Biography
Meryl is the third person to play Archangel's aide, Marella and Laura having appeared on previous episodes. Like Marella and Laura, Meryl is also a skilled pilot and a computer expert. Meryl has arguably the largest role of any of Archangel's aides before and after. Indeed, she probably had more lines that Marella in any one episode. Meryl is also the only aide to ever appear in the same episode as Marella.
In One Way Express Archangel first sends her undercover to chat up Simon Sayes and learn the details of his "photo shoot" which Archangel suspects is a front for a real highway robbery. Acting on information she obtains and what Hawke already knows, they conclude that the target may be a train carrying gold for the U.S. government. Meryl works out a list of trains within the operational radius of the helicopter Hawke will be flying and from this, and the call time Hawke has been given, he deduces that it must be a train out of Bakersfield.
Later, while Hawke is airborne on the mission, Meryl finds out that a name Sayes had dropped, Edward Stoner does not work for any railroad company but for Hi-Desert Trucking, which also moves gold for the U.S. government. Acting on this information, Archangel diverts Dominic in Airwolf to a truck which is the target for the robbery.
As always with Archangel's aides, her banter with Archangel is an opportunity to tease out details about Hawke and Archangel's relationship with him. At one stage, Meryl suggests to Archangel that they can fly top cover for Hawke themselves and he would never know about it. But Archangel overrules her saying that Hawke is risking his only friend to help them catch the master criminal Philip Maurice, so they have to let him do it his way. "I thought you and Hawke were friends?" she asks. Archangel laughs and says no, they only use each other, that wouldn't be something he called friends. Meryl smiles to herself, like she has just heard the understatement of the year.
This episode is Meryl's only appearance. We can only speculate why Archangel chose to deploy Meryl and not Marella against Sayes. The probable answer is that as Archangel told Hawke earlier, Maurice had his sources inside the FIRM. Marella was too high profile and well known in the FIRM as she is frequently seen with Archangel, for example at meetings of the Committee. There had Marella been sent to meet Sayes and she bumped into Maurice, she could have been recognised and her cover blown. So Archangel had to send in someone less well known, probably a trained field operative, as the "swallow".
Portrayed By
Meryl is played by Leann Hunley[1][2]