2014.01.28 - Intercepted Pass

South Gotham. 10:00 PM. It'd been days since Black Canary had recovered from being drugged, but she'd kept to Barbara's recovery recommendations as best she could... despite how badly she'd wanted to get back out into the field. The mounting presence of Maggia around these streets bothered her, and it had only increased in the week's time she'd been (mostly) off her feet. Following a reliable lead, she drove one of Oliver Queen's beater-cars, an old Chevy, to the site of what was speculated to be a base of operations--or at least of significance--for some of the mobsters, many having been spotted coming in and out throughout the week.
After about a ninety-minute stake-out on her own, Dinah called for some back-up. For all accounts, this place was currently empty--or at least not getting a lot of traffic--but she didn't want to take chances. Both Oracle and Huntress took her call, and she waited for their arrival, her car safely tucked from view a block away.
While Oracle speeds towards Dinah's stakeout on the back of her recently-dragged-out-of-storage batcycle (woot!), DELPHI scans through playback of the last 24 hours around the edifice in question, looking to ID notable faces coming in and out of the establishment. "Probable numbers in there?" Babs asks the AI as she switches the bike into silent cruise mode, gliding with only the soft crunch of tires on road salt into an alley not far from where Dinah's car sits. 
"Uncertain," DELPHI replies. "Thermal imagery and visual tracking for the last 24 hours indicates the presence of 22 individuals within. However, that may be inaccurate due to the heat sources detected in what is very likely the club kitchen. Further, facial recognition can only match records to 50% of those individuals. Some may be ordinary civilians enjoying a meal."
See, that's the problem with mob families. They choose restaurants and clubs as their front businesses for a reason -- and not just because it makes money laundering easier.
Phone call received. Thankfully, Helena had just returned home from closing the florist shop, and Q was off doing whatever he usually does on his own. So, she suits up, hol... Shit. Her crossbow. Muttering curses, she takes a few extra moments to swap out to a 9mm she keeps for 'home defense', cramming a few extra clips into her quiver instead of the usual complement of bolts and quarrels. Babs'll likely bitch at her, but that's just too bad. She's not going out there completely empty-handed. 
The Ducati makes quick work of the drive to Canary's location, though she stops still farther out and rooftop-hops the rest of the way. Unlike SOME people, her motorcycle isn't fancy-pants with silent running mode and all those other frigging bells and whistles. Fat lot of good they ended up doing. She could probably get an EMP bolt designed that would have done the same thing as that schnazzy motorcycle of the Bat's managed. AFTER her replacement crossbow arrives.
Dinah fumbled around from inside the car, doing awkward little muscle stretches while waiting for her summoned allies to arrive. While acquiring information was far more advantageous here, to find out whatever the mobsters were specifically planning with Gotham, she wasn't lying to herself--she was hungry for a fight. 'Stealth', she reminded herself passively. She rolled down the car window, and breathed in some of the air outside. Somehow, seeing her breath, the cold winter air, felt good.
As Dinah's window rolls down, Oracle's voice sounds in her earpiece. "So," she says, lightly scaling the fire escape to reach the rooftop alongside Dinah's car. "We're here." She can see Huntress incoming, her little minimap of the area lit up with little blue dots that indicate where her Birds are, just like in a video game. (She's such a geek.) "How do you want to play this, D?"
"The back door hasn't opened in the last two hours, but supposedly that's the hotspot. If we want to go the safest path, we should stir up the people seated at front--getting an exodus that doesn't blow our cover will get their attention away from the backdoor, buy us some time, and hopefully get bystanders out. If there are any." Dinah slips out of her car--she's wearing a snazzy, dark blue, trench coat to obfuscate her costume. "I'm heading to the back now. We're looking for clues here. Paperwork, names, drugs--anything to tip us off why they're forming up en masse in Gotham. Low guys on the totem don't know anything," Dinah notes. She crosses the street and moves towards the back, careful to check if anyone might spot her. The street, thankfully, is virtually empty.
Huntress makes it to the rooftop just in time to hear Babs's question to Dinah both over her earpiece and in person. It's still just a little disconcerting seeing Babs up and about literally, but it's a GOOD disconcerting. Lightly elbowing the redhead, she looks down at the building they're targeting. "We gonna do this like John McClane, or like Corbin Dallas?"
