February 2018
Federal Predator Monitoring Agency
Washington, D.C., USMA
Tyler Jones had been on the job for two-weeks with the FPMA at the nation's Capital. The scientist had just graduated from Stamford before landing one of his dream jobs with the agency and his field was in apex predators of the world in accordance with the modern norm. The monster snakes of South America. The ancient crocodiles of Africa and Australia. And, the various Birds-of-Prey that frequented sparsely populated zones all over the rest of the globe. His field studies during the college days frequently took him to the southern states to research the growth of the North American alligators, though. Not nearly as dangerous as research on crocs, but still necessary in the scheme of his studies. He preferred to deal with the ones that had a propensity of staying around the land compared to the maritime department that dealt with sharks and whatnot.
"Hey! New Guy!" Mira Fields said loudly, smacking him on the shoulder roughly. "Quit daydreaming and power down your equipment. Boss wants us in the briefing room ASAP."
The suddenness startled the cougar into action and, sure enough, the phone that had been muted on his desk had three missed calls and several messages on it. Once his desktop was shut off, he scooped it up and hustled after the retreating doe elk. No comment was made on the euphemism that he was addressed by.
"What's up, Mira?" He asked instead.
"What do you mean 'what's up'? Didn't Gus walk you through everything before he transferred? The briefing room is for active cases!" She said harshly, ducking into another corridor.
At the end of the hall was the entrance to the briefing room and she hit the swinging doors with the full force of her speed with her hooves. Sure enough, several mammals were already in the room. Some of them were already in their utility uniforms and openly carrying sidearms on their drop-leg holsters. At the head of the class, standing off to the right of the projector screen was the team lead, a massive Grizzly by the name of Chuck Farrier.
"Nice of you to finally show up, Fields!" He growled.
"Had to grab our FNG, Captain." Fields said loudly, throwing a hoof back towards Tyler. The gesture was understood despite the doe not having thumbs.
"Alright! Asses in seats!" The Grizzly barked, ignoring the explanation.
The lights were switched off to better show the screen. There was a map on it.
"One-hour ago, word was passed to us from the Canadian government that an exceptionally large BOP had been confirmed in the Yukon Territory near the town of Old Crow. Allegedly, it had been operating in the area for a couple of years now, but nothing had been spoken of even after several mammals disappeared over that period. The Provincial Government chocked it up to mammals who left without reporting their next destinations to the towns population recorder." Chuck explained.
"What changed, Cap?" One of the older team members asked suddenly. Tyler could not tell who it had been.
"There had been no previous recorded evidence of the hawk until two-weeks ago. The BOP attacked a Native settlement further north of the town, early one morning, and then it dropped into a playground at the Old Crow high school during the afternoon recess. This is the imagery that was pulled. And, New Guy?"
The projector screen changed as Chuck went forward in his slides on the computer. Tyler's mind clicked and his eyes went up to find the Grizzly bear staring into his soul, not even looking at what his paws were doing on the laptop beneath his hulking frame.
"If you puke on my floor, I'm going to have Fields use you as the mop to clean it up." Chuck growled.
Tyler's ears pinned back immediately, feeling all the rooms eyes on him. Some of the more experienced members were chuckling and that only made the cougar feel worse about what was about to be played on the screen. A blurred image behind a roundel of the 'Play' symbol. The high vertical orientation told him that it was from a cellphone camera. And, as if it could even be possible, he knew Mira was mean-mugging him worse than the Captain was.
"I'm good, Sir!" Tyler's voice came out weaker than he had intended it to.
"You fuckin' better be!" The bear growled again, deeper if that was even possible. "Alright, you jugheads. This video, and the multiple images that follow it, are extremely sensitive in nature and our Head Shed doesn't want the word getting out to the American public just yet. For most of you, this will be the first time seeing a Non-Mammalian Predator Attack in action. So, keep your muzzles buttoned and your lunch in your guts."
Chuck Farrier stood upright and backed off the computer with a controller in his paw. After a moment, he hit the play button and the room was blanketed in noise.
