Sergeant William Blane, LAPD
Los Angeles
The Republic of California, United Federation of Nations
Friday 13th July 2018, 0500hrs Local Time
It was just under an hour before dawn in Los Angeles and the streets were quiet, even in the heart of infamous South Central LA (or at it was properly now known as simply South LA). Very few people saw the LAPD Lenco Bearcat armoured vehicle bearing the legend ‘Metro S.W.A.T.’ as it cruised through the streets. Those that did watch the vehicle roll past shared more than a few furtive glanced but no one was stupid enough to make a move; not even the kind of weapons the gangs of South LA had access to would scratch the surface of the Bearcat. But the armoured vehicle moved on without incident, making steady determined progress towards its goal and leaving the gangbangers to their own business for the night at least; it wasn’t like there weren’t other patrols keeping the peace. After all, it was not for the gangbangers that still resided in this part of the sprawling city that they were after; no this pre-dawn outing was chasing after an entirely different sort of criminal; one that was using these neighbourhoods as a convenient distraction to hide their operations behind.
The Great North American Syndicate, one of the largest, most organised and most feared organised crime groups in the world, might have lost the level of influence it had earlier in the previous century, particularly when the Mafia had held uncontested sway within the Syndicate Commission, but it still had its claws into criminal dealings all over North America, and indeed the world. As such when reliable chatter from the streets had reported the presence of the Syndicate in Los Angeles no one in the LAPD had wanted to mess around, and the decision to send in SWAT had almost been a foregone conclusion.
“Two minutes, Sarge.”
Sergeant William Blane, the team leader, looked up from the tablet he had been reviewing the intelligence information he had been provided by the intelligence unit. Blane was a veteran of the UDF Marines; he had come up the hard way from these very streets that he now protected. He had gone to UCLA on a football scholarship, playing Linebacker for the Bruins. He had narrowly, and to his extreme regret, went undrafted in the NFL Draft, and without much of a backup plan had enlisted in the UDF Marines. As it turned out this had been an exceptional decision, for Blane had made one-helluva Marine and had left the service as a Service Chief after twelve years of service to marry his high school sweetheart who he had reconnected with at a reunion. Returning to Los Angeles he had been recruited into the LAPD and barely out of his two-year probation he had been recruited into SWAT where had he promptly raised to the command of a team and the rank of Sergeant.
“Alright, here’s the deal; the target building is the eighth in a series of warehouses along a stretch of road; intel suggests that the Syndicate is using it to store drugs and weapons; our job is simple; secure the building and contents,” Sergeant Blane said firmly looking around at the other five members of his team. “Now the Syndicate aren’t your run of the mill chumps; their associates will be well armed and if we catch any made members they’ll likely have body armour, so speed and concentrated violence is the order of the day.”
Blane paused, bringing up a field drawing of the target building on a tablet.
“Patrol units are going to set up a perimeter, but there are only two entrances so we should be able to prevent any of the bad guys from getting away; Rawls and Fernandez, you take the back entrance and secure the back corridor,” Blane instructed. “Johnson and Sherman; you’re with me and Santiago going in the front hard and heavy, any
questions?”
There were none; the raid was simple enough. They would be relying on the element of surprise, and their superior weapons and tactics, to win the day, but most of it was ingrained into them and the raid itself was straight out of the training manual save for their opponents. Each of the six SWAT officers were armed with the Heckler & Koch HK416 assault rifle, modified to meet their particular needs and role within the team, and they all carried the specially designed Kimber LAPD SWAT Custom II as their primary sidearms. All wore body armour and were equipped with the most cutting-edge tactical equipment available; no expense was spared.
As they reached their target area, and Rawls and Fernandez jumped out of the vehicle to move around to the rear of the target building, Blane thumbed his radio.
“10-David this is 50-David; on-scene, Code 3.”
“50-David, this is 10-David; roger that, proceed at your discretion.”
The Bearcat pulled up out of sight of the target building and the four SWAT officers quickly disembarked and stacked up at the corner of the building. Looking around the corner Blane could see that the Syndicate had not posted an external guard; no doubt trying to keep a low profile and posting a clearly armed guard was the best way to get noticed. With a hand gesture, he led the team round the corner and they quickly but quietly made their way towards the main door of the warehouse. Once they reached it they stacked up on the door and Blane checked the door to see if it was locked, communicating to his team via hand signals that it was not before breaking squelch with his radio twice. Upon receiving a return signal from Rawls and Fernandez he nodded to his team and began to breach the building.
