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Old 02-08-2017, 01:38 PM   #26
Icelander
 
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Default Re: Custody of federal prisoners convicted at court martial or unfit for trial

Quote:
Originally Posted by thrash View Post
That would do it. Probably the easiest way to meet your objectives, since you don't really intend to bring him back.

Permanent custody of an organization without (officially acknowledged) confinement facilities, or transfer to temporary custody without a specific permanent destination, will probably raise questions best left unasked.
Can you suggest an organisation or several that would be plausible and I'll check to see if the conspiracy could arrange that?

Quote:
Originally Posted by thrash View Post
Probably raise questions, too, at this point. The time for this play would have been during the trial.
At that point, the data hadn't really been put together and there wasn't an organised faction within the US government that was aware of the unforeseen consequences of Project Jade Serenity. Even if there were, at that time, some few people within the US Army who had an inkling (and knew that illegal experimentation had been carried out), they had no reason to assume that having (then) SFC Mackenzie Chase Taylor rot away in Fort Leavenworth would do any harm to their interests.

There were these two military men suspected or convicted of crimes who orchestrated an escape from the base (outlying part of Camp Mackall, NC) where the Project Jade Serenity experiments were set, but two deserters/escaped prisoners, even violent, murdering ones, seemed like a problem a coterie of conspirational officers within the US Army, DARPA or DOD could solve.

Some of the people who were covering up crimes might have planned to ensure that the deserters remained uncaught (and thus silent) or that whenever the deserters were ultimately caught, they would elect to take a plea bargain that included not airing old dirty laundry about the experiments in return for backing off from the death penalty. Hell, there might have been some people afraid enough of them talking who were considering arranging that when they were caught, they weren't brought in alive.

It was only after evidence began to come to light that the former Project Jade Serenity test subjects were exhibiting profoundly strange medical issues that things began to change. Some time after that information first became clear to a small group of people with access to widely disparate information sources, some people in the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) put together an intelligence picture that made it imperative to mount a task force to capture the escaped military convicts/deserters in Mexico.

The two were by now apparently powerful figures in the drug cartels and were living more or less openly within a certain area near the border. The local authorities seemed thoroughly cowed, subverted or both and the federal police, for some reason, refused to operate in the area. After the FBI, US Marshals, DEA and the CBP and ICE tried and failed to get the Mexican authorities to arrest the two men and several other US citizens allegedly involved in criminal conspiracies in the area, some shadowy figures within high military circles apparently came up with an alternate plan.

Colonel Ortiz, who used to be the commanding officer of Raul Vargas, the former Special Forces warrant officer who was now a high-up in the Knights Templars, was authorised to mount an operation where some of Vargas' former comrades-in-arms would approach him with an offer to squash the more serious crimes he was accused in return for him turning himself in to the task force now established to deal with the fall-out of Project Jade Serenity, which was codenamed Onyx Rain.

Whether Colonel Ortiz received secret orders to kill Vargas if that approach failed is not known to the PCs. What they were told is that the fall-back plan was capture and rendering back to the US, where he would have been turned over to a law enforcement task force composed of Army CID and CBP/ICE. In any event, Col. Ortiz and his hand-picked team of Special Forces never came back from the mission. They were not killed, however, and intelligence indicates that they are still in the area, but not replying to attempts to contact them.

Sherilyn Bell, at the Manhanock Asylum for the Criminally Insane, is Raul Vargas' former girlfriend and the mental health technician who helped him escape from Project Jade Serenity. Onyx Rain believes that she has been in contact with him within the last five years, when Bell managed to get a hold of a cell phone in a security breach at Manhanock. It is possible that Bell may have information that would help to capture Vargas and Onyx Rain is even considering the possibility of using her as an informant or double agent in an operation to do so.

Inmate Taylor was a protegé of Col. Ortiz, coming up as a young Ranger in Ortiz's platoon in the 1st Ranger Battalion and going through a modified form of SFQC with him as part of Project Jade Serenity. He also served with every one of the operators who are AWOL in Mexico. Added to that, other personnel involved in Project Jade Serenity who have been questioned have confirmed that (then) SPC Taylor and (then) Pvt. Bell were close friends during the time they spent at Camp Mackall and that he is the most likely person to be able to gain her trust.

Quote:
Originally Posted by thrash View Post
If it's really a joint operation it shouldn't matter, but the Army officer may have an easier time negotiating the system.
It's a joint operation, but it may not be a joint operation that is duly authorised. Even if it has full authorisation, it is very likely that some of the things that were told to the political figures at the top about the operation and its goals and methods were... substantially edited.
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Last edited by Icelander; 02-08-2017 at 08:28 PM.
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