0812 hrs.Undisclosed Date
Cafeteria, NERV Headquarters
"Lampright! Explain yourself!" Misato yelled.
Eric looked up from his bowl of Cocoa Pebbles.
"What did I supposedly do this time?"
"Don't pretend like you don't know!" she yelled.
Lampright looked puzzled before turning to Cooper.
"What'd I do?"
Cooper shrugged.
"You think she knows about-" Cooper started.
"Nah. She couldn't have found out about that already." Eric said.
He turned back to the major.
"I'm gonna stick with 'I don't know what you're talking about'."
"Captain, you requested that yourself and the other four American members of your team be assigned to a special mission!"
"No I didn't, what special mission, and what the HELL are you babbling about!"
"This!" she yelled, brandishing several sheets of paper in front of his face.
"That'd be easier to read if you'd stop moving it around." Cooper commented.
"SHUT-UP!" she snarled.
"Damn major, someone's hormonal today." Lampright said, snatching the paper from her hand.
"Cooper, Jackson, Carey and Maloy! Y'all are with me on an extraction mission to pull some civilian doc outta Thailand before her field hospital gets overrun by the rebel faction."
"What's the matter maj? Jealous?" Maloy asked.
"Shut-up Maloy!" Both Lampright and the major said in unison.
Maloy looked at them, slightly puzzled at the response.
"Holy shit Cooper! Look who it is!"
Cooper craned his neck.
"Who?"
"Bethany Roberts."
"Well cover me in shit'n call me a rainbow." Cooper said.
Everyone stopped and starred at him.
"What?"
0912 hrs.Undisclosed Date
N-FOG Offices, NERV Headquarters
"And Denisovich is in charge while I'm gone. HOWARD BEHAVE!" Lampright finished.
"Da. I will keep an eye on our man for you sir." Denisovich responded.
"I know ya will. Now let's go boys, we got a bird to catch." he said to Cooper, Jackson, Maloy and Carey.
The five stepped out and started the walk to the helipad.
"Remember, ROE says we can only return fire." Lampright said.
"So why are WE going sir?" Jackson asked.
"It's a very time-sensitive issue, and what with the situation in the Spratly Islands heating up and sucking up most of the spec-ops in the area, we're the closest U.S. forces."
"So what's the plan, sir?" Carey asked.
"Well, we're gonna catch a bird to Camp Zappa, from there we get catch another bird to the fleet, the fleet'll put us on an RIB to the coast of Thailand, we hoof it inland a few klicks to the objective, grab her, and pull her out by helo."
"Why not just put in by helo?" Jackson asked.
"Well, first off, we don't have that kind of linger time. It has the possibility of gettin' pretty hot down there, and they don't want a bird in the air any longer than possible. They're also not exactly sure the facility is."
"Awesome." Cooper replied, opening the hatch to the helipad.
"Indeed!" he said, yelling to be heard over the sound of the rotors.
'It's gonna be a long day.' he thought.
1630 hrs.Undisclosed Date
Deck of the USS Ronald Reagan CVN-76, 100 miles off the coast of Thailand
The five members of the team stepped out of the helo, stooping low to avoid the rotors as they ran towards the seaman waving at them. The man straightened and saluted as Lampright approached.
"Cut that shit out, sailor."
"Sir, I'm Lieutenant Junior Grade Stevens, commander of this ship's detachment of Special Boat Unit 4! We're assigned to bring your boys in sir! We leave at 0130 tomorrow morning!"
"Outstanding son! Y'all just get us there in one piece, ya hear!"
The LJG responded with a thumbs-up.
"Good man!" Lampright said, slapping him on the shoulder as he walked past.
"Now where are our berths!"
1703 hrs.Undisclosed Date
Crew Berths of the USS Ronald Reagan CVN-76, Underway
"So Lampy, ya ready to start up where ya left off?" Cooper asked with a grin.
"Hey Cooper, meet me in my berth." Lampright said opening his door.
"Aww, man." Cooper replied, walking into Lampright's room.
"I swear, it's not my fault!" Cooper said, sitting down in a chair.
"Hey Cooper, if I tell ya something, you have to promise not to tell any of the others."
"Is this about you snogging the major?"
"HOW DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT!"
"Well, I knew you were gettin' some from someone, and I had my suspicions, so once I knew to look for it, it was pretty easy to spot; I saw how both of you acted every time you were both in the same room. And that you just called me in here to discuss it in private confirms it."
"So does anyone else know?"
"Nah, the only reason I caught on was 'cause I've known you forever and a day. I figured you wouldn't want it out, so I kept it to myself."
