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The Company
Time: Friday, June 25, 2010 (late afternoon).
Place: Stranraer, Scotland, U.K.
Last Event: Arriving in Scotland from Northern Ireland.
After ditching their most incriminating gear – guns, surveillance equipment, and so on – the Agents (and Paul Mullen) stroll into Stranraer with a mind to purchasing what they need to bike the length of the U.K. To minimize suspicion, they move as a loose group, doing their best to come across as tourists. Everybody keeps an eye out for helicopters, vans, and so on, but there's nothing obviously worrisome lurking nearby.
The first stop is a cycle shop, to buy not only bicycles but also biking clothes, tents, camping food, and so on. Solar chargers suitable for phones are also a priority! Rather than acquire a suspiciously identical array of vehicles, each Agent picks out something quirky, suggesting "fun" rather than "pro." For example, Vinnie makes a big deal out of buying Italian, while Wen gets a hipster ride with a banana seat, tasseled handlebars, and colored straws on the spokes.
After that, Anabel and Qoqa head to the chemist's. Anabel picks up a wide variety of hair dye and makeup, primarily for hasty disguises. Qoqa puts together a good first aid kit . . . and adds ample Aspirin and liniment for the inevitable biking pains and sprains.
All the shopping is done with Company bank cards, which are sufficiently anonymous that nobody is worried about the transactions raising a flag. By the time the team is done, it's near evening and the shops are closing. The Agents decide to bike out of town for a few hours and set up camp after dark. This "test ride" mostly goes well, although Qoqa has a little wipeout that skins both knees – it's been a while since she rode a bicycle!
That night, the group stops at a small, relatively secluded wood and sets up camp out of sight of the road. Vinnie and Wen camouflage the site. Meanwhile, Qoqa treats her bruises. After that's done, everyone grabs a bite to eat, watches are assigned, and people get some rest.
This sets the theme for the entire journey: Bike at day, pitch a camouflaged camp at night, and be sure to keep a low profile and post watches. The general plan is to keep to fields and back roads where possible, buy food from farmers and small village markets, and travel casually, with no special haste. Hopefully, this will give the trail time to cool off some.
The trip proceeds uneventfully until the evening of June 30, when Wen's Company smart phone rings. It's Chaturvedi with some worrisome news. He says that ever since the attack on Vinnie, he has been worried about security. Why were vans and helicopters watching that night? Why was there an attack? Something didn't seem right!
Thus, he decided to shake some trees. He started with the tip that named Paul as a candidate for recruitment. This came via the Company's contacts inside Interpol, who have an informal "points system" for assessing the skills of out-of-work cops for various purposes. The whole thing is on a "don't ask, don't tell" basis, but Chaturvedi decided to burn some bridges and ask anyway. He learned that according to the raw data, Paul was on the list, but in the bottom third . . . yet his name somehow appeared at the top of the list. Clearly, somebody put him there.
Why would somebody do this? Perhaps because they knew that somebody else was recruiting, and wanted to learn the details – and concluded that a down-and-out Belfast cop would be easy to run surveillance on. This would almost certainly be without Paul's knowledge . . . indeed, Chaturvedi warns that Paul's most likely role in all this would be to die once he was no longer useful.
Chaturvedi's conclusion is that a well-funded law-enforcement or intelligence service got wind of someone passing first-rate tips to Interpol regarding Russian organized crime in France, the Netherlands, the U.K., and Greece. This organization might not suspect anything as unusual as the Company, but they doubtless want to know who's behind it all – especially with a nuclear arming box in the picture! Depicting Paul as an ideal recruit was in all likelihood their way of drawing out the mysterious tipsters.
Who would have the pull to mess with Interpol files, be interested in nuclear arming boxes, and have sufficiently good intelligence analysis to deduce that the people working against the Russians would've required an organization's planning and resources? One of the world's spy services would be the most likely candidates. Just since the Company went live, Agents have had brushes with the CIA, FSB, MI6, Mossad, and so on.
In light of all this, Chaturvedi warns that the Agents should keep a low profile and ensure that Paul, especially, remains out of sight. He isn't especially worried about the Company phones and bank cards, however – those come courtesy of people who aren't even aware of the Company's field ops or Interpol contacts. When Wen hangs up, she passes all this information along to the others, making sure that Paul doesn't overhear the details.
From July 1 on, Anabel makes an extra effort to disguise Paul. Otherwise, there's no change of plans. The team continues to avoid main roads, camp at night, and generally play at being tourists. They even have more than their fair share of nice weather.
All goes well until the night of July 6. As the Agents are about to turn in for the night, Anabel thinks she hears the sound of a distant helicopter. This isn't cause for alarm until Wen squints into the night sky and says that there's a chopper actually circling the area, albeit at some distance. A moment later, Paul hears a vehicle approaching via the back roads – definitely strange, given the hour. Vinnie thinks it's some sort of off-road SUV, and Qoqa claims to hear two engines.
