Delta Green - Iconoclasts 23

[00:00:00] Warning! This game's setting revolves around an active Middle East combat zone and contains references to extreme violence, graphic content, and other mature themes. Listener discretion is advised. The Rancors Brothel presents Wants some whiskey in your water, sugar in your tea? What's all these crazy questions they're asking me?

[00:00:24] The craziest body that could ever be Don't turn on the lights cause I don't wanna see My little man has come My little man has come I need the way to have fun Sun Iconoclast, a campaign of horrors modern and ancient

[00:00:47] I'm not the wind or let the matter to this room I think I'm almost choking from the smell of step perfume And a cigarette just smoking Don't scare me half to death I'm not the wind or let me catch my breath

[00:01:03] I'm not the wind or let me catch my breath I'm not the wind or let me catch my breath I'm not the wind or let me catch my breath The Rancors Brothel presents They now have as of yesterday in game They now have their IDs

[00:01:45] So they can attempt to insert into Mosul Obviously with them looking for so many on-site clues Things that they haven't been able to figure out Through the Peshmerga or through the CIA Or through other contacts Now they theoretically have the opportunity to insert If folks wanna do that

[00:02:03] Obviously who would you send? What would you send? We're also kinda doing a general review Of clues and trying to understand some plot And possibly figure some stuff out So that's kinda what we're doing this evening Somewhat low-key but we'll see what happens

[00:02:17] I haven't even got dice out yet so we'll see if I even need them Anyway, Jeff, you were asking about Operation Conquest And Mosul and how far our Rissams was away, etc. Well, we were talking about survivors from Rissams Correct We've established narratively that there were survivors

[00:02:35] And Sadegi would from the Peshmerga I think that's the right contact Would have let you know who they are For the players, if there's someone you're interested in looking at And I didn't explicitly kill them I think I said this at the end of the last episode

[00:02:49] If I didn't explicitly kill them on camera Literally in the first, in sort of the opening gambit I'll let you look into them if that makes sense If you wanna look them up You can find out information about them

[00:03:01] We just need to review that episode and make sure it's not somebody Like I said, I'm pretty sure it's Tamir who's dead Gokhan is dead Rassam is dead And we were kind of up in the air about a couple of others

[00:03:09] I think I killed at least one more And none of us bothered to go back and listen No, absolutely not My biggest question is There's like, I don't mean anything bad about this I think it is maybe a good thing to do

[00:03:21] But legitimately what could we learn from them That we don't already know From these survivors Legitimately asking If we were to go down that path, what would that look like? More details about maybe what actually happened off camera Okay

[00:03:35] I mean, we know that we saw a cloud of black stuff come up And tear people apart What else do we... What else happened? Yeah I would say establishing timeline would be If you're interested in establishing timeline after You obviously know that The attack happened

[00:03:52] You are presuming that something related to the attack Is continuing to happen You know that It was Al-Jabari Put troops on Rassam's place Yes So like, there... Clearly there is something that happened in the interim But I don't know how much you've established

[00:04:15] This is where I think laying out the timeline And remembering what you know is important And we were wondering whether the survivors would be In Mosul in a hospital Whether they got home Or I was just questioning the timeline

[00:04:29] When Mosul was cut off by the Iraq and American military Which... There's been operation conquest What's it say like Wikipedia sources, Jeff? All the news stories are March 24th Which is the day after Yeah, the day after it happened

[00:04:48] But I'm pretty sure they were discovered on the 24th What was discovered? The remains at Rassam's The 24th... Yes, the 24th would have been When the outlaws would have arrived at Rassam's Yeah, so now I'm questioning How did Al-Jabari get his men out there? So if it's helpful

[00:05:09] I can see that Looking at some other maps I can see that as of April 1st Coalition forces are in Qura and Mahana Which appear to be 100 kilometers south of Mosul So that's well past Rassam's Rassam's is like maybe 10 or 15 kilometers This other map

[00:05:36] And this is something that you could actually look up Because like I said This timeline integrates actual historical events And it says on March 24th Iraqi forces advance westward Toward the oil town of Quraq Southeast of Mosul Iraqi troops reported to have recaptured Several villages from ISIL

[00:05:52] And then Garmandi, Koudila and Kerberdan I would say So yeah, that's where they're at as of early March Or sorry, late March, early April Okay, so if survivors did flee from Rassam's They wouldn't have been picked up by military Because nothing had gotten that close yet

[00:06:08] Correct, you would... If that was your supposition, yes The other thing that I was going to say is obviously that While there is the possibility That these guys could have run to the coalition You would think that more than likely

[00:06:22] These guys have thrown their lot in with ISIL Ideologically So they probably would have run back to Mosul Also it's closer Like do you really want to run towards the coalition front lines You know, with an AK-47 on your back In a truck flying an ISIL flag Right

[00:06:37] So yes, if you are looking for survivors They are likely in Mosul Now whether or not they're in hospital Whether or not they died later Whether or not they were rehabilitated out on the front lines There's no way for you to know at this point Okay

[00:06:50] I think it would be a good use of time to Literally map out who is going to Mosul And what are we doing Because I feel like there are a lot of stones To turn over in Mosul And also how are we getting into Mosul and Right

[00:07:04] Can the Peshmerga set us up inside of Mosul Right So there are a lot of different things you can investigate there I personally as your handler Also think it wouldn't be a bad idea for you to review notes And put together some sort of timeline or Understanding

[00:07:20] Because I think that It's just the episodic nature of the podcast We come in and we do the exact same thing For more we picked up from last time But there's quite a bit of information you've been fed

[00:07:30] And I just want to make sure everybody knows where you're at I don't think you're inherently missing anything But I do want to make sure you're seeing the whole puzzle Right So I don't know if there's something you want to talk about Or go through

[00:07:40] But that was one of the reasons why I said It might be a good idea to review your notes And kind of think Our notes are as good as you think they are The moleskin isn't here True I do believe starting in episode one

[00:07:51] I said that there should be a moleskin There is one He's just in Florida Oh you're putting Daniel as your note taker He's taking significantly more notes than the rest of us That's fair As I'm editing I am going back and taking notes

