Operation STOP REPO

Situation

Airport long-term parking has long been a good place to lose a car. With budgets tight, they are rarely cleared out. This makes an ideal temporary Green Box location. Agent Saffir, a recently retired Delta Green Agent, was using Boston’s Logan Airport long-term lot for just this sort of reason. Unfortunately, his retirement was more sudden than expected, and his notes are not as detailed as the program would have hoped. At the same time, a shakeup at Logan among the lackadaisical parking staff, an overzealous government auditor and a panicking administration in full blown ass-covering mode mean the lots were rapidly cleared of abandoned cars. These cars are being auctioned off. There’s a good chance some of these “mobile” Green Boxes are already in civilian hands.

Objective

Determine which vehicles were used as Green Boxes. Reacquire the contents. Clean up any contact between civilians and items as required.

What’s Happened:

MASSPORT (Logan’s operating authority) rounded up abandoned cars, towing them into a central lot for cataloging and auction. Cars that were too far gone were loaded onto carriers and junked in a salvage yard along Route 1A, somewhere in Revere, MA.

Agent Saffir kept a safehouse in a beachfront seasonal rental along the water in Scituate, MA. Hidden inside a false bottom of a filing cabinet is a list of the cars used as mobile greenboxes. Unfortunately, they were listed in X,Y coords (row 4, 15th car, etc), with only notes such as “green hatchback”. Adjust the detail of notes as needed to adjust difficulty for the agents.

By the time agents arrive at the auction itself, it’s likely some of the mobile green boxes are already both in the salvage yard and in the hands locals who got deals the first day of the auction. The auction will run for several days.

Use sample items below, your own creations, or the fantastic Green Box generator (www.palinola.com/projects/lab/greenbox/) to populate the mobile green boxes. A good mix of mundane items, that don’t really need to be picked up by the Agents but will waste time, should be sprinkled into a mix of items that really shouldn’t be handled by civilians. The idea is to franticly split the agents time between trying to buy up cars still on auction, breaking into cars in a secure auction lot, and/or running around the city hunting down the car Jimmy got for his graduation present.

What’s left of Saffir’s cell

Agent Saffir was a rarity, a longtime Delta Green agent before his retirement, and his team, S-cell shared a lot trauma together. Those that remain would do anything for Saffir. Before his retirement he maintained a deadman’s switch, a coded e-mail that would automatically send a request to Saffir’s team.

The e-mail contains a copy of Saffir’s manifest with the request that the cars be sanitized, along with Saffir’s safehouse. The remaining members of S-cell can be encountered at almost any point in the scenario, but much like Saffir, they’re damaged, and care a lot less about containing the problem as they do carrying out Saffir’s effective last will and testament. While the player agents might take great care to sneak into a garage and abscond with the contents of a car’s trunk, S-cell is content to whip a couple molotov cocktails through the rear window.

Misc

Agents who search Saffirs safehouse may be able to find Saffir’s e-mail on his network, they may also trip up S-cell that there's an intruder at the safehouse.

The longer agents take, the more likely one or more nasty artifacts start causing problems in the city. Don’t go too crazy. A tense standoff with a guy who bought a used pickup demanding to know what an agent is doing poking around his garage works better when it’s just a shot up bulletproof vest with FBI on the front that’s recovered, than when it’s yet-another-necronomicon.

There’s a good chance that civilians will go to the police finding many of these items, but there’s an equal chance that they try to use/comprehend/etc the item themselves.

Handler notes

3-4 cars with things in the trunk is a good number to throw at the Agents. The scenario works best when the agents challenges are less finding the cars and more securing things or dealing with fallout from S-cell. Don’t let a failed search roll defeat the agents, if agents get to a car, the trunk should contain the green box items.

Suggested roadblocks for agents

• Several of the listed locations are on opposite ends of the city of Boston. Traffic is a brutal obstacle when time is of the essence. Logan Airport has a digital toll system that will either ping a drivers EZ-Pass, or mail a bill to the address on the registration, agents using their own vehicles, or company vehicles, may have to explain repeated trips to the airport.
• With the administrative shakeup at Logan, everyone is doubling down on doing a good job, making sneaking around or badging through things harder.
• Push the Agents timeline such that more cars are sold and out in the world, cars taken to the salvage yard may already be crushed into scrap metal, making retrieval harder (or releasing things that should stay locked away.

Suggested helping hands for agents

• MASSPORT is a large organization, covering the airport, and the whole port of boston. There’s bound to be a DG friendly in there somewhere.
• Finding the right car and straight up buying it at auction shouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. Auction cars like this are cheap.
• Agent Saffir picked cheap cars that blend well, nothing fancier than a Civic.
• If agents are short cash, provide an envelope of DG sponsored cash, or even better, the address of a local criminal.

