by Natalie Grey
“Negative. There are a fair number of innocents being used to run the largest plant,” John answered.
“We are to save the innocents, and then?” asked Akio.
“Send a Bitches’ welcome down.”
“Oh, then a bombing run,” Peter commented.
“Make sure we are clear before we do that, John,” Scott mentioned. “I was talking to Marcus, and the shockwaves from the motherpuckers plus the probable concussive force are going to be pretty substantial.”
“Come on, don’t you want to see what these things can handle, Scott?” John asked.
“Sure. You go first; I’ll be the Army Brass sitting in the concrete bunker miles away taking pictures.
Everyone chuckled at Scott’s remark.
The team went above the atmosphere and darted over to Iraq before heading down in the twilight. The night had just gotten started when six craft slowed to a stop a mile above the largest oil refinery.
“Are they supposed to have that many fires burning?” Scott asked.
“Yes, they are burning off gasses that form during the processing of the oil. They either don’t have enough to capture and use in the process or they are just inefficient.” John replied.
“Big fucking place,” Scott commented.
“Isolated, too,” Darryl added.
There was a small road which led to the huge refinery, but otherwise, there were precious few buildings besides the refinery and the pipes leading to it and away.
“I see two major security bunkers along that road,” John answered. “You guys want to play or just nuke them?”
“I’ll do the first one,” Akio said. “If we drop something, maybe they get the word out, and we lose surprise.”
“I’ll take the second one,” Peter mentioned.
“Pete?” John said.
“Yup?”
“Why don’t you let your true self be free tonight? What they don’t understand will only make them more scared,” John suggested.
“Oh, you wicked, wicked man,” Peter replied. “Can I have your babies?” The chuckles went around.
Two of the Black Eagles broke formation and went toward two security emplacements, which were three hundred yards away from the main entrance to the refinery.
John told the rest, “Everyone else, take a side. Drop down and have fun. Don’t shoot the good guys.”
“How do we know who the good guys are?” Eric asked.
“They won’t be shooting at you,” John replied.
“I’m telling you, I hear growling!” Hasayne told Aabad.
The two men were in a dugout surrounded by sandbags, and a machine gun poked out of a firing hole. They had some rough-hewn wood and a couple of old doors over their heads to supply protection from above, not that they had any need for it.
“We are two hundred kilometers from any fighting.” Aabad grunted. “You hear the machinery behind us.” The two jihadis shared a cigarette. “We haven't seen any action since we got here, and if we don’t get picked soon, we are going to be here the whole war.”
Aabad was taking a drag on the cigarette when the growling got loud enough for him to hear. He turned slowly around to look out the back entrance to their dugout. Two glowing eyes returned his stare.
The cigarette dropped from his fingers.
Three hundred yards from him, two men were playing cards when a figure cloaked in black with red glowing eyes ghosted into their security bunker. Seconds later, he stepped back out after cleaning his sword on the dead bodies.
Akio jogged to the next bunker and took a look inside. His nose had already told him that the men inside were dead.
He looked at the blood and body parts. Apparently, Peter was upset, and had truly ‘let his mad out.’
Akio turned and started running toward the large refinery if he didn’t hurry he wasn’t going to have any additional kills.
John dropped the twenty feet from his Pod to the walkway on the distillation tower with his new rifle. The team had taken a few minutes to zero them back on the Ad Aeternitatem. Given the distances here, he wouldn’t have to worry about the slug this threw dropping due to gravity. John pulled the gun from his shoulder and rolled his head around, hearing a couple of his vertebrae pop.
He opened his senses as Bethany Anne had taught him and listened to the creaks and moans of the metal around the refinery as the oil went through high-pressure and heated tanks.
He heard the footsteps, the heartbeats, and the grunts as men passed each other.
Fifteen. He had fifteen in his area. John raised the rifle to his shoulder. He had shot once on 10x, and decided unless it called for it, he didn’t want the pain that caused again. Even with his advanced healing, it hurt like a bitch.
John looked down and to his left. Two guys were sharing a smoke. He aimed and gently stroked the trigger. The rifle’s kick was inconsequential as the metal slug went through the first guy’s neck at an angle, exiting between his shoulder blades to enter the chest of the guy behind him. Both bodies slumped to the walkway they were on.
Thirteen.
He turned to watch a guard head down a third walkway and waited for his target to turn to the right. John squeezed his slug through a gap between two eight-inch pipes, and the man’s head blew all over the small distillation tank he was strolling past.
Twelve.
The distillation tank now had a small hole in its side and oil started dripping out.
“Somebody should look into that,” John murmured.
Thirty seconds and seven shots later, he was down to five.
Two things happened simultaneously. An alarm went off on the distillation tank he had shot earlier, and one of the dead bodies was discovered.
Two more shots and the latter wasn’t an issue any longer. That damned alarm stayed a problem.
John looked over his shoulder and noticed three men jogging toward the tank. One of them had a rifle.
“Way to make yourself a target, asshole.” John spoke to the wind. Another twitch and another guy dead. The two running in front of the downed guard heard his fall and turned around. The first in line, who was wearing a tan shirt, drawstring pants, and sandals, pushed the second out of the way as he ran past him to bend down, grab the dead man’s gun, and headed back the way the three had come.
