You're contacted by the usual means and within the hour you're assembled in briefing room B in the Raft.  Director Barnes sits silently--as is his style--behind Agent Parker who places a photo in front of you.

"This man, Sarkis Novikov, committed double murder in Yugoria two years ago.  He was sentence to life and was serving that sentence in Zukauskas prison until six weeks ago,"  The young blonde woman pauses as she grabs a roll of papers from the other end of the table and unfurls them revealing the floor plans for the prison.  She continues, "He escaped by unknown means but was recaptured.  Or so the Yugorian's believe."

"The Yugorian's captured Sarkis's identical twin brother Yevgeni Novikov who we believe was lured to Yugoria by his brother.  Yevgeni is part of a team developing a new gyroscope for the enemy's ballistic missiles and has been providing us schematics for the project's various prototypes."

"Your mission is to capture Sarkis--who we believe is staying with an old girlfriend--and exchange him for Yevgeni without alerting anyone in the prison.  Yevgeni must be allowed to return to his work with no one the wiser, " Parker announced.

Parker turns and nods to Barnes then takes a seat next to him.  "Questions?"

"Interesting problem," Gideon says, cutting straight to the chase.

"In order to minimize our vulnerable time, we'll need two teams--one to get Sarkis and take his girlfriend out of circulation, and the other to handle the prison for the exchange."

"While I'm not ruling out going through one of the exterior walls, I think that should be our last choice."

Virtue sat comfortably in her chair, legs crossed and resting her chin in her hand, looking at the diagram of the prison.  "Are these the as-built drawings?" sha asks indicating the prison.  "Also, Does Yevgeni's employer know he is missing yet?  If so, do we believe they will send a rescue team?  If not, How soon will they realize?" she fires off a series of questions as her ind starts working out potential options.

"We need to find out how they get supplies into the prison, and trash out; also, if a prisoner dies, what is the procedure?  Do we have a man on the ground in Yugoria?"

Seated quietly at the far end of the table, the New Girl seems more than a little intimidated by the whole briefing situation, shrinking into her chair like she hoped it would swallow her whole, making herself as unobtrusive and small as possible (which was really very small indeed).  She doesn't actually give voice to any questions, but she does peer curiously at the schematics, hoping to find information about the building's security systems, physical locks, and so on.

Jess Parker nods her head at Drakes comment.  "Breaching a wall would give away the operation unless you can stage it in such a way as to make it look like some sort of accident."

"These drawings are the most recent we have of the layout.  While they're seven years old we believe the prison sees little in the way of redecorating," Jess says with a smirk.  "Though security measures may have changed."

"Yevgeni took a two week leave of absence.  That ends in four days.  He's expected back Monday morning so time is of the essence.  Our asset in Yugoria is keeping tabs on the prison.  He should be able to provide intel on arrivals and departures."

Glancing at the drawings, you spot 6 guard towers integrated into the wall surrounding the yard and prison grounds.  Notes on the drawings indicate towers are double occupied 24/7 with guards rotating between tower duty, gate duty, and ground patrols.  The gate house is staffed by four guards during the first shift and two guards on the other two shifts.  Shifts are 9 hours with a 30 minute overlap at the beginning and end of shifts which start at 7am, 3pm, and 11pm.  A garage is built into the southwest corner of the outer wall.

CCTV is in use but a camera has only been observed with a view of the gate. Warded locks are believed to be in use all over the prison.

OOC: We'll just pretend the outer wall and guard towers are on the ground floor drawings. :)

"Wow. Great questions, V!" Gideon compliments Virtue. "Sounds like you've done this before!"

"Looks like we've got two approaches to this: subterfuge or stealth."

"With subterfuge, we do everything out in the open so that everyone sees what we're doing. They just think we're doing something different that what we are really doing. Whether that's updating the wiring, repairing a wall, or just transferring a prisoner, we can work out those details. If we need to, we can put someone inside as a new prisoner, even."

"With stealth, they never see us... at all! We sneak in, we sneak out. A bit easier to do at night. If we need to breach a wall, they can't see or hear us do it, and they can't tell it's been done afterwards."

"For the former, we'll need to know the names of all the personnel involved. If Yevgeni is in prison, one of two things has to be happening--either he thinks he's been arrested and imprisoned for something he's done, or he's been telling everyone that he's not Sarkis and no one, of course, believes him. That could be in an 'in'--as a psychiatrist showing up to evaluate this new behavior."

"Also, I wouldn't rule out that the commandant--or one of the guards--has been bribed to look the other way. If Sarkis actually escaped and was recaptured, and now he's claiming to be his twin brother, you'd have to be an idiot not to consider the possibility. A mere fingerprint check would confirm or refute that."

"On the other hand, the commandant may not want to confirm it. He's got a prisoner who looks exactly like the prisoner he's supposed to have, and if it turns out he's not Sarkis, he could be in trouble, so better not to upset the apple cart."

"Oh! Here's another thought! What if the commandant already knows he's got Yevgeni? Did the fingerprint check and stated that it matches Sarkis. Or, it really does! Sarkis might have switched them somehow. We need a file on the Commandant, take a look at his personality and psych profile."

