Author's Note: This chapter is graphic so reader discretion is advised.
Far Cry 5: The Collapse
Chapter 26: Message 1 of 2
Dmitri left shortly after breakfast to infiltrate the conservatory once more now baring the large manila envelope that contained the entire program that he had laid out. The most key part of the show was the set design thus why the Russian intelligence officer had to leave so early in order to give Rachel's people time to build and ready everything.
In Fall's End Kim Rye and Mary May were busy organizing every possible heavy vehicle they could get hands on. Many former cult marked trucks from John's motor pools were pulled out and either serviced or parted out to get other vehicles up and running.
In the Henbane region Minkler and Tracey were busy doing much the same but their task included getting some of the mining equipment that could be pressed into service as cargo haulers.
Between Marcus and the Sheriff they went over the pictures that Joey had taken inside of the Cache and marked high priority items like medical supplies to be grabbed first.
Roger and Joey though were left pretty much idle though as they watched the gears move around them until their part of the operation came around. The most they did do was gather at the main planning table and go over the layout of the compound as far as Joey knew of it to provide an infiltration route and a exit route.
"So that's it Roger. We go in do what we need to do and get out..." Joey started to say until she saw the grim look on her friends face.
"Joey I'll be going after Rachel alone. You'll leave with my father and the raiders then setup at Rachel's silo. You'll have all my gear with you so when I show up we can clear her bunker, I can't bring you along as I was intending to have Nick land on the river and be waiting for me for a quick extraction and his plane can only carry one besides the pilot." He said calmly.
She snapped back instantly. "No. I'm not sitting on the sidelines Roger especially now, besides sending even you alone into the conservatory is a bad idea." She paused to gather her willpower before going on. "Look I know that I'm a rank amateur at well... this entire asymmetrical warfare thing we are in the middle of so I know I don't have much of a leg to stand on but even I know it's safer to send two people instead of just one. Buddy system you know."
Roger started laughing at the words 'Buddy System' in this context but logically she wasn't wrong. When he stopped laughing he grew serious once more. "Joey let me tell you now that what I have planned for Rachel is... brutal in the extreme even by my own standards. Are you sure you could live with knowing and seeing just fully what I am capable of doing?"
His words gave her pause as she glanced at the map of compound to buy her time to think. "Roger... I was there when you killed John. You didn't just walk up and crush his skull like I know you could, you did it slowly and deliberately prodding him all the while to use his own tag line on himself. If you had more time I know you would have come up with something flashier and public but you didn't so you made do with your broadcast." She said as she moved over to him and cupped his face lovingly.
"You have always liked to put a bit of flair in everything you do Roger when you can get away with it. It's a part of that constant mental calculation you always do when getting people to do what you want, I also know that you wouldn't be as brutal as you say you will be if Rachel hadn't deserved it. Again that's how you think Roger, brutality for brutality's sake is wasteful." She finished before standing on her tip toes and giving him a soft peck.
"I love you Roger, be you man or monster." She said as he smiled at her words.
"I'll get with Nick and tell him about the change. Since you'll be with me I'll have Dad prep those external hard drives again so if we run into an opportunity for more info you can take care of that while I do my 'flair' thing. Probably should also go ahead and take a full weapons load out as well." He replied softly.
"I take it you don't want to talk about your 'flair' right now?" She joked.
He shook his head as he smiled widely at the reference. "No not right now. Just know it's going to be more than the minimum 15 pieces of flair but it certainly won't be the fun kind."
.
It was right after breakfast for the cult when Dmitri made it to the front gate of the conservatory. The increased guards there stopped him for a time but flashing Feeney's 'Father's Blessing' and showing them The Father's letterhead on top of his documents quickly got them to not only back off but to escort him to the door of Rachel's office in record time.
Before he knocked he turned to the Chosen that had escorted him. "I must ask you to leave now. The Father was clear this message is for Herald Faith alone."
The awe struck men nodded and bowed deeply and vigorously before quickly rushing away. He couldn't help but feel happy at just how easily these men were manipulated and after so long of having to live in fear of being questioned by a member of the Chosen while he served under John, it was all the sweeter.
He reached up and knocked firmly on the door until he heard a clearly annoyed "Enter!" come from Rachel.
He opened the door and once more entered the Herald's office and saw it unchanged from his last visit, however the same couldn't be said of Rachel. Before she had just a hint of dark bags under her eyes but now they were clearly visible, then to only add to the signs of stress and lack of sleep were the bloodshot eyes and uneven clearly nibbled fingernails.
"So what message do you have?" She snapped angrily her patience clearly running critically low.
Dmitri smiled for the briefest of moments before speaking. "I bare a message from The Father."
Instantly Rachel's bloodshot eyes widened. "You… you are the messenger that I assigned to Feeney! Where is he? Why… how did you get a message from The Father?!" She demanded with increasing excitement.
'She is latching on to the bait just as we had hoped.' He thought as he launched into the story that he and Roger come up with.
"A few nights ago we were at Feeney's home and just an hour or so after he had made the breakthrough that he expected we were ambushed by a Resistance patrol. We were being taken to Fall's End when I managed to untie myself and hauled Feeney and myself out of the bed of the truck we were in. We landed in the Henbane River and were carried by the currents to Whitetail Lake, from there I managed to pull us on to Joseph's island where a Chosen patrol brought us in and treated Feeney's injuries."
Rachel now had a ever widening smile crossing her face as she heard the tale. Most importantly was the news that Feeney had made the breakthrough he had alluded to seemingly so long ago.
"Tell me about Joseph! What did The Father say?!" She asked on the brink of dancing around like a little girl once more.
Dmitri smiled more obviously from under his mask. "He had Feeney pass his findings to Jacob and has ordered me to find my way back here and give you this packet. There is instructions for you and your followers that must be followed to the letter for him and his forces to arrive tomorrow morning."
"His forces? Him coming here to the conservatory?!" The Herald exclaimed.
