Hi guys, I'm trying to post one chapter a week for the rest of this story, so here's my latest submission, sorry it's a little shorter than usual (I usually try to write between 2 and 2 1/5 thousand words but I think this one needed to finish where it did...)
Thanks for all your continued words of encouragement, they really do matter to me!
You know the drill, read, enjoy (hopefully!) then R & R
xxx
The walkie talkie hissed and crackled then burst into life. Ethan, one of the quietest of the Rangemen present and one of the most stealthy too, picked it up and spoke into it to affirm he was listening. The game was on again.
He quickly walked over to the tent Connor was in and said "knock, knock" as he bent down and let himself in. "Next set of orders just came through, Boss. Bomb disposal and building refurb - said we need to be ready at the hanger at 11.40 hours."
Connor nodded from deep within the middle of the sleeping bag he was using and climbed out, fully dressed except for his boots which he pulled on quickly. Everyone knew they needed to up their game and Connor had been no exception so had been catching up on his zzzd's as had anyone else who was not on duty.
"Thanks, Ethan. Gather everyone in the mess tent for me. Be ready in 5 minutes for a briefing."
Ethan nodded then quickly retreated to go do Connor's bidding.
o0o0o0o0o
"Soooo, bomb disposal and building re-furb, my favourite!" Lester said, grinning at Hector who was rubbing his hands in anticipation.
"Everything set?" Ranger asked as he looked up from the clipboard he was holding.
"Sure thing." Came the confident reply.
"Good. So while Bobby and his team brief the teams, Tank and his men will be out wreaking havoc…" Ranger added, a sly glint in his eye. Although he was admitting nothing, he was sooo enjoying these exercises and perhaps Lester was right, they needed to do them more often…
o0o0o0o0o
"Each office will have a designated part to play in this exercise and there will be only one winner." Bobby explained as he handed a sealed envelope to each of the teams now assembled in the hangar. "Some of you will be playing the part of good guys, some will be the bad guys and some will be a bit of both, but your roles and objectives are detailed in the packs I have just given you. You have 15 minutes to familiarise yourselves with the information before we begin. Good luck everyone."
The Atlanta team moved to one of the corners of the hangar, away from everyone else's ears and Steph looked at Mungo anxiously as he opened the brown A4 envelope Bobby had handed him. "Well, Big Guy. What are we doing?" she prompted as the rest of the team huddled round waiting while (authors note: not 'whilst'…!) he scanned the sheets he had just pulled out.
"It appears that we're some of the good guys." He said "However, it looks like we have rivals who will also be trying to secure the building. The goal is to clear out and tidy as we go and prevent our counterparts from doing the same. At the same time, there will be a number of bombs in the building with differing levels of complexity and our job it to disable all the green ones. Reading between the lines, though, this is the easy part of the game."
"What do you mean?" asked Robo as he draped himself over his twin brother Pike's shoulder, angling in slightly to make sure no-one had to speak above a whisper.
"Well, so far nothing we have done has been straight forward or even remotely like we envisaged. Look at the shooting for example. It was done in the dark and early dawn to really test us. The night vision goggles were a help in the black but pretty useless in the half light. Then there was the driving which was in rickety old go-carts and ancient muscle cars as well as our SUV's and involved deep gullies as steep inclines rather than road like conditions, soo, all I'm saying is that this seems too simple, that's all."
Everyone nodded in agreement.
"We need to be extra vigilant and assume that any scenario we have ever come across could well be included or exaggerated, so let's have your experiences, no matter how off the scale they might have seemed at the time. Anyone have anything happen that was really, and I mean really outside the norm?!" Mungo asked.
"Well, people are always shooting at us, so we can expect that." Pike said. Heads nodded in agreement, after all, people didn't like change and clearing pimps, prostitutes and felons out of a building used for nefarious activities was as big a change as you could probably get.
"I fell asleep once…" Steph started and all eyes darted towards her "What?! I was tired… but Tank got shot and I nearly got blown up." She added indignantly, folding her arms and pouting.