"DELPHI says there are about 22 people inside," Oracle tells the crew, flashing a smile at Huntress she probably doesn't see, given that she's wearing fully concealing helmet. Even her red hair is tucked neatly inside it. The Oracle suit is a lot more high tech and concealing than the Batgirl suit. And, for some strange reason, it doesn't even include a cape! (Or bat ears.) Still, Babs gives her a thumbs up. "I'll have her trigger a fire alarm. That will at least clear the civilians." She chuckles softly. "So, which is that?" she asks Huntress, her digital voice harmonic out of the suit's speakers. "McClane or Dallas?" They're both Bruce Willis.
Huntress hms considerately at Babs, though she's very clearly amused. No concealing helmet here. "I think that's more Frank Moses than the other two. Want me along, D?" She knows she's just backup 'muscle' here, so is perfectly content to let the other to call the sho...wait. "I see movement on the roof. Think I'll hop over and say hello."
Dinah, having made it around to the back of the building, studies the scene. Observing a network of exposed pipes lingering a few feet over the doorway, she manages to climb up and nest herself there. "Got the door on lock down, but it's got a suspiciously high-tech keycode security panel. Didn't see any other exits. Windows are barred, except for the front," she murmurs, feeling suddenly a bit useless, aside from her ass-kicking spirit.
After hearing Helena's report of rooftop movement, she's hesitant to act. "Shit," she says, trying to keep her volume muffled, "Is there a sniper up there?" she asks. "Oracle, see anything?"
"DELPHI, what's on the rooftop?" Oracle asks her AI, watching as Huntress makes her way across to the other roof top. "And, H... what happened to your bow?" The outline of the firearms are made clear in her visor, thanks to DELPHI's automatic threat and weapons assessment algorithms. 
"Satellite imagery indicates... a pair of teenagers demonstrating a high degree of affection." DELPHI replies, using the Birds' channel to respond, so that they all hear the response. 
Oracle's gloved hand covers her faceplate lightly. "Romeo and Juliet, anyone?" 
Nevertheless, the alarm sounds inside the building and, soon enough, people are filing out of the doors. Below Dinah, the high tech door opens as well, though the people that emerge from that aren't the kitchen staff nor patrons. And at least one or two of the big guys have pistols in their hands.
"You think it's a false alarm?" one says to the other.
"Dunno, but I ain't seein' any smoke," replies his compatriot.
Oracle leaps across to another building, following Huntress' route. "I think H and I can get in through the roof," she tells Dinah as she goes. "You may want to try something similar."
Dinah holds intensely still as four burly men push their way out the door and look around. Knowing that communication back to Oracle would lead to her detection at such a close proximity, she waits there, nestled within those pipes over the doorway.
"Remember the last time this happened, Rick-o?" the largest one says, thwapping the shoulder of the man next to him.
The man responds with laughter, "Yeah, was juss Johnny B. in the ladies bathroom, hittin' the tweaker pipe." After some more banal chatter, the men decide to re-enter the building. One, however, straggles behind.
"Gonna take a quick puff," he says, pulling out some cigarettes. As the three meander back inside, they leave the back door open. Dinah, of course, sees this as her silent knock of opportunity, but decided she'd first wait a good 30 seconds to make her entrance, and possible assault on this straggler less... noisy. But the man, quick as a fiddle, notices the door left open, and goes to shut it.
Acting on impulse, Dinah swings herself down in a long arcing motion, knocking her boots straight into the skull of the smoker, sending him to the ground. She drops down, and throws a choke hold on him, rendering him unconscious.
"Back door is open. I'm undetected. Some guys inside." Dinah reports in. "Suggested next move?"
"Start carrying knockout gas," Oracle quips in reply. Then, a little more seriously. "How many, Canary? I can be at your 20 in 2." Though, she also knows the Canary is plenty able to take out a handful of mooks by herself. It's simply the noise factor that's the problem. "Can you don an apron and pretend to be staff?"
