Carbonell has set me up with the UFLL, so I head over to their HQ in Pala. The man out front pats me down and takes my guns, then ushers me inside. Up the stairs I find a room with another guard, a lieutenant with a Russian accent, and Dr. Leon Gakumba, the local head of the UFLL. The work he has for me is simple: a group of foreign commandos are in the country to capture a local APR individual, but Gakumba doesn't want this to happen. His reasoning is that people will think he is so rich he can just buy armies off the shelf. "Africa is for Africans," he says. The Russian lieutenant says "Without the APR, we've got nobody to fight."
I'm to blow up some equipment out in the desert. Without it, the special forces guys are screwed. I pick up the folder and receive my payment in diamonds. On my way out, the lieutenant warns me that the UFLL guys won't know who I am, so they'll shoot on sight too. That's the thing about Far Cry 2: instead of trying to implement some sort of "faction mood" system, they just resort to having everyone shoot you on sight. As a result, you can find yourself adopting a "kill or be killed" attitude very quickly. I think it's the fact that literally everyone I encounter on the road or in an installation will be trying to kill me that results in me being more of a dick in how I play this game than in almost any other shooter I've played.
As I walk out of the building and down the street out of town, I get a call from Michele, who wants me to meet her at a safe house just north of the town of Mokuba. This will happen pretty much every time you get a mission, and taking the buddy's objective will always result in upgrades to your safehouse, so it's worth the extra effort. I head for the bus station. This area has five stops, one in Pala, and then one for each of the compass directions. Traveling by bus is automatic, meaning no having to deal with checkpoints and roving patrols, so I take it. It's also not far from Michele's location.
After I arrive, I check my GPS locator and follow it to a case of diamonds around the back of the station, then take off. I encounter a checkpoint on the way and clear it out fairly easily, then take one of their jeeps and drive to my nearest friendly neighborhood arms dealer. At the computer inside, I contemplate buying the accuracy upgrade for my G3, but spend all of my 20 diamonds instead on grenadier webbing and light assault webbing, figuring that scarcity of ammo is a bigger problem. Then I check the ammo counter for my rifle and see it hasn't changed. Huh. I look in my journal and see the light assault webbing upgrade only applies to a bunch of weapons I don't have. Smooth. I consider reloading my game and spending my money a bit more carefully, but decide this is too easy a way out. If I'm playing under permadeath rules, then that means no turning back.
I head to meet Michele, who tells me she's the person the commandos are here for because of contraband and human slavery or something. I don't know, I kind of stopped paying attention here. Basically, she tells me to go this villa where this Dutch radio operator is relaying orders to the team. I'm to redirect them to the Mokuba shantytown, where it'll be easier to take them on and destroy their supplies than in the middle of the desert. At least, that's what Michele claims. I shrug and sleep on the cot inside until nightfall.
On my way out, I spot an MGL-140 lying on the ground. The MGL stands for Multi-Grenade Launcher. It holds six at a time. I pee a little and trade out my shiny G3 assault rifle for it and set off on foot. I do this because it's a sound tactical decision and not at all because I crashed my jeep in the pond right next to my safe house shut up. I continue across a wide field towards a guard post, and manage to sneak all the way up to the motor pool and behind cover as a jeep on patrol drives through. I wait until I think it's left, but when I poke my head out to confirm this, a guy's looking right at me. I take him down, then hop on the machine gun in the back of the assault jeep in the motor pool and go crazy. I blow up a hut (thanks explosive yellow barrels!) and then drive off.
At the "do not enter" sign at the beginning of the road to the villa, I ditch the jeep and go in on foot. There's a single guard post at the perimeter, but I manage to sneak around it on a small footpath without engaging anyone and without even being spotted by the guards there. Wow. They kind of suck. The path takes me to a ridge giving me a good overlook on the villa, and I start scouting it out. I see a sniper on the upper balcony above the entrance, along with three guards walking around beneath him. Then I hear a gunshot. Yep, sniper saw me. Kind of expected that. But I'll bet he wasn't expecting a big fat grenade to fly over and hit him in the what the hell this thing just jammed on me.
Yep, Michele's a slut. So with a sniper plugging me full of lead and more angry soldiers bearing down on my position from below, I clear the jam and fire a few rounds at the sniper. Apparently, the gun's in such bad condition that just one doesn't do the trick. I drop down to the small path and pull out my pistol, firing and sprinting towards the first of two garages. I sneak around both of them towards the back of the mansion and start looking for another entrance, but don't find one. When I finally make it all the way around, at least two guys out front start peppering me with machine gun fire. Without enough time to pull out my MGL-140, I sprint along the facade and into the mansion, ducking into a side room and jabbing a syrette into my wrist to heal up.
There aren't any guards in the house, so I move upstairs, pistol at the ready, and find the radio operator. He stands up, which is when I stick my machete under his neck and shove a piece of paper in his face. This is actually how half of all interactions in the game go down, the ones that aren't you mutely accepting whatever orders you're being given. You shove a machete at a guy and hope he gets that what you really mean is "I'd like you to read this over the radio, please".
He reads out the new orders, which means I'm done here and should leave and get to Mokuba. That's a bit complicated, though, considering there are at least two guys with machineguns on the grounds still looking for me, and if the crashing noise I think I just heard downstairs is any indication, they're moving into the villa. I consider leaving the Dutchman alive, because he's sort of just looking at me, and even though I know he won't, logically there's nothing to keep him from getting on the radio after I'm gone and going, "Hey guys, some dick with a machete just burst in here and told me to tell you that, so don't do it". I'm very low on ammo by this point though, with only 8 rounds or so left for my dinky pistol, so I opt for the machete instead.
I edge my way back downstairs, pistol at the ready. I head towards the side entrance that I missed on the way in because apparently I'm not too bright when I see a guy inspecting one of the rooms. Just as he turns, I fire and take him down, then scoop up the ammo from the pistol he dropped. Two more men are waiting outside of the side entrance, but I make short work of them and make my way into the garage. I take the cargo truck inside and scream down the road, past the surviving guard(s?) and then barreling past the perimeter checkpoint, squashing one of the guards there against a jeep as I do so. After I've made it a ways away, I get out and repair the truck, then continue on towards Mokuba, stopping at an armory on the way to trade out my MGL-140 for a crappier but much more reliable G3 rifle.
I approach from further uphill on foot, and I see a couple of guards on the road, but I know there must be more. The way the buildings are so close together, though, it's impossible to see who could be walking among them. I figure the best way to take them on would be to draw them to me, since if I tried sneaking past I could be in too deep should one of them spot me. At a small post on the hill is a man with an RPG, and I figure he's as good a place to start as any. It takes two swipes with the machete to bring him down, and his yells send the rest of his guys running.
After a short firefight with a squad of four or five guys at the head of the road, I ran to a hole in a fence which I snuck through to get into the town proper. It was about then I saw a flare rise into the sky, meaning someone was trying to signal for reinforcements. I needed to wrap this up. The truck with the supplies was parked under a bridge in the dried up creek bed that split the town, so one RPG round later, it was taken care of. All that was left now was to help out Michele where she was engaged with some APR goons at a checkpoint just to the north.
By the time I got there, there were only a couple guys left. It didn't take long to mop up, meaning the job was done, and now all my safehouses would have a jeep with a machinegun parked out front. Michele told me to go ahead without here while she cleared a jam in her gun. I took a gun truck from the checkpoint and returned to the bus station where I'd arrived in this area and continued past to a safe house with a couple of dudes out front. After unceremoniously murdering them, I grabbed a few hours of shut eye. I survived my first job. How many more would I get?
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