Road Gangs: Ray Part II

At this hour the desert was at its coldest, not enough for thicker clothing but enough to induce horripilation in addition to the apprehensive nerves. Lack of sleep was also a rising issue that forced a strain to focus on the situation at hand.

Ray prepared his SATCOM communicator and put on a headset, combing through his mullet while adjusting the device for comfort. "Ray online, how do you copy?"

Various team members acknowledged him on similar communication gear, still gathered around him awaiting his command.

"Everyone remember the plan? Ready to move?" He barely let a second pass for them all to form a coherent answer. "Let's go."

Weapons were at the ready and all teams split off, hitting the dirt as they approached the complex. Ray led the first team with Shining Armor by his side, as well as Junkers and Washington for support. Chrysalis led the SMF team, heading towards the opposite side of the complex.

The brothers Jarrett and Duster waited anxiously in a ditch near the back of the complex, keeping their promise to strike upon the success of the rescue mission and when the REDF and SMF teams were well out of range.

Xenon searchlights moved across the barren land from behind large walls of concrete and various scrap metals, looking for intruders who dared traverse into Overdog's territory. The main gate appeared to be a bus paneled with ghetto armor, well-guarded with watch towers and turrets, making it an unlikely entry point for Ray's team.

The team stopped behind a large rock, allowing a beam of light to pass by on the other side.

"We may need to rethink this." Shining said, peering over the rock.

Ray shook his head, emerging from cover to observe the complex as well. "No time. Look for a weak point in the wall and we'll exploit it."

"There." Junkers pointed to a thin sheet of metal along the wall, loosely applied to the crude frame in contrast to the rest of its sturdy construction. The only obstruction appeared to be an active watch tower built over it.

"It'll have to do. Who has the bolt-cutter?"

"Me." Washington answered, pulling them from his belt.

"Up front with me. Stay close."

Washington scooted closer to him, holding both his weapon and the bolt-cutter readily as he prepared to follow Ray's advance towards the wall.

"Wait!" Junkers hissed.

All eyes went to him, in which Junkers pointed to an object in the ground next to them.

"You've got to be fucking kidding" was Washington's response to seeing it.

At first glance it appeared to be a circular handle to a faucet valve sticking out of the sand, but they knew what it really was, as well as how is severely affected their plan.

Ray pressed on his headset, urging himself to report the finding to Chrysalis. "My Queen, we have a problem."

"I know," she replied, "Minefield. They're some kind of Bouncing Betty offshoots. Probe the base with your knife to sweep them out. We're already at the wall."

He shot her a bit of sarcasm. "Nice of you to share." He pulled out his knife and stuck it in the ground next to the circular trigger, prying out the whole coffee can-shaped mine and set in a safe spot next to the rock. "Any open windows?"

"Drainage grate. We'll be through in a minute."

"Copy. We're moving." Ray nodded to the team and proceeded towards the wall.

Shining was burdened with sweeping for the mines, carefully probing the dirt for any hidden ones between unearthing those already visible, while Ray led them through, keeping his attention at the searchlights. Each mine seemed to differ slightly from the other, but the most notable differences were the trigger assemblies, as some bore the circular shape while others had three needle-like prongs giving the impression of stiff grass blades. Shining knew better, of course.

"Hit the dirt!" Ray whispered loudly, forcing them into a depression.

They laid low, allowing a searchlight to pass over them unknowingly, then continued on while remaining prone. The team finally reached the wall, hugging it close to remain out of the range of the lights. Everyone crept towards the weak metal, with Washington preparing to utilize his bolt-cutter. Then a loud "CLICK" snapped them to attention, freezing them in place.

Junkers, eyes wide as if he had seen a ghost, slowly looked down. Everyone else followed his vision, stopping at his boot. He was standing on a mine. He looked up at them in horror, not knowing what to do but remain as still as possible.

Ray put his hand out, approaching the armed device underneath its terrified victim. "Don't... move..."

"Really? No shit!" Junkers struggled to remain silent. He knew that if he stepped off, the mine would detonate. Still he counted his blessings that he was lucky enough to encounter one with a pressure-release fuse at all, rather than a pressure-contact or magnetic type.

Ray removed a small pack from his belt, pulling out various tools for disarming the device.

"We're through." Chrysalis announced on the communicator. "What's taking so long?"

Ray threw a screwdriver on the ground. "Charlie Mike. Junk got himself trapped here, so give us a minute."

"We're moving on. Out."

