NationStates Jolt Archive

General Tala woke in the dead of night – his bed sheets soaked in sweat. He reached for the light switch in the darkness – knocking his water glass from the night table sending it to its doom on the hard floor.

“God damn!” he said as the light finally switched on.

He sat up and picked up the phone on the small table. “Get me the Ops Centre. *pause* Major – I want a General staff meeting at 0600.”

He hung up the phone and checked his watch – 3 hours till he could deal with this mess – 3 hours till he could start to put an end to not sleeping at night.

It had been a bad month for the General – and for all Imperial Dominance citizens.

Despite the strong sounding name – Imperial Dominance was anything but “Imperial” let alone “Dominant”.

It was a puny nation, surrounded by vastly larger – more economically stable – and better armed countries.

And that wasn’t something a General like Tala could stomach – attested to by his bleeding ulcer and lack of sleep.

He lit his cigarette and went to the kitchen table where maps, charts and graphs were spread out from his evenings study session.

The large book with the black cover “WMD for Dummies” – its well-worn pages stained from spilled coffee and overuse sat on top of the pile.

Picking it up, he re-read the page he’d studied last night…

Perhaps the most easily converted fissionable weapon is the nuclear landmine. It has an accessible fuse system [fig. 1] and tends to be located in relatively isolated and unguarded locations.

Conversion of the landmine to other uses is considered to be of easy-to-moderate difficulty [see page 233].

The greatest challenge may be that nuclear landmines of between 0.01 and 5 kt are typically pressure sensitive – and are often “tamper” sensitive, with tamper-detonation times as quick as 10 seconds.

This presents some challenges to the force recovering the weapons. However, virtually all nuclear landmines are extremely susceptible to cold – which may give the well-equipped thief the needed advantage [see also Ground-Freezing Technique, page 509].

The General closed the book. The plan would be simple enough, and that provided some comfort.

The key, of course, would be locating some of these nuclear landmines - getting away with stealing a few. One would also expect that the owners might not like having their very valuable weapons going missing in the night.

Shame.

People carrying around various storage media and paperwork rushed around in the command Center. General Soran J. Clarius and several advisors were bowing over a digital map of Pro-Patria with several flashing red dots indicating current hotspots.

It was only days ago that, under Leadership of Dr. Vachant, power was seized in a Coup d'Etat from the corrupt isolationist government. While huge parts of the military and police did support this step, many people felt insecure in this current situation, and more influental people than expected were unhappy with the change of regime, and caused the improvisated current leadership problems where they could.

Riots, protests, and even some paramilitaric uprising took place all over the country.
Soran touched one of the flashing dots and the map zoomed in on Scion, the Capital City. He took a look around: "Damnit...we are seriously undermanned. These weapon storehouses must not fall into the hands of the protestors!"

Some of the advisors nodded, others mumbled a "yes" or "indeed"...
Every larger city had weapon storehouses to arm the populace who underwent compulsory military service in case of an outside attack. In this situation, things got complicated though...while most protestors were peaceful, some where not...and those few could easily break into one of those storerooms by overwhelming the few guards there.

Soran had one hand on the table and rubbed his chin with the other: "Damnit, we need more man. Where's the 2nd Airborne at the moment?" One of the advisors thought shortly, then replied shyly: "Guarding the research reactor near Cranford, it's also severely undermanned!" Again, most of the advisors nodded or mumbled some words of agreement.

Soran looked at them angrily: "What is wrong with you guys? You are ADVISORS, not man-servants. Ever since this whole thing started, not one of you managed to come up with even ONE reasonable suggestion. All you do is mumbling and agreeing and more mumbling!" - "Excuse me Sir!" one of the youngest advisors spoke up. Soran looked at him sharply: "What?" The young one met his gaze and spoke on unshattered: "I'd like to make a suggestion!" Soran relaxed a little: "Go ahead!"
The young advisor touched the screen, zooming the map out again, then changed 2 or 3 options, making the map highlight various spots and lines along the border: "There. The border patrol units. They are military as well. We are currently in neutral or positive standing with our neighbours, we don't need them all fully manned. If we withdraw people from there, we could well increase the human resources at our hands by 10-25% percent!" - "But you can't..." one of the advisors started before Soran cut him off: "Silence!...Thats indeed a workable idea. You, whats your name?" "Kain Crowe, Sir!"

One of the advisors tried to talk Soran out of it: "Sir, you know we have 3 different kinds of nuclear devices in use to defend our borders. If we weaken our garnisons and patrols, serious problems could arise!"
But Soran had his Mind made up: "Nothing more of it. We need man, we need them now. I want this flame of uprising quenched before it becomes a forest fire! If we seem unable or incompetent now, more people will rise up. Keep it a secret and have jets perform recon along the borders, we can't use our air force in crowd control anyway. If anything comes up, we should be able to respond in time!"
Neither he himself nor the advisor he talked to were all too certain about that...but as he had said, they needed men, and they needed them now.

OOC: Pro-Patrian Border Patrol Units are reduced by 60-80% of their regular manpower, the attention focus of command is with Scion and the other bigger cities...

General Tala paced back and forth.

The plan was now underway – and the radio blackout was causing his ulcer to flare.

“WHERE ARE THEY NOW!” he demanded of the lieutenant in the Combat Control Centre in Imperial Dominance’s capital city, hundreds of kilometers away from Pro-Patria.

“As we discussed Sir,” replied the very-nervous lieutenant, “they are currently in radio silence – so we don’t know exactly. However, according to the plan, Zeus squad should be about here *points to map* - Apollo here *points again* and Poseidon somewhere around here *points once more*.”

The General sighed, and lit another cigar – his second of the night.

