| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Debrief |
| Date: | Mon, 9 Feb 1998 22:55:09 +0000 |
>>>>>[Just for the record.
+++++begin video
Lynch, and a dozen FBI agents - all in the black raid fatigues, though
without the heavier armour and combat harnessing - are watching a
screen. The view is frozen on a group of men and a few women arrayed in
seats, a speaker on a dais in front of them, all caught in a moment of
surprise and alarm.
"Okay, and while it was fine so far, this is where it all goes to shit."
Lynch sighs. "They're caught by surprise, in their chairs, away from
their main weapons, and at that point we had some hope of a surrender.
But this guy -" he highlights the speaker - "reached for a weapon."
The image unscrolls in slow motion, as the man (who had been haranguing
his audience) reaches snail-like for the Thunderbolt automatic stuck in
the front of his trousers, as if for show. He has just begun to withdraw
it when one, two, three bullets slap into his torso and he begins to
fall.
"Lilith took him down. We now have a roomful of frightened, scared,
armed, often slightly drunk men, who believe they're under attack and
are being fired on, and the inevitable happens."
In the slow-motion playback, some of the audience are drawing sidearms,
and the smartlink's aiming mark settles on one person raising a
Manhunter, Lynch's ammo counter dropping by two as a double-tap of
7.62mm explosive rounds knocks the man out of his chair.
At one-tenth speed the entire engagement takes less than a minute to
unfold: the Children of Thunda managed to get some shots off, none
scoring, as they are caught in a crossfire between two wired, skilled
and smartlinked enemies.
Lynch pauses it at one point, as he's just shot an Oriental man in the
chest, the terrorist thrashing. "This got us our prisoner. This guy is
still firing, he's hosing the woman _here_ and hit her five times in the
back. Her armour stopped it, but she thought she'd been shot and was
dying. By the time she realised she wasn't, it was all over." He resumes
the playback, as the last handful - the slow, or those who hesitated
before drawing, or the lucky - are gunned down.
"Okay. Fourteen dead, one prisoner. How can we get more of them alive
next time? Any ideas what else we could do with only two?" A pause. "How
about with more resources?"
"More force going in? Overwhelm them, make it more obvious that they'll
lose a firefight?" one agent suggests. "Difficult to co-ordinate without
tipping their lookouts, but if we took an eight-man squad in across the
rooftops..."
"Yeah, that's a possibility. Getting them into Redmond's a hard job in
the first place, though." Lynch nods.
"How about an assault vehicle?" Franks suggests. "You two jam the doors,
trap them in the room, the vehicle pumps it full of stickyfoam. Some
might drown, but you'd get more alive."
Lynch nods. "Again, got to get the vehicle into the area unobserved. But
yeah, that's one to remember."
"Just hit them by the book? Tell me why not." one female Fed enquires,
slightly mischeivously.
"Because they were tooled for exactly that, had local gangers playing
lookout, had reinforced the building to stand up to small-arms fire."
the SIGA agent replies. "They wanted to go out in a blaze of glory,
martyred in a high-profile siege live on prime-time TV. That's why this
wasn't a total screwup, at least the mayhem was confined to them and it
happened off-camera.
"Okay, any other questions?" The general answer seems to be negative.
"If you think of any, ask me." The briefing room rapidly empties and
Lynch gratefully lights up a cigarette.
Lilith enters, looking with some surprise at the display. "Debriefing
this one?"
"Thought it made a useful example for best-of-a-bad-lot." Lynch shrugs.
"What's the problem? The suspects resisted, the suspects are dead." His
wife sits beside him.
"That's the problem. FBI Death Squads Strike Again. Judge Lynch, with an
old Python instead of a Lawgiver. Okay, the general public are
delighted, a CoT cell of maniacal terrorists broken up, killed resisting
arrest and it's provable, they went for weapons and we had to open up.
But within half an hour the Oliver Stone Foundation had posted the first
claim that I lined the CoTties up on their knees and capped them each in
the backs of the head, and faked the footage and the autopsies. And that
crap feeds on itself, out in wacko-land, and some more nutcases are
tooling up to avenge their martyrs."
Lilith takes the cigarette, finishes it off. "Maybe. But what you can't
shake is the message. Play with things that go boom, get killed. It'll
keep the numbers down."
"Yeah. If it really bothered me, I'd go do something else, it's just I'd
like more prisoners next time. And it helps us be anonymous here in
black-fatigue-land."
"Speaking of which, I was off to practice some kata. Unless you feel
like fencing a few friendly rounds?" Lilith smirks. "One day, Jason,
you'll realise you're not supposed to hold the sharp end of the sword."
+++++end video]<<<<<
-- 1Lt J R W Lynch <22:54:34/02-09-59>
Strategic Intelligence Gathering Agency