Jed leaned over and grabbed her round the neck, rubbing his knuckles in her hair "You really are one on your own, Kiddo, you know that right?" he added as he smirked at her. Steph playfully smacked him in the gut and giggled as she tried to wrestle herself out of his embrace.
Mungo gave them a death glare and the conversation quickly turned back to the task at hand and the rest of their time was spent working out their plan of attack.
"TIMES UP!" Bobby yelled when 15 minutes had passed and everyone turned to face him. "We need to move out to the rendezvous point." He added, beckoning everyone towards him.
Steph turned her navy seals cap round so that it sat backwards on her head, this was it, her first challenge had begun. Butterflies, bats and crows jostled for position in her stomach as all the Rangemen present waited for further instructions.
"This way, please. Miami, you need to go with Aaron. Boston with Tag. New York…"
o0o0o0o0o
The Atlanta base camp was on high alert, expecting the unexpected and ready for anything that Ranger and his team of sadists had up their sleeve.
"It's too quiet." Connor said, turning to look at Ink who was scanning the rough, uneven ground in front of him. "Yeah." Came the tense reply.
"Run the heat sensing equipment round the perimeter again, will ya." he commanded quietly before turning back to the mess tent hoping for a status report from Mungo and the team via their cell phones.
Ink nodded and began to move off.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
"WTF?!" Ink yelled out as he looked down at the front of his jacket which was now covered in bright orange paint. Diving for cover he rolled to soften his descent then crept forward yelling out as he did so "Snipers! Alert!"
From his vantage point behind a small hillock, Tank grinned. Before Atlanta had had a chance to react, his men had made some clean hits. Two of the men in the camp had paint on their torsos. They were now out of the game.
He raised his walkie talkie as he gestured to his men who silently crept off towards their next target.
"Atlanta here."
"Both men with paint on their torsos belong to me." Tank stated. "And I know who we got." He added happily.
"K" Came the pissed reply.
"Send them out now, complete with whatever kit they were using when they were shot… especially the heat sensor." He added with relish, mentally patting himself on the back. He knew Atlanta would be pissed to have lost such a vital piece of equipment. He just wondered if they'd brought more than one.
Immediately, Ink and Ralph came out from the camp and marched unhappily towards where Tank was now standing. Neither had had a chance to prove themselves or help the rest of the team. Strangely enough it was this last fact that annoyed them the most.
o0o0o0o0o
Pike and Robo disarmed the last, and most complex, of the bombs and gestured Jed and Ethan to pass by. The rest of the team had split up into pairs and they had successfully beaten their rivals, Trenton, and had gained complete total control of the dilapidated farm buildings that had been the place of the afternoon's exercise.
Maybe their years of practice of being intimidating bastards had stood them in good stead for something Mungo thought grimly as they tied up the last of the New York team members and herded them out of the building and into a makeshift 'holding pen' they had created by driving a couple of old farm trucks and a tractor into a circle, using chicken wire as a 'fence'.
Bobby nodded to them as they passed and one of his men checked a stop watch he was carrying then wrote down some information on a clip board.
"Ok, well done everyone." Bobby said. "I think we can safely say that we have finished this task. We just need to make a few more notes and check out a couple of things so if you could all stay put that would be very helpful." He added before turning back to his colleague who was still holding the clipboard.
As the exercise was pretty much over, and having just untied and released the last of his 'prisoners' into the pen, Mungo wandered round to the back of one of the trucks so he could catch up with a couple of the guys he hadn't seen since he'd left the marines. As he leant against the side of the vehicle the tail gate swung open and smashed into his shoulder. Mungo dropped like a stone and everyone rushed over.
Bobby pushed through the crowd and knelt quickly at his to assess the damage.
"What's the prognosis, Doc?" the wounded man winced out.
"Looks like a broken collar bone." Came the reply as Bobby gently manipulated Mungo's shoulder. "'Fraid it looks like you're out of the game." He added matter of factly.
Steph, Pike and the rest of the team looked at each other. One of their best field men was down. What else could go wrong?!