Slade Chapter One

700 meters. There was the hairy bastard. Lumbering, hunched over just like the ones you'd see in a Zoo back stateside, only this wasn't no zoo. I was on my stomach on a hill, flanked and concealed by dense foliage, overlooking what seemed to be a supply camp, straddling a river that flowed further through the forest to God knows where. "Huh, like something out of a sci-fi movie" I muttered from under my mask. By mask I mean the covert masks me and Wintergrey used on ops like these, lined with a thin layer of lead to make us completely un identifiable, 'less we take the masks off. Wintergrey. Bill was the finest soldier I'd ever seen, and here I was saving his ass. The thought that these apes may have pinched him was enough to make me almost squeeze the trigger on my heavily modified M107 sniper rifle. No. Not yet.

The dossier called this place Mubak-ak-Too.. Whatever that meant. Never heard of the place, in 16 years of service, and here I was, staring down the barrel at a camp manned by gorillas. Yeah, you heard that right. 'Super-intelligent primates' said the dossier. I scoffed at it, but if anybody could have taken down Bill Wintergrey, it had to be something out of this world. Drawing a deep breath and drawing myself back to the task at hand, I counted the apes guarding the perimeter. 1,2,3,4 and they were pretty spaced out. I tightened the silencer on the barrel of my sniper rifle and let one go. The hairy beast hit the ground like a sack of rice. I clipped the other one in a similar fashion, but the other two were together. Time to get close.

I figured I could leave the M107 on the hill and doing that, crept down the hill and within minutes was at the perimeters. It had been a day since I dropped onto this Island and nothing so far. Just typical jungles beasts and the occasional patrol here and there, but something wasn't sittin' right. Something told me something bigger was going on here, and it put just the spur in my step that I needed. My mask and armor I spray painted green, and the furry guys didn't see me coming. I slit one of their throats, drawing the attention of one of 'em, but a steel-toed boot to the face kept him honest.

The camp seemed very undermanned, almost too undermanned. Some crates loaded onto the back of some trucks caught me on to what was really going on here. That logo was unmistakable, but I still felt the need to confirm it with base. No can do, this was as black an op as it gets. But I didn't need to confirm a thing. Grodd. I thought the guy was a myth, hell, we all did. But now it was making sense.

See Grodd was something of an enigma to the folks back in the US. All they knew was that he was dangerous, very smart, and he was a gorilla. Enough to make anybody back at base laugh at the story. But no, at that moment I knew that Grodd was very real, and I was up shit's creek with barely even a boat, let alone a paddle. But Bill needed me, no man left behind, right? Some rustling in the bushes let me know I wouldn't be alone for much longer, and in a few strides I was gone, back through the forest. I managed to lift a map off of one of my poor simean friends; I was on the northern tip of the island, explains the lack of manpower.

But the island was much bigger than I thought, and right smack in the middle? Gorilla City. My stomach turned. I had no backup, no communication with base, and limited resources, but don't get me wrong. It wasn't fear for my own life that I felt that 2nd day on the island. It was fear for Bill's.