[Earth II] The Erebus Initiative

[Layarteb]

March 6, 2012 - 05:05 hrs [UTC+11]
Green Point, Tanna Island
Force Falcon Team One
(19° 37' 41.18"S, 169° 21' 21.31"E)

The sound of incoming helicopters might have been audible had the lead birds not been AH-6M Little Birds, which were barely audible past five hundred meters. Their guns and rockets had a range in excess of one thousand meters so by the time they were heard, they had already finished their first gun run. Using their FLIR, they saw the homes and the heat signatures in the trees. It didn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together and the two Little Birds fired a burst of Gatling gun and rocket fire into the trees to the north and to the west. "Falcon Zero-One, Hellraiser 1-1, how about you get out of those houses," the radio cracked to life as the Little Birds buzzed overhead.

"Hellraiser 1-1, what else do you have!" Delaney answered, ecstatic to see the tree line erupt in flames. "Guys, we need to pull back to the clearing. Black and Purple, move back first, report clear. Then I want Orange and Gold. I'll bring in Red and the package. White and Brown, you're last." One by one, in rapid fashion, the seven men agreed and the pullback was initiated. Steel and Milton moved back first since they weren't engaged with hostiles yet. Quickly, they exited the huts and through the FLIR, the pilots could see their flashing, infrared strobe lights, indicating that they were friendly.

About two miles away, the MH-60M Black Hawk was coming in hard, preparing to flare for landing. It would be a touch-and-go with the helicopter coming in from the southeast and departing to the northwest. The Little Birds would provide cover until the Black Hawk was clear of the island, at which point they would race ahead to fly alongside her over the water, back to the ship.

With hostiles still firing from the trees, the Little Birds came in for a second run, using just their Gatling guns this time for fear of shrapnel hitting any of the exposed Force Falcon soldiers. By then, Delaney, Doctor Noyle and Rigalo were just getting to the clearing. The Black Hawk was flaring for landing. "Let's go!" Delaney yelled into the microphone. Doctor Noyle was pushed into the helicopter and Milton and Steel climbed aboard to provide more covering fire. Wilkins and Wilson piled in next as Delaney and Rigalo took up kneeling positions between the helicopter and the settlement. They fired against the muzzle flashes in the tree line and watched as Howard and Jackson sprinted the one hundred meters to the helicopter.

It wasn't the worst gauntlet that the men had run but it was a good enough one that they dove into the helicopter's cabin, practically sliding out of the other open door. Rigalo jumped on and then, last, Delaney jumped onto the cabin floor, and gave a thumb's up to the pilot, who was looking in the side view mirror. The helicopter lifted off immediately and the Little Birds came in again, strafing the settlement, expending the rest of their rockets while the Black Hawk lifted off and cleared the trees. A few minutes later, as the helicopter passed over the water, Delaney hoisted himself into the helicopter, and the cabin doors were closed shut. Everyone took a seat and relaxed, for the first time since they had arrived in theater.

The sky was lightening to the east as the sun began to rise. They were still about thirty-something minutes away from the actual sunrise but it was a beautiful sight to see nonetheless. Over the open water, they had an unrestricted view of the sunrise and looking at the islands, they could see the eastern side of Tanna Island illuminated in the coming light of dawn. Delaney gave a brief look, having seen it dozens upon hundreds of times, and then turned to Doctor Noyle who was sitting next to him. "I hope you are happy with all of this."

"Happy?" He responded, confusedly.

"Yeah, happy…"

"Why would I be happy? I was perfectly fine where I was. What does the Emperor want anyway?"

"That's a conversation between you two Doctor but I can assure you it has to be important if I had to come get you."

"Mister Delaney," he said but Delaney quickly put his fingers to his lips. "Of course," Doctor Noyle said, nonchalantly correcting himself, "why don't you tell me when you're going to retire? Aren't you getting a little old to play soldier?"

"Thanks to you Doctor, I've got another twenty years in me. I guess I should be angry with you though. What you've given us is a curse."

"Was it?" Doctor Noyle began, "out of ninety-nine subjects only three individuals did not develop psychosis. I believe you are on that very short list."

"I am."

"Then what curse have I given you?"

"I used to like my dreams Doctor."

"Did you like your nightmares too?" Doctor Noyle was referring to a specific series of nightmares that Delaney had towards the end of the Layartebian Civil War until he completed Project SLEEPWALKER. They were of his home, which was burned to the ground and of his wife and son, both of whom were nothing more than unrecognizable, charred corpses in the city morgue.

Delaney was quiet for a minute and then he answered rather pointedly, "At least I had nightmares…"

---

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[Layarteb]

March 6, 2012 - 05:35 hrs [UTC+11]
South Pacific Ocean
Scorpion class SOC
(19° 9'40.15" S, 169°15'46.81" E)

The Black Hawk touched down on the Scorpion-class special operations craft and the Little Birds came in just behind it. Delaney and the rest of Team One got out with their passenger, ignored the looks of the Delta commandos on the ship who looked at them with a bit of confusion, and went straight for their part of the ship. "Doctor, remember you aren't to say a fucking thing, got it?" Delaney said as he opened the cabin door for him.

"I must warn you, I've always gotten seasick." Delaney laughed, "I trust there is a place to change and wash up?"

"Yes, we're leaving in thirty minutes so don't dawdle."

"Thank you." Delaney shut the cabin door and looked at Rigalo and Jackson. He started walking away and then thought the better of it and stopped. He turned to them, "Watch him for fifteen, Howard, Milton watch him for the other fifteen. Then we're out of here. Use the time to get your shit. I've got to make a stop. On deck in thirty."

Delaney made his way to the ship's captain, who was to be found in the CIC. Upon entrance, he saluted, and walked over to the captain, "I need a few minutes with you."

"Aye," the captain answered and they walked over to the map area where the captain dismissed everyone standing around. "What is it soldier?"

"Who was the asshole who decided to leave us on that fucking island all morning?"

"Well soldier, I had those helicopters deployed elsewhere. You do realize we are running other operations right?"

"Realize? Captain, my mission has the highest priority here."

"What was your mission anyway? Who are you? Your unit isn't registered, we have no record of anything, you just show up with these ambiguous papers and I'm supposed to jump through hoops for you?" The captain was barely able to keep his voice at a low tone and his face was clearly turning red. He was livid that he was being questioned, especially by a lowly soldier. He no clue that in the ranking order, Delaney had him beat. None of his men wore any rank insignia on their uniforms.

"That's classified above top secret. Captain you really screwed the pooch here!" Delaney said, in true military fashion, something that decades of experience had taught him, how to insult a "superior officer." "You nearly cost my men, our cargo, and our mission because of this. Now tell me then, what the hell was so important?"

"Erromango, we've got a situation."

"What kind of situation?"

"I'm not authorized," the captain began but Delaney stopped him.

"Captain, I have clearance. Obviously, look at the mission I just pulled."

Tempers instantly defused and though the captain still fumed slightly, he continued. "Delta has secured their objectives and Ghost Recon has secured theirs but the island is a mess. Here, look at these reports. Skulls, bones picked clean, bodies, wanton slaughter, disgusting… These men aren't prepared for this." Delaney had seen it before so he was far from surprised but it had been some time since he had seen this level of ritualistic inhumanity.

"I've seen this before," he said, quietly.

"You have?"

"Yes, I have." He tried to block out the memories but he couldn't and he stared at the reports quietly for a few minutes. "What about the other men on the island?"

"One squad we've lost contact with and the other two are moving fine."

"Lost contact?"

"Yes, we cannot raise them on the radio."

"Captain, my team is getting out of here in less than thirty mikes. I strongly advise you to use whatever men you have and find them. They are captured."

"How can you be sure soldier?"

"Because… we were…" A grim silence hung in the air again. "If you want to find them alive, you had better mount an immediate rescue operation. If Marines have people to spare bring them in, bring in everybody."

"Marines are heavily engaged."

"They have reinforcements captain." Further north, the Marines were still heavily engaged with the rebels but the battle was beginning to wane. Under the superior firepower of the Imperial Layartebian Navy, the rebels were finding themselves quickly outflanked and rounded up with no choice other than death or surrender. The Marines were making good progress but they still had a long way to go. The battle was, by no means, concluded. Adding in the situation on Erromango, the Empire was in control of no island except those that had no people on them. It would still be another few days before the Empire secured the last parts of Vanuatu and by then, the mystery on Erromango would become visible.

Delaney, Team One, and Doctor Noyle would be, by then, back in Layarteb City. After thirty minutes on the ship, they boarded the Black Hawk, which took them to the nearest naval carrier. They waited another forty-five minutes before catching a COD flight back to New Caledonia. From there it was a military transport to Hawaii and then another military transport all the way to White Sands in New Mexico. A third transport flight brought them all the way back to Layarteb City. It took them a total of twenty-six hours to make their way back to Layarteb City. For Delaney and Doctor Noyle that included flying to the Fortress of Comhghall from Stewart Air Force Base, fifty-seven miles north of the city. Because of the time zone changes, while it was March 7, 07:35 hours back in Vanuatu, it was 15:35 hours, March 6, in Layarteb City. For Doctor Noyle, the long trip, the jet lag, and the major shift in climate, was a lot for him to handle. He was weakened, tired, confused, and when he was brought in front of the Emperor, it took him a few minutes to collect himself.

---

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[Layarteb]

March 6, 2012 - 15:40 hrs [UTC-5]
Governors Island, Layarteb City
Fortress of Comhghall
(40° 41' 26.58" N, 74° 0' 59.25" W)

"Mister Delaney," the Emperor's gorgeous receptionist, Judy Mitchell said, catching his attention.

"Yes Judy?"

"The Emperor will see you both now," she said, a smile on her face as she put the phone down on its cradle. Delaney hadn't even heard the phone ring, a byproduct of the intense mental exhaustion he had exhibited since first arriving on Tanna Island. Her auburn hair glowed in the sliver of sunlight coming in through the windows.

Doctor Noyle gave her an inquisitive look and then quickly followed behind Delany as the two of them entered the Emperor's office. It was just as Doctor Noyle remembered it and he was not surprised either. "The elusive Doctor Atticus Noyle," the Emperor said as he stood in the corner by the bar. "Still drinking blended these days?"

"Bourbon," Doctor Noyle responded, "ice and water." Doctor Noyle took a seat opposite the small bar and Delaney took a seat opposite Doctor Noyle, next to the bar.

"Judy knows I am not to be disturbed so we can have a proper conversation," the Emperor said as he handed Doctor Noyle his drink and Delaney another drink, which was identical, eighteen year old scotch, neat.

The Emperor poured himself a glass and took a seat and as he did, Doctor Noyle broke the mild silence, "You have aged very little," he did not use the word "sir" but neither was it problematic.

"Cheers, to our long health, thanks to you Doctor," the Emperor said, offering his glass, which the three men clanged together. "Thank you for the complement, it's a shame you have not had the same luck but then again you were not part of the same experiments, were you?" The Emperor said this with some derision but that did not go far. Doctor Noyle was quick to respond and with claws in his remarks.

"You are the one who requested the project to begin and you adamantly demanded that you be part of it. I did caution you originally that the results would not be favorable for all."

"And so they weren't…"

"Have you been keeping your dosage regular?"

"I have and I remain free from the 'side effects' if you can call them that of the experiment."

"Good then, I guess I have done my job." Doctor Noyle said with some satisfaction.

"Doctor, you were the premier mind in our country and the projects you created and worked on have forever shaped the Empire except none of them can ever be made public. You have had failures and you have had successes and this little spat of you going AWOL is unacceptable!"

"Are you going to put me in jail?"

"Hardly," the Emperor laughed, "but I'm not going to let you escape again."

"How fitting, that I should die by the very hand whom I saved." There was an entire story to this comment, something book-worthy but that was another book, which would not be published, let alone even written.

"Doctor, what do you remember of EREBUS?"

"EREBUS?" Doctor Noyle asked himself, "I remember that project in significant detail. It was a disaster, an utter disaster. An entire platoon wiped out. Twenty-five good men, all killed, by their own side."

"Yes it was a disaster but that was twenty-something years ago."

"Twenty-two to be precise," Doctor Noyle answered.

"Yes and now the situation has changed again. Jack, did you give him the briefing on the Hi No Moton situation?"

"I did sir."

"Then no doubt you know what is at stake Doctor, correct?"

"I do. How did you ever allow this to happen?"

"We approached the Hi No Motons with peace. We were there to offer humanitarian assistance and they spat in our faces, acted with belligerency towards us, and now they wish to claim the Pacific as their own inheritance. They won't stop with the Pacific and if the Empire yields to them there, then what will stop them in the Indian Ocean and across Asia? How long before they creep onto the shores of North America? They're in the Aleutians already."

"Yes, botched that one?"

"So to speak, yes we did."

"Then you have a situation on hand of the gravest importance. The Hi No Motons are a creeping threat and a threat not to ignore. The natives on Vanuatu referred to them in the most horrible ways. The Kempeitai are fierce and their methods exceed that of even our most brutal units, do they not?"

"Correct Doctor," Delaney answered, being better versed with the intricate details of the Kempeitai than the Emperor was.

"And your answer to this is EREBUS?"

"I want to know what advances in pharmacology and science have been made that could make EREBUS possible?"

At this, Doctor Noyle leaned back in his chair and took a hearty sip of his bourbon. He weighed what the Emperor was saying and then responded, opening his mouth and shutting it first and then opening it again to speak. "There have been advances, we have learned of new pharmaceuticals that did not exist in the 1980s but I can assure you that I do not believe the success rate would be any different, if there was even a success rate to be had."

"Doctor, you haven't even tried."

"Is your intention to create a unit of absolute murdering psychopaths who cannot tell the difference between friend or foe, brother or bad guy? EREBUS ended because the two groups slaughtered one another with a savagery not even seen among cave men!" Doctor Noyle began to raise his voice, annoying that the Emperor doubted his expertise on the matter.

"There's no need to raise your voice."

"This is reckless, utterly reckless."

"Doctor, is there a possibility? Money, test subjects, laboratory equipment, personnel, et cetera is of no issue." Quiet filled the air while Doctor Noyle considered this.

"The limits of biology and chemistry still apply."

"Let's look at EREBUS' initial goals. We wanted a synthetic substance that we could give to soldiers that would heighten their senses, remove fear, allow them to go for longer times without getting tired without going to the lengths that SLEEPWALKER went to, and we wanted them to be able to learn at significantly quicker rates.

"To all of these objectives, the project was a success. However, it was too much of a success. The drug was perhaps too powerful or maybe not powerful enough. Perhaps it needs another additive to balance it out, you are the Doctor. Regardless, I read the reports multiple times. The subjects showed heightened senses, they lost all inhibitions of fear, they stayed up for forty, fifty hours straight and did not show any physiological strains of sleep deprivation, and when presented with new material just as language recognition, they picked up foreign languages in weeks."

"They also attacked one another, bayoneted each other, saw one another as the enemy. One soldier chewed the face off of another. Another gouged out his own brother's eyeballs and then cut open his stomach to do whatever behind he got bayoneted in the neck. The hallucinations these guys experienced were horrendous. They thought each other was the enemy and the one survivor was so shattered, emotionally and physically that we got nothing out of him. It took months just to recreate what happened."

"Can we do it again? At the very least, if we cannot control EREBUS as a benefit, then it can become a weapon against our enemies."

"A weapon?"

"Yes Doctor, a weapon… EREBUS was aggressive and if it cannot serve a benefit to us, could it not be administered to our enemy as a weapon?"

Silence filled the room as the three men took a few more sips of their liquor. Doctor Noyle finally would break the silence with three words, "Yes it can."

---

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[Layarteb]

March 6, 2012 - 18:00 hrs [UTC-5]
Governors Island, Layarteb City
Fortress of Comhghall
(40° 41' 26.58" N, 74° 0' 59.25" W)

The Emperor, Doctor Atticus Noyle, and Jack Delaney had struck up a lengthy and detailed conversation, not just about the future of the EREBUS Project, which would be dubbed EREBUS II but about other projects as well. They committed virtually an hour to SLEEPWALKER and SLEEPWALKER II. Other projects mentioned was the 6-month experiment in 1994 during the Kaliningradian War against prisoners at Malbork, which was codenamed KOMET or German for comet. That was a brutal program that was all about human testing of certain, "new," biological drugs. Never did what Doctor Noyle was doing in Vanuatu come up for discussion and when the question had been asked, he waved it off by saying, "A failure…"

Another project mentioned and then discussed at length was TORTOISE, a particularly aggressive project undertaken by Doctor Noyle just after SLEEPWALKER was closed. It used prisoners as test subjects and aimed at creating a chemical that could make an individual resistant to chemical weapons. It was an abysmal failure and the survivors of the program were executed to prevent them from speaking. All-in-all, to all causes, the program claimed the lives of fifty-two prisoners, none of whom would have been missed. A brief follow-on program titled STARGAZER aimed at identifying ways to torture individuals without killing them. Prisoners were once again test subjects as well and unlike TORTOISE, this program was a complete and total success. Doctor Noyle only had limited input in it though.

As the clock turned to 18:00, the Emperor stood up in his chair, put down his empty glass, and looked at Doctor Noyle with a friendly face. "Doctor, I am glad to have you back within the borders of this nation. It has grown much since you left but I cannot allow you to leave again. Jack here will escort you down to a specialized team, which will be responsible for your oversight. Unfortunately, your old facility is not going to be usable to you but, instead, we have a new facility that will be made available.

"Up until now, this facility has remained a secret, even from me. I thank the individuals in charge of it for their level of discretion. However, now it is known to me and you will find the facility to be state-of-the-art."

"Where is it located?"

"Travel upriver precisely fifty-eight miles north of here to Pollepel Island in the Hudson. Six and a half acres of rock with a vast underground network of structures; you will find the place quite homey."

"I can't wait…" Doctor Noyle said, standing up from his chair. He handed the Emperor his glass, offered him his other hand to shake, and followed Delaney out of the office and to the helipad, where a government-marked MD 902 Explorer helicopter was waiting. He and Delaney shook hands but shared no words thanks to the noise of the helicopter and then Doctor Noyle entered the cabin and within ninety seconds, he was flying over the Hudson River, heading north towards a small Layartebian base near Pollepel Island on the Hudson River. He would travel to the island by boat after the sun went down, to ensure total secrecy.

Back in the Emperor's office, the phone rang just about at the time when the MD 902 was lifting into the air. "Yes?" He answered, recognizing the number on the caller ID screen.

"Sir, we want to inquire about the status of Project EREBUS?"

"EREBUS-Two is a go!"

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March 7, 2012 - 12:00 hrs [UTC+11]
Erromango Island, Vanuatu
14 km east of Dillon Bay Airfield
(18°46'25.96" S, 169° 8'11.34" E)

The Ghost Recon attachment deployed to Erromango Island belonged to 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company. From it, the twenty-five "Ghosts" as the Ghost Recon commandos were called were separated into five squads, Alpha through Echo. Alpha Squad was still trying to keep their last meals down outside of Unpongkor; Bravo Squad was still out of contact, their last known position being just twelve klicks to the north-northwest; Charlie Squad had called for extraction from the south of the island just twelve hours ago, with two of their five wounded and the other three in severe shellshock; Delta Squad had made it to Port Narvin but that was the last anyone had heard about them; and Echo Squad was still in the jungle.

