Curtis Woodman

I can never thank enough the people who help me with these stories. Thank you Hal1, you're a star. My thanks as always to those who stand behind me, so that I can take the blame. You all take time out of your lives to help me and for that I really appreciate it. To those of you about to read this, please enjoy. We did our best.

Please note. This is a story.

It came from my head and not from any history books. It's a story.

*******

"Boss. Headquarters wants you."

I put the binoculars down and slid back about half my body length before reaching behind me for the radio.

Lewis still had the headset on, so he reached out with the handset. "Control this is Eagle Four-Two, send over."

Eagle Four-Two this is control. Braithwaite, I say again Braithwaite. Stand by for emergency extraction, over."

"Confirmed. Out."

We all backed further down the hillside and stopped while we packed what little we all had out of our pouches. I pulled my map out and revised every decision I had made since we had been here. Braithwaite was our authentication code for whatever was to be said after that, which judging by the order to extract immediately, left little to ponder. We needed high ground and I certainly wasn't considering the hill we were on.

My finger scanned the map just as I knew my boss would have done before sending such a cryptic message. With my finger resting on the only place on the map high enough above the green canopy for an extraction, or even a clearing we could put a helicopter down safely.

I paused, even drummed my fingers for a moment as I slowly ticked off the fore's and against of every available place. Two miles. I looked up and directly at it while pulling out my binoculars for a closer look. I felt my people close in around me. When I dropped my glasses and pointed, they knew.

Chad took lead, he always did. Jackson would relieve him about halfway. My eyes quickly scanned the area we were about to leave, I trusted my people, what I was doing was just habit and I found exactly what I expected, nothing. To those curios enough to come to this very spot, my people and I simply weren't here and never had been. We were quick but cautious. We also all had the safeties off, even the Sig in my hip holster was combat ready.

The first time I instigated such a move. Jackson looked at me and smiled before saying. "Oh, if the health and safety people could see us now."

I trusted my people, not one of them had shot a toe off yet.

We were swift but careful. Having received the move order and the emphasis placed on it, we were in unknown territory and I disliked the fact I seemed to have placed my people in such a predicament. It's not very often you will find a group of people willing to follow you into such situations, and yet all six of these folks would do and had done just that. We sweated and grunted our way across two miles of bush and not one of my people bitched about it, well not to my face anyway.

As we crested the hill, I could hear a helicopter in the distance. The boss had timed all of this real well. Out of habit I pulled my binoculars from their pouch and took a closer look, swore and then added out loud.

"Harnesses on boys." That alone caught everyone's attention.

Chad was the only one throwing out expletives as he strapped himself into his harness, the rest of them let him have his say. It was his pressure valve; theirs was to smile as they watched him do it. We were all experienced halo jumpers, so shit like this shouldn't bother us, but Chad was the only one that voiced how uneasy we all were about what we were going to do next.

I pulled my strobe marker from one of my pouches, ensured the IR cover was in place and allowed it to cycle three times. The chopper immediately altered course and in the half light of the day, I watched it wave slightly from right to left in acknowledgement that the pilot had seen us. Now for the fun part.

My team squatted down, and the helicopter lowered itself so close to the ground that I could see the machine gunner smile and stick his thumb up before he said something into the headset he had on. The cables dropped from the bottom of the chopper and one by one my team attached themselves to the cables as the helicopter lifted itself upwards.

So, there we all were, hanging under a helicopter feeling very vulnerable and our only protection was the two machine gunners on the helicopter and the skill of the pilot. I had faith in my team, but these people I knew nothing about. Hell, I didn't even know where we were going.

The whole journey took seventeen minutes, with the sun now growing in strength. My people saw the landing zone and adjusted as best they could. As boots touched mother earth they unhooked and took up a defensive position. Two cloth bundles were thrown out by one of the gunners and the cables moved back inside the helicopter. With a throttling of the rotors, it rose up and to the side before heading back to the growing heat haze of the horizon.

The cloth bags revealed extra ammo and a replen of food and water. I took the envelope that got handed to me and took it to one side while Freddy, being my second-in-command, took charge of the two cloth bags and set about distributing the contents to all the team while we held this defensive position. They effectively, left me to look after the new orders as they re-stocked.

To say I wasn't impressed as I read on, would be a gross understatement. I pulled a map over and married it up with what I already had, and then briefed my team. They shared the same opinion I had. My orders reflected what we all suspected, something had gone wrong and we were the closest good guys to it that could fix it. A bit like taking a Katana to a fencing duel, as Chad so eloquently put it when we had one of these missions before.

*******

I gave Chad the coordinates and then checked my compass before pointing and telling him "just shy of four miles". He adjusted to his own compass and set off at a fierce pace. I asked JoJo to take up the last position; she nodded but could tell there was going to be more. So, I took a breath and told her that when we got to our final position before waiting for dark she was to receive her own orders. JoJo just nodded, squatted down and watched for anything following us.

