Title: Blood On The Leaves
Summary: "You know who's been following us, don't you?" "It's more of a case of "what", rather than of "whom"." Fact: Everything you do in the field can get you killed, including nothing.
Genre(s): Action/Adventure, Drama, Humour, Horror.
Warning(s): Violence, gore, coarse language, mature subject matter.
Murphy's Law of Combat: Tracers work both ways.
Chapter Two: Tactical Assault: Part II
Not even half a second after she fired her third shot, taking out a guard half hidden behind a large crate, Dagny heard Langdon and his half of the team began their end of the assault on the encampment. Guerrillas flooded from the main building, seemingly coming from nowhere. Dagny suspected that there was an underground level of some sort.
Captain Martinez led the four sergeants into the melee, rifles firing rapidly as they took cover behind several crates and trees. Dagny remained at her post on the outcropping, picking off any hostiles that got too close. She shifted her hold on the SR25, moving the crosshairs over a guerrilla on the roof of the main building. This one had brought a machine gun up with him. Deciding that she wasn't going to have any of that, she pulled the trigger without hesitation, watched the body fall, tumbling over the side of the building... It was strange, picking hostiles off as a sniper, because Dagny had never really fancied herself one. During the first few weeks in the unit under Martinez's command, the captain had been quick to notice that she had a talent for it, however, and had insisted on getting her some basic training in that area... Risked his reputation on putting a newbie in with the "real" snipers...
Something moved. There, by the hut. The guards were trying to get to the hostages. Likely, they planned on slaughtering their prisoners rather than running the risk of having the women and children escape. Bastards. Dagny adjusted her scope, moving the crosshairs over the face of the lead guard.
She pulled the trigger once more. Blood spattered across the side of the building. She wasted no time in moving onto the next guerrilla, but this one seemed to have noticed that someone other than the soldiers on the ground with them was picking his comrades off. He dove behind the corner of the hut, disappearing from her line of vision.
Dagny swore, her pulse jumped. A knot twisted her insides when the man didn't peer around the corner, like he should have. Where the fuck had he gone? She reduced the magnification of her scope and quickly took stock of the immediate area. Seven hostiles –possibly more if there was an underground level were barricaded inside the main building, frantically firing projectiles and throwing explosives from the shattered windows. The remaining guards that had been outside lay dead on the ground, their blood spattered on the side of the building, on the crates, the nearby plants... Dagny shook her head, focusing on the task at hand. Another four guerrillas were on the second level of the building. None on the roof that she could see. She returned her scope-enhanced gaze to the ones she could see. The second and ground level hostiles had Captain and his operators pinned down at the edge of the encampment. Martinez was calling for cover.
Glancing at the corner the guerrilla had disappeared around, Dagny decided that wherever the hell the man had gone, he wasn't coming back any time soon. Somehow, this did little to make her feel less uneasy about the man's disappearance. She moved the crosshairs of her scope over the barricaded hostiles, searching for whatever clear angles she could get; no sense in wasting ammunition on shots she wasn't sure she could make.
It was strange; Dagny reflected as she pulled the trigger again and again, sometimes missing, sometimes catching glimpses the lifeblood of the hostiles she killed, splattering onto the floors, the walls... Being able to kill from a distance somehow made her feel oddly detached about it all, as if she'd withdrawn into some small part of her mind. And, to be perfectly honest, she had done just that. She'd withdrawn into a part of her mind where there was no sound, only the quiet lull of static. It was a place she often went when she killed on assignments like this, body going onto autopilot, instincts taking over while her mind shrank away from reality...
What was it about guns that made the shooters feel so detached from their actions? Was it because there was no real contact between herself and her victims? That could be it... Truthfully, Dagny had never really been fond of guns. Sure, she used them and, yes, she was a damn good shot, but that didn't mean she liked them –especially not in the hands of amateurs. An amateur with a gun felt more detached than an amateur with a knife or a club. Shootings were so distant, making the shooter feel secure, isolated even. Knifing someone was far more intimate. It required getting up close and personal, close enough to see the light leaving the victim's eyes...
Something crunched under foot behind her. Dagny felt her pupils constrict, her heart skip a beat. Without another thought, she whipped around, reflexes leaping into action... And found nothing. No one was there. Nothing except a broken twig, barely two feet away from where she was lying. Something cold and entirely unpleasant settled in her chest, like a cold, iron hand squeezing her ribcage. That twig hadn't broken on its own. Twigs didn't just randomly snap in half just for the hell of it. Something or someone had to have broken it... The thought sent a chill down her spine.
Someone had been right behind her.
"Sakariasen!" Martinez was shouting at her. Dagny swore for the second time since the assault began, realizing what she'd done.
She'd abandoned her task, had failed to cover her comrades. Rolling back onto her stomach, she resumed picking off the hostiles, targeting the ones she saw arming explosives. Now and then she managed to shoot a grenade in a hostile's hand, killing the hostile and, occasionally, the poor bastard beside him.
As the assault continued, an uneasy feeling settled inside of her, like a heavy weight. Her thoughts turned to the man that had disappeared around the corner. Could he have doubled back around her flank? No, someone would have seen him... she hoped. A hostile getting behind her while she provided covering fire for her captain and comrades could and would be fatal –and not just for her, either...
"Sakariasen, move in!" Captain's voice derailed her train of thought, crackling loudly over the radio at her hip. Dagny took another look at the scene below. It had become eerily silent...
