NationStates Jolt Archive

Floating high above the tropical forests of north Iuthia, various surveillance satellites from nations around the world recorded their silent images, a never ending stream of information in zipping through space relaying Iuthia’s secrets back to their motherlands. Secrets were few and far between in this modern age of information, analysts and artificial intelligence programs alike nibbling away at every piece of the puzzle and making educated guesses at the next move on the international game of chess. And yet there was a new feeling in the air, an uncertainty at one of the worlds most reliable players of the beautiful game.

The Iuthian Military was mobilising.

It had started as a trickle, a minor change in flow on the ground as several bases near the north of Iuthia slowly all begun to increase in activity. Rumours on the streets confirming that all leave had been cancelled indefinitely for the men and women in the northern most parts of Iuthia, supplies were being sent earlier then normal to each base preparing for some yet unannounced event.

The Iuthian Military was mobilising…

It wasn’t long before the Iuthian Government had to make a statement to assure its people they weren’t at war. There had been some vague yet reasonable explanations for the sudden changes, stating simply that the Iuthian Military was undergoing drills to test its combat readiness, running exercises to fully evaluate how prepared they were and how they would operate under such pressure. For the most part, people accepted this and continued about their daily lives as though everything was normal.

Meanwhile, the mobilisation continued, concentrated mostly on the northern most forces of Iuthia, going on into the night. Prior to all this some intelligence agencies had noted a small amount of actively in the northern most jungles of Iuthia, the nearby base seemed to have expanded substantially in the past few months, growing beyond the needs of the town it resided in, many had assumed that perhaps there was some secret facility that justified such a garrison, but no questions or explanations had really been asked or given, it just wasn’t proper. A lot of exercises had been run in the nearby forest some time ago, with many wild and unreasonable rumours surrounding them… until now it hadn’t been too important, but as the night went on it was clear that Bowness Military Base was easily the most active, almost as though it were on full alert.

There are no certainties in foreign Intelligence, at the end of the day there was only so much information you could gather from one dimensional surveillance satellite photos and spies keeping their ear down, but as the week went on it became increasingly clear that a sizable force was being deployed near Umbar Forest, Iuthia’s largest mass of jungle, maybe it was just an exercise testing the readiness of Iuthia’s forces...

As if in light speed, a runner darted down the seemingly never-ending corridor, and suddenly dodged into one room on the right, near the end of the way.

"Sir!" the runner yelled, gasping for breath. "Sir! Look at this..." He placed the manilla folder on David Howe's desk. It had taken a while, but he had just about gotten the IMF back to where it needed to be. It would be a while before everything was back to his standards, but for the time being, things were working out pretty well. He had placed three sattelites in the air already, and was waiting for the Senate to pass off on funding for the rest of the program, which would allow the IMF to send up as many as fourteen more, each with a different objective, ranging from weather analysis to millimeter wave radar. The IMF/BOU wasn't even close to being operational yet; if the IMF needed anything done, they'd have to go either to CGN Mark Spitz, or get special clearance for Packrat Platoon, aslo more commonly known as "Sierra Hotel".

Howe looked up and opened the folder. Inside was a small, one page report, along with several other pages of sattelite photos. The report, which David read very intently, summed up what suspicions were already flared about: Iuthia's mobilization. Of course, there was quite a damper on the situation, as many thought it was simply a show of power in a large-scale tactical excercise by Iuthia. Sniper Country had done the same thing with Operation: Brute Force several years ago. But as Howe looked deeper into the pictures, he began to notice things. Small things, but nonetheless, he took note. He noted that some Bowness Military Base was seemingly the most active, which brought him to a certain, unanswerable question: Why the North? He continued to study, as he did with much of the information handed down to him from SIA (Sattelite Information Analysis). As he studied the report alongside the photos, he called in his secretary.

