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The Company
Time: Monday, August 5, 2013.
Place: Seoul, South Korea.
Last Event: An unexpected elevator encounter.
In the lobby of the gleaming tower that's home to Park Ventures, Klas, Lev, and Paul are watching the bank of express elevators intently enough to note that the car containing Anabel, Jili, Qoqa, and Wen has been stopped on the 28th floor for far too long. A failed attempt to inquire about this via text message further suggests that something is amiss. The briefest exchange of glances is all it takes to send the three men dashing for the non-express elevators. They're soon on their way up, praying that there won't be too many stops between them and their associates.
Upstairs, meanwhile, Anabel, Qoqa, and Wen are standing over four badly beaten men and the sprawled form of Jili, stunned by a Taser. Qoqa is the first to act, rushing to get Jili back on her feet. As Qoqa works, Anabel hastily searches the defeated goons and comes up with a remarkably robust syringe – a device seen time and time again in the hands of suspected CIA operators. Wen listens at the elevator door for any warning that whoever landed on the roof of the car is about to make an appearance.
Just as Jili is standing up, Wen hears the "thump" of something or someone hitting the floor of the stopped elevator car. As Wen prepares to mangle anyone who forces the doors open and emerges, Jili lunges past her toward the open elevator panel, which is wired into an expensive-looking laptop computer sitting on the floor. Before the other three can figure out what she's doing, Jili starts fiddling with alligator clips and tapping away on the keyboard. A few seconds later, she turns to her teammates and proudly announces that she has sent the car on a nonstop trip to the ground floor.
Theorizing that the phone interference was controlled by the computer, Anabel tries texting Paul again. Sure enough, it works – Paul replies that he, Lev, and Klas are on their way up, and asks Anabel and the others to stay put. Anabel passes this along, and the four women turn to keep watch in all directions. It's at this point that they realize the 28th story is under renovation. The air reeks of paint and caulk, and tarps and tools are visible nearby; the bustle of a busy office tower is conspicuously absent.
Shortly afterward, Klas, Lev, and Paul arrive on the 28th floor via the non-express elevator, albeit some distance from their allies owing to the sheer size of the place. Just as Paul steps out of the lift, he glimpses a figure in a painter's jumpsuit disappearing around the corner to his left. Sneaking a peek, he sees four workers marching down the corridor in the general direction of the other Agents. When these men stop halfway to the other elevator bank, set down their ladders and paint drums, and start pulling out suppressed MP5s and handing around magazines and stun grenades, Paul gestures for Klas and Lev.
Paul, Lev, and Klas hastily agree that their best course of action would be to storm around the corner and jump the gunmen before they've finished ditching their disguises and loading their weapons. Taking the lead, Lev silently counts down from three on one hand and then breaks into a sprint. Paul and Klas follow closely on his heels. The three Agents fan out as they charge, angling to barrel into the opposition at top speed.
This leads to a short, brutal scuffle. Lev catches his target by one arm and exploits the momentum of his run to break the limb, drag its owner off his feet, and viciously stomp his victim into submission. Paul flies into two of the goons and manages to kick one of them in the kneecap so hard that the leg buckles and the man collapses in pain. Klas opens with a flying knee to the face and scores a knockout. The remaining assassin manages to cock his MP5 while evading all three Agents . . .
. . . only to be caught off-guard by a laptop computer, hurled at his leg Frisbee-style by Jili! Wen is close behind Jili, and Qoqa and Anabel aren't much further back, all four of them having heard the sound of the fracas around the corner. By the time the women reach their associates, the situation is under control. Klas and Paul send the gunman to the floor with a fierce beating, and then when one of their other opponents makes the mistake of twitching, Klas silences him with a throat-crushing knee drop.
Reunited, the Agents relieve their moaning foes of their weapons and exchange notes on what happened. Everyone is alert to the possibility that if the enemy assigned not one but two squads to the elevators and had an armed team nearby for backup, then the gunmen may likewise have allies in the area. And right on cue, Lev hears the sound of elevators arriving in both the regular and express banks. Everyone hastily dives toward the nearest office to get out of sight. Unfortunately, Klas stumbles in the rush and doesn't quite make it in – and seeing this, Wen ducks back out to cover him.
What happens next is decidedly peculiar. Looking toward the non-express elevators, Klas see the barrel of an M16 protrude around a corner for an instant – a tactical error on the user's part – and prepares to fire his borrowed MP5. Watching Klas' back, Wen sees four Korean gentlemen in two-piece suits step out from around the corner nearest the express elevators, armed with an assortment of chains, clubs, and swords. The largest of the four hollers, "Ms. Wilson? Keep your head down! We're here to help!"
