War and Racketeering; An Easy Guide

[7734]

Spoiler: Music

Your name is Smith. Major Smith, according to the fake birth certificate in the wall locker in the rather nice hotel room you were staying in. More importantly, you were between jobs, so the rather nice three-star hotel room in Manilla would hopefully change soon- you didn't want to become too much of a regular after all. It was bad for the reputation, and in your business reputation was everything.

Your business? According to most of the documents in the wall safe next to your counterfeit Albanian birth certificate, you were a security specialist tasked with high profile jobs. Last month, you'd been overseeing oil rig security in Kuwait, officially, while making sure that the Iraqis across the border didn't want to come in too bad. Mostly this involved a lot of land mines, duplicitous intelligence, blow-up anti-tank missiles, and hiring Somalis as border raiders to start fires in places old man Saddam didn't want there to be fires.

Good times.

Now that the contract had run up, though (and you'd made the other side of the border madder than hell) you were at loose ends. Commercial anti-piracy operations had looked like they were gonna take off any minute now, which is why you'd come to Manilla, but with the Gulf exploding like an oil fire that option was looking fairly shot as every two-bit contractor was getting snapped up by the Turks or Israelis. Considering the fact you'd gotten burned by the Jews back when you'd just started in '68 and you didn't speak Turkish, both those options were pretty much closed.

That's when your work phone rang. Picking it up gingerly, you answered it carefully. "Major Smith speaking."

"Hello, Major Smith." A voice said, smooth as honey. "My name is Thomas Johnson, and I come on the behalf of a consortium of interested parties interested in hiring you for a contract."

"What kind of contract?" you asked, curiosity piqued.

"Long term, for yourself and a company of picked individuals to operate in sub-Saharan Africa. We require a security specialist with expertise in working against government-backed groups, and your resume is very much meeting our requirements."

You smirked as you looked at your rolodex on the coffee table across from the bed. "I can certainly do that. What sort of operating budget do we have here?"

"Your salary is two hundred thousand USD a year, directly deposited into the secured account of your choice on a bi-monthly basis. For operations, we have assembled forty million USD as your operational assembly budget, and will be providing five million a month for the first twelve months, after which we will be looking into renegotiating your operational budget."
You had to resist a wolf-whistle. That was a lot of money. A lot of money. Chuckling, you had to put your hand up to cup the phone carefully.

"I can certainly work with that. Do you have a representative in the Philippines, Mr. Johnson?"

"Of course. Would lunch at two at the Parkland in Manilla be apros?"

"Certainly."

----

Looking over the massive dossier you'd been given, you smirked. Zimbabwe was next to collapsing, with a gigantic inflation problem, decreasing public health, an AIDs epidemic, multiple strikes and revolts… it was a goddamn mess. Plus side, though, you weren't propping up the regime, you were just making sure that there was an area of stability in the country. Whistling a jaunty march, you settled down in an internet cafe, and whipped out the disposable phone and your good headset. Once the door was locked and your pistol was loose in the holster, you started placing calls.

"Billingsley Accounting, how may I direct your call?" A young woman's voice said, bright and perky.

"I need to talk to James. James Billingsley." you said calmly, aware most people wouldn't just call up a major English accounting firm out of the blue.

"And may I tell him who's calling?"

"His friend from the Sinai" you replied, smiling slightly. It was about a minute later you were connected through to the man himself.

"Thomas! How are you doing, old chap!" he called out, and for a second you smirked. You hadn't been Thomas in twenty years, but Billingsley would refuse to call you anything else."

"Ah, just fine." you replied, your accent slipping over to something vaguely West German in a flash, consonants softening and lengthening your vowels carefully. "I just got hired again, you know. Business is booming."

"Good, good! Let me guess- you need a money man?"

"Exactly. Got any young braves feeling like a fun time in Africa?"

Billingsley laughed, and you could hear him joking through the phone. "No Jews, I take it?"

"I can handle a few Jew," You muttered, trying to get over the sting of that old joke. Having been a bit of an anti-Semite back in the day, working on the Jordanian border with them at your back had quickly broken you of that particular belief. The fact Billingsley was half-Akazanshi himself only added to the joke, since you hadn't known that when you'd first met. "Just don't ask me to work with their NEM teams again."

"You don't like driving pigs over landmines?"

"It's been years since I joked we should serve bacon with a side of explosive, James. After getting left out to dry, though, I can safely say my dislike is purely professional now."

"It was only two million dollars in equipment, you panzie."

