Location: Somewhere over Nambo Province, Matanbai
"Everyone else is likely inserting quietly and looking for clues, Bethan. What the fuck are we doing dropping out of the sky?" The Northern Irish tone of Sean was irritating now to Bethan's ears, but depressingly, a part of the operation that was mandatory to her. Sean stood at about 6"3, with moderate-length black hair, a patchy ginger beard with a pair of Oakley sunglasses on, the look of someone grizzled from his experience, certainly no stranger to using the tools at his disposal. That primary tool was a tricked out Colt C8 at his side, the same as what Bethan had to hand- Trijicon ACOG, Surefire silencer, foregrip, customised Magpul stock and a tan spray. The special forces workhorse of choice for the Pathfinders, Royal Marines Commando, and SFSG, and a tool that Sean was happy to be reunited with.
Just like her, he wore fairly lowbrow fatigues, no shiny new MTP, more the DPM that was usually in an Army surplus shop now. It was effective though, and would do the trick for this- the two only carrying fatigues and a light combat pack alongside their rifles and sidearms, with Sean a basecall cap tucked into his bag and Bethan a boonie hat. Up in the sky above the wartorn shithole they were dropping into, the RAF C130 was not sticking around and flying home after leaving the two former lovebirds to get on with their job.
"We have a lead on the Hyena and our ride is paid for. So are the rifles. Have some faith. Sooner we get this done, sooner we get to go our seperate ways. The plan is super simple. Drop into the rainforest, find who he is, get into the camp, whack the bastard, get to the border and find a payphone. Someone'll fill the vaccum of selling guns within a few hours, but that's not my shit to give, so long as we go our own ways once we're bloody done." Bethan's tongue was cutting, as the Welshwoman checked her own setup. Standing at 6"0, she had short dulled blonde hair, with a well muscled and shaped physique, less burly and more cardio-focussed, her face bearing a few scars and cuts. A different kind of warrior, the sort that found their talent another way.
"It really is like that? You've got no calm on you since we left, Beth." Sean jibed, annoyed with what they were going through just as much as she was, but trying to bridge that gap.
"I can't fucking stand another five fucking minutes of you Sean, so yeah, it is. Red's on. Give me a gear check?" The Ulsterman responded accordingly to Bethan and silently looked her over, with Bethan responding in turn to give one last check over him. Open-face helmets and goggles, rigs secured up and altimeters on, they were ready to go. There were no comms with the pilot, anyone in command, even the jumpmaster. Radio silence was the prefered option, given the clandestine deniability of this work they had embarked upon- and nothing really needed to be added for the cargo that wasn't officially on board.
With a flicker, the green was on, and with a thumbs up, both were running out of the back door, and over the thick clouds of the very early morning pink and white sunrise over Matanbai's highland. For a moment, a sight to behold, the distant plains and the thick rainforest of the northern region was stunning, not that they could see much of it due to the high-level cloud layer that went pretty much all the way down to their expected landing zone. They hadn't gone to high enough an altitude to make this a HALO drop- no oxygen was thus required, and from 12,000 feet it was going to be about 60 seconds before opening up and not going splat.
The two were qualified for this, and while the drop seemed overdramatic, it was based on seemingly quality intel- and a fast way to resolve this issue from what they'd been both briefed upon. Lot of people wanted the Hyena after all- this was just a head start that the Brits had, and it was hardly like Sean and Bethan knew the reality of where they were going and the complexity of the situation beyond icing one HVT. That said, dropping into a completely unnknown DZ was new to them both however, especially into trees. But fuck it, the reasoning went that it was better than a train into the country, right?
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Crashing into the trees after picking a lightly foliaged section of the rainforest canopy, Sean managed to barely miss a trunk, taking a breather and checking the drop down. With the distance mentally measured up, he cut the harness away from the main, grabbing a few branches and sliding down off the tree canopy and through the low-level forest with a thud, landing on his side. Bethan followed suit further along, the dark underbelly of the rainforest in the early morning basically like going into pitch black, night-sky levels of dark. She rolled as she hit the red-dusty floor, silently beckoning the Ulsterman over as she stood, knowing while she would want to go her own way here, safety in numbers was better than being a lone wolf for this one. They had some movement to do, as she checked the compass bearing, and with a look at her GPS, checked their first OP to get towards. Time to move, and without even a word said.
