Tillman Investigation and Planning - Fri, Jul 24, 2020

Opening recap: the search of Esau Tillman’s apartment

• The previous session ended with the team investigating Tillman’s sparsely furnished, barely occupied apartment. Its principal purpose appeared to be giving him a private place to identify and collect information about abusers.
• Tillman maintained a spreadsheet in which accounts of extreme cruelty were organized and color-coded. His laptop had no security.
• The Handler raised two possible explanations for the unsecured computer: Tillman might have believed nobody would discover his work, or he might have wanted particular people to find it.
• The team also recovered Tillman’s journal. Andy Banks had checked its latest entry first and found the words: “They are coming. You are here.”
• Andy understood the entry as referring to the team, but could not determine whether they were the “they” or the “you.”
• Nearby entries showed that Tillman had been looking for the Teeth, particularly the missing and deceased members of MASTICATE.
• The journal contained years of entries extending back to Tillman’s high school years. Its crude handwriting made it difficult to read.
• Printouts from neurology journals were folded among its pages. Dr. Ming would need to interpret those materials.
• The immediate questions facing the team were how to stop Tillman’s operation, whether they could rescue the children inside the Life Force facility, and what they could do with the prisoners afterward.

Reviewing the incomplete plan

• Andy recalled a proposed first step: arrange a minor vehicle collision involving Smedley, then obtain his access card. The discussion included kidnapping and questioning him and copying his security credentials.
• The team had not settled on a reliable sequence of actions after that initial move.
• They anticipated that making someone disappear would create a limited window before his absence from work prompted questions or a welfare check.
• Previous proposals had also included making thermite and obtaining drugs that could be planted on Tillman to get him arrested.
• The Handler confirmed that Ming had already manufactured the thermite using the team’s improvised laboratory in the camper.
• The thermite would not provide an instantaneous breach. Melting through an obstruction could take as long as a minute, and anyone on the other side would have an opportunity to notice what was happening.
• Andy remained concerned that a violent assault would continue the pattern through which people became Teeth.
• He also doubted the team’s suitability for an armed attack. Even apart from the unnatural implications, these were not the people he would ordinarily choose to assault a federally affiliated facility.
• The Handler identified a possible source of drugs through Andy’s DEA access, but no drugs were obtained and no attempt to frame Tillman occurred.

The team’s position and available approaches

• The current time was established as approximately noon on Friday the 24th. The investigation had been underway for almost a week.
• The team remained with the motorhome in the desert after returning from Tillman’s apartment.
• The Handler reminded them that their drone reconnaissance had revealed a garage entrance at the rear of the facility.
• Jerry confirmed that this entrance was associated with the concealed corner of the building that particularly concerned them.
• Ming wanted to begin by understanding the neurology articles. His earlier failed roll meant he could not simply skim and recognize the material; he needed time to read and cross-reference it.
• The motorhome’s isolated position was discussed as a possible place to question a captive.
• The group revisited the idea of disabling the facility’s air conditioning to make people come outside. Ernie objected that staff might leave while keeping the children locked inside in the heat.
• Other possibilities included disrupting communications, cutting power or telephone lines, and taking advantage of the smaller number of personnel present at night.
• Jerry suggested that the motorhome might be capable of forcing its way through the garage door.
• Ernie recalled the proposal to attach their old grenade to the drone.
• The Handler agreed that Ernie’s technical skills could support an attempt to build a release or activation mechanism, provided he had tools. His relevant skills included Microelectronics at 40%, Electrician at 30%, and Mechanic at 30%.
• No drone modification, utility disruption, or forced entry was carried out.
• Ernie remained interested in capturing Smedley, but the group also remembered that Jesse was due to make contact that day.

