NationStates Jolt Archive

The intelligence officers were closely monitoring the live feed from the UAV flying over the Sky Wonder, observing when all of a sudden, the cruise liner rocked but nothing more happened. It did get the attention of the intelligence officers though, who had just enough time to call over Admiral Freiland, who was just getting on duty in the early morning to see the explosion light up the monitor. The room was dead silent for a moment as the officers processed the unimaginable and accepted it. Then all hell broke loose.

”Hva i helvete…!” [What the fuck…!] Admiral Freiland said, ignoring the burning warm coffee on his shoes and uniform pant leg after he dropped the cup of warm coffee when the explosion occurred.

”En større eksplosjon i cruiseskipet. Ser ut som ei bombe eller kanskje en torpedo, men det er tvilsomt. Torpedoer er laget for å detonere under skipet og dermed knekke kjølen. Denne her har eksplodert inne i skipet ser det ut som.” [A major explosion in the cruise liner. Looks like a big bomb or maybe a torpedo, but that’s undoubtful. Torpedoes are made to detonate underneath the ship and thus break its keel. This one looks like it detonated inside the liner.] One of the intelligence officers said quietly, analyzing the situation and giving the Admiral his analysis.

”Overlevende?” [Survivors?]

”Muligens, men vi må forberede oss på enorme tapstall.” [Possibly, but we’ve got to prepare ourselves for massive casualties.]

”Faen. Jeg må kontakte Oslo. Gi dem beskjed om hva som har skjedd her. En eller annen få tak i en Layartebianer og finn ut hvordan i helvete dette kunne skje! Jeg vil ha en eller annens hode!” [Fuck. I need to contact Oslo. Let them know what just happened here. Someone get a hold of a Layartebian and find out how the fuck this could happen! I want someone’s head!]

The message was relayed to High Command in Oslo, where it was afternoon and near the end of the working day, but still not late enough for the government officials to have called it a day yet. That was why the message was in the hands of the senior officials immediately and labelled CRITIC, meaning that it had to be in the hands of the Prime Minister and the King within 15 minutes of being labelled. This time, it took less than six, since both men in question were still in their offices. It didn’t mean that the message was received more favourably though.

The most immediate effect was an order to relay all available intelligence to the Defense Ministry and have it all analyzed, and an order to provide any available assistance to the rescue effort. That meant a pair of Indefatigable class destroyers based out of Mobile in Alabama (Empire of Layarteb) that were detached from their Amphibious Battle Group and sent to the area at best speed. They still wouldn’t be there for another couple of hours though, travelling at 37 knots. Additionally, a P-14/A Poseidon – the same one from a few days ago – was diverted from the ocean patrol task in the north-western sector and sent to the area to provide assistance in any way. The Poseidon carried a small number of life rafts and survivor packs designed to be dropped down to shipwrecked survivors and downed aircrews, but that were equally useful for any survivors of this horrible act.

A few hours later, the intelligence that had been relayed had been reviewed, analyzed, and reviewed again, and the initial feeling among the intelligence community was that this had been a terrorist attack of some sort, using a massive bomb equalling nearly a thousand kilograms of TNT near the keel. It had been sufficient to sink the cruise liner in a little over three minutes, and there were bound to be many dead.

The intelligence analysis also revealed another fact, and that was that the Sky Wonder had not been experiencing engine trouble, but rather a terrorist hijacking as the Cottish had feared and believed from the beginning. The Layartebians hadn’t had anyone aboard the Sky Wonder at all, something the politicians had been content with “knowing” despite the Military and intelligence community’s frantic efforts to convince them otherwise over the past two days, only to be frowned and told to proverbially sit down and shut up. After all, the Layartebians didn’t lie to their close allies, did they now?

The answer was hideously obvious to military men, intelligence officers and politicians alike: Yes, they did.

As a result, Prime Minister Thomas Rothsky, who had taken the Layartebian response to Admiral Freiland’s communiqué two days prior to be true, was truly and righteously pissed, as he expressed quite clearly when he personally called the Layartebian Ambassador and quite literarily ordered him in no uncertain terms to report to the Prime Minister’s office immediately, leaving absolutely no room for questions or delay, before hanging up as abruptly as he had called.

He was pissed off for a reason. During the extraordinary cabinet meeting a few days earlier, he had personally guaranteed that the Layartebians had the situation under control and that there was no danger to the citizens on the ship, kicking down the critical voices in the cabinet. Now, he had been proven wrong, and even worse, he had been personally humiliated in the cabinet and his credibility was wounded. Someone was going to pay. True, he had already berated two of his aides in a rather colourful language not commonly associated with the otherwise so kind 72-year old career politician, but he still had lots more in store for the next unfortunate sod!

The explosion aboard the Sky Wonder was massive, so massive that windows shook on board the patrolling vessels. Nobody knew what had happened except for the crew aboard the Loke and the men within the Grenada command center. Immediately, everything went dark. Communiques to the Loke demanded that it return to port at once for debriefing on the situation and the crew got that message as they came to periscope depth to see just how badly the torpedo destroyed the ocean liner. By the time they were viewing through their periscope, the stern was almost completely underwater. There would be bodies all over the place, hundreds. Layartebian warships in the immediate vacinity launched every motorized raft they had with men aboard to fish out bodies and find survivors, if there were any. There wouldn't be though as the few who managed to survive thus far from the poisoning were so far below deck that they were either vaporized with the blast or went down with the ship. There were whole bodies up there though and it was imperative that they all be recovered. It was obvious now that the Layartebian explanation of the problem wasn't entirely true. The vessel definitely didn't have engine problems as no problem aboard could create an explosion of such a size. The real explanation would be tightly buttoned down and hidden while another one was determined. The Emperor and the cabinet, attending a meeting concerning actions in Portugal received the phone call just two minutes after the explosion. The Minister of Defense was on the phone with the Caribbean Sector Defense Command at the time. The Joint Chiefs had been notified of the launching of the torpedoes and it seemed that, all at once, things slipped away.

Within the confines of his office, the Emperor slammed the phone down. "It seems we have a problem." It was at that moment that the Minister of Defense entered from the waiting room. "Yes. I know." He stopped the minister before he could continue. "There is no doubt in my mind that the Cottish will not believe our story of 'engine trouble' so let's get something real quick."

"Yes sir!" The Minister of Defense said as he put away his cell phone. "Well it's obvious that they'll know it was a bomb. Who wouldn't? It is obvious that they'll know it was the work of terrorists. Again. Who wouldn't? It isn't obvious though what it really was. So. At the moment, information is, at best, spotty but we were in communication with a terrorist cell that captured the ocean liner. We were not at liberty to disclose the information since the terrorists threatened that should they see any further vessels in the area, they would blow up the ship. We were planning on a SEAL incursion after diplomatic efforts failed. All of this is true, no?"

"Yes. To a degree."

"Good enough. Now," the minister continued. "We are fully aware that the Cottish had a UAV in the air operating at 42,000 feet. There's no way they could have seen it from there so we can't say that they spotted it. The fly over was a while ago so again, that won't work. Perhaps we can just say we do not know why they detonated the explosives. We were making progress in negotiations and we had the best interest of the people aboard in our minds, which was why we delayed the SEAL incursion, since we were unaware of their true capabilities due to 'unknown jamming' of the ship's wireless security system. That's all we need to say."

"I agree. Is there anything else anyone in the room will like to add?"

"Yes. I do." The Minister of Foreign Affairs began. "This was a Layartebian domestic matter, despite the presence of Cottish citizens on board and we reserved the right to make the calls we did since we had full understanding of the situation and did not wish to complicate the matter. Until the time of the explosion, we had no indication, whatsoever, that they were planning on doing it. We are as flabberghasted as they are. Naturally we'll offer reparations."

"Indeed we shall but the Ministry of Finance must cap these reparations. We cannot bankrupt ourselves."

"Certainly minister. Certainly. Very well. Let's get this communique to the embassy at once and inform our ambassador that he is to handle the situation as seriously as possible but that the terms of these sittings are not up to him to decide. That is as simple as it is going to be and if the Cottish do not like it that is their problem. They have to accept this as such given the nature of the situation. We will return whatever bodies we find of Cottish citizenship after proper identification, including pieces of bodies since I'm sure we'll find tons of those, and they can be buried. Minister. Go ahead." He instructed the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who immediately sent the encrypted message to the Layartebian ambassador to the Realm of Cotland, in Oslo.

"Sir. It may interest you to know that the Cottish have dispatched a destroyer from Mobile. Sorry sir a pair of them. They have another Poseidon in the air as well."

"It is imperative that we recover any and all bodies before they do. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir." The massive salvage operation was immediately underway as the few naval vessels in the area used their high-speed RHIB rafts to pick up bodies and parts and ferry them back to the ship. MQ-8 drones were launched to aide in the recovery. Despite the explosion, few of the bodies or parts had travelled far from the ship. Most of them were contained within a small area, making things that much easier but, even still, as the ship pieces sunk, more floated to the surface as they became dislodged from the vessel. Sharks were also beginning to come into the area. They hunted at sun up and sun down and though the sun had been up for some time, the smell of blood in the water was enough to bring them from hundreds of miles away, for a feast and to circle until later that day, when the sun went back down. It was because of this that the initial excusions to the find the bodies came back successful but shaken. They went out with assault rifles and harpoon guns after that to kill the sharks with, should they be attacked.

At the same time, across the Atlantic Ocean, in Oslo, the Layartebian ambassador received the request to report to the Prime Ministers office and, disliking the tone, felt a delay was in order. It was proper though as the cable he needed had not come in yet and he needed word from Layarteb City before proceeding. He simply had the secretary inform the Prime Minister's office that he was in a high-level meeting and could not be disturbed until it was over but that the message had been delivered to him.

In the Caribbean Sea, any evidence linking the true events was snatched up and suppressed immediately. The Loke made top-speed back to port and in Grenada, any sounding from the SOSUS network and plot information, including communiques, were immediately copied to secure files and erased from the active logs. The events "never happened." The crew, upon arrival, would be detained and the captain rigorously questioned, though more like brutally interrogated. Logs from the vessel were copied and stricken just the same as well as tapes and recovered items from the sonar and weapons room. The missing torpedoes were quickly replaced and the events "never happened." It was odd though. The SOSUS network recorded the firing of the torpedoes by the Loke, that was obvious. However, it never recorded the two torpedoes shot at the vessel although every one in the sonar room would swear that they had been fired upon and, to prove it, their own logs confirmed two torpedoes being fired 3,000 yards behind the ocean liner and coming to within 1,100 yards of their submarine before they disappeared. Things didn't add up but not even they could create those happenings. Something malfunctioned somewhere and the Loke would sit in port for a month while technicians went over the sonar system with a fine-toothed comb, trying to find out why it reported two incoming torpedoes but yet every hydrophonic sensor in the region reported only two and not four torpedoes. Though it never happened, nothing made sense.

It wasn't enough that in just four hours Portugal came under rebel control and these rebels shot down a civilian airliner, killing 108 Layartebians. Now they added a sunken cruise liner to the mix and, with things going sour in the Amazon, it seemed almost hopeless. Just nine hours old, May 28 had already claimed 2,258 lives for the Empire, 400 of those being Cottish. Nothing was certain anymore and as the day continued, things would become even less certain.

The Emperor stewed in his office as the media stations got word of the sinking. News helicopters flocked to the Gulf of Mexico and every station was carrying the "breaking" story. "You know," the Emperor commented. "Not getting a hold on the media is one of my biggest regrets. This is what they want. This is what they need and these assholes just give it to them. They don't want to send a message to me or the government. This is what they want. They want to show the world. They want bodies on television. See. There. That's someone's leg being pulled out of the water. That's what they want. They want everyone to see that and they want everyone to be afraid that will happen to them. They want to come in and change. Rather ruin. Our way of life. And the media just gives it to them."

"Well sir I think the right choice was made. The media are driven by some sort of underlying force of misinformation sir. They preach their own agendas and warp the news to what they see fit. Sir. The public may watch the media but when you speak to them they listen to you first and foremost."

"Are you suggesting I go on air?"

"Concerning this event sir? I would believe so."

"Very well. What time is it? Almost nine. We'll go on air at ten. That should be enough warning for the stations."

"Yes sir. I'll have it handled." He departed the room and the Cabinet returned after a few minutes from a short break.

"Alright. Where were we?" The meeting continued. Meanwhile, over 1,600 miles away, in the Yucatán, Mr. Carpenter watched the news. He was pleased to see the events going so well and though he was alone in his apartment, he still talked to himself outloud.

"Yessss. Thessee devicesss worked well." He said with a chuckle as he flipped off the television and stood up to leave. He had a plane to catch and a country to ruin and time would wait for him. He was, essentially, that powerful.

The whole world watched as the Empire struggled to maintain internal order. Ratings sank lower and faith in the ability of the government to protect its people was beginning to diminish. Since October 2005, almost 700,000 people died as a direct or indirect result of Majestic and that was a lot of people. The Emperor, who billed his power on security and safety for the people began to appear human. Twenty-seven years of rule was a long time and the people were thankful that things had changed from the way it was during the Republic but now things were becomming more and more chaotic and 1976 appeared to be coming back again. Who would have thought that thirty years later, history would repeat itself. Had the Layartebians not learned from history? Were they doomed to repeat it? Perhaps they were. Just as Mr. Carpenter and Majestic had been an integral part of the revolution to overthrow the Republic, here they were again, over thirty years later, plotting the demise of the Empire. They, in essence, as a group, created the Empire and now it was time to destroy it, once and for all. The seeds of revolution grew within the people. It grew was thousands died at a clip and as terrorism became as real to the Empire as lower taxes had. Soon the people would speak.

May 28, 2007 - 09:20 [EST]
Governor's Island

"Sir. Do you have a moment? There is something important I would like to discuss with you." The Vice-Minister of the Interior said as the Cabinet took a break for consultation. "It is highly urgent." The look in his eyes reaffirmed his statements.

"Yes. I do. Please. Step this way. We'll use the private room over here." There was no visible door but the Emperor walked up to a painting near his desk and put his hand on a corner of it. The door opened up inwards and both of them stepped in as the Cabinet continued their private conversations. "What may I help you with?"

"Sir. I am hereby informing you of my resignation. Effective immediately."

"Alright. Alright. Why?" The Emperor had a seat in one of the comfortable, leather chairs on the one side of the small, private meeting room. Without windows, the room was lit by a thin blue light from a ceiling light. It was definitely a calming room. "Is it because of this incident?"

"It is sir."

"Have a seat you look tense."

"Thank you sir. I feel that we went about this situation completely wrong."

"When you say 'we' you mean me?"

"I'm sorry sir I do."

"Very well. Your opinion is your own but I would need a further explanation."

"Very well sir. I respect you and this government but I feel that our lying to the Cottish about this situation, the fact that we did not mount a rescue attempt sooner, despite the lack of communication with the vessel, and the fact that now we have a major cover-up here is a dangerous problem."

"It is. It is. What do you propose we do about it?"

"Sir. I am not in that position. I feel that my tenure as the Vice-Minister of the Interior is at an end sir. I would appreciate it if you accepted my resignation."

"Very well. I will. However, you are fully aware of the confidentiality of this matter?"

"I am sir."

"Very well. I will have you escorted out of here immediately. I wish that you would stay on but your decision is your own." They stood up, "Good luck with life."

"Thank you sir." The Vice-Minister departed the room to inform his superior and while he did, the Emperor remained behind. He picked up his cell phone and dialed a number to someone in the castle.

"Yes. I need an escort. The Vice-Minister of the Interior has just resigned. Please see him out. The usual surveillance." He hung up the phone and soon, BG. Delaney met the Vice-Minister in the waiting room and escorted him out of the castle. Few within the Cabinet, except for the ministers of Defense, the Interior, Intelligence, and Justice really knew what role he played although they were still kept in the dark. For everyone else, he was simply a "confidant" of the Emperor and a member of the security team. That was about it. Few within the castle knew anything about him or what his role even was except that he was there and he was higher than they were. The Vice-Minister swallowed his fear as he saw BG. Delaney enter, fearing something else and they walked in total silence, BG. Delaney behind him, throughout the castle. When he left, he almost expected to get shot in the back of the head but when it didn't come, he felt some sigh of relief. What he didn't know was that a few agents from the Central Justice Agency were working on bugging his residence while nobody was home. Surveillance against him was a necessity. As the Emperor returned to the room, he put away his phone, "Shall we continue?"

May 28, 2007 - 16:00 [GMT]
Office of the Prime Minister, Oslo, Norway

Prime Minister Rothsky had been waiting for over an hour for the Layartebian ambassador to get his ass from the Layartebian embassy - it took about five minutes to drive - over to the Government Block in the eastern parts of downtown Oslo, where the Prime Minister's office lay. By now, the elderly Prime Minister was boiling with anger, something his assistants and secretary had experienced first-hand over the course of the last hour. As a result, they were afraid to interrupt him as he seemed liable to kill someone right now. The reason for the Prime Minister's anger was simple. He had been blatantly lied to by a country - more specifically a man - who he had considered to be a close and trusted friend, and been made a fool of in the cabinet in front of the King. It was completely unacceptable!

Finally, the secretary buzzed that the Layartebian ambassador had arrived and was on his way up.

The ambassador had barely gotten into the large office before the Prime Minister started barking.

"It's about time!" He said, leaving little room for discussion. "I called your office and demanded your presence here over an hour ago. I hope you have a good excuse for this blatant insult towards the Realm!"

"Mr. Prime Minister. I'm afraid that I am not a servent. My reasoning for being here when I am here is a matter of national security to the Empire. We do have problems of our own, I hope you know." He said with a sharp tone, disliking the instant disrespect he was being given.

"And the reasoning for me calling you here isn't sir?" Rothsky asked rethorically before being silent for a moment, motioning for the ambassador to take a seat in front of his desk. He took a deep breath, trying to calm down enough to maintain a clear line of thought for this meeting. "On the behalf of the Realm of Cotland, I demand an explanation for the massive loss of Cottish lives in the Caribbean, and an explanation for why your Emperor saw fit to lie us straight in the face."

"The Emperor and I spoke earlier and he informed me that the situation in the Caribbean Sea was a situation of great importance. As I am directed to inform you, this must remain a national secret for the time being as it is of the utmost urgency to national security for both of our respective nations.

"The terrorists who took over the Sky Wonder were unlike those we faced previously. We believe them to be linked to the wave of terrorism that has swept across our Empire in the recent past. Negotiations with them commenced immediately and we were informed by them that they would, in essence, sink the vessel if they saw news helicopters or warships. What few warships we had there we were able to convince them were of no harm. They believed us slightly on that measure but your overflight made it hell for us to try to resolve. We worked hard to calm them down. Normally terrorists want media attention, which was why this instance was so strange. They demanded that no media network produce a boat or helicopter and we abliged. It was necessary.

"In addition, we were making progress with negotiations. We planned to have these terrorists release all women and children when the vessel exploded. Why they detonated their explosives on board is beyond us. We just do not have an answer for that yet since we were making progress with them at the time of the explosion. We fear there are no survivors.

"The reasoning behind keeping the Cottish Realm in the dark was two-fold. First and foremost, we couldn't have an attempted rescue by your special forces. The vessel was in international waters so you were within your rights to do so and we expected you to do just that. If that went sour we'd have a lot of lives to account for, which was why we went a different route, a peaceful, diplomatic route with these terrorists. Secondly, your society being democratic, your media would have gotten word of the situation, thereby causing problems for our negotiators. The reasoning was made by our Cabinet and the Emperor affirmed this decision. We did what we thought was in the best interests of the 2,100 people aboard."

The Prime Minister remained silent while the Ambassador explained himself, and for some time after that. The tension in the room could be cut with a knife, it was that thick. The only sound in the room was the silent humming from the Prime Minister's computer and the elderly man's deep breathing. Finally, Rothsky spoke in a sharp tone.

"Are you insinuating that we cannot keep a secret? For your information, the incident was handled completely by the Military and intelligence service, who make their living by keeping secrets. The officials in question in the Foreign Ministry are also sworn to secrecy and keep their mouths shut, unless of course they want to spend a few decades in a labor camp. The medias can also be quieted if necessary, although we don't really want to do that for obvious reasons. Quite frankly sir, I am shocked and disappointed by your government's lack of confidence in the Realm. Have we revealed our involvement in the Yucatan or Venezuela campaigns?"

Rothsky took a deep breath before continuing, speaking in a calmer, more reasonable voice now. He was still angry, but a little calmer tone of voice would probably get the message better through.

"Had you shared this information with us from the beginning, this situation could have been handled differently on both sides and perhaps those twenty-one hundred souls could have been saved. Had you shared the information you have shared with us now forty-eight hours ago, we could have decided to refrain from wanting to take a more direct role in the termination of the terrorists. I am very disappointed with the Empire in its handling of this incident.

"Ambassador, I have the relatives of four hundred Cottish nationals wanting, nay demanding to know what the status of their relatives are. It was they who directed our attention to the Sky Wonder in the first place. They know that something is amiss, and they do have a right to know. Do you expect me to ignore them or lie to them?"

"Regardless of oaths or what not we could not risk the possibility of a leak. This matter was far too crucial. We were making progress on alleviating the situation, we admit. The fact that they blew up the Sky Wonder comes as a shock and a surprise. We cannot explain it Mr. Prime Minister. We were, in this instance, hampered by the fact that we knew not the capabilities of these terrorists. Originally there was fear they had a biological weapon aboard but we largely believe that was simply a 'claim' although, throughout the course of the negotiations, we kept said thought in the back of our heads. The terrorists that did this, it seems, had no intention to negotiate. Despite their negotiations from the beginning. We saw them more as opportunist rather than nationalist although that still seems to be the case. Little is known about their origin or their code at this point and we may never know. What we do know is that we were handling this in a textbook way. An incursion by special forces was being planned and it was going to receive the green light if they did not cooperate.

"We have families we have to explain to as well. This isn't a one-sided situation. In so far as the Yucatán and Venezuela are concerned, I know not what you are talking about. If there was Cottish involvement in said areas, I would hope you would keep that a secret. I am not privy to that information Mr. Prime Minister. That is not part of my job, that is better handled by the Cabinet ministers.

"I am not here to make apologies for the Empire. We were doing things properly with the negotiations. We were not acting in a malicious manner, we were acting in the best ways we believed we had at the time, which we still believe is the case now."

Rothsky sighed.

"Let me ask you a question. What would be the effects of this terrorist attack and its massive loss of life be in the Empire?"

"Well you just had a cruise liner get blown up by a terrorist group? It isn't hard to see the effects. Cruise and tourism industry takes a hit. A lot of people lost loved ones in this tragedy. The effects will be astronomical. The government will have to face with the fact that it could have prevented this, sure it could have, a lot can be prevented. Life will go on though. It always does but this is a dark day in the history books of the Empire."

"Well I hope your government is ready for the effects, because the news of this incident is going to break. It will not come from this office or from any Cottish government office. We shall play along with your little game.

"However, we will inform the relatives of those lost and inform them of the situation. We won't give any details, and we'll urge them to keep it silent in the interest of national security, but we won't prevent them if they want to talk with anyone about it. Freedom of speech is one of our dearest rights sir, defended by the Constitution, and I shall not be known as the Prime Minister who violated the Constitution. That is the official position of His Majesty's Government, and that is what will happened, the Layartebian government's feelings and response be damned sir."

"There is Freedom of Speech within the Empire as well. In fact," he checked his watch. "You may wish to turn on any Layartebian News Channel. The Emperor is going live any minute now. Nobody has to remain silent in the interest of national security. The world knows about the cruise liner. Secrecy is no longer an issue. It was when the terrorists had their fingers on the button. Now it is different. The Layartebian people are scared and I am sure so are Cottish. The Emperor will be trying to placate that any minute."

"And what exactly will the Emperor say in his speech?" Rothsky asked while opening a drawer in his desk and taking out something the Ambassador couldn't see from where he sat. Not until the Prime Minister raised his hand and aimed the remote control towards the 38" LCD TV hanging on the wall on the Ambassador's right-hand side. The television flickered on and Rothsky quickly swapped to LNN (Layartebian News Network) where Shepard Smith announced something that the two men didn't quite catch because the Prime Minister muted the sound. With the television on, Rothsky looked at the Ambassador with a critical gaze, waiting to hear his reply.

"That Mr. Prime Minister is something we will find out. I personally do not know."

"Very well," Rothsky said. "Do you know if any of the terrorists survived the explosion?"

"As of right now we do not believe anyone survived, terrorist or civilian alike. It is highly regrettable."

"Indeed it is." Rothsky said. He had calmed down quite a bit over the course of the meeting, having gotten many of his questions answered and learned more. He was still rather upset with the Layartebian course of action in this incident, but for now it was best to conceal it. After all, killing an ambassador would look bad in the media. "We currently have two destroyers en route for the Sky Wonder's last position. Their orders are to assist in the recovery of survivors and dead in any way they can. The Realm would look favorably upon them being allowed to participate in the recovery effort. We also expect the Empire to allowed Cottish forensic experts to participate in the identification effort so that we can bring home our dead citizens as quickly as possible, and for you to personally relay the following message to the Emperor himself.

"I am deeply disappointed with the way the Realm has been treated in this situation and the level of distrust shown towards us by the Empire. I fully expect to be kept continuously informed of the development in the investigation of this henious terrorist attack upon both the Empire and the Realm. With that said, the Realm deeply regret the loss of life in the Sky Wonder incident, and offer our condolences to the Empire and its people."

"I am directed to inform you that, upon the beginning of an investigation, the Cottish will be invited along on an advisory role and the findings shall be shared with your government. We do regard this as an internal matter, despite the presence of Cottish citizens aboard the vessel. Identification will be difficult and Cottish assistance is requested."

"And Cottish assistance you shall have. The details will be forwarded to your embassy by the appropriate ministry. Justice I believe will be in change on Cottish side without saying anything too certain." Rothsky said before glancing to the muted television on the wall. It seemed that the speech was about to start.

"Will you watch the speech with me Mr. Ambassador? I may have additional questions afterward."

"Certainly Mr. Prime Minister."

OOC: Conversation roleplayed with Layarteb on AIM

May 28, 2007 - 10:25 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

"Ladies and gentlemen of the Empire. Good morning. I come to you this morning with news that I wish I didn't have to bring. Earlier this morning, at roughly 08:15 hours, terrorists who had hijacked the Sky Wonder in the Gulf of Mexico, detonated a large explosive on board the ship. Regrettably, their explosive was powerful enough to sink the Sky Wonder, a cruise liner carrying 2,150 civilians, 400 of them Cottish citizens. This international tragedy is one that I will take full responsibility for and I shall explain why.

"Terrorists took capture of the Sky Wonder just three days ago, on May 25. We learned of this right away as they contacted us immediately. The Empire does not negotiate with terrorists and we shall not in the future. However, in this instance, we felt these were terrorists of opportunity, different than those who have ravaged the Empire's peace with a frail attempt at insurrection. We did enter into diplomatic negotiations with these terrorists, which was when they informed us of the presence of a large explosive on board the vessel. I, at that point, with the best interests of the civilians in mind, stall a military action attempt.

"The goal was to have these terrorists release everyone peacefully and safely. Should something go wrong with a military rescue, they could detonate the explosive. That was not an outcome I hoped for. Negotiations proceeded along well and their demands were easily palpable. They demanded absolutely no media attention, an unusual trademark of a terrorist action and they demanded no warships. We had warships there to which we negotiated their presence.

"Up until the point of detonation, these terrorists gave absolutely NO indication that they were ready to detonate the bomb. Moments before they pushed the trigger, they agreed to release all women, children, and sickly hostages. We were on our way with helicopters to rescue these people and get them to safety when they detonated the bomb.

"Little is known why they did this. I cannot give you a reason and for that I apologize. We were making progress, more progress than we would have made with a military option and safer as well.

"We do not believe anyone has survived this disaster and we are currently beginning an investigation of the wreck. Because of its depth, this will be an arduous task and we do not expect cooperation from the seas.

"I offer my condolences to the victims of this tragedy. With other terrorist acts in the past there have been arrests. We have found those responsible for these acts of horror and brought them to justice. We will do the same here, that I guarantee you. Those who directed this attack will not be safe, regardless of where they hide in the world.

"Thank you."

Police Station on outskirts of Cleveland
28 May 2007
1200

While awaiting his trial, Simeone passed some time reflecting on how to best make the situation turn to his favor. He knew nothing of what Neubergen's investigation was churning out, and since his formal charges, he has been literally put in the dark. He has had no lawyer, principally because he asked for none at all. It was a strange tactic, but now it seemed to be backfiring against him. Surprisingly, he remained at the police station's cell, pending approval to relocate him to a more secure station. However, Neubergen insisted that Simeone was not a threat to anyone at the moment, and that he would be questioned further. Two days later, he had yet to be even bothered for an answer to these crimes.

Suddenly, at around noon, the station rocked from its foundations, and the quiet town became a war zone. The attack came from no where, literally. Men dressed in white robes and white hooded masks [not KKK] laid assault to police station, armed with weapons that stunned even Simeone. Of course, the police was under powered, and the masked men held every advantage. The men came out with a surrender term: "GIVE US THE ITALIAN."

Lay, you can give the police response, since I'm not sure about the protocols of the defense of a minor police station. I'm thinking about something on lines of Assault on Precinct 13, if you know what I mean.

May 28, 2007 12:15 [EST]
Police Station on outskirts of Cleveland

The police station was just like any other non-urban police station. It was sizeable but it wasn't a barracks. The heaviest weaponry inside of its doors included .44 Magnum revolvers and 12 gauge shotguns. Wearing body armor was an advantage and the police had that although so did their attackers. They put up resistance immediately taking casualties of their own as the assault continued. They were immediately pinned down inside of their structure. A concrete construction gave them some sort of shield against the sniper rounds and assault rifle rounds that turned the windows into nothing but shattered and broken shards of glass. With lines of communication except the satellite dish on the top of the roof completely cut off, the police officers tried their best for a distress call. They weren't sure if it would be heard. Gunshots echoed across the city but virtually all of the 911 calls were routed to the isolated police station. As 911 operators stationed elsewhere in the area received the calls and the returned calls from the police station, they put them in elsewhere. Other police stations were in the general region and there was even a SWAT team in Cleveland. By 12:40 hours, if the police could hold out for that long, the SWAT team could be there. Though a helicopter was inbound to survey the scene, the police officers knew that they were alone. They would have to stand their ground with whatever weapons they had on them.

OOC: SL it is your "post," so to speak.

ooc: sry for the long wait for a response - last week was hectic, this week more so.

Police Station on outskirts of Cleveland
28 May 2007
1220

The white robed men, seeing that the local police station was unwilling to give up so easily, decided to get on more "extreme" methods to extract the prisoner. But who were they? Perhaps the distinctive cross that rested under their cloaks would tell who they were, but it was only part of the story. Why did they want Simeone? And at what costs would they extract him?

"Porti i razzi." (Bring the rockets out here.)

The rocket men were kept back a safe distance - only to allow the police inside know that they were about to be pummeled with high explosives. Of course, the concrete walls would hold them off, but the random shell could and would enter the building through the windows. This is yet another reason why windows are a bad idea in police stations, but the thoughts for design were beyond them at the moment - they had windows, and the enemy had rockets. What to do now? The people outside were growing weary of this waiting game of course.

One of the policemen guarding Simeone looked at him and asked politely, "What the $#@^ do they want with you?" Simeone shook his head, saying, "They probably want me dead." It was a simple conversation, and left it at that, as the robed men began to fire their rockets.

May 28, 2007 12:25 [EST]
Police Station on outskirts of Cleveland

The policeman shrugged his shoulders as he looked at Simeone and reloaded his .45ACP pistol. Someone yelled but he could barely hear anything over a sudden and loud roar that shook the whole building. He thought he heard them yell, "Rocket!" He couldn't be sure. The roar echoed loud enough to pop eardrums whole floors away. Walls exploded and dust filled the air, dust and smoke. Rockets had come through the windows of the upper floors and shook the building as if a helicopter crashed into its roof. Bullets continued to rip out of the building, through windows towards the gunmen outside. The building's concrete walls could withstand the rockets, that was standard but through the windows, the rockets came without effort. They had barricaded the doors and entry points shut. They used whatever they had inside and fired their arsenal towards the gunmen outside. Without any means of communication except two-way radios, which could easily be overhead, the men inside were left to their own devices. Help was on the way but it was still too far out to be of any good.

Then they heard another echo. They didn't know if it was more rockets or what but it only got louder and louder. Explosions still echoed throughout the building, where rockets had come into the building. The gunmen continued to trade gunfire with the policemen who still numbered in excess of thirty men although six had been killed by gunfire and most of the others were either wounded or barely escaped wounds. Still, they fought on, defending their lives as the echoing got louder.

Then someone recognized what it was. It was a helicopter. "Do they have a fucking helicopter too?" Someone shouted as the distinctive sound of a helicopter echoed throughout the building. There was one, flying at 500 feet in the air, a Bell Model 407 JetRanger. This was the same airframe that the Layartebian army selected for its RAH-70 Araphao. The helicopter overhead wasn't an army RAH-70 but it was SWAT helicopter, flown towards the police station. There were five men inside, counting the pilot, SWAT officers all of them. They were equipped mostly with M4 Carbines, which had been phased out of the ILM but one had an MP5 SMG. They could plainly see the exchange down below and as they called in their views of what they saw, the doors opened up and the men opened fire.

Police Station on outskirts of Cleveland
28 May 2007
1230

The robed men saw the helicopter and noticed its shots coming directly for them.

"Andiamo. Loro arrivano più presto. Sparite quell'elicottero." (Let's go. They are coming earlier than expected. And take down that helicopter.)

In that instant, the men began to scramble away from the scene, taking refuge in the alleys before the police could arrive. The men with their rockets began firing at the helicopter and the police structure. Only chance would tell if the helicopter would be eliminated, but in a few minutes, the scene would only tell tales of what they had done; not who they were or what they wanted from Sparetti. In the minds of those who defended him, there was an air what to do with him - the criminal and the victim.

The idea was apparent - move him to a more secure location.

OOC: SL what kind of rockets? Surface-to-air, guided missile like a Stinger or unguided like an RPG-7?

May 28, 2007 - 19:00 [EST]
Rural West Virginia

The assault on the police station was something that was a complete surprise to the city of Cleveland and law enforcement officials everywhere. It heightened the need for additional security when dealing with high profile criminals. How anyone ever found out about this particular one was beyond them and it was still under investigation. The prisoner had been shuttled aboard a SWAT helicopter and was going to be flown to a much more secure facility north of Cleveland and SWAT would be there to protect him. Because of the situation too, a helicopter would be standing by with snipers and FLIR. However there was a lot more brewing in the Empire, specifically in West Virginia where Majestic was meeting, again.

"Gentlemen. We should begin. There are things we must discuss, roles we must plan for, and disasters we must avoid. The Illuminati have done their job and done it well. People are scared to take cruise ships now. They are jittery about airliners. They fear nuclear powerplants. They are afraid that their government is beginning to lose its ability to protect them. We are doing our job. Gentlemen, we must be proud of that but not too proud. We have a lot of work to do still. As the sun sets behind us, we must plan for our next stage.

"We will break for several days. The situation in Portugal and the Azores will preoccupy the government for now. Perhaps we can use this time to regroup. We are not hampered or hurt. That is obvious. We need time to organize though. This morning's attack brought about a whole new problem for the government in dealing with the Cottish and hiding the truth. That is their job. To hide the truth. They do it well and one day we will blow the lid clean off their jar of 'dirty secrets' and 'enamored lies.' That time has not yet come. We need public disobedience. We need popular support. We're on the cusp of our thir dphase. The second phase is coming to an end and when it ends, terrorism will be a topic on everyone's lips. Active support and public disobedience will lead to revolution.

"When our fellow citizens march through the streets in defiance of this government's ban on public demonstrations we will see. When the army is ordered to fire into the crowd, they will disobey. Not at first. No. At first they will. Outrage will sweep the nation. Layartebian people will stand up for themselves, just as they did thirty years ago.

"The Empire was a great experiment in our history. It was also a doomed experiment. It has grown too powerful, too popular, and too successful. Too fast. Our own roles diminish each day as the Empire swallows cultures and territory. Our power diminishes each day another corruption trial succeeds in putting someone behind bars. Our own futures are not secure.

"Gentlemen. We are here for a reason and we have a reason to fight our own cause. As the Portugese bring war and terror to the Reich, as the Illuminati has scared the citizens of the Empire, as the government overreacts, our power grows stronger. Our allegiance with the Portugese has only turned out to our benefit. The Venezuelans did as well but their contribution, though significant, was too temporary. We underestimated the military and we shall not do it again. Our influence upon the generals within the Amazonian Republic is strong but not strong enough. The Amazonians succeeded today in their first victory against the Venezuelans. Only because of our help. They are convinced the Empire is coming. They are right but President Santoro remains in power. Our alley in Fraga was assassinated. Was he not General?"

"He was."

"Very well. Without him we have to rely on the generals. They must perform a coup d'état and they must overthrown President Santoro. Once they do that, they will prepare the Empire for war and usher the Empire in. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that they must complete for us. When they do and we are drawn in, we will lose. Our defeat will send shockwaves through the Empire. People will doubt our effectiveness, just as they did after Kaliningrad. This is what we must continue with, this is where we must focus."

June 9, 2007 - 01:00 [EST]
Layarteb City, New York

The events in the Amazonian Republic played out perfectly. BG. Delaney was accused of being the assassin of Fraga and all Amazonian cooperation with the Empire dried up in an instant. On June 4, the generals launched a successful coup and convinced Santoro that the Empire was up to no good and now, it was one hour into the war between the Empire and the Amazonian Republic. Cruise missiles and guided bombs slammed into targets throughout the country and Amazonian aircraft were being shot down by the dozen. The Empire was a behemoth of might and technology and would easily overwhelm the Amazonian military but, with Venezuelan rebels backing them it would degenerate into a ruthless guerilla war and the leaders were expecting that once troops were committed. It wouldn't be long before they were but something strange was happening in Layarteb.

The populace were pleased with the brutal defeat of the Venezuelan rebels for the third time now. However, they were not pleased with the extension of the war. It wasn't a question of disbelief as to the role of the Amazon Rainforest in hiding the rebels. They had been hearing that since the 1970s. The main problem they had was expansion. They had been told a year earlier than the Conquests were over, that the Empire was done expanding. They didn't believe it at first but it was true, seemingly. The military had been gradually reverting to peacetime numbers and it had assumed a size of between sixteen and seventeen million, the smallest it had been in the entire twenty-seven year history of the Empire. However, as war raged across the border in South America, they couldn't help but think that the Conquests were not over with yet and that the Empire had more expanding to do.

The people of Layarteb were sick of war, so to speak. War had been a near constant in Layartebian culture for the past forty years. It was Venezuela first. Then revolution. Then the Conquests. With the announcement in 2006 that those were over, people finally thought that some sort of peace was on the horizon. When terrorism reignited within the Empire, it was met with frustration more than anything else. It didn't spark fear, at first, just frustration that war continued. Now, with the terrorism campaign in full and the government's inability to stop it, combined with another war, obviously set on conquest, people were even more tired and more sick.

Still, minus the factor of terrorism, people remained safe. They remained prosperous. Their children weren't under threat. They weren't under threat. Any sort of popular discontent that Majestic wanted was slow brewing, not quick like the Red Army Faction got thirty-one years earlier in 1976, when their campaign called an end to Layartebian involvement in Venezuela, albeit it really went on just a hiatus. The war in the Amazon was billed as a permanent solution to the Venezuelan problem. There were now four times in the history of Layarteb where Venezuela was the site of struggle and conflict. The removal of Venezuelan rebels, even though they were sorely defeated, from the Amazon would, they hoped, guarantee that the Venezuelan situation would never again be as it was.

Deep underneath the Upper New York Bay, where Governor's Island rested, Layartebian war planners and the Empire watched bomb footage and listening to communications. It was called the Joint Command Center and it sat deep underneath the bay and had taken years to construct. It was hugemongous and could serve as a whole city underneath the bay. Most of its construction used reinforced concrete that was rated past 10,000 psi and the bunker complex used as much as 50 feet of it in certain areas. Even if Governor's Island sustained a direct hit with a thermonuclear weapon, the bunker complex wouldn't. Its average ceiling height was under 240 feet of rock and concrete and it extended for miles. In so far as the Empire was concerned, it was the most heavily fortified and secret bunker in the whole of the Empire. From it, the Emperor or the military could direct a full campaign and stay there for years without ever breathing the air on the surface. They predicted a quick end to the war but they weren't going to full get that prediction.

By June 18, the army was on the outskirts of Manaus and launching a full blown strike against the city. Casualties were mounting on both sides of the fight and the army suffered an astounding and embarassing defeat at Boa Vista on June 12 and encircled the city and its limits rather than seige it again so soon. Manaus was the big objective, which meant that as the army rushed to it, they left a lot of pockets untouched, where resistance remained, where resistance could launch attacks on the army's rear flank. It was a flawed tactic that the Empire had never untaken before but with Manaus on the minds of the sitting generals, everything else was nonessential. The Emperor disagreed from the getgo but he was assured that what pockets remained wouldn't be enough to do any damage. By June 18, he was displeased with the assurances and Layartebian forces were mopping up these pockets, taking heavy casualties as they did.

June 24, 2007 - 12:00 [EST]
Layarteb City, New York

The month of June was a busy month for the Empire and the government was heavily preoccupied. The split of Portugal and Spain from the Reich and the killing of Layartebian citizens meant bad news for the Empire. When the Reichskanzler asked the Emperor for support, the Imperial Layartebian Navy and Air Force sprung into action. A punishing missile strike by the navy decimated most of the Portuguese Air Force and many of the strategic and defense targets within the country. The Portuguese struck back and attacked the Layartebian fleet hours after the first strike was launched. Using advanced submarines, they fired waves of torpedoes at Layartebian vessels but few escaped, if any at all, after an equally punishing salvo of ASROC missiles and torpedoes were launched from both surface and submerged vessels of the fleet.

Aside from everything that was going on with the navy and air force, there was a secret mission being conducted deep inside of Portugal. The Ministry of Intelligence identified three associates who were deeply linked to Totalis and the SP terrorist group. Their names were Daniel Murphy, Vanessa Fernandes, and Martin Cabral. All three of them had been associates of Totalis' Portuguese office and they were linked to the SP through evidence collected from the campaign against the terrorist group. They were considered the best known links that the MOI had between Totalis, the SP, and the terrorist organization plaguing the Empire. That was why the Emperor send in Force Falcon Team One to find, capture, and return them to the Empire for questioning. With the permission of Reichskanzler Kübler, BG. Delaney and his men parachuted into northern Portugal on the morning of June 13. BG. Delaney and his team left Portugal in the early morning of June 20 and their jet landed back in Layartebian territory late on the evening of June 23. They had taken a fishing boat into the water and snuck to a rendezvous with a Layartebian submarine and, from there, transiting to the Azores, where they took a Gulfstream back to the mainland.

By noon on June 24, a preliminary report revealed a lot of information on them and a network that had largely eluded the Empire for so long. Majestic would not be pleased but BG. Delaney had always told them that his cover must remain in tact. To Majestic he was the most important member since he had direct and uninhibited access to the Emperor. When everything went down, he would be the one tasked with the Emperor's defense, meaning that without him, Majestic would fail in their plans.

"Good. Glad to hear. I'll get back to you," the Emperor said as he hung up the phone. He was on his way back to Governor's Island. He had been scheduled to make a speech concerning an increase in the education budget and it went over well. With the extra funding not necessarily needed to fund a forty-million man military, there was a lot of extra money and though most of it went into necessary programs, at least a quarter of it would be boosted into the educational system. It wasn't necessarily a dire need but it would be a good help. "Gentlemen. It seems our three captures have begun to talk." He said in the back seat of the armored limousine. There were two aides and the Minister of the Interior inside of the limo. "This is a good break." He smiled and sat back. The rest of the journey was quick as the police escort cleared traffic and kept the convoy moving through the city streets, all the way to the Governor's Island Clauseway. Armed guards stopped the convoy at the beginning of the clauseway and demanded identification and the proper codeword of the day. The Emperor gave it to them and they were on their way, moving across the span to the other side, where a second guard booth was, stopping them again.

When the Emperor finally settled into his office, the Minister of Intelligence was there, waiting for him. "Tell me Minister. What have you learned?" The Emperor asked with enthusiasm.

"Well. Vanessa is our most cooperative captive. Apparently she isn't a total or a direct involved party. She is a close confidant of Mr. Murphy and he told her a lot."

"Good. Good. So let's see what we have?"

"Initially we have a heavy link between Totalis and the SP. One that we had already but we have even more details."

"Alright."

"The SP had nothing to do with the actual bombing. Totalis had a mercenary wing within their payrolls and they were heavily paid to acquire the bomb that went off in Grenada. From there, they transported it across the Atlantic, from Africa, and to a receiving party. It got in, as we suspected, when we dropped the blockaide. Totalis' role stopped there. Our domestic terrorist group took over from there."

"Alright. What else do we have?"

"A name."

"A name? For what?"

"They're called 'Ghost Warriors' and they are not your average run-of-the-mill terrorist group."

"You're shitting me."

"Nope."

"Good! Good! Tell me more! More!" The Emperor was excited that, finally, information was coming about the terrorist organization fighting them. "Go on."

"Sir. They used SP camps to train a sort of elite mercenary group. On the level of our SOF soldiers. They live amongst us though."

"Impressive."

"Yes sir. Very. They're old too."

"Age or?"

"Based on what we are digging up, the Ghost Warriors could date back to the days of the Republic."

"Well that figures..."

"That's all we have right now."

"Keep on it! We're doing well and I want us to keep doing well."

"Yes sir."

July 2, 2007 - 10:00 [EST]
Rural Virginia

"Why are we out here?" Kenneth Calderon said as he walked alongside the most maniacal man in the Empire and the world. The sun was hot and it was humid in the rural Virginian countryside. It was quiet and the nearest person was over fifteen miles away. It wasn't noon yet but the sun beamed down on them. It was an area with a good amount of hills, rough terrain, and what not.

"Misssster Calderon. I want to introduccce you to ssssomeone." Mr. Carpenter began. "You ssssee. I have that asssssasssssin you were looking for."

"Where is he?"

"Will be meeting ussss here sssshortly." Just then a snap and a crack tore past Calderon's left ear, between him and Mr. Carpenter. He jumped out of the way while Mr. Carpenter dared not move.

"What the hell was that?"

"The introduction Misssster Calderon."

"What?" He turned around and looked behind him. There was a paper target behind him that was the size of a looseleaf paper and there was a red "X" drawn in the center of it that was no more than an inch in diameter. In the center of it there was a hold that was ten tenths of an inch in diameter. "What the..." Before he could react a second round came through the air, cracking as it tore past his ear. It passed just inches from his body and hit the paper behind him, missing the hole already made by just millimeters. "Good lord. Enough. Enough. Don't need any more."

"Very good." He waved his hand in the air and a third round, intended for the paper, never left the barrel. "Are you impresssed Missster Calderon?"

"I am. So where is this fellow. I want to meet him."

"Ssssheee will be with us ssshortly."

"She? You do realize that the Illuminati is a male organization."

"Don't be quick to judge Misssster Calderon. Sssshe is very capable."

"I can tell."

"Good. There sssshe isss." In the distance, a woman stood up with a rifle in her hands. It was large and heavy and as she stood up, she folded the bipod up and took a few steps down towards them. She was far in the distance, over a kilometer away and she walked towards them down the same path that they were on, which was nothing more than dirt and rocks. On her right leg was a pistol holster and she wasn't dressed in any sort of camouflage. Because she was so far away though, she was hard to spot.

http://www.forsakenoutlaw.com/Graphics/Nation-States/People/mmcguire-01.jpg

"Nice shooting." Calderon said as she got closer. The rifle was a semi-automatic, M44A1 Sniper Rifle with a suppressor, powerful 12x scope, and a Harris bipod on the front of it.

"Thanks. Maybe if you didn't flinch so much I could have gotten a third shot off but you move around too much." She said with an Irish accent. "You can call me Mary McGuire."

"Misss McGuire. Thisss isss Missster Calderon."

"Pleasure to meet ya." She said as she held out her hand. She was devestatingly beautiful but also a deadly woman.

"So what's your skills?"

"You just saw them. You want a mercenary you've got one. You want a lap dancer then look elsewhere."

"What's your price?"

"That's already been discussed with Mr. Carpenter. I'm under your command. His payroll."

"Good. Well Ms. McGuire. Welcome to the good side."

"Mr. Calderon let's get one thing straight. There are no good sides and no bad sides. Only cash."

"Understood."

July 10, 2007 - 19:10 [EST]
Raccoon City, West Virginia

Rush hour swamped Raccoon City into a dead stop. Roads were clogged with cars, busses, taxis, and pedestrians. The city was home to several million people and it was the global headquarters of the Umbrella Corporation, which employed over a hundred thousand people worldwide with almost four thousand people just in the headquarters alone. In the days of the Republic, the mighty corporation built up Raccoon City and virtually owned the city. In those days, the corporation was above the law but all that changed in 1980, when the Empire was formed, asserting dominance throughout the former territories of the Republic. The corporation did its best to win back its stature but they lost the battle, along with all of the rest of them and eventually the Layartebian League of Commerce was formed, a corporate entity that contained every major corporation based in the Empire and that operated in the Empire with significance. They had ulterior motives.

http://www.forsakenoutlaw.com/Graphics/Nation-States/Role-Playing/Ride%20the%20Lightning/umbrellacorphq.jpg

In the distance, the Umbrella Corporation Headquarters jutted into the clouds above. It was a large skyscrapper, the largest in the city at 925 feet to the roof and 1,047 feet to the top of its twin antennae. There were, in total, 77 floors and all of them, at one time, belonged to the Umbrella Corporation. However, as technology advanced, the mamoth corporation realized less and less of a need for some of them and now they occupied, out of the 77 floors, 42. Against its glass exterior, it was a mirror, a large mirror, showing the setting sun all the way on the western horizon. The day had been sweltering in the city and though the temperature never exceeded 90°F and the humidity was mild throughout the day, getting higher as the sun was setting. The day had been hazy for the most part and partly cloudly for the rest. They expected a light rain late in the evening but, until then, it would gradually get cooler and the humidity would continue to climb towards a predicted 87% by midnight.

Sunset was in another forty minutes and it glistened off the exterior of the Umbrella building, presenting more of a hazard than of a beautiful sight. This was precisely why Mary McGuire chose this hour to make her mark on the city. She drove in and rented a room in a sleezy looking motel in the not-so-good part of town and brought in only a duffle bag. "I'll just need to stay for the night. I'm heading north." She told the manager as she handed over the §50 bill for the room, the price for one night. Outside, the neon vacancy sign buzzed and hummed, flickering between "NO VACANCY" and "VACANCY." There were plenty of open rooms, the place was a total dump. Still, it provided her with exactly what she needed.

"What a sty..." She commented as she closed the door behind her. The room was in poor shape and the bed was something out of a nightmare. It was a single twin bed and it was more of a death trap than anything else. She walked over to the window and looked out of it. It was covered in dirt and grime, perfect for what she needed. The room offered, surprisingly, an amazing view of the Raccoon City skyline but, what was more important, was the view it offered of an unobstructed view of city hall, just 948 meters away, to the east. The glare from the Umbrella Corporation Headquarters would blind anyone looking out of the windows to the west, which meant they would never be able to see the motel. She popped open the windowsill and went to her duffle bag where she removed the M44A1 Sniper Rifle she used to impress Mr. Calderon. It still had the same equipment and as she screwed on the suppressor, she looked at her watch. The time was coming and she unfolded the bipod next, propped it on the radiator so that the barrel was just above the windowsill. Kneeling on the ground, she propped the riflebutt against her shoulder so that the recoil suppressor attached to it was snug against her.

She looked into the scope and adjusted the zoom. It was a different scope than before and offered an even more powerful zoom level, allowing her to see into windows of the city hall as if she were standing in front of them. Her scope was ranged already and everything was set except the windage. She had the weather report in front of her as she set the sights for a four mile per hour easterly wind. She was using a higher pressure round, which meant that its range would be increased by at least ten percent. The rifle's effective range had always been listed as 910 meters but she had made it go 1,005 meters once with deadly accuracy. Now she could hit out to 1,100 meters with the rounds. It would confuse the investigators who would have to send the rounds in for sampling to determine what range they came from and what angle. It would appear as if they were fired from, perhaps 700 meters away. They wouldn't suspect the sleezy motel simply because, although she had an unobstructed view of city hall, it was really between two buildings. It would take them time to get the ballistics report back and, by then, she would be long gone.

Rested and ready to shoot, she played the waiting game. She had two targets and both of them were due for a meeting at 19:45 hours in the mayor's office, he being one of the two targets. The other was a field director for the CJA. Both of them were meeting to discuss the threat the Ghost Warriors played to Raccoon City. Since the Portuguese captures, the government had learned a lot about the Ghost Warriors but they still had not scratched the surface and they knew nothing of the Illuminati. All they knew was the link between Totalis, the bombing, and the SP. They were getting more and more details but they were leading them further away from the Illuminati, which was done on purpose.

She couldn't let that meeting happen and that was why she had a full magazine of ten rounds in the rifle. She would only need two, especially since she was an excellent marskman. Finally, just a few minutes before the scheduled time, she saw the door open. In stepped the two men but also a third person, a woman. The woman wasn't on her target list but she knew that, whoever she was, she was important to the meeting or else she wouldn't have been there. She was, obviously, no secretary. She kenw something and she had to be taken out along with the other two. This would require some rapid fire. She waited now until everyone was seated, the mayor with his back to the window and the other two facing him. Now's the time... She thought to herself. The crosshairs were right over the first target, the CJA field director and she squeezed the trigger, quickly resetting for the second shot. She panned the rifle scope slightly to the right and squeezed the trigger again. Both rounds were in the air at the same time but the first one hit before the second got halfway there. As she was setting herself up for the third and final shot, the second round hit. The mayor, concerned, was in the process of standing up when the third shot struck him. It was a quick succession of events. The first round pierced through the neck of the CJA field director, pushing him onto the ground, bleeding from his jugular. The second round hit the women in the chest, right through her heart, killing her instantly as she slumped over in the chair. The round that killed the mayor was actually aimed at the back of his head but, because he was standing up, it fell slightly lower than the meaty part of his skull. It penetrated through the base of his skull and immediately blasted his brain stem to bits. All three of them died without so much as a peep and the only sounds were the three sounds of the glass cracking as the bullets pierced through it.

Satisfied, she quickly packed up her belongings and collected the three shell casings from the floor. They were still warm but through her gloves she felt none of the heat. She packed up and shut the window. She would leave in the middle of the night, as police scowered the crime scene to recover evidence. There would be little that they would find except the three rounds, none of them containing any fingerprints. In addition, they would give the tell-tale signature of the barrel except for one thing. They were already marked so now there were two sets of markings. It would take the forensics team even that much more work to get to the bottom of everything.

July 18, 2007 - 04:00 [EST]
Bronx, Layarteb City

The dingy apartment in the South Bronx was overcrowded and musty. There was a single air conditioner in the living room window but none in the bedroom and the humidity just seeped in everywhere. It had been brutally humid throughout the day and it only got worse when the sun went down in the early evening. It was a small apartment by most standards and had just one bedroom, a living room, a kitchen big enough for a few cabinets, a small stove, a refrigerator, and a small table, and a smaller bathroom that was too small for a tub. The apartment smelled of cigarette smoke and whiskey as a small group of men huddled around a coffee table in the living room. They spoke Farsi to each other and smoked away at their unfiltered cigarettes as they watched a soccer game broadcast from the Eurasian homeland. They had all been and were Eurasian nationals, with dual citizenship, a benefit of the October Alliance. The Empire only gave out dual citizenships to citizens of October Alliance countries. The only way for a foreign national not from an October Alliance country to become a Layartebian citizen was to renounce their original citizenship. Many did; many did not.

The four men had just finished assembling a small radio that they bought for under §30.00 at an electronics store just three blocks away. They had gutted it after that, looking more for the case than anything else, which could shield the explosive device that they had concocted. Inside of the plastic case was an elaborate radio detonator that worked by proximity, a pound of explosives, which they made themselves using household products, and four, small, round, glass spheres, inside of which sat a viscous, clear, gel-like liquid. They had taken special care with those glass spheres and put them in the radio case slowly, carefully, and silently. Sweat dripped from their brows as they did this, putting the spheres into a special egg-crate carton that they glued into the case. Inside, they put the glass orbs and filled the area around and on top of the orbs with an expansion foam, commonly used to seal joints and what not around the house. Their bomb cost them under §200.00 and they had it all done.

The most ingenious device was the detonator. They would place a radio transmitter at the target location, which sent out a signal. That signal was matched by the one inside of the bomb. When the frequencies matched and the signal was strong enough, the bomb would explode. Based on what they knew about similiar devices and what they had been taught, they would need to put the proximity device within twenty-eight feet of the bomb device to achieve an explosion. However, their run wasn't a suicide mission. They planned to place the device in an area and have the bomb delivered to it. Their target had already been chosen but now it was a matter of time. They were set to attack late on the 18th, during the evening rush hour. As soon as the game ended, which would be around 05:00 hours, they would go to sleep and wake up around 15:00 to 16:00. From there, they would take their bomb, go down to the target area, place the proximity device and the bomb at their respective locations, and be done with the matter. They would high tail it out of there as quickly as they could and return to their apartment to watch the fireworks around 18:00 to 18:30, depending.

For now, drunk and smoking a storm, the four men kept their voices low as they shouted in joy and frustration at the low-scoring game. They were all members of the defunct Sepah-e Pasdaran terrorist organization that the Eurasians had destroyed, with secretive Layartebian help. Few cells remained of the SP and one of them was inside of Layarteb, this one, the only one. They were highly trained, very capable, and they had all of the right documentation. Professionally speaking, they were educated, white-collar workers. Their English was excellent and they were not of the usual terrorist profile. None of them wore bears, none of them preached the Koran vehemently, and none of them attended Mosque. They were well known by their neighbors and though they often paid cash for everything, they were never suspected of being terrorists and rightfully so, that was why the SP was so successful. Terrorists often fit a specific profile. They were very introverted, they rarely associated outside of their small cliques, they were always seen at Mosques, they wore long beards, et cetera. All of these were give aways. Even if a person wasn't a terrorist, signs of this behavior, especially in a country as schooling terrorism as the Empire was, this would attract attention. It did in the 1980s when IJAM launched a campaign against the Empire but were destroyed because they could not adapt to Layartebian culture. The SP could, which was why they were so successful. They had never, directly, attacked the Layartebian Empire though. They had trained various terrorists that belonged to the RLA and the Illuminati but they had never gone into war mode against the Empire. They were smart that way but when the Eurasians wiped them out, they were left with little.

Nobody knew except the higher-ups in the Eurasian military and government about the Layartebian campaign against the SP. It was done on purpose, to avoid retaliation from cells that might have survived. Approximately eighteen cells did survive. Most of them were located in the Caucasus region, where the SP operated. One had gone to the Empire and two others had gone completely off the grid. Their whereabouts were unknown.

July 18, 2007 - 04:50 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

"Go ahead. No I wasn't woken up. And you say you have actionable intelligence about this threat? No I don't want to hold it off. Get the goddamn guys now!" The Emperor said as he hung up his phone and stood up to turn on the television. He had just received a call from the Minister of Justice, who had been woken up himself. An elite unit of the Imperial Layartebian Military had been working on conjunction with the Central Justice Agency about a very real and very possible terrorist threat to Layarteb City. The elite unit was a four-man team of the 2nd Black Operations Group, "Force Thunder," a counter-terrorism force that operated at the regimental level.

Force Thunder had been founded in the late 1970s as an elite unit within the Revolutionary Corps. They were tasked mainly with ensuring that the Red Army Faction did not wage war against the Empire once the President was deposed. The Red Army Faction did undergo a small resurgence in 1979 but were brutally returned back to their dead state in 1980. Force Thunder was not disbanded at all and fears of further terrorism sparked their rise to power. They successfully fought the Islamic Jihad of Allah and Mohammad, which waged war on Layartebian soil in the mid-1980s. They fought against various domestic terrorist groups throughout the years, including the Republican Liberation Army. They were, unsuccessfully, battling the Ghost Warriors too but that was more because of the extremely elite nature of the group. Most terrorist organizations they battled were equivocal to a rag-tag force but the Ghost Warriors were like a paramilitary, mercenary, special operations force all in one. Tactics had to be changed and they were changing them but the Ghost Warriors seemingly adapted way too fast for them.

Force Thunder, using intercepted communications handed to them by various groups within the Ministry of Intelligence had formed a cohesive unit with the Central Justice Agency in all of the major cities when the RLA threat broke out. They had done well chasing down and thwarting some of the RLA operations but they were stonewalled by the Ghost Warriors. The unit had been trailing several leads obtained through the Portuguese captives. They had raided two homes in Falcon City and one in Washington City. All of them were safe houses for the Ghost Warriors but none yielded evidence that could give them bigger leads. They were, in effect, back to square one.

Then the biggest lead came. During interrogation, one of the Portuguese captives talked about a cell of SP terrorists that were in Layarteb City, operating in the Bronx. With that much more narrow field of view, the combined arms of Force Thunder, the CJA, and the MOI began to examine possible suspects and possible leads. When it was revealed that they planned to attack a large, public target at the end of July, the various groups worked double time to find out what and who it was. They cross-referenced names with those found on visas and citizenship papers to those captured at the SP camps. Throughout the entirety of the first week of July, investigators assigned to the case went through over a million documents. On July 16, they found a single name. The name was Ahmed Khan, an Iranian by birth but he had visited an SP camp eight months prior to the invasion by the Eurasians. He entered the Empire just nine days after the SP was dismantled and he lived in the South Bronx with three friends. Originally, they were part of an exchange program but they stayed on, obtaining dual citizenship. Several undercover officers of Force Thunder set out to trail them and watched them go to the supermarket, to the electronics store, and meet a shifty character in a subway at three in the morning. They attempted to get that character but they couldn't, he eluded them. Still, they stuck with the four Iranians.

Now it was the middle of the morning on July 18 and the surveillance team identified the radio case and, sitting next to it, the parts from its interior. It wasn't a lot but laser microphones recorded a chatter of bomb-making talk as they assembled it in the wee hours of the morning between July 16 and July 18. It was completed now and though they didn't know the full extent of the bomb, the four men from Force Thunder and the eleven men in the CJA were all ready to take down the four Iranians. As the Iranians watched their soccer game, smoking and drinking, the fifteen men snuck into various parts of their building. They walked in with completely civilian attire on, hiding bullet-proof vests underneath these clothes. All of them had concealed weapons and they waited now, for a heavy team to show up, which would bring six men, all with submachine guns, a battering ram, and more armor.

They didn't know if the four men were armed but they did know that time was working against them. They wanted to wait for the men to sleep but they wanted to capitalized on their drunken state even more. The heavy team was inbound, set to arrive at just after 05:10 hours. They hoped that, by then, the four men would be in a drunken stupor and asleep. They couldn't wait too long though. The possibility of someone seeing them getting ready was just too great. They stuck two snipers on a roof about three hundred meters away and they looked through the windows with their scopes to make sure that the four men were inside. Still though, there was a major hurdle to overcome, one that the Minister of Justice himself would have to undertake.

The four men were all Eurasian citizens. Law and agreements with the October Alliance stipulated that October Alliance citizens were to be regarded much higher than other immigrants. In the Empire, citizens of October Alliance nations were considered to be brothers to the Layartebians. That meant they couldn't treat them as if they were Russians or some other citizen who was despised. The only way that Layartebian authorities could act against citizens of other October Alliance countries was if they were a national threat, they committed a felony, or they were aiding and abetting felons within the borders of the Empire. They weren't excluded from misdemeanors but those were a low class that everyone agreed would be just the same, regardless of citizenship. In these circumstances, action could only be taken with the Emperor's explicit approval to the Minister of Justice and he had to inform the government of the respective nation. The Emperor planned to do just that but not until after the raid had been conducted. That was a right they were allowed through a small loophole. The only time the Emperor's approval wasn't needed before the operation is if flight was at risk. In this instance, there was applicable time and no flight threat.

When he gave his approval to the Minister of Justice, he gave it to the unit commander, and it was just a matter of time. The operation would be a quick strike with an emphasis on capturing all four men alive. They wanted to question them, to find out what they were building, and to find out what their plans were.

July 18, 2007 - 05:10 [EST]
Bronx, Layarteb City

"Hey John. The lights just went out!" One of the two snipers said as he looked through his scope. His radio was to the right of his mouth and he leaned his head down as he pushed the button to talk. "Thermal shows one on the couch in the living room, two in the beds in the bedroom, and one lying on the floor in the bedroom."

"Got it. We're going. Keep an eye!"

"You got it!" The sniper put his eye back to his thermal scope and watched. Outside of the apartment, with the sun rising in the east, the Force Thunder men moved ahead of the main group. The S.W.A.T. team had arrived but they were prevented from breeching the door. They wanted these men alive and it was because of that necessity that the four Force Thunder men moved to the front of the pack. All of the men had their weapons drawn except the Force Thunder men who drew both a taser and a pistol. They used their dominant hand for the pistol and the other for the taser. If they had to start shooting they would have to drop the taser but they wanted all of these men alive and quickly. The taser would quickly incapacitate them, especially as they upped the voltage to the maximum output levels. All of them were equipped with a pair of laser dots, enabling them to target without looking down the sights, a necessity in a crowded environment.

Rather than breeching through the door with a ram, making more noise than a freight train in the process, the lead man pulled out a lock-picking set and began to jiggle the cylinders on the locks of the door. It was a quiet way of entering but it was not an instant process. It wasn't like the movies, especially since they were working, for the most part, in darkness. It was all by feel and a click later, they knew they had opened the door. "Alright," John, the point man, said. "Quiet! Nobody yells once unless it's to shout 'Gun' understood?" The CJA men nodded. The S.W.A.T. team was covering the rear now with their submachine guns and heavy body armor. The Force Thunder men wore much lighter but highly effective body armor, which was rated through Level III, meaning that it could stop many assault rifle rounds up to and including the 5.56 x 45mm round, the 7.62 x 51mm round, and the popular 7.62 x 39mm round. It couldn't stop the higher velocity rounds in these sizes but those were armor piercing and those were less likely to be in use in the environment they were going.

The four men righted themselves up and slowly pushed the door open just to make sure it was open. "Alright. We're going in," the point man said into the microphone. He swung the door open and silently, without a sound, the four men entered the apartment. The man on the couch was already asleep and still drunk so he never felt the barbs from the taser hit his body. By the time the electrical current was surging into his muscles, causing him to violently thrash from his sleep, the other three men were moving into the bedroom. Several other officers entered and covered the four Force Thunder men with pistols while they engaged.

The man on the couch screamed before the three men in the bedroom could be subdued. One of them, the least drunk of them, awoke and dove forward. He didn't get too far as he was tackled down by one of the Force Thunder men, who put a shot across his face hard enough to make him see stars. Naturally, this woke the other two and they shot upwards, from their beds. As the man on the ground was getting tased the other two were moving upwards. The two remaining Force Thunder men were in the room quickly and firing off their tasers as well. One of them connected but the other missed completely as the Iranian dove away. The silence had gone and three of the four Iranians were effectively subdued. Now they were being yelled at, in Farsi, to stay down and put their hands behind their backs. The fourth man dove to the other side of the bed and put, between him and the men, the bed. The Force Thunder men couldn't see him but the snipers could, through their thermal sights. He was lying still on the ground but they couldn't tell if he had a weapon or not. Smartly, one of the men threw on the lights, causing instant and temporary blindness to the Iranians. The fourth, who dove away, shot upwards in pain but he had a pistol in his hand and the men could see him going to squeeze the trigger.

His shot would have hit the ceiling and the men could see this but they didn't take any chances. One of them, instinctively, aimed and fired himself. It was just one round and the round left his barrel moving at 350 meters per second. It entered and quickly exited the Iranians right shoulder and it did damage as it did. Instantly, the gun fell down and another Force Thunder soldier was diving across the bed and tackled the Iranian. He fought, or rather attempted to fight, the Force Thunder soldier but didn't make any progress. He took a hard hit to his jaw and the Force Thunder soldier pushed hard on the bullet wound, causing immense pain. Seconds later, he looked up and yelled, "Clear! Call an EMT!"

The federal officers holstered their weapons and the S.W.A.T. team relaxed. Three of the four men were in handcuffs and sitting around the living room, half blind, still shaking from the tasing, and obviously distorted. The fourth was in the bedroom with a bullet wound to the shoulder. The bullet had gone clean through and didn't hit anything too vital but he would need minor surgery to repair torn tendons and what not. The CJA officers put on rubber surgical gloves and were putting pressure on the wound and the Iranian wasn't fighting, he couldn't. He had been shot with the taser after he had been subdued and he knew that if he moved, he would have tens of thousands of volts into his body. In addition, one of the CJA officers stood over him with his pistol drawn, aimed right at his head. He would never even seen the flash of the gun before he died if he tried anything.

Twenty minutes later, the Emperor was duly informed and the Eurasians were informed shortly thereafter that four of their citizens had been arrested in connection with a terrorism plot. When the bomb squad came and began to disassemble the bomb, they made a startling discovery. The bomb was just a dispersing system. It would never generate enough force or heat to eliminate the actual package, which consisted of four, one ounce spheres, filled with Agent VX, the deadliest, known chemical weapon every made. They had planned to kill tens of thousands, although their target was still unknown. Questioning would reveal it.

Unfortunately, despite the counter-terrorism nature of the case, it would be regulated to civilian courts. It was a federal crime and the four would be tried on charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism, conspiracy to murder, treason (they were Layartebian citizens), and various other charges. They all faced, at minimum, the death penalty. Lawyers would try to defend them, to commute their sentence but no judge would hear it. They were not going to survive. There was documented evidence, video tapes, sound taps, of them building the bomb, discussing it, and their plans to kill tens of thousands. One hoped for an even million. He had taken the forty caliber round through his shoulder. It was a clear cut case.

July 20, 2007 - 12:35 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

It was two days after the successful raid that netted the four SP terrorists. The injured one was in a hospital room under constant, armed guard and though he had tried to escape twice already he never got further than the bed. He had been handcuffed to it and it weighed more than double his own weight and it was bolted into the floor. He wasn't going anywhere, no matter how hard he tried. Had he gotten loose, he would face two CJA agents, both with brand new M110A3 Pistols, chambered in .40SW. Each gun held fifteen rounds plus, if necessary, one in the chamber. Proficient marksmen, both men escorts nurses and doctors into and out of the room. The prisoner would have to remain in the hospital for another three days. When that time passed, if he had not shows signs of infection and if the wound was healing properly, he would be released back into CJA custody, meaning he would go to a jail cell.

The arrests were high-profile and every media outlet in the Empire picked up on it and ran the story constantly. The Director of the Central Justice Agency had given a press conference pertaining to the operation. He detailed some of the initial evidence but kept quiet on a lot of the pending items. As usual, ongoing investigations never saw that many comments simply because the police or investigators didn't want to tip anyone off, especially if they had not made arrests yet. What the CJA didn't know but was looking to find out was if these four men were the end-all, be-all of the cell or if there were more. The prospect of more Sepah-e Pasdaran terrorists running around inside of the Empire with dual citizenships was a frightening one.

The three healthy terrorists had already been questioned and questioned again. The CJA agents had to be real careful not to violate law either. They had seventy-two hours to hold a person without charging them, denying them the basic rights of the accused and that time was running out. They had extracted some details but, mostly, the Iranians simply stonewalled them, asking for lawyers and when they were going to be charged and for what, they had done nothing wrong. This was a standard line of response for them and one they were undoubtedly taught in the Caucasus camps. Because the press was so inclined to the story, several lawyers, trying to make a name for themselves in a legal system that favored the prosecution more than the accused stepped forward. Some of them claimed they would defend the men pro bono while others stated that their innocence was plain and obvious. Some accused the investigators of planting the bomb. Others tried to accuse the Empire of racism against Arabs and other Middle Easterners, due to the low population of them within the Empire. Those were the more looney of the sort. There were false flag accusations and plenty of people claiming that they wouldn't get a fair trial. Granted, these voices were well in the minority, they were sought out by the press and put on television. In a day and age where terrorism was high again and the safety of the Empire, within its own borders, was being questioned more and more frequently, the populace were growing skeptical. They had done so under the Red Army Faction attacks back in the late 1970s.

The Emperor was now being advised to do a press conference on the matter. The situation was gaining national headlines and it was unnecessary to do so. It was a simple operation against four suspected terrorists, who were apparently in possession of an improvised chemical bomb. One of the terrorists had said the target as well during interrogations, by mistake. The target was going to be Grand Central Station and, at rush hour. Thousands and tens of thousands would inhale the deadly nerve agent within minutes of its release. Because of the closed quarters of the subway system, the deadly vapors could travel throughout the subway lines in the heated air, which pushed through the tunnels under its own convection currents. It had the potential to kill almost a hundred thousand.

The terrorists sat uncomfortably in the headquarters of the Central Justice Agency is downtown Layarteb City, not far from where the Domestic Justice Agency had been during the days of the Republic. Their building had been destroyed by a terrorist strike in 1977 killing hundreds. The basement of the CJA building went down fifteen levels and somewhere in those were the holding cells. They could hold up to two hundred prisoners at once and, at any given time, interrogate forty of them. They only had fifty-eight prisoners, including the three Iranians who were all in questioning. They had not slept since the night they were awoken from their drunken stupors and, since then, they had only been given the basics. They had been given water but only enough to quench the thirst and only enough for their day, never more. They had only been given one meal and it was definitely not the best tasting in the world. It was all part of breaking them down, psychologically as well as physically. If the body gave in, often so did the mind. Unfortunately, they were running out of time. With less than twenty-four hours to go, they had to extract as much information out of them as possible. Once lawyers got involved, they could retain the right to silence.

As the Emperor stepped up to the podium amidst camera flashes and a growing silence, the Iranians were going in for another round of questioning. "Good afternoon," the Emperor said as he stared into the camera. "I have called this press conference concerning the recent arrests by the Central Justice Agency of four Eurasian and Layartebian citizens in the south Bronx who are suspected of conspiracy to commit terrorism against the Layartebian people.

"This operation concluded early Wednesday morning when agents of the Central Justice Agency arrested the four conspirators in their apartment. In their possession was an illegal handgun, guides to constructing an improvised explosive device out of a radio or other small electronics, using household items, and a newly completed bomb. By standards, the bomb was not a large one, concealed inside of a portable radio case. It did; however, contain enough explosives to kill dozens within a proximity of perhaps twenty feet.

"As of right now we do not know what their target was or when they planned to detonate it, specifically that is. We did have credible evidence gained from our allies and various other intelligence collection methods that a terrorist cell, linked to the Sepah-e Pasdaran, the decimated terrorist organization in the Caucasus region, was operating inside of Layarteb City. Brilliant investigative methods undertaken by our Central Justice Agency, in connection with LCPD, tracked and surveilled these four terrorists for several days prior to their arrest.

"Not only was everything done by the book but I must commend these agents who, in the face of a bomb that could have been on a remote trigger as well as this unregistered and illegal handgun, succeeded in capturing all four terrorists alive, with no injury to themselves and only minor injury to the terrorists. Now, concerning this press conference. I cannot answer any questions pertaining to the actual investigation as it is currently underway." The reporters shot their hands up right away but few dared to speak. It was a common way of doing things that hands went up only and reporters were respectful to the Emperor, regardless of the situation. He always and often knew everyone by their names. "Danielle?"

"Good afternoon sir. What is your response to the allegations made by certain individuals that this was a 'false flag' operation and that it was perpetrated simply because of the lack of progress against domestic terrorism?" Her question was easily expected and the Emperor looked at her and addressed it quickly.

"The allegations are simply untrue. It would be abhorrent to believe that this government would plant evidence or create any sort of 'false flag' situation to bolster support for anti-terrorism operations. It is true that our progress against domestic terrorism has been slow and not as promising as I would like to have. We are making significant leaps and bounds against this organization and these arrests will help us push ahead in our investigations. Phillip?"

"Sir. Is the prosecution seeking the death penalty in this instance?"

"Yes. I have directed the Ministry of Justice to seek the maximum allowable sentence under the law, which for these charges, would bring about execution. Kimberly?"

"Thank you sir. What information do you expect to gain from these alleged terrorists?"

"We plan on extracting every detail about their operation, who planned it, who ordered them to do it, where they learned what they were going to do, and if they are connected with the domestic terrorism on our soil. Marcy?"

"Sir. There have been unconfirmed rumors that these terrorists were in possession of some sort of chemical substance, perhaps a chemical weapon. Is this true?"

"No it is not. I have seen these rumors and they are in fact just rumors. Many chemicals were used to construct their bombs but, at no time, did chemical weapons play a part in their operation. John?"

"Sir. What has the Eurasian government stated about this situation?"

"The Eurasian government is behind us fully but they have requested to provide a legal attaché to the case and they will be granted that right. Lucy?"

"Sir. Can you tell us where the intelligence originated that led the Central Justice Agency on this manhunt?"

"No I cannot. That is classified. Final question, Mark?"

"Sir, what is the possibility that these four individuals are just the initial cell layer and could there be more terrorists out there related to their cell?"

"That is a very good question, one that we are asking right now. It is my personal belief that these are it and we got them all. Our interrogations will reveal the truth however. Thank you." The Emperor departed amidst more camera flashes and nobody pestered him after he left for more questions. When the Emperor stated that would be the final question, he meant it.

July 23, 2007 - 23:00 [EST]
Rural West Virginia

"I take it our timeframe is intact? The last thing I want is a total failure of our timeframe here. More rests on this than a puny attack." The bald but tall and muscular man said as he stood in the middle of nowhere in rural West Virginia. "Do you understand?"

"Yeah. I understand. Our timeframe is intact. Nothing has changed. They were just a smoke screen. What they knew is nothing not even my real name. They were the setup and it was done on purpose. You see we're a step ahead of you."

"Good. Let's keep it that way. Now tell me what the targets are. We haven't approved them yet."

"Pennsylvania Station. Grand Central Station. Union Station. South Station."

"Fine. At the same time, are we understood?"

"We are. Precisely 17:13 hours. Eastern time."

"Good. We're done here. From now on out we're dark."

"Got it." The bald man stepped back into his limosine and sat down on the comfortable leather. The headlights flicked on and the driver lowered the window.

"Mr. Patrick. What is the situation?"

"No change. We're still go. Communicate that to the rest."

"Understood." The driver was really a member of the Illuminati and he had a short list of people to send a secure and encrypted text message to when the deal was cemented. It was just a code-word and it gave away the outcome of the meeting. With a successful outcome, the code word as "Evelyn" and as the men got it, everything was put in place. At the same time, the man that Mr. Patrick met with turned around and headed back to his own vehicle, an off-road jeep just a few dozen yards away. After stepping on a soda can and remarking about garbage, the man prepared to open the door. Almost predictably, a loud echo bounced off the mountains around them and the man slumped over, onto the hood of the car before falling back onto the dirt ground. The man did not get up and the limosine drove off just a few seconds later. Two kilometers away, sitting comfortably in a fire watching tower sitting 180 feet off the ground, was Mary McGuire and she held her M100A1 Outbreak long-range, high-caliber sniper rifle. The scope was a powerful night-scope that had a range of almost three kilometers and she had practiced with it over the past day to the point where she could shoot a soda can off a rock from two thousand meters away, the same one the man stepped on before he died.

John Patrick picked up his phone and dialed one number. "He's neutralized. Clean up the mess." His call went right to an Illuminati soldier hiding in the forest. Had Mary McGuire missed her shot, a Ghost Warrior team would ambush his jeep and kill him. The man wasn't a hired gun for the Illuminati. On the contrary, he was deep undercover with the Central Justice Agency and only two other people knew of his existence and of his men. As he was shot in rural West Virginia, a Ghost Warrior team was pouring gasoline all over his house and soon it was a blazing inferno. The two field agents who knew him personally were each killed by unique but simply car bombs as they stepped into their vehicles the next morning. In one fatal swoop, the Illuminati had destroyed the entire capacity of the CJA's undercover contingent within the Illuminati. Eventually, there would be no body and the vehicle would be turned into scrap metal.

July 26, 2007 - 13:00 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Zone

The crushing defeat of the former Amazonian Republic and the subsequent insurgency made the entire territory a problem. It was cordoned off and as many people died due to insurgent action as did during the war itself. Car bombs, IEDs, and sniper attacks were just some of the tactics being used by the insurgency, which still numbered over 5,000. The territory covered almost 700,000 square miles and it bordered a large, anachy state, covering almost 925,000 square miles. The borders between the newly acquired Layartebian territory and the rest of the Empire were sealed let alone those between the territory and the anarchist state, which saw nothing but opportunity in the chaos of the former Amazonian Republic. More than two and a half months prior, it had been known as the Federal Republic of the Amazon but now it was known as the Amazonian Control Zone. It had not been integrated yet into the Layartebian Empire as it was still just a territorial possession, which meant that it had little, if any rights. Republics, colonies, provinces, all of which had rights were part of the Empire. Territorial possessions, on the other hand, were almost always placed under a military rule and the Amazonian Control Zone was no exception. Because it had, in effect, replaced the lawlessness of the Yucatán, the ACZ was a haven for the criminal masterminds that were so thoroughly squashed throughout the rest of the Empire. In its more remote regions, the ACZ was home to drug lords who saw opportunity in a country that had no major drug cartels. In its cities, gangs and black markets sprung up to push their own greed and profit ahead. Gang wars were frequent throughout the various cities of the ACZ especially Boa Vista and Manaus. Of these, Boa Vista was the most loosely controlled. Insurgents had made it their haven and the Layartebians were hard pressed to secure the city. Gangs fought over territory they could call there own, some of it no larger than a city block. Sometimes, they fought for whole sectors of cities.

Throughout all of this, the Illuminati had set up a makeshift base in the ACZ. They had used the tunnel networks and vast underground complexes built by the Venezuelans to hide themselves. They helped the anarchists sneak across the boarder and, by official estimates, at least some 500 to 1,000 anarchist rebels had come through the border and were fighting the Layartebians in the ACZ. It was a battle they were losing, it seemed. Originally, Layartebian forces controlled each and every major city and half of the back country. They could have controlled more but the tactics employed rushed for the cities, ignoring all else, a fatal mistake. Now they controlled less than a quarter of the back country and their control was diminishing by the day as insurgents fought onward, against them. The Illuminati had many bases of operation. Some were legitimate businesses while others were less legal. In the ACZ they had both.

Things were sour throughout the Empire. Since the diminishing success in the ACZ, the terrorist bombing of the Sky Wonder in late May, the revolution in Portugal and Spain, the gang attack against Cleveland police station, and a rising string of assassinations against Layartebian leaders, public opinion of the Emperor had decreased from the high 70s to the low to mid-60s. It rose and fall based on what was happening. The capture of the Sepah-e Pasdaran cell pushed his approval rating back up to the high 70s but for how long, who knew.

As analysts feverishly worked to decipher where his ratings were going, the Illuminati plotted and planned. The SP cell was just a smoke screen. The real cells had gone dark weeks earlier and were operating on schedule. They had a little over a day before they would act and before they would begin the true attacks.

July 27, 2007 - 17:10 [EST]
Subway System, Layarteb City

Illuminati teams 21 and 22 had moved into position in Pennsylvania and Grand Central stations. They had placed their respective explosive devices on board the trains hours earlier. They did last minute calculations of the approximately detonation times, based on the schedule of the trains. They planned to have them both go off at the same time but it would be difficult, one of the trains was running two minutes behind schedule. With their radio devices in place, the two teams of eight men each were satisfied. They emerged from the underground moments after 17:00 hours and walked towards a safety zone far, far away. Each of them had placed a bag loaded with over 50 pounds of Semtex A plastic explosives in the two stations, putting over 100 pounds of explosives between the two of them. The radio devices themselves were on the trains, hidden underneath seats. At Union Station in Chicago and South Station in Falcon City, teams 23 and 24 did the same thing. They would simply wait now for the trains to arrive. Based on their estimates, they expected over 10,000 casualties between the four stations.

The operation was really just a traditional terrorist strike. It was also a smoke screen for a larger, even more devious Illuminati operation, which was going on in the ACZ. As the Layartebian government focused on the damage control of the four train stations, the Illuminati would incite a major riot and insurgency in Manaus. Their hope was to have the Layartebian people look between the two incidents, put them together, and speak out against the occupation of the former Amazonian Republic. If the Empire withdrew, the chaos of the former republic would create a power vacuum that only the Illuminati could fill.

The first bomb went off at 17:13:02, at Union Station, in Chicago and was followed nine seconds later by the one in Pennsylvania Station. At 17:13:39 and 17:13:52, the bombs went off at South Station and Grand Central Station. Seismometers in all three cities registered the powerful explosions, which equalled a little over 360 pounds of TNT. Richter Scales registered readings between 1.0 and 1.2 at the various locations, which were small enough to barely get much notice otherwise but, when smoke began to billow from the underground, people suspected the worse. The ground had shaken slightly as the bombs went off, all of them producing an impressive amount of damage. Confined by the subway design, the explosives torn trains to shreds and splattered people all over the place.

When the first rescue workers arrived they described climbing down to the bomb locations as climbing through their worst nightmares. It would, unfortunately, take them over an hour to cut through the debris at Union Station alone and get to the trapped people underneath. Media stations picked it up right away and were airing it non-stop as the riots in Manaus began to unfold, thousands of miles away. Layartebian forces engaged the rioting people and insurgents and the city turned back into a disaster zone. Unfortunately, the subway bombs eclipsed this and the public only heard a short blurb about the fighting in Manaus although they heard about the various subway bombings all night long.

When the dust cleared and the rescue workers were able to get underneath the wreckage and debris, they brought out few living people and even fewer wounded people. The casualties were high but no where near what the Illuminati wanted. At Union Station, 238 people were killed and a further 99 wounded. At South Station, the bomb had largely been shielded by a column and though it collapsed the column it only killed 109 people and wounded another 85. Miraculously, 128 people were able to escape from South Station. At Pennsylvania Station, the blast killed 408 people, the highest toll of the four bombings and it wounded a further 68. At Grand Central Station, 158 people were killed but 290 were wounded. In total, just 913 people were killed and 542 required medical attention. Between the four stations, 315 people were unharmed and managed to escape with minor injuries.

As the CJA learned about the bombings, they immediately went to the four captive Iranians and began further interrogation. They had been under the false belief that the Iranians were the only cell but, apparently, they weren't. Questioning intensified and as it did, rights were broken. Instantly, more backlash came as the defense lawyers cried foul. It would do them no good though, no judge would acquit them, especially not after these attacks.

August 27, 2007 - 14:34 [EST]
Launch Complex 48, Layartebian Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida

LC-48 buzzed with activity but over a thousand miles north, activity was quiet. John Patrick sat in his office atop the Tower of Luna and watched on a television screen, the Space Channel, which would show the launch of a Proton I rocket at LC-48. His phone had rang a few minutes earlier and when he picked it up and now was speaking to the General of the Air Force. "There was no way to stop this. This is a major blow to our efforts." John Patrick said as he lit a cigar and leaned back in his leather chair. "General. I understand." He hung up the phone and shook his head. Majestic had expended a significant amount of effort to stop the launch of the rocket but failed and she would be launching, without a hitch. The rocket was carrying a satellite into orbit high over the Earth. It was a signal's satellite, which would complete a Layartebian tier of spy satellites that had been launched. This last satellite would like the rest and though it was billed as a communications satellite, it was all but one. Nobody knew that it was actually a spy satellite except a few within the government, air force, and Majestic. The satellite could provide advanced capabilities to listen in on encrypted and secure networks that the Illuminati used to communicate through their Ghost Warrior teams. Without an adequate replacement, they would have to revise their entire code standard and use it immediately.

The narrator for the television channel talked about the nature of the communications satellite, which would help a major Layartebian telecommunications company handle international calls at a much higher volume than before. The satellite was advertised as a §380,000,000 venture but, in reality, the hardware cost §1,085,000,000 and it was part of the most advanced and classified satellite program the Ministry of Intelligence had undertaken, codenamed Project ICARUS, which was a name that few actually knew and those who did kept the information completely compartmentalized. "We're about to begin the thirty-second countdown for Telstar 14 in just a moment here as we do our final launch checks," the narrator said. The television showed the rocket on its launch pad with a steam like gas rising all around the pad. The rocket was fully fueled with dinitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, the two primary fuels that drove the rocket to its orbit high above the Earth.

The launch complex was the newest built and the history of the Layartebian Space Center at Cape Canaveral stretched back to the days of Robert H. Goddard, the father of modern rocketry. It had been a test site for the Republic of Layarteb during their ICBM days and it remained both an Air Force Base, one of the largest, and the epicenter of the Layartebian space program, which had six space ports: Cape Canaveral, Arecibo in Puerto Rico, Kourou in French Guiana, Wallops Island off Virginia, Arauca in Venezuela, and Punta Lobos in Peru. Each site had their various roles in the Layartebian space program. With the exception of Cape Canaveral all of them were rocket launch facilities, which could launch Proton I, Delta IV, Athena, Atlas V, or Taurus rockets. Cape Canaveral could launch any of those as well as the Layartebian primary space exploration vehicle, the Next Generation Space Transport System, which replaced the STS in early 2000. Consequently, five NG-STS systems were in service, scaled down from the planned nine, which would each be named after a planet in the solar system, Pluto included. Instead, just Mercury, Mars, Jupitur, Saturn, and Pluto were chosen instead of the planned nine. Each vehicle was rated for up to one hundred individual launches. However, between the previous five STS vehicles, they flew, on average, just twenty-seven before they were retired. Between the five of them they had flown in excess of five hundred million miles, deployed seventy satellites, and conducted one hundred and twenty-four space walks. They could carry a payload of up to fifty thousand pounds to low-earth orbit but the NG-STS could theorhetically carry a payload four times that amount.

Launch Complex 39 was designated for the STS and NG-STS launches and while both of those pads remained operational, many others across the 250 mi² facility had been dismantled or renovated or reassigned. In that time, LC-48 had been built to handle large rockets, mainly the Delta IV Heavy and the Proton I. "And here we go. Thirty seconds to launch." The narrator began as the camera panned in on the shuttle and a small insert appeared in the lower right hand corner of the screen with the countdown clock. It went down slowly, towards "0" and when it reached ten, the narrator took over. "Ten...Nine...Eight...Seven...Six...Go for engine start...Four...Three...Two...One...Zero...LIFT OFF!" The rocket turned from peaceful to pure violence in just six seconds as the main engines lit and smoke and flames filled the launch pad. At zero, the rocket shot forward with a violent force behind it.

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It roared upwards, its speed increasing dramatically as it pitched itself to a climb angle that would take it all the way into low-earth orbit. As the rocket launched, John Patrick watched with a sort of disappointment about himself as the rocket roared upwards, carrying the possible end to the Illuminati, the Ghost Warriors, and Majestic. There was little they could do to counter the satellite and they would simply have to be more careful and work to evade it rather than defeat it.

September 1, 2007 - 10:00 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Zone

Summer persisted but fall was coming. In Manaus, the temperature was a balmy 84.2°F and the humidity was upwards of 70% giving a heat index of 90.9°F. It was flat out, uncomfortable. Since the war concluded on July 3, the situation in the Amazonian Control Zone had rapidly deteriorated. There had been 566 KIAs, 1,768 WIAs, and 7 MIAs on the Layartebian side and there were over 20,000 civilian casualties and at least 30,000 casualties of all types amongst the military forces. It was a brutal defeat for the enemy but a defeat that, by mid-September, seemed to have been planned, an attempt to draw the Empire into a guerilla war, which was what was going on and with great success. The Empire was fighting against an insurgent force of 5,000+ and they knew the terrain well. Most of them were Venezuelans, few of them had fought in the original Venezuelan Civil War in the 1960s and 1970s and few remained who had fought in the 1980s as well. These were a new breed of rebels who sprang up over the years, many from the rural areas of Venezuela, where drug cartels had once been the dominate force until two wars against them practically ended the internal drug trade in the Empire. The rest of them were a mix of anarchists from various Brazilian territories and Amazonians as well. In all, of the 5,000 strong, an estimated 55% were of Venezuelan descent. At one point they had nearly all been of Venezuelan descent.

October 1 was nearing and it didn't seem as if fate was on the side of the Amazonians. The Territory of the Amazon, as it was officially called, remained under strict rule since July 3. Territories within the Empire were the least respected divisions. Their citizens were not citizens of the Empire, they did not have the option of self-rule, not like the Republics had, they were under martial law most of the time, and they were ruled by an interim council made up mostly of generals and various civilian administrators from the Empire. Their laws were strict and their rights were limited. They were, in essence, conquered peoples, slaves in the modern sense. They could not exit the territory and nobody could enter except approved people. Unfortunately, insurgents had found ways into the area through various underground tunnels, primarily from Mato Grosso.

The goal, in July, was to have a referendum vote within the former Amazonian Republic as to their status. They could join the Province of South Eastern Virginia or they could become an independent republic within the Empire. However, that referendum would be contingent on a stability about the land. There was anything but in the Amazonian Control Zone, as it was still being called. The biggest danger came from a border area with Mato Grasso. Within the Amazonian Control Zone, the Imperial Layartebian Army controlled almost all of the major cities still but the rural backwoods had been almost entirely lost. Layartebian convoys were under daily ambush and offenses yielded little result. Even in the big cities, fighting continued as rebels used IEDs and ambush style attacks to counter the Imperial Layartebian Army. Helicopters had been shot at and one had been downed in late August from a Stinger missile. It was, without a doubt, still a war zone.

As offensives were being planned and as the Imperial Layartebian Army rethought its strategy in the region, more rebels slipped through the border. They used a small area in Mato Grosso along the 300+ mile border for their staging point. There were tunnels and various other devices throughout the backwoods area, which was covered by jungle canopy. Layartebian soldiers who guarded the border were under seemingly constant fire. If things did not change with regard to the area, intervention would be required.

On September 1, it was decided to push the referendum vote back, to January 2, 2008. The instability meant that any vote would be tainted, at the very best. With the ongoing fighting throughout the country, there was a deep necessity to get it entirely under Layartebian control first and, in order to achieve that, military tactics would have to change. It would require new offensives, new deals with the local populace, and a yearning desire to wipe out the rebels. All of that existed but not with enough push yet. September 1 hoped to change that after a horrific afternoon of fighting.

The morning had seen a sharp rise in the number of incidents that occurred throughout the country. Along the Mato Grosso border, incidents were up 200% and throughout the rest of the country, they were up at least 100%. The rebels were attacking on almost all fronts, pushing towards the cities and towards some sort of inevitable end. They were making a fatal flaw and a fatal mistake. They were engaging the numerically and technologically superior Imperial Layartebian Army one on one and by noon, they were losing, it was quite evident. Rebels throughout the country had launched some sort of nationwide counterattack against Layartebian positions. Firebases, helicopter landing sites, and various other outposts were all attacked throughout the morning. Layartebian convoys took fire from all directions, always returning fire in the process. The fighting saw an intense renewal of strategic fighting. Layartebian bombers and fighters took to the skies with helicopters and vectored in on rebel positions. Bombs fell in the dozens and in the hundreds. Rockets flew across the sky and missiles pounded hard-to-reach targets from miles away. Artillery bases took the most fire from the rebels but their return fire was tragically accurate for the rebels. One hundred and fifty-five millimeter shells landed on their heads and in their dug-in positions with amazing accuracy.

When fighting erupted throughout the cities around 13:00 to 14:00, the Imperial Layartebian Army was ready. They fought back, hard, clearing streets ahead of the time. They turned all of the useful skills they learned for urban warfare against the rebels and used their own weapons and tactics against them. The offensive by the rebels was a hard push and a strategic mistake. By the middle of the evening, fighting had waned and the rebels lost over 1,000 of their own, dishing out fewer than 5% casualties against the Imperial Layartebian Army. It was a victory for the Empire and a defeat for the insurgency, a defeat they would learn from but a defeat that hurt them hard with over 20% losses. The importance of Mato Grosso to the insurgency suddenly doubled and the Imperial Layartebian Army set their sights on the beleaguered land.

September 3, 2007 - 06:00 [AST]
Amazonas-Mato Grosso Border, Amazonian Control Zone

Since the offensive on September 1, the Territory of the Amazon had been a hotspot. The violence increase was directly related to the decision to push the territory's fate from October 1 to January 2. The offensive made headlines throughout the Empire and the victory of the Layartebian forces was overshadowed by a strong call for a total victory. The Layartebian people had enjoyed victory after victory after victory since 1980 and, with the exception of Kaliningrad, had never been forced to withdraw from a territory out of defeat. The Amazonian territory was going just that way and the people weren't happy about it. After twenty-seven years of conquests under the Empire and another two decades of war before that, the people were growing tired of war. Peace had ensued upon the Empire proper but there were still clashes on its periphery. The Amazonian territories were just one cornerstone of that periphery. The Argentine situation had shaken headlines just as well, especially after the Ghost Warriors brought hell and fury to Tierra del Fuego, succeeding in many respects.

When the sun rose on the morning of September 3, Layartebian forces throughout the country were on high alert. They had hunkered down, replenished their ammunition, and tried to get as much rest as they could. The highest alert was along the Mato Grosso border, where anarchist forces had been driving the insurgency. They were using tunnel systems to push arms and fighters across the border and every time a tunnel was found and blown up, the anarchists built another four to replace the one they lost. There was just no way to get on top of the situation and they could only keep blowing them up with thermobaric munitions and explosives. The tunnels were vast, some big enough to stand up in and others small enough to crawl through. The bigger the tunnel, the more important it was to the anarchists as it could support more volume. There was even one tunnel system that was on top of another tunnel system. It had been blown up using various thermobaric munitions, mostly SMAW-NE rounds, which were wired together and detonated in sequence, collapsing both tunnels.

Nobody heard the first shots until they hit at 06:00 hours. They were simultaneously fired at three border outposts, each separated by four to fourteen miles of open space. The rounds were fired from a portable 81mm mortar, from a range of over three miles and when they hit, they hit with precision. The border outposts were small, in retrospect, staffed by sixteen to thirty-two men, depending. They had minimal support, mostly just Dingo APVs and Bushmaster IMVs, which were armored enough to withstand small arms but not persistent beatings by rockets and mortar rounds.

The three mortars killed no one but destroyed the gates at the border outposts, allowing a flood of anarchists to charge in, amid an intense wave of Layartebian bullets. The radio calls went out the instant the mortars hit, calling for backup, air, and artillery support. The anarchists had used their tunnels to sneak to within four hundred meters of the outposts, through an area that was covered with landmines, many of them laid in the middle of the night, in territory that the Empire did not legally control. The anarchists knew this and used the rising sun to their backs for the advantage. They hid in the glare while the Layartebian forces engaged them in a dramatic battle that would last up to a half hour.

The anarchists traded gunfire with the Layartebian soldiers. Rounds as small as pistol caliber to as large as those mounted on the Layartebian vehicles tore through the sky that morning. Mortar rounds continued to fire from far behind the Layartebian field of view, meaning that they could not be engaged except by direct incursion. To the three outposts, the nearest firebase was just six miles away and was packed with a full squadron of artillery units, which included twelve towed guns, twelve missile launchers, and twelve self-propelled guns. The missile systems would be useless against an enemy so close to the Layartebian positions and without an accurate location on the mortar teams, they were useless against them too. The dense canopy made sure that finding the mortar teams would not be easy, if even possible at all. However, the Layartebians did have one thing to their advantage. While the artillery shells rained down, with startling precision, three teams of two helicopters each descended on the outposts. The helicopters were fast and nimble as they were AH-6M Little Birds and they carried with them, two M79A1 12.7MM Gatling Guns, each armed with 800 rounds as well as two Adder rocket pods, each containing seven rockets, armed with high-explosive and fragmentary warheads.

The Little Birds were quick and tough to shoot and provided a necessary distraction for the ground troops as they fired back at the anarchist forces. They used all of their capable arms fighting the anarchists and inflicted heavy losses before the artillery even started pouring down at 06:06, just six minutes after the first mortar rounds began. The amazing M2014s could put several rounds in the air before the first ones ever hit and that was what they did, providing the Layartebian forces with necessary force to destroy the tunnels and the anarchists within them. When the helicopters arrived, they made strafing runs and used their powerful FLIR systems to try to locate the mortar teams. They found only one of the three and the two attack helicopters fired their rockets into the target with disastrous effects, destroying the mortar position.

Shortly thereafter, the anarchists pulled back and decided the offensive wasn't worth it as they dragged bodies free from sight. They used smoke to cover their retreat but the FLIR sensors could see right through the dense clouds and the Little Birds continued to harass them as they retreated from the battle grounds. The attack left eight Layartebian soldiers dead and dozens more wounded but was estimated to have killed over sixty anarchists, although they would claim only a dozen in the fighting.

The attacks did more than the September 1 offensive did to galvanize Layartebian resolve against the anarchist forces in Mato Grosso. Operation Thunder Rain, a plan dating back to the beginning of July was suddenly back on the tables and a go-ahead was given.

September 4, 2007 - 04:00 [AST]
Amazonas-Mato Grosso Border, Amazonian Control Zone

"Echo Lead. Echo Two. We're go!" The radio had been quiet for too long as the three formations of aircraft flew at high-altitude and subsonic speed over the Amazonian Control Zone. Each flight was identical and they consisted of quite a number of aircraft as they were heading for three different targets, all of them inside of Mato Grosso. The fact that Layartebian aircraft would be crossing the border was a gross violation of the country's sovereignty, not that it was really a country. Anarchy rained free and the weak government in Cuiabá had no control, whatsoever, over the border area with the ACZ.

The main package with each formation was a flight of four F-46C Enforcer fighter-bombers, armed with satellite-guided JDAM II bombs and AMESM missiles. Ahead of them was a flight of three F-50A Cardinal escort fighters, which carried only air-to-air ordinance. There was also a flight of two EA-5F Vigilante electronic escorts, carrying a heavy array of jamming equipment and anti-radiation AARGM missiles. Lastly, with the whole group was also a flight of four F-16G Super Falcons, armed mostly with unguided cluster bombs and Harbinger anti-tank missiles.

Each formation bore down on a separate target, all of them airports. There were three of them in the vicinity at Aripuanã, Juína, and Juruena. Intelligence sources showed that they were all minor airports but vital to the anarchist forces, who were known to possess several light-transports. They could use those transports to breech the airspace of the ACZ and infiltrate fighters as well as supply their region. These were the opening stages of Operation Thunder Rain, which was meant to push the anarchist forces back from the border and to secure the area to prevent further incursion into Layartebian territory. The casus belli had already been established with the border intrusions by the anarchists but the attack on the outpost was the final straw that broke the camel's back. Now they were in for a real treat and it wasn't going to be pretty.

The three flights crossed over the border shortly after 04:00 hours and assumed their various flight paths. The escort fighters would keep an eye on the airspace and protect the strike force from air attack but no resistance was expected. The Vigilantes would jam any anti-aircraft defenses and destroy radars, if necessary but, again, no resistance was expected. The Enforcers would strike next, using their AMESM missiles to attack hangars and fuel tanks at the bases while they used their JDAM II bombs to crater the runways. The Super Falcons would mop up, using their cluster bombs and anti-tank missiles against the tarmacs and any aircraft that happened to be on the airfield. They could also attack any anti-aircraft units as well. Based on the estimates, the entire strike force would begin their attacks on the various airfields within two minutes of each other and their attacks would last less than six minutes.

The Cardinals stayed high, at 40,000 feet, using their powered radars to scan the horizon from the deck to the heights. The only air traffic they saw were civilian airliners, over a hundred miles away, on paths to and from Cuiabá. The Vigilantes dropped lower, to 15,000 feet and moved at high sub-sonic speeds but there wasn't anything to jam or shoot at, it was quiet out there. The nearest radars were over Cuiabá as well, too far to be a threat. The Enforcers descended next. They launched their AMESM missiles from 15 to 25 miles away, locking onto separate targets, sending twelve AMESM missiles at the various targets at the airports. They struck before the bombs did and did immense damage themselves. The JDAM IIs came next, all of them 2,000 pound class bombs, powerful and deadly. They were dropped at various points along the runways and tarmacs and each Enforcer carried four of them. In essence, each airport took hits from twenty-four hard-strike weapons, before the Super Falcons ever dropped their ordinance. The Super Falcons came in last. They used their ground-mapping abilities to locate aircraft on the tarmacs but there weren't many. Between the three airports there were a few small, twin-engine, propeller transports, one 737, an older model at that, and various other single-engine, propeller planes. Still, the Super Falcons would take no chance and they pickled their cluster bombs over the targets, setting them to burst at 1,850 feet. When they did, they burst into hundreds of smaller munitions. The airports lit up like Christmas trees as the submunitions went off, setting off secondaries throughout the airbase. The Harbinger missiles would never have to be used and all thirty-nine aircraft egressed from Mato Grosso unscathed, undetected, unopposed, and successful. The initial strike was an overwhelming success. Real-time satellite imagery showed that all three airports were completely out of commission.

If that didn't send a message to the anarchists that this was serious, nothing would. Unfortunately for the Layartebians, the anarchists were just warming up and they weren't joking either.

September 4, 2007 - 13:00 [AST]
Amazonas-Mato Grosso Border, Mato Grosso

The air strikes earlier did not go unnoticed. The weak and useless government in Cuiabá was calling for an international condemnation of the attacks. They justified it by stating they were civilian and the Empire attacked them illegally. There was no universal international law for that to be illegal but still, the government called for help. They would get none. Smoke still rose from the three airports, which were completely out of commission. The anarchist forces were consolidating their power and their arms, ready for a long haul fight against the Empire. Just as they were doing within the ACZ, they would do on its periphery. They had mostly small arms and improvised devices, nothing major, nothing that the Empire could really fight against except tunnels and hideouts. It would be, for them, strictly infantry tactics and it would involve the most common and also the most innovative guerilla tactics known. They obtained Stinger and Igla missiles from various black markets and combined those with various RPGs to form a heavy arsenal. Mortars would provide a heavy arsenal as well.

However, the anarchists did have four, small items that they would use most successfully on September 4. Throughout the breakup of the Neuvo Rican Empire, military equipment went everywhere. Into the hands of the anarchists came four artillery guns. Operable and in good condition, they were towed L119 105mm cannons, able to lob thirty-three pound shell as far away as eight and a half miles. Due to their lightness, the guns could be towed along behind a jeep and that was what the anarchists did, stocking the jeep with as much ammunition and powder as they could. They were even still equipped with their digital firing computers, which gave the anarchists a major advantage as they trudged them into four separate positions just six miles from the Layartebian outpost they had assaulted the day prior. A quick adjustment to the weapon computers was alll that they needed to gain a proper lock onto their target.

To each gun, the anarchists posted five people and they could all scoot away in the single jeep. They had driven to the launch points, dropped the guns onto the ground, and loaded them up, all in a matter of minutes. Then they adjusted the elevation and rotation and fired off the first rounds. They shook the ground where they were firing but, otherwise, were unheard six miles away. The first salvo came down hard on the outpost. One of the shells destroyed a large segment of the wall while another crashed through a small garage, blasting a Dingo APV to smitherines. The other two landed on the grounds, sending fragments everywhere.

Once again, at the outpost, distress calls went out but the artillery kept coming. The anarchists weren't being foolish enough to assault the outpost this time. They would just shell it with artillery and, as the third salvo demonstrated, rockets too. The anarchists had gotten a hold of several dozen BM-21 Grad multiple-launch rocket systems. Each truck held up to forty rockets and though they weren't as accurate as the howitzers were, they could pummel the outpost and they did. In twenty-seconds, each of the two rocket trucks positioned to attack, launched their full salvo. The eighty rockets slammed down into the outpost moments later, killing most of the remaining survivors.

As they did, the Little Birds came out to hunt again, this time four of them, armed with Adder rocket pods and 12.7mm Gatling guns. They swooped in, low and fast, using their FLIR to locate, target, and destroy the artillery guns. They achieved that much but getting the two trucks was much harder. They would eventually find both of them and destroy them but not until the outpost was a smoldering wreck.

The anarchists had put eighty missiles and about twenty-four artillery rounds into the outpost before the helicopters came. There was little left of it and just two of the sixteen men at the outpost would live to tell the tale, although they wouldn't see the outside of a hospital for months. Injuries sustained during the attack were heavy on both of them but they would live, albeit missing a limb or two.

The attack outraged Layartebian forces and the government. The anarchists sought nothing but all out war and throughout the day, they launched more and more rockets and artillery from various positions along the border. They would fire a few rounds off and immediately leave the area. Due to their quick shots, they couldn't necessarily do pinpoint targetting so, instead, they aimed for urban areas along the border and military outposts.

As they did, Layartebian forces prepared to continue Operation Thunder Rain. In advance of it, the ILAF began to pound various highways and bridges along the border, isolating certain sections, including the town of Aripuanã.

September 5, 2007 - 07:10 [AST]
Amazonas-Mato Grosso Border, Amazonian Control Zone

The shelling of Aripuanã began at 05:30, just seventeen minutes before sunrise. It continued for an hour, unimpeeded as Layartebian M2014s fired rocket assisted projectiles into the small town from 34 miles away. Along with them, a volley of missiles from several M2005s slammed into the town as well. The Layartebians were going forward with the full brunt of Operation Thunder Rain, which would put a full brigade of soldiers into Aripuanã to secure and hold the anarchist enclave. From there, Layartebian forces would spill into the border area with plans to deploy two full divisions into the area, with over 36,000 men. Unfortunately, at the ready, were just two brigades of men, 12,000 soldiers. One full brigade would move to Aripuanã while the other moved to Juruena. Juruena was also under a heavy barrage of artillery fire from missiles mostly but after the hour volley, the Layartebian guns silenced.

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Instead, reconnaissance was taken. A Predator drone flying over each location fed live data back to the Layartebian command centers, showing the extent of the damage and the situation within both locations. It was evident that the anarchists were fleeing, along with much of the civilian population from both locations but there was no real way to tell friend from foe. With forty minutes before the planned assault, Layartebian psyop aircraft crossed the border, relaying a single message across all airwaves: radio, television, and internet. It was a simple message that read, "People of Mato Grosso. The anarchists within your country have brought shame upon you. They have invited war and they have asked for war from the Empire. Surrender to Layartebian forces and reveal anarchists. They will only cause death and destruction. Save yourselves and your country. We are not your enemy." It was repeated over and over and over from a single, EC-130J Commando Solo II flying a patrol over both towns and Cotriguaçu, which was north of Juruena and the first stop for Layartebian armor along the way to Juruena and Aripuanã. Cotriguaçu had been spared bombardment for a single reason.

The Commando Solo was just buying time for Layartebian forces to conduct final preparations. The operation was, arguably, rushed and with only two brigades at the ready, the Layartebian forces would have to act promptly and decisively. Their enemy wasn't a formally trained fighting force. Instead, they were bandits and guerillas and rebels. They could be easily stomped by the Layartebian military machine, which had rolled through the former Federal Republic of the Amazon in less than a month. Layartebian commanders estimated that Operation Thunder Rain could last up to two weeks. They hoped it would last even sooner. It had one overall purpose, to push the anarchist forces back past Brasnorte, which was deep into Mato Grosso, far enough that they could wage no war against the Amazonian Control Zone.

However, to accomplish that task, the Layartebians would need both divisions fully ready. With just two thirds of one division or one third of the total, overall, fighting force, they could only move as far as Juruena and Aripuanã. They would have to wait before they could push further. Finally, at 06:50, the force was ready and the go codes were given.

The first units to move were Layartebian armored units, M2032 Sabertooths leading the way with smaller, lighter, and faster APCs and IFVs behind them, initially. They would soon take the course ahead, scouting for enemy forces and mines placed along the roads. The fast and extremely capable M2031 Tumblers, meant as breaching vehicles, did just that, taking off ahead of the main armored force just as they crossed the border. The two-seat, armored race cars, it seemed as they were, moved quickly down the roads, using their powerful thermal sights to look for enemy forces. They were loaded with an array of light and heavy machine guns, SMAW rocket launchers, a quadruple mortar unit, and a mine laying system. They could hold their own against a tank, using their maneuverability to escape and evade but, if necessary, they could fire their mortars or rocket launchers into the tank, disabling or destroying it.

As the armored force set out from three points along the border, another force set out ahead of all of them. They were CH-47F Chinook and CH-53N Super Stallion II transport helicopters, each carrying forty-four and fifty-five soldiers, respectively. There were twenty-four of each variant in South Eastern Virginia and between them, they could move an entire regiment of men. Instead, they would be moving just three battlions of men, five hundred and twelve soldiers to each battlion. The men would move ahead of the force and land at Juruena, Aripuanã, and Cotriguaçu, being transported by sixteen CH-53s and sixteen CH-47s. Black Hawks would also provide support as well as Anasazi attack helicopters, Arapaho reconnaissance helicopters, and Lakota helicopters. For them it would be just twenty minutes to the three sites and they would all land at once.

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Operation Thunder Rain had now turned into an all-out ground war.

September 5, 2007 - 09:00 [AST]
Aripuanã, Mato Grosso

The gunfighting in Aripuanã was intense from the get-go. Anarchist forces anticipated the army's invasion and laid as many booby-traps and scouted as many ambush zones as they could. It was no surprise that the soldiers took fire the moment they landed but they returned fire just the same. Attack helicopters running strafing runs zoomed overhead to cover their advance as they converged on the battered town, which had received its fair share of artillery fire in just a few hours. They estimated about four hundred anarchist forces in Aripuanã, which meant they had more forces. Countering the flanking maneuvers of the largely guerilla-based anarchist army, the Layartebian soldiers made initial successes and advances.

Further away, Layartebian armor was reaching Cotriguaçu. It was quiet, which was a forboding sign. The Layartebian helicopters had dropped in their infantry soldiers and they had moved into the town shortly thereafter. They reported that it was quiet, all around. To them, it seemed abandoned, very abandoned. That was usually a bad sign. Anarchist forces were in the town, they knew it, and helicopters flew overhead, using thermal and FLIR sensors to try to find signs of life. They found few, which meant they were really hiding and really dug-in, waiting for some unknown.

Lastly, Juruena was a full-on war zone. Anarchist forces began engaging the helicopters even before they could land. One CH-53 was badly damaged by what appeared to be a mobile anti-aircraft gun, possibly a KPV mounted on a pick-up or a jeep. The CH-53 pulled out immediately after dropping its infantry, sustaining six hits along its hull. It would limp back to the Layartebian lines and actually crash land just a half mile south of the airbase. Its crew, wounded, would all survive. Later investigation would reveal that the rounds were 14.5 x 115mm rounds that penetrated the fuel and oil lines. How the pilots got that far, the investigators wondered, was a miracle.

In all three locales, the scene was vastly different. Aripuanã was the site of a highly aggressive anarchist contingent, hell bent on stopping the Layartebians from entering the city. They lined it with devices such as Bouncing Betty landmines, trip wires, gasoline pits, and various other booby traps. They also shot at the Layartebians from every corner and every angle, forcing them to stop their advances and take cover to return fire. Lead was flying around that city like a swarm of locusts but the anarchists weren't very accurate. They had wounded a few Layartebian soldiers, mostly by ricochets, but had failed to kill or seriously injure any of them. The Layartebians, on the other hand, were firing precisely and accurately. Rather than spray rounds into the air, they used their single-fire and burst modes to place their 6.8 x 51mm rounds right on target, which was usually an anarchist's chest. Since they didn't wear body armor, the rounds tore through them without effort. The Level IV rated body armor the Layartebian soldiers wore could sustain in excess of two hundred rounds from a submachine gun and over forty rounds from an assault rifle although those figures were more accurate to the now lower-service Level III systems that had been relegated to the ILDF, who stood behind the front lines. Juruena, as opposed to Aripuanã, was the site of a much more cautious anarchist contingent. Rather than stop the Layartebians from advancing, they wanted to draw them in, for an ambush and they had succeeded. Unlike Aripuanã, three Layartebian soldiers had died and several more were seriously wounded. The anarchists there suffered fewer losses as well. Lastly, in Cotriguaçu, the anarchist contingent was extremely passive. They were trying to draw the Layartebians deep into the city and take away any advantages they could have.

The three cities showed three different styles of fighting the war. The most successful was certainly Juruena but Cotriguaçu showed heavy promise, for the anarchists that was.

Nearly two hours into the operation, the Layartebian forces controlled less than 10% of Aripuanã, approximately 25% of Cotriguaçu, and 18% of Juruena. In total, they had six fatalities and eighteen serious injuries, which required evacuation. Nonetheless, the enemy forces had to have suffered in excess of fifty fatalities as the Layartebian forces advanced amidst sniper fire and booby-traps, which served more to slow them down then to harm them. As they were slowed down, the anarchist forces tried, vainly, to flank them, failing in almost all regards. The most success the anarchists had were from their snipers, who took pot shots at Layartebian forces from concealed positions using semi-automatic rifles mostly. Thus far, the Layartebians had advanced without artillery support, focusing more on aerial support from helicopters and ground-attack aircraft, which buzzed overhead, dropping precision munitions into structures, decimating them.

By 10:00 hours though, it was evident that artillery support was going to be needed. M2014s had moved up, across the border, into secure areas, and began launching guided artillery rounds towards targets designated by the forward artillery spotters, who advanced with the Layartebian soldiers. Between them and the forward air controllers, the enemy was facing a three dimensional threat from artillery, aerial bombardment, and the advancing soldiers. Unbeknownst to a large contingent of anarchist forces holed up in a half ruined structure in downtown Juruena, twelve rounds were bearing down on them. Each round had a warhead consisting of a high concentration of high explosive. They zoomed down at supersonic speed, using an onboard GPS/INS seeker to locate the target. Designed to penetrate buildings, the rounds came down in such succession that the entire building wound up collapsing, taking the anarchists with it. It was a morale boost for the Layartebian forces, who thought they were too far away to be under the veil of artillery but they were proven wrong as guided and unguided shells mixed in the skies and tore down on enemy positions. Unguided rockets fired from Little Bird helicopters above and bigger, more powerful Harbinger and Silencer anti-tank missiles, many equipped with thermobaric warheads, tore buildings to shreds in the two major cities as the Layartebians pushed.

September 5, 2007 - 19:00 [AST]
Aripuanã, Mato Grosso

The brutal battles raged on but had largely subsided in Aripuanã, Juruena, and Cortiguaçu. Layartebian forces had secured most of the territory in all three locales and were beginning to conduct mop-up operations. The rebels had, in large numbers, retreated to the south, to Juína, which was under heavy bombardment from Layartebian aircraft and helicopters. The city there was being shaken left and right by the bombings, which were driving civilians out in droves, leaving the rebels with few places to hide and few allies to rely upon.

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By 19:00 hours, Layartebians forces proclaimed victory in the opening battles of the war, which saw the Layartebian invasion of Mato Grosso. The government in Cuiabá continued to denouce the Layartebian invasion. They demanded an immediate Layartebian withdrawal, economic sanctions, and action against the Empire. Unfortunately, without the ability to project their power into the troubled border region, the Layartebians would go unopposed by Cuiabá. The President of Mato Grosso, a woman by the name of Marta de Oliveira, a strong woman but who had no influence northward. She condemned the Layartebian actions in a speech broadcast internationally.

"Ontem, setembro 4, 2007, o Império de Layartebian, em infração da soberania nacional da nação democrática da República de Grosso, começou operações militares contra as nossas pessoas. Seu lutador-avião de bombardeio jorra bombas derrubadas contra alvos de civil em nossa região do norte de fronteira, uma região que era uma vez pacífico e próspero mas está agora uma zona de alienação.

"Bombardearam nossos aeroportos. Bombardearam nossas rodovias. Bombardearam nossas pontes. Bombardearam nossas plantas de poder. Deslocaram centenas de milhares de civis desta região, criando a crise humanitária maior em brasileiro e história sul americana.

"Hoje, empurraram mais ainda, invadindo nossa nação humilde com forças moídas. Iniciaram operações contra três cidades, Aripuanã, Juruena, e Cortiguaçu. Estes são cidades eles erroneamente reivindicam conter um grupo rebelde de anarquistas, acusado de fornecer braços a insurgentes dentro da República Federal do Amazonas, um país ilegalmente invadido e anexaram por estes imperialistas! Agora trouxeram guerra à nossa nação e eu peço, quando as expansões pararão?

"Em 1980, a nação de Layartebian consistiu em somente a porção nordestina da região de Estados Unidos. Hoje estica de Irlanda a Perú e para baixo às Ilhas Malvinas. Sua sombra preta aconteceu sobre o Caribe inteiro, América Central, a América do Sul, América do Norte, Europa, o Atlântico, o Pacífico, o subcontinente índio. Quando acabará?

"Imploro o mundo condenar esta invasão, repeli-lo com sanções econômicas. Isole a grande prostituta de nosso tempo. Imploro o mundo a ajudante nos em nossos estragos que o Império de Layarteb causou. Suas reivindicações, errôneo, não suportará reparações.

"A este exijo ação mundial. A República de Grosso não cairá aos ventos como a República Federal do Amazonas fez depois que falsa e trunfou para cima reivindicações de ação rebelde.

"Obrigado." [Yesterday, September 4, 2007, the Empire of Layartebian, in violation of the national sovereignty of the democratic nation of the Republic of Grosso, began military operations against our people. Their fighter-bomber jets dropped bombs against civilian targets in our northern border region, a region that was once peaceful and prosperous but is now a zone of alienation.

They have bombed our airports. They have bombed our highways. They have bombed our bridges. They have bombed our powerplants. They have displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians from this region, creating the largest humanitarian crisis in Brazilian and South American history.

Today, they have pushed further, invading our humble nation with ground forces. They have initiated operations against three cities, Aripuanã, Juruena, and Cortiguaçu. These are cities they erroneously claim to contain a rebellious group of anarchists, accused of supplying arms to insurgents within the Federal Republic of the Amazon, a country illegally invaded and annexed by these imperialists! Now they have brought war to our nation and I ask, when will the expansions stop?

In 1980, the Layartebian nation consisted of just the northeastern portion of the United States region. Today it stretches from Ireland to Peru and down to the Falklands Islands. Their black shadow has befallen upon the entire Caribbean, Central America, South America, North America, Europe, the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian subcontinent. When will it end?

I implore the world to condemn this invasion, to repel it with economic sanctions. Isolate the great whore of our time. I implore the world to aide us in our damages that the Empire of Layarteb has caused. Their claims, erroneous, will not bear reparations.

To this I demand worldwide action. The Republic of Grosso shall not fall to the winds like the Federal Republic of the Amazon did after bogus and trumped up claims of rebellious action.

Thank you.]

Whether or not the world would listen was not a concern to the Emperor and the Imperial Layartebian Military. Their sovereignty had been directly threatened by the inability of the Grosso government to control their northern regions. Now, Layartebian forces were required to settle a very unsettling area. Rebels controlled the north and they opposed the Layartebian Empire. They funnelled arms across the border, into the Amazon, as well as fighters and drugs. They fought the Empire at every turn but now they brought the most fearsome military machine down upon them and it was just the beginning.

September 5, 2007 - 21:00 [AST]
Juína, Mato Grosso

The statements made by the government were only marginally true. The Layartebian forces had yet to bomb any powerplants, albeit they were on the striking dossier for the night. Mato Grosso was under seige by the Layartebian military and there was no end in sight, not until the anarchists relenquished all of their arms and ended their fight against the Empire. Fighting continued in Aripuanã, Juruena, and Cortiguaçu as anarchist forces still within the cities opposed the Layartebian forces and reinforcements came, fighting against the Layartebian soldiers left and right. It would be a hard hold to take these three cities and though they controlled over three quarters of the three cities, each, the revitalized push by the anarachists could push the Layartebian forces back.

It was just before dark that a small flight of Layartebian fighter-bombers took off from an airfield in Guyana. The three A-5D Vigilante bombers from the 11303rd Fighter Squadron, based in Bartica had already been in the air nearly two and a half hours when they passed over the border with Mato Grosso. They had refueled mid-air along the way, allowing them to carry a heavier combat load, which included four 2,000 lb. JDAM II bombs for the lead aircraft, eight 1,000 lb. JDAM II bombs for the second aircraft, and two AGM-224A Advanced Hard-Strike Weapons for the third aircraft. They fitted a 600-gallon fuel tank internally and, externally, mounted a pair of streamlined 370 gallon fuel tanks, which would allow them even further range. To reduce weight and drag, they did not carry any air-to-air missiles but would rely, instead, on a pair of Horus fighters circling the area for combat air patrol, although the Republic of Grosso contained no threatening air force. It was more precautionary than anything else.

The Vigilantes kept high, well above thirty thousand feet and kept around 450 miles per hour as they moved through the thin, cold air. When they reached the border they had just 175 miles to the target, still a long journey but one that would be over in just over twenty minutes. They did their final flight checks, arming their satellite guided bombs and programming in the coordinates. Their target was a major powerplant just outside of Juína's city limits. It provided power to the whole city as well as half of the power to the region north of Juína, it was that big and powerful. There was another powerplant in Juruena but it was captured intact by Layartebian forces.

The powerplant was a combination plant, a hybrid built during the time of the Neuvo Rican Empire. Parts of it used biomass production while other parts used oil, natural gas, wood, and various other combinations of solar and wind. It was a highly advanced powerplant, for its time but was now largely obsolete. It was not nearly as efficient as nuclear powerplants but it was still useful for what the area required. Twenty minutes late though, it wouldn't be as the bombers released their payloads shortly before 21:00 hours.

The bombs slid through the night air quietly and towards their aimpoints. Satellite signals guided the bombs as they fell from altitudes ranging from thirty to thirty-six thousand feet. Improvements made to the JDAM series brought about the JDAM II series, which allowed bomb released as high as 100,000 feet and well into supersonic speeds. It also increased the accuracy to around two meters, making them the most accurate freefall bombs on Earth. Inexpensive, at $35,000 per kit, on the average, the Empire had produced hundreds of thousands of them and had largely phased out laser-guided bombs, although the Paveway V series was still in production and still in service.

The twelve bombs hit the powerplant in rapid succession, shattering its brick frame and collapsing its roof in just milliseconds. Fire spread throughout the powerplant as secondary explosions buckled what remained of the structure. From their altitude, it was impossible to really tell the extent of the damage, satellite reconnaissance would do the rest but an advance team of SOF soldiers on the ground had front-row seats to the target as it lit up in flames. It was determined that the missiles wouldn't be needed and the Vigilantes turned back for home, flying out of enemy airspace unopposed and probably unseen.

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September 6, 2007 - 03:00 [AST]
Aripuanã, Mato Grosso

The anarchist forces had done themselves a favor retreating. They had brought the Layartebians closer, putting them deep within a guerilla war, just as the Amazonians had done, albeit not by design there. The Layartebians continued to face resistance throughout Juruena and the situation in Cortiguaçu was similiar although, to a significantly lesser extent, mainly because of its closer proximity to the Layartebian border and the success of Layartebian efforts to destroy the tunnel networks. Further south though, in Aripuanã, the situation was horrific. Layartebian soldiers were being assault left, right, and center by anarchist forces. Armor had caught up to them, giving them the necessary support to hold what positions they had but it was going to be a brutal, all-out fight.

Layartebian forces had held the city for just a few hours and now they were being pushed back as anarchist forces came up from the south, where Layartebian forces had no influence. The offensive was still new but the Layartebian planners, those who had helped with the former Federal Republic of the Amazon did not envision much to the south. Surely, it would be their undoing as Layartebian forces continued to push further south. Helicopter and fixed-wing support was immediately vectored to the Layartebian front in Aripuanã and, realizing what was going on, reconnaissance was set up on the vast main highways that ran south from Aripuanã.

Put into the sky were the mighty AC-27C Sledgehammer gunships, which had long-since replaced the AC-130s years ago. They trained their Bushmaster cannons on the enemy positions throughout the city and used their Harbinger, Silencer, Longhorn, and Maverick missiles as well as Viper Strike bombs to hit positions that their guns would not do much against. They used their powerful FLIR and thermal sights to locate enemy positions and fired hard against them, dropping 120 millimeter rounds on the hardest ones, shaking the plane as they did. The AC-130s had used powerful 105mm howitzers but the AC-27 upgraded to an even more powerful 105mm gun. There was talk about reintroducing the Hercules as a gunship but using the newer, more robust and capable C-130J airframes instead. The AC-27 was very capable but, to many, it didn't bring the same feeling everyone felt for the mighty Spookys and Spectres that had been retired and sat in boneyards, baking under hot daytime suns.

The gunships were only part of the equation. Attack helicopters were the rest of the equation, using their missiles, guns, and rockets to strike enemy positions. Several Lakota and Arapaho helicopters had taken up various positions in the air around the city and to the south. They used their better and more capable sensors, which were designed for reconnaissance and target spotting, to fish out enemy positions, as well as watch what was coming up from the south. That was where they found their biggest targets. The anarchists weren't using the subterranean tunnels as much as they were using the actual roadways. This presented a major advantage to the Layartebian forces, who vectored in A-15 Cobras and AH-99 Anasazi attack helicopters against the highways to the south. They would strafe all night until the anarchist reinforcements ceased.

As they did, target sighting was being done for a wave of airstrikes at dawn, aimed at destroying the highways to the south, enabling Layartebian forces to secure the cities without fear of large volumes of reinforcements moving from the south. They would target small bridges and intersections mostly, using mostly unguided bombs to destroy the easily engaged targets. F-16s and F-26s would do most of the striking but F-46s would be tasked to do the job as well. They could all carry a large amount of bombs and, for most of the targets, 500 pounders would be sufficient, especially against the bridge. Some of the larger intersections and highway segments would require larger, 2,000 pound bombs though.

September 6, 2007 - 06:00 [AST]
Aripuanã, Mato Grosso

"Sir. We need to authorize Thor's Hammer." The General of the ILAF said as he picked up the ringing phone. He knew it was the Minister of Defense on the other end of the line and he had papers all across his desk that showed reconnaissance photography and analysis. "Yes. I am looking at them right now. Thor's Hammer will sever several major bridges and highway routes leading to the north. If we drop those this morning we can stop this wave of reinforcements northward. We are wasting ordinance blow up trucks along the highways when we can knock out the whole highway. No sir. I understand. What is more important? The lives of our soldiers or the lives of refugees? I rest my case. Thank you sir." As he put down the phone he lit a cigarette. "Bureaucrats. What the hell did the Emperor see to give the position." The Minister of Defense was not too popular with the ILM as he was seen more as a bumbling idiot than anything else. His failure over the former Federal Republic of the Amazon was one nail in his coffin and he had few remaining. Even the Emperor was beginning to see his necessity as being easily replacable but he wanted to give the man a chance to redeem himself. Thus far, in Mato Grosso, he was doing well, despite the military doing most of the planning. Operation Thor's Hammer was just another step into Thunder Rain. It would see the focused and tactical destruction of eleven bridges and sixteen highway arteries leading north from Castanheira, Juína, Brasnorte, Novo Horizonte do Norte, and Tabaporá. Anarchist reinforcements would be completely unable to come up through the conventional methods, slowing them down and forcing them completely underground, where their volumes could not be as large.

The Minister of Defense had finally been swayed into the attack, which he originally oppossed, saying it brought on too much collateral damage. He was a byproduct of a small group of Layartebians who thought the Wars of Conquest harmed too many civilians and could have been better exercised differently. Few truthfully believed that, especially in the military. Now with this operation underway, the Imperial Layartebian Air Force took on the largest single day sortie number of any since the opening stages of the war against the former Federal Republic of the Amazon. The strike would consist of several groups attacking the various targets and, because mobile anti-aircraft artillery had been spotted, Layartebian aircraft would be required to suppress them.

Set to kick off at 09:00 hours, local time, the total striking package would consist of enough aircraft to strike the twenty-seven targets and then some. Leading the strike would be a total of sixteen F-16G Super Falcons and four EA-5F Vigilantes. The Super Falcons would be equipped with AARGM and Harbinger missiles to attack the mobile guns. Vigilantes would be armed with minimal loadouts of AARGMs and focus heavily on jamming, just to be on the safe side. Attacking the sixteen highway arteries would be a total of twelve F-26A Typhoons, eight F-46C Enforcers, eight B-10A Badgers, and twelve F-50A Cardinals. Attacking the eleven bridges would be a total of twelve B-10A Badgers and fifteen F-46C Enforcers. Providing air cover support would be a total of eight F-50A Cardinals, eight F-48A Priests, four F-47A Horus', and six F-26A Typhoons. Also, additional support over the target areas would be provided by four MQ-1B Predators, one RQ-4A Global Hawk, an E-9A AWACS, and an E-10A MC2A. Refueling tanks would also be in the air for support. The total air strike would see one hundred and twenty-four aircraft in the air at once, dropping a plethora of ordinance on the various targets. Guided missiles would be used against the mobile gun platforms, if any were found, and, against the highways and bridges, bombs would be used. Each Badger would be carrying either fifteen one thousand pound bombs or six two thousand pound bombs, each Typhoon would be carrying two two thousand pound bombs, each Cardinal would be bringing four two thousand pound bombs, and each Enforcer would be carrying five two thousand pound bombs. Together, they would be dropping hundreds of tons of ordinance on their targets.

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A brutal hour after the attacks began, they were over and Thor's Hammer was complete. Layartebian aircraft poured over the border under the protection of higher flying aircraft with air to air payloads and lower flying aircraft with sophisticated jamming and anti-radiation missiles. The bombers were clear the whole way to the target and it was a messy strike for the enemy. The mission achieved a very high success ratio.

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The aircraft providing air defense actually scored a single kill when a Mato Grosso F-15 Eagle wandered into radar range of one of the F-50 Cardinals. A single LRAAAM was used to destroy the fighter at a range of fifty-two miles. The Super Falcons and Vigiliantes providing electronic escort and SEAD struck down four mobile gun platforms, two of which actually opened fire on Layartebian Enforcers as they came down to destroy one of the bridges.

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In total, there were six aborts of all the aircraft and at least a half dozen bomb misses. Unguided bombs were mostly used due to the lack of absolute precision, as the Minister of Defense deemed. They would have achieved a higher success ratio with guided JDAM IIs but it didn't matter, the targets were all destroyed. Unfortunately, during the course of the attack, the mobile guns managed to take down one aircraft and, unfortunately, there was no ejection. The downed F-46 crashed just a few miles west of Juína and exploded on contact with the ground. The mobile gun, a twenty-three millimeter system, put several rounds into its engines and several more into the front of the aircraft. Most likely, the rounds killed the pilots before the plane ever crashed.

September 6, 2007 - 15:30 [AST]
East of Juruena Mato Grosso

"I repeat, we are taking heavy fire. We need immediate air support right fucking now," the SOF team leader yelled into the radio as bullets and mortar rounds whizzed over head. Four SOF teams from the 4th SOG "Rangers" had been flown into Juruena during the night and were tasked with taking a high value target on a small hill to the east. The hill was the site of a major communications post that the Anarchist forces were using to direct artillery fire. They were also using it to provide reconnaissance for reinforcements, as a sniper nest, and as a hub to their vast tunnel network. The communications post was too vital to destroy with aircraft and, thus far, three attempts to assault it failed. There were at least two hundred Anarchists there and they were dug-in all around the hill. The two Ranger teams had been brought in to clear the enemy forces as regular infantry advanced behind them. The assault began just after dawn on the 6th of September and by noon they had barely reached halfway up the hill. By 15:00 hours, they were stopped dead by a barrage of enemy fire.

The Anarchists were directing fire down on them accurately and had enough weapons there to hold out indefinitely. They used sniper rifles effectively to keep the Rangers and infantry down as they bogged them down, directing mortar and light artillery fire against their positions. Unfortunately, the post was out of range of artillery batteries based in Juruena and that meant they were, essentially, on their own.

Helicopters had been in the air to provide cover for the assault but they were getting shot up regardless of what altitude they flew at and regardless of their speed. Two Little Birds had been badly damaged by ground fire and a Black Hawk crashed just six miles away after taking a hit from a surface-to-air missile. The dense canopy of the hill didn't help either but neither did the tunnels the Anarchists had built and booby-trapped, killing two Rangers who tried to enter one of them.

By 15:30 hours, the Rangers were surrounded and were being threatened with total annihilation without support. The infantry to their rear was in a similiar position and without landing paratroopers atop the hill, the Rangers would be killed. The four teams, spread out along the hill were all fighting for their lives as the Anarchists descended on them through waves and tunnels. Without adequate artillery fire, it was just a matter of time. So, when Captain Frank O'Neill picked up the radio to call for support, he wasn't surprised when they responded, "Out of range." He threw the microphone down and kept fighting as soldiers at the command center across the border, in the Amazon, looked at maps and tasking orders. He didn't expect a response back but he got one at 15:35 hours. "Blue Wonder, come in."

"Yeah what do you want?" He said as he popped off another burst of two rounds from his rifle. "I'm busy and it better be good fucking news."

"Sir. Repeat coordinates for fire mission."

"Repeat them? You fucking have them. The paper is a half mile down the hill by now I'm not going back to get it."

"Roger that sir. Confirm." The coordinates were repeated by the radio operator on the other end of the line and the Captain barely paid attention to them as the bullets whizzed by and the rockets exploded overhead. "Is that correct sir?"

"Sounds fine. Now hurry the fuck up!" He put down the radio, unaware what was coming. "Help's on the way boys!" He yelled as he reloaded the rifle.

Two hundred miles away, in the Amazonas territory, a Vesta battery went on alert. "Key's locked. Target coordinates entered. T minus ninety seconds." The controller said inside the cab of the TEL as he initiated the launch countdown. The missile was already vertical and its powerful warhead was ready to be used against the Anarchist positions. When the countdown was over, he flipped open the plastic cover to the firing button, which was nothing more than a circular, red, illuminated, rubber button. With a push of his fingers, the TEL shook. They had earplugs in their ears to avoid hearing damage, even inside the protected cab.

Outside, the four nozzles of the Vesta breathed fire as the 26,000 pound rocket lifted off the elevator. It roared to life as it ripped into the blue skies above, gaining rapidly in speed as it climbed to an altitude of 38 miles, assuming a quasiballistic trajectory towards the target, two hundred miles away. The rocket quickly sped up to nearly 4,000 mph, which meant that it covered a mile each second.

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After a minute and a half, the Ranger captain picked up the radio again and keyed up the microphone. "Where's our fucking support goddammit!"

"Fire mission underway sir. Stay down."

"Where are you firing from, Cuba?"

"Negative sir. Tactical missile underway. Out." The captain realized what was coming and immediately ordered his men down and to take cover. The fire mission was far enough away from them that they didn't have to worry about the shrapnel effects of artillery shells but a tactical missile, on the other hand, would give them some headache and, so, they immediately hit the ground and covered their positions as the Vesta tore through the skies above them, racing towards a target just a half mile up the hill.

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When the missile hit, it shook the ground for miles. It's powerful thermobaric warhead hit hard atop the hill, not far from the communications station, obliterating half of the Anarachist forces and stopping a massive wave that would have surely finished off the Rangers. The explosion lifted into the sky over the hill and Juruena, which was ten miles away, and rolled upwards with smoke as the Rangers picked up and advanced, hard. Attack helicopters swooped in and provided more cover as the ground continued to shake from the rocket hit. Vestas were being moved into place throughout the border area and would be used to significant effect as the ILM pushed the Anarchists southward.

By the end of the day, another six missiles would be used against the three cities being assaulted by Layartebian forces. Submunitions and fragmentation warheads would devestate the cities as each missile struck down in rapid succession.

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September 6, 2007 - 22:30 [AST]
Aripuanã, Mato Grosso

"Goddammit I can see the fucking line I don't need light!" The corporal whispered rather loudly as he analyzed a trip wire.

"Then what's taking some goddamn long?" A voice behind him asked as the eight solders kept watch while the engineer worked to disarm the booby trap. "We're going to get pinned here!" All around them, the sound of impacting artillery, flying missiles, mortar rounds, and gunfire echoed, shaking the air and the ground. "You done?"

"Hey impatient. Why don't you step on the wire, get your nuts blown off so the rest of us can go? No?" He turned and looked at the sergeant. "Okay then shut the fuck up!" He was being subordinate but, in light of the situation, he didn't care. He was disarming a trip wire that held a tight tension across the ground of a small alleyway and it was rigged to some explosive device that he couldn't find. He wasn't sure though if snipping the tripwire would set it off and he didn't want to just step over it either. Above them, missiles zoomed, flying first and then followed by a sound that echoed into the cavernous openings of the bombed out city, where Anarchists continued to mount a fight against the Layartebian troops. The corporal, deciding that it was now or never, snipped the trip wire and held his breath. He waited for a loud explosion that would send bricks hurdling at him at over ten times the speed of sound but it never came and he breathed a sigh of relief as they moved on, through the alley.

The nine men were a small, advance team sent to neutralize a pair of mortar positions on one side of the city that were raining down rounds on the other side. They had already disabled a pair of armored units though it didn't appear that their shots were aimed as they were too inaccurate and too far spread out to be of much good. Still, they were a nuisance and they had to be taken out quickly. The nine men moved through the last leg of their journey and they could hear the mortar tubes echoing with each round that went off, flying into the air with the flush of air. "Alright men, we're approaching it. Remember. Quiet and stealth!" The sergeant said as the nine of them prepared to assault a small, open area in the back of a courtyard. The courtyard was next door to a small church and the Layartebian military didn't want to risk collateral damage to the church. The Anarchist forces, on the other hand, used this to their advantage and had, on numerous occassions, used strictly civilian targets to wage their war. The Layartebians were responding dutifully and now they were about to neutralize the mortar team.

The nine men climbed a set of steps towards the courtyard, their weapons in hand, ready to fire and ready to engage the enemy forces. With their night vision optics on and the world very green to them, they hushed and moved quickly but quietly, backing against the side of a building for cover. They were not equipped with any Land Warrior systems and neither were most Layartebian forces in this conflict. When the fighting in the former Amazonian Republic began, Land Warrior systems were prevalent throughout the ranks but, here, they weren't, a major drawback to soldiers who had grown used to using them in the field of battle. The sergeant, leading the way, inched up towards the edge of the wall and peaked around. Using his hands he indicated the two mortars, eight enemies, and told them to get ready. Lucky for them, they were working in total darkness and the mortar teams didn't have night vision or flashlights. They operated simply by feel.

The sergeant walked out, his men behind him and they set up a short line, crouched down, and opened fire. Their rounds penetrated the air and tore through the flesh of the mortar teams, killing all of them instantly and without notice. The mortars were, finally, silenced. The team would go on to destroy the ammunition cache that the mortar teams used. From there, they would hold down and wait, reinforcing Layartebian forces moving parallel to their position.

