Chapter 2

The new students assembled at 0900 hrs in room 102 at the Agency’s Training Facility for their welcome to the Agency and in-briefing. They had each been selected for their physical and mental abilities. The instructor who welcomed them was an old hand at the Agency. He had been a field operative for many years and had been moved to the training facility because of his extensive knowledge and superior operating record.

Following the welcoming speech, he continued by calling each students name from his roster and had them stand to introduce themselves to the others. All went well until he reached the last two names on the roster.

“Carry Kincade!” he called and followed that with the last name, “Chris Kincade?” There was no answer to either name, and he turned to look at the other students.

“Have any of you seen those two Kincades?” he asked the other students. His question was immediately followed by,

Bang, Bang, BANG, Bang, Bang, Bang!!

The several small explosions filled the room with noise, smoke, and confusion. Two young women appeared out of the smoke near the other students.

“Bang!” they both said in loud voices and followed that with, “You’re all dead!”

“Who are you, and how the hell did you get in here?” the now flustered instructor demanded of them.

“We’re the Kincades! I’m Carry and this is my twin sister Chris. We’ve been waiting for you for some time now,” she finished.

“How did you get in here with those explosives?” he demanded in an angry voice.

“We waltzed in early this morning past your security with those modified M 10s and set everything up,” Chris told him with a smile.

“Our father used to be in the Agency, but he has been retired for a while now. He taught us a lot while we were growing up. If you need a reference, you can call our Uncle Lester or whoever from ‘the Family’ is running the Agency presently,” Carry told him before we both took seats separate from the other students who were staring at us in shock and amazement.

In the meantime, security guards had arrived, alerted by the sounds of the explosions. They were somewhat startled by the remaining smoke and the lack of destruction and panic among the students.

“What happened here? What were those explosions that we heard?” they demanded.

“Some of the new students thought that a grand entrance was necessary. It was only a prank, one that they will regret, and one that will never be repeated!” the instructor informed them in an angry voice. The security men soon departed after reporting what had happened on their radios. The instructor was still very agitated and made a point of addressing what had just happened to the students.

“Pranks like you just witnessed will not be tolerated here. These two young ladies are in considerable trouble, and I don’t know if they will be allowed to remain in the program,” he informed those present. “Both of you will accompany me to the Administrator’s office at the conclusion of this briefing,” he added before continuing the briefing.

The briefing was soon over. The rest of the students were split up into groups and taken on a tour of the facilities here. They would later be taken to be issued a part of the equipment required for the course. We were escorted to the Office of the Administrator by the instructor.

“Sit out here and don’t get in any trouble,” the instructor told us. There were two security guards there to watch us, along with the secretary, while he went in to speak to the Administrator. After a time, the door opened again, and we were told to enter.

To our surprise the Administrator was the older woman who we had seen running on Sunday morning. She was sitting behind a large mahogany desk. The instructor had taken a place on the right side of the desk. The security guards had remained in the outer office.

“I remember seeing the two of you out running on Sunday morning!” she said. “I thought at the time that you must be very interested in attending the course. Now, the instructor tells me that you pulled some cheap prank to get attention at the briefing this morning,” she added in a disappointed voice.

“Would you care to hear our side of the story?” Chris asked, looking her in the eyes.

“What excuse could you possibly have?” she demanded angrily.

“YOUR SECURITY SUCKS!” I told her loudly with a grin.

“The Agency has the best security of any of the government agencies!!” she replied in a heated voice.

“Really?” we both asked with a smirk.

“Yes! Really,” she answered in indignation.

“Let us tell you how we got in here and what we have learned so far,” Chris asked her.

“Go on!”

“A little background first,” I told her. “Our father was a Field Agent for the Agency. He was retired about eight years before we were born. He has always been security conscious, and became more so when he met and married our mother.

“About a year after we were born, Uncle Lester came down to Georgia from the Agency to try to convince dad to rejoin the Agency. Dad wasn’t impressed with his offer and sent him and his security people packing. He and our grandfather became even more security conscious following that.

“We and our brother were raised on a farm with very tight security. Growing up, we learned how to outwit most of it,” I told her.

“We also decided that we wanted to join the Agency and do field work. Dad got us on the student list,” Chris told her.

“We arrived in town on Friday. After getting a motel room, we checked on the main gate but didn’t enter there,” I continued.

“We had downloaded satellite pictures of your facilities and went to the back part of the facility. We entered through the maintenance gate there and checked out the area.

“Eventually we made our way to this building at about 1800 hrs. The building was open but no one was there. We did our own registration and then departed the same way that we had entered with no one detecting us,” I finished.

“On Saturday, we drove to the main gate and showed them our acceptance letter. The guards were too busy looking at our cleavage to notice anything else. We could have had anything in our car, and they would have never noticed,” Chris told her.

“We spent the weekend in the room that we had assigned ourselves and away from the other students, and no one ever checked on us. We set up our little demonstration early this morning. The building was open at 0600 hrs, but we didn’t see anyone. It could have been any kind of meeting that we booby-trapped, and we could have killed some important people because your security sucks!” I finished.

