NOTE: The following three sessions are truncated because the player behind Eyevan exited the group and there were some issues scheduling for a couple weeks and each session wound up being much shorter than intended and with at least one more member absent, in addition to Eyevan’s player.
The crew had a short time to prep their op, the op they had been waiting for since before their arrival in Marrakesh. Everyone had something to do and Glenn decided the name of the game was mobility, opting to put himself in the back of a petty taxi, waiting nearby, Gustav in a nearby cafe, Riordan on a motorcycle, touring the city. Ivan had come down with what he was calling Glenn’s disease, and had checked back into the tourist hotel in the downtown, offering surveillance assistance, but not going mobile for the op.
After getting into position it was a tense wait as the afternoon slowly ticked by. Muhammad’s wife went about her normal routine, bringing her son home from school, unaware of the irish tale she had on the way to the school and back. The crew’s phone bug let them know her mom would come by to take the boy away, ahead of the mysterious meeting at Muhammad’s house, and shortly after the grandmother had been by a black luxury sedan pulled up in front of the house.
The crew recognized the driver as the man they had made at the school that morning. He got out and opened the back door to let out a well dressed business man, and followed him up the walk to the door. Muhammad’s wife Aliya seemed surprised to see this man and graciously let him in, his name coming in clearly over the bug, Nazim.
Nazim was well spoken and polite, and seemed to have some personal connection to the faux widow and her family, though it wasn’t obvious from the conversation what that was. Aliya and Nazim exchanged pleasantries before getting down to business.
Aliya was noticeably shaken the moment Nazim arrived, and this did not subside through pleasantries. When Nazim broke the news about her husband, she could be heard clearly stifling back tears and she asked for details. After some attempts to sooth her, formally (and likely without physical contact of any kind), Nazim excused himself, leaving behind the money and alluding to her husband truly having earned it.
Exiting Muhammad’s house, Nazim’s driver promptly opened the door to the sedan and Nazim got in, muttering to the driver ‘lets go home now’, before the driver shut the door, got back in, and started down the street.
The crew had to make a sudden decision and decided that Glenn and Riordan would rendezvous, and follow the sedan, wherever it would lead, with Eyevan in the back seat running the plates and working up a dossier on this Nazim.
Meanwhile, Gustav decided it was in their best interest to still checkout this safehouse, having tagged the driver as the one witnessed entering it before.
Making his way to the bizarre downtown, Gustav decided to go into the business in front of the alley, a hookah bar, and scope the place out over some hookah. After a few minutes he decided to wander into the back of the bar looking for a bathroom, and sure enough was able to catch a glimpse of a locked door looked like the right position to be the room the driver went into from the alley.
Deciding it was time to make his entry, Gustav went back out to the alley and picked the lock on the door, entering to find some overflow hookah bar storage, along with a cot, that looked like it had seen recent use, a bucket (that looked like it was being used as a chamber pot) and the horrific smell that came with it. After digging around a bit, Gustav came up with a receipt to a cafe, with an address in Casablanca. Pocketing it, Gustav made his way outside.
Meanwhile, Glenn, Eyevan, and Riordan found themselves on the highway out of town. The plates were registered to a corporation, Oasis Financial, and with a Casablanca address. Nazim’s home address was also found. The three decided it would be best to continue to follow the sedan, as it was very likely making its way back to Casablanca, and that their business in Marrakesh had ended.
Gustav decided he’d catch up with the party in Casablanca, but wanted to take his own route, soaking up the local culture. He found a bus stop with a bus running to Casablanca, it wouldn’t arrive for another hour and would take a few hours extra to arrive in Casablanca, but Gustav enjoyed some people watching while he waited for the bus to arrive.
Arriving in Casblanca, the crew found a seedy hotel to hold up in under fake names and got to work plotting out their next tasks. However Eyevan seemed distracted and was complaining, mostly to himself about someone making a go at one of his records, and mumbling about taking their teeth.
The crew decided that the best thing to do would to first case the cafe from the receipt that Gustav had found. And Gustav and Riordan made their way to the cafe, ordering some coffee, and spending the morning people watching.
Meanwhile Glenn made his way to the address of Oasis Financial, discovering it to be in a secure high rise office building, then to the address he had for Nazim, confirming that was indeed where Nazim lived.
