Three Months Later
Afull moon is glowing high in the sky giving us all some light to the darkness that swallows my team and me. It’s the first mission of the deployment and it has me on edge. I love the thrill of being in a black hawk as it transports us. Every time I get in a helicopter with my team it feels like the first time. Tonight gives me an eerie feeling, I know too well. We are tasked with rescuing two captured soldiers taken hostage by a terrorist group. Rooker, Kane, and I with a new guy named Lopez travel carefully as we near our target area on foot now, the air ominous. The reaper breathing down my neck, as always, trying hard to get into my head.
Tonight is the night.
The words sound condescending and mimicking. I shake my head.
Fuck off.
Our night vision goggles strapped onto my head tight allowing me to see better. We silently get comfortable in a woodsy area near the village that the terrorists have called home for the past few days. Tall trees and bushes offer us cover to settle in and attain surveillance. We’re on a hill that surrounds the village giving us the perfect position on our targets. The middle of the night tends to give us an advantage.
‘Fuck man, what I would do for some tamales right now and not this MRE shit,’ Lopez complains while settling underneath a tree. Lopez is our communications guy. He relays any messages or alerts out to higher-up personnel while we work.
‘Texas, I swear, if you start talking about food again, I’m shutting off your radio.’ I snarl.
We all have operator names we use on the mic when addressing each other. We don’t want to risk the enemy getting a hold of our real identities. Lopez is Texas. He was born and raised there, and he chose that for himself.
Mine’s Grim Reaper. I have the most successful missions on the team, along with the highest kill count in the military so everyone branded me with it. I didn’t give it to myself.
Rooker is Cobra since it’s his favorite snake species and when he strikes, he’s fast.
I look at the stars and I can’t help it, but I can feel myself getting distracted. What I would do for whiskey and a cigarette… and a Cherry.
Every time I get stressed, I think about whiskey. Whiskey makes life better. Then my mind saunters to El Devine and how it’s been my favorite place to be recently. There isn’t a day that goes by I’m not thinking about my cherry… my sweet Ari. Her taste has me addicted but I know this isn’t a line I should cross… I can’t cross. I can’t take her without feeling like a piece of shit. She’s already clouding my mind and I can’t imagine how I will be if I capture her. Her smell and her touch are already altering my mind. The aftermath of Whiskey can’t even compare to the effects she has on me. What she could do to me is ruthless. What I could do to her is worst.
‘Grim!’ Rooker snaps me out of my thoughts, his voice painfully loud in my ear. The earbuds vibrate with his voice. We use these tiny things to communicate with each other.
‘Shit, Cobra! What?’ I snarl quietly.
‘There’s movement in that building. You see that open window. Fuckers left it open.’ Rooker breathes.
‘I see it,’ I confirm as I turn my position underneath a tree that has a brush surrounding the bottom.
‘You sure you’re okay man?’ Rooker doubts me in my ears. He’s not concerned about my well-being. He’s getting suspicious of my behavior and I don’t blame him. He can tell something is different about me and he’s right. Rooker is the dad of the team because of his parental behavior around us. He’s also a dad to two daughters and husband to his wife, Noel. Even though he’s the oldest of the group, I’m still the one in charge of the team.
In a midsize window, there’s a room with a light left on, on the second floor of the building. It’s our small window to confirm the identities of the hostages. Our intel has led us up to this point so we have to confirm if the hostages were really in this location. Then breach and rescue. If only the process was that simple.
I grab my binoculars and study the room. The room is absolutely plain. Nothing inside of it but concrete walls and floors. Sitting in the middle is a man and a woman sitting strapped to a chair with a cloth over their heads. Their hands are tied behind their back, and they have OCP pants on, and camo shirts with their dog tags hanging over their neck. It looks like they’re the hostages we’ve been looking for, but we need confirmation of their identity.
‘It looks like it’s them, boys. Intel didn’t fail us this time. Bane, can you get a closer look at those dog tags? See if their names match up right.’ I order Kane while still looking in the room. Bane’s Kane’s operator name. Bane’s his favorite DC villain. Subsequently, it rhymes with his actual name.
Dog tags are required to wear while deployed. Information like the person’s name, blood type, and religion are on it. Our hostages are one female and one male belonging to the army. The female is a medic and the male is an infantryman. Their Humvees were blown up a few days ago and they were kidnapped from the crash site. The other soldiers in the Humvee died on impact when the crash occurred.
‘Yup already doing it Grim.’
