"I owe you there for giving us the hint about a new variant of aliens, Bill." I said to Billy, as I smile at him while we were heading to the weaponries and equipment storage.
"Well, I can also learn more to be sharper from you, Travis." He responded to me, with a delighted expression drawn on his face. "Thanks to your deeper thoughts, the whole team can now be fully aware of a new kind of threat."
"I just hope that it will be only one though…" I replied him as I sighed lightly.
"My hopes exactly… I doubt that I will be able to adjust myself quick enough in order to counter any other sudden unidentifiable assaults…" Billy said, sharing his current concern with me.
Shortly after our brief conversation ended, we arrived right in front of the weapons storage at the second floor of the eastern wing. Somehow, I had the feeling that even though the door to enter the storage was almost only half wide compared to the meeting room back at the western wing, the interior of the storage room might even be wider than the meeting room.
Billy then pressed his right middle finger to a small machine right next to the right side of the wall, which seemed to be most likely a fingerprint scanner. After about four to five seconds, the door was unlocked automatically with a couple of clicking sound. He then opened the door, and asked me to enter first.
As soon as I went inside the storage room, my feeling turned out to be completely true. Based from what I could see, the storage room had at least the area of no less than six hundred feet square, and at least twelve feet of height. There were a couple of smaller rooms inside the storage – one at the far left corner, and another larger room at the other end of the storage.
Aside from that, another thing that caught my eye right away was the sight of so many forms of equipment that I had never seen before, although most of them seemed to be of analog-based, instead of digital-based were on display at both of the side walls. If I were to take a guess, the equipment engineers most likely develop each of the unfamiliar equipment inside both of the two smaller rooms.
Billy told me to follow him to get inside the larger room as the chief equipment engineer had been waiting for us inside in order to brief and gave us about our own equipment for the operation. As I approached the larger room, I also passed through several used and unused targeting practice thin sheet boards. Since I could see that there were many blank bullet cartridges scattered at the left side of the wall, I believed that the target practice boards had just been used back when I had just entered the eastern wing from the first floor.
"Permisi, pak…" said Billy as he knocked and opened the door to the larger room, asking permission to come inside to a middle-aged man that was sitting inside and seemed to be calibrating some sort a small equipment.
"Oh, ya! Silahkan masuk, Letda Mubarak." The middle aged man responded as he allowed both of us to come inside the room, right after he stood up and left the small equipment that he was working at.
Again, my assumption about the room turned out to be correct, at least for the current room I was in. The room was only about a quarter or perhaps even one-fifth of the whole storage room area, and I would actually called it a sectioned part of the storage room, rather than a different room with walls since it was only divided by room dividers.
Nevertheless, the small room seemed to be already more than enough to develop a new form of equipment, since I could see several measuring and observation tools inside it, as well as a couple of wireless computer set. Also for some reasons I had yet to know, there was a wide plastic pale filled with roughly two thirds full of water at one of the corners of the room. However it also shortly came to my mind that the water inside was probably used to test the water-proof ability of the developed equipment.
"Travis, this is Dr. Ishak Maulana. He is the chief weaponries and equipment developments team for our Special Forces Command and this operation." Billy said to me, introducing the middle-aged man.
"Good day, Doctor…" I said to the middle-aged man as I shook his hand smiled gently.
"I am very sorry if my English is not so good, Lieutenant Burners. But please, let me show my amazement towards your actions three years ago on behalf of our team." The middle-aged man responded to me, as he held my hand with both of his hands and bowed a little.
"Please, doctor." I replied his words, trying to be as humble as I could, "We would do everything that we could in order to protect everyone, would not we?"
The small and light talks only went for a brief time before Billy brought up the reason of why we came to the room in the first place. Dr. Maulana responded by saying that he had been waiting for us, and that both of our equipment were already prepared at the other small room. With that said, we spent no time before we went to the other room, and got introduced with each of our equipment.
The first tool, or rather gadget that we were handed with, was a seemingly standard analog watch with a thick, heavy, awkward and rather large strap, especially at the part where it would touch the back of our hand wrists. However, the chief development team then told us to pay attention at the watch strap. As both of us turned the analog gadget, we soon realized that the straps were of no ordinary kind.
When I looked more carefully, the awkward part of the strap turned out to be some sort of a lighting device. On both sides of the very same part, there were four small buttons and each with different functions. The equipment developments chief then proceeded to explain to us on how to utilize the gadget.
He told us that the awkward part of the strap was actually the means for communications on the field, as it was in fact a small Morse Code Transmitting and Receiving device. He then demonstrated on how to use it by taking the third watch, and turned it and showed the awkward part of the strap to us.
First, he pressed the upper left button of the strap, which had the function to turn on or off the transmitting function of the device. Then, he went on to press the second button located at the upper right side of the strap, which had the function to write the Morse code message that we wanted to send.
The next button that he pressed, was the one located at the lower left side of the strap, which had the function to turn on or off the vibration feature of the device. I asked if the vibration feature was for the user to be aware of what the received Morse code message was, to which the equipment developments chief confirmed it to be correct.
The fourth and the last button which was located at the lower right side of the strap had the function to send the Morse code message to the direct supervisor. He also mentioned that both of the watch needles would also blink the received message.
Once the explanation on how to use the analog Morse code watch had been finished, the equipment developments chief also mentioned that the watch would also work underwater. So far that he could guarantee was that it could stay completely wet for no less than four hours. He also told us that as long as the watch did not fell from the height of more than twenty five meters then the watch would not break, an explanation that made Billy chuckled a little bit.
