent, Monique Barteau, then later by the youthful team of CIA Agent Justin Graham and British MI6 Agent Victoria Stone. Each chapter is a story within a story that takes the reader from London and Paris to Turkey, Spain, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, the States, the Middle East, and around the world as the agents battle terrorists with their tactics, intelligence, and devotion to each other. It is also a love story. That fragile line that exists between people trying to live and love in a normal relationship while living and working in a dangerous occupation that’s hidden behind the cruelty, brutality, and savagery that exists in a hostile and vengeful world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781662409929

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The Agents

Leon Dalton

Copyright © 2020 Leon Dalton

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2020

ISBN 978-1-6624-0991-2 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-0992-9 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Aaron Brighton

Aaron Brighton: BA Flight 724

Aaron Brighton: The Story Continues

Aaron Brighton: The Final Chapter

The Battle Continues: Good Versus Evil

Agents Graham and Stone: Their London Adventure

From London to Paris: Agents Graham and Stone

Between Iraq and a Hard Place

After Iraq, It’s on to Spain

Madrid, the Next Assault

The Trip to Cornwall

Royalty Hath Its Privileges

California, Here We Come

Back to Work on the Other Side of the World

End of the Line (or Mind the Gap)

My wife, my family and friends, and to all veterans, the men and women, who put on a uniform, dedicated their life, and defended this great country of ours…

Chapter 1

Aaron Brighton

He’d been flying up here in the skies on this tin cylinder for nearly seven hours since early Friday morning. They said—no, they actually had insisted—that he change his travel plans and without much warning. Just a quick call from ops and here he was. So instead of leaving from Heathrow in London for a quick, fun-filled two-day weekend trip to Paris to meet up with his sweet girlfriend, Monique, he’d somehow managed to pull an all-nighter and now found himself in a middle seat, in the middle row, in the middle of the aircraft on a fully packed last-minute flight to Istanbul. Aaron looked both ways, up and down his row, and thought, Could they pack ’em in any tighter?

One would think an American CIA operative of his caliber and experience and what he brought to the game would warrant a better seat on any aircraft, even if it was a rushed last-minute reassignment for God knows where or what? After all, he did belong to an elite unit of one, so was this a travel faux pas simply by design or just some normal company mismanagement again? But after fifteen years in this covert-operations business, Aaron Brighton expected it and expected nothing less. And after far too many perilous assignments, Aaron knew whatever he asked for, they hardly ever rejected it, hardly ever didn’t see things his way. He was the one in the field, he was the one getting shot at, and he was the one that the company could never give praise to an unsuspecting, uninformed public. This stuff was seedy underworld terrorism. No games were being played here. These bad guys want us dead, and that’s the bottom line. And it wasn’t for just anyone.

So he’d take one for his team and forget about his personal, romantic plans with his beautiful Monique. He’d step up, go, and fill in or whatever it was they needed him for. He knew he’d eventually get the job done better than anyone could expect, given the circumstances and the times we live in, and he’d be rewarded handsomely for his service and, in the end, receive a lot more than even he thought he was worth.

Still, he was used to much more lavish travel than this, normally on a company plane jetting him off to places that don’t even show up on a map. Even if his ego insisted he was a brilliant agent, traveling like this was really quite insane, but enough of this self-pity as he, thankfully, heard the announcement coming over the PA system, indicating they were in a descent and about to land in Istanbul. That eased his mind a bit as he heard the wheels dropping from their enclosure. The sketchy details of this assignment had been a bit hard to understand and the urgency was a mystery as well. Normally these assignments are well-thought-of, well planned out, and he would go over the intel with company ops again and again.

