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The Company
On April 2, we had Bonnie ("Xiang Wen," a.k.a. "Wu Xie Zhi" and "Dot"), Marc ("Anabel Windsor," a.k.a. "Abigail Wilson" and "Vicky"), Mike ("Vincenzo Calliente," of many aliases), and Torsten ("Qoqa Ramazanov," a.k.a. "Zoya Petrovna Sidorov").
Time: Thursday, February 28, 2013 (mid afternoon).
Place: Miami, Florida.
Last Event: Buying a couple of stolen SUVs.
After swiping plates for their newly acquired SUVs, Vinnie and Paul detour to a carwash to remove any outward traces of the seller's side lot, and then drive back to the hotel. On rejoining the others, there's a brief discussion about how to find the Chloë Luudens and track the assassins once they disembark from her. Given the layout of the Port of Miami, spotting the ship come in should require nothing more than binoculars. As for tracking, Jili says that given a couple of smart phones and a laptop, she could easily adapt a phone to serve as a long-range GPS beacon. With those thoughts in mind, the team splits up, Vinnie chauffeuring Anabel, Qoqa, and Jili on a shopping expedition while Paul takes the rest of the gang to the waterfront.
Vinnie's squad has no difficulty procuring the necessary gear. Anabel visits a phone shop, where she buys one phone while slickly filching two more. Jili goes to the nearest Best Buy and purchases a cheap, functional laptop. Qoqa drops into a sporting-goods store to pick up binoculars and hunting knives; she has a story ready for why she needs so many of each, but nobody seems to care about that. All three return to the SUV in less than half an hour.
With that done, Vinnie's plan is to rendezvous with Paul's squad, but Anabel points out that if she's being asked to plant a rigged phone on one of the assassins' vehicles, she'll want somebody else for backup and believes that the two of them should be in disguise. This means she needs to stop by the hotel, where she has her cosmetics stashed. As Vinnie drives there, the Agents work out that it makes the most sense for Qoqa to accompany Anabel, because Vinnie isn't especially good at such tomfoolery while Jili needs to stay with her laptop to verify that she has a signal. Upon reaching the hotel, Anabel and Qoqa duck in for long enough for Anabel to alter their appearance.
Ultimately, Vinnie's group links up with Paul's at the waterfront. By the time they do, Jili has the phones set up to do what she wants. However, the Chloë Luudens hasn't turned up yet. Thus, the entire team ends up sitting around watching ships, now with the assistance of shiny new binoculars. At 13:30, Wen spots the vessel steaming into port.
After waiting a short time for the ship to tie up and prepare to unload, Anabel and Qoqa hop into one of the SUVs and drive to the port. Anabel tells Qoqa that her plan is to claim to be delivering a surprise strip-o-gram to a port employee, in the hope that this will deflect prying questions. Qoqa is to play the role of Anabel's driver and dresser. At the gate, the security officer seems fine with this story but still insists on checking and logging Anabel and Qoqa's ID. Fortunately, the false documents from Chaturvedi seem to be good still, as the guard simply scans them and waves the women in.
As soon as they're inside the port, Anabel and Qoqa park and walk toward where the Chloë Luudens is moored. They do their best to act casual, as if they belong, and not to appear to be searching for anything. Before long, Qoqa spots the ship and she and Anabel stroll toward it. They keep an eye open for any of the men in the photos that Anabel procured in Monrovia, but they see no familiar faces. This is more than in part because they're keeping a low profile and trying not to look as though they're actively observing.
When Qoqa and Anabel are about 60 metres from the ship, they're passed by a convoy of seven black SUVs. These pull up near the gangplank and park in a carefully spaced formation. Almost simultaneously, the drivers emerge: seven beefy men with shaved heads, wearing earpieces and Oakley SI sunglasses, the outlines of pistols in waistband holsters visible under jackets. Though a few of these guys glance in Anabel and Qoqa's general direction, they don't react in a way that suggests recognition. They simply walk around their vehicles and open the tailgates, as if preparing to load something aboard.
Shortly after the SUVs show up, another man with a shaved head appears at the top of the gangplank, looks up and down the pier, and then speaks into a radio. An instant later, the driver nearest Anabel and Qoqa turns and strides purposefully toward them. Reading his body language, Anabel realizes that he has his sights set on Qoqa – probably because Qoqa doesn't look like an airheaded stripper. Anabel takes advantage of this to distance herself from Qoqa and keep walking.
Sure enough, the driver flashes some sort of badge, doing so quickly enough to convince Qoqa that it's fake, and then orders Qoqa to stop. Mumbling something about national security, he warns Qoqa not to approach the Chloë Luudens. Qoqa can tell that the goon is making it all up as he goes along, but she feigns belief to buy Anabel time. First she explains that her destination is another ship further down the pier. Then she draws the man into a conversation about how wonderful it is that he's keeping America safe, and pretends to be impressed by his important law-enforcement duties.
