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Entry tags:
The Company
On September 29 and October 6, we had Bonnie ("Xiang Wen," a.k.a. "Wu Xie Zhi" and "Dot"), Marc ("Anabel Windsor," a.k.a. "Abigail Wilson" and "Vicky"), and Torsten ("Qoqa Ramazanova," a.k.a. "Zoya Petrovna Sidorova").
Time: Sunday, August 10, 2014 (night).
Place: Near Mazatlán, Mexico.
Last Event: Tracking Anabel.
Knowing that Anabel has almost certainly told her abductors a story calculated to guide them back to Mazatlán, the rest of the team prepares to meet her there. Klas gets behind the wheel of the big rig, and Qoqa joins him up front while Jili monitors the signals gear in the back. Paul takes the car, with Lev and Wen to back him up. All six Agents don body armor and keep their AKMs handy. Then it's time to wait.
Anabel remains hooded in the helicopter carrying her away from where she was interrogated. After several hours of flying, she feels the aircraft slow to a hover. All around her, she hears men barking commands that suggest they're about to fast-rope out of the chopper. Then she's roughly hooked to a line and finds herself shoved out of the vehicle! Fortunately, it appears that her handlers want her alive – her plunge slows smoothly, and then she's unhooked and set on the ground. She manages to reactivate her cellular beacon undetected.
Jili picks up Anabel's signal almost instantly. She relays this information to Klas and Paul. Both drivers fire up their engines and get ready to roll. Jili prepares to track Anabel and guide the team to her location.
Anabel finds herself hustled into a large vehicle and seated between two people. Shortly thereafter, the hood comes off and she sees that she's in an SUV. Surrounding her are armed men with camouflage face paint, plus a fit middle-aged woman in plain combat fatigues. The woman makes it clear that the deal is this: Anabel will lead her to the nuke or to whoever is closest to it, and "her people" will deal with anyone who gets in the way. Her words suggest that she considers those who currently possess the device – which is to say, the Agents – to be terrorists.
Paying close attention, Anabel realizes that the woman in charge speaks the kind of generic English that trained spooks practice to avoid giving away their origins. Further, she can't help but notice that the leader's face has a suspicious, even surgical lack of noteworthy features. It's also very clear that her captors have military training, based on the way they address each other and handle their weapons. As far as Anabel can tell, these are soldiers-turned-freelancers of some kind – probably of Western origin. It's hard to be certain of anything else.
Anabel does her best to convince her captors that she has to leave a message to reach her associates – that is, she cannot simply show up and hand over the nuke. The woman sitting next to her understands, but makes it clear that she doesn't plan to let Anabel stray far from her side. Anabel says that she needs to be able to walk into a bar in Mazatlán – alone – for this to have any chance of success. The "compromise" Anabel is offered is that after the building has been surrounded and secured, she'll be allowed inside. Anabel agrees, and gives the address of the place where she bought the AKMs.
While all of this is going on, Jili keeps tabs on Anabel's signal. At first it seems as if Anabel is staying put, but after a few minutes, the blip moves toward Mazatlán. Klas and Paul head for the city and get there ahead of Anabel's transponder. Then they park on a dark side street and await further developments.
Eventually, the SUV carrying Anabel pulls up outside the Mazatlán watering hole. Anabel can make out enough chatter from her captors' earpieces to deduce that the place is being surrounded in force. She also hears words that suggest that some locals got in the way and were "eliminated." And she's told to her face that there are several teams of armed men in the area, as well as air support. Then she's turned loose and allowed to venture into the bar.
As soon as Anabel is inside the bar and out of her minders' immediate sight, she lifts a cell phone off a drunken patron, ducks into the ladies' room, and texts John Talbot Deringer. Hoping to confuse anybody who's eavesdropping, she writes, "At bar. Pedro outside is not responding. Please advise." Then she returns to the main room and orders a beer.
It doesn't take Jili long to get a lock on Anabel's beacon. She informs her allies that Anabel is at the dingy bar where she bought the guns. Running dark, Paul and Klas roll up to within a few blocks of the place and park. Then everybody but Jili grabs a rifle, hops out, and disappears into the shadows.
