Out of Chars and Ashes Part Two

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// AFTER ACTION REPORT //

OPERATION PLATEBREAKER

TO: ALPHONSE. FROM: I-CELL

// BEGIN MESSAGE //

A night in holding and prolonged questioning by FBI Counterintelligence. Sitting alone, wondering "is this it", IRENA had a visitor. Down the hall he could hear him, marching steadily towards her cell, spouting obscenities. Agent IAGO entered. "Get up, we're leaving". As IRENA stood, two FBI agents followed behind IAGO. "You" IAGO barked at one of them, "My patience is running thin with you two inbreds, where the fuck is Ed Collins?". The agents balk at IAGO, who they call "Mr. Donoghue". IRENA gathers that IAGO's bureaucratic weight is heavy enough that he's able to have her sprung, citing that her work was on a Treasury Department-organized task force that HE headed, not Russian military intelligence. He demands to know where Ed Collins is, most agents point him to the FBI offices at Quantico. "Pack your shit, you and Isaac are coming with me to Quantico."

IMOGEN returns to her office in D.C and receives another letter with a cut-out from a news article detailing a suicide by a canoer on the Chesapeake Bay with another print out for Psalms 137. The letter contains two other odd items, a fortune from a fortune cookie reading "What Was Once Yours Will Return To You Soon", and a handwritten note reading "Every other day onwards. Forfeit." and a phone number. Frightened that the Skoptsi mean to hurt her family, she encourages them to take a last-minute vacation to Bermuda. She then frantically alerts IAGO, who receives the call while in transit to Quantico.

At the FBI offices in Quantico, IAGO carries himself with all the grace and subtlety of a bull in a china shop. He browbeats Collins' superior, FBI Counterintelligence Assistant-Special-Agent-in-Charge Rutherford Scott, into giving him access to Collins' office, and demanding that the man be arrested for interfering in a federal tax fraud and money laundering investigation. They arrive at Collins' office and find it looking like a tornado came through it, with enourmous reams of paper scattered about the floor and overflowing the garbage can. IRENA looks through it while IAGO grills ASAC Scott, finding an unnerving note among the papers.

    "PAPA'S FAVORITE. GODDESS'S FAVORITE. GODLESS COMMIES BURN IN HELL FOREVER."

One of the last coherent notes makes refernce to Collins visiting Berezhkov over "yet another complaint". IRENA deduces that the Skoptsi used a similar brainwashing technique as the one they used on Kerry Houghton to brainwash Ed Collins. Collins, a counterintelilgence agent, would have had enourmous access, and if he leaked information to the Skoptsi, it would explain how the Skoptsi were able to deduce Agent IRENA and IMOGEN's identities (it would also explain why ISAAC and INDIGO weren't targeted. Their names never appear on any official documentation, nor would they be in any federal law enforcement personnel databases). IAGO shows Scott the note as obvious proof that Collins has suffered mental collapse, and orders Scott to have Collins arrested and put on indefinite psychiatric leave, he then leaves for the Treasury building to pick up IMOGEN before moving to a secondary location. IAGO guides I-Cell to a suburb of Georgetown, to a bungalow on a quiet street. Graffiti on some of the walls, weeds pushing up from under the driveway, the garden unmowed for years. "Home Base". Inside he lets the agents treat themselves to his liquor and his fridge while he sits at his console, an enourmous computer system in what used to be a child's bedroom connected to the Delta Green secure server. 

After some consulting with A-Cell, and debriefing his agents, IAGO lays out his understanding of the situation. 

• The Skoptsi have issues I-Cell an ultimatum, every two days, someone in the Chesapeake Bay area will die by their own hand, likely through the brainwashing technique they've been known to use. This is unless I-Cell forfeits the Black Icons to them. 
• Delta Green's resources have been stretched to where they aren't to offer the same backup like before, though Agent OMAR of O-Cell has volunteered to assist, and will be arriving with a day. I-Cell will be left to its own devices and their allies: Coney Island Carpets, The D Stacks, GRU SV-8. 
• The Skoptsi likely aim to dupe or destroy I-Cell during the meeting, so measures need to be taken to assure this never comes to pass.

The planning stage unfolds over a few days. The Black Icons are brought back to Washington. I-Cell investigates Moscow-on-the-Chesapeake's recent financials and discovers a business coalition made of several Skoptsi-owned businesses acquired Channel 13 News broadcasting of nearby Elkton, Maryland, which has been used to advertise Moscow-on-the-Chesapeake as a tourist attraction for the nearby area, driving its public outreach and increasing the number of families, even schools, that have gone on guided tours of the community and its basilica. IMOGEN deduces that the Skoptsi are using the tours to isolate people (including potentially children) to expose them to a similar brainwashing regimen as they had with Kerry Houghton and Ed Collins. I-Cell decides to reach out to Dr. Wu the next day, as his expertise both in antiquities and in the unnatural are going to be irreplaceable. INDIGO and the "Coopers" position themselves in Washington and sit on standby. That night, OMAR arrives at IAGO's command centre and is briefed on the situation. I-Cell turns in early that night, they have a meeting they need to make.

