Some of this will look strange to those expecting traditional literature,
but please understand that that odd script is the thinking of the missile,
in a language that looks eerily like unreal script. Note to programmers:
don't try it at home, because I didn't specifically write it for any
existing language, because it's written for a missile that doesn't exist
yet.
Cyprus
Operation Zeno
As painful as the expenditure is to the young and stunted movement, Job Khalid cast his best Cypriot cell into a complementary mission to insure the success of his high-priority Operation Mehmed.
Upon being activated, the two operatives didn't feel so happy about it, either, after giving thought to the low-level task. At least it's violent.
The planned violent act conveniently is planned to take place only a few miles distant from the concrete leased home of Basil Jacobs and Mikhail Amos, two veterans supposedly sidetracked by the war to the Turkish Cypriot lands, but are in fact placed agents of Khalid. Jacobs works on the docks in Larnaca Bay on the better paid night shift, and Amos is only promoted from being a pageboy at a small Armenian paper, now doing some cartoon sketches, but far from becoming the star artist. Both are night owls, working the latest shifts, and both put in enough work and promise for upward mobility to be insured. Surely these two veterans wouldn't throw that away with acts of terrorism.
Both Jacobs and Amos promote the small Armenian community at the church named after Lazarus, and are well liked by the congregation. The patrician seniors are helping Jacobs land a second part-time baggage job at Larnaca International, and helped Amos set up a tutoring practice for the drawing workshop. The community will repeat this mantra of disbelief many times: Surely these two veterans wouldn't throw that away with acts of terrorism.
But to trade their lives for the deaths of thousands, or even just hundreds, of guilty Turks, they just might. Job Khalid promises their diversion could mean the successful flattening of the "Terror Proof" Turkish metropolis.
Jacobs and Amos have the faith of the parish, they have unfettered privilege with the church grounds, and they have no fear to restrain them from violating that trust. The Chinese Gundam pilot pulled off a feat like this as an afterthought early in Operation Meteor, without the crutch of infrared guidance, and he didn't assimilate with the local community for camouflage, and he worked solo. He also fought Oz at the peak, while the Armenian duo battles a protector of their enemy at their trough. Easy. Dekéleia serves as a buffer between the strong Greeks, and the weak Turks. Under the sound theory of the strong should dominate the weak, the Hellenic Cypriots should quickly overrun the Turk presence.
Is that how it will go? The strong live, and the weak die? The Preventers operate two modest bases on Cyprus. One is Dekéleia, the one focused on air operations in the Middle East and peacekeeping between the two major ethnic groups on the island, and Akrotiri, farther south, more committed to ocean-oriented missions, and the strategic aspect of keeping order in the region, meaning it normally handles the bigger aircraft, for heavy bombing and accepting cargo carriers.
Armenians don't care so much about Akrotiri.
Dekéleia's perimeter is ringed by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, and the odd sentry post erected twenty feet in the air. Canine patrols walk the grounds hourly, and palladium remote non-lethal/lethal sentry guns line up with the walls.
The base is pretty secure, but who said anything about attacking the base?
Dekéleia
Cyrus is an old vacation spot for European travelers and Crusade enthusiasts, and as such, has all the treats a fun-receptive Nebraskan extreme jock prowls for. Rene LeFlore doesn't distinguish duty from play, and didn't enjoy much about school, but he applied himself on things that got his heart pumping. Things like playing tailback with the Huskers for five years, and setting a number of records doing it, including some at special teams. That got his attention; eleven bull-rushing gladiators charging eleven others in the field of battle. He'd loved it, but needed more. He wanted to hit people, and demanded time on the defensive end of the ball. Coach gave it to him, and LeFlore clinched some records at strong safety too. The world would be less melancholy if football were an eligible major, and the next best thing was Aeronautical Engineering, and to his father's surprise, (Mr. LeFlore happened to have a master's degree in something lame) old Rene grasped the material!
He came to love the Taurus suit, and one day found himself exploring what the rogue hackers in space could find on it. This was the first suit he ever appreciated, and then only in the flight mode. He understood that shooting from a biped machine came more naturally to humans, but that didn't seem to justify the compromises mobile suit technology placed on efficiency, and if you cut down on efficiency, you lose some of your righteous and true extremity.
