And they swore an oath to be gentle unto the weak, terrible unto the wicked...

Now that I'm back from SI Camp, I guess I can tell you guys about some of the cool stuff that we did.

1) Lectures:

The material covered in the lectures consisted of intel history, careers, agencies, counter-intel, and various materials "recommended" for consumption. I think my favorite lecture was done by a man who was a good friend of Bob Hansen, the man who was portrayed in the movie Breach.

2) Teams:

The whole camp was split into six teams with each team having two separate divisions. For instance, my team was CIA. Within CIA, we were split into CIA 1 and CIA 2 with CIA 1 being the female team and CIA 2 being the male team. The teams represented six different agencies within the intel community: SOCOM, NRO, DIA, CIA, FBI, and NSA. At the end of the week, CIA was second overall in points.

3) Missions:)

This was obviously my favorite part of the week. Four missions were conducted throughout the week and the results affected our overall points standing.

Monday: Dead Drop. I was not able to participate in this mission due to the fact that I was in a heated argument with an interrogator at the time. My cover had been blown by a former TCC student who just so happened to spew out my real name in front of everyone. Yes, Calamy knows who I am talking about.

We were about to leave one of the buildings to start our mission when I looked out the window...

"Uh, oh."

"What?"

"You see those dudes with the guns in that golf cart over there?"

As everyone walked out of the building, they fired up the cart and came speeding over to the multitude that had gathered outside.

The first words out of their lips...

"Is there a Matthew Womack here?"

"Yeah, that's me."

Two more were called up and we were told to wait next to the cart. The one that was guarding us had a Steyr AUG and I was so tempted to take him down and run.

Alas, I could not do it. They transported us to a building were we waited outside the interrogation room. The guard at the door looked like an Easter Island statue. I decided to make some small talk with him...

"So is that an AK-47 or '74?"

He seemed somewhat surprised that I would ask such a question.

*Looks down at gun*

"74."

He then went inside the room. Oh, well. I tried.

Our team did not do well on this mission because of the fact that by the time they met the contact, our team had spread out too far to actually perform the dead drop. This was due to a lack of communication. *Ahem*

Tuesday: Interrogations. On Tuesday we had to interrogate five different people and guess which one was the baddy. I did not like this mission.

Wednesday: Arms Deal. We had to meet a contact out in some drainage ditch across a field. As we were crossing the field, a small band of guerrillas pounced on our group and make us spread-eagle.

She-guerrilla: "What are you doing here?"

Group: "We're humanitarian workers."

She-guerrilla to ME: "What are you doing?"

Matt Womack said: "We're looking for some children who have gone missing from their village."

It's amazing what the mind will come up with in a crunch.

SG: "I haven't seen any missing children!"

Big Ape who is waving M-16 around: "Should I teach dem a lezon?"

They took two of our guys for interrogations while a higher-up with "the black group" came storming in and demanded our release.

We later found the contact, who had a sniper rifle, and he gave us money and directions. We then located the arms dealer and he tried to sell me more than what we had originally asked for. (This was because of the fact that I was the team leader.) He demonstrated his merchandise by shooting off an RPG. After some quick and forceful demands, we were able to obtain a weapons crate. It was heavy and big enough that I had to help another guy carry it. As our team was heading back into the clearing, a security Jeep in the parking lot roared to life and came flying at us with lights blazing. This was not good. Even though we had the crate, I think that we still ran to the next contact before anyone else...

Next, we had to barter the crate for some blood diamonds. Through some more forceful demands, we were able to make a deal for 18 diamonds. As the dealer was counting them up, the security Jeep reared its ugly head again and we split. In the ensuing madness, a diamond was dropped. We thought we had seventeen. When we met our last contact, she counted out 19. The hand is quicker than the eye...

Thursday: The Great Rendition. The mission was conducted in a three story building. On the first floor was a nightclub that was dark like a funeral parlor. It was complete, though, with Mexican rap coming out of a CD player, a soccer game on TV, an artist painting obscure things, a bartender who glowered at everyone, a poker game, and an overall dislike from everyone for the security goons who slithered their way around the place like as if they owned it. Upstairs was a different story. A corporate party was taking place between members of Shell, Exxon, and BP. The occasion was the completion of an oil pipeline in the host country.