Eventually Gustav and Riordan were able to tag the driver, as he came into the coffee shop, looking worse for ware, ordered a coffee, and took a loud phonecall where he chatted about his drunken escapades from the night before. After getting his coffee he exited the cafe and made a B line for the club across the street, named Casa de Sangre, going around back and emerging a few minutes later, back in the sedan, this time with the windows all open and blaring a song with heavy bass.
The next couple days the crew shadowed the driver and Nazim. Establishing a set pattern where the driver would pick up the sedan from the club each morning, go to Nazim’s house, pick him up, drive into the office parking structure, and then exit by foot, returning before lunchtime to pickup the sedan and then Nazim again, to go for lunch, then dropping Nazim and the sedan off again, before coming back to pickup Nazim and drop him off at home, then drive the sedan to the night club and then go into the club for a night of fun, before taxiing back to his apartment.
While shadowing Nazim and his driver, Riordan decided his best chance to observe Nazim’s habits was to sneak onto the roof of the adjacent building and observe his office from there. Successfully getting onto the roof, Riordan brought along his binoculars and a handy directional listening device, and was able to ascertain that:
a) Casablanca during the day was hot as hell on the roof of a tall building, especially for a pale skinned irishman, and
b) Nazim had two phones, one of which he appeared to only use once, where he confirmed some meeting at the docks the following day.
With that information in mind, the party decided to follow Nazim more closely the next day, bugging his car and making themselves mobile.
Glenn stuffed cotton balls into his mouth, put on a wig and corssette, ensuring no one would recognize him (and that he would have trouble bending over) and planted a bug in Nazim’s car the club the next morning at 6am.
This tactic paid off as they were able to identify a truck rental company near the edge of town that Nazim called that morning, on his way to work, where he confirmed that later that day he would be by to pickup a truck rental (the kind for carrying shipping containers), and that he would only be renting it for a 24 hour duration.
Glenn put on another disguise, this time looking like foreign business man, and made his way to the truck rental place, where he tried to get a better feel for the operation and distract their employees while Riordan strapped himself to the underside of the bed of the truck that Nazim would be renting that day.
Unable to get ahold of Eyevan the last few days, Glenn decided to use the rubber duckey they had deployed (from Eyevan) in Marrakesh, plugging it into the truck rental company’s system while he was unattended.
Back at the hideout Glenn and Gustav were dismayed to discover that Eyevan had some kind of passphrase and a tackey Jurassic Park style gif of him waving his finger saying ‘ah ah ah, you don’t have the right passphrase’, rendering the info that might be on the drive useless until they could get ahold of Eyevan.
Back at the truck rental place, Riordan indentified the voices of Nazim and the driver as they arrived and then the truck left, making its way to the docks. At the docks he had to make some quick moves as security swept the underside of the truck with a mirror, narrowly avoiding detection.
Meanwhile Glenn and Gustav made their way into the Docks under the false pretense that they needed to use the bathroom, there was more to their story, but it hadn’t worked out how they had hoped. However they were permitted to enter for 15 minutes to use facilities, but were told very clearly that if they were there past 15 minutes, they would be detained for trespassing.
Glenn and Gustav broke into the locked portion of the administrative facility they were told to use the restrooms (publicly accessible) and found a locker room with equipment and uniforms for security and dock workers. Glenn deciding to take on the role of a dock worker, and Gustav deciding to disguise himself as a security worker.
Back at the truck, Riordan was jostled heavily, to his dismay, as a shipping container was loaded onto the truck bed above him, and then the truck was parked nearby. Soon Riordan could hear the voices of Nazim, the driver, and several others he hadn’t heard before.
What Riordan hadn’t seen was the black Cadillac that had pulled up in the nearby parking area (now empty as it was night time), nor the several suited men that got out, all of whom looked like they had ties to crime.
Gustav and Glenn however did see this as they made their way to the container ship, Gustav pretending to patrol the unloading area, and Glenn going aboard and pretending to inventory containers, setting up an observation hub on a secluded section of the deck with a view of the truck.
Gustav got a good view of the rear of the truck as the three new players made their way over to it, gestured to Nazim and his driver, and then stood back as the driver opened up the back of the truck to reveal stacks of wooden crates marked ‘tea pots’.
