Sidon District, Lebanon, Present Day

From under a dust-covered rough and ready tarp tent, Drake "Birddog" Woolf eyed the persistent stare camera feeds on his laptop monitor. No movement in the structure. The high-value target appeared to be literally sleeping in his "bed-down location." Others in the two-story refugee flat were also in deep slumber according to the four image panes on his computer's dust-caked display.

Drake blinked dry, bloodshot eyes to focus and wiped the screen with the back of an equally filthy hand. Americans like Drake, in this secret unit, were no strangers to the Levant, their periodic and established presence dating back to the 1980s when they started conducting human and signals intelligence against militant cell phones and other electronic communications. To Woolf, this ancient battleground was home to many of his non-official cover missions against Hezbollah and other targets of opportunity using classic espionage tradecraft and new high-tech bells and whistles.

Let's go, Drake. The dark voice prodded from within.

It's not time. Drake had more targeting preparation to do before rushing in and needed to keep focused on tasks beyond the kill.

His IBM ThinkPad was recycled from India and procured from the Middle East to fit a closer pattern of life to his indigenous cover legend and backstops. This meant he had to look the part to play the part if he was caught. The computer's screen cast a dim, hazy glow on Drake's tanned and chemically bronzed face. His foul breath passed through a four-year-old beard that hung like dark cloth from his emaciated cheekbones and flowed over cracked and blistered lips.

Woolf's tongue was swollen from dehydration. It made a slight clicking sound as he contemplated his move after days of surveillance. The quiet clicks had persisted since he was a young teen. Ever since that day, and even before he decided to speak again to the aunt and uncle who brought him back from a zombie-like state of mental purgatory.

Woolf knew he needed to take his meds, but he couldn't afford slowing down his mind. They could wait. He had business to attend to. But the voices would persist.

Drake switched screen views to his network and signal monitoring utility feeds for COMINT, or communications intelligence. He had to continue validating the target and ensure there was a strong connection if he was going to get what he needed for the job. And to get what he wanted for himself.

An internet protocol, or IP, address mapped to the house's location in addition to the other triangulated bearings that targeted the exact position of the known violent extremist. This showed the team supporting Drake from afar who was in the house and where the signals were coming from. It confirmed the baseball card, or BBC, as it was often called when the detailed descriptions of an adversary matched.

In addition, the National Security Agency's Global Access Operations brainiacs had pushed the highly classified Y-LOCKCHECK communications surveillance data to Drake's system fields, validating a bunch of other techie mumbo-jumbo that basically said in bits and bytes and data blips that, yes, the asshole is indeed in the house and plenty of his nasty pals are nearby.

There was little to no risk of a technical blink occurring that would allow the target to vanish. Billions of dollars' worth of American technology pointed at a two-bit shithead in a shithole location to ensure he was the right guy and staying under watchful eyes. This wide-reaching system surveillance captured personal details, pattern of life, communication linked associates, and stored media. A comprehensive electronic snare locked the target to Drake, call sign Birddog, the digital assassin who'd stalked his prey for nearly a month in the region.

Drake's direction-finding and ranging Amberjack antennae also ensured the proximate lockdown. Once all the electronics and intelligence gave undisputable validation, then it would be old-school, roll up the sleeves, hardware meets flesh time. Of course, the latter was outside of his current mandate but well inside of Drake Woolf's comfort zone and the professional expectations of his uncle Robert.

As Murphy's Law would have it, the signal on Drake's feed stuttered for a moment. "No, no, no, no, no, no." Drake refreshed his setting with the last few hours' worth of technical signal bearings, pummeling frequencies to recapture the trace. The cell phone data indicated the target was spoofing a device MAC address to hide traceability. "You tricky little shit," he whispered with a self-assured smirk as the IMSI phone ping responded to his Harris Hailstorm stingray cell-site simulator and surveillance intercept tool. He reconnected.

Check, check, checkmate ... motherfucker. Not sneaky enough. Drake gave the screen a middle finger. Nearing prep work completion, he keyed and pasted the code script for a payload hack to the phone that would remotely extract calls, contacts, and anything else from the target's phone to a cloud database.

Almost go-time.

His secondary tasking was to digitally capture bank transfer routing numbers that would also be swept up by the program written to search the target's device remotely. But personally, Drake needed a certain photo recognition from the crow, as he and his crew called terrorists. He'd handle that personally, and against orders. Drake knew the likelihood of a positive identification of the photo would be a million to one shot. Although, considering Drake's unofficial body count of those he'd shown the picture to, it was more like a million to upward of sixty when totaling all the up- close and personal terminations in the past decade. None of those men recognized the photo he presented at their time of final interrogation. And so he continued on his quest.

"Birddog to Halo Actual," Drake whispered. "Do you copy? Over."

"Halo Actual to Birddog. Good copy. Ready to come home? Over."

"Target handhold is locked. Just sent verification package to the mother ship. I'm clear to go say hello for final confirmation," Drake whispered. The tan skin-colored ear device and its four-millimeter boom microphone captured the fidelity and catapulted the communication up to the secure satellite relay.

"That's a negative, Birddog. You are red. Confirm. You are not green to shake hands. Stick to your script as fragged. You just help us develop the picture and confirm the BBC. Time to bug out. Do you copy? Over," the Operational Detachment Delta G Squadron commander, Blake Touhey, directed from the Beirut safe house over forty kilometers away.

Blake muted the mike and leaned to his right. "Man from Orange is on target. Chief, call our flyer. Temp hold payload on objective until he's outta there."

"Roger that. Not cleared hot on our end. I'll let 'em know," the chief validated.

"If they ask, tell 'em pre-strike HVI assurances are potentially compromised. We just need a minute to get him off the roof and headed for pickup," said the commander with a grin. He had referred to Orange as Drake Woolf's unit — the Intelligence Support Activity, known as Orange, Centra Spike, Grey Fox, and a host of other terms to mask the true identity of one of the most secretive military elements in existence.

"Move the boys in for extraction. This crazy Activity bastard got closer to this crow in a week than we did in a year of...