diamon dog-fusion

Northern Kabul, Afghanistan - 1930 hours

The sound of distant helicopter blades beating the air reverberated off jagged cliff faces and down the narrow canyons between them. The faint thumping faded away by degrees, and was replaced with thumping of a different sort. A white horse was barreling down one of the winding little roads in the bottom of one of the many canyons scarring the land. Mounted on the saddle atop its back was a woman, dressed in a baggy camouflage BDU. A set of night vision goggles were secured to her face, allowing her to navigate the perilous trail at a full clip. On her ears she had a pair of headphones, hooked up to a small device on her hip.

“Bum-bum-bum, da-dum-dum, da-bum-bum… bum-bum-bum, da-dum-dum, da-bum-bum…”

She quietly sang along to the tune in her headphones, as she expertly guided the horse through the near total blackness of the canyon road, through the little twists and turns, avoiding potholes and other assorted footfalls typical of unpaved roads in war-torn nations. The horse continued on at a full gallop the whole time, seeming to trust the woman to keep it on steady footing.

“She’ll only come out at night… the lean and hungry type...”

Eventually, the cliffs tapered off and opened up into a valley. The woman pulled back on the horse’s reins, and the beast slowed down to a trot. She directed it to stop at the top of a large sand dune. She pulled her night vision goggles off of her head; she didn’t need them anymore, anyway. The moon was full and bright, and cast a pale blue light on everything. It was just enough to provide decent visibility for the naked eye. She took a moment to fix her ponytail, as the goggles’ harness had pulled it loose, then reached into her pack to pull out a monocular, putting it up to her right eye.

“Oooh-ooh here she comes… watch out boy, she’ll chew you up…”
Down below at the foot of the dune, there lay a village. It was nothing special, just a loose cluster of shoddily constructed huts. The interesting part was that it had been converted into an outpost for the Soviets, and soldiers patrolled around the perimeter. They had no idea she was sitting there, watching them. She reckoned she could probably kill them all from this distance with none of them ever being the wiser. But lucky for them, she wasn’t here to do that. She was here not as an assassin, but more as a talent scout, looking for one soldier in particular who was rumored to be particularly good at his job. She scouted among the ranks for a short while, until she fixated upon a face that appeared vaguely familiar. She fished a small polaroid out of her pocket and compared it to what she saw. She smirked as she recognized the man as her quarry. Stowing her monocular, she lightly kicked the horse in its sides, setting it back into a trot in the direction of the village.

“Oooh-ooh here she comes… she’s a maneater…”

She was able to get within 50 meters of the village unseen, and decided not to test her luck. Guiding the horse behind a large rock, she dismounted and made her way closer on foot. The Soviets remained oblivious to her presence as she snuck up around their flank, her footsteps utterly silent on the loose desert sand. Coming up to the wall of a partially collapsed hut, she leaned against it and listened, trying to make out where the patrols had moved to in the interim. She peeked around the corner, and quickly pulled her head back, and tried to flatten herself against the wall as much as possible. Not a moment later, a pair of soldiers strolled right past her, idly chatting about something, too enthralled in their little conversation to notice the heavily armed woman a mere meter away from them. She didn’t even dare to breathe.
After a minute more of chatter, they turned around and went back the way they came. The woman slowly let her breath out and continued on, crawling on her belly now. It was slow going, but she eventually sighted her quarry again, on the other side of the outpost.

He had his back to her, and was looking out on the endless sea of sand bathed in the pale moonlight. Moreover, he was alone. She crawled up to him, slithering silently through the sand like a deadly serpent, ready to strike at him. She considered him lucky, in that she needed him alive. She chuckled.

He heard her.

He spun around and saw her lying belly down in the sand, and stood in shock for a moment. She sprang up and lunged at him, as he brought his rifle to bear. She swatted the barrel away, but he was already pulling the trigger, and the burst of fire caught the attention of the entire outpost.

Grabbing him roughly by his uniform’s collar, she kneed him in the gut, and swept his feet out from under him, slamming him into the ground and knocking him out cold. She had no time to admire her handiwork as the Soviets closed in around her. She dove behind some sandbags and unslung her rifle from her shoulder. It was clear that the element of surprise no longer applied.

The soldiers were conscripts, poorly trained, and it showed. Two of them immediately charged her position, firing wildly and shouting. She put them both down with two controlled bursts. The remainder were at least smart enough to grab some cover. They dumped their magazines in her direction with reckless abandon, blind firing from concealment. She hit the deck, minimizing her profile as much as she could. The bullets ripped through the sandbags, covering her with their freshly liberated contents.
The gunfire started to taper off, and one of the officers started barking orders. Two more conscripts approached her position, but this time they hugged the wall of a nearby hut and assumed low, wary stances. As they stepped over the body of one of their fallen comrades, a small object came flying through the air, landing at their feet with a dull thud. They knew instinctively what it was, but they had no time to react as the grenade peppered their bodies with shrapnel and broke their bones with the concussion.

The Soviets opened fire once more, expending their magazines with suppressing fire. Their numbers had been reduced by a third by a single attacker, and they weren’t about to take anymore chances. They had no way of knowing that their attacker had already changed positions, and they were wasting their ammo shooting at ghosts.

She flanked around the village, using the huts as concealment, tossing grenades wherever the soldiers clustered together.

The rest of the battle didn’t last long.

Within a few short minutes, the remainder of the garrison had been killed, and the triumphant woman made her way back to her original position to recover her quarry. She wasn’t too bothered by how this had turned out. Stealth was never her strong suit, anyway. Who cared, though, as long as she got results?
She picked her way through the carnage, mentally patting herself on the back the whole way. But when she reached her original position, she felt her stomach churn a bit. Her smug self-satisfaction went out the window.

“Ah… shit…”

He was stone dead. His body was full of bullet holes and shrapnel. Perhaps she had been a bit too liberal with her application of fragmentary explosive devices. Perhaps she should have thrown him behind the sandbags with her so his comrades wouldn’t have shot him up with their panic fire. Either way, the man she was supposed to bring in alive, the man whose survival she’d been explicitly instructed to prioritize…

One thing was for sure.

The Boss was not going to be happy.