Fallen World: The Complete Trilogy

by Tom Jones

  Chapter 7

  Mobile Task Group

  A black GMC Savana proceeded down the semi-remote road which led to Arcades’ home. Inside of the van’s cargo compartment were eight humans making their preparations for their mission. Each member of the team wore custom Crye Precision G4 Kryptek Obskura Nox combat uniforms, black MTEK FLUX ballistic helmets with Multicam Black helmet covers, Multicam Black MOS Tactical SPAV-W plate carriers, and Multicam Black HSGI Sure-Grip battle belts. Each operative also wore black L3Harris EOTech Fused GPNVG night vision goggles. As the operatives checked their equipment, they began to make sure their weapons were also ready for their mission. Four humans carried LWRC SMG-45s, two carried Heckler & Koch HK337s, and the remaining operatives wielded M4A1 lowers mounted with Brownells AR-18 upper receivers chambered in .300 BLK. Each weapon was suppressed, and all of the ammunition for each weapon had a subsonic load of gunpowder. Overall, four humans would use submachine weapons chambered in 45 ACP, and the rest would use short-barreled rifles chambered in .300 BLK.

  The leader of the squad spoke over the radio using his 3M PELTOR Comtac VI headset and his L3Harris Falcon III radio, “Sorcerer, this is Rho-1-Actual. Mobile Task Group Rho-1 is inbound to the target location: ETA five minutes. Over.” The mission controller replied to the squad leader, “Affirmative, Rho-1-Actual. This is Sorcerer. The target is likely to have one accomplice. The target must be taken alive, but you are free to terminate the accomplice. How copy? Over.” Rho-1-Actual replied to the controller, “Solid copy, Sorcerer. Just to confirm, the target we need alive is a black and white furred fox? Over.” Sorcerer replied moments later, “Affirmative, Rho-1-Actual. Capture the fox alive. Other reports suggest that he may be accompanied by a gray wolf. You are clear to terminate the gray wolf with extreme prejudice. Over.” Rho-1-Actual believed that he understood the mission well enough, “Rho-1-Actual copies all. Proceeding with the mission. Out.”

  The human relayed the information to the rest of the squad, “Listen up! The fox must be taken alive. Terminate anybody else. Everybody got that?” The other members of the squad gave their unanimous acknowledgements. Rho-1-Actual held the HK337 in his gloved hands, and he gave the suppressor on the barrel of the weapon a nice tug to make sure that it was properly seated. Since each member of the squad was wearing night vision goggles, they all had infrared lasers attached to their weapons, and their weapons also had L3Harris EOTech HWS 552 sights mounted on the top rails. As each member of the squad toggled the infrared lasers, they lit up, but they were only visible to the members of the squad wearing night optic devices. Rho-1-Actual spoke to the squad again, “Equipment checks out?” Each squad member pointed the laser of their primary weapon at the ceiling of the van, and the squad leader was able to see that all of the lasers were indeed visible. After the squad collectively finished their preparations for their deployment, all they had to do now was just wait to arrive at their destination.

  After about five minutes, the van pulled to a stop a little bit away from Arcades’ home; the Mobile Task Group was not about to give the fox a heads up and time to prepare. The rear doors of the van opened up, and the eight members of MTG exited the van, leaving the driver as the only remaining occupant of the vehicle. Since all of their weapons were checked and loaded, all they would have to do is simply disable the safeties on their weapons before firing. The squad of eight broke up into two fireteams of four, and they each contained two riflemen as well as two submachine gunners. The first fireteam moved to stack up in front of the front door, and the second fireteam moved around to build an entrance team that would be breaching at the rear of the building. The leader of the second fireteam spoke over the radio once the group was in position at the rear door, “This is Rho-1-5. We are ready to breach. Rho-1-Actual, what is your status? Over.” Rho-1-Actual and his fireteam had already stacked up at the front door, “This is Rho-1-Actual. We are ready to breach as well. Standby for breaching time.” Rho-1-Actual checked his watch on his left wrist, and he could see that the current mission had only lasted one minute and thirty seconds. Since the squad all had their watches synchronized, the squad leader was able to tell the other members of the squad precisely when to make entry, “All units, this is Rho-1-Actual, breach on exactly the two minute mark. Over.” After the squad collectively agreed on the time, all they had to do now was just wait for the clock to count down the seconds until they would make their entry.

