It was a slog to the rendezvous point, but that was the point. Better to be uncomfortable than have someone follow you, Fred thought. And given what waited for him at the evac site… Well, it was called a ‘visor up’ ride home by most everyone in the armed forces. It did not take much imagination to figure out why.
The Sargent had secured the cube in a black bag, which was made out of fabric that blocked out any and every signal. Otherwise they would have to worry about being tracked down by CorSec by some tracking device on the cube…
Not that it mattered if the sounds of chopper blades were that close.
“Shit, they are not fucking around.” Lenny hissed. If you could hear the blades, than it was an assault chopper and not a recon one, and they could be loaded with enough firepower to level a small city. They generally were not, but they could be. And that ‘could’ was always a bitch on the field.
“Yo, Corporal Jones,” Fred dove behind a tree as a spotlight swept the ground nearby. “Can’t you give them something else to look at?”
“Not unless you want to be on your ass spitting out your teeth,” Jones was their demolition expert. Every member of R.A.D.E. could be considered a demolition expert by the standards of a normal army, but Corporal Jones took that to a new level. The man was a refugee from the MRC who had been arrested for arson, and he was a certified pyro. So the brass had decided that instead of treating or imprisoning the man, they would hand him as much explosives as he could carry and let him use the MRC as a test subject. Fred didn’t like him much, but he did respect the man. Hard not to respect someone you stood shoulder to shoulder with in battle after battle.
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“We have another half mile before we clear the zone,” the Sargent grunted. “And we all know that when the techs say ‘clear the zone’ they actually mean, you will still get hit but we think you will survive.”
“I prepared the charges myself,” Jones laughed. “Don’t you trust me?”
“You get off on the blasts, asshole.” Lenny growled, “I’ve seen your motherfucking burn marks!”
“Stow the chatter,” the Sargent cut in. “Let's clear the zone, blast the place to hell, and get to our evac. If you can talk, run faster.”
The team shut up and pushed forward, though they were all thinking it wasn’t fair for the Sargent to tell them to run faster. They might be super soldiers, but compared to the genetically engineered Sargent they might as well have been children. For fucks sake, the man was nearly as fast and strong as the rest of them without his armor!
A little bit later, they heard an explosion and a shockwave nearly knocked them off their feet.
“Goddamnit Jones!”
“Corporal Jones,” the Sargent sounded disapproving but exasperated, this would not be the first time he had given this warning. Jones probably had a lecture waiting for him in the transport. “I have told you many times, give us a fucking warning before you pull the fucking trigger!”
Jones just laughed.