Tyler Jones flinched so hard that it must have looked like he was going to take cover under the desk. The first things to hit his eardrums were the sounds of screaming females, even over the screeches of the hawk itself, while the bass picked up the pounding sounds of wings against the air. The perspective refocused upon the zoom being reduced. Finally, the Bird-of-Prey was seen clearly. Tyler's wide eyes flicked around the screen and fell on a teenaged moose that was being pinned to the ground underneath one of the talons as the head of the hawk snapped out at other, smaller kits who were trying to run away. The poor moose was wailing and trying to claw itself out from under the BOP.
Other sounds started making their way into Tyler's mind. The sound of gunfire, wails from the mammal who was taking the video, urgent shouting from who were assumed to be the local law enforcement and other civilians, sirens wailing into the immediate area. The camera had panned off as the recording party ran away to a safer location. Blue lights flashed around the area from the police vehicle strobes. Once it was back on the hawk, the zoom kicked back in… In time to see the blood pouring out of the moose's mouth and back. In time to see the hawk manage to hook a medium-sized arctic hair kit in its beak.
"Aim for its body! Aim for its body!" Someone screamed from off the screen.
The discharge from a rifle cracked and muted the audio for a split-second as the BOP spread its wings. The sound of beaten air returned as armed onlookers rushed into the frame, desperately firing handguns at the torso of the hawk to kill it before it could retreat from the area. The video feed stopped seconds later, and the air of the room returned. The sound of rustling clothing from many of the mammals' present illustrated the level of discomfort in the room.
"Lion Christ, Cap! That thing's gotta be damn near as tall as you!" Tyler recognized Dan Henderson's voice in the dark room.
"The Old Crow Sheriff guessed, just off a visual, that it's probably seven-feet tall and I'm nine-three. So, yeah, it's a pretty big fucker." Chuck admitted before turning back to screen. "These next images were captured by a wildlife photographer as the hawk was flying out over the town. At the same time, a brain-dead civilian decided to take a shot at the hawk, and he ended up hitting it. Sadly, when that shot struck, the artic hare that had been in its beak was dropped. The poor buck ended up falling over two-hundred feet to his death. The young moose girl still hasn't been found…"
Click. The hawk was flying outbound from the town. Click. Again, wings down this time. The photog was surprisingly good with his camera. Click. The hawk's posture was disoriented. Click. The artic hare was falling now. Click. Again, but further away as the hawk seemed to be trying to decide if it would risk a dive to recapture its prey. Click. A map showed up on screen. Red X's were marked all over to the north and northwest of the town of Old Crow. There was a clear yellow cone that had been placed from one point north of the town and angled to the southeast off of a larger black X.
"Lights!" Chuck bellowed.
The suddenness of the lights coming back on was blinding, but it showed that several of the team had their paws and hooves up to their muzzles, rubbing their heads if they had taken their hats off, or simply staring off into space as their brains tried to process the horror show that had just been witnessed. Tyler felt light-headed and green himself. Never once in all of his college studies had a video of a NMPA been shown or even spoken of in the academic society. Only the black-and-white, typed reports of what happened showed up online.
"Sir!" Dan Henderson spoke again.
"Go ahead, Sergeant." Chuck replied, taking a seat at the desk.
"Earlier… You said, 'had been'. As if you meant past-tense. Can you drop the other paw?" Dan requested firmly.
Tyler watched as his boss sighed and took a drink out of his coffee mug before speaking. "Two-days after those attacks, the Indians and the Cowboys got together for a little pow-wow at the Old Crow Community Center. The civilians decided to overrule the local government and law enforcement's wishes, and after all of the relevant information was compiled into a pseudo After-Action Report… The townsfolk went up to the north, where they thought the BOP was loosely based at, and razed the forest. The RCMP has told me that much of the area is still burning even as we have this conversation."
Chuck raised his paw, and a laser pointer was directed at the screen.
