Always Forward

Chapter 02: The Rally

                                             ~ CHAPTER II ~

                                               - The Rally -

En route to Rally Point Whiskey,

Republic of Sierra Leone

Leaves rustled in the cool night breeze. Crickets sang their mating calls. The bright glow of the full moon pierced through the clouds above and penetrated the jungle canopy, dimly illuminating the floor below. Secreted within the shadows were the fourteen battle ready Marines of MSOT 1, cautiously slogging through the dense jungle growth like phantoms in the night. Their movements were slow and deliberate, each move carefully planned and executed.

Roughly an hour had passed since their departure from their designated drop zone. In that time they had traversed roughly a kilometer of terrain, and had yet another to go before reaching their destination. Rally Point Whiskey. Located at the base of a hill, dubbed “Hill 96” on their maps because of its elevation in feet above sea level, it was the nearest hill to the village of Eaiama.

The radio suddenly crackled to life in Staff Sergeant Cunningham’s headset, startling him. He repressed the urge to jump and listened to what was being transmitted.

“Team, halt,” Captain Carson ordered.

Cunningham raised his left hand in the air and balled it into a fist. He dropped to one knee and brought his rifle up in front of him, looking over the Aimpoint optic mounted to the top of his Mark 18 rifle to scan his sector. As the seconds ticked by, he began to wonder why they had stopped. Had something caught the captain’s eye? Had he heard something moving in the darkness? Was he consulting his map to make sure they were on the right heading?

His unspoken queries were answered moments later. “Team, this is Roddy. Chaos Actual requested a SITREP. Move out. Over.”

“Chaos Actual” was the callsign for the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Weatherby, whom was back aboard the USS George H. W. Bush. The man was a career Marine with little in the way of a life outside the Marine Corps. Before he’d joined up with MARSOC shortly after its formation in 2009, he’d been an intelligence officer leading an S-2 shop for an infantry battalion. According to scuttlebutt (rumor), the colonel had no family and very few friends to speak of.

Cunningham did not like him. He seemed like an overbearing prick that sought to climb up the ranks in hopes of one day attaining general. The colonel probably hadn’t been in combat before and considering his position in the chain-of-command, it was unlikely that he would ever experience it. The staff sergeant, in contrast, had served in the infantry and the recon communities for years prior to having volunteered for selection into Special Operations.

In his ten years of service with the Marine Corps, he went through three tours in Iraq and two in Afghanistan as both an infantry and Reconnaissance Marine. Since acquiring his status as a member of America’s elite Special Operations Forces (SOF), he had been all over the world; Africa, South America, Asia, and especially the Middle East. His baptism by fire long ago was merely a footnote in his service record when compared his most recent deployments.

Cunningham swept those thoughts aside as the team moved on. The Marines slinked through the thick brush, their weapons at the ready and their senses attuned to their surroundings. Several minutes passed by in relative silence until the captain ordered a halt in their movement upon reaching a dried up streambed that bisected the jungle. After a brief review of his map, their team leader ordered the team to follow along the streambed.