Sandstorm

**Sandstorm** is a former terrorist organization led by Major General Ellen Briggs, whose main goal was to end corruption in the United States at all costs with no regards for human lives. Its members were highly trained and skilled in combat and weaponry.

## Etymology

« These people, they give me that same feeling. They scare me just... just like that sandstorm. »
— Nas to WellerNas Kamal gave the organization the coded name of *Sandstorm* when she started her investigation for the NSA. In her childhood, Nas and her father got caught in a Sandstorm, being in that moment the most frightened she's ever been in her life, alluding the organization the same feeling.

## Events

### Background

Although Sandstorm's beginnings remain unclear, it is known that they started their first domestic attacks in 2009 with plans designed to appear to be originated from different groups in order to keep attention away from the organization.

As a Major General in the U.S. Army, Ellen Briggs had access to the nation’s best-kept secrets and to highly sensitive information such as the Truman Protocol. With a wealthy family background, she was able to pay for Kurt Weller’s tuition at Liberty Academy in hopes she could recruit him as an asset for her plans.

With valuable and skilled assets on her side, Sandstorm became a powerful and highly organized terrorist group whose goal was to end the corruption in the United States.

With a vast knowledge on Kurt Weller's life since his teenage years and due to his high values of justice, he became the prime candidate to replace the current Deputy Director of the FBI NYO, Bethany Mayfair, who had a record of corruption for being part of Project Daylight.

With a date set in mind to launch Phase One, Shepherd had to ensure Weller’s permanency in New York; to accomplish this, Sean Clark called Mayfair and suggested she kept Weller in her office for a while because he was still not ready to be transferred to DC.

**Clark:** *Look, I'm calling about the agent you put up to run the DC office.*

**Mayfair:** *He's the best I've got.*

**Clark:** *I think it's a little premature for him to be a candidate. He should spend some more time with you in New York before taking over an office of his own. He's a bit raw, to be blunt.*

**Mayfair:** *Well, that's one word for it, but he gets results.*

**Clark:** *I'm sure he does, but if he stays in New York, I think he can do great things.*

To guarantee Weller the position of Deputy Director, all of the corruption cases within the country, to whom the responsible were considered enemies of Sandstorm, were tattooed on Remi’s body for the FBI to solve and held them accountable for their actions.

## The Plan

### **Phase One**

* **Main Goal:** Ousting Mayfair from her charge as Deputy Director of the FBI New York Office and replace her with Kurt Weller.

Phase one was a series of events orchestrated by Sandstorm and performed by several of its members to accomplish a significant stage into the organization’s final plan. It took place in New York, starting in Times Square after an amnesiac woman was found naked and tattooed inside of an abandoned duffel bag as a way to be directly sent to Kurt Weller’s team.

Due to Remi’s physical appearance –eye color, hair and age-, and her possible resemblance with an adult Taylor Shaw, she decided to be part of Phase One and pose as Taylor to gain Weller’s trust inside of the FBI.

A few months before the memory wipe process, Remi and Oscar flew to Pennsylvania and swapped Taylor’s DNA samples with Remi’s for the time the FBI would need them once Kurt Weller found the scar and figured that Jane Doe might be his missing childhood friend. It’s presumed that while in Clearfield, Remi and Oscar also attended Taylor’s memorial to observe Weller and study his behavior towards Emma Shaw and Bill Weller.

Once the details for her cover as Taylor were covered and the tattoo designs were already done, Remi cut her hair, her body was covered in tattoos and her memory wiped with a high dose of ZIP to be dropped off in Times Square inside of a duffel bag and finally taken to the FBI and her case assigned to the Critical Incident Response Group lead by Kurt Weller.

An old scar at the back of her neck and her resemblance with Taylor Shaw were crucial to make Kurt Weller firmly believe she was his old friend, effectively gaining his trust over her work helping the team solve the cases behind the tattoos. With Jane properly placed inside of the team, Oscar’s job as her handler, was to gain her trust after showing her a recording made by Remi before her memory wipe; although this tactic didn’t have much effect on Jane, Oscar managed to convince her to perform small tasks inside of the FBI.

Jane successfully replaced a GPS chip in one of the team’s cars, as well as swapping Mayfair’s pen for a replica given to her by Oscar; she also unknowingly removed all files about Alexandra Harrison (aka Donna Hollaran) from the FBI servers. On the other hand, Sofía Varma, who was still alive after Remi contacted her before she committed suicide, asked Mayfair for money, making her believe that she needed to flee the country again; meanwhile Donna, posing as Alexandra, met and flirted with Mayfair until her assassination –by some Sandstorm member probably-. All of this, along with Thomas Carter’s disappearance and presumed murder, led Matthew Weitz to conduct an investigation on Mayfair and taking her under arrest for killing Carter once the evidence, planted in the FBI by Sandstorm, charged her as guilty.

