| From: | Paul J. Adam Shadowtk@********.demon.co.uk |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Onwards |
| Date: | Sat, 12 Jun 1999 15:52:06 +0100 |
>>>>>[TO: D J H Coppinger, Director
Well, he's back to his usual self. Hasn't changed. Well, not too much.
Didn't seem to mind the promotion too much, either. I guess you get used
to being an 05, maybe?
He'll be back, too. Maybe not for a while... but he'll be back.
+++++begin video
One of the Pentagon's meeting rooms: two officers amiably faced off
across a stack of printouts and data chips. One's a Marine Corps major,
the other a Navy rear-admiral. Jason Lynch and Jane Kowalski, who seem
to be settling into a friendly argument.
"You're rejecting the whole proposal outright, Lynch? Come on, at least
tell me why..." Kowalski asks.
"Does the phrase 'fundamentally flawed' ring any bells? Or how about 'been
there, done that, still got the scars'?" Lynch replies. "Let me guess, Jane,
this isn't your proposal."
"No, it's Ernang's work, he's been putting this together for a while. Is that
an issue?"
"As long as you bear in mind I can't stand that swivel-chair commando and
think he's so full of shit he squeaks, no." Lynch is surprisingly vehement.
"Jesus, Jason, don't hold back, tell me how you _really_ feel about the
guy!" Kowalski chuckles. "Okay, so there's some personal animosity going
on. I guess the fact that he had Christiansen under him and Mado above
him doesn't endear you, but surely that's not it?"
"The Farmer's puppets were convincing. They had to be. That's not it at
all." Lynch says as he stands on his chair, so he can press duct tape over
the smoke detector's inlet: he and the Admiral light up almost in unison.
"Ernang's got the corporate mentality of what an 'elite unit' should look
like."
"Go ahead, enlighten me. Then tell me why it's wrong."
"Okay. This unit - the Fast Response Assault Group - has it _all_. Natty
black fatigues-"
Kowalski, leaning over to get coffee for both of them, laughs so hard she
nearly drops a mug. "You and your phobia about black fatigues..."
"You want to hear this or not? Black uniforms, a cool-sounding acronym
for a name - though he should have used Fast Action Respose Team, fits
better - and a list of hardware that makes your eyes pop. I mean, lookit.
We're supposedly going to give this unit's tour bus eight MP-III lasers,
twenty-four L7 assault weapons, twelve SCK Night Warrior gauss rifles,
four Transys-Neuronet plasma cannon... it's like someone went through
the latest catalogue and ticked all the k3w1 new t0y2." The Marine
flutters the equipment list disparagingly. "That's not a unit, it's a walking
firepower demonstration. But of course those are all 'subsidiary issue'
because the basic personal weapon remains the HK-fucking-227 sub-ma-
fucking-chine gun. The guy has absolutely no clue at all."
"He doesn't?" Kowalski asks. "Okay, this is why I wanted _you_. I'm a
shiphandler and a politician, not a groundpounder. I hear the HK227's a
mighty fine piece of ordnance. It's gotta be, every cast member on
ShadowStrike owns one."
"It is. For the right work it's probably the best on the market. Accurate,
precise, reliable, forgiving. But, it's a submachinegun firing pistol ammo
to a hundred yards or thereabouts, beyond that you're into spray-and-pray
territory." Lynch warms to the subject. "It's great for close-quarters work
because it's short and light but still packs a punch. It's good for sneaky-
beaky work because it's easy to suppress it without screwing up the
ballistics. It's popular for police and security because the rounds don't
overpenetrate the way an assault rifle's do.
"But where in any of that is our supposed FRAG's mission? They've decided
what they want to look like, not what they need for the job. For what he
_says_ they're meant to do, the ideal armament's Sako AK-97J Supers, but
you ever see anyone in Fire Team Cherokee using those? Kalashnikovs
aren't cool or sexy, only Third World bad guys carry them in movies,
heroes don't use them. And you have to look like a hero if you want to
make brigadier-general, or so Ernang believes..."
"You're proposing our super-elite unit uses Kalashnikovs? Either you're
shitting me or you're really serious." Kowalski sounds surprised.
"Whichever, let's say you're selling me on the notion. So, what would you
do with the plan?"
"This." Lynch picks up Ernang's executive summary of the FRAG proposal,
tears it into quarters, throws them over his shoulder where they flutter to
the carpet.
The Rear-Admiral laughs out loud again. "Damn it, Jason, you better pick
every piece of that up, that's UCAS SECRET material you're throwing
around."
"Yeah, yeah, spoil my dramatic gesture why don't you? But that unit is just
too screwed up to work. It's got all the worst of the FBI Projects, the
BATF and the old Agency, and none of their redeeming features."
"So come up with something better. What _would_ work?" Kowalski finds a
notepad, turns to a clean page, starts to make notes.
"First off, look at the top operators. What do _they_ do? Look at the SAS,
at GS G9, at the Aztlan Jaguars. Hell, our Rangers do it right. No fancy
uniforms, no distinctive black fatigues unless you really need them, they
just need a little shoulder badge on a regular uniform to show who they
are. This force works in issue BDUs unless there's a pressing need to wear
something else. We're soldiers, not the Gestapo."
"Ernang says the uniform builds unit cohesion."
