The White House
1539 EST
Team Peacemaker stood in the operations center, watching the live take from a reconnaissance drone as it flew over Roosevelt Island. Endurance had been improved at least somewhat since the start of summer, but they still lacked the ability for long term station keeping. Even so, what they had was a vast improvement.
"Least we're not going in blind," Bundmeister remarked as she watched the video feed.
"Which doesn't make me feel a whole lot better," snorted Ryckmen. "Forget who it was that said horror was the uncertainty of how awful something could be while terror was knowing exactly how awful it can be. But I'm feeling a little terrified right at the moment."
The drone passed over a clearing, a large number of Outcasts gathered around a crude St. Andrew's cross. Chained to the cross, a civilian screamed silently as one of the Outcasts dropped a jerry can a short distance away, then lit a road flare and tossed it on a trail of diesel oil leading to a pile of wood and tires underneath the cross. The drone's camera recorded the murder unflinchingly, and Team Peacemaker would not look away.
* * *
Roosevelt Island
2032 EST
Descending the broken chunk of highway into the disrupted bank of the Potomac, Team Peacemaker moved carefully in the growing gloom, letting the toes of their boots slowly drag through the ankle high water to find any bits of debris. Gregory looked up at the mangled overpass above their heads. "How'd they bring this thing down?"
"Thermite, from what I understand," Tarvey replied quietly. "And they weren't subtle about it. They apparently bound some prisoners against the beams to help tamp down the reaction. Thermite's cheap, really, once you get right down to it. Rust and granulated aluminum with a magnesium trigger. Only hard part I can think of would be how they ground up the aluminum.
"I'm sure they figured out something, Ricky," murmured Ryckmen, bringing up the rear. "Desperate people can do all sorts of incredible and horrific things once their backs are to the wall."
The team crossed over to the beach, seeing an airplane wing perched on the tops of several trees, a couple of piles of rubble built up underneath it to give some stability. "Coming up on the back door, Lobo," Tarvey subvocalized. Despite being the entrance point for the team and the Outcasts, the powered gate was actually the rear entrance to the CERA quarantine camp. "Peace, walkway on the left side."
"Got it, Ricky."
Carefully slipping into position, Team Peacemaker waited, letting Ryckmen survey the scene. "I think we've got a sniper up on a scaffold near the gate," he subvocalized, a faint hesitation coming across. "Guy's carrying a compound bow. I'm not even kidding."
"Well, that's new and oddly confusing," murmured Bundmeister.
"No, it does make sense, sort of," Ryckmen corrected. "Mind you, for distance work, I'd probably go with a recurve or even an English longbow. The question is the quality of the archer."
"Why would you screw around with a bow, Lobo?"
"Because, Bunny, for all the power behind a good marksman rifle, it's still pretty loud even suppressed. But a bow, you'd have to be right on top of the archer to hear anything if they've got a silencer on the string. Get your specs on, guys. Ricky, roll the pod."
The team put on their AR shooting glasses, then Ricky tossed the sensor pod. Instantly, targets were lit up in the glasses. Ryckmen took a bead on the archer. "Start the music," he murmured as he squeezed the trigger gently. The trigger broke over just as the archer turned, sending the bullet through the Outcast's lungs, hydrostatic shock causing the heart to stop as the aorta was perforated. By then, the dying gurgles of the archer were lost in a cacophony of gunfire as the Outcasts came under attack. Gregory kept the Outcasts from trying the walkway across the shallow pool with judicious bursts from his M249. Tarvey put a round from his M1A through an Outcast's suicide vest and killing four others in close proximity. With no other enemies detected, the team moved forward, collecting the pod, and moved deeper into the island. As they traveled the path, the tail section of a cargo plane sat before them, the stabliators twisted and dented, the cargo doors torn away to some unknown destination.
"Looks like a C5," Bundmeister remarked. "Must have been planning to kick supplies out the back as they passed over."
"Which begs the question of how they brought the bird down," murmured Gregory.
Tarvey snorted. "Wouldn't take much, really. If the plane's approach vector was already well established, all you'd need would be some good sized rocks thrown into the intakes. Especially if they were coming in just above stall speed to help minimize breakage on the supplies."