She slides smoothly down a zip-line to the rooftop of the restaurant. Romeo and Juliet are relatively heedless of the commotion below... and the landings on the rooftop -- mainly because they're in the midst of re-enacting a winter rooftop version of Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.
Huntress makes it across to the building roof just in time for Oracle to declare that it's a pair of teens sucking face. Pfeh. She stays out of sight until the fire alarm goes off inside the building and the young couple... don't even notice. Pfeh again. "HAL, I'll tell you later." She's practically subvocalizing to keep from being heard, though she suspects the two out there wouldn't notice anything short of her shouting at them. 
"Wait, you need knockout gas? I think I have a bolt for that." Visually checking on the couple again, she sneaks to the edge of the rooftop directly over the back door and Canary's location. Peeking down, she plans the best place to drop the bolt, then whispers over her comm, "Canary, hold your breath." 
From the blonde's point of view, Huntress's arm sticks out over the edge of the roof and simply drops something. Something that hits the ground amongst the men then with about as much clatter as a dropped ballpoint pen, then explodes in a puff of smoke that oddly matches the coloration of the gas frequently used by the Sandman.
Dinah looks over her outfit and smirks to herself, murmuring: "Don't think an apron would work very long, but I'll--" she suddenly stops speaking, as she's face to face with one of the men who'd stepped back inside a moment ago.
"HEY! WHAT THE--" he starts to say, but soon has Dinah's heel driving itself into his mouth and nose. Dinah remembered this one from earlier--he had a gun. Glancing quickly, she identified it: holstered, but he was reaching for it while stumbling back from Dinah's kick. 'Oh hell no!' Dinah thinks to herself, and shifts her weight to make another straight-on kick, to intercept his hand before grasping the gun.
"Detected," Dinah says remorsefully, suspecting the scuffling sounds and shouting might've already tipped Barbara and Helena off. Her kick worked, landing straight into the mobster's hand... a bone-crunching sound re-sounding.
The man let out of squeaky, frantic, "Shit--SHIT!!" to which Dinah's response was three punches, landing in his head, throat, and stomach in quick succession. He toppled over, unable to breath. Dinah winced as she heard some running headed her way from the hallway within. But that's also when she heard Helena's words about holding-her-breath, and she did so, stepping backwards in several long, quick strides.
Oracle chuckles softly as she watches Huntress skirt the lovesick teenagers and drop a knockout bolt over the side of the building. She eases her way to the door and examines the lock. The door's propped open slightly, so Romeo and Juliet can sneak back in. "We've got access, H. Going in." 
With that, she eases the door open and slips into the dim stairwell. DELPHI automatically flips her visor over to a starlight vision that enhances her acuity, adjusting its levels to compensate for the the increasing light the lower down she goes. She pauses as she starts to hear noises in upper hallway, and takes out a couple of knockout pellets of her own.
Huntress doesn't wait to see how well her bolt works on the goons in Canary's part of the building, instead moving back toward the stairwell access door. The oblivious couple continue being oblivious thankfully, and she slips into the stairwell just a few seconds behind Oracle. Close quarters like this, her 9mm is more a liability than anything, so she pulls the knife she keeps sheathed on the back of her left forearm. "Right behind you, HAL," she whispers, to let Oracle know she's there.
Watching the two men from earlier re-emerge from the doorway, only to find themselves unconscious within seconds, Dinah ignoring the sudden temptation to run into the back door in full-on attack-mode. 
"How many exited the front on alarm? Let's do some math. 4 down here," she asked Oracle accountingly. Dinah decided that she was going to take the rooftop entry point for the teamwork advantage, as well as taking the opportunity to seal these guys inside. She spun herself around just inside the entryway, and found the complimenting security panel for exit. With a few swift, well-placed kicks, she completely smashed the push-button controls. Stepping back outside, she pulled the door shut, hearing it lock. Another kick rendered the outer-entry point null, and Dinah soon found herself carefully climbing the cold, slippery metal of the fire escape. "They're nailed in," she whispered into hear ear-piece, "I'm heading to you."
So, the point of this little shindig is to get in without really disturbing very much. A handful of unconscious guards in a back hallway might disrupt that plan, if anyone else comes along. So, chances are good that another couple of unconscious mooks in an upstairs hallway won't raise any higher an alarm then their sleeping counterparts down below. 