[00:08:07] But I haven't gotten that far So then I'm leaving you alone from Baldur's Gate this weekend He's just going to sign in invisible So you don't know that he's playing Baldur's Gate I know, I'd do the same thing Okay So timeline wise

[00:08:22] You want us to review the timeline of information that we've gained Just I think it would be helpful to start putting You've been given a lot And I think that it seems like you've just moved Sort of in a straight line

[00:08:33] I think way more of those pieces fit together To create a puzzle than you realize Just because of the nature of recording Literally over what A year and a half or more at this point No, it's been that long

[00:08:45] So I can't get this Nineveh out of my head And Nineveh was an old The ruins of a holy place It's the ruins of the old city of Nineveh Well the thing is it wasn't really ruins Iso made it ruins It was ruins but then they ruined

[00:09:01] The ruins Right Nineveh was a massive We talked about that It was a big walled city It was a big walled city And Iso moved in and bulldozed everything Ah, right But specific within the attacks timeline There was discussion about Algebrae ordering troops into Nineveh Correct

[00:09:17] And I want to say that was right around the 30th That is roughly correct Basically a week after the incident And that's when And I think that's roughly the end of when We started getting details about attacks And 30 March 2016 An intense firefight took place East of As-Sin-A-Y-A As-Sin-A-E-A

[00:09:39] District I don't know how to pronounce that What did you call me? I called you lots of things But nothing right now In the demolished ruins of Nineveh Police and military units were ordered Out of the area By the head of Amn al-Dawah Iso counterintelligence in Mosul

[00:09:56] Ahmed Al-Jabiri Correct So the real question is What would cause a firefight Within the city of Mosul in that area And why did it happen a week after This thing was released If this thing is supposedly We've had the conversations about this thing Taking or converting soldiers

[00:10:11] Converting men Converting boys Yeah, because there's men that keep going missing From the attacks and not being found Correct And if this thing was ancient Being the ruins Or at least significantly old Like could it have been The site of like what captured this thing To begin with

[00:10:29] Interesting So In the original operation bone box stuff That you did receive So I'm not telling you anything new Stuff to have on a piece of paper Yeah There were four SIGINT assets Identified So you have the incident at Rassam's On the 23rd Yep SIGINT assets identified

[00:10:46] Four similar incidents on the 24th Four similar incidents on the 25th Three on the 26th One on the 27th One on the 29th And you guys I believe Were told April April 1st or April 2nd is when you guys Started this operation bone box Yep

[00:11:05] And at that time they said no Pertinent incidents had been reported As of the 1st of April And no pertinent incidents Had been reported outside Mosul It's fascinating So the last pertinent incident Was reported prior to the firefight And there were none after You did start

[00:11:21] You guys your first Your briefing in Germany was April 1st So that data would have been up to The minute basically Got ya At what point did they start finding body parts In the river April 6th I don't know why that date sticks in my head

[00:11:37] It's probably entirely wrong But I don't know why This is such a unique book It's really kind of interesting Oh Beginning the first incident you have In turn of sort of Sort of like human remains Like skinless arms and legs Limbs etc

[00:11:56] The first report is 12th of April 12th Other questions I can answer Or other discussion you want to have We could just talk through what we need to do in Mosul But I don't think we're finished with timeline yet though Like there's more to discuss

[00:12:11] I just don't know what it is Well again I don't necessarily think it's all timeline either It's sort of just putting pieces together Like you also have learned a lot from Various textual resources About this thing too You know just making sure you start putting things together

[00:12:29] Just throwing it out there Do you guys have any theories as to why Incidents have decreased? Is it Have decreased since when Just there's that precipitous drop immediately When it's released You know for incident We're not getting the same level of intelligence

[00:12:46] I think it's part of it too Interesting Like cause that's not necessarily I mean And what we've been kind of viewing Has been like social media Trying to communicate with refugees It's not like we're getting Detailed incident reports by the minute Like he's talking about it

[00:13:03] It's like when we're looking into stuff And what we have gotten has been kind of Given like along those timelines Like finding out about the tank And those other people That's fair It's also under the cover of war too The cloud of war I guess you'd say

[00:13:15] That this thing could operate Okay so which river Where the bodies found it I believe there's a river that runs straight through Mosul And runs out to the south Southeast It's the Tigris I think It is I'm just trying to map it The Tigris Gotcha

[00:13:31] It looks like it flows south Sort of south south Yeah south southeast out of Mosul And then turns almost completely south Where it meets another river I don't know if that's the Euphrates or not I know the Tigris and the Euphrates Do meet in Iraq

[00:13:45] The other thing to your point Just to sort of throw some other thoughts out there You have been in touch with the CIA As early as April 2nd Yeah I think that was our first call It is now May 4th Okay

[00:14:00] So just you've been in contact with the CIA For some amount of time About a month So it's not like that's the only SIGINT Options out there You've also been SIGINTing yourself Yeah we just had shit rolls When it comes to the CIA for the most part

[00:14:13] I mean you did attempt to kill Al-Jabiri She's got some cruise missiles So she's been pretty pleased with your input from that Yeah I'm not gonna lie I would be interested in trying to talk to the At least somebody from Rassam's From the Rassam's house incident The original

[00:14:30] Just to find out like What kind of communication is coming down from Al-Jabiri About like what's going on Like I would love to know how they're talking about it I have a stupid question Probably not Al-Jabiri ordered the police and the military out of Nineveh

[00:14:47] Who had the firefight? That's my question Oh sorry Yeah that's what I was talking about earlier Like what focus group of people would be on the other side of the firefight If there was a firefight between ISIL, combatants and who Well that's the thing

[00:15:02] He ordered the military out Right after the firefight No Before Yeah Right? He ordered them out prior and then there was a firefight Yeah I'm looking to Cody and he's kind of chidly knotting Right So which then goes to show that in my opinion Al-Jabiri's got

[00:15:20] Something else going on What? Mm-hmm Which by something else going on means there's a reason why those people were sitting at Rassam's Yeah I mean he had to have some inkling of what was there