Howe's secretary, Eva Sparks, was new to the job, only coming to work for the IMF after the Rebellion. She was jittery, and often told to relax, not only by Howe, but also by her associates. She earned her Master's degree in International Studies from Lehigh University, the premier university of Sniper Country. Sparks applied with the IMF in hopes of becoming a field operative, but instead was placed to work as David's secretary. She seemed upset, but Howe promised her a chance if she showed him the right potential. "I'm not sleeping with you," she had said. At this, Howe laughed heartily, and replied, "Good, I'm married. Hah, you'll make a fine agent someday."

Sparks walked hurriedly into Howe's office, seeming to be in a rush to answer his question and get back to whatever work she had been doing. Her curly blonde hair was disheveled, and her small glasses fell to the end of her nose as she stopped in front of the desk. She was clad in a khaki skirt and white blouse, holding another manilla folder in one arm, she pulled her glasses off and held them, waiting for David to get done analyzing his documents. He looked up, and back down, proceeding to talk.

"Eva, do we have anybody on the ground in... Iuthia?" he asked.

"No sir, we have very few field operatives anywhere at the moment."

"Anybody on standby?"

"Um, Jae Medders is awaiting deployment to Automagfreek. That's all we have on the roster right now."

"Pull him. Get on the phone with Ops, and let them know we need a plan for getting Jae into Iuthia's Umbar Forest, and fast. No longer than a week. We need somebody on the ground."

"Mr. Howe, why not just get hold of Spitz and let him insert a team?"

"...go."

"Sigh, yessir. What if Ops can't get anything going on this?"

"We'll worry about when it happens."

Eva left Howe's office, already frustrated, and began following orders.

“I want everyone to be perfectly clear with me on this one, is this really necessary? ” Lord General deGritz asked calmly, his eyes searching the rest of the table for the expressions of each of his senior advisors on this matter. The ‘War Room’, as it had been officially dubbed, had been home to many such discussions in the past, everyone looking at one another across the large circular table layered with green that filled the centre of the room, overhead the lights shone directly down onto the table to illuminate paperwork, allowing the large strategic screen at the end of the room to display it’s information without glare. Currently the five of them were playing a game of poker, their expressions solemn and serious, not entirely concentrating on the game itself but on the conversation going on.

“I think I speak for all of us, Lord General, when I say that we all agree that this is a necessary step in dealing with this situation. It’s not the preferable way to do thing but we can all be certain that it’s the Iuthian way.” He was a fairly old man, even by the Lord General’s standards, easily in his mid-sixties Dr. Mandrake replied in his usual cool, emotionless tone. Immediately the others nodded, even Iuthia’s Chief Scientist Kristine Kale who clearly despised the old man, but she took no pleasure in what little opinions they shared.

“You of all people Sir, should understand why we must do this, why we must make a show of force to these people regardless of the cost. We’ll try the nice way, but if we aren’t prepared to go the full length and show them we’re in charge then we’ll never see the end of it. This must be done.” General Turgidson added, dealing out a new hand to everyone present.

“Yes… I admit that sooner or later it would come to this. I would have hoped for a bloodless solution, but I suppose that isn’t in their nature, we’ll give them the chance though…that’s the least we can do.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you, James… but you know as well as I that it’s likely they’ll just try and scrag the poor bastards there and then.”

“Regardless it’s about the principal of the thing, we give them a chance and hope that our preparations can protect our people from the worse.” Everyone looked at their cards in silence for a moment before the Lord General looked up again and lay his cards on the table “Call”

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Meanwhile, across the northern most parts of Iuthia the military mobilised their forces in preparation for deployment. As events continued to fold out there wasn’t a particularly huge amount of additional information at the time, many of the movements supported the idea that Iuthia could very well be testing the readiness of its troops, though it was a little odd there wasn’t any clear enemy to mobilise their army against. Internationally, Iuthia had been quiet for sometime and seemed to have spent the last year or so looking internally and dealing with its own problems, there hadn’t been any huge incidents for sometime and it didn’t look as though there was anything unresolved in their recent past.

But yet, it’s hard to ignore the feeling that something was up, that it was all so sudden and without warning. No one had so far asked exactly what was going on and so far they hadn’t made any statement to the International Community at large… such actions could even be seen as irrational for the stable rock that was Iuthian diplomacy. It was just odd really.