"Two on the roof are a couple of horny kids," Oracle tells Dinah. "Heat signatures indicate two more up here in the corridor. So, that's 8." DELPHI provides her minimap with a red dot update of unknowns. "Looks like there's 8 or 10 in the parking lot out front. So, we've got 4 unaccounted in the building."
Even as she speaks, she rolls the pellets down the hall toward the two mooks at the far end. She can hear them speaking softly, but not loudly enough to make out what they're saying. Doesn't matter. In a moment, they're slumped against walls, leaving only those mystery four left to contend with.
Huntress waits for Oracle, watching the pellets take down the two mooks. "Stairwells are so boring." She brushes past the redhead (though you can't see her hair currently) and because she's a little paranoid she holds her breath while using zip ties to secure the unconscious men's hands. She also checks them for keys, weapons, anything useful. The weapons are rather viciously jammed, their bullets confiscated. Especially any 9mm rounds. "Four to go, then?" She starts down the stairs to the next landing, listening carefully as she goes.
Dinah was glad she brought her gloves--the icy railings on her ascent would've been a nightmare. After a few minutes, she was up on the roof, and moved with measured paces, eventually identifying Barbara and Helena's entry point, she gazed inside. Not particularly suited for the darkness, she fumbled for a lightweight, thin-beamed flashlight she'd been carrying.
"While it's fun beating these guys up," Dinah joked into her earpiece, playing on Helena's sometimes violent-tendencies, also knowing full well that within seconds she be in the same room as the two, "I hope this isn't a waste of time."
Oracle let's out a singular 'heh', into her com, digital voice harmonizing still. "What are we looking for, D?" she asks, now, moving silently along the hall to check each door there for thermals and noise. "Any idea?" If the remaining four are anywhere, they're likely down another level. She's not picking up anything significant.
Huntress waits in the stairwell for Oracle and Canary to catch up, making sure their way to get to the next floor of the building doesn't get taken away from them. "How many floors are there to this place, again?" She's already checked for cameras, and is standing directly underneath one to stay in its blindspot. "Hey, HAL? There're cameras in here. Any way you can blind them?"
Dinah joined Barbara, and the two of them stepped closer to the stairwell. She looked in, identifying both Helena and the security camera pointed at the stairs. The light was dim, however. From the floor below, there was talking, and Dinah gazed down from her position. Though difficult to see much, she noticed it coming from one of the rooms below, near the stairs. The old, wooden, chipped doorway was slightly opened, and whomever was talking started raising their voice. It was a gravely-throated, complaining tone.
"We got us a situation here. We been twiddlin' our thumbs all night waitin' for your lady--den we gets a call that she ain't even showin' up. Are me and the guys supposed to guard this fookin' shit all night or what? I know dis is important, but dere's a fookin' GAME on!"
Dinah rolls her eyes and whispered to Barbara, "Why does it feel like we're here on little league night?"
"Welcome to Jersey," the superhacker says with a shrug and casual deprecation. "Sound like outtatowners, anyway. Imports from Boston." So, there may be links down that way to follow up on, too. "Sounds like they're fixing to move. What say you we discourage them?" She smiles, though they can't see it, and slides a pair of batarangs from her belt. Then, enjoying the fact she has full mobility again, she slides lightly down the stairs, spins and tosses the 'rangs down the corridor with a flick of her wrist that sends them thoking into the wall, through the door, wherein the mooks sit grousing.
Huntress just grins as Babs pulls a stunt that she herself considered briefly but opted against for the sake of stealth. "Going for the drama, HAL?" She then rushes toward the door on light feet with the intention of taking down anyone that comes barreling out that door. Yes, she's probably cramping Canary's style at this point by claiming the up-close stuff, but she really doesn't have many other options since her 9mm is anything but subtle.
The door to the room where the shouting was coming from flung open with the batarang's assault, a chunk of the rotting wood tearing off and drooping down--the well-lit room's yellowish light beaming into the darkened hallway. Inside were three more gangsters of varying heights, eyes-wide with surprise. The largest one a bright-orange haired ginger wearing a wife beater, holding his cellphone. Behind them was a room full of crates. 