He went back to his task, shoveling the dirt away with his hands to expose the surface of the mine's body. He used a screwdriver to unscrew the plugs from the detonator wells, proceeding to pull out the detonators with a magnetic rod, then tossed them aside before putting his equipment away, grinning at Junkers with a look of satisfaction.

"That's it?" Junkers asked incredulously.

Ray nodded. "That's it."

Junkers hesitantly stepped off the mine. It made another click, but to his surprise it did nothing else. The sensation of relief overcame him and forced him to collapse into the wall for support, sitting upright to stare at the device that almost claimed his life. The sensation dissipated to allow a shred of audacity to take over as he scooped it out of the ground and brought it to eye-level to confront it. "Gotcha, sucker." He tossed it aside and brought himself back to the situation at hand.

Ray turned to Washington. "Charlie Mike."

Washington raised the bolt-cutter up to the metal, then hesitated for a moment, turning to Ray. "What does that even mean?

"Just cut the damned metal."

He shrugged and continued. The cutter made its way through the metal surface like a knife through butter, eventually making an opening large enough for them to fit through one-by-one. And they did just that, with Ray leading them behind a barrier of sandbags.

Washington snuck back to the opening and grabbed the mine and detonators, shoving them into a pouch on his belt, then returned to the group.

"Team Two," Ray hailed to Chrysalis, "The gnome's in the garden. Time to whack the weeds."

"Copy that," She acknowledged, "We got you covered. Be advised, Two-Twelve and Thirteen are en route to the main structures, so check your fire."

Two Ravagers stood in the beam of moonlight shining through the framework of the factory ruins, passing a cigarette and conversing about whatever came to mind. Their weapons were slung and postures were slack, unalert, expecting this night to be like any other.

"I'll be right back," one of the barbarians said to the other, immersing himself into the shadows as he made his way through the steel labyrinth. He found a concealed area where he planned to carry out some very important business, but found himself staring at two bright, blue eyes a few feet away. Before he could react, a pair of hooves wrapped around his neck from behind and snapped it instantly, resulting in his dead body collapsing to the ground.

Sud Quest nodded to the pair of eyes, which emerged into the moonlight to reveal himself as Saver, prompting him to shapeshift into an exact, living copy of the body laying before him. In a flash of green light, he was now a human Ravager, with the appearance of clothes and equipment included in his holographic disguise. He slung his weapon and took the barbarian's to complete the illusion, checking the ammo and chamber before potential use.

The other barbarian noticed the green flash behind the machinery and quickly ran to the area to investigate, only to find the usual scrap and earth, but no sign of his comrade.

Saver loaded an arrow into Sud's borrowed tactical crossbow and launched it into the man's back, paralyzing him as he tumbled to the ground.

Sud darted to a support beam and removed a C4 block from his saddlebag, armed the electronic detonator, then placed it onto the beam. He repeated this process on another beam on the other side of the structure. As a provision, Chrysalis carried extra remote detonators programmed for each device's frequency, should Sud be out of commission to utilize his own.

As soon as he completed his task he gave Saver a nod.

"My Queen," Saver hailed on the communicator, "This is Thirteen. First half of Plan B is secured. Moving on to the refinery."

Ray and his team reached a large garage area, remaining behind the outer wall to allow Ray to peek over the edge to see inside. It was brightly-lit, with all kinds of vehicles being worked on by various personnel.

He led the team past the openings as all eyes averted from their direction, occasionally crouching concealed behind the wasteland machines to remain under cover, then finally reached the other side of the structure, where they found a doorway into the rest of the complex.

Ray and Junkers checked the corners of their entrance, scanning the opposite ends of a forked corridor, then declared it clear for them to move. They pressed on down a corridor that led to the cages, but upon inspection they appeared empty.

"Great," Shining mumbled, "I knew this was a waste of time."

"It's not over yet." Ray replied. "We got a whole complex to search."

Junkers checked his watch. "We better hurry. Sun's coming up in twenty minutes."

Saver approached one of the men manning the pump that extracted the crude oil into the repository tanks for the refinery. "Hey!"

"Yeah?" The man answered, taken by the disguise.

"Could you help me with something?"

"I'm a little busy, what do you need?"

Saver looked down at his crude assault rifle, which he purposefully sabotaged beforehand. "I forgot, what do you do when it misfires and the chamber refuses to eject the round?"

The man looked at him alarmingly. "Hey, take that thing somewhere else if you're having that problem! Do you want to explode or something?"