Getting a spy into Iuthia shouldn’t be a problem for any professional intelligence agency with decent resources, even if their nation was blacklisted for some previous atrocity it wouldn’t take much to get a foreign identity and enter Iuthia as a tourist from a nation that wasn’t unacceptable. The problem never was getting someone into the nation, but more getting them in with weapons. Of all places Iuthia’s stance on firearms was perhaps one of the more excessive ones, with Magnetic Anomaly Detectors and Chem Sniffers now common in all secure areas of the nation and the laws being strongly opposed to none-military personnel owning firearms it was surprisingly hard to get them into Iuthia, even the few organised crime syndicates didn’t bother with them much, preferring a more subtle form of crime in the highly disciplined society. It wasn’t impossible, but it required ingenuity assuming anyone actually wanted to have a firearm in the first place.

Other concerns were the travel restrictions on tourists limiting their movements; more recently at least, from the northern most parts of Iuthia near the jungle itself. Many of the towns and cities in that direction weren’t hugely reliant on tourism in the first place and the further away from the tourist hotspots the more xenophobic the populace became to perceived outsiders. Not hostile as much as un-trusting. But there is always a way and ultimately Iuthia was still quite an open nation.
Further analyse of Umbar Forest proved to dig up more interesting never before important facts about the area, aside from the expanded and now highly active military base in Bowness. The entire perimeter of the jungle was actually fenced off from the few towns and villages that came near it. The assumption previously would have been that Iuthia was protecting its people from the wildlife of the jungle, however with more observation it was clear that the fence was patrolled by the military themselves, though not heavily up until recently. Exact details were hard to discern, however, given the limited nature of satellite imagery… but the fence had only been finished a month ago.

Many nations simply overlooked the whole matter, there wasn’t any clear threat from Iuthia and most nations had good relations with their government, so they just let it lie and stopped thinking about it.

Jae Medders stood in front of David Howe's desk, waiting for his briefing.

"Sit down, please," Howe said, urgingly.

"I'll stand," Medders replied.

"Whatever. Listen up. We're taking you off the AMF assignment. There's a huge, and I mean huge, mobilization of troops in the northern region of Iuthia, near that forest, uh, Umbar. Umbar Forest. Now, a lot of the mobilization is concentrated at this one base," he said, pointing to the location on one of the sattelite photographs. "Bowness Military Base. This is really sudden. When we pulled off Operation: Brute Force, it took a long while to put together. This is just an 'up and get after 'em' sort of thing. Now I've studied these photos over and over, and you're not going to get anywhere in that forest by just walking in there. We've already ruled out trying to get you into that base. It's practically on lockdown. Now it looks as if there's a fence going along much of the forest. It's hard to discern where exactly it extends to, but we've got something in your pack for that. We'll get to that in just a minute.

"Right now, we've got you on a flight out of Sniper Country this afternoon at three fifteen headed to Iuthia International. Your passport and all is in your pack. Get it all out and ready on the ride to the airport. You'll be going under the identity of Jonathan Woods, a banker from Stalk Lane. You're in the country on official business to finalize the transfer of several clients from one bank in Iuthia to yours in Stalk Lane.

"We had considered sending you in clean. No weapons. But, after conferring with Eva and a few others, we decided you'd need to be packing something. However, it's going to be broken down. It'll be a Glock 27, forty cal. Plastic Fantastic; so it won't be picked up by metal detectors. The barrel and slide will be placed inside a binder within your bag, inside a binder, disguised as your stamp and seal for official documents. The magazine will be placed inside the handle of your shoe-shining brush. The grip will be placed in the rear of a voice recorder, which you'll have for your "meeting" with the Iuthian bank officials. The trigger and weld will be rolled in separate pairs of socks, under much of your clothing. The rounds for the pistol will be inside a large bag of candy in your bag. And finally, the silencer will be in a slightly carved out compartment of the battery compartment for your laptop. This will all be in your larger bag, which will will go in the belly of the plane until you retrieve it in Iuthia. You'll carry a knife on you, in your pocket.