As tail-end Charlie, she was the buffer. The terrain would dominate the distance she would keep between us and herself, to her it was down to line of sight or instinct as to how far she would allow herself to travel away from us.

As my team moved I was more on auto pilot than I should have been. The new orders made little sense, but then again not a great deal made any sense in this country. For now, we moved swiftly and safely, since Jackson had now replaced Chad, it was up to him to get us there. When Jackson suddenly stopped and took a knee, we all followed his lead. He did nothing for a good three minutes. Slowly the sounds of small animals grew as they became accustomed to us within our small area. Eventually Jackson lifted his left hand and made a circle motion with his finger. For the next six hours this area would be our home.

The team looked towards me and I nodded, each had a job to do and fanned out to do it. I waited for JoJo. She was not going to like this. My job for now was to build a map of the area out of what I could find on the ground. I was a good halfway through that when her hand came into view and moved part of my map a couple of inches to the left, I knew she was probably right but I still checked the aerial photo to confirm it. Its fun keeping my people on their toes.

"I have a job for you, you're going to hate it and give me a ration of shit about it, but I can't give this to anyone else."

"You want me to baby-sit someone?"

This time I looked directly at her before I said anything.

"What makes you say that?"

Her face was as neutral now, as it was when we first started this conversation. Her eyes gave her away though and it was confirmed when she said. "Because you're cornering me to ask me, and I'm a girl."

My jaw tightened and I paused for a moment before saying. "Lay that shit on me ever again and I will accept your request for a return to unit, whether you've made one or not. Are we REAL clear on this JoJo?"

She paused. She could see the line and JoJo was really close to stepping over it. I then gave her wriggle room and mentioned that I was about to brief her on what I wanted from her, and she was then going to accept with a nod of her head only, and then go away and think on how best to do what I'd asked of her.

She went a shade of red around her neck, or at least the small part of her neck I could see. Joan Carmichael was the newest member of my team; I had actually sought her out. A friend of mine phoned me and suggested I take a look at someone who didn't fit in her own unit but could well fit into what we did. I took notice of this person since at least two of my team over the years had come from this source.

She was a member of the 12th Intelligence Unit. Her personnel file was a lot harder to get hold of since the intel people always liked to keep their own secrets, and their own people were always a secret. I went to my boss and mentioned her name. He simply nodded, and a week later, I not only had a copy of her file, but a pass to go to their base for an intelligence gathering meeting with her department head.

Little did he know that he was about to lose one of his own people less than a month later. Joan Carmichael, or JoJo as the rest of the team quickly dropped on her as her nickname, was smart, real smart and I often thought she had a higher IQ than any two of my team put together. Her one weakness was that she actually didn't realize that she was in this team on her own merit, and although there is no test like the SAS selection or Parachute regiment training. Her test, like everyone else's in the team, came from their own past experience and of course, the school of 'hard knocks'.

We were God's brother's soldiers, there was no selection training here. Although a large part of our job had an emphasis on fitness, we each brought one or two (sometimes three) skills to the unit that filtered down to the rest of our Unit over time. If there was a specific talent needed to add to the team, we searched for ourselves and then went out and drafted them in.

JoJo was that type of person, and once she got over the shock of knowing there were units out there more secret that her own, she was interviewed by my boss and me. At first, she took it as some sort of joke. In the end even my boss gave up and we both stood, thanked Joan Carmichael for wasting our time, and left.

Less than a month later I had my people on one of Salisbury Plain's rifle ranges testing a new assault rifle. A military vehicle from the camp we were staying at turned up and dropped Joan Carmichael and her combat kit a few feet away before leaving. We all watched her pick her shit up and drop the lot next to us and then look towards me.

"I went from the rank of Lieutenant to nothing in the space of an hour of talking to my boss about the two people in the interview room. My pay grade hasn't changed, in fact it has gone up and I also now seem to have dropped off the grid. Who the fuck, are you people?"

Jackson held one of the new assault rifles, he was supposed to be the next on the range. He also knew that had changed when I looked at him and held out my hands. The rifle changed hands and I walked towards Joan. When she took it in her hands, she may not have known just then, but everyone watching knew. It was as though the rifle had just become an extension of her.

It had been easier with the rest of my team, but Joan had her own self doubts about being here. None of the team cut her any slack. She carried as much as the rest of us, dug holes in so many countries the same size as the rest of the team. Hell, the bugs sucked on her blood as much as they did ours and still, she thought we were carrying her because she was a girl. I knew that one day she would figure it out, I just hoped it was soon.

*******

Just as it started to get dark, I pulled my team together in a huddle around the make shift map on the ground.

"Ok folks this is where the fun starts. Three days ago, Judith Chapman and her daughter were snatched from their holiday home. That was mistake number one. Number two was that they drove her and her daughter as far away as they thought safe from any help. The problem with that thinking was that the further east they went the closer to us they became."