But it beat the crop-duster at the farming college, right? He signed with the ROTC, and played with their much better machinery, and picked on the Lego nerds while at it.
What a surprise? Once out of school and ready to pay back the Alliance, a war started. He remembered the fear and concern of those geeks, the ones with Lego blocks and no appreciation for the extreme. Most of those decided they'd bury themselves in more school, and desperately applied for academy openings.
Well, Taurus suits are the most awesome things out there, but he knew the drill- it could be years before he got to touch the extreme in that program, and the war's happening RIGHT NOW! So, with little regret, he paced through the much more expedient straight-wing flight school, and aced it well enough to fly escort for none other than the Lightning Baron himself, just in time for Corsica and Daybreak.
See how things turn out if you have no patience in chasing the cool stuff? Right, the lame rumors about the Taurus being a Tuborov marionette proved out, anyway, with the exception of the white ones he managed to play with later. What a stroke of luck?
The alert had highly compatible wing, All-American Sooner Receiver from Kansas, Dirk Esteban, and him scrambling under their spacious bubble canopies as the helmeted flight crew sparked both plane's massive twin power plants with carted auxiliary power units.
The first time he'd seen the practice in flight school, Rene had asked why the plane didn't come with a starter and a key, and the Chief had replied that Rene should think of it as the military's idea of a parental control measure.
"What do you mean?" Rene asked.
"These guys have noticed they can't keep you away from the jeeps, Sebe? Well, they can hardly tolerate your meddling on those runs, so they have the starters as you see them, and they have us give them over to the MPs, where I'm told they're used to heat the guard shacks. Smart thinking, no? Like a Daimyo tying a samurai to the estate he guards, the Brass makes sure the MPs have a personal interest in taking care of the units, and out of your hands."
That's the urban legend floating around, anyway.
The crew carts away, and the chief confirm the flight controls and airbrakes move the way they want them. Dirk and Rene run some electronic checks. The planes don't need to taxi, in view of the fact that they're lined on the runway in the expectation that this flight would be needed.
A bare nine hundred feet later at only 135MPH, Rene tests to see if he has the lift to nose the fighter in the air. The nose pitches upward. A few seconds later, he's off the asphalt and climbing at .30 Mach. He swivels his eyes over both shoulders, looking for Esteban, call sign: FLATLINE.
He's up, hugging the runway a little to long for Rene's taste, but that's fine, he's grabbing more speed down there.
Both after burn sparingly, accelerating enough to progressively scale to the heights their tankers will be waiting, somewhere on a figure-eight south-east of Troy.
At subsonic speeds, Rene, call sign: DEFIB (The Human Defibrillator), could only experience the thrill of flying by peering at the fleeting stationary objects below.
By fortune, his head inclined left when two columns of light and pale smoke loomed from a church bell-tower in the city.
"Break left, break left!" At this juncture, the birds don't have much air under their butts, meaning they must run away without the luxury of trading altitude for speed. The missiles, Rene has no doubt of what they are, bank with them, and burn hotter to close the distance.
Thinking through what to do:
"EnemyDirEnemy.Location EnemyDist=Vsize(EnemyDir); Consider detonate if target within blast radius if (Target 200M)
Detonate proximity shrapnel charge if canopy or drop tanks exposed (Enemy orientation C or Enemy orientation F)"
Rene elected to keep his bulky engines between him and the trailing missile, while leading it out to sea at all possible speed. He purchased more time by plummeting to the deck, although this will in time put him in more personal danger (because his canopy is exposed).
He can't see, Flat Line, but sees the missile isn't baffled by its time under the microwave jammer. It's closing fast. Rene isn't just darting, but riding the afterburner. His foe stares down the canopy, and goes for the buckshot kill.
Rene deftly rudders the instant he sees the warhead flare, skidding the nose a number of degrees. The jet yaws, taking the canopy out of the missile's line-of-fire. The fishtail maneuver, however, eats away a tail.
