Post by Trask on Aug 31, 2006 9:38:43 GMT -5
The jungle steamed.
Greyish, pre-dawn light danced in thin strands on the leaf littered floor, the thick canopy overhead almost completely obscuring the sky. Ten thousand species of life crawled, jumped and swam through the humid air, either fleeing from a predator or in pursuit of prey. Five of those predators were men. Their painted faces and jungle camo made them all but invisible amidst the mass of tropical foliage. Each held a rifle easily in trained hands and not one of them so much as twitched a muscle.
A huge dragon-fly buzzed to a stop on Trask's shoulder but he barely gave it a glance.
Everything was quiet. Exactly as he'd hoped it would be.
Convinced that they had gone undetected he gestured a series of hand signals. Two green and black man-shapes detached themselves from the undergrowth and began circling the target.
It had taken days to infiltrate this close to the Cartel's smuggling post and now that they were within striking distance he intended to make it a clean sweep. In an hour the compound would be burning and they would be long gone.
He edged forward and pulled heavy binoculars from the webbing around his waist. They took a moment to focus and then the nest of buildings swam into view. A warehouse, a bunk-house, three out houses, a single tower and a helipad. One, two, three guards on patrol around the perimeter and one in the tower. He looked harder. Two in the tower. Sly bastard; there was another with his feet up inside the little room.
The bunk-house would hold at least another dozen men, possibly as many as twice that number.
He glanced sideways at the sergeant and offered him the binoculars.
The Sergeant took the binoculars and studied the compound in much the same way as his CO had just done. His face was expressionless as he lowered the lenses.
"I say we take out the ones in the tower first," he said, in a low, barely audible voice. "They're the ones who have the most firing cover. Take them out, we eliminate the main threat to our boys. We're on a level, then."
Sergeant Lucas Bishop was like that. Taciturn to the point of stoic, only offering his opinion either when it was asked for directly, or when he was confident he was right. In the time Trask had known Bishop, he'd found the younger man to be a consummate Marine, deadly and direct.
Just what he liked in his troops.
Trask nodded once.
"Work your way down to there," he indicated the massive, rotting trunk of a fallen tree that lay parallel to the edge of the compound. Every four minutes one of the patrolling guards passed right by it.
"You, Mathers and Green take the walkers, Klusky and I will stay here and clear the tower."
He scanned the compound again. The sun would cross the horizon in just under fifteen minutes. They needed to be done before then, before the rest of the troops started waking up.
"Go."
Lucas Bishop went.
Mathers, Green and Bishop. The strike force. They'd worked together for several years now and formed quite the triangulation team. They closed in on their prey like the silent deadly killing machines that they were. By dint of voiceless signals, and by some unerring sense of working together, they split out and took a guard each.
Within four minutes, the three walkers were dead, each killed the same way: instant death by neck breaking. Bishop, who was the only one of the three still in Trask's direct line of sight, held his hand out in a thumbs-up gesture. With that positive sense of direction he'd often displayed, he found his two fellows and waited for the elimination of the guards in the tower. Any second now they would notice the absence of the patrols.
The soft pop-crack of a silenced shot disturbed the heavy air only slightly and The walker in the tower toppled soundlessly from his lofty perch. The second man was almost on his feet, already unslinging his own rifle when a second shot knocked him back into the chair with a chink of punctured glass.
There would be no alarm this morning.
Trask and Klusky shouldered their weapons and slid through the vegetation, down the soft earthen bank and joined Bishop on the perimeter. He listened; the feathery beat of some tropical bird disturbed by their passing, the buzz and chirp of insects, the dawn chorus of a family of monkeys. No human life stirred.
"Klusky, secure the tower," Trask said softly, "Bishop, Green, you take the warehouse, incendiary charges, delta pattern."
"Mathers and I are going to deliver the wake-up call."
Klusky was already gone, hunched over his weapon he crossed the open space to the ladder in seconds and began his ascent. Trask nodded in satisfaction and waved the rest on before breaking from cover.
Green moved round to the south side of the warehouse on a signal from the Sergeant, who shouldered his rifle, hefting its weight in his hand, a sure sign that he was concentrating. It was easy enough to look in through the slightly tinted windows and get a feel for the interior layout of the place.
It was what he'd been trained for, after all.
There were no visibly obvious guards inside the warehouse as Bishop slid inside so quietly not even the air stirred. He began the job of laying charges, setting a timer of six minutes. Delta pattern.
Green could be seen over at the far end of the warehouse and still there were no hostile encounters.
