Participants:
| Scene Title | To Break Fenrir's Chain |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Following in the death of King, Ethan sneaks into Jersey City to get to the bottom of Kazimir's plan, and comes face to face with the men he once knew as allies. |
| Date | January 21, 2009 |
Jersey City, Irradiated Zone: Vanguard Warehouse
Jersey City is a shithole.
Once you get past the reclained territory and out towards the harbor and into the Fallout Zone, it becomes painfully obvious what urbanization looks like when civilization moves out. Ice and snow flood the ground where pavement should be seen, no plow trucks or public works to clean the back alleys and buildings, no one to shovel the roofs of collapsing buildings and apartments gutted by fires. Manhattan is the sob-story of New York, while New Jersey is the forgotten tragedy that continues to rot in the sun.
Few areas of Jersey City are worse than the harbor district, a crumbling shithole back before the bomb, now only made worse by the visible decay of the brick-faced buildings and dilapidated warehouses. Boats left abandoned when the fallout cloud hit lie half sunken in frozen waters at ice-crusted piers, and labyrinthine mazes of railroad tracks and chain-link fences create an impression that this place is one cold and industrial circle of hell.
But somewhere amidst all of the isolation and desolation, the one person willing to brave the cold, the radiation, and the decay here finds everything he searches for. The sound of workers loading heavy cargo onto a flatbed railroad car is what gives him direction, leads him to where Rico Velasquez had fled to so many days prior, leads him to the heart of the Vanguard's more clandestine operations.
Behind a series of three interconnected warehouses, perched on the roof of an adjacent lot of storage facilities, Ethan's vision through his raised binoculars affords him a harrowing sight. Being loaded by four heavy cranes, a Russian T-80 tank lowers down onto the flatbed railcar. Soldiers in urban camouflage work the cranes and machines, their faces covered by black skimasks, likely to both conceal identity and keep out the freezing chill.
Inside of the warehouse, the noise of cargo being moved by forklift is accompanied by heavily armed soldiers in black body armor loading boxes of ammunition into yellow moving trucks.
He's found it.
Quietly, he reports what he sees into his headset, crouched here he is on the building with all the patience of a gargoyle. The report is brief, spoken tersely, before Ethan is moving back from the ledge of the roof, his view of the adjacent warehouses scoured into his mind for reference. "Yes sir," he confirms into his headset, the metal staircase winding up the side of the building that had acted as his post rattling underfoot as he heads for ground level. "I'm taking a closer look now."
On the ground, he gathers up his past training and lets it dictate every step, each one quiet and calculated, designed to veer towards shadow and away from the presence of others. If all goes well, they will never know he was here. The Wolf, in the past, has proven to be more than capable. All the same, the gun strapped to his torso beneath his jacket is a continual reminder of what has to happen should he prove not to be so today.
Crossing the railroad tracks between the adjacent buildings, the Wolf slips thorugh the gap between freight cars, some sixty feet beyond where the cranes are noisily loading the T-80 on to the flatbed. With the soldiers' attentions locked on the delicate process of raising a multi-ton tank off of the ground for shipment to God knows where, it allows Ethan the ease of slipping into the compound unnoticed.
Long shadows cast by floodlights give way to the Wolf as he makes headway between two of the interconnected warehouses, boots silently pressing down into frozen snow with each careful footfall. It's always been about control, now more so than ever. From his vantage point in the narrow passage between the warehouses, he can see a raised walkway overhead, an open catwalk that connects the two warehouses, one side having an open door, a half-lowered fire escape nearby provides easy enough access, with a little bit of legwork.
He waits for confirmation before attempting it, glancing up and down the narrow passage way as if crossing the street. Then, his strong hands clasp around the icy bars of the fire escape, gloves offering minimal protection, pulling himself up, booted feet scraping briefly against the brick of the exterior wall. With a last grunt, Ethan's knee finds purchase on the edge of the catwalk, breathing out an expulsion of steam into icy, Jersey air. He's paused for a long moment on the catwalk, before, as quiet as he can on the rickety metal, makes his way for the door, at a half-crouch, back bent.
His hand disappears inside his jacket, and extracts the gun. A silencer is connected to the barrel with militant efficiency. "Entering," is his only confirmation, before slipping inside the building. He's neglected kevlar - this is a silent operation and if a firefight occurs, he's already failed. Still, the gun is heavy in his hand, and he murmurs everything he sees into his headset, continually reporting back to those still loyal to him. Those that Kazimir neglected in favour of all of this.
