Sharon Williams Fonseca: Unconventional C.I.A. Agent
On Facebook one night, I got to kidding around with a girl I went to school with. Don’t give me grief, I told her, or you’ll wind up in one of my books. Well, I decided to do it. I decided to make Sharon a C.I.A. agent. But not just any agent. No, Sharon has to do it her way, regardless of what the rules say she’s supposed to do. Her assignments don’t come through normal C.I.A. channels, but through what is almost an agency within an agency. As a result, the Agency doesn’t trust her, and goes to great length to monitor her activities around the world.
Warning: The covers aren’t very good. I did all but one of them myself.
As of April 2022, the series has six stories.
Whiskey, Zebra, Tango
This short story, “Whiskey, Zebra, Tango”, is based on a police action that happened in Cranston, RI in January 2011, using one of my school friends as the sort of main character. Sharon is an ex-CIA agent now located in Cranston, who helps a Middle Eastern man escape from the police. He is a suspected terrorist. That puts her under investigation, and could uncover sensitive CIA operations. The police are ready to give her a hard interrogation, not believing this slender, grand-motherly woman would help a terrorist, when they are visited by a man who says he has tangled with Sharon many times in the past, and that the police should just back off. This is available at Amazon and Smashwords.
Charley Delta Delta
This is the second short story in the series about Sharon Williams Fonseca, unconventional CIA agent. It goes back in time, to when Sharon was an active agent. This story takes us back to 1988, when Fonseca is in Greece. A struggling analyst agent, who wants to be a agent is assigned to follow her for a few days in Athens. He struggles with the demands of being a one-man operation, yet witnesses something he is certain is evidence that Fonseca has indeed gone bad. Then everything explodes around him. Available at Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and other places.
Sierra Kilo Bravo
Carter Burns is fresh out of C.I.A. field agent training, and is assigned to the London office. At about the same time, a double agent, an Eastern Block man who was supposed to be working for the Agency, but who was proven to be working for the Soviets, is murdered on a train from Florence to Lucerne. Sharon Williams Fonseca, unconventional C.I.A. agent, was in Florence and then in Lucerne at about the same time. Did she assassinate Sergio Brusci? And, if she did, what that a good thing or a bad thing? Burns is assigned to find out. Set in Italy and Switzerland in 1982, the story traces the beginnings of Burns’ involvement with Fonseca. But it won’t be the last time he’s called on to tail her. Available at Amazon.
Hotel Whiskey Papa
Carter Burns is about to head back to London and await his next assignment, when he is told to rush to Vienna, for Sharon Williams Fonseca appears to be on another case. He finally tracks her down in Salzburg, and must enlist the help of an American tourist so that he can tail her with less conspicuousness. He begins to think Foncesa isn’t on a case, but he must follow-through with his instructions. How can one man provide surveillance of a person round the clock? He knows he can’t, and concludes the Agency must have something else in mind with having assigned him to follow and observe Sharon’s movements. Finally, something does happen, but what, exactly? How does he report this to the Agency, and is it of any real significance? Available as an e-book at Amazon.
Tango Delta Foxtrot
Carter Burns continues to chase Sharon Fonseca in Europe, this time from Salzburg to Paris. To maintain the appearance of being a mere tourist, he asks the American college girl, Leah, he had hired on the spot in his last adventure to go with him to Paris—just for the train trip. Alas, Carter makes a major error and is in a position where Fonseca can figure out who he is and what he his mission is. So he has to keep Leah with him to maintain his cover. Doing the tourist thing in Paris while being with Fonseca and trying to control Leah becomes a major effort. Available as an e-book at Amazon.
Foxtrot Alpha Tango
Carter Burns has failed in three CIA operations in Europe, and sees his career cascading out of control. He is given a new assignment, a chance to redeem himself, but the subject of his assignment is the same as of the prior three: Sharon Williams Fonseca. She’s either a rogue agent or just unconventional, getting her assignments outside the normal chain of command and carrying them out with questionable tactics. This time, rather than following her, he is sent to investigate what her involvement was three years earlier in the Qatif villages uprisings in Saudi Arabia, an uprising that might have violently overthrown the Saudi government. Did she instigate the uprising as the CIA seems to think? If he can prove it, he may just save his career as a field agent. The code name of the operation: Foxtrot Alpha Tango.
This sixth short story in this series has Burns going from Europe to Langley to Los Angeles to Saudi Arabia, where he fights the language barrier and convicted or suspected criminals who took part in the uprising to do all he can to trace Fonseca’s participation.
Available at Amazon.