[center][b]Chapter 3
Golden Triangle[/b][/center]

[b]Yangon 
The Republic of the Union of Myanmar
2132 Local Time[/b]

Tara had only been to Myanmar once before and she hated every minute of it. The country, formerly called Burma, had been part of the British Raj during the height of the mighty British Empire. If India was the shining jewel of the Raj, then Burma had always been a pearl that wasn't worth the time or effort to polish up. The only thing that seemed worth a damn in Burma was the opium trade, which thrived to this day and made Myanmar one of the largest producers of opium and heroin in the world. The country overall constituted nothing but poor farmers with very little industry that wasn't worth the time or investment. It was such a non-entity during the Second World War that the Allies were content with dragging their feet with the Japanese while millions of starved Burmese. After the War when the British Empire was finally in its death rattle, Burma became its own country known as Myanmar. It soon became a socialist military dictatorship and, despite the American's love of land wars with Asian communist, they did very little for fifty years while the dictatorship ruled. Another sign that nobody really seemed to care about the country or its people.

With the general apathy towards all things Burmese, Tara found it very appropriate that she would end up in Myanmar on a mission that SIS viewed as second-rate. Steed and Peele were in Yemen, searching for the terrorist who started the whole mess that the British and Americans were involved in. She was on stakeout duty, looking for a hacker. Granted this hacker was impressive, one didn't just hack into a CIA satellite and remote control a drone strike on accident, but this job could have easily been done by Six's local station staff. But sending 00's on all fronts showed the Americans that the British were fully committed to fixing this fuck up. 

Three days since an American drone strike had killed the president of Yemen, and the Yemeni people along with most of the Arab world were rioting outside US embassies. Internet traffic pointed to an increase in militant jihadist recruitment across the entire region. The whole intelligence community was certain an attack on an embassy somewhere was imminent. The politicians in Washington, specifically those not part of the president's party, were calling for congressional committees and presidential impeachment. The blowback for the British wasn't as bad, but it would severely damage their so-called special relationship with the United States if it was discovered their intelligence had been faulty and led to the accidental assassination.

Tara sat in the ratty motel room beside the window and watched the three story walk-up apartment through the slit in the blinds. Two and a half days sitting on the location, and she had yet to see anything. The gadgets Q Branch sent with her had failed to detect any electronic signals or signs of life inside the apartment she was watching. The presence of a western female with blonde hair was bound to attract attention if she conducted the stakeout on foot, so instead she used the QRT for on the ground operations. SIS's Quick Response Team was a small four man team made up of former SAS members like herself. They worked as a unit and carried out more military inclined tasks than the 00's, although rank dictated they were junior to any 00's working in the field. Nick Poole, 006, had been pulled from the QRT and given 00 status, and Tara herself had been training for the QRT when she was given a chance to go out for a 00 spot. 

"007 to QRT," Tara said into the walkie talkie in her hands. "Sound off. Give me a sit-rep, lads." 

[i]"Bravo Leader here and I got nothing,"[/i] said squad leader Captain Price. Tara looked through the window and saw Price in the shadows beside a parking garage, blending in with the concrete and oil stains.

[i]"Bravo Two, same here,"[/i] Price's number two, MacTavish said, from his vantage point on a roof beside Tara's motel.

[i]"Bravo Three, and I don't see a thing."[/i]

[i]"Bravo Four, and all I see is a dog taking the largest shit I've ever seen. Seriously, looks like it's bigger than him."[/i]

[i]"Maybe we can name that turd Brass Angel, Gaz?"[/i] Price asked with a wry chuckle.

"I second that," said Tara. "Stay on your positions and keep your wits about you." Tara sighed and looked at her watch before continuing. "If I don't get any movement in the house by midnight, we're going in."

Tara put the walkie talkie down and lit up a cigarette to wait. Most people had an image of the spy game inside their head and this wasn't it. The job wasn't martinis and exploding pens anymore, it was waiting and watching and maybe taking action. Nearly sixty hours of stakeout here would lead to maybe a minute of action when she and the QRT raided the house, and that would just be a routine sweep that would more than likely lead to a dead end.

[I]"I think I see something,"[/i] MacTavish reported at twenty to midnight. [i]"Male Caucasian wearing a trench coat, appears to be two meters tall."[/i]

"I see him," Tara replied, stubbing out her sixth cigarette of the night. There were only two other tenants in the entire apartment building, two elderly Burmese women who went out in the morning and stayed inside the rest of the day. The man heading towards the stairs didn't seem like the type to call on either of the old men. The trench coat was the wrong type of dress for hot and muggy Yangon. He carried a satchel marked with a golden triangle on the side. Tara took note of how he walked, how he carried himself, and any other features that would make her remember him. She saw his scarred face and stopped cold as he disappeared into the stairwell leading to the third floor. 

"Fucking hell... Fucking hell!" 

Tara jumped up from her seat and pulled her Glock from her luggage and checked it was fully loaded and ready to go. She put in her wireless earpiece and connected to the channel with the QRT.

"007 to QRT. Move in on the house and the man. It's Gareth Carlyle, gents."

[i]"Fucking hell,[/i] three of the men said almost at once.

"I know," she said as she tucked the gun into her waistband. "SIS public enemy #1. I want him taken alive if possible, but remember who he is and do not hesitate to put him down if need be."

[i]"Wait, who is this guy?"[/i] Bravo Three asked nervously.

Tara was already out of her motel room and bounding down the stairs. 

"He's a traitor and terrorist. Before that? He was my predecessor as 007."