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The Company
Time: Saturday, March 12, 2011 (late afternoon).
Place: Mexico City, Mexico.
Last Event: Finding the FSB equipment cache.
Once the equipment cache is secure, the Agents file in, shut the door, and examine the place more closely. From inside, it's apparent that while the building is in a rundown area, it's remarkably solid, with thick doors and good locks. Nobody could get in without the right key or some serious burglary tools. As for the gear, it's all up-to-date Russian kit without a scratch on it. It's also heavy, weighing well over a ton in its eight shielded footlockers. Moving it is going to require a small truck!
Despite the building's solidity, the neighborhood isn't a good one; the Agents agree that leaving the gear sitting around would be unwise, now that they've drawn the locals' attention. After a short discussion, Anabel, Vinnie, and Zhang take one of the cars and drive off in search of a U-Haul or the local equivalent, with the goal of renting a cube van. Jili, Paul, and Wen grab handguns and knives from the cache, and step outside to keep an eye on the other two cars. Hamid, Klas, Lev, and Qoqa remain indoors to look over what they soon realize is quite a haul.
The TsNIITochMash contribution alone is impressive: two Vintorez silenced rifles, 10 Veresk submachine guns, 12 Vector pistols, and a dozen bizarre NRS-2 knives with silenced pistol barrels in the grip – everything with suitable magazines, lights, lasers, slings, holsters, etc. Explosive ordnance consists of a pair of RPG-7s with six TBG-7V thermobaric rounds; entire crates of frag, stun, and thermite grenades; and many dozen blocks of SEMTEX-H rigged with radio detonators. There's enough tactical kit to outfit 12 men, including armor, load-bearing vests, night-vision goggles, radio headsets, rappel kits, waist packs, and (for whatever reason!) folding shovels. Tools abound, both for maintenance and for forced entry (bolt cutters, crowbars, drills, hacksaws, lockpicks, torches . . .). There are also binoculars and spotting scopes for observation; fiberscopes and stethoscopes for spying; grapnels and ropes for climbing; and even Geiger counters and radiation badges. For signaling, the loadout includes two backpack radios with encryption devices, GLONASS/GPS locators, and satellite uplinks, plus a box of infrared strobes for marking LZs. Everything comes with ample ammo and batteries.
Qoqa can't help but notice that there's no medical equipment, no food, and no clothing. This gear is intended not for survival, but to enable a small team to blast its way into an urban target quickly, deal with a problem violently, and then signal for extraction before the local authorities arrive. Qoqa calls it "typical Russian thinking."
Meanwhile, a few neighborhoods over, Anabel finds a rental agency. She scores an excellent deal on a cube van thanks to her charm, innate cultural adaptability, and flawless Spanish (right down to the Mexican accent!). After filling out a one-month contract and prepaying the rental with her FSB-supplied credit card, she rejoins Vinnie and Zhang with keys in hand and a leering clerk in tow. Vinnie and Anabel hop in the truck and drive back to the others; Zhang follows in the car.
By the time the whole crew is reunited at the equipment cache, it's getting dark. Paul, Vinnie, and Zhang get to work immediately loading the footlockers onto the cube van, while Anabel keeps her eyes open for the police. The others lurk out of sight in the cars and the building, ready to pounce if there's trouble. All goes well, however. Vinnie carefully lashes down the cargo and then the Agents pile into their vehicles and get on the road out of the city, stopping only to pick up cheap prepaid cell phones.
The general plan is to travel northwest, toward Chihuahua, in order to get within striking range of the most likely hotspots along the U.S. border. This will take a few days by car. For safety, the Agents decide to drive in convoy at all times. From front to back, the disposition is:
• Car 1: Zhang drives. Wen rides shotgun with a pair of binoculars, keeping an eye out ahead.
• Car 2: Paul drives. Jili rides shotgun. Hamid sits in the back.
• Van: Vinnie drives. Anabel rides shotgun.
• Car 3: Qoqa and Lev alternate driving and riding shotgun. Klas sits in the back with a pair of binoculars, keeping an eye out behind.
As it's late and everyone is tired, the Agents make little headway during their first night on the road. They stop at a cheap motel in a small town a few hours outside Mexico City, where Anabel rents five rooms, telling the clerk some story about moving with her family. Given the valuable cargo in the cube van, everybody agrees that it would be prudent to post guards. The rotation is Wen, Zhang, Lev, Paul, and finally Vinnie.
The morning of March 13 comes without incident. The Agents grab food and then get on the road, agreed that as soon as they find a place with nobody around, they should dig out one of the satellite radios and report in to the FSB. Wen spots a suitable area before long, and the entire convoy pulls over.
Vinnie unpacks one of the satellite sets for Jili, who pops in the batteries, runs a few checks, and then fires the thing up. Anabel takes the mike and does all the talking. After listening to several strange numbers broadcasts, passing code words, and going through multiple "operators," the two eventually establish voice contact with V. V seems slightly annoyed that the Agents took so long to report in, and instructs them to call in every 12 hours from now on, and in fact to update her at six-hour intervals when circumstances permit.