I gave instructions to each of my team as I pointed to the map on the ground. When each of them had nodded in understanding I left the map as it was so each of my team could make their own minds up about infiltration and probabilities of where security would be standing or hiding.

"I'm now about to throw a rock into the pond on this mission, folks. Apart from the Chapman women, there is another person we have to look out for. She will be wearing a full Burka with face veil and everything. She will have a blue scarf around her head. She's one of the good guy's folks so please refrain from putting holes in her if she has a gun in her hand when we get there."

JoJo and I exchanged glances; I had told her that Burka girl was C.I.A. Other than that. I knew nothing since the information I had about her stopped right there. That left me real uneasy and I put JoJo on her to act as her shadow from the time she had eyes on her until we got rid of everyone. Losing even one of my team to act as a babysitter wasn't sitting easy with me, but three letter agencies have a tendency to worry me. For instance, why was she even in this area in the first place?

As each of my people stood up from the map, I exchanged a word here and there, but mainly left them to their thoughts for a moment before discussing in more depth what every person in that clearing had to do tonight. Close to an hour later I set about destroying the map on the ground. Thirty minutes later we were almost ready to move. I swept the area once again, but my people had destroyed and buried everything we had no use for.

Once again it looked like we hadn't even been here. It was also here that I dropped my last rock into the pond.

"Folks, we do have one more problem. You all know that at times like these we face mask up. I can't allow that on this mission. Judith Chapman's daughter is deaf. What's going on at the moment must be scaring her shitless, and people wearing face masks will make her even worse. Paint up, night goggles will cover the rest. But we have to give her the chance to be able to read lips, so be conscious about what you say around her and keep the swearing to a minimum."

Each of my team nodded and buddied up to become face artists. JoJo stood in front of me, so I set about painting her face and neck she did the same to me, and ten minutes later I finally nodded, and out of habit, I looked up at the sky. My boss would have had us all on our HQ's big screen ever since we got the job. Me looking up as he looked down on us from either a satellite or a drone flying overhead just sent him the signal that we were going in.

It took me two hours to get to my own position; I added another half an hour since Jackson had the furthest to travel, not to mention dealing with anything on the way.

I thought I spotted JoJo off to the left. Since our target was the hostage hut, we were coming at it from front and back. The second hand of my watch hit twelve and I moved. The shadow over to my left moved along with me. JoJo got to the hut first. I had just put my back to it when the shooting started.

The timing between us was uncanny, reinforced when both doors exploded inwards and slamming against the wall. The mother had grabbed her daughter and pulled her to the ground, a woman in a burka stood over them with a gun in hand. JoJo got the two she was aiming at while I got the one that hid beside the door that JoJo came through.

While all this was going on, Burka girl had knelt, gun at the ready and aimed at the door I had just come through. Fear finally gripped the little girl and she screamed into her mother's chest. We came in and JoJo kept watch from the window while I kept watch through the open door for any unwanted visitors. Other than some sporadic fire going on at the furthest end of the group of huts, things started to settle down.

I gave it an extra minute when the firing ceased. Eventually the signals of all clear individually came over the radio and I closed the door so I could walk over to the group in the middle of the hut. JoJo was checking on the condition of the kidnappers. To her, dead was an acceptable condition.

Burka girl continued to aim her gun at my chest and finally said. "Identify yourself."

Standing there while Burka girl centered her gun at my chest, made me think that this really was so surreal. "You're wearing a burka and want me to identify myself. Now that's funny."

I think she figured it out via the accent.

*******

Time was now our enemy. We had to put distance between us and this place and do it now. Between JoJo and I we stripped down our helicopter harnesses and built a crude strapping system so I could carry Trisha, our little deaf girl, on my back. We strapped her on so she didn't need to hang on and I had my hands free to continue to carry my weapon. Lewis was given permission to finally break radio silence with a simple acknowledgment code that stated we had completed this part of the mission and were now headed for the rendezvous point.

We all had little doubt that our boss had watched everything from a satellite feed or from drone pictures. It was more a morale thing than anything else. I also felt that with the sun up now and all of us no longer using night sights, that too much of our faces were showing so we all went the sunglasses route. God how I miss face masks.

I looked at the two women now my responsibility and said. "You two need to keep up."

The spook hadn't taken long to remove her head cover and tucked it under a belt around her waist. A brunet and features that I would probably forget within five minutes of not seeing her again.

She looked at every one of us before saying. "You're all carrying more than either of us; trust me we'll keep up."

I gave Chad the coordinates and he checked his compass before moving out. Jackson followed as soon as we lost sight of our lead man. JoJo handed both women a candy bar each and told them it will help. The spook dropped hers on the ground and proudly announced to us all that she didn't need drugs. It was then that we both looked at each other trying to figure out when sugar became a drug. I did see JoJo pick up the candy bar and place it back into her pouch before I turned and followed in the direction of Chad.

The rