The Mortar is a retrofitted Soviet-era train and the setting of Untouchable, the epilogue mission of HITMAN™ III.
Background[]
According to research gathered by Ether's Acquisitions Manager, the train was nicknamed "The Mortar" after the Baba Yaga's favorite means of transportation.
Originally a KGB black site commissioned by legendary Sixth Column spymaster, Janus, over the years the train was utilized as a top secret data archive and mobile prisoner interrogation facility.
Routes[]
The train runs on a perpetual loop from Zagreb in the West to Irkutsk in the East, cutting across vast uninhabited stretches of Russia, Kazakhstan, Romania, and Mongolia, using a system of decommissioned rail lines.
Post War[]
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the train was stationed near Volgograd until it was purchased by the Ether Corporation as a sample backup storage facility. Following the bombing of Ether's R&D site in Johannesburg, they began refitting the train as as mobile field lab.
HITMAN™ III[]
47 scales the frozen train.
After Agent 47 was intentionally poisoned and incapacitated in Argentina as part of Diana Burnwood's ruse to get him close enough to Arthur Edwards, the former Constant and new supreme leader of Providence, he woke up in the medical carriage of the train. The Mortar was en route to a CICADA facility in Mongolia, where the team that had ambushed Lucas Grey--now Edwards' private bodyguards--originally trained, and where 47 would allegedly join their ranks after being administered Ether's serum to wipe his memories.
Edwards offers the serum.
However, 47 managed to make his way through dozens of guards, uncoupling the train from Edwards' private car and eventually confronting Edwards himself. Afterwards, he manually halted the train and abandoned it on a bridge.
Trivia[]
- Edwards' car contains a version of the Snow Festival Suit hanging up near the exit, a nod to Arrival and the very first suit 47 is seen wearing in the trilogy. He exits the train in this suit by default.
- The Mortar is one of only four maps in the World of Assassination trilogy not to have any security cameras, along with the ICA training facility maps and Thornbridge Manor.
- The train may also be a nod to the train seen in the cinematic Partners, Then?, aboard which Edwards would make his first deal with Diana Burnwood; its aboard The Mortar that would provide Edwards the ultimate fruition of that deal.
- The Mortar's connection to Janus may be a reference to the 1995 James Bond movie, GoldenEye, wherein main antagonist Alec Trevelyan, who also uses the alias Janus, uses a soviet missile train as a mobile base of operations. Sean Bean, the actor portraying Alec Trevelyan in the movie, also appears as an Elusive Target Mark Faba in Hitman 2.
Gallery[]