Klas, Lev, Paul, Qoqa, and Wen stalk through back alleys and approach the bar. On the way, Klas notices a helicopter orbiting overhead, and can just make out that it has weapons of some kind mounted in the side doors. As the team moves up, Wen and Klas note that there are HMMWVs parked at the two nearest intersections. At least one of these appears to have some kind of pop-up weapon turret installed. Klas suspects that it boasts a Minigun.
After a few seconds of hushed planning, Lev and Qoqa take up a position halfway between the vehicles and the bar, to secure the line of retreat, while Klas and Wen sneak forward to a point from which they can see the alley behind the target building. Once Wen and Klas are sure they haven't been spotted, Wen texts the others via secure phone: "In position." Then Paul creeps up, the plan being for him to fetch Anabel and escort her to safety.
For the most part, keeping to the shadows and moving quietly looks like it will do the trick. However, Klas and Wen can see two armed men lurking in the shadows at the bar's back door. They quietly signal to Paul, who signs back that he can handle the situation. Paul slinks down the alleyway, using trash for concealment. The moment he's within striking distance of the goons watching the rear exit, he explodes into action. A few swift kicks later, Paul is standing over a couple of unconscious men.
Upon seeing this, Wen texts Jili: "Signal Anabel that we're coming." Jili's only option is to buzz the receiver on Anabel's tracking device. In Morse code, she sends a brief message: "Exit back door now. Paul there." This kills the gizmo's tiny battery – the signal goes dead, leaving Jili to hope that Anabel was paying attention.
Inside the bar, Anabel does indeed feel the buzzing coming from the gadget in her pants. She takes a moment to plant her stolen phone on its original owner, and then heads toward the ladies' room again. As soon as she's out of sight of most of the bar's patrons, she takes a sharp turn and dashes out the back door. There, she runs into Paul, who helps her ditch the clothing her captors gave her – which may well be rigged with tracking devices – and hands her his long coat.
Once Anabel is covered up, she and Paul slip down the alleyway toward the street. They can just make out Klas and Wen hidden across the way. As soon a Wen signals that there are no enemy sentries watching, Paul and Anabel steal over to their allies. Then the four of them carefully make their way back to Qoqa and Lev's position, moving from doorway to doorway, using parked cars for concealment, and always remaining in shadow. From there, the six Agents skulk back to their vehicles.
The Agents get moving as soon as they're mounted up. Klas and Paul are careful to drive as slowly as they can, and to run dark. They leave the area of the bar by the most direct route possible. Before long, they're headed south along the coastal highway. As far as they and their companions can tell, nobody is following them.
In the back of the big rig, Jili and Qoqa examine Anabel for "presents" left by her captors. Jili finds a subcutaneous chip in Anabel's neck. Qoqa examines it and realizes that it has tiny capsule attached, containing what she assumes to be a poison of some kind. With deft hands, Qoqa extracts the device without triggering any dire consequences. Jili deposits it in a shielded box for later inspection.
As the Agents roll southward in the wee hours of Monday, August 11, they decide to make their way to Mexico City and lose themselves there. They stop only twice. The first time, it's to ditch the car, which Qoqa quickly cleans. With the whole team in the big rig, the second stop is at a roadside diner with several other heavy trucks outside. This is for just long enough to let Jili sneak out and swap license plates. From there on out, Paul takes the wheel, Klas rides shotgun, Wen lurks in the sleeper area behind them, and the other four ride in the trailer.
The haul to Mexico City gives Qoqa and Jili a chance to take a closer look at the device extracted from Anabel's neck. Qoqa focuses on the capsule. The equipment she has available limits her analysis, but she manages to work out that the substance inside is a shellfish toxin, most likely quite deadly and without a reliable antidote. Jili examines the tiny chip and deduces that it's primarily an "echo" bug that sends back a locator signal on receiving a pulse, but that it also has the facility to release the poison if sent the correct code. The whole thing is clearly tamper-resistant, too – the fact that Qoqa got it out without killing Anabel is a testament to her steady hands.
