By Any Means (Patreon)

This NSFW (PG-13) story (19 images, 4K words) requires membership in a paid tier. This is Account #2 in the Secrets Of The World storyline.

Laylana, in “Laylana’s Forest Nightmare” ran into trouble in the form of a woman calling herself Natasha. There’s a lot more to the Secrets Of The World storyline, and “By Any Means” opens the door and gives a little peak!

 ~Ailana

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: 

Readers who look closely at the images will find subtle differences in what should be the same clothes and/or gear. Similarly, the generated faces may have minor variation (due partly to lighting, angle, and other effects). The slight variations should not detract from the story. 

The villa image was a photo-manipulation of an image from a travel site: HERE

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Natalie crouched down on all fours in the middle of the trail. This had better work…

For the second time, she screamed into the darkness. "Please… help… I… I know you are out here… You are supposed to be coming to the villa… to… to… I know you are out here somewhere!

A few seconds passed when Laylana Vals, a CIA agent in the Special Activities Group appeared. She was, surprisingly, also naked. 

"What's your name?" Agent Vals said, looking around vigilantly.

"Nat… Na… Natasha… Thank you for coming!" 

At that point, per the plan, one of the marksmen on Natalie’s team opened fire, sending a few carefully aimed rounds into the nearby trees followed by numerous blanks.

Natasha screamed as bark exploded from a nearby tree.

Laylana rushed to take cover behind a different tree. "Get up! Natasha! Get to cover!"

Two more rounds cracked in the night. The muzzle flash lit up the area around the shooter. Laylana took aim, watching Natasha out of the corner of her eye.

Natasha began to crawl toward a tree near her as her team member fired two more shots.

At that point, Laylana squeezed off two rounds of her own right toward the muzzle flash.

Natasha screamed again.

Two more shots rang out from up the hill.

Laylana looked at Natalie. "Get to cover and stay there!" 

At that point, Natalie stood up. She needed to get close enough to see Laylana’s gun.

When Natalie stood up, her teammate fired off another round; Laylana had to return cover fire. She did, spending two more rounds.

Laylana called out to Natalie."Get to cover! Now!"

The shooter fired again, from five meters away from the first spot. Laylana sent two more precious rounds up the hill.

Natalie could not believe it when her team member growled out an indication that he had been injured.

At that, a second member of Natalie’s team yelled to him to see how he was. 

"Flesh wound!" the first shooter answered.

Then, a barrage of shots blasted toward Laylana and Natasha from the second location. Natalie was screaming again, still standing in the open. Bark splinters were exploding from the trees and saplings were being snapped off by the rounds. This is going to work…

Laylana turned her M2.0 Shield toward the second shooter and tried to give Natalie cover.

Finally, Natalie moved out of the middle of the road. She was, by then only a step or two away from Laylana.

The fist shooter opened fire, then. Bark once again exploded from above Laylana's head.

Laylana turned her weapon toward him and fired once more.

At that, Natalie stopped moving and looked up the trail. She began jogging away, yelling to the hillside as she put distance between her and Laylana.

"That's nine rounds! Slide locked open!"

A standard Shield magazine held seven rounds and the extended magazine held eight. Add one in the chamber for a total of nine shots. Natalie had counted the rounds and was watching to see when Laylana was out of ammo.

Laylana could only watch as Natalie disappeared up the dark path. She backed up against a tree as Natalie rushed away.

Natalie ran down the trail as quickly as her bare feet could carry her. She left Laylana behind, naked, back pressed to a tree, gun out of ammo. By the time her team was done with Laylana’s camp, she’d have a long naked day ahead of her.

Laylana being naked wasn’t actually in the plan. It’ll make things interesting for the follow team. 

Natalie being naked, on the other hand, was part of the plan. Natalie thought it had value as a shock factor. She thought it might evoke sympathy and create a feeling of desperation. Anything to throw her off… She’s too good…

After a long jog into the waxing dawn, Natalie reached a waterfall that figured significantly into her plan. Waiting for her there was Gavin, her team’s second in command. 

He waited until she was ankle deep in the stream beside him, then he said, “You made it.”

Natalie looked around for her backpack but didn’t find it. “Where’re my clothes?”

“Up the trail.” He pointed. “We did what you said… She’ll have a tough time finding her way out of the stream.”

Natalie looked where the trail should have been. She knew where it was, but didn’t see it. 

“You know, boss, you look pretty good naked and smeared with mud.”

Natalie pointed where the trail should have been. “Shut up and go stand by my backpack.”

Gavin laughed and trudged through the shallow water and up onto the far bank. Natalie took a few minutes to wash off the mud she had streaked her body with noting that the sound of the waterfall was adequately loud.

She would shower quickly before starting the second phase of the operation. But getting the bulk of the mud off in the stream seemed like a worthy use of a few minutes.