Once on the ground in Istanbul, Turkey, Aaron was told to meet his CIA courier, who would fill him in on his assignment in much greater detail. This was standard operating procedures, and perhaps it would give a bit more rationale to his being here instead of him not being in Paris. John Robertson was assigned by the agency to go over Aaron’s mission, to issue any necessary weaponry and documents he might require, and to safely follow him in trail, about two hours behind his departure. This is done for a number of reasons, like in case of an unforeseen problem, possibly an attack of some sort or if there might be a mechanical breakdown; additional gear or machinery or weaponry could then be provided by the courier. Aaron hadn’t recalled ever working with Robertson before, which he found a bit strange after working in the Middle East for so long, but the agency kept changing their personnel like underwear, so it was tough to know or even follow up with anyone for very long in this line of work.

After Robertson and Aaron sat down in a fairly quiet café near the Blue Mosque. John went over the assignment and proposed methods of completing the assignment with Aaron. It turned out that the mission was fairly routine, and Aaron had accomplished many of these scenarios in the past; this was just another one of many. Aaron was to travel by car to Ankara, Turkey’s capital city, check in with the US ambassador at the American embassy there, then travel to the small village of Dudas, about 300 kilometers southwest of the city. Aaron knew this area well, having worked with Northern Kurdish informants in the past as Dudas was located in the Beypazari region of Turkey and was a very old village. Its people pretty much kept to themselves, and even though they were all Muslims, they hated the Iraqis and Syrians and most almost anyone they didn’t know.

After collecting the essentials, Aaron needed for his trip, he bid Robertson a temporary farewell, then headed east into the interior of the country. He again went over in his mind what Robertson had relayed to him by the agency. He was to meet with the US ambassador, which generally was just a gesture of goodwill and to let him know that the agency was keeping him informed of their activity under his control. Of course, the real mission was to quiet down a recent uprising between two rival Turkish groups that wanted change and government reform, and both have been giving the other fits over the past few weeks. Still, Aaron was puzzled why the urgency as these skirmishes and uprisings normally didn’t require any fast acting on anyone’s part.

As he drove, Aaron thought again, as he had done many, many times in the past, that the US should keep its nose out of another country’s internal beef. Keep their politics to themselves. However, it was his job to ensure that the best interests of America was not threatened by some radical Islamic thugs. And if anyone out there was willing to listen, willing to make peace once and for all, he’d be pretty much out of a job. But as long as this planet continues rotating with terrorists’ threats or issues going on here and there, his job would be secure. It was a job that surely got to him at times, and he’d been thinking of getting out of it every now and then, but he also loved it too much to give it up. Getting the big bad guys who always seemed to come down on the little guy somewhere, that was the rush. So Aaron continued his drive, dwelling on his conflicting thoughts as the Turkish countryside swept by his window.

After a few hours, he pulled up to the military guard at the US Embassy gate in Ankara, offered his ID and US passport, disclosed his firearms, and was permitted to go inside. He was greeted by an undersecretary to the ambassador who had been expecting him, but with an urgency Aaron sensed immediately from him. Jim Burke, the undersecretary, swiftly guided Aaron into a nearby room, shut the door behind them, and quickly passed a folder for him to scan.

Aaron tried reading the first page in the file, written in an almost-extinct language that he was only vaguely familiar with, called Ural-Altaic he believed, not used in many parts of the modern world anymore. The note had been translated into English on the second page, and it was basically a ransom/death note stating that the US ambassador had been kidnapped in a recent siege of his residence.

When did this siege happen, Jim, and why the hell weren’t we advised of this until now? Aaron forcefully demanded.

Burke shot back, We had to send encrypted messages to Langley so the press wouldn’t get wind of this, or we’d be either in high alert right now or all of us dead or we’d be presidentially reprimanded. We’re sitting on a powder keg over here, a potential Benghazi all over again, so we had to be careful and needed to get this corrected as quietly as possible. We needed a covert operative to rescue the ambassador, and that’s where you come in. All that other stuff was just a cover story. Three aides, five Marines, and three servants were killed when they captured the ambassador, blindfolded him, and removed him from his home just outside the city limits. The CIA director himself ordered you off your trip to Paris to be the agent to get this done as quickly and secretively as possible.