"The townsfolk knew that there was no way they were going to find the bodies of mammals who had been killed by this hawk. So, they decided to try to push it out of their area rather prematurely. The size of it tells me that much right off the bat. This predator has been hunting mammals for quite a while, I think. As you can see, there are marks on the map around the mainland, south of Herschel Island that date back a year. The most notable of them was the disappearance of Randall Birch, a sizeable gray wolf, who had been fishing in the Ivvavik National Park, seven-months ago. The authorities from Herschel Island had been treating it as a mammalian homicide case since discovering his boat, bag and haphazardly discarded fly rod on the bank of the Firth River. If I'm right, we're talking about this fucker having hauled off a fully grown Alaskan wolf... And, due to its size, we're going to have to assume that the range of this BOP far larger than normal projections from past cases." Chuck explained, noting the critical points with the laser. "With all of this information loosely being considered, and as unsavory as the thought to think about… What happened to the rabbit buck was probably the most merciful of ends that could have occurred…
"Better that than to listen to the sound of your hind-limbs being crushed under talons while your guts are being torn out from within your belly… All while you're still alive… Comprehending the entirety of the event and screaming the rest of your life away throughout it." The bear explained resolutely.
The throat-ripping release of hot liquids onto the floor was not a sound that came from Tyler Jones. The repulsive sound of spewed vomit hitting the floor came from one of the support technicians for the FPMA unit way off to the cougar's left side. Tyler did not dare look away when he found the Captain staring directly at him from the front of the room: entirely ignoring the sick mammal off to his right side. It was as if the Grizzly was testing the cougar's resolve right there in the situation room.
"If you don't have the guts for what might come our way, then get the fuck out of my briefing room! Right fuckin' now!" Chuck bellowed, shoving himself out of the chair while not taking his eyes off the cougar.
It was not as if Tyler Jones' body could not move. That was not what the issue was. His body simply would not move. There was something deep down in his soul that kept Tyler's ass in the seat that he was currently inhabiting. Of course, there was the understanding that there was no way that the Grizzly would harm him in a manner such as what the hawk had done to mammals up in the remote, near-tundra zones. Tyler would not lie to himself, though. He was scared shitless. That fact had to have been written all over his muzzle even as he stared down the bear. More out of fear than him being some disrespectful government employee.
Apparently, in the background, the offending party had not removed themselves from the room. Two of the other military-backgrounded mammals decided to do the work for them. The poor mammal was purposefully dragged through their own vomit on the way out of the room and the two operators returned in short order, after the fact. They looked resolute. They were seemingly unfazed by the information that had been shown on the screen. Tyler could not help but feel appreciative of those attributes, considering the news.
"Alright! So, here it is." Chuck began again. "The civilians are reported to be heavily armed. As heavily, if not more so, than what you and I are capable of purchasing through conventional U.S. means. Both the local sheriffs and the RCMP have reported sightings of illegally-held, Restricted-classified small arms, as well as what looked to be smuggled Russian arms within the paws of the Native tribes-mammals. Likely brought in from over the Pole. The FBI and BATFE have seen similar reports in the northern-most parts of Alaska. I want everybody here to understand that these mammals are not to be fucked with! They are well-armed, and they are scared out of their fucking minds because of this BOP. They are not afraid of the national rules on shit at this time! We are not – I repeat – NOT to antagonize them any further than the local authorities are already doing. Is that understood?!"
"Sir, yes, Sir!" A quarter of the room launched themselves out of their seats to give the response.
"This is a hunt, you understand me?!" The Grizzly snarled. "If any of you die – in a foreign land – in any other way than from the talons of this winged cocksucker, I'll personally see to it that the President is invited to witness me as I piss on your fucking grave! Do you understand me?!"
The sound of Mira's chair being shoved back against the linoleum floor made the cougar jump in his own seat. More than half the room was on their paws at this point: bellowing back at the enormous bear at the head of the room. Tyler was rooted into his seat due to the seemingly ostentatious display of authority from the Grizzly. Looking around the room, he found several mammals whom he would have assumed would have jumped up at the militaristic display of authority: simply out of respect. Those mammals, mostly wolves, had not done so despite their verbal response. It was clear that they were of a group who was far more disciplined and dedicated than the rest.
"Sir, yes, Sir!"
"Very good!" Chuck bellowed back at the room. "Now, here is Director Morrison to run us through all of our clearances."
