Black Powder Red Earth: Awbari returns with its second chapter, and it might not be what you’re expecting if you’ve followed past BPRE stories. Instead of the usual blend of backdoor politics, mission briefings and tactical violence, Awbari Book 2 takes place almost entirely on the Cold Harbor base and features a surprising amount of insight into the contractors and their preparatory methods in the slow build-up to their next operation.

After an opening act that sees Cold Harbor neutralizing a squad of Chinese mercenaries working for the insurgency, the rest of the chapter is spent on the base as we continue to follow the three main contractors: Kino, Cobol and Pro. The next target in their campaign to take down the Aayari insurgency is Naji El Taib, a UK-born terrorist recruiter, key figure in funneling foreign fighters into Awbari, and overall just a very nasty guy. Awbari Book 2 is about all that happens in the lead-up to the raid, and to that end we are treated to an incredibly nuanced look at the Cold Harbor operators and their intelligence gathering techniques.

BPRE’s minimalist storytelling style is out in full force here, treating the reader as a fly on the wall without spelling out plot details within the sometimes inscrutable shop talk. In one of the chapter’s more memorable moments, Kino carefully studies surveillance imagery in the quiet of his room. The scene is portrayed in more detail than you would expect, and that is when one realizes that Awbari Book 2, despite having minimal action or significant plot movement, shows how intelligence gathering is just as critical as the boots-on-the-ground carnage most people expect. Again, there’s absolutely zero handholding to help you understand what exactly they’re doing, and in more than a few instances I found myself having to carefully scrutinize the information a character was reading on a monitor or tablet.

After spending much time in the backrooms of these ice-cold killers, the story doesn’t forget to remind us that there still is a moral element to all this. After a mission briefing, Cobol explains to Kino that Naji El-Taib was formerly an ISIS sex trafficker, and that every Iraqi town Cobol and his comrades liberated bore the gruesome scars of his atrocities. Cobol not-too-subtly implies that he and his Iraqi compatriots want Naji dead, but Kino reminds him that they’re being paid to make every effort to bring him in alive to further develop intelligence on the Aayari network. The Cold Harbor operators may be ruthlessly professional and willing to manipulate and deceive anyone who can lead them to their target, but in a region soaked in centuries of tribal warfare, one could consider their methods to be mild in the face of the enemy’s depravity.

Of course, being a PMC isn’t just about the bloodbaths, but about the bling, too. The contractors are rewarded for their work not just in payment, but in glorious Rolex Pro-Hunters; a striking reminder of the contrasts that define private military work. On one hand, the people operate with the kind of extreme precision and lethality you would only find in the highest tiers of military special operations, while on the other, they shower themselves in rewards like Wall Street bankers.

Visually, Awbari 2 is rich in a much different color palette than its predecessor. While Book 1 was often drenched in orange and red hues, this chapter is overwhelmingly painted in an ice cold blue and gray. We’re knee deep in the secretive backrooms, bearing witness to the Machiavellian machinations that culminate in Cold Harbor’s red-eyed assassins slaughtering Islamic extremists and Chinese mercenaries with terrifying precision. To even further drive home the slower and more introspective pace, the book devotes significant space to showing characters’ nonverbal reactions to each other. The amount of dialogue continues to be relatively minimal, leaving you to fill in the spaces of silence with your own careful study of the plot.

If there’s one moment that sums up Book 2 in a nutshell, it’s during a curiously lengthy section in which the characters share their preferred ways of making coffee. Pro, arguably the most crass and outspoken of the three who loves custom cars as much as Rolexes, uses a coffee maker for its speed. Kino, on the other hand, prefers to French press his coffee. It’s a slower and more complex process, but yields better tasting coffee. Actual execution must be preceded with meticulous planning. It’s a microcosm of the chapter in general: slow and complex, all in service to what is surely going to be a thunderous climax in the next chapter. If the previous series, Yemen, is anything to go by, we’re likely to see unexpected twists, plans going awry, and copious gratuitous violence. Here’s to Awbari Book 3.

Learn more about Black Powder Red Earth and purchase at the official website