"I had to default on that loan and work in Macedonia after that as a gun runner to make it up to the Russians! I think I can hold a little bit of a grudge!"

"Ha!" your friend said, laughing. "Anyway, I have a fellow on tap for you. David Long, finished up in the bottom fifth of his class at Cambridge. Speaks English, French, and a little Arabic, and wants an exotic woman or two. Even has a passport. Seems up to your speed?"

"Where we're going? He'll do fine, if he doesn't get AIDs."

"Thomas, everyone I send down to you I expect to get AIDs. He's a bit of a cunt, but honestly he'll get the job done."

"Great." you said, and started getting the next name ready. "Send him to Manilla on the next plane you can, please."

"Anything else?"

"No, we should be good. Tschus!"

"Tschus!"

With that done, you sighed and got to work calling up your security assets. Normally, you preferred to train units on the ground on location for the job, but according to your brief your Center of Operations was a couple of Quonset huts and a radio tower. You'd have to buy and build a facility if you wanted local fighters, plus recruit trainers. Getting trainers was a headache, since your two options in that regard were either expensive as hell, or North Koreans. On the plus side, most of your contacts bore out fairly well- a few of the Somalia groups you'd set up in the last job were functional, el Salvadore still had guns for hire, Paraguay was still selling rangers, and the assorted Slav groups up in the Balkans still had the wind in their sails. You could buy force, still. That was a relief.

---

It was almost a month later you'd assembled your headquarters team and shipped out to the home base, buried deep in the Matesi Safari Area. Logistically you'd be getting most of your cargo in from across the border in Botswana, who had proved surprisingly helpful to your cause- namely, money. Money never hurt. Just like it said on the tin, there were Quonset huts, a radio tower, and a bulldozer over in the corner. Your old logistics company had followed you out here, at least, so that was something good. The rest, though? You were building it up from scratch. First things first, though- you needed a game plan. Time to get to it.

---

Votes

Mission Planning (CHOOSE ONE, affects FY1)
[] Develop your HQ
-Honestly, your staff agree with you- you don't have enough direct and actionable resources to do much more than scratch your balls and drink coffee. You're gonna need to dump some serious cash into upgrading this joint before you can credibly project force.
-Unlocks Base Development
[] Develop an Intelligence Branch
-After working for nearly thirty years in the Gulf and Balkans, the first thing you learned was that more intelligence was the best gift anyone could get you. While a topical dossier reading told you most of the country had a severe law and order problem, you'd probably want to put names to faces and figure out how to best maximize your impact.
-Unlocks Intelligence Dossiers and Intelligence Division
[] Develop a Training Cadre
-The best way to keep costs down, as you figured out a long time ago, is to train and arm the locals. They don't need guides, they need less support staff, and they normally tend to be a lot more willing to put their bodies where the bullets are than the professionals.
-Unlocks Local Unit Training.
[] Develop Local Infasturcture
-You are, quite literally, out in the bush. It sucks out here, and the reality is it's going to continue to suck out here for quite a while. However, if you can get material out here reliably, you can make things suck less, and more importantly make things cost less too.
-Unlocks Local Construction

Tactics Planning (CHOOSE ONE, Affects Q1)
[] Hire Mercenaries
-[] War Pigs (1,000,000 USD/month, 2 companies, standard weapon: AK-74, Soviet surplus)
-[] Pascal Group (5,000 USD/month, 3 companies, standard weapon: none)
-[] Los Abrejos (20,000 USD/month, 1 company, standard weapon: M-16)
-[] Tasver Group (100,000 USD/month, 1 flight, standard equipment: Hind-B)
-[] Gemeni Group (80,000 USD/month, 2 flights, standard equipment: Bell 205)
-You need manpower, and you need it now. This is a shortlist of groups you trust to stay bought, and more importantly groups you trust to get the job done before they dissolve.

[] Investigate Local Terrain
-You need to know where you're fighting, what you're fighting in, and if there are any third parties that may need to be bought, bribed, or broken. Considering the sparse population, though, if there's anything here it's gonna be fairly easy to roll up once you have the resources.

---

Resources

Cash On Hand: 38,000,000 USD

Equipment Stocks
-NATO: Nonexistant
-Soviet: Nonexistant
-Historical: Nonexistant
-Air: Nonexistant

Personel
-Logistics Unit (Company)
-Headquarters Unit (Platoon)

 

[7734]

Zimbabwe Informational Dossier, 1992



Political Map

XO Comments: We're in Matabeland North, by the boarder. Ain't many people here, so we can stay under the radar easier. Not much money here either.