Grabbing the device and depressing a button on its side, she confirmed that she had received the orders. Quickly pushing herself off of the ground, she thought about removing the silencer, but decided against it and hopped off edge of the slope, landing in a crouch. Checking that she had another twenty-round magazine ready, she moved forward to join a fellow operator behind one of the larger crates.
"Dag." Sgt. Lopez greeted her, eyes never leaving the main building. Dagny nodded, brushing a loose strand of hair out of her face and bringing her rifle up to bear. Ever since he had gotten used to having a female soldier in "his" unit, Lopez had rarely called her anything but "Dag" – though "Dag" was sometimes exchanged for "Ma'am" when he was trying to be polite. Shaking her head, unable to feel anything other than a sisterly fondness for the man, and focused on the situation at hand.
She strained her ears, listening for the telltale shuffle or the click of a magazine being loaded. Dagny, but heard only the quiet whimper of a child –the hostages. Captain Martinez and the three other operators were nowhere in sight.
"Sir, shall I retrieve the hostages?" Dagny asked via her radio. For several long moments, no one answered. Dagny exchanged worried looks with the sergeant beside her. She depressed the button on the side of the radio once more and tried again. "Sir? Captain, respond."
A quiet crackling answered her as she removed her thumb from the transmit button.
Dagny shifted her weight nervously. It wasn't like the Captain not to respond immediately...
"Martinez, here. We're inside the main building." The gruff voice of her Captain finally answered. Dagny heard Sgt. Lopez heave a sigh of relief. Dagny, however, felt her heart sink at that her Captain said next. "Retrieve the hostages... or whoever's left of them. Looks like all of the women were killed before we arrived. Including the politician's daughter." –Martinez's voice was grim- "Kids might still be alive, but don't get your hopes up."
"Yessir." Dagny rose from her crouched position behind the crate, the sergeant rising with her, and moved carefully towards the hut. She stopped a few feet away from the hut, off to the side. There was no guarantee that a guerrilla wasn't hiding in the hut with the children –if there were any children left, that is. Lowering her rifle, she called out. "Hey? Kids, you in there?"
No response. Sgt. Lopez made another attempt to communicate, speaking Spanish instead of English. Mentally, Dagny kicked herself. Of course the kids wouldn't understand English! The main language in these parts was Spanish.
Why hadn't she thought of that?
From within the hut, the voice of a young boy answered. Dagny shivered as the sound. The voice seemed so small, so frail... She hated to think of what the child's condition was if he sounded so weak.
"What did he say?" Dagny prompted the sergeant to translate. On the other side of the camp, she could hear the other members of her team moving about, rummaging through the main building in search of any other hostages.
Sgt. Lopez cleared his throat, and swatted an insect away from his face as he answered. "He said, 'Are the bad men gone?', ma'am. He wants to know where his mother is..."
Dagny stared at the hut, feeling her chest constrict painfully. That poor boy... A surge of pity hit her, gnawing at her from the inside out. She shook her head, as if the action could clear away the thoughts of the boy's future. Suddenly motherless, probably traumatized, beaten, bruised... There was no way the boy would ever get the psychological treatment he'd need to recover from something like this. Not in this country. Poor kid probably wouldn't make it into his thirties –if he even got past his twenties...
"...'am, what do I tell him?" The sergeant was addressing her. Dagny blinked, asked him to repeat the question. Lopez gave her a strange look. "I said, what do I tell him, ma'am?"
Lopez had to work hard not to let the grimace show, only to find himself working even harder to resist the urge to run over to the boy... The boy who so strongly resembled his youngest brother, with the same wide, brown eyes and wild hair... The sight made his eyes sting, but he maintained control over his emotions. He had to. It hurt, but that hurt had to be kept in check. Delta Force operators didn't lose control of themselves. It was something of an unwritten rule, a silent taboo. It just wasn't done.
"Tell him... Tell him that we don't know."
Dagny found it hard to swallow as she said those words. It was cruel to lie to a child like that, but far kinder than telling him of the fate of his mother, whom had probably been tortured for information –raped, too, most likely before finally being killed at the hands of the guerrillas. Dagny had seen it before. Women who were kidnapped by men like that never came out of the experience whole, if they ever actually got out. Most didn't. The few that did...
Dagny shook her head once more.
Lopez looked up at the Staff Sergeant, caught off-guard by the thickness of the woman's voice. He wasn't the only one having to refrain from dashing over to the child's side, it seemed. Somehow, this surprised him more than it should have. There weren't many female soldiers in the Delta Force –if there were any at all. Lopez supposed that was why his superior was always so distant and professional; being one of the few females in this branch of the military was bound to be both daunting and challenging. If fellow soldiers weren't playing cruel pranks, then uptight superior officers were making life difficult. Despite this, Dagny would have been expected to work past such things. On that she had succeeded.
Strangely, he felt he pitied her for that, and wondered how the teams' staff sergeant would have been otherwise. Would she have been more benign? Chatty? Coy, perhaps? Lopez frowned, finding that he could picture Dagny being any of those.
In the end, Lopez reflected as he watched Dagny, it didn't matter how cold and distant you made yourself out as. Something got to you sooner or later. For SSgt. Dagny, that "something" turned out to be children.
'Why must humans be so cruel to each other...?'