Price swore. There was no way he would be able to push his way through the encampment stealthily, and to try and find another way around the beaten path would take too long. He would have to push through, but he didn't like the odds.
"I need a distraction..." he thought, using his years of battle experience to calculate his chances. He had an idea, and while it was certainly an improvement on dying an glorious death today, the outcome could get fairly grizzly...Then again, when did that ever stop him?
"Nikolai...come in..." Price whispered fervently into his head-set.
"Nikolai...are you in position?" Nothing but static for a few moments, until Price heard the familiar pop and click of a microphone coming on.
"Dah. What is the situation?" Nikolai came over a little statically, but his words were clear and intelligible.
Price breathed a small sigh of relief.
"Nikolai, I need a diversion. What are you outfitted with?"
".30 caliber machine guns, grenade launcher, and air-to-air missiles...but Price, the explosive ordinance is non-lethal. The American's were kind enough to lend us their helicopter, but they want no ties to this operation... I fear we are running on smoke and mirrors."
Price didn't speak for a minute. He figured as much. A man could hardly get the proper equipment these days...everything was traceable. But, as many times as he had been screwed by the government, he was prepared for this sort of thing. He fiddled with his infrared goggles in the eye-wear compartment on his jumpsuit.
"Smoke and mirrors, eh? I guess we have to work with what we've got...I'm sending you my coordinates Nikolai. If I want to get out of this alive, I'm going to need your cover."
"You are not far..." Nikolai said after receiving Price's location. "I can fly over in 5 minutes time, but I can't do more than a circle around... you know this means that I will not have enough fuel to pick you up for at least another 5 hours, Price. You will have to hunker down at the LZ."
"Understood."
"Good luck, comrade. I am on my way."
Price heard the whirl of helicopter blades being started, and then the pop click of the microphone turning off. He fitted his infrared goggles over his eyes, the screen flickering to life almost instantly. Using the optical zoom, he counted 12 men within a mile radius. 8 were in the vicinity of the actual camp. He needed to create a kill-zone...but how?
Maybe his ears had been trained to the sound, but he already hear the soft sound of the far of helicopter blades. With luck, the emergence of the helicopter would bring the scouts back to camp to form a defensive position, where they had cover, consolidate forces, and perhaps heavy arms...
The whirl got louder.
Price fought his way up a steep rock face, and lay atop the lichen and brush. He focused his zoom in on the camp. Indeed, he had been right. With the steady clop-clop of the helicopter blades, the scouts had returned to camp. All he need do is...
!
Nikolai had begun to launch his ordinance, and the soldiers in the camp had taken up their rocket propelled projectile weapons to shoot him down.
"Sorry, not going to happen, mate." Price needed only seconds to wait for the rockets and grenades to explode in the camp, sending mutli-colored marker smoke into the air. Now that his enemies vision was obscured, they would not be able to determine his location and return fire.
Price zoomed in on an Iranian's head. He smiled to himself and pulled the trigger. Instantly, the gun recoiled into his shoulder and a shot rang out over the forested area, the bullet hitting its mark; reducing the man's head to a amorphous mass of bloody pulp while fragments of his skull and blood painted a man beside him.
Price was quick and precise as he took out each man between short choppy breaths...2,3,4,5...A man still focused on Nikolai took dead aim through the smoke. Price aimed at the base of his RPG, and fired, ultimately hitting the rocket inside starting a chain-reaction resulting in the premature explosion of the explosive, taking out two more men.
"Seven." Price thought to himself, intent on his work.
Four more men had taken refuge behind a rock face, periodically popping up their heads to send blind fire in Price's general direction. They were hunkered down pretty well, but they made a fatal mistake...one Price planned to exploit.
"Nikolai! I need machine gun fire behind that rock there! Face north to north-east in the west part of the enemy encampment." Price yelled into his mike. Almost immediately, that rat-tat-tat of .30 caliber rounds spewed red mist into the air, as Nikolai returned from the apex of his circle-around. Price waited for any sign of movement as Nikolai broke away and back south, toward HQ. There was absolutely no motion from the rock, and Price doubted that Nikolai would have left any stragglers...
Suddenly, Price experienced two things. One was the sudden realization that those four, with the seven he had taken out before hand equaled 11, not 12. One man was unaccounted for...which explained the second sensation. The cold, hard steel of a pistol barrel was pressed to the side of his skull.
He heard cruel, venom-dripping words in Arabic.
Major John Price squeezed his eyes tight.
BANG.
Author's Fucking Note:
No reviews. Thats cool. Updates will be short and far between unless I get some constructive feedback. I don't need to write. I just like praise for my lack of creativity and poor writing style. And if you're wondering if he died... thats my choice, isn't it?