Jesse calls Jerry

• The Handler called for Luck rolls from Jerry and Andy to determine whose phone rang first. Jerry rolled higher.
• Shortly after noon, Jerry received a call on the burner number he had left with Jesse.
• He recognized her voice. Before discussing the investigation, she told him to assume the call was being monitored.
• Jerry reported in indirect terms that their target was where they expected him to be, that the children were probably there as well, and that they were confident he had bad intentions.
• At Andy’s prompting, Jerry added that the pattern appeared to be repeating.
• Jesse used a party metaphor to establish whether the situation involved the sort of threat they handled and whether intervention could become difficult to contain.
• Jerry described the location as relatively isolated, far from its nearest neighbors, and not exceptionally fortified. He also made clear that their team was poorly suited to an assault.
• Jesse said that she knew some “party planners” who might help.
• The Handler established that Jesse and the team had previously arranged coded names for several possible meeting locations around El Paso.
• Jesse directed them to the “party supply store,” meaning a Waffle House, at 10 a.m. on Sunday.
• The team would meet the prospective assistance there.
• Jesse encouraged continued surveillance, emphasizing that additional information about the facility would be useful.
• Jerry ended the call.

Antonia Pitzerelli returns Andy’s call

• Approximately twenty minutes later, Andy’s other burner phone rang.
• This was the phone he had used on Monday morning to leave a message for Antonia Pitzerelli.
• Andy had retained it rather than discarding it after Baltimore.
• His earlier message had named the original MASTICATE personnel and requested a callback. He had been trying to reach someone above their existing contact because he feared the situation was not being taken seriously.
• Pitzerelli sounded tired and asked whom she was speaking to.
• Andy knew from the Black Lantern file that she was associated with the Program.
• Concerned about speaking openly, he described himself as someone belonging to another organization she was also part of and who had handled reports concerning her former associates.
• When she asked whether he worked for the Attorney General’s office, he said that he worked for a different organization.
• Pitzerelli asked why he had called and left a list of names.
• Andy said that he was concerned about unfinished business those people had been dealing with.
• After a long pause, Pitzerelli told him that she thought he had called the wrong office, apologized for the confusion, and hung up.
• Andy became concerned about the phone being traced. The group agreed to isolate it in their Faraday bag, with removing the battery also discussed.
• Pitzerelli did not call back again during the session.

Continued surveillance: a child is brought into the facility

• The group decided to remain at the observation position and continue watching until Sunday’s meeting.
• Shortly after 3 p.m. on Friday, a large black SUV arrived and was admitted through the gates.
• Its darkened windows prevented the observers from identifying its occupants.
• The SUV entered through a garage entrance. The doors remained open long enough for the team to see activity inside.
• A young woman in handcuffs was in the vehicle with a small child, approximately two or three years old.
• The woman struggled free enough to fall or wrench herself out of the SUV, creating confusion.
• From their distant observation point, the team could see her screaming and panicking, although they could not hear her.
• She was trying to prevent the personnel from taking her child away.
• The child was taken farther into the facility.
• The woman was forced back into the SUV, which then drove away.
• The Handler clarified that the vehicle had used the facility’s front-side entrance. This observation did not reveal the contents of the concealed area associated with the rear entrance.
• Over the preceding days, the team had seen other arrivals and departures. Activity was intermittent rather than constant, but there had been multiple drop-offs and some apparent pickups.

Discussing publicity and conventional criminal charges

• Ernie raised the possibility of informing the press, since the team had accumulated information about the operation.
• Andy doubted that bad publicity would meaningfully constrain the people in authority.
• The group considered the possibility that attention would cause the children to be dispersed and Tillman’s operation to move elsewhere.
• Andy also observed that publicity might attract protesters and other observers, making a later covert entry more difficult.
• No contact with the press was made.
• Andy proposed another route to arrests: finding or creating evidence of financial wrongdoing involving the facility.
• He asked whether Ernie could access payroll or reimbursement systems and establish apparent embezzlement, such as Tillman taking money or claiming reimbursement for purchases that had never occurred.
• The intended pressure would come from Life Force itself if it believed its money was being stolen.
• Ernie expressed interest in the idea, but the discussion paused for Ming’s findings. No financial records were accessed or altered.

