//------------------------------// // Deployment // Story: Do you believe in Ghosts? // by Material Defender //------------------------------// Author's Note: This short film is highly recommended viewing if you're not familiar with Ghost Recon, especially Future Soldier. This film gives a good idea of the kind of armaments, armor, and technologies the Ghosts have at their disposal. If you're already a Tom Clancy fan, then enjoy. To: Captain James Talbot From: Acting General Michael S. Noriega Captain, you have standing orders to track down and bring back Julius Maynard. We've finally received location on where the traitor is; SOCOM will update you further with a full info dump. I must warn you, Captain, Maynard can well be considered insane; briliant, but insane. He's a genius, and he's outsmarted almost all our attempts to track him down, eluding even our best NSA and CIA operatives. He is dangerous, make no mistake. Take him in alive if you can; we need to know what he knows, but if he tries anything you think is out of place, kill him. Another thing: we know that your entire squad was killed when the war began, and I apologize in advance for having you run so many operations solo or with OGAs. I hope that the new Ghost squad we've managed to put together for you a couple of years ago has turned out well. I won't lie to you, Captain, you're going to need to work together to make it out of this one alive. Maynard is just too important to leave running amok. Do whatever needs to be done to take him back, dead or alive. Important he may be, he still committed treason, and he's going to pay for it. I'm giving you full authorization to anything you need in the arsenal, but nothing more; anything that would give you away cannot be used as Maynard will have an escape plan prepared. Do not come back empty-handed. I will also be sending messages directly to your squad to let them know how important this is. SOCOM Field Intelligence Classified: Only Authorized Eyes May View Unit Deployment: United States Army, Ghost Recon, Anvil Squad Location of deployment: Fortaleza, Brazil Date of Deployment: 09/XX/2020 Deployed Soldiers: Captain James "Talon" Talbot, Squad Lead Lieutenant Kevin "Shell" Pastor, Rifleman Corporal Manuel "Fuse" Mendoza, Demolitions Corporal Burt "Scope" Raymond, Sniper Available Resources: Heavy Ordnance Arsenal: GRANTED Field Operations Arsenal: GRANTED Intelligence Operations Arsenal: GRANTED HAMMER Drones: DENIED Infantry Support: DENIED Close Air Support: DENIED Cavalry Support: DENIED NOTE //FROM SOCOM//: General Noriega has deemed this a discretionary operation, but stealth is suggested. Unsuppressed weapons allowed, but do not make noise or it will give you away. Quartermaster advises using suppressed secondaries. DOSSIER: FORTALEZA Fortaleza, like most of South America, was spared the onslaught of being bombarded with ICBMs at the beginning of the war. Most of the city is intact, if not overcrowded due to refugees pouring in from the major cities like Rio, which unfortunately wasn't spared. Crime is rampant, the area is dangerous. Local militia groups run the city and will shoot anything they think is out of place. Agents are in place to deploy Anvil north of the city, near the rainforest. It's the only option we have as Maynard can't spare that many of his men to watch the entire coastline, and he has eyes in the city. DOSSIER: THE VILLA The villa is located in the highlands due west of Fortaleza. Maynard has taken upon himself to seemingly construct and modify the place heavily; we only have plans from the initial construction, use those as you will. He will have most likely turned the place into a bunker base of sorts, but our intel suggests that he hates over-reliance on technology, so he will have more conventional safeguards in place. Be careful. Our agents couldn't get close enough as Maynard's men would have spotted them. DOSSIER: MAYNARD'S MEN Best suggestion would be mercenaries, hired off the black market. Combat experience levels may vary, but expect these men to have done serious soldier time. Maynard has shown no favor towards any faction participating in the war so far; it would seem he's trying to stay out of the crossfires as long as he can, so his men aren't from any specific nationality. But he has made deals with a number of organizations that the NSA has seen working in-country within the past decade. Expect them to be armed with the best that the black market can