Moving through the village was too risky, so Nathan had to take a wide detour around and approach from the south. The problem with that was that there was much less vegetation on the south side compared to the north. There were some rocks and some bushes that gave adequate cover, but the ground was mainly flat. During the daytime, it would be next to impossible to sneak up to the camp from this direction, but at night it could be done. Night-vision goggles helped, of course.

Nathan had spent some more time on the coms arguing with Overwatch, but they had relented for now. He was sure they would continue the discussion in the debriefing. If anything went wrong now this would probably be his last job for the company. Hell, it might be anyway. He hoped this John Moon fellow was worth it.

“I am closing in on the village from the south. No hostiles spotted. Shadow, how do things look on your end?”

“Still clear on the north side, but I am unable to see anything on the south end of the village. Request permission to relocate,” Shadow replied.

“Negative. You need to pack up and move north, or you’ll miss your ride.”

Smith got on the coms to confirm. “It’s slow going, but we are 10 mikes from the LZ. Shadow, you need to hustle. Eagle doesn’t like to wait around.”

“Roger, packing up now. I’ll be with you soon.”

Nathan moved past the last rock, making sure to stay close to the ground. He could see the stone pier on his left, and what presumably was barracks straight ahead and on his right. He had the dirt road on his left-hand side. The cars were parked by the side in front of the barrack in the middle.

He couldn’t see any grate or hole, but there was what seemed to be a depression in the area over by the pier. He supposed that was it. To get there he had to cross the road and move approximately fifty meters without any cover. It looked hairy, but there was no way around it.

Normally he would have preferred to crawl but there was no time for that. Instead, he walked slowly and as quietly as he could while keeping a sharp eye on the barrack doors.

As he got closer, he saw that there was indeed a grate in the depression. It was round and had a two-meter diameter. He knelt at the edge, and carefully peaked through. Even with night-vision, it was difficult to see anything, but there was definitely water down there, and perhaps something else?

“John Moon? Are you down there?” Nathan whispered. Even as quiet as he tried to be, he felt like the sound carried.

“John Moon?” he repeated. It looked like something moved down in the hole, and Nathan could see a face surfacing from the water. It was so bruised and bloated that he couldn't even guess Moon's age. What he could say for certain was that the man had dark straight hair –currently plastered to his head– and that he was of Asian descent.

“What, who...? Yeah, I’m John,” John crooked. He was speaking slowly and struggled to make any sound at all. It seemed like he had to make an effort just to speak.

“Mr. Moon, I am here to get you out, but we have to be very quiet. Are you able to walk?”

While talking, his earbud came to life. Nathan ignored it. “This is Eagle, I am 1 mike out. Prepare for touch and go extraction.”

“I… I don’t know”, said John. “Here, let me…” he tried to stand up, as he had been sitting in the water. He almost fell but managed to steady himself on the edge of the hole. He was prevented from standing up fully by the grate but was able to get to his feet, although not quietly. “I am very cold and very tired. I don’t think I can walk very far.”

“It will have to do.” Nathan switched to whispering into his mic. “This is Headhunter. Package four is located and available. Will start extraction now. Out.”

He examined the grate. It was made up of two half-circled parts, both hinged. On one of the sides, they were padlocked together. However, on a closer look, the padlock was not actually locked. The space in the grate was so narrow that it was impossible to get a hand through them, so the guards must have felt that just putting the padlock on was enough. Nathan was relieved, as he’d been worried about how to get it off without making a sound.

A very low ‘dur’ that had gradually gotten louder could now be heard. To Nathans trained ears it was clearly a helicopter, but hopefully it was not yet loud enough to wake anybody up. Even so, it was an indication that time was running out.

“We need to move,” Nathan told John as he quietly removed the padlock. “I will pull you out. Once you are out, follow me quickly but quietly.”

John nodded, and Nathan pulled the grate open. What he couldn’t see with night-vision, and what he, therefore, hadn’t accounted for was how rusty the grate was. Immediately as he started to move it, it started to squeak. Loudly. No way nobody heard that.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“God damnit”, Nathan said as he threw the grate all the way open having given up on the stealth approach. He quickly reached down for John and managed to grasp his hands. With little help from John, he pulled him up, but they both stumbled to the ground while doing so.

As Nathan got back in a crouching position, he looked over towards the barracks. The right barrack door opened, and two men exited, both carrying automatic rifles. The first one pointed in their direction and yelled something in a language Nathan didn’t understand. The second turned back while in the door opening and gestured to someone inside. They were silhouetted by what was probably candlelight from inside the barracks.

“What is happening?”, asked John from the ground beside Nathan.