Ming interprets the neurological material

• Ming had spent enough time studying the articles and checking references through Ernie’s improvised Stingray hotspot to understand their subject matter.
• The articles concerned different forms of brain damage, particularly cases in which the connection between the brain’s hemispheres had been severed.
• Tillman had annotated the articles, and related notes appeared in the journal around the pages where the printouts had been stored.
• Tillman believed that he suffered from split-brain syndrome.
• His writings attributed this condition to something done to him in childhood by the old woman who ran the children’s refuge.
• He described her as having put something inside the children’s bodies, breaking them and tearing them apart in different ways.
• In his own case, he believed that this had severed the connection between the two halves of his brain.
• Some of the lifelong difficulties he described were consistent with split-brain syndrome, assuming his account was accurate.
• The Handler emphasized that this was Tillman’s self-diagnosis. There was no indication that he had received an official diagnosis, an MRI, or another examination confirming it.
• Ming judged that Tillman had studied the medical material seriously enough to understand it reasonably well, but his conclusions still rested on his own observations.

Tillman’s explanation for his ability to speak and hear the “quiet”

• Tillman believed that one side of his brain had developed the ability to speak, understand language, and connect with other people.
• He described language as a skill he had deliberately learned and still had to concentrate to use.
• He believed that this language-capable side remained separate from the other side of his brain.
• The other side, according to his account, could still hear the hunter that guided the children and remained connected to what he called the “quiet.”
• Ming asked whether Tillman thought this was true of the other children as well.
• The Handler explained that Tillman considered himself unusual or unique.
• Tillman referred to Nika, whose name the team had encountered in the Black Lantern material. He believed that she had once heard the same silent voice, but had lost her way after doctors taught her to talk.
• Tillman wrote that he alone could hear the children, the Teeth, and the silent voice.
• He therefore believed that he had to speak for all of them.

The first renewed argument about killing Tillman

• Ming suggested that, if Tillman’s unusual condition allowed him to connect the people involved, killing him might cause the operation to fall apart.
• Andy objected that killing was itself part of the recurring pattern.
• He pointed to the team’s animal bites and the prospect of using violence to free abused children as signs that they were following the same sequence that had drawn others into becoming Teeth.
• Andy believed that responding with violence could pull them more deeply into the phenomenon.
• The group did not resolve this disagreement before continuing its research.

Ming and Ernie read the rest of Tillman’s journal

• With time available before Sunday, Ming and Ernie undertook a more complete reading of the journal.
• The journal also served as a language exercise book.
• Throughout its entries, Tillman practiced reading, speaking, and understanding speech.
• The material reinforced the impression that ordinary conversation was a laborious activity for him, dependent on conscious effort and learned techniques.
• Ernie noted that this matched what ScribeLife420 had previously said about him.
• Tillman appeared to have spent much of his life working to communicate with other people.

Tillman’s childhood memories and attachment to “Sredni Vashtar”

• Tillman described a powerful emotional reaction to the short story “Sredni Vashtar,” which he first read as a teenager.
• He attached particular significance to the similarity between the fictional child’s name and the name he himself had used in childhood.
• He did not regard that resemblance as a simple coincidence.
• He initially failed to recognize that the story’s animal was a ferret.
• Once he understood that connection, it became especially meaningful to him.
• He wrote at length about a ferret who had been his earliest and most beloved friend and protector.
• He did not describe the animal primarily as a possession or pet. He regarded their relationship as a partnership in which they protected each other.
• His childhood reflections repeatedly returned to the presence of a guiding force.
• He contrasted his father’s understanding of God and divine guidance with his own experience, asserting that his father did not truly understand what such guidance meant.
• Tillman believed that he and the other children from Cornucopia House understood it in a way other people could not.

