Ep11: The Woodlands Depot Incident
General Summary
The Woodlands Depot Incident
Just a week after the offshore retrieval of some highly explosive content, I got our next assignment. The meeting was at a swanky bar at Orchard Road. I arrived a couple minutes late to find Uncle Ah Wa and our new getaway guy Lukas already waiting and looking uncomfortable and out of place in suits. I plopped myself down in the VIP booth and made small talk about our last contract and the revolving door of drivers we had. In walked our prospective employer, a young lady in a form-fitting business suit with an air of bravado masking nervousness. As she introduced herself, it rang a bell and I surreptitiously ran a check; Elisa Mok, a reporter with Strait Times. Still a greenhorn; only seen her on vids going back a year. She was charming in person and filled out that business suit nicely. While busy checking her out I got the gist of what she wanted us to do for her. Illegal entry into a Toyota-Huawei vehicles depot at Woodlands for some snooping. Apparently, there has been strange goings and security has just beefed up, even more than before. The catch is she wanted to come along, our job is mainly facilitation and protection. We named our usual price and were surprised she accepted at once. I didn’t know Strait Times had such huge pockets for activities like these, or that they would even get involved in illegal activities. Still, the money was legit. We got to work immediately as Elisa wanted in even sooner than I wanted to get into her pants. Uncle and Lukas left for some reconnaissance while I snooped about online. Nothing in the public apart from the news so I took a dive to the Fringe, found something interesting eventually. A shaky cam footage of what looks to be military vehicles in the supposedly civilian depot. The markings I could make out suggests Toyota-Huawei’s paramilitary force. Timestamp was just a few days ago. Lukas and Uncle came back and we shared our findings. We called someone to help us hijack a TH automated bus which will allow us to enter the depot hidden inside the vehicle. Uncle managed to procure TH uniforms. What we need now are some cover identities. I gave a call to an ex-lover. Jessica Wee works in TH Public Security and can can get the information we need. I steeled myself for an awkward conversation as we didn’t part on good terms in our tumultuous off-again, on-again, then off-again relationship. She picked up my call almost immediately and I sweet-talk her as much as I could and hinted at a possible future together. She agreed to my request and extracted a promise from me to catch up. The things I do to get the job done… True to her word we soon had details of the security, and as we suspected it was significantly beefed up. She also provided us with a list of employees and their ids at the depot and who are on leave. This allowed me to fabricate the last piece we need; ID badges. We informed Elisa we were ready to make our move. We were going in during the evening shift changes and when the employees are leaving about to leave for the day. I was dressed as a supervisor, I figured that gave me enough excuse to be in different places. Lukas went in as a mechanic, he seemed most comfortable being the mech guy. Uncle Ah Wa dressed as a sales rep, visions of early 2000s necktied slicked hair insurance agents come to mind, but he looked the part. Elisa will take the cover of a prospective customer from across the causeway, so she just came in a business suit with a pair of glasses to accessorise, but man can does she know how to wear a pair of business pants. We had an uncomfortable but thankfully short ride hidden in our hijacked automated bus. When we hear the bus docked and stopped, we stepped out and after checking the coast was clear stepped out. We found ourselves in the bus compound, a number of employees in overalls were headed for the exit, as we suspected during this hour, with folks milling around we didn't look out of place. Walking in pairs we made our way to the office building and our ID cards worked thankfully worked and we got in, so far so good, no one paid us much mind. I did catch one stiff checking out Elisa’s behind. The plan then was for Uncle and Elisa to try to talk to someone using their cover story while Lukas and I would be lookout. I was having none of that. I was in an office, my element and I planned to snoop around. Curiosity is a valuable trait in my line of work. The office was surprisingly full at this hour, but then I remembered this is Toyota-Huawei. I walked around like I was going somewhere and saw an opportunity, an employee was just standing up to apparently speak privately on his phone. Once he left the room I walked purposefully to his vacated seat, sat down and started taking a look. Thank the machine spirit for cubicles, relics of the 20th Century! I had all the privacy I required. Unfortunately, this drone’s terminal (one Justen Kumer, employee ID: 77529125) were filled with the kind of mind-numbing documents that kills the soul, even his trash bin was empty. I was about to give it up for a lost cause when I hear him coming back; no time to duck into a neighbouring cubicle. I confidently stood up and turned to with my slate in hand and asked sternly, ’Justen Kumer?’ ‘Eh, yes?’ he answered with a guilty shift of his eyes. ‘I am from cybersecurity, I flashed my badge. ‘We have traced a cyber intrusion originating from *your* terminal, this is very bad.’ ‘What--what, no, no I can’t be me!’ ‘Relax, we don’t mean *you*, probably some malware got lodged into your terminal, we just need to clean it up. You are done for the day, give me your login credentials, we will be here all night. Tomorrow everything will be fine.’ I gave him a reassuring look. ‘What, oh yes of course! Here’s my id and password! Thanks so much!’ He was out of there in record time. Guess he was only too happy to have an excuse to leave early. Using his credentials I logged onto the local office secure intranet. I went deep enough that I was sure some red flags were raised but I found a screenshot with some fishy numbers. I took a screenshot of it. Decided I had enough and I got up and saw at the far end Uncle Ah Wa attempting to fasttalking his way out of some hot soup. Elisa gave me a nod and motioned for me to follow, I was only too happy to comply. She apparently found something suspicious in the basement, and that is where we eventually ended up. It was dirty and filled with old equipment. It looked like the last spring cleaning was years ago. A trail of bootprints in the dust let to the far end to something that looked for shinier and newer than the rest of the junk down here. I went over to take a closer look with Elisa close behind. When I saw what it was, my heart took a sudden lurch. I gently pried open the case just to make sure. Yup, this was one palette of the explosives we lifted last week. Elisa looked puzzled, so rather than explain and send her info about what we found to her. She mouthed 'shit' just as we hear the cargo lift coming down. We swifty hid behind some pallets. The lift open and we saw three guys in overalls come down, walked straight to the explosives and started loading the contents onto an motorised trolley. I wasn’t quite sure why I did it. Asking Elisa to stay down I waited till they pushed the trolley to the lift and jumped out with my pistol and told them to freeze! Fight broke out and I took 2 guys down before a heavy slug slammed into me, and I fell to the ground, stunned. Last guy came for me, and might have been my end but Elisa jumped him from behind, the guy knocked her down and was about to fire on her when I put a bullet in his skull from my vantage point on the ground. Elisa was out cold, I could hear commotions far off. Moving Elisa to the trolly I decided to use it as cover and go up the cargo lift. The fact that it contained highly dangerous stuff that could blow me to smithereens anytime did cross my mind a few times. When the lift opened at level 1 to a scene of near chaos as I saw armed men seemingly holding the staff hostage. One of the intruders started walking towards us when a loud explosion came from outside. While everyone was distracted I muster up my courage, picked up the unconscious Elisa and ran for dear life. I am still not sure how I made it out of there. Lukas commed me to go towards to docks and he had a boat waiting. Amid the explosions and chaos we slipped onto the boat and hightailed it out of there.Missions/Quests Completed
Operation Press Gang (Employer: Eliza Mok of Temasek Strait Times)
- Pays Well
- Learnt Something