Near the front of the room, Morrison stood up from the front table and went around to take his position at the podium. The bighorn ram was a formidable looking buck in his own right. Wide-shouldered and entirely focused on the paperwork that he was carrying around for the last few moments. Behind thin readers, Morrison brought his eyes up on the lit room full of mammals.
"There will be three units going in on this operation. Captain Farrier will be running point with Alpha Squad, and Sergeants Kelley and Renaldo will be leading the two tactical squads in support: Bravo and Charlie. Three Griffon helicopters will be on loan from the Canadian Armed Forces and the tactical units will use them for searching the estimated cone of travel, as shown on this map. The Canadian government and the State Department have worked out full authorization for you to go in armed: so, all of you who are weapons qualified will armed. All three squads are required to wear either pierce-proof armor or Kevlar. The Canucks have given the Agency a Shoot-on-Sight authorization due to the threat level posed by this BOP, so all gunners will be allowed to fire at their own discretion assuming that no innocent mammals are harmed in the process. The helicopters will meet you all upon debark in Whitehorse and they will make a refueling stop at one of the towns between there and Old Crow: which has yet to-be-determined. I want to make this clear to all of you. This is not a research mission. To quote one of the Canadian officials that I spoke to this morning: 'I want you to kill this motherfucker'. That is all."
Director Morrison collected his paperwork again and strode around the desks until he pushed his way through the doors to exit the room. The senior-in-charge did not even wait for a response from the team. Chuck Farrier stepped back up to the podium to finalize the briefing.
"Alright, ladies and gentlemammals. You heard the word!" He shouted loudly. "Kelley! Renaldo! Select your teams and gear up! I've got Graves, Fields, Huang, and the fuckin' new guy. Two-hours until wheels-up out of Dulles! Pack for cold weather! Temps are going to be in the negatives! I don't want any of you freezing your nuts off up there… And, Fields!"
"Sir!" Mira responded loudly.
"You're in charge of the new guy. Don't kill him or let him die in some stupid fashion." Chuck said firmly, bringing up a thorough round of laughter from the room.
"What if he falls off a cliff, Sir?" Mira asked humorously.
"That would qualify as 'stupidly', Fields!" Chuck barked back. "Alright! Class dismissed!"
The room reverberated with more laughter at Tyler's expense and the cougar pinned his ears back. Sounds of chairs being shoved back screeched and slammed as the IPMA mammals began to file out of the briefing room. Mira, again, smacked the tom in an effort to get him moving. Once the room had cleared, Tyler followed the doe into the hallway at a brisk pace to keep up. He had not originally expected to get to go out on a field-op so soon. Despite his nervousness, it was still something that was welcomed.
"You need to throw all your usual gear into your bag. Sign a camera out and bring it along. Spare batteries. Don't worry about your armor until we get into the Yukon. If you're quick, I'll take you down to the armory so that you can see how things are done. You aren't weapons qualified, so you're not getting a sidearm. You stick to my ass like glue at all times up there. Understood?" Mira said, going over the points in a rapid-fire fashion.
"I understand!" Tyler said loudly. He did not want to be the fuck-up.
"We will tie you up for bait if you attempt to decide that research is more important than the kill order. Am I clear?" She asked evenly.
Tyler was not sure if she was messing with him.
"Yes!" He replied quickly. "Wait… Are you serious?"
"Ask yourself why Gus isn't around anymore, New Guy…" Mira offered, though there was no change in her tone or gait.
"Seriously?!"
...
Nearly twenty-four hours had passed by the time the team made it to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory of Canada. Tyler followed Mira out of the aircraft in time to see the tactical teams locking and loading their weapons while some of the Charlie squad was slinging their bags out of the cargo bay onto the ground. The CH-146 Griffon helicopters, from the 408th out of Edmonton, came in on a hard, fast flare towards a landing zone near to the plane. Mira hooked her bag out of the pile and sprinted for the center helicopter: seemingly knowing where the Captain was going to want Alpha to be. Technically speaking, Alpha was the most lightly armed of the three squads and that meant that they would be in the middle of the flying convoy.