Throughout the night, Layartebian forces continued to push the Anarchists out of Aripuanã. They had done so in Juruena and Cortiguaçu and claimed tactical control over both towns. Aripuanã was the last town on the list, for now, while soldiers behind them, in the border zone, reinforced themselves and prepared for a major offensive that would push the Anarchist forces as far south as Brasnorte, creating a large buffer zone between them and the border, a border zone, the Layartebian government would demand remain demilitarized by the Anarchist forces. The government in Cuiabá continued to condemn the actions of the Layartebians and appealed to a worldwide condemnation but no nations gave in except for a few here and there, none of them significantly important. They prepared a military force to counterattack the Layartebian invasion but even they knew of the slaughter they would face against the Layartebian military.

September 7, 2007 - 05:30 [AST]
Aripuanã, Mato Grosso

While the ILAF continued to bomb Juína into submission, attacking the Anarchist forces as they retreated from the north, the army began mop-up operations in Aripuanã. Their offensive during the night succeeded and helped push a significant amount of the Anarchist forces out of the city and the few that remained were in pockets, scattered here, there, everywhere. They hid mostly, few venturing out to engage the Layartebian soldiers as they moved throughout the city, checking here, there, and everywhere.

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Armored units moved in to help secure the city and helicopters buzzed overhead, using their powerful sensors to locate, sniff out, and annihilate enemy positions. They helped to destroy ammunition caches when they were found and they continued to pummel enemy positions when they were located. The power and precision of their weapons ensured that any enemy target located would not survive and that was the course of events in Aripuanã. The ground war was entering its third day and already, Layartebians forces succeeded in driving the Anarchists out of the border area. The Imperial Layartebian Army controlled all three mentioned cities and two other crucial ones further to the west, that were taken without effort. They included Apiacás and Nova Monte Verde.

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What was created, essentially, was a line in northwestern Mato Grosso that Layartebian forces exercised control over that neither the Anarchists or the government in Cuiabá did. It was a victory now for Layartebian forces as they pushed the remaining Anarchist holdouts southward, out of the border area and out of a lethality zone whereby they could launch rockets and artillery shells into Layartebian controlled territory.

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As the Anarchists retreated, the Layartebian army brought in armored bulldozers to stomp out the last remaining hideouts for Anarchist forces. The bulldozers, produced domestically, could essentially crush any Anarchist hideout as well as level most of the cities. They entered behind armored support and began to clear rubble from the streets, creating pathways for Layartebian forces throughout the various towns in the border area. They also helped demolish suspected hideouts and, on three occassions, crushed Anarchist forces hiding in those locations. They collapsed buildings and walls here and there, suspecting Anarchist snipers and rocket positions but, aside from the three times, they weren't too successful at locating them.

As they did, Anarchist leaders in Juína realized they needed time. They did not expect to be beaten so quickly and they expected a stiff resistance to the Layartebian invasion but, they did not get what they wanted. There was but no solution they had except to indicate surrender and they did. The Anarchist leader, a man who went only by the name of Paco drafted a letter and had it delivered to Layartebian forces in Aripuanã, a risky venture that worked out for the better. They had a small boy, a civilian, deliver the letter and he barely got killed doing it but succeeded.


Dear Layartebian Commander,

My name is Paco and I command the righteous forces you engage. I have watched your illegal invasion and our legitimate resistance with zeal and with hope. Today, the 7th of September, I realize things have gone sour. I wish to, in immediate effect, negotiate a ceasefire between our respective groups. I will invite a negotiation team of your own to Cuiabá on the 12th of September to end this unnecessary fighting. If this is accepted please launch five green flares into the sky over Aripuanã at 18:30 hours, local time, today.

The military commanders thought pessimistically and viewed it as nothing more than a trap but, because they were ruled by civilians and reported to civilians, they passed the note up to the Ministry of Defense. Without any proper authentication method to prove the legitimacy of the letter, the Ministry of Defense was in a pickle. They did not want to be suckered into something as a trap but neither did they want to prolong the war one minute more than was necessary.

September 7, 2007 - 18:30 [AST]
Aripuanã, Mato Grosso

Somewhere along the lines, the Ministry of Defense decided to go with the letter. They would send up the five, green flares over Aripuanã. Despite the insistancies of the military to push ahead to Juína and drive the Anarchists south, to Brasnorte, the MOD ordered the sending up of the five flares. Paco, with spotters inside of Aripuanã, hiding from the Layartebian forces, prepared to radio back the intentions. Because of the lack of authenticity of the document, Layartebian forces remained on high alert but ceased their further advance. They continued to dig in around the border zone, which was being called the "Blue Zone."

Shortly before 18:30 hours, a team of three Layartebians ascended the staircase of one of the few remaining tall buildings in the city. They carried their assault rifles, equipped with 40mm grenade launchers and star cluster rounds. The five GC-3D-2 rounds they carried would provide a seven second burst of green illumination over the city, signalling the intentions of the ILM to go along with Paco's request. Few within the ranks of the military thought of it as a good idea but what could they do, they were being led by the MOD and though the Emperor himself was skeptical, it was, ultimately, the MOD who made the decision on this one. The Emperor had, since the Sky Wonder affair, tried to decentralize the power within the Cabinet. Fearing that his authoritarian leadership style was actually detremental he was given each Cabinet ministry more freedom to do their jobs and it had showed initial success and promise, which was why he forged ahead with the plan, though he disagreed with it himself.

"You guys ready?" The corporal leading the three of them said as he pulled out a grenade round and loaded it into the launcher underneath his M80A1 Assault Rifle. The other two men concurred and did the same. "Alright. Succession, fire, wait for the burst, count to six, and fire. You second, you third. Then I will fire four and you will fire five. Understood?"

"You got it!"

"Good." He aimed upwards and squeezed off the first round. The second, third, fourth, and finally, the fifth round all burst in succession over the city, signalling to Paco the willingness of the ILM to halt the advance and meet in Cuiabá for the discussion, which was, oddly enough supported by the Mato Grosso government and President Marta de Oliveira announced it as much needed. Whether or not it was actually going to happen was something of a different story because, as the Layartebians stopped their advance, the Anarchists regrouped. Within their tunnels and safe locations south of the Layartebian border area, they reinforced themselves, treated their wounded, and prepared to unleash unholy hell on the Layartebians to the north. Paco was only buying time and he planned everything accordingly. He was hinging on the MOD to do the rest of the work for him and they had.

When he had been told about the green flares, he smiled inside of his command bunker in Juína. "Good." He remarked to his men as they agreed. The plan was underway and the Anarchists would use it to their advantage.

September 10, 2007 - 12:30 [AST]
south of Juruena, Mato Grosso

Throughout the entirety of the Imperial Layartebian Army and Marines, the Dingo and Bushmaster were being phased out and replaced by record numbers of Cougar, armored and heavily protected vehicles. They offered far better ballistic and explosive protection than the Dingos or Bushmasters and they were just as agile and capable. Though a few Dingos and Bushmasters still lingered here and there, on the front lines, they were few and far between. They had been retired from the front lines but they still served within the various military bases within the Empire of Layarteb and they still saw active service with the Imperial Layartebian Defense Forces, who had replaced the last of their HMMWVs just two years prior. The ILAF, who mostly used vehicles on base and what not, where they weren't under constant or even remote fire, gobbled up the Dingos and Bushmasters as they rolled away from the front lines. Behind the lines, they were still wholly capable vehicles and protected their crews far better than the HMMWV ever could. In the entire order of battle in Mato Grosso, there were just sixteen Dingos and eleven Bushmasters in service, all of them at Juruena.

While the Layartebians prepared to travel to Cuiabá for the conference between the Anarchists and the Layartebian Empire, things had grown quite quiet. In the Layartebian control zone along the Amazonian border, Anarchists had been rounded up here and there as they attempted to hide out from Layartebian forces. It was tough now to travel southward, out of the zone with the massive presence of Layartebian forces in the area. Anarchists captured were taken back as prisoners and were being shipped far to the north, to the mainland, in the Province of Layarteb, where they would be interrogated, questioned, and either imprisoned or released, following the cessation of hostilities. The way it was looking though, few of the 400 captured would be released. Many of them freely admitted to fighting against the Layartebians and they were proud of it. This only meant that they would see the inside of a prison cell and those weren't pretty. It would be up to the ministries of justice and the interior to decide where to put them. There was talk of building a new facility in the center of Alabama, where the tropical heat and humidity were murder during the summer.

Juruena was not far from a river delta that served as a major juntion for the local populace. While the Layartebians worked to repair several bridges along the delta, for the Rio Juruena. The work crews travelled to and from the various bridge sites along the delta and the river by way of convoy. It was still too dangerous to just move freely and convoys consisted of three Dingos, each armed with fifty caliber machine guns. All three vehicles were armored against most small arms fire, could withstand an RPG hit, and could even withstand a small anti-tank mine. One such convoy was preparing to depart at 12:30 hours back to base camp in Juruena. Work crews pulled six hour shifts and one shift was ending. The Dingos, each carrying eight men, arrived just before 12:30 hours. Each vehicle could take six men back with them and the three of them would be filled. Work crews included groups of six men and there were three immediate sites near the delta that each vehicle stopped at and then, moved along. They worked hard at the various sites and were in need of some due rest. Because they were the earlier crew, they avoided most of the humidity and the heat that came along with the mid-day crew, which was arriving.

Finally, at 12:45 hours, the three Dingos prepared to set off from the delta. They were loaded with eight men each: six workers, the gunner, and the driver. Pulling away from the delta was normal and they began a short, eight mile drive back to Juruena, where they would do other work around the city. The Layartebians had largely cleaned up a lot of rubble in the various cities they assaulted in the northwestern portion of Mato Grosso. Life had yet to really return to them but those who stayed were finding that the Layartebian soldiers were rebuilding and cleaning up the disaster that was created by the war. Few were grateful though.

Two miles up the road, the three Dingos turned onto a dirt road and continued northward at forty-five miles per hour. Unfortunately, for them, just a half mile from the turn, everything went to shit. The Anarchists had plotted and planned an ambush by placing an IED in the middle of the road, buried underneath just six inches of earth. It consisted of two, 105mm high-explosive artillery shells, fused together and connected to a remote detonator. When the lead vehicle neared the blast zone, the Anarchist forces detonated it. The blast shook the ground and covered the entire area in a haze of dirt and dust. The Dingos to the rear immediately slammed on their brakes. They followed a separation standard, meaning that the blast from the first one wouldn't necessarily destroy the others.

The explosion destroyed the first Dingo and all those inside of it, scattering parts for a mile radius in every direction. The Anarchists flowed out next, dozens of them, firing towards the Dingos as they rushed from the sides of the road. With the distress call out, the other two Dingos took off at full speed, their heavy machine guns pounding out rounds left and right. The ambush was carefully coordinated and saw a slew of small arms fire pinging off the sides of the Dingos, the drivers frantically speeding down the roadway, the gunners providing what cover they could. Their biggest threat was more IEDs but there weren't any. However, there were dozens of rocket launchers and unguided, anti-tank rockets streaked across the ground, towards the Dingos.

September 10, 2007 - 13:30 [AST]
Layartebian Control Zone, Mato Grosso

The ambush prompted an immediate end to the ceasefire that had been in effect since September 7. Layartebian leaders within the MOD were flabberghasted at what happened but the military leaders, on the other hand, weren't. They expected this much and they were seemingly ready. In the three days, they had boosted Layartebian forces in the control zone from two brigades, numbering 12,288 men to four bridgades, numbering 24,576 men. That was a significant number of reinforcements. An additional two brigades were still being surged and prepared behind the lines, which would add an additional 12,288 men. Counting the reservists that were set to deploy, the Imperial Layartebian Army would have close to 50,000 men inside of Mato Grosso by the end of the month. The military was doing at least what they could to prevent a total overrun of Layartebian positions while the MOD foddered along, as many of them described their actions.

The ambush wasn't the only break though. Anarchist forces had used the three days to quietly and secretly get into positions all around the Layartebian Control Zone. Those captured made out like they had been there for weeks and were almost relieved to get some food and water, despite being put in jail. The Anarchists used the time to reinforce their supplies, tend to their wounded, and formulate new plans. They had drawn the Layartebians in and in enough that they were too far to immediately run to home. Over the course of the three days, some 3,500 Anarchists had moved into the Layartebian Control Zone, mostly through underground tunnel networks, some over forty years old, stemming back to the Venezuelan Civil War, before the Empire of Layarteb ever existed.

At precisely 13:30 hours, the Anarchist forces attacked. Inside of the seemingly quiet cities of Aripuanã, Juruena, Cortiguaçu, Apiacás, and Nova Monte Verde, the air suddenly erupted into the loudest collage of war that ever existed. Gunfire, mortar fire, mine explosions, booby traps, and everything else the Anarchists had available suddenly went off in a massive offensive that began like clockwork. Layartebian forces were somewhat caught by surprise. The influx of captures over the past thirty-six hours told them that the ceasefire was just a stall tactic and they were reinforcing positions throughout the control zone. What wasn't expected though was the quickness that the ceasefire would be broken. Intelligence agents and military planners expected at least until the 11th before all hell broke loose. This was now a day early and caught the Layartebians by surprise. Still, the Layartebian Army dug-in and began to fight back. They weren't being driven back and they weren't going to surrender either. The Anarchists had waged war upon them and they would lose that war.

As the Anarchist forces launched their attacks, Layartebian helicopters and aircraft took the skies and began to provide support. Fighterbombers equipped with guided bombs and missiles brought down their ordinance on Anarchist positions as attack helicopters provided hard and heavy gunfire against the Anarchist positions, being directed in by the various Layartebian ground controllers, entrenched with the fighting forces. It was really a major urban battle and the Layartebian Army excelled in urban fighting tactics, namely due to the Conquest Wars that included mostly urban fighting. The Anarchists, on the other hand, knew the territory and knew it well. They had prepared for this, after all, drawing the Layartebians in at their will. It was they who started this war and for good reason. They had studied their Sun Tzu and were ready to use the philosophy.

Layartebian artillery and air strikes were concentrated around the northwestern portions of Mato Grosso and seemingly did not include Juína, for the moment. Aircraft occassionally flew over and dropped a bomb here or there as targets became available but those were few and far between now. Most of the air strikes were settled north of Juína and with the highways and bridges severed, there were even fewer targets to strike. Airstrikes had pretty much taken out the power to the entire northwestern region and that included Juína, where civilian refugees began to huddle in various air raid shelters, many of them lacking the protection against the more powerful penetrator bombs that the ILAF employed.

With MOI agents moving freely inside of Juína, spotting targets for airstrikes, along with Layartebian BOF soldiers, it was considered a sort of "safe city," in that most of its activities were known. The underground networks, on the other hand, weren't but those were not of concern, yet. In the northern areas, Layartebian units moved into them and collapsed every one they found, sometimes setting up their own booby traps for the Anarchists as they came out of them. They were quite ingenious with the counter-traps and one included using detonator cord to actually sever the body of one of the Anarchists, igniting a controlled demolition of over 200 yards of tunnel, killing over 100 Anarchists at once. It was the most successful counter-tunnel maneuver conducted during the war so far.

September 12, 2007 - 11:00 [AST]
Juína, Mato Grosso

Andrew Hunt had been in Mato Grosso going on three months now and he wanted to get the hell out of there as soon as possible. As one of the many field agents within the Ministry of Intelligence he had been here, there, and everywhere. He had successfully oversaw the Layartebian hunt against Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam, an Afghani drug lord who supplied money and arms to the Sepah-e Pasdaran, who, in turn, supplied training to the Illuminati Ghost Warriors. When Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam had been killed in March, Andrew had been fostered away, to a few posts here and there but never long enough to get too comfortable. Then, in July, well after the successful destruction of the former Amazonian Republic, he had been summoned again and sent to Mato Grosso. Anarchist forces were flooding the Amazonian Control Zone with arms and fighters and he was to provide intelligence on their network. He moved around throughout the country, mostly concentrating his efforts to the northwest. In August, he was joined by two other agents, who were more or less field technicans rather than actual spies.

Since the outbreak of war, he and his small team had bunkered down in Juína and took refuge in a large hotel building that was off-limits to artillery and aerial targetting, for good reason. It was, essentially, an air raid shelter and Andrew could make sure that the Anarchists weren't using it as a military command center. They weren't and it remained safe for him to stay. From his twelfth floor room, he had a commanding view of the city and the horizon for as far as sixteen and a half miles. He and his team had plenty of equipment to make sure that they could see that far away too. Equipped with bionoculars, high-resolution cameras, and powerful optical scopes, they could see just about every part of the city. Because their windows were tinted, they could operate relatively freely without people looking at them and seeing who they were and what they were doing.

Their large hotel room was a mess. They had garbage mostly everywhere, mainly because they rarely ventured out of the hotel. When the war began, most of the staff fled, leaving just a skeleton crew who, essentially opened the kitchen up to refugees. The three of them took turns getting food and, since the water continued to flow, they had plenty of sustenance, even if it wasn't too good. Aside from that, they had equipment out the ying-yang. There were four sets of bionoculars mounted on tripods, two sets of handheld bionoculars with impressive zoom capabilities, four digital cameras that could get resolution as powerful as 18 megapixels with impressive zoom and SLR abilities, a powerful satellite communications set, and their personal belongings. They never ventured far from the room and when they did, someone always stayed behind with a two-way radio that all of them carried. It was secure and worked much like a cellular phone except that it didn't need to make the call. It would just transmit over a secure frequency. They had weapons too. Each of them packed an M105A1 Tactical Defense Pistol and they had three M99A1 ASAC rifles, two M109A1 Advanced Combat Shotguns, and three M97A3 UMP submachine guns. They carried grenades ranging from simple fragmentation to incendiary and smoke. They also had some explosives with them too, enough to destroy the entire room, their equipment, and a good portion of the twelfth floor. Because they were in such a heated warzone, they had the room wired with the explosives and they could detonate it remotely, if need be but they hoped that wouldn't arise.

For days, they had been watching and reporting on Anarchist troop movements inside of Juína. Whenever an aircraft appeared overhead and dropped a bomb it was because of them. They used real-time, powerful satellite imagry to spy on places they couldn't see and direct airstrikes where they needed. They were heavily successful and it was they who suggested the strike on the airport after they observed two cargo planes land and offload surface-to-air, guided missiles, Stingers. They could practically listen to every radio communication within Juína and, using the proper codes, they could tap into the vast network of spy satellites overhead, enabling them to listen to even secure communications between the Anarchists. For days, they had been mapping out command locations here and there, listening to and trying to find Paco's voice. It was tough and they were working overtime. Layartebian listening aircraft overhead provided help as they scoured the radio bands for voices that sounded familiar.

Now, Andrew was making the final preparations for another strike. He had been observing a steady flow of Anarchists into a single building, just two miles south of the hotel. He had a clear view of it and he had a clear view of a good portion of the southern and eastern portions of the city. Because the hotel was actually on the outskirts, they had a view of most of the city. The flow of enemies into the building was not as great as their flow out, meaning that, simply, they had a tunnel entrance there or a large arms cache. Unfortunately, what he couldn't see was its northern entrance, which was accessible only through a building several hundred feet north of it, connected by a thin alleyway that was covered. As the Anarchists ran into the building, they ran out through tunnels leading them to the north, underneath a steady flow of civilians, pouring into the building as it was actually an air raid shelter. There was, unfortunately, no way to know this and the sheer volume of Anarchist forces entering, with guns in their hands, rockets strapped to their backs, and grenades on their belts made it a legitimate target. He finished his final sweep of the area and picked up the GPS locator that he had been issued. He carefully zoomed down to the building and placed the cursor right over the center of it, giving him a decimal readout of the latitude and longitudinal location of the building center. He made sure to double check them against satellite data and they verified.

Andrew put down his binoculars and looked around the room. "We're going." He said as he sat down at a table near the corner of the room, away from the windows. They had rigged the satellite transmitter to the window by way of wire and hid it that wire underneath the carpet. Because of the lack of a maid staff now, they had little reason to actually hide the stuff but they did. He picked up the secure phone and put down his notepad, the GPS coordinates scribbled on it. Dialing a nine digit number, he waited for the satellite to connect. It took just fourteen seconds and, when it did, they entered eleven more numbers, following by an audio verification. The encryption software kicked in and suddenly his communication was vamped up to an amazing 2048-bit encryption, nearly impossible to crack in any one's lifetime, using current technology. "This is White Tiger. I have a receipe." He began. Despite the encryption and security, there was no room for error, who knew who was actually listening.

"Go ahead White Tiger. I've got my chicken broth heating on the stove." A voice from the other end came. That voice was far away, in the Ministry of Intelligence building, in Layarteb City, nine stories underground, well over 3,700 miles away.

"Alright. I want you to turn the oven to bake and preheat it to 400 degrees Fahrenheit." That was code for a heavy strike. In the MOI communications room, the agent brought up a list on the wall of available striking options, which included a B-10 strike in one hour, a Vesta strike available immediately, and a pair of Enforcers who could be on target in fifteen minutes.

"That is understood White Tiger. I need to know the proper salt content," he asked now for the latitude of the strike.

"Okay here it is." He gave the coordinates in a cypher that equated to 11°25'01.11" south. Then he gave the "pepper" reading which asked now for the longitude, which equated to 58°46'22.47" west. "Rapidly preheat the oven." He then said, meaning that time was of the essence, ruling out the B-10 strike.

"Are there fleas in the aera?" The MOI agent asked, meaning were there any civilians.

"That is correct. We have a filthy dog here." There were civilians and that meant accuracy was of the utmost importance. The Enforcer was carrying only unguided bombs so it was ruled out, leaving just the Vesta option.

"Alright. We've got the oven ready. We're going to put the Turkey in first and then go for the stuffing. Talk to you soon." By themselves, they meant nothing but, in combination, that indicated a Vesta missile. Andrew put down the phone and walked back to the window.

"Vesta is inbound. I estimate it'll be here in just six to eight minutes. Are the cameras set up?"

"You got it. We're rolling and ready for the BDA. Satellites are keyed in as well."

Two hundred and seventy-five miles away, to the north, inside of Layartebian territory, a Vesta battery went online. The target coordinates were downloaded via secure satellite downlink. The battery had three TELs and a total of six missiles. On the three TELs were all unitary warhead variations. Two of them carried the powerful, BLU-118 thermobaric warhead, capable of collapsing the hotel Andrew was in, with just one strike. The other carried the BLU-116 Advanced Unitary Penetrator warhead, a 2,000 pound class warhead that had double the penetration that the BLU-109 Improved 2000 lb. warhead had. Combined with the powerful speed of the Vesta, it could penetrate through a significant portion of the available targets throughout the world. Equipped with a programmable, hard-target, smart fuse, it could be programmed to explode at various depths, allowing for maximum damage.

At the battery location, those outside scurried to their positions. Four people removed the camouflage netting from one of the TELs while everyone else moved away from the missile launcher. The crew of the TEL climbed into the vehicle and began the launch proceedure. The man operating the missile launch itself booted up the information on his computer console. The target coordinates were first programmed into the missile and the default setting for the fuse was set, since no known intelligence on the building's structure was available. With the net clear, he initiated the raising proceedure and the missile elevator sprang to life, elevating the missile to a 90° vertical position. Once the missile was elevated, he entered one half of the launch sequence. The commander of the vehicle entered the other half. At that moment, things were ready to go, the missile was armed, its trajectory selected, and its target locked. The driver and the gun operator of the TEL had not joined the commander and the launcher within the cab and they immediately locked the doors. Nobody could get in or out unless they allowed it and it would require both of them to do so. Usually, the entire crew would be inside of the cab but this wasn't a threat environment.

"Countdown initiated. Ninety seconds to launch." The launcher said as he initiated the countdown. A timer in the vehicle began to tick down from the number ninety. The missile they would fire was armed with the BLU-116 AUP warhead and it guaranteed that nothing would be left of the building once it struck and detonated. When the countdown was over, the missile was ready to fire. The launcher lifted the plastic cover over the launch button, which was a red, circular, rubberized button that illuminated a red light. "Launch!" He said as he pushed the button, marking the twelfth combat launch of the Vesta rocket.

Outside, everything sprang to life. The four nozzles of the Vesta breathed fire as the 26,000 pound rocket lifted off the elevator. It roared to life as it ripped into the blue skies above, gaining rapidly in speed as it climbed to an altitude of 28 miles, assuming a quasiballistic trajectory towards the target, two hundred and seventy-five miles away. The rocket quickly sped up to nearly 4,000 mph, which meant that it covered over a mile each second. The missile shot vertically, climbing at a 45° angle, gaining speed raiply as it approached the altitude where it would peak. Because it was quasiballistic, it could fly a very unpredictable path. There was, essentially, no way to tell where it would hit. Because of this, the missile was one of the most capable in the world and its payloads and ranges agreed. The missile ripped into the sky and hurtled towards the target, its GPS chips locking onto the target, guiding the speeding missile towards it at phenomenal speeds. There were plans to upgrade the missile with a more powerful engine, allowing for speeds in excess of Mach 8, a thirty-three percent increase in its speed. There were also plans underway for a second stage to be fitted onto the missile, hoping for increased range. None of these were realized, yet.

The Vesta began its descent not far from the target, maneuvering eratically to keep its true target a mystery. It was only seconds later when the missile struck. It hit with such force and with such powerful that it shattered through the unprotected roof of the structure and burrowed itself into the ground, using its speed and the penetrator warhead to push it deep into the ground. The strike itself collapsed the rather ill-kept air raid shelter underneath the building and the missile penetrated through at least half of it before the fuse activated. The explosion was immense and the ground shook as the warhead detonated. It annihilated the air raid shelter and the building itself, collapsing it onto its own footprint.

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Smoke rose over it as a massive fireball climbed into the sky. The intelligence agents in the hotel watched the whole strike, noticing the effects of it. It was devestatingly accurate and Andrew Hunt put down his binoculars just moments after it hit. "Circular error probability. Zero." He commented as the building collapsed, exploding, kicking dust, debris, fire, and smoke into the air. The missile had been in the air for less than six minutes and hit with impressive accuracy and power.

It hit the right target, the target that Andrew designated. However, the Anarchists weren't deeply affected. The civilians were. The building had been an air raid shelter for the Neuvo Ricans, a fact known to the Layartebians but, because of the flow of Anarchist soldiers into it, it had been taken off the protected target list. Unaware that civilians still occupied it, Andrew called down the strike with devestating precision. Throughout the day, rescue and aide workers would sift through the rubble, looking for survivors but there were none. The blast was so powerful that it obliterated the whole building and its basement shelter. It caused significant structural damage to a neighboring building, injuring 48 civilians within it and killing an additional 18. Inside of the main target, the bodies of 1,026 civilians would be pulled out, some no bigger than a finger. There were an estimated 1,680 civilians inside of the bunker but their remains would never be identified. Of the 1,026 that were pulled out, 616 of them, over half, were children under the age of 15. The rest were mostly women. In total, the strike killed an estimated 1,698 civilians and an untold number of Anarchists who were in the tunnels below. The Anarchists would estimate that they lost just 32 men in the strike, bringing the total number to 1,730 killed and 48 injured. Of course, the Anarchists would never publically admit to the presence of the tunnels and while the government in Cuiabá moved to condemn the Layartebians, they asked the whole world to do the same.

The Fourth Reich officially condemns this act of civilian massacre on the part of Layarteb.

The following statement was delivered to the Layartebian embassy in Oslo by a high-level official from the Foreign Ministry six hours after the Vesta strike against the air raid shelter in Juína with instructions to the recipiant at the embassy that it was to be delivered to the Layartebian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as quickly as possible.

Official Statement

The Realm is shocked and appaled by the blatant disregard for the lives of the innocent civilians trapped within the wartorn city of Juína that the Empire of Layarteb displayed today. While we have not been opposed to the conflict in Mato Grosso, this latest infraction made by the Empire of Layarteb against the innocent civilians taking refuge in a known air raid shelter filled with civilians, a target which is off-limits even to Layartebian soldiers, had forced us to reconsider our position. We cannot support a side in a conflict which obviously has such a casual attitude towards civilian lives.

Therefore, the Realm of Cotland is hereby officially condemning the Empire of Layarteb for its brutal murders of more than sixteen hundred civilian lives and counting, and calls for the officers responsible for carrying out this strike be brought to justice before a Layartebian court-martial to answer for his or her crimes.

Rest assured that we will monitor not only this situation and its after-effects closely, but also the conflict. We warn the Empire: Any further strikes against civilian targets, and you will find that you will have a hard time rallying support in the Realm in the future.

[signed]
Siv Jensen
Foreign Minister
The Realm of Cotland

1700 dead in Juína after errant military strike

CUIABÁ (RFP)- An estimated 1700 people are dead today after a missile struck a shelter in Juína, according to multiple witness accounts. The Empire Of Layarteb has so far released no statement regarding the incident, but according to several reliable sources, it was unmistakably an EOL missle that pierced the building, causing it to collapse within minutes.

Condemnation of the attack was swift. Already EOL allies Germania and Cotland have denounced the strike, calling it a "civilian massacre" and admonishing the EOL for a "casual attitude towards civilian lives". Multiple groups also marched on the Layartebian Embassy in both Rome and Toronto to protest the strike (with some calling for the complete independence of the Amazonian Republic), with a mass vigil held at 12PM Toronto time and 6PM Roman time dedicated to the fallen victims.

Meanwhile, Emperor Valerius IV Maderia also released his own statement regarding the tragedy:

"It is with a heavy heart that we witness the recklessness and the gross miscalculation by the Empire Of Layarteb in senselessly killing civilians- civilians they are trying to win over- all in the name of culling a rogue group. The EOL, it seems, will stop at nothing to snuff out recalcitrant groups, and it is this kind of recklessness that we in the Roman Empire not only cannot just support but also is something that must be completely and utterly admonish. We are also aggrieved by the fact that the EOL has not yet released a statement of regret regarding its tragic error in judgement."

When the floor was opened for questions, Maderia stated that his Foreign Ministry and the Consul of Brazil Julio Ferrara will conduct a "thorough review of the war" and re-evaluate the Roman position on the war. When asked the likelihood of continued Roman support of the war, Maderia replied "slim."

"We simply cannot support a war if the EOL gives us every indication that they are going to put civilian lives at risk," explained Maderia. "They've killed innocent Neuvo Ricans now- who's next? Romans? We cannot stand for that prospect, espeically considering the high population of Roman citizens living in nearby territories, and thus we will not support this war if the EOL continues conducting it in this manner."

As for the immediate Roman response, more soldiers are expected to be deployed in nearby Acre and in border areas around Bolivia. Although Roman officials do not believe the war will spill over into their territory, after the events of today they decided they will take no chances- hence the increases in the border patrol.

Slowly the high-level diplomat approached the Secretary of the Ambassador inside the Embassy of the Empire of Layarteb in Stockholm. He motioned the case was to be placed in the secure TOA drop box designed for flash messages to be exchanged between Prime Minister Wells and the Emperor himself. Inside the message neatly penned on Wells personal stationary read.


Old Friend:

I can't help but be saddened by the recent VESTA strike on the Civilian Air Raid complex. While we understand the intent of the strike was to eliminate insurgents hiding amongst the populace, the blatant disregard for civilian lives is deeply troubling, not only on an official level but also personal one. I can see the faces of the children and innocent men and women that surely were instantly evaporated inside that shelter. It is with some reservation that I have to officially condemn the actions of the EOL Military for this action and I hold the EOL leadership responsible for this cataclismic loss of life. In the best interests of both the EOL and the World the men responsible for this unthinkable strike need to be brought before a tribunal and held responsible for there actions. We do not want to be associated directly or indirectly with the indiscriminant killing of civilians and the EOL has drug every TOA Nation into a bad light with this action. These actions reflect badly on the EOL and The October Alliance in a time when we can ill afford bad publicity on our group. I hope this doesn't strain our relations within the TOA and I hope you will personally fix this matter.

Signed,

Prime Minister Gordon Wells
Holy Republic of Hawdawg

Official Statement from Eurasian Government

The United Federation of Eurasia is horrified of brutal murder of 1700 innocent civilians who no had part in the conflict against the Empire. Eurasian Government can understand the area was a war zone, we can understand certain areas were selected as targets, but to strike shelter full of unarmed civilians crosses a line between the nature of war and mass senseless murder. The Eurasian Government here by condemns the Empire for its senseless killing of innocents. We call for those behind this to be bought before justice to answer for their crimes.

Signed

Premier Nasir

Official Statement from Premier Kristan Zhao of the United Eastasian Republic

"I know I speak for the entirety of the Eastasian people when I express my shock and disgust for the actions of the Empire of Layarteb; such casual disregard for life, undoubtedly some Layartebian number-cruncher is eagerly tallying the statistics without even a first thought for the lives that were brutally snuffed out. We would hope that there is some explanation, some valid reason, but to be honest even the most eloquent of speakers would be hard-pressed to defend such an atrocity.

The thoughts of everyone in the United Eastasian Republic are with the families and friends of those who lost their lives in this...incident. We would like to think that those involved will be subject to the harshest penalties possible, but if the orders came from higher in the command chain then it is likely to be a vain hope that anyone will be disciplined for this."

Official Communique

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Priority: High
Recipient: Global Community
Origin: Empire of Layarteb - Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Classification Level: Confidential
Subject: Juína


The Empire of Layarteb is deeply plagued by the events that have unfolded in Juína. It is not our intention to kill innocent civilians. However, as is the policy of the Ministry of Defense, the Empire will not comment publicly upon any current operations. Let it be known that the Empire shall conduct a full investigation into this occurrence and if the participating parties are found to be guilty of negligence, they will be punished accordingly.

The Empire shall not, under any circumstance, submit this case to an international tribunal nor allow a foreign country or government body to pass judgement upon those who participated. The Empire will not recognize any judgement or case of similar nature and should any attempt at force be made, the Empire will see it as a direct violation of the Doctrine of Sovereignty and take immediate action henceforth.

The situation in Mato Grosso is very fragile and highly critical. The government has taken no action to stop or even impede the flow of arms and insurgent fighters across the border into the Amazonian Territory, where Layartebian forces are working diligently to restore stability. This region has a four decade long history of strife and just recently, in May, that history cost the lives of several hundred thousand Venezuelan citizens. The Empire has taken just action against the former Amazonian Republic for their support of that war and continues to hold the guilty accountable. The government of Mato Grosso has not cooperated and the Empire must take matters into our hands to protect our borders and our citizens.

The Empire holds skepticism to the number of dead that the Mato Grosso government has claimed. Reconnaissance has observed that building taken a steady flow of insurgent fighters using tunnel networks to harass Layartebian forces in the border control zone. Our strike was just and though it shall be reviewed, we maintain the fullest level of confidence in our armed forces. We would not at all be surprised if these "civilians" were planted by insurgent forces to coax an unsuspecting and gullible global community into condemning our actions.

The Empire also finds it appalling that the governments of the world would pass condemnation upon the Empire as we defend ourselves from a clear and present danger. It is all too easy to condemn and sit thousands of miles away, ignoring the hard facts of this war, a war that was started not by the Empire but by forces conspiring against the common good. Should we deem it necessary to take due course of action against the global community it would be in accordance with the Doctrine of Sovereignty.

Lastly, the Empire is especially displeased with our fellow allies of the October Alliance. Your lack of support for our own domestic defense has led us to believe that the October Alliance is not entirely supportive of the policies of the Empire. Should it be the case, the Empire would see no benefit in remaining within the October Alliance. Our sovereignty is of the utmost importance, over all nations, friend or foe.

Sincerely,
The Emperor


.

Official Statement from The Russian Federation

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We join the global community in condemning these acts of violence against the civilians that were brought about by Layartebian Imperialism. Where are civilian casualties in any war but that is no excuse to target a civilian complex, neither is it an excuse if these actions were taken due to poor intelligence. Innocent lives lost will never be regained and it is the fault of the Empire of Layarteb and no one else. Our only hope is that where will be justice in this for those who suffered and punishment for those responsible.

Signed,

Igor Stepanov
President of the Russian Federation

After the gross display of military imprecision that occurred in Juina, the Chief of Mission at the COH Embassy in Layarteb was dispatched immediately toi the Foreign Affairs Ministry.


OFFICIAL COMMUNICATION/STATEMENT

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Once again the Empire of Layarteb is at the forefront of the world's gaze with yet another heinous display of disregard for civilian lives during wartime. Like many other nations we do not oppose EOL actions in Matto Grosso but the recent murder of over a thousand civilians carried out by the EOL military is nothing short of disgraceful.

The Commonwealth is, hereby, making its anger and protest known to the manner in which the EOL is and has been conducting its operations. Support for them is thinner now than it ever has been.

The Emperor has talked of his own feelings, that of being appalled at the international community for its response to the massacre in Juina. Perhaps the Emperor should consider the feelings of the surviving relatives of the thousand people he so heinously ill-considered in authorising such a poor manner of war-fighting.

The Empire is displeased with the October Alliance? Perhaps the Emperor and the Empire should consider exactly how displeased the Alliance is with them.

Signed,

The Department of State,
Hirgizstan City

September 12, 2007 - 17:30 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

The Emperor entered his office with several Cabinet members in tow, ready for a meeting. It was a small meeting, including just the ministers of defense, foreign affairs, intelligence, and the interior. They had received the latest international condemnations from the Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Hirgizstan. The former was expected, to say the least but the latter was not. "So what is this nonsense? The Cottish, the Hawdawgians, the Hirgizstanians, even the fucking Eurasians!" He said as he sat down at the conference table, the others sitting as well, behind them, the doors shutting. "What is going on here? It wasn't an errant strike was it?" He asked, unsure of the answer.

"Sir. As far as the evidence goes and we've done it already. Our agent observed dozens of insurgent fighters, armed, enter the building and not exit. He watched this over a several day time frame. Based on satellite and real-time imagery it is a viable target. What could not be seen were civilians entering an adjacent building, which led to, apparently, an underground shelter underneath the building." The Minister of Intelligence said.

"Alright. Do we have plans of the structure?"

"Yes sir. We do and we were not aware of the shelter still being in use."

"Why is that?" The Emperor asked, rather sarcastically, the concept being foreign to him. "It is a raid shelter and we are bombing them into oblivion."

"Sir. The shelter was built over sixty years ago. It is not armored or even fortified against modern weaponry."

"Little is."

"This is true sir but modern shelters have some sort of reinforcement to them. This shelter does not so it is fully believable that it wasn't in use anymore."

"Understandable. So there was a tunnel entrance below?"

"Yes sir. The rebels were using the civilians, essentially, as shields."

"Alright. So it remained a viable military target."

"Yes."

"Moving along then. What are the estimates for the death toll. Are their figures accurate?"

"Yes sir. As far as we can tell as well their figures are accurate. Over 1,700 dead. Mostly all civilians sir."

"Goddammit. Alright. Well we're moving past this. Based on your investigation of the matter where do we stand?"

"Justifiable." The ministers all added, one after the other.

"Fine then. We're moving along. How is the situation here?"

"Worsening." The Minister of the Interior added. "The populace is not happy. It seems that our strike did not just aggravate foreign governments. There have already been three protests. All of which have been stopped and the guilty parties arrested but, sir, we can't stop them all if they get out of hand. We just don't have the manpower for that."

"No. I understand. If we have massive civil unrest we will be in deep trouble. Contain what we have and make sure that we don't lose control of the situation. What size were the protests?"

"Forty people at the first in Falcon City. Seventy-four here in Layarteb City. Then another eleven down in Washington City. They're pretty small, yes. We have indication that there could be bigger ones brewing though. Our intelligence assets are wary of the situation and they're ahead of the game. We expect that, within the evening and the night, we're going to conduct seventy-four simultaneous raids. We expect that we'll net over a thousand dissidents that are currently preparing to open up a large amount of protests."

"Do we have proper evidence? Collected legally? You understand how the legal system is here, correct? Technicalities won't add up to much but we don't want it getting out that we couldn't handle this because then every nutball will be doing this and we'll have lost our edge."

"Yes sir. We have been collecting intelligence on them for weeks but now we feel this is the catalyst for them to strike. We're going to make sure that they don't."

"Good. This is enough for now." The Emperor said as he leaned back, looking over now at the Minister of Defense. "Give me a situation update."

"Yes sir. At the moment all major cities and towns in the border region are in dispute. We do not currently have strategic or tactical control over any of them due to the attack. Our estimates that the anarchists would hold true to ceasefire backfired on us."

"No shit they backfired. I was a fool for listening to you in the first place on that matter. Let it be known that this will be corrected!" The Emperor said, his voice elevated, anger within his tone. "How do we plan on fixing this?"

"Sir, we're sending in reinforcements now and we expect to be in control within the next day. Tomorrow we plan on dropping several platoons of paratroopers on a key crossroads about twenty-four miles north of Castanheira. We will continue bombarding Juína and we are currently working to find out the location of the anarchist leaders in Juína. We know that they're there so we just have to find them and an SOF team can get them."

"Good. This is good. This situation had better be rectified. This will not turn into another Kaliningrad. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir." Sweat dripped from the defense minister's brow, his voice trembling as the meeting wrapped up for the day. Various Interor Ministry and law enforcement teams throughout the country moved on warehouses, basements, and all sorts of hideouts for citizen dissident groups, rounding up people in droves. Many of them were having meetings, some innocuous, others were planning full-scale riots. When it made the news that evening, people began to wonder about the state of their country and about the state of the government.

Layarteb Crackdown, Civil Freedoms Violated!
By Martine Aurland

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Layartebian police arresting demonstrators in Falcon City (Photo: Scanpix)


LAYARTEB CITY/OSLO (VG): Last night, thousands of Layartebian law enforcement and paramilitary personnel conducted widespread raids throughout the Empire of Layarteb, arresting people in droves. Officials offered no comments on the massive operation, but VG has learned that the operations were being undertaken prematurely in order to prevent public expressions of protest against the Layartebian government's massacre in Juína yesterday.

From what VG has learned, the crackdown were a result of the three public demonstrations in Falcon City, Washington City and Layarteb City, where a total of 125 persons were brutally arrested for expressing their opinion on the Layartebian Army's actions in Juína, where 1 700 innocent civilians, among them more than 610 children, were killed in a deliberate Layartebian missile strke on September 12th. This massacre has set the minds of the Layartebian people ablaze, something the government naturally fears.

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FBI agents arresting innocent civilians in Layarteb City (Photo: Scanpix)

Time and time again, the Empire has claimed that it has the utmost of respect for the civil freedoms of its populace, naturally assuming that these freedoms does not violate the laws of the land. Yet, last night's actions were a clear violation of these freedoms. The people arrested were citizens of Layarteb who were minding their own business when all of a sudden, heavily armed law enforcement officers batter down their doors and drag them off to an uncertain fate in a Layartebian prison, where they no doubt will be exposed to abuse and torture.

There existed no justification for this blatant violation of the civil liberties of the Layartebian people to be carried out, as our sources inform us that there existed no probable cause nor arrest warrants for the arrests to be carried out, something which is required for Layartebian law enforcement officials to make an arrest. The brutality displayed by the Layartebian law enforcement personnel in the arrests was also completely uncalled for, and goes only to show the extent to which the Layartebian government is willing to go to in order to suppress the civil freedoms of its people.

All attempts of VG to get a comment from the Layartebian Ministry of Justice and Interior Ministry were met with "No comment." Clearly, the Layartebian government has something to hide in this matter. Rest assured, this reporter will continue to investigate this matter further.


Verdens Gang (VG). Published 11:17 (CET), 13.09.2007
Worldwide Copyright (C) 2007

September 13, 2007 - 07:30 [AST]
North of Castanheira, Mato Grosso

"Five minutes!" The loadmaster inside of the C-17's cargo hold yelled as a yellow light flicked on next to the door. Inside of the C-17 were sixty-four paratroopers, comprising two full platoons of just one of the four companies being deployed throughout Mato Grosso's northwestern region. Each company consisted of four platoons, giving a total of sixteen but, as of yet, just one was being deployed, flying inside of a pair of C-17s heading over the Mato Grosso landscape. Escorted by a pair of Typhoon fighters, the aircraft had descended to just 500 feet above ground level, drop altitude. They were slowing down to drop speed, which was around 180 mph, not far from its stall speed. The Typhoons were moving much quicker though, unable to fly this slow without stalling and flew ahead of the aircraft, circling around to prevent themselves from getting too far away. As the C-17s made their final course correction, each separated by just four hundred meters, the cargo doors were thrown open to allow for simultaneous side exits. The jumpers stood, attached their static lines, and did their final checks. Thumbs went up and people shouted, "OKAY!"

The loadmaster smirked as he reared up to push men outside of his C-17 for the eighth time since he had joined the Imperial Layartebian Air Force. "Thirty seconds!" He yelled and watched as the platoon leaders stepped up to the door. In the airborne, the leaders were the first ones out of the aircraft and the last ones to step back into them. "Good luck captain," he said as he saluted. A second loadmaster on the other side of the aircraft was doing a similar routine. Both of them would watch each other and launch their paratroopers out of the door with a short separation for each of them, to avoid any entanglements. It would take less than forty seconds to get all sixty-four men out of the plane, during which time the C-17 was the most vulnerable it could ever be, something the Air Force didn't take lightly. "GO! GO! GO!" The senior loadmaster yelled as the captain dove out of the door, his static line opening up the parachute immediately. At five hundred feet, they didn't jump with reserve chutes, they would never get the chance to open them in a failure. It was a sad fact of life but, rather than carry unnecessary weight, they all did away with them.

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They floated to the ground quickly, spending as little time in the air as possible, by design. The area was crawling with anarchist forces, who would love the opportunity to engage the paratroopers before they ever touched the ground. Bullets whizzed up, into the air, though none of them were too accurate and the best the anarchists were able to do was shoot up the parachutes but, because of their size and because of the short distance between the drop and the ground, none of the paratroopers were harmed. Few knew they were even being shot at, because of the lack of accurate shots.

However, on the ground there were two MANPAD teams. Both of them mounted their Stinger missiles and took aim at the passing and now climbing Globemasters. They had begun to deploy flares early on, to avoid being shot at by these missiles. Both teams locked onto the exhaust of the lumbering transport jets and fired, the pair of missiles streaking up into the air. The first missile was timed all wrong and it flew right into a flare cluster that had been dropped from the lead jet. The second, sifted through them and homed in on the C-17s exhaust. "MISSILE INBOUND! STARBOARD SIDE!" The loadmaster yelled as he saw the flash of the missile from the ground. The crew immediately took evasive action, pushing the throttles to their maximum, turning into the SAM, dropping more flares. The whine of the engines was deafening, heard even on the ground and in the air, as the paratroopers watched the missile soar up, towards the C-17. They had a ballistic range of almost five kilometers and homed in by infrared sources. The heat coming off the engines was enough for the missile to lock onto and the flares were ignored as it roared upwards at Mach 2.2. Seconds later, the missile, turning with the C-17, slammed into its starboard, outboard engine, causing an instant fire.

Warning lights lit up in the cockpit and an audible warning ensued, a woman's voice yelling "FIRE! FIRE! ENGINE ONE! FIRE! FIRE!" The pilots countered a violent movement by their aircraft to the starboard and immediately activated the fire extinguisher, which pumped chemicals into the engine, suppressing the fire. The co-pilot, simultaneously, shut down the engine and the aircraft began to right itself as they countered with the proper amount of power. They righted the aircraft and initiated a steep climb, continuing to drop flares. Smoke continued out of the engine for a few minutes as the aircraft flew out of the area. The Typhoons, unable to get a proper fix on the launch location were unable to drop in their unguided bombs. Instead, they joined the aircraft as they flew out of hostile airspace.

September 13, 2007 - 14:00 [AST]
Juína, Mato Grosso

Agent Hunt continued to designate targets in Juína for the air force to attack. Since the Vesta strike, he had directed another fourteen airstrikes, mostly on places not far from his hotel. He did not feel an overwhelming sense of grief about the strike either. He had designated a legitimate military target. He knew that there would be civilian casualties and he had no way of knowing that the shelter was still in use. He had the plans just like everyone else but even those said the shelter wasn't in use anymore. He shrugged it off, he had a job to do. He had been eyeing a building about two and a half kilometers away for some time now. It was near the center of the city in a highly residential part of the town. Whether or not the residences were actually occupied anymore was something he wouldn't know.

His main target was a building, about eight stories high, nothing too extravagant. He had watched insurgents climb to its roof and fire off rockets and missiles at aircraft but he didn't know much about the building to order a full strike on it, not until he saw a dozen of them climb to the roof on the afternoon of September 13. Based on analysis and imagery, one of the men looked remarkably similar to one of the confirmed leaders of the anarchist forces, Pedro Ruíma, a Venezuelan by birth. He didn't waste time trying to find out what was what as he picked up the phone to call in the strike.

The anarchists had brought up a slew of anti-aircraft missiles and he could tell that they were getting ready to launch the dozen or so of them into the sky. Layartebian aircraft flew all over Juína, engaging ground targets mostly with GPS-guided bombs and Maverick-type missiles. As the coordinates were relayed to an incoming fighter group, the insurgents hoisted another piece of equipment to the roof. It was tough to tell what they were really hoisting but it was heavy enough that four of them had to pull it up, using a thick rope and a pulley system, rigged to the roof of the building. When he finally figured out what it was, he couldn't help but feel good about calling in the airstrike.

The four of them had hoisted a large, heavy machine gun up to the top of the roof and set it up on a rotating mount. It was easily a KPV 14.5 millimeter heavy machine gun, capable of inflicting heavy damage to the slew of Layartebian choppers floating around the city at low altitude. No sooner than they got it up there and situated did they start firing it. The KPV on the roof combined with dozens of technicals throughout the city with similar setups. Guns blazed and tracer fire climbed into the air in steady streams or thick burps throughout the city. Layartebian aircraft were doing a hell of a job engaging them with anti-tank missiles, particularly the Harbinger.

More gunfire ripped into the blue sky above the smoking and tattered city as the insurgents unleashed the KPV, taking direct aim at a flight of Little Birds to the west, engaging ground trucks. The gun opened up with surprise and caught a few rounds into one of the Little Birds, puffing smoke from its engine. The pilots immediately disengaged and turned around to head out of the area, to avoid the gunfire. Over the radio, calls for targets were constant and the army helicopters were taking a beating but they were also giving a beating of their own.

Thirty thousand feet over the city and eight miles away, a single F-16G Super Falcon approached. It was loaded with two AIM-221A LRAAM missiles, two AIM-204A Escape missiles, two GBU-53B JDAM bombs, and six GBU-51A JDAM bombs. The GBU-51s were 500 pounds each and for the smaller targets while the others were 2,000 pounds each, designated for the larger targets. The pilot had done his last set of preflight checks and released one of the bombs, designated to the target that Agent Hunt provided. It would just be a matter of time now until the bomb hit the target.

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September 14, 2007 - 09:10 [AST]
West of Juína, Mato Grosso

The 9th SOG, "Ghost Recon" was one of the most potent forces in the Layartebian special forces. They worked in small teams of four, usually equipped with advanced weaponry or long-range rifles. They were often deployed far behind enemy lines and in the most adverse situations, mainly to conduct reconnaissance and attack the enemy's rear flank. However, they could do far more than just harass the enemy. They could conduct COIN operations, kidnapping and assassination operations, as well as rescue and escort missions. Designed to operate mostly in urban areas, they were equally as deadly in rural areas. That was why they had deployed to Mato Grosso early in the morning on September 8, during the ceasefire.

Interrogations told the Layartebian military of a major Anarchist base to the west of Juína that was underground and the main headquarters. Unfortunately, the area was over eighty square miles in size, meaning that there was a lot of land to cover and a short amount of time to do it. The ceasefire helped the four men move freely and quickly while the Anarchists dug-in and concentrated their attention to the north. It also helped them get into enemy territory undetected, flying in the middle of the night inside of a small C-31A Infiltrator cargo plane, operated by the Ministry of Intelligence. They had jumped out of it at an altitude of 2,500 feet, higher than usual, and glided down to somewhere between 800 and 1,000 feet when they opened up their parachutes. Then, they maneuvered down, using the dead of night to get in completely unnoticed as their C-31 headed back for the Amazonian Territory.

When they touched down, they linked up and began their search. Twice already they thought they had found it but had come up empty handed. Now, the third time, they were sure they found it. They were all in a very hilly and very rocky area, a few miles west of Juína. As bombs went off in Juína and aircraft flew overhead, they conducted their own little war. They had yet to use their weapons, which gave them the edge of not being known. Now, they were all lying down, on the ground, covered in ghille suits and thick underbrush of the jungle, looking through binoculars and watching droves and droves of insurgents entering a small tunnel about three kilometers from their position. They had first seen it just before 03:00 hours that morning and decided to investigate. Two of the men were able to get within a few meters of the entrance and just listened as the insurgents entered the command center. Once it was confirmed, they doubled back to their position. It was risky in the daylight but they were capable and did so effectively.

Now they were just verifying the coordinates of the bunker. A satellite heat scan and confirmed the presence of unnatural heat for a large portion of the area and analysts within the Ministry of Intelligence had debated for an hour already where they should strike. When it was finally determined, the Ghost Recon team was told to keep their heads down, a Vesta missile would be underway at 09:15 hours.

Since its inception, the Vesta had been billed as a high-speed, highly capable short-ranged ballistic missile. That was true, it was. However, since its inception, something didn't sit right with the designers and that was its speed. At Mach 6, it was virtually unstoppable but no faster than the 1970s era AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missile. It was slower than the Pershing II IRBM, which had a speed of over Mach 8. Virtually unstoppable, the Pershing II had a lot of advances over the Vesta in terms of speed and response time, which was a major thorn for the Vesta design team, who had worked now for two weeks readying a newer variant. The Vesta had yet to be introduced into actual service and there were still just test rounds being used. Now, about a half dozen, re-engined Vesta missiles had made their way to the Mato Grosso front, all of them capable of speeds of Mach 8 or higher, depending on the trajectory and the range. There were even designs for a two-stage model with increased range but that was far away.

At an altitude of 25 miles, Mach 8 was 5,809 mph. At this speed, the missile would cover 1.61 miles each second, too fast to be intercepted. Nearing 30 miles, the speeds exceeded 6,000 mph. For this target, a single Vesta missile would be used, equipped with the powerful BLU-118 thermobaric warhead, capable of destroying any underground bunker the Anarchists possessed. Fired from just over 300 miles away, the missile would travel through the air in less than five minutes, covering over a mile and a half each second. The missile roared away from its launcher, accelerating rapidly as it climbed to an altitude of 175,000 feet, which was just over 33 miles high, where the missile accelerated to 6,033 mph. Its quasiballistic trajectory took it no higher and it barrelled through the thin, cold air at maximum speed.

On the ground, the Ghost Recon team did their final preparations and set up their video recording equipment to catalog the strike. Moments later, a bright fireball erupted in the air as the missile bore down on the target, its speed heating the air around it rapidly, unfortunately causing it to slow down. However, it would still impact with enough power to penetrate the ground and the base underneath.

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The explosion shook the ground for a mile or two. The sheer power of the explosion produced heat of 5400°F, overpressure of over 435 psi, and a blast wave moving at over 2 miles per second. The heat alone would instantly char everything it touched but the real damage was done by the massive overpressure, which was equal to that of a nuclear device. The power of the explosion instantly destroyed the bunker and caused most of it to collapse on itself, sending a jet of fire out of the tunnel entrance that killed the two guards standing out there and destroyed three trucks that were approaching. The bunker was definitely gone.

September 17, 2007 - 11:30 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

"Alright, let's get started. We're already running a little late here. Minister, you have the first word." The Emperor said, calling order to the commotion in his office as the Cabinet prepared for a meeting. They were beginning the daily Cabinet meeting much later than usual, by at least three and a half hours but that was done because the Emperor had an important speech to give at a public high school in lower Manhattan. He arrived back at the castle just before 11:00 hours and the Cabinet wasn't ready until now. He gave the first word to the Minister of Defense, who cleared his throat and began, remaining seated.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Sir. Thank you. The war in Mato Grosso continues as it has before. However, this morning things are changing. For the better. Our forces are reporting that fighting is beginning to subside in Juruena. Control is, at the moment, disputed. The situation in Aripuanã continues to intensify with no clear end but our forces are holding out and definitely inflicting more damage to the enemy than they are receiving. In Juína, our air strikes have been nothing but successful, despite the single hiccup with our Vesta strike a few days earlier.

"Our current projections indicate that by October 1 we will have close to fifty thousand men ready to wage a full on offensive."

"October 1?" The Emperor asked skeptically. "That is two weeks away. What are our boys supposed to do until then? Expend bullets?"

"Sir. We've worked within the confines of every guideline that the Ministry of Defense has set. We are surging our forces as quickly as possible but increased instances of insurgency throughout the Amazon have forced our hand there. Our forces will be ready by that date."

"How many will die by then?"

"Sir. Our casualties are not significant at this present time."

"And do you have the latest figures?" The Minister of Defense fumbled around his folder for a moment, a moment too long for the Emperor. "Minister. I appointed you to this position thinking you were the most competant man for the job but I fear that I was terribly mistaken. Do you have these figures handy?"

"Yes sir. We have suffered a total of two hundred and eight deaths. Four hundred and forty wounded. Two are currently missing in action."

"And what of the enemy? Those are heavy figures for just two weeks."

"Sir. We have only estimations for the enemy. Over one thousand killed. At least five times that wounded."

"Estimations are not good enough at this stage of the game. We have suffered high casualties between the Amazon and Mato Grosso and have little to show for it except being bogged down by the incompetance of the Ministry of Defense. Perhaps I was in error when I allowed the Ministry to make many of their own decisions. I can assure you this," the Emperor leaned forward and lowered his tone. "That when this war concludes I will be holding the Ministry of Defense personally accountable for the outcome. Is that clear?"

"Yes sir."

"Very well. Moving along. What is the situation like here? Minister?"

"Yes sir." He directed his attention to the Minister of the Interior. "Our raids last Wednesday were very successful. We arrested one hundred and fifty-nine people throughout the country. Most of them have been released as they have shown little violation of the law as such. However, twenty-nine of them remain in custody. They are going to be charged with conspiracy to commit sedition. They were the most adament of the arrestees and we found bomb making supplies in one location. The three men there will be facing terrorism charges. We do not believe they are related to the current domestic campaign. We see these as copycat groups.

"We do not anticipate any further problems."

"Good. What of this Cottish article?"

"Sir. The Cottish VG article is nothing more than a warped take on the situation. The Cottish have no business telling us how to manage our country here and we are not entirely sure as to their governmental position. We suspect they will keep to themselves about it." The Minister of Foreign Affairs chimed in, adding his two cents. The briefing continued another hour before they called it quits for the day. Much was accomplished and the Empire would see stability as the situation in Mato Grosso ebbed. With its end, the situation in the Amazon would, hopefully, stabilize.

September 18, 2007 - 01:30 [AST]
Juína, Mato Grosso

"Teams. Assemble." The quiet voice echoed in their ears as the twelve men rounded up in the middle of the night, a mile and a half north of Juína. They were wired into each other using the Empire's sophisticated Centurion battle system, which was, essentially an updated and upgraded Land Warrior system. They all used powerful night vision goggles to see in front of them but they also had a small HUD within their right eye, which could enable them to link into various cameras mounted on their weapons and the weapons of their teammates. In addition, it provided GPS coordinates and told them where each of them were and what condition they were in, whether they were wounded, dead, or alive. If they were wounded, they could simply hit a small button on their weapon, which would alert the rest of the system. Their death was assessed simply by a sensor on their neck that was attached to their microphone. It would read their pulse. No pulse meant no life. The twelve men comprised three teams for the 9th SOG "Ghost Recon" and included the team that had spotted the September 14 Vesta strike. Between the twelve of them, they were armed with six M81A3 Carbines equipped with suppressors, infrared illuminators and designators, ACOG 4x or M68 Aimpoint scopes, and either M48A3 Grenade Launchers or front handles, three M76A1 Tactical Shotguns, equipped also with infrared illuminators and designators as well as M68 Aimpoint or Reflex sights, two M106A2 Squad Automatic Weapons equipped with ACOG 4x or M68 Aimpoint scopes, the same infrared illuminators and designators and on the other weapons, suppressors, and a bipod, which could be used as a front handle, and, lastly, one man carried an M89A2 Designated Marskmanship Rifle, equipped with a suppressor, a bipod, an adjustable 4x, 8x, and 12x scope, and the infrared illuminator and designator as the rest. That constituted their main weaponry. All of them carried suppressed M105A1 Tactical Defense Pistols with infrared aimpoints or illuminator devices, tactical combat knives, and the sniper also carried an XM112A4 Viper submachine gun, which was still being tested, it had an integral suppressor and a small Reflex sight on the top of it, which could enable him to target more accurately than with iron sights. They also carried a wide array of grenades and explosive door breaching charges. They were an army unto themselves and their SOV-4000 bodyarmor distributed their loads so efficiently that it was as if they were carrying half the weight.

The twelve men came into a circle and took a knee, listening to the explosions in the background, the fires of Juína illuminated the night sky to their south in a reddish haze. "Gentlemen. The target building is heavily guarded. Here's the battle plan," the captain said as he began to draw on the ground. "Alpha team, which will constitute my team, will make the initial penetration into the building and secure floors one through three. Bravo team, which is led by McMahon, will make the roof penetration and secure from the fifth floor to the third floor. We'll meet up there. Charlie team, which is led by Sylvester will move in to secure these two entrances here on the west side of the building and on the south side of the building. As tactical and quiet as possible first. Roof entry you're best bet is a ladder on the northern face of the building but be careful when you go past the windows. When all teams are in place and in position, say 'Vixen' over the interlink. When I am satisfied I will signal 'Glory' and we'll go. Surprise is essential here. The building does not have a very good basement and we believe it is used to store weapons. A source confirms this but who knows how reliable he is. According to him there is no way out of the building except the two ground entrances and the roof. When all is well the codeword is 'Vampire' and if it's going sour, 'Nightmare' is the abort code. Is that understood?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

"Yes." The twelve men all nodded or orally affirmed this.

"Let's move out." They stood up and began their walk towards the city. It glowed like a smoldering fire, a deep shade of dull red, the smoke invisible in the blackened night sky. There was a waxing moon in the sky, just a day away from the first quarter, which provided little illumination along with the millions of stars overhead. It was just enough illumination for their night vision goggles to work, which worked best in starlight conditions. In total blackness, they were useless as they needed some light in the sky.

Together, the twelve men equalled one hundred and twenty, a full company but they were just twelve men. Arranged into three teams of four, they could assault nearly any target without help and they had the power and training to bring down any target in seconds. Their target this morning was a building in Juína that was believed to be the Anarchist headquarters in the city. Agent Hunt had observed it since before the campaign began and had seen numerous high-ranking Anarchist leaders enter and exit the building. When the bombing began, the building had been passed over because it was too close to a civilian air raid shelter, one that was definitely full of civilians. A much more tactical approached had to be made, especially in the wake of the September 12 Vesta strike, which still echoed loudly across the world as protestors in various countries camped out in front of the Layartebian embassies and consulates abroad.

The men moved quickly until they got into the city itself. Overhead, they could hear the helicopters firing down rockets and their guns on Anarchist positions. They felt each bomb hit and they could hear the missiles whooshing by them at supersonic speeds. Bravely, the men moved on, keeping low and slow, their weapons against their shoulders, ready to fire at the first instance of trouble. That first instance came just a few steps into the city. They were moving down a bombed out street, with cars overturned and debris everywhere. Just twenty-five meters ahead of them was a small Anarchist checkpoint. Lacking night vision devices, they looked into the darkness, right at the Layartebian soldiers but couldn't see them as they moved slowly underneath the darkness. No fires burned here and the men were cautious to keep from stepping into any light sources, which glowed on the ground in front of them. Silently, they communicated through hand signals as the Alpha team took the lead. They were equipped with a shotgun, a SAW, and two assault rifles. Because of the nature of the situation, they would rely on the assault rifles for now and each of the two men with the M81A3 Carbines targetted a man at the checkpoint, there being four of them. In quick and rapid succession, they each squeezed the trigger twice, sending a pair of bullets through the air at their targets. They quickly reaimed and fired twice more, putting just eight rounds into the air in total, all eight of them hitting their targets with sheer precision, dead center in their chests. Their weapons were equipped with a burst feature but that would send three rounds and they only needed two. In reality, they only needed one as each bullet at more than enough energy to put the targets down but two made sure that they were dead and not getting up to fire back.

The twelve men moved forward, to the checkpoint and inspected the four dead men. They checked for pulses, to make sure they were dead and then continued onward, after briefly searching them, turning up nothing useful. They took an immediate right turn, through a small square and into another back alley, this one quiet and empty. It was a long alley, which ran parallel to a major avenue they did not want to take, especially since fires glowed all over the place. Overhead a fighter jet soared through the air at low-altitude, running towards a bombing target. A mile later it would release a pair of iron bombs, sending them hurtling towards a building being used to store ammunition. It would explode with enough force to break windows two miles away. The men had remained silent so far and were exiting the alleyway soon enough. They checked every which way when they came to the exit and took a right turn, putting them back to the direction they came from but not entirely. They would move to the end of the street, climbing over a car in the process, checking the buildings above them, only to make a left turn into another alleyway, which led down to another alleyway. From there it was another left turn and they moved quickly through this one.

They could hear voices all around them as Anarchists hid inside of the buildings, digging in and preparing for the inevitable invasion by Layartebian soldiers. They placed machine guns and prepared booby traps. The Ghost Recon soldiers only took mental notes as they came to the end of the alleyway, which dumped again to that long avenue but further down, past three machine gun nests and a rocket grenade nest, which was elevated above the street. The avenue was two lanes each way with no divider. Debris were all around them and fires burned left, right, and every other way. Alpha team darted out and kept low, running between the debris piles, meant to slow down tanks, aiming for the other side of the street and they passed rather quickly. When they got to the end of it, they turned and covered both Bravo and Charlie team as they made their way across the avenue.

The streets from there on wound around turns quite frequently and were heavily populated with Anarchist patrols, looking out for reconnaissance teams. The Ghost Recon soldiers hid whenever they had to and kept their profile as low as possible. They tried their best not to engage the enemy soldiers but, on one occassion, they had to, although they used their knives as there were just two of them and they were facing away from them. Finally, after that, they came to the target building, a five story commerical store, which had been transformed into a command center. The plan was simply, seige and secure the building, capture as many as possible, and bunker down for an airlift. A pair of helicopters, MH-60M Black Hawk helicopters would come in, land on the roof, extract the prisoners, and head back to safe territory, escorted the whole time by AH-6M Little Bird attack helicopters and AH-99A Anasazi gunships. It was a plan that had the helicopters already in the air when the men reached the building. Overhead, in the skies of Juína, a whole armada of attack and transport helicopters circled at 500 feet, out of the range of most handheld weaponry except the guided MANPADs that were possessed. An AC-27B Sledge gunship was also on its way to the area, to begin pounding Anarchist positions while the special forces soldiers struck the building.

They approached it from the western side and carefully got into place. Charlie team set up their perimeter around the building, defending the two entrances, the sniper being with them. Alpha team walked up to the two doors and placed door breaching charges on them, Flashbang grenades in their hands. Bravo team climbed the rickety and rusting ladder to the empty roof and quickly booby-trapped it with a Claymore antipersonnel mine. They moved up to the hatch for the roof and prepared to open it and drop in grenades of their own. When all teams were in place there were three "Vixen" calls over the radio and the captain looked at his watch. It was 01:28 hours, two minutes early. Satisfied, he whispered "Glory," which went over the always active interlink system. Then, he turned his face away from the charge and pushed a small button on the detonator. Those five seconds seemed endless but when it ended, the charges shattered the silence in the air around them. They were in rapid succession, just tenths of a second apart but both the western and southern doors splintered into millions of pieces as they shot inward, from the explosion, wounding one and killing another. On the roof, the men opened the hatch and dropped in a pair of Flashbang grenades. On the first floor, the men threw in three grenades and the five bursts of light and noise incapacitated most of the men on both floors quickly and skillfully. The men pounced next and the gunfire echoed loudly, despite being suppressed.

Tactically and successfully, the men stormed throughout the five floors and the basement of the building, firing off round after round, using their Flashbang grenades up as they cleared the floors. They pounced hard, coming from the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top, leaving the basement for last, storming it when they had secured all five floors. The mission lasted, from the time they set off the charges to the time they cleared the basement, just eight minutes. It was fast, too fast it seemed. Outside, Charlie team engaged fourteen hostiles in that time, all of them coming to investigate the explosions and the gunfire. The mission wasn't without incident though. Of the fifty-two individuals in the building, only eleven would make it out alive and only six of them were actual leaders of the Anarchist group. The rest were just henchmen and soldiers. The rest were all dead. Of the eight Ghost Recon men that stormed the building, two of them were wounded by gunshots that managed to strike them in spots where their armor didn't fully cover. They would make it out alive but they would need an immediate evacuation.

The captain quickly recalled the helicopters and the men moved towards the roof, the prisoners all secured with plastic cable ties, after they had been searched and disarmed. Overhead, four Black Hawks detached from the group of six Black Hawks and four Little Birds. Two Little Birds detached as well and began their flight towards the building. The first Black Hawk arrived only a minute later and they loaded it with the two wounded men and flew it out of their immediately. The second bird arrived four minutes after the call and was loaded with six of the eleven prisoners and three of the Ghost Recon soldiers. The remaining three stayed with the last five prisoners and waited as Charlie team, under heavy engagement, moved into the building and up to the roof, setting two Claymore mines in the process, attached them to tripwires at the base of the staircase and the top of the staircase. By the time they had set the one at the top of the staircase, the bottom one had detonated. They rolled a pair of fragmentation grenades down the stairs behind them as the third and final Black Hawk landed on the roof and began to be loaded.

The mission was over soon after that as the third Black Hawk departed from the roof, the final Claymore shaking the building as it did. The helicopters barreled out of Juína at full speed as a pair of F-46C Enforcers came inbound with guided bombs, dropping a pair of thousand pound JDAM IIs on the building, levelling it and those inside, as well as the arms cache in the basement. Despite its proximity to the air raid shelter, the building was still a viable target. It was a field HQ and it had to be destroyed. No damage would be sustained by the shelter, which was just one hundred meters away, across the street.

September 20, 2007 - 15:00 [EST]
Ministry of Defense, Layarteb City

"You have to be kidding me!" The Minister of Defense said into his phone as he leaned forward in his chair. He had just received a startling report about the situation in Juruena. Fighting had intensified over the previous hour and control of the city remained disputed. He put down his phone and hit the intercom to his secretary. "Janice. Do me a favor? Schedule a meeting of the principles right away."

"Yes sir." She would make five telephone calls, bringing in the Assistant Minister of Defense, the Director of Operations, the Director of Intelligence, the Director of National Security, and the Director of Development. These six individuals, including the Minister of Defense, ran the whole department and were among the most influential individuals in the Empire. The three men and two women appeared at in the Minister's office within the hour and sat down at a length conference table in an adjacent room.

"The situation in Matro Grosso has just taken a turn for the worse. We are making little headway against these insurgents. It is obvious. Juruena is now the site of major combat operations again and we're getting reports that Anarchist forces are attacking all along our flanks. The Emperor is already prepared to remove us from the decision making process and with the latest happenings, I fear it will be sooner than later. We need options and we need them now."

"Sir. The Intelligence division has reported that the Anarchist insurgents are running low on reinforcements. They are sending everything they got to the north and with Juína being bombed into oblivion, they are running low on supplies." This was, unfortunately, a blatant error of fact. The Anarchists had enough forces and supplies to fight for another month, at minimal. "Our liason with the Ministry of Intelligence has put this offensive as a last ditch attempt by the Anarchist forces." The Director of Intelligence concluded, shifting her legs as she began her speech.

"The Operations division fully agrees. We have surged our forces and by September 29, we will be ready for an all out assault. Our offensive is titled the 'Brasnorte Offensive' and it will push Anarchist forces all the way back to Brasnorte. We estimate a seventy-two hour blitzkreig type assault with armor, infantry, and aerial support, the most intense of which will be in the first forty-eight hours. We expect that the remaining Anarchist rebels will flee during this push." He couldn't have been more wrong and the Director of Operations got his intelligence from the same faulty sources as the Direction of Intelligence did.

"Actually. I disagree." The Assistant Minister of Defense said as he flipped a page in his notepad. "Gentlemen and ladies. The Anarchists are strong. They have large numbers that we have yet to count and they have a network of tunnels and underground hideouts so vast we cannot begin to comprehend their supply status. In addition, we can't possibly expect them to just flee as we push south. This is absurd!"

"I disagree with you. Wholeheartedly." The Director of Development began as she adjusted her skirt underneath the table. "The Development division has been closely working with Operations and Intelligence on this matter."

"That isn't reassuring. This has the potential to overturn our entire agency here. This intelligence is faulty. It has the threat to compromise our national security. Would you agree?" The Assistant Minister turned to the Director of National Security, who nodded in agreement.

"It does. We must not underestimate these forces. We did that with the Amazonian territory. It was a foolish mistake and we cannot allow ourselves to make it again."

"Oh nonsense!" The Minister of Defense said with a harsh tone. "These are irregulars. They have little morale left. We've pounded them into oblivion. What fight do they have left in them?"

"A lot of fight. The Venezuelans had a lot of fight. The Amazonians had a lot of fight. Do not underestimate them at all!" The Assistant Minister fired back. "This will be our undoing! We need to contain this situation and contain it fast. We need to order Operation Rising Mist."

"What a waste," the Director of Operations muttered. Rising Mist was an intense bombing campaign with round-the-clock sorties by Layartebian aircraft pummelling Anarchist positions throughout the country.

"Why is it a waste? Why? Explain to me why killing the enemy is a waste? You know I don't get it. Your department comes up with these operations but then discards them for whatever reason? Explain this to me," the Assistant Minister yelled across the table, furious that Layartebian soldiers were dying because of nonsense.

"It is a waste of ordinance and aircraft. When the war began it was a splendid plan. The enemy does not have the targets anymore. We would be bombing nothing. What would we be hitting? A road intersection? A truck parked?"

"We would be hitting viable targets. Where do you get your intelligence from? Our men on the ground say the enemy isn't ready to give up and yet you countermine them and say they are. Where are you making these assessments from?" The shouting continued another twenty minutes with no clear resolve. There were serious rifts within the Ministry of Defense and it was evident that the Minister of Defense had lost all control over the situation. He knew his time was up but he wanted to finish this war with a victorious win for the Empire, to at least wipe away the glorious failure that the Amazonian territory had been.

September 24, 2007 - 18:50 [AST]
south of Juruena, Mato Grosso

"This is Viper 2-1. Turning inbound." The pilot of Viper 2-1 said over the radio. Viper flight was a four-ship formation of CH-53N Super Stallion II heavy-lift helicopters, each transporting 64 men, nine more than normal capacity. They were moving eight platoons of Layartebian paratroopers into position south of Juruena to provide a buffer zone between the city and the southern areas. This was mainly for the Layartebian offensive that was scheduled in just five days. Juruena had become a hotspot for Anarchist activity and as supplies and reinforcements flowed into the city from underneath the ground, Layartebian forces found themselves practically surrounded and fighting an unlimited enemy. The goal was to move eight platoons of paratroops south of the city to set up a secure zone along the major travel route. They would entrench themselves and dig-in for those five days and set up a "push-ahead" zone as it was called. This would enable Layartebian armor to begin the push southward with a safe area to begin their initial operations. They would move through the streets towards Juína with the paratroopers in tow.

They turned to their initial point, which put them just seventeen miles from the drop zone, which was enemy controlled territory. The paratroopers would have to secure the area first and then hold it but supply drops would be plentiful, enabling them to continue fighting. They would also have aerial support. It would be a properly planned and executed operation and the four helicopters pushed out their spacing as they dropped to two hundred feet, above ground level. It was dangerous that low and as they passed over the city of Juruena and headed further south, they initiated a flare dropping program and activated their infrared jamming systems. "We're three miles to drop point." The pilot of Viper 2-1 said as he prepared to put the aircraft in hover and land on the ground, allowing all sixty-four men to jump out and take cover. They expected heavy resistance when they got there and, the whole way in, bullets pinged off the underside of the helicopter. None did any damage other than cosmetic but the Anarchists were shooting at them.

They roared overhead and barrelled towards the drop point at near maximum speed for that altitude and level flight. With their flares dropping, they felt safe from infrared guided missiles and two streaked up at them as they neared the drop zone, neither of them tracking. The four aircraft were separated by at least a half mile spacing and they went into hover at two hundred feet in the air, beginning their descent immediately. The helicopter furthest to the south was Viper 2-3.

The pilot put the aircraft into a hover and began the descent properly. His gunners kept a close eye on the terrain in front of them, protecting the port and starboard sides of the aircraft. Unfortunately, for them, they never saw what was to their rear. The pilot had oriented the helicopter facing north, which was a mortal mistake. Unable to see the rear, he did not see the technical that had uncovered itself from the thick, jungle brush just four hundred meters away. It was a large truck, large enough to support a pair of dual cannons on the rear. Mounted on its rear was a ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft gun platform with a pair of 23mm cannons, capable of two thousand rounds per minute cyclic. For the gun system, four hundred meters was point blank range and the system was setup in such a way that the gun system included a pair of infrared guided missiles. The gun, who had been waiting for the helicopter to go into hover smiled and unleashed a powerful burst that rocked the truck. He sent practically sixty rounds at the helicopter in the first burst, which lasted just two seconds. The rounds tore through the skin of the helicopter and caused instant chaos to its systems and crew inside. Next, he fired both of the missiles, which soared up, towards the helicopter, both of them smashing in the hot engine exhausts. He followed with another quick, two second burst of rounds.

The mighty helicopter groaned in the air as it went into an uncontrollable and high, lateral G spin. Its entire tail rotor system broke apart and the helicopter began to wobble as it belched smoke from its engines. Inside the cabin, just sixteen of the men were still alive and they were all seriously wounded. Both gunners were dead and the co-pilot was bleeding uncontrollably. Only the pilot remained semi-coherent, enough to try to stabilize the helicopter but it didn't work. The other helicopter pilots watched in horror as the Super Stallion II pitched forward and flipped itself over, smashing hard into the ground, two hundred feet below. It landed upside down and the smoke continued to belch out of it as the technical sped away, unopposed. When the paratroopers got to the wreck five minutes later, they found a disaster scene. The crash had killed those who remained alive and the shoot down cost the Layartebians sixty-nine lives, the worst single-day loss of life in over a decade.

Instead of immediately securing the perimeter, paratroopers would have to work to dig out the bodies and prepare them for extraction back home. Another flight of Super Stallion IIs were inbound with reinforcements and the appropriate space to take the bodies back. Instead of being unescorted, a pair of Anasazis went ahead of them and a pair of Little Birds tagged along behind. That should have been the case in the first place.

September 29, 2007 - 03:00 [AST]
Northwestern Mato Grosso

In the past five days, Layartebian numbers had swelled from just eighteen thousand men to fifty-four thousand. Original plans called for just two divisions but those had been modified to three divisions, with a fourth on standby in Amazonas. The swelling of forces constituted a hefty invasion force and as they prepared to push into Mato Grosso, the governing body of the Empire of Layarteb waited patiently for the commanders on the ground to give the final orders. The Ministry of Defense, at the insistance of the Emperor, put the final orders in the hands of the commanders on the ground. Everyone managing the operation back home waited, patiently and quietly, afraid to talk or to jinx anything. Fifty-four thousand Layartebian soldiers prepared to push southward in the Brasnorte Offensive, which aimed to push Anarchists forces all the way back to Brasnorte, a city that sat around 235 miles south of the Layartebian border. The push would create a buffer zone that drew a line from a major Roman checkpoint in neighboring Rondônia, 127 miles east to Brasnorte, then 198 miles northeast to Itaúba, then 109 miles north-northeast to the border with Cottish Pará, creating a buffer zone large enough that Anarchist forces could not fire weapons into Amazonas nor could they traverse supplies through to Amazonas. It was a 433 mile line that was drawn on a map and created and Layartebian forces would make sure that they pushed the Anarchists south and east far enough that the line would remain intact. Brasnorte sat just 270 miles northwest of Cuiabá and 75 miles southeast of Juína.

Armored forces would lead the push southward under the cover of aerial bombardment and helicopter assaults. Layartebian casualties numbered 435 killed in action and 1,780 wounded in action, 680 of which would not be returning to combat duty any time soon. Those figures were hefty and mostly suffered in the stagnation experienced since the end of the ceasefire on September 10. The push was set to kick off at 03:00 hours, local time and the fighting had largely subsided in Juruena, thanks in part to the large number of Layartebian forces who stormed and surrounded the city. With the Layartebian commanders in charge of operations on the ground, casualties began to ebb significantly and the enemy was on the run, truly, on the run.

The first target was Castanheira, 57 miles south-southwest of Juruena. Layartebian bombardment of the city had increased in the past forty hours, thanks, largely in part, to the commanders taking control and authorizing Operation Rising Mist, which brought hundreds of aircraft over Mato Grosso in tight formations, dropping thousands of tons of ordinance in just a short time frame. They bombed everything and anything that was viable and a target and then rebombed it. The Ministry of Defense deemed it unnecessary but the commanders on the ground disagreed. In the end, they would win, not the bureaucrats in Layarteb City. The commanders had pushed for the use of chemical weapons but that request had been fervently denied by the Emperor and the Minister of Defense, who both, finally agreed upon something with the course of the war. The commanders were annoyed with the decision but, unable to defy the direct order to remain conventional, they sought new plans. They would use a lot of incendiary and fragementation devices, as many as they could.

The push began at exactly 03:00 hours, local time, when the overall Layartebian commander, Lieutenant General Victor Sanchez authorized the Bransorte Offensive. It took three minutes for the orders to propogate throughout the various units and the armored tanks began to roll at 03:03 hours. The push was heard a world away as the Layartebian forces began a blitzkreig style attack to Castanheira and to Juína, striking both cities at once and from three directions: east, west, and north. It was a powerful move that offered the Anarchists only one viable option, a southern retreat. Many would stay and fight but, as they did, they would be slaughtered as Layartebian technology prevailed.

September 29, 2007 - 11:00 [AST]
Northwestern Mato Grosso

In just eight hours, the Imperial Layartebian Military had turned the stagnation in northwestern Mato Grosso into a full onslaught. Three divisions of men surged into the country and pushed southward like bulldozers, pushing their enemies aside, crushing those who stuck their heads out of the ground. There were few words in the English language to describe the trouncing they gave the Anarchist forces in the previously uncontested locations of the war zone. They have swarmed through Juruena and Aripuanã initially and in eight hours, they were standing on the outskirts of Castanheira. It was inches away from Juína, their biggest target and with the Anarchists on the run, southward, away from the bombs and the missiles and the tanks, the Layartebian advance was a true blitzkrieg. Their aim was 235 miles in just 72 hours, putting their advance at over 3 miles per hour. That was slow by most standards but this was a full operation. They weren't moving to encricle, they were moving to stomp and suppress. They would take extra time in Juína, to make sure that nobody with an Anarchist thought remained alive or able to fire a weapon.

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Throughout the morning both Castanheira and Juína were turned inside out from aerial bombardment and artillery fire. Shells and rockets tore through the city's weak infrastructure and bombs tore buildings to shreds. Fireballs engulfed whole buildings as Vesta rockets slammed down onto targets throughout the city. The biggest target struck was the largest ammunition cache in the city of Castanheira. It was found simply by accident and it was disposed of equally as quickly by a single strike by a Vesta missile, inbound at Mach 6. The missile tore through the weak structure that had sustained repeated hits from JDAM II bombs and iron bombs. The amazingly deadly thermobaric warhead on the Vesta incinerated the building and two buildings next to it, collapsing all three of them, the secondary explosive effects being the most deadly.

Throughout the country, the Layartebian military advanced. In Cuiabá, the government called on the world, again, to condemn the Layartebians. They were pleased when the world called up the Empire to cease the war following the September 12 Vesta strike but the defiance by the Empire did not surprise them. Fearing that the Layartebians would advance to Cuiabá and beseige the capital, the president ordered the entire military of Mato Grosso, which numbered less than the three Layartebian divisions pushing southward, to secure the capital. Martial law had to be declared and civilians were urged to flee the city. The government feared the inevitable, that the Layartebian invasion in the north was just a precursor to annexing and seizing the country. That wasn't the case though. The goal was only to push the Anarchists back to Brasnorte and then broker a peace deal to keep the entire area defined by the Layartebian war plan as a safety zone.

Already, Layartebian diplomats were in Cuiabá, trying to reassure the government that the Empire had no annexation intentions. The only desire the Empire had was for a safe and demilitarized border area, something that the diplomats had asked for prior to the invasion. A new plan had been drafted through and it was being presented to the government in Cuiabá. The plan would call for an immediate withdrawal of all Layartebian forces from Mato Grosso upon the pledge and promise that the government would ensure the border region remained demilitarized. The Layartebians would provide foreign aide to the government to achieve this task, rebuild their devestated infrastructure, and trade deals to kickstart their economy. The Empire had no intention to seize more land and become further bogged down than they already were in the Amazonian territories. The government was skeptical though and insisted that the Layartebian military halt their advance immediately and not seize Juína. However, that wasn't part of the bargain. The Empire was going to push the Anarchists back as far as possible and make sure that they didn't move back north.

September 30, 2007 - 01:00 [AST]
Northwestern Mato Grosso

Less than twenty-four hours after the offensive began it was already coming to an end. Layartebians forces had completely encirlced Juína. They had shredded Castanheira and its resistance to pieces and moved through it like a swarm of locusts feeding on a farm. Layartebian units were also on the outskirts of Brasnorte, pummelling it into oblivion as the entire offensive line pushed southward. Juína was the biggest target and Layartebian forces flooded its streets in droves, engaging the Anarchists in heavy street-to-street fighting. Tanks and armored vehicles pounded the city as soldiers pounced on the Anarchists. The bombs continued to fall and the missiles continued to fly. Thus far forty-two Vesta rockets had been expended in the war in Mato Grosso and three more were slated for firing during the final hours of the offensive, which was billed as one of the most successful thus far.

Layartebian forces had covered most of the distance already, nearly 235 miles in twenty-two hours of the assault. They had not fully secured the whole area but they were on the outskirts of Brasnorte, where Anarchist forces would make their last stand. From north, they fled south. From south they fled further south. There was, seemingly, no escape for them now that the Layartebians had swarmed. For months they had been standing below the hornet's nest, poking it with a stick and finally, the hornets had come for them. Now they fled, ran as fast and as far as they could, trying to escape the pursuing swarm. They had hoped the Layartebians to be bees rather than hornets, insects that would die after the first sting but, instead, like hornets, they could continuously sting and never die.

The Layartebian soldiers powered through northwestern Mato Grosso. They brought fourth heavy armor, artillery, helicopters with rockets and anti-tank missiles, fighter jets with bombs and guided missiles, and heavy bombers. Juína shook with each missile strike or bomb blast. Overhead, rows of attack helicopters, AH-94A Stalkers and AH-99A Anasazis came inbound with their guided missiles and rockets. They pummelled the retreating Anarchists and those who were making a stand. the city was encircled. There was no way in or out without passing through Layartebian armor or infantry. They had surgically sealed off three hundred tunnels into and out of the city using incendiary munitions. Two thousand pound bombs, shoulder launched missiles, and grenades had devestated the underground routes into and out of the city.

Using intelligence gained from captures, the Layartebian military had done their homework and watched. They used thermal imaging mostly to find the heat sources underneath the surface. They couldn't pinpoint anything but each heat source was a target. On the ground, SOF teams marked the spots and called up the coordinates to overhead aircraft. When there weren't aircraft available, they used grenades. When buildings stood in their way, they used rockets to drop them. When all else failed, they called down the mighty hands of God from above. A single Vesta rocket had been used in the assault. It came down and levelled a whole city block as well as a tunnel connection underneath, where dozens of tunnels joined together.

The worst bombardment came at 01:00 hours. Layartebian forces had converged on Juína and were moving into it but the city center was still untouched. There was a one mile radius in the center of the city where Layartebian forces had yet to reach. Orders suddenly ran through the advancing units to hold short and pull back. They pulled back from their perimeter, a move that the Anarchists didn't see through. They saw it as their victory and began to celebrate where they stood. What was coming, they would never see or hear. They would never know it was there either. It was a single B-11B Zeus bomber, flying overhead at 40,000 feet. Its payload was mammoth, containing nothing but one thousand pound bombs. It was carrying two hundred and forty of them, constituting just 71% of the internal payload capacity of the B-11.

The Zeus kept up its speed of 440 mph and altitude of 40,000 feet. Its targetting system had already mapped out the area of bombardment based on satellite photographs. The targetting system had already taken into account windage and weather patterns and the system was on automatic. All the pilot had to do was activate the autopilot and he had, ten miles earlier. The plane was on its own now. The system would open the bomb bay doors on time and it did. Then, it would release the bombs properly. At the proper point, the computer system activated the release mechanisms and two hundred and forty bombs were released on a computer determined fall pattern. All of them glided through the air carefully, quietly. When the last bomb fell, the doors were closed and the pilot took the aircraft off autopilot. He did, banking the plane to turn northward. The far lighter aircraft would be able to fly far further on its remaining fuel than it would have before hand.

Minutes later, the bombs took on a distinctive whistling as they spun through the air. It was too late now. Anyone on the ground who could heard the whistles knew what they were but could get nowhere. The first bombs that hit struck dead center in the city. The remaining bombs hit in a thick pattern around it. Because the bombs were far more advanced than those the Layartebians used forty years earlier, the onboard computer could, in essence, predict their trajectory. By rotating the bombs as they were dropped, the system could provide some sort of aiming pattern. The goal was to create a near circular pattern. It was impossible to do that entirely but the Zeus didn't carpet bomb like traditional bombers, which left a rectangular pattern of hits along its bombing path.

When it was over, the two hundred and forty bombs had completely pulverized the center of the city and the reistance within it.

September 30, 2007 - 15:00 [AST]
Northwestern Mato Grosso

The Brasnorte offense reached hour thirty-six and things weren't looking up for the Anarachists. Juína was practically in Layartebian hands and Castanheira had fallen. Throughout the border area, Layartebian forces converged on their final objective lines. Layartebian forces had unleashed fury and fire in Brasnorte and were seiging the city with troops and armor. Juara and Novo Horizonte do Norte were the scene of intense fighting as well as Layartebian forces drove out a bastion of Anarchist rebels who had the luxury of mild airstrikes and no infantry presence since the campaign began. They were more entrenched than in other places but they weren't immune to the Layartebian onslaught. Those that tried to hide were just killed slower than those who were out in the open. Layartebian aircraft flew overhead and dropped incendiary, fragmentation, thermobaric, and high explosive munitions. The final Vesta strikes were conducted as Layartebian infantry spotted the final targets.

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Smoke rose in plumes over each city as if there were hundreds of chimneys on the ground and burning fires in the basements of the cities. There was no end to the destruction either and there was no hiding. What few civilians remained were trapped, mostly, many being caught by the secondary effects of the campaign. As buildings collapsed, fragments flew, and fire burned, civilians were swallowed whole. Based on estimates, the casualty figures could approach 500 for the Layartebians, exceed 8,500 for the Anarchists, and approach 20,000 for civilians.

In the vast region of Northwestern Mato Grosso, three divisions of Layartebian soldiers and an unknown number of Anarchists faced off above and below ground and in the air. Layartebian helicopters and jets bombed relentlessly. The offensive was non-stop coverage for Layartebian news channels and Layartebian citizens at home were glued to their television sets as images from the front came back from military reporters along with the advancing units. Of course, noen of the military reporters were too close to the action to be threatened by the war itself but they did, occassionally, get shot at by pockets of Anarchists.

The war would be wrapping up soon as the Layartebian forces did their last bit of work against the Anarchist forces, pushing the last groups of them southward, to Brasnorte.

October 1, 2007 - 20:00 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

The Emperor stepped into the press room in the Fortress of Comhghall after a long briefing concerning the situation in Mato Grosso. When he took the podium, he was standing in front of forty reporters who were waiting patiently for the Emperor to begin his speech. He would be addressing the whole nation and possibly with the whole world. He adjusted his blue tie and his suit jacket, underneath which his neatly pressed and ironed white shirt sat perfectly. He had no notes with him, his usual style, and there were no teleprompters. His charisma was built on his ability to speak to the people, directly, honestly, and with his own words. "Good evening. Thank you for coming tonight. I will be fielding four questions following the cessation of my speech. Please hold your questions until I direct them." He addressed the reporters who readied their cameras. Final adjustments were made to the filming cameras and a sound check was conducted. His speech would begin promptly at 20:10 hours and the whole of the Empire was ready.

"Sir. Ten seconds." One of the workers said as the Emperor straightened himself out at the podium. "Five...Four...Three...Two..." His voice went silent and he gave the "OKAY" sign when the Emperor was on camera.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the Empire. Good evening. I have asked for this time slot to address you tonight to bring to you good news. As of 20:00 hours this evening I have ordered all Imperial Layartebian forces in Mato Grosso to cease offensive operations. We have succeeded in pushing Anarchist insurgents as far south as Brasnorte and have succeeded in securing the northwestern border area.

"Our soldiers have fought bravely and valiantly in the face of adversity.

"Effective immediately, the Empire shall begin negotiations with the government of Mato Grosso. Our negotiations will call for the effective policing of the border area, ensuring that we will not be harassed further by these lawless insurgents. For this guarantee and pledge, the Empire shall provide financial assistance for the struggling nation of Mato Grosso and we shall withdraw immediately from the border area. We will seek no land to claim our own and we will provide assistance to rebuild the damage infrastructure. It is the goal of the Empire to ensure that our efforts have not been in vain.

"The government of Mato Grosso is cooperating with our decrees and we expect that by October 8, all Layartebian forces will have withdrawn back across the border. I am thankful to be able to bring you this news, to announce to you, the Layartebian people, that your soldiers have served us well. The Empire remains secure and our borders remain intact. The efforts of the Anarchists are in vain and will remain in vain. They will not be able to continue to wage war and terror within the confines of the Amazonian territory. Already, we have seen a massive decrease in the instances of violence in the Amazonian territory since we have pushed the Anarchists back, away from the border.

"With this push forward, we have rescheduled the referendum vote for the Amazonian territory's future for January 5, 2008. This vote shall not be delayed and despite the best efforts of these Anarchists insurgents, they have merely delayed the inevitable. This vote shall occur and nothing will stop it.

"Thank you. Now I will field some questions. You. Paul."

"Sir. Paul Atherton, Layarteb City Times. Can you tell us the casualty figures for this war?"

"At the moment I do not have exact numbers and I would rather wait until those are made available than speculate. We have informed the next of kin of all families involved and it is my deepest regret that Layartebian lives had to be lost because of the inability of the government in Mato Grosso to police their own territory. Next."

"Sir. Melinda McCafferty, Ireland Excelsior. What should happen if the government in Mato Grosso cannot uphold their end of the deal? Will we recommit forces?"

"Melinda. I am prepared to authorize any means necessary to protect the sanctity of our borders. The sovereignty of the Empire is not up to negotiation nor will I allow it to be violated by those who wish nothing more than misfortunte and terror. Next.

"Sir. Kenneth Ball, Layarteb News Network. Can you provide details on the impending investigation into the September 12 Vesta strike?"

"No I cannot. At the moment that investigation is still underway and it is not the policy of the Layartebian government to comment on ongoing operations or investigations. Final question."

"Sir. Lisa Hoffman, Chicago Sun. Will you be meeting personally with President Marta de Oliveira concerning this situation?"

"No. I will not be, that is being handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Thank and have a good night." He stepped off the podium and left the press briefing room, heading back for his office. His words were true, Operation Thunder Rain had ceased offensive actions and the Brasnorte Offensive was an overwhelming success. They had pushed the Anarchist forces back past Brasnorte, too far away to launch any attacks into Amazonas.

October 6, 2007 - 04:00 [AST]
Juína, Mato Grosso

Civilians were slowly returning to Juína to sift through the rubble that lay where their homes once stood. Business owners came back to find their shops completely looted, if they were still standing. The war had torn Juína to shreds more so than any other city south of Juruena. Layartebian forces still occupied the city and were conducting operations to locate the deceased within the rubble. The final casualty figures had been published just a day earlier and the war claimed 476 Layartebian soldiers while wounding another 2,059, of which 800 would not be able to return to active duty. A total of 15,480 civilians were killed with at least that many wounded, many seriously. Over 100,000 civilians had been displaced by the war. Lastly, the war killed 8,490 Anarchists out of just 9,500 of them. Their ranks were purely devestated and the leader, Paco, had been killed in Juína during an airstrike. There remained three divisions of Layartebian forces inside of the border zone, of which a full brigade remained in Juína and Castanheira. The remaining eight brigades were distributed in Brasnorte, the northern cities, and throughout the country, many of them engaged in operations looking for and destroying arms caches, underground tunnels, and remaining Anarchist holdouts.

Among the most important targets in Juína was an oil depot that was providing Layartebian forces with the necessary fuel to continute their operations. Stationed at the oil depot, which was actually a secure, military compound, were three platoons of men, a total of ninety-six soldiers. They were equipped with light machine guns, collapsable rocket launching systems, a recoilless rifle, and some light mortars. Their armor consisted only of a few Bushmaster IMV and Dingo APV vehicles, equipped with heavy machine guns but ammunition for those was low. They were awaiting a resupply at 15:00 hours that day. Six miles away was a small artillery battery, consisting of four M777A1 Lightweight 155mm artillery guns and, not much further away, a small airfield with Anasazi, Black Hawk, Little Bird, Panther, and Arapaho helicopters. Juína had remained an uneasy seat of power for the Imperial Layartebian Army. Anarchist forces numbered just a little over one thousand in total and most of them had fled south, past Brasnorte. However, a few cells remained north of the lines. Inside of Juína, there were two cells, one consisting of fifty and the other consisting of sixty. The one hundred and ten Anarchists were among the most loyal to the cause and the most experienced.

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The layout of the oil depot was pretty simple. There were two, large tanks, each holding upwards of three million gallons of oil. It was a small depot, by standards. There was one in Venezuela that could hold one hundred and twenty million, twenty times that amount. However, unlike that one, which was civilian, the Juína Tank Farm was entirely military by nature and origin. It was guarded by four guard towers that stood forty feet in the air and were lined with ballistic protection, allowing them to resist small arms fire up to 7.62 millimeter. There were three other structures on the depot's grounds. There was the main control center, which also housed an underground barracks and armory. The other two structures were the pump control station and the machine shop, where repairs were conducted. Normally, the facility was staffed by thirty-five workers. It was built to only hold sixty so the ninety-six were uncomfortable. They had stuffed the armory with all of the ammunition they had and mounted a pair of M91A1 12.7 millimeter heavy machine guns in towers one and four, facing the northern entrance, the only way into the facility. Twenty-five foot walls made of thick brickwork boxed in the facility.

In preparations, the men had put various K rails all around the entrance to the facility. They expected an attack but now, six days after operations ceased, they seemingly relaxed a little. It was a shame they did. The Anarchist cells within Juína had been watching them for those six days, waiting. They planned to make their attack now, using a multi-stagged attack. The first stage would require the use of a suicide bomber driving a truck, packed with high explosives. The goal was to crash it into tower four, to bring it down and open a breech in the wall. At the same time, a small group of Anarchists would shell the airfield with mortars to keep air support on the ground. The facility was pretty large though and the Anarchist forces would have a tough time seiging the compound but they had a plan that allowed them to keep cover fire against the soldiers' support areas.

At 04:06, the attack began. The Anarchists had begun to shell the airfield with mortar fire and engaged it with sniper rounds, fired from afar. Most of the sniper fire was not accurate but that was on purpose. To be accurate, they would have to be much closer to the airfield, risking them being seen. At the same time, sniper fire was directed against the small artillery firebase and various IED devices went off on the approach roads. Seemingly, within minutes, the compound was completely isolated, its ninety-six men left alone to fend for themselves. Mortar rounds rained down on the oil depot, the firebase, and the airfield from ranges in excess of 2 kilometers. The men inside the oil depot were awake by the time the first rounds began to fall, thrown from their beds by the screaming of their commanding officer who yelled only "WE'RE UNDER ATTACK! GET THE FUCK UP! NOW!"

The first two rounds landed harmlessly in the southwestern corner of the depot, doing little damage to anything. The men manning the guard towers immediately began to report incoming fire. Bullets pinged against the exterior of the guard towers and suddenly, from the north, came a speeding truck. The truck was an old, Neuvo Rican army HMMWV, which was carrying over three hundred pounds of explosives in a carefully constructed IED consisting of unexploded 155 millimeter shells, 203 millimeter shells, and one anti-tank rocket, which was all that they could muster. The vehicle started out along the roadway and quickly accelerated to speeds over fifty miles per hour.

What came next was the most insane three hours of their collective lives. SPC. Dunnam, who manned tower four, was equipped with a powerful M38A2 Special Application Rifle, a .50BMG, long-range sniper rifle. A qualified sniper, he had the rifle propped up on the window ledge of the tower, its bipod supporting the massive weight of the bolt-action rifle. "INCOMING!" He heard as he shifted his sights. He had ten rounds loaded in the magazine and he had used of two of them already engaging a pair of snipers over 600 meters away, on the top of a building. Both of the snipers had actually fired the first shots but shot too low, their bullets never reaching the window of towers one and four. He barely had time though as the vehicle sped up and neared the northern gate. "VEHICLE!" He quickly put the sights on the windshield of the vehicle and fired, unlocked the bolt, released the spent casing, relocked the bolt, and fired again. Both rounds pierced through the unprotected safety glass of the HMMWV, the first round turning the driver into a liquified goo and the second round impacting an artillery shell in the rear of the truck. With a walloping explosion, the HMMWV shattered into thousands of pieces and exploded harmlessly, 100 meters from the gate.

Radio calls went out throughout the city as the soldiers in the oil depot called for support. Unfortunately, none was coming and the battle intensified. By 07:15 hours, just nine minutes into the attack, the Layartebian soldiers in the oil depot had hidden from fourteen mortar rounds that crashed down and had begun to trade gunfire. Explosions shook the area around as Layartebian forces returned fire. They activated their light mortar and began to fire at various points around the area, where they were taking gunfire and rocket fire from, which was everywhere. The Anarchists had equipped themselves with dozens of rocket propelled grenade systems, mostly outdated RPG-7 and RPG-18 type weapons. They fired, unsuccessfully at the towers and the walls. As they fired, Layartebian snipers returned fire.

October 6, 2007 - 04:10 [AST]
Juína Oil Depot, Mato Grosso

"Come on damnit! Where are they!" The radioman yelled to himself as he repeated the calls to the airbase and the firebase. "This is Shark Eleven. This is Shark Eleven! We're under heavy fire. Requesting immediate air and artillery support. Do you copy?" Static echoed over the air waves, which made his stomach drop in his chest. What if something happened? He thought to himself as he began to think about the possibility of being entirely alone during this operation. "Son of a bitch!" He tried again, also to no avail. Gunshots pelted off the compound walls and flew over their tops. Soldiers manning the guard towers were the biggest targets and the main targets for the gunners all around them, who fired erratically and inaccurately. It was part of their tactics. They wanted to confuse their enemy, keep their heads down, and allow themselves to get into position much, much, much closer to the depot than they were.

"Corporal Stevenson! What is the situation on that radio?" The commander officer, Major Luis yelled down at the radioman, who was lying on the ground next to one of the Bushmasters. "Have you gotten through?" He held his assault rifle with the butt against his thigh as he slapped in another magazine.

"No sir. Still nothing sir." He responded back with frustration.

"Keep at it son! We need that support and we need it now!" He jumped onto the side of the Bushmaster and sighted the muzzle flashes in the distance, coming out of upper floor windows of surrounding buildings. He squeezed off a couple of shots before he was being called by the radioman. "You got something?"

"Yes sir. Firebase is under heavy fire as well. The airbase is the same situation. We're on our own for now."

"You've got to be shitting me?" He said, the full reality of the situation still lagging on him as he squeezed off a few more rounds. "You tell them to hurry the fuck up. I got ninety-five men here and if they don't get on it we're going to need ninety-six bodybags! Make them understand that Corporal!"

"Yes sir." He got back on the radio and began to relay the orders.

October 6, 2007 - 04:12 [AST]
Juína Army Airfield, Mato Grosso

"Sir. Corporal Stevenson is back on the radio. He's whining about some body bag count." Another mortar round crashed down on the tarmac east of the control building. "What do you want me to tell him?"

"Tell them that if they want air support so fucking bad let them come out here and fly a helicopter themselves! We're doing what we can! You know we're under fire too, we're not sitting around barbecuing hot dogs!"

"Yes sir." The radio operator relayed the message as the base commander, Colonel Laurent yelled as he looked over at the tarmac. Two more mortar rounds landed in quick succession. The rounds were poorly placed and it was evident that there was no spotter, which was seemingly helpful, it was one less person that they had to kill.

"Quick. Find out where these mortars are coming from and find out now!" He barked as he picked up his pistol from the table and prepared to dash across the tarmac, from the command center to a hangar. He needed to get a helicopter in the air and he needed someone crazy enough to do it. He had, ready to go, a four-ship of Little Birds armed with two M74A1 7.62MM Miniguns each fed with 1,500 rounds and two 7-round Adder rocket pods. He also had a pair of Anasazi attack helicopters equipped with its 20MM rotary cannon and 890 rounds, 2 AIM-227A Viper air to air missiles, 12 AGM-230A Harbinger anti-tank missiles, and two 19-round Adder rocket pods. Lastly, available were a pair of UH-60M Black Hawks equipped with just a pair of M74A1 Miniguns fed by a 1,500 round magazine each and an RAH-70A Arapaho armed with just a pair of 7-round Adder rocket pods. However, sitting where they were, the helicopters were useless.

October 6, 2007 - 04:13 [AST]
Firebase Juína, Mato Grosso

"Come on dammit! I don't have all morning here. We've got heavy attacks along our lines, the airfield, and at the oil depot and you mean to tell me that satellite reconnaissance is out for another hour and a half? You hear that?" A loud crash echoed into the bunker. "That's a goddamn mortar round and there are plenty more where that one came from. Yes. Get on it dammit!" The lieutenant threw down the phone and looked around the bunker. The firebase consisted of just four artillery guns, M777A2 Lightweight 155mm Howitzers that were prepped and ready to fire except mortar rounds were raining down on them. "We need to find out where these rounds are coming from!" He yelled as he looked around the bunker at the men who were holding their weapons, expecting a full on attack. "That was command on the line. Satellite reconnaissance is out for another hour and by the time we vector in a plane we'll be done for so I need some volunteers. Three man teams and I need three teams." Men immediately stood up, weapons in hand.

"Good. You're alpha, bravo, and charlie. Let's keep it simple." He walked over to the table and illuminated the map with his red flashlight. "Alright see this area here? This is a possible firing location, one kilometer away. That is your priority alpha. Bravo check out this position to our west. Charlie. The south. Right here, behind this hill. Get on it! Stay in radio contact!" The men agreed and were out of the bunker like lightning, using their night vision to show them where they were going. They kept maps on them but they had programmed the coordinates in their GPS devices and just followed those, which told them where to go.

October 6, 2007 - 04:16 [AST]
Juína Oil Depot, Mato Grosso

After ten minutes of the main assault at the oil depot, things weren't looking good. One vehicle had been stopped with a bomb in it, the biggest success for the Layartebians. Sixteen mortar rounds had crashed down on them and hundreds of bullets, mostly sniper rounds, had pelted the watch towers and the walls. Layartebian forces had taken up positions along the walls and in the watch towers and returned as much fire as they could. Without air support though, they really had to conserve their ammunition as they did not know when they would be getting a resupply. Already low on ordinance, they prepared to fight for their lives and they began to take single shots at muzzle flashes, waiting instead for their enemies to give away their positions before they returned fire.

October 6, 2007 - 04:19 [AST]
Juína Oil Depot, Mato Grosso

More mortar shells landed inside the grounds of the depot and continued to pelt them, gaining in accuracy as they crashed downward. "Contact. North!" One of the snipers yelled as he saw some of the Anarchists come out from a hiding place and creep along the street. He slapped in a fresh magazine in his M38A2 Sniper Rifle and leveled the gun sights. The M38 was a beast of a rifle and there was no way to rapid fire it as there was no way to muzzle its massive sound. The muzzle brake on the end of the barrel made the weapon sustainable for semi-automatic firing. He locked the bolt into place, loading the round, and put the weapon crosshairs on the chest of one of the men. Quickly, he squeezed the trigger and put the first round into the air, sending it right through the Anarchist, who was barely 500 meters away. The round split him in half at the torso and liquified half of his body. The sniper, skilled and quick, immediately loaded the next round and fired again. His first two shots were perfectly placed, the Anarchists caught fully by surprise as the rifle shot echoed in the air around the depot. As he lined up for the third shot, a halo of machine gun rounds tore into the outside of the tower and he ducked immediately as they ricochetted inside of the tower. Seconds later, he felt a tearing in his leg as he yelled out in pain.

October 6, 2007 - 04:21 [AST]
Firebase Juína, Mato Grosso

"This is Alpha. We're at the target point. No sign of mortars sir." The commander of the first team reported as he and his men looked around the small area where they suspected mortars were. "Please advise."

Inside of the bunker, the lieutenant swore up a storm. He was fully confident that the mortars were there but as they continued to crash down around them, he knew that the team was right. "We're sustaining heavy fire. Maintain perimeter defense."

"Yes sir." The team maintained the defense of the perimeter of the firebase but backed closer to it as they did a final sweep of the area. There were no mortars there though since the distinctive firing sound of the mortars would have been enough to tell them that this was a viable location. As Alpha team double backed, charlie team found their spot to be just as empty, sadly. They reported it back too and were ordered to scout out a fourth location, which had a slim possibility but one nonetheless. It all hinged now on Bravo team, which was carefully approaching their target spot.

"Bravo. Report." The lieutenant asked over the radio, frustrated and impatient. "Do you have them?"

"Shhh." Came over the radio as the team leader and his men inched closer. They had spotted the mortar position and they were approaching it on their stomachs, slowly and carefully. The transmission wouldn't give them away, the receiver was in their ear like a hands free system, which it was. "Mark." The leader repeated back at a barely audible whisper, enough of a message to get the lieutenant to be quiet. The men had their M80A1 Assualt Rifles close to them as they crept towards the mortar position, which was in the middle of a small park, covered with trees. Using hand signals, he informed his men that they would move around and engage the mortar position from two directions. He and one of the men would remain facing it while the third man crawled around to another side and fired a diagonal line on the mortars. There were two of them and the gunners were loading and firing rapidly, not taking much time to aim or cool down the barrels. They had a general idea of where the target was but they didn't have a spotter to do pinpoint targetting. Their mission was just to keep fire on the target long enough to assault the oil depot and achieve the goal.

October 6, 2007 - 04:22 [AST]
Juína Army Airfield, Mato Grosso

"Alright I need four brave pilots." The colonel said as he arrived in the hangar. The rounds continued to fall all around them but did no damage to the aircraft on the tarmac. Ten men stepped forward and he immediately just pointed to four of them. "You four. Take those Little Birds, get in the air, and suppress these fucking mortars. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir. Where are they coming from?"

"How the hell do I know? Just get in the goddamn air now!" He yelled as he darted back to the command center. The four men, who were already suited up, shook each others' hands and swallowed their breath. They grabbed their helmets and took a run for the Little Birds, which were a little over six hundred feet away from the hangar. They were parked on the tarmac, awaiting flight and they were preflighted already. The four pilots braved the incoming mortar rounds, which crashed all around them, and headed right for the helicopters. Unfortunately, one of the rounds clipped the ground too close to one of the pilots and the men watched as he tumbled and fell to the ground. The men in the hangar didn't think twice. One of them grabbed a helmet and darted out to replace him while three others ran out to get him and bring him to the on base hospital.

"Ned's down. I'm filling in!" The fourth pilot yelled as he climbed into the helicopter and plugged his helmet into the communication system. "Let's go!" He yelled and they began the start-up sequence as the two helicopters came to life, their rotors beginning to spin and their engines whining up to idle speeds.

October 6, 2007 - 04:25 [AST]
Juína Oil Depot, Mato Grosso

Bullets tore over the depot walls like a swarm of locusts attacking a crop. They already had six wounded, none of them life threatening yet but that was changing quickly. Explosions all around the walls told them that the Anarchist forces were close, too close. They lobbed grenades over the walls and they landed all around, sending fragments and splinters throughout the air at high speeds, tearing through flesh and metal. Of the men inside of the compound, most of them had cuts and scrapes from the fragments and the trials of battle. Six of them were unable to continue fighting and they had been pulled to safety and were being given medical treatment. One had a broken leg, sustained from tripping and falling out of a tower, evading a rocket, which luckily missed. The other five had bullet wounds.

The mortars were firing again from the depot and they were being properly spotted. They landed around the perimeter of the streets around the depot, showering down their own lethality and their fragments. Shards of steel ripped through the air there too as the mortars and grenades went off, slowing the Anarchist advance on the depot walls.

Snipers were having the most success. Their powerful scopes and more powerful rifles allowed them to engage enemy forces far beyond the range of the normal assault rifles and with better accuracy. Their rounds ripped through the air with more force and precision than any others and they put not just 6.8 x 51mm and 7.62 x 51mm rounds into the air but also 12.7 x 99mm, .404 Chey Tac, and 15.5 x 115mm rounds. All of them destroyed their targets brutally and not equally. The former two rounds would simply kill. The latter would decimate.

October 6, 2007 - 04:27 [AST]
Juína Army Airfield, Mato Grosso

The Little Birds picked up off the ground splendidly. They were like angels to the men on the ground, who cheered as they banked hard to avoid incoming mortar rounds. Both pilots put the peddle to the metal and lifted off, high into the air, putting themselves away from the firing pattern of the mortar rounds, which were coming down all around the tarmac and the runway. Both helicopters were loaded as heavily as they could be, with rockets and machine gun rounds, which could tear through any enemy without effort, save for the most heavily armored vehicles. "This is Fury One. We're airborne.

"Two. Airborne. Let's get the fuck outta here. They're coming down hard!"

"Roger that. Head south."

"Yes sir." The two helicopters, moving at 155 miles per hour, fast and hard. They kept low and using their thermal sights and their night vision goggles, they hunted. They had to cover a lot of area and they had to cover it fast. They banked hard to the south and left the airbase quickly, heading to the south, to cover an area roughly two kilometers away from the base. Flying at over a thousand feet, they could use their forward looking infrared sights to search for the mortar teams.

October 6, 2007 - 04:29 [AST]
Firebase Juína, Mato Grosso

"This is Bravo. We've got the team neutralized. Destroying the mortars now. Get the artillery falling!" The group leader with Bravo said as he took a last look around. He and his men had neutralized the mortar position with little effort and barely any bullets expended. As they did, cheers ran through the firebase as Layartebian soldiers ran out to the guns and immediately began to elevate them. One had been damaged in the attack but the other three were fully operational. It would take three minutes to put the first rounds into the air.

"This is Firebase Juína. Rounds on their way!" The firebase commander screamed into the microphone with a happy smile on his face as the first rounds left the M777A2 barrels at over 2,700 feet per second. The first three rounds were on their way quickly and the next three would be on their way in another twelve seconds. They could fire up to five rounds per minute, working overtime but it leveled off to just two rounds a minute sustained.

October 6, 2007 - 04:34 [AST]
Juína Oil Depot, Mato Grosso

"Holy shit!" One of the snipers in the first tower yelled as an artillery round slammed into the ground about six hundred meters away. The first three rounds hit hard right around the target location and the second set of three landed soon thereafter. The rounds had come down hard, real hard, hard enough to slow an immediate advance by the Anarchist forces. They couldn't hear the artillery shots from where they were or even feel them coming down but when they hit, they hit hard, hard enough to help them out right away. The snipers continued to take their shots and those manning the light and heavy machine guns continued to unload their rounds at high rates of fire. They were going to win this!

October 6, 2007 - 04:38 [AST]
Juína Oil Depot, Mato Grosso

"Keep them coming! New coordinates!" The artillery spotter yelled into the radio as the rounds landed all around the streets but they were being countered as the Anarchist forces were taking new approaches. Soon enough, the artillery wouldn't be very useful. Crews were firing upwards of three rounds in twenty seconds but they were slowing down as they grew weary and tired. They could sustain two rounds a minute but they would be doing more than that, perhaps three or four rounds every minute. They were keeping the Anarchist forces at bay thus far and they were protecting the Layartebian forces in the oil depot.

The bullets didn't slow down though. Regardless of the artillery, the Anarchists were firing at the Layartebian forces from every direction. There were dozens of them here, there, and everywhere, too many to count. The Layartebian forces fought on as they began to take injuries. There were twenty wounded now, three serious enough to require medical evacuation. Unfortunately, air support was not available just yet.

October 6, 2007 - 04:42 [AST]
Juína Army Airfield, Mato Grosso

The Little Birds had scanned the south and the west of the airbase and found nothing. They were moving fast and they stayed at their altitude, using their FLIR to find where the shots were coming from, in order to fire back. Mortars did not leave muzzle flashes and spotting them was otherwise impossible. They had a general idea of the range they were coming from but not the exact location. They needed to get to them immediately in order to get the other aircraft into the air, to provide air support for the oil depot, which continued to take heavy enemy fire.

October 6, 2007 - 04:47 [AST]
Juína Oil Depot, Mato Grosso

"Sir. We've got a KIA!" The medic reported to the commander. In that instant, the entire battle stopped. Layartebian forces heard over their individual radios that there was a KIA, the first thus far of the battle, which passed forty minutes. At the airbase and the firebase, there were no casualties and certainly no fatalities. At the oil depot, they had lost one now. It was SPC. Joseph Ryan, a plain infantryman. He had been struck in the leg by a ricocheting bullet and it sliced through his fermoral artery. Despite the immediate efforts to stop the blood loss, he lost too much of it and his heart stopped at 04:46 hours.

The momentary pause in time only existed for a split second. The battle didn't stop at all. Bullets tore through the air and mortar rounds continued to drop into the oil depot compound. Artillery fire continued to fall around the depot, creating a sort of protective shield but that wasn't working as well as they wanted. The Anarchists moved much quicker than the artillery could fall and they moved not in groups but small units of two or three men, enough to watch each other's back and still pour a lot of bullets on the target. They were keeping the Layartebian forces at bay, keeping their heads down and preventing them from maintaining static defense positions.

The Layartebian forces had light machine guns as their primary method of defense. They had their bipods extended and rested them on the walls of the compound or the towers. They poured volumes of bullets into the air and shot at the various muzzle flashes and enemy positions. They were having much more of a success at taking down the enemy than the enemy was at taking them down. With one KIA on the Layartebian side and at least forty for the Anarchists, it was obvious that the Layartebians were winning.

October 6, 2007 - 04:52 [AST]
Juína Army Airfield, Mato Grosso

"Two. I've got something. Turn left bearing 0-3-6. About three miles away."

"Roger that. Turning." The two Little Birds turned to the heading and closed in on a target roughly three miles away from the airbase. The heat signature was small, small enough to be just a person or two but, as they flew closer, the signature increased to show a full complement of people. It was a small clearing, big enough to be a mortar position and it was. There were three mortar units, each manned by two men and the six men were all Anarchist forces, loading the rounds in and firing them. They had a small truck parked near the clearing, which they had used to transport the ammunition and the mortar tubes to the location. It was a covered pick up truck and the truck had to have been cramped with all of the ammunition, the people, and the mortar parts.

"Target acquired. Let's make them suffer!" The lead pilot said as he activated the master arm and selected the weapon systems. He could fire the rockets with the thumb button on the flight stick and the guns with the trigger. He would come in for a high-speed pass, using the rockets first and he planned to fire six of them in a single salvo. "Come in behind me. Quarter mile separation."

"Roger that. Two is back!" The second helicopter dropped back slightly as the lead helicopter began its attack run. The pilot placed the rocket attack sight right on the mortar position and pushed down on the thumb button for a quick two seconds, firing off the six rockets. They tore through the air and struck hard into the site just seconds later, decimating the truck and the mortar position but, to be safe, the second helicopter came in on a strafing run as well, letting off a few hundred rounds from the Miniguns and four rockets. When they came off the target, seconds later, it was destroyed.

"This is Fury One. We got them! Three miles to the north, bearing 0-3-6." The pilot said as triumphant cheers rang out throughout the airbase. Pilots were running to their helicopters next as the two Little Birds turned for the oil depot. They wouldn't arrive on station over it until 05:00 hours but air support was finally on the way.

October 6, 2007 - 04:58 [AST]
Juína Army Airfield, Mato Grosso

The tarmac at Juína Army Airfield had gone through three phases. The first was a loud shelling as the mortar rounds tore holes in the concrete and scattered fragments for hundreds of feet. The second was the silence after the two Little Birds of Fury flight did away with the mortar position. Now, the third phase had taken over and it was louder than both of the previous two. Sitting on the tarmac were a pair of Little Birds, a pair of Anasazi attack helicopters, a pair of Black Hawks, and a single Arapaho. All seven helicopters were coming to life as their pilots started up their engines and rotors. The helicopters were angry, hungry, and they wanted revenge for the near hour they sat on the ground, unable to help their brothers who sat a few miles away, being shelled and attacked. The most potent of the seven, the Anasazis were codenamed "Revenge" flight. The other two Little Birds would join Fury flight and the last three would all be part of Scarab flight.

October 6, 2007 - 05:00 [AST]
Juína Oil Depot, Mato Grosso

"Those goddamn flyboys are so fucking useless! Where the hell are they? We're getting pounded here and they're whining about a few mortar rounds!" The radioman yelled inside of the command center of the oil depot, the unit commander by his side. As he said that, bullets pelted against the command center and a rocket propelled grenade soared up at tower three, slamming into its side and knocking some of its brick facing off from its HEAT warhead. The whole tower shook and the two machine gunners inside had dove for cover as the rocket exploded outside of the tower, a near miss that could have killed both of them.

The ground shook as more mortar rounds came down and a whole slew of Anarchist forces bore down on the main gate, another vehicle behind them, laden with explosives, pushing for the gate just the same. Artillery continued to crash down but targets changed just too quickly to be as effective as the Layartebians needed. The truck bore on, picking up speed as it raced towards the main gate. Snipers engaged the vehicle, shoulder fired rockets tore through the air, and machine gun rounds ripped forward, all aiming to the truck. They struck it constantly but failed to stop it as it continued to bear down on the gate, picking up speed rapidly.

"TRUCK!" Someone yelled and it was, seemingly too late as the vehicle approached the gate. It moved powerfully through the street. Sunrise was in just twenty something minutes and the sky was already growing progressively lighter, but not yet light enough yet for them to stop using their night vision goggles. As the Layartebian forces engaged the vehicle, a single sniper mounted his M41A1 Sniper Rifle, a full magazine of twenty rounds loaded. It was a semi-automatic weapon, allowing him to fire much quicker than if it were bolt-action. He took his first shot, aiming for the fuel tanks on the side of the vehicle, missing narrowly, catching only its frame. He fired again and again, two more rounds, these into the engine block, both of them slashing oil lines inside but yet the vehicle continued to move. He took another shot, this one aimed right at the windshield and, marvelously, as the round impacted, the entire truck exploded, a ball of fire spreading out, along the street and upwards, into the darkened sky. He and many others cheered, the vehicle just fifty or so meters from the gate.

They didn't know what caused the explosion at first but that became evident as a pair of helicopters zoomed overhead, low, fast, and firing their guns. "Come in guys! This is Fury flight! We're here!" The lead pilot said as he banked hard to the left, his wingman banking to the right, finishing off their strafing run, putting hundreds of rounds into nearby buildings.

The soldiers on the ground cheered but the Anarchists didn't stop. They kept coming but the morale of the Layartebians had suddenly been boosted. Airborne support was there.

October 6, 2007 - 05:05 [AST]
Juína Army Airfield, Mato Grosso

The first helicopters lifted off into the air. These were the two Black Hawks and the Arapaho, all of which were heading now at maximum speed towards the oil depot. The Black Hawks were going to be used to evacuate the wounded, of which there were thirty-five, two more needing immediate evacuation. They would be on the first helicopter out of there, which was coming inbound at high speed, its crew manning the two Miniguns on its side. The Arapaho would use its sensors to locate enemy positions and engage them as such.

October 6, 2007 - 05:10 [AST]
Juína Oil Depot, Mato Grosso

The Little Birds were out of ammunition and running low on fuel. They had flown at high speed most of the way and they turned back now for the airbase as their relief came inbound. They would be relieved, on station, by the two Anasazis and the two extra Little Birds, all four of which were armed to the teeth. Unfortunately though, none of them carried extra ammunition for the men on the ground who were running dangerously low, too low to keep fighting indefinitely. They were conserving ammunition now, using single shots rather than burst or automatic, engaging only targets they could see. The attack helicopters would provide much more support but even still, there would be periods when they would not be overhead and the men would need their ammunition for those times.

October 6, 2007 - 05:16 [AST]
Juína Oil Depot, Mato Grosso

"Yee-Haw!" The gunner in Revenge 1 yelled over the radio as he locked up the Anasazi's powerful M88A1 Advanced Rotary Cannon on one of the windows of a high building, facing the depot's southern flank. The Anasazi carried 890 rounds of 20mm ammunition and its magazine carried both incendiary and armor piercing rounds, alternating throughout the belt. Several armor piercing rounds would hit then an incendiary, and so on and so fourth, producing maximum destructive effects. The three barrelled Gatling gun could fire up to 1,500 rounds per minute or reduce that to 750, if necessary by a selector toggle. They weren't attacking armor so the gunner had reduced the rate of fire to conserve ammunition. The designers of the gun had added a small feature to it that made it more menacing than any other class of weapons employed. The M88A1 ARC carried with it a special sound device that made it sound just like the GAU-8 Avenger cannon on the A-10 Thunderbolt II, the most powerful aircraft gun ever put into service.

As the Anasazi tore into the building, its rounds sending out fountains of fire as they impacted the walls, the second Anasazi came around the other side and, using its FLIR, spotted and began to target Anarchist forces hiding in the alleys all around the area. The men at the base kept firing themselves and had already evacuated men in both Black Hawks but they needed ammunition and they needed it badly. Despite the availability of aircraft and artillery, they still couldn't get any vehicles into the area, meaning that ammunition wasn't going to be coming too quickly. The airfield had ammunition but not enough to supply the men. As they approached the seventy-five minute mark, they did a quick ammunition check and found they had, between them, less than two thousand rounds. They were running out and running out fast.

October 6, 2007 - 05:24 [AST]
Juína Army Airfield, Mato Grosso

The Little Birds touched down at the airfield and began to be rearmed and refueled, a process that could take just a few minutes. "Captain, what's it look like out there?" The base commander said as he approached the pilot on the tarmac. He had gotten out of the bird just for a few minutes, to stretch his legs as the fuel flowed into the helicopter and crews worked to detach and reattach rocket and machine gun pods.

"It's a nightmare. They're taking fire from everywhere."

"They estimate only about sixty?"

"Sixty? What dead?"

"No engaging them. Why you think otherwise?"

"Sir. I saw at least two hundred muzzle flashes down there. They think it's sixty but it's probably four times that amount. They're getting engaged from everywhere and there aren't a lot of bodies in the streets either."

"Very well. Get up there and give them hell. We've got the two Black Hawks inbound now with wounded. You're escorting them back to the zone. They reported being engaged by rockets as they lifted off."

"We heard. We're on it." The Little Birds were refueled and rearmed by the time the two Black Hawks set down. They did with one KIA amongst them, a soldier who had died en route back to the airfield. That marked now 2 KIAs for the Layartebians and 45 WIAs. That was around half of their force.

October 6, 2007 - 05:40 [AST]
Juína Oil Depot, Mato Grosso

"Goddamn it. We're running out of ammunition here! What the hell are you people doing down there? An IED? What one? Two? Six? That's it! Goddamnit I've got wounded here, I've got men dying, and I've got hundreds of Anarchists converging on us. Artillery is ineffective, our aerial support is taking fire, and you are scared of a few mines? If we don't get that ammunition soon you're going to have a hundred bodybags to fill and I can bet you we won't die nice and pretty for you!" The commander threw down the radio and cursed up a stop as he looked around at the nearly depleted stores of ammunition. The Black Hawks had brought in some ammunition but not enough and they were running out again. "Attention. All units. Fix bayonets! We aren't giving this one up men!" The commander yelled into the radio as he pulled his knife from his pocket and fixed it to the end of his M80A1 Assault Rifle. He hated the order as he gave it and he knew that this was going to be a battle to the end. Unaware of just how many Anarchist forces were left and how many were still coming, he knew he had to protect the depot and the men inside of it.

Overhead, the two Anasazis were finishing up their last bits of ammunition. They had used up their rockets and the missiles on enemy targets for a range of two miles around the oil depot. They had blown up two buildings being used by Anarchists to store ammunition, setting off massive secondary explosions when the missiles penetrated the weak roofs of both buildings. They used their FLIR to target enemy forces throughout the area and engaged them with rockets, guns, and even their missiles. The Little Birds had come back and fourth a few times already, expending their ammunition far quicker.

The best thing though was the Arapaho, which flew an orbit pattern around the oil depot and the surrounding areas. It had more powerful sensors than the Little Birds and could direct the Anasazi's weapons. They also had weapons of their own and used them mostly to engage targets that fired back at them. Rockets streaked through the air at the helicopters and then back down at the ground as the helicopters returned fire. Satellite tasking would soon be available as the rockets, missiles, and bullets tore through the buildings all around them.

October 6, 2007 - 05:47 [AST]
South America Sector Command

"Alright what do we have here?" The satellite, high overhead, had come into view over the oil depot and Juína and was providing live feed back to sector command and the men in the oil depot. They watched in both places as muzzle flashes continued. The sun had already begun to rise on the horizon and casting light all around the area. They patched the feed back to the artillery firebase and the airbase, which instantly increased their effectiveness. Now the artillery could target more fluidly, striking as they saw. The attacking helicopters could also be vectored onto specific targets as they could see the satellite feed themselves. The operators at the base and the oil depot could designate targets as well and patch those into the airborne helicopters.

October 6, 2007 - 06:15 [AST]
Juína Oil Depot, Mato Grosso

The gunfire began to taper off as the sun rose on the horizon. Smoke lifted into the air from the oil depot. The helicopters overhead continued to buzz like a swarm of bees, striking down on targets that got too close to the hive. Three Anarchists had managed to get as far as the gate and they began to plant explosives but they were killed before they could get the satchel charge in place. It still sat there and a sniper set his crosshairs right on it. If anyone got too close he would shoot them or it. Either way, nobody was going to set off that satchel charge close enough to the door to use it.

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Satellite reconnaissance had been crucial in the last minutes of the battle. It showed enemy positions that not even the helicopters could spot and it exposed a weakness in the plan by the Anarchists. They had put all of their resources into his battle. They had no reinforcements hiding out and they had no rearward protection. Their sabotage methods around the area did ensure though that the Layartebians would not be getting reinforcements to the oil depot anytime soon but they were on their way. They had shelled both the firebase and the airbase, in hopes that it would keep the Layartebians without adequate cover but even that plan backfired from the courage and resourcefulness of the Layartebian forces at both locations.

Now the Layartebians were bringing in two small maneuver teams of four men each. Part of Ghost Recon, the two teams of four men each choppered in on Little Bird helicopters. They had come in without escort and they didn't need any either. The Anarchists were in full retreat and they had been dropped in four hundred meters behind the main thrust of the attack. Both Little Birds touched down on top of a pair of buildings that stood high in the air. Satellite reconnaissance and the helicopters overhead confirmed that the building was empty and the Ghost Recon forces could use it to their advantage.

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One team set up a static position on the building and used its height to provide rear cover for the Layartebians, acting as snipers, engaging the Anarchist forces. They were immediately successful, taking down several remaining snipers and several Anarchists trying to move around the rear of the area. The other team, on the other hand, took a long slide down the side of the building with ropes and moved in from the rear, against the Anarchist's flank, their weak spot. Armed to the teeth and equipped with body armor that could withstand bullet strike after bullet strike, they pushed forward, moving through the alleyways towards the Anarchist area.

Despite the lack of bodies, blood was everywhere. The Anarchists had done a good job moving the bodies away from view, which was something essential for them. It hid their true numbers. The Layartebian forces at the oil depot continued to estimate that they were engaged by between forty and sixty Anarchist insurgents and they had killed at least that many. They did not take into account the diversionary tactics elsewhere or the numerous Anarchist snipers.

By 06:30, the battle had, effectively ended. The Layartebian forces in the oil depot stopped taking fire as the final snipers were killed or fled. The Anarchists who had stalked the alleyways had gone now and all that was left was blood. In some cases, there were pieces of bodies, fingers and arms here and there, mainly from the high powered weapons of the helicopters or the powerful fifty caliber sniper rifles.

The end results estimated between eighty and one hundred dead Anarchists at the oil depot, the six confirmed at the airfield, and the two at the firebase. Figures were, otherwise, hard to come by because the Anarchists had cleaned up the bodies, on purpose, meaning that some had survived the attack but who knew how many. For the Layartebians, there were just two KIAs and fifty-six WIAs between the firebase, the airfield, and the oil depot. They had practically exhausted their ammunition, barely having enough to fill a single magazine of thirty rounds and they had fixed their bayonets to defend themselves against the inevitable breach by the Anarchists. Helicopter gunships made sure that did not happen.

October 8, 2007 - 12:00 [AST]
Mato Grosso

October 8 had come and the Layartebian "mandate" in Mato Grosso had come to an end. The Empire had until midnight to withdraw all of its forces from Mato Grosso and it was. Three divisions were a lot of men to pull back, including their armor. Artillery bases would be some of the last to go as they could provide cover for Layartebian forces taking fire on their egress. Surprisingly though, it was a quiet exit. Layartebian forces had secured the exit routes already and were moving along them quickly and without incident. Aircraft buzzed overhead, providing air cover for the leaving troops.

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Behind them, they left a massive wake of destruction. The war in Mato Grosso had brought a significant amount of casualties to the region. By October 8, Layartebian casualties were 484 men, eight more dying between the attack on the oil depot and various IED explosions. There were 2,139 Layartebian wounded soldiers. Layartebian forces inflicted heavy casualties on the Anarchists, who lost nearly their entire fighting force. They didn't have many left after the final attack on the oil depot. At least a hundred thousand civilians had been displaced from the war and they had escaped far, far away. They would return to total destruction.

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Many international groups were quick to condemn the Layartebians because of the destruction that they left. Whole cities were ruined, leveled to the ground, and an entre region was wiped off the map from constant bombardment from overhead and artillery.

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By midnight, the Layartebian forces would be completely out of Mato Grosso, back in the Amazon territory, reinforcing the border. The agreement with the Mato Grosso government was accepted by them and also by the Layartebian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Emperor. The deal excluded Anarchist and other insurgent and rebel forces from the northwestern region of Mato Grosso in exchange for Layartebian foreign aide.

October 12, 2007 - 14:00 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

"Good afternoon everyone." The Emperor said as he entered his office through a door in the back of the room, a door that led directly to his living quarters. He had been in there on a private phone call with BG. Delaney concerning an important and crucial matter that was nothing short of classified. Soundproof, his living quarters were lavish and splendid, fit for a king. He rarely used them though, spending more time managing the Empire than anything else. "I hope you will excuse me, I was detained. Please everyone, be seated. We have an important matter to discuss.

"As you are all aware, I have asked the Minister of Defense to resign based on the poor performance in our last conflict. He has abliged and we have a spot to fill in the Ministry of Defense. Over the past seventy-two hours, we have reviewed six individuals and I have made my final decision. Before we proceed to invite him into the room and sit with us to present his platform, I would like to ask anyone here of their thoughts. The candidate I have chosen is Jonas Graham. He is a rising star in the Ministry of Defense and he has served the Empire for over a decade already in the Ministry of Defense itself. He was recently promoted to Assistant Director of Operations and it was primarily his ideas and leadership skills that have saved us in this conflict. I feel that had we listened to him from the getgo, we would be standing in Cuiabá raising a Layartebian flag. However, that is neither here nor there.

"I personally take some of the blame for our performance. Following the failures in seizing the Amazonian territory, I decided to allow our former Minister a chance to reprieve himself. Unfortunately, he failed in that task and took advantage of my kindness. This has left us with a draw. We may have claimed tactical victory and even strategic victory in the end, pushing the Anarchist forces all the way to Brasnorte and devestating their ranks. However, we underestimated them and as a former military man that is a mistake I cannot afford to make. Those mistakes get men killed ladies and gentlemen. I do not like to see bodybags full of Layartebian soldiers. A part of me dies when we have to fill one of them and I am afraid too many of them have died because of the inepititude of the former Ministry of Defense and their staff. In the wake of our chaos, I hoped that this new breed could do the job the old breed failed to do anymore but I am afraid I was wrong.

"That is, partly, my own fault. As I have admitted. You see," he continued to pace the room, only eyeing his chair, not actually moving to sit in it. "In the years of the Conquests, we benefitted from excellent leadership but, as always happens, people become burned out. Ideas do not seem new anymore and with the rise of domestic terrorism, our Ministry of Defense needed a change. Unfortunately, it wasn't a change for the better. We failed at a task that, just three years ago, we would have succeeded hands down. Mr. Graham is part of that old breed but he is also part of the new breed. He has shown the leadership skills and the thinking of the old breed but the innovation the new breed has presented. You may wonder why I refer to them as this and it is nothing more than an affectionate term, if you will.

"So. I will open the floor for questions and concerns." Dozens of them were fired at the Emperor over the course of forty-five minutes. Jonas Graham sat in the waiting room the whole time, patient but unaware of why he was there. He was only told to prepare his platform and to present it to the Cabinet, an honor so few were able to have. He did not know that he had the job yet nor did he know what was going on inside of room. Several times, the secretary, Angie, had asked him if he wanted something to drink and he accepted twice but that still did not calm his nerves. On the outside he was quite calm and he seemed quite at ease, even striking up minor conversations with Angie, to pass the time. He reviewed his platform, made some last minute adjustments and watched the television hanging on the far wall of the room. The secretary had turned it to local news and at least one daytime talk show, offering to change it to whatever Graham wanted but he did not impose. He was a gentleman and he never checked his watch either.

He had arrived at 13:45, which was "on-time" per say. Decorum stated that if one did not arrive fifteen minutes early, they were late. He was on time and finally, at 14:50, the secretary's buzzer echoed. "Angie," the Emperor's voice followed. "Please send Mr. Graham in. Thank you."

"Yes sir." She released the buzzer intercom and smiled at the man in the waiting room. "Sir. You may enter." The doors slowly swung open and Mr. Graham stood up and straightened out his suit jacket, picked up his briefcase, and entered the Emperor's office for the first time in his life.

"Mr. Graham. Please. Welcome." The Emperor greeted him, his hand extended. They shook hands and he offered him a seat. "I trust you know who these fine ladies and gentlemen are?"

"I do sir."

"Excellent." He finally moved over to his seat at the head of the table. "I have asked you here this afternoon to present your platform. We have reviewed your candidacy request for the Minister of Defense. You would not be here this afternoon if we did not have confidence in your ability to perform this task. However, before we can make our final decision, we need to hear your own personal thoughts. We have heard what your peers think of you, what your friends think of you, and what your job performance is. We are pleased. So, whenever you are ready, please begin." The Emperor finally sat down, after nearly an hour of walking around the room, addressing everyone individually. The doors had finally shut and the room was eeriely silent as Jonas opened his briefcase and pulled out some notes.

He spoke for a half hour, looking down at his notes just once. He addressed everyone as they asked questions along the way and performed better than anyone had expected. By 16:00 hours, he was officially declared the new Minister of Defense, a title that removed his name.

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October 13, 2007 - 05:00 [EST]
Miami, Florida

"This is Blue. I've got a visual on the target. He's setting out for a jog now. Is the vehicle ready?"

"Roger that Blue. Vehicle is ready and moving. State position."

"Three hundred meters north of the target. At the bus stop."

"Roger that. We've got a visual. We'll take him there."

"Affirmative." The morning was warm, warm enough for a jog in shorts and a T-shirt and this was what the man did every morning. He had always lived in Miami but for a long while he had been in Layarteb City, working there for the government. He was retired now and he wanted nothing more than to stay in shape and keep healthy. He imagined he would have to get another job soon but that did not concern him just yet. The stress he had since May 14, just shy of five months ago, had aged him nearly five years. He looked forward to a sabatical, some time off, and some rest. He was young, in his mid-40s, young enough to still live another sixty years if he stayed healthy and sharp. That was his concern. The slow moving van twenty meters behind him was of no concern and he jogged with his iPod, unable to hear anything.

Moving quickly, he fast approached the bus stop, where another man waited. This man was quiet and calculating. He was dressed like anyone else on that day, even though it was five in the morning. He leaned against the bus stop, his arms crossed, a backpack hanging from his shoulders. He stood quietly, waiting for the bus it seemed. Repositioning himself to the other side of the bus stop, he watched now as the jogger approached him, the jogger in his own world. "Making my move!" He whispered, a small receiver on his colar picking up his voice.

The jogger passed by the bus stop and never knew what hit him. The man with the backpack, who seemed to be innocent, simply waiting for the bus, had thrust out his leg. The jogger had no chance to avoid it and tumbled over, slamming into the ground in front of him, skidding on his palms. His iPod earphones had come off in the fall and the van stopped abruptly, its door opened and two men climbing out, both wearing ski masks. "Get him in!" The man with the backpack ordered as he thrust a needle down into the man's thigh, right into the fermoral artery, a precision strike that put a powerful sedative into the jogger's bloodstream instantly. He stopped fighting moments later as it took effect. Scraped, bruised, cut, and bleeding, he was carried into the van and thrown on the floor inside. The man with the backpack took a seat in the front and they shut the door, driving away. "Good job! Let's get to the harbor." He looked behind him as two men proceeded to restrain the sedated jogger with plastic zip-ties. In the front, the man coordinating the plan pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed a number that nobody knew except him. It rang four times before the other line picked up, "I'll have eggs over easy." He said no more, hanging up the call immediately thereafter.

They drove to the harbor, a straight run from where they were, and packed their van down the pier. They had changed en route to look like nothing more than casual people and they brought with the fishing rods and all sorts of items that would make them far less suspicious than they were. It was a plan that was carefully planned, at last minute but executed perfectly. They looked around the docks several times before they pulled the sedated and now restrained jogger from the van, carrying him into the cabin of a small boat, leaving him on the bed. Two men were already on the boat and they were joined now by three from the van, including the commander of the operation. Waiving farewell, they started the boat and piloted it out of the harbor, the van going far away, to meet two other men. The operation consisted of eight men total, not including the kidnapped jogger.

