Agent Jennifer Bryan: an Attack in Manila
by mrmonster
I woke up early that morning to make waffles and bacon. I rarely allowed my sons to eat anything sugary for breakfast, but I liked to do something nice for them anytime I was about to leave the country.
“Morning honey.” Olivia, my wife, said as she came to the kitchen to get some coffee. “Need any help packing?”
“No thanks, I got my suitcase packed yesterday.” I said.
“Cool, I’ll go wakeup Taio and Bolin.” She said as she went to their bedrooms
Taio and Bolin are our adopted sons from China; one ten years old, the other eight. China normally doesn’t allow same-sex couples to adopt, but having connections like mine allowed for a certain few documents to be forged and for a male CIA agent to pretend to be my husband during the adoption meetings.
They were both the best and the hardest part of my life. I hated that I always had to lie to them about what I was really doing. I couldn’t let them know that their mom’s work trips involved fighting terrorists, drug traffickers, and enemy spies. It’s hard enough on Olivia, I can’t put that burden on the boys.
Maybe when they’re adults, I’ll tell them the truth about everything I’ve done to secure peace and democracy throughout the world, but for now, all they have to know is that I’m going to Manila to advise their economic panel on trade policy.
______________________
After breakfast, I went to take the Washington DC metro to the airport. I arrived at Reagan National early so I could meet Gregory Mitchell in the airport Starbucks. It’s basically our unofficial meeting room at this point.
“Morning.” He said. “I got you a vanilla latte.”
“Thanks.” I said as I took a sip. He normally paid for my coffee, and knew exactly what I enjoyed.
“How’re the kids?” He asked.
“Good.” I said. “They goth just got their green belts in karate. Bolin is falling behind a little bit in school, but Olivia arranged for him to get after school tutoring.”
“Speaking of Olivia, how’s she doing?”
“Good.” I said. “The hospital still keeps her busy, thankfully her mom is in town this week, so the boys will always have someone to watch them.”
“Excellent.” He said.
If you think his questions were out of genuine care, you’d be mistaken. Maybe they’re slightly motivated from a sense of paternalism, but he’s trained to follow the personal lives of his agents. He needs to know about any possible way we could become compromised, or susceptible to bribery.
“Whatever you do in The Philippines, please be careful.” Gregory Mitchell said to me. “This branch of Al-Muhima is dangerous, they will target you personally if they find out you’re in Manila.”
“Thank you, but I’ve beaten Al-Muhima before.” I said. “And I’ll do it again.”
I was in The Philippines at the request of the NICA, The Philippines’s intelligence agency. The Philippines has long been a hotspot for Al-Muhima’s drug production and exports, but that began to change as the Filipino military began to heavily cracking down on their operations. As such, Al-Muhima had begun a campaign of vicious attacks. The Filipino city of Manila had recently been the victim of a bombing at a downtown shopping center, killing eleven people. The NICA asked for CIA expertise on finding the terrorists responsible and preventing anymore attacks.
So I met with Filipino Special Agent Gabirel Bautista at an NICA office, hoping that together we could prevent any more attacks.
“Good morning.” I said as we met in an NICA conference room.
“Yes, good morning.” Gabriel said to me. “Thank you for coming all the way from the United States on such short notice.”
“You’re welcome.” I said. “Do you have any active leads on Al Muhima?”
“Not yet.” He replied. “The attack took us completely by surprise. Truth be told, we thought our branch of Al-Muhima was on the verge of surrender.”
And then, all of a sudden, the lights went out in the room. In fact, they seemed to go out for the whole building.
“Are power outages normal?” I asked.
“No.” Agent Bautista answered. “And the backup generator should’ve gone on by now.”
Moments later, we heard a deafening explosion, one that appeared to destroy an entire wall.
“Shit.” I said as I drew my handgun from my boot holster. Bautista reached into his desk drawer to pull out one of his own.
I heard someone shout something in Filipino. I turned to Bautista and whispered “What did they say?”
“Find the American.” He whispered back.
And then, the gunshots started. Just from the sounds, I could tell they were using automatic assault rifles; most likely AK-47s, since those are the most commonly used by Al-Muhima insurgents.
As they started to get closer to Bautista’s office, I turned to him and said “They’re gonna kill us if we stand still; we need to make a move, and we need to make it now.”
“Agreed.” he said as he stepped towards the door. “On three, we burst through and fire in their direction. One…”
“Two…”
“THREE!” He exclaimed as he threw open the door. Both of us rushed out, and faced a different direction of the hallway. We didn’t have a visual on any insurgents, so I said “Follow me, I think the gunshots are coming from this way.”
We hurried towards the sound of their gunshots. Later, we could hear them shouting in Filipino. While I still couldn’t understand them, I think it was fairly obvious that they were asking where “the American” was.
We finally caught up to them; a group of four insurgents, with a group of NICA staff corralled in a conference room, with guns pointed at all of them. As we got closer, I could see that this group was surrounded by the corpses of dead NICA agents.
Agent Gabriel and I both opened fire, killing two instantly and injuring a third. The injured one started firing back at us, but couldn’t hold his gun right due to his injury, and Bautista took him out with a headshot.
The last insurgent grabbed a woman by the back of her collar, held his AK-47 right up to her head, and shouted at us in Filipino.