Tyler was fast enough to keep up with the doe elk even after grabbing his own bad. The pierce-proof armor was adorned during the last stage of the flight, prior to landing, so that he was ready to get to work. He only hoped that the camera had not been obliterated by the rough unloading efforts of Alpha. Fortunately, it was not like they were about to fly around an active combat zone, so the passenger doors stayed shut. Once everything and everyone was loaded, the helicopter took off over the tops of the fir forests of the location region.
Being on the operation, with the males and females that he was with, made the whole thing feel surreal to the tom. His eyeballs were glued to the window facing east-northeast out of the helicopter. Tyler was not totally sure that the hawk could not take out a helicopter: if they had flown over the BOP's immediate territory. After a couple of minutes, he noticed that Captain Chuck Ferrier, Graves, and Huang were not wearing their headsets, but Mira was. So, he decided to nudge her with his elbow while pointing up at his headset: signaling with a paw to switch to Channel-2. Once the doe did that, he keyed the mic on his communications wire.
"So, how does a guy like Ferrier get a job with the IPMA?" Tyler inquired.
"A guy 'like Ferrier?' I'm not following…" Mira replied.
"A Jarhead, I mean. How does a Marine like him get a job with this agency?" He clarified.
"Well, when a mommy and a daddy decided that there needs to be a new direction in their careers, they usually have one of them submit a résumé to organizations that they want to work for…" The doe explained dryly.
Tyler made no response other than giving Mira a firm stare, letting her know that he was not impressed with her smartass antics. He nearly jumped in the harness holding him in his seat when another party cleared their throat over the communications channel. The tom's head snapped over to find the Captain staring right at him. In fact, it seemed as if Tyler had inadvertently chosen the channel that everybody else was already on. The whole of Alpha Squad was looking at him now.
"I was with Marine Special Operations Command before this, Kid. My job was to hunt the monsters-of-sentience within our mammalian society. At the time, I was the leader of MSOT-8260 and we had been tasked with slapping al-Shabaab around in Kenya. There had been fourteen Marines in the unit at the time." Chuck explained, muzzle remaining neutral, and the bear's eyes were unblinking the entire time. "We figured that at least sixty hostiles had been killed in our raid – just from simple small-arms fire. Another twenty from Hellfire missiles off of Predator drones when they tried to regroup. After that… We regrouped and attempted to pull back into Tanzania to exfil."
He could see it. The longer that the Captain spoke, the more the life's light to diminished from within the Grizzly's eyes: as if he was steadily beginning to replay whatever Hellish memory was sitting at the forefront of the conversation. Tyler did a snap-check on Graves and Huang. Both the American and Asian black bears were staring at him with the same look in their eyes. It made the fur on his body stand on-end while the tom's eyes widened to a point of discomfort.
"We did not expect that the Hadjis would get their shit together as quickly as they did. But, they did exactly that and eventually forced us up against the bank of this little offshoot of the Mara River close to dusk. We weren't even two-klicks from the border. We had been running and operating a revolving door of cover-and-retreat for hours. What none of us had really paid any attention to… was the whole mental compartmentalization of their logistical understanding of their own backyard. Let me break that down for you. We had a Level-One understanding and respect for the fact that they knew the territory like the backs of their paws. But, everybody in the whole Company had failed to pay attention to what all was encompassed in the environment that the enemy understood…
"So, it's right there on the front-end of the rainy season and most of us are slogging through the reeds, wading through water up to our dicks, while the insurgents are pouring shit-for-fire down into the river. We hadn't realized it at the time, but they were only trying to keep us in the water. If we had realized it sooner, maybe we would have pushed back up the bank… Ten-minutes later, while we're trying to find a skinny enough spot to safely cross without catching a COMBLOC slug to the back of the skull, AFRICOM is screaming on the horn. They're telling all of us that Wilkey, our MSOT's coyote, had been killed at our six. But, they're reading some odd movements in his GPS locator: vitals recording was dead, though. We never heard the splashing over the gunfight… And, slowly, the monitor was letting everybody know that our teammate was moving upstream despite there being no sight of him on the surface whatsoever. It wasn't until Harold was grabbed that we realized what was happening. The ragheads had driven us into a river of hungry monsters and had stirred them into a frenzy by shooting fragmentation rockets at the shallows of the opposite bank."
