Mercenary Army Aviation Special Operations FARP Team? Where to recruit?
 

Old man J.R. Kessler, the PCs' Patron from Caribbean by Night, the secret protector of humanity from threats most of them don't believe in, owner of a lot of airplanes and rotorcraft for Monster Hunting logistics, secret Patron of a lot of occult research and the Patron behind one PC moving a whole bunch of reluctant Zimbabweans, once Mugabe's massacres in Matabeleland had made it impossible for many Ndbele, Kalanga, Shaangan and others to support him, as new settlers in Dominica in 1990, where they formed Reserve African Rifles to defend their new homeland, but also three rifle Commandos and a Support Commando for deployments if small teams of Night Riders (Monster Hunters) ever get into a supernatural situation which cannot be solved without at least a troop, if not a company or bigger unit, needs to recruit a mercenary force to go ahead of any such deployment and set up a Forward Arming and Refueling Point for helicopters.

He's doing this in 1990-1991, at the same time shady arms dealers with connections to his network of connections were in the former USSR with long wish lists of military hardware they were to attempt to bribe unpaid base commanders, factory managers, warehouse staff, underground cache maintenance and anyone else with access to military stuff they could sell for just the cost of some bribery and transport.

Those were wild days and anyone looking to arm secret supernatural organizations could score some crazy deals. Those were also just about the only time in history you could recruit former KGB, Spetsnaz and other elite ex-Soviet forces and be 100% sure that the recruit was not a double-agent, because no Soviet intelligence agency was thinking about the future or actually functioning well enough to run an operation with that kind of long-term planning behind it.

So, hiring anyone the Soviets had trained in infiltration other countries and setting up secret forward arming and refueling points for Mi-8 Hip transport helicopters and Mi-24 Hind gunships was absolutely on the table. One issue is that I don't know who the Soviet would train to do that.

GRU Spetsnaz? VDV airborne pathfinders of some kind? Spetsnaz under the some Army formation, maybe a Guards brigade? Just conscripts in helicopter units who were willing to be trained in infiltration methods like parachuting? KGB Spetsnaz? Naval Spetsnaz?

All of the above?

What are some other places for personnel with the special skills you need?

They need to be able to infiltrate by sea, air and land. Some of them need to be experts with boats and sailing, others need to be parachute experts, yet others will need to be able to drive or hike through all kinds of terrain without being detected. Plus, you need the ordnance and refueling experts for helicopters, as well as experts in aerial resupply, meaning parachute riggers and experts at taking air-dropped fuel and ordnance and camouflaging it in a way that it is still quickly accessible if helicopters need it.

At least some of them need to be able to operate undetected among civilian populations, like Tier 1 SOF Advance Force Operation experts or simply paramilitary intelligence officers. Some might fly in commercially or arrive on yachts or fishing boats, pretending to be tourists.

And while you initially establish this unit in 1990-1991, you need to maintain this capability until the modern day, so you need to recruit replacements for any injured, dead or retired members.

The difference between these and your Night Riders and the Reserve African Rifles is that these will not know for whom they are working or anything about the troops they are supporting by establishing FARPs. So, while they do need to be trustworthy, they don't have to be family or best friends of one of your existing recruits. They just need to be professional mercenaries who are loyal to their paymaster.

They'll probably have the option to choose to have vacation homes in Costa Rica or Panama, while being legal residents in Honduras. Initially, they'll have a (perfectly legal) training facility in Honduras, but in 2003, some changes in Honduras law for Private Military or Security Companies (PMSC) cause them to move that facility to Guatemala.

Where they will mostly train boating and waterborne infiltration will be the Darién Gap of Panama, where Panama cannot and will not patrol too much, as then they'd be stuck dealing with all the illegal immigrants that otherwise just pass through their country and become the problem of Mexico and the US. They'll also parachute in there frequently, but also train parachuting in Honduras and then Guatemala, where their legal compound will be. Some of their training will actually consist of infiltrating the countries where they will operate the most, Dominican Republic and Haiti, and leaving caches there, both arms caches and fuel. Infiltrating other Caribbean islands to bring arms there would also be natural training.

Re: Mercenary Army Aviation Special Operations FARP Team? Where to recruit?
 

Refueling helicopters is not rocket science. The only hard parts are managing condensation and other contaminants in the tanks (which I'm not sure Soviet aircraft are even sensitive to) and maintaining the fuel pumps or setting up a gravity feed system.

Re-arming is more technical, but still not difficult. Actually re-arming in a non-permissive environment is highly unlikely. Once the shooting starts, the local military and/or gendarmerie will take a very dim view of any armed combatants that stick around too long. Note, though, that Hinds probably have enough internal cargo capacity for one reload of ammunition, if needed.

Parachute rigging is a special skill -- but only on the packing end. If you don't care about re-using the parachute(s), you don't need any training at all to de-rig a load on the ground.

