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The Company
Time: Monday, April 25, 2011 (late afternoon).
Place: London, U.K.
Last Event: Hamid dragged from Kamal's kebab joint by four heavies.
As Hamid is manhandled out of Kamal's restaurant by four goons, his associates realize that safety and stealth demand that they do nothing until the men are off the street and away from civilians. Wen holds her position in the kebab joint, Klas and Lev remain hidden in the van out front, Zhang ducks into a nearby doorway, and Vinnie slows down and cruises past in his car. All five Agents watch Hamid's captors shove him into a building across the street, and Zhang is close enough to hear them lock the door afterward. A glance at the windows reveals that they've been soaped or painted – there's no way to see what's going on inside.
As soon as Hamid and his attackers are out of sight, Klas starts up the van, hoping to approach the building from behind via an alleyway or a backstreet. Vinnie sees Klas and Lev pull out, and decides to follow, stopping only for long enough to pick up Wen. Zhang runs, vaults, slides, and climbs his way around the rear of the place. The Agents hastily coordinate their plans by phone as they move.
Zhang's route being the most direct, he reaches the rear of the building first and promptly starts looking for a way into or onto the place. It takes him only a minute to spot a rusty fire escape hanging a couple of metres off the ground; moments later, he's clambering onto the roof three storeys above street level. Vinnie and Wen arrive out back next, and Klas and Lev shortly after that. The four leave their vehicles a few doors down the alleyway and stalk up the lane, doing their best to stay hidden. From his elevated vantage, though, Zhang spots them easily, and signals for them to join him. Following Zhang's instructions, they all make it onto the roof quietly and without incident.
Vinnie looks for a way into the building from the roof and finds a broken skylight that evidently hasn't been keeping rain or pigeons out . . . or squatters, if the stale urine smell is anything to go by. Wen squints into the dismal room below and sees nothing more interesting than broken furniture, peeling paint, and graffiti – nobody's there, not even the squatters. The Agents do a quick weapons check: Lev pulls the MP5SD out of his jacket, Zhang draws the little .32 ACP pistol and hands it off to Klas, and Vinnie readies a big knife. Then all five drop through the skylight; Zhang goes first, followed by Wen, Lev, Klas, and finally Vinnie.
The place has all the hallmarks of being abandoned. In addition to smelling of urine, there's the reek of mold and rotting wood. The floor is somewhat spongy underfoot, suggesting severe water damage and decay. The Agents listen carefully, but nobody hears a sound. Hamid's captors certainly aren't up here.
With Zhang in the lead, the squad moves out, peeking into empty room after empty room as they go. The entire third floor looks thoroughly vacant. The Agents move down to the second floor and find that it, too, appears empty – if somewhat less dank and rotten than the previous storey. From here, Wen hears a noise on the ground floor. She's almost positive that it's the sound of tactical chatter coming over a radio that is set too loud or has an ill-fitted earpiece.
After a brief conference in hushed tones, the Agents descend to the ground floor, with Zhang still on point and Wen close behind. At the bottom of the stairs, the two of them stalk over to the staircase exit and peer out into the gloom. They see an extremely long hallway that runs the entire width of the building. About 20 metres away, this corridor meets a short entrance hall at right angles. Guarding the intersection – and hence the front door – are two men with North African features, their jackets barely concealing hefty firearms.
Ducking back into the staircase, Wen and Zhang describe the situation. Zhang is sure that he can steal down the dismal hall and reach the foyer undetected; he says it's a simple matter of moving when the sentries are looking away and hiding in doorways whenever they start to turn his way. He's also confident that once he's in range, he won't have any trouble taking out the guards before they can draw weapons and shoot. Since a stealthy resolution would be superior to anything involving gunfire – including Lev opening fire with his submachine gun, however effective its suppressor – the Agents agree to Zhang's proposal.
With that, Zhang moves out, stalking down the corridor exactly as he described. Behind him, Lev leans out just far enough to aim his MP5, figuring that if there is noisy trouble, he would rather it involve him gunning down the sentries than those two killing Zhang. Behind Lev, Wen gets ready to run, her logic being that if Zhang loses his advantage but guns don't immediately come into play, she's the best hand-to-hand combatant. Klas and Vinnie keep an eye on the rear.
Upon reaching the intersection, Zhang leaps from the shadows and brutally lays into the sentries. Unfortunately, they're either tougher than they look or Zhang is having a bad day, because neither man goes down. The two respond to Zhang's assault by extracting compact M4 carbines – some variant with a 10.5" barrel and a telescoping stock – from their coats. Zhang suddenly finds himself grabbing gun barrels and focusing on not getting shot. Luckily for Zhang, the men aren't his match in hand-to-hand combat, and he manages to disarm them both. They're hardly pushovers without their guns, though; one cracks him across the face hard, while the other pulls a huge knife.
Lev decides to hold his fire now that his marks' guns are out of the picture, and taps Wen to move up. As Zhang dodges knife thrusts, Wen sprints down the corridor. Her goal is to jump the sentries from their flank, but things don't go exactly as planned: Wen leaps into the fray feet-first, but her target sidesteps and cracks her on the back of the head, sending her sprawling. He then starts stomping on her kidneys. This takes some pressure off Zhang, however, allowing him to drop his opponent with a brutal head kick. When the man jumping on Wen turns to see what the thud was, he runs into Zhang's boot as well.
As Zhang helps Wen up, the other Agents rush down the hallway to join them. The verdict on Wen is that while she has had much worse, she's in no shape to be fighting just now. Instead, she'll stay behind while the others look for Hamid. Once Wen is safely hidden from sight in a doorway, Klas and Vinnie snatch up the discarded M4s, and Klas hands the .32 ACP pistol back to Zhang, while Lev keeps watch with his SMG at the ready. When everyone is armed, the four men search for clues as to where Hamid was taken.