By the looks of it, they’ve been already interrogated pretty well. Their uniforms are torn in some areas, dirty, and drops of blood on their shirts. Their arms look bruised, and the male has a mark going around his neck as if he had been strangled by a rope.
Fucking vicious psychopaths.
I clench my jaw. This is why I signed up to be in the Navy. I always had an overwhelming urge to protect people from evil. And this… This was just a taste of the pure evil I’ve seen in my career. I became a Navy SEAL at eighteen. I’m thirty-three now and rest assured, I’ve seen a lot of sinister shit that war can bring.
‘Yup, it’s them. Violet Redd and Damon Hawk. And they look beat to shit. We got to get them out of there.’ Kane says.
We already have a plan to extract them. We’re going to wait until they’re most vulnerable, hoping they just give us one moment, one minute of vulnerability and we’re going to take it. All of us have our snipers ready in case of an emergency but Rooker and I are going to take the lead and physically breach the building along with a team of Green Berets. There are no more than five terrorists in there doing dirty work which we confirmed with research surveillance.
‘Alright, you guys know the plan. Texas and Bane, you guys stay put. You’re our Overwatch. Cobra and I are going to start making our way down there. Bane, give us the green light to breach. It’s gonna be a fun night boys.’
‘Hooyah sir.’ The boys whispered into their mics, simultaneously.
Rooker and I begin to descend the hill cautiously and quietly as we can. Rooker’s going to breach, and I’ll be the first man in the room. We aren’t the only ones on this specific mission tonight, conducting the rescue of the hostages. We have green berets surrounding us as well, ready to step in. Of course, we can’t see them, but they’re there.
‘When the fuck are you going to settle down already?’ Rooker breathes into the mic, grunting as we both get hit by branches. We’re trying so hard not to give away our positions. A simple twist of our ankles on rocks we can’t see and we’ll be tumbling down, alerting the villagers.
I chuckle.
‘Look Grandpa, just be grateful you got to marry the woman of your dreams while the rest of us aren’t so lucky.’ I scoff, quietly.
‘So, there is someone? And what’s stopping you?’ Rooker tries me again and I’m getting annoyed. One, I don’t like talking about these kinds of things with anyone. Two, I can never reveal what I’ve already done with Ari.
‘Yes, there is someone actually,’ I reply with a smirk.
‘I already told you, my mom’s taken.’
‘You should be so lucky. But no. Let’s just say she’s loyal, mouthwatering and I can never get enough.’
We’re getting closer now, just a few more steps and we’re out in the open, breaching the building, executing.
‘Oh? What’s the poor girl’s name?’
‘Jack Daniels. Now shut the fuck up, we’re here.’
Rooker and I slide out of the bushes, walking fast toward one wall of the building. Rooker starts setting up to breach, creating a bomb. A cloud that was covering the moon, finally moves, shining on his face. It’s crazy how different we look with our uniforms on. We have face paint all over and we’re covered head to toe with equipment. I don’t recognize Rooker. The weight of my rifle is on one side of my body as I hold it close, ready to use.
‘Shit, Grim there’s movement. They’ve untied Redd from the chair and it looks like they’re taking her downstairs, one of the men is holding a machete to her throat as she walks. Hawk is still strapped to the chair…’ Kane shouts in my ear. A few seconds pass by before he continues, ‘I no longer have visuals on the girl. I can see they’ve taken her downstairs but that’s it. I think they’re going to start doing their worst on her.’ He rasps.
‘Almost done here,’ Rooker mutters as he assembles the breaching device on the wall. My adrenaline courses through my veins and my thoughts are now scrambling. Suddenly, I smell Ari’s scent. Her sweet perfume is all I can think about at this moment, and it distracts me from the inevitable intensity that’s about to follow. We’re about to get into a gunfight. Someone’s going to lose. Then I feel the reaper’s cold breath return on my neck and I grin wickedly.
I’ll be sending a couple of men your way tonight. Don’t worry.
A woman screams from inside and we know it’s Redd. Rooker and I’s bodies stiffen as we look at each other and we both know; it might be too late. The screaming stops and the breach has been set. We back away at a distance yet still close to the wall so we can enter immediately. This is going to sting, to say the least. One of my ears blew out one time a couple of years ago. I was standing too close to the breaching device when it went off, my ears bled, and I couldn’t hear anything for a week.
The breaching device goes off and we enter the building at a calculated speed. Rubble flows everywhere, smoke fills the air, and it looks like luck is on our side tonight. We breached into the wall of a living area space that’s been turned into some sort of torture room. Two of the terrorists are taken back by the explosion and they’re sprawled out on the floor, holding onto their ears in agony.