After that, Anabel and V update one another. Anabel confirms that her team found the equipment cache, procured transportation, loaded up the gear, and drove out of Mexico City headed northwest. In return, V says that she has no new intel on the nuke as yet, and asks the Agents to continue toward the U.S. border, avoid the locals as much as possible, and look for a secluded locale where they can familiarize themselves with their kit before they need to use it. She also warns that the criminals handling the bomb are likely to have many people looking for them – law-enforcement organizations, rival gangsters, and even the CIA – and that the team should avoid engaging these players and try to stay out of the way of other Russian-backed teams seeking the device under the purview of other agencies. Then V and Anabel establish callsigns for the next report, and Anabel signs off.
After the call, Jili notes that the radio seems to be a surprisingly modern, secure unit. In her professional opinion, someone eavesdropping with a shotgun mike is a more practical concern than a comms intercept. The sentries report that they spotted nobody nearby while the call was in progress. Since the uplink has to be more-or-less stationary to operate, the Agents decide to keep it in the truck and unload it only when needed. Once it's packed away, the convoy gets back on the road.
The rest of the day is uneventful. The only stops are for food and gas, and to pull over to report in to V periodically. Toward night, the Agents find another motel that takes credit, where Anabel tells her lies and rents some rooms. Unfortunately, there's no ATM, so it's impossible to withdraw cash against the credit cards – something that several members of the group want to do, just in case. That night, Wen, Zhang, Lev, Paul, and Vinnie once again take turns watching over the truck.
March 14 goes much as March 13, with stops only to buy fuel and grub, and to call V every six hours. However, the late-afternoon check-in brings news: V reports that she has word from HUMINT sources that it's 80% probable that the nuke is destined for Tijuana sometime in the next week, although she still has no idea what its point of entry into Mexico will be. She instructs the team to drive for Tijuana unless or until she gets intel that places the bomb elsewhere on its journey to the U.S. border.
After a long day on the road, though, it's time to rest. The Agents know that even if they drive like mad, Tijuana is over a day away, almost two – and that arriving tired and worthless is a recipe for failure. With the timeline being "sometime in the next week" rather than "now," there's no reason to rush just yet. Thus, the Agents decide to stop in Chihuahua for the night.
The first order of business is to buy some items that weren't in the FSB cache, notably camping and medical gear. It proves to be too late in the day to score camping equipment, but Anabel finds Qoqa a pharmacy where she can obtain basic first-aid supplies. After stowing this with the other gear, the Agents look around for an ATM that will let them advance cash against their FSB-supplied credit cards. Again Anabel comes through, and soon the crew has about $1,000 in cash in hand.
Once the shopping and banking are out of the way, the team goes in search of yet more cheap lodgings. Unfortunately, Anabel's "moving with my family" story doesn't go over so well at the local hotel. Specifically, her unabashedly sexy approach backfires and sets off the clerk's suspicions, which leads to a pair of police detectives taking an interest. At first it seems as if they intend to arrest her for soliciting, but it soon becomes evident that they are corrupt and have far darker intentions for her – intentions that they articulate in coarse language.
Waiting in the parking lot, the rest of the crew sees the hotel door suddenly fly open as two large men shove a handcuffed Anabel outside and toward a parked car. Anabel catches sight of Vinnie in the van and tries a last-ditch ruse: She tells the detectives that her pimp is waiting nearby and could pay them off. They buy it for long enough to parade her over to the van, where Vinnie manages to defuse the situation somewhat through judicious overacting. He promises the cops cash, and suggests that they take Anabel back inside while he fetches it.
The detectives conclude that groping Anabel while they wait for a bribe isn't a bad idea, and give Vinnie five minutes to come up with the cash. Then they drag Anabel back into the hotel and paw at her. Outside, the other Agents manage to restrain themselves; while the abuse that Anabel is suffering is unacceptable, stomping two police officers would jeopardize the mission. They reluctantly hand over all their money (and even some tequila and cigarettes) to Vinnie, vowing to return for revenge after the assignment. Vinnie then dashes inside to buy Anabel's freedom. The cops hold up their end of the bargain but tell Vinnie to leave town – tonight.
A couple of hours after arriving, then, the Agents once again have no cash. They also have nowhere to stay. Worst of all, Anabel is everything short of raped. And more than a few members of the team – particularly Paul, Vinnie, and Zhang, and of course Anabel – are barely holding back an urge to punish the crooked cops.
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So yes, there was a critical failure – and given the situation, that was very bad luck. Anabel had to manipulate the hotel clerk, her lie bounced, and the man reacted with suspicion to a convoy pulling up and someone walking in a minute later and fibbing about why she needed five rooms on a European credit card. When I checked whether there were any cops nearby to overhear it all, the roll suggested, "Wow, either the clerk is a cop or there are cops at the counter." So it goes.
Of course, I could have downplayed it, let the cops be charmed by Anabel's looks, fudged the dice, etc., but the "bad stuff happens but we can't jeopardize the mission for it" angle made for a better story, so I left it in!