AN: Hello all! How are you surviving this hiatus? Recovered from "Time to Shine" yet? *shakes head*
Thank you all for reading and reviewing/favoriting/following. I haven't done it in years (literally), but once I have time and remember how to thank each one of you in a DM, I will.
Enjoy! :)
3: Blind Faith (Part 3)
Kasey took a deep breath. Or, at least she tried to. Her leg hurt for some reason, along with her head, but she didn't think about that. How could she? There was a bound soldier on the ground in front of her… her problems could wait for now.
Taking a hesitant step forward, Kasey knelt down and placed two fingers to the soldier's neck. He had a pulse, which was good. His breathing didn't sound right, but she didn't know what to do about that.
She took off her sweatshirt and used it to wipe blood off the man's head, looking for the source of it all. She couldn't remember if he was wearing a helmet before, but if he had that would be a reason why the wound she soon found on the side of his head wasn't any larger. After wiping some of the blood away, Kasey started to worry. The soldier didn't move when she dragged the fabric across his face, so she shook his shoulder to try to wake him up.
Nothing.
Kasey moved to untie the rope from the soldier's wrists when the door opened suddenly and the man with the large gun stepped into the room. Before she could brace herself for whatever came, the man roughly kicked her in her right side.
She screamed and tried to back away, but another kick caught her in the same spot.
"No touch." The man tells her in broken English. He is gone as quickly as he came, leaving Kasey curled in on herself on the cold floor.
The plan was straight forward.
Jason, Ray and Sonny would set up positions to take out the armed men in the kitchen once Kairos located the fuse box and cuts the lights. Trent and Clay would head for the basement where, hopefully, Brock and the American are being held. Blackburn "conveniently" stepped out of HAVOC base to take a call, leaving Davis to coordinate unofficially.
Bravo Team knew the risks of disobeying a direct order but locating Brock and the American was their top priority. However, the severity of the situation regarding the hostiles in the kitchen was growing, and they couldn't wait for the German military to arrive to take care of it.
The bomb that already detonated was proof of that.
"Bravo One to Bravo Seven. Have you located the fuse box?"
"Bravo Seven to Bravo One, affirmative. Ready when you are."
"Copy. Hold for my signal." Says Jason. Ray was in front of him with his weapon raised and ready while Sonny had gone over to the second door twenty feet away. "One to Four, are you and Six in position?"
After following Davis' directions to the stairwell she lost the hostiles and the American in, Trent, with Cerberus attached to his belt and Clay began their search for Brock. Four flights of stairs later, they were in a short hall that lead to what looked like a wine cellar.
Clay took a knee and watched Trent's back as he peered into the room. It was dimly lit and other than being able to make out a few wooden crates stacked two or three high, he couldn't see much. But he could hear voices talking. The comms were spotty, but Trent says, "Four to One, good copy."
Jason readies his own weapon, and keys his comms. "All call signs ready to move in three…two…one…execute!"
Jason, Ray and Sonny burst into the kitchen, taking out five armed men at the same time, before any hostile had a chance to react to the lights going out. Once the hostiles were down, Bravos One, Two and Three checked each man for a kill switch but all came up empty.
The guests were rounded up, waited for the German military to arrive. Jason told Sonny to secure the area until that happened, and for Kairos to head for the kitchen while Hayes and Ray went to give Trent and Clay backup.
When the lights went off in the basement, Trent entered the room with Clay on his heels, each man sweeping their respective sides as they worked their way deeper into the room.
One hostile appeared with a weapon raised, and both Four and Six took him out in quick, practiced motions. They passed the man, rounded a corner, when sparks suddenly bounced off the floor and splintered the wooden crates around them. Taking cover, Clay returned fire while Trent went around to the opposite side to get a better shot at the gunmen. Cerberus began to growl and bark furiously, which raised Trent's attention in the direction the dog was pointed.
