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Sarah T. Hensleigh, née Parkes, is a paleontologist and undercover Intelligence Convergence Group agent.

History[]

Early History[]

Through unknown circumstances, Sarah Parkes joined the U.S. Army in the Chemical Weapons Division of the CDC. At some unknown point she was recruited into the Intelligence Convergence Group, who asked her to retire and take up paleontology at university in order to find out what was going on with ice core research.

There she met Brian Hensleigh, and used him to achieve this goal, eventually getting married to him. However Brian was killed in a car crash and Sarah was given custody of his daughter Kirsty.

While doing research at Wilkes Ice Station, Sarah worked with Ben Austin to research sea snake venom. At the same time, she noted James Renshaw's discovery of atmosphere from three hundred million years ago, but disregarded it as unimportant to the ICG. While at Wilkes, she also met some of the French scientists from the neighbouring Dumont d'Urville reseach station, including Luc Champion and Henri Rae, while also knowing the names of other other French scientists such as Jacques Latissier.

When Renshaw hit metal in a 300 million year old drill core, and his supervisor Bernard Olson planned to write an article about it, Sarah knew she couldn't allow that to happen without the ICG knowing first. Upon hearing Renshaw arguing with Olson, Sarah decided to kill him, and used sea snake venom to ensure that he couldn't be revived. Because of their argument, Renshaw was accused of murdering him.

Ice Station[]

Subsequently, Sarah and the other scientists decided to investigate the source of the metal, and discovered it was in an underground cavern, and sent a team of divers led by Ben down there. They reported that they had found what they thought to be an alien spacecraft, only for something to attack them. Though Sarah tried to re-establish contact, there was no further response, and so Abby Sinclair sent out a distress call for assistance. 

Within two days, a group of French scientists from Dumont d'Urville came to assist, and Sarah and the others trusted them since they already knew Champion and Rae, while also knowing Lattisier by reputation.

Shortly after a group of the Wilkes scientists were escorted away on the French hovercrafts, a team of U.S. Marines arrived to secure the station. Sarah, having been showing off the station to Latissier, was soon rounded up by Montana and Hollywood and brought back to their team leader, Shane Schofield. She took it upon herself to explain both the situation to the Marine Lieutenant regarding the ice cavern with the spaceship, as well as the Olson incident, still claiming Renshaw had done it.

Soon, however, many of the French scientists were revealed to be soldiers, intending to take the spaceship and having already murdered the first group of scientists they had taken away. After the civilian quarters were compromised, Sarah, Kirsty, Abby and Warren Conlon were forced to follow Book in order to escape death, but ended up being cornered on the B-deck catwalk. Before the French could open fire on them, an explosion caused by a gas leak destroyed the catwalk, causing Sarah and the others to fall into the diving pool. During their attempt to get out they were attacked by killer whales, and Sarah was unable to save Conlon once she got to safety.

In the aftermath of the battle, Sarah made several attempts to ask Schofield to allow her to join his team diving down to the cavern, though he was initially too busy with securing the station, he did take note of her suggestion to use Champion to help the wounded Samurai. Once Schofield had prepared his team of divers, he was surprised to see Sarah also prepared for a dive. Telling him of her desire to go to the cavern, Sarah claimed that her expertise might prove useful if her theory that the ship was not the result of an alien culture, but rather a super-ancient race of people. Once Schofield agreed, she asked him to hold on to her necklace, not wanting to lose it.

Soon after arriving in the cavern with Montana, Gant and Santa Cruz, they spotted the spacecraft. Sarah took the most interest in it, and Gant was unsettled by the obvious ambition in her eyes. During her initial inspection, Sarah noticed that there was a kind of keypad on it, and after activating it they saw that there were Latin numbers on it, meaning it was not an alien ship. Sarah decided to try and crack the code in order to try get inside the craft.

Soon Gant located the remains of an old ice station nearby, where they learnt that the craft had been built by one of the losing contenders in the bid to build the stealth fighter back in the 1970's, and the ice station had been lost in an earthquake. While looking over Silhouette's schematics, hoping to find another way inside, Sarah was told to go elsewhere by Montana, who was also ICG, while he killed Santa Cruz. However, before he could get Gant, a mutant elephant seal got him.

While hiding with Gant in a fissure from the seals, Schofield, Kirsty and Renshaw arrived, having being forced to escape the station because of the ICG's arriving SEAL forces. At this point Schofield had gotten a list of ICG personnel, and after seeing Sarah's maiden name on her necklace, realised she was ICG. Sarah proceeded to hold them all at gunpoint, and disregarded Schofield's claim that a nuclear missile was inbound. Contacting the SEAL forces that were entering the station, Sarah was given permission to shoot them all if necessary. Admitting that she had killed Olson, she then explained why she had gotten involved with Brian in the first place.

Before Sarah could kill Schofield, noting that she had kind of liked him, Gant (who had managed to draw Schofield's pistol without being seen by Sarah) shot her first, killing her instantly. Sarah's body was subsequently destroyed when the nuclear missile hit the station.

Personality[]

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Skills[]

  • Skilled Infiltrator: To Be Added.
  • Trained Marksman: Having served in the United States Army, Sarah has been trained to be an accurate markswoman and is able to use a variety of firearms.
  • Expert Paleontologist: To Be Added.

Equipment[]

Weapons[]

  • Pistol:

Trivia[]

  • Hensleigh is the first female (human) antagonist to appear in any of Reilly's novels.
  • It is never mentioned if Hensleigh was aware if Montana and Snake were also an ICG operatives.
    • If Montana did know about Hensleigh, then his suggestion for her to leave him and Santa Cruz alone was just for Cruz's benefit.
      • However in this case it remains unclear why he bothered to have Hensleigh leave them alone when they could have taken out both Santa Cruz and Fox together.
  • It is also unknown as to why Hensleigh didn't kill the wounded Fox after Montana's death in spite of having ample opportunity before Schofield's arrival.
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