"Flat Line, call position!" The Nebraska pilot, distressed as he is, doesn't even announce he's hit, but rather calls out for his wing, who's transponder signal died sometime on the flight.
"Look for the 'chute, Defib. I couldn't shake the missile." LeFlore paned his head around, spotting his falling comrade.
"Hey Tower, did you see those SAMs?" The radio crackled. A voice replied.
"Negative, Flight, but I did hear your broadcast. I've taken the liberty to dispatch a patrol, over."
Roger.
"Tower, do I have permission to strafe the church bells?"
Judgment call.
"Affirmative, flight. Considering we have one downed plane- go ahead." Even as permission came through, Rene gunned his Vulcan through the tower alcove, and heard the pleasing ding of the religious instruments.
He pulls back the stick, rudders hard left, tops out, and slopes back for a second pass.
"Tower, I failed to mention this, but I'm hit. Please advise." He could almost hear the tower crew groan.
"The pattern is open, Pilot."
Somalia
Dear Friends:
I extend my sympathy concerning your injuries suffered in the duty of protecting the world we've collaborated in creating. I am vexed, however, of the continued butchering of the military phonetic alphabet.
We mustn't let Treize's eccentric whims rule our era any longer. The truth is that the code I learned very young is not like the one taught by Noin at the academy.
The code goes as followed:
Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November(not Nemo!), Oscar, Poppa Quebec, Romeo (not Rio!), Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whisky, X-Ray, Yankee, Zulu.
Why does this have me in a fluster? Because Treize wasted his talent on pointless glossy issues like these, and we're going along with it to this day! I don't even understand why he'd have a problem with the regular mention of November in radio broadcasts, though I can figure why he took issue with "Romeo" being thrown about. I suppose he considered it degradation of Shakespeare. Even so, I wish for the alphabet to return to me.
Let's not dwell on the same issues Treize became obsessed with. Guys, I don't mean to shun you. I'm on a very sensitive mission at this time, and I'm out in the complete cold doing it. Duo, I couldn't possibly have made your party under these circumstances, and you know I would have tried catching up.
I wish you and Hilde your health and happiness. I wish the same with your other party members, especially the ones I know. Trowa, take care. WuFei, hang tough. Quatre, take it easy. Sally, Releana, Cathy, I promise to drop by before the year's out.
I mean what I say, you guys are my clan, and I'll take the time to watch over things, but right now, I have a mission.
Your truest ally,
Heero Yuy
Trowa folded Heero's greeting card, and passed it to WuFei.
"I've never known him to nitpick." Duo, reclining to the hospital room's aft, seconded the sentiment.
"I here you. He seems to be free-associating as he's writing in the card. It's odd." Chang passed the card to Quatre, who's still lying down in the hospital bed.
"That doesn't sound like him at all, but I've known people to be different when scripting their words," said the blond Arabian pilot.
WuFei chose not to say anything, as embarrassed as he felt. The broken collarbone meant the doctors needed to brace his head straight with a boxed assembly of shafts and wires. The effect is not attractive.
"Does anyone here know what he's doing?" Hilde speaking, also from a hospital bed. She's only been awake for a short time, the very reason everyone's congregating.
Releana appeared reticent, but found her voice.
"I suppose I shouldn't keep it from you," she forwarded, "he's on an anti-narcotics mission for the Sanc Kingdom. I personally asked him to take care of it. I could give you operational details, if you want, but I'd have to contact Pagan."
No one broke the silence.
"I'm surprised you out of every one would send Heero away, Releana," Hilde wheezed weakly, "the problem must have been pressing."
"You have no idea how easily traffickers can infuse themselves into a train of refugees," she explained, "borders were meaningless even before I made the mistake of officially abolishing them."
Duo and Hilde were taken aback; they didn't figure on the Queen accepting blame. Odd, considering they never thought her a narcissist.
"Hold on," Trowa hailed, "you say he's fighting drug runners, but so is your brother, and Noin, and Pagan. Sounds like your going full-court on the illicit industries."
"That's right." Trowa mused over this.
