Past Targets
Autumn Twilight Links
Twilight:2000 Links
Comments, questions, or feedback?
|
I will say this for him, that little fucker is fast. God was fifty feet behind him and running almost full out. I on the other hand was lagging behind God, but that was not my fault, blame it on the genes. My dad was about six foot five and weighed in at 295 pounds, all muscle. I inherited his brawn and had to fend for myself in the speed department. Oh, I can be as quick as I want to be provided that it is a bar room brawl, but put me on my feet and tell me to do a mile in under six minutes and I can guarantee you that at the end I will have timed in at two minutes after and throwing up my cookies for all I am worth. I am a big boy, made to bruise not cruise. God, on the other hand, is maybe smaller in size than I am, but there are times when we have gone toe to toe and more often then not I have landed on my ass, but I attribute that to his martial arts ability than raw strength. He is also the swiftest of the bunch, his size affords him quick movement and he uses his body and quick foot response to avoid ruts in the road and any other obstacle. Nonetheless given his speed and stamina he his still fifty feet behind Danh Pho Lanh and only keeping at that margin, never gaining or losing ground. If he takes out his pistol to shoot that margin will be even greater and he will have a harder time trying to keep up. We were on training in the field about eight months ago and I was trying to track him though this rocky sort of wasteland deep in the heart of Utah. The game involved me tracking him armed with a paintball gun and he was unarmed, he had to cross a finish line with so many feet separating us to win and I only need hit him with one pellet. He had taken off, equipped with a weight belt in order to make the race somewhat fair considering my weight, fifteen minutes before I was to follow giving him a slight edge. For half an hour I tracked him through the rocks taking special note of which direction he had gone and how best to utilize the surroundings in order to get the drop on him. I had reached a small crevasse that I thought would be a good hiding place and waited. He had once told me that waiting was the most important aspect of the job that we do, needless to say I paid it what lip service I could but I am not one for patience. So, after ten minutes of waiting I popped my head out of the crevasse and had dirt kicked in my face. I spluttered out the grime from my mouth and tried to clear my eyes and could hear him running off through the rocks. I pulled myself fully out of the crevasse and took a couple of shots at his back, but the dirt had screwed up my vision and the shots went short. I sprinted off behind him passing two bright fluorescent spots of dirt were the pellets had impacted. He had twenty feet on me and kept on running. He was fast even with a weight belt on. I decided to stop and get a bead on him, with careful deliberate aim I squeezed off two more shots but he leapt into a forward roll and the pellets zinged past him and he was up and running. By that time he was thirty plus feet in front of me and running hard. When I had passed the finish line he was sitting on the ground and drinking a beer. He told me that the problem was that I had stopped to get what I thought was a sure shot, but I did not anticipate that he might change his patterns and screw me up. I should just have run after him until I was breathing down his neck and than chanced lunging at him or shooting. I sit down next to him and take a beer. Now we are chasing this piece of shit, Zen guru terrorist through the streets of some godforsaken back woods Chinese suburb. The way that it was explained to me was this; Mr. Lanh had taken to terrorism after his training as a Buddhist took him into China in an order to preach the word of the Dalai Lama. He did this in hopes of getting support from local Chinese citizens to take a stand against the ruling factions of the Government for their actions toward the Tibetan people. His philosophy was if peaceful action cannot sway their minds maybe fear and intimidation can do the job. Several cultural shopping centers have been hit with the loss of life measuring in the hundreds so far. Two American diplomats and an entourage of Indian politicians were caught in one of the explosions. Several blocks in the Chao-Lung province had a S-class nerve gas released into the sewer systems and air ducts of several businesses, resulting in over five hundred deaths and over a thousand hospitalized. After these attacks on the Chinese people, the Dalai Lama denounced the man as a terrorist and offered whatever support he could offer the Chinese people. Today after a failed attempt on the life of the local Chinese Government representative, we stumbled upon the man's safe house. We had possible known whereabouts that we were researching on our way from Kyoto and when we had landed and geared up we tried the first location on the list. God was the first to go up and investigate. I followed behind him and at one door, he kicked open the door and ducked before a bullet just about took his head off. God was up on his feet and out the front door running after the fleeing terrorist before I could recover from the ambush. God turns down one street and I decide to be prudent and follow down a different street, hoping that I can cut them off. Just as I turn down one of the many alleyways that criss-cross this horrible town, a burst of gunfire tears up the ground before me. I drop and roll toward the nearest entryway and try to get an idea of where the shots had come from and who fired. Chips of wood rain down on me from the frame of the doorway as more bullets rip it apart. I pull out my CAR-15 and return fire in a general direction hoping to discourage more fire at least until I get my bearings. I can see civilians running around screaming, some have drooped to the ground in the hopes that lying flat with their arms around their heads will protect them. Others are lying were they were hit by random shots; pools of blood spreading from the them and turning the dirt around them into a kind-of mud. More shots turn the frame around me into splinters and I squeeze off a few more rounds. A glint of metal is coming from a window just down the street, the angle is horrible from a return attack and obviously my random shots are discouraging the person. Fortunately his shots are not getting me, but they are tearing apart my cover. I pull one of the flash grenades from my vest and pull the ring and turn around out from the doorway to at least make the grenade much more effective. The grenade bounces of the wall behind me and rolls into the middle of the street as pain sears through my arm from where the bullet of my attacker tears away flesh from the inside of my forearm. I resist the urge to cry out but instead cradle my arm and grit my teeth as I duck back into the doorway. I try the door in desperation as the bullets get closer and closer. The glare of the flash begins to dim and I try to make a break for it across the street to an opposite doorway from where one of the victims had managed to pull herself to, before her body gave up the struggle to live. I leap up and out across the street, bullets zinging past me. A couple punch through the body at the doorway just as I smash through the door into relative safety. A man screams from the chair just inside the room and runs out through the house to back door which overlooks yet another alley (Don't these people have streets). I get up and brush myself off and turn toward my previous location and spot a few slat-ribbed mongrels trotting down the street to lap at the pools of blood that are now starting to congeal around the innocents. Instinct takes over and I whirl toward the back door that the old man went though spraying a rain of bullets and catching my assailant, who had thought to catch me off guard by sweeping around from the other alleyway, in the chest with a few rounds. Blossoms red bloom from his chest as he stumbles a few feet and falls. I jerk my head around the corner to get a view of the alleyway, and discover God rushing past. Danh Pho Lanh had run up this street after falsely attempting to lose us and draw us into a one man ambush, but he did not count on the fact that I would break off the pursuit to try and waylay him. I lean out the building and raise my CAR taking careful aim. God is forty feet behind him (having made up some distance to close the gap) but he looks to be slowly losing that distance as the sprinting chase seems to have tired him just a bit too much. I focus my attention through the scope mounted on the weapon and slowly pan it to the back of my Team Leader and turn just a hair to get the figure fleeing in front of him. God pulls out his sidearm and brings it up to fire. I pull the trigger and Danh jinks to the right as God's shot goes spinning over Danh's left shoulder. My bullet throws up a puff of dirt where Danh should have been. I retrain the sight as God and Danh become more distant. Danh is now helping to close the distance as he jerks left and right to avoid the bullet he believes will come from God. The crack startles the mongrels feasting on the remains of the townsfolk and Danh's body spins as the bullet tears through his right shoulder and drops him on the ground. God stops just short of tripping on the body and starts cursing and kicking Danh, yelling at him about "Fucking making me run through this shitty hovel of a town, You fuck!" I guess I was just fast enough that time.
Previous | Next | Index | Random |