There are generally three approaches to this problem:

1. Bring fuel (and maybe ammo) with you, in logistical support aircraft. These could be fixed-wing tankers or even other cargo helicopters with aux tanks. Support personnel can accompany the aircraft or onboard crew (crewchiefs and pilots) can resupply themselves.
2. Use agents in place (with or without hired local help) to receive airdropped supplies and set up caches. The actual replenishment is still probably carried out by the crew themselves.
3. If it can't be done any other way, the equivalent of pathfinders or combat control teams can set up a DZ/LZ as a deep FARP. This is risky, however, as a considerable number of people are hanging around in bad-guy territory, waiting to be discovered.

Re: Mercenary Army Aviation Special Operations FARP Team? Where to recruit?
 

Just as a dummy question,
If you are doing support prep in a place like that, why not just make is part of something legit?
If I've got enough money to pay ground support staff to set up and maintain refuel/rearm/repair points I should also have enough to set up a NGO transport hub or a helicopter tour company that sells thrill rides to instagrammy ecotourists (or something).
If the locals come looking they see a small organization just barely afloat with legitimate reasons to have lots of helicopter parts and fuel around.
Maybe only 2 or 3 people even know it is anything other than what it purports to be.
Plus, it does something to offset the cost.
They may need to keep the fun stuff in somebody's basement until it is needed though.

Re: Mercenary Army Aviation Special Operations FARP Team? Where to recruit?
 

Are you aware of the historical example of Neal Ellis - who operated an aviation PMC in Sierra Leone? Might be a good inspiration...

Neal Ellis
 

Yes, I've read all his books and most of what has been written about him, I imagine. His example of how to do this on a shoestring is illustrative, but he was never projecting power as far from friendly lines as what the PCs might need in the course of the campaign. Hence, a lot more resources thrown at the problem, and, ideally, a whole mercenary force dedicated to nothing else than arming and refueling the helos you're operating deep inside the territory of someone else's sovereign territory, saving their people from supernatural threats they will hopefully never learn about.

Re: Mercenary Army Aviation Special Operations FARP Team? Where to recruit?
 

It's not rocket science, but you do want to have people who've done it before, in a shooting war, teaching your people the right way to do it. Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters operated pretty far from Soviet bases in Afghanistan, but even more so, they operated continents away in Angola, Mozambique, etc.

Since Panama in 1989, the 160th SOAR has done this, in non-permissive environments. So much so that they were in a firefight while re-arming Little Birds, which they went and unloaded on the enemy which were firing at them.

I find it somewhat implausible that the Soviet never tried to train anyone in that capability, given that they sent Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters to take part in proxy wars in a lot of African countries, and sent KGB, GRU and Army Spetsnaz with them to develop helicopter doctrine in revolutionary and counter-revolutionary warfare.

If no Soviet serviceman ever trained to re-arm a Hind or a refuel a Hip under combat conditions, then I guess we can't recruit from former-USSR countries, but then other users of USSR equipment would be possibilities. Angola must have re-armed helicopters while not secure in possession of the ground. As must Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mozambique, Botswana, etc.

The US Army 160th SOAR has aerial delivery experts who have the parachute rigger MOS and specialize in preparing loads for parachute drops to supply FARPs, being deployed ahead of everyone else (along with the aviation fuel and ordnance MOS guys) by parachute or helicopter, and then receive the drop capsules and in as little time as possible, make it no longer parachute drop capsules and turn it into fuel or ordnance that can be used to arm and fuel helicopters.

It's like how any proficient motorist at TL7 and early TL8 could change a tire with a spare, but only a highly trained NASCAR pit crew could do it under maximum time pressure.

There are generally three approaches to this problem:

In case you do anything overt enough to seize air fields, that's perfect.

Yeah, that's why I want to recruit actual intelligence officers or Advance Force Operations special operations personnel, to do this part, which makes everything else so much easier.

Deploying a company-sized Commando into a sovereign country which did not ask for help and is not aware of the supernatural threat you are protecting it from is inherently risky. Because the network you serve exists to prevent the end of the world, though, you still train for it, because if such a deployment is ever necessary, you better be the best in the world at it, and able to do it without blowing the organization wide open.

That's also why the mercenaries doing this part are cut-off from knowing any important secrets. They are people doing a job. Like them or hate them, if they are caught, they can't compromise the entire organisation, all they can do is compromise a support structure that exists to support them, because they don't know about anything else.

Re: Mercenary Army Aviation Special Operations FARP Team? Where to recruit?
 

In Honduras (until 2003) and in Guatemala (from 2003 to now), they have a legit Private Military or Security Company, which will train Colombian, Honduran, El Salvadoran, Guetemalan, Costa Rican and Panaman intelligence, military, police and security units in helicopter tactics with Mi-8/Mi-17 transports and Mi-25/Mi-35 gunships. They will be doing legitimate things as much as they can, especially training, even though they'll lose money on that pursuit, by offering it cheaply to anyone official from that part of the world.