The Captain sat back against his harness straps so that he could cross his brown-furred arms, sternly looking at his newest squad-member. The pause would have reflected a gathering of oneself if there had been any other emotional connotations on the face of the Grizzly. But, not Chuck Farrier. The bear simply looked like a disapproving, though contemplative, grade-school teacher. Anybody else, without the depth of training that Farrier had gone through, would probably have been weeping or screaming at the recollection of such an event.
"There's no real way to describe the level mental disorientation that comes with being in half of a gunfight – taking purposefully misdirected fire while shooting-to-kill in return – and hearing the sounds of your teammates screaming from wounds sustained by an entirely different enemy force. Nile fucking crocodiles… Harold was grabbed around his guts and drug away, being crunched on, and screaming in pain the entire way until the water was deep enough to drown him. I had turned back in time to see Quentin's killer lunging out of the water to crush his skull. The notifiers told his wife that he never felt a thing. Graves went next…"
Tyler looked over at the large American ursine incredulously. The bear simply pulled up the legs on his trousers: showing the prosthetics where there should have been two black-furred legs. Instead, there were two previously silver rods – now decorated with various stickers – that ran into the boots where the hindpaws should have been. Tyler was starting to lose the blood to his head.
"Huang saved his big, black ass… But, not before the twenty-something-footer crushed Graves' legs beyond medical repair. That was an instant Special Operations career-ender for him. Due to the speed of the attacks versus our processing of the whole thing, it was a mess. Riker ended up turning his Two-Forty onto the water in a panic. He was howling and gone a minute later… None of us had anything that would have saved us at point-blank range. Especially when you were far more likely to be attacked in a manner where you never even saw the croc that ended up taking you away. Reed and Harrington made it out with us. Unfortunately… both of them ended up killing themselves from the PTSD. Lowe, Hall, Clay, Kaur, Higgins, and Saunders ended up getting ripped apart in the middle of al-Shabaab's main body disposal area. Who needs mass graves when you have the most efficient killing machines on the whole planet to eat the corpses, right?
"Anyway…" Chuck finalized. He looked tired of seeing the images play against his mental projector screen. "The three of us couldn't shake the feeling that there weren't enough mammals hunting Mother Nature's most effective killing machines. And, at the time, only Huang and I made it out unscathed. Two mammals out of a fourteen-mammal Marine Special Operations Team. Reed shot himself in the hospital before he was even discharged and Harrington… he took too many prescription pills one night, a couple of months after that. We had all been in for over a decade, if not closer to two. They were never placing us on another team… So, Huang and I snatched up our DD-Two-Fourteens, then we hauled ass for the VA hospital, we picked up Graves, and spent the following week smoking so much grass they would have called us prey."
The explanation was given in such a monotone fashion that the every-so gentle smirk on Graves' muzzle was resounding in and of itself. Tyler could see that Mira Fields seemed to be uninterested in the conversation due to the fact that she had removed her headset entirely at some point during the conversation. The tom did not even get a chance to open his muzzle and seek out information. The Captain was already onto it.
"I—" Chuck said, stopping to wave a paw at his previous unit's teammates. "We joined the IPMA to hunt the monsters that are frequently used as a simple scare-tactic to get kits to go to sleep at night. That's why the three of us are here. Because we know that monsters do exist in this world. And, they do mercilessly kill mammals all across this globe. Most mammals don't believe in these animals until someone close to them ends up dead. We are here to prevent that from happening. And, that's who I – we – got hired on with the IPMA."
"And, what about Fields?" Tyler's muzzle was moving before his mind had agreed to making such a statement.
Captain Chuck Farrier's simple, barked laugh was both cut short and accented by the laughter from both Graves and Huang. Chuck had decided that that was enough and had taken off his headset so that his mammals could leave the property in peace.
"There's a six-thousand dollar betting pool going for the first mammal who can get the real story out of her, New Guy." Huang said in a thick Asiatic accent.
"So, y'know… good luck." Graves said, laughing deeply while the two black bears removed their intercom headsets to prevent any further conversations on the subject.