It wasn't until 10:00 hours when they stopped the boat. The sun was well up by then and there wasn't a single boat on the horizon. They were seventy nautical miles from Miami, between Grand Bahama Island and Florida, in a place alone. They used a GPS device to determine where they were in the world and when they reached their waypoint, they had stopped. Now they were simply adrift, floating with the currents. "Bring him up here." The commander said to two of the men as he pulled out another needle, this one containing a stimulant that would immediately waken the jogger from his sedated slumber.

Both men dragged him to the deck and plopped him down. Both his hands and his feet were bound, a black hood over his head, and he was still out of it. "Son of a bitch is still asleep." The commander laughed, sticking the needle right in the man's arm. He pulled off the hood and roughly two minutes later, the jogger opened his eyes. He was groggy and shaking off the sedation was hard, too hard. He didn't know where he was, what he was doing, or even if what he remembered was true. "Wake up!" The commander said, standing over him. The jogger groaned, the pains of his fall coming back to him. He realized now that he was on a boat and that he was restrained.

"Where am I?" He asked, confused, looking down at the boat floor. "Why am I tied up?" Slowly his senses came back to him.

"Because you're a bad man."

"That voice. I recognize it." The jogger suddenly said, pushing his body around, the glare of the sun completely obscuring his vision, forcing him to close his eyes as they teared.

"You should recognize it. You realize that you're in deep shit right?"

"Who are you? What are you talking about?"

"I'll wait until your eyes adjust or would you like some sunglasses?" He joked as he adjusted his own. "It's beautiful out here. Beautiful sea. What a view too. The shining sun. I mean it's fall but it feels like summer still. What a change in atmosphere wouldn't you say?"

"Who the hell are you and what do you want from me?"

"What do I want? Nothing actually. I already have what I want. You. On a boat. In the middle of nowhere. Come on you should be smarter than this. Pinpoint the voice yet?"

The jogger was finally able to open his eyes and though he had to squint, he looked up and clearly saw the man standing over him, a suppressed pistol in his right hand. "Jack?"

"That's right. Brigadier General. Jack Delaney. You look surprised?"

"So this is what you do?"

"You don't know what I do. My team does what?"

"I don't know."

"Even the Minister of Defense doesn't know what we do?" He joked with the men around him. "I bet you don't. You see. You never really passed the test on what it is that we do here."

"Fine. Are you going to tell me or just kill me?"

"I'm going to do both. Just for the hell of it."

"You're a monster aren't you?"

"You could say that," he walked around the boat and took a wiff of the sea air. "I love the sea air you know. It calms me. You're lucky too because I chose this spot. You see, I didn't really think it was too fair killing you and all so I thought you might want to at least have a pleasurable sight before you die. Most people that die by my or rather our hands, don't usually have such a beautiful sight. You'll at least get that much. It's the least I could do."

"Gee. Thanks." He sat up and leaned against the side of the boat, it rocking lightly with the calm waves. "Fine. What is it that you do?"

"My team is the Emperor's personal body guard force. When we aren't doing it another team is. Otherwise, we are the protectors of the Empire, so to speak. We do the dirty work that keeps the Empire intact. We've been here, there, everywhere. Every war the Empire has fought we've either fought in or planned for or at least trained for, in some way. You see, this latest fuck up by your inept leadership has convinced some of the higher ups in the government that you aren't capable of running a brothel. Much less a whole Ministry. So I simply dangled the idea that you were a member of the Ghost Warriors. They ate it up hook, line, and sinker. No pun intended, obviously."

"So you are traitors?"

"Traitors? What do you mean by that?"

"You're part of that group aren't you?"

"Part of it. Hell we're the model it's built on. I pride myself in that. You see for decades we fought with the Empire, for the Empire. We have done things no man, no matter how savage he is, would think to do. All in the name of the Empire. The Empire has outlived its usefulness. You see we know every dirty, little secret in the Empire. That's us, the Protectors of the Empire. Except, we aren't protecting it anymore. Your little foul up gave us the necessary smoke screen to plant some evidence, do this, do that, you know the usual. Now here we are. Under orders to interrogate and execute you. Obviously, there's no need for interrogation, you are truely innocent. Sucks doesn't it?" He made a joke of the ordeal.

"So that's it. You bring down the government and what? Take power yourself?"

"Not in the least bit. We aren't interested in power. You see, we don't need it. We have it. Hell, I could walk down the streets of Layarteb City, shoot a cop in the face, smile for the cameras, and they'd never put be in a court room. That's the power we have. We are the Protectors of the Empire."

"You like that term. Don't you."

"Yes I do. We fought in hell holes you don't even know exist. We've been to Kaliningrad. To the Yucatán. To Quebec. To name a few. So now you're time has come. We have to be getting back and it's a long way back. So I'll grant you one thing before you die. Obviously you can see the sights around you. Nice aren't they? Well here is your one thing. It may seem rather devious but that's our desire here. You see I like to toy with those I kill slowly. You may call me a monster or a mad man but, to me, it's paradise. So here, what is one question you have? Think about it but don't think too long, I don't have a lot of patience in situations like this. Ask away and I will give you an honest answer then."

The former Minister of Defense knew death was coming upon him but he didn't know yet. He was already dying. After a few minutes he finally posed the question. "Fine. Since I imagine I can't get out of this one and I realize when I'm done for."

"See I told you that you were smart."

"Have we made contact with extraterrestrial life?"

"That's it? You want to know if UFOs are real?"

"Yes."

"That's it? You're sure?"

"Yes."

"Fine. They are. Life exists outside of planet Earth. We've engaged and shot down UFOs. They have evaded us on occasion while other times we've gotten them. They don't go around though abducting every Tom, Dick, and Jane that claims they are though. Those are just wierdos who need attention and what not. They are far more advanced than we are but we've gotten them on a few occassions. We have conducted experiments on them as well. None of them are currently living though. We have no live extraterrestrial lifeforms in our possession and all bodies have been thoroughly destroyed. The Yucatán affair with the documents and the ancient texts? That's all real. Does that suffice?"

"Yes."

"Good." The former Minister of Defense smirked, the thought that life existed elsewhere gave him some hope. He closed his eyes moments later and his breathing stopped. He had been poisoned earlier when BG. Delaney woke him with the injection. After his breathing stopped, he was weighed down with chains and thrown overboard. As he landed in the water, BG. Delaney put two bullets into the back of his head, making sure that he was dead. His body sunk thereafter to the bottom of the sea.

OOC Summary

Chapter One: Faint & Numb


October 10: A massive truck bomb in the order of 2,000 pounds goes off outside a newspaper office of the LNN in the early morning hours. 7 dead.
October 11: Missile Base 1511 undergoes treasonous insurrection. Further reports unknown.
October 14: ILN Hunter SSN ordered to take up position off Layarteb coast. Further orders not given.
October 15: Force Falcon Team One ordered to re-establish contact with Missile Base 1511. Boeing 777 crashes north of Athens, Tennessee. All 89 on board are killed. Investigation pending.


Chapter Two: Frantic

October 16: Force Falcon Team One leads a strike on Missile Base 1511. During the course of the retaking, a single LGM-174A Satan is launched at Layarteb City with the intention of hitting it. Luckily, MIM-196 AABMS missiles intercept the ICBM before it could hit.


Chapter Three: Estranged

October 18: Force Falcon Team One lands in Santa Cruz, Bolivia for the assassination of the President of GnOoLoCoPeLep.
October 20: GnOoLoCoPeLepian President assassinated early in the morning.
October 22: Failed attempt by terrorist group to bomb Layartebian airbase in Sunbury, PA.


Chapter Four: Overburdened

October 23: Central Justice Agency begins Anti-Domestic Terrorist Force under the command of Bureau Chief Benjamin O'Davis. Identifies Republican Liberation Army as terrorist group responsible for bombings of Layarteb City and airliner over Tennessee.
October 25: RLA blows up a Boeing 707 and an Airbus A300 from Layarteb Airways over Cove Neck, New York and Belle Harbor, Queens, Layarteb City.
October 26: Emperor makes speech condemning the RLA. Raid on Layarteb City apartment nets 17 RLA terrorists and kills 3. Documents recovered tell of a plot for subway bombings.
October 28: News media is leaked the presence of the Mayan uprising in the Yucatán state.
October 30: Six security guards shot and killed execution style inside the Layarteb City office for Layarteb Publishers
United.
October 31: Secret societies meet to discuss revolutionary plan.
November 2: Two firefighters die in a suspicious blaze in a New Jersey factory.


Chapter Five: Rosenrot

November 5: 84 RLA terrorists seize St. Paul's Boarding School in New Hampshire and take 1,184 hostages, most of them under 18. In the fighting, they lose 2 of their own and kill 20, mostly school officials and guards. Terrorists round up hostages in the main dining hall as parents, soldiers, and police officers, including SWAT, surround the school. By 1300, a standoff ensues. At 1430, three children are executed by the RLA terrorists after a SWAT sniper shoots one of the terrorists. The SWAT sniper dies mysteriously. At 1530, Rome and Norway denounce the seizure.
November 6: Under the threat of a severe winter storm, small group of soldiers enter school and hide in admissions office. Families begin to grow wrestless and plot their own action. Explosions go off in dining hall and a chaotic attack is done leaving 75 terrorists, 152 children, and 38 soldiers dead. Many are wounded. Seven terrorists are captured, including the leader.
November 7: Emperor delcares national day of mourning for November 6.


Chapter Six: Precious

December 1: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island become part of the Empire. Only Quebec remains.
December 9: Quebecois Special Forces use VX gas against Jay, Vermont, killing 384 of 426 people.
December 10: Quebecois invade Ontario during the early morning. Jay Incident becomes public knowledge and Quebecois SOF and RLA terrorists blamed. Quebecois forces make quick and powerful headway throughout the course of the morning, seizing North Bay. RLA base compound in Clinton discovered for its true purpose.
December 11: Roman forces land to help the Ontarians. Quebecois clash with Roman/Ontarian forces in Alliston.
December 12: RLA forces seize 12 MGM-212 CBRR rockets on an assault at the El Jobal Chemical Weapons Depot, in Venezuela. 60 base personnel and 18 terrorists are killed. The rockets are currently "missing."
December 13: Roman forces repel the Quebecoi offensive, pushing them out of Ontario and towards Quebec. RLA group captured in Alliston, where Quebecoi forces devestated and forced back.


Chapter Seven: Colorblind

December 15: Layartebian forces begin aerial attack on Quebec at 0200 local time.
December 25: Ground war against Quebec begins at 0230 local time.
December 30: Boisclair captured by Roman forces.
January 1, 2006: Quebec War over. Montreal secure.


Chapter Eight: Gone Away

January 21: Battle of Clinton begins. Layartebian forces attack RLA compound north of Clinton, Alabama. The battle begins at exactly 10:02, local time. 8 soldiers die initially. Full assault begins at 23:00. Assault ends at 23:40 with 52 soldiers dead and 82 wounded.
January 22: Battle of Clinton continues. Stalemate ensues with a twenty-four hour ceasefire at 07:15.
January 23: Battle of Clinton ends. RLA compound burned from the inside out, RLA leadership and fighters dead from suicide or gunshots. 427 die.


Chapter Nine: Greed & Serenity

June 1: Former Minister of Intelligence dies inside of Nova Prospekt prison, Galapagos Islands.


Chapter Ten: Bleed the Freak

June 15: Soldiers begin leaving the island of Grenada for 6-day liberty.
June 16: Rebellion forces attack Grenada at 03:00 hours. At 05:29 hours, rebel forces shoot down Flight 2993 to Miami, Florida with 226 people onboard; none survive. By 20:00 hours, rebel forces have secured 100% of the island and suffered 3,049 losses. Layartebian casualties number 7,775 and 4,518 are captured. In the fighting, 839 civilians are killed in addition to Flight 2993.


Chapter Eleven: Goodbye For Now

June 16: Dr. Gordon Gray of the University of Layarteb at Layarteb City is murdered by an unknown gunman.
June 17: United Eastasian Republic publically officially recognizes the Republic of Grenada and offers supplies, funding, and aide.
June 18: At 08:30 hours, the Emperor gives worldwide speech about Grenada and condemns UER for recognizing the Democratic Republic of Grenada.
June 19: Imperial Layartebian Navy blockades island of Grenada.
June 22: UER aide flight given clearance to land in Grenada. UER aide flight evacuates UER diplomatic contingent from Grenada. ILN RA-5E Vigilante conducts low-level reconnaissance.
June 23: Christopher Allen Florence is arrested outside of Charleston, WV and questioned and held in connection to the murder of Dr. Gray.


Chapter Twelve: Fall to Pieces

July 3: Supreme Grenadian of the DPRG secretly requests international aide to be delivered during a week long "negotiation" with the Empire, during which they hope the blockade will be lifted.
July 4: MSgt. Brendan Williams and his family are murdered, possibly by drifters, in their Tennessee home. MSgt. Williams was due for a media interview regarding the shoot down of LA Flight 88 at 19:00 hours.
July 6: Secret safe house in Panama is attacked by Force Falcon Team One early in the morning, just after midnight. RLA high council, survivors of the Battle of Clinton, are all killed. The total death toll is 42 in the safe house and 28 in the vehicle convoy. The Emperor agrees that the blockade shall be lifted on July 16, 2006 at 00:00 EST and reinstated on July 22, 2006 at 23:59 EST, if no progress is made during negotiations.


Chapter Thirteen: Bleeding Me

July 11: Shoot out at Dockhouse 14 in Caracas shipyard leaves 13 dead. A mysterious cargo is stolen and the identity of all men, except two, is unconfirmed. Those two are linked with Esmeralda Cartel.
July 13: Giacomo Benevetti is murdered by shooting and burning outside his office in Caracas, Venezuela. Suspects unknown though murder is linked with Dr. Gordon Gray. Suspect sought out is believed to be the same person for both.
July 14: Esmeralda Cartel yacht sunk in the Gulf of Paria by ILN vessel. Eight men aboard killed. Two men founded murdered, execution sytle in Güiria. Both are linked to the Esmeralda Cartel.
July 21: Layartebian delegation to Grenada is assassinated in their hotel in St. George's, totalling 29 individuals. Blockade resumes and the DPRG is given 24 hours from 11:00 hrs [EST] to surrender the island back to Layarteb City.
July 22: Deadline passes. Hostilities officially begin against DPRG at 13:00 hrs [EST].


Chapter Fourteen: Stillborn

July 22: Deadline passes. Hostilities officially begin against DPRG at 13:00 hrs [EST]. First eleven hours of fighting sees 1,600 Grenadian, 22 Layartebian, and 65 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 21,239 at the start of the war.
July 23: At 00:15 hrs [EST], Victoria is secured. Mount Saint Catherine is secured at 03:00 hrs [EST]. Panorama and Trevellan are secured at 09:00 hrs [EST]. First thirty-five hours of fighting sees 3,839 Grenadian, 312 Layartebian, and 300 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 17,315 at the end of July 23. There are a total of 85 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 24: At 01:20 hrs [EST], Grenville is secured. At 03:00 hrs [EST], Saint Patrick's parish & Saint Andrew's parish secured. At 06:20 hrs [EST], the airport is secured. At 08:30 hrs [EST] assault on St. George's begins with aircraft and cruise missiles. At 11:15 hrs [EST] Gouyave is secured but massacre of civilians is found with 2,450 civilians executed throughout the town by Grenadian soldiers. First fifty-nine hours of fighting sees 7,293 Grenadian, 815 Layartebian, and 2,828 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 13,734 at the end of July 24. There are a total of 212 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 25: At 02:00 hrs [EST], all of Grenada is considered secured except for St. George's. At 05:00 hrs [EST], invasion of St. George's by Marines begins. At 21:25 hrs [EST], the captured Layartebian soldiers from June 16 are recovered. Of the 4,518 that were initially captured, only 3,758 remained alive. In the first eighty-three hours of fighting, 9,549 Grenadian, 1,787 Layartebian, and 3,201 civilain casualties are registered. Grenadian soldiers number 11,430 at the end of July 25. There are a total of 260 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 26: At 10:29:38 hrs [EST], a 5 kiloton nuclear device is detonated in downtown St. George's. The device is of unknown origin and at least 30,000 civilians and 8,500 Grenadian military personnel as well as 6,100 Marines are persent in the city when the device goes off. Possible casualties are expected to exceed 40,000. At 12:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor addresses the world about the events in Grenada. Estimates for casualties are narrowed between 20,000 and 30,000.


Chapter Fifteen: Cowboys From Hell

July 26: At 11:30 hrs [EST], martial law is declared on Grenada and an immediate "in-house" curfew is imposed. At 14:15 hrs [EST], analysis shows that radiation is rapidly spreading towards Cottish Barbados, to the northeast, and that the device used was an enhanced radiation device. At 15:01 hrs [EST], the first fire fighting chemicals fall over Saint George's. At 17:00 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as a W80-0 of a Tomahawk SLCM. At 18:20 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as a Teh Ninjan weapon. At 21:18 hrs [EST], a fire storm hits the city and ravages the inner circle of the city, around the blast zone.
July 27: At 09:30 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as being built within the Empire of Teh Ninjas in Cuba and shipped to Madagascar for basing on a 688/I class submarine. At 11:00 hrs [EST], the fires within the city are considered "under control." Recovery efforts continue within the city.
July 28: At 04:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor meets with President Baruti of the United States of Brink about the bombing. At 04:30 hrs [EST], two vehicles are identified on a highway heading north from Georgia and engaged by 2nd BOG forces. Two men are captured. Six are killed and their vehicle destroyed. Witnesses had little to say about the event.
July 29: At 06:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor's aircraft and flight are engaged by twelve F-22B Raptors going rogue from the ILAF. All twelve rogue aircraft are shot down along with four F-22B Raptors and one F-14E Super Tomcat escorting the Emperor's aircraft. At 21:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor returns to Layarteb City. The engagement of his aircraft is kept "hush-hush."
August 9: At 12:00 hrs [EST], the final casualty figures are released to include 37,221 as a result of both the blast and the radiation poisoning that followed. On Barbados, 400 Cottish individuals died.


Chapter Sixteen: Sehnsucht

November 23: Layarteb Airlines Flight 1890 explodes in mid-air, at 19:30 hrs [EST], 8 miles south of East Moriches, Long Island. The cause of the disaster is yet unknown but all 526 onboard are presumed dead.
November 24: Jasmine Delgado, the daughter of the Governor of the Province of Raef, is kidnapped at a market in Havana at 15:05 hrs [EST] by Luis Rendon and Javier Montenegra of the Florida Cartel. They soon meet up with Hector Pimentel, also of the Florida Cartel. Their house and car are burned and their whereabouts are unknown.
December 1: At 10:27 hrs [EST], the chief of police for the Province of Raef is asssassinated when his helicopter is shot down trying to land on the roof of the Panama City police headquarters. Six men in the helicopter and three bystanders on the street are killed.
December 11: Mysterious explosion around 22:39 hrs [EST] kills lead witness in Jasmine Delgado kidnapping and destroys two adjacent homes. Ten others are killed.
December 23: Official investigation on LA Flight 1890 concludes citing that mechanical failure brought down the aircraft due to faulty wiring in the center fuel tank, which ignited fuel vapors and caused the explosion. All 526 lives were lost, making it the dealiest, civilian air disaster in EOL history.


Chapter Seventeen: Ugly & Damned

December 27: The Empire begins a secret war against Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam, a major warlord in Afghanistan and drug dealer who is directly linked with Layartebian cartels.
February 2, 2007: Layartebian forces assist the Eurasian Federation in seizing Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. They wage a "secret war" against Sepah-e Pasdaran, an Islamist-terrorist group in the region. Evidence gathered from Sepah-e Pasdaran link them to the Layartebian situation. Funding for Sepah-e Pasdaran was given through Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam by Totalis (Varsolan Corporation on the Falklands linked directly to Grenada), the cartels, and the RLA. Sepah-e Pasdaran trained various terrorist groups acting in the Empire of Layarteb from 2005 - 2007 including the RLA and Free Venezuelans. An unknown "major funder" is sought out.
February 15: Layartebian forces invade southern Neuvo Rican Mexico and seize Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, and Tabasaco in the "War on Drugs" and, effectively, end the drug trade in the region when the war is completed.
February 18: State governor of Venezuela is assassinated, presumably by a "domestic" terrorist group related to the RLA.
March 1: Victory is declared in southern Mexico.
March 4: Successor to the state governor vanishes mysteriously. Street violence in Caracas escalates to its highest levels since 1988. Fueled by Illuminati Ghost Warriors, street violences peaks shortly thereafter.
March 12: Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam is killed. Evidence links him to Sepah-e Pasdaran.
April 1: Organized protests begin in Caracas and are brutally suppressed. In total 629 people, including 55 police officers are killed when the government stepped in to stop the protests.
April 2: Two women are killed when the State Governer of Venezuela's house is attacked by rocket fire. The governor is severely injured and is forced to withdraw from his duties.
April 5: The "Free Venezuelans" announce that they are a pro-independence group seeking for Venezuelan independence and claim responsibility for the attack of April 2. They are linked to demonstrations going back to March and are immediately assumed to be responsible for the February 18th assassination of the government.
April 8: The Imperial Layartebian Military begins to mobilize as unrest in Venezuela peaks again.
April 9: The Free Venezuelans detonate a massive car bomb inside the South Eastern Virginia government building in Caracas, leveling the building. Forty-five are killed in the attack, which occurs at 01:30 hours [AST]. At 01:32 hours [AST] fighting erupts in Caracs and by 05:30 hours [AST] Venezuela is in the midst of a total revolution.
May 5: The last of the Free Venezuelans are captured, killed, or in hiding and the insurrection ends, unsuccessfully. Fatalities include 182,500 civilians, 4,528 soldiers, and 429,040 rebels. Casualties include upwards of 300,000 civilians, 12,086 soldiers, and 200,489 rebels. There are 342,493 rebels captured.
May 14: The ministers of Defense, Intelligence, Interior, and Justice are fired.
May 17: Assad al Samir, a prominent leader with Sepah-e Pasdaran is killed during a failed mission to apprehend him. He is a major player in Layartebian terrorism and acts as a middleman between Sepah-e Pasdaran and Totalis. He is also linked with the unknown "major funder" sought out by the Ministry of Justice.


Chapter Eighteen: Long Way Down

May 19: An arson fire destroys the Church of Saint Andrews in the Bronx, killing 6.
May 23: Marjorie Williams, a prominent writer for the Layarteb City Times, disappears from her White Plains home in the early morning hours. She was working on a feature story about the rise in kidnappings since November 2006. All of her notes, tapes, and the laptop she used were taken. No suspects are immediately sought. Early on the morning of May 23, Salem Nuclear Powerplant is attacked by eight unknown terrorists. Two are killed and six captured in a firefight that also claimed the lives of one security officer and one National Guardsmen. The attack was unsuccessful.
May 24: Thomas Deveroe, last President of the Republic of Layarteb, dies in his sleep in Kerala, Cotland. Cause is determined to be acute myocardial infarction.
May 25: Illuminati terrorists secretly take hold of the Sky Wonder, a cruise ship in the Caribbean Sea with 1,550 passengers and 600 crew members.
May 26: Jeremy Berms, a director in the Ministry of the Interior is assassinated by an unknown hit man in the Yucatán.
May 27: Referendum vote favors returning the body of Thomas Deveroe to Layarteb for burial 87.63% to 12.37%.


Chapter Nineteen: Night Train

May 28: At 04:48 hours [EST], an M-107 civilian jetliner crashes on the Spain/Portugal border, all aboard are lost, including 108 Layartebian citizens. Cause of the crash is unknown. At 08:15 hours [EST], terrorists sink the Sky Wonder ocean liner in the Gulf of Mexico with explosives. All aboard, including 400 Cottish citizens, are killed, a total number of 2,150. An assault on a police station in Cleveland leaves 8 police officers dead and 31 injured. Of the attackers, 2 are killed and the remainder escape. Open revolution begins in Portugal with the secession of Portugal from the Fourth Reich. Spain eventually joins the secession.
June 9: War breaks out with the Federal Republic of the Amazon concerning the Venezuelan uprising of 2007 and the harboring of insurgents.
June 17: Eighty Layartebian civilians are brutally murdered by the Portugese government. At 19:30 hours [EST], Layartebian forces begin a systematic bombardment of Portugese strategic positions relating to their air force and air defense network.
June 19: The last two of three Sepah-e Pasdaran terrorists are apprehended secretly in the town of Guarda in Portugal. They are returned to the Empire for questioning.
June 24: Interrogations reveal that the name of the "domestic terrorist group." They are referred to as "Ghost Warriors." Little other information is known about them except they trained in Sepah-e Pasdaran camps and are elite mercenaries.
June 27: Manaus is secured by Layartebian forces in the Amazonian War.
July 3: The Amazonian War concludes with a Layartebian victory. There had been 566 KIAs, 1,768 WIAs, and 7 MIAs on the Layartebian side and there were over 20,000 civilian casualties and at least 30,000 casualties of all types amongst the military forces.
July 10: An unknown assassin kills the Mayor of Raccoon City, the CJA Field Director for Raccoon City, and an unidentified woman.
July 18: At 05:10 hours [EST], Layartebian police and CJA officers raid an apartment in the Bronx and arrest four Sepah-e Pasdaran terrorists plotting to set off a bomb in Layarteb City. They are Eurasian citizens.
July 27: At 17:10 hours [EST], bombs rip through Grand Central Station, Pennsylvania Station, South Station, and Union Station in Layarteb City, Falcon City, and Chicago. In total, 913 people were killed and 542 required medical attention.
September 1: Amazonian insurgents launch a brutal offense against Layartebian forces in the Amazonian Control Zone and are defeated with over 1,000 casualties to the enemy and fewer than 60 to the Layartebian forces.
September 3: Anarchist forces launch attacks on Layartebian border stations between Mato Grosso and the Amazonian Control Zone killing 14 Layartebians, injuring 11. Anarchists suffer just 8 deaths.
September 4: Layartebian forces launch Operation Thunder Rain with the systematic bombing of airports and highways in Mato Grosso to cut off the Anarchist forces from waging war in the ACZ. The goal is to push them out of the border area and stop a flow of arms and soldiers into the ACZ from Mato Grosso.
September 5: Layarteb officially invades Mato Grosso with soldiers.
September 7: Layartebian forces secure various northern cities and Anarchists call for a temporary ceasefire.
September 10: Anarchist forces attack Layartebian positions near Juína, ending the ceasefire.
September 12: The ILA launches an MGM-233 Vesta rocket into Juína, striking a civilian air raid shelter killing 1,730 and injuring 48. Of them, 1,698 are civilians, many of them children. This brings upon a subsequent international condemnation of Layartebian actions.
September 24: Anarchist forces down a CH-53N Super Stallion II, killing 69 Layartebian soldiers, the largest single loss of life in one day to the Empire in over a decade.
September 29: Layartebian forces begin the Brasnorte Offensive, aimed at driving Anarchists forces all the way south of Brasnorte.
October 1: Brasnorte Offensive concludes with all goals achieved. Anarchists, decimated, call for an immediate ceasefire, which is honored.
October 6: Anarchist remnants launch a surprise attack in Juína against an oil depot, airfield, and artillery base killing 2 Layartebian soldiers. Estimates for dead Anarchists exceed 60.
October 8: All Layartebian forces withdraw from Mato Grosso by midnight. Operation Thunder Rain concludes, essentially, as a draw. The government of Mato Grosso pledges to keep Anarchist rebels out of the border area in return for Layartebian foreign aide and relations. The war leaves 484 Layartebian KIAs, 2,139 Layartebian WIAs, almost 9,000 deaths for the Anarchists, and over 20,000 civilian deaths.
October 9: Layartebian Minister of Defense resigns.
October 12: New Minister of Defense appointed.
October 13: Former Minister of Defense mysteriously disappears from Miami, Florida.



Confirmed Body Count: 748,600
Unconfirmed Body Count: 748,910+

Chapter XX: November Rain

November 1, 2007 - 02:00 [EST]
Caribou, Maine

Despite fall being in full swing, the weather was otherwise warm in Caribou, where the thermometers read 50°F. The town was quiet and calm. It was clear but windy with a 15 mph wind gusting to 27 mph heading to the south. A town of barely 10,000 Caribou wasn't very important, globally speaking. Few knew it actually existed and even fewer knew where it was. Nestled in northeastern Maine, a few miles from the border with New Brunswick, Caribou was otherwise a useless spot on the map. During the winter, their 115 inches of snowfall always brought skiers and other nature enthuiasts but rarely anybody else. There was one part of Caribou though that made it worthwhile, to the Empire at least. Nestled in its northern limits, a single radar station sat fenced in and protected by electronic surveilliance. Military officials went into and out of the facility at all hours of the night and all days of the year, Christmas and New Years included. The site was particularly large, just under 4,000 acres in size and extremely isolated. White domes protected the radars from prying eyes and several point-defense SAM units roved around here and there, hiding underneath camouflage.

Caribou was the site of just one of the many radar stations for the Layartebian Air Defense Network. Equipped with technologically advanced machinery, Caribou Air Control Station, as it was dubbed, unofficially, allowed Layartebian officials to see over 2,000 miles over the horizon, on a bad day. They could see as high as space and they used the site for many space calculations, using laser telemetry to gauge the distance between the Earth and the moon and, on some occassion, Mars as well. Not far from the military station was the third largest telescope in the Empire. Caribou was, in that case, highly useful to the Empire and its military. Throughout its history with the Empire, Caribou had been crucial for the air defense of the Empire.

With another shift sitting down at their consoles and displays, Caribou Air Control Station hummed with its normal activity until just after 02:00 hours. Senior Airman Bradly Mendozza had just sat down at his console when he saw the inbound track. He wished he had seen it after he drank his cup of coffee but he wasn't that lucky. "Echo One. I've got a track. Inbound from high altitude. Currently over Labrador Sea. Altitude is 53.85 miles, just entering the Mesosphere. Speed is 12,500 miles per hour. Increasing. Heading 2-3-0."

"Alright Echo One. What do you have? Meteor?"

"Sir. Possible but it does not exhibit the characteristics of one." The highest ranking officer in the room was a major and he brought up the display on the main video screen. The incoming contact was moving fast, very fast, too fast to be anything normal.

"Space debris?"

"Unknown sir. System has no classification yet."

"Roger that. Keep on it. Unless it does something strange I'm not going to wake anyone up."

"Yes sir." Covering almost 3.5 miles per second, the track was heading southwest and getting lower, although not as quickly as a meteor would unless it was coming in at a very shallow angle. They couldn't tell just yet. "Sir. Based on size of this object it is too big to be a meteor, space debris, a warhead, or anything else."

"Size is?"

"Sir. It's big enough to be a plane."

"A plane? At that speed?"

"Yes sir."

"Nonsense. The system is haywire." They were communicating through the headsets, rather than alert everyone in the room. A professional atmosphere existed in Echo control room but everyone would want to really know what was going on and though they saw the track over their heads, they paid it little mind. To most of them it was probably a meteor. Then, suddenly, it disappeared off the track, just as it passed over the Labrador Coast. "See it's gone. Must have blew up on re-entry. Couldn't be a plane."

"Roger that sir." Bradly went back to his console but he knew the system wasn't haywire. It took readings off the size of the object and returned it to be triangular shaped and large, larger than an F-22 Raptor. He kept eyeing his console and watched as everything returned the normal. Despite being the middle of the morning, they were tracking hundreds of aircraft throughout the troposphere, most of them civilian jetliners flying at altitudes of 30,000 to 50,000 feet. There were some military aircraft in the air, most of them on combat air patrol routes, around 36,000 feet and subsonic speeds. A few of the many aircraft were moving at supersonic speeds but none of them were lower than 30,000 feet. Three minutes had passed since the contact disappeared when, suddenly, it appeared again, 600 miles to the southwest of where it was. "Sir. We've got another contact. Could be the same one sir. Computer is reading it as identical."

"That can't be." The major stood up and took off his headset as he looked up at the screen. "That's impossible. It has to be something else."

"Sir. It is showing the same thing with a 96.72% certainty."

"Run diagnostics."

"Sir. I did. The track is the same. It's altitude is 105,000 feet, speed is now 6,000 miles per hour and decreasing rapidly. Current position is at the Labrador-Quebec border. Still moving along the same course. Altitude is stable now, not decreasing. Airspeed has stabilized at 5,850 miles per hour. Wait. No. It's increasing. Holy shit! It just pegged 8,000 miles per hour. Still increasing."

"It has to be a system glitch."

"Sir. Two more stations just reported the same target. I'm showing Quebec South has it on track and so does Anticosti Island. It's the same target sir. I recommend we scramble a fighter patrol."

"Not just yet. It's too eratic to be anything."

"Sir. The course has not changed. It is not a meteor or else it would have a linear progression in speed and altitude. It does not show this. It is a craft. Sir. We have a U.F.O. on track." Everyone in the room looked up at the screen and recognized the scenario immediately. Just over two years earlier, in October 2005, they had a similar scenario with a UFO that flew over Tennessee. During that encouter, a civilian jetliner was shot down as it became entangled with the UFO. The craft was on a similar course exhibiting nearly the same flight profile. "It is a stealthy craft sir. We're actually constantly losing track of it. The system is switching frequencies constantly. With the other stations reporting, we can have a better fix on it. It is likely that we simply lost it as it decreased altitude. Sir it is now at 12,000 miles per hour again. In roughly two minutes the craft will be to our west."

"Alright. Scramble a flight of F-25C Firefox aircraft out of," he looked at his dossier real quick. "Burlington." As he finished it up, the orders and the information was sent immediately to Burlington Airfield, which was located outside of Burlington, Vermont. Home to sixty-four F-25C Firefox interceptors of the 13th Fighter Wing, it was a secret and classified airfield. Operations were hidden from satellites and prying eyes and the base was gigantic.

It was warmer but a lot windier at Burlington, with 35 mph wind gusts and a stable temperature of 55°F, falling to 48°F with each gust of wind. As per standard proceedures, two F-25C Firefox interceptors were fueled, armed, and ready to go at all times. Sitting inside of a hangar, they had pilots standing by them, ready to jump in and fly. All they had to do was open the doors, idle start the engines, and go. Everything else was prepped and ready. The two pilots were sitting at a card table, playing blackjack when the klaxon sounded. "Alert. Alert. Scramble immediate two fighters!" The electronic voice echoed in the hangar and both pilots threw down their cards, grabbed their helmets and took a run for their jets. Ground crew workers followed them, following them up the ladders, where they helped the pilots get into the aircraft, who were already beginning the idle start proceedure. They would be in the air in two minutes from the time their engines reached idle power, which would take another sixty seconds, roughly. The craft had slowed down significantly so they would be in the air and in front of it before the craft passed over them.

Armed with a pair of 25mm guns, each holding 725 rounds, 6 AIM-204A Escape air to air missiles, 4 AIM-221A LRAAAM air to air missiles, and 4 AIM-216A Halycon missiles, the Firefoxs weighed, with their lighter fuel load, just 87,700 pounds. Their engines produced 84,000 pounds of thrust at maximum afterburner, meaning that they had a thrust to weight ratio of almost 1:1 on take-off.

Both F-25s taxied out of their hangars and onto the runway, where they held short, one to the left of the middle line and the other to the right, the left one ahead by at least fifty feet. "This is Foxtrot 5. Holding short on runway 29. Request take-off clearance." They had already booted up their radar systems and were receiving the direct feed from the air defense network and they had already plotted an intercept course. All they had to do was get there.

"Foxtrot 5. You are clear for take-off. Depart heading 0-3-9."

"Roger that. Two. Light 'em up!" The lead pilot said as he pushed the throttles of the F-25 to their maximum setting. The aircraft lurched forward, slowly initially as the engines increased in power. Once the afterburners kicked on, the jet began to roll quicker and quicker. The second aircraft did the same thing, waiting for the other to get roughly two hundred feet down the runway before he pushed the throttle up himself. Both pilots were experienced veterans and they were both aces. They had fought in numerous wars and between the two of them, they had eleven air to air kills, six by one and five by the other. The leading ace was Colonel Joseph Hartman, the lead pilot in Foxtrot 5 and the commander of the 13th Fighter Wing. His wingman was Major Jeffery Anderson. Both aircraft barrelled down the runway and left the ground at 182 miles per hour, 4,400 feet from their start point. They formed up in the air, turned off their afterburners, retracted their landing gear, and turned to the departure heading. Once they were a mile away from the airbase, they increased speed and pushed their afterburners to their lowest setting as they began a 30° climb to 105,000 feet. They could fly as high as 120,000 feet.

http://www.forsakenoutlaw.com/Graphics/Nation-States/People/josephhartman-01.jpg

The two aircraft left their radars off and guided themselves just by using the air defense uplink. They maintained a far separation, to avoid becoming one, large, radar target. Despite being amongst the stealthiest aircraft in the ILAF and the world, in a close formation, they would appear as one, large aircraft. They emitted no signals and they were as stealthy as they could be, climbing high and fast.

November 1, 2007 - 02:10 [EST]
Caribou, Maine

"Sir. I've got a classification." Mendozza said as he looked at his monitor. Everyone hovered around their own panels but most of them were captivated by what was happening on the screen above them. Two F-25Cs were not speeding towards the track at almost Mach 2, flying high at 95,000 feet, using their efficient ramfan engines, burning less fuel than if they were using straight turbofan engines. They sped towards the track, closing at 5,200 miles per hour, which, at that altitude, was Mach 7.67. "Sir it's a Type 6."

"Six?"

"Yes sir. Reconnaissance."

"Keep the track. I'm immediately compartmentalizing this affair. Initiate a lock down proceedure." The commander said as he pushed a button on his console. Within ten seconds, the room was completely sealed off from the outside. An encrypted message was sent to the General of the Defense Forces. It wouldn't be long before the Emperor was informed of the situation, as per proceedure. Few others would know and by 02:30 hours, all of them would be present in the Fortress of Comhghall for a meeting concerning the presence of an extraterrestrial aircraft. This would not be the first time they convened either. Inside of the Echo control room, the commander stood up and called for attention in the room. "Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Order please. We have a Blue Situation here. We all know what this means. I expect full cooperation and decorum here. We are now solely in charge of this operation. All other stations and control centers will be taking over normal duties. We are focused." Everyone took the orders and got back to their stations. As they did, the contact passed by Maine to the northwest.

Minutes went by as the Firefoxes and the Type 6 Reconnaissance vehicle, codenamed "Stalker," closed in on each other. The Firefoxes had ascended to 110,000 feet, which was a full 6,000 feet over the reconnaissance craft. Flying towards each other now at a closure speed of 5,750 miles per hour, they covered, in one second, almost 1.6 miles. "This is Foxtrot 5. We've got the contact on radar." The call eventually came as the lead pilot looked down at his right MFD. It displayed his own low-probability of intercept radar, which he had turned on moments before. In previous encounters, the Type 6 Reconnaissance vehicle had difficulties detecting the radar signals of the Firefox. Against the F-15 Eagle or the F-16 Falcon, the Type 6 easily detected the radar emissions of the aircraft and were easily spooked. On two encounters, the Type 6 had engaged F-15C Eagles sent to intercept them. In both encounters, the Type 6 won. Against the Firefox, however, the Type 6 had failed each and every time, although there had only been three encounters where the Firefox was able to close to within engagement range. They hoped that this would be a fourth encounter.

As the aircraft closed on each other, the technicians in Echo control room had been working on a track plot. They had hundreds of models, some of them based on actual plots obtained from extraterrestrial aircraft. They now worked to determine where it was headed. When the results finally came in, they had the plot. The aircraft was headed right for a top-secret facility in West Virginia, a facility that had been overflown several times. The commander, realizing this, picked up the phone and dialed a number that only he and one other person knew. "Sir. Yes. We have its target plot. It is on course with Rosedale sir. Yes. I understand. Yes sir. We estimate an interception at 02:42 hours sir." He put down the phone and watched the screen, his face tightened and he eyed the map above him as the three aircraft closed on each other.

November 1, 2007 - 02:30 [EST]
Governors Island, Layarteb City

Over the previous eight minutes, limosines, town cars, and a helicopter had arrived on Governors Island. In total, there were eleven of them, including the Emperor and they did not meet in the Emperor's office but rather somewhere else. The Fortress of Comhghall was comfortably warm that morning and the men were led through the corridors of the ancient castle to a meeting room at its far end, one of the older portions of the castle. This had been a room that ancient, Scythian leaders had used to plan the defense of their territory during the various wars. It was large enough to hold dozens of people but had since been refurbished with antique furniture and fine rugs, to keep its stone floors warm. Here, they were cold, very cold. The room was located on one of the upper levels of the castle but in a room that was accessible only by a secret entrance. This was done to protect the leaders from seige hundreds of years earlier. Now the room was used exclusively by this gathering body.

"Gentlemen. We may begin once our last arrives. I am told he is in the Fortress and being escorted to our room." The Emperor said as he sat down in a high-back, comfortable chair in a corner of the room. A fire burned behind him, providing warmth for the room. As he took a sip of his scotch, the door slid open and the eleventh member of the consortium entered the room.

"Mr. Delaney. Welcome," the Minister of Intelligence said as BG. Jack Delaney entered the room and stopped as the door shut behind him. "May we begin?"

"Yes." The Emperor continued. "We have a positive ID on a Type 6 Reconnaissance craft currently inbound to Rosedale. You know what this means gentlemen. This marks the eighth flight this year but we have yet to have a successful interception against them this year. They are onto our operations. How is it they have found this out?" He posed the question to the consortium.

"Sir. We are fully aware of their sensor capabilities. Damaged craft have revealed these capabilities. It is certainly feasible that they listen to our communications." The Minister of the Interior said as he sipped his coffee.

"The real reason is not this. Sir if you will," the Commanding Officer of Force Viper said as he stood up, putting down his own drink as he did. "Gentlemen, Rosedale is the most vital extraterrestrial research facility. Naturally, what craft we recover goes there, to be analyzed, reverse engineered, and researched. Regardless of our inability to detect it, we train all of our personnel about the properties of magnetite. It is the most magnetic of all Earth materials and it is a crucial element to space travel it appears, along with several other elements, those of which we have yet to fully understand. It has always been our belief that these elements emit some sort of radiation. If these vessels can track this radiation, they can certainly locate Rosedale."

"What do you propose?" The Emperor asked, curious about this information.

"Sir we must find a way to trace and contain this radiation. Once we do that we can move operations from Rosedale to a secondary facility and, from there, simply use Rosedale only to misdirect these reconnaissance operations."

"What of contact?"

"What of it?" The Emperor addressed the question, which had been posed by the Director of the National Security Agency, an elusive and highly unknown branch of the Layartebian government, rooted underneath the Ministry of the Interior. Their operations were highly classified and revolved around protecting the Empire from any number of threats, external or internal.

"Sir. As you are aware..."

"No. We will not revisit this. Our first and foremost decree is not up for amending. We created this decree in 1986, after we downed the very first craft. We made sure that it cannot be altered."

"Sir."

"No!" He slammed his fist on the arm of the chair. Those in the room agreed, the decree could not be altered. "This consortium and international consortium's of similar purpose established, as the most universal rule that if an alien spacecraft crashed on Earth and the extraterrestrials survived, the country that held them would be responsible for their immediate extermination. We cannot revisit this decree. There will be no further discussion on this matter. Is that agreed?" Everyone but the NSA Director agreed. The meeting continued as the Firefoxes closed on their targets.

November 1, 2007 - 02:40 [EST]
Near Raquette Lake, Over Northern New York

"This is Foxtrot 5. We've got a positive lock on the inbound. Range is sixty-eight miles, weapon select lock. Request permission to engage." The lead pilot said as he locked onto the incoming craft with a single AIM-216A Halycon long-range air-to-air missile. Equipped with a powerful 100 pound, continuous-rod, fragmentation warhead. It was a unique warhead that could turn even the most capable aircraft into shredded cheese. On the ground, the commander in the room waited for the final call to come. He would authorize engagement and he did. It was only moments later that the lead pilot in the F-25C Firefox called, "Fox three!" The missile dropped from the weapon's bay of the Firefox rapidly and ignited only two seconds after falling into the airstream, by which time the bay doors had already closed. They snapped open and shut like the bays of the F-22 Raptor.

The 1,500 pound missile was powered, initially, by a booster, which ignited and propelled the missile forward and upwards. Because the Firefox was so high, the missile, which had a normal cruise altitude of 115,000 feet, climbed only slightly and accelerated rapidly to Mach 6.85. The missile was moving now at 4,825 miles per hour, the craft moving at 3,850 miles per hour, a closure velocity of 8,675 miles per hour or 2.4 miles per second. The missile would be there in less than a minute. The pilot, who wasn't taking any chances, locked up the craft with another missile, this one an AIM-221A LRAAAM missile and fired it as well. The missile accelerated quickly to Mach 4 and barrelled forward. Now it was just a waiting game.

The craft began to execute a series of rapid jink maneuvers seconds after the two missiles were launched. They were aware they had been engaged. Both Firefoxes, now moving at Mach 2.9 or 2,023 miles per hour, accelerated rapidly towards their maximum speed, which was 2,310 miles per hour or Mach 3.31 at this altitude. They had limited maneuverability at their speed but, against the craft, they wanted to make sure they could engage it properly.

The first missile, the Halycon, wound up overshooting the target, missing as the UFO jinked away from it. The missile, moving too fast to turn, banked hard as the UFO jinked and detonated about two miles behind the craft, unable to keep up with the high-speed, maneuvering target. The second missile, the LRAAAM, moving much slower, had gone into terminal mode as the other missile lost its track. Still jinking, the UFO suddenly became a target for the LRAAAM, which picked up on its exhaust signature using the imaging infrared guidance mode. The missile vectored itself in, cut its rocket off, and maneuvered towards the target, jinking with it as the UFO came rapidly into range of the Firefox's Escape missiles.

They weren't needed though. The LRAAAM caught the craft near the rear of it and exploded with its powerful continuous rod warhead. It did not split the craft in two, which would have normally happened on any conventional aircraft but the fragments and the exploding metal pierced right through the craft's stabilization drive. It immediately lost control, smoking, and began to spiral towards the ground. Both pilots in their F-25s slowed down and banked hard, using their thrust vectoring to help overcome their speed, slowing down in the process. When they came about, they had the craft ahead of them, spiralling towards the ground, a trail of smoke from its rear body. Without its stabilization system, the craft could not maintain horizontal flight. Spiralling towards the ground, the G forces on the craft increased rapidly to a point where any human would simply lose consciousness. "This is Foxtrot 5. We got it. It's going down. Current position is 28 miles north of Raquette Lake. Looks like it's going to hit close to it. We're pursuing."

"Roger that Foxtrot 5. Team dispatched." The team was an elite Layartebian Black Operations Group, the 14th BOG "Force Viper." They were formed in the mid-1980s in response to the first downed UFO by the Empire of Layarteb.

The date was April 26, 1986, just after 02:00 hours when radar picked up a strange object over the skies of southern New York. It was the middle of the Layartebian Conquests and the track could be anything from an enemy reconnaissance plane to space debris but, to be safe, the air force scrambled a pair of F-16C Fighting Falcons, armed with two AIM-120A AMRAAMs and four AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles. As the aircraft approached the craft, which seemingly hovered in mid-air at 30,000 feet, they realized they were tracking and seeing a UFO. With the engagement order set, a dogfight ensued. In total, four of the eight AIM-9Ms available were fired, all at close range, two at rear-angle shots and two on head-on shots. Three of the four missiles completely missed with the fourth missile catching the rear exhaust of the craft. A brilliant fireball lit up the sky at 02:39 hours and the craft headed towards the ground, crashing just 80 miles northwest of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Low on fuel, the F-16s returned to base, sending the coordinates of the downed craft back to the base. Without a moment to spare, two teams of eight men from an elite Black Operations Group, Force Falcon, who had been stationed in the area to conduct interrogation on captured rebel leaders, were dispatched. They included teams One and Six and both of them were helicoptered over, dropped into the area of the crash site, and secured it. Recovery teams arrived early as the sun rose and worked throughout the day and night, cleaning up the wreckage, putting it in containers and what not and shipping it southwest, to West Virginia. The area was sanitized and that was the end of it. Two months later, on June 18, another UFO evaded F-15 Eagles sent to intercept it over Layarteb City. It was at that time that Force Viper was formed.

Force Viper teams would consist of twelve men who were tasked with any number of operations. They included, mostly, perimeter security. They would be sent into a crash zone and secure it until recovery teams could arrive. Aside from Force Falcon, they rank as the most secretive BOG within the Empire and the world. With similar shoot-to-kill orders as Force Falcon, Force Viper is recruited directly from Force Falcon, meaning that only the most elite BOG in the world and the most secretive knows of its existence. However, unlike Force Falcon, they aren't necessarily a strike or reconnaissance or general purpose force. They had their own speciality and they were tasked with guarding it at all costs. They were enpowered with orders that were unlike most of those existing with the military. They were tasked with defending and guarding the crash site, against all people, civilians included. The utmost secrecy of each crash site meant that anyone who stumbled upon it was considered a threat to national security, whether they went looking for it or simply saw it. If Force Viper found out, they would simply kill them or capture them. Nobody that had ever witnessed the crash of a UFO had ever turned up again. Most of the times they were simply killed and their bodies disposed of but sometimes they were brought back for interrogation, especially if they had witnessed the crash from far away. The goal was to find out if anyone else had seen it and if they had, where and who were they. Force Viper had a notorious record within itself. They had killed many civilians, including police officers, park rangers, and two young children, all of whom were just too curious for their own good. Their body count stood at eighty-five and continued to climb with each crash, although there had not been one in quite a while.

When the craft was first identified and Echo control room placed on lock-down, two teams of twelve men strapped on their gear in just minutes and boarded a four MH-100A Explorer clandestine operations helicopters. Armed with a pair of 12.7 millimeter machine gun pods and a pair of 7-round Adder rocket pods, the helicopters took off and flew fast and low towards the suspected interception area. Once the aircraft was engaged and struck, the four helicopters were just fifty miles away, moving at 165 miles per hour. They would cover the distance in just eighteen minutes.

As Foxtrot flight watched the craft fall towards the ground, they picked up the four helicopters on their radar. Identified as friendly, they ignored them and continued to descend with the falling craft. They were about 10,000 feet behind it, watching it fall towards the Earth at 1,800 miles per hour, fluctuating in speed as it continued to grow aerodynamically unstable. Both F-25s continued to fly downward, slowing down as the craft headed towards the ground, picking up speed here, losing it there. It was in an uncontrollable descent and, not equipped with an ejection seat system, the pilot of the craft would never stand a chance as it barrelled towards the Earth. As the craft approached 10,000 feet, both F-25s pulled up and slowed down rapidly. Four seconds later, it slammed into the water of Raquette Lake, 2,500 feet from Osprey Island. "Foxtrot 5. We've lost it on radar. Do you see it?"

"Yes sir. It is down, northwest of Osprey Island. Sending the coordinates now."

"Roger that. Return to base."

"Foxtrot 5 out." The lead pilot said as he levelled off the aircraft at 20,000 feet and 600 miles per hour. They were low on fuel though they had more than enough to get back to base. "Two. Return to base."

"Two." Both aircraft formed up and flew home, at subsonic speeds. Minutes later, the MH-100s arrived on scene. Two of them touched down at Osprey Island and let out the men, the other two touched down on Indian Point. Unable to see the actual wreckage, they simply dug in and kept an eye on the perimeter. Anyone moving around the area would certainly fall into their night vision goggles or scopes. With a recovery team being prepared, it was all up to Force Viper to hold the site.

November 1, 2007 - 02:48 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

The room was quiet as the eleven men pondered the implications of a failed interception or worse, a witness. They moved around the room or sat still, some of them still drinking tea or coffee, depending on whatever was their poison. Others sipped brandy or scotch, the Emperor taking to the latter. The crackling of the fire in the room was the only sound other than those of footsteps or sipping. Then, the silence of the room was shattered when a phone rang, it being that of the Director of the National Security Agency. "Excuse me gentlemen," he said as he stood and stepped over to a far side of the room. "Yes. I understand. Very well." The conversation was short but when he turned around he brought good news. "Gentlemen. Our interception has been a success. The UFO has been intercepted and has crashed into Raquette Lake upstate. We are currently undergoing a recovery operation. I believe our tenure here this evening shall conclude?"

"Yes. Unless there are further questions or points." The Emperor said as he stood up, his glass of scotch still half full. "Nothing?" Nobody responded so he continued. "Very well. Mr. Delaney. Please stay."

"Yes sir." The room emptied out and, eventually, just BG. Delaney and the Emperor were left sitting in the room, the crackling of the fire still the only sound. "Sir?"

"Jack. This business is serious. Too serious. This marks a triumph for us in a battle we are undoubtedly going to lose."

"I agree sir. What do you propose?"

"Nothing as of yet. We have bigger fish to fry."

"Who sir?"

"A leak in the Ministry of Intelligence."

"An asset or an angent?"

"It is an agent. Part of the team that had been deployed to Mato Grosso."

"Who is he leaking information to?"

"Someone within the Layarteb City Times. We do not yet have an identification."

"What is the name?"

"Here's a write up." He pulled a few pieces of paper from his jacket pocket and handed them to Jack, who unfolded them and looked. "Miguel Santos sir?"

"Yes. He's part of the Juína team that had been deployed there. He and two others directed target strikes."

"Understood. Where is he now?"

"The Ministry has him in Caracas right now. You are to capture him. Alive. We want to interrogate him and find out who he is talking to and why."

"Understood sir. I'll have my team ready to be on the next flight out."

"Good. Let's make this clean."

"Yes sir." The Emperor departed the room twenty minutes after Jack had left, preferring to stay behind and enjoy some peace and quiet for the first time in days. He listened to the crackling fire and smell the burning logs, the creature comforts of a home he never had. Hours later, across six flights, BG. Delaney and the rest of Team One were landing in Caracas. They would meet up at a safehouse in the city and then, proceed to locate and extract Santos, where he would be taken immediately to Nova Prospekt, in the Galapagos Islands.

November 2, 2007 - 14:55 [AST]
Caracas, Venezuela

"Target is leaving. Gold team. You're in play. Blue. On me." BG. Delaney said as he stepped out of his rental car. He had been parked in front of Santos' residence for the past twelve hours, waiting and watching. Gold team, which consisted of LTC. Wilkins, MAJ. Wilson, MAJ. Steel, and MAJ. Milton would follow Santos to wherever he was going. They had a long timeframe to capture him, three days in fact but they wanted to get him by the end of the day. As he walked off to hail a taxi, BG. Delaney approached the apartment building. The three other men of Blue team would go with him. Two of them would stand watch outside while the other would stay in the vehicle, a four-door sedan, ready for an escape, if necessary. LTC. Wilkins, driving another four-door sedan began to follow the taxi as BG. Delaney opened the outer door of the building. He carefully looked around for surveilliance equipment but there weren't any cameras present. Quickly, he moved through the vestibule and to the inner door, which was locked but he wouldn't le tthat stop him.

Withdrawing a lock-pick from his pocket, he immediately began to jimmy the lock and, within a few seconds, had it open. He truly was an expert in regards to this area of work. Cautiously, he proceeded, down the hallway and to the stairwell. He walked up the stairs, passing the second and third floors without being seen. The fourth, however, wasn't the same. A couple, walking out of the building to walk their dog passed him on the stairs. He kept to himself, ignoring them as he did. They ignored him too, although they did not immediately recognize him and were, somewhat, suspicious. Outside, the two men stood, both talking to each other, smoking cigarettes, arguing soccer, enough to make them seem like anyone else on the streets.

Delaney walked up to the sixth floor, the top floor of the building, and took a quick listen and look. The hallways were quiet and clear, clear enough that he could easily walk to Santos' door, 6F. He used his lock-pick to open that door as well and found it just as easy to open up, even though it took him a little longer. Once inside, he quietly shut the door and whispered into his microphone, "Clear in." It took only two minutes to get as far and, by the time he did, Santos was already three blocks away, his taxi moving through traffic quickly.

He quickly scoured around the apartment, looking for any clues that could lead him to the contact within the LCTimes. He found little as he moved throughout the apartment, searching through files and napkins and anything else that had writing on it. His initial search turned up nothing and he sat down on the sofa, to collect his thoughts when the radio buzzed. "Wilkins here. He's on his way back."

"Where'd he go?" Delaney answered.

"Sir. No destination reached, just turned around the taxi. He's heading back."

"Roger that. Blue team, report acquisition. We're going to take him when he gets back up to his apartment."

"Find anything?"

"No. When I authorize clear prepare for extraction."

"Yes sir." As Delaney stood up, he noticed a hint of light underneath the rug in the center of the room.

What do we have here?" He thought to himself as he kicked over the table and yanked up the 5 by 8 foot area rug. Underneath was a safe and the light had been glare. The light had, come down through the shutters of the window, and bounced off the digital keypad on the safe. Shit. He thought as he looked at the safe, realizing that there was no way to get in except with an access code and a thumb print. "Got something. Safe underneath the rug. We're going to keep an access code and a thumb print. Blue two and three. Follow him in with you but do not ascend past the fourth floor. I'll take him myself. Wilkins, how far is he?"

"Three blocks."

"Understood. I've got nothing here except this safe. Standing by. Blue two report on fourth floor."

"Yes sir." Now, they played a small waiting game. As Santos' taxi returned to the area, the two men smoking cigarettes outside had put out their cigarettes but continued to talk about soccer. Santos stepped out of the taxi moments later, unaware of their presence as being suspicious or of the four-door sedan that parked just a block away. "Target is in the building," MAJ. Rigalo whispered into the microphone as he and MAJ. Howard followed Santos into the vestibule, still talking about soccer. Santos gave them little mind and ascended the stairs. They timed it so that, when they reached the fourth floor, he would be on the sixth. "Target is on the sixth floor. Holding four. Standing by."

"Gold team stand by outside. Jackson, stand by." Delaney heard the keys in the door and readied himself. He was in a darkened corner of the living room, hiding with enough reach to jump out and tackle Santos the moment he shut the door. As the door opened, he took a deep breath and held it. Santos stepped in, shutting the door behind him. Before he could turn on the lights, Delaney jumped out at him, soaring through the air like an arrow. He struck Santos hard with his fist as he pummelled him over and onto the ground. He struggled instantly with the well built intelligence agent but quickly subdued him using his martial arts training, eventually putting a pistol to the back of his head. "Move and I shoot. Clear up." Delaney said as he backed away, "Hands on your head and on your knees. Move and I will shoot. What's the safe combination?"

"Go to hell!"

"What's the safe combination? I will not ask again." The door opened and both Rigalo and Howard entered the apartment, shutting the door behind them. "Lights." They turned them on and now the three of them had their pistols pointed at the back of his head. "What's the combination? Stop stalling, no one is coming."

"Who do you work for?"

"I'll ask the questions," Delaney said as he lowered his pistol and kicked Santos back over, onto the ground. "Alright. Get him up and get him in the chair. He isn't going to do this the easy way. Both Riaglo and Jackson lifted him off the ground by his arms and though he tried to fight he did so only in vain as they slammed him into a desk chair and quickly restrained him with plastic zip-ties, making them extra tight. Both of his legs and his arms were restrained and they quickly returned back to defensive positions, Delaney walking off into the kitchen. "Watch him. If he moves take out a knee." He rummaged through the kitchen and came back two minutes later, holding a plastic jug, a knife, and a towel. Setting the jug down on the table and the knife along with it, he looked back at Santos. "Last chance to tell me the combination before I make this painful."

"Who do you work for?" Delaney nodded his head and twisted the towel.

"You don't want to make it easy, that's alright for me." He wrapped the towel around his head, putting it right in his mouth, and tightened up harder. Tying it behind his head and coming around the other side. "You going to tell me or am I going to have to be sadistic about this?" He mumbled something but Delaney wasn't listening to him. Instead, he went over and to the plastic jug and screwed off the cap before he walked back over and held the jug underneath Santos' nose. "Smells good doesn't it?" He smiled and pulled the jug away. "Household ammonia. It's a wonderful substance. You realize that you can inflict pain without any effort. Ammonia is rather dangerous and toxic to humans. You see, this really irritates the eyes, your throat, nose, and sometimes your skin. To make it really good, sometimes we slice open little cuts, like paper cuts, those hurt to begin with, then pour in some ammonia. Talk about setting your blood on fire. I bet you know all about this. So. Do I continue or are you going to be good and just tell me the combination?" He didn't answer, which was why Delaney stood back up and lifted the knife off the table. "Dennis. Go heat up a piece of metal or something. Red hot. Real nice. And see if you can find something sharper than this. Maybe a meat cleaver."

"Yes sir." Rigalo walked off to the kitchen and Delaney didn't waste another moment. He took the knife and made a long, sharp, deep slit down Santos' right arm, from his bicep to his wrist. It wasn't deep enough to be life threatening but it was deep enough to hurt like hell and Santos screamed in pain as he dragged the knife through his skin, slowly.

"Last chance before this hurts a lot more?" He dripped a little bit of the ammonia on the wound, sending a burning, searing pain throughout Santos' blood. "Bet that hurts. Combination now." Still, no answer. "Well they trained you well."

"Let's get this over with," Jackson said as he took a seat on the couch, getting comfortable.

"Yes. Let's." He poured a good amount of the ammonia on the wound, sending Santos' eyes into the back of his head. His whole body shook from the pain as the ammonia tore through his wound and through his nerves, setting them ablaze. His skull nearly split in two as the pain boiled through his body. "I bet that hurts. Alright. Combination. How many numbers. Six?" Santos shook his head. "Less?" He shook his head again. "More?" Santos affirmed. "Eight? Eight? Okay. Eight. What's the first number?" Santos kept shaking his head, refusing to give up the number. "After this I'm going to cut off your thumb if you don't cooperate. Maybe I'll cut both of them off and make it so you can't ever use your right arm." He took the knife and sliced his ear. The ammonia came next and sent Santos to the edge of consciousness. "Hurts doesn't it? So how about we try again. Eight digits. What's the first one?" Santos mumbled something. "Didn't understand you. Did you say an eight? Okay you did. So the first number is an eight, someone remember this, I'm having too much fun. What's the next number? Two? Okay. Eight, two. Six? No? Five? Eight, two, five. Nine? Nine. Six? Seven? Six. Three. One. Nine.

"Alright guys. Try that. Eight, two, five, nine, six, three, one, nine." He looked over at the safe and realized he needed one thing. "Oh right. The thumb. Hey, you got that knife?"

"Yes sir. Here you go," Rigalo walked in with a meat cleaver and a large, kitchen knife that was glowing red.

Delaney smirked and looked around the back of the chair. "No. This won't do!" He kicked the chair over, sending Santos into the floor, face first. His whole body ached now and he tried to wiggle free but it wasn't working. "Right or left thumb? Dennis, which one?"

"Let me check." He put his hand on the safe and pulled it back away. "Right."

"Alright." He swung hard with the meat cleaver and took his right thumb off quicker than he had kicked him over, causing Santos to, immediately, pass out. He used the hot knife to seal the wound, a pain Santos didn't even feel. "Alright open her up," he threw the thumb to Rigalo who opened the safe and pulled out a huge folder. "Looks like we've got something. His personal files on everything he's done it seem. Well. I believe we have what we need."

"Good. Let's get out of here. Got the syringe?" He asked as Dennis produced a needle with a powerful sedative. He injected it into Santos and together, they untied him and picked him up, ready to walk him out. "Wilkins. Jackson. Prepare to move out, we've got him and the documents."

"Roger that sir."

November 3, 2007 - 05:00 [CST]
Santa Fé Island, Galapagos Islands

The UH-95A Super Huey touched down on the helicopter pad at Nova Prospekt. The sky was beginning to brighten as the rising sun climbed on the eastern horizon. The seas were rough that morning and a gray mist had already covered the island, something not out of the ordinary. The prison, which loomed on the rocky, volcanic island, was dark and gloomy in and of itself. It had no windows, just walls, concrete walls. Lights blinked slowly from its highest towers and antennae, to alert airborne craft that they were there. Those who knew it was a prison could easily see it as one. Those who didn't only saw it as a concrete structure that gave off no indication of what it was. There were only two ways to and from the island and one of them wasn't safe at all. You could travel by aircraft, which was the preferred way or you could travel by boat, which was a risk and a half. Navigating the rough seas and rocky waters around Santa Fé was a deathwish.

BG. Delaney stepped out of the helicopter first, following by the other three men of blue team. They carried with them Santos, the treasonous MOI agent who still had not given up his source at the Layarteb City Times. When they carried him out of the helicopter, he was restrained behind his back and his legs were in shackles. His head was covered with a black hood and he had no idea where he was or even if he was still alive anymore. The torture that had been done to him by the Force Falcon team had been enough to touch every nerve and bone in his body but, sadly, it didn't work aside from giving up the safe combination.

They carried him to an awaiting M2008A1 Dingo APV. The Dingo had since been retired from active service in both the ILA and the Marines but it still served, in large quantities, with the defense forces and behind friendly lines. The vehicle could hold eight people in total, including the driver. Because this was a transport vehicle, its main gun armament on the roof had never been installed. A driver sat at the wheel, the vehicle idling with a captain in the front seat. BG. Delaney opened the door and ushered in his men and the prisoner, climbing in last. "We're good. Come on before the sun goes down." He said with a smirk. They drove off, Santos conscious, gagged, and half coherent. He heard in bits and pieces, here and there, the remark striking him as confusing. He didn't know what time of day it was. Since he had been injected with the sedatives, he had seen nothing but blackness. After he had been brought to a black site in Venezuela, he had been gagged and the hood thrown over his head. He had not seen daylight since before he had been knocked out and he didn't know exactly how long he had been out for nor did he know where he was.

The Dingo bounced along on a rather uncomfortable road up to the prison and entered its garage area where the driver came to a stop and turned off the vehicle. Several guards were there to process Santos and they took him from there. From there, Santos would be processed and brought to a cell. Then he would be interrogated for hours and hours on end. The guards and specialists at Nova Prospekt already knew what information they needed to extract from Santos and what time frame they had.

At the same time, over a thousand miles away, a reporter stepped into a café and sat down at a table in the back. "Espero alguien." [I am waiting for someone.] The reporter answered a waitress who came over to take the reporter's order. The reporter waited and waited, finally ordering something at 07:00 hours and leaving at 09:00 hours. Something had gone wrong...

November 4, 2007 - 22:00 [AST]
Caracas, Venezuela

"Gentlemen. Let's begin." Another meeting of Majestic had come to order in a reclusive part of Caracas. Still scarred from the Fourth Venezuelan War, Caracas' southeastern section had become a doldrums of filth and pestilence. Large sections of buildings still lay in ruins and the sector, which covered just under five square miles was completely cordoned off by the army and the police. It was considered a "No-Go Zone," by anyone except authorized personnel, mainly because it had simply not been repaired yet. Police units often ventured in on search and capture missions, seeking out criminals who took refuge in this particular part of the city. Because of this and because it was so secluded, it would be fitting for Majestic to meet there, after all, their planning had caused it.

Majestic had a small building not far from the center of the sector that had been unscathed by the war. They entered the sector easily through underground accessways and convened in the basement of the building. It was quiet, too quiet but comfortingly so. "It is our third phase. Our first two phases have gone successfully but this, the third and most crucial phase has been slow," Dr. Victor Michael said as he tapped his finger on the table to emphasize his points. "Our goal within this phase is to sow the seeds of popular discontent. The Interior Ministry raided our ongoing protest operations but we have others in place.

"When can these be run?" John Patrick interrupted.

"Within this month we expect to have a single protest of 5,000 strong. It is our intention and our hope that the Interior Ministry forces fire upon these crowds." He continued.

"That is an assurance I think we can all count on," the General of the Army began, giving his own interpretation of the probable timeline of events.

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles to the south, in Manaus, army units were engaging a small rebel contingent of just forty men in an active and very real firefight, the first since the Mato Grosso War ended a month prior. Throughout the Empire, things were sour. Majestic met to discuss the further planning of their operations while Illuminati Ghost Warriors moved throughout various targets. They placed car bombs and fragmentation devices on public transportation systems, soon to be crowded markets, and anywhere else they hoped to kill as many as they could. At the same time, another team was using its influence to corrupt a prison in southern Florida, where they hoped to launch a full assault, freeing up to fifty hardened criminals. In the Falklands Islands, mercenaries hiding from the fall of Totalis planned a meeting of their own, to wage revolution and war on the island, to grant it independence from the Empire.

The seeds of discontent were sown throughout the Empire, regardless of Majestic's perception of the matter. The only problem was still fear and loyalty. Despite the problems arising throughout the confines of the Empire, people still felt loyal to the government and feared betrayal. They also feared what would happen if the government didn't do its job. They looked towards Governor's Island with hope and with some sort of comfort that the government was devising a plan and putting it into action to rid the Empire of the Ghost Warriors, of terrorism, and of its problems. The government was but, without the proper intelligence, things were a lot harder than they had been in the past.

November 8, 2007 - 10:00 [CST]
O'Hare International Airport, Chicago

"Now boarding. Flight 296, non-stop to Dublin. Rows..." The area around gate 9 buzzed with activity as passengers stood and proceeded towards the boarding platform. They would walk down the platform and step inside of a newly built Boeing 777-300 jetliner from United Airlines. The aircraft would be filled to capacity with all 451 of its seats being occupied in two classes. They filed onto the plane, one by one, greeted by stewards and stewardesses as they stepped through the door of the airliner. It would take at least twenty minutes to get everyone on board the aircraft and then boarding would continue until everyone was seated and their belongings stowed. Stewards and stewardesses helped the proceedure as they walked through the aisles of the wide-body jetliner. Set to depart at 10:40 hours, the aircraft was taxiing to the runway on schedule and without incident. Inside of its cabin were 451 passengers, 9 flight attendants, and 2 pilots. Also onboard were four federal air marshals, part of the Ministry of the Interior's Airline Safety Division. They boarded with the rest of the passengers, nothing about them being suspicious, not even the concealed M110A2 Pistols.

As an Air Marshal with the Interior Ministry, they were one of the more highly trained federal officers in the Empire. They had much higher standards than other agencies, such as the Central Justice Agency. Air Marshal's were required to perform under the highest amount of pressure possible, with hundreds of lives at stake and even more if terrorists hijacked an airliner. In qualification, they were required to shoot a full magazine of fifteen rounds into a stationary target without a single miss, grouping the rounds in the largest portion of the target, the chest. That wasn't the only scenario they qualified in though. They trained engaging targets that were mobile and in a specially designed firing range, which added the instability of flight to the mix. In these scenarios, they were required to hit fourteen out of fifteen times. They also practiced against targets using civilians as human shields. As such, they were trained to engage the head of the hijacker but, in situations where they could not, they could, legally, shoot through a civilian to kill a hijacker. The philosophy was simple: if it was to save hundreds, one would be acceptable. That was a call none of them wanted to make but they would if they had to and they wouldn't regret it either.

They used the .357SIG bullet, which was a powerful round. It was a myth that a bullet hole through an airliner would cause it to tear apart. They had chosen the .357SIG round because of its ability to penetrate through obstacles. On an airliner, those obstacles could be a suitcase, a seat, a door, or even a person, should it be necessary. The .357SIG offered an accurate, reliable, and flat trajectory round, which could allow them to shoot, accurately, for the entire length of the plane. As such, many of the flights, particularly long-range ones, were loaded with two air marshals per class. This flight had two classes and carried two air marshals. One of them would always sit in the very back of the class, able to see the entire length of it while the other was somewhere in the middle. They always sat in the aisle seats and were, otherwise, impossible to distinguish. Most of the time, they conversed happily with the passengers, never acknowledging each other once although they always knew who their partners were.

They would be crucial on this flight as the Boeing 777-300 barrelled down the runway, taking to the skies 8,500 feet later. The jetliner climbed higher as it continued along its flight path, eventually settling at 35,000 feet, where it steadied at 560 mph. The plane continued its flight for an hour and a half, unimpeded. It had a flight time of seven hours and it would be traveling at 35,000 feet the whole way, keeping its speed at 560 mph for the duration of the cruise. They would be touching down at 23:40 hours, local time although, in Chicago it would only be 17:40 hours. It was a long flight, long enough to have an inflight movie and two meals. Comfortable, many of the passengers settled down to reading, writing, listening to their iPods, or sleeping. Others conversed with each other and sometimes strangers around them. It was then, at that time, that things took a twist in the wrong direction.

Amongst the 451 passengers were 6 Venezuelan men, all of them a part of the resistance forces that fought the Layartebians against the former Amazonian Republic. Part of an elite paramilitary unit within the Amazonian Army, they had managed to escape, through Venezuela and avoid detection by the authorities, while they plotted some sort of revenge. They were well trained, coordinated, and, between the six of them, there existed ties that were akin to that of a brotherhood. They were all in this together and they told themselves and each other that on numerous occassions. Now, they finally had their plans in place. They had gotten their tickets for this flight months earlier and spent the time training and planning. When it came down to it, they stepped onboard with plastic knives and two bombs, each of them concealed in their carry-on bags. Both of the bombs were small, just two pounds of Semtex explosives each, enough to bring down the airliner. Stored in the overhead and on the floor, the two bombs were placed inside of electronics equipment, disguising them and hiding them. Attached to a radio detonator, they could be exploded at any time but one of the Venezuelans.

Hunted now because of their involvement in the war against the Empire, the six men cautiously removed their weapons and waited. One hundred and seven minutes into the flight, they acted. Two of them immediately grabbed hostages, two females, one of them being a stewardess. Two others moved forward with their knives, pushing towards the cockpit of the aircraft, while the other two stayed back in the main class of the aircraft. Shouting and yelling for everyone to get down, they proclaimed that this was a hijacking, that they had bombs, and that they would detonate them if anyone tried to stop them. Immediately, the Air Marshal's sprung to action, carefully analyzing the situation first.

November 8, 2007 - 11:38 [CST]
Over Georgian Bay

The situation in the airliner became grim fast. The six hijackers had fanned out throughout the cabin. One of them grabbed a young girl and fast approached the cockpit door, a knife held to her throat. It was at that time that the lead agent on board activated the hijacking alert. It was a small device that he carried on his keys and it gave off no visible signs that it was active. Shaped more like an electronic, keyless entry device for a door, it was actually a radio transmitter and GPS tracker that sent a signal to a variety of places. The first and most important was to air traffic control, which immediately flagged the airliner as hijacked and locked its transponder so that it could not be turned off manually. From there, the signal was transmitted to the Imperial Layartebian Defense Forces and various other federal agencies throughout the government of Layarteb. It took mere seconds for this to happen as the signal was sent out at light speed. The battery device inside of the unit was capable of transmitting for up to one year constantly before failing and could not be turned off once it was activated. At the same time, in the cockpit, the pilot and co-pilot activated the distress signal, watching on a camera screen as the hijackers herded the passengers towards the rear of the plane. As the passengers did, the four agents locked eyes with each other and took up defensive positions in the rear of the cabin. This was a scenario they had practiced hundreds of times. Still passive, they would be waiting until they found out whether or not the hijackers had a bomb and which one of them had the detonator. It would be useless for them to engage and save him for last, giving him enough time to blow up the plane. They knew one thing though, if they did have a bomb, they weren't intent on simply blowing up the plane or else they would have just done it and saved themselves the charade.

"Open the door!" The lead hijacker said, holding the girl in the air, the knife pressed against her throat, tears rolling down her face and the face of her parents, who waited helplessly at knife point in the rear of the plane. Back there, some passengers mumbled that they were going to do something but the four agents persisted that the hijackers did not intend harm. It caught them strange looks but they had to control the situation and that meant the passengers as well. Often, herd mentality kicked in and people suddenly became passive and useless. They wanted that to happen here so that they could engage the hijackers without worrying about collateral damage. "Open the door!" The hijacker banged again, cutting a small slice into the girl's throat, causing her to wince and scream in pain. With the distress beacon activated and air traffic control locked onto the plane, they could, with the use of a datalink system, take control of the aircraft's autopilot. However, the drawback was they could not land the aircraft and it could be overridden in the cockpit using a four digit access code that the pilot and co-pilot both knew. It was a final measure that was designed to prevent aircraft from becoming used as flying cruise missiles more than anything and had never been operationally used except during testing. "I will say one last time!" The lead hijacker yelled as he smeared blood on the eyehole of the cockpit door.

It was a tough decision for both the pilot and the co-pilot, a decision that was, technically, illegal. It was law in the Empire that, regardless of the situation, a pilot and co-pilot were not to relinquish controls of an aircraft in the event of a hijacking. They did, slowly, opening the door and being forced to the rear of the aircraft by another hijacker. The lead one released the girl, who ran back to her parents, the small cut on her throat causing more panic than necessary as she embraced her parents, tears still coming down her cheeks. The lead hijacker stepped into the cockpit and shut the door behind him while things began to settle down in the passenger cabin, herd mentality setting in as people listened to the speech of the lead hijacker, who had turned on the intercom system. "This aircraft has been hijacked. We, the Revolutionary Guards of Manaus, have seized control of this airliner. We will demand the immedate withdrawal of the Evil Empire from Amazonian territory. Should your government comply this aircraft will land safely at the nearest possible airport. Should they not comply, we will blow up this airliner and ensure that our sacrifice is not without the bloodshed of innocent Layartebian citizens, just as our brothers and sisters have died at the hands of the Evil Empire.

"If you attempt to stop us, we will kill you and two others. For every attempt we will kill two more people than the previous until there are none left. We will begin with children, then women, and then the men. We will not hesitate to blow up this airliner. You are our prisoners and our hostages just as our brothers and sisters are." He released the microphone key and banked the aircraft to maintain course. He kept everything normal, unaware that the distress beacons had been activated.

By now, the nearest possible ILDF airfields was Plattsburgh in New York, 350 miles east. With over a hundred fighter aircraft based there, an immediate scramble order came for an interception flight. Based there were Super Falcons, Typhoons, Demons, Ravens, Defenders, and Super Tomcats. Of them, the fastest was the Defender, built as a stealth fighter originally to defend the skies of the Empire, the Defender was capable of speeds in excess of Mach 3 and, in its "A" version was a pure interceptor. Agile and strong, the nimble fighter could carry as many as eighteen air to air missiles internally but that was for a reduced range. Instead, the Defenders had been loaded with a pair of Escape dogfight missiles and six LRAAAM long-range missiles, a total combined weight of just under 3,100 pounds. With a full fuel load, the aircraft weighed in at 30,500 pounds. This gave it a thrust to weight ratio of 1.48 to 1, meaning she could move and fast!

Though the aircraft was moving to the northeast, she wasn't entirely heading away from the base although soon it would be, hence the crucial role that timing played. The Defender had a short range, especially at high speed. She could cruise at 50,000 feet and Mach 2 while conserving fuel but not for too far. At the same time as the Defenders were being called into action, a single KC-10B Extender refueling tanker would be scrambled into the skies from Quebec, allowing it to refuel the Defenders if they had to escort the airliner for an extended period of time. The ILDF operated 46 KC-10s and plenty of them were within the projected flight path of the airliner, meaning that the Defenders could remain in the air for quite some time before they had to be landed for mechanical concerns. By that time, the airliner would be in range of plenty of other airbases or on the ground, depending on where the hijacker took the airliner.

Immediately, the two Defenders took to the skies and climbed at afterburner to 50,000 feet, covering it in under a minute, maximizing their performance as they accelerated past Mach 1 and quickly towards Mach 2, which was 1,320 miles per hour. At that speed, they could cover 350 miles in just sixteen minutes. They roared forward, the airliner locked on their radar as they patched into Layarteb's air defense network. Because the airliner had no radar warning receiver it would never have a clue that it had been locked on by the two Layartebian fighters.

November 8, 2007 - 11:52 [CST]
Southwestern Quebec

The Defenders raced towards the airliner and they were close, very close. They were within just a few minutes of intercepting the airliner, which continued its northeasterly course. On board, the hijackers had revealed who had the bomb detonator. The location of the bombs was still unknown but the marshalls now knew who to shoot first when the assault began. They remained coordinated and patient, waiting for the right opportunity before they rose up and engaged the hijackers. With four of them, they could sweep the whole part of the aircraft to the cockpit door in a matter of seconds. Getting the door open would be a slower but entirely doable task. Armored, there was no way to shoot through the door to kill the pilot but they could open it with a key that they possessed. The real test would be whether or not the pilot would do something idiotic. They had to get a message out and they had to get it out fast that, once they obtained control of the cabin, ATC would activate the autopilot, preventing the pilot from putting the aircraft into the ground or rolling it to avoid capture. It was four against six, one of the six being away, hidden behind the cockpit door. He wouldn't be foolish enough to come out either, knowing that the door was armored and locked. The marshalls would wait until all five hijackers were in their field of view, so much so that they could engage all of them individually and without wasted time. The coordination would be difficult but they were trained for such occassions.

All of the men had cell phones and, quietly and carefully, the leader typed up a text message. Cautiously, he did so without looking at the keypad, trusting his own fingers to type the right numbers and the right code. The number was memorized and drew right into ATC's emergency line, allowing them to literally communicate back and fourth with the ground, regardless of where they were or of what was going on around them. Cautiously, the leader typed, "6 t. control of plane t. 4 m. activate autopilot override. confirm y." The message was short and simple. Six terrorists were on board, in control of the plane, there were four alive and ready marshalls, and ATC had to activate the autopilot override. Now came the waiting game. The phone was on silent, meaning that he had to be careful and watch, out of the corner of his eye, both the nearest hijacker and the phone screen. It took only a minute but a response came. "Confirm y. Activate ready. Confirm go." He waited to type back as he looked around at the four marshalls. Waiting until he had eye contact with all of them, he nodded his head down, a simple and short motion that informed all of them to get ready. He typed back the response. "Confirm go." He now waited until the response came, indicating that the autopilot had been overridden and the plane was no longer in the control of the hijackers. Another two minutes passed before the response came, "Go!" He put the phone in his pocket and carefully and slowly removed his pistol, ignoring the people around him. The others had done or were doing the same. With their safeties off, they were prepared to get up and fire. Everyone had marked the one with the bomb and he was the first target. The way it worked was simply by proximity. Whichever agent was closest to him would take him out with a quick double tap to the chest, both rounds aimed directly at his heart. The other three agents would do the same, double taps to their targets, all of them respectively closer to them than anyone else. The fifth hijacker, who was closer to the front of the aircraft, was more of an enigma. Whomever got the bead on him first would take him out and then it would be time to get to the cockpit.

Because the leader was not the closer one to the one with the bomb, he carefully tugged on his right ear, sending off another signal. It was up to the agent taking out the bomb carrier to be the one who started this off, since his shots were the most important. With the plane out of the control of the hijacker in the cockpit, it was all a matter of time now. As the Defenders closed in on the aircraft, the agents waited, waited until they could get a clear shot on all four of their targets. It kicked off right on time as the agent drew and fired off both rounds before the hijacker ever knew what hit him. The other three agents did the same, firing off their rounds precisely on target, shooting four of the six hijackers dead before the fifth one was able to get up from his seat in first class. He took a quick look to the left and caught a round right in his forehead as the agents began to sweep forward. Passengers, in shock, screamed, some of the angry and some of them happy. They still couldn't rationalize the situation but none of them dared move as the marshalls yelled back, "Stay down!" They swept forward, checking each hijacker's pulse, seizing the detonator from one of them and kicking their knives away. They converged now on the cabin door. The hijacker in the cockpit could easily hear the deafening gunshots and tried, vainly, to alter the course of the aircraft, trying to roll it hard to unsteady the marshalls. The controls wouldn't respond though. "Marshalls! Get out of their now. Hands up! Put your weapon down!" The leader yelled as he banged on the door. Inside of the cockpit, the hijacker knew that the game was up but he wasn't going to give up as easily. He looked at the armored and locked door with confidence that they could not get in but he didn't know about the key.

The key was in the door before the agents ever yelled to him. Backing away from it, two of the agents covered the passengers in the rear of the plane while the other two, including the leader, stood by the cockpit door. The leader was there with the key and the other agent further back, his sights leveled on the door, ready to shoot if the hijacker came running out at the leader. "Open this door now! You have no control over this aircraft!" The two Defenders settled themselves on the rear of the airliner, one mile behind it, matched speed, and waited for their orders. They were now being informed that ATC was in control of the autopilot and the marshalls were acting on board. As per protocol, the fighters hung back. They could do any number of things: buzz the cockpit and the cabin, escort the airliner, return home, or, in the worst case scenario, shoot it down. That last option could only be approved by the Emperor himself and he was not about to make that call until all hope was lost and national security was at stake.

The leader turned the key, opening the lock but did not yet act. He banged once more on the door but the hijacker didn't respond. He nodded and swiftly opened the door, the agent covering him with a clear sight of the back of the hijacker's head as he sat in the pilot's seat. "Hands up! Now! Drop your weapon! Stand up and back towards us right now!" The leader yelled but the hijacker didn't respond. He repeated the order but the hijacker didn't move. Cautiously, he entered the cockpit now, his weapon trained right on the back of the hijacker's head, ready to shoot if he had to defend himself. "I said!" That was when he noticed the pool of blood on the floor. The hijacker had suicided himself, sticking his knife straight through his chest and into his heart, a bold move that took him quickly, despite the pain it caused. He holstered his sidearm and felt for a pulse, there being none.

The encounter was over and the aircraft was once again under friendly control. It would be put down immediately, escorted by the Defenders. Unfortunately though, because it was a crime scene, passengers were simply unable to return to their seats. They would have to stay where they were and the agents made sure of this, holding them there as the airliner began to descend towards the nearest airport, under the control of the two pilots. They would land shortly after 12:30 hours, central standard time.

November 11, 2007 - 19:30 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

"Alright. Sit down so we can begin this briefing." The Emperor said as he entered his office, which was full of chattering Cabinet members and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He had been at a press conference prior and strode in flanked by two aides, both of them stopping at the doors and returning to their offices. As the door shut behing the Emperor, he unbuttoned his suit jacket, took it off, loosened his tie, and sat down at the head of the table. "I apologize for being late. The conference ran longer than expected. Very well. Minister, you have the floor." He motioned to the Minister of Defense, the first of the standing to be seated, who now shifted his weight in the chair. Sitting in the middle of the table was a large map of the ACT, newly made following the Layartebian annexation.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Good evening. I have asked for this meeting to brief the executive branch on the current status of insurgents within the Amazonian Control Territory. As you are aware, our campaign in Mato Grosso has ebbed the flow of arms, money, supplies, and soldiers into the ACT since the Brasnorte Offensive and the subsequent Cymrean ascension to power has left the insurgency in the ACT without their biggest backer. Since the end of the campaign, we have launched three major military operations and captured significant amounts of both territory and insurgent fighters.

"Interrogations and intelligence reveal that, despite being wounded, the insurgency still exists in force. We currently estimate the insurgent forces within the ACT to number approximately 2,200. Of that, we suspect at least 75% of them to be concentrated here," he pointed to a large red circle on the map, which was just a piece of plastic placed over the city of Tapauá, located 280 miles southwest of Manaus. "The remaining 550 are likely scattered around the country.

"Though our military presence exists around Tapauá, it is not entirely within our control at the present time. It was heavily bombed during the war and we estimate that, perhaps 25% of the city is completely leveled. Manchurian Global is currently providing reconstruction services to the area along with several other firms. Numerous reports by civilian contractors in this city have informed us that the city is growing hostile. Residents, much like those throughout the country, do not show much loyalty towards the Empire and continue to oppose us every opportunity they get. Our interrogations and intelligence reveals that Tapauá is serving as a headquarters for the insurgency, led by a man we know only as Pablo, likely a Venezuelan.

"Tapauá has a civilian populace of approximately 20,000 but it is not heavily fortified and is very vulnerable to artillery and helicopter operations. Currently, stationed around Tapauá is a single company of soldiers. As we continue to scale back forces in the region, our presence here grows thinner. What we are currently planning is 'Operation Boa,' which would place two brigades of soldiers in the city to destroy any insurgent forces. We would be attacking approximately 1,650 insurgents with a land force of 12,288, enough to completely decimate them so that they cannot hide. Our goal is, essentially, to constrict the city from the outside inward, to effectively suffocate and destroy the insurgency."

"What can you tell me of this man named 'Pablo'?" The Emperor asked, the Minister of Intelligence responding.

"Sir. We suspect the name is an alias. We believe he is Venezuelan, based on his accent. We have intercepted several communications we confirmed have been him. They put him right in the middle of the city and we know exactly where, to within just a few meters."

"How do you plan on dealing with him?"

"Sir." the Minister of Defense continued. "We are planning to capture him using a special forces team. We will have them inserted into the city approximately two hours before we begin the assault on the city. During this time, we will have air support ready to assist them, should it be needed. Once they have captured the insurgent leader, hopefully alive, they will be helicoptered out of the city. We do not esimate their mission to take longer than forty minutes, if all goes to plan."

"You realize how difficult this operation is going to be. Nothing goes according to plan."

"That is true sir. That is why we are planning for that contingency. We have actionable intelligence putting him in this building," he handed over a slew of satellite photographs, the target building noted. "We know that it is a three story building with possible egress points here and here. The special forces team has reviewed the plan and it is their go."

"Very well. Continue. What of the offensive?"

"Sir. We will flatten everything out there big enough to hide under and, if we have to, flatten it again. We anticipate a campaign lasting from ten to fourteen days. We anticipate clearing up pockets of resistance in the next month."

"When are we planning to go?"

"Sir. H-hour is at 04:00 hours, November 16."

"What preparations are currently underway?"

"Sir. We are staging both brigades around the city now. We are doing this as quietly as we can to avoid alarming the residents, who will, in turn, notify the insurgents, who undoubtedly have escape plans already cemented, should they come under seige."

"What are we doing to prevent their escape?"

"We expect their primary means of egress to be underground, through tunnels. Through interrogation and ground mapping we have located approximately thirty-eight, individual escape tunnels. Many of them have been booby-trapped with explosives and motion sensors. We plan on leaving them be until the insurgents begin to escape. At that moment, motion sensors will trigger many of the explosives, causing collapses, effectively trapping them in the tunnels. We are still working to locate other tunnels as we believe there could be as many as fifty more."

"When should this be completed?"

"We are currently putting a deadline at 19:00 hours on the fifteenth. Anything found afterwards will be guarded to filled with claymores and trip-wires instead, something far more easy to do. We are cataloging everything so, should we need to enter a tunnel, we can effective do so without harming our soldiers. Our fighting will be concentrated above ground although we have and will reserve several tunnels for specialized units to enter. When I said we are going to pacify this city sir, I mean by all means necessary."

"By all means necessary? Have you authorized the use of chemical or biological weapons?"

"I have not."

"Nuclear?"

"No sir."

"Then conventional it will remain?"

"Yes sir."

"That is good to hear." The briefing continued as the Minister of Defense laid out the plans for his elaborate but extremely promising operation to cut off the insurgency's head. If it were successful, it would make up for months of poor decisions by the previous leadership of the Minister of Defense and his directors. The new Minister of Defense had to prove himself worthy of job and this would be it. With news of the disappearance of his successor, he was shaken slightly. He suspected the involvement of the Emperor and the governing Cabinet but he had no proof. He would play ball, rather than investigate it, leaving it up to the Ministry of Justice, which seemingly exhausted every resource, though it was beginning to look bleak. With no communication or word from the former minister since his kidnapping, many officials suspected that he was dead. Without a body though, they would continue to look. No body would ever be found.

November 13, 2007 - 10:00 [EST]
65 miles south of Isla de la Juventud, Carribean Sea

The Druid, high-speed, patrol corvette swung around as the motor boat zipped past it. The Druid had been in a high-speed pursuit with a suspected pirate motorboat for about twenty minutes now. The Druid had identified the craft on radar and, when it didn't heave to, the chase began. It wouldn't have been too unordinary except, as the motorboat zipped past, several of the crew members on board opened fire with smarll arms. Now, the Druid was being fired at, which meant it could return fire and it did. The vessel was loaded with a Bushmaster III chambered in 50mm as its main weapon and had two remotely operated 15.5mm heavy machine guns on its port and starboard sides. As it turned around and increased speed to catch the motorboat, which was moving now at 28 knots, the captain of the Druid authorized them to open fire. "This is Serpent 1. We're being engaged by a pirate motorboat. We're chasing it now." He said over the radio to alert headquarters as to what was going on in the waters south of Isla de la Juventud.

The main gunner on the Druid slaved the gun to target the boat now and used the optical systems attached to it to get a good view of the vessel. The camera was already recording the event when he set out the first burst of fire. The cannon banged out two rounds, sending both of them after the vessel at high speeds. Because of the advanced tracking and fire control system, the shots were a guaranteed hit and both of them crashed into the rear of the vessel, right at the desired point. Both rounds, armor piercing in nature, tore through the rear hull of the motorboat and sliced right through the engine compartment, tearing the engine to shreds. Smoke billowed out of the rear of the vessel now as the engine ceased functioning. About eight hundred yards ahead of the Druid, the motorboat suddenly lost all power and began to immediately slow as the Druid, now moving at 40 knots, closed in on the vessel. "Captain. She's disabled!" The gunner reported as the camera confirmed the occurance.

"Good work. Let's come along side of her. On the deck now, guns at the ready. I still see them out there and they're definitely not in the mood to be boarded." The captain ordered as the motorboat got closer. The Druid, crewed by two officers and eleven enlisted men slowed down to approach the vessel slowly. Inside of its control area, the captain and XO watched along with four of the eleven enlisted men. The other seven were preparing to board the vessel. Two of them rushed out to the deck to cover a forward and the port light machine gun, 7.62mm M35 LMGs. The other five suited up their body armor and picked up their M112A1 Viper submachine guns. They waited now as the motorboat got closer, its crew scrambling on board to cover themselves. "This is the Imperial Layartebian Defense Forces. You will throw down your arms immediately. Come topside and place your hands in the air. Immediately!" The captain said over the loudspeaker. The people on the motorboat did not comply and several rounds of 15.5mm armor piercing rounds tore overhead and crashed into the side of the boat, slicing through its unarmored hull. "I repeat. Come topside. Place your hands in the air. Prepare to be boarded!"

"Sir. What is that?" The gunner said as one of the men appeared to be carrying something on his back. He came to the deck and appeared to be arming something. "Jesus! He's got a rocket!"

"Take him out now!" The captain yelled as the gunner slaved the port side M31A1 HMG and let off a quick burst of fire. The rounds pierced right through the air and turned the pirate into mist as he tried to sight in his shoulder launched rocket system. "Good job. Stay alert. They're definitely not going to surrender."

"Aye sir." The Druid got closer now as the pirates scrambled, opening fire on the Druid as it approached. "Sir. Cleared to engage?"

"Not with the big guns. Open fire!" He yelled out to the gunners on the deck who were manning the LMGs. Both of them opened fire, using the tracer ammunition to find out where the rounds were going and adjusted their fire accordingly. Within seconds, the rounds pierced through both of the pirates on the deck, leaving just one more of them, who remained blow deck. "I repeat! Come topside immediately without your weapons! If you do not you will be sunk! Do you hear me!" The captain yelled one last time over the loudspeaker. "Wait. We got movement." The captain watched through his bionoculars as the fourth pirate stepped out to the deck of the smoking and probably sinking vessel, his hands in the air, no weapons in them. "Alright. We're game. Cease fire all gunners. Cease fire! Get us alongside her now."

They got closer and closer to the vessel and finally came alongside her, the seven men on the deck, their submachine guns pointed right at the pirate, who now looked frightened. Smoke continued to belch out of the rear hull of the vessel and the motorboat was slowing down quicker. The captain, now stepping outside with a pistol in his hand looked down at the pirate from his higher vessel deck. "On your knees now. Hands on your head. Interlock your fingers." The pirate complied and he continued to hold the pistol in front of him, aiming at his head. "Alright. Get some cuffs on him and get him on board." Two of the sailors lowered their guns and jumped to the other ship, approaching the pirate cautiously. With all those guns on him, he wasn't going to move, not if he wanted to live. Once he had his handcuffs on, they helped him on board the Druid, where he was brought below deck and secured in a small compartment that acted as a brig. The motorboat, which was definitely a pirate vessel was boarded and what they found was flat out scary.

The captain, preparing an inventory of everything on the motorboat had caught himself several times mystified by what they were finding. "Three shoulder launched AT4 rockets. One of them badly damaged from gunfire. Two Stinger missile launchers and missiles. Thirty-two AK-74 assault rifles. I mean Jesus Christ they've got enough to equip a whole platoon here. Where the hell were they headed?" He said as he looked over the inventory list. "Get a tow line on that fucker and let's get it back to port. Now." He said as he prepared to go down to the brig to question the pirate. The motorboat was badly damaged but she wasn't taking on water, which meant that it would be easy to get back to port, especially since they were only heading north, to Cuba.

November 13, 2007 - 18:00 [EST]
Layarteb City, New York

"Good evening and thank you for tuning into the evening news. I am Ryan Jenkins and this is Leslie Downs. Our top story tonight takes us to the Caribbean Sea. Earlier today, a maritime patrol vessel of the Defense Forces, engaged and captured a suspected pirate vessel south of Cuba. Details are sketchy but we are told that three of the suspects were killed in the skirmish and one has been captured. We have been told by officials that they recovered a number of small arms and explosives on the vessel. No destination was immediately available and we have been told that the majority of the weapons originate from the Eastern Bloc. Whether or not Russian involvement is suspected is unknown. Now onto..." The Emperor turned off the television and paced around the office. On the video phone were the ministers of defense and the interior.

"We couldn't suppress this story sir." The Minister of the Interior began. "Byproduct of a free press system."

"No. I understand. When was the last time the Caribbean saw actual piracy?" The Emperor asked, more curious than anything else.

"Sir. The last time we had an incident of piracy was 1981. A frigate caught a pirate motorboat moving off the Venezuelan coast transporting arms to Panama."

"That was twenty-seven years ago. Twenty-seven years without an incident and now we have one," the Emperor sat down behind his desk. "As if we didn't have enough problems now we've got this. What exactly are the polls showing?"

"Sir. A loss. People are seeing this as a weakening of our abilities to defend the Empire. Despite this being one event. Pundits are already billing it as a single 'exposed' event."

"Since when did the Layartebian people trust pundits more than their own instincts?"

"I'm unsure sir. With all that's happening though, sir. There is a lot of confusion in the minds of the Layartebian people."

"We need to fix this and we need to fix this fast. With the situation rapidly deteriorating due to this terrorism and the situation in Brazil, we are finding ourselves in a deepening situation."

"Yes sir. We'll get right on that."

"Good." The Emperor terminated the call and left his office for a press briefing concerning the incident. At the same time, thousands of miles away to the south, Layartebian forces were moving around Tapauá in the Amazonian Control Territory. A Layartebian team from the 9th SOG "Ghost Recon" had just landed in Manaus. It was 3,300 miles from Fort Ticonderoga in far upstate New York to Manaus. They had flown down on a routine C-29A Titan flight from Stewart Air Force Base in Newburgh, cramming themselves into the aircraft along with 300,000 pounds of supplies, including ammunition and MREs. They operated in teams of four and rarely did two or more teams operate in the same vacinity. Due to the highly sensitive nature of the operation, three teams were being sent in, to join with two teams of Delta Force commandos and six teams of Rangers, putting a total of 72 SOF operators in the attack along with the scores of infantry and cavalry soldiers. Because secrecy was the key, the forces moving into attack positions moved slowly and only at night. Because the operation had the benefit of time, they could move into position gradually, rather than all at once, enabling them to avoid alerting the populace.

It was a busy time in the Empire, very busy. Layartebian forces throughout the ACT were bracing for the final assault on the insurgency. Throughout the remainder of the Empire, forces were not on a heightened alert level. With the Colony of Denmad being organized and the government concentrated on the special economic zone being set up there, things were a bit hectic. Throughout the entirity of the Empire, things were sort of unfolding on themselves randomly. Criminal investigations were proceeding on many of the acts of terrorism committed by the Ghost Warriors and investigators were making headway. Military investigators and intelligence analysts were tracking down suspected terrorists throughout the world and the whole of the Empire was being put into motion to stop the terrorism before it spiralled even further out of hand.

November 14, 2007 - 04:00 [EAT]
8 nautical miles east of Mogadishu, Indian Ocean

"Alright. We're at the insertion point. Let's get up to periscope depth and find out what's going on. Signal the divers." The captain of the boat said as the chief of the boat looked back at the men standing in front of him. "Quietly COB."

"Aye sir. Make your depth 65 feet, 3° up bubble. Speed 3 knots." Immediately, the submarine began to move and slow down, all at once. It had been moving for quite some time now at a deep depth but, as it got closer to the African coast, the Scythe Flight II class SSN had to move to a shallower depth, keeping tight with the ocean floor. It had, for some time, been moving at a depth of 220 feet and at 8 knots but it was now rising to periscope depth, its towed sonar array following as the submarine, quiet to begin with, and already operating silently, became even more silent. The insertion point was eight nautical miles east of Mogadishu, Somalia, part of the United States of Brink. However, the USB was not nearly as glorious and unified as many were led to believe. Zimbabwe was not all that safe, Madagascar was pretty much all jungle, Mozambique had factories, resorts, and nothing else. Kenya was slowing becoming integrated but was in a political conflict because half the people lived under the Commonwealth of Hirgizstan. Only South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana were truely urbanized and industrialized. Somalia was rife with illegal activity, activity that, until now, seemingly did not include the Empire until two weeks earlier.

Slowly, the vessel rose to persicope depth, where the captain did a quick survey with his ESM sensor first, before raising the periscope fully. "Sir. ESM reports no contacts." The ESM sensor scanned the horizon to search for, intercept, identify, and locate sources of radiated electromagnetic energy for the purpose of immediate threat recognition. With no threats abound for as far as the horizon was, the periscope was raised. It was the middle of the morning and dark, which meant that the periscope had to be engaged in night vision. The captain looked out over a green horizon, seeing everything for three nautical miles. There was nothing around and a backup infrared vision proved that there was nothing around, for miles. "Chief of the Boat, horizon is clear. ESM reports no activity. Sonar reports no activity. Signal the divers!"

"Aye sir. Signaling the divers!" The COB said as he picked up the tactical phone, which ran throughout the entirety of the ship. "Dive Bay. Conn. Deploy the divers." He put down the phone and waited now. The Scythe Flight II submarine was equipped with a "lock-out" system, which enabled it to release as many as twenty-four divers with their equipment. Designed to deploy Navy SEALS and other SOF forces, it was selected for this mission because of that system except that only four men were deploying, not twenty-four. A minute or so later, the phone buzzed. "Aye." The COB said as he listened and quickly hung up the phone. "Sir. Divers away." Out of the lock-out compartment of the Scythe, four men bubbled towards the surface as they breathed through SCUBA gear. All of them carrier rubber bags with them, their equipment and gear contained therein and they also helped tote up an inflatable raft. The ascent was quick and they reached the surface on time, sticking only their heads out the water enough to see the darkness around them. They could see the periscope in front of them, moving away, towards the north. Quickly, one of the men pulled a cord on the raft and it instantly began to inflate, taking mere seconds to become a four-person raft.

Acting quickly, the men threw their bags into the raft and climbed into it, staying low to avoid making a larger target. The captain watched this, through the periscope and, upon them reaching the surface successfully, one of them gave a thumb's up to the periscope. The captain smirked and immediately closed the arm rests, "Down periscope. Take us to heading 1-3-9. Speed 8 knots. Maximum depth."

"Aye sir. Come to heading 1-3-9. Dive to floor transit. Increase speed to 8 knots. Aye." The COB repeated as the submarine's periscope slipped beneath the waves and it began to exit the area, just as quietly as it had come. The men on the surface, on the other hand, made their way west. With their gear in the boat, them lying down in the boat as low as possible, they unpacked a small, propellar engine, and put its propeller in the water. With their SCUBA mouth pieces out and the air off, they pulled off their water goggles and doned night vision goggles. One of them pulled out a GPS device and immediately booted it up and determined their position.

"Let's go," he whispered as they started up the motor. It was electric and had enough battery power to get them a total distance of 36 nautical miles in calm seas or less in rougher seas. It was a calm night and they were lucky. Though it made noise, it was as quiet as any motor could be and only barely humed loud enough to be heard. Costly, the motor was standard equipment for this sort of mission as the four men, wearing their black wetsuits moved towards the coast in complete silence, having their assault rifles unpacked and at the ready. They were in between a new moon and a waxing crescent, meaning that there wasn't a lot of moonlight above, not enough to risk being seen. "Come port. Eight degrees." The man whispered after two nautical miles as they came left a little bit, keeping themselves heading west, towards their beach point, about three klicks south of Mogadishu, a spot picked because it was empty and the nearest structure was a half mile away and unoccupied.

They moved in silence towards the coast until they got to a distance of one nautical mile, where they cut off the engine. Now they were driting. In the distance, they could see lights on from Mogadishu and a camp fire somewhere along the beach between their landing point and the city, a few klicks away. They removed a pair of small oars from the bottom of the boat and put them into the water. Slowly and quietly, they rowed the boat towards the coast now, using the momentum to get them most of the way. They also used it to help slow them down as they came closer to the beach, the waves crashing on the warm sands ahead of them. The roar of the ocean would have made their small motor completely quiet, even if it made more noise than it did. "Stay alert. We're one hundred meters out." The leader whispered as he put away his GPS and turned it off, to avoid its illumination being seen. They were close enough to the landing spot that they no longer needed it. While two men rowed, the other two kept their weapons shouldered and looked down their sights. Everything around them was green with the glow of their night vision goggles and they could see that the beach was deserted. They couldn't see as far as the camp fire but they didn't want to either, it wasn't close enough for them to be worried about it.

When the oars hit the bottom of the beach, they quickly removed them, put them in the boat, and jumped out of it. The two men without weapons now had them and all four of them quickly took the boat with one free hand and ran the rest of the way, onto the beach, their foot prints etched into the sand until the next waves came and washed them away. They ran about twenty feet away from the waterline before they stopped, dropped the boat, and immediately went to work. They four of them unpacked their gear and immediately deflated the boat, storing their SCUBA gear inside of it. They doubled checked to make sure their tanks were off and quickly wrapped them in the black rubber of the boat along with the collapsable oars and motor. It took only minutes and they were on the move again, this time running up the beach towards a road that connected it to Mogadishu. That was where their contact would be waiting for them. Because of the sensitivity of the operation and the composition of their enemy, they had to be very cautious. The sand slowed their pace but they reached the road side quickly, lying prone on the ground, waiting. They were told exactly what kind of vehicle would be coming for them and it was not waiting. Though this wasn't routine, they weren't worried.

Instead, the man held an infrared strobe in his hand but did not activate it yet. They waited there four minutes before a pair of headlights came on the horizon. They identified the vehicle quickly as the one they wanted and, immediately, the man flashed the strobe three times. The driver suddenly turned off the headlights and turned off the road into a dense shrubbery area not far from the four men. They cautiously approached the vehicle now, their weapons ready to annihilate the driver, if they had to do so. The man turned off the engine and stepped out of the vehicle. He flashed an infrared strobe himself three times and then tucked it away in his pocket. "Clam." That was the codeword for the encounter.

"Baked." The leader responded back and everyone relaxed, the driver taking his hand off a pistol behind his back. "You're late."

"I thought I had a tail or something. Hurry up."

"Get the gear in the vehicle. Look normal. Three minutes." The leader said as the driver helped lug the raft into the rear of his enclosed SUV. The men removed their wetsuits, revealing civilian clothing, and pulled more gear from their bags, including socks and boots. In three minutes, they had transformed themselves into civilians and now made things even better. With a splash of whiskey here and there, they all gave off the appearance that they were completely and utterly intoxicated. Of the five men now, the driver and the leader would keep their eyes open. The other three would pretend to sleep. All of them clutched pistols and assault rifles, hidden in the darkness of the vehicle as the driver turned on the engine and entered the road. All of their important gear was hidden now. "Where are we going?" He knew the answer but he had to make sure the driver knew.

"Safe house in Mogadishu. It's been a long week let me tell you that."

"You are here alone?"

"Yes. The Ministry sent me in a week ago to establish a location. I found a small house thing in the city. It's in a safe zone, not far from the airport. We'll be safe there. The city is calm now. The whole country is calm, for now. Tribal wars sometimes turn this place into a mess."

"How is it that you fit in so quickly?" The leader sounded suspicious.

"That's what they pay me for. I was told not to ask many questions."

"I wasn't." They entered the city. Some drums burned flames out of them but, for the most part, the city was quietly asleep. The few lights on were lights in protected areas or the burning 55-gallon drums. Mogadishu was a difficult city to understand as was the whole of Somalia. It was tribal, very tribal, and warlords controlled segments of it. Whenever someone encroached upon them a war would ensue. The United States had yet to pacify the area and it was unlikely that they ever would. For now though, Mogadishu was quiet, too quiet. The four men were there to, in essence, stir things up but they had no idea just how badly they would.

When they arrived at the safe house, their intelligence contact helped empty their gear into the small, one level house. They hid the stuff in the basement and gathered their places in the house. "You'll be safe here. Get some sleep. We have to scout the market at 08:00 local." The contact said as he took his place in the bed room, taking off his shoes and lying down on the bed. Nobody had opposed them and, had they, they would have passed them off as a couple of drunks. The men now unpacked their gear accordingly and removed their clothes, changing into clean ones, without whiskey spread on their shirts.

As they did, the leader pulled out an encrypted satellite phone and dialed in a number. "Yes sir. The bee's nest is quiet right now. We've got our smoke. Yes sir. Out." He put down the phone and assumed his own place in the house.

Seven thousand, six hundred, and twenty-five miles away, in Layarteb City, the Emperor's phone rang just minutes later. "Speak to me." He said as he identified the caller.

"Sir. Delaney and his team are at their destination in Mogadishu."

"Very well. Inform me when the task is complete."

"Yes sir."

November 14, 2007 - 11:00 [EAT]
Mogadishu, Somalia

The weather in Mogadishu was uncomfortable, to say the least, and November was considered a palpable month. It was in the 80s and the humidity was high due to the ocean being so close but they were lucky, there was a decent breeze that morning. Still, they had a job to do and they weren't going to let the weather stop them. These men could stand the most balmy conditions in the world or the most frigid, it didn't matter to them, they were trained well. They had ventured out of the shack of a house just before 10:00 hours, local time, dressed as if they were just another bunch of Africans. Their contact took them, by foot, throughout part of the city, specifically the area they would need to know the most. Armed with pistols, they strode through market places where people bought and sold arms, explosives, drugs, carpets, rugs, and who knew what else. You could get anything in Mogadishu and it didn't matter either, there weren't any laws. They walked past tables with M16s and AK47s, tables with RPGs, and then, five feet away, a table with beautiful pottery. People yelled in all sorts of languages and it was a cash capital. Nobody would get anywhere with a check or plastic and anyone trying to use them or even a traveler's check was bound to find themselves on a milk carton. The five men that now walked around fit in as best as any white men could in a city that was as dark as the evening sky. Their contact was a native African and helped them avoid some suspicion. Mogadishu was the capital of the criminal world. Layartebian criminals who managed to escape the grips of justice had fled there, few of them looking back. Occassionally, Layartebian bounty hunters caught them and dragged them home, kicking and screaming. Others were just too happy to leave such a pathetic mess, where running water and elecricity were rarities.

"The man you are looking for," Danny said as he led into a café and sat down at a table. He ordered five teas and a plate of mixed vegetables, meat, beans, pitta bread, and beans. It was a sort of common meal there and they would all eat from it as Danny explained everything. Though not his real name, it sufficed the men who didn't ask further. "He is a man who holds great esteem and power here." Nobody in the café spoke English though. "You see this city and this country is anarchy. Each piece of land is controlled by a warlord or a tribe. There are hundreds of them. Thousands. Here, in Mogadishu, the fighting, in the past, has been horrific. You see, power rules the day here. When one warlord gets too powerful he is cut off. Another takes his place. It progresses as such.

"So you see. Mogadishu is rife with battle. It has been quiet so far though. This man you are looking for, he is the glue that holds it together. He is powerful and all of the warlords respect him. It is, through him, that they get their guns. He is the biggest arms dealer in the country and possibly the world."

"This we know but can we get to him?"

"You can always get to him. He is accessible. He is well protected here, which is a problem for you. Why did you not just launch a missile or drop a bomb?"

"That is not precise enough in this environment. Our goal isn't to slaughter half the city for one man." BG. Delaney could tell that there was something amiss about this contact, albeit he was an asset, not an agent. "We are here to be precise."

"Very well. I can respect this. I do not wish innocents to die either but I must warn you of the consequences of your actions. You will create a war within this city that could tear this country apart. This city will become the nightmare of the world."

"That isn't our problem. That is a problem for Windhoek."

"Do you think they have any say here?" They were brought their tear and the plate of food was brought moments later. Danny thanked the waiter and they began to eat. It was customary for them to leave a little bit of food on their platter and they would. They weren't there to insult anyone. "They have no say here," Danny said in between bites. "This place will spill over, further and further. No corner of the world will be safe."

"Leave the politics to the politicians. We are soldiers. That is of no concern to us."

"Is it? You soldiers, you Layartebians. That is your thinking but here, in Africa, politics is everyone. We do not avoid things here and there."

"That is your way. Ours is different. We are here to do a single job. It is of no concern to us how the populace will react."

"My fellow countrymen will die."

"Then why are you helping us? Where is your loyalty?" BG. Delaney did not trust Danny anymore, not that he ever did.

"I will not betray you. I too am a soldier and I too have a duty. Once this is over I will leave Africa. I will leave this chaos in Somalia and with my family I will go south. To South Africa."

"Good. Then it will be us who get you out safely."

"Thank you. But is that your word?"

"It is." He offered his hand to shake and they shook on it, smiles all around the table cementing the deal, reassuring Danny. "Now. Let's go to the location." He said when they were done eating.

They were in country to assassinate a single man. He was, in essence, the most wanted man in the world, the Empire having put a bounty of §55,000,000.00 on his head but few were going to risk killing him or turning him in and the Empire simply didn't know where he was. His identity became known in early 2007, after the fall of the Sepah-e Pasdaran. His name had been seen on numerous documents linking him to Totalis and, in retracing the documents recovered in Port Stanley, the Ministry of Intelligence learned something vital about this man. Besides being the world's most prolific arms smuggler and dealer in the world, he was also amongst the richest and simply because he had received a single sum of money from Totalis that gave him his greatest bit of table conversation. Unfortunately, all of the intelligence learned on him in such fashion had only been learned two weeks prior.

It was October 2005 when it all began but it wasn't in Mogadishu, it was in Falcon City...

October 12, 2005 - 05:00 [EST]
Falcon City, Massachusettes

"Gentlemen. Let's call this meeting to order. Gentlemen. You will notice that our brother, the Minister of Intelligence is absent this morning. This is because we have concluded our business with him." Dr. Gordon Gray began as he stood at the nine o'clock position of the round table of a restaurant in downtown Falcon City. The restaurant was closed and the basement was dingy but the Majestic members sat around it comfortably, the twelfth seat empty. "As you are aware, the Minister of Intelligence had betrayed us. He planned to expose our secrets and to turn the interior forces against us. This has been dealt with and the first opportunity for the Republican Liberation Army has gone successful to their favor.

"Now we must proceed forward. Our plans are in play and we cannot turn back now. The RLA will unleash a dirty campaign of domestic terrorism and they will be destroyed. At this point, the Layartebian people will breathe some sort of relief sigh. Of course, that is when the Illuminati Ghost Warriors kick into action. By then, they will be ready and prepared to go into battle. Their tactics will be different, very different. Elite in nature, they will give the overconfident authorities, in the wake of the defeat of the RLA, nothing but circles.

"We are not fully there yet. Planning continues and events shape our progress and our future. However, what remains on the table is 'Overture.' As you are aware, Overture requires the actual rise of a rebellious government on Grenada. The details for Overture are worked out and the forces are being trained in various locales in the Amazonian Republic, the Caucasus, and elsewhere in the world. Our contacts within the Sepah-e Pasdaran tell us that they are progressing well and quickly. By May, Totalis will be completely entrenched in this plan and the evidence is in place. All we have to do is present it. The only matter that remains is the end of Overture."

"You mean the nuclear weapon?" Dr. Michael added. "Are we serious about this proposal?"

"Yes."

"Very well."

"The only problems lies in obtaining the weapon. Our chances of obtaining a Layartebian weapon are completely out of the question. That will simply be impossible. We must look abroad."

"But where?" It was, seemingly, a two way conversation but the other nine men were listening very intently, taking mental notes, thinking of ideas themselves.

"Our sources," Ethan Hunter stole the thunder as Dr. Gray sat down. "Indicate that in the United States of Brink, particularly in Somalia, we will find what we need."

"We will find what exactly?" The Admiral of the Navy asked, unaware of what Ethan was talking about or of the situation in Somalia.

"Admiral. Gentlemen. Somalia is a lawless haven for criminals, particularly arms traders. The Ministry of Intelligence has extensive satellite and reliable ground reporting on arms deals within the territory, primarily Mogadishu. Currently, the place is rife with civil war, tribes fighting each other, which helps us. When there is peace, weapons are being moved. We have tracked stolen chemical agents, two nuclear warheads, and more assault rifles than any of us care to realize. Sometimes we buy these weapons, ship them to rebel groups in hope of overthrowing a government. More than once we have done this. So, you see, we have extensive contacts. Primarily, we deal with one man. He is not a native to the area nor is he a native to the United States. We honestly do not know where he is from, he is very cautious about giving away personal details. Those close to him are loyal. There is no chance of turning anyone. We have tried.

"He goes by the name of 'André' but this is definitely an alias. Here is a photograph of him." He put a photograph on the table, taken definitely without his knowledge.

http://www.forsakenoutlaw.com/Graphics/Nation-States/Role-Playing/Ride%20the%20Lightning/andre.jpg

"That is him on the right. The man on the left is unidentified. We believe this photograph was taken in a bar near the border with Rome, perhaps here in North America. The exactly location is unclear. The photograph was taken from his home, digitally copied, and returned. He did not notice. This was a high-tech operation and it succeeded. André has a long doisser we simply do not have. We know he was an ex-Special Forces soldier but with what military we do not know. He did not serve with the Empire nor was he ever a Layartebian citizen. We have taken a DNA sample and they do not match with the database.

"He has, in the past, spoken to us about the possibility of a chemical agent. Our buyers pushed him aside, moving more towards conventional arms but now we are going to approach him about the possibility of a nuclear weapon. We are not sure how this will turn out but this is our best and currently only option."

"Plans call for the use of a device no greater than fifteen kilotons and no weaker than five kilotons. Our desire is to level the city of Saint George's in the midst of the war to reclaim the island. There will be a war, trust me." Dr. Gray continued though remaining seated. "Our plans are to acquire a nuclear weapon of foreign origin, place it into Saint George's, and detonate remotely. We are still working out the final details of this but we will require help from the navy. Recommending a blockaide of the island following their ascension to power will be most effective. We will work to push the government for a humanitarian 'event' whereby international aide is delivered to the island. It is during that time that we will deliver the weapon.

"We must have the weapon in our possession by June. The war will begin on June 16, one day after the majority of the military forces are given a six-day leave. We anticipate a Layartebian invasion no later than July 15, one month after. Timing is crucial. We have plenty of it now but securing this weapon may take a lot longer than expected."

"And the money? Where will that come from?" The General of the Air Force asked, unaware of the Totalis angle.

"That is where Totalis comes in. Totalis has been secretly funding the Sepah-e Pasdaran for months now. That money is being used to train the Ghost Warriors and the RLA as well as other revolutionary armies that we intend to use against the government between now and 2009. They will be the ones to pay our arms smuggler here. Do they know this is going on? No. They do not. Are there any questions?"

November 14, 2007 - 15:00 [EAT]
Mogadishu, Somalia

"So you understand now why this man, André, is our target." BG. Delaney explained to Danny. Danny had simply asked why he was a target and, in short, BG. Delaney gave the only information he was authorized to give. That was simple, André had been the one who sold the nuclear weapon to the terrorists on Grenada. That was it. No other details were available to give. The five men had fanned out now. BG. Delaney and Danny remained in the upper story of a small hotel on the edge of the famous Bakara Market, the world's largest arms bazaar. The three men that had come with Delaney, which was the rest of "Blue Team" - Force Falcon Team One had moved throughout the market and were looking around, finding their target. "So you tell me this man is conducting a major arms team here? Or elsewhere?"

"No. Elsewhere. About fourteen kilometers away, to the west."

"Where exactly? Why aren't we there?"

"It will be in two days that this occurs and in the late evening, when the sun is to the west. That is why we will benefit."

"Hiding in the setting sun is something we did not entirely plan for here. Is there no adequate cover?"

"No. You will need to hide in the west."

"Very well. That is what we will do then. Why are we here?"

"You must visually ID the target. Must you not?"

"He's here. Trust me."

"Very well. I will take you to the spot."

"White. Brown. Stay here and scout around. See if you can find our boy. Red. On me. We're going for a drive." BG. Delaney said aloud. They were all wearing ear pieces that were small enough to be hidden and they were. The pieces also picked up their voices. As he gave the orders, he and Danny left the building, exiting the rear where MAJ. Rigalo met them. "We're taking a drive to the meeting spot."

"You got it Blue."

"Why is it that you use names of colors?" Danny asked curiously.

"I thought you weren't supposed to ask any questions?"

"I am sorry." They walked off, MAJ. Rigalo reading BG. Delaney's mind. Danny was becoming a liability. They would need to evacuate him from the area once they completed their mission. From Bakara, they drove out to the west, pretty far away, even though it was only fourteen kilometers. The sun wasn't unbearable but they weren't necessarily used to such warm temperatures in the month of November. Back home, in the Empire, the temperature barely exceeded 50°F and there was no such thing as humidity during fall. "It is up there. Over that hill. We must walk the rest of the way," he said, pulling his SUV off the side of the road. They stepped out and walked over to a hill that was covered in low-lying brush and had a single tree dotting it. It wasn't a high hill but it obscured their view to the west. They did not leave the hill though and all three of them lay down on the ground and Danny removed a pair of binoculars. "The meeting will take place down there by the well." He handed BG. Delaney the binoculars.

"We can use this hill for cover. It will offer a practical shot."

"Mr. Blue. You are talking a fourteen hundred meter shot."

"That is fine."

"I do not have orders to give you a fifty caliber rifle."

"We won't be using a fifty. It's too loud, bulky, and noisey. We're using something else."

"What can shoot that far?"

"You'll see. I'm glad I packed my ghille suit. What about you Red?"

"Yes sir I did."

"Good. We'll take up a position here and engage the target. We'll have to really range it when we get out here and determine wind patterns. We are facing east so this should not be a problem for us to hide, visually. We will suppress the shot and I have a bipod with us for this. Getaway car on the road. White and Brown will be there."

"And me?"

"You'll be right beside them."

"Good. Then we will leave?"

"We will leave. You will come with us."

"Thank you."

"Red. We come back here in the evening," BG. Delaney said as he handed Danny the binoculars and the three of them stood up and walked back to the vehicle. They would need to do some preliminary things before the day of the assassination. First, they would have to find a way to hide the vehicle from sight. There was some brush but not a lot of it and camoflauge was out of the question. They would also have to get the proper range to the well, which was a fixed point for them. From there, they could easily determine the range if their target wasn't standing by the well.

November 14, 2007 - 22:00 [EAT]
Mogadishu, Somalia

"We're here. Pull off and let's hide this for now. I don't see anyone on the road so we'll be safe for now." BG. Delaney said as he looked at his GPS device. It told him exactly where he was and he had programmed it to the coordinates of the shooting site before they had left earlier that day. The sun had gone down and the temperature dropped a few degrees but the night was no more comfortable than the day was. Dressed in their camouflaged ghille suits, the two men stepped out of the now parked and silent SUV and quickly crossed the road. They had not driven with headlights on, opting instead of their night vision goggles, which showed them an excellent picture ahead of them where their eyes would otherwise be ineffective. The night around them creaked, groaned, and echoed a thousand a one sounds of nocturnal woes and creatures that stalked their prey.

Quickly, the two men dropped onto the hill and set up their equipment. They could easily see that no one was around and they were safe. A laser rangefinder would give them the proper distance between their position and the well. They would also observe the windage patterns and mark possible hiding places. "Sir. What do you propose we do about Danny when we're done?" MAJ. Rigalo asked as he zeroed in the well. "One, three, eight, nine to the well."

"Tag that rock to the right. Looks like about a twenty meter difference." BG. Delaney scribbled some notes quickly. "Danny is a liability."

"He is sir. Fourteen hundred even. Off by nine meters."

"I'm getting old. What else do we have out here?"

"It's barren sir. Will we simply dipose of him?"

"Danny is a problem. I can't trust him. Something tells me he isn't playing for our side alone."

"You think he's a double agent sir?"

"Possible. This arms dealer, he's cunny and crafty. He's probably got a hundred spies in this city alone and Danny is way too questioning on certain things."

"I doubt he's that curious myself sir."

"How long did it take us to get here?"

"Just shy of fifteen minuts. We averaged about thirty-five miles per hour sir."

"Danny is definitely a problem. When we're done we'll deal with him."

"Do you think he's alerted our target?"

"If he has we'd be dead already. No. I don't think he has. If we grab him now, if he is talking to the target, the target will know something is up. We better play this one dumb but think smart."

"Yes sir."

"Once we take down the target, we're out of here."

"What is our egress option?"

"The same way we came in."

"Danny thinks we're driving out."

"Good. Let him think that."

"Yes sir." They finished up the survey by midnight and were back at the house fifteen minutes later. The men were awake, planning the mission while Danny was sitting off to the side, playing solitare. The meeting was scheduled for 19:00 hours, local time, on November 16. They had just under forty-three hours to go, which was long enough to plan the most perfect assassination but long enough for something to go dangerously wrong.

Thousands of miles away, Layartebian soldiers moved into position all around Tapauá. They were set to unleash their own fury eight hours prior to the assassination of André, who was spotted in the city that evening. Layartebian soldiers had amassed a large arsenal of tanks and infantry around Tapauá and they were carefully moving in, not alerting suspicion, using the dead of night to move in, and the day to hide. It was one of the most secretive operations being conducted in the ACT and it was thus far highly successful. The SOF teams had already moved into position at the airfield and would enter the city via Little Bird, flying four per bird, strapped to benches on their sides. Fast, agile, small, and quiet, the Little Birds could move them anywhere in the city, drop them in, and take off within two minutes. Protected by larger, more powerful, and armed attacked helicopters, the Little Birds would be the first in and the first out as well for they would have no armament. Other AH-6M Little Birds armed with rockets and powerful Gatling guns would assist, providing close air support while the SOF forces seized the rebel leader and prepared to extract him from the area. They would do that via Black Hawk.

November 15, 2007 - 04:00 [EAT]
Mogadishu, Somalia

"We're in place. No. I do not have a visual yet on the target. He's here. I assure you he's here. It'll be done. Keep panicking and see what happens. When it is over you will know." BG. Delaney ended his whispered conversation and closed the phone, ending the conversation he had been having with someone within the Illuminati, possibly Majestic. He had a secure phone that was one of many circulating through the ranks of the Layartebian government and there was, in no easy way, no way to know who he had been talking to without actually being privy to the conversation. He entered the house and sat down in the living room, on an arm chair that the owner had, seemingly, salvaged from a dump somewhere up the coast. "Brown. On me. We're going out. Pistol light." He said as he strapped his pistol to his leg holster and walked out of the house again. In Mogadishu, anyone not walking around with a weapon was going to get noticed quicker than someone walking around with a bazooka. MAJ. Jackson stepped out of the house a moment later and lit a cigarette.

"We're we going?" He asked as he took a drag.

"To find our boy. Stay low."

"You got it." He tossed the cigarette, knowing that its glow would give away their presence. They were off now, skulking about the shanty's and obstacles in the disgusting, filth-ridden city of gun runners, drug dealers, and scum of the Earth.

Back in the ACT, it was 21:00 hours and still November 14. Layartebian forces continued to move into position around Tapauá and the Ghost Recon operators took turns practicing the snatch-and-grab operation against the rebel leader. Pilots used the cover of darkness to conduct reconnaissance, flying a single RAH-70A Arapaho reconnaissance helicopter to the city and maintaining a high enough altitude and a far enough distance that the helicopter would not be heard too easily. Quieter drones orbited at altitudes over 20,000 feet and both aircraft used their FLIR and night vision sensors to watch the city. It was truly amazing how well they could observe the city from their positions, using the darkness of the night to cover themselves. The RAH-70 would only be on station for a short amount of time, being used to provide more pinpoint reconnaissance than the MQ-1B Predator flying overhead. Unarmed, the MQ-1B Predator UAV could remain on-station for up to 30 hours and it would remain there for at least 24 hours before it was relieved by another UAV. They took turns, normally carrying two AGM-230A Harbinger anti-tank guided missiles, just incase they spotted a target. Sometimes, they carried the "B" version, which used a thermobaric warhead powerful enough to level a single building in one shot. Occassionally, although rare, they would carry the GBU-50A JDAM II 250-pound GPS guided bomb or the GBU-44A Viper Strike, a 42 pound glide bomb guided by semi-active laser and GPS and equipped with a two pound HEAT warhead, powerful enough to destroy a tank or a single room.

They had yet to drop any ordinance on Tapauá but they were there and ready to act. They would be used in the initial stages of the assault. While SOF operators moved on to capture Pablo, a combined assault from helicopters and UAVs would provide perimeter protection for the operators. Layartebian fighter-bombers would also participate in the attack and two squadrons of them were ready at an airbase near Manaus. One squadron consisted solely of F-26A Typhoon aircraft while the other consisted of F-46C Enforcers. The Enforcer could carry a much heavier payload than the Typhoon but was not as agile and had a longer turn around time. However, the heavy hitter would be used where it was needed the most. They would be dropping 2,000 pound and 4,500 pound bombs on targets while the Typhoons concentrated on using Mavericks, Harbingers, and lighter bombs, including unguided dumb and cluster munitions.

The initial assault called for an all around offensive. It would begin at 03:00 hours when helicopters took off, carrying forty-eight of the seventy-two SOF operators into battle. Moving to capture Pablo would be four Little Birds. On board two of them would be eight Ghost Recon operators and on the other two would be six Delta operators. They would land on the roof and on the streets around the building where they knew Pablo to be and storm it, capturing the leader alive. The remaining six Delta operators would move in via Black Hawk and be put down a kilometer away, at a suspected command center along with the twenty-four Rangers, who came in on three Black Hawks. The Delta team would move into the command center and secure it along with eight Rangers while the remaining twelve took up blocking positions around the building. Lastly, the remaining four Ghost Recon operators would move in via Little Bird and land at the radio station. They would secure that and await the cavalry. By 03:45, all SOF objectives were hoping to be met, at which time the airborne soldiers would enter. The assault would see them deployed on Super Stallions and Black Hawks, putting an entire company of one hundred and twenty-eight of them into positions around the radio station and the command center. By then, a Black Hawk would remove Pablo and any other captured principles out of the city. At 04:00 hours, the main assault would begin. Attack helicopters would provide cover for soldiers moving into the city while the SOF operators spotted targets for Typhoons and Enforcers as well as artillery. It was expected that, by 08:00 hours, five hours after the mission began, the entire Layartebian invasion force would be within the city, pushing the insurgents to the ground. With armored support, the Layartebians were unstoppable.

Few took notice that, a world away, in Mogadishu, everything was beginning to crumble apart. The city was like a floor layout with individual rooms, each one opened and closed by a fire door. Inside of each room raged a gigantic inferno, hotter than the sun, contained only by the fire door. André, the intended victim for BG. Delaney sat at those controls. His death would open every door and the fires would fight each other for dominance. To the powers that were, the outcome of his assassination was well known. The chaos that ensued in Mogadishu would serve the Empire in two ways. It would, basically, end the arms trade as factions fought each other, rather than sought prospective buyers and it would allow Layartebian BOF units to enter and operate in the city, assassinating or capturing high value targets. André was only the tip of the iceburg for the Empire.

Secretly, the 12th Carrier Battle Group, based in the Persian Gulf, in Bahrain, was preparing to sail. They would leave the base and make a 2,350 nautical mile journey to a position 75 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia. There, they would station and prepare for the inevitable outcome of Mogadishu. There on training exercises, they would be conviently placed when the fighting went chaotic in Mogadishu and the United States seemingly accepted Layartebian assistance as news footage of fighting in Mogadishu was downloaded via satellite to Layartebian news stations. It would take the group almost six days, once they left port on November 16, to reach their position, enough time for Mogadishu to have turned into the world's most horrific warzone. The sheer amount of firepower in the 12th CVBG was enough to literally level the entire city.

November 15, 2007 - 03:00 [CST]
Chicago, Illinois

"No Daddy. I'll be home in ten minutes. Okay!" It was a school night and the seventeen year old daughter of the mayor of Chicago had no business being out on the town with her friends. She had snuck out just before 23:00 the previous evening and her father found out just short of thirty minutes ago. Unable to get through to her cell phone, he began to worry. Finally, when he got through, he was relieved but when she got home, she was in for a long talk. He wasn't happy with her behavior at all. He couldn't understand it either. He had always been there for her, a good parent, his wife, her mother, too. They raised her right, treated her right but she was a problem child. She partied too much and too hard, once having to be rushed to the emergency room after a bad reaction with some party drug. She hadn't seen daylight except to go to school for about four months after that ordeal. Perhaps it was her privileged upbringing that did it to her. Perhaps it was the influence of her friends, friends her parents did not approve of but tacitly tolerated. When she got home, she was in for a strict punishment. She exited the club with her friends as last call rang through the dance floor. Outside, the air was cold and winter and overcast, with a small snow storm coming. "G'night. I'll see you tomorrow at school." She kissed her friends good bye and walked towards her car, which was parked on the opposite side of the street, two blocks down. That night, an unusual oddity, she was sober. Dressed to kill, she had gone out more to dance and be with her friends than to get hammered, an unusual occurance.

Few questioned it that night and she walked now in the chilling cold across the deserted street, the thumps of the bass music echoing from the club, its exterior, neon sign still glowing. A traffic light above her turned from green to yellow to red but nobody was there to stop for it. Freezing underneath her warm but small coat, she crossed to the other side of the street and turned down the block towards her car. There were street lights and the street was pretty well lit. This was no back alley and she noticed that when she parked her car. That was why she had parked it there. Behind her, a car whizzed by, running the now red light on the main street, probably speeding too, who could tell. She was not really near the center of Chicago but she wasn't far from it. The Sears Tower wasn't too far away either and neither was Union Station. Her cell phone rang again but she didn't answer it after she saw the caller ID was her father, again. "What does he want now?" She asked the thin air around her as she approached her car and pulled her purse off her shoulder to dig for the keys.

"He wants to warn you." A voice echoed from the dark behind her and, startled, she screamed, her purse falling to the ground in the process, the keys coming out of it. "He wants to warn you." The voice echoed again as the sound of screeching brakes broke the silence of the alley. She dropped her cell phone and now started to run away but she didn't get far, the panic in her taking over her rational mindset. She tried to scream again, to get away but she felt a pair of cold, strong, and seemingly concrete arms around her waist. Nobody said anything but the van beside her had turned into a nightmare that she couldn't wake up from and that was very real. The arms yanked her into the dark van and the voice that had been behind her followed into it, in front of her, grabbing her kicking legs while the hulk behind her held her writhing body still. The door was slammed shut and the van sped off as the voice yelled, "Go!" At the end of the block, the van's driver made a sharp right and sped off, taking another left shortly thereafter. From then on, they resumed normal speed, not attracting attention while, in the back, the girl was given a sedative injection into her shoulder and restrained, plastic zip-ties holding both her hands and her feet together and a piece of duct tape over her mouth to keep her from yelling. Next, they tossed a black hood over her head and left her in a seat as they continued down the road.

Once they left the Chicago city-limits and passed over its suburban homes on the interstate highway, the voice that had startled her first, who had now moved to the passenger seat, picked up his cell phone. "Yes. We got her. No. She's unharmed. Fine. Pretty little thing. No. We'll deliver her on time and on schedule. Don't worry about that." He hung up the phone and turned to the two men in the rear seat, one of them sitting next to her, keeping her seated properly. She was too precious of a cargo to get harmed and they all knew that well. "Make sure she's okay when we drop her off. By our time and schedule, we'll be pulling up to the airport around dawn. Nobody should be there but, in case, be ready." He said as he opened the glove box and removed his pistol, an FN Five-seveN chambered in 5.7x28mm with twenty rounds loaded and ready, each one powerful enough to shred body armor.

Hours later, as news of the girl's kidnapping circulated throughout the news stations around Chicago and around the Empire were being prepared to be read on the morning news, the van pulled up in front of a small airfield. It was before 06:30 hours about fifteen minutes before sunrise. They pulled up to one of the hangars at the private airfield, which catered to business jets, mostly Learjets, Gulfstreams, and Cessnas. Sitting inside the hangar, ready for taxi was a Cessna 560XL Citation Excel. The pilot and co-pilot of the corporate jet was joined by two other men, who were waiting patiently. One of them had opened the hangar door to let the van in, closing the door behind it. Now, the eight men stood in the hangar, both groups of them unaware that they were actually working for the same goal, the same company, and they belonged to the same organization. Secrecy was that powerful within the ranks of the Ghost Warriors, especially now that the government knew their name from captured brethren.

"You have the cargo?" One of the other men asked, a pistol, the same make and model clearly visible on his hip. "Is she hurt?"

"No. She's fine. The money?"

"Show us." The two men stared down each other from at least ten feet apart and the man who had ridden in the van nodded his head. The side door was opened and the other two men stepped out, the girl on one of their shoulders. "She remains sedated?"

"You can check her vitals if you want." Untrusting, the man nodded and the one who had opened the door approached carefully, putting his fingers on her throat to feel for her pulse. He nodded that she was fine. "Satisfied? The money."

"Right here." The pilot emerged from the plane with a briefcase and, walking down the small ladder of the jet, walked over to the man and handed him the briefcase. He handed it behind him to another man who went to the van with it, to count it. The deal was over moments later when the money added up and the girl was loaded onboard the plane. Before the plane exited the hangar, the van left, heading east, towards Washington City while the plane taxied to the runway, where it would take off and head south, to the Yucatán, 1,300 miles away.

Before the plane ever got into the air though, Michelle Baxter's photograph was all over the news. Police were on high alert, looking for her as her friends were being awoken in the middle of the night by calls from the mayor and visits by the police, trying to find out what happened to her. Despite the presence of public cameras in Chicago, that particular area was not well covered. It wasn't a particularly high crime area and cameras weren't necessarily added to all areas of Chicago. News reporters and pundits, by 07:00 hours, were drawing similarities between her kidnapping and that of Jasmine Delgado, daughter of the government of the Province of Raef, who had still yet to be found. She was presumed dead though.

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November 16, 2007 - 03:00 [AST]
Tapauá, Amazonian Control Territory

"Alright gentlemen. Listen up. We're taking off in just one minute here. Gear strapped on, weapons locked and loaded, night vision set. Gentlemen, it has always been an honor to serve in the field of battle with you and tonight is no exception. Let's do this fast, right, and hard. One of us goes down, we all go down. Understood?"

"Yes sir!" The SOF operators were more than ready. They moved down the tarmac and boarded their Black Hawks and Little Birds. Each Little Bird that the men boarded could hold four of them, two on each side, strapped to a bench. Those who stepped into the Black Hawk did so by stepping into the cabin. Crews were already finishing their preflight check lists and engines were beginning to idle. Gunners in the Black Hawks did weapons checks and the whole force prepared for the battle of their lifetime. Sitting at idle were five MH-6M Little Birds, used to ferry the soldiers into battle, four MH-60M Black Hawks, used to ferry in more of the soldiers and provide cover for them with their Gatling guns, six AH-6M Little Birds, armed with Gatling guns and unguided rockets, for an even more powerful attacking punch than the Black Hawks, and a single RAH-70A Arapaho reconnaissance helicopter. Already in the air was an MQ-1B Predator, armed with two Harbinger missiles, a single AC-27C Sledgehammer armed with an assortment of guns and twelve Harbinger missiles, and a single MQ-14A Firefly UCAV, armed with sixteen 250 lb. JDAM II bombs. While the SOF operators climbed aboard and into their helicopters, other forces were preparing. More SOF operators and airborne paratroopers were getting ready themselves. They would be on the ground in under an hour and they were going in force.

The last man was secured onto an MH-6M by 03:02 hours and then there was silence. Three minutes passed by, slower than a turtle would take to walk across an entire runway and then, static. The radios came alive as the pilots waited and waited, the operators waiting, listening to the helicopter blades around them, turning at idle speeds. Fuel was burning away but not quick enough that they were in danger. The tarmac was a noisy place to begin with but with sixteen helicopters all ready to take off, it was deafening, even for those with hearing protection. "All units. Report 'Go' or 'No Go.'" The operational commander said over the radio.

"Ghost One. Go."

"Ghost Two. Go."

"Ghost Three. Go."

"Delta One. Go."

"Delta Two. Go."

"Ranger One. Go."

"Ranger Two. Go."

"Ranger Three. Go."

"That's the last of them," Brigadier General Wesley Pambry said as he marked off his doisser of teams that were going into battle. "All units. All units. We are code green. I repeat. We are code green. The order is Starfish. I repeat again. The order is Starfish." Suddenly, the tarmac got even louder as the pilots pushed their engines all to take off speeds. These were elite pilots and it showed. Sixteen helicopters, all at once, lifted off into the air, side slipping from the tarmac over the runway and, from there, moving forward, gaining altitude and speed. The sixteen helicopters, in a long line, sped off into the distance, towards Tapauá, which sixteen miles away.

They formed up a mile from the airbase and went into a unique formation, the aircraft grouped according to their targets. Because it was the dead of night and because they wanted surprise, they flew low, very low. Passing over tree tops with no less than fifteen feet of clearance, the sixteen helicopters had formed an airborne assault force so dangerous that if the insurgents had known they were coming, they would have been better off surrendering. At least then, they wouldn't have been turned into molten goo. The first target was Pablo's residence. Airborne surveillance had pinpointed him in the house simply through his cell phone. An orbiting EC-21C Learjet, a specialized variant designed for electronic intelligence gathering, had been able to pinpoint his cell phone number. Pablo never had it more than arms reach from him and he never turned it off, thinking himself to be invincible and untraceable. Unbeknownst to him, the EC-21C flying high overhead had locked onto his signal and tracked it within a meter of its actual location. They knew he was home and, possibly, sleeping.