Re: Mercenary Army Aviation Special Operations FARP Team? Where to recruit?
 

It seems that if this is a "buy vs. build" decision, the answer is build.

Re: Mercenary Army Aviation Special Operations FARP Team? Where to recruit?
 

In 1990-1991, you'll need to purchase the loyalty of some USSR helicopter pilots, crew chiefs, mechanics and support staff.

Arms dealers who work for you are buying helicopters, or, perhaps more technically, bribing what used to be Soviet base commanders into allowing them to steal them. Successor states like Russia did not immediately come into actual existence, more a theoretical one. For example, several military bases were now on foreign soil, with soldiers from the Caucasus or Siberia stationed in the Ukraine, and no one having a plan how that would work, how they would get home, if they were under discipline, who their superiors were, etc. Many successor states also did not start paying their public servants, including soldiers, because there were days, even weeks, when no one knew who was in charge or if there even was any money to pay out.

It seems logical to try to recruit highly trained helicopter support staff, possibly ones who ended up having to re-arm and re-fuel Hinds and Hips deep in the Hindu Kush, in Afghan-held territory, during the fighting 1984-1988 which was dubbed 'the Caravan War', but codenamed Operation Curtain.

You'll also want to try to find some Spetsnaz trained to infiltrate Asian or African countries where the Soviets officially did not have troops, and re-arm and re-fuel the helicopters allegedly used by local forces, when those local forces had no pilots or trained enlisted aviation personnel.

Deeply criminal arms dealers supplied with ambitious wish lists of military vehicles and ordnance tried to infiltrate the Leningrad Naval Base, to bribe their way into leaving with a landing hovercraft or more than one, if things went well. Things did not go well. Leningrad was not some cut-off base of former USSR soldiers with no one in charge. There was confusion, arrears in pay, and, yes, scenes of corruption, but there were also GRU officers who defaulted to doing their jobs, even in the absence of orders, and tried to arrest a pair of foreign arms dealers, and the two black marketeers they had with them for local knowledge. There was a firefight, the black marketeers were wounded and captured or killed, one of the arms dealers was wounded and some of the GRU men were shot.

Fortunately for the pair of arms dealers, they were working with a man whose career at the dark intersection of French intelligence, mercenary work and arms dealing spanned the entire second half of the 20th century. There were few wartorn and corrupt countries where he had not bribed officials and developed agents, but during the re-birth of St. Petersburg, he pulled off a masterpiece. Leveraging the usual antipathy between GRU and KGB officers, he bought, wholesale, an entire section of KGB officers concerned with military matters (whom he had collected dossiers on in preparation for using them to obtain more ordnance from the profitable wish list).

Using their networks and access, he kept his colleagues out of the hands of the GRU and alive through a somewhat inefficient manhunt. With false reports and deceit, he confused and confounded all pursuit while obtaining medical treatment for his wounded partner, and even kept the haddock-brained American-raised son of an old mercenary friend alive, though the boy had fired an assault rifle at GRU pursuers on a crowded street, hitting no one but cvilians, making the manhunt a Militsiya matter as well as the security services.

Ultimately he got his colleagues out of the city and into a fishing trawler sailed by a KGB asset. The fishing trawler deposited them in Tallinn, Estonia, in ordinary times far from free from GRU pursuit, but during the times, few mechanisms of power worked and most Soviet intelligence officers were more concerned with personal survival than doing their jobs for an empire no longer in existence. The eight KGB officers who helped him pull off his magic trick were aware that as soon as things quieted down, odds were that a competent investigation would, at some point, be carried out. Rather than wait for their role to be discovered during such an investigation, they fled Russia, those of them who had families taking them along (except one, who detested his wife, and used this opportunity to secure a clean break from her and his mother-in-law, the only woman he liked even less than his wife).

None of the KGB men were elite commandos of the caliber sought for aviation special operations advance force operations and covert FARP teams, but several of them had served in Afghanistan and as KGB officers concerned with military matters, they had knowledge and connections useful for anyone foolhardy enough to go into the chaos of the former USSR and try to recruit a bunch of highly skilled experts, many of whom specialized in clandestine infiltration and covert warfare, and any of whom might try to turn them in.

That will be an interesting mission, for someone who enjoys old Kessler's absolute trust, but who exists somewhat outside his inner circle, so that if the men he recruits are not all 100% loyal, they cannot compromise the whole counter-supernatural network, just their small, independent part in some effort where they are ignorant of the goals, objectives and identities of their ultimate employer.

