GWOT 2 - Murderer, His Hands Red
Jun. 15th, 2020 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT 2 - Murderer, His Hands Red
Yesterday was not a good day.
I nearly had to shoot our Fire Captain for bringing an unauthorized person on campus. At great risk (and cost) we saved their life.
And I murdered their baby.
Let us make no bones about it. And no jokes about abortion, retroactive or otherwise. I stood in a room with a doctor and a midwife; well, a vet surgeon and a self-identified midwife; and I allowed a conspiracy of silence to suffocate an infant.
I might as well have put a pillow over its face.
Failing to take a life saving action is morally the same as taking a murderous action.
The young teen who gave birth is grateful not to be saddled with caring for an infant he didn't want.
Oh, and the woman who blew her face off is still alive, moaning. We have two isolation wards with additional soundproofing. She's in one of them.
Doctor gives her about a week before infection carries her off. And gave me a lecture about knowing better than to have intubated her difficult airway.
My reply.
"I needed the practice."
She nearly slapped me.
I also needed to deter imitators.
And our whispering campaign, spreading rumors about her horrible suffering, was bearing fruit.
If it prevented one firearms suicide, it was worth it.
###
By comparison, the meeting with our newest informant, Sean, went very well.
Spite and a desire for revenge are among the best possible motivations for informants.
And the Colonel, that stupid killer rapist monster, was keeping his slaves in his _home_. Well, not his home, the best house in the ridgetop neighborhood he had stolen in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Each of the nine Dirty Mercs had their own house along the same narrow, winding mountain road. The house nearest the bottom was secured by Special Troops, Homeland's answer to the Special Olympics. A puddle of heavily armed, almost untrained idiots whose job it was to guard the road and follow simple procedures.
Each of them was too busy to cook and clean, so they had taken in one or more 'attendants' to take care of all these chores. The Colonel had three frightened girls, one older than the other two, and told each that he would kill one in two weeks, sooner if everything was not exactly how he wanted it. He kept his word, too. This also made sure that no one had time to learn his routine or became sufficiently non-terrified to hide a weapon or make a bomb. For all his many faults, the Colonel is not stupid.
The Colonel had been on a routine operation - murdering people to depopulate the Santa Cruz Mountains - when he'd flipped over the boy he was raping to discover that Sean had been born female. So he took advantage and took his find home, as a looter might do with a rare object.
Sean had been there for five weeks, and sensed that the good Colonel was bored of him. So he tried to get away.
He didn't.
But one of the other Dirty Mercs took him in. Left him alone, for values of making him cook and clean and do dishes and laundry fourteen hours a day. He started to heal up. Then he started getting bigger in the middle and realized he was pregnant.
With a stolen hatchet and a pair of boots overlooked in a garage, Sean took off running down the side of the mountain one day just after the Dirty Merc convoy left.
This provided a ten hour head start before the returning convoy, irritated, started hunting him instead of going back to base for rape and relaxation.
Someone - we didn't know who - ambushed the Dirty Mercs, fairly professionally if I read between the lines. A Claymore, a machine gun and at least three rifles. They obviously were all killed but Sean had the chance to break contact.
From there to Site, the story got vague. Sean was protecting Janine, our Fire Captain. I would tolerate that for now.
I turned Sean over to Wyatt. He would interview for the nitty gritty details.
Much of the Santa Cruz Mountains had already been burned down, either house by house, courtesy of helitorch, or 'controlled burns' for values of Homeland burning out hiding places for insurgents.
I felt I should make it a clean sweep, with the good Colonel's neighborhood no exception.
But Janine disagreed.
"Their fire safety is excellent. They took over a good neighborhood and then improved it. There is literally a stolen fire engine parked at each house, equipment staged and ready to go. They made a labor crew clear at least 100 feet around each house, in some places 300, and then shot them all. But made them strip first, so the Mercs could use their gear if needed."
I consulted Raven's Roost, my budding cell of baby snipers.
"No, sir. They know their shit. We can't hope to get close, even with Barretts. Look how these houses are in slight depressions, and this house which would be perfect, they don't occupy. This is a sniper trap."
I didn't have mortars. Or anything heavier.
Don't even joke about getting up close.
Nine Dirty Mercs were worth over 90 conventional troops.
In a surprise attack, with equal weapons, we could overrun them at devastating cost - as in losing all of Security and most of REACT.
They had far superior weapons. That's a no go at this station.
