Summary:
February 08 2015: Aspect and Partisan light into the HYDRA research effort
Columbia Cave Network
A cave network in northern Colombia housing some deadly secrets/
Characters
NPCs
- Colombian Mercenaries
- Colombian Occultists
Mood Music:
[* None]
Jericho doesn't have time right now to arrange a flight to South America but he has identified a couple of likely spots where HYDRA occult activity might be taking place. This'll be an information gathering run, so he's asked Partisan to kit up and met her at the CCU headquarters. "Okay, ready then?" He flips open a device that looks kind of like a cellphone and turns it on.
"K'tten, two for site to site." There's a purple beam of light and a sense of dislocation and then…
Columbia.
Partisan just, blinks at first. Jerry doesn't have to explain where they are, she can -feel- it in her bones. "Never thought, I'd come back here."Lifting her helmet off, followed by that gasmask which is an odd thing. "The hell was that, K'tten and star trek transporter beams?"fiddling in her chestrig for that rather basic GPS/GLONASS receiver so she can get some vague notion of her bearings. "Ya'know Jerry, if you'd have told me we were coming like ahead of time we could've at least stayed for dinner or something. Bogota is lovely this time of year, minus the car bombs of course."
"I've made a few friends. Not all of them are demon queens though that is the other way I get around." Jericho grins. "Sorry, we'll drop by later if you like. Right now…" He gestures. "I think down there is our place. Couple klicks out. You take point?" He grins. She always does.
Partisan straps her helmet to her backpack, trading out for a ballcap and stuffs her gasmask in a thigh pouch. Then she gets to it, and well lets not pull any punches here. Partisan spent the majority of her days since the second world war fighting in jungles, and it absolutely shows. She moves like a ghost amongst the foliage, carving through the terrain without a hint of complaint. Pausing every so often to listen to the jungle, before stalking off again. Columbia is mostly jungle, only some of which is actual rainforest so her trademark skate shoes don't seem that out of their element as you might expect. That tigerstripe camo just as incredibly effective now, as it was in 1958. With Momma wolf up there on point it's easy to lose track of time in a way, spend enough time in the jungle and all those wars start to feel the same.
Jericho slips behind her. He's quiet, trained for this kind of work. He's sporting an M-4 with an M-24 on his back and his gunblade of course. Up ahead, through a narrow mountain track is a cave network carved by centuries of running water. According to the brief Jericho gave there's unusual activity in there. "Minimal guards. Sneak or shoot. Your option. First checkpoint coming up in a hundred meters."
The hand signs say it all, before she all but vanishes into the underbrush. No wonder Pablo Escobar wild mad, she's perfectly at home out here in a way no human should be. She doesn't have the ideal kit for this sort've work, no machete that is. However a Kerambit and a Tomahawk will have to do, it would seem she's chosen to at least silently open the place up a little. After all this is Colombia, these chucklefucks might as well have a main battle tank in there for all anyone knows, and the Partisan did not dress for anti-tank warfare.
Jericho follows on a parallel course, tracking Partisan through coded GPS signals. He comes up on the cave network, three choices. He doesn't see Partisan but he knows she's there. "Picking nothing so far but I'm hearing something, and smelling incense… real faint. Must be deeper in. Going in left. Will advise."
Despite popular myth, throwing a tomahawk is stupid. It's a perfectly good tool, and your very literally throwing it away. So when there are sentries, of course she doesnt throw the thing. The Partisan slips the blade of her kerambit through a poor fuck's neck just foreward of his spine and cuts the flesh beyond free in one cool slice. His compatriot is just starting to term, before the spike of that bayonet finds the base of his skull with a soft -whup-. After a moment of silence, she drags the bodies free and moves to follow after her compatriot. Exchanging tomahawk, for suppressed handgun between here and linking back up with Jerry.
When she does Jericho is just finished swording a couple of people. Quite quietly, actually which is a testament to how much he's been working with the damn thing. Silently he points to a pentagram carved into the floor near where he killed a couple of occultists. "Same mix I've seen on other sites. These guys are HYDRA alright. Need to figure out what they're doing here. See if you can find any documents or paraphenalia to recover." He glances around. "I've got electronic signals coming from the back. Some kind of satellite uplink. Sure to be guarded." He points. "That way."
Sure enough Partisan can hear and likely smell some rather unwashed if actually kiind of quiet guards.
Partisan narrows her gaze minutely, before setting off towards the indicated direction. She moves quietly, cautiously, taking her time and well the results are nasty. Guards drop one by one, which is work that only gradually gets easier as she goes along. Dumping sidearms and magazines in a dump pouch as she goes along, likely out of force of habit. Pausing only before finally making her approach to the uplink itself.
The Uplink is the only part of the cave network that shows evidence of construction. It's hardened with steel security doors and weapons emplacements. Clearly, if anything was to be hit, HYDRA expected it to be here. Fortunately, no one has detected Partisans approach. Unfortunately, the weapons are well sited and there's a distinct lack of cover.