[00:15:31] That's why I want to know what kind of communication about everything that's going on is coming from Al-Jabiri to anybody else And it wasn't Al-Jabiri part of sending the original group to Rassam's I don't think so You have a He's counterintelligence not I'm not Al-Jabiri Yeah Doud

[00:15:48] I think that was the guy's name You have an ISIL org chart as one of the clues if that's helpful But He's the head of the religious police right? Al-Hisba No he's Amun Al-Dawah which is counterintelligence so he's under the secret service But you the

[00:16:06] I think it was Al-Hisba that was Like Al-Hisba is the one that went initially Correct Al-Hisba is the one that went with Dubeek Right But I know you guys did ask at one point who would have ordered that Right And we got that answer

[00:16:21] I swear the guy's name was Dawoud Dawoud Al-Said Was an official for Al-Hisba The Dubeek folks were dispatched by Ali bin Hazma Who is basically someone in charge of Dubeek Okay could you say that again I'm sorry I was right Ali bin Hazma Ali bin Hamza Hamza

[00:16:43] And this is the head of Dubeek It says an official of the recruiting magazine Dubeek So someone, a senior editor you know Editor in chief something like that He is the one who Dawoud Al-Said Set this up with Yeah Dawoud Al-Said would have sent the Al-Hisba team

[00:17:01] Ali bin Hamza would have sent the video team for Dubeek to record it Okay So they would have had to have had some sort of communication to send There are two different parts of the ISIL structure So it's an interdepartmental thing

[00:17:14] So there had to have been cross-departmental communication Right One of those vacuum tubes sent the order Right somebody set that up Correct Somebody had to know something about what was at Rasams Correct

[00:17:27] And was it these guys or was it somebody else who pointed these guys at that place That I don't think you could extrapolate easily Yeah Looking at the ISIL org chart These folks are, I mean they're all under but they're not There's no real common denominator

[00:17:44] Al-Hisba falls under the military and security council Really kind of the military council Al-Dawah falls under the secret service which is the security council And then Dubeek falls under the communications council So Yeah Different branches of the same organization

[00:18:00] But it's not like they fall in line or tree down to each other Or are directly connected Do we know for a fact that Rasam doesn't have any other extended family in the area? There was no mention of any other family He had a dead wife

[00:18:16] Well, I don't know because he had a niece Can we look into also the other teams that are running down All those family members who immigrated to the western countries? It's been a month Yeah I mean you could talk to Colonel Gwynn about that

[00:18:31] I think it's a classified dossier on Rasam Just some of the extended family members acted as US intelligence assets Local translators and liaisons from obviously the 50s to the 90s Which is outside of, a good outside But like why is his niece in here?

[00:18:45] Why was his niece there? Yeah you could ask, it's being run down by the folks The real question is where would the niece go? Or the butler? Would they, I assume they wouldn't go back to the city Well if you remember that dynamic I find their names

[00:18:59] Majid al-Muhandis Was the Gardner mechanic and sort of friend of Rasam And Shatha was the 17 year old sort of servant Shatha had told those investigators that her uncle, I think it is Was like very connected to Rasam

[00:19:17] You get the sense that Rasam and Majid are incredibly closely connected It was Shatha that was like She even said something about getting her uncle away from here Or something like that Shatha was the niece of the Gardner guy, not Rasam Correct Very ideologically connected to ISIL

[00:19:37] Which is one of the reasons why she wanted to talk to the Debeet guys in the first place Yeah She was talking about how Rasam was summoning demons and stuff She was trying to throw Rasam under the bus Correct

[00:19:47] She could be the reason why they knew it was Rasam's to begin with Okay so This map is absolutely no help I'm sorry Trying to figure out where the hell bodies would have come from off of the Tigris But most of this map is not in English

[00:20:08] Ironic that Not a lot of English names in northern Iraq Yeah but I mean like half of the words are in English on Google map But the rest are not Well you know Like I know this is a supermarket

[00:20:21] But I don't know what the hell the name of it is There's a mosque There's a cemetery There's a shopping mall But I can't figure out where would the bodies have come from I mean the the the Tigris is fucking big Correct

[00:20:33] I was looking to see if it ran close to Nineveh But it doesn't look like it does The map that I have shows that the ruins of Nineveh are Goodness For some reason I wanted to say they were like in the southeastern portion of Mosul

[00:20:48] No they're northeast it's it's a kilometer maybe less from the river I'm trying to measure this This is that that distance is one kilometer If I set that there Yeah I'd say the ruins of Nineveh are obviously huge

[00:21:01] So like the far side of Nineveh is probably several kilometers from the river But at its nearest point you're talking about a few city blocks Like not not massively far like a kilometer is probably the distance from the river to Nineveh Yeah

[00:21:17] And I do believe the Tigris runs to the south So theoretically these bodies are flowing from Mosul or just outside Mosul So unless if it happened like Nineveh it would have to flow through basically the entire city of Mosul

[00:21:31] Which is not unusual again I know in my research they They ISIL in a few places did in fact murder I believe it was a university maybe They murdered several hundred students and I think they cast their bodies in the river and they floated downstream for miles

[00:21:49] Don't remember where it was but I remember reading that in one of the books I remember reading that one of the one of the big resistance forces was university students That is correct I cannot remember the name of them for the for the life of me though

[00:22:03] Kitab al-Mozul also known as the Mosul Battalions An informal movement of students former civil servants and Kurdish spies resisting ISIL occupation They were known to so confusion at checkpoints and in questioning help targeted populations hide escape steel supplies watch

[00:22:21] ISIL fighters activities they are thought to be mostly active near Mosul University Which would be just north of the Nineveh ruins It's also the site of one of the attacks wasn't it? It was it happened at the university It's easier for you to flip through your

[00:22:37] Yeah I'm looking I'm in it I'm just trying to find Seven ISIL fighters were found skinned on the campus of Mosul University Two vanished two were injured and were transported to Al-Khanzah Hospital How many are these districts?

