Natalie giggled, chuckling as she took a heavy drop down into a seat next to Victor, sighing out heavily as she sat back in the heavy armour, clutching the GAU-19 onto the seat by her side.
"Oh yeah. I mean....this could be some world ending shit. But hey. We're the last emergency service. Someone else is gonna have to do this shit one day, I swear...otherwise we are never going to retirement. Hey, can't show fear when you're the Bear and the Brute, right?" Natalie chuckled, knowing the severity of how serious this was, and yet knowing deep down, showing fear was what was gonna undo them. 

Besides, sleeping paranoid was never going to be good...until she let rip a sudden roar, chuckling as her blonde hair blew about for a second, the sudden updraft making her giggle further.
"If I keep this up, who needs a heating system..." 

-----

Andrew nodded, shaking his head in confusion.
"Fuck knows, Nolan, fuck knows." The New Zealander responded in kind, knowing he couldn't give a great answer, not now he was running with the Canadian bionic man of a sniper. It seemed surreal, none of it really made sense to him. What the fuck was in Greenland? This couldn't be right, it had to be whoever the hell was in the group they were fighting these past few months, some serious, crazy black ops shit and even though Andrew wished he could say it wasn't for him, he didn't seem to really have a choice. Clearances like that meant you didn't dawdle asking questions, because whoever had issued it had already asked whatever was neccassary. 

----

2100 Hours
Iqaluit Airport, Nunavut

The far-northern airport was usually emptied and devoid of people in the bitter cold of the winter night, yet it felt even more so, any trace of activity or hubub inside the airport emptied in place of a small, tight military presence. Even Natalie and Victor, who had flown all the way to Canada in the C17s had switched out to a V22 for this stint to Iqualit, as had the rest of the team that had switched over from Afghanistan. The snowy ground all around made for a winter wonderland, all apart from the thin strip of tarmac kept cleared for any CF-18s and F35s redeploying to here as backup aircraft. 

The terminal had been emptied, and the public cordoned off, the inside of one of the gates turned into an impromptu briefing room, loaded upw with munitions, arms for the soldiers, equipment and briefing boards. This place wasn't going to get any airtraffic anytime soon, not until this shit was over. And while the locals would have been tempted to ask, the relative SIGINT control here over internet would stop anything too major leaking, anything that went beyond a Canadian military exercise. It looked like one, bar the F35s and the V22s- but beyond that, nothing seemed majorly out of the ordinary.

Apart from the CIA agent on site, and the four-star General with him to attend the briefing. 

Looking across the small team before him, the agent had to admit- this was quite the sight to behold. A sight beyond. He had already briefed up Ross, Andrew, Nolan, Carl and Jenny, but the rest were hearing it for the first time. Blue Sword's Recon Team were here, a ten man team, and a 10 man Navy SEAL detatchment, with 10 more from Blue Sword in heavier combat gear, but other than that and our fearsome bunch, it was incredibly small for the operation that was to come. Merlin knew the reality of the odds- but sometimes, you couldn't take a hammer to a heart operation, you needed a scalpel and a surgeon with very, very steady hands.

"Gentlemen, ladies, you're wondering why you're here, and why you were selected. As you probably notice, there's not more than 40 of you here, excluding our aerial assets. I'll try and keep it brief. But you'll need to know what shadow you are facing first." He said, stating the obvious, but wanting that to be clear as the teams looked among each other, Eric here too with the two large brutes from Blue Sword, Natalie and Victor like monoliths among everyone else.

"This operation is minimal in information, need to know basis, and anyone outside this terminal will not hear what I'm about to tell you. 15 hours ago, a highly armed, well equipped unknown force took over Thule AFB and rounded up the local population in a local school. Their numbers are around 200, and they overran the base within minutes. Poor defense, yes, but satelite imagery shows total destruction of the site, and the parking of their jets on it like they own the place. Not just that. The site is home to a numbers station, and a long range nuclear defense network they're trying to hack. A move they'd make, maybe to extort the US.

