Project Hyperion
Chapter I
September 15 - South Khorasan, Iran
I'd lost track of time. We'd been missing for at least 2 days. Which was bad. Because by now, we could be anywhere in the Middle East or West Asia. Ever since they captured us, we've been on the move from location to location. Which was unusual. Strange. Whatever they wanted us for, it wasn't for any kind of ransom. We've traveled too far for that. That's what made me uneasy. No idea what kind of trouble I'm in. I decided to give up on analyzing. My head hurt too much for it.
They'd thrown us into some kind of holding cell and it felt as if they'd forgotten about us - I can't tell how long we've been sitting here. It was completely black inside, with no light at all. My back was killing me from leaning against a stone wall. I could feel dried blood on my forehead. Who ever these people were, they were better than the average. Whatever the 'average' was. All of our gear was gone - destroyed back when they first caught us. They'd forced us to put on plain white shirts and baggy jeans. Someone had cut most of my hair off, too, using a knife. Pain was an understatement. I didn't know how many of them there were, or what they looked like because we'd had black rags wrapped around our head to cover our eyes all the way up to this point. Doing this had pretty much ended any chance of trying to find a way to escape. Plus, I'd already felt around the pitch black room for anything, but found nothing but stone floor and wall.
So for the time being, we were stuck. Just the two of us.
"'The fuck do they want with us?"
I thought he'd managed to get to sleep. It was my first time hearing his voice since we'd been in the room. It was a good question, but I didn't answer him. I felt too weak to speak, and I didn't have an answer anyway. Speculating wouldn't get us anywhere. There was simply no way to figure out all of the questions that we had. My head hurt too much for it.
There was movement outside the door, and it made me sit up straighter. I could hear the sound of footsteps. More than one person. Heading straight towards our direction. No voices. They were coming to move us, I realized. Had to be.
"Shit, here they come!" He whispered. I nodded, even though he couldn't see me nod.
The door opened and I had to shield my eyes from the blinding light that flooded the room. I squinted and tried to make out the figures standing in the doorway, but I couldn't. My eyes hadn't adjusted.
"The one on the right is the one that we came for." One of the figures said. The voice was light, female, and had a foreign accent. Spoke first. Commanding voice. So I assumed that she had a higher position than the other people with her. She was in charge of them. But for all I knew, someone that wasn't here could be in charge of her.
My eyes were finally adjusting, and I could see three people step inside the room. They were going to be handling one of us, and they had heavier builds, so I reasonably assumed that they were male. About 600 pounds of human, altogether. And they snapped quickly to the order. My hands weren't bounded, but it would be foolish to try and make a move against these three guys.
They moved past me and grabbed the one on the right, instead.
They hauled him up to his feet and shoved him out the door. He was too weak to put up any resistance. The door shut behind them, and I was left alone in black silence. In and out, just like that.
There was at least four of them in total. Three dirty workers and one leader. A team of four. That's what it looked like so far. None of them had been carrying weapons, but I knew for a fact that they had at least one. Because that was how we got captured in the first place. I thought about what the lady said. They had some kind of plan up their sleeve, that was obvious. But whatever they were planning to do, it only required one of us. But it required a specific one of us, rather than just randomly choosing between the two of us. Because she'd said "The one on the right is the one we came for." Maybe they chose him because his rank is higher than mine. They could've seen our ranks on our gear.
I stopped thinking about it. My head hurt too much for it. I just hoped that they didn't do something extreme. And then I fell back against the wall and fell asleep for the first time in days...
...And then I woke back up in what felt like a few minutes later. Someone was standing over me, and I immediately became alert.
"Get up." Another foreign accent. It sounded Russian.
