Special Operations: Afghanistan
#1 of Special Operations
Accidentally deleted the one on-site while I was editing. Oops.
Author's Notes: This is a short story only. I will be uploading the remainder of Hunter's Moon when I finish tweaking some more.
Disclaimer: Is as inaccurate as it can possibly get.
Special Operations: Afghanistan
May 12, 2013
Grid Coordinates: Kilo Lima 5812-9B
Afghanistan-Baluchistan border
1stLieutenant Gary "Mantis" Anderson, Task Force 322 member
"Hey, sarge. We there yet? This weather is killing my hair" a soldier griped on my left.
"I told you Ramirez, have a scalping. I can't guarantee that your bouncing locks will survive in this heat" I answered back.
"You know that's not an option, right sarge?" answered another member of TF 322 to my directive. I merely shook my head and kept moving along the trail. Even with all the maps and satellite imagery handed to us by the Agency, in the end it came down to putting boots on ground.
I chuckled darkly to myself, remembering my commanding officer's last words, "To err is human, to screw up is CIA!" Just a few days later, I bid farewell to the wooden coffin that held the remains of my CO. He had been shot at by a "faulty" drone piloted by a CIA agent.
"Get your head in the game Gary", I told myself. There was no use letting sentiment cloud my judgment right now, not in Taliban territory. I glanced down the cliff on my right. One slip from anyone and its almost certain death. And a free trip to Baluchistan province.
Wait, what was that?
I signaled for the team to stop moving with a wave of my hand. Closing my fist, I gave the hand signal to go into a crouch. With another hand signal, I motioned for our resident sniper to move forward.
"Listen up Charles. I saw something just on top of yonder ridge" I whispered to him, gesturing at a ridgeline on our left flank.
"Okay, sarge. I'll have a look-see and try to figure out what's up there" Charles answered politely. I clapped him on his back and sent him off. I watched him crawl a few meters forward and open his bipod. He adjusted the scope for windage and immediately let out a low whistle.
I hurried over as best I could, given the near-zero amount of cover in the area, and accepted the binoculars he held out. I shuddered when I looked through the glasses.
Right before me was a Taliban hideout/supply depot. There were loads of weapons crates, food, medicine and what looked like foreign fighters milling about. The tableau included three AAA batteries and possibly SAM sites. There was even a lone Hind helicopter parked on a solitary helipad. All in all, an air strike might cripple the Taliban's hold in the area. IF we could raise anyone.
The only bad thing here was that the reception was awful. Most of the time, we got static on the comms. Messages that did get through were so garbled as to be incomprehensible. To top it off, Pakistani airspace was now off-limits to any coalition aircraft without prior coordination with the Pakistani airforce.
"So, what's the gameplan?" Charles asked, chewing gum.
"We wait for dark. I have a plan that might just work" I answered calmly.
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6 hours later...
"Ok. Everyone ready?" I asked my team.
I was on tenterhooks. This would be my first combat mission where I had no orders from HQ. Nor was I supposed to engage the enemy without prior notification of my superiors back at Kandahar. Psyching myself up, I took one deep breath.
"On my signal, Charles will take out the guard nearest us with his silenced rifle. We move quickly and we will be just below their first line of defense. Once we get there, Charles will radio us when the second guard is taken out. And so on." I said calmly and quietly.
"Stealth and speed, gents, stealth and speed. Any questions?" I added.
"None sir" the men replied.
"Keep your suppressed pistols at the ready. If you have a lone target, take him out. Just don't screw it up. We can't radio for backup until we can take over their command area" I continued.
Satisfied that the men would follow orders, I passed around my last tin of black camo paint. The men daubed their faces with the petroleum-based mixture and slathered it around to conceal any trace of their smiling mugs.
A soft pop erupted from the muzzle of Charles' suppressed rifle and I heard him call out "One down".
I motioned the others to follow me in as I rushed at the exposed encampment. Through sheer luck, we made it through unscathed. However, when we reached the second objective, I had the unnerving feeling that we were heading towards an ambush. Quickly, I asked Charles what he could observe from his scope. When there was no response, I tried a second time to raise him on our radios. Still nothing.
"Guys, nothing to get worked up about. We are about to be ambushed" I told the personnel around me. We took off our suppressors and prepared to go loud. Without any consideration for the amount of noise we would generate, we appeared from behind the sandbagged entrance of the second OP and we got spotlighted by a sentry inside an unnoticed bunker.
"Americans, drop your weapons" a voice was broadcasted from a speaker, the accent heavily reminding me of a Russian.
The men looked at me, their eyes wide with fright. "What do we do?" whispered one.
"Lower your weapons. They've won this round" I said. We placed our weapons in front of us and placed our hands over our heads. Foreign fighters of every stripe emerged from the bunker with wild grins and weapons drawn. Quickly, they made their way towards us. The first one stopped not three meters away from me and ordered us to lie down, as if he meant to shoot us as we lay. Gritting my teeth, I did as told and lay on my chest. Almost immediately, the clouds parted for a brief moment and a mournful howl echoed across the mountains.
From my facedown position I could not see anything, but I could hear scared whispers of Arabic and something else.
