Chapter Five - The Things They Wore

Chapter 5 – Once More Into The Breach

Kaeo shifted nervously. A few minutes had passed since the Humvee containing Miller and Shulte had driven off towards the company aid station back at camp.

Team One had since grouped up around Staff Sergeant Dygalo after they had taken time to restock their ammo and, in Garza's case, swap weapons with another marine. The 240 wasn't exactly the most appropriate weapon for clearing a cave. He now opted for another marine's M249.

Dygalo took a knee and began his customary pre-op briefing.

“All right warriors, we're going straight through the front door while the rest of the platoon takes the other entrances. It looks like a shitty dangerous assignment, I know. But someone's got to do it and, the LT and I can't think of anyone better. Move out.” Dygalo stood up and trotted over towards the entrance to the cave. The team followed him closely

It was a dark and uninviting looking hole. The cave's mouth widened significantly as Kaeo and his unit neared it. Even with their NODs, it was hard to see in the pitch darkness. Although even without his PEQ-15 on he could easily see the frame of a larger door nestled inside because of the light shining through the cracks.

“McGraw, you're up.” Dygalo whispered as he gestured to the door. Corporal Mcgraw dropped his pack and pulled out an IV bag with a tightly coiled piece of detcord taped onto one side. He then carefully moved up to the door and placed it along the latch. He then attached a pull igniter to the end of the detcord and crawled away slowly trailing the wire connected to the igniter behind him. He then got back into position along the outside of the cave’s mouth where the rest of the team was stacked up.

“The go word is ‘Lucy’. When you hear that on the net, blow that charge” Dygalo instructed. Rico and Johnson, the two team members on point for each side of the mouth, both drew M67 frag grenades out from their pouches. A loud explosion cracked in the distance. The light on the inside of the door flicked out.

“Raptor 2 to all Raptor 2 victors, Lucy, I say again Lucy.” echoed over the net.

Dygalo nodded. McGraw gave a sharp tug to the end of the wire and there was a loud bang as the steel door flew open exposing the darkness within.

“FRAG OUT!” Rico shouted while tossing his grenade into the open hole as Johnson followed suit. After a few seconds delay the grenades exploded inside. Kaeo could hear shrapnel ricocheting off the cave walls with a few stray pieces shooting out of the entrance. After a few seconds delay Kaeo felt someone give him a knee to the butt, the signal to move it. He passed the knee onto Rico who quickly broke from cover and moved into the darkness of the cave itself.  They moved swiftly; strafing along the wall out of the fatal funnel. On the other side of the door the cave opened up into a large two tiered receiving area. Tailors had been lined up along the walls and the second deck's catwalks waiting for them.

They were now all nursing serious shrapnel wounds with a few killed and most seriously wounded and out of the fight. That part had gone well.

Red emergency lights flicked on all around rendering their night vision useless. Kaeo flipped up his NODs in response. The blood appeared black under the lights.  It was splashed all over the walls, even touching the Fleur de lis painted on the ceiling. Men were writhing in pain in puddles of black. Some were screaming as the black spurted out in time with their ever increasing heart rate. They couldn't be bothered to stop; there was work to be done.

Two hallways splint off from the receiving area. One went straight back into the mountain while the other went right and jogged left from there. The remains of Alpha and Dygalo went straight and Bravo broke right.

Rico lead their group down the hallway. They could hear gunfire echoing from all around the compound. Every sound jumped out to Kaeo as an unseen enemy. The red light pressed soft shadows against every surface. The darkness flicked and flitted in time with the sparking of the backup lights. As they moved, they passed and cleared several small offices and storage rooms, all of which were devoid of personnel and hastily stripped of anything vaguely important.

After that, the hall way took a sharp turn. Rico lay down prone to peek around the corner.

“More doors” Rico said while standing up then carefully sliced the pie around the corner. The rest of team followed suit. There were more of the small offices and workstations as well as a larger red steel door at the end of the hallway. There was light shining out from under it. They quietly made their way up the hallway checking each room as they went. Each was as empty as the ones they previously passed.

