Freedom Day

Chapter 11 - "Retribution"

Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Fort Bragg, North Carolina
0824 hours

Day 11

...

"Where did you get this?", Ethan spoke to the device on his ear, all the while opening the email.

"Archived reports from the Beaver State...", Emily Jacobsen replied, her voice slightly muffled by the cellphone's signal. "...Back in '95, ATF seized guns from a bunch of survivalist nutjobs east of Willamette. Quite close to the coordinates you gave me."

"Two years after Waco, huh? This happened near the wine country?"

"Yep. Loose firearms sometimes turn up in the most obscure places... Anyway, ATF didn't nab any big players, but they dug up a few things about one of the houses they raided... Mostly floorplans and invoices, written under one of Leonard Fausse's aliases..."

The email contained an old photo of the recently-deceased leader of America's True Patriots. He posed himself as a mustached fellow with thinning hair named 'Richard Roe', the most obvious of fakes. The stupid fool practically sold himself out, but the Feds didn't catch the ruse, for some reason.

Ethan held back a yawn while he leaned back on his seat, trying his best to fight off the lingering drowsiness. Only a few minutes had gone by after he had breakfast with the team at the mess hall. After an hour, Seamus would call them back to the briefing room for the daily sitrep. Nearly everybody was focused upcoming deployment to New York, just a couple of weeks away. Some of the guys were getting restless, but the rest kept themselves busy with other stuff. Meghan Castellano kept in touch with her friends at the Office of Naval Intelligence in Maryland, mostly skimming for news about the on-going hunt for the White Masks. Sébastien Côté, who previously worked with the ATF in his cop years, had also checked in with his old friends for anything on the wire. Two people kept their ears to the ground, so to speak.

But they weren't the only ones working hard. Going beyond his job description as a humble Operator, Ethan took the initiative to drum up leads as well. Hence, his recent meeting with Emily, the red-haired CIA lady that he used to call his boss. He was eager to lend a hand, both to prove his worth and to do something other than twiddle with his thumbs. This morning, his friend had finally come through with her promise: the location of a remote farm complex that used to be the site of a major criminal enterprise back in the 90s. The laptop screen had a smorgasbord of data mingled with several photographs, among them were a few gray-scale images, spanning years of undercover police work and satellite recon. Most of them were almost a decade old, back from when America's True Patriots were still an unknown quantity.

"...I'm not sure what happened after that, though...", Emily continued. "...The case files were redacted and sealed when I got my hands on them."

"You're shitting me. ATF didn't tell anyone at Homeland about this?"

"Beats me. Hell, nobody here at Special Activities even knew about this case until I showed them those coordinates of yours."

"Wait, you're telling me that you guys are also learning this just now?", the man with the cellphone frowned. "The hell has Langley been doing all this time?"

"Busy. It's called 'compartmentalization', Ace.", she defended.

"Why? What's going on with you guys?"

"Two hints: 'cyber ops' and 'Yongsan'."

She dodged the question, as expected. The man sighed and took a second look at his laptop, once again going over the floorplans emailed to him. 'The Compound'. Built in the 70's, this rustic piece of property changed hands several times until it was bought by a farming collective, in reality run by one of Fausse's front groups, as their headquarters. The place itself covered several hectares of arable land, dotted by a few shacks and greenhouses. The centerpiece, however, was the main ranch building: two floors and a basement, plus enough space to house a small company of men. It was also isolated, had clear sightlines to the major roads, and was innocuous enough to not raise suspicion from passersby. From a tactical perspective, the place seemed like the perfect spot to set up one's base of operations. It's hard to see why the Feds didn't pay it much heed back then, but these were the same people who didn't anticipate what the wacky 'populist revolutionary' would eventually become.