"You, officer. You come with us" the rebel who had ordered me to lie face down was now asking me to get back up. I did so and flashed a smile. I tasted blood next as he slammed the butt of his rifle into my mouth.
Behind us, I heard a distinct animalistic roar which caused the rebel to almost wet himself.
"Not so tough now, are you?" I teased, spitting out blood from my mouth. He gave a look that confirmed it, the bastard was now shaking. From fear or cold, I did not get to find out. A blur of dark fur rushed past me and ripped the rebel cleanly in two. Then, this blur kept moving and pounced on a group of LMG men and tore them a new one.
"DOWN!" I yelled out just in time. Within seconds of the creature's attack, the encampment exploded with gunfire and explosions. The men and I huddled in an abandoned foxhole while the entire area got really noisy. The dull thump and whine of mortar shells meant that they were trying to engage whatever it was.
"On three. Grab a weapon and shoot, shoot, shoot!" I ordered the men. I picked up an AK-47 from the hole and pulled the catch back to check the breech. There was a round in and I cocked it, ejecting the round in my haste.
"At the Taliban?" Ramirez asked a rhetorical question.
"WHO THE FUCK ELSE!" I shouted back, making myself heard over the ack-ack of the AAA guns. Immediately, those who could began adding their weapons to the noise in the area. We could hear screams from the bunker and the areas within, but we were a little preoccupied at the moment.
"INCOMING!" a soldier yelled out as he imagined a mortar shell heading for our fox hole. We jumped out of the hole and dashed towards another source of cover. "SPREAD OUT!" I yelled as well, no use making us look like a nice target. The men will bunch up in a minute, so the order was reasonable. Though in the confusion, the rebels were concentrating all their efforts on killing that *American monster*. We were left to prosecute targets unmolested.
"Left flank!" I ordered. One of my team tossed a frag towards my target, a machinegun nest. The explosion neutralized the position and we continued to advance towards the communications relay.
"RPG!" someone shouted out. I saw the missile trail towards me and impact into one of the sandbagged positions a meter from me. I blacked out for a minute or so. When I came to, someone was asking me something. I could not hear anything, save for a twenty-bell chime.
"...Sir, are you okay?!" the soldier was asking me over and over, bent over to be safe from the tracers.
"I HEAR BELLS!" I answered. He grinned and we took off again. We reached the communications relay and the door in our way was reminiscent of a bank vault. There was no use in shooting at it with rifle rounds; there was a chance of a ricochet.
One of the men picked up an RPG and let fly at the reinforced steel door. With one hit, the huge door groaned and fell inward. It turned out there was a side door to the area and we had bypassed it. The door we were going to enter had rusted shut a long time hence.
Quickly, we cleared out rooms one at a time. To our surprise, there was no one inside. The equipment, at least those not yet destroyed, was brand new. In part, because these were the *missing* shipments stolen from the Pakistanis. I set three men to operate the equipment and left three more to guard.
I still had 4 more men with me. I motioned for them to approach as I outlined a new line of attack. This time, we would try and clear the helipad so that our escape route would be secure.
The four of them nodded their assent at my plan and made ready to carry it out. Before we could do anything, however, all the gunfire and explosions went strangely silent. The five of us looked at each other and wondered at the deafening silence. None of us wanted to volunteer just in case it was another trap.
Screwing up my courage, and what was left of my pride, I said I would go. After much haggling, the five of us agreed that we would cover each other. What we saw made one of our number squeak like a mouse. Another almost lost his snack.
Before us, there was a nine-foot tall wolf gorging himself on a large number of foreign fighters. There was a familiar wolf tooth hanging round its neck. I only knew of one person in my unit who carried that talisman. I gave it to him for saving my life in the Arctic.
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Flashback
December 24, 2011
Thule AFB
Thule, Greenland
S/Sgt. Charles Grim
"What the hell did I do to deserve this?" I muttered to myself, trudging in the snow on another nightly patrol. Hell, you could never tell if it was day or night during the six months of winter.
"Maybe, because you decided to place cherry bombs inside a crate of whiskey and fooled the commander into pressing the plunger before a lot of brass?" a voice spoke up behind me.
"But, that was three months ago! Why am I still pulling graveyard duty? And you're late again Gary" I answered. "What's the reason this time? Forgot to check your watch?" I asked.
"Well, let's see. I was cleaning my rifle and pulled out the firing pin. Then, I decided to disassemble my pistol because it keeps on jamming. I had already removed the spring when I looked at the clock and it was already quarter past 3 in the morning. So, I left the pieces on your bed as I rushed all the way out here. Hope no one sits there though, it might go up his ass" Gary chuckled at the last bit.
"Whatever. You got my shotgun?" I replied.
"Pump or auto?" Gary replied, sounding like a gun store clerk.
"As long as it shoots, its fine"
"Okie dokie. One Benelli shotgun for you and one AA-12 for me" he answered. When I looked at him in disbelief, he handed me the pump shotgun with the 8 rounds of slug ammunition. He kept the automatic and pulled the hammer back, testing to see if it would slide. It did and we kept walking.