Slipping into the second floor of the warehouse, it's clear something was recently assembled in here. A metal scaffolding has been erected down on the ground floor, planks laid out for workers to walk around something. Tall and wheeled boxes of tools are still left out, along with a table covered with print schmematics. "Alright, come on, clean this shit up 'ere, we're back to the coast in twenty!" A familiar voice, an unexpected voice. Pacing back and forth on the ground floor, dressed in urban camouflage with a black vest worn over, matching the knit cap covering his head, is a man brought in to the Vanguard and trained by Ethan personally. Drake Leeds. Former British SAS, a merciless and highly skilled soldier.
"Chavo, Estes, Silus!" He shouts to three of the masked soldiers, waving one hand towards the front door, "Get those goddamned rockets out of here and onto the train!" Rockets? Sure enough, down near the warehouse back entrance, stacks of crates marked with "explosives," enough to make Elias' most moist dreams come true.
"David, Briggs, West!" Another hand waving towards more soldiers, "Pick up those tools, pack 'em up and keep 'em out of the way. You're with me when we take off!" They're mobilizing, everything is moving along according to some unheard tick of a meteronome, it's worse than expected. Counting the men outside and the ones in here, there's at least one hundred and fifty, maybe more. Between that and the men at Eagle Electric, it puts the number somewhere near two-hundred.
The Wolf's has worse odds. But not by much.
"Fuck me," Ethan mutters, to the curiosity of those on the other side of his comms device. He licks his lips once, before reporting on the approximate numbers, and the things being handled and stored. "And Drake Leeds," the Wolf reports gruffly, gaze shifting from the familiar man to regard the less important shadows nearby. His fingers creak a little around his gun - not out of some misplaced feeling of betrayal, exactly, but out of the want to end things now, before they can even begin. "They're buildin' themselves an army," he says, then amends that with, "in that they already got one."
"Holden." The voice, thick with consonants, comes from behind where Ethan crouches, followed by a swift kick to his kidneys that sends him sprawling to the ground. A quick recovery, rolling with the blow sends the Wolf back up onto his feet, crouching on the catwalk and standing face-to-face with the one man in the Vanguard that he wouldn't want to have to go knuckle-to-knuckle with — Hans Kazakova. "I thought I smell't a dog." He is an enormous man, not nearly as tall as King, but equally as well muscled. With a flick of one hand, he whips his combat knife out from the sheath on his vest, holding it backhanded with a snarl across his lips. Ethan has met Hans on several occasions, a former Spetzsnaz officer, and practitioner of a brutally efficient form of martial arts — Systema.
Below, the sound of Ethan's body slamming to the catwalk draws attention from the soldiers, and from Drake, "Fuck me." He hisses out through his teeth, unholstering his sidearm as he makes a break for the stairs on the opposite side of the warehouse, quickly climbing the steps.
There are shouts, yes, commands to capture the cat amongst the chickens, but more importantly, commands move swiftly through radio, satellite, and every man here seems to be a soldier. Not the least of which is the man standing above him with a knife in his hand. "Kasakova," the Wolf says harshly - less for dramatic effect, more for the headset still attached, and all the while, is long arm swings in a wide arc to point his gun, and squeezes the trigger. The bullet goes wild as the weapon is kicked to the side, but it's enough - it's a distraction to occupy Hans' attention for a few crucial seconds that might get Ethan to his feet, which is his next mission.
Ethan rises up from his crouch, stepping in towards Hans, towards the exit his bulky frame blocks. A shoulder is thrown into the man's midsection, but he doesn't buckle — expected. Nothing worth doing was ever easy, and beating the ever-loving hell out of Hans is very much worth doing. This is likely the man that let the orders be dropped on Eileen's life, the man organizing this whole mess. A hammer-like blow strikes Ethan square in the shoulder, dropping him to his knees. One knee is raised, but Etuan moves his head to the side, grabbing one of Hans' legs and twisting with all his might, yanking the man down to the ground.
You have to take yur licks, to get what you want.
