Elite (37 page)

On the wall to Daniel’s right was a black leather couch situated behind a dark marble coffee table. A projector hung from the ceiling above the couch, and was pointed at a white screen on the opposite wall. To the left of the screen was a small computer desk with a grey rolling office chair behind it.

A laptop computer sat on the desk, two wires plugged into the back of it. One was the power cord, and the other plugged into one of the computers outputs and then ran under the carpet over to the back wall, where it then climbed up the wall and into the ceiling until it made its way over to where the projector hung down.

Daniel shrugged off the unexpected layout of the room and plopped himself down on the far side of the couch. He rested his elbow on the arm of the couch and propped his head up with his hand, anxiously awaiting Richfield and Blank’s arrival. He was eager to hear what they had to say. He hoped that his being in the briefing room meant that they were going to skip the last week of his training and send him out on his first assignment.

Approximately five minutes later someone joined Daniel in the room, but it was not at all who he was expecting.

“Norma?” Daniel stated in confusion as the tan-skinned woman walked through the door to find an unsuspecting Daniel waiting for her.

“What are you doing here?” She asked, seeming just as surprised by the arrangement as he was.

“Richfield told me to come to the briefing room,” Daniel stated plainly.

“But I had a scheduled briefing with him for right now,” she explained.

Daniel sat and stared at Norma in confusion for a matter of seconds before developing a reasonable explanation for their meeting.

“I’ll bet Richfield wants to show me what a briefing looks like since I’ve never seen one,” he reasoned.

Norma threw her hands up at her sides and rolled her eyes, as though she should have figured that out on her own.

“That would make sense,” she said, before easing onto the other side of the couch.

Half a beat later Richfield and Blank appeared in the doorway. Richfield was carrying two manila file-folders in his hand. He waited for Blank to clear the doorway and closed the door behind them. He then walked over to Daniel and Norma and threw the two folders down onto the coffee table in front of them.

“One for each of you,” he said before walking over to the desk and pulling the chair out from behind it.

Daniel and Norma each picked up a folder and opened them while Richfield slid the rolling chair in front of them on the opposite side of the coffee table and took a seat. Blank set up shop at the front door, leaning up against it a suave manner that only he could.

Richfield leaned forward in his chair and proceeded to brief the two agents.

“This should be a cake walk,” he explained. “There should be no threat here, just a paranoid father sending his little princess on a trip to Costa Rica with her boyfriend.”

Richfield sat upright as Daniel flipped through the files. There wasn’t much – just a picture of the twenty-something girl and her similarly aged boyfriend, along with a fact sheet about the both of them, as well as the girl’s father. The other papers inside were a trip itinerary along with travel documents.

Travel documents?!
Daniel suddenly felt a rush of unprovoked adrenaline as he began to realize that the documents he was looking at had his name on them.

Richfield must have noticed the change of expression on Daniel’s face.

“Last phase of training is on-the-job kid,” Richfield said, smirking in Daniel’s direction.

Daniel’s face lit up at the realization that he was finally receiving his first assignment.

Then he remembered Norma sitting to his left. He simply pointed to her, without a word, and looked back at Richfield with a questioning look on his face.

“Norma is going to be your field trainer,” Richfield explained, once again reading the expression on the overwhelmed face of his newest agent.

“That is, if you’re alright with that,” Richfield added, now looking in Norma’s direction.

Norma chewed on the thought, and for a moment Daniel feared that she might refuse.

“Better I mess him up than one of those other jackasses,” she finally spoke. A smile crept up on her face and Daniel thought that she might be fighting to keep it from growing any bigger. She seemed to be making an effort not to look in his direction.

“Wonderful,” Richfield said, seemingly pleased with Norma’s response.

Daniel began rifling through all the paperwork in an overly excited fashion, trying to take in as many details on his first assignment as fast as he possibly could.

“How did you get me a passport?” He asked, stumbling across a passport with his name, photo, and signature inside.

Richfield paused to glare at Daniel for a moment.

“Right,” Daniel said, remembering that the man was ex-CIA and still had a lot of connections.

Richfield continued with his briefing. “This is the perfect first job for you Daniel because it should be relatively stress-free. I’d like Norma to take the opportunity to teach you some things in situational awareness in a non-threatening environment.”

Richfield glanced at Norma, waiting for her acknowledgement.

Norma nodded in understanding.

Richfield continued, “That’s not to say that there is no possibility of danger – you are going into Central America after all – but Costa Rica is a relatively stable country and there should be no reason for anyone to target the client specifically. There is however, one catch…”

This got the attention of both Daniel and Norma as their heads both snapped up from their paperwork.

“The daughter is insistent that she doesn’t want attention to be brought to her by dragging a couple of body guards around with her – so her, her father and I came up with a compromise.”

Daniel and Norma continued staring at their boss, bracing themselves for the coming punch line.

“You two are going undercover as another couple.”

Chapter 19

It wasn’t until Daniel stepped outside the doors and felt the sun beating down upon his face that he realized just how long he had been trapped inside the walls of the Elite complex. If anyone had witnessed him walk into the building over twelve weeks ago they would not recognize the strong, capable man that stood in front of it today.

The assignment on which he and Norma were about to embark seemed from the briefing to be more of a vacation than a job, and Daniel wondered if Richfield had done that intentionally.

The two rode in a town car together to the Chicago O’Hare airport. From there they would fly to Dallas, Texas, where they would be escorted to the client’s house. They would pick up the client and her boyfriend there before heading back to the Dallas Fort Worth Airport and flying on to Costa Rica. The plane tickets were first class all the way – something Daniel was excited to experience.

The Client was Tiffany Barstow, the daughter of Bobby Barstow, the owner of the Dallas Saddlemen. Owning one of the most successful professional football franchises in the country, Barstow was one of the wealthiest men in the world. When Daniel saw that he was the man who had called on Elite to protect his daughter, he understood the type of clientele Richfield pulled from.

The best part of the job was that Daniel wasn’t supposed to act like a body guard while on the week-long trip. He was to act like any other tourist would. Even better was that he and the woman he had become smitten with were supposed to act like a couple. He couldn’t think of a
more desirable situation than taking a trip to a tropical destination with one of the hottest women he’d ever met and getting paid for it.

And the pay was substantial. Barstow had offered up one hundred-thousand dollars to keep his daughter well protected in the Central American jungle. Norma agreed to split the fifteen percent commission with Daniel, which equaled out to seven-and-a-half thousand each. Not bad for an all-expenses-paid vacation.

Norma barely said a word on the drive to the airport or on the flight to Dallas. The entire time she had just stared out the window, with Daniel unable to venture the slightest guess at what she might be thinking about. It was a bit off-putting since he had hoped this trip might be a bonding experience for the two of them.

Daniel was wearing a charcoal grey button-up shirt and his nicest pair of jeans, and a pair of aviator sunglasses over his eyes. It seemed to him like the sort of thing a wealthy American might wear on his first trip to Costa Rica. It was the first time he had the need to wear street clothes in months.

Norma simply wore a white tank-top and a pair of tight-fitting black jeans. She apparently saw no need in keeping up the façade, and was focused mainly on protecting the client.

After a relatively silent flight, the two personal security agents grabbed their bags and met their driver out in front of the airport. Barstow had ordered a limousine to drive his daughter and the two Elite agents to the airport. On the ride over to the Barstow compound Daniel began to worry that Norma might be less than thrilled at the arrangement of their current assignment. Norma was generally quiet, but he had hoped that the situation might serve as a catalyst to spark some form of meaningful conversation between them. Thus far, she had shown little to no interest in any form of interaction.

It was a half hour ride from the airport to the Barstow compound, and when they arrived Daniel could not believe his eyes. What he was looking at was not so much a house as it was a castle. He looked over at Norma sitting next to him, his eyes filled with wonder, but she seemed less than impressed. She had been to numerous mansions that belonged to the wealthy clients of Elite, so this was nothing out of the ordinary for her.

