Out of the Fire

Part 10 - Contact

The two vehicles glided slowly and silently through the tall grass, using their infrared lights for guidance under a cloudy moonless sky. The team's focus sharpened as they edged closer to the target, the Commando led by the warrior they knew as Geo. As planned, the vehicles drew to a halt in a shallow depression about two hundred yards from the Commando's concealed camp site.

Before advancing on foot, Joe carefully scanned the small copse of woods hiding Geo's Commando, using his passive IR scope. He counted four immobile green heat signatures indicating sleeping warriors and one mobile heat signature moving in an irregular path around the camp keeping about fifteen yards out from the sleeping warriors. Beyond the sleeping warriors the scanner revealed the larger heat signatures of the Commando's six horses, also stationary. Joe was concerned, drone surveillance had identified six warriors in the Commando, there were six horses but Joe could only identify four sleeping and one sentry, where, he wondered was the missing warrior.

"Can anyone see six bodies?" he asked quietly into his mike.

"Negative, I see five," reported the commander of the second vehicle.

"Focus on the horses, he might be hidden by their signature," Joe ordered.

After another ten stressful minutes, they still had not located the sixth warrior.

"Ok, we will have to wing it, keep your eye out, he must be around somewhere. One and Two of each team keep your tasers as primary, number threes you are backup, you have your Mark 18s as primary." Joe continued, "Check each other's kit, we don't want any accidents and mask up, you know the drill, same as in the Yemen, recovering the ambassador's son. Shit, that seems a long time ago now."

The teams checked the security of each other's body armour and gas masks, then dropping the night vision headsets into place, the vehicle ramps silently lowered.

Through the green tinge of the NVGs Joe observed his teams shake out into formation and begin the slow deliberate advance on the Commando camp. Still worried about the sixth warrior, Joe signalled his second team under Sergeant Henrik Baume to circle towards the horses, hoping they would locate the warrior near the horses. The advance slowed, pausing they lowered to the ground whenever the lone sentry circled to their side of the camp. When Joe determined they were within effective range he signalled a halt.

"Misty, any sign of the sixth body yet?" he radioed back to the Bravo vehicle driver.

"No sir, still only the five," she reported back.

"Roger that," acknowledged Joe, "Team check your masks, the gas is going in,"

Joe then directed his leading rifleman to release the Valium gas grenade into the camp, just up wind so the sleeping gas drifts across the camp site. The grenade landed with a thump exactly where it was supposed to, drawing the attention of the sentry, but failed to detonate. At the sound of the grenade hitting the ground, the lightly sleeping warriors were instantly awake, fully alert and reaching for their weapons.

"Shit," whispered Joe into his mike, "Gas is a fail, go, go, go, use Tasers."

Joe's team leaped silently forward toward the camp in an attempt to overcome the warriors before they could fully respond. All seemed under control for just a few moments, when the horses responded in alarm to Sergeant Baum's oncoming team. Before the assault teams could attain Taser range, the warriors were up, throwing their bedding from them, shouting and presenting their weapons at the ready.

The Sentry as the first to identify the assaulting soldiers, shouted a warning, as he, with practiced ease, extracted an arrow from his hip quiver and in one fluid movement, notched, drew and loosed it towards Joe. Fired in haste in the darkness, the arrow slightly off target, clipped a tree and spun down and toward the right. In the dark he didn't see it coming until the arrow sliced through the side seam of his thigh armour and buried into his upper left leg with the force of a sledge hammer. Staggering under the impact Joe dropped his weapon and clutched at the closest tree for support.