Bishop found that faintly unnerving.
Trask slid up to the bunk-house door and watched as Mathers moved to the opposite end. This was where stealth ended and surprise began. He pulled a tear gas bomb from the webbing and held it, open palmed for the other soldier to see. He pulled an identical grenade and prepared to throw.
Up in the tower Klusky pushed the dead man out of his chair and examined the pile of slightly bloody papers the body had covered. Manifests, troop movements and scheduled pick-up times were listed. Excellent. It was all the evidence they would need to close this particular business down for good. Then one of the figures caught his eye.
Shit.
Trask had ordered radio silence since their insertion, but now there was nobody alive or awake to monitor them so it probably didn't matter. If it did he'd take the reprimand later. This was more important.
"We're going to have company," Klusky hissed into the com.
He checked the numbers again.
Then he looked out the window.
The helicopter, while still only a black shape in the early morning sky, was approaching fast. He gave them thirty seconds before they'd start hearing the engine noise and a couple of minutes after that before it arrived.
From inside the warehouse, Bishop keyed radio silence three times to confirm he'd received and understood and then looked up at the sound of the helicopter blades cutting into the silence of the morning. The helicopter would, no doubt, wake up the soldiers in the bunkhouse – the soldiers who would then doubtless launch themselves in a full-on attack on Mathers and Trask.
The warehouse charges were set. Bishop knew his orders and knew the punishment for disobedience. Set the charges, clear the area, don't hang around.
He'd be damned.
Trask wasn't only his CO, he was deeply fond of the man, both as a friend and as a teacher. He'd go to Hell before he fled the area. His decision made, he indicated that Green should get out of the warehouse and head to the assigned meeting point. He pointed up at the sky and passed a hand in front of his eyes.
Stay low, keep hidden.
Then he made his way toward the bunkhouse.
Trask frowned in annoyance at the breach of radio silence but acknowledged the importance of the news. The chopper wouldn't carry many men, but it would wake those within the bunk-house. Time to go. He nodded once to Mathers, pulled the pin from the bomb and lobbed it through the window. A second later there was a second crash as an identical bomb spiraled in through the opposite door.
There was a muffled bang, and then a hiss of escaping gas as the canisters expelled their noxious cargo.
Then the shouting started.
Trask and Mathers jumped back and raised their weapons; anybody leaving the building was going to have one hell of a surprise. Tendrils of gas crept out through the broken glass and drifted in the still air. Then the door burst open and men came stumbling out, clutching their faces, choking and gagging.
There was no mercy.
The rattle of automatic fire filled the air and the soldiers dropped like stones. They never stood a chance.
In seconds the building was clear, nothing moved in or around the bunk-house. Sixteen men lay dead and dying, their bodies crowding the shattered doorways. Trask lowered his weapon and listened; the chopper was closer now, much closer. They needed to be gone.
Then one of the out-house doors burst open and one man surged from within, screaming obscenities and clutching a pistol.
He didn't last long.
A single, silencer shot to the back of the head took him out instantly. As he pitched forward, his arms outstretched, the shape of Lucas Bishop became apparent behind him, his pistol still smoking.
"Suggest we beat a hasty retreat, sir," said the ever-calm Sergeant. "That chopper's less than a minute or two away from landing. We can scoot round the western perimeter without them seeing us."
Trask turned and looked down at the body of the man who had almost killed him, then up at the sergeant.
"You left your post soldier," he said to Bishop, though the tiny upturn at the corner of his mouth revealed that Sergeant Bishop wouldn't be getting a reprimand any time soon.
Mathers joined them followed shortly by Klusky who had stashed the appropriate paperwork among his kit.
"Let's get the hell out of here."
The four soldiers swept around the perimeter, keeping low and using the vegetation to hide their movements from the approaching helicopter. A minute later and they had joined Green at his position.
Trask glanced over at Bishop.
"Wait until they are on the ground."
He snapped a sharp salute and slid the pistol back into its holster. Unslinging the automatic from around his shoulder, he dropped to his belly and inched forward until the helicopter was in his sights.
"One minute to detonation," said Green, urgently.
"You should all go," said Bishop. "My aim is better and you know how good I am at withstanding blast zones."
He paused, as though realising he had just said something he shouldn't have, then shook his head.
Trask only paused a second before nodding and waving the squad back. Their evacuation zone was a half hour march away across difficult terrain. Bishop would have to catch up.
"See you at the Evac sergeant, get the job done and get out."