Before the mission, I had the wonderful task of splitting our group into three platoons with each having a leader and a communications officer. The concierge at the entrance was supposed to hand us three walkie-talkies for communication during the mission. The mission was split up just like the platoons. Platoon 1 (my platoon) would find the contact, who would give us certain instructions, and then relay instructions to platoon 2. Platoon 2 would receive more instructions on down the line and relay them to platoon 3. Since my cover story involved oil research, I had to mingle with the guests of the corporate party - which turned out to be a black-tie affair. My comm. officer and I made friends - again - and we worked well together. Since he was the international relations student working on his thesis, I offered my humble, uneducated scientist's theory, not "projection", on how the pipeline would benefit the country. This was an interesting topic of discussion with some of the other guests at the party as one of them turned out to be the daughter of a Venezuelan oil big-shot. (Who, of course, was really a puppet...but we couldn't say that.) We eventually went downstairs where we found the contact in the nightclub. We relayed our instructions to platoon 2, which quickly disappeared. I then instructed my team to mingle until we were needed again. After platoon 2 disappeared, two goons stood at the bottom of the staircase and made sure that no one made it upstairs to the party. One of the goons happened to be the former TCCer.

"Ben, man, how's it goin'? Man, don't you remember me? Sophomore year at Ohio State?"

As he's saying this, he's waving an M-16 around.

"Dude, I have no idea who you are...I went to CalTech..."

One of the guys who had been playing poker decided that he could get past security and go upstairs. I can think of only one reason why he would try to do this: Besides playing poker, he also pretended to be slightly drunk. Yes, drunk. He made it about halfway up the stairs before the guards threw him back down.

"Bunch of stupid people walking around with guns...not fair that we can't go up there...YOU BUNCH OF RETARDS!!"

I tried to keep from laughing as he meandered back into the club.

Later on, I was sitting next to him as he was playing poker. Someone poked their head in the doorway to the club and shouted:

IS THERE ANYONE FROM NRO IN HERE?

The soccer game and Mexican rap could not fill the silence that fell on the room.

Drunk: Man, who wants a bunch of spy people with guns walking around this place?

Me: Yeah, the guards are bad enough.

Drunk: Hey, weren't you in the party upstairs?

Me: Yeah, but I figur'd that if they are going to be treatin' you guys like that I might as well stay down here. Besides, it was too stuffy up there.

So I mingled in the club for a while. I played chess with one guy who got into an argument with the rest. He thought we should watch boxing, but that was too American for the rest of the locals who wanted to watch soccer. He beat me in something like five moves.

I also tried to get a drink from the bartender.

"Are ya staying (for the night) or are ya just here for a while?"

I didn't know that we were supposed to be "staying", so I said that I was there just for a while.

"Did ya pay the cover charge?"

"No, nobody asked me 'bout a cover charge."

"Go pay the concierge."

I told the concierge about the situation and she said, "Tell him that the concierge will cover it."

I got a shot glass full of Pineapple Jarritos. It didn't last very long.

Next, one of the guys playing poker said: Hey, did anybody bring a CD of something else? We've heard this one like three times already.

The humor provided a nice break from the stress of the mission.

Moments later, I looked around to see how my platoon was doing. I could not come to a conclusion because of the fact that half of it was missing! Half of my platoon, including my comm. officer who possessed the only walkie-talkie for our platoon, disappeared on me. After some quick words with the concierge, she told us to wait a moment there in the lobby. Behind her, two guards were talking to each other about something totally obscure. I was staring into space behind them while I was thinking about our situation. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the elevator door behind the guards open. One of the guys from my team poked his head out - along with his rifle - and ran to the staircase along the wall. Several more team members, all visibly armed, did the same.

The diversions that the mind creates in such a situation are amazing.

The concierge then told us to go outside where we would meet our team.

The end of that mission also meant the end of our aliases. As our team met, everyone was saying, "Hey [alias], what's your real name?" We eventually found out that we had three Bens on our team.

On Friday night, they announced the final scores. The top four teams were designated with a new mission and name.

"In second place: CIA. You will now be designated as Echelon Dark Steel. This coming week you will be transported to Pakistan to hunt down a man by the name of Osama bin Laden..."