23rd June 2027 00:12
Austin, Occupied Texas
The moon was the only thing illuminating Logan Walker's path as he made his way through the forest. Logan moved as swiftly as he did quietly, ducking past branches and vaulting himself over logs. The slight rattle of a strap hitting his assault rifle was the only noise he made. He stopped just short of the approaching clearing. A radio tower stretched hundreds of feet up into the air, its lights exposing the soldiers guarding it.
There was a crunch of dried leaves behind him, and Logan turned. His brother, David, stood behind him. Streaks of black and white smeared his pale complexion, some having found its way onto his buzzcut.
Both men nodded at each other, as their third companion, Riddian "Whisper" Poe, revealed himself from the nearby shrubs.
"Where's Phantom?" muttered Whisper.
"Here," said a grizzled voice above them. Thomas Merrick dropped down from the tree and landed with a soft thud among the men. He let off a sly smile as Haunt and Hint hit the ground seconds later.
"Ghost, this is Spectre. Team is in position, ready to proceed," Dave said down his radio.
"Roger that, Spectre. Commence Operation: Camera."
Merrick went prone. "Alright, see three tangos up ahead. Haunt, Spook, we'll take 'em down on three."
Three muffled shots rang out, and the bodies dropped to the ground.
"Base guards are down. Now let's take this bastard."
The six Ghosts ran across the clearing, and reached the base of the tower in seconds. A mesh wire fence surrounded its base, but they heaved themselves over in seconds.
Silently, they went to work. Haunt hid the scattered and lifeless bodies, having to execute one that was still moving. David, Logan, Merrick and Whisper all applied semtex to each of the Tower's supports, as Spook kept watch.
They did it all in less than thirty seconds.
The small, rusted lift was made even more claustrophobic with six heavily armed soldiers inside: "Phantom" Merrick with his bald head and thick bushy beard, the only one lacking face paint; "Spook" Carson, diagonal stripes marking his dark skin; "Haunt" King, his deeply concerned face hidden by his Ghost Balaclava; "Whisper" Poe, his lanky frame lengthened even more by the Ghost uniform; David "Spectre" , expressionless apart from a certain sense of guilt amid his eyes; and finally, Logan "Shadow" Walker.
The lift stopped, and Merrick, Spook and Haunt stepped out. The room was small, maybe the size of a caravan. The tables had every square centimetre covered by radios, monitoring equipment, and machines whose meanings Logan didn't even attempt to fathom. Maps and charts adjourned the walls, and a few family photographs rested near them. A yellow ladder led to the roof and the helicopter.
The six radio operators looked at the open lift, and the six Ghosts looked back.
"Hands in the air!" screamed Merrick, and five of them complied. The sixth, a forty-something Chilean woman, grabbed a knife and backed herself into the corner.
"Bastardo!" she screamed, motioning the knife towards Merrick. He didn't change his vaguely angry expression when he put three rounds into her head. Her lifeless and brainless body slumped backwards, leaving a large stain on the wall.
"You want to end up like her?!" he screamed to the operators. "Get this ready to broadcast! Who can operate this?"
A man with worn and scratched glasses nervously raised his hand, and Merrick grabbed him and shoved a DVD into his palm.
"Get this playing on every TV in Austin or you're a dead man!" he shouted, pointing the barrel of his gun in Glasses' face.
As Merrick had his back turned, as Logan and David were applying zip ties to the remaining operators, as Spook watched out of the window, as Haunt was moving the body of the Chilean woman, as Whisper was going onto the roof to check the helicopter stashed there was in working order, one of the operators, the one with the large scar running down his face, made a break for it.
Logan made a grab for him, but only clipped his leg. Both men tumbled onto the floor, Logan smacking his head on his shoe. Scars kicked Logan in the face, and stretched up. He smashed his clenched fist against the small red button marked in both English and Spanish, "Emergency".
"Hold him," ordered Merrick to Haunt as he pushed Glasses towards him. Merrick strode towards the runaway, and plucked him up by the back of his collar. He didn't even have time to scream before Merrick defenestrated him. Glass showered out of the tower as he began to scream desperately.
"Now what?" asked Haunt. "They'll be here any minute!"
"Calm down!" barked Merrick. "You! You got it working yet?"
"Done!" shouted Glasses, and the words had just escaped his mouth when Merrick pressed his pistol to his head and fired.
On every TV in Austin, the show began.
"Hello," began a masked figure. "I am Ghost. I am an American. And I want America to stay American. Too long have we been under SAMA's shadow. Too long have we allowed this filth to stay on our land. Until SAMA go back to the jungles from which they came, we will stop at nothing to drive them out. The Marxists have taken our homes, our jobs- our way of life. And it's time to take it back. In God is our trust."
Logan looked at the three remaining operators. A young woman with a necklace, a moustachioed man, and a man totally devoid of any hair. Moustache and Baldy were screaming; Necklace just looked on as her lip trembled.
"What about this lot?"
"Kill them."
Baldy began to whimper, but Logan stopped him after a few seconds. His eyes looked sad. So did Logan's. Spook took out Moustache without a word from either.
"Army's on their way up!" shouted Haunt.
"Haunt, you hold them off while we get this bitch on the chopper!" ordered Merrick. "Whisper, how long until we can go?"
"I've been ready for, like, five minutes!"
Logan went up the ladder first, and arrived on the small landing pad with the equally small helicopter. David followed, along with Spook.
"Lift's about ten seconds away!" screamed Haunt. He rested his gun on the table and aimed it at the lift.
Merrick was halfway up the ladder when he screamed, "Come on, man!"
The doors opened at the same time Haunt's fire did.
The first three soldiers were cut down in a hailstorm of bullets, although only one was killed outright. Haunt still kept his finger jammed on the trigger several seconds after it had run empty.