It's a little after noon on Monday when the Agents pull into Mexico City. Their first order of business is to check in with Chaturvedi via secure phone. They report on their mission, and specifically on having located a target in South Texas. Anabel also mentions her message to Deringer. Sadly, it seems likely that never reached its destination to confuse the situation or at least let Anabel count coup – Chaturvedi explains that the Company team that hit Emerson Tactical Solutions tracked Deringer leaving Florida some time ago.
After that exchange, the Agents ask Chaturvedi for a drop-off point for their truck full of gear – a need their handler seems to have anticipated. They also request that he arrange a flight for them: Mexico City to Toronto. Chaturvedi says this might take him a few days, but that it shouldn't be a problem. He asks the group to park their truck at a particular address and then lie low and await his call. With that, the conference ends.
The Agents waste no time. They drive directly to the drop-off spot, where Qoqa shoos everyone out of the truck and cleans it as well as she is able. Then the team finds a nearby motel that accepts cash and doesn't ask questions. After that, the group simply holds position, awaiting news from Chaturvedi. He calls back that night to say that he has booked flights out of town on Friday morning.
Friday arrives without incident. The Agents check in – using yet another of their recently acquired identities – and have no issues boarding their flight. The trip is totally uneventful, and gets the group to Toronto in plenty of time to catch a train to Windsor, Ontario. They reach Windsor at around 21:00, whereupon they board a cross-border bus to Detroit. This last leg of their journey is similarly unexciting.
In Detroit, the Agents go out of their way to find a motel in a barely populated bit of urban wasteland. The man at the desk accepts cash and asks no questions, but the place isn't exactly clean. In fact, it turns out to be downright scummy – Anabel wakes up to find bedbugs biting her, panics, dashes into the shower, slips, and bashes her head. Her roommate, Wen, summons Qoqa for help. As soon as Anabel is cleaned up and has her wits about her, she insists that the group leave Detroit at once. The others agree.
Wandering about a nearly deserted part of Detroit in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the team's goal is simple: find the first vehicle large enough to hold them, and either buy, rent, or steal it. As luck would have it, Paul spots an old school bus that looks totally abandoned. He and Jili check it out and confirm that it will run. After a brief pause while Qoqa cleans up the interior a little, the Agents pile aboard and get moving. Paul stops only to visit a service station to put some air in the tires and fill the tank.
Time: Sunday, August 10, 2014 (night).
Place: Near Mazatlán, Mexico.
Last Event: Tracking Anabel.
Knowing that Anabel has almost certainly told her abductors a story calculated to guide them back to Mazatlán, the rest of the team prepares to meet her there. Klas gets behind the wheel of the big rig, and Qoqa joins him up front while Jili monitors the signals gear in the back. Paul takes the car, with Lev and Wen to back him up. All six Agents don body armor and keep their AKMs handy. Then it's time to wait.
Anabel remains hooded in the helicopter carrying her away from where she was interrogated. After several hours of flying, she feels the aircraft slow to a hover. All around her, she hears men barking commands that suggest they're about to fast-rope out of the chopper. Then she's roughly hooked to a line and finds herself shoved out of the vehicle! Fortunately, it appears that her handlers want her alive – her plunge slows smoothly, and then she's unhooked and set on the ground. She manages to reactivate her cellular beacon undetected.
Jili picks up Anabel's signal almost instantly. She relays this information to Klas and Paul. Both drivers fire up their engines and get ready to roll. Jili prepares to track Anabel and guide the team to her location.
Anabel finds herself hustled into a large vehicle and seated between two people. Shortly thereafter, the hood comes off and she sees that she's in an SUV. Surrounding her are armed men with camouflage face paint, plus a fit middle-aged woman in plain combat fatigues. The woman makes it clear that the deal is this: Anabel will lead her to the nuke or to whoever is closest to it, and "her people" will deal with anyone who gets in the way. Her words suggest that she considers those who currently possess the device – which is to say, the Agents – to be terrorists.
Paying close attention, Anabel realizes that the woman in charge speaks the kind of generic English that trained spooks practice to avoid giving away their origins. Further, she can't help but notice that the leader's face has a suspicious, even surgical lack of noteworthy features. It's also very clear that her captors have military training, based on the way they address each other and handle their weapons. As far as Anabel can tell, these are soldiers-turned-freelancers of some kind – probably of Western origin. It's hard to be certain of anything else.