Burke continued with, Even your courier, John Robertson, in Istanbul, didn’t know the true assignment you were going on.

Okay, I get it, said Aaron as he continued to read, then listed all the particulars he needed to know from the file, and less than an hour later, he was gone.

This was much worse than he thought, as Aaron drove his jeep toward the small village of Dudas, and he realized this easily could become an international crisis. The notes on the kidnapping letter were most disturbing to him as they indicated this was a malicious act committed by none other than ISIS. This didn’t have a thing to do with the Kurds or the Turks. This was about dragging Turkey into a war with Syria and Iraq, ISIS’s stronghold. Aaron had only one thought, one mission, one act, and that was to find the US ambassador to Turkey, Henry Nelson, and bring him back. It all started to add up as Aaron quietly tuned off the jeep’s engine just outside the walls of the old Dudas village. His quick change of plans by the agency, the commercial flight, and all the armament and ammo in the trunk, there for him to deliver some real firepower and carnage. Night had just settled in, and he did have the slight advantage of surprise and night coverage on his side, but he had to act quickly as his paramount goal was to locate the ambassador.

The village of Dudas was small, just less than a mile square, and although there were more than a few places to search, the obvious one to start was where there would be armed guards manning a door. He located a small sokak (or alleyway) that ran just west of the village’s main cadde (main street) and where the bazaar would be found. In almost every ancient Middle Eastern city or village, the bazaar is the very center or heartbeat of the town, and the bazaar is much like big town centers or the huge malls of modern cities today. It’s where the men congregate and smoke their pipes (or hookahs), but Aaron needed a disguise as he just couldn’t sneak in and wander around with his heavy ammo tote bag and with guns blasting away. He needed to find some bad guys, and as luck would have it, he spotted a man dressed in black, carrying a Czechoslovakian Skorpion, a 7.65 mm gun, and dragging an ISIS flag behind him. He looked tired and was stumbling a bit as he guarded the dark sleepy streets of the town. Aaron unsheathed his knife, stood in the shadows as the gunman had stopped to adjust his baggage, then Aaron was on him, tore open his throat, then caught him before his body sagged and dropped to the ground. He quickly disposed of the body in an old barrel after removing the dead man’s ISIS uniform and covered the opening with some straw and weeds in a very dark alleyway. Then he dressed in the uniform, gathered up the Skorpion and the extra ammo, his pistols, and then dumped his own ammo bag in the barrel, over the body, for his future needs.

Aaron then picked up the ISIS flag, trying to copy the ISIS guard’s labored movements, and ventured out into the street, walking slowly toward the bazaar. Ammed, he heard someone shout from just behind him, about a block later, and pretended not to hear and kept walking down the dark dusty street. But he didn’t get very far. Aaron grabbed the handle of his knife as he heard the ISIS gunman approaching him from behind. Aaron quickly scanned the dark street, and as soon as the guy shouted to him, Ammed, wait, and ran quickly up to him, Aaron turned and dug the blade deep into his side. He caught him as he fell and slowly walked him over to another empty alley as he heard him losing consciousness and then dropped him behind an old abandoned shack. He finished him off with his knife, then relieved him of his pistol, a few magazines, and two hand grenades he had hanging on his back. It was fortunate that he was nearly fluent in Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by many, mainly in Islamic countries like Syria, Iran, Turkey, and Iraq, and even some of the slang Arabic that he picked up along the way. It also helped that Aaron was tan, wore a beard, had dark hair, and could easily blend in with the thugs he was assigned to track down and dispose of.

Just two blocks away, Abdul Mohamed Shahrivar, the leader of this squad of ISIS misfits, was wondering what the Americans were going to do about the week’s recent event and how they were going to react to the kidnapping of such an important US official. The thirty-six-year-old Syrian-born rebel fighter was wondering why he hadn’t been contacted. He hadn’t heard a single word about the kidnapping of the important American ambassador he was holding in his well-guarded tent on the internet or any Western media.