"Feel free to slap me if I offend, but your critics will point out that this is just an image situation with you-"
"I know what you're going to say, and your right, it does look like I'm trying to look tough on one of the few issues I can afford to be heavy- handed with."
"Exactly," Trowa said, letting the unsaid remain unsaid, "and the casual viewer will see these criticisms as reasonable," he said sagely.
"I'll keep Sanc's involvement under cloak and guard."
Columbia
Not all targets are fit for explosions, Heero Yuy knows. Like targets loitering under the sanctuary of a historic church.
Don Balboa isn't really a player within Bartista's apparatus, but Heero values him as a hit for his own reasons. He's dangerous to the future of the region as Heero sees it, for this man seeks profit from the kidnapping of school-aged kids, just for the sake of marketing their appearances.
Heero knows the description well enough. He likes wearing white buttoned shirts, isn't obviously overweight, dark features, comb-over, swept to the right. Always well shaved. This man always likes to carry one of his look-alike girls in with him, the better to advertise them.
Heero parks in a school zone roughly a mile out of the way, removes his bike from bondage in the back, rides over to the church.
The worship center, a catholic establishment, has no guards but a side-armed usher smartly at attendance to the visitors coming in. Heero follows, in theory unarmed, and passes detection.
Inside, Heero passes down the aisle, leers at his back. He's whispering to the ear of the likeness of Dorothy, and his expression is of grim seriousness.
Yuy sidesteps many rows until he's made his way behind and to the left of him. Heero steels himself against a persistent twitch in his fingers. He's rehearsed this, but hasn't cased this enough to be sure.
In his visits, he'd never seen any protective detail, and doesn't see any now. The proceedings look strange to the Japanese pilot. He can't feel any clergy eyeing him, they're to busy with ceremony his Asian upbringing can't understand.
It doesn't take long before a looker rents the Dorothy mimic, and carries her away.
Perfect, just give the creep a few moments, then get him. Heero curls one finger around a metal ring in his pocket, uncoils a surplus NATO wire saw, a construction of two metal rings at opposing ends of a twelve inch wire with midget metal teeth. Perfect for garroting.
After sliding to the aft of this man, and looping the surplus under his head, the Japanese assassin is finished.
Just one more job, and he can go home to that chocolate cake.
Cyprus
Operation Zeno
As painful as the expenditure is to the young and stunted movement, Job Khalid cast his best Cypriot cell into a complementary mission to insure the success of his high-priority Operation Mehmed.
Upon being activated, the two operatives didn't feel so happy about it, either, after giving thought to the low-level task. At least it's violent.
The planned violent act conveniently is planned to take place only a few miles distant from the concrete leased home of Basil Jacobs and Mikhail Amos, two veterans supposedly sidetracked by the war to the Turkish Cypriot lands, but are in fact placed agents of Khalid. Jacobs works on the docks in Larnaca Bay on the better paid night shift, and Amos is only promoted from being a pageboy at a small Armenian paper, now doing some cartoon sketches, but far from becoming the star artist. Both are night owls, working the latest shifts, and both put in enough work and promise for upward mobility to be insured. Surely these two veterans wouldn't throw that away with acts of terrorism.
Both Jacobs and Amos promote the small Armenian community at the church named after Lazarus, and are well liked by the congregation. The patrician seniors are helping Jacobs land a second part-time baggage job at Larnaca International, and helped Amos set up a tutoring practice for the drawing workshop. The community will repeat this mantra of disbelief many times: Surely these two veterans wouldn't throw that away with acts of terrorism.
But to trade their lives for the deaths of thousands, or even just hundreds, of guilty Turks, they just might. Job Khalid promises their diversion could mean the successful flattening of the "Terror Proof" Turkish metropolis.
Jacobs and Amos have the faith of the parish, they have unfettered privilege with the church grounds, and they have no fear to restrain them from violating that trust. The Chinese Gundam pilot pulled off a feat like this as an afterthought early in Operation Meteor, without the crutch of infrared guidance, and he didn't assimilate with the local community for camouflage, and he worked solo. He also fought Oz at the peak, while the Armenian duo battles a protector of their enemy at their trough. Easy. Dekéleia serves as a buffer between the strong Greeks, and the weak Turks. Under the sound theory of the strong should dominate the weak, the Hellenic Cypriots should quickly overrun the Turk presence.