When he had finished explaining, I asked him if the watch was rather a little impractical to use on the field despite its sturdiness and excellent functionality. He responded by saying that he had been thinking about it since the start of the development of the device. However, he also seriously considered the possibility of the high rate of rain during the month, which was supposedly reaching the peak during the current week and the next.
He stated that had it not for the device to must have an excellent waterproof feature, he could have cut the thickness and the weight of the watch of up to a third or even a quarter of the current weight. Aside from that, it was also completely necessary for us to investigate the village as silent as possible. Therefore any forms of spoken communications were out of the option right from the start.
I realized that I had not paid any attention at all to either the current weather of the location that we were about to get into, as well as the fact that we really indeed had to resort to a stealth approach on the investigation of the assault. Therefore, I only nodded three times as a response to his explanation. Right after that, he handed to us the next sets of equipment that were no other than the main firearms that we were going to use on the field.
Billy and I received different kinds of firearms – I was handed an integrally suppressed M3A1 submachine gun, while Billy was handed a Sterling Mk 5 L34A1 submachine gun. I did not ask the reason why we were handed a submachine gun instead of an assault rifle like the rest of the other Special Forces Command soldiers, since I would pretty much prefer a more compact main firearm as it would make me easier to move more swiftly from one spot to another, especially during any sudden attack.
"You know, I did wonder just now if we would get a submachine gun instead of an assault rifle for our operation." Billy said to me as he glanced through his main firearm.
"Why? Is it because you prefer the assault rifle?" I asked him as a respond.
"On the contrary." he said, as he turned to me briefly before having his attention back to his firearm.
"I would expect few, if not several chances that we would be forced to close quarter crossfires should we indeed are facing invisible aliens. Would not that mean we should really opt to choose more compact firearms instead?" he continued.
Indeed, Billy's concern was what I had been thinking once I had received my submachine gun. For me, personally I had an excellent history with the firearm, specifically during three years before. I could barely recall how many times the submachine gun had saved my life back then.
The equipment developments chief then told us that the decision in giving the firearms to the both of us was not his decision. Instead, it was the strong recommendation directly from both Major General Girsang and E.X.T.I.R.T.
For my case, it was indeed because of my remarkable history with the submachine gun during the extraterrestrial terror in Chicago three years before, at least it was what E.X.T.I.R.T told him. As for Billy's case, it was because during most of the target practice that he had taken as well as during his field experiences, he had the best accuracy and overall performance if he were to be equipped with a submachine gun. Apparently, he had the history of swiftly neutralizing three top list abroad fugitives by using a submachine gun a year before, alone.
As for our sidearm, I was handed the standard Browning Hi-Power while Billy was handed the M1911, both without suppressors. The equipment developments chief suggested us that our sidearm should only be used during urgent situations, if not life-and-death ones only, a reason which I was already aware of right from the start.
The sidearm was the last equipment that the equipment developments chief gave us. Right after that, he let out our own uniform set complete with the protection armor. As it was for our main firearms, our uniform and protection armor set was different – I was given a black crocodile-scaled like short – sleeved light body armor and the standard U.S Navy green uniform pants from E.X.T.I.R.T, while Billy was given a golden-dark brown camouflaged half-sleeved light body armor and his standard Special Forces Command uniform pants.
The only same protection gears that we had were our protection knee pads and elbow pads. Once we had been given all of our necessary equipment, both Billy and I prepared ourselves with all of them. By the time we were finished, the equipment developments chief told us that the final briefing was about to finish as well, and that the vehicles that would brought us to the destination had begun to wait for us.
Before we headed for the vehicles, both Billy and I took another five full magazines for our main firearm as well as another three full magazines for our sidearm at the ammunitions rack near the storage room door. It was right after we had taken the magazines and just about to head outside that the equipment developments chief suddenly went out and told us about another update regarding both of our deployments.
"Wait a minute, Lieutenant. There is one more thing that I need to tell you two." Dr. Maulana said right after he stopped his fast steps.
"What is it, doctor?" I asked in confusion and curiosity as I frowned a little in reflex.
"I just received a call directly from E.X.T.I.R.T direct supervisor. He said that the Special Forces Command also have agreed about the matter." Dr. Maulana responded, as he turned to Billy who nodded twice in response.
"In order to simplify the communications, E.X.T.I.R.T has decided to use codenames on the operative personnel for this operation. Lieutenant Burners will have the codename 'Black Caiman' and 2nd Lieutenant Mubarak, with the agreement from Special Forces Command will have the codename 'Golden Jackal'." He continued, as he read the received message from his foldable smart tablet.
Somehow, I did not really fond of my codename, although I could not even understand why I felt that way. Billy, on the other hand, did not seem to really concern about it and just gave his response that he accepted his codename. With that said, the two of us then said our gratitude to the equipment developments chief, who wished us the best luck in return before we headed to where the vehicles had been waiting for us.
"You do not seem to like your codename, Travis." Billy said to me as we descended the stairs to the first floor of the eastern wing.
"Well, maybe because I do not like the color black." I responded to his words, still not really sure of my own feeling.
Thankfully, he did not tease me or mentioned anything more about it during our way to our transport vehicles. When we had exited the eastern wing, almost all of the soldiers had been gone from there. Just then, we heard some people talking from the direction of the western parking lot. As it turned out, the rest of the Special Forces Command soldiers apparently had been waiting for us there since so many of them were looking at the direction we were coming from when we got there.
Both Billy and I were to get inside the back cabin of the third armored pickup truck. As the two of us went inside and closed the door, it only took around one minute before the whole team began to move out. I took a deep breath as the truck that we were in headed out and further away from the Army Base until it could no longer be seen from the rear view mirror, and prepared my mind of all of the possible things that might be waiting to happen. The first real step of the investigation had just been started…