Raid at the Camp

It was a typical afternoon at Casper High in the early spring. Everything was just starting to bloom for the very first time. That's until the history teacher was yelling harshly at his students for falling asleep in class. "Alright everyone listen up before the bell rings for the weekend I have a project about a distant family relative that's due in two weeks from today. I want a one thousand-word essay along with some artefacts. I hope there won't be any trouble now will there?" The history asked as he gazed at the entire class. The then looked at Caddie who was just starring at the clock waiting for the bell to ring. "Miss Fenton, you don't seem interested. Am I boring you or something?" the teacher asked.

Caddie just snapped out of her and replied to her teacher that she was interested in the project though thinking to herself she did not know whom in her family to do it on.

At last the bell rang and everyone bolted straight for the door. At their lockers Lily and Tuck were arguing on wanting to do their project on either their mom or Dad. "You can do dad, I got mom, because I followed in her footsteps." Tuck instructed his twin sister. Lily though argued and told him that she wanted to do it on her mother and he can do his on their father. "Why do you always got to be like that, Lily? Hey Caddie, are you going to do yours on your parents?" Tuck asked his good friend as she was stuffing her books into her book bag.

"To tell you the truth, Tuck I don't know who to do it on and besides it has to be a distant relative. It can't be your folks; you're going to have to dig deep on this one and to tell you the truth. I don't know how far back my family blood line I mostly know just up to my grandfather that's it." Caddie explained as she closed her locker.

"Wow you really must suck if you can't remember your own family heritage, loser." Katie said as she and her followers were now standing behind her. Caddie though didn't look at her just yet, as her eyes were glowing purple in rage.

"Hey take it easy, girlfriend. You know she's just trying to get under your skin." Lily stated as she tried to calm her friend down. It did work though, as her eyes changed back to their normal blue state.

"You're right, Katie. That's why I'm going to look it up instead of doing the project on my parents to try and take the easy way out. You know you're going to get a bad mark if you do know that, right?" Caddie smirked as she walked right on by the frustrated Katie with Tuck and Lily.

As soon as Caddie got home, her mother greeted her as she walked in. "Hey sweetie. How was school?" Carrie asked as she was at the coffee table writing a few songs.

Caddie walked up to her mother and gave her a hug before she explained that other then Katie bugging her, they had to do a history project on a distant family relative and it was due in two weeks. She did not know who to do it on.

"Well…we got some stuff in the attic and there's a few family photo albums. Why don't you start looking through those?" Carrie suggested as she rubbed her daughter's back.

"Thanks mom. I'll get right on that." Caddie replied before she kissed her mother on the cheek and ran upstairs to the attic.

Carrie smiled as she watched her oldest daughter disappear, before her mother instincts kicked in and said... "Emi, get your hands out of that cookie jar. You're going to spoil your appetite for supper."

Upstairs, Caddie reached for the handle that pulled the attic steps down. When they came down, the dust flew everywhere as she covered her mouth until it settled. It was really dark up there, so making sure that no one was looking, she lit up her ecto energy so that she was able to see her way around the room. "Whoa…mom and dad don't really come here that often." Caddie said to herself as she swept her finger on an old picture frame that was collecting dust.

She then came upon a box that was under an old bookshelf that said family memories. She smiled with delight as she quickly grabbed the box. But as she picked it up and started to browse through to see what can help her for her project, she noticed a photo that fell by her feet. She quickly went to grab it, but as she did Caddie took a long look at the photo. She focused and wiped the dust off it to show that it was a soldier with some kids holding up the piece symbol. She also noticed the Canadian flag patch that was on his left shoulder. "That's odd, I wonder who this is." Caddie asked herself before she put the photo back in the box and went back to the stairwell.

"Carrie, girls, I'm home." Caddie's father shouted from downstairs. Caddie quickly ran downstairs to greet her father while still holding the photo. Carrie gave him a long kiss on the lips before both girls showed up right in front of him.

"Hey honey, how was work today? Anything exciting happen at the office?" Carrie asked as she held her husband close to her. Danny explained that other then the mess that was caused by the janitor in the eating lounge, his day went by pretty well and now that the weekend was coming around. He was just going to enjoy relaxing with his family.

Carrie smiled at him and told them all that dinner will be ready in half an hour and she went back to the kitchen to get the final preparations on the steaks they were having. Emily jumped into her father's arms and told him that she was let out of school early today because some kid blew up one of the toilets in the boy's room and it flooded the school floor. He smiled gave her a kiss on the cheek before she jumped down and went to follow her mother to see if she can help her out.

