NationStates Jolt Archive

Former Sergeant Timothy Byrne was somewhat nervous. He'd seen a lot of shit, and he'd seen a lot of situations that would make people uneasy. Most of it hadn't bothered him. Since abandoning his allegiance to the Harakian Combined Expeditionary Force some years earlier, he had been on the side of some vicious men. One, a seven foot tall giant from the Borderlands with a penchant for explosives and sledgehammers, had given Tim nightmares for a month. Eventually, he had been paid to put a bullet in the back of that one's head because he was giving their employer a bad name. But he'd still had the nightmares. Nightmares of women with no faces, children missing limbs, and men with burns covering every inch of skin on their bodies. People who would never recover from what he had done to them. Tim was not religious, but he knew that if any one of the religious sects were right, he was already in hell a thousand times over. Not even for what he had done, although much of that was terrible, but also for what he had not stopped. Things his companions had done while he watched.

Sometimes he hated his job. But he usually got over it, dismissed any fears of a supernatural comeuppance, got himself an expensive whore, and went home to his bigscreen television and expensive shower. After months in whatever godforsaken country he was in at the time, he was always happy for the good company, expensive luxuries, and hygiene. Yes, he was a bastard and he deserved to die. Probably. One thing he never let any of his employers know about was the fact that he had been kicked out of the CEF - not for anything honourable, either. He had been kicked out for trying to reenact the Nanjing Massacre in a Danterian village. It had earned him a somewhat savage beating from his superior officer, which had lost him a tooth, and a dishonourable discharge. Only his timely disappearance had kept him out of Harakian or Danterian prisons. He didn't tell his employers that. he told them he had left due to differences with his superior officers, which in a manner of speaking was true. Undoubtedly some of them had done enough delving to find out the truth, but they didn't seem to mind. His methods were effective, he cleaned up his messes, tied up loose ends, and disappeared again.

In the world of independent contractors, he was somewhat prized. He was a professional when he needed to be, mind-numbingly brutal when he needed to be, and he got the job done. Independent contractors. That was what he called himself. Mercenaries was a more appropriate term.

He had done some horrible things, and he had still been given nightmares by what the seven-foot monster had done. Of course, that had been in a fucked up little country the name of which he couldn't even remember anymore. He preferred inner-city jobs. Ones where he got to kill corporate head honchos. Cushy jobs. They paid well and were easy. Of course, there were also the requisite criminal jobs; stealing a suitcase, or robbing a bank, or guarding a suitcase. They didn't pay as well, but he still did them. He did them all. And they paid better than the money he would've made in a lifetime's work and pension at the CEF. Oh, the price of morality.

Now he was somewhat nervous. In his line of work over the past few years he had worked for mobsters, rogue generals, dictators, politicians, corporate CEOs, all manners of sinister people. But the one that scared him most was the one right in front of him now. He couldn't see the man's face across the table, thanks to the stereotypical bright light shining in his face, but he could see he was chewing on the end of an unlit cigar, another cliche, and he was a large, bald or balding man with a thick neck. Tim counted three cliches in as many seconds. Typical.

The last thing he knew, he had been all-but abducted by a black sedan and several besuited men in sunglasses. Now he was sitting here, and the man was telling him in a loud and somewhat angry voice - telling Tim that he was somewhere where no one would hear cries for help, and that this man did not care who heard him here. It was his place - that he wanted to hire him. It had somewhat surprised Tim, who had expected that his abductors were government agents and that he would spend the rest of his life being roughly sodomized by larger men than he.

The man had already explained that the mission would pay more than any other job he had ever undertaken. Honestly, he already had enough money to live like a working stiff forever. But he wanted more. He wanted to be a rich motherfucker. Eventually take on his own mercenary company, maybe. Something like that, yeah. This job would help. Oh yes, it would help.

"These people give us a bad name."

Tim swallowed and decided the time had come for him to speak up. "Um ... Us?"

