Chapter LXIII: All your base are belong to us.
1500hrs, 25 December 2013, aboard the JMSDF Destroyer Murasame, off the Coast of Socotra, Yemen.
"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you." General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
"AMERICA! FUCK YEAH! COMIN' AGAIN TO SAVE THE MOTHERFUCKING DAY YEAH!" Team America: World Police.
The Allied group that was sieging the Nakanishi base at Socotra was pulling out all the stops. After the debacle about a week ago, in which several ships from CTF 151 and 152 were damaged or sunk, there was no precaution that wasn't being taken.
Ships from no less than twenty nine nations were deployed there, from Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan (although they were being watched suspiciously by everyone else), Jordan, the Republic of Korea, Kuwait, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, the People's Republic of China, Portugal, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Everyone wanted a piece of these fuckers, and there was going to be hell to pay. The UN had finally come through with Security Council Resolution 2099, that stated "Reaffirming the commitments to peace and prosperity of all humanity that the Nakanishi Group singlehandedly violated in the events of 16 December 2013 to 17 December 2013, the United Nations Security Council states that immediate military action take place on the island of Socotra to end this threat, and to restore peace to the world."
In addition to the gaggle of ships deployed there, there were three carriers deployed there; one was enough to make nations quake in their boots, but three was just overkill…and a serious commitment to show "Do not fuck with the United States or you will pay." The USS Carl Vinson, the USS John C. Stennis and the USS Harry Truman were all stationed there, with a combined air fleet of over 300 planes of all types, ranging from recon to ground support roles. The new F-35s hadn't been rolled out as of yet, due to Congressional oversight and budget cuts, but the mainstay of the US Naval Aviation, the F/A-18E/F, was still a force to be reckoned with. Woe to the person who thought older planes couldn't do damage; even if armed with old and obsolete F-4E Phantoms, a well-trained squadron of aviators could whip the most advanced plane on the market if piloted by novices.
If the carriers weren't enough, several amphibious ships from the UK, the US, Italy, India, and France were on standby, ready to offload their Marines and other assault troops. The USS Bonhomme Richard, the HMS Ocean, the San Grigorio, the INS Jalashwa, and the Minstral were all amphibious warfare ships that were capable of such a landing, and along with other reserves of Marines on the aircraft carriers, capable storming the island on a moment's notice. They even had their own air support, mostly in helicopters but the several of the ships carried Sea Harriers and AV-8B Harrier IIs, perfect for close in air support. The sheer, raw power of the combined forces there could easily wipe any opposing force off the map. Probably never since Operation Overlord had a force been assembled to take on such a problem as this.
But that wasn't for the SAILOR team. They were on a destroyer, the Murasame, that had escaped the massacre last week and was now placed on the very far edge of the fleet, away from the aircraft carriers. No one trusted them at this point, but this also allowed the SAILOR team to get closer to the island as well. They had been flown out via a USAF UH-60 helicopter from Al Udeid early in the morning, taking the long route around the island and refueling from a tanker, they had been landed on the destroyer. They had spent most of the day getting ready for the upcoming battle, checking their scuba equipment, and the weapons that they had been brought in on the plane that Amy and the rest of them had flown in on from Japan. There was a small selection of rifles on the destroyer, but nothing like they would need for the upcoming mission.
"These guys are really going to town," Amy noted. She had been above decks, looking at the massive fleet outside.
"What does that even mean?!" Lita asked her.
"I dunno, it's just an idiom."
She sighed. A couple of F/A-18Fs flew overhead for a recon mission, planning out how the battle would play out tomorrow.
Lita broke the brief silence. "What's going on between you and Mina?"
It was bound to come up sooner or later.
"She…she's really smitten for me," Amy hesitantly answered.
"Ah…and she told you last night?"
"Yeah."
"And…?" Lita nudged. "Eh? Eh?"
"Oh hush, it wasn't…like that."
"On the contrary, it sounded like you were having loads of fun in there," Lita smiled. "I think Raye would have snuck in there to take a video recording, but we stopped her."
"She's still a little bit sore over me cracking into her computer back at the Medical Facility?"
"Oh you haven't heard the end of it. That's all she talked about when we were on duty in China." She mocked Raye's voice. "And I'm SO going to get Amy back for looking at all of that stuff on my computer. I'm sure that SHE looks at that stuff all of the time, and…"
Amy giggled at her impression. "That's probably the worse impression I've seen anyone do."