Is that how it will go? The strong live, and the weak die? The Preventers operate two modest bases on Cyprus. One is Dekéleia, the one focused on air operations in the Middle East and peacekeeping between the two major ethnic groups on the island, and Akrotiri, farther south, more committed to ocean-oriented missions, and the strategic aspect of keeping order in the region, meaning it normally handles the bigger aircraft, for heavy bombing and accepting cargo carriers.
Armenians don't care so much about Akrotiri.
Dekéleia's perimeter is ringed by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, and the odd sentry post erected twenty feet in the air. Canine patrols walk the grounds hourly, and palladium remote non-lethal/lethal sentry guns line up with the walls.
The base is pretty secure, but who said anything about attacking the base?
Dekéleia
Cyrus is an old vacation spot for European travelers and Crusade enthusiasts, and as such, has all the treats a fun-receptive Nebraskan extreme jock prowls for. Rene LeFlore doesn't distinguish duty from play, and didn't enjoy much about school, but he applied himself on things that got his heart pumping. Things like playing tailback with the Huskers for five years, and setting a number of records doing it, including some at special teams. That got his attention; eleven bull-rushing gladiators charging eleven others in the field of battle. He'd loved it, but needed more. He wanted to hit people, and demanded time on the defensive end of the ball. Coach gave it to him, and LeFlore clinched some records at strong safety too. The world would be less melancholy if football were an eligible major, and the next best thing was Aeronautical Engineering, and to his father's surprise, (Mr. LeFlore happened to have a master's degree in something lame) old Rene grasped the material!
He came to love the Taurus suit, and one day found himself exploring what the rogue hackers in space could find on it. This was the first suit he ever appreciated, and then only in the flight mode. He understood that shooting from a biped machine came more naturally to humans, but that didn't seem to justify the compromises mobile suit technology placed on efficiency, and if you cut down on efficiency, you lose some of your righteous and true extremity.
But it beat the crop-duster at the farming college, right? He signed with the ROTC, and played with their much better machinery, and picked on the Lego nerds while at it.
What a surprise? Once out of school and ready to pay back the Alliance, a war started. He remembered the fear and concern of those geeks, the ones with Lego blocks and no appreciation for the extreme. Most of those decided they'd bury themselves in more school, and desperately applied for academy openings.
Well, Taurus suits are the most awesome things out there, but he knew the drill- it could be years before he got to touch the extreme in that program, and the war's happening RIGHT NOW! So, with little regret, he paced through the much more expedient straight-wing flight school, and aced it well enough to fly escort for none other than the Lightning Baron himself, just in time for Corsica and Daybreak.
See how things turn out if you have no patience in chasing the cool stuff? Right, the lame rumors about the Taurus being a Tuborov marionette proved out, anyway, with the exception of the white ones he managed to play with later. What a stroke of luck?
The alert had highly compatible wing, All-American Sooner Receiver from Kansas, Dirk Esteban, and him scrambling under their spacious bubble canopies as the helmeted flight crew sparked both plane's massive twin power plants with carted auxiliary power units.
The first time he'd seen the practice in flight school, Rene had asked why the plane didn't come with a starter and a key, and the Chief had replied that Rene should think of it as the military's idea of a parental control measure.
"What do you mean?" Rene asked.
"These guys have noticed they can't keep you away from the jeeps, Sebe? Well, they can hardly tolerate your meddling on those runs, so they have the starters as you see them, and they have us give them over to the MPs, where I'm told they're used to heat the guard shacks. Smart thinking, no? Like a Daimyo tying a samurai to the estate he guards, the Brass makes sure the MPs have a personal interest in taking care of the units, and out of your hands."
That's the urban legend floating around, anyway.
The crew carts away, and the chief confirm the flight controls and airbrakes move the way they want them. Dirk and Rene run some electronic checks. The planes don't need to taxi, in view of the fact that they're lined on the runway in the expectation that this flight would be needed.
