I apologize for how long it took to get this chapter up. The last week exactly hasn't been the best. Here it is though. Enjoy!


September 9th, 2015

Stas had played baseball when he was a teenager. Not proper baseball with a bat and ball but two by fours and fist sized pieces of concrete was all he and his friends could scavenge out of the ruined cities. Sure it made for some dangerous playing but it helped them not think about the brutal war still going on. They were extra careful then though. If they ever saw a plane in the sky they'd scatter or if they head shriek of artillery they would immediately seek cover. It was different now. Instead of playing on streets littered with debris they played on an actual baseball diamond on the edge of the park. They had real bats and baseballs too. The atmosphere was more relaxed than two days prior because no more attacks had taken place so they figured it was over. Stas took a deep breath and readied himself. The pitcher on the other side could throw hard but rarely got the ball over the base. A curveball that angled towards Stas' ribs made him spin out of the box.

"Ball four! Take your base!" the umpire howled pointing at first base. He was a senior sergeant with a face that seemed to droop like a mastiff. He wasn't the best umpire in the world but nobody had the balls to tell him so. Stas tossed the bat aside and jogged to first base. A few guys he didn't know clapped and whooped. They weren't his friends so they probably had money placed on his team. Along with the decent amount of Estovakian soldiers there were some Emmerians. Most of them were kids hoping to get some candy, gum, or field rations from the soldiers. There weren't many Emmerian men in the crowd. Maybe five or six that turned up to see what the occupiers did in their spare time.

"Strike!" the umpire yelled. To Stas it looked four inches to high but there was nothing he could do. "Ball!" That one looked better than before but once again there wasn't a thing Stas could do.

Stas took a modest lead on the base. The pitcher stared at him from the corner of his eye daring him to move just a bit more. Stas wasn't going to let himself be lured into that one. He might not have been the best at baseball but he certainly wasn't blind at what the pitcher was trying to get him to do. Stas noticed one more Emmerian guy in the crowd. He was around the same age as him and wore a large coat despite the warmer weather. The coat wasn't what got Stas' attention as the man disappeared in a crowd of soldiers behind third base. The look on the man's face told him something was….wrong.

BLAM! Stas hit the ground before he realized it. It may have been a few weeks since he'd last been shot at but his combat reflexes were in tip top shape.

"Fuck the Devil's grandmother!" the first basemen yelled. He was on his stomach a few feet from Stas. "The Army put a minefield down or something?" Stas slowly rose his head. He wished he had his rifle or at least his sidearm but that was in the dugout with most other's gear.

Stas looked over at third where he'd last seen the man. Bodies and pieces of bodies lay everywhere. Half of somebodies still bleeding thigh lay a few feet from the pitcher's mound. Those who had been wounded started screaming. Someone called for a medic. Stas, still half dazed, ran over to see if he could help in any way. He didn't carry any dressing or morphine like he had when he first landed in Gracemeria. Officers told him no such thing was needed now that the fighting was over. By the helpless looks of the other non-wounded they had been told the same. Stas realized that he was ready to deal with the scene mentally unlike before but not physically.

He kneeled down next to a soldier holding on to his bloody leg. "You want me to try and wrap that up?" Stas asked. He may have not had dressing but he could use his telnyashka and shoelaces as a substitute.

"No. I don't think it's that bad." the wounded soldier said. In an angrier voice he said, "The bastard blew himself up."

"Who?" Stas asked and immediately felt stupid. Who else could have done it.

"That fucking Emmerian. He really blew himself up." The wounded soldier slammed his fist into the ground and cursed.

"No way. There had to be a mine." Stas said wanting to believe that over what could have really happened.

"Not a chance. I watched him go up. He was there one moment and the next he was gone. Fucker took a bunch of our guys with him." The soldier pulled something out of his leg and held it up so he could see it better. "That is not a fucking nail." the soldier said through clenched teeth. Stas stared at the four inch piece of pointed iron. The soldier looked at Stas and said, "Please tell me I fell on a nail."