Echo Squad was led by Captain O'Neill, a seasoned veteran of the 3rd Special Operations Group and a former Pararescue jumper from the 7th Special Operations Group, the "Hawks." The executive officer and Intel tech of the squad was First Sergeant Ferretti, a former Green Beret. Both O'Neill and Ferretti were just under six feet in height, they had a tan complexion, and they had more muscle tone than muscle itself. Their communications sergeant was Staff Sergeant Brown who was a short Venezuelan who spoke faster than an X-15 flew. He was from some airborne unit none of the men could ever remember. Their equipment tech was Sergeant Freeman, who had been a Ranger before he came to Tier One Special Operations. He was as Irish as they came but he could lift at least twice his weight and hump that for at least ten miles before he ever got tired. The last member of squad was their sniper, a former Marine, Sergeant Reilly. He was Turkish, born there, who immigrated to the Empire with his parents when he was just four years old.

Two hours after Doctor Noyle departed Governors Island for his "prison" up north, Echo Squad stopped in the middle of the jungle on Erromango Island. They were fourteen klicks due east of Dillon Bay Airfield, which had been commandeered by a Marine company. It was now receiving C-130s and C-27s loaded with supplies. One troop squadron from Delta Force continued to remain at the airfield but the other three had rotated back to the ship. Soon enough, they would be marshaled to help locate Bravo Squad and Delta Squad.

"Stop, stop here…" CPT O'Neill ordered as he took a knee. The jungle was so thick that their progress was measurable in terms of feet rather than klicks. Cutting through the brush with their machetes was tiring work and CPT O'Neill, who had been on point now for the past three hours, needed a rest. Everyone needed a rest.

They had been inserted onto Erromango on March 5 at 20:30 hours and they had been on the island since, a total of thirty-nine and a half hours. It was the most arduous thirty-nine and a half hours any of those men had since they had come to the 3rd Special Operations Group. They had slept for barely four hours sometime around dawn on March 6 and on March 7, they had slept another two or three hours, at most. About six hours after they had inserted onto the island, they came in contact with a small trail that snaked alongside of a stream cutting through the jungle. They followed the path for three hours and stumbled onto a jungle hide site constructed in the ground. It was 05:45 hours, March 6, around dawn. With suppressors attached to their weapons, they killed the three, sleeping occupants. What they found was truly grotesque.

They wore light clothes, which had been torn to pieces by the shrubbery on the island. Around their necks, they wore necklaces of ears, all of them right ears. They had half-eaten but cooked pieces of human flesh sitting on top of a crate. Three, polished skulls sat on another crate with a canteen sitting next to them. They had been the three easiest people to kill and the Ghosts rummaged around through their belongings to find, of all things, a recipe for human flesh. Apparently these guys didn't like the saltiness of it. They found no other personal effects on them. There were no photographs, no journals and diaries, no letters, and no identification. For the next twelve hours, Echo Squad moved more cautiously than they had before. As the sun went down, they camped out for a few hours to rest but none of them slept one wink.

Throughout the night of March 6 and the early morning of March 7, they moved about the jungle, heading northward. They had found little but they all had the distinct feeling that they were being both watched and followed. When they camped just before dawn on March 7, they got their two to three hours of sleep. Since they woke up, they had been trekking northward and this was the first time they had stopped since then. "Christ man," SSG Brown began as he fought to catch his breath, "this radio is getting heavy."

"Freeman, swap gear with Brown," CPT O'Neill said as he handed off the machete to 1SG Ferretti. "You're up," he said once more but now with a smile. "Reilly, you good?"

"Good as gold Cap'n," the former Marine responded as he wiped off the scope glass on his M111A2 MAW - Marksman. He also gave a tug on his secondary weapon, an M112B4 Viper submachine gun. The rest of the squad all had M111A5 MAWs, which had a mere 10-inch barrel, versus the 21-inch barrel on the M111A2, an integral suppressor, and could fire the 6.8x51mm LDC round that the Empire used as standard issue. For their sidearms, they carried the M120C4 Equinox Combat. Echo Squad, unlike Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie did not opt to bring a machine gun with them.

With the swapping of equipment, everyone whose loads had been heavy became lighter and vice versa for those who had been lighter were now heavier. Of course, this would only be temporary. They would swap loads again in the future but that was hours from now. The men who needed the rest would get it and then it would be their turn to carry the brunt of the weight again.

Suddenly, there was a crack in the jungle and all five men got instantly silent. They got down on the ground, lying prone, pulled their weapons up to their shoulders, and peered down the sights, covering every possible direction. Another crack and the sound of rustling leaves came next. Chopping followed and it was definite that a patrol was fast approaching their position. Using hand signals, CPT O'Neill ordered his men to stay quiet and watch around them. If they could avoid engaging the force, they would; depending on how large it was, which they had to determine first anyway.

Staying quiet, the five men of Echo Squad could only lie there on the ground, wondering who was approaching them. They heard only the sounds of movement. There were no voices to discern how many approached and there was no way to know that the noise was just a decoy, which it was. All of a sudden, while Echo Squad honed its attention to the north, where the sound was originating from, a metallic-sounding clang echoed in the middle of their formation. It sounded as if cheap metal, more like tin or aluminum, fell onto a rock. By the time CPT O'Neill turned to see what it was, the smoke grenade had gone off, filling the air with a dense cloud of white smoke that instantly began to irritated their eyes, their noses, and their mouths. The realization that the grenade was not a smoke grenade but rather a tear (CS) gas grenade hit everyone almost at once. However, these men had no gas masks and though they had been exposed to CS gas before, they knew that unless they could clear the area, they wouldn't be able to relieve themselves of the gas's effects.

Ignoring the noise coming from the north, Echo Squad began to crawl away from the gas and away from the north, towards the south, away from the direction of the wind, right into a horseshoe formation of nine hostiles, all of them barefoot, with assault rifles pointed in their direction.

---

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[Layarteb]

March 7, 2012 - 16:45 hrs [UTC+11]
Erromango Island, Vanuatu
Unknown
(LOCATION UNDETERMINED)

CPT O'Neill had no clue where he was, what time it was, how he got there, or what had happened to him. His head ached, his eyes burned, his throat burned, his nose burned, and his stomach growled from an obscene sense of hunger. As his vision came back to him, he saw that he was in a cavern that wasn't very large but encircled on all four sides by rocks. A small opening above them showed small slivers of light that gave him enough light to actually see around the cavern. Looking to his right, CPT O'Neill saw SGT Reilly sound unconscious next to him; looking to his left, he saw the squad leader of Bravo Squad and his radioman. That was it for the occupants of this cavern. What he didn't know was that in a cavern next to his was the rest of Bravo Squad, or rather what remained of it, and the rest of his squad. What remained of Delta Squad was in a third cavern.

Of the three Ghost squads, Delta was hit the hardest. They had two KIAs, the squad leader and the equipment tech. Of the other three men, every one of them was wounded and none of them was ambulatory. Bravo Squad wasn't in great shape either. They had one KIA and two of the remaining four weren't ambulatory. Echo Squad was ambulatory but everyone in Echo Squad and the other two men in Bravo Squad were still injured, suffering still from the effects of the tear gas and the rough handling they suffered during capture and transportation. Twenty percent were dead and another third needed to be carried out, making these three Ghost squads the hardest hit of any deployment in the history of the unit.

Escape and evade came to CPT O'Neill's mind as he realized that he wasn't bound by any chains or rope. He checked his body, more or less trying to ascertain what gear he had remaining. They had taken his compass, his radio, his weapons, his map, his survival gear, his first-aid gear, and left him only with his cigarettes. Rather than let them go to waste, he pulled one out of the pack, lifted it to his lips, lit it, and took in a deep breath. When he exhaled, the smoke hung in the air like little silver wisps. The air was stagnant, hot, humid, and downright oppressive, despite their being underground.

A voice groaned in the cavern and CPT O'Neill saw that it came from the Bravo Squad leader. "Yo man, cigarette…" He asked but CPT O'Neill looked at his pack to see just three left. Sharing cigarettes was a faux pas in the military, if you ran out, tough luck on you, but in their present situation, CPT O'Neill handed one over, and he also handed over his lighter.

"The price is you got to tell me what happened," CPT O'Neill said as he took back his lighter. The squad leader for Bravo was in bad shape, dried blood marked his face.

"What's there to tell? They corralled us in, distracted us, threw in a tear gas grenade, and when we crawled downwind, there they were, waiting for us."

"How long have you been captured here?"

"About three hours after we landed, if that, I can't remember too well." He took in a deep draw of the cigarette. "I don't even smoke…" He said with a light laugh at the end of it. "What day is it?"

"Seventh, maybe the eighth, how long have I been here?"

"Not long, seventh then…"

"Seventh yes…"

Suddenly, a shrill echo filled the cavern. It came through the air from above and pierced right into CPT O'Neill's ears. Bravo's squad leader just shook his head, "That's one of my guys…"

"Where are we?"

"Some underground army base or something. There's some Asian guy here, big shot, he's doing some tests on people… My men…"

"What do you think they're doing?"

"Probably torturing him, these people, they're headhunters, cannibals, you know, sick fucks."

"Yeah, I know, we killed three of them. Skulls and everything there, bones, flesh, blood…"

"I saw them," Bravo's squad leader dropped his voice to a whisper. "I saw them kill my guy. They slit his wrists, drained out his blood, did some ritual or something, and then drank it."

"Fuck me…"

"Fuck me is right man." The shrill screams continued and the two men sat there in silence while the other two remained unconscious for another half-hour before they awoke. The afternoon came to an abrupt end on them and soon it became night. The light coming in from the hole above their cavern went away, casting them in starlight, and by then they realized some of the layout of the underground base. They were in what would be considered a basement level. The main level was directly underground and the incoming sunlight was coming through a small hole that they used to either vent stale air or to collect rainwater. It was too hard to tell. The hole had a purpose; it wasn't there by random, particularly because a steel grate kept anyone from above from getting through it.

Throughout the night, the screaming continued intermittently. The other two men drifted in and out of sleep, weary and exhausted. Everyone was dehydrated until a bucket with dirty, bacteria-ridden water was lowered to them. It was cool, fresh, and obviously came from a nearby stream meaning that wherever they were, an escape route to the sea was present. They just had to escape and find it. Escape and evade, continued to dance in CPT O'Neill's mind and he got very little sleep that night. When night turned to day, the temperature again rose and the steamy, sweltering, uncomfortable air in the cavern made it hard to breathe. CPT O'Neill and the rest of the men began to shed layers of clothing, which were so soaked with sweat that they were beginning to irritate them.

Daylight came and went again. More dirty water was dropped and though they wanted nothing to do with the bacteria-infested water, they drank anyway, plotting their escape. Those plans were almost coming to fruition when, all of a sudden, shouting voices echoed from above. The voices weren't intelligible and whatever language they were speaking, none of the Ghosts knew it but it was obvious that something was happening when a rope ladder was dropped into the hole. "You! Up the ladder!" A native with a rifle yelled, pointing the muzzle down the down at CPT O'Neill. He resisted and the order was repeated again. Then a shot was fired and it landed mere inches away from CPT O'Neill.

"Go! We'll figure it out," Bravo's squad leader said and CPT O'Neill nodded, ascending the ladder in just his boxer shorts.

"Where are your clothes!"

"Too hot!" They said something in their native language. It was impossible to discern. CPT O'Neill was led away from the hole through a labyrinth of low tunnels that forced him to crouch over the whole time. As he walked through them, he passed the wounded and tortured sniper from Bravo Squad. He was one of the two non-ambulatory WIAs. CPT O'Neill was then pushed through the tunnels until he was stopped in front of a large, steel door. It was opened and he was pushed inside. The door slammed shut with a resounding echo behind him and there he stood face-to-face with a smiling, Hi No Moton scientist.

"What is your name?" He asked, in perfect English. He obviously had been educated in the west, probably Britain.

"I have no name," CPT O'Neill defiantly answered. None of the Ghosts wore their names or their ranks on their uniforms, ever and they had all been defiant against giving away any further information. Bravo's tortured sniper had, in the end, never given up his name, rank, or unit. They were POWs but they weren't the normal POWs one would suspect. Name, rank, and serial number was, in effect, not going to be had here.

"That is what your last man said, and the one before that." He said with a faint laugh as he turned around and walked over to a table full of surgical instruments. Despite the oppressive head, he was wearing a suit from head to toe just without a tie and without a jacket. He wasn't sweating at all.

"What are you going to do?"

"I am going to get your name, your rank, your unit, your mission, and everything else I can about you. I did not get it out of your other colleagues but you are a different sort. I shall think you will be a success." Gritting his teeth, CPT O'Neill prepared for the worst and soon, it began.

---

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ |xxx| ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Layarteb]

March 9, 2012 - 03:00 hrs [UTC+11]
Erromango Island, Vanuatu
Unknown
(LOCATION UNDETERMINED)

Echo Squad had been captured for approximately thirty-nine hours already. CPT O'Neill had been enduring a length and painful torture session at the behest of the Hi No Moton doctor. He remained resolute in his defiance against the Hi No Moton interrogator but he wondered just how long he would be able to endure before the pain just became too much. He caught a glimpse of the Hi No Moton's watch and saw that it was 03:00 hours and he gathered that it was March 9. He tried to piece back the past day and a half, from the time he and his squad were captured to now. He pieced back everything he remembered, fighting against the details that he couldn't remember. He looked around the interrogator "chamber" or whatever else he could think of to describe it. He took in the surroundings, the door, how the handle had to be turned downward to open. He caught stock of the Hi No Moton, of the sweat on his wrists, and of the distinct possibility that he could slip out of his restraints, which were nothing more than ropes. The vigorous action of torture had certainly loosened the knots.

One chance, the trocar, yes, I'll use him as a shield… Get his gun, he has a gun… He looked around the chamber and saw the pistol lying on the table. It was a Beretta 92F, a favorite of CPT O'Neill's. He began to work with his restraint a little and felt his right hand coming loose. His Hi No Moton torturer was reviewing a medical book. He was weary, tired, and he was letting his guard down, that much was evident. One of the base's soldiers had come into the room about forty-five minutes ago and asked the Hi No Moton if he wanted anything. However, the Hi No Moton shooed him away irritatingly.

"You know Mister 'No Name' I think I will be able to crack you." He said idly as he focused on the medical book in front of him. CPT O'Neill paid him no mind as he reviewed the pages of the book.

Holding his breath, CPT O'Neill slipped his right hand out of the restraint and then he rapidly pulled out his left hand and began to work on his feet. Precious seconds were ticking away and CPT O'Neill, sweating profusely, was petrified that he would make a sound or that the Hi No Moton would turn around and alert the guard. Luck was on his side, lending itself to his getaway as he stood up for the first time in hours. He felt a surge of strength and energy fill his weary, taxed, and pained body. He crept forward, his mind focused on the Hi No Moton doctor who paid him no mind or attention whatsoever. Within seconds, he grabbed the trocar and stood straight behind the Hi No Moton. He was still focused on his book but CPT O'Neill didn't let him finish the paragraph. Instead, he reached around with right arm, grabbed the doctor's throat and shoved the trocar in his left hand against it, drawing blood. "Shhh…" CPT O'Neill whispered in the Hi No Moton's ear. "Now you listen to me and you listen to me well. I will crush your throat if I want to and you know I can do it… When I say so, call the guard, but do it quietly. You got it?" The Hi No Moton tried to nod his head in agreement but the grip that CPT O'Neill had on him was like an unbreakable death grip.

"Walk…" CPT O'Neill led him over to the table with the pistol, took it, and pressed it against the Hi No Moton's back. "Act contrary to what I tell you and I will shoot you right through the abdomen and let you bleed out you fucker…" He situated himself in the side of the room, so that when the guard entered, he wouldn't immediately see CPT O'Neill holding the doctor hostage as a human shield. "Now call him…"

The Hi No Moton did and after about ten seconds, the door opened, and in stepped the guard. He spoke in English, "How can I help…" That was as far as he got. CPT O'Neill threw the trocar through the air, getting it right into the guard's neck. He slumped over sideways, hit the floor, and was dead. In an instant, CPT O'Neill smacked the gun into the Hi No Moton's shoulder, forcing him to go to his knees, while he shut the door.

"All right Doctor, why don't you and I go for a walk, okay?" He grabbed the guard, removed his holster, and threw it around his body, tucking the Beretta into it. Then he grabbed the guards' assault rifle and checked the magazine. He looked down at the doctor and put the magazine back into the rifle.

In pain, the Hi No Moton stood up, and begrudgingly fell into place. "Make a peep the wrong way and you and I will end our relationship most quick, do you got that?"

"I do," the doctor said.

"Now when we walk out of this door, and don't you fucking lie to me, is it a left, or a right?"

"A left… The right is nothing…"

"How do we get out?"

"The left, you keep going left, you will see stairs…"

"Doctor you might just live with your body intact if you don't fuck this up! Now one last question, how many guards?"

"Seven."

"Seven?"

"Seven."

"With him?"

"Six then."

"Six…"

"Yes six." CPT O'Neill motioned with the gun for him to follow and they walked up to the door.

"Where are they?"

"To the right and the left, both places. They are probably asleep."

"For your sake I hope they are… Open it…" Out they went, into the hallway, where CPT O'Neill looked both ways. There was no one in the corridor and CPT O'Neill steered him to the right. They walked about forty feet before they came to an open room cut into the rock. Inside, CPT O'Neill saw several cots sitting around. Four soldiers were sleeping on them. That left two more. Knowing that he simply couldn't kill them all silently, CPT O'Neill shoved the Hi No Moton aside, raised the CAR-15, and opened fire, putting about twenty rounds in the air. He sliced all four men to pieces before any of them awoke and then quite rapidly, he ran over to them to grab a fresh magazine. He slung another rifle around his back and turned to see the Hi No Moton doctor run away. He let out a fresh burst, emptying the rest of the magazine in the process.

Reloading, he walked up to the door and ignored the painful ringing in his ears from the gunfire. The noise echoed throughout the entire base and the two enemy soldiers were alerted as the Hi No Moton ran past them, up the stairs, out of the bunker, and into the jungle. He was gone, escaped, lucky for him. CPT O'Neill focused his attention on the matter at hand and approached the corridor turn, knowing that he was close to the holding caverns. He could see the shadows of the two soldiers still left alive. One of them quickly bucked away and he assumed that he had made a run for it, leaving just one nervous, scared soldier. He would be itchy with his trigger finger and CPT O'Neill decided that he needed a diversion. He backtracked back to the room, grabbed the body of one of the wasted soldiers, and dragged him into the corridor. The shadow was still there so he propped up the body against the wall, and with a reserve of strength he didn't know he had, tossed the body into the corridor.

The bullets that ricocheted against the rock wall came like a buckshot shell from a shotgun, hitting seemingly all at once. The nervous soldier opened up with full auto and CPT O'Neill watched the bullets dance upwards, showing that he had no control over his weapon. Listening, despite the deafening ringing in his ear, CPT O'Neill heard the faint sound of clicking, and popped out, sighted the soldier reloading his rifle, and opened fire with a six round burst. The soldier was hit all in the upper chest, and fell backwards, dead.

CPT O'Neill rushed to the hole where he had been held, looked down, and saw everyone teeming with excitement. He kicked the ladder down, and then handed the CAR-15 down the ladder to the squad leader of Bravo Squad. "There's more I'm going to get them, get everyone out! Scientist got away and one soldier, he might come back, I don't know, we don't have a lot of time!" He charged the squad leader as he ran back for the rest of the assault rifles. Inside of the room, he grabbed the other three assault rifles, four pouches of magazines, and a couple of hand grenades, two of which he dropped as he rounded the corner. He lightly kicked them along until he got near the holding area. By then, the men in his area were all up, and he handed them the weapons, pouches, and the grenades. "We've got to help the rest, Reilly, watch our backs."

