Oprichnina on the Chesapeake

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AFTER ACTION REPORT: OPERATION OBSIDIAN FLAKES

AGENTS:

• IAGO, Department of the Treasury, Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence
• IMOGEN, IRS Criminal Investigator
• INDIGO, Black-Hat Hacker.
• IRENA, FBI Criminal Profiler
• ISAAC, Anthropologist
• HANNIBAL, FBI SWAT, former Army
• HECTOR, CIA Ground team

THE SKOPTSI:

• YELENA KALAMATIANO, Elderly sorceress, manager of Families Without Frontiers.
• FEDOR BEREZHKOV, NKVD defector, now an agent of the Skoptsi.
• JERMIJA BOGDASHKAVICH, The Patriarch of the Skoptsi with a penchant for killing sex workers.
• ALEXI ARSENI, Skoptsi cultist, employee with Families Without Frontiers.
• SABINA APOLLONOV, Skoptsi cultist, employee of Families Without Frontiers
• RYAN INNOKENTY, Child abuser, Angel-food
• TERRANCE GAMBLE, Child abuser, Innokenty's replacement.

PERSONS OF INTEREST:

• "GLININ" - Tajbegskaya Bratva operative in Baltimore
• REUBEN FLYNN - Courier and clueless patsy
• NATALIA CHERMINENKO - Baltimore based Russian mafioso 

I-Cell received their summons shortly after the new year and were briefed at the Treasury building in Washington D.C by IAGO. Their "cover" was that the five of them had been transferred to a task force led by the Treasury, investigating a potential money laundering racket run out of the Basilica of Our Virgin Mother in the unincorporated community of Moscow-on-the-Chesapeake. The investigation would turn up a smattering of incidents of petty tax fraud, common for the blue-collar trades which the majority of the Skoptsi work in, but that the Basilica uses them more or less for benign uses that couldn't be plausibly construed as embezzlement or money laundering.

The reality of their operation is to probe the Skoptsi once again, and select a target to eliminate. Their prior operations in the Chesapeake mapped out the majority of the Skoptsi operation, namely their Bratva connections and the trinity of their senior leadership;

Fedor Berezhkov / "Vasili Karpov"- NKVD defector and Skoptsi fixer/chief of security
Yelena Kalamatiano - the elderly manager of Families without Frontiers, the cult run orphanage
Jermija Bogdashkavich - High Priest of the Basilica of the Virgin Mother

I-Cell was put to the task of identifying a target they believed posed the most vital to the Skoptsi, and who could most feasibly be eliminated, develop a plan to eliminate them, and carry through with it.

Electronic surveillance of the Skoptsi by INDIGO revealed that a clandestine meeting with a third party was taking place in nearby Chesapeake City, at the cab stand for Apollo Taxi, a known Skoptsi front. The meeting was surveilled and the third party was spotted and tailed. A fake "arrest" was arranged and the third party was drugged, kidnapped, and brought to I-Cell's "Green Box", a defunct bomb shelter beneath a car-wash in Wilmington, Delaware. The cell initially intended to torture the man, but after questioning him, learned he was only a courier and a dupe. The man, a dock worker by the name of Reuben Flynn, revealed he was delivering things back and forth from the Skoptsi, though he never knew them by that name, to another Russian man in Baltimore he knew as "Glinin". Flynn's testimony led the agents to believe that "Glinin" is in fact a member of the Tadjbegskaya Bratva, and that the Skoptsi had resumed their business arrangement with them. Flynn was brutalized, so that he could believably tell his “employers” he had been in a car accident, and that the materials he was meant to deliver to them, a pair of large binders full of images, were lost in the burning car.