Fast and maneuverable, the four Little Birds hitting Pablo's residence landed first. Two of them had moved in and put down three Delta and four Ghost Recon operators. The other two, took to the roof, hovering only a feet overhead. They put down the other four Ghost Recon and three Delta operators. Seconds later, they were off, into the air, into a holding pattern at 200 feet in the air, where they would be on station for evacuation, if necessary. As they did, the four Black Hawks came inbound and went into a hover seventy feet above the ground outside the command center. Inside of them were six Delta operators and twenty-four Rangers. Three Delta operators and four Rangers landed on the roof of the building while the remaining twenty Rangers and three Delta operators put down at three positions around the building. Four of the Rangers and the three Deltas immediately hit the building's front door while the remaining twelve Rangers immediately dug in and deployed their weapons. Further away, just a minute later, the last Little Bird would land on the roof of the radio tower and insert the four Ghost Recon operators. The battle had begun.

At Pablo's house, nobody knew what to do except to panic. The three Deltas and four Ghosts who hit the roof found their way into the building easily with a door charge that blasted the door into splinters. The other seven SOF operators came in through the front door. To make them lighter, more maneuverable, and deadly, the Ghosts and Deltas ditched their usual long-barrel carbines and went, instead, with a new weapon, the M111 Modular Assault Weapon. They took either the A4 or the A5 version, which used a ten inch barrel. Still using the powerful 6.8 x 51mm LDC round, the men had turned their MAWs into armadas, equipping them with suppressors, infrared lasers and illuminators, and reflex or aimpoint scopes. Loaded with thirty-round magazines, the MAW was perfect for the close range of the battle but they could still go out as far as three hundred meters, if need be although, in this city, one hundred meters was a long drive. They used stun grenades to blind and deafen the occupants in the house as they stormed in, looking at everyone through their nightvision goggles. Each target they saw got a double tap of two rounds into them, two rounds grouped millimeters apart, right in their heads. These were trained professionals. They could hit a target anyway, head, chest, shoulder, foot, finger, wherever they desired. This was a close operation and speed was essential to their success. The quicker they killed the insurgents the better.

None of them drew their hand guns. None of them had to though. Their surprise had worked well, Pablo had been asleep. Startled when the helicopters echoed into his room, he didn't jump out of bed until he heard the gunshots and stun grenades exploding. That was when he knew this was for real. How they had found him, he did not know but as he threw on a pair of pants, he grabbed his assault rifle, a Layartebian made M30A3 Carbine. He would defend himself and as his body guards rushed in, he knew what they were going to say. "¡Es un ataque! ¡Ellos nos han encontrado! ¡Nosotros le debemos esconder! Ellos son soldados especiales." [It's an attack! They have found us! We must hide you! They are special soldiers.]

All Pablo replied with was, "Claro." [Clearly.] The fourteen Ghosts and Deltas stormed through the three level building without effort and without much of a fight. They shot anyone in their way, weapon or not, and pushed forward. By the time they got to the bedroom, where Pablo and six bodyguards were hiding out, using anything as cover, they stopped and silently spoke to each other. "¡PATO! ¡CUBRALE OJOS!" [DUCK! COVER YOU EYES!] Pablo tried to yell but it was too late. A pair of stun grenades went off in midair, inside of the room, one just eight inches away from him. All seven of them were cast into blindness and six of them would never again see light as four of the Ghosts stormed into the room, two through each of the two doors. They shot dead the six bodyguards and came upon Pablo quickly and easily. With a hard hit, they knocked him to the ground and kicked free his weapon. He writhed on the ground and struggled to fight off the attackers he couldn't see, he was hit hard again. This time, he took a nap and never felt the handcuffs thrown around his arms as they were yanked back, behind him.

"We've got him!" The Ghost leader yelled as the Deltas stood guard outside with the other four Ghosts. "Mother Hen. Mother Hen. This is Ghost One. We've got the package. Request immediate evac." The Ghost leader said into his microphone as he tossed Pablo onto his shoulder and began to carry him out, his rifle still in his right hand, his left holding the captured insurgent in place. He was heavy but the Ghost was no weakling.

"It's clear. Let's move to the roof!" The Delta leader yelled as the operators began to backtrack, quickly, towards the stairs. One of the Black Hawks that had moved the Rangers into position had already begun to move towards the building where the Ghosts and Deltas captured Pablo, in just five minutes, none of them expending a full magazine in the process. They waited at the stairs to the roof until the helicopter put itself down, unable to land. It was hovering just a foot off the roof and the men emerged. Four of the Ghosts, Ghost Two, would take the insurgent leader back in the helicopter, to the base, where he would be "processed."

November 16, 2007 - 03:14 [AST]
Tapauá, Amazonian Control Territory

The four Black Hawks went into hover mode above the insurgent command headquarters. High above, in the sky, the MQ-1B Predator illuminated the whole city for its operators back at the base and also fed that view into the palmsets of all of the operator teams on the ground. Seventy feet above the ground was a long way up but, for the men on board the four Black Hawks, it was nothing. Hanging outside the Black Hawks, on either side, was a long coil of thick rope, forty-four millimeters in diameter, and black in color. The rope was heavy and it was thick for one reason, so that the rotor wash wouldn't throw it all around. Once they got into position, the helicopter pilots yelled out and pushed a button on the console. This button automatically released the locking harnass on the rope and the coil went free, falling towards the ground at an increasing speed. Because time was of the essence, the first men out the door were on the rope before it ever hit the ground. Two meters later, another man was on the rope, and, in just a few seconds, all of the men inside the Black Hawk were on the rope or on the ground. Once they were all out, the pilot pushed another button and both ropes were disconnected. They would fall to the ground and lay there until picked up by a future recovery team.

The thirty men were highly skilled. Seven of them had put down on the roof of the building while the other twenty three assembled around the perimeter of the squat, two story, former car dealership. The insurgent command headquarters were loaded with armament and emplaced positions but none of them were manned at that moment. Not aware that the Layartebians were coming for them, they had let their guard down, a dangerous and fatal mistake. From the roof, the seven Deltas and Rangers swept into the second floor, engaging everything that stood in their way and did not surrender. On the ground floor, the other seven Deltas and Rangers stormed in, doing the same. They rushed over machine gun emplacements and passed by a cache of arms. Unlike their brothers in arms securing Pablo, who would by done by 03:18, they did carried full length carbines and heavier weaponry. Among the Rangers were four light machine guns, all of them M35A1 LMGs. The rest carried mostly M81A3 Carbines. For every one of them, aimpoint or reflex scopes were fitted. To the machine guns, they all put on bipods. On the carbines, they loaded grenade launchers or front handles. Nobody went into battle without a suppressor or an infrared illuminator or laser. They meant business and they were there for business.

Securing the headquarters took longer than it took the Deltas and Ghosts to seize Pablo. For starters, there were over fifty hostiles at the command center versus the twenty or so at Pablo's house. In addition, the insurgents had booby trapped the command center and done it well. One Ranger almost lost his foot as a mine went off behind him. He was saved though by one of the Deltas that had gone with them. It was a dangerous and open place. The insurgents took hiding positions around the building and slowed down the Rangers and Delta operators, who used stun grenades quite effectively. They would still have to sift through the intel at the command center before they could move on and delcare the place clear. It was no short battle and by 03:25 hours, seven minutes after Pablo had been captured and three after he had gotten into a helicopter and was being sent out, the fighting in the command center stopped. The fourteen Ranges and Delta operators had taken out forty-four of the hostiles, leaving six captures, though they suspected there was at least one runner they were unable to tag.

They now undertook the task of securing the intel there. They sifted through radio frequencies and grabbed bags that were lying around. Anything of importance was thrown in them and the men made sure to get everything and anything they could. They grabbed code books and photographs. They found an order of battle as well that listed the military forces inside of the city and their capabilities. Everything was written in Spanish but that was of no consequence, they could speak the language and back at the command center, they could too. "This is Delta Two. We have secured the barn. Request immediate evac for six prisoners and intelligence gathered. We've got some good stuff here."

"Roger that. Viper 2-2 moving into position. We need a strobe." The Delta leader nodded to the request and ordered one of his men to run up to the roof with an infrared strobe. They could direct in the helicopter easily from there. When the helicopter put down on the roof, it was 03:33 hours and 04:00 hours was fast approaching. They were in the bottom half of the hour and that always went quicker than the top half. The Deltas and Rangers ushered the prisoners to the roof and threw them into the cabin of the Black Hawk along with the intelligence they collected. The doors were shut and the helicopter was off the roof at 03:35 hours, roughly a minute and a half after touching down. That was when the first hostile gunfire was witnessed. Muzzle flashes in the distance lit up the night sky as a pair of pings echoed from the armored underbody of the Black Hawk. "We're taking hostile fire. No damage. Position 3-2-9 from the HQ." The Black Hawk pilot reported as the Deltas, who had just moved down the stairs stopped abruptly and returned to the roof. They saw the muzzle flashes as the hostiles began to fire on the Black Hawk, which was lifting away. They couldn't have been more than fifty meters away, if even that far. With a pair of well placed shots, the Deltas knocked down the two shooters, the first enemy casualties of the battle that weren't at either of the initial two target locations.

Now it was up to the Rangers and the Deltas to secure and hold the command center. They would use the defensive emplacements to their advantage and they dug in, waiting for an assault. They had already destroyed most of the radios there but left several in tact to listen to the enemy chatter. They had seized a number of rocket propelled grenade launchers such as AT4s, LAWs, RPGs, and tons of other heavy ordinance. They restocked the machine guns with fresh ammunition boxes but found their own rifles, which used 6.8 millimeter rounds, to be without adequate supply. The insurgents used many calibers, mostly 5.56 x 45mm, a caliber that had been retired by the 6.8 millimeter round. It was of little bother to the soldiers, they had enough weapons around them that they could use the enemy weapons before their own, and they would.

November 16, 2007 - 03:15 [AST]
Tapauá, Amazonian Control Territory

Two kilometers from Pablo's building and about twelve hundred meters from the command center was the radio station. It was a tall, five story structure that was easily defended. The four Ghosts who had choppered in on the last MH-6 had just stepped onto the roof and quickly moved up to the door. They found it to be locked but not well secured. With a powerful kick, they had the door open, which echoed loudly through the stairs. All four of them moved down the stairs, to the fifth floor and found it to be absolutely empty. On the roof, a radio tower with a glowing red light atop its mast silently announced its presence to the world. All four of the men were carrying the heavy but hard hitting M37A2 Special Assault Carbine. They, like their brethren, had suppressors, front handles, grenade launchers, scopes, lasers, and illuminators all on their weapons. Two grenade launchers were enough for the team to have a powerful standoff capability but, in these close quarters, they hoped not to have to use the grenade launchers. Instead, they kept their fingers on the triggers, ready to squeeze off round after round.

The fifth floor, deserted, was not too nice of a place to want to stay. Trash littered the floor and it looked as if nobody had been there in weeks. Two windows were broken at the end of the main hallway and glass crunched under their feet as they moved to the other set of stairs. The four of them, grouped together, moved quickly now to the fourth floor, where the broadcast station was. It was only sparsely populated and, like their brethren, they achieved full surprise. With a series of well placed shots, they put rounds through the air and into three insurgents guarding the broadcast booth. That was it for the building, there were no other hostiles in it. It was a sort of let down for them. They expected full fury in the building but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. At 03:45 hours, when the paratroopers joined the SOF operators in the city, eight of them would assist in securing the radio station, where propaganda would be broadcast, nonstop, until the battle was over. It was to be broadcast in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and was simple. "Civilians are advised to stay in their homes. Seek shelter underground. Layartebian forces are securing this city and driving out a caustic insurgency. Do not engage Layartebian soldiers or you will be shot. Revealling insurgent positions will only quicken this battle and save more lives. We encourage you to surrender insurgent positions. No harm is meant to the civilians of Tapauá. We wish to bring about peace to this city. Insurgents are a virus that seeks only to destroy. Your loyalty to them is trickery on their part. All insurgents are advised to lay down their arms and surrender to Layartebian forces. We will take prisoners and not harm them in accordance to proper laws of war. We do not endorse torture nor do we tacitly condone it. The Empire is not here to level your city. The Empire is here to bring about peace." Then the message repeated.

At base, paratroopers were boarding Super Stallion II helicopters, thirty-two per helicopter. There would be four of those over the city shortly, to assist Layartebian forces. While they did, Ghost One would move back into the city via Little Bird while the remaining twenty-four Rangers would prepare for battle themselves. Broken into three squads of eight, the remaining twenty-four Rangers were there for backup. They would be used if necessary to evacuate another team already in the city. They were fully prepared themselves for battle and would be chopped in with one team per Black Hawk.

It was now that, all around the city, Layartebian infantry and cavalry forces were getting ready for action. At 04:00 hours, they were expected to enter the city. Armored units would lead the way with Layartebian M2032A1 Sabertooth main battle tanks and M2048A1 Shark IFVs pushing forward. Infantry forces would be all around them and the tanks and armored vehicles were fitted with non-explosive, reactive armor. These blocks were made of a highly dense rubber and each of them weighed almost seventy pounds. While not nearly as effective as explosive reactive armor, they were entirely safe to use in close quarters and they did offer an extra level of protection against chemical warheads and even kinetic warheads, although to a much lesser degree. Kinetic penetrators could easily tear through them but at a cost of energy, which would slow their penetration into the actual hull armor of the vehicles.

By 03:40 hours, all SOF objectives were fully met. Layartebian SOF operators had secured Pablo's residence, the command center, and the radio station. Those soldiers who had been at Pablo's residence had already begun moving to another target objective, an armory just four hundred meters away. Their mission there was to visually identify the cache of arms there and target it for destruction. Overhead, the Sledgehammer gunship had yet to fire a shot and the UAV continued to circle. The UCAV was doing the same though its munitions would be used against the armory. At the command center, the soldiers dug in and awaited the inevitable insurgent attack to reclaim the building and, at the radio station, the Ghosts began transmission of the propaganda, twenty minutes before the infantry and cavalry came. Five minutes ahead of schedule, the Layartebian SOF operators succeeded in killing sixty-seven insurgents without a single loss or wounded soldier of their own. They acted with surprise and skill and that was why they were all still alive, unwounded, and still well stocked on ammunition. Paratroopers, already in the air, would bring replenishment ammunition for them, particularly in the area of grenades. The two main groups had used up most of their stun grenades and would now replace them. It would take the four Super Stallions ten and a half minutes to get from base to their drop points over the city. They took off at 03:42 hours and would arrive just before 03:55 hours. The tension mounted as silence gripped the city.

November 16, 2007 - 03:45 [AST]
Tapauá, Amazonian Control Territory

Dust and dirt swirled up in Tapauá as the four beasts went into hover over the city, just fifty feet into the air. The four of them had taken up positions at various places in the city, one near the radio station, another near the captured headquarters, another near a northern plaza, and the last one had gone into hover over the south of the city. The four beasts each dropped four ropes from them, two from each of the two doors and two from the rear ramp, which was lowered as the helicopters went into hover. Inside each of the beasts were thirty-two paratroopers, men who had practiced and trained jumping out of aircraft at low altitude, over hostile territory. The Super Stallions hung over the ground, fifty feet in the air while eight men lined up at each rope and slid down, just as the SOF operators had done over a half hour earlier.

The operators had already begun to take fire from the insurgents in the city but it was completely uncoordinated thus far. As the paratroopers roped down, the insurgents within the city, still taken by surprise, plotted to shoot down the beasts. They shot, wildly, at the lumbering birds, the bullets pinging off the sides and bellies of the airborne beasts. Each bullet hit was a spark that lit up a small area around the impact point, albeit only briefly. Each Super Stallion was crewed by five men: two pilots and three gunners. In this instance, because they did not fit the ramp gun, the fifth man was making sure that all thirty-two of the men got out safely. Both gunners manned the Miniguns and had yet to open fire. The four beasts were taking non-threatening forms of small arms fire thus far, nothing serious enough to warrant full return fire. No rockets or missiles had come up towards the helicopters yet and that meant they were safe, for now.

It didn't take long for the four helicopters to empty their complete loads of men but in that short time span, they each took dozens upon dozens of rounds, mostly 5.56 millimeter rounds, clanging against the hulls of the beasts. Once the last men were out of the helicopters, the pilots immediately disconnected the wires and began their ascent out of the city. The helicopters, as large as they were, moved quickly out of their hover positions and out of the city, dropping flares as they did, protecting themselves against the unorganized resistance that the insurgents were beginning to mount. All four helicopters safely exited the city as another line of helicopters entered, these different than the transport helicopters previously. Joining the single RAH-70A Arapaho orbiting at 2,800 feet, using its FLIR and other sensors to locate insurgent positions, came a two ship flight of AH-99A Anasazi gunships and six AH-6M Little Bird light attack helicopters. The previous helicopters had left station and were joined now by fresh helicopters, with full fuel tanks and armament.

Fifteen minutes later, as the paratroopers had moved into position, defending various targets throughout the city, digging in and waiting for the main thrust, the army entered. Two brigades, over twelve thousand men, supported by armor. Pushing ahead were the Sabertooth main battle tanks and Shark fighting vehicles, the infantry pushing in behind and alongside the armored beasts. Insurgents, by now, knew that there was little escape on the surface. Many of them had gone into the network of tunnels around the city, unaware what they were really walking into and finding out the hard way. Before the clock turned 04:10, three quarters of the tunnels had collapsed due to explosive devices planted by the Layartebian soldiers. Those few that remained were either hidden from the engineers or just hadn't been hit yet by the insurgents. Now, the insurgents found themselves trapped. It was quick that word spread through the ranks of the insurgency that they were, in essence, trapped. They would have to stand and fight, although they knew not what was coming at them. Numbering less than sixteen hundred, the insurgency was organized, more or less, into small militia groups, none of them numbering more than sixty, although the average was eighteen.

Aware that their final days of battle would come, they didn't know how soon they would arrive. When the first helicopters appeared overhead, they were caught by total surprise. They were caught by even more surprise when a ball of fire lit up the city. The advance team of SOF operators had finally found the enemy arms cache, tagged it with a laser, and directed a missile strike against it. The missile had come from the overhead MQ-1B Predator and the Harbinger anti-tank missile had done an excellent job piercing through the shoddy construction of the house and blew up the cache. The secondary explosion was enough to shatter the frame of the house to miniscule pieces. The fireball lofted up, over the city and rolled upwards, to the black sky above. Fighting was still sporadic as Layartebian units moved into the city, building to building, finding hundreds of civilians, mystified as much as the insurgents were. Most of the civilians in Tapauá were, unfortunately, not loyal to the Empire. They supported the insurgents so cooperation amongst them was not going to be had. Soldiers, knowing this, worked around them. They ushered civilians towards basements and shelters, though few of them listened for any reason other than the guns pointed at them. The battle was definitely just beginning.

November 16, 2007 - 18:00 [EAT]
Mogadishu, Somalia

It was eleven hundred hours in Mogadishu when the full Layartebian invasion of Tapauá began. Where it was the dead of night there, in Mogadishu, a warm afternoon was approaching. It was hazy there as smog from factories to the north and west drifted over the city in the warm, humid heat. BG. Delaney and his team had been moving throughout the city all day. It wasn't until 16:00 hours, three hours before the meeting that André was "tagged" by MAJ. Howard, near the Bakara Market. BG. Delaney and MAJ. Jackson, at the time, were surveying the escape routes after they had shot André. Danny, who hung close by in the city was trying to keep himself busy. With the impending assassination approaching, he was growing impatient and become even more of a liability. None of the men trusted him anymore and they had resolved themselves to his fate after the assassination. Technically, they didn't need him anymore but they didn't want to do away with him just yet, in case he was in league with someone. There was no reason to spook André from the deal. They needed him to show up and, on time.

As they prepared for the final hour, a Layartebian submarine, a Virginia class, moved into position off the coast of Mogadishu, just four nautical miles from shore. It would remain on station until 23:00 hours. If BG. Delaney and his men weren't in the water by then, the submarine would move out of the area and proceed with a secondary mission. However, there was no way for the sub crew to know what was going on anymore. BG. Delaney and his team had gone dark since they arrived in country and reported that they arrived safely. Nobody knew if they were safe or even alive anymore, not even the Emperor. Even Danny had not contacted anyone in the Ministry of Intelligence and, as the hour approached, everyone crew nervous. "What if they aren't there? What if we miss this opportunity? We could use a cruise missile." They said, they asked, and they proposed. They were more nervous than ever. The operation, despite being an operation of the Ministry of Intelligence, was being conducted by the military although nobody but the Emperor knew the true identity of the team on the ground. There was no paperwork but had there been some, the men on the ground would have been a four man team of Delta Force, a special not necessarily a black force.

At 18:00 hours, BG. Delaney and MAJ. Jackson left the house. Both of them kept the pistols strapped to their legs but hid their main weapons. For BG. Delaney it was an M36A2 Sniper Rifle, chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum, which had a supersonic range out to fifteen hundred meters, especially in warm, summer conditions. Mogadishu exhibited that environment. The bullet was effective anywhere from thirteen hundred to sixteeen hundred meters, depending on enviornmental and climate conditions. In this enviornment, maximum range was well over the thirteen hundred mark, which was about how far they were going to be shooting, tough their target was around the fourteen hundred meter area when they were settled into their spots. Ghille suits inside of their vehicle, the two of them got into their car and drove off to the meeting spot at 18:01 hours. The other two members of the team, majors Rigalo and Howard, had their own missions. MAJ. Rigalo, being that he was closer to Danny was to make sure he didn't do anything stupid. He would, in essence, tell Danny they had to return to the home, where he would make sure the spook didn't leave his sight. MAJ. Howard, because he had spotted André, would stay on him until he left for the meeting.

The ride to the meeting spot was bumpy and BG. Delaney drove around a number of potholes large enough to swallow his jeep. He didn't understand how they didn't hit any when they drove there the other night. "Guess it was just luck," he replied to the question. There was no cover of darkness this time and he parked the jeep off to the side, lifted its hood, and left it there, seemingly dead. He and MAJ. Jackson removed their ghille suits from the back seat, put them on, grabbed their gear, and ran towards the spot. They reached it moments later, at 18:18, forty-two minutes before the meeting. Earpieces in place, they could listen to and talk to each other and the rest of their team while just whispering, a major advantage. When they dropped down to the hill, BG. Delaney immediately deployed the bipod on the rifle and grabbed a rock. He drove the rock into the soft sand and made sure that it wouldn't go down any further. It was big enough that he could rest the legs of the tripod on it, providing a stable base for the rifle. He had already screwed on the flash suppressor and uncapped his scope. Paper on the end of it narrowed his field of view but it was done so as to not give off any reflection, which could give away his position. MAJ. Jackson, on the other hand, placed his assault rifle by his side and picked up his binoculars with their laser rangefinder. He dug it into the ground as well, this way he could keep a lower profile. Now, they would just wait.

Seventy-five hundred miles away, Layartebian army units and air force fighters began an intense bombardment of Tapauá. The seige had been ongoing now for about seven and a half to eight hours now. Layartebian forces had few casualties, none of them fatalities and only six requiring immediate evacuation from the combat zone. Helicopters had been shot up with small arms fire but no missiles or unguided rockets had yet to score a hit. The Layartebians had even yet to lose a vehicle though there were a good amount that were in seriously bad shape, including one Sabertooth, which had not only run over a mine and damaged a tread but also had taken four rocket hits to its skids. The tank was still moving, under its own power but was being offered heavier infantry support due to its condition. The battle there had become quite intense as the daylight dawned over the city. The insurgency managed to organize some of its operating groups and mount some coordinated attacks though the loss of their leadership was definitely evident when Layartebian forces began to flank them quickly and quietly.

Thunder echoed there as a storm rolled in whereas, seventy-five hundred miles away, in Mogadishu, it was clear. There was a storm due that evening, a simply thunderstorm, nothing too significant or close enough to interfere with the mission, not that it would. BG. Delaney was taking the shot even if a tsunami was coming. As the clock ticked away, he listened to the reports from MAJ. Howard about where André was moving, how many people he was with, and what they were carrying, in so far as weapons were concerned. He was certain that, from the distance he was going to shoot from, none of André's bodyguards would be able to see, let alone reach with their weapons, which were mostly assault rifles rated for five hundred meters or less, nowhere near fourteen hundred. Shortly after the first set of reports and BG. Delaney got set up, MAJ. Rigalo reported back that Danny was safely stowed. He didn't go into details, he didn't need to, everyone knew what it meant.

Danny had, begrudgingly, followed MAJ. Rigalo back to the house, where he suddenly was knocked unconscious. MAJ. Rigalo had whacked him hard against the back of his head with his pistol, sending Danny into a state of unconsciousness. Then it was simple from there. MAJ. Rigalo dragged him to the center of the living room, though there were only three rooms in the house, counting the kitchen. The bathroom didn't necessarily count as a room and, even if it did, it was not very pleasurable a room. Regardless, MAJ. Rigalo quickly removed a long, black, strong rope from his bag and began to tie it around Danny's feet and ankles. He had already thrown a zip tie around his hands and restrained him as if he were under arrest. Then, he threw the rope over a beam in the ceiling and hoisted Danny into the air, upside down, his arms held tight behind his back. He secured the rope on the couch leg and sat down on it, a clear view of the front door, a pistol in his right hand. Anyone who came through the door was bound to get shot.

November 16, 2007 - 18:50 [EAT]
Mogadishu, Somalia

"Sleeping like a baby sir." MAJ. Rigalo answered when asked to report on the status of Danny. "He's a little upside down though. Shall I wake him?"

"Negative. We're ten minutes from the meeting start. What is the status Howard?"

"Sir. He's getting ready to go. They've got two cars, both jeeps and about ten men with them. They're loading cases right now. Who knows what of though."

"Not sure myself. Let's just keep on mission. We'll ID the merchandise when they arrive."

"Yes sir. They're going to be a little late but they'll be there."

"Our guests seem to be arriving," BG. Delaney and MAJ. Jackson watched as two vans pulled up to the meeting spot, both of them dirty and filthy with sand and dirt but still in good shape. They pulled both vans into the area and stopped them, facing away from the setting sun, which set behind BG. Delaney and MAJ. Jackson. The sun had to be blinding to them in the open but it shielded the two snipers, the desired effect. "Looks like they're going to look around."

"Yes sir it does. I count four men so far. Who knows how many are inside of the van. Wait. Yeah. That's what I figured." MAJ. Jackson smirked at his correct guess as one of the vans had its rear doors opened and out stepped four more men, all of them armed with assault rifles. "We've got eight now. I wonder what they're buying?"

"Me too. Hold fast for now."

"Sir. They're leaving. I put their ETA at five past nineteen."

"Got it Major. Go back and reinforce Rigalo."

"Yes sir."

"Don't shoot me when I come through the door."

"You got it." The chatter ended there as BG. Delaney went back to work on the mission.

"Range me to the right van."

"Roger that. We've got thirteen-fifty."

"See that guy with the cigar?"

"Yes sir."

"Range him."

"Yes sir."

"Thirteen, sixty-nine."

"Roger that so we're between the upper half of thirteen and fourteen hundred."

"For now sir yes."

"Alright. Let's just wait for the package."

"Yes sir." They stayed perfectly still, their ghille suits making them appear as if they were part of the ground, the obvious intended goal of the suit, which was made of burlap, twigs, underbrush, dirt, and who knew what else they had managed to stick onto it. The suits were made in a factory and then customized by those wearing them so much so that their suits were, in essence, reflective of their missions. They could hide anywhere and not be noticed due to the suits. "What's the chance of a sound mask here?" MAJ. Jackson joked.

"None. They'll hear us but they won't see us and that's fine for me."

"You and I both sir." Unfortunately, inside their suits, it was hot, very hot. They kept water with them to keep themselves hydrated but that was only half the battle. They were losing around a liter of water per hour in just sweat alone but that didn't matter, it meant they wouldn't have to go to the bathroom. They consumed as much as a liter in the first hour that they were there and they would consume that much more before they ever got back to the house. Lucky for them, because this wasn't a time consuming mission, they would not necessarily have to ration out the water although, they still did, making sure to keep their throats moist, to avoid a tickle, which could induce a cough and, potentially, give away their position, despite all the environmental and camouflage factors they took to their advantage. Fifteen minutes went by when a glare shot over the horizon to the south.

"I see them. Eyes on." Around that time MAJ. Howard was returning to the door of the house and, before he entered, he carefully knocked once and spoke into the headset. He opened the door after MAJ. Rigalo acknowledged. The situation was so tense he didn't need to be the unfortunate victim of a friendly fire, which had never occured in the history of Force Falcon. He didn't need to be the first. Now both of them stood watch over Danny, who still hung in the air, unconscious and with a concussion that was growing worse by the hour. Unfortuantely, MAJ. Rigalo hit him a little too hard and in the wrong spot. He could, theorhetically, die if the concussion went untreated. "Alright gentlemen. The package has arrived and they're pulling in now."

"I got them. Looks like they're parking."

"Indeed. Wait for my confirmation of the target."

"Yes sir."

"When they stop range the lead vehicle."

"Yes sir." The vehicles came to a stop, the man with the cigar in between them and the already parked vehicles. Their doors were now open and they were waiting for the transfer of goods. Money would be exchanged for illegal arms although who knew what they were. "Alright sir. Fourteen hundred to the lead vehicle."

"Roger that. Let's see where they go. Wait. Eyes on. Target is present. Going hot." He unlocked the safety on his rifle and was ready to fire. He had already adjusted his scope to fourteen, allowing him to zero out the center of the Bulls-eye at fourteen hundred meters. The scope went up to eighteen hundred meters and it was specifically designed for the .338 Lapua round. "Windage?"

"Slight breeze east to west, coming off the ocean. Four knots."

"We're set. Alright let's just wait until he stops moving. Coriolis effect is going to make this one a doozy." They waited now as André stepped out of the vehicle and moved over to shake the man's hand whose cigar still burned. They couldn't tell what they were saying, not that it was important but they did want to see the arms before they took out the target. Thousands of miles away, in the Ministry of Intelligence, planners watched on live satellite feed as the arms deal went down, unaware that BG. Delaney and MAJ. Jackson were actually on site. They tried a few times to spot them but came up short each time, believing them to be in about nine different places, none of them being where they actually were. The planners still didn't have confirmation that the team was on site and they wondered what was taking so long. They didn't necessarily care about the arms, they wanted the dealer gone.

At the site, there was idle chit-chat between André and the buyer, as if they were old friends. They even joked with each other a little bit but then, finally, they brought out the merchandise, which was in a long, hard plastic, black case. Two men had to carry it and, from the looks of it, there were more in the other jeep. "Alright let's see what they're trading."

"He's opening the case now. It's going to be a tough look, they're in our way. Thirteen ninety-five to the case."

"Windage change?"

"Negative. Constant four knots, east to west. So far."

"Alright. C'mon open her up." André bent down and opened up the case on the ground and revealed what was inside, although they couldn't see too easily because they were being blocked. They couldn't necessarily see much of it but it was a missile, a bit one too, at least as long as the case was and that was over six feet. "ILAF. Well. It's definitely ours."

"You got that right but what is it."

"I can't see, they're too much in the way. Can you read the serial code on it?"

"Negative. No fins attached to it."

"Yeah. They must be in there as well. Whatever it is, they look pleased."

"Unfortunately. Wait. He's moving." MAJ. Jackson zoomed in a little bit with the binoculars and got the full view of the case in his sight from end to end as the men moved a little bit and prepared to close the case. Just before they did, he recognized the missile inside and his heart seemingly stopped for a few seconds. "Jesus Christ! That's an MGM-212!" Both MAJ. Rigalo and Howard, listening in, experienced the same sense of disbelief but they stayed silent, only looking at each other as Danny dangled over them, beginning to wake up as the concussion momentarily subsided.

"Aw shit you have to be kidding me. How many cases?"

"I can't tell sir. Maybe four. You think they're armed?"

"No. I doubt the payload is inside of them but if they have the missiles, they have the payload."

"Sir. Twelve were stolen in December '05 from El Jobal. You think that's one of them?"

"It has to be. We've got the inventory on them." BG. Delaney was definitely going to have it out with Majestic when he got to their next scheduled meeting, which was in a week. This was definitely not part of the deal. Those missiles were to be stolen and used as ransom to scare the populace and the government, not to actually be used. Whomever they were being sold to was definitely going to use them, that was a given. "Each rocket contains one hundred and four ounces of chemical, you realize that?"

"I do sir. One rocket detonated in an airburst could take out half of a major city. Two of them would be enough to kill half of the populace of Layarteb City sir. We cannot let those arms continue."

"No. We can't. We have to take out André and we have to do it now. Alright. They'll move the boxes into the vans. They'll want to see the money first but they won't leave until everything is done. During that time I expect him to sit around and relax as his men offload the boxes. He looks to have about four in there."

"I count as many. What about the chemical agent?"

"It has to be there as well. Depends on how much money comes out. Who knows, they could have it already."

"Possible sir. Here they go. There's the..." He stopped talking as the money case was opened. "That's a lot of money."

"Millions. They've got the agent with them. Wait for them to load first. It's easier to track the trucks. MOI has to be watching this."

"If they're not sir."

"Shit. Major Rigalo. I authorize you to immediately break radio silence and contact Firefly with the intel received. Four MGM-212 missiles. Unconfirmed if agent is with them. Highly probably it is given money being transferred. Track vans."

"Yes sir." MAJ. Rigalo went to the secure satellite phone immediately and began to type in the number to reach Firefly, which was an emergency channel. When Firefly was coded into an operation there were a few scenarios: the team on the ground had been compromised and/or captured or killed, they had unforseen complications requiring immediate abort, or the team revealed a piece of intelligence that required immediate and decisive action. As the money was exchanged and MAJ. Rigalo spoke in coded languaged to the MOI planners, who were relieved the team was in place, BG. Delaney waited now for the shot. He had already controlled his breathing and was about to take the shot when his earpiece buzzed. "Sir. Firefly reports hold."

"Negative. We are not going to hold."

"Sir. Firefly demands immediate communication with you."

"You can't reach me. The comm is staticy. Find out what they want. We will not abort."

"Sir. Wait one." BG. Delaney looked down the scope again and followed André as he put the fourth bag of money in the jeep. "Sir. They need confirmation."

"What do you think we just gave them?"

"Understood sir. They're recommending we abort and follow the vehicles."

"Negative. We cannot do that. Our mission supercedes their recommendation. They must follow on satellite and engage via air or missile strike. We do not have the equipment or capability to follow those vans." It was a flat-out lie, they could and they would do it flawlessly but the MOI was under the belief that Delta was on the ground, not the most elite black ops team in the world, who had unlimited capabilities. "We're waiting one more minute here before I take this shot."

"Yes sir. They're talking now about rules of engagement and national security and blah, blah, blah."

"Keep them talking. We're taking the shot."

"Yes sir. Roger that." BG. Delaney hovered the crosshair over André's heart and asked one last time.

"Windage. Range to target."

"Windage. No change. Range is one three eight-eight."

"Roger that. Ready."

"Yes sir. Sniper go. Fire. Fire. Fire." With that, BG. Delaney squeezed the trigger and Mogadishu, Somalia, a chunk of the United States, and the entire world fell to pieces.

November 16, 2007 - 19:24 [EAT]
Mogadishu, Somalia

There was a lot of time for the bullet to fly to think about things. This single bullet had the capability to turn an entire country into a torrent of disaster and it was fitting that the bullet would come from the Empire. It was a stuble sort of revenge against the United States of Brink, albeit not an intended revenge. It had been the United States of Brink and this man, André, who supplied the nuclear bomb that devestated Grenada in July 2006, over a year earlier. Though not actually intentionally done, the United States of Brink, in one way or another, caused the deaths of nearly forty thousand people. It was fitting now that the chaos that would descend on Mogadishu and radiate outward like a plague in warm weather would be ushered by the Empire. BG. Delaney had not thought of it that way and neither had anyone who planned or authorized the mission. It was a matter of necessity rather than an act of ill will.

The .338 Lapua Magnum bullet weighed 250 grains when it left the barrel of the M36A2 rifle, moving at 950 meters per second. It would lose 530 meters per second in speed and take 2.24 seconds to reach the target, long enough for the target to move out of its way. Still remaining supersonic, the bullet would impact with 1,052 foot pounds of energy, more energy than a .357 Magnum, .40SW, or 10mm Auto bullet would have at muzzle velocity. It was certainly enough to take down the target and BG. Delaney had aimed at the target's chest, right at the heart. There was too much riding and too much time in flight to feasibly aim for a headshot and though it would have guaranteed a kill, they needed to hit first. He could always follow up with a second shot, if need arised. Had he zeroed the sights at 100 meters, the bullet would have subsequently dropped over 700 inches and drift 54 inches with the wind. That was a long shot to make a lot to take into account but he had adjusted everything prior to taking the shot.

From the moment he squeezed the trigger, the fate of Mogadishu was set. It was written and it would play out soon enough, though it wouldn't be a fairy tale. It would a story akin to the deepest, darkest horrors of humanity. While war raged in Tapauá, 7,500 miles away, something else raged in Mogadishu. It was the calm before the storm, a storm that nobody could predict. Like the great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, few would heed the warnings as the swells intensified and the storm clouds rolled in, high above the ground. Mogadishu was not an innocent city by any respect but neither was it a city of sin. The fate it would take would be worse than Sodom and Gomorrah experienced but God played no hand in this destruction. This was all brought upon by the misgivings of man. God would sit this one out.

Two and a quarter seconds was a long time, an eternity. As the bullet spiralled towards its target, maintaing a proper line, drifting with the wind, curving with the Earth's rotation, the rifle rocketed back into BG. Delaney's shoulder at eight miles per hour. He had it braced tight and properly, resting on the rock he had buried into the ground and that was enough to limit its force. With a recoil absorber attached to the butt of the rifle, he barely felt a thing as he released the bolt of the rifle, sliding it backwards causing the spent casing, still smoking, to eject. He pushed it forward and locked it back into place never taking his eye off the scope lens. It took him as much time to do that as the bullet would take to travel through the air. He would have the second round ready to go by the time the first one hit.

When it hit, it hit with perfect precision. BG. Delaney was a trained and skilled marksman. He spent hours upon hours each month practicing long-range shooting with a variety of weapons ranging from 7.62 x 51mm to 15.5 x 115mm, including the Doomani sniper round, the .338 Lapua, and the .50BMG. He could hit targets at ranges of over 2,500 meters with the right weapon and he was trained to use each bullet to its maximum effective range. The windier the days, the harder he practiced. He had been a skilled marksman now for over thirty years and he was not one to let that skill go to waste. With well over eight hundred kills, he was, unofficially, the leader sniper in the world. Somewhere along the way, he had seemingly lost count of his number although, on the books, there was an official number, albeit he didn't exist so neither did the number. As he squeezed off the shot, the blast of the muzzle dissipated through the suppressor, giving no flash. At the same time, it dulled the sound and reduced it by about 32 decibels reducing the recoil in the same process by as much as 35%.

"That's a hit." MAJ. Jackson reported as the round struck André, dead in his chest, right through his heart. It blasted right out the rear of his back and embedded itself into the door of his jeep. BG. Delaney, a second round locked and loaded, peered through his sights as the sound rolled over the horizon. The bullet hit nearly two full seconds before the sound of the shot rolled over the ground. "There goes the sound. They know it. Second shot?"

"Yes. Range me."

"Roger that. He's slumped down. No change. Wind two knots, east to west."

"Adjust. Ready."

"Sniper go. Fire. Fire. Fire." He squeezed the trigger again and sent a second shot towards the target. André, mortally wounded, was now slumped over, sitting on the ground, a trail of blood streaking down the jeep door as he sat against it, gasping his last breaths of air. Panic set in around the vans and the jeeps as the men dove for cover, looking frantically for the shooter, unaware how far away BG. Delaney was. The second shot, like the first, spiralled through the air with unmatched precision. With the windage adjustment, the bullet would not drift as far, which meant a different targetting solution was needed. BG. Delaney, this time, aimed for his head. André was barely moving when BG. Delaney took the second shot, six seconds after he had taken the first one. Perfectly sighted, the bullet found its mark and smashed into André's face, just to the right of his nose, underneath his eye. The bullet burrowed through his face and exited the rear, blowing out the back of his skull, leaving an oozy mess on the jeep. "That's a confirmed kill. Let's get out of here before they start looking for us. Backpeddle now." They had their gear ready to go and MAJ. Jackson backpeddled as BG. Delaney kept a watch for him. At the meeting site, they had managed to get to and began to drag André to cover, not that it mattered. The men instantly split into two hostile groups. Those buying were accused of setting this up, to keep their money while the buyers accused the sellers of the same thing. It wouldn't be long before they traded shots against each other. All the while, BG. Delaney and MAJ. Jackson backpeddled off the hill and well out of sight, and then darted off to their vehicle, throwing their gear inside and starting it up immediately. They drove off as gunshots rolled over the horizon. The buyers and the sellers began to trade gunfire, each untrusting of the other group.

"Good kill sir. Requesting permission to report mission accomplished."

"Go ahead." BG. Delaney was driving as he sped back towards Mogadishu and to their house. Their mission was, in essence, accomplished and now it was time to get out of there. They had a submarine waiting for them four nautical miles off coast. As they drove, MAJ. Jackson dialed in a number, connecting him with the operations center in the MOI that was overseeing the mission.

After the code words, he began with the report. "This is Black Dahlia. We are in a briar patch. I repeat. A briar patch. We're heading for the exit now."

"Hold." A voice on the other end said. The code "briar patch" was a mission success code without complications. Another voice got onto the call, "Black Dahlia. Report status."

"We are in a briar patch. Heading towards the exit. Is the signal clear?"

"Five by five. Line is secure. Speak free."

"Roger that. Mission is accomplished. Target is deceased. We're heading to the egress point right now."

"You defied a direct order team."

"What order?"

"You were ordered to abort. To follow the cargo."

"Negative. Did not receive that order."

"Like hell you didn't! You took out our only lead as to how those damn missiles got from Venezuela to Somalia."

"Negative did not receive that order. Is satellite tracking the vans?"

"They're shooting at each other right now! If they strike a gas ball we'll have a major international incident."

"We advise immediate destruction of the target with incendiary munitions."

"Negative. No authorization."

"Hold on just one goddamn minute! You wanted us to follow these missiles but yet you will not authorize their destruction? Since when did you lose your balls!" MAJ. Jackson caught a look from BG. Delaney and took the hint. It was time to end the conversation. "We are entering city. We'll resume contact when we are safely aboard the train."

"Don't you..." He ended the call and put away the phone.

"They sound angry."

"Our orders came right from the Emperor himself. Trust me, their authority means nothing to me."

"Nor I sir. Let's get out of here. I've had enough of Africa for one life time."

"Don't worry. We'll be back, trust me."

"Why do I not doubt you sir?"

"Because you'd be a fool to do it." They pulled up to the house and stepped out of the vehicle, their ghille suits still around their bodies. "Rigalo. Howard. We're coming in. Don't shoot."

"Yes sir." They entered the door and saw the dangling over the living room, awake and mumbling incoherrently.

"Danny. Danny. Danny. What are you going to tell me?" BG. Delaney asked as he looked down at Danny's face. "Feeling good there?"

"Why am I here? What have I done? I am friendly."

"Sure you are Danny. You ask a lot of questions don't you."

"I am a curious person. Why am I here? I am an agent with your Ministry of Intelligence. I am trusted."

"Not by us Danny. To us you're a liability."

"I am not."

"Sure you are Danny," though BG. Delaney remained in his line of questioning, Danny's voice trembled, confused and scared. "Danny, you see, you're not a trusted agent with us Danny. You've seen and heard too much and we can't have you roaming around here giving away what happened now can we?"

"I am telling no one. I am going to get my family and leave. Leave Africa. I want to go to Europe."

"To Europe Danny? Where you can tell your story? Or are you working with André?"

"I am not. I work for no one but your ministry."

"You're a good liar Danny. I'd love to stay and chat but we've got a train to catch."

"You aren't taking me with you?"

"No Danny. We aren't. You're going to stay here Danny. In Mogadishu. Where we know where you are."

"Don't leave me."

"Ah shut him up." MAJ. Rigalo came around with a piece of duct tape and slapped it on his mouth, shutting him up instantly. He remained dangling in the air there and they began to pack up their stuff. They quickly grabbed their belongings and began to load the jeep. They gathered their wetsuits and the boat as well, things they would use to get back to the submarine. It wasn't until 20:08 hours before they were ready to go and they had their jeep loaded by them. Only one thing remained and that was up to BG. Delaney to accomplish. He returned to the house but with a red, metal can in his hands. Danny was still dangling above the floor and his eyes widened when he saw BG. Delaney splash a colorless liquid all over the house, on the walls and on the floor. He especially made sure to put some right underneath Danny. He then tossed the can into the bathroom and returned to the living room. "You know Danny, you blew your cover by asking too many questions. Ever heard the expression, 'Loose lips sink ships'?" Danny didn't answer. "Well here you have it." He lit a match and tossed it to the ground, igniting the pool of gasoline underneath Danny, which quickly spread out through the rest of the living room and throughout the house. Within a minute, the house would be a raging inferno.

As flames danced throughout, BG. Delaney stepped back into the jeep and drove off, towards the beach. They would be back on the submarine long before the deadline and back on their way to port, in Bahrain, where a major Layartebian naval base sat. The Virginia would dock, offload the Layartebian team and they would be back in Layarteb City in a matter of hours. They would return back home, to safety and sanctity, peace and tranquility. While they did, Mogadishu would unfold into complete and utter chaos, ravaged by a plague of war. The Four Horsemen had come to Earth and one of them had descended right on Mogadishu, another one leaving.

November 25, 2007 - 18:00 [EST]
Layarteb City, New York

"In what the Imperial Military has called the most intense urban warfare since the Fourth Venezuelan War, the Battle of Tapauá is coming to a close. In a press briefing given by the newest Minister of Defense, he announced that the insurgency in the Amazonian Control Territory is decided 'wiped out' following nine days of intense urban warfare in Tapauá. According to the Minister, approximately fourteen hundred and fifty insurgents were killed over the nine days and over two hundred captured. Layartebian casualties are listed as significantly lower at eleven killed and forty-three seriously wounded." The news cast continued on for the remainder of the half hour time slot but, throughout the Empire, especially on Governor's Island, people had a reason to celebrate. The insurgency in the ACT had been exterminated. By best estimates and using liberal figures, there were fewer than one hundred insurgents remaining in the ACT, if even that many. More realistic figures numbered less than thirty. Tapauá had been an overwhelming success. The Layartebian seige effectively closed off the city and few were able to escape. From there, the Layartebian military simply squeezed the insurgents like a boa constrictor. They didn't stand a chance. "In other news," the broadcast continued. "In Mogadishu today, internal fighting intensified as what can be described as a civil war, rages on, unchecked. The civil war reportedly began on the 16th and has shown no signs of weakening since then. For more on the story, we go to reporter Joanne Killgore in Windhoek, Joanne?"

OOC Summary

Chapter One: Faint & Numb


October 10: A massive truck bomb in the order of 2,000 pounds goes off outside a newspaper office of the LNN in the early morning hours. 7 dead.
October 11: Missile Base 1511 undergoes treasonous insurrection. Further reports unknown.
October 14: ILN Hunter SSN ordered to take up position off Layarteb coast. Further orders not given.
October 15: Force Falcon Team One ordered to re-establish contact with Missile Base 1511. Boeing 777 crashes north of Athens, Tennessee. All 89 on board are killed. Investigation pending.


Chapter Two: Frantic

October 16: Force Falcon Team One leads a strike on Missile Base 1511. During the course of the retaking, a single LGM-174A Satan is launched at Layarteb City with the intention of hitting it. Luckily, MIM-196 AABMS missiles intercept the ICBM before it could hit.


Chapter Three: Estranged

October 18: Force Falcon Team One lands in Santa Cruz, Bolivia for the assassination of the President of GnOoLoCoPeLep.
October 20: GnOoLoCoPeLepian President assassinated early in the morning.
October 22: Failed attempt by terrorist group to bomb Layartebian airbase in Sunbury, PA.


Chapter Four: Overburdened

October 23: Central Justice Agency begins Anti-Domestic Terrorist Force under the command of Bureau Chief Benjamin O'Davis. Identifies Republican Liberation Army as terrorist group responsible for bombings of Layarteb City and airliner over Tennessee.
October 25: RLA blows up a Boeing 707 and an Airbus A300 from Layarteb Airways over Cove Neck, New York and Belle Harbor, Queens, Layarteb City.
October 26: Emperor makes speech condemning the RLA. Raid on Layarteb City apartment nets 17 RLA terrorists and kills 3. Documents recovered tell of a plot for subway bombings.
October 28: News media is leaked the presence of the Mayan uprising in the Yucatán state.
October 30: Six security guards shot and killed execution style inside the Layarteb City office for Layarteb Publishers
United.
October 31: Secret societies meet to discuss revolutionary plan.
November 2: Two firefighters die in a suspicious blaze in a New Jersey factory.


Chapter Five: Rosenrot

November 5: 84 RLA terrorists seize St. Paul's Boarding School in New Hampshire and take 1,184 hostages, most of them under 18. In the fighting, they lose 2 of their own and kill 20, mostly school officials and guards. Terrorists round up hostages in the main dining hall as parents, soldiers, and police officers, including SWAT, surround the school. By 1300, a standoff ensues. At 1430, three children are executed by the RLA terrorists after a SWAT sniper shoots one of the terrorists. The SWAT sniper dies mysteriously. At 1530, Rome and Norway denounce the seizure.
November 6: Under the threat of a severe winter storm, small group of soldiers enter school and hide in admissions office. Families begin to grow wrestless and plot their own action. Explosions go off in dining hall and a chaotic attack is done leaving 75 terrorists, 152 children, and 38 soldiers dead. Many are wounded. Seven terrorists are captured, including the leader.
November 7: Emperor delcares national day of mourning for November 6.


Chapter Six: Precious

December 1: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island become part of the Empire. Only Quebec remains.
December 9: Quebecois Special Forces use VX gas against Jay, Vermont, killing 384 of 426 people.
December 10: Quebecois invade Ontario during the early morning. Jay Incident becomes public knowledge and Quebecois SOF and RLA terrorists blamed. Quebecois forces make quick and powerful headway throughout the course of the morning, seizing North Bay. RLA base compound in Clinton discovered for its true purpose.
December 11: Roman forces land to help the Ontarians. Quebecois clash with Roman/Ontarian forces in Alliston.
December 12: RLA forces seize 12 MGM-212 CBRR rockets on an assault at the El Jobal Chemical Weapons Depot, in Venezuela. 60 base personnel and 18 terrorists are killed. The rockets are currently "missing."
December 13: Roman forces repel the Quebecoi offensive, pushing them out of Ontario and towards Quebec. RLA group captured in Alliston, where Quebecoi forces devestated and forced back.


Chapter Seven: Colorblind

December 15: Layartebian forces begin aerial attack on Quebec at 0200 local time.
December 25: Ground war against Quebec begins at 0230 local time.
December 30: Boisclair captured by Roman forces.
January 1, 2006: Quebec War over. Montreal secure.


Chapter Eight: Gone Away

January 21: Battle of Clinton begins. Layartebian forces attack RLA compound north of Clinton, Alabama. The battle begins at exactly 10:02, local time. 8 soldiers die initially. Full assault begins at 23:00. Assault ends at 23:40 with 52 soldiers dead and 82 wounded.
January 22: Battle of Clinton continues. Stalemate ensues with a twenty-four hour ceasefire at 07:15.
January 23: Battle of Clinton ends. RLA compound burned from the inside out, RLA leadership and fighters dead from suicide or gunshots. 427 die.


Chapter Nine: Greed & Serenity

June 1: Former Minister of Intelligence dies inside of Nova Prospekt prison, Galapagos Islands.


Chapter Ten: Bleed the Freak

June 15: Soldiers begin leaving the island of Grenada for 6-day liberty.
June 16: Rebellion forces attack Grenada at 03:00 hours. At 05:29 hours, rebel forces shoot down Flight 2993 to Miami, Florida with 226 people onboard; none survive. By 20:00 hours, rebel forces have secured 100% of the island and suffered 3,049 losses. Layartebian casualties number 7,775 and 4,518 are captured. In the fighting, 839 civilians are killed in addition to Flight 2993.


Chapter Eleven: Goodbye For Now

June 16: Dr. Gordon Gray of the University of Layarteb at Layarteb City is murdered by an unknown gunman.
June 17: United Eastasian Republic publically officially recognizes the Republic of Grenada and offers supplies, funding, and aide.
June 18: At 08:30 hours, the Emperor gives worldwide speech about Grenada and condemns UER for recognizing the Democratic Republic of Grenada.
June 19: Imperial Layartebian Navy blockades island of Grenada.
June 22: UER aide flight given clearance to land in Grenada. UER aide flight evacuates UER diplomatic contingent from Grenada. ILN RA-5E Vigilante conducts low-level reconnaissance.
June 23: Christopher Allen Florence is arrested outside of Charleston, WV and questioned and held in connection to the murder of Dr. Gray.


Chapter Twelve: Fall to Pieces

July 3: Supreme Grenadian of the DPRG secretly requests international aide to be delivered during a week long "negotiation" with the Empire, during which they hope the blockade will be lifted.
July 4: MSgt. Brendan Williams and his family are murdered, possibly by drifters, in their Tennessee home. MSgt. Williams was due for a media interview regarding the shoot down of LA Flight 88 at 19:00 hours.
July 6: Secret safe house in Panama is attacked by Force Falcon Team One early in the morning, just after midnight. RLA high council, survivors of the Battle of Clinton, are all killed. The total death toll is 42 in the safe house and 28 in the vehicle convoy. The Emperor agrees that the blockade shall be lifted on July 16, 2006 at 00:00 EST and reinstated on July 22, 2006 at 23:59 EST, if no progress is made during negotiations.


Chapter Thirteen: Bleeding Me

July 11: Shoot out at Dockhouse 14 in Caracas shipyard leaves 13 dead. A mysterious cargo is stolen and the identity of all men, except two, is unconfirmed. Those two are linked with Esmeralda Cartel.
July 13: Giacomo Benevetti is murdered by shooting and burning outside his office in Caracas, Venezuela. Suspects unknown though murder is linked with Dr. Gordon Gray. Suspect sought out is believed to be the same person for both.
July 14: Esmeralda Cartel yacht sunk in the Gulf of Paria by ILN vessel. Eight men aboard killed. Two men founded murdered, execution sytle in Güiria. Both are linked to the Esmeralda Cartel.
July 21: Layartebian delegation to Grenada is assassinated in their hotel in St. George's, totalling 29 individuals. Blockade resumes and the DPRG is given 24 hours from 11:00 hrs [EST] to surrender the island back to Layarteb City.
July 22: Deadline passes. Hostilities officially begin against DPRG at 13:00 hrs [EST].


Chapter Fourteen: Stillborn

July 22: Deadline passes. Hostilities officially begin against DPRG at 13:00 hrs [EST]. First eleven hours of fighting sees 1,600 Grenadian, 22 Layartebian, and 65 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 21,239 at the start of the war.
July 23: At 00:15 hrs [EST], Victoria is secured. Mount Saint Catherine is secured at 03:00 hrs [EST]. Panorama and Trevellan are secured at 09:00 hrs [EST]. First thirty-five hours of fighting sees 3,839 Grenadian, 312 Layartebian, and 300 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 17,315 at the end of July 23. There are a total of 85 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 24: At 01:20 hrs [EST], Grenville is secured. At 03:00 hrs [EST], Saint Patrick's parish & Saint Andrew's parish secured. At 06:20 hrs [EST], the airport is secured. At 08:30 hrs [EST] assault on St. George's begins with aircraft and cruise missiles. At 11:15 hrs [EST] Gouyave is secured but massacre of civilians is found with 2,450 civilians executed throughout the town by Grenadian soldiers. First fifty-nine hours of fighting sees 7,293 Grenadian, 815 Layartebian, and 2,828 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 13,734 at the end of July 24. There are a total of 212 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 25: At 02:00 hrs [EST], all of Grenada is considered secured except for St. George's. At 05:00 hrs [EST], invasion of St. George's by Marines begins. At 21:25 hrs [EST], the captured Layartebian soldiers from June 16 are recovered. Of the 4,518 that were initially captured, only 3,758 remained alive. In the first eighty-three hours of fighting, 9,549 Grenadian, 1,787 Layartebian, and 3,201 civilain casualties are registered. Grenadian soldiers number 11,430 at the end of July 25. There are a total of 260 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 26: At 10:29:38 hrs [EST], a 5 kiloton nuclear device is detonated in downtown St. George's. The device is of unknown origin and at least 30,000 civilians and 8,500 Grenadian military personnel as well as 6,100 Marines are persent in the city when the device goes off. Possible casualties are expected to exceed 40,000. At 12:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor addresses the world about the events in Grenada. Estimates for casualties are narrowed between 20,000 and 30,000.


Chapter Fifteen: Cowboys From Hell

July 26: At 11:30 hrs [EST], martial law is declared on Grenada and an immediate "in-house" curfew is imposed. At 14:15 hrs [EST], analysis shows that radiation is rapidly spreading towards Cottish Barbados, to the northeast, and that the device used was an enhanced radiation device. At 15:01 hrs [EST], the first fire fighting chemicals fall over Saint George's. At 17:00 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as a W80-0 of a Tomahawk SLCM. At 18:20 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as a Teh Ninjan weapon. At 21:18 hrs [EST], a fire storm hits the city and ravages the inner circle of the city, around the blast zone.
July 27: At 09:30 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as being built within the Empire of Teh Ninjas in Cuba and shipped to Madagascar for basing on a 688/I class submarine. At 11:00 hrs [EST], the fires within the city are considered "under control." Recovery efforts continue within the city.
July 28: At 04:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor meets with President Baruti of the United States of Brink about the bombing. At 04:30 hrs [EST], two vehicles are identified on a highway heading north from Georgia and engaged by 2nd BOG forces. Two men are captured. Six are killed and their vehicle destroyed. Witnesses had little to say about the event.
July 29: At 06:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor's aircraft and flight are engaged by twelve F-22B Raptors going rogue from the ILAF. All twelve rogue aircraft are shot down along with four F-22B Raptors and one F-14E Super Tomcat escorting the Emperor's aircraft. At 21:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor returns to Layarteb City. The engagement of his aircraft is kept "hush-hush."
August 9: At 12:00 hrs [EST], the final casualty figures are released to include 37,221 as a result of both the blast and the radiation poisoning that followed. On Barbados, 400 Cottish individuals died.


Chapter Sixteen: Sehnsucht

November 23: Layarteb Airlines Flight 1890 explodes in mid-air, at 19:30 hrs [EST], 8 miles south of East Moriches, Long Island. The cause of the disaster is yet unknown but all 526 onboard are presumed dead.
November 24: Jasmine Delgado, the daughter of the Governor of the Province of Raef, is kidnapped at a market in Havana at 15:05 hrs [EST] by Luis Rendon and Javier Montenegra of the Florida Cartel. They soon meet up with Hector Pimentel, also of the Florida Cartel. Their house and car are burned and their whereabouts are unknown.
December 1: At 10:27 hrs [EST], the chief of police for the Province of Raef is asssassinated when his helicopter is shot down trying to land on the roof of the Panama City police headquarters. Six men in the helicopter and three bystanders on the street are killed.
December 11: Mysterious explosion around 22:39 hrs [EST] kills lead witness in Jasmine Delgado kidnapping and destroys two adjacent homes. Ten others are killed.
December 23: Official investigation on LA Flight 1890 concludes citing that mechanical failure brought down the aircraft due to faulty wiring in the center fuel tank, which ignited fuel vapors and caused the explosion. All 526 lives were lost, making it the dealiest, civilian air disaster in EOL history.


Chapter Seventeen: Ugly & Damned

December 27: The Empire begins a secret war against Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam, a major warlord in Afghanistan and drug dealer who is directly linked with Layartebian cartels.
February 2, 2007: Layartebian forces assist the Eurasian Federation in seizing Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. They wage a "secret war" against Sepah-e Pasdaran, an Islamist-terrorist group in the region. Evidence gathered from Sepah-e Pasdaran link them to the Layartebian situation. Funding for Sepah-e Pasdaran was given through Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam by Totalis (Varsolan Corporation on the Falklands linked directly to Grenada), the cartels, and the RLA. Sepah-e Pasdaran trained various terrorist groups acting in the Empire of Layarteb from 2005 - 2007 including the RLA and Free Venezuelans. An unknown "major funder" is sought out.
February 15: Layartebian forces invade southern Neuvo Rican Mexico and seize Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, and Tabasaco in the "War on Drugs" and, effectively, end the drug trade in the region when the war is completed.
February 18: State governor of Venezuela is assassinated, presumably by a "domestic" terrorist group related to the RLA.
March 1: Victory is declared in southern Mexico.
March 4: Successor to the state governor vanishes mysteriously. Street violence in Caracas escalates to its highest levels since 1988. Fueled by Illuminati Ghost Warriors, street violences peaks shortly thereafter.
March 12: Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam is killed. Evidence links him to Sepah-e Pasdaran.
April 1: Organized protests begin in Caracas and are brutally suppressed. In total 629 people, including 55 police officers are killed when the government stepped in to stop the protests.
April 2: Two women are killed when the State Governer of Venezuela's house is attacked by rocket fire. The governor is severely injured and is forced to withdraw from his duties.
April 5: The "Free Venezuelans" announce that they are a pro-independence group seeking for Venezuelan independence and claim responsibility for the attack of April 2. They are linked to demonstrations going back to March and are immediately assumed to be responsible for the February 18th assassination of the government.
April 8: The Imperial Layartebian Military begins to mobilize as unrest in Venezuela peaks again.
April 9: The Free Venezuelans detonate a massive car bomb inside the South Eastern Virginia government building in Caracas, leveling the building. Forty-five are killed in the attack, which occurs at 01:30 hours [AST]. At 01:32 hours [AST] fighting erupts in Caracs and by 05:30 hours [AST] Venezuela is in the midst of a total revolution.
May 5: The last of the Free Venezuelans are captured, killed, or in hiding and the insurrection ends, unsuccessfully. Fatalities include 182,500 civilians, 4,528 soldiers, and 429,040 rebels. Casualties include upwards of 300,000 civilians, 12,086 soldiers, and 200,489 rebels. There are 342,493 rebels captured.
May 14: The ministers of Defense, Intelligence, Interior, and Justice are fired.
May 17: Assad al Samir, a prominent leader with Sepah-e Pasdaran is killed during a failed mission to apprehend him. He is a major player in Layartebian terrorism and acts as a middleman between Sepah-e Pasdaran and Totalis. He is also linked with the unknown "major funder" sought out by the Ministry of Justice.


Chapter Eighteen: Long Way Down

May 19: An arson fire destroys the Church of Saint Andrews in the Bronx, killing 6.
May 23: Marjorie Williams, a prominent writer for the Layarteb City Times, disappears from her White Plains home in the early morning hours. She was working on a feature story about the rise in kidnappings since November 2006. All of her notes, tapes, and the laptop she used were taken. No suspects are immediately sought. Early on the morning of May 23, Salem Nuclear Powerplant is attacked by eight unknown terrorists. Two are killed and six captured in a firefight that also claimed the lives of one security officer and one National Guardsmen. The attack was unsuccessful.
May 24: Thomas Deveroe, last President of the Republic of Layarteb, dies in his sleep in Kerala, Cotland. Cause is determined to be acute myocardial infarction.
May 25: Illuminati terrorists secretly take hold of the Sky Wonder, a cruise ship in the Caribbean Sea with 1,550 passengers and 600 crew members.
May 26: Jeremy Berms, a director in the Ministry of the Interior is assassinated by an unknown hit man in the Yucatán.
May 27: Referendum vote favors returning the body of Thomas Deveroe to Layarteb for burial 87.63% to 12.37%.


Chapter Nineteen: Night Train

May 28: At 04:48 hours [EST], an M-107 civilian jetliner crashes on the Spain/Portugal border, all aboard are lost, including 108 Layartebian citizens. Cause of the crash is unknown. At 08:15 hours [EST], terrorists sink the Sky Wonder ocean liner in the Gulf of Mexico with explosives. All aboard, including 400 Cottish citizens, are killed, a total number of 2,150. An assault on a police station in Cleveland leaves 8 police officers dead and 31 injured. Of the attackers, 2 are killed and the remainder escape. Open revolution begins in Portugal with the secession of Portugal from the Fourth Reich. Spain eventually joins the secession.
June 9: War breaks out with the Federal Republic of the Amazon concerning the Venezuelan uprising of 2007 and the harboring of insurgents.
June 17: Eighty Layartebian civilians are brutally murdered by the Portugese government. At 19:30 hours [EST], Layartebian forces begin a systematic bombardment of Portugese strategic positions relating to their air force and air defense network.
June 19: The last two of three Sepah-e Pasdaran terrorists are apprehended secretly in the town of Guarda in Portugal. They are returned to the Empire for questioning.
June 24: Interrogations reveal that the name of the "domestic terrorist group." They are referred to as "Ghost Warriors." Little other information is known about them except they trained in Sepah-e Pasdaran camps and are elite mercenaries.
June 27: Manaus is secured by Layartebian forces in the Amazonian War.
July 3: The Amazonian War concludes with a Layartebian victory. There had been 566 KIAs, 1,768 WIAs, and 7 MIAs on the Layartebian side and there were over 20,000 civilian casualties and at least 30,000 casualties of all types amongst the military forces.
July 10: An unknown assassin kills the Mayor of Raccoon City, the CJA Field Director for Raccoon City, and an unidentified woman.
July 18: At 05:10 hours [EST], Layartebian police and CJA officers raid an apartment in the Bronx and arrest four Sepah-e Pasdaran terrorists plotting to set off a bomb in Layarteb City. They are Eurasian citizens.
July 27: At 17:10 hours [EST], bombs rip through Grand Central Station, Pennsylvania Station, South Station, and Union Station in Layarteb City, Falcon City, and Chicago. In total, 913 people were killed and 542 required medical attention.
September 1: Amazonian insurgents launch a brutal offense against Layartebian forces in the Amazonian Control Zone and are defeated with over 1,000 casualties to the enemy and fewer than 60 to the Layartebian forces.
September 3: Anarchist forces launch attacks on Layartebian border stations between Mato Grosso and the Amazonian Control Zone killing 14 Layartebians, injuring 11. Anarchists suffer just 8 deaths.
September 4: Layartebian forces launch Operation Thunder Rain with the systematic bombing of airports and highways in Mato Grosso to cut off the Anarchist forces from waging war in the ACZ. The goal is to push them out of the border area and stop a flow of arms and soldiers into the ACZ from Mato Grosso.
September 5: Layarteb officially invades Mato Grosso with soldiers.
September 7: Layartebian forces secure various northern cities and Anarchists call for a temporary ceasefire.
September 10: Anarchist forces attack Layartebian positions near Juína, ending the ceasefire.
September 12: The ILA launches an MGM-233 Vesta rocket into Juína, striking a civilian air raid shelter killing 1,730 and injuring 48. Of them, 1,698 are civilians, many of them children. This brings upon a subsequent international condemnation of Layartebian actions.
September 24: Anarchist forces down a CH-53N Super Stallion II, killing 69 Layartebian soldiers, the largest single loss of life in one day to the Empire in over a decade.
September 29: Layartebian forces begin the Brasnorte Offensive, aimed at driving Anarchists forces all the way south of Brasnorte.
October 1: Brasnorte Offensive concludes with all goals achieved. Anarchists, decimated, call for an immediate ceasefire, which is honored.
October 6: Anarchist remnants launch a surprise attack in Juína against an oil depot, airfield, and artillery base killing 2 Layartebian soldiers. Estimates for dead Anarchists exceed 60.
October 8: All Layartebian forces withdraw from Mato Grosso by midnight. Operation Thunder Rain concludes, essentially, as a draw. The government of Mato Grosso pledges to keep Anarchist rebels out of the border area in return for Layartebian foreign aide and relations. The war leaves 484 Layartebian KIAs, 2,139 Layartebian WIAs, almost 9,000 deaths for the Anarchists, and over 20,000 civilian deaths.
October 9: Layartebian Minister of Defense resigns.
October 12: New Minister of Defense appointed.
October 13: Former Minister of Defense mysteriously disappears from Miami, Florida.


Chapter Twenty: November Rain

November 1: Unidentified Flying Object is downed near Raquette Lake, New York.
November 2: MOI agent Miguel Santos disappears from his Caracas residence.
November 8: Terrorists hijack a Layartebian 777 bound for Dublin. All six are killed.
November 13: Maritime forces of the ILDF intercept and capture a pirate vessel south of Cuba.
November 15: Michelle Baxter, daughter of Chicago Mayor, Dwight Baxter goes missing. Her whereabouts are unknown.
November 16: Layartebian forces seige Tapauá in the ACT. Civil war breaks out in Mogadishu.
November 25: Hostilities cease in Tapauá with an overwhelming victory by the ILA.



Confirmed Body Count: 750,070
Unconfirmed Body Count: 750,382+ [312+ difference]

Chapter XXI: Kashmir

November 4, 1975 - 11:00 [AST]
Caracas, Venezuela

The C-141 Starlifter touched down gracefully on the 11,500 foot runway at Simón Bolívar International Airport. The plane landed in less than 3,800 feet and taxiied off to the tarmac, which wasn't too far from the runway. Since Layartebian forces had been sent to Venezuela in 1967, the Layartebian Air Force had taken over a whole section of Simón Bolívar International Airport to use for operations. Mostly transport and aerial refueling planes operated from the airport, mainly due to its sheer size and location away from the front lines of the Venezuelan Civil War, which raged far to the south, mostly in the countryside.

Venezuela first dawned on Layartebian politics in the early 1960s. Terrorism was rising throughout the world and the world was a very uncertain place. The weak, corrupt, and ineffective Venezuelan government was trying its best to stop the flow of weapons, drugs, and dangerous ideology both into and out of its borders, with no luck and no avail. In 1967, President Marcos Baracóa formally requested Layartebian assistance with his crisis. The Layartebian President, Baxter Wesley Gephard was all too willing to assist President Baracóa and committed some 250,000 Layartebian soldiers to the Venezuelan countryside. The war was initially met with strong ratings as it was seen as a chance to ebb the flow of drugs and dangerous ideology into the borders of the Republic. In 1969, the war took a tragic downturn with the assassination of President Baracóa and the onset of a full-fledged civil war. The civil war, which had little to nothing to do with Layartebian involvement grew and grew. Rather than withdrawing, Layartebian forces downsized to 150,000 and continued to fight the civil war, even during a period of transitional government, which saw four presidents assassinated in 7 months. In 1971, Layartebian involvement was one of three causes of the civil war's prolonged state. The other two was ethnic rivalry between indigenous and Hispanic people and the third being the lifting of oppression from the Venezuelan government. In late 1972, President Gephard won a second term in office and announced that Layartebian officials would be governing Venezuela until it could return to stability. Approval ratings for the war plummeted and by 1973, 23,940 Layartebian soldiers had come home in body bags with another 16,800 wounded. Things at home became problematic in July 1975 when President Gephard died of a sudden heart attack while in office. His vice president, Thomas Deveroe immediately assumed the presidency and now he was planning an election campaign for 1976. He had already begun to increase rhetoric that the Venezuelan War should be fought by Venezuelans but, as he stated this, Layartebian soldiers continued to be shipped south and many were coming home in body bags.

The C-141 Starlifter was just another example of that rhetoric being completely bullshit. When it came to a stop at the end of the tarmac and pulled into a hangar, guarded by four MPs with M16A1 Assault Rifles, forty Layartebian soldiers stepped off of it, all of them carrying weaponry. They weren't there to bring anybody home. They were there to fight. When the C-141 took off again it would be carrying one hundred body bags, soldiers who had been killed since October 1. In particular, one soldier stepped off the C-141 who was an unusual sight. At the age of twenty, he was older than most of the people stepping off the aircraft. By the age of twenty, if a soldier was coming back to Venezuela they were on their second tour already yet, for him, this was his first. He had spent the past three and a half years in the military, joining on his seventeenth birthday with the permission of his parents. He had gone from being a normal soldier to marksman school following his rifle accuracy tests. From there, he had gone to the paratroopers, joining right after completion in marksman school. Expecting to be shipped off to Venezuela, he quickly applied for Ranger school and was accepted. After two years in the military he had yet to seen combat and he was already a Ranger. It was part of his plan to stay alive and still serve for four years. Displeased with the Venezuelan War, he had joined before he could be drafted and, in doing so, he chose, essentially his course of action. By succeeding above and beyond the minimum requirements, he earned the right to progress to more difficult schools. He hoped to keep doing that for four years until he was done with the military. Unfortunately, his luck ran out in November 1975. He had managed to get accepted to the most elite military unit in the Layartebian Army and, from there, pass through selection and become a member of the elite Delta Force, despite being two years younger than the minimum required age. Most of his peers thought of him as a gung-ho military man who wanted to get into the field of battle, shoot as many Venezuelans as possible, win as many medals as possible, and come home a hero. He thought otherwise. He was actually trying to avoid combat but that wasn't going to happen for him anymore.

Because he had scored so highly on all of his tests and exams, passing everything on the first try, his drill instructors and mentors liked to call him a "Super Soldier" or "Captain Layarteb" but he hated those names. He just wanted to live at home and start a family with a girl he had been seeing since he was fourteen. Her name as Maggie and he wanted to marry her and avoid coming home in a body bag like 25,000 of his fellow Layartebians had. When he got his orders on October 31, that he would be going to Venezuela for a tour of duty, he practically collapsed. He wasn't ready for combat, he said but his command officers thought otherwise. Twenty and a half years old, an E-5 sergeant, never fired a weapon in combat, and more than enough experience in training to be the best soldier, Sergeant Jack Delaney was the most depressed man on Earth when he kissed his girlfriend good bye and boarded the bus to the airport. Twelve hours later he stepped off the C-141 Starlifter in Venezuela and nearly threw up twice along the way. I'm not ready for this. He told himself about a half million times before he landed. "I'm not ready for this!" He told everyone at the base before he left but most of the people saw it as just jitters since he was young. Everyone assured him he would be fine. He was a Delta and, since the war began, only three of them had died. The odds were, they said, in his favor. He didn't see it that way.

"Sergeant. Sergeant Delaney?" A lowely private first class yelled as he ran through the crowd. "Sergeant. Sir. I have an immediate message for you." He said as he came to a stop in front of the sergeant. Most of the men around him stopped and sort of eavesdropped but none of them cared to get caught doing it.

"What's that?"

"Your presence is requested immediately in the south barracks. I have a jeep that will be used to drive you there. We have to hurry. You are already ten minutes late."

"Late? For what?"

"I don't know. I was just sent here to collect you."

"Collect me? What am I a piece of change?"

"Sergeant. Please. I don't want to get yelled at because your plane was late. I have to already explain this and I'm not in the mood today. I should be home, not here."

"You think you're the only one?" He said as he began to follow him. "You think I want to be here?"

"Don't you? You're," he dropped his voice to a whisper. "An operator."

"So what if I am. That doesn't mean I want to be here. Come on. Let's just get this over with." He didn't say anything else as he climbed into the M151A2 Jeep and was taxiied over to the south barracks. The jeep came to a halt outside and he stepped out of it before it could come to a complete stop, nearly sending the private first class into a panic. "Stay here. I'll handle the rest. Where am I going?"

"Inside. You'll find out once you get there. Thank you." He sped off quickly, trying to avoid getting seen. With his head hung low, Sergeant Delaney walked into the barracks and didn't find any beds, brushing past the two MPs who eyed him quickly before he was allowed to enter. He found a command center that looked more like something out of a futuristic movie than anything else.

What the... He thought to himself as he tightened the sling on his rifle, which was hanging on his shoulder. Another sergeant quickly brushed past him, nearly knocking him over. "Watch it!" He yelled as the sergeant kept walking. "What the fuck is this?" He asked a little louder but nobody heard him. He walked up to the a sort of front desk and bent down. "What's going on here?"

"Sergeant. Delaney. Good they're waiting for you. John. Will you escort Sergeant Delaney to the center?"

"Yes sir." A voice said from behind the lieutenant who was guarding the desk, filling out some sort of military form. "This way Sergeant." A short, baby-faced person said as SGT. Delaney looked up from the lieutenant, who paid him no further mind. "You're already late."

"Plane got delayed. What is going on?"

"I am just told to escort you to the center. That's all."

"Center of what?"

"I cannot say. Please follow me." The soldier began to escort him through the command center, which was nothing more than a ruse, it seemed. He didn't understand it as he walked around the desks and past the projectors, which showed maps and forms and who knew what else. "Down this way." He led him down a flight of stairs that descended deep, underneath the airport and towards what looked like a maintenance area. There were tunnels and pipes and everything was concrete. "We're underneath the airport if you're wondering."

"What is this place? It's big enough to drive a truck through."

"Underground maintenance facility. We've since commandeered it."

"Alright what's down here."

"You'll see. Just follow me." They walked about a hundred yards before they turned down a smaller corridor, this one not big enough for any vehicles. At the end of it were two more MPs, both of these arms and standing in front of a thick, steel door. "Gentlemen." The Lance Corporal saluted but SGT. Delaney did not. They had no rank insignia on them. "Sergeant Delaney. As ordered."

"Sergeant. Your ID." One of the MPs asked, the other with his hand on his pistol, ready to draw and fire if he tried anything.

"Easy there man. Here." He handed over the ID but failed to recognize the seriousness of the situation.

The MP took it and eyed it. He picked up his radio and spoke into it, "Sergeant Delaney is outside. ID checks."

"Send him in." A voice came from the other end as the door shook to motion. It opened and revealed something that was completely different from the chaotic mess upstairs. This time there was no where to go but up to a small desk with a single soldier sitting at it, two more MPs behind him, both holding assault rifles. "Sergeant. Step up to the line please." There was a white line on the ground and he did, his weapons still around his shoulder and on his hip. "Sergeant. Your ID please."

"Here. Where..."

"That'll be enough Sergeant. Silence please." The man behind the desk looked at him with a stern sense of seriousness as he took the ID from the twenty year old. Suddenly this wasn't a game anymore nor was it a joke nor was it training. He scanned the ID on some sort of device and used his computer to punch in a few things, he couldn't tell what the green screen showed but he could hear the loud echo of the keys being punched. "Sergeant. You were born in 1955. Yes or no?"

"Yes."

"Sergeant. Your identification number is 668-29-110?"

"No it is..."

"Yes or no Sergeant."

"No."

"Sergeant. The muzzle velocity of your rifle is thirty-two hundred feet per second? Yes or no?"

"Around."

"Sergeant. Yes or no? If you continue this my men are ordered to shoot you. This is not a game? Failure to answer correctly and promptly will result in your execution. Are you aware of the importance of this matter?"

"Yes."

"Again. The muzzle velocity of your rifle is thirty-two hundred feet per second?"

"Yes."

"You engaged a silhouette successfully at a range of eight hundred yards with your rifle on the first day of Ranger school?"

"No."

"Sergeant. You have a girlfriend?"

"Yes."

"Sergeant. You flew down here on a C-5 Galaxy?"

"No."

"Sergeant. You are colorblind?"

"No."

"Very well. Sergeant. This was a voice analysis test and based on your responses you are who your ID says you are. Sergeant. Welcome to Delta. Please pass through." He handed him back his ID and continued into the base, past the door. Once inside, he was in the Delta portion of the base, which was nothing like the chaotic fury upstairs. This entrance was one of six but the one that all new recruits and officers of high rank above major would have to pass through to gain access to the base. It wasn't a large base but it took up a good portion of what was once an underground terminal. Standing at the door was an officer whom he saluted immediately.

"Sir."

"Sergeant Delaney. Welcome to Delta. That will be the last salute you will give me."

"Sir?"

"Sergeant. Did you salute on your base at home?"

"No sir."

"Then you won't do it here either. For someone who scored so high I would expect a little more from you. Let's go."

"Sir?"

"Yes Sergeant?"

"Where are we?"

"Underground Sergeant. You really are dumb aren't you?"

"I'm having trouble taking this in sir."

"Alright. Enough of this sir shit. Okay so back on base you did that much. Here? No. You will just call me by name. Is that understood?"

"Yes."

"Very well. You're already late so let's get a move on. I don't have time to give you the tour. Is your weapon combat worthy?"

"It is."

"How much ammunition do you have?"

"Two magazines for my pistol and three for my rifle."

"That won't do. Before we head out you're going to need a few more rounds."

"Okay. Where are we going?"

"Sergeant." He stopped abruptly in the middle of a barracks area that was largely empty. Most of the soldiers were out in the field. "You didn't think you came here to clean your rifle did you? This is a specialized combat unit and you are a soldier in it. You are an operator Sergeant. That means you will be fighting. A lot. Now hurry up before I shoot you myself. Goddamn they said I would like you but I hate you already."

"Thanks. That's nice to know."

"Keep up the attitude Sergeant. Out here you won't be doing pushups. You'll just get shot." They walked into a door that was on the far end of the barracks and, inside, was a large table and a number of men sitting around it, most of them joking around with each other. "Foxtrot team. Welcome Sergeant Jack Delaney. He's the replacement."

"Kind of young isn't he?"

"So I am."

"And a fresh mouth too." Everyone in the room was three to four years older than he was so he had a disadvantage already.

"Enough. Let's hurry up. Because his ass got here late we have to hurry this up." The Major said as SGT. Delaney sat down and put his rifle on the table. "Gentlemen. Our target is a bridge to the south of Caracas. Intel is reporting that a number of rebels are going to be transporting ammunition over this bridge in about four hours. Nationalist forces will be making sure that doesn't happen and we're there to provide covering fire. Apparently, there's something else that is going on here. I don't know what or why the fuck we're along for this but we are. It'll be a good mission to see if this boy is worth anything," they shared a laugh but SGT. Delaney did not see it that way. "Any questions? Except from you?" The Major said, blatantly ignoring SGT. Delaney who wanted to ask something. "None? Good. Let's go. Helicopter is waiting. Oh. Yeah. Someone get him some more ammo? He's only got three mags for the rifle and two for his pistol."

"What you think you're going to shoot with that? Targets?" One of the men asked and already SGT. Delaney was thinking about leaving the unit. He hated these people already and he hadn't been there more than an hour yet. On the way out, he followed the men, quietly, walking towards an elevator that was at one end of the small, underground base. Before they got to it though, one of the men took SGT. Delaney into a room that served as the armory. It was a pretty large room and inside of it was a ton of weapons. Sergeant Major Harry Wilcox stood behind a large counter, examining the slide of an M1911A1 pistol when the two men entered. "Harry," the operator yelled out as he entered. "Need some ammo. Quick."

"What do you need? Ah! A newbie?"

"Yeah. We got one. Let's see. He's going to need another five magazines for, what is that? An M14. Good. Five mags for an M14 and three for a? What you got there? A 1911. Well at least you walked in with the right weaponry. You got any grenades?"

"No. Just the rifle, pistol, and my knife."

"Couple of frags and a smoke."

"You got it." He put down the slide and walked to the back of the room where he had ammunition stacked to the ceiling.

"That's Sergeant Major Harry Wilcox. Our armorer. You treat him with respect."

"You got it. You on the other hand. I might not."

"Funny."

"Here you go. Good luck." SGM. Wilcox said as he put the magazines and grenades on the table. SGT. Delaney picked them up and held them as they walked out of the armory.

"Put your bags down on that cot and take your weapons and tac pack. You'll only need that. Is that pack prepared?"

"It is."

"Good. Hurry up. Chopper is leaving." SGT. Delaney followed quickly as he ran to catch up and get to the surface. An elevator took them to the surface quickly and put them inside of a small barracks that served as a storage location. From there, the two operators joined up with the other four, including the Major, and walked out of the building. Weapons in hand, they all carried more or less the same weaponry and the same amount of ammunition as well, eight magazines for their rifles and five for their pistols, plus the grenades. Loaded with a ton of tactical gear, including body armor vests, they walked down the tarmac to an awaiting helicopter, which was sitting at idle, its rotors spinning.

November 4, 1975 - 15:00 [AST]
Serrucho, Venezuela

About twenty miles south of the airport just to the east of Serrucho was a small trail that ran through woods thick enough to hide just about anything short of a main battle tank. Since the beginning of the war in the early 1960s, rebels had been using the thick, wooded trails to move supplies and three times already they had used them specifically for launching waves of attacks in Caracas. They had used them in 1969 when they moved into Caracas and ultimately assassinated the Venezuelan President, Marcos Baracóa. His successor, Carlos Zapata had since retained power, going on six years now, although largely due to an overwhelming amount of corruption. It was tough for the Layartebian soldiers to know exactly who they were fighting for when it came down to it. The political sphere of Venezuela was more than confusing to an insider, let alone someone from a different country with very little understanding of the country.

On November 1, 1975, there were a total of 287,520 Layartebian soldiers in Venezuela, most of them fighting in the southern regions where the terrain and rural villages offered the best advantages to the rebels forces. There were, in essence, two fighting forces in Venezuela. The main line of fighting was the Orinoco River, the largest river in the country. The river ran from a large delta in eastern Venezuela down, to Cabruta, and then snaked south, moving through El Jobal and exiting into Colombia near Puerto Carreño and Puerto Páez. Everything south of that river was in rebel hands. Rural villages and towns were sympathetic to the cause of the rebels who fought, "for the people," as they always declared. In reality, they fought for themselves, just like everyone else in the world. They were no crusading army of good or benevolence. They were just as horrible as the nationalist forces. Rebel forces numbered anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 in the early 1960s. When Layartebian forces joined the fight in 1967, they numbered around 50,000. In 1969, as rebel forces geared up for a major offensive, they numbered approximately 800,000, when the country itself only had about 11,000,000 people in it. Rebel forces ranged, in age, from six to sixty and included just about everyone south of the river who could hold a weapon and fight. The 1969 Offensive was, unfortuantely for them, a dismal failure. Though they had succeeded in attacking just about every major city and military installation north of the river, they suffered heavy casualties, most of them at the hands of the Layartebian forces, further galvinizing the population south of the river to the cause. They had returned home with less than 45% of their forces in tact, most of them dead with over 15,000 captured. Those would yield strong information as they were tortured and interrogated at the hands of their Venezuelan captors.

In 1971, nationalist forces combined with Layartebian forces and led a doomed offensive south of the river. It lasted eight months and, in the end, though the rebels suffered heavier casualties, the offensive was a failure. They pulled back to the river and the stalemate ensued. By now, nationalist forces numbered at least 1,250,000 plus the quarter of a million Layartebian soldiers, now fighting a rebel army approximately half its size. Though the technological edge was on the side of the nationalist and Layartebian forces, they still couldn't push south of the river. Then, in early 1973, another rebel offensive rocked the nation. This time, it was successful. Though not a surprise to Layartebian forces, nationalist forces were unable to group and counter-attack quickly enough. In just four short weeks, rebel forces not only seized hundreds of tons of arms and ammunition but also succeeded in capturing two army airfields with intact helicopters and left Caracas burning. This was the third attack on Caracas, the first being in 1967, when Layartebian forces were first requested.

The history since 1973 had been shaky. Rebel forces now operated throughout all of Venezuela and still held onto everything south of the Orinoco River. They continued to harrass and disrupt nationalist and Layartebian supply lines throughout the north of the country and even raised their own air force. Though it was small in comparison to the Layartebian and Venezuelan air forces, it was devestatingly effective. Operating mostly from dirt strips and clandestine bases, the rebel forces used a combination of attack helicopters and fighter jets to fly combat air support missions in support of their own operations. Their army air force consisted of at least a dozen Huey transports, ten to eighteen Cobra attack helicopters, a couple of Sea Stallion heavy transports, two to four Hind attack helicopters, and at least one Sea Knight. Their actual air force numbered about twenty-five jets, most of them technologically inferior to the Layartebian fighters that flew from carriers in the Caribbean and North Atlantic and land bases all around the country. Their inventory was known to include at least four to ten Skyhawk attack aircraft, their mainstay, about six Skyraiders, three Phantom IIs, and six to twelve Dragonfly attack aircraft. Their hardest hitting aircraft were their Skyhawks, which could fly low and fast and outmanuever most of their attackers in order to escape.

As of late 1975, the rebel forces had succeeded in engaging and shooting down just one Layartebian aircraft. Their tactics always told them to run from the Layartebian Air Force, which flew in Venezuela with Phantom IIs, Thunderchiefs, Delta Darts, and Aardvark bombers. Though their air force numbered twenty-five by late 1975, it had, at one time, numbered forty-eight. Due to air to air engagements, they had lost twenty-three aircraft, all of them to the hands of Phantom II fighters operating at medium altitude and before 1972. Since then, Layartebian fighters were much more reluctant to fly at lower altitudes due to a developed air defense network. Using mostly mobile surface-to-air systems such as the Chaparral, Shilka, Gecko, and Gaskin, the rebel forces were able to push Layartebian aircraft up to higher and higher altitudes, where their radars were far less effective at look-down capabilities. This would change though. The Layartebian Air Force was introducing a new, air-superiority fighter, the F-15A Eagle and it boasted superior look-down, shoot-down abilities as well as far more capability with the Sparrow than the Phantom II could provide. In addition, the Layartebian Navy had already had their premier air superiority fighter in service for three years already, the F-14A Tomcat, which was capable of carrying the autonomous Phoenix missile, which could shoot down bomber sized aircraft from eighty miles away. Though ineffective in Venezuela's combat environment, the F-14 Tomcat made the AIM-7E-6 Sparrow double as effective as it was with the Phantom II. When the AIM-7F Sparrow entered service in 1974, the Tomcat and the Phantom II were able to destroy aircraft as far away as forty miles, double as far as with the AIM-7E Sparrow. Though they had yet to score a kill, both the Tomcat and the Eagle took to the skies over Venezuela with one intention in mind, finding and destroying what remained of the rebel's aircraft.

Then, November 1975 came. Every intelligence report produced by the Layartebian military showed another offensive in the works. Rebel forces had, since the previous one, been storing up weapons and supplies, increasing their use of tunnels for transportation, gaining ground north of the Orinoco, and even gaining support in Caracas. The corrupt government barely held onto power in November. Corruption was so widespread that it seemed everyone was getting rich off the war except the Layartebians. Nationalist generals were getting money to give away troop movements and positions, to give away the keys for supply bases, and for passing on intelligence. It was frustrating the Layartebian generals and leaders and everyone knew what was going on too. It was no secret that the nationalist forces only fought for the government because they weren't being paid off by the other side. If that switched, they would switch their allegiance in a heart beat. The rebel forces were wealthy, very wealthy. Aside from "foreign donations," they received money from several other sources as well. The most prominent and the most obvious one was drug trafficking throughout the world. Heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, were their biggest cash crops and they raked in millions every month, more than enough to supply their army and more than enough to keep their face with the people south of the Orinoco. The second source was Venezuela's corruption. They claimed to champion the cause of ending it but they were benefitting from it just as well as the leaders in Caracas were. They were paid to do this, to do that, to not do this, and to not do that sometimes by nationalist generals who needed to appear loyal. It was a struggle that the Layartebian government should have never put Layartebian soldiers into but there was a third source of income for both the nationalist and rebel forces. That was the Republic of Layarteb. Leaders there, particularly the political party of President Gephard and his successor, the current President, Thomas Deveroe, were sending millions upon millions to nationalist forces in foreign aide and, clandestinely, millions upon millions to the rebel forces. The war would, seemingly, never end unless someone stepped up on either side and put a stop to the circle of corruption. As long as the drug trafficking existed though, everyone was getting rich.

It was a piece of corrupt intelligence that put Foxtrot team and their newest recruit, SGT. Delaney in Serrucho. They took up positions on a small elevated piece of terrain about two hundred yards south of the small bridge, which crossed a stream that snaked through the woods. It was a large enough bridge and stream to support a vehicle but it was only wide enough for one at a time. Nationalist generals had orchestrated the event months prior. A group of rebel soldiers, largely unimportant and incapable of fighting prolonged periods of time would move some supplies, none of them essential, through the trail and be ambushed by nationalist forces. It would be heralded as a great victory by the generals and they would use it as an example that they weren't bought by the rebel forces, like their counterparts were. Though whoever believed that lie was obviously too dumb or too brainwashed to even know what was going on anyway. Rebel forces would number less than thirty and nationalist forces would number twice that, with the Deltas there as back up though their role was vastly different. The nationalist generals hated the Layartebian Special Forces soldiers simply because they were so effective against the rebels, whenever they weren't hampered by some incompetent order from a politician playing general back in Layarteb City. The goal of their presence was their elimination. The nationalist generals had paid, in essence, for their execution. They had contracted a group of highly trained and elite mercenaries with the rebel forces to ambush the Deltas and assassinate all of them. The generals hoped it would do two things: first to cause the politicians back home to continue to hamper the Special Forces with low risk missions and to also give the rebels their own morale boost.

When the helicopter touched down early in the afternoon, underneath a rising and baking sun, none of the men with the Delta squad knew what was about to happen to them. All they knew was they were there to help out the nationalist forces stop a supply train. None of it made any sense. The men, dressed in their usual camouflage gear held their rifles tight as they looked around at the scene in front of them. Nationalist forces were buried in the thick underbrush with their own camouflage and they were ready to attack unaware that the entire day's proceedings were carefully scripted by their own commanders. There would be no air or artillery support, the Layartebians and their nationalist buddies were completely alone out there, twenty miles south of the biggest Layartebian airfield in the country. The nearest Layartebian airfield was sixty miles away and though it contained a number of attack aircraft, namely Phantom II fighters, they were preparing for a bombing raid on a few intersections in southern Venezuela, far away, where they couldn't be any help to the Layartebian commandos on the ground. The whole operation cost six nationalist generals a total of $800,000 each but, to them, it was well worth it, considering the political and military effects it would give them and their allies south of the Orinoco.

November 4, 1975 - 15:19 [AST]
Serrucho, Venezuela

"Rebeldes. Sesenta y cinco metros. Este." [Rebels. Sixty-five meters. East.] The Major said quietly into his radio as one of the operators identified the approaching rebels.

"Barely thirty of them." SGT. Delaney said quietly as he eyed them through his scope. "Doesn't seem like much of a force to transport. What? What are they even moving?"

"Probably rice. Stay quiet Sergeant!" The Major whispered but the young sergeant would not be so easily deterred.

"No. Something isn't right here. Everything. This is just too easy. Look at that, they're going to get slaughtered. Why do they even need us out here?"

"Sergeant. I said hush up."

"Goddamnit. This is a setup if I didn't see one." He said as he turned his head to scan the horizon around them. The situation was too eerie for him to know what was what but he knew this situation was not as straightforward as it appeared. He did not rest easy as the rebel troops approached and, out of the corner of his eye, he caught something, something moving. He didn't brush it aside and as he turned his left to the left he realized that they were in a trap. To their left and all around them, from behind, he could see a line of men moving towards them, none of them standing up either. He could even barely see their profiles but he knew they were there by the movement. "Behind us. We're being walked up on. Left too. Check right." He whispered as he looked over his shoulder again and brought his eyes back to the scope, doing a quick count. "I've got nine this way."

"Eight to the right. Son of a bitch. We've been set up." One of the other men said as he did the same thing.

"Son of a bitch was right. How many to the rear."

"Eleven. Growing. Possibly twenty."

"Think the nationalists are going to fuck up?"

"How could they? There are sixty of them to what thirty? They're not the best but they aren't the worst."

"Engage rear. This is a setup. Delaney take left flank. Gold. Take the right flank. Red and Orange, rear. Brown. On me front. Hold fire." Carefully and slowly, the men turned themselves to their positions and held their fire, waiting for everyone. It took only seconds but all of them did it effectively and without being noticed. They were spaced out pretty far from each other but could still listen to each other well. They all were equipped with throat microphones and wireless ear pieces. They only had to whisper to be heard loud and clear as the microphone picked up sound directly through neck contact. Once they were in position, the Major took aim on one of the approaching rebel soldiers, who was set to be ambushed. "Fire on three." All of the men sighted their targets. "Three. Two. Fire!" The first six shots echoed for two miles as the deafening silence of the countryside was shattered by one hundred and sixty decibels of noise, times six. The first six shots were perfect shots. Everyone hit their target and hit their target hard. That was six instant kills and, from there, it was clear fire. As the mercenaries trying to sneak up on the Delta operators dove for cover and stopped moving, the nationalist forces engaged and began to fire at the rebels. They had caught them in a clear cross fire and mowed them down, left and right in a matter of seconds but, the Delta operators weren't as quick.

They had all picked multiple targets each and when the first shots stopped everyone's movement, they went back to memory. SGT. Delaney had excelled at such exercises in training and, from there, proceeded to fire true. He shot six more rounds, each one hitting a target but, from there, he needed to rethink his options. The mercenaries had began to move to different positions, knowing that their element of surprise was up and that they were, essentially, fighting now for their lives. More gunshots echoed now as the nationalist forces heralded their victory by shooting wildly into the air and into the bodies of the dead rebels. Their situation was contained in a manner of seconds and it was easy for the sixty men to cheer, they didn't know what was the true motives. Now, with the nationalist forces providing a good distraction, the Delta operators needed to move. They were sitting ducks for grenades and the mercenaries began to return fire, though each time they did, their muzzle blasts were sighted and fired upon, sometimes catching them. There were forty mercenaries out there, most of them hidden and six of them at long range, with high powered rifles. They had, thus far, remained quiet. The mercenaries did not know the exact position of the Deltas nor did they even know after the first series of shots because it was so quick and decisive but, when the Deltas began to engage they knew. The snipers moved their scopes and began to account for the distance and windage. The Deltas were only easy to spot now because of their muzzle flash. Otherwise, they were hard targets.

"Somos el disparos en aquí. ¿Quiere ayudar a putas?" [We're being shot at over here. Want to help whores?] The Major said as the nationlist forces continued their celebration. Their frequency and the frequency of the nationalist forces was different, for obvious reason. Rebels knew the frequencies of nationalist forces and the Deltas didn't want their own communications to be heard. They didn't heard the Major too easily and as the Deltas darted from their positions, the nationalist forces realized something was up and it wasn't kosher. Three loud, high-powered rifle shots echoed as the Deltas ran from their position, taking cover in the thick underbrush. "We've got snipers!"

"Roger. I'm on it. I saw two of the muzzle flashes. One is east, maybe six hundred yards, maybe in a tree. The other is about as far but to the south there. I've got that one." SGT. Delaney said as he hit the ground and put his rifle scope on the target that he had seen. The snipers were careful not to fire again until they had a definite position but, at the same time, they had already given away their positions. Rounds bounced off the ground as the mercenaries engaged the moving Deltas, missing every time. They were good but not good enough. Once the Deltas hit the ground it was a game of whack-a-mole. They would pop up from the ground, fire off a round, and drop back down, crawl to a different position, and do the same thing. They targeted the mercenaries and, with striking precision, began to reduce their numbers as SGT. Delaney waited for his own opportunity. He had his rifle well supported and he was waiting and he got his chance. As the other Deltas popped up and down, it gave the snipers a target, albeit a brief one. The sniper SGT. Delaney had been targetting took it upon himself to try to engage but it was his own demise. A second and third sniper fell the same way before SGT. Delaney moved his postion, shooting two mercenaries in the process. With a quick change of his magazine, he sighted another sniper and fired, a second shot against the sniper finally taking him outof action.

The firefight did not slow. As the nationalist forces moved up, they were easy pickings for the mercenaries, who fell for the distraction. To the Major and the Deltas, the nationalist forces meant nothing and he wanted them to come rushing over, to make the mercenaries engage them and reveal their positions. It was an easy and simple tactic that worked well. The nationalist forces didn't stay up for long though and they too hit the ground hard after suffering eight casualties in just a few seconds. The Deltas continued their tactics, moving left, then right, then forward, then right again, snaking through the underbrush, looking for and killing the mercenaries with ease as SGT. Delaney picked off the last two snipers. As he did, he came upon a wounded mercenary who had been struck in his leg by a round. It pierced right through his femoral artery and he was bleeding out. With only his knife for protection, the mercenary was startled when SGT. Delaney dove on him and knocked it away, punching the mercenary hard in his jaw. "Who sent you over here!" He yelled at the merc, who was beginning to go into shock. "Fuck. I got a live one here. He's hurt."

"On my way," the Major ran over towards him, wanting nothing more than to interrogate the merc, who could reveal why they were there, looking for them.

"You knew we were here didn't you!" SGT. Delaney yelled as he punched him again. The merc nodded and tried to speak, his body losing blood fast. "Nod. Yeah. Good. Keep not answering me and I'll beat you before you bleed out. We can save you, you know that right? We're medics too! Who sent you? Were you sent to kill us? Who? Was it rebels? No. Who. Nationalists? Why? Fuck!" The Major landed next to him and looked at the merc, who was going into shock. "He knew we were here. Nationalists sent him to kill us basically."

"Who the fuck sent you?"

"Answer him goddamnit! We'll save you!" In the background, gunshots continued to be exchanged between the rebel mercenaries and the nationalist forces, the Deltas caught in the middle. "He's no use to us. We need another one. A live one. Someone who isn't dying."

"Can you get me one?"

"Consider it done." The Major returned to the fight as the mercenary stopped breathing, his heart stopping in the process. SGT. Delaney, on the other hand, was looking down his rifle again, through the scope, this time looking for an easy shot. The Major wanted a rebel soldier alive and he didn't want him dying. He did; however, want the rebel to think he was dying so he could have some sort of leverage over him. SGT. Delaney, the superior marksman that he was, went to work. He looked for his shot, carefully, not revealing his position, staying crouched and completely still as the mercs moved away from the firefight, just four of them remaining alive. They had taken eight nationalists with them but they had been devestated by the Delta operators. With just four remaining, they decided it was better to give up than to fight and they began to retreat, carefully and slowly. Seeing this as the case, SGT. Delaney took to chase, moving close to where he suspected one of them was. Slowly and cautiously, he approached the spot, his rifle close to his shoulder and his body low to the ground. He could hear voices as he got closer and knew that two of them were talking to each other but he couldn't yet see them. Still crouched low, he threw his rifle around his shoulder and pulled out his sidearm. He moved closer and closer as the voices became clearer and clearer. Two of the mercs were talking about retreating, he could hear them quite clearly and he had a fix on their position. He carefully stalked them, moving behind them to a vantage point where he could pounce on both of them with the element of surprise.

He finally got it when he saw both of them lying on the ground, facing away from him, trying to decide which way to go. He dove forward, his pistol in his right hand. One of the mercs tried to turn around but caught his left fist in the face, disorientating him as the other caught his pistol to the back of his head. He hit him hard enough to put him into an unconscious state but the other one was definitely conscious. He shook off the hit and tried to come after Delaney with his knife but missed on his first try and SGT. Delaney took a shot with his pistol, the round going right through the shoulder of the merc. It knocked him down right away and was serious, albeit not life threatening. "He's dead. You're next if you don't cooperate. Who sent you? I got one!" He said into his microphone as the Major smiled.

February 13, 1976 - 13:40 [AST]
Caracas, Venezuela

"Yes. I love you too babe. I'll see you soon." He put down the phone and turned around, noticing that the rest of the men from his unit had been there, waiting to make fun of him for the lengthy phone conversation he had just had. "You guys been there the whole time?"

"Yes we have. Babe." Wilkins said as they laughed, following him back from the phone. "So. Jack. Jack. Jack. What a bad idea man? Married? Why would you do that?"

"You know Jack. That is a really bad idea. Don't you like Venezuela," Luke Wilson joined in, sharing more of the laughter. Since his first day with the unit, he had been accepted well into Foxtrot team. His keen prowess and combat skills were second to none, something none of them expected from the green recruit who wanted nothing to do with war.

"You guys going to just sit there and make fun of me or are we going to rehearse this mission?"

"Make fun," the Major chimed in as he walked around a corner. "You gentlemen done?"

"Not yet."

"Good. That's what I thought. Carry on," he kept walking, towards a briefing of his own. He wouldn't be going along on the mission, which would take the five men of Foxtrot unit on a snatch and grab mission of a nationlist general who was selling information to the rebels. Since Delaney's first mission, Foxtrot team had uncovered a web of corruption that they were now personally tasked with eliminating. Foxtrot team was able to interrogate, successfully, their two captures and reveal a lot about that mission, including the motive and those behind it. They set out on a task of their own, operating largely independently of military command. Their exploits were something of legend amongst the men in the Layartebian military. Since November, they had planned, coordinated, and conducted eighty-seven individual missions aimed strictly at nationalist generals, units, and politicians who were really fighting with the rebels. In one sector alone, they completely eliminated all rebel presence by going after two colonels and a pair of politicians who were feeing arms and intelligence to the rebels.

To many who were truly fighting against the rebels, their legendary exploits were something of a good thing. To those who fought for the rebels, they were madmen. They weren't universally liked even in the Layartebian military. Politicians at home who wanted to see a prolonged fight, who wanted to see rebel gains, sought to discredit them. Throughout Venezuela, in just three months, they had successfully stopped nineteen rebel attacks from ever happening, located and destroyed three major supply bases, put forty-two politicians in graves or behind bars, and saw to the removal of fifteen officers above the rank of major from command in the nationalist military. They all had bounties on their heads despite nobody actually knowing who they were or what they were doing. Foxtrot unit kept completely to themselves most of the time when it came to combat matters. They succeeded even in hiding their motives and missions from other Delta operators and the Major himself took a lot of heat for supposed activities that Foxtrot team was involved in, always able to shake it off though. They were, in essence, legendary.

Now they were planning a mission to snatch their highest value target yet. They were going after General Simón de la Cruz, who was in charge of all military intelligence for the Venezuelan Army. They had direct evidence that he had sold rebel forces intelligence reports on eight different occassions. All of those reports showed not only Venezuelan but also Layartebian troop movements and one planned offensive near El Jobal. The Layartebian offensive at El Jobal occurred in March 1975 and was an abysmal failure for Layartebian forces. An entire brigade of Layartebian soldiers stormed into El Jobal to take down rebel forces and wound up retreating after three days. They had armored and aerial support but failed to make gains on the rebels who operated with a force around the size of two companies. It had long been suspected that the rebels knew the Layartebian battleplan but, again, it had never been proven. Finally, Foxtrot team was able to uncover the evidence. For $100,000 General de la Cruz gave away the entire Layartebian plan. Rebel forces succeeded in killing eighty-five Layartebian soldiers during the engagement and shooting down an F-4E Phantom II that was on a low-level, combat air support mission. The retaliation had yet to come and now, with the fact that it was a setup by the same people the Layartebians were fighting and dying for, revenge became the single most important motive.

The Layartebians sought revenge, all around but were too hampered to do anything. The people they fought and died for turned around to stab them in the back most of the time. Yet, they continued to fight and die, essentially for nothing. Foxtrot team saw themselves as those avengers. Now they huddled around a table in a closed and sealed briefing room in a far corner of their small base. The general was always guarded by a handful of body guards, half of them not even Venezuelan. He didn't have much trust for his own people and the men of Foxtrot team knew this. They had been after him for three weeks already and finally, they got their chance. General de la Cruz and his entourage of bodyguards would be visiting San Carlos, a city of 70,000, about 126 miles southwest of the Delta base, a far ride by helicopter. For them, their UH-1N Huey transport helicopter could fly the entire way and back without using up all of its fuel but, if it ran into trouble, it would have to hope on its reserves. What de la Cruz was going to be doing in San Carlos was not known to them but neither was it important. They were there for one simple mission and it was going to be a success, whether or not the general wanted it that way.

They concluded their briefing just before 14:15 hours and, in a strange occurance, command of the team and the mission was placed with SGT. Delaney, the newest member of the team. It was done for a specific reason though. Since the moment he stepped foot onto Venezuelan soil, SGT. Delaney had been tested time and time again. Each time, he had passed with flying colors. However, he had never been put in a specific leadership role. Whether or not he could pull it off was another thing but the men felt confident in his abilities, even if he was a little shaky. Suited up in purely civilian clothing, the five men exited the compound and walked towards the Huey, which was sitting on the tarmac, waiting to take off and fly them to their destination. Their carte blanche was something of an enigma within the ranks of the special forces community and when they exited the compound and walked towards the Huey, they did so with a sort of aura about them. To everyone who was dedicated to actually winning the war for the right reasons, they were heroes but for everyone else, they were an unstoppable force and they were raising a lot of eyebrows.

They carried with them backpacks but no civilian would carry what they were carrying. To achieve their mission they needed a number of weapons, namely explosives. Based on their intelligence, the general would be moving through the city in a small motorcade. From there, they would ambush the convoy and extract the general. Unfortunately, for them, it was such a high profile grab, that their extraction would be entirely by their own means. Armed with their pistols and assortment of other weapons, including shotguns and submachine guns, the five men boarded the helicopter and prepared to go back into battle.

February 13, 1976 - 15:40 [AST]
San Carlos, Venezuela

Set up and in position twenty minutes after their bird touched down, Foxtrot team began the waiting game. It was 15:40 hours, local time and their target wasn't expected until 17:00. Holed up in a wrecked house on the outskirts of the city's northern flank, all five men prepared their mission. They knew two things about the convoy. First, it would consist of three cars, the general being in the middle one. Secondly, their route. The convoy had to pass the house in order to get into the city and, in doing so, it was vulnerable. There were two ways to hit the convoy right off the bat. First would be to slow it down and storm the vehicles but that wasn't a safe enough option. They risked too much in that maneuver. Rather, they chose for a different approach and they chose it before they ever left base. They would slow down the vehicles but, rather than storm them, they would take out the lead and the rear vehicles with rockets and then, from there, capture their target. They had packed for that occassion and, as they unpacked their gear in the house, they unpacked a pair of M72A3 LAW rocket launchers, which they would use to take out both of the vehicles. In order to make it work, they would have to attack both vehicles at the same time and from opposite sides of the road. Without adequate cover to attack from the other side of the street, they would have to make due with the best of their abilities. SGT. Delaney and SSG. Wilson would take positions in the house and attack from there while the rest of the team, MSG. Wilkins, SFC. Steel, and SFC. Jackson would all take up positions on the other side of the street. The hardest part of the mission would be to secure adequate transportation out of the hot zone. They invisioned that all three vehicles would be too shot up to use in the worst case scenario, especially if they were going to destroy the front and rear cars. Instead, they would have to take something else and all five of them eyed a pair of jeeps as they walked through the final part of the city, just before reaching the house.

Dug in and without any idea if the general was on schedule or not, the five men were largely quiet. They paid careful attention to what was around them, making sure that nobody snuck up on them without their knowing it. If anyone came out and detected them, it could mean the end of the mission. There was, in effect, no way of knowing the loyalty of the village and, if that was even known, there was no way of knowing the loyalty of each, individual resident. They had to be watchful and, with over an hour of waiting, there was a lot that could still have gone wrong. They just needed to make sure, regardless of what they did, they didn't screw the pooch. It was too vital and sensitive a mission to fail on their only chance. They had yet to fail but, as everyone always said, "It's bound to happen."

Hundreds of miles in the distance, a pair of Layartebian B-52H Stratofortress bombers were dropping iron bombs on suspected underground bunkers used by the rebel force. Each B-52 carried and dropped fifty-one 750 pound M117 iron bombs. Both bombers released them from high altitude and in rapid succession, putting all of the bombs right on their target, shaking the ground beneath them. Not far from them, a flight of F-4E Phantom II fighter-bombers were carrying out a precision bombing run against a rebel enclave, buried deep in the jungle. They were using state-of-the-art Paveway II laser-guided bombs, each one equipped with Mark-84 heavy warheads, each weighing almost 950 pounds. These were major improvements over the original Paveway I series bombs, which had been used extensively over Venezuela. The Paveway II bombs, having been used now for three years, were proving themselves. Each strike they were used in boasted extremely high rates of success. As the Phantoms cruised at 25,000 feet, they operated in a buddy system. One aircraft woudl carry a laser designator pod underneath their fuselage while the other or others, depending on the target, would carry two Paveway II bombs. The Phantoms could carry up to four each but, given drag and weight limitations, plus the necessity for external fuel tanks, they usually only carried two each.

While the air strikes shook the ground dozens and hundreds of miles away SGT. Delaney and his squad prepared to ambush the convoy. They waited now as the convoy rounded corners and sped down straightaways ten, fifteen miles away. It was moving quickly towards the destination, unaware of what was about to happen. With their rockets ready and their rifles prepared, they kept motionless, like the elite, professionals that they were. Finally, after seemingly hours of waiting, the convoy appeared, first as a dust cloud on the horizon and then, it got closer, much more visible. It may have been the evening in Venezuela but it wasn't any less sunny. They cautiously watched now as the three cars moved towards the small town. It wouldn't be long before they sprung to action and, with SGT. Delaney leading, it was his call to fire the first shots. He had a LAW with him, just to initiate the fight. His shot would blast the first car into oblivion while the second took out the last car. Then, they would storm the middle car and get their victim. "Alright. We're code 'Echo' time to act." SGT. Delaney said through the microphone on his neck as he waited for the shot. The cars would have to slow down at their area because of a series of roadblocks that Delaney and his men put into the road.

Everything went quick now as the convoy turned down the road and began to drive up a small incline towards the town. The convoy had to travel less than one hundred meters now before it reached the attack point. It would take just short of seconds at this point as the convoy sped up at the top of the incline, taking a turn and moving towards the attack point. Then, the vehicles came around the final bend as SGT. Delaney held the LAW tightly in his hands. His rifle remained around his back and he waited now for the final stop of the vehicles to launch his shot. Finally, the lead car and the rest of the other two trudged towards the roadblocks, slowing down to just under 8 miles per hour. It was then that the team sprung to action. SGT. Delaney poped up over the small, half wall, the LAW on his shoulder. The rocket needed ten meters to arm itself and he had at least that much distance between him and the lead vehicle when he pushed the trigger button on the top of the launcher. The launched shuddered against his shoulder as the 66mm rocket motor lit and fired off the projectile at over 300 mph. The rocket ripped through the air with a thick trail of smoke, smashing into the side of the lead car, penetrating its unarmored door, and exploding inside. The driver had no time to react and neither did the driver in the rear car as it too exploded in a ball of fire. Unharmed, the middle car remained untouched by by the two explosions as the Delta operators sprung up and laid down their fire. The three of them popped off several rounds each. They pierced right through the windshield and side windows of the car, killing the driver, front seat passenger, and a passenger in the rear seat. It took less than fifteen seconds for all three passengers and the two vehicles to be killed and destroyed.

"Hands up!" SGT. Delaney yelled, his Spanish still needing work, although the other men repeated his orders. The general, baffled at what happened threw his hands into the air. One of the men opened the door and all of them kept their rifles on the general's head. "Let's go!"

"What are you doing? Who are you?" The general asked as he stepped out of the car and was thrown to the ground. They kept their weapons on him as MSG. Wilkins searched him, pulling out an old revolver and throwing it to the ground. They yanked him off and tossed an incendiary grenade into the car. Taking cover behind the half way, they shielded themselves from the blast as the middle car turned into a big fireball. By now, the residents of the village had come out to see what happened, which meant trouble for the team. They made their way down a few alleys, the general handcuffed and being dragged against his will. He had tried to talk, to yell for help but Delaney shoved a piece of duct tape on his mouth and told him, in no short way, to be quiet.

They found a utility pick-up truck eventually and, from there, piled into it.

OOC: The following was featured in War on Terrorism (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=520939).

April 13, 1976 - 7:40 [EST]
Layarteb City, New York

Monday morning rolled around with impending doom. The five special forces teams had been plucked from Venezuela and were heading back. All five of them, with their six men, had been thrown onto a C-141B Starlifter and rushed northward. It was 2,107 miles from Caracas to Layarteb City International Airport, situated on the southern coast of Long Island, in the borough of Queens and the C-141 cruised the whole way at 560 mph, making the trip in just under four hours. The flight was long enough for the thirty men of the five Delta teams to review the background prepared for them on the Red Army Faction, the Liberation Faction, their attacks, their relationship, intelligence gathered, and a brief history of what happened. For two groups that the federal government knew very little about, the brief was thick, heavy, and prepared perfectly. It was almost as if it were sitting on a shelf somewhere, dusted off, and flown down to the Delta operators before they took off on their flight. It wasn't the truth but they were prepared extremely fast, although they weren't specifically aimed at the Delta operators. The documents they had were the documents that the government itself used and just continually updated as the days went along. It showed key understanding and a grasp of what was happening but the key issues weren't resolved at all and that issue was stopping the terror and ending the two groups. It was over six hundred pages long but that wasn't a problem. Between the thirty operators, they each covered just twenty-one pages and they read them thoroughly, twice through and all of them would explain it to each other once they landed. It was a perfect way of doing it and it was more than a sufficient way of going about the problem.

When the aircraft touched down, the teams were rushed to the command post, which was situated in a downtown Manhattan warehouse. The civilian in charge of the operation was the Director of the Domestic Justice Agency and had managed to survive the bombing by being late to work that day. He would thank his daughter for the rest of his life for being particularly moody that morning before leaving for school. Now he stood with a two-way radio in one hand, his sunglasses perched on his nose, his hair grayer since the bombing, deep, bags under his eyes, a pistol at his side, and a submachine gun on his back. His jacket said "DJA" and he wasn't in the mood for nonsense anymore. He lost colleagues and friends in the explosion and he wanted revenge for them. The RAF had to pay and he said it daily, sometimes hourly. The DJA was so consumed with the RAF and the LF that it seemingly ignored the rest of its mandate. Crimes were sharply rising and already two cases against rapists, which were open and shut cases, had to be dismissed due to the ineptitude of the DJA case officers assigned to the trials. Two rapists now walked the streets, preying for their next victim. Rapists and murderers walked the streets anyway, simply because of the breakdown in the justice system. One murderer had served just three years of a life sentence and a number of rapists never got to jail. Child molestors were rampant and it seemd that the DJA was completely incapable of dealing with the issues at hand. They focused only on the terrorism and ignored criminal terrorism that preyed on unsuspecting citizens even in the most remote reachs of the Republic of Layarteb. People were angry!

The briefing was short and simple. The operators would walk the streets, keeping in touch through sophisticated microphones and earpieces that were tiny and blended in with their skin. They would walk around armed, with pistols only, simply because of the necessity of concealment but they still carried magazines everywhere they could. Each Delta team placed a designated sniper on a specific patrol route and they were armed with a bolt-action, 7.62 millimeter rifle. When the RAF and LF broke loose the snipers and Delta members would have simple rules of engagement. If the person had a gun, they were a target. Police officers would be required to wear their shields around their necks and federal officers would have to keep some form of identification visible at all times. Sure it gave them away to the enemy but friendly fire wasn't an option and, with as hectic as it was meant to be, they didn't want to take any chances. The shoot-to-kill orders came down directly from President Deveroe himself.

On Tuesday morning, the President called in the operations team of the joint task force. This included the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Delta group leader, who happened to be a major. With him came a lowely enlisted man, whom was definitely not invited. There was also the DJA Director, Marshall Haley. Several other cabinet members were present but when the delta major entered, with the lowely sergeant, everyone's eyebrows went upwards. "Major. Pleased to meet you. I don't want to be rude but this meeting is only for directors only. There will be information given that you may not want to share with everyone on your staff." President Deveroe said as he shook the major's hand after a quick salute.

"Mr. President. This man standing next to be is my executive officer of my own squad and of this operation. He may only be a sergeant but if you're his history, I suggest staying at least sixteen hundred meters away from him at all times."

"Well then. Sergeant. Pleased to meet you." They saluted and he shook his hand. "What's your name soldier?"

"Sergeant Jack Delaney sir."

"Pleased to meet you. Please. Everyone be seated." Everyone did, even the two soldiers who rigidly moved down into their seats. "Gentlemen, I trust that we are all up-to-date with the information about this week?" Everyone nodded. "Very well, then we don't have to go through it again. The RAF is a major threat and I want Good Friday to not be remembered as the Good Friday Massacre. If that happens we will have failed. Catholics all across our land will be celebrating the holy day and it is a perfect opportunity for the terrorists to attack. I would like to mandate everyone to stay in their homes but what kind of a society would we be if they dictated our daily lives. We would have failed everyone, all ninety-six million of Layarteb's citizens. What a fool's errand we undertake here.

"I trust that everyone is aware of my shoot-to-kill order. I want to explain myself. I am, sorry to say, that it has come to this level of barbarism. The RAF and LF will engage in a street war on that day and there will be casualties. I want it to end there. This will mark the day that both terrorist groups were wiped out by the Layartebian people! These terrorists represent the greatest threat to national security that this country has ever seen. That means collateral damage can be acceptable. Let me present you a scenario. If there should be an RAF terrorist with a detonator or an Uzi in his hands he could, protentially, kill as many as fifty to one hundred people, depending on what the situation is like.

"If that terrorist is in your crosshairs he must be shot. Take the shot. If there is a kid in the way. Take. The. Shot. One kid is a terrible loss but one to save one hundred is acceptable. We are dealing with an enemy that refuses to fight us properly, that refuses to fight us peacefully. The gloves have now been taken off and they are going to stay off until we have killed or imprisoned every last one of them."

"Sir? I can't agree with that order." The Major interrupted. "I could not, in good conscience, allow an innocent child to die to kill a terrorist. I cannot order my men to shoot through children or women to kill a terrorist. Sir we see it all in the time in Venezuela. The rebels will use women and children as human shields and though they are doing it against their will, in some situations, it gives the enemy a tactical advantage. My men and I have never shot through a civilian to kill a rebel, I don't care how clean or safe the shot can be. I cannot, in good conscience continue that order."

"It is not for you to decide!" President Deveroe ordered. He was a desparate man. "It is my order. Passed down to you, directly. There is no middle ground here. You are in charge, militarily, of this operation. Posse commitatus has not been suspended but you are in charge, militarily. You are an active participant in this role. Should you choose to disobey me I will see to it that you are court martialled and imprisoned for failing to follow a direct order."

"Mr. President. I do not appreciate threats at all. I do not care for your position you are still a man with a conscience. I cannot do this and I will not. I protest to this order and I will make it noted, officially, that I protest to this order and should it be that I am to be court martialled than so be it I will allow myself to be taken into custody right now but know this. My team and the twenty-nine men under my command will happily follow suit. We are not mindless murderers Mr. President. We are elite forces and as elite forces we know the difference between right and wrong. We are not crafted to obey each and every order we get and I will not obey this order."

"Then you will be court martialled!" The President roared. "Your position in this command is hereby removed."

"Very well sir. Call in the guards and I shall go. The trial will show the truth of the matter. My men are behind me." As he stood up, so did Sergeant Delaney.

"Mr. President. I concur with my commander. I will not shoot through children to accomplish a single kill."

"Mutiny!" He roared again. "That is what this is! Do you work for them? Are you terrorists?"

"No. We're soldiers." The Major replied as he stood up. "We are soldiers. If we are to kill children WE are terrorists! You are a terrorist for issuing such an order Mr. President."

"This is insubordination at its finest form." Everyone else in the room stood silent as the President and the Delta Major squared off against each other. Neither was going to budge and it would take a cooler head to prevail except that there were none in the room. The other soldier was with the Major and there was little doubt that the rest of the Deltas would be against him. The President now faced losing thirty of the finest men in the Layartebian military, the thirty men who would stop the Good Friday Massacre before it even began.

"Now gentlemen. I'm sure we can work this out. Please. Let's have a seat." The Secretary of Defense rose to say, a cooler head prevailing. It was just then that Vice-President Camilino entered the office, unaware of the preceedings.

"Gentlemen. I am sorry that I am late I..." He cut off in mid-sentence and looked over at the Delta major and the President staring face to face. "Apparently I missed more than I wished."

"Yes you did. It seems our Delta leader here doesn't agree with my order to shoot freely."

"I'm sorry?"

"Sir. I do not agree with the President's order that shooting through civilians, including children, is a necessity for this operation. I cannot concur or follow this order. If I follow that order sir I will make terrorists and butchers out of my men and I refuse to do that to them."

"Tom is this true?"

"It is. Our Delta major here doesn't believe that defense of the Republic of Layarteb is worth a few innocent lives to save millions."

"I agree with him Tom. Now let's sit down." The President was stunned. Everyone sat and the Vice President looked over at him. "If we ask them to kill civilians we are making them into terrorists. I'm sorry Tom but I just cannot agree with that order at all. I will not agree to it either."

"Thank you Mr. Vice President. It is illogical to go on such a venture. We can do our job without harming innocents. We do it daily in Venezuela. I ask for the same courtesy to be given the Layartebian people that we extend the Venezuelans."

"Very well. But you do the damn job! No fuck ups!" The President recanted, obviously stirred that the Vice President didn't agree with him. "Now let's continue. I don't care what it takes I want these attacks stopped. Major. What can you tell me about these attacks, based on what you read?"

"Based on the information presented this is going to be a major gunfight. The profiles worked on both organizations is small but it gives us key insight to what will happen. Chances are the RAF will launch an attack on something, perhaps a church or a market. Maybe a school. They want to create terror and they will do just that. The LF seemingly oppose the RAF so they'll try to prevent it although they aren't the good guys. Our best option is to ensure that neither side achieves its goals and to neutralize all threats possible. Killing them is a solution but we need interrogations. We need to take some of them alive."

"Agreed. Major, how much success do you and your men have in Venezuela?" The Vice President asked.

"When unhampered by rules of engagement, we're successful all of the time. When hampered, it drops far less."

"What do you mean Major?" The Vice President continued, seemingly stepping on the President's toes.

"Well first of all there are targets we cannot hit because the government tells us we can't but we know that they're being used by the rebels. They use schools, hospitals, and churchs to prepare their attacks but we can't go in there because it is against combat rules. Leaders within the Venezuelan government hide and protect them..."

"I will not listen to this heresay!" The President roared again. "I did not invite you back here to question my leadership in this conflict."

"And I'm not Mr. President. I'm simply answering the Vice President's question in ernest."

"Very well Major. We should end it there. Tom do you have anything else for them?"

"No. I want this to go off without a hitch or else it's your ass Major."

"That's fine sir. I accept full military responsibility for this operation. As for your civilians, I cannot accept that responsibility."

"You are in charge of this..."

"Only the military portion sir." The President was obviously steamed that a lowly major in the army was dictating policy towards him but he seemingly left it be for the time being as they left the office. He would wait until they were gone to go on a rampage about them. Once outside, the major looked at SGT. Delaney and laughed. "What a fool."

"You've got that right sir. He's going to get us all killed. Shooting women and children. He's the butcher sir."

"You're one hundred percent correct on that one Sergeant. C'mon let's get out of here before they arrest us for being human and having a conscience."

"Yes sir." The two Delta operators returned to the makeshift barracks in the command center and briefed the rest of the men on what happened with the President. Most of them laughed but they were all universally outraged at the order to shoot innocents. They weren't about that and they wouldn't go down that road even with a gun to their heads. They would have stood behind the Major if it came to it and it still might, he cautioned them, it wasn't over yet. The police were too incompetant to handle this and neither were the feds quite capable, especially in the wake of the bombing. It would be up to the Deltas who would break down into two man teams. That would put fifteen teams on the ground with six dedicated sniper teams on the roofs, armed with bolt-action M40A1 Sniper Rifles and plenty of ammunition. As for the rest of them, it was strictly .45ACP pistols. Tuesday ended as such and Friday drew twenty-four hours closer. Both the RAF and LF were preparing for the biggest day of 1976 and neither of them knew the full scope of just what was happening. None of them knew that the Deltas were now on their tails.

OOC: The following was featured in War on Terrorism (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=520939).

April 16, 1976 - 08:00 [EST]
Manhattan Island, Layarteb City

It was Good Friday, one of the holiest Catholic holidays, the day when Jesus was crucified. Churches all around the Republic of Layarteb were taking in patrons left and right. Mass attendance was expected in record numbers and no warning of the terrorist attack had filtered down to the people. The government wanted it to be a surprise to the bad guys. They wanted to capture them all and bring them to justice, not warn then and let them change their plans and tactics. SGT. Delaney and his spotter, another sergeant both took up a position on top of an apartment building. They had rigged the door shut with a Flashbang grenade. If someone came up, they would be warned by the exploding grenade. Neither of them would be facing the door and it was out of direct earshot from them so they wouldn't succomb to the effects but they would hear it go off and they would be able to act.

SGT. Delaney had his M40A1 Sniper Rifle sitting next to him as he and his men stayed high above the ground. His spotter had a Heckler & Koch G3A4 battle rifle, which fired the powerful NATO 7.62mm round versus the 5.56mm round used by the Republican military. The reasoning behind using the 7.62mm weapons in their situation was because the 5.56mm rounds had a tendency to overpenetrate and they wanted as few civilian casualties as they could. Both of them had M1911A1 .45ACP caliber pistols, enough to drop anyone with a single shot. "You ready?" He asked his spotter who nodded. Both of them had sunglasses on and boonie hats. Both of them were also chewing gun but neither blew any bubbles. "Alright. Let's get ready." He looked at a pair of pictures on the ground. One was of Justin Amar, the leader of the Liberation Faction and the other was Carl Weathers, the leader of the Red Army Faction. Both of them were the prime suspects and both of them were to be shot on sight. The government cared little about capture of these two men, it wanted both of them dead.

"Snake Two. Snake Two. Report." The radio came alive and SGT. Delaney picked up the two-way radio as the radio call ended.

"Go ahead Major. Snake Two here."

"What do you got?"

"All quiet. Nothing yet."

"Keep a sharp eye. We're all silent everywhere."

"Roger that sir." He put down the radio and looked through the scope of his rifle, which gave him a powerful, 10x zoom. He had a suppressor screwed to the front of the rifle to hide the muzzle flash and reduce the noise level. All of the Delta operators did. They waited and waited as the sun rose overhead, a warm breeze passing over the island. Then they heard the first gunshots echo from far away. It was a burst of automatic fire, possibly from an AK-74. "There we go. Keep a lookout. We've got to defend that church." SGT. Delaney and his men were tasked with defending the largest church in Layarteb City, Saint Patrick's Cathedral, located at 50th Street and Fifth Avenue. Hundres were flocking into the church, the perfect target for the revolutionary forces.

"We've got gunshots! This is Snake Four. Gunshots at our location. They're duking it out!" The radio came alive here and there as positions reported in that fighting had begun. SGT. Delaney's position was quiet, for now but as churchgoers filed in by the dozens, he couldn't help but think, when it would happen there. Police officers, both local and federal, were duking it out already with the two groups and the Delta operators, acting completely clandestinely because of the Posse Comitatus Act, engaging just as well. By 08:30, all positions would be under fire.

Civilians scurried around in panic as members of the Liberation Faction square off on the streets with members of the Red Army Faction. Nobody had yet to see either Carl Weathers or Justin Amar, the two most wanted men in Layarteb. With gunshots making up the background, Layarteb City went from its peaceful state to a frightening shooting gallery. When it was obvious that both factions were also packing hand grenades, the stakes went up significantly. The Red Army Faction planned to turn Good Friday into a bloody day by bombing churches and various other places throughout the city where civilians were expected to be present in high numbers. Because of their inherently communist tendencies, they were atheists by nature and blowing up churches didn't weigh in on their conscience.

The gunfight continued in the streets as the Liberation Faction effectively kept the Red Army Faction from detonating their bombs. Because of the way things were though, the police and federal officers engaged even those defending the city. Some would be arrested, many wounded but the bulk of them would be killed. By 09:00, the gunfighting had continued without end and bodies lined the streets. Paramedics were forced to stay back while the bullets flew around the city. By their best estimates, in just 48 minutes of fighting there were at least 400 casualties, many of them Red Army Faction members. The Delta snipers had over 50 confirmed kills by then and had yet to lose anyone themselves. On the ground, the other Delta operators made use of special tactics and extreme skill to take out their targets. They had picked up the weapons of their enemies throughout the fight and brought an equally painful amount of firepower against them. SWAT teams used assault rifles as well and tear gas was filling the air around the engagement zones.

Then, at 09:05 hours, Snake Two reported something that was needed. "Major! Major! This is Snake Two. I've confirmed Justin Amar. He is at our location," he said into the radio as he squeezed the trigger and killed a Red Army Faction bomber carrying a backpack full of dynamite. "Advise."

"Roger that Snake Two. Take him down." SGT. Delaney looked through his scope and put the crosshairs right on Amar's chest. He was hiding behind a wall, shooting out from its cover against RAF fighters. SGT. Delaney was one of the best shots and it was evident. He moved the crosshairs slightly up on Amar's body, to his head, and squeezed the trigger. The round let his barrel at 2,800 feet per second and twisted through the air until it hit Amar's forehead. He was killed instantly and the body fell limp against the wall. "Major. This is Snake Two. Target is down. I repeat VIP Two is down."

"Good job Sergeant! Now let's push this revolt back!"

"Yes sir!" The gunbattle continued and though few except for the Delta operators knew that the Liberation Faction lost its leader, everyone seemed to have a new and sudden fury about them. The RAF and LF fighters fired more accurately and more powerfully against one another and the police were becomming far more effective.

The last gunshots echoed in Layarteb City at 10:39 in the morning. The scene was gruesome and paramedics were finally allowed to survey the scene. It seemed as if the number of bodies was uncountable, purely uncountable. Civilians took the hardest toll with 829 wounded and 229 dead. Seventy-three police officers were wounded and thirteen of them were killed. Then, out of the revolutionaries, a total of 600 were wounded and in custody and another 439 were killed. Between the two groups, the RAF lost 255 people while the LF lost 184 to fatalities. The remaining 600 taken into custody or rushed to the hospital included 550 RAF members and 50 LF members. The LF was extremely hard hit. They lost their leader and 59% of their force in the single battle. No longer would they be very effective in stopping the RAF, whose forces still numbered over 6,500. None of the Delta operators were wounded or killed and they achieved the largest number of kills. Unfortunately, many stray bullets from both sides happened to find civilians. The Delta operators had killed several civilians but not by choice. Not one of their soldiers or even the federal law officers had put a civilian in their sights, even if they were in the way. None of them respected the President's order, which was what allowed Carl Weathers to escape the scene. When presented with after-action reports, the President would be furious about this, fire the special agent in charge, and put the Delta Major in his own crosshairs.

April 20, 1976 - 13:00 [AST]
Caribbean Sea

The C-141 Starlifter was making good time as it skirted along the skies at 33,000 feet. The celebrations in Layarteb City following the success of the Good Friday operation was short lived. The five Layartebian Delta teams that had been brought up, secretly, and tasked to fight alongside local and federal law enforcement personnel had proven themselves. Despite the wishes of President Deveroe to shoot even civilians in order to take down the leadership of the Red Army Faction, no Delta operators complied with that request. Despite the anger President Deveroe had for them, especially SGT. Delaney and the Delta major heading the operation, he couldn't let that piece of information come to bear. He had to tread careful waters with the Delta operators, who all made it vocally clear they did not agree with any request to engage and kill innocent civilians. The President had clearly misjudged them and now risked exposure. Fortunately for him, the Delta operators wouldn't be in Layarteb City for long.

In the early morning hours of April 20, a relative peace and calm about Venezuela, especially around Caracas, was broken by the echoes of gunfire and artillery fire. Rebel forces, whom had been moving into position for a major offensive throughout the entire winter months, had finally unleashed their fury. Mortar and artillery shells landed in downtown Caracas and over 25,000 rebel troops stormed into Caracas and an additional 50,000 more into the areas around the city. Venezuelan forces were far away and even Layartebian forces were engaged further south, where rebel forces created distractions throughout the past few days. Bogged down and unable to help, Layartebian forces were fighting numerically superior forces who had set up ambush points and used underground tunnels to travel from one battlefield to the other. Venezuelan forces, on the other hand, were capable of falling back to the capital but poor and corrupted leaders allowed most of them to come under heavy ambush. In short, Caracas was being beseiged by no fewer than 75,000 rebel troops and there were less than 25,000 Venezuelan and Layartebian troops to defend it. President Zapata had been evacuated out of the city shortly before dawn when a barrage of artillery rounds landed just fifty feet from his home. Under the protection of a pair of Delta teams, the frightened President rushed out of his house and climbed into an awaiting Huey. One of the Delta teams boarded it and they lifted off immediately. Bullets clanged against the hull of the helicopter the entire journey out of the city and a pair of rockets streaked up to meet the helicopter, both failing to connect. It had been a bumpy and stressful ride out of the city but the President was safely inside of a military bunker forty miles away in no time, guarded by elite members of the Venezuelan and Layartebian militaries.

Offshore, a Layartebian battle group saw action like it had never seen action before. Off the decks of two aircraft carriers flew A-4F Skyhawks, F-4J Phantom IIs, A-7E Corsairs, and A-6E Intruders. The fighter-bombers carried with them hard hitting iron bombs, incendiary munitions, and cluster bombs. They came down for attacks against rebel positions as forward air controllers screamed in a panicked soliloquy to themselves about what to call in when and where. Air support, though plentiful, was limited. The navy fighters were joined by air force F-4E Phantom IIs, F-105D Thunderchiefs, and F-111F Aardvarks and marine AH-1J Sea Cobras, A-4M Skyhawks, and F-4N Phantom IIs. Army units were almost completely engaged southward and their own helicopters were pummelled down in heavy fighting. The marines were, luckily, behind army lines and were fully able to maneuver to the north, where they could fight effectively against the rebel forces.

Still three hours out, the five Delta teams that had been rushed northward, to Layarteb City, were itching to get into the fight. SGT. Delaney and his team had already begun to take the intelligence documents and decipher them. Other teams were doing the same as all five of them were going to different parts of the country to fight. They would land and immediately set out for their destinations. Time wasn't on their side as the rebels sought to choke Caracas in and make it completely cut off from the outside world, where it could not receive aide from the Layartebians. The fighting was nothing short of intense and the intelligence documents showed that to be more than the case. Few people, except for the Major's team were actually looking at how well planned this had been. "Don't you think it's more than a coincidence that when five Delta teams are out of the country, along with a ton of other infantry this pops up?" MSG. Wilkins commented as he looked over a piece of paper detailing just how many Layartebian troops wouldn't be in Venezuela.

"No. It's definitely planned. This war goes all the way back to Layarteb City and President Deveroe. Our own generals are probably in league with whomever is orchestrating this down here." The Major answered, reading over a piece of paper that listed a short conversation between a pair of rebel commanders. The paper revealed nothing important and he crumbled it up and tossed it on the floor along with a dozen other pieces of paper of equal unimportance.

"That's quite an accusation." SGT. Delaney answered, still naive in his understanding of the scope of the war, despite all that he had seen. "Our own generals?"

"Jack? You're definitely too naive for this job." SFC. Steel answered as he picked up a piece of paper. It talked about a few rebel troops movements and it was of semi-importance.

"Maybe I am but this still doesn't make much sense to me. Of course they've got leaks in our military. There's no doubt about it but how in the hell are we supposed to prove our own upper echelon doesn't want to win this war?"

"Easy." The Major responded, although nobody expected such an answer and all of them looked up at him, waiting for his explanation. "We interrogate them." They shared a laugh, wishing for the opportunity. "When we're down we're going to be moving out to this sector here," he pointed to a spot on the map in southwestern Caracas. "We suspect that this is where the rebels have their forward command center. Based on radio transmissions, the signal is the strongest here so we're going to find it and put a stop to it. Satchel charges, all of you. I want to make sure we don't have to come back for this and I'm not going to rely on the damn flyboys to make this one happen. They're stacked up all over the place providing close air support and that's there mission. We could call in a precision strike but even that I don't trust more than us with a few pounds of C4.

"It seems to me that, not only was this orchestrated and well planned by the rebels and our own traitorous allies in Venezuela but that we had better watch ourselves. Jack can tell you. Deveroe had nothing nice to say about us, regardless of our performance but he was treading a fine line and didn't want any of us letting it slip that he wanted civilians to be shot through. I tell you, I never trusted him to begin with but after meeting him, I don't doubt there's a price on our heads from our own leaders. We're making too much headway here, pissing off too many people, and getting to the bottom of too many leads. Sooner or later it is going to come out that our own politicians are not only neck deep in this clusterfuck but are responsbile for the deaths of our own brothers. Is that understood?" He was whispering now. "So watch yourselves out there. We're too valuable to this war to go down because of something stupid. Mark my words, we're going to get to the bottom of this sooner than later and it won't look pretty."

April 22, 1976 - 05:00 [AST]
Southwestern Caracas, Venezuela

Mortar rounds screamed through the air, waking every one of the soldiers up before they even crashed into the street. Caracas had been under seige now for two days and Layartebian forces were holding their own, despite taking heavy casualties by the numerically superior rebel force. Explosions had shaken the city all night long and a platoon of Marines were holed up in a ramshackle department store in the southwestern corner of the city. They had been put there hours earlier to provide cover fire for three Delta and two Rangers teams, which moved in and attacked the rebel headquarters. The attack was not successful though and the combined forces were effectively pinned down in their positions throughout the southwest corner of the city. Layartebian forces, though holding their own, couldn't sustain themselves out there forever. Ammunition drops were sparse and soldiers had to conserve their ammunition and made their shots count.

As helicopters circled overhead, mainly Marine Sea Cobras and Hueys, the men on the ground tried to get what sleep they could. Few had been able to sleep since the fighting started and they took advantage of ever lull that came about. Until a few minutes earlier, they were in one of them. The mortar rounds had been poorly sighted but they still landed just thirty meters from the Marine positions. Pinned down across the city was SGT. Delaney and the Delta team that was originally set to attack the command center. Without armored support, the Marines weren't as effective a fighting force as they could be and, on foot, they had done well. Unfortunately, they hadn't done well enough. Their positions were known to the rebels and so were their tactics. Realizing this, the Delta Major had changed the whole battleplan just minutes before they went into battle. It saved the lives of over a hundred men. Unfortunately, it left them pinned down now. Mortar rounds were just one threat they faced. Friendly artillery had already landed inside of the safe zones twice and injured four men, although none critically.

As fragments flew through the air at high velocity they ripped through the buildings, passing over the heads of every Layartebian soldier hunkered down. The calls of "Wake up!" echoed throughout the buildings. The Delta operators across the street were already awake, planning their breakout when the rounds shattered the silence of the night. What came next was more than expected at this point in time. Rebel forces, using the mortar attacks to hide their movements began a fierce counterattack against the pinned down Layartebian troops. It was their gravest mistake. The three hundred rebels in the sector converged now on the Layartebian positions. Though weary, the Marines, Rangers, and Delta operators were battle hardened, dug-in, and now rested. They had plenty of ammunition still to fend off the attack. As the rebels converged on the Layartebian positions, the battle intensified, dramatically.

Radios, which had once been silent, became enthralled with communication as the Rangers, Marines, and Deltas called out rebel positions and movements. The highest ranking officer there was the Delta Major, who was now calling the shots. He ordered maneuvers and put his own team on the front against the rebels. He ordered SGT. Delaney to take up a position high above them, in the third floor of their building, an office of some sort. Armed with an M14A1 rifle, SGT. Delaney was the designated marksman for the team that outing and it meant he was taking the walk. As rounds flew throughout the buildings, he threw his rifle onto his back and unholstered his M1911A1 sidearm. He had a full magazine of seven rounds loaded and he made a dash for the stairwell, three rooms away. Because time was of the necessity, he couldn't simply crawl, he had to run. Though he kept low, there was no way to hide his movements and rounds tore through the air, looking for him. He managed to avoid them as he ran from room to room, towards the stairwell. Unfortunately, his luck ran out there.