That left IEDs and assassination.
Both required us to get in close safely. Good luck with that.
I'd been at arm's length of the Colonel once, in a crowd full of people, and nearly died for it.
He was _good_. He knew his combatives. If I killed as if I were cutting blades of grass, he killed as if he were a riding lawnmower. He carried weapons as extensions of his body, but could kill with a thumb as easily as with a push dagger.
He'd give a clan of ninjas a run for their money. He'd had some months, at least nine, to fortify his residence. He only left it in convoy surrounded by his own people. They shopped by looting. His vices were indulged at home, leaving no openings for mistresses or poisoned drugs or alcohol.
Let me be blunt. He and his people had been doing this shit for _decades_, long before the Firecracker. The only difference is that they were playing in the home game, in the post-Firecracker United States, in which their contract with Homeland let them do whatever the fuck they wanted as long as they delivered.
Just like me, at site. I could kill with impunity, fuck the VP-HR, break all the laws I wanted ... as long as Site delivered on the contracts, and didn't become a threat to Homeland or a hotbed of resistance. Or Resistance.
I could do a lot, lot more than I was doing, and still be fine. I could probably even kill the SLE and take over for him. As long as the code got written and the code kept helping America win the wars.
The Colonel had told me himself, in as many words, what his deal was with Homeland. Keep the Santa Cruz Mountains from becoming its own hotbed of resistance. Destructively was OK.
We had a grudge, however.
On their way in, the Dirty Mercs had taken a day to party at Site.
Seven dead, fifteen wounded - several of those raped.
It wasn't enough to punish the Dirty Mercs and leave them alive.
I needed them dead, dead, dead - with Homeland having no idea that we were the ones behind it. Because that would be interpreted as anti-American partisan activity, if not actual Resistance.
If I killed all but the Colonel, he'd recruit and come back stronger. So we had to get him, first, with all the advantages of surprise.
One of the great secrets of assassination is that anyone can kill anyone, if they don't care what happens to them afterwards. In the calculus of threat, suicide attackers are a division by zero. Error results.
I couldn't go do it myself. Way too traceable. And I still had my uses here.
So I had to act via proxy.
Expendable hands and backs.
Like Sean.
###
If I send someone to do something on my behalf, I am equally morally culpable for their actions.
"He who plots revenge, must dig two graves."
This is true.
But the first grave was dug for Sean, not me.
###
After Wyatt finished with his interview, I came in.
Sean was sitting up in the bed, in a bathrobe that had once belonged to a dead Employee. Pillows took the place of a proper hospital bed's head.
"I'm here to offer you a chance to kill the Colonel."
His eyes shone.
###
And that's how you kill with words.
I would certainly kill Sean.
But we might kill the Colonel.
The logic and ethics of sacrifice.
It could be argued that Sean owed us for his life. He certainly would have died without us. But we don't keep slaves.
Sean had his own fish to fry with the Colonel. But living well is the best revenge, and Sean had a whole life in front of him.
Sean was fourteen. But his eyes were flinty and had decades more experience in them, than even my own.
"Every day he lives, more people die. I died yesterday. This is my afterlife. And the Colonel's days are numbered."
I respected his commitment.
And turned him over to Dr. Betty for evaluation, then Arturo for night-killing training.
I would put on the final polish myself.
###
"Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch," the Colonel kept repeating to himself.
He tightened the tourniquet another notch, to make sure. The Mercs were patrolling, with night vision equipment, looking for the attackers. Death in the dark.
But he felt sure that the one attacker was here in front of him, life flowing out with each weakening heartbeat. No pressure dressings or tourniquets for the likes of him.
For the first time in years, he had felt that his own personal life had actually been at risk.
It was not a feeling he liked.
"Echo 18 sends his regards," the attacker spat.
"What did you say?"
He leaned closer, to pick him up by the throat and squeeze more information out of him before he died.
And for the second time that day, a blade pierced the Colonel's skin.
"Fuck fuck fuck" he shouted as he threw the brat away, and two Dirty Mercs emptied their magazines into Sean.
"Godddamn it! That was close!"
A third Merc dabbed at the shallow cut on the Colonel's neck.
"I don't like this boss."
"Fuck it, put a dressing on it, I'll put a better dressing on it tonight."
He wouldn't be attacking Site with a snap kick.
They had two things in common: utility to Homeland, and an inability to directly attack each other.