Sample cars and notes

• 1978 Chevy Monte Carlo, White, with factory T-tops
• 2003 Honda Civic, Silver, plastered with anime bumper stickers
• 1994 Volvo 740 Turbo, Was once maroon, 5-speed manual
• 1992 Lexus ES, Gold, actually an imported Toyota Windom, no oil
• 2018 Chrysler Pacifica, Black, with every option, even the undercoat
• 1996 Jeep Grand Laredo, Blue, appears to have been rolled completely at least once
• 1988 Volkswagen Jetta TDI, Mostly white, incomprehensible gas mileage, leaky sunroof

Sample mobile green box items

• Two, bullet riddled FBI bulletproof vests, covering a kilo of pure cocaine
• $25,000, in 20s, still with intact US Mint seal
• Four burner nokia cell phones which only call each other, a disconnected number, and one of the agents phones.
• A complete collection of first-edition’s by Hemingway, with a hastily scrawled post-it note that simply says “True”. Agents who take the time to read the books find that these all have different, darker, endings.
• A dot-matrix printout containing the entire 2017 Equifax data breach
• Two, opened and re-sealed 5-gallon drums labeled Part A, Part B, and a full, smaller quart container labeled “DO NOT SHAKE”. The quart container contains a mixed, binary explosive which is triggered by shock. A quart functions as an IED (15% lethality, 10m kill radius).
• The wild, insane ramblings of a madman sketched into the margins of several phonebooks, detailing several Delta Green operations (use ones your agents were on) with vivid detail.
• A 78 rpm record sleeve, yellow with age.  All You Are Going to Want to Do Is Get Back There by Leyland Kirby, Caretaker of the Imperial Conservatory, 1911 AD.  If the well worn shellac disc inside is played, its gentle wind instruments and lively brass suffuse listeners with a sense of aching nostalgia and loss.  The record will get stuck several times, requiring corrective action.  At the end of the full song, listeners find themselves in Carcosa.  Playing the record backwards will return them to reality, but why would they want to leave?

Sample buyers/locations for auctioned vehicles

• Person working three jobs deep in debt, taking this car will probably ruin them.
• First car for a young kid on his way to college, Dad bought the car without consulting mom who believes it’s a death trap (maybe it literally is)
• Car repair shop already converting the car into parts.
• A bunch of 20-somethings who are towing the car to a remote shooting range in Nashua, NH to shoot at.
• Police looking to pick up a cheap stakeout car (alternatively, corrupt police looking for a car to stuff full of drugs and plant on someone)
• A criminal who owns a towing company, planning to use the truck to tow a car full of contraband, will resist attempts to be stopped and play dumb, “Guy I just tow em I don’t know what’s in em.”
• An eclectic collector with a high-security garage and who won’t part with his car for any reason.

S-cell (Pick and choose enough of S-cell to challenge your players)

AGENT SAMPSON - Program Manager, always connected, always on
STR 11, CON 12, DEX 13, INT 12, POW 11, CHA 13
HP 12, WP 11, SAN 45, Totemic Compulsion (laptop)
Skills: Accounting (60%), Alertness, (60%), Anthropology (30%), Bureaucracy (60%), Computer Science (50%), Criminology (30%), Disguise (30%), Drive (40%), Firearms (40%), History (40%), Law (40%), Navigate (30%), Persuade (70%), Psychotherapy (30%), Survival (30%), Unarmed Combat (60%), Language: Spanish (70%)
Inventory: Hi-point in 9mm (40%, 1D10)

AGENT SANDOVAL - Off-the-grid retired SEAL, says he was on the Bin Laden raid.
STR 14, CON 8, DEX 14, INT 16, POW 13, CHA 7
HP 11, WP 13, SAN 31, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Adapted to violence
Skills: Alertness (80%), Archaeology (20%), Art: Pornography (20%), Athletics (60%), Demolitions (40%), Dodge (50%), Firearms (80%), Heavy Weapons (50%), Melee Weapons (50%), Ride (30%), Stealth (50%), Survival (70%), Swim (50%) Unarmed Combat (60), Language: Pashto (20%)
Inventory: FN Fal (80%, 1D12+2) with underbarrel 40mm grenade launcher. 4 40mm CS grenades, 1 40mm High Explosive grenade. Since CS doesn’t kill people, he considers them essentially harm-free and will use them liberally.

AGENT SMITH - MA State police motorcycle cop with a chip on his shoulder
STR 10, CON 14, DEX 11, INT 10, POW 12, CHA 15
HP 12, WP 12, SAN 41, Addiction (Alcohol), Addiction (Painkillers)
Skills: Alertness (60%), Artillery (20%), Bureaucracy (60%), Criminology (50%), Dodge (50), Drive (50), Firearms (40%), First Aid (30%), HUMINT (50%), Law (50%), Melee Weapons (50%), Navigate (60%), Occult (30%), Persuade (40%), Ride (60%), Search (50%), Surgery (20%), Survival (30%), Unarmed Combat (60%)
Inventory: Sig P229 DAK .40 cal (40%, 1D10)

AGENT SHEMETS - Bookish old professor who’s on his third TA turned wife
STR 10, CON 10, DEX 13, INT 14, POW 17, CHA 8
HP 10, WP 17, SAN 50, Depression, Ligyrophobia
Skills: Anthropology (40%), Art: Brutalist (20%), Bureaucracy (40%), Dodge (50%), First Aid (30%), History (60%), HUMINT (50%), Navigate (30%), Occult (40%), Persuade (40%), Pharmacy (20%), SIGINT (20%), Swim (40%), Language: Greek (30%), Language: Russian (70%), Unnatural (25%)
Inventory: A dog-eared copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and a UV Penlight
Rituals: Infallible Suggestion and Finding.

Credits

This was an entry to the 2017 Delta Green shotgun scenario contest, written by Elendil004.