"But more importantly, underneath the airbase itself, in the permafrost is a blacksite, home to a biological weapons station. The US Government for the last fifty years has locked up the worst shit we could find in there, and know that because of the relative cold and stability of the station, it wouldn't go touched. What they are hunting, if they realise it, is a DNA-based virus, one that can be tailored relatively easily by a good geneticist to target a specific individual, race or group. We're talking 95% fatality rates within 48 hours, and no amount of stopping borders will stop that virus when it hits, there is no cure, nor will there ever be because it's a weapon. It has one of the highest transmission rates of any virus known to mankind, and is more dangerous than we ever could allow to be left in the open. It's the Devil's Scythe itself. Now, the site has a 36 hour deadlock before anything can be retrieved and taken upon request- that is, if they haven't already figured out the exact location in the vault themselves. Can you see why we are worried?" 

We believe this to be the last play of an as of yet unidentified terrorist organisation our forces engaged in the Wakhan Corridor over the last few weeks, known to us as "The Network". A trans-national criminal syndicate, with its hands in everything from drugs to guns, human trafficking to corruption. Using Islamic terrorist networks as a front, they have created disruption and instability anywhere they can get their mitts on. But the scale is so, so much more than that."

"Unlike a normal criminal gang, its leaders, who are unknown, appear to be politically linked to very high ranking figures in China, Russia, India, Indonesia and even EU nations. This is a shadow organisation that wants control and chaos for its own profits, and perhaps even something more...to see the demise of our freedom, values and culture and replace it with their own world order. While poltiicans may argue over power plays, what they want is a shadowy control over it all. What we don't know exactly how they look, but if it's anything to go by how the militants in Wakhan were treated, as if they want total control. They want to see us fail, and then fall under the weight of their efforts. And in Wakhan, they took heavy losses, both in their specialist teams and their equipment. This is their Broken Arrow. They do this, everything they lost will be nothing compared to us. For them, chaos is the last card they have last to play.

"So, if we send in a large military force, they'll flee faster than we can attack them, as they have heavy AA and AT defenses already posted up and can hold out to escape into the wilds. That's why we haven't carpet bombed the place, and besides, if there are any inside the underground bunker, they'll survive. Which is where Option C comes in. We perform a surgical, pinpoint strike that applies maximum pressure to the smallest point we go for. We're going to deploy you in a variety of stages, taking advantage of a snowstorm that is forecast to close into the base in two hours."

"Sniper Team Cordite, you'll be deployed via an SDV off the western coast, and set up in the mountains to the north when the snowstorm clears. You'll need to use thermal optics to silently remove the AA threat, alongside an infiltrator, callsign "Osprey" we already have making their way in via the east. Only then, once we know all their radar-guided elements are down, we'll deploy all other teams in the V-22s, going low-level along the fjords and dropping everyone straight into the main encampment itself. The SEAL team, callsign "Blackfish", will clear the school and local settlement of any hostiles, while both Blue Sword detatchments attack the airbase itself. Team Knight, as well as Bear and Brute here, will deal with the underground section of the base while the rest provide security. While that door is on a timer, it only takes enough munitions or C4 to blow the runway apart to get inside that concrete reinforced bunker, and for them to get out of there with it. That cannot happen. Whatever the cost, you do not let that happen. You get in, you destroy the whole sample lot and cave it in." 

"Then, when that is done, we get the hell out. We do not know if they have reinforcements, and we will not provide more fight than what we are here to solve. We are not here to fight a war. We're here to stop the end of the world as we currently know it. Other forces can clean up and deal with the backblast after that, by which point, The Network's main leadership stem and forces will be eliminated. Deployment for the snipers is at 0300, rest of you, on dawn at 0600. All clear?" 

Merlin looked to the group, Natalie shruggling her large shoulders as she stood up from the pathetically tiny terminal bench, the actual bench itself bent from where she had sat in her heavy, looking to Victor first before looking at Merlin.
"I'd ask why you didn't call Russia in. But then again, I know they flew out of Murmansk on a bad flight registration. The Russian Federation, if it did this would invoke WW3. Same too if ith elped. So I understand why you want no dramas. My friends do tell me though, that almost all of their HVTs are there. If you see them, try and keep one alive so we can hurt them a bit more. Remind them they cannot take away our world." Natalie said, looking with an icy stare at each squad leader.

"This will not be one to tell the grandchildren, yes? But hey...I suppose that just made everyone in this room a little more mysterious. Let's fucking end them."