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They had been told they fit the target's psyche profile perfectly; nubile young women easy enough to mistake for minors sealed in skintight red latex, sporting 8" platform heels and little machinepistols. It was true; the target was quite specific. The wigs were a stab in the dark by ECHELON but, it was assumed, they couldn't hurt and in any case mostly concealed their headseats, which were not part of the fetish. This was also true; the wigs would not hurt the overall aesthetic, and they would hide the headsets. This was also one of ECHELON's first mistakes; the headsets were part of the fetish. Even so, ECHELON had largely been correct; the wigs wouldn't hurt. Other mistakes that ECHELON made, however, would prove fatal. 

Their faces and bodies certainly looked young enough that the impression they were minors would stand up to close surveillance; both women were short, under 157cm, with taut, lithe bodies, long limbs, very small breasts and large heads with enormous, lightly-coloured eyes. A few minor surgical treatments gave them the upturned noses and full cheeks that were required to complete the look. Their appearance was where the lies began, however, as both of them were out of their teens, if only just.  

Lt Jaeger had graduated West Point the previous year with top marks, and had rallied hard for a spot in the Green Berets (and had deserved it) before she'd been selected for ECHELON. Pte Waters had been an Olympic brat her entire life, winning an impressive assortment of medals in gymnastics before she aged out of that program, then landing in pentathlon and doing well in international competition while training for the Tokyo Olympics. A mate sold her on the service before they rolled around and when COVID hit she realized they would probably never happen. She was also campaigning for a special forces billet when she'd been called up to ECHELON. Lt Jaeger was 23. Pte Waters had just turned 20.

The reasoning was simple; a full-scale attack on the compound would likely just alert the target and allow them to escape or, worst case scenario, spook and send out the code. Given the level of non-web accessible surveillance a small strike team was also inadvisable. Even the best operators would likely just be overwhelmed and killed. The only weakness that ECHELON had definitively been able to identify was the targets penchant for young, or rather very young women sealed up in latex. It was thought that if the infiltrators presented in a way that was irresistible to the target the target they would demand that the operators be taken alive, giving them the tactical edge they'd need to complete their mission. 

This was ECHELON's reasoning as explained to the two young operatives. It was a tangled knot of optimistic assumptions, half-truths, lies of omission, and the odd kernel of actionable intelligence. The fact that the target had a penchant for torturing young women to death while they were sealed up in latex was not disclosed to them. Even so, they were told that the metal rings mounted to their collars, if given a stout tug, would detonate their suicide packs and spare them the various indignities that captured female operatives the world over expected. This also was a lie, though they both took comfort from it, and both of them were confident that, should the moment come, they would have the strength to do what was necessary. 

In truth, ECHELON's plan was more diabolical than what had been explained to the operators who were being sent in, essentially, as human bait. The surgical procedures that the young women had been told were for the purposes of giving them cute little piggy noses and round, girlish cheeks had been camouflage for subtle but profound alterations to their immune systems that would render their vaginal discharge into lethal poison for the target, and only the target. It would also ultimately poison the operatives themselves, giving them an extremely limited shelf-life, but given the importance of the operation and their intended use this was considered irrelevant. 

The operative's suicide packs were indeed packed with enough explosives to blow them and anyone in their immediate vicinity into chunked meat, but the women actually had no way to trigger them themselves. The collar rings that they placed so much faith in, telling themselves that if worst came to worst they need not fear rape or torture as they trained for their mission, were a blind, as were the packs themselves. In fact it would be easy to remove them without detonating them, rendering the girls apparently safe for the target to "enjoy". 

ECHELON's true plan was brilliantly callous; it expected the girls to fail in their mission and be captured. Even if one of them was killed, or managed to suicide by means other than her self-destruct system, the analysts and their computers still projected a high degree of certainty that the other would survive to endure the worst that the target had to offer. It would be the worst, it was true, and a few of the younger analysists shuddered to think of what was going to happen to the young women when they went home to their own families and looked at their own daughters or wives. A fate worst than death, to be sure, but then, the girls, no, women, they would correct themselves, had volunteered, hadn't they? This was what they'd signed up for, wasn't it? And in any case it'd all be over in a few days or weeks, at most. And really, what were the lives, or deaths, of a few young women, talented though they might be, stacked up against all the money and resources that ECHELON stood to gain? Think of all the good ECHELON could do with it! And what were two little sluts worth anyway? Nothing. 

The girls trained, meanwhile, in a secret reproduction of the target's compound west of Langley, Virginia. By day they did weapon drills and practiced CQB. At night they learned seduction techniques from a high-heeled parade of escorts, spies, and sex therapists. How to strut in platforms, how to bite your lip just so, how to trap a man (or woman) with a single glance. Once, one of the escorts had managed to slip into the subterranean compound and wandered around for seven minutes before she'd been located. ECHELON had convinced itself with judicious applications of sodium thiopental, a blowtorch, and a pair of pliers that she'd acted alone, apparently out of curiosity. The sludge of dissolved blood, bone, tissue, mobile, clothing, and acid that was all that remained of her had been poured into a deep ravine on the south end of the property, though the young operatives knew nothing of this. 

Occasionally, on a light day, the girls made love to one another. It had started almost as a joke, an escalating game of trying newly-acquired seduction techniques that had proved, to their mutual surprise as both considered themselves heterosexual, all too effective. After three months in virtual isolation it had transformed into something deeper; a frenzied affair carried out with the desperation that only the damned who know their fate can muster. This too was part of ECHELON's plan. Select videos of the women, recorded in secret, were already making the rounds on the darkweb sites the target was known to frequent.

By the time the morning of their mission arrived the girls couldn't wait for it. They knew that the chances were high that one or both of them would be killed, but after four months of training it simply no longer mattered. Each day was an eerie clone of the one that had proceeded it, the only change being the depth of their feelings for one another. It was a cycle that had to end and they were elite athletes, and soldiers, and they needed this mission more than air or food or sex. They wanted to test themselves and this was the only possible next step in their evolution. When their driver asked for a demonstration of what they'd learned before he took them to the helipad they didn't hesitate...