Mission #1: Project Whetstone (Christmast 2013 part 1)

Mission #1: Project Whetstone

 Wednesday December 25, 2013.
10:15 am.

A garbage bag stuffed with discarded and shredded wrapping paper lay in the middle of the empty living room floor. The television held images of a dancing fire burning brightly in someone else's fireplace while Christmas music played. Each of us were still pajama-clad and sitting around the dining room table feasting on traditional Christmas morning breakfast: monkey bread and cocoa moo (aka chocolate milk). Knowing that we were awaiting a call that would relay details of the initiation process into IMF, my phone was sitting next to me at the table.

My phone rang.

A call from an unknown number.

Father questioned my choice of Fantasmic music as my ringtone but hey, I love it. Don't judge me.

This blogpost would be WAYYYYYY too long if I typed out every single cryptic message we received, so I'll summarize:

All three secret-agents-to-be would receive codenames. I, Mountaineer, was the team leader. Freelancer and Phoenix were my teammates. Oracle (Mother) was in charge of logistics and transportation. Raptor (Father) was in charge of communication between the team and Headquarters. There were three missions that would take place over the course of the day. Mission one was focused on retrieving a thumbdrive containing project 'Whetstone' that had critical information contained on it. Civilians were NOT to know of our mission and in the case that we were captured or killed, the Secretary would disavow all knowledge of our information.

Each of us (Mountaineer, Freelancer, and Phoenix) were texted identical set of longitude and latitude coordinates. With the magic of GoogleMaps, we were able to discover the location where Raptor had scheduled intel to be dropped. Discretion being key for the safety of any civilian eyes who might be reading this report...intel was found in the designated location (under a bench at a bus stop).

This started us on a hunt that last for about an hour as we traveled across the city following these different clues. Tasks included wishing a family 'Merry Christmas' in Norwegian (please note: GoogleTranslate makes the pronunciation much more difficult than it actually is), traveling to the classroom where Freelancer attends early morning seminary five days a week, and locating a handicapped parking sign at a local park.

It was at this point, we were giving coordinates to a safehouse where the thumbdrive containing Project Whetstone was hidden. As we received text messages from an unknown individual that I began referring to as 'Q' (Seriously people, the humor is much better if you've seen James Bond movies and/or the tv series 'Alias'), we were warned that hostiles were in the area of this safehouse and they might fire at us with super soakers. Having a twenty minute drive between our current location and this safehouse, I texted Q to ask him how many hostiles our intel suggested were in the area. We were told that the information was unknown at this time. I asked again, asking for just an estimate so the three completely unarmed still-basically-in-pajamas agents could have some idea of what to expect.

Q responded thusly: "Cannot say as this is a party line. Comms being monitored. This line is being cut. Good luck IMF. This message will now self-destruct".

I sent one final text message in response, informing Q that he had been fired. (To this day, the three agents do not know the formal identity of the agent referred to as 'Q'. We would like to take this opportunity to commend him for his impressive improvisational skills and wish him a Merry Christmas).

To say that we were paranoid to approach this random house in the middle of suburbia California was an understatement. I stood watch, looking frantically up and down the street for the first sign of hostiles armed with super soakers, while Phoenix and Freelancer went to work looking for the thumbdrive. We found an odd duct-tape-wrapped object about the size of a thumbdrive and unwrapped to discover that it was, indeed, the necessary object. (No, there were no super soakers involved. Yes, we were all a little disappointed).

Returning home, we plugged the thumbdrive in to see a message informing us that Project Whetstone had been safely recovered and the Secretary had left a Christmas present out by our recycling bin.

I would gladly tell you what that present was....but if I told you, then I'd have to kill you ;)

END OF MISSION ONE. 

Confession: I was too lazy to write all 3 missions up in 1 big long post. The other missions have been written about, just in two different posts on this same blog. They're pretty easy to find and not cleverly named so there shouldn't be too much confusion.