[00:22:51] Let me look on my map and see if it defines it I would think that these districts are like neighborhoods If the map that I'm looking at is denoting the

[00:23:02] Is denoting the the districts you're talking about anywhere from a handful of blocks to maybe two or three dozen If all of these things on the map are our districts in Mosul there are 40 districts or so based on the map that I'm looking at

[00:23:18] I think the districts are relative are probably much smaller than you would think Probably Just thinking out loud have we ever talked about the 25th of March That attack and the fighter who discovered the body was unable to give a statement What does that mean to you Jeff?

[00:23:34] Like because it specifies in other incident reports that they were catatonic And that is a reason to be unable to give a statement is catatonic So I find it interesting that it's vague But just thinking out loud

[00:23:48] My personal pet theory is that Al-Jabari is the thing that's possessed him And now it gets its fill of blood from just war, regular war

[00:23:58] Well I mean if you want to go down that line of reasoning I think that then contextual clues are probably what you've been learning about the father of war Would probably either help support or deny some of that Ooh I like this

[00:24:10] Do we have handouts about what we learned about the father of war? I honestly cannot remember I told you things Yeah I know you did and I couldn't remember if you would put any of that in Nope you wrote them down Bullshit

[00:24:24] You did because you made me repeat them several times Going very slowly Now I believe because I am a smart handler I wrote down which ones I actually gave you The slopes of Mount Artemi Tribe found demon father of war I have really sketchy notes Cult of Shagash

[00:24:47] Yeah Cult of Shagash was one Oh the cult in 1000 BCE Yeah Darum Auxing Godbinder We're at what day now? It is May 4th It's May 4th So my pet theory is that the thing we're up against, the evil entity has taken a vessel

[00:25:09] I just kind of mentioned that I think the vessel is Al-Jabari just because it's thematically interesting I have no evidence But then Kodi said go back through and look through what we've talked about of the God of War And see whether or not those characteristics fit

[00:25:26] I don't know if that's Kodi saying we're going down the right path or the wrong path I don't know I've known Kodi for decades, I can't read him He's always lying Yeah Okay He's insatiable The God of War

[00:25:42] The cult sacrificed people to him at night and the sun kept it at bay Also the moon Yes I'm looking things up Um, the Generally useful Yeah Human remains were found in the river on April 12th The new moon was the 5th Right

[00:26:00] Or no, the 7th, I'm sorry It's five days before the remains were found Which means it would have been the darkest at night that day Exactly We were looking up the new moon or the full moon before and it didn't line up with anything The new moon Ding-Ding

[00:26:15] The new moon is what we need to be looking at Yeah And right now the new moon is in two days Got ya So we need to be in Mosul Yeah, in two days Or maybe we shouldn't be in Mosul in two days

[00:26:30] Well, I mean maybe you should wait two weeks I mean, you guys don't want to be where the action is or what? Can we task satellites for Nineveh? I don't know Depends on whose satellites Cause we pissed off some people I know

[00:26:47] Yeah, but we made friends with the CIA I can't remember what Irene gave us last She gave us more about the attack, the firefight on the 30th That's right But oh, okay Yeah, she gave us the information about the firefight

[00:27:02] Was it more information that she gave us or was she just reiterating what we already had? Sometimes I do a little bit of column A So I don't know that I have that written down, let me look Okay

[00:27:14] Yes, I do believe that she provided further details about that attack I think that's what she did provide What were those further details Cody? I'm pretty sure it's what you already know I don't know that I provided It says I gave you this clue on this page

[00:27:27] Basically that investigations or looking into anything like this would have been controlled by Amin Aldawa Any of these disappearances or anything else Which is just the name of the ISIL counterintelligence organization Correct, which is Algebrae

[00:27:46] Yeah, sometimes I struggle with determining like are these names of people or names of like organizations Correct, Amin Aldawa is ISIL's counterintelligence organization Which Algebrae heads Which would have been headed up by Algebrae Right And again the firefight at the Nineveh ruins

[00:28:02] But we already had that on the details True, but I think she's able to sort of fill in Basically there is no further investigation after that The investigation has been concluded as of that from all appearances The just the entire ISIL counterintelligence regime's investigation

[00:28:22] Yeah, sort of into these attacks or whatever the case may be Did she have any information on who was involved in the attack? I don't know that you asked, but I think that's something you could ask Okay Some of that would be difficult necessarily for her to know

[00:28:41] Right, but I mean the fact that police and military were pulled out of there Correct Algebrae would have had his men, but who were they fighting? Correct, I think it's a fair point And you would just know just mechanically speaking

[00:28:55] That some of this stuff looking into Algebrae would be incredibly difficult to track From sort of a sigint source and also potentially incredibly dangerous from a human element Right What? The head of ISIL counterintelligence is dangerous Might be, might be

[00:29:18] The Peshmerga may not necessarily be so inclined to What? To enter Mosul and follow around the one guy whose job it is specifically to shoot them Yeah

[00:29:30] But I don't think it's an unreasonable ask potentially to task looking into some things if that is what you want to do I would say you're on, I don't think Irene's ever going to be Jennifer's friend But I think that you're on at least decent speaking terms

[00:29:42] I mean tell her that we're looking at going into Mosul to track this guy I mean you don't even have to go that far if you don't want to Cause she is backtracking you as well She already thinks you're up to no fucking good

[00:29:54] In case you had forgotten that point No I hadn't forgotten it She had called you guys out on your shit You think we can have, um, with God I can't think of his name, the tech guy Al-Rabini Al-Rabini, thank you The NSO guy

[00:30:10] Do a little backtracking on her I mean I mean I don't know why we couldn't Yeah, that's not Make a roll We gotta make at least one roll on this No I have to Like I said, part of this is

[00:30:22] You could talk to Roy, my NSA contact and get background deets on old Irene You could, that's definitely something you could do if you're looking for pressure points I fucking love that That's an option That's great

[00:30:34] Can we have Landry start working with the Peshmerga to get us into Mosul And set up a safe house, set up contacts inside of Mosul I think if I remember our last interaction with Peshmerga correctly

[00:30:50] Cody was warning that it was, you know these rat lines are incredibly tenuous That it only takes, you know, only a couple people go And that the Peshmerga would not be so inclined to send people through these rat lines If am I remembering correctly

