by S. K. Lessly
With orders already provided, Charlie and Fox teams fanned out and headed southwest into the dark forest. My team and I, along with Echo team, headed south into the wooded area surrounding the estate.
Our plan was simple yet messy. Charlie and Fox teams were charged with gaining the attention of the guards fanned out in the forest covering the estate. They would move west of the estate, taking the bad guys with them, leaving the front open to assault. Echo team along with the rest of us would charge the castle. Some would take the front, again causing a diversion for me, Misty, Curtis and Ivan to enter through a side entrance Junior discovered. The side entrance gave us a straight shot to where we thought Josh was being held.
Time wasn’t on our side. We knew someone would hear the gunfire and send the local police out here. We didn’t need friendlies getting caught in the crossfire, which meant we needed to get in, get Josh and get out. Carefully laid out plans, however, sometimes never went as you wanted them to go.
The forest around us was quiet, dark and densely populated. It wasn’t as vast as the Amazon rainforest far north of us, thank fuck, but this island had its assortment of trees indigenous to this area, along with plant and animal life. You could cut the humidity with a knife, too. Sweat formed on our faces, droplets falling in our eyes and mouths, despite the sweatbands we all wore.
We proceeded forward, stepping over fallen branches, large uprooted tree roots, leaves and shrubs. Our steps were as silent as we could make them, all the while scanning the area through the night vision goggles attached to our tactical helmets. We fanned out, creating two lines, Misty, Ivan and myself took point, the rest were spread out behind us. We were making great time, slicing through the quiet night with ease. Then something hit me.
Was it too fucking quiet?
I mean, not even the insects and animals, indigenous to this area, made a sound. It was as if they were holding their breaths, waiting for something. My spidey senses began to tingle and I raised my fists, holding the team. I sent three squawks over the channels shared by each team and received three squawks back advising that all was good. Yeah, if that were the case, why were the hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention. I shifted my NVGs up and turned my head to face Misty. Hers were up too and she was also searching the area.
Fuck, it was dark as shit, I couldn’t see a damn thing. I was about to tell Misty that very thing, when she suddenly yelled, “Everyone take cover!”
We all slipped behind the closest tree or boulder we could find before the night was suddenly lit up all around us.
Automatic gunfire erupted all around us, bullets slamming against trees, sending bark and wood chips everywhere. The sound of the gunfire was deafening. I did my best to become as skinny as I could muster as I hunkered behind a huge fig tree. I glanced to my right and behind me, making sure everyone was covered. I couldn’t see the others but Misty was across from me standing behind a rubber tree her helmet lost.
“We need to do something or we’re sitting ducks!” I yelled to her.
She grinned at me and at first, I thought she didn’t hear me but the way her face lit up with anticipation told me otherwise. Ironically, if I didn’t know her, I would be alarmed at the excitement lighting up her face. I mean yeah, I enjoyed a firefight like most people but I would love to be able to fire back. However, I misunderstood her excitement. I squinted through the night and realized she was holding two objects in her hands. She flicked the objects and hurled them in the air as far as she could throw them.
I knew immediately what she threw and yelled, “Flash bang!” before I dropped to my knees doing my best to cover my ears and close my eyes tight.
A flash bang, or stun grenade, did just that, it stunned you. They were non-lethal devices that temporarily disoriented a person’s senses using blinding light and an intense loud “bang”, both of which were temporary.
Flash bangs incapacitated someone just long enough to change the advantage. Misty threw two of these suckers into the line of our attackers and when they went off, they definitely did their job. The screams from the dark was proof of that fact.
Misty was the first of us to recover and move. She glided swiftly between trees and plant life taller than she was, aiming her M27 and firing round after round into these assholes. The team and I were right behind her, picking off anyone we saw writhing around, screaming.
I tried not to think about what would have happened if Misty was a split second too late in warning us. It was crazy; none of these assholes were visible through the night vision goggles, which led me to believe they were wearing special gear that shielded their thermal readings from our NVG’s.
I couldn’t dwell on that now. I radioed the information to the other teams as I brought my M4 up and fired, fired, fired. I could hear gunfire in the distance that I couldn’t quite make out. I wasn’t sure if it was ours or not. God, I hoped so.
My team and I took anyone not dressed like us down. I kept on Misty’s six, having her back, until the woman freaking disappeared in a cloud of smoke. And wouldn’t you freaking know it, it started to fucking pour. Damn sheets of blinding rain, pelted us, causing the visibility to go to shit. It turned out, we didn’t need to see shit. All we had to do was follow the bodies she left for us, like freaking breadcrumbs.
Damn that woman!
I looked back at the team, signaled for us to split up, following our original plan. Ivan and Curtis came up on either side of me, our heads on a swivel, firing at any resistance we came across. Once we cleared the tree line, the sprawling estate was in front of us. We surveyed the area, waiting for movement, however, nothing else moved. I thought that odd. Before we landed, they had sentries all around this building. However, I wondered if they were all sent to the west of us. In the distance, you could hear a serious battle surging. Automatic fire filling the night, causing me to believe our time to—get in and get out—was running short.