"AH FAAAK!" he shouted, dropping his phone, and turning around to grab what was in all likelihood a weapon. Oracle's batarang, sticking itself to the far wall in the room, started venting gas into the room, and witin a quick ten seconds, all three thugs had fallen into a cuddle puddle in the door's frame, right in front of Helena.
"H, wait!" As Helena leaps past her, Oracle mutters a soft, "Ah, crap." She knows the spread of the gas and, frankly, knows it won't really spread much beyond that room. So, the real trick is making sure her friend doesn't cross the threshold. Not, mind, that there's some sort of magical barrier that will keep wisps of the gas from escaping. It will just have much less effect the farther away from the 'rangs than right at the back of the room. 
Huntress somehow actually manages to NOT just dash into the room where the mooks are. Maybe she heard Oracle's warning. Regardless, she stops just outside the door, waiting for Mr. BadAccent to step through. She's put the knife away, but has her pistol in hand now. And of course, this is when H's typical bad luck kicks in. She takes a breath waiting for the ginger to step through the door, and ends up breathing in a bit of that smoke from Oracle's batarangs. "Oh, shit."
Dinah lets out a little gasp at Helena's movement towards the room, and makes a careful, swinging movement downstairs, landing next to Oracle. The room inside housed about 8 shipping crates, each just small enough for two men to awkwardly carry. They were nailed shut. Sitting atop one of the crates was a long, metal, locked piece of luggage, resembling an over-sized briefcase. Dinah knew that Barbara was quite particular about using knock-out gas, and waited the requisite 30 full seconds, her attention rapt in worry about Helena getting affected by the smoke. 
"Hello? HELLO? FREDDY?!" a volume-maxed voice from the cellphone shouted. Then, silent. Dinah looked down at the three mobsters in the doorway. Three. Then, she heard a creaking sound behind her.
"Math--" Dinah said, her voice sounding alerted, and spun around to look at the stairwell below. Bad luck indeed: the final unaccounted for insider was right there, and he let out three shots--aiming desperately at Canary and Oracle. Two of the shots missed, hitting the ceiling above, and the third grazed Canary's shoulder, a thin stripe of her blood wisping through the air.
Oracle throws herself to one side as the bullets start whizzing. Again, she flicks something. This time, however, a small dart splits in half and nails the man at two separate spots on his torso. The wire between them lights up and the built in taser leaves him vibrating with electricity for a full 10 seconds before he drops.
"I hate guns," she notes... fully aware Helena is holding one.
Huntress slaps her empty hand over her mouth and nose, trying to stifle the urge to cough. And luckily, she has her back against a wall, so any dizziness resulting from the gas or her holding her breath (or both, most likely) is not sending her to the floor. Not right away, anyway. The ginger mook finally steps through the doorway to escape the gas himself while the other two collapse, and she swings her pistol at the man's head to knock him out. No, Babs, she never had any intention of shooting anyone with it. Not right now, anyway. If DELPHI is good enough, there might even be indication that the safety is still on.
Dinah, in typical Dinah form, pretends like she wasn't almost shot and her shoulder isn't bleeding all over her. She moves into the lit room with haste, aggressively stepping right atop the fallen body of Helena's attacker, and glances around. Somebody's office--or used to be--most of the functional office equipment and desk have been pushed up against the wall. Now it seems more like a... former hangout zone for these guys. 
"Smuggling?" Dinah asks, eyeing the crates. She gives one of the corners of a crate a sharp kick, trying to knock it open. And, while it lets out a ghastly sound of wood cracking, it doesn't give. With another, stronger boot, Dinah, knocks the side of the container off it's nails. Inside is tons of foam padding. She begins digging in there, acting rushed, and begins pulling out numerous black, metal rectangles. "Looks like weapon parts."
Oracle follows Dinah into the storage room, "Hey. You okay, D?" She side steps the mook Huntress felled and Dinah subsequently tromped on. She glances over to Huntress. "You okay, H? I have an antidote, if you start feeling buzzed or fatigued." She extends a hand and a sensor array on her gauntlet feeds information back to DELPHI as she opens crates to see just what they're dealing with. "Could be smuggling," she admits. "More likely it's stockpiling. Let's see if we've got a full roster of parts. DELPHI, see if you can extrapolate what these things actually are."