One of the larger men yanked the driver out of the back, hopped up, and pried open one of the containers with a crowbar he produced from his jacket, throwing out padding and several teapots that shattered on the ground, before pulling up a false bottom and a small duct-taped brick of something, cutting it open and taking a small sample of the white powder inside, and placing some into several small test tubes he produced from his pocket, which all already contained liquids. Shaking each tube vigorously he nodded to one of the other men, who appeared to be in charge, threw the brick back into the box, and closed the truck back up.
By this time however the actual dock security were in heavy patrol mode, as Glenn and Gustav had never returned; and one of the guards, looking like a senior officer, made his way over to the truck quickly, as the thugs were closing it back up. On his way over he made eye contact with Gustav, who was still mock patrolling while observing the scene, and gestured forcefully for him to join the senior guard at the truck.
At the truck, the senior guard ordered Gustav to radio in for a specific form, and then to issue a citation to Nazim for littering, and to detain the truck for inspection before it would be aloud to leave the docks. After Gustav struggled with his radio, the senior guard started to inspect Gustav and interrogating him about his patrol route, hire date, etc.
Gustav managed to persuade the senior guard he was new and hadn’t learned to use his radio properly, but would do so as soon as possible. The senior guard rolled his eyes and told Gustav to shadow him as he issued the citation, radioed for the form and detained the truck.
By this time Nazim had turned a pale white and the three seedy gentleman had made their way back to their car. The driver had retreated to the cab of the truck, and appeared to be playing a game on his phone, from Glenn’s perspective.
After some tense negotiations, where the guard heavily implied a bribe, Nazim seemed to take the hint and produced a large stack of bills, and handed them over without counting, to the guard, to took the stack quickly and put them into his pocket, then waved Nazim off and radioed in to cancel the forms and backup for detainment, and instead for custodial to come clean up a small mess.
By this time Gustav was making his exit, only to be shouted at by the guard as he walked away, turning back, he saw the guard catch up and pull out a few bills, handed them to Gustav, and reminded him to take care of his radio, otherwise next time he would have to file an official report.
Back under the truck, Riordan braced himself for the trip, wherever the truck was going, while Glenn and Gustav looked, on making their way back towards the main gate.
Glenn discovered that security had been beefed up considerably at the exit, likely because of his and Gustav’s failure to exit within 15 minutes. Thinking fast the pair made their escape in a stolen vehicle. But on their way out they passed the growing line of trucks exiting the facility, and realized they had beefed up truck searches as well, complete with two guards with mirror stick s and a canine unit. Things didn’t look good for Riordan.
Back under the truck Riordan was informed of the beefed up security over the radio. Thinking fast he rolled out from under the truck as it joined the line of trucks exiting, and made a break for the chain link fence. Trying to be discrete, Riordan made a b-line for some barrels near the fence, but was detected by one the patrolling gaurds and chased down as he broke for the fence.
Choosing to avoid a confrontation, Riordan made for the fence and on the way up found himself being pulled down by the guard. At his wit’s end, he swiftly dealt with the guard with a swift stomp on his head with his free foot. The guard unceremoniously collapsed on the ground as Riordan made his way out and fled into the night, making his way back to the safehouse.
Meanwhile Glenn and Gustav followed the truck out of town, overhearing Nazim reference a mile marker on the highway while driving. Speeding ahead the duo identified the mile marker and spotted a side road that was little more than a dirt two track. Thinking fast they parked down the highway and hiked back, hiding amongst the hills around the dirt road. Waiting for the truck.
A short time later the headlights of the truck were seen pulling into the dirt road, followed by the gangster’s sedan, driven by the gangsters. Nazim and the driver exited the cab of the truck, opening up the back, and allowing two of the thugs into the truck, where they continued to dump all the teapots out on the ground and remove several more rectangles of duct tape. Each package was emptied out onto a scale in the trunk of the sedan, then put into a different container.
Glenn made sure to get pictures of all of it, including shots of Nazim and the leader of the drug runners, as well as the handoff of a briefcase full of cash.
The deal done the gangsters left with their drugs in the sedan, and Nazim and the driver were left with a mostly empty shipping container, a bag of money, and the drive back to town.