[00:31:07] Yeah no, it's something that you want to consider very carefully In fact, this is something that Gwen would be interested in Whether or not you want to involve him or not Just, you guys are agents So some of this stuff you're gonna know from the book

[00:31:22] I could just tell you straight up that you would know, right You start talking about are you going in covertly Are you using some, you know, clandestine tactics Are you using military assets Are you leveraging human assets Okay, covert and clandestine You're making a distinction there

[00:31:43] I need to So clandestine would be sort of, I mean clandestine would be What's, I was trying to think of the phrase for you Clandestine would be walking in between the raindrops You don't need to use any of your assets

[00:31:58] You don't, you're using all your assets to not be noticed Okay Period Covert your hidden in and amongst them Correct, you're authorized, you're able to go in You have paperwork You walk up to the front door and say, you know, multi-pass Right Corbin Dallas Multi-pass

[00:32:17] How would that work? What? Well no, I guess it's not like a solid barricade line around Mosul Correct Yeah, so okay, you can sneak, you can get into Mosul The rat lines is kind of like the covert aspect of it

[00:32:31] Whereas I would think using our aliases to walk in the door Like we are supposed to be there is the clandestine way Uh, I think we're gonna have to flip it Do I have it backwards? Yeah Well, I don't know what if Cody's right

[00:32:44] But based on what Cody said it would be flipped But clandestine was completely hidden Right And covert was blending in Correct And if you'd like you get, you get all, um, check man I've just spoken so much today

[00:33:01] Uh, you get Glancy's explanation in here so I could give you that So it's, clandestine tactics involved operating in a way that prevents the enemy from detecting a team's presence at all

[00:33:11] Covert tactics involved operating in a way that convinces the enemy that the team's presence is either authorized or does not oppose a threat Interesting So pretending to be an old lady showing your papers, being a part of the religious police These would all be covert tactics

[00:33:28] Clandestine would be para-dropping into the thing at night And hiding in the sewers Yeah It's likely that you're gonna have to utilize Both Both in some way Um, if you'd like, since I did start reading up on this

[00:33:40] Um, there are four major methods that you would potentially enter Mosul So the things that you would think about and this, your characters are obviously discussing this and have been discussing this Right Your experts in the field so I'm just giving you basic information

[00:33:56] You could walk, which would be one great way to dodge literally fucking everything if you just walk through the desert Um, you could drive You could try and task a helicopter Or you could para-drop Those would be the four major methods One literally walking through the desert

[00:34:12] One driving up to the front door and just going in A helicopter which would attract a fuck ton of attention But you could basically fly, you know Exactly where we want to be And jump off the side of a building and do that

[00:34:26] Or do an incredibly dangerous halo jump Which if you're not familiar with halo jumping Fucking dope as shit If anybody listening to this or if you guys haven't You should see the military perform halo jumps Give me a

[00:34:42] It's high altitude, low opening so that you're not seen on radar So like they take you up to where you can't fucking breathe Yeah, with masks You oxygenate up because Did you watch which one was it? Mission impossible No, James Bond James Bond, yeah

[00:34:57] It was Tomorrow Never Dies I think No, yeah The Helly Berry one Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah But yeah, you literally It's an extremely strenuous thing Because they take you up to such a high altitude You are exposed to situations with no oxygen

[00:35:16] You have to breathe I don't actually think you breathe oxygen on the way down But I think you're in a high You're in a high oxygenated atmosphere to the point where you drop Because once you drop, the pressure changes

[00:35:29] And your pressure in your body changes because you fall so fast You basically over-oxygenate your lungs And then you drop so fast You basically have to exhale the whole way down Probably screaming To try and keep from the pressure change on your body

[00:35:45] You literally can get the bends like you can in diving Because of the rapid stress change Yeah Because you're falling at your free falling at Terminal velocity Terminal velocity, you're falling at 9.8 meters per second squared And then the thing is that to avoid detection You open your parachute

[00:36:00] Like some absurd distance from the ground Like just enough to keep you from breaking every bone In your body when you hit the ground But that's the thing You don't show up on radar Nobody sees you do it All these characters have parachuting They do Yeah

[00:36:18] All... not all Hastings does not Fuck You would also know that Being in the military You would also know that a paradrop Like You gotta pull some goddamn strings You're not gonna be paradropped in there every week You're gonna be lucky if you can get

[00:36:34] A handful of people authorized Like that is a You're talking about You're not just borrowing an ISIL truck Laying on the side of the road You're taking a specific military team And a specific plane And it would be easier for you guys To probably steal a helicopter

[00:36:51] Than it would be, you know, to do a paradrop But... But we could... A regular parachute would be easier We could... I feel like there are certain risks Walking across the desert And I wonder how long it would take And if we could do it all at night

[00:37:04] And I wonder if Getting dropped A more reasonable distance to walk Might be an option You know, like get dropped a Kilometer outside of Mosul And then walk the rest of the way A on foot from... On foot from Kirk Cook to... So we've been talking a lot

[00:37:22] And I didn't realize Because I'd never really looked at this chart this way Kirk Cook to the war zone Is about an hour driving Through the war zone To Mosul is two hours of driving So essentially Kirk Cook Is a three-hour drive From Mosul city limits

[00:37:39] It is a... It's a 90-minute to a two-and-a-half-hour helicopter flight A paradrop is going to get you there real fast Because terminal velocity Because you're jumping from about 15,000 feet Between 15 and 30,000 feet It would take you 12 hours To walk from Kirk Cook to the war zone

[00:37:59] To walk through the battlefield You would estimate it would take you a full day Give or take Yeah, that's why I was thinking If we can get paradropped But just like normal Parachuted in A little closer I mean, something to consider Normal parachuting in

[00:38:14] They're going to see you See you radar And they're gonna watch you float down And they're gonna shoot your ass Before you get to the ground Well, that's why I was thinking Several kilometers out You've got a lot of hopped hard-on jihadis