When she was relatively clean, she stood up and looked at where the trail had been. Gavin’s efforts to hide where the trail exited the stream had been very effective. Natalie knew where to look and it was hard to find.

She paused one more time to listen to the waterfall, then followed Gavin’s path out of the stream and up the trail. She looked a second time at the work concealing the path. It was more than adequate. They just wanted to buy a little time.

Satisfied, she continued on up the path toward Gavin. I guess the easy stuff is done…

Natalie wasn’t sure that she and her team weren’t in over their heads. There was a lot at stake, and if anyone found out what they were actually doing… Natalie didn’t know what would happen and tried not to think about it.

It was no more than a couple dozen paces to where Gavin stood holding her backpack. Once there, she pointed and looked back at the stream. 

“The waterfall will be plenty loud enough. I think. As soon as she’s in the stream, we take off. Probably not a mission breaker if she hears the helicopter, but the more confused she is, the longer we can put distance between ourselves and what we are doing here.”

Gavin nodded, then held out the backpack. “Want this?”

Natalie took the backpack from Gavin, placed it on the ground, knelt down and pulled on her leggings first. “Did we get her gear off to process?”

“Confirmed,” Gavin replied. “Dimitri should be hot on your heels, once he gets what we need… Lab in a backpack… That guy’s something else.”

Natalie looked at Gavin. “So, we are good to go, here. Phase one… essentially complete. On to the real show… Once airborne… timing… You sure you can interrupt the cross-check?”

“In theory…” Gavin looked at Natalie closely. 

Natalie nodded. “Well, it’s sort of the hinge pin in our plan.”

Gavin nodded and looked off into the distance. “I know. Every piece of code works independently. There’s just no way to test it, without… you know… actually trying it…”

Natalie smiled. “Yeah, I know…”

Natalie walked back toward the waterfall and took a last look.

As she was returning to where Gavin stood, he pointed at her. “You sure you can fool the face recognition?

Natalie pulled a tank top out of the bag and stood up. “In theory.”

Natalie looked back down the trail toward where they had left Laylana. “Non-CIA face recognition software matches between 87% and 96%. That’s within tolerance to access low clearance satellite pics.”

Gavin nodded. “We could wait a while and these pictures will be on Google.”

Natalie was stepping into her shoes. “We don’t have that much time. Our opportunity window is pretty thin as it is.”

Gavin nodded. “Well, we dug deep to intercept Laylana’s pending orders and preempt them. It will be a long time before we can pull anything like this off again.”

“Then we better not blow it.” Natalie looked up the trail. “Let’s get going. Where are the bikes?”

Gavin pointed. “I moved them just up the hill.”

They were using electric Segway Dirt E Bikes that could run the trail at over 70 kilometers per hour. The Segway’s would take them to a somewhat luxurious villa they had found and… arranged to use. The helicopter would be waiting there to carry them to the embassy in Jakarta.

After not too long in the Segway’s Gavin stopped and got off. Natalie pulled up beside him and did the say.

Gavin pointed. “Villa is down there. Eva has been getting it ready.”

A few seconds away from where they parked the Segways, there was a nice path leading to the villa. Another of the team members, Eva, was standing there waiting.

“Everything’s ready,” Eva said as Natalie and Gavin walked on toward the villa.

Eva fell in after Natalie as she passed, then added, “Boss, don’t take this wrong, but you smell like forest.”

“I smell like a forest?”

Eva faked a cough. “Not a forest. Just forest… Like dirt, actually.”

Gavin looked back. “I don’t smell anything.”

Eva answered. “Men can’t smell anything when it matters.”

Natalie looked at Eva. “I washed in the stream… but I’m planning a fast shower ASAP.”

Eva nodded. “I turned the water heater on… took it off ‘standby’ to be more accurate.”

“Okay, good.”

“I flew the helicopter here very indirectly. I doubt the agent would have heard it.”

Natalie looked back again. “Also good. The less she knows, the longer it will take for her to clear up the mess we are making for her.”

“We’ll come in by Segway from the rally point when we get back from Jakarta,” Gavin said.

By then, they had reached the villa. When Eva caught up to Gavin she gave an exaggerated sniff. “You need to wash up, too, when you get out of the camos and into your next costume!”

Gavin smiled. “I was planning to do that.”

As soon as they entered the villa, Natalie headed for one of the bedrooms in which was a bathroom with a luxurious shower. “I’ll be fast.”

True to her word, Natalie was showered in only a few minutes. Her hair was still wet when she walked into another bedroom where Gavin was changing. There was, off the main part of the room, something of a nook with access to the bathroom and a big, walk-in closet. Gavin was standing in the nook with his clothes on the floor at his feet.

“I figured you’d be done before me… My outfit is in that closet…” Natalie shook her head.