John reached up to the small microphone by his mouth. “This is Eagle One. We have a good guy with a rifle about to deliver righteousness to the evildoers, it seems. Try not to kill him.”
John clicked off, shouldered his rifle, and started down the stairs to go into the maze.
Scott dropped from his Black Eagle and commanded it to go up. He was wearing a full chest and thigh protection. He kept the helmet on and let it show him everything in the nearby area. It was able to decipher movement and organic sounds with the amplified microphones within the helmet. From this information, it would list likely targets.
Scott smiled under his helmet. “I’ve always wanted to play Robocop…”
He started walking in a plodding step to the first path. “Please step away from your camels…” he started, then stopped and sighed. “Wow, I can’t even make a racist joke about someone I plan on killing without feeling bad. Where is this world going?”
“Who are you?” a voice called from the darkness to his left.
Scott turned to see three armed men in a row. “God, could you guys make this any easier?” Scott pulled his pistol in a blink and shot, and the three men were thrown back with massive holes in their chests, surprise the last expression they would ever have on their faces. “Clean up, aisle one. Aisle two it is.” He headed away from the first three dead bodies.
He could see a hundred-yard row of oil containers, dark in the night. “Go infrared.” His helmet showed the areas between the tanks, and there were no humans in his view.
Scott looked around. “Bring me the Black Eagle.” Scott holstered his pistols and pulled off the helmet. His Black Eagle was in front of him within five seconds, s
o he palmed the lock. The cockpit slid open, and he placed the helmet in the front seat and reached into the back to grab his rifle.
He hit his microphone. “Take the Black Eagle up to the holding level.” His Pod disappeared.
Over the noises of the refinery, a wolf’s howl pierced the night.
Scott jerked around. “Motherfucking wolf!” Scott yelled and started running toward the plant. “I’ll shoot you myself if you take any of my kills!”
Scott’s heart started pumping as he slung the rifle over his shoulder and pulled the pistols. He came around a corner to find himself in a group of four armed men crossing the ground between sections in the plant. Scott jerked his right elbow up, practically exploding one man’s skull. He twisted to his left, bringing his pistol around and shot the second in his kneecaps. That man screamed in pain, but Scott was already on the next man to his left.
The third guy in the pack received a bullet between his eyes.
The last man was trying to pull up his rifle and jerked the trigger, sending a burst of bullets into the man in front of him—the same man Scott had kneecapped, blowing the unfortunate guy's chest open from friendly fire.
Scott finished his turn, raised his right hand, and spoke in frustration. “You rotting jizzy-cunt fuck!” Scott shot him in the stomach. “I had fucking plans for him!” Scott shot him in the kneecap. “But now you’ve gone and killed him!” Scott finished the man with a shot to the head.
He turned in frustration after watching the man’s body fall backward. “Fucking shit, how is a guy supposed to—” Scott had to duck to his left when bullets screamed at him from a guy firing off a catwalk fifty yards away.
“Losing situational awareness,” John said in his ear, “is a good way to get shot.”
Scott bowed his head. John was right. He had been allowing emotion to run his decisions lately. He unslung his rifle, ramped up his speed, darted out from behind his hiding place, and raised his rifle. He could easily see the man at the end of a walkway taking aim at where he had been hiding. Scott continued running toward him as his mark tried to track his target.
When Scott was halfway to the guy, he shot him in the head. Scott was past him before the body fell off of the catwalk to slam to the ground and lie still.
Darryl watched Scott step out of his Pod and paid attention as John dropped to the high-level catwalk. “That was smart,” he whispered.
“Hey, Eric,” Darryl called.
“Yeah?” Eric replied.
Darryl said, “What say we leave those two to ground efforts and play up here?”
Eric smile came through his reply. “What, shoot fish in a barrel?”
“Yes, exactly that,” Darryl agreed.
“Works for me. I knew I liked you being around for something besides just getting me a beer.”
Darryl snorted. “Prick, I’ll bet you a six-pack I get more kills tonight.”
“Just say when, old-timer,” Eric quipped.
“Now, you cockup.” Darryl hit the button for the door and raised his new railgun rifle. Then, it was a silent effort as the two men started aiming and shooting.
Scott was running into a more dense section of the refinery when he heard regular rifle shots and then return fire in what sounded like a firefight, but the noises weren’t from his group's weapons.
“What the hell is going on?” Scott asked as he stepped onto a catwalk and started jogging toward the gunfire.
John replied, “We have good guys grabbing guns and shooting bad guys.”
Scott had just flipped to the main team channel to ask a question when he heard Darryl and Eric. “Gott Verdammt! That was my kill, you lazy fuck!” Eric told Darryl. “I’ve got twenty-one, and if you steal my kill again, I’ll come over there and slap you so hard your momma will feel it!”
“Oh, try it, you burrito-eating barbarian!” Darryl shot back. “Twenty-three and -four!”
“What?” There was a pause. “Yeah, ok, that was good shooting. But how about this?” Four ear-shattering blasts entered a building to Scott’s left, and brick pieces exploded from the wreckage.
