OPERATION: Phoenix
Written by Nisse
Patterson & Jewell is a multinational company selling weapons. It has branches in many parts of the world. The head of the Caribbean department, Shane Quinn (Irish/American), is living on the island of St Cyril. The military dictator of this island is Patterson & Jewels largest customer in the Caribbean. There is a civil war going on the island, and this has largely motivated the junta to purchase arms. Lately however there has been some attempts at promoting peace between the guerilla and the junta. In just a few weeks the guerilla will be meeting the military governments negotiator and peace talks will commence. Mr Quinn believes that this will make the junta stop most or all of their purchases of arms. He has a plan to halt the peace talks and to make the civil war bloom again. He calls this plan “Plan phoenix”.
Mr Quinn intends to hire mercenaries and have them pose as the guerilla while attacking a town on St Cyril were the son of the dictator will be partaking in the consecration of a new church. He wants the mercenaries to massacre the town so that the peace talks will be cancelled and the civil war will bloom again.
The population of St Cyril stems largely from the slaves captured in Africa during the 18:th century. They are therefore black. Mr Quinn secretly travels to Brazzaville of Congo where he recruits a number of hardened mercenaries. These will be trained at a training ground out in the jungles of Congo that is owned by Patterson & Jewell. Then they will all be sent to St Cyril to carry out plan phoenix.
However, there is a young operative for the British secret service in the city of Brazzaville. He is in Congo investigating “the involvement of British companies in illegal activities in Congo”. He has noticed some activities at an estate owned by Patterson & Jewell (the training ground) where they seem to be recruiting and training mercenaries. He also stumbles on Mr Quinn while he is recruiting the mercenary he wants to lead the other mercenaries. The operative immediately takes a number of photographs of their meeting. He is spotted by Mr Quinn’s personal bodyguard (a polish brute called Kryzov Kiosova who is a master in the art of knife fighting) and followed. The operative realizes that he has been spotted and manages to mail the undeveloped film to his own address without the bad guys noticing. The operative is caught and questioned (badly tortured) by the villains. Finally he is killed when he wont talk. The villains then continue with their plans as usual.
This is where the characters come in. They have just completed an assignment that they happened to turn into an international incident. M wants them out of the way for a little while so he hands them the apparently simple mission of investigating the torture and murder of MI6’s operative in Brazzaville, Congo.
The characters will find the undeveloped film in the mail of the deceased and they will also find a map where the training ground is marked. Investigating the area marked will put them in the middle of a mercenary drill with live ammo. The mercenaries are training urban combat. Here they might find a list of a number of mercenaries employed for carrying out Plan Phoenix (the characters wont find out what this plan actually is just yet). Developing the film will lead the characters to Mr Shane Quinn (who according to all records never sat foot in Congo) and his home on St Cyril. Hopefully this will make the characters travel to St Cyril to confront Mr Quinn. The villain will be hosting a banquet at his estate, the characters will make sure to be invited (with a little help from MI6). At the banquet Mr Quinn will be alerted to the presence of the MI6. He will tactfully advise them to mind their own business and then have them followed (I actually had him discuss with one of the characters the topic of how one can become resilient to certain poisons by exposing oneself to small doses of it on a regular basis, thus allowing the assassin to share the same poisonous drink as ones victims, and then offering the agent another glass of wine).
In order to figure out what Plan Phoenix is, the agents will have to burglarise Mr Quinn’s residence. This is easier said than done as the parameters are guarded not only by advanced alarms but also Mr Quinn’s two pet crocodiles. They then have to stop the attack from taking place in order to save innocent lives. There are two Hercules airplanes taking of from St Cyril international airport stuffed with mercenaries. The agents should be able to find some spectacular way of stopping them.
