Immaculate Spirit c1-242

by Newbiel

  Contrary to his habits, the tv on the other side was broadcasting CNN. The reason why it was the case was simple. It was more than twenty hours since they lost contact with the interrogation team they sent to the US and the freelance operative in charge of investigating the ties between the bombing in Riyadh last year and the Lyndon family. So far they had no information about what happened and that made him queasy. He even called his counterpart at the CIA for information and he had no clue either even if it was possible he was just lying.

  He had even hired someone to look at the warehouse where his agents were last stationed and the place was found empty and cleaned out completely. No trace could be found about his people, it was almost like they had vanished into thin air. Hearing something that spark his attention, Khan put down his report before taking the remote and upping the sound coming from the TV.

  "Yes Chris. It is an extremely grim situation what happened here in New York this morning. The body of a woman was found this morning by a bodega worker in a dumpster on the corner of this street. The woman was so heavily mutilated that she was unrecognizable but so far the only thing we know about her was that she had mid shoulder brown hair and that she was around forty years old. I cannot stress you enough how gruesome the scene is. A significant number of her fingers and toes were cut off and she had burned a huge part of her body. Everything so far is pointing at the fact that she was tortured. This is a horrible hate crime that took place here Chris."

  "A hate crime you say Susan?"

  "Yes Chris, based on what the person that found the body said earlier, the flag of Saudi Arabia was cut into the woman's forehead next to what looks like a bird. At this time, the Police refused to make a comment about the murder but they have made a…"

  At that point, Khan had heard enough and turned the TV off. Even if his face was devoid of any emotion, his mind was reeling from the information he just got. The fact that the Lark had been found out was in accord with his own thinking, the torture was too but dumping the body where he could be easily found was baffling. The Lark skill and experience was almost unrivaled in their field, for being taken out, the person doing it would need a huge amount of time and resources. The easy culprit in the US would be the CIA but Khan seriously doubts that it was the case.

  For starters, even if they had the means to take her out, they would never have disposed of the body like that. That incident in itself was going to gather a lot of public attention and create a diplomatic incident between the two countries, something that they did not need at the moment. His thought process was interrupted when someone knocked on his door.

  "Enter." Not bothering to ask who it was, only one person could knock on his door.

  Entering his office, his most senior agent stops after closing the door and putting his hands behind his back in a sign of respect.

  "Start talking."

  "Sir, we found our interrogation team that we lost contact with in the US." He said succinctly.

  "Where?" He asks, keeping his voice devoid of any emotions.

  "Here, sir. They were found in the hold of the last plane coming from the US four hours ago."

  "Four hours ago? Why are we knowing about this only now?" He asks, a hint of cold anger creeping to his voice now.

  "They were found heavily sedated without any identification on them so they were brought to the hospital while the police took their time to run their fingerprint to the database which got our attention. I was the one who got to the hospital to make sure that it was indeed our team and to know what happens. I was not able to talk with them as they were still heavily sedated but the doctors told me that their bodies show signs of injury but nothing life threatening. Based on what I saw, they were knocked down before being drugged, I let one of our men to let us know when they woke up."

  "Good job, let me know when they wake up, I will debrief them myself." He said before frowning, seeing his men still in his office. "Is there something else?"

  "Yes, we found names written on our men's bodies, one name each time at the same place, on their chest. I wrote them down for you before running them on our database." He said before taking a piece of paper and giving it to him.

  The more that he read the names on the list, the more his expression became serious and grave. Every single name on that list was the real name of one of his undercover agents placed in various places in the Middle East. All extremely skilled agents and all personally placed by him under heavy secured identity. The simple fact that someone knew about them all was baffling and surprising to say the least but everything about this situation was.

  Falling into deep thought, he starts reviewing that he just learned starting from the Lark. They had managed to capture her, torture her and then kill her before dumping the body at a place where she will be easily find. The marking on her body shows that it was a message sent specially for him, showing that they were ruthless and were not afraid to kill his people. The matter of his interrogation team means something else entirely. They were returned to him drugged but otherwise unharmed, showing a desire to make peace. And now, the fact to give him the name of his own agents was a disguised threat and a promise all in one. The promise that if he wanted to keep investigating, he would pay it dearly.

  Making a quick decision, he opens his personal safe from his desk before fishing the files of all his agents and giving them to his agent.

  "This is our agents that were mentioned in the piece of paper you gave me and the way to get them out of their assigned missions. I leave that to you, I need to speak with the King." He said, getting to his feet and leaving his office followed by his agent.

  Chapter 191: :

  Myanmar. 03/02/2013. 03:55.

  Climbing the wall using only the crack between the rocks, Nathaniel moved with practice and slow movement, taking the precaution to not make any noise while making his climb. The place was originally an old monastery, modified to make a fort to guard the frontier with China during WW2 and then abandoned at least forty years ago. Since they had taken over the place, they had rehabilitated the exterior wall and added two wooden towers on the road side, equipped with machine guns and a spotlight.

  That was one of the reasons that Nathaniel and his team chose to make their approach by the opposing side of the stronghold where there was less security. Hearing footsteps above him, Nathaniel froze, sticking to the wall to avoid being noticed. Waiting without moving an inch, suspended twelve feet above the ground, he starts climbing back once the man starts moving back to his original position, lighting himself a cigarette. Hoisting himself quietly on the wall, he approached silently behind the man, putting his hands on each side of his head before twisting with force, killing him before he could yell. Dropping the body slowly to avoid making any noise, his eyes looked around him to make sure that nobody noticed anything. Once he was sure that everything was good, he took a rope from his bag, tying it to the wall and sending it down.

  "Wall clear, rope secured." He said in his earpiece.

  "Roger."

  Putting a knee to the ground, Nathaniel took in hands his HK416 equipped with a suppressor and a thermal lens, covering his team while they were busy ascending using the rope that he just sent. Once they were all on the wall, Nathaniel nodded in Scott's direction.

  "We go according to plan. Move out!" Scott said in the com.

  Scott took Na-Yung, Lucie and Jon with him and started walking to the west of the compound where the captives were being held while Nathaniel and Camilla started going north where the sleeping quarters of the slavers were located. Using the shadow and the poor lighting inside the camp, Nathaniel and Camilla moved unnoticed to the first building. Taking her bag off of her back, Camilla took an explosive charge from it and stuck it to the wall.

  They kept moving stealthily, going building to building, continuing posing explosives until Nathaniel raised a fist in the air. Understanding the signal, Camilla stops moving and sticks to the wall near her, looking around with her rifle raised.
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  "What is going on?" Camilla whispers in her com.

  "I'm hearing someone getting beat up and crying from the building just ahead." Nathaniel answers back.

  "I'm not hearing anything." Camilla said.

  "I have a good hearing, want to check it out?"

  "We have strict orders, sir." She said with a dry tone.

  "You are right. Scott, come in." Nathaniel said, going to the team channel.

  "Go ahead." He answers a few seconds later.

  "I have a civilian getting beat up here, third building north of your position. Request permission to go in and save the hostage before it's too late."

  "Did you accomplish your assigned task already?"

  "The explosives are set." Nathaniel answers, not liking where this was going.

  "Did you secure the towers?"

  "Not yet."

  "Permission denied, secure those towers first. Scott out."

  "Scott! I can get the girl out of her before they even know that I was there!" Nathaniel exclaimed.

  "Do I need to remind you what we discussed? If anything happens and those towers are not secured, we will be sitting ducks! So do what I told you to do and shut the hell up!" Scott shouted angrily before cutting down the communication.

  Clenching his jaw in anger, Nathaniel closed his eyes to calm himself. He knew that Scott was right and it was for this reason that Nathaniel named him as team leader. Nathaniel always was kind of a lone wolf and Marc was the same after he left the Seals. Scott was the perfect candidate to be in charge in the field, he was extremely skilled and experienced. Still, he was angry because he was confident he could get the hostage out without triggering any alarm. Sighing, he turned to Camilla who was uncharateristicly silent.

  "Let's go Camilla, we have orders."

  Walking in the direction of the towers, Nathaniel and Camilla were surprised to find one of the two men manning the towers descending the ladder, saying something to the other one. Nodding to each other, they rapidly took position on each side of the tower, hiding in the shadow. Once descending the ladder, the man died when Camilla knife sliced his throat before lowering him to the ground silently. Checking that everything was alright, Nathaniel put his HK on his back, taking his knife between his teeth and started climbing the ladder of the other tower.

  Unlucky from the person guarding the tower, he never knew how he died. One second he was hearing something behind him and the next a knife was stabbed into his brain. Wiping his knife on the dead guy, Nathaniel calls Scott.

  "Towers secure, how is it going on your side?"

  "We breach the wall and are currently evacuating the hostages, we need you to speed up the process, this is taking too much time."

  "Scott, I need to go back to…"

  Nathaniel started to say when a gunshot echoed in the fort, shutting him up instantly.

  "Lucie is down!" The voice of Jon said in the com.

  "Jon go get her! Na-Yung covers him and finds me who is the bastard that just shot her!" Scott ordered quickly.

  "On it!" Na-Yung answers.

  "I… I'm good, I took it in the vest, it hurt like hell but I think I'm good. I got the one who shot me." Lucie said weakly.

  Relieved that Lucie was only injured, Nathaniel kney that the problems were only getting started. That gunshot had been extremely loud and he could hear noise coming from the building where the ex soldiers were no longer sleeping.

  "Scott, we have movements here, the whole fort is waking up."

  "You need to hold them! We need two minutes to extract the rest of the prisoners and then we will be with you."

  Scott knew exactly what he was asking. Two minutes in this kind of situation would be exactly the same at two hours, that was going to be really difficult to do but he had orders and he was going to obey them. There was no other choice.

  "Camilla, you heard our orders. I'm going to take the high and stay here, take the low ground and secure my descent. Take your suppressor off, we are going to make a lot of noise to make sure that everyone goes to us and not where the prisoners are being held. Armed with the charge that we placed and get ready to blow everything up at my signal."