The early recruits will likely be ex-USSR military, intelligence and security services, simply because that is where this kind of expertise with Soviet arms and helicopters is found. Plus, the coincidence of the KGB men who'll write down lists of potential recruits of various Spetsnaz, VDV and Guards units, and especially paramilitary KGB officers and KGB spetsnaz.

Many with the required skill sets will likely be from GRU Spetsnaz units, but the KGB men will not know enough about their rivals to even make good educated guesses on who might be trustworthy, not turn the recruiter in, and be receptive to an offer of a new life in the tropics, paid good money in their choice of Western currency, to do pretty much what the USSR trained them to do, just with better living conditions and ten times the salaries.

After Russia becomes a functional state once again, recruiting from there is too dangerous. In 1991, you could be sure that no Soviet intelligence or security service would be deliberately trying to place a double agent in your organization, because, a) The organization was new and the Soviets could not even have heard of it yet, and b) Everything was too chaotic for some kind of long-term plan with an agent placed somewhere, potentially over months or years, for results irrelevant to the fight of the ex-Soviet intelligence and security agencies fighting for relevance and thus survival. Your old recruits might suggest men they trusted implicitly, family and such, and maybe you'd take the chance for an exceptional man with skills possessed by few others.

I imagine that other recruits might be former USSR or Eastern European elite soldiers who went into the French Foreign Legion once their former countries stopped paying them. Kessler's network has a lot of former Legionaires and they maintain contacts with old friends who retired close to Legion barracks and still hear things. Placing someone into the Legion for at least five years is too much effort to go to in order to place a double agent in an organization not all that important to Russia.

This can get you men with training in arming and supplying Mi-8/Mi-17 Hip and Mi-24/Mi-35 Hind helicopters, as well as Commando Paratroops of the 2e REP, graduates and instructors of the CEFE jungle warfare school in French Guiana and other valuable skills. Given that many more potential recruits must be 'probably loyal and reliable' than 'definitely, 100% worth trust as you would trust family', there must be many potential recruits who can't be trusted with learning all they would learn by being part of the Night Rider teams, but who can serve with these Aviation Special Operations / Pathfinder Commando FARP Teams.

So, you keep up numbers by regularly recruiting new members. Perhaps even from Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guetamala, Honduras, and Panama, as even if they lack the world-class training, they have cultural familiarity and language skills. There might be unpolished gems among private military contractors and former soldiers from these countries, who can be trained to sufficient levels. Plus, your intelligence support will recruit Dominican Republic and Haitian agents who can help infiltrate their countries. Jamaicans too, I imagine, maybe even people from other Caribbean islands, but Cuba and Puerto Rica are, each in their own way, possibly too dangerous to run penetration operations against.

Re: Mercenary Army Aviation Special Operations FARP Team? Where to recruit?
 

Keeping de-milled Mi-8 Hip helicopters as part of a commercial front company is no problem at all. Register them in countries where they have a commercial type certification with the local equivalent of the FAA and you can lease them out to anyone you need.

Armed Mi-24 Hind helicopters are more of a challenge to justify as part of any tourist or commercial helicopter lease operation. However, a legally-registered Private Military Company can have one for the purpose of leasing it to a Western military for OpFor training. In the real world, actual companies in the US have done that. And when it comes to less affluent militaries, one's without as many UH-60 Blackhawk and AH-64 Apache helicopters as they would like, they might be using Mi-8/Mi-17 Hip and Mi-24/Mi-35 as part of their own forces and could use advanced training in operations with them.

In the region, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela all have used one or both the Hind or Hip, aside from, obviously, Cuba. And El Salvador, Guetemala, Honduras or Panama might need to train against them, due to their security situation, not to mention how any wary neighbour of Cuba might want to have access to Mi-8/Mi-17 Hips and Mi-24/Mi-25/Mi-35 Hinds for tactical exercises against infiltration or invasion.

Because they don't actually need to make a profit, while they do need constant training (and joint training with Latin American and Caribbean militaries is extremely valuable to them, as they might learn about air traffic radars in the region, as well as weaknesses to infiltration), they'll offer their helicopter leases and training contracts at extremely low rates, complete with NDAs about the terms. Their goal is to get legitimacy for their training.

Until 2003, they can legally keep the fun stuff in Honduras, as long as they manage to get citizenship there. After 2003, they can do so in Guetemala, where there isn't even a citizenship issue.

But, sure, they'll stash military equipment in several places, in Panama, of course, and then near likely infiltration spots in the Dominican Republic and in Haiti.

But they need constant access to military equipment any time they are not on leave, because realistic SOF don't maintain their skills without regular and extensive training.

Home Base, Training Facility and Air Fields
 

Having reviewed the regulations for residency and citizenship, Private Military and Security Companies (PMSC), as well as the history of the relevant Central American countries in this era (they were having a spot of trouble, with all the civil wars), I've come up with some preliminary locations.

