First of all Happy New Year guys! I hope you all like this chapter. I'm not sure that I managed to capture the tension in this chapter quite like I wanted to but I hope it's okay. Thanks to all those who reviewed, favorited or followed!
Music: Overpowered by Phantom Power Music (It's an awesome track)
Disclaimer: I do not own Jurassic Park/World. Macx's OC's belong to her.
Hamada motions for the helicopters to lift off and watches them take off. It's better this way, though it leaves them with little to no fast extraction abilities. But raptors are fast as hell and too, too smart. They wouldn't come while the birds are powered up. They'd sneak past the whole platoon of ACU and ARU and nobody needed that.
No, the point was to end the pack before they could harm anyone. He glanced at the ARU team and really hoped that they could pull off what they said they could. He's not in the mood to hear the dying screams of men as they are ripped apart by a pack of raptors. He especially doesn't need to hear those screams from his own men.
ARU signals that they are ready and Hamada nods, gesturing to his guys on the back of the trucks. The men monitoring the camera equipment give a thumbs up. The attached helmet cams on the ARU members going on the raptor-bait-run are live and working.
Hamada can't help but feel a frisson of unease. This feels like tempting fate. Like playing with fire. Like dangling meat in front of a creature that is infinitely dangerous and far more suited to hunting than you are. But they have no choice. They cannot let that pack get to the park. They can afford no more deaths. Hamada himself cannot afford any more nightmares.
He gives the replying signal to the ARU team and then gestures his men into their places. Ambushes are tricky things and they will have only one shot to do this right.
When everybody is in place, Hamada whispers into his comm. "We are ready."
Brennen responds. "Noted. RBR team. You're up."
Hamada watches as the small team of three, grip their weapons and then run into the forest. When they are out of sight, he turns his attention to the screens that show the feeds from their helmets. The names are written at the bottom of the screen to denote who is who. Raylan, Jeremy, and Kavita. At the moment it is nothing more than he expects. Trees and bushes. The view wavers as the ARU teams carefully thread their way through the forest, hopping small branches, keeping free of vines and thick brush that would slow them down or hide an enemy. Sometimes he will catch a glimpse of the others in full stride in someone else's cam.
He can tell by the way they move that they are always aware of each other. The team moves in a way that is both tightly coordinated and loose and open. It eases one of the many, many knots in Hamada's mind to note that the team is graceful and smooth, their motions liquid yet firmly in control. They might survive.
It takes them almost ten minutes of light jogging before they stop. The stop is so abrupt it is jarring for those who ware watching through the cams. There is a breath of silence while the cams slowly pan over the area in front of them. Hamada himself feels breathless, waiting for the explosion. One of the cams pause, Raylan's, and Hamada sees it in the next second. A raptor's head, cleverly disguised, peering at them from the brush.
The explosion comes in the next second, in an entirely different direction from the raptor they'd seen. Raylan ducks, almost like he'd expected it and Hamada catches sight of a tail flashing into the headcam's view, sailing over the man.
"Contact! Contact!" someone screams through the comms. And then there is nothing but the sound of running feet and raptor barks.
A flash of green hide has his eyes drawn to Kavita's cam and he watches as a raptor darts towards her, jaws opening, claws stretched out, ready to disembowel her. Hamada has one second of absolute surety that he is about to witness her death before she twists out of the way in time, whirling and then diving to the floor.
A loud bark is heard and then her camera catches the edge of two raptors scrambling on the floor, attempting to untangle themselves. Somehow the two raptors had crashed into each other. He doesn't get a second to contemplate how before another set of feet flash past Kavita.
Jeremy, from his cam. He doesn't stop to help her up. But Kavita clearly didn't expect him to, scrambling to her feet and darting off through the underbrush, at an angle from him.
Raylan's camera has both Kavita and Jeremy in its sight. He behind them and to the left, gaining on both and clearly planning to intersect their path.
He rolls forward in the next second to let another raptor sail over his head. He comes back up into a crouch, spins and fires a round at the raptor. It dodges and flinches back, giving him the time to launch himself forward again.
He throws himself to the left as the raptor behind him launches after him. It sails past him once more and a brief glance back from Raylan lets the spectators see that it has already landed and turned, ready to pounce again.
A shot ring outs and Hamada can see Kavita's gun up in her cam, aiming at the raptor that was about to jump Raylan. She throws herself forward and right as abruptly jerks back two steps. Jaws intrude on her head cam, snapping viciously, but the girl makes it out miraculously, twisting and turning at angles that give her the barest inch of space to avoid the fearful jaws, and large claws.