It wasn't long to move at least a good twenty minutes through the soundtrack of crickets and loud wildlife, the true heart of darkness where it felt so easy to lose your soul. Right now, Sean knew he had lost his. Sold it to the wrong devil, and so hard that his wife was here to enjoy this carnage too. They were almost totally silent as they moved, not becuase they were telepathic, but because they had no words to say to each other. Sean hadn't learned, he'd never learn how to not be a piece of shit, Bethan reasoned, not aside from his alluring charm which might keep him alive here if he was on his own. His lie that the money was clean, and that it was an honest piece of work, rather than the reality that it came from honestly just felt like a sinkhole at this point. He'd gotten in with the wrong people and saw nothing wrong about it, just another way to get by, any means needed rather than actually try and be a member of society. No ambition, and she was annoying she hadn't seen the signs sooner.
Bethan on the other hand, Sean reasoned, was just a tagalong. Poor girl had argued and argued to not be dragged in, but she never asked where the money came from when they were talking of seperating and she had costs to pay back- so now she was here, she was trying to make a point to him, in a fucked up way. They weren't total bastards to each other- arguements happened but they had tried at it, though since both coming here it had sunk through the floor. Way he saw it, the bills added up, and he wasn't such a piece of shit to kick her out onto the road but to help her get through hers before they left. What he did was what he had to do, and hell, he had little care for law if it meant he was kept in a nice standard of living. Shame it went the way it was, but live by the sword, die by the sword, he reasoned.
It didn't matter who was right and who was wrong right now, because either way, they had a task at hand, and approaching their first OP, they managed to get themselves to the edge of the rainforest hill, with a small escarpment making a good position to look ahead. The two looked at each other, looking at the encampment in the valley beneath them, cutting through a higher part of a river valley. Immediately, it didn't fit the satelite image, nor the profile of anything they were expecting to see.
"Fuck, the intel has to be wrong...I can't see anyone who even fits the MO. It's a COGS site, no sign at all of this being a moving dealer's camp. Either that or he is very, very well disguised. If he's here, these fuckers don't need any guns to buy, because these COGS lot look like they're about ready to do some war crimes for themselves." Bethan said, sighing as as she peered through the binos, her sigh to that of no recognition that there was anyone that looked like a foreign arms dealer, or anyone who even was selling guns.
There were only lightly-packed Land Rovers, rows of tents, and a fuck load of well armed COGS soldiers, at least a company's worth. This didn't look like anything what was even remotely mentioned in the intel- the Hyena's mercs were well equipped, so the rumour went - and if this was where he was based, the atmospherics of a dealer's setup seemed totally off- encamping himself with COGS meant he wasn't dealing to anyone else, which most definitely wasn't the case. This did not feel like it, and the gut feeling grew stronger by the second.
"What are going to do then, Beth? Watch the jungle book a bit longer, go fucking Rambo and kill as many of them as we can, bullshit that we got him now to upper command?" Sean commented crassly, Bethan replying her own annoyance back.
"Yeah well, we'll have to sit and watch, maybe see what happens....I mean, we haven't got much in the way of altern..."
And as if by cue, the rifle round cracked right on the tree above them. It was a classic setup. Whoever had provided that intel clearly had set a decoy, or worse, tipped off a redirected target that they were getting visited, exact time, exact date, exact place. That single rifle round punctuated it to the two of them better than anything else could. Before another had the chance to get them, Sean and Bethan were on their feet, scrambling to get out of their scouting position and back into the rainforest, giving each other an instant look of agreement with exactly how this had just played out. There was a squad directly to their left that were very, very aware that someone was coming to visit and did not take kindly to snooping eyes through binoculars, barking orders. And that squad ballooned to what looked like a platoon.
Running through the thick brush, Bethan laid out of the rest of her mag in blind fire back after vaulting a treestump, running at pelt behind Sean after and quite frankly, running out of ideas.
"Fuck, where do we go!?" Bethan called out, Sean pointing ahead as Sean emptied his mag to cover taking cover by a tree, firing suppression fire backwards into the treeline, not even taking time to reload as he could see figures growing, and growing behind them in number. The hostiles were beginning to cover off more of the seemingly impenetrable rainforest, the logs and flora that felt like it was almost impossible to sometimes break through, but in situations like these, parted when it had to. That didn't help with the bullets flying their way too.
"Keep fucking running, there's fucking hundreds of them!" Sean yelled out, skidding down a bank after Bethan, the adrenaline fully going. The forest began to break, as Bethan looked back, and down over the side of the jagged looking rock and canyon-like river down below, flowing downstream from the encampment on a meander. The Welshwoman only gave a glance to Sean, beckoning her head towards the abyss, knowing they were as good as screwed, unless they dropped the 30 feet.
"That's where we go. Broken bones might heal, they want us dead...arrgh, fuck it." Bethan was completely spent and out of breath, just like Sean, but could see where this was going. With a run, she awkwardly slipped down the wet reddish rock and off of it into the muddy, raging rocky river over an almost 30ft drop, all to the sight of Sean.
