Caleb Schumann’s Reviews > The Katanga Run > Status Update

But if Mike thinks Unione Miniere is the only player he'd be sorely mistaken. We see a short call between the leadership of Western; they've resolved that, if Lumumba can't deliver their concessions, they'll deny the resource market to their competitors by engineering a Civil War that will make mineral extraction in Katanga untenable. Capital sure is pernicious, huh?

Mike and Duclair head off for an arms deal in paris- Mike quickly is intimated with two things- one, the Unione Miniere has vast resources with which to acquire planes for Katanga's budding Air Service, and two, his hopes are a little too lofty. Most of the people in Tshombe's administration seem to only see him as Chantal's pet, and he won't end up leading their fleet. He's pretty dejected & humiliated.

Back to Kane, we find out that Lumumba has been rescued, but his rule over the Congo is one only in name; Kasa-Vubu and the army hold him more or less hostage. Kane and Suzy fuck the daylights out of eachother and Kane gets some information for his "troubles"- Barlow is being sent to Katanga & UN firmly behind Lumumba. He reports to IMEX & Western he'll explore concessions there to hedge bets on cross-congo contract.

Back to Kane, we find out that Lumumba has been rescued, but his rule over the Congo is one only in name; Kasa-Vubu and the army hold him more or less hostage. Kane and Suzy fuck the daylights out of eachother and Kane gets some information for his "troubles"- Barlow is being sent to Katanga & UN firmly behind Lumumba. He reports to IMEX & Western he'll explore concessions there to hedge bets on cross-congo contract.

-and evacuate some of the wounded to Elizabethville, and he does without issue. Returning, he goes to Chantal and is taken off to a party with Tshombe et al, where he advises him to buy T6s for air support before hearing Lumumba's been overthrown by one General Mobutu- uh oh. The next day he flies again, headed to help with the bridge repairs, and finds the village a ruin, seeing corpses strewn about. The gendarmes-

He's able to sound off a warning just in time as the Baluba spring their trap, all twenty of them making a sudden charge as the column comes to a halt, a firefight breaking out between the surprised gendarmes and them. A few go down, but more of the rebels, and by the time those bearing spears and machetes reach the fore they're too depleted to overwhelm Hermann and the men around him. They tell Mike to come down-

Mike is assigned to provide overwatch for a few columns of Gendarmes slogging up into High Katanga; Baluba territory. They're headed to repair a bridge, and on the way he flies by a little village. Nothing seems amiss, but he can't shake the idea that something feels off- too calm, too at ease.. peformatively so. Just as the first column makes its approach he spots two dozen rebels in the bush by the road!

Kane manages to convince Lumumba to sign the agreement, but soon learns from a woman employee of ONUC named Suzy (who fucks the everloving shit out of him in his hotel room a bit after they party together) that Lumumba is planning to invade Katanga in support of the Baluba insurgency, having secured substantial soviet backing. Frightful stuff!

Mike arrives in the Katanga and visits with Chantal, discussing the job; rather unsurprisingly, the offer was a bit of a dupe. They want him to be a fighter pilot, not Tshombe's personal one. He also meets his new bodyguard, a beefy boer named Hermann Schmidt- the two watch the arrival of Hammarskjold in Elisabethville for a meeting with Tshombe, poised to evacuate if things go hot, but no violence occurs.

We find that Barlow has become something of a hotshot in the UN, rising through Canadian Civil service and being personally tapped by Hammerskjöld. An idealist as ever, Kane finds him useful, but rather irritating. After their meeting Kane gets Lumumba alone and with help from an aide (who he bribed) manages to get him to sign a letter of intent to give the concessions to Western.