Gavin looked at her, at the closet, then back at her, smiling. “I’m not done because I checked behind Eva to make sure her weapon sweep was solid. I told her to get rid of all the silverware, just in case. Laylana’s no green recruit. Death by fork would be embarrassing to explain to your family. Death by spoon… even worse!”

Natalie smiled. “Okay, acceptable. I don’t know why I feel like it’s important to actually see her face-to-face.”

Gavin looked at Natalie and said, “Go with your gut… Your instincts serve us well. So, that’s in the plan. We go with it.”

Just at that moment, Eva came into the doorway of the room they were in and looked curiously at them, smiling. “Well, now, what’s going on in here?”

Nataile looked back over her shoulder at Eva. “We are almost dressed. My outfit is in that closet. We’ll be ready.”

Eva shook her head. “I’m just the pilot, here. You don’t answer to me! Take your time.”

Gavin looked over at Eva. “Any word from the follow team?”

“She’s making decent time. We’ll need to take off in… they said next quarter hour, but she stops a lot and scouts around before she moves on.”

“As a good agent would,” Gavin added.

Eva nodded. “Might take a little longer for her to get to the waterfall.”

Gavin finally yielded the closet to Natalie and she put on her outfit for a trip to the embassy.

At that point, all they had to do was wait a little while for a call from one of the members of the follow team. As soon as that call came in, Natalie and Gavin boarded the helicopter and headed for Jakarta.

Getting to the embassy was routine. They drove into the city from an outlying heliport in a small car. As they drove, they reviewed the plans, finding no need to change anything, but coming to the same conclusion.

“We are counting on,” Natalie said, “your software working right and their facial recognition software working only so much.”

“We’ve done everything we can,” Gavin replied. “But, it’s your neck on the line. If you want to abort…”

Natalie interrupted. “No way. Our opportunity window is pretty narrow, as it is. If we are going to progress toward our objective, we need to do this now.”

As they approached the embassy compound, they parked within easy walking distance. Natalie got out of the car and looked at Gavin.

“Give me about 5 minutes, then do your magic.”

Gavin nodded. “Will do. Everything is ready. Triggering the code from here will be easy. Let’s hope it works.”

Natalie smiled. “It’d better or I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do to people I have no interest in even talking to.”

“I’m confident,” Gavin replied as Natalie started for the embassy.

She had forged credentials that would get her past the guards. After that, it was dicey. Her team had gained access to an unassigned agent code that would get her past the first level of security.

“Go right ahead, agent,” the guard at that checkpoint said.

Natalie made her way to the data center where she would download a few dozen satellite images to an SD card. That would only happen if the facial ID system wasn’t talking to the agent code system. Laytana’s real mission would have had her looking at activity around oil pipelines in the Middle East. Natalie was going to use her access token to look at images in central China.

But, if the two systems were talking, the data center would not have a check-through by Agent Vals, so even though the face matched—which Natalie hoped it would—it would not allow the download.

Natalie and her team had done a lot of deep digging to find a CIA agent whose face they could match. There had been a close match to Gavin’s, but they could never get above 82%. It took a long time before they found Layana and found that the match to Natalie was so high. That she was in the Special Activities Group was not really necessary, and her high security clearance actually complicated matters, but she was the best match they could find, so they picked her. Once she was selected, they just waited until they had a chance to use it. 

Natalie reached the security kiosk, put a clean, white cotton glove on her right hand, and punched up the login interface. She typed in Laylana Vals as the agent, then picked “biometrics” for authentication.

Here we go…

The system asked for a fingerprint. Natalie took out a piece of special tape Demitri had prepared with a fingerprint he lifted off one of the water bottles that was in the gear they gave to—and stole from—Laylana. She pressed it against the sensor. It didn’t match, and she got the “try again” message. Demitri had prepared four tapes. The second one worked; it matched what the system was looking for.

While she had been fussing with the fingerprints, the facial recognition system was deciding if her face matched. As soon as the fingerprint was approved, a box on the screen by “facial match” also got checked.

Natalie was in.

She wasted no time getting to a terminal and starting a query for the latest satellite images. She entered lat/long coordinates and a 200 kilometer radius. The system returned half a dozen files, and she started the download.

While the files were moving onto an SD drive, she retrieved two more things Demitri had prepared from the stolen gear. First, there was a long strand of Laylana’s hair. That was the easy one. Next, there was an envelope containing—as far as Natalie could tell—an almost nonexistent amount of dust. Demitri promised it was epithelial cells from some of Laylana’s clothes that he thought would match hands, wrists, and arms.

“I got some off her Shield,” Demitri had told Natalie.

The download was complete, so Natalie took the SD card, wiped the keyboard and surrounding area to remove her own fingerprints, then dusted the area with the epithelials. There would be lots of those cells in the public area, but any investigation would be trying to match to Laylana. Natalie wanted to make sure some cells would.

SD card safely tucked into a slot tailored to the inside of the waistband of her pants, Natalie left the data center, made her way out of the secure area of the embassy, and exited the compound. She took only a few satellite images of a remote area in the heart of China, but she left a trail of confusion behind her.

Laylana was a good agent, trusted and reliable. She’d not have a hard time convincing her handlers that she was innocent, but it would take time for an investigation to clear everything up. By the time Laylana was cleared, Natalie hoped her group would be well on the way to wrapping up the bigger plan of which getting the images was a preliminary step.

A few hours later, Natalie was ready to confront Laylana and send her back stateside. She entered the villa and found a locked door. It was just a regular interior door, so picking the lock was trivial.

Show time…

Natalie opened the door and Laylana looked back with a smile. "You look better than you did last time I saw you."

Her remark surprised Natalie. "Well… You… You seem no worse for your little naked frolic in the woods."

"I can assure you, there was no frolicking going on. Turns out, I quite enjoyed the freedom and simplicity."

Natalie thought the remark was pretty strong, given the circumstance. "Enjoyed… Is that so?"

Laylana at that point seemed done with pointless banter. "What do you want? You clearly have no intention to kill me or I would be dead. What do you want?"

Natalie smiled and took a deep breath. "We got what we wanted. The mission objective has been achieved."

Laylana did not seem to like how that sounded. She turned and looked out the window for a long moment, then looking back over her other shoulder, she looked Natalie right in the eye.

"Do you think we look like sisters?"

Natalie was shocked. She felt the smile fade from her mouth and she knew that Laylana could tell she was  startled. Is there any way she knows? Natalie didn’t think there could be, so she mastered the moment quickly, and forced a laugh.

"Funny you should say that, you know. Actually, very funny."

Laylana didn’t seem to get the joke, but she did seem to be ready to get to the bottom of things. “So, let's go with this, and move on. Somehow, you got my codes and IDs and sent me here. Your woman at the airfield sent me on my little hike with promises that it would be easy and relaxing to lull me into false security. For some reason, most likely to slow me down, you staged an attack, so you could get me to be weaponless… I'd wager that detail was so you could come through that door worried only that I might have a tchotchke ready to hurl at you. Maybe getting me naked was just a windfall for your boys in the ghillie suits who probably have had a red dot pointed at me since that night. I end up here, more or less on schedule… Nice place, by the way…"

Laylana paused for a breath.

"Thank you," the woman replied. "Wish it were mine…"

“Tell me something,” Laylana said looking back at the woman she thought was Natasha, “why were you naked? I was naked because I was in my sleeping bag. But, why were you?”

The woman smiled and shrugged. “Shock factor? We wanted you off guard and confused. Maybe to drum up some sympathy? Get your rescuer vibe going? Spice things up a bit? Hopefully, to get you a little off balance.”

Laylana got up from where she sat and stood by the window, then went on with her ideas about what was going on.

"So, what has been accomplished? I wasted a few grand of the Agency's money getting here and burnt a lot of time. Is that what you wanted? Just to put me out of touch with my handlers and let time pass?"

Natalie shrugged. "Well, they said you are keen. I guess they were right. Your little ordeal is over. We… went out of our way not to hurt you.”

Laylana furrowed her brow. “You shot bullets at me!”

“Almost everything we shot at you was blanks… Just a few live rounds to shoot into the trees.”

“It only takes one live round to do bad things,” Laylana replied.

Natalie nodded. “Granted… But we had the best marksmen in the… in… in our… organization doing the shooting. At that range, you were in essentially no danger.”

Laylana shook her head but said nothing more.

“And you were shooting back,” Natalie added. “You actually clipped one of the shooters in the arm.”

Laylana nodded and looked down.

“He’s fine, but the truth is, they were in far more danger than you were.” 

Laylana seemed relieved to learn that.

Natalie went on. “We just needed to get you off the grid for a while. You… missed an assignment while you were pampering yourself in the wilderness. And… you might have been seen somewhere you shouldn't have been seen. By the time you get all this mess sorted out, we'll be done. Now, it's time for you to get some sleep."

"Sleep?" Laylana turned to face the woman. "I have no intention of going to sleep."

At that moment Natalie backed quickly away so that Dimitri could move in. He drew a pistol, aimed, and shot Laylana with a dart.

"That's gonna leave a bad bruise," Dimetri said.

Laylana managed to get back to the bed before she passed out.

Natalie stepped back up beside Dimetri. “Okay, get her safely to Detroit, as planned. You have the suitcase I packed for her… Follow the plan…”

Dimetri nodded. “We got her go-bag and gun… should we give them back to her, too?”

Natalie nodded. “Do it. Gavin, Eva, and I have a lot to do. You take care of everything back on this end, and don’t let any harm come to Agent Vals.”