Now, it's not necessarily good to have all their helicopters registered to the same company or even kept in the same place. Even if they participate in exercises with national armies where numerous helicopters are needed, they can lease them from sub-contractors.

The shoot house and tactical exercise facility will be in Guatemala right from 1991. Yes, this means that it's technically in a country still going through a civil war and maybe they'll be hired to perform some activities dangerously close to participating in it. This is fine, it's not like they've planning to emigrate to the US and having the CIA view them as regional mercenaries is actually decent cover.

They will not want to live in Guatemala, though. Residency through investment in Honduras means they can immediately get a residency permit there and after they live there for three years, they can become citizens. And while a lot of Salvadorans and Nicaraguan contras were trained in Honduras, by the US and others, the country was, at least, not a warzone.

From 1994, once they become Honduran citizens, they can set up another shoot house and tactical training facility close to their homes, to reduce the need for commuting. They'll still have the Guatemala facility, to use in case of training that is closer to there.

They'll also train in Panama's Darién Gap, illegally, as well performing the kind of infiltrations they'd do for real as dry runs in some neighbouring countries with poor border security, using the opportunity to stash arms caches.

Some of the helicopters can be owned by Colombian companies, as the Mi-8/Mi-17 are commercially type certified there. Obviously, the Mi-24 Hinds and armed Mi-8 Hips will be registered with a Private Military Company, first in Honduras, then in Guatemala.

Does anyone know about Central American countries where Hip helicopters are commercially certified?

Any of the mercenaries will have the option of having a second home in Costa Rica or Panama, to use during leaves. Or they can just travel during leave weeks, stay in hotels or resorts. Once they can no longer have a training facility in Honduras, after 2003, I imagine they move away from there, even if they retain the citizenship.

Actual Recruiters - Need Names and Firm Up Biographical Details
 

As these mercenaries aren't supposed to be able to blow J.R. Kessler's operations or any important connections to the central hubs of his networks, they'll have to be recruited by cut-outs who aren't linked to Kessler and, ideally, don't have a clue for whom they work.

Fortunately, Kessler has a very old and loyal friend, Antonio José Villareal y Herrera (b. February 19, 1913; Santiago de Compostella, Spain; d. November 16, 1992; Roseau, Dominica), who was still alive in 1991, living on Dominica with his much younger wife, Elena Cartagena Blanco de Villareal (b. April 2, 1941; Havana, Cuba), whom he married while running a casino with Kessler in pre-Castro Havana. And Antonio Villareal had a son out of wedlock before that, while serving in the French Foreign Legion during WWII, Rafael Villareal (b. May 5, 1941; Paris, France).

By 1991, Rafael Villareal is a senior intelligence officer in the DGSE. And Kessler, his (unofficial, on account of the German defeat of France and the occupation of Paris having prevented either Antonio or Kessler from attending the baptism) godfather reached out to him to find the right people to recruit men with a very specific set of skills from the former Soviet Union or other Warsaw Pact countries, which Rafael was in an extremely good position to do, as the DGSE, just like other Western intelligence services, was making deep cuts in their former Soviet departments, to enjoy the 'Peace dividend'.

So, with the enigmatic Jean René Marie Souètre (b. October 15, 1930; Ayguemorte-les-Graves, France) acting as the go-between, two former DGSE officers are hired to act as recruiters and talent scouts in the chaotic, still-in-flux former USSR and other Warsaw Pact countries in 1991. They were previously presented with their redundancy and pension packages by DGSE, as well as rather a lot of official NDAs enforced through the French version of an Official Secrets Act.

The senior intelligence officer was born at some point between 1946 to 1950. His paternal grandfather came to France in 1920 with his aristocratic mother and siblings, fleeing from Russia, and married a French-born White Russian woman. He was raised speaking Russian at home and French at school, as well as valuing Russian culture, attending military academies and graduating from St. Cyr, before becoming a combat arms officer in the French military.

I'm trying to figure out what a normal junior officer career might be, after graduating from St. Cyr in the 1970s, but after some 6-8 years in the military, depending on when exactly he's born and how French officer contracts and careers are usually structured, might even be 10-12 years, he moves over to SDECE or DGSE, depending on the exact year he makes his career change, and becomes a paramilitary officer there. He's trained in fieldcraft and as a case officer, but his expected role in the field is to recruit and control locals for those rare covert operations where there is a stabbing, shooting or an explosion.

I need his name, which would probably consist of a noble surname from a family who lived in St. Petersburg (but might have had estates somewhere else), but the given names should work in both Russian and French.

Then there would be a Ukrainian of Cossack heritage, born around 1955, whose father defected to the UK, along with his family, when he was a teenager. While his father was paid a small pension, it wasn't enough to provide the whole family with the decadent lifestyle they'd been hoping for, and the son had an angry, resentful, rebellious reaction to the whole thing, and after several arrests for brawling and being expelled from more than one school, in 1973, the youngster ended up crossing the Channel and signing up for the French Foreign Legion, like he'd seen in movies.

