The Fate Of Nations: F.I.R.E. Team Alpha: Book One

by Ray Chilensky

  Once on the beach the team removed the swim-fins from their feet as Sains briefed Carter on his scouting mission. “I didn’t see any signs of enemy patrols or other recent activity. There’s an old boat shack on the other side of the dock. That should be a good place for us to gear-up and pull ourselves together,” Sains reported,

  “OK, show us the way,” Carter replied.

  Once inside the small shed the team removed their dive gear and stacked it one corner of the shed. They then checked each other for any ill effects from the parachute drop or the long swim. “Gadget, brake out the vanishing cream,” Carter ordered, pointing at the stacked SCUBA equipment.

  Burgett removed a plastic, tea-pot sized canister and sprayed the contents on the piled gear. The vanishing ‘cream’ was more of a pale, gray mist. The mist was comprised of hundreds of thousands of incredibly small robots, each the size of a single atom. Known as nanites, they immediately began breaking down the assembled gear on a molecular level; dissolving it into a large pool of shimmering liquid in a matter of minutes. Ten minutes later the liquid ceased to shimmer, indicating that the nanites had self destructed as they were designed to.

  Carter nodded his approval. “O.K., check weapons, and I want everyone to drink a can of coffee. That was a long, cold swim and I want us to get our core temperatures up.”

  Carter took an eight-ounce plastic container of coffee and pressed his thumb firmly into a small bulge at its base; breaking the barrier separating two chemicals contained in separate compartments below the coffee itself. Once mixed, the chemicals created enough heat to warm the coffee to an agreeable temperature. Carter set the can aside to allow the beverage to warm while he checked his weapons and saw that the other operators had done likewise.

  “This may not be real coffee, but it does warm the bones,” McNamara commented a few minutes later as he drained the last drop from his canister. He pulled the charging handle on his sub-machine gun and let it slam forward with a sharp, metallic click. “I think we’re good to go, Boss.”

  Carter looked to the rest of the team and made sure they were ready to move. “O.K., we have to haul ass, but be alert. Avoid enemy contact if at all possible. If we have to engage keep it quiet and make sure we kill every enemy trooper; no one gets away. Get your forty-fives ready, loaded them with armor pierces, and put on your suppressors,” Carter ordered.

  The team complied; each readying conventional .45 caliber handguns and attaching sound and flash suppressors to the weapons' muzzles. Unlike weapons specifically designed for paranormals, which were too powerful to be effectively suppressed, the sound of the .45s discharging could be reduced to the volume of a low human cough. They could be used without calling unwanted attention from nearby enemy forces.

  “Move out”, Carter ordered; “Section-wedge formation. Brains, you get out front; one hundred meters.”

  The next few hours passed in silence; the team communicating only with hand signals. Avoiding roads and paths in favor of more rural, less traveled terrain; Carter kept the pace at a fast walk. As paranormals, he and his troops could have run for the two hours or more it would take them to join Renner and his resistance fighters but, in this situation, such haste could prove disastrous. Stumbling into an unwanted encounter with enemy forces due to a lack of patience could compromise the entire mission and the invasion that depended upon it. If they did make premature enemy contact, he wanted time to avoid an engagement or, failing that, to engage the enemy on his terms so that he could ensure that none of them survived to report his team's presence.

  The war and WCA occupation had emptied the countryside of population. Those citizens that had not been pressed into military service had been forcibly relocated to major cities, imprisoned, or confined in work camps. Nature had begun to reclaim the land. The roads, with the exception of those used for transporting essential supplies and military patrols, were overgrown with weeds and thickets. Abandoned houses were commonplace as the team continued their trek. Whole villages sat idle and decaying. There was sense of foreboding that Carter had only experienced when he was deep in a land where many people had been enslaved. The land seemed to reflect the suffering of the people who dwelled there.

  An hour into the march, as the team was moving through a forested area, Sains used hand signals to bring the group to a halt. Carter moved forward to meet him as the team dispersed to find concealment.

