As I continued shooting the rest of the gunfire slowly died down, I aimed at the last person alive and fired, he was riddled with gunshots by other soldiers, sadly he was the last one alive.
With the last of the terrorists dead we finally stopped shooting and checked the area for anything else, i looked around to see Stephen and Alina dragging someone from the wrecked apc earlier. After all is done every soldier let out a victorious shout in celebration, around me were soldiers celebrating or soldiers on the ground, dead or alive. I rushed to Stephen and Alina pulling multiple people from the wreckage, some crawling out and even one somehow below the wreckage.
"Damon get your ass over here, help!" Alina ordered.
I rushed to one of the soldiers, barely getting out of the wreck, fortunately the back door was still good although wrecked and torn apart. I grabbed both of his arms and pulled, he was heavy but manageable.
I stop until he was far enough from the wreckage, still on fire, the man looked burned and had a tattered uniform. Alina crouched to the man's side, pulling something out of her bag, she placed something on the man's wounds, probably alcohol. Looking back, nobody was no longer in the apc, fortunately. The fire slowly died out with it's whimpering flames. Around me the other soldiers stopped celebrating and did any tasks needed, be it getting more ammo or assessing the damage.
"4 dead, 23 injured" Alina muttered under her breath while attending to the man.
"Damon." I turned to see who it was, when suddenly in front of me something flew at my chest. I moved back in fright, but whoever called me was laughing. I looked up and it was Luna, removing her helmet revealing her short black hair. I looked back down to a magazine, i bend down to grab it and the magazine was full, shaking the water and mud from it i placed it on one of my empty pockets and looked back up again.
"Prepare, were gonna be sending the reaper more customers Damon, good job here." Luna remarked, as she finished she walked away.
One of the apcs had soldiers unloading large boxes from the ground, two people lifting the box with their hands then settling it on the mud all with "AMMO" etched in white paint on each box, rain still poured on by this time the fire became a small constant stream of black smoke, soldiers made broken lines for the boxes quickly moving. Noticing i was missing some magazines I joined the quick moving line.
I get to the front of the line, the box had separated areas for different magazines, luckily they had ones for my rifle. I grabbed what i can carry and walked out of the line trying to put them on my pockets.
"Dames, you still calm?" A voice asked next to me, Thalia stood next to me with her armor dirty and soaked in cold mud or water.
"Yeah, I'm fine" I replied.
As she spoke a voice came to my ears. "Damon meet us at the back apc, the one with the flag." The voice spoke, i looked back to see the apc, recognizable from it's stripes of green and the country's flag planted on the top, wonder why the terrorists didn't fire at that one.
Walking to the apc, soldiers moved around in different directions all doing their own things similar to the hallway at the academy. I got to the apc with it's back door open, stepping inside, the apc was bigger than the others and had a table in the middle showing some map, on both sides were my teammates all looking at me. I joined in on the planning and viewed the screen on the table, the building resembles a barracks, Sebastian put his finger on it and the screen turned into a 3d model of some building, slowly rotating giving full view of what it looks like. Sebastian moved his fingers again and it went back out, now showing some sort of dugouts close to the barracks.
"So this is the base, apparently it holds heavy fortifications like traps and scouts or ambushes, similar to the one we just discovered. Command told me that the other teams with us received no issue and are now awaiting us, wonder why they attacked us only?" Sebastian places his finger on his chin in a thinking manner.
"We got the command truck, why won't they attack us." Lennox mocked.
"Tanks, carriers, jeeps, they have many things. Were hitting them hard, reinforcements and air support is still on standby. WE have to move ahead of the group to scout and maybe poke some holes into them."
"Hell yeah my type of job" Stephen muttered with a smirk.
"Now we have to move first while the rest of the soldiers follow kind of far behind, were moving through the dark green, means that we should move through the denser portion of the forest. Be aware though that there might be more killers moving through the green as well, just kill them." Sebastian explained.
After we looked through the map and finalized the plan, we moved out. Standing in front of us was a soldier, the soldier wore a darker uniform with the symbol of two swords and a shield in between.
"Here, you may need this for the infiltration or along those lines," The soldier hands a small backpack to Sebastian. "The terrain will be shit by the time you arrive, best of luck." The officer walks back to his soldiers, possibly to give new orders.
the rest of the soldiers paid no mind to us as they were occupied with their own duties. The rain poured on becoming stronger and louder, thunder became a more common occurrence. We got our way to the entrance of the dark green, it's far more filled with trees and bushes, definitely not fit for vehicles to pass through. Each of us move inside through the thick bushes and into the green. It was less than welcoming, trees dominated the place and the pathway was broken with roots moving out from ground, vines in the way, or parts of the ground turned to dirty brown water puddles.
"Were far." Sebastian commented, he held a small tablet showing a map of where we were and how far we were from the base, we were facing the right direction of the base but the destination was far from where we stood. With stride and constant uncertainty of who will find us in this path of the forest we walked, fast enough to make the trip quick but not enough to cause a sound. While were on our way to kill terrorists helping rioters, the riots back at the city must be getting worse, hopefully the country has enough money to get more mercs to support them, or maybe the mercs would support the terrorists, rogue ones most likely would help the terrorists.
The way forward became denser by moving deeper in the forest, the tree lines blinded the light from the clouds making it harder to see.
"You'd think that the rioters back at the city could be getting more violent?" Stephen asked.
"Maybe, the enemy knows what were doing and might try to stall our attacks." I replied.
"Smart, perhaps they would." Stephen moves ahead of the group peering at the trees with his rifle while I focused my glare at our backs. While moving through the foliage, Sebastian slowed down, as he did we all slowed down. Sebastian pointed his finger at the left, Lennox stepped out with his pistols on both hands, disappearing into the bushes. A couple of seconds later, 5 muffled gunshots broke the silence and the noise of the rain, each shot followed by a yelp and a thud on the ground.
Lennox steps out of the bushes with his pistols and arms pointed down.
"5 of them, luckily none of them called help." Lennox stated. After all is said and done, we continue walking through the forest, rain blocked by the trees we managed to find some warmth while walking through, sometimes stopping to take a break and check up on all of us.
The rest of the trip kept us on edge, my finger tense on the trigger waiting for someone to jump out. Mary slowed down now walking next to me.
"How do you feel about our first battle?" Mary asked with a smile on her face, maybe to keep some joy in the fight.
"Felt exhilarating, kind of what I expected." I replied.
"Well, were gonna have a better fight waiting for us. Best of luck to you." Mary lightly jabs me on the shoulder and moves to where she was earlier.
I routinely look back and inspect the back of our course in case someone is following us. I removed my magazine to check how many rounds I had left, from the slit in the middle looks to be around half left, good enough.
We managed to make decent progress to the base with little to no issue, rain continued pouring. Now the ground had more puddles than usual earlier, with more water hitting the ground, by the time we get there I won't be surprised if the storm becomes hard rain breaking roofs and causing landslides.
After walking for some more time, Sebastian motioned us to halt. We walked forward to see why he stopped us, i walked to the side to see. It was the base, the base was surrounded with fences, guards moving about, in the middle of the base was a building similar to a warehouse with a gaping opening in front, though i cannot make out what's inside it. Surrounding it were 9 buildings all with different sizes and possibly different uses. While we were looking Sebastian removed his bag and pulled out the contents the soldier gave us, he pulled out a rod, rope, and some sort of anchor for the rope.