Alex Wolfe and Skylar Cruz are agents with Vector.
That organization is a newly formed experimental covert group led by a U.S. Army colonel named Abraham Kasim, a highly experienced military leader who had spent a "lifetime of tracking nefarious government research groups and bioterrorists". He saw not only a need for such a team but also the means to get it created and funded. He pled "his case to Brigadier General Heidi Liang, the commander in charge of USAMRIID (the United States Army Medical Research and development Command). Six months ago, she'd signed off on Kasim's proposal, and Vector Team was born. While other government agencies were limited by pesky things like law, protocol, and diplomacy, Vector operated in near anonymity. They could react quickly, without deliberation, to risky threats where other intelligence agencies or military units were prohibited from rapid response."
"Vector's operations center was housed in a nondescript office building on the main campus of USAMRIID. The other officers, scientists, and administrators in the surrounding buildings knew almost nothing about the small facility labeled Hazardous Material Disposal Unit or about the six-man team that worked there."
One interesting twist to the relationship between the nascent Vector and the head of USAMRIID was that "Kasim was supposed to somehow bridge the divide between showing her Vector was useful while keeping her in the dark about their exact operations."
In Kasim's mind, "Vector was the tool the United States needed to combat the burgeoning threats in the biological warfare arena. Or at least, that had been the idea." Being so new and as yet unproven, any mission that did not go perfectly could bring Vector down and Kasim was well aware that no mission ever sent perfectly.
This is the first mission for Vector that Wolfe and Cruz have been on; indeed, it was the first real mission for the organization itself and as such, it was the time "to prove the black-box organization was more than just a discretionary line item on a federal budget. That they could be instrumental in fighting the shadowy war against biological and chemical weapons".
"As part of Vector's operational protocols, he and Cruz were not officially employed by the United States government. No intelligence agency would claim them. That gave the US government plausible deniability in case their mission devolved into an explosive scandal.
The two Vector operatives that we follow in these adventures are:
Alex Wolfe - an agent quite experienced in the clandestine services, he spent a decade in the CIA before being recruited into Vector. He is described as blond-haired with blue eyes, a "decidedly Scandinavian appearance".
Skylar Cruz - a dark brown haired former Marine helicopter pilot with several years of service including some extremely dangerous one spent flying missions in Afghanistan. Her last flight had ended badly and cost her a limb. Even with a prosthetic right leg, though, "she had a habit of walking with her shoulders back, chin up like the world belonged to her."
Good Lines:
- Regarding a target's looks, Cruz comments, "Guy's got a face like a blind carpenter's thumb".