In a room in Hlaanith of the Peaked Roofs, I-Cell meets with George and Julian, the SV-8 operatives in the Dreamlands. They let SV-8 know of the situation and what needs to be done. They're disappointed to learn that SV-8 is unwilling to send its own agents into America, at least at this moment, but promise to check what resources they can muster. 

ISAAC and IMOGEN travel to New York to meet with Wu while IRENA tails OMAR on a "shopping spree", visiting nearby Green Boxes and arming himself. Wu agrees to join I-Cell and books time off to consult with them. That night, Wu and OMAR meet to discuss their plan with the Icons. That night, I-Cell is given the news, SV-8 will send a kill-team from the Propavsheye, a brotherhood of Ukrainian mobsters that often act as proxies for SV-8 in Europe. They are assured of their professionalism and understanding of the threat. They are told the men will be in New York tomorrow afternoon, at the warehouse in Coney Island where the Tadjbegskaya Bratva had built their (now deactivated) Dreamlands gate. 

The next day, Wu and OMAR continue work on the plan with the Black Icons while I-Cell goes to New York to receive the Propavsheye. They meet in the tunnels (dug illegally, likely by the Skoptsi) under the Coney Island warehouse, barred by tape and signs warning against entry at the room where a gate to the Plateau of Leng had been erected. After a brief moment, the portal sparks to life, and men in rain ponchos over mish-mashed military fatigues exit, the first one curses in Ukrainian and vomits on the floor, the others come through no less happy with their trip. IMOGEN understands how they feel, she recalls the feeling of using the portal as feeling nothing so much like being poured down an ice-filled drain. They speak briefly, before the men change into civilian clothing. I-Cell brings around a few U-HAUL trucks for them to use to haul their gear to a secondary staging area, a bunker under the car wash in Wilmington, Delaware. 

OMAR and IMOGEN talk about the men, OMAR notes that despite their mobster behaviour, they seem disciplined and moderately well organized, likening them to an irregular militia. The Propavsheye Kill-Team is 9 men divided among 3 groups, each led by an officer, who act as the Kill-Teams leaders. The officers are the only ones that speak fluid english and identify themselves as "Rhino", "Papa Bear", and "Big Black". The team leaders carry M16s, Knives, Binoculars, flares, smoke grenades, and silenced pistols. The "Point Men" carry M16s, mini Pump-Action shotguns, and knives. Two of the "Specialists" carry Dragunov sniper rifles, one carries a Saiga 12 auto-shotgun. I-Cell shows them to their quarters in the car wash, closed for a few days for "sickness" (thanks to a favor called in by IAGO with the owners). I-Cell then regroups in D.C. to go over the plan before they put it into motion.  

The move needs to decapitate the Skoptsi all in one blow. If the Skoptsi learn of the deception, they're liable to send out the order for their "manchurian candidates" to take their own lives en masse. The best way to do this, they figure, is to booby-trap the Black Icons with several bricks fo C4. Wu's expertise allows for the explosive device, created by OMAR, to be seamless fitted into the icons. The opening is sealed so as to be entirely undetectable and the icon is filled so that the weight remains the same as it had before, and it isn't audibly hollow if knocked on. OMAR's explosive device comes fitted with a variety of countermeasures, firstly, the transponder that will receive a detonation signal for the C4 is timed so that it will only begin transponding 1 hour after the deal is set to take place, meaning anyone attempting to detect a transponder won't be able to do so with traditional ELINT tools. Additionally, the explosive comes with two failsafes should I-Cell be unable to activate the explosives themselves: a 15-hour countdown will begin once the transponder is live that will detonate the explosives once it hits zero. Additionally, the bomb has been made to be intentionally difficult to disarm with many booby-traps to trick inexperienced bomb defusers. 

It will be important for I-Cell to confirm the kill, but they concoct a work around. Neil and Francis Cooper, the elderly SV-8 agents, will infiltrate the community ahead of time and will be present to hopefully confirm any kills. Additionally, if it can't be confirmed from a distance using binoculars, I-Cell plans to infiltrate the community with cover from the Propavsheye kill-teams to confirm the kills (and kill the Skoptsi's laeders should the bomb fail to). 

They call the number, and after a brief conversation with the rasping Fedor Berezhkov, they settle on a neutral ground to make the deal: Club Apocalypse. 

Continued in Part 3