After returning to their safe house in Wilmington, IMOGEN locked herself in a bedroom with a bottle of vodka and reviewed the contents of the binders. They depicted members of the Skoptsi performing a ritual involving men, women, and children. The summoning of a horrific being from the dark woods that would feed on an offering - in the pictured ritual, a bound and gagged man. Other, more hideous things were also pictured. After reviewing the binders, IMOGEN removed the most "important" photos, and stuffed the rest into a wood-burning stove. I-Cell took the photos to their contact, Dr. Jensen Wu, who likened the horror in the photos to a "Greater Spirit of the Wood", a horrific being known to the celtic mythos cult of Sheela-Na-Gig. Close examination of the photos, and Wu's consultation, confirmed that the ritual that summoned this horror would take hours, and required the slaughter of bovine and human sacrifice, and likely would not be deployed in the heat of combat against an invading force. Investigation of the photos led the agents to identify the sacrificed man as Ryan Innokenty, whose name they had run across earlier in their investigations, and who they believed was a purveyor of illegal pornography. IRENA, an FBI agent in the behavioral analysis unit, determined that the bound and blind folded Innokenty was being “offered” to the children he had been abusing, who in turn would offer him to the Horror from the woods for a prolonged and horrific death. They were taking revenge on their abuser, and were being taught to affiliate their liberation with the thing from the woods, and the Skoptsi.

Consulting with Dr Wu about the so-called “Black Icons” that the Skoptsi had been dedicating significant resources to acquire through Berezkhov/Karpov’s connections to the criminal underworld, a disturbing conclusion was reached. Each part of the 12 piece set contained segments of a cypher that, when all 12 were brought together, could be deciphered. While Dr Wu could not say what that could mean for certain, ISAAC put forth the working assumption that it would provide the Skoptsi with some sort of occult knowledge that the cult clearly wanted very, very badly. As such, it was something they had to be denied. It also meant there was a clock slowly ticking down towards a unified set of Black Icons in the possession of this insane cult.

While it became clear that the Black Icons represented an imminent threat, I-Cell decided their immediate target was the cult-run orphanage where they knew for a fact children were being tortured and abused in order to indoctrinate them into the twisted faith of the Skoptsi. Being a cult in which castration was a central tenant, this obscene operation also served as the cult’s primary, potentially only, means of maintaining their numbers and ensuring the endurance of their blasphemous faith. It was also reasoned that effort to recover the remaining Black Icons would be substantially slowed down by the upcoming cyberattack against all of Karpov’s assets (in particular the Smyrna Airport) that Agent INDIGO was orchestrating with her hacker collective.

The raid and cyberattack were to happen simultaneously and on a night when a Tiger Transit plane was set to touch down at Smyrna, the night of February 20th, 1999. This would maximize chaos and with the correct timing force the smuggler’s plane to have to divert to Baltimore where friendly assets in Customs Enforcement had been tipped off. I-Cell petitioned A-Cell to send back-up, which came in the form of two agents, Agents HANNIBAL and HECTOR of H-Cell, identified through a challenge phrase "Do you have Smokes?" to be answered by calling the challenger the "Son of a Whore". Preparations were drawn up and the agents selected their gear, their roles, and prepared to rain down hell on some child abusing cultists.

The agents disguised themselves as representatives of Maryland Power Incorporated, responding to a power outage which they themselves engineered. Once they were close to the Orphanage, a fat man with a rottweiler on a chain approached them, presumably Terrance Gamble, and asked their business, to which he was answered with a hail of bullets.

The situation immediately grew chaotic. A cultist bolted from the barn into a tool shed, pursued by IRENA and HANNIBAL, meanwhile, HECTOR swept around the outside of the main house, INDIGO moved to breach and clear the barn, & IMOGEN and ISAAC moved to breach the main house. A brutal gunfight between IRENA, HANNIBAL, and the cultist they had chased into the tool shed ensued, with the cultist using an antique bolt-action rifle to fend himself from the two agents, striking IRENA hard in the chest before being perforated with bullets by HANNIBAL. IMOGEN and ISAAC were immediately greeted by a hysterical, screaming Sabina Apollonov who attacked them with a double-barrelled shotgun. INDIGO, finding only livestock in the barn and nothing else, takes to the shadows and begins sneaking through the snow towards the back of the main house, seeing a rotund woman in the distance frantically waving her arms and shouting as staccato bursts of machine gun fire rings out from the main house.

HECTOR, who had broken off the sweep the outside of the main house, appeared through the rear glass door to the main house and began spraying in the house, very nearly striking ISAAC who is forced to take cover behind a couch in the pitch black darkness of the main hall. As IMOGEN had withdrawn from the main house and circled the house to meet HECTOR, she saw Yelena Kalamatiano in the distance. The old woman was frantic, waving her arms and screaming. After a brief moment, IMOGEN is able to make out her words:

"THAT ISN'T ME, SHE'S IN MY BODY, IT ISN'T ME". HECTOR turned to meet IMOGEN, grinning wildly.