"Please, I need your help. I don't want to risk upsetting Overdog if he finds out."

The man hesitated for a moment and took a deep breath. "Okay, follow me." He looked around to see if anyone would notice his desertion of the task at hand, then led Saver to a safe position behind a metal structure separating them from the refinery.

"Let's see what's wrong here." He grabbed the weapon from Saver and began inspecting it, attempting to pull a release lever on the weapon to open the chamber, but it would not free. "Man, you weren't kidding. This thing's really stuck." He turned his back to Saver, crouching on the ground to exert more force on the lever.

Saver took the opportunity to unsling his other weapon.

"How often do you clean the-..." He was interrupted by the impact of a rifle butt into his head, knocking him out cold.

Saver slung his weapon and grabbed the man's legs, dragging him into the shadows.

Sud, now having a window to move, approached the pumps and prepared another explosive, planting it in the most vital location he could think of under the repository tanks.

"Second half of contingency in place." Saver reported on the communicator. "Moving on to final step."

"This is weird," the radioman started, adjusting dials as he monitored his equipment, "I'm getting some kind of signals."

He was among a guard, both stationed inside a small warehouse being used as a radio shack to track signals around the compound. It was a dreary haze filled with cigarette smoke and the sounds of creaking wood and metal, the latter of which mostly bothered the guard as the radioman was immersed in the sounds of airwaves through his headphones.

"What kind of signals?" the guard asked with a puff of smoke.

"Transmissions, I think. Coming from inside the compound."

"Transmissions?"

"Yeah, but I've never seen this kind of frequency before. Hang on." He flipped a switch on the speaker box and adjusted a knob until voices could be heard:

"...-py that, my Queen. Still no sign of the package. We're moving on to the back."

"Understood, team. Sixty-Eight will provide sniper cover. Will advise."

"Thanks, out."

The radioman turned to the guard. "What the hell was that all about?"

The guard shook his head and made his way to the door, putting out his cigarette in a nearby ashtray along the way.

Ray and his team halted as soon as a door to a nearby warehouse flung open, making way for a Ravager that scanned the compound. He immediately spotted the team, but before he could say anything a silent bullet went through his head, killing him instantly. Undoubtedly the work of Fabre, or Operative Sixty-Eight as he was designated, from some hidden location.

"'The hell?!" another man inside the warehouse shouted, running to the door to see what happened. He was met with the same fate, collapsing onto the ground next to the other body.

A guard in a nearby watchtower heard the commotion and jerked his light towards the warehouse, shining it right over the bodies.

Ray quickly raised his weapon and took aim, hissing the word "Light!" as he shot the guard with his silenced weapon.

Shining understood the relevance of the word and shot the spotlight as soon as the body hit the floor, disabling it.

"My Queen," Ray hailed, "We need to hurry. Things are getting sloppy real fast out here."

"Understood," Chrysalis answered, trotting towards the industrial structures with the rest of her SMF team, careful to stay quiet as two guards stood conversing nearby, "We're approaching the south end. We'll rendezvous at the-..." She suddenly fell down a hole in the ground with a loud "Oof!"

The two guards caught the sound and turned sharply towards the area to find the source, but were quickly gunned down by the SMF agents' silenced weapons.

Chrysalis coughed away the dust and found herself eye-to-eye with a familiar man.

"Make yourself at home." was the man's response to seeing her.

"Faust?" she asked, mostly to reassure herself.

"No, I'm his twin brother. Nice to meet you."

She grinned at his playful sarcasm and met the gaze of another inhabitant of the hole, who appeared to be a female REDF pony. The mare was holding on to Faust for dear life as she stared at the Changeling Queen, suggestively close despite the fear in her eyes.

"What happened?" Ray asked on the communicator, "Are you alright?"

"We've located Faust! He's in a pit by the vehicle wreckage."

"Nice work! How's he doing?"

"He's pretty roughed up, but he'll live. We have a REDF soldier too. We're extracting them now."

"Is that Ray on that thing?" Faust asked.

"Yep."

"He's here? Now?"

She nodded.

He smiled and turned to his companion. "See, what'd I tell you?"

It would not be long after Chrysalis and her team extracted Faust and Silverspade from the pit that they would find others around the hideout, extracting their inhabitants to safety as they made their way back towards the drainage grate.

"Stop right there!" a guard shouted from a watchtower, shining his light directly at Sud as he was preparing another explosive to plant on the gate, not even close enough to his target as he stood with Saver near a pile of empty fuel drums with a throne atop of it.