“Fuck me! That hurts like a motherfucker!” Eric called. “Why didn’t John tell us it hurt so much to shoot these things on ten?”
“Probably so you would do something like that!” Darryl replied. “Yeah, I see four bodies in there. That was slick. I would like to say it was cheating, but only because I didn’t think of it first.”
“Anyone seen a werewolf?” John’s voice interrupted the two.
“Why, did we lose one?” Eric asked.
“Here, Pricolici! Bark, bark, bark!” Darryl called over the net.
“Ahhh, fuck!” John exclaimed. “Akio, see if you can find Peter and get him to change back. I’m getting news that my next hit has moved up their timetable. We have to go. Scott, we are leaving in three.”
“Got it!” Scott called. He had arrived at the scene of the firefight. There were ten ISIL members behind a brick wall firing back at four of the previous hostages. “Ah, screw it.” He popped the switch to 10x and moved the railgun to his shoulder. “You only live once.” Scott held down the trigger.
All hell broke loose.
In a second, seven rods slammed out of his gun at an incredible velocity. The first three shattered the wall into thousands of killing shards, destroying the bodies of five guards immediately. The remaining four went through the two other living ISIL members. The shots blew holes so large in the bodies there was nothing remaining to hold them together and continued into the oil heaters.
That was when the explosions started.
Scott was tossed backward by the continued pummeling from the gun, and tripped over the wire safety railing and flipped off the catwalk. The whole situation became hyper-slow motion to Scott. He tucked his knees to increase the speed of his somersault and paid attention to the ground to stick his landing.
He looked left and then right to see if anyone was going to shoot him.
“I give that a seven for effort but a four for technique.” Darryl quipped on the comm.
Fuck, they saw that. He wasn’t going to live that down.
“Scott, quit fucking around and get your Olympic gymnastics ass in your Pod,” John grumped.
Seconds later, Scott's Pod dropped down, and he jumped in to get out of there.
“Where’s Peter?” Scott asked.
“Oh, I’m here.” Peter’s voice came over the net. “I was cleaning my claws when Akio found me.”
Akio came on. “Maybe my English is bad, but please explain to me again how swiping your claws through someone's shirt is ‘cleaning?’”
John’s chuckle came back after Akio’s question. “It isn’t your English, Akio. It’s Peter’s definition of cleaning.”
Chapter Three
“Are we bombing them?” Peter asked as the six Black Eagles silently ascended a thousand feet.
“Yes,” John responded. “Confirm no humans near the storage tanks and use two pucks each to take them out. Eric, I want you to focus on the pipes heading to the southeast. Go out about ten miles and take out a huge section. I’ll go to the west and do the same.”
Those fighting inside the refinery were startled when ground-shaking explosions went off. They looked to their left to see oil and metal flying high in the air from the sixty-foot-diameter holding tanks. There were no flames, but the destruction was catastrophic, and it was raining petroleum.
The men started running in the opposite direction when two more explosions occurred near them. No one saw the missiles, but everyone suspected they were being used.
From ten miles away and three miles up, Eric released a four-pound puck at maximum acceleration. Below, a huge explosion of dirt obscured his vision.
“Mission accomplished,” Eric reported, then looked over the side again. “I think. I can’t see shit down there.”
“Mine too,” John’s voice came back. “It will be good enough. These don’t have to be perfect. Close enough works.” J
ohn switched over to the group comm. “Ok, next stop is Beni.”
“Where?” Peter asked.
“Beni,” Scott replied. “Shit, sophomore, step up your global mapping knowledge.”
“And where the hell,” Peter responded, “is Beni?”
“East side of the Republic of Congo,” Scott replied.
“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Peter said. “There is no way you knew this already. Did John tell you this?”
John cut in, “No, I didn’t, Pete. If you had paid more attention to how your helmet works, you might have this information already.”
“Oh,” was Peter’s sole reply.
“Ok, we are going to visit the ADF, who are resurging. They’ve killed innocent women and children, often slicing open pregnant women and tying up people before slitting their throats. The politics involve those close to power trying to stop the elections from occurring because they would lose power. Frank heard chatter about a group of about thirty doing a run on a remote village of about eighty.”
“Can I come out and play again?” Peter asked.
“No, too much can be a drug, I understand,” John answered.
“Yeah, it is a hell of a hit,” Peter agreed.
“Ok, guys, we are going to fly in, drop down, and walk down the main street to the path the ADF is using.”
“Great! The Magnificent Seven,” Darryl exclaimed.
“But there are only six of us?” Akio asked.
“I’m counting Peter’s ability to change as a split personality, so seven,” Darryl qualified. “Or we could say Scott and his arms.”
“That are big as tree trunks,” Eric agreed.
“Would those be oaks or redwoods?” Peter asked.
“Guns?” Eric asked.
“They should have a few, but they commonly use machetes and other bladed weapons,” John answered.
“No, I meant, what guns do we use?” Eric clarified.
“Pistols at most, but I’d suggest knives for close work. You are looking a little weak in your hand to hand.”