He served fifteen years in the Legion, ending up in the Commandos de Renseignement et d'Action dans la Profondeur of the 2e REP Legion parachute regiment. Because of his origins, he spoke Ukrainian, Russian, English and French well. The combination of his capacity for ruthless violence, his extensive training in its application and his language skills led to a job offer from DGSE in 1988, but while he had the skill set to be the perfect operator for a personal security detail, surveillance and overwatch for officers on dangerous assignments, there were concerns that in a new post-Cold War world, he wouldn't fit into a gentler, more civilized DGSE.

Going to need an original Ukrainian name for him, as well as maybe a variation of it he uses in France.

The third isn't actually a DGSE officer or even contractor, yet. He was born in Marseille in 1966, to a Corsican French father and a mother of Moroccan origin. He enlisted in the military as a contract soldier, served for a couple of years in the 33e Régiment d'Infanterie de Marine (33e RIMa), stationed on the island of Martinique in the Caribbean, and then made it through the selection to join the paratroopers of the 1er Régiment de Parachutistes d'Infanterie de Marine (1er RPIMa).

At the moment, however, he is in the brig, after he was caught running a sizeable black market scheme selling various military supplies over the border to Basques in Spain. Apparently, he had no political motive, he was just trying to make enough money to get his 'girlfriend', a teenage prostitute with a drug habit, out of the life, so they could marry and be happy. Apparently, they've been together two years and he's already learned her language, which, with her being a Moldovan from Transnistria, is Russian.

Even when offered freedom and all charges dropped, the boy wouldn't cooperate until they brought the girl to him. When he heard she'd been released, as she didn't have anything illegal on her when they were arrested, he was frantic that she'd go back on heroin wandering alone without him, and insisted she be found immediately.

He gave up a list of safe houses where she might have gone, which revealed quite a bit of organization and preparation, as well as suggesting others were involved, but when asked if she might be back with her pimp and the men who trafficked her to France, he didn't appear too concerned. Said that was over and they weren't looking for her any more.

Only, about three months before that, there was a fight at a whorehouse. A bad one. Left six dead, all Eastern European men. Three stabbed, five shot, not a wrong count there, one was stabbed in his lower back, below a tactical vest, his gun apparently drawn and used to kill three other men, who shot back without immediately incapacitating hits, then he was shot in the side of the head from contact range.

Then the two other men on the top floor, they must have tried to flee. A Romanian AK-type rifle apparently belonging to one of the men downstairs was used to stop them climbing out on the roof. One hit in the back of the knee and the upper arm, of his right. Maybe he had a gun? The other might have been a miss, it didn't get the knee, but the thigh. Messy scene, with the femoral artery ruptured, even though the wounded man tried to keep pressure on it. He didn't manage it for long, anyway, as someone stabbed him where the neck meets the shoulder, must have been a good-sized, long blade, as it reached through a lung and ruptured the aorta. Bled out pretty quick, then.

The other one, with the busted kneecap and shot-up arm. He got the worst of it. They're up on a roof, it's raining, a bit slippery, and even if it's out in the sticks, you have to figure gunfire will bring cops eventually. So, it wasn't slow, not as such. Just pretty thorough. Broke his left wrist and elbow, must have been some kind of grappling move to hold it still while he did what he did with the fingers. Cut them all off, even the thumb. Then rammed the knife up the peritoneum, through the jeans, and cut forward, until the knife came out at the zipper. Didn't nick an artery or anything.

Man was still alive when police arrived, just hoarse from screaming so long. He couldn't climb, even with assistance, and the cops couldn't get him down without equipment. While they were waiting for a fire truck or EMTs, the man slipped into unconsciousness, like he'd screamed out all his energy. They got him to a hospital, but it didn't matter, in the end, he never did wake up. Slipped into a coma and I don't know who they call to decide whether to pull the plug. Too much blood loss and oxygen-deprivation to the brain.

Anyway, those six guys, they all had Yugoslav or something passports. One of those new Eastern European countries, maybe. Refugees, they said they were, but they'd been here longer than just a few months. They were the heavies running the house and maybe a few more. Until somebody closed them down. Didn't even look like they came in there with guns. Don't know how many it was, but there was a lot of blood and inevitably, some bloody footprints. If it was more than one guy, they was all wearing the same size Nike sneakers.

I'll need a name for the Marseillais kid and his Moldovan girlfriend.

Ukranian Language And Russian
 

A kid who grew up in a normal, middle class home in the city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, during the 1960s and 1970s, until age 15, how much Russian would they speak?

And would they have used Ukrainian for all regular conversations, at home and with friends, assuming that the parents are not Russian-speaking, but have ancestors from around there several generations back?