He nodded. "Yes he asked me to pass on how proud he is that you have held out this long and to take heart that he is bringing reinforcements to help retake the mountains. He himself said that it is the will of God that we hold these mountains. If God and The Father wills it…"
"Then it will be done..." Rachel finished as she took the envelope and started looking through the papers. "This… will be challenging but it will be done by dawn. What must you do now?" She asked longingly.
"I must get some information for some of The Father's assistants on the equipment in your amphitheater and then The Father mentioned that he would have more work for me." He replied as he pulled out Feeney's 'Father's Blessing'.
"The Father has seen fit to gift me this and as such I have many more responsibilities. Now my time runs short." He finished with a bow and turned on his heel to leave.
As the office door closed Rachel looked back at the orders she had been given. This was a bit more… artistic then what Joseph normally did but at the same time he did say it was for the children and it would certainly provide a distraction from the events of the last few days. She reached for her radio to begin getting her people moving immediately.
Dmitri slipped silently through the empty amphitheater and took plenty of pictures of all the controls for both the on stage curtains and for the TV broadcasting equipment as Roger had requested. The massive room was split into two levels, the main floor with the seats and a catwalk along the wall that ultimately lead to the production booth at the back of the room.
He had taken the last of the pictures he had been asked to take when he saw a wall mounted ladder that lead up to a roof hatch.
'Better look into that. It might even be a useful escape route.' He thought as he climbed up and found himself on the roof the conservatory as expected. A quick walk on the rock and asphalt covered roof to the edge looking over the entrance he found a light pole mounted to the roof edge that had a thick steel cable lined with little cult flags down its length until it terminated at another light pole. From there escape would be just a straight run to the front gate. He didn't know the full details on Roger's extraction plan but the man was like any other operative, there was no such thing as too much information.
He went back down the ladder inside where he was met with several laborers and a very shocked and upset Priestess.
"Who are you and what were you doing up there?" She asked until she went wide eyed as she caught sight of his messengers cross and 'The Father's Blessing'.
He humored her just to make sure that she didn't raise further unneeded suspicion. "As you are aware of The Father is coming tomorrow morning. His Chosen have requested that I look for any vulnerabilities or potential guard posts for them within the conservatory, now that my task is done I must now return to him." He stated sharply inviting no further conversation.
He then gently pressed his way past the shocked workers and made a beeline for his cult branded motorcycle that had served as his means of slipping past any Resistance patrols that weren't somehow made aware of his mission.
With a flying tail of gravel he left the conservatory for the last time as a messenger. The next time he would set foot on these grounds would be as a Resistance fighter.
.
Back at the jail Roger walked around the top of the walls, burning time until they moved on the conservatory that night. His patrol stopped when he got to the front gate and found Ed Whitehorse for all intent and purposes standing at his own post with his Mosin on his back.
"Hey Ed what brings you up here?" He asked. He had heard from his own father that Ed had been given the rifle in full making it his first true rifle. He had to admit that for lack of a personal family connection like what he had with Grampa Anthony's 03 Springfield that the old Mosin was a fine choice especially given the affinity that he had gained with the rifle.
The young man shrugged. "Kind of bored and Jessie isn't quite done with the book I want to read so I thought I would come up here and be useful as Grampa would say. I found three peggies that are watching us from the ridgeline but the other guards can't seem to see them."
Word of a possible threat made him unsling his Barrett and take a knee beside the boy. "Ok I want to you to describe but don't point where you think they are. I got enough magnification that I can confirm if you are seeing what you think you are seeing."
He raised his rifle and started scanning the ridge that was immediately north of the jail.
"First one is behind the rocks to the left he has I think a straw hat with some dead grass stuck to it but he had a green bush behind him that makes him stand out." Ed said as he watched the sniper move slowly side to side until he stopped.
"Yeah I see him, he thinks he is being smart with the hat and the grass but you're right he has no color sense. What about the next one?" He said as Ed pointed out the next scout.
"This one is easy, he is to the right at the base of a tree that got hit by lightning. He has a light blue thermos that he drinks from sometimes." The boy stated proudly finally being vindicated after the other guards had dismissed his original sightings.
Roger didn't have to even hunt as he saw a brief flash of blue as their guy chose that moment to take a drink. The light blue thermos was like firing a signal flare in the middle of the night, it was hard not to see him. Then an odd glint to his right caught his attention as he swung the rifle towards it and he saw another Peggie crouching practically out in the open with a pair of binoculars looking at something to Roger and Ed's far right.
A quick glance over his shoulder showed the likely subject being watched as he could see his father and the Sheriff walking and talking about something.
'Figures they would be focusing on locating any Resistance leadership.' He thought as he looked back at Ed.
"Well Ed want to save the day again?" He offered.
"Seriously?" The kid replied as he already started taking his rifle into his hands.
Roger nodded. "Some people including your Dad and Grandpa would probably disagree but you spotted the peggies so I will let you bag them if you want. I will be here to back you up so if this goes wrong don't worry. So go ahead and fix your bayonet."
Ed grabbed his bayonet out of his belt and began to fit it to the end of the barrel. "I thought shooting at long range with the bayonet was bad?"
"You are generally correct but Russian's being different back then… actually they tend to just be different but that is a different history lesson. They had their rifles sighted with the bayonets on so your rifle will shoot best with it on. Mind you this doesn't apply after the 1930 remodel by the Soviets. It also doesn't matter much at the short ranges you have been normally fighting at but at these ranges you're shooting at nearly 400 or 500 yards and it will make a difference. Get ready." He instructed and Ed went prone understanding that he wasn't anywhere near good enough to shoot that far standing yet.
"Ok so 400 arshins is 280 meters?" Ed asked.
"284.48 meters so for now call it 284 meters, we will see if you need to worry about that extra half meter in a moment. Also if you feel more comfortable let's just keep this in Imperial units. So 400 arshins is 311 yards. We are shooting farther then that obviously." Roger raddled off as he glanced through his scope again at the first peggie scout making sure that he was focused on something besides them.
Ed was now a bit quicker on estimating the range. "Looks like… 450 yards I think to the first guy?"
He nodded with a smile. "I would agree plus or minus a yard or two so 600 arshins is 466 yards so set your sight and aim a little low."