  “There are three enemy deserters heading right for us; about five minutes out. There is a platoon-sized patrol right behind them. The patrol has formed a skirmish line; ten meter spread, to search for the deserters. I’ve scanned the patrol leader, there are other patrols one click apart; one to the east and one to the west,” Sains whispered.

  “Is there any chance we can hide and let them pass; or go around them?” Carter asked.

  Sains shook his head. “No way; there are too many of them and their alert because their on a man-hunt. One of them is bound to notice us, and we’d run into the other patrols if we try going around.”

  “Shit,” Carter said. “O.K., we let the deserters pass and then take the patrol.” He looked at Williams. “Take your section and flank them to the east, the rest of us will work from the west. Remember; edged weapons and suppressed .45s only. This has to be done quickly; and above all, silently. Let’s go to work.”

  In minutes the three deserting soldiers passed as the Alpha operators as the concealed themselves in the underbrush. Fearful of a capture, they were enduring a multitude of cuts and bruises as the nearly sprinted through forest. The patrol, unsure of their quarry’s position, moved more slowly; hoping either to either to find the deserter’s hiding place, or drive them into the path of other searching patrols. Team Alpha let the patrol come with five meters of their positions. Striking in unison, they covered that five meters in what was, literally, a blink of an eye. The WCA soldiers began dying in the space between breaths; having no time to realize they were under attack before the first of them was already dead.

  Carter singled out an enemy soldier at the westernmost end the skirmish line. Using a micron-sharp, double-edged fighting knife in his left hand and his sound-suppressed .45 caliber pistol in his right, he came from the enemy’s left; covering the space between them in a fraction of a second. He impaled the trooper through both sides of his neck and pushed the blade out through the front of his neck; severing the carotid artery, the jugular vein, and the trachea in a single motion. The trooper fell; a scream still trying to gurgle its way out of the gash in his ruined throat.

  To his right a second enemy trooper tried to defend his comrade and attempted to bring rifle to his shoulder. The rifle had moved less than an inch before Carter launched his foot into the soldier’s jaw; striking him under chin. The soldier’s teeth shattered into tiny fragments as they were slammed together by Carter’s kick. The soldier’s head was propelled backward with such force that his neck snapped with a pronounced cracking sound.

  Carter shot two more troopers just under their noses before the body of the second trooper had fallen. The.45 caliber rounds tore through their faces and obliterated their brainstems; killing them before they could raise their weapons.

  Nearby, Burgett ran toward his targets; bursting from the shadows with his pistol raised. Still running, he shot four soldiers in their heads. He was less than a foot away from his fourth target when his bullet blasted the soldier’s head from his body forming a spray of bone and blood.

  Roth had switched her sidearm to its burst mode. She fired a three shot burst from behind a dying tree. The last of the three bullets left her pistol’s muzzle before she felt the recoil from the first. Her enhanced reflexes and perception guided each bullet into the heads of three enemy troopers.

  Like Burgett, Defontain charged her targets; firing while moving; literally becoming a blur to the soldiers she was engaging. Each of her three targets received two tungsten coated, armor piercing bullets in his heart. The last of her targets died before the body of the first had hit
the ground.

  McNamara lay behind a fallen tree. With his pistol in burst mode, he waited until his targets were within three feet of his position before rising to his knees to fire. In less than a second he fired a three shot burst into each of the four enemy soldiers in front of him; destroying the hearts and lungs. The four bodies hit the ground almost in unison.

  Williams sprang from the shadow-enveloped underbrush. His micron-sharp sword decapitated two enemy soldiers in a one, seemingly effortless, stroke. Using his blade used to deflect the muzzle of another trooper’s rile he cut the rifle in half, between the trigger-guard and magazine well, just as the trooper squeezed the destroyed weapon's trigger. With another lightning-swift cut, William sliced the trooper’s throat as he stared in disbelief at the two halves of his weapon.

  Another trooper tried to bring his weapon into firing position. William’s sword flashed again. The hand that the trooper would have used to pull his rifle’s trigger was severed at the wrist and, in one arching motion, Williams struck the enemy’s head from his body.