"Hey, guys." Serena appeared behind them, already dressed in their uniform for this mission, the standard Japanese flecktarn, in a desert pattern. After some convincing (actually, no convincing was involved, Luna just told them to ditch the six pattern uniforms), they had switched out into the standard JSDF uniform, and were getting ready for the mission at hand.
"Briefing time."
Amy sighed, gave one last look at the massive fleet outside, and headed back below decks for the long session of planning.
"Alright, we're going to enter the base here." The SAILOR team was in one of the wardrooms, having kicked the poor captain out and cluttering the place up with maps, paper and equipment. Amy pointed to a submersible entrance about thirty meters down from the surface. "We don't even know what this looks like; it might be camouflaged and hidden, and we're more than likely going to have to breach the interior. That'll put the place on alert."
"So this entire mission will become one long, drawn out battle," Serena noted, frowning at the blueprints. Hundreds of kilometers of tunnels and god knows how many personnel were in there would make for an incredibly difficult and near impossible mission. There wouldn't be any time for rest in there that was for sure. Further inspection of the blueprints revealed more information, albeit not very much. Another interesting detail that had been discovered was a proposed tram system, although the SAILOR team did not know if it was actually completed or not; but it seemed like a good idea, considering the size of the island.
"That's the way it's going to look like. I don't like it, but this is something that we have to do," Amy said.
"What time are we heading from this ship again?" Lita asked. Amy had the answer immediately.
"About 0100hrs to get there about 0240. Guard times are usually at their weakest response at that point, and even with automated defenses, they still have to have actual humans patrol the fortress. Hence, our attack strategy."
"Understood. Anything else Serena?" Lita said.
Serena pondered the limited options they had set out in front of them. After about a minute, she came up with something. "Okay, as soon as we get into the submersible pen, Amy, you try to find any computers that'll allow access to the current specs on the base. It looks like there's an underground tram system that'll take us straight to the main base. Most of the tunnels in the island lead to observation posts, additional living quarters, and such, but the main base, like Amy pointed out earlier, is near the east side of the island. That's where the CIC, information warfare center, and Beryl's office is located."
"So, even though they have a bajillon kilometers worth of tunnels, most of them are useless?" Lita wondered why someone would build all of those tunnels just for them to sit empty. Unless Nakanishi was anything like the public works guys in Japan, who produced lots of roads to nowhere.
Serena continued on. "Not useless, just irrelevant to our mission. We need to secure information in the Nakanishi servers for both the Americans and our people to be used for better purposes."
"And what information would that be?" Raye asked, impatiently. She fucking hated briefings, and they sounded the same after awhile. She wanted to say, "Yes, we've been over this before, yes, going to fuck shit up, yes, we get to kill the bad guy, save the day. Can we fucking get on with it?"
Serena interrupted her thoughts on that one. Oh well.
"Well, the healing solution, for one. There's absolutely no information about that on what we recovered from both the Nakanishi HQ or the UK servers."
"Hell, that's important enough," Raye replied. "I don't know about you, but that'll save a lot of lives."
"Raye the pacifist. Never thought I'd see the day," Lita joked to her.
"I'm not a pacifist," Raye groaned. Any day now, she thought. Can we PLEASE get this briefing over with?
"But, we have to take out their nuclear option as well. That remains our highest priority before we take out Beryl or Kunzite. However…" Serena looked extremely concerned as she started in on that part of the mission. "We have no idea where they might have those nuclear weapons."
"Those blueprints though…" Lita started to say, but was cut off by Serena shaking her head.
"Like I said before, they only show the civil side of things, and all of the military grade stuff was added on at a later date. That we don't have."
Mina tried to keep things at least somewhat optimistic. "If we get into that facility however, won't we be able to determine where those nuclear weapons are?"
"That's the hope. Amy will help tremendously on that part of the mission."
"I can't believe that our only plan for getting these stupid nuclear weapons back come down to, 'let's make shit up as we go along,'" Raye bitched.
"Raye…" Serena glared at her, but she had a massive point concerning that part of the mission. If those nuclear weapons were detonated, millions of people would die, and they would have failed in their mission. Not having a dammed clue where they were was something that had to be taken into account, and resolved quickly.
"After we've secured the nuclear weapons, wherever they might be, we will proceed to the CIC here.
"The objective remains as follows; we are to eliminate the nuclear threat, eliminate Beryl and Kunzite, retrieve any useful information on projects they were working on, and clear the way for American Special Operations or any other landing force that is to secure the facility after this."
"How are we getting out?" Lita asked, probably one of the more important questions of the day. Not having a plan to get out, well, that was not going to end well.
