I watched the back of the tango's head through my scope.  He was one of the last obstacles opposing our way to the rooftop helicopter pad and our medevac site.  I faintly heard the sounds of my squad approaching from behind me.  I squeezed the trigger of my Lee Enfield L85A1 British Assault Rifle.  I was rewarded with a high-pitched crack and the target falling.

            I took my eye away from the scope and moved out ahead of my squad.  The helicopter pad was located at the top of the relatively short, forty-floor skyscraper that we had just shot up the top two floors of.

            Eighteen hours ago a group of fundamental terrorists had stormed the building of and sealed them in the top two floors and threatened to kill the hostages that they said they had if they weren't given all of their demands.  Snipers and repeated helicopter observation flights had confirmed a single fact, the terrorists had no hostages.  They had blitzed the terrorists and smashed the place.  The only problem was the Andrei; our shotgunner had taken a round in the back in the processes of doing so.

            We had immobilized him, but we needed a medevac.  I dropped down beside the terrorist's body.  I kicked the MAC-10 he still gripped in his hand away.  An approaching Huey did a flyby over the pad and then moved around for a landing.  The huge downdrafts of wind picked up anything that was not nailed down and throwing it around the building's top. 

            Two black clad figures ran up to the pad, bearing a stretcher with a man on it.  They slid it and Andrei on, then the chopper lifted off.  I watched it disappear into the night.  "Casey, get down to the 38th floor rest rooms."

            I touched the sub vocal microphone on my throat.  "On my way."

            I took the stairs down to the 38th floor.  I pushed open the door and moved towards the sound of gunfire.  Three of my groups were taking cover behind office furniture and firing into the door of the restroom.  Every so often, a hand gripping a MAC-10 or a skorpion would poke out and let loose a burst.

            I took advantage of a break in the firing to sprint to the nearest person under cover.  It was dark in the room, and the figure was clad completely in black, with a helmet and goggles, but I could see the snipers rifle on her back.  That told me that it was Krystal Mclean, our unit sniper for this op.  She held her MP5-PDW, her back-up weapon, at the ready; the look in her eyes told me she was scared and confused.

            I couldn't blame her for being scared. A sniper is trained to observe the battlefield through the scope on their rifle.  They often have difficulty in close combat situations.

            We all ducked as more automatic streamed out of the doorway.  I returned fire with my L85.  My clip ran dry and I dropped back to reload.  I dropped the empty clip to the ground and snapped another in, then snapped the bolt forward.

            I pulled out a fragmentation grenade.  "Don't grenade them." Sounded in my ear. 

            "Why not?"

            "We need to make sure that we get one alive to interrogate them."

            I looked down on my CQC (close quarter combat) vest.  I had spent all my flashbangs earlier in the engagement.  My hand touched my subvocal microphone.  "Does anybody have any flashbangs left?" I asked.

            "None"

            "Not here."

            The rest were a chorus of the others.  We had used all of our flashbangs, even if we hadn't I would have expected that my men would have already tried it.  I had trained most of these people myself; they would have easily thought out the situation and had been able to come up with flashbangs as the best solution possible for the given situation.

            One of my guys tried to move to a better firing position by crouching up to fire.  As I watched, the hand gripping the skorpion came around the corner and fired two rounds.  Both the rounds stuck home and my man went down, collapsing onto his back as he did. 

            The tango that shot him got a little too brave and exposed himself to try to pick a few more of us off.  I fired a quick three round burst that cut the man in the chest, leaving bloody stains on his shirt front, and smears where he slid down the wall he had been standing in front of.

            More gunfire came from the door. I had had enough.  I pulled a frag grenade off my vest, yanked the pin and tossed it into the bathroom.  A panicked yell came out "grenade!" 

            The explosion sounded, lighting up the bathroom, then there was silence.

            I jumped over a desk to the fallen soldier.  Three more advanced to secure the bathroom. 

            I carefully checked over my man.  He wasn't dead, he was still moving his legs and groaning as his hands felt around his chest.  It looked like the rounds had cut through his CQC vest and into the Kevlar beneath it.

            I carefully lifted the vest off and then the body armor.  The bullets were both stuck in the chest plate.  "You're a lucky guy." I exclaimed and helped him to his feet.

            The next few hours were filled with cleanup and investigation.  There were investigators swarming around the scene, cut the number one thing I wanted to know was if Andrei was all right.

            I went to our unit leader, Santiago Aniviscara, and asked him if he knew anything.  He told me that Andrei had just gone into surgery and it was too soon to tell anything, but he would let me know as soon as he heard anything.

            I wasn't sure what to do. All I did was walk around, looking like I was busy so that no one would disturb me from thinking.

            I knew Andrei's rather well.  I was a friend of his family and knew that he had a wife with a baby on the way.

            As well as that, the way Krystal handled herself in close combat situations bothered me.  She wasn't properly trained, which would have to be fixed.  I didn't want her, or anybody else on Rainbow to end up like Andrei had.

            I came to a stop as I felt my boot kick something and send it skittering.  I looked down at what I had kicked and found one of those little clip-on identification tags that you always see in the movies. 

            I picked it up and looked at it.  The picture was of a middle aged oriental man.  The header was for Sheyumen-Habatsu meat freezing based out of Tokyo, Japan.  On the back of the card was a separate business card that had been taped to the ID.  The face on the card looked familiar.  It did because I had killed the man that belonged to it.  He was the only oriental with the terrorists.  He was the one that I had shot after he put two rounds into one of my men.

            I walked back to the bathroom.  The body was still lying against the wall in a pool of blood, it had taken a fair bit of shrapnel damage from my grenade, but otherwise it looked all right.  It was easy to see that this man was the one on the card.

            I slipped on a latex glove from a nearby forensic kit and checked the man's pockets.  All I found was another ID card for the meat freezers.  I took that one and added it to the one already in my pocket.

            I went around to all of the bodies and checked them.  The rest had nothing on them.  I took the cards and to Aniviscara and let him take a look.  He said that he would turn them over to the investigators and take it from there, but he said he felt that we would make a quick stopover in Tokyo on our way home and take a look at this meat freezer.

            In fifteen hours it was all over.

            I sat in Andrei's hospital room.  He had undergone major surgery, but they had been unable to find or remove the bullet.  After stitching him up, the boy had slipped into a coma and the doctors were unable to move him.  Subsequent X-rays had made matters worse.  They showed the bullet dangerously close to his spine and decided that moving him at all could kill him.