As he reached the third room, his pistol still in his hands, unfired, the hammer cocked back, a spray of machine gun fire ripped into the drywall around him. Sheetrock plaster turned to a fine, white dust and he knew that it was time to move. He darted forward, towards the stairs when another spray of machine gun fire ripped through the air. The gunner was experienced but he wasn't tracking Delaney enough to get a kill shot. Even still, as bullets ricochetted all around the room, one of them caught him in the arm. In a yell of pain, SGT. Delaney slammed down into the ground and slid a few feet behind a counter. The bullets continued to pepper throughout the room and he could hear the rebels advancing on his position. The Marines watched, helplessly, as the Delta sniper was pinned down, unable to fight back from his position. Few of them believed he was even alive after the machine gun burst. They got their answer when a pair of rebels, cautiously approaching the counter were shot dead and knocked over by the force of two rounds of .45ACP ammunition. SGT. Delaney had moved from behind the counter to immediately and raised his pistol. As both of the rebels approached, AK-74 assault rifles in their hands, he fired. His rounds were aimed at the one viable target the rebels presented, their heads. Instantly dead, the red mist of blood filled the air as SGT. Delaney pulled his rifle from his back and shouldered it. Sitting against the back wall, he leaned over, to his right, his rifle in his hand, and his eyes staring down his scope. He found his target moments later and squeezed his tigger in a fluid motion. The gunner saw this but too late as the 7.62 millimeter round borrowed into his chest and knocked him down from his emplaced position. The Marines cheered as SGT. Delaney stood and darted up the stairs, his pistol back in his hands. Momenets later he was on the third floor and the rebels were now seriously in trouble.

"I'm set. Commencing my attack." SGT. Delaney said as he propped the rifle barrel on the windowsill and squeezed off round after round, knocking down advancing rebel soldiers. Rounds slammed into the exterior of the building but none of them had the accuracy to deter him from his mission. After he emptied the first magazine of twenty rounds, he reloaded and realized that the Major had been asking him a question on the radio for the duration of his engagement.

"Sergeant. Sergeant!" The Major repeated.

"Go. Reloading."

"Sergeant. Are you hit?"

"Negative. A-okay."

"Sergeant. Did you take a round back there on the first floor?"

"Negative. All is well. Rebels advancing north of our position to our rear flank. I have no shot. Moving into position. I'm going to need more ammunition soon, I've only got another six magazines, including the one I have in here now."

"We're running dry ourselves Sergeant. Make due with what you have."

"Roger that." He moved his position and ran through a few rooms to get to the rear of the building. Now, he was facing the rear of the building and he could see about ten rebels trying to move to their rear flank. He propped his rifle on the windowsill and put the crosshairs over his first target, the leader of the group. He fired off a round and its trajectory was true, killing the rebel right away. The other nine dropped and tried to hide behind anything they could use to shield them but it wasn't enough. After two more of them were shot by Delaney, they finally began to back track. They had been too easily deterred and SGT. Delaney didn't like it. "Sir. Sir."

"Go Sergeant."

"Rebels to the rear. Ten start, three down. Seems like they're backing off."

"That was too easy Sergeant."

"You're telling me. Get a claymore back there or something."

"Roger that." Then, SGT. Delaney found out his answer and suddenly the rebels reappeared, this time with a shoulder fired rocket launcher, an RPG-7.

"HOLY SHIT!" Delaney yelled as he fired again. His round struck the man holding the launcher and he fired off two more rounds getting another of the rebels, who went running for the rocket launcher. "They've got an RPG!"

"Roger that." The Major was in a bind himself. He couldn't send a man to the rear to take out them, he had to leave it up to Delaney and his rifle. As the rebels, now numbering five tried to get a hand on the rocket launcher, Delaney realized that it was all a diversion. Eyeing the rocket launcher, he put a round through it and caused it to explode, possibly killing the other rebel soldiers. He ran back to the front and listened as he ran to the sound of the machine gun roaring up again. He barely got to the window in time to take out the gunner and the loader. He put a few more rounds into the air, taking out more of the rebels. He was doing well at his position and reloaded another magazine quickly. By himself, he had taken out thirty-eight rebel soldiers, including the two machine gunners.

He put in his third magazine and barely had time to react himself. A rocket streamed up towards him and though it was well aimed, it was fired from far enough way to be inaccurate. Delaney, seeing the launch dropped his magazine and rifle and dove out of the room. He landed in the hallway and in just enough time as the rocket struck the window and exploded, sending shrapnel and chunks of brick all over the place. Smoke filled the room and everyone who saw it, again, wrote him off but he had survived. Fragments had cut through his exposed skin particularly on his arms and along his right cheek. Bleeding, wounded, and already wounded from the bullet, he crawled back into the room, coughing and trying not to breathe in the smoke and dust to retreive his rifle. Though covered in dust, it was in working order, though the magazine had not been loaded properly. He pulled it out, put it back in, yanked back the bolt, and sat up, his sights aimed throug the smoke and dust. The muzzle flash from his rifle made every Marine gasp in awe. Delaney emptied the third magazine into twenty rebels, killing all of them with a single round before he loaded a fourth magazine. He was running low now and his ears were ringing.

"Sergeant. Sergeant!" A voice yelled over the radio but he could barely make it out, his ears ringing from the explosion and the gun blasts. "Sergeant!"

"Go." He repeated, loudly, unaware of the volume of his voice.

"You whole?"

"Looks like it. Fourth magazine now. I've only got two left after this one. You'd better get me some ammo up here."

"Don't think we can. We're moving out. We're taking that machine gun."

"I'll cover. Best advance is through the alleyways to the east."

"Cover us." The Major repeated as the battle intensified.

April 22, 1976 - 05:30 [AST]
Southwestern Caracas, Venezuela

SGT. Delaney popped off two more shots as the Delta operators moved into position. The radio echoed with static as the Marines called out orders and moved to blocking positions. They had taken heavy fire by the rebels but had no new fatalities, thanks largely in part to SGT. Delaney's effort in drawing their attention. "Sergeant. Sergeant." A voice echoed onto the radio and SGT. Delaney did not immediately recognize it but he had a feeling they were calling him.

"Go."

"Sergeant. Corporal Adams, Marines. I've got a couple of magazines here of 7-6-2."

"Well what took you so long? How many?"

"Eight."

"Good. Get the fuck up here right now!"

"Roger that." SGT. Delaney squeezed off another round, sending the bullet right through the brain of a rebel totting a light machine gun. The ground shook all around them as more mortars crashed down on the street, narrowly missing the young coporal and his cargo. The Marine dashed into the building where the Delta operatives had left under a hail of gunfire, which peppered the ground all around him. He had run fast and breathing heavily when he got into the building. He paused there as he tried to catch his breath.

"Corporal? You going to give me that ammo or suck on a lollipop down there?"

"Sorry I just..."

"Move it Corporal!" SGT. Delaney popped off another shot and took down another rebel with a heavy weapon as the Delta team moved through a few back alleys. They were going to hit the gun nest from the rear, where most of the rebels were. SGT. Delaney loaded his second to last magazine quickly thereafter and slowly chose his shots. "Corporal. It's getting lonely up here. Where the hell are you?" The Corporal was crawling through the last room now, almost about to hit the stairs when a burst of machine gun fire ripped into the side of the building in a careful pattern that went from SGT. Delaney's window downward. Diving for cover, SGT. Delaney was unable to return fire as dozens of ammunition poured against the building. "HURRY IT UP CORPORAL!"

"He's got me pinned!" The Corporal wasn't lying, the gunner had his sighted and was laying down quick bursts keeping both of them down in rapid succession. "He's got me pinned!"

"Hold there!" He yelled as another burst tore through the windows. SGT. Delaney tried to pop his head up but a quick burst kept his head down again. "SON OF A BITCH!" He yelled out as he kept his head down and his rifle in his hands. He squeezed the microphone on his neck. "Need a little help here."

"We're pinned."

"Roger." He had to think fast and he did. He didn't have any fragmentation grenades left but he did have a single smoke grenade. Though it would completely obscure his vision, it would obscure the vision of the gunner too, giving him the possibility of a shot, even though he wouldn't necessarily be able to see. Without another choice, he yanked out the pin, maneuvered himself on the floor, lying down, so his body was facing the window, and, with all his strength, heaved the grenade down the street. It clanged on the ground and belched white smoke. He would wait a few seconds for the smoke to build before he popped up again and, he spent the time with his eyes closed, visualizing the position of the gunner. A few seconds later, he popped back up, sitting up, the rifle against his shoulder, and the barrel resting on the windowsill. In a perfect position, he clicked back onto his microphone. "Corporal. Fire off three shots towards the gunner and run up the stairs, when I say."

"Sergeant?"

"When I say!"

"Roger."

"Wait. Wait." He kept the crosshair pointed at where he suspected the machine gunner to be and waited now. "GO!" He yelled and Corporal did as he was ordered. He fired off three shots, blindly and ran for the stairs. The machine gunner, blind, lit up his weapon and the muzzle blast lit up the smoke. "Got you!" SGT. Delaney said to himself as he sighted the blast, adjusted his aim, and fired off a single round. Milliseconds later, the gun went silent and the Marine corporal reached the top of the stairs. "Stay down!" SGT. Delaney yelled as he kept his eyes on the smoke, waiting for another to take his place. None would. The Corporal's blind shots killed the loader and, with the gunner down, the smoke spreading, and the Delta operators moving through the last alleyway, they were safe. "Alright. Get in here and stay down!" SGT. Delaney backed away from the window and met the corporal at the doorway, both of them lying on the ground. "Good job Corporal. Good job!"

"Nice shot Sarge," the young corporal said as he handed over the ammunition.

"What was your name again?"

"Adams Sarge."

"Adams. How long you've been in?"

"This is my eighth month."

"Good. What is your specialty?"

"Communications."

"Communications? Are you kidding me? You ran all the way here with that?" He was silent. "You a good marksman?"

"Yes I am."

"You're my new spotter. How many rounds you got in that?" He pointed to the M16 the corporal was holding.

"I've got six magazines plus this one. I think I've got twenty bullets in this one."

"Roger that. Good. Major. How's it going down there?"

"Could use a little help."

"On it. Corporal let's go." SGT. Delaney, now with eight new magazines, plus the one and a half he still had, darted towards the stairs, the Corporal following him. When they got to the bottom of the stairs, they moved up against a part of the wall and kept back. Carefully, SGT. Delaney peaked around the corner at the machinegun nest to find it unoccupied. "Corporal. We're going to be moving soon. Make sure you're with me. You don't utter a word unless I say so and never above a whisper. Is that clear?"

"Yes."

"You got any grenades?"

"Two frags and a smoke."

"Good. Give me a frag." He took the grenade from the Marine and both of them prepared for the run. "You see it, you shoot it. Don't stop!"

"Got it." SGT. Delaney took off running and darted down the street, his rifle out in front of him the whole time as they ran towards an opposite building. The building was long and ran the entire length of the cross street, which meant that it put them in a perfect position to cover the Delta operators and the Marines, who were moving now too. Once inside of the building, it was a different story. The sounds from the street were dulled but still loud enough to shake the air. They moved up a flight of stairs to the second floor and moved down a long hallway, parallel to the street. SGT. Delaney had thrown his rifle around his back and pulled out his pistol, needing its small size for the short range combat he would face in the hallway. The Marine, on the other hand, only had his rifle and that was pressed hard against his shoulder as he looked every which way. He listened hard as they walked past the multitude of doors, listening for any sound of life but they were all silent. If anyone was in there, they were hiding and keeping as quiet as possible. They wasn't the building the rebels were expected to be in but SGT. Delaney would not be reckless either.

Finally, at the end of the hallway, they reached another flight of stairs and ascended it to the third floor. There were six floors in the building and they wanted to go up higher but the stairs weren't anywhere to be found. At the same time, they couldn't be caught in the middle of a hallway either, that was just poor positioning. "Corporal. We've got to find a set of stairs. Be on the look out."

"Okay." They moved back through the hallways and finally came to what they needed but they were in trouble. "How's that going to work?"

"Boost me up." SGT. Delaney looked up at the fourth floor. There was no stairs but there was a gaping hole in the floor big enough for him to get through. Unable to reach it, he would need the corporal to boost him up to the floor so he could get a grip and hoist himself up to the floor. The Marine did exactly that and SGT. Delaney slowly brought his head up to the floor hole, his pistol still in his hand. He scanned the floor quickly and saw that it was safe. With brute force, he pulled himself right up and looked around again, his pistol still in front of him, ready to be fired. Both of them were silent for a good amont of time before SGT. Delaney declared it safe and reached down with his hand. Using more strength and the help of the corporal, he got him to get his grip on the floor, where he pulled him up, and they proceeded forward. SGT. Delaney and the corporal maneuvered around a few corners and soon enough found the fifth floor stairs. They ascended and that was about as high as they could get.

As the bullets pounded outside between the Deltas and the Marines who were exchanging gunfire with no fewer than a hundred and eighty rebels. The Rangers had already moved to a different blocking position to the rear where they were engaging rebels as well, having split their force in half with the other half going for the mortar nests. "Just a few more minutes Major. We're moving into position now."

"Roger that. Taken your ass long enough."

"Sorry, we got held up." They moved up to a door, which would lead into some sort of apartment or room that was directly looking the way they needed. Both of them stacked up against the side of the door and listened before they did anything. "Alright, follow me. Keep that weapon up and make sure you don't pop anybody unless they're a rebel asshole. Got it?"

"Yes." The Marine was nervous and it showed but SGT. Delaney didn't have time to give him a pep talk. With his pistol in his hands, pointed down, he backed off the wall, raised up his pistol, and slammed his foot into it just above the knob and lock. The wooden frame shattered into a thousands of small fragments as the door banged inward, nearly ripping itself off its hinges.

SGT. Delaney moved inward, his pistol in front of his, aiming down the sights, his finger on the trigger, ready to squeeze. They walked into a living room, which had a room off to the left and a bathroom immediately to the right. As they entered, SGT. Delaney, using just hand signals, ordered the corporal to check the bathroom. He did as SGT. Delaney moved into the next room, a kitchen that was also empty, or so it seemed. The food was still warm and SGT. Delaney heard something, coming from the other room, behind a door that was locked, from the inside. He backed away and came to the corporal, who was watching the rear. "We've got some people in here. Watch the front."

"Roger." They whispered and SGT. Delaney went back to the door. With a hard kick, he snapped it clear off its hinges as it burst inward, the deadbolt breaking off in the process and the frame shattering. With his pistol raised, he ventured into the darkened room, only to stare down in the corner.

"Aw shit," he said to himself as he began to lower his pistol.

April 22, 1976 - 05:50 [AST]
Southwestern Caracas, Venezuela

"Corporal. How's your Spanish?" SGT. Delaney yelled as he backed off a little bit from five people, huddling for safety in the corner of a room.

"Good."

"Get in here."

"Roger that." He came in with shock in his face too. All of the intelligence they had reported that this particular sector of Caracas had been evacuated weeks earlier. That there was still a family living there was definitely a major problem to their using the apartment as a base of fire. They couldn't simply find another one either as this one offered the best position. "¿Están bien ustedes?" [Are you okay?] He asked as he looked at the five frightened people that spanned possibly three generations. Of the five of them, three of them were children and the fourth was barely in her twenties. The mother, a woman of presumably forty to fifty protected them as she nodded that she wasn't. "Usted necesita salir de aquí." [You need to get out of here.] Again, she shook her head she protected the three smaller children, two boys and a girl, none of them over the age of five. They looked up at the two Layartebian soldiers, their eyes wide, unblinking, curious who they were. "Es demasiado peligroso aquí. Los rebeldes han atacado la ciudad." [It's too dangerous here. The rebels have attacked the city.]

"Yo no sé donde ir. Somos atrapados aquí. Tenemos miedo." [I don't know where to go. We are trapped here. We are afraid.] Her voice trembled as the elder girl, who was maybe eighteen or nineteen, at the most, began to cry. "Oímos historias de soldados. Sus soldados. Historias horribles. A mujeres. Los campamentos para refugiados repugnan. Oímos demasiadas cosas malas. Queremos estar a salvo tan permanecemos aquí." [We heard stories of soldiers. Your soldiers. Horrible stories. To women. The refugee camps are disgusting. We hear too many bad things. We want to be safe so we stay here.]

"What'd she say?" SGT. Delaney asked listening to her speak quickly, too fast for him to understand.

"She said that she's afraid. They don't know where to go. They've heard a lot of stories about soldiers, I guess raping the women." He replied back. "Nosotros no le doleremos." [We're not going to hurt you.]

"¡MENTIROSO!" [LIAR!] The young girl screamed. She obviously had a reason, her voice told it with such conviction. SGT. Delaney understood that word and he realized they were wasting too much time.

"We've got a problem here. They're wasting too much of our time," the radio buzzed with the Major's voice. "One minute sir. We've got a situation here. A trapped family. Bunch of little kids. Wait one." He unclicked the microphone and went back to the Corporal. "We have to either keep them in here and get them out when we're done or what. But we can't risk them giving up our position. We can't let them leave yet. They have to be kept here. I'm going to need the kitchen window. You have to bring these people into the living room, keep them quiet, and watch the door. None of them leave until I'm done. Is that understood?"

"Yes. And if they won't move?"

"You have a rifle don't you?"

"Sergeant?"

"Scare them with it. Now hurry up." He left the bedroom and went to the kitchen. The girl began to cry now and the small children, fearing something unknown began to cry as well.

"Por favor no nos duela." [Please don't hurt us.] The old woman pleaded but the Corporal nudged her off, he wasn't there to hurt them.

"Usted tiene que venir conmigo. No es seguro. Entramos la sala de recibo. Si no yo tengo que cerrarle aquí dentro." [You have to come with me. It isn't safe. We're going into the living room. Or else I have to lock you in here.] They didn't budge, fearing that they were going to be brought out for an execution. In the background, SGT. Delaney was rushing him along as he set up in the window and adjusted his scope. "Usted tiene que apurar. Necesitamos protegerle de los rebeldes. De los tipos malos. Usted tiene que venir en la sala de recibo. Nosotros no le doleremos." [You have to hurry. We need to protect you from the rebels. From the bad guys. You have to come into the living room. We won't hurt you.]

"Todos dicen eso. ¡Usted es los tipos malos! ¡Usted nos matará!" [They all say that. You are the bad guys! You are going to kill us!] The young girl yelled again.

"Any day now Corporal. We've only got all day."

"Usted tiene que apurar. Vayamos ahora. Si no yo tengo que dolerle conseguirle ahí adentro. Usted estará a salvo ahí adentro." [You have to hurry. Let's go now. Or else I'm going to have to hurt you to get you in there. You will be safe in there.] Again, they didn't budge and he pointed his weapon at them but still, they were too scared to move.

"To hell with it Corporal. Lock them in. We've got to go. Now." SGT. Delaney had walked away from the rifle and quickly rigged a small booby trap at the front door, with a tripwire. It connected to the grenade that he had taken from the Marine corporal and, if tripped, it would explode inside of the hallway, killing anyone inside of it and seriously wounding everyone else behind them. He jumped back into the kitchen as the Marine was coming out of the room. He had a displeased look on his face. "You got a problem? No? Good. They're a liability. Now take this cord here," he handed him the cord to a lamp that he cut with a knife and looked over at the door. "Tie one end to the door knob and the other to the refrigerator. They won't be able to get out and get a jump on me."

"What if they get shot in there?"

"Tell them to get down." He picked up the rifle and peered down the sights now as the rebels were beginning to set up their own ambush positions, unaware that they were being observed.

"Usted tiene que bajar y esconder. Ellos estarán disparando." [You have to get down and hide. They are going to be shooting.] The Marine yelled at them, opening the door just to let them know to be cautious. Whether or not they heeded his advice, he didn't know. He quickly tied the doorknob to the refrigerator, preventing it from being opened. "Done."

"Alright. Major. This is Young Gun. We're green."

"Roger that. Recon."

"We've got about two dozen rebels in a red brick building immediately to your southwest. Heavily armed. Maybe another dozen across the street. The bulk of the force is concentrated in the shops down on the main street, parallel to your position, a block away. The hotel looks like its got a few snipers in it. That's priority one." He gave out the enemy positions and waited for the advance to begin. "Alright. You ready in there? Anything comes in, you put a bullet in it. I've got a grenade rigged out there with a tripwire so if you hear that go off, get ready. No Claymores to be had so we've only got that."

"Roger."

April 24, 1976 - 19:30 [AST]
20 mi Southwest of Caracas, Venezuela

A convoy of Layartebian armored vehicles and trucks were moving out of southwestern Caracas. Despite the advances of the Marines and Special Forces soldiers over the previous two days, the Layartebians and the government just could not hold the ground anymore. Rebel forces had swarmed into the southwestern sector of the city by the tens of thousands and they benefited from some sort of support from the local population, even if it was tacit approval. The Layartebians and nationalist forces stood little to no chance now and were forced out of the sector. Despite this, the Layartebian forces alone dealt significantly more casualties than they suffered and covered their retreat properly. Helicopter gunships and fighter-bombers overhead pounded rebel positions and protected the rear flank of the evacuating forces. Unsuccessful, they had a long drive out of Caracas to the most pro-governmental and pro-Layartebian area of Venezuela, Valencia. That was where the President came from and the town was fiercely loyal to the government and its allies. It would never fall to rebel forces, that was a guarantee. The roads to Valencia were packed with Layartebian vehicles. Mobile anti-aircraft units, mainly M163 Vulcan Air Defense Systems, M247 Sergeant Yorks, Redeye teams, and M42 Dusters all protected the convoy from the threat of both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. The newest Layartebian armored vehicles, M2 Bradleys and M1 Abrams' led the way. Heavily armored, the vehicles were nearly unmatched in the world, especially against the largely inferior equipment the rebels possessed. However, their best weapon was their ability to stage ambush attacks. The Layartebians were careful about this tactic and, as vehicles moved southward, out of Caracas, vehicles in the lead carefully searched for ambush situations. Reconnaissance helicopters flying overhead did the same, scouting for rebel positions along the route. They had already blasted several of them to smithereens with unguided 2.75" rockets and TOW missiles.

The rear of the convoy would be taken up by four vehicles, consisting of two Delta teams, the Major and his team taking up the rear. Their four vehicles were all the newest tactical truck in service with the Layartebian Army, the M998 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) or Hummer for short. Though they were unarmored, they offered exponentially better protection than the M151 Jeep and they were entirely enclosed. In addition, they were armed with roof turrets that were equipped either with the M240B or M240G Light Machine Gun, the M2HB Heavy Machine Gun, or the Mark 19 Grenade Launcher. The four vehicles had three M2HB Heavy Machine Guns and one Mark 19 Grenade Launcher, which was mounted on the roof of the Major's HMMWV. SGT. Delaney's carried an M2HB. The six men from the Major's team piled into the rear two HMMWVs with the Major and SGT. Delaney driving. One man took cover on the roof weapons and the other sat in the front seat, his rifle hanging out of the window. Both the Major and SGT. Delaney both unholstered their pistols and picked up the rear of the convoy, behind a series of M113A2 Armored Personnel Carriers. Keeping at a steady speed of approximately 45 miles per hour, they were racing out of the city, taking small arms fire from every direction. The gunners had no vacation manning the high powered weapons and they shot left, right, forward, and behind, at dozens of rebels hidden amongst the brush and trees alongside the jungle road.

They had only left the city an hour earlier, none of them having gotten a bit of rest since they landed several days prior. They had all been resupplied several times with ammunition and, amongst the two teams, they took down hundreds of rebel soldiers throughout the southwestern part of the city. With the help of the Layartebian Marines, they were the only unit within the city that could post successes in battle. The other units had all done nothing but lost ground. The Major's team alone was the most talked about team throughout the command structure. They had repelled three full offensives into their sector and beat the enemy forces back past their starting positions. SGT. Delaney alone had two hundred and ninety-six kills with his M14A1 rifle and at least another two dozen or more with his pistol. On the morning of April 22 alone, he racked up over a hundred kills, firing from various positions alongside a road infested with rebel forces. He had been, during the course of the engagement, shot twice. The first round came from the machine gunner just after 05:00 hours, when he was racing to an elevated position to suppress the rebel positions. It had gone through his right arm and exited out, a superficial wound that he immediately got under control by one of the oldest tricks. He picked up the assault rifle of a rebel he had killed at point blank range, pulled a round from the magazine, and yanked out the bullet. He poured a little of the gunpowder on the wound and lit it with a lighter. It stung and burned terribly but it closed the wound immediately. The second round wasn't so forgiving. He had been firing on rebel forces as the Marines and Deltas pushed forward, eliminating them by the dozens when a sniper caught him clean the shoulder. Again, the bullet exited and, again, he applied the same treatment; however, his right arm was now in serious pain. He was wounded and lost a good bit of blood in the two wounds but he continued to fight. Throughout the course of the long battle with rebel forces, he suffered various other wounds, mainly from fragments and, when he climbed into the HMMWV, he was more than exhausted. His efforts though, saved the entire group of Marines and his Delta brothers, something that everyone had taken notice of during that battle.

They had been driving for about twenty-five minutes already, having engaged at least a hundred rebels along the way. They were only about five miles from Los Teques and they still had at least fifty to sixty miles to go before they reached Valencia. They would reach friendly territory soon enough though and be safe once they got within a few miles of Lake Valencia but that was still about thirty-five miles away. At their pace, they would reach it in about forty-five minutes unless they were slowed down by rebel forces. Los Teques had been costly for them to drive through. Rebel forces had been everywhere and rounds peppered their vehicles. Though none of them were hit by the rounds, they had expended a great deal of their own ammunition killing the rebel forces as they drove. As each M2HB fired off bursts of dozens of rounds against rebels, striking them and tearing them to pieces, their weapons blasted aimlessly, sometimes rockets firing clear into the air. It was a sight to see and had been harmless so far, that was, of course until they moved further down the road. The rebels had set up a hasty ambush site with several LAW rockets and about three dozen men. The HMMWVs stood no chance. The lead two HMMWVs blew up before anyone could react, the byproduct of being struck by a total of five rockets, three of them LAWs, which tore through the unarmored hull of the vehicles. The Major, driving the third vehicle, immediately slammed on the brakes and yanked the vehicle out of the line of fire as a rocket streaked past it, the gunner on top, SFC. Steel firing off a pair of 40mm grenades, both of them exploding at the feet of the rebel rocket men, blasting them to small pieces and fine mist.

A dozen or so rounds ripped right through both HMMWVs, one of them catching the Major clear in the arm, failing to exit. He slammed the throttle and yanked the wheel of the HMMWV hard to get out of the way of another rocket while SFC. Steel fired off another three round burst of grenades, all of them destroying their targets. The rebels fired off more rounds towards the vehicles and the Major again turned hard, slamming on the brakes this time and dismounting the vehicle. SGT. Delaney put his own vehicle in a good firing position and jumped out as well. Both SFC. Jackson and SSG. Wilson did the same, firing off at the rebel soldiers now taking cover against the Delta operators. The Major immediately ran up to the closer burning HMMWV and saw that nobody was alive within it, he returned fire in the process. SGT. Delaney, providing cover fire for all of them, watched as the Major ran up to the second HMMWV to find the same results. Everyone inside of them, eight Delta operators, were dead, killed instantly by the rocket explosions and a high volume of small arms fire into the two vehicles, even after the explosions. As the Major yelled back, "They're dead!" A round sniped through the air and caught him hard in the leg, causing him to drop to the ground right away.

SGT. Delaney, seeing the whole thing, yelled out as he ran to cover the Major, "He's hit. Cover me!" SGT. Delaney ran up to him and took a knee, firing off a few rounds at the rebel who had shot the Major, killing him in the process. "You alright?"

"In the leg. I'll be fine. Let's get the fuck out of here."

"You got it. Best keep firing."

"You got it!"

SGT. Delaney looked back at the SSG. Wilson and SFC. Jackson, "Get him. I'll cover you!"

"You got it." He barked orders as, behind him, the sound of gunfire from the M2HB and the Mark 19 echoed loudly on the battlefield. SGT. Delaney fired off more rounds from his M14A1 rifle and reloaded another magazine before the final round left the chamber, allowing him uninterrupted and continuous fire. The Major, being dragged free by the two Deltas, who were also firing their weapons, continued to fire his pistol at rebels that he could see. The thick smoke from the two burning HMMWVs obscured their vision on the battlefield and the immense heat from the fires distorted the air all around them. The Major was pulled into his HMMWV and SFC. Jackson took control of the wheel as SGT. Delaney backed up towards his own vehicle, under the cover of the M2HB, firing at rebel soldiers all around them. He reloaded once more before he climbed into the vehicle, shoved the transmission into drive, and floored the accelerator. They bumped over the uneven ground and followed behind the Major's HMMWV, moving at over 70 miles per hour in no time. Though normally governed at 55 mph, their HMMWVs had been modified by them, removing the governors. They could move at around 70 mph at their weight. They were out of the ambush zone just a few minutes later and, eventually, arrived at the forward command center, taking a few additional rounds here and there, none deadly enough to hurt anyone or slow them down. The Major would require minor, battlefield surgery to remove the bullet from his arm and the shell fragments from his leg. He would be sewn up right away and wouldn't miss the next engagement.

May 4, 1976 - 11:00 [AST]
Caracas, Venezuela

"Eyes on. Target is acquired. Awaiting order." SSG. Delaney said as he looked through the scope of his M40A1 rifle and put the crosshairs right over his target, a Venezuelan general with the nationalist forces. Since the removal of the nationalist and Layartebian forces from over half of Caracas, the Major and his Delta team had gone on to uncover a web of lies and deceit that went to the highest office in the country. Just the day before, they had executed three Venezuelan commanders, after an exhaustive interrogation in the middle of Caracas, deep into enemy held territory. The Delta team had snuck back into the city early on the morning of April 28 and had operated within its confines since. The three commanders had all confessed to receiving treasonous orders from this particular general, who happened now to be in the sights of SSG. Delaney's sniper rifle. They carried out those orders and let rebel forces come into the city, ordering their own men to stand down while the rebels poured into Caracas. Over two hundred Layartebian soldiers had died trying to defend Caracas and an additional eighty-four more in the retreat.

April 27 had been the last day SSG. Delaney had talked to his fiancee back home. He had been promoted to Staff Sergeant the day earlier and awarded several medals. He had received a Purple Heart for his wounds, a Silver Star for his gallantry rescuing the Major, and he had been awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his valor, gallantry, and bravery fighting during the three day battle in southwestern Caracas. He was also being investigated for a possible Medal of Honor for his heroism involved throughout the battle. He had, after all, saved the lives of dozens upon dozens of Layartebian Marines, Rangers, and Delta operators throughout the course of the battle. His heroics on that particular morning of April 22 were the prime motivating force behind his recommendation, which came not only from three Marines but also eleven Rangers, who he saved earlier that morning from an RPG attack. He had told her he loved her, that he was avoiding the bullets, and that he would be home soon, so they could be married. Hours later, he was crawling into a sewer underneath the city of Caracas following the Major. They used their night vision devices in the sewers but not very effectively. There was little light and what light did exist was few and far between, despite them being only a few feet underneath the surface. Manhole covers and curb grates provided the best source of light from the moon and stars overhead. They couldn't see very far and neither could their enemy, unless they had a flash light, which would announce their presence for further than the light's radius.

They had reached the surface only an hour later when they were underneath a bank in Caracas. The bank had been attacked by various smart munitions during the course of the three day battle, since it was holding a number of rebel fighters. It was empty now and as the Major and SSG. Delaney climbed into it, they kept their submachine guns close to their shoulders, scanning every which way for enemy soldiers. It was empty and the six of them climbed into it pretty quickly and, from there, skirted across another mile of alleyways and streets, amidst heavy rebel presence. Silent, they were able to get to their destination without being seen or having to kill any rebel soldiers. They would have had to use knives in such an occurance, to keep things completely quiet. They located the three commanders late on May 1 and interrogated them for two whole days before they killed them just before midnight on May 3. The commanders exposed the general and various other higher officials in the Venezuelan Army and government. The rebels taking Caracas was no coincidence and neither was it due to brilliant military tactics either. It was due solely to corruption and treason. The biggest player in the game was the Venezuelan vice-president, another target for the Delta team. This general, however, was to serve as a message to the entire web of corruption.

SSG. Delaney had put the crosshairs of his 7.62x51mm rifle on his chest and now awaited the final order to shoot. His first round would enter the general's chest, right at his heart, killing him instantly. A second round would go through his head. Fitted with a suppressor that would hide the bright flame of the muzzle, SSG. Delaney's M40A1 was perfectly capable of making the long-ranged, 950 meter kill. He had propped his rifle up on a sandbag in a nineth story window of a bombed out apartment building. The general was nearly a kilometer away, sitting inside of an office, speaking with some unidentified rebel commanders. A non-windy morning, the shot would be easy for SSG. Delaney, who was an expert marksman. The Major, who was a floor above him with a pair of binoculars had set his own sights on the general. The rest of the team was dispersed throughout the two floors, providing cover for the sniper and the spotter. "Take him down." The Major said a moment later.

"Roger." He squeezed off the first round and the rifle jolted backwards, sounding as if he had just dropped a two-by-four on the ground from nine stories above it. As the round came through the air, SSG. Delaney cycled the bolt on the rifle, lifting it up, pulling it back, ejecting the round, sliding it forward with a fresh round, and finally relocking the bolt into position. It took a matter of seconds and as he looked back into the scope, he saw the general take the round in his chest. "Hit."

"Hit." The Major repeated as SSG. Delaney aimed and fired again. The round left his rifle at 2,550 feet per second and made its way for the general once again, as he cycled out a third round, in case he missed. It wasn't necessary. The second round did hit the general low, catching him in the jaw. It blew it to pieces and the general slumped over, onto the floor, dead. "Target is eliminated. Let's move." The Major said as he put away his binoculars and SSG. Delaney pulled back his rifle and threw it on his shoulder. They departed the apartment building and exited the area, moving another half of a kilometer away, to a position in the southwestern corner of the city, where rebel presence was especially high. They would leave the city at nightfall.

June 15, 1976 - 16:00 [AST]
Valencia, Venezuela

In just a month, the Venezuelan Army had been utterly decimated by rebel forces. Operating at less than 60% of their strength before the loss of Caracas, they were nothing more than cannon fodder now. Layartebian soldiers had backed off from assisting the Venezuelans and they were being slaughtered, while Layartebian casualties began to plateau, rather than increase. Caracas was almost completely in rebel hands and Valencia and all west of it were under threat from rebel invasions. Layartebian forces had already begun to pull back after a secret plan was announced throughout the ranks of a pull out, just eight days earlier. Apparently, the Red Army Faction had become completely unpenetrable and Layartebian police forces were losing ground against them. Thousands lay dead and even more injured. Then, on June 13, they decimated the Port of Baltimore by blowing up a tunnel and a tanker ship. Hundreds more were killed in just milliseconds as the explosions shook the city with a 2.4 magnitude earthquake. At the same time, deep in the heart of Venezuela, rebel forces began their final build-up for an offensive that would put the entire country under their control. There would be no stopping them and with the corruption in the nationlist army and government, there was no will to stop them.

The Major and his Delta team had become the most feared, loved, hated, and respected unit in the entire Layartebian military. To the Layartebian soldiers fighting the battles on the front, dying for a country that offered them no help, they were respected for what they did to their betrayers. To the politicians in Venezuela, they were hated because they exposed their own treasonous dealings daily. To the Venezuelans who wanted to win, they were loved for their sacrifices. To the politicans at home, they were feared, feared for what they could bring to bear on their own corrupt dealings. Thus far, fourteen attempts to kill them had all failed, brutally. They were getting closer and closer by the day to exposing the entire web of lies and deceit in Venezuela and a lot of people were worried, as they should have been, the team had executed dozens of corrupt commanders. By assassinating the general on May 4, they scared the entire Venezuelan government and army. Everyone knew who it was but there wasn't a shred of proof against them and claims were nothing more than assumptions in the eyes of the Layartebian field commanders. Still, something had to be done about them. Even President Deveroe wanted them out of the game, the highest authority in the Republic of Layarteb and their own Commander in Chief. They were making few friends in high places and they were a constant Bulls-eye.

They were sitting inside of their barracks on the afternoon of June 15, resting after another two day ordeal. They had gone out early on the morning of June 13 and attacked a rebel supply convoy near Los Teques. They had returned only three hours earlier after coming into heavy resistance on the way back. Their mission was a small success and, at the same time, a failure. They had wanted to capture a rebel commander alive but he wound up being killed by the shrapnel from a grenade. This would set them back; although not too terribly. They had other commanders in their sights and they were compiling a new list when the Major walked into the barracks with a strange look on his face. "Gentlemen. I have some news. Take it as you wish."

"Huh?" SSG. Delaney responded as he put down the pencil. "What news?

"Earlier today, President Deveroe fired his whole cabinet. He has announced, publically, that the Republic of Layarteb will no longer fight for the Venezuelans if they will not fight for themselves. Hell, they even faxed us down a copy of his speech. I figure we should use it for toilet paper but it's rough. I don't want that on my ass. Either way, we're leaving. Transport leaves the morning of June 18. We are to stand down all operations from here on out and defend our base only."

"What? What a load of shit!" SFC. Steel yelled out as he slammed shut a book. "We're this close to catching those fuckers and we have to pull back? You know what this is!"

"We've rattled Deveroe's cage." SFC. Jackson said. "I'm glad though. I hate this country and I want nothing more than to get home, get with my honey, and make some babies." They laughed but it was short lived.

"We're to report to Fort Drum to begin training special units to hunt down the Red Army Faction at home. We are not, under any circumstances. Yeah this is a load of bullshit, to pursue the Red Army Faction."

"We're too effective."

"That's what I'm thinking Jack." The Major said as he crumbled up the piece of paper and tossed it into the garbage. "I've got paperwork to fill out. Let's follow these orders."

"Are you serous?"

"Yes. Let's get home. Jack. You might want to call that girl of yours and let her know you'll be home for Christmas."

"On it." Jack put down the pad and pencil on his cot and shot off to the phone. He couldn't tell her when he would be home but he only told her to be ready, they would be married by the end of the month. Ecstatic, she dropped the phone, twice.

Three days later, theor C-141B Starlifter transport touched down in the middle of the largest thunderstorm of 1976. It streaked down the runway and stopped short of the final taxiway, where it turned off and headed towards a hangar in the far distance. Overhead, thunder cracked and lightning streaked and the sky was practically black even though it was the middle of the afternoon. A tornado watch had been issued for the whole area and that wasn't a joke either. The storm clouds overhead were producing intense vortices. The C-141 was carrying 154 Layartebian soldiers, including the Major's Delta group. SSG. Delaney was set to receive his promotion, officially, and his medals in a private ceremony when they returned. For their actions, the Major and his whole Delta team were being awarded with up to eight Distinguished Service Crosses, thirteen Silver Stars, eleven Bronze Stars, four Purple Hearts, and eight Army Commendation Medals. The unit had served the Republic of Layarteb with great honor and great care since they landed in Venezuela. SSG. Delaney, alone, had 386 confirmed sniper kills in Venezuela. They had a mission success rate of 98% and were the most successful unit in the entire Layartebian Army. They guided aircraft to targets and called down some of the first precision bombs of the world. They were called Paveway bombs and by the time they boarded the plane, the first Paveway II bombs were being dropped in 500, 1,000, and 2,000 pound variants. They would be significantly more accurate than the Paveway I generation.

"So, what are you going to do now that we're released?" SSG. Delaney had said to the Major as the plane began to taxi. "Coming to my wedding?"

"Sergeant? I wouldn't miss it for the world. I hope you're going to take care of that wife of yours."

"You bet."

"Glad to hear it. I might be giving you a call in a couple of months."

"What about?"

"Sergeant. I've been thinking. Our government is weak. They're corrupt. They send us to die to line their pockets. Something has to be done. They cannot control terrorism nor can they effectively manage themselves. We've been away a long time but just look at the Layarteb City Times. I picked one up before we boarded it. The populace is about to shit themselves and our government is about to implode."

"What do you suggest?" The Delta team was sort of secluded on the aircraft. They were well-respected by many of the regular infantry onboard the aircraft but they were feared just the same. A Delta unit had gone haywire in late 1975 and practically leveled a whole city-block out of revenge. The stigma that all Delta units were to be feared stuck, especially with the greenest of soldiers. The aircraft was full of those. So when they boarded, the Major and his Delta team were saluted in the middle of silence. They took their place on the plane and few people sat within earshot of them.

"Sergeant. Something has to be done. This Red Army Faction. Our government is waging war on them. That's why we're coming home. You can bet we'll be called up, even if our orders stay we aren't supposed to. We fought them once before and won. It is only a matter of time before we're fighting them again. Whether it's Caracas or Layarteb City, we'll never be without a rifle in our hands."

"Of course."

"I studied a lot of revolutionary theory. There's only one logical pathway for these events." The plane stopped taxiing and entered the hangar. When it stopped, the men debarked and both the Delta Major and SSG. Delaney continued their conversation as the rest of the unit went their way. "You see. The government has lost the support of the elites of this society. That is a given, just read the article. I've picked up papers here and there in Caracas and they all say the same thing. The government is being turned on from inside. Trust me, this doesn't happen overnight. If it did it would be too drastic and everyone would see it and stop it. It creeps up on you, that's why it happens. It's slow. You'll never know its there until it's already an immovable object."

"Interesting."

"Yes. The populace is losing support for the government, if they have any left at all. That's two key elements. The last remaining group is the army. Overall, the military has about a fifty percent 'support' rating of the government. Venezuela buggered that severely. When the government puts the military on the streets, the morale is going to plummet. There is nothing more degrading than having to police your own population. That's part of the reason we have the posse comitatus act, which is going to be overturned by the end of summer, just watch."

"I couldn't disagree. You're right. There is, historically, nothing more corrosive to the morale of a population than policing its own citizens, but the enemy would be sadly mistaken if they were to doubt our resolve."

"You have that right. We are going to defeat them. That is a given that everyone knows. Probably even them. Maybe that is their intention. You see. Once they give the order to have the army fire into crowds of civilians, two things will happen. Those with overaggressive trigger fingers will kill women and children and probably be beaten to death by angry mobs. Those with souls will stand there and drop their rifles. The government will lose the support of the military.

"Combined with the loss of support of the elites, popular discontent by the populace, and you have one thing."

"Revolution."

"Revolution. That has a chance to succeed!"

"What of the Red Army Faction?"

"They're the main target. That is what the government is focused on and that is all that they see. There are dozens of groups currently plotting. Many will be of opportunity groups. Anarchists. Religious forces. Nationalistic forces. Et cetera."

"Are you," SSG. Delaney dropped his voice to a whisper. "Are you suggesting mutiny? Revolution?"

"Yes. That is exactly what I am suggesting. These groups will tear this country apart. From the inside out. We'll be nothing more than a giant cemetery."

"I don't want to see that happen. You know that but I'm not a traitor."

"You won't be betraying your country. Is it not our duty to protect this country from all threats, foreign. And domestic?"

"It is."

"You do not see the government as a domestic threat?"

"I do...I just..." An air raid siren echoed and cut the conversation short. "What the..." They darted to the nearest window and looked out, across the airbase. There, at least thirty miles away, a tornado was touching down. "Jesus Christ! We'll have to continue this later sir."

"Quick. To the basement!"

June 29, 1976 - 11:00 [EST]
Fortress of Comhghall, Layarteb City

"Alright Major stand right there please." The Secret Service officer said as he escorted the Delta Major into the President's office. President Deveroe was in the press room, giving a conference on a series of assassinations in the day before, which killed three federal judges and wounded four others. When President Deveroe returned he was, as usual, soiled with fury.

"The nerve of Danny to..." He noticed the Major and stopped his rant about a reporter who asked when the President was going to watch the news. "Ah Major. Where's your boy wonder?"

"Mr. President. He's on his honeymoon."

"Honeymoon?" President Deveroe laughed as he sat down and put a snide face on, "Well. I'm glad to know that the security of our Republic can wait for sex."

"Mr. President, why am I here? I have things to do. So let's hurry up."

"Don't take that tone with me!"

"Mr. President I don't care who you are but if you do not show some respect yourself I am leaving and making sure that whatever you want you don't get. Now let's dispense with the bull. Sir!"

"Fine. To get you out of my face quicker. I hate you Major. You allowed Carl Weathers to escape and I'm wondering whose side you're on. However, my generals tell me that you're the best small unit leader in our entire military, which means that I am forced to deal with you because we both have a common enemy, I hope."

"The Red Army Faction?"

"Yes. The reason I am bringing the military back is to fight the RAF. Our intelligence analysts have pretty much determined that the RAF is going to launch a full guerilla campaign against us and our law enforcement personnel just don't have the capability to fight them. We need all of our men here, especially since they are gaining support from the populace. Eventually, they're going to number in the tens of thousands and that is a large force that our entire military is going to have to fight.

"That is why I need you to form a small unit of men, perhaps twelve to sixteen."

"To do what sir?"

"Hunt them down before the main thrust of the military. We won't be ready for months and until then, the RAF is going to go unchecked. I need you to form a unit to keep them in check."

"And what leeway do I have in this unit?"

"As much as necessary. The Congress is going to revoke the posse comitatus act next month, which means that everything is totally legal. Until then, of course, your unit will be operating in the realm of black operations. Is that clear?"

"It is sir."

"Good. I want this unit formed by the end of the week and I want a full report on its members and your plan to stop the RAF."

"I need access to intelligence on them."

"A liason with the Department of Intelligence is going to be assigned to your unit. When you leave, you'll be given a packet that will tell you the rest of the details. You are aware that this is compartmentalized. Your unit will be codnamed GRYPHON and you have until July 19th to become operational. Can you meet that deadline?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. Now get out of here. I have more important things to do."

"Yes sir." On the way out, the Delta Major wanted nothing more than to kill the President with his bare hands but he couldn't act on those impulses.

**********

July 5, 1976 - 07:00 [EST]
Fort Drum, New York

"Good morning gentlemen. I'm glad you could all be here. Today is the first day of our fight. You are all standing there, confused and what the hell I'm talking about or who this man is standing right here. I'll get to that in just a minute. You were all selected because you are the best of the best. You know this. I know this. He knows this. So now there's no need for cockiness because no matter how good you are. We're better." There was a quick laugh amongst the men and the Delta Major kept up with it. "So let's get to the bottom of this. You are all aware of the threat of the Red Army Faction and if you didn't surmise that is why you are here, you don't belong here. So any morons amongst you?" Nobody moved around and the discipline was showing. "Good. That's why you're here. I don't care that you are the best. Remember. We're better. That's rule number one. Just so we know there's no cockiness here. Cockiness gets people killed. I don't want people killed. I've never lost a man under my command and I will retire with that record intact.

"Alright. Let's get this started. You are all officially but unofficially members of Task Force Gryphon. I say unofficially because gentlemen, what exists that prevents the military from acting as a law enforcement body. Sergeant McKenzie, you should know?"

"Sir. The posse comitatus act."

"Good. You are smart. That's good. I hate stupid people. Gentlemen. The military won't be ready to defend the Republic of Layarteb until September. That is pathetic gentlemen. The Red Army Faction is fighting us and we can't be ready for two months. Our leaders have failed us gentlemen but that isn't our concern. Our concern is the defense of this country. Gentlemen. You took an oath to defend the Republic of Layarteb from enemies both foreign and domestic. Gentlemen. This is a domestic threat. While our government and military lolligag around it is our job to disrupt, destroy, dismantle, annihilate, capture, and/or kill the Red Army Faction. So. Anyone want to leave?"

"Sir. No sir!"

"Good. You've been taught well. Our methods will be unconventional. You are all members of elite special forces groups. Congradulations. You've just graduated to the realm of black operations. Nothing we do. And I repeat. Nothing. Is to be told outside of us. Our missions are compartmentalized to us and only us. I don't care if President Deveroe stands in front of you and demands to know something. You will tell him nothing! Is that understood?"

"Yes sir yes!"

"Good. Gentlemen. I'm no drill sergeant. I don't care how many push-ups you can do. How fast you can run or how far you can run. I don't care how well you can keep a fucking tune as you jog. We're not here to redo basic. You are all elite. You are all trained. There's no time to waste re-training. There is however, something that everyone here is going to do. I don't care what branch you're from. You are all now in one unit. So none of this my branch is better than your branch shit. This is why we're all in one unit. Because we're better than everyone else. And remember. Who is the best?"

"Sir you sir!"

"Good. You're learning. What we're going to do here, this week, is become a family. Is that understood?"

"Sir yes sir!"

"Alright. It's late enough. We're going to start this nonsense in just a little bit. The twelve of you are going to be arranged into two teams of six each. I will lead one team. Staff Sergeant Jack Delaney here will lead the other. Gentlemen. There is one other thing. Rank does not matter here. You may realize that some of you outrank my staff sergeant here. To me. It means nothing! Gentlemen. We aren't here to polish shiny pieces of silver or brass. We're here to dismantle the biggest domestic threat our Republic has ever seen and we are going to do it before the military can. Which brings me to my next point. When the government suspends the posse comitatus act. And they will. Our operations remain classified. Gentlemen. I don't want your pillow to know what you do. Alright. Now. I have to see what you can do. So. Let's get out on the range and the course. You'll be arranged in two man teams. Remember. Cockiness isn't going to get you points!" The twelve men departed the barracks and headed out to a special course that was the most complicated in the entire military. Passing through it would really determine where people belonged. They still had two weeks to go before the deadline. Until then, police units and drawn back SOF units would take the lead against the Red Army Faction. Ready by July 19th, Task Force GRYPHON would bring the fight to the Red Army Faction like it had never been before. The RAF would stand no chance against them, let alone against the entire Layartebian military, which was pulling back in droves from Venezuela.

November 21, 1976 - 04:30 [EST]
Fort Drum, New York

Fort Drum was quiet as autumn brushed her chilling air and colorful foilage over northwestern New York. The base had been quiet for the past month. Despite the promises of President Deveroe, the Congress never suspended the posse comitatus act and Task Force GRYPHON was forced to act very limitedly and, when they did, with the utmost care for secrecy. This heavily hampered their efforts and, in many ways, completely reduced them to a combat ineffective unit. Projections and every analyst asked to survey the situation predicted the end of the Red Army Faction by mid-September if GRYPHON was allowed to operate limitedly but without restriction. If they were allowed to operate fully, without restriction, the Red Army Faction wouldn't survive the month of August. It was November and the Red Army Faction, though wounded, hurting, and on their last leg, had killed hundreds more since the June attacks on Baltimore harbor.

The sequence of events were downright troubling. GRYPHON was ready to go on July 19th and conducted their first operation the next day, arresting two RAF lieutenants and killing another one in a shoot out. Acting as police officers, they cornered the three men who were all part of the support cadre of the organization. Their mission, though classified as the posse comitatus act was still in force, was never revealed to the public. Six days later, a major bombing plot was stopped thanks to their "unconventional" interrogation techniques of these lieutenants. Again, it never made the news. July was a busy month for the RAF and the Layartebians. Deveroe's approval rating rose as Layartebian soldiers came home from Venezuela, in droves. He saw himself mounting a successful election campaign on that single issue alone though he needed the RAF out of the way first. He gave a greenlight to the Delta Major to conduct four more operations throughout the month of July, three of them complete successes, the fourth being a failure thanks to the hampering of conventional law enforcement personnel who managed to arrest SSG. Delaney for tresspassing. He was conducting reconnaissance and though he spent the night in jail, he did manage to collect what information he needed.

August rolled around and GRYPHON was becoming impatient. The Congress had failed to repeal the posse comitatus act after an attempt late in the month of July. President Deveroe was forced to disclose that his desire for the revokation of this act had to do with using the military against the RAF. The populace was not in opposition to the thought either but the Congress was. Heavily corrupt and significantly bribed by high-rollers supporting the RAF or even members of the RAF, the Congressional politicians managed to keep the posse comitatus act on the books. The military continued to roll back home, keeping President Deveroe's numbers high, the highest in his entire term of office. GRYPHON was forced to act even more covertly, limiting them from a planned fourteen operations in August to just two, both of which were met with considerable failure thanks again, largely in part to local law enforcement personnel. On the second time, they were just inches away from capturing Carl Weathers, alive. As the month of August wore on, the RAF became more and more active. They had conducted four assassinations of judges and politicians and blew up an empty school bus. President Deveroe again tried to pursuade the Congress to suspend the act; it failed.

September dawned on the Republic of Layarteb and the RAF had warned that children would not be safe. On the first day of school, every parent practically drove their children to school. Police officers flooded schools as security staffers and everyone bit their nails all day long, keeping the news on constantly, expecting someting to happen. Nothing did and though people may have speculated that the RAF was either too weak or not that heartless to do anything, President Deveroe claimed that it was because of a joint operation of local and federal law enforcement officials who stopped two bombings. The RAF further denied this, stating that fear was their weapon, not the murder of children. Four hours later, they blew up six cars around Layarteb City, killing fourteen people and injuring thirty-two more. GRYPHON sat around, unable to act. Tensions grew and the task force began to grow hatred towards President Deveroe and the Congress for failing to put them into action. The Major had seen this coming though. Finally, in mid-September, GRYPHON was able to act again. With the entire Layartebian military out of Venezuela except a team of advisors and one Special Operations unit, the President again tried to get the Congress to suspend the posse comitatus act. Like the previous two chances, it failed, miserably. The populace grew weary, sick, and tired. They protested in front of the governmental buildings and demonstrations turned violent. Scores were arrested and hundreds injured. Four people were killed in one event when they were hit with non-lethal ammunition from police shotguns. GRYPHON's only mission was to capture a small group of low-level RAF bombers. They succeeded but interrogations revealed nothing.

October brought a complete unfolding of the situation. The RAF denounced the government almost every other day and called President Deveroe weak, the Congress corrupt, and the citizens of Layarteb sheep. They should rise up, the RAF told them, and overthrow their inept leaders. Fewer than forty percent disagreed in a poll taken early that month. GRYPHON was able to act in three missions, with the gloves off, completely successfully. President Deveroe was forced though, to reveal that a specialized task force consisting of military personnel were hunting down the RAF. Immediately, the Congress was seemingly calling for his head. As much of a fool as he was, he was the only one who seemed to want the RAF gone. GRYPHON remained inactive for the rest of the month, trying to hide from the witch hunt, which stemmed from their third mission. They had killed four RAF members and captured six others. One of the RAF members was an "upstanding" Layartebian citizen. A member of the elite class, he was one of their biggest funders and he died that chilly morning from a shot to his head, fired by SSG. Delaney from his pistol. Nobody believed the evidence against him and they called for blood. They wanted the unit thrown in jail. The populace, on the other hand, thought the unit should be allowed to act freely. Over ninety-four percent of those polled agreed. The leaders weren't listening to the people anymore, it was obvious.

November rolled around with a fireworks display. The RAF succeeded in destroying two major landmarks in Layarteb City and Baltimore, shattering them to pieces with high explosives. Nobody was injured or killed but the morale of the people was broken. The Republic was falling, it was obvious. Investigations were launched to try to capture these vigilantes and the press and Congressional leaders called them. The President was now completely useless to do anything. On election day, the people spoke, effectively voting out of office every since politician, the President included. Four recounts were done but the results were true and steady. On January 20, the Republic of Layarteb would have an entirely new leadership. That wouldn't stop the sitting politicians from being as corrupt as possible though. They pillaged the country as they hung out to dry anyone who opposed them. Task Force GRYPHON was their biggest target and the RAF announced that they would continue the fight until every corrupt Layartebian was dead or behind bars. They claimed to be "fighting for the people" but they weren't fighting for anyone other than themselves.

Finally, on the morning of November 11, GRYPHON got its biggest green light yet. The location of the RAF headquarters had been passed down to them, from unknown sources. It was two hundred and twenty-one miles to the southeast of them, just north of South Salem, in New York, a few minutes from the Connecticut border and Ridgefield. How the information got to them, they didn't know but there was a note attached to it.

RAF Headquarters. Location has been known for months now but nothing has been done about it. You'll find satellite imagery inside and even reconnaissance information. Someone's been busy but it seems as if they haven't been allowed to do anything. Someone needs to take off your muzzle.

By November 19, every piece of information in the packet was confirmed. The government had known about the location of the RAF headquarters since later August, when they managed to spot Carl Weathers go there. Federal law enforcement officials had the place under surveilliance but couldn't get a warrant to storm the place, which was nothing more than an old military bunker complex built in the 1940s. Because it was considered an historical landmark, the federal officers weren't allowed to act. It had only been named one a day before. It was a strange coincidence but everyone waited for the orders.

The Major brought up the information to President Deveroe within hours of confirmation. By 04:30 hours, November 21, he had not responded back yet with a favorable answer. The Major finally thought he was getting what he needed when his phone rang at 04:30 hours that morning. "Yes sir. Mr. President tell me good news." He said, wiping his tired eyes.

"Major. You are hereby ordered to stand down and disband immediately."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me Major."

"Are you fucking kidding me? We have these guys! We know where they are. We can get them. You want us to fucking stand down? What are you? One of them!"

"Major. That is insubordination at its highest. You will carry out my orders and you will be court martialled immediately. I will not stop until you are behind bars."

"Mr. President. Go fuck yourself. I'm getting those bastards!" The Major slammed down the phone and immediately left his office, his phone ringing behind him. He set out to get to his team before the MPs on the base could be informed of his insubordination and obvious violation of every law of the Republic of Layarteb.

November 21, 1976 - 04:40 [EST]
Fort Drum, New York

"Everyone up!" The Major yelled as he entered the barracks where the eleven members of GRYPHON slept. Everyone snapped to and rose from their beds. "Gather around gentlemen." They were all thinking the same thing, they had gotten the green light from the President. They were ready to go. "Gentlemen, I know you're all thinking that we just got the green light to take the compound. We haven't. We have been ordered to stand down, disband, and never revisit this subject again." The faces went completely blank. "Gentlemen. Time is of the essence here. We have been duped. The government does not want the RAF gone. Even though they have been fully voted out of office, they still are holding onto their own skin. Corruption knows no bounds without our government and it seems our own President, as useless as he is, has been bought by the RAF. Upon being ordered to stand down and disband, I committed the most gravest crime one could commit. Some may call it high treason but I do not consider it as such. I informed the President, in no short way, that I am going to get these RAF bastards. There are calls going to the MPs at this base right now for my arrest. I plan on leaving this compound, immediately, taking what weapons I can gather, and destroying this RAF sons of bitches. You are all released from service. You will disband and stand down immediately. That is my order to you.

"However, in light of what is happening, and in light of the sacrifices you have given, who really wants to follow that order?" The room was silent. "Good. That's what I thought. Chances are, in light of this, our task force will be hung out to dry. We will be accused of illegally operating against the posse comitatus act. They will sweep under the rug all that we have done and make us out to be the bad guys. They may even accuse us of conspiring with the RAF. That is why, effective immediately, I am ordering all of you to immediately begin Hornet's Nest. Is that understood? We have less than ten minutes before the entire MP staff on this base knows about my insubordination to the President. Escape and evade gentlemen. Is this clear?"

"Yes sir!" They all responded, recognizing the gravity of the situation.

"Sergeant Delaney."

"Yes Major?"

"How do you feel tonight?"

"Thirsty for long-range action."

"You're with me. The rest of you. It has been the finest pleasure commanding this unit. Defend your country as you would defend your families. Our government is corrupt, it is out of power, and it is making us it's enemy. Remember my words." Immediately, the Major got up and made a bee line for the door, his pistol in his hand. SSG. Delaney was inches behind him, his own pistol in his hand too, his gear on his back, boots on his feet, and rifle in his hands. "Jack. I have the intelligence for this operation here." He handed him the folder with the photographs and the intelligence reports. "We need to get out of here quickly. I have weapons and supplies stashed about ten miles from here."

"Did you expect this or something?" Their voices were never higher than a whisper as the Major peaked out the door.

"Yes I did. Let's move. Silence." They took off down the dark hallway. In the background, they could hear boots, many of them, walking down the hallways. The MPs were onto them and, on base, there were over forty of them. They were all on high alert. They knew how capable GRYPHON was and how loyal they were to the Major. This fact alone led them to grab several twelve gauge shotguns before they departed their own barracks. Moments after the Major and SSG. Delaney heard them, they arrived at his office. Their voices echoed in the quiet and empty corridors.

"Search for him. He's around here somewhere. He's armed and dangerous. Shoot to kill if you must. Detain is secondary. The rest of the team. Detain them immediately!" SSG. Delaney heard and continued along, down the empty corridor towards the doors. The Major was only inches ahead of him, both of them keeping their pistols ready to fire, hammers cocked back. A simple tap on the trigger would send a .45ACP round through the air at 800 feet per second. They had eight rounds ready to go, one in the chamber and seven in the magazine. On SSG. Delaney's back was his M14A1 rifle, loaded with twenty-one rounds itself, in the similar fashion. They reached the double doors just moments after the MPs came to the doors of the sleeping quarters, which had now been barricaded shut by the ten GRYPHON members. They had left themselves, taking various escape and evade routes out of the barracks. The MPs, standing outside, began to kick at the doors, shouting to those inside, "You are committing an act of treason and mutiny against the Republic of Layarteb. You will put down your arms immediately, put your hands up, and stand for detainment. Is that understood?" There was no response from inside, they were all gone already. "We have and will use lethal force if you do not cooperate!" SSG. Delaney and the Major exited the barracks and were outside, in a darkened world. There were few lights on in their areas of the base, which was done by design and request. GRYPHON always left at night and always under both the cover of darkness and night vision. Lights would be contradictory to those methods.

"No lights." SSG. Delaney commented with a smile. It had been his recommendation that the lights be turned off for that area of the base. They ran towards the perimeter of the base, keeping low and fast. They used every means of cover they could find, whether it was a wall or even just lying flat on the ground. There were few MPs walking around, just two who seemed to be watching the main entrances to the barracks, rather than the ones they had exited. Fools. SSG. Delaney thought as they reached the perimeter of the base. They had entered and exited the compound through an underground tunnel, dug in complete secrecy, allowing them to completely avoid being seen. Again, this was Delaney's idea and it proved indispensible now, in this time of pure need.

They were outside of the base and moving to the southwest, to Watertown, the nearest city to the base. It was where the Major stashed his weapons and also, where SSG. Delaney had moved his wife. Since they were married, she was informed of a lot more than she had previously known. It had been a long and stressful conversation that night between both her and Jack but also the Major, who came to elaborate as well. She had never realized just how dangerous his job was or what unit he had really been in but she knew now and accepted it, though she still worried for him. It was natural but now, as he and the Major made their way for the quaint and quiet little town, he didn't know what he was going to say to her. They were in survival mode, moving quickly through the terrain between the base and the town. They both had put on night vision goggles and were able to see through the darkness quite easily. It was what helped them find their transportation, which was a small pickup stashed in the field of a farm. It wasn't theirs nor did they put it there but, it was a tool for them. Though locked, they were easily able to gain entrance with a small wire that allowed them to unlatch the lock and open the door. Now inside of the small pickup, SSG. Delaney went to work hotwiring the vehicle. It started up nicely and they immediately sped off, moving through the gears quickly as they exited the farm, the lights of the pickup off. When they got to the main road though, they turned on the lights, turned off their night vision, and acted like normal citizens, driving on a quiet road in the middle of the night. They had, by now, decocked their pistols but kept them close by, just in case.

Watertown was silent at this hour of the morning. It was a quarter after five and cold, very cold. The weather forecast spoke of a snowstorm later that afternoon and it felt like it. The skies would dawn gray instead of blue. The leaves on the trees had already died and most of the farms around there had already been buttoned down for the winter. They drove down various roads and parked just a block away from SSG. Delaney's house. Carefully and quietly, they exited the pickup truck and moved through various backyards, hoping fences and opening gates, staying off the main streets. The military didn't know that SSG. Delaney's wife lived here and they didn't know that the Major had stashed his weapons there. For now, they were safe, although it wouldn't take long before their pictures were up in the shops of the town warning the residents that they were wanted for mutiny. The MPs were already preparing the documents, having searched the whole base and not found any of the members of GRYPHON. The President was informed just shy of 05:30 hours and now he feared, for his own life. He and the Major hated each other's guts and President Deveroe knew how capable the Major was. He also knew, more than anything, how deeply involved the Major was in stopping Venezuelan corruption. He knew that he was in deep trouble and he knew it more than ever now.

Jack and the Major slid up to the back door of his house. Jack pulled a key from the top of the door frame and opened the back door. Both of them snuck into the darkened house and kept to the kitchen, keeping the lights off. "Let me go wake Maggie up." He said as he left the kitchen and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The house was cozy and big enough for a family. He wanted to have a family there, where it was safe and quiet. Unfortunately though, he was going to have to leave quite abruptly and he had to make sure his wife was okay. He walked up to the bedroom door and took a deep breath as he opened it and looked at their bed. Maggie was asleep but she stirred as the door opened up.

"Jack. Is that you?"

"Yes babe. It's me." She smiled and sat up, moving to turn on the light. "No. Keep the light off." She stopped and looked at him, noticing something in his voice. "Something's wrong. You have to come downstairs."

"Jack? What's wrong?"

"Remember that day I told you about? It's here."

"What?" She got out of bed and he led her out of the bedroom. "What happened?"

"A bunch of bullshit. We'll explain."

"We?"

"Yes. The Major and I are here."

"Okay Jack. But are you okay?"

"We're fine but in about four hours we're going to be the most wanted men in the country."

"Jack." She stopped. "What did you do?"

"Nothing. Come on. I don't have a lot of time to spare."

"You have to tell me what's going on."

"I will. We have to hurry though." Downstairs, the Major had moved into the living room and sat down. Maggie and Jack came down only moments later and she sat down on the chair, while he stood in the living room. He flicked on the lights and looked around the room.

"Maggie." The Major smiled. "I'm sorry about this. Jack and I are in a bit of trouble."

"What kind of trouble?" She looked up at them. "What'd you do?"

"Nothing yet." Jack answered.

"Maggie. You are aware of our mission, correct?"

"Vaguely. Just what you told me."

"Well. It has come to light that certain authorities within the government do not want us to fulfill that mission."

"Why not?"

"Who knows. I don't care to find out either. Our mission is crucial to this country."

"It is. I mean. Right?"

"Yes babe." Jack answered. "It is."

"Currently Jack and I are wanted for treason and mutiny. We do not, under any circumstances, intend on letting the idiots who be get either of us and make us a public scapegoat for their own failings and, believe me, they will. That is why the day has come. They day we all hate."

"You have to go into hiding?"

"Yes. I'm sorry."

"What about us Jack? What about the baby?" She was four months pregnant. "Jack what am I supposed to do?"

"Don't worry. I have everything set." She began to cry. "You don't have to run away right now. We have to get out of here fast, before the sun gets too high on us and we can be recognized. Nobody here, they don't know you and I are married. They don't know any of that junk. The army doesn't even know I have this house. It's all done by design. You're safe."

"And you?"

"I'm safe too. We're all safe. We are trained for this sort of thing."

November 21, 1976 - 19:00 [EST]
South Salem, New York

Truesdale Lake was a small, eighty-three acre lake that had been constructed, artificially in the 1920s. Underneath it was a large bunker complex, built in the early 1940s to shelter VIPs from a nuclear war. Thirty-five miles from the border of Layarteb City, even the largest thermonuclear bombs of the time could not reach as far if they fell on Layarteb City. In addition, if a bomb was detonated near the base, the lake would absorb most of the force of the blast. Despite all of these factors, the base was abandoned in the mid-1950s in favor of a more capable location that remained classified. Declassified just a year later, the base had been untouched for almost fifteen years before the RAF had gone there. Condemned in 1973, the base was long forgotten by not only the military but the civilian world as well. When the RAF occupied the underground fortress in late 1975 and early 1976, they did so in complete secrecy. The houses around the lake were mostly summer homes and, during the winter, nobody was there except a few caretakers, who were always fast asleep when the RAF moved into and out of the complex. Since the federal authorities put the complex under surveillance, the RAF were seen going into and out of it from the hours of 22:00 to 04:00, a six hour window. When the Major and SSG. Delaney crawled into the town and entered an abandoned house three hours before the window began, they were fully aware of the presence of federal officers.

"So you think they know we're here?" SSG. Delaney asked as he put the barrel of his M14A1 rifle on the sill of a second floor window and sat down, leaning his back against the wall. He was comfortable and he uncapped the scope on his high powered rifle and looked down at the bunker. "Range?"

"One hundred fifty. One sixty-five to the lake front."

"We're zero'd. Now the waiting game." He put down a photograph of Carl Weathers and eyed it for a moment. Silence ensued as they waited there, an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, until just after 23:00 hours. SSG. Delaney had fitted a long suppressor to the end of his barrel, which would not only muffle the shot but hide the brilliant flame as the bullet exited the barrel, which would be a dead giveaway to their location. They were far into the realm of illegal on this one, which made no sense. The Red Army Faction was the sworn enemy of the Republic of Layarteb but, at the same time, so were the politicians. Voted out of office, they had roughly two months left before they were all going to be replaced by different politicians, ones the people hoped would actually rule Layarteb for the people, not their own personal bank accounts and pockets.

The sun had set long before the RAF began to come out of their hole. They weren't afraid to either, even with the federal officers around their complex, watching them. Inside, they stirred, ready to come out for another round of attacks. They would come out, conduct their attacks throughout Layarteb and return the next night, only moving into and out of the complex under the cover of darkness. SSG. Delaney looked hard down the scope at the doors of the bunker and waited now. Waiting was their game and they didn't mind it, especially not in this situation. The only hostile fire they could take was from the federal officers. The RAF wouldn't have enough firepower or experience to locate them and, even if they did, do anything about it. They were more than capable of taking out their targets and, at the same time, defending themselves from an attack. Between the two of them, they had plenty of magazines and plenty of time. The federal officers were there only to watch, not to get results. SSG. Delaney and the Major, on the other hand, were there for one purpose, to get the job done.

By now, all members of Task Force GRYPHON were wanted fugitives. The charges ranged from mutiny, insubordination, to outright murder. The charges were bullshit though. Those who were murdered were Red Army Faction terrorists and the mutiny and insubordination had to do with their disagreement over the handling of the situation. They wanted the RAF out of business and the government wanted them out of business. There was no simple answer though. They were public enemy number one to the government, moreso than Carl Weathers himself. The government accused the task force of being corrupt, of being double agents for the RAF but it was all lies. GRYPHON had gone into survival mode, hiding from the grips of the police, where they couldn't be found. They had scattered all around the country and did so quickly, efficiently, and silently. The Major and SSG. Delaney were going to do the same, as soon as they accomplished their last mission, the only mission they ever had, which was to destroy the Red Army Faction. With the removal of Carl Weathers from the equation, the RAF would fall apart shortly thereafter. Though they wanted to enter the bunker, to storm it and take out all those within, they couldn't do that without being seen by the federal officers. They wanted to stay alive, not be shot or arrested in the process, especially by the governmental forces, who would make them their scapegoats, charging them with their own failures.

The two of them thought about that as they watched the bunker entrance. "Wait. I've got activity." SSG. Delaney said as the door opened. "Someone's coming out now."

"Roger that. I see. Nobody important yet. Remember our target is Weathers. If they know we're out here, they'll never come out and we'll never get in."

"Roger that. Weathers is my only target." They watched and waited, the whole night but nothing came of it. Dawn came and their window had expired. Weathers had never showed his face. They laid down for sleep but kept especially wary that anyone could come in and discover them. The next night, they resumed their positions and watched, waiting for the shot, the shot that would end the reign of terror of the RAF. During the course of the day, the RAF assassinated two judges and came close to assassinating a senator. Neither the Major nor SSG. Delaney knew this though and, had they known it, they wouldn't have done anything differently. Night passed by slowly as they watched for Weathers to come out of the complex but, again, there was no reward. They waited through dawn and went back to sleep again, using the abandoned house as their refuge. The process repeated again and again and again. November was drawing to a close but they still had not seen Weathers exit or even enter the compound.

They waited until November 29, when the situation finally changed for them. Again, they resumed their positions, watching through the windows for Weathers to enter or exit the compound. They assumed he was inside the whole time and it was a correct assumption. In those few days alone, the RAF had killed fourteen people, three of them innocent bystanders to another car bomb that killed its intended target, a corrupt police sergeant. Then, just after midnight, on November 29, they got their chance. As SSG. Delaney looked down the scope of his rifle, watching the bunker doors, he counted the dozen RAF terrorists leave. Only four had entered and none of the sixteen were Weathers. The long barrel of the M14A1 rifle protruded out a little from the window and hung there in the darkness, cold and ready to go. One hundred and fifty meters in front of it, the doors to the complex were more active than usual. Within the first hour of November 29, another eighteen RAF members left the compound though none of them were Weathers. Then, after the long stream of RAF terrorists, the doors opened again and, this time, a group of five men stepped out. "I've got him." SSG. Delaney said as he put the crosshairs right over Weathers' face.

"Put him down!" The Major said with a smirk as he knew that all their waiting had finally paid off. A split second later, the rifle that SSG. Delaney was holding suddenly rocked back to his shoulder, the barrel instantly heating up as a round left its muzzle. Weathers dropped to the ground a few milliseconds later and the four men around him, his personal body guards, instantly covered over his body, banged on the door, and dragged him back inside, all of them pointing their guns in every direction. "That's a kill. Let's get out of here. Escape and evade Jack. It's been a pleasure. When the time comes I'll call on you." The Major said as he held out his hand. They shook hands and went their separate ways.

January 4, 1977 - 13:30 [EST]
Norfolk, Virginia, Republic of Colodia

"Honey. Come in here. Look at this." Maggie yelled from the small living room. Jack was in the kitchen, frying a grilled cheese sandwich for him and also for his wife, who was almost six months along now. They were having a baby boy and since November, they had both fled southward, to the Republic of Colodia, hiding out in a small apartment in Norfolk. "Hurry up." She turned up the volume on the television and he walked inside, a towel over his shoulder

"I don't want to burn lunch. What's up?"

"Jack. Look." The television cameras had panned on President Deveroe, who had barely two weeks left before he and the rest of the Congress were to end their terms of office. "It's Deveroe."

"What about him?" He licked his fingers, tasting the butter. "I don't want to burn lunch." He went back into the kitchen and flipped over the sandwich in the frying pan. "He's a moron." Jack yelled back out from the kitchen but she couldn't hear him, the television was too loud. Since he had assassinated Carl Weathers, the RAF had fallen apart, being completely dissected by the Imperial Layartebian Military, in early December, after the posse comitatus act had finally been repealed although only because the politicians felt that it was their only hope to retain some credibility. It wouldn't though, the people were furious and they couldn't wait for the twentieth to come, a day when all Layartebian politicians would be replaced. The president-elect, Gideon Smithe was from an entirely new party and his campaign promises were simple but effective. He would end all involvement in Venezuela, put an end to corruption, cease supporting foreign interests over Layartebian ones, and restore faith in the government by acting for and protecting the people. He won an eighty percent majority in the election and his party claimed over sixty-three percent of the Congress. President Deveroe's own party failed to gain even one seat in the new congress and there had been hundreds of instances of voter fraud by his party. Still, they could not squeak out even the slightest victory.

"Good afternoon. I come to you this afternoon with startling but factual information regarding the previous election. Since the results were announced, an independent team of monitors has been investigating the election and has reached their conclusion just four hours ago. I will now present you with their conclusions, which have already invalidated the previous election." He began and while Maggie's jaw dropped, Jack yanked the frying pan from the heat and ran into the living room.

"What did he just say?" She didn't answer him as President Deveroe continued.

"There have been over sixty-five cases of voter fraud having been recorded throughout the course of election day. All of these instances were conducted by the current president elect's party. Intimidation against voters, buying votes with alcohol, money, and drugs, flasfying voting records, and voting multiple times are just some of the many tactics used by Gideon Smithe and his party. The monitors have also uncovered links between Gideon Smithe's party and the Red Army Faction, which were captured and kill in full just one month ago. It has been the goal of this administration to dismantle the RAF and this success has been hampered by the efforts of this party.

"In the wake of these findings, the Congress and I have no other choice but to recall the previous elections and, until a new batch of elections can be held, we will continue our duties to the Layartebian people. This measure has passed unanimously throughout our government. Tentatively, we have set a date for new elections on the first Tuesday in February.

"Because of the crimes of Gideon Smithe and his party, they are hereby banned from running in this election. Law enforcement officials are currently arresting these criminals and they will be tried by the highest courts in our land for their treason to this Republic.

"In addition, due, in large part, to the influence of this party and their ties with the Red Army Faction, the Republic of Layarteb is, until further notice, immediately placed under a state of emergency. Effective tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m., the constitution will be suspended and martial law will be declared. Until the results of this new election are presented, this state shall persist. Furthermore, to contain the situation, all borders the Republic of Layarteb shares will be immediately closed.

"It is my disappointment to have to conduct such grave measures in order to ensure the continuation of liberty and freedom in the Republic of Layarteb. Thank you." The cameras cut off to a newscaster who was speechless. His face was white and his own jaw was on the table. From behind the camera, the sounds of snapping fingers and paper crumpling could be heard as the news anchor failed to snap out of the trance. It cut to commercial immediately thereafter.

"What the hell just happened?" Maggie asked. Before Jack could answer her, the phone rang, for the first time since they had moved to Norfolk. Maggie eyed the phone on the table next to her and looked up at Jack. "Do I answer?" He nodded. "Hello?" The ringing stopped. "Yes. One moment." She took the phone from her ear and handed it to him. "It's for you."

"Hello?" He asked, his eyes still fixed on hers, unable to pivot them away. "Yes. I saw. Understood. Yes Major." He handed her back the phone and finally blinked his eyes. "I'm so sorry..."

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Maggie looked back at him without a smile on her beautiful face, a tear rolling down her cheek, followed by hundreds more. "Do you have to go?"

"Soon. Soon."

"How soon?"

"You'll know. I'm so sorry." He quietly turned around and walked back into the kitchen, to finish making her lunch. Whether or not she had the appetite to eat it, he didn't know but he already lost his own.

January 5, 1977 - 01:00 [EST]
Norfolk, Virginia, Republic of Colodia

Jack sat in front of the television, Maggie asleep next to him. Since President Deveroe made his announcement, the state of chaos in the Republic of Layarteb had grown out of proportions. Rioting and anarchy ruled the streets and the cities. Law enforcement officers were firing into crowds with lethal force and others were standing down, unable to shoot innocents. The Layartebian Army had been called out and rolled down the streets of Layarteb City in armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, and armored tanks. The warzone that was Layarteb City was the center of it all. Live new coverage from the Dnalkradian News Center and the Colodian News Outlet played non-stop footage of the scene. Fires burned everywhere and fresh bodies littered the streets. Even in the middle of the night, the eerie glow from the city was something out of a doomsday moving. Fires consumed a quarter of the city and hundreds of thousands had taken to the streets. Their protests were simple and easily understood. The invalidation of the election was the straw that broke the camel's back and incited the first riots. When martial law was declared, the entire nation erupted in fury. The Layartebian people wouldn't have it anymore and they fought back, the only way they knew how now, with violence.

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Gideon Smithe, who had fled authorities just before the announcement had already called for peace from the Layartebian people but they weren't listening. He had moved northward and was going to attempt to cross the border into Dnalkrad, a communist country that bordered the northern part of the Republic of Layarteb. The country itself was in shambles but it was still coherently a country, whereas the Republic was fading away and fast. Three hundred and sixty safe miles away, Jack and his wife had watched every minute of the situation unfold on live television, which was completely uncensored. They watched as an M60A3 Patton main battle tank unleash a thousand rounds from its coaxial machine gun into a crowd of demonstrators, armed with torches, rocks, assault rifles, and who knew what else. They also watched as its 105mm main gun laid waste to several vehicles that were moving throughout the city. "This is madness," Jack remarked as he watched in horror as the government slaughtered its people. Despite the slaughters, over half of the law enforcement force inside of Layarteb City had essentially laid down their arms. They vanished into the crowds, refusing to fire on innocent civilians doing only what they wanted to do, voicing their same opinions. When the army rolled into town, the other half split itself again, half combating the army and the other half fighting with the army.

Safely inside a fallout shelter thirty miles away, President Deveroe, a coward who wished nothing more than to avoid the bullets, called teh shots. He ordered this and that, commanding men to do the unthinkable. Even the army was beginning to lose faith but still, discipline held as the morning hours began. When the sun rose again on the morning of January 5, it rose to a wasteland of fire, death, carnage, and destruction. In the seventeen hour catastrophe, roughly one third of the population of the Republic of Layarteb, almost thirty-two million people, too the various streets in protest of the government. Already being dubbed as the turning point in Layartebian politics by various pundits around the world, the seventeen hour disaster resulted in three thousand, eight hundred, and sixty-seven fatalities, just thirty-three of them law enforcement officers and fourteen of them from the army. The rest were civilians. The slaughter restored some semblance of order to the Republic but it wasn't going to hold for too long. Martial law was difficult to enforce now as the soldiers saw the full extent of the previous night's activities. They watched now as their bullets had torn people to shreds, including both women and children, many of them caught in the crossfires. One of the vehicles destroyed by the M60A3 Patton tank had contained an unarmed family, just trying to flee. The 105mm high-explosive round destroyed the vehicle and turned its four occupants into charred mist.

Jack continued to watch as the cameras showed billows of smoke rising above Layarteb City. Maggie stirred around 7:00 and stretched as she focused her eyes on Jack. "Are you still awake?"

"Yeah."

"What happened?" She wasn't fully aware of the full extent of the situation. She had nodded off a few minutes past eleven the night before. "Is it over?"

"Yes. It is." Tears rolled from his face and she realized that now, she had never seen him cry, not once.

"Are you crying babe?"

"I can't help it. I'm sorry."

"What happened Jack?"

"Thousands babe. Thousands dead." Her eyes suddenly widened and she looked at the television. A scrolling message across the bottom read: THOUSANDS DEAD IN REPUBLIC OF LAYARTEB; GOVERNMENT ORDERS MILITARY TO FIRE UPON CIVILIAN PROTESTORS.

The headlines continued to roll across the screen. "What's going to happen now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Won't someone do something?"

"Nobody. Well maybe here, the Colodians, the Dnalkradians up north. But they're allied to the government, regardless of what just happened. They'll fight with them."

"What about the people?"

"Babe. The people are going to be scared now. They'll fight back, again. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. But they're scared. Leaderless. Smithe, he's running away they say. The President, well nobody's going to look to him for support. That's it babe. The Republic is over but not yet. Someone has to sort of rise up."

"What do you mean 'rise up' Jack?"

"You studied it in school didn't you? Revolutionary theory?"

"I don't really remember it that well, I'm sorry."

"Without a leader, what happened today it'll go in vain. You see the people have finally had it with the government. But thousands of them dead? Even with the level of defections the news reports, the people are going to be too scared to act on their own."

"So you're saying that nothing is going to come of this just yet?"

"No. Not yet."

"What will change it?"

"Someone with charisma and someone with leadership." Suddenly, the phone rang. Jack reached over and picked it up, already knowing who it was. Only one person had their number and they never got wrong number calls. "Major. I've seen it. All night. Thousands they say. Do you have that confirmed? Do you suggest that. I will." He hung up the phone and wiped his cheeks. "Three thousand, eight hundred, and sixty-seven dead."

"How'd he know that?"

"What do you think? Just because he's out of the loop he's lost all his connections?"

"No. I guess not."

"C'mon. Hungry?"

"A little. I don't have a big appetite after this though."

"Me either. But c'mon you and the baby need food. What do you want?"

"Sometimes Jack," she looked at him, "I don't know what I'd do without you." She smiled and kissed him but even she knew, in the back of her head, that he was going to be leaving her soon. She married a soldier, she knew that and she knew that he was a soldier first, more than anything else. She had his loyalty but so did the Major.

January 5, 1979 - 12:00 [EST]
Layarteb City, New York

The situation in the Republic of Layarteb had become a giant rollercoaster ride. After the initial, mass protest and essential decimation of protestors, the civilians calmed down slightly. There were dozens more protests within the next week and though they all turned violent, the body count was nowhere near as alarming. By the end of January, it seemed as if the government had gotten a handle on the situation. Though several thousand were dead between January 5 and January 31, the rioting quelled, massively. Martial law was never fully receeded but the scores and scores of military soldiers in the major cities, Falcon City and Layarteb City especially pulled back to far lower numbers. Local law enforcement personnel were mainly the ones on duty at protests with the military forces guarding only the more important government buildings in the city. Almost ten thousand in Layarteb City became just shy of eight hundred by the end of the month and Falcon City had under four hundred military soldiers. Morale had sunk even lower though and the populace, the military, and the world was fed up with the government of Layarteb.

A second election was held on February 3, as promised by the government but the results were startlingly different. Gideon Smithe and his party were banned from the election and wanted fugitives by the government. When the results came in early the next morning, with the entire world watching, President Deveroe and his party came out, overwhelmingly ahead. The populace rose up again and took to the streets, this time better equipped. Amidst allegations that the elections were flat out rigged, President Deveroe and the Congress agreed to have international observers review the election after three days of violent protests that left hundreds dead, thousands injured, and several million shingrots worth of property damage. This time, the military forces and law enforcement personnel had approached the situation with much cooler heads. Of those dead or injured a fraction were children or women, most of them men, many of them armed with lethal force. Still, the wounds were fresh, sore, and covered with salt.

International reviewers arrived less than a week later and began an inquest, that was slated to take just two weeks. By March 1, they still had not reached a verdict. They cited numerous instances where the government had hampered their efforts, all the while Gideon Smithe declaring the review a farce for the government to save face with a populace that wanted them out, as the first elections had showed. Though he was hiding out to the north, in the communist dystopia of Dnalkrad, he still had followers, millions of them swarming the streets in Layarteb City, Falcon City, Washington City, and elsewhere. A week later, on March 7, the observers had, essentially declared that the election was valid. Few believed them and they left the country the next day, only to arrive back in their respective homelands and denounce their own findings. They were removed from their jobs and within the next couple of days, allegations of fraud and bribery surfaced. On March 13, they joined together for a new conference in Oslo and admitted what everyone knew. The election was a fraud, they had been bribed, coerced, and, essentially, forced to delcare it constitutional and democratic when it was all but.

By midnight on March 13, in Layarteb City, an open and full state of rebellion existed. Millions gathered and took to the streets. Defections by law enforcement and military personnel were widespread and the world suddenly took a step back from the Republic of Layarteb, isolated it, and watched it tear itself to pieces. There were the anarchists, who wanted nothing more than to reap the rewards of the chaos and proclaim anarchy as a way of life. The Catholic Army, which rose up to bring about a religious theocracy and expel the "Pagan infestation" that Layarteb suffered from were also a fighting force. There were the mafias, who sought to reap the benefits of a land in chaos, pilfer what they could, and gain as much power as they could. Layarteb's Brigade was, by far, the largest, numbering over a hundred thousand who rose up to fight the injustice of the Republic and establish a democratic government that was akin to the Republican government but also uncorrupt. Finally, getting a late start were the Revolutionary Corps, a small fighting force mostly composed of soldiers who opposed the government. They were led by a Delta Major and they sought a complete and utter change to the government of Layarteb. The Major, who had walked into the forray on the morning of March 8, declared the international observers to be crooks, liars, and cheats. Obviously, when they admitted as much, he gained clout, though, in all honesty, everyone thought the same thing. He had called Delaney back to his side as well and though he was reluctant to leave his pregnant wife, he did. She was due in mid-April and he didn't expect the government to last that long. He promised here that he would be there, for the birth of his son and he promised her the world. Though furious with his departure and his loyalty to the Major, over her, she wanted, in her own heart, for her son to grow up at home, in Layarteb, in the Republic, safely. She entrusted him to do that for her.

In all regards, the revolutionary groups were outnumbered two to one. The Layartebian Military boasted excellent numbers, at first, despite the defections. This was mainly because those who defected did not immediately seek out the opposition. They sought out their own peace and serenity. They watched from their homes in the countryside or from abroad as their brothers-in-arms, on both sides, began to duke it out, city by city. The weakest of all of the groups were the anarchists. Though they boasted larger numbers than the mafias, they suffered from disorganization and youthful hatred that drove stupidity more than rationale. Their tactics were simply to reign as much destruction as possible, making them enemies to both sides of the conflict. They were on their own, fighting the governmental forces to their front and the revolutionary forces to their back.

At first, the fighting was intense, brutal, and almost devoid of any aspect of humanity. Supporters of either side were dragged into the streets by their enemies and hanged or shot, many within full view of their families. Children were the most vulnerable and mass exodus' of refugees headed west, north, and south, only to come to closed borders. Nobody wanted them and nobody would accept them as the Layartebian Civil War, the second one in history, cast a dark cloud over the world and over democracy. By the end of 1977, four hundred thousand people were dead and the populace of Layarteb had been reduced to 95,300,000. It was a bloody year but not the bloodiest. That title was reserved for 1978, when the civil war became infested with even more groups both foreign and domestic. A group known as Luna's Army rose up early in 1978 to fight against the Catholic notion of a theocracy. The two groups squared off against each other in a religious battle as the anarchists were essentially torn apart, piece by piece by all sides of the conflict. Secretly, army forces from Colodia, which stood to the south of the Republic, joined in the fight, alongside the Major and his Revolutionary Corps, which swelled to nearly a half million strong. They were the largest and most successful group thus far and fought not only against the military of Layarteb but also against two elite, mercenary groups: the Protectors of the Republic and the Guardians. Though they were outnumbered, these two groups were elite mercenaries who fought for the government, the Guardians being especially brutal, committing horrific atrocities. In 1978, Layarteb's population was reduced by 1,745,000.

Nineteen seventy-nine brought a new aspect of war to Layarteb. Thus far, none of the major cities had fallen to revolutionary forces. The government maintained control; President Deveroe maintained his seat of power, having indefinitely suspended elections, the constitution, and the normal way of life following the outbreak of civil war. Protected by an entire group of bodyguards, none of the revolutionary forces had come within five miles of him at any time. That year would bring about entirely new dimensions in the war. Two years after it began, Falcon City had finally fallen and, with it rose a new group of revolutionary forces, an opportunistic group called The Scorpion's Council of Fighting Soldiers. They were small, only a few hundred, and they wished to establish some sort of sovereignty for Falcon City. The anarchists were no more and the mafias had been decimated. Both the Catholic Army and Luna's Army had done more harm to each other than to the government. Layarteb's Brigade had essentially turned to fighting itself. Once one hundred and twenty-five thousand strong and a contender for winning the war, they were now half that size, fighting themselves and the military. With the fall of Falcon City, Dnalkradian forces entered the mess. Secretly assisting republican forces, a small contingent of them came across the border in the winter of 1979 and began to fight against the revolutionary groups. The biggest fighting force was the Revolutionary Corps, the Major's group, with Jack Delaney by his side. Amazed that the government stood so long, they made the biggest headway and were over five-eighths of a million in size, growing, absorbing smaller splinter groups of other revolutionary personalities. United against the government and to the Major, they had conquered over eighty-five percent of the land the government lost. The other fifteen percent was mainly in the hands of smaller, opportunistic groups or Layarteb's Brigade but they were losing their grip fast. They wanted to be inside of Layarteb City by the end of 1979 but that was going to be hard. As they drove the military out of the countryside and out of the north, they drove them to Layarteb City. It wouldn't be long before all of the forces were in Layarteb City.

Jack's son was born early on the morning of April 18, 1977. Jack had managed to sneak off the front lines and be there but his homecoming was short lived. By the middle of June, he was back in the fight. Though he made frequent trips back home, especially during the winters, he was never there for more than a month. This led to a stress and strain in his relationship with Maggie but he wrote her everyday, professing his love for her but also his love for his country. He wanted their son, Jack Jr., to grow up in Layarteb City, without having to worry about being kidnapped by some three-time felon who had avoided justice because of corruption and perversion of the system. He wanted the world for his son and for Maggie and he felt that he and the Major, the Revolutionary Corps, they could all deliver that to them. He believed in what he was doing and though she was safe in Colodia, away from the guns and the rockets and the bombs, he still worried, every minute of every day.

July 9, 1980 - 19:00 [EST]
Norfolk, Virginia, Republic of Colodia

Delaney stood on a mound of grass in front of his house, staring up at its frame, wondering what was really different about it, despite the obvious answer. The Layartebian Civil War, the second in its history, had ended just five days prior when the Major, who now named himself the Emperor, stood at a podium outside of the Fortress of Comhghall, on Governor's Island, just south of Manhattan Island and west of Long Island, in Layarteb City Harbor and proclaimed victory. The President, the Congress, and the ruling government declared defeat, surrendered, and were being held in a prison at an undisclosed location. Many suspected that it was within the walls of the Fortress itself but the Fortress was heavily guarded. With the military, effectively in his control, the Emperor ordered a full stand down of all forces and declared that, despite their allegiances, those who fought would not be prosecuted. The real enemy, he proclaimed, was the government, not the people. Suddenly, his popularity rose and those who fought against him and his revolutionary army began to respect him. His true test would come a year later, when Venezuela was invaded and annexed by Layartebian forces, as the Conquests begun, spreading the Empire initially south but, eventually, north, east, and west. That was its new title as well. The Republic of Layarteb ceased to exist, its flag lowered from buildings throughout the entire country and a new flag raised, the flag of the Empire of Layarteb.

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But that was five days ago and, in just five days, Delaney's entire world turned upside down. He had been there, on that day, standing guard behind the scenes, just a few feet from the new Emperor of Layarteb, tired and weary from the fighting. He had spent more than thirteen months on the front without seeing his wife and son, who had been born early on the morning of April 18, in 1977. Jack missed his second birthday, his first words, his first steps. It tore him apart from inside out but he told himself one thing, he was fighting for his son and for his wife. He would bring them back to Layarteb, to the city that was last to fall, and raise them, retire from the military and from the service of Layarteb forever. He had his plans made and he already informed the Emperor that, following July 4th, 1980, he would no longer be a soldier for Layarteb, Republic or Empire alike. Despite his objection to the matter, the Emperor couldn't deny his request and granted him that much, seeking out the remainder of his team as personal bodyguards. Delaney's unit, which originally began as the Emperor's unit had broken away and fought the war on its own, with honor, distinction, and success. They had been wounded, injured, nearly killed on more than ten occasions but they never gave in and fought hard. It had been Delaney's unit that received the surrender of President Deveroe when they stormed the President's home and captured him alive, killing most of his bodyguards in the process, wounding the others. That had been July 1 and the war was declared over on July 4.

But that was five days ago. He picked up the phone shortly after the press conference, called his wife and spoke to her, for hours. He would be home soon, he promised her. He just had to finish some last minute details but, he would be coming home, July 10. He promised her that and he had that assurance. She was too happy and he spoke to his son, hearing his words for the first time in months. It was a sight and Jack had to be out of sight as he broke down and cried. "I miss you. I'll be home soon. I love you." Were the last words he gave to his wife on that phone conversation. Early on the morning of July 5, Jack, who was sleeping inside the walls of the Fortress of Comhghall, along with his men, who had now become the bodyguards of the Emperor, was abruptly awoken. "What is it? Goddamnit it's five in the morning!" He yelled out as he jumped out of his bed, a civilian now, for all intents and purposes.

"Jack. You have to come quick. I mean now!"

"What is it? Are we under attack?" He grabbed his pistol but there weren't any gunshots in the background. "What is it? He looked at the face of Darryl, one of the Emperor's new aides. He was barely awake himself when he turned on the light and shouted for Jack to wake up and come with him.

"Come with me. Now. The Emperor. He. You have to hurry." He yelled and ran out, towards the Emperor's office. Jack followed, his pistol in his hands, his boots on, ready to unleash unholy hell on any enemy that was threatening him.

He got to the Emperor's office in half the time it would have taken him, had he been running at full speed, a testament to how fast he had run. "Sir. What is it? Are we under attack?" He yelled out as the Emperor ended his phone conversation and stood up, a grief-stricken look on his face. "What happened? What's going on?" He held his pistol tight in his hands, ready to squeeze off the first round. "Are we under attack? Someone fucking answer me? What am I? Talking to a fucking brick wall? What's going on?" His voice trembled with anger and adrenaline.

"Jack. Something happened. I can't. Jack. Give me the pistol." He held out his hand but Jack wasn't eager to give it up to him. "Jack."

"What happened!"

"Jack. The pistol." He cocked the hammer back and held it up, pointing it right at the Emperor, who stopped dead in his tracks. "Jack. What are you doing!"

"Tell me what the fuck is wrong, right now." His voice suddenly became calm and his hand stayed perfectly still as he held the gun eye level with the Emperor's head. "Now!"

"Jack. You need to put down that pistol." The Emperor was about twenty feet away from him still, far enough that he couldn't simply grab the pistol but close enough that there was no way to miss. Jack nodded at him as he went to step another foot closer and even the Emperor realized that the situation was completely out of his control. "Fine. Fine. But I promise you, I will get that pistol from you."

"Hurry."

"Jack. Something's happened in Norfolk. There's been a fire." Suddenly, Jack's whole body began to tremble and his grip on the pistol became shaky. "I'm sorry to tell you Jack. Maggie. Jack Jr. They. They didn't make it. I'm sorry. There was nothing they could do." Jack wasn't able to move and he stood there, frozen, his body shaking, his right hand like an earthquake. "Jack?"

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Jack's legs buckled first, his whole body collapsing down, onto the cold, hard stone floor, his back banging into the wall on the way down, his hands coming to his head, as the tears began to empty from his eyes. The Emperor approached, carefully and took the pistol, fearing Jack would shoot himself with it in his grief.

That was four days ago. Jack was on the ground by noon, outside of his house in Norfolk. The fire department had long since left the scene and the house was nothing more than a frame, blackened, its second story completely gone, the entire rear of it disintegrated. Jack stood there for hours, not moving, just looking at the wreckage before he crossed the yellow caution tape and stepped into the shell of his house. There was nothing left, less than nothing left. What remained of his living room was nothing more than the charred metal skeleton of his couch and an arm chair. The kitchen was nonexistent, the only things remaining were the torched remains of his appliances. There were no stairs and his basement was flooded with water and even more debris but he didn't try to walk down the concrete steps that were remained.

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That was four days ago. As he stood there, sifting through the wreckage of the house, he thought his day couldn't get any worse. He had stumbled back into the living room and nearly collapsed onto the skeleton of a sofa before he saw something underneath a pile of charred wood. He reached down and sifted out some of the rubble, moving a few pieces of the wood to find a half charred teddy bear. He recognized it immediately as the teddy bear he had mailed home for his son's second birthday. It was now, all he had left. He almost fell over crying again when he heard a siren and looked up to see the flashing red lights of a police car. Out of its door stood a police man who walked up towards him. "Sir. This is a crime scene and a dangerous location. You can't be here. Drop whatever it is that you have there and step over here. Slowly. With your hands in the air." He hadn't drawn his gun yet but he had his hand right on its handle. "Sir."

Jack turned his head and looked over at him, "This was my house..." He said as he completely collapsed onto the ground. The police officer didn't arrest him that afternoon or take away the only possession he had left but took him to a hell worse than both of those would have been. He had to come in and identify the bodies, not that there was anything left of them to really identify. They had been burned beyond recognition and were nothing more than blackened skeletons of melted flesh and muscles. It took him almost a half hour just to do it and even longer to listen to the police chief's conclusion about what happened.

"Mr. Delaney. I'm sorry to have to bring this news to you, especially this soon but you should be made aware of what happened here. You are not a suspect as I have been informed from the new Layartebian government that you were in Layarteb City at the time of this incident. I can't present you any sort of hope either at this moment. I am sorry. Mr. Delaney your wife and son were murdered. The autopsy revealed that they were, Mr. Delaney I am afraid this is not going to be easy."

"Just tell me damnit."

"I'm sorry. They were restrained in the second floor of the house and assaulted. We do not believe they were conscious when the house was set on fire. Your son had a plastic bag wrapped around his head prior to the fire and we surmise he was dead before hand due to asphyxiation. Your wife we cannot be certain. Do you know who might have done this?"

"No." His voice was absent of any feeling or humanity as he answered the police officer. "No. I don't."

"You should leave a phone number where we can reach you, in case we have any leads. As for now, I am sorry there is nothing we can do or offer. You can make burial arrangements for your son and wife. Would you want them to be buried in Layarteb?"

"Yes. Yes I do. Please contact Darryl Harris for arrangements." He gave the police officer the phone number as he stood up in the chair and looked down at a photograph on the desk.

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That was four days ago. Delaney left the police station with only the half burned teddy bear in his hands and walked away from the building, it being the dead of night. He walked for about five miles before he came to an abandoned warehouse, outside of which was a small pickup truck. He approached it, the teddy bear still in his hands, and looked into the cab. Nobody was inside and he tried his luck. The door was open and he climbed inside, hoping now to find some keys but he didn't. There weren't any to find, leaving him with the option to hot wire the car. It didn't take too long but the vehicle was started in less than a minute and he put the transmission into gear as he pulled away from the warehouse, the teddy bear by his side, the first time he had let it go since he picked it up hours earlier. He didn't get too far though before he came to a truck stop that he used to fill up the gas tank of the pickup. He also made a single phone call while he was there, to Darryl Harris, the aide to the Emperor who first woke him up on the morning of July 5. "Darryl. Yeah. It's Jack. Listen. See to it that the burial goes off right. No. I won't be there. Find me who did this. I want to know!"

That was three days ago. Now, Jack stood on the grass again, in front of his charred house. The pickup truck sat off, on the curb, the teddy bear still inside. It was nearing dark with the sunset only a half hour or more away. Jack looked around, his neighbors taking little notice to him being there. He disregarded any of them that might have been looking anyway and walked off to his back yard and to a shed that had been spared the fate of his house. He dialed in the combination on the lock and opened up the two sliding doors. He stepped into the blackened shed, shut the doors behind him, and pulled a piece of string above his head, bathing the entire shed in light, from a small forty watt bulb above him. It cast light on gardening tools, a sledge hammer, a shovel, a rake, and all sorts of other things one would expect to find in a shed. There was something though that was, sort of, out of place. It was a steel container on the floor, against the back wall, locked not with one but two combination locks, using two totally different combinations. It would take more than just a pair of bolt cutters to get into the container and, as he dialed in the two combinations, his mind went elsewhere. His eyes were blood red with fire and he wanted nothing more than the blood of those who did it in his own hands, covering his face. He wanted revenge. Once he got into the container, he saw exactly what he needed. Inside was a backpack, an arsenal of weapons and explosives and ammunition, body armor, a combat uniform, and combat gear. He spent less than ten minutes digging through the container but, when he emerged, he emerged with all of the gear that he needed, along with his M1911A1 Colt Pistol, Remington 870 pump-action shotgun, G3KA4 assault rifle, a half dozen grenades, several blocks of C4 plastic explosive, a machete, his Ka-Bar knife, and who knew what else in his backpack. He tossed them into the pickup truck and darted off, never wanting to return to the house or even Norfolk again.

He had gotten a phone call from Darryl the previous day and the Emperor gave him the scoop on what happened. The Red Army Faction, which had re-emerged late in the fall of 1979 had, somehow, gotten the identity of both the Emperor and Delaney, as the ones who had killed Carl Weathers. They wanted revenge and though they were the "Red Army Faction," they were far more radical, militant, and violent. They gave the Emperor and his armies hell during the final months of the civil war but were squashed. A single contingent of six of them, four men and two women, managed to escape with the single mission and intention of destroying both Delaney and the Emperor for assassinating their leader. They exacted that revenge on the evening of July 4 and the morning of July 5, when they tortured and killed Delaney's wife and baby son, burning down the house before they left. They had escaped to the rural hills of Virginia since then, hell bent on opposing the Emperor and the Empire. They never knew what awaited them...

OOC: Warning for graphic content.

July 10, 1980 - 01:45 [EST]
Dublin, Virginia, Republic of Colodia

The farm house had been fully dark now for fifteen minutes. It took almost two hours for the last lights to go out after he arrived and he didn't want to jump any gun and act too quickly. The Emperor had allowed the newly formed Ministry of Intelligence to use satellites and listening equipment to pinpoint the location of the RAF holdouts, which was five miles outside of the rural town of Dublin, two hundred and fifty miles west of Norfolk, a drive that took Delaney less than three hours to make. He drove in silence, the teddy bear and his gear next to him, brooding over how he would execute the RAF terrorists. Ideas plagued his head the entire ride, none of them escaping either. For the past two hours, he had been sitting in the same spot, a thousand meters from the house, watching, brooding, plotting, and waiting, until the right moment. When the lights went out, nothing short of a smile etched across his face, from ear to ear as he put down his binoculars and sifted through his gear. He decided that, for his incursion, he would take only his knife, machete, pistol, shotgun, and a single hand grenade.

After those fifteen minutes, he was ready. The lights remained out and Jack's revenge began as he left his spot and descended towards the farm house. It looked strikingly similar to his own house and he resisted the urge to immediately burn it to the ground. He wanted to torture those inside, like his wife and son had been. Slowly, carefully, and like a true soldier, Jack approached the house low and slow, his eyes fixed on it and everything around, looking for anything that might give him away. He had already sidestepped a rake and avoided a small hole filled with muddy water, despite it being pitch black. With less than one hundred meters to go before he reached the house, Jack quickened his pace, just slightly. The steps became less and less as he neared the two floor, wooden-frame house, its serenity intact, for now. He got to within ten meters of the house before he came to an abrupt halt.

The front door had creaked up, echoing in the silent still of the night and he immediately stopped and got even lower on the ground, only the whites of his eyes showing underneath his black camouflage and face paint. Hello pretty. He thought to himself as one of the terrorists stepped out onto the porch to smoke a cigarette. It was one of the two females and he smirked, his first victim being outside of the house. He could take his time with her and he would. She was in a pair of pajamas and looked more like a college kid rather than a radical revolutionary. He didn't care though, she was the enemy and her appearance didn't matter to him. You're first. She took a puff of her cigarette and paced around the porch, shivering and hiding underneath a sweatshirt. The night was cool and damp, about 55°F with a moderate level of humidity due to an earlier rain storm. She finally settled down after a few paces and stood, her back against the railing, towards Jack, a fatal move. He took it as the opportunity and sprang up, quietly, his weapons making no noise as he drew out his knife and got closer and closer. He kept low and slow but got to her quicker than she could finish the cigarette, which was her most fatal mistake.

He stood inches behind her, more silent than her smoking and stood up carefully, his weapons remaining silent. With his left hand, he came around and grabbed her mouth, the cigarette falling to the wooden floor as he yanked her up and over the railing, never moving his hand from her mouth, keeping her silent. He yanked her hard and fast up and over the railing, a strength that not even he expected himself to have but didn't question. He dragged her back into the darkness, away from the house, silent the whole time, the knife, in his right hand, pressed up against her neck. "Do you know who I am?" He whispered when they were far enough away from the house. She nodded her head that she didn't, tears streaming down her face. "You killed my wife. And my son. Now do you know?" She nodded her head "yes" and began to cry even more. "Praying won't help you." He jabbed the knife into her lower back, hard, deep, and twisted it around, a full 180° turn so the sharp edge of the blade was pointing upwards. Slowly, he methodically walked the knife upwards, tearing her insides as he worked his way higher and higher, keeping the knife just off her spine. "Hurts doesn't it? Painful. That's what I seek. I think you feel that." She was about to pass out from the pain as shock began to set in almost immediately. "It won't be long now. Once it gets to your heart. It's all over." When he was just millimeters away, he stopped the knife and yanked it out of her back. "Not yet." He kicked her over, onto the ground and watched as she tried to crawl away, blood gushing from her large wound. He reached down and turned her over, blood came out of her mouth, keeping her voice muffled and he smirked as he bent down, his eyes looming, looking into hers. "You feel the pain yet?" He asked as he wiped off the bloody blade on her shirt and left her there to die. It didn't take long, the trauma of her wound enough to kill anyone, regardless of their physical size.

He walked back to the house now and up the porch steps, to the front door, which was unlocked, thanks to his first victim. With a turn of the knob, he pushed the door open and stepped in, quietly, the knife still in his hands. Nobody made any noise but he could hear snores from a close room. Rather than arouse any suspicion either, he shut the door behind him and took an instant look around the living room. There was someone sleeping on the couch but not snoring. This would be his second victim. Quietness was the key and he slowly approached them the knife in his hands, clean and eager for more blood. This time, it was a man, sound asleep, victim number two. He stood over the body with a thirst about him and slid his knife back into his holster. This would take something additional and he pulled his machete from his back and, holding it with both hands, swung it down, hard, cutting deep into the man's stomach, right above his belly button, slicing all the way through, practically slicing through his spine. Instantly, the man awoke, the searing pain of his stomach being split in two enough to wake even the soundest sleeper. He never got the chance to scream as Jack put his hand right over his mouth, the same hand that covered the girl's mouth. "You shouldn't have killed them." He whispered to him as the man's face grimaced and writhed with pain. His stomach bled profusely, shock setting in just the same as Jack held the bloody machete over the man's face, letting the blood trip onto it. He was unconscious seconds later, dead shortly thereafter as Jack stood up and made his way to the snores, in a separate room.

Victim number three was in a small, guest bedroom and he found it easy to access. This was another man, the second of the four and his third victim. Still not the ring leader, he would die in a horrific way himself. Jack had left the machete blade bloody when he left the second victim. The third victim, he decided, he would take his time with, rather than quickly eliminating. The bloodlust in his own body fueled his adrenaline, which pumped hard, nearing replacing blood in his veins, coursing through with each beat of his heart and there were over a hundred and twenty of them each minute, more than double his resting heart rate. The man was asleep on the bed, face down, his body spewed out as if he just collapsed onto the bed. The room stunk like spilled alcohol and Jack knew he would have a lot of fun with his one. First, he needed something to use though, his knives being incapable of doing the task. He wiped the edge of the machete off now, on the bed, hoping to arouse the sleeping drunk so he could whack at him but it never happened. Jack put the machete away and reached down for a shirt on the chair. You'll do. He thought to himself as he wrapped it around his two hands, making it tight, coiled, and a perfect strangulation weapon. He walked back to the side of the bed and, quickly, with a single movement, yanked the shirt underneath the man's face and underneath his neck, waking him in the process, even though he was in a drunken stupor. Jack jumped onto the bed, his knee landing right in the man's back and yanked upwards with the shirt, pulling the man's body backwards, unnaturally far as he stiffened his grip on the shirt. The man choked right away and tried to grab the shirt but Jack's grip was impossible to break. "You're going to die. I am going to kill you. Slowly." He whispered in the man's ear as he tried to push Jack off him but failed. His lack of coordination and Jack's sheer strength were a deadly combination as the man began to choke. His body, naturally, forced itself downwards as Jack pulled upwards, making him, essentially, suffocate himself. "You murdered my wife and son. You know who I am don't you? Of course you can't answer. It'll be over eventually. Keep fighting me." He whispered with a sinister laugh as the man choked and gasped for air. Nobody was alive to hear him either and his face turned red. It didn't take long before he became unconscious, though he wasn't dead yet. When his body went limp, Jack released the shirt and tossed it aside, grabbing the man around the neck this time. "Chicken shit." He whispered as he snapped his neck like a twig.

Jack left the guest room, his third victim deceased and passed back through the living room and into the kitchen to find that it was empty. That was it for the first floor. Everyone else was upstairs. He climbed them, quietly, unable to keep a few creaks from getting out as he ascended the thirteen, straight, box steps. At the top of the stairs was a small bathroom and two rooms, both bedrooms. Both of the doors were closed. "Which one..." He whispered to himself. There were two options and one of them would yield two people, possibly three, it depended. "Right." He whispered again as he walked over to the right door and slowly turned the knob, keeping himself to the side of the door. It opened fairly easily and Jack peeked in first before he stepped inward. "Good enough." He whispered to himself, seeing his fourth victim, the third man, lying asleep on a small, obviously child's bed. "How ironic." He thought to himself as he looked down at the sleeping man from the doorway. He pulled out his shotgun and aimed at the man, aware that this would awake the other two, not that either of them would be able to react quick enough. Jack fired, sending a load of buckshot into the lower pelvis and legs of the sleeping man, instantly waking him up and causing a horrific, mortal wound. He pumped the shotgun, releasing the empty, still smoking shell, and burst through the other door.

He was so quick that the man and woman inside couldn't react and, by the time either of them were up and out of their beds, he was on them, quick to act. He aimed first at the woman, smacking her with a back hand so hard that she crashed over the bed and slammed her head onto the floor, instantly causing a horrific concussion, knocking her out before she could lift herself up to fight back. The man, on the other hand, went to reach for his gun but never made it. Jack grabbed him and flung him across the room and into the hallway, following like a bolt of lightning to throw him down the flight of stairs. The man tumbled down them, screaming as he did, landing on his back on the hard, living room floor. He tried to crawl away, towards the man on the couch but only got to the coffee table before he passed out, seeing the horrific corpse of his comrade before he saw black. Jack was pleased with his results and put his shotgun away. He went back into the bedroom, grabbed the woman, and tossed her over his shoulder. He carried her down the stairs too and dropped her onto the floor, furthering her unconsciousness. The fourth victim in the second floor bedroom bled out by the time Jack returned from the kitchen with a pair of chairs and a roll of duct tape. He picked up both of the terrorists and duct taped their hands and mouths. He put the woman in the chair, facing the corpse of the man on the couch and taped her to the chair so she couldn't run away. The man, on the other hand, he had plans for and he left his feet free.

He waited a few minutes for the man to recover from his trauma and yanked him up to a stand from the floor, by his hair. "Wakey. Wakey." He said as the man opened his eyes slowly. "You see my handiwork?" He pointed down at the corpse on the couch as he held the man. "Come. There's more to see." He dragged him, again by his hair, into the bedroom where he showed him the third corpse. "That's your other friend. I'd show you the other two but I don't feel like going outside or upstairs with your heavy ass. Come on. Back to the living room." He brought him back to the living room and dropped him into the chair. The man tried to fight back but one quick hit to the head knocked him back unconscious, letting Jack tape him to the chair. With both of them secured, he put them both in the center of the room, facing the corpse as he went back into the kitchen and gathered a few items, ammonia amongst them. He went back into the living room and placed everything on the coffee table before he woke both of the terrorists. They came too slowly and both tried to scream when they saw him and each other. "Now. Calm yourselves. This will be a lot easier." It was still dark so they couldn't fully see the corpse on the couch. When they were both sufficiently alert, he yanked off the tape on their mouths and tossed it onto the floor. "How's that? Better?" They both screamed and cursed at him, neither one of them knowing who he was yet. "Let me show you something." He stood up and walked over to the wall to flick on the light switch. They became blank, sick, and silent when they saw the corpse on the couch. "Everyone's dead. Just you two remain. Scary feeling isn't it. Do you know who I am?"

"Who the fuck are you? Some kind of sicko?" The man said, the girl silent, afraid. "Huh? Fuck you!"

"Yes. You could say that. 'Some kind of sicko.' It has a nice ring to it. No. I'm more though. More dimensions. Scarier."

"Why did you do that?" The girl asked. "Why?"

"Why did you do what you did? My wife. My son. Both of them."

"What are you talking about?" They both yelled at him, fearing their own fate.

"You shouldn't lie to me. It'll prolong this. Let's try shall we? To do this the easy way. I'll ask a question. You give me an answer. The quicker you do this, the easier it is on you. It's always easy for me by the way."

"Fuck yourself! Go fuck yourself you sick fuck!"

"Such language for a young lady. It isn't proper. Who am I?"

"I don't know!" The man yelled as he spat at him. Jack smirked as he pulled back his knife and sliced the man's exposed chest. It was a superficial wound but a long one that stung terribly. "Ow! Fuck you!"

"Who am I?" He asked the girl now. She didn't answer, only shook. Jack smirked as he opened the bottle of ammonia, which was almost full, and poured some on his knife blade. Then, with a single act, he brushed it on the man's open wound, instantly flaring it up as if it were on fire, causing him immense pain. "Wow. That worked better than I thought. You know," he said as he watched the man's veins pop with pain, his chest enflamed. "I should remember that one. Who am I? The harder you make this the more he's going to hurt." He addressed only the girl, the weaker of the two.

Her eyes were like waterfalls now and the man began to cry himself, more so from the pain. "You're. Him. You killed. Weathers. Carl. Carl. Weathers."

"Right. How did you know that?"

"I don't know." She cried but Jack wasn't satisfied. He sliced another gash across the man's chest, this one making an "X" now but his knife blade was already covered in ammonia. The effect was instant. "I don't know. I don't know." She yelled at him and the man, gasping for air, tried to explain.

"Jack. Delaney."

"How do you know my name?"

"You're going to have to kill me."

"Such bravery. Such bravery. Maybe I'll just maim you. And kill her." He made a small slice across her cheek with his knife, causing an equal amount of pain in her as the ammonia mixed with her blood and nerves. "You be brave. She suffers. You see how this works? How do you know my name?"

"Fuck you."

"More pain it is." He reached back now and, instead, picked up a long match that was for lighting the pilot light on the stove. He struck it and held it close to her face, deciding, instead, to put the flame right underneath her ear. The match was long and could easily burn for a long time. She screamed as her skin melted from the flame. "Ready to give it up or does she suffer more."

"Okay. Stop. Stop." He gave in, quickly at first but stalled with the answer as Jack drew the match closer to the woman's ear. "I said stop! Goddamnit! Stop! Fine. I'll tell you."

"Quit stalling. How'd you find out? Who told you?"

"A general."

"Which one. You're stalling. She's got another ear you know. I've got all the time in the world."

"General Rolands. It was Rolands." Jack immediately recoiled back as he heard the name. General Rolands was set to be named General of the Army for the Empire and here, the terrorists were giving his name out. They couldn't have known he was going to ascend to the post either. That information was completely confidential.

"Rolands? Prove it to me." Jack said, his voice a different level than it had been the whole time. "You had better not be lying. Prove it to me!"

"Rolands. He helped the government. Against you guys. He gave you up. He told us. We had to kill you."

"Why? You realize this makes no fucking sense!" He held the match to the man and let it singe his chin. "Lay it out. Now!"

"Rolands. He was a double agent. The whole time. He helped the RAF get their rise. He didn't want the Emperor to win. He wanted to win himself. To restore the Republic. Not this dictatorship! He instructed us to destroy your home. Kill your wife and son. Then you. We fucked up."

"You're damn right you fucked up!"

"We went too soon. We were told you were coming back that night." Jack suddenly realized something. He had only given the whereabouts of his family out to two people. One of them was the Emperor and the other was General Rolands, the Emperor's confidant. While Delaney was the Emperor's arm, Rolands was his body. The Emperor was an excellent commander and a skilled leader but he couldn't be everywhere at once. With Delaney fighting the war, he needed a close, second in command, with whom to put his trust in and that was General Rolands. There was only one way to prove if these terrorists were really telling the truth.

"Get this question wrong and I promise you I'll make you drink her blood! You understand me?" The man nodded. "General Rolands also had a sort of memento with him. Everywhere he went but nobody knew about it. Not even the fucking Emperor knows about it. I know about it. Because I gave it to him."

"Are you talking about the coin?" Jack instantly recoiled. "The coin?"

"The coin." Jack looked back at him, realizing that he had told the full truth. "The coin."

"We have it. I have it."

"Where!"

"In his pocket. Him." He motioned to the corpse on the couch.

"What do you think this is, a game?"

"It's in his pocket." Jack turned around and backed towards the corpse and carefully reached into the pocket with his left hand, his right on his pistol, just in case any of them tried anything. His fingers touched a metallic object and he pulled it out and nearly fell down, onto the floor as the truth hit him. "It's a one of a kind right?"

"Yeah."

"He told us to put it on your corpse. To burn you with it." Jack walked back over to the man and woman and put the coin in his pocket. "Please. We didn't."

"You didn't what? You murdered my wife. My son. You couldn't keep the war with me. You had to take it to them!"

"You killed my father!" The woman spoke, the first time since he began to torture her. "Carl Weathers was my father. What do you think? You're innocent? You dragged my family into this. So I dragged yours."

"So you're the brains of this? I guess."

"You fucking animal. You murdered him."

"He was a terrorist."

"And what are you? You and your men. Your unit. You killed civilians. You're the traitors. Not to the government but to the ideals. To the people! You let them down, you let a dictator take power. You are a terrorist!"

"You know," he sat down on the coffee table. "I did things I'm not proud of. I killed for my country. I don't care who it was or who it will be. At least I didn't kill to create fear. I didn't prey only on civilians like your terrorist of a father. It's easy to kill a woman with a purse in a department store. Try killing a soldier. Try killing to save the lives of your men. You two. You wouldn't know anything about what a war really is. You wouldn't know the first thing about killing. You're just a bunch of errand boys. Girls in your case. You did someone else's dirty work because you didn't have the courage to do it yourself. I do my own dirty work." He lit another match and pressed it to the man's pants, near the bottom and watched as the fabric caught fire. "You don't know the first thing about anything."

"You're the fucking terrorist. The fucking monster. Look what you did." The woman, enraged, let her feelings out in full force as the man stood and watched the flames creep up the man's pants. "Now you're going to torture us. Kill us. For what."

"For what? Like I said. You don't know the first thing about war. What did you think was going to happen? Your daddy was going to save the day, stop the big bad government? All he did was galvanize the people. AGAINST HIM! He knew it. Why do you think he was hiding? He was a chicken shit. And I put a bullet in him. You know what? Your daddy didn't do a single good thing for this country. The Republic is gone. Fallen for good." He kicked the man hard, extinguishing the flames as it crept above his knee. "He didn't do a single good thing." Jack took his knife and slashed the man's inner thigh, deep, slicing right through his femoral artery. He would just bleed out not. "And you. What good have you done?"

"Fuck you."

"Rolands. Rolands. Rolands. For this. I thank you. So which one of you did it? Huh? Who killed who? Was it you? Him?"

"I did it. Me. I choked your baby boy. Made him suffocate. Right in front of your crying wife." The girl yelled, trying to get some sort of victory over him. "It was me."

"You huh? Well then. I guess I'm going to enjoy this then." He took a can of lighter fluid and doused her with it, enjoying the smell of it as he did, watching the man bleed out as he doused his wound with the lighter fluid, only adding pain to the mortal injury. "This is your consequence. This is the punishment you'll reap."

"You're never going to get away with it. With this." The man said, woozy from the blood loss.

"I'm not? What do you think? They're going to arrest me? By the time they find you, investigate this, even think that I am the culprit I'll be long gone. You think I have an identity? You erased that from me, maybe you might find some sort of enjoyment with that but guess what, you've only done me a favor. Your friend. General Rolands. He'll be next." Jack backed away and made a long, winding path on the floor with the rest of the lighter fluid. "You brought this down on yourselves. Now live with it." He lit the final match and tossed it onto the ground and watched as both of the terrorists panicked, trying to get away from the flame, which winded around the room, following the curves of the lighter fluid, eventually reaching them, instantly setting them ablaze, their shrieks and screams loud enough to wake the dead.

July 10, 1980 - 18:30 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

"Jack. You realize how serious a charge this is. You're basically accusing the head of our army of the highest level of treason that exists. Do you understand what that would do for our country? For our people and our new peace? Even if it is true, we will be strongly limited in our course of action."

"Leave it up to me." Moments later, General Rolands entered the Emperor's office by himself, having received the urgent message from the Emperor. Now the acting began. "General, I'm pleased to see you."

"You as well Jack. I'm very sorry about your family. I attended the funeral, I'm sorry you weren't there. Your wife's eulogy was beautiful."

"I appreciate that General."

"If you'll excuse me. Sir. How may I be of help?"

"General. We have a situation in Virginia that needs the tending of the army."

"Yes sir. You will give me the proper details in private?"

"Certainly."

"Sir. If I may interrupt. General, I was just speaking to the Emperor about that coin I gave to you. He wanted to see it. You know the Emperor is a coin collector and he is very interested in seeing it."

"I am General. Was it really a two headed Sphinx? They are very rare you know."

"Sir. Jack. I am afraid I lost that coin during one of the last battles during the war. I wish I had been more careful. It must have fallen out of my pocket during the engagement." He put on his best, pretend face of disappointment. "Jack. I'm very sorry."

"Well General. I feel bad for you then. It was a rarity in the world. One of a kind. Even with the, I don't remember. What was etched underneath the paw? Some number was it or mark?"

"It was a hammer strike I think. Very unique."

"Yes. Very." Jack produced the coin from his pocket, dropped it through his fingers and stared right into his eyes. "So how'd I get it?" His voice's volume level halved itself instantly and the Emperor stood up himself and nodded. In the rear of the office, two of the body guards instantly walked out of the office, closing the giant, wooden doors behind them. "You lying sack of fucking shit I ought to kill you right here!"

"Jack. Sir. What are you talking about?" Jack slammed the coin on the Emperor's desk, its echo filling the cavernous room as he drew his pistol and aimed it right at the General's head. "Jack. Jesus. Put the gun down!"

"You lied to me. You know they told me. Your little errand boys. The four guys. The two girls. Whatever was left of the RAF. They told me."

"Who? What are you talking about?"

"General. You had better start telling the truth or I will have no hesitation in letting Jack here blow your head across the room. This coin here," he picked it up and eyed it. "Is a one of a kind. I am no coin collector but a specialist in my office twenty minutes ago was. This is a one of a kind coin, minted for an ancient Greek senator. This coin alone is worth over $10,000 and it is definitely yours. Jack here picked it off of six RAF terrorists, the same six that killed his wife and newborn son, the same six who you ordered to do so."

"I don't have a clue what you are talking about. These accusations are ridiculous!" The General yelled as Jack cocked back the hammer on his M1911A1 pistol. "Put down the fucking gun!"

"General. You have less than ten seconds to start talking and it had better be the truth. One. Two."

"Sir. This can't be serious." Jack continued to count as the General basically begged for his life. "Sir. Aren't you going to stop this?"

"Nothing I can do General. This is between you and him. I'm just facilitating the meeting."

"Eight. Nine. Ten." Jack squeezed the trigger after resighting his gun, putting a round clear through the General's arm, a non-fatal but tremendously painful wound that would require medical attention. The echo practically blew out their ear drums but none of them, save for the General, who fell to the floor, faltered. He wished he had brought his sidearm but he left it on his desk. As he lay on the floor, his hand gripping the gunshot wound tightly, staring up at Jack, he realized that this wasn't a game. "The next one won't be so forgiving."

"Jesus Christ. Sir. You are allowing this to happen? I have served you faithfully since..."

"General. Leave me out of this. It is between you two and I am afraid to tell you that I have chosen my side. If you want to come out of this office alive you will speak the truth."

"You had better hurry General. I have plenty of rounds to go. Perhaps a kneecap this time. You know those never heal right."

"This is a game to you isn't it?"

"A game? General. This is no game. You should see what I've learned with ammonia. It's an amazing torture device. Your friends, they got acquainted with it before I set them on fire. Alive."

"You're a sicko! You're a psychotic sicko!"

"You're running out of time. The kneecap is next. Move and it's your balls."

"Sir!"

"General. I'm not going to say this again..."

"Jack!" Jack fired a second shot, putting a round only millimeters from his kneecap, which rocked into the pavement and ricocheted away, harmlessly. "Jesus Christ man!"

"He can't help you. Are you going to tell me the truth now?"

"What truth?" Jack kicked him hard, right in the arm, where he had shot him and made sure that he hit him hard, definitely not helping.

"That wound won't heal itself General. You're going to die if you do not begin to cooperate." The General lay silent, his hand back on his wound, holding it tightly, trying to get the bleeding to stop as the pain throbbed in his veins. "I'm waiting General."

"Fine. Fine. Jesus Christ fine."

"Fine what?"

"You want to hear? You want to know the truth? Fine. Well you already know the truth. What more can you know?"

"Why did you do it? Huh? Why? What did I do to deserve that?"

"It wasn't what you did. You were just a pawn Jack. You were supposed to be there too but those fucking morons did it too soon. When you weren't there. I had told them to wait but they got spooked. I figure."

"You figure? They were ordered to do it."

"Not by me. Jack. I wanted you dead as well."

"Why? Why me!"

"Because, without you he would fall!" He pointed to the Emperor. "Him! He's the fucking target not you!"

"Why General? Why would you fight alongside me and then betray me? Are you greedy for power?"

"No. Power? No. Democracy. You have turned this into a dictatorship. That wasn't the deal! We were fighting for the people! For the end of the government. Establish the Republic again."

"Republic? The people were failed by the Republic. No. We will continue. The people will not be let down this time. The corruption of the Republic and of democracy will not be born again!"

"You are a fool sir. You're going to be killed before you get to speak to them again!"

"General? A coup? A coup? Who do you think I am?" At that moment, the Emperor, who already knew there were military officers preparing a coup against him, smiled. "You were part of it I see?" Loyalists to the Emperor were rounding up the traitors and arresting them for trial. The coup was stopped before it could even begin. "That chapter is already over General."

"You're bluffing."

"I am? Yes. I guess I am. Jack. I am sorry for your loss. I am sorry that he has broken both my trust and yours and ordered the horrific. You will have one last act before you are to leave the service of me and this Empire. He is yours. You will find the accommodations in the basement to be fitting I trust." He picked up the phone and called the secretary on the other side of the doors. "Yes. Yes. Please escort Jack and the General to the basement. I understand." The doors opened and a pair of armed guards stepped in, restrained the General, and lifted him from the floor.

"You banned executions for the time being. Do you not remember?" The General laughed. "You will lose face with the people."

"How will I? You were killed by an assassin. I could not prevent it. General. You are hereby stripped of your rank and service with the Empire of Layarteb. Your sentence is his desire." Jack escorted the General out with the two guards, a rage within his body fueling every part of it.

It took twelve hours for Jack to emerge from the basement and, when he did, he made his way right for the Emperor's office. He stood at the closed doors and held his head low. Is it finally over? He asked himself as the doors opened, swinging inward. He stepped into the room and walked up to the Emperor's desk where he stood, at attention while the doors closed behind him.

"Sir. I regret to inform you that the late General has passed away. Medical personnel were unable to save him from the assassins bullet, which was lodged too close to his heart to be removed. His death was, I apologize, very painful."

"That's a fine story. I have your papers for discharge here. Jack. You have served the Republic and the Empire faithfully, properly, respectfully, and with more honor and distinction than any soldier in our eight hundred and twenty-three year history. It is a shame that your heroics will never grace the books of history but you will have more than just a namesake Jack. You and you alone are responsible for this country and this peace more than any other individual within our country."

"Thank you sir."

"You will have to sign of course."

"Yes sir." He stepped forward as the Emperor handed over his discharge papers and a pen. "Sir," he straightened up and looked down at the line where he was supposed to sign. "These past twelve hours have left me thinking. This Empire, yourself. There is more vulnerability than either of us can fathom."

"That is true. But we will endure. The Republic lasted for one hundred and eighty-nine years. I think the Empire has a long way to go."

"Sir. I feel that my life would be better filled in service to this Empire and country. Sir, I have nothing to go back to, nothing to live for, you might say. Look what they did to my family? To all that I know. That's all I have left sir. You are the only family I have left, and the rest of the men of course."

"What do you propose?"

"Sir. I had talked to you once about the formation of an elite unit."

"I remember."

"Sir. I ask that you allow me to form that unit. Eight men. Black Operations. We will be your personal body guard force."

"How do you propose to fill this unit?"

"First and foremost our brothers in arms. I would appoint Wilkins as the executive officer of the unit."

"Jack. Your loyalty and their loyalty I do not question but there were only six of us. Five without me. Where will you get the remaining three?"

"Sir. We have fought with men that were more honorable, loyal, and brave than you or I know."

"Time frame?"

"I can have the unit ready in one week."

"What do you propose to name it?"

"Sir. The 1st Black Operations Group. Force Falcon sir."

The Emperor stood up and reached over the desk and took the papers and the pen from Jack. "Jack. I want to make sure that you know what you are proposing here."

"Sir. I am fully aware. I have thought about this since I left Dublin."

"Jack. Are you sure this is the best thing right now? You've just..."

"Sir. I'm prepared."

"Very well. There is someone I would like you to meet. His name is Doctor Atticus Noyle. He worked for the previous government in research & development underneath the 'Sleepwalker Project.' You are aware of it?"

"Wasn't it a project to investigate whether or not soldiers could be made to not sleep?"

"Yes it was."

"It had horrific results though? Correct? All of the subjects died."

"They did. Doctor Noyle has made it work. There are two test subjects who have been successfully converted for eight months now. Please, come with me."

OOC Summary

Chapter One: Faint & Numb


October 10: A massive truck bomb in the order of 2,000 pounds goes off outside a newspaper office of the LNN in the early morning hours. 7 dead.
October 11: Missile Base 1511 undergoes treasonous insurrection. Further reports unknown.
October 14: ILN Hunter SSN ordered to take up position off Layarteb coast. Further orders not given.
October 15: Force Falcon Team One ordered to re-establish contact with Missile Base 1511. Boeing 777 crashes north of Athens, Tennessee. All 89 on board are killed. Investigation pending.


Chapter Two: Frantic

October 16: Force Falcon Team One leads a strike on Missile Base 1511. During the course of the retaking, a single LGM-174A Satan is launched at Layarteb City with the intention of hitting it. Luckily, MIM-196 AABMS missiles intercept the ICBM before it could hit.


Chapter Three: Estranged

October 18: Force Falcon Team One lands in Santa Cruz, Bolivia for the assassination of the President of GnOoLoCoPeLep.
October 20: GnOoLoCoPeLepian President assassinated early in the morning.
October 22: Failed attempt by terrorist group to bomb Layartebian airbase in Sunbury, PA.


Chapter Four: Overburdened

October 23: Central Justice Agency begins Anti-Domestic Terrorist Force under the command of Bureau Chief Benjamin O'Davis. Identifies Republican Liberation Army as terrorist group responsible for bombings of Layarteb City and airliner over Tennessee.
October 25: RLA blows up a Boeing 707 and an Airbus A300 from Layarteb Airways over Cove Neck, New York and Belle Harbor, Queens, Layarteb City.
October 26: Emperor makes speech condemning the RLA. Raid on Layarteb City apartment nets 17 RLA terrorists and kills 3. Documents recovered tell of a plot for subway bombings.
October 28: News media is leaked the presence of the Mayan uprising in the Yucatán state.
October 30: Six security guards shot and killed execution style inside the Layarteb City office for Layarteb Publishers
United.
October 31: Secret societies meet to discuss revolutionary plan.
November 2: Two firefighters die in a suspicious blaze in a New Jersey factory.


Chapter Five: Rosenrot

November 5: 84 RLA terrorists seize St. Paul's Boarding School in New Hampshire and take 1,184 hostages, most of them under 18. In the fighting, they lose 2 of their own and kill 20, mostly school officials and guards. Terrorists round up hostages in the main dining hall as parents, soldiers, and police officers, including SWAT, surround the school. By 1300, a standoff ensues. At 1430, three children are executed by the RLA terrorists after a SWAT sniper shoots one of the terrorists. The SWAT sniper dies mysteriously. At 1530, Rome and Norway denounce the seizure.
November 6: Under the threat of a severe winter storm, small group of soldiers enter school and hide in admissions office. Families begin to grow wrestless and plot their own action. Explosions go off in dining hall and a chaotic attack is done leaving 75 terrorists, 152 children, and 38 soldiers dead. Many are wounded. Seven terrorists are captured, including the leader.
November 7: Emperor delcares national day of mourning for November 6.


Chapter Six: Precious

December 1: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island become part of the Empire. Only Quebec remains.
December 9: Quebecois Special Forces use VX gas against Jay, Vermont, killing 384 of 426 people.
December 10: Quebecois invade Ontario during the early morning. Jay Incident becomes public knowledge and Quebecois SOF and RLA terrorists blamed. Quebecois forces make quick and powerful headway throughout the course of the morning, seizing North Bay. RLA base compound in Clinton discovered for its true purpose.
December 11: Roman forces land to help the Ontarians. Quebecois clash with Roman/Ontarian forces in Alliston.
December 12: RLA forces seize 12 MGM-212 CBRR rockets on an assault at the El Jobal Chemical Weapons Depot, in Venezuela. 60 base personnel and 18 terrorists are killed. The rockets are currently "missing."
December 13: Roman forces repel the Quebecoi offensive, pushing them out of Ontario and towards Quebec. RLA group captured in Alliston, where Quebecoi forces devestated and forced back.


Chapter Seven: Colorblind

December 15: Layartebian forces begin aerial attack on Quebec at 0200 local time.
December 25: Ground war against Quebec begins at 0230 local time.
December 30: Boisclair captured by Roman forces.
January 1, 2006: Quebec War over. Montreal secure.


Chapter Eight: Gone Away

January 21: Battle of Clinton begins. Layartebian forces attack RLA compound north of Clinton, Alabama. The battle begins at exactly 10:02, local time. 8 soldiers die initially. Full assault begins at 23:00. Assault ends at 23:40 with 52 soldiers dead and 82 wounded.
January 22: Battle of Clinton continues. Stalemate ensues with a twenty-four hour ceasefire at 07:15.
January 23: Battle of Clinton ends. RLA compound burned from the inside out, RLA leadership and fighters dead from suicide or gunshots. 427 die.


Chapter Nine: Greed & Serenity

June 1: Former Minister of Intelligence dies inside of Nova Prospekt prison, Galapagos Islands.


Chapter Ten: Bleed the Freak

June 15: Soldiers begin leaving the island of Grenada for 6-day liberty.
June 16: Rebellion forces attack Grenada at 03:00 hours. At 05:29 hours, rebel forces shoot down Flight 2993 to Miami, Florida with 226 people onboard; none survive. By 20:00 hours, rebel forces have secured 100% of the island and suffered 3,049 losses. Layartebian casualties number 7,775 and 4,518 are captured. In the fighting, 839 civilians are killed in addition to Flight 2993.


Chapter Eleven: Goodbye For Now

June 16: Dr. Gordon Gray of the University of Layarteb at Layarteb City is murdered by an unknown gunman.
June 17: United Eastasian Republic publically officially recognizes the Republic of Grenada and offers supplies, funding, and aide.
June 18: At 08:30 hours, the Emperor gives worldwide speech about Grenada and condemns UER for recognizing the Democratic Republic of Grenada.
June 19: Imperial Layartebian Navy blockades island of Grenada.
June 22: UER aide flight given clearance to land in Grenada. UER aide flight evacuates UER diplomatic contingent from Grenada. ILN RA-5E Vigilante conducts low-level reconnaissance.
June 23: Christopher Allen Florence is arrested outside of Charleston, WV and questioned and held in connection to the murder of Dr. Gray.


Chapter Twelve: Fall to Pieces

July 3: Supreme Grenadian of the DPRG secretly requests international aide to be delivered during a week long "negotiation" with the Empire, during which they hope the blockade will be lifted.
July 4: MSgt. Brendan Williams and his family are murdered, possibly by drifters, in their Tennessee home. MSgt. Williams was due for a media interview regarding the shoot down of LA Flight 88 at 19:00 hours.
July 6: Secret safe house in Panama is attacked by Force Falcon Team One early in the morning, just after midnight. RLA high council, survivors of the Battle of Clinton, are all killed. The total death toll is 42 in the safe house and 28 in the vehicle convoy. The Emperor agrees that the blockade shall be lifted on July 16, 2006 at 00:00 EST and reinstated on July 22, 2006 at 23:59 EST, if no progress is made during negotiations.


Chapter Thirteen: Bleeding Me

July 11: Shoot out at Dockhouse 14 in Caracas shipyard leaves 13 dead. A mysterious cargo is stolen and the identity of all men, except two, is unconfirmed. Those two are linked with Esmeralda Cartel.
July 13: Giacomo Benevetti is murdered by shooting and burning outside his office in Caracas, Venezuela. Suspects unknown though murder is linked with Dr. Gordon Gray. Suspect sought out is believed to be the same person for both.
July 14: Esmeralda Cartel yacht sunk in the Gulf of Paria by ILN vessel. Eight men aboard killed. Two men founded murdered, execution sytle in Güiria. Both are linked to the Esmeralda Cartel.
July 21: Layartebian delegation to Grenada is assassinated in their hotel in St. George's, totalling 29 individuals. Blockade resumes and the DPRG is given 24 hours from 11:00 hrs [EST] to surrender the island back to Layarteb City.
July 22: Deadline passes. Hostilities officially begin against DPRG at 13:00 hrs [EST].


Chapter Fourteen: Stillborn

July 22: Deadline passes. Hostilities officially begin against DPRG at 13:00 hrs [EST]. First eleven hours of fighting sees 1,600 Grenadian, 22 Layartebian, and 65 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 21,239 at the start of the war.
July 23: At 00:15 hrs [EST], Victoria is secured. Mount Saint Catherine is secured at 03:00 hrs [EST]. Panorama and Trevellan are secured at 09:00 hrs [EST]. First thirty-five hours of fighting sees 3,839 Grenadian, 312 Layartebian, and 300 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 17,315 at the end of July 23. There are a total of 85 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 24: At 01:20 hrs [EST], Grenville is secured. At 03:00 hrs [EST], Saint Patrick's parish & Saint Andrew's parish secured. At 06:20 hrs [EST], the airport is secured. At 08:30 hrs [EST] assault on St. George's begins with aircraft and cruise missiles. At 11:15 hrs [EST] Gouyave is secured but massacre of civilians is found with 2,450 civilians executed throughout the town by Grenadian soldiers. First fifty-nine hours of fighting sees 7,293 Grenadian, 815 Layartebian, and 2,828 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 13,734 at the end of July 24. There are a total of 212 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 25: At 02:00 hrs [EST], all of Grenada is considered secured except for St. George's. At 05:00 hrs [EST], invasion of St. George's by Marines begins. At 21:25 hrs [EST], the captured Layartebian soldiers from June 16 are recovered. Of the 4,518 that were initially captured, only 3,758 remained alive. In the first eighty-three hours of fighting, 9,549 Grenadian, 1,787 Layartebian, and 3,201 civilain casualties are registered. Grenadian soldiers number 11,430 at the end of July 25. There are a total of 260 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 26: At 10:29:38 hrs [EST], a 5 kiloton nuclear device is detonated in downtown St. George's. The device is of unknown origin and at least 30,000 civilians and 8,500 Grenadian military personnel as well as 6,100 Marines are persent in the city when the device goes off. Possible casualties are expected to exceed 40,000. At 12:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor addresses the world about the events in Grenada. Estimates for casualties are narrowed between 20,000 and 30,000.