“He’s saying he’ll kill her if we don’t lower our weapons.” Bautista said as he began to slowly lower his gun. Moments later, I did the same.
Predictably, the moment our guns were lowered, he attempted to turn his gun on us. But what he didn’t account for was the concealed pocket taser I had in my sleeve. In just the blink of an eye, less time than he could
even fire off a single bullet,, I already had my taser jolts lodged firmly in his neck. The moment it took effect, he started squirming like a fish dropped onto dry land.
“We needed a lead on Al-Muhima.” I started. “And it looks like we’ve got one.” I said before kicking him in the head.
_______________
Special Agent Bautista interrogated him for two hours. I helped at first, but I wasn’t much good considering he had to translate everything I was saying.
Nonetheless, our new friend remained stone cold silent. Despite Bautista’s grueling series of questions, he did not say a word. However, luckily enough, we didn’t need him to; the NICA’s IT department was able to unlock his phone, allowing us to access all of his texts.
“Anything useful?” I asked as Bautista was reading them.
“Dear God.” He exclaimed. “One says they’re going to attack the airport at 2:00 this morning. Which is in seven minutes.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” I asked. “Let’s go.”
__________________________________
We ran to the parking garage together, got in an NICA issued cruiser, and drove off to engage the militants.
"Local police are on their way." Agent Bautista said. "But they may not be up to the task. Soldiers won't be able to get to the site for at least an hour."
“Then it sounds like we’ll have to do this ourselves.” I remarked. “Got any weapons in here?”
“Yes, I have a shotgun in the trunk.” He answered.
“Excellent.” I said as I reloaded my handgun.
Gabriel tuned the radio into police frequencies. After listening to what sounded like a pretty frantic dispatcher, he told me “She says that there are active shooters at the airport, four of them.”
And then, we arrived. Even as we approached, I could already hear the screaming and running passengers. There was such a badly congested line of stalled cars that we had to pull over and make it to the airport on foot.
“Do you have visual on any hostiles?” Gabriel asked as he cocked his shotgun.
“Not yet.” I said, although I kept my handgun at the ready.
Finally, we found one of the militants along the dropoff zone, gunning down travelers attempting to flee the airport.
Gabriel fired a blast with his shotgun, but at that range, he only grazed him. And then, the terrorist turned towards us and began firing.
We had to take cover behind support columns. I then threw a Howler right beside him to make his ears bleed. Unfortunately, at that range, we were also feeling its effects, just not quite as severely. While he was struggling just to regain his senses, I closed the distance and put two rounds in his chest.
“One down.” I said as I faced the airport entrance. “Three to go.”
____________
Two more of them were keeping a group of passengers hostage in the lobby. I briefly coordinated a plan with Gabriel, and then we made our move.
I fired twice, at a range where I couldn’t possibly hit them, and then ran towards an ice cream shop to take cover behind the counter. It was risky, and I came just seconds away from being shot, but I gave Gabriel just the chance he needed to blast two slugs that filled the hostiles with lead.
The hostages were free to go, leaving just one more we had to deal with. And we could hear his shots, echoing down the security hallway all the way from the terminal.
____________
The security hall was empty, except for the corpses of dead security guards whose blood was still wet on the floor. This must have been where the terrorists began their assault.
From there, we continued to follow the trail of bodies all the way inside the terminal, where the passengers had nowhere to run and hardly anywhere to hide.
When I saw him, attacking passengers trying to hide underneath the tables in the terminal restaurant, I fired but missed. He then turned and fired back at me, forcing me and Gabriel to run towards cover of our own.
We were separated (myself behind a store counter, him being a service desk), and neither of us could move out of cover without risking our heads getting blown off.
“JENNIFER, NOW!” Gabriel shouted as he risked everything; he stood up, raised his gun, and quickly fired off a blind shot that stood no chance at anything more than a lucky graze. He fired again, only to find that his gun was out. The terrorist then shot him in the stomach.
It was clearly bad news for him, but he didn’t care; because he bought me just enough of a distraction to rise out of cover, aim my handgun, and fire at his chest.
To my surprise, it didn’t kill him, it just sent him stumbling backwards. He must have been wearing Kevlar. Worse, I was out of ammo.
I ducked back down, and he started walking towards me, firing all the way hoping to get in a lucky shot.
“It’s over, American.” He taunted. “Today is just the beginning of a long and brutal…
He finally found the counter I was hiding under, only to see nothing. He didn’t hear that I scurried to another part of the store. And from there, all it took was one blast of my taser to knock him flat on his face.
And then I cuffed him. As much as I wanted to kill him, I knew that he'd be more valuable to us and to the NICA alive.
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Not long after the attack, I met Agent Bautista in the hospital.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Lucky.” He said. “Doctors said an inch to the left, and I’d be dead.”
Gabriel then “Our prisoner’s cellphone continued giving us valuable information. We now know loads about Al-Muhima’s local drug operations, so much that by this time tomorrow, we’ll have dealt a tremendous blow to Al-Muhima’s finances.”
“Excellent.” I replied. I learned early on that fighting a terrorist group’s income was just as effective as fighting the group itself.
“Now, if you need anything else, just email me.” I said. “In the meantime, my kids are probably missing me back in Washington DC.”
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