offer. Numbers unknown, expect at least 50. Patrol patterns may fluctuate as they have been there for over half a year with nothing to do. DOSSIER: JULIUS MAYNARD Julius Maynard is a former intelligence analyst that worked in the NSA, specifically for OGAs that are classified. He worked the system during his entire time there, selling information and acting as a mole, until he overplayed his hand at the beginning of the war, revealing his true nature after he was caught dealing as an information broker on the black market. He had substantial connections as he deployed his own armed force against NSA forces during his escape from the DC facility, where he then seemingly disappeared. Maynard is a class-A genius, a prodigy in the fields of science. Unfortunately, he was also a bit crazy. Reports from coworkers indicated that he often distrusted others and rarely, if ever, divulged any personal information about himself. It would seem he used his position to wipe his records somehow as that's all we have to go on him. However, a coworker reports that he has a dislike for over-reliance on technology as he thinks everything can be hacked; he prefers doing things the old-fashioned way. A number of top US and EU scientist kidnappings were assumed to be connected to him. Top-level physicists and engineers in their fields, just kidnapped out of nowhere. Whatever Maynard is working on, it can't be good. To: Captain James Talbot From: Lieutenant Kevin Pastor Looks like it's that time again, eh, boss? Almost two years now. You've been a good captain to us all. God knows what we all felt like after we learned that our squads were KIA'd within a week at the beginning. I know Fuse is still dealing with his loss; he had a family in Los Angeles when it got hit by the Russians, and they didn't make it out. Scope's been as cold as he usually is, he's about as much career soldier as you are. And don't worry about me, I'm fine, and so's my family. Up in Montana at the refugee camps now, since they started moving all the civilians away from the coast for their safety, but it's gonna be a bit bittersweet to leave 'em like that... Shell To: Lieutenant Kevin Pastor From: Captain James Talbot You've been a good LT, Kevin, no doubt about that. Nice to see that your family is doing well. On to the mission: Maynard is a real screwball, and we'll need to be at the top for this mission to go right. Keep an eye on Fuse when you can. I know his loss is hard. He came and talked to me about it a few weeks back. He's getting over it now, after I reminded him that we're Ghosts, and we still have a job to do. He could still use a few more talks before he gets it out of his system. Talon To: Captain James Talbot From: Corporal Burt Raymond Good to go and ready to kill, boss. SOCOM says we'll be deploying from sea. Looking forward to it. Haven't been to Fortaleza for a while. Traveling from Bragg right now to the Constitution, the aircraft carrier's gonna be taking us a bit into the Atlantic before we air-drop in with a Zodiac. I saw that we got the green light to the heavy ordnance. Keep the fireworks away from Fuse and we'll have less accidents. Scope To: Captain James Talbot From: Corporal Manuel Mendoza I reflected on that talk we had a while back, you know? Just felt really shitty. How all of my brothers and sisters and my parents died, but I'm still alive. Then you talked to me. The world's a shitty place right now, but everything just clicked. I know we have a job to do, and that's what I signed up for. Know you're my boss, but you've also been a real amigo to all of us. Gracias for that. I heard we got access to the heavy ordnance. I really want to get my hands on those nasty shoulder-mounted rocket pods that I saw Bones' squad using in Russia. That's some real man-portable ordnance, you know? Man, I must be feeling a lot better than I thought, just running off my mouth about explosives again, haha. It's going to be good to see the squad again. But Scope still kind of scares me sometimes, you know? He's like a robot with that rifle of his. Fuse To: Lieutenant Kevin Pastor, Corporal Burt Raymond, Corporal Manuel Mendoza From: Captain James Talbot I'll be seeing you all on the Constitution. As you may well know from the info dump, we're going after a serious screwball. I need all of you to be in your A-game if we want to make it through this, and I'll expect no less from Ghosts. We deploy at 1730 hours. Get yourselves some sleep until then. Talon