  All three anthros suddenly awoke to the sound of glass breaking, and Arcades immediately rolled out of the bed. Jason had heard the noise as well, and the wolf was already reaching under the bed to pull out an ATI Bulldog shotgun. Jason shouldered the bullpup shotgun, but he did not take it off of the safety setting yet. Arcades, figuring that he may be dealing with a group of armed intruders given the events in the previous night, went to grab a weapon he had hidden in a drawer. As the fox opened the drawer, Jackie stood up, and she prepared to ask the other two anthros what was going on. However, the vixen knew that doing so would blow their cover and give the intruders an idea of where they were in the building. Arcades tried to make as little noise as he could, and it was getting a bit difficult for the fox since his arms were beginning to tremble under the sudden stress of the situation. Fortunately, Arcades was able to grab a Heckler & Koch MP7A1 from the drawer, and he extended the stock, deployed the integrated vertical foregrip, and toggled the Trijicon MRO he had on the top rail of the submachine gun. Arcades was the proud owner of one of the few privately-owned Heckler & Koch MP7s in the United States. If the fox remembered correctly, there were less than one dozen MP7s owned by private American companies, and he was one of those owners.

  Right after Arcades shouldered the MP7 and performed a quick check of the chamber to make sure that there was a round ready to fire loaded in the weapon. Jason had moved closer to the door, and he trained his shotgun’s sights on the front door itself. The wolf could already see an arm clad in dark camouflage attempting to open the door from the outside through the broken glass, but he was not ready to open fire yet. Arcades moved up to the wolf, and he moved to the other side of the doorway after transitioning the weapon to his left shoulder. Since the MP7 was a rather light weapon, it was easy for the fox to manipulate it to train it on the doorway from the rather unusual position he was standing. The MP7 was equipped with a SureFire flashlight, and the ATI Bulldog had a Streamlight 88089. Despite the fact the weapons were both equipped with the lights, neither of them were enabled since enabling the flashlights would definitely give away their positions. Though the wall would not provide ballistic cover for Arcades, it would provide him with ample visual cover; the less his enemies saw him, the better. Jackie stood in silence behind the two anthros, and she did look rather concerned. However, she was not too terribly worried since she believed that Jason and Arcades would be able to ward off the current threat at large. Fortunately for the anthros, they were on the defensive, so they did not need to advance on their enemies. They had one advantage, at least. However, they were very underequipped: Both anthros were wearing only a t-shirt and shorts, and they had no ammunition beyond what was already loaded in their magazines.

  The door finally sprung open, and the first MTG member emerged through the doorway, already facing the wrong direction. As soon as the operative turned to his right and raised his HK337, Jason flipped off the weapon’s safety, and he fired one shot at the operative. Since the Mobile Task Group was equipped with plate carriers holding NIJ rated Level III+ armor plates, the shotgun was not enough to harm the human. However, the human instantly fell backwards, and the air from his lungs was knocked from his body as the impact of the shotgun knocked him off his balance. Arcades immediately noticed that the men were wearing night vision goggles, so he turned on the flashlight of his MP7 and quickly flipped the selector switch to fully-automatic. The blast from the shotgun was very loud, and since Arcades was standing so close to it when Jason fired, all he was able to hear was ringing in his ears once the firearm was discharged.
The wolf fired a couple more shots at the humans entering the building, and he turned on his flashlight as well to hopefully damage the operators’ $30,000+ night vision goggles. It did not take long before the humans began to return fire, however they were having difficulties aiming since a bright light was now shining directly into their night optical devices. Multiple rounds of .300 BLK ricocheted off of the walls and floor, and some of them began to penetrate some of the walls. Jackie watched a few rounds fly right past her, and frightened by the near miss, the vixen almost immediately dove to go prone on the ground.