They stacked up outside the red door. Kaeo could hear the sound of rustling papers, the crackle of a fire, and the taps of many footsteps. Rico motioned to Max who broke from the stack and unslung a M1014 shotgun and placed the muzzle against the bottom hinge. Rico nodded and Max fired, blowing the bottom hinge, the door latch and the top hinge in quick succession. Max gave a sharp kick to the already falling door and then ducked back around the corner to the to avoid return fire. The door fell into the ground with a loud crash and they darted into the room. Rico broke right putting three rounds into an armed tailor. Kaeo darted left. A figure that had been standing at a desk in the corner of the room spun around. Kaeo's eyes shot to the glint of metal in their hands.

He acted automatically.

The weapon shook in his hands. Its bark filled the room. The figure crumpled. He then scanned the room searching for more threats.

The room was a relatively large open workshop with a furnace opposite the door. Boxes of documents were piled all around the room. Four men and women in lab coats had been feeding them into the furnace as fast as it could handle. They now stood in shock with their hands as high as their bodies could take them. Rico was sorting through some of the papers. Max was examining Rico's kill. Garza was fiddling with something on one of the desks. Kaeo turned back to the person he iced just seconds prior.

It was a woman. Her neck was a bloody mess of pulped flesh where two of his rounds had entered, most of her jaw lower was gone from the impact of the third. Her eyes though, they still looked as pristine as the day she was born. She was staring at him, judging him with those deep blue saucers.

They were boring holes into his soul. He felt the ring shift in his pocket

“Hey, Kaeo come look at this” Garza called.

He turned away.

Garza was holding up a small glass tube capped with metal at both ends. Kaeo walked up closer to get a better look at it. Between the two ends a strange red semi-florescent thread was strung. The scientists shot nervous glances to each other in between bouts of staring at it.

“B-be careful with that!” one of them croaked in strangely accented English.

“Oh yeah?” Garza said in response.

He turned, looked at them and smiled. Garza cocked his arm back. Fear turned to terror on the faces of the scientists.

Garza threw his arm towards the ground with all of his might.

He suddenly stopped his arm just short of release and then leaned in close toward the petrified scientists and said with a chuckle, “Nah, I'm just fucking with you”.

Garza smiled wildly again and set the vial back down on the desk where he'd found it. Rico finished sifting through the pile of papers on the desk.

“Alright, this all looks rather important. Flex-cuff these fuckers and we'll leave them and the rest of this stuff for intel to sift through.” Rico ordered.

They did as instructed, tying their hands and feet together so the scientists couldn't move and then sat them down in the corner before proceeding back out into the hallway.

The hallway turned into a narrow staircase after a sharp turn to the left. They followed it up inching along the wall constantly staring up at the next level for any movement or indication of a threat. They reached the top of the stairs and stacked up at the door to the next level. Rico nodded to Max who gave the door the same treatment as before, shooting off the hinges and latch. He gave the door a sharp kick sending it flying out of the frame before rolling back onto the wall. Then Rico tossed in a M84 stun grenade. The crash and flash of its detonation was greeted by wild gunfire.

They rushed into the hallway while the tailors were taking cover behind an improvised barricade of filing cabinets and overturned desks at the end of the long stretch. The grenade had blinded them for the next precious few seconds causing them to fire into the ceiling instead of Bravo team's fleshy bits.

Rico ducked into a vacant office to the right while Max and Garza did the same on the left. Kaeo, feeling particularly adventurous, ran forward to the next set of offices and kicked his way into one of those.
Judging by the sound of the weapon, he guessed there was one tailor with a PKM and at least three more with AKs and those sewing machine things in various places along the hallway.

Garza leaned out and fired off a burst with his 249 silencing at least one gun. The PKM was keeping Kaeo pinned down by hammering away at his doorway which was being shredded by the bullets. Max and Rico were taking turns leaning out from their positions and letting off a few rounds. He swore those two worked together better than the gears in a Swiss watch.

The PKM stopped firing for a second. Thinking it was safe to do so, Kaeo crouched down and peaked out of the door.

The gunner had the top cover of his PKM open and was shakily feeding a new belt in. Kaeo raised his weapon and fired off a round giving the gunner a new ventilation hole in his head. Kaeo felt his bolt lock to the rear.

Behind the now dead gunner, a tailor stood up and ripped something from one of his pouches. Kaeo watched the tailor press something on the cylindrical object and cock his arm back to throw.

