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The Company
Time: Thursday, March 22, 2012 (wee hours).
Place: Crappy "hotel," Ottawa.
Last Event: Doing some crimes.
With cash in hand and rooms rented, the Agents decide to lie low until Chaturvedi has new identities ready. This should give the injured time to heal and the trail time to cool. People do venture out to buy a few necessities (notably, clean clothing), but only during daylight hours, and only in small groups. Everyone keeps an eye on the news, too, but it seems that the team's exploits – even burning down a multimillion-dollar ski lodge and leaving the nearby mountainside strewn with dead assassins – have somehow been kept from the media. There's no question that strings are being pulled.
The Agents phone Chaturvedi every night to check in. On Saturday evening, he finally has news. He starts by reiterating that the team really needs to stay off the radar for a while, adding that their track record in Canada is a little bleak, so it would be best to get out of there. Then he abruptly switches topics, mentioning that in the past, the group has often ended up fighting its foes barehanded – sometimes with mixed results, as not everybody is especially adept at such things. His next statement links the two thoughts: He's sending the crew to a muay thai training camp for six weeks.
While the Agents' initial reaction is stunned silence, they soon see the merit in this. For one thing, some such camps – including the one that Chaturvedi has in mind – are relatively remote and largely off the grid. For another, the team currently has no enemies in Thailand. And of course learning a little unarmed combat could only improve their odds of future survival. Six weeks is hardly time enough to become an expert, but 40 days of intensive hand-to-hand combat training is nothing to sneeze at.
The Agents have questions, and Chaturvedi has answers. Yes, this camp is the real deal, not just a tourist attraction. Yes, unlike some such establishments, this one trains women as well as men; in fact, several moderately successful female MMA fighters have trained there. No, there's no club scene, Internet, or anything much but a small village – the place is somewhat rustic and isolated, which is a major reason why Chaturvedi chose it. Reactions to these details range from "Oh, no!" (Anabel) to "Cool!" (Wen).
Chaturvedi wraps up the conversation by saying that he'll send the Agents' interim identity packages by courier. These should arrive in two days. The identities won't be super-strong – he'll use the six-week break to engineer something better – but they ought to get the crew from Canada to Thailand without issue. After obtaining the street address of the team's accommodations, he ends the call.
As promised, a parcel arrives by courier on the morning of Monday, March 26. The driver of the van is visibly apprehensive about delivering a package to a glorified flophouse, especially one with scary-looking people hanging around outside, but Klas breaks the ice by showing the man a small identity card associated with the last of the group's false identities. Then everybody heads inside, where Klas distributes the goods. Each Agent gets fake papers, an envelope of cash, and a generic gift card for an athletics shop. There's also a note in the box: The team's flight to Thailand, booked under these names, departs tomorrow.
The Agents use the evening to buy athletic clothing suitable for six weeks of muay thai training. Several people – notably Klas, Lev, and Qoqa – also make a point of getting hold of insect repellent, netting, and so on. And Qoqa picks up first aid gear. By nightfall, everyone is packed and ready to travel.
Tuesday morning, the Agents grab their bags, stroll to the nearby bus station, and catch the airport bus. At the airport, check-in goes well. While the documents Chaturvedi sent furrow a few eyebrows and provoke a couple of questions, they get the job done. Nobody is detained, and no government agents or assassins appear to cause problems. The plane takes off with the entire team aboard, starting the first leg of a long trip.
The group's flights are uneventful. The only enemy is boredom, and everybody has some way of coping with that. For instance, Wen uses the time to catch up on her drawing, creating some truly disturbing "tentacle porn" involving Hamid, and then showing this to Anabel as revenge for Hamid's conduct during the back-room porn shoot a few days ago. Jili experiments with air-sickness pills that aren't. Qoqa just orders lots of vodka.
When the Agents finally reach Thailand on Thursday, they've had enough of planes. Chaturvedi's forged papers work just fine at this end, too, and before long everybody is looking around for the man from the training camp. Bearing a sign in four languages and surrounded by athletic-looking Westerners with bags, he isn't hard to spot. He escorts everyone to an ancient, rusty bus with bald tires, chattering nonstop the whole time.
The old bus burns more oil than gas, and doesn't so much roll as lurch, but it does the job. When the Agents disembark, they find themselves in an isolated "village" that looks like a cross between a boxing gym and boot camp, with tropical trappings. Then the trainers show up and start barking orders in accented English. It seems that women get one barracks, men get another, and nobody drinks or smokes. Also, the camp has a strict schedule for reveille, meals, and lights-out. It's like something out of a bad military movie, but with more kicking.
The next six weeks pass surprisingly quickly. Amazingly, nobody sustains more than a minor training injury, the worst of these being a badly pulled muscle in Vinnie's case, which Qoqa looks after. Even more impressively, nobody – not even the soft-living types – washes out or gives up. Notably, Anabel takes to the training surprisingly well. By the time May 10 rolls around, everybody is throwing decent strikes, and those who were already good at such things have added new tricks to their arsenal.