Sandstorm successfully managed to take Mayfair out of the FBI by framing her for murdering Carter, which allowed Kurt Weller to assume as the new Deputy Director of the FBI New York Office.

« **Oscar:** Let's call this phase one.
**Sofia:** Bethany needed to be removed from power. Made accountable for her actions. »
— Oscar and Sofia Varma to Jane
### **Phase Two**

* **Main Goal:** Replace the current U.S. administration with the new Deputies brought to power by Shepherd through the Truman Protocol. - Failed ☒

Through her time in the military holding the rank of Major General, Ellen Briggs had access to the Truman Protocol, a confidential file written during Truman’s presidency, allowing the designated deputies from a key federal agency to assume power after an attack.

With Kurt Weller as Deputy Director of the FBI and several other corrupt Deputies replaced after Jane’s tattoos were solved, Phase Two was a few steps closer to be launched. To get rid of the team, that had become a liability to the plan, Shepherd tricked Jane into believing that Phase Two was about blowing New York’s power grid, which lured the team to Sandstorm’s headquarters only to make the building collapse while the FBI was still raiding the building.

Even though the team managed to survive the attack and Jane and Roman left to the FBI, Shepherd managed to take Phase Two to its final stages alongside Robert Borden by purchasing HMX explosives. Sandstorm had also managed to build a replica of SIOC they left for the FBI to find while they were attacking the Bureau’s building and placing the explosives in tactical places to blow up the place.

In order to activate the COGS, Sandstorm planned coordinated attacks on several federal buildings, two of which fell after the explosions; with the country under attack, all deputies were taken to a secret bunker to keep them under protection and ensure the Truman Protocol’s correct procedure on allowing the designated deputies assume power if needed.

Patterson, with the help of two NASA experts, Jane and Weller stopped Shepherd’s rocket take its curse from attacking the White House; this attack intended to wipe out the current country’s administration to be replaced by the deputies awaiting in the bunker.

## Connections

### Remi/Jane Doe

Alice Kruger stumbled across Sandstorm's way after she was rescued and adopted by Shepherd along with her brother Ian Kruger. Apparently, they both were raised and trained for war under Shepherd's terms to accomplish her goals.

It is implied that Alice, after changing her name to Remi, being maybe the second on command, was a volunteer to be part of the plan that implied wiping her entire memory and tattooing her whole body to be sent to the FBI to blend with Weller's team and being an active Sandstorm asset to accomplish the organization's biggest goal set for phase 1: take Bethany Mayfair off her position as Assistant Director of the FBI's New York Field Office.

She was ordered by Oscar to complete a series of missions under his threat of killing Weller and his team if she refused to complete the tasks. She unwillingly accepted in order to protect the people she was working with completely unaware of Oscar's true intentions. Jane realized about the main plan way too late to stop its course and she was surprised by Mayfair, as a result, Mayfair got killed by Oscar to prevent her from alerting the FBI. As soon as she realized the damage she made and killed Oscar, she went back to her safe house to encounter Weller waiting for her and take her under arrest.

After escaping the CIA's black site, Jane is taken back to the FBI to be questioned. As soon as she realized that she's no longer trusted by any of the members of her old team, she decided to work as a double agent for both the FBI and Sandstorm to understand the organization's goal and find out Shepherd's true identity.

Trying to do the right thing, Jane gave the FBI intel about Sandstorm's plans and members, however, Shepherd and Roman knew since the beginning that she was working primarily for the FBI instead of her own family. After discovering Jane's betrayal, Shepherd and Roman managed to elaborate a plan to kill Kurt Weller’s team; believing her team was dead, Jane took a wounded Roman to a medical safe house and decided to inject him with a dose of ZIP in order to give him a new beginning and forget his awful past.

### Kurt Weller

Nas Kamal alerted Weller that Sandstorm has been watching him for over twenty years, by showing him a video of his time at Military School, a video file taken from an NSA's asset who worked as a double agent into Sandstorm. He also recognized Shepherd's voice in an audio recorder.

### Bethany Mayfair

Trying to find Sofia Varma's whereabouts, Mayfair ends up finding out the truth behind Jane and her actions during her time assisting on her own FBI case. She then realizes that Sandstorm, through Jane, framed her as the murder of Thomas Carter, which led her to be taken under arrest and out of her job.