"Jesus..." The bullet right over his head prompted Sean to follow far more awkwardly, and with that, falling clumsily and nastily into a torrent of water, dark, horrid, and inhospitable. As he hit the water, he smashed his helmeted head against a rock as the torrent took him away, his vision blurring as the water pulled him along.
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The small shoreside sandbank was still in the jungle, but further down, much further down. Sean coughed his lungs out, sand and muddy water coughing out, realising Bethan had basically dragged him out, and more or less gone with him floating down the river, out of the firefight. In exchange, they'd lost pretty much everything- bags, rifle, GPS, binos, and he'd left his helmet off now by the shore alongside his smashed sunglasses, a very significant crack in the side of it being the main reason he wasn't dead upon impact with the rock in the torrent. The most useful stuff they were carrying it seemed was gone, and Bethan was in a foul, but exausted mood, laying pretty much by her ex's side and feeling broken. Even so, the river was an inviting alternative to getting shot at, even in spite of that. No rifles, no equipment, not much at all left on them. They were lucky not to be dead or have any broken bones.
"Your fat fucking arse nearly drowned, you've got no idea how lucky you are. You're gonna feel concussed for a bit, but it beats a gammy leg." Bethan merely retorted, weak but still spiteful, annoying as hell she hadn't just let him go in all honesty- well, apart from the fact that it was probably better to keep him alive rather than face another hundred people alone. At least he could stay behind and be a decoy.
"Alright then missy, who says intel is solid as fuck, explain what just happened?" Sean's reaction was equally fierce, knowing she had no real reaction, perking him up a bit as he spluttered more sand. Sometimes it was nice to be right, just able to go "fuck you" after all that had happened.
"Well, it didn't work, did it? He wasn't there, we got double-crossed and chances are, we're as good as dead. So yeah, here we are."
"And you got a plan, Beth? Because I don't think those COGS wankers are hiring and this place is a lot bloody worse than North Wales right now." Sean added, clearing his throat and checking what was left on his person, inspecting his P226 at his side and his machete, which was pretty much all he had literally on hand. They could scavenge the rest of a kit together more likely than not with just those two tools alone, but it wasn't like it would be easy.
"Shit...well, Plan B was get to the capital. Tangayi, it's thirty klicks south of the LZ, which means we're probably 25 as all the rivers here branch south for a bit out of the rainforest. We can't exactly walk into the British embassy as there isn't one, not that they'd get us home. They did say there's a set of mercs that are friendly, working on the same job. We might be able to tag along with them. Directive's the same, just this op was going to snatch and grab him faster."
"Yeah, well that didn't happen. And you think those mercs won't just frag us if you say we're crossed? Right now, I'm inclined to trust fucking nobody, not even you." Sean said, bitter as he spat out the last of the sand, wiping his brow and taking his baseball cap out of a pouch on his jacket, screwing it on tight over his hair as Bethan did the same with her boonie, sitting up and checking her own Glock over, sliding a mag out and back in.
"You got any other ideas? Because I don't trust you either, but we're gonna be dead if we don't work together, and find some allies here. Chances are, they'll just kill us if we aren't needed. But more likely than not, we have a common goal and that works for us. The contract for MI6 still stands, no matter how it gets done...and chances are, whoever the intel came from clearly found the money better elsewhere, so that bastard is probably on their list too. And lastly, I suppose those mercs would need a very big payday to waste their rounds on strangers, so yeah, that's where we are at the moment. Thoughts?"
"After your last one, I fucking wish I did have some ideas of my own rather than trusting you. But fine, whatever, you have a point. Chances are, we'll get tapped by them on sight at least if they don't like the look of us, but not before we tap them. So we walk 25Ks, ditch the jackets, don't die of dehydration, malaria and godknowswhat, and hopefully, find a safehouse full of people wanting to go back into what we just jumped off a cliff for." Sean reiterated, as Bethan stood up, nodding to confirm, offering a reluctant hand to the sitting Sean.
"Bang on. Let's go before they catch up." Taking her hand, Sean stood up again, and holstered his P226, drawing the machete instead to start cutting through the rainforest and down the slopes towards the plains, hopefully to find a road, and then a track which led onto a more major road into the capital. They would stick out like sore thumbs as white westerners in the heart of darkness but then again, they looked battered enough to not worth picking a fight with, no obvious bags, high value items or anything really at all standing out. They looked like lost little mercs, which they very much were.
That was the plan then. Try not to die, find the mercs, and carry on with the mission with some allies.
(A long intro but I did want to throw a real curveball to the reality of what they've gone into, and a bit more of exposition on the world).
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