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The Company
Time: Sunday, October 7, 2012 (night).
Place: Construction camp not far from Gisenyi, Rwanda.
Last Event: Gunning down armed raiders.
As soon as the last of the interlopers goes down in a hail of bullets, the Agents storm the camp and secure the area. Qoqa immediately begins her casualty assessment, while Klas and Wen provide security. The other six, spotting no further hostiles, jog to the road and hike back to the group's vehicles. Everyone stays alert, but it seems that the attackers kept nothing in reserve.
In camp, medical tasks are the top priority. Qoqa takes the lead on this, her first order of business being hasty surgery on the foot of the worker she accidentally shot. After that, she examines the gunned-down attackers, finds that just five in 25 are still breathing (not including the leader, unfortunately), and takes steps to ensure that some prisoners will survive for long enough to talk. Meanwhile, Wen revives and patches up Jean-Pierre. Klas does the same for Paarl, who tells him that the goons who beat him were asking about gold.
The three Agents in camp are still treating the wounded when their associates return with the group's transportation: three jeeps and three pickup trucks, laden with gear and supplies. Vinnie starts rummaging through the attackers' vehicles for intelligence. He turns up a manila folder containing telephoto night-vision shots of the team and its vehicles arriving in Kigali. Anabel, Paul, and Zhang get the grisly task of searching the dead. They mostly find ammo, a small amount of cash, and cigarettes – although the leader also has an old cell phone on him.
Before the group can meet to discuss the situation, though, Anabel senses that the sight of the bullet-riddled camp full of corpses has the workers about ready to flee into the night. Thus, the next order of business is a meeting between the construction crew and the Agents, with Jean-Pierre and Anabel doing most of the talking. Things are touch-and-go at first, even after Anabel emphasizes her team's proven ability to defend the site and promises a 50% pay bonus. It's clear that the laborers believe that tonight's attackers were Congolese militiamen, and that there will be reprisals. Eventually, Anabel manages to get them to agree to stay on provided that her people set up defenses.
Given the low morale around the camp, the Agents elect to make a show of taking action, despite the fact that it's late and they're tired. Vinnie unpacks enough of his new kitchen supplies to cook everyone a meal. His associates use the distraction this provides to stack the corpses out of sight. The five surviving attackers are quietly diverted to the tool shed for interrogation by Qoqa:
Q: "What group do you work for?"
A: "We worked for Laurent."
Q: "Who is Laurent?"
A: "He was the boss. You killed him!"
Q: "Who did Laurent work for?"
A: "Laurent was independent – he answered to nobody."
Q: "Where were you camped?"
A: "Camped? Hah! No camp, either. We came across the border. The border can't hold us!"
Q: "Where was the last place you were camped?"
A: "No camp, I said. Our camp is on the move!"
Q: "When did you leave to come here, then?"
A: "We moved out this afternoon, after Laurent got the phone call."
Q: "And who called Laurent?"
A: "Top men. Laurent was connected."
Q: "Is there anyone else besides you?"
A: "All the grunts. We're Laurent's men. We're special ops. We're not grunts."
Q: "How many grunts?"
A: "The UN man says three companies."
Q: "What UN man?"
A: "The man on TV . . . don't you watch TV?"
Q: "Are there any child soldiers in these three companies?"
A: "Sure, I guess. Some of the grunts look small."
From the prisoners' answers, Qoqa deduces that tonight's attackers were a well-armed paramilitary gang under the command of a charismatic leader, Laurent. It seems clear that they were loosely attached to a militia operating out of DRC. Qoqa suspects that someone – whoever phoned Laurent – sent these men to check reports of a camp near the border, relying on their bravado to get the job done on a "no questions asked" basis. It doesn't strain disbelief that a force three companies in size might detach an under-strength platoon of irregulars for that task.