Before he's even caught the wind that was knocked out of him from the fall, Hans draws back a foot and kicks Ethan in the top of the head — once, twice, three times. Each kick sends him a little further back, until the Wolf can sink his teeth in, grabbing the leg with one arm and swinging his pistol around, leveling it squarely at Hans.
A gunshot rings out from across the catwalk, and a bullet tears through Ethan's arm at the wrist, sending his gun clattering to the metal catwalk. Across the building, Drake stands with his gun held out in both hands, having taken a long shot to prevent Ethan from executing his commanding officer. In the seething sea of pain from the shot, Hans swings one leg around, striking Ethan in the jaw and sending him colliding with the wood wall, knocking him up to his feet and then back to the ground, before he's able to scramble up to a crouch again. Hans rises, tilting his head to the side with a pop of his neck, wiping blood from his lip as he holds one hand towards Drake.
It's a signal. Don't shoot, he's mine.
His right arm folded against his midsection, leaking blood, Ethan hears only the pounding of his blood through his arteries, other hand spread against the metal catwalk and shoulder leaning against the wall. He sees, out the corner of his eye, that indication preventing his execution, and something like a crooked, lazy smile spreads across Ethan's face. Unlike him, in some ways, but with a shattered wrist in the den of lions, it's hardly surprising. He turns his head and spits, saliva tainted pink with blood from the kick to his jaw, before he slides back up to stand. The headset is drawn off, falls with a clatter on the floor.
"Well, motherfucker, let's dance." And then, rather simply, he charges, throwing his own bulky frame into the one blocking the exit, his shoulder catching Hans' stomach and sending both crashing to the ground.
A knife sinks in. Ethan hardly notices. Adrenaline will do that to you.
His hands seeking Hans' arm, strong fingers around his wrist and slamming is down upon metal, again, and again, until it loosens the knife from his hand. A sharp headbutt sends Ethan rolling off him, scrabbling like a mad dog in a corner, and making a rush for the door.
Hans' head strikes the catwalk with a loud, metallic clang. And the soldier rolls onto his side, grabbing his disarmed knife as he pushes up with his other hand, throwing himself towards Ethan from the ground, slashing out to drive the knife hilt deep into the back of Ethan's calf, dragging the blade down from calf to heel, spraying himself with blood as he hamstrings the soldier. The catwalk clangs and clanks as Drake rushes around from the othr side, gun still trained on Ethan, but no shots fired.
Hans struggles up to his feet, even as Ethan wheels around to deliver a roundhouse kick to his jaw with his good leg, sending Hans staggering back against the railing. Hopping on his one good leg, Ethan makes his way out onto the catwalk as a hal of gunfire fills the air, the soldiers outside opening with automatic weapons, sparks showering the area from ricochets. Ethan grunts as a bullet whizzes up, grazing his shoulder and sending him down to the ground with a crash.
And a clink.
And a tink, tink, rattle.
His fingers curl around the pin of the grenade he tore from his vest, and the grenade lands down below the catwalk in the snow. Three soldiers stare down at it, in the moment before it detonates and sprays them like a chunky red vapor across the brick walls of the warehouse, followed by a plume of black smoke and stone dust the rushes up from either side of the iron railings.
Hans' shadow looms in the door, blood running from his mouth, knife in hand. He breathes in heavy breaths, pieces of brick and tattered uniforms raining down on the catwalk, floodlights gleaming in his knife's chromed surface.
Ethan's good hand tears loose a knife from inside his jacket - smaller than the combat knife currently gleaming in Hans' hand, a pocketknife that unfolds with a flick. Blood-stained teeth similarly gleam as Ethan almost bears them in some mix of a grin and a snarl, using his elbow to shimmy himself away from Hans, trailing blood from a leg hangs a little dead from his body, the other foot digging his heel against the metal surface as he pushes himself away
A glance back towards the fire escape— too far— and the footfalls from Hans' approach make the catwalk vibrate. Ethan's hand reaches out to clasp the railing of the catwalk, to pull himself up and over, to fall the rest of the way in a somewhat suicidal move of escape, but in one lithe movement, Hans' moves to bring that knife down, to spill entrails on the rattling catwalk.
Thwip
The bullet rips through Ethan's skull with relative ease, penetrating through one side of his head and leaving out the other. Blood practically explodes in the split second that the bullet hits the Wolf's skull. Apparently Ethan isn't as untouchable as he once thought himself. Even legends die, as evidence as the suddenly very limp body, tipping up and over the railing of the catwalk.
