Dramatis Personæ

FUBAR Operation

  • Mahoney, at the soccer match at Al Masry Club stadium, watches the Egyptian National Security (NSA) agents draw their sidearms and converge on CS:Heimdall and CS:Baldr, the latter of which produces a Mini-Uzi and sprays indiscriminate automatic fire, while the former calmly surrenders himself. Mahoney follows CS: Baldr as he escapes from the stadium in the press of the crowd. Seeing his quarry flee on a stolen scooter, Mahoney commandeers his own (flashing one of the stolen NSA badges) and gives chase, ending in a fiery crash in a crowded market, with the quarry injured and unconscious. Mahoney wraps the man in a carpet and hauls him away to an alley, to await pickup by the rest of the team.
  • As the Egyptian police converge on the storefront CS:Bragi had entered, Vega stays out of the way and waits, watching. He spots the mystery-man slipping out the back of the store in disguise, and follows him on foot, where the man enters a mosque. He waits outside for some time, but never sees his quarry emerge, and later decides he must have slipped away. Returning to his stolen Mercedes, Vega finds a local motorcycle-policeman has identified it as stolen, and is in the process of having it impounded. Vega waited for the policeman to enter a nearby shop to ask questions, slashed the motorcycle’s fuel-line, and sped away in the Mercedes.
  • On the way to their room at the AraCan hotel, Hurt and Baum (still wearing only a towel) have to share an elevator with some Egyptian police and a familiar NSA agent (with a bruised neck, from being choked out earlier). The police exit, but the agent returns to stop the door, perhaps having recognized Hurt. Baum quickly pulls the agent into elevator & the two choke him out (again). The unconscious agent is taken to the room and stowed in a closet, and as the two leave to get a taxi, Baum returns alone, briefly, to slash the agent’s femoral artery, killing him. Then the team flags a taxi and leaves to pick up Mahoney, Baum paying the driver $200 “for the day.”

In an alley some distance from the stadium, and the market, Hurt had stepped out of the taxi to help Mahoney load the carpet-rolled CS:Baldr into the trunk, when an Egyptian policeman entered the alley behind them and demanded they stand-to. Baum gives the taxi-driver a wad of cash and tells him to get rid of the cop, but the driver bolts with the money instead. As the policeman spots a human foot within the rolled carpet, he draws his weapon and calls for backup. Mahoney pulls his pistol and fires a few warning shots to dissuade the policeman, as they quickly stuff the carpet-roll into the trunk, and speed away in the abandoned taxi.

The team meets up with Vega and transfers to the Mercedes. They decide to hole-up in a less-well-observed corner of the port, in an unsecured shipping container. Inside, they wake up CS:Baldr and interrogate him, to no avail, as Baum deduces he’s been trained to resist. The team calls Phillip Quinn to report in. Quinn is in the process of connecting some of the dots with some of his financial research when the call is suddenly cut off. Having been keeping tabs on the local news for word of their own shenanigans, the team sees a breaking-news report that the American embassy in Israel—where Quinn was to meet with other intelligence agents—has been bombed.