Climate Map

XO Remarks: It's hot as balls, and it's like that for most of the country. Some areas are hot as balls and humid too. Joy. Not much jungle in the traditional sense of the word, though, which certainly helps.



Food Map

XO Remarks: We could build a lot of goodwill if we could get food production up in this region, and getting the locals to fight for their bellies is easy.



Disease Map

XO Remarks: Odds are we're gonna atrition units to disease, and badly. We've got good staff here, so the base officers aught to be fine. Better warn the mercs, though.

 

[7734]

War Pigs

Commanded by Major Aucion Lebre, the War Pigs are a two-company formation with their own support assets, heavy weapons, and vehicles. Capable of being rolled off a plane and into a combat or peacekeeping operation, these soldiers of fortune are smart, brave, and well trained in fieldcraft. Their main lacking, if any can be found, is the exorbitant cost for their relatively large support structure, which is sometimes refereed to as a silent company in the organization.

Personal Note: Lebre owes me three hundred dollars in poker money, but his boys are good as gold. Trick is making sure they earn their fee- anything short of Barbarossa is their idea of fun.

Pascal Group

Commanded by Marquis Duval Savoriste, the Pascal Group is an amorphous group of salvaged soldiers and vagabonds from Tunis and Algeria, who are frequently used in more manpower-dense and subtlty-light situations. Without standard equipment, vehicles, or training, this group may contain as many child soldiers and prostitutes as it does able-bodied fighters. Their only saving grace is the fact they will fight at literally a dollar a man a day, and most of them consider that good pay.

Personal Note: Don't trust them as far as you can throw them- maybe Duval will finally catch a bullet, or I might need to put one there myself. They'll fight like lions, though, as long as they can't run home.

Los Abrejos

Commanded by Tomas San Angles, Los Abrejos is a group of ex-Contra soldiers from Guatamala and El Salvador who went into violence as a career when the war went up. Poorly armed, these units have little supply and little issue with that. Well trained, experianced, and with camaraderie to spare, the only issues with this unit are a total language barrier and a need to provide most of the equipment that isn't boots and guns.

Personal Note: Don't ask these guys to do any shady shit, but they'll die before they run. San Angles is damn good, even if he is a kid, and they'd make decent trainers in a pinch. Paying for their gear will be a pain in the ass though.

Tasver Group

Ex-Yugoslavs, the Tasver Group is technically a telecomunications company that owns and operates six Hind-B helicopters. This is bullshit. They're mostly what's left of Arkan's Tigers, rebranded and herded out of the country so they don't make too much noise where the boss can see. All six of their birds are equiped with mounts to turn them into gunships, and the ground crews are armed to the teeth in case the airstrip gets assaulted.

Personal Note: They can work off a grass strip, but sorte effiency will be garbage. The fact they can haul a fast response force is good though.

Gemini Group

Commanded by Colonel Vercio Luives, the Gemini Group is composed of several dozen Poles and other Eastern Bloc pilots and soldiers put out of work through the collapse of the Soviet Union. While they can't fly combat missions, of their 14 Bell 205's, there's two heli-ambulance platforms, two cargo movers, and the rest are set for regular troop deployment. They claim to be good, but their track record is short.

Personal Note: Big Boss recommends them, and he's got good taste.

 

[brmj]

One of the Quonset huts came with a surprise gift: reference material. Beside the folding table perhaps intended to serve as your desk, a stack of four small, wooden crates turned on their sides and nailed together made a somewhat serviceable bookshelf. In addition to maps of the country and region, some recognition guides and the like, a perfectly ordinary three-ring binder caught your eye. It proved to contain page upon page photocopied from a report by some NGO or UN affiliated subcommittee or the like on development potential in the province, with other binders holding similar reports for neighboring provinces and adjacent regions of Botswana, Zambia and Namibia. Not something you expected to see, but perhaps a wise inclusion for getting the lay of the land and understanding local needs and how best to meet them. There's a lot of information to it, too much to read while there is work to do, but the executive summary is at least a good start.

---

Prospects for Self-Sufficiency: Matabeland North

Executive Summary

Major challenges towards local self-sufficiency in Matabeland North currently include limited access to clean water for domestic use in some areas, food scarcity, somewhat limited infrastructure, and minimal export-oriented economic activity. Tourism, gold mining and agriculture are the major industries, with agriculture largely of a subsistence nature and limited by lack of water. Basic transportation infrastructure is adequate for present needs around most significant population centers, but decreases rapidly in more remote areas and may not be adequate for any substantial expansion of industry. Where electricity is available, supply can not meet the current demand and rolling blackouts are common.