Bravo Four saw the American woman being tossed into the back of a van. She was bound and gagged, laying on the floor. Upon seeing the two SEALs arrive, she tried to fight to get free from her captors, but strong arms prevented her from getting far.
"I've got visual on the package!" comes Clay's shout over gunfire but he didn't have an opening. "I'm pinned down here!" No sooner than the word left his mouth, Clay grunts and jerks back, which didn't go unnoticed by Trent. However, he was back on his feet soon enough.
"Cover me!" Trent changes his mag and readies himself to move closer. When the onslaught of bullets slowed down slightly, he made his move.
However, when Bravo Four peered back around the crates, he realized that the presence of the American wasn't what caught Cerberus' attention.
Brock was being dragged from a room to the waiting van by two men with weapons strapped to their backs. From his position and the fact that he was engaged in a firefight, Trent couldn't be sure if Brock was even alive. Regardless, the hostiles loaded Bravo Five into the van with the American and shut the door before the vehicle lurched forward into the night and out through an open bay door.
Cerberus barked and whined and tried to give chase, but his efforts were fruitless. And as the van got further and further away, he simply laid down behind the cover of crates.
"Bravo Four to HAVOC base. I have visual verification that Bravo Five and the package are being held hostage!" Trent yells into his comms. The bullets have yet to slow down; he was beginning to wonder if their supply was endless. "They were taken in a dark van that left from the loading docks. Can you get ISR on them?"
"Stand by, Bravo Four." Comes Davis' reply as she works to locate the van.
Clay hunches low as the hostiles continue to bare down on his and Trent's position behind the crates that now offered very little protection.
Trent shouts over his shoulder, says "Prep a frag!" But before he and Clay would do just that, Jason and Ray come into the room with weapons hot and engaged with the hostiles that had them pinned down. Both Clay and Trent took this chance to flank the men and soon the problem was eliminated as the last hostile went down in a heap of gunfire.
When the room filled with silence, Jason turned to Clay and Trent, asked for a sitrep. Trent told him what they saw, and that Davis was looking for the van on ISR. After giving Jason the information, the medic turned to Six with careful eyes.
Clay didn't need to be told. "Bullet just grazed my leg, caught some splinters too. I'm—"
"Don't say fine. I'll be the judge of that." Trent pulls the gear needed from his bag and set to work on cleaning away a few splinters out of Clay's right thigh. The wound wasn't deep, but it still bleed pretty good.
"Bravo One to Bravo Three, how's the situation up top?"
"Three to One, the German military finally arrived. The hotel guests are outside, and the bomb techs are sweeping for additional devices." Says Sonny. "They located a kill switch, so, yea." he pauses, finally asks, "You find Brock?"
Jason would rather tell his men what they saw in person, so he keys his comm and says "Let the Germans have the fun upstairs. You and Seven head for the basement."
"Copy that, Boss."
With Trent tending to Clay's wound, Jason and Ray fanned out about the room, checking it and the dead men for any additional devices that could detonate. After a few minutes of coming up empty, Clay and Trent joined in the search in sweeping the rest of the room right when Davis came though comms.
"HAVOC to Bravo One. I need a sitrep, over." Blackburn. Jason could tell that he likely just got back to base after getting an earful from brass about Bravo disrespecting the chain of command.
Hayes informed him that Brock and the American were taken hostage and Davis was looking for the van. "The Germans have a handle on the situation here; we need to get out there and locate Five before—" Jason stops himself. He didn't want to think what the hostile would do with his soldier. "Anything yet, HAVOC?"
"ISR picked them up leaving the resort and making for the mountains due northeast of your current location." Davis tells Hayes. "The roads up there won't take them far, the terrain is rough. If they keep in that direction, they'll have to ditch the van, foot it to wherever they're taking the hostages."
"What's up there?"
"Looking now."
Jason purses his lips, looks out the open bay door where the hostiles made off with his man and the American as he waits for HAVOC to get him the information.