Anabel does her best to convince her captors that she has to leave a message to reach her associates – that is, she cannot simply show up and hand over the nuke. The woman sitting next to her understands, but makes it clear that she doesn't plan to let Anabel stray far from her side. Anabel says that she needs to be able to walk into a bar in Mazatlán – alone – for this to have any chance of success. The "compromise" Anabel is offered is that after the building has been surrounded and secured, she'll be allowed inside. Anabel agrees, and gives the address of the place where she bought the AKMs.
While all of this is going on, Jili keeps tabs on Anabel's signal. At first it seems as if Anabel is staying put, but after a few minutes, the blip moves toward Mazatlán. Klas and Paul head for the city and get there ahead of Anabel's transponder. Then they park on a dark side street and await further developments.
Eventually, the SUV carrying Anabel pulls up outside the Mazatlán watering hole. Anabel can make out enough chatter from her captors' earpieces to deduce that the place is being surrounded in force. She also hears words that suggest that some locals got in the way and were "eliminated." And she's told to her face that there are several teams of armed men in the area, as well as air support. Then she's turned loose and allowed to venture into the bar.
As soon as Anabel is inside the bar and out of her minders' immediate sight, she lifts a cell phone off a drunken patron, ducks into the ladies' room, and texts John Talbot Deringer. Hoping to confuse anybody who's eavesdropping, she writes, "At bar. Pedro outside is not responding. Please advise." Then she returns to the main room and orders a beer.
It doesn't take Jili long to get a lock on Anabel's beacon. She informs her allies that Anabel is at the dingy bar where she bought the guns. Running dark, Paul and Klas roll up to within a few blocks of the place and park. Then everybody but Jili grabs a rifle, hops out, and disappears into the shadows.
Klas, Lev, Paul, Qoqa, and Wen stalk through back alleys and approach the bar. On the way, Klas notices a helicopter orbiting overhead, and can just make out that it has weapons of some kind mounted in the side doors. As the team moves up, Wen and Klas note that there are HMMWVs parked at the two nearest intersections. At least one of these appears to have some kind of pop-up weapon turret installed. Klas suspects that it boasts a Minigun.
After a few seconds of hushed planning, Lev and Qoqa take up a position halfway between the vehicles and the bar, to secure the line of retreat, while Klas and Wen sneak forward to a point from which they can see the alley behind the target building. Once Wen and Klas are sure they haven't been spotted, Wen texts the others via secure phone: "In position." Then Paul creeps up, the plan being for him to fetch Anabel and escort her to safety.
For the most part, keeping to the shadows and moving quietly looks like it will do the trick. However, Klas and Wen can see two armed men lurking in the shadows at the bar's back door. They quietly signal to Paul, who signs back that he can handle the situation. Paul slinks down the alleyway, using trash for concealment. The moment he's within striking distance of the goons watching the rear exit, he explodes into action. A few swift kicks later, Paul is standing over a couple of unconscious men.
Upon seeing this, Wen texts Jili: "Signal Anabel that we're coming." Jili's only option is to buzz the receiver on Anabel's tracking device. In Morse code, she sends a brief message: "Exit back door now. Paul there." This kills the gizmo's tiny battery – the signal goes dead, leaving Jili to hope that Anabel was paying attention.
Inside the bar, Anabel does indeed feel the buzzing coming from the gadget in her pants. She takes a moment to plant her stolen phone on its original owner, and then heads toward the ladies' room again. As soon as she's out of sight of most of the bar's patrons, she takes a sharp turn and dashes out the back door. There, she runs into Paul, who helps her ditch the clothing her captors gave her – which may well be rigged with tracking devices – and hands her his long coat.
Once Anabel is covered up, she and Paul slip down the alleyway toward the street. They can just make out Klas and Wen hidden across the way. As soon a Wen signals that there are no enemy sentries watching, Paul and Anabel steal over to their allies. Then the four of them carefully make their way back to Qoqa and Lev's position, moving from doorway to doorway, using parked cars for concealment, and always remaining in shadow. From there, the six Agents skulk back to their vehicles.