Then they melted back into the steaming jungle.
Greyish, pre-dawn light danced in thin strands on the leaf littered floor, the thick canopy overhead almost completely obscuring the sky. Ten thousand species of life crawled, jumped and swam through the humid air, either fleeing from a predator or in pursuit of prey. Five of those predators were men. Their painted faces and jungle camo made them all but invisible amidst the mass of tropical foliage. Each held a rifle easily in trained hands and not one of them so much as twitched a muscle.
A huge dragon-fly buzzed to a stop on Trask's shoulder but he barely gave it a glance.
Everything was quiet. Exactly as he'd hoped it would be.
Convinced that they had gone undetected he gestured a series of hand signals. Two green and black man-shapes detached themselves from the undergrowth and began circling the target.
It had taken days to infiltrate this close to the Cartel's smuggling post and now that they were within striking distance he intended to make it a clean sweep. In an hour the compound would be burning and they would be long gone.
He edged forward and pulled heavy binoculars from the webbing around his waist. They took a moment to focus and then the nest of buildings swam into view. A warehouse, a bunk-house, three out houses, a single tower and a helipad. One, two, three guards on patrol around the perimeter and one in the tower. He looked harder. Two in the tower. Sly bastard; there was another with his feet up inside the little room.
The bunk-house would hold at least another dozen men, possibly as many as twice that number.
He glanced sideways at the sergeant and offered him the binoculars.
The Sergeant took the binoculars and studied the compound in much the same way as his CO had just done. His face was expressionless as he lowered the lenses.
"I say we take out the ones in the tower first," he said, in a low, barely audible voice. "They're the ones who have the most firing cover. Take them out, we eliminate the main threat to our boys. We're on a level, then."
Sergeant Lucas Bishop was like that. Taciturn to the point of stoic, only offering his opinion either when it was asked for directly, or when he was confident he was right. In the time Trask had known Bishop, he'd found the younger man to be a consummate Marine, deadly and direct.
Just what he liked in his troops.
Trask nodded once.
"Work your way down to there," he indicated the massive, rotting trunk of a fallen tree that lay parallel to the edge of the compound. Every four minutes one of the patrolling guards passed right by it.
"You, Mathers and Green take the walkers, Klusky and I will stay here and clear the tower."
He scanned the compound again. The sun would cross the horizon in just under fifteen minutes. They needed to be done before then, before the rest of the troops started waking up.
"Go."
Lucas Bishop went.
Mathers, Green and Bishop. The strike force. They'd worked together for several years now and formed quite the triangulation team. They closed in on their prey like the silent deadly killing machines that they were. By dint of voiceless signals, and by some unerring sense of working together, they split out and took a guard each.
Within four minutes, the three walkers were dead, each killed the same way: instant death by neck breaking. Bishop, who was the only one of the three still in Trask's direct line of sight, held his hand out in a thumbs-up gesture. With that positive sense of direction he'd often displayed, he found his two fellows and waited for the elimination of the guards in the tower. Any second now they would notice the absence of the patrols.
The soft pop-crack of a silenced shot disturbed the heavy air only slightly and The walker in the tower toppled soundlessly from his lofty perch. The second man was almost on his feet, already unslinging his own rifle when a second shot knocked him back into the chair with a chink of punctured glass.
There would be no alarm this morning.
Trask and Klusky shouldered their weapons and slid through the vegetation, down the soft earthen bank and joined Bishop on the perimeter. He listened; the feathery beat of some tropical bird disturbed by their passing, the buzz and chirp of insects, the dawn chorus of a family of monkeys. No human life stirred.
"Klusky, secure the tower," Trask said softly, "Bishop, Green, you take the warehouse, incendiary charges, delta pattern."
"Mathers and I are going to deliver the wake-up call."
Klusky was already gone, hunched over his weapon he crossed the open space to the ladder in seconds and began his ascent. Trask nodded in satisfaction and waved the rest on before breaking from cover.
Green moved round to the south side of the warehouse on a signal from the Sergeant, who shouldered his rifle, hefting its weight in his hand, a sure sign that he was concentrating. It was easy enough to look in through the slightly tinted windows and get a feel for the interior layout of the place.
It was what he'd been trained for, after all.
There were no visibly obvious guards inside the warehouse as Bishop slid inside so quietly not even the air stirred. He began the job of laying charges, setting a timer of six minutes. Delta pattern.
Green could be seen over at the far end of the warehouse and still there were no hostile encounters.