The first room, an entrance and reception area, was empty and the team moved quickly up to the next door which led into the main warehouse floor. A quick check under the door confirmed that there were no hostiles waiting for them on the other side and the team quickly entered the main floor and began their sweep. The knew that Rawls and Fernandez would be covering the rear entrance so their main concern was ensuring that they did not miss any hostiles as they swept through the floor. Through careful use of cover, the team was able to locate the hostiles without being detected themselves, and Blane set up his team to attack from two separate directions. Once they were all in position he gave the order and the team surged forwards. Shouted warnings and challenges echoed around the warehouse as the SWAT team fulfilled their requirements to identify themselves and call upon their foes to surrender, but to the surprise of no one the Syndicate gunmen raised their weapons to fire and were quickly cut down. Some of the syndicate men fired off a few rounds but none hit any of the SWAT officers as Blane and Santiago bounded forwards under Johnson and Sherman’s overwatch towards the office in the corner of the warehouse.
Risking a Blane through the window Blane could see a smartly dressed man taking cover behind the desk, a hefty looking revolver in his hand; likely the full-member of the Syndicate overseeing the warehouse’s operations. This made the man a key target if the could take him alive. Reaching into his equipment for a flashbang grenade Blane held it up to Santiago who nodded and, after placing a breaching charge on the locked door and detonating it, threw it into the enclosed office. Once it had detonated the two SWAT officers piled in and overpowered the disorientated and stunned Syndicate member, wrestling the man to the floor and securing him with zip-cuffs for the moment. There were a few moments of silence as the rest of the team completed a full sweep of the area before all six of them regrouped in the office to report that the building was clear. Blane smiled and thumbed his radio.
“10-David this is 70-David, we are Code 4; all clear.”
Before he could make a more detailed report the team spun as they heard banging from out on the warehouse floor and leaving two of their number to keep an eye on their captive. They located the source of the banging inside one of the large trucks packed by the service doors. Sharing a glance two of the team moved to the doors and gripped them in their hands as Blane and Santiago raised their weapons and, on Blane’s nod they pulled the door open quickly before also raising their weapons towards the back of the truck. All four SWAT officers stared in silence into the back of the van as the flashlights on their weapons swept across the interior. Huddled in the cold darkness of the truck were at least two dozen young women, some girls really, in dirty, scrappy clothing, all looking at the bright lights with wide-eyed terror.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe now,” Santiago, the only female in the group, said softly as she climbed up into the truck, handing her weapon to Blane for safekeeping as she did so. “We’re police officers, no one can hurt you now.”
As other officers from the LAPD entered the warehouse Blane gestured female officers forwards to take the lead with whatever was happening, stepping back himself to talk to his superior, Lieutenant Charles Holt; the SWAT Watch Officer (10-David).
“What do you think this is?” Blane frowned, looking over at the truck. “Sex trafficking?”
Holt nodded thoughtfully. Based on the look of them most of the girls were likely off the street, or otherwise the kind of people that would not be easily missed. Most were likely addicted to narcotics of some sort, meaning that they could be controlled easily. All of this made them easy targets for trafficking; they could make their captors a quick dollar for a few years before being done away with. Once upon a time, the Syndicate would never have involved itself in this sort of thing; running a prostitution racket was one thing, this was something else entirely, but times were hard for the Syndicate and clearly they had decided to take things to a whole new level of depravity.
“Well, either way, this is a little above our expertise,” Holt sighed, putting his phone to his ear. “Get me the FSA LA Field Office.”
Special Agent Frank Heywood, FSA
Los Angeles
The Republic of California, United Federation of Nations
Friday 13th July 2018, 0900hrs Local Time
Special Agent Frank Heywood of the Federation Security Agency flashed his badge to the LAPD officer manning the cordon who lifted the police tape to allow Heywood to drive his black FSA-modified Dodge Charger, the standard duty vehicle operated by the FSA, towards the warehouse that LAPD S.W.A.T. had raided earlier that morning. The information about a Syndicate presence in Los Angeles had been passed to the LAPD by the LA Field Office, who had themselves received it from a well-placed source. The decision had been made, for the purposes of inter-agency cooperation, to entrust the raid to LAPD S.W.A.T; a decision that had paid off given the slick raid, not to mention the apprehension of a Syndicate member. Of course, getting any useful intelligence from their prisoner would be difficult at best, but at least it would be good publicity for the ongoing fight against organised crime. The FSA had been at the forefront of the fight against the Great North American Syndicate for its entire existence and it had been the hard work of FSA agents in the 50s and 60s that had finally curbed the influence of the Syndicate.
