10447/Dead Man Switch

Dead Man Switch
Date of Scene:	12 March 2022
Location:	Military Base - LOCATION CLASSIFIED
Synopsis:	Grifter and Zealot investigate the death of a friend. And find that there's definitely something darker, something deeper, something Deviant.. That they have to go up the chain to find more of.
Cast of Characters:	Ivana Baiul, Cole Cash, Lucy Blaze

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Ivana Baiul has posed:
    It had likely been awhile since Cole had heard from John Lynch. A short time ago from out of nowhere, a message had been sent.
    'If you're geting this, then I'm dead or close enough to it I wish I were. I found that kids were being experimented on and mind controlled to make them into weapons. Kids of friends.'
    'Most of the rest of the old team were with me. Something's happened and the kids are vulnerable. Find out who's after them and put a stop to it. Don't let them end up the way so many others are'.
    Or something along those lines.. Some backtracking had found a minor news report listing Lynch as a terrorist that had been killed in a missile strike by the Department of Defense. Some backtracking had lead to the base from which the airstrike was based out of.
    They might be in it to avenge a friend. They might be in it to make sure no other kids were hurt. They might be in it for other reasons.
    But no matter what it was in the end, they were here.

Cole Cash has posed:
When Cole received the message, he was sceptic. Lynch is a weasel, Cole was sure he would be the last of the Team 7 to die. He was I.O.'s director, for fucks sake. But... the Gen-13 project was what destroyed Team 7. That part he remembers.

And Team 7 was a band of brothers. He didn't get along with all the 'siblings' but there is a bond, there is duty, a blood-pact. And he can't find Marc Slayton, he can't find Jackson Dane, he can't find Michael Cray. He can find Amanda Waller and Slade Wilson. Have they received the message too? Maybe he will ask. Tomorrow.

For now he is sneaking around a military base with his Ex. A woman who is actually able to sneak around even better than him. Among other things.

Lucy Blaze has posed:
Zealot has a few rules regarding what she will do or allow to happen around her. Experimentation on, torture of, or mistreatment of children? That's a very big no-no. When the message had been shared with her, she readily agreed to help locate the kids to keep them safe.

While she doesn't have the bond of former war-band to draw on, she has some experience (okay a lot) with hunting down people that really don't want to be found. Including an alien race that possesses people. So sneaking around a military base to get information is easy mode.

Cole will probably hate it, but Zannah taps into his head to keep an open telepathic link so they can communicate without having to speak (or even move). She slips alongside him, glancing around for cameras, or sensors of the motion, thermal, or pressure types. Making sure they don't inadvertently tip off their arrival.

Ivana Baiul has posed:
The base is an air force base primarily used by the CIA or other 'black' departments within the aegis of the Pentagon. It had been relatively simple to track where the airstrike had come from; big bases in an area were fairly easy to get into.

The place has rather good security. High end electronics, metahuman scanners, drones on patrol, alert guards, and even the occasional robot going through the corridors.

Plenty of cameras, some obvious, some not. Personnel on alert coming and going. No small talk. No signs of alert or them having been noticed. But they were definitely professionals here. But also easy enough to avoid and bypass security given the skill of the two

Cole Cash has posed:
No telepathics, Cole keeps the mind shields up. Maybe Coda battle sign language, but they have done this together many times, they barely need to look each other as they jam cameras, avoid invisible sensors and pressure plates, and dodge patrolling guards and drones as if they weren't there.

CIA and the IO are careful with their computers, and Cole doesn't have a military grade codebreker at hand. But he knows the weak points of the shady agencies. They cover the electronic tracks, and yet they take forever to erase the flight plans of the aircraft. They hide the name that deliver the orders, but not the names of the pilots executing them. Not that many combat helicopter pilots in the CIA or IO. He doubts this was an army operation.

The hangars, he points. Less security there.

Ivana Baiul has posed:
The way towards the hangar is slow but possible for the stealthy duo. Going along evading things and security. The hangar as they get to it is filled with cutting edge craft and weapons. But they're all within Earth military standards. There's nothing extremely exotic, hyper-advanced, or anything that necessarily would grab attention as unusual beyond that of a military base with advanced strike craft.

There were several banks of data displays within the hangar. The issue was that they were all in the 'open'. Nowhere that was isolated or closed off, nowhere that had a closed door.