Chapter Fifteen: Cowboys From Hell

July 26: At 11:30 hrs [EST], martial law is declared on Grenada and an immediate "in-house" curfew is imposed. At 14:15 hrs [EST], analysis shows that radiation is rapidly spreading towards Cottish Barbados, to the northeast, and that the device used was an enhanced radiation device. At 15:01 hrs [EST], the first fire fighting chemicals fall over Saint George's. At 17:00 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as a W80-0 of a Tomahawk SLCM. At 18:20 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as a Teh Ninjan weapon. At 21:18 hrs [EST], a fire storm hits the city and ravages the inner circle of the city, around the blast zone.
July 27: At 09:30 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as being built within the Empire of Teh Ninjas in Cuba and shipped to Madagascar for basing on a 688/I class submarine. At 11:00 hrs [EST], the fires within the city are considered "under control." Recovery efforts continue within the city.
July 28: At 04:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor meets with President Baruti of the United States of Brink about the bombing. At 04:30 hrs [EST], two vehicles are identified on a highway heading north from Georgia and engaged by 2nd BOG forces. Two men are captured. Six are killed and their vehicle destroyed. Witnesses had little to say about the event.
July 29: At 06:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor's aircraft and flight are engaged by twelve F-22B Raptors going rogue from the ILAF. All twelve rogue aircraft are shot down along with four F-22B Raptors and one F-14E Super Tomcat escorting the Emperor's aircraft. At 21:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor returns to Layarteb City. The engagement of his aircraft is kept "hush-hush."
August 9: At 12:00 hrs [EST], the final casualty figures are released to include 37,221 as a result of both the blast and the radiation poisoning that followed. On Barbados, 400 Cottish individuals died.


Chapter Sixteen: Sehnsucht

November 23: Layarteb Airlines Flight 1890 explodes in mid-air, at 19:30 hrs [EST], 8 miles south of East Moriches, Long Island. The cause of the disaster is yet unknown but all 526 onboard are presumed dead.
November 24: Jasmine Delgado, the daughter of the Governor of the Province of Raef, is kidnapped at a market in Havana at 15:05 hrs [EST] by Luis Rendon and Javier Montenegra of the Florida Cartel. They soon meet up with Hector Pimentel, also of the Florida Cartel. Their house and car are burned and their whereabouts are unknown.
December 1: At 10:27 hrs [EST], the chief of police for the Province of Raef is asssassinated when his helicopter is shot down trying to land on the roof of the Panama City police headquarters. Six men in the helicopter and three bystanders on the street are killed.
December 11: Mysterious explosion around 22:39 hrs [EST] kills lead witness in Jasmine Delgado kidnapping and destroys two adjacent homes. Ten others are killed.
December 23: Official investigation on LA Flight 1890 concludes citing that mechanical failure brought down the aircraft due to faulty wiring in the center fuel tank, which ignited fuel vapors and caused the explosion. All 526 lives were lost, making it the dealiest, civilian air disaster in EOL history.


Chapter Seventeen: Ugly & Damned

December 27: The Empire begins a secret war against Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam, a major warlord in Afghanistan and drug dealer who is directly linked with Layartebian cartels.
February 2, 2007: Layartebian forces assist the Eurasian Federation in seizing Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. They wage a "secret war" against Sepah-e Pasdaran, an Islamist-terrorist group in the region. Evidence gathered from Sepah-e Pasdaran link them to the Layartebian situation. Funding for Sepah-e Pasdaran was given through Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam by Totalis (Varsolan Corporation on the Falklands linked directly to Grenada), the cartels, and the RLA. Sepah-e Pasdaran trained various terrorist groups acting in the Empire of Layarteb from 2005 - 2007 including the RLA and Free Venezuelans. An unknown "major funder" is sought out.
February 15: Layartebian forces invade southern Neuvo Rican Mexico and seize Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, and Tabasaco in the "War on Drugs" and, effectively, end the drug trade in the region when the war is completed.
February 18: State governor of Venezuela is assassinated, presumably by a "domestic" terrorist group related to the RLA.
March 1: Victory is declared in southern Mexico.
March 4: Successor to the state governor vanishes mysteriously. Street violence in Caracas escalates to its highest levels since 1988. Fueled by Illuminati Ghost Warriors, street violences peaks shortly thereafter.
March 12: Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam is killed. Evidence links him to Sepah-e Pasdaran.
April 1: Organized protests begin in Caracas and are brutally suppressed. In total 629 people, including 55 police officers are killed when the government stepped in to stop the protests.
April 2: Two women are killed when the State Governer of Venezuela's house is attacked by rocket fire. The governor is severely injured and is forced to withdraw from his duties.
April 5: The "Free Venezuelans" announce that they are a pro-independence group seeking for Venezuelan independence and claim responsibility for the attack of April 2. They are linked to demonstrations going back to March and are immediately assumed to be responsible for the February 18th assassination of the government.
April 8: The Imperial Layartebian Military begins to mobilize as unrest in Venezuela peaks again.
April 9: The Free Venezuelans detonate a massive car bomb inside the South Eastern Virginia government building in Caracas, leveling the building. Forty-five are killed in the attack, which occurs at 01:30 hours [AST]. At 01:32 hours [AST] fighting erupts in Caracs and by 05:30 hours [AST] Venezuela is in the midst of a total revolution.
May 5: The last of the Free Venezuelans are captured, killed, or in hiding and the insurrection ends, unsuccessfully. Fatalities include 182,500 civilians, 4,528 soldiers, and 429,040 rebels. Casualties include upwards of 300,000 civilians, 12,086 soldiers, and 200,489 rebels. There are 342,493 rebels captured.
May 14: The ministers of Defense, Intelligence, Interior, and Justice are fired.
May 17: Assad al Samir, a prominent leader with Sepah-e Pasdaran is killed during a failed mission to apprehend him. He is a major player in Layartebian terrorism and acts as a middleman between Sepah-e Pasdaran and Totalis. He is also linked with the unknown "major funder" sought out by the Ministry of Justice.


Chapter Eighteen: Long Way Down

May 19: An arson fire destroys the Church of Saint Andrews in the Bronx, killing 6.
May 23: Marjorie Williams, a prominent writer for the Layarteb City Times, disappears from her White Plains home in the early morning hours. She was working on a feature story about the rise in kidnappings since November 2006. All of her notes, tapes, and the laptop she used were taken. No suspects are immediately sought. Early on the morning of May 23, Salem Nuclear Powerplant is attacked by eight unknown terrorists. Two are killed and six captured in a firefight that also claimed the lives of one security officer and one National Guardsmen. The attack was unsuccessful.
May 24: Thomas Deveroe, last President of the Republic of Layarteb, dies in his sleep in Kerala, Cotland. Cause is determined to be acute myocardial infarction.
May 25: Illuminati terrorists secretly take hold of the Sky Wonder, a cruise ship in the Caribbean Sea with 1,550 passengers and 600 crew members.
May 26: Jeremy Berms, a director in the Ministry of the Interior is assassinated by an unknown hit man in the Yucatán.
May 27: Referendum vote favors returning the body of Thomas Deveroe to Layarteb for burial 87.63% to 12.37%.


Chapter Nineteen: Night Train

May 28: At 04:48 hours [EST], an M-107 civilian jetliner crashes on the Spain/Portugal border, all aboard are lost, including 108 Layartebian citizens. Cause of the crash is unknown. At 08:15 hours [EST], terrorists sink the Sky Wonder ocean liner in the Gulf of Mexico with explosives. All aboard, including 400 Cottish citizens, are killed, a total number of 2,150. An assault on a police station in Cleveland leaves 8 police officers dead and 31 injured. Of the attackers, 2 are killed and the remainder escape. Open revolution begins in Portugal with the secession of Portugal from the Fourth Reich. Spain eventually joins the secession.
June 9: War breaks out with the Federal Republic of the Amazon concerning the Venezuelan uprising of 2007 and the harboring of insurgents.
June 17: Eighty Layartebian civilians are brutally murdered by the Portugese government. At 19:30 hours [EST], Layartebian forces begin a systematic bombardment of Portugese strategic positions relating to their air force and air defense network.
June 19: The last two of three Sepah-e Pasdaran terrorists are apprehended secretly in the town of Guarda in Portugal. They are returned to the Empire for questioning.
June 24: Interrogations reveal that the name of the "domestic terrorist group." They are referred to as "Ghost Warriors." Little other information is known about them except they trained in Sepah-e Pasdaran camps and are elite mercenaries.
June 27: Manaus is secured by Layartebian forces in the Amazonian War.
July 3: The Amazonian War concludes with a Layartebian victory. There had been 566 KIAs, 1,768 WIAs, and 7 MIAs on the Layartebian side and there were over 20,000 civilian casualties and at least 30,000 casualties of all types amongst the military forces.
July 10: An unknown assassin kills the Mayor of Raccoon City, the CJA Field Director for Raccoon City, and an unidentified woman.
July 18: At 05:10 hours [EST], Layartebian police and CJA officers raid an apartment in the Bronx and arrest four Sepah-e Pasdaran terrorists plotting to set off a bomb in Layarteb City. They are Eurasian citizens.
July 27: At 17:10 hours [EST], bombs rip through Grand Central Station, Pennsylvania Station, South Station, and Union Station in Layarteb City, Falcon City, and Chicago. In total, 913 people were killed and 542 required medical attention.
September 1: Amazonian insurgents launch a brutal offense against Layartebian forces in the Amazonian Control Zone and are defeated with over 1,000 casualties to the enemy and fewer than 60 to the Layartebian forces.
September 3: Anarchist forces launch attacks on Layartebian border stations between Mato Grosso and the Amazonian Control Zone killing 14 Layartebians, injuring 11. Anarchists suffer just 8 deaths.
September 4: Layartebian forces launch Operation Thunder Rain with the systematic bombing of airports and highways in Mato Grosso to cut off the Anarchist forces from waging war in the ACZ. The goal is to push them out of the border area and stop a flow of arms and soldiers into the ACZ from Mato Grosso.
September 5: Layarteb officially invades Mato Grosso with soldiers.
September 7: Layartebian forces secure various northern cities and Anarchists call for a temporary ceasefire.
September 10: Anarchist forces attack Layartebian positions near Juína, ending the ceasefire.
September 12: The ILA launches an MGM-233 Vesta rocket into Juína, striking a civilian air raid shelter killing 1,730 and injuring 48. Of them, 1,698 are civilians, many of them children. This brings upon a subsequent international condemnation of Layartebian actions.
September 24: Anarchist forces down a CH-53N Super Stallion II, killing 69 Layartebian soldiers, the largest single loss of life in one day to the Empire in over a decade.
September 29: Layartebian forces begin the Brasnorte Offensive, aimed at driving Anarchists forces all the way south of Brasnorte.
October 1: Brasnorte Offensive concludes with all goals achieved. Anarchists, decimated, call for an immediate ceasefire, which is honored.
October 6: Anarchist remnants launch a surprise attack in Juína against an oil depot, airfield, and artillery base killing 2 Layartebian soldiers. Estimates for dead Anarchists exceed 60.
October 8: All Layartebian forces withdraw from Mato Grosso by midnight. Operation Thunder Rain concludes, essentially, as a draw. The government of Mato Grosso pledges to keep Anarchist rebels out of the border area in return for Layartebian foreign aide and relations. The war leaves 484 Layartebian KIAs, 2,139 Layartebian WIAs, almost 9,000 deaths for the Anarchists, and over 20,000 civilian deaths.
October 9: Layartebian Minister of Defense resigns.
October 12: New Minister of Defense appointed.
October 13: Former Minister of Defense mysteriously disappears from Miami, Florida.


Chapter Twenty: November Rain

November 1: Unidentified Flying Object is downed near Raquette Lake, New York.
November 2: MOI agent Miguel Santos disappears from his Caracas residence.
November 8: Terrorists hijack a Layartebian 777 bound for Dublin. All six are killed.
November 13: Maritime forces of the ILDF intercept and capture a pirate vessel south of Cuba.
November 15: Michelle Baxter, daughter of Chicago Mayor, Dwight Baxter goes missing. Her whereabouts are unknown.
November 16: Layartebian forces seige Tapauá in the ACT. Civil war breaks out in Mogadishu.
November 25: Hostilities cease in Tapauá with an overwhelming victory by the ILA.


Chapter Twenty-One: Kashmir

No Activity



Confirmed Body Count: 750,070
Unconfirmed Body Count: 750,382+ [312+ difference]

Chapter XXII: Trapped Under Ice

May 1, 2008 - 22:00 [EST]
Layarteb City, New York

The warehouse at the South Street Seaport was a busy place, filled with chalk boards and maps of the entire city. It was crowded with forty agents of the Domestic Justice Agency and a group of fifty-eight Layarteb City police officers who belonged to the now formed, Joint Terrorism Task Force. They had been formed the previous month in advance of Fleet Week 2008, an annual event in Layarteb City when various ships from the Imperial Layartebian Navy and throughout the world lined the piers at Layarteb City. Fireworks, parties, demonstrations, tours, and celebrities filled the schedule of events. The annual event was scheduled to begin on May 12 and continue through May 18 and Layartebian planners hoped to bring over one hundred million foreigners and nationals to the city during those seven days for the twenty-first Fleet Week event. The previous record of eighty-five million had stood since 2006, when the Emperor stood at the podium and announced "Realization of the Empire," perhaps his most famous speech to date.

The ninety-eight law enforcement agents inside of the warehouse were mapping out an entire evacuation plan and response plan, should a terrorist event occur. Since late November, when the Imperial Layartebian Military effectively stomped the resistance in the Amazonian Control Territory, a lot had happened. Two votes in the ACT had failed to reach a consensus on the fate of the territory and it remained as such. The Colony of Denmad, a special economic zone on the eastern coast of Brazil had burgeoned into a vast empire in and of itself, feeding the Empire with a steady supply of revenue, boosting the economy of the Empire nearly 25% already. It was one of the most successful economic ventures for the Empire, which boasted a surplus so high it was kept confidential to avoid inflation. Pundits and economists surmised it was in excess of ten trillion shingrots but that figure was just too low.

However, terrorist attacks had not ebbed either. The Ghost Warriors had set off several car bombs since late November and kidnappings had spiked during the winter months, only to decline during the spring. Estimates put between two hundred and two hundred and sixty people who had been kidnapped since the first ones began and there was little evidence, if any presented. In most of the cases where the kidnappers demanded money or some sort of ransom, they were often determined to be copy cats rather than the actual perpetrators of the crimes. In addition to those, the Ghost Warrior terrorists had grown in their power. Their passive cadre ballooned and the Domestic Justice Agency had established an entire division to stopping them and though there were dozens of arrests and instances where terrorist events were stopped before they could happen, the Ghost Warriors themselves were unscathed. They had recruited violent revolutionaries from around the world including Marxists, fascists, and anarchists, amongst others and turned them loose within the Empire. These "knock-off" terrorists were often the ones to be caught or killed, several of them killing themselves while making their own creations.

When May rolled around terrorist attacks between late November and the entire month of April left another one hundred dead and even more wounded, the biggest attack killing forty-two civilians at a fish market when a bomb went off in the market. Across the expanse of the Empire, things were beginning to turn sour. Popular discontent was on the rise and at least a third of the Empire's elites had already called for the resignation of the Empire and the return to democracy. The military still remained loyal though and their defection would take a lot more than the puny attempts by a group of terrorists. However, one of the most talked about topics wasn't the rise of terrorism or kidnapping or the rise of popular discontent. It was about the rise in piracy incidents in the Caribbean Sea. Piracy had not been in the Caribbean since the earliest days of the Empire, when the large and overbearing Imperial Layartebian Navy unequivocally squashed it by sheer, brute force. Piracy was something that was reserved for the African coasts, especially around Somalia, where the United States of Brink had little influence and control. The rise of piracy in the Caribbean was a major topic of discussion and some heralded it as a sign that the Empire was weak and had outlived its day. As its first major accomplishment, the elimination of piracy in the Caribbean for the Empire was one of several pivotal events in the early 1980s that guaranteed the Emperor's legitimacy to his people. Following the defeat of Venezuela and its annexation as the Province of South Eastern Virginia, the Emperor's popularity spiked above the highest levels afforded even to the best days of the Republic.

The Empire was still a force to be reckoned with, that was a matter of fact. Force projection, hemispherical dominance, and its sheer size guaranteed its place in the order of things. Some argued that, despite its domestic issues, the Empire remained the most powerful state in the world. Economically dominating, militarily domineering, and technologically superior, the Empire was a model for any political scientist to study. While the Joint Terrorism Task Force met in a dingy warehouse on Manhattan Island, a Layartebian destroyer moving south of Jamaica was about to run into a pirate skiff. The morning headlines would read that the skiff was sunk by the destroyer and that was the truth. It was the brutal truth as well. The Layartebian Voodoo class guided missile destroyer from the 4th Carrier Strike Group had left its port on the island of Hispanola to conduct a routine patrol mission. There were reports of possible Russian submarines from Mexico running surveying missions off the coast of Jamaica and Hispanola in search of SOSUS arrays and the Layartebian navy had been searching for evidence that this was happening.

The Voodoo was a new vessel and equipped with a powerful assortment of weapons ranging from a deadly, 155 millimeter, 62 caliber ETC main gun, one hundred and twenty-eight VLS cells, four quadruple anti-ship missile launchers, a pair of heavy, armored box launchers for heavy, anti-ship missiles, a pair of twin torpedo tubes, and plenty of CIWS. By itself, the destroyer could sink most ships in any world's navy. When the small pirate skiff, which was nothing more than an old, retired river patrol boat that had once run the rivers of Venezuela engaged and attempted to attack the destroyer, it signed its own fate. The pirate skiff was crewed by five. They fired off two unguided, anti-tank rockets at the port side of the 545 foot, 8,000 ton destroyer, for what purpose nobody knew. They ran next and made their second mistake. Two thousand yards away from the Voodoo, they met their maker, sent there by a pair of 155 millimeter, high-explosive shells, fired from the main gun of the destroyer, which gave chase. The boat, moving at nearly thirty knots, exploded in a fireball bright enough to light up the water between them and the destroyer. A new age in the history of the Empire had dawned and it wasn't an age of reason or advancement. It was an age of regression.

May 4, 2008 - 13:00 [CST]
Chicago, Illinois

It had been a while since Majestic last met and it would be a while until their next meeting. They had not met since November 23 and, when this scheduled meeting came around, none of them would opt for video-conferencing. It was just too important of a meeting and everyone had to be present. The twelve of them had driven or flown into Chicago between May 1 and May 4, arriving by different methods, from different destinations, and at different times. There was no connection between any of them nor could anyone observing them surmise any connection either. Their meeting was held in a secure conference room of one of the Illuminati's shell companies. It was a small investment firm that primarily dealt with investing in foreign currency and gold. While it provided some income for the Illuminati, it wasn't their biggest success but it was their most remote. Situated in Chicago, the small company employed under a hundred people, most of whom weren't in their offices, part of the reason profit wasn't as high as it could be but that wasn't the purpose. With a reduced office staff, fewer people were around to ask questions when the twelve "suits" walked through the doors, obviously at different times. They all converged in the secure conference room by 13:00 hours though and got themselves comfortable. They introduced themselves as the board directors for the company and that they were having a board meeting. Nobody knew them, nobody questioned it, and nobody seemed to be too nosey either. The director of the office was informed and he had made all of the arrangements prior to the meeting, he being an Illuminati member himself. As far as he knew, these twelve men were simply Illuminati elders of some sort who were planning something. He didn't know any of the full truth.

"Gentlemen. I am pleased you could all make it here. I was concerned that not all of you would be able to come in person, given the space between our previous meeting. We have importance to discuss here this afternoon. Minister, will you begin?" The Admiral of the Navy began, handing the floor over to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

"Thank you. Gentlemen. Since our last meeting we have seen a rise in tensions in our Empire. The simple resurgence of piracy in the Caribbean is enough to tell us that our methods are working and that we are on schedule. In the coming months, the Ghost Warriors and their knock-offs will be bringing more fear to the Layartebian people, emphasizing that the Emperor can no longer protect them. As the Republic fell the same way so too shall the Empire but, this time around, the Republic will be reinstated. Gentlemen, it is now that we begin our next phase of operations.

"Planning. We have planned and articulated our method now for years. We are fully prepared to go forward with the letter of the doctrine but we must be sure that we are prepared for hiccups. Scenarios have been presented and the articles have been modified since. There are loose ends though. The biggest concern is the October Alliance. The October Alliance charter states, and I cite it verbatim, 'No member-state shall allow another member-state to be taken over, whether through revolution, coup, or outside intervention by forces that are hostile to the member-state, this alliance, and the ruling government, unless it is the will of the ruling government.' This is from Article 3, Section 10. What this translates to is simple. In the event of a revolution, the member-states are required to prevent the overthrow, coup, or whatever it may be, to proceed successfully. When our revolution does come full circle, we can bet on Hawdawgian, Cottish, and Hirgizstanian tanks rolling in to stop the rebellion. Whether or not the Emperor will ask for this I cannot surmise but I cannot deny his request should he ask for it, without giving away our secret. This puts me in a bind. You understand?

"We must plan for this contingency. We have already but you can never be too prepared. I must stress."

"Minister. I can guarantee you that the Emperor will allow allied forces in to defend the Empire." BG. Delaney said as the Minister of Foreign Affairs finished. "He will not feel that it is in the best interests of the Empire to do so simply because that would admit to letting a foreign nation have a say in our immediate domestic policy but he will have little choice. This will not be a bloodless revolution. The military will be split and that will mean a heavy fight. I understand we have planned for a long conflict but we must be prepared for an even longer one or a possible loss, when October Alliance forces join the fight."

"This is a plausible scenario," the General of the Army added as he lit a cigar. "You understand that, despite any superiority we may possess, the addition of just these three nations will topple the balance of power. With the introduction of Eurasian forces it will sway heavily in the favor of the Empire."

"We must plan to completely dissuade the October Alliance from getting involved. The only way to do that, aside from withdrawing from the alliance, is simply to force the member-states into a position where the Empire is their foe." Dr. Perry concluded. "But that is no easy task. You're talking an alliance here stronger than any other. Simply turning the member-states against the Empire cannot happen overnight. Although, it has and is happening already. Dissension within may be our best option. The incident in Mato Grosso served only to increase the tensions the alliance feels with the Empire."

"We must repeat such an event."

"How General? We are surely running out of countries to invade." The men laughed as BG. Delaney brought up a valid point. The insurgency in the Amazonian Control Territory was pretty much wiped out as well. "You need to have the illusion of rebellion. The ACT is the best location. You must make the military and the people believe than an entire town or city still is under enemy control. The bombings will bring massive civilian casualties, furthering the rift between the alliance and the Empire."

"That is easier said than done. You would have to fake just about every aspect of it from reconnaissance to intelligence. You cannot make it look too obvious either. Everyone in the ACT knows what happens if you bomb a military check point. They've seen how the military handles the rebellions. They are scared now and with the defeat of the last remaining holdouts, they have little hope to look forward to in order to fight us back." The General of the Air Force said, bringing everyone's sprits a degree or two down. The meeting continued until almost 16:00 hours, a long meeting but its conclusions would begin the next phase of the rebellion. As the General of the Air Force put it, so bluntly, "Gentlemen, this is the Highway to Hell..."

May 10, 2008 - 18:30 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

Since the end of the Amazonian War on July 3, 2007, the city had been largely reconstructed. Icons of the war still remained with burned out buildings and bombed streets but those were off-limits to all but reconstruction personnel. The Layartebians had made significant leaps in the reconstruction effort and though the Amazonian people still loathed their "occupation" as they called it, they were pleased with the reconstruction. The Empire's goal was to turn Manaus into a burgeoning district of foreign trade and an international market. Following the end of the war in Mato Grosso, Operation Thunder Rain, Manaus had taken on a new peace and calm. With the overwhelming victory in Tapauá on November 25, Manaus was officially declared a safe haven and it was. Since the calendars turned to 2008, the city and its 650,000 inhabitants had flourished. Reconstruction still wouldn't be complete for many months but the city looked like a city again. Most of the rubble had been cleared away and over 80% of the city was inhabited, which was a high since the war. During the war, it was estimated that 90% of the city's residents had escaped north, south, east, and west, many of them turning into the insurgent forces as they moved deeper into the uncontrolled interiors of the country.

However, one thing that remained was the status of the ACT. It was still a territory and its citizens were second-class, not even considered Layartebians. They were conquered people, a subclass of humans without any visible identity. They had too many to associate with any one singular identity, spending their history as Neuvo Rican, Amazonian, and now quasi-Layartebian. They still viewed the Layartebians with disdain but that was to be expected. Their previous elections had all been postponed, thanks largely in part to the violence of the insurgency. The government of the ACT was, essentially, a military junta, a stratocracy with General William J. Hoffer as the leading man in charge. A four-star general of the Imperial Layartebian Army, he had done well in his leadership roles to quell the violence in the country, especially around Manaus and the defeat of the insurgency at Tapauá was entirely by his planning purposes. He was a competant leader and made for an excellent politician, though he was a symbol of the Layartebian government for the people in the ACT and, by that respect, their least adored leader, next to the Emperor himself.

Air travel had resumed to Manaus on a limited basis in April 2008 and was scheduled to receive more freedom by mid-summer. Thus far, the only people travelling from anywhere to Manaus had to meet a certain set of criteria and fewer than six hundred new people per day met that criteria. Only five civilian aircraft landed, on average, per day in Manaus and four departed. Most of the air traffic in Manaus was military by nature and mainly cargo planes bringing in supplies and personnel. Fighter and attack aircraft sorties had drastically dropped as well and usually just consisted of a single flight or two around the country armed for combat air support missions, usually a light mix of bombs and air to ground missiles. Attack helicopters were even becoming a rare sight over the skies. Regardless, Layartebian reconnaissance aircraft remained in the air, eavesdropping on communications and hunting for any possible reawakening of the insurgency. Most of the time, their missions were marked without anything new being detected.

That was why, on the afternoon of May 10, when the four men of the EC-21C Learjet 80 climbed into their aircraft they didn't do it with any sort of enthusiasm that would mark any combat aviator. They would take off and cruise to 30,000 feet, where they would listen in on a plethora of phone and radio communications from around the country, most of them personal and the rest being assorted, in nature. Their small aircraft sat on the end of the runway at Manaus International Airport flanked by a pair of F-26A Typhoon fighters. Once inside, the four men sat down at their respective places. At the front were the pilot and co-pilot and, at two terminals in the body were the two operators. Behind them, the airplane contained an impressive array of electronic intelligence gathering equipment. From all outward signs and purposes, their EC-21 wasn't very different from the C-21B transport variant, which was based on the Learjet 60X. However, once they got up to altitude, the rear operators deployed the sensors, a large array of foldable antennae that were hidden within the fuselage of the aircraft until deployed. Their plane was a flying sensor and they assumed their normal cruise pattern at 30,000 feet with their earphones in place, just listening. Hours had gone by without anything until just after sunset when they picked up a peculiar conversation. "Hey. I think I got something," TSgt. Baines said as he listened to the whispered voices. "Yeah. It's definitely something. Its encrypted though, that's for sure. Coming in all broken up," he said as he pressed the earpiece to his ear to get a tighter seal and a better sound on the conversation.

"He's going to be leaving soon. We'll take him then..." He heard the voices say as he turned up the volume dial and began to go to work on the filtering knobs. The conversation went in and out, most of it being inaudible but the recording devices on board would allow them to review it later on, when they landed. "Yeah. No. I have the weapon." The conversation peaked in through the static.

"They're talking about taking someone. A weapon. Yeah. It's something important." He looked at the frequency indicator and saw it jumping around. "It's an encrypted signal."

"Could be special forces." SSgt. Marshall said as he looked at his own panel. "They're always operating around here."

"No. The frequency it isn't on the list of what is used."

"Not a big deal. It happens. They're probably on something secret. We're just wasting time on this anyway."

"Be quiet for a moment." He listened and watched on his panel as the signal faded in and out and the static ebbed and flowed. "Duke. Let's head back towards Manaus. The signal is coming from there."

"You got it."

"Are you serious? You know we're just chasing ghosts."

"If you don't be quiet I'm going to pull rank on you. Now shut the fuck up and listen for something out there." TSgt. Baines had the higher rank than his fellow operator and though they were good friends both in and out of uniform, he needed to listen and he knew that this was something. He had a lot of experience in this field and he knew when things were amiss. All of the signs pointed to that as the pilot bank the plane to the northwest and headed towards Manaus. They weren't far away at all and as they got closer, the technical sergeant noticed that the signal gained in strength. After ten minutes, they were over Manaus and the signal was strong. He even pinpointed the location of the call origin to within a few dozen meters and as he ordered the pilot to fly lower, to 20,000 feet, he could get an even better fix on the location as they now entered an orbit over Manaus.

May 10, 2008 - 19:00 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

Overhead, the EC-21 continued to search for the signal of the call. It had abruptly ended twenty minutes before 19:00 hours and left the two operators of the EC-21 in the dark as they continued to circle overhead. "Damnit. Yeah. I've lost it. It was somewhere here." He pointed to a spot on the city map that wasn't too far from the center of the city but they still didn't have a proper fix on it or even much cause otherwise. They had little intelligence except that something was going to happen. "Duke. They cut off. Let's head back to the south and see if something else happens."

"Roger that," the EC-21 banked 30,000 feet above the ground and took a southerly course, away from the city. Far below them, on the ground, a Ghost Warrior team had implanted themselves into Manaus and were setting themselves up for the plan that Majestic had discussed six days earlier. Team 19 had been there for days already, using the various Illuminati shell businesses to get themselves into the city after being called up late in the day on May 4. They were already in Panama City, having moved there earlier in the previous year along with another team, which operated within the city still.

The eight men were scattered around the city, awaiting their orders. The commander had positioned himself on the highest floor of a hotel not too far from the city center and, with his binoculars, he watched. Down, near ground level, a team of two sat with a long-range rifle. The other five were in positions between them and the commander, providing support. The commander picked up the radio once again and keyed it up, breaking squelch twice, which sent a message to the team on the ground that they had a green light. The sniper team had put themselves on top of a small, covered patio on the fifth floor of an apartment building and made sure that nobody else was around. In their hands was a powerful weapon, a long-range sniper rifle that was meant for anti-material duties at ranges in excess of two thousand meters. The bulky weapon was 46 inches long and had a 17.6 inch barrel. Weighing in at just over 33 pounds, it was loaded with a five round magazine of 25 x 59mm shells, each capable of penetrating 50 millimeters of steel at a range of two thousand meters. Equipped with a muzzle brake and flash compensator, it would not be quiet but it would not give away their position when they squeezed the trigger and sent the round downrange at over 750 meters per second.

The gunner looked through the powerful scope of the rifle and adjusted it already for the low-light conditions as he squared the crosshairs on the door of a building roughly a mile away. "Windage?"

"East to west. Eight knots."

"Final range?"

"Fifteen, eighty-two to the door."

"Now we just wait."

"Roger that." And they waited and waited. The clock passed through 19:30 hours as they waited there, on the patio, being pleased that the darkness was coming, which would further hide them. By now, the sniper changed out his scope for a night capable one and flipped on the green light of the night vision as he stared a mile ahead of him. It was nearly 20:00 hours and the commander broke squelch again, four times now. That meant a status update. "Go."

"Status?"

"Quiet. Ready."

"Roger that." The EC-21 flight was drawing to an end and they had never heard the communication as the pilot lined up the EC-21 on ILS approach for a smooth landing. The operators inside would be taking the information and deciphering it along with a group of analysts back at the airport. It was a shame for them they got the information too late but they didn't have much to work with when the technical sergeant first overheard the chatter.

Miles away, the sniper team continued to wait, patiently and quietly, the commander using his binoculars to eye the pair of large, steel, double doors that served as the target for the sniper team. They remained still and motionless, even now as the clock passed 20:00 hours. Then, finally, as if the waiting would never end, at 20:15 hours, the doors opened and out stepped a group of bodyguards, four of them. "We're go." The sniper said as he unlocked the safety on the rifle and watched. Out came the suits first, eight of them followed by their target, a tall, elderly man with a cigar in his mouth, neatly pressed uniform, and a smile on his face. Underneath his uniform, the man kept an armored vest on, protecting him from sniper fire, part of the reason these men were boasting an anti-material rifle. No vest on earth could stop the power of the 25 x 59mm shell, which was a high-explosive shell. The man would stand no chance. The sniper instantly controlled his breathing and squeezed the trigger slowly, keeping the weapon completely stable, the bipod on the front helping.

The round left the barrel with a thunderous roar, the bullet already far enough away that nothing could be done. The man's smile eroded fast when the round slammed into his chest, shattered his ceramic, armored plate into thousands of fragments. It kept going though, exploding milliseconds later. As it did, it sprayed fragments into the chest, head, and body of the target while fragments flew all around them. The pressure wave from the round came next, causing more than enough damage all around as it shattered bones, punctured organs, and what not. The man would die before he hit the ground, his heart stopping almost instantly. "That's a hit. Let's move!" The spotter said as he broke squelch three times, indicating that it was done. Now came their escape.

May 10, 2008 - 19:45 [EST]
Layarteb City, New York

Within a half hour, news that General Hoffer had been killed by assassination spread like the flu through the populace of Manaus and radiated outwards. The second in command, Lieutenant General Marvin Dunne had been placed in charge simply by the chain of succession. Unlike General Hoffer, Dunne was not a born leader and though he had achieved the rank of Lieutenant General, having three stars on his shoulder, many felt he didn't deserve even one. He was a weak leader and he had difficulty making tough decisions. General Hoffer had really been the man behind the plan and Dunne simply agreed most of the time, always playing it safe. Now faced with the prospect of actually having to lead the Amazonian Control Territory his stomach gnarled itself into knots and he fought back the urge to vomit.

It didn't take long before his worst nightmare began to play out in front of him. The populace of Manaus, whose flames were being stoked by the Ghost Warriors took to the streets with jubilation. Despite all of the good the Layartebians had done to the city, especially in reconstruction, they still loathed them and General Hoffer was the immediate symbol of their hatred. Now deceased, the people saw weakness in the Empire and quickly bit at the situation.

The first crowds to take to the streets were only a handful here or there, many chanting and cheering, "Down with the Empire. Freedom from tyranny!" That was their slogan, so to speak and soon the crowds swelled into the hundreds, equipped with stones and signs. Still unorganized, they began to clog the streets, overwhelming local police forces who were ill-prepared for this type of demonstration, despite their months of training for this very situation. Then, by 20:00 hours, the crowds had grown into the thousands and organization took hold in the form of a single leader, a charismatic man. Young and handsome, he took to the top of a car with a bullhorn and shouted, "Ao quartel general!" [To the headquarters!] In a cavernous and thunderous applause, the thousands around the Manaus Municipal Park chanted their slogan and his order. They were going to the headquarters.

Panicked and completely incapable of dealing with the situation, LtG. Dunne cowered in his office when the white phone rang. It was an important call that he couldn't simply ignore either. "Lieutenant General Dunne," he answered.

"Please hold for the Emperor." The voice of a sweet girl came over the phone, the Emperor's secretary. Moments later, he was connected straight to the new commander officer of the ACT.

"Good evening sir. I would like to know what the situation is there?" The Emperor asked, sounding compassionate at first, which was all a ruse. Standing in his office were the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Military and the ministers of the Interior, Defense, and Intelligence. All of them agreed, Dunne was a waste of space. The Emperor knew this from his advisors and now wished nothing more than to contain the situation long enough to get Dunne out of there and replaced by competent leadership.

"Sir. It's a mess sir. The people. They're rioting. We have a crisis."

"Calm down. Calm down." The Emperor said, trying to remember what he had said, his speech moving a million miles per second. "Now calm down and repeat that to me."

"Sir. I'm sorry. We've got a crisis down here. The people are rioting." In the background, the Emperor could hear thousands of voices, chanting and cheering, even though they weren't near the headquarters yet. The crowds had, by now, swelled to over ten thousand and continued to grow as people saw them moving down the streets, to the headquarters. "Sir. We have a major crisis."

"You do have a crisis. Your leader is deceased. You are now in charge. What have you done to quell the situation? Have you instituted martial law? Have you declared a curfew? Have you alerted your forces?" The Emperor powered away the questions, increasing the seriousness of his tone as the questions endured.

"Sir. I'm afraid we are at a standstill right now."

"A standstill? What does that mean?" He put the call onto the speaker and listened. The demonstrations in the background were deafening.

"Sir. I cannot contain these people. They are rioting."

"Lieutenant General. You are a military man and a commanding officer. You will contain those crowds. You will restore order. You will do this before the sun rises. Am I clear?"

"Yes sir but..."

"But what? You are a leader. Act like one and solve this crisis right now."

"Yes sir." The phone call was terminated and LtG. Dunne had little motivation to do anything other than hide as the tens of thousands of civilians closed in on the headquarters. He picked up his radio and keyed up the radio operator in the basement of the high walled compound. "Major Harris. Major Harris," he asked in a panicked tone.

"Sir. Major Harris here," the competent Major replied seconds later.

"Major. We need to stop these crowds."

"Roger that sir. I will authorize Directive Echo Niner Seven."

"Lethal force is authorized. I don't care what you have to do but get this crowd under control."

"Roger that sir." The major put down the radio and looked around the room. Blundering idiot. He thought to himself as he scanned the faces in the room. "You heard me. Order the directive now!" Radio calls went out to every military unit in the city and, as over a hundred thousand people arrived at the center of the city to protest, an entire brigade of men shot to their feet and took off to secure the city. Back in Layarteb City, the Emperor looked around the room and took a quick survey of whether or not this crisis could be contained. The results were, unanimously, against the moronic lieutenant general. The Emperor shook his head and pondered how he got as high as he did in rank and who let him obtain his position as the executive officer of the ACT. The Emperor didn't recall being the one to do it either.

"Gentlemen," he said inside of his office as he reclined in his chair. "We have a grave crisis. We just stomped out the insurgency in the ACT and now we have a catalyst for it to return. If they do not get control of the city and of these people we could be looking at a loss of the city from our power. If this commander is as inept as you say I gravely fear that we will lose the city of Manaus by sunrise. We need options and we need them fast. Whoever among you can speak a solution, let's hear it before we lose the biggest foothold in the ACT and erase all of our progress since the invasion."

May 10, 2008 - 21:00 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

Major Harris returned to the command center at once from his conversation with his superior, LtG. Dunne. "Blubbering idiot," he remarked under his breath as stood in the center. Over two dozen radio operators and planners stood and sat around, waiting now for his orders, which they knew came directly from their overall leader. "Gentlemen. It is the order of Lieutenant General Dunne that we immediately begin Directive Echo Niner Seven." The faces on everyone in the room matched the thoughts in Major Harris' head but he wouldn't dare, openly, disrespect his commanding officer, even if he was a blubbering idiot. "Gentlemen. You have your orders. Transmit them immediately. ON THE DOUBLE!" Military decorum still stood, despite the situation and the obvious objection amongst the men in the command center. "God will forgive us," he remarked again as he walked over to a map of the city. Planners had placed various markers along the map to show troop positions, fall back positions, and positions of rioting crowds. "What do we have gentlemen?"

"We have a problem here. Our forces in city are scattered. They're not in position to handle these crowds, even if they stay non-violent. We do not have any reports yet of them turning violent. They're angry and they're large but they have yet to harm a single person, regardless of nationality. Sir, are you sure we should be going down this route?"

"Sergeant. You will do as you have been ordered." The planners moved around the small pieces, which resembled chess pieces. It wouldn't be long before the word checkmate fell across their thoughts. "Now. You must prepare for the fallback positions to be immediately overrun. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir."

"Very well. Gentlemen," he raised his voice so that all could hear him. "We are immediately under lockdown conditions. Our men out there depend on us, in here, to do our jobs. Until I say otherwise, you are all now on full duty. Understood?"

"Yes sir!" The men echoed in the room as a pair of MPs, standing outside of the doors shut and locked them. Nobody would get in without having to pass through them first and they were under orders, in a lockdown situation, to detain anyone who threatened otherwise. Those who were considered a threat could be shot and killed, regardless of their rank or position in the Layartebian government or military. The war room, as it would be dubbed eventually was bathed with florescent light and a quiet hum of electronics. For the men inside, it was now their home for the next few hours, depending on how long the situation endured. The chess pieces moved again, as crowds advanced down the streets. Aerial reconnaissance and cameras around the city showed the live action as it happened. The crowds were moving closer and closer as Layartebian soldiers hunkered down, behind sandbags and other emplaced positions. They manned light machine guns at these positions while snipers, on roof tops, scrambled into positions of their own. Other soldiers manned their assault rifles and kept their own barricaded positions. Sweat dripped off everyone's brow, even the safest snipers on the highest rooftops.

The orders went out, throughout the city and its immediate surroundings. Layartebian forces outside of the city grabbed their gear and rushed inward, many of them on foot. It wouldn't be long before the two groups faced off against each other, one group, numbering in the tens of thousands, against another, numbering barely a thousand but armed. Thousands of miles away, in Layarteb City, the military commanders of the ILM sat around a large conference table to discuss alternatives. On a video line was the Emperor, in his dimly lit office, pacing around, thinking as well when the phone rang. The General of the Defense Forces answered, "Yes. No. Understood. Understood. I shall." He hung up the phone and instantly commanded everyone's attention. "Gentlemen. Sir. I have just been informed that Lieutenant General Dunne has just ordered Directive Echo Niner Seven." Everyone, the Emperor included, knew what it meant and they knew they had to do something.

"He did what?" The Emperor said in disbelief after it sunk in that the general had just ordered one of the more severe emergency codes that could exist. "Is he this panicked? General. I do not care what it takes, he cannot be allowed to continue this. The ramifications are too severe. Do we even have confirmation that these protestors are hostile?"

"Sir we do not. As much as I do not agree with the call myself sir, he is the man on the ground. He has battlefield command."

"This is lunacy. This isn't a command! This is a massacre."

"Sir."

"Stop this. Now!" The Emperor cut off the line and left it in the hands of the generals, who more than disagreed with the order. They abhorrently despised it. Directive E97 drew an imaginary circle around the center of the city that acted as a perimeter. That line, a dotted circle on a map, represented the protection zone. It was used specifically when large crowds of civilians, particularly armed or hostile ones, were advanced on a military control or government headquarters. If civilians crossed the line, they could be engaged with lethal force. In Manaus, that line was represented by a group of soldiers who stood guard, with bullhorns. They would order the crowd to cease and desist and return to where they had come from, or else they faced violent force. Though the crowd of civilians was large and angry, there was no evidence that they were armed or hostile. Firing into them, massacring them could have only one of two outcomes. The first, the most favorable, would see immediate dissipation of the crowd and an end to both the engagement of the civilians and an end of the situation. If civilians retreated back across the line, they were not in engagement zones. Soldiers were not authorized to fire at civilians behind the line unless they were physically being attacked by them. The other outcome was the most dangerous. Seeing their friends, neighbors, brothers, whichever it was, executed in front of them, the crowd would instantly crowd enraged and become an armed, hostile force, overrunning Layartebian positions, seizing their weapons, and vaulting towards the headquarters.

May 10, 2008 - 21:10 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

"Parada! Imediatamente! Vire e retorne a seus lares! Isto é uma área restringida! Somos autorizados usar força letal! Retorne a seus lares! " [Stop! Immediately! Turn around and return to your homes! This is a restricted area! We are authorized to use lethal force! Return to your homes!] A brave but visibly anxious soldier yelled into a bullhorn as he stood on top of an M2058A1 Multipurpose Armored Car, a Doomani Defense Industries product. Next to him was another one, another visible anxious soldier manning the heavy machine gun on its roof cupola. These guns would tear any soldiers to shreds, let alone and unarmored civilian. They wouldn't stand a chance at ranges of a kilometer or more, let alone the eighty meters between the gun muzzle and the advancing crowd. That was point blank range of the heavy 15.5mm M31A1 HMG. The soldier repeated again from his bullhorn, "Parada! Imediatamente! Vire e retorne a seus lares! Isto é uma área restringida! Somos autorizados usar força letal! Retorne a seus lares! " The crowd continued to advance, yelling, screaming, waving signs. The officers and commanders knew these crowds weren't hostile, let alone carrying weapons. The soldiers manning the machine guns had their own assumptions but they were too scared to voice them.

"Parada! Imediatamente! Vire e retorne a seus lares! Isto é uma área restringida! Somos autorizados usar força letal! Retorne a seus lares! " The soldier repeated again, fearing that he was only yelling in vain as the crowd drew closer and closer. He could hear them, cursing the Layartebians and their war, demanding they go home. It wasn't a situation that any one of them wanted to be in, especially not now. Manaus had become a peaceful place and the soldiers had grown accustomed to it. They didn't worry about sniper attacks or roadside bombs anymore. They didn't worry about kidnappings or any sort of horrific deaths from hostile forces. Manaus hadn't seen violence in weeks and they were happy about it. Some of them even thought that the populace was warming up to them, especially since they had repaired most of the city. Tonight viciously destroyed those sentiments and rumors. "Parada! Imediatamente! Vire e retorne a seus lares! Isto é uma área restringida! Somos autorizados usar força letal! Retorne a seus lares! " The soldier yelled, once more, as the crowd approached the imaginary line. He remained atop the vehicle, which had nobody in it and nobody was manning the light machine gun on its roof. Within fifty meters of him and the advancing crowd were two machine gun emplacements, both with light machine guns, M35A1 7.62mm LMGs, two M2058s, one with a HMG and his with the LMG, a dozen or so more men with assault rifles, and two snipers, high above on a rooftop, with semi-automatic rifles.

The lonely sergeant knew that he could do nothing to stop the crowd. He drew his pistol and aimed it high in the air, resorting to something more drastic. The gunshot he fired into the air echoed loudly and the soldiers stood fast, a testament to their discipline. "Parada! Imediatamente! Vire e retorne a seus lares! Isto é uma área restringida! Somos autorizados usar força letal! Retorne a seus lares! " He yelled one last time, one final time, the crowd too drunk with anger to stop. They closed on them and closely approached the "line of death," which was twenty meters away from the machine gun nests, thirty from the vehicles and other soldiers, and around fifty-five from the snipers. The twenty Layartebian soldiers were facing a crowd of over 2,000 and, as far as their eyes could see, there were just hordes and waves of people. Radio reports from other units around the city reported much of the same. The crowds just weren't stopping, they continued to advance, in a sort of march of death. Had they know the fate that awaited them, perhaps they would have thought differently about their actions.

The first civilians to cross the line never knew they had until they slumped over, onto the ground, bleeding. The light machine guns out in the front let loose a burst of gunfire, a full second worth of bullets, enough to shred the entire front row of people. Leaving the barrel at 840 meters per second, each 150 grain bullet had 2,529 foot pounds of force and they barely lost any energy over the instant twenty meters they had to travel before finding their mark. Capable of blasting 900 rounds per minute, the M35A1 LMG had en effective range of over a mile. With two hundred rounds loaded onto each gun, they could hold back the entire crowd of 2,000+ people with little effort. However, what happened next was something that none of them had wished to see in their entire lives.

The quick bursts from the machine guns let loose thirty rounds in total. They ripped the front line of protestors to shreds. The rounds, moving so fast and with so much energy, overpenetrated and struck those behind the people in the front. Blood splattered everywhere as rounds tore through people and kept going, hitting the victim behind them and so on and so fourth until they simply ran out of energy. Many ricochetted around, hitting people off to the sides. An initial guess would put at least forty people dead or wounded from this quick burst. The rounds were very deadly, almost too deadly. The crowd, rather than recoil back and duck away, tore forward. Anger had filled them as their eardrums rang with from the gunshots. The thousands of them pushed forward and the war commenced. Fearing that they were going to be killed and they would be, the gunners fired again, joined in by the other men behind them. Everyone let loose at once as the sergeant, who had been standing on top of the vehicle dropped into its cupola and opened fire with his own machine gun. In less than ten seconds, casualties for the civilian protestors nearly jumped ten fold as they swarmed forward, braving the now hundreds of rounds of gunfire in the air.

There were just too many of them though and overwhelming the two forward, light machine guns was a simple task. They seized control of the guns, trampled, beat, and choked the four gunners and loaders to death as a hail of gunfire crashed around them. Snipers tried their best to save their brothers but they couldn't fire fast enough. The crowds continued to swarm through, seizing their weapons. Those with them fired at the snipers and the other gunners. They weren't marksmen but they did succeed in knocking some heads down, allowing the rest of the crowd to push forward. When someone got hit and killed, another would simply pick up the weapon. What took one second to begin was over in less than twenty as the crowds swarmed over and seized control of the vehicles next, killing their occupants. They moved and took out the last twelve men, who were retreating. They were hosed down with machine gun fire and one brave protestor manned the HMG on top of the M2058 and fired at the two snipers. They successfully avoided getting hit. Though they did manage to kill the hostile gunner, they were now being fired at from every direction below them. They had to abandon their position and move to a fallback location and they did, right away. In less than forty-five seconds, eighteen Layartebian soldiers and upwards of three hundred and ninety civilians were killed, many more injured. The only survivors were the two snipers, who were now being hunted, as they yelled into their radios, "Bravo position. Bravo position. We have been overrun. Report casualties. Men down. Civilians now armed. Hostile intent. Repeat. Civilians possess heavy and light machine guns now. Assault rifles. Pistols. Knives. Eighteen men down. Bravo position has been overrun!" All throughout the city, the story was the same.

May 10, 2008 - 21:28 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

"Oh God! They're all over!" The radio cries shook the airwaves. They were frightening and shrill. Layartebian soldiers manning the outermost defensive perimeters were being overrun by the now violent mobs. Word that the Layartebians had fired on the civilians spread quickly and, as the civilians pushed over more and more imaginary lines, more and more soldiers opened fire. It was a cycle that had the utmost of consequences. As civilian mobs grew more and more aggressive, pushing forward, against the troops, they fired at them. As they did, they only made the crowds more violent, more aggressive, and more dangerous. The cycle repeat, continued, and was made worse and worse with each passing moment. Eighteen minutes since the first rounds were fired, the situation had grown more than chaotic. There were over fifty dead Layartebian soldiers, two dozen more seriously and critically wounded. Civilian casualties numbered in the hundreds. However, the riot had already apexed. The civilians had, essentially, broken through the initial defensive lines of the Layartebian military and pushed into a more secured zone, one much harder to breach.

The second perimeter line was an entirely different situation than any of the first were. The first perimeter line was ill-equipped, scattered, and at bad defensive positions. It wasn't a surprise that they had been completely overrun by the mobs, who now boasted their firepower. Part of the reason they didn't have much in the realm of heavy firepower was in case they were overrun. The second perimeter line was the opposite, a wall of heavy weaponry, well placed soldiers, and excellent defensive positions. They were also under an entirely different set of orders. The rioting crowds had already breached the safety zone and they were engaged already, armed, and hostile. The men on the second line wouldn't have to wait until the crowds got to within touching distance to open fire. They could engage them as they saw them, meaning more room between them and the masses that approached. Concrete barricades, sandbag emplacements, armored support, and snipers protected the second line of defense with enough fortification and firepower to essentially drop an army twice the size of the mob and armed. With soldiers pouring into the city from the outside, the mob would find itself completely surrounded within a matter of minutes.

The men on the second perimeter line donned gas masks as their first weapon of choice would be to use CS gas, more commonly known as Tear Gas. Canisters and grenade shells loaded with the irritant were ready to fire and, as the crowds grew closer, they were fired. The crowd wasn't visible yet but their screams and their footsteps told the men that they were getting close, real close. Dozens of CS gas canisters were fired into the alleyways and streets around the second perimeter line, filling the air with the irritating, white gas, which would definitely help to deter the approaching masses. The gunshots came next as the machine guns tore into the air, tracers lighting up the white smoke as they ripped through. Snipers high above the clouds watched as dozens upon dozens upon dozens of rioters fell to the ground, mortally wounded. They took shots themselves, lining up their sights and squeezing off rounds, mostly at those who were armed. The snipers were a little different than the soldiers on the ground. Their positions were elevated and much safer and they had the luxury of being able to pick and choose their shots. On the ground, the men fired at whoever was closest to them, their own lives depending on it.

The combined assault of gas and bullets slowed and horrifically scattered the rioting crowds, many of them deterred enough to abandon their efforts. Radio chatter still told a tale of horror and catastrophe. Men cried upon seeing the bodies of women and child line the streets and the soldiers who were approaching from the rear were horrified by what they were seeing. Snipers saw it all, their own souls wretched out of their bodies, their stomachs empty except for the guilt and grief they saw. Everyone lost their soul that evening, watching as it departed from them, sailing away, seemingly towards the heavens until knocked down by the gods, sent to the abyss' of hell rather than the paradise above. To the men, this was an order none of them could live with and none of them wanted to endure. They wanted it to be over quickly and they got their wish, for all their wishes added up to mean something.

By 21:35, the rioting crowds no longer posed a forward threat. They had scattered, dissipated, or simply collapsed where they were. The radio chatter spoke of this and soldiers approaching from the rear were careful not to further enflame the situation. They engaged only those with weapons and few of them still carried their machines of destruction. Most of them had been killed outright or simply dropped their weapons on the ground rather than face death. Those who still carried them did so to protect their own homes and families, fearing a major Layartebian crackdown was on the horizon. They didn't know just how true that was. No sad verse could describe the scene of Manaus that evening. The sun had long set on the country both figuratively and physically. Eventually, the gas cleared, the smoke calmed, and the guns silenced. The crowds scurried back to shelter, to safety, many of them leaving the dead behind. By morning, they would know the true scope of what had happened; everyone would know the true scope of what happened.

The headlines the next morning read, aloud: "SCORES DEAD AFTER MANAUS RIOT," "THOUSANDS DEAD IN MANAUS," "SLAUGHTER IN MANAUS," and those headlines touch every corner of the globe. The official toll wouldn't be publicly released but, somehow, it leaked. It was a terrible figure that shocked not only the world but the Layartebian government as well. Manaus was an unstable corner of a dark world, a place that the Empire hoped to forget, just as Kaliningrad had been forgotten. This was different though, this wasn't as easy to simply walk away from, this was the quagmire the Empire always feared. Fifty-two Layartebian soldiers were killed in the fighting and an additional thirty-nine were injured. Eight hundred and sixty-eight civilians were killed with an additional twelve hundred or so wounded during the fighting, many seriously. LtG. Dunne hailed it as a success, he had held the city. Nobody above or below him agreed. It was an abysmal failure that set back the Empire in the ACT at least six to eight months. He had to be replaced and right away or he was going to lose every bit of progress. As the General of the Army flew down to Manaus that night and morning, he had thought of nothing more than shit canning Dunne. By sunrise the next morning, Dunne would be officially removed from the Imperial Layartebian Military and replaced by a much more capable and adept man to lead the Layartebians in the ACT. He accused the General of making him a scapegoat and he would go in front of cameras and profess the same. Disgraced and stripped of every ribbon and medal he had somehow managed to get onto his uniform, he proclaimed that he would see the Empire suffer from their gross injustice against him. The media ate it up, despite him being the most incapable of generals in the entire military.

May 13, 2008 - 14:00 [EST]
Ministry of Defense, Layarteb City

The Ministry of Defense was buzzing with activity and had been since the 10th, when the riots broke out in Manaus. The whole city was teeming on the edge of a major cataclysmic explosion of violence. With hundreds of civilians dead, at the hands of their Layartebian rulers, the populace of Manaus was enflamed with hatred and an unyearning and unquenching desire for vengeance. Those who managed to escape the hail of bullets and the canisters of tear gas huddled together during the daylight hours, plotting, relaying messages. Once the sun was down, curfew was imposed. Over ten thousand Layartebian soldiers patrolled the streets of Manaus at night with armored support and plenty of bullets, ready to defend themselves. The soldiers were furious as well. Fifty-two of their brothers, their comrades-in-arms, had died at the hands of the people. Revenge fueled both sides and made for a horrifically unstable situation. The last time any situation was this intense was in Kaliningrad, nearly thirteen years earlier. That had turned out horrifically unfavorable for the Empire and though many pundits, local politicians, and even phoney revolutionaries back home compared the ACT to Kaliningrad, they were drastically different. In Kaliningrad, the Layartebian military held, at any given point of the time, less than half of the territory and, in what they did hold, they had a shaky grip. After two years, the Layartebians only really controlled and capital and their grip was loosening then. Any defeats in Kaliningrad weren't because of military or political incompetence though. The Layartebians were simply outmatched. In the ACT though, the enemy was nowhere near as capable or as respectable as the Kaliningradians. Most of them weren't even from the ACT, they were foreign imports. Any defeats there was simply because the planners and generals were overconfident, something the Emperor personally addressed after firing many of them.

Now, after the situation had finally been contained and the enemy resoundingly defeated, thanks to competency in the military leadership, everything was unraveling. The actions of one moron had forced the hand of the Layartebian soldiers and now the situation was worse than before. In a country that had grown accustomed to peace and serenity, the fact that violence had returned did more damage to the morale of both the people and the army than total war could have. On May 11, the first night of the curfew, Layartebian soldiers reported forty-eight instances of criminality, where people broke the curfew laws. Two people were shot and killed, something that didn't make the news. The next night, that number had doubled in every aspect. The situation was on the brink of total and utter loss. With Layartebian forces in the ACT significantly less than they had been months earlier and with an enemy that was largely and overwhelmingly native to the region, it presented a highly different scenario than it had been. It was quick to become like Kaliningrad, where not even flattening the entire country worked to the Layartebians' advantage. What made matters worse was that the Layartebians suffered problems of their own, namely dissension within the ranks. Many opted for a full scale offensive in the city and the country to bring about an iron fist to squash any sort of dissent. Of course there were those who argued total withdrawal. Then there were others who were more cautious, who opted to wait, to see how it unfolded. Those won out but even still, confidence in any scenario was low.

The Minister of Defense called an emergency meeting on the afternoon of May 13 to discuss options and plans, especially if the country was about to erupt in full scale violence again. Layartebian assets had to be readied, marshaled, and moved into place. With less than sixty thousand Layartebian troops of all kinds in the ACT, there were more than enough, to handle a peaceful population. The ACT was almost 700,000 square miles in size, which was 11,895x larger than Kaliningrad. It took over 400,000 Layartebian soldiers, armor, aircraft, and ships to hold the country for two years. Many argued that with a force of 650,000 Layartebians, the country could have been pacified. With that same logic, it would take over 7,731,750,000 troops to secure the ACT and pacify it. There were only 1,315,500,000 Layartebians period and, of them, 16,500,000 were in uniform. That wasn't nearly enough to pacify even a sliver of the ACT. The Minister of Defense saw this and knew that, should the Empire become completely bogged down in controlling the ACT, it would be combat ineffective to even defend its own borders. Many might jump at that scenario and seize the opportunity. That couldn't be allowed.

As he and many of the leaders of the Layartebian military, the Emperor included, shuffled into a secure, underground, vault-like conference room, a small riot was brewing in Manaus. Two dozen teenagers, none of them more than eighteen years old, were filling glass jars and bottles with paint turpentine and sugar, rigging them with rags to serve as fuses. They prepared to heave the bunch of Molotov cocktails onto Layartebian armored vehicles and troops patrolling a market square that afternoon. Unaware that their actions could cause unnecessary deaths of their own countrymen, the teenagers, driven more by stupidity rather than anything else, set off from their homes that afternoon to kill as many Layartebians as they could find. To them, it was revenge but it wasn't smart revenge. They were going to get a lot of people killed and they wouldn't all be Layartebian.

May 14, 2008 - 10:40 [EST]
Governors Island, Layarteb City

The Emperor had left his office in the great Fortress of Comhghall and was making his way for the press briefing room. In light of the chaos and tension that had befallen Manaus and the ACT, the Emperor called a press conference to dispel many rumors and to speak to the people, who wanted answers. He had gone over what he would say a dozen or more times already and he was ready but he also allowed it to be an open one, meaning journalists could ask questions. He had little idea what questions they would ask, so he had to be prepared and ready. Dozens of reporters, armed with cameras, microphones, and tape recorders huddled through the security checks and into the press briefing room in the confines of the castle. Security was always tight and reporters were expected to be ready to go through the checkpoints two or more hours ahead of time. Going through the actual entrance would be simple and not very time consuming. They would simply remove everything from their pockets and allow it to go through an X-ray machine. Camera equipment was hand inspected and all reporters stepped through metal detectors and were patted down, just in case. Then, they walked to a secondary point where they received their badges. Their information was brought up by security personnel, analyzed and reviewed, and their were asked designated, individual questions that only they would know the answer to and further evaluated through the criminal database. If everything checked out, they were given the pass and ushered to the press conference room. They were not allowed to stray except to three locations: a specialized smoking room, the bathroom, and an adjacent room where they could talk to their respective media outlets. That was it and security personnel were always cautious of the press.

The Emperor stepped into the room and up to the podium at 10:42, three minutes before he was set to go on and address the country. Silence bestowed the room as he entered and everyone stood out of respect. They were seated when he stepped up to the podium. A technician pinned a microphone on his lapel and he straightened his tie and smiled. "Nice day for a press briefing don't you agree?"

"Yes sir," one daring but veteran reporter answered. "We should have these outside sir."

"Talk to my security staff." He laughed in mild agreement as the tech finished and stepped away. "There will be time for questions after I finish." He stated, which he always did prior to actually speaking. He wanted everyone in the room on the same page and it was bad decorum to ask a question when none would be fielded or to interrupt the Emperor. Such outbursts could end a reporter's tenure at the Fortress of Comhghall, a coveted assignment. The tech began the countdown as the Emperor steadied himself and waited for the signal. "Ladies and gentlemen of the Empire, good morning," he began. "There have been recent, troubling developments in the Amazonian Control Territory that have led many of the naysayers and political pundits in our great Empire to bring about many allegations. It is true that the Imperial Layartebian Military and the Empire as a whole mourn the tragic and unjustified assassination of General Hoffer and that his death has been a tragic blow to peace in the Amazonian Control Territory. Following his assassination, insurgent forces, using unarmed, civilian demonstrators attacked military checkpoints. The unfortunate reality was hundreds of unnecessary and unwanted deaths of many unarmed civilians.

"Thankfully, our military police forces have secured Manaus and captured many of these cowards. Unfortunately, their acts of sheer terrorism have damaged many families permanently as well as the furthering of peace in the Amazonian Control Territory. We are currently restoring that peace and this morning's reports have shown a significant decrease in acts of crime and violence since the tenth. It is our projection that the Amazonian Control Territory will be as it was on May 9 in approximately six more days. Layartebian soldiers are beginning to withdraw from Manaus and back to their normal positions, which would only be possible if peace was being restored.

"While many of the naysayers paint a grim outlook on the situation in the Amazonian Control Territory, the reality is quite the opposite. This hiccup, as we wish to refer to it informally, has set back the peace process but it has not caused any significant delays. Our model will continue, uninhibited and the Amazonian Control Territory will be ready for elections before the end of this summer. The insurgency that has plagued the Amazonian Control Territory, fueled from abroad, has been decisively defeated and it shall remain that way. It will not be reborn nor will it find a comfort in the people. The Amazonian people are fed up with violence, death, and destruction. They have applauded our rebuilding efforts and have thanked us for restoring the way of life so quickly. We have applauded them for their cooperation and appreciation.

"We are very grateful of their assistance in establishing peace and prosperity in their region of the world. As their steward, the Empire has a grave and large responsibility. We have never failed a willing people yet and we shall not fail them either. Thank you. Questions may begin." The Emperor's speech was terse but that was its design. He did not want to get too in depth, especially since a group of civilian children had just killed eighteen civilians and wounded thirty-nine more in a failed attempt to kill Layartebian soldiers at a military checkpoint. Two soldiers were wounded and, of the twenty-four teenagers, three were dead and nineteen were in handcuffs. The other two were at large and a manhunt was underway to find them. That attack had not reached the news wires yet and it likely wouldn't.

"Sir, Charles Cunningham, Hawdawgian National Press. Do you think the riots are a result of the policies adopted by the Empire?"

"Mr. Cunningham, no I do not. The May 10th riots were orchestrated by cowardly terrorists to seize an opportunity. They assassinated General Hoffer, staged the riots, and got hundreds of people killed for their own ends. Their desired effect, I imagine, of creating a new insurgency has failed."

"Sir, Martha Julliard, Layartebian News Network. Despite allegations that Layartebian soldiers fired first, can you confirm that they were fired upon before they actively engaged the crowds of rioters?"

"Yes I can Ms. Julliard. Layartebian protocols, specifically in such an instance, do not give soldiers the choice of whether or not to fire into crowds of civilians or unarmed rioters in general unless they have taken hostile fire first. According to after action reports, as I have read them, rioting crowds were warned to hold at bay and not approach military positions. Deadly force was authorized when hostile elements, hiding within the crowds, fired at Layartebian checkpoints. Unfortunately, our first line of defense was overrun and many soldiers lost their lives."

"Sir, James Watson, Sun International News. Recently, there has been a stir on internet blogs quoting Amazonian civilians accusing Layartebian military personnel of using chemical and biological weapons during the course of this war. Can you speak to these allegations?"

"Mr. Watson, as you are aware, the Empire does not possess any biological weapons program, so obviously these are lies, cooked up by those sympathetic to the insurgents. Chemical weapons, on the other hand, the Empire does possess. However, the only way chemical weapons may be used in combat is with my explicit approval and, in the twenty-eight years that I have served as the head of this government and state, I have not once authorized the use of chemical weapons."

"Sir. What about the use of tear gas during the riots?" Mr. Watson asked, trying to catch the Emperor off-guard.

"Mr. Watson, tear gas is not classified as a chemical weapon. It is non-lethal, is used by civilian police agencies around the world, and was used to avoid further, unnecessary civilian casualties. In this instance, it worked to everyone's favor."

"Sir, Janice Carlton. What is the Empire's official stance on 'torture.' These same blogs report that Layartebian interrogations often involve the use of torture."

"Ms. Carlton, as I stated these blogs obviously have an incorrect bias. The Empire does not actively practice torture methods. We have no legislation barring the use of torture but it is often considered ineffective in extracting information. Far more docile methods have been used to much greater success than torture every could. It should be noted though that our soldiers have been tortured by insurgents. Several POWs were brutally tortured, many of them succumbing to their wounds, throughout the course of this conflict."

"Sir, Angela Hudson, Layarteb City Times. A recent poll conducted shows that over seventy percent of Layartebian citizens believe that the situation in the ACT mirrors that in Kaliningrad, how would you respond?"

"Ms. Hudson, that poll did come across my desk three days ago. I can say that the situations are nothing alike. Kaliningrad was a full-blown war that lasted two years. The Empire was simply outmatched there as I have stated before. We have not been outmatched in the Amazonian Control Territory and the country has been under our full control and in a state of peace for many months now. Kaliningrad never had those luxuries. One more question."

"Sir, Benny Chambers, Washington Herald. Rumors continue to circulate the internet that the situation in Manaus is far from stable. Should another riot erupt, what would be the action of the Layartebian military?"

"What's this, everyone reading the same blogs," he and most of the crowd laughed. "Mr. Chambers, the situation is stable. I cannot comment; however, on military tactics as that would certainly invite some sort of action by overzealous terrorists throughout the area with some sort of latent grudge. We don't want more civilians to die. Thank you," he stepped off the podium. Cameras continued to shoot and video continued to record but the questions had stopped, as per the rules of decorum.

May 25, 2008 - 15:19 [AST]
15 nautical miles east of Dominica, Atlantic Ocean

The cruise liner Nord Hill had been hijacked just two days prior by sixteen armed men with threats of horrific violence. It was the one year anniversary since Ghost Warriors had seized the Sky Wonder and sunk it in the Caribbean Sea, with the whole world watching. Everything stunk of this same situation and though many cruise liners had armed themselves with anti-pirate devices, these men came in with the passengers. They reported having a total of 2,448 hostages. On board the vessel, when she left port were a total of 2,020 passengers and 668 crew members. The sixteen men used these numbers to hide their true force, admitting to executing only 124 passengers. In reality, they had executed 224 passengers and kept those bodies underneath the decks. The rest of the passengers were secured inside of their cabins or had been bound and gagged and thrown into small, holding cabins. With a lockdown in progress, nobody could enter or leave their cabins and that let the sixteen Ghost Warriors concentrate on the task at hand. In their demands, they called for the immediate withdrawal of the Empire from the Amazonian Control Territory and the resignation of the Emperor. Those demands would not be met and the Ghost Warriors threatened to sink the vessel. Unlike the last one, this wasn't a bank robbery. They weren't there to steal jewels or money. They were there to make a point and cause horror.

Off her port bow, the Nord Hill had a single Layartebian destroyer, a Voodoo class watching her. High overhead, a P-7A LRAACA maritime patrol craft flew patrol, monitoring the vessel below. They had not included in their demands to be alone. They wanted Layartebian naval vessels to sit off their hull, weak, unable to act. It sent a powerful image around the world as the Layartebian destroyer sat idle, unable to do anything to stop the violence. The Ghost Warriors had already executed eleven people on live television and thrown their bodies overboard. They were terrorists this time, not thieves. Joining the Voodoo was a Layartebian air defense frigate, a Dnalkrad class, a pair of smaller, faster, more agile Raef class patrol boats, and Tenerife class medium-endurance, Coast Guard cutter. Federal negotiators had arrived on scene hours after the standoff began but they weren't going to negotiate with the demands of the terrorists. They were going to negotiate the release of the hostages and of the vessel. The Ghost Warriors didn't care, they weren't there to negotiate anything and they weren't there to play nice. They knew the Empire wouldn't grant their demands, which was why they made them. They also knew that, with so many hostages, the Empire wouldn't drop in forces either and raid the boat. That was too dangerous.

Things were different this time around. There was no elaborate jamming in place and the passengers were, largely, conscious. Though dehydrated, hungry, and not necessarily in the best physical or mental shape, considering the air conditioning and heating systems on the vessel were turned off, the passengers were there, banging on their doors, yelling. Many of them had cellular phones although there weren't any signals out there and the repeater system that the vessel carried was turned off by the Ghost Warriors. The only way to communicate was by satellite phone and only six people on board, powerful executives, had them. They mostly horded them to themselves as they were mostly alone, except for one, who was truly thinking about others rather than just himself or his company. While the other five communicated only to their families and boards, this one, the Chief Operating Officer of a tool company was huddled into a cheap cabin with a small family of four, all of them scared out of their wits. His own family was somewhere else onboard and he didn't know if they were alive. It was a shame, his wife had been one of those executed and thrown overboard. Her body was recovered though, as the rest were, and they would receive a proper burial. He tried, frantically, to get through but he had one problem. Though he was fine on power, it had a small, solar cell to it, which he swung out the window to get power, he had trouble reaching the satellite. It was an odd angle and the satellite kept moving. For two days, he had tried, frantically to get more than a few seconds on the signal but it didn't work, until midday on May 25, the first anniversary of the hijacking of the Sky Wonder.

Cedric Sinclair waited twenty minutes while his secretary tried to reach the proper authorities. She had more than enough trouble trying to convince the Domestic Justice Agency of the authenticity of her claim and, eventually, won out, speaking to the supervisor of that particular department. She e-mailed over the itinerary for her boss, the tickets included. Finally, when the call was connected to the DJA support staff who had been helicoptered onto the Voodoo class destroyer. First, they tried to identify him, asking where he was located. Though he didn't know, he managed to get the cabin number from the family, who were relieved that he got through to someone. He told them of his solar cell out of the window and a few minutes passed while the P-7 confirmed. Now, he was in business and the questions began, "How many of them are on board? How many civilians are there? What is the status of the crew? What is the status of the passengers? Did you see a bomb?" Everything and anything was asked and, unfortunately, Cedric had few answers. He didn't know how many of them there were, he heard about the bomb but did not see it, the passengers were locked down and seemingly in distress, based on the conditions he had faced, and he had no clue about the crew.

Cedric had one thing though and he repeated it to them. "I overheard this. Outside of the door. One of the terrorists said it, I don't know to whom though. 'Me nakhodimsya v'e kontrole. Kolichestvo ostaetsya shestmadtsat'e. Nachinaya operatsiyu.' I don't know what it means or what language it was but I remember it perfectly." He repeated it a few dozen more times while the agents recorded it and listened for any variation. Each time he said it exactly like the time before. Orders were shouted and someone was looking for a possible translation.

May 25, 2008 - 21:00 [AST]
15 nautical miles east of Dominica, Atlantic Ocean

Hours had passed since Cedric Sinclair first made contact with the outside world, in a beneficial manner. While the others who had satellite phones thought about how they would issue press statements glorifying how they kept their composure and continued to do their jobs while under the threat of hijacking, only one cared about the lives of others rather than his own career. Cedric was an older man, in the late fifties. He had led a long and fulfilling life thus far. He had three children, a wife, and a grandson on the way. He had seen the darkest times of the Republic and the formation of the Empire. When the bullets tore through Falcon City during the civil war, he and his new family had fled north, to Dnalkrad. When the war was over, he had come back, with his second child. His third had been born in the late 1980s. He had worked hard and kept his nose clean his whole life although he had spent four days in jail during the early 1970s after getting into a bar fight outside of Washington City.

Now, he thought only of getting himself and everyone onboard the Nordic Hill to safety. The cruise had been the first he had ever taken and he had taken his wife with him on it. She was, unfortunately, gone and he didn't know it yet. With the threat of a bomb onboard, he wanted the good guys to come and he wanted them there fast! Little did he actually know, they were already on scene. The Voodoo class destroyer was the command vessel for the operation. While DJA personnel communicated back to Layarteb City and the Domestic Justice Agency, negotiators bought time, while a black ops unit was preparing to go on the offensive. They had translated what Cedric had told them and, with this piece of information, the green light for offensive operations was given. Cedric's phone was, by now, beginning to lose some of its charge. He kept his conversations short and checked in only once every hour and only now for seven minutes. He could go all the way to morning if he kept that pace and the family in his cabin was more than relieved that he got through to an outside source, let alone the DJA. None of them knew of the planned incursion.

On board the Voodoo, which sat just two thousand yards off the bow of the Nordic Hill were eight men, both part of the 2nd Black Operations Group, "Force Thunder," an elite counterterrorism unit. Force Thunder had shined on dozens of countless occasions in the past, from the 1980s to present, fighting against terrorism, their main mission. Highly specialized, dedicated, trained, and skilled, these eight men formed two teams of four each. Former Special Operators, they had moved up through the ranks to the elite circle known as Black Ops. Classified and highly secretive, their unit wasn't even known to exist in all but the highest circles of the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Intelligence. One could count how many people, aside from their own members, knew about the existence of Force Thunder.

They were still a few hours from beginning their mission but they suited up and prepared now. They all donned black wetsuits and silent weapons ranging from simple knives to submachine guns with subsonic ammunition. Their primary weapon was an old but classic, the M43A4 Submachine Gun, the domestic equivalent to the H&K MP5SD6. They carried a double magazine on each SMG and had thirty rounds loaded and another thirty at the immediate ready. They would go in with another one hundred and twenty rounds. Aside from their primary weapon here, they would also carry smaller, suppressed pistols equipped with a dozen or so rounds. Knives were standard as was piano-wire and a number of other devices that would allow them quick, stealthy, and silent kills. All of their ammunition was subsonic, meaning that it would give off no sonic boom. The only noise to be heard would be the noise of the bolt clicking back and fourth. That was loud but nowhere near as loud as a gunshot. You wouldn't be able to hear that from the other end of the ship. They would deploy in a pair of small, inflatable boats with silent motors. Once they got to the hull of the ship, they would ascend it using suction devices. Then, they would clear the ship.

"Gentlemen," the eight of them had gathered in the officer's mess aboard the Voodoo. Their weapons and gear was still to the rear of the vessel but under close watch and guard by two naval officers with loaded assault rifles. Among them, one was designated the operational commander but they had no individual ranks. None were more important than the other except the one designated as the operational commander. He sat down at the table and laid out a schematic of the vessel. "There are sixteen enemy tangos on board this vessel. Thermal shows at least six of them located up here, in the bridge. Alpha team this is your immediate responsibility. We know of an additional four topside on the deck, patrolling around, looking for some sort of rescue mission. That leaves six unknowns. We do not know where they are located or who has their trigger on the bomb, if there even is one. What we do know though is that these ten are our immediate targets. Once the bridge is secure, we will move forward and advance. Bravo you will sweep the deck while we take care of the bridge. Tactical silence on the radios, I don't want to hear so much as cough or sneeze.

"Remember silence is crucial and so is speed. If someone sees someone fall, make sure they don't see that body hit the ground. Understood? DJA wants some of them alive for questioning but you know the rules. If it's you or them, make it them. If it's a hostage or them, make it them. You have authorization to shoot through shields. It's a shitty thing but we have over two thousand on there. I don't have to tell you about the lesser of two evils. This is what it takes to be a part of this unit and we are all seasoned veterans. We launch at 23:00 and commence operations immediately when all eight of us are on the decks. We have not seen any search lights and we do not know if they possess night vision equipment. We must assume they do. We are entirely on our own, the way we like it so let's come home in one piece." They studied the schematics and began to plan their assault and surmise where the remaining six men were. The P-7 overhead would continue to look for them but it was impossible to see below the decks. They got lucky with the bridge and a combined thermal and visual scan picked up the six of them in there. The four on the decks were spotted through night vision and thermal as well.

May 25, 2008 - 23:00 [AST]
15 nautical miles east of Dominica, Atlantic Ocean

At fifteen thousand feet in the air, the LRAACA circled around the area of operations, its thermal sensors panned on the deck of the cruise liner. There were still four people on the deck patrolling, keeping an eye for intruders. The Ghost Warriors didn't expect any sort of incursion but then again, they didn't know about Force Thunder being on-scene or even who they were. They weren't counting on the satellite phone either, it was something they had overlooked. These two teams weren't sloppy but they weren't as careful as the other teams were. Little did they know what was happening just two thousand yards off their stern, on the stern of the Voodoo class destroyer.

The lower, aft deck of the Voodoo had become alive with activity in the previous half hour as the Force Thunder operatives prepared to embark. They had unpacked and inflated a pair of black rafts that they would use to reach the cruise liner. The eight men climbed into the two rafts with their weapons and gear and held on as a pair of small cranes lifted them into the air, over the port side of the destroyer and lowered them into the warm but calm Atlantic water. The quiet, electric winches of the Voodoo put both boats in the water right next to the destroyer. They were tiny, a few feet long, compared to the massive, 550 foot destroyer but they were for a specific purpose as was the destroyer. Neither could perform the mission of the other and the eight, Force Thunder operatives unhooked the cables as they touched the water. They did; however, leave two cables connected to their rafts, which would remain connected to the destroyer, allowing operators on board to recover the rafts once they were in place.

Both rafts moved forward slowly at first, just a few knots as they propelled away from the mammoth destroyer and towards the cruise liner. The eight men stayed low in the boats, their weapons ready and their night vision goggles casting nothing but green into their eyes. They saw perfectly as they moved into the black abyss and towards their target. The Force Thunder operatives would move to the stern of the vessel and ascend it to the deck, where they would sweep the vessel, quickly and carefully, silently and efficiently. Once they cleared the destroyer, the two rafts picked up speed to eight knots and moved in towards the cruise liner, without making any noise. Spotters on board the destroyer watched the cruise liner for the location of the four patrolling terrorists on the deck as well as those in the bridge. Not much had really changed since the previous sweeps of the vessel and the ten terrorists on the deck and in the bridge were still there.

The LRAACA continued to fly overhead, providing a live broadcast of what was happening to the command staff aboard the Voodoo. With the LRAACA high overhead, circling the area, no movements the terrorists could make, on deck, would go unnoticed. Everything they did, the operatives would see and they would react appropriately.

The two rafts slowed down once they got within two hundred yards of the cruise liner and more or less drifted to the stern, quietly, the four men inside of each as low as they could be, their weapons still drawn and ready. Once they got to the hull of the cruise liner, they went into action, quietly putting themselves against the hull. Two operatives sprung to action and removed a pair of suction devices each. The operatives were excellent athletes and rock climbing was one of their many talents. Both men would use those skills to ascend the side of the cruise liner, the suction cups giving them the needed hand holds. Their ascent would be nothing but upper body strength and they were more than physically fit for the task.

Both men began their ascent quickly. Down in the rafts, the six other operatives covered them, their weapons drawn and ready to fire, if they had to protect their fellow operatives. Their ascent was slow though as the men carefully placed their hand holders and pulled themselves up higher, moving up hand by hand. Because the side of the vessel was so smooth, the suction cups stuck perfectly and it wasn't long before they got to the deck, the railing in front of them. On their ear pieces they could hear that the nearest terrorists were towards the middle section of the ship. Quickly, they sprang over the top, pulling their suction devices with them.

They immediately went to action and as one of them covered, the other began to tie off the rope and secure it to the deck of the ship. Then, they tossed it over the rear of the ship and towards the rafts below. Now, the two men covered while the other six ascended the rope, making their way to the deck of the cruise liner quickly and without a single sound. Each one of them that reached the deck moved out to a concealed position where they could cover the others. It would take less than a minute for all eight of them to be on board once the rope was secured. They made quick work though of their tools, unsecuring the rope, letting it drop into the raft, along with the four suction devices. There was no trace that they even came aboard as they signaled, "Alpha. Bravo. Commencing topside sweep." The winch operators on the Voodoo immediately activated them and pulled the rafts towards the destroyer, a process that would take a few minutes.

The eight men immediately split into their two respective units, Alpha and Bravo. Alpha would move down the port side of the cruise liner and go to the bridge while Bravo moved down the starboard side and went below deck. They had a total of sixteen terrorists to take down and they knew that four were on the deck and another six in the bridge. The other six had to be below deck and Bravo would have to find them, quickly, and take them down before any of them could detonate the bomb, if they had one. Their greatest enemy was that unknown but their greatest friend was their training and the night. As they moved through the stern of the cruise liner at a lightning but completely silent pace, they enacted that training. Anything that could conceal their position did and they focused on getting to the bridge as quickly as possible, as silently as possible, and without taking any casualties themselves.

Their first target came from the two men patrolling towards the rear. The two men leading the two groups sighted their rifles on the terrorists, their infrared designators landing right on their heads as they watched through their night vision goggles. The green, infrared designators were visible only to those wearing night vision goggles. As they approached, they could see that the terrorists weren't wearing any, giving them the distinct advantage. Ready to engage, the two unit leaders tapped the trigger of their submachine guns twice, sending a pair of rounds through the air at low velocity, into the skulls of both terrorists. The subsonic, 9x19mm rounds wrecked havoc on their brains and killed them instantly. They continued, passing by the two dead bodies, bending down to check their pulses as they went by, to make sure they were dead.

Silence characterized their assault as they moved forward on the deck, towards the bow. "Tango Three. Tango Four. Thirty-nine meters forward, walking stern." A voice came over their headsets from high above as the spotter onboard the LRAACA informed them that the next two terrorists were moving towards them and about forty meters ahead. They still couldn't see them though, as they were in positions that weren't on a direct line-of-sight to the two terrorists. Both of them were moving along the side of the ship, towards the stern and the eight operatives were moving towards the bow and somewhere, they would intersect each other. Again, the two squad leaders moved forward, their weapons shouldered and their eyes down the sights. Their infrared pointers shot out ahead of them and, as the two terrorists came around the corner, they sighted the pointers on the terrorists' heads and fired again, each one of them firing off two rounds, sending them right through the terrorists. One of them fell off the side of the ship and into the water below, a noisy splash that, thankfully, nobody could hear as they were the only ones on the deck now. The other simply slumped over, onto the deck, bleeding from the gaping wounds in his head.

The eight men regrouped and began the move to their objectives. Alpha squad was going to the bridge, to neutralize the six terrorists there while Bravo squad was going below deck, to find the other six terrorists. Quickly and skillfully, the two groups of men ascended some steps to the next part of the deck. That was where the two groups split. Alpha squad moved into a door and ascended a staircase towards the bridge while Bravo squad headed below deck. They kept their weapons shouldered and moved quickly and silently up and down the two staircases.

Alpha squad moved up the stairs rhythmically. The first two men went side by side, one looking forward, while the other moved backwards, facing upwards. The other two men alternated the same setup and the four of them covered the steps quickly. They had a few flights to go to the bridge, which was high above the deck, to offer good visibility for the crew. About halfway there, the echoes of the bridge trickled into the stairwells. The first sound was the radio. The terrorists had left it on and listened to communications around the area, perhaps listening for any sound of an assault. The other sound was conversation. The terrorists were talking to each other, in clear English. Though they had spoke Russian over their phone at the start of the operation, here, they spoke perfect English, without accent. Once they got to the top of the corridor, the four men of Alpha squad prepared for their assault. They moved down the corridor and then split into another two groups, two men going to each of the two entrances to the bridge. Two men would sweep through the bridge while the other two provided cover. The assault would be quick.

The two men waited seconds, crouched low, their weapons in front of them, ready to go. They both switched their firing modes from single to automatic and assaulted. They both stood up higher and moved forward, towards the door, took aim, and fired. In the first salvo, they dropped two of the six men and while the other four reacted, reaching for their weapons or to look at what happened, the two operatives fired again, now inside of the bridge room. It took a few seconds to put the six men on the ground and they did it so efficiently, so silently, so impressively, they used two bullets or less per person and, except for one tango, they were all head shots. The one who wasn't a head shot was lying on the ground, struggling with the bullet wound through his stomach, his body throbbing with pain as the bullet had not exited his back. "Bridge clear. Five kilo, one whiskey. Interrogating." The squad leader looked around and felt a few pulses while the other operative did the same. Then, they came to the wounded terrorist, who was grabbing his stomach, lying in between a pair of consoles, no weapon in his hand. "Where are the others!" The squad leader asked as he bent down. They turned off the lights in the bridge so their night vision goggles wouldn't be completely useless and that hid them from the wounded terrorist.

"Go fuck yourselves!" He tried to be brave but it wasn't going to do him any good.

"Where are the others!"

"Fuck you."

"You've got two options. Where are the others!" He spat towards him, his saliva full of blood. "Option one, we let you live and you come back to interrogation. Option two, you tell me and I make sure you don't get tortured. You choose. Where are they?"

"Go to hell!" He reached down and pulled out a small medical kit from on his pack, a syringe coming out first with a cocktail that included morphine, antibiotics, and some other medicine, including something that would ease the bleeding. "What the fuck is that?"

"You chose option one." He stuck the needle into the terrorist's leg, catching the femoral artery. Force Thunder operatives, like all special operators and black operators in the Empire were all trained corpsmen. "This is Alpha lead. We've got a live one here. We need to medevac him out immediately, he's got a 9 millimeter to his lower abdomen, no exit. Prep surgery immediately." He said into his microphone, which relayed the communique to all eight men, the LRAACA overhead, and the destroyer.

"Wait. Wait." He thought about the ramifications of his survival. He could feel the painkiller kicking in and it fogged his perception a little. He realized just how much pain he would be in if he survived. "Wait."

"You chose already. Helicopter is on the way, just hold in there, this isn't a fatal wound. You're going to live a long life. Behind bars of course and I imagine you'll enjoy the accommodations."

"Wait." He couldn't imagine it anymore. He knew the rumors and the stories. He was a Ghost Warrior after all. "Two of them are in the engine room. The other four are in the radio room." He said as he gave in, rather quickly. The threat of torture was enough.

"Cancel medevac. We've lost him." The squad leader stood up and fired a pair of rounds into his head and communicated it back to Bravo squad where the other six men were. Within eight minutes, the situation was over and, of the sixteen terrorists, fourteen were killed. Two, who had been subdued in the radio room were perfectly healthy and eventually unconscious. They would be transported back to the destroyer and secretly moved to Force Thunder's headquarters in Washington City, Maryland where they would undergo extensive interrogation. Then, eventually, they would vanish to an unknown prison, perhaps Nova Prospekt or somewhere in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, a nightmare in and of itself. The news would report all sixteen terrorists killed of course.

June 1, 2008 - 04:00 [AST]
Eastern Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

June brought with it something stale. The hijacking of the Nordic Hill left a sour taste in everyone's mouth. While the two Ghost Warriors were being extensively interrogated in an underground facility in Washington City, media personalities, pundits, and the average Layartebian speculated just who was to blame. Most saw the hijacking as a retaliation strike for the Layartebian action in Manaus in early May. Regardless, there was one truth and nobody had hit it yet. Nobody seemed to put two and two together, that this act was nothing new. This was an act committed by the same domestic terrorist group that had plagued the Empire for several years now. Though the effectiveness of the Ghost Warriors was beginning to wane and their missions becoming more prone to failure, to the people, their message was still clear. The events in the ACT were overshadowing anything else in the Empire and beginning to take a hold of everyone's attention, again. Never before had such a popular consensus come out about any land. Not even the defeat and withdrawal of Layartebian forces in Kaliningrad was met with some a large consensus. The people of the Empire were sore with the wounds of the ACT. Venezuela was over, the rebellion was over, the war was over, Mato Grosso was over yet, still, the ACT remained.

The ACT wasn't considered, by the people, a part of the Empire. It was more or less a possession. Their citizens were not equal to those in the Empire, many felt, and deserved no benefit. As a territory they had more than enough benefits from the Empire but they were also lacking in quite a bit, including the same rights as any Layartebian citizens. The ACT was more or less a police state, under military control. It was occupied by over twenty-five thousand Layartebian soldiers, most of them inside of Manaus. Things had been peaceful and calm and were returning to normal just two months prior. Now, the chaos was back. Angry citizens tossed fruit and garbage at Layartebian soldiers. They threw rocks at their tanks and filled balloons with red paint. Hostilities within the city were compounded by the harsh new edicts in place by the military government. The curfew was extended, detainment was now guaranteed, soldiers had shoot-to-kill orders, and people were being surveilled in their own homes. Never before had the citizens of the ACT felt so raped by the Empire. Not even when the Empire was tearing through their country, shooting anything that moved had they felt this abused. They had thought they were gaining equality within the Empire, something to look forward to, perhaps independence one day, like Kaliningrad, but through peaceful means now. All of that went out the window on May 30, when the military commander of the ACT announced that the Layartebian troop presence would be scaled up from twenty-five thousand to sixty thousand and offensive operations would be taken against insurgents throughout the city.

Manaus was cut into four zones. There was the eastern sector, which was considered the most dangerous; the northern and most secure sector since that was where the military command area was; the southern sector, which was considered neutral or at least passive; and the western sector, which remained somewhat pleased with the Layartebians, despite what happened. Throughout the country, the sympathy towards either the insurgents or the Empire was split. There was no clear consensus among people of the ACT about whether or not the Empire was good or the insurgents were good. Most of the people were just sick and tired of the bloodshed. They wanted peace, normalcy, and stability and they also wanted it now. With the Empire holding them down, they knew that there wasn't much of a way to get anything that they wanted.

Finally, on June 1, it appeared that there was just no more patience left for either side. It started early in the morning, just after midnight when a Layartebian patrol encountered a group of teenagers violating curfew. As they prepared to arrest and detain the four boys and two girls, one of the boys took off running. Convinced that he was a scout of some sort and that he would lead them into an ambush, the squad leader opened fire. He sent a quick burst of three rounds down the street and through the boy's back and out his chest. He slumped over dead and skidded to a stop in the street. The other five teenagers were quickly detained and horrified by what they saw. Residents to the area, hearing the screams of the teenagers following the gunshots flocked outside to see what was happening. They converged on the dead boy as the Layartebian patrol pushed the five teenagers into the back of their Bushmaster armored car. Though they had been removed from frontline service in the Imperial Layartebian Army, many of them still served with the Defense Forces, who oversaw the ACT.

Enraged, the crowd began to throw rocks and garbage at the soldiers. Now they were all violating curfew and the soldiers made that clear as they ordered the residents back to their homes or else they would face detainment. The crowd swelled to about sixty, versus just six Layartebians. They called for backup at 01:13 hours and the next seven minutes were the most crucial in the entire morning. Backup arrived and the crowd was boxed in armored vehicles in front and behind them. Fearing that they too would be shot and killed, the crowd took up their own self-defense and split into two groups. Albeit without an organizer, the sixty or so people managed to coordinate a sort of wall as they both moved towards the two armored cars. It was sixty versus twelve but those sixty were unarmed. Somewhere around 01:18 hours, one of the soldiers got skittish and accidentally fired his weapon. The rounds passed aimlessly through the air and struck nothing. It was enough though to scare the crowd. They rushed the vehicles and the soldiers opened fire, now against the unarmed civilians. It took less than sixty seconds to neutralize the crowd and the word spread, quickly and without hindrance.

At 03:00 hours, thousands of people inside of the city, armed, took to the streets in the eastern sector and began fighting. They had enough with the Empire, their soldiers, and their killings. Five teenagers were being detained, sixty unarmed civilians were dead, and one teenage boy, barely fifteen years old was dead, all, seemingly, without provocation. Fighting was sporadic at first, rounds and shots here and there, without organization. Groups of four to ten moved low throughout the eastern sector, weapons to their hips and shoulders, in front of them, and plenty of bullets. Despite a city-wide campaign to find and eliminate guns, many slipped through. There were thousands of arms within the city, many of them stashed and hidden by stay-behind networks prior to the fall of Manaus to the Layartebian Army. Civilians had found these stashes and caches and equipped themselves, keeping them hidden from the Layartebian military while they waited for the right moment. Now it was here and they put those weapons to good test.

By 04:00 hours, the fighting had intensified, solidified, and began coherent. There was organization now to the insurgent attacks. They weren't simple shoot-and-scoot maneuvers intended to put down the heads of the Layartebian soldiers and then allow them to escape. Snipers took up elevated position and took aim at Layartebian soldiers. IEDs were being placed and booby-traps were being set up throughout the eastern sector. Despite all of this and being outnumbered, in the first hour of fighting, the Layartebian soldiers took no casualties except a few minor wounds. The insurgents were not very good shots and their tactics were certainly amateur. Despite their clear coherency, they were still too unorganized to take on the professional soldiers of the Defense Forces. They took significant casualties and were thwarted every step of the way on their first offensive. Though they were not decimated or routed, they were forced, in many scenarios, to retreat or else they would have been. They were good about retreating and knew when they were outmatched and outgunned, which was generally everywhere they turned. Their best marksmen, who were snipers, found themselves unable to score kill shots and often found their rounds ineffective against the body armor of the Layartebian soldiers, who seemingly always knew where they were. Their bright muzzle flashes in the dead of night and lack of night vision equipment allowed the Layartebian soldiers to effectively return fire. Most of the casualties the insurgents took were to their snipers, who often exposed their positions too soon or were without adequate cover.

June 1, 2008 - 08:00 [AST]
Eastern Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

Operation Silver Tornado was an older military plan. It had been devised in the days of Kaliningrad and never put into action as the Empire had withdrawn from the country before it could be fully controlled. Silver Tornado was a scenario envisioned when order and civility had been restored to Kaliningrad and terrorist factions reignited hostilities. Since order and civility had never been restored to Kaliningrad, the plan could never be exercised. However, in the Amazonian Control Territory, civility and order had been restored. Now that was gone and while the merits weren't necessarily the same the plan was certainly fitting for the situation in the ACT. The doctrine had to be modified as well. Because Kaliningrad was a coastal nation, the plan called for the use of carrier based aircraft and V/STOVL aircraft for quick response along with helicopters. For the ACT there would be no carrier based aircraft and helicopter support was minimal. Once tensions began in the beginning of May, the Imperial Layartebian Army committed a small but capable helicopter detachment to the area. Now, with the obvious hostilities, more aircraft were being supplied.

Already able and available to operate over the city of Manaus was the small, helicopter detachment numbering twelve attack and several utility and reconnaissance helicopters as well as a slew of fixed wing aircraft from Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela. Most of these aircraft would have to embark on some aerial refueling though because of the long range and amount of ordinance they would have to carry. However, there were several aircraft available for the effort already at Manaus International Airport. These included a small detachment of four F-35A Raven multirole fighters, four A-15A Cobra ground-attack fighters, three F-46C Enforcer fighter-bombers, and five F-26A Typhoon multirole fighters. These sixteen aircraft were backed up by a small logistical detachment of C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft, one KC-10B Extender aerial refueling tanker, and several MQ-9A Reaper UAVs. Rumors were around the airbase that they were going to receive a pair of AC-27C Sledgehammers, both capable of leveling whole city blocks with their guns. Soldiers were always excited when they heard about an AC-27 being on scene or at least in the area of operations. AC-27s had the distinct honor of never having a base under its protection lost to the enemy.

Though the AC-27 rumor was still unfounded yet, the intense combat seen in just a few hours in Manaus certainly justified having the AC-27 on station. As soldiers dug in along the eastern sector of the city, insurgent forces, now numbering upwards of 10,000 or more and fought hard. Throughout the whole city of Manaus there were only around 12,500 Layartebian soldiers and only 5,000 of them were on the front. The rest were behind the lines, securing the rest of the city. With another 35,000 soldiers coming to the country, the insurgency would find itself heavily outnumbered. This was a new insurgency though and they were totally different from the one that plagued the ACT following the fall of the republican government.

Dug in deep along Swan Avenue, the largest road in the eastern sector, a platoon of ILDF soldiers were taking heavy fire from insurgents in at least five different buildings. Sniper and rocket fire was inaccurate but kept their heads down and showered them with dirt and debris. The soldiers were organized and their enemy outnumbered them by at least three to one or more. The Layartebian soldiers were well armed and they brought to bear several machine guns, sniper rifles, and rockets themselves, some with thermobaric warheads. They even walked around with a Corona launcher and four missiles, one of which had already been launched into a building, eliminating its usefulness to the enemy. They needed more help though and they feared that insurgents were beginning to surround them on their flanks. They were basically stuck, unable to retreat or move forward and that was bad news for the unit of thirty-two men. "Comanche One. Comanche One. Come in," the platoon leader, a captain yelled into the microphone of their radioset, bullets showering around him. "Comanche One. This is Crazyhorse Nine. We need immediate air support! Over!" The radio buzzed with chatter and, finally, they were answered.

"Crazyhorse Nine. Stand by. We're vectoring in a pair of fighters. Contact callsign Lima Two-One. Out."

"Roger that. Lima Two-One. Lima Two-One, come in, over." The two fighters were further away but they could definitely make it to their position in no time.

"Crazyhorse Nine. Crazyhorse Nine. Lime Two-One is inbound. ETA to your position is four minutes. Mark your position and spot targets. Ordinance is free-fall only."

"Hooah Lima Two-One, we need immediate support. We're transmitting our coordinates now and positioning our targets." The captain shouted a few orders and one of the men immediately opened up his digital laptop computer and began to coordinate targets. Despite being at the bottom of the military's pecking order, the Defense Forces were better equipped than most armies. Entirely digital and linked into the rest of the Imperial Layartebian Military, all platoon sized units carried a single soldier who acted basically as a forward air controller. He carried a digital, encrypted, and strengthened laptop that allowed him to access what was up there, what was in front of them, and everything else at their disposal. He panned the small solar panel to the sun and the laptop immediate drew power and the screen lit up with a digital display. The laptop was also battery powered but could work entirely off solar energy. In this instance, it would be using the latter.

"Sir. I'm marking our targets right now, transmitting details to Lima Two-One!" The FAC yelled back as he marked the targets with a pen attached to the screen, transmitting the coordinates and small notes to the aircraft overhead. They were moving at just under Mach 1 but they were 30,000 feet in the air, flying in a tight formation from the south. The pilots received the transmission immediately and began to program their weapons. They only needed to click a few buttons as the coordinates provided by the ground team would immediately be uploaded into the guidance system of the bombs. Each of the F-35A Raven fighters were carrying four 1,000 pound JDAM II bombs and they uploaded the coordinates into the eight bombs while paying careful attention to the coordinates for the friendly position. The computer in each fighter automatically calculated if the friendly team was threatened by the blast radius of each bomb. It took nanoseconds to return a "SAFE" condition and the pilots switched their master arm switches to "ON" and radioed back to the team.

"Crazyhorse Nine. Stay down, ordinance coming down." The lead pilot said as he pickled the four bombs and pushed the trigger on the flight stick. "Two. Cleared to release."

"Two. Roger that. Bombs away!" Both aircraft remained straight and level as their bombs released, falling towards the ground in a spiraling motion. Attached to each bomb was a small TV camera that could provide a few minutes of video feed and sent back what the bombs saw. They broke through the clouds, spiraling down to the target, picking up speed before they stuck. When they hit, they hit hard and shook the ground for miles. The five structures exploded in a brilliant fireball that was larger than the entire city block that belched thick, black smoke skyward. The soldiers cheered as they watched the houses crumble in on themselves, cheering also that they were safe now. They stopped taking fire immediately and popped out of their concealed positions and moved towards the other side of the street, engaging a few insurgents who were lying down and dug in around them. The dozen or so insurgents on the ground were eliminated quite quickly as the soldiers moved into their sector of the city.

June 1, 2008 - 11:00 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

The Emperor stepped out of his office with the ministers of Defense and the Interior in tow. They were heading to the press briefing room, where the Emperor would address the situation in Manaus and his order to begin combat operations in the city against insurgent forces. He had been receiving updates every fifteen minutes from the Minister of Defense in his office and met him when his helicopter landed on the island an hour earlier. "Sir. We are in a major firefight." He began, the Emperor seated at his desk. "Insurgent forces have, essentially, taken control of the eastern sector of the city and number upwards of ten thousand or more. They have a clear organization but we do not have any players marked yet. The situation is critical. Our soldiers on the front lines can and will hold out long enough defensively for reinforcements to arrive. Sixty thousand strong, the Defense Forces will push offensively tomorrow throughout the eastern sector of the city. I'm afraid sir, all that we've seemingly rebuilt is being destroyed."

"How did they anticipate this?"

"Sir. It is our belief that we have traitors within our own government that are in league with those in Manaus. Sir it is also my personal theory and while it is not backed up scientifically or by any other that these events in Manaus, the hijacking, and so on are not the worth of separatists in the Amazonian Control Territory but the same terrorist group that we've been dealing with now for years."

"How did you come to this conclusion?"

"Sir, I am not sure I should inundate you with this theory as it is my own personal assumption."

"Mr. Minister. You theory is not out of the blue. I too entertain these thoughts. Please, share your theory with me."

"Thank you sir." The Minister of Defense sat down and leaned back in the chair in front of the Emperor. "This domestic terrorist group, the 'Ghost Warriors' as they and we have dubbed them are too capable to be some rag tag army. They are not like the Sepah-e Pasdaran in the Caucasus region that we so easily eliminated. These terrorists are like mercenaries, elite soldiers who once served either in our own military or in foreign militaries, probably special forces or elite combat units."

"I agree. Go on."

"They are also far larger than we know. Their active cadre is big enough alone that they could be the size of a battalion or more. Their passive cadre though, is countless. It could easily number over a million and we know that they are certainly well trained. Any group of mercenaries that well trained needs pay and we're not talking the pay of our soldiers. We're talking the type of pay that is hidden in unnamed bank accounts such as the Bank of Saint Lazare, the Grand Caymans, et cetera. The funding alone for this group is monumental and it is one group. The RLA, they were the same group sir. The size and scope of the organization is not foreign, we would have found that out already. We uncovered the Totalis ring, linked to the SP, and so on and so fourth."

"This is correct."

"But sir, we uncovered one single entity. This is far larger than any of us imagine at the present time. This group of terrorists can only be domestic. If it were international, we would know about it, we would have found out already. Sir, this comes from the heart of the Empire and, I imagine, within our own government as well. There may very well be persons on this Cabinet that are involved. I cannot say I have proof of this accusation."

"And it is a serious one to make Mr. Minister. What led you to this aspect of your theory?"

"Sir. The things this organization has accomplished could not have been possible without information and help from the highest levels of this government. It cannot simply be that they are this lucky, no sir. They've had help."

"I see." The Emperor had met the Minister of the Interior shortly thereafter and now the three of them were walking to the press briefing room. "So, what do you suspect they will ask today?" He joked as they reached the door and he straightened his tie. The three of them stepped into the room, the Emperor leading the way, as was custom and the three of them ascended the podium and stood with the Emperor in the center. "Good morning. I will be addressing questions following my speech." He said as he composed himself behind the microphones and waited. The press brief, like any other, would be broadcast on television and radio as well as on the internet. It would not interrupt much in the way of programming though. The speech was not considered crucial and so networks were not required to broadcast it. Local stations did, of course, broadcast the speech throughout their viewerships but most cable stations did not, except for the dedicated news stations, the LNN especially. The camera panned to him and the operator gave the silent countdown as the Emperor composed himself one last time. "Ladies and gentlemen of the Empire, good morning," he began. "Early this morning I ordered the start of offensive combat operations in the Amazonian Control Territory with the purpose of routing out this insurgency. Soldiers and equipment of the Imperial Layartebian Defense Forces are currently engaged in firefights throughout Manaus and elsewhere in the A.C.T. as per my orders.

"The insurgency in the A.C.T. is nothing but a band of terrorists who want to undo all of the accomplishments of the Empire these past months. Their intention is to return chaos and horror to the A.C.T. beginning with Manaus and separating from the Empire in order to found a state based on fear and tyranny. These terrorists will call themselves 'freedom fights' and 'revolutionaries' but they use these euphemisms simply to hide their true nature, which is death and destruction.

"This campaign, which is known as Operation Silver Tornado will be the largest combat operation in the A.C.T. since the defeat of the anti-Layarteb, Amazonian government and will conclude with the defeat of this insurgency.

"Recent violence in Manaus, attributed to these insurgents and separatists can be directly linked with the hijacking of the Nordic Hill and has called for a swift and concise military operation before it can grow too dangerous.

"It is my anticipation that this fight shall not last long nor shall it end in victory for the insurgency. A surge of combat troops and equipment is currently underway to ensure that the enemies of the A.C.T. and the Empire do not have safety in numbers. They are fighting against the most highly trained, skilled, and equipped military in the world and it is the intention of the Empire to completely destroy their ability to wage war and terror. If they were wise they would surrender immediately and save countless lives that need not die. The Empire is not a foe to the A.C.T. and neither is the A.C.T. a foe to the Empire.

"Thank you. Questions?"

"Sir. Jamie Harding, Layarteb City Times. What is the current duration of this operation?"

"Ms. Harding, the operation has no time limit. We do; however, expect that within two weeks fighting will have ceased and this insurgency destroyed. Next."

"Sir, Randolph White, Layarteb News Network. Can you give us any details as to the size of this insurgent force and of their capabilities?"

"We estimate the insurgency to be under 5,000 and their capabilities are, at best, rag-tag. They do not possess heavy equipment or armor, perhaps unarmored vehicles such as pick-up trucks and cars but that is the extent of their abilities."

"Sir. Pamela Watson, Washington Post. Sir, does this increase in hostilities signal a weakening by the Empire in this region?"

"Not at all Pamela. The Empire remains strong and it is because we are strong that we will rout out the insurgency before it can grow into a cause."

"Sir. David Hawker, Reuters. How would you compare this conflict and Kaliningrad? What similarities do they contain?"

"Mr. Hawker, aside from bullets flying through the air there are no similarities. Kaliningrad was never under peaceful control of the Empire. The Kaliningradian War was based on entirely different principles and driving forces. Thank you and have a good day." The Emperor and both ministers exited the room, the questioning ceasing when he announced that he was finished. Kaliningrad and the A.C.T. were different, very different. The Empire never had an upper hand in the former and the body count was significantly higher, for both sides than in the A.C.T. In addition, Kaliningrad wasn't on the Empire's doorstep and neither was it a haven for terrorists planning revolution in the Empire's cities. No, Kaliningrad was completely different.

June 2, 2008 - 14:00 [AST]
500 miles northwest of Manaus, Venezuela

"Hey you guys remember that quote from our infantry journals? The one about if the enemy is in range so are we?"

"Yeah. I remember that one. Funny isn't it, considering."

"Considering what soldiers? Those are wise words that you should remember." The grizzled major barked as the two enlisted sergeants chatted inside the cabin of their forty-something ton vehicle. "How you holding up back there Benny?"

"Good sir. Just a little nervous."

"About what son? You're in a forty ton truck, five hundred miles away from the battle. You scared?"

"A little sir."

"A little. Son, that's not what I want to hear. You've got a job to do now make sure you do it." Major Gavin was a veteran of the conflict in the A.C.T. and of the latest Venezuelan conflict and he had a truck full of soldiers who never walked into battle before and he despised them for this fact. He had been something of an enigma in his career, entering the Imperial Layartebian Army at eighteen and going right to OCS to lead a squad of engineers. He didn't see combat until he was in the service four years, choosing the military as a career rather than go to college. He was a first lieutenant when the Venezuelan Uprising began and just twenty-two years old. He led his platoon of engineers throughout the conflict, demining passes and booby traps without losing a man. Then, the Amazonian War began and his unit kept fighting as he was promoted to captain. His men had a hard time there, clearing mines and booby traps, which were identical to those in the Venezuelan Uprising. He lost three of them to enemy devices and he had been wounded himself by shrapnel from a Bouncing Betty mine towards the end of the war. His unit never quite had contact with the enemy and he had never fired his rifle in anger either. Then, following the war, his unit was given a commendation and he a promotion to major. That was when he switched duties and applied to join the newest missile regiments of the army. Having seen the destructive force of the Vesta first hand, he decided that they were the future of Layartebian warfare.

Now he was in command of a single Vesta crew and under orders to move his crew and vehicle to a launch position in southern Venezuela. He didn't expect that he would actually have to fire the thing. "Gentlemen. This is it. Halt the vehicle here." He said as his navigational console showed him that this waypoint had been met. The driver, Sergeant Daniels had not been paying full attention either and was startled that they were there. He and Staff Sergeant Ryan, the offensive systems operator, had been chatting about baseball for most of the drive. The defense systems operator, Specialist Bennedetto, whom every just called "Benny" was sitting in the back, silent and quiet. He had been on plenty of training missions but, at the tender age of eighteen and a half, he had never been brought into combat before. Now he was and he was scared shitless, even if the enemy was five hundred miles away.

They had parked and no sooner than they arrived did flash traffic arrive on the communications link. "Quiet. Quiet." Major Gavin yelled as he read the incoming transmission. "Shit. Prepare for launch gentlemen, this is the real deal." He said after authenticating the orders, which called for immediate launch of their payload, a Vesta SRBM. "Let's do this right. Initiate launch control systems."

"Outriggers deploying, blast covers closing. Isolating air. Beginning illumination sequence." The driver said as he flipped a few switches and pushed a few buttons. The M2027A3 TEL sprung to life as four outriggers on the rear of the vehicle deployed their arms simultaneously and dropped their ground plates into place, sensors and leveling devices automatically making sure that the vehicle was properly stabilized and all in a matter of seconds. At the same time, metal shields slid over the windows and the interior cabin of the TEL turned red. "Sequences complete. Driver ready!"

Specialist Bennedetto was dazed as he looked down at the thermal screen in front of him. His position was to man the remote control turret on top of the vehicle. The turret contained an M50A1 Heavy Machine Gun and was equipped with a standard load of 1,000 12.7x99mm rounds. They had another thousand ready to be added and they could do so without every leaving the cabin of the vehicle. "No threats," he said as the Major turned around to ask him if he was paying attention.

"Targeting sequence downloaded and trajectory completed. Awaiting coordinates." The defensive systems operator said as he looked down at his panel. He had the coordinates in front of him and entered but he had to confirm them with the Major before he uploaded them into the missile.

"Coordinates are. Negative three dot zero eight three three eight four. Negative six zero dot zero two eight zero eight one. Confirm."

"Negative three dot zero eight three three eight four comma negative six zero dot zero two eight zero eight one. Confirm."

"Accept coordinates. Erect missile."

"Coordinates accepted. Diagnostics complete. Erecting missile." Their vehicle hummed as the electric motor in the rear of the vehicle and hydraulic systems lifted the forty-three thousand pound missile from its horizontal resting place to a vertical angle in just a few seconds, the solid-fueled, short-range ballistic missile now looking skyward. "Missile is erected. Satellite sequencing complete. Awaiting launch codes."

"Launch codes." The Major said as he and the driver opened a small safe on the arm rest of the vehicle and removed a red card with a sequence of letters and numbers. Both the driver and the Major had one half of the code to the safe, which was opened with a ten digit code entered on an electronic keypad. The Major looked down at the sequence and verified them with the sequence on the orders. "Sequence is verified. Enter the following. Alpha, bravo, zero, eight, echo, echo, miner, five, x-ray, delta, hotel."

"Entering, alpha, bravo, zero, eight, echo, echo, miner, five, x-ray, delta, hotel. Code is accepted. Missile is ready to fire."

"Delay ninety seconds for final confirmation." The Major pushed a button on the transmission interface that sent a return signal notifying command that they were ready to fire. The signal arrived instantly but standard practices was just to wait ninety more seconds, in case the order was rescinded. It had happened in the past and it could always happen. If after ninety seconds nothing came, the missile was launched. It could still be self-destructed in flight if need came but at the waste of a multi-million dollar missile. Waiting ninety seconds, for this particular system, wasn't going to hurt anything or anyone.

Capable of untold horrors, the MGM-233 Vesta was the culmination of a decade long development project. The need for heavy artillery came at the onset of the Conquests but the MLRS system and its rockets fulfilled that task quite well and with superb accuracy and capability, especially after the fuses on the bomblets for the rockets were fixed, significantly lowering the dud rates. When the MLRS was replaced by the Boar and Devastator systems, the need for a long-range, highly accurate and capable rocket arouse. The Empire had been without an SRBM system for some time following the retirement of the MGM-52 Lance in the early 1980s. The Vesta emerged in early 2005 and was first used, operationally, in 2007 against Mato Grosso during Operation Thunder Rain. Since then it had been used in numerous conflicts around the world and by Cottish, Layartebian, and Hirgizstanian forces against Nerotika, Pantheaa, Spizania, the Ukraine, and in various other conflicts. Though initially developed as a nuclear or chemical weapon, the Vesta had been mated with a series of conventional warheads and while reducing its maximum range, they provided the Vesta with a modified and much more capable mission.

The missile this crew carried had one such warhead and when the ninety seconds were up, it was sent hurtling towards its target. "Delay concluded. No change to orders. I authorize immediate launch." Major Gavin said as he looked down at the panel. A green light had come on showing that the ninety second hold had expired and the missile was completely authorized for launch. In the back both Specialist Bennedetto and Staff Sergeant Ryan looked at each other as SSG. Ryan's finger hovered over a plastic cover protecting the launch button. A few seconds went by before Major Gavin turned around and looked back, "I said launch!"

"Yes sir." He flipped open the cover and pushed the illuminated rubber button, which was green. The vehicle shook as the forty-two thousand, five hundred pound missile's four rocket engines ignited, searing the ground with a blast of fire and force powerful enough to turn sand into glass and everything short of concrete into a crater.

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The rocket rose from the elevator rail quickly as the combined thrust of the four rockets threw the missile skyward towards an altitude of nearly 45 miles. The missile's trajectory was quasiballistic, which meant that anyone tracking it would never be able to tell just where it was heading. Following a lower trajectory than a regular ballistic missile, the Vesta could hit with little warning and evade most interceptors, making it a first strike and highly deadly weapon. If equipped with a nuclear warhead, the Vesta could strike targets as far away as 1,250 miles but, with a heavier conventional warhead, it could only hit targets 520 miles away or less. Its target today would be at the limit of that range with only a few miles to spare. During its ascent, the rocket would quickly speed up to over 4,000 miles per hour, covering over a mile each second.

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Cameras on the exterior of the TEL showed that the launch was successful and the crew watched as the missile climbed skyward at 45° towards the southeast. The GPS guidance chips inside of the missile along with its satellite link immediately told the missile where to go and how to get there and in less than a minute, the missile was just a bright dot in the sky, heading away from Venezuela, having already crossed into the ACT.

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The missile reached its apex somewhere along the flight and began its descent shortly thereafter, picking up speed. It was already moving more than seven times the speed of sound and it would top out around Mach 8, over 4,800 miles per hour. Shortly after the missile reached its apex, it jettisoned the first stage, a length booster that provided the missile with its initial thrust and power. The second stage was just as powerful though and because the missile was significantly lighter now, it could do the same with less thrust.

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Inside of the missile, the 2,000 pound warhead armed as the missile sought out its target, a soccer stadium in Manaus. As the missile descended at over 4,800 mph, it maneuvered to its striking position as the GPS coordinates put it in the middle of the stadium. Intelligence assets had reported that insurgent forces in Manaus had secured the stadium and were using it to store ammunition, supplies, and to regroup their fighters. This was partially true. The stadium was also a safe haven for some civilians caught in the middle of the fight. In such, it was a gray area in that it was a military target and not one at the same time. This was of little concern to the insurgents who used the civilians to shelter themselves from airstrike. Little did they know that fact never got to the intelligent circles as they had done so well at keeping it hush-hush, fearing more for the lives of the civilians than of their own protection, a noble yet foolish maneuver.

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The missile had already locked onto the target and there was nothing to be done and nobody saw it coming. The missile streaked down from high altitude at high speed with little concern for what was in its path. At two thousand feet it was clear that there were people inside of the stadium but the missile would be there in a fraction of a second as it covered 7,040 feet each second. Tearing through the air, the missile slammed into the stadium where its warhead detonated and filled the stadium, seemingly instantly, with a brilliant fireball that rose into the air. The explosive force of the warhead tore the stadium to pieces, vaporizing those at ground zero and melting the others all in nanoseconds. The heat and force combined from the explosion ripped through the stadium and tore it piece by piece, collapsing the whole eastern side of it, where most of the weapons were stored and where most of the refugees were hiding.

June 3, 2008 - 04:00 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

"Torn to pieces. Everything we've accomplished. All those lives, lost, saved, what for? This? For this whole shitstorm? You hear that? That isn't gunfire, that's a massacre. Those explosions of artillery, that isn't help. That's slaughter. This whole war, this whole fucking situation. And for what? A couple of hundred thousand square miles of what? Nothing. Jungle. That's it. Fucking jungle. This place doesn't even have running water throughout most of it. It's a complete shithole and here we are for it. I fucking hate this. I hate this." The soldier said as he looked down the scope of his rifle. It was night and he had a powerful, night vision scope that gave him the ability to see nearly three hundred meters away in the night. He could see a thousand in the daytime but he was far more comfortable at night.

"C'mon. You know there's more to it," he spotter said, looking through a pair of binoculars equally as powerful and as expensive. They were perched in the fifth story of an apartment building that was peppered with holes from chain gun and machine gun rounds. It had been secured just hours earlier and friendly forces moved up, throughout the rest of the neighborhood, fighting a battle house to house. In front of them, they could see that battle as they were to provide support for the advancing forces. "What do you think we're doing here?"

"Beats me. I used to think it was about Venezuela, about that forty year old war. We came here in the 60s and 70s, secretly. We didn't come back here in the 80s and now we're back in the 00s. What does that tell you? We didn't do it right any of the other times or else we wouldn't have to be here. What do you think? This place was just going to embrace us, hold our hands high while we pushed back anarchists and insurgents? They could care less. They may not like them but they hate us more. Where does that leave us?"

"Target. Movie theater. Roof. Behind the sign. One hundred, ten meters. No wind."

"Eyes on."

"Fire. Fire. Fire." The sniper squeezed the trigger and sent a 6.8x51mm round downrange at 930 meters per second, striking the insurgent underneath his left eyeball quite easily and without much effort. He keeled over and fell from the top of the roof, landing lifeless on the ground, five stories below. They continued their conversation. "That's a kill. Listen, I don't understand what you're trying to say? Do you mean we're all dying for nothing here or rather killing for nothing?"

"Yeah. That's exactly what I'm saying. We've got a ton of people here who hate us, that don't want us here. Hell our own people don't want us here."

"But what about the calm we just had. Everything was peaceful."

"No. It was just brewing."

"You think that this, hold on. I've got something. Down there by the dumpster. Right of the burning car. Looks like an RPG team?"

"Maybe. I can't tell, the fire is obscuring my scope."

"Hold on. No. I can't tell either."

"Let me try something." The sniper aimed low and fired off a single shot that was sure to ricochet around. He hoped that it would startle whomever was there into moving and it worked. Two insurgents, one carrying an AT4 jumped up and out of the way and the other, holding an M16 rifle fell backwards. The round ricocheted away, hitting neither but scaring them. As he could see their faces, he could tell they were just kids but he had a duty to do and he did it, firing off two rounds, both into each of their heads, killing them quickly and efficiently. "Look at this. You see those two? I doubt either of them is old enough to know what sex is yet but they're walking around with a fucking rifle and a rocket launcher. C'mon you can't be serious about peace and shit? Look at these people!"

"Yeah I see them. Trust me. I've been here as long as you but I don't think it's just about this. I think there's more to it here. No, there definitely is more to it. You'll see. There's a lot more than what we have here."

"Like what? This is just a senseless slaughter. We're turning these guys inside out and for what reason and what end? Look at this place. It's a dump now. We fixed it up for them and they go ahead and try to destroy it again."

"We destroyed it in the first place though."

"Okay so we did. This war never stopped. It just went into a lull."

"No. It stopped. This enemy, they are different. They're not the same ones from before. They're newer, younger, obviously dumber. Target on the fire escape left of the movie theater. Check that. Two. One has a radio."

"Roger I see them. Range it."

"One-five-eight. Wind is up to two, east to west."

"Okay. Set."

"Fire. Fire. Fire. Good shot. Kill. Move to second. Ready? Alright. Fire. Fire. Fire. Round hit. Second shot. Required. No change in the wind. Good hit. He's down."

"Reloading."

"No new targets." As the sniper-spotter pair continued to provide support for the Layartebian forces moving through that sector, the war took an ugly face. The final counts of the dead from the stadium strike were released throughout the military channels but wound up in the hands of the media quite quickly. All-in-all, the strike took 432 lives, of them 198 were civilians, mostly women and children. The stadium was completely pulverized and even the insurgent commanders admitted, privately, that the strike was crippling to them. Layartebian intelligence had hit the right and the wrong target, all in the same nanosecond.

So many things were going on Manaus that morning. Layartebian reinforcements had arrived in full and were pushing into the city from various directions. Helicopters were dropping special forces Rangers and Delta units onto rooftops to secure critical choke points while ILDF armored units, mostly M2048A1 Shark IFVs but there were a number of M2050A1 Serpent light tanks operating in the city as well, bringing their 105mm ETC cannon to bear on many targets. They also tore holes in walls using their machine guns and made quick and good use of a retrofitted, external, directed-energy weapon, modeled on the one used on the M2032 Sabertooth MBT. They used it to slow down advancing infantry troops, raking them with machine gun fire shortly thereafter. The battle scene of Manaus glowed that night with the distant thuds and pounds of artillery echoing over the country while the silence and dead of night fell over the ACT. Gunfire echoed too but nothing woke people up like the sound of a 155mm artillery barrage.

Missile strike hits stadium, kills thousands of refugees

MANAUS, Brazil (RFP)- Thousands are mourning today after a reported rocket strike hit the Estádio Vivaldo Lima (more commonly known as the Vivaldão) where it is reported that refugees from the Amazonian War were hiding. Few details are known about the exact number of casualties, but reports indicate the stadium- whose attendance record was 56,950 but can hold an estimated 3,000 more if the field is open to the public- was full. It is likely the missile that struck the field was Layartebian, known to have conducted military operations in the area in recent months.

"Why are we the ones who were struck? Why?" exclaimed a sobbing woman just outside the stadium. "All we want is peace, it is the crazy people who want war."

"Usually I don't let the news of the war bother me," said a man who claimed he lost his brother in the blast, "but now this is personal. The Layartebians give us no choice but to strike back- if they wish to hit us innocent civilians it's time we're not so innocent anymore."

Condemnation of the attack was swift in both Roman and Brazilian circles. In statements issued shortly after news of the attacks broke out, both Brazilian Consul Julio Ferrara and Roman Emperor Valerius IV Maderia formally demanded to speak with Layartebian officials concerning the attacks, while Ferrara formally withdrew his support of the Amazonian War. "Junina," started Ferrara in reference to an earlier civilian casualty at the Amazonian city, "was unfortunate but we had hoped the Layartebians would have learned from their ways. Now, after another terrible tragedy we cannot be certain of that. Therefore we are politely demanding the Layartebians meet with us to tell us exactly what they think they are doing. We cannot stand for more senseless carnage."

The Amazonian War was presumed over in late 2007 but rebel activity has continued in the "Amazonian Control Zone"- a military-operated province of the Layartebian Empire- since that time.

Official Communique

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Priority: High
Recipient: Emperor Valerius IV Maderia
Origin: The Emperor
Classification Level: Encrypted
Subject: Requested Meeting


The Empire is locked and engaged in a serious and significant insurgency in Manaus. The details of our operation and of our campaign remain classified and shall not be disclosed. The missile strike on June 2 was a strike by the Imperial Layartebian Military against a target identified as an insurgent stronghold. In contrary to the RFP, there were only 432 casualties, all of them insurgents. Also a casualty in the strike was an estimated 25% of the insurgency's arms and ammunition. While the Empire does respect the Roman Empire and the Roman government, we must reiterate that the domestic affairs of the Empire are not, have never been, and shall never be open for discussion.

Sincerely,
The Emperor

June 4, 2008 - 11:50 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

The fighting in Manaus had finally taken a short lull late on the evening of June 3, when a powerful thunderstorm rolled over the city and bombarded it with powerful and frequent cloud-to-ground lightning, deafening thunder, and a deluge of rain large enough to fill the Amazon River it seemed. Layartebian aircraft were grounded for the storm and soldiers on the ground found their night vision goggles to be nuisances given the frequent, bright flashes. The insurgents, lacking any of the refinements the Layartebian soldiers had mostly took shelter wherever they could. Of course, the fighting didn't really stop. Layartebian soldiers continued to assault insurgent positions and strongholds just at a much slower pace. When the storm didn't let up the following morning, Layartebian military personnel saw it as a golden opportunity. The rain had stopped most of the insurgents and forced them to cover but the Layartebian soldiers had the tools of the trade to fight and fight effectively. By 08:00 hours, all Layartebian units were under new orders, to use the rain to their advantage and fight through it, against the insurgents, essentially stomping them into the ground.

Operation Silver Tornado was barely three and a half days old and the results were still sketchy. While Layartebian forces were utterly routing the insurgents, they weren't gaining much ground. Best estimates still put the whole eastern sector of Manaus in open rebellion with the possibility of even the rest of the city if the offensive didn't curb the insurgency by June 14 and that was a very real scenario. PSYOPS (Psychological Operations) were already underway in various parts of the city to keep those residents away from the rebellious tendencies of their eastern neighbors. Its effectiveness was still to be determined though.

Layartebian fighters took back to the skies and flew above the storm at high altitude, using strictly GPS guided munitions to launch their air support. They were limited in their own effectiveness because of the heavy cloud cover and strong forces of the thunderstorm. Taking off and flying through it was no picnic for the fighter pilots but they had a job to do and their aircraft were, of course, all-weather. Intense lightning made the pilots nervous as they climbed through the thick "soup" as they called it and into the clear and calm skies above the storm, which ravaged the ground below.

Down below it was a totally different story. While the fighters circled high above, avoiding the bad weather, the ground personnel were in the thick of it and fighting still. Everyone that day wanted to be in a tank or armored vehicle, rather than fight wall to wall and alley to alley, getting drowned by the downpour. Those inside the armored vehicles were never happier to be surrounded by metal. The push during the storm marked a different attitude by the Layartebian soldiers who saw the rebels in Manaus as ungrateful terrorists. The Empire had, after all, rebuilt their country and here they were, wrecking it. Had they never supported the Venezuelans, they wouldn't have been put in such a situation but they were stubborn and foolish.

June 4 also marked the beginning of Buzzsaw operations. The M2060A1 Buzzsaw was a heavily armored, urban combat vehicle constructed and produced by the Doomingsland Defense Industries. It was designed for the most brutal warfare envisioned and it excelled at destroying the enemy. The near eighty ton vehicles entered the city with a total desire to ruin the insurgency all on their own. They were armored like a tank, armed like a fighter-bomber, and stocked like a naval warship. At the top of their list of offensive weaponry, each Buzzsaw was equipped with a pair of ETC cannons loaded with a total of 1,400 rounds of 57x438mm armor-piercing, high-explosive, incendiary rounds. They gave the tank its name "Buzzsaw" because they could saw a building in half in just seconds. The armament didn't stop there. The co-axial weapon was an M74A1 Minigun stocked with 8,000 rounds of 7.62x51mm ammunition. Both the loader and the commander could operate an M35A1 LMG each, both weapons loaded with 1,600 rounds of 7.62x51mm ammunition. The Buzzsaw was also equipped with a Corona ATGM launcher and eight missiles, two of which were ready to fire right away. Still, it had more. The Buzzsaw was also equipped with a pair of M49A1 Grenade Machine Guns that fired 40mm grenades. Each gun had 384 grenades ready in eight belts of 48 rounds, all linked together. Lastly, the Buzzsaw was also equipped with up to 60 anti-personnel grenades, each 57mm in diameter. Armored like a tank, a single Buzzsaw could take hit after hit after hit from RPGs and small arms fire and never be put out of commission. It's powerful weapon systems and sensors meant that no enemy could hide.

The rain would play hell on their thermal sensors, cooling the exterior temperature of the skin but they still had a bevy of other sensors to work from, including LIDAR. The UCVs, as they were dubbed, moved into Manaus in the thick of the morning version of the thunderstorm, all under the callsign Hitman with numbers to designate their units and vehicle numbers. Leading the group was Hitman 1-1, crewed by four enlisted men and one lieutenant who was itching for trouble. He brought his Buzzsaw immediately into the eastern sector of the city and moved to back up a group of Layartebian soldiers pushing down the main avenue. A welcomed sight, the Buzzsaw immediately sprang to action as the platoons of men on the ground spotted and called out targets for the behemoth, which moved down the street, locking onto targets with its sensors and engaging with rounds from its Minigun and LMGs first. A few 40mm grenades were tossed into windows and over corners with significant effect as the crew brought the vehicle further down the road.

The UCVs hull clinged and clanged as it moved down the main avenue. Small arms fire bounced off the heavily armored hull and even high powered sniper rounds had no effect as the tank moved parallel to the enemy controlled buildings. Thus far, the Buzzsaw's main weapons had remained silent as the crew inside used the superior targeting systems of the vehicle to accurately fire their machine guns and grenade launchers. Most of the buildings were below six stories and easily cleared with a single pass as the soldiers moved with the UCV, firing themselves at the enemy positions. The avenue was a major dividing line in the battle but, with the help of the UCV, the soldiers hoped that they would soon control both sides of it. Inside the Buzzsaw, the five man crew carefully and cautiously placed their rounds, wasting none as they bounced the enemy, watching the rounds enter and exit their bodies through the UCV's optics.

Though the Buzzsaw was taken heavy small arms fire, it had taken no direct hits from rockets or anything of the sort. The enemy had tons of RPGs, mostly light ones such as LAWs but there were a number of AT4s buried in the catacombs of Manaus that the enemy had a formidable weapons supply, had they found all of the buried arms. The first hit by such a weapon that Hitman 1-1 took was completely unseen until the round impact. A two man team had managed to sneak through the buildings and get towards the avenue, armed with a single LAW. Mounting it on his shoulder, the gunner popped out just enough to let the LAW's tube be exposed so as not to harm anyone inside the building. He sighted the front of the Buzzsaw and fired quickly, ducking back into the building as he dropped the disposable launcher and went to his assault rifle, a G3. The M72E9 66mm anti-armor rocket streaked away at 650 feet per second towards the front of the UCV, slamming into it eighteen meters later, causing a thud and an explosion. The rocket alone could penetrate more than 300mm of armor. Against the Buzzsaw, it did little damage. Fitted with NxRA blocks of high-density rubber, the Buzzsaw looked like a normal armored vehicle, coated in ERA except that these blocks would not explode. Though not as effective as ERA, they allowed infantry to stand close.

The Buzzsaw's defensive systems immediately locked onto and categorized the threat but was unable to stop it in time as it impacted the block and hull. The block was decimated by the explosion but the armor was saved, which was as thick as 3,100mm against HEAT rounds or 2,600mm against KE rounds. The LAW would do little even without the NxRA blocks. Immediately, a soldier, seeing the enemy rocket launched, switched to his M115A1 Grenade Launcher and shot off a 40x53mm high-velocity grenade towards the opening. He placed the round perfectly and it blew up inside, killing both men as the UCV shifted its position and let loose a barrage of machine gun fire, continuing to move slowly down the road, stopping occasionally to fire a strong burst of fire like it did this time. The Buzzsaw had already made a significant dent in the battle and it had not even fired its main cannons yet.

The avenue was sectioned off into six quadrants and the Buzzsaw easily moved into the third quadrant, having decimated the previous two with little effort. Fighters overhead let loose JDAM bombs, leveling some buildings as the soldiers began to move into them to secure them. Other soldiers continued to move with the Buzzsaw, providing cover for it as it moved into the next quadrant, its weapons still firing accurately. By now at least a thousand rounds had clanged against its hull but with no effect. Enemy insurgents had taken up positions in every window and alleyway that they found, pouring rounds onto the Layartebian soldiers, who had the benefit of their positions and the Buzzsaw to protect them. Thus far, in this single push, not one Layartebian soldier had been killed, although several had been wounded by ricochets, snipers, and lucky shots. The insurgents weren't very good with weapons and they poured rounds more than they fired them. Only the "snipers" were effective though, compared to their Layartebian counterparts, they were amateurs. Most of them had old hunting rifles or military grade weaponry that was in bad need of cleaning. Some even used assault rifles fitted with scopes.

Though formidable, the snipers weren't dealing casualties left and right. They were in good but exposed positions, allowing them to be easily picked off by counter-sniper tactics. With the Buzzsaw now, they had little chance. The gunners inside the behemoth targeted every muzzle flash they saw and fired on them, killing insurgents left, right, and center. The insurgents' advantage of having the high ground went nowhere with the Buzzsaw. Infantry tactics kept everyone far enough back that they couldn't climb on the thing and it also prevented RPG teams from getting off any shots. There had been one slip in the second quadrant, with the LAW and a second slip shortly into the third quadrant. The Buzzsaw moved around an obstacle, which was a burned out car, to get a better position on a nineteen story tall structure, the largest along the avenue. The structure was full of enemy forces armed with just about everything there was to be armed with and they were pouring rounds towards the Layartebians. They had the best benefit, being high enough up that they could barely be seen through the rainy conditions. Likewise, they couldn't see too well either but they could see the UCV coming towards them.

From high up, an RPG gunner put a SMAW rocket launcher on his shoulder and cleared out the room. Unaware of the repercussions of his actions, he aimed down at the tank and fired. The backblast from the launcher was so powerful that, not only did it tear the walls and room to pieces, killing someone just outside the door, but it sent the concussion back to the gunner, blowing him out the window, half of the bones in his body crushed from the tremendous force. The rocket remained on target though, slamming into the top of the UCV, just behind the turret, where the engine compartment was, striking several NxRA blocks, demolishing them. Larger than the LAW, the SMAW rocket was 83mm in diameter and equipped with a powerful anti-armor charge that could penetrate over 550mm of armor, much more than the LAW. That would have been more than enough to go through the top of the vehicle and destroy the engine inside, had it not been from the NxRA blocks, which added an additional 450mm of protection against HEAT or 300mm of protection against KE rounds. The blocks took the brunt of the force but the armor was cosmetically damaged and bent from the explosion though. The UCV crew felt it and immediately decided that it was time.

Stopping the vehicle, they swung the turret towards the building and the main gunner went to work. A snapshot of the building was taken and displayed on a targeting overlay. With a pen, the gunner a line drew across the screen, between the eighth and ninth floors. He set the firing mode to automatic and set the desired shell density to high. Then, he simply pushed one button, labeled "FIRE." The computer did the rest, automatically swinging the turret to the start of the line. The deafening roar was enough to make anyone's ear drums explode, especially those inside of the UCV, had it not been for their ear protection. The two ETC guns let loose immediately, firing at a rate of 450rpm each, pulverizing the building.

The muzzle flash of the guns was a constant as the turret moved with the line, it poured rounds into the building at a rate of seven and a half rounds each second. The program only took ten seconds to complete, firing 150 of the 1,400 rounds available. The 57x438mm shells were a mix, mostly high-explosive and incendiary rounds but also mixed in were armor piercing and fragmentation rounds. The result was a light show that everyone, even the enemy, was amazed at watching. The tracer rounds left streaks of red in the darkened sky as the UCV roared into the building. Then, ten seconds and one hundred and fifty rounds later, the guns silenced, smoke escaping from the twin barrels. The building was covered in smoke and dust as chunks of it had fallen off, landing below, injuring and killing insurgents in the process. The rounds had torn through the eighth and ninth floors and keep on their trajectory and ripped out the rear of the building as well, creating an even bigger set of holes there, heavily weakening the structure in the process.

The building was in bad shape after the hit but insurgents that survived continued to fire, unaware at just how much damage was done. Those hit by the projectiles were torn to shreds and pieces, some no bigger than a soda can. Arms, legs, torsos, and heads were thrown about, most of them unrecognizable except for the bits of flesh clinging to the walls and ceiling. A red mist was in the air on those floors as the building groaned, its structure damaged. "Goddamn it. It's still standing," the commander said as he watched through the sights. He could see that the building was beginning to disintegrate but not quickly enough for his tastes. He decided to give it some help and he ordered the twin grenade launchers to fire four rounds each into the various spots on both floors. The result was catastrophic for the building and those inside.

The concussion waves from the grenades were enough to weaken whatever was left standing and the explosive force of each grenade further destroyed the structure. The building finally began to collapse but in a most dramatic way. First, the front, where the rounds had entered, bucked downward as the walls collapsed. The shells had a higher velocity and more energy going in, making giant holes than they did going out the rear. Then, as the weight of the front collapse hit, the rear buckled, slamming the eighth and ninth floors together, pancaking them as the weight of the building swayed it forward. Everyone watched, unaware that bullets were still flying through the air as the front of the building tipped forward and fell downwards at a record speed. Bodies fell from the windows, many of them live insurgents, as the building was, in essence, sawed in half. It collapsed onto the ground below, destroying a few other buildings in the process. To the cheers of the Layartebian soldiers, the Buzzsaw moved on, living up to its name.

June 4, 2008 - 22:30 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

The storm had finally blown out of the area by early evening and when the skies turned black for night, the Layartebian soldiers rejoiced that they could wear their night vision goggles without being blinded by frequent flashes of lightning. Nearly every weapon in the Layartebian arsenal seemed to be coming out for this war. The Imperial Layartebian Air Force had joined in the fight, sending better equipped and more aircraft to the area for bombing and CAS missions against the insurgents. Sadly though, the war was spreading. Insurgent support had grown in the northern sector of the city as well and open hostilities began there, albeit at a much more reduced pace. The spread though had set off every alarm in the command sector of Manaus. Every leader there, including General Fordham, the new military administrator of the ACT, realized the enormity of the situation. That night, as the city rocked, rolled, shook, and groaned with war, General Fordham sat in his office, protected deep inside the military compound there. He had a cigarette lit and he was looking at a report by a reconnaissance unit into the northern sector. He didn't like what he was reading and he didn't like what his options were either. Set to address the National Security group of the Cabinet at 22:30, local time, he had to make sure his requests were answered. If they weren't, he feared, this war would be lost and thousands of Layartebian soldiers would die.

He was set to video conference into the Ministry of Defense and the Emperor's castle. In front of him was the report and he read it one more time, making sure he checked every detail of it. This can't be happening. Dunne you fucking coward! He thought to himself as he re-read the report. LtG. Dunne, who had been in de facto charge following the assassination of General Hoffer had turned a burst of freedom into a massacre, igniting the war that he now faced. He was cleaning up his mess and he wasn't pleased about it either. His duty to the Empire, he held, was not to clean up the disasters of the inept but rather to guide the inept from ever making such disasters. He had not had that opportunity here. By the time he took over, the storm was brewing and the right catalyst was all that was needed. He looked down at the report and placed it down as he looked at the computer screen in front of him; it was time. He logged in through the appropriate channels, authenticated himself, bypassed through the encryption networks, and linked up to the video conference interface. Immediately he was put online with the Emperor, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Imperial Layartebian Military, and the ministers of Defense, Intelligence, the Interior, as well as a few other here and theres. Everyone began with the pleasantries and by 22:40, the General was asked for a situation report. He put down the cigarette, having finished it, and began. "Things here are not looking good. Insurgent activity in the eastern quadrant remains firm. Despite our blows to their numbers, their casualties, and them being complete outmatched, we still do not have enough of the quadrant under our control to consider this operation in the clean up stages.

"Insurgent forces remain in the thousands and are decently equipped. We have uncovered many weapons caches here in the city that were left by the previous government for stay behind networks that, seemingly, never materialized. We know that these insurgents are not part of this network. They are not nearly as trained as any stay behind network but they have gotten their hands on the supplies. How, we do not know. Intelligence is working on that matter but we are hitting dead ends.

"Air support is crucially helping us in this fight. I must thank the generals for their answering of my request for further air support. I have more requests that we need to fulfill immediately based on new intelligence.

"An intelligence report from not more than three hours ago has the insurgency spreading into the northern quadrant with sporadic clashes. Intel confirms this is not a flanking maneuver but a spread. Furthermore, intel confirms that there are many caches still unfound in the northern sector and the possibility of a full blown fight in the northern sector by July 7 remains strong unless we squash it immediately. I am hereby requesting, in light of this, an additional forty thousand troops of the Imperial Layartebian Army to complement the sixty thousand Defense Forces troops here. In addition, we need rotary support to be bolstered and the availability of heavy ordinance such as the MOAB.

"The timetable must be revised as well. Original calculations and forecasts put a spread of the insurgency on or after day ten. We are only ninety something hours into this fight. This puts a major change in operations planning." The general continued on the conference for another forty-five minutes, going back and fourth with the various members in attendance. When it concluded at 23:15 hours, he shut the top of his laptop with a smile as he lit another cigarette and called in his executive office, Major General Wright. Wright entered the office and stood at attention. "Jason, we've got good news."

"Sir?" He acted more casually.

"Our requests have been agreed upon. This war will not be lost."

"I like the sound of that sir. What of the air support?"

"By dawn we will have access to the MOAB."

"Excellent. Sir, may I recommend we drop it immediately for psychological effect?"

"That is already under review and we shall be considering its use on a dense target without the threat of fratricide."

"Of course sir as well as collateral damage."

"At this point, nothing we do can avoid collateral damage..." He said with a straight face as he exhaled from his cigarette.

June 5, 2008 - 10:00 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

The mission had begun four hours earlier when ordinance handlers at Mahdia Air Force Base pulled out a thirty foot long, fifteen ton blast bomb and loaded it onto a cart and then into the awaiting Special Operations transport sitting on the tarmac. The transport was an MC-130J Combat Talon III and its seven man crew were sitting in a briefing room covering over the waypoints, target, and mission profile. This was a specialized mission that was part of General Fordham's expanded plan for warfare against the insurgency in Manaus. The profile called for the dropping of this powerful bomb in the eastern sector of Manaus, where Layartebian forces had yet to encroach upon and fight. Because of the target selection, the risk of fratricide was very low although the risk of collateral damage was very high, a risk General Fordham had written off simply as necessary.