Jeremy's cam has her in its sights in a few seconds and Hamada can't help but feel terrified for her. She is moving within a little patch of forest, using the trees, and brush and vines to her advantage while the raptor snaps at her, claws catching every now and then on her tac vest cutting little slivers out of them.
It's also the first time that Hamada can see what the boot from Masrani Global's R&D department do. They're lit up and he can see the plates shifting as she moves, providing support for her whole legs, bracing her ankles at odd angles that would certainly have them twisted if not for the boots. It lets her do some of the feats that are keeping her alive, like that landing that should have twisted her ankle if not downright broken it, or the pivot that only managed to keep her ribs out of the raptors claws.
From the flashes of Kavita's camera he can see Jeremy approaching, and behind him another raptor, stalking him, tail up, dancing between the trees, shadows dappling on its coat making it look like some otherworldly demon, come to snatch lives and retreat to a hell that only existed in whispers.
The soldiers around him who have a view to the screens are tense. He can feel their despair and taste their hope. He feels much the same. Having a front view seat to the possible death of someone is never easy.
Right as Jeremy's raptor speeds up, readies itself to commit to the jump, Kavita turns and runs. She heads straight towards Jeremy and the raptor that was attacking her follows. Before they crash into each other, Kavita and Jeremy both lunge to the side, he siding underneath, she arcing on top and then both their cams show nothing but grass for a brief second before they both up and running again.
The raptors behind them hiss and Hamada hears the faint thumping stop for a second as the two creatures clearly try to avoid each other which results in them losing out on catching their prey.
Raptor-bait-run.
Hamada had through it was madness before. He knows that it is so now.
A shot barks out from Raylan's camera and then Jeremy is turning to glance at his teammate who is on a collision course to them. Jeremy's gun barks and the raptor that was about to slide out from behind the tree and eat Raylan pitches back, blood blooming on its chest.
Raylan puts on a burst of speed and joins the other two and then he's reaching out a hand, tugging Kavita to the side. The raptor skids between them and Jeremy but the other man doesn't flinch, merely aiming his gun and shooting. The raptor skips away and then Jeremy is jumping, avoiding the sweep of a raptor's tail. He lands and ducks behind a tree in time to keep his eyeballs from littering the forest floor. Kavita distracts the raptor focused on Jeremy by running up to it. It has to face her, turning away to greet this new threat which allows Jeremy time to escape from where he'd been pinned down.
Kavita shifts on a dime, adjusting her path in seconds to skim past the raptor. It gives Raylan the shot he needs. It hits the raptor burning along one shoulder and down its flank. The animal screams.
Bloody scales appear behind Raylan so quickly it might have been like magic but then another shot hits the raptor courtesy of Jeremy's excellent marksmanship. The weight of the raptor still bowls Raylan over but he detangles himself with a few bleeding nicks and dashes forward.
It's only been four minutes.
They're three-quarters of the way back to where the ambush is set up despite the wandering nature of the routes they're forced to take to keep themselves alive. They're three-quarter way back and Hamada begins to feel a little bit of hope that they might make it out alive.
That's when the fourth raptor appears. It doesn't jump out at them. Instead, it barrels towards them, low to the ground, picking up speed in a way that had been impossible for the raptors before in the terrain. But this one. This one is smarter. She'd waited until she found a place where the trees had grown in such a way as to allow her a straight, easy path to the ARU soldiers.
She's fast, a blur of dark scales and predatory instinct.
The ARU soldiers scatter. But they're not fast enough. Jeremy's cam catches blood splatter from where Kavita's thigh is scratched open, the claws catching behind her leg. The girl goes down and her rifle spills away from her but she rolls along the floor, camera catching that wickedly curved claw slamming down into the dirt centimeters from her face three times before Kavita manages to unsheathe her handgun and shoot. The first bullet puts a furrow in its skin. The rest miss.
Jeremy skids under the fourth raptor, passing dangerously close to the claws and yanks Kavita up from the ground. The raptor that was chasing him skids to stop before it hits the fourth one and then darts around it. Kavita throws a knife and it makes its mark, straight to one dark eye. The raptor rears back scrabbling at the knife and Jeremy pulls Kavita out of the way of the fourth raptor once more before shooting at it.
Raylan's headcam is spinning wildly as he shoots at the other two raptors. Keeping them off his tail and away from the other two members of his team.
"Brennen!" Hamada growls into the comm.
"Not yet," Billy replies, voice terse. "They can make it out."
"No," Hamada says, because he's seen what a pack of four raptors can do, even against men with guns. He won't ever forget the aftermath of the ship Owen had been held on. "No, they can't."
"Give them a minute."
"They'll be dead in ten seconds," Hamada says. He's not the kind of man to sit and watch the people under his command die.
"Then give them five!" Billy snaps back.
The screens in front of Hamada are a nightmare. There's currently not a single member of the RBR team not bleeding. Only one of the raptors are out of commission, still trying to dislodge the blade from its eye. Its movements are slower however and Hamada wonders if blood loss or brain damage is finally getting to it.
Jeremy and Kavita are frantically trying to escape the advances of the fourth raptor but Kavita is limping badly and Jeremy is sporting what looks like bone-deep claw marks in his left forearm. He's lost his rifle somewhere. His right hand is occupied with keeping Kavita on her feet, tugging her out of the way of death when she can't make her injured leg move fast enough.
The intern still has her handgun and is still using it. But the fourth raptor is canny and tough. What shots hit her dead on don't stop her. What grazes her, only leaves furrows that bleed but do little more. Every time Kavita misses is a bullet wasted.
They're hanging on by the skin of their teeth.
Raylan isn't much better but he's taken slightly less injury; a shallow slice across his right shoulder. He has more space to move however and is using it to his advantage, ducking behind trees, jumping over fallen logs, deliberately baiting the raptors into areas with slick mud that makes them lose their footing.
Hamada is about to comm Brennen again when he sees it.
Injured and fighting for their lives, they'd still been coordinating.
Jeremy and Kavita had inched back and to the side with each darting run to make their way closer to Raylan. Rayland had done the same, until he could get a clear shot at the fourth raptor. Then without any regard for himself, he spins from the two raptors hot on his heels, sights down his rifle and shoots the fourth raptor in the head.
The two raptors behind him pounce, claws out, ready to make the killing blow and then are pitched to the side. Kavita is toggling the trigger on her handgun, and with the reprieve, Jeremy has managed to get his handgun and is doing the same.
The shots don't stop the raptors only graze them, but Raylan is fast enough to throw himself out of the way of the falling raptor bodies as they crash disoriented into the ground.
Then the three are running. There is no more dodging. No more circular paths. They are leading them right to the ambush without further delay, pelting through the forest as fast as they can.
Behind them Hamada can hear the soft hisses of the two raptors.
"Be ready," he orders his men softly.
He can hear them now, crashing through the underbrush.
"Steady," he whispers through the comms. "Steady."
The three emerge from the treeline and dash straight into the field. The raptors streak out after them and even having watched them on the head cams, seen footage of the park incident and even studied how Owen's pack moves, Hamada is still blown away but how amazingly, incredibly fast they are.
Then he is barking, "Fire!" into his comms.
The teams of men strategically hidden in the fields, rise up from where they'd been hidden in the grass, taking advantage of the raptor's focus on the three visible targets.
The three runners spilt left and right before dropping and rolling to avoid the barrage of gunshots. The raptors rear back and duck themselves, slicing through the field low on their bellies but then gunshots start up again. This time it's from the trees they had run past a few seconds ago.
The ARU team of snipers stationed there don't hesitate. With their bird's eye view of the field, they can see the trails being left behind in the long grass, can mark the passage of their targets.
It's still difficult, but the snipers are relaying where the raptors are heading and it gives the teams in their path an edge. As soon as the raptors break cover to go for the teams, the snipers fire.
It takes a few tries, a few injuries and one badly bitten leg before the snipers take down the two raptors in the field.
The third raptor emerges from the forest, knife removed. But it is sluggish and not as fast as it's siblings. Hamada and his men mow it down.
Then there is nothing but aching, crackling silence for a long moment before Billy's voice comes crackling through the comms.
"It's done," he says, breathing hard. "We got them."
Hamada relaxes for a brief second before he tenses again. "Wait a minute. There were supposed to be six to the pack. I counted four."
"There were only four," Billy agreed. "Which means that Owen is going up against a larger pack than he expects."
"Damn," Hamada says. He calls out the information to Cater and then sets to work on getting his injured to medical and rounding up the rest of his men to back up Carter and Owen, in case they needed it.
Tell me what you all think! Did you like the unexpected POV? I hope I didn't make Hamada too OOC.