But if Echo 18 could attempt murder-by-proxy, so could he.
Yesterday was not a good day.
I nearly had to shoot our Fire Captain for bringing an unauthorized person on campus. At great risk (and cost) we saved their life.
And I murdered their baby.
Let us make no bones about it. And no jokes about abortion, retroactive or otherwise. I stood in a room with a doctor and a midwife; well, a vet surgeon and a self-identified midwife; and I allowed a conspiracy of silence to suffocate an infant.
I might as well have put a pillow over its face.
Failing to take a life saving action is morally the same as taking a murderous action.
The young teen who gave birth is grateful not to be saddled with caring for an infant he didn't want.
Oh, and the woman who blew her face off is still alive, moaning. We have two isolation wards with additional soundproofing. She's in one of them.
Doctor gives her about a week before infection carries her off. And gave me a lecture about knowing better than to have intubated her difficult airway.
My reply.
"I needed the practice."
She nearly slapped me.
I also needed to deter imitators.
And our whispering campaign, spreading rumors about her horrible suffering, was bearing fruit.
If it prevented one firearms suicide, it was worth it.
###
By comparison, the meeting with our newest informant, Sean, went very well.
Spite and a desire for revenge are among the best possible motivations for informants.
And the Colonel, that stupid killer rapist monster, was keeping his slaves in his _home_. Well, not his home, the best house in the ridgetop neighborhood he had stolen in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Each of the nine Dirty Mercs had their own house along the same narrow, winding mountain road. The house nearest the bottom was secured by Special Troops, Homeland's answer to the Special Olympics. A puddle of heavily armed, almost untrained idiots whose job it was to guard the road and follow simple procedures.
Each of them was too busy to cook and clean, so they had taken in one or more 'attendants' to take care of all these chores. The Colonel had three frightened girls, one older than the other two, and told each that he would kill one in two weeks, sooner if everything was not exactly how he wanted it. He kept his word, too. This also made sure that no one had time to learn his routine or became sufficiently non-terrified to hide a weapon or make a bomb. For all his many faults, the Colonel is not stupid.
The Colonel had been on a routine operation - murdering people to depopulate the Santa Cruz Mountains - when he'd flipped over the boy he was raping to discover that Sean had been born female. So he took advantage and took his find home, as a looter might do with a rare object.
Sean had been there for five weeks, and sensed that the good Colonel was bored of him. So he tried to get away.
He didn't.
But one of the other Dirty Mercs took him in. Left him alone, for values of making him cook and clean and do dishes and laundry fourteen hours a day. He started to heal up. Then he started getting bigger in the middle and realized he was pregnant.
With a stolen hatchet and a pair of boots overlooked in a garage, Sean took off running down the side of the mountain one day just after the Dirty Merc convoy left.
This provided a ten hour head start before the returning convoy, irritated, started hunting him instead of going back to base for rape and relaxation.
Someone - we didn't know who - ambushed the Dirty Mercs, fairly professionally if I read between the lines. A Claymore, a machine gun and at least three rifles. They obviously were all killed but Sean had the chance to break contact.
From there to Site, the story got vague. Sean was protecting Janine, our Fire Captain. I would tolerate that for now.
I turned Sean over to Wyatt. He would interview for the nitty gritty details.
Much of the Santa Cruz Mountains had already been burned down, either house by house, courtesy of helitorch, or 'controlled burns' for values of Homeland burning out hiding places for insurgents.
I felt I should make it a clean sweep, with the good Colonel's neighborhood no exception.
But Janine disagreed.
"Their fire safety is excellent. They took over a good neighborhood and then improved it. There is literally a stolen fire engine parked at each house, equipment staged and ready to go. They made a labor crew clear at least 100 feet around each house, in some places 300, and then shot them all. But made them strip first, so the Mercs could use their gear if needed."
I consulted Raven's Roost, my budding cell of baby snipers.
"No, sir. They know their shit. We can't hope to get close, even with Barretts. Look how these houses are in slight depressions, and this house which would be perfect, they don't occupy. This is a sniper trap."
I didn't have mortars. Or anything heavier.
Don't even joke about getting up close.
Nine Dirty Mercs were worth over 90 conventional troops.
In a surprise attack, with equal weapons, we could overrun them at devastating cost - as in losing all of Security and most of REACT.
They had far superior weapons. That's a no go at this station.
That left IEDs and assassination.