  Nagura drove one of her palm-knives deeply into the back of one enemy trooper’s skull, leapt over the still twitching body as it crumpled to the ground, and before touching the ground, drove her right foot into the mouth of another trooper, propelling him onto his back, fragmenting his teeth, and stifling what might been a call for help. As the trooper used both hands in a futile attempt to staunch the torrent of blood streaming from his mouth, Nagura stabbed him twice in the heart in rapid succession. Another enemy trooper turned toward her. Her blades lashed out again; one severed the trooper’s finger as it moved toward his rifle’s trigger, the other impaling him under the chin and penetrating the brain.

  To her right an enemy soldier tried to drive the butt of his rifle into her face. Nagura evaded the thrust and slammed her foot into her enemy’s left knee; feeling the bone shatter through the sole of her boot. A knee to the bridge of his nose kept him from announcing his pain with a scream. Nagura leapt on him as he fell and slit his throat.

  Sains seized an enemy soldier from behind and slit his throat before throwing his knife at a second target. Made of the same ultra-strong, micron-sharp metal as all of the blades used by the FIRE teams, and propelled by Sains’ paranormal strength, the Bowie-style knife pierced the enemy soldier’s body armor and sank into his chest to its hilt. Surging toward the two remaining members of the enemy patrol, Sains crushed one of the men’s' windpipe with an arching blow with the edge of his hand. Sains punched the last enemy trooper in the solar-plexus, and chest; crushing the sternum, collapsing his lungs, and launching him backward. He was airborne for ten feet before rolling to a stop face down on loam-covered ground. Sains ended the soldier’s pain by breaking his neck.

  “Check the bodies for documents,” Carter ordered.

  “Do we hose them down with vanishing cream?” Burgett asked.

  “No,” Carter replied. “If these guys just vanish their headquarters will send a division out to look for them. It would be too much of a mystery to ignore. We’ll leave the bodies here. We’re close to our link-up with Renner. I'll have him send a detachment from his unit back here and have them tramp all over the place to make it look like the underground ambushed this patrol. An ambushed patrol won’t seem as odd as a whole platoon going missing; Renner and his people have the enemy troops in this area pretty used to being ambushed. Let’s get out of here before the other two patrols realized they’ve lost contact with their buddies,” Carter added.

  “You think they’ll fall for that?” McNamara asked;”Especially since the Captain decapitated three of these poor fellows here in grand samurai style.”

  “The may ask some questions,” Carter responded. “But, buy the time they find the answers, our job will be done.”

  The team assumed formation and resumed their march. Thirty enemy soldiers lay dead. They had not been able to fire a shot in their own defense. The entire battle had lasted less than thirty seconds.

  Chapter Seven

  Thankfully, the team had had no further encounters by the time the approached the planned rendezvous. When they were within half a mile of the rendezvous Carter used hand signals to halt his troops in small grouping of trees and indicated that they should gather around him. He looked at Sains. “What do you have?”

  Sains close his eyes and extended his psychic senses. “I’ve got two people about seventy meters directly ahead; one male one female, just inside that stand of trees. Twelve more people directly ahead fifty meters behind them,” he said after several seconds.

  “I see them”, Carter said. “That should be Renner and his people,” Carter said touching William’s shoulder. “Take your section into that drainage ditch,” he told Williams, pointing a ditch a few hundred feet to the team’s right. “Cover us while we do the meat-and-greet. Everyone remember that the only ones from the underground unit who know who we are, and what our final objective is, are Captain Renner and the local underground leader. Use call signs when the underground fighters are around. They don’t need to know our real names.”

  Williams, McNamara, Sains and Nagura moved quickly to their position. Carter retrieved his infra-red beacon from a pocket on his tactical vest, directed at the two figures Sains had located and flashed it carefully in a predetermined pattern: one long flash followed by two short flashes, a ten second pause, and then another long flash. He waited for the equally specific response from Renner before leading Roth, Burgett, and DeFontain cautiously forward.