When they arrived in Germany, it was cold. When they arrived at the resort, it was still cold. In the unknown amount of time that had passed since then, it got colder, and a thick blanket of snow now covered the ground. Dozens of scenarios played through his mind, and none of them ended well for his man, or the American.
It felt like hours went by before Blackburn's voice rings though Jason's comms. "HAVOC to Bravo One. ISR shows what appears to be a compound in the mountains eight klicks due northeast of the resort. It could be their home base, which is why we don't have plans for the building."
Jason nods absentmindedly, knowing this means HAVOC can't give them a layout of the building. "How far out is QRF?"
"From your current location, 80 mikes." Eric pauses, catching on to what Jason was getting at. "However, if Bravo were to detour eight klicks due northeast, QRF would arrive in 65 mikes."
"Hey, Boss!" Ray calls out. "You need to see this."
"Good copy, HAVOC. Stand by." Jason walks over to his men, eager to see what they found. Upon arriving at the walk-in wine cellar, Hayes first noticed that Cerberus was sniffing and pawing at an area on the floor. There was a balled-up jacket, and two different spots of blood on the floor. One was larger than the other.
"Cerberus got Brock's scent right there." Trent points to the area next to the larger pool of blood. "And if the package was locked in here with him, then the other blood is hers. This jacket, too."
Jason turns to Bravo's official/unofficial medic and asked the question that was on everyone's mind. "How bad does it look, Trent?"
Bravo Four kneels down, inspects the wine cellar. The room was chilled, not as cold as it was outside, but cold enough to do harm to any person locked inside for an extended period of time. "Hard to say. Sonny told us Brock was right next to the blast when it detonated. That, plus he fell through the floor and was dragged from the fourth floor to a chilled wine cellar in the basement. And there is no way of knowing what they did to him while he was MIA—"
Jason curses. He then fills Bravo in on the information that he got from HAVOC about the compound. "All right, suggestions?"
It was the constant motion of moving that drew him from unconsciousness. But it was that same motion that pulled him back to darkness. Everything hurt. He wanted to move, but something told him that wasn't the best idea right now.
Voices speaking in the cab of the van were in the middle of a very heated conversation. And considering how cold the back of the van was, that was the only source of heat to be found.
Brock tried to move his arms, but they were secured behind his back. He tried to shift his legs ever so slightly, but they too were tied together. He could tell that other parts of his body were aching, but the cold was dulling that pain to where he was able to ignore it for now.
Not able to do much else, he slowly opened his eyes. Doing so wasn't the best choice he made, with his vision blurry and eyes dry, but he kept them open and tried to look around best he could.
Without moving his head, Bravo Five noticed containers of chemicals, trash bags, tape and other odds and ends in small barrels that made his skin crawl. From his position on his left side, he then saw the American, bound in a similar way as he was.
And she was staring at him with eyes so wide he could see how panicked she was, even in the dark van.
But before he could try to calm her—how, being bound and gagged himself, he didn't know—when the van slowed to a halt. A few seconds later the back doors opened, and three men appeared.
Two were larger, holding rifles aimed into the van at Brock and Kasey while the other one had a long hunting knife and a pistol tucked into his pants.
The smaller man reaches into the van and cuts the tape around Bravo Five ankles, before one of the large men grabs him roughly, pulls him from the van and out into the cold, German air.
"Come here." The small man says to Kasey. His English is broken, but clear enough to understand. "We have an appointment to keep."
AN: I thought this was going to be the final part of "Blind Faith", but it was getting too long to keep together. Soooo... I separated this and included the *REDACTED* and *REDACTED* in part four because I really wanted to focus on *REDACTED* and the *REDACTED*. I have a lot of homework (like write a short story that isn't FF) and my job that will take up my time this weekend, but part four is nearly finished, so that may come sooner rather than later.
Thanks so much for reading. Please review, let me know what you thought and be sure you are following so you know when I post part four.
PS: and for those asking for Clay whump... I know I shot him here, but more is coming (not in this story, but in a one-shot I'm working on). *evil laugh* :)