Bishop found that faintly unnerving.
Trask slid up to the bunk-house door and watched as Mathers moved to the opposite end. This was where stealth ended and surprise began. He pulled a tear gas bomb from the webbing and held it, open palmed for the other soldier to see. He pulled an identical grenade and prepared to throw.
Up in the tower Klusky pushed the dead man out of his chair and examined the pile of slightly bloody papers the body had covered. Manifests, troop movements and scheduled pick-up times were listed. Excellent. It was all the evidence they would need to close this particular business down for good. Then one of the figures caught his eye.
Shit.
Trask had ordered radio silence since their insertion, but now there was nobody alive or awake to monitor them so it probably didn't matter. If it did he'd take the reprimand later. This was more important.
"We're going to have company," Klusky hissed into the com.
He checked the numbers again.
Then he looked out the window.
The helicopter, while still only a black shape in the early morning sky, was approaching fast. He gave them thirty seconds before they'd start hearing the engine noise and a couple of minutes after that before it arrived.
From inside the warehouse, Bishop keyed radio silence three times to confirm he'd received and understood and then looked up at the sound of the helicopter blades cutting into the silence of the morning. The helicopter would, no doubt, wake up the soldiers in the bunkhouse – the soldiers who would then doubtless launch themselves in a full-on attack on Mathers and Trask.
The warehouse charges were set. Bishop knew his orders and knew the punishment for disobedience. Set the charges, clear the area, don't hang around.
He'd be damned.
Trask wasn't only his CO, he was deeply fond of the man, both as a friend and as a teacher. He'd go to Hell before he fled the area. His decision made, he indicated that Green should get out of the warehouse and head to the assigned meeting point. He pointed up at the sky and passed a hand in front of his eyes.
Stay low, keep hidden.
Then he made his way toward the bunkhouse.
Trask frowned in annoyance at the breach of radio silence but acknowledged the importance of the news. The chopper wouldn't carry many men, but it would wake those within the bunk-house. Time to go. He nodded once to Mathers, pulled the pin from the bomb and lobbed it through the window. A second later there was a second crash as an identical bomb spiraled in through the opposite door.
There was a muffled bang, and then a hiss of escaping gas as the canisters expelled their noxious cargo.
Then the shouting started.
Trask and Mathers jumped back and raised their weapons; anybody leaving the building was going to have one hell of a surprise. Tendrils of gas crept out through the broken glass and drifted in the still air. Then the door burst open and men came stumbling out, clutching their faces, choking and gagging.
There was no mercy.
The rattle of automatic fire filled the air and the soldiers dropped like stones. They never stood a chance.
In seconds the building was clear, nothing moved in or around the bunk-house. Sixteen men lay dead and dying, their bodies crowding the shattered doorways. Trask lowered his weapon and listened; the chopper was closer now, much closer. They needed to be gone.
Then one of the out-house doors burst open and one man surged from within, screaming obscenities and clutching a pistol.
He didn't last long.
A single, silencer shot to the back of the head took him out instantly. As he pitched forward, his arms outstretched, the shape of Lucas Bishop became apparent behind him, his pistol still smoking.
"Suggest we beat a hasty retreat, sir," said the ever-calm Sergeant. "That chopper's less than a minute or two away from landing. We can scoot round the western perimeter without them seeing us."
Trask turned and looked down at the body of the man who had almost killed him, then up at the sergeant.
"You left your post soldier," he said to Bishop, though the tiny upturn at the corner of his mouth revealed that Sergeant Bishop wouldn't be getting a reprimand any time soon.
Mathers joined them followed shortly by Klusky who had stashed the appropriate paperwork among his kit.
"Let's get the hell out of here."
The four soldiers swept around the perimeter, keeping low and using the vegetation to hide their movements from the approaching helicopter. A minute later and they had joined Green at his position.
Trask glanced over at Bishop.
"Wait until they are on the ground."
He snapped a sharp salute and slid the pistol back into its holster. Unslinging the automatic from around his shoulder, he dropped to his belly and inched forward until the helicopter was in his sights.
"One minute to detonation," said Green, urgently.
"You should all go," said Bishop. "My aim is better and you know how good I am at withstanding blast zones."
He paused, as though realising he had just said something he shouldn't have, then shook his head.
Trask only paused a second before nodding and waving the squad back. Their evacuation zone was a half hour march away across difficult terrain. Bishop would have to catch up.
"See you at the Evac sergeant, get the job done and get out."
Then they melted back into the steaming jungle.
