G'Day,

The Doc (the one at the hospital here, not our Doc, who is in the ward here
with me and Komarov) says I should stay awake with my concussion, so I
thought I'd use the time to file an AAR on yesterday. Beats staring at
Komarov's ugly mug, anyway.

So - I decide to run the Blue Quarry Shopping Mall expedition much like the
Special Cake factory job. It's a lot closer to the villa, so we could do it
by car, but the quarry has lots of good vantage points for snipers and
choke points for cars, so I reckon flyers are best. It turns out that Van M
can spare us another flyer (after the previous one got hit by a truck), but
no new pilots. So we're stuck with 'Mr Engine Trouble' on one flyer.
Fortunately, one of our team, Thorkel (great guy by the way - served with
me in Hela Regiment in Q7 - top sergeant) has some experience with Flyers
from his Ground Force days, so he agrees to pilot the lead flyer with the
Principal in it.
Of course, she insists on taking her 'minimal' entourage with her (we got
her down to a hairdresser, P.A., accountant, nutritionist, stylist and some
other flunky). So the Flyers seat eight apart from the pilots, and that
means we have Flyer 1: Pilot (Thorkel), Van Moisten, 2 entourage, Bennie
Parker + 4 close protection squad. And Flyer 2: Pilot (dodgy Van Moisten
employee), 4 entourage, 4 protection squad.
With the 6 off-duty guys as backup on-call, parked up just down the road
from the mall, that leaves us with me, Col Silverado, plus nine to deploy.
I want there to be cars there, so that we can get out on road if need be,
so we use all three - one parked at the entrance, and one by each of the
two fire exits on the side where she'll be doing the speech and walkabout.
The day before, the bomb disposal guy goes over the whole area and
pronounces it clean. We also negotiate a tap into all of the security
cameras in the complex and get one guy to monitor that. Then there are two
guys on the upper walkway, making sure there are no people up there and
keeping an eye on the crowd, two people on the lip of the canyon to prevent
anyone using the obvious sniper position, and myself, Tony and one other,
plus the medic, just on standby, wandering around, keeping an eye on the
crowd.

Map of Blue Quarry Mall

Now, the night before it all goes down, suddenly there's this news item
that a military flyer has gone mising. Complete with multicannon turret.
Great. No time to rearrange our plans, but I don't like the look of things
if there's a military flyer that might intercept our flyers. Not only that,
we of course have to file our flight plan in advance, so the crooks know
we're coming and what route we'll take.
Tony S has an idea - if they have a military flyer, they'll need someone
who knows how to use it. That's beyond your average mobster, so maybe they
have brought in their own offworld talent. Smith Smithson, our resident
computer guy, hacks into passport control, and lo and behold, half a dozen
mercs who we recognise from a rival firm checked in yesterday on a
'training mission'. This is looking bad. I suggest we cancel. Van Moisten
won't have it. I say we can't guarantee her protection. She suggests we
take a hike and she'll find someone who can. So, we agree to run it out,
but I ask Thorkel not to take the pre-arranged flight plan. We'll let the
Van Moisten pilot stick to the route (as a kind of decoy) and Thorkel will
come in low, terrain following, keeping people off his tail. Totally
illegal of course, but Van M can stand the fine.
Anyhow, so we're all in position now, dignitaries arriving, crowd kept back
outside the mall, apart from the inevitable journos, and a party of special
needs kids from some charity Van M supports. There are local mall security,
but none of them are armed so that's okay, but there are also six cops
around, full riot gear, helmets, guns. Hmm. Six cops. Six mercenaries. Tony
tries to get them to let him see their faces. They tell him to get stuffed.