"The same way we got back in, hopefully. If not, we can try to find an external exit that'll lead right toward the coast, and hopefully get picked up by friendly forces."
"That's it then, hmm?" Lita asked. "Then we fly back to Japan, and go back to our lives as usual?"
"I don't think as 'usual'," Amy said. "I finally put together that media package that will tell the entire story of the SAILOR team. Luna will release it once we've communicated with her that Beryl has been killed."
Amy turned her attention to Luna. "Did we miss anything, Luna?" Artemis and Luna were still on the video call, but there really wasn't much to say.
"That's a negative," she replied. "Standby, I have an incoming transmission." She switched over the incoming transmission.
"Er…is this the SAILOR team?" An older woman sat in front of a desk, tired looking but still full of whatever she kept running on.
"Who is this? How did you get this…oh, excuse me," Luna said. "Madame President."
"Yes, it is I," POTUS said back, taking a sip of yet another cup of coffee (it was up to about liter of coffee per day, maybe more). "Please put me into contact with your team."
"Uh, understood. Standby for a second." She put the President on hold, and contacted the SAILOR team to make sure that they were ready for her.
"Heads up guys," she said to the assembled team. "The President of the United States wishes to speak to you."
"Alright, put her up then," Serena said to her. "Amy…"
"I'll translate," was her response.
"Let's do it."
It took a bit longer than expected however. "Luna, what's going on?" Serena asked her.
Luna narrowed her eyes at the monitor in front of her. "I'm having some problems with some interference, please standby."
While Luna was busy getting that fixed, POTUS bugged her with some questions about the upcoming mission. Like everyone else, she was extremely nervous about the upcoming battle, and this little unit of hers was going to be the glue that held most of the pieces together. "Ms. Luna, while we're on the subject, can you tell me about the plan that the SAILOR team has in place to assault the Socotra fortress?"
"Standby, Madame President, I'll have my associate work on this. Artemis!"
"Yeah?" He had a face full of cheese puffs, as usual.
"Put down those goddamn puffs and help clear through this interference, okay?"
"Yep, I'm on it."
Once Artemis had gotten to work, Luna turned her attention to the President. "I'm sorry about that Madame President, as you were saying?"
"What's the plan for Socotra?"
Luna looked back through the notes she had been taking while the SAILOR team had been talking. "Madame President, I believe that the SAILOR will infiltrate the fortress using a disused submersible pen, and will then attempt to recon the base, find the nuclear weapons, and eliminate Beryl and Kunzite. Further details will be added along the way."
POTUS knew exactly what that statement meant; they had been doing it all the while when most of the Joint Chiefs and most of Congress had just gotten wiped out. "So they're just making it up as they go along."
"That would seem to be the case, Madame President," Luna said.
"Well, got to deal with what you've been given," POTUS said, smiling at Luna. Inside, she was panicking a little bit. Those nuclear weapons could kill many people, and she didn't need to imagine the consequences that would result in detonation.
"Yes, Madame President."
Artemis finally cut through the interference and managed to set up a link to the SAILOR team.
"Luna, I'm through."
"Alright, I'm patching you through now, Madame President."
A couple of seconds later, POTUS appeared on a video screen set up in the wardroom.
"Madame President, glad to have you with us," Amy said for the rest of the team.
POTUS nodded her acknowledgement. "I'll make this short, since you're heading out fairly soon, I take it."
"How do you know that again?" Amy asked suspiciously.
"Your…uh, 'Luna' told me about the plan you had in place. I think, given the circumstances, it's a good plan. Once you've secured the nuclear weapons, alert your communications officer and I'll send in the rest of the special operations teams to help secure the facility, provided you've found additional entrances to the base."
"Why can't you send in them with us?" It was Mina's turn to be suspicious.
"They would have to know about the nuclear threat beforehand, and hence, the brass as well. That would lead down a very slippery slope, and only after you've dealt with the nuclear weapons, then I can have them come in an assist you. "
"Very good then. What type of units are on standby?"
"Navy SEALs, Delta Force, Marine Recon, British SAS, French 1st Marine Parachute Regiment…but the foreign special forces units won't be in until after our guys go in first. That I can assure you."
"So, after we get the nuclear weapons, we can call for backup?" Serena asked, her English holding up. Amy was just translating for Lita and Raye, basically. Even then, they got the jist, and only had to have the more complicated phrases translated.
"If you would like, yes." Amy couldn't tell if the President was being sarcastic or not, as in "Yes, please secure the nuclear weapons and call for reinforcements, that might be helpful in the slightest." Amy quickly stopped thinking about that and gave her response to the President.
