And Then I Saw Her
By: StormHoof
Prologue part 1
I stood there and listened as Sergeant Landers gave out the announcement that my team, a team of elite mercenaries consisting of myself, Erin Conners and Eddie Sage, were to proceed to briefing. Of course we knew this already. We were always up to date on what was going on, especially when it came to our assignments. We nodded and left the break room and walked down the hallway to the Briefing room, where General Levrette and Lieutenant Carson where both waiting.
“Anderson, good to see you.” The General said.
“The same to you sir. And please, use my code name. Night Shade.” I replied.
“As you wish. Now I’m sure you and your team are all wondering why you’re here?” The Lieutenant asked.
“Actually, we know why we’re here. You need us to take an assignment that requires us to go into an enemy territory and recover a group or person of importance that you can’t get out yourself.” I stated.
“Close, We need you to go across Syrian borders and slip into their closest military compound. Once inside, you need to get to their munitions and take them out. We don’t care how you do it just get it done. Once that’s finished, you will need to go to their missile defense control and disable it so that when we go to destroy the compound, they won’t be able to stop it. Are we clear?” The General explained.
“Crystal sir. We’ll head out once we’re ready.” I replied.
“Good, we’ll have a ride waiting for you outside. Just let them know when you’re ready to leave.”
“Understood.” I said as all three of us moved to attention, saluting both the General and the Lieutenant. When they dropped their salute, we fell out and moved to our place. I unlocked the door and walked inside with my team. We all got out our gear and began putting it on. I put on my combat uniform with the Kevlar vest on as well. I put my boots back on and once I finished lacing them up I put on my gloves, my helmet and shades. I put on my radio and placed the headpiece on and checked it to make sure it worked.
“Check, check, 1...2...3.” I said.
“Check.”
“Check”
The radio check being complete, we moved to the gun safe in the back. Opening it up, I grabbed my M4 and checked it, making sure it was in working order. I took out a black case and grabbed my magazines. I opened the case and removed my sight and placed it on my rifle. I took out a box of ammunition and began loading my mags, and just to be sure, I grabbed my extended mag and filled it. Placing a mag into my rifle, I checked it once more. I took out two grenades, one frag grenade, and a flashbang, which I doubted I would need. Once those were safely in place, I strapped my knife on and stowed my mags away for when they would be needed.
Once I was geared up, I put the case back and check the rest of my team. Eddie was all set and was checking his sniper in much the same manner as I had my rifle. Erin however just stood tapping his foot, waiting for us to hurry up.
“Erin, something up? Your acting like you have somewhere to be.” I said, chuckling.
“We all have somewhere to be and you guys are just as slow as you always are. And aren’t we supposed to be going by our code names?” He asked.
“We won’t need our code names until we get to Syria. Chances are, they’ll be listening in, so we might have to go with radio silence. Eddie you set?” I asked.
“All set Jack.” He replied.
I nodded and walked out, the others following. I closed the door and locked it back up. All geared up, we headed out to where our ride was waiting. When we got there, we were met with a standard Blackhawk. During any mission, a Blackhawk was by far our most preferred way to travel. I hopped in and helped the other two in as well. Once we were safely inside and strapped in, I told the pilot we were ready.
Before we knew it, we were in the air and we were heading straight for the border. The base that my team and I were on was only about three or four miles from the border so the ride wouldn’t take too long. I looked over at Eddie, aka Silver Bullet. He was looking out over the landscape as we flew. He always did love nature. Me, I was never a nature lover, especially when nature seemed too perfect. I learned early on in my life that if something seemed perfect or too perfect, then something was up, or something was going to happen.
I learned this because back when I was a kid, I had been running around in the forest behind my house. Being a kid, I was taking sticks and was using them like swords or guns. Oh man, my imagination knew no bounds. After a while, I stopped to listen to the sounds of the forest, and that’s when I heard it. A loud gunshot rang through the air. I was curious and followed the sound back to my house where my mom was making lunch. When I got home however, a guy all dressed in black was running from a broken window in our living room. I ran inside to see if he took anything and that’s when I saw her. My mom was lying on the living room floor and she was lying in a pool of her own blood. I have never cried harder than I did that day.
That day was the reason why I became a mercenary in the first place. I wanted to be able to not only protect innocent people, but I wanted to get rid of any and all bad people in the world.
Suddenly I was yanked from my thoughts as the pilot yelled over the radio.
“We are hit, I repeat, we are hit! Brace for impact!”
I immediately grabbed Eddie and Erin, aka Black Light, and we prepared for the worst.