[00:38:27] Looking to shoot anything that is, you know Not berries And a parachute's probably not one of theirs Right I would like to point out Just in case it becomes relevant It is May now The average low at night In Iraq is 59 degrees Fahrenheit

[00:38:46] The average high in May is 91 degrees Wow Night Welcome to the desert Yes, so there would be Those would be kind of your inserts Okay, I'm sorry What were the temperatures? It's 59 at night And 91 degrees during the day Okay Fucking hot So, you get what I'm saying

[00:39:09] So how far out do you think we would need to Drop in to not get, you know Jihadis taking potshots at us Let me think about the reaction that Al-Jabari's men had when you flew the drone over You could see You wouldn't know until you dropped

[00:39:25] You know what I mean? Like it would be hard to scout out that I got a different one Small watercraft float down the river Float up the river Float down the river Go to the north side and float down So that there's no motor There's no nothing Interesting

[00:39:41] Into the city Just Rambo this shit Yes Now I will say you probably want to look at your Your map Because one of the reasons why Mosul was The last stronghold of ISIL was because of how close it is To the border

[00:39:53] I'm not sure how close Mosul actually is To the border But they were using it as a corridor to Syria I don't know what it was But I knew it was It's not that close Fair enough That's about 80 kilometers Like I said, I don't know

[00:40:11] I remember from the books I read that one of the reasons Why Mosul was the last stronghold for ISIL in Iraq Was because they were falling back towards I don't remember where the fuck it was I had to look at my map No, if we

[00:40:22] Mosul's closer to Turkey Maybe it was Turkey I don't remember where it was About this thing No, it's closer to Turkey If we came over to where Rassam's was And head north around Mosul We could get to the Tigris up there And float down That is an option

[00:40:36] You would still obviously Potentially run into some things But that would be a different option I would let you be able to play that Like military science or anything like that Is that what obstacles does Jeff not know about That that would present

[00:40:50] I would say the biggest obstacles Is that if you take a watercraft You are stuck with a watercraft You know what I mean If some jihadis are out fishing You know what I mean Like you're stuck with your watercraft As a mode of transportation Like that's just that

[00:41:03] Kind of like a road that we can't leave Correct It's like a train would be I mean it's You're on the track You could get off and walk But just you would have Yeah, it's not a bad idea I mean that I'm kind of following the

[00:41:17] Satellite image of the Tigris Into Mosul right now On Google Maps And even at its most narrow junction It's 200 feet across But there are points like here When you get close enough Where there are literal barriers Covering mo- So I think it would be something where

[00:41:38] I think it would be a good point of Egress, is that the right word? To get in Egress or egress Which one are you To get in Ingress But to a certain point And then get out and walk Yeah Yeah, you would be on foot

[00:41:52] After you get out of the boat Yeah, yeah, yeah But I don't think we'd want to go too far Into the city on the river Something else that you might want to do Which you haven't done yet

[00:42:01] Which Jeff might want to take into his notes for next time You've not set up exactly I don't think what your cover identities are Let me look at those cover identity things again Because I Do you mean the What kind of little bit?

[00:42:13] The initial two or the one for Mosul? I don't think you guys have done either if I'm honest I wasn't sure what we needed to do For the ones for Mosul Well, that's what I'm saying If you're coming from If you're coming from the north

[00:42:25] Does it make sense if your paperwork comes Says you should be coming from the south I have no idea Well, that's what That's just what I'm tossing out there Yeah, I mean I don't know what level of details we need on our paperwork

[00:42:37] Like I said, you've got paper work Each agent has paper supporting multiple identities Each under a single name These include a citizen of the Islamic state Residing in Mosul An inspector from Al-Hizbah Or the all-female Al-Khansa brigade An officer of Amin al-Dakili

[00:42:53] A unit of the Secret Service responsible For maintaining law and order An officer of Amin al-Asqari A unit of the Secret Service in charge of reconnaissance And special operations Assigned from Raqqa to Mosul That's what I was going to see Where is Raqqa?

[00:43:07] Because some of your cover identities are Raqqa, Raqqa Which I believe is on the side that you're talking about Boating from I'm looking right now It is not Okay It is just north of Baghdad So then my concern that where I

[00:43:21] Is a handler would try and fuck you, Jeff Is if you said I'm coming to Well, when I put it like so they're saying Raqqa is a, I don't know Yeah Raqqa on, at least on Google Maps Literally looks like it's Wouldn't even be considered almost

[00:43:35] Well, maybe like a county In size at best This is the interesting Where a bunch of white dudes in Indiana Don't understand exactly the geography Of your law Well for scale, I mean we're talking like Damn it, where'd my map go? I thought Raqqa was to the north

[00:43:49] Raqqa is really, really important to ISIS What's the name? What's the name or how do you spell it? Raqqa I mean Yeah, there are a couple of different instances Of that as a naming convention There's Al Raqqa and there's Raqqa Raqqa, Syria Yeah

[00:44:04] Syria would be to the north No, maybe not Hey, you know what guys? Raqqa At least we may be average motherfucking White boys from Indiana But we can point out Syria on a map Which is better than like 99% of Americans

[00:44:18] I don't know if like I could get close I don't know if I know exactly which nation Syria is just looking at a blank map With no discrimination Yeah, that's fair Yes, I think I imagine in this case they're Saying Raqqa, Syria Not Raqqa

[00:44:33] No, they are spelled different Raqqa is what it says in the book For Syria RaqqaH is what it says Here for Syria That's what I got too Yep I'm just reading it out of the book Raqqa in Syria was a major stronghold For ISIL

[00:44:48] That's why I'm thinking it's the Raqqa in Syria Okay, if that's the case Raqqa in Iraq is directly Almost directly south It's south right in between Mosul and Kirkuk Interesting I believe you Mosul Kirkuk, Raqqa Interesting Fudging it and act like it's from Syria

[00:45:11] Will definitely be to our benefit It would I think that's the hard part Is that it is a little It's a little ambivalent I mean it's just something about Culture in the Middle East In terms of naming conventions that We are all learning

[00:45:27] All it says is that these These IDs are made out as officials From outside of Mosul in order to avoid Encountering individuals who are familiar With the Mosul staff of these internal Security apparatus I honestly don't know if we want to go boating bro