I tapped my earpiece signaling the team back home.
“Oracle,” I whispered using Junior’s call sign. “Do you see any movement around the house?”
“Negative, Cap,” he returned.
“However,” Junior continued. “The house is filled with running bodies. Majority of them are running to the front, but wait. Hold one.”
There was a loud explosion on the side of the house. We crouched low our guns at the ready.
“What the fuck was that?” Curtis called out.
“Yeah ummm… Black Widow just set off a few explosives on the side of the house. She just attracted some attention.”
Fuck…
“Alright, keep watch for any unwanted company. It’s loud on this island and I have no doubt we are attracting our own attention.” I told him, heard his ‘copy that’ and switched to the teams channel. “Echo team, traffic is coming your way make the diversion worth it.”
“Hoorah, Cap,” returned Gordon from Echo team.
“Rockhound?” Rockhound, aka Sims, was the leader of Charlie team.
“Sir,” his response came back loud and agitated.
“How’s it going over there?” I asked as I signaled Curtis and Ivan to follow me. I headed swiftly to the side of the estate.
“It’s going. The fuckers are falling one by one.”
“Good, clear them out. Echo team will need some assistance storming the castle.”
“Copy that.”
The three of us arrived at the side of the house where a door, leading to the kitchen, was supposed to be located. The door wasn’t there. The doorframe was torn apart on the right side, top and bottom. Misty must have shot the hinges off the door when she walked inside, by herself.
“Looks like we’re late to the party, Cap,” Curtis surmised, a bit of humor in his voice.
I didn’t respond. I continued forward, feeling my temper rising. Misty was off the reservation once again.
I shook my head and cleared the hallway we entered. We moved down the hall, cautiously checking corners, shadows, and doorways f
or any movement. So far nothing. Then there was something. A few yards down the hall was a large room. Inside the room were five bodies, all shot in the head.
I didn’t bother with checking them. I knew they all were dead.
We continued on, passing two other rooms filled with bodies, before we came to a doorway. There was a hallway facing us, with the option to head right and left. I signaled Curtis and Ivan to head left. I went right.
Just as we separated, I heard another flash bang going off in the distance followed by screams. I started sprinting in that direction, knowing what I was going to see but wasn’t prepared for what I actually saw.
Misty was surrounded by three guys each holding knives as their only protection. Each if the men shook their heads, trying to recover from the disorientation they felt. Misty too had her knives in her hand; however, things weren’t as they appeared.
Looking at the scene, you would think the odds of Misty getting out of this situation was grim. She had three large and imposing fuckers circling her. They were mean, deadly and had her in their sights. To an outsider, Misty was fucked. But I knew better.
Misty grinned at them, blew them a kiss and proceeded to tear them apart piece by piece. I mean, fuck, it was beautiful to see. She danced around their hulking frames, her movements elegant, graceful yet deadly. She sliced tendons and ligaments as she glided between her victims.
A geyser of blood erupted from one man’s neck as he dropped. Another sliced through the air, going for her neck. She ducked under his swing, arched her blade and sliced underneath his armpit slicing through his artery. She then spun, crouched behind him and cut through his achilles heel. The man howled in pain and dropped down to one knee. That’s when Misty went in for the kill. She grabbed him by his hair, violently forced his head back and stabbed him in his heart twice. She then slit his throat and threw his body down.
That left one.
The man stood there stunned, the whites of his eyes bulging from deep sockets. I had to give it to him though, he didn’t run away. He stood his ground, eyeing the female warrior before him. She was covered in her enemy’s blood and I could only imagine what was shining in her eyes; a combination of hate, death, joy, hunger or hell all of the above.
I stepped further inside the room, gun raised, aimed at the man’s chest.
I said to him, my voice calm and nonthreatening, “You want to walk out of here with your balls attached to your body. I’d drop the knife and cooperate. Tell us where Perchenko and Emily have my brother. You don’t and I’ll let her proceed to rip you apart.”
I stayed to the left of Misty where I could cover the last man standing and the door. There was no way I was letting my guard down. Two more explosions could be heard in the direction of the front of the house and I knew Echo, Charlie and Fox teams were making their presence known too. I could also feel the window of this operation closing fast.
“H-how do I know if you’re telling the truth? You’ll let me go?” the man asked in heavily accented English. The man was Russian, young, maybe in his early twenties. I studied the man, noticing the tremors racking his body. I played into that, knowing the fear would be the best way to play him.
“You don’t to be honest. But if I wanted you dead, I would have just pulled the trigger when I stepped into the room. Instead, I allowed her to play.”
I could see him playing back my words in his head. He looked me over then brought his eyes back to Misty.
She looked foreboding and dangerous and deadly. She looked like a killer. Blood was on her clothes, with specs of it marring her cheek. Her hair, which was once inside a ponytail, fell from its prison and laid untamed on her shoulders and down her back.
Her knives were foreboding in her hands, promising a death that would and could be very unpleasant. Now, Misty could have finished this guy off before I even stepped inside this room. She didn’t. She stood stock still, waiting for the word from me, waiting to launch herself.
God, I loved this woman.