Max wasn't having any of that. The Lance Corporal snapped up his M16 and left off a burst; messily severing the tailor's hand. The cylindrical object fell to the floor and the other tailors dived for cover.

Kaeo spun back inside his room a second before the deafening explosion. He and the rest of the team's Comtacs preserved their hearing admirably well. It was perfectly silent in the wake of the explosion. Kaeo reloaded his weapon and peeked out again scanning for threats.

It was another bloody mess. The grenade thrower was splattered on the walls and all the other tailors were various flavors of dead and dismembered.

Max leaned out to look then stepped out of his room with Rico in tow. Garza stood up and followed.

“Damn suckas, I just got some.” Max said while surveying the destruction. He paused to spit out some tobacco juice and turned to Rico.

“Look at me John. I'm a man now, just like you.”  Max said dramatically placing his hand over his heart and inhaling deeply. “Except, I don't look like a faggot and, talk all professional-like.” Max spat again.

Rico just shook his head. Garza offered Max a fist which he gladly bumped. There was still one more room to clear. A thick wooden door stood at the end of the hallway. After their quick congratulations they proceeded down the hall.

As they closed in on the door they could faintly hear music play from beyond it. It was some type of classical piece; he just couldn’t recognize where he’d heard it or what was its name. Knowing Rico's classical training in music he couldn't help but ask.

“Sergeant, do you recognize it?” he asked quietly.

“It's the first movement of Winter from Vivaldi's Four Seasons,” Rico stated coolly.

They stacked up outside the door. Just as the music reached its peak, Rico smashed the door open. They rushed inside. It was a very nicely decorated office with a large South African Oak desk and a leather high backed chair. There was a half drunk glass of whiskey sitting on the desk and a cigar smoking in the ash tray.

The chair spun around and an old well-dressed man was sitting in it. Kaeo could see the gun in his left hand and he immediately kept his sights trained on it. The old man smiled quaintly. Then in a flurry of motion he stuck the gun in with mouth. Kaeo lunged across the desk to try and stop him, but he was a second too late. His brains were scattered across the ceiling and wall with a loud bang and the old man slumped forward. The record player finished its recitation and now skipped eerily.

“Aw, fuck.” Garza spat out, lowering his weapon. Rico stooped down and picked up a plaque that Kaeo had knocked off of the desk in his lunge. Rico held it out and tapped his finger on the Japanese writing.

“Kaeo, the fuck does this say” Rico asked. Kaeo paused to examine it.

“Director of Research”

“Well, I guess we won't be learning what he knows now. Let’s get out of this hole.” Rico sighed.

They carefully stalked back out to the entrance. Apparently they had been the last ones to finish clearing their section, but they definitely didn't have it the worst. Two marines had been killed and four were in critical condition from various bouts of enemy fire. That made 8 marines put out of action in the operation in total, just below the 20% “acceptable” casualty rate for their 46 man platoon.

“One hell of a day that had been.” he thought to himself. Kaeo craved something, anything to take the edge off as the Adrenalin made its' way out of his system.

“Hey Max, you got a dip?” he asked wearily.

“Yeah” Max retrieved a can of longcut from his flak. Max hesitated for a second. “Wait, I thought you didn't dip.”

“Today seems like a good day to start.” Kaeo responded, rubbing his eyes.

“I remember the first time I dipped I threw up a bit but, as long as you don't get it in our Humvee, I don't mind.” Max winked and passed the can over.

Kaeo took the can gave it a few shakes and stuck a large wad in his lip just like he had seen so many other marines do hundreds of times. He sat back against the Humvee's wheel and thought over the day’s events. The sun would rise in another couple hours and with it came their relief and ride back to camp. They'd dealt a good blow to Tailor operations in the area but, he had a sinking feeling that as long as that eye-patched kid was running around there would still be a threat. He just wanted to be far away from this place now with a hot meal and a warm rack.

His mind wandered to the woman he killed earlier. Robbed of the protective high of the moment, the feeling hit him like a brick wall. She had eyes the color of the sky just like the first one. The ring in his pocket felt cold enough to burn his flesh. He could feel their eyes watching him. The sky and the trees seemed to close in all around him. He saw their figures in every shadow. Suddenly, he felt very sick and he was pretty sure it wasn't the tobacco. He sprinted over to the tree line and heaved for what seemed like an eternity.