"Good man Cooper."
0342 hrs.Undisclosed Date +1
About one mile off the coast of Thailand
LJG Stevens took another glance at his GPS and cut the small craft's engines.
"We're close to the coast. Time to paddle boys."
Jackson and Cooper both picked up the paddles stashed inside the boat and began quietly paddling towards land, stopping about twenty meters from shore. Stevens motioned for them to get out, and they dropped into the four foot deep water.
"This is kinda cold. I got shrinkage." Maloy said.
"Remind me why we brought you?" Lampright replied as he flipped down his NODs.
Cooper took point, leading with his shotgun. The group moved silently through the jungle single file for several hours. Suddenly the hand signal came up the line to stop. The men slowly crouched down, Maloy at the back pulling rear security, Jackson and Carey turning outwards to watch the flanks as Lampright watched the front as Cooper came up to brief him.
"We got a river up ahead, and two bad guys with AKs, one on each side of the river." he whispered.
Lampright motioned for everyone to gather on him.
"Carey, keep the far guy covered with that silenced M-4, when Cooper takes the near guy, light'im up. Maloy, once both are down, you cross the water and secure the far side." Lampright told them.
Carey nodded and Cooper and Maloy flashed a thumbs-up.
"What about the rules of engagement?" Jackson asked.
"We're already engaged, didn't you hear it? One of'em clearly shot at me."
Lampright watched through his NODs as Cooper drew his knife and crept up to the soldier. He reached out with his left hand, clamping it over his mouth and jerking the man's head up, drawing his knife across his neck with his right hand. He buckled his knees, allowing the dead man's weight to carry him backwards, falling into the brush and thick vines which hit him and the body. As he fell, he drew his knife back, and thrust it into the man's kidney, just to be sure. Carey, already kneeling and aiming, gently squeezed his trigger. The rifle bucked slightly and released a tiny pop as the other soldier dropped to the ground, dead. Maloy charged off across the water, moving through it with barely a ripple in the way only his kind could. Jackson and Lampright brought up the rear, and rendezvoused with Cooper and Carey before crossing the river. Maloy, who had been about a hundred meters down the road, came running back to them, hunched over.
"Sir, I got stationary lights far in the distance, my guess 'bout half a klick dead thatta way." he said, pointing.
Lampright nodded, and motioned for them to form up in a file again and follow Maloy. They covered the distance quickly, stopping in the woodline about fifty meters from the group of about a dozen or so huts, the thrumming of a generator audible in the background, although only two of the huts seemed to have lighting. He motioned for Maloy, Jackson and Carey to take a perimeter, while he and Cooper checked the huts. The pair checked the one to their left first, Cooper throwing open the door and Lampright entering first. The pair had burst in, weapons up, on a surgical suite, and an operation was currently in progress.
'Good, we're in the right place.' Eric thought to himself.
Their arrival send the room into an uproar, the two of the three Thai women and one Thai man were freaking out at the arrival of two heavily armed men in their operating theater. The third woman, apparently the one in charge, started to walk up to them.
"We are not here to hurt you, we are American." Lampright said in Thai, supplementing his words by repeatedly pointing a finger at the US flag patch on his shoulder.
The woman walked up to him and slapped him across the face, yelling in Thai.
"How dare you burst into my operating room like this, guns pointing everywhere, scaring my assistants! We're in the middle of a surgery!"
"Noted." he replied, turning around and walking from the hut, motioning for Cooper to follow. The other lighted hut was larger, and had two doors on opposite sides of the hut from each other. He motioned for Cooper to take one door, and he'd take the other. Cooper nodded, and crept towards his door. The SEAL flung open the door and rushed in, shotgun up. Right in front of him was a red-haired woman pointing a makerov pistol directly at him.
"Come on lady, put the pistol down." he said in English.
"I don't know you are, but you're not gonna do whatever you're here to do!"
"Damnit! Why do you always have to make things difficult! Just put the gun away and everything's cool."
"Really? Looks to me like we're got a stand-off." she replied.
"Not really. Look behind you."
"I'm not falling for that."
"Hi Beth." Lampright said from behind her, right before grabbing her around the stomach and knocking the pistol from her hand.
"You guys really know how to roll out the red carpet for old friends 'round here." Cooper said.
"What?" she said, as Lampright walked around in front of her and pulled down his baclava.
"Yo." he said simply.
Beth stared at them both for several seconds.
"Eric? Daniel?"
"Yep. The dynamic duo back again." Cooper answered with a grin.
"Carey, Maloy, Jackson, get inside the hut on the right." Lampright radioed.
"We're here to extract you." Eric explained as the other three soldiers walked in.