It doesn't take long to solve the mystery. Just past the intersection is a door to the basement, along with plenty of evidence that somebody was dragged through it recently. Suspicions are confirmed when Vinnie realizes that the door is locked, unlike every other door in this rotten old building. Vinnie wastes no time picking the lock, defeating it in record time. Zhang gets the job of taking a look. Realizing that the scuffle very likely alerted whoever is downstairs, he crawls slowly and carefully down the steep, L-shaped staircase, and risks a quick peek around the corner.
Zhang sees two men crouched at the bottom of the stairway, pointing SMGs up at the landing. The gunmen don't seem to spot him, however. He ducks back up the stairs and informs the others of the situation. This looks like a job for Lev, who figures that a suppressed weapon fired half a storey underground in a building isn't likely to be heard on the street. Without ceremony, Lev moves quietly down the stairs, clears the corner in one smooth step, and shoots. An instant later, he's gesturing for the others to join him.
Leaving Vinnie to guard the rear, Zhang and Klas move down behind Lev. As they round the bend in the staircase, they see two figures collapsed on the basement floor, victims of Lev's scarily precise shooting. Lev holds his SMG on the men just in case, but while both are still drawing breath, neither has any fight left. The Agents halt about halfway down, however, when they realize that the staircase past that point is dangerously exposed on the right, the wall giving way to open air and the only "cover" being a rickety banister.
After a few nods and gestures, Zhang springs into action, leaping down the rest of the way – over the fallen gunmen – and rolling to a crouch, his pistol pointed to the right. This proves to be a mistake. Even as he flies through the air, he spots two men guarding a doorway, each with a Franchi SPAS-12 in hand. When he hits the floor, they promptly open up, peppering him with buckshot. Zhang feels hot pellets shred his right side.
From Klas and Lev's position, Zhang's wounds look survivable but bad. All Zhang knows is that he has to get out of the kill zone! Lev moves up to cover Zhang's lurching retreat, shooting as he goes and clipping one of the shotgunners, while Klas leans out just enough to draw a bead with his M4. The appearance of Zhang's allies buys him time to drag himself up the stairs, but not without a cost: Lev eats some shot. Still, Lev is mobile enough that he and Klas can finish what Zhang started. They take down the men in the basement with the remaining rounds in Lev's MP5, one noisy shot from Klas' captured carbine, and finally a slash from Lev's knife.
As soon as Klas signals that the area is clear, Vinnie moves in, helping Zhang down the stairs. Lev is still in fighting condition, but Zhang really isn't. Vinnie polices up the weapons dropped by the defeated Libyan spies: two H&K UMPs with suppressors and two SPAS-12s. Klas and Lev grab and check the UMPs, while Vinnie prepares one of the shotguns. They leave the M4s with Zhang, who's propped up against the wall and awake enough to point one of the carbines up the staircase, just in case.
Having chosen their weapons, the Agents approach the door that the shotgunners were defending. Klas and Lev crouch and take up shooting positions a short distance from it, while Vinnie advances on it from one side. As soon as everybody is ready, Vinnie blasts the flimsy hinges off the wobbly door and gives it a kick, causing it to give way and revealing a disturbing scene: Hamid, stripped to the waist and tied into a large chair, with a bag over his head and a truck battery clamped to him. His bespectacled torturer is behind him, using him for cover and holding a bone saw to his throat.
More-or-less simultaneously, Vinnie and the man with the saw shout, "Drop your weapons!" Before anybody can consider it, though, Lev fires a short burst from his UMP. The left-hand side of the torturer's face explodes into a bloody mess and the man keels over out of sight behind the chair. Then Klas, Lev, and Vinnie carefully move through the doorway. They find nobody else in the room.
Once it's evident that the torture chamber is clear, the Agents' first order of business is to assist the wounded. Vinnie frees Hamid, while Lev – whose injuries aren't even serious enough to slow him down – dashes into the next room to give Zhang a hand. Klas run upstairs, kicks the beaten guards out of sight of the front entrance, helps Wen make her way down to the basement, and then locks the basement door behind him. As far as Klas can tell, nobody has come to check out the shooting yet; it's just possible that the foundations were thick enough to muffle the noise.
Once all six Agents are in the basement, Klas and Lev get to work treating injuries. While Hamid looks unwell, and has been injected with some sort of drug, the torturer only had 15 minutes alone with him – his wounds are likely more psychological than physical. Zhang and Wen, on the other hand, need first aid. Lev takes care of Zhang, while Klas sees to Wen.
As Klas and Wen work, Vinnie searches the torture chamber and a couple of small closets adjacent to it. He almost immediately finds a collection of surveillance electronics – including a small monitor that shows an excellent view of the kebab shop. Next to this, he discovers the SSD taken from Ring Snatcher Media's equipment room, sitting next to some break-and-enter gear. And carefully opening a locked closet door, he stumbles upon a woman who has been bound restrictively and subjected to punishment similar to Hamid's. Dragging her into the light, he recognizes Stephanie Wakeling from a photo in her apartment.
Having patched up Zhang and Wen as well as they can, Klas and Lev see what they can do for Stephanie and Hamid, respectively. Neither has life-threatening injuries, but Hamid is only semi-conscious, while Stephanie won't be able to walk without assistance. Wen is now well enough to move around, and decides to make sure that the torturer doesn't bleed out. From what she can tell, Lev actually managed to crease the man's skull and knock him out without doing life-threatening harm! Vinnie, already thinking of exit strategies, reports in to the crew back at the condos, warning that there will be more wounds to treat and another captive to interrogate.