Surely their elite forces would be up to something three days later, he thought to himself, especially after the slaughter they found at the ambassador’s home during the kidnapping. He was admittedly worried as his paid informant was due at the American embassy earlier this evening, but so far, there was no news reports, no text, no messages, nothing heard from anyone on his cell phone. Shahrivar knew there had to be something going down, so as a precautionary maneuver, he ordered three gunmen to check around the village and all through the outskirts of town to see if there was any sign of retaliation or, possibly, even a surprise attack on the village.

The ISIS patrol walked through the bazaar but saw nothing out of the ordinary, no enemy forces or any covert activities to be found. When the three had split up to check through some alleyways, just off the main street, Aaron saw one go past the exact spot where he had just killed one of them, so he thought, what the heck. Aaron called out to the gunman in Arabic, Hey, look what I found over here, and as soon as he stepped into the alley, Aaron quickly thrust his blade into the base of his neck. He then decided to go for broke and pretended to be the gunman he’d just killed and followed far behind the other two, who were returning to report on their search to their boss, Abdul Shahrivar. Soon they were back on the north side of the bazaar where Shahrivar was outside waiting for them, with five other gunmen beside him and three others in an old-model Mercedes.

Aaron knew that the bodies were beginning to pile up, so he had to be careful not to be exposed before he could locate the ambassador, Henry Nelson. If he were even still alive. As he approached the courtyard from the north, he could plainly see a tent in the middle of it with a guard posted on each corner and one in the front, making five. If Aaron did the quick math, that makes at least fourteen of these bad guys that he could see and still only one of him to fight this little war he found himself in. And he had to be certain that Henry Nelson was in that tent; he thought he must be, but he had to be absolutely certain.

Aaron was now observing all this from a rooftop when number fifteen came running up to Shahrivar, yelling that he’d found one of the ISIS gunmen dead in a nearby alleyway. His throat had been slit. Shahrivar quickly made some decisions and ordered another two men to join the five that were next to him and to seek out this team that has obviously been sent in as a retaliatory squad and to swiftly destroy their sworn enemy.

Aaron saw the seven gunmen leave in the rusty Mercedes, and Aaron knew this was his only opportunity to act and to act as fast as he could. He knew, without a doubt, that Ambassador Nelson had to be a held prisoner inside that tent. He crawled down from the rooftop, went quietly around the side of the courtyard, and gathered some straw and some scraps of wood he found scattered on the ground. He then struck a match and started a slow smoldering fire near an open window with a cloth curtain hanging down from one side. Then he repositioned himself just inside an open doorway across from the courtyard and waited for the fire to get bigger in size, forcing a reaction from the guards. Once the fire began erupting, it started burning quickly inside that outer courtyard room and the gunmen guarding the tent immediately left their posts, momentarily unmanned. Aaron heard them yelling some orders at each other and searching for some water buckets as he made his way from his rear position and then quickly ran as fast as he could toward the courtyard and the tent. He totally surprised the only guard who had remained behind at the tent’s entrance, coming from his blind side, covered his mouth while stabbing him deep in the spine.

The guard dropped like a cement bag while Aaron pulled out the gas-injected Skorpion pistol and rushed inside, dragging the dead guard with him. Ambassador Nelson was handcuffed with leather straps, gagged, and blindfolded, but Aaron quickly removed all three. He handed Nelson a pistol and a few ten-round magazines, making a gesture with his fingers to his mouth to be quiet and to follow him immediately. The two took off to the north exit of the courtyard, buying just enough time to clear it, when Shahrivar and the four tent guardsmen were returning to their posts. Shahrivar saw that the one guard he had ordered to remain at his post was missing. He ran immediately into the tent, then came out screaming and yelling like a madman who had just seen a ghost.