A bare nine hundred feet later at only 135MPH, Rene tests to see if he has the lift to nose the fighter in the air. The nose pitches upward. A few seconds later, he's off the asphalt and climbing at .30 Mach. He swivels his eyes over both shoulders, looking for Esteban, call sign: FLATLINE.
He's up, hugging the runway a little to long for Rene's taste, but that's fine, he's grabbing more speed down there.
Both after burn sparingly, accelerating enough to progressively scale to the heights their tankers will be waiting, somewhere on a figure-eight south-east of Troy.
At subsonic speeds, Rene, call sign: DEFIB (The Human Defibrillator), could only experience the thrill of flying by peering at the fleeting stationary objects below.
By fortune, his head inclined left when two columns of light and pale smoke loomed from a church bell-tower in the city.
"Break left, break left!" At this juncture, the birds don't have much air under their butts, meaning they must run away without the luxury of trading altitude for speed. The missiles, Rene has no doubt of what they are, bank with them, and burn hotter to close the distance.
Thinking through what to do:
"EnemyDirEnemy.Location EnemyDist=Vsize(EnemyDir); Consider detonate if target within blast radius if (Target 200M)
Detonate proximity shrapnel charge if canopy or drop tanks exposed (Enemy orientation C or Enemy orientation F)"
Rene elected to keep his bulky engines between him and the trailing missile, while leading it out to sea at all possible speed. He purchased more time by plummeting to the deck, although this will in time put him in more personal danger (because his canopy is exposed).
He can't see, Flat Line, but sees the missile isn't baffled by its time under the microwave jammer. It's closing fast. Rene isn't just darting, but riding the afterburner. His foe stares down the canopy, and goes for the buckshot kill.
Rene deftly rudders the instant he sees the warhead flare, skidding the nose a number of degrees. The jet yaws, taking the canopy out of the missile's line-of-fire. The fishtail maneuver, however, eats away a tail.
"Flat Line, call position!" The Nebraska pilot, distressed as he is, doesn't even announce he's hit, but rather calls out for his wing, who's transponder signal died sometime on the flight.
"Look for the 'chute, Defib. I couldn't shake the missile." LeFlore paned his head around, spotting his falling comrade.
"Hey Tower, did you see those SAMs?" The radio crackled. A voice replied.
"Negative, Flight, but I did hear your broadcast. I've taken the liberty to dispatch a patrol, over."
Roger.
"Tower, do I have permission to strafe the church bells?"
Judgment call.
"Affirmative, flight. Considering we have one downed plane- go ahead." Even as permission came through, Rene gunned his Vulcan through the tower alcove, and heard the pleasing ding of the religious instruments.
He pulls back the stick, rudders hard left, tops out, and slopes back for a second pass.
"Tower, I failed to mention this, but I'm hit. Please advise." He could almost hear the tower crew groan.
"The pattern is open, Pilot."
Somalia
Dear Friends:
I extend my sympathy concerning your injuries suffered in the duty of protecting the world we've collaborated in creating. I am vexed, however, of the continued butchering of the military phonetic alphabet.
We mustn't let Treize's eccentric whims rule our era any longer. The truth is that the code I learned very young is not like the one taught by Noin at the academy.
The code goes as followed:
Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November(not Nemo!), Oscar, Poppa Quebec, Romeo (not Rio!), Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whisky, X-Ray, Yankee, Zulu.
Why does this have me in a fluster? Because Treize wasted his talent on pointless glossy issues like these, and we're going along with it to this day! I don't even understand why he'd have a problem with the regular mention of November in radio broadcasts, though I can figure why he took issue with "Romeo" being thrown about. I suppose he considered it degradation of Shakespeare. Even so, I wish for the alphabet to return to me.
Let's not dwell on the same issues Treize became obsessed with. Guys, I don't mean to shun you. I'm on a very sensitive mission at this time, and I'm out in the complete cold doing it. Duo, I couldn't possibly have made your party under these circumstances, and you know I would have tried catching up.
I wish you and Hilde your health and happiness. I wish the same with your other party members, especially the ones I know. Trowa, take care. WuFei, hang tough. Quatre, take it easy. Sally, Releana, Cathy, I promise to drop by before the year's out.
