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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5042192" data-attributes="member: 143">Oh, don't worry. Stuff is coming that will make this stage of the campaign look like a picnic. * * * * * Interlude: Aftermath (July 1, 2008)The long trip back to Nevada was a fairly sedate one.  Flying on vapors, Ken took the Skyranger to Casement Aerodrome, at Baldonnel.  The base had a military hospital attached where they could get their wounds treated.  They met up with an X-COM tanker from Europe-1, and the next morning they were in the air.  The British doctors were amazed at the quick recovery of the wounded team members; by the time that the ship started its descent over the Nevada desert, Catalina woke up and was even able to crack a few jokes.  Stan White still insisted on bringing her out in a stretcher.  “Special delivery, one cat,” she mumbled, as the orderlies took her to the infirmary. The alien power supply followed the next day, brought over by the recovery team along with several components taken intact from the alien ship.  The power supply, which the scientists were calling Elerium-115, was kept in a special containment unit that had been prepared on a deeper level far under the populated areas of the base.  Access to it was strictly limited. The day following the mission was quiet, as X-COM’s researchers and engineers worked on assimilating the new data that Alpha Team had recovered.  But on the next day, the members of Alpha Team were summoned to the briefing room for an update on the flash drive.  All of them but Catalina, who was still convalescing, reported to the summons.  James had returned from his mission to New York, but he was quiet, distracted.  Agent Drake had a sour look on her face as the field operatives filed into the briefing room, but she remained silent as Director Garret explained the results of the American operation with the flash drive. "Due to the tracking device,” he explained, “we were able to determine when the drive was recovered from the trash canister.  An inspector took it and handed it off to a supply clerk, who in turn took it from the incineration facility.  Both men have been taken into custody.  We followed the device to a location in Reno, a warehouse facility.  The signal was lost there; this prompted Homeland Security to immediately raid the site." "It turns out that the site was operated by a significant criminal enterprise; in addition to the flash drive, which had been placed in an armored vault hidden on-site, we found sixteen kilograms of methamphetamine, eleven illegal guns, and about six hundred thousand dollars worth of stolen consumer electronics items.  Two men fought back and were killed; another six were taken prisoner.  The American Department of Homeland Security has already conducted preliminary questioning, and it appears that the six were low- to mid-level operatives for the cartel.  Only one had any knowledge of the flash drive, and it seems that their role was limited to forwarding it to a third party, which another member of the group was going to meet in San Francisco in a few days.  The criminal had no specific knowledge of when or where this meeting was going to take place.  The Americans will conduct a more thorough interrogation later, but at the moment we doubt that we will gain further information from these individuals." "The Defense Department inspector and the clerk admitted that this was the third flash drive that they'd shipped through this illicit system.  They did not know any details about the organization for whom they provided the service, but admitted that they each received one hundred thousand dollars for each delivery that they processed.  Most of that money has since been recovered by Homeland Security investigators."* * * * * The weekly e-mail update from Doctor Wagner followed on the heels of the briefing.</blockquote>

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