A large majority of land area in Matabeland North features favorable hydrogeology, with large, reasonably easily accessible groundwater reserves and good water quality. Rural communities typically obtain water from boreholes by means of a hand pump, with electric pumps increasingly present in urban areas. Old equipment and poor maintenance has lead to increasing failures in rural water sources, suggesting that new or replacement well pumps may play an important role in future aid or development efforts. In many regions, groundwater is sufficient to supply significant irrigation projects, if the pumps, electricity and irrigation equipment were to be provided. This, if carried out on a sufficient scale, would largely address the province's food production difficulties. For more information, see the included figure or the British Geological Survey's report on the hydrogeology of Zimbabwe.



Food insecurity in the region is largely due to limited available water. Agriculture is primarily of a subsistence nature and often can not adequately supply the nutritional needs of the farmers. Little room for productive mechanization currently exists because of limited infrastructure and fuel availability. Herding, once a much larger component of the province's agriculture than it currently is, can better make use of much of the region's land than plant-based agriculture in the absence of additional irrigation. Current recommendations for increasing food security include introducing center-pivot irrigation or other well-based irrigation techniques, and encouraging increased cattle or goat herding in otherwise marginal land, with modern farming techniques potentially being introduced in the future pending improved infrastructure and a more developed local economy.

Transportation infrastructure consists of the Victoria Falls – Bulawayo railroad line, part of the Bulawayo - Francistown line, a handful of railway connections to communities or mining sites off of the main line, and a sparse network of (often unpaved) roads, as well as a handful of small airports. Communities of significant size are typically adequately served to meet current demand, but little infrastructure exists in remote areas, and expansions will likely be needed to accommodate any substantial new economic activity. Improvements in road quality will be key, and any significant new mining, industrial or export-oriented agricultural ventures will likely be best served by railway connections where existing lines are available in the vicinity. Access to remote rural communities can likely be best improved by expansion of the road network and regular trucks and buses for goods and transportation.

Power is provided almost exclusively by the Hwange Thermal Power Plant, a coal plant run off of locally produced coal. Water for the plant's boilers and cooling towers is piped from the Zambezi River, with significant excess capacity in the pipeline but limited excess capacity in the on-site demineralization plant. Demand exceeds capacity and rolling blackouts are commonplace. The vast coal reserves in the region allow for almost arbitrary expansion of the capacity, given sufficient funding. Expansions to the existing plant would likely be easiest due to the infrastructure and water supply already in place, but there is also the potential for coal-fired plants elsewhere in the province. Additionally, there is significant untapped hydroelectric potential on the Zambezi river along the border with Zambia, and there is evidence of large reserves of coal-bed natural gas which could be used as an alternate fuel. In addition to securing an improved supply, transmission lines will need to be greatly expanded away from major population centers to achieve full rural electrification and to be able to utilize electric pumps for large-scale irrigation. This is expected to be a significant challenge to attempts to improve food security.

Besides wood, rammed earth and the like, construction materials for buildings and infrastructure projects largely has to be shipped in from elsewhere. Limestone and other minerals for cement production, as well as copious coal to fuel cement kilns, are available locally, rendering cement production quite viable if a plant were to be set up. This may be worthwhile as part of a large-scale development plan, but is not otherwise immediately necessary.

In terms of economic activity, expansions to tourism may be the easiest in the short term, with beautiful and well-maintained parkland and Victoria Falls as the primary attractions. Improving access and amenities for tourists will be key. Conservation considerations aside, safari tourism is likely to be the most profitable in the short term, but other forms of tourism are more sustainable. However, tourism has relatively little absolute potential for growth. Once food security is established, excess agricultural capacity may be used for export to the rest of the country and the surrounding region. Development plans featuring large scale irrigation especially may give agriculture a significant role in the future economic development of the region. Given the infrastructure improvements to support it, light industry such as textile production could also have a significant role to play.