Ed adjusted his sights up two notches and laid them on the straw hat guy who was laying prone on a rock. He out of habit aimed at the middle of the man's face but thought better of it and aimed the front sight just below what he could make out as the man's face. "Ready." He said otherwise asking for permission to shoot.
Roger aimed his own rifle ready to shoot if Ed missed and the peggie started to make a move to run off. "Ok send it when ready." He ordered.
The boy marksman in training let out a calming breath and steadily squeezed the trigger just as he had been taught. Roger could see through his scope the round strike the peggie around the cultists cheek bone or so, and judging by the direction of the bloody mist ejected by the exit wound the round must have somehow deflected deeper into the skull. In any case it was a solid kill.
Almost immediately the other wall guards were up and looking for threats when one of them rushed to him. "Deputy you see peggies?" The man asked as he looked around the massive man at the far shorter blonde kid laying prone on the ground.
"Yeah I do, now let us work. Ed shift right to the next one he doesn't seem to have noticed anything, remember this one is a little further away so adjust as needed. Send it when ready." He rattled off as he watched the thermos guy let out a yawn as he arched his back slightly only to have it cut off by Ed's next shot.
The bullet was lower and to the right more than what he would have preferred but it meant that the shot hit the peggie in the heart which was an acceptable outcome.
"Heart shot, peggie is down hard. Shift to the last one, this one is even further away and you are aiming more on his right side so aim high and start adjusting for the wind more aggressively." He called out as he shifted his own scope over to the last man.
Ed could hear the guard try to ask where the peggie was but he quickly remembered to shut it out and focus on his target and his sights. He could just make the outline of the man still holding up his binoculars as he adjusted his point of aim a bit higher than he did last time before watching the grass on the hill to make sure he knew just how hard the wind was blowing and compensate for that as well.
His adjustments made he cycled his breath one more time and squeezed the old trigger again.
Roger watched the round fly and expected it to be a perfect headshot only to have the peggie duck at the last moment to grab something at his feet.
"No hit, tango ducked under it." He called out.
"Fuck!" Ed swore.
Through his scope he could see the peggie now stand up and raise what was clearly a Remington 700 and start to take aim at likely his father or the Sheriff.
"Work the bolt lad! Work the bolt!" He ordered and immediately after he heard the familiar click clack of Ed's rifle.
"He's standing up so you have bigger target..." Roger didn't even finish his guidance when Ed fired and saw the man's rifle explode just forward of the receiver.
"That was an ok shot but you slapped the trigger a bit. Work the bolt!" He ordered as he kept watching through his scope as the man just stood there shocked and dumbly looking at his wrecked rifle now on the ground then his hands as he started to pull out the odd splinter from them.
Once more Ed acted on his own and sent a much better shot into the man's head ending the latest cult threat.
"Tango down..." He said as he lowered his rifle and looked at the young man beside him. "It got a little squirrelly for a moment but you did good Ed."
The boy smiled broadly at the praise. "Thanks but why didn't you start shooting?" He asked curiously.
"I nearly did and had you taken an extra moment before hitting the guy's rifle or missed your next shot I would have, but its moments like this that help you learn what to do when things go wrong. Don't freeze up, work the bolt so you have a ready weapon in your hand then take stock of what is going on. If you do it backwards then you will often see the moment when you need to act and realize you have a delay forced on you by that empty chamber." Roger stated sagely.
There after the deputy had the other wall guards get a team together to gather the bodies, search them for any intelligence, and add them to piles of dead still awaiting mounting.
Ed and he sat on top of the wall as the young man asked for shooting advice, how to best care for his new rifle, and to be talked out of bubba-ing a scope mount on the old gun.
"If you want a scoped rifle I will ask my father to keep an eye out for a Dragonov or at least a PU Mosin when we are raiding Rachel's cache tonight. That way you don't also have to deal with buying another caliber."
Far to the north of them they could see the faint flashes of lightning reminding them of the coming storm that night.
"Roger are you really going to blow up all those peggie kids?" Ed asked changing the subject to something grimmer.
He chuckled softly at the kid's bluntness but he wouldn't dodge the question. "Yeah Ed like I said back at the briefing they are peggies so they must die. I can't allow the chance that you will have to grow up and have to fight another peggie one day, you know start the cycle again. If you want an example of that, start trying to untangle Middle Eastern history you see my point in short order."
Ed nodded before looking back North at the flashes on the horizon. He spoke in a slightly angry tone. "Good. They need to die, every single one of them. I heard my Grampa and Mr. Minkler talking at breakfast and I heard him talk about how many families were killed. All my friends are dead, and it sounds like Jessie is going to be the only third grader in the whole county."
"Well lad you aren't wrong. Even after this is over kids like you are going to find it rough to say the least and I wish I could do something about it. In a way that is yet another reason why they shouldn't be spared." He said.
Ed spoke with a touch of harshness. "Why should my friends have to die and the cult kids be allowed to live?"
He couldn't help but smile at the young man's sharp awareness of the situation. "Exactly. Even if we somehow could provide for those children until help arrived it's doubtful that they would all be taken away immediately which means that you would go back to school with probably an entire class of former cultists. It would be worse than sitting in an empty classroom and I would bet every gun in my collection that every single one of them would hate you, your sister, and any other child that survived for not being one of them. It starts the cycle of hate all over again which is unfair to you guys. That is one reason why I will do what must be done for the greater good of the people regardless of what moral busybodies far away will claim."
"You really are a hero." Ed said turning back to the massive lawman.
"Sort of. But don't go too deep into the hero worship though no matter how tempting. I may be a hero in your eyes but you should also recognize why I am and will be seen as a monster among men. A flawed and mortal man just like anyone else. But like your Grampa implied at the meeting, in our society the act of killing a child is a most heinous act and not something to be taken lightly. One of my greatest flaws and sometimes strengths Ed is the fact that I never really was a people person, I don't look at most people and have real empathy for them or their issues."
"But you've helped everyone here and in Fall's End? Dad, Grampa, and your own parents always joked about how you would help other people all the time." Ed countered.