"Oh dear." Sud sighed, accepting his fate.

The guard fired his weapon at the unearthly creature until the bullets impacted the saddlebags of demo gear, engulfing the two intruders in a startling and bright explosion that shook the compound and destroyed Overdog's mighty throne.

The entire hideout was alert, with bells and alarms sounding everywhere as Ravagers yelled and scrambled without order.

Ray's team dove behind an APC carcass for cover as soon as they heard the explosion, hiding from the Ravagers that swarmed around the compound.

"What the hell was that?!" Ray asked into the communicator.

"Two-Twelve and Thirteen are down!" Chrysalis answered.

"Alright, Plan B! Plan B! Rendezvous near the helipads!"

"The last explosive isn't planted yet! They never made it to the gate!"

"Shit!" Ray concluded that the explosion must have been from the last batch of C4 and quickly brainstormed possible solutions.

Shining woke up to a particular part of that sentence with alarm. "Explosives? What explosives?"

"The ones to keep the enemy busy once we extract the hostages! Except the last one was to cover our escape through the main gate, but now that plan's shot to hell!"

"They're not close to the refinery, are they?"

"Of course they are!"

"That's over a billion bits worth of petroleum! Are you crazy?!"

"Don't start with that shit again, now shut up and let me think!"

Shining grabbed Ray by his collar. "You're insane! You should've told me the details behind this contingency plan of yours!"

Ray shoved him away with the aid of his weapon, while Junkers struggled to restrain the Royal Guard Captain. "If you do that again we're leaving you here! Stop being part of the problem and help me find a solution, damn it!"

He turned away, muttering something about a report to the Princess.

Ray looked around and noticed a helicopter being prepped by aircrews nearby, then came up with a plan on how to use it to their advantage. "Alright, I got an idea. My Queen, are you listening?"

"Affirmative!" she responded.

"Alright. Junkers, take Washington and Shining back to the vehicles... extract the same way we infiltrated, post-haste. Chrysalis, take the hostages and the SMF team and steal that helicopter to the south... regroup with Junk and the others and then rendezvous with me on the highway back to the Equestrian border. It's a small distraction, but the canyons and dunes won't allow us to stay separated long enough so hopefully it buys us enough time for our run to safety. We don't have time to regroup with the armored unit! Everyone on the same page?"

"I got it, Ray, we're on our way to the chopper now!"

Junkers spoke up. "How are you going to make it to the highway without us?"

"Don't worry about me, just go! If I'm not there just keep heading for the border!" Ray took off towards the factory and garage structures.

The SMF team took down the aircrews preparing the Dauphin with their silenced weapons, leading the hostages into the cabin and Chrysalis into the pilot's seat. Lancer joined her in the cockpit, claiming the co-pilot seat to her left. By now the sun was rising, casting an orange glow over the desert surface. It would not be long before the Ravagers would notice that one of their aircraft was commandeered, so Chrysalis finished the preparations to lift off, flipping switches and turning knobs in haste.

It was slightly more complicated than Snakefly, but she understood enough from flying the small experimental and reading enough relevant literature to figure out the rest on her own, separating the critical flight instruments from the other sensor equipment and weapon systems.

"Sixty-Eight!" Lancer shouted into his communicator. "Sixty-Eight, this is Fifty-Two! We've secured the chopper! Get over here!"

Chrysalis' heart sank, stopping her preparations to look back at the stick of troops in the cabin, and indeed her quick headcount indicated that one of her operatives were missing; Fabre, Operative Sixty-Eight, probably still dug in to his sniper position.

"Negative," Fabre responded, "Area is too hot! Repeat, area is too hot! I have no clear path between you and me! I'll provide cover for your extraction and exfiltrate towards Thorne Three! Over!"

"Alright, Sixty-Eight, good luck! See ya in Equestria, over."

"Heh! I'll see you in Handlirsch! Happy trails!" His signal suddenly cut.

Chrysalis was uneasy at the idea of Fabre exfiltrating to a location many miles away on his own in the desert, likely having to ditch his equipment to fly there, but she assured herself that the SMF was fully trained for desert warfare and survival and therefore made the decision easier for her to accept. Besides, it was far more sensible than wading through enemy fire to get to an already fully-loaded helicopter.

