"Damn it…" cursed Karl in German at his predicament, not daring to move one bit, knowing that if it blows up he is going to get eliminated, along with whoever that is unfortunate enough to get caught in the blast with him.
Sean observed the area behind them through the LPVO optic of his SCAR-H. "The instructors are approaching!"
Erika immediately moved over to Karl, carefully stepping on areas he had stepped on, since those areas are 100% safe and landmine free. Upon reaching Karl, she carefully brushing aside the leaves around to fully reveal the "grenade", which is revealed in fact to be a 2-part trap consisting of both a grenade and a jumping anti-personnel landmine. The "click" heard by Karl is the grenade arming itself when he touched the tripwire, which is wired to set off both the grenade and the landmine.
"Bloody overkill," commented Erika.
Erika wiped her sweat off from her forehead, she first grabbed two thick steel wires and slotted them into the 2 slots in the landmine that had housed the safety pins, locking down the landmine. She then carefully re-inserted back the safety pin of the grenade. Upon ensuring that it is done correctly, Erika then grabbed a pair of needle-nose pliers from her toolkit on her body armour, carefully cutting off the tripwire.
"Snap," with a cut of the pliers, the tripwire is snapped off. Erika then held her breath, lowering down her heart rate as she carefully dismantled the fuse of the landmine, then the payload itself.
Karl and Erika held their breath, knowing that if she screwed up, the 2 will have to try again next year.
Fortunately for them, the tripwire trap is dismantled successfully. Karl and Erika immediately stepped backwards to join the rest of the cadets.
"Great, we don't have time to clear through the landmine field, what now?" asked a cadet.
Sean looked at his map, finding that there is a way to go around the landmines, but that will require a group of them to stay behind and stall the instructors. Upon understanding this, Karl grabbed a claymore explosive from Erika's bag and started setting it up.
An idea had crept into his mind.
(30 minutes later)
"Sector E all clear," reported an instructor as they advanced forward in reverse triangle search formation. They are in a group of 5.
"Copy, stay alert," replied Herbert in the radio, observing the feed from the cameras of the helmets of the instructors.
"Drones taking off in 10 minutes," he added.
"Standby," ordered Karl, the cadets had hidden themselves in the foliage, observing the instructors who are slowly heading into the trap they have set.
Albert traced the lead man with his dagger gun, a specialised dagger with a 4-shot magazine, firing an integrally suppressed bullet, moving one hand to the trigger. Karl, Ariel, Erika and Sean readied themselves.
An instructor stopped, seeing a claymore sitting in the middle of the path. He looked at his map and then sneered.
"Careless morons," he and the other instructors jeered, recognising the bomb to not be part of the traps they made, meaning that it can only be done by the cadets they are pursuing.
This moment of distraction is all the cadet need, as Vera slowly raised her dagger gun at them.
One shot from her and Albert each later the leading and rear instructor have yellow smoke rising from their body armour. Before the rest of them can react, Karl, Ariel and Sean sprang out from hiding in a flash, tackling down the 3 instructors, pointing a dagger each at their necks.
"You're dead," said Sean curtly.
Knowing that the rest of the instructors are coming this way soon, the cadets immediately grabbed whatever supplies they can get from the their "bodies", and downloading their maps into their own smart devices.
Once that's done, Erika and other ordnance specialists among the 18 cadets came forward and wired a few claymores and landmines around the "bodies".
"Done, let's go," said Sean, and the group broke contact, rushing off in the direction of the other cadets.
Catching up to the rest of them after confirming identities using bird sounds, the cadets continued forward in the dense jungles, trekking up and down and going across all kinds of natural obstacles.
The cadets stopped at a short cliff, needing to climb up. Sean, Ariel, Clara and the Dracos in the group took the lead, using their sub-species affinity to hover up to around half of the cliff with ropes, then climbing up, bringing up the rope with them, which is to be fastened to the top of the cliff and provide a path for the other cadets.
It was not long before a loud "BOOM" erupted in the mountains, Sean turned around to the place where they were at, seeing birds flying into the air, startled by the loud explosion.
"I think you all used a bit too much!" exclaimed Sean at Erika and the other ordnance specialists on the ground below him.
Erika sheepishly scratched her cat ears.
"Rigging up the "bodies" with claymore traps, you and Karl are really immoral to the core," mused Clara at Sean.
Sean chuckled. "Well, special operations are about using whatever means at our disposal to create an asymmetric advantage."
The Dracos resumed their climb, reaching the top soon and tying the ropes around rocks, taking up guard positions.
After all of the cadets climbed up, they continued to advance through the thick tropical jungle.
"AHH!" screamed a cadet in the column suddenly, and they turned around to see her shaking off a spider on her arm, which left behind a huge bite.
Louis killed the spider with an ice dagger, then opened a bottle of disinfectant spray. He drew his dagger, using the spray to disinfect it while the cadet tied a tourniquet on the area above the bite. This is to prevent the venom from the spider from travelling to the rest of her body.
"This is going to hurt, a lot," warned Louis, as he sliced open the wound with a horizontal slice, letting out the venom-tainted blood. The cadet grimaced in pain as she also used her hand to squeeze the blood out to speed up the blood-letting process. Once that's done, Louis opened his flask of water and washed the wound, then helping her bandage it.
"You good to go?" asked Ariel.
The cadet nodded, standing up and grabbing her rifle, and the cadets continued their advance, heading upwards to find markers to determine their whereabouts and plan their next move.
Sean resumed to slicing open a path. He could not help but to feel worried for the wounded cadet.
Injury plus venom is an extremely dangerous combination in a tropical environment.
True enough, the cadet collapsed.
Clara and Karl checked her, finding her having a raging fever, which prompted Clara to immediately withdraw her hand from her forehead.
Clara then peeled open the bandage, shaking her head at the state.
"Infected," she observed, she took a Panadol tablet from her medical pouch and fed the cadet.
Clara tried to talk to the cadet, only to find out that she's already losing consciousness. With no other choice, she reached for the yellow smoke dispenser on the cadet's body armour. The elimination smoke can be triggered by 2 ways, either by getting hit with simunation rounds, or for it to be manually pulled when a cadet gives up or is in an emergency.
The cadet grabbed her hand, stopping her.
"Don't…please…" she muttered, not wanting to be eliminated when she had already come so far.
Clara hesitated, as someone who is stubbornly determined to passing the selection course and does not have the term "giving up" in her dictionary, she can sympathise with her.
Karl however, is less sympathetic, overpowering the cadet and pulled her chord, taking off all of her useful supplies such as food and ammunition in the process.
A medical quadcopter drone the size of a small car soon traced the smoke and flew over. It and its fellow drones have been hovering in the area around the Kachin Mountains to respond to any emergencies.
2 medical officers stepped out from the drone as it landed, attending to the cadet and then brought her away from the area.
With a heavy heart, the remaining 17 cadets continued their advance, using their maps, compasses and the surroundings to determine their relative position.
After a long, arduous trek battling the cruel nature of the Kachin Mountains, ranging from wild animals to rough terrain and to bodies of water, as getting wet in the tropical environment is suicide, it makes a person heavier and also causes him or her to feel suffocatingly hot as their sweat and consequently heat cannot be dissipated into the surroundings. Not to mention the dangers of the drop in body temperature at night.
Night time soon came, and the cadets set up a camp at a secluded spot, eating up their hardtack biscuits.
Sean, Albert and Vera took the first rotation of night guard duty, wearing DIY ghillie suits and hiding under the vegetation.
Sean scanned the surroundings with his binoculars with night vision
He yawned, still sleepy. Fortunately, the fifth rotation is last rotation before they continue on their course, needing to reach the final destination by 6am. All Sean has to do is to hold on tight for another 2 hours, then they can move off. To ensure he has enough energy, Sean finished the remaining half of his hardtack biscuits.
"How's things on the traps?" asked Sean.
Eddie is observing them with his night binoculars. "All clear."
The cadets have set up a series of traps 100m away from their camp, consisting of the remaining claymores of the ordnance specialists. Knowing that the instructors' search party for them will likely follow the area of jungle they have cleared out to form a crude path, Karl had deliberately asked Ariel, Louis and Erika to clear a diversionary path which leads to the "mine field" they have made. As an added guarantee Eddie had aimed his Ultimax 100 light machine gun there too.
Clara meanwhile checked other areas.
"Movement detected!" said Eddie. Sean and Clara immediately turned to his position, seeing instructors approaching the area, well camouflaged and night-vision shielded, making them barely visible.
Eddie loaded his light machine gun.
"Wait," Clara stopped him. "If you shoot, we will be exposed."
"Then what?" he asked.
Clara bowed her head down, rapidly thinking. "Sean, wake up the others, we need to move off now. Once they enter the mine field, they will get blown up, or choose to clear them or go around them. That will buy us time."
"Eddie and I will guard here, we will leave in 10 minutes time," she added.
Sean agreed, leaving to wake up the rest, they immediately set off, using night vision goggles and torch lights with cover nets to hide the light as much as they can, trekking forward. Night time simply made things worse as they can barely see where they are going in the environment with little light thanks to the thick trees.
Clara and Eddie caught up, as they did, a second "BOOM" is heard, followed by more explosions.
"Sh*t," exclaimed Erika, figuring out what is happening. "They are using rockets to clear the traps! We need to speed up!"