Is Russian a totally different language for the Ukrainian boy, while related to his and belonging to the same language family, not actually mutually intelligible, like Icelandic and Danish? Which I learned in school a couple of decades ago, and despite scoring 95% on my final exam after a decade of classes, speak abominably.

It might be good to know how well the undercover recruiter could pass as a native, depending on where in the dissolving USSR they go.

Re: Ukranian Language And Russian
 

This was a political issue at the time in Ukraine. Parents could chose to have their children educated in Russian-speaking or Ukrainian-speaking schools. The USSR central government was trying to Russify all the non-Russian speaking peoples, although it had more sense by this time than to do that by force. Some Ukrainian-speaking parents sent their children to Russian-speaking schools to seek future advantage for them.
Russian and Ukrainian have some genuine mutual intelligibility (although Ukrainian has more with Belarusian), but they have enough differences to make it obvious which is your native language. Learning to speak the other like a native is likely possible, but would take real effort.

Re: Ukranian Language And Russian
 

Ah, that is interesting and means that I have to make a decision on what the parents would do about choosing a school.

The father was a policeman, enforcing laws that effectively make Ukraine an unwilling part of a larger polity, a polity governed mostly by and for Russians. Outwardly, the father accepted this and was an authoritarian, fearsome servant of the state, a powerful wielder of the state's monopoly on force. In this way, the father acted as his recent ancestors did, as he is descended from Zaporozhian Cossacks who fought for Tsarist Russia in the Caucasus, and in return received freedoms and privileges beyond what was granted to many others under Tsarist imperial rule.

On the other hand, in his heart of hearts, the father felt as did the many generations of Zaporozhian Cossacks before they fell under the endless tide of Tsarist armies, whoever seeks to rule his people, whether it is Polish-Lithuanian hussars, Tsarist soldiers or Tatars hordes, they are the enemy, and he should find a way to send them a sternly worded letter expressing his sentiments and the desire of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to live free and choose their own leaders.

While the father was torn, the mother was not. She was a free Cossack living under Russian occupation. She was wise enough to keep her hatred of the occupying forces secret, but the strength of her convictions eventually led to both her and her husband defecting to the West in 1973, after obtaining and passing to the first Western intelligence officer they could find (which happened to be one from the Secret Intelligence Service of Great Britain) as much valuable information harmful to Soviet interests as they could gather through their positions and the mother's dissident friends.

It would make sense for the father to have sent his son to a Russian-language school in order to prepare for him for a career in the security services or other public service. That would best deflect suspicion from them and almost be expected of a moderately senior police officer. The sentiments of the mother were too strong, however, and her son spoke Ukrainian at home, with friends and at school, except when he was in Russian classes. And then he moved to Britain and learned to speak English, through the musical repertoire of the Rolling Stones, the Who, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, the Kinks, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Bowie and Elton John, before discovering his true self in the punk, Sex Pistols and The Clash, The Damned, The Jam, The Stranglers, The Buzzcocks, etc.

Interesting and perfect for the adventure. Having absorbed the passionate (if secretive) hatred of his mother for the Russians, the son never learned to speak Russian well, though he did pass all his classes. He will sound very Ukrainian not matter how much he tries to remember Russian lessons from twenty years ago.

Assessment and Selection Camp in Angola
 

If we assume that separate teams of mercenary recruiters, former intelligence officers, agents, arms dealers and black marketeers are sent to several locations in the former USSR, as well as Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, PCs might, of course, accompany any one of them.

Others, probably NPCs at the start, will need to set up a camp where prospective mercenaries can be evaluated and assessed, sort the braggarts and liars from the genuinely skilled soldiers with the right specialities, and run them through some sort of assessment and selection process, so that no one too untrustworthy, difficult, stupid, undisciplined or otherwise unsuitable is expensively re-settled in Central America.

This base will be obtained courtesy of the government of Angola, who will turn over a former militia or militant faction camp to the new Private Military Contractor (PMC) they've hired. At some point, PCs will then have to juggle actually providing genuine PMC services, with actual PMC personnel, to the former guerillas turned government soldiers, while also assessing conspiciously not sub-Saharan African former USSR soldiers, Spetsnaz, pilots, mechanics and other helicopter specialists, without Angola becoming aware that anything fishy is going on.

To staff this base, the PCs will be relying on a few Angolans whom the paymasters have used before, as well as Namibians, South Africans, ex-Rhodesians and Zimbabweans, all the military flotsam of at least three (and possibly six or seven, depending on how you count them) wars.

I need suggestions on a few things.

A) Where is a nicely remote part of Angola, where it's difficult to reach except with aircraft and helicopters? Would be nice is there's some jungle nearby, but it's not a requirement.