  Arcades also lowered his stance as he saw the rounds impacting around him, but the wolf did not lower his own position. Jason actually stood out of his visual cover, and he now fired his shotgun from the middle of the hallway, hitting a few more of the men. The extended magazine in Jason’s ATI Bulldog held twenty rounds, and he had already fired off about half of the shells in his shotgun. Arcades transitioned into a prone position, and he finally put aside his hesitations and began to fire in bursts into the dispersing group of MTG operatives. The fox was still unable to hear anything; the ringing of his ears were louder than the suppressed gunshots being fired by the humans inside the building with him. Arcades’ flashlight proved to be rather effective since he could see that there were five humans sprawled out on the ground with varying degrees of injury. The fox did not know how hurt the men were; for all he knew, they could have just taken a couple rounds to their plate carriers and had collapsed from the sudden impact of a shotgun blast to the chest. He had fired a couple rounds into some of the collapsing men himself, and his MP7 was equipped with armor-piercing ammunition. However, Arcades doubted that his ammunition would pierce anything rated higher than NIJ Level IIIA, and judging by the equipment that the intruders wore, they likely were equipped with superior armor.

  Jason paused his hail of gunfire as he looked down to examine the situation as it stood: There were five armed humans sprawled out on the ground, but the wolf did not know how many people had entered the building in total. Little did Jason know that there were still three more operatives who had entered from the other entrance and had not tried to advance on the hallway. The wolf’s ears were ringing themselves, so he was unable to hear if there were any other people in the building besides the ones who were already downed. Jason could still see three of the five men still stirring, and one of them reached into his polymer Safariland holster to pull out a suppressed Agency Arms Glock 17. The human pushed his night vision goggles upwards with his left hand before returning his hand to his weapon to try and fire at the wolf. Unfortunately for the human, Jason reacted first, and he shot the human directly in the face. The human was not dead from the blast, but he was now blind since the shotgun pellets tore apart his eyeballs. The operative screamed out in pain, and he dropped his Glock as he instinctively brought his Mechanix gloved hands to his eyes to try and get whatever just hit him in the eyes out. The operative may not have gone blind if he wore the ESS Crossbow glasses that a few of his colleagues wore.

  Jason briefly removed the magazine from his Turkish-made shotgun to check the remaining ammunition, but he forgot to move out of the hallway before doing so. Since the intruders were wearing 3M PELTOR Comtac VII headsets, they were able to hear the sound of the magazine as it was removed from the bullpup weapon. One MTG operative pushed up his night vision goggles, toggled the light on his rifle to output visible light, and he quickly rushed the corner with his sights set to kill the wolf. However, Arcades saw the beam of light approaching, and he held down the trigger as soon as he saw a figure emerge into the hallway. The MP7 dispensed about eight rounds as the fox held the trigger, and five of those rounds impacted the human’s arms. The other two rounds hit the human in the plate carrier, and he yelped as he lost control of the weapon, blindly firing it into the ceiling. Before the MTG member could retreat, Jason had pulled the trigger and blasted the human in the helmet with the shotgun round he still had loaded in the chamber. With another pair of $30,000+ night vision equipment gone to waste, the human dived out of the way to avoid any further bodily injury, and there were now only two MTG members who were not injured. The wolf inserted the magazine back into the shotgun, and he pulled the AR-15 styled charging handle to chamber a new round into the shotgun. Though he would normally press the bolt catch paddle, the wolf did not have a magazine inserted into the shotgun when he last fired it, so the bolt was not locked backwards.

