Devon Ford - The Fall

Jake drew in a breath to issue his next, and final, ultimatum when Sebastian struck. “Now!” he called, prompting Jake to hit the flashlight’s switch with his thumb and cast a blinding light straight into the face of the one directly in his path.

Sebastian had worked around, smelled, and sensed the two others lurking in wait, and held his breath for them to spring their rudimentary trap. As he stepped forward and called out to Jake, he brought the butt of his weapon down onto the base of the skull of the man closest. The second one responded quicker than he expected, but he still had no chance.

He didn’t realize this, because he was a young thug; full of the exuberance of angry youth and lawlessness, but with none of the calm confidence of experience and training. He was six feet from Sebastian, which was too far away to close the distance and stab him before he could fire, and too close to have any other options. His only chance of surviving the ambush was to surrender, but he failed to grasp that. The instant he made a move, Sebastian put two rounds dead center into his chest and killed him. He turned his attention to the one in front, who still had his hands up to shield his eyes from the bright light, and took three fast steps toward him. Sebastian kicked him brutally between the legs, which would have felled almost every person, man or woman, but it had the simple effect of doubling him over. Sebastian brought the gun down where his skull met his neck, but the exaggerated muscles of his upper back prevented the full effect from knocking him out. The second blow brought the huge youth to his knees, one hand on the tarmac of the path to steady himself.

“Come on!” Sebastian told them urgently, prompting the other three to follow. They ran, eager to put distance between themselves and the failed street robbery, with the bouncing beam of Jake’s flashlight lighting their way. They didn’t stop until they were forced to when Louise stumbled and fell in the dark, then they were forced to slow their pace.

Far behind them, having heard the shots and homing in on the sound like predators in the dark, two black-clad infiltrators found the three unconscious, one dead, and one injured youths on the park.

“Where did they go?” one asked the hugely muscled boy still gasping for breath.

“Go fuck yourself,” he replied bravely, still believing that pure aggression and hostility were the only weapons at his disposal.

The man standing over him wasted no more time on questions, simply drew a bead on the likely path of his quarry and turned to put a single round into the heads of the entire crew at his feet.

Troy’s unit touched down at the moth-balled forward operating base in the Allegheny Mountains in the dark; their expert pilots executed the maneuvers flawlessly using night vision. Troy had been there once with Chalky, travelling there in one of their dedicated Black Hawk helicopters and escorting a small flight of Chinooks, all weighted down with underslung loads. Whilst the Black Hawks could land easily on the artificially flattened earth, the Chinooks were too large to set down so had to hover whilst they took turns to cut away their cargo straps.

The location was not a new project. In fact, it harked back from even before the very beginnings of the Cold War, and was intended as a command bunker in the event of a nuclear attack. Whilst the enemy had changed drastically since then, the threat of nuclear annihilation had only ever grown in intensity, especially as Middle Eastern countries had since acquired their own nuclear arsenals. Not to mention the alarming amount of radioactive material which was unaccounted for since the fall of the iron curtain. The existence of a bunker in those mountains was not a state secret; in fact, the original cold war era bunker had been decommissioned and was now a novelty hotel, but the public never knew of the other base nestled into the dark hills.

Troy and a few other commanders of elite groups of specialists were read-in on certain contingency plans. They were all on code-word standby to drop everything they were doing and get their teams there with as much ammo as they could carry. Inside there was space for almost a hundred personnel. The base was buried deep into the very mountainside and had been excavated in parts over the last thirty years, as the emergency base was extended and refitted for various upgrades.

There were also vast stores held inside: MREs, munitions, telecoms suites, as well as huge fuel reservoirs and maintenance equipment to keep their birds in the air. The way the flattened helicopter pad had been created showed very little sign from any aerial surveillance and each helicopter could be covered with folding canopies. One by one the helicopters set down and shut down their engines as they disgorged their crew and passengers. Most of the operators, typical amongst their kind, had fallen back to sleep during the ride there but now came awake without any issues.

“Inside, grab a rack, find the briefing room in ten,” Troy announced when the last sounds from the winding down engines had faded away. “Valdez, Farrell, get on overwatch. I’ll fill you in later.” The two teammates, inseparable at the best of times, nodded their assent.

Troy heard a muttered, “ Oohrah ” in stereo as the two trotted away to their assigned duty, which he translated into his own vernacular in his head. Commanding a team of mixed forces produced a lot of interesting cultural differences, and the oohrah/hooah debate between the army and the marines was a constant one which took a predictable turn when their resident SEAL piped up to offer his opinion on the matter.

Valdez, one of two trained and experienced snipers under his command, was a stone-cold killer who also had a passion for drawing landscapes in pencil; the pastime offering a stark contrast to his profession but also an insight into his love and deeply intrinsic knowledge of terrain. Farrell, his fellow United States Marine Corps recruit and friend, mocked his ability to find routes over open ground by telling others he had been a Coyote bringing illegals over the Mexican border. Valdez was from Houston, but that never stopped Farrell telling the story. He operated a big support weapon which he carried with ease, despite its incredible weight and his slight stature. Farrell operated as Valdez’s eyes and protection detail, and between the two of them they had probably taken the lives of more insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan than the decorated heroes Joe Public heard about. They didn’t do what they did for fame, but because it was their job. Pure and simple.

Troy walked inside, leaving the aviators of SOAR running out the camouflage net canopies to cover their aircraft. Just as the operators of Endeavor cared for their weapons first, the 160 thmaintained their aircraft before themselves. He threw his ruck on the closest cot in the closest rack in the room nearest the ops center before pulling dust sheets off the table in the briefing room. As he did so under the weak glow of the emergency lighting, which had come on automatically when the main door had been opened, the main lighting came online. Troy smiled to himself knowing that Dillon, the team’s proud tech geek, would have taken it upon himself to find the main power grid and fire it up. The bunker was powered by a generator as a backup, but one of the last changes to have been made was to reroute the entire power grid from a small hydro-electric plant submerged in the Greenbrier River. The facility, although officially decommissioned, was in fact a multi-billion-dollar project and one of the American military’s best kept secrets.