"Door lock is mechanical… I'll need to breach it. Or you." Jericho pulls out his M24 and observes through the scope. "Let's see… ten guards. Two machineguns on either side of the security door. RPK's and AKs and grenades. Who were they expecting to roll up I wonder? Cartels? I'll pick off the ones furthest out…" He offers, though Part may have other ideas.
"We're in a cave, breaching is a bad idea."Pausing, Partisan glances back towards Jericho. Quietly pulling her mask on, before doffing her pack and out comes the goodies. Four WP grenades and four smoke grenades, more than enough to make it all but impossible to breathe. This is afterall, a semi-enclosed environment being a cave and all. "Concealment, and well WP is lethal all by itself in the right doses. You did bring a mask, right?"
"Always when I'm going with you." Jericho grins as he slips it on. "Go for it. I'll cover." He's a very good shot after all. Not Partisan levels of good but really who is these days? "Ready on your signal."
Partisan whips that smoke out first, and well it's black and acrid and quite intentionally so it's very easy to mistake it for actual smoke. They don't pop, they dont even sizzle they just smolder. Once the smoke begins to cloud casual observation, out goes the WP exposing faint pulses of light followed by properly toxic smoke. It's rough even on gasmasks, not harmful but you can feel the particulate mass want to clog the filters. The skin tingles and the body naturally begins to sweat. Guards, well they're having problems. The smoke from WP alone, clogs their lungs as it tries to clog those gasmasks. It gets into the eyes and does terrible things, and people wonder why it's classified as a chemical weapon! Part just lets things play out, comfortable not only with the secondary effects but also with fighting near blind. In this mess, it's so easy to miss the odd report of a suppressed .45 running subsonics on a locked slide.
The loudest noise Jericho is making is working the slide on his M24. One. Two. Three… and well that's all he gets. He can see Partisan in the smoke thanks to his own highly adaptive vision effects though it's not easy. There she is, taking out a guard with her pistol, another with the kerambit, another gets shoved hard against the entry barrier. One after another they go down but it's a few minutes before the hacker stands to approach. The door takes some work. It's a proper security door but some thermite should burn through it. It just takes times. He doesn't even bother speaking to Part. Not with the mask on. Just signals. Two inside by the door. Three more in the work area.
Partisan presses that safety down to safe, then further towards conventional unsafe. Then again that 1911 she's carrying is, oddly shaped. Something to ask about another time. She slithers through the fatal funnel, and then she does what the Partisan does best. It almost sounds like a suppressed machinegun, seven quick rounds of muffled fourty five and theres nobody left living inside. She quickly swaps magazines, before moving to kneel beside the doorway and peer outwards. Making for what passes as a defensive perimeter for him to exploit the place.
Jericho quickly moves in, hijacks the satellite and starts ransacking the database. At this point he's not expecting to make sense of much, just get as much data as he can uploaded to his buffers before he scrubs the hard drives and overclocks the processors with the fans off to melt them. No more occult whatever the hell they're doing here for them. "Two minutes. Nice work Part. Anything out there?"
No not really. Partisan probably killed or bypassed just about everything on the way in.
"All clear, I don't see or hear anyone."Pausing as Part swaps from pistol to that equally unfamilar suppressed SMG, the GM-94 is for the moment forgotten but thats to be expected considering. "The fuck is this joint, research station?"
"Yeah, looks like. HYDRA started using occult assets sort of out of the blue a few months ago and they've been using them to pretty good effect raiding SHIELD facilities and striking at their assets and others who get in their way. I'm trying to figure out what they're building up to. They've got some kind of endgame in mind and I just don't know what it is yet." The hacker looks up at his HUD. "Okay, got it all. Setting the comptuers to melt themselves and wiping the hard drives. You good?"
Partisan thumbs up, tossing Jerry her trademark demolition charge. three thermite grenades taped together with an aluminum camp bottle of a sticky highly flammable mixture of lord knows what. She's used it to destroy tanks in Africa, so this place is likely overkill really. "I'm ready, we gonna exfil from here or hike out?"
"Unless you've a contact to meet or want to catch up with someone out here, I can call for our trip back right here." He taps the communicator clipped to the inside of his combat harness. "Didn't have time to arrange for a flight and this is more or less a one and done op until I find the next nest or we come down here to set up a long term camp."
Partisan shakes her head, before stepping back towards Jerry "Naw, get us out've here. This place brings back all kinds of uncomfortable memories, yaknow?"Finally giving Jerry a glance and a stiff nod.
Ah right. Blacksites. And… the time she was working down here was not her best. "Sure thing Part." He says quietly. "K'tten, we're ready for recall." There's the same sense of dislocation and a flash of purple light, then they're back at CCU headquarters. "The good news is we should be able to get a decent lunch, if you like. I'll need to do some data crunching before I get anything useful out of this anyway."
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