Axis Files: Operation Badger - Chapter 1
This file was previously classified, and only accessible by two people on the planet. While certain elements of this account have been paraphrased or altered to fill in gaps, it is—as best as possible—accurate.
Mission #1479
Codename- Badger
Operator 11- Sean Grayson Wyatt
Theater- Moldova
Year- 2003
Sean Wyatt pressed his eye to the scope, watching the Russian mobsters moving the heavy crates, loading them onto three vans disguised with a moving company logo slapped on the side. The rain pouring from the sky helped conceal his position, but also limited visibility.
Blessings and curses, he thought. Under the eave of the abandoned mill rooftop, the rain didn’t touch him, though he knew soon he’d have to venture out of the nest and into the deluge.
His assignment was simple, at least in concept.
Kill everyone. Destroy the weapons.
Easy enough. If it was a video game.
In practice, the mission was a little more complicated than that. A lot more.
By his count, there were two dozen men moving the crates, both by hand and with a forklift. They were all armed with pistols or submachine guns—the latter a combination of Heckler & Kochs and what Sean figured were some Chinese knockoffs. While unreliable, they could still be deadly in the right hands. Or if someone was just lucky.
To say Sean was outnumbered was an understatement, but then again, that’s how all of these Axis missions were. So he’d been told. This happened to be his first. For an Axis agent, there were no training wheels missions, no easing into things. It was a pure baptism by fire with a lava frosting on top.
He and the other eleven agents operated alone, independent of each other and without knowledge of what any of the others were doing in their respective missions. At least that’s how it usually went. This one was an experiment, a trial run in a way. Sean wasn’t sure he wanted to be a guinea pig, but he didn’t get to make the rules.
The reason Axis agents worked alone was simple; plausible deniability was paramount for an agency that reported directly to the President of the United States, and in turn, the commander-in-chief reported to no one regarding Axis missions. Other than that, they received no intel, no details, and minimal debriefing. With such tight security measures, Axis operatives were protected from enemies both foreign and domestic.
The military top brass presented the president with problems, and then he took those problems to Axis. Underneath all that simplicity, however, was a delicately operated machine. And Sean was one of the cogs.
The agency had been formed as a direct response following the attack on Pearl Harbor, just as Black Cell had been formed to similarly address terrorism or covert attacks on the United States. Axis was designed to be a way to intercept such dangerous attacks before they happened, and to eliminate serious national security threats, both to the US and its allies.
The shroud of secrecy around Axis kept the media and the population from accusing the nation of activities that bordered on state-sponsored terrorism, which it wasn’t, but sometimes to keep the hands of the people clean, the hands of the government had to get dirty.
Every agent knew the score. Get captured in the field, you die with everything you know. For most, they accepted this burden because they didn’t have much else in life. No family, few if any friends. Sean, however, was different. His parents were still alive and in good health. If he disappeared, it would devastate them, but after he’d been approached to join Axis, he felt called to the task as if it was destiny.
He continued to watch the men loading the trucks.
According to his intel, they would be moving out in an hour, as soon as all of the cargo was loaded. If the trucks got out, there was no way Sean could stop them all.
Each of the moving vans was designated for a different destination, but every one of them had something in common.
The buyer.
Sean’s intel said a terrorist organization known as Blood Moon had setup the buy, and the weapons distributed would provide extremist cells in major cities all over Europe with the capability to cause mass carnage.
Their plan, as Sean understood it, was to arm their soldiers and send them into public places such as train stations, malls, outdoor markets, locations where thousands of people congregated at once.
Armed to the teeth, these terrorists could wreak havoc, cause chaos, and result in tighter control by governments, removing freedoms from their people in the name of public safety.
Sean’s job was to disarm all of them before they ever got the weapons, leaving the cells essentially naked. He knew if he was successful, it would buy the cooperating agencies much needed time to track down the individual cells before they could find another arms dealer.