As they pulled around the circle drive and up to the front of the house, Tiffany and her boyfriend were already standing with their bags at the bottom of the home’s enormous front porch. When the limo came to a stop the driver jumped out of the car, Daniel instinctively reached for the handle before noticing Norma’s body language, which suggested that she had no intention of getting out of the car.

He looked out the window at the couple handing the driver their bags to be loaded into the trunk, noticing that Bobby Barstow himself was nowhere in sight. He remembered that it was Sunday, and Barstow was undoubtedly at Saddle Men Field watching his team play.

Daniel moved away from the door and took a seat next to Norma, realizing that there was no point in getting out of the car since the two love birds weren’t the actual paying client and would soon be climbing into the vehicle anyway.

The ride back to the airport consisted of the socially required round of greetings and introductions, accompanied by the typical niceties one would expect when sharing a limo with people you’ve only just met for the first time – Where are you from? What did you used to do? Etc.

Norma’s answer to the latter made a great deal more sense than Daniel’s given their current line of work, but to Daniel’s surprise Tiffany nor her boyfriend Pete pressed the issue. They simply accepted the response of “I used to work in radio sales,” and went on to talk
about their own personal experiences with the glamorous world of radio.

Norma answered their questions and listened to their stories but Daniel could tell that she was clearly annoyed. For not being able to stand rich people, she certainly picked a hell of a career path.

When they arrived at the airport Tiffany and Pete disposed of the niceties and shrunk back into their own world. Before stepping out of the car, Tiffany put on a pair of oversized turtle shell sunglasses and threw up the hood on the hoodie she was wearing even though the temperature was in the seventies. Daniel remembered that he was in the presence of the daughter of a celebrity, and that she stood a fair chance of being recognized, especially in the home town of the Saddle Men.

Daniel figured he should raise his alertness and be ready to protect the couple from any potential threat, even while still in the United States.

Norma acted as though she could care less. The chance of a few paparazzi snapping some candid airport photos were of absolutely no concern to her.

Pete and Tiffany kept to themselves while in the airport. The only
acknowledgement of Daniel and Norma’s presence were the few times Tiffany stopped to check Daniel out, eyeing him up and down. Her actions were quite clear to Daniel, even with her giant-sized sunglasses hiding her eyes.

About the third time she did it, Pete finally caught on and shot Daniel a dirty look. It was all Daniel could do not to laugh right in Pete’s face. He wasn’t used to being the primary focus of a woman’s carnal desires. He quite liked it.

The flight to San Jose, Costa Rica was twice as long as the flight from Chicago to Dallas, and had felt twice as awkward. “Tee and Pee,” as they called themselves, sat one row in front of Norma and Daniel in first class. The two lovebirds had drinks, watched movies, and cuddled up throughout the entire flight, while Daniel and Norma sat silently – Daniel playing games on his phone while Norma continued to stare out the window.

If the two were supposed to be a couple, no one around them would ever have guessed it. In fact, Daniel was pretty sure that if you had asked any of the flight attendants on-board, they would have guessed that the two were complete strangers by the way that they had acted.

All of that changed once the plane touched down in Costa Rica. Norma became a different person as everyone began gathering their personal items in anticipation of deplaning. She adjusted herself and stood at attention as if preparing for battle. Norma was now clocked in for work.

As the two agents followed their clients down the stairway leading from the plane to the tarmac, Norma put her arm around Daniel’s waist and moved her mouth up toward Daniel’s ear in a fashion that to any outside observer would appear as a romantic gesture.

“Time to go to work,” she said softly into Daniel’s left ear. “Keep your eyes open.”

Daniel moved his head from side to side, scanning the area for potential threats. His movements were very obvious to everyone around him. He glanced over at Norma and found that her eyes were also scanning their surroundings, but with far less head movement. Her movements appeared very casual, not giving away her true purpose.