[00:45:45] Just everywhere I look along the river It's like people with guns Just in barbed wire little benefits Just wide open Just we're on the boat guys Worth it Yeah, I don't know I don't hate the idea Jeff It sounds like a very cool spy thing

[00:46:04] I don't know the logistics of it I will look into it though If you decide that is your plan I mean going down a river that size In the middle of the night With no lights With no lights The sound of the river around you

[00:46:17] Nobody's going to see you unless they shine a light on you He has a point I agree Jeff has never done some shady shit in his younger years Involving rivers and or creeks Lakes Yeah it's just a fun thing about where We would enter north of Mosul

[00:46:37] Like how far north There's a pretty good chance that we would be Right along Nineveh and the university As some of the first places we would run into No I thought it was to the northeast It is to the northeast It is off the river a kilometer

[00:46:54] Oh okay I thought you said three blocks Well it's about the thing about Nineveh Is Nineveh is huge Gotcha So it's like Here's Nineveh You're not really angled towards me Here's Nineveh Okay Shit Good talk There's Nineveh There's the Tigris

[00:47:13] Up here is where we would have to come in Right So we'd have a long ass way to go down that river Got ya To get off at Nineveh Well we also have to think about how we're going to Exfil from Mosul If

[00:47:27] Put it in a retainer with our spec ops To airlift us out I'm gonna call in our old SEAL Team 6 huh To get shot the fuck down If they're shooting at them They're not shooting at us We had to pay them a fuck ton of money

[00:47:46] Just to get them to go to a place How much money do we even have left? Not a lot Just by inching it With this piece of paper Bought my scale here Schroeder To get into like central Yeah Mosul By my It's like 15 kilometers

[00:48:01] By my fuck you gradie math We've got $58,400 left Because I just remembered This much money fuck you gradie This is what we have left We were also talking Moving some antiquities To make a little bit more money We did talk about that

[00:48:17] Which I think is a fantastic idea I'm here for the crimes Yeah there's a few people who have At least some criminology Criminology and archeology You could fed stuff if you wanted You would need stuff to fed We talked about fence and stuff

[00:48:32] For the guys that we helped steal to begin with Yeah Cause they're like What are they gonna do with this shit? Like what are they gonna do with it? We'll take fucking 35% Oh by the way please don't save us When we're in the middle of Mosul

[00:48:46] I mean we're the ones that got them The money to begin with Yeah dude If you sell this antiquity For $50,000 And then hand them $35,000 They're gonna be like thanks man That's 15 grand for us We'll knock it down to 25 If you'll save us a spot on a helicopter

[00:49:05] Yeah brother Money Talks Lots of money Now I do remember looking into it At least a little bit I don't think it's in Iconoclast But I'm trying to remember now I know that Some of the larger assets PMCs don't have as readily available to them

[00:49:26] So I don't know like if a military grade chopper Is something that PMCs would have They're gonna be flying in old Oh fuck nah I just lost it Hueys Hueys No they'll be flying in that fucking gyrocopter From Mad Max and that's the best you're gonna get

[00:49:43] Someone's got that dude piloting it That dude How much can we get fencing a Handmade antique Mitten Cousy Second Second favorite TV Wizard of all time Oh that was in like the seventh son He was in Legends of the Seeker Yeah The first book in that series

[00:50:00] Was the seventh son The first book in that series Was Wizards First Rule Was it? Yeah When am I thinking of I have no idea but it's not what I'm talking about I do know the series that you're talking about though Seeker

[00:50:12] A direct ripoff of Wheel of Time If we'd like to bring that up to Schroeder I once met a fellow Wabash man You both would know Matt Goodrich Who yelled at me for 45 minutes About how I was reading absolute trash When I was reading Wizards First Rule

[00:50:26] And that it was nothing but a direct ripoff Of Wheel of Time To which I said Well it's got this in it And he's like Yeah just like in the fucking Wheel of Time Over and over and over Oh guess what You got a bunch of like

[00:50:39] Evil priests and like torches of people Yeah like in the fucking Wheel of Time Ah good And like I'm just like my fucker As I went on to describe it I then started looking it up And realized he was absolutely correct That it largely stole

[00:50:53] Major concepts of the Wheel of Time I mean Shannon was saying Did you hear that conversation With me and for me and for me And I was like Did you hear that conversation With me and for me and AJ Yesterday morning No We were talking about different things

[00:51:03] And I was like Yeah but that just stole from this And this just stole from that And he was like Well what about that one kid Or what that one thing Aragon or whatever it was And it was like You mean the guys who rolled Road dragons

[00:51:15] Who were all evil And there were 13 of them And they were called the Four Sworn Instead of the Forsaken And there's literally the same number And they rode basically evil Nazgul Like from Lord of the Rings And like just went down All the numbers And was like

[00:51:28] The kid was 19 when he wrote the book He stole from everyone Yes he did He really did It was a rip off of Star Wars Yes It was Because they were basically like A Sith organization Like the lore Well yeah but I mean It was Luke and Obi-Wan

[00:51:44] Yeah 100% Through the first book Yeah But that's one of the reasons Why I've been so stoked to read Some of this appendix and literature Because these guys Lord of the Rings Wasn't the end all be all At the time that most of these guys were writing

[00:51:59] So you get drastically different Non-Lord of the Rings inspired fantasy Like Elric is fantastic It's nothing Tolkien-esque at all Yeah And it's awesome Fafford and the Grey Mouser Way more of a D&D party Than fucking Lord of the Rings Like just great

[00:52:19] I fucking love Fafford and the Grey Mouser Because they just do dumps Like it's just Half their adventures are because They got drunk and ran out of money And now need to do a job They yell at the person who gives them the job

[00:52:32] Much like players yell at a DM To play the story And then sometimes they just run away They're like, nah fuck this This shit's scary We're out of here It's like there's no courageous At all There's a great one where I think it's the Mouser has been captured