A bout of gunfight that nearly missed the IRS investigator before the CIA killer's MP5 clicked, out of bullets. INDIGO took the opportunity to close the distance and tackle the agent. As IMOGEN closed in, ready to eliminate the possessed agent if need be. At once, HECTOR's eyes rolled back in his head before darting to meet his comrades', screaming "DO YOU HAVE SMOKES, DO YOU HAVE SMOKES, IT'S ME, IT'S ME". Apollonov takes the opportunity to leg it through the front door, ISAAC giving pursuit.

As HANNIBAL confirms his kill in the shed (positively ID’d as Alexei Arseni) IRENA takes stock of the damage sustained from the rifle bullet lodged in her kevlar vest. She is very nearly caught unawares by the murderous Sabina Apollonov and her double barreled shotgun, but before either IRENA can draw her pistol or Apollonov can pull the trigger, ISAAC rounds the corner and cuts down the hysterical cultist with a burst from his silenced skorpion machine pistol.

The team regroups in the main house and determined to move on to the cottage where Kalamatiano had withdrawn to, while HECTOR and HANNIBAL clear the rest of the main house and secure the children. INDIGO snuck through the dark towards the cottage, while IMOGEN took one of the vans they had commandeered for the raid and rammed it into the cottage as a form of “dynamic entry” . Mere second after demolishing the southern wall of the cottage, Kalamatiano and IMOGEN lock eyes and a new imperative floods into IMOGEN’s mind.

KILL YOUR FRIENDS, THEN TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW

IMOGEN reversed out of the cottage and began barrelling towards agents ISAAC and IRENA, only regaining control of her faculties at the last moment, swerving wildly and flipping the van. Her Intermittent Explosive Disorder now in full swing, IMOGEN proceeds to punch her way out of the shattered windshield, and marches towards the cabin with ISAAC and IRENA.

INDIGO, already being on the scene and still undetected, unsheathes the black sword and slips through the hole in the side of the cabin to advance on Kalamatiano, who had retreated to her bedroom. Hearing strange chants and seeing even stranger lights from the cracks under the door, INDIGO bursts into the bedroom only to be greeted by the horrifically mutated matron. In one fluid motion, the “Babushka” disrobes to reveal her “divinely” altered form, gleefully shouting "WITNESS HER" filling INDIGO’s mind with visions of birth, unbirth, death, transformation, metamorphosis, and cannibalism. INDIGO becomes rooted to the spot, frozen in awe and terror.

ISAAC and IRENA form up on the front door to the cabin, preparing for a more cautious and tactical approach that is interrupted when a battered and bruised IMOGEN, silenced shotgun gripped tightly in her bloody hand embedded with glass, seeing the world in red shouts “WHERE’S THE BITCH” and kicks down the door making a beeline towards her nemesis of the moment.

INDIGO stands stock still in the doorway of the bedroom, standing between IMOGEN and her quarry. “OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY” are the only words IMOGEN utters as she kicks INDIGO to the ground and immediately begins pouring shotgun blasts into the abomination that is Yalena Kalamatiano. ISAAC and IRENA soon join in the firing line and, mercifully, Yalena’s corpse is reduced to something wholly unidentifiable.

IRENA helps INDIGO up off the floor while ISAAC begins searching the cottage and IMOGEN lights a cigarette and puts her head into her hands in silence. The place is truly a hovel, covered in filth and decay, but amid the detritus and of viscous, mad sorceress ISAAC finds a stack of notebooks containing Yalena’s journals, experimental logs, lists of enemies, and recipes.

The cottage and the main house was doused in gasoline and set alight, while the children from the orphanage were herded into the barn, given warm water, fruit, and snacks to eat. I-Cell did as much as they could to collect evidence of their activities before leaving, informing the police not long after so that the children would be found before long.

I-Cell withdrew from the burning ruins of the Orphanage, watching the flickering glow disappear into the pitch black forest. As they drove back to Wilmington, questions began to fill their minds. What will the authorities think? What will become of the children? How will the Skoptsi respond? What next? They all individually come to the same conclusion: It doesn't matter. They destroyed a thing they could only describe as "evil" and didn't get caught. That's the only thing that matters now. They withdraw into midnight, the last year of the millennia.

Written by Fee Fi Fo Fin
Edited by Grandini