Sheppard emerged from the jungle and on to a road about ten minutes from Bekalo. The sun was starting to rise in the sky now and he put on a pair of aviator style sunglasses to lessen the morning glare. The walk went quickly and he soon found himself amongst the bustling crowd of people going about their morning business. Guns were everywhere, he could see that much already. Men armed with AKs stood by doors and on rooftops everywhere, technicals with machine guns would part the crowd with their horn on a regular basis and dotted here and there were the white mercenaries; some armed to the teeth with kevlar and modern assault rifles, others clearly a bit more down on their luck. Being tasked with a mission of such gravitas, Sheppard wished he didn't fall fall into the second category. Looking for information, he decided to head for the town's market, the sound of gunfire would be his guide. Arms dealers tended to fire off weapons as demonstrations or to attract attention and no one else seemed to react to the bursts of AK fire so Sheppard assumed it wasn't a battle. From his briefing the situation didn't seem to be quite that bad just yet, at least not in the cities.

After a few minutes of pushing his way through the crowd, he found himself in the market. The narrow alleys between stalls were packed with people, but at least the canopies of the stalls blocked the sun, making it a lot cooler. Evidence of the Scorpion was even more prevalent here than in the streets. Packed between stalls selling fruit there were tables covered with ammunition belts, AK-47s, AK-74s, RPKs, RPGs, pretty much every soviet weapon under the sun seemed to have found its way to Africa and Asia after the fall of communism. Sheppard noticed the occasional suspicious glance being thrown his way, but he didn't seem too out of place, mercenaries were still dotted around resupplying at various stalls. 
"Hey," he said, stopping at a food stall with a mini-fridge. "I'll take some Coke if US dollars are okay?" The stall owner nodded and held up a finger. Sheppard handed over $5 and got 5 bottles back, stuffing them into his backpack. Coke tended to be cheaper than water in a lot of African countries, or at least safer. Sheppard remembered reading somewhere that there were only two countries in the world where it wasn't sold officially, Cuba and North Korea. "Good old American Capitalism," he said smiling to himself as he made his way over to an arms dealer. These guys probably wouldn't take anything other than diamonds or gold but at the very least he might learn something. 

The dealer saw him coming and picked up an AKS-74u, showing it to Sheppard for a second before firing off a short burst into the sky. "You like? Very cheap, good weapon," the man said, his grasp of English clearly not completely perfect. 
"I'm good thanks," Sheppard said, he had less than $100 on him which wouldn't be enough even if the man accepted them. "I only just got here, what's the current situation with the UPL and the PUFfE?" He asked. "I couldn't get CNN the past few months," he added thinking back to his prison cell in South East Asia. This country was in the process of fucking itself up but he couldn't help but be glad to be here.
"War very soon," the Arms Dealer replied. "You need weapon, mine very cheap," he added clearly going for the sell.
"Right, thanks," Sheppard said waving a quick goodbye and heading off back into the crowd. 

With his information gathering going nowhere, Sheppard decided to find a bar. It may be early but he'd been up for almost 24 hours straight now so he figured it was practically evening for him, plus other mercenaries might be there. They'd probably be more helpful than the locals when it came to information on the Scorpion and he might even find some of the others that the letter had mentioned. Sheppard wandered for a while before coming across what seemed to be a town square. Centred around a fountain, the square was rather small, however Sheppard's gaze was drawn to a woman sitting on the fountain. She was older than most and white, she stuck out even with all the foreign mercenaries in the country. Like Sheppard she was relatively clean, she couldn't hadn't been here long. They were dressed similarly too. Sheppard was wearing tan cargo pants, a black t-shirt and his black tactical vest, also identical to the woman accept for colour. Her weapons stuck out the most to Sheppard though, a pistol and a machete. 

[i]Maybe...[/i] he thought to himself, turning his eyes to a bar sign a little way down a road leading from the square. He headed inside and took a seat at the bar. The bar was filled with armed mercenaries, he ordered a Busweiser and lit up a cigarette. He sat at the bar, sipping his beer, trying to listen in on any of the mercs' conversations.