Huntress coughs harshly for a few seconds as Canary and Oracle pass her into the room. "I'm, uh, yeah. What happened to D?" She's still leaning against the wall just outside the door, and thus not really helping them with figuring out the crates.
"Pretty weird stuff for Maggia," Dinah comments, crouching over a shipping label that had been scribbled over in long strokes of permanent black marker. "Passed through Turkey via Japan," she commented, continuing to look the gear and room over, and stood back up to her feet, face to face with the locked, silver briefcase. Before grasping at it, her eye noticed the downed cellphone, and decided to look at it. Walking over, she bent down and scooped it up. Her eyebrows twitched when she noticed that whomever was on the phone... was still connected. Dinah pointed at the phone wordlessly.
"DELPHI," Oracle says, the sound not coming out of her suit speakers, "trace that call would you?"
She moves over to the phone, bending down to pick it up, cradling it in her hand. Her suit speakers are off, now, so her voice comes into the women's ear pieces. "I think we'll take this with us," she notes softly. "Even if the trace doesn't go through, there's a lot on this I can lift."
Meanwhile, multitasking, DELPHI works on the trace and puts together a likely design for the weapons within those cases. As it coalesces on Babs' visor display her brows rise. "Holy crap... We need to confiscate these things. Now."
Dinah, not wanting to speak, turns her attention back to the silver case. The locking mechanism, while not sophisticated, would take some pretty good cutting tools to open. She gives it a little test-lift--pretty heavy. She wagered it was another weapon. She stepped outside the room, and whispered into her earpiece, "How are we going to get all this gear out quickly? We've no doubt sounded whatever alarms these people have."
Huntress finally feels like whatever was in that gas is easing off, and steps over the downed men to look at the contents of the crates as well. She's by no means a weapons expert, but... damn. Those do NOT look like normal pieces of semi-auto pistols. She looks from Canary to Oracle and is about to say something when she notices the phone in the latter's hand. Okay. Keeping quiet. Though really, it might be too late already.
It's absolutely too late, from the point of view of whomever's on the end of the phone. But as the room falls silent, he's got to be getting nervous. Regardless, DELPHI chimes into the comlink with, "The call can be traced to a payphone at the Gotham Airport. I am accessing airport security to get a visual on the caller." 
"Run the face through recognition," Oracle says. "I want an ID to go with an image."
She turns to her companions then, still speaking through earpieces. "If DELPHI's extrapolations are correct, the weapons in this crate are plasma based. We can't leave them here."
"Time is the issue," Oracle responds. "We don't have a lot of time before reinforcements arrive." She purses her lips. "Power supplies," she says then. "Let's grab as many power supplies as we can and get them out of here. That will at least slow them down. We can come back for the rest, later." Or send someone back for the rest. If they're quick about it. It'll have to happen today. But Batman may be willing to help with that. As might Commissioner Gordon. 
Meanwhile, DELPHI produces a grainy picture of a man in sunglasses for Babs to see. "This is the individual who last used the phone in question. However, he has eluded airport security and his current location is unknown."
Huntress starts pulling a very compactly folded wad of rip-stop nylon from a compartment on her belt. she then shakes it open and offers the nylon drawstring backpack to Dinah while pulling a second from her belt. "Never leave home without them," she mouths to the blonde. She's got a total of four of these bags with her, and if that's not enough to carry everything, then they can cram the rest into a crate or two.
Dinah begins rustling through the containers, one by one, kicking the sides off the unopened ones. "Speed packing!" she announces with a bit of manic whimsy.
--- --- ---
Twenty minutes later, Dinah is en route to the Clocktower, equipment in the back of Oliver Queen's beat-up old Chevy, driving literally 1 mph below speed limit. 
"Almost there," Dinah says into her earpiece. 'We just ripped off the mob!' she jokes to herself. Then she hears a sound. It's beeping... from her trunk. "Uh, guys--"
Category:Log