Once the mission was planned out, the five planners were tasked with finding people to go on the mission, and consequently went through reams of files looking for suitable candidates. They prepared a list of possibilities and reported back to President Reagan.
The mission was approved, and prospective Task Force members were interviewed. In the end, there were sixty-two people that boarded planes for what had become Operation Valiant Response, and headed into the Middle East.
Operation Valiant Response was anything but a success. Of the sixty-two men that went into the theater of operations, only sixteen came out again. Our five planners, who had weaseled the President into letting them go along, survived, as did Joe Strano, Melissa Pana, Doug Danko, Adam Mason, Mitch Vannell, Alayne Engleslause, Hera Steel, Carmen Ritter, Terry Carson, Patrick O'Donnell and Eric Wayne. On the ride home to the United States, Kristine mentioned that if they were to be staying in the BlackOps business, they were going to need a name.
Six weeks later, the team was again called upon. This time, they simply had to stop a group of homicidal, drugged-up thugs who had taken a mall hostage. In Operation Clearance, the team showed their true colors as they went into action as the Eagle Task Force for the first time. This was their second mission, but there was no mistaking their cohesiveness. This team had bonded.
Two more missions would follow, as the ETF would be called upon to stop a drug smuggling ring in Montana by infiltrating them and taking them down. Along the way, the 137TFW members trained with the Navy SEALs and Marine Recon, beating equal sized squads of each in respective tests of skill.
The last mission of the 137th Tactical Fighter Wing would come in October of 1989, when they would be called upon to stop a group of terrorist known as the Rising Sun, who had announced their intentions to hijack the British Airways Concorde (Pictured).