Three men, the same ones who came earlier, stood me up and gave me a shove in the back. I stumbled and almost fell. Hours and hours without standing at all. My legs were weakened. Standing outside of the room was a lady, the same one from earlier I assumed. One guy on the left side held my left arm, and the guy on the right side gripped my right arm. The third guy was standing behind me. A smart enough move. It would be futile to try anything when there's at least one guy that I can't factor into any plan I can think of. He was behind me somewhere. The lady was in front of me, and she signaled for us to follow her. They half-carried me down a long narrow hall for a few minutes before I felt the cold steel of a barrel stick me in the back of the head. "Walk, or die. Your choice." The barrel wasn't quivering at all on my skull. The guy had a controlled gun hand. Which suggested some real experience. He was ready to shoot. So I willed my legs to hold my weight up. It burned to walk and my upper-body felt sore, like I'd been working out all day yesterday. The barrel left my head.
That pretty much sealed the deal on any hope of trying to maneuver my way out of this situation. Logically, it would make sense to assume that the guy behind me still had a gun trained on my back. It would be physically impossible to wrench myself free and avoid being blasted in the back. Plus, his grip on the gun suggested that he was a veteran in this stuff. He wouldn't miss. So we continued down a stretch of hall for a long time. The woman was dressed in desert fatigues with boots, and her hair was cut short, like a buzz-cut. The same set up for the men that were hauling me violently behind her. There weren't any insignias or any adornments to her uniform from what I could see. She had a commanding stride.
There was a doorway on the right side of the hall that we went into. The woman led us in. The first and only thing that I saw was a chair that sat bolted to the floor. She signaled for them to place me into the seat. As they shoved me into the chair, I took a quick look around the room. There wasn't anything to see. Nothing inside the room to give any hint as to who these people were, or what their agenda was. Just a chair in a blank room. I couldn't see the doorway from where I sat. Two of the guys gripped my wrists and locked them with the legs of the chair. There was no way I was going to break the chains - the chair legs were bolted down.
The lady signaled for the men to leave the room.
"I hope you'll be more cooperative than your friend, American." She said, looking me in the eyes. Her accent was definitely Russian. She was shorter than me, I knew, but she carried herself dominantly. With authority.
"Where is he?" I demanded, my voice rough from being unused for so long.
"I am the one asking the questions here. Your friend is suffering badly now, but if you don't cooperate, I'll be forced to dismember him. A limb for every time you disappoint me. Are we clear?"
"What did you do to him!?" I was getting angrier by the second, and my wrists strained against the cuffs. She ignored my question this time, stepping closer to me and kneeling down to get right in my face.
"You should know something, James. If you don't do what I tell you to, then I will saw off the Corporal's arm. First his right one, then his left one. Then his left leg, and then his right leg. You have a choice to make, little Private. I am clear on this, no?"
I immediately felt torn. She knew my name by taking my dogtags, but I couldn't tell if she was lying about her intentions. It sure as hell didn't seem like it, and I had no way of being sure. I had no choice but to go along with her. This was unexpected. I couldn't let them do that to Dunn. I just couldn't. It would be illogical to think she was bluffing. And there was no way that I could fail a brother like Dunn. But I had no idea what these people wanted with me. I wanted to spit in her face. But the option to turn down this offer would spell doom for Dunn. Torture. His family would never be able to get over it. And it would be my fault for letting him down.
I looked into her eyes. They were grey, and I could tell that she was searching my face for an answer. I nodded.
"Very well. You are going to help us out with a little problem we have."
Inside, I felt my gut wrench.
"A shipment of highly valuable weapons are being carried across the Iran-Pakistan border. It is highly advanced equipment that is being sold illegally to an arms dealer in Tehran. The supplier is Great Britain. I believe your two countries have friendly relations, yes? You are going to help us steal this shipment. If you choose not to, then Dunn will miss his left arm that he's lived with for so long. Your comrade is counting on you, James."
Shit. She glanced down at a watch on her wrist, and said something in a language that I didn't understand. I guessed it was Russian.
"Time to go, Private. Try anything foolish and we execute Corporal Dunn."
She stood up and took a step back, and then said something else that I didn't understand. I heard footsteps behind me as the men from earlier stepped into the room.
