Any pair of two chosen from the mercs below can do the sweep, I ranked them by versatility and overall strength, but really, they are all worth your cash, even if they drop out of the main team, they will be very strong defenders:



Wolf: Awesome with shotgun (in running stance!), medic and mechanic with solid combat skills and stats. Perfect for squad leader. Keep him at shotgun duty, he's the best merc in the game to kick a door in, but don't be shy to give him a rifle to switch to for longer range combat.

Thor: A proper medic (70 skill) with great base stats and good shooting skills. Bring him up to 80 Med quickly to be able to use largest medkits. You will need to replace his Desert Eagle with a rifle very quickly, after that he can double for a sniper throughout the first week.

Sidney: A cheap sniper with basic medical skills, and a very powerful Gunslinger trait and an awesome Enfield rifle. Perfect to cover Wolf's shotgun rushes, capable of headshots at medium range but also able to gun enemies down shooting rapidly from his hip. Versatile, powerful, and a gentleman.

Blood: Melee Expert, able to easily dispatch to god's kingdom any guy with an axe, even when hitting with the butt of his weapon, excellent stats, basic medical skills so he can patch your medic if your medic gets shot. No need to keep a knife on him, you can as well tell him to use his weapon as a club and he will slaughter easier enemies without much hassle. With a machete, as long as it's a 1vs1 fight, very few enemies can scratch him before they die, so don't hesitate to tell him to close down, just provide him some covering fire and... as soon as he gets close to the guy, there will be blood. His Runner trait is useful outside combat when you run from house to house ransacking them.

Meltdown: She's an explosives expert, starting with a bazooka (don't sell it! missiles aren't that expensive since all grenade launchers, rocket rifles and LAWs in the game use the same ammo (lol)). She has good stats and is a solid shooter. She prefers to work alone (very good morale when alone in a squad), and is great at defending sectors after the initial rush is done because she can lay some minefields around, or just use her LAW to blow up the entire enemy unit. A very unpleasant lady, but noone kills groups of mobs faster than her.

Barry: Another explosives guy with good basic stats but a poor shooter, a lot of people pick him for their teams of three, but he can function in a pair just as well, so you can quickly catch up with his mechanical skills. Poor man's Wolf.

Malice: A very cheap mercenary with excellent shooting skills, good for covering fire, but not much else. Poor man's Sidney.

Fox: I know, I know. But she can Sneak very well, is a solid medic and an SMG expert, which means you can give her a silenced MP5 or UZI, tell her to sneak to flank enemies and then as your main merc attacks them, tell her to quickly stand up and start spraying them with cheap and common 9mm ammo from her hip, which makes short work of even bigger clusters of opponents. Improve her shooting skills or she won't be of much use against regular army.