"Got it Cap'n," SGT Reilly flipped off the safety on his rifle and took up a position, watching the open bunker doors. For the next five and a half minutes, Bravo's squad leader, CPT O'Neill, and Bravo's radioman helped the rest of the men out of their holes. Those who weren't ambulatory would be carried on the men's shoulders and those who were would carry the others. Unfortunately, they didn't see the bodies of their deceased and the worst off out of all of them was Bravo's sniper. His squad leader personally threw him on his shoulders to help him out of there. Formed up, the men prepared themselves and made their ascent to the surface. The stairs were arduous and they came out to find a night sky that was as dark as their holes were. In the distance, they could hear the rushing water of the stream. That was where they had to go and while they took a bearing, SSG Brown nearly tripped over something and as he looked down, he saw the three bodies of their killed comrades.

"Cap'n," he called, preventing them from heading towards the river. "Cap'n we've got them…" Everyone's hands were full but they couldn't leave the bodies behind. They were in bad shape, rotting in the jungle heat, and they smelled but they couldn't be left there.

"We've got to take them. We have to…" CPT O'Neill said as he looked around. "We'll get to the river, bring the wounded, then we'll come back for them!" He said and off they went, moving towards the stream, which they pleasantly found was just four hundred meters away. There, they dropped off the wounded and CPT O'Neill, Bravo's squad leader, SSG Brown, and Delta's sniper ran back for the bodies. Holding their breaths, they picked them up, carefully. All four of them threw up on the way back, SSG Brown accidently onto the Delta squad leader, who he was carrying.

Formed up back at the river, they looked at it and saw that the stream was rushing hard to the east. "Okay, that's the way to the ocean. We've got to get the fuck out of here and we've got to go now! We'll float the bodies, if we have to carry people we will, c'mon!" Into the stream they went…

---

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[Layarteb]

Epilogue
Vanuatu

The fighting in Vanuatu was far different than what the Empire of Layarteb was used to, especially since the end of the Conquests. Marines responsible for taking on rebel forces in the northern parts of the islands faced a small but surprisingly well-equipped force. There was plenty of evidence to suggest that they were receiving international assistance and virtually all eyes looked northward, to the Empire of Hi No Moto. However, there was nothing, legally speaking, that made this a direct act of war against the Empire. Quite simply, the Hi No Motons were likely trying to set up a puppet regime to give themselves a better base of power against the Empire, which had only just consolidated its power in the Solomon Islands to the west. Since Fiji, to the east, was under Hi No Moton control, it was entirely logical that Vanuatu should be a Hi No Moton desire for it allowed them to threaten both the Solomon's and New Caledonia. Their efforts had, to say the least, been thwarted by the Empire's assault onto the island group.

Following the defeat of the rebel forces, the government retook control over Efate and the rest of the island group. The Marines suffered minimal casualties with just 7 KIA and 28 WIA requiring medical evacuation. The rebels, despite being well-equipped, suffered from a distinct lack of leadership. It was surmised, from interviews with POWs that the Hi No Moton advisors likely abandoned the rebels when it was clear that the Empire would invade. The rebel forces largely fell to pieces amidst the superiority of Layartebian firepower.

Further south, on Erromango Island, things were far different. The island had fallen under the jurisdiction of special forces. Delta Force had taken the main objectives on the island and they had done so with minimal casualties of their own. However, they found that no rebel or government forces occupied the island. There were less than fifty soldiers controlling the island and they were far from "conventional." They operated in very small groups and they showed a significant amount of skill and discipline. None of them were captured alive and based on recovered intelligence documents, as well as the debriefing of the captured Ghosts, the Hi No Moton Kempeitai had directly trained them. They were likely some black operations unit formed by the Kempeitai and they had obviously been well liked, they received a lot of attention from Tokyo.

Regardless, nothing could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and the Ghosts who arrived on the island had taken a serious beating. Alpha Squad was extracted without incident. Bravo Squad suffered 1 KIA and 2 WIAs. Charlie Squad had been previously extracted with 2 WIAs and they would all depart the 3rd Special Operations Group before month's end. Delta Squad was the hardest hit with 2 KIAs and 3 WIAs. Echo Squad just had the 1 WIA, CPT O'Neill. Their escape had quickly become something of legend within the special operations community. The daring heroics of CPT O'Neill inside of the enemy base had not ended when they came to the river. All of them, the dead included, waded down the river, all the way out to sea, popping out about four klicks south of Port Narvin, where they remained for nine hours before search and rescue spotted their signal fire on the beach.

In the debriefing that followed, the account of their tale was recounted by every one of them. There was no doubt whatsoever as to its authenticity. Everyone was awarded a POW Medal and most of them received a Purple Heart. Delta's squad leader was awarded a Silver Star for his heroism in captivity before he was executed. CPT O'Neill, who led the escape, was awarded the Medal of Honor and there were plenty of other awards given out for heroism. Bravo's sniper received an Army Cross although he would never again fight in combat. During the rest of March, Layartebian black ops from the 2nd BOG "Force Thunder" hunted the jungles of Erromango for the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes that the men deployed to the island had seen. In the end, they found no one. It was assumed that they all escaped, likely for Fiji or, perhaps, Indonesia. That put the count at forty-four and though no identities of the soldiers were ever found, a likely profile of them had been surmised by investigators.

On Tanna Island, everything was swept under the rug. The roving patrols were hunted down and captured and killed. They weren't of the caliber that the men on Erromango were and they weren't trained by Hi No Moton advisors but they were certainly not of the pathetic caliber that the rebels were. Doctor Noyle's laboratory was taken over by members of the Ministry of Intelligence and all trace of him was wiped out and forever buried. The entire place was sanitized, quite a daunting task given the stench and the putrification of the dead.

President Korman's body was recovered and a full investigation was made on the crash that killed him. It was concluded that the aircraft had actually been shot down using a man-portable, surface-to-air, shoulder-launched missile system. The explosive residue matched the explosive charge normally used in the 9K38 Igla, or SA-18 Grouse. The missile system was never recovered nor was the shooter ever identified. It was assumed that the crime was perpetrated by the rebels who likely had a spy within President Korman's cabinet. Most of them were dismissed following the Empire's assumption of authority over the island.

By April 1, the Layartebian flag flew over the capitol in Port Villa. The island group joined the Western Republic on June 1, the same day that Rondônia joined the Amazonian Territory. Peace would come to the island group in time and its annexation would make a major end to the Empire's expansion in the Pacific. Vanuatu would join New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands as major entity of the Western Republic, smack dab to Indonesia's east and the Empire of Hi No Moto. The Hi No Moton occupation of Fiji would soon become a major priority of the Empire due to its location. In the overall cold war between the Empire and Hi No Moto, Vanuatu was a major piece of the puzzle.

---

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ |xxxii| ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Layarteb]

---

There's a storm coming...

---

Part II
Amapá

June 18, 2012 - 05:00 hrs [UTC-4]
San José, Venezuela
Force Thunder / Spectre Shared Facility
(10°34'37.70" N, 66°57'23.51" W)

The sun was only just rising on this cool but humid June morning outside of Caracas. In the small town of San José, just seven miles from downtown Caracas was a massive, underground facility that was akin to Zeta Facility in White Plains, where 1st Black Operations Group or "Force Falcon" called their home. This particular facility was home to the 2nd Black Operations Group, "Force Thunder" and the 3rd Black Operations Group, "Force Spectre." Whereas Zeta Facility housed only sixty persons at most, the larger San José facility held two hundred and forty, one hundred and twenty belonging to each respective BOG group. Normally, BOG units had their own, separate facilities but the 2nd BOG and the 3rd BOG were structured identically. Each unit had six, 5-man squads of operators, and ninety support personnel. The only difference between both units was their upper level mission and their upper level training. The 2nd BOG was a counter-terrorism unit while the 3rd BOG was a counter-drug unit and up until their individual, squad training, everything between the two units was identical.

Within each 5-man squad was a commanding officer, normally a lieutenant. There was a communications technician, an equipment technician who was a master in just about every piece of hardware the mission would need, an intelligence technician, and a marksman. Everyone save for the commanding officer was a high-ranking NCO of grade E-8 or better. In special operations units, this bar would usually be down to E-5 for the more elite units, which was what made BOG and SOG units so different. The men in BOG units had all come from SOG units, exemplified themselves in service, and now, as a BOG operator, they frankly did not exist in any manner of speaking. Their records were expunged completely, their fingerprints deleted from databases, their identities virtually deleted, and it took less than ninety seconds to complete said task once the process was started.

Both BOGs operated similar to the 1st BOG. For the 1st BOG, one team was on leave, one was at Zeta Facility, one was at the Fortress of Comhghall, and one was wherever the Emperor was. For the 2nd BOG and the 3rd BOG, one team was on leave, three were on standby at the facility, and two were deployed. On this particular morning, Alpha Squad was on leave, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta were on standby, and Echo and Foxtrot were on deployment for the 2nd BOG. Echo Squad was in Europe, following up on an investigation with the Cottish while Foxtrot Squad was in the Falklands.

First Lieutenant, 1LT, Sam Cruise, Delta's commanding officer, was fast asleep in his bunk. He and Delta Squad had been in training until 02:00 hours and they were taking this opportunity to catch up on some much needed sleep. Sleeping dreamlessly, 1LT Cruise was barely into REM sleep when the phone next to his bed began to ring. There was no mistaking that ring and he reached out, instinctively, without opening his eyes, lifted the handset off of the receiver, and put it up to his ear, "Cruise…" He said, his voice audibly irritated and groggy.

"Code Mike, be down in the CIC in five mikes."

"Confirm five mikes." He repeated and then put the handset back, rolled over onto his back, and cursed underneath his breath. Phone calls would alert the rest of Delta Squad so he wouldn't have to, giving him time to get out of bed, throw his shoes on, splash cold water on his face, and get down to the CIC. The rest of Delta Squad filtered in over the next thirty seconds, at which point the unit's commander, a colonel by the name of Vladimir Surgeon, a Russo-Cottish Layartebian-born genius, came in to give them the briefing.

"All right guys, we've got something fishy in Amapá. We don't know a lot since it just happened but you're going to be going there in the next four hours. Embraer ERJ 145," he began as a map of Macapá International Airport came on the screen behind them. "At Macapá International Airport was hijacked about forty-five minutes ago but one gunman and four assailants. Identities are unknown but they're demanding four hundred thousand and safe passage to; get this, the United Provinces of Bavin. Only thing, they're not Bavinese that much we've confirmed. Their accent just isn't. In fact, there's more on this.

"The MOI has taken a special interest in this, which is about as normal as hurricanes in winter. Something's big here. They're not saying but we caught something on the band, they think the hijackers are Layartebian. Yeah real weird.

"Okay well so they have the plane and fifty passengers and they're sitting on the tarmac still. Amapánese counter-terrorism police have the plane isolated and they're on scene and they're trying to negotiate but things aren't going so well. They're probably going to storm the plane but the MOI worked out a deal for Layartebian 'advisors.' You guys." COL Surgeon said, taking a breath before he continued further. "The hijacker hasn't given a name but he claims to have the aircraft wired with plastic explosives. We don't know if that's true or not, we can't confirm anything. MOI is being real tight-lipped about this. Tell you the truth I think this is a ploy. Maybe it's a weapons deal to anti-Bavinese guerillas or something, I don't know but it ain't Kosher. I want you guys down there, where you'll liaise with the Amapánese CT forces under the command of a Raul Machado. We don't know much about him but we have to assume that he's competent. If you see otherwise, make sure you act on it. We'll keep in constant communication. Any questions?"

"Transport?"

"Four hours you're leaving on a direct military flight out of Caracas Air Force Base."

"Cover?"

"Caracas SWAT. We've got uniforms somewhere, we're just trying to find them for you guys. That'll be about an hour or so."

"Rules of engagement?"

"Amapánese are storming the plane for now but that could change. Bring the tools as if you guys are."

"And what of the MOI?"

"Guy's name is Andre, we don't know anything about this guy. He's about as ghostly as anyone else. You'll liaise with him too but don't trust him. Don't trust any of these MOI guys, like I said, something isn't Kosher here. They want this to go down one of two ways. My take is they don't believe the Amapánese can do the job right, that's why they want you. They want these guys dead but they want them to appear as terrorists and not as anything else. That's my take but they've alluded, whether it's true or not, to a high-value Layartebian being on the flight, no details. Sounds like a smokescreen to me. All right, any other questions?" There weren't any so the men split.

---

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[Layarteb]

June 18, 2012 - 14:30 hrs [UTC-3]
Macapá, Amapá
Macapá International Airport
(0° 3'1.02" N, 51° 4'16.82" W)

The Beechcraft Super King Air came to a stop in the extreme southwestern corner of the tarmac right next to a de Havilland Canada DHC-7 or "Dash 7." The short-takeoff, regional airliner had a capacity for fifty passengers and it had a range of eight hundred miles. This particular one from the Amapánese National Airline was scheduled to depart at 15:45 hours for São Luís in Maranho, which was just over five hundred miles away. Inside of the small, thirteen-passenger plane were just seven men. There was 1LT Cruise and the rest of Delta Squad, five men in total, the MOI pilot at the controls, and an MOI asset who spent most of the flight briefing 1LT Cruise and his men on the situation.

As the two propellers halted their rotations, the cabin door opened and the five men from Force Thunder stepped out onto the tarmac, bags over their shoulders, sunglasses covering their eyes. The hot, humid, and otherwise stagnant summer air slammed them straight in the face but as they were used to it being based in Venezuela, they largely ignored its grotesqueness. They were dressed in the Caracas SWAT uniforms that they had been provided with and if anyone was paying attention to them, there wasn't a single thing out of place with their uniforms. A military vehicle sat about ten meters in front of them and standing alongside it were two men. One was dressed in a suit and a tie, obviously a government agent and the other was wearing the uniform of the Amapánese military. The seven men converged on one another halfway between the plane and the vehicle and handshakes were exchanged. "Lieutenant Black, is that correct?" The suited man said, speaking to 1LT Cruise.

"That's correct, are you Andre?"

"I am sir, this is Captain Machado."

"Pleasure Lieutenant, you and your men are much needed here but I trust you are aware of your advisory status?"

"They're aware," Andre said as he took a few steps towards the VPK-3927 Volk. All seven men climbed into the back and CPT Machado shut the doors behind him, as he was the last one into the vehicle. Seated around the back of the vehicle, they were quiet until the vehicle began to move forward, being driven by one of Machado's men.

"All right what new contact has been made with the terrorists?" 1LT Cruise immediately asked.

"We are trying to ascertain whether or not we have any medical emergencies on board, we believe that there might be a pregnant woman in the cabin."

"Are they cooperating?"

"Well they've hijacked a plane Lieutenant," CPT Machado said snidely, as if he were put off that such a "stupid" question would have been asked, especially by a lowly "lieutenant" as 1LT Cruise was. There was something to be said about the attitude of officer's in the Amapánese military but at the same time, Force Thunder had personally created their counter-terrorism group. 1LT Cruise had been an advisor to them on three different occasions and he remembered most of the group's men. However, CPT Machado was someone he didn't remember. He concluded that he was likely a new recruit to the unit and that if anything; he had been put there under dubious circumstances.

"Captain, are they cooperating?" The question was repeated, this time without any room for misunderstanding, 1LT Cruise was asking a direct question and he expected a direct answer.

"So far yes, they have been forthcoming with our requests but they have not released any hostages nor will they, they say."

"Okay so then, let me run this by you once more. This is my latest intelligence on the situation. We have one ERJ 145 that was hijacked approximately ten hours ago by five terrorists. They are armed; they are equipped with bombs, grenades, or some other kind of explosive that they will use to destroy the plane and its occupants if they don't get what they want. There are fifty passengers on the plane, the cockpit is blocked by clothing, and the window shades are all pulled down. The aircraft is fueled and it is flight-worthy. There are no reported injuries and there has been no gunfire yet.

"Their demands are, in retrospect to other hijackings, miniscule, four hundred thousand universal standard dollars and safe passage to the United Provinces of Bavin, a specific destination has not been stated. The aircraft is isolated and your forces have commandeered a hangar on the far end of the tarmac approximately one hundred meters from the aircraft. The way the aircraft is sitting, the hangar is in its blind spot.

"You have a team of nine men plus you on the ground and various officers from your government. Furthermore, you have various agents with the Empire's government, including Mister Andre from the Ministry of Intelligence here. He is the lead Layartebian on the scene and you are the lead Amapánese when it comes time for the rescue."

A bit amazed, CPT Machado nodded as the Volk came to a halt just outside of the hangar. "Captain, have you and your men practiced taking down an ERJ 145?"

"No we haven't…"

"Okay then the first thing we're going to see is lots of duct tape. Do you have that handy?"

"No."

"Get it. Lots of it," the doors opened and the seven men stepped down from the truck, into daylight, only to be cast into artificial light once they stepped into the hangar. Inside, they saw a mess that immediately set 1LT Cruise off on a mini-tirade. "Captain, get over here." He ordered with the authority of a general. "Get this place cleaned up! We'll never be able to work properly here. So first order of business, get all of that nonsense gear over there," he said, pointing to a stack of crates, "over in that corner there. All of those tables there get them moved up against the far wall over there. I want the center area cleared. We need to build a perfect scale of the aircraft on the ground here in duct tape. We need to be able to work without any obstacles. Do you understand me?"

"Yes but Lieutenant," CPT Machado answered back with barbs in his voice.

"Captain, you might outrank me but it is only in rate. Insofar as experience is concerned, you will listen to me otherwise, you will get your men, and those passengers killed. Is that clear Captain?" 1LT Cruise said, harshly but quietly so that CPT Machado would not lose face with those around him. With a nod, he assented, and hurried off to carry out the instructions he had been given. 1LT turned to his men and gave a shake of his head before whispering to them, "Now I see why we're here. What the hell kind of show are they running?"

"Beats me, looks like a big sham if you ask me. You've got more suits than bullets in here and that means a whole lot of red tape. We'll probably need to ask permission just to put the duct tape on the ground," Senior Petty Officer 2nd Class (SPO2) Bradley Valentino, a former SEAL answered. He went by the nickname "Spider" but today, everyone was either "Mister White" or "Mister Black."

"Well, we better sweep the floor up so the duct tape sticks," 1SG Red Watson said as he took off his sunglasses and looked for a broom. The other two men in the team were MSG Gary Andrews and SPO3 Daniel Coats. Andrews and Watson had both come to Force Thunder from Delta Force whereas SPO3 Coats had come straight out of naval intelligence. 1LT Cruise had been a former Ghost Recon commando before he came over to Force Thunder.

Insofar as their roles were concerned, 1LT Cruise was the CO, obviously. SPO2 Valentino was the communications technician and XO. 1SG Watson was the marksman, MSG Andrews was the equipment technician, and SPO3 Coats was the Intel technician.

Sometime later, when all was said as 1LT Cruise had instructed, the five men from Force Thunder, alternated referred to as Mister White and Mister Black, and the ten men from the Amapánese counterterrorism force, gathered in an area in the center of the room. Rolls of duct tape sat around them. "Gentlemen, we are going to have a quick rundown of this aircraft per the configuration of it. Listen up and hold questions until I am done.