So we're starting to sweat - the flyers are inbound. Still no word on this
military flyer, and then the bomb disposal guy says he's found an IED in
the ladies' toilets (right next to one of the fire exits that are our exit
routes). He is defusing it, so we delay the flyers' arriving and have them
orbit for a while.
And then all of a sudden we get a call from Nobby and Chalky up on the rim
of the quarry - they've noticed a white van parked up not far away, been
there for some time, they're going to check it out. Tony gets even more
nervous when we hear the van apparently has no roof, and he decides they
need backup, so he gets into one of the cars and he and the driver hare off
up the exit ramp towards the position. And as he is driving through the car
park, he sees a camera crew that look suspicious - that camera looks wrong
somehow. Is that a trigger? He calls it in to me, and I take one of our
guys and head towards the camera crew to check it out. As we close in I see
it really is a surface to air missile launcher disguised as a camera. The
operator has a partner who sees me, and immediataly I pull my gun on them
and tell them to freeze. The guy starts moving a hand towards his jacket
then thinks better of it. I get them both to lie down, and now the police
are coming to investigate what's happening. I thought we might grab the
missile launcher in case this military flyer shows up, but it's clear that
the cops want it as 'evidence', so I just disable it and hand it over.
Van Moisten is having a hissy fit now about needing to land, even though
Tony has reached Nobby and Chalky to find they've stormed the van (one bad
guy killed, one captured) and discovered it has a military mortar inside,
zeroed on the reception area. Things get even worse when they come under
sniper fire from someone across the quarry, who is using a GF rifle. Now
this sniper has no way of targetting the principal as she arrives, so he
must be purely protection for the mortar crew. Our guys are unhurt but
pinned down. I decide I have to tell the local cops about the mortar and
the sniper. They say they're calling in backup, and they'll deal with it.
By now our second flyer (which took the legal, pre-planned route) is
arriving and lands in the car park. I notice that one of the Van Moisten
company representatives is looking very nervous, and when the flunkies get
out of the flyer he wants to know where Van M is - he is looking sweaty and
panicky. I ask him if he'll come over to one side for a quiet chat, and he
is getting hysterical. I pull a gun on him and 'insist', and he starts
reaching into his jacket. I grab his arm with my free hand, twist it into a
lock and get him to one side of the corridor, and pat him down. He has a
lot of bulky packages under his jacket. I get the bomb disposal guy over
PDQ. Yup - this man is wired to blow, and he says that 'they' are holding
his family and that they'll be killed if he doesn't blow up Van Moisten. I
tell him I'm sorry. Fortunately the bomb is easy to disarm. I get one of
our guys to hold him and get the explosive off him, while bomb disposal man
(who is having a very busy day) goes back to sweeping the area, and I get
back on station.
Well, what with a mortar, two bombs and a SAM, plus a sniper still on the
loose out there, it is all getting very dicey and I call to tell Van
Moisten we're aborting. She says no way - she HAS to open that mall. I call
our Contract Guy in on this, and after a frank exchange of views, he says
that if the Principal is happy to proceed, then we have to do it. I say I
want it sure to be on record that it was her call.
So she lands, and thankfully, it all goes smoothly. No more bombs, the
police don't turn out to be mercenaries in disguise, still no sign of the
military flyer, so we're starting to relax a little. The police have their
own flyer in now, and they have an armoured car up at the site where the
mortar is and they're securing it, and they're hunting for the sniper on
the quarry ridge. Tony gets back in our car to bring it back down to the
mall.
And then the kicker - bomb disposal guy says he's found something in a
plant pot. Small charge, but some kind of binary chemical agent - could be
a chemical weapon. Can we quietly check the other plant pots? We do - yes,
they all have these things. Must have been planted in between the last
sweep. Looks like they're command detonated. I have made sure we all have
respirators - expecting teargas or something similar - but if it's nerve
gas we could all be dead. That's the last straw for me. I order an abort.
Close protection squad grabs Van M and we leg it. We put her in the flyer,
and the rest of us get into the cars and drive out at speed.
I'm in the lead car with the doc and four other operative, and we are
crossing the bridge heading out of the mall complex when it all went black.
Apparently there was some huge bomb in the culvert under the bridge that
blew our (heavily armoured, bomb-proof) car clean off the road. The only
good thing is that the person detonating it was a fraction of a second too
early; we were still just hitting the bridge. If we had been halfway across
we would all have been toast, apparently, just like those poor saps who
were in the queue for the car park heading in the opposite direction.

Anyway, Van M got out uninjured, and the 'nerve gas' in the plant pots
turned out to be just some kind of retching agent that makes you unwell -
would have started a grand panic, but nothing fatal. There never was a
missing military flyer, apparently - just a hoax call. It was all designed
to channel us into running away, not using flyers (for fear of their
flyer), and driving over that bomb. Everything else was just a distraction
so they could get it planted and so we never had time to stop and think. It
was a good, professional job, but I'm pleased to say we all came out of it
in one piece. With two exceptions - the Doc, in the car with me, has picked
up a couple of fractures, and I have the mother of all headaches and I'm
not allowed to go to sleep. Tony has taken operational command for the time
being until I'm feeling better.

Can you put some more coffee on, nurse?

Masumi Minogue (Chu-sa, retd)