In the wee hours of the morning, the Agents finally meet to share their findings. Qoqa tells the others what she got out of the prisoners – namely, that the attackers were almost certainly DRC-based militiamen. Vinnie reveals that the goons were specifically hunting the team, as they had photos of the group, snapped from afar using light-intensification optics. Zhang opines that it looks as though the militia is being manipulated by forces who object to Darmatech's presence. Paul agrees, and suspects that Laurent's caller ultimately worked for somebody's secret service.
The question then becomes, "Who would back such action?" Based on her pre-mission reading, Anabel feels that China's MSS would be a prime candidate, given that China has a substantial economic interest in Rwanda, doubtless tied to a desire to project political influence into the region. Vinnie is inclined to agree, because while it makes little sense to him that a militia would block the UN-sanctioned humanitarian efforts of a European biomedical firm, it isn't implausible that Chinese spies bent on stacking the deck against Western competition might use a militia as a cat's paw. Everyone agrees that it wouldn't be beyond the MSS (or CIA, or FSB . . .) to use local assets where possible and blame bloody incidents on regional conflict.
This leads to a witch hunt for Chinese involvement in the night's unpleasantness. Jili is of the opinion that night-vision photos, grainy in a way that suggests digital interpolation from extreme range, suggest better technical means than those of the average militia. Vinnie examines the prints more closely and finds that the photographic paper was made in China, though that isn't especially damning given how much of the stuff is manufactured there. Lev notes that a lot of the militiamen were carrying Chinese AK knockoffs. Ultimately, all the evidence is circumstantial.
Eventually, the Agents decide that it's time to get some rest. They post watches, but this proves unnecessary. The night's only remaining surprise is that it doesn't rain.
Everyone rises late on Monday morning. Vinnie throws himself into upgrading the machine shop with the hardware from Kigali, assisted by a couple of Paarl's men. Qoqa recruits one of Jean-Pierre's workers to operate the rusty old bulldozer so that she can quickly dispose of the dead in a mass grave (which she camouflages, just in case). Wen has almost everyone else working on fortifications – a subject she seems to know a lot about. Her plans focus on what's possible with manual laborers and second-rate earth-moving equipment: berms and ditches, hardened against infantry by palisades made from the ploughed-over trees at the edge of the clearing.
During the afternoon, Anabel calls Chaturvedi via satellite phone. She reports on the previous night's events, on the need for a 50% pay bonus to improve worker morale, and on her suspicions that the MSS is pulling strings in the region. Chaturvedi doubts that last point, but Anabel pushes the issue, requesting that Chaturvedi ask Staedert how the Company would want to deal with possible Chinese spooks. She adds that if there are spies involved, ordering pawns around via cell phone, then the team will need electronic surveillance gear in order to gather operational intelligence. Chaturvedi promises to do his best to get more aid into the field.
By nightfall, the camp is lightly fortified, with a shallow ditch around the perimeter and a tree-trunk-studded berm in front of that. Vinnie has the machine shop up and running well enough to weld together a moveable metal tire shredder to drag across the site's access road. Paul takes the time to organize the group's motor pool, which now consists of their three jeeps, the two lousy pickups bought in Kigali, the decent-quality pickup captured from the gang there, and the four light trucks that carried the previous night's attackers. He parks the vehicles so as to facilitate a hasty evacuation – and away from the edges of the clearing, so that they don't block sight lines.
That night, all nine Agents go visibly armed, as there's little point in maintaining the pretense of being something other than well-trained killers. They post their sentries closer to the road. Those who aren't standing watch sleep with rifles nearby. However, the night proves uneventful, the only visitor being a rainstorm.
Come the morning of October 9, it's time to return to Kigali to pick up the medical gear that Darmatech arranged via the UN facilities there. Given recent troubles, the Agents opt to go about this cautiously. Vinnie drives Anabel and Klas in one of the jeeps, while Paul and Qoqa follow in the best of the pickup trucks. Lev, Wen, and Zhang remain at the camp for security. Jili also stays behind, to keep an ear to the radio.