"Corporations," the large man barked. "Companies. The driving force behind capitalism. These people, they don't understand anything other than death, murder, and killing. So, to be honest, you don't know who you're working for, and that's the way it's going to stay. Suffice it to say we have enough money to keep you in the field for a lifetime, and enough power and influence to make you disappear at any time. No prisons. Where you'll be going if you tell anyone is somewhere you don't even want to hear about." He sniggered.

Tim swallowed again, realizing no fluids were getting down his throat. "I believe you," he said, doing his best to stay calm and failing. "I really do. So ... who are you talking about, and what am I supposed to do about it?" he said, starting to slide into his regular badass mode. He figured it was a usual corporate job, one that would involve killing someone opposing a merger, or maybe getting back at someone that sunk this fat man's company.

"We're asking you to go after the Griffincrest Corporation."

Tim's face fell as the man continued. It was not a regular job. It was the Goliath of jobs. It was the ultimate, the one that would make him for life or finish him forever. It was life or death. Life of luxury, death of ... well, death.

"As I said, they give us a bad name. I want them gone. Finished. Removed. With so many people already trying to fight them, it shouldn't be too hard. And we're sending you because they're everywhere, offices in many countries, factories in even more. So you're going to fuck with them as much as you can and as much as you want to. I want you to make an example of whoever you want and blow up as much as you can. You will have an ample supply of money. Enough for whatever you want."

"So you're asking me to ..."

"Disrupt everything you can about the Griffincrest Corporation. You will have explosives, guns ... knives, hammers ... whatever you feel is necessary to do what you do, Mr Byrne. We know about your time in the CEF, we know what got you dishonourably discharged, we know about what you've done since. You're a son of a bitch, Mr Byrne, and that's why you're perfect to lead the team of bastards, liars, vagrants, cheats, and fellow sons of bitches that we've got assembled."

"There's others? And you want me to lead it?"

"There's five others. More if you need them or if some die. You're from all different countries, you're all getting this some speech, and none of you know who you're working for. We aim to keep it that way. You will not reveal anything if captured, except that you have large sums of money and will fuck them up. I advise you to keep a spare bullet in your gun in case. Of course, should this operation succeed and you get home, you will of course be well-compensated. Enough to live wealthily for the rest of your life, Mr Byrne. You're even getting more than the others because you're the leader. What do you say?"

Knowing he didn't really have a choice, Tim thought for a moment and took his time in giving an answer. "I suppose I'm going to say yes. What exactly are you talking about in terms of actual operations?"

"Firebomb factories. Sabotage production plants. Assassinate corporate executives. Blow up office buildings. Torture and kill people you don't like. Make examples of their leaders. Kill their families. I want you to blow up everything you see with the Griffincrest logo on it. I want you to kill everyone in their employment. I want you to make it unthinkable that anyone would ever want to work for them again for fear of what you will do to them. Do I make myself clear?"

Tim swallowed once more. "Very. When do I meet my team?"

"Right now. Goodbye, Mr Byrne. You will never see me again. You will be given a laptop and all of your team members will be pneumonically injected with a GPS locator. We will communicate through text on the laptop, which will of course be untraceable. The laptop is equipped with an explosive device and will detonate if anyone other than you tries to use it or if we feel it has been compromised. The GPS locators, should you choose, can act as cyanide tablets which will kill you on command from a panic button we will give you. Suicide, I assure you, is a much more agreeable option than what the Griffincrest employees will do to you if you are caught or what we will do to you if you choose to do something silly like take our money and run or attempt to betray us. Once again - do I make myself clear?"

"Once again, very."

"Good. Goodbye."

The fat man stayed sitting, as the door behind him slid open. A man in a rubber mask stepped into the beam of light created by it and gestured to Tim. "Step over here, Mr Byrne."