"An ERJ 1-4-5 has four exits, two in the front, and two mid-wing. The aircraft is twenty-six meters in length, it has a twenty-meter wingspan, and the tail is six-point-eight meters in height. The normal seating applies in terms of seat size. There are fifty passengers in eighteen rows. On the port side of the aircraft are eighteen, single seats. There is a break between rows eleven and twelve, where the exit door is. The forward exit door is forward of seat row one. On the starboard side, at the forward area is the galley. Row one has the exit door; row two is empty. Seating is double beginning at row three and all the way back to row eighteen. The lavatory is in the aft of the aircraft. The starboard exit door is also between rows eleven and twelve.

"The aircraft is powered by two turbofan engines situated aft near the tail. This aircraft has a range of thirty-one hundred kilometers or nineteen hundred and fifty miles at a speed of five hundred and seventeen miles per hour or eight hundred and thirty-three kilometers per hour. Yes that is useful.

"Now, due to the terrorists having blocked all of the windows, we cannot tell where they are in the aircraft but based on common patterns we can ascertain these following assumptions. First and foremost, there will be someone in the cockpit, likely who is able to fly or who knows what to look for in terms of pilot behavior. They may have removed the pilots and brought them into the main cabin. There will be someone in the very rear of the aircraft. That is two down. The other three will be dispersed mid and front if they have a sleeper or if they do not, the third man will likely be in the rear as well.

"So now let's draw it out on the floor. We will first draw it out on the floor in chalk using tape measures following the diagrams I am about to hand out, I want you to measure twice, from both sides before you make your chalk marks. When I am satisfied, the duct tape goes down. We have twenty-five minutes to do this!"

---

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[Layarteb]

June 18, 2012 - 23:00 hrs [UTC-3]
Macapá, Amapá
Macapá International Airport
(0° 3'1.02" N, 51° 4'16.82" W)

"Okay, let's take a break." 1LT Cruise yelled out as they completed yet another run on the boxed out aircraft layout. "Take an hour, relax, get yourselves some coffee, shut your eyes, whatever. We're going to review some things and in an hour we'll reconvene to check on the situation." 1LT Cruise could see that the men were getting fatigued and though this was the real world, this was the real deal and not some cushy training run, they still needed to acknowledge fatigue and treat it accordingly. If the order to go came right now, the men would stumble over one another and endanger both themselves and the hostages. They had been doing well, running the drill over and over and over again. They had run through a minimum of thirty times already and that was the point. It would be muscle memory by the time that they stormed the airliner such that thinking would be secondary to reaction.

All around them, the hangar had been humming with activity as the "suits" poured over information, attempted to negotiate with the hijackers, and analyzed plans. The "Go" still had not come down from the Amapánese government and as far as 1LT Cruise was concerned, until that time came, they would drill and drill and drill. As Captain Machado's men filtered away to their little corner of the hangar, 1LT Cruise approached the Amapánese commander and dismissed a suit who was hovering around them. "Captain, we need five minutes."

"Understood," they walked off to the corner, stepped out of the hangar, and stepped into the humid and grotesque, summer air. Captain Machado lit a cigarette and puffed away. A thick cloud of smoke hung in the air inside of the hangar and it made even smoking deplorable but outside, in the somewhat fresh air, Captain Machado was having his first "real" cigarette since the arrival of 1LT Cruise and his men. "Okay Lieutenant what's on your mind."

"Captain your men are doing a good job. The last four runs got quicker and quicker but they're fatigued. I need to know, first of all, if they have the stamina to wait this out? We could be here for days."

"My men are the very best in this country; we've done things like this before."

"Good, then we have to make sure they remain fully ready to take action. Right now, if the order were to be given, and I pray it doesn't, we would be of no use. The men would trip and fall over one another before they even got to the aircraft."

"We have been running hard this entire time. The men just need a mental reset."

"Make sure they get it."

"Will do Lieutenant, anything else?"

"Why are there so many suits here?"

"Good question Lieutenant but I don't know. When I asked your intelligence agent, Andre that very same question, he had no answers for me. Between you and I Lieutenant, this is much bigger than a simple hijacking."

"What's your take? Confidentially, between you and I."

"This is something your government is too interested in right now. I wonder if these hijackers are not agents of your own intelligence services. It is no secret how close my government and yours is. I would even consider Amapá to be a virtual pawn of the Layartebian government," at this, Captain Machado's voice did not include the expect form of dissatisfaction. He was right, it was no secret.

"Even if I were to agree with you, and since I lack the facts I cannot, we must be sure that we follow the orders given, whatever those orders are."

"I understand Lieutenant."

"See you in an hour," 1LT Cruise re-entered the hangar and located Andre. He asked for a status update and again asked who the hijackers were but there was little information he received that he hadn't already received so he found his men, gathered them around and confided in them that he doubted the operation would go. They were there to save face but the outcome had already been determined. He was sure of it.

Reconvening at midnight, the men drilled another twenty-five times over the course of the next three hours and then 1LT Cruise ordered everyone to get three to four hours of rest. Relieved, the Amapánese counter-terrorist forces virtually passed out instantly as did 1LT Cruise's men. Captain Machado, Andre, and 1LT Cruise did a thirty minute debriefing just to go over where the faults lay with the drills and then they crashed themselves, not awaking until 06:00 hours when a sudden opportunity arose.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ | ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

June 19, 2012 - 06:10 hrs [UTC-3]
Macapá, Amapá
Macapá International Airport
(0° 3'1.02" N, 51° 4'16.82" W)

"Did you get all of that?" Andre said after he concluded his short speech. 1LT Cruise nodded as well as did his men but Captain Machado looked puzzled.

"Why again?"

"Apparently the hijackers have actually agreed to a demand to give food and water to the people and apparently the toilet is backed up as well and the smell is just too much even for them. We're going to use this to our advantage."

"Yes we are," 1LT Cruise said. "Do we have civilian uniforms?"

"Yes," Andre answered. "Food service has already prepped the meals; we just need two men to deliver them to the door. The hijackers specifically said no police but how could they know the difference?" Plain and simple, they couldn't. "Lieutenant have one of your men and one of Captain Machado's men to go with you there."

"Understood."

"Now for the toilet, lieutenant you know how to do that?"

"Yes we do, I need three men total, one of my own, Captain I want you to go with the food service, get an idea if you can the situation inside. I'll take two of your men for the toilet."

"Got it."

"How long 'til we go?" 1LT Cruise asked and Andre checked his watch quickly.

"How's sixty seconds?"

"Not much time but we're on it, let's go!" 1LT Cruise yelled and quickly assembled his men and Captain Machado's. They changed into civilian uniforms right in the middle of the hangar and darted out of the rear entrance to where the food service and waste management trucks were. Civilians who had driven them over were quickly tossed aside as the men jumped into the vehicles with submachine guns and pistols with them. They would tuck them away and hide them as they drove over to where the plane was parked. Over the radio, the negotiator was informing the hijackers that the vehicles approaching were requested and that they were not a threat.

The trucks approached slowly, one driven by 1LT Cruise and the other driven by Captain Machado. Captain Machado would eventually drive his right up to the main cabin door of the airliner while 1LT Cruise took his around to the rear of the aircraft, where the two lavatories were. As 1LT Cruise and the men went about hooking up the hoses to drain the aircraft's lavatory tanks, Captain Machado and SPO2 Valentino passed the meals one-by-one through the open cabin door to a terrified hostage who was standing in front of one of the gunmen. It made communication difficult but they managed anyway, using opportunities whenever they arose. They stalled as long as they could too, working slowly, much to the annoyance of the hijackers.

---

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[Layarteb]

June 19, 2012 - 07:00 hrs [UTC-3]
Macapá, Amapá
Macapá International Airport
(0° 3'1.02" N, 51° 4'16.82" W)

After returning to the hangar, the various elements met up and shared what intelligence they had collected. For starters, the aircraft was not in the most tactically viable location. The pilots were in the cockpit and they were at the controls with no one guarding them. The hijackers were far from a professional terrorist group and they didn't have the plane wired with explosives at all. They had only pistols and they weren't going to repel any assault on the plane. Captain Machado had half a mind to storm them right there but not having authorization from his superiors certainly prevented him from going further. Within seconds, an argument erupted between Captain Machado, his superiors, and the Layartebians.

The Layartebians argued that the situation was entirely not what was being represented. The hijackers were nothing more than amateurs and this could be easily solved. According to them, this was a setup. Captain Machado was arguing to let his team go; they could take the airplane in less than thirty seconds and do it without harming a single passenger. Captain Machado's superiors and the various Layartebian suits were arguing that the situation was sensitive, critical, and political and neither Captain Machado nor the Layartebians could understand the situation. After a solid thirty minutes of yelling voices and flaring tempers, 1LT Cruise pulled Captain Machado away and said very quietly, "Captain, this is a setup. This is a definite intelligence operation gone wrong. Do not storm that plane."

"Why?" He asked, more than annoyed with the suggestion.

"Because, if you do, you're head is going to be on the chopping block, I've seen this before. Once, not here, long time ago."

"Lieutenant, I don't trust it either but this is an embarrassment for me and my men."

"Swallow your pride Captain, this isn't our fight. Trust me. This is going to get resolved fast."

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June 19, 2012 - 14:00 hrs [UTC-3]
Macapá, Amapá
Macapá International Airport
(0° 3'1.02" N, 51° 4'16.82" W)

The heat of the day was in full force. It was 105°F with the heat index and at least that much inside of the hangar. To the men inside, suit jackets were discarded, ties had long been tossed over chairs, and shirts were unbuttoned or even off entirely. It was disgusting outside and just as atrocious inside. Scattered clouds hung overhead like a blanket, keeping the hot, humid air around rather than let it escape. Buckets of water were brought and just as quickly as they were brought in, they were emptied. Comments were spoken in hushed and subdued tones. Most of them were along the lines of, "We need to resolve this now before something happens…" What that "something" was remained to be seen. Captain Machado and his men had largely stopped rehearsing, taking to their little corner with one of only three fans inside of the hangar trained right on them.

1LT Cruise and the rest of the Layartebians hung around outside where the wind blew at a little over ten miles per hour providing some minor semblance of relief. Inside of the airliner, which was baking in the sun, the temperature was so unbearable that they had to turn on one of the engines to run the air conditioners but even that didn't do enough, or so it felt. The tension was unbearable inside and the weather certainly didn't make it any better. It being mid-afternoon, many of the agents and officials inside of the hangar were eating when Andre came outside and joined 1LT Cruise and the rest of the men. He put a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, and took a long draft before he said anything. "We're going to have this wrapped up by dusk," he said. "We're giving the hijackers one chance to cooperate and then, if they don't we're going to assault the plane. I need you gentlemen to lead the assault. I don't know if that Captain in there is the right person."

"Of course he is," 1LT Cruise said, "that's ridiculous! No!" He stood up, irate, "No you just want us to clean up your mess."

"That's your opinion but it's fiction and not fact."

"Ah bullshit," 1LT Cruise said as he sat back down. Nothing more was said between Andre and the rest of the Layartebians; and, 1LT Cruise didn't offer any more suggestions.

By the time dusk came, Andre was right, the situation was resolved. In some strange turn of events, the Amapánese decided to ultimately cooperate and give into the demands. Several duffle bags full of money were brought to the plane and put inside. Clearance was given for the plane to take off and, off into the wild blue yonder it went. Captain Machado, fuming, watched as the plane ascended into the darkening skies above, 1LT Cruise standing by his side. No words were exchanged between the two men and instead, as the airliner banked away, to the south where it would fly to Argentina, they exchanged only a glance. It was a tacit, mutual silent understanding between the two of them that this situation was entirely what 1LT Cruise had assumed it to be, a setup, an MOI operation gone awry.

Unfortunately for them, no explanations were ever given and by the end of the evening, 1LT Cruise and his men were on their way back to Venezuela while Andre and the rest of the Layartebian staff remained behind. Most of them were liaisons to the Amapánese government. They were there on a permanent basis but 1LT Cruise and his men weren't and, at the same time, neither was Andre. He was assigned to the region but Amapá wasn't his base.

---

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[Layarteb]

Democratic Republic of Congo

June 20, 2012 - 03:00 hrs [UTC+2]
Likasi, Democratic Republic of Congo
Katanga National Army Armory
(10°58'5.70" S, 26°44'8.41" E)

It wasn't the startle that had awoken Pedro but rather than short fall out of the military-style cot and onto the rough, uneven, dirt floor that the cot rested upon that shook him from whatever dream state he had entered. The fall had knocked his head around accordingly and images of the past three and a half weeks jarred in his brain. He only wished that he wasn't so tired so that he could remember them and perhaps, put them back together. He knew where he was, he knew what he was there to do, and he knew what he had done and how he got to where he presently was but the finer details that would be required in an after-action report had all escaped him. The last that Pedro could remember, with any tangible detail, was arguing with two equally large men in combat fatigues, slung assault rifles, and large machetes. The kicker was that they were "friends," so to speak; although, his current predicament, being their prisoner, certainly changed that particular relationship.

Pedro was in the Democratic Republic of Congo and more specifically, in its southeastern province of Katanga. Presently, he was in the city of Likasi, the largest city in the Haut-Katanga district and like the rest of the province, it was under the controlling thumb of the Katanga National Army, which wasn't as much of an army as it was a goon squad under the command of a warlord named General Antoine Ponyo, who so happened to also call himself the governor of Katanga. Forty-thousand strong, the KNA was your average, African militia force. They were undisciplined, untrained, and uncivilized, not unlike the forces in Ethiopia. The main difference was that they were far easier to deal with when it came to business propositions. They were far greedier than either the guerillas or the government forces in Ethiopia were. It was for that reason that Pedro had liaised with them.

The KNA's Likasi Brigade numbered five thousand men and it stood under the control of Colonel Daniel Chapwe who hated his name and just preferred to be called "Reaper." He certainly lived up to his name and he had a fondness for machetes over bullets. He would often speak of how personal killing someone with a knife was versus shooting them from one hundred meters away. The kicker was that, like the rest of his force, shooting someone from one hundred meters away was nigh impossible. Even at ranges of fifty meters, he and his men sprayed more bullets in the air than struck their targets. Half of the time, they shot wildly and emptied their magazines with closed eyes. Pedro shook his head at their profound lack of skill, tactics, or sense but never in the presence of the mighty Reaper or his senior staff of ass-kissing, fellow sadists.

Pedro had come to Africa on May 31 and he held a short meeting with General Ponyo first. He passed a duffle bag full of African marks, a handsome bribe, and explained his purpose. General Ponyo sent him to his beloved Colonel Reaper. On June 2, he had that meeting, passed another duffle bag of African marks, and secured the use of forty men, Colonel Reaper's "finest." They were far from fine. Pedro, an agent with the Layartebian Ministry of Intelligence certainly had a base of comparison. He had been running various groups in Africa and South America for the past five years and he found the KNA to be one of the least capable. If even a semi-organized force went against them, the KNA would fold like a piece of paper in the presence of fire. They were, in his estimation, worthless but this was who he had to work with and he just dealt with it, moving on accordingly as a man of his position and profession did.

Pedro was in Africa on a very special mission that had been handed down from a well-dressed man in a suit whom he had never seen before. The man never gave his name and he bypassed Pedro's own chain of command. The meeting was offsite and it involved a brief exchange followed by a briefcase exchange, his orders contained therein. From there, it was off to Africa and in Likasi; his first order of business was to at least give his forty "volunteers" a bit of training. He aimed to make them into a semi-acceptable fighting force and for the next week, he ran them through some drills and taught them the most profound concept any of them had ever imagined, aiming down their sights and squeezing their assault rifles in short bursts. By the end of the week, marksmanship improved but to claim that any of these men were marksman would do a disservice.

Then, it was onto the test. Unknowingly, these forty men would be test subjects for the first reformulation of the EREBUS drug. EREBUS I had been an abysmal failure, the test subjects all turning on one another. Since his return to the project, Doctor Noyle had isolated two compounds that were problematic and exchanged them for two more. In monkeys, the new formulation was stable, to say the least. Aggression was certainly heightened and both monkeys went after one another but that was to be expected. The drug was synthesized and placed into solid form, hidden inside of MREs. That drug was what Pedro carried and he gave it out to these forty volunteers, which he dubbed the Echo Platoon. Colonel Reaper knew what was happening but for a few extra hundred marks, kept the secret. He was painfully easy to bribe, Pedro found out quickly enough in their relationship.

At first, ten men were given the drug and sent out on a mission. The mission was a bogus reconnaissance and it was during the day. They returned, without incident and reported nothing unusual. Pedro began to wonder if they had even received the right MREs. He wondered if Colonel Reaper had done as he said. For a few more hundred marks, Pedro obtained the right to give the MREs himself and he did so, this time to all forty men. He split them into two groups of twenty and sent them out on separate missions that would last several days. There, he had results!

Unfortunately, the results were profoundly undesirable. As with EREBUS I, this new formulation caused a horrible series of reactions within the subjects. They heightened the subject's primary senses to a point of overload and amplified their sense of fear. The subsequent hallucinations caused them to lose control and as undisciplined as they were, some immediately deserted. Both groups were kept separate but exhibited similar results. In the first group, of the twenty men, nine of them committed suicide. Two were found with severe, self-inflicted wounds. One person tried to literally chew his fingers off and he succeeded in eating two of them. Seven were killed by one another, one was never found, and only one managed to survive unscathed. Of the second group of twenty, twelve were killed by one another, six committed suicide, and two had gone missing.

Of the forty, the one who survived, explained, ad nauseum, his tale of terror to Colonel Reaper. Colonel Reaper, the logical and calm-headed man that he was, instantly boiled into a rage and that was where he hunted down Pedro, not that he had to look far. Pedro was boarding in a small hotel in town that Colonel Reaper's men guarded twenty-four hours a day. Pedro was to get a visit from Colonel Reaper and his chief aide, a seven-foot giant with hands as big as a truck tire. Pedro, though no small man at six-foot-six, was easily outclassed and after a lengthy argument, where Pedro explained that the effects were not the norm and undesirable, he was knocked unconscious and arrested. Of course, nothing Pedro said he hadn't said before, and certainly, his accusation that Colonel Reaper's men were probably mixing the drug that they were unwittingly taken with a more commonly taken drug such as khat did not go over well. Colonel Reaper insisted that these men, because they were his best, did not take khat. To suggest this was, in his eyes, a grave and serious insult.

That was twenty-four hours earlier and the entirety of those three and a half weeks was blurry to Pedro as he rubbed his head and climbed back onto the cot. His legs were shackled and so were his hands so sleeping on the already uncomfortable cot was a roaring hemorrhoid. He couldn't tell if it was night or day, his little cell had no windows and the sheet metal wall was cut deep enough into the ground that light couldn't poke underneath. He would have tried to tunnel his way out if he wasn't sitting smack dead in the middle of Colonel Reaper's headquarters camp. Escape was foolish and he wasn't going to do it in any dramatic fashion. What he did hope for was agency support. Because he undoubtedly missed his regular check-in time, alarms would go out in the Ministry and they would automatically assume that he had been captured or killed. Normally, for an agent, that meant nothing but because of the package that he had brought to Africa and because of the sensitivity of the matter, he was sure that a rescue unit would come for him.

He closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep, ignoring the throbbing of the back of his head, where he was sure a bump was beginning to form. He was only hoping that Colonel Reaper didn't have some sort of dawn execution planned for him, he wanted at least some chance to survive and escape Likasi.