"Rocks, or somebody who really knew how to time a hand grenade," amended Ryckmen. "A Galaxy isn't exactly tiny, but they would have had to have hit all four engines more or less simultaneously if they're not using a SAM. And it would have to deliver catastrophic damage across the board. They could fly on two engines, but they'd have to get back home PDQ if they did."
"Yeah, things were gas guzzlers," said Bundmeister, nodding in agreement. "Great lift capacity but terrible fuel economy."
Gregory crept up a slope and glanced ahead, then slid back down in a crouch. "We've got some customers up ahead. Four of them. One of them's got some nasty looking hardware bolted on to a toy car."
"That one goes down first," Ryckmen growled softly. Nodding in agreement, the team crept forward, waited for the countdown, then struck in a short burst of gunfire. Once the Outcasts were down, Peacemaker moved forward. They paused as they found another chunk of fuselage, the nose of the massive cargo plane crushed by the impact. Off to the side, they found the bright orange flight recorder perched on a piece of structural cross-member. A brief twitch of the SHD watch brought the last seconds of the doomed flight to their ears.
"Mayday, mayday. This is CERA Supply Flight 363. We are going down over Roosevelt Island. Repeat, we are going down over--" The recording ended abruptly.
Gregory shook his head mournfully. "You think the pilot was the one we saw earlier?"
"No. Anybody who survived this almost certainly hasn't survived the Outcasts. Not after this long." Ryckmen took a deep breath, then shouldered his MDR. "Let's get rolling. I really don't want to be here after midnight."
Continuing along the path, the team came across a series of raised beds for growing crops. Compared to the efforts at the Theater and the Campus, the results were not particularly encouraging. Gregory had a flash of insight into the mindset of the Outcasts from the tableaux. The gardening, the security, it was stage dressing, as false as the set pieces from The Tempest. They weren't interested in surviving. They had no ambitions to try and rebuild. They were hellbent on killing themselves in a way that ensured they took as many people with them, driven by a perverted survivor's guilt which caused them to lash out rather then turn inward.
"What a world that has people like this in it," Gregory muttered.
"Not quite right," corrected Ryckmen gently, "but I'm sure Shakespeare would understand the sentiment."
A shout from a temporary wall further away drew the team's attention. Outcasts began to charge out from behind a chain link gate. Without missing a beat, the team dropped behind cover and began to engage the attackers, short bursts of automatic fire mixed with the sharp cracks of rifle rounds selectively drilling through vital organs. The team moved through the gate and along a crude gatehouse made up of pipe and heavy plastic tarps, coming into a rough clearing, what might have been a staging area for supplied moving deeper into the quarantine area. Another squad of Outcasts came down from a chunk of wing over at the far end of the clearing, two of them screaming as they pulled tabs on suicide vests and began rushing towards them. A single rifle round from Tarvey took out the two suicide attackers, while Gregory and Bundmeister dispatched the remains. Climbing up on the wing, the team continued further in.
"Man, this place got rearranged," Tarvey said quietly. "Parts of it seem real familiar and other parts just hurt my brain trying to recall what was there."
Bundmeister nodded, eyes scanning the gloom ahead of her. "I know the feeling. Been here a few times, and it's surreal."
A faint breeze began to blow in their faces, carrying a collection of scents. Rubberized plastic, kerosene, smoke, and burnt flesh hit their noses, not strongly enough to induce nausea, but enough to tell them they were going to be seeing something awful soon. Within minutes, the team arrived at another clearing, this one almost completely bare of vegetation, a massive pit off to one side lined with piles of bagged corpses and short cargo containers. Gregory couldn't tell, but there were shapes down near one corner which suggested not every corpse at the bottom had been properly bagged before it was burned.
"This must have been the disposal area," Ryckmen said tonelessly. "We're probably getting close to the boundary between the safe and hot sections of the camp." Continuing up the road, they passed through a wide gate and along a track up a shallow hill. As they approached, they heard voices.
"Get it fixed now!"
"It's hard to work when you've got a gun pressed to your head!" came an acid reply.
The team glanced briefly at each other, then crept forward stealthily. A small knot of Outcasts stood guard over a woman trying to work on a cargo truck's engine. Whoever she was, it was clear she wasn't there voluntarily.
"Ricky, toss the pod, make sure it's a little noisy," subvocalized Ryckmen. "We don't want to hit the civvie."