The region contains significant opportunities to expand the mining sector. Gold, coal and diamonds are most significant at the moment, with relatively limited capacity for expansion in gold and diamonds but vast and underutilized reserves of coal. Large, completely untapped reserves of coal-bed natural gas are now believed to exist, though making use of them for more than stand-alone power generation would likely require extensive pipelines. Exploitable or potentially exploitable deposits of amethyst, opal, mica, copper, iron, tungsten, vanadium, bismuth, fluorine, tin, lead, silver and mercury among others also exist, with some relatively limited mining already in place. The vast majority of mineral wealth is concentrated in the Hwange district, though some deposits are found elsewhere and coal is spread a little more widely. Notably, the immediate vicinity of the Lubimbi hot springs in Binga district contain deposits of uranium minerals which are so far unexploited, a potential source of income but also a proliferation risk.

Taken together, there is significant potential to achieve food, water, power and economic self-sufficiency in Matabeland North, but an extensive and well-funded development plan will be needed involving significant investment. Agricultural improvements, in practice irrigation or an expansion of herding, are likely to be the highest priority, but sustainable improvement of conditions will require a multifaceted approach, with improvements in power and transportation infrastructure as a major component and expansions to mining and light industry providing a sustained source of income and non-agricultural jobs. Improvements to healthcare and education, largely outside of the scope of this report, will then be able to follow where today they might have limited reach and suffer from infrastructure limitations.
​

---

You close the binder and nod thoughtfully. There may be some potential here, if you choose to go that route.

 

[7734]

This is gonna be the 'megapost' of all GM notes. If you have a ruling question, check here.

INFORMATIONAL THREADMARKS VS. APOCRYPHA

Anything posted in Informational is GM produced, and has a GM Seal of Assurance on it that it is produced to the best of your character's knowledge. Information in Apocrypha has no such guarantees, even though it may be as accurate or more accurate than some GM provided materials.

Yes I will threadmark any and all good posts that are relevant into Apocrypha, as long as they are made with information that MC has available.

Edit 1: For the near future, votes will be called on Tuesdays or Thursdays.

 

[brmj]

Aircraft Comparison

I'm seeing the "get an AN-2" suggestion floated a bunch, so I went on an obsessive wikipedia binge and have resurfaced bearing information on useful transport/cargo aircraft. This all basically assumes low and slow is all we need, and a multi-purpose utility aircraft with good rough field performance is what we are looking for. This is not to say that something like this should be our highest priority, just trying to figure out what our best options are if we want to go down this road. In practice, what we can or can't actually get will probably be as much about GM rulings as our preferences, if not more.

The AN-2 has a lot to recommend it. It's an excellent largeish bush plane, well suited to short, unimproved runways and remarkably rugged. Not all that widely available in Africa, but that's a surmountable problem. 12 passengers, which is certainly enough to be useful. No ramp or large cargo door, which is unfortunate.

Some other good candidates:

AN-14: Tried unsuccessfully to replace the AN-2. Seats 8. Good STOL performance. Rarer than the AN-2, and very few in Africa.

BN-2 Islander: A utility and transport aircraft with room for 9 passengers widely used as a regional airliner. Decent STOL performance and can operate off of a fairly rough runway, but not really a bush plane. Freight versions exist. They seem to be reasonably common in Africa.

DHC-2 Beaver: An absolutely legendary bush plane, mostly in the context of Alaska and Canada. Some variants will seat up to 11, but most seat more like 7. Can carry 2000 lbs, and has good sized cargo doors (for a plane its size) on each side. Excellent STOL performance. There are some in Africa, with both military and civil operators.

DHC-3 Otter: A fine bush plane, though seating one or two less than the AN-2. Not too widely used in Africa, but more so than the AN-2. Think beaver, but a bit bigger.

DO-28: A twin engine STOL utility aircraft with only 7 passengers, so a bit smaller. There seem to be plenty in Africa, but mostly military.

Noorduyn Norseman: A bushplane with seats for 10 passengers and similar characteristics to the otter. Very few if any in Africa.

PC-6 Porter: A utility aircraft with 10 seats with good STOL performance well suited for rough, unimproved airstrips. There are only a few operators in Africa, all of them military. A trapdoor can be installed in the floor of the cabin, which is typically used for supply drops or mounting surveillance equipment.

If we want to go smaller, we're looking at something for observation, smuggling small quantities of something or transporting one or two people, rather than a real cargo or transport aircraft. Any decent bush plane will get the job done, so whatever will blend in locally is probably best. Pretty much any of the small aircraft people associate with Piper or Cesna will do the job well.

If we want to go a little bigger:

AN-28 and PZL M28: A stretched AN-14 with various improvements. Seats up to 19. Good STOL performance. At least some versions have a rear cargo ramp. Fairly rare, but some are in Africa.