Daniel took note and began doing the same, moving his head only slightly as he looked from side to side, utilizing his eyeballs over his neck.

“Make sure you’re watching our six,” Norma
instructed, her arm still around Daniel’s waist.

Daniel turned his head from side to side, and eventually turned himself all the way around to get a good look behind him, as if looking for something specific.

“How do I do that without looking like an idiot?” He asked Norma.

Norma looked up at him and rolled her eyes. “Rookie,” she said in an exasperated tone. She then turned her head to the left and looked down at the ground as she scratched her nose.

“I don’t think the fat, old dude in the red Hawaiian shirt will be any trouble,” she said, bringing her gaze forward.

Daniel smiled, having noticed the man when he had done his less than graceful three-sixty. He remembered back to his classes with Richfield and how his instructor had stressed the importance of using peripheral vision.

“Never let them know where you’re really looking,” Richfield had told him. “The same thing applies to women.”

Daniel threw his left arm around Norma’s shoulders and turned his gaze toward her, as if wanting to stare into her eyes. She turned her head to gaze back at him, maintaining their cover as a couple. The two exchanged what appeared to be a flirtatious smile before turning their heads forward as they neared the door to the terminal.

“His wife looks a bit suspicious in that giant white sunhat though,” he commented as he held the door for his partner.

She smiled approvingly as she walked through the doorway.

The only remote possibility of endangerment they faced the entire trip came at the very beginning, on their way to the resort. They rode in an old, rusted out blue van that had been converted into a shuttle bus.
The driver, whose name Daniel never did catch, must have been certifiably insane by the way he sped along the narrow dirt roads that lead through the mountainous tropical landscape. He whipped around tight corners, never once hitting the brake until they came upon a shepherd, herding his pack of sheep across the road.

The driver laid violently on the horn, clearly irritated at the shepherd who took his sweet time coaxing his sheep across the road. Daniel noticed that the driver’s horn blowing seemed to only make the shepherd move slower.

Finally the shepherd had enough of the driver’s impatience, and smacked the large walking stick he carried in his right hand against the hood of the van. This really set the driver off as he jumped out of the van and ran around the front of the vehicle to where the shepherd stood as the two began angrily shouting at one another, their faces mere inches apart.

“Why don’t you go monitor the situation,” Norma instructed Daniel.

Daniel nodded and made his way toward the van doors.

“But don’t get involved unless it gets physical,” she added before he opened the door. “Stay alert, don’t get distracted. There’s currently no threat to our clients, so this is the driver’s problem, not ours. Normally you’d stay put with the clients, but since there’s two of us I can stay here with them while you make sure things don’t get out of hand out there.”

“Got it,” Daniel responded before opening the door and hopping out of the van. He remembered everything Richfield had taught him about diversions and distractions, and not to get caught up in them. This was a perfect lesson in staying disciplined.

He leaned up against the side of the van, just listening as the two Costa Rican men continued their verbal boxing match. Daniel
continually scanned the area to make sure there were no real threats to the clients nearby.  After about five minutes of infuriated shouting, the last of the sheep finished his trot across the old dirt road and both men agreed to part ways with a mutual distaste for one another.

“Who was that?” Tiffany asked the driver as he and Daniel both climbed back into the shuttle.

“Mi hermano,” the driver replied.

“That was you’re brother?!” Tiffany exclaimed. Apparently growing up in Texas had taught her some Spanish.

“These shepherds,” the driver ranted in a Latin accent, “they theenk they own all the land out here, even the rroads.”

Daniel threw his head back in silent laughter as the driver continued his pissed off rant about his brother and the Costa Rican shepherds. Talk about family drama.

“Bandejo,” the driver said, finally concluding his rant as he resumed flying along the narrow Costa Rican road system.

Daniel looked over at Norma who was next to him, now turned around and bent over the seat, digging through her suitcase which was stored in the very back of the shuttle.

She finally came up, a pistol and its harness in her hands.

She checked the clip and shoved it back in before wrapping the harness around her waist.

“You might want to check your bag,” she told him.