This only made Roger laugh heartily. "That is true Ed but a lot of that was either me actively trying to care about others, manipulating people around me to improve my standing in the community, or because someone directly asked me to help. If I am honest that is why I became friends with Joey, she was the talker, the people person in this case. So she gave me the reason why I should try to learn how to at the very least act like I cared about others beyond how they could be useful to me. I can't overstate how important she was at helping me improve in that respect. So I have gotten... ok I think at acting like I care, but at the end of the day I am still a numbers guy at my core and most people are just numbers to me."
"Including the peggie kids..." the ten year old picked up on and Roger nodded.
"Exactly. I naturally see them as just another part of the big mental equation in my head, so I don't suffer from the moral issues or mental trauma as easily as a normal person would. I still wish I had a better solution to our peggie problem but given what I have to work with this is the best solution we have. So I am not the best person to call a hero, I just am the best person to get the job done with the lowest cost to everyone else." He finished.
Ed smiled. "Well you're still a hero in my book."
.
The dark clouds that had been gathering for nearly two full days now fully enclosed over Hope County that afternoon and threatened to bring rain that night. Regardless all around Mary May looked from the cab of the Widowmaker she could see a convoy of trucks unlike anything that had ever seen in the history of the county.
Everything from heavy box trucks cult or otherwise to ATVs and side by sides with trailers was manned, fueled, and made ready to drive. Marcus had decided that only people he hand picked would handle loading once they were in The Cache so all anyone else had to do was drive and not crash.
She was fairly shocked when Marcus first briefed her on how the theft part of the operation would go. They would be taking groups of twenty or so vehicles to the bottom level at first and as they finished picking up whatever cargo was on that floor they would move up to the next level .
Marcus had explained that it meant that if something went wrong and they had to pull out of the Cache they wouldn't have ten floors worth of people and vehicles trying to escape at the same time. So now they sat in a massive line of vehicles that stretched on the main road from roughly from Feeney's house to just past the Misery, all ready to go on a moments notice and all waiting for the shooters to roll in.
A mile or two away from where Mary May was Grace was leading a small team of fighters and Cougars as they set up a camouflaged hide near Rachel's missile silo. Their orders were to make sure that that no one from the silo spotted the long lines of waiting vehicles visible from the mountain top that the silo occupied. Grace had gone over the area with a fine tooth comb and had found no signs of guards being posted on the silos exterior and only a single fixed camera that was pointed at the silo door.
If there were any other cameras on the exterior she couldn't see them through the clouds of Bliss leaking out from the edges of the missile hatch. Still as her orders stood should for any reason the silo be opened she was to radio it in where someone currently sitting at Feeney's computer stood ready to vent all the Bliss that was being pumped around and then she was to storm the silo and at least gain control of the silo control room.
She didn't like the plan because even with the Bliss dissipating inside the bunker, just having to hold only the upper levels of the bunker meant that the peggies could easily plan something like another gas weapon that they wouldn't know about until it was too late.
'I really hope Roger and Joey get here with that silo key. I'll be more than happy to let them clear the bunker while I secure the control room.' She thought as her people finished settling in for hopefully a long wait.
On the southwestern face of was the burned and wrecked remains of Eden's Altar, a particularly large cult shrine that had fallen to the Cougars attacks shortly after the King's Hot Springs Hotel had been blown up and the cult's Saint project was hopelessly disrupted.
Now in the flat area between the front row of the concentric seats and the central dais sat Nick Rye and a helicopter he had gotten a hold of. There hadn't been any shortage of volunteer rotor head pilots to fly the extraction mission for Roger and Joey but between the coming storm and Roger's heavy hinting that they would have less than two minutes to pick up and then at least get behind before the Cache was blown. Nick wouldn't think about letting any other pilot besides himself fly tonight.
He glanced up towards the top of the mountain where Mack and more of his people were setting up the cameras that Roger had requested be brought in from the Seed Ranch and John's bunker. All of them setup in hardened housings and pointing at the conservatory at various angles per Roger's order.
'Roger wasn't kidding about going all out on sending out a message to the cult. His practical effects might even win him an Oscar!' Nick thought bringing a smile to his face.
.
To the south of the conservatory above the blocked Ancient Bison Tunnel Dmitri put the finishing touches on his own hide made from various local stones piled up in a way to hide his outline and provide a small hole for him to slip his rifle through so that he may observe the compound. His main job though was to watch through the large window of Rachel's quarters for the Herald's location and what she was doing at the time.
A quick glance at his watch showed that they were just a few minutes away from 10pm, the agreed start of Operation Seismic Defoliant.
.
"Operation start time… mark! Punch it Roger!" Marcus said over the Grey's own radio frequency as his son started the 6x6 and made best speed from their staging point across the bridge next to the burned out husk of the Whistling Beaver Brewery toward the Gethsemane Greenhouse.
Two Chosen walked around the outer perimeter of the greenhouse chatting quietly as they did their best to stave of both boredom and fatigue. Their route now took them next to the entrance to the grounds when they first heard and saw a single large truck racing down the road from the direction of the brewery.
They didn't react at first until it finally dawned on them that the truck wasn't painted cult white and that there shouldn't be any reason to see one of their trucks driving this late in this area. This delay in identification cost the two men dearly when the truck suddenly jerked left at the Greenhouse entrance and ran both men over.
"Get ready Joey!" Roger said as he aimed for the tunnel entrance leading to the Cache. There the two posted Chosen already were starting to swing their rifles off of their backs and get them up to fire, but even as quick as they did Joey was already leaning out of the passenger side window with her Beowulf and let loose with a long burst of fire on her man even as Roger took his Desert Eagle and put a pair of rounds into the man on his side of the tunnel.
With the guards down Marcus radioed quickly before they got too deep into the mountain to the Sheriff who was waiting to signal the school bus that contained the chosen loadmasters that would once they got a hold of the forklifts at the top floor of the Cache go back down to the bottom floor and by then meet the first wave of transports.