"Screw that. It makes the members feel they're a breed apart, that
they're too good to cooperate with lesser mortals. And that feeds back
into resentment and bad support. Look at the way the regular Feds and
the Projects drifted apart, for instance, the Projects got the best toys
and all the attention, the regular Feds felt overlooked and undervalued,
and it all slid into the shit. All you need for unit morale's a cap badge, a
different-coloured beret, a shoulder flash, something small and simple like
that: but you're still UCAS military, just a highly qualified member of it,
not some seperate Superman."
Lynch notices his cigarette's gone out, lights another: rises to his feet,
begins pacing. "And you do a tour with the unit, then go back to your own
battalion with a mission to inform and to pick out some good prospects.
Don't pull the best out of other forces for good, rotate them through so
they come back bursting with stuff they've learned and can pass on. That
way, units don't feel they're losing their best soldiers, they think they're
gaining free training, and _everyone_ gets some benefit.
"Secondly, you need a long workup cycle before you throw these guys into
their first fight. Pick your core team, then train the living hell out of
them for three months. Not to teach them anything, you're pulling in good
operators for this, but to make the unit a seamless whole. Ernang figured
you could do it in two weeks, I say bullshit, all it needs is one Gomer who
knows how to jam the BattleTac and the FRAG is falling apart because
nobody knows what anyone else is going to do. You need these guys to
know each other so well they seem telepathic.
"And on the training, screw all the fancy gear and the week-long planning
sessions. The guys you pull into a team like this _know_ that, local units
can handle it, there's no need for more gunbunnies to be cluttering up a
siege situation. What you need this unit for is to throw at problems
_now_, to deal with a deteriorating situation as fast as possible. Learn to
go in with what you've got, strip the gear down to the minimum we can
haul around or commandeer on site, you get best possible recon ASAP and
get in there before the Gomers build up their defences. That goes for
maintenance too, if you can't front-line repair it then it's got to be _vital_
that we have it along."
"Examples of where you'd use this force?" Kowalski says, starting to cover
a fourth page with her looping scrawl.
"Think back eighteen months and the King Street bus station. The cops let
the bad guys dig in. Firstly, that meant the metahuman hostages got
raped, mutilated, killed for a few hours while the law enforcement sat on
their black-clad butts, secondly when they _did_ move the Gomers were
dug in like ticks on a rottweiler's balls and we lost most of the hostages
and a lot of cops. Situations like that, you can do more *now* with ten
men than you can do in six hours with a hundred." Lynch pauses in his
rapid, thoughtful pacing by the coffee machine, refills both mugs.
"Next up, rules of engagement. This unit's going to get bloody. Two things
we have to hammer home right away. Firstly, use the Mitchell rules.
You've got a weapon, you get shot. We don't have time to shout "Federal
officers, drop your weapon, you're under arrest, do you understand your
rights or shall I read the Miranda warning?", a Gomer with a HVAR can
empty a whole goddamned magazine at you before you get past 'drop' and
be reloaded by the end of 'weapon'. Armed equals shot, shot equals dead,
absolutely no fucking around.
"Secondly, zero tolerance for hostage-taking. A guy's using a hostage as
shield, go for the headshot over the civ's shoulder. Take the shot, take
the chance. He shoots the hostage, you kill him _hard_. For the public, it's
so you can get the hostage medevacked fast. For real, it's education.
Take a hostage and you die. Drop the weapon and raise your hands and
you live. Keep pounding that home and the Gomers may get the
message."
"Pretty damn ruthless." Kowalski admits. "Looks like some of Mitchell
rubbed off on you."
"Hey, a lot of that was me. Had to be. I just played some stuff up, some
other stuff down." Lynch laughs. "Anyway. that's the sort of special ops
unit you need. Not another team of black-clad cowboys , we're knee-deep
in trideo commandos already. Not a law-enforcement heavy mob, either,
the Feds have Hostage Rescue tasked for that and everyone and their dog
has a SWAT team. This would be a Holocaust Squad, something you'd
throw at immediate threats _fast_"
Kowalski finishes writing. "So, who would you want for this unit?"
"Me?" Lynch looks startled. "What have I got to do with anything?"
"You said you wanted out of the spook business, well, this is as out as it
gets. This is pure smash-and-bash work, except you get to run the show
for a change. You want the deal or do I have to find someone else?"
There is a long pause.
"I can't do it, Jane." Lynch shakes his head. "Not for a while. I'll advise
and
train and help out, but I need to get some distance between me and the
job for a while."
"That bad? Don't answer, I was watching. Yeah." Kowalski admits. "Okay.
Take some time off." She hesitates. "Anything you want to talk about?"
"If I do, I'll let you know." Lynch seems to bouncing back from that
moment of blackness.
"How's the rest of the team? You had casualties?"
"Cordovez was KIA. Emma's still comatose. Whatever hit her, it was
_bad_. Easy's out of hospital and back at the Eight with Mani, she was
badly burned but by comparison that was easily fixed. Those titanium
bones probably saved her life, meant she had a wide shallow ugly burn
instead of a hole blasted clean through her. Quinn wanted Mitchell's hand
as a souvenir, so she got it. Crazy bitch. Those were the entry team's bad
losses. Topside-"
"I got topside casualties from Turner." The Admiral is quite gentle. "Get
some distance between yourself and the last job, Jason. Go have some
fun. Kick loose. Relax. Come back when you're ready."
+++++end video]<<<<<
-- RAdm Jane Kowalski <15:50:54/06-12-60>
Special Operations Command