The GBU-43C MOAB being loaded into the MC-130 was a modified version of the original GBU-43A, which weighed four tons less and wasn't as wide. It was also filled with three and a half tons less explosives. The modified GBU-43B introduced the same explosive filler as in the BLU-82 Daisy Cutter, giving it a blast radius of a quarter of a mile versus the original, which had a radius of just under five hundred something feet. The high-explosive filler of the GBU-43A was then added to the GBU-43B making it the GBU-43C, expanding the radius to over six hundred feet. The same GPS guidance equipment used on the GBU-43A would be carried over, allowing the MOAB to hit its target within six and a half feet of the aimpoint. In addition, the modifications to the MOAB allowed it now to be carried inside the C-17 Globemaster III, C-29 Titan, and the B-11 Zeus.

Two and a half hours later, the MC-130 took to the skies and climbed to its cruising altitude of 28,000 feet where it settled in at 400 mph and cruised towards Manaus, 574 miles away. The bomb was strapped to a pallet in the rear of the MC-130 the whole time while the seven crew members sat rather comfortably inside of the cargo plane, listening to the drone of the four turboprop engines, built by the Layartebian Defense Corporation, like the rest of the aircraft.

The mission was part of the expanded effort by General Fordham to get the ILAF involved in the ACT's current insurgency. Thus far, other insurgencies had met their end, usually at the hands of the ILA and ILAF but since the end of the Mato Grosso War and the last insurgency, the ILA and ILAF have had little to no role in the ACT, leaving it all up to the ILDF. While well-equipped and state-of-the-art, the ILDF's assets and forces inside of the ACT just weren't enough to handle the situation. Even still, their mission called for delaying an invasion or attacking force until the ILA and ILAF could arrive on scene and ready to battle, although they were capable of fighting for themselves, without outside assistance.

Forty miles from Manaus, the MC-130 leveled off at 12,000 feet and kept their speed constant at 400 mph. They were just six minutes out from the target and on their final waypoint before turning to egress. Two minutes later, the loadmaster in the cargo bay of the MC-130 lowered the rear ramp and a specialist on board walked over to the bomb and pulled the arming pin, allowing the bomb to begin its arming sequence. As a safety, the bomb's fuse had to experience a 6,000 foot drop in barometric pressure as well as a certain acceleration with the gyros pointed in a certain direction. If these three safeties did not click on, the bomb would not arm and its explosive would become inert.

The pilot an co-pilot could see the devastation over Manaus as they approached the city. The rubble and wreckage was tremendous and smoke billowed into the sky. They could see explosions from artillery and watched as bombs from fighter jets crashed into buildings on the ground, many leveling them in a single blow. "Ever seen anything like that before?" The co-pilot asked, himself being rather new to the ILAF. He had never been in combat though. The pilot had only been in combat a few times, the most notable during the Venezuelan War in 2007.

"Just once and I never forgot it. This ain't like that though. This is calm."

"Calm? That building just got leveled."

"Calm. Trust me."

"I trust you but that ain't calm."

"Not for you. Two minutes to release!" He yelled into the headset, giving the heads up to the rest of the crew. In the back of the aircraft, everyone was ready and waiting for the command to release the weapon. "Keep watching and you'll see what I mean by calm. Have you ever seen the destructive power of one of these bombs?"

"Only the videos."

"You'll see. Keep an eye on that camera for the rear."

"You got that." As the MC-130 flew over the first part of the city, the insurgents below looked up, unaware of what was about to befall them. At thirty seconds, a buzz rang in the cargo bay as a red light lit, the same one used to tell jumpmasters when to put paratroopers into the air. The specialist, standing at a back panel watched the light and counted in his head, the longest thirty seconds he had ever known until the light finally turned green. When it did, he pushed a button and the massive bomb slid out of the back of the transport and fell downwards, quickly accelerating as the parachute retarded sled fell away, leaving the bomb on a near 90° dive towards the ground, the bomb quickly picking up speed. Now that it was on the dive, the first mechanism for the warhead armed. After 6,000 feet, the bomb had attained enough speed for the second mechanism and the proper drop in barometric pressure for the third mechanism. With 6,000 feet to go, the bomb was now a bomb. The pilot and co-pilot watched the cameras in the rear of the aircraft and also watched a third camera, a small one on the hull of the aircraft that locked onto and panned with the falling bomb. Those in the cargo bay watched as well as they flew away from the target site.

Six thousand feet later, the bomb hit its mark, a small open area that had once been a construction site for a new Presidential home in the Amazonian Republic. The building had never been finished and neither had the clearing of the vegetation for the site. The equipment had long since been removed but the site remained open and empty.

http://www.forsakenoutlaw.com/Graphics/Nation-States/Role-Playing/Ride%20the%20Lightning/manaus-moab-01.jpg

It was chosen for a number of reasons. Because it had been partially begun, the military brass suspected that it was the site of a number of weapons caches as well as the surrounding areas being rife with insurgent activity. When the bomb finally hit, it hit hard. The detonation alone shook the ground but the resulting blast of heat and pressure radiated outwards from ground zero with more than 134.4 GJ of energy and an explosive force unrivaled by almost every conventional bomb created. The devastation was tremendous as the ground billowed up into a gigantic cloud of smoke and heat, everything for 625 feet around ground zero being obliterated into dust and vapors. Every Layartebian soldier and insurgent and civilian inside of the city watched as the tremendous explosion rose up above the skyline and felt the ground shake.

June 5, 2008 - 18:45 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

The Federal University of Amazonas was on a sprawling campus in the middle of the eastern sector of the city. It stretched, corner to corner, for two and a half miles and was in the middle of a protected, urban forest. Secured early on in the first Amazonian War by Layartebian Rangers, the university was one of the first major civilian assets restored to the civilian populace following the war. Largely unharmed by the war's aerial and artillery bombardments, the university flourished in the short time that the Amazonian Control Territory was at peace. The university, though underdeveloped by the Amazonian Republic had been further built up during the reign of the Empire. Until now, the campus had been quiet but, with the advancing Layartebian military and the unwillingness of the military command to decimate the civilian target, the insurgency flooded into it, where weapons were buried. Stay-behind networks would have undoubtedly used the campus as a staging point for military attacks and recovered intelligence showed that there were at least fifty burial points on the grounds of the campus where weapons were stored.

In the hours following the MOAB blast, the insurgency had grown and taken control of the university campus where they set up their command center, unbeknownst to the Layartebians. Also unbeknownst to the Layartebians, a group of insurgents had come across an underground garage where stay-behind networks left four anti-aircraft guns, two lightly armored tanks, and a ton of man-portable, shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft missiles, mostly FIM-92 Stingers and advanced versions of the Igla. The four anti-aircraft guns were ZU-23-2 twin-cannon 23mm autocanon systems, each capable of firing at 2,000 rounds per minute, cyclic. There was plenty of ammunition for the guns and the insurgents found the manuals to use them. Lastly, the two light tanks were Centauro 8x8 tank destroyers equipped with a 105mm, 52 caliber main gun, capable of doing heavy damage to infantry forces and Layartebian light armor. The combined arms could bolster the insurgency's force and power quickly and do devastating damage to the Layartebians.

At the same time, Hitman 1-1 was moving to secure Maternidade Ana Braga, a hospital for newborn infants and their mothers. The commander of Hitman 1-1 had just ordered all of the units within his assault force to keep their guard up as they approached the small structure that overlooked the northeastern corner of the campus. Other units would be moving into structures and positions on the other three corners of the campus for a combined assault on it by Layartebian paratroopers. The Buzzsaw was moving in with two platoons of men inside of four M2051A3 CMPLVs armed with heavy machine guns and a pair of armored M2047A1 Arrow APCS. The six vehicles were in position and waiting for the go command as the Buzzsaw locked onto and watched the hospital. The commander inside of the UCV clicked on the microphone, "All units. Begin assault." The vehicles sprung to live as the ramps on the back of the M2047s lowered and the men poured out of them and the four CMPLVs.

The Layartebian soldiers moved out of their vehicles with their weapons to their shoulders and ready to rock. They climbed out of the vehicles quickly but effectively staying out of the line of fire from the building until their assault began. The men pushed forward next, keeping close to the armored vehicles while other men, sitting inside of the vehicles, manning their weapons kept a close watch on what was going on around them. The two platoons split off once they got out of the vehicles, one protecting the outside while the other moved into the building. Gunshots echoed immediately as the platoon and squad leaders encountered enemy insurgents armed with rifles and shotguns. Regardless, the ILDF forces were far superior and better equipped. Their body armor alone gave them the decisive advantage as they moved through the building, the four platoon squads moving up the two sides of the building, each sweeping a floor, there only being three and a basement.

It took ten minutes but when it was all over, the Layartebians had the building secured and without a single casualty. Thirteen insurgents lie dead and eleven more captured. Hitman 1-1 reported the success and the clocks began while the other three units captured buildings around the other three corners with little effort as well.

June 6, 2008 - 00:20 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

"All units. All units. Corvette. I repeat. All units. Corvette!" The airwaves came alive as the go-code for the university operation was issued. At that time, six UH-60M Black Hawks, two CH-53N Super Stallion IIs, and two CH-47F Chinooks carrying two companies of paratroopers took to the air from Manaus International Airport, a location still firmly in the hands of Layartebian soldiers. Their escorts, a flight of four AH-6M Little Birds, two AH-99A Anasazis, and two AH-104A Cherokees, were already in the air. The attack helicopters would provide close air support for the Layartebian paratroopers who would be landing at five different zones to secure the sports facilities in the southwest, dorms to the southeast, campus buildings in the center, facilities in the east, and homes in the north. The Chinooks would put men down at the southeast and east, the Super Stallion IIs in the center and southeast, and the Black Hawks to the north, center, and southwest. With over two hundred and fifty Layartebian paratroopers, the insurgents would be brutally stomped back.

The longest trip for the helicopters would be just under twelve miles with the average around nine to ten. The five targets would be hit by the landing forces simultaneously and hard. Fast-roping out of the Black Hawks, the paratroopers would all be on the ground in seconds. Out of the Super Stallion IIs and Chinooks, the Layartebians would escape from two side and one rear door, emptying out at an equally fast pace. With the biggest targets in the southeast and center, the landing aircraft would hit after the attack aircraft swept through and put the insurgents into their holes. It was a brilliant attack plan that was one that had been done many times over, albeit normally with the assistance of Layartebian Rangers or Delta commandos. Regardless, the paratroopers were up to the task.

As the Layartebians helicopters headed south through Manaus, towards the university campus a massive explosion rocked the city and lit up the sky. It originated just a few hundred meters east of the campus and the brilliant fireball lifted up into the night sky and sent a white flash through the pilots' night vision goggles. The pilots quickly looked away as the fireball rose into the sky, engulfing it with its heat and size. "Wow! What the hell was that?" Just about everyone asked upon seeing it. One hundred feet below, the ground shook from the explosion and resulting shock waves. Regardless, the helicopters continued on their course. They could not see the university yet but they could see some of the tree tops from the protected forest around the campus.

The attack helicopters, four miles in front of the main assaulting force swooped in for their attack on the campus seconds after the explosion. The Little Birds swooped in first, moving quick and scanning with their thermal sights and night vision for targets. They were moving so fast that anyone on the ground could not have engaged them if they tried, especially with the way they swept through. Each Little Bird was armed with a deadly Minigun and a pair of Adder rocket launchers. On the first sweep over the university, they found it quiet. The Anasazis came in next, flying higher up and using more powerful sensors and immediately located enemies that wanted to play. Two rockets, unguided and poorly aimed, streaked up at them, missing by more than a few hundred feet. Both helicopters overflew without returning fire, simply taking notes as to where the enemy was. Given their speed, altitude, and armor, anything they had on the ground could be harmless to them, or so they thought. Armed with Igla missiles the rebels near the campus buildings in the center quickly locked onto one of the Anasazis and launched his missile. It quickly sped upwards and the pilots inside of the Anasazi jinked evasively as they dropped flares. The Anasazi was equipped with 180 of them inside of its hull and about nine of them dropped out as the helicopter banked hard to the south. The Igla failed to track and exploded harmlessly into a flare as the pilots switched on their active laser and infrared jamming systems. They reported back the shoulder launched missile and the pilots of the assaulting force all switched on their infrared jammers and readied their flares.

Next came the two Cherokee's swinging over the campus quickly themselves. More insurgents tried to engage and fire at them but were unable to get a lock due to the jamming done by the helicopters, who also dropped flares for good measure. They came in firing as well, opening up their own rockets and cannons against insurgents hiding near the various landing zones. They made short work of a number of insurgents as more unguided rockets streaked up at them harmlessly. They kept up that sequence, Little Birds flying over next, opening up with their Miniguns against various positions. The concentrated attacks by the Layartebian helicopters told the insurgents that they were coming and in force. Quickly they prepared to defend their headquarters from the Layartebians. Their "secret" weapons, the two ZU-23s hidden amongst the trees, were immediately manned and prepared, keeping quiet, just waiting. Their operators were disciplined and though they weren't well trained, they were more than confident.

Overhead the Little Birds zoomed again, making a final sweep of the landing areas as the groups of Layartebian transport helicopters became visible to those on the ground. Patiently the gunners waited as they talked about which target they would hit, keeping low but pointing at the incoming helicopters. Overhead, as the helicopters went into assault mode, they dropped to just 70 feet and quickly sped in as they oriented themselves on their targets, the gunners of each helicopter quickly opening fire on rebel positions to put their heads down while the Layartebian paratroopers fast roped down. The larger Chinooks and Super Stallion IIs wouldn't be able to fast rope and so they came in even lower and put themselves onto the deck. In just a few seconds, all ten transport helicopters were on, above, or descending on their targets.

As the thick, black ropes fell from the doors of the six Black Hawks, paratroopers took hold of them and immediately began descending. It was the cue now to the gunners on the deck in their ZU-23s. Both gunners independently targeted two Black Hawks and opened fire. They opened up at full rate and emptied their magazines in just two seconds, putting a full one hundred rounds into the air. Untrained and unqualified for actually firing on the ZU-23, they exhausted their supply of ammunition so fast that they were now at a loss of what to do next. While the gunners scrambled to locate the manuals, to teach them how to reload them, others watched their work.

The first ZU-23s rounds tore through the air at almost a kilometer a second, smashing clean into the fuselage of a Black Hawk hovering over the center of the campus. The helicopter took about thirty-five rounds, all at practically point blank range, tearing its insides to shreds and instantly killing eight paratroopers inside of the cabin. The four who managed to get onto the rope and slide down watched as the helicopter instantly lost control and exploded, its fuel tanks ruptured. The ropes instantly broke free and the four men plummeted to the ground. Two would survive while the other two would die on impact, having fallen fifty feet in full gear, breaking their necks. The flaming wreckage of the Black Hawk would smash into the ground shortly thereafter with all hands on board killed. Nobody had any time to react as the tracer rounds reached up from the ground and tore into the metal skin of the helicopter. The second ZU-23 had fired a second later than the other and targeted a Black Hawk over the southwest of the campus. The gunners were horrific at aiming and sent the first burst clear over the head of the Black Hawk with the second off to the side. Although they had fired in two bursts, they had expended their ammunition just the same and clearly missed the Black Hawk.

Instantly, everyone around the helicopter landing force shouted out the same command, "GUN!" Gunners operating the Miniguns sighted the origin of the gunfire and opened up, pouring hundreds of rounds towards them as the two Anasazis, already on their own run locked onto the guns and fired a pair of anti-tank guided missiles. The two AGM-235B Coronas in combination with about eight hundred rounds of Gatling gun ammunition tore the two guns to shreds and blasted huge holes in the ground and a major hole in the defense of the campus. However, the toll had been felt by the Layartebians who had, in less than two seconds, lost a Black Hawk and fourteen men, four of them the crew members of the helicopter and the other ten being unlucky paratroopers who had not gotten out in time. The Little Birds set up another strafing run as the rebels coordinated a MANPAD attack. They found it hard to lock onto the helicopters given their infrared jamming and they shot both guided and unguided rockets into the sky, missing wildly except for one unguided rocket, which impacted the underside of a Black Hawk, damaging its landing gear. The pilot would have to "crash" land back at the airbase.

The gunners had never been able to reload the guns in time before they were blasted to bits. Explosions echoed in the distance as artillery let loose and pounded a position inside of the campus. The guided rounds hit within a few meters of their intended aimpoint and sent shrapnel flying around the area, which was danger close to the Layartebian paratroopers but still far enough to avoid causing any casualties. Rockets continued to streak upwards along with small arms fire as the helicopters exited the area. What took less than fifteen seconds to do cost the Empire fourteen lives and one helicopter but the paratroopers were now all on the deck at the campus and beginning to move throughout the campus. Insurgents were ready for them and they would make their push a nightmare as the helicopters escaped from the area low and fast. The escort helicopters followed, low on ammunition. The paratroopers were now all on their own.

June 6, 2008 - 04:00 [EST]
Cayuga Lake, New York

Myers Point was only about a mile to the southeast of the small but fortified, underground bunker. Built underneath Cayuga Lake in upstate New York in the early 1950s to serve as one of the main hubs for the Layartebian Anti-Ballistic Missile Program, the Cayuga Lake Facility had, like thousands of others across the Empire, been abandoned and left to its own devices. Hidden and secret still from public eye, the facility was big enough for a support crew of forty-five, enough to watch an entire the entire air defense network for the north of the Republic. Now it wouldn't serve but to house a single Crow missile defense site crew, which covered an area only four hundred and fifty miles across. The facility was, by modern times, ancient. Its computer system was the size of the facility itself and housed in a separate area a quarter of a mile away, accessible only by a small tunnel large enough for a specially constructed rail system that would ferry parts too heavy to pick up by hand and carry, especially for a quarter mile.

Entirely self-sufficient, the facility had not seen light until the mid-1990s when Majestic scouted it out and brought it back to life. Now it served as a fallback shelter and escape refuge. It could be stocked with enough supplies to last one full decade for a full forty-five man complement. If necessary, Majestic could fall back to this position with some family members and enjoy safety and solitude for a full ten years, underneath a lake that few people even knew about, let alone could find. It was for this purpose that the Majestic team returned to the facility in early June, 2008. An advance team had gone there to prepare the facility for their arrive and to do modernization work on its support facilities just four months prior. They had completed their task in total secrecy and vanished shortly thereafter. It was too important to let those men and women, all fourteen of them, live on with the secret location of the Majestic fallback point. Even if they were kept under total military secrecy and were entrusted by the Layartebian government, the risk far outweighed their lives, the leaders of Majestic felt. Their bodies had yet to be found, many speculating that they were killed in a "mine" accident, the official cover story. Due to the conditions, the resulting fire, and their depth, their bodies would not be recovered for some twenty or so years. Benefits were paid, funerals were held, and life continued.

The last to arrive this morning was John Patrick, the CEO of Manchurian Global. He stepped into the facility just at 04:00 hours, ten minutes after the last person. Due to the distance, not all twelve members were present. Several of them communicated strictly by secure, encrypted, video phone. They were the General of the Air Force, Governor of the Province of South Eastern Virginia, Admiral of the Navy, and General Victor Trumbell. The others were present and accounted for as well as verified. Their excuses were far ranging but they were masters of secrecy. Having arrived through various modes of transport and through various locations, the eight of them now sat around a large conference table, which was as old as the facility. Fluorescent lights bathed the whole room in white as the meeting began, all of the men tired except BG. Delaney, who was used to not sleeping. "Gentlemen. Let us begin," Dr. Victor Michael began with a tap on the table of his right, pointer finger. Everyone hastened to and focused their attention. "General. Do you have an update on the situation in Manaus and the Amazonian Control Territory?" He asked, addressing General Trumbell.

"Yes. We have a slight setback in our efforts. It is clear now that the insurgency will lose this fight. They are simply outclassed and outgunned. Some of the leaders will survive and I have taken measures to avoid any more of our Ghost Warrior mercenaries from being caught. None are currently engaged in the battlefield in Manaus. Those who took the Nordic Hill have, unfortunately, been captured."

"Can this be confirmed?"

"Yes." The Admiral of the Navy added to BG. Delaney's question, although he had known the answer. He wasn't sure though if everyone knew. "Yes. Despite our best efforts at keeping this 'hush-hush' I can proudly say that it has slipped to myself and the General here."

"The Ghost Warriors are becoming a liability." John Patrick chimed in, calculating their performance. "Despite their training, drive, and their capabilities, they have become too reckless."

"It seems they may be operating on their own agenda."

"That is nonsense Ethan!" Dr. Donald Bush yelled across the table. He and Ethan Hunter had never seen eye to eye all of the time but this was one area they absolutely disagreed on, especially since Dr. Donald Bush was the figurative head of the Ghost Warriors. "I retain complete control over the Ghost Warriors. Their captures and mistakes, I assure you, have been to plan. They will become a liability in the long run and this we discussed when we originally established the program. No, you are incorrect in your assertion."

"Continuing along, General." Dr. Michael called to order, stopping a possible back-and-fourth from happening as the general continued.

"Regardless, the situation in Manaus is heightening still. However, we must bear in mind that the insurgency will lose."

"General. Correct me if I am mistaken but it was never our intention to have the insurgency win? It was always about morale of both the troops and the citizens. A perpetual war, like the Conquests only bode well if the outcome is victorious. Our war in Kaliningrad was a failure on our own and detrimental to the morale of our populace. The draw in Mato Grosso took its toll and the continued violence in the ACT has certainly ebbed the patience of everyone, our leadership included," BG. Delaney said, quickly putting the General back on track.

"No you are correct." The level of in-fighting amongst Majestic was nothing new. The group consisted of twelve men who were high-quality and high-class leaders all with A-type personalities and egos to boot. They clicked well together because they all saw a common goal, which was re-establishment of the Republic and an end to the Empire and its Emperor. "The situation will continue and I promise you that there will be plenty of press coverage, which I have personally arranged. It seems that bringing the war to our populace has been nothing but counter-productive, especially when they see dead, Layartebian soldiers. Every mother thinks it is her son."

"Very good. Very good. What of the situation with ODESSA?" Dr. Michael asked, specifically addressing Dr. James Perry. It had been a long time since this topic had come back to the forefront of discussion but with the summer half-way over it seemed, it had to be addressed. ODESSA was an organization that gathered some of the brightest, most brilliant, and most influential minds in the Empire ranging from academia to politics to celebrities. Nobody belonging to this clandestine organization had an IQ lower than Mensa standards and they were more than just brainiacs. They were eloquent, influential, and powerful. This group, which now numbered in the low thousands had been organized by Dr. James Perry over the past eight years for one single purpose. These were the elites of society, those who could influence the masses and the public. Their disenfranchisement with the Empire and desire for a return of the Republic would only roll downwards through society, eventually affecting the masses. The leaders of the revolution would come from this group and they would not be swayed from their ultimate goals.

"ODESSA proceeds along ahead of schedule. I am seeing an improved attitude amongst the membership and I have seen morale boost amongst them as well. Given the current popularity rating of the Emperor and all that is going on with the ACT, it is obvious that ODESSA is pleased. They feel that their time to act will be coming soon and I concur."

"Very well. How is our candidate?"

"He is prepared gentlemen. I must make this complement in that he is fully prepared to accept his role at the forefront of ODESSA and at the forefront of this revolution. He will be instrumental and convincing the populace to support the return of the Republic. He may not necessarily have distaste for the Empire, which will turn out to benefit us. He will connect with the people. He saw the good in the Empire, he supported it, and now he has learned the error in his ways, just as the remainder of the Empire shall feel."

"Perfect gentlemen. Continuing along, we must touch also upon Directive 988D." The meeting continued through 06:00 hours and finally adjourned at 06:27 hours. Hours later, these same men would be in front of their desks at work or throughout the Empire, playing a role they had crafted so finely that nobody would even dare to suspect them as "Fifth Columnists" for any rebellious group. The Empire had a lot to worry about with these men and Majestic had a lot to worry about with the Empire.

June 6, 2008 - 15:00 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

A flight of four B-10A Badger medium bombers had just finished dropping 48,000 pounds of ordinance on five targets inside of the city, their weapons consisting of heavy, 2,000 pound GPS-guided bombs referred to as the JDAM II. The bombs hit hard and pulverized the five targets around the southeastern portion of the city, an area where Layartebian soldiers would soon be entering. In the ten hours since Majestic began their meeting, the Layartebian forces had made significant gains in the city. A counteroffensive would begin at dusk that night with a total of 10,000 Layartebian soldiers of the ILA moving into the southeastern sector of the city, under the cover of both darkness and armored fighting vehicles. The insurgency would now be fighting against Layartebians on four specific fronts, putting them at a huge disadvantage. They finally began to saw their numbers wane as more and more civilians on the fence decided to, "hide in the hills." Refugees leaving the city were at an all-time high and the potential for the insurgency to envelope the whole city had ebbed as well, although the northern sector was now in open rebellion. Any spread to the south and west was to be determined but it didn't look likely.

The paratroopers at the university had run into snag. Despite all of the gains of the Layartebian forces, the paratroopers were not getting very far. They had secured only about a quarter of the campus with most of the interior still under enemy control. The blocking positions around the perimeter of the campus were under constant, heavy, and accurate fire from every direction. Insurgent snipers and RPG teams pounded the buildings and armor with rounds. They even tried mortar attacks although their forward observers weren't very conspicuous and often found themselves dead after a round or two had been fired. This was one advantage the Layartebians still possessed around the campus. However, because of the intense counter-fire offered by the insurgents, the armored vehicles at each choke point had been forced onto the move or into secluded positions where they were harder targets. Hitman 1-1, the Buzzsaw that had already ravaged a good portion of the city had, by now, taken over ten RPG hits to its various portions of the hull. Still undamaged on the whole, the urban combat vehicle had been forced onto a search and destroy mission, moving around the various areas and engaging insurgents whenever they popped their heads up from an alley or a window.

Across the whole city there were more bullets in the air than flies. Helicopters buzzed overhead as they poured rounds into buildings and fired unguided rockets into corners. An insurgency that now numbered close to 8,500 caused intense havoc for a professional, Layartebian force that numbered close to 80,000. Despite being roughly 10% the size of the Layartebian military forces in Manaus, the insurgency accounted for more than 75% of all of the bullets flying around the city. Notoriously inaccurate shots, the insurgents had very unconventional tactics. They would fire from concealed positions, often just holding up their rifles and spraying rounds without aiming, emptying clip after clip. Because of this, Layartebian soldiers looked more for the sights of muzzle flashes than anything else, although this was nothing new. In such a cluttered and confusing battlefield as Manaus was, this was one of the best ways to ensure that nobody was killed needlessly, the only drawback was you had to be fired at first, which wasn't the best thing in the world. Given the inaccuracies of the insurgent gunmen, it wasn't an uncomfortable experience for the Layartebians, who often fired back in single, two, or three shot salvos, killing the gunmen quickly. Despite these tactics, the rebels had only lost roughly 500 of their own, albeit many more were wounded yet continued to fight. In contrast, the Layartebian casualties now stood at 44 killed and 290 wounded. Again, many more were wounded but they continued to fight. Civilian casualties numbered between three and eight hundred.

Now, with the arrival of the 6th Quick Reaction Force (Army), a specialized, entirely mobile unit of the Imperial Layartebian Army, their numbers would dwindle further. The 6th Quick Reaction Force, based in North Carolina specialized in urban warfare and they brought with them seventy armored vehicles and four companies of men, all trained and ready to fight. Extremely mobile, their small mechanized force was split between the three companies, each one led by M2050A1 Serpent light battle tanks and M2060A1 Buzzsaw urban combat vehicles. Outfitted with the latest weaponry, the men arrived on board their various transport planes with their equipment at Manaus International Airport shortly after 11:00 hours. By 12:00 hours, they were fully on the ground and by 15:00 hours, they were ready to go. Of the five hundred and twelve men that deployed, one hundred and ninety-three would make up the backbone crewmen of the various vehicles although they were trained equally as well in infantry tactics. The remaining men would be on infantry duty although even they were trained equally as well in cavalry tactics. Any one man in the unit could do the job of any other and that was what made them so capable and deadly. Equipped with a unique but capable assault rifle or carbine, namely the M114, a design that lost in competition to the M80/M81, the men of the 6th QRF-A set out to the city from the airport with a score to settle.

Entirely self-sufficient, the four companies split up from the airport and went four separate ways, assaulting the city hard. Two companies would move right into the northern part of the city and instantly put a stop to the insurgency there while the other two headed to the east, where one would move directly to the university campus, where the paratroopers were snarled. They welcomed the incoming reinforcements but they were advised that it could take them several hours to get there. With forces tied up all around the city there was little the command could do for the paratroopers except send a company from the 6th QRF-A to their assistance, which they now did. Artillery and aerial bombardment would keep the men alive while the insurgents pushed and probed. Strafing runs from Little Birds and attack helicopters would seemingly come just in the nick of time as whole squads of insurgents, some numbering over thirty, pushed and probed onto a flank, only to be driven back by the helicopter runs.

Callsign Revenant 1 through 4, the 6th QRF-A moved out of the airport perimeter to the cheers of soldiers behind them and throughout the city. Moving quickly, each company and its seventeen or eighteen vehicles and one hundred and twenty-eight armed and fully ready soldiers broke into the city and split off from themselves, the lead vehicle drivers all sort of nodding to each other, thinking the same thing, "Let's go kick some ass!" As they did, several miles away, a group of four M777A2 Lightweight Howitzers sprung to life as they received new coordinates for a fire mission. The four howitzers put eight DPICM rounds into the air in just twelve seconds, the rounds targeted using GPS and satellite assistance. Each M483 shell soared towards its target at over a half mile per second. The rounds were targeted to an area about two kilometers in front of the advancing 6th QRF-A, first company, the company heading directly for the university campus. Spotters had watched a group of insurgents set up a major ambush point and the Layartebian vehicles would not be caught in it as they slowed to a near crawl, the rounds cracking overhead, arcing down to the target. Seconds later, they impacted hard, bursting at preset altitudes over the target area, showering it with bomblets. Each round contained a total of eighty-eight anti-personnel, anti-material bomblets that scattered over an area wide enough to take out the whole ambush zone and then some. The one thousand and fifty-six bomblets instantly turned the area into a total nightmare. The submunitions all exploded over the area, showering it with shrapnel and explosive force, lighting it up like a barbeque. Watching the effects from almost nine hundred meters away, the first company got the go-ahead to move out and they did, moving into the ambush zone quickly and exiting it just as quickly and quietly.

June 13, 2008 - 02:00 [AST]
Manaus, Amazonian Control Territory

Task Force 90 had been formed in total secrecy at the outbreak of renewed fighting in Manaus for the simple reason of finding the leaders of the rebellion and either killing or capturing them. The Task Force consisted of several teams of Special Forces personnel including Rangers, Deltas, Force Reconnaissance, and SEALs. Combined together, this awesome force had already made major advances in fighting the insurgency's leadership. Still, they had yet to catch the "big fish," a man identified as "Avispón," which was Spanish for "hornet." He was identified as the insurgency's top commander and he was known to be fighting in the city, rather than observing from afar and directing forces through runners and shortwave radio. He was somewhere, trapped almost, in Manaus and he was elusive. One interrogation revealed that the closest Task Force 90 had come to nabbing him was a mere eighteen minutes. That was close but not close enough. They wanted him and they wanted him alive. They had been hot on his trail ever since but were never closer than twenty minutes from catching him, making them want him more and more.

Task Force 90 had been looking for some sort of advanced tip that showed where he would be at least thirty minutes ahead of time. They would have settled for five to ten even. Unfortunately, Avispón was quick and always on the move. He was cautious too. He never used the same frequency twice or the same phone twice. A criminal on the run, he knew that the Layartebians were hot on his trail and it had to have been waning on him, especially when he made the worst mistake of his life.

It was late in the evening on June 12 when an orbiting EC-21C Learjet tasked for ELINT observation and gathering duties picked up him talking. The call came inbound to one of his trusted lieutenants, a man that Task Force 90 had showed no intention of going after, for obvious reason. By acting as if they didn't know he existed, they created a false sense of confidence that allowed them to quite easily track him, passively of course. They monitored his activities and communications from high in the sky and never led on that they were surveilling him, something the Ministry of Intelligence was quite good at doing. At precisely 23:08 on June 12, that move paid off massively. Avispón called the lieutenant on a totally new frequency from a totally new location and spoke for fifteen minutes, a long time. Perhaps feeling that it was safe to contact the lieutenant, who's real name was Juan Ramirez, a Puerto Rican who fell in with the anarchists in the days of the Mato Grosso War, Avispón called for an important meeting to discuss their escape from the city. In the days since the university was stormed and taken, with sheer, brute force, the Layartebian military had made more than a handful of gains. The insurgents were retreating left and right and could hold no ground. Torn apart by the Layartebians, surrounded, and cut off, the first surrenders began to be seen along the edges of the fronts at first.

Avispón identified a warehouse in the southern portion of the city, not more than eight blocks from the ruined soccer stadium, which had taken a direct hit from a Vesta missile just ten days earlier. The meeting was scheduled for 02:00 hours, when even the massive might of the Layartebian military would be at a reduced capability. Despite the dangers of war, most soldiers were camped in rather than advancing by 04:00 hours. At 02:00 hours, the Layartebians would be slowing down everywhere around the city, as would the insurgents. Because they chose a location that was out of the fighting, they felt relatively safe. The meeting would include Avispón himself and his top lieutenants, eight of them in total. Masters of the underground, they did their traveling in sewers and this was something that Task Force 90 had already adapted for and began planning. With little time on their side, they immediately dispatched, in full force, to the area around the warehouse. Several teams would take reconnaissance positions and just observe while others traveled into the sewers to plant hidden motion sensors and camera systems. They wanted to know when the bad guys arrived and they used every available resource. By 01:00 hours, they were in position and now just waiting. They had scoped out the premises already and planned their attack for the right moment. Helicopters were standing by for extraction of the entire team and their prisoners.

Armored support would roll into the area as well to set up blocking positions while the main assault was conducted by Task Force 90. Donning night vision goggles and the most advanced weapons in the Layartebian arsenal, they had a simple plan. They would assault the warehouse from four points, throwing Flashbang grenades into the warehouse from those four locations and two of the reconnaissance positions. They would hope then to take everyone without a shot fired but they had to be prepared. They scouted possible hiding spots in the warehouse and even put teams into the sewers to make sure they could cut off their route of escape. They wouldn't attack, of course, until all were present. Skittish and jumpy, the lieutenants began to converge on the area around 01:55 with Avispón finally arriving at 02:02. A team of one SEAL and one Delta on the roof of the building watched through a fiber optic camera as the warehouse filled up with fourteen people, including six women.

Identification of everyone had already been done by the time Avispón arrived. It was easy to tell who he was, he garnered the most respect in the warehouse and was saluted by the lieutenants when he entered, something they had not done for each other. "We have a go!" The SEAL operator on the roof said as he identified the leader. "Count is fourteen tangos. Begin assault." Because of their position, they were the ones to order the beginning of the assault. They wouldn't do so until all of the "players" were present and they had the best vantage point to make sure of this. Even during the assault, they would watch through the camera to spot any possible hiding tangos. Their eyes would always be on the bad guys except the first few seconds when eight M58A1 Stun grenades burst open midair and on the ground. Each cylinder like, black grenade weighed under a pound and were filled with 0.16 ounces of a pyrotechnic metal-oxidant mix of magnesium and ammonium perchlorate that produced a 1 million Candela flash and 180 dB "bang," that both blinded and deafened those within its radius. Its effects could last up to three minutes, depending on how directly one looked into the light. Even if they avoided that, their eardrums would be overcome by the sound that ranked 50 dB above the threshold for pain.

Counting the "bangs," the two men on the roof waited for the eighth, which didn't take very long, before they looked back into the camera. They could see some of those inside were visibly stunned and in pain. Several were not. Two were moving quickly towards the sewer exit while the others were looking around for some sort of hiding place. Weapons at the ready they didn't even have time to breathe when the four teams entered the building. They used IR lasers to sight their targets in the darkness of the warehouse and move very fast. From the roof, the SEAL operator on the camera had activated his own IR illuminator, which was a nifty little addition to the system. He illuminated the priority target and identified him for all of the operators. Only those with night vision could see these illuminators and designators and none of the tangos had them. They were completely unaware that they were easily targeted.

Shots were fired, immediately as the trained and skilled Special Forces soldiers engaged and shot two body guards that had come with Avispón, both of whom were not stunned by the grenades. Each of them took at least three rounds to their heads and fell down lifeless near their leader, who was finally getting his vision back. The two that managed to get to the exit and make it into the sewer thought they were home free until they were tackled by operators in the sewer. They were restrained but not without a fight, a fight they obviously lost. More shots were fired in the warehouse itself as two more, one of them a lieutenant were dropped. No shots were returned in the direction of the Layartebian teams and inside of two minutes, the entire situation was over with and under control. Four of the fourteen tangos were dead and the remaining ten, including Avispón were captured, unharmed. It was a textbook raid executed by the most elite Special Forces in the world. Helicopters were called in to land in the parking lot and they did, putting down a pair of Black Hawks and a single Super Stallion II. The entire Task Force loaded into the helicopters, released the armor from their duty, and flew high and fast towards the airbase, taking a longer but visibly safer route. Once they were on the ground, the Task Force was collectively celebrated as heroes. Because of their high priority, the prisoners were loaded into an awaiting C-5M Galaxy cargo plane and flown northward, to a secret holding facility in the Province of Layarteb. The Emperor would receive the news of the successful raid, capture, and extraction of the prisoners at 03:00 and he had only one thing to say, "Good job. Commend Task Force 90. Now squash those fucking cockroaches! Begin operations phase November-Mike-Kilo-Four-Four." That was it for the insurgency, they would never stand a chance without their leaders and with the military in extermination mode.

June 21, 2008 - 21:00 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

It was a cool, calm evening in Layarteb City. With temperatures in the low 70s and a cool, calm breeze of 7 mph, it was a gorgeous night to be out and about in the greatest city in the world. It was quiet in the Layartebian capital with only a minimal amount of sirens on the horizon. Car horns were a constant nuisance of course but, for the most part, the whole populace was enjoying the summer. Bars were receiving customers in bulk and drinks were beginning to pour. Concert halls were finishing up their intermissions and theaters were setting up for the next showing. There wasn't a boring corner in the whole city that evening. Some would have pointed to Governor's Island and pointed out how calm and quiet it was there. That was only on the outside. Though there was little activity within the walls of the giant Fortress of Comhghall, it was the busiest place in the world. Around it was the "City that Never Sleeps" and like it, the fortress never slept.

The Emperor had his windows open that evening and watched on the horizon as the glow of the lights from the city lit up the horizon. He could see a buoy blinking in the distance on the water and watched as a few police patrol boats zoomed through the waters around his island and around the waters of Layarteb City. He had his lights dimmed low and he had been sitting for hours at his desk reading a proposition for renewed development of the Empire's infrastructure. At one time, he would have simply agreed that it was the best course of action but, also, at one time, the Empire had a gigantic surplus of funds. There was still a surplus of course, the Layartebian government never spent into the red and would never allow a deficit but the surplus wasn't what it once had been. It was far from stagnation though and the massive economy of the Empire continued to boom. He put down the document, finally coming to his decision to approve of the nation-wide project that would cost a pretty penny but, in the end, improve the quality of life in the Empire greatly, as well as provide sustainability into the next century, based on current projections of course.

Rising from his desk, he walked over to a small cabinet on the other side of the room and opened it up to reveal a glass pitcher filled with fifteen year old scotch, from a Johnnie Walker Green Label bottle. He poured two fingers worth into a small glass and put the cap back on the glass pitcher. He opened the doors to his office and looked in on his secretary who was sitting at her desk, reading a romance novel. Her coworkers had done most of the work needed and she was able now to sit back and relax. Because it was late at night and there weren't any scheduled meetings, she was given this liberty and the Emperor wasn't a slave driver either. "Evening Allison. How's Josh?" He asked as he stepped out of the office, scotch in his hands, taking a slow sip. Josh was her son who had just graduated from middle school and would be going to junior high in the fall.

"Good sir. His birthday is next week. He's real excited. Randy," her husband, "promised to buy him a new bike."

"I'm glad to hear it. I'm afraid I won't be in town on his birthday this year."

"Yes sir. I saw you have a scheduled meeting in Havana. I'll let him know, he was looking forward to meeting you."

"I apologize. I have a great gift for him though. I'll make sure it gets there."

"Sir. You shouldn't have." She blushed a little. He was very good to his workers, that was a given fact.

"Nonsense. For all of the hard work you do for me, this is the least I can do. I haven't forgotten an employee's birthday or their family yet and I never will. You remember that."

"Thank you sir. He'll be very happy, I'm sure."

"I hope so. Have there been any calls for me?"

"Just two sir. One from the Layartebian News Network looking for a quote concerning the war in Manaus."

"It isn't enough they got a primetime interview is it?"

"No sir, I guess not. The other was from Ms. Wilson. She wanted to remind you about tomorrow evening's dinner plans."

"Yes. Yes. I almost forgot is right. Have the reservations been made?"

"Yes sir. I did so last night and I will have Amanda confirm in the morning."

"Good news then. She didn't ask how long I was in there for did she?"

"She did sir."

"She's getting worried with all that is happening. I think at least."

"Sir. I'd expect as much, if I may?" She asked politely before she spoke her mind. He always allowed it but the respect factor was too great for her to just blurt out her thoughts. She began after he nodded, "You have the most difficult, taxing, and stressing job in the world. As far as I have seen sir, you never sleep. You're buried up to your eyes in papers, calls, meetings, and plans. Sir, you haven't taken a vacation, per say, in twenty-eight years."

"You know running this Empire is a full-time job."

"Your sacrifice to the people is more than appreciated I am sure."

"Polls beg to differ presently, I must admit." He took a third sip from his glass and felt the warmth down his throat. "But you are right. I do work a lot."

"That's an understatement sir. Have you ever actually thought about a vacation?"

"I have. Many times. I just never get around to it. You know how hectic this job is. I have a duty to the people that my predecessors had but siphoned away. I cannot fulfill that duty while I am vacationing at a resort somewhere and, in reality what vacation would I really have? I would still be running the country just from a beachside somewhere? Surrounded by bodyguards with locals unable to surf or tan?"

"Valid point sir. Think about it." She said as the phone began to ring. She picked it up and answered, "Allison Hamlet speaking. Yes. Go for authentication. Yes. Kilo, Mike, Oscar, November, Echo, One, Seven, Nine, Eight, Two. The word of the day is 'building,' the color of the day is 'brown,' and the animal of the day is 'mongoose.' Yes. One moment." He pushed mute on the phone and looked up at the Emperor, "Sir. Classified phone call. Authentication from the Ministry of Intelligence."

"Patch it through," he said as he returned to his office, the doors shutting behind him. He walked over to his desk and put down the glass, picking up the phone. "Yes. Operation is go." He put down the phone and return to his scotch but, rather than return to his conversation, he picked up a remote on his desk and pushed a few buttons while aiming it at the wall. It turned on the 10.1 surround sound speaker system in his office and began playing a track titled "Adagio for Strings," a strings piece by Samuel Barber from 1938. He was a Layartebian and a citizen of the Republic when he was born only to die a citizen of the Empire shortly after its establishment. The Emperor had always been fond of it and for good reason.

As the piece continued, fourteen tactical teams spread out around the Empire received "go-codes" for operations. The teams were composed of agents from the Domestic Justice Agency, local law enforcement, and the Ministry of Intelligence. The raids were arrest raids against fourteen high-value criminals in the Illuminati. These fourteen individuals were identified as enemies of the Empire by various outlets. Documents recovered in Manaus, interrogations of high-ranking insurgent leaders, and surveillance identified each of these men as members of a clandestine, unknown organization that could be linked directly with the Ghost Warriors and now to the insurgency in Manaus, as well as a number of other things that were all linked to the Ghost Warriors. In retrospect, the fourteen men were members of a small council within the Illuminati that were appointed to establish and carry out the insurgency in Manaus. They weren't nearly as high on the totem pole as the government would have liked. Regardless, they were links to the criminal empire that fueled the terrorist empire, which raked the Empire with blood and violence.

Within ten minutes of the orders, each of the tactical teams would have secured their mission. A relatively quick and skillful series of raids, shots were only fired during one and not at the principle target either. All fourteen men would be arrested and brought to Washington City, Maryland, where they would be interrogated by elite members of the 2nd BOG "Force Thunder." Though on-scene at each of the raids, Force Thunder operatives did not actually storm any of the target locations. They were disguised merely as federal officers of the DJA and were there to "oversee" the situation. Pleased at the skill and tactics employed, they felt that their presence on the assault teams was completely unnecessary. Their real duty lay in extracting the necessary information from the fourteen Illuminati members and finding out just who they worked for, what organization they were a part of, how extensive was their reach, what were their plans, why, and everything else they could think of in between those answers.

OOC Summary

Chapter One: Faint & Numb


October 10: A massive truck bomb in the order of 2,000 pounds goes off outside a newspaper office of the LNN in the early morning hours. 7 dead.
October 11: Missile Base 1511 undergoes treasonous insurrection. Further reports unknown.
October 14: ILN Hunter SSN ordered to take up position off Layarteb coast. Further orders not given.
October 15: Force Falcon Team One ordered to re-establish contact with Missile Base 1511. Boeing 777 crashes north of Athens, Tennessee. All 89 on board are killed. Investigation pending.


Chapter Two: Frantic

October 16: Force Falcon Team One leads a strike on Missile Base 1511. During the course of the retaking, a single LGM-174A Satan is launched at Layarteb City with the intention of hitting it. Luckily, MIM-196 AABMS missiles intercept the ICBM before it could hit.


Chapter Three: Estranged

October 18: Force Falcon Team One lands in Santa Cruz, Bolivia for the assassination of the President of GnOoLoCoPeLep.
October 20: GnOoLoCoPeLepian President assassinated early in the morning.
October 22: Failed attempt by terrorist group to bomb Layartebian airbase in Sunbury, PA.


Chapter Four: Overburdened

October 23: Central Justice Agency begins Anti-Domestic Terrorist Force under the command of Bureau Chief Benjamin O'Davis. Identifies Republican Liberation Army as terrorist group responsible for bombings of Layarteb City and airliner over Tennessee.
October 25: RLA blows up a Boeing 707 and an Airbus A300 from Layarteb Airways over Cove Neck, New York and Belle Harbor, Queens, Layarteb City.
October 26: Emperor makes speech condemning the RLA. Raid on Layarteb City apartment nets 17 RLA terrorists and kills 3. Documents recovered tell of a plot for subway bombings.
October 28: News media is leaked the presence of the Mayan uprising in the Yucatán state.
October 30: Six security guards shot and killed execution style inside the Layarteb City office for Layarteb Publishers
United.
October 31: Secret societies meet to discuss revolutionary plan.
November 2: Two firefighters die in a suspicious blaze in a New Jersey factory.


Chapter Five: Rosenrot

November 5: 84 RLA terrorists seize St. Paul's Boarding School in New Hampshire and take 1,184 hostages, most of them under 18. In the fighting, they lose 2 of their own and kill 20, mostly school officials and guards. Terrorists round up hostages in the main dining hall as parents, soldiers, and police officers, including SWAT, surround the school. By 1300, a standoff ensues. At 1430, three children are executed by the RLA terrorists after a SWAT sniper shoots one of the terrorists. The SWAT sniper dies mysteriously. At 1530, Rome and Norway denounce the seizure.
November 6: Under the threat of a severe winter storm, small group of soldiers enter school and hide in admissions office. Families begin to grow wrestless and plot their own action. Explosions go off in dining hall and a chaotic attack is done leaving 75 terrorists, 152 children, and 38 soldiers dead. Many are wounded. Seven terrorists are captured, including the leader.
November 7: Emperor delcares national day of mourning for November 6.


Chapter Six: Precious

December 1: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island become part of the Empire. Only Quebec remains.
December 9: Quebecois Special Forces use VX gas against Jay, Vermont, killing 384 of 426 people.
December 10: Quebecois invade Ontario during the early morning. Jay Incident becomes public knowledge and Quebecois SOF and RLA terrorists blamed. Quebecois forces make quick and powerful headway throughout the course of the morning, seizing North Bay. RLA base compound in Clinton discovered for its true purpose.
December 11: Roman forces land to help the Ontarians. Quebecois clash with Roman/Ontarian forces in Alliston.
December 12: RLA forces seize 12 MGM-212 CBRR rockets on an assault at the El Jobal Chemical Weapons Depot, in Venezuela. 60 base personnel and 18 terrorists are killed. The rockets are currently "missing."
December 13: Roman forces repel the Quebecoi offensive, pushing them out of Ontario and towards Quebec. RLA group captured in Alliston, where Quebecoi forces devestated and forced back.


Chapter Seven: Colorblind

December 15: Layartebian forces begin aerial attack on Quebec at 0200 loca l time.
December 25: Ground war against Quebec begins at 0230 local time.
December 30: Boisclair captured by Roman forces.
January 1, 2006: Quebec War over. Montreal secure.


Chapter Eight: Gone Away

January 21: Battle of Clinton begins. Layartebian forces attack RLA compound north of Clinton, Alabama. The battle begins at exactly 10:02, local time. 8 soldiers die initially. Full assault begins at 23:00. Assault ends at 23:40 with 52 soldiers dead and 82 wounded.
January 22: Battle of Clinton continues. Stalemate ensues with a twenty-four hour ceasefire at 07:15.
January 23: Battle of Clinton ends. RLA compound burned from the inside out, RLA leadership and fighters dead from suicide or gunshots. 427 die.


Chapter Nine: Greed & Serenity

June 1: Former Minister of Intelligence dies inside of Nova Prospekt prison, Galapagos Islands.


Chapter Ten: Bleed the Freak

June 15: Soldiers begin leaving the island of Grenada for 6-day liberty.
June 16: Rebellion forces attack Grenada at 03:00 hours. At 05:29 hours, rebel forces shoot down Flight 2993 to Miami, Florida with 226 people onboard; none survive. By 20:00 hours, rebel forces have secured 100% of the island and suffered 3,049 losses. Layartebian casualties number 7,775 and 4,518 are captured. In the fighting, 839 civilians are killed in addition to Flight 2993.


Chapter Eleven: Goodbye For Now

June 16: Dr. Gordon Gray of the University of Layarteb at Layarteb City is murdered by an unknown gunman.
June 17: United Eastasian Republic publically officially recognizes the Republic of Grenada and offers supplies, funding, and aide.
June 18: At 08:30 hours, the Emperor gives worldwide speech about Grenada and condemns UER for recognizing the Democratic Republic of Grenada.
June 19: Imperial Layartebian Navy blockades island of Grenada.
June 22: UER aide flight given clearance to land in Grenada. UER aide flight evacuates UER diplomatic contingent from Grenada. ILN RA-5E Vigilante conducts low-level reconnaissance.
June 23: Christopher Allen Florence is arrested outside of Charleston, WV and questioned and held in connection to the murder of Dr. Gray.


Chapter Twelve: Fall to Pieces

July 3: Supreme Grenadian of the DPRG secretly requests international aide to be delivered during a week long "negotiation" with the Empire, during which they hope the blockade will be lifted.
July 4: MSgt. Brendan Williams and his family are murdered, possibly by drifters, in their Tennessee home. MSgt. Williams was due for a media interview regarding the shoot down of LA Flight 88 at 19:00 hours.
July 6: Secret safe house in Panama is attacked by Force Falcon Team One early in the morning, just after midnight. RLA high council, survivors of the Battle of Clinton, are all killed. The total death toll is 42 in the safe house and 28 in the vehicle convoy. The Emperor agrees that the blockade shall be lifted on July 16, 2006 at 00:00 EST and reinstated on July 22, 2006 at 23:59 EST, if no progress is made during negotiations.


Chapter Thirteen: Bleeding Me

July 11: Shoot out at Dockhouse 14 in Caracas shipyard leaves 13 dead. A mysterious cargo is stolen and the identity of all men, except two, is unconfirmed. Those two are linked with Esmeralda Cartel.
July 13: Giacomo Benevetti is murdered by shooting and burning outside his office in Caracas, Venezuela. Suspects unknown though murder is linked with Dr. Gordon Gray. Suspect sought out is believed to be the same person for both.
July 14: Esmeralda Cartel yacht sunk in the Gulf of Paria by ILN vessel. Eight men aboard killed. Two men founded murdered, execution sytle in Güiria. Both are linked to the Esmeralda Cartel.
July 21: Layartebian delegation to Grenada is assassinated in their hotel in St. George's, totalling 29 individuals. Blockade resumes and the DPRG is given 24 hours from 11:00 hrs [EST] to surrender the island back to Layarteb City.
July 22: Deadline passes. Hostilities officially begin against DPRG at 13:00 hrs [EST].


Chapter Fourteen: Stillborn

July 22: Deadline passes. Hostilities officially begin against DPRG at 13:00 hrs [EST]. First eleven hours of fighting sees 1,600 Grenadian, 22 Layartebian, and 65 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 21,239 at the start of the war.
July 23: At 00:15 hrs [EST], Victoria is secured. Mount Saint Catherine is secured at 03:00 hrs [EST]. Panorama and Trevellan are secured at 09:00 hrs [EST]. First thirty-five hours of fighting sees 3,839 Grenadian, 312 Layartebian, and 300 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 17,315 at the end of July 23. There are a total of 85 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 24: At 01:20 hrs [EST], Grenville is secured. At 03:00 hrs [EST], Saint Patrick's parish & Saint Andrew's parish secured. At 06:20 hrs [EST], the airport is secured. At 08:30 hrs [EST] assault on St. George's begins with aircraft and cruise missiles. At 11:15 hrs [EST] Gouyave is secured but massacre of civilians is found with 2,450 civilians executed throughout the town by Grenadian soldiers. First fifty-nine hours of fighting sees 7,293 Grenadian, 815 Layartebian, and 2,828 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 13,734 at the end of July 24. There are a total of 212 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 25: At 02:00 hrs [EST], all of Grenada is considered secured except for St. George's. At 05:00 hrs [EST], invasion of St. George's by Marines begins. At 21:25 hrs [EST], the captured Layartebian soldiers from June 16 are recovered. Of the 4,518 that were initially captured, only 3,758 remained alive. In the first eighty-three hours of fighting, 9,549 Grenadian, 1,787 Layartebian, and 3,201 civilain casualties are registered. Grenadian soldiers number 11,430 at the end of July 25. There are a total of 260 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 26: At 10:29:38 hrs [EST], a 5 kiloton nuclear device is detonated in downtown St. George's. The device is of unknown origin and at least 30,000 civilians and 8,500 Grenadian military personnel as well as 6,100 Marines are persent in the city when the device goes off. Possible casualties are expected to exceed 40,000. At 12:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor addresses the world about the events in Grenada. Estimates for casualties are narrowed between 20,000 and 30,000.


Chapter Fifteen: Cowboys From Hell

July 26: At 11:30 hrs [EST], martial law is declared on Grenada and an immediate "in-house" curfew is imposed. At 14:15 hrs [EST], analysis shows that radiation is rapidly spreading towards Cottish Barbados, to the northeast, and that the device used was an enhanced radiation device. At 15:01 hrs [EST], the first fire fighting chemicals fall over Saint George's. At 17:00 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as a W80-0 of a Tomahawk SLCM. At 18:20 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as a Teh Ninjan weapon. At 21:18 hrs [EST], a fire storm hits the city and ravages the inner circle of the city, around the blast zone.
July 27: At 09:30 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as being built within the Empire of Teh Ninjas in Cuba and shipped to Madagascar for basing on a 688/I class submarine. At 11:00 hrs [EST], the fires within the city are considered "under control." Recovery efforts continue within the city.
July 28: At 04:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor meets with President Baruti of the United States of Brink about the bombing. At 04:30 hrs [EST], two vehicles are identified on a highway heading north from Georgia and engaged by 2nd BOG forces. Two men are captured. Six are killed and their vehicle destroyed. Witnesses had little to say about the event.
July 29: At 06:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor's aircraft and flight are engaged by twelve F-22B Raptors going rogue from the ILAF. All twelve rogue aircraft are shot down along with four F-22B Raptors and one F-14E Super Tomcat escorting the Emperor's aircraft. At 21:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor returns to Layarteb City. The engagement of his aircraft is kept "hush-hush."
August 9: At 12:00 hrs [EST], the final casualty figures are released to include 37,221 as a result of both the blast and the radiation poisoning that followed. On Barbados, 400 Cottish individuals died.


Chapter Sixteen: Sehnsucht

November 23: Layarteb Airlines Flight 1890 explodes in mid-air, at 19:30 hrs [EST], 8 miles south of East Moriches, Long Island. The cause of the disaster is yet unknown but all 526 onboard are presumed dead.
November 24: Jasmine Delgado, the daughter of the Governor of the Province of Raef, is kidnapped at a market in Havana at 15:05 hrs [EST] by Luis Rendon and Javier Montenegra of the Florida Cartel. They soon meet up with Hector Pimentel, also of the Florida Cartel. Their house and car are burned and their whereabouts are unknown.
December 1: At 10:27 hrs [EST], the chief of police for the Province of Raef is asssassinated when his helicopter is shot down trying to land on the roof of the Panama City police headquarters. Six men in the helicopter and three bystanders on the street are killed.
December 11: Mysterious explosion around 22:39 hrs [EST] kills lead witness in Jasmine Delgado kidnapping and destroys two adjacent homes. Ten others are killed.
December 23: Official investigation on LA Flight 1890 concludes citing that mechanical failure brought down the aircraft due to faulty wiring in the center fuel tank, which ignited fuel vapors and caused the explosion. All 526 lives were lost, making it the dealiest, civilian air disaster in EOL history.


Chapter Seventeen: Ugly & Damned

December 27: The Empire begins a secret war against Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam, a major warlord in Afghanistan and drug dealer who is directly linked with Layartebian cartels.
February 2, 2007: Layartebian forces assist the Eurasian Federation in seizing Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. They wage a "secret war" against Sepah-e Pasdaran, an Islamist-terrorist group in the region. Evidence gathered from Sepah-e Pasdaran link them to the Layartebian situation. Funding for Sepah-e Pasdaran was given through Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam by Totalis (Varsolan Corporation on the Falklands linked directly to Grenada), the cartels, and the RLA. Sepah-e Pasdaran trained various terrorist groups acting in the Empire of Layarteb from 2005 - 2007 including the RLA and Free Venezuelans. An unknown "major funder" is sought out.
February 15: Layartebian forces invade southern Neuvo Rican Mexico and seize Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, and Tabasaco in the "War on Drugs" and, effectively, end the drug trade in the region when the war is completed.
February 18: State governor of Venezuela is assassinated, presumably by a "domestic" terrorist group related to the RLA.
March 1: Victory is declared in southern Mexico.
March 4: Successor to the state governor vanishes mysteriously. Street violence in Caracas escalates to its highest levels since 1988. Fueled by Illuminati Ghost Warriors, street violences peaks shortly thereafter.
March 12: Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam is killed. Evidence links him to Sepah-e Pasdaran.
April 1: Organized protests begin in Caracas and are brutally suppressed. In total 629 people, including 55 police officers are killed when the government stepped in to stop the protests.
April 2: Two women are killed when the State Governer of Venezuela's house is attacked by rocket fire. The governor is severely injured and is forced to withdraw from his duties.
April 5: The "Free Venezuelans" announce that they are a pro-independence group seeking for Venezuelan independence and claim responsibility for the attack of April 2. They are linked to demonstrations going back to March and are immediately assumed to be responsible for the February 18th assassination of the government.
April 8: The Imperial Layartebian Military begins to mobilize as unrest in Venezuela peaks again.
April 9: The Free Venezuelans detonate a massive car bomb inside the South Eastern Virginia government building in Caracas, leveling the building. Forty-five are killed in the attack, which occurs at 01:30 hours [AST]. At 01:32 hours [AST] fighting erupts in Caracs and by 05:30 hours [AST] Venezuela is in the midst of a total revolution.
May 5: The last of the Free Venezuelans are captured, killed, or in hiding and the insurrection ends, unsuccessfully. Fatalities include 182,500 civilians, 4,528 soldiers, and 429,040 rebels. Casualties include upwards of 300,000 civilians, 12,086 soldiers, and 200,489 rebels. There are 342,493 rebels captured.
May 14: The ministers of Defense, Intelligence, Interior, and Justice are fired.
May 17: Assad al Samir, a prominent leader with Sepah-e Pasdaran is killed during a failed mission to apprehend him. He is a major player in Layartebian terrorism and acts as a middleman between Sepah-e Pasdaran and Totalis. He is also linked with the unknown "major funder" sought out by the Ministry of Justice.


Chapter Eighteen: Long Way Down

May 19: An arson fire destroys the Church of Saint Andrews in the Bronx, killing 6.
May 23: Marjorie Williams, a prominent writer for the Layarteb City Times, disappears from her White Plains home in the early morning hours. She was working on a feature story about the rise in kidnappings since November 2006. All of her notes, tapes, and the laptop she used were taken. No suspects are immediately sought. Early on the morning of May 23, Salem Nuclear Powerplant is attacked by eight unknown terrorists. Two are killed and six captured in a firefight that also claimed the lives of one security officer and one National Guardsmen. The attack was unsuccessful.
May 24: Thomas Deveroe, last President of the Republic of Layarteb, dies in his sleep in Kerala, Cotland. Cause is determined to be acute myocardial infarction.
May 25: Illuminati terrorists secretly take hold of the Sky Wonder, a cruise ship in the Caribbean Sea with 1,550 passengers and 600 crew members.
May 26: Jeremy Berms, a director in the Ministry of the Interior is assassinated by an unknown hit man in the Yucatán.
May 27: Referendum vote favors returning the body of Thomas Deveroe to Layarteb for burial 87.63% to 12.37%.


Chapter Nineteen: Night Train

May 28: At 04:48 hours [EST], an M-107 civilian jetliner crashes on the Spain/Portugal border, all aboard are lost, including 108 Layartebian citizens. Cause of the crash is unknown. At 08:15 hours [EST], terrorists sink the Sky Wonder ocean liner in the Gulf of Mexico with explosives. All aboard, including 400 Cottish citizens, are killed, a total number of 2,150. An assault on a police station in Cleveland leaves 8 police officers dead and 31 injured. Of the attackers, 2 are killed and the remainder escape. Open revolution begins in Portugal with the secession of Portugal from the Fourth Reich. Spain eventually joins the secession.
June 9: War breaks out with the Federal Republic of the Amazon concerning the Venezuelan uprising of 2007 and the harboring of insurgents.
June 17: Eighty Layartebian civilians are brutally murdered by the Portugese government. At 19:30 hours [EST], Layartebian forces begin a systematic bombardment of Portugese strategic positions relating to their air force and air defense network.
June 19: The last two of three Sepah-e Pasdaran terrorists are apprehended secretly in the town of Guarda in Portugal. They are returned to the Empire for questioning.
June 24: Interrogations reveal that the name of the "domestic terrorist group." They are referred to as "Ghost Warriors." Little other information is known about them except they trained in Sepah-e Pasdaran camps and are elite mercenaries.
June 27: Manaus is secured by Layartebian forces in the Amazonian War.
July 3: The Amazonian War concludes with a Layartebian victory. There had been 566 KIAs, 1,768 WIAs, and 7 MIAs on the Layartebian side and there were over 20,000 civilian casualties and at least 30,000 casualties of all types amongst the military forces.
July 10: An unknown assassin kills the Mayor of Raccoon City, the CJA Field Director for Raccoon City, and an unidentified woman.
July 18: At 05:10 hours [EST], Layartebian police and CJA officers raid an apartment in the Bronx and arrest four Sepah-e Pasdaran terrorists plotting to set off a bomb in Layarteb City. They are Eurasian citizens.
July 27: At 17:10 hours [EST], bombs rip through Grand Central Station, Pennsylvania Station, South Station, and Union Station in Layarteb City, Falcon City, and Chicago. In total, 913 people were killed and 542 required medical attention.
September 1: Amazonian insurgents launch a brutal offense against Layartebian forces in the Amazonian Control Zone and are defeated with over 1,000 casualties to the enemy and fewer than 60 to the Layartebian forces.
September 3: Anarchist forces launch attacks on Layartebian border stations between Mato Grosso and the Amazonian Control Zone killing 14 Layartebians, injuring 11. Anarchists suffer just 8 deaths.
September 4: Layartebian forces launch Operation Thunder Rain with the systematic bombing of airports and highways in Mato Grosso to cut off the Anarchist forces from waging war in the ACZ. The goal is to push them out of the border area and stop a flow of arms and soldiers into the ACZ from Mato Grosso.
September 5: Layarteb officially invades Mato Grosso with soldiers.
September 7: Layartebian forces secure various northern cities and Anarchists call for a temporary ceasefire.
September 10: Anarchist forces attack Layartebian positions near Juína, ending the ceasefire.
September 12: The ILA launches an MGM-233 Vesta rocket into Juína, striking a civilian air raid shelter killing 1,730 and injuring 48. Of them, 1,698 are civilians, many of them children. This brings upon a subsequent international condemnation of Layartebian actions.
September 24: Anarchist forces down a CH-53N Super Stallion II, killing 69 Layartebian soldiers, the largest single loss of life in one day to the Empire in over a decade.
September 29: Layartebian forces begin the Brasnorte Offensive, aimed at driving Anarchists forces all the way south of Brasnorte.
October 1: Brasnorte Offensive concludes with all goals achieved. Anarchists, decimated, call for an immediate ceasefire, which is honored.
October 6: Anarchist remnants launch a surprise attack in Juína against an oil depot, airfield, and artillery base killing 2 Layartebian soldiers. Estimates for dead Anarchists exceed 60.
October 8: All Layartebian forces withdraw from Mato Grosso by midnight. Operation Thunder Rain concludes, essentially, as a draw. The government of Mato Grosso pledges to keep Anarchist rebels out of the border area in return for Layartebian foreign aide and relations. The war leaves 484 Layartebian KIAs, 2,139 Layartebian WIAs, almost 9,000 deaths for the Anarchists, and over 20,000 civilian deaths.
October 9: Layartebian Minister of Defense resigns.
October 12: New Minister of Defense appointed.
October 13: Former Minister of Defense mysteriously disappears from Miami, Florida.


Chapter Twenty: November Rain

November 1: Unidentified Flying Object is downed near Raquette Lake, New York.
November 2: MOI agent Miguel Santos disappears from his Caracas residence.
November 8: Terrorists hijack a Layartebian 777 bound for Dublin. All six are killed.
November 13: Maritime forces of the ILDF intercept and capture a pirate vessel south of Cuba.
November 15: Michelle Baxter, daughter of Chicago Mayor, Dwight Baxter goes missing. Her whereabouts are unknown.
November 16: Layartebian forces seige Tapauá in the ACT. Civil war breaks out in Mogadishu.
November 25: Hostilities cease in Tapauá with an overwhelming victory by the ILA.


Chapter Twenty-One: Kashmir

No Activity


Chapter Twenty-Two: Trapped Under Ice

May 10, 2008: General Hoffer, administrator of the Amazonian Control Territory is assassinated in Manaus by an unidentified sniper. Riots break out in Manaus shortly thereafter that end in violence. There are 52 dead Layartebian soldiers, 868 dead civilians, 39 injured Layartebian soldiers, and over 1,200 civilians. A curfew is imposed.
May 11: 2 people are killed violating curfew in Manaus.
May 12: 4 people are killed violating curfew in Manaus.
May 13: 65 civilians and 2 Layartebian soldiers are killed when 24 teenagers hurl Molotov cocktails into an abandoned military checkpoint in Manaus. Of the casualties, 18 of them consist of the teenagers, the remaining 6 were arrested.
May 23: Cruise liner Nord Hill is hijacked by 16 terrorists.
May 25: Nord Hill, situation ends with all terrorists killed by a Layartebian SOF raid. Terrorists had executed a total of 224 passengers during their hijacking.
June 1: Full blown fighting erupts in Manaus. Operation Silver Tornado commences by the Layartebian military.
June 2: A Vesta missile strikes a soccer stadium in Manaus killing 432, of them 198 civilians.
June 6: Rebels down a UH-60M Black Hawk killing 14 paratroopers and crew members in the Empire's most damaging single blow for the war. A further 19 Layartebian soldiers are killed on June 6.
June 13: Insurgent leaders are captured in Manaus by Layartebian SOF raid.
June 15: Imperial Layartebian Military reports that full-scale fighting has ceased. Insurgent forces are in full withdrawal and defeat but fighting continues.
June 18: Mop-up operation commences by ILM for rooting out insurgent pockets and hiding personnel. By now, 62% of Manaus' eastern sector is destroyed and 39% of the northern sector is destroyed. Southern and western sectors sustain up to 10% damage collectively. Over 1/4 of Manaus is in ruins. A total of 102 Layartebian soldiers are killed during the fighting with 212 wounded. Insurgent forces suffer upwards of 2,500+ killed and possibly 6,000+ wounded. In total, 819 civilians are confirmed killed by both sides in the conflict, including the June 2 strike.
June 21: Ministry of Justice raids capture 14 members of the Illuminati based on intelligence collected from Manaus.



Confirmed Body Count: 754,724
Unconfirmed Body Count: 755,035+ [311+ difference]

Chapter XXIII: Comfortable Liar

July 1, 2008 - 12:00 [EST]
Layarteb City, New York

"Good afternoon. I'm Gina Maybrooke and I am sitting here this afternoon with Lucas Henning, president of the Council for a Democratic Layarteb. Mr. Henning, welcome to Our Empire."

"Thank you Gina. I'm glad to be here this afternoon." The well dressed man said with a smile as he faced the camera. He was on Our Empire, a daily, one hour show on the Layarteb News Network from 12:00 to 13:00 that covered recent events, trends, news, history, et cetera in the Empire and it included a live studio audience, who often were asked to give commentary, opinion, and reaction. Of all afternoon time slots, Our Empire remained in the number one slot with a massive viewership. The audience finished clapping in the background as Gina began the show. Seated comfortably on a small stage along with Lucas Henning, they were surrounded by about fifty people, seated comfortably in front of the stage, behind the cameras.

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"Today we're talking about the mission of the Council for a Democratic Layarteb, their history, their future, and how they feel about the current state of the Empire. Mr. Henning is the president of this non-profit, non-governmental organization that was started in 1992 by citizens who favored a return to a republic-style government, as opposed to our current form. Since 1992, the Council for a Democratic Layarteb has grown in membership to a current size of twenty-five million. Is that correct?"

"Yes Gina it is. The Council for a Democratic Layarteb has a membership size of twenty-five million people, quite a fair number for our particular type of organization. Unfortunately, with the population of the Empire, this means that our membership is less than two percent of the entire populace of the Empire."

"How many new members do you receive each year?"

"Approximately a quarter to a half million. This year we have seen an influx of two million, which shows that more citizens of the Empire are inclined to return to our roots as a democratic country." He smiled again and the crowd clapped, partial to this cause themselves.

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"So tell us a little bit about how you started? Where exactly did your organization start and how did it grow so fast?"

"It was started by a group of college students in 1992, myself included, who felt that the direction of the Empire was not what we had signed on for in the late 1970s. The state of the Republic was characterized by corruption, ineptitude, and insecurity. There is no denying that its end was a necessity. The establishment of the Empire following the end of our civil war is not necessarily a step in the wrong direction. The Empire's establishment created security, stability, and prosperity for our great nation. By 1992, the Province of Layarteb was fully established, we had begun to establish the Province of Dnalkrad, Bermuda had been brought into the Empire, we were securing French Guiana, and we were beginning to start our campaigns in Central America.

"Unfortunately, by then it began to become apparent to us that the Conquests weren't about any sort of Manifest Destiny but rather a greed for land. Our founding committee had all previously served our two years of service with the military and looked upon the then current path of the Empire as having strayed from its original intention. In addition, we feel that the establishment of an authoritarian system should never have become permanent. Once order and sovereignty had been restored, the Emperor should have reopened the government to free elections.

"To date, we carry this message and it is our hope that, despite the tenure and status of the Empire in the world that the government enact legislation to allow for free and fair elections."

"Your organization then started out on a single college campus and grew to a national entity. That is impressive. Support must have been hard to conjure up at first?"

"Indeed it was. We were protested against on campus, even threatened. Most people seemed to have imagined that we were an unpatriotic or somehow ungrateful group of people. That couldn't have been further from the truth. We, as patriotic citizens of the Empire felt that it was our duty to prolong the morality and integrity of our nation by establishing a democratic state. Perhaps our strongest influence has been our allies, the Cottish and Hawdawgians, both of whom are democratic states. As equally as large as the Empire was at the time, both the Cottish and the Hawdawgians flourished under democracy. Who was to say that the Layartebian nation wouldn't? A democratic Layarteb would usher in a golden age of peace and prosperity." The audience clapped again.

"Certainly you raise a theory and point that is not entirely alien in this day and age. Perhaps sixteen years ago it wasn't welcomed with any sense of enthusiasm but in a recent poll conducted by the University of Layarteb's multiple campus' has shown that, amongst college-aged students, approximately sixty percent favor the establishment of free and fair elections on a federal level. Amongst middle-aged and young adults it is slightly less, under fifty-two percent. However, as an interesting point, amongst those over the age of fifty-five, those who favor the establishment of free and fair elections is under ten percent. Why would you say this is?"

"Simply put it has to do with influence. Those over fifty-five years of age were in the twenties when the civil war broke out. Many of them took up arms against either side and it is obvious, based on the outcome, that most of them took up arms against the government. They gained the most from the establishment of the Empire. They were directly affected by the terrorism campaign of the Red Army Faction and the following four years were the most pivotal in their lives. They were old enough to be fully affected by the growth of the Empire. In contrast, someone who is presently thirty-five was just a child during that time. College-aged youths nowadays weren't even born yet. It is to be expected. Our demographical aim is those under forty years old. Teenagers at the time of the establishment of the Republic this demographic is our most influential."

"Mr. Henning, if I may ask. How old are you?" The crowd laughed as she asked with a smile.

"I am thirty-seven. When the Empire was established I was only nine, too young to fully understand and grasp it."

"Your main demographic, in that sense, is your own age group?"

"Yes."

"How do you feel they react? Does your presence in this demographic help you?"

"It certainly does and I must admit that I find the reactions to be very positive."

"What sort of things does your organization do to attract membership and influence those in power?"

"Our biggest 'thing' is simply putting ourselves out there. Our organization sponsors rally's and peaceful protests. Given the Empire's strong laws against protesting this is the most difficult and the one that carries the most risk. However, the greater the risk, the greater the reward. Our most frequently cited reason about how someone heard of the Council for a Democratic Layarteb has been our rally's and protests. We also do mailing, cold-calling during daytime hours, advertisements, and seminars. We have a strong collegiate presence that we can fully owe to simple speeches. One of our goals is to create collegiate-level organizations that will be active in the community. Just like how we started."

"That is quite a solid plan. It has worked well for your organization of course. Moving forward. How does your organization see the Empire presently?"

"In trouble. The growth of terrorism, the open rebellion in both Venezuela last year, hijackings of cruise liners, the Grenadian Incident, and the entire situation with the Amazonian Control Territory and our previous war with Mato Grosso has shaken the very foundations of our Empire. Our Emperor promised us safety and security more so than anything else when he established the Empire twenty-eight years ago. Now that safety has completely eroded. Our borders are subject to constant penetration and our occupation of the Amazonian Control Territory is draining our resources."

"What would you say is the most prevalent cause for this?"

"A combination of things. Unfortunately, the Empire is not nearly as strong as it was. Foreign nations have threatened our sovereignty and succeeded without reprisal, which has shown other nations and domestic groups that we are weakening. The simple campaign of terror unleashed against our nation and people and the subsequent inability of our government to stem the violence only feeds into these terrorists." The audience clapped more as the show continued. The audience would soon ask questions and respond to statements from Lucas Henning. Though a figure of resistance to the government, Lucas Henning's popularity and notoriety amongst the Layartebian people nearly quadrupled as a result of his appearance on Our Empire.

July 6, 2008 - 18:00 [EST]
Fortress of Comhghall, Governor's Island

Thunder rolled through the air over Layarteb City and lightning flashed miles to the west. Strong and violent summer storms had formed over the plains of Nebraska and dropped hail, three tornadoes, and strong wind gusts. Now it was moving to the east and it was going to pass right over Layarteb City. A strong thunderstorm warning was already in effect for the area as the sky turned dark. "Rain's coming sir." Jack said as he stood in front of the Emperor in his office.

"You've got that right. Storms tore apart the plains. Did a ton of damage in Pennsylvania."

"So I've seen sir. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a waterspout out there."

"It wouldn't be the first time Jack. How's Trisha these days?"

"She's good sir. She's waiting for a promotion presently but she thinks it'll be by the end of summer for it."

"That's good to hear Jack. I'm glad. It is a shame it's been so long since we all sat down together."

"Ms. Wilson is doing fine I imagine?"

"Yes she is. Currently she's in Ireland researching for a book she is writing about ancient paranormal activities."

"Is she now? That's definitely a mouth full sir."

"You've got that right Jack." He laughed as he offered Jack a seat at his desk, motioning with his hand for him to sit down. "I've got a bigger problem that I need to address to you."

"I'm all ears sir."

"The results of Operative Study 4414 have come in."

"I don't remember that basis for it sir, please refresh me."

"Forty-four, fourteen was an operative study directed to the Ministry of the Interior concerning internal revolution and civil war on a modern stage. I commissioned in fourteen months ago and it was delivered to me three days ago."

"Not pretty I imagine?"

"Not at all, care for a drink?" He asked as he stood up and walked towards the corner where he had his scotch and glasses.

"Yes."

"Things won't look pretty at all." He said as he began to pour the two glasses. "We can expect casualties in excess of one million even if the military remains on our side. In a worst case scenario and the Empire is split fifty-fifty, we're looking at casualties in excess of five million with the possible use of nuclear or chemical weaponry on a civilian population center. Already, steps are being made to secure everything."

"So then sir you expect actual fighting?"

"Jack. You know I expect nothing but prepare for everything."

"I do sir."

"Then here is what I need you for," he returned with the two glasses. "There are already clandestine, counter-revolutionary forces operating in our Empire to seek out and stop these terrorists and revolutionaries. There are also groups within that oppose and that are arming and preparing for total war between our conflicting sides."

"Pessimistic?"

"Not entirely but I cannot be optimistic about the current state of things. It's not looking good. We have made significant advances combating these 'Ghost Warriors' but we cannot get ahead of them. I do not know if it is our tactics or if, simply, they are outsmarting us. Of course they have agents within though."

"Yes sir that is quite obvious but we are doing everything we can to ensure that violence does not erupt?"

"Of course we are." The Emperor returned to his seat. "But even I must admit that the natural order of chaos and tranquility exists. Chaos seems almost inevitable for the world and within our own borders, I do not know what that future brings. Perhaps a little revolution wouldn't hurt us."

"Sir. You can't be serious?"

"I am not. I was just joking. No revolution will only hurt us. The Empire has grown from the ashes of the Republic and we are the complete antithesis to what the Republic was. Those who wish for a return to the Republic wish out of their own greed for power. We know what will happen and we have seen it happen before, all around the world. This will not happen here."

"No sir. It won't."

"Precisely why I am directing you to conduct your own counter-revolutionary operations. Here," he removed a large binder from his desk and slid it across the table. "Jack. You and your team are the only men I fully trust with my life. You though, you are the chosen leader of them for due reason."

"Sir?"

"Read."

"Yes sir." Jack stood, picked up the binder, saluted, and left the office. He was escorted out of the massive castle by security personnel to the outside parking lot, where he walked up to his car, a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS with the LS6 engine, a 454 cubic inch, 450hp engine that could push his car through a quarter mile in under thirteen seconds, stock. He had his car modified though and ten seconds wasn't impossible. He started the car up and it roared to life, shaking the ground. He put the binder on the seat and drove off, slowly across the bridge until he got to the other side. He then headed north, towards home, shaking the air as he drove, breaking just about every speed limit there was to break.

July 9, 2008 - 05:30 [EST]
Lower Westchester, New York

Jack Delaney sat comfortably in a large, deck chair, its cushion thick enough that it felt as if he were floating in midair. He was sitting outside, on the second-floor porch that adjourned the master bedroom of his three floor, one-hundred and eighteen year old home. He often sat outside, at night, mostly with his girlfriend and watched the stars overhead. Away from the lights of Layarteb City, one could see thousands of stars overhead, not as many as someone in the boondocks but far more than anyone in the city could. It was, therefore, unusual that he should be sitting out here at sunrise, quietly, listening in a sense to the final noises of the creatures of the night as the sun peaked over the horizon at five thirty-three in the morning. He had been out there for hours already, silently still, listening more than watching anything, the darkness of the night preventing him from seeing very far. I have to know I've done it all for the right reasons, he thought to himself. A man of keen and nearly unsurpassed intellect, Jack was as much of a philosopher as he was a warrior. It was this almost desired combination that proved to be one of his greatest weaknesses.

Jack did two things better than any other man or being on Earth. He killed and he philosophized, a combination that kings in the ancient years were known for in legends and myths. They would kill during the day, slaying whole armies, paving the way for their kingdom to claim more land and expand from horizon to horizon and then, at night, they would sit by the campfire, surrounded by their knights and warriors and discuss just what it meant to take a life, to expand a kingdom, and to what end God had in store for them. Jack did the modern equivalent. He killed for the Empire, slaying civilians and armies alike, should they stand in his way or become a center for the Empire's cross hairs. Day or night, he would accomplish his missions and proceed afterwards to look up to the stars and the heavens or across the horizon and think to himself about everything one could think about, whether it be politics or religion, significance, or even the meaning of something as opposed to another thing.

These curses, as he labeled them weren't as much a part of his life or condition but rather of his circumstances. A successful test subject for Dr. No's experiments with abolishing the necessity for sleep, Jack found himself awake twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week. He could take short, cat naps here and there but passed each day by taking specially formulated supplements that provided the regenerative properties of sleep. Unfortunately, the toll to his body was both physical and mental. He had to be at the pinnacle of his body's fitness levels, which prevented his body from wearing itself out, even at his age. He looked over a decade younger than he actually was and, physically, his body matched that look. By staying constantly in shape and fit, he staved off the consequences of his constant state of overdrive. He could run a full marathon one day and the next, spearhead an assault on a reinforced military barracks without so much as feeling the notion of fatigue. The closest thing to a supersoldier that any country would produce, naturally of course, Jack had all of the good but also all of the bad.

While he was a specimen of physical fitness, he was the perfect test subject for any psychological doctor. The biggest drawback to Dr. No's program was the mental ailments that accompanied the test subjects. While the physical characteristics of sleep could be mimicked through specially formulated supplements, the mental properties could not. This was what ultimately led to the end of his program to enhance human beings beyond the limitations of sleep. The program started off with fifty-eight test subjects but, in the end, only nine remained alive, those being the Emperor and the eight men of Force Falcon Team One. The remaining forty-nine subjects were all deceased, many by their own hands. Dr. No couldn't adequately and consistently treat the effects of severe sleep deprivation, which ultimately led to incurable psychosis. The first fourteen test subjects all exhibited levels of psychosis never before observed. Eight of them committed suicide during hallucinations that not even L.S.D. could induce. The remaining six were killed by police officers during separate incidents where they committed heinous crimes. Despite the forty-nine test subjects being deceased, an additional eighty-five were killed as a result of the program, thanks to the psychological inhibitions of the test subjects. Countless more were left scarred for life through experiences so traumatic that no psychological method could cure them.

Ultimately, Dr. No synthesized an anti-psychotic drug that he prescribed the nine, living subjects. Despite each one experiencing severe psychosis, they all had different reactions. The Emperor, for example, was, perhaps, the most severe. Combined with his statue of power, the drugs were a simple necessity for his daily life, which came in the form of a small pill that had to be taken daily. The men of Force Falcon Team One exhibited different levels of psychosis, Jack being the odd ball in the equation. While the other seven men were dependent on the same drug the Emperor took to survive, Jack developed a sort of coping mechanism. Whether voluntary or involuntary, he was able to channel the psychosis into useful forms of mental capacity, allowing him to function as any normal human being, without the medication. The drawback came though in various other manifestations that were easily appeased through his line of work. As the premier assassin and soldier for the Empire and arguably the most dangerous, capable, and potent man in the world, his psychosis was fed in the bloodlust that he practically reveled in during his time in combat. Bullets flying at him were the most calming force he knew. Equally as calming were the hand-to-hand kills he made. It was almost as if he were an emotionless robot when it came to combat and such was true. Unfortunately, like any addiction, he needed more and more of it just to stay on top of himself. Now, over two decades later, the addiction was at intense levels he had never experienced or even expected. New methods were added but nothing was ever as soothing to him as combat was. Thinking and philosophizing came next and that was what he sought at three in the morning when he stepped out of the doors of his master bedroom.

Jack looked out at the stars and the darkness of the night and thought of all the evil he perpetuated. By default he wasn't an evil man nor did he truly revel in it. Despite the pleasing aspects of combat and the peace he felt when he killed, he didn't enjoy it to enjoy it. He enjoyed it because it made him feel normal. It put him in a state he had not felt in almost thirty years, a state that had once brought him to the highest levels of human interaction. Those days were gone though, thanks to the efforts of double-crossers who sought nothing more than his demise and the demise of the Empire. This very day, twenty-eight years prior had been the worst day of his life. He stood in front of his house, which had been burned to the ground by the last remnants of the Red Army Faction, a communist-terrorist group he had helped annihilate in the last days of the Republic. It had been in his house that his wife and newborn son, not much past his third birthday had been brutally beaten, raped, tortured, and burned alive. The revenge he exacted brought him to depths of darkness no human being had ever seen or gone. It had been that single, defining moment that decided his fate. Suicide had been too good of an option to the human species. Instead, he exacted his revenge by being the highest servant to the Empire besides its great leader. To date, his body count numbered in excess of five thousand, a number that made him the number one serial killer, so to speak, in history. He had killed in war of course and with the approval of a sanctioned government but it was still homicide. Women, children, men all felt his wrath. He had assassinated presidents, senators, politicians, police officers, military officers, and so on and so fourth.

Now he sat alone, in the darkness, thinking to himself about those past twenty-eight years. Though not a religious man at all, Jack believed his wife and son went to heaven or some plain of existence that was otherworldly. He hoped that when his time came, if it ever came, he too would be on that same plain. The only thought he couldn't escape from was that if such a plain existed and if it were indeed Heaven then Hell had to exist equally as much. He felt that deep inside. The idle jokes that not even Hell would want him were just his way of putting the issue aside but it was an issue he couldn't simply escape from all of the time. Though he truly knew not what awaited him in the afterlife he knew that, whatever it is, his sins on Earth could never be atoned for, not in eighty lifetimes. Maggie. I'm so sorry. He thought to himself as he sat alone. I've done so much bad to accomplish so little good. I have to know it was for all of the right reasons but how can I? I can't even believe that the ends always justified my means. What lies for me ahead? Tell me. Please. Show me. Show me that you, I, and Jack. We will see each other again. That I will be given the time I was robbed of. That I robbed you of.

Twenty-eight years was a long time but an event as traumatic as the one in 1980 could never be fully forgotten. It took him eighteen years to finally chisel a piece of ice from his heart. That was when he met Tricia Watson, a stewardess on board a hijacked airliner. He and his team had rescued the airliner and its crew from Kaliningradian terrorists in 1998 during an ordeal that made national and global headlines. It was seen as a precursor to renewed Layartebian involvement in Kaliningrad but, thankfully, it had never come to bear. Despite his past, he and Ms. Watson eventually began a relationship. Slow to progress, Jack eventually opened himself up to a level that allowed their relationship to blossom into something real. He had never fully opened up, not even now but there was a mutual understanding that this was as far as he would go. She moved into his house in 2003, after five years and now, five years later, they continued their relationship just as they had previously. Though they weren't married, legally, there was little difference between their arrangement and marriage. They cared for and loved each other like any married couple did but there was a love, deep in Jack's heart that even she couldn't replace nor did she expect to replace. That love was for Maggie and his son Jack, neither of whom he would ever see in this lifetime. What's in store? He thought more. God. I miss you. Both of you. It's been too long. So long. Yet my time here is far from being over. I can feel it in my bones and in my heart. We can't be together yet. Nor soon. He talked as much to himself as he seemingly did to her spirit, wherever it was.

As the sun rose over the horizon and cast its rays onto the side of his house, he didn't move. He sat still, thinking and talking as much to himself as he seemingly did to her spirit, wherever it was, a concept he mulled over and over again. Finally, inside, when the clock struck six, the alarm buzzed and awoke Tricia from her sleep. She noticed that he wasn't in the bed beside her, nothing unusual but neither did she know where he was. Expecting him to be gone for the day, having been called to the capital for something important, she walked down to the kitchen and noticed that his keys were still on the counter. She would have been awoken by the sound of his car too, she realized. It was loud enough to wake the neighbors ten blocks away. She would have heard a helicopter if that had been the mode of transportation and she would have been awoken by the headlights of a courier car pulling into the driveway had one been sent. Then she realized what day it was and instantly it dawned on her that this was the anniversary of his discovery of the house. He had never spoke of the actual date it happened, just when he saw it with his own two eyes, as if that was the moment when it happened. Almost angry at herself that she forgot, she left the kitchen with a pot of coffee on and climbed the stairs back to the second floor and back to the bedroom. There she pulled back the vertical blinds from the door and found it unlocked and, sitting outside, facing the east was Jack. She opened the door and stepped outside, him completely aware not only of her presence but also the moment when she withdrew the blinds. The warrior ethos in him could tell the movements of ants on the railing before they actually moved.

"Good morning." She said as he stood behind him. "Remembering?"

"Something like that." She bent over and kissed him on the head as he reached around and put his hand behind her head, gently of course. "Tell me I'm a good man."

"You are Jack. You are."

"Thank you." He didn't necessarily believe her but neither did he doubt her authenticity. "I'm done here." He stood up and kissed her back. "It's just another day on the calendar."

"It's more than that but it's not your fault. Remember." Unfortunately, for him, it would always be his fault.

July 21, 2008 - 22:00 [EST]
15mi west of Norwich, New York

It was the middle of the night and on a lazy, lonely road in the middle of upstate, rural New York, just fifteen miles west of Norwich, a podunk town of barely 10,000 people. Norwich was an old town, dating back to the late 1700s but settlers had moved into the area in the early Middle Ages, before Layarteb was an independent state but that didn't take away from its insignificance. Situated one hundred and fifty miles from Layarteb City, the epicenter of the Empire, it wasn't even a town half of the populace knew existed and the people of Norwich liked it that way, as did the upper echelon of the Imperial Layartebian Military, who had a specific interest in the town. Because it was, essentially, in the middle of nowhere, Norwich wasn't high on any radar or targeting list. The nearest military base was far enough away that even a nuclear strike wouldn't directly affect the town. It was because of this purpose that the town became the location of a small, classified military project known only by its codename, ELYSIUM.

Project ELYSIUM began in the early 1980s, after the Empire was established and the Republic gone. Set up in complete secrecy underneath a warehouse that acted as a beverage distributor, the project flourished until an abrupt close to the project in 1986, almost six years after it opened. Though shut down, activity continued at the secret, military laboratory, which was headed up by none other than Dr. Atticus Noyle, the brainchild of the Empire's more sinister programs and research projects.

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Born in the early 1940s outside of a mining town in Pennsylvania, Atticus Noyle was already a published and respected individual in genetics, biological engineering, chemistry, and about fifteen other fields when civil war broke out between the pro-government and revolutionary forces in 1977. Holding two PhDs at that time, Dr. Noyle was working for the Umbrella Corporation in their Treblinka, Poland facility, working to develop a vaccine for the Marburg virus. Noted as the most brilliant scientist with Umbrella, he was also regarded as the most complex. Though Dr. Noyle had been working on vaccine projects for some type, his real passion lied in exploring the absolute limits of the human body. He had published several books already on the properties of DNA in regards to human evolution and how advances in medicine and science could reshape the genetic code of humanity. He endeavored to explore every aspect of the human body and his colleagues noted that he would have gone to any means necessary, even those considered unethical. Already one of the most notable scientists in the world, he was contacted by none other than the Emperor himself in the earliest days of 1980 and asked to quit his research with Umbrella and work for the new government. When Dr. Noyle asked why and what for, the Emperor explained simply, "Because your ideas and theories will revolutionize this world and our species and working for Umbrella, you're chained down. I want you to work, independently, to explore your theories." Accepting the offer, Dr. Noyle was in for the biggest surprise of his life. He was made to "disappear" from the face of the Earth, thanks largely in part to the assistance of the Emperor and the newly formed Imperial Layartebian Military.

His first project was to be ELYSIUM, a dismal failure, in his eyes, despite some success. It was this project that shaped both the Emperor and Delaney into what they became. ELYSIUM challenged the limits of human sustainability and explored the first, true super-soldier program in Layartebian history. Despite the overall failure of the project, the methods and innovations from the project led to thousands of other ideas, theories, and projects. It was Dr. Noyle who also, subsequently, operated and autopsied extraterrestrial life from shot-down and crashed UFOs. His research evolved exponentially and he never had an issue with funding or resources. The only issues that existed was the complete and utter disregard for ethics. There were no limits placed upon him or his work and the results were kept as classified as possible, many of them remaining secret from the Emperor himself.

Twenty-eight years later and though ELYSIUM had been shut down twenty-two years earlier, its conclusions continued to influence a number of projects being covertly established and evaluated throughout the Empire. Research from those projects only moved to support conclusions of ELYSIUM and even present new theories. Never fully satisfied with the outcome of ELYSIUM, Dr. Noyle had also wished to return to the project at a later time, when advances in medicine and science gave him breakthroughs he would not have had in the early 1980s. Secretly, he had undertaken two revivals, one in 1996 and the other in 2007. They were short-lived and both of the research subjects committed suicide before the trials could be completed. Presumably as a result of the psychosis they suffered, the two subjects did yield results that none of the original subjects did, allowed Dr. Noyle to formulate new hypothesis about the affect of sleep deprivation on the human body, especially its use as an interrogation tool. It remained the most effective interrogation tool used by the military. Though its inception was decades older than Dr. Noyle's research in ELYSIUM, the conclusions of ELYSIUM led to different and much more strenuous methods for sleep deprivation. The use of certain sounds, different wavelengths of light, temperatures, and pitches led to different results, when combined with sleep deprivation. What used to take a week or more thirty years earlier could take not more than two or three days with the newer methods, despite their obvious cruelty. The 2nd BOG, "Force Thunder" specifically applied these methods, rather than the traditional uses of torture. To great effect, Force Thunder always extracted the information it needed from their prisoners.

Though his staff was small, Dr. Noyle achieved great things, many of which would eventually be achieved by the civilian world, decades later. Closest to his was a man of equal age and equal importance to both his work and the work of the Empire. His name was Dr. Brian Haydn, a distant descendent of none other than Joseph Haydn, the eighteenth century, Austrian composer famous for both the string quartet and the symphony. Dr. Haydn lived outside of Norwich in a small house in the middle of rural New York, even more rural than the town of Norwich itself. A widower, he would drive home each day from the laboratory and return in the morning, enjoying the serenity of the nightly drives and the countryside. Never before had this been an issue but on the warm, summer night, he never made it home, stopping just a mile from his house.

There was little explanation except the initial facts. Found by a state trooper on local patrol, Dr. Haydn and his vehicle were stopped in the middle of the road, the headlights on and motor running. At first, the trooper did not know what to think and he slowed down, stopping about forty feet behind the car, his lights on and his search lights illuminating the vehicle. He could see that the door was open but there was nobody inside or near the vehicle. Alone, he radioed for backup but it was more than ten minutes away, even at high speed. The trooper had to act and had to assess the situation and he did, stepping out of his vehicle, his M110A3 .40SW pistol drawn. "Hello?" He called out, "New York State Police. Is there anybody out there?" He yelled, from the safety of the door of his vehicle. There was only silence and the running engines of now his cruiser and the white, 2004 Chevrolet Malibu LT forty feet in front of him. "I am armed and I will fire. If there is anyone there, stand up slowly with your hands in the air. If you are injured help is on the way." He yelled as he took a few steps away from his vehicle. Cautious and expecting a possible ambush, the trooper approached the rear of the vehicle and carefully eyed to either side of it but saw nothing. He crossed to the right of the car, on its passenger side, his weapon drawn, his wrist resting on his other wrist, which held his large, steel Mag-Lite. He shone the light around and checked in the dark spots that the vehicle's and his own lights did not illuminate, which was when he saw Dr. Haydn's body, about fifteen feet in front of the vehicle but out of the illumination of its headlights. Face down, on the pavement, Dr. Haydn was motionless when the trooper saw him and he approached cautiously until he saw the pool of blood underneath the man. Quickly, he ran to his side and felt for a pulse but, upon finding none and feeling the coldness of his skin, even he knew that there was nothing he could do. He scanned around, looking for any other victims or the perpetrators of whatever happened. It was empty, except for him and the corpse of Dr. Haydn. "I've got a body here. Elderly male, possibly in his late sixties. No vitals. Looks like a gunshot wound to his head, unable to tell from this angle. No other signs of people in this area." He reported over the radio as a cruiser raced to his position, barreling down the abandoned, rural highways at over one hundred miles per hour.

The trooper waited until backup arrived before he holstered his sidearm. It was evident, by then, that there wasn't anyone else in the area and that a murder had been committed and once his identity was reported over the radio, thanks to the trooper finding the man's wallet in his back pocket, bells and whistles rang in several offices of the government, including the Central Justice Agency. Classified as a normal citizen, certain flags had been tied to his personnel file and immediately, the Central Justice Agency prompted a thorough investigation. Dr. Noyle would be informed directly by the Emperor, who would find out a few hours after the ID had been made by the trooper. His murder was, as the Emperor concluded, no accident and Dr. Noyle agreed. His own safety now of concern, Dr. Noyle was ordered to remain in the laboratory until a proper bodyguard protection could be established, which meant sending Force Falcon Team Two. Because of its low profile, Dr. Noyle's laboratory wasn't guarded by the same military personnel that most other ones throughout the Empire were.

July 22, 2008 - 12:30 [EST]
Norwich, New York

"Alright, alright settle down. Settle down." Sergeant Station Commander Marvin Graves said above the clamor of voices inside a of a classroom in the Norwich NY State Police station. The room was like a classroom with small chairs and desks, enough for about thirty people although the last time they were completely filled, at once, had been over a decade earlier for a bank robbery. Now all thirty seats were filled with investigators and troopers from all over Troop C, which was in charge of Chenengo County and the surrounding areas. Graves, the officer in charge of the Norwich station wasn't excited, per say, that there was a murder in his county and area but it was a sort of welcomed changed from the usual boredom of trapping speeders and the occasional drunk driver. "Alright. Settle in." He said once more through his glasses as he looked up from the podium. Quiet ensued in the room and he began the recap from the previous sixteen hours. "Last night Trooper Estevez came across the body of Dr. Haydn, an employee of Norwich Beverage Distribution, about fifteen miles west of here near the intersection of Ten and Moon Hill Road, just outside of Pharsalia.

"Autopsy confirms that Dr. Haydn was shot twice from close range, less than ten feet, with a forty caliber pistol, presumably silenced. The first round entered the base of his throat and exited, lodging itself into the dirt on the side of the road. The round has been recovered. The second round entered his forehead and exited the rear of his skull but this round has not been recovered. We are still looking.

"Dr. Haydn was murdered presumably between 20:30 and 20:42 hours, long before Trooper Estevez came across the body. We suspect that whomever committed this crime either blocked the road in front of Dr. Haydn's vehicle or flagged him down, possibly under distress. He was lured to the side of the road and murdered and that is where we end. Trooper Estevez came across Dr. Haydn roughly an hour and a half later. We have no reports or call-ins of distress so it is assumed that Dr. Hayden's vehicle was not found until Trooper Estevez came across it.

"So that's about it. Now we've had a few of you moving about the crime scene and Norwich looking for any leads. Robin, what did you come across?"

"How about nothing," Robin said with a disappointed look on her face. A plainclothes investigator with the Norwich station, she was relatively new to the force but not necessarily a rookie. "Dr. Haydn normally reports to work at around 08:00 and leaves after the business is closed for the day, which is at 18:00. He is an employee of Norwich Beverage Distribution and heads the quality assurance department. He's a model employee as per Norwich Human Resources but nobody knows anything about the man. He works in an area on the lower levels, which is off-limits to the rest of the staff, including the warehouse manager. I was told, repeatedly, by everyone, 'We're told it isn't our business.' That's about all I have." She said reading from a small notebook in front of her on the desk.

"Great, a warehouse full of idiots. Chris. Anything?"

"Nothing really. Neighbors say he keeps to himself. Nobody really knows anything about him?"

"Clerk at the grocery store? What about where he gets his gas? For Christ's sake everyone knows everyone in this town. Martha who sits in front of the bookstore knows the last time I got a rectal exam." Everyone laughed, "But nobody knows who the hell Dr. Haydn is?"

"I'll keep digging."

"You better. C'mon. We haven't had anything of significance here since the 1993 robbery and we solved that in four days with a conviction that put the perp behind bars for forty years. Now we've got a homicide and we better solve this and put the perp in the fast lane for execution. Let's act like policemen and solve this crime before it can be done again!" He said with frustration as he realized that, in fourteen hours since the NYSP had discovered the body they had, literally, no leads. All they had were the facts of the crime, which didn't require anything more than good police work and forensics help to figure out. As he was preparing to dismiss the officers in the room, he was interrupted by an opening door at the back of the room. "Can I help you?" He asked as he looked at a pair of well-dressed, well-groomed men in expensive suits, meaning that they were federal agents.

"Yeah, you can. Special Agent Alex Trumbel and this is my partner, Special Agent James Wilson. We're with the Central Justice Agency and we have a special interest in your homicide."

"What homicide might that be?" Graves answered, displeased with their very presence.

"I guess we'll get the exact amount of cooperation here as we will everywhere huh Alex?" Special Agent Wilson added with a smirk.

"This crime was committed entirely within the borders of New York and did not cross any state lines nor does it classify as any sort of federal crime. We can handle a homicide here, you know."

"Sergeant Graves. We are not here because of any sort of belief that you cannot do you job. On the contrary Sergeant, we're here to help your investigation, no hamper it."

"That's what you guys always say. What's the reason you're here." Graves responded back to him with a glare, especially since most of the time the federal agents always came because they "couldn't handle the task."

"We're here because the person who was murdered, Dr. Brian Haydn, is of special interest to the Empire and his murder has raised a special alarm at the Central Justice Agency. We want to work with you in solving this murder and, because of the special nature of Dr. Haydn to the Empire, we bring fourth many of the resources available to us that are not necessarily available to your own department."

"Bullshit." Graves replied back as both of the agents stood in the middle of the room and eyed everyone inside of it, sizing up everyone in the room. "I'm supposed to believe this?"

"Sergeant. You don't have any other choice in the matter, the Central Justice Agency has the authority to pull this case right out from underneath your department's feet. I imagine that, given the absolute boredom experienced in this town and probably this area of the country, this is the most exciting thing you guys have going for you. So rather than exercise that authority, I'd rather we assisted your investigation and helped each other out. Sound fair to you?"

"Ladies and gentlemen. Dismissed, let's find out whatever we can by ourselves. You two, my office." Troopers all over the room rose and headed out of the room with the two agents staying behind with the station sergeant. The two agents followed him to his office and shut the door behind themselves as he sat down behind his desk and slammed down a folder onto his desk. "Why the hell are you two here? Who was this guy? All of my troopers out there can't even find out where this guy shops and what he buys for groceries. Nobody at his job knows what he does or anything about the man and, on top of it all, you come in here and instantly know something that you aren't telling us. Then you threaten me with pulling this out from underneath my feet? Alright fine. What the fuck is going on here?"

"Sergeant," Special Agent Wilson said as he sat down in a chair next to his partner. "Dr. Haydn is a political refugee from an unnamed, foreign country. He was a high official in this country's government, turned spy for us. We were hiding him here until several hours ago when you found him murdered alongside a rural highway in the middle of nowhere. So, as you can see, he's definitely high priority for us. This isn't one of those times you actually have a choice Sergeant. This is more than significant. We need to know who executed him, was it a random act, some foreign entity, or someone else."

"And this is?"

"For your ears only."

"Alright. Get me information. I want to know what you know about this guy that isn't classified. Alright? I need to know who the hell would want to kill him and how they found him here. I need to know so I can find the guy."

"You got it Sergeant." The agents smiled at the sergeant as troopers departed the building to hunt down whatever small leads they had.

August 5, 2008 - 06:30 [EST]
Layarteb City, New York

Alarms rang all over the city, the sun already having begun to rise in the east. The morning routines of men, women, and some children instantly sprang to life. Some people rolled over and hit snooze, wishing just for another fifteen minutes of precious sleep. Others sprang out of bed and into the showers or into workout clothes and others simply woke up to nothing special. Showers turned on, coffee pots began to percolate, stoves were lit, and refrigerators were opened. Since school was still a little over a month from opening, most kids across the city, from little ones to teenagers were still sleeping, except those few that would have to go to babysitters or daycare, both rare in the Empire and usually reserved for only a single class of citizens. The Empire always emphasized family and tradition over modernity but there were some families where both parents were more motivated by their careers than their families. They weren't even a significant minority in the Empire but they did exist.

In a small office and studio on the lower east side, a cell phone rang instead of an alarm clock. Quiet and occupied only by a single, young man in his early 20s, the echo of the cell phone ring bounced off every wall in the room. Groaning, the young man reached up from the makeshift bed, his face buried in a pillow. His cell phone was within his reach, on a table next to the bed but he still had to fumble around for it as its piercing echo sharply stung his ears. Finally, he felt it and lifted it off the table, flipping it open. Without moving any other part of his body, he put the phone to his ear and grunted, "Hello?"

"Is this Arthur McHenry?" A woman's voice on the other end of the phone said. She was not elderly but she was not too young either, he could tell that from the graceful way she asked for him.

"Yes."

"This is Olivia from OD." Instantly, Arthur McHenry's eyes opened wide and he flipped his body around and sat up, recognizing the name and its code meaning.

"I'm listening."

"You will meet with a liaison from OD this morning at 06:45 hours."

"Understood."

"Good luck on your big day." The woman on the other end terminated the call and Arthur sprang out of bed. "Olivia" was the codeword for his contact within the organization known as ODESSA or "OD" for short. ODESSA stood for Organized Dissidents, Estranged Socialites, and Activists and it was an organization that was still largely secret. It was created by Majestic and included the foremost elites within the Empire's society and tasked them with two goals: recruitment of more elites and dissent. They would be the ones to justify the overthrow of the Emperor to the masses, the re-establishment of the Republic, and they would be there to lead the masses in the post-Empire world. Numbering several thousand already, ODESSA comprised many individuals within the government of the Empire and also in the private sector. Among them was Lucas Henning, president of the Council for a Democratic Layarteb, the biggest anti-Empire organization that existed. It was also one of the only legal ones.

Arthur was not but a bolt in the machine that Majestic was crafting to unleash revolution against the Empire. Though he was just a peon, he had been recruited by ODESSA for the most important task there was, which would open up the Empire to the possibility that organized, massive dissent existed. In spite of the Empire's law against massive, unapproved public demonstrations, ODESSA had organized some ten thousand people across the Empire to march down Broadway in Layarteb City protesting the Empire and demanding a return to a republic. Most of them were college-aged students, easily swayed here and there by radical ideas but there did include a number of middle aged and elderly people, an even balance of men and women. Arthur was the leader of it all and he was their "ground organizer," so to speak. This would be a big day for him and it would put him on the map with ODESSA. It would be a big day and the protest was scheduled to begin at 13:00 hours so he still had a lot of time, which was why he was sound asleep. All of the leg work had been completed and he sent his "staffers" home to get a good rest as he was sure that many of them would be arrested. As long as they kept it peaceful, he would remark, they wouldn't have to fear for injury or death. He knew though that people would be hurt, that was simply the nature of the game.

Arthur shot across the room and grabbed his clothes quickly, making himself look as presentable as possible since he only had thirteen minutes and, given the reputation of ODESSA liaisons showing up early, he really only had between five and eight minutes to get presentable. Quickly, he brushed on deodorant and brushed his teeth, combing his hair as best as he could in that time. ODESSA had opened a small student center in the lower east side of Manhattan for many of its student planning activities and since Arthur had dropped out of school the previous semester, he had taken refuge in the center, agreeing to work there. His salary was low but he was guaranteed a place to live, the expenses paid for by ODESSA itself. His office was in the heart of a major college district with several campus's within throwing distance. The LES was also loaded with art galleries and, by its very nature, was much left on the political spectrum than most other places. It was the perfect place to recruit, of all people, students, for a revolution against the government.

Arthur was barely ready when the bell from the door rang, echoing in the still silent studio. "Shit!" He yelled out to himself as he realized that he looked like a mess. Never one for appearances per say, he wanted always to impress ODESSA liaisons. After all, he saw them as his future and the future of the Empire itself. Impatient, the liaison rang the bell a second time, depressing the button for quite some time before Arthur finally came into view behind the glass door. The liaison took a step back and held his hands in front of him, one palm around his other wrist. He was dressed in a sharp suit and he had dark sunglasses on his face that hid his eyes. Arthur could see, as he got to the door, that they were Oakley's and they were very nice. He walked up to the door and unlocked it, pushing it open to let the man into the studio office. "Good morning sir." He said as the man walked by him and into the dark studio, not saying a word or removing his glasses. "I apologize for my appearance and the appearance of our office. We've been very busy," he said as he shut and locked the door closed.

"How is your progress?" The man asked as Arthur prepared to switch on the lights. "Leave them off."

"Yes sir. Progress. It is very good. We are ready to act."

"That's good. Are you alone here?"

"I am sir. I sent my staff..." He was interrupted before he could continue. The man turned around and waved his hand for him to back away from the lights and Arthur did, stepping towards the side.

"So me your planned route."

"Yes sir." Arthur sort of scrambled towards his desk on the side of the office and fumbled around in the dark, trying to find the map of the city that he drew on to show his route down the city. "Here sir." The man looked down at it, through his sunglasses and nodded his head in approval. "This is acceptable I hope?" Someone who was a firebrand orator who had little respect for authority was the polished model in this case but, if he wanted success in his endeavor, he had to be polished and polite. On the streets and in the pubs and coffee houses, he had to be as virulent as anyone but, when dealing with ODESSA liaisons, he had to be a respectable, young man. He had to be professional.

"No. This is not acceptable."

"Sir?"

"You heard me. No. This is not acceptable." The man crumbled up the map and flung it aside as Arthur looked at him in disbelief. The plan had been approved by the previous liaison. He wanted to challenge the man, to explain himself and assert his point but he wasn't the alpha male anymore. "You are nothing but a mistake." The man said as he reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a suppressed pistol, an M130C6 Equinox pistol. He unlocked the safety and raised the pistol towards Arthur, a .45ACP round chambered and eleven more in the magazine. He didn't say anything else as he squeezed off two rounds. The first round tore through Arthur's right lung, slicing a hole clean through it and the second round went through the same spot on his left lung. Mortally wounded, he fell back, onto the ground, bleeding and only inches away from death. He slammed into the desk on the way down, scattering the papers everywhere.

The man stepped over him and looked down, with his pistol barrel leaked a small sliver of smoke. He aimed the pistol and squeezed off a third and final round, this one right through Arthur's forehead, killing him instantly and blasting the top and back of his skull to sticky fragments. Locking the safety back, the man put the pistol back in his suit jacket and turned around. He quickly but very calmly exited the building and, as he left the office, pulled out a key from his pocket and locked the door behind him. Adjusting his jacket, he calmly walked down the street, a few blocks this way and a few that way, eventually winding up seven blocks away, where he hailed a taxi, a smile on his face. "East Eighth and Fifth north of Washington Square Park." The man directed the driver as he pulled away, heading to a parking garage just north of Washington Square Park, a garage that was strictly for government officials only. A short ride, he handed the cabbie a ten shingrot bill, told him to keep the change, and exited the cab. The man adjusted his glasses as he strode up to the window and produced his wallet with his identification, a government card that identified him as a member of the Layartebian Secret Service, which was the main diplomatic security guard. Often their ranks included members of the 4th Black Operations Group, "Force Victor," which was a specialized group, not unlike Force Falcon, tasked strictly with bodyguard duty for government and diplomatic officials. The man could easily be one of these elite soldiers without anyone knowing it, not even his superiors in the Secret Service. "Agent Mosely, Secret Service."

"Yes sir. Keycard please." The kind, woman teller said as she looked at his badge. He slid a small keycard underneath the bulletproof glass and she took it with a smile, swiping it on her keyboard. It immediately pulled up his information and the required codeword that he would need to gain access. "Agent Mosely, how is your wife this morning?"

"She has the flu, I'm afraid."

"I'm sorry to hear there sir. Have a nice day." She handed him back the keycard and a door next to the window buzzed and unlocked. Placing the keycard back in his wallet with a smile, he turned, opened, the door, and entered the garage facility. Entirely underground, he would descend to the fourth level where he found his car, in spot number 482. Despite being underground, there was good lighting all around the facility, enough that he could leave his glasses on and not worry about not being able to see. Minutes later, he exited the garage and headed south where he eventually would wind up on the causeway to Governor's Island.

August 5, 2008 - 22:00 [EST]
Layarteb City, New York

The Layartebian News Network prepared for its nightly news. Every news channel across the Empire, local and national, did a nightly news program, either at 20:00 or 22:00 hours. In the more populated regions, especially Layarteb City, it was at 22:00 hours rather than 20:00. The hours of 20:00 and 21:00 in the more populated regions were prime time hours for television shows. The Layartebian News Network was a twenty-four hour news program and they had their own primetime commentary shows at 20:00 and 21:00 hours but they reserved 22:00 for the simple task of recapping the domestic and some foreign news stories for the day.

Two anchors appeared on the screen with smiles on their faces, one being a woman and the other being a man. "Good evening," underneath them, the screen displayed their names. They wouldn't do the usual, "Good evening, I'm" like the local news programs did. Their names were Frank Carthwright and Nancy Amato, both of them veterans in the Layartebian News Network, which was formed in 1981 after the establishment of the Empire. "Today in Layarteb City, a young man was shot and killed inside of his studio on the Lower East Side. The victim has been identified as Arthur McHenry, a twenty-two year old college student at Layarteb City University in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan. For more we go to Sverre Toknedal on the scene." Nancy Amato said, introducing the story.

"Thank you Nancy. I'm here on the Lower East Side," behind him was the building face, police officers all around. There were no flashing lights and most of the officers were outside except for a few detectives inside, gathering and collecting evidence. There were plenty of reporters there, who were blocked from coming any closer than the other side of the street, which had been closed for most of the day due to the volume of police cars and various other vehicles. "Police officers have released that Arthur McHenry, a twenty-two year old sophomore at Layarteb City University was murdered here at around 07:00 this morning by an unknown gunman. An earlier statement revealed that Arthur was shot three times at close range, twice in the chest and once in the forehead by a high caliber pistol round that did significant damage. A coroner's report is not expected until tomorrow morning but the statement did cite that the wounds were in a triangular pattern, the base being at each lung. They have concluded that a significant amount of skill was required and that they are not ruling out the possibility of a professional hitman."

"What can you tell us about the victim?" Nancy asked with Sverre nodding that he received the question in his ear.

"Arthur was the leader of a student council body known as the Students for a Democratic Layarteb, which is a campus offshoot and subsidiary of the larger, national organization, the Council for a Democratic Layarteb. Earlier this evening, Lucas Henning, the president of the CDL released a statement in which he called for public outcry against a crime that was not becoming of any civilized country. Mr. Henning went as far as to call this an act perpetrated by the Layartebian government."

"Why would he make that accusation?"

"It has come to light that Arthur had been planning a massive demonstration of students today that did not happen due to his demise. The demonstration was to protest the authoritarian nature of our federal government and would have cause a significant mess in the city this afternoon. It was to happen just after noon with over one thousand students from across the city. We do not know many details except that when other student leaders, who have not been identified, showed up this morning around 10:00 for a pre-rally meeting, his body was discovered. We are expecting more tomorrow when the coroner's report is concluded. It is interesting to note that Arthur McHenry is the son of a Cottish woman and an Irish Layartebian. Whether or not this has anything to do with the current and recent tensions between both the Realm and the Empire is unknown. Police have few leads at this moment and details are sketchy."

"Thank you very much Sverre." The camera returned to Nancy and then panned over to Frank, who had introduced the program.

"The Minister of the Interior stated..." He began, going onto the next story about the increased levels of piracy in the Caribbean.

August 6, 2008 - 06:30 [EST]
24 miles northeast of Greensboro, North Carolina

Mohsen Makhmalbaf was a figure of high importance in the Empire, despite not even being a Layartebian. He was the Eurasian ambassador to the Empire and he had finally begun his yearly vacation. An avid hunter, Mohsen Makhmalbaf had chosen, instead of taking only a family vacation, to take a short break in the woods of North Carolina for a few days before taking his children and wife to Disney World in Florida. Joined by a few staffers from the embassy and a Layartebian friend he had made years earlier, he had set out for the woods late on the 5th. Up bright and early, he had ventured out before dawn and he and his fellow hunters had already picked out a nice, cozy, high spot to search for and got comfortable. Whispering, the four men talking about what it was like to kill a deer or any other animal. For Mohsen, killing a deer or animal was a lot more tolerable than killing a person. Having been in the Eurasian Special Forces when he was younger, he was now a civilian, so to speak, and it was a nice change. He could have a family now and be with them rather than being shipped off on deployment here or there.

A man of fifty-two, Mohsen looked down the scope of his .30-06 rifle and peered out as the sun began to rise on the eastern horizon. The clearing ahead of him was calm, even by the brook where animals often came to wad during the earliest hours of the morning. Their conversations continued as a mile and a half away, another hunting team crawled into position. The two men were outfitted in the same camouflage as the rest of the hunters in the woods often took, even the orange vests that notified the other hunters that they were human and not animal. Hoping for a catch of their own, the two men opened up a large, plastic box and pulled out the various parts of the rifle and began to assemble them, carefully and quietly.

The two men didn't speak as they clicked the various pieces of the weapon together. They first took the main body of the rifle and attached the barrel. Then they attached the bipod and pulled out a large suppressor that had to weigh as much as the body of the rifle itself. Carefully, one of the men attached it to the end of the rifle barrel, the other attaching the powerful scope. The suppressor would hide the flash of the rifle rather than deaden the sound but that would certainly help against their prey, which was vision oriented rather than sound. Completely together, their rifle was almost sixty-six inches in length, thirty-nine and a half being the barrel alone. It weighed thirty-six pounds and was all black. The men carried only one magazine with them, a large, plastic box that held four rounds of high-caliber ammunition, enough to take down even the strongest and most powerful bear. No bear could actually withstand the impact of their round and after just one minute, they had the rifle fully ready. The shooter unlocked and pulled back the bolt on the rifle, dragging one of the four rounds into the chamber. He pushed the bolt back, wedging the bullet safely in the firing chamber, ready to leave the barrel at high speed.

Lying prone, the two men put on a pair of headphones, which would protect their hearing while they engaged their target. They could reduce the sound by as many as Without speaking the two men gave each other a sign that they were ready and the shooter uncapped is end of the ends of the scope, which were covered by a thin paper with only a small hole cut out in the center of the scope. There was only paper on the opposite end of the scope, which would prevent it from reflecting light, possibly scaring away the prey. A reflection like that could be seen miles away and was a pure give away, especially for seasoned prey that had survived years upon years in the wild. The shooter unlocked the safety and positioned the rifle and scope through the clearing well ahead of him, searching for his prey.

Moments later, a deer carefully stuck its head out of the forest and took a few steps forward before stopping. Inside the tree, Mohsen saw the movement four hundred yards away and hushed everyone as he looked down the scope of his rifle. "Yeah. That's a big one!" The deer was at least six hundred and fifty pounds and an easy target for Mohsen, if it would stay still long enough for him to get a perfect shot. He carefully, slowly, and very quietly positioned his rifle on the deer, careful to be as quiet as possible as the slightest sound could spook his prey. Much further away, the other shooter saw the same deer and immediately sighted it with his own crosshairs. Slowly, it moved towards the brook, all by itself. With the two men sighting the deer at the same time it was a question of who was going to get the first shot, even though the caliber of weapon used by the second shooter was overkill against a deer, even one weighing over six hundred pounds.

The two men independently stalked the deer as it walked slowly and carefully towards the brook. Mohsen's scope was a rugged one that was not powered. He manually set the range and the windage settings, based on what he observed. The second shooter had a fully powered scope that used a small, invisible, laser range-finder to determine both windage and range. Other sensors would automatically calculate bullet drop and he had a small compass that derived heading. An ammunition counter on the scope was also present, which was programmed in before the first shot was fired. The resulting recoil triggered a sensor in the weapon that reduced the ammunition counter. It was an expensive scope and very powerful but it was high-tech for a reason. The rifle was a high-caliber weapon that could fire at ranges of a mile or more. The precision of the scope was to match the precision of the weapon. Surely a human being could calculate all of the factors needed but not nearly as quickly and not nearly as efficiently. The scope could allow match grade ammunition to be used at match grade accuracy over and over again. A second shot wouldn't need to be manually adjusted as the scope did all of that for the shooter.

Finally, after four and a half minutes, the deer came to a stop at the brook and put its nose down, hesitantly at first, as if it sensed the danger in the air. It was silent in the clearing and as far as the second shooter as well, who happened to be over two thousand meters away. Finally, Mohsen saw his shot and made the final adjustments to his rifle scope. He centered the crosshairs on the deer and instantly controlled his breathing. A moment later, he squeezed the trigger and sent the round downrange at over twenty-nine hundred feet per second. The bullet was one hundred and eighty grains, leaving the muzzle of his rifle at enough speed to knock down the deer with one hit. Five hundred yards was nothing for the .30-06 bullet and it stuck the deer hard and tore through its flesh and muscle, right into the center of its chest, right where its heart was. It was a perfect kill shot as the deer didn't get very far, a few steps, before it crashed down to the ground, dead. Inside the tree, Mohsen and his friends pumped their fists victoriously.

The second shooter was waiting patiently when Mohsen shot. His muzzle flash gave away his position and the sound followed a few moments later. Instantly, the shooter trained the scope to the location of the muzzle flash and he zoomed to over twenty times. He could see the men in the tree, shaking each other's hands, victorious in their kill. The shooter held the rifle butt tight to his shoulder, its recoil dampening system ready to take the brunt force of the shot. With the crosshairs on target, he squeezed the trigger and sent his own round, a 15.5 x 115mm, nine hundred and twenty grain, projectile that was moving at a speed in excess of a kilometer per second. The round covered the distance in just under six seconds, long enough that the target moved quite a bit but stayed just where he was. The round still had a lot of force when it struck and it was big enough that a single strike could easily kill him, especially since it was aimed at his head. For good measure, the shooter squeezed off a second round before the first one hit, about half way into its flight time. The first shot rocked the rifle backwards at a high rate of speed and force but, thanks to the recoil absorber in the butt of the rifle, the shooter's shoulder wasn't dislocated. The sound was deafening but there was no muzzle flash, thanks to the heavy suppressor on the front end of the muzzle. The second round did the same thing and the shooter watched through his scope as the first round hit, followed by the second.

The first round was a low shot that hit the shooter in the shoulder, thanks to his movement. It tore through it and shred itself into a few pieces inside of his shoulder, causing significant damage, which would require more than just immediate, medical treatment. The second round was on target just the same. Because Mohsen had moved after the first round was fired, the second round was targeted differently, this time on his chest. When the first round hit, he instantly shot backwards from the force and the pain and this meant that the second round would impact him in the chest. It hit to the right of his heart and pierced through his lug with tremendous force, breaking four ribs in the process. The round wouldn't exit either, instead this one was an incendiary round, which instantly began to burn inside of his chest. The shooter, watching both rounds hit, saw that there wouldn't be need for a third round and he immediately because to disassemble the large weapon. The two, scalding hot brass casings from his shots were collected as well and thrown into the plastic box. In seconds, they had disassembled the rifle and were on their way out of the forest.

Before Mohsen's friends got him to the ground, he was dead. The combined effects of the two rounds severed one artery and sent shrapnel through his body into a major vein as well as into his heart. Mohsen had suffered a gruesome and quite bloody death, which would make its way to the Eurasian government very soon enough.

Ankara, Turkey, United Federation of Eurasia

Premier Nasir was having another non eventful day at his office, intill one of his aids rush in and said the following in Arabic

“Premier… I regret to inform you Ambassador Mohsen Makhmalbaf has been assassinated.” Said the aid


The Premier frozen for moment as he process what he has been just told, then he said “ Your telling me that our ambassador to the Empire…has been killed in cold blood..Well this makes things certainly more interesting doesn’t it?”

The aid picked his words carefully and said “Yes, Premier…this certainly throws things into chaos..”

“That’s a understatement....one of our top ambassadors to one of our key allies has killed and I intend to get whomever is behind this. Contact the Emperor Office…I want a word with him...that is all.” Said the Premier, who maintained his calm for the entire time.

The aid nodded and left the office

OOC: Conversation RP'd between Ottoman Khaif and myself on AIM.

August 6, 2008 - 09:00 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

The Emperor, who happened to be out of his office when the incident occurred was rushed back into it by aides who found him elsewhere in the Fortress of Comhghall. "Sir. The Eurasian Ambassador has been killed." One of them said as the Emperor stood in front of a mirror and shaved.

"Is that so?" He asked, nonchalantly. "I imagine that this will not make the Eurasians very happy?"

"Sir?"

"I'm kidding. Yes I have just heard myself. It is an issue I will have to address privately with Premier Nasir. I imagine he'll want an audience via video-phone once he is notified, although I am sure he has been." The Emperor concluded his shaving and was escorted to his office as he reviewed the initial police report. Ambassador Makhmalbaf of the Eurasian Federation had been killed by a skilled assassin firing a 15.5 x 115mm, military rifle at a range in excess of one mile. The first round had struck him in the shoulder and sent fragments and shrapnel into a major artery as well as a major vein. The second round, which had been the lethal one, struck him just an inch right of his heart. Because it was an incendiary round, its effects were the most brutal and those had been the ones which ultimately stopped his heart. An immediate autopsy done had shown that the rounds were match-grade and military in nature. This was a professional hit, it was obvious and who ordered and carried it out was a question the police would have to answer. Combined now with the assassination of a college student of semi-Cottish descent, this marked the second incident between the Empire and an October Alliance ally in just two days. Something was definitely going on and whoever it was that was behind these two killings, they wanted tension between the Empire and its strongest allies.

The Emperor was finally called by Premier Nasir just after 09:00 hours, two and a half hours after the assassination of Ambassador Makhmalbaf. It was guaranteed to be a tense conversation, to say the least. As the Emperor picked up the phone and was connected to the Premier, he adjusted his tie, watching the news coverage of the assassination from the Layartebian News Network on the television in his office. "Premier. Let me be the first to say that this is an atrocity that we will investigate fully. Whomever is responsible will not get away with this crime at all!"

Premier Nasir maintained his calm and said, "I have full faith in your nation's ability to get whomever is behind this crime. Nevertheless, we in Eurasia, are not pleased with the fact that our top ambassadors has been killed in cold blood."

"I assure you that you are as unsettled as I am. As you are aware the Empire has been plagued by an epidemic of terrorism for the past three years, the same terrorism that led us to the Caucasus to sweep out the Sepah-e Pasdaran so long ago. What we uncovered there allowed us to prevent numerous acts, some so horrid that would have caused casualties of untold numbers and proportions. However, I regret that it has not been as successful of an investigation as we have hoped. It is our belief that whomever is responsible for this is linked to this same organization and that their hope is to drive a wedge between the Empire and its respective allies in the October Alliance. It is my hope that you see this as well and will see through it to our long-standing history."

"It is because of our long-standing history, Eurasia trust your nation to bring those who have perpetrated this crime to justice but I do not speak for everyone in my government. Many of us are clearly upset at this senseless killing. I do expect the report of the investigation to be sent my government for our own review of it."

"Certainly Premier that is a matter that will be given highest priority. The Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be giving your government full cooperation on this matter and I assume you will want to make arrangements for the body, something the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Justice have eagerly asked me about this morning. We do not want to cause any undue grief to your government or the family. It is a shame that there are those in your government who do not trust us on this matter. If there is anything I can personally do to help alleviate their fears, I would be willing. The Empire is in a strange place right now and I dare say we are a fragile state that risks major undoing, especially if our allies were to abandon us."

"I understand completely my friend. Eurasia went thought its own periods of instability and managed to come out stronger. I believe the same can be said for the Empire. I assure you Eurasia will stand by the Empire through thick and thin. As for the body, the family will handle that matter as it's a private matter now. I truly do hope we can get to the bottom of this crime as soon as possible."

"As do I Premier. As do I." With that the phone call was terminated and the Emperor took a seat in his chair. At the same time, half way around the world, Gatawain forces in Strasbourg were beginning their advances outwards and the Imperial Layartebian Military, having bases in southern France, went to high alert in the area.

August 15, 2008 - 21:00 [EST]
Lower Westchester, New York

Jack Delaney sat comfortably on his sofa, watching a movie with his girlfriend by his side, resting her head in his lap. She was extremely tired, having come down with some sort of summer cold and he was a man who never slept. Quietly, they sat, together, watching the movie, which was a drama flick titled The Shawshank Redemption. It was one of their favorite movies and though Jack was never a man of many words, Tricia, his girlfriend, had noticed that he had been especially quiet. "Something wrong?" Her sweet voice asked as she shifted around and looked up at him. He had just taken a sip of beer and put the glass bottle onto an end table next to the couch and just looked down at her. She knew better than to ask such a question, especially of a man who had more blood on his hands than any ruler in history. "You're way too quiet."

"I'm just thinking."

"What of?"

"What's in store for us." By "us" he meant the Empire itself, rather than the two of them but Tricia, who was more than well versed in his subtleties and cryptic speech manners was taken aback, the cold working on her logic center more than she realized.

"What's wrong with 'us'?" She asked back, concerned, sniffling. She was exhausted and had a low-grade fever but she insisted on staying up, even though she was wearing two pairs of socks, thick sweat pants, and a sweatshirt, shivering underneath a blanket, all of in the middle of August.

"I mean the Empire."

"Why? The terrorism?"

"Yes."

"You'll stop it. I know you and those men, you're all we have really."

"Are we?" He looked down at her. Or are we the biggest enemies? The thought flashed.

"Yes. You stopped how many ordeals in the past?" Hers in particular led the their meeting and eventual courtship.

"We can stop whatever it is that we know. What if there's more? Something we don't know?"

"I've lived here long enough to know that there isn't much the Ministry of Intelligence doesn't know about. I may not be privy to any classified information but I'm no fool."

"You're right. But even stuff gets by them. Remember Grenada?"

"I do."

"That slipped away." He remembered the wounds he received from Grenada and flashbacks fogged over his eyes.

"Inside Jack, your a torrential storm. You can't be the savior of this country every minute of every day." Although that was what he really was, even when he wasn't looking down the scope of a barrel. "You need to step back, push away. Watch the sunrise or sunset."

"I know what you mean and you know I can't. The oath I swore ends only when I am dead.

"What debts have you yet to repay?"

"There are plenty."

"Like what?" She knew he wouldn't answer that and she knew it was foolish to ask but she was on the offensive, a rarity against Jack, especially in her condition, where the logic portion of her brain would have otherwise prevented her from asking such questions. "What debts? How many dead faces do you see at night?"

He didn't answer her immediately, opting instead to take a gulp of his beer, finishing it and feeling its warmness in his blood as he put the empty bottle down. "I don't see any. It's been so long I've just gotten used to it."

"Do you actually enjoy it? Do you enjoy taking life?"

"No." He was lying but she couldn't tell, he was a professional liar and he was paid to lie. "Never have I once enjoyed it."

"Good. Stay that way." She didn't realize that he enjoyed it too much to ever quit. The addiction of killing, its power and its lure had captivated him decades earlier and that was his master and true love. It had been since the day his wife and son died, the day, with his bare hands, he killed their murderers. The day he ultimately killed the final person responsible had sealed his fate. As for the faces of the dead, he saw them every day, at every turn, and at every corner of his life but he never let them bother him. He had killed hundreds upon hundreds, too many to even count anymore but he was sure he could remember each instance, vividly, if he had to, if he wanted to, or if he needed.

September 5, 2008 - 23:21 [CST]
Chicago, Illinois

"I'm just parking now, give me five minutes, okay? I love you too." A man in a very expensive suit said into his cell phone as he stepped out of his 2008 Mercedes S550 4MATIC. He put away his expensive cell phone and locked the car behind him, his designer briefcase in his hand. He was a man of excess, or so it seemed. A partner of a powerful law firm based in the Sears Tower, Mr. Thomas Anderson was a self-made millionaire who never lived much of a childhood or really enjoyed college. His mind had always been on the prize in front of him, which was the paycheck he wanted to one day receive twice a month. He received it now and though he was married, there was a longing deep inside of him of regret. He learned to suppress it and he did just that as he walked towards the elevators.

He didn't have to wait long for the doors to open and, when they did, he stepped into its emptiness. Quickly, the doors closed and he pushed the button for the penthouse, which he owned. He also inserted a key into the elevator above the button panel. Without it, he could have never got to the penthouse. It stood more than twenty-five stories off the ground and offered a beautiful view to every direction. He could see the Sears Tower in the distance and most of the Chicago skyline, the great lakes, the seaport, and plenty of other parts of the city. His wife was waiting for him upstairs and he was eager to get there, take off his suit, and relax. He had a long day at work, a very long day and he was pleased that it was a Friday. He wasn't going to be in on either Saturday or Sunday and had two days to recoup his lost rest and gain more of his wits back.

The elevator shot upwards, ignoring every other call because it was tasked strictly for the penthouse, a neat part of its programming. He enjoyed that part especially. Quickly, it shot up to the penthouse and he put his keys back into his pocket. There were only three keys: his, his wife's, and concierge, who just happened to be at home that evening. He loosened his tie as the elevator approached the top floor and felt it come to a halt underneath him. The doors dinged and opened. He stepped out onto his marble floor and strode towards the living room. It was big, open, and offered a lot of space. He strode down the hallway towards the living room and plopped his briefcase onto a table near the elevator doors. He unknotted his tie and loosened the top button as well as he walked into the kitchen instead, taking a bottle of water from the refrigerator and pouring its contents into a large glass. "Babe, you here?" He called out, wondering where she was.

"In here." She said from the living room and he set out for it, his shoes echoing on the marble floor beneath his feet. The living room was thickly carpeted so he wouldn't make any sound and he was hoping just to sit down on his couch and take off his shoes, to relax and turn himself back into a human being, rather than a machine part. He had been working non-stop on a special case for two weeks and he had only seen relief a few hours earlier, when he got a call from the opposing lawyer about dropping the case due to inconsistencies in the story of his client. Thomas Anderson was happy and he poured himself a small drink to celebrate, deciding to leave the office at once, head home, and enjoy his weekend.

"Alright." He answered her back as he came around the corner and stepped onto the plush carpeted steps that dropped down into his living room, two feet below the rest of the floor. It was at that moment that he saw a man sitting across from his obviously shaken and scared wife. "Who are you?" He demanded of the man who was sharply dressed himself in a suit that he instantly liked.

"Sit down Mr. Anderson." The man said as he stretched his neck. "We have some business to discuss."

"Like hell we do, who are you?" He put down the glass on a small table and pulled his phone from his pocket. "I am calling the police. Unless you," he was interrupted immediately by his wife.

"No. Don't." The man drew his pistol, a long suppressor fitted to the end of it. "He's armed."

"Do you know who I am? What are you, a thief?"

"No. Put down the phone and sit down. Now!" He pointed the pistol right at his head and his face said that he was serious. Unwillingly and reluctantly, the man put down the phone on the coffee table and took a seat in the nearest chair. The man with the gun picked up the cell phone and removed the battery and put it into his pocket. "Alright, now that we're done there. Ma'am, yours too." Hers was sitting on the table as well and she pushed it towards him. He did the same thing and sat back, the pistol in his lap. "I am not a thief. I am not here to rob or rape either of you. I'm not here to blackmail you and I am not here to teach you any lesson."

"Then why are you here?"

"I am simply an instrument for my superiors. In precisely eight minutes I will receive a phone call that will provide me with further details that I will pass along to you. I am here to work with you."

"Then why the gun?" The man's wife asked pointedly.

"This is a matter of the highest importance." He said as he tapped the pistol on his leg. "I must have your full attention and cooperation." The man with the pistol said, keeping his eyes on the two people in front of him. "You must understand me."

"I would understand you better if you put away the weapon," Thomas Anderson said, his wife shaking across the room. "Much better."

"I'm sorry but I can't. Until this is over I will keep it. You must sit here and do just as I say. This is not up for discussion." He said calmly, in total control of the situation. "The company I work for is quite reaching you must understand."

"Reaching how? What company is this?"

"I cannot disclose its name but believe me when I say that the men I work for will not take kindly to any uncooperative behavior."

"I do not believe you and I do not believe a word of this. What are you keeping us here for?" Thomas Anderson went to stand but the man with the gun motioned for him to stay seated.

"Stay seated Mr. Anderson. I have only one purpose and that is to deliver a message to you but if you are not here I cannot deliver it."

"You said yourself it will take eight minutes so why must we sit here until then? I have to use the bathroom."

"Because eight minutes is scheduled but it could be sooner and this a message that must be delivered immediately. Hold it. You have only six minutes to wait now."

"What is the name of this company?" The wife demanded.

"It is not a company I can disclose."

"Then we do not believe you and we shall call the police once you leave!"

"You may do that but I assure you that they will not find me."

"How so? We have security systems all over this building. Surely you have been seen coming in and both of us can describe your face." Thomas Anderson added as he suddenly had a thought. "How the hell did you get in here anyway? Did you let him in?" He addressed his wife at the end of the sentence as the man held up a key. "I have a key."

"Where did you get that?"

"It was made for me by my company. As you can see, they are far reaching."

"Nonsense! Anthony gave it to you didn't he?"

"Who is Anthony?"

"Our concierge."

"Your concierge is named Harrison and no he did not. Very crafty Mr. Anderson."

"Then how did you get it? You must have stole it from one of us and copied it."

"Not likely. You keep yours in your pants pocket with the rest of your keys and your wife has it in her purse, along with her keys as well. Her purse is never away from her side. I imagine there are other important items in there?" He said. "You have a very good sense of responsibility ma'am. I can appreciate that."

"Then how?" Thomas Anderson demanded.

"I told you already. You know Mr. Anderson, I do not enjoy answering the same question more than once."

"I'm sorry to inconvenience you of course. Please accept my humblest of apologies." Thomas Anderson answered with nothing short of pure sarcasm.

"I am not a fan of sarcasm either. You should just take solace in the fact that I am here to help you."

"Yet it just doesn't feel that way."

"You've only got a few minutes. Just sit down, grin, bear it, and let me deliver my message. When I am done I will gladly leave without so much as disturbing a thing." The man said, the pistol still in his lap.

"I find that hard to believe. You've already upset so much." The wife said just before the man's cell phone rang. "Finally."

"Hello. Yes this is Agent Green. Yes. I understand. Both of them are with me. Correct. No I was not. I will. Go for message." There was an awkward and uncomfortable pause. "Clear. Thank you." He hung up the phone and put it back into his jacket pocket. He smiled as he looked at the two of them. "Well this will be over very shortly."

"Good. What the hell were you told?" Thomas Anderson demanded. The man raised the pistol and fired two rounds across the room, right into Thomas' wife's head. Both bullets went through her head and exited out, landing in the sheetrock of the wall, bloody and stained. Her head exploded as the two rounds tore through her skull and splattered her brain all over the wall. Thomas nearly jumped towards her in horror as he looked at the man. "What the fuck!" He uttered as the man leveled the sights on her.

"Mr. Anderson. You see I work for the Illuminati and I am afraid that you, as a social elite in the Layartebian society have to die. Our goal is to usher back the Republic but we need three key elements and one of those is support of the masses, another support of the elites, and the third is support of the military. The masses are quickly swaying to our cause and many of the elites have as well. Your death, your martyrdom, so to speak, will garner more support. Unfortunately, you have to die." He squeezed the trigger twice more and put both rounds into the man's chest. He slumped over onto the floor, gripping his chest. Neither of the rounds killed him, instead, they pieced his two lungs and instantly he began to suffocate as they both collapsed inside of his chest. "Your lungs have collapsed right now and I am afraid that you will suffocate to death before you bleed out. It's most gruesome but you see there is a reason for it. It is my trademark. Well this trademark. You will mark the second death of it. I'm afraid that poor kid in Layarteb City last month suffered greatly as I was a little slow with the third round, which will be right into your forehead. You won't feel a thing. Go well Mr. Anderson," he pointed the weapon down and put the last round through the man's forehead. He was dead instantly, the bullet lodged now into the carpet and floor.

The assassin picked up his phone and dialed the same number he had received the previous call from and waited for the operator on the other end to speak. "Yes. This is Agent Green. The task is complete." He hung up the phone and pulled out a plastic bag from his pocket, holstering his pistol at the same time. He also pulled out a pair of needlenose pliers that he used to die out the two rounds from the sheetrock, one round from the man's chest, a fourth from the chair, and the fifth round from the carpet. He put them into the bag and collected the five shell casings, throwing those in as well. "It is a shame Mr. Anderson." The assassin quickly departed and headed for the elevator. He placed the call for it and waited a few moments for it to come, stepping into it, and pressing the button for the bottom parking garage, where his car was parked.

As he left the building garage, his phone rang again and he answered it. "Yes. Speaking. Understood. Go." He turned the corner and headed for the airport. His car was a rental and he would have to return it before he took a flight back to Layarteb City. He would present his credentials at the ticket counter and be allowed to board the plane with his pistol, no questions asked. As he drove towards the airport, waiting on his phone for the end of the call, he couldn't help but think of the deaths he had caused over the previous month. They included the college kid in Layarteb City on August 5, a Eurasian diplomat the next day, and now a prominent Chicago lawyer. "Yes this is Jack Delaney," he said as the voice came onto the phone, a voice he immediately recognized. It was Mr. Carpenter and he was definitely in need of something important.

September 11, 2008 - 10:00 [AST]
Caracas, Venezuela

"We've rebuilt most of the city already. It was a shame that war had to devestate it but now, we don't have to worry again, do we?" A suited buisness said as he lowered the window in the backseat of the taxi. He was with another man, also wearing a suit who spoke little. He had just stepped off a plane from Miami and his two bags were in the taxi cab's trunk. The two men were inside of a luxury taxi, the kind that VPs and directors in important companies used. The cab was clean, comfortable, and smelled nicely. "You know the war was a terrible thing but our economy has rebounded. We've buried the dead, rebuilt our buildings, and cleaned the streets. There remain a few places that we haven't yet fixed up but they're getting there."

"Yes. War is a terrible thing." The traveling man said to him, looking out of the window, his dark sunglasses hiding his eyes. "War is a truly terrible thing." His voice wandered, almost as if there were a story or a visual accompanied with his speech but there wasn't any to come to the two men inside of the car. "I hope that none of your family or friends were killed or injured."

"Unfortunately my daughter was killed by a sniper. Friendly or enemy, I don't know. I'll never know." The man looked at him and saw a tear in his eye as he thoughto f his daughter. "She was fourteen and away at school at the time just outside of the city. We were separated and I was forcibly evacuated and I was told that she was too. I guess they weren't quick enough." He said as he remembered hearing the news of his daughter being killed. It had devestated him and he had never been the same since.

"I'm sorry to hear. I lost my wife and son a long time ago." The man said, his sunglasses still hiding his eyes. "War is a terrible thing Mr. Dyson. Unfortunately, it is all around us. Let me ask you something about stability."

"Shoot."

"Your company has several holdings in both the Amazonian Control Territory and Matro Grosso. Those two areas alone scream instability. You've just told me about your daughter dying a year ago and yet your company has dealings with the very places that sparked said war. How am I supposed to explain that one?" The man was direct and he had a reason for asking such a question. He was there to negotiate a merger with Dyson Electronics, a small but global firm that was responsible for creating microchips that could be used in guidance systems for battlefield rockets. The man in the car with him represented another small but global electronics firm known as Digital Bath, who manufactured RAM for computers and was looking to expand into other sectors, automobile and defense particularly. The merging of both companies wasn't that big of a deal to anyone outside of the two companies and few within both knew about it. It would have gotten a small blurb in the business section of some newspapers and not even that many of them.

"I can see your concern with the matter. Opportunity is my answer. Despite the trouble in both regions and despite what the trouble means to me and this city here and this entire nation as a whole, I am not a politician. I am an entrepreneur and both of these holdings predate both of these conflicts."

"Fair enough. I hope then that you will understand our caution. We have a small but loyal staff and consumer base that has made our company what it is today and I feel a debt to them, a debt that I wouldn't want to violate."

"Understandable of course. Small companies like ours owe a great deal to our consumers and our workers. I couldn't agree more. You have nothing to fear in that instance. We do not deal with disreputable characters." It was odd that he should say that for Digital Bath was a front for the Illuminati and the man with him was none other than Jack Delaney, there to negotiate the merger as well as carry out a secondary mission.

September 12, 2008 - 12:00 [AST]
Caracas, Venezuela

The merger was approved in the dead of night on Friday, September 12. By 10:30 in Venezuela or 9:30 in Florida, it had been announced in both companies and a half hour later, it would be on the news, being prepared for papers and analysts throughout the Empire to mull over, even if briefly. The merger wouldn't get much press except for a small blurb in the paper and a few minutes of television airtime. For the most part, the merger meant little even in its own little world of electronics but to the people involved, it meant a lot of things. To the shareholders, it meant expansion, profit, and success. Management would meet, consolidate, and they promised not to fire anyone, they would be rewarding their employees rather than punishing them.

Ecstatic, Dyson had phoned Jack's hotel room four times during the morning but, each time, got the answering service. He left four messages. So pleased with the dealings from the previous day, he wanted to take Jack out to celebrate but, with Jack unable to be found, he was left wondering. He hadn't checked out of his hotel but he wasn't answering the phone. Dyson was tempted to send someone to his hotel but had held off on the idea for now. Instead, he remained in his office, celebrating with his workers. A video-link to the Digital Bath headquarters showed the same scene. People extended greetings over the internet and toasted to each other as little to no work actually got done. Monday would resume normal life but for today, for this Friday, it was entirely different.

The Illuminati didn't need the profit or even the influence of Dyson Electronics. They needed just another washing machine for money. Since the Ghost Warriors had been slowly captured and their activities rolled back by the Illuminati, they needed more outlets for washing the money clean. That was an unfortunate reality of what they had to do. The Ministry of Justice had unraveled a lot with the Ghost Warriors, Sepah-e Pasdaran, Totalis, and the Republican Liberation Army and they were all connected. They were on the heels of the Illuminati and they knew it. They were consolidating, moving their funds around discretely from one place to the next, keeping everything appropriately organized, ensuring that not a dime went miscounted. Carefully and cautiously, they played a game they had played hundreds of times before.

The upper echelon of the Illuminati and Majestic knew this and knew it well. That was specifically why Delaney was sent to Caracas. The merger would have been approved regardless of the offer from Dyson. Jack was there for a specific reason and it wasn't Illuminati related. It was Majestic related. Early in the morning, he drove forty-five miles south of the city to a rural farm that was an Illuminati safehouse. He had gone there to pick up a single satchel, filled with explosives, ten pounds of Semtex-A. He drove back to Caracas to yet another Illuminati safehouse and, with the explosives. Three hours later, he drove out in a Mercedes E Class W211, dressed as a chauffeur with the proper identification of being part of Caracas Premier Transportation. In the time between he last met with Dyson, he had dramatically changed his appearance. He had dyed his hair a darker shade of black, used contacts to change his eye color to brown, and added a full beard onto his face. He would also alter his speech to a Venezuelan accent and he would only speak in Spanish. Dyson would never know it was Delaney or, as he had introduced himself, Jason Burke. At the same time, Majestic had conducted a black operation with the Ministry of Intelligence and locked into his cell phone, as well as his office phone, and his secretary's phone. Any calls made out of them would be eavesdropped by the Ministry of Intelligence. All that was done by 09:00 so when Dyson had made his four phone calls, Jack knew all about it. The only thing he could do was wait and, skew the odds in his favor.

He picked up his cell phone and dialed Dyson's number at 12:00. "Mr. Dyson. It's Jason, I'm sorry I missed your calls, I was exercising."

"Jason! I'm glad you called me back." Dyson yelled on the other end of the phone, the elation in his voice.

"I take it our respective companies are one and everyone is pleased?"

"You got that right! You've got to come out and celebrate with us."

"Sounds good. I'd like to come over and meet some of your workers. Would that be alright?"

"Not in the least bit. I'll be over with a car. I want to shake your hand for helping our companies. How long?"

"I'm ready right now."

"Good!" He hung up the phone and immediately called to his secretary to get him a car. Once the number went through, the Ministry of Intelligence had the call.

"Good afternoon, Caracas Premier Transportation." An operator within the Ministry of Intelligence said. She was a woman with a beautiful, Hispanic voice, Ecuadorian by origin. "How may I help you?"

"Hello. This is Alice from Dyson Electronics. Mr. Dyson is in need of transportation for this afternoon. Is there a vehicle available?"

"Certainly. I have a vehicle just a mile away. Your driver will be Fernando."

"Thank you." The call was completed quick enough and Jack's cell phone rang moments later. He smiled as he started the car and set off for Dyson Electronics. He was there in moments, pulling up to the building and stepping out of the car, adjusting his hat as he walked through the entrance and to the secretary at the front counter.

"Buenas tardes. Soy Fernando, aquí para Sr. Dyson." [Good afternoon. I am Fernando, here for Mr. Dyson.] He said with a smile.

"Un momento." [One moment.] The secretary said with an equally friendly smile. He was down in just a few moments where Jack shook his hand. Dyson looked at him for a second, thinking if he had recognized the man but he realized that he didn't. Instead, he followed Jack out to the car and climbed in as Jack held the door open for him and shut it behind him. Jack got into the car and started it, putting on the air conditioner.

"To the Grand Venezuelan Suites."

"Yes sir." Jack said as he pulled the car away and headed towards the hotel. He would take a detour not far from the actual hotel and pull down an abandoned street where he would get out of the car and complete his mission.

September 12, 2008 - 12:15 [AST]
Caracas, Venezuela

Jack turned the car down a few streets as he made his way for the hotel. In the back, Dyson beamed with excitement. He just couldn't wait to begin celebrating and if he had known what was in store for him, he would have never stepped into the car. "Señor, hay un accidente de automóvil que debemos tomar un desvío." Jack said as he pulled down a side street that still bore scars from the war. Dyson didn't respond, he only nodded and Jack slowed the car down as he entered the street, which was one way and quite narrow. It was desolate and Jack smirked as he reached underneath the dashboard and pushed a small, black button. Seconds later, a loud echo shot through the street and the sound of flapping and ripping rubber filled the air. "¡Mierda! Señor. Tenemos un neumático desinflado." [Shit! Sir. We have a flat tire.]

"¡Cambíelo bien! Y el apuro arriba tiene que llegar al hotel." [Well change it! And hurry up we've got to get to the hotel.] He said as Jack stepped out of the car and he dialed a number. He was really going to call Jason, or rather Jack, and tell him the bad news but when he looked up and held the pone to his ear, his driver was nowhere around. He quickly turned his head to see that the trunk was still closed and that the car wasn't moving with the motions of a jack. Jack had stepped through an alleyway and was about forty feet away from the car, shielded behind a dumpster. He pulled his phone from its holster on his belt, entered a four digit number before he lifted the small, plastic antenna a half inch out of its holder. It clicked and he looked at the front screen. It showed a small timer and it counted down from four to zero. When the two digits read zero, he pushed down on the antenna, shoving it back into its resting place. A single radio wave exited the phone and shot straight to the car, just under eighty feet away and on the other side of the alleyway and building.

The roar and trembling of the exploding car echoed into the alleyway and through the ground. Pieces of the car were torn from the frame violently, throwing them here, there, and everywhere. The explosion tore and chipped off chunks of concrete from the buildings in the street and the explosive fireball singed everything for a forty-foot radius as it rolled upwards in a fury of red and black. Car alarms a half mile away started to echo from the trembling of the ground, which would suggest an explosion as powerful as a fifty pounds. It was a powerful bomb and it crashed a whole section of wall down next to it, showering the ground with brick, mortar, dust, and debris.

Jack turned out of the alleyway and looked around. People had come to their doors, windows, and out of their houses to see what had happened. The black smoke licked up from the street and distorted the bright, blue sky above. Putting the phone back to his hip, Jack took a left turn and walked away from the scene, casually, as if nothing had really happened. Disappearing was an act he made into an artform and within minutes, he was around the corner, hailing a taxi. He would go back to his hotel, wait an hour, then get on a plane and leave.

Hours later, he stepped into a meeting with Majestic and informed them of his deeds. He reported on all of his transgressions over the past few weeks. They were pleased but even he realized how truly bad his actions were. He simply looked around the room, watching everyone and laughed. And I'm the comfortable liar? He thought to himself.

September 15, 2008 - 20:00 [EST]
Layarteb City, New York

The Layarteb News Network had been reporting on the various assassinations around the Empire since mid-July. They reported on the deaths of Dr. Haydn, Arthur McHenry, the Eurasian ambassador, Thomas Anderson and his wife, and now Luís Dyson in Caracas. Federal investigators had put together many pieces and linked them all to the same person. One person had been responsible for all of them, they concluded and they gathered as much evidence as they could; albeit, whomever the killer was, they concluded, he was a professional. The assassinations began on July 21 and the last had been on September 12. No real leads were to be had though.

On Monday, September 15, they did a full, hour long special on the murders and touched on a lot of what the federal authorities had made public. There wasn't a lot to be had though, not so much because it wasn't public but because it didn't exist. The news media speculated here and there but failed miserably most of the time and Jack knew this as he watched the special in the comfort of his living room. His girlfriend was out of town, flying to London and staying for a few days before she would catch a flight home. The house was quiet, peaceful, and empty. He always hated when it was, it left him too much time to think. He had been responsible for all of the murders but one, that one being Dr. Haydn. He didn't know who did that and neither did Majestic but whomever it was, they were just as skilled as he was. Majestic speculated that it was a woman, possibly an Irish assassin but there was no way to know for sure.

The reasoning behind the murders was to shake confidence in the security that the Emperor promised. Arthur, Jack's first target was a kid, so to speak. He was gunned down while his organization was planning the biggest demonstration in decades. Everyone looked at that murder as if the government were responsible. The Eurasian ambassador was to shake the confidence of the Empire's allies and make it apepar as if the Empire couldn't protect the diplomats. Thomas Anderson and his wife were opportunity kills. They were both social elites and part of ODESSA and their deaths made ODESSA spring to action. They were angry now, enraged, and scared, paranoid that the government was onto them, hunting them down. Lastly, there was Dyson, who was blown to smitherines on a street in Caracas, just after his company merged with one that really was an Illuminati front. The Illuminati thought now that the government was onto them and they were scared and paranoid, more than normal.

Everything was converging together for the biggest shift of popular support that had happened since the Emperor first announced victory over Venezuela just after his rule was established.

OOC Summary

Chapter One: Faint & Numb


October 10: A massive truck bomb in the order of 2,000 pounds goes off outside a newspaper office of the LNN in the early morning hours. 7 dead.
October 11: Missile Base 1511 undergoes treasonous insurrection. Further reports unknown.
October 14: ILN Hunter SSN ordered to take up position off Layarteb coast. Further orders not given.
October 15: Force Falcon Team One ordered to re-establish contact with Missile Base 1511. Boeing 777 crashes north of Athens, Tennessee. All 89 on board are killed. Investigation pending.


Chapter Two: Frantic

October 16: Force Falcon Team One leads a strike on Missile Base 1511. During the course of the retaking, a single LGM-174A Satan is launched at Layarteb City with the intention of hitting it. Luckily, MIM-196 AABMS missiles intercept the ICBM before it could hit.


Chapter Three: Estranged

October 18: Force Falcon Team One lands in Santa Cruz, Bolivia for the assassination of the President of GnOoLoCoPeLep.
October 20: GnOoLoCoPeLepian President assassinated early in the morning.
October 22: Failed attempt by terrorist group to bomb Layartebian airbase in Sunbury, PA.


Chapter Four: Overburdened

October 23: Central Justice Agency begins Anti-Domestic Terrorist Force under the command of Bureau Chief Benjamin O'Davis. Identifies Republican Liberation Army as terrorist group responsible for bombings of Layarteb City and airliner over Tennessee.
October 25: RLA blows up a Boeing 707 and an Airbus A300 from Layarteb Airways over Cove Neck, New York and Belle Harbor, Queens, Layarteb City.
October 26: Emperor makes speech condemning the RLA. Raid on Layarteb City apartment nets 17 RLA terrorists and kills 3. Documents recovered tell of a plot for subway bombings.
October 28: News media is leaked the presence of the Mayan uprising in the Yucatán state.
October 30: Six security guards shot and killed execution style inside the Layarteb City office for Layarteb Publishers
United.
October 31: Secret societies meet to discuss revolutionary plan.
November 2: Two firefighters die in a suspicious blaze in a New Jersey factory.


Chapter Five: Rosenrot

November 5: 84 RLA terrorists seize St. Paul's Boarding School in New Hampshire and take 1,184 hostages, most of them under 18. In the fighting, they lose 2 of their own and kill 20, mostly school officials and guards. Terrorists round up hostages in the main dining hall as parents, soldiers, and police officers, including SWAT, surround the school. By 1300, a standoff ensues. At 1430, three children are executed by the RLA terrorists after a SWAT sniper shoots one of the terrorists. The SWAT sniper dies mysteriously. At 1530, Rome and Norway denounce the seizure.
November 6: Under the threat of a severe winter storm, small group of soldiers enter school and hide in admissions office. Families begin to grow wrestless and plot their own action. Explosions go off in dining hall and a chaotic attack is done leaving 75 terrorists, 152 children, and 38 soldiers dead. Many are wounded. Seven terrorists are captured, including the leader.
November 7: Emperor delcares national day of mourning for November 6.


Chapter Six: Precious

December 1: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island become part of the Empire. Only Quebec remains.
December 9: Quebecois Special Forces use VX gas against Jay, Vermont, killing 384 of 426 people.
December 10: Quebecois invade Ontario during the early morning. Jay Incident becomes public knowledge and Quebecois SOF and RLA terrorists blamed. Quebecois forces make quick and powerful headway throughout the course of the morning, seizing North Bay. RLA base compound in Clinton discovered for its true purpose.
December 11: Roman forces land to help the Ontarians. Quebecois clash with Roman/Ontarian forces in Alliston.
December 12: RLA forces seize 12 MGM-212 CBRR rockets on an assault at the El Jobal Chemical Weapons Depot, in Venezuela. 60 base personnel and 18 terrorists are killed. The rockets are currently "missing."
December 13: Roman forces repel the Quebecoi offensive, pushing them out of Ontario and towards Quebec. RLA group captured in Alliston, where Quebecoi forces devestated and forced back.


Chapter Seven: Colorblind

December 15: Layartebian forces begin aerial attack on Quebec at 0200 loca l time.
December 25: Ground war against Quebec begins at 0230 local time.
December 30: Boisclair captured by Roman forces.
January 1, 2006: Quebec War over. Montreal secure.


Chapter Eight: Gone Away

January 21: Battle of Clinton begins. Layartebian forces attack RLA compound north of Clinton, Alabama. The battle begins at exactly 10:02, local time. 8 soldiers die initially. Full assault begins at 23:00. Assault ends at 23:40 with 52 soldiers dead and 82 wounded.
January 22: Battle of Clinton continues. Stalemate ensues with a twenty-four hour ceasefire at 07:15.
January 23: Battle of Clinton ends. RLA compound burned from the inside out, RLA leadership and fighters dead from suicide or gunshots. 427 die.


Chapter Nine: Greed & Serenity

June 1: Former Minister of Intelligence dies inside of Nova Prospekt prison, Galapagos Islands.


Chapter Ten: Bleed the Freak

June 15: Soldiers begin leaving the island of Grenada for 6-day liberty.
June 16: Rebellion forces attack Grenada at 03:00 hours. At 05:29 hours, rebel forces shoot down Flight 2993 to Miami, Florida with 226 people onboard; none survive. By 20:00 hours, rebel forces have secured 100% of the island and suffered 3,049 losses. Layartebian casualties number 7,775 and 4,518 are captured. In the fighting, 839 civilians are killed in addition to Flight 2993.


Chapter Eleven: Goodbye For Now

June 16: Dr. Gordon Gray of the University of Layarteb at Layarteb City is murdered by an unknown gunman.
June 17: United Eastasian Republic publically officially recognizes the Republic of Grenada and offers supplies, funding, and aide.
June 18: At 08:30 hours, the Emperor gives worldwide speech about Grenada and condemns UER for recognizing the Democratic Republic of Grenada.
June 19: Imperial Layartebian Navy blockades island of Grenada.
June 22: UER aide flight given clearance to land in Grenada. UER aide flight evacuates UER diplomatic contingent from Grenada. ILN RA-5E Vigilante conducts low-level reconnaissance.
June 23: Christopher Allen Florence is arrested outside of Charleston, WV and questioned and held in connection to the murder of Dr. Gray.


Chapter Twelve: Fall to Pieces

July 3: Supreme Grenadian of the DPRG secretly requests international aide to be delivered during a week long "negotiation" with the Empire, during which they hope the blockade will be lifted.
July 4: MSgt. Brendan Williams and his family are murdered, possibly by drifters, in their Tennessee home. MSgt. Williams was due for a media interview regarding the shoot down of LA Flight 88 at 19:00 hours.
July 6: Secret safe house in Panama is attacked by Force Falcon Team One early in the morning, just after midnight. RLA high council, survivors of the Battle of Clinton, are all killed. The total death toll is 42 in the safe house and 28 in the vehicle convoy. The Emperor agrees that the blockade shall be lifted on July 16, 2006 at 00:00 EST and reinstated on July 22, 2006 at 23:59 EST, if no progress is made during negotiations.


Chapter Thirteen: Bleeding Me

July 11: Shoot out at Dockhouse 14 in Caracas shipyard leaves 13 dead. A mysterious cargo is stolen and the identity of all men, except two, is unconfirmed. Those two are linked with Esmeralda Cartel.
July 13: Giacomo Benevetti is murdered by shooting and burning outside his office in Caracas, Venezuela. Suspects unknown though murder is linked with Dr. Gordon Gray. Suspect sought out is believed to be the same person for both.
July 14: Esmeralda Cartel yacht sunk in the Gulf of Paria by ILN vessel. Eight men aboard killed. Two men founded murdered, execution sytle in Güiria. Both are linked to the Esmeralda Cartel.
July 21: Layartebian delegation to Grenada is assassinated in their hotel in St. George's, totalling 29 individuals. Blockade resumes and the DPRG is given 24 hours from 11:00 hrs [EST] to surrender the island back to Layarteb City.
July 22: Deadline passes. Hostilities officially begin against DPRG at 13:00 hrs [EST].


Chapter Fourteen: Stillborn

July 22: Deadline passes. Hostilities officially begin against DPRG at 13:00 hrs [EST]. First eleven hours of fighting sees 1,600 Grenadian, 22 Layartebian, and 65 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 21,239 at the start of the war.
July 23: At 00:15 hrs [EST], Victoria is secured. Mount Saint Catherine is secured at 03:00 hrs [EST]. Panorama and Trevellan are secured at 09:00 hrs [EST]. First thirty-five hours of fighting sees 3,839 Grenadian, 312 Layartebian, and 300 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 17,315 at the end of July 23. There are a total of 85 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 24: At 01:20 hrs [EST], Grenville is secured. At 03:00 hrs [EST], Saint Patrick's parish & Saint Andrew's parish secured. At 06:20 hrs [EST], the airport is secured. At 08:30 hrs [EST] assault on St. George's begins with aircraft and cruise missiles. At 11:15 hrs [EST] Gouyave is secured but massacre of civilians is found with 2,450 civilians executed throughout the town by Grenadian soldiers. First fifty-nine hours of fighting sees 7,293 Grenadian, 815 Layartebian, and 2,828 civilian casualties. Grenadian soldiers number 13,734 at the end of July 24. There are a total of 212 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 25: At 02:00 hrs [EST], all of Grenada is considered secured except for St. George's. At 05:00 hrs [EST], invasion of St. George's by Marines begins. At 21:25 hrs [EST], the captured Layartebian soldiers from June 16 are recovered. Of the 4,518 that were initially captured, only 3,758 remained alive. In the first eighty-three hours of fighting, 9,549 Grenadian, 1,787 Layartebian, and 3,201 civilain casualties are registered. Grenadian soldiers number 11,430 at the end of July 25. There are a total of 260 Grenadian soldiers captured.
July 26: At 10:29:38 hrs [EST], a 5 kiloton nuclear device is detonated in downtown St. George's. The device is of unknown origin and at least 30,000 civilians and 8,500 Grenadian military personnel as well as 6,100 Marines are persent in the city when the device goes off. Possible casualties are expected to exceed 40,000. At 12:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor addresses the world about the events in Grenada. Estimates for casualties are narrowed between 20,000 and 30,000.


Chapter Fifteen: Cowboys From Hell

July 26: At 11:30 hrs [EST], martial law is declared on Grenada and an immediate "in-house" curfew is imposed. At 14:15 hrs [EST], analysis shows that radiation is rapidly spreading towards Cottish Barbados, to the northeast, and that the device used was an enhanced radiation device. At 15:01 hrs [EST], the first fire fighting chemicals fall over Saint George's. At 17:00 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as a W80-0 of a Tomahawk SLCM. At 18:20 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as a Teh Ninjan weapon. At 21:18 hrs [EST], a fire storm hits the city and ravages the inner circle of the city, around the blast zone.
July 27: At 09:30 hrs [EST], the bomb is identified as being built within the Empire of Teh Ninjas in Cuba and shipped to Madagascar for basing on a 688/I class submarine. At 11:00 hrs [EST], the fires within the city are considered "under control." Recovery efforts continue within the city.
July 28: At 04:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor meets with President Baruti of the United States of Brink about the bombing. At 04:30 hrs [EST], two vehicles are identified on a highway heading north from Georgia and engaged by 2nd BOG forces. Two men are captured. Six are killed and their vehicle destroyed. Witnesses had little to say about the event.
July 29: At 06:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor's aircraft and flight are engaged by twelve F-22B Raptors going rogue from the ILAF. All twelve rogue aircraft are shot down along with four F-22B Raptors and one F-14E Super Tomcat escorting the Emperor's aircraft. At 21:00 hrs [EST], the Emperor returns to Layarteb City. The engagement of his aircraft is kept "hush-hush."
August 9: At 12:00 hrs [EST], the final casualty figures are released to include 37,221 as a result of both the blast and the radiation poisoning that followed. On Barbados, 400 Cottish individuals died.


Chapter Sixteen: Sehnsucht

November 23: Layarteb Airlines Flight 1890 explodes in mid-air, at 19:30 hrs [EST], 8 miles south of East Moriches, Long Island. The cause of the disaster is yet unknown but all 526 onboard are presumed dead.
November 24: Jasmine Delgado, the daughter of the Governor of the Province of Raef, is kidnapped at a market in Havana at 15:05 hrs [EST] by Luis Rendon and Javier Montenegra of the Florida Cartel. They soon meet up with Hector Pimentel, also of the Florida Cartel. Their house and car are burned and their whereabouts are unknown.
December 1: At 10:27 hrs [EST], the chief of police for the Province of Raef is asssassinated when his helicopter is shot down trying to land on the roof of the Panama City police headquarters. Six men in the helicopter and three bystanders on the street are killed.
December 11: Mysterious explosion around 22:39 hrs [EST] kills lead witness in Jasmine Delgado kidnapping and destroys two adjacent homes. Ten others are killed.
December 23: Official investigation on LA Flight 1890 concludes citing that mechanical failure brought down the aircraft due to faulty wiring in the center fuel tank, which ignited fuel vapors and caused the explosion. All 526 lives were lost, making it the dealiest, civilian air disaster in EOL history.


Chapter Seventeen: Ugly & Damned

December 27: The Empire begins a secret war against Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam, a major warlord in Afghanistan and drug dealer who is directly linked with Layartebian cartels.
February 2, 2007: Layartebian forces assist the Eurasian Federation in seizing Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. They wage a "secret war" against Sepah-e Pasdaran, an Islamist-terrorist group in the region. Evidence gathered from Sepah-e Pasdaran link them to the Layartebian situation. Funding for Sepah-e Pasdaran was given through Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam by Totalis (Varsolan Corporation on the Falklands linked directly to Grenada), the cartels, and the RLA. Sepah-e Pasdaran trained various terrorist groups acting in the Empire of Layarteb from 2005 - 2007 including the RLA and Free Venezuelans. An unknown "major funder" is sought out.
February 15: Layartebian forces invade southern Neuvo Rican Mexico and seize Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, and Tabasaco in the "War on Drugs" and, effectively, end the drug trade in the region when the war is completed.
February 18: State governor of Venezuela is assassinated, presumably by a "domestic" terrorist group related to the RLA.
March 1: Victory is declared in southern Mexico.
March 4: Successor to the state governor vanishes mysteriously. Street violence in Caracas escalates to its highest levels since 1988. Fueled by Illuminati Ghost Warriors, street violences peaks shortly thereafter.
March 12: Faysal Abd-Al-Malik Behnam is killed. Evidence links him to Sepah-e Pasdaran.
April 1: Organized protests begin in Caracas and are brutally suppressed. In total 629 people, including 55 police officers are killed when the government stepped in to stop the protests.
April 2: Two women are killed when the State Governer of Venezuela's house is attacked by rocket fire. The governor is severely injured and is forced to withdraw from his duties.
April 5: The "Free Venezuelans" announce that they are a pro-independence group seeking for Venezuelan independence and claim responsibility for the attack of April 2. They are linked to demonstrations going back to March and are immediately assumed to be responsible for the February 18th assassination of the government.
April 8: The Imperial Layartebian Military begins to mobilize as unrest in Venezuela peaks again.
April 9: The Free Venezuelans detonate a massive car bomb inside the South Eastern Virginia government building in Caracas, leveling the building. Forty-five are killed in the attack, which occurs at 01:30 hours [AST]. At 01:32 hours [AST] fighting erupts in Caracs and by 05:30 hours [AST] Venezuela is in the midst of a total revolution.
May 5: The last of the Free Venezuelans are captured, killed, or in hiding and the insurrection ends, unsuccessfully. Fatalities include 182,500 civilians, 4,528 soldiers, and 429,040 rebels. Casualties include upwards of 300,000 civilians, 12,086 soldiers, and 200,489 rebels. There are 342,493 rebels captured.
May 14: The ministers of Defense, Intelligence, Interior, and Justice are fired.
May 17: Assad al Samir, a prominent leader with Sepah-e Pasdaran is killed during a failed mission to apprehend him. He is a major player in Layartebian terrorism and acts as a middleman between Sepah-e Pasdaran and Totalis. He is also linked with the unknown "major funder" sought out by the Ministry of Justice.


Chapter Eighteen: Long Way Down

May 19: An arson fire destroys the Church of Saint Andrews in the Bronx, killing 6.
May 23: Marjorie Williams, a prominent writer for the Layarteb City Times, disappears from her White Plains home in the early morning hours. She was working on a feature story about the rise in kidnappings since November 2006. All of her notes, tapes, and the laptop she used were taken. No suspects are immediately sought. Early on the morning of May 23, Salem Nuclear Powerplant is attacked by eight unknown terrorists. Two are killed and six captured in a firefight that also claimed the lives of one security officer and one National Guardsmen. The attack was unsuccessful.
May 24: Thomas Deveroe, last President of the Republic of Layarteb, dies in his sleep in Kerala, Cotland. Cause is determined to be acute myocardial infarction.
May 25: Illuminati terrorists secretly take hold of the Sky Wonder, a cruise ship in the Caribbean Sea with 1,550 passengers and 600 crew members.
May 26: Jeremy Berms, a director in the Ministry of the Interior is assassinated by an unknown hit man in the Yucatán.
May 27: Referendum vote favors returning the body of Thomas Deveroe to Layarteb for burial 87.63% to 12.37%.


Chapter Nineteen: Night Train

May 28: At 04:48 hours [EST], an M-107 civilian jetliner crashes on the Spain/Portugal border, all aboard are lost, including 108 Layartebian citizens. Cause of the crash is unknown. At 08:15 hours [EST], terrorists sink the Sky Wonder ocean liner in the Gulf of Mexico with explosives. All aboard, including 400 Cottish citizens, are killed, a total number of 2,150. An assault on a police station in Cleveland leaves 8 police officers dead and 31 injured. Of the attackers, 2 are killed and the remainder escape. Open revolution begins in Portugal with the secession of Portugal from the Fourth Reich. Spain eventually joins the secession.
June 9: War breaks out with the Federal Republic of the Amazon concerning the Venezuelan uprising of 2007 and the harboring of insurgents.
June 17: Eighty Layartebian civilians are brutally murdered by the Portugese government. At 19:30 hours [EST], Layartebian forces begin a systematic bombardment of Portugese strategic positions relating to their air force and air defense network.
June 19: The last two of three Sepah-e Pasdaran terrorists are apprehended secretly in the town of Guarda in Portugal. They are returned to the Empire for questioning.
June 24: Interrogations reveal that the name of the "domestic terrorist group." They are referred to as "Ghost Warriors." Little other information is known about them except they trained in Sepah-e Pasdaran camps and are elite mercenaries.
June 27: Manaus is secured by Layartebian forces in the Amazonian War.
July 3: The Amazonian War concludes with a Layartebian victory. There had been 566 KIAs, 1,768 WIAs, and 7 MIAs on the Layartebian side and there were over 20,000 civilian casualties and at least 30,000 casualties of all types amongst the military forces.
July 10: An unknown assassin kills the Mayor of Raccoon City, the CJA Field Director for Raccoon City, and an unidentified woman.
July 18: At 05:10 hours [EST], Layartebian police and CJA officers raid an apartment in the Bronx and arrest four Sepah-e Pasdaran terrorists plotting to set off a bomb in Layarteb City. They are Eurasian citizens.
July 27: At 17:10 hours [EST], bombs rip through Grand Central Station, Pennsylvania Station, South Station, and Union Station in Layarteb City, Falcon City, and Chicago. In total, 913 people were killed and 542 required medical attention.
September 1: Amazonian insurgents launch a brutal offense against Layartebian forces in the Amazonian Control Zone and are defeated with over 1,000 casualties to the enemy and fewer than 60 to the Layartebian forces.
September 3: Anarchist forces launch attacks on Layartebian border stations between Mato Grosso and the Amazonian Control Zone killing 14 Layartebians, injuring 11. Anarchists suffer just 8 deaths.
September 4: Layartebian forces launch Operation Thunder Rain with the systematic bombing of airports and highways in Mato Grosso to cut off the Anarchist forces from waging war in the ACZ. The goal is to push them out of the border area and stop a flow of arms and soldiers into the ACZ from Mato Grosso.
September 5: Layarteb officially invades Mato Grosso with soldiers.
September 7: Layartebian forces secure various northern cities and Anarchists call for a temporary ceasefire.
September 10: Anarchist forces attack Layartebian positions near Juína, ending the ceasefire.
September 12: The ILA launches an MGM-233 Vesta rocket into Juína, striking a civilian air raid shelter killing 1,730 and injuring 48. Of them, 1,698 are civilians, many of them children. This brings upon a subsequent international condemnation of Layartebian actions.
September 24: Anarchist forces down a CH-53N Super Stallion II, killing 69 Layartebian soldiers, the largest single loss of life in one day to the Empire in over a decade.
September 29: Layartebian forces begin the Brasnorte Offensive, aimed at driving Anarchists forces all the way south of Brasnorte.
October 1: Brasnorte Offensive concludes with all goals achieved. Anarchists, decimated, call for an immediate ceasefire, which is honored.
October 6: Anarchist remnants launch a surprise attack in Juína against an oil depot, airfield, and artillery base killing 2 Layartebian soldiers. Estimates for dead Anarchists exceed 60.
October 8: All Layartebian forces withdraw from Mato Grosso by midnight. Operation Thunder Rain concludes, essentially, as a draw. The government of Mato Grosso pledges to keep Anarchist rebels out of the border area in return for Layartebian foreign aide and relations. The war leaves 484 Layartebian KIAs, 2,139 Layartebian WIAs, almost 9,000 deaths for the Anarchists, and over 20,000 civilian deaths.
October 9: Layartebian Minister of Defense resigns.
October 12: New Minister of Defense appointed.
October 13: Former Minister of Defense mysteriously disappears from Miami, Florida.


Chapter Twenty: November Rain

November 1: Unidentified Flying Object is downed near Raquette Lake, New York.
November 2: MOI agent Miguel Santos disappears from his Caracas residence.
November 8: Terrorists hijack a Layartebian 777 bound for Dublin. All six are killed.
November 13: Maritime forces of the ILDF intercept and capture a pirate vessel south of Cuba.
November 15: Michelle Baxter, daughter of Chicago Mayor, Dwight Baxter goes missing. Her whereabouts are unknown.
November 16: Layartebian forces seige Tapauá in the ACT. Civil war breaks out in Mogadishu.
November 25: Hostilities cease in Tapauá with an overwhelming victory by the ILA.


Chapter Twenty-One: Kashmir

No Activity


Chapter Twenty-Two: Trapped Under Ice

May 10, 2008: General Hoffer, administrator of the Amazonian Control Territory is assassinated in Manaus by an unidentified sniper. Riots break out in Manaus shortly thereafter that end in violence. There are 52 dead Layartebian soldiers, 868 dead civilians, 39 injured Layartebian soldiers, and over 1,200 civilians. A curfew is imposed.
May 11: 2 people are killed violating curfew in Manaus.
May 12: 4 people are killed violating curfew in Manaus.
May 13: 65 civilians and 2 Layartebian soldiers are killed when 24 teenagers hurl Molotov cocktails into an abandoned military checkpoint in Manaus. Of the casualties, 18 of them consist of the teenagers, the remaining 6 were arrested.
May 23: Cruise liner Nord Hill is hijacked by 16 terrorists.
May 25: Nord Hill, situation ends with all terrorists killed by a Layartebian SOF raid. Terrorists had executed a total of 224 passengers during their hijacking.
June 1: Full blown fighting erupts in Manaus. Operation Silver Tornado commences by the Layartebian military.
June 2: A Vesta missile strikes a soccer stadium in Manaus killing 432, of them 198 civilians.
June 6: Rebels down a UH-60M Black Hawk killing 14 paratroopers and crew members in the Empire's most damaging single blow for the war. A further 19 Layartebian soldiers are killed on June 6.
June 13: Insurgent leaders are captured in Manaus by Layartebian SOF raid.
June 15: Imperial Layartebian Military reports that full-scale fighting has ceased. Insurgent forces are in full withdrawal and defeat but fighting continues.
June 18: Mop-up operation commences by ILM for rooting out insurgent pockets and hiding personnel. By now, 62% of Manaus' eastern sector is destroyed and 39% of the northern sector is destroyed. Southern and western sectors sustain up to 10% damage collectively. Over 1/4 of Manaus is in ruins. A total of 102 Layartebian soldiers are killed during the fighting with 212 wounded. Insurgent forces suffer upwards of 2,500+ killed and possibly 6,000+ wounded. In total, 819 civilians are confirmed killed by both sides in the conflict, including the June 2 strike.
June 21: Ministry of Justice raids capture 14 members of the Illuminati based on intelligence collected from Manaus.


Chapter Twenty-Three: Comfortable Liar

July 21: Dr. Brian Haydn is murdered outside Norwich, NY by an unknown assassin.
August 5: Arthur McHenry, a college student is murdered in Layarteb City in the early morning by an unknown assassin.
August 6: Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Eurasian ambassador to the Empire, is assassinated while hunting in North Carolina by an unknown assassin.
September 5: Thomas Anderson and his wife are murdered inside their Chicago condo by an unknown assassin.
September 12: Luís Dyson is assassinated by car bomb in Caracas by an unknown assassin.


Confirmed Body Count: 754,730
Unconfirmed Body Count: 755,041+ [311+ difference]

Chapter XXIV: Highway to Hell

December 15, 2008 - 02:15 [AST]
100mi northwest of Aripuanã, Mato Grosso

Manaus was 475 miles north of Aripuanã, a city in northwestern Mato Grosso that experienced the first brunt of the Layartebian invasion in September 2007 as part of Operation Thunder Rain. Its small airport was demolished by air strikes and when grounds troops crossed the border into Mato Grosso, that was the first city they hit and when they hit, they hit it hard. It wasn't heavily populated or even very big or built up but the residents there fled quickly when the air strikes began. Few stayed and none survived the air strikes and subsequent invasion. Rebel forces used it as a defensive point against the incoming Layartebian ground forces, who were hell bent on seizing it quickly. The battle was brutal and it wasn't over quickly, lasting from 05:30 hours on September 5 into the evening hours of September 7, eventually retreating amidst casualties, artillery, and air support that they just couldn't outlast, even with reinforcements. When the Brasnorte Offensive resumed, Aripuanã lasted only hours. Remnants of the war still scared the city and despite the Layartebian pledge to assist the Mato Grosso government in rebuilding the country in favor of keeping the anarchist forces away from the Amazonian Control Territory, Aripuanã was still a cemetery. The Mato Grosso government agreed to an endeavor it could only temporarily succeed at and by the end of 2008, anarchist forces had outlasted and outlived the police and military forces sent from Cuiabá, the Mato Grosso capital. The big difference now was that the anarchists were finding it significantly more difficult in getting to the Amazonian Control Territory. A huge majority of their tunnels had been destroyed and many left intact were booby-trapped by the Layartebian engineers. Motion sensors were placed around the border and the border force in Amazonas had been increased by 300% as intelligence sources reported lawlessness returning to northwestern Mato Grosso.

Mines, blown out buildings, unexploded ordinance, burned out vehicles, and some corpses still clung to the ground in Aripuanã. Fewer than 100 civilians lived in the now desolate town. The airport had only been partially completed when the anarchists resumed control over the territory. It was fixed enough to operate helicopters and light aircraft such as Cessna's or Twin Otters, useful enough to smuggle in and out illegal drugs, weapons, people, and money. Eight days earlier, a Twin Otter flying from this very airport was detected trying to penetrate the airspace of the Amazonian Control Territory. Its destination was unknown at first but it came in low, at just 200 feet AGL. The pilots thought they were below radar coverage but they weren't below the sophisticated radars of the Imperial Layartebian Defense Forces. Immediately, a pair of F-26C Typhoon fighters were scrambled to intercept the propeller-driven, smuggler plane. Upgraded with an AESA radar, the "C" variant of the Typhoon was highly advanced and detecting the smuggler's plane would be a piece of cake. Armed with four AIM-221A Gryphon air-to-air missiles underneath its fuselage and four AIM-204B Escape air-to-air missiles on its outer-wing hardpoints and a pair of 400-gallon drop tanks, the Typhoons would find the Twin Otter easy prey.

Flying at medium altitude, above 10,000 feet, the Typhoons headed from an airbase about one hundred and sixty-five miles south of Manaus and eventually intercepted the Twin Otter not long after it passed over the border into the Amazonian Control Territory. The plane flew low, at just 165 mph, its cruising speed and the Typhoons were up high, unknown to the Twin Otter. They swooped down at 500 mph and buzzed past the aircraft, to see how it would react. Its reaction gave them their answer as to its purpose. Immediately, the plane dropped to tree-top level and the pilot pushed the throttles to maximum power, not that he could outrun the supersonic fighters. He still flew underneath their stall speed but he flew low, very low. Had it not been for night vision and the tracking of the aircraft on the Typhoon's EO system, the pilot might have been able to hide his aircraft but he had no chance. The Typhoons came back for a second pass and watched as the rear door opened and a man sat by it with a light machine gun, firing tracer rounds towards the fighters, missing horribly. The Typhoon's peeled off, obtained permission to bring it down, and set up five miles behind the aircraft. They closed to three miles and the lead pilot fired a single Escape missile. The Twin Otter crashed into the forest floor in a fireball that was big enough to be seen a hundred miles away. Charting the position of the crash, the Typhoon's returned to base and a recovery and investigative team was sent out via helicopter from an outpost base just 100 miles northwest of Aripuanã, a few miles north of the Layartebian-Mato Grosso border.

The team consisted of just eight men, all of them part of the elite 4th Special Operations Group, codenamed "Rangers." They flew aboard a pair of UH-96A Panther utility helicopters, both of them crewed by two pilots and two door gunners who controlled each one of the helicopter's two M35A1 Light Machine Guns. The helicopters flew unarmed except for the two door guns, which allowed for fire support and cover for the Rangers who would rappel down to the ground from their helicopters. The terrain would not allow the helicopters to land and they would orbit the area, only about 45 miles from their base until the Rangers concluded their missions. Armed with submachine guns mostly and a single semi-automatic sniper rifle and squad automatic weapon, the eight men investigated the crash site, which had burned itself out by the time they arrived. They found the remains of four smugglers, two of them the pilots, one the door gunner, and a fourth who had been somewhere in the wreck but survived the initial crash and somehow managed to crawl a few feet from the burning airplane. That fourth victim had been burned just as badly as the others and there would be no way to really identify them. Examining the cargo, they found that the smugglers were transporting about 300 pounds of narcotics and a few crates of assault rifles, mostly M16s, AK-74s, and Uzis. The fire had consumed and damaged them all beyond repair. The conclusion was simple, the anarchists were back in business and Aripuanã was a base of operations.

Immediately, reconnaissance was set up and a single MQ-1B Predator operating from that very base was sent over the border at 24,000 feet to orbit around Aripuanã. The Mato Grosso Air Force had been decimated in the war and had yet to fully replace their losses. Any aircraft they had were operating in their air force did so around their capital, protecting it and the government. Intelligence estimates put their air force inventory as a few helicopters, all Hueys and maybe a half dozen to a ten in service, under eight serviceable cargo planes, all Transall C-160s, and perhaps three or four third or early fourth generation fighters, perhaps two F-5E Tiger IIs and maybe two F-16A Falcons that somehow survived the air strikes and air interdiction missions conducted by the Imperial Layartebian Air Force. Their air defense network had been shattered and all of their resources protected their capital. The best any outpost could have was man-portable Stinger missiles or, if they were lucky, a Skyguard anti-aircraft gun. None of that was around Aripuanã, where the anarchists now controlled everything. The anarchists did have some defenses but nothing that could intimidate the Imperial Layartebian Military. The Predator would reveal just what they had as it orbited over the city for sixteen hours, watching, recording, and transmitting. Unarmed, the Predator was really there just to observe rather than intimidate. The Imperial Layartebian Military wanted to know what was going on in the city and they kept the drone high on its orbit, flying it in shifts. They watched as two Twin Otters landed during that time, each offloading supplies in plastic crates. Some of the crates resembled the handling crates for surface-to-air, man-portable missiles, perhaps Stingers or Iglas. Others looked like they held assault rifles and others looked like they held food and water. They were building up their caches and stocks. Their main defense in the area was a single ZPU-2 anti-aircraft gun, armed with two 14.5x115mm KPV machine guns. Dangerous to hovering helicopters, the guns looked to be in bad condition from the high-resolution photos obtained and the unit could be easily destroyed by a single Predator with a Viper Strike bomb or Harbinger missile.

Then, on December 12, after more Predator flights observed the anarchists essentially stocking a full cache of arms and supplies the Imperial Layartebian Defense Forces realized that they would have to act. They simply couldn't allow the anarchists to stock up the area with weapons that they would eventually use against the Layartebians either inside of or along the border of the Amazonian Control Territory. An attack would have to be orchestrated but it couldn't be anything too obvious. An air strike would advertise that it was the Empire and that would break the rather uneasy and one-sided truce that had been agreed upon the year earlier following the success of the Brasnorte Offensive. Command approved it right away but only as a ground assault with highly trained special forces. The mission was finalized early on the morning of December 14 and the attack time was set of just before 03:00 hours on December 15. The assault would involve sixteen men from the 4th Special Operations Group. The two teams of eight Rangers would each split in half and attack key points around the town in the middle of the night. One team would destroy aircraft and facilities at the airport using explosives, another would hunt down and destroy the arms cache, a third would attack command sites in the town including the anti-aircraft gun, and a fourth would destroy a bridge near the southeast of the town.

At 02:15 the force of four helicopters took off from the outpost base in southern Amazonas with the four groups of Rangers inside of them. The helicopters would not orbit the town but rather drop off the Rangers and come back to pick them up at the airport when their missions were completed. The helicopters, all UH-96A Panthers, would keep low and fast, dropping the Rangers at four precise points outside of the range of the anti-aircraft gun and outside of the town. Locked and loaded, the Rangers prepared for an all-morning raid to be concluded just after dawn. They brought pounds and pounds of C4 in single units and satchel charges loaded with ten to twenty pounds of C4. They brought fragmentation, incendiary, and stun grenades, plenty of ammunition, door breeching charges, and their night vision goggles. The full moon had ended on the 12th and that meant that it was waning but their night vision capabilities would be limited though available thanks to intermittent cloud cover that helped hide the moon's brightness above.

December 15, 2008 - 02:45 [AST]
20mi northwest of Aripuanã, Mato Grosso

The four Panthers kept low and moved at 150 mph as they cruised over the jungle terrain. Not carrying weapons except for their door guns and only carrying four troops each, they were able to extend their overall range, allowing them to fly to the target faster without sacrificing the range they would need to complete the journey to and from the target site. Inside the cabins of the aircraft, there were just six men. Two manned the two door guns, the M35A1 Light Machine Gun, a 7.62x51mm weapon with the ability to put as many as nine hundred rounds on a target more than a mile away every minute. Each gun was fed by a magazine holding up to 1,000 rounds each and a special bag system attached to the side of the gun would retrieve the spent shell casings, preventing them from falling onto the ground below or into the cabin, where they could become a hazard. Additionally, retrieving them made rearming quick as the weapon would only need a bag change. Each bag could hold precisely one thousand spent casings and the brass was reloaded back at LDC factories. Recycling casings was a fruitful endeavor.

The sixteen Rangers were more heavily armed than most platoons in a regular army. Amongst themselves, they carried a pair of M106A2 Squad Automatic Weapons for heavy firepower, three M76A1 Tactical Shotguns, one M41A1 Sniper Rifle, eight M81A3 Carbines, and two M111A5 Modular Assault Weapons. They all carried knives and pistols, the standard pistol being the M105A1 Tactical Defense Pistol but some carried additional revolvers, .38ACP being the favored shell of choice as an ultimate backup weapon. They carried pounds upon pounds of C4, dozens of grenades, and several Claymore mines. Five of the eight M81s were equipped with an M115A1 Grenade Launcher and they carried plenty of 40mm grenades with them. Loaded to the teeth, they prepared for the assault of their lives. It was sixteen against at least eighty, perhaps more and the eighty were well dug-in too. The only thing they had was the element of surprise and that was on their side. They had brass collection bags attached to their main weapons to ensure that their 6.8x51mm casings wouldn't be left behind. The shotgun shells were simple 12-gauge magnum slugs or 00 buckshot and those weren't rare. The 7.62x51mm shells of the M41A1 Sniper Rifle were also quite commonplace throughout the world. Even the 40mm grenade casings were popular throughout the world. The .40DDI round of their pistols were also common throughout the world but the 6.8x51mm round was unique to the Empire. It was made by necking down a 7.62x51mm shell to accept the 6.8mm Remington SPC cartridge. Because the round was punched out by the same amount of cordite as the 7.62x51mm round, it left the barrel at a significantly higher speed and because its weight was slightly increased, it offered a good enough amount of energy to knock down a target with a single shot, much like a 7.62x51mm round. The only drawback to it was that it wasn't good for ranges past 800 meters. The round, exiting the barrel of an M81A3 at a speed of 884 meters per second would pack a total of 2,334 foot pounds of force, compared to that of a 5.56x45mm round, which, out of the same length barrel, was only 1,178 foot pounds of force. By comparison, a 7.62x51mm round would have a muzzle energy of over 2,600 foot pounds of force. By comparison, the 6.8x51mm round was definitely a lethal killer.

The Rangers were quiet in their helicopters as they flew towards their rappel points, which would be about a mile or two from the target points. The helicopters would definitely be heard by the people in the town, there wasn't much they could do to avoid that but the helicopters would be around for only a few seconds. They would deploy rappelling lines and each line would take two Rangers to the ground. The helicopters would instantly begin to retract the lines, which could be done in only a few seconds, and bank for home, spending less than a minute over the actual target, hovering between fifty and ninety feet off the ground. It was a long way down but the Rangers had no other choice and they were trained to do all sorts of fast insertions, including fast roping, which, in a way, this was. The only difference was that the helicopters would not drop the ropes but rather retract them and the ropes were not as wide, meaning that they couldn't support the weight of more than two soldiers at once. Fast ropes were thicker, a lot thicker.

The helicopter pilots kept strict radio silence and all of the lights off in their helicopters. Everyone wore night vision goggles except the four men in the rear, who had yet to turn theirs on yet. They wouldn't until they were ready to rappel out of the helicopter. That moment came soon enough and the four helicopters all split off from each other about five miles from the town, taking their different approach paths. Inside of the helicopters, the pilots moved their microphones to their mouths and let the men in the back and the gunners know that they were about two minutes from their rappel points. The soldiers were ready. They grabbed their gear and adjusted their night vision goggles. The doors were opened and the gunners swung their weapons out, ready to engage anyone that might stand in the way of the Rangers. Despite having only a light machine gun, the gunners could force an entire platoon or more of enemy soldiers to put their heads down and back off as the Rangers rappelled. Their whole goal was to protect the men and the helicopter, the former being the most critical.

Once at their drop points, the pilots went into an immediate hover with an impressive braking maneuver, pulling hard on the stick while cutting their engine power, instantly slowing the helicopter down. Once in hover mode and at the proper altitude, they deployed the rappel lines and the men slid down them, the helicopters shaking as the men stood up to the lines, grabbed, and slid downwards. Seconds later, they were on the ground, weapons shouldered, crouching or lying prone, their night vision goggles all showing the same thing, nothingness. They had achieved their insertion with surprise and had done so quite effectively. There had been worry that the anarchists had lookouts in the jungle with cell phones who phoned in whether or not helicopters were coming into their territory. That had been the case during the early parts of the Amazonian War. The Panthers above them quickly banked away, the rappelling ropes retracting into their housings as the helicopters sped off at nearly top speed, heading for the Layartebian border.

Certainly the arrival of the helicopters had been heard by the anarchists in the town but when they did not appear over their town, the anarchists had to know that something was up, especially since the government of Mato Grosso wouldn't be flying any in their area, especially not this close to the Layartebian border. They knew that the Layartebians had come but where they were, they didn't know and that was why they called the whole town to action, all two hundred and fourteen anarchists. They more than overwhelmed the Rangers but the one problem they had was they didn't know where the Rangers were and they weren't nearly as skilled nor did they see or hear the MQ-1B Predator orbiting overhead at 22,500 feet. This time it was armed, with four GBU-44A Viper Strike bombs, each one holding a 2.3 pound HEAT warhead. It wasn't a lot but it could easily destroy a tank or any other target. Guided by GPS, it had a CEP of under 1 meter. If needed, they could rain down destruction on four individual targets and provide the Rangers with additional air support. Patched into the sensors on the Predator, the Rangers had a major advantage the anarchists didn't have and that was the ability to see into the most hidden of creavices from angles unprotected. Alleyways would be no problem for the Rangers.

December 15, 2008 - 03:00 [AST]
Airport, Aripuanã

The four Rangers going to the airport would hit their target first. Between the four of them, they had two carbines, a shotgun, and one of the two SAWs. The needed the latter two because of the resistance expected at their target, which the Predator had eyed just as they rappelled out of the helicopter. Quietly, the men closed in on the airport from the thick vegetation all around it. The airport had been carved out of the jungle, a man-made clearing that accommodated the small, 3,000 foot long runway. The runway had been only partially repaired and the control tower still lay in ruins. There were four hangars, two of them still destroyed from guided bombs and missiles launched during the opening stages of Thunder Rain a year prior. Other associated structures were still only partially repaired and none of them were of concern except the barracks and the storage depots, where the anarchists were thought to be storing some weapons. With suppressors attached to all of their weapons except the shotgun, the four of them split off again, into two teams of two with one carbine and either the shotgun or SAW to a group.

One group, the one with the shotgun, would flank the buildings while the other hit the hangars. There weren't any aircraft on the tarmacs or on the runway but they were bound to be in the hangars. As the four of them came out of the vegetation and onto the clearing, they all got down and began to watch the airfield. There was little actual activity, most of the anarchists being indoors, defending whatever it was they were assigned or closest to, rather than venture outside. There were a few of them acting as sentries to the hangars and the main barracks building but those six were it. There were no patrols and no vehicles moving around on the airfield and none of the sentries outside had night vision goggles. Two of them were smoking too, the small, red glow giving away their position from the other side of the airfield. Ready, they brought themselves up from prone to a crouched stance and walked onto the airfield, staying hidden, weapons shouldered, looking down their reflex sights or optical scopes. They stayed low and watched the various corners of the airfield, keeping as silent as possible, watching every step at the same time. They were elite, special operations forces that were trained for these types of missions. A strike force, they could take just about any target from any sized force with little to no casualties to their own all on their own. The Predator overhead only made their job easier, which allowed them to focus more attention on the minor details. Because this was, essentially, a black op, there was no room for error.

The two groups of men split off not far onto the airfield. The hangars were to the left and the buildings to the right and the split was quite obvious at that point. The two men going to the hangars crossed the airfield and stayed close to the hangars, approaching the first hangar quickly. Outside of it stood two of the six men, one of them smoking. Quickly, the Ranger with the M81A3 Carbine put the crosshairs of his ACOG on the closer soldier and squeezed off two rounds. His weapon was set to semi-automatic fire mode and he was a precise shot. Both rounds entered and exited the soldier's chest and before the other one could react, he took two shots himself. Each round impacted with over twenty-two hundred pounds of force, slicing through their chest and ribs with no effort, exiting quickly leaving a giant hole in his back. They fell to the ground silently and with a thump. The Ranger with the SAW quickly pointed his weapon the way of the other two soldiers, about two hundred and fifty meters away, at the other hangar. He covered them while the other Ranger walked up to the door to the hangar and carefully put his hand on the knob. He turned it a little, to make sure that it was unlocked and it was. He made a clicking sound with his mouth and the other Ranger moved up, taking a position on the other side of the door, his weapon still aimed down the tarmac. His targets were close enough that he could take them out in a quick swipe but it was far enough that he could miss and a missed round would present a problem. He would cover the other Ranger while he entered the hangar, standing against the sheet metal wall and turned the door knob, pushing the door open, slowly, carefully. He didn't immediately enter but instead, he waited.

After thirty seconds, he crouched down and entered the hangar, his weapon pointed right in front of him. It was dark inside of the hangar and as he entered, the other Ranger followed, closing the door behind him, quietly. A quick search around the hangar revealed that it was empty of any people but there were two aircraft inside that were now prime targets. The first one was a Cessna 303, a twin-engine, propeller plane with the ability to carry up to five people, or equal weight, as far as eleven hundred miles. That single aircraft could drop fighters or ammunition deep into the Amazonian Control Zone and make it out safely. The other aircraft was a Piper PA-32, a single-engine, propeller plane with the capability to carry up to five or six passengers or equal cargo as far away as eight hundred miles. These were the aircraft that could deliver illegal narcotics, weapons, ammunition, men, and supplies to the Amazonian Control Territory, sparking more hostilities, when the place was finally stabilizing again. Quickly, the Ranger crouched to his knee and pulled around his pack. He withdrew two blocks of C4, each weighing a pound, and two small, radio detonators. He affixed the detonators to the C4 blocks and quickly placed them onto the undersides of the two aircraft. Thin skinned, the C4 would shred the aircraft to pieces no bigger than a quarter.

His job done, he slung his pack onto his back and approached the door with the other Ranger. "Bodies." He whispered and the two of them walked up to the door and listened. They were ensuring that nobody was outside. Satisfied that no one was after about thirty seconds, they exited, quickly but carefully. The SAW gunner dropped to the ground and centered his scope on the two soldiers by the other hangar while his partner slung his rifle onto his back and grabbed the two, now dead, anarchists and dragged them back, towards the hangar, quickly back peddling, dragging them on the pavement. He pulled them into the hangar and quickly shut the door, pulling his rifle back around to his chest. The two of them moved closer to the hangar with their weapons shouldered, just like they had done previously. He kept low, moving up towards the two of the soldiers. Neither of them were smoking but still, they were easily found through the Rangers' night vision goggles. About sixty meters away from them, the two Rangers stopped and opened fire. The lead Ranger put off two rounds again, both finding their mark while the other Ranger let off a quick burst on his weapon. With a rate of fire of eight hundred and fifty rounds per minute, a single, one-second burst, let out fourteen rounds. His trigger control was truly honed and he held the trigger for just one quarter of a second, letting out three rounds, all three of them reaching their mark, slicing through his chest and neck. The two soldiers slumped onto the ground, dead.

Quickly, the two Rangers ran up to the hangar and repeated their search. The hangar was empty too except for a single Twin Otter inside, the same one that had landed and offloaded the weapons while the Predator watched. The Ranger planted the C4 and exited the hangar, dragging the bodies back inside. With the hangars cleared, they moved onto the storage depot, located on the backside of the airport, behind the two hangars. The Rangers crossed behind the hangars quickly and stayed closed to them as they moved towards the rear of them, to the storage depot. It was a small bunker-like building that was buried into the ground four hundred meters away from the hangars, at the edge of the airport's clearing. The Predator had identified it easily and crossed the town quickly and easily as it orbited at over 20,000 feet. The two Rangers stopped short of the edge of the hangar as their headsets broke squelch. "Lizard One-Two. Lizard One-Two. Barracuda has eyes on target 'C' report is quiet."

"Roger that Barracuda. Target 'C' is green." The two Rangers moved out from the hangar and crossed towards the storage depot. They moved quickly with the Predator watching their advance from overhead. They stopped against the side of the bunker and stood on either side of the steel door. It was thick enough that they couldn't simply kick through it but they could blast through it with a breeching charge, which would be quite loud. The airport was far enough from the town that the sound wouldn't be heard from there but it would definitely be heard at the barracks, where the other two Rangers were finishing up their assault. "One-One. Going loud."

"Roger." The voice wasn't a whisper, which meant that the barracks were probably cleared by then. The Ranger put a door breeching charge against the door and pulled on the fuze. Quickly, he and his partner backed up from the door and stood to the side, against the building. Five seconds after pulling the fuze, the C4 detonated. The explosion was loud but not very powerful. It shot the door backwards, buckling it and its frame but not knocking it off its hinges, thanks to its solid, metal construction. They shouldered their weapons again and pushed into the bunker. It was dark inside and they turned on their infrared illuminators. Through them, they could see around the bunker. Because there was no natural light inside, this was the only way they could see without turning on a light. The infrared illuminators were just like flashlights but visible only through night vision goggles. They search around the main room of the bunker and saw plenty of plastic crates and no one around. The Rangers began to inspect the crates and saw that the anarchists had surface-to-air missiles, explosives, and plenty of other devices of war. These were the weapons the Predator watched them offload. The Rangers placed several pounds of explosives around the bunker and came back outside. Their job was done and the airport had been, by then, neutralized.

December 15, 2008 - 03:00 [AST]
Northeastern Area, Aripuanã

The northeastern segment of Aripuanã was where the anarchists stored their arms. It was a target that was heavily defended and the Predator relayed that information rather matter of factly. Its FLIR showed at least a dozen armed men around the cache, all of them raring to go. It looked as if the helicopters had truly startled them and they knew that some sort of attack was coming, even if they hadn't heard or seen any gunfire yet. The four Rangers attacking it had moved quickly to the outskirts of the jungle and stopped, using the live-feed from the Predator to determine not only their position but also the position of the arms cache. Had it not been a covert mission, the Predator would have fired one of its missiles or dropped one of its bombs into the building and the mission would be over, a confirmed destruction of the target coming within seconds of the weapon's impact. However, this was now a ground op and it would require the Rangers to get down and dirty.

They crouched low and lay prone, weapons ahead of them, safeties off, eyes locked down their sights. The team leader was holding the PDA showing him the footage from the Predator. It gave off a low-intensity light that he could see without the night vision goggles. He kept himself low and shielded the light with is body to prevent it from being seen by anyone wandering around, not that anyone was there. It was all precautionary. It took him only seconds to plot his course, which now differed from the one they had rehearsed, thanks to the addition of an obstacles down their main alleyway. They would improvise and adapt, just like Special Forces did all over the world when the situation changed. They were no different except that when they wore a flag, it was Layartebian.

Armed with two carbines, a shotgun, and a SAW, the four men set off from the jungle, keeping low. They made their way to the exterior wall of a small, concrete house that would have held two or three families before Thunder Rain and before the anarchists resettled into the area. Its roof had been peppered with gunfire from an orbiting AC-27 Sledgehammer during the war and it had yet to be repaired. Now the inside, which was burned and ashen, smelled of the mold that grew inside thanks to the heat, humidity, and gaping hole. Torn apart by 30mm and 35mm gunfire, the northeastern section of the town was raked again and again from the air, the first rounds impacting before anyone knew they were on their way. Anarchists were driven out of the area almost as soon as the bombardment began. That was the price they paid.

Against the exterior wall of the house, the four Rangers kept low and quiet, inching close to the edge. The lead Ranger, with his M81A3 Carbine, checked, with one eye, around the corner and looked down the alleyway. It was empty and quickly he and his men entered it, staying in position, their weapons forward, scanning everywhere below and above their heads. The arms cache was only two hundred meters away from them but it wasn't an easy journey to make. At the end of the alleyway was the road and they had to cross it and they had to do so without being seen or else their mission would be over before it began. They would be surrounded and, without air support, they weren't going to last very long. Sidestepping garbage, particularly glass bottles and debris left over from Thunder Rain, they got to the edge of the alleyway quickly and the lead Ranger quickly tilted his body out to see one way. His night vision goggles revealed nothing in front of him so he quickly tilted back, flipped his body around, and check the other direction. It was empty too. The Predator had shown that the nearest enemies were still a little further away from this point but things could have changed in the time it took him and his men to get to that point from the jungle edge. Someone could have seen something and gone to investigate. The anarchists weren't necessarily elite or very highly trained but they weren't stupid. They weren't the garden-variety henchmen one would find in a low-budget, cheap, action film.

They too had suppressors on their weapons, with the exception of the shotgun and they could easily take out an unsuspecting target before giving away their position but they wanted to get as close to the target as they could before they needed to open fire. Quickly, because it was safe, the leader ran across the street, a narrow, two-way, two-lane, concrete road with scattered pot holes, some rudimentarily filled in with dirt and packed down with a shovel of some sort. He went from the one alleyway to another, this one in between two buildings, one of which had been the fire station. The fire station had been used, initially, by the anarchists to lob mortars at the Layartebian soldiers but it took a direct hit from a five hundred pound JDAM dropped from an F-26 Typhoon on a CAS mission. It had been hastily repaired since and the alleyway was a maze of debris that the Predator couldn't have seen thanks to the overhanging roof of the fire station and the building adjacent to it.

After he made it, he looked to his immediate right while one of the men in the other alley covered to his right and the two of them covered the whole street. The other two Rangers quickly darted across and then the third, under the cover of the others. With the four of them across the street, they kept moving, climbing over and ducking underneath debris and wreckage in the relatively long alleyway, which ran the length of the fire station and two more buildings before it ended at a door. That door led into a building that was at the corner of a "T" intersection. What they needed was to then move down the long part of the "T" towards another left turn, where they would be in front of where the arms cache was stored. Still, they needed to know more than just what was in the street. They needed to know what was on the other side of the door. The leader pulled out his PDA and quickly located his position and adjusted the direction of the camera on the Predator to the building. Everything in front of it was clear and around it as well. He glanced over at the target building to see enemies now on the roof of the two story, concrete building, presenting a slight issue.

He turned off the PDA and put it away as he looked at the door. It was locked and he couldn't blow it off its hinges, that would be too loud. There weren't any battle sounds that they could use to mask that sound or the sound of a shotgun so they had two choices. They could bust through it with a hard kick or they could try to pick the lock, the latter possibly taking too much time. There was little room to stand in the alleyway and they had no where to go. The leader could kick the door open and hide against the wall but his three men would be exposed. They needed to act swiftly. While one of the Rangers checked for any booby traps, particularly wires leading to mines in the alleyway, the SAW gunner and the shotgun holder arranged themselves. The SAW gunner lay prone on the ground, his weapon ready to open up into the building while the shotgun holder crouched above him. His one shell could clear the whole doorway. The leader would kick open the door and the other gunner would stay to the very rear, against the wall, protecting them from anyone coming from behind. They all nodded to each other and, without speaking, they were all ready to go. Quickly, the lead Ranger put his rifle around his back, drew his suppressed pistol, reared up, and kicked through the door, getting back quickly, while the Rangers on the ground looked for any indication of a human being. They would fire outright if anyone stood in their way but after ten seconds, they had yet to pull on the trigger. The lead Ranger, cautious that it could still be a trap pulled out an M58A1 Stun grenade and yanked the pin, dropping it around the room. Both men on the ground shut their eyes and looked to the ground, away from their night vision goggles as the grenade went off, sending a brilliant, 1 million Candela flash of light through the area, behind a loud, 180 dB "bang," which was why the grenade was nicknamed the "Flashbang." The men waited less than a second after the flash left the air and charged in, their weapons drawn, each covering a corner of the room.

Their suspicions weren't unfounded but, at the same time, they didn't necessarily find a threat. The lead Ranger saw her first, a girl, a teenager, writhing on the floor, holding her hands to her ears. She was naked, bleeding and bruised and she was blind and deaf. Lying next to her, writhing himself was a fat slob of a man, his pants around his ankles, his hairy ass and legs covered in sweat. Neither of them were threats and the Rangers knew right away what was happening but it wasn't their mission. They stood around, horrified at what they were looking at, the girl was no older than eleven or twelve. She was too young to be subjected to anything of that nature. Sympathetic to her, the lead Ranger leveled his pistol on the fat slob and fired his weapon twice, putting two rounds in the rapists head. He stopped writhing on the ground but the girl continued, unaware what was happening around her. The effects, for her, would last a few more minutes. She had looked right into the grenade when it went off, a poor decision. "What about the girl?" One of the men asked, the one holding the shotgun. She was beaten, battered, and they couldn't help but take pity on her. What more could they do though? She would only endanger their mission and they weren't even supposed to be there.

"Nothing we can do. We have bigger fish to fry. Fucking sucks." The SAW gunner said before the leader could but everyone was thinking the same thing. "We can't leave her though, she might run away and alert someone. Who knows? She could be a hooker. Don't look at me like that," he continued, giving the leader a look as he caught his eyes.

"No. You're right. Give me a tie wrap." He took one of the plastic tie wraps and the men held down the girl as he quickly tied her hands and legs. He left her face down on the ground and slung another tie wrap to the fat man's wrist and then connected them. She wouldn't be going anywhere for a while. They had no other choice. Quietly, they left the building and moved down the street, keeping to the shadows. Before they got to the end of the street they heard the shrill sound of the girl screaming. Her vision had come back and she was now realizing that the rapist who was torturing her was dead and she was tied to him. How cruel a predicament it was but the Rangers were professionals. They had no other choice except to kill her and they weren't that cruel. They hoped no one else would hear her but even they knew that if someone did, it was likely someone who knew what was going on and would stay away for fear of his or her own life. They had picked up the empty grenade casing and tossed it into one of their bags. They were leaving nothing behind.

They made the left turn and made it quite easily, without resistance. They traveled a little bit further to a building that was four stories tall and would provide perfect overwatch for the men. The SAW gunner and the other Ranger with the carbine would ascend to its top floor and protect each other and the men below. It gave them a perfect place to fire onto the men on the roof of the arms building while the other two swept through it. As they approached the building they wondered why it wasn't used for the cache itself. They got their answer the minute they stepped into it. Carefully, in case there were any soldiers inside, the four of them entered and stayed below the windows. When they looked up they saw just why the building wasn't chosen for the arms cache. It had a gaping hole in the ceiling that went all the way to the basement. At the bottom of it was the casing of a JDAM guided bomb, a piece of ordinance that landed but failed to detonate. It still did its job, essentially rendering the building useless. The Rangers avoided getting too close to the bomb and found a cozy corner in the rear of the building, near the steps, away from the windows and the bomb itself. "Check it." The leader said to the shotgun holder who moved up the steps quietly with the other carbine holder. They moved up the stairs quickly and cautiously, looking for trip wires, past the second and third floor to the fourth floor and they did a quick recon of the roof too. The building was unoccupied and they came down to the report, noting at least eight trip wires throughout the building. It was booby trapped to hell and they realized that this would be the worst and the best overwatch point. While they were upstairs, the lead Ranger had an idea. He looked at the bomb casing and saw that it was a one thousand pounder, loading with nearly a quarter of a ton of explosives. When the men came back he explained his plan. "We put a charge near the bomb. It goes off. Levels the whole block. We didn't do anything. Someone must have touched a piece of unexploded ordinance." The men immediately liked the idea and carefully he placed a block of C4 next to the bomb and set the radio detonator. All of the charges they had would be detonated through radio, once they were in the air, flying away from the town.

The SAW gunner and the other carbine holder parted ways and headed for the top floor, careful about the tripwires they saw and the ones that they didn't see. They disarmed a few on the way up, just in case they needed to make a dash for it but they left a few, in strategic places where they could be used to their own benefit. At the top of the building, they set up shop, across the street from the building. Using a small, fiber optic camera, they looked over the window and counted eight hostiles on the roof, all of them ready to fight. They looked around on the street but didn't see anyone there. The other two, the leader and the shotgun holder, exited the building and crossed the street behind them and worked their way around the block. When they were in position, the leader broke squelch three times and the SAW gunner opened up, firing quick, controlled bursts at the eight men, raking the roof with gunfire and dropping all of them in a matter of seconds, before any of them could fire back. The gunshots were audible, suppressor or not, and the arms cache became a buzzing hive of activity. The leader and the shotgun holder could hear from outside the building as anarchists shouted commands. Having to act quickly, they did, the shotgun holder blasting through the lock with a single shot, pumping the next round into the chamber, ejecting the plastic casing. The leader tossed in two grenades, both of them Flashbangs and then they pounced, entering and shooting, keeping themselves low and in one place, shooting all of the men around them in rapid succession, one covering everything to the right and the other to the left. As they did, more men appeared on the roof and another came out the front door. The SAW gunner took care of all three before they could react and fire back.

The first floor was cleared quick and revealed a wide assortment of arms, mostly assault rifles and plastic cases, holding Stingers or advanced RPGs. Their mission wasn't over though and they had another floor to clear and they did so, just as powerfully, throwing Flashbang grenades up the stairs and charging after them. The second floor was a maze of rooms but easily cleared by them as they moved in the darkness of the building. They shot through wooden barricades, mostly tables, turned over to protect gunners. The shotgun holder blasted several hostiles as they came into the hallways and this time, the enemy returned fire and it echoed across the city. The anarchists didn't have suppressors. Their bright muzzle flashes lit up the Rangers' night vision goggles but it made them even easier to kill. They used several Flashbang grenades and one smoke grenade to do their clearing of the floor, eventually counting a total of thirty-eight bodies in the building and eleven outside of it. The arms cache was secure and the Rangers carefully picked up their grenade shells, stowed them in their bags, and began to place their charges while the SAW gunner kept watch outside, from his elevated position. The shotgun holder reloaded.

December 15, 2008 - 04:20 [AST]
Airport, Aripuanã

Aripuanã was a drift in the wind. Dozens of anarchists lay dead in the town. The anti-aircraft gun was neutralized, a block of C4 attached underneath its frame. The command HQ, arms cache, and bridge were all wired with blocks of C4 as were the aircraft at the airport. Pounds upon pounds of C4 had been placed all around the town and the airport, all that the Rangers were carrying with them. They were much lighter now as the sixteen of them waiting at the airport for their extraction. They reported that the mission had been a success at 03:45 hours and their transport was on the way, a trio of UH-96A Panther utility helicopters, each one unarmed except for their door gunners. The three helicopters were moving low over the jungle floor, just above the tree tops, the pilots watching through night vision goggles as the trees rushed underneath them. They were five minutes out now and moving at over 120 mph. The Rangers had taken no prisoners, left no shell casings except those of their pistols and of their shotguns, common casings that could be found all over the world.

The helicopters approached the airport from all different directions and pulled into a hover over the airport at less than eighty feet. Instantly, they dropped to the ground, quickly their landing gear still stowed. They would never touch the ground, instead, their pilots went into a precise hover just a foot or so above the ground. The Rangers jumped on, eight onto one of the helicopters, four onto each of the other two. The helicopters quickly lifted back off the ground and made their way out of the country, at high speed, and on three different routes. Separated by miles each, the three helicopters and their crews and Rangers were pleased that the mission had gone off so easily. The Predator departed as well, taking a fourth route out of the country.

For the mission planners back in the Amazonian Control Territory it was finished, a successful mission that only hinged on one detail, getting the men back home. They all remained tense, despite the overwhelming success on the ground. Once the Rangers stepped onto the helicopters and the helicopters lifted off, the Ranger in charge of the whole operation pushed a single button on his detonator. It instantly sent a radio signal across the town and detonated the explosives, each one destroying its target effectively, powerfully, and decisively. The planes were incinerated, the anti-aircraft gun torn to pieces, and the bridge twisted and mangled. The command headquarters and all of its equipment went up in a brilliant fireball while the arms cache took out nearly the whole city block, thanks to the added effects of the unexploded bomb. Anyone left in the city, anarchists and civilians, trembled that morning as the city was torn to pieces by the Layartebian Rangers. Out of the area, they weren't going to be around to see the after effects. The Predator confirmed the destruction of all targets and it egressed immediately thereafter.

The Rangers were quiet in their helicopter cabins as the helicopters hugged the ground again. The helicopters were flying clean and smooth over the jungle, fast and low. Then, the unthinkable happened. The second Panther in the flight, carrying four of the Rangers, including the mission commander, was flying at 135 mph, at an altitude of 100 feet. Regardless of how fast the helicopter moved, it couldn't outrun radio waves and they had been sent from the town to four anarchist outposts in the thickets of the jungle. One of them was positioned just ten miles from the Layartebian border. Their radio clattered to life as the four anarchists slept in a ramshackle cottage, big enough for only the four of them. They slept on a couch, two cots, and in a chair, fully clothed, weapons all around them, empty cups and mugs lying around from nights of boozing. Quickly, the man in the chair shook his head and picked up the radio. "O posto avançado Oito. Siga adiante." [Outpost Eight. Go ahead.] The man said into the microphone as a distraught voice on the other end awoke the other three men.

"Fomos atacados. Extraem para o norte. Helicópteros. Três." [We have been attacked. They are extracting north. Helicopters. Three.]

"Entendo!" [I understand!] The man jumped out of the chair and screamed across the room. "Levante-se! O Layartebians atacou! Voam para o norte em helicópteros! Receba os mísseis!" [Get up! Layartebians have attacked! They're flying north in helicopters! Get the missiles!] The men sprang to action, grabbing their assault rifles and a pair of missile launchers that were lying in a pair of plastic cases. The launchers were ready to go, all they had to do was plug in the batteries and that took only moments. They ran outside and to two trees where two of the men climbed up a pair of rope ladders to a platform at the top of the tree. Then, they threw ropes down and pulled up their missile launchers. The other two men ran to a third and climbed to a platform on its top as well. The platforms were very unstable, shaky, and definitely not rigged for much except as watch posts. They were barely stable enough to support the two men on the one, both with long-range, night-vision capable binoculars. They both scanned the horizon, each covering a wide arc of vision. The other two men were kneeling, the weapons in front of them, ready to fire. If they saw only one helicopter, they would both fire on it and if they saw two, they would fire on them both.

It took some time but eventually, one of the spotters had seen a helicopter. It was about a mile and a half to their west, moving quickly on the horizon. They could see the Panther and knew that it was Layartebian, even if it didn't have any markings. "Vejo-o. Oeste. Empenhe." [I see it. West. Engage.] The spotter yelled into a two-way radio and both men stood up with the missile launchers on their shoulders. They turned to the west and listened as their missile launchers growled. The weapon was armed and ready to go. Eventually, the missile launcher's growl turned to a solid, steady tone, signifying that the missile had locked onto the helicopter. Both men disengaged the safeties and held on the triggers. The missiles ejected from their launch tubes. They had fired the missiles within two seconds of each other. Once clear of the tube, the missile's control fins extended and the solid-fueled main motor ignited, accelerating the missile to over Mach 2 in just two seconds. Both missiles tracked on the helicopter where a number of things happened.

Inside the cockpit, there was no warning from the avionics. Infrared guided missiles like the Stingers that had been launched at the helicopter were completely passive. They didn't give out any warning to the engaged aircraft and defense against them was dependent on seeing the launch, which the door gunner did. He saw both missiles ignite to the helicopters starboard side and immediately, he yelled out into his microphone. "MISSILE LAUNCH. 3 O'CLOCK. COUNT TWO BIRDS!!!" The pilots immediately sprang to action, immediately ejecting flares. The helicopter banked hard, away from the missiles while nine flares shot out of its hull dispensers, illuminating the night sky. Still, both missiles continued to track and the helicopter banked hard again, the throttles maximized and the pilots ejecting more flares, another set of nine. They had sixty total but now they were reduced to forty-two.

The missile's flight time was only a few seconds. At burnout, the missile was burning through Mach 2.6 and tearing through the skies towards the helicopter. The pilots had time for one more erratic maneuver and dropped another set of flares, this time only six of them but it wasn't enough. One of the missiles had tracked a flare and dove into the trees, exploding harmlessly while the second continued to lock onto the exhaust of the helicopter. The proximity fuse on the warhead detonated and sent 6.6 pounds of explosive force and fragments into the helicopter's engines. Instantly, caution sirens erupted in the cockpit as the helicopter lost control from a turbine failure. The explosion also damaged the fuel and hydraulic lines and the helicopters nosed in, shaking as it rocketed towards the ground at high speed. The helicopter slammed into the ground slicing off a tree as it hit, hitting hard. As the helicopter was engaged, the pilots reported their distress call and when they struck, it was a "Mayday" call.

December 15, 2008 - 05:10 [AST]
90mi northwest of Aripuanã

The Panther hit the ground hard, hard enough to kill all eight men on board almost instantly. The pilots stood no chance and the two door gunners had been thrown from the helicopter. The Rangers inside, though strapped in, bounced around the cabin and off each other. One of them would survive the initial crash but die within minutes of massive trauma to the head. The downed helicopter sat underneath the jungle canopy, having made it all the way to the ground, destroying dozens of trees on the way down and sheering the top of one tree clean off, throwing it a hundred feet. The helicopter didn't explode on impact but it began to smoke, as a result of the crash and the searing hot fluids spilling all over the hull of the airframe and the ground below.

Despite the radio call, the crash of the helicopter wasn't witnessed by any of the other helicopters or the Predator but, immediately, the mission priority changed. The Predator was vectored to the general area the helicopter should have been at the time of its "Mayday" call. The Predator was miles away but with its powerful sensors and high altitude, the search wouldn't take very long. Back at the outpost, the mission commander, a Major with the Rangers immediately issued a number of orders. Among them was to vector both remaining helicopters to the area and to launch another trio of helicopters on a combat search and rescue mission. One of the helicopters was an AH-6M Little Bird, armed with a pair of M79A1 Gatling Guns each supplied by a magazine of eight hundred rounds and two, seven-round CRV7 rocket launchers. The other two helicopters were MH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters, each carrying a pair of M74A1 Miniguns and external fuel tanks for extended loiter times. The three helicopters had about one hundred miles to fly but it would take them almost a half hour to get there.

The Little Bird would provide air cover for the helicopters and they would as well, using their Gatling guns to take out any resistance on the ground, should any arise. The helicopters were vectored to the general area, like the Predator was without any knowing where the downed helicopter actually was or if any of the Rangers on board were alive. It would be up to the Panther's, their Rangers, and the single Predator to secure the crash site until the Pave Hawks and Little Bird could arrive, bringing pararescue personnel with them.

The Predator soon found the downed helicopter from its smoking engine and directed the Panthers to the area. They came in hard and fast, their door gunners looking through their night vision goggles for targets and the pilots paying close attention to their FLIR. It seemed as if the jungle was an empty place and when the helicopters came to a hover near the wreckage, letting their ropes down, everyone was tensed up, expecting to be shot at from rebels down below. Armed up, the twelve Rangers dropped to the ground below. Instantly, they formed up and set up a perimeter around the downed helicopter, lying prone and crouching next to trees, motionless and watching out of their goggles at the green around them. They kept their weapons shouldered and looked down their sights, their targeting lasers off but ready to go on at a moments notice. The two Panthers cleared out and set up an orbit around the area while the Predator did the same but from a much higher altitude, its own weapons ready to be brought to bear against the enemies that shot down the helicopter.

The lead Ranger of the twelve quickly checked the helicopter when he landed and reported that all on board were dead and that both door gunners were missing. A quick search would find them, lying away from the helicopter, their bodies twisted, many bones broken in many places, their skulls crushed. There was nothing the Rangers could do, the men were dead and they did everything they could to treat the bodies with respect as they pulled them from the wreckage and set them down in an area a few feet away. The bodies were mangled and in bad form and the men wished they could do something, these were their brothers, their fellow soldiers, men who protected them and vice versa. With the rescue helicopters inbound, the Predator set out on a secondary mission, to find a clearing big enough to land a Pave Hawk, which would make it easy for them to load the bodies and to escape.

Everything was quiet until the Pave Hawks entered the area, one of them setting down just a mile north of the crash site. The Pave Hawk set down with eight Rangers waiting, each one carrying a body. They loaded them onto the Pave Hawk and two Rangers climbed in, flying away while the second Pave Hawk set down, loading four of the Rangers, leaving two behind. They were soon joined by the remaining four who stayed at the crash site. They placed several blocks of C4 and several incendiary grenades inside of the helicopter and stood back while it detonated. The hull of the helicopter was torn to shreds and any trace of the Layartebian origin of it was burned beyond recognition. By the time the sun rose, the Layartebians were out of Mato Grosso and though they left behind the smoldering hulk of the Panther behind, they had torched and destroyed it beyond any identifiable means.

January 18, 2009 - 11:15 [EST]
Washington City, Maryland

Police units swarmed over downtown Washington City, lights flashing and sirens blaring. They were joined by ambulances and plenty of federal law enforcement vehicles as well. The city was in a panicked state of chaos, only having reached it in the last fifteen minutes, when things took a dangerously wrong turn at the National Mall, an open area national park in the downtown part of the city. It was there that over a half million people had gathered to listen to speeches the Council for a Democratic Layarteb. Having applied for the permit through all the proper channels, the CDL was given the area at the National Mall for a big rally. Their cause was against the Empire, a cause that sought a democratic Layarteb but still they were granted the right to organize, there was a freedom of speech of course. Most of the half million people present were college students and the other half were supporters of the CDL. With their numbers growing, the CDL found more than enough attention in the media and in their own private channels to have their rally, which called for a peaceful return to democracy in the Empire. Beginning at just half past ten, the rally was scheduled to go to noon, with a variety of speeches given. One was to be done by Maria Pendleton, the other by Lucas Henning, the president of the organization, and two others by faithful members of the CDL. Only one third over, the rally didn't get past eleven in the morning when all hell broke loose, all part of the plan.

**********

The events of January 18 began in the early morning hours of January 3 when Majestic held its first meeting of the new year. Majestic met that morning on the third and top floor of a brownstone in Layarteb City. The block was old and wealthy and the men, dressed in suits, took a variety of entrances to get into the building, arriving over the course of three hours started at half past midnight. When they were all present by three-thirty, the twelve men sat down in a darkened living room in the back of the building, drew the shades, and turned on one of the lights to its lowest setting. The dull light filled the room and illuminated the twelve faces just enough for each man to see the other. "Gentlemen. Shall we begin?" John Patrick began and quickly put aside his cup of coffee after having checked his wristwatch.

"The CDL is holding a rally on Sunday, the eighteenth at the National Mall. Attendance is expected to be in the range of three hundred to six hundred thousand. They plan on giving speeches denouncing the Emperor and the Empire itself, calling for democratic reform and their supporters are going to eat it up quite nicely. The media is giving them special attention and now that ODESSA has been finalized, the full weight of them is behind this rally and the CDL. This will show to the world that there is a call within the Empire for democracy." The Director of CEMA said as he leaned back in his comfortable, high-back, leather chair.

"What is the final membership total for ODESSA?" BG. Delaney asked.

"Nine hundred and eighty-seven of the highest socialites and elites in our country. Their base of control is vast and their base of influence is global." Dr. Victor Michael said, he being one of the men in ODESSA. "And the CDL has a membership numbering just over twenty-seven million and growing by the day. Within this year alone they will be expected to surpass forty million. This rally will be their biggest influence this year alone."

"This is precisely why we must advance their cause," John Patrick said as he returned to his freshly brewed coffee. "This obvious falls to your expertise," he turned to Jack and, in the dull light, motioned his head to show that he was addressing him. "Your expertise will give them their membership goals this year and incite what we hope to be the beginning of revolution, the end of the Empire, and our rise to power in a democratically controlled country."

"I assumed as much Mr. Patrick but is there any other way?" BG. Delaney asked as he knew what John Patrick was asking of him, what he and Majestic needed of him.

"I'm afraid not. This is the only way." The Minister of Foreign Affairs said so obviously and without a shred of human compassion. This was what had to be done and everyone at Majestic, Delaney included knew that there was no other way. "The target is Maria Pendleton. Her schedule is to appear for a half hour between ten forty-five and a quarter after eleven. Along with her, Lucas Henning and two unknown members will be speaking as well. They are not our concern, only Pendleton."

"She is a member of ODESSA." Dr. Michael said, realizing the implications on ODESSA that it would have. "The entire organization, both the CDL and ODESSA, will think that the government is onto them more so than they already think. The Brigadier's work this past summer certainly allowed ODESSA and the CDL a moment to realize that they were being targeted by the Emperor and his government. The deaths orchestrated have only furthered their paranoia and galvanized their resolve."

"On the topic of those, do we know who is responsible for Dr. Brian Haydn's death?" Ethan Hunter asked, knowing that the case remained unsolved with the authorities.

"That is a pending matter to which we have no answer as of yet." The Minister of Foreign Affairs answered. "We do not have any leads, provided that it was not you Brigadier?"

"It was not." BG. Delaney added. "Whomever it was though, from what I have researched and read, they are of equal skill to myself and, perhaps, an agent acting against us. The origin and source of which I do not know."

"Very well. For the time pending, our matters are to be focused elsewhere. To this rally. Agreed?" Dr. James Perry said, breaking his own silence in the midst of the morning and the darkly lit living room.

January 10, 2009 - 01:15 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

Low tide had just peaked only twenty-three minutes prior. Governor's Island and Upper New York Bay were both quiet. It was a cold January morning, the thermometer reading just 26.1°F, the wind chill bringing the temperature to 17.6°F thanks to an eight mile per hour breeze. It was clear out and the moon was ninety-seven percent full. Thanks to the chilling temperatures of the early morning, the Emperor kept all of the windows in his office sealed tightly shut. The fireplace that stood in his office had been running continuously for days now, logs fed into a particularly hot fire, in excess of 950°F, which pushed hot air throughout the whole office, helping to heat it with the aide of the heaters, all of which were running on minimal settings thanks to the fireplace. The office was comfortable, averaging 70°F throughout most of the room and the Emperor sat comfortably at his desk, reviewing memos sent to him by the Domestic Justice Agency when the buzzer on his desk echoed throughout the room. It was really an intercom to the secretary outside of his doors, both of which loomed at the other end of the room. "Sir. Mr. Delaney is here to see you."

"Send him in please and ensure I am not disturbed." He answered. Moments later, one of the two doors was pushed inward as Jack stepped into the room, dress casually but with his pistol tucked into his pants. He was one of the few people allowed to carry a weapon inside of the Fortress of Comhghall. The others were the rest of Force Falcon and the body guards that protected the Emperor and stood watch over the castle. Everyone else was required to surrender theirs upon entry. Delaney had upgraded his pistol from the outdated M33 to the newest pistols available in the Imperial Layartebian Military, the M120 Equinox. His was chambered in .40SW and the Combat variant, officially an M120C4 Equinox. Its barrel was threaded at the end to allow for the attachment of a suppressor and he could mount a small laser-aiming module onto it as well, the same kind created for the Mark 23 Mod 0 SOCOM pistol so many years prior. The LAM was ungainly and heavy but it gave him the ability to have either an infrared or visible laser pointer or either a visible or infrared illuminator. He didn't often carry it because it weighed down his weapon too much but if he needed to, he had one available to his disposal at home, at Zeta Facility, or in the Fortress of Comhghall. The same went for a suppressor.

"Sir. You called for me." He said as he entered, allowing the door to shut behind him.

"Sit down Jack." He said as he looked up from his desk and from the memo in front of him. "I want you to read something. It's about Dr. Haydn."

"Yes sir." He came in and sat down in front of the desk and was handed a brown, manilla folder with the words "CLASSIFIED" sprawled across it. He opened it and immediately began to read the typed memo. At the conclusion, he closed the folder and handed it back. "Still no leads?"

"No. Disturbing though. Dr. Haydn was assassinated by someone who is beyond the realm of professional. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Having reviewed the matter I would. The assassin is someone on equal skill to my own sir. I think whomever it is, they stand as the most potential threat to our Empire sir. They could, with enough information and planning, get to you."

"Preposterous." The Emperor's tone immediately identified that he wasn't popular with the idea Delaney had just presented. "That is why you and your team are here to protect me."

"Sir. I'm serious on this matter. You should be careful. Whomever did this did it to send a message that they know about certain things. Sir whomever did this knows about more than we'd care to admit. They are hunting, perhaps for Dr. Noyle. Although he's well hidden, the fact that they got to Dr. Haydn is a scary enough fact that they could get to him."

"Could they now?"

"Sir. We must take every precaution we can and we must be as cautious as possible. If they can get to him. They can get to you."

"Do you suspect this as some sort of organization?" The Emperor asked, probing Jack for any information that he might have.

"It's definitely the work of an organization but of what caliber I do not know. Perhaps mercenaries hired by the same people who created the Ghost Warriors."

"Could it be them?"

"They're not that highly skilled or trained. Whomever is responsible belongs to a higher organization. The root, perhaps. They're the ones we need to concentrate our efforts on and they're the ones we have to seek out and destroy over any others. They're the source but they're the ones who we have to get."

"Could this individual or group be the same that assassinated the Eurasian ambassador?"

"Highly possible. Like I said sir, they have immense skill, nearly unlimited reach, and enough power to do that. We have to assume that they have access to sensitive areas of this government. There are traitors in our midst."

"There are Jack. We are no closer to finding them than we were months earlier though." The Emperor seemed distressed by his own comment. Those that sought out the end of the Empire from within were elusive, cautious, and very capable. They were among the highest officials in the government and they were in various areas, layered to protect each other.

"Sir. Unfortunately, whomever we're dealing with are in areas and positions to protect each other. I suspect that within your Cabinet are one or perhaps two of these individuals. I cannot be certain who though. I have dug and searched and I'm afraid I've come up with nothing."

"That is a novel theory but if you cannot prove it how am I to adjust to it or even believe it and you?"

"Sir. I'm afraid you will have to take my word on it for the time being."

"And I have. How am I to know that one day I won't call a meeting and be assassinated in this very office?"

"We have taken precautionary measures to stop this sir. Unless they intend on subverting myself or my team they will not be able to accomplish that feat." Jack said with pure assurance and confidence. Based on the plans established by Majestic, the Emperor was to be left alone for the time being. Nobody would try for his life until the time was right and, when it was, Delaney would be the one.

"I trust you have Jack but this is a time when I am becoming less and less trustworthy with those around me."

January 12, 2009 - 11:00 [EST]
Zeta Facility, New York

"Ever fired this weapon?" The armorer asked Jack as he sat at a counter, a rifle in front of him along with several clips, all loaded with bullets. The rifle was an M36A3 Sniper Rifle, an in-house modification of the M36A1. The M36 Sniper Rifle was among the most accurate in the world and definitely for good reason. Originally intended to replace all existing bolt-action rifles in the medium-caliber range in the Imperial Layartebian Military, it was adopted as the M36A1 Sniper Rifle in the mid-1980s and chambered in 7.62x51mm. With an effective range of 1,015 meters and an accuracy of just .2MOA, it quickly became a sniper's favorite within the Imperial Layartebian Military. It was equipped with a ten round magazine and a specialized system in the butt of the rifle to allow for recoil reduction. Often, the rifle would be fitted with a recoil absorber to the rear to allow for more accurate shooting. Additionally, it was fitted with a rail system underneath and on the top of the weapon to allow for the carriage of a number of optical devices as well as the Harris bipod and though it could use its iron sights, the weapon was meant for a scope. Because the weapon was bolt-action every round was chambered in the exact same way, lending to its unprecedented accuracy. Then, in the early 1990s, the rifle was rechambered to the A2 version and given the ability to fire the .338 Lapua Magnum round, extending the effective range of the rifle by over seven hundred meters. Now, Force Falcon's armorers modified an existing M36A2 to an experimental XM36A3 configuration with an entirely different round. The round was the extremely powerful 7.8x63mm Doomani cartridge, which was an improved .30-06 round, a round that overpowered almost anything else, bulletproof glass included. "Now all of the modifications and testing are completed. We've got it set for the 7.8 by 63 millimeter round and we've been effective well through sixteen hundred meters but I have to say that its range is really a lot further. A lot further Jack."

"What makes you say that?"

"You're familiar with the Springfield 1903 right?"

"Of course." Jack said. He owned one such rifle. "I have one at home."

"And the maximum range of it?" Jack liked where he was going with it.

"Twenty-three hundred."

"Yes. With a twenty-four inch barrel and a round at a muzzle velocity of eight hundred and twenty meters per second, give or take. Whereas we have a rifle here with a twenty-eight inch barrel and a round with a muzzle velocity exceeding one kilometer per second, one thousand and forty-five to be exact. The Doomanis sure know how to make a cartridge. The only problem is the high pressure load of the cartridge exceeds that of the .338 Lapua so the barrel and chamber will wear out faster, perhaps twelve thousand or fourteen thousand instead of twenty thousand rounds."

"Fine by me. How many have you converted?"

"Seventeen. This one is my personal favorite."

"Is it now?"

"Quite. It's been tweaked the most and I have to admit Jack, it's a work of art." Jack eyed the rifle and the bullets. The magazine allowed for the full ten rounds and the weapon's barrel had a suppressor, bipod, scope, and laser ranging device attached. "It's got just about everything on it already. The standards and then the normal laser ranging device that we've pioneered for use on the heavy caliber weapons, fine tuned now for this round. It's just as accurate as the rifle and will shoot an invisible laser beam as far as four kilometers, ranging it precisely."

"Looks like I need to get it on the range and find out what it can do."

"The long range is empty today. Let's go have some fun."

"Let's." Jack picked up the rifle and folded the bipod, unscrewed the suppressor, and put it inside a hard-plastic case, putting the suppressor next to it in its place. The armorer picked up the rounds and put them inside a bag as well and the two of them left the armory. They were bringing two hundred rounds with them in twenty magazines, all of them preloaded and ready to be used. Zeta Facility was entirely underground and the long range they were talking about was a few miles up the road, on protected, government land, big enough to have a rifle range long enough to test fire high caliber sniper rifles and machine guns that used 15.5x115mm rounds. Less than a half hour later, they pulled into a parking space at the range and stepped out of the armorer's pickup truck, a 2001 Chevrolet S10 ZR2. The rifle and ammunition were in the bed of the truck and they pulled the goods out of it before they stepped into the office. The range wasn't very sophisticated. There was the range itself, the parking lot, and the main building, which housed a small armory with several weapons, mostly rifles, and plenty of ammunition, an area to sit and eat, a bathroom, and a ladder to a tower that sat next to the building. The tower was about sixty feet in the air and gave a perfect view of the whole range.

The two men walked into the office and Jack took off his sunglasses. "Randy, good morning. We've got a new toy to test out."

"Really? What have you then?" The old man said. He was a career enlisted man with the Imperial Layartebian Army, someone who had been in the military for his whole life, joining at seventeen and now he was almost sixty. The only reason he was allowed to serve for so long was because he had a spotless record for the full fifty-two years of his service. He was a Command Sergeant Major, the second highest enlisted rank one could achieve, an E-12. Fifty-two years of service was a long time, a really long time and he enjoyed his position essentially as the man in charge of the whole range. He would have been invited to Force Falcon's support staff but he rejected it, wishing to stay in the regular army instead.

"You know that's classified."

"Classified?" He laughed. His tenure in the military had seen his fair share of classified information. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody's on it today so pick a stall."

"Need a spotting scope." The armorer asked as Jack set off for the door. Randy pulled one out from underneath the counter and handed it off to him and quickly, he left. Despite the huge differences in rank, Randy being a Command Sergeant Major, an E-12, Jack being a Brigadier General, an O-7, and the armorer, Tim, being a Master Sergeant, an E-9, none of them saluted and first names were more important than rank, just the way Delta had been in the last days of the Republic. The two men exited the building from the rear and picked one of the stalls, which was essentially a piece of dirt with a row of sandbags in front of it underneath a wooden canopy. There were twenty stalls and they chose stall number four, Jack lying on the ground with the rifle, a pair of earphones covering his ears. Tim joined, moving over to his left side, the spotting scope on its tripod, his own earphones on, protecting his ears. Jack extended the bipod and uncapped the scope, leaving the suppressor off for now. He turned on the laser ranging module and put the butt of the rifle up to his shoulder, the recoil absorber flush against his jacket. It was cold but not cold enough to shoot a rifle. He looked out through his scope and identified a silhouette down range and put the scope on it.

"How about target number one. Range is thirteen hundred even."

"Got it. Wind is seven knots to the north."

"Alright here it goes." He slapped in the magazine after having set the rifle scope, unlocked the safety, and reacquired the target. It loomed ahead of him, far in the distance and he put the crosshairs dead center on the target, a heart shot if it were a real person. It was a piece of metal, banged up from the amount of rounds that clanged into it over the years and it was the size of an average human being. He waited until he got his breathing steady, which took a fraction of a second. Into the proper rhythm, he squeezed the trigger and released the round, sending it downrange and over one kilometer per second. Two and a quarter seconds later, still supersonic, the bullet hit.

"That's a hit. Dead on. Why not a further target."

"Target three? Range is two thousand meters. One hundred and eighty grain bullet, it won't be supersonic that far or have a lot of energy."

"No. You'd have to get a direct heart or head shot to kill." The armorer said as he sighted the target. Jack adjusted the scope and sighted the target, putting the crosshairs on the target's head. He waited and squeezed off the round, putting it back downrange. It impacted, directly on target, just four and a half seconds later. The spark on the target showed that it hit and the target would have been neutralized, even though the bullet had less than three hundred pounds of force.

January 14, 2009 - 09:00 [EST]
Department of Engraving and Printing, Washington City

The Engraving and Printing office was located in Washington City, overlooking the Tidal Basin and a series of memorials and the giant reflecting pool, the same place that the CDL would be having its rally in four days. Brigadier General Jack Delaney, dressed in a sharp business suit sat in its lobby. He looked civilian, a businessman, not a government employee or even a military leader. He most certainly looked ordinary, just as ordinary as the dozens upon dozens of men who walked into and out of the building, running a constant stream of traffic through metal detectors and past armed security guards, all employees of the government. The lobby of the building was ornate, its floors marble and granite, polished so well that it was a big mirror. He sat in a comfortable leather chair on the side of the lobby next to a small table with fresh flowers and another leather chair. He sat comfortably his suit in perfect condition, his hands folded, a briefcase by his side, his pistol tucked into his jacket. Comfortable in the chair, Jack looked around the lobby through his Oakley sunglasses and stood up as he saw a man walking towards him. The man was tall, over six feet and just as sharply dressed as Jack was. Jack buttoned his jacket and stepped forward, extending his right hand. The other man extended his right hand as well and they shook hands, each one covering their right hands with their left, shielding the handshake from anyone else but it looked more as if they were good friends rather than anything else. "Jack. It's good to see you here this morning."

"I'm glad I could come Walter. Shall we go inside?"

"Yes. We must go to my office first." Jack walked back to his briefcase and picked it up with his left hand, stepping towards the metal detectors with Walter near his side. "We'll bypass security."

"Good." Jack knew he couldn't get through the metal detectors without setting them off given the presence of the pistol in his jacket and Walter would take care of that fact, that was his mission.

Together they walked up to the metal detectors and Walter nodded to the security guard. He stepped aside and opened a gate. "Sir," he said as the two men entered. Walter pulled a badge from his pocket and handed it to Jack, showing that he was allowed to be in the building. The badge had his picture, a fictitious name, "Mark Skinner," and a code on the top, "OPRT." That meant he was to be given unrestricted access to any part of the building, even the part where the Empire's currency was printed, deep in the basement of the building. The badge was also scannable and could be swiped through any card reader in the building. He could go anywhere.

"My office is on the fourth floor. We'll be able to talk there."

"Sure." Walking up to a bank of elevators, Walter smiled at a few people standing there and stepped in with Jack when the doors open. They continued the rest of the way to his office in silence. The sound of their shoes on the floor the only noise between them until they stepped into Walter's office, walking past his secretary in silence. He shut the door behind Jack and Jack walked up to a chair, unbuttoned his jacket, put down his briefcase, and sat down. Walter did the same behind his desk, a large, wooden desk that was fifty or more years old, polished and kept in excellent condition by himself, his predecessors, and the maintenance crews. "We're on schedule?"

"Yes. The spot is upstairs at the very top level that is currently closed to all employees and security personnel due to structural problems. It is unsafe thanks to the presence of termites on the support areas. It is slated for reconstruction in just one week and that gives us plenty of time. All security devices there are disabled and the only way up is through another cordoned off area. However, that area is guarded by cameras and security personnel. The cameras aren't the problem, those will be taken care of and any footage of you entering or leaving the area will be erased. You will appear as you are today, as a contractor hired by myself to make initial estimations on the job. You will carry in your weapon, unassembled I trust, hidden underneath a variety of tools and devices?"

"Correct. From there?"

"I will escort you into the area and remain there. You will take your shot and we will leave fifteen minutes later. Timing is crucial."

"Very good. Then in four days I'll return. Today was a preliminary meeting."

"Yes. You can come back then and you will need that badge to get into the building. Until then, keep low and out of sight. Four days is a long time for us to wait."

"We've waited longer for certain things. For now we'll be fine."

January 18, 2009 - 12:00 [EST]
Washington City General Hospital, Washington City

There was nothing that the surgeons could do for Maria Pendleton. She was barely alive when the EMTs pulled her into the ambulance and sped off, behind a police escort. The round that Jack fired from 1,450 meters away had gone clean through her chest, causing severe trauma. Her left lung collapsed and her heart instantly began to go into ventricular fibrillation. CPR and the use of a defibrillator in the ambulance ride did little to bring her heart back into a normal rhythm as she remained unconscious inside of the ambulance. When she arrived at the hospital, she flat-lined and there was nothing they could do anymore, despite how hard they tried. After a few minutes in the ER, the doctors stopped and the EKG was turned off, its paper reel to be removed and stored for her file. The lead doctor in the room looked over at the clock and at his watch. "Time of death, eight past eleven and fourteen seconds. Alright, let's get this place cleaned up and get the body downstairs for autopsy." The doctor said as he left the room. There was nothing they could have done and the autopsy would be pivotal for investigators. Their biggest task was to find the location of the shooter. That was the ultimate endeavor for them and that hinged on the autopsy. They had to recover the bullet, find out how it hit her, how it traveled, and what it was. That was everything for them and until that could be established, they had very little of a case to go on, especially since they wouldn't be recovering a shell casing or a weapon.

By then, Delaney had left the building and was on his way to Andrews Air Force Base where he and his weapon would board a small airplane and fly back to Westchester County, where he would return to Zeta Facility. There would be no evidence of his being there and the police would never know who did it although they would eventually find out that the shot came from the building and from the upper floor. However, there was nothing more that they could get on the case from there and that would take more than a week to determine.

The CDL would issue their press release just before 15:00, citing the assassination of Maria Pendleton as the gravest injustice in modern times and demanded that the government and police forces find her killer, bring him to justice, and disband to allow for democratic reform. They would hold a vigil for her that evening while the Emperor fumed in his office, demanding whomever was responsible to be caught. The reaction was just what Majestic predicted. Sympathy for the CDL and their cause was boosted overnight and Lucas Henning and the rest of those in ODESSA met late that evening, just before midnight. Someone was onto them, they concluded and their paranoia, as predicted, grew exponentially.

January 24, 2009 - 19:00 [EST]
Governor's Island, Layarteb City

The Emperor sat in his office, waiting for the final person to arrive. He had called an emergency meeting of the National Security group following a major news broadcast from the Layartebian News Network. It was a broadcast that instantly inundated his office and the Ministry of Defense with phone calls from reporters and journalists in the Empire and all around the world. The story fell like a bombshell on the 18:00 evening news and the half hour long special received very high ratings. It took the Emperor and the government by surprise and he had watched it in its entirety only to call the meeting immediately thereafter. Joined in his office by the Minister of Defense, Minister of Intelligence, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Justice, Director of the Domestic Justice Agency, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Imperial Layartebian Military, and a few others, the Emperor waited on only one last person, the Minister of the Interior, who had been delayed due to traffic. She had finally arrived at ten after and entered the office, the doors shutting behind her. The Emperor stood up from his desk and the chatter in the room quieted as he picked up a folder. It was his copy of the mission folder from Operation AEQUITAS, the covert operation against rebel forces in Aripuanã just a month earlier.

He walked to the giant conference table and put the folder down. "Operation Aequitas. Or justice. Was covert. Almost. We lost eight men during the return flight home due to a surface-to-air missile back in December. The mission, up until that point, was an overwhelming success. All of our objectives within Aripuanã, Mato Grosso, were achieved. We devastated multiple aircraft, an arms cache, their headquarters, and an anti-aircraft gun without being noticed. The official body count from the operation was one hundred and seven between all of the objectives, and then the additional eight from our men. The rescue operation of our downed helicopter and airmen was done according to procedures. The bodies were recovered, returned, and the helicopter destroyed with incendiary devices. Ladies and gentlemen. Nothing about this seems very out of the ordinary correct?" The crowd nodded their heads in agreement. "You would be correct. So then why the hell did I just watch a half hour special showing this helicopter and some damning evidence linking us to the helicopter and to vast devastation in Aripuanã. You know, the Mato Grosso government lodged a protest with us the following day and I answered that personally, assuring them that the Empire had nothing to do with this event and that it was likely due to infighting between various anarchist groups. I chided them on their inability to police the region. How did the media get a hold of this?" He said, pacing around the table.

"Sir. Our best understanding is limited only to guesses. We surmise," the Emperor interrupted the Minister of Intelligence quickly. He quieted and looked down at the table briefly before returning his eyes to the Emperor.

"Your guesses will not finish anything. This is not about guessing. This is about solving. Our official response to this broadcast is that it is sensational, fiction, and its conclusions are obvious mistaken. The Empire has not conducted any operations in Mato Grosso since the treaty was signed and that is our official story and that will remain our official story. That is where we stand there. We are working to discredit the journalist for this action and calling for his resignation from the LNN. Whether or not they will oblige is beyond our control. Our biggest problem lies with how they got a hold of this story. How did they know about the helicopter? It wasn't hard to learn about the devastation inflicted on Aripuanã but the helicopter was. It was devastated, destroyed, I saw the photographs myself. The folder has them in there. There was nothing left of the helicopter at all. Nothing. Yet it was paraded on camera with some pretty damning evidence that it was ours. There's also some obvious defenses we have. First off, we have exported the Panther helicopter worldwide and its systems, whatever were left of them, were destroyed enough that they couldn't directly be linked to us. Of course the aircraft was manufactured in the Empire and that is something we can say simply went to an export customer. Neuvo Rica. It doesn't matter though. What matters is that this is a needle in a haystack that they got their hands on."

"Sir. In light of this and in light of the recent assassination of Maria Pendleton just six days ago, the public is very concerned." The Minister of the Interior said, her glasses between her eyes and the Emperor, sitting comfortably on her face.

"Of course they're concerned. Of course they're concerned. Our populace isn't stupid. They understand that there are things they aren't told, that the government has to lie to protect the greater good and to provide security. This is something they accept. Obviously. Now they're being presented with this notion that we're lying to them not to protect them but to extort and take advantage of them. This is something they won't accept and it isn't true. That's obvious. The bigger issue now lies with the source. Do we have a leak?" The room was quiet for a few seconds, nobody daring to speak, afraid of the possible ramifications of their answer. "Of course we do!" The Emperor yelled, his voice echoing off the stone walls and floor, the flames in the fire place rising to his temperament. "Find out who it is!"

February 1, 2009 - 10:00 [AST]
Caracas, Venezuela

Since the Emperor first gave the order to find out just who leaked the story of Operation Aequitas to the press a total of eight days had passed and it wasn't until now that the first real lead came. The case had been assigned to a pair of investigators with the Ministry of Justice and they sought out the leak as a matter of national security. They had first gone to the actual television station and questioned the staff there about the story. Threatening to have those responsible tried for violating national security laws, the two investigators finally got the name of the journalists source, a woman from Caracas who, for all intents and purposes, didn't exist. Quickly it became evident that the leak was someone who knew a lot more than just Operation Aequitas. The name given to the investigators was Angela Hornsbry and when that name was put through the databases at the Ministry of Justice, it pulled up nothing. Further digging and another twenty-four hours into the investigation later, the two investigators found something startling. Angela Hornsbry had been killed in 2000 in a horrific car accident in Ireland during a very foggy night. Eleven people were injured in the wreck and she and two others died before paramedics could arrive. Originally, the investigators thought they had been lied to and returned to the television station only to find that the journalist had been AWOL since their visit. Angered, they left, returning to their office to put out an APB on the journalist, Martin Crow. He was found on January 30 outside a seedy bar in Jamaica, a bullet in the back of his head. Whatever was going on, the investigators knew that it was big. Whoever had leaked the story to the press didn't want to be found and certainly was going through great lengths. This is what brought the investigators to Venezuela.

The name Angela Hornsbry gave them nothing until they filed a report with various directors. Eventually, the name reached the desk of an analyst in some small, compartmentalized office within the Ministry of Intelligence. The name was a name assigned to one of their agents, an agent working in Mato Grosso, an agent who had gone rogue when the war ended. She was originally believed to have been killed during the fighting but by the beginning of 2009, her status was revised to that of a rogue agent and she was being hunted for execution. Quickly, that information was returned to the Minister of Intelligence who knew what this meant. Resources were made and both investigators were suddenly brought into the Ministry of Intelligence early on the morning of January 31 and given the entire briefing on Angela Hornsbry and given the option of working, temporarily, above their security clearance, to hunt down, track her, and bring her to justice. They accepted and were put on several peoples' radar screens. Their first break came later that evening when they were put on a plane to Caracas to meet up with another agent working with the Ministry of Intelligence, a man who had been in Mato Grosso during the war, who had originally been assigned to track down Angela and find her but who had been reassigned shortly after he began the work. His name was Andrew Hunt and he was going to meet the two agents in a seedy motel in a seedy area of Caracas, its southwestern side. This was a side of the city known for its crime and it wasn't a part of the city anybody with any taste would go. It was definitely not a pleasant place to be but it was perfect because it was well under the radar. Police officers moving throughout this part of the city weren't the most capable and they weren't the most inquisitive either.

The meeting was for broad daylight, furthering the obviousness of the matter. Nobody was looking for them, especially not the police and especially not Hornsbry, who was hundreds of miles away. Both agents pulled into the motel's parking lot in a rental car. The car wasn't new and it wasn't in good condition either. The goal was to make them look as if they were supposed to be there and the vehicle mattered most. A flashy car meant somebody of high importance and the cops would definitely be inquisitive at that point. Dressed like common thugs, they exited their vehicle and ascended the steps of the motel's northern building and walked to room 204. They walked past rooms that, for the large part, had their windows open. The temperature was in the low seventies with a high amount of humidity and these were rooms occupied by one of two folk, people who had no money to afford anything else and people coming to have sex with a hooker. It was almost too early for the latter and that meant most of the occupied rooms were occupied as residences. The motel owner charged just §350 a month for renting a room and that was overcharging. The rooms had no air conditioning, often a single bed, bathroom, and kitchenette area. Some of the better ones, the two bedrooms, went for §500 a month and they had added luxury but even still, cockroaches would have lived elsewhere. The two investigators, their pistols tucked underneath their shirts, walked past rooms where couples argued, children cried, and people screwed. There was no escaping the sounds and they found room 204 and its quiet, to be out of place. They knocked on the door in a certain code, four quick knocks followed by a brief pause, two slow knocks, another pause, and three quick knocks.

Andrew Hunt had seen them pull up and watched them ascend the stairs from his darkened room, the blinds drawn. He had peered through the slats and got himself ready. He had a pistol on his hip as well but that wasn't for anything except show. His real weapon was in an ankle holster, a small, stub nose .38 revolver with five rounds loaded and a twelve gauge shotgun that he held close to him. He racked the round into the chamber and unlocked the safety as he walked up to the door. He peered through the peephole and recognized the two men from a photograph that he had seen. Regardless, he didn't let his guard down and he wasn't going to be so quick to open the door. "Who are you?" He asked, expecting a coded response.

"Dry cleaners," the lead investigator, Charles said. "About your bill."

"Fuck my bill. Go away." Andrew responded. Thus far everything was according to plan.

"Can't do that. We've got a special payment plan for you. Involves biweekly payments." The other investigator said, ensuring that he got his line right.

"Alright. Maybe we can talk. Let me put on a pair of pants." The investigators were told that if that line should arise, Andrew was armed and ready to blow them to smithereens if they screwed around with him. He shuffled around in the room, making noise and then opened the door slightly, to see the two agents outside. He pushed the door closed again, slid off the chain, and opened it. They stepped in, seeing the shotgun in his hands and he closed it behind them, locking the door, the deadbolt, and replacing the chain in the process. "Don't fuck around boys. Just because they say you're on my side doesn't mean I believe them. Charles and Rick?"

"Yes."

"Yes. What's the deal man why so paranoid?"

"Why?" Andrew stepped towards them with his weapon. "Did you notice a silver Chevy Caprice in the parking lot?" Both investigators looked at each other and shook their heads. "Didn't think so. That's because it's spread out all over a town about six miles south of here along with my decoy. Turns out Angela's on to me."

"Okay how'd she find out who you are?"

"Not a clue. Now sit the fuck down and let's get started." He took a seat in the back of the room, the weapon in his lap. "Hands where I can see them at all times and no I'm not turning on the light." Light filtered in through the slats on the blinds and though the room was quiet, the noise of the neighbors arguing, their televisions, crying children, and sounds of sex were hard to block out through the thin walls. "So you've found out she leaked about Aequitas?"

"Yeah. Now we have to find her and arrest her. Tell me, is this not going to be easy?"

"Of course not. She's a spy. Governments and crack-pot police and intelligence investigators from all over the world have trouble finding us. You're outmatched. Not to say you're stupid but let's face it, she's out of your league."

"What about yours?" Rick questioned, slightly annoyed by Andrew's underestimation of him.

"Thus far no. I'm still alive." He said, cradling the shotgun in his lap, the barrel easily pivoted to face the investigators in front of him. A single shot would easily kill one of them and seriously wound the other. "So what have you got?"

"We think she's in the Amazonian Control Territory but we don't know where." Andrew started laughing right away and both investigators looked at each other and then at him. "Something funny about this?"

"You were fooled. She's not in the ACT."

"Then where is she?"

"Right here!"

February 1, 2009 - 13:15 [AST]
Caracas, Venezuela

Three hours changed a lot in the world's of Rick and Charles. Both of them had followed and passed Andrew's small and large tests over the course of those three hours and now they sat on the floor of an abandoned office building just next door to a low-rent, apartment building, in the industrial sector of the city. Their orders were far simpler now that they located her. At their disposal were plenty of resources and they would need as many as they could get. Hornsbry was a slippery agent, a skilled agent who wouldn't be cornered easily. Time was ticking and that meant they couldn't wait around. Armed, vests on, they waited now for more agents to arrive. These were agents from the Ministry of the Interior. Within the Ministry of the Interior were seven groups, one of which was titled the Interior Ministry Forces and they were, essentially, a paramilitary force consisting of 200,000 men and women. Within this group were the spies that the Ministry of Intelligence had, as well as spies for the Interior Ministry. They had been called up by the trio of men for the high risk operation and they were to secure the building while the three men pounced on her. They were told, flat-out, to expect armed opponents and, for them, the entire building was hostile. They would come wearing body armor, carrying assault rifles and submachine guns, stun grenades, and they would come in hard and fast. The three men, armed themselves would be the ones who took the lead and if the shooting started, they were the ones to be out front, returning fire. Most of these types of raids would have been conducted at night but time wasn't permitting. They were now all on the playing field.

The vehicles pulled up quick, a series of black sedans and large SUVs. It was almost as if it were choreographed how they showed up, arriving from every available road and all at the same speed. They screeched to a halt and the perimeter was instantly established. Charles, Rick, and Andrew came out of the abandoned warehouse and darted across the street, weapons raised as the men pushed into the building and sealed off the ground floor. They would punch into each and every apartment. If anyone went out a window, they were facing more Interior Ministry Forces, all of them with their weapons trained on each and every window. Quietly but with force, the men and women kicked in the four doors on the first floor and subdued anyone inside. People screamed but were quickly hushed as they were thrown to the ground, handcuffed, and gagged. Even children suffered the same fate. Nobody was going to be spared. More men and women hit the second and third floors and anyone trying to go out of a window from higher wouldn't survive the fall without injury. The ideal goal was to do this without killing any unarmed civilians but when did anything ever go ideally? Angela was on the sixth and highest floor, barricaded into her apartment. When the cars outside screeched to a halt, she knew they had found her and immediately, she went to work. She had an axe and was already cutting a hole inside of the wall of her apartment to access a shaft that would get her to the basement. The noise would have echoed into the hallways but the people screaming drowned it out, hiding it from earshot. She was alone, four metal bars running across the wooden door. They had something for that though, a small block of C4 that they placed on the wall next to the door. Four seconds later, the entire wall crumbled to bits and pieces and several stun grenades were thrown inside as the trio of men tore into the room, weapons in front of them, gas masks on to allow them to breathe and see through the smoke and cloud of tear gas created by one of the grenades.

They had moved fast, very fast but not fast enough. She had gotten into the wall and down the shaft, running through the basement into an underground tunnel system. The three men followed, alerting the others on their radios that she had escaped. They were cautious but fast, running through the basement and then into the tunnel, finding it easy enough. Angela was in a rush, a huge rush and she didn't have time to cover her tracks. The metal gate she ripped open to get into the tunnel was left open and a smear of blood was left on the wall, caused when she accidentally sliced her arm with the axe. They followed her into the tunnels, listening to her footsteps echo ahead of them. Andrew had expected an escape plan like this from her but the others had not. As they ran down the tunnels to go after her, a pair of Interior Ministry Forces pulled up in a black sedan only about three hundred yards away, around the corner from the warehouse. That was where the tunnel would go and where he expected her to exit. He had given those orders specifically to the men by himself and only when the men arrived on scene. He had staked out the building before, which was why he knew where to find her but he expected it to be a fortress and the idea of leveling the whole building just to get her didn't sit too well with him, especially when he saw children playing on the stoop one morning. He had targeted Vestas during the Mato Grosso War, watching them land here, there, and everywhere and when the one landed on an air raid shelter, he realized the full extent of his actions. Killing women and children, even if for the benefit of the Empire, wasn't on his list anymore.

Andrew's guess worked. As Angela emerged from the tunnel, she was pushed to the ground, handcuffed, gagged, and thrown into the back of the sedan. One of the two men kept his weapon on her at all times as the other waited for Rick, Charles, and Andrew to emerge. They were only sixty-five seconds behind her and they came out with smiles on their faces. Captured alive was something they didn't expect and when Andrew walked over to the car he looked into the open door and knelt down, his pistol in his hand. "We're through." He said as he walked off, turning his head around to look at the building, just as Angela's final escape plan came to fruition. Angela had rigged the building with fifty pounds of Semtex A plastic explosive. The explosives had been placed throughout the basement, on the main support joints of the building and rigged to a timer that she activated once she was through the wall. All three men had walked right by the devices, which, unlike the movies, didn't blink red and didn't make any sound. They were easy enough to disarm, had they been found but they weren't meant to be found. The explosive force of the charges shattered the structural supports of the building, weakening them in milliseconds. The building collapsed seconds later, the entire north face of it sliding to the ground followed by the rest, almost as if it had been struck by a bomb from a plane flying high above it. Everyone turned to Angela who only sat and smiled. Eventually, she would be on a plane to the Galapagos Islands and the infamous but largely unknown, Nova Prospekt prison.

March 14, 2009 - 20:00 [EST]
Layarteb City

"Since the first terrorist attack by the RLA on October 10, 2005, there has been a recorded total of more than 600,000 civilians and military soldiers dead from policies of the Emperor. To answer your question. Of course the RLA was a terrorist group and its demise was perfectly justified. Their seizure of St. Paul's Boarding School was a deplorable act of cowardice to name just one of the many that they had committed. Their demise in January 2006 was a welcomed event but we have to be warned now. Always in the history of terrorist groups do we see this and we saw it happen with the RLA. It's a predictable outcome you could say. Terrorist groups are often rallied around a single, charismatic leader but there is always tension within, from groups of people who conflict over the scale of attacks. The most dangerous of these groups are and will always be those who deem the group's leader 'too soft' and want more and more bloodshed. That undoubtedly happened within the RLA and whatever splinter group came from it, they were far more devastating. St. Paul's School was tragic but events like the nuclear bombing of Grenada, the kidnappings, Venezuela, the Sky Wonder hijacking and subsequent sinking, just to name a few have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and shaken the very core and fabric of our state.

"When the Emperor proclaimed his victory after our civil war, he proclaimed that things like injustice, corruption, and violence were products of the Republic, that the days of insecurity were over but really, what's changed? The draconian laws and justice system are injustice in and of themselves. Those less fortunate in our society are left to rot in their own demise, swept from the streets like rubbish. The motto of work or die isn't exactly fair. Fairness and equality have been erased from our system. Men and women may be considered equal, white and black, Hispanic, whatever the race may be. But really, what equality is there anymore? This injustice has bred violence both inside and out. Crime rates may be low but that's because of draconian laws and harsh sentences for even minor crimes. Our prisons are not necessarily overpopulated but then again, we have more prisons than most countries have towns. Our population grows as well. And what of the Conquests? More than two decades of violence as the Emperor 'expanded' our borders, taking over lands north, west, south, and east, across oceans just to create our grandiose Empire. How many millions died so that we could look good on a map? It's bred contempt for us, not just outside of our borders but also within. Look at the Mayans. The Amazonians. They're all loathsome of us. Even the Quebecois detest us and the Venezuelans have been revolting against our intrusion for more than four decades now.

"Insecurity is just as prevalent. Look at the state of affairs since October 2005, since the RLA first rose. Over 600,000 people have died as a result of insecurity. What level of security can you proclaim when an entire state within your borders revolts, when a nuclear bomb explodes on an island in your control, when men, women, and children are being systematically kidnapped and held for ransom or executed. Some of these kidnapping victims are even the kin of some of the highest officials of our government. They can't even protect their own families. What makes me confident that they can protect mine?

"I'm sorry but I have to refute everything you say on the basis of just these past three and a half years. If 600,000 deaths isn't enough to shake your confidence in our leader than I am afraid you are meant to live as a slave underneath our government. What good are our rights if we cannot exercise them to alter a destructive government that is hell bent on dominating every hemisphere of our planet at the expense of all of its citizens? Times have grown dark for us and the Empire has peaked and has far outstayed its welcome. The days of the Republic are over and gone but the days of the Empire should not be written in stone." Lucas Henning concluded. He was giving a live interview on a prime time political show on television, cable's most watched prime time news show in the Empire. Millions upon millions of viewers tuned in to hear the interview, to listen to what Lucas Henning had to say and he had one more tidbit to add. "And what of Maria Pendleton? A fellow organizer and sympathizer in the CDL? What was her death? To me it was a signal that the Empire and the Emperor have broken each and every rule set fourth in the wake of the fall of the Republic. It's time for a new government and I don't believe it needs to be done at the point of a pistol yet but that time may come if things continue the way they are. Thank you." The show cut to a commercial and many in the studio stood perplexed by what he had said. It wasn't that they were appalled with what he had said but it was the way he said everything. It was said with such passion that they knew, right there, that his cult of personality was going to be instrumental in some form of change experienced by the government. Whether it was good or bad, they couldn't surmise but many thought it as good. After all, here was a man, rallied by millions, who sought peaceful reform of the government; although, he hinted at non-peaceful measures, should they arise. The Emperor saw his speech too and while it infuriated him, he knew that Lucas Henning was a foe he couldn't instantly dismiss or make go away. He had to confront him, in time.

March 21, 2009 - 18:00 [AST]
Yaguaraparo, Venezuela

Yaguaraparo, a town of barely 10,000 people, sat just two miles from the shores of the Gulf of Paria, a quiet little gulf that sat west of Trinidad and east of the Venezuelan department of Sucre. Ten miles or so to its north was the Caribbean Sea. Geographically speaking, the town was nestled in a cozy area with lots of thick vegetation around it. It was an unknown location, just a speck on a map to the rest of the world, a town whose name wasn't even known more than twenty miles in any direction. The people liked it that way. It was kept away from the eyes of the Empire's Ministry of the Interior and self-sufficient to itself. It had a small school to teach the youth of the country, a baseball field, a single church, one gas station, bumpy and shoddy roads, no hotels or motels, a few bars, a single police and fire station, and no hospital. It had no formal airport, just a dirt strip carved out of the vegetation for small, propeller planes. The runway could suite any number of small, single-engined Cessnas or even a plane as large as the Twin Otter, its runway measuring just four hundred meters in length. It had been a project funded by the Ministry of the Interior in the late 1980s that fell apart shortly after its completion. Now it was used mostly by a few pilots with transport planes offering locals the ability to transport goods elsewhere about the area. In all, there were just four pilots there, one with a single DHC-6 Twin Otter, one with a single Cessna 421, and two others with single-engined two seaters. Most of the times, they transported simple goods such as fish, handmade clothes, and other cheaply made items that the townsfolk made. Most of these items were sold further inland and the profits taken back to the village, a sizeable portion going to the pilot of course and that was just how life in Yaguaraparo was. Most of the people that were born there died there and few left.

There was something else about Yaguaraparo though and it wasn't nearly as innocent. Southwest of the town was its source, an area along the edge of small inlet that led to a small river snaking through the department. The few boats owned by the villagers were moored on the northern shore of the inlet, away from the currents of the sea and safe from grounding. On the southern shore, the inlet snaked into the vegetation a little bit and ended after four hundred and eighty yards after less than six miles into the inlet. The small extension of the inlet was forbidden for any of the locals and they all knew it, even the children who moved up and down the inlet on rickety row boats with makeshift fishing poles. There were no dragons, monsters, giant snakes, or even black holes to worry about there but there was something even more dangerous, pirates. Pirates in the Caribbean weren't like they had been hundreds of years prior. These were modern pirates with high-speed motorboats, automatic weapons, heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, and GPS. The band of pirates inhabiting that particular inlet were known as Los piratas de la Serpiente or "the Pirates of the Serpent," a historical name rather than anything else. During the 1600s, a band of pirates hailing from a region in western Venezuela called themselves the same name and their exploits were legends. They met their final demise east of Trinidad during a mysterious tidal wave that modern history attributed to a major earthquake. The modern day pirates were far less legendary and far more brutal. Pirates, even during the 1600s never had honor but these had far less. With the perception of a weakening sense of security against piracy in the Caribbean, the Pirates of the Serpent had grown far more daring. They attacked supply ships carrying precious cargo and always attacked swiftly, took what they needed, and ran away, long before the Layartebian maritime forces could get there. In their most recent strike, they had kidnapped four young girls from a yacht, murdered the four parents, and set the boat ablaze. Those girls ranged in age from six to sixteen and they were taken back to the pirate's base, restrained, and abused. No one even knew they were missing until the boat broke loose from its anchor and eventually drifted into the binoculars of a patrolling El Hierro class coastal patrol boat of the 9th Coast Guard Group, its home port in Cienfuegos, Cuba.

An investigation turned up the names of those four girls and their parents quickly and by the next morning, on March 18, the search was underway. Satellite data was being reviewed but, as luck would have it, none had been over the southern Caribbean at the time. The yacht had been at anchor just fifty-five miles north of Caracas at the time and the pirates made their way back to their base quickly and without giving much away. The girls now sat in the corner of one of the rooms of their shack, sitting on mildly moist mud, their hands and feet bound, blindfolded, and gagged. The pirates hovered around the room talking in Spanish, drinking, eating, laughing, and getting themselves ready for the next round of abuses they were going to give to the girls, who cowered, cried, and begged for their freedom back. It was beyond wrong and immoral what they were doing and they had ridden on their successes for long enough without screwing up just once but this time, they really had. They had kidnapped the daughters of two families. One family was unimportant and the other was related, by blood, directly, to the chief of police in Caracas. Whether or not it was their intention to kidnap that particular family, they had, a grave mistake. The chief of police set out a major manhunt and involved the Imperial Layartebian Defense Forces, whose maritime contingent in the Caribbean was top notch, well staffed, and significant in size. The pirates could do nothing to defend against them except try to run and try to hide. Nestled southwest of Yaguaraparo, the pirates waited until sunset to set out from their cover, when the sun was to their backs. They would be out most of the night in two of their four motorboats. Shallow drafted and powered by waterjets, their motorboats were similar to the PBR boats used by the Layartebians during the First Venezuelan Civil War but they weren't quite them but rather just derivatives of them. Armed with machine guns, each boat set out with a crew of five, one piloting and four gunning. They traveled outwards from the inlet and then headed into the Caribbean, between the island of Trinidad and the Paria Peninsula, into their hunting grounds. The ten men on board the two vessels constituted one third of the total force of the Pirates of the Serpent. Averaged sized, the group retired to Yaguaraparo sometimes at night to get supplies they couldn't steal and to drink at the local bars, finding women for hire, and taking them away for their pleasures. Tonight was one of those nights when five men traveled away from the base, leaving fifteen behind to watch after their four prisoners and their base.

March 22, 2009 - 01:15 [AST]
South Caribbean Sea

The two pirate motorboats had run into serious trouble when they attempted to take a supply ship north of Carúpano. The ship was anchored a few nautical miles off the coast and the crew of eleven were below deck when the pirates came along side them. They had heard the approaching boats and quickly came to the bridge to see the pirates making their way up the side of the hull. A distress call was made instantly and the crew prepared to defend themselves, firing the first shots at the pirates from two shotguns and a semi-automatic pistol. The rounds tore over the deck but made no contact but the eight pirates who ascended knew they were being shot at, quickly diving for cover. The firefight continued, the crew keeping the pirates back, trying to buy themselves time before help could arrive. The move worked and the pirates, too concerned about the cargo they intended to steal, stayed on board, engaging in the firefight. They had plenty of ammo for their guns but so did the crew as well. Bullets pierced the air at supersonic speed but few found their mark and after a half hour, both sides were still shooting at each other and that was just enough time for the cavalry to come.

The nearest patrol boat in the vicinity was an ILDF Vigilant class corvette, which had been just off the eastern coast of Isla de Margarita. Capable of cruising at thirty-two knots and sprinting at thirty-five, the corvette and its crew of nine officers, sixty-nine enlisted men, and eight soldiers immediately turned to flank speed and began their route towards the troubled supply ship, arriving half an hour later. The Vigilant carried a single UAV on it, an MQ-8D Fire Scout and they launched it immediately, using it to not only locate the vessel visually but also to set up reconnaissance over it, so they knew what was in store for them. Armed with a powerful, seventy-six millimeter main gun, two twenty-five millimeter chain guns, and three seven point sixty-two millimeter light machine guns, as well as eight AMESM missiles, there were few surface targets that could escape her wrath. For aerial targets, the ship could launch up to thirty surface-to-air RIM-204 Escape missiles or up to twenty-one RIM-116 RAM missiles in self defense aside from up to twenty FIM-186 Wizard missiles fired from shoulder launchers. The Vigilant was at general quarters the moment the call came in and everyone was ready for action. Lightly armored but more than capable of blowing both motorboats out of the water, the Vigilant made her presence known the minute she got close, blaring sirens and shining lights towards the supply ship. The goal was simple, get the pirates off the ship, back onto their boats, and on the run. The Vigilant could outrun and easily outgun them and blow them out of the water at will but the biggest goal was to track them, to find where they were heading, hoping that they would run right back to their base.

There, the eight soldiers would deboard and make their way to the base and eliminate any resistance there. Piracy was considered an act of terrorism by the Empire and that meant no judge and no jury were required in the field. Apprehension was second to execution except in limited circumstances. This circumstance wasn't going to be one of them. All eight soldiers were members of the ILDF's Maritime Forces division. Trained alongside ILN Marines, they were tasked with specific duties that mainly involved things of this nature as well as securing hostile vessels at sea. Their entire purpose was to travel along the various vessels of the ILDF, throughout the seas of the world, in protection of the Empire to be a deployable contingent in hostile situations. This was just one of those situations and the eight men, below deck, were locked, loaded, and ready. Their primary weapon was the M112A4 Viper, a submachine gun manufactured from the M111 Modular Assault Weapon or MAW. The Viper was chambered in 10x23mm Doomani, the same round that was standardized for military pistols. They carried M105A1 TDPs for sidearms and, if they opted for a shotgun, their weapon of choice was usually the M109A1 Advanced Combat Shotgun, a twelve gauge, semi-automatic weapon that could fire up to six rounds before reloading out to as far as one hundred and twenty-five meters with a slug. Both their Vipers and Shotguns were mounted with optics, infrared designators, and their Viper's were all suppressed, along with their pistols. Logistics were simple for them. Their pistols and primary weapons used the same ammunition and their shotguns used twelve gauge rounds. Things were simple. They did carry a single sniper rifle with them for specialized duties and that weapon used the same rounds as their light machine guns but they rarely ever needed it and this time they wouldn't either.

As predicted, the pirates scurried away, crashing back into their boats as the crew continued to fire. Of the eight that climbed aboard, only seven would get back to their motorboats, one having been killed during the escape by a well-timed shot from the captain. His pistol round caught the pirate in the abdomen and while the round didn't kill him, the motion of being struck by it caused him to lose his footing and slide head first into a winch. The impact fractured his skull and killed him almost instantly. Cutting their lines free, the pirates fled away, at their own top speed while the Vigilant took chase, the MQ-8 following behind them at 8,000 feet, silent as the night itself, cruising as slow as it could. The Vigilant dropped back, pretending to not be able to keep up when it certainly could. The Fire Scout took over the chase after ten minutes and the pirates cheered in victory, the false sense that they had actually outrun the Layartebian warship setting in from the obvious tactic. The Vigilant slowed down to just eight knots while the Fire Scout followed the pirate motorboats all the way back to their base, using the opportunity to get much needed reconnaissance of the area before it returned to the ship, its fuel low.

Once on the deck, crews worked quickly to arm and refuel the helicopter, refilling its tanks with just over a thousand pounds of fuel and attaching a pair of lightweight GBU-44A Viper Strike guided bombs to the helicopter while the Vigilant moved at full speed towards the pirate's base, inching itself into the Gulf of Paria just far enough to get themselves in complete gun range but not close enough to be at risk of attack from the pirates. Now in position, the helicopter lifted off again, piloted from a remote station deep within the confines of the ship while the eight soldiers embarked on their single RHIB, traveling into the inlet quietly before running themselves aground just a mile from the pirate base. There, they deboarded, weapons in hand, night vision goggles at the ready, silence around them as the helicopter remained high enough that it wasn't heard from the ground but it was still low enough to deliver high-resolution imagery of the base. Despite being nestled in the foliage, the FLIR and EO sensors on the helicopter had found them quite easily. At 04:50, the soldiers were in position, the helicopter was in position, and the Vigilant was ready to go.

The soldiers swept through, weapons off safe, looking at everything that moved...

April 5, 2009 - 15:35 [CST]
Layfield, Illinois

"Cease fire! Cease fire!" A woman's voice yelled. On the firing line, eight men, all in a crouched position, holding assault rifles, let off their triggers and saftied their weapons. The woman walked behind them, watching their progress and studying their technique. Since the Illuminati had brought the Ghost Warrior program to a grinding halt because of captures, interrogations, and investigations, a new breed of mercenaries were being born. Here in rural, southern Illinois, on a farm that no satellite would dare waste bytes photographing, a training camp for these new mercenaries was situated. It was on a farm owned, in essence, by the Illuminati and covered a few hundred acres. One whole section was dedicated to outdoor, urban warfare and, to legitimize the venture, doubled as a paintball park. Facilities on the farm were big enough to house at least forty mercs at any one time and there were forty-eight of them there, aside from the training staff. Dubbed the "Avenger Program" by the Illuminati, the goal was to create eight teams of four men each, all specialized in urban warfare training. From these forty-eight, sixteen men wouldn't make the cut and they would be dismissed, which meant nothing short of execution. Those that made the cut wouldn't know of course. When the revolution happened, these eight teams would join revolutionary forces throughout the Empire in fighting the Imperial forces. Some were slated to join larger units and act as advance and reconnaissance teams while others would serve as infiltration units.

The woman behind the was Mary McGuire, a stunning woman in her mid-thirties known only by said alias. She was five and a half feet tall and she could make men double her size cower in shame and fear. She paced back and fourth behind the eight men on the line, observing them and taking mental notes, black sunglasses shielding her eyes from bright sun and a cigarette hanging from her mouth. On her right thigh was a pistol and she wore all black, from her tank top to her pants and boots. In the sun, her skin was warm yet remained smooth, contradictory to someone who could kill so easily. Feminine in all of her physical characteristics, she was in better shape than most athletes and she could run any obstacle course around the world in half the time anyone else could. She was a mercenary for hire who came with a price tag so high that the Illuminati even had to think twice about hiring her. Now, they were pleased with their decision. She was in charge of a variety of programs, the Avenger Program being the latest. Prior to undertaking the Avenger Program, she trained ten soldiers in another program that was designed to undertake the most horrible parts of warfare and make them a reality for the citizens of the Empire. There, she trained men who went only by alias's such as Trilogy and Williams. These ten men were the most despicable human beings on the face of the Earth and even Mary was uncomfortable working with them. She did it though, giving them an eight month course on total warfare. They all had dossiers long enough to fill a few binders and none of what was in them was good. They were all criminals, wanted for crimes committed while in the service of the Empire and other military units throughout the world. All ten of them were given orders to lay low until the revolution occurred, practicing and honing their skills on the unsuspecting civilians around them. Together, since they had been released from their program in June 2008, they committed eighty-seven felonies including: sixteen homicides, two acts of arson, forty-seven rapes, two kidnappings, and who knew what else. They were fiendish men who were more animal than human. Compared to these men, the forty-eight mercs in the Avenger Program were model citizens and some of them were wanted for crimes just as bad.

Mary knew who was going to make it and who wasn't already. The program still had twenty-two days though and she watched these men from July 2008 until now, keeping them under her control while she dictated the rules and guidelines for the Avenger Program, as handed her from above. The men were all practicing today with a new assault rifle, the M118A1 AVIR, a very unique and deadly weapon. Shooting at silhouette targets five hundred meters away, they used both optical and iron sights to practice engaging targets. This evening, they would take their weapons to the paintball course and carefully fight against another eight men, using nothing but paint cartridges. The bullets they fired here though, were live. "Alright, get some rest before tonight. Dismissed!" The men would all have to fight against each other in a capture the flag game except it was one round and it could last for hours. Set to commence at 20:00, it would have to be completed by 05:00 and one side had to defeat the other. Walking off the line behind the men, Mary discarded her cigarette butt and exhaled the last puff of smoke from it, getting into a jeep and driving off to the main building where she would tally up her report on the men. That night, when the night embraced, the sixteen men would venture out in search of each other and, with brutal fashion, aim to kill one another, although not for real, yet. Field commanders had been chosen and the forty-eight men were put into three groups of sixteen each, further broken down into two groups of eight and four groups of four. Ranks were given out only to differentiate. Those in charge of a sixteen man group was considered a lieutenant and those in charge of eight a sergeant. Those in charge of four were corporals. Anyone else was just a private. Once they graduated from the Avenger Program; however, they wouldn't retain those ranks. Instead, they would join the rest of the latent, waiting, revolutionary forces around the Empire.