There’s a variety of different blades hanging onto a wall, like decoration, along with guns and glass buckets full with dismembered body parts. My anger is raging inside of me, and I want to burn this whole fucking village down.
Redd is laying down on a table in a fetal position, a cloth still covering her head. She’s screaming, crying, and shaking uncontrollably. There’s a saw in the corner, making noise and I swallow. They were going to start sawing off her limbs. Rooker and I raise our rifles and swiftly put a bullet in each of the men’s heads, neutralizing the threats faster than the speed of light.
Redd is barefoot, still in her OCP pants and camo top. Her hands are tied together by a rope that has dried blood below her wrists. I quickly move towards her, grabbing the cloth off her head and I cringe, internally.
Her whole face is bruised and broken. Her eyes are swollen and black she’s only able to open one eye. Her nose appears to be broken as well. Her lips are cut open and she’s crying.
‘Violet Redd?’ I approach her, still holding onto my rifle.
She nods frantically, sobbing.
‘You’re safe now. Can you walk?’ I ask sternly. My voice cut and dry, we have to move fast and get them both to safety.
Again, she nods. Her reddish, cinnamon hair is tied up in a pony and she’s wincing in pain.
‘Let’s go.’
I would carry the poor girl, but I can’t risk all of our safety by doing that. I have to keep my rifle in my hand and watch Rooker’s six and hers, in case more threats catch us off guard.
‘Call in the green berets. We’ve got Redd, she’s going to need assistance immediately. We still have to get Damon Hawk. Do you have eyes on him?’ I call out to Kane. I’m guiding Redd toward the hole we just blasted through the wall. Rooker watches her get closer and a team of seven green berets enter through the entrance we created. Another special operator carries her off her feet and she’s crying into his shoulder. I’m feeling accomplished in this rapid moment looking at her be whisked away to safety but then I feel my adrenaline pulling at me because I know the job is unfinished.
‘Fuck Danny, they’ve moved Hawk away from the room. They’re taking him downstairs. I don’t have eyes on him anymore. You might get contact from them.’ Kane urgently informs me. I turn around immediately and so does Rooker. He also hears Kane’s voice in his ear.
Green Berets surround the torture room and we’re all pointing our rifles at the only door to the room. Rooker and I are the closest ones to the front of the door and I can feel something is wrong. There’s no movement, no sounds of footsteps. I thought Kane said they were coming downstairs.
Suddenly, a grenade is thrown at the entrance of the door. Rooker and I quickly move away, turning our backs toward the impact.
‘Grenade!’ Rooker shouts and everyone is scrambling to get the fuck out of here. We’re able to get to a good distance away but then we feel it. The explosion from the grenade shakes us in our bones. Rooker, the green berets, and I are able to survive the devastating impact, smoke everywhere but my God, it doesn’t mean it fucking hurts.
One green beret shouts as chaos starts to ensue.
“We’re taking fire!” He shouts.
Bullets are coming through the floor, straight at us. From underneath the ground. Spraying everywhere.
What the fuck?
We had to abort the rescue mission. The area became too hot and we lost our sights on Damon Hawk. Monsters had hand-built a tunnel underneath the building and we were taking fire from underground as well as our surroundings outside the building. There was no way to finish the mission and it infuriated me to my core. Fire burning inside of me and I was about to boil over. My thoughts swirl around Damon and it stings knowing that he’s going to keep getting tortured. We had to leave a soldier behind when we were so close.
I’m breathing heavily as my head rests back to the wall of the cabin. Everyone’s quiet and the morale low, knowing the job was left unfinished. Every man in the cabin tense as we sit in the dark cabin of the Chinook going back to base. I run my hands through my beard. I need a fucking cigarette.
We’re all high in the sky and all I want to do is force the pilot to take me back to the village so I can reap more souls to hell.
‘Danny… you’re hit, man. Don’t you feel it?’ Kane asks me as he looks at my shoulder, toward my back. His voice is full of worry and I’m trying to feel any pain signaling to my brain where the injury is… but nothing.
‘Where?’
‘It looks like there’s a hole through your shoulder from when the grenade went off. You must have gotten hit with shrapnel. You’re bleeding through your uniform bro, all over.’
If I’m hit that bad, I know the higher-ups are going to make me stand down until I can fully recover. Meaning I can’t finish the mission with my team until I’m healed.
‘Fuck.’
