Quarantine Zone

After having agreed to Chana’s favor, to enter the quarantine zone for a sample of the infection, the team decides to wait until dark to go in. In the meantime:

• Brooks spots a cut-out, who gives him a message from his SIS handler, informing him that they are dropping the Medvedev mission, and he is being assigned to aid the ConsOps mission he has found himself attached to.
• Baum spots El-Sisi, the Egyptian federal agent the team encountered back in Cairo, and tails him to a meeting with some “mercenaries,” who appear to be gearing up for an operation in town.
• Back at the WHO mess tent, Lynch encounters his FSB counterpart, Col. Sudokov, and in an initially-tense exchange, convinces him that his mission is only to stop Breznikov, not to question him, and they agree to not interfere should an opportunity come to take him out.

As evening approaches, the team regroups and prepares to go into town. Chana volunteers to take up overwatch from nearby high-ground.

The team creeps into town, carefully navigating through the ruined buildings toward the objective, a shipping company office where Medvedev was supposed to have delivered “materiel.” Along the way, they observe other “teams” in the area being assaulted and brutalized by hordes of berserking, infected locals. Cautiously, the team skirts wide around the trouble spots, and avoids traps left behind by the others. As they approach the objective, they observe that it is being guarded by another team, of unknown allegiance, faces covered in shemaghs. As the team creeps around to the guards’ flank, Baum decides to extract a sample from a nearby pile of locals’ corpses. He is shocked to find that one of them isn’t actually dead, when it attacks him. Concerned about the noise alerting the warehouse guards, the team keeps watch, as Brooks rushes over to help Baum subdue the woman. She is excessively strong and resilient, and highly aggressive, and they put her down with some difficulty. As Baum finally gets his sample, a voice from the warehouse is heard, exclaiming in Arabic that he “found it”…