After-Action Report: Out of the Mouths of Babes - Part One.

WEEK ONE

24 OCTOBER 1999

Head in her hands, trembling, NANCY finishes her debriefing of the late Karotechia sorcerer Werner Linz. Linz had been ambushed in a parking lot in Sugar Land, Texas, just outside of Houston earlier this year after Delta Green caught wind of him attempting to flip the Neo-Fascist publication "The Review" into a tool for propaganda and recruitment. The contents of Werner's brain were disturbing to recall, and for months NANCY had refused to divulge memories pertaining to a specific incident of Mexico of particular interest to Delta Green. After some hypnotherapy, they were finally able to coax the story out, and V-Cell was activated and sent to Fort Bliss, Texas to receive her debrief. 

NANCY is ushered away by N-Cell as VIRGIL takes over the briefing. He informs the agents will be assigned to Operation BINGO BOOK to pursue the leads revealed during NANCY's debrief. The Karotechia's "Aktion Haruspex" has been identified as a high-priority target, it is believed that Haruspex is a major factor in the Karotechia's hypergeometric intelligence gathering operations. Given that their previous facility in the Chihuahuan wilderness was scuttled after the mutiny in 1996, coupled with intelligence gathered by Delta Green pointing to a major Karotechia stronghold in the city of Ciudad Juarez, Delta Green suspects the group has relocated its operation to Juarez, and is relying primarily on cartel connections to insulate their operation against investigation or interference. 

V-Cell's objectives for BINGO BOOK are to investigate "Aktion Haruspex", discern where it is being operated and to subvert its operations. All Karotechia materials (artifacts and texts) pertaining to "Haruspex" must either be confiscated or destroyed, all persons involved in Haruspex must be killed, all unnatural phenomena and entities must be eliminated and their existence covered up. Two individuals have been designated as Persons of Interest and must be eliminated: Immanuel Toth, a Hungarian-German Bischofe, and "Flaying Wind", an indigenous Mexican sorcerer and research partner of Toth. A third person of interest: Cartel heavyweight "Don Flavio", has been identified as a contact of the Karotechia, V-Cell believes he will lead them to Haruspex. For their purposes, V-Cell has been given a secure room on Fort Bliss which they will use as their command centre. 

V-Cell calls on a contact in the Mexican Federal Police, Ignacio Rodriguez, who forwards them information on Flavio, and meets with Gregory Reed, a geospatial intelligence analyst from England, who A-Cell identifies as a representative of PISCES, a newly acquired ally with whom the group is beginning to tentatively cooperate with. Reed explains that PISCES operates a number of top-secret high-powered spy satellites it uses primarily for domestic purposes, but which he is able to re-task for the purposes of this operation. Using advanced satellite imaging technology matched with V-Cell's own detective-work, they're able to identify the location of Aktion Haruspex's previous hideout, codenamed "HOTEL Site-A" by identifying a field polluted by the strange "smoke" that was emitted from the breached ritual chamber during the mutiny. With the help of their connection in the Federales, V-Cell moves quietly across the border into Mexico to the location of HOTEL-A to take samples of the strange "pollutant" and look for clues. 

On the evening of the 26th, they cross the Bridge of the Americas into Mexico and, with Rodriguez escorting them, they drive for several hours until they arrive at a motel in on the other side of the mountain from HOTEL Site-A. 

27 OCTOBER 1999

In the early morning of the next day, V-Cell gears up and hikes towards the site. While scouting HOTEL Site-A from a nearby mountain, V-Cell notices a small, abandoned camp further down the slope. It appears old and relatively amateur. They find a sun-bleached can of soup and a plastic water bottle and a star-chart drawn in mud (for purposes unknown, though VICTOR believes it had been used for navigation). Nothing else of particular note is found, and with the coast evidently clear, V-Cell descends from the mountain to investigate. 

Site HOTEL-A is largely abandoned. The Karotechia had been mostly thorough in cleaning it off important documentation and equipment. The Hacienda was largely bare, though in an alchemy lab, Rodriguez finds an annotated print-out of a scientific on the process of decay in human cadavers. The group moves to the warehouse - once a facility for processing dairy, since turned into a ritual testing-chamber by Aktion Haruspex. Investigating the test chamber, they find a strange debris, small crystals formed in the drain of one of the testing chambers and in the chimney of the industrial incinerator. They bag the samples and move on to the motor pool, which initially appears fruitless, which all of the drawers emptied of tools and equipment. That is, until VICTOR thinks to tip over the drawer and search for a label. "Paso Del Norte Motor Solutions, Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico", reads a sticker on the back.

V-Cell wasted little time on the return, and by that evening, had crossed back into Texas. Samples collected from the site are forwarded by courier to A-Cell for analysis. 

28 OCTOBER
V-Cell decide to start with the legwork on their persons of interest. VICTOR liaises with Special-Agent-in-Charge Norton Wardell, the DEA liason at Fort Bliss and a longtime colleague through VICTOR's work in JTF-6 and Task Force North. VICTOR asks for Wardell on intelligence on Don Flavio: who he is, what he does for the Juarez Cartel, everything. Meanwhile VERDANCE puts a request for information from INTERPOL through the FBI for intelligence on Immanuel Toth. After that, they speak more with Reed, then rest.

29 OCTOBER

Intelligence packages arrive for VERDANCE and VICTOR from INTERPOL and SAC Wardell respectively.