“It’s up to you, sport. Are you willing to die for nothing or live for something?” It was a cheesy line, something I heard from a movie, but it fit in this situation.
The kid contemplated on my words and for a minute, I thought I had him. But he sealed his fate when his features hardened and he crouched in a fighting stance. He roared his battle cry and lunged for Misty.
It took six seconds for the kid to die. Misty didn’t play around this time. She methodically took this kid a part, showing she was ten times the better knife fighter this kid had ever seen. I almost felt bad for the fucker, I really did. Maybe he had a death wish or something, or he feared Perchenko more than death. Either way he charged and after a slice to his thigh, balls, stomach and neck, the kid was gone before he hit the ground.
Misty stood still after she killed him, her back to me. I could see her shoulders rapidly rising and falling. Her body was tense, the grip on her knives taut and ready.
This would’ve been perfect timing to light into her. She was pliant, believe it or not. She would receive my words without a fuss. She deserved a good tongue lashing, she did. She also deserved me tanning her ass before I fucked the shit out of her up against the nearest wall, among all this blood and death.
Watching her in action was a huge fucking turn on. Call me crazy or fucked up, but damn my dick was screaming for her. He was begging me to give into my wants, this mission be damned.
I took a few deep breaths and…gave in to my desires. Fuck it.
I stepped to her, lowered my gun, grabbed her by the back of her head and crashed my lips to hers. I kissed her hard, demanding entrance into her beautiful mouth. I felt her melt against me, which made me take more. And more. And more.
I finally released her lips, placing only a few inches between us. Our breaths were coming in hard pants, intertwining to become one.
“When this is over…” I paused until I had her eyes. Yet I couldn’t find the words to continue my threat. The love I saw in them, the devotion and submission in her fiery blue eyes robbed me of the ability to speak. I couldn’t fucking speak.
I took a moment to gather myself before I brought the control back into my body. I stepped back from her and brought my gun up to bear.
“Let’s move,” I instructed, my voice hard and void of the erratic emotions that had previously taken over. “We don’t have much time left.”
Misty didn’t utter a word. She wiped the blood from her knives on the pant leg of one of her victims, and sheathed them inside the holsters on either side of her hips. She strolled over to her rifle, which was propped up on the wall to our right, picked it up, swapped the magazine for a fresh one and chambered a round. When she was ready, locked and loaded, her manic eyes met mine.
“After you, Cap,” She said then grinned.
I shook my head and led the way to find my brother and to kill Perchenko and Emily.
Emily
Emily searched the security feeds around the estate hoping she would see them approach soon. The cameras around the property were out; however, the drone flying overhead gave her an infrared imaging picture of the rainforest and the surrounding land. She watched the figures approach her men, who were lying in wait just a few feet from their location. Their objective; to tear into the intruders without prejudice.
Emily leaned in close when she saw flashes of light that looked like lasers lighting up her screen. A bright light suddenly appeared on the footage and she leaned back startled. Suddenly there were two sets of laser-like rounds coming from the enemy. More bright lights then more gunfire.
She cursed. So much for the element of surprise.
Her team had engaged the enemy. The battle had begun; however, she had no qualms about who would come out victorious. That was until she saw a lone figure who stepped out of the forest. She zoomed in on the figure and changed the camera view so she could see their face. Her eyes went wide when she saw who was standing there.
“That bitch,” she mumbled then heard a
gravelly chuckle behind her. She looked over her shoulder at the man slouching in the chair, bound, bruised and bloody.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
The man just shook his head.
Emily turned back to the screen in time to see the woman look up at the drone, as if she knew it was there, and smiled. She then stuck her middle finger up and proceeded to run full speed toward the house.
“Yeah, keep coming bitch. I have something for you,” She said to no one in particular.
She grabbed the walkie-talkie next to her and hit the talk button. She brought it to her mouth and spoke in hush tones, as if the figure on the screen could hear her.
“She’s coming, alone. Be ready.”
“You’re going to die tonight,” announced the man behind her.
She turned around fully and took in the man in the chair. His face was battered. Both eyes were swollen so bad she wasn’t sure if he could see out of them. His lip was busted, cheeks swollen with a huge gash on the side of his face.
Blood was caked on his chin, his shirt and he breathed shallowly as if it hurt. Maybe a few broken ribs? She had no doubt he had some internal injuries. Davies worked him over good as a couple of guys held him up. Josh didn’t stand a chance. Oh he fought valiantly, she had to give him that, but in the end, it was six against one. Plus, he had been drugged. There was no way he was able to defend himself.
“Oh, really?” Emily asked, smiling. She leaned on the desk behind her and tilted her head to the side. “And who is going to kill me? Your puppet?”
Josh, his hands bound to a chair slowly tilted his head to the side as if he was regarding her. “Who else?” he replied, his speech sluggish yet determined.
Emily laughed. “Oh please, lover. You have always given her too much credit.”
“And you’ve never…” he paused as a wave of pain appeared on his battered face. It looked to Emily he was trying to breathe through the pain but the broken ribs he had made it very difficult. He slowly breathed in and out before he continued. “…you’ve never given her… enough.”