"Oh, and before you leave, I should mention that the shipment security forces are comprised of Royal Marines and a small force of SAS troops. Your skill is enough to handle these men, yes?"
We were moving in using a 4-door Sedan painted all white, with no faults in it at all. It had the new-car smell to it, too. The seats were perfect. No squealing in the brakes. All lights, including signalers, were in working order. The guy driving had a single penny sitting in the dashboard. Pennies gave you a simple way to swap out tags on the back of a car. We'd already stopped twice. Both times, the driver had swapped tags. I pegged him as a Pro-Am. Smart enough to be cautious enough to switch tags, but not smart enough to understand the rules of that kind of stuff. Twice was overkill in the small amount of time that we'd been driving. Plus, this car was brand-new. Probably bought specifically for this job. It was as anonymous as any car could get. There was no need to swap tags, especially since we hadn't done anything that would cause immediate need for us to do so. Or, maybe he was just a cautious guy. Which was why he had me sitting in the passenger seat. Smart enough move. Why would you put a guy, a guy that you don't trust, behind your back with a gun?
It put me in a position where trying something stupid would be futile. A movie would have you thinking that a single guy could maneuver his way out of situations like this with some bullshit move. That wasn't going to happen. A bullet would hit me in the back of the head before I had a chance to do something that would never work, like trying to get the driver to crash the car.
Not that I was thinking about being stupid anyway. The lady that was calling the shots was monitoring our progress. She made it pretty clear that if I attempted some kind of Rambo move, Dunn was as good as dead. I didn't even know where their hideout was located. Before we left, I was forced to wear a blindfold until we got about 25 minutes away from the place. So if I did manage to get free of these guys, there was no way that I would find Dunn and rescue him, even if he hadn't been executed already. One thing I knew for sure was that these people were the real-deal. Way above your average terrorist warrior, and well past being average mercenaries. Their stockpile of gear was somewhat impressive.
All four of us inside the car had standard-issue US Marine Corps MTV ballistic vests on, with E-SAPI plates to go along with it. MTVs weren't exactly favored by most of the grunts in the USMC. It was bulkier, heavier, and in reality not much of an improvement over the IBAs that'd been in use previously. I had to agree with them. It's not what they give us, but it will have to do for this job. I didn't want to think of how this group of people managed to get this stuff. We were geared down. Fortunately, the windows to the car were reasonably tinted, for an obvious reason. We were better off without people raising questions as to why armored military guys were driving around town.
The weapons they had were what anybody would expect. Nothing that was exactly top of the line, but could be relied on. What stuck out the most to me was the absence of Avtomat Kalashnikova. I expected them to hand me something of Russian make, judging by all of their accents. Instead, I was equipped with an IAR, which was another piece of US Marine equipment. It didn't fit with my rifleman qualification, because the M27 IAR is a squad automatic weapon. Newly built to eventually replace the M249 LMG. I felt ohkay to handle it. I'd heard a lot about this weapon. Designed to basically help out with maneuverability and speed of displacement.
What I didn't feel ohkay about was the mission itself. I didn't know why the UK were doing illegal arms sales in this part of the world. Maybe the woman had lied about that. What bugged me the most was that we were going to have to face British troops. Before the day is over, I'm going to have to kill a close ally. We served with some British troops when we went on the offensive during WWIII. I respected them. They were well-trained, well-organized, and highly skilled. We fought and bled alongside them. Now I was going to turn the barrel on their backs and squeeze the trigger.
The job was simple on paper. We would let out the two guys in the backseat a few blocks ahead of the convoy. While they got into position, me and the driver, whose callsign was Gorilla, would swing around the back side of the convoy. The first two guys would open fire on the lead vehicle, effectively halting the convoy in it's tracks, because you can't drive through a roadblock. While the attention was focused in that direction, Gorilla and I would hop out of the car and get to work on the rear of the British troops. They would be ambushed and sandwiched. By the time we get to the truck that carried the package, the fight would be over by then, in theory. Gorilla would take the truck, and the rest of us would hop inside one of the convoy cars, and the mission would be success.