Tillman’s study of coincidence, religion, and the occult

• During college, Tillman used the opportunity to study the force that had influenced his childhood.
• He cataloged strange impulses and coincidences that worked in his favor.
• These incidents were numerous, and he regarded them as intentional.
• He believed that fulfilling his purpose required following those impulses and allowing the force to place him where he needed to be.
• His writing combined theological speculation with historical and occult research.
• Like the independently compiled Black Lantern document, Tillman’s journal discussed the Black Rites of Bast.
• He studied Egyptology and other mythologies, identifying parallels with his own experiences.
• The Handler distinguished the occult accounts of the Black Rites from reliable historical scholarship. Tillman drew on material that circulated in occult writing.
• His research extended to mythical Atlantis and Lemuria.
• He described an ancient, persistent power: a nameless god that had warred with the legendary Black Pharaoh, Nephren-Ka.

Tillman’s account of the nameless god’s hunger

• In Tillman’s understanding, the nameless god was always hungry.
• Its hunger could be directed toward people who tortured and harmed the innocent.
• If its attention was not diverted elsewhere, it would consume its own followers.
• Tillman believed that its strongest appetite was for inhuman things and powers beyond ordinary human understanding.
• He described such entities as lurking in the shadows.
• Humanity’s role, in his account, was to “light fires in the darkness” that would draw the god’s attention to those threats.
• The intended result was that things which would otherwise consume humanity would themselves be consumed.
• These were presented as Tillman’s beliefs and conclusions, rather than independently established explanations of the phenomenon.

The journal’s connection to the cornucopion

• Tillman eventually linked his religious and occult conclusions to quantum mechanics.
• His writings arrived at a theory resembling the cornucopion.
• The Handler contrasted this with David Cortez’s earlier interpretation.
• Cortez had considered the possibility that a person or power used the cornucopion particle to influence or control events.
• Tillman instead believed that the particles were his nameless god, or the closest manifestation of its presence in the world.
• His research was thorough and his writing persuasive.
• The correspondence between his journal and the independently produced Black Lantern file made it difficult for Ming and Ernie to dismiss everything as invention.
• Following those connections led toward an understanding of reality that was deeply hostile to human existence.

Mechanical consequences of studying the journal

• Ming and Ernie each gained 1 point in Occult and 9 percentage points in Unnatural.
• Both succeeded on their SAN checks.
• Despite those successes, each faced a loss of 2d6 + 1 SAN.
• Ming rolled the minimum loss of 3 SAN.
• He chose not to project that loss onto a Bond, explaining that he had considerably more SAN than strength in his Bonds.
• Ming reported a resulting SAN score of 67.
• Ernie initially rolled a loss of 10 SAN.
• He projected onto a Bond and rolled 2, reducing the SAN loss to 8 and reducing the Bond by 2.
• The projection also cost 2 Willpower, but the Handler said that the available rest would likely restore it, so there was no need to retain that reduction.
• Ernie’s SAN fell to 51.
• Because he lost at least 5 SAN at once, Ernie experienced temporary insanity.
• The Handler described Ming and Ernie reading together in the camper. As Ernie processed several pages, realizations overwhelmed him and he stared into the middle distance, dissociating for a time.
• Ming continued reading and considering the material without initially noticing Ernie’s withdrawal.

What the journal says about the current facility

• Ming asked whether the journal explained Tillman’s current operation at the ICE facility.
• The Handler said that Tillman did not appear especially interested in recording its practical details.
• Instead, Tillman described it as the spark that would set the fire.
• He connected it to what had brought him into the world and brought his god’s Teeth.
• He hoped that the Teeth had been able to feed the god and wrote that he needed to bring them there.
• Ming interpreted this as evidence that Tillman wanted the team to kill him and unleash widespread violence at the facility.
• He worried that a large confrontation would be precisely the outcome Tillman was arranging.
• Ming suggested that kidnapping Tillman and killing only him might be a lesser evil than a broad assault.

Considering capture and Program detention

• The team knew where Tillman lived, making an off-site abduction a possible option.
• Ming proposed capturing him and then approaching their original Program contact with a living subject whose brain might have an unusual condition.
• He thought the Program might want to examine or study Tillman.
• Ming also expressed his own professional interest, as a neurologist, in studying someone with Tillman’s reported condition.
• Such an arrangement might allow them to avoid killing him.
• Ernie argued against acting before meeting Jesse’s contacts, since the meeting was only about a day away.
• The group agreed that the newcomers’ capabilities might change their options, particularly if they had experience capturing people.
• Jerry pointed out that removing Tillman would not, by itself, resolve the children’s situation.
• Ming doubted that the operation would continue in the same way without Tillman.
• The group distinguished Tillman’s apparent unnatural role from the other participants, whom they suspected might be ordinary abusers.
• Andy emphasized how much remained unknown: they had not established the full extent of anyone else’s involvement or what was happening in the concealed room.
• Ming also suggested that Tillman’s disappearance could bring investigators to his workplace and prompt questions about the facility.

Deciding to wait for Sunday

• The group agreed not to attempt an abduction on its own before the meeting.
• Ming wanted capturing Tillman to be their proposal to Jesse’s contacts.
• Andy initially discussed taking both principal suspects, and the Handler reminded them that there were technically three individuals of interest.
• Andy favored capturing all three, while identifying Tillman as the primary target.
• Jerry warned that taking one of the others first might alert Tillman and cause him to relocate.
• They considered the possibility that removing Tillman first could frighten the others or leave them unable to continue the operation.
• Andy argued that questioning Tillman would help them make an informed decision about what to do next.
• The team also recognized that its surveillance had now directly confirmed the arrival of a child in the age range that concerned them.

Sunday morning at the Waffle House

• The group arrived at the Waffle House at 10 a.m. on Sunday.
• They had been given no description of the people they were meeting and assumed those people would know how to recognize them.
• Everyone except Ernie succeeded on an Alertness check.
• Ming rolled 5 against 20; Ernie rolled 43 against 40.
• Ernie focused on the menu while the others looked for signs of their contacts.
• Nobody inside the restaurant appeared particularly interested in the team.
• Across the highway, in the parking lot of a small retail strip, the observers noticed two people sitting in a truck.
• The truck faced the Waffle House, and its occupants remained there throughout breakfast.
• Their position was conspicuous enough that the group became confident they were watching the restaurant.
• Andy succeeded on a Criminology check and recognized that the arrangement could allow the contacts to pick up their vehicle and follow them elsewhere.
• The truck’s occupants made no attempt to approach them inside.
• The team finished breakfast, spending approximately forty-five minutes at the restaurant before leaving.

Moving the meeting to a cemetery

• Jerry suggested finding a nearby cemetery where they could park and walk around.
• The group drove south from the Waffle House in northern El Paso and entered a cemetery toward the outskirts of town.
• After they had walked around for a while, a man approached.
• He appeared to be around sixty, with a beard showing some gray.
• He wore old green cargo pants that were frayed and stained, a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt, and sunglasses.
• A cigarette hung from his mouth.
• His appearance and silhouette matched one of the people seen in the truck.
• The second person was not visible.
• When Ernie asked where his partner was, the man said that he had gone to relieve himself.
• The newcomer surveyed the area, checked that the team was alone, and said Jesse had told him they had an operation underway.
• He invited them to explain the situation there in the cemetery.

The team briefs Jesse’s contact

• Andy explained that they had three individuals of interest.
• They wanted to question one to determine whether the problem was limited to those three, then potentially take the others.
• Jerry emphasized that they wanted the perpetrators stopped and could not allow the principal target to resume his activities.
• The newcomer had understood that the investigative work was already complete and that the team had identified people involved with things they should not be handling.
• He asked about the targets’ powers.
• As an example of the sort of danger he meant, he asked whether they knew a secret word capable of making someone’s skin fall off.
• The team could not give a clear inventory of Tillman’s abilities.
• Andy explained that Tillman probably knew they were coming, but that this might itself be part of his unnatural capabilities.
• Ming described the situation as a setup: Tillman was drawing people toward him, and a spectacular attack could fulfill his intentions.
• The children’s presence was also emphasized as a reason they could not simply destroy the location.