Heywood stepped out of his vehicle and looked around at the hustle and bustle of activity of an active crime scene, noting the suspicious glances that normally accompanies the arrival of a Federal Agent by local law enforcement. It was to be expected, even if the two organisations were meant to focus on different things it could still feel like they were being told that they couldn't do something, or that the central government was being overbearing. Of course, the fact of the matter was that local law enforcement had neither the time, the funding nor the reach to handle matters such as organised crime outside of their own city. That was where the FSA stepped in, and rightfully so, but it didn’t prevent a certain degree of professional rivalry between ‘The Feds’ and local police. Never the less, when coming together for a just cause, like countering terrorism, all those rivalries were dropped, and the FSA-led Joint Terrorism Task Forces were key tools in preventing radical groups from striking at the Federation.
Heywood flashed his badge to the two LAPD officers guarding the main entrance into the warehouse and was allowed inside. Making sure to avoid any evidence markers or otherwise disturbing the crime scene Heywood made his way through the building until he reached the large group of men and women around several bodies at the rear of the warehouse’s main floor. He watched as the city medical examiners began to load the corpses into body bags allowing the Crime Scene Investigators to continue their own work without having to worry about disturbing the bodies and the valuable evidence they would provide. It was pretty much a clear-cut engagement, but in this day and age pretty much every law enforcement agency was strictly by-the-book when it came to officer-involved shootings; the last thing any of them needed these days was bad publicity when it came to the conduct of its officers. Moreover, all the details had to be done exactly right or you risked your perp getting off on a technicality; as police procedures had gotten more advanced so to had the defence attorneys, the really good ones, and the knew how to work the system as well as they always had.
One of the LAPD SWAT officers who had been watching the work noted his arrival and made his way over, offering a hand.
“Sergeant Blane, Metro S.W.A.T.”
“Special Agent Heywood, FSA,” He said in reply. “Your team made the assault?”
“It did,” Blane nodded, gesturing to the office. “There’s something you’re gonna want to see.”
Heywood raised an eyebrow in surprise but never the less followed the SWAT officer into the office and looked around at the various documents that were being picked through by LAPD officers. It wasn’t to any of these documents that Blane directed him, however, but to one of the computers which had, perhaps fortuitously, been left unlocked. And judging by the earnest young police officer hovering by the computer it was likely that they had been deliberately keeping the computer from timing out and locking. As Blane explained to him as he settled into the sea they had been able to access the secure messaging system that the Syndicate had been using to communicate; the system used the dark web so even the FSA’s Cyber Crime Division had struggled to get any usable information from the system. The way the system was set-up, specifically designed to avoid being compromised by law enforcement, the long-term benefit was likely to be less than any short-term intelligence they could gather, but it was a start.
“Imagine if more criminals started using systems like this,” Blane commented dryly as they read the messages, watching just how candid the Syndicate communications were. “We’d lose thousands of leads from chatter.”
“Fortunately we believe that the system was designed and built by someone within the Syndicate’s employ, and thereby at no cost beyond the infrastructure,” Heywood replied glancing at him. “It would be prohibitively expensive for someone else to design such a system, and it's in the Syndicate’s best interest to keep this technology to themselves.”
“Very true,” Blane nodded, then brought up a particular message. “This is what we wanted to show you.”
“Aerostar; Badger to Gopher, 2100, twenty head.”
“We figure it is a delivery order, sick bastards are referring to the girls like a head of cattle, but we can’t work out where it’s going to or coming from,” Blane replied with a scowl. “We’re assuming that Badger and Gopher are codewords for major Syndicate operating bases, but we have no idea…”
“The Syndicate likes to use the unofficial nicknames for North American states, going back years,” Heywood replied, leaning back in the chair. “Minnesota, in the People’s Republic of the Dakotas, is the Gopher State.”
“And Badger?” Blane frowned as Heywood took out his phone.”
“Wisconsin,” Heywood replied. “This is Heywood… get me the Federal Justice Agency of the Empire of Layarteb.”