The 'program' was scheduled to start at 8am so they had ten hours to gather up absolutely everything that they had already worked out before hand, before they would have to leave the area to avoid the coming blast. Assuming of course Roger's gamble worked and they remained undetected.
Roger roared through the galleries and past the row upon row of industrial shelving and massive storage tanks as he raced up another spiral ramp to go up another floor, the tires on his truck sometimes squealing and chirping as he pushed the seven ton truck to its absolute limit without rolling it.
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! You weren't kidding when you said Rachel had ten million gallons of Bliss down here!" He said over the sound of the roaring engine and protesting tires.
Joey white knuckled the roof mounted 'Jesus' handle as she got her seat belt back on to help resist the G forces her friend was managing to pull. "Yeah I was shocked as well so just don't do something stupid like crash into the tanks please!"
As they pulled on to the second floor Roger killed his headlights and slowed down a bit as he still had some concerns of the sound of his truck engine echoing and alerting the peggies if any in the office trailer Joey had described.
The truck coasted up the last dozen or so feet up the ramp to the top most level and continued to roll on at an idle toward the office trailer. As the speed slowly dropped the Grey's started carefully jumping out and split into two groups.
Casey led the front team while Marcus led the rear.
Just as Roger hit the brakes on his truck did the call go out for both teams to breech the trailer. They struck with the power and shock of a Kansas tornado at midnight, but their effort was largely unneeded as the lone cultist from before was once more at his TV unaware of anything going on beyond it.
"Tango down. Caught him with his pants down literally." Marcus chirped over the radio.
"Copy that, Joey and I will move on to main target. If things go sideways we will go ahead and start some chaos on our end." Roger replied as he and his partner left the truck and started making their way to the Cache entrance.
Meanwhile the Grey's broke into the key box that contained unsurprisingly the keys for the fleet of trucks and most importantly the various forklifts that would be essential for loading the Resistance convoy.
Soon the school bus of loadmasters reached the floor and took to their stolen vehicles as fast as they could get off the bus and raced back down to the first floor to begin their work.
.
Roger and Joey slipped silently around the exterior of the conservatory until they found the side entrance that she had used when she got out of vent system. He needed to check on the status of the amphitheater as if it wasn't setup fully then it would change everything.
Inside they had to run off of both the map that Dmitri had drawn up and Joey's own experience in the building so they found themselves back in the laboratory and Roger saw firsthand the gas chamber that Joey had described, still damaged and bloody.
"Mother of God…" he muttered quietly as a sniff from Joey drew his attention. She was visibly on the brink of tears as no doubt the memory of what happened reared its ugly head.
She noticed him looking at her and tried to put herself back together. "Sorry… I… just…" she trailed off as he came over and embraced her.
"I know and it's ok… just you wait Joey. We will make Rachel suffer more than you can probably imagine here in short order. Let's get going."
They left the lab and after a few wrong turns they found themselves in the still lit amphitheater as a group of peggies were starting to walk away from the stage.
"Everything checks out brothers and sisters. We are ready for The Father to come and bless us with his word and presence in a few hours. Now let's get some sleep." Said a Priestess from a top the stage.
From the cracked open door what Roger saw made him smile evilly. As he had designed a massive wooden cult cross was erected on top of a raised dais surrounded with white Bliss flowers and three TV screens facing the audience to display a timer. At the edge of the stage another three TV screens faced the audience to display a pre-show timer. Above the cross a thick white curtain was hung on a motorized circular track erected above it, this when closed would completely hide the cross and its base from view.
Rounding out the visual portion of the event were the two massive drop down projector screen with their matching projectors hanging down on either side of the stage that would allow everyone in the room to easily view what was on the stage.
Something that wasn't planned on were the presence of electronic locks on the doors leading to and from this room, which meant that more than likely he could remotely hard lock the doors ensuring that no one could escape. It would save a lot of extra running around blocking doors after everyone had arrived.
The peggies left and following Roger's lead Joey followed him in to the now darkened room. She cast a wary glance at the stage set before looking at Roger. "Roger... just what do you have planned?"
She couldn't clearly see his face in what little light made it through the small frosted windows that ringed the whole room near the ceiling, but she could certainly hear the menacing smile he had to have.
"A grand display Joey. The peggies will see Rachel for what she is in their last moments, and in turn Rachel will see all of her work in crafting her image in the cult be crushed. It will be painful, terrifying, and because of its public nature it will do extreme damage I believe to the rest of the cult." He said before pausing to collect his thoughts.
"If we are really lucky it will somehow spark an internal civil war but that is a bit of a reach. Still I would expect for Joseph and Jacob to have to spend more time and resources at least policing their people which means fewer people pointing guns at us."
She couldn't help but smile. The very idea of making the cult afraid after all the years they had terrified and strong armed the county with increasing boldness... it was enough to soothe her knee jerk reaction to suppress such thoughts.
"Well then let's get going then." She said finally.
.
Dmitri watched silently from his hide as he watched Rachel sit at her desk typing away at her computer until finally she got up from her chair and left his line of sight.
"Roger, Rachel seems to be winding down for the night." He said into his radio as he glanced at his watch. It had been nearly an hour since the operation had started and he was still a bit wary of just how much could go wrong over the course of a single night given the scale of what was happening right now within the depths of the mountain.
But the rest of the conservatory save for Rachel's office was quiet and dark. A small two man team of Chosen were patrolling outside the main building but they were clearly not alarmed in the least bit.
"I copy Dmitri. I take it things are still quiet?" Roger asked.
"Yes for now." The Russian responded.
"Ok then we will move on Rachel's office now. If anything looks off you let us know." Came the deputy's reply.
.
In the Cache Marcus watched as the next group of trucks emerged out of the ramp way leading from the eighth floor. They had so far been able to get ahead of schedule in the raiding part of Roger's plan and now with most of the foodstuffs they had targeted in the first three floors hauled away they now looked to gathering a portion of the cult's ammo stockpile.
'And what a stockpile it is. I could run an entire Army corp in heavy active combat for at least three months with how much ammo they have stashed here. Too bad the heaviest weapons they seem to have are RPG's and a few American and Russian 120mm mortars, we could have really used even a small pack howitzer or two.' The elder Rook thought as the loadmasters started their work.
