Geoffrey could not help but feel relieved as he, along with his team, were led away from the operations room and into the armoury. Operation Black Jack, while sounding rather interesting with its need for a non-lethal and quiet solution, was certainly not geared towards what Geoffrey was trained for and what he was comfortable with. He was a sniper, and a rather good one at that, if he could say so himself. Putting a round into a target's head from a mile away with his PGM 338, that he could do. Fight room-to-room on board a ship? That sounded just plain unappealing.

"Well, that was a waste of breath." Kazue muttered beneath her breath and folded her arms. In the short time Geoffrey had known the Japanese woman, he had found her to be almost trying too hard to be sniping with her words, as if she were actively trying to pick a fight with everyone around her. Geoffrey chalked that up to her small size; she was probably just trying to prevent anyone from looking down on her or doubting her abilities, though how she intended to achieve that with an acidic personality, he did not know.

"Not entirely. At least the Black Jack teams have a plan, yeah?" Geoffrey offered. As his old platoon commander in the Guards had once put it, 'if you have a plan at the end of a meeting, it doesn't matter how many black eyes or bruised egos there are. It was a good meeting.'

Kazue shrugged, and they both fell silent as Sergei gave the briefing for their new mission.

Geoffrey more or less stopped listening after Sergei mentioned their target's involvement in the infamous Elisaveta video. Back when he was in the Singapore Guards Formation, he and the rest of his section had made the mistake of watching the video while messing around with their phones after a long day of training. It had been like watching a car crash - disgusting, painful but ultimately nigh impossible to pull your eyes away. In fact, his section had half a mind of taking up Sarenkov's offer back then, and would have if they had been less afraid of being court-martialed for desertion.

"He's a dead man walking, that's for sure." Firdaus commented after the briefing and stuffed his hands into the pocket. "Anyone else saw the video when it came out?" He asked and shivered involuntarily. 

Adelaida nodded, but then shook her head. "God rest Elisaveta's soul, but we have work to do and more people to save." She said and looked to Wei Jie. "Should we put together our plan first, or load up?"

"We already know what we will be using," Wei Jie said and turned towards Osprey. It appeared as if the other team had already came up with a plan during the briefing and their team leader - Wojtek, if Geoffrey recalled correctly - wasted no time in sharing. The plan sounded rather solid. They had two targets and two teams to take care of it. While Geoffrey would have gladly volunteered to be the one to put a round square between Khanya's eyes, he was quite satisfied with being part of the element to raid the brothel. Going in guns blazing to rescue people never failed to make him feel like a soldier again.

Wei Jie nodded in agreement with Osprey's plan. "We will send two of our own to recce the brothel." He said and pointed to the road cutting across the desert, to the north of the compound. "Geoffrey will be deployed first, along with Kazue. Between the two of them, they can make a temporary outpost to keep an eye on movement in and out of the brothel. I imagine that it would be busy, and not with people who would surrender at the first sign of fighting either."

That was quite a tall order, as far as Geoffrey was concerned. They were probably going to deploy on the same beach, and it was going to be in absolute darkness. While he was confident of his navigation skills, the more he looked at the map, the more he was convinced that the desert was featureless and thus a navigational nightmare. Still, it was not completely impossible. It would just take him longer than usual to carry out the order. "Give me co-ordinates and I can be there within twenty minutes of hitting the beach." He said confidently. Two klicks was nothing compared to the ten kilometer fast march he had to undertake to just earn the title of 'Guard'. 

Wei Jie nodded and looked to the others. "No objections?" He asked and waited for exactly two seconds before continuing, "Then load up and ready yourselves."

----

That was how, a few hours later, Geoffrey found himself sitting in a boat with both his team and Osprey. At a glance, it would have been easy to tell the difference between the two teams. Osprey looked like they were about ready to just level the compound and call it a day with all their weapons and the various accessories fitted to them. Virus, however, went with a different approach. Where Osprey had a rocket launcher, the heaviest weapon on Virus was Wei Jie's QLB-06 semi-automatic grenade launcher. It was a heavy beast, and it was anyone's guess how he could carry it slung across his back while still carrying a Type 81 light machine gun. Everyone else either carried a simple assault rifle or, in Geoffrey's case, a sniper rifle.

Geoffrey smirked to himself as he recalled how they decided on the name Virus. It suited the method of operation of almost every one of its members. They infiltrated the enemy's territory with minimal fuss, made themselves scarce while pinpointing and exploiting weak spots and when the time came to strike, they made sure it was sudden, crippling or if possible, fatal.

"20 seconds." He heard Wojtek say.

As soon as the boat hit the beach, Geoffrey was out. He was easily the most lightly equipped member of either team, forgoing the plate carrier the others used in favour of a mesh load bearing vest and ditching the helmet for a boonie hat. His rifle, a PGM 338 with only a variable zoom scope, night optics and anti-mirage band as its only modifications, was slung across his front and an MP5 hung from its sling by his side. He carried a medium-sized rucksack containing everything he was going to need to make himself disappear into the desert, as well as some rudimentary survival equipment. 

Kazue soon joined him on the beach. As the designated engineer of the group, she had to carry her pack of tools and explosives in addition to her standard battle equipment of rifle, plate carrier, helmet and ammunition. She loaded a magazine into her Type 89 assault rifle and cocked it. She nodded to Geoffrey, indicating her ready.

"Move when you're ready," Wei Jie said in a low voice. In the dead silence of the night, it might as well have been a shout.

With a nod to their team leader, Geoffrey and Kazue moved off towards their observation post. "Virus-Four to Osprey sniper. We are moving to our OP." Kazue reported in a quiet voice over her headset. "Let us do a bit of recon before you start shooting things up. Out."

It did not take long for them to reach their post - the two klick estimate had obviously been from the beach to the compound itself. Geoffrey looked out at the pinpricks of light in the distance and guessed that they were maybe five or six hundred meters away, but no more than that. It was a lot closer than he was used to, but it was probably for the best. With such a high chance of collateral damage and civilian casualties, he wanted his shots to be as accurate as possible.

"Outpost my ass," Kazue said as she looked around them and tapped her foot on the ground. "Ground is hard, we won't be able to dig a scrape worth digging in time." She looked out across the road. "I see a small ditch, we could probably use that as cover."

Geoffrey shrugged. "Better than nothing. Let's go."

They dashed across the road and did not stop until they reached the ditch. It was, as Kazue said, small, but it could at least fit the two of them and with a few hacks of Kazue's entrenching tool, they managed to make it possible for them to poke their rifles out without increasing the risk of being spotted. To conceal them even further, Geoffrey took out a large net with brown strips of cloth stitched to it and laid it over the ditch, securing it down with rocks he found around them. He sprinkled a few handfuls of sand over the net to complete the illusion. It was sub-par and far from satisfactory, but in such low-light conditions, it would do.

He slipped back into the makeshift scrape and shouldered his rifle, peering through his scope and aiming towards the brothel. Beside him, Kazue took out a pair of binoculars and scanned the area in front of them. "Virus-Three and Four in position." Geoffrey reported and adjusted his scope. "Eyes on the brothel. I can see lots of movement inside and cars parked outside. We could have a lot more people than we expected. Osprey snipers, can you confirm?"