I mean what I say, you guys are my clan, and I'll take the time to watch over things, but right now, I have a mission.
Your truest ally,
Heero Yuy
Trowa folded Heero's greeting card, and passed it to WuFei.
"I've never known him to nitpick." Duo, reclining to the hospital room's aft, seconded the sentiment.
"I here you. He seems to be free-associating as he's writing in the card. It's odd." Chang passed the card to Quatre, who's still lying down in the hospital bed.
"That doesn't sound like him at all, but I've known people to be different when scripting their words," said the blond Arabian pilot.
WuFei chose not to say anything, as embarrassed as he felt. The broken collarbone meant the doctors needed to brace his head straight with a boxed assembly of shafts and wires. The effect is not attractive.
"Does anyone here know what he's doing?" Hilde speaking, also from a hospital bed. She's only been awake for a short time, the very reason everyone's congregating.
Releana appeared reticent, but found her voice.
"I suppose I shouldn't keep it from you," she forwarded, "he's on an anti-narcotics mission for the Sanc Kingdom. I personally asked him to take care of it. I could give you operational details, if you want, but I'd have to contact Pagan."
No one broke the silence.
"I'm surprised you out of every one would send Heero away, Releana," Hilde wheezed weakly, "the problem must have been pressing."
"You have no idea how easily traffickers can infuse themselves into a train of refugees," she explained, "borders were meaningless even before I made the mistake of officially abolishing them."
Duo and Hilde were taken aback; they didn't figure on the Queen accepting blame. Odd, considering they never thought her a narcissist.
"Hold on," Trowa hailed, "you say he's fighting drug runners, but so is your brother, and Noin, and Pagan. Sounds like your going full-court on the illicit industries."
"That's right." Trowa mused over this.
"Feel free to slap me if I offend, but your critics will point out that this is just an image situation with you-"
"I know what you're going to say, and your right, it does look like I'm trying to look tough on one of the few issues I can afford to be heavy- handed with."
"Exactly," Trowa said, letting the unsaid remain unsaid, "and the casual viewer will see these criticisms as reasonable," he said sagely.
"I'll keep Sanc's involvement under cloak and guard."
Columbia
Not all targets are fit for explosions, Heero Yuy knows. Like targets loitering under the sanctuary of a historic church.
Don Balboa isn't really a player within Bartista's apparatus, but Heero values him as a hit for his own reasons. He's dangerous to the future of the region as Heero sees it, for this man seeks profit from the kidnapping of school-aged kids, just for the sake of marketing their appearances.
Heero knows the description well enough. He likes wearing white buttoned shirts, isn't obviously overweight, dark features, comb-over, swept to the right. Always well shaved. This man always likes to carry one of his look-alike girls in with him, the better to advertise them.
Heero parks in a school zone roughly a mile out of the way, removes his bike from bondage in the back, rides over to the church.
The worship center, a catholic establishment, has no guards but a side-armed usher smartly at attendance to the visitors coming in. Heero follows, in theory unarmed, and passes detection.
Inside, Heero passes down the aisle, leers at his back. He's whispering to the ear of the likeness of Dorothy, and his expression is of grim seriousness.
Yuy sidesteps many rows until he's made his way behind and to the left of him. Heero steels himself against a persistent twitch in his fingers. He's rehearsed this, but hasn't cased this enough to be sure.
In his visits, he'd never seen any protective detail, and doesn't see any now. The proceedings look strange to the Japanese pilot. He can't feel any clergy eyeing him, they're to busy with ceremony his Asian upbringing can't understand.
It doesn't take long before a looker rents the Dorothy mimic, and carries her away.
Perfect, just give the creep a few moments, then get him. Heero curls one finger around a metal ring in his pocket, uncoils a surplus NATO wire saw, a construction of two metal rings at opposing ends of a twelve inch wire with midget metal teeth. Perfect for garroting.
After sliding to the aft of this man, and looping the surplus under his head, the Japanese assassin is finished.
Just one more job, and he can go home to that chocolate cake.
