I quickly aimed my submachine gun towards the silhouettes, and while Jessica had been told not to fire her shotgun by Billy earlier, she still aimed towards them as well. I could not blame her though, since I would also pretty much be crept out by the sudden occurrence of other living beings that should have not been there in the first place if I were her. Strangely enough, Billy did not seem to be aiming his submachine gun at all.
First there were only four silhouettes, but as they seemed to slowly approach us their numbers increased to eight, and then twelve, up until it was a whopping number of more than twenty. I slowly drag my feet backwards as I slowly held Jessica's arm and signaled her to get back. I really wanted to tell Billy that we had to move back from the silhouettes, but by the time I wanted to approach him he was already too close to the silhouettes.
'Great! What is next?!' I thought to myself as I aimed my submachine gun towards them and gritted my teeth.
To the least of my expectation, the silhouettes eventually turned out to be indeed human beings with masks, camouflaged uniforms, and what seemed to be Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifles. Just then, I was not even sure if I had to feel completely relieved or shocked when in fact, those people were Billy's comrades all along. He welcomed them by hugging few of them, while one among them with different uniform, and also seemed to be taller than most of them, slowly approached me.
The person approaching me had his mask on, but unlike most of the others, he seemed to have equipped himself with a shotgun that greatly resembled the Browning Auto-5 and also what seemed to be a revolver of unknown type as his sidearm. He also wore a deep blue tiger stripe uniform, with both of the sleeves rolled to half of his arms. I had to take a step back when he suddenly reached out his hand to my shoulder.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, son." said the person behind the mask with an extremely familiar hoarse voice.
'That voice…' I thought to myself, before I almost instantly realized who he was. "Commodore Quentin?!"
I could not contain the feeling of relieved and the huge smile on face when I realized that it was indeed him. He quickly handed me the same mask as his, and told me to not talk for some moments first since I had inhaled an amount of hazardous volcanic ashes. He said that I had to breath in deeply right after I had put on the mask since it contained some sort of neutralizer for the hazards. He also mentioned that the team brought some supplies for our meals and ammunitions, since he had guessed that we most likely had our firearms on its last magazines.
As I inhaled deeply from inside the mask, he told me that the mask was specifically made by Dr. Maulana for each of five of us. The mask also had a built-in short radius radio communication powered through static electricity by gently tapping the mask head band. He also handed Jessica a different, but of similar function mask as I slowly began to feel easier to breathe. When Commodore Quentin believed that I had inhaled enough of the neutralizer, he began to explain to me what had actually happened.
He first asked me when exactly Billy had received his last transmission on the previous day, to which I said it must have been around 05.30 to 05.35 p.m. since it had been 05.45 p.m. when we had decided to take the detour to the dry swamp back then. He responded by saying that at exactly 05.26 p.m. of Western Indonesian Time, the Special Forces Command base suddenly suffered from total communication lost with E.X.T.I.R.T. At the exact same time, E.X.T.I.R.T also reported the same thing to every personnel involved within the operation.
Commodore Quentin had a feeling that someone within the U.S. and/or the Indonesian Military had hacked into the communication system and therefore chances were they had also gave false and confusing information to the field operatives – Billy and I. Therefore, he rushed all the way to his former stationed base in U.S. from Germany, and transmitted an emergency cross-continent Morse code messages all the way to the Special Forces Command base.
Fortunately for him, he succeeded in transmitting the message through, and of all people who received the message it was Commander General Girsang who saw the message for the first time before all other people involved in the operation because he also had both the Morse code receiver and transmitter in his office for emergency situations. He knew right away that it must have been Commodore Quentin who had transmitted the messages since absolutely no one had ever used such obsolete communication technique again.
He explained the whole situation of E.X.T.I.R.T to Commander General Girsang, and after some while, Commodore Quentin decided to continue it through his untraceable line. Since Commander General Girsang clearly stated that absolutely no other party in his country had ever dealt with such extraterrestrial crisis and therefore everyone would most likely wanted to end it all quickly, they finally arrived to a conclusion that the hacker must have from the U.S.
Commander General Girsang then asked if Commodore Quentin would allow him to directly supervise me as well in the operation once the communication line could be restored since he believed that Commodore Quentin had something else to deal back in the U.S., but it turned out that Commodore Quentin had another plan. He instead decided that he would fly to Indonesia, and to come directly to the field of operation in order to give the field operatives, which were Billy and me, his direct assistance.