"Ohkay, turn your radios on. It is almost time to start."
I tapped a button on my earpiece and then slipped on a baseball cap. Traffic was beginning to die down. Buildings seemed to roll into one another. Sidewalks were starting to be stripped free of pedestrians. The hour was getting late. It wasn't night time, but it was getting close. Traffic lights seemed to glow brighter. We were driving down a long one-way street, filled with stop signs and drugstores and kids running and screaming and playing and clothes lines stretching from building to building. The air was stifling. Death was coming.
Gorilla made a right turn at one of the stop signs. It was a back road with no traffic on it at all. I also didn't see any civilians. This part of the city was strangely dead, compared to the other places we'd been. He drove down the street some and stopped beneath a light pole.
Gorilla looked into the back seat. "You know what we came here to do. When I give the order, you will fire the first shots and history will be made. The option of failure is not here. We do this right or we die. Good luck, comrades."
The two guys in the backseat said something in Russian and got out of the car. They jogged around the front of the Sedan and crossed over to the left side of the street. We waited and watched them until they entered into an alleyway, out of sight.
"Ohkay American. I trust that you are handy with weapon and battle instinct. We do this right and your comrade will not die today. Screw up, and you both die."
With that, Gorilla sped down the street for a few blocks and made a left turn. He was noticeably driving faster now. We were operating within a window now, and we had to maintain the timeline. I'd already thought about what he said hours ago, about me dying. If that happened, then my body may conveniently show up at the crime scene, and I just may be recognized as an American soldier. There was no telling what kind of strain that would put on the relations between my country and the UK. And Dunn would be killed. I was going to have to be efficient against these British troops who were highly skilled.
The street that we drove down had several lanes, but pretty much resembled the one-way street that we road down earlier. Except it was a little less active. No kids on this street. I looked out the windows and wondered how in the hell I had gotten myself in such a situation. Foley probably already had been given replacements by now. They would call off the search after a certain amount of time, like they usually did. They would list me as MIA and notify my sister and mother. Mom already had heart problems. This would hurt her more than anything if she received news like this. I wasn't close to her, but I was still her son. She would think about all of those times how she tried to talk me out of enlisting.
Damn.
I spotted the small 'convoy' down the road, crossing the street that we were on. Gorilla slowed down and drove as casually as you can get. Then we turned down the street that the convoy was on. So far so good. We were directly behind the 5 vehicles. Two SUVs in the back, two in the front, and an armored truck that resembled a larger version of a U-Haul was square in the middle. Without a doubt, the men inside those SUVs had their eyes on us. Just in case. It was all about being 'Just in case'. But that cut our time shorter. The longer we stayed behind them, the more unorthodox we became.
"Ape, Monkey, are you two in position?" I heard Gorilla's voice in my earpiece and right next to me. A second later came a reply.
"Affirmative. Are you and Chimp behind them yet?
"We are. Let's keep this flow going steady. Remember to watch your fire. Friendly fire isn't as friendly as they say it is." He reminded them. "Prepare to execute."
I rechecked my weapon for the 4th time. Personally, I didn't like to use a weapon unless I knew it to be reliable. In this situation, I didn't have much of a choice. Plus, the M27 wasn't perfectly ideal for a CQB engagement. But then again, I didn't have much of a choice. The absolute professional will check his equipment, and then double check it, and then check it again, and again. Quad-checking. A trick I picked up during the New York City campaign. The Russians were some of the best-trained troops in the world, and you couldn't afford to be surprised when it came to them. I almost died from a weapon malfunction in the middle of a fight one time.
I removed my hat, put on a ski mask, and then slipped the hat back on. I now realized that this was my first time being in combat since World War III. There wasn't any time to think about what was coming up. A man has to do what a man has to do.
"Do this and save your comrade, Chimp. Or die." Gorilla said to me.
A crackle of gunfire split the silence.