B) In connection with A, above, where would be a nice air field somewhere with nicely bribable staff, in order to ferry arms and men into the camp. Yes, the Angolans know they'll be there, no, they are not supposed to know about all the aircraft, arms and men, just the ones that don't contravene the UN-monitored peace process. The PCs aren't planning on using the aircraft, arms, men and ordnance to alter any balance of power before crucial milestones of the peace process are reached... but, if the Angolans find out how much striking power they have, they'll probably try to pressurize them to intervene on their side.

C) Practical issue, what language do you standardize on when speakers of about a dozen tribal languages, Afrikaans, English, Portuguese and Spanish are supposed to be instructing, assessing, commanding and training a group of men who all speak some Russian, but whose native languages range from South Slavic to Tajik and Uzbek? English is the international language of aviation, but did Warsaw Pact pilots acknowledge that before the fall of the Soviet Union?

Angolan Camp as PMC Training Site for Ukhozi Services Ltd.
 

The PCs, upon arrival in Africa, will be employed by the Durban-registered Ukhozi Services, which seems less dominated by South Africans than the rival Executive Outcomes, but the ultimate beneficial owners of which are not easy to discover, as the company was founded by an attorney acting for Strategic Security Services Ltd., registered on the island of Jersey in 1989, taking advantage of lenient company legislation on the Channel Island, where disclosing company officials is not required.

The man in charge introduces himself as Commandant Bison. He's tall, athletic and imposing, with the build of a rugby flanker, but a grotesquely mishapen face and head, like a lot of facial and skull bones were broken and didn't heal right. His black skin is smooth and a practised observer can tell that despite his injuries masking his youthful facial features, he is not much older than the average National Serviceman when he finishes his two-year term at twenty or twenty one, but it does not seem likely that he is one of the Cape Coloured men who are called up for National Service in South Africa.

He has darker colouring than most Cape Coloured, the kind of build most Xhosa or Zulu warriors strive toward, and he speaks English with no trace of Afrikaans accent. If anything, his accent is British, his diction precise, and his orders given without hesitation and with total assurance they will be obeyed. He seems completely indifferent to the stares of the less courteous of the recruits and his mere presence soon quiets even the inveterate jokers, constant grumblers and stubborn troublemakers.

His first instructions are simple. The men have a choice about how much of themselves they reveal to each other, but before giving out full names and addresses, consider that in Angola, allegiances shift, and actions that were legal security assistance to the government might become revolutionary acts or terrorism in the eyes of the next government. Unless they have nothing and no one left at home they want to protect from hostile questioning, least said, soonest mended.

He then introduces the other officers and NCOs, an eclectic mix of Black, Coloured and White men, few of whom appear to come from the same tribes or even countries. His words are translated into Russian by a black translator, whose musical cadence and Portuguese accent on the occasional Russian term suggest that he is a native Angolan.

For the duration of their stay or until he gives orders otherwise, the new men rank as Recruits, no matter what their prior rank or service might have been. There are expressions of dismay from some of the new faces, but no chirping or audible grumbling.

Few things I could use suggestions on:

D) I want the new recruits to wear uniform clothing, which feel and look somewhat military, without being the uniform of any combatant country or faction in Angola, or, for that matter, any ongoing or recent warfare in nearby countries. I also want the clothing to be practical for the terrain and climate, easy to keep clean and made from durable materials. They'll need PT clothing, daily duty clothing and full tactical exercise outfits, with load-bearing battle belt, web gear and pouches and the whole nine yards.

At the end of 1990, where should the well-funded paramilitary equipment manager shop for this clothing, if the goal is both for the clothing to be practical and comfortable, and also for the soldiers to compare their current management favourably with their prior ones? Not necessarily the most expensive kit (soldiers might well display reverse snobbery), but the best value and utility, for clothing that will be used exclusively in the Global South, probably no further from the Equator than Iraq or Namibia (but probably significantly more humid)?

Edit: I figure that what I want is light, but strong khaki cargo pants and shirt, with multiple pockets which can be securely closed. What was a good brand of khaki 'safari' clothing in 1990?

E) The aim is to arm the men with USSR weaponry. The officers and NCOs had self-defence arms before the cheap Soviet arms started flooding the market; what might be good deals bought from Israeli arms dealers and others involved in evading sanctions to South Africa? Surplus FN FAL rifles should be available at decent prices, Uzis are not that expensive even if you buy them new, but what might be good deals on good pistols?

It's easy to say Browning Hi-Power, obviously every mercenary in the 1980s wanted one, but during sanctions, the SADF and security forces couldn't get enough of them and the Israelis themselves were buying from Belgium at scandalous prices. Pay a premium for genuine, newest-model, FN-made Browning Mark III pistols or buy much cheaper Spanish-made Star pistols (pretty much a 9mm 1911 design with 8-rd magazine) like the SADF did?

Something else?