2-3-4 Challenge Book Discussions #2 discussion

Agents from the ATF make a desperate request of the Bend FBI team, asking Mercy to substitute for one of their agents in an undercover assignment. The details were beyond sketchy and the agents weren’t willingly sharing details. Why did the FBI push Mercy into this assignment? Were alarms going off for you? What concerned you the most at the time?

Things just felt very suspicious for her to go undercover with almost no preparation time, especially since she was to be part of a couple with a guy she didn't know....

This felt all kinds of wrong. Going undercover inside an isolated, dangerous group requires lots of preparation. 24 hours notice was just unprofessional. They never should have put Mercy in this position. What concerned me the most is that they had no inside view of what was going on, relying solely on Chad to contact them from “time to time” via a SAT phone. This was so horribly planned.

They never should have pushed Mercy into this situation and she is such a strong personality she should have known to say NO. I believe she would have if not for the fact that there were children involved. That was the tipping point and I thing the Bureau knew this and by saying there are children involved would sway Mercy to accept

I had a hard time believing the ATF put one of their own agents in the camp with such a dumb plan. Then they needed a second agent to go in with less than 24 hours notice. There were too many things that could go wrong and no way to contact law enforcement. Mercy was crazy to accept the assignment.

Agree with you both. Susan, I’d forgotten about the children reference.

The mission felt off from the start. The details about the mission were kept from Mercy and the ATF group didn't know her personality well enough to put her in their mission so quickly. As mentioned the plan wasn't worked out before they put Mercy in danger. they didn't have an escape plan, or give her any options for protection. It was all wrong.

This was insane! It bordered on unbelievable for me. But I understood the reference to children being there was what tipped the scale for Mercy.

I agree with all the above. This was nuts! No professionalism.

Well, I actually bought it. They had already planned it and Chad was there... and Mercy was the perfect candidate with her physical similarity to the other agent and her knowledge of these sort of groups. They played on Mercy's sense of justice and fair play and the cherry on the top was the mention of children in danger. I would have thought they would have had some better way to keep in contact to know what was going on though... covert satellites or something.

I hated the set up for this book. The entire reason behind Mercy going undercover was contrived and rang completely false on how I feel an undercover operation would have gone down. I can't believe they didn't have a back up plan rather than scrambling at the last minute for plan B.