March in Ostend was still cold. With two months left before summer vacation, the empty streets were devoid of tourists, and even the passersby appeared listless. The city, known as the "King’s Seaside Resort," presented a desolate scene.
In the northwest corner of Mariakerke, there was a small restaurant called "Sun Beach." As it was only a road away from the beach, it was always packed during the tourist season. But now, it was so quiet that there was only one customer. Two young waiters stood in the corner, whispering and laughing, while the idle owner dozed behind the bar.
Mark Vlaeminck sat under a navy-blue umbrella in the outdoor seating area. After finishing a meal of white wine mussels and fries, he burped, then took a large swig of foamy Chimay Trappist beer, and leaned back in his French oak chair, nodding off.
After finishing his work in Bolivia, he returned to his hometown, spent half of his pay on an old single-mast yacht, and leisurely sailed the North Sea for two weeks. Then, with a few friends, he went hiking along the Meuse River in the Ardennes, followed by a hunting trip in Wallonia.
But less than a month later, he was bored out of his mind, unable to muster interest in anything, and started to spend his days in a haze of alcohol. It wasn’t until a few days ago, after he drunkenly beat up two trouble makers in a bar and threw them out, that he finally felt a bit more alive.
A cold sea breeze, salty and harsh, swept through the street, blowing across the burly Belgian's body and shaking him fully awake. Mark shivered, stood up, tightened his coat, downed the rest of his beer, and left after paying.
He drove his Opel Astra along the N34 highway, heading west towards Westende. Seeing the empty beaches and neat rows of piers on the roadside, his mood grew even more irritable. Like most veterans with many years of service, he had grown weary of the peaceful yet monotonous civilian life and started to miss the adventurous life he once led.
Back at his apartment in Lombardsijde, he took a bottle of "Leffe" pale beer from the fridge, sat on the living room sofa, and started drinking. After finishing the beer, he opened his gun cabinet, took out more than a dozen hunting rifles and handguns, and brought them to the dining room. One by one, he disassembled, cleaned, and oiled them before reassembling them.
It took him over four hours to complete the maintenance, finishing just as dusk approached. Mark glanced at the clock and then went into the room to turn on his computer. He logged into his eBay account to check if there were any bids on the items he was selling. Last week, he had put up a wild boar head trophy from his last hunting trip for auction.
With some time to spare before dinner, he browsed a few online gun shops, then logged into his email. In the "new mail" section, he was surprised to find a message from "Keith Brown." The email contained a long-distance number, starting with 002731, and two English words: "Call me."
As dusk settled over Ostend, night had already fallen in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. In a small hotel called "La Mada," Per Jansen cheerfully hung up the phone and raised a glass to the Karura Forest outside the window, saying, "To Durban!"
He had returned to Nairobi two days ago to attend a work meeting and report to his employer. After two months of running around, his skin was tanned by the African sun, and his once youthful face now appeared several years older, transformed by the local climate.
Shortly after returning from Bolivia, he had signed a three-month contract with Deyang Group to train a 30-member border patrol team near the Masai Amboseli Reserve on the Tanzanian border, tasked with anti-poaching and fighting cross-border smuggling.
The history of mercenaries working in environmental protection dates back to the early 1980s. At that time, the global mercenary business was in decline, and the Kenyan government took the opportunity to hire mercenaries to work in the country's nature reserves, combating poaching and ivory smuggling.
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Last year, an environmental group called "Green Planet" reached an agreement with the Kenyan government: the organization would provide a grant through its nature conservation fund to help combat poaching and the illegal ivory trade. In exchange, the Kenyan government pledged to strengthen border patrols and take measures against illegal ivory sales.
Ordinarily, companies as large as Deyang wouldn't be interested in such low-profit work. However, the private military contractor industry had garnered increased attention in recent years, with companies like Deyang, much like Blackwater, facing widespread criticism in the media.
In 2000, the UN International Police in Bosnia exposed Deyang Group for forcing minors to engage in prostitution and providing sexual bribes to UN officials in order to win a $15 million police training contract. This scandal has recently been turned into a film, scheduled to be released in the US in 2010.
In 2006, more than 1,600 civilians from Esmeraldas Province and Sucumbíos Province in Ecuador filed a lawsuit in a Florida federal court, accusing Deyang Group of spraying herbicides from airplanes during drug eradication efforts, causing harm to local residents.
2007 was a tumultuous year for Deyang. In February, the US Government Accountability Office accused Deyang of wasting resources and committing fraud during its police training work in Iraq. In October, the company’s employees, while protecting a convoy for the US State Department, recklessly killed a taxi driver in Baghdad.
Mismanagement had led Deyang to lay off employees twice, yet the situation remained dire. To open new business avenues, the company’s executives believed that engaging in more "noble" work would help improve their image. They heavily publicized their role in maintaining order and assisting with reconstruction in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, as well as their involvement in counter-narcotics operations in Afghanistan and South America, while also taking on some unprofitable "PR" tasks.
Compared to working in Iraq or Afghanistan on "Protect jobs," training assignments were much safer and more relaxed, supposedly a "simple task." But for Jansen, his time in Kenya had been neither enjoyable nor fulfilling.
Half of the patrol members didn't understand English, and the rest, besides basic daily conversation, had a vocabulary smaller than that of a high school student. Since Jansen didn’t speak Swahili and the assigned interpreter arrived late, the first month of training relied heavily on gestures.
Additionally, the rampant corruption among Kenyan officials left Jansen fuming. According to the contract, the necessary supplies for the patrol were to be provided by the Border Police Headquarters and the Amboseli Reserve management in the border city of Namanga. However, after passing through several layers of graft, the remaining supplies were barely enough to meet basic needs.
Take weapons, for example. They only received 26 old AK-47s made in China, Cuba, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia, and each person wasn’t even assigned their own rifle. Furthermore, each rifle came with only one magazine, and they had no cleaning or maintenance tools. Extra magazines, gun oil, and even cleaning rods had to be bought out-of-pocket. The government was also incredibly stingy with ammunition, and they had to scrape together around 3,000 rounds from Nairobi and Namanga, using them sparingly.
It took over a month to get transportation for the patrol, eventually receiving two rusty Land Rovers and a Toyota Land Cruiser 40 that was at least 30 years old. The condition of the two Land Rovers was appalling — the exhaust pipes spewed black smoke as soon as the engines started, and they required constant revving to prevent stalling when idling. The Land Cruiser was functional, but its interior had been stripped bare. Apart from the driver’s seat, all the other seats had disappeared long ago, and makeshift seats were welded from steel rods and thick iron plates.
The most unbearable aspect was the widespread bureaucracy in Kenya, where even the most trivial expenses had to be reported and approved at multiple levels, resulting in extremely low administrative efficiency. Once, Jansen had to fill out four different forms to get a 3,000 Kenyan shilling fuel expense reimbursed, and the request still had to be sent to Nairobi for approval.
However, bureaucracy wasn’t all bad — at least the twice-monthly meetings gave Jansen an excuse to leave the makeshift outpost built from tin sheets and spend two days at a hotel in Nairobi with hot showers and cold beer. He was in a good mood now, not just because the annoying job was nearing its end, but mainly because of the email he received that afternoon.
They had just spoken on the phone. Keith had told him about a new job and wanted him to head to Durban as soon as this assignment was over, leaving him a meeting address. Keith also promised to cover all his expenses, and even if Jansen didn’t take the job, he would be provided with a ticket back to the US.
Notes:
*Deyang Group (DynCorp International LLC): A private American military contractor.*