VICTOR learns that Don Flavio was, for many years, the Juarez Cartel's main go-between when meeting with other criminal syndicates, namely the Cali Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel, though with the implosion of the Cali Cartel and the ongoing gang-war with Sinaloa, he's rarely called on to play "diplomat" these days. Sources indicate that he's become something of a slave-driver for the cartel primarily by extorting coyote smugglers heading through Juarez. He charges them either money or people in exchange for protection and safe passage. Coyotes that lapse on payments are picked up at the border either by the Federales or US Border Patrol (thanks to a lucky anonymous tip to the Federales) and are sent to prison, the lucky ones are, anyways; it's been known that a few have wound up in ditches withouth any feet or hands... or head. According to sources, it's rumoured that every few months Flavio specifically steals a kid. Curious about this, VICTOR learns that a Mexican immigrant who was detained by US Border Patrol (awaiting deportation) reported having been robbed of her child by Flavio. 

VERDANCE is forwarded INTERPOL's file on Immanuel Toth. A Hungarian-born Swabian-German whose father was an officer of the SS, allegedly kidnapped and tortured to death by the KGB shortly after the Soviets claimed Hungary. Toth's name appears on reports on White Power / Neo-Fascist organizations in Hungary throughout the 60s and 70s until he briefly disappeared from Europe in the mid-1980s, rumoured to have been travelling through South America. Upon his return, he became closely involved with Neo-Fascist organizations throughout Hungary and the Balkans, such as the "Hungarian National Front" and the Serbian branch of "Blood and Honor".

In 1993, Hungarian police linked him to the murder of a journalist investigating the "Day of Honor" Neo-Nazi parade in Budapest, evidence gathered indicated he had ordered the murder to be carried out by two Swedish members of the "Nordic Resistance Movement", who he had paid and armed with illegal weapons to carry out. In 1997, French authorities identified Toth as having ordered the murder of a Union Syndicalist in Lyons in 1992, similarly hiring fascist hitmen to carry out the murders.
INTERPOL believes Toth fled Europe some time after 1993 and is believed, presently, to be in hiding in Brazil or potential Suriname. VERDANCE hypothesizes Toth's time in South America in the 1980s was likely when he first joined the Karotechia and was training in the occult to become a Bischofe, and that throughout the 90s he had acted as a middle-man, funnelling Karotechia money into forming militant Neo-Nazi cabals in East Europe. It's unclear if his relocation to Europe was a purely pragmatic matter (he was wanted by the authorities in Hungary by 1993), or if it was to pursue his research with Aktion Haruspex.

VERDANCE and VICTOR decide to look in after that Coyote caught by Border Patrol. VICTOR leans on another old contact, Hollis Redding in USBP to get them access to the holding facility that the Coyote and his cargo are being held while awaiting deportation, so that they can speak to the smuggler and the mother claiming her child was stolen by the Karotechia. 

Eventually, VERDANCE and VICTOR end up interviewing over 28 people caught during the bust, including the coyote, Jesus Palau, and the mother, Ana Abasto. They learn that before ending a secret tunnel heading under the US-Mexico border, the group were stopped by armed men, including a federale, who Palau identifies as Officer Angel Acosta, and a "Native guy" he had seen before. They sized up the kids present and eventually took Abasto's 6-year-old son, Fabian. Palau's interview makes them suspect he knows more, and eventually VERDANCE circles back with him for more answers. After being offered a deal to retain his anonymity and enter witness protection in the states, Palau caves, and explains he had seen the "native guy" before at Don Flavio's hacienda outside Juarez. He attended a meeting with Flavio, the native, and a "gringo from Europe", during which the native performed a gruesome, impossible feat of magic by putting Flavio in a trance before passing his hand through Flavio's head. With ample names and evidence, V-Cell return to Fort Bliss.

30 OCTOBER

After Breakfast, VICTOR is alerted through the Delta Green secure email that Fr. Luther Marks has turned in his research. Father Marks conferred with "some friends" out in New Orleans and was able to turn up a few promising leads that sound like they fit what V-Cell's investigating out in Mexico.

He relates a story about the Codex Borbonicus. The Codex, written by the Aztecs, is primarily concerned with fire and day/night rituals needed to keep the world turning. It is widely though to be incomplete, as a final chapter concerning the "kindling of a secret flame" is missing, believed destroyed. It is rumoured that these pages contained a ritual to summon a hideous demon called a "Child of Smoke", brought to earth through child sacrifice. Furthermore, rather than destroyed, the account of a single conquistador claims that the pages were torn from their book and given to the Church to be dealt with. 

The story of the Borbonicus fragment goes cold until the 1930s. Rumours circulated that an emissary from the German secret society, the Thule Gesellschaft arrived in Rome with a briefcase full of money, a letter, and a list of texts the Society wished to purchase. It is said that on that list was the Borbonicus fragment and a book listed as the "Black Psalms", rumoured to be a Catholic bible owned by Pope Pius VI, in which the Pope recorded a conversation with a Child of Smoke which he had secretly summoned in order to speak with. Their conversation scribbled madly into the margins of the book in Flemish. 

VICTOR and VERDANCE ponder Marks' findings. A while later, they're back in Gregory Reed's trailer. VICTOR asks Reed about the capabilities of the satellite, and whether it can track a moving target. Reed assures him it can, and VICTOR asks Reed to focus the satellite on the address of Don Flavio's hacienda outside the city, so that they can track his movements.

(Continued in Part 2)

Music.