The contact favors killing Tillman at a distance

• The man sat on a tombstone and lit a fresh cigarette from the one he was finishing.
• He asked whether they knew the range of Tillman’s abilities and whether he could be killed from a distance.
• The group acknowledged that a distant attack might be possible, but Jerry argued that it would not necessarily solve the underlying problem.
• Jerry explained the concern that Tillman wanted or needed to be killed for the pattern to continue.
• He suggested that the children currently being abused might repeat Tillman’s actions in roughly ten years.
• Ming observed that postponing the problem for a decade would still be a substantial delay, while acknowledging the uncertainty.
• Jerry also pointed to the previous team’s fate as grounds to fear that they themselves would die.
• Ernie stressed that he had a family he wanted to return to.
• The newcomer asked what they expected to do with Tillman if they did not kill him.
• The team proposed detention at a black site.

The contact explains his position

• The man said they were confusing him with their friends in Washington.
• He had no detention facility available; the only equivalent he offered was a dark hole.
• Jerry objected that none of the people they had dealt with had explained matters directly, leaving them uncertain about whom they were working with.
• The newcomer accepted that criticism.
• He said he was becoming convinced that the team was not there to expose older agents.
• He described himself as someone who had been doing this work for a long time and had seen changes in the organization.
• He disapproved of the people the team had worked for because he believed they thought unnatural forces could be controlled.
• His own experience had convinced him otherwise. His approach was to keep destroying such things until they could no longer be found.
• When addressing whom he worked for, he said that he worked for himself.
• He suggested that the team appeared to have walked away from its previous organization and warned that it would not simply allow them to do so.
• Nevertheless, he approved of their decision to address the present threat.
• Jerry explained that their prior handlers wanted to wait until after the election because of the possible political consequences.
• The newcomer regarded that explanation as consistent with his view of the Program.

Explaining Tillman’s suspected abilities and network

• Ming told the contact that wild animals might help Tillman, although he did not claim that Tillman directly controlled them.
• The team also described the voice Tillman believed he heard.
• Jerry thought Tillman might not be especially dangerous in a confrontation because he wanted the confrontation to happen.
• Ernie suggested that this could mean Tillman would not resist.
• Ming countered that Tillman might fight if doing so would produce greater carnage.
• Jerry then made the practical complication explicit: Tillman was an ICE agent operating at a black site.
• The Handler confirmed that Tillman spent most of his time at the facility, but occasionally went home.
• Ernie described Tillman as gathering abusers around himself and trying to create a distributed network connected to his god.
• He presented possible manifestation or increased access for the entity as the team’s interpretation of that network.
• The newcomer was willing to act against ordinary perpetrators as well as those with powers.
• When he asked whether they had intelligence about the wider network, Ernie supplied a copy on a USB drive.
• Ernie retained additional copies.
• The contact accepted the information as something to address later, after dealing with the immediate organizer.

The danger of learning more

• Jerry warned the newcomer that learning about the phenomenon seemed to pull people farther into it and increase their personal danger.
• He explained that the current team had already been affected after reading extensively about the case.
• The newcomer said this was part of the reason he had arrived wanting a simple answer about whom to shoot.
• When Jerry pointed out that he had asked them to explain their investigation, the man accepted responsibility for inviting the additional information.

Disagreement over whom to interrogate

• Ernie proposed neutralizing Tillman’s associates, capturing Tillman, questioning him, and then disposing of him.
• The newcomer broadly agreed with stopping the group but rejected the suggestion that Tillman was safe to approach.
• He considered the organizer the person most likely to possess dangerous knowledge or abilities the team had not anticipated.
• His preferred approach was to kill Tillman quickly and question one of his subordinates instead.
• The wider list of contacts could be investigated afterward.
• Ming suggested that, if the subordinate knew little, the immediate operation might end with Tillman.
• The contact cautioned that such situations were rarely clean.
• Ernie acknowledged the lack of attractive alternatives, but Jerry continued to insist that they needed to find the children.