"Your mission, since you can't really choose to accept it or not, is to infiltrate Iuthia, get to the Umbar Forest, and figure out what exactly is going on in there. As I said earlier, there's a fence covering a large portion, if not all of, the outskirts of the forest. For that, we have a specialized, sort of James Bond thing. In your pack, there is an ink pen. It works just like a real one, but one the the ball on the point is broken, it acts as a torch capable of burning through inch-and-a-half thick steel. The life on it is just two minutes, though, so once you break the ball, you have two minutes to cut yourself a hole in that fence, or else you're pretty much screwed. I didn't really like the pen idea, but that's what R&D came up with for this type of mission. Don't ask me why. But you're a banker. You'd need a pen, right?

"In your bag you'll have your usual black beanie, paint, turtleneck, and pants. It'll be in there with the other clothes. Your cell phone is wired with SECNET, so we can communicate safely. But try to keep from it, just in case, although SECNET's about as good as you're gonna' get in secure communications. It also has GPS and a transmitter so we can watch your location from here.

"Now know that security is extremely tight around there. Military will be all over the place. Once you infiltrate the forest, you'll probably do a lot of your time on your stomach. Try to avoid any of the guards or military at all costs. You know the procedures, so I'm not going to drill them into you any more. Once you figure out what's going on, contact us. Get us that information, and get out of there. If you're discovered... you know what to do. Once you've finished your mission, get back to your hotel, and catch the next flight to Sniper Country. We need you in there as little as possible. You understand everthing?"

"Uh, sure."

"Okay, here's a folder with some aerial photos and the latest on movements and such. Study up, and give it to the driver when you get to the airport. Good luck, Jae."

Medders took the manilla folder from Howe, and made his way out of the door. He walked outside, into the heat of Sniper Country- 107 degrees today. He looked around, and a grey Cadillac DeVille pulled up. He got in, and saw his bag in the front seat, along with his passport and other small items. In the back with him was a black business suit. He proceeded to change in the back of the car, an obligation he was used to after several missions of this sort in various nations over the world, including his entrance into Omz222 just before the war. Just another walk in the park, he thought to himself as he removed his shirt. The drive to Sniper Country International in Stalk Lane would take about an hour.

The usual delays aside, the flight from Sniper Country to Iuthia was pretty uneventful, amounting to little more then a bit of turbulence along the way. The Iuthian Tourism Guide proved to be a useful if not interesting read during the journey, though it was out of date the little leaflet provided some basic information on the nations laws and customs as well as providing tips on the more popular tourist traps of Iuthia. Perhaps most interesting of all though, is the section detailing Iuthia’s privacy laws in regards to tourists, most importantly the lack of privacy laws and how privacy was a privilege and not a right… though it was hardly the same for an Iuthian citizen. One would have thought such a thing would turn tourists away, maybe some were, but there were still a fair number of business men and even holiday goes on this flight, the many other freedoms Iuthia offered seemed to almost balance everything out. The rest of the leaflet simply covered the much more friendly aspect of Iuthia, like the nations open attitudes to recreational drugs, nudity and prostitution… all of which ironically made it harder for tourists to sign into their hotels every day.

Finally, the long haul flight made it to Iuthia Prima International, perhaps one of Iuthia’s largest and above all busiest airports. The capital of Iuthia had always been one of the biggest tourist locations in the Urbanites region, with much to offer in the way of nightlife and seaside resorts further out to the east it had enjoyed perhaps the most investment of all Iuthia’s cities. Currently, even as the passengers left the terminal for customs, the atmosphere was full of movement and rushing about.

Passing through a metal gate, a member of security simply offered ‘Jonathan’ a passing look before moving on to the next passenger, the advanced magnetic anomaly detector apparently not noticing anything illegal on the man as he walked down to customs itself, where the security officer simply asked for his identification in a dull monotone voice.

