Jack of Harts

Pineland troops continued to secure the last free airport as Pineland citizens and Attican allies tried to get through the Islamic Congress checkpoints and the airport gates. But daily bomb threats closed the gates and slowed the evacuation. Then one day a suicide bomber killed a dozen Pineland Marines and nearly two hundred refugees around the gate. The Pineland responded quickly with a missile attack and announced to the world that they had killed a car filled with people who had planned the attack. They gave no names though, making many wonder who the poor bastard really was. Later evidence showed the man to be an aid worker in Attica, and the other dead included nearly a dozen children. The Pineland administration refused to answer questions about that, but continued to pronounce that they would continue to deal with anyone who attacked Pineland.

The Pineland administration gave the Islamic Congress biometric information on Pineland citizens and allies. When questioned on that, they said it was so the Islamic Congress would know who they needed to help evacuate in the final days of Pineland’s administration of the airport. The Islamic Congress then setup barricades around the airport and stopped Atticans who helped Pineland from getting there. They confiscated papers and beat some. They arrested others. And some they killed. This was in time with their going door to door in search of people they knew had helped Pineland. Beating some. Arresting others. And killing some. In the middle of this rising terror, Pineland’s allies sent out special forces teams to pull their people back to the airport and safety. It was a dangerous time for all, but most dangerous for those Atticans who had sided with Pineland and her allies.

The surviving Attican government and thousands of their elite forces retreated from the capital and rendezvoused in the northern parts of Attica where the old resistance had held out against the Islamic Congress twenty years ago. The Pineland administration refused to answer questions about the resistance as the Islamic Congress surrounded the last free airport. They sought closer relations with the new government, and sent no public aid to the resistance. Even medical support. Every announcement they made ignored the remains of the old government and granted legitimacy to the new one. Many remembered all the times the Pineland government had armed anti-government forces in Montanya or Parumphia in decades past, always seeking to gain closer relations with what they hoped would be a new government. It was not a new tactic, though had rarely worked as well as they hoped.