Despite the fact that the Captain had removed his own headset, Tyler could not follow in the rest of the squad's religious listening of the helicopter's turboshaft engine. It did not seem as if their ears were bothered by the loudness reverberating throughout the compartment. They were resolutely watching the windows for activity.
Four-hours later, and one stop betwixt the layover point and the destination, the pilots brought them high around the town of Old Crow. Even with the doors closed, Tyler could smell the scent of burnt forest from miles away. The RCAF pilots took their time circling the remote township. They wanted the IPMA squads to visualize the fact that acres-upon-acres of forest was on fire below them. It looked to Tyler as if Hell had risen out of the center of the Earth to swallow the land whole. Thick black smoke was a solid indicator of where the fires were presently burning with an unrelenting vigor. White and gray smoke billowed from areas that it had already passed through: eating up the immediate fuels prior to moving on naturally.
The local population's willingness to burn down an entire nearby ecosystem, in an effort to kill or move the threat away from them, was clearly understood. There was no way that the BOP was still in the area and it was highly unlikely that anybody would ever recover any remains of the victims known or otherwise. Tyler was wondering how many mammals were displaced from the spread of the burn. Most of those would likely have been small- to extra-small classes of mammals losing their homes on the fringes of the township. The more critical members of society would have also been pushed out if they lived in that general direction. There would be questions that would have to be answered at the end of the day.
The plume of smoke from the front of the burn had to have been two- or three-dozen miles wide at the broadest point. It went so high up into the air that it was starting to diminish from visibility due to the impending night. Out of the other window, Tyler found that someone was on the ground, tossing road flares into open areas. The pilots could be seen talking to someone over their communications.
After several minutes of circling the area, the pilots of the Griffons brought the team to the deck with the swiftness of all their combat tour experience from Afghanistan. These mammals had been through the ringer before and had learned a lot to manage their birds as fluidly as they did. The crew chief of Alpha's helicopter threw the door open before they were even on the ground and the whole cabin filled with a rush of cold air. Snow flared out away from the chosen landing zone and, then, everybody was following him out of the Griffon while the machine began to be powered-down.
They would not be operating in the colder temperatures that gripped the night. That job would be done by the high-altitude Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) drones which had thermal imaging cameras mounted to them. A couple of them were Canadian, but quite a few more were being loaned out from Air Force units out of both Washington and Alaska.
Huang's shouting nearly caused Tyler to jump up into the slowly halting rotor-blades as the power waned away from the turboshaft engines on all of the helicopters.
"Bravo Squad, Ops goes in the community center! Charlie Squad, check the status of that hotel and report back!" The Asiatic black bear shouted out commands to the already dispersing parties.
Everything was kind of falling into place in Tyler's mind. These mammals were disciplined to the same degree of the United Mammalian States Marine Corps (UMSMC) so the hierarchy within the unit could be drawn. Chuck was the leader, but he led his own squad alongside two lower-ranked, "noncommissioned" members of Bravo and Charlie. Each squad had a designated member for replacing their squad leader in the event of a death. Daniel Graves seemed to be the NCO designated for that job. Alex Huang simply liked doing all of the bellowing.
Meanwhile, Chuck Farrier was speaking to two of the local sheriffs who had come out to meet the newcomers. Locals were pouring out of their homes to see what was going on and many of them were openly armed: though, they did not seem displeased to see the new militaristic group of mammals that had just arrived. Tyler had not been issued an intra-squad communications device yet, so he was trying to take in information as readily as he could process it when all of guys within visual range started dispersing randomly. The helicopter crews were simply meandering towards the community center with their packs. They were not linked in either, but they seemed to know what to do well enough.
"Let's go, New Guy!" Fields shouted at him.
With attentions back on the doe elk, he noticed that his squad was moving towards the hotel and that Bravo was moving off towards the community center with the helicopter crews. After a steady jog, he caught up with the guys. Even over the gusting winds, he could hear Chuck talking into his mic.
"—Bravo, do a little setup and then get some rack time. Briefing is at zero-six so rest-up." He was saying, before turning towards Tyler. "You're racking with Graves and Huang, Kid. Watch out though… Huang likes to nibble on things in his sleep."