  "Got it!" Camilla answers quickly, taking position to have a good view to the passage leading to the tower.

  "I'm making sure you are going to have the time that you need. Camilla, move 8 yard to your left, there is a slight depression in the ground, you will have a better view and a better cover on the passage."

  "Moving now."

  "Requesting radio silence now."

  Closing his eyes, Nathaniel starts expanding his consciousness outward. Overwhelmed by the huge number of persons and information he was getting, he withdrew it quickly. Taking another breath, he limited himself in a thirty yard radius around him where he could feel twenty four people moving. Having an idea, he tried to visualise the position of his weapon which was surprisingly easy to do. Keeping his eyes closed, he pressed the trigger three times in a row, hitting a wall and two doors.

  Seeing where the shots landed, Camilla looked surprised at where Nathaniel was. She was well aware of how good a shot he was and wasting three shots like that did not look like him at all.

  "What the hell!?" She exclaimed loudly when one of the two doors that he just shot opened, a man half dressed toppling over, a bullet wound in his head.

  Keeping himself from smiling at his success, he shot five more times when the hair on his neck started standing up. Not wasting time, he jumped from the top to the tower and used the ladder as a sliding pole to descend. He had just jumped when bullets started ripping where he was just standing a few moments ago. When he was three feet above the ground, he jumped from the ladder, doing a roll on the ground to absorb the kinetic energy of the descent. Even if he did it right, he still felt the impact on his joints.

  "Camilla, I'm going to cover your right flank." Nathaniel said on the radio, taking cover on the side of the building.

  The position he was in was not that great, he was covered by the building but there were two paths coming in his direction and at least ten windows who had a direct line of sight to his position. Moreover, based on his location and the barracks in the fort, he was going to take the brunt of the attack. In contrast, Camilla was in a better position to defend herself and block her side of the tower as he had only one path and a few windows. That arrangement was not due to hasard, Nathaniel had decided to take the more dangerous path.

  Hearing footsteps coming, he quickly checked his HK416 after changing the magazine. Even if he had shot only eight rounds of the thirty rounds in it, he preferred to have a fully loaded one, he will need all of them to hold what was coming. Hearing Camilla starting to shoot, he did not have the time to look in her direction because someone appeared on his side and he also started firing.

  Chapter 192: :

  "Requesting radio silence now." The voice of Nathaniel said in the com.

  Cutting his mic, Scott ran to where Jon was looking at Lucie, Na-Yung busy escorting the prisoners out. They all had learned some quick phrases in Burmese to be understood by the prisoner and Na-Yung was using that now to reassure everyone that things were going to be okay. Things that even Scott was not confident about right now.

  "How is she doc?"

  "She has a cracked rib but otherwise she's good based on what I can see right now."

  "Alright, now can someone tell me where the guy came from and why nobody told me that we lost a prisoner?" Scott asked, looking at a thirty something years old woman dead near Lucie.

  "She was not a prisoner, she was just pretending to be one!" Lucie finally spoke, putting back her vest in place. "I was busy helping two girls walking away when I noticed her trying to leave to the center of the fort. At first, I thought that she was just a little out of it so I walked to her to steer her in the right direction. That's when she wiped a gun to my face. I managed to move away the gun from my face but she still got me in the chest. Before going down, I shoot her down with my handgu
n. I'm so stupid, I should have expected something like this."

  "Don't do that now, you will have a lot of time later to think about it. Make mistakes, learn from them and then do different mistakes, this is life in a nutshell for you kiddo." Scott said before being interrupted by three gunshot coming from the other side of the fort.

  "That was Nathaniel." Lucie said with certainty.

  "How can you know? And why would he take the suppressor off of his gun? That's really stupid to be honest." Jon asked skeptically.

  "She's right, he's the only one who can be accurate in a single shot and that fast between targets. Yeah, it's stupid but he's doing that for us. The first place that the soldier would usually first check would be our position as it is where their money is, by making noise, he's basically redirecting all the attention on them. Let's go people, we need to get the prisoners out of here now before the whole fort is coming on them!"

  "Scott, this is the last of them." Na-Yung said when seeing them run in her direction, pointing to the seven womens who were passing by the hole in the wall.

  "They know where to hide?" Scott asked quickly.

  "Yes, I explain it to them."

  "Okay, then we are moving, they can pass the wall without our help now."

  "That was not Nathaniel." Lucie said, hearing an automatic weapon firing.

  "Remember your training, we move together, be swift but not quick. Lookout for your fellow teammates and be attentive, remember that you can't shoot what you can't see but what you can't see can very well shoot at you."

  Moving between the buildings, Scott and Na-Yung were walking side by side, gun ready while Lucie and Jon were covering the rear. Meeting a few stragglers, they took care of them before moving on. There was non stop gunfire now and they even heard a grenade or RPG at one point exploding. Raising his fist into the air, Scott stopped them before turning his com back on.

  "Nathaniel, I'm going to get overrun! We need to blow the explosives now!" Camilla shouted in the com in a strained voice.