"Well, I've never done this exactly, no," Virtue says basking in the compliment.  "But subterfuge of this type is something of a hobby."  Talking her way out of an internment camp as child she didn't counted and in any case she wasn't in the mood to discuss it.  She thinks about the new information and Gideon's musings.  "I think we need to recapture Sarkis first, find out how he got out.  If he had inside help we'll need to know that and factor into our plan; if not, maybe his method is reversible or we can replicate.  If we stage a similar escape for Yevgeni and then tip off the Yugorian police to Sarkis so they recapture him, does that satisfy our mission?" She asks the last of Jess.  Only four days to plan and execute, she thought with some concern

Gin absorbs the ongoing conversation quietly, regarding the sort of subjects under discussion to be rather above her head; matters of mission strategy and speculation on human motives were far enough outside her areas of expertise that opening her mouth on such questions would surely reveal her to be woefully ignorant.  Whatever skills she was bringing to the mission were...  well, in those fleeting moments when she felt charitable with herself she liked to think of herself as a "specialist."  And as such she just quietly focused on those areas that fell within her specialty:  she cranes her neck and leans just slightly forward to peruse the schematics, seeking for probable unobtrusive access points to the electrical and CCTV systems, looking for any evidence suggesting specific makes and models of locks in use, et cetera.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:07, Fri 07 May 2021.

"So, the first thing we need to do is get more intel," Gideon summarized.

"We need information on:"

"1. power into the prison.

2. name and address and profile of the Commandant. If we know where he lives, we can enter while he's at work and come up with a rough profile. Maybe we could get him drunk one night when he's off duty and then take his place the next day.

3. how they get their supplies and who from.

4. what kind of locks and electronics they have in the prison. That's mostly as a back-up, since if we come up with the right plan and it works, we won't need to deal with them.

5. find out what the current prisoner's status/attitude is."

"Anything I missed?"

"I'm thinking now that we might be able to disguise Sarkis as the Commandant, march him in while sedated, have Yevgeni brought to his office, then switch the identities of both of them so that Sarkis is now Sarkis again and is marched back to his cell. Yevgeni would be disguised as the Commandant and can walk out on his own."

"One of us can go in as either the Commandant's new aide or else someone from oversight."

"I don't think getting in or out as a workman should be all that difficult, but that could give us access to any cameras and such so that one of us could monitor the situation from the outside in case something goes wrong."

"In any case, I suspect the only way we get Sarkis into telling us how he escaped is to trick him into telling us. Possibly we could disguise someone as Yevgeni who claims he's escaped and get Sarkis to compare escape plans?"

"Give us an hour to come up with a final plan, and then we need to fly out. We'll need to take anything we need with us."

((OOC: I suppose we could have Aliyah and Clifford be the ones to deal with Sarkis... sort of 'off camera'...))

"You're awful quiet, Gin," Gideon asks. "Any ideas on our little plan? Suggestions? Corrections?"


He continues to study the floor plan, which appears to be an architect's visual representation rather than actual blueprints. Still, architects tend to be detail-oriented by training.

"Ah. Here it is. The power entry point. It looks to be underground. Probably encased in concrete. If we wanted to take out power, we'd probably have better luck doing it at the relay station or else the main power plant. If power goes out, the cell doors won't automatically open."

"As for locks, I'm guessing, based on the architect's name here in the corner, and the age of the prison, that they are Gorky 300s. Hard to pick, but not impossible. They can be operated manually with a key, but they are also wired so that they can be released individually from the guard control room. That looks like here... and here... and here."

He points to a couple of places on the map.

"Line of sight to the cells so that when guards are in position, they can signal to open the cell door."

"That sound about right to you, Virtue?"

"hmm, and airlock-type access points to exit the cell blocks," Virtue adds looking fvoer the map.  "A neighborhood power outage would be less suspicious, should we need to cut the power, but also more likely to be repaired quickly; not sure on the timing there, or whether there is a generator backup," she says leaning back in the chair to think.

"I can't imagine they don't have a back-up generator," Gideon replies.

"Maybe I'm being optimistic, but I think we could crack this prison if we had to. I'm leaning more towards subterfuge, though."

"Any of you have any preferences?"

"I most definitely prefer subterfuge, but I don't have enough information to form a viable plan, yet," Virtue says looking back down from the ceiling to focus on her teammates.

"I was leaning to subterfuge, too," Gideon said. "More dangerous if we get caught, but a lot less complicated to plan."

"As I see it, there's three likely ways to go about it."

"One, we pose as an inspection team. Either we're there to decide on closing it or upgrading it, or we've got budget concerns and want to see how efficiently it's being run. Either way, that should give us complete access to it."

"Two, we're a U.N. inspection team looking into rumors of human rights violations."

"Three, as I said earlier, one of us goes in as a temporary prisoner. Once inside, we switch identities with Yevgeni, and he goes out as the prisoner being picked up by the rest of the team. Our inside man then switches places with a guard, puts the guard in the cell and walks out as the guard."

"That gets Yevgeni out, but still leaves the problem of Sarkis. He could come in unconscious as another prisoner and switch places with the guard. When he wakes up, he's back in his cell."

"As for Sarkis, I prefer to get his cooperation.  We need to find leverage to get him to want to go back," Virtue says with a mischievous smile.  She keeps the rest of her thoughts to herself, wondering if there was something they could convince him was left behind, or that Yevgeny has, that would prompt him to want to return.

"The only two things I can think of that might get Sarkis to do such a thing is self-interest and power," Gideon replied.

"He sacrificed his brother, so I don't think family is important to him, unless he has a kid and has unexpected fatherly affection."

"Power-wise, if he thought that he was about to be pardoned and made prime minister or something, he'd be concerned that his brother would get that power and accolades."

"Anything else come to mind?"