The unresolved problem of the children

• The team considered whether Tillman might already have sent children elsewhere.
• They had his list of contacts, which could provide leads if that had happened.
• Ernie also noted their working theory that Tillman needed the children together at the facility.
• Jerry described the operation as an attempt to create another Cornucopia House.
• Ernie hoped that eliminating Tillman and his associates would end their influence over the children.
• He questioned whether the team had the resources to get the children out.
• Andy insisted that something had to be done for them because they could become the next generation in the cycle.
• The conversation turned toward their future care, including therapy and the possibility of the Reverend taking responsibility for their upbringing.
• No arrangement for the children’s care was established.
• Ernie again asked about the contact’s absent companion. The man deflected the question, and the second person remained out of sight.

Jerry finds a Bridge of Hope brochure

• During the discussion, Jerry noticed a piece of paper blowing across the cemetery lawn.
• It fluttered and unfolded nearby, close enough for him to read.
• The paper bore the name “El Puente de la Esperanza,” meaning “The Bridge of Hope.”
• Smaller text identified the organization’s work as immigration legal defense.
• Jerry spoke Spanish and could read the name without relying on its English translation.
• The brochure offered assistance with immigration status, relatives detained by ICE, and locating missing family members.
• It explicitly criticized ICE’s abuse and misuse of its powers and offered help challenging those actions.
• Jerry picked it up and showed it to the others.
• He described its arrival as another of the coincidences that seemed to accompany the case.

Recognizing the organization’s connection to MASTICATE

• The name prompted recollection of MASTICATE’s earlier Los Angeles investigation.
• The previous team had dealt with Alina Estevez, a lawyer associated with the organization.
• She had supplied useful intelligence while representing people affected by a shooting at a daycare in a neighboring unit.
• The Handler clarified that the connection had appeared briefly in the Black Lantern file, even though it was incidental to the main operation.
• Andy, who had studied that file especially closely, could recognize the organization.
• The brochure listed an El Paso office.
• The earlier team had also known that Estevez was based in El Paso and had encouraged her to return there from Los Angeles.
• Jerry did not necessarily remember the earlier connection himself, but recognized that the organization’s work might make it useful for helping the children.
• Andy pointed out that the organization had been mentioned in their files.
• He recommended contacting Bridge of Hope to determine whether it could help with the children after their removal.
• No call to the organization was made before the session ended.

Returning to the possibility of questioning Tillman at home

• The team revisited whether Tillman should be shot from a distance or confronted at closer range.
• Ming felt that, without an option for long-term detention, the precise method of killing him might not make much difference.
• Jerry suggested that Tillman’s isolated, little-used apartment could accommodate questioning without attracting attention.
• The team could wait there for him to return.
• Ming favored the prospect of interviewing him.
• The Handler reminded them that Tillman appeared to anticipate their arrival.
• Andy recalled the welcoming quality of the journal’s final message.
• The exact words were repeated: “They are coming. You are here.”
• The newcomer said that questioning Tillman was the team’s business and offered a phone number for contact.
• Andy proposed having him remain outside with a scope and a signal while the team conducted the interview.
• The man refused to be anywhere near the interrogation.

The contact’s proposed next step

• The newcomer offered to help plan entry into the ICE facility.
• The team’s surveillance had given them information about personnel movements and shifts.
• Jerry clarified that children were definitely inside; the uncertainty concerned what was happening to those in the concealed area.
• The contact agreed that they needed to inspect that part of the building.
• His preferred sequence was to wait for Tillman to come outside, kill him from a distance, and have the others ready to enter.
• Once inside, they would assess what they found, with an extraction plan prepared beforehand.
• If the team insisted on questioning Tillman elsewhere first, he wanted the facility operation planned in advance.
• Provided the interview did not alert anyone at the facility, they could proceed with the strike afterward.
• He reiterated that he would not participate in the questioning.
• Jerry reminded him that he now had the list of Tillman’s wider contacts to pursue if the team did not survive.
• The man acknowledged that responsibility with a nod.
• He suggested finding a private place to work out the plans and prepare weapons.
• The session ended at that point. The team had acquired an armed ally and a possible source of help for the children, but had not yet captured or killed a suspect, entered the facility, or carried out a rescue.