"No." Stas said shaking his head. "He made his own shrapnel." Stas took a pack of cigarettes he kept in his pocket. He thumbed one out and offered it to the man below him. "Thanks." he said taking it. He produced his own lighter and lit it. Stas didn't smoke himself but he figured he might as well carry around a pack so if anyone was out he could offer them. Civilian emergency personnel arrived on scene but they were pushed away by medics armed with AKS-74Us. More armed soldiers arrived on scene and began securing the area.

"Those bastards." the soldier said looking around at the carnage and inhaling a lungful of smoke. "Those fucking bastards." he repeated exhaling through his nose. Stas did his best not look around. He wished he'd never see pieces of men strewn about again. Unfortunately he had no such luck.

"Lend me a hand." one of the medics said as he put his arms under the wounded soldier's armpits. Stas took his legs and they lifted him up on a stretcher.

"Fuck!" the wounded soldier cried. Another medic came and they carried him to the back of a BTR-50 that had been converted into an ambulance.

Stas moved on to the next wounded soldier he saw. "Want a smoke?"

000

"I'm against it." Jack said leaning back in his chair.

"Me too. What's the point of trying to free our city if we depopulate it using suicide bombers?" Peter said with an all too serious look on his face.

Carter shook his head in a disapproving matter. "We have to show the Stovies that we are serious. Look at all of them we took out. That was just one bomber. Imagine six or seven of them running into one of the Stovie victory parades. Think of how much damage we can cause."

Jack bit his lip and thought a moment. "I see what you're saying but I still don't like it."

"We can shorten the occupation if we keep it up. A constant string of bombers against concentrated groups of Stovies. We'll make it so bad they won't want to leave the bases or houses they're quartered in. We can drive them out." Carter continued to push the idea. Jack looked almost bought on the subject but Peter detested the idea.

"What about all the people they're shipping out? They made an entire city block disappear last night. They're all heading to Estovakia to be put in those damn camps." They all knew this. The Estovakians had put on a nice show on the news showing entire families being put on boats and shipped off.

"One man can take out a dozen Stovies by himself." Carter insisted.

"I think we should work in cells. Try to stay away from the suicide bombers. We're short on people as it is now. Not point in wasting them. A cell of five or six guys can do as much damage as one bomber and get away with it to do it again." Peter argued. LeAnn walked in the kitchen with baby Jonathan in her arms.

"I'm going to the store to pick up diapers. Ya'll need anything?" LeAnn asked brushing a piece of jet black hair out of her eyes. At 17 she was older than Peter but by a few months. She carried Peter's last name because they decided they should get married before Jonathan was born.

"I think we're good. I can go later on if you want me to?" Peter offered.

"I can do it. He hasn't been wearing me down too much lately." LeAnn said with a tired smile. Jonathan looked up at his mother a smiled showing a toothless mouth.

"Okay. Be careful out there. I love you." Peter said getting up to hug LeAnn. When Jonathan saw Peter he cracked up laughing.

"You be safe. Please don't get hurt. I love you, Peter." LeAnn whispered in Peter's ear as they hugged. Peter had been he had the option whether or not to tell her what was going on. In the end he decided to and she took it harder than he'd thought she would.

Peter looked down at his son and said, "You take care of your mom. You're the man when I'm not around." Jonathan squealed happily and spit up.

"Dammit." LeAnn muttered as she walked out the door dabbing Jonathan's chin with a baby wipe. When Peter took his seat at the kitchen table Jack and Carter looked at him with grim expressions.

"What would you do if the Stovies picked her up and interrogated her? We'd be done then." Carter said frowning. Peter squeezed the edge of his chair until his knuckles were white. If the Estovakians ever put their hands on LeAnn he'd kill them all. As unrealistic as that sounded that was exactly what Peter planned to do.

"We'll deal with that if it happens. Back to our moral dilemma." Peter said desperate to change the subject. The more he thought of what the occupiers would do to LeAnn the more he wanted to walk up to a random Stovie soldier and shoot him in the face.