"Hey Caddie Cat. How was your day?" Danny asked as he hugged his oldest daughter. Of course Caddie asked him to stop calling her that even though she smiled slightly as her father picked her up and gave her a big hug. She then went on what she told her mother about what happened today.

"Oh that's neat. Who are you going to do it on?" Danny asked as he stood tall looking like a super hero.

"Sorry Dad, but you're out of the running for this project. It has to be on a distant relative." Caddie chuckled, but then her tone went to confusion when she pulled the photo out of her pocket before she added, "But can you tell me who this is, dad? I've never seen him before around here or anytime in my life. Do you know who he is?" As Danny took a look at the photo, his eyes went wide and he started to tear up, thinking back to the memories of when the photo was taking. "Dad what's wrong?" Caddie asked thinking that she did something wrong.

"Oh nothings wrong, sweetie. But where did you find this photo in the first place?" Danny asked as he kept on looking at the photo. Caddie told him that mom said to go look up in the attic to find someone if she can use for the project. As she found a box that said family memories, which the photo fell out of the bottom of the box and then she grabbed it from the box, and came out of the attic when he came home.

Danny asked her to go and get the box and bring it downstairs for him to see. Without hesitating, Caddie ran up to the attic as fast as she could; within a few seconds she was back down, with the box in her hands. She laid it down on the coffee table though making sure her and her father moved and placed Carrie's music on the end table for now.

"Caddie, before we go through this box there is one member of the Fenton family we never told you about. And he was one of the bravest of the bunch, his name was Addison Fenton." Danny announced as he opened the box. Caddie was confused on why she had never heard of this relative before.

"How come you guys never even mentioned him before?" Caddie asked as she kept on gazing at the photo. Danny told her that when he was her age Addison went to fight in Afghanistan with the Canadian forces with the special operatives Regiment since he was living in Canada at the time he wanted to do his duty to serve. But sometime in September, Addison went missing in action presumed to be dead. Even though Danny knows the true fate of where his cousin was right now.

"Dad there's no way a Fenton can serve in the army. I thought the blood line always was to battle ghosts?" Caddie replied as she chuckled at the thought of the family from generation to generation was fighting ghost like her grandfather Jack told her.

"Well…to tell you the truth, Caddie your grandfather, MY dad, also served during two operations, Grenada and the Panama Crisis. So any Fenton can serve if they put their heart into it, like Addison did." Danny explained as he pulled out an old set of dog tags with Addison's name, rank, serial number, unit, blood type, and religion.

As he placed the tags into Caddies hands, he pulled out a few more photos that were bundled up inside along with a small book. He showed her the pics of him leaving on the plane, and a picture of him jumping out of a C-130 with nine other guys. "I liked it when he sent me this photo along with the letter that came with." Danny said as he pulled out a letter from back when he was a kid then started to read it.

"Dear Danny

How are things going with you and the family back home. Melanie and I are having a blast up here even though we still got a job to do. I hope you like the photos I've been sending and tell Aunt Maddie thank you for the care packages. Those wet naps she sent with the last package were a Godsend. Well I got to go kiddo, tell everyone that Melanie and I love you guys. Thanks for the support and we'll be seeing you guys soon.

Sincerely Addison"

Caddie asked whom Melanie was; Danny told her that she was his fiancée before he went missing and that she moved on. (Though you guys know what happened to her if you have been reading my stories.)

"But before he went missing, his last journal entree was an actual mission, a raid on a improvised explosive device making factory. That had one of the key leaders of the Taliban was in this complex." He cleared his throat and flipped through the pages until he came upon the journal entry. And the story flashes back to that time period where we see Addison on board a C-130 writing the journal entry in the red light.

August 18 2007

We're thirty thousand feet over Afghanistan time 01:30 hour's destination classified. While in flight we were finally told of our mission and our targets, even though we have been practicing, entry drills, close quarter combat, and radio procedure. There were ten of us to go out on mission. Myself of course, Jake, and Kirby were always picked as the lead assault force. We had a female engineer attached with us along with our radioman, Spike who was the assault force. I was the leader. On the other team, was the Sergeant, two heavy gunners, a medic, and his second in command. They were on the other bench sitting across from us.

"Hey Addi, don't you ever put that journal away? I mean come on, man. We're about to do a raid on a camp." Jake said with a little bit of a chuckle. He was the joker of our group, my best friend, and fire team partner. We were never apart from each other except for when I had to go receive orders.

"Hey it's better to do, then jerking off to the same porno for the past two weeks." I said. Everyone except for the Sergeant laughed slightly. This got rid of some of the tension in the air, but we went back to our mindset, because this was a dangerous mission. Any one of us would probably not come back.

