FC2: PERMADEATH Chapter Eight: Fuck the Po-Lice

I decide to spice things up a bit and take a job from the APR (again, the acronym is irrelevant and you don't care anyway), so I head back to Pala by bus and cross the street to their HQ. Yeah, that's why there's a cease-fire in town, because both of the factions are set up literally down the street from each other. I like to imagine that when the officers in the buildings aren't giving me work, they're just staring at each other out of the windows, rubbing their assault rifles and breathing really deeply.

The APR in this sector are headed by Prosper Kouassi, who appears to be more "with it" and "hip to the kids", but equally as "psychotic" and "homicidal" as Gakumba. He and some British dude give me the task of assassinating the chief of police, who's riding around in a motorcade for reasons that are never adequately explained. I accept and pocket some diamonds, then after I exit the HQ I get a call from Michele (again) telling me to meet her north of the slaughterhouse. I'll do it, but only for the safehouse goodies. God, I'm a whore.

First I head to Mike's so I can drop some phat stacks of cash on brand new gats. (I'm probably mixing slang genres, but whatever). I get an AK-47, which for a while will be the only rifle I'll ever need, as well as a silenced Makarov pistol and a reliability upgrade for same. Now I can actually be stealthy, at least in theory. I take a boat from the dock upriver to the rendezvous.

At the safehouse, Michele says I should go to Shwasana, a fishing village, where the chief's brother is holed up. He's got a ledger of all the bribes the APR have paid him, and if I get a hold of that, the psychic link the chief has to the book will alert him it has been stolen and he'll retreat to his station. This will somehow alert the deputy chief of the fact the chief has been getting bribes from the APR, and he'll tell the UFLL to go to town on his superior out of spite. Michele will then ambush this convoy because that'll be fun. At least, I think that's how it works, because as soon as I touch the ledger the chief will head straight back to the station. I don't even have to give it to anyone. I agree, and notice a rocket launcher by the door. Tempting, but not this time. I know how this works. I sleep for like 12 hours so it'll be dark for my infiltration/assault.

I take my boat towards Shwasana. Marty currently isn't on hand for a rescue, so I'll need to be extra careful. I pack my silenced pistol and decide to actually go in stealthy this time. Before I arrive though the checkpoint at the mouth of the passage to the village catches me off guard, and I'm forced to use one of their emplaced machine guns to dispose of the guards. Not the best start to this whole "stealth" thing, but the guys in the village won't have heard all the commotion.

I swim/walk towards the village and pause on an outcropping in the lake to survey the area. The house with the chief's brother is on stilts over the water, and the walkways around it as well as the adjacent patch of land are crawling with sentries. My initial plan is to swim to the docks on the other side of the house from my current position, then make my way in from there. I make it to the roof of the sunken house in the middle of the lake while operating under this plan when I hear a motor start up. Of course they'd have a patrol boat, wouldn't they?

I frantically swim to the central house, and it doesn't help that the water is murky as hell. I manage to avoid the boat by ducking underwater and emerging underneath the raised platform. I decide to approach this way, but I realize very quickly stealth will be tricky. Not impossible, but definitely tricky. I sit under the house for a while just observing the guards. (At one point, I'm swimming in the water among the stilts and I look up through the floorboards to watch a guy patrolling directly above me. So badass.)

I pull out the silenced pistol and start to move out from underneath the dock, but as I do a guard knocks a barrel off the dock as he runs along. Apparently something I did tipped off the guards, because now they're actively looking for an intruder. I think a distraction's in order, and there just happens to be a big ol' stockpile of explosives right in front of me. It's way too crowded to venture out, so I try chucking some molotovs at it from under the house, in the hopes of starting a fire as well. I empty all three of them, but the guard's still can't find me, now they're just more frantic. Also a fire didn't start, so I guess I suck at distractions.

I decide to venture out while they're still a little confused, but practically as soon as I do, I'm spotted. I take him down with my silenced pistol but now everyone else is alerted, so I break out the AK. At first I'm overwhelmed so I duck under the house, and after dropping a guy or two I swim to the nearby dock, then go around one of the smaller houses to flank the two guards left on the small patch of land. I take out the guys guarding the house, as well as the man on the boat's gun, who by now has pulled up to the house and slammed into the adjacent dock.

I clear the house of the three guards inside, then head up to the second floor and confront the chief's brother. At first he's unwilling to deal with a "criminal" like me, but after some machete-to-neck time, he coughs it up. I set out back down the river, and find out the checkpoint at the mouth of the passage has been restaffed in the hour or so of in-game time I was in the village. They are fast. I hop out and am confronted with what is apparently the strongest man in the world. First I hit him with four rounds from my AK at point blank range, but he's still kicking so I swipe him with my machete, which drops him. I move up and take down the other guard at range pretty easily, which is when I get hit in the back with a pistol round. Not only is the first guy not dead, he's actually trying to limp away to safety. I shoot him again, and he finally dies. He was wearing one of those South African cowboy type hats, though, so I guess it makes sense.

I set out to the police station, not wanting to lose anymore night time, and approach it by river as well. The silenced pistol actually proves its worth on the journey, allowing me to eliminate a lone sentry and slip by a checkpoint undetected. When I arrive at the station, the plan is once again stealth. I'll swim upriver, eliminate the sniper at the rope bridge, then move up on the station. I decide to approach from across the bridge to take out the sniper, but as I slink across, a shot rings out. Then another. Because it turns out not only does the sniper have a sniper buddy in a guard tower at the exact opposite end of the compound, but he's got better eyesight than the guy whose job it is to watch the main approach. I sigh and pull out my assault rifle again.

I take out the first sniper, then evade the second through the advanced special forces tactic of sprinting directly at his position, yelling like a madman. I take him down with one shot from my silenced pistol, then use the AK on the other sentries who are advancing up the hill towards me from the compound. I move into the compound and three more guys attack from a cluster of buildings up on the other side of the hill. I set a tree on fire, which holds them off long enough for me to take one of the malaria pills that I guess I need right now.

After the area's clear, I head into the building where the chief is hiding. He starts to say something about how he's my boss but gets cut off when a bullet hits his face. From my gun. Time to help Michele with that UFLL convoy.

I go downriver then hop out not far away, and as I run down the road start to hear gunfire. I pull out my PKM and dispatch them easily enough. I heal the now wounded Michele (again), and then head to a nearby safehouse to sleep the rest of the night away, confident in the knowledge that either stealth with the pistol really doesn't work, or I just really suck at it.