Beth slapped Eric in the face.
"I guess I deserved that." he said.
"You have a lot of nerve, just showing up like this!" she yelled, attracting the attention of the other soldiers.
"Hi Beth, it's nice to see you too." Eric said sarcastically.
"Three years, and I don't hear anything, and now you show up with a posse on my front step!"
"We were in the neighborhood. Besides, as I remember it, YOU were the one who dumped ME. And I wrote you SEVERAL letters while I was in OCS. I stopped when you didn't write back."
"Those don't count! I was still angry with you!"
"This is why I never tracked you down. Because I knew you'd still be the same, stubborn, illogical, bitter old-"
Gunner was cut off as she slapped him again.
"Why does everyone keep doing that!" he yelled.
She curled her lip.
"Besides, as I said before, YOU left ME." he reiterated
"You know why I had to do that, because-"
"Because I took that commission. And you know why I had to take the commission." he said, turning back to Cooper.
"And I see you're still following him around." she said to Cooper as she reached down and pocketed her pistol.
"And I see you're still bitter." he replied.
"Somebody wanna let me in on the back-story here?" Jackson said.
"Lampright and Beth used to uh...used to be a pair a while back. It's...it's complicated." Cooper responded.
"Usually is when women get involved." Maloy muttered.
"Sat-intel shows a large force of hostiles movin' directly towards ya. You need to pack up your op and move the fuck out. We got room for us, you, and eight other people in the helo."
"Well I have over eighty people here, and I'm not leaving them. You can't make me."
"Beth-"
"I'm not leaving with you!" she growled, pulling the out, but refraining from pointing it at anyone.
Jackson looked to Lampright, who nodded once.
Jackson leveled his weapon at her and fired the grenade launcher. The bean-bag flew true, and struck her in the chest, knocking her to the ground unconscious.
0944 hrs.Undisclosed Date +1
Aboard MH-60 Enroute to USS Ronald Regan CVN-76
Beth regained slowly regained consciousness, looking around the inside of the helo groggily. She squinted at Lampright for a second, focusing on him.
"I can't believe you shot me!" she yelled at him suddenly.
"Oh please. You've known me for how long and you're surprised? Cooper, tell her."
"Yeah, you shoulda seen this comin'." he confirmed.
"And you just left my people there." she said bitterly.
"Ah, come on. Gimme some credit. Parts of 1st SFG are gonna be in later today in MH-53s to grab'em."
"Assuming they're still alive." he muttered.
"Yeah. My mission wasn't them. My mission was you. What did you think I would do? Abandon my mission and lead all of you on a nice little hike to the border? This ain't a movie." he said, leaning the closed door of the aircraft, starring out the window opposite him.
"So you swoop in to save me just in the nick of time, just like the old days huh?" she said, starring straight at the ceiling.
"Yeah, just like the old days." he said dryly.
"'Cept Danny ain't blown anything up today."
"The day's not over!" Cooper yelled.
"Indeed. Hey Beth, you know you already missed a mid-air refueling. Twice." Lampright said.
"Where exactly are we going?" she asked.
"Japan. We're already over Kyushu. We should be there in less than an hour." Cooper stated.
"Well, you probably won't be shipped back home for a few days. You wanna get together, just you, me & Cooper after we get off for the day? It'll be just like old times." Eric said.
"Yeah. Sure, why not." she said, smirking slightly.
2311 hrs.Undisclosed Date +1
Residential Area, NERV headquarters
Eric and Beth are walking down the hall, stopping outside Eric's quarters.
"Too bad Cooper couldn't show up." Beth said.
"Alright, well, it's been 'nice' seein' ya, but I gotta turn in for the night."
"That's it? just gonna go to sleep?" she said, raising an eyebrow and smiling at him.
"Yeah, I'd invite you in to my room, but while I was gone, Howard hacked my keycard and glued all my furniture to the ceiling."
"Wow sounds like you work with some GREAT guys."
"Yeah, he's a hoot." he said, rolling his eyes.
"Well, I'll see you around." she said, giving him a good hug and walking away down the hall.
Lampright leaned against the wall, watching her walk away for almost a minute before turning around. Major Katsuragi stood behind him, fuming.
"What? It was a hug. It was completely innocent and-"
Eric stopped for a minute.
"-you don't care what I have to say, do you?"
She glared at him.
"I suppose this is the wrong time to ask if I can crash on your couch, huh?"
She gave him the death stare for several more seconds before returning to her room, slamming the door behind her.
Eric sighed loudly, and banged on a door.
"Hey Cooper, open up! I need your couch!"