Poseidon Group: off the coast of Pro-Patrian, submerged

The group of twelve men inspected their kits in silence. Two excited dogs sat silently in their own gear [http://fozbaca.org/archives/ScubaDog.jpg ]. Bullets were chambered; compact shovels and tool sets carefully inspected and packed in waterproof bags.

Finally the black air tanks and regulators on the re-breathers were inspected and the signal was given to flood the pressure chamber on the diesel-electric sub.

The 12 men and two dogs waited patiently as the cold sea-water rushed in around them – their breathing evenly pace until finally the chamber was full, and the exterior doors opened into the blackness.

Compasses were checked – pointing the way towards enemy territory, and the ultimate conclusion to their mission.

They began their swim – weighted down with all the equipment they would need to steal nuclear weapons – and perhaps start a war.

Zeus Group: 30,000 feet over Pro-Patrian

It was never like this in the movies, thought Captain Walters as he re-checked the gear of his squad.

In the movies 12 guys would drop out of a plane and nothing would ever go wrong – where as in real life – everything could go wrong, and quickly.

“All right – Listen up. You know the plan. We stick to the plan. Check your GPS – we meet at Checkpoint Mike in one hour. If you miss Mike for any reason – you are to covertly travel to Checkpoint Lima and wait for the team to arrive in 4 days.”

He watched the faces for a sign of understanding before continuing.

“When we hit the ground we have to clear out quick. Don’t wait for the others. Remember – this is hostile territory.”

Walters put his hand up to his earpiece so he could hear the pilot better.

“Okay – we’re over the target area…get ready.”

In the cockpit, the pilot picked up his microphone and flipped to the local Pro-Patrian frequency.

“Pro-Patrian air control – this is Lear WJ5 692 out of Dominica. We are experiencing cabin pressure fluctuations. Request emergency routing and priority landing directions… I repeat - Pro-Patrian air control – this is Lear WJ5 692 out of Dominica. We are experiencing cabin pressure fluctuations. Request emergency routing and priority landing directions…We are light – repeat – no passengers. But I’m getting wild readings up here…This is WJ5 692 declaring an emergency – I have now lost cabin pressure…” he continued to broadcast as the men in the back prepared for action.

Walter’s gave the signal, and one of the team kicked the emergency handle on the passenger door of the small jet. The door resisted – until a second boot hit it harder than the first.

It blew outwards suddenly, ripping the hinges from the fuselage and sucking all the air out of the pressurized cabin.

The men took a second to adjust to the new conditions before, one-by-one unstrapping themselves from their safety belts, adjusting their oxygen masks, and leaping into the darkness.

In spite of their High Altitude Low Opening training – the darkness was disorientating, and the bulk of their gear weighted down the minute adjustments needed for “comfortable” gliding.

The chutes opened at an alarming 3,500 feet – barely time to slow the jumper before impact with the hard-packed ground.

On contact the team was a well-choreographed hive of activity – parachute lines were cut, chutes were rolled and dragged to the brush line, where a pit was hastily dug. Men spread out, guns at the ready – working in total silence.

Within 10 minutes of the last man landing the squad had set out for the checkpoint – forming up at Mike three quarters of an hour later.

They were still too far away from the enemies beach front defense line – but they were close enough to complete there mission – prevent reinforcements from joining up and spoiling the “recovery” operation.

“Alright,” said Captain Walters quietly to the gathered men. “We’re here *points at map* - I want four fire team, three men each. Alfa will position themselves here – sniper on the high ground – SMAW (Shoulder-Launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon] specialist here, and the communications operator in a reserve position here…

He continued, outlining each of Alfa, Bravo, Charlie and Delta teams’ position – maximizing the small force to contain the largest possible area.

Each team was well armed with a .50 calibre sniper, communications officer armed with a silenced MP-5N, and a SMAW / explosive ordinance specialist.

Within another hour they had set up their perimeter, covertly isolating the beach-border defense screen from inland positions.

Apollo Group, 100 km off shore, third-country flagged cargo ship

Boredom was the worst part of being in Spec-Ops, thought Captain Riggs. His group – the third squad and final piece of the operational puzzle – was sitting on a stinking ocean freighter no where near the field of battle.

While Zeus and Poseidon groups were now “in-country” his group of 18 were sitting in the early morning sun – their gear stowed below decks and out of sight.

And it was a lot of gear.

Three Mark V boats [http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/mark_v.htm], along with all the weapons and fuel they could carry (including STINGER launchers); specially designed sleds for dragging their (hopefully) newly-obtained cargo; personal weapons – smoke and grenade launchers – and the like.

The key, of course, would be for the ground team to be successful, and send the appropriate signal for his team to head for the beach.

In all likelihood – the shooting will have started and they’d be going in hot.

Reflecting on that – he became quite content with his current state of boredom.

ooc: Deployment

Here is how I figure things look.

I’ve got four fire teams (Zeus Squad) in-country from your beach defense positions.
Poseidon Squad is swimming up to the beach.

Apollo is well off-shore, and out of your territory – traveling with a non-descript cargo ship.


So if the solid line is the beach – X’s are your positions – Z’s are my Zeus Squad – and P’s are my Poseidon Squad (still swimming)


Z Z Z Z



X X X X X

______________________________________________


P

WTF! I bumped first, then wrote here!
Now the system had logged me out and i didn't have it copy-pasted :P
All gone *close to tears*

-_-
Guess i'll have to rewrite it :(

That sucks. Hate that. I've taken to typing it in Word and not deleting the file until I see in on the forum.

OOC:
ya, sorry bout that :P
and today we had elections and i had to sit as controller for the whole day, evening clubbing...
but starting tomorrow i'll have some spare time again so expect an significant increase in activity then-

Tag.