C-212 Aviocar: An STOL cargo aircraft and short-haul airliner. Passenger versions seat up to 28. Has a cargo ramp and is well suited for skydiving. The US Army Special Operations Command and Blackwater apparently like them for many of the tasks we might use them for. There are a number of military operators in Africa (including Zimbabwe), but no civil ones as far as I can tell.

DC-3 / C-47 Skytrain: Designed as an airliner, but in the 30s that meant sometimes operating off of what we'd consider a pretty bad grass strip today. The oldest aircraft in large-scale operation, with over 2,000 in active use today. Legendary for ruggedness, reliability and versatility. Needs a bit longer to land than most on this list, at least under sub-optimal conditions. Seats up to 32. No cargo ramp. There are plenty of them in Africa, so they ought to blend in and parts will be available.

DHC-6 Twin Otter: A nice plane for short fields. 19 to 20 seats. No cargo ramp. Reasonably good for parachuting. There are a decent number in Africa, but not the most common aircraft there.

DHC-4 Carabou: Good short field performance and does fine on a grass strip. It's got a cargo ramp, and it can carry 32 troops, 24 paratroopers or two jeeps. There aren't many civil operators in Africa, but there several countries that will have just recently phased them out of military service, so they may be available. Not an especially quiet aircraft, and rare enough to be a bit distinctive.

DHC-5 Buffalo: Essentially a slightly expanded turboprop version of the DHC-4, with notably higher cargo capacity and apparently somewhat worse STOL performance. Not as widely available, but there are a few in Africa.

SC.7 Skyvan: 19 seat STOL aircraft normally used for short-haul freight or skydiving. Not that many around. It has a cargo ramp.

Short 330: A stretched SC.7 that seats 30. Most are built as airliners and don't have the ramp, but there's a cargo variant that does. Good short field performance, but probably not as good. Rare, and none in Africa.

Short 360: A slightly expanded Short 330 that seats 39. Also has a cargo version with a ramp. Probably has a little worse STOL performance. More common than the 330, with a couple in Africa.

If we want to go significantly bigger:

AN-24, AN-26, AN-32 and Xian Y-7: Closely related STOL airliners and military transports. They seat in the range of 40 to 50. They are good at short, unimproved fields by the standards of an aircraft their size, but don't expect them to take off quite as quickly as a Beaver or an AN-2. AN-24s and most Xian Y-7s are configured purely as transports, but AN-26s, -32s and some Xian Y-7s have a cargo ramp. AN-24s are reasonably common in Africa, AN-26s have some presence in mostly military operators, the others not so much.

AN-72 and AN-74: A turbofan powered replacement for the AN-24 and derivatives. Similar characteristics. All (or those not configured as airliners?) seem to have a cargo ramp. 52 passengers or 10 tons of cargo. Very good STOL performance for an aircraft its size. There are a few in Africa with both military and civilian operators.

DHC-7 "Dash 7": An STOL regional airliner that seats 50. No provisions for large cargo. Performance not far off from bush plane-like, supposedly. There are a few in Africa, but not common. 4 engine, so extra complexity, and the engine out performance is notably mediocre. Relatively quiet.

If we want to go a lot bigger:

IL-76. A soviet strategic airlifter that also sees a ton of use as a civilian cargo plane. Able to operate from relatively short, unpaved runways, but will still need more than the rest on this list. There are a bunch of them in Africa, many of them civilian. This is what we want if we need to fly a tank somewhere.

Edit: Added a couple more.

Edit 2: For questions about capacities on the larger end ("Can an AN-72 carry a PT-76?", etc. (answer is no.)), see this document: http://www.jofair.com/news/archives/2003-Freighter-Reference-Guide.pdf

Edit 3: a minor correction.

Edit 4: a correction on which AN-24 and AN-72 derivatives have cargo ramps.

 

[7734]

The first step to life in the middle of the most godforsaken part of Africa, you decided with the annoying whirl of a mosquito over your desk, was to start assembling a base. Step one to a base? Water.

Looking at your cup of quinnine-laced beer, you amended that carefully. Good water. You already had a well that made… enough… and the aquifier here was fairly good, but that didn't mean more wasn't better. More importantly, though, it meant you'd be handling water filtration and sanitation that wasn't dumping a chlorine tablet in and waiting four hours. Speaking of which- sanitation. Cholera was a bitch and a half, and it was probably the nicest thing you could think of. You'd need to dump cash into a clinic to make sure your boys weren't coming down with every damn jungle disease known to man, or more likely every venereal disease too. You once saw an entire Palestinian rifle company laid low by three hookers with herpes and one with the clap (one of your better operations) and the same fate didn't need to happen here.