When I opened my eyes, I noticed the ground around me. It was black and charred. Grunting a bit, I slowly and painfully pushed myself up and looked around. There were pieces of debris from the Blackhawk lying around and most of the crash site was black and burnt. I got up and tried to steady myself. I looked down and Eddie and Erin were both lying there. Looking at Eddie, I wanted to die. He had one of the blades from the tail rotor, going straight through his head. Erin however, looked to be okay. I bent down and began shaking him.
Slowly he came to and looked up at me with dazed look on his face.
"Ugh, Erin, come on...Get up. We need...to hurry. Whatever hit...us is going to...be looking for...survivors." I said, trying to speak as the heat from the air burned my throat with each breath.
"NNNggghhh." he groaned. I knew he wouldn't be able to get himself up, so leaning down, I rolled him over, and placed my right arm under his right leg, then I reached over and grabbed his right arm with my left, and pulled him up onto my back. I straightened up and looked around me. I noticed that where we had crashed was mostly flat land, except for a set of mountains to the west. I remembered before we crashed, we were heading to the left of those mountains, which meant that was where the compound was. Knowing this, I figured our best bet would be to go to the mountains.
I walked for about an hour before Erin was conscious enough to know what was going on. He go extremely upset when I told him about Eddie. Him and Eddie had been the best of friends since they were in high school, and to know that he was gone now was almost too much for him to handle. Eventually he decided to try walking, which didn't exactly turn out well. His left leg was broken near the knee. The bone could be seen through his uniform, which meant compound fracture. If I didn't get him medical attention soon, he would bleed out.
We stopped in an area covered in brush as we heard the sound of a chopper from over head. He both hit the ground and automatically tried to conceal ourselves in any way we could. I pulled up a couple shrubs and placed them over us as we lied motionless. I watched as a chopper with Syrian markings flew over us. They made a quick sweep of the area and continued on. We waited a few extra minutes before deciding the coast was clear.
We decided to wait there for a bit, and while we did, I took my knife out and cut off a few strips of my undershirt and leaned over to Erin.
"Okay, Erin. I'm going to have to push the bone back in and set it." I said as I handed him my knifes sheath, "Here bite down on this."
I pulled up his pant-leg and assessed the damage. His shin bone was sticking our from the side at an odd angle. I looked it over and after figuring out exactly how it was broken, I started pushing on it. Erin grunted through the pain and bit down on the sheath. I carefully pushed the bone back in and after a few agonizingly painful moments, I managed to set the bone. I reached over and grabbed two shrubs. I took my knife and cut off the branches and shortened the stems so that they could work as a tourniquet. I took the pieces of my shirt and tied the two pieces of shrub to his leg to hold the bone in place.
"Alright, you all set?" I asked.
"Yeah, my leg just hurts like all hell. So yeah, I'm just peachy." He said in a straight tone.
"Jeez, you could ease up on the sarcasm you know." I said as I helped him back to his feet.
After walking for two hours we finally came upon the mountains. They weren't too tall, and there were paths along it's side, cut into it from years of water erosion. We walked up for a bit until we saw a cave. I pulled Erin in and we sat down against a wall.
"Whelp, this has been a shit of a day." I said.
"You make it sound like it's been a fucking joke! Eddie is dead!" Erin yelled.
"Erin, I'm well aware of that, but getting angry and raising your voice isn't going to help us right now. Ok?" I said.
"Yeah whatever."
"Well, I'm going to go scope out the rest of this place. I'll be back in a bit, and please for the love of god, don't blow yourself up." I said. I knew that when he got careless, things happened. Explosive things.
I walked out of the cave and began scaling the small cliff next to it. Once I got to the above ledge, I took a minute to locate all the hand holds and foot holds for the next wall. After about an hour, I made it to the top of our personal little mountain, which in retrospect, wasn't really that big. I looked around and noticed that there were dark storm clouds above us. I hadn't noticed them before.
Why are these here now? I wondered.
Suddenly, I heard a deep rumble and a saw a bright flash and then everything went black.
(/)_()
When I opened my eyes, all I saw was blue sky. It was weird, one minute it's looking like a fucking hurricane, and now it's as clear as water. I looked at some of the clouds. They didn't seem to be moving, and they seemed a bit too puffy. I was about to get up, but every time I moved, I would feel a splitting pain go up my spine and into my brain. It hurt too much to be able to weather through it so that I could get up. I closed my eyes and slept, hoping that I would be able or, recovered enough to be able to get up.