The Agents get moving as soon as they're mounted up. Klas and Paul are careful to drive as slowly as they can, and to run dark. They leave the area of the bar by the most direct route possible. Before long, they're headed south along the coastal highway. As far as they and their companions can tell, nobody is following them.
In the back of the big rig, Jili and Qoqa examine Anabel for "presents" left by her captors. Jili finds a subcutaneous chip in Anabel's neck. Qoqa examines it and realizes that it has tiny capsule attached, containing what she assumes to be a poison of some kind. With deft hands, Qoqa extracts the device without triggering any dire consequences. Jili deposits it in a shielded box for later inspection.
As the Agents roll southward in the wee hours of Monday, August 11, they decide to make their way to Mexico City and lose themselves there. They stop only twice. The first time, it's to ditch the car, which Qoqa quickly cleans. With the whole team in the big rig, the second stop is at a roadside diner with several other heavy trucks outside. This is for just long enough to let Jili sneak out and swap license plates. From there on out, Paul takes the wheel, Klas rides shotgun, Wen lurks in the sleeper area behind them, and the other four ride in the trailer.
The haul to Mexico City gives Qoqa and Jili a chance to take a closer look at the device extracted from Anabel's neck. Qoqa focuses on the capsule. The equipment she has available limits her analysis, but she manages to work out that the substance inside is a shellfish toxin, most likely quite deadly and without a reliable antidote. Jili examines the tiny chip and deduces that it's primarily an "echo" bug that sends back a locator signal on receiving a pulse, but that it also has the facility to release the poison if sent the correct code. The whole thing is clearly tamper-resistant, too – the fact that Qoqa got it out without killing Anabel is a testament to her steady hands.
It's a little after noon on Monday when the Agents pull into Mexico City. Their first order of business is to check in with Chaturvedi via secure phone. They report on their mission, and specifically on having located a target in South Texas. Anabel also mentions her message to Deringer. Sadly, it seems likely that never reached its destination to confuse the situation or at least let Anabel count coup – Chaturvedi explains that the Company team that hit Emerson Tactical Solutions tracked Deringer leaving Florida some time ago.
After that exchange, the Agents ask Chaturvedi for a drop-off point for their truck full of gear – a need their handler seems to have anticipated. They also request that he arrange a flight for them: Mexico City to Toronto. Chaturvedi says this might take him a few days, but that it shouldn't be a problem. He asks the group to park their truck at a particular address and then lie low and await his call. With that, the conference ends.
The Agents waste no time. They drive directly to the drop-off spot, where Qoqa shoos everyone out of the truck and cleans it as well as she is able. Then the team finds a nearby motel that accepts cash and doesn't ask questions. After that, the group simply holds position, awaiting news from Chaturvedi. He calls back that night to say that he has booked flights out of town on Friday morning.
Friday arrives without incident. The Agents check in – using yet another of their recently acquired identities – and have no issues boarding their flight. The trip is totally uneventful, and gets the group to Toronto in plenty of time to catch a train to Windsor, Ontario. They reach Windsor at around 21:00, whereupon they board a cross-border bus to Detroit. This last leg of their journey is similarly unexciting.
In Detroit, the Agents go out of their way to find a motel in a barely populated bit of urban wasteland. The man at the desk accepts cash and asks no questions, but the place isn't exactly clean. In fact, it turns out to be downright scummy – Anabel wakes up to find bedbugs biting her, panics, dashes into the shower, slips, and bashes her head. Her roommate, Wen, summons Qoqa for help. As soon as Anabel is cleaned up and has her wits about her, she insists that the group leave Detroit at once. The others agree.
Wandering about a nearly deserted part of Detroit in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the team's goal is simple: find the first vehicle large enough to hold them, and either buy, rent, or steal it. As luck would have it, Paul spots an old school bus that looks totally abandoned. He and Jili check it out and confirm that it will run. After a brief pause while Qoqa cleans up the interior a little, the Agents pile aboard and get moving. Paul stops only to visit a service station to put some air in the tires and fill the tank.