---

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ |xxxvii| ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Layarteb]

June 20, 2012 - 03:00 hrs [UTC-5]
Layarteb City, New York
Ministry of Intelligence
(40° 47' 10.28" N, 73° 55' 58.42" W)

Pedro had been in captivity for a little over a day and it so happened that seventeen hours into his captivity, he passed his check-in mark. Back at the Ministry of Intelligence, his name appeared on a log of outstanding check-ins along with two other spies, one of who was in Russia and the other who was in China. The one in China was notoriously late to her check-ins and the one in Russia was hit-or-miss. Neither of those tardy agents aroused much suspicion, at least not yet. However, Pedro was a different story. He wasn't the most punctual agent in the Ministry but he was never more than a few hours later and now he was in excess of seven hours late. To the analyst looking at the log, responsible for the maintenance of it, this raised a red flag based on previous activity, the risk assessment of his whereabouts, and the nature of his mission, none of which was quantified in anything other than a number on a one to five scale.

The analyst looked up the contact information and found the extension for the night's duty officer. He dialed it on the phone, put the handset to his ear, and listened to it ring four times before the duty officer picked up the phone. "Gary, it's Marshall down in ops, listen I have an agent seven hours post-due to check in, he's flagged as a risk."

"What's the agents ID?"

"Papa Echo Niner-Five-Two."

"Okay hold on one minute." Marshall could hear the turning of pages in a book and then the contemplative thinking that went along with searing a long page with small type. "All right, I got it, action plan underway, await further instructions."

"Thanks, understood." The phone call ended and Gary, the duty officer for the night rubbed his eyes. He had been catching a quick powernap for the past ten minutes and he wanted another twenty rather than this disturbance.

The way the Ministry worked was a tiered, compartmentalized fashion. Marshall only had access to the duty officer's contact information. The duty officer only had the contact information of the departmental head. Neither of these two men had a name, a location, a mission, or anything other than an identification number and a brief, action instruction. It was the job of the departmental head to carry out the actual plans if something should occur. Gary dialed the number, per the instructions, and waited several rings. It was three in the morning and the departmental head was sound asleep. It might even taken two or three calls to get in touch with him on his secure, cellular phone but as luck would have it, the departmental head answered on only the fifth ring. "Sir, this is Gary at the duty desk. We have a flag on an agent who is seven hours post-due on check-in. Yes sir it's Papa Echo Niner-Five-Two. Understood sir, I will await further instruction." The call, as brief as it was, told the departmental head everything he needed to know and being awoken at this hour of the morning was reserved for only serious incidents. Pedro's incident was, by all manner of speaking, quite serious indeed.

From the department head, the call went directly to Pedro's handler, a man by the name of Nicholas who had been with the agency for the better part of the past two decades. Nearing retirement, Nicholas still carried some fire with him but it was reserved and often kept in check except for serious matters. Thirty seconds after his phone rang, old Nick was charged up, writing a flurry of notes in his den while his wife slept soundly in the other room, having become quite accustomed to late night phone calls.

There was a process and a procedure to endure before an agent could be declared "in trouble." Direct confirmation of a "troubled" status instantly negated the required work but in this instance, as with many captured agents, there was no direct confirmation and the Ministry couldn't just send a recovery team into another, sovereign country without confirmation. Recovery teams, while quiet and highly skilled, were not single agents or assets, they were skilled teams of men and women who obtained weaponry and who were charged with the recovery of an agent or his body at all costs. They were skilled in the use of explosives to destroy evidence, and on more than one occasion, they set fire to a safe house only to watch an entire row of homes be destroyed due to shoddy, old construction. One such high profile incident occurred in December 1993 in the Realm of Cotland when an agent was arrested for what amounted to a bar fight. Before his status could be determined by the Cottish police, a recovery team, already in the Realm's sovereign territory, breached his apartment and destroyed it via fire. They destroyed nine other apartments, two kittens, and boiled a tank of fish alive in the process, none of which was the intended targets. The resulting diplomatic incident, while kept out of the press did not make for a good Christmas. In the end, the Cottish tried the agent and put him in jail, exacting their revenge on the "burned" agent.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ | ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

June 20, 2012 - 12:00 hrs [UTC+2]
Likasi, Democratic Republic of Congo
Katanga National Army Armory
(10°58'5.70" S, 26°44'8.41" E)

Two hours after the series of calls were initiated in Layarteb City, the infamous Colonel Reaper, an ice-cold Coca-Cola in his hand, a bloodstained machete at his side, and a Colt .45 pistol on his hip, politely knocked on the cell door where Pedro was being held. The knock, though polite, was more for comic relief than for courtesy. "Mister Pedro, Mister Layartebian spy, I want to have a conversation with you." The colonel smiled, showing his stained and rotting teeth. In this part of the world, dental care was far from anyone's prerogative and most of the people lost their teeth due to fighting, smoking, or khat chewing. Colonel Reaper lost his from Coca-Cola, which he drank, six, seven times a day. By his side, what could be described as "two henchmen," both with AK-47 assault rifles in absolutely disgraceful shape stood stern and at attention while a third man fumbled with the keys.

Colonel Reaper did not like any delay and he was in a particularly good mood, which didn't bode well for Pedro. "I want you to tell me what you gave my men." He said as he entered the cell. Pedro, still lying in the cot, only looked up with a sense of deference. He knew what was about to come so he took these precious few seconds to prepare himself mentally for the physical pain he was to receive and, receive it he did. One of the henchmen reached forward, grabbed his arm, and with supernatural-like strength, yanked him off of the cot and his arm out of its socket. He landed on the ground with a thud and a yelp of pain as the pain tore through his shoulder. "I'd like to introduce you to Pierre. Pierre might not look strong for he is smaller than I am but he is stronger than your God." Colonel Reaper let out a laugh.

"I told you already," Pedro said, trying to sit himself up or at the very least remove his weight from his throbbing shoulder. "I told you when I came here. It is a chemical that will make your men into supermen."

"But it did not work!" He yelled as Pierre planted his boot right into Pedro's ribs not once or twice but four times. Pedro gasped for air, praying that he didn't suffer a broken rib. Few things in life were as painful as a broken rib. "They turned into psychotics. They killed each other! Not our enemies."

"That is not our fault." Pedro was in no position to argue with a man who was served by Pierre but he did it anyway. "The drug counteracted with something in their bodies."

"My men do not chew khat!" Colonel Reaper bellowed, spitting down at Pedro in the process. "Your charge is bullshit!"

Pierre landed another kick but this one wasn't as hard as the first salvo of four. "Then let us autopsy one of the bodies."

"Why? So you can plant evidence? Ha!" Colonel Reaper laughed. He handed over his Coke, so he would not drop it, and bent down to come face-to-face with Pedro. Pedro could smell his rotting teeth and tried his best not to turn away from the stench. "Listen to me," the colonel said, his voice barely above a whisper, "when I am done with you, I am going to cut off your balls and send them back to your Ministry of Intelligence with a note. It will read 'If any Layartebian so much as looks at the DRC on a map, I will have my men cut out his eyes.' Do you got that?" Pedro nodded his head and watched as Colonel Reaper and his henchmen departed. The cell door was locked behind them and Pedro was left to tend to the physical beating he endured, which was by the standards of this country, rather light and merciful.

---

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ |xxxviii| ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Layarteb]

June 20, 2012 - 09:20 hrs [UTC-5]
Governors Island, Layarteb City
Fortress of Comhghall
(40° 41' 26.58" N, 74° 0' 59.25" W)

"Sir," the Emperor's intercom chimed. Immediately, his conversation with Jack Delaney, head of security and head of Force Falcon, stopped.

"Yes Judy?" The Emperor responded. Judy Mitchell, the Emperor's newest and most seductive receptionist was working the desk today.

"I have the Minister of Intelligence on the line with a 'Priority Delta' call sir."

"Patch him through then, thank you Judy."

"She turned out to be an excellent choice huh sir?"

"Yes she did Jack." The Emperor picked up the phone and quickly greeted the Minister, "Minister, what is the crisis now?"

"Sir, we have a problem with EREBUS."

"Meeting in twenty minutes, I will gather the principles."

"Yes sir." Twenty minutes later, the Minister of Intelligence, the Emperor, the Director of the Ministry of Intelligence, and the commanding officer of JSOC were all meeting in the Emperor's office. It was amazing just how quickly these men could assemble in what was called "Priority Delta," or "HOLY SHIT CRISIS." It was the highest code for a non-military emergency with only Charlie, Bravo, Alpha, and Zulu being above. Zulu was the highest and it denoted a global thermonuclear war basically; Alpha was an invasion of the Empire; Bravo was an invasion of the Empire's periphery; and Charlie was a terrorist attack of unprecedented magnitude. "Sir, early this morning, an agent of ours, codename 'Pedro' failed to check in per protocol. Pedro is assigned to the Likasi region of the Democratic Republic of Congo with a version of EREBUS-TWO. The mission was to use a platoon from the Katanga National Army to test out a new variation of the drug.

"Pedro's last report indicated massive failure on a systemic and actionable level with the variation. The goal in using the KNM was discreetness. They're nothing short of thugs and nobody is going to pay attention if a platoon of theirs suddenly disappeared if the drug failed and frankly, sir, with the khat usage, nobody would believe the stories of 'superhuman' strength if the drug worked.

"Obviously the drug did not work but nothing appeared to be problematic. However, with this failure to check in, based on the regularity of Pedro's check-ins, and the region, the possibility that he has been killed or captured is significantly high sir." The room remained quiet, eerily quiet.

"How do we know he hasn't ran off into the jungle with some local women?" The Emperor asked, skeptical of the situation. "This check-in procedure, I've seen this happen before where agents were on stakeouts or undercover or whatever the case might be and they failed to check in, and we sent people after them and it turned out to be a waste of resources. I think we even burned a few agents' cover because of it."

"Sir that is a possibility but based on the testimony of his superiors and handlers, he is in trouble."

"Can we confirm that?"

"No sir we cannot."

"Then what? Ah hell guys, remember the Christmas Incident with Cotland in 1993? What a mess that was. Granted, the DRC isn't Cotland, still…"

"Sir I know what you are saying but we must entertain the possibility that true trouble exists here."

The Emperor looked at his watch and then pursed his lips before continuing. It was evident that he did not see this as the level of crisis that the Minister of Intelligence or his subordinate saw. "How overdue is he?"

"At present, he is a little over thirteen hours overdue sir."

"Thirteen hour? C'mon guys, you have to give me something better than that," the Emperor stood and began to pace around the room. "Thirteen hours, hell I remember a mission it took us a day and a half past time to get back to base. Nobody panicked."

"With all due respect sir, Venezuela was a war, the DRC is not the same scenario. This agent was sent in with a highly important function. He liaised with people who are highly unstable and who have been known to commit atrocities beyond comprehensive at the drop of a hat. Sir, the man he met with, Colonel Reaper he calls himself, he has murdered people just for bringing him the wrong beverage. Sir we must send in a team."

"This is an internal MOI matter. You don't have a team available?"

"Sir, we do but I'm afraid they would be a poor choice."

"You want me to send the military!" The Emperor asked, his voice exuding a tone of irritation.

"No sir but black operations would be permissible in this scenario."

The Emperor turned to JSOC's CO and gave him a very disconcerting look, "General, what do you think of this?"

"Sir, if there is cause for concern I think we should do as the Minister is requesting. I have resources that we can launch. They can be on the ground tomorrow morning sir."

"Bah!" The Emperor waved his hand, still unconvinced but then, after a few minutes, he relented, "Minister fine, let's send in a team. General, I will leave it in your hands but if this blows up, I'll hang you with it!" He said, specifically addressing the Minister of Intelligence. EREBUS was a sensitive program, the most sensitive in fact, that the Empire had launched since Kaliningrad's wave of black operations programs.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ | ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

June 20, 2012 - 11:00 hrs [UTC-5]
Guantanamo, Cuba
Force Scorpion Operations Center
(20° 6' 38.10" N, 75° 8' 39.79" W)

Summer in Cuba might have been nice for tourists but for those who lived there day-in and day-out, the tropical heat and humidity was less than pleasurable. Mostly cloudy skies on a day like today merely trapped the heat, and soaked the air with humidity, and the weather today was no exception. A tease of a breeze blew over the southern Cuban landscape as air conditioners rattled all around the city of Guantanamo. Just north of a major, Layartebian naval base, the city was very popular for the military but not so popular for tourists. For that reason, it wasn't as sparkling and shiny as some of the other cities were. It was for that very reason that the 4th Black Operations Group, commonly known as Force Scorpion within its circles, called Guantanamo its home.

Its headquarters and operations center was just outside of the city, to the southeast, a stone's throw from the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base where aircraft carriers from the navy's Caribbean Fleet were docked. With its proximity so close to the base, the men and even women of Force Scorpion, because it was a mixed gender unit, could utilize the military and civilian infrastructure of the base and the city.

Few units in the military were mixed gender and those that were all belonged to JSOC or Joint Special Operations Command, which ran special and black operations groups for the military. One hundred and twenty-five thousand strong, JSOC was broken into three commands. There was the Headquarters Command, which numbered fifty-seven hundred; there was the Black Operations Command (BOC), which numbered twenty-nine thousand, three hundred, and fifteen; and there was the Special Operations Command (SOC), which numbered eighty-nine thousand, nine hundred, and eighty-five. Fourteen Black Operations and twelve Special Operations groups belonged to JSOC and they did a bevy of tasks but rarely did the commands cross. It was only in extreme circumstances that the commands crossed and those were generally counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and in the midst of war. Even in these situations, the identities of the men from the BOC remained elusive and secretive.

Even though all fourteen of the groups within the BOC were classified, three were classified above all the others. The most classified and least known was the 1st BOG, commonly called Force Falcon. This was Delaney's unit and they were the Emperor's personal bodyguards. They also carried out the blackest of black operations and answered only to the Emperor himself unless he designated a commander in JSOC to oversee a specific operation. Below them and just as classified was the 12th BOG, commonly called Force Shadow. This tiny, elite unit conducted counterterrorism operations through terrorism. In essence, these sixty-five men were terrorists, trained and sanctioned by the Layartebian government. To date, they had been quite active in fighting Al-Shams but their operations, until then, had hit much closer to home. Lastly, the newest group to join JSOC, the 4th BOG or Force Scorpion, sat just slightly underneath Force Shadow's classification level.

Force Scorpion had been formed less than a year earlier. Since the fall of the Third Spanish States and the subsequent annexation of the Inner and Outer Hebrides by the Empire, the Ministry of Intelligence had been secretly trying to locate Goodrule officials and military officers, especially those responsible for the chemical attack against the Empire. This small, compartmentalized unit had very little in the means of action. It was mostly a tracking group and when it did find someone, it sent in an MOI team. Unfortunately, they weren't the most successful group. Then, in February 2012, a high priority individual from the Goodrule government had been located on Belle Ile off the coast of France in the Bay of Biscay. The MOI team by then had put snatch-and-grab operations under an agent named George. A veteran of MOI operations, he tasked a SEAL Squad from SEAL Team 3 to snatch and grab this individual. The operation was a success and he subsequently was able to form the 4th BOG and with it, he took the SEAL Squad as his Alpha and Bravo teams, splitting them into small, four-man units. In most vehicles you could put five men so four men plus a captive. Most teams in the Empire were based around modes of transportation; it was just simpler.

By now, Force Scorpion had grown to a strength of ninety-eight. There were ten, 4-man squads broken into two, 5-squad platoons. Each platoon had a CO, an XO, and a 15-man support staff. The overall HQ element of the 4th BOG was four men, including George, who assumed the role of CO. A further 20-man support staff provided more assistance. The primary goal of the 4th BOG was extraordinary rendition, a highly sensitive subject, politically speaking. Their task was to go into countries without permission, locate criminals and persons of interest wanted by the Empire, and snatch them up, taking them out of the country and to the Empire without the knowledge of said country. They were entirely in the realm of black operations and these missions were so secretive that more than likely, said country's own intelligence services wouldn't be notified, even if said nation was the Realm of Cotland, the Empire's closest and strongest ally.

Thus, these men were the most capable men when it came to this type of mission. This was what they trained for and this is what they did. Sending anyone else to Likasi to look for and get Pedro out would have been foolish.

Word passed to them quickly and now, Alpha team, under the command of LTJG Neil Austin, who was CO of that SEAL Squad from February, was sitting in the small briefing room. They were getting the "skinny" on the situation. Intel was limited but Pedro's notes certainly provided more information to them than the MOI could provide them. They got a dossier on the KNM and the infamous Colonel Reaper. They had a layout of the city, major targets of the KNM. They had Pedro's home location identified. All HALO-qualified and fresh from training, they were the best squad to send into the country and they would do so, jumping from 35,000 feet into Likasi with weaponry and not a single shred of evidence on them linking them to the Empire. This was a sanitized, sterile mission but then again, they all were this way.

---

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[Layarteb]

June 21, 2012 - 22:00 hrs [UTC+2]
Katanga Province, Democratic Republic of Congo
16 miles north of Likasi
(10°45'48.82" S, 26°47'55.10" E)

Seventy-two hundred and fifty miles, one aerial refueling, and fourteen hours later, the rear cargo ramp on the C-17ER Globemaster III was finally lowering. At an altitude of 36,000 feet, the air outside was below freezing and given that it was nighttime, the temperature was even cooler. Flying too high to be seen by the naked eye, with no lights on except for the dull, red glow inside of the cargo hold, the Globemaster III, despite its size and shape, was actually invisible over DRC airspace. It would turn and fly on to Diego Garcia after releasing its cargo, making the detour down towards Likasi a "navigational error" rather than something sinister if anyone asked. It was far better to feign incompetence than it was to fess up to the truth that the C-17 had inserted four black ops soldiers into the DRC, quite obviously without the DRC government's consent.

They were flying a route approximately sixteen miles north of Likasi, their primary target. LTJG Neil Austin and PO1 Jimmy Sullivan would be the first ones out of the aircraft, keeping close together while PO2 Hal Kelly and PO2 Mark Appelton went out ten seconds after them. As they fell through the skies, they would maintain a close separation, keeping visual track of one another and of the markers on their backs. They had only just completed a HALO refresher course, a prerequisite for HALO operations. It wasn't like in the movies where soldiers just jumped after a few minutes' notice. There was a lot of prep work involved and there was a lot of training involved. Teams rotated through refresher courses throughout JSOC, keeping their qualifications current so that they could go at a moment's notice. This was one of those cases and LTJG Austin's team was most current.

Falling through the air, increasing in speed, the four operators watched as the faint lights of Likasi flickered in the distance. They weren't going to land too close to the city because that would remove the element of surprise but after a minute in the air, they all realized that a steady breeze was blowing them off course. Soon enough, without course corrections, they would miss their intended landing zone by five miles, a catastrophic turn of events. Corrections were made by the point man, LTJG Austin and that translated into everyone else following the lead behind him, as if they were NASCAR drivers drafting off of one another. Minute turns were very precise measures and they dropped in altitude quicker and quicker. This type of stealthy insertion was made to defeat radar and that it did, not that the DRC had a formidable, operational, air defense network in place.

On the ground, the four men quickly went to work reeling in their parachutes. They would take them with them for a short while and then bury them in the jungle when they deemed that it was safe. There was no way to tell if their insertion had been seen or not and rather than wait around at the LZ and risk being caught, they quickly began to run to the west, towards Likasi. Armed with some of the better weaponry that the Empire could provide, their mission would take them into Likasi by dawn, at which point they would make their way to Pedro's residence, clear it of any hostiles, and learn what they could, hoping to pick up the trail from there. As for their extraction, that was already arranged and an MC-130J Commando II with a Skyhook extractor system was planned for use. The specialized system, which the men carried with them, enabled all five of them to extract at once. It wouldn't be a comfortable ride but they would be able to get out of Katanga very easily, provided they got to a safe extraction location and in time for the MC-130J Commando II to come.