"Here we go," said Chrysalis with her hooves positioned on the controls, "Hang on!" She slowly pulled back on the collective lever to her left and steadied the aircraft with her right hoof on the cyclic at the center with her back hooves on the pedals for tail rotor control, which dictated the direction of the aircraft. Her posture was awkward in the small seat, making her slightly uncomfortable, but she pulled through and raised the helicopter into the air. Her take-off was smooth for her first time in a more advanced helicopter, though a bit wobbly, but she quickly grew accustomed to it and began flying the Dauphin towards the front of the compound.

"Triple-A!!" Lancer shouted, "Left-front!"

Chrysalis looked and saw a pair of Ravagers preparing a mobile SAM station trained at the escaping Dauphin.

Faust grabbed the minigun guarding the open door window to the port side and fired at the installation until the Ravagers dropped behind the clouds of red and brown smoke exploding around them. "Tango down! They got the drop on us, let's get the hell out of here!"

Chrysalis realized the other major obstacles in their escape and took action, finding the rocket trigger on her cyclic. She took aim at the various watchtowers around the base and fired rockets at them until they were blown apart in flames.

Washington was last through the hole in the wall as Junkers and Shining ran through the safe path through the minefield, towards the dunes concealing their vehicles. Washington stayed behind, removing the mine he took earlier and fuses from his pouch. He rearmed the explosive device and ran a piece of wire over the trigger, placing the mine on one side of the opening and tied the other end of the wire to the beam supporting the watchtower on the other side.

"Hey!" a Ravager shouted at him, "What are you doing over there?!" This particular barbarian seemed even less intelligent than the others, appearing genuinely confused as to whether he should have his weapon trained at him or not.

"Planting a bomb, you moron! What does it look like?!" With that said, Washington finished and sprinted away towards the rest of the team.

The Ravager reacted and began chasing Washington, not noticing the small wire across the hole until he tripped it, hearing a loud "CLICK" to his right. As soon as he turned in the direction of the sound, the mine shot out of its casing and hit the man in his chest, blowing him back into the watchtower support beam just before it exploded and caused the tower to collapse.

"Triple-A!!" Lancer shouted again, spotting another pair of Ravagers preparing a SAM launcher, "Dead ahead!"

Before Chrysalis could react with the weapons on her gunship, the two Ravagers were met with the fate of unseen small-arms fire aimed perfectly for their heads. Undoubtedly the work of Fabre still dug in somewhere.

"Chrysalis!" Ray shouted on the communicator, "Execute!! Blow the explosives!"

"Copy that!" She acknowledged, then turned to Lancer. "Grab the detonators out of my pack! I'm a little busy here!"

"Yes, my Queen!" Lancer did as he was told and set the remote detonators in his lap, awaiting the command to set off the explosives.

"What are you waiting for?! Do it!"

"Affirmative, detonating!" He grabbed all of them and hugged them close, triggering all of the explosives at once.

The factory and refinery exploded into brilliant mushroom clouds that cast shadows over the compound as they darkened. Chrysalis could only imagine how Shining felt about seeing this spectacle unfold. Better yet, how Overdog himself felt about his precious fuel going up in flames.

No... No!! The refinery! Our only way of refining the fuel! The fuel!! Overdog watched with fury burning through his veins as his refinery was reduced to rubble, swallowed by the desert and the fuel gone with it. He reminded himself with vexation that his only means of refining the crude of his new wells was destroyed before his eyes, and there was no undoing.

Suddenly revenge was all that lingered in his mind. He felt it as strongly as he could smell the smoke and fire of his burning fuel around him, no longer lamenting the loss of his control of the Zone Ravager base and instead cursed the ones responsible.

"My Lord Overdog!" McNabb shouted as he approached the enraged monster of a man, "They've taken the prisoners! And Screaming Minnie!"

Overdog watched as the stolen gunship screamed overhead, making way for the dunes and out of the confines of his compound. "They will pay for this," he started, just barely audible over the commotion, "They will pay in kind with their blood scattered across the wastes!"

Suddenly the thin wall of the nearby garage burst open as one of the tanker Peterbilts sped towards the gate, driven by an unknown man sporting a dark-brown mullet. The truck then crashed through, not the gate, but the metal structure of the wall next to it, quickly swerving back onto the road to avoid the minefield.

"After him!" Overdog shouted to the scrambling Ravagers, "He has the prisoners! Go!!"

Those that actually heard him ran to their vehicles in the garage, with others following as they realized what was going on.

Overdog spun to McNabb and grabbed his shoulders. "Prepare my battlewagon! Go!!"