Both required us to get in close safely. Good luck with that.
I'd been at arm's length of the Colonel once, in a crowd full of people, and nearly died for it.
He was _good_. He knew his combatives. If I killed as if I were cutting blades of grass, he killed as if he were a riding lawnmower. He carried weapons as extensions of his body, but could kill with a thumb as easily as with a push dagger.
He'd give a clan of ninjas a run for their money. He'd had some months, at least nine, to fortify his residence. He only left it in convoy surrounded by his own people. They shopped by looting. His vices were indulged at home, leaving no openings for mistresses or poisoned drugs or alcohol.
Let me be blunt. He and his people had been doing this shit for _decades_, long before the Firecracker. The only difference is that they were playing in the home game, in the post-Firecracker United States, in which their contract with Homeland let them do whatever the fuck they wanted as long as they delivered.
Just like me, at site. I could kill with impunity, fuck the VP-HR, break all the laws I wanted ... as long as Site delivered on the contracts, and didn't become a threat to Homeland or a hotbed of resistance. Or Resistance.
I could do a lot, lot more than I was doing, and still be fine. I could probably even kill the SLE and take over for him. As long as the code got written and the code kept helping America win the wars.
The Colonel had told me himself, in as many words, what his deal was with Homeland. Keep the Santa Cruz Mountains from becoming its own hotbed of resistance. Destructively was OK.
We had a grudge, however.
On their way in, the Dirty Mercs had taken a day to party at Site.
Seven dead, fifteen wounded - several of those raped.
It wasn't enough to punish the Dirty Mercs and leave them alive.
I needed them dead, dead, dead - with Homeland having no idea that we were the ones behind it. Because that would be interpreted as anti-American partisan activity, if not actual Resistance.
If I killed all but the Colonel, he'd recruit and come back stronger. So we had to get him, first, with all the advantages of surprise.
One of the great secrets of assassination is that anyone can kill anyone, if they don't care what happens to them afterwards. In the calculus of threat, suicide attackers are a division by zero. Error results.
I couldn't go do it myself. Way too traceable. And I still had my uses here.
So I had to act via proxy.
Expendable hands and backs.
Like Sean.
###
If I send someone to do something on my behalf, I am equally morally culpable for their actions.
"He who plots revenge, must dig two graves."
This is true.
But the first grave was dug for Sean, not me.
###
After Wyatt finished with his interview, I came in.
Sean was sitting up in the bed, in a bathrobe that had once belonged to a dead Employee. Pillows took the place of a proper hospital bed's head.
"I'm here to offer you a chance to kill the Colonel."
His eyes shone.
###
And that's how you kill with words.
I would certainly kill Sean.
But we might kill the Colonel.
The logic and ethics of sacrifice.
It could be argued that Sean owed us for his life. He certainly would have died without us. But we don't keep slaves.
Sean had his own fish to fry with the Colonel. But living well is the best revenge, and Sean had a whole life in front of him.
Sean was fourteen. But his eyes were flinty and had decades more experience in them, than even my own.
"Every day he lives, more people die. I died yesterday. This is my afterlife. And the Colonel's days are numbered."
I respected his commitment.
And turned him over to Dr. Betty for evaluation, then Arturo for night-killing training.
I would put on the final polish myself.
###
"Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch," the Colonel kept repeating to himself.
He tightened the tourniquet another notch, to make sure. The Mercs were patrolling, with night vision equipment, looking for the attackers. Death in the dark.
But he felt sure that the one attacker was here in front of him, life flowing out with each weakening heartbeat. No pressure dressings or tourniquets for the likes of him.
For the first time in years, he had felt that his own personal life had actually been at risk.
It was not a feeling he liked.
"Echo 18 sends his regards," the attacker spat.
"What did you say?"
He leaned closer, to pick him up by the throat and squeeze more information out of him before he died.
And for the second time that day, a blade pierced the Colonel's skin.
"Fuck fuck fuck" he shouted as he threw the brat away, and two Dirty Mercs emptied their magazines into Sean.
"Godddamn it! That was close!"
A third Merc dabbed at the shallow cut on the Colonel's neck.
"I don't like this boss."
"Fuck it, put a dressing on it, I'll put a better dressing on it tonight."
He wouldn't be attacking Site with a snap kick.
They had two things in common: utility to Homeland, and an inability to directly attack each other.
But if Echo 18 could attempt murder-by-proxy, so could he.
