Congo - Kinshasa - Part II

JBA Assignment: Find CIA Agent Hisham Hamza

The bad thing here is that Moss and company know that your ally Hisham is a mole for the CIA. He's making a run for the imperial palace, where he hopes to contact the U.S. Embassy and get the hell out of this mess. The good thing is that you have no more "avoid alerts" objectives here. If you don't particularly care about your stealth score (and by this point in the game it's hard to imagine you will), you can be seen by the guards as often as you like without having to worry about failing an objective. Unfortunately, that's all too likely a proposition here, since the battles between the rebels and the government have caused plenty of soldiers to flood the streets, and the mid-day lighting will afford you very few places to hide.

At the outset here, watch the two rebels destroy the government troop carrier, then wait for one of them to retreat back to the right before moving forward. The other rebel will be obscured from your vision, but not from your radar. He'll eventually start moving to the right himself, but he'll move slowly, allowing you to creep up behind him and knock him out.

NSA Secondary Objective: Prevent The Execution

Around the corner from there, you'll spot an RPG rebel up in a window, and another shirtless rebel in the street below, telling him to fire on a nearby building. Use the noise as cover for you to duck into the alleyway on your right. If you check your 3D map, you should see a concentration of five or six bodies in the area, but don't worry too much; three of these are actually hostages.

Knocking out the hostages is effectively the same as saving them, even if the rebels don't get knocked out themselves.

If you don't particularly care about the hostages or losing a bit of trust with the NSA, you can let the rebels off their captives, but if you're like us and would feel bad about letting them die, you can rescue them. To do so, creep around to the rear of the stack of boxes nearby. You only have a few seconds to distract, disable, or kill the rebels here. We liked to plop down a gas grenade at their feet, launching it from our SC-20k. The smoke radius is enough to disable both of the soldiers, as well as all of the civilians in most cases. If that doesn't work, then you might have to resort to sticky shockers or airfoils to stun both of them.

Stay in the relative shadows of the wall behind the hostages as you move down the alleyway; if the enemies in the street spot you, they'll give chase. Even if they do see you, you can probably run for cover and disable them as they pursue you.

Dancing In The Streets

That's a hell of a bang for a frag grenade!

Check your 3D map. You have two paths to take here; one that leads through the street to the right of the end of the alley, and another one that'll have you jumping up to a window to move through some enclosed rooms. If you can reach the window, it's a far better option, because the street path will be overflowing with violence.

When you hop up to the window, creep around the corner until you reach the rebel with the blown-off legs. He's in a lot of pain, and he's decided to end it with a bang, as you'll be able to tell when the grenade rolls out of his hands. Immediately back up a bit until you have a wall between yourself and it, then wait for it to go off before creeping forward.

NSA Secondary Objective: Save Woman On The Bus

The tank doesn't threaten you, but you can blow it up with a grenade anyway, if you wish.

You should be overlooking a pair of buses in the street at this point, which are situated behind a government tank, which is itself supported by a group of soldiers. Another squad is down the alley across the way; this appears to be the last redoubt of these soldiers, although that tank will likely hold off the rebels for a while. You're going to have to get past them, though, which isn't going to be easy unless you're willing to expose yourself to a bit of fire.

Your ultimate goal here is to reach an exposed sewer pipe that sits kitty-corner from where you are, on the opposite side of the tank. After avoiding the grenade, flip on your radar and take a look at the signals for the soldiers around the tank. After a couple of seconds, they'll all be dead, leaving only the tanks and the rebels that it's firing on, along with the soldiers near the sewer.

Drop down, but don't bother with the hatch on the bus; just hit the top of the bus, then drop down behind it so that it's between you and the rebels. Now, the objective here is somewhat time-sensitive, so if you want to pick up some NSA trust and save the woman on the bus, you'll need to get moving.

Anyway, if you want our advice, it's to just book it and run like hell across the street. Get behind the first bus, move between the buses to get behind the tank, spot the opening of the sewer, and stand up and run like hell! It's possible - even likely - that the soldiers there are going to spot you, but if you run like hell, you should be able to duck into the ditch and move into the first covered area before they shoot you. If your light is still flashing red, pop a smoke grenade in the next uncovered section of the ditch to move on. After moving on a bit, you'll reach the end of the sewer; hop up onto the ground to your right to move on.

The soldiers here will likely spot you as you run past them towards the bus; you can pop smoke if you're worried about it. If you stand and run, though, they shouldn't be able to hurt you overmuch. Just get into the bus, free the woman from under the chair, and follow her out of the bus to the nearby street.