After what felt like eight hours of darkness, the skies brightened to a light grey and we knew our shift was up. Making our way back towards the parked 4x4 that served as a mobile warmer, I stumbled on a lump in the snow. I fell flat on my face and onto something warm.
Behind me, I could hear Gary's chuckling. "Not only do you not look where you are going, but you fell into a ditch"
"Help me up you imbecile" I ordered as I tried to regain my footing and failed miserably. I froze as I heard growls from the snowbank and Gary quit chuckling, pointing his weapon at the lump. Gary held up three fingers and counted down. When he would reach 1, I would try to roll away as he unloaded 12 shells into the strange object.
I watched Gary as he held up three fingers, then two, then one... I made to jump as something knocked me to the side and charged at Gary. From what little I could see, I had stepped on a white Arctic wolf and he was taking it out on Gary.
I heard the click of the shotgun as the AA-12 misfired in the freezing cold. Immediately, I removed my pistol from its holster and ran up the bank. I caught sight of Gary weaving and dodging the snarling muzzle of the wolf.
"GARY!" I called out in an attempt to keep him appraised of my condition. It turned out to be a stupid mistake.
The moment he stopped, the wolf lunged at his neck. Gary was wearing a heavy coat that day and it saved his life. I started peppering the wolf with shots from my Colt .45. Angered by my interference, the wolf turned on me as I stopped to reload the pistol. In my haste, I failed to notice that the wolf was not bleeding.
"CHARLES! LOOK OUT!" I heard Gary yell before I got tackled by the massive white wolf. As I lay on my back, I fended off his bite with my left arm. A crack signaled that he broke both my ulna and radius in my left arm. Despite the pain radiating from my left arm, I had the sense to remove my knife from my leg and slice open the wolf's throat. Blood poured forth from the fatal wound as the pressure on my arm slackened. I started to black out from loss of blood and the adrenaline that kept me going. I saw the wolf look at me with contentment before his eyes closed for the last time.
Gary made his way to me and pulled me up. "Thanks buddy. Now, we'll get you patched up again. Come on, let's get you to the infirmary" Gary spoke softly, scooping me from the bloody snow and ice.
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"Charles..." I whispered. The beast turned towards me. Blood and entrails on his fur and muzzle made for a grisly sight, quite menacing in fact. The four men brought their weapons to bear and almost shot through me.
Fear does that to you.
I raised my hands so that they were level with my chest. "Easy buddy, we're not gonna hurt you. I just wanna say thanks for helping out. Er, am I going to finish this?" I said, finishing my sentences with a question because he offered a human heart for me to eat or bite into.
"Eat" was the gruff, baritone reply from the wolf-like thing as he dropped it into my hands. He then turned back and continued munching on the dead. I stared at the still-beating organ and swallowed the bile rising in my throat.
"Well, maybe just one bite" I reasoned and bit into the organ. Immediately, I spat out the cardiac tissue and hurled. I felt lightheaded as I staggered away from the corpses and the cordite.
I thought I could hear the distant throb of approaching V-22 Ospreys and smell the scent of victory. The coppery smell of blood got very overwhelming as I lurched forward, my body losing balance momentarily. I blacked out the moment I hit the rocky floor. I came to after a while. As I looked up, I saw Charles grin at me. He was obviously enjoying my predicament.
The longer I looked at his smug face, the more I wanted to be like him. To engage in predation on the weaker species; or possibly even turn them into people like us. I snorted at the last term. People?
Just as I was about to ask Charles to turn me, a sharp pain cut through me like a knife. Gasping for breath, I felt the pain spread across my ribcage and radiate towards my head and legs. With the intense pain leaving me breathless, my vision began to blur as I fought to inhale. I was sounding like a 90 pound asthmatic and I could not do a damn thing. Instinctively, I placed my transforming hands on tactical vest and rent it in two. I could feel my nose and mouth push out to form a distinctive muzzle. My skin felt like it was on fire as tiny hairs pushed out of my follicles, covering bare skin. Here, I blacked out again.
When I opened my eyes once more, the rest of the transformation felt good. I could feel a tail swishing in the air behind me and I could smell the delectable spread of dying prey. I looked down and noticed a plump mass of skin and fur where my cock used to be. Rubbing it gently with one of my paws, I felt myself becoming aroused. I moaned out in lust as I felt blood rush to my member, allowing it to peek out. I noticed that the mushroom head was gone and that it now looked like a black rocket.
A gasp behind made me turn, my half-hard cock poking out of my furry sheath and starting to drip.
The rest of the squad had returned after they had sent the distress signal and the capture of a Taliban supply depot. I could see the looks of fear in their eyes as they simply could not comprehend what had just happened. Well, Ramirez was giving me a sexy look that made me blush.
"You boys look like you've never seen a wolf before" I spoke, my voice dry and gravelly.
"Sir, with all due respect..." one of them began.
"...could you change back? We have an evac on the way here. Ten mikes out" another finished.
I licked my rough tongue over my dark muzzle as I thought about the implications of my change.
"They can't do a damn thing. But, let me have some fun" I laughed darkly, feeling my member slide out into the cool mountain air.