"I think we should discontinue using suicide bombers." Jack said firmly.

"What?" Carter exclaimed looking at Jack like he was crazy.

"We can't afford to lose any people we do not have to." Jack said shrugging his shoulders. "The risk for civilian casualties is too high also. If our own people get hurt while we're trying to kick the Stovies out they'll use that against us."

Carter sighed and scratched at a bump on his arm. "How many people will be involved in our next operation?"

"Five or six. We'll need the extra muscle." Jack pulled a black and white picture out of his pocket and unfolded it.

"How did you get this?" Peter asked scrutinizing the picture. It was pretty good for a black and white photo. It was a picture of an Estovakian officer followed by an entourage of body guards as he exited a building.

"The Stovies hired one of us to take pictures so they can send it back home for their newspaper." Jack took out several more pictures, all of the one Stovie officer but at different places, and spread them around the table.

"Who is he?" Peter asked examining one photo that was of just the officer.

"The Shark of Silvat." Jack said narrowing his eyes. "Major General Rusland Vorobiev. He's the one who personally led the attack that encircled so many of our guys at Silvat. Now the Emmerian Army is missing a good chunk of its firepower. Here's the best part though. The Shark of Silvat is coming here."

"Let me guess. We're gonna snatch him." Carter said crossing his arms.

Jack nodded and said, "If we can. He'll only be in town for one night so we only have one shot at this. If we can snatch him we have to pull every piece of information out of his head even if we have to pull every finger nail out to get it. Our boys over on Khesed Island are getting the shit kicked out of them and if that Stovie has anything that can help them out inside his head I want it."

Peter just started to scrutinize Major General Rusland's face and memorize every facial feature when someone walked past the door whistling a tune. Peter knew the whistle well. "Olly olly oxen free"

That was a member of the resistance. Jack stood up and drew his PPK. He walked over to the door and looked through the peephole. "Go…." Jack challenged.

"Dance with the angels." the person behind the door replied. Jack slowly opened the door and let the person slip in. It was an older lady with brown hair but it was quickly greying. She had bags under her eyes that were so dark Peter swore the lady hadn't slept since the Stovies came. Peter's eyebrows rose in surprise when he realized who the lady was. Mary Conan had been a chemistry teacher at the high school Peter had gone to. Her son was a tank gunner in the Emmerian Army and had been killed in the first few days of the war trying to buy time for civilians to cross a bridge.

"I know where Rusland will be today." Mary said in a low voice. Peter remembered how her voice boomed but now she sounded like she had lost the will to live. "He is to be greeting a new unit arriving at the Air Base tomorrow evening. He'll stay a night at the base and take a plane to the morning to the front.

Jack pulled out his wallet and fished out 800 Robica. "Thanks." Jack said handing her the money. Henry would have been surprised to find out his mom was such a good spy." At the mention of her now dead son Mary smiled a little and looked down.

"I'll be going now." Mary said and let herself out. As usual Jack locked the door and looked through the peephole to make sure no Estovakian soldiers were planning to storm in before returning to the table.

"No way we are shooting our way into there. They have a few divisions guarding the place. Even if we did units stationed throughout the city would pulverize us as soon as we tried to escape." Carter said shaking his head. "Face it we lost the guy."

"What if we could sneak in?" Jack said looking up at the ceiling.

"How would we be able to sneak in?" Carter asked looking at Jack. Jack looked at him back and smiled.

"You can't. Sorry to say but you'd stick out in a Stovie uniform."

"Stovie uniform?" Peter said giving Jack a funny look.

Jack smiled a friendly smile and asked Peter, "How's your Estovakian?"

