Mr. Selik set the newspaper down on the boardroom table before him and checked his watch. His shirt was pressed and tucked in. His hair was black, slicked, and unmoving. His thin circular glasses sat near the tip of his curled nose. He returned to the paper with a scowl.

The Derbaran National Press Agency, state-run and supposedly reliable, were reporting that President Zaripov had pulled an unprecedented amount of resources from the country’s many oil operations and redeployed them to the uranium mining and development sectors. The financial markets had reacted poorly, as expected, and the phones at the government headquarters hadn’t stopped ringing since the story went public.

As the head of the Derbaran Military’s Intelligence branch, and leader of the elite Nightwatch 1 Strike Team, it was Selik’s job to handle situations like this. The facts needed to be massaged, opinions needed to be corrected. He would have to make a few phone calls of his own, perhaps arrange an accident or two. He doubted he would need to make any personal house calls over this, though they always did brighten his day.

Just then the doors across from Selik were thrown open and President Zaripov charged into the boardroom, followed closely by his usual pack of advisors.

“A scandal!” the portly Minister of Economy wheezed from behind him, “An outrage! With all due respect, Mr. President, making decisions like this without consulting me is-”
The group fell silent when they spotted Selik sitting at the other end of the room. There was only one reason why the President called personal meetings with him, and they were the type of thing everyone was better off not knowing anything about.
“Do go on, Minister,” Zaripov urged smoothly, “you were saying?”
The Minister, though, was silent, seeming to have suddenly forgotten what he was talking about. A rumble in the distance cut his silence short. Out the window, there was a pillar of black smoke rising in the distance over the horizon. The NIU had been growing bolder of late, striking at major highways, power plants and even Derbaran’s harbour last week. How they had come to be so coordinated and well armed was a mystery even to Selik. They still weren’t striking at the major cities, but at the rate they were going it seemed only a matter of time.
Zaripov waved the advisors out the door, something all of them were more than happy to do, then crossed the room and stared out at the smoke on the horizon.
“I have a job for you, Mr. Selik,” he said.
“Anything, Sir,” Selik replied, still reading.
“I trust you are familiar with the recovery effort in the desert north of here beyond the Republic Highway?”
Selik lowered the paper. He hadn’t been briefed on it personally, but there was little that escaped the attention of the Head of Military Intelligence. He had assumed the report details he had heard were miscommunications or some kind of joke.
“…I am.”
“The situation has developed beyond what we originally hoped. I would like you to take your team and secure the village nearby the site. No witnesses: we can’t let the NIU catch wind of what we’ve found there.”
“It will be done.”
He folded the paper neatly under his arm and left the room without another word.
“I can always count on you,” Zaripov said as he went.
Selik wondered what sort of recovery operation in the desert could be more important than holding ground against the NIU - maybe even he was better off not knowing about this one.