In an instant, it made Commander General Girsang both surprised and doubted his decision, but he stated two things that assured him that it was actually the best decision. He first told Commander General Girsang that even though our last known location based on the Morse code transmission was in the middle of the first jungle, he had his hunch that by the time their communication had been completely cut off, the three of us must have reached the crater, which was a location not too far from the mountain peak.
If he was to get there and get in contact with the three of us, he would be able to quickly end all of the confusion that had occurred by any misinformation. Secondly, he added that it was all the more urgent and concerning because he had received report about another earthquake centering on an untouched jungle located in Western Java.
Upon hearing the news about the earthquake, Commander General Girsang immediately responded by saying that he had also just received news from the national geophysical board that they had been mistaken about the information regarding the inactive volcano shortly before he received Commodore Quentin's Morse code transmitted messages. With that in mind, they could quickly conclude that the earthquake had been caused by the reactivation of the volcano located right in the middle of the operation zone.
It was at that moment when Commander General Girsang finally agreed to wait for Commodore Quentin to arrive at their base, and immediately scrambled an elite team consisting of forty men led by himself to directly assist the three of us in the operation zone. Once Commodore Quentin arrived with his own full gears, they immediately departed from the base by using old trucks and jeeps, to prevent any detection from the aliens once they had entered the operation zone.
Unlike both Billy and I, the whole team took the opposite direction in heading towards the mountain. As they had finally arrived somewhere within three miles from the mountain through the north direction, they came across steep surfaces of great heights that they were forced to leave their vehicles and to climb up the cliffs. It turned out that the steep surfaces eventually led directly to the current plateau all along.
At first, they could not be sure if they were approaching the right area as they continued to climb up the cliffs. However, one of the soldiers suddenly signaled that he had seen a faint silhouette of Billy in the distance. He also told the rest of the others that apparently the silhouette also seemed to notice his presence.
The soldier was scared stiff for a brief moment, since he could be mistaken and it would mean that an alien had just noticed his presence. But, it turned out that the silhouette instead looked like it aimed its firearm at another thing beside him. That was actually the moment when he saved my life from my imminent death due to my own recklessness by his agile shooting towards the three aliens behind their mounted auto-beam.
Once they had reached the top of the plateau, they had difficulty in trying to figure out which way to go until they began to hear several faint running sounds in the distance that seemed to be approaching fast. Of course, the whole team immediately had their guards up and their weapons safety turned off as they aimed towards the direction of the sounds. Then shortly after, they began to see three human silhouette figures. Two of them slowly moved backwards while one other seemed to just stay and stand right there. As it turned out, those three figures were the three of us all along.
'Huh… so his sudden agility was not due to his adrenaline or excellent proficiency, but instead it was because he had found out that an assistance was just one step away that it made him motivated…' I thought.
"But, sir." I said to him with my mask on. "If what you said about the hacker being from the U.S. all along was true, then who would deal with that situation?"
"About that…" he answered to me as he paused for a little moment, "Let us just say for now that I had let someone whom I have my complete trust on to solve it."
I only nodded as a response, and it was not too long before another person in woodland camouflage uniform approached me as well. It only took me a couple of seconds before I noticed the name "Gillian Girsang" on his uniform.
"General, Sir!" I said as I immediately gave my salutation to him. "I am truly grateful for your assistance, and I believe that just by showing my appreciation would just not be enough to you…"
"Exactly…" Commander General Girsang replied and responded to my salutation as well, "Therefore, I expect you to keep on doing your best through your clever tactics, Lieutenant Burners. Oh sorry, I mean… Black Caiman…"
I then turned to Billy for a brief moment, and found out that he was sitting down on a nearby small rock as the medical personnel looked like he was checking his chest injuries. Somehow, I felt like he seemed to smile at me through his mask, and it suddenly gave me the thought that he apparently had told Commander General Girsang about my counter attack plan back on the wild sugarcane field.
That being said, Commodore Quentin urged both Jessica and I to have our meals first before we proceeded to go to the next checkpoint – the newly formed rift. Since the masks had been installed with a built-in radio communication, both Billy and I no longer had to turn to our watches again to communicate with our supervisors, although apparently both of them also had the same watches strapped on their wrists.
When we finished our meals, both Commodore Quentin and Commander General Girsang told us to gather somewhere near the groups of small rocks nearby for briefing. The time was then 08.45 a.m., and for some reason I finally began to feel like we had gained our firm grips on the operation again…