That meant you'd probably need to build, and more importantly staff, a brothel. On the plus side, a good brothel was a great way to get information and control the shakier troops, but they got damn expensive, and fast. Along with that came the standard other means of fleecing your men of their pay- restaurants, bars, the O-club, a Walmart, and probably a bookstore too.

Men needed houses and food, though, and while a tent and a Chinese MRE could fuffil these needs, it wouldn't keep them from dicking around every spare minute they weren't off innawoods or building something. Building some fairly simple trench houses, or zemlyanka as your Ruskie friends called 'em, that was just a matter of running the buldozer a few times and slapping a roof on top. Cool, dry, and surprisingly shell-resistant, they would work for ages- or until you needed to add internal plumbing. A mess hall was another must-have, since real food was the fastest way to enact loss prevention against people wigging out and deserting. About the only thing worse than a deserter was an embezzler, in your book.

Of course, that was all neccessities you'd just doodled out on your legal pad. Offensively, you'd need a the Holy Trinity of beating the shit out of people- a motor pool, an armory, and a drill field.

The motor pool was the most important, if only because a mobile force lived and died in it's trucks. The Toyota War had been a resounding example of what motivated, mobile, and most importantly intelligent people could do with a truck and an oxy welder, and Dad had an entire photo album on the shelf of his work with them. Shikas, Dushkas, Grad, Ma Deuce, Stingers, even old rocket pods- just weld it on a tripod, and slap that shit in the bed. Half a dozen of them could put the fear of Allah into a mess of Iraqi conscripts (even with the guns unloaded) and their effect on morale was incredible. Even if you weren't strapping them to the gills with guns, the simple fact was you could keep a kitchen in a milk crate in one quarter of a technical's bed, and haul sixty plus liters of water in one that was still armed.

Then there was the armory. White Christ, the armory. While most people thought the armory was just where hopes and dreams went to die, they actually served an important purpose in keeping weapons and munitions both safe and operable. A Hind was a manageable opponent when your company's Stinger missiles worked. When they didn't work- well, that's how you nearly bought the farm back in Israel. After that, every gun, missile, and bullet you ever worked with would have to go through an armory, and by God you'd make sure that armory was a good one. Between getting a professionally matinenced gun every time you hit the field, knowing your magazines weren't going to fall apart, and the fact that three round bursts weren't just full auto in disguise, they were worth every penny.

Last, but certainly not least, was the drill field. Technically it was more an outdoor gym, but calling it a drill field made people feel better when they were puking their guts out in the grass and trying not to die. By making sure you had a place to keep your units sharp, train new hires, and build new tactics, it was relatively easy to make sure your fighting units didn't fall apart.

After that, though, there was just the wish list. Grass stirp air field for CASEVAC and maybe air supply, armor motor pool for if you ever decided to waste money on APCs, artillery park for the guns too big to manpack, electronic warfare center for when you wanted to snoop on cell phones half the country away, combat engineer courses for sappers and whatnot… all things you wanted, but probably didn't need.
Shaking your head, you got back down to reality. Settling on building a mess hall and a barracks complex for about a company of men, you got the work orders filled out and stamped so your construction teams would get to work. You only had a company of construction engineers, though, so things would probably get done fairly slowly. Oh well- as long as you kept them working, they'd keep you with new construction.

(MECHANICS: Every quarter, your Engineering Company can build up to 2,000,000 dollars worth of buildings. If no work orders are put in, they will default to working on Infrastructure Construction or building Base Defenses.)

It was a few weeks later that you got to meet San Angeles in the flesh. After putting on your good field uniform (now updated with twin thunderbird lapel patches and a golden hat-pin) you met him and his men in the field.

In all fairness, you didn't expect a stellar-looking lot, but what you ended up with looked like they'd been scraped up off the tarmac after a class of paratroopers fucked up to the man. Each one was dressed in ratty cammies, carrying an equally filthy rifle, and all of them looked mildly malnutritioned from their experiences. For all that, though, there were all promised two hundred off them, every man jack with the same silly floppy hat and a black triangle stitched on their 'uniforms' in some place or another. San Angeles barely looked better than his men, but when you sat him down in your office and got to talking, the results were good.