In any case they hadn't been disturbed yet according to the men he had left at The Cache's entrance and so long as that held that was all that mattered to him as far as his part of the operation went. Roger and Joey he didn't feel that concerned about as even if something went royally sideways they both could easily handle themselves as they had proven time and again.
His thoughts were interrupted with the roar of the Widowmaker as it pulled up. Mary May leaned out the driver side window and spoke. "Hey Marcus what am I hauling? Because this doesn't look like grain to me."
He smiled widely. "Good news you are going to hauling massive amounts of explosive ordinance! I normally wouldn't ask this of you but with me and my guys preoccupied and of course Roger being busy, you're the only other person I trust to haul something this dangerous."
The blonde woman huffed a little and gave a sarcastic sounding comeback. "Thanks a lot Marcus. I'll try not blow us up."
"That's all I can ask." Came the reply.
.
Like uniformed specters the two Deputies crept into the surprisingly secluded wing of the conservatory that served as Rachel's residence. The dark living room was richly decorated with old but well taken care of furniture and the walls were covered in preserved plants and numerous horticulture and agriculture awards gathered over a few generations.
It was the legacy of the Jessop family at least what it once was, now as far as anyone moving forward would be able to remember only the brutal acts of Rachel would remain. They went through another door and found themselves in an office space just as Dmitri has described, to their left was a bedroom and to their right was a lit bathroom where the sound of a shower running revealed where Rachel was in the living space but it also meant that they could have only moments to prepare everything.
'This is a bit faster and looser than I normally would run this sort of op but it is what it is. Now I'm glad that Joey is here to help with the little things.' He thought as he reached for the two pairs of cuffs on his belt before turning to Joey.
"Joey take my cuffs and yours, close this window behind the desk, then I want you go to the bedroom and attach the cuffs to the head and foot boards if you can't do that then go for the bed rails. Make sure that if someone pulls at them that they won't somehow slip off. I'm going to collect our 'Herald-turn-victim'."
Joey nodded as she took the offered cuffs and moved towards the window as quick and quiet as she could manage before moving toward the bedroom. Just at a glance the weight of what he likely had planned started to truly hit her, but she was pressing through it for the moment.
The shower stopping drew his attention back to his task as he neared the bathroom and peered in.
Rachel finished toweling dry her hair as she regarded herself in the mirror briefly before reaching for her hairbrush.
'I can't believe that Joseph isn't mad at me! After everything that has happened I hadn't expected him to show mercy let alone actually provide aid. He had said that John had to stand on his own as God had directed but I would have thought that the same would have applied to me. Jacob of course would have insisted on fighting the Whitetails alone even to the bitter end, but that could just as easily be his pride showing.' She thought as set the brush down.
"I'm not too proud to ask for help and if The Father is willing to help me kill Hudson and the Sheriff then all the better." She said to herself as she focused on where she had laid the brush down. When she then looked back at the mirror first focusing on her own face before she noticed the massive black armored man behind her.
"You forgot about me Rachel." Roger said as he slapped a massive hand over her shocked mouth before he took his other arm and wrapped it around her torso, lifting her off the ground effortlessly.
Joey barely herd the struggle until Roger entered the room with the actively struggling nude brunette.
"Cuff her legs! I got her mouth and arms." He said as he slammed the cultist down on the mattress before setting work restraining the first of Rachel's arms.
Joey did as she was told, dodging the woman's attempts to land a kick on her face. "Done." She stated as Roger replied. "Get the bedroom door just in case."
Now with Rachel fully restrained and the room as closed down as much as possible Roger released his hand from the woman's mouth.
"So we finally meet Rachel. I have to say that you are a real piece of work you know that? The 'experiments' that you directed and oversaw are the sorts of things that you don't normally see anymore, I mean gas chambers and dungeons with brain dead zombies that you chain up your victims that didn't pass the prerequisites to be feasted upon and literally torn limb for limb... I mean usually the dictators and jiahdists that I normally get sent after save that sort of thing for people they really don't like, but you just do it for everyone." He said as his hand rested on his knife.
Rachel stared back at the massive man before her in absolute horror. "Rook! You... you're... you're a..." she tried to say as her terror overrode the rest of her mental processes.
"Yes Rachel he is a Saint. Feeney himself labeled him as such. Oh and before you ask yes Feeney is dead, got bayoneted by a 10 year old of all things." Joey said as Rachel's eyes exploded.
"No... no no no! No one has survived! Everyone died in the end!" came Rachel's panicked reply.
Roger unsheathed his knife and pretended to test the freshly honed edge before he replied. "Rachel let me tell you something that most normally functioning people just know off hand, but in the end everyone does die. Time being the unmoving cast iron bitch that it is. However allow me to segway to what is about to happen to you this..."
His watch beeped indicated that it was midnight.
"Ah, morning. For the next hour or two I will be taking a few elements from John's M.O with a touch of Aldo Raine from the movie 'Inglorious Basterds' if you are familiar it. I will carve your sins and symbology into your flesh, then when I am done I will again take another element from the cult's book of punishments and publicly display your body for all of your followers to see. Then your Bliss will consume you and your followers sending you all to the gates of Eden." He finished before adding one last point.
"I should say now that this kind of 'one on one' torture isn't my normal fair, I normally prefer quick and clean kills in that case. However not only have you really disgusted me to the point where I am willing to change my own M.O. but I also feel the need to do this for the wider cult after all you are 'Faith Seed' the calm and gentle herald to Jacob's fire and wrath or John's televangelist bit. Seeing you bleeding and terrified while your followers are screaming with their own horror will do untold damage to the hearts and minds of the rest of the cult. Congratulations on becoming the turning point of this entire war."
With that said and one last flourish of his knife he approached the bound cultist. To Rachel's credit she didn't move an inch until the steel touched her skin.
Joey leaned against wall beside the bedroom door as she watched Roger do his dirty deed and listen to Rachel shriek intermittently. She had thought it would bother her more but in a way it gave her a strange and kind of sick vengeful relief to hear and see Rachel actually suffer for everything she had done.