He stood up and walked towards the door, at which point a black bag was tied over his head. He could breathe through it, but not see. They were taking no chances. Not a-fucking-gain, he thought as he was roughly dragged through hallways and into the back of a car. The engine started and the car roared away. As it drove, he felt a pneumatic injection slam something home under the skin in his back and a spherical object pressed into his hand. A covering with raised letters spelling out PANIC covered a button. He knew what that was for, and resolved never to have to use it. Timothy Byrne would be dumped where he would meet his team. He never saw the faces of any of his new employers, but he knew that they were watching him.

They would always be watching him, until he was done.

And it would be a long time before he was done.

OOC: I honestly did not see this until Undershi alerted me to it, I was not ignoring it

IC:

The Griffincrests were pretty well dispersed throughout the globe at this point, the only one staying on the Corporate Island was Claudius' beautiful daughter, Julia. She was safe on the hill top manor, on the far end of the Griffincrest family's massive private island. Maximus Redstone, Griffincrest head of Security, sat in his office on the island, napping. Black clad mercenaries patrolled the island, while similarly colored Humvees, emblaloned with the Golden Griffin on each door drove in groups of three vehicles along the coast. Occasionally, a Ka-52 attack helicopter, Predator Drone, or Mercury APC could be seen running their solitary routes.

Huge oil rigs stood, doing their work a half mile out from the island. Around these massive man made islands, dozens of Mirage patrol boats kept their eyes open, to ensure that noone who was not supposed to be here got through. Even farther out to sea, was possibly the most boring job in all of the corporation. Four GNF stealth ships sat, creating a perimeter around the island. Since they were ordered out here after the attack by Aesonic Shadowmen, they have done absolutly nothing but wait.

OOC: Hey! What about the Undershi IIS soldiers on the island? I've got two infantry divisions and an armoured division camped out there!

Timothy Byrne righted himself and tore the black bag from his head just in time to see the black sedan peeling away around a corner in the distance. He was standing beside the door of a large warehouse with a large white number 6 above the door. Meekly opening it, he stepped inside, his right hand cautiously sliding over towards his left armpit and the small (registered) pistol holstered there. He was in a small entrance room, and had to take several steps past a windowless wall to enter the larger room.

It was fairly massive, and was entirely empty were it not for the small amount of easily assembled and disassembled furniture in the middle of the room. Folding chairs, several tables - one of which had three large metal briefcases on it, which Tim could take an educated guess about the contents of - and some air mattresses with sleeping bags on them. Beside each air mattress were however many bags the man associated with it carried with him. One had none. One had three.

Sitting on the chairs were five other men, ranging in size from the largest - at least two-fifty pounds and six-six in height - to the shortest - five-eight at most. They seemed to be waiting for him, and gave him approving or disapproving looks as he approached. One, a black man with a week's worth of beard on his face, stood up and said in a throaty growl, "You must be Tim." Tim could see he made no attempts to conceal his weaponry, a combat knife on his belt and a rather large autoloader at his armpit.

"That's right," he replied, walking to the lone remaining air mattress and setting his duffel bag down there. In it were several spare sets of clothes - one of street wear, one suit, and several changes of camouflage - some weapons, a good deal of cash in various increments and currencies of Griffincrest associates, and the laptop he had been given by his mysterious employers.

"That makes you the leader," a heavily accented man added from the chair where he sat. He sounded almost British, and Tim began running through his head all the places the man could be from.

"That's right," he said again. "Who are you all? First names only."

"Gregor," the British man replied almost instantaneously. He seemed to be sizing Tim up. He knew what he was talking about. The tone of confidence and inflection in his voice showed Tim that he was absolutely sure of what he did and what he said. A force to be reckoned with.

"'ector," replied the black man. The absence of an H at the beginning made Tim wonder whether that was simply the way he spoke, or whether his name was simply Ector. He was big. Tim was scared of him already.