"Alright, we're dropping the back ramp, three minutes to drop. Suit up." The loadmaster of the aircraft shouted. We all put on our helmets and respirators because the aircraft was right now pressurized and since there's not that much oxygen at thirty thousand feet, you get the drift. As the lumbering herc started to slowly depressurize, in my mind I was going through my head to make sure that the mission would be a success and that I would get ALL my teammates and I back to base in one piece.

"Ramp coming down, two minutes to jump." The loadmaster counted down as he activated the switch to lower the ramp. As it slowly started to come down, you can feel the wind gusting around in the back. Sometimes it was scary that you didn't want to leave the safety of the airplane and jump into nothing. But you get use to it when you do it more than once.

"One minute to jump, red light flashing." The loadmaster signaled as we all waited for the light to go green. Jake patted me on the shoulder as he usually did to give me thumbs up. It was our good luck charm when he did that.

"Jumping in five... four... three... two... one... go, go, go." The sergeant yelled as the green light came on and we all jumped into the darkness.

The wind was rushing by my body as we dropped towards the earth. I watched my altimeter on my wrist to see that I was now at 20,000 feet. I could not see anyone else I was alone as I dropped from the heavens. 10,000 feet, I getting close to pull my chute; once at 5,000 feet that's when I'll pull it. 7,000 feet, I'm just about ready to pull my handle when all of a sudden; something big knocked me; what it was, I'll never know. All I did know was that I lost consciousness for a second or two, before I realized I had to pull my chute now or never. I pulled it, and every time that happens I always get a bad wedgie from the straps riding up my pants.

It was quiet now as I was gently floated down to the ground though I can see the lights over our target about 700 meters away. The pilot was good at getting us on target. As I hit the ground I saw some of the other teammates pack their chutes into a bag for later when we had to get out of there by helicopter.

Once we were all on the ground a ready to go, I noticed my team was ok and ready to fight. But we were missing someone out of the Sergeant's group. He came back with bad news one of the machine gunners didn't make it, his chute never opened in time and he crash landed into the sand, head first killing him on impact.

"Kirby go and grab his machine gun, we need all the fire power we can get." I told my friend and so far the mission was not going good, losing one guy already, that's a bad Oman.

"Alright, leave him here at the pickup point and bury him under the chutes. I don't want any towel head picking every piece of clothing off his body." The sergeant said. The medic covered her mouth but she did not lay a tear because we all know that we chose this job and that some of us were not going to make it out that night.

It's no more than 5 minutes after we were done securing our lost teammate before we took off towards the target. We can see the lights of the camp and we heard the roaring of a distant plane in the distance.

"Corporal, Specter is over us right now watching over us." Spike said to me as he went back on the radio to see if we can commence our attack. Specter was the call sign for the AC-130 gunship that was flying over head watching over us.

We were now just outside the camp perimeter, and watched as some of the guards were sitting around a campfire talking in their native tongue. As I took a step closer to get a better view, one guy popped out of nowhere around the wall. Without thinking, I quickly pulled out my K-BAR, grabbed him by the mouth and thrust the knife into his body. He died instantly.

"Sergeant, threat eliminated, we're ready to go over." I said over our intercom. The sergeant told me he was ready in his position over watching the camp and ready to fire once the initial burst of a 105 howitzer came in from the AC-130.

"Alright guys we're going for it in 20 seconds. Remember, your training and I'll see you when this is over. Good luck." I told my team as we were making final adjustments to our weapons. Jake told me that he was going to buy me a beer after this was over while the engineer and Spike nodded their heads. I nodded back to them lowered my night vision goggles and readied my weapon. "H hour in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, now." I said and sure enough a huge ball of fire rose into the sky as the gunship and the support laid down the heavy firepower as we moved to our target location.

As we were moving up to the building, I saw some of the chunks of human bodies scattered all over the ground. We kept pushing forward as the rounds coming down. Just then, Jake shouted at the top of his lungs. "Contact two o'clock RPG!" I immediately turned my head to see the target ready to fire. I was quicker on the draw though as I fired three rounds towards him in the chest and one in the head. He dropped instantly as his head exploded from the round that entered his forehead.

We kept the momentum going until we came up to the target building. I shouted to the closed door left stack left and at an instant we lined up right by the door. I yelled for the engineer to step up and get ready to breach the door. As she reached the door and was about to blow it with depth chord I noticed two wires at the bottom. "Wait! Don't touch it." I shouted but it was too late, as she just put pressure on the door, it exploded sending her flying towards a wall. "Spike, go check on her see if she's ok." I ordered and turned to my other teammates, "Jake, we're going in. Lets go." I ordered and we each moved in covering our corners. As Jake walked in he fired two rounds into a guy holding an AK-47. We were told before take off if anyone has a weapon and is seen as a threat take him out, don't hesitate. It's a good thing we had Jake, because he saw the suicide vest on the bugger and we would have been history.

