On a mission for their UCAS handler Mr. Smith, who was behaving rather strangely, Templar, Bubbles and Visage infiltrated a wellness resort for those with money to burn. With the help of the decker Bluepin the team posed as rich excentrics there for a well-deserved holiday. Their goal here was to extract cartel-daughter Daniella Mirando against her will during the second night of her stay.
The team quickly hit up the locals for information, managing to land intel on how to call off the resort’s guard dogs, location and habits of Daniella in the evening, as well as a copy of the keycard belonging to billionaire guest Richard William Dickens IV. They also managed to covertly place datatap dongles at the reception and in two likely-cartel-owned cars. The one complication they did run into was that Dickens likely knew they had copied his card, though he didn’t seem to mind.
And now:
After finishing their reconnassaince of the resort, and covertly copying a staff’s keycard on the way, Templar and Bubbles went to their quarters. There they promptly bugged the camera in their living room, then sneakily also bugged the cameras in the corridor outside. (No cameras present in bedrooms of course.) Unfortunately the one in Visage’s living room would have to wait until he came back, because even though their quarters were connected he’d have to unlock the door frim his side first.
Bluepin let the two know that with the planted dongles so far, come curfew he and the flyspies would be able to spread out datataps and take over most of the cameras. The main problem would be doors, which could only be bugged when ajar. He also had managed to crack the reception’s files and now knew what room Daniella Mirando and her bodyguards were staying, in a dual-quarters setup quite alike the team’s.
Shortly after Visage joined the others and informed them of what he knew of Daniella’s schedule. The team quickly bugged Visage’s room and went back out to pretend all was normal. It was then that Bubbles received curious intel from one of her Roto-Drones: It had spotted a car hidden outside the resort, blinded windows and all. As for the brand of the car? Another Mexican-favoured vehicle… It appeared there weren’t only bodyguards inside here.
During dinnertime Visage went to the pool to make contact with their target, managing to make a good enough impression for her to call off her guards. She then had a pleasant lengthy conversation with him. When the time for her massage arrived, Visage had been smooth enough for her to invite him back for the next day. She wanted to get to know him better, and it was rather strongly implied she meant in the biblical sense…
While Visage was flirting Templar had gone to bed early, to guarantee a good night sleep. Shortly after Dickens dropped by to make good on their invitation. When Bubbles tried to ditch him by noting Templar had already gone to bed, Dickens his simple response was that he only cared for actual women. (NOTE: Templar only surficially disguises himself as female, he is still a male and does not identify as anything else.)
How Dickens had pierced Templar’s disguise, Bubbles did not not know but clearly he had. Dickens asked for a sweet smile and received a rather awkward one. Disappointed, he then told Bubbles to say hi to her uncle Samuel before leaving.
In the morning the team discussed their options, given their intel and hacker preparations. They could target Daniella at the pool, in transit, at her massage or in her quarters. They felt taking on the bodyguards directly would be risky, so instead they needed a place where they could cut those off, leaving massage and bedroom as available options. Given how Visage likely would be sharing Mirando’s bed if he tried, and how unlikely it’d be for her to have a bodyguard with her at that time, the group eventually decided on the bedroom. With the crewmember’s keycard they could lock the doors of the bodyguards, leaving them trapped while the group made for a getaway. And since chemsniffers and detectors hadn’t picked up Visage’s shockgloves, he could easily take on Daniella if needed.
By now Bubbles her Roto-drones had noticed a second Mexican car outside the resort grounds. As they upheld their surveillance, they got lucky when the driver stepped out of the second car to take a leak. When the drone overheard a voice from inside the car, warning the driver Mirando would kill him if found out, it became rather obvious that the men outside had been sent by Carlos Mirando to protect his daughter.
To distract the men outside the resort, the team decided they would use the hacked Mexican cars to distract the enemies outside, then make their getaway in another vehicle. They weren’t sure on what car to use for their own getaway yet though. For now Bubbles and Templar went to check out the massage area, to keep their options open. And who else would they encounter there but Dickens, accompanied by two ladies and one of the resort’s masseurs.
Dickens took some time to engage the agents in idle conversation, flirting as always and asking for a smile from Templar. Templar did much better on delivering quite the charming one, satisfying Dickens his desires. As reward he told the two that in the evening he planned to stay away from areas where he’d have to use his keycard. In other words, the two realized, the security system wouldn’t spook if they were to use their copy of his keycard during their extraction.
Before they parted ways Bubbles had a realization and asked if Dickens had an awesome car with him. For a second the conman’s pokerface slipped as he scoffed “a?!” and noted he had two Eurocar Westwind 3000s with him, which incidentally his keycard also unlocked. However, there was a catch to this information: Dickens softly informed them that if they were going to use his car, he wanted the footage of their actions within the week. If they didn’t give that to him in time, he’d hunt them down for sure… After handing them a card with a commcode, Dickens smiled and returned to the ladies accompanying him.
In the evening Visage once again joined Daniella at the pool. After talking for a while, they went for a lengthy massage which was utterly delightful, then retired to Daniella’s room. As predicted she made her bodyguards stay in their own room and soon, while the others hid nearby with Bluepin’s help, Visage joined Daniella in her bed.
When at long last the deed was done and the lady quite exhausted, Visage heartlessly struck with a shockglove while the others locked the bodyguards in their room. Bluepin started taking over the cameras and easily let the group, while carrying an unconscious Daniella with them, get to the garage to steal their cars and get out of dodge fast.
Bubbles sent the rigged cars off first, luring Mirando’s men outside away from the resort and straight into inevitable police chases. Not one to miss chances, Templar took the opportunity to let one of the rigged cars pretend to be his. To be precise, to be owned by the fake SIN suspected of murder of a Lone Star… While the sirens wailed and a rain of bullets ended the cartel members their lives, the group picked up their Roto-Drones and drove their Westwind towards their extraction point.
At their delivery spot, a warehouse without anything in it barring a chair with cuffs and a table with a hologram projector on it. The agents first carefully inspected the chair and table, still worried about their handler’s suspicious behaviour, before tying up their prisoner and waking her up. As the video started playing on the projetor, the team stepped back into the shadows and observed the scene.
On the screen their handler, Mr. Smith, explained to Daniella that her father had been keeping some bad friends in recent days and had involved himself with a member of a rather dangerous terrorist organisation. As for said bad friend, Smith wanted to show her a video about the man. His figure was replaced with a video from an airborn camera, filming a military camp in the jungle from quite a while removed, with dozens of soldiers around. Without warning a massive explosion obliterated the entire camp…
The screen cut back to Mr. Smith who reminded Daniella it would be in her best interest to make sure her father kept better friends from now on. Then came Smith’s final statement, which lifted part of the curtain on his motives here, with a very important warning: “Stay away from my daughter.” And with that the video stopped playing…
The team untied Daniella Mirando and let her take Dickens’s car to wherever she wanted. Themselves, with their pay in hand and having just finished an unsanctioned personal job while breaking many laws, it was time to move. Specifically it was time to scrub the footage of identifying personal details, send Dickens his payment and get the hell out of dodge to find a hole to crawl into. Preferably a hole with air conditioning and room service.
Shadowland 
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[…] To be continued… […]