---

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ |xl| ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Layarteb]

June 22, 2012 - 06:50 hrs [UTC+2]
Likasi, Democratic Republic of Congo
Red Roof Hotel
(10°58'31.51" S, 26°44'54.51" E)

It was cool and the air had a certain dampness to it as LTJG Austin entered what was called the Red Roof Hotel. A white man in this city was about as normal as sharks in the Arctic Ocean so he knew that within minutes of stepping into this dwelling, the local militia leader, that being Colonel Reaper's of the Katanga National Army would know about it. He surmised that they had twenty minutes or less to search Pedro's room before a squad of pissed off militia would be at their location with the intention of arresting them. More than likely, the squad of men coming to get him would have been sleeping and having had to wake up would certainly put them in a foul mood so, before he entered, he gathered his men together in the alleyway just east of the hotel's perimeter. "Plan of action, Sullivan you're on me, it's just us two going inside. Kelly and Appleton hold fast out here and watch the perimeter. The minute we get company I want to know about it."

"Roger that L-T."

"C'mon, let's get inside and see what we can find." Thirty seconds later, LTJG Austin and PO1 Sullivan entered the hotel building and eyed the sleeping clerk behind the front desk. They paid him no mind and quickly walked past and to the stairs, not looking back to see if he had heard them or not. Knowing what room Pedro had occupied, they went right to the second floor, room 209, and with a lock pick set gained access within seconds. There, they found a room that had already been ransacked, no doubt by Colonel Reaper and his men. "All right, let's get a move on before they figure out we're here."

"Roger that L-T, on it." PO1 Sullivan whispered back as they moved throughout the room with small flashlights, checking through the ransacked papers and clothes. A minute passed then two, and then five. So far there was no word of anyone coming. They were looking for a notebook or a flash drive of sorts. They didn't find Pedro's computer but not that they would either, Colonel Reaper would have grabbed that first, hoping to get into it in order to get necessary information to blackmail the Ministry of Intelligence. Whether or not he succeeded wasn't known to LTJG Austin and his team but it didn't matter, the Ministry of Intelligence could remotely kill the computer from ten thousand miles away, which they either had done already or were simply waiting to do. If the computer's unique address popped up on a network being monitored by the MOI a simple signal would go to it, which would activate a computer virus so lethal that it would actually cause hardware failure. The device would be permanently unrecoverable.

A few more minutes went by and LTJG Austin stopped for a moment to take a quick survey of the room. There was a dresser that had been moved, the drawers had been tossed, removed, and flung into the corner. The desk had been flipped upside down. The mattress and the bed had been tossed too and even the bathroom in the shoddy room had been torn to pieces. "Wait," he said to PO1 Sullivan. "Wait, wait…"

"What is it?"

"Mattress!" A thought shot through his brain as he looked at the mattress, looking at it for anything that would give an indication of what he was thinking and then, sure enough, along the side he found it, a very subtle slit, something barely noticeable. That was why it had been missed and, sticking his fingers inside of it, he felt something hard and plastic. He grasped it, pulled, and out came what they wanted, a standard MOI-issue, encrypted flash drive. "Got it!" He said with a smile just before their radio cracked to life with two bursts of static. "Just in the nick of time!" They quickly left the room, closing the door behind them, and made their way back to the stairs, aiming now for the roof. As they ran up the stairs, they could hear the voices of soldiers yelling at the clerk in the corridor. LTJG Austin and PO1 Sullivan said nothing, they just kept moving.

At the top of the stairs, they found the roof access door. It was open, locked only with a deadbolt to prevent looters from coming inside. There were no fire or security alarms, not that one would expect such a modern invention in such a disgusting hellhole as Likasi was. Quietly, they undid the bolt, opened the rusty, metal door, and found themselves on an antenna farm of a roof. "Green, we're on the roof, coming down now."

"Understood White, stick to the east side, east side."

"Roger." Whispering he got direction to move to the east side and as he did, he could hear the soldiers yelling. The door to the hotel room was found locked and no one was found inside. The room was in the same condition that it had been left, angering the soldiers at what they believed to be a "false alarm" of sorts. While they took out their anger and aggression, PO1 Sullivan and LTJG Austin made their way down the side of the building and into its courtyard where, hiding for about ten minutes until the soldiers left, they climbed over the wall, and reunited with the rest of the squad in the small, eastern alleyway.

"Okay, we got a flash drive." LTJG Austin whispered as he realized, in broad daylight, moving would be a task unto itself.

---

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ |xli| ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Layarteb]

June 22, 2012 - 09:30 hrs [UTC+2]
Likasi, Democratic Republic of Congo
215-meters north of the Red Roof Hotel
(10°58'26.11"S, 26°44'52.77"E)

LTJG Austin and his men had made it two hundred and fifteen meters north of the Red Roof Inn when they found themselves an abandoned warehouse shack. Its sheet metal siding was rusty and it had been raked by machine gun fire during one or two of Likasi's street battles. From the outside, it showed signs that it could collapse at any moment but there was no alternative. The sun had risen and the city was now a no-go zone for LTJG Austin and his men. They needed to hunker down and hide out until darkness fell again. Without any other options, they entered the warehouse shack and set up a simple perimeter inside of the 1,200 ft² warehouse. There were only two ways in, a rickety side door and the garage doors, which looked to be rusted shut. They used tripwire and a Claymore to seal off both doors and then retreated a safe distance away and into another room.

Inside of the warehouse was an entirely different story than the outside. While it had been looted and ransacked over the years or months or however long it had sat abandoned, the interior structure was in solid shape. Bricks and steel beams held the shitty exterior together and they could plainly see that, should their Claymores detonate, the building would not fall to pieces. This gave them something of a reprieve and they set out to go about their daytime activities. Two of them would sleep while the other two kept watch, alternating every four hours until it was darkness again. LTJG Austin and PO1 Sullivan took the first watches and while they set up to watch the two doors, LTJG removed his small laptop from his carrying case. He booted up the flash drive and, facing the encryption software, he used a code that he had been given prior to his departure from Cuba.

Before him, the computer rebooted on its own and the flash drive became the primary boot device. The screen went black and then a gray cursor appeared. It flashed slowly, like an old DOS prompt. LTJG Austin waited for a few seconds before the screen changed. "ENTER PASSCODE" it read. The passcode was a different code than was required to access the actual drive. LTJG Austin had that code as well, both of which had been committed to his memory before he ever jumped out of the plane. He entered the alpha-numeric-character code and waited as the system began to boot. "RECOVERY MODE" flashed across the screen. This meant that the flash drive recognized that it was in a different computer. For security purposes, it took the next five minutes to copy the contents of itself to a hidden system folder, which was further protected. When the backup was completed, the device rebooted the computer again. This time, it went into the operating system and the drive was now visible under the devices.

LTJG Austin opened it and began to peruse through the collection of notes. He was looking for any clue whatsoever that could lead him to the whereabouts of Pedro and he had a lot of work to do but four hours of uninterrupted time to do it. He continued to watch the rickety, side door, his firearms at his side. He had rigged a few cans to the door, just to make extra sound if it were to be opened. Broken glass spread out in front of the door would crunch under the feet of anyone who entered. The various backup alarms were all there in case the worst should happen and he fall asleep or become too engrossed in the documentation from Pedro's flash drive.

While browsing through the documentation, LTJG Austin found a reference map of the city. This instantly brought about his intense interest. The map showed not only the Red Roof Inn but various KNA points throughout the city, including the headquarters, its armory, and some other key positions. Little did LTJG Austin know that he and his men were now within fifteen hundred meters of Pedro's position in the KNA armory; if they knew, they would have been working on a plan already to rescue him.

---

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[Layarteb]

June 22, 2012 - 19:30 hrs [UTC+2]
Likasi, Democratic Republic of Congo
215-meters north of the Red Roof Hotel
(10°58'26.11"S, 26°44'52.77"E)

Darkness descended over Likasi and the sounds of the day were suddenly transformed into the sounds of night. Insects creaked from underneath rocks and inside of crevices while the sputters of semi-automatic and automatic gunfire rolled across the city's expanse. A calm, humid chill fell over Likasi and its residents while LTJG Austin and his men prepared for their excursion. Throughout the course of the day, LTJG Austin went over the data again and again and finally concluded, just shy of 18:00 hours that Pedro was being held in the KNA's armory. "Look, it's the most secure place in the whole city," he explained to a skeptical PO1 Sullivan. "Not only that but in one of Pedro's notes, he describes the armory as a possible source for 'volunteers' for the EREBUS INITIATVE, whatever the hell that is. He specifically puts the word 'volunteers' in quotes meaning that they aren't volunteers."

"So the armory? We're going to hit the armory?" PO1 Sullivan said, "Four of us against their how many thousand?"

"Satellite photos show this place as pretty impenetrable. Isn't it better just to make the place for an airstrike or something? A cruise missile will solve the problem right quick." PO2 Kelly said, "Austin, that's a pretty shit plan."

"I know it is that's why we need an advantage here." LTJG Austin said as they stood around the small table. Next to it, the pile of junk from the table lay annoying in front of them and at their feet.

"The armory only has one way in and one way out, unless we blow a hole in the wall." PO1 Sullivan said, looking at the satellite photograph. "I doubt going over the wall is a good idea. If we get in and take the place then what? Steal a truck and race out of the city?"

"Precisely that, we will have a Commando II on its way from Annobón. It's a four hour flight from there to here, they'll be wheels up no later than 21:45 if we make this call, meaning they'll grab us at 02:00. There's a second window at 05:00 from a second Commando II on the ground there. I say we go for the first window. Extract point is twelve klicks north of the city, about two and a quarter shy of Luambo. No idea what the KNA has there, Pedro's notes don't mention the city. We must assume that they control it."

"Then we get out via Skyhook, all five of us?"

"Yes." LTJG Austin answered, looking down at the satellite photograph of the armory. The entrance was on the southwest corner of the property. There was the main building in the center of the property but close to its south wall. A series of shacks sat in the northeast corner while another structure sat along the western wall but close to the northwestern corner, which was virtually devoid of any structures. "We need to go in via the northwest corner," LTJG Austin said, pointing to the photograph. "We get in here, somehow. I think going over the wall is out best bet. I'm sure we can find something in here to lay over the razor wire. I'm not betting on a ladder so we will have to boost each other over the wall."

Studying the photograph for another twenty minutes, the five men formed up their plan and their best bet was going to be to climb over the wall. There didn't appear to be any towers or lights so all they had to do was make sure that they weren't seen by anyone on patrol with a flashlight or who was standing underneath the wall when they came down. They would go in with suppressed weapons and knives to avoid making unnecessary noise but they all knew that, at some point, a distress call was going to go out and reinforcements would arrive. "They don't happen to have jamming over at Annobón do they?" PO1 Sullivan asked, knowing that everyone would be happier with an EC-130 on station or a UAV with the same capabilities.

"Don't think so, we can ask but time isn't on our side unless we want to wait for the second window. That's cutting it close. Skyhook flight doesn't want to be here during daylight. They'll grab us and get into African airspace quicker than we'll get into the compound. Jamming might be too high-profile."

"I think we'll all be a bit more comfortable if you ask anyway," PO2 Kelly said. "If we can stop their radio, we can cut their wires maybe, that will give us a chance. KNA has five thousand in this city alone, forty thousand in the whole province."

---

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ |xliii| ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Layarteb]

June 23, 2012 - 01:00 hrs [UTC+2]
Likasi, Democratic Republic of Congo
KNA Armory
(10°58'5.70" S, 26°44'8.41" E)

LTJG Austin and his men were standing with their backs to the wall surrounding the KNA's Likasi armory. Neither the navy nor the air force had any assets to spare that could have provided them with radio jamming capabilities over the city. Though it would have made the four men feel easier about the task they were about to undertake, they had expected the rejection, it being a last-minute request. Without this ability, they had to move quickly but as quietly as possible through the armory compound with only Pedro's notes to guide them and despite the level of detail that Pedro had provided, it was "old" intelligence, per say. Time wasn't on their side either and the compound would have to be approached like any other compound except without the added benefit of a rehearsal. Despite the fact that these men had done this over and over again and it was more routine and muscle memory than anything else, there were plenty of things about the KNA compound that made it unique enough that they were essentially blind.

The initial plan was simple enough. They would boost up to the wall, lay a rug over the barbed wire, and drop down. The last man would remove the rug to avoid arousing suspicion. Once on the ground, they would use knives only, killing the KNA militiamen one-by-one as necessary, hiding the bodies accordingly. After the perimeter was neutralized, they would progress to the inside, moving quicker but less quietly, aiming not for stealth but for shock and surprise. When these four men were SEALS, they had done this time and time and time again but now, as members of Force Scorpion, this was the opposite of what they preferred to do. The methodology in Force Scorpion was to snatch persons of interest while they were being transported, in their homes, or while they were exposed in public. In essence, Force Scorpion's methods were to exploit when a person of interest was at their weakest and in their most exposed situation. Storming a fortress was not their cup of tea anymore.

"All right, time's running out…" LTJG Austin whispered. They needed to be in and out of the place in fifteen minutes or less if they were going to have enough time to get to the extraction point. They opted, at last minute, to steal a vehicle for the egress, which advanced their attack time to an hour when most of the armory was likely to be asleep versus the late evening / early night when plenty of them would be coming down from their evening khat highs. At 01:00, the likelihood that they would all be in a drug-induced sleep was considerably high and for that reason, LTJG Austin was boosting PO1 Sullivan up to lay the rug over the barbed wire surrounding the compound.

The rug was a filthy, maggot-infested piece that they found lying around in the garage. They cleaned it off as best as they could but to them it was still crawling with maggots. It was only temporary and after putting it over the top, PO1 Sullivan climbed over and down, his pistol with its suppressor aimed forward. He gave a quick look around with his night vision goggles and keyed up his throat mic twice, signaling the all clear. PO2 Kelly went next. Two clicks later, it was PO2 Appleton and two clicks later, it was LTJG Austin. It was now officially 01:04 and the fifteen-minute clock began to tick. The men were in the extreme northwest corner of the compound in an area that jutted out from the main portion. It was empty and quiet but open and they were exposed. Thirty meters ahead of them was a small shack, a guard post of sorts. Its windows were closed with wooden shutters and the flicker of a gas lamp filtered through the shutter's slats. That was their first target. PO1 Sullivan took point with PO2 Kelly trailing just behind them. LTJG Austin and PO2 Appleton took overwatch and in less than thirty seconds, PO1 Sullivan and PO2 Kelly were about to breach the shack. PO1 Sullivan knocked on the door and in a steady voice called out, " Ouvrir il y a un problème avec la radio." [Open up there is a problem with the radio.]

He heard some movement inside and with a snap, the lock opened. As the door came open, PO1 Sullivan rushed in with his knife in his hand. He thrust it right into the guard's stomach and PO2 Kelly rushed in right afterwards and jabbed his knife in the skull of a second guard who was too inebriated to react quickly enough. The two men left the bodies there for now and moved into the next room where three soldiers were sleeping. They backed out quietly and whispered for an extra man. LTJG Austin entered and all three of them killed the guards simultaneously, jabbing their knives in their chests while they held their mouths to avoid their screams from arching across the compound.

LTJG Austin keyed up his throat mic three times to signal the all clear and the three of them emerged from the shack's northern and only door. Adjacent to the shack was a seventeen by sixteen meter structure made from cinder blocks with a solid roof and multiple windows. Each window was covered with thin, wooden shutters just like the shack was but the difference here was that no light emanated from between the shutter's slats. This was the barracks and it contained as many as twenty men, too many for them to take on all at once, especially since they had to do so without raising any sort of alarm. It was better now to leave the building alone, keeping a close watch while they assaulted the rest of the compound.

LTJG Austin turned to PO2 Kelly and gave him a few hand signals, ordering him to watch the barracks. The rest of them moved east along the perimeter wall, searching for any sleeping soldiers. They would put the main building between them and the front gate, which would keep from being exposed to the men guarding the gate. Quickly, they pounced down the line, finding no soldiers and then they turned and moved south along the eastern wall. It was just as empty but as they came around to the other side of the main building, they stopped and moved back behind cover. There were four men guarding the front gate and they were all quite alert. "Hold," PO1 Sullivan whispered since he was the point man. "Four tangos at the gate, we've got to leave them alone for now."

"Roger that," LTJG Austin whispered. "Assault main," he replied as they turned back around to go into the side entrance to the main armory. The giant warehouse was very open and thankfully, very dark. They used a small, fiber-optical camera slid underneath the doorway to see inside of the warehouse. The door opened into a small office that was devoid of people but full of furniture. It was used frequently by the KNA officers who ran the armory. An ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts told them as much.

PO1 Sullivan and LTJG Austin entered after picking the lock, leaving PO2 Appleton to watch their six. Inside, crouched, both men moved into the office, and looked around. They were in the main portion of the armory, a large warehouse full of weapons. They would surely take some of them for the egress, just in case they would need some extra firepower. The KNA stockpiled hundreds of AKs, RPG-7s, RPKs, and PKs inside of this small armory and along with them, tens of thousands of rounds neatly packed in crates, some as old as the AK-47 itself was, it appeared.

PO1 Sullivan and LTJG Austin moved out of the office and through the main warehouse area. The main building was large and open. It had two levels. The office was like a small shack in the middle of the open warehouse area, which extended to the roof. At the far end was the two-story area. A second-floor office overlooked the entire warehouse area. There were no lights on and that was to their advantage. "Top down," LTJG Austin signaled as they ascended the staircase towards the second-floor landing. There was another locked door at the top of it but not one that couldn't be easily defeated and the men pushed inside, checking their watches to show that they had less than eight minutes now. Time was rapidly running out on them and the inbound MC-130 was on its way, observing radio silence for its flight.

They moved through the second floor office quickly thanks to it being empty and then they moved down into the main level. There was a single guard watching over the area but he was asleep and killed before he ever woke up from his narcotic slumber. That was where they found Pedro, lying inside of his makeshift cell sound asleep. "Pedro?" LTJG Austin whispered. Quickly, the prisoner awoke and looked at the shadowy figure through tired eyes and three days of beard growth. All he saw was a black unit and night vision goggles. He just nodded that he was and LTJG Austin keyed up his mic, "We got him, coming out now; we'll neutralize the front gate and the barracks at the same time." He turned back to Pedro as PO1 Sullivan opened the cell door. "Can you walk? Are you hurt?"

"I'll be fine."

"I need you to hold a gun."

"Fine," he said defiantly to the dead KNA guard who had been watching over him.

"Stay here, we'll be back in four mikes, got it?"

"Yes."

"Don't make a sound." LTJG Austin and PO1 Sullivan popped back out of the armory through the same door they entered and split up, PO1 Sullivan going to the barracks and LTJG Austin joining PO2 Appleton for the assault on the front gate. It took them a total of ninety seconds to get into position but then the assault began and though it was louder than the knives that they had been using, it wasn't as loud as it could have been thanks to their suppressors and special loads. As part of its doctrine, Force Scorpion hand loaded their weapons. They worked with hotter loads and heavier bullets. As a result, their rounds moved slower but had far more stopping power. They could hit someone in the gut and kill him outright instead of just wounding him.