"Of course, Madame President. Thank you for all your support and help…I know that we're not from your country, but you took a big risk backing us up here."
"Not a problem Amy. And tell Ms…Serena?"
"Yes, it's Serena."
"Tell Serena there that her English is very good. I'm glad that at least something good has come out of this awful situation."
"Thank you," Serena said. She bowed at the President's image, along with everyone else.
That humbled POTUS for a moment. These five young women were about to do what many of her best special operations operatives trained for years to do. They did it in six months. Jesus. POTUS awkwardly bowed back, trying to convey her respects to the team, although it was always in the back of her mind that they were indeed, expendable. She wasn't going to let them onto that, although she suspected that they knew that she knew…but she hoped that it wouldn't come to that. They had saved her life, and she would hopefully do all that she could for them.
"One more message, from the Prime Minister of Japan."
Unlike the President, the SAILOR team had no respect for the PM. They would only listen to him because they had to. His face popped up on the screen a couple of seconds later; he looked tired, like POTUS.
"Um…hello?" Not a good start.
"Yes, what do you want, Prime Minister?" Serena asked quite impolitely in Japanese.
"Now, that's no way to address…"
"Prime Minister, please, just get to the point," Serena interrupted. The PM looked slightly shocked, but he deserved it, after all of what he'd done. He recovered and continued on.
"Well, the President of the United States briefed me on whatever plan you've got going down there. Good luck, and I promise you we'll get this all straightened out once you get back home." The PM was slightly hunched over, and though it was barely out of shot, a flask of whisky could be seen nearby. The drunk fucker, Serena bitterly thought to herself. I'm so glad that this man allowed me to be blown up, ripping both my legs off and then made to be a corporate hitman.
"Your help is greatly appreciated," Mina said, unconvinced by his sly words. She might as well have said, "Fuck you," and gotten it over with, but they still needed to think about the aftermath when they got back to Japan and told everyone about their whereabouts.
"If you have nothing else to say, Prime Minister," Serena said to him, "Then please leave us be. We have a mission to complete."
"Of course. Good lu…" Luna terminated the transmission before he could finish.
"Thanks," Amy said to her.
"Not a problem. His government probably won't see the end of the year," Luna coldly noted.
"What do you mean by that?" Artemis asked, opening up another bag of cheese puffs. Luna glared at him, but she had her own stash of chocolate bars in her purse.
"It mean, Artemis, that when the Diet gets together again for that special session, he's going to face a vote of no confidence. He's going to get voted out, and those Liberal Democrats are going to take power. Again."
"You don't sound so happy about that."
"Just stick to communications, Artemis," Luna said, grabbing one of the chocolate bars from her purse. She needed right now, and she figured that most of them would be gone halfway through the mission. At least she wasn't down there, doing the dirty work.
"Is there anything else that you require, SAILOR team?" Luna asked.
"Negative," Serena replied. "We'll get ready then. Thanks." She terminated the communications.
"Hand me some of that ammo, will you?" Lita pointed to a box of 5.56mm ammunition that was lying on a table. She was occupied with checking her M249 Para machine gun, completely decked out in customized parts; there was an added foregrip, an ACOG sight, and a polymer stock, reducing the weight of the weapon considerably. It was still a heavy weapon coming in at ten kilos, but like most of the weapons in their arsenal, Lita could carry it with ease. She also carried a Mossburg 500 shotgun, with the stock removed and the barrel shortened so it could be easily slung across her back, allowing her to complete her tasks. On her leg was a Mk23 pistol, similar to the M1911, but updated for the twenty-first century with all the bells and whistles that soldiers in the field needed; mainly, just a flashlight and a suppressor.
"Here you go." Serena gave the box to her. Serena had her trusty M4 CQB Receiver, which was actually appropriate for this type of mission, inside the close, cramped quarters of the fortress. Attached was the standard foregrip and a red-dot sight.
Raye on the other hand, was loading up even more than Lita; she grabbed a handful of grenades and clipped them onto her tactical vest, making sure to tape over the pins so that they would not snag on any loose equipment or obstacles. She slung two LAWs over her shoulder, much to the irritation of Serena.
"Raye, why do you need those?" Amy asked, curiously. Firing anti-tank weaponry inside an enclosed area was not exactly advised.
"Just in case."
Serena glared at her. "Raye, we don't need those. So leave them."
"Fine, geez. Can I at least take the grenade launcher?"