The next four soldiers stepped out of the lift and opened fire. With no regards to accuracy, their bullets smashed through the radio equipment. Haunt hugged the ground, and when they finally stopped shooting, he bolted to the ladder as he released a smoke grenade. Heavy clouds of ash burst out from the device, but through its haze Haunt could still see the ladder.
The soldiers quickly began their second wave of inaccurate shooting.
Merrick took Haunt's bloody hand as he hefted his way up the ladder, gunfire erupting from below them. As his torso emerged, Merrick left him and hopped onto the helicopter.
Just as his leg cleared the hatch, he screamed and contracted.
"I've been hit!" he said, and Merrick moved to grab him when the first SAMA soldier reared his ugly head from the hatch.
"Go! Go!" screamed Merrick, and Whisper complied. Haunt's face changed from pain to despair to a grim form of happiness.
As the first SAMA troop joined him on the roof, he whipped the det charge from his pocket and pressed it.
The supports buckled outwards, and there was a single beat of silence as SAMA and Louis "Haunt" King stared at each other. It seemed to last a life time; and, in a way, it did.
Haunt would have died happy if he looked angry. But he didn't.
He looked sad. He looked like he was leaving a fatherless son and a husbandless wife somewhere in the world. He looked like he didn't expect to go out today and die.
Haunt's final words were, "I'm sorry."
The tower gave one final creak, before its weight proved too much and it hurtled towards the ground. It exploded into shards of metal, leaving crumpled corpses and twisted girders in its place.
"Shit. Shit!" screamed Merrick, and punched the wall in frustration. "Ghost, this is Phantom. Haunt is down! Haunt is down!"
"Copy that. Message delivered?"
"Message delivered. Train's-"
A whoosh cut Merrick off.
"It's a fucking jet!" screamed Spook. "Whisper, we anywhere near that fucking train yet?"
"One minute! Grab a stinger and shoot that bastard out of the sky!"
Spook complied; grabbing a stinger from Hesh, he leant out the side of the chopper and aimed.
"Come on... lock on..."
It beeped, before LOCK-ON was displayed in big neon letters. Pressing the trigger instantaneously, Spook cheered. He stopped once he noticed the jet launch its own missiles.
"Shit! It's locked on!"
The stinger reached its target first. It slammed into the jet's left wing, blowing of metal and exposing its infrastructure. It banked left for a few seconds, before gravity got the better of it and it began roaring down towards earth. A neighbourhood marked its likely landing spot, until it suddenly shifted right and aimed its crash site in an empty field. A small dot left the jet, and its parachute bloomed open as the jet crashed in an explosion of fire and dust.
"Bail out! Missiles coming straight for us!" screamed Merrick, as he slipped into his parachute and launched himself downwards.
"Hang on, the pilot's still down there!" said Spook as he grasped his rifle and let off several shots. All missed.
"Come on. Spook, we've gotta go!" shouted Logan as David and Whisper made their escape.
"Just a...sec!" he cried as his bullet went straight into the pilot's leg. He turned in celebration- to see the chopper totally abandoned.
He looked left, to see the empty cockpit and a missile heading straight for him.
He didn't even manage to finish saying, "Oh shit!"
The helicopter exploded into a fireball, missing Logan by seconds. The four remaining chutes popped open as the train- a goods train from Austin to San Diego- passed below.
Merrick's landing was the best of all of them. He slammed straight onto a shipping container and wrapped his arms around the ladder, as he ripped of his parachute and let it float away. He slinked onto a flatbed, safe from the wind rushing in his face, to see David clutching his arm.
"Fucking banged it, Phantom. Might have broken it."
"Where're Shadow and Whisper?"
Logan swore for the forty-second time that day. His parachute had wrapped around a tree, just above the train. He glanced behind him: he had ten seconds to get out of this or he'd be left behind.
He ripped his knife through the first strap, and awkwardly held it in his left hand to slice through the second. He frayed it, and finally tore through it.
He landed with all his weight on his left leg, and he cried out in pain with his injury. He pushed himself up, and looked around. Merrick and Dave were probably a hundred meters or so in front of him; Whisper was-
"Help! Oh fucking hell help me Logan!"
Logan looked up suddenly; Whisper was parachuting down maybe ten meters ahead of him, much slower than the train that was rapidly escaping from him.
"Pull down! Crash on the train!" he called. Whisper landed in a lump slightly ahead of Logan on the gravel surrounding the tracks.
Logan reached out, but Whisper was always going to be too slow.
His parachute wasn't. Logan gripped it, his fingers clamping through its thin material.
Whisper felt the force of a million bulls pulling at him while the gravel and muck tore through his tendons and muscles in his leg.
"FUCK FUCK FUCKING HELL!" he screamed, before his shouts were reduced to deluded ramblings.
Logan pulled his parachute onto the train, and heaved Whisper onboard.
"You okay?"
"My legs.. ahh... I got a really bad friction burn on my legs..." Whisper got out between panicked gasps for air.
Logan turned him over to see his skin flayed away, leaving dirty stretches of red in place of his calves. It wasn't very deep, at least. He cleaned the wound, throughout Whisper's cries.
"Phantom, this is Shadow. Whisper's injured-got really bad friction burns. The train was fucking dragging him along, man. Doesn't look fatal, though. Chance of infection. If we give him some anti-biotics, he'll pull through. Who's with you?"
"Just Spectre. No sign of Spook?"
"Afraid not."
"Damn it... Ghost, this is Phantom. Whisper's W.I.A., and Spook is M.I.A. Probably went down with the chopper."
"Alright, Phantom. They won't have died for nothing. Get back to base. We're planning something big..."
Logan and Whisper crawled up against the side of the flatbed, and both of them fell asleep almost immediately.