The Administrator had some questions for us following that.

“Where did you acquire these satellite pictures?”

“From the Internet. There are a number of foreign governments with very good pictures of your facilities,” Chris told her.

“And how were you dressed on Saturday when you arrived here?”

“Very provocatively to get the guards’ attention. It’s exactly what an enemy agent would do,” I told her.

“You girls are still rather young according to your folders. How do you know about all of these things?” she asked.

“Like Carry said, our dad worked for the Agency in the field. He was very good before they retired him. He taught us a lot,” Chris told her. The Administrator had been frowning for a time. Now she made a decision.

“The two of you will return to your room, and remain there for the remainder of the day. A security guard will come to take you to eat at lunch time and for dinner. I’m going to check on the things you have told me. You will be escorted back to this office to hear my decision tomorrow morning. Is there anything else?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” we both answered and the instructor prepared to show us out.

“Wait!” the Administrator called as we neared the door. “Just to be sure, what room are you in?” We gave her our building and room number. We were escorted to our room by two older guards who appeared to be unaffected by our sexuality.

In the meantime, the Administrator was busy with the things that she had learned. She reviewed the recording of their interview several times making notes on the pertinent points. Following that, she called the Operations Section at Agency Headquarters located nearer Washington. Much of the remainder of her day was spent checking on the other things the twins had told her.

Time: Later that afternoon

Location: The Office of the Director of the Agency

A young man entered the Directors office with a fist full of papers.

“I’ve finished checking,” he announced. “There has never been an agent or field operative named Kincade.”

“What about the name ‘Uncle Lester’?” an older man at the table there asked.

“There was a Director of Operations named Lester who retired nearly eighteen years ago. He was a prominent member of ‘the Family’. He had failed to persuade some rogue agent to return to the Agency a short time before retiring,” the young man informed them.

“Yes, I remember Lester,” an older woman sitting behind the desk of the Agency Chief told them. “He liked to style himself as ‘Uncle Lester’ to those in ‘the Family’. I also remember the agent who he failed to persuade to return. He was known by his code name of Bill. His parents had worked for the Agency, and they were part of ‘the Family’, but they had been killed in an avalanche out west. The searchers never found their child’s body. He eventually reappeared in the Army. He was very effective, but was retired when ‘the Family’ lost control of the Agency for a time.

“Years later, he was involved in a couple of incidents as a civilian. He had remarried and had two children at the time, daughters as I recall. Lester went down to Georgia to convince him to return to the Agency. It didn’t work because it turned out that the woman he married had the ‘bubble’ as did the daughters. Bill wasn’t interested in returning, and they sent Lester packing with threats to come after those in the Agency if we bothered him again.

“I remember all of this because Lester was fit-to-be-tied when he returned. He screamed and ranted for several weeks about the audacity of that young ‘son-of-a-bitch’. Others in ‘the Family’ persuaded him to retire shortly after that. I remember all of this because ‘Uncle Lester’ actually was my uncle,” she finished with a hard smile.

“Check on an Agent code-named Bill,” the older man directed the younger who was now seated at the Directors personal computer. After a bit of key clacking, the printer near the desk began spitting out paper. The older man picked up the papers when it finished. They all had a red border around them.

“Why do all of the pages have red borders? The file in the computer had the same border,” the younger man wanted to know.

“The red border indicates that he is retired, but is to still be considered extremely dangerous and to be approached with the utmost caution,” the older man informed the younger before he started reading the file.

“It would appear that Kincade is his second wife’s maiden name. According to our records, he is still living on that old farm in Georgia, but has retired from the blacksmithing business. He and his wife had a total of three children: twin daughters and a son named Bill, Junior. According to our latest report on them, the son is taking over the blacksmithing business although he is still quite young,” the older man reported after scanning the sheets.

“So we can assume that the Kincade Sisters are his daughters then!” another man at the table said.

“Never assume anything,” the Agency Chief told him in a sharp voice from her desk before turning to the older man.

“Have our people check on the whereabouts of the daughters. I want it definitely confirmed that the two here are in fact his daughters. It is seldom that we have the opportunity to add women with active bubbles to ‘the Family’,” she told them with a much friendlier smile. “Perhaps we can do what ‘Uncle Lester’ failed to do.”

“I wouldn’t count your chickens before they are hatched!” the older man warned her. “Or your Kincades before they are actually persuaded to join ‘the Family’,” he added before returning to his job as Director of Operations for theAgency. There was a call from the Operations section to the Administrator of the Training Facility shortly after that.

“Marge, Tony. We still have to check on the whereabouts of the two daughters, but I think it’s a pretty safe bet that they are the ones that you have. The Director is very interested in those girls. They are to be kept in the program and a very sharp eye is to be kept on them. Their father, code-name ‘Bill’, is a part of ‘the Family’ but a distant part. The Director wants to bring those girls fully back into ‘the Family’. It is therefore important that they finish the course, but no special favors are to be shown them. They must earn the right to graduate,” the Director of Operations told her.