While the details are sketchy, one thing is clear: Somebody seems to be closing in on the group's campsite. There's no way that a helicopter and two vehicles would all just happen to converge on a random wood behind a farm in the middle of the night. Paul is especially worried, explaining that if whoever was watching in Belfast just rediscovered the trail after having lost it for 12 days, they probably won't take the risk that they might lose the trail again!
Everyone agrees that evasion would be the best option. The decision is to run for the low stone wall between the nearby field and the next field over, and then take cover behind it. Given that the approaching vehicles are still some distance away – and trying to be stealthy – it might be that the group can reach this objective well in advance of their pursuers.
Wen, who has the best night vision and tactical skills, takes point. Jili sticks close by, advising Wen on the limitations of helicopter-borne surveillance gear. Between the two of them, they manage to guide the team to the stone wall without being intercepted. In fact, nobody catches sight of any pursuers as yet. On reaching the wall, everybody hops over and goes prone on the far side.
The plan is for the bulk of the group to remain here, waiting, while one or two of them run off to draw the enemy across their allies' position. With any luck, the hunters will give chase, which will mean hurdling the wall . . . whereupon the lurking Agents can grab them at point-blank range and hopefully disarm them. It's a gambit, but nobody can offer an alternative that doesn't involve having firearm or at least cover better than a low stone wall.
After a bit of discussion, Jili gets the job of being the distraction. The logic is that as the group's least-capable combatant, especially hand-to-hand, she's in significantly less danger zigzagging across a field than wrestling with gunmen. Paul surprises everybody by pulling off body armor – his "old service vest," he explains – and fastening it around Jili as well as he can. It isn't a perfect fit, but it's certainly better than nothing.
Jili's job is simple: Run zigzags directly away from the wall, doing her best to give the impression that she thinks she's being stealthy when in fact she's plainly out in the open. As soon as she hears shots (or, in the worst case, is shot), she'll fall as if hit. Hopefully, this will do the trick.
Before Jili starts her mad dash, Anabel, Paul, Qoqa, Vinnie, and Wen do what they can to camouflage themselves. They get as close to the wall as they can, and use coats and scrub to break up their profiles. When the trap is as ready as it's going to be, Jili psyches herself up and then makes a run for it.
After only a few seconds, there's the sound of eight shots . . . but the noise is that of an air gun of some kind, not a firearm. Jili feels something hit her armor, and takes a fall. There's another series of shots from the air guns, and then somebody with a Georgian drawl says, "Put a bullet in the leg, just in case." There's the muffled crack of a silenced rifle. Fortunately, Jili isn't hit – but she stays very still, and there's no more shooting at her.
There's a tense moment as the shooters approach the wall; Paul and the Agents do their best to stay still and quiet. The first two enemies clear the wall carefully, making sure to check the far side. As soon as they do, though, the trap is sprung. Wen and Vinnie attack one man, using fists and a knife respectively. Anabel and Qoqa knife the other, while Paul smashes him across the face with a large stone. The first two ambush victims are soon unconscious on the ground behind the wall.
This provokes a race: The shooters covering their point men dash toward the wall. Meanwhile, Wen and Paul hasten to grab the carbines dropped by the fallen gunmen, while Anabel and Vinnie move to snatch their holstered pistols. Qoqa uses the time to roll to cover beneath one of the body armor-clad casualties. A few heartbeats later, things get violent again.
Two more gunmen show up some distance down the wall – one to either side of the group – moving to flank the Agents. Four more come down the center by pairs. There's a brutal exchange of fire at close range. Wen flicks to full-auto and pops up from behind cover twice, each time aiming low and blasting the men running down the middle in the legs, below their armor. While Wen lays down heavy fire, Paul and Vinnie score face shots on the men taking the flanks. The return fire is hasty and inaccurate.
As suddenly as it all began, it's over. Two of the strangers are down with severe knife wounds to the throat, two more are shot in the face, and four are sprawled unconscious in the field, bleeding from multiple hits to the shins, knees, and thighs. The Agents, on the other hand, are unharmed – none of the enemy shooters managed to hit anyone but Jili. And as Wen realizes after examining the captured weapons, Jili was struck in her body armor by gas-propelled darts fired from an underbarrel marker gun, not by bullets.
Qoqa is a little worried by this. If these men came with something along the lines of tranquilizer darts, then their intent wasn't assassination, but capture – almost certainly for interrogation. Now that the Agents have mowed them down mercilessly, the next bunch of people that come looking are likely to have a kill order. She moves out to see what she can do for the fallen men, hoping that she can save lives and send some sign of good will.
As Paul helps Jili up, Anabel and Vinnie gather weapons and ammo, and Qoqa checks the fallen, Wen turns her attention – and carbine – toward the helicopter flying around somewhere in the darkness overhead . . .