Failure wouldn’t just mean his death, but the deaths of thousands, perhaps more. Such attacks often bred copycats. If one organization claimed responsibility, others would follow.
The task weighed heavy in Sean’s mind. The lives of untold thousands were counting on him and they didn’t even know it.
He’d studied the facility intensely before arriving on the scene. Sean knew every way in and out of the old building—unless there were some kind of secret passages that had been constructed after the original design.
He doubted the current tenants would have constructed such modifications, but you could never really know. Sean brushed off the doubt-filled paranoia. He returned the binoculars to his gear bag and rechecked the extra magazines in his vest and on his belt.
The chilly rain didn’t pierce Sean’s watertight shell jacket and pants, but beads of cold moisture rolled down his forehead and off his face. He’d been trained to ignore such elements, things he couldn’t control. Always focus on the things you can control, he learned in his training. That mantra was one of the big reasons Sean played poker. Luck was an element he couldn’t control, but in poker, there were key decisions to be made—all based on math, psychology, and logic—that could make or break a person’s session, or career.
The stakes had never been higher than they were at this moment. Although, the same could be said of most Axis missions.
Staring through the scope, he considered taking out the men one at a time, but he knew that wouldn’t work. He could eliminate one or two, three maybe, if he was lucky. But the second the first guy went down, all the others would be spooked. More importantly, the main target, the man running the show, would get away.
The elusive Vladimir Pushnaya had managed to slip through the fingers of Interpol and the CIA more times than they could count. It wasn’t as if the man kept a low profile. He could be found, it was just a matter of knowing where and when.
Sean originally discovered the man at a gentlemen’s club in Moscow more than three weeks before. Utilizing a combination of tracking tech and a series of contacts, Sean managed to follow Pushnaya through Europe, bouncing from Russia to Poland, Romania, Hungary, and eventually here, to Moldova.
The former Soviet state provided excellent cover for shady underground dealings for men like Pushnaya. Being a relatively small, obscure nation, Moldova was easily overlooked by most international law enforcement agencies or defense ministries. Home to many vineyards and wineries, the Moldovan citizens also didn’t recognize the many corrupt dealings happening right under their noses. They were too busy working, producing some of the world’s best red wines. On top of that, their economy was finally beginning to click and people across the country were discovering newfound economic freedom, along with the ability to enjoy some of their traditional cultural pleasantries. Things that were taken for granted in other parts of the world, such as sitting down with friends for a cup of coffee, were now the center of a day’s activities.
Sean found that the Moldovan people appreciated the little things much more than folks back in the states—a fact that saddened Sean to a degree.
Now, he had Pushnaya cornered. Sean had been waiting for the right time to make a move and take the man down, along with his entire operation. This seemed like the perfect opportunity.
He straightened up onto his knees and looped his pack over the left shoulder. Clutching the rifle to his chest, Sean retreated farther into the shadows and through the open window he’d used to gain access to the rooftop.
Sean climbed down a rickety ladder. The pistols on his hips and outer thighs weighed heavily, but he’d trained hard through the years, and his muscles handled the extra pounds without much trouble.
He scurried over to the nearest door. It hung slightly open. There, he waited, listening, watching. Rain pounded the tin roof and metal walls. The sound reverberated throughout the enormous mill. It might have annoyed some. Sean liked the sound, and for more than one reason. It enabled him to move faster without fear of being detected.
Stopping at the door, he was about to pry it open and dart across the loading yard to a stack of old pallets when he froze. A flashlight panned across the ground nearby. It swiveled to the left, then right, as the person carrying it searched for signs of trouble.
Sean bit his lower lip. A patrol guard this far off the perimeter? The thought annoyed him, but it only meant he would have to start dancing a little sooner than planned.
He leaned back against the inner wall and waited, watching as the circle of light drew closer to his position. Sean drew a tactical knife from his belt and waited, measuring his breaths in a slow, even rhythm, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.