“Mr. Jonathan Woods, yes… everything seems in order here. Would you mind me asking if you are here on business or pleasure sir?” he asked calmly, handing the spy his luggage. It was fortunate that the rounds for the Glock themselves also didn’t include metal in their design, otherwise it would have been an entirely different story all together. Now all that remained was to sign into his hotel and work out how to get to his target without causing too much suspicion…

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v258/Iuthia/Maps/QuickyIuthia3.jpg
Basic map of Iuthia - Note nation to the north is 'White Lotus Eaters', to the west 'The Angery Cavies'.

OOC: Not sure if I’m going to have internet tomorrow as there is are a few concerns about my ISP, so I’m unsure as to how long I may be out for, but I’m hoping it won’t be too long.

Medders looked at the security officer for a moment, pausing before continuing. "Business," he said, grabbing his bag and walking off.

Medders, now under the guise of Jonathan Woods, walked outside the airport terminal and into the bright sunshine of the day. He hailed a taxi, and proceeded to place his bag inside as he sat in the front seat.

"Let's see... Take me to the nicest hotel around, please sir," Woods requested as the driver bagan to speed off. EVerything was going according to plan thus far. He'd get to his hotel and check in, get to his room, and set up his temporary Base of Operations. Hopefully, before the night was retired, he'd have communications set up with IMF Headquarters through his laptop; have his weapon put together and ready to fire; and have his equipment put together and set up, ready for deployment. Tomorrow he'd scope out his way to the Fence, and deteremine his entry location. The following night, he planned, he would make his infiltration. For now, he was a Lone Ranger, trying to expect the unexpected. He was clad in a black business suit with a white tie, hoping he somewhat resembled a banker. There was no telling if he was being scoped, if airport security had traced anything in his bag, or if he was simply marked as suspicious. He looked relaxed, which he was, but it was most difficult- this was, after all, the first field operation the IMF was attempting since the Rebellion. And with such a blur in terms of objectives, Woods was slightly unnerved.

The taxi continued on, as Woods stared outside, taking in the scenery, or so it appeared. He was always watching paths and roads, making a map in his mind, in case he had to get out in a hurry. Which he may have to do at any time...

Nodding as the man went, the Security Officer seemed content with the answer and the trip out of the busy airport wasn't further complicated with any additional security checks.

Outside Medders was greeted with the warm summer’s breeze of Iuthian December and the bright grey skyline of the capital city a short distance away. It was hardly the most beautiful scene to be welcomed by, as Iuthian architecture was often a practical spartan affair with more concern put towards structural integrity then aesthetic values. However in recent years as the nation opened up, more and more outside influences could be seen in Iuthian design, with many of the newer hotels in the tourism industry catering to a higher class of holiday-maker whom would normally shy away from the severe Iuthian scenery.

Hailing himself a taxi, Medders instructed the driver to take him to the nicest hotel around to which the driver nodded understandingly; it was a fairly common request these days.

“I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Milton Hotel recently, good service, discreet and very respectable. I’ll take you there if you like…” the man was pretty typical for taxi-drivers everywhere, waiting for his fare to give some basic response before continuing on automatic…

“So where did you fly in from? I don’t recognise the accent… though to be honest we get all sorts these days, what with the beaches improving, not to mention you get a lot of people like yourself here for business meetings and a bit on the side, not that I can blame them. Everyone needs to have a break now and then, you know what I mean?”

It was like that throughout the short thirty minute drive into the city centre where the concrete jungle grew up around them as they drew closer to their location. Iuthia Prima was more or less the same as any other heavily built up city, albeit the building seemed a bit more imposing what with all the fortified structures and was offset by the odd Iuthian sporting an unusual style or bright hair or simple not wearing much at all and not looking the least bit uncomfortable about it. The city centre itself was as busy as could be expected, with the high streets full of tourists and citizens alike shopping and living out their lives like normal. As could be expected there were more then enough bars, clubs and restaurants scattered about the place.

Before long they arrived at their location, the Milton Hotel. Like the driver had said it seemed to be fairly upper class given many of the other buildings nearby, already someone preparing to carry Meddlers luggage for him.