John had gotten off easy when all Roger had done was slowly crush his head. But this, as extreme as it all was felt like an appropriate punishment even if her inner deputy said otherwise.
He worked over Rachel for nearly two hours before pulling back and looking at his bloody work. He really did dislike this kind of torture but it had to be done and with it done came the public display part of the work.
He uncuffed one of Rachel's legs from the foot board before cuffing it to the other leg. Rachel's complete lack of resistance as she moaned in constant agony greatly helped in speeding up restraining her arms and remaining legs. He then dug around in one of his vest pouches for the special item that he had one of the Grey's grab from John's room back at the Seed Ranch.
It was ball gag with a special time lock on it, one of the many 'toys' that John had in his room. In this case it was the perfect tool to keep Rachel quiet until the right time.
"I'll do the honors Roger." Joey offered as she took the gag from him and double checked the time lock. "It's 2am... so six hours even?"
He shook his head. "Tack on an extra 10 minutes for the speech we have to record."
Setting the timer of the gag lock she firmly secured the gag around Rachel's head. "Finally get the chance to shut you up." She added with a smile.
With Rachel gagged and bound he moved to use her own bedsheets to further wrap her up for transport. "Joey you lead the way to the amphitheater and I will follow." He said as he hoisted the Herald over his shoulder.
With a nod towards him he followed Joey as they passed through the dark hallways back to the amphitheater entrance they had reconed earlier. It was so strange to not see any interior guards but once more it showed that the cult as brutal and inhumane as it was in many respects was not all that competent as far as security goes.
Now at the cult cross on the stage he unwrapped Rachel who looked around confused as to why she was here of all places. Her confusion was replaced with pain as each of her limbs were uncuffed only to be lashed with rough rope to the diagonal points of the cult cross one by one.
"Rachel if it hasn't occurred to you I will let you know now that Joseph isn't coming, in fact the orders that you read and followed were written by me and delivered by one of bravest fighters in the entire Resistance posing as a messenger. But don't worry Joseph will see and hear what is going to happen later on this morning." Roger finished as he turned and lead the way towards the control booth, ignoring the muffled cries of the cultist.
Once they got into the control booth he was once more grateful for the recon work that Dmitri had done as he didn't have to spend much time figuring out how everything worked.
"Ok so this is the curtain control…" He said as he pressed the appropriate button and the white curtain around the dais closed around Rachel.
"Now what?" Joey asked as she looked around at the various video equipment stashed around the booth in any spot that it could be stuffed into.
He chuckled softly. "Well give me a few minutes to setup a camera, the bare minimum lights, and a lav mic then we will shoot the speech have I been working on since I woke up. Ever worked a video camera before?"
Joey shrugged. "Yeah I mean some basic stuff in college and a few times with Mary May afterwards but not anything like this."
"Don't worry I'll get it all setup so you just hit a button and I start talking. Maybe after this war is over I can show you the finer points of professional camera work… unless you prefer just being on the business end?" He teased.
He got a soft laugh out of her with his comment as he had hoped. "My God Roger, here we are in the middle of a cult stronghold with their tortured Herald tied up on stage and you are still cracking lewd jokes." She replied with a smile.
"You have to find or make fun where you can Joey in this line of work. If you don't lighten up you mentally tend to at best burn out or worse become unglued and do something stupid. Besides at least in my opinion it's always good to have something to look forward to." He hinted as he finished setting up one of the cameras on a tripod.
In a few more minutes he had gotten the lights setup and had clipped a lapel mic to the upper lip of his armor. The small booth was now extremely crowded but it would have to do.
"Ok Joey I'll switch spots with you and when I tell you to do so hit the little red button." He instructed as he grabbed a small rolling stool to sit on for his part.
"Ready." Came Joey has she set a finger on the record button.
He took a deep calming breath before saying. "Hit it."
The record light on the camera came on and he launched into his prepared statement to the cult. "Hello Children of Eden's Gate, yes it is me Deputy Roger Rook. I know that probably a few of you have been wondering where I have been as after all Herald Faith has been exclusively battling my 'Demoness' who was kind enough to take over the fighting as I battled the Herald's attempt to poison me."
He sat upright and gave the camera a clearer view of his new bulkier form. "As you can see I am much more impressive than I already was when I fought John. Faith as is her way, had produced a form of Bliss meant to produce a 'Saint'. This Bliss being more lethal than average had already killed hundreds of 'test subjects' to quote Dr. Feeney but I am 'The Collapse'."
He continued his voice growing harder. "If you need proof of how the will of God is being made manifest you now need only look upon my form and see that instead of a member of the faithful becoming the first and only 'Saint' it is I, The Collapse who now walks among you in a physical form that is nigh human perfection. That brings me to the purpose of this message. Already it has reached me that many wiser members among your number have taken their own lives in accordance to the will of God as I have stated before, but still many of you continue to resist and continue to take up arms against me and my forces in defiance of God. This defiance must be punished and that punishment will be sent to wait at the gates of Eden by way of Faith's own poison."
He had to pause and smile at his own words. He had to admit that he was having a bit too much fun doing these 'fire and brimstone' type speeches but they were from Dmitri's reports far more effective at damaging the cult then what he had ever thought possible.
"So on this dark and thunderous day all of creation will feel wrath of God as he strikes down upon your number and punishes you all for your continued defiance, to this end so too will your children suffer the sins of their forebears as they too shall take a place at the gates of Eden. Now Children of Eden's Gate look upon the price of your sins against man and God." He closed and after a short 30 second pause he had Joey cut the camera.
"Well... I guess this is happening isn't it?" She said looking at him with a unsure look on her face.
He nodded. "Yes it is. I wish I had a better solution but the better solutions require resources that we simply don't have and that is also ignoring the long term risks that those solutions inherently place upon us. Welcome to the real dark side of the modern world."