After the disaster that was '86, you had to hand it to the man- he had excellent sales pitches and recruitment moves, although he was still a little junior to the concept of being a subcontractor. Fortunately, his secondhand American training kicked in fairly quickly, which meant he was willing to work fairly closely with you in order to get things done, and done well.

After about a week of in-country processing and intensive feeding, the majority of the Contras were back in shape to take up patrol duties. This rapidly went south when one of the units, sans translator, ran into a patrol of 'militia' from one of the local governor's out on tax collection. After a short and sharp fight, the militia had been scared off, and the Contras were bringing back their wounded. While their effective strength had been reduced somewhat, the fact of the matter was that most of it was drain through needing to lay support networks and train translators. The dozen-odd wounded were mostly put towards this, freeing up the reserves.

In other news, the grapevine had finally shaken out some results, and you had a couple of interesting warm bodies on call as specialists.

First up was Pierre LaCours, late of the Wild Geese after his discharge. Nominally an airmobile group, Pierre was a bombardier and fixed-wing flight specialist. He'd been in charge of the 'demilitarized' A-26 Invader flight until a particularly nasty bout of flak over Peru in '72 had forced him to ditch. After that and the resultant loss of both legs beneath the knee, he'd sidetracked into chemical warfare just in time to get involved with a private contractor launching Agent Orange drop missions over 'Nam. He had a dry sort of Spanish wit, and you'd met him several times back when you were between jobs on Crete.

The next person was an old friend of yours from Syria, Abdul Al-Jarhad. He'd been a man on the inside and counterintelligence asset par excellence, and his experience in organizing rifle regiments in the Syrian army for you to knock to pieces later meant he knew how to build up a tough, strong, and smart unit- and then put in fault lines to make it shatter as soon as someone started pouring on the artillery. Apparently, he'd been caught in some internecine round of infighting again, and had needed to relocate to Albania for a while to let the heat die down. Until then, he needed a job, and you were still hiring.

Finally, there was Dorrier Farbrach, an expatriate East German who had spent the last thirty years running guns under the Soviet's, and now German, governmental noses. Specializing in recovering Soviet stashes of old firearms from the Great Patriotic War, he'd made bank on a couple of Stasi caches before the Germans caught him at it. Right now he was in Silesia, and needed to liquidate his cargo before the Alanders figured out they were currently sitting on enough guns to arm every citizen in the islands twice over. Bringing him on would probably get you reduced rate on his stock, and more importantly mean you could get right of first refusal on anything else he found.

Time to start writing letters, then. You had things to do.

---

VOTES

Tactics Planning (CHOOSE ONE, Affects Q2)
[] Hire Mercenaries
-[] Write-in group from any Mercenary Dossier not yet hired.
[] Investigate Local Terrain
[] Develop Local Contacts
-You don't know anything, and you know you don't know anything. At least finding out who your neighbors are will help fix that.
[] Start Local Patrols
-You nearly got jumped by freaking tax collectors. Keeping a good, secured cordon around your base will keep that issue out.

Build Queue
[] Add to Build Queue: Select any building below, which will be added the queue. Up to 2,000,000 of buildings can be constructed in a single turn.
-[] Barracks: 50,000
-[] Mess Hall: 30,000
-[] Clinic, 20 beds: 80,000
--[] Clinic expansion, 40 beds: 120,000
-[] Shops: 20,000
-[] Brothel: 45,000
-[] Bar, 20 seats: 30,000
-[] Grill, 20 seats: 30,000
-[] Motor Pool: 100,000
--[] Motor Shop: 150,000
--[] Expanded Yard: 20,000
--[] Expanded Shop: 100,000
--[] Armor Shop: 200,000
-[] Armory: 100,000
--[] Explosives Shop: 50,000
--[] Heavy Weapons Shop: 80,000
--[] Tooling Shop: 40,000
--[] Build Shop: 90,000
-[] Drill Field: 5,000
--[] Gym: 20,000
--[] Range: 10,000
--[] Explosives Range: 15,000
--[] Shot House: 25,000
--[] Long Range: 10,000
--[] Crew Served Weapon Range: 10,000
-[] Artillery Park: 30,000
-[] Dirt Strip Field: 2,000,000
-[] Electronic Warfare Center: 1,500,000
-[] Engineer School: 1,000,000

Hire Specialists
[] Pierre LaCours
[] Abdul Al-Jahard
[] Dorrier Farbach
[] Decline to acquire a specialist.