[00:52:48] And Fafford throws his voice in a false setto And is dressed up as a ghost And I'm like, that's it That's shit you do in D&D Some Scooby-Doo shit right there Aragorn is not running in with a Nazgul hood on To scare the shit out of people

[00:53:04] Or a Kai run off But that's the kind of shit Fafford and the Grey Mouser are doing I'm like, I'm here for this I am here for this Well sorry History chose Tolkien Don't be wrong, great Tolkien's great But not everything needs to rip off Tolkien

[00:53:22] That's why I like Discworld Discworld is also very good You know, nobody talks about it anymore But I really enjoyed a lot of it Dragon Riders of Pern Yeah, I never read a whole lot of it But I did enjoy what I did read That's fun It's fun

[00:53:35] I know Lisa Lisa read a ton of those when she was a kid But there's plenty of fantasy that you can do Outside of being strictly Tolkien There was another series that she got me to read Pierce Anthony wrote it And it was all aspects of

[00:53:51] Like this book was about the personification of time This was about the personification of war And death and God and everything like that I only ever read Time But it was very, very good I know we took a fantasy literature I took a fantasy literature course in college

[00:54:10] As my freshman tutorial And one of the things that we read Because we read a diverse thing We started with Conan the Barbarian But we moved on to some other things I think we're going to talk about the story of Jereg I never here talked about a lot

[00:54:22] It's not one I've heard of It's essentially hard Not quite hard boiled crime detective Like hard boiled detective novel But it's in a fantasy setting He has a pet dragon and there's like half dragons And like there's magic involved But he's like the human detective

[00:54:39] In a world controlled by various races of dragon Of various different like clan houses Oh that's cool I think it's like a very different kind of A very different kind of a side who's like coming into like Solve murders and like It's very, very cool Solid Solid stuff

[00:55:00] The only fantasy can and I accept is Dr. Seuss So that's he is the creator of all That is great the Vipra Vip Fox with socks You know how many fish there are There's two red and there's two blue God damn it

[00:55:15] Can you tell I've been reading these books Not very well I feel bad for your oldest One fish two fish Some red fish Go to Oh orcs Spencer opened up another bottle of pop-trap You have to finish the title with a slur One fish two fish

[00:55:38] Red fish blue fish It's like fucking Oh God what's the actor's name who was doing the champagne commercial And was totally sloshed Oh fuck Orson Welles Oh yeah yeah yeah Oh champagne A premium quality champagne It's like Jesus Christ Orson come on now

[00:55:57] I do like that phrase though It's gonna get lost in the laughter But Spencer opening up another bottle of box wine Might be my favorite thing I've said today There's no shaming at people Inflation's up You gotta buy smart You gotta buy and bulk people

[00:56:16] What other things do you want to discuss Who are we gonna send in That is an excellent question Jennifer I think should be definitely You're gonna make a list I'm gonna make a list Check it twice Cause this is the thing With how difficult it is

[00:56:35] To go in Are you going to go in come out Go in come out You're gonna go in and stay in until the job is done Oh yeah that's what she said Sorry Yeah no that's a good point I think it's So Cody has a good point there

[00:56:54] And I think a lot of it has to do with Whether or not we're able to establish our own safe house Like a home base within Mosul If we can get a safe house Then the prospect of going in and out And sending different teams at different times

[00:57:08] Is more viable But if we don't have a home base once we're in there Going in and out I think is not the best way to do it My vote is Jennifer and Kat and Dan Kat and Dan Just the two Oh that Dan, that's gonna be hot

[00:57:22] Yeah they're definitely gonna have a love interest Come up in the third act It's gonna be great No these people are too broken to love They're all shells of humans Dan's gonna get stuck in Namath's hand Jennifer That's your love I love you so much Jennifer

[00:57:43] I just can't quit you Oh man I really don't With Cody on this let's talk shit about Cody No I mean I don't get a sense of how well we're doing Or if we're on the right track or not I really don't I think he's right

[00:58:08] Something has to be going on with Nineveh You think I'm right Yes I think Schroeder is correct Something has to be going on with Nineveh If there's nothing going on with Nineveh It's a hell of a good red herring

[00:58:20] There's been too many references to the sun and the moon For me to ignore moon phases We got two days I don't know that we want to go in In the dead of night in two days On the river where we can't get the fuck

[00:58:34] Run from the goddamn thing No I think that we need to scope out the place from a distance I'm not sure how feasible that is Cause I don't know what Nineveh really looks like now Yeah What would be the best time to

[00:58:48] I was like oh maybe we actually need to be there when it's there Because that's our best chance to catch it When it's fully formed We don't have anything to put it in That was my next thought What can we put it in Number two

[00:59:02] What can we use to Like magically simulate Sunlight or moonlight Like what is an artifact or a device Or something that can Cause if sunlight, moonlight hurts it If we want to ambush it What can we mimic that Nothing Cause I have a feeling that it's specific

[00:59:21] That it's light from the sun I can't imagine a fluorescent light bulb Is going to do the same Oh no I was talking about that I was mostly thinking about magic shit Yeah well we only know how to make the elder sign

[00:59:32] We don't have any other magic shit And Sloane said that the elder sign Is not going to stop it Correct I forget the line that Grady used I believe Glancy said It's great to lock a door But makes a piss poor flak jacket Yes Yeah

[00:59:53] So we have the ritual To make an elder sign Is it just the one person who knows how to do it Or has it been taught to us By that person I think you were going to look into it But I don't think anybody's been taught yet

[01:00:07] We had discussions of Mary teaching Of people I think that process started Cause if I remember correctly Mary went to Baghdad After she came back Yes Which one's Mary Mary Olsen Yeah Olsen's in Baghdad Believe it's Hastings and Olsen in Baghdad Yep And Kazim went to Greece Correct

[01:00:24] Cause I do remember we were going to look at The rules for learning magic Cause it's weird Correct No point knowing how to aim a missile If the only person who knows how to do it gets killed Mm-hmm That ain't the way to have fun, son

[01:00:42] That ain't the way to have fun, son

[01:01:28] That ain't the way to have fun, son That ain't the way to have fun, son Mama told me, mama told me, mama told me, mama told me