“We are about to be spotted,” Nathan said as he raised his rifle. He knew that the only reason they hadn’t been spotted yet was that the guards had moved into a darker environment and their eyes hadn’t compensated yet. But as they moved steadily -and as of now carelessly- closer, this would soon change. “Get ready to run straight ahead, towards the rocks. I will be right behind you.”

“But I can barely see anything,” complained John.

“You will.”

Nathan set his sights on the chest of the closest target and squeezed the trigger twice. He crumpled to the ground without a sound. Nathan quickly moved his sights to the second target and squeezed twice more, with the same result. As promised, even with light and sound suppression, the shots did light up the immediate area for John, who started to run in the indicated direction.

Suddenly there were yelling from everywhere, and none of it friendly. Nathan switched to full auto and started to shoot at the barrack with the open door, the bullets punching through the walls with ease. He switched to the other barrack and emptied the magazine while loudly speaking into the mic.

“This is Headhunter, we are compromised. Repeat, we are compromised. Moving towards secondary extraction. Expect hot LZ.”

“This is Eagle, roger that. The postmen and packages one and two are momentarily secured, moving towards secondary LZ”.

Nathan changed mags while running after John, realizing that John hadn’t gotten very far. As John had tried to run, his legs gave, and he’d started to crawl instead. As Nathan overtook him, he bent down and lifted John into a fireman’s lift, before continuing.

At this time the yelling behind them intensified, and before long the shooting started. It was random at the start, but before long someone spotted them in the muzzle flare, and it got closer. As most untrained tribals Nathan had fought, they seemed to favor putting as much lead as possible in the air and let either God or random chance decide who gets hit, depending on your view.

They reached the first rock safely but could hear bullets striking the ground around them. The rock only gave cover for a short while as Nathan kept on running. His pursuers were shooting from the hip while running after him, so to stop now was to die.

When they reached the fifth rock, a ricochet got Nathan in the leg, and both him and John tumbled to a hard stop. Nathan forced himself to ignore the injury and dragged himself and John behind the rock before he started to return fire.

He still had a great advantage in that he could see the enemy, and once he had mounted the rock, he was able to down the most eager pursuers. His muzzle flares made for a nice target though, and he had to move back down into cover. He grabbed a smoke grenade and a frag grenade from his vest and chucked them over the rock to get a reprieve, before turning his attention to John.

John had continued to desperately crawl away, and once Nathan had made sure that he was able to put weight on his foot, he moved after him and picked him.

“I got you, come on. Just a little further and there is better cover,” he said as he put John back on his shoulders. He swiveled around and added some one-handed cover fire, emptying his rifle before moving on.

“See!”, Nathan said as they reached an area with a bit more rocks, even though John probably could not see them. “Once we are past these, they will have a much harder ti-“

Something punched Nathan in the back, and he went down. He was out for a second, and when he came to, he no longer had his NV goggles and John was yelling hysterically next to him.

“What are we gone do? Where are we going?”

Nathan ignored him and tried to move into a better position while changing to a fresh magazine. He struggled as his legs didn’t seem to cooperate. He managed to turn around and dragged himself to a more defensive position.

He pulled out an infrared flare and dropped it beside them while yelling into the mic. “I am hit, unable to move. I have- “an enemy combatant appeared in front of him and after almost fumbling his weapon Nathan managed to hit him with a short burst. Struggling to focus, he remembered what he was doing and started over. “I have dropped a flare on our position. We will not reach LZ. Multiple enemies-”.

He started to have trouble speaking clearly and he felt dizzy. And tired. What was he saying? Perhaps he should just lay down for a bit? He felt someone grabbing his sidearm and could perceive someone firing it beside him, but everything was foggy. Like in a dream.

The shooting intensified, and the sound of rotors could be heard. Looking up he couldn’t see the helicopter in the dark. He could see Brown, seemingly floating in the air as he leaned out of the helicopter door, strafing the ground with his machine gun, tracers zipping everywhere.

He must have passed out, for the next moment the medic –he couldn’t remember his name- stood over him and was saying something. It was hard to make out.

“Nathan, you … stay awake. Stay calm... ...pretty bad.”

There were still a lot of gunshots, but now he could also hear the suppressed shots from Smith and Rodriguez, and now and again the sound of Sergei’s marksman rifle. From time to time, someone would yell something.

“Frag out!”

“They're pulling back!”

The medic waved to one of the others, and rough hands suddenly lifted him from the ground and dragged him towards the helicopter by his arms.

“We got you, boss. Time to go home. Moon is already on board,” he heard someone say. He thought it was Smith, but Smith never sounded this worried before. Strange. “Just stay with us.”

"I’m not going anywhere”, he tried to say but the words came out jumbled. Still, he felt calm.

I’m just going to close my eyes for a while, he thought, and so he did.