000

Louis felt good with the radio controller in his hand. It brought him back to his days in the Osean Secret Intelligence Service when the Circum-Pacific War was raging. Instead of controlling a remote control P-39 Airacobra like he was now he was remotely piloting a MQ-9 Reaper dropping GBU-37 bombs deep behind Yuktobonian lines during the Circum-Pacific War. Madison sat to his left colouring a picture while Alexis lay on her back reading and using the book to shade her eyes from the Sun. It pained him to say so but they were completely oblivious to why he chose this park to come to even though it was further from their house than the other park. This park was in range of the Gracemeria Air Base which at this moment An-124s was landing to disgorge their loads of Stovie soldiers.

"That's a big plane daddy." Madison said looking up from her picture.

"That it is." Louis said hitting a button on the bottom of the controller. Half a mile over the airbase his model plane was snapping dozens of pictures via a digital camera he'd attached. The photos were automatically sent to his e-mail in an encrypted format, sent to a proxy e-mail, encrypted yet again, and then sent off to his various contacts each with their own personalized code. It was the same program the Osean Secret Intelligence Service used when dispatching information. The risk of the original message being intercepted and decrypted was low and even if the Stovies managed to intercept it without the encryption key all they would see was useless random numbers and letters.

He made one more pass over the base before bringing the plane back to the ground. It glided as he cut the engine off and came down in a field of grass fifty meters away. "Shit." Louis muttered as an Estovakia soldier in PT gear stopped and picked the plane up. Louis jogged towards the soldier waving his hand.

"This your plane?" the Stovie asked handing it to Louis.

"Yes. Thank you very much." The soldier nodded and continued jogging. Louis examined the P-39 for any damage. He'd have to sweep it for bugs when he got back home. He looked over at his daughter and wife and decided it could wait until after he took the two loves of his life out to a proper dinner. Too bad they'd have to walk. The Estovakian imposed ration of three gallons of gasoline per car was brutal to say the least.

"Who wants some pasta?" Louis asked when he got back to the grass knoll where Alexis and Madison where.

Alexis moved the book away from her eyes and squinted in the sun light. Louis marveled at how Alexis' eyes changed from green to blue. "Where did you have in mind?"

"Alfonso's." Louis replied as he helped Madison pick up her drawing materials.

"Can't." Alexis said. A robin landed on her leg and stared up at her with black beady eyes. Alexis slowly reached forward with her finger and tried to bet the robin. The bird, sensing a threat, puffed out its crimson chest and hopped backward. Alexis half way smiled and whistled softly. To Louis' surprise it whistled back. The bird gladly hopped forward and rubbed Alexis' finger with the side of its head like a cat. Alexis whistled a final tune and the bird flew away.

"Didn't know you could speak bird." Louis joked.

"I don't. When you were off on one of your missions I'd take Maddie on walks through the park. I'd whistle and the birds would whistle back." Alexis said getting a far off look in her eye. She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear before continuing. "And we can't go to Alfonso's. Estovakians turned it into an officer's only place."

Louis sighed and sagged his shoulders a little. Alfonso's was his favourite restaurant in the city. The nearest place they could get good food anywhere close to Alfonso's was all the way in San Loma. "What about pizza?"

"Pizza!" Madison exclaimed shouted dropping a handful of crayons on the ground. "Can we please get pizza? Pretty please."

Louis looked at Alexis. "Any good pizza parlors around here?" Alexis bobbed her head and started putting all the stuff they had brought into a large shoulder bag.

"You want pepperoni or a plain cheese pizza?" Louis asked.

"Plain cheese!" Madison replied. Louis frowned. "Just kidding daddy. Pepperoni, pepperoni, and more pepperoni!" Alexis smiled and Louis laughed.

Louis picked Madison up and kissed her on the forehead. He put the partially disassembled plain under one arm and interlaced fingers with Alexis. With a click of a button on the controller every picture the converted spy plane had taken was erased from the hard drive. Even if the Stovies decided to sweep the plane now all they'd find were blank spaces.


And that ends chapter 2. As you can see the resistance is experimenting with different forms of attacks and is planning something big. The Estovakians aren't exactly sure how to handle but they'll be doing some experimenting of their own to try and stop the attacks. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy.