Chapter 1

The Awakening

Year 2024

Wednesday

March 30

12:00 hours

Freedom Military base hospital

Baghdad, Iraq

Alpha Team Remnants

Air Force Special Forces

Dragon Skin Attack Group

"Is he alive?"

"I don't know."

"If he is we have to get him awake now."

"If we wake him up now there could be permanent damage to his body."

"I don't care how screwed up he will wind up, I am going to wake him up now."

Cortez was woken up very suddenly by a sharp shaking to his shoulder. He opened his eyes and looked around and noticed that he was in a hospital room. He also noticed that his commander was in the room with a very concerned looking doctor. "Where am I, I mean, which country am I in?" Cortez asked.

His commander replied, "You are at your home base, Freedom Base, in the hospital."

"Where is my team?" Cortez inquired. He tried to sit up but as he did he felt searing pain in his chest, but sat up anyways. "Why does my chest hurt so much?" asked Cortez.

"Sergeant I am sorry to say that most of your team is missing; some of them are dead; and you, Private Benny Hayes, and the pilot are the only people who we are sure are alive from the attack on the mosque. That's why I had to wake you up. In the battle you were shot in the chest by a high caliber round that penetrated your armor." reported his commander.

"So what happened to my team?" asked Cortez, exasperatedly.

"We believe that they were taken captive by the terrorists you fought against. The rest of your men are dead." was the commander's grim answer.

"How could this happen, I thought they didn't know we were coming. My team was killed because they knew we were there! They were tipped off! How could this happen?" Cortez yelled.

"Sergeant Cortez stop screaming. This wasn't the only reason that I woke you up. I was sent here to tell you that you have been put on Honorable Discharge."

"What!" said Cortez, "Why? What have I done?"

"You directly endangered your team, which resulted in four of your team members dying and three of them being captured. The Honorable Discharge takes effect in four days. Until then I hope you have a good day Sergeant." was the commander's last say in the matter.

After that the officer walked out of the room and left Cortez sitting up in the bed. The doctor came into the room and told Cortez that he had visitors. The sergeant was surprised about this. He sat watching the door and into the room walked Benny Hayes and Lieutenant Segraves.

Benny walked in with an unusual swagger. As he walked in, Cortez noticed that when he turned around to shut the door, that he winced in pain. "So, what happened to you, soldier. asked Benny's sergeant.

"Sarge, I took several fifties to the side, but the armor withstood it. Even though they didn't go into me, the rounds still broke several ribs." Benny replied.

Cortez looked around the room once more, and noticed that the pilot had a huge gash on his arm. He nodded at the lieutenant's arm, "So…?" he inquired.

Lieutenant Segraves saw what the soldier was talking about, and replied, "Bad landing."

"Ahh." was Cortez's last word on the matter. "Did you guys get fired?" he asked the two. Both the men nodded. "What did they get you guys for?" he asked.

Benny was the first one to speak, "Well, Sarge, I really don't know what they discharged me for. You know me I really don't do well with the legal crap. All I care about is gunfire, computer hacking, explosions, and more explosions."

It was then that the pilot answered the question, "Somehow they pinned my wingmate being shot down on me. It's not my fault that Lieutenant Simmons tried to pull off some stupid trick and got shot down in the process. Anyways, they still blamed me for endangering my squadron-mate, so command discharged me," Segraves said.

"That is the stupidest reason to release someone from service," the sergeant commented.

"Hey, Cortez, I looked all over the hospital at the base and I couldn't find Corporal Haverson," the pilot said, "do you know where she is?"

"Yeah, what happened to her, Sarge?" Benny asked. "I passed out before I could see what went down," he said.

Cortez was silent for a moment. "They, er, They captured her."

"Well, where did they take her?" Segraves asked.

"I really don't have the faintest Idea of where they would take a prisoner like her. I am just surprised that they didn't kill her on the spot. Besides, they also took Rivera and the others too." thought Cortez aloud.

"Hey, guys, I really can't answer why they took them, but I can propably tell you where they went." Benny said, "you know I can hack into any –and I mean any- computer or mainframe. So I think that tapping into the satellite video feed for the last seven days to see where they went would be a cakewalk.

Both of the men opposite of him just stared at him. They both knew that the kid was a genius, but they hadn't expected that idea. It was brilliant.

"Now, I know that you are in awe of me, but there is one little problem with me doing this: getting to a computer that can hack into the database. The computer that has this information is in Washington, D.C., and there is no computer here that can hack into that system."

"Hey, geek boy, how does a flight to Egypt sound to you?" asked Lieutenant Segraves.

"Well, it sounds awesome, but does that have to do with this situation?"

I have a friend in Egypt who has the technology to do that and more, and he has a stockpile of explosive, to sweeten the deal."

"Oh, so how do we get there?"

"Have you both been trained to fly a jet before?"

"Yeah, we have but what does that- Oh, I see; I like where this is going!"

"So Sergeant, are you up for this?" asked the pilot, "can you even walk?"

"Hell yeah, Count me in!

Cortez sat up, ripped off his IVs, pulled on some pants and a t-shirt, and the three ran out of the room.

Corporal Brandy Halverson awoke with the worst headache of her life. It was even worse than the hangover after first time she had raided her father's liquor cabinet. She reached her hand back to the posterior of her head and felt a sharp stinging sensation and pulled her hand back quickly. She looked down at her hand and saw what appeared to be dried blood. Then it struck her: where was her helmet? She looked down at herself, and noticed her armor was gone, she was wearing the clothes she had had on under her armor, but there was no armor to be seen.

She stood up, checked out her surroundings and saw that she was in a small room with a barred door, barred window, a simple mattress with a sheet, and a separate room with a hole in the ground. Then it all came back to her, the firefight, her friends being shot, her about to kill one more person, then blackness.

All of a sudden, there was a commotion in a nearby room, and men, assault rifles in hand, walked in carrying Private Rivera. They threw him roughly to the ground of the cell that Halverson was in. The armed men left the room and walked away.

The young private attempted to get up, but fell to the ground. Brandy rushed over to him, turned him over and noticed the bruises and burns all over his body. Underneath his shirt, Rivera's gut was crudely bandaged with what looked like linen tied around his body, and he had his arm taped up with surgical tape.

"My God, what have they done to you?" she said as she looked down at the young man's body. She ripped open the front of his shirt and found only more wounds. She lightly touched his skin, and the boy writhed and groaned in pain.

Halverson stood up, at the sound of screaming nearby. She recognized the voice of the one in pain; the voice belonged to Travis. She wondered what they were doing to him.

The yells and screams continued for, by her estimate, about ten minutes. A short while after they stopped, the armed men again came up to the cell. This time in their arms was a wounded Private Joseph Travis. They dropped him into the cell and walked off, after closing and locking the door behind them.

Travis got up off of the floor, looked at Rivera, then at Brandy, and said, "Christ, they got you too." Solemnly she nodded her head. "You do know what's going to happen to you next?" Travis asked her. Once again she nodded her head. She knew what he meant: that she was next.

The two soldiers appeared at the cell gate seconds later, grabbed her, and started to lead her down the hallway. No matter what they do to me, I can endure it, I will survive, she thought as she was brought into a room just down the hallway. I will survive.

It's one thing to sneak off base and get drunk and not get caught, but it's a completely different thing to try to sneak off base in the Air Force's fastest, newest, and expensive fighter and not be seen, or heard. Cortez thought as they ran down the corridors that led to the hangar that held the TX-89 Reapers. If they could even get into the hangar, it would be a great achievement; if they got off the ground, past the air patrols, out of surface-to-air missile range, it would be a miracle from God.

When the three men would get near a guard, they would slow down, walk past him, sometimes say hi, and when they got past his eyesight, they ran. They walked by one guard, turned the corner, and Segraves stopped the other two. He stopped by a door, took out a key, put into the lock, turned it, and opened the door. The three walked inside the doorway. "What is this place?" asked Benny, clutching his side.

"This is the pilot locker room," Segraves responded, "this is where we will get us some pilot jumpsuits. You guys don't have any paper clips or bobby pins on you?" Cortez shook his head, but Benny started digging through his pant's pockets, and came up with both a bobby pin and a paper clip. He handed them over to the pilot.

"Where did you get a bobby pin from?" asked Cortez.

"Well you know me, I'm a lady's man; what can I say." Benny responded.

Segraves took the two metal pieces and bent them so that they were straight. "Watch this, a little trick I picked up at the Academy, when my frat boy of a roommate locked me out of my dorm." He took the two wires, stuck them into a lock on a locker, pushed one to the side, and started to wiggle the paper clip around until the pins in the lock started to click. Finally, the bolt on the lock twisted, and the locker door swung open. Conveniently inside were three pilot jumpsuits. Everybody grabbed one, put it on; or tried to put it on, in Cortez's case. Eventually they were in the proper attire to steal multimillion dollar flying machines and escape to Africa.

The three poked their heads out of the entrance to the locker room, checked for anyone, and started to run down the hallway again. After a couple of minutes of more running, they reached the exit nearest the hangar. Once they were outside, the pilot pointed out their destination, a hangar, about eight hundred feet from the building. They started to sprint to the front of the hangar, until they saw two armed guards walk out of the hangar door. They slowed down their approach to a stealthy, crouching walk. One of the guards walked inside. The lone sentry stood outside, lit a cigarette, and started to walk toward the three. The men dispersed themselves, and walked into the shadow of the hangar, so that they would not be seen. Cortez took the shoelace out of his shoe, stretched it between his hands, and silently walked behind the lone man smoking. He quickly wrapped the cord around his neck, put his hand over the man's mouth, and dragged him into the shadows. He slowly put the man down and checked his pulse to make sure he wasn't dead. He felt it twitter lightly against his fingers. Good, he's out. The took the guard's pistol, rifle, and tazer.

A few minutes later, the other guard came out, and looked for his buddy. This time Benny walked behind the man and quickly hit the man in the back of the neck, knocking him out instantly. The three men walked into the hangar, unharmed, got in the planes, and took off.

Brandy was pushed into a chair and strapped into it. A man walked in front of her, and introduced himself as Hussein Balleesh. He started to ask prying question; none of which she answered. Seeing that she did not respond, he ordered a big Middle-eastern man in Arabic to do something. The man unstrapped her, grabbed her by the hair, and forced her face into a tank of freezing cold water, almost until she was out of air. He pulled her up by the hair, and thrust her back into the chair. Gasping for air, Corporal Halverson looked up at her interrogator. The man grinned, asked more question, and got the same result. Once again, he ordered the same burly guy to take her and dunk her in the water. This continued several more times. Until Hussein walked up to her and said, "You are a tough one, like the rest of your team, but all it takes is time, eventually you will talk. One way or another, you will talk."

He ordered the two armed men to drag her out and put her in the cell. She was thrown in the cell next to Rivera, who was starting to be able to get up now. She could not sleep that night, she kept on thinking, I will survive, I will make it.