"Addi, its Spike. The engineer is ok, but she lost a lower part of her left leg. We need to get her out of here now." Spike announced over the headset. The sergeant told him to stay with her and bring her to the firebase where he was. I didn't know if he was doing it but my mind was on getting this leader. Just then Jake and me heard someone coming down the hall. We both turned on our sure fire flashlight and there he was yelling and wetting himself like a little baby.

"Get on the ground now." I shouted while Jake went to zap strap him.

Once we were done we reported to my sergeant that we had the target and that we were extracting to the Extraction point. He then told Spike to tell the gunship to lay everything to dust once we were clear and just as an extra precaution he called in a B-2 Bomber to drop a few 2000 pound JDAMS on the compound and buildings.

"Alright guys fall back. Joseph, when we meet back at the extraction point, immediately tend medical aid to the engineer. Now let's move." The sergeant ordered and they quickly fell back towards our drop zone. Meanwhile I told Spike that we were clear from the camp and that he was clear. What happened next was able to out match the first of July and the fourth of July in between put together as the gunship laid down all its firepower and the 2000 pound JDAMS's lighting the entire place up.

The rest of team was already at the extraction point and everything was ready to go as Jake and I showed up with the prisoner and no later than a minute our helicopter showed up. We grabbed everything we got and took off out of the hot spot.

"We may have lost one man and wounded another, but we save countless lives for getting rid of that roadside bomb making factory that's been killing our troops." The sergeant implied with a lit cigar in his hand.

He was right. We may have lost a soldier from this operation but we have saved many others for in the future. I'm going to stop writing now due to the fact that I need a good long rest from this mission…

As the scene fades back to Danny, he was finish reading the story to Caddie in the living room.

Caddie was amazed to hear this story. She kept asking questions on what happened after the fight? Did the engineer turn out fine? And what did they do to the prisoner? "I don't know, sweetie. That's was the last bit in his journal entry before he went missing. But what did you think of that story?" Danny asked his daughter.

"I never knew that someone could go through that kind of hell. He must have been a crazy person." Caddie replied, as she was a bit scared from the story she heard, but her father reassured her that he was a sweet and caring person to be around with. He was only mean like that to people he didn't like. He pinned Dash to the ground to show he meant business. He couldn't help but laugh at the thought.

"Wait, Addison beat up Katie's father for ganging up on you and mom? I would have loved to see that." Caddie implied as she started to get to know the good side of him.

"And your mother, or anyone else in the family on both sides can back me up on everything I said about Addison. If you need anything else for this project, I bet you that your grandparents will be more than happy to let you borrow his medals and his flag that he came home in there both framed up so that nothing can damage them." Danny replied as he put his hand on his daughter's back.

Caddie thanked him for the information she needed for this project and embraced her father in a bear hug before she told him that she was going to call her grandparents to see if she can use any of what he had named for her project. She then gathered everything up and ran upstairs to her room to at least try and start getting to work on this assignment.

"Dinner's going to be ready very shortly, sweetie." Carrie shouted as she heard Caddie's door close.

"Don't worry mom, I need to shower from all the dust that's on me anyways. I'll be ready for dinner." Caddie shouted back behind a closed door. Carrie smiled before she turned back and had a worried look in her face to see that her husband had a really sad face on while he was looking at the photo of his cousin.

"Danny, what's the matter? Is everything ok?" She asked. Danny quickly came out of his trance and told her that he was ok and that he just needed to go out for a moment. "Ok dear. I'll save you a plate for when you get back, don't take too long ok?" She asked as she wrapped her arms around her husband's neck. Danny smiled down at her before he told that he wasn't going to be and he gave her a quick kiss on the lips before he grabbed his keys and his coat and walked out.

Carrie watched with a smile on her face as her husband got into the family car and took off down the road. "Emily I'm warning you, one last time to get your hand out of that cookie jar right now before I come in there after you." Carrie warned her youngest daughter.

"How does she do it?" Emily asked herself as she closed the cookie jar and walked towards the table, pouting.

It wasn't long until Danny came to the cemetery and walked over towards his cousin and his wife's final resting place. "Man, I just wish you were around longer so that Caddie and Emily could have gotten to know you two better." Danny said in a sad tone to himself as he knelt down in front of the graves.

Though just out of sight and out of ghost sense, two specters with glowing yellow and orange eyes, dressed in black, white and grey square pattern clothing watched from a distance smiling down at the man. "Don't you worry, Danny; they'll know us better shortly." The male said before both specters disappeared in the sky.

The end