"James," a well-dressed man with spiky blonde hair replied from across the circle. His crossed arms and furrowed eyebrows revealed to Tim that this man could be an issue to his leadership. He spoke in perfectly fluent English, and his accent betrayed nothing. He sounded as if he had come from the well-educated parts of the larger Harakian cities, away from the coast city of Arkia where they now sat. The Arkians tended to be more guttural and used more slang. James sounded well-educated and like a master of the spoken word. Tim had no doubts that, had he wanted to, he could have sounded like an Arkian sailor, or a soldier from the Borderlands. It was a gift few had, and he was nearly sure that this James had it.

The largest man barely grunted. Tim raised his eyebrows at this monster, a man with no neck and a crew cut. He looked like a dropout from a 'wrestling meets boot camp' video, and his lazy, half-lidded eyes decried an absence in the head. "Norbert," the man said in a low, slow voice. Tim was absolutely sure it was not his real name. He had never met someone named Norbert. it seemed more as if the quite-definitely-stupid man liked the sound of it and had picked it for whatever reason. Maybe he thought it made him sound intellectual.

The fifth man remained silent. He had mid-length hair, unusual for a mercenary, and wore a black winter coat and scarf wrapped around his neck. He squinted at Tim, and for a moment Tim thought he might have had bad eyesight, but his eyes opened wide and he grinned at Tim. Accepting, but definitely more than met the eye. "Percy," he replied with a grin. "I make people disappear."

"You seem quite happy about it," Tim replied, almost nervously, but imposing on his words an inflection of confidence and joviality to make the others seem more at ease.

"I love my job," Percy replied.

Tim's eyebrows raised of their own volition at this sentence, but he said nothing, instead taking a seat on the sole remaining chair, pulling a table in front of him, and opening the suitcases there. They were filled with cash, in similar ways to the one Tim carried with him. He noted a panic button engraved into the bottom of the handle on all the briefcases, which would make all the money inside useless by flooding it with ink from the walls of the briefcase, in case of capture. These, as with the panic suicide pills, could also be activated remotely, either by Tim's laptop or by his mysterious employers. It freaked him out how prepared they were in case of failure.

Now that he had met them all, and since they all seemed to know him, he needed to know one more fact before he could manage the team properly. "Once more around the group," he said, trying his best to stay calm and not sound like a schoolteacher, "what do you do? Don't pull any punches, brag all you like."

The British man, Gregor, was first, once again. "Explosives and general-purpose heavy weapons," he said swiftly and with conviction.

Following up was Ector the black man. "I also deal with weaponry," he said grimly, "but mine is less sophistocated than bombs and grenade launchers. Firearms expert and squad support fire."

James was next, his arms still folded across his chest. "Technology and infiltration. I deal with everything from electronic locks to remotely hacking computers. I'm good with physics. I'm also a good shot, and I have a damn fine disguise kit, not to mention impersonation skills and other such things." Tim could tell there was even more to him than that. He seemed, by far, the most competent - and, by association, most cocky - member of the team.

Norbert came after him, his slow speech and hanging open mouth almost making him seem as if he was about to start drooling. "I hit people. I'm good at it. I'll do whatever you tell me to."

Percy was last, the silly grin still looming over his face. "I'm a marksman, assassin, and all-round killer. I can abduct people if you like, and I can make them ... confess ... to whatever you want."

Of all the large men in the room, and of all the stone-cold killers arrayed in front of him, Percy was the one that scared Tim the most. He was ruthless and cold-hearted, though he hid it with a goofy grin, and Tim knew he would have no qualms murdering any one of them in their sleep. He continued talking. "So, boss, where are we headed first?"

"Call me Tim. And first, we're heading to Egyptianstan, where we'll get to blowing shit up and killing people. Once we're done wreaking havoc there, I assume we'll get new directions from our employers. Any questions?"

There were none. It appeared their employers had been just as clear to the other five as they were to him.

"Right. Let's get ready."

OOC: Well? Is it? Because that would be a shame...

OOC: No. However, I'm in no rush, as I doubt Griffincrest will be destroyed anytime soon, and I'm becoming involved in several things both on NS and in other places. I've said before that it will move slowly for some time, and it will. However, I'll get to it eventually.

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