Brighton and Nelson made their way back to the alleyway where Aaron had earlier deposited one dead guard in a barrel, along with his tote bag filled with his ammo. Neither of them had uttered a word over the past four minutes of running, and that was still the case as Aaron retrieved the bag and, again, signaled Nelson to go. The Mercedes, filled with the seven ISIS gunmen, came squealing around a corner, just as Brighton and Nelson were moving across the dusty street near the edge of town. Aaron dropped the ammo bag and unloaded the entire magazine of the Skorpion into the oncoming car as the windshield exploded and the driver was the first hit. They watched as the Mercedes immediately began to bank, then roll over and flip upside down before it came to a sudden stop. Aaron dropped the Skorpion and retrieved his ten-round pistol as he and Nelson both fired at the men now trapped within the burning car to ensure their kill was complete.

Nothing was moving inside the bullet-splattered vehicle, then they saw some lights coming on around the village as confused Turkish villagers could be seen closing their open shutters, like they were rehearsing for a fire drill. Aaron reloaded, handed a magazine to Nelson, then picked up the ammo bag and raced over to the place where he had hidden the jeep. They got in, started it up, raced past a corner of the old village wall, spun around, and then headed down a small road toward a creek.

Aaron had noticed this near-dry rocky creek on the map in the folder back at the embassy, mentally thinking then that it could work as a quick hideout if they needed some last-minute luck. Unfortunately, Shahrivar and his remaining band of ISIS gunmen saw the jeep in the distance and were now in hot pursuit with a .50-caliber gun-mounted pickup truck directly on their tail about three hundred yards back. Abdul Shahrivar was insane with anger as he had watched this mad escape unfold before his very eyes. He no longer cared about any talk of returning a kidnapped US ambassador. That was all only a farce to get the stupid Americans into another war in another Muslim country.

Now he simply knew that every one of them up ahead was about to die. But Aaron had a contingency plan of his own now as he pulled the jeep behind a high formation of rocks near the riverbed. He unloaded Nelson, told him to hide in another rock formation located about twenty yards away, handed him a Browning automatic rifle, or BAR, with a tripod stand on its muzzle head. Then he quickly explained how to set it up, reload, and then sent him to his designated position. Aaron did this only because Nelson broke his silence in the jeep while they were making their escape, relaying his Desert Storm experience in Iraq to him as a former Army infantry grunt, an unknown gift of great proportion.

The heavily armed pickup truck came racing around the final turn before the dry creek bed and stopped. Shahrivar ordered the truck’s high beams and rack of lights on top the roll bar to be turned on, and the lights just popped brilliant light into the black night. As the bright lights illuminated out of the darkness, Aaron pulled the pin and tossed the grenade at the exact same time the lights came on. The blast was deafening as the front of the truck blew into the night, and Shahrivar was thrown off the truck’s bed and over to the other side.

The ISIS troops never knew what hit them as the truck went up in huge, bellowing flames. Nelson’s BAR shots were hitting them as they tried to escape the burning vehicle as Aaron threw the second of the two grenades. Abdul Mohammed Shahrivar saw the second explosion and covered his head as metal pieces and body parts went flying past him in the air. When the deafening noise subsided and the explosion was over, the surrounding area went from a flickering light to dark.

Abdul Shahrivar had this strange feeling that someone was standing near him. His night vision was slowly coming to him as he shook his dazed and battered head, then actually felt a presence that made him shake in a violent way. Shahrivar looked up and saw a single man dressed in an ISIS black uniform, eyes piercing down at him, then he saw him kicking his unholstered pistol that had fallen from him to the ground, just out of his reach. In Arabic, Shahrivar blurted out, I surrender to you. How many troops have you used to defeat me? Thirty, forty?

And as Ambassador Henry Nelson approached him, Aaron Brighton looked Abdul Mohammed Shahrivar in the eye and said, Nope, there’s just the ambassador here and me.

As Shahrivar’s jaw dropped, like this crazy American was lying, he heard Aaron’s hammer click and a single shot was fired, and Shahrivar would never again speak. Then Aaron turned and introduced himself to Ambassador Henry Nelson, then politely said, "Now, sir, if you’ll excuse me, I’d very much like for us to leave this place so I can be in Paris with