Nodding slightly, Tarvey tossed the pod towards a now abandoned guard tower. The noise was obvious enough to attract the curiosity of a couple Outcasts, prompting them to start poking around the tall grasses growing up around the base of a guard tower. Once the threat to the civilian was reduced (nothing could have completely eliminated it), Ryckmen took the first shot, dropping the Outcast closest to the woman. The others quickly eliminated the remaining Outcasts, then moved up, weapons trained on a gate as it opened up slowly to reveal Outcast reinforcements. As his CTAR cycled, Gregory couldn't help but feel a bit of disgust at his opponents. Against barely capable civilians, the Outcasts were terrifying. But against Division agents, especially ones who'd been fighting traitorous military personnel recently, they were almost hilariously outmatched. If they didn't have their suicide runners and the bastardized UGVs, they might never have proven any sort of serious threat.
"Peacemaker, this is Blue Parrot."
"Blue Parrot, Peacemaker," Ryckmen replied calmly as he put a round from his MDR through one of the Outcasts' flamethrower units. "Go ahead."
"We have overhead coverage of the island. We're seeing a group of Outcasts escorting an individual towards the docks. Looks like a protective detail."
"Do we have an ID on the individual?"
"Negative, Peacemaker. They're wearing a cloak of some sort. Deep hood, facial features obscured. And the guard detail is positioned in such a way as we can't get a clear look."
"Roger that. Keep an eye on them, Parrot."
"Peacemaker, this is Casablanca. You've heard?"
"Casablanca, Peacemaker. Blue Parrot just made their report." Ryckmen smiled thinly. "They're keeping an eye on them right now, Manny. Relax."
"It's gotta be Emeline. You guys need to hustle up and intercept them."
"Manny, this is a big island, and Parrot didn't make a positive ID. If the worst thing that happens is we chase her out of town, cut her off from the rest of the Outcasts, I'll take that as a win. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a civilian here who needs a little hand. Peacemaker, out." Ryckmen looked over as Bundmeister approached him with the civilian in tow.
"Lowell, meet Angela Woods," said Bundmeister. "Normally, she works with a small team out of the Campus. But she got snatched a few days back. They were pushing her to get that truck up and running," she continued, jerking a thumb back towards the vehicle in question. "Think we kinda screwed up their logistics when we hit the Events Center."
"You guys are Division agents, right?" asked Woods curtly. When Ryckmen nodded, Woods continued. "There's a lot of Outcasts ahead of you. A lot of them are still living in the tents they were assigned when the quarantine was initially established. Pretty sure they were going to execute me whether I fixed that truck or not. But you have got to do something. I'd rather go back to Henry with good news rather than tell him I bolted before you knew for sure the Outcasts were put out of business for good."
"You seem to have a very optimistic appreciation of our mission here," Tarvey said slowly.
"You wouldn't have come here if it wasn't to try and break their backs," countered Woods.
"True enough," Gregory admitted. "And I certainly hope we can do that. But, if you don't mind my saying, we'd prefer to keep you out of the line of fire while we go about that."
"I appreciate that. But I want to make sure," Woods said coldly. "I need to be sure they're gone."
Shrugging their shoulders, the team went over to the gate, a large fuel tank next to a second gate. Tarvey took a brick of C4, shaped it around a fitting, then pushed in a radio detonator and activated it. The team moved back to a safe distance before Tarvey shouted, "Fire in the hole!", and detonated the plastique. The fuel tank went up completely, blasting the second gate away and setting fire to the grass on the other side of the fence. As the flames died down, the team charged through, heading for what had probably been a storage area and anchor point for various fixtures. They found several Outcasts waiting for them, but hardly the sorts of numbers they were expecting. The ensuing firefight was strangely brief. All the time in the world to prepare, the element of surprise completely absent, and the Outcasts couldn't seem to put up a serious fight.
"Thought you said there were a lot of them ahead," Ryckmen said quietly to Woods.
"There were a couple of days ago. I don't know what happened to them," admitted Woods.
"Peacemaker, Casablanca. That mystery person is almost to the dock. If they get away--"
"If they get away, they get away, Manny," Bundmeister snapped. "Something's already pretty hinky here. Resistance is unusually low."
"Copy that. But please do what you can to expedite."