  Just as they entered the small wooded area, a voice came from behind the one of the thicker trees. “Blueberry,” it said in clear, unaccented English.

  “Cobbler,” Carter said in response.

  A figure stepped into plane view. Carefully keeping his arms away from his body he approached Carter and his group. “Prowler?” the figured asked.

  “Affirmative,” Carter said.

  “Tony Renner,” the man said, extending his hand. Renner was average in stature thickly bearded and dressed a heavy utility shirt and jeans. He appeared, for all intents and purposes, as a local worker. His eyes though, even in the dark of night, were intense and full of purpose.

  Carter accepted the handshake, “Good to meet you.”

  Another figure stepped from behind a tree; it was petite and female. Dressed in a dark green turtle neck and jeans, her hair was short and dark. She was young; no older than twenty, but she carried herself with deliberation and resolve. She made no effort acknowledge Carter.

  “This Lisa Mertens,” Renner said, speaking in French. “She’s the leader of the underground cell you’ll be working with.”

  Carter judged her as someone with no patience for pleasantries. “Ma’am,” he said with a nod.

  “It was you that freed my father?” Mertens asked, also in French.

  “My team and I did, yes,” Carter replied also in French. Now that contact with the underground had been made, all conversation would be in French; one of the three dominant language of Belgium.

  Mertens’ face brightened slightly. “He is well?” she asked.

  “He’d been through hell,” Carter told her. “But, when I last saw him, he was recovering well.”

  Mertens extended her hand. “Thank you,” she said.

  Carter took the offered hand. “No problem,” he replied.

  “We have a hide-sight about click east of here; a small, abandoned railroad maintenance yard,” Renner said. “The gear you wanted is there. We’ve got hot food and your people can catch their breath. The trip here had to a bitch: even for paranormals.”

  “It has been a long night,” Cater agreed. He turned to Defontain. “Use your IR beacon and single Harvard and his section to move up.”

  Defontain obeyed and within seconds Williams and his section had rejoined Carter. “Captain,” Carter said to Renner. “We had to take out a platoon-sized enemy patrol about five clicks from here. I want you to send a squad or two to leave some tracks and make it look like it was your uni
t that staged that ambush. Make sure that they really trample the up the area. They can help themselves to any weapons and equipment they find on the bodies.”

  “You wiped out a whole platoon?” Renner asked astonished. “We didn’t hear a thing.” he added, clearly impressed.

  “We specialize in being sneaky bastards,” McNamara said, grinning.

  Carter turned to McNamara. “Grumble, you and Bandaid show the Captain’s people to the ambush sight and then meet us at Captain Renner’s hide sight. Don’t get spotted by another patrol and make sure to mask your trail.”Renner sent some his fighters to comply with Carter’s order.

  “Will do, Boss,” McNamara said. He tapped DeFontain on her shoulder and the two operators gathered ten of Renner’s fighters and led them toward the ambushed patrol.

  “How heavy is the patrol activity in the area?” Cater asked Renner.

  “It got pretty heavy about twelve hours ago,” Renner said. “The WCA just raised a new conscript regiment from Belgium and Denmark. That regiment is in a temporary training camp about twenty clicks from here. It just got orders to ship out for the Alaskan front. There have been a lot of deserters since those orders came in. Most of them try to make it to the coast and get to the Antwerp Corporate Exclusion Zone, and hope the Corporate Consortium will give them asylum.”

  “The patrol we hit was on the trail of three deserters,” Carter said. “What’s to keep a patrol from finding your camp, Captain?”

  “They’ve already been there,” Renner said. “Our scouts watched them search the rail yard three hours ago, before we set up shop there. I’ve got sentries posted to give us warning if they come back.”

  “Very well,” Carter said. He faced his team. “Our hide sight is one click to the East. Form up with the Captain Renner’s people and move out,” he said. “Brains, Gambler, I want you to hold here for twenty minutes to make sure we’re not being followed, and then meet us at the hide-sight.”Sains and Roth followed orders and vanished into the night.