"Yeah, you do that." Raye had her longer M16A4 with an underslung Masterkey shotgun, which would be more than enough firepower unto itself in a normal situation; however, since this was a very dangerous operation she took a South African MGL grenade launcher, a rotary type weapon that fired a 40mm grenade. In addition to that staggering amount of firepower, she had a Glock 18 strapped to her leg, with an extended magazine for those close in encounters. She also tried to stuff two bricks of C4 explosives in a rucksack, just in case they would need it for doors or something like that. They didn't seem to fit in her already crowded loadout, so she passed them off to Lita.
"Why am I carrying your explosives?" Lita glared at Raye, putting them in one of her pants pockets, along with the blasting caps, wire, and detonator.
"Don't have enough room. I'm packing enough already as it is," Raye casually replied.
"Yeah. Excuses."
Amy checked her Glock 26, her old standby. On most missions they had been on, it had provided more than enough compact firepower. But today she would need more than a dinky pistol to get through that fortress, and in addition to her pistol she packed her favorite, the MP5-PDW. Both of those weapons were not exactly useful in the era where the proliferation of body armor made survivability on the battlefield even better, but at least it worked both ways. She thought that she might take a different weapon, but this configuration had served her well in the past, and plus, she wasn't going to the heavily lifting in terms of combat. Amy was carrying several computers; her HUD, her tablet computer, and a Toughbook for actually hacking into any systems she came across. There was only so much a tablet computer could do, and having an actual laptop with lots of processing power and the ability to take weapons fire was an invaluable asset. She put them in a waterproof container, so not to get them damaged in the cold water that they would swim in to access the base; damaged computers would obviously make things a lot harder.
Mina checked her own rifle, a newly delivered HK417, a highly adaptable battle rifle, designed for the specifics of close-in, modern day combat. She had the extremely compact version, a twelve inch barrel with a collapsible stock, foregrip, 5x scope and a flashlight, just for good measure. She also had a Mossburg 500 shotgun, like Lita, just for good measure. Her Glock 26 was strapped to her leg as well.
"Guys, make sure to have suppressors for at least one of your weapons."
"Yep, I got one," Lita said, pointing to her Mk23.
There were an array of suppressors for the different variety of weapons that they were using for this final mission, from the Glock 26, MP5-PDW, the M4 CQB Receiver, M16A4, and the HK417. Even the M249 was equipped with a suppressor, ridiculously enough. Using the suppressor in close quarters would lessen the sound that the report of the gun would make, but unlike video games it would not eliminate sound altogether, hence the misleading name "Silencer". This would confuse enemies on where exactly they were being shot from until it was too late.
"Lita, you'll be the go to person for suppressed weapons when we get up there…Raye, you'll have a suppressor on your rifle as well. You two will engage any enemies first, and we'll need some surprise for that. But it'll be wise to put them on for the rest of us as well. Try to keep things as quiet as possible."
After some more weapons checks, pocketing of grenades, flashbangs, and magazines, it was time for them to get a move on.
"Does anyone need to use the bathroom?" Lita asked jokingly. Suddenly, everyone felt like they had to use the bathroom.
"Er…yeah," Raye said, slowly inching toward one of the restrooms on the ship.
"I think I might have to go as well," Mina added. She was mimicking Raye, and was also inching her way toward the bathroom. Suddenly, Raye dropped all of her stuff and made a break for it, and the rest of the SAILOR team followed suit.
"GET OUT!" Raye yelled at the crew in the bathroom. It would have been awkward under normal circumstances, but these were no ordinary times. They needed no convincing, and several sailors scrambled to get out of the way of five very anxious and angry women.
"Okay, now are we ready for this?" Serena asked the rest of the team. Everyone felt much better, and despite them being on a ship, no one felt seasick or anything like that. Amy guessed that it was probably one of the (many) aftereffects of being exposed to that healing solution. They looked completely ridiculous, armed from head to toe with weapons, ammo, grenades, electronics, and armor. One thing that they did leave behind were helmets; they were too bulky for this type of operation, and would only get in the way. Their black wetsuits glistened in the harsh fluorescent light of the ship's armory, and the air was filled with the immense tension of the mission before them.
"Yeah," said Mina. "We are." The rest of the nodded their approval.
"Let's roll." The team walked through the corridors of the destroyer to abovedecks, where they would board the RIBs.
"Ma'am." An able seaman came up to them and saluted. "All of your stuff is in RIBs."
"Thank you."
"Who are you guys anyway?" They certainly didn't look Japanese, but…
"Sorry," Mina winked at him. "That's classified information."
"Of course." The seaman went to the controls to lower the RIBs into the water. The SAILOR Team boarded into the boats, ready to start their final mission.