A quick glance at his watch showed that it was now nearly 3am and now they had little else to do but use the laptop in the control booth to quickly edit his speech and then program everything so all they had to do was a set a timer and then watch the show unfold. Once he was done he poked around the room looking at the equipment stashed as Joey proceeded to use one of the backup drives to pull anything of use off of the computer until she navigated to something that she couldn't believe she was seeing.
"Roger! This thing is tapped into Faith's bunker!" She exclaimed as he rushed over to look over her shoulder. Sure enough unlike John's bunker computer system Rachel's was better networked no doubt by Feeney for his convenience but in doing so had opened everything up if one were to dig deep enough as Joey had done.
"Jesus her bunker is big... 34 levels total even if most are living quarters." He breathed as Joey continued to poke around and explore the various bunker systems she could reach.
"I don't see the Bliss production options so that must be something only Feeney's own computer has access to but otherwise I have full access to everything including cameras throughout the bunker, good news is we probably won't have a repeat of Jacob's stunt." She said the memory of the attempted gassing of both them and the prisoners with a Samson-esqe chlorine gas weapon sending shivers down both their spines.
"Ok what about prisoners? Do you see anything?" He queried.
A few minutes passed with Joey muttering to herself as she noted the labels on various cameras. "No, all the prison cameras show empty rooms. If I had to guess though there is about... three dozen or so strong garrison by the looks of it backed up with another two dozen strong mix of Angels and Archangels."
He smiled at the news as this was the sort of intelligence that could easily save numerous Resistance fighters lives. "Ok what about the launch controls for her missile?" He pressed.
A few taps of the keyboard and Joey brought up the view of Rachel's missile silo, its stark cult white missile dominating the field of vision on the various cameras caused even Roger to pale briefly.
'Nuclear genies are dangerous enough in the hands of a stable modern government let alone in the hands of doomsday cult.' He thought before speaking. "Joey lets disable this bastard right now. With how big of an explosion we are about set off I can't rule out that Joseph might decide to launch and while he probably still has Jacob's missile in play assuming he does have a third one, one nuke in his hands is better than two."
"Ok its done but if we can access the controls from here do you think Joseph can do the same?" Joey asked.
He had to think on this briefly. John's bunker systems were largely isolated save for the original missile control systems that had been built with the bunker. That meant that if the local computer system disconnected the flight and targeting systems there was nothing that the central control center near Joseph's compound could do about it, but for Rachel's far more networked and integrated systems...
"Ok can we password lock even part of the system?" He asked.
"Already ahead of you... yes looks like the missile controls can be password locked but weren't for God only knows why. I guess Feeney figured that his people wouldn't be poking around this deep in the computer controls and how many peggies are computer savy enough to actually access this stuff?" Joey added.
"Jesus Christ this is insane..." He muttered when Joey replied a bit more cheerfully.
"Ok Roger what do you want as a password? 12345?" She joked.
"Acta Sancti Michahel" He rattled off instantly.
Joey looked at him wide eyed in disbelief. "Joey would it really be surprising to learn that I got bored while being told to 'Hurry up and wait.' one day and decided to learn Latin for the hell of it?" He replied.
She started tapping away at the computer as she spoke. "Yeah that does sound like you. Can't say I didn't break down and do some odd things too over the last few years considering how bored and depressed I was getting."
He perked up at the hint of a another revelation from his time away from home. "Oh? May I ask what some of these odd things were?"
A wide coy smile broke across her face. "That's question I'm willing to answer when we are in a safer place but I will say that it involved a camera, Grace believe it or not, Mary May of course, more than a few really strong drinks, and a very long weekend. Something to look forward to hearing about as you said."
With that to look forward to learning he reached for his radio and hoped that he could reach his father.
"Black Reaper to Grey Reaper come in."
The radio crackled and pop for a moment until finally he could hear his father on the other side. "I copy switching to the black channel."
Another moment of crackling and popping followed before the radios finally latched on to the others signal. "Ok Roger what is going on top side?" Marcus asked.
"All quiet and the package is on display. Be advised that we found a laptop with full access to Rachel's bunker systems include the missile launching systems. We have locked them down with a password that should prevent anyone from reconnecting the missile for launch. We also have a rough estimate on how many people are left in the bunker itself. How about you?" He rattled off as Joey listened in.
"We are loading the last vehicles now save for your truck, there are a few things I didn't think were important enough to put on the shopping list, but since we have the time I thought 'Why not?'? After that we set charges and run." The older Rook said.
"Just please make sure you and everyone else gets well clear just in case my calculations on the blast are wrong." Roger replied
Marcus chuckled a bit before responding. "No problems on that front. Everyone was ordered to make for Fall's End, also makes sorting and storing our loot that much easier. Roger one last thing though please make sure you and Joey get clear yourselves, we have come too far in this war for us to loose both of you."
"Don't worry Dad we will get clear. Black Reaper out." He said as he ending the conversation.
"Now we wait." Joey muttered as silence descended upon them.
.
In the Cache Marcus looked at their latest find. In behind some of the heavy mortars that they were going to be taking Casey had found five massive modern safes each easily the size of a grown man. As he and Casey looked over the safes to determine if the pallets they were on would still be movable by a forklift, one of the Grey's just messing with the combination dial on one of the safes randomly managed to open the lock.
"Sir! You better come see this." He exclaimed as all the soldiers gathered around the open safe.
Marcus and Casey pushed though the entranced group before they too had to stop and behold the sight before them.
The safe had shelves and shelves of diamonds in carefully shorted containers that each had a printed label describing the diamonds cut, clarity, color, and carat weight from the Gemological Institute of America. The rest of the safe was no less lacking as it was filled with more bars of precious metals with a healthy number of black strapped blocks of $100 bills.
"Well now... I think we found another part of Joseph's war chest." Marcus said as he looked at his gathered men.
"So are we splitting this Marcus?" Casey asked as he voiced what everyone else was thinking.
"Oh we are splitting this safe but everything else I will hand off to Roger. He planned the heist after all not to mention considering everything he has been through in the last few days like Joey, I think he has more than earned a fair bit of 'Hazard Pay'. Now lets get this loaded in his truck and then get out of here."