At the barracks, PO1 Sullivan and PO2 Kelly entered with their submachine guns, M112B4 Vipers, drawn. Firing the Amastoli .360 Auto round at a rate of nine hundred rounds per minute, they each found a good spot and emptied their forty-five round extended magazines into the soldiers. Before they were done, they reloaded, and sprayed the room again, putting one hundred and eighty rounds into the twenty soldiers and the walls around them. There was no chance for any of them and they quickly spot-checked the soldiers. No one was alive.

Outside, LTJG Austin and PO2 Appleton used their same weapons and picked off the four soldiers in rapid succession using 3-round bursts from a range of just thirty-five meters. "All clear," LTJG Austin whispered into his throat mic just seconds before PO1 Sullivan did the same. Now the jig was up; they had gone loud and surely even their suppressed shots had been heard by someone. "Appleton, get the vehicle, Sullivan, on me, we're getting the weapons and the package." Rapidly, they went into action. PO2 Appleton ran over to a parked M35A2 cargo truck, commonly called a "Deuce and a half" and started it up while the rest of them went into the armory and grabbed whatever they could as fast as they could. They would wind up loading six RPG-7s, four RPKs, and a dozen AKs into the truck along with three crates of loaded magazines. Then, they all jumped into the vehicle, and PO2 Appleton sped out of the front gate, taking an immediate right on the roadway. They would stay on the road for as long as their trip since it was the road that not only led to Luambo but also to their extraction point.

---

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ |xliv| ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Layarteb]

June 23, 2012 - 01:38 hrs [UTC+2]
Near Luambo, Democratic Republic of Congo
Extraction Point X-Ray
(10°51'33"S 26°44'10"E)

As a stark contrast to their ingress, the team made one of the nosiest possible egresses from the city of Likasi. With their stolen military truck, they right out of the armory, onto the main road, and hightailed it north as fast as they could. Two lone vehicles, driven by normal people, were pushed out of the way, as the military truck barreled towards the extraction point. Balancing themselves on the rear tailgate, LTJG Austin and PO2 Kelly looked for any possible followers. They had their weapons sitting on the bed of the truck, ready to unleash into the enemy should a jeep or a technical chase after them. PO2 Appleton was behind the wheel and PO1 Sullivan was effortlessly navigating, which was what he did best. When they were all SEALS, PO1 Sullivan had been the squad's point man. He still exercised that particular role now with Force Scorpion.

About two kilometers out of Likasi, if it was even that far, the beeping horns of a military jeep began to fill the air and LTJG Austin and PO2 Kelly saw the dodging headlights of a chase vehicle. It was time for action and they estimated the distance at a little over five hundred meters but the vehicle was much faster, smaller, and more agile than the beastly M35A2 was. It would close the lead fast without any sort of intervention. LTJG Austin had just the ticket though and he shouldered one of the RPK light machine guns. It had a forty-round magazine loaded and he looked down the weapon's sights towards the vehicle, and let off a quick burst. Six rounds barked out of the muzzle and smashed into the ground in front of the closing vehicle. It didn't veer off course, proving it wasn't a crazy civilian driver.

"All right, let's light it up," LTJG Austin screamed over the roar of the road. He let loose the rest of the magazine as PO2 Kelly fired off a burst from an AK-47 that they had taken with them. The rounds hit with devastating accuracy, tearing through the engine block of the approaching vehicle. In a whoosh of white smoke, chiefly steam, the radiator burst and the engine went dead. The vehicle would chase them no more and though it was impossible to tell, they had wounded the driver and killed one of the three passengers. PO2 Appleton kept his foot on the gas and the vehicle tore down the road towards Luambo, where there was little doubt a "welcoming committee" was being hastily set up to greet them. They would never arrive for obvious reasons.

The extraction point was west of the highway so, like good soldiers, they pulled the vehicle off the road to the east and a little over a kilometer northeast of the extraction point. Taking all of the weapons that they could carry, along with their gear, they grabbed Pedro, tore out of the truck, booby-trapped it with a grenade, and high-tailed it through the jungle towards the extraction point. It took them less than eight minutes to get there, which they found was atop a small hill. Tactically unsound because they could be silhouetted against the sky, they took cover in the brush while they assembled the Skyhook gear. They laid out their balloons, rigged their harnesses, and prepared their quick-fill air tanks. The tanks were all filled with compressed helium, which would cause the big balloons to rise rapidly to five hundred feet. Infrared strobes on the balloon's wire would light it up for the recovery aircraft to spot easily in the night.

Usually, the system, which was officially called the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system or STARS, was used to extract single persons from way behind enemy lines. It was effective in recovering burned intelligence agents and black operatives and, in this case, it would be highly effective in recovering an entire team. Multi-person extractions had been tested before but only with three people, never five. The system was sound and it would support their weight, theoretically but this was hardly the time to do something daring and risky. Of course, without another choice, this was the risk that they were going to have to take. The entire system was really five cables twisted together to form one cable. Each one was shorter than the next by about ten feet, so that none of the men would crash into one another while they were being lifted off the ground and then recovered airborne.

They arrived at the extraction site at 01:38 hours and within six minutes; they were set and ready to go. From their vantage point, they kept watch on the highway, knowing that the aircraft wouldn't arrive until 02:00 and not a minute sooner. They were also operating under strict, radio silence so the balloon would be inflated at 01:58 and put into the air then, unless trouble was around, in which case the flight would simply pass overhead, and the next window would have to be exploited. Of course, that window required the entire team moving twenty-five klicks away to a new extraction point. They didn't want to have to do that so while PO1 Sullivan kept an eye on his watch and PO2 Kelly protected Pedro, LTJG Austin and PO2 Appleton watched the highway's northern and southern approaches. They were positioned about six hundred meters west of the highway.

However, a small dirt road curved around the base of their small hill. It connected to the highway at both ends. Should the KNA see something, they might take that road and move to the extraction point at high speed, jeopardizing the exfil. Tense and nervous, the team watched as headlights appeared from the south. LTJG Austin knew that they were from the KNA since there were five sets and they all formed a neat line. It was a convoy, probably a jeep carrying the famed Colonel Reaper, a technical or two, and two M35 trucks with twenty soldiers per. That meant about fifty men to deal with, far too many for them, even though they had four RPG-7s and some RPKs. This was not the time to fight and every good special forces warrior knows when a good time to fight was. Quite obviously for many reasons, this wasn't.

"Sullivan, you got it? They're coming man!" LTJG Austin called out as he looked at his watch. It was 01:57.

"Yep, I got it," he watched the second hand tick towards 01:58 and holding the quick release on the helium bottle, he nervously and patiently waited. He didn't want to go too soon, he needed to let the incoming aircraft see his balloon with plenty of time to correct their course but he couldn't give away their position to the enemy. He already decided that he wouldn't go until 01:58:30. The balloon needed five seconds to inflate and another thirty to rise to altitude. That was enough time, or so he hoped. He dialed back five seconds in his mind, making last-second corrections and as the hand struck twenty-five, he open the quick release on the tank. The noise of air rushing through the balloons filled the hilltop and they quickly took shape and began to ascend rapidly once the tank was out of helium. "There it goes, assume positions men!" PO1 Sullivan called out just as the booby-trap grenade went off in the background. The explosion rolled right over the hilltop as the fireball from the truck rose skyward.

"If that doesn't get their attention nothing will," Pedro said, jokingly. They were all seated in a line towards east-to-west, according to their position on the line. PO1 Sullivan was at the point with LTJG Austin at the very bottom. "Gentlemen, if this doesn't work, then fuck you!"

"Fuck you too Pedro." They all responded in unison as the noise of four turboprops filled the air. The ground began to shake a little as they tucked their heads into their chests, tightened their legs, and crossed their arms in front of their chests. Seconds later, the black shape of the MC-130J Commando II entered the sky and with its nose-mounted pincers, snatched the line right on point, seventy-five feet from the top of the line. Once locked, the line snagged and with the force of +7Gs, all five men were yanked off the hilltop and into the sky. They straightened out to avoid spinning and every one of them kept his eyes closed. Down below, the mystified KNA soldiers opened fire with their weapons but none of their rounds had a fat chance in hell of hitting either the escaping MC-130J or the men hanging from its rear, dangling midair.

The balloons were snipped free and they rose indefinitely while the line was snagged from the opened, rear, cargo ramp but the two loadmasters. It was attached to a winch, secured, and the men were hoisted into the aircraft, one-by-one. PO1 Sullivan went first, then Pedro, then PO2 Kelly, then PO2 Appleton, and LTJG Austin was last. The extraction was successful and the MC-130J Commando II quickly made its way for African airspace, where it would turn and fly back to its home base, refueling midair several times on the return trip. Inside of the cargo area, the five men all relaxed, comfortable in the notion that they were all going home safely and that they had successfully extracted Pedro from the hands of the KNA. He would have a lot to say when they got back to Layarteb-proper and his briefings to the Ministry of Intelligence would be compartmentalized.

The entire EREBUS Project was known to so few people that this information had to be compartmentalized and classified above top secret. Pedro was just one of the handful of men and women responsible for it. Even though LTJG Austin and his team were now a part of it, they did not know anything. The flash drive that LTJG Austin recovered was returned to Pedro before the aircraft landed and after touchdown, the MOI agent was ushered away by suited men who said nothing to LTJG Austin and his men. They would return to their subsequent destinations separately and at different times. The only thanks that the men would get would come from their commanding officer, who would relay to them something of a form letter from the MOI's operations directorate. It was near worthless but then again, the men didn't do their job for the praise. They did it for the thrill and for the service that they felt they owed to the Empire.

---

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ |xlv| ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Layarteb]

Ethiopia

September 19, 2012 - 10:00 hrs [UTC-5]
Fort Campbell, Kentucky
3rd SOG Headquarters
(36° 38' 58" N, 87° 29' 24" W)

Fort Campbell crossed the border from Kentucky into Tennessee without any effort. The 102,500-acre facility was one of the Empire's many major army installations but like Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Benning in Georgia, it was more than just a simple army base. Fort Campbell was home to four special operations units, a single tier one unit, the 3rd SOG known as Ghost Recon, and three tier two units, the 5th SOG known as the Green Berets, 10th SOG known as the Cobras, and the 12th SOG known as the Night Stalkers. Of these, the most coveted was obviously Ghost Recon. The 855-man unit was a complement to the 1st SOG or Delta Force, which was based down in Fort Bragg. Ghost Recon's primary role was reconnaissance but they were more than capable of direct action and deep strike missions far behind enemy lines.

The unit traced its origins back to the First Venezuelan War when elite Green Berets were tasked for what was called Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrols or LRRPs. On LRRPs, specialized four to six-man teams of Green Berets were sent deeply behind enemy lines to provide real-time reconnaissance on troop movements and to direct air strikes on supply depots. Midway through the war, the importance of these LRRPs became so great that the 3rd SOG was formed in order to devote 100% of its resources to them. Nowadays, Ghost Recon performed alongside Delta Force and other tier two units, usually gaining the distinction of being the very first units inserted into enemy territory before H-Hour. Most recently, Ghost Recon had deployed in force to Vanuatu but, unlike other war stories, Vanuatu had a far darker and far more horrific ending to the soldiers deployed there.

Captain O'Neill, a seasoned veteran of special operations, had been the team leader on Echo Team, Bravo Company, 2nd Platoon when they deployed to the island group. Captured and tortured, he and his men had made a daring and miraculous escape from the island. For his heroics, he had been awarded the Medal of Honor, the Empire's second highest award. He contemplated leaving special operations and returning to civilian life afterwards but after weeks of internal debate, he remained, though the nightmares still kept him up all manner of the night. On this particular morning, Captain O'Neill had been off base when he was summoned back to 3rd SOG's headquarters, which was buried deep underneath Fort Campbell's auxiliary firing ranges.

Upon his arrival, he had been directed to one of the briefing rooms and upon entering, he saw the rest of his team. There was 1SG Ferretti, his executive officer and Intel specialist, SSG Brown, their communications specialist, SGT Freeman, their equipment specialist, SGT Reilly, their sniper, and the newest addition to their team, SGT Maxwell, their medic. In June, all of the Ghost Recon teams were boosted from five to six men by the addition of a medic. "What's this about guys? We aren't due for a mission right now." He asked after surveying the curious eyes of his team.

"Dunno, none of us were told anything, just to report. We were hoping you had some info." His XO replied.

"Nothing, I'm just as in the dark as you are," just then the door opened and they all snapped to as the unit's commanding officer, a colonel entered. "Colonel," CPT O'Neill said. The unit was too closely knit for rank to take much precedence among the teams. Nobody saluted and nobody cared what your rate was but when it came to the CO, everyone snapped to, it was only good manners.

"Gentlemen, have a seat. I have no doubt you are curious why you've been called here. You aren't going on an op that much I can guarantee you. We need to revisit Vanuatu, as painful as that might be for you." Nobody had really talked about Vanuatu after their debriefing and the mere mention of it brought blank stares from all of the men except for SGT Maxwell who was saved the torment thanks to his not being on the team.

"Colonel, what is this about?" CPT O'Neill said as he leaned forward. "Be straight with us here."

"Fair enough O'Neill, we think we found your Hi No Moton scientist." Instantly, everyone went white. CPT O'Neill suddenly entered a flashback as he bounded through the underground cave in vain as the Hi No Moton scientist escaped. His body had never been found and there was no evidence that he had left the island but CPT O'Neill didn't believe that for one instant. He knew that the son of a bitch as alive and well.

"Where?"

"Ethiopia possibly," the colonel put a file folder in O'Neill's lap. "Do you recognize these photographs?"

CPT O'Neill took a deep breath and opened the brown, manila folder stamped "TOP SECRET." Inside, he looked at an 8 x 10 photograph of a Hi No Moton man dressed in a business suit. He was getting into a car but his face was clearly visible. It was rotten and sour with spite. His hair was longer and his appearance much cleaner but it was him. It was the son of a bitch! "That's him…" CPT O'Neill said.

"Are you sure O'Neill?"

"Get me close enough to smell his stench and I'll tell you for sure but that's him. I will never forget that face. When do we go?"

"You don't O'Neill, I'm sorry. Ethiopia is no go for us. You'll have to stand down." No sooner was this said than did the men burst into an uproar. CPT O'Neill wanted to feel the Hi No Moton's last heartbeat and he wanted to do it himself. He didn't want to outsource this to another unit, person, or even another country. No matter how hard they protested though, they weren't going to go on this sortie. There was simply no chance of it and that only made matters harder to bear and harder to understand. This wasn't going to sit well with them but in the end, they were sent on their way with strict orders not to go to Ethiopia but that thought was on everyone's mind.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ | ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

September 19, 2012 - 13:00 hrs [UTC-5]
Guantanamo, Cuba
13th BOG Headquarters
(20° 6' 36" N, 75° 8' 39" W)

Three hours later and nearly fourteen hundred miles to the southeast, two men walked into a similar but much smaller room in the headquarters of the 13th Black Operations Group, known as Force Snake. Situated underground in a large facility, the 13th BOG was one of three black operations units based outside of Guantanamo in Cuba. The other two were the 4th BOG known as Force Scorpion and the 12th BOG known as Force Shadow. Despite all three being in the same facility, its members had little to no contact with one another. Operational security kept all three units separated and in secure locations accessible by unique entrances and exits. If any of the men actually did run into one another they had all been trained to keep it cordial and ambiguous. Nobody spoke about what he or she did and nobody expected it to happen and for good reason.

Force Scorpion was the newest black operations unit and they were responsible for extraordinary rendition and always against a particular nation's will. After all, if the nation approved of it, Force Scorpion wouldn't be necessary. The 4th BOG was a 98-man unit that had been started to track down and find former Goodrule persons of interest. They had limited success there but far more success than any snatch-and-grab teams from the Ministry of Intelligence had. The 12th BOG was a much smaller, 65-man unit that was, in essence, a terrorist unit. Its members were trained in terrorism and they had carried out terrorist operations before. The 13th BOG was modeled on the 12th BOG and it too was a 65-man unit but its mission wasn't terrorism, per say. It was a hunter-killer, assassination unit. They were tasked with finding individuals and killing them by any means necessary.

Like all men who joined a black operations unit, these two men had no identity anymore. They were given cover names, which were their names in civilian life as it was in military life. Both men were as dark as the night but they weren't African. Marcos, the taller of the two and the more senior man, was from the Dominican Republic. The other was Pablo and he was a Panamanian. An odd couple indeed, the two men had somewhat similar background but they both had differing political views. Most of their political conversations ended in an intense argument and for that reason, they seemed to get along famously. This was their way of bonding, aside from the usual combat methods. Now, as the two of them sat, listening to an intelligence "dweeb" talk about their mission into Ethiopia, they wondered what it was about this man, a Hi No Moton named Susumu Esaki that would warrant their special attention. They'd never be given this information and they knew it. They were just given a face, a location, and all of the resources they could need to achieve their objective. Whoever this Susumu Esaki was and whatever he did, he wouldn't much longer.

---

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ |xlvi| ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Layarteb]

September 23, 2012 - 07:00 hrs [UTC-5]
Guantanamo, Cuba
13th BOG Headquarters
(20° 6' 36" N, 75° 8' 39" W)

Marcos and Pablo, teammates, were idly discussing politics in the unit's bar room. Small but big enough to fit all sixty-five men and women of the 13th Black Operations Group, the room was usually a place for the teams to relax while they were on call. A refrigerator stocked with beer was open and available to everyone. There was no charge but a large chalkboard on the wall had everyone's cover name and he or she wrote tick marks every time they took a beer. For Marcos and Pablo, both of whom had a beer in their hands, this was seven and eight, respectively. The board was erased once a month and the quantities recorded. A general fund for the food and alcohol supplies was established and the teams put into through their paychecks, usually fifty per person per month. Whatever money was excess, and there always was, went into a pension fund should they become disabled or killed. In the event of the latter, they could designate a person to receive the funds, usually a parent or sibling but that was rare. Few men or women in the 13th BOG had relatives and, per rules, none was married with children or had any dependants.

Neck deep in their conversation, they paid little mind to the muted television on the background. It was showing a newscast from Eritrea where a civil war was ravaging the country and where Muslims and Christians were purportedly slaying one another. The government, for all it was worth, was squashing both sides, or so they claimed. That was when the intercom in the building buzzed, "Charlie Two, room seven; Charlie Two, room seven." That was their identifier and both men snapped out of their conversation, put their empty beers down on the table, and high-tailed it out of the room and towards briefing room number seven. There were eight total rooms, each one identical to the others.

They used electronic badges to gain entry and inside they found two men, the intelligence chief of the unit, and the operations chief of the unit, both holding the rank of major. "Marcos, Pablo, you've got an op."

"Ethiopia?" Marcos asked before he sat down in the nearest seat.

"Yes, the Hi No Moton scientist, he's your target."

"Insertion?"

"Ethiopia is a tricky country, no surprise there. We've tracked him to the capital, Addis Ababa, so you're going in via commercial flight direct to the capital. Your cover will be journalists from a Buenos Aires newspaper. It fits your background.

"An agent from the MOI will meet you at the airport and take you to a safe house. There you will receive your weapons so don't bring anything on the plane; remember you're journalists. Once there you have one week. The agent will be your assistant for the time and he has information on our guy."

"What's his cover name?"

"Solomon, he's a black fellow," the intelligence chief said. "We have a photograph for you here but it won't come with you. This is beyond black gentlemen. We're not looking for an abduction here; we're looking for a clean and verifiable kill, understand?"

