Chapter 4

The day I graduated from Stanford I had to fly to my sister’s new home town, Pocahontas, AR. I had become an Aunt, I wanted to see my sister and my new niece before I got involved with my work for the CIA. My brother in law Samuel picked me up at the airport in Compass City since it was the closest major airport to them. Four hours later, we pulled up to a nice house in the middle of nowhere.

The view was spectacular, from the front porch you could see across a valley with a river running through it. But I didn’t come to see a river so I headed to the front door, I walked in to see Sarah smiling as she breastfed the baby.

“Hi sis, give me a bit for her to finish and I’ll let you hold your niece Samantha,” Sarah said.

“Okay Sis, if she is anything like you she gets grouchy if she is interrupted,” I teased.

Samuel brought my bag in from the car, “Let me show you to your room while she finishes up,” he said.

I followed him down the hall to a nice guest room, not sure how much I’ll be sleeping though. I have had a roommate for the last four years, and Linda makes enough noise during the night for three girls.

“My brother and his wife are coming over later for Supper to meet you,” He told me.

“I’ll be happy to meet them, not sure why they want to meet the weird sister though,” I said.

He grinned and shrugged, so I headed back to the living room. Sarah was burping the baby when I got back, walking over and I sat on the couch beside her. Watching the way she handled being a mother made me proud of my sis.

“Make sure you support her head,” Sarah said, handing me the baby. “Samantha this is your Aunt Susan, Susan this is your niece Samantha Elanor Raven Wing,” She introduced us.

I sat looking down at the tiny life I was holding, Samantha had a look on her face like she wasn’t sure if she was happy to see me or mad at her mom for handing her to me. “Hello Sam, You’re my first niece so we will have to learn together,” I said to her gently. Apparently she was good with that since she closed her eyes and went to sleep.

Sarah took her away from me then and put her in a bassinet beside the couch, before she sprang an idea on me, “Susan we would like you to be one of Sam’s godparents, Samuel’s brother James and his wife will also be her godparents,” She said, with a hopeful look.

“I would love to be her godmother, but you know I’m going to be doing a lot of traveling and be based in New York, so I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to come see her,” I said.

“We understand that you will be gone a lot, but we still want you to do this,” She said.

I just nodded my head yes and hugged my big sis. We went to the kitchen and started working on supper together. I caught her up on my college experiences, she told me about being pregnant and labour. Samuel apparently had fallen apart when she went into labour and acted like a total baby.

We almost had supper ready when I noticed a strange woman walking into the kitchen, I nudged Sarah toward her. Sarah turned and saw her and smiled going over to hug her. I wiped my hands before heading towards them.

“Susan this is my sister-in-law Georgia, Georgia this is my sister Susan,” she said.

“Nice to meet you Georgia, I need to stir the pot one more time and I think it will be ready to eat,” I said.

“Nice to meet you as well, I’ll start setting the table if you tell me what we are having,” she replied.

“We are having Sarah and my chilli recipe,” I said.

We gathered around the table and had a good time eating and talking. James looked like I had thought he would, being Samuel’s brother other than being shorter. His wife is funny but looks kinda tired but I can see why with three young kids and one of those a newborn.

I spent the next week getting to know Samuel and Sarah again, the peace of the mountains had me up early every morning. I was awake for Sam’s morning feeding every morning, I even changed some of her diapers. I jokingly told Sarah it was so I could embarrass her later by telling people I used to change her diaper.

I was sad when I had to leave, but I made Sam and myself a promise. I kept that promise as best I could for sixteen years, I only missed two of her birthdays and I made sure I saw her at Christmas those years, except the year she turned seventeen.

Samuel took me back to the airport for my flight to New York. As far as the family knew other than Dad I was going to be a reporter for the New York Times. I had only found out myself when I met Naomi after my graduation. I was going to work there for at least a year to establish a cover, before starting my real work.

My first day at the Times was all HR work, filling out paperwork and getting my press credentials. I had decided to avoid the whole Woman named Johnathan bit. I filled out all the paperwork as J. Susan Smith, it worked, nobody said anything about it. I then got the bad news. I was not going to be working on serious news, but was going to be writing fluff for the society page.

I spent the next year covering dog and pony shows literally. The most excitement I had that year was when I stopped a Polo ball from hitting the people watching. When I turned in my two weeks notice, I told my boss I was going to work for the State Department, as an embassy press liaison.

That was the cover I had worked so hard to create a fairly good report but not a great one. But now it was time to go back to school CIA, school that is I was headed to The Farm. I was being sent there to learn the things they don’t teach anywhere else.

I got in trouble within five minutes of arriving, when an overweight bald guy started trying to act like a Drill Instructor. I couldn’t help but laugh, the joke ended when he ran up and grabbed me. I put him down and had my sword point touching his throat before he knew what was happening.

I growled as I asked him, “If your fat ass ever touches me again I won’t stop at this point. Do you understand me?”

He barely nodded his head so I let him up. He started to say something but I interrupted him, “Tell your friend trying to sneak up on me that it really isn’t a good idea unless he wants to get hurt,” I said, raising my voice enough to make sure the other person heard me.

I heard a woman’s voice behind me say, “You can go back to the office Mike, I got it from here.” The woman that walked around me was probably in her mid 30’s but was just as well muscled as I am.

“I’m your primary instructor for unarmed combat and general PT. You can call me, SGT. Camacho.” She said.

“We run this test for every new class when they arrive, this is the first time anyone knew beyond a doubt that Mike was not an Instructor. At least I hope that is why you reacted the way you did,” She said looking at me.

I nodded my head before I said, “I knew he wasn’t a DI because I grew up with a DI for a father. Once he grabbed me I knew for a fact he wasn’t any kind of Instructor here, because I know that instructors wouldn’t be left in the dark about me and what I can do.”

She nodded at me then addressed the group, “She is right about all of that, she used her previous experiences to evaluate the situation, she is also right that the instructors here know not to try and lay a hand on her outside of training. Since she will actually be helping teach this class hand to hand, while she learns a new form from me.”

The rest of the class gave me strange looks hearing this. I was looking at her wondering what form she practiced. She got us lined up and led us to where we would be staying while here, it was an old WWII barracks and completely co-ed.

I had fun learning all the things a spy needs to know how to do like how to find and plant bugs. Thanks to the classes Naomi had me take I can even repair them. We learned how to service dead drops, do a brush pass and even basic recruiting of a foreign agent.

The most fun for me though was the physical training, we learned to handle different small arms from around the world, the different types of explosives and their explosive power. The best part for me was the hand to hand training. You could see my classmates’ jaws drop when I walked to the front of class the first time in my Aikido Gi. But the best part was SGT. Camacho’s family was from the Philippines, she was teaching me stick fighting.

Out of the twenty people we started with we had fifteen left when we went to Camp Mackall for the last of our training. I’ve had some of the training we were going there for but not all of it, SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) school is one of the hardest schools mentaly of any military school. The only part of the course I hadn’t had was being captured and tortured before having to escape.