Cole Cash has posed:
More aircraft that Cole expected, though. But how many would be suitable to shoot a missile to a boat. Probably a helicopter. Probably nothing too exotic, as there might have been witnesses. Nothing that would have made Lynch suspect he was going to be attacked.

Or maybe he saw... no, he wouldn't have sent the Dead Man Switch message. If Lynch is alive, he must be seriously injured or captured.

He starts checking the choppers, trying to figure out which ones would fit the bill. Which are ready to take off with just a few hours of preparation.

Ivana Baiul has posed:
Choppers. Number of short range ones. Quiet ones. Lynch wouldn't have had any sort of radar on his boat (likely) so it wouldn't have to be very stealthy. There would be just a few of those about. And thanks to standardizationa nd efficiency, the four models that would have been the likeliest ones were all in the same area. But they were out in the open, had identical markings..

But they weren't fueled or armed. In a position where they would be undergoing maintenance. But with no techs or equipment around.

Cole Cash has posed:
Four, four is good. Cole does a quick checkup to see if he can determine if any of them has been used recently. Hard to say, but maybe he can discard one or two. Then he will check the onboard computers, review flight paths and message logs.

Or even if the data is gone, that is also significant, since he knows the date of the attack. Finding the right machine will lead to the pilot, and perhaps the one that gave the commands.

Ivana Baiul has posed:
The helicopters are all standard. But also they have minor differences. Hardpoints. He would know what type of missile had been used in the strike. So the helicopter had to have a hardpoint that could have taken the missile. That eliminates two of them that couldn't hvae done it.

Now it's just seeing if they have computer records on them of it.. Or if he can perhpas get enough data to go through the computer banks.

But there are guards about and lots of security and the copters are powered down. So he would likely need to get onboard each of them to check them out.

Cole Cash has posed:
That is exactly the plan. Get into the choppers. The guards need to be avoided, so Cole will wait for his chance, for hours if needed. He might need to remove them, but since they probably are just soldiers, he rather avoid harming them or get them into trouble.

Contrarily to his reputation, Grifter can be very patient. He was a sniper and a spy, after all.

Ivana Baiul has posed:
They're following orders. They're professionals. They see it as their duty. They may not even have blood on their hands in anything. The patrols are quick and steady, but also in a rhythm after awhile. So with some work there are empty times that he can use to dart along and get to the helicopters.

He's able to take that space to get up and over to the first one, silently opening the door and getting in. The dark cockpit making it hard for him to be seen outside of it. there's the powered down computer.. And the data log.

Cole Cash has posed:
Cole switches to night vision, turning on a small UV lantern. He needs to turn on the computer, without starting the chopper, which requires some minor rewiring. This is going to leave a trail, but he trusts the government bureaucracy to fail to understand what might have happened.

In any case, he has no choice. This is more subtle than flooding the whole base with virus and intrusion programs like all those hotshot hacking kids keep doing at the drop of a hat.

Ivana Baiul has posed:
He gets up and over into it, ducking low and staying out of sight. The program is working. It goes to start to spit out recent mission logs and orders. Going through them until it matches the time of the strike and the destruction of where Lynch was supposed to have been.

And there seems to have been an.. External broadcast linked to the gun camera.

Someone was watching the show.

Cole Cash has posed:
That would be a very interesting video, since this kind of operation is completely illegal in the US. He doubts the chopper has a copy, but he will check if he has time. Now, who was the pilot? Who was onboard? Who was giving the instructions from base control. He has questions who have easy answers.

There was, after all, an enemy of Team 7 behind this. Unfortunately, the list of those is pretty long.

Ivana Baiul has posed:
The list will take a backlog to go through. Anyone of Team 7 that hasn't gone to ground is probably uninvolved or not related. That would likely rule out ones like Waller or Slade. The pilot.. Isn't listed, but that should be in the duty roster listings in the main computer banks. And some digging can probably also find who ordered the mission.. Or where it came up from the chain of command.

And probably wherever the camera was transmitting to.

Cole Cash has posed:
Cole curses quietly. No pilot or crew names? That is all shades of irregular even for a black op. Or maybe they have upgrades security in the last decade... nah, it will never happen. It goes against a century of bureaucratic inertia.

But someone knows, Cole has the mission data, now he will just have to shake the tree in person, which means raising flags all over Washington. The (dumb) things he does for old buddies.