An instant later, all hell breaks loose. A man with an M16 steps into Klas' sights and promptly eats a three-round burst. This brings three more gunmen with assault rifles, blazing away wildly but hitting no one. When 40 rounds pepper the scenery around the Koreans down the corridor, the four react by discarding their hand-to-hand combat weapons and producing a bizarre assortment of hand cannons from their jackets: an IMI Desert Eagle, some kind of pumpgun chopped so short that it amounts to a big handgun, a Beretta 93R with a ridiculously extended magazine, and a colossal .44 Magnum revolver with a scope on top. With cries of "Don't worry, Ms. Wilson, we'll protect you!", the Odd Squad starts shooting back.
Wen and Klas react by going flat under the hot lead sailing up and down the hall. It seems clear that the lunatics with the bizarre selection of weapons are on their side, but neither Agent trusts their newfound allies' marksmanship. In point of fact, the chap with the shotgun actually scores a lucky hit and drops one of the riflemen. However, most of the damage done to the M16-toting assassins is by Klas and Wen's careful shots. A few well-aimed bursts leave the men with the assault rifles badly wounded and retreating back around the corner, dragging their mates.
Leaving their unexpected backup shouting action-movie lines and reloading their now-empty weapons, Wen and Klas get to their feet. Lev and Paul join them an instant later, and the four bound up the corridor, MP5s at the ready. It's Lev and Wen who round the corner, whereupon they see one of the riflemen dragging another toward an open elevator door. Lev executes the man with three rounds between the eyes, and then signals for Wen to cover him while he clears the elevator. As it turns out, the car is empty and the door is propped open with a fire extinguisher.
Meanwhile, Anabel emerges from hiding and identifies herself as "Ms. Wilson" to the Korean rescue squad. The four oddballs claim to work for Mr. Gae – who happens to own the building – and explain they were told to watch her back while she met with Mr. Park. It seems they were doing exactly that when something went wrong with the elevator, and they came as soon as they could. They have no useful information on the small army of heavies with guns and Tasers, but deliver assurances that Mr. Gae's people now control the building. Anabel's instincts tell her that as strange as it all seems, the men are telling the unvarnished truth.
After a brief huddle, the Agents agree to help their new allies clean things up. Qoqa takes the lead on the actual cleaning. The others lug the bodies of their defeated enemies to one of the elevators, which the biggest Korean claims he can send straight to the basement with his passkey. Before long, that's where everybody is.
Safely out of sight, Qoqa treats the wounded foot of the man who was waving the .44 Magnum. It's severe enough to need surgery, but Qoqa manages to stabilize it for the time being. The hulking Korean starts making phone calls, periodically explaining in English that he's dispatching real renovators – workers on Gae's payroll – to patch up the 28th floor as if a gunfight never happened there. He adds that the police won't be getting involved; it has something to do with somebody's brother, though the Agents can't follow the details.
The Agents are given a chance to photograph and search their fallen attackers, but this turns up little of interest. In fact, the conspicuous absence of tattoos or other identifying marks, wallets and phones, and even clothing labels makes everyone rather nervous. All the men have on them is weapons, reloads, and tactical earpieces. It's a little too perfect to be a random mob hit, that's for sure.
With that done, the colder Agents get to work helping the Korean "security men" ensure that their attackers are dead, and then heaving the bodies into the building's huge industrial incinerator. Qoqa excuses herself from the party to return upstairs with mops and detergents. Gae's building or not, she has no intention of leaving more evidence than necessary. While all this is going on, Jili decides to see whether the laptop she used as a weapon can be rescued.
When the team reconvenes about an hour later, Jili announces that she managed to get the computer working again. She reveals that in addition to software for tampering with elevators and security systems, she found recently accessed photographs that are definitely of interest. These prove to be a series of pictures taken at the Gaes' orgy. Almost all of them depict either Anabel with Mr. Gae or Jili with Gae's engineer. There are no images of Qoqa or Wen, much less of Klas, Lev, or Paul. Based on the snapshots' quality and angle, Jili deduces that they were taken by Jung using a camera hidden in his eyeglasses.
At this point, Paul speaks up. Drawing on his long experience with mystery-solving, he opines that there are indeed spies at work here, interested in the team's electronics deal. However, he believes that all signs point to this interest stemming from surveillance of Gae, and that the people watching Gae do not know the Agents for who they are – only as messengers delivering sensitive information. His theory is that the original plan was to grab the package from the women in the elevator and make it look like an unusually forceful case of industrial espionage, and that the armed backup was in the area mostly to warn off Gae's armed men.
Anabel interrupts this discussion to point out that Mr. Park is still expecting the group. After a brief conference, the Agents agree that it would be best to proceed according to plan. Qoqa gets to work cleaning everybody up, and Anabel assists by straightening out hair and clothing. Then it's time to venture back upstairs.