Sarah Stevens and Vince Hennessee are two members of Task Force 125.
That designation denotes a group of people specially selected for "clandestine counter-terrorism operations. Few people know about this task force. It was a tight knit group of highly trained and dedicated individuals who were sent into impossible situations and expected to succeed.
When we first meet the people in Task Force 125, it is being led by Hennessee on a mission to take down a very nasty but still handsome and charming drug lord working closely with Al Qaeda. The group had managed to get one of their members, a woman named Dana, to infiltrate the cartel and to seduce the kingpin and then to set him up for elimination. In the month or so of her mission, she fell in love with the man and thought he felt the same so when the moment to end him came, she instead protected him. He thanked her by tossing her out of a helicopter 50 feet above the sea.
So it is for that reason that Hennessee, a former member of the Marine Corps' elite Force Recon and holding the rank of Major, made a promise to himself that as he began the long and painful search for another female to take her place, the next one "had to be tough as nails and cold as ice".
Enter Sarah Stevens.
Airman Stevens when we first say hello. Getting ready to deploy to Kuwait with the U.S. Air Force. According to her commanding officer, she was "a good troop ... Twice named Airman of the Quarter and even named Squadron Airman of the Year. You have excellent test and annual rating scores. You're one of my best Fire Team Leaders and a bang-up Desk Sergeant". She was also overweight. 65 pounds over the limit. And had been so for the last three evals. So instead of packing to head to the Middle East, she was packing to leave the Service at its request. To make the day even better, when she went to tell her current boyfriend about her disaster, she finds him with a naked man.
In his parting words to Stevens, the CO had handed her a card with the number of a "Boot Camp" which would help her get back into shape. It would not save her career but it might be of use in her civilian life. Having struck what she thought of as the bottom in her professional and personal life, she reluctantly made the call.
The boot camp was unlike anything she had ever been a part of. Losing the weight was a big goal. Training her far more than the Air Force ever had in how to stay alive in the craziest of situations and how to make the other guy not make it out of the fight. Learning surveillance techniques, both following and not being followed or at least know if you were. The list went on and on and so did the drills and Stevens was constantly aware of how much she hated it all and how much she was loving it.
And when it was finally over, she was offered a position in the Task Force. And she knew she was ready.