"Yes sir," Pablo responded. "ROE on civilians?"

"Ethiopia is a catastrophe, no limits, do what has to be done. This is personal for a few guys in special operations."

"Any more information you can give us on this guy?"

"Yutani has contracted him to do disease research there. Thanks to the complete lack of ethics or laws in Ethiopia, Yutani has virtually no limits with regards to their research. His location is pinned down to a Yutani complex but he frequently leaves to visit a sister institute a few klicks outside of the city. We surmise that the main research is done at the headquarters complex where he spends most of his time but that the other facility is perhaps a control facility. It is difficult to know for sure, the MOI has not been able to penetrate Yutani yet." The intelligence chief answered, reading from memory.

"Ethiopia is a warzone, what if the shit hits the fan?"

"Chances are it will. MOI agent will extract you to Somalia if possible, Eritrea more likely. Intel just confirmed that President Bairu and Ethiopia came to some sort of agreement regarding the border. You will be able to sneak into the country more easily now, not that Eritrea is a stable place but it is a go zone again. Somalia is worst case scenario because the Africans will ask questions."

"Departure then?"

"You'll leave tomorrow morning on a flight from Havana to Rio de Janeiro, and then onto Buenos Aires. You'll change covers in Rio. From Buenos Aires you'll wait a few hours in the airport and then catch a flight to Cape Town. Once in Cape Town you'll head direct to Addis Ababa."

"Long flights," Marcos answered.

"Lots of jetlag, try your best guys but remember, we need this in one week or your cover could be blown. Intel reports of a big to do over there and they don't know if it's Eritrea or Ethiopia but someone's going to become a really busy place."

"Foreign intervention?"

"Yes possibly, we don't know who the Africans or the Amigardians but Intel is picking up a lot of chatter."

"If that don't make things interesting," Pablo said with a snide laugh. "Okay, we're off then, gimme the packet."

---

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[Layarteb]

September 26, 2012 - 02:30 hrs [UTC+3]
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Bole International Airport
(8° 58' 59" N, 38° 47' 46" E)

Despite being highly trained soldiers, Marcos and Pablo were utterly destroyed when they departed from the cabin of the Boeing 767 in Addis Ababa. It was 02:30, local time, but for them it was impossible to tell what time it really was. They had left on flight at 07:00, local time, on September 24 from Havana and arrived in Rio at 17:30, local time. It was still the 24th at least. They had a short layover and they were in Buenos Aires as two Argentinian-born journalists by 22:15, local time. They waited around for four hours before getting on a transoceanic flight to Cape Town and when they landed, thanks to the distance, the layover, and the time difference, they found that it was 16:15 in the afternoon on the 25th. They had lost virtually half a day and it was only going to get worse, from there they went to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.

Both men were jetlagged beyond recognition and who was to blame them, they had traveled 12,850 miles across the world, first down, then over, then up, all to keep their cover alive. In doing so, they had spent twenty-seven hours on four aircraft, dealing with ascents and descents, popped eardrums, crying babies, sexually frustrated stewardesses, chatterbox seatmates, and all of the turbulence they could wish for in a lifetime. They preferred to travel by military transport. Despite being less comfortable, it was quicker, more direct, and once they went up, they didn't come back down until they were at their destination. They'd have preferred a HAHO or HALO insertion, which was far rougher on their bodies but again, far more comfortable than what they had just endured.

Gathering their luggage and clearing through the joke that was customs at Bole International Airport, the two men wandered around seemingly aimlessly for the next twenty minutes, using the restrooms, getting terrible coffee at a cart, and then finally meeting their "driver" who was an anxious fellow waiting at the pick-up section. He held up a sign with their names but to fit the cover, Pablo's was spelled incorrectly and Marcos' was written all in lowercase letters. This man, an agent with the Ministry of Intelligence, was one of their better field agents. His cover name was Solomon and even at this god-awful hour of the morning, he was quite excitable, as his cover demanded him to be.

"Are you our driver?" Marcos asked, suddenly aware that he was partially deaf from all of the ascents and descents that he had endured. He also realized that he hadn't changed clothes since departing Havana. Despite being a hardened black operative, he craved for the simplicity of a hot shower.

"Yes, yes, embassy sent me to get you, yes," Solomon said, excitedly. He was about five-foot-nine and very lanky. He had short hair and his clothes were particularly humbling. His skin was visibly greasy and his fingernails filthy with vehicle grease. "Come, I take your bag, bring you to hotel." His English was actually perfect but he was a master of tradecraft and since his cover was that of a rather uneducated taxi driver, he had to make sure he did everything precisely to point. The government of Ethiopia was particularly cautious when it came to foreign spies and whenever they captured them, torture and execution always followed a disastrous interrogation. Solomon knew this and he knew two agents, both from other countries, who had been captured, tortured, and executed. He was, for many reasons, careful, especially since he was the top agent for the Empire in Ethiopia.

"What's your name?"

"I am Solomon, you?"

"Marcos."

"Pablo," both men said. They exchanged enthusiastic handshakes and followed the lanky agent out into the parking lot, passing by scores of armed soldiers. Since the country was in such turmoil and since the airport was a rich and wonderful target for the rebels, the government had stationed an entire company of troops to guard the airport. Another company was less than five klicks away, and battalion headquarters was twenty klicks away and they had helicopter support.

The three men said nothing else until they got to the car. Solomon popped the trunk on the rusty sedan. It was a mid-80s Chevrolet Caprice Classic, which was a big, boxy car that ate as much fuel as it ate oil. Solomon loved the car though. In the streets of Addis Ababa, the car reigned king. He could push everything and anything out of his way, short of an armored truck or a big rig. The car looked the part too. Dents were all over and the paint was chipped so badly that neither Marcos nor Pablo could tell the car's original color. "Nice car," Marcos responded as he climbed into the back, passenger seat. Pablo slid in on the other side and Solomon dropped in last, starting the car up as soon as he plopped down. The engine cranked almost immediately, a testament to the money that the MOI probably spent keeping the car in good condition.

"It is safe in here," Solomon said now in his normal voice. "This car is a beast, we spend about fifty bucks a month in oil for it though but it works fine. Gas is cheap here. I have a hookup."

"Good, because we're going to probably be doing some driving. Where are we staying?"

"Safe house, it's owned by Montgomery Broadcasting as a place for its journalists coming into and out of the country. It was cheaper just to buy a damn house than to put the journalists in hotels."

"And they went for this?"

"No, the journalists cried it wasn't safe enough," Solomon put the car in gear, "and so the house just sits there. They still own it but we basically use it at will."

"Do they know?"

"They think I'm a caretaker of sorts."

"Okay, good, I like that," Marcos answered. Pablo was still trying to figure out what time it was. He was taking the jetlag harder than Marcos was, as it were. "Hey man, you okay?" Marcos asked, noticing that Pablo was staring into space. Solomon pulled out of the spot and they headed out of the airport's exit, bumping along shitty roads, hopping a curb, and cutting off two other taxi drivers, just to get onto the main streets.

"Yeah man, just exhausted is all," Pablo answered as he clued back into the matter at hand. "Just keep talking man, keep me awake."

"You sure you're fine?"

"Yeah dude, fine enough to fuck your mother." Solomon laughed and pulled into traffic. "How far is it?"

"Nine and a half klicks to where your target is working and another two klicks to the safe house," Solomon said as he laid on the horn. Despite the hour, there was a lot of traffic but it was all because they were at the airport and, for safety reasons, most of the flights came in during the nighttime hours, when it was harder to see and shoot at the airplanes.

Pablo nodded off about thirty seconds later and Marcos resigned himself to taking "watch" as it were but he was going to wake up Pablo as violently as he could muster the minute they got to the Yutani building, located in the Kebena District of the city. Their safe house, not that Marcos knew it, was located one district over, in Arada. The city was otherwise peaceful after they cleared the initial mess at the airport and quickly threatened to lull Marcos to sleep but he fought it with every bit of strength he had. In the blackness of night, he wasn't able to see the scars that the ongoing civil war had left upon the city, which might have kept him from drifting away.

Marcos did in fact drift into a powernap for about five minutes and awoke with a startle when Solomon slammed on the brakes to avoid rear-ending a truck, which had pulled out of an alleyway. Solomon cursed aloud in Amharic but it was of no use. "Hey, Marcos, wake your buddy up, it's right around the block."

"Did I fall asleep?"

"I think so."

"Shit!"

"Even the most hardcore soldiers succumb to jetlag. It's just a universal thing."

"Yeah," Marcos said as he looked over at Pablo, who was seconds away from snoring. With a kick, he drove Pablo's leg into the rest of his body, awakening him with just as much of a startle. "Sleeping Beauty, wake the fuck up…"

"Man, fuck you."

"Fuck you back," Marcos answered as he rubbed his own eyes, concealing that he had nodded off as well.

"All right, see the big building over there to the left?" Solomon had parked the car on a dirty, cluttered back road that ran alongside the Yutani complex. "That's where he stays and does most of his work. The entrance is heavily guarded at the end of the roadway leading in and I'm not going to play dumb with them. Yutani has private security forces, not the kind who takes lost cabbies easily. They're probably mercenaries like the rest of the country. Well that's it, the building. Security is tighter than a Jew's asshole here so we're not going to do anything here. The best chance is when he travels."

"How routine is he?" Both men were eyeing the building as they spoke, keeping watch on the darkened windows. "No lights," Pablo observed.

"It could just be the glass, no way to know for sure." The building was a square, as far as they could see, four floors in height. Satellite photographs showed that it was actually two structures connected together with an open courtyard in the middle. The building was beige and the roof was brown and flat. A smaller, rectangular building sat on its southeastern edge. It was only two floors and colored the same. Likely, that was the building where the security force slept and had their weaponry and vehicles stored. Razor wired topped fencing that ran around the entire compound and there were plenty of trees to hide it from prying eyes. "Okay, that's enough for now; let's get to the safe house." Marcos said after another few minutes. With that, Solomon eased off the brake, and the car rolled into forward motion. He weaved around the clutter and the junk until he got back to the main road, which was so strewn with potholes that it was as dangerous to traverse as a minefield was.

A few minutes later, Solomon was parking the car underneath a makeshift garage with a tarp to cover it from rain and prying eyes. Arada was a shantytown, just like the favelas in Rio, and it brought back many memories to both Marcos and Pablo, who had traveled into Rio two years earlier to assassinate a Mato Grossan general. They found the safe house to be comfortable, secure, and perfect for their purposes. Both of them crashed onto the nearest beds, hoping to get a few hours of sleep before dawn, when they would awake and begin.

---

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[Layarteb]

September 26, 2012 - 07:00 hrs [UTC+3]
Arada, Addis Ababa
MOI Safe House
(9° 2' 26" N, 38° 45' 24" E)

Groggily, the men awoke and shuffled out of their bedrooms, wishing for another fourteen hours of sleep but both Marcos and Pablo needed to become accustomed to the local time zone and they needed to do it sooner, rather than later. Solomon, already awake, was sitting by the kitchen table, reading his collected notes, looking for anything useful to give them. He had been on the Esaki case ever since August, when the Ministry both identified Esaki as the possible culprit in the Vanuatu Experiments, as they were officially called behind stamps of "Top Secret," and tracked him to Ethiopia. It had been Solomon's telephoto lens and his steady hand that took the photograph, which CPT O'Neill saw to identify Esaki. Since the sighting, he had kept detailed notes on Esaki and his routine but there wasn't much of a usable pattern. "Esaki is an unpredictable fellow, Kempeitai training there…"

"Is there anything useful?"

"Plenty but he's too unpredictable Marcos." Solomon pushed the notes forward and stood up to pour both of his "guests" a cup of coffee. "Coffee is strong but you'll do fine."

After the first sip, Pablo nearly spit it back out, "Jesus man! What is that?"

"Old Eurasian recipe, perfect for curing jetlag."

"It'll eat the inside of my stomach dude," Pablo said with a laugh as he took another sip of the thickened battery acid.

"Esaki does travel to a distant compound just north of Sululta, about twenty-seven klicks north of where he is now. I said in my report that he goes frequently because throughout August, he went nine times but he has yet to go at all this month."

"How do we even know he's in there?"

"We don't, we have no one inside and the Ministry tells me that they can't break through the security codes yet. I don't think they're trying hard enough, Yutani is a big corporation, they're not stupid, but I've seen reports the Ministry obtained from other governments."

"Does he take a regular route?"

"Yes, that's one benefit, in fact it turns west before going north again just outside of here, at the end of the main street, where we turned right."

"That big curve?"

"Yes."

"Pretty convenient then," Marcos was still reading while Pablo did all of the talking. They were looking for any way useful. The idea of a car bomb had not been ruled out at all, which was both effective and, in Ethiopia, neither uncommon nor expensive. Filled with enough explosives and the right fragmentation devices, they could turn an entire section of a street, thirty meters long, into a fireball. Unfortunately, though, car bombs were more effective against static targets or as suicide devices; and neither Marcos nor Pablo was going to kill himself to get a Hi No Moton scientist. They were terrorists, so to speak, but not of the suicide variety.

"What is his route outside of the capital?" Marcos asked, the wheels in his head spinning.

"Well, he stays on what they call Route 3 here. I doubt it even has a name. After leaving the city, it goes through some hills and becomes very curvy, but only for a short time. If you're thinking of pushing his car over a cliff, that won't work, not steep enough."

"What is the political situation like north of the city?"

"Well it's hard to say really. In 2009, it was fully in government hands but the rebels were raising havoc for the government forces. Two years ago, the lines were formed up, the rebels concentrating on the southern areas more. In fact, by now, they control the entire southern region of the country but at the same time, the government locked down the northern border area. Thus, there is very little direct fighting here but the battle is just a few kilometers to the south, west, and east. It's not out of the realm of possible though for a rebel force to get behind the lines and make some attacks. It happened two months ago in fact."

"Details?"

"A rebel force, maybe fifty of them, maybe less, attacked an armory about forty-five klicks north of the capital. They didn't succeed in destroying the armory, in fact, they got their asses handed to them, every one of them killed or captured. But they did scare the shit out of the government, who thought that the rear areas were safe."

"So they've got a grudge to settle?"

"The rebels always have a grudge to settle," Solomon said laughing. "The government is about as brutal and oppressive as they are. This isn't even a conflict on religious lines, as we're seeing pop up in Eritrea. While it's true most of the Ethiopian rebels are Muslims, a solid third of them are Christians. Government areas are about even, fifty-fifty. It's tough to tell anymore really where the battle lines are. Most of the reports I see just mention control by district, which controls what district. To give you an idea of the scope, Ethiopia has nine regions, sixty-eight zones, and five hundred and thirteen districts, basically what we would call counties. It's an impossible task to remember when the battle lines shift every few months."

Marcos looked up from the notes and shook his head. He took his first sip of coffee and recoiled, just like Pablo had but by now, Pablo had drained half of his cup. "You'll get used to it."

"I hope not," Marcos replied back as he took a big gulp, swallowing as quickly as he could to avoid tasting it. "That was a big area of land where Yutani is, do they control all of those buildings?"

"No that area is split into three sections. Yutani has the smallest, just the buildings you saw and some open field property. Immediately adjacent to the building on its western side is a government compound of something. I can't tell, I think it might be a living compound for government officials. Then, the bulk of the area is taken up by a French school, big boarding school with dormitories." Marcos and Pablo looked at one another with glee. They both spoke fluent French. "No go guys, security there is tighter than at Yutani."

"Well shit Solomon, you aren't giving us much to work with here."

"Listen, if you are Asian looking I'd get you in Yutani but we can't. This is security out the yin-yang. I can't get you into any of the three places. This might be a failed state but the government compound is guarded by an elite EDF unit, some sort of special forces group I guess. Real badass guys man. You're two, they've got a platoon in there. And the French school? Mercenaries are protecting that place and you know what mercenaries are like. Shoot first, boast about it later."

"Well that sucks," Pablo said, eyeing the table errantly. "Well, where there's a will, there's a way."

"What are you thinking?"

"What do you know about the mercs?"

"Contracted from, hold on," he took his notebook and sifted through the pages. "Contracted from Armacham." Marcos and Pablo looked at each other with wide smiles. "Uniforms will be hard to get."

---

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[Layarteb]

September 26, 2012 - 16:00 hrs [UTC+3]
Arada, Addis Ababa
French Secondary School
(9° 2' 7" N, 38° 45' 47" E)

Solomon was right; uniforms were hard to procure, in fact too hard in the allotted timeframe. The initial plan was, for that purpose, scrubbed but Marcos and Pablo were fast thinkers and where uniforms was too hard to procure, identification badges and false letters of business weren't. By late afternoon, both of them had perfect counterfeit identification badges that identified them as executive directors. Their false letters of business would announce to the personnel at the school that they were there for an unannounced inspection. If asked what the nature of it was, Marcos and Pablo would only give a vague response as to a quantifiable "threat" to school security and, being the diligent company that they were, Armacham wanted them to do their due diligence to make sure that the school was adequately protected.

When all was said and done, the two men resolved to check out the school immediately, just to put the staff on the defensive. Donning casual but appropriate clothing, the two men had Solomon, playing his role as stumbling taxi driver, drive them to the school, where they got out, and loudly ordered him to stay put. Solomon smiled and nodded enthusiastically, "I keep meter running, you take your time, I okay, I wait." Both of them walked up to the curious guard at the booth who saw that both men were displaying Armacham badges around their necks.

"Can I help you sirs?" He asked, not allowing them to proceed.

Marcos, taking the senior role, eyed the man's badge and name, "Ken, we're here to meet with Brandon. We do not have an appointment; this is an unannounced inspection of your facility. You may check our credentials but time is of the essence tonight."

"Yes sir," Ken eyed the badges and saw the title. Just a lowly security guard, he walked back into the booth, picked up the phone, and called about the visitors. Solomon had called a few hours earlier and feigning that he was a worker in the Ministry of Education, obtained the name of Armacham's chief operating officer, Brandon Little. His name was at the top of the document and at the moment, for this operation, all calls from his office and elsewhere in the school would be routed by the Ministry of Intelligence to a switchboard operator working for the Ministry. It was amazing how quickly things got done when they needed to get done. Less than a minute later, Ken appeared from the booth, "Sirs, please enter the main office there, building fourteen, and Mister Little will be with you shortly."

"Thank you Ken," Pablo answered and both of them strode in and went to the assigned location. They entered, sat down in the reception area, and said nothing. It was less than two minutes before a visibly annoyed Brandon Little appeared in his suit and tie. He had obviously just put them on given the lack of creases from sitting around all day.

"Gentlemen, I apologize, I was not under any impression that my facility needed an inspection," he extended his hand, "Brandon Little, Director of Operations here."

"Raul Matos, Executive Director of Security, Division H," Marcos answered followed quickly by Pablo who gave his name as Victor Pedilla, also an executive director of security.

They handed over the letter, it was reviewed, and Brandon Little, faced with little else, ushered them into his office. "It will take me a few minutes to get my chief of security here to escort us. It is pertinent that he join us."

"Thank you."

"Can I offer you gentlemen anything?"

"Tea," Marcos answered.

"Water if you please," Pablo answered. Both of them were making themselves quite comfortably at home here and they were taking in everything as they did. In their satchels, Marcos was carrying a digital camera and Pablo was carrying a notepad. They would make sure they got ample footage of the target building. As a good employee of the great, corporate machine, Brandon went along with it and didn't make any inquiries about them.

---

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