Tristan was wishing that he was back home more than anything now. It had been an amazing year being with Rory and working on building a strong foundation for what would be a very long time together. She had finished school early, having doubled up each semester and had graduated top of her class. She was working full time with Mitch and only part time in the Corporation with Colin and Robert. They had finished the mergers and gotten the board together and working smoothly. They had tabled the New York issues and it seemed that their long game had worked out as Stephanie had been voted out and their insurance part was facing major lawsuits and claims that would bankrupt them once it was all settled. They had spent long weekends together and holidays and life were fun and easy with his girls and their friends. Just a week ago he was in bed watching her sleep after having spent the night making love and celebrating their one-year anniversary.
Now he would give anything to be back there than here. They had a routine mission in a low security risk, simple gathering intel and retrieving an individual that was looking to get his daughters and himself out before he was forced to marry them off. He had said he wanted a better life for them and in exchange would give us all the intel he had on the whole cell and people in this area. That went to hell when we were 5 clicks from our target and an RPG hit our lead car flipping it.
It was chaos from that point on trying to get us all out of the two vehicles that were receiving fire from all sides and get some sort of shelter. With bullets and shrapnel from RPG flying around it was confusion. It was his job to start taking out targets and the other snipers while their medic pulled those who were laid out from the blast to safety.
"I need more fucking ammo over here" I yelled out taking a chance to glace at my teammates around me and locked eyes with Alex who tossed me what he had.
"We have got to take some of these bastards out we are sitting ducks?" Marcus responded just as another rocket exploded throwing dirt up over us and making our already ringing ears and heads pound. None of us had come out of the blast unhurt so hard but some were fairing better than others. John was unconscious and had taken shrapnel to his body and arms, Brian was the worst off having his leg mangled in the blast and the car flipping and was losing a lot of blood. Marcus had done what he could for him at this moment, but we needed this finished or none of us would be making it home.
"I am hit, fuck I am hit!" I heard Felix yell, but he was still on his feet firing back at those to the left.
"Cover me, I am going up the right side and up that ridge. If we can get those rockets taken out, we have a chance." I said and at their nodded and as they laid down fire to the right I ran hard out to get to the ridge. Along the way I took out one insurgent while hiking up as fast as I could. I come along a second who managed to get a shot off at the same time as I did, and I was only lucky it hit my weapon.
Pulling the trigger nothing happened on the second shot and I looked down to see his bullet wedged into mine rendering it unusable. "Fuck, Fuck" I yelled out in frustration and approached the person taking his out-of-date weapon and wait rounds I could find on him while pushing mine to the back of me.
Runing and pushing myself to the point that I had not in a very long time I made it to the top of the ridge and opened fire on those there taking them out as quickly as I could and taking control of the RPGs and aiming across the valley at those still shooting at my team. It gave them cover to concentrate on just the ones to the north of them and after an intense twenty more minutes it was over and done and I was slowly making my way back down the ridge starting to feel the pain in the many places that had taken a beating and it was just then I felt the wounds on my face and arms that had been running with blood for a while but was now drying up. It was also then that I felt the pain in my upper shoulder just between my neck and where my vest fit and reached up to find blood there stopping me in my tracks for a seconds before knowing that I needed help and more importantly I needed to make it back to my team for that help.
"Tristan, you good?" Marcus asked as I limped into their area and at that I met his eyes and fleetingly thought about being back home once again with Rory in our bed together and not in this place where I was going to die.