While Qoqa keeps the driver occupied, Anabel struts down the pier and executes a convincing fake stumble as she passes the open tailgate of the man's SUV. In an instant, she slips Jili's rigged phone under a mat in the rear of the vehicle, and then stands up and brushes herself off. A couple of the other goons react, but in ways that suggest that they would like to get Anabel's phone number. As Anabel turns to leave, she gets a good look inside the SUV, spotting a carbine clamped in a bracket as well as a high-end touch-screen display on the dash.
Her work done, Anabel makes her way back to the parking area, putting a wiggle in her walk just in case the men behind her are still watching. Qoqa eventually disengages and makes her own way back by a more roundabout route. As soon as the two are reunited at their vehicle, they leave. There's no trouble at the gate, and before long they rejoin their associates.
The Agents pile into their vehicles and leave the area so that the men from the ship won't spot a big knot of people they might recognize from Kigali. Jili stays behind on a bench in the small park near the port causeway, with Paul lurking nearby for security, so that she can verify that her beacon is working. After about 30 minutes, Jili and Paul see seven black SUVs roll down the road and into the city. Jili confirms that she's receiving a good signal and then calls for pickup.
By the time the whole team is assembled and on the road, the men they're tracking have a 15-minute lead. That's fine with everyone – especially Vinnie, who has no desire to tail seven SUVs full of thugs visually if he can do so electronically. It soon becomes apparent that the group's quarry is driving into the Everglades on US 41. Jili's tracking device makes it possible to get a GPS fix from a safe distance. Eventually, Jili informs Vinnie that the vehicle carrying the phone has turned down what the Internet says is a private road. As the Agents drive past the turnoff, they spot a gated entrance in the swampy brush, with a small metal sign nearby:
Emerson Tactical Solutions
Private Property
All Trespassers Will Be Shot
Realizing that the situation calls for infiltration through swampland, the Agents decide to drive past the gate a short distance, wait a while, and then turn around and return to Miami. Jili uses this time to try to research Emerson Tactical Solutions online. She finds nothing. It's after sunset by the time the group is back in the city.
After a quick bite to eat, the whole crew visits a sporting-goods shop to procure some additional equipment. This time, Qoqa gets to use her crazy story about the group being from away and interested in gators. It helps explain why an odd lot of nine people are buying wetlands survival equipment and night-vision gear, anyway. Then Jili confirms that her beacon has been stopped at the end of that private road for hours, and the Agents leave town on US 41.
It's well into the night when the Agents arrive at the Emerson Tactical Solutions turnoff. Klas spots a good place to pull over and hide the SUVs. The team camouflages the vehicles, just in case. Then they gear up, donning waders and boots, strapping on knives, and slinging night-vision binoculars. Once everyone is ready, they slip into to wilderness next to the highway and start moving parallel to the private road.
The going is slow and unpleasant, but at least there are no gator attacks. It's 04:00 on Friday morning when Klas signals a full stop and asks Vinnie to come forward. Vinnie looks where Klas is pointing and finds a wire, which proves to be the trigger of a tripflare. Knowing that Wen is the best at dealing with such things, Vinnie has her come disarm it. From this point on, Vinnie and Wen take point – which proves wise, as there's another flare rigged further in. Wen neutralizes this one as well.
Eventually, the Agents can see light and hear the faint whirr of a machine from up ahead. Peering through their night-vision gear, Vinnie and Wen spot a tall wire fence – the heavy kind, used for area security – covered in camouflage netting. Some of the fence posts are taller than others, and appear to have security sensors mounted atop them. Vinnie signals for Jili to move up and assess the situation.
Jili approaches as close as she dares, scans the fence for a while, and then slinks back to the group. She explains that the sensor turrets are armored, have full pan and tilt, sport battery backups and wired/wireless redundancy, and seem to hold both motion sensors and low-light cameras. In short, they would be very tricky to deal with. Jili adds that the fences themselves are also rigged. She can't be sure, but her guess would be optical fiber capable of sensing cuts and climbers. In Jili's estimation, all of this suggests a big budget.
The Agents decide to hold their position for a while to see what else they can learn. As it turns out, there's something to hear. The whole team can make out the sound of several shooters firing suppressed rifles. Anabel hears conversation interspersed with the shooting that suggests this activity is a training exercise. She also overhears the same people grumbling about things not working out well in Rwanda. When she mentions this, the group sneaks a little closer . . .
From what the Agents manage to hear, it seems that some of the shooters were indeed in Kigali that night. The voices say little of importance – it sounds like people venting about a mission gone bad. However, Paul does hear one ominous exchange: "It would've been nice to know that we were facing professionals over there." "Hey, you knew that – the whole point was to wipe out the competition and dominate this niche."
Once the early morning shooting drills are over and the conversations die down, the Agents decide that it would be best to return to Miami and check in with the Company to learn how they would like to handle this. On the way out, Vinnie decides that it would be wise to reset the tripflares to minimize the odds that the men at Emerson Tactical Solutions will learn that they had night visitors. Unfortunately for Vinnie, something goes wrong and he sets off the damned thing! Qoqa hastily positions a branch to look like it fell across the tripwire, but even as she does, a siren sounds in the compound and Wen hears airboats starting up . . .
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