Ryckmen snorted, then motioned for the team to advance. As they did, his mind chewed on the situation. Bundmeister was right. This was supposed to be the Outcasts' home base. Yet the level of resistance felt off. More heavily defended than the DCD building, to be sure, but not quite as heavily defended as the Events Center.
Creeping up on another knot of Outcasts, the agents struck swiftly, dropping them in a single burst of fire. Ryckmen turned to Woods, a troubled expression on his face. "Angela, I really think you've got enough evidence that this place is going to be cleaned out. You should think about making your way back over by the bridge."
"I'm thinking you're right," Woods sighed. "I just hope you burn this place to the ground when you're done."
"We'll see what we can do."
Nodding, Woods turned back, making her way over towards the eastern side of the island. The team continued forward, reaching a heavy duty gate which could only open from the inside. Tarvey went to work, setting another C4 charge in place. Once the gate was demolished, Outcasts began to converge on their position. As before, the resistance seemed light. Moreover, Ryckmen noticed the Outcasts were being sloppy and careless. Ortega's exhortations to hurry up and secure the docks in the face of such poor opposition perversely made him want to stop. As they reached the last wall before the docks, he called a halt just inside the entryway.
"ISAC, mute all inputs for the moment." The watches flashed twice in acknowledgment, fading out almost entirely. Ryckmen looked at his comrades. "All right, guys. Anybody here smelling a rat?" The three of them nodded. "About what I thought."
"Peacemaker, what the hell's keeping you guys? Finish this!"
Tapping his watch, Ryckmen frowned as he spoke. "Manny, I hope you're not on speaker right now, because I'm about to chew you out," he said coldly. "This situation stinks to high heaven, and has been almost from the start. Jesus, Manny, I've played video games on the easy setting that had characters fight harder than these schmucks. We have been telling you something is wrong with this strike and you have not been listening."
"Emeline is already on the boat and they are fueling it up!"
"She's not on the damn boat, Manny!" exploded Gregory. "She wants us to think she's on the boat. She has deliberately set up one of her people to be a decoy. Hell, for all I know, they volunteered for it. And if it was somebody like Henry and his people trying this job, I'm sure they'd buy it. Think, Manny. Use that big brain of yours. Are you seriously going to tell me that a bunch of super angry internees with a death wish and a grudge against society are somehow going to fight less vigorously for their leader than they would for one of her flunkies?" The question hung in the air, daring Ortega to answer.
"So what do we do?" asked Ortega after several moments. "We just let them sail off, make them think they've won?"
"They're not going to sail off, Manny," Tarvey sighed. "If Peace is right, and I happen to think he is, they're going to sit there at the dock fat, dumb, and happy to die. They're going to let themselves get killed by us. It's a no-lose situation from their perspective. The ones on the boat become martyrs to the Outcasts, and we're the evil jackbooted stormtroopers who callously murdered them in the name of a society which already condemned them a long time ago. If we don't sink the boat, they might just scuttle it themselves, and hope to catch us in the blast. Or they might deliberately starve themselves to death, creating the myth of some legendary doomed standoff like The Alamo. For all I know, they'll poison themselves, Masada on the Potomac. They're more than unafraid to die. They want to die and take us down with them."
"If they want to die that badly, then I see no reason not to oblige them." The channel closed with a faint click.
Looking at each other, the team nodded, then clambered over the last barricade at the dock. The guards at the dock fought clumsily, the fanaticism somehow diminished by the necessity of the charade. Tarvey wired up C4 charges to the two massive fuel tanks, allowing Gregory and Bundmeister to punch holes in the steel walls to splash fuel over the edge of the dock and allow more air into the tank to enhance the explosion. Meanwhile, Ryckmen shot the lock off a steel plate covering the engine compartment of the only boat tied up at the dock, then set thermite charges around the cast iron block of the engine. When the demolitions were properly set, the team drew back a safe distance, then watched as Tarvey pushed a button and detonated all of the explosives at once. At any other time, there would be a sense of satisfaction, a feeling that they'd done something which made the world a little safer than it had been before. Now, as they watched the dock burn and the boat sink, they only felt disappointment. They'd been cheated and they'd been made to help in the deception. As they walked along the pathway leading back to the bridge, they said nothing to each other.