The hammer is pulled back again, and another bullet let loose. Moving the scope over a fraction causes this next bullet to clip the right shoulder of the now very surprised Hans. Two more bullets rip through the air at Hans, though they both miss the burly frame of the man. Four shots. More than enough time to start responding..
It's time to go.
His eye pulls away from the scope, his naked gaze scanning the scene almost lazily. A gloved hand sans the fingers of the glove reach up to pull the burning cigarette away from his lips. A light sigh is emitted, smoke billowing up around his scruffy features. The gun is quickly disassembled, the barrel being removed and placed into the steel clase sitting next to him on the rooftop far away from Hans, Ethan, and their catwalk. Closing the steel case the man goes into a crouch to grip the case. His long green trench coat splayed out at his feet, the man looks more like a homeless vagrant than a dealer of death. But a death he has given.
The cigarette is tossed effortlessly over his shoulder as the man lifts the case and makes his retreat from this scuffle.
He doesn't even look back.
"What the f— " Hans staggers back from the shot, falling into the warehouse through the door, even as Ethan's blood sprays across him. Smashing into the railing on the interior catwalk, Hans crumples to one knee, his hand moving up to feel at the bullet wound even as Drake rushes to his side and presses his shoulder against the door frame. "Shit. Bloody shit." His eyes dip down, looking to the red mess dripping through the catwalk where Ethan was. He catches sight of movement, someone dashing across the rooftops and moves out onto the catwalk, opening fire with his unsilenced pistol.
A barrage of bullets strike snow, and Drake turns to quickly look down to the ground below the raised walkway — bodies — the dismembered remains of soldiers hit by Ethan's grenade, and there face down in the snow, head surrounded by a halo of blood, lies the motionless corpse of the Wolf. Drake's brows furrow together, lips curling back into a snarl.
Radio silence is broken, a crackle of static as Drake presses the reciever on his shoulder-mounted walkie. "Ellinka, target moving northeast of Home-Zero, do you have a bead?"
«Positive.» Ellinka replies in a crackling voice over the radio, and Drake's snarl turns into a baleful scowl.
"Take the fucker out." The moment Drake's words are spoken, there is a sound like a crack of thunder and a flash of a tracer round whipping through the night's sky. The bolt of her Anti-Mechanized Sniper Rifle lances thorugh a wall, blasting a two foot hole in brick that explodes just a foot from where the shadowed figure runs along the rooftops.
«Target moving, going into full auto.» Drake ducks as he hears that, and suddenly the sky lights up as if it were the Fourth of July. Tracer rounds rip through the skies from some high aerial vantage point across the other side of the abandoned city. The high-velocity tungsten rounds tear through the air, demolishing the wall in a line behind the unknown man as he continues to run, leaping into the air, green trenchcoat flaring out behind him before he lands in a crouch on another rooftop, rolling to the ground as a shrieking bolt of glowing white-yellow light rips through the air, causing a chimney to erupt in a shower of broken bricks and stone dust.
The green trenchcoat shadow, ducks lower into his run as the shards of brick and stone bounce against his outstretched arm. The man casts a look over his shoulder at the plethora of gun fire coming his way. His lips turn up into a grin. Hopping the gap to the next rooftop, the man continues in his race across the snow and ice, Ellinka's fire demolishing the surface around him as he goes.
Throwing one arm out he comes to a skidding stop at the edge of this roof. The ice causing it a rather tough spot to stop on. Placing his foot on the lip of the edge, he thrusts himself to turn around suddenly. So that he is looking straight at where Ellinka should be. His head is cocked to the side, as if asking some unvoiced question of the sniper. Reaching into his pocket, the man gives a soft grin as he pulls out the small black device.
Then presses a button.
The center of the roof where the man had been rushing suddenly explodes into the air, making visibility impossible behind the large explosion of flame and debris. Once the dust clears, there is no sign of the man nor his green trenchcoat, nor his steel case. The man simply vanished behind the explosion.
Later on, Hans and his men will find a set of footprints in the snow that lead to nowhere in particular. A sign. An intentional reminder that they could not catch him.
Rafe has made quite an impression.
 January 21st: A Life To Get Back To |
 January 22nd: Unpardoned |