  Arcades got up from his prone position, and he moved to a kneeling position. The fox still held his sights on the doorway; he still did not know if the building had been secured or if there were still hostiles inside. The last remaining MTG members who were not incapacitated had a general idea of where the gunfire was coming from. The human operatives held up their weapons, and they aimed somewhere at the wall where they believed that either of the two anthros were standing. One operative carried the AR-15 with the Brownells upper receiver, and the other operative carried the LWRC SMG-45. Only the .300 BLK would be able to penetrate the walls, so the human wielding the SMG-45 would have to wait with the weapon pointed at the doorway to see if anybody would emerge. As the building fell silent again, the operative holding the rifle began to fire at the walls in an irregular pattern, hoping that at least a few of his rounds would hit something. Jason took a knee as he saw multiple rounds impact the walls around him, but he still did not keep his eyes trained off of the doorway.

  Arcades knew that he would have to do something about the remaining operatives, so he decided to do something extremely risky. The fox stook up, and he disabled the flashlight on his MP7. Arcades firmly grasped the vertical foregrip with his left hand, and he sprinted through the hallway while having his upper body turned to the right. When the fox emerged from the hallway, he held down the trigger and shot both of the men before they were able to react to him. Despite the fact that the submachine gunner was anticipating an anthro to pop out of the hallway, he simply was unable to hit the moving target fast enough. The human did fire his SMG-45 as he saw motion, but he could not keep up with the sprinting fox. Both humans collapsed to the ground, and Arcades looked around in his storefront as he tried to see if there were anymore attackers in his building. The fox checked every corner he could, and he did step over a few of the humans who were now moaning in pain.

  Arcades was pretty sure that none of the humans died from their injuries, but they were definitely hurting. As the fox walked around his store, he caught a glimpse of a black van that was outside. Arcades opened the door while avoiding the broken glass on the ground, and he looked at the van driver as the driver turned on the headlights and slammed on the gas. The van seemed as if it was going to run over the fox, so Arcades instinctively raised his weapon and fired all of the remaining ammunition at the vehicle. The van took a couple shots, and the driver’s hand was also struck by a round. The van driver yanked the steering wheel to the left as he felt the bullet hit his hand, but he found that he was now going to collide with the building itself. The driver, unable to stop, directly impacted into the building.

  The vehicle’s airbags deployed, but the driver was dazed from the impact. Arcades’ MP7 no longer had any ammunition in it, and the bolt was locked backwards. The fox turned the SureFire light on his personal defense weapon back on, and he shined it directly at the driver’s door of the van. Arcades slowly advanced on the van, but he knew that he would not be able to fire back if the driver was armed. The fox stood in front of the van, and he could see the human driver grasping his head as he tried to collect himself after the impact. Arcades pointed the light at the driver and yelled, “Step out of the van!” Unfortunately for the fox, his voice hardly sounded intimidating. Arcades knew that the empty weapon in his hands was doing more harm than good, so he quickly retreated back into the building. As the fox stepped inside, he ran into Jason, and he found that the wolf had almost pulled the trigger while aiming at the fox. The wolf exclaimed, “Fuckin’ hell! I almost pulled the bloody trigger on ya!” Arcades spo
ke to the wolf, “The escape driver or somebody crashed directly into the building. My gun’s dry, so I came here to get another.”

  Before the wolf could say anything else, Arcades grabbed his Salient GRY that was still sitting on the counter from earlier, and he grabbed a magazine that he kept under his desk before putting it into the rifle and racking the Radian Raptor charging handle installed in the rifle. Arcades discarded his MP7 on the counter, and he did not even bother to drop the bolt before doing so. Before the fox went back outside, he grabbed two spare magazines and stuffed them into the waistband of his high-cut pyjama shorts since they lacked pockets. Jason decided that he would swap his weapon out as well, so he grabbed a CZ BREN 2 from one of the gun racks and then went to the other side of the storefront to retrieve three loaded Magpul PMAGs. The wolf placed one of the magazines into his rifle, and he pulled the charging handle back to chamber a round into the rifle. With both the wolf and the fox now armed, they would have to make sure that they did not lose their tactical advantage.