The Harp Incident-08

Whatever the subject's life was before, it's over and so was his legal identity. Control had him declared dead; his new code-name was all that was left for him now: "Epyon".

Epyon trained hard, his powers allowing him to push himself further faster than anyone else possibly could. Under Agency guidance, and control, he acclimated quickly; Jan's preliminary profile of him served as the basis for a complete and comprehensive profile through which Control ensured the loyalty of Epyon to our cause.

Meanwhile, the others and I headed out to track down Carrano and his fellow Squid. Carrano came up in Argentina, so off we went. We caught up with him at the home of a major drug cartel head, so we assumed covers as FBI and DEA agents using international treaties and other agreements to pull off a covert operation in a foreign state in a manner deniable to the Agency. That wasn't the hard part; the hard part was to keep our operation under wraps in a country with notorious corruption issues- amongst other known issues.

Jan and Aaron did the talking, again. As the lead agents, they handled the local officials and bullshat U.S. assets into assisting us- with Matt backing them up on the electronic end. Eric and I did the heavy lifting, as it were; we had to clean up some local messes to buy assistance from the more reluctant--but otherwise friendly--assets, and do it cleanly, but that didn't take long and we kept our shirts tucked in while we did it.

The operation, once we had what we needed ready, went as I expected. We came in at dusk, when we knew that the host would be hip-deep in women while partying with other guests and otherwise playing the Good Host expected of a high-rolling cartel kingpin. Jan worked her way through the crowd to get to the host, while Aaron networked his way towards Carrano. Eric stood by with the getaway, Matt monitoring by way of a drone in the sky overhead, and I was well away watching Jan and Aaron with a rifle trained on the scene.

The play was simple enough. The cover operation was a blackbag job. Jan slipped a tracker on the host; he would later get killed by a missile fired from the drone. I popped one of the high-profile guests, the son of another high-roller gangster there to work out an arrangement from the Golden Triangle to Argentina--heroin for cocaine, as I recall, w/ some guns mixed into it--and in the panic Aaron would taze and take Carrano.

Hours later, as we took off back for the Oubliette with Carrano in custody, taking pleasure in a well-executed plan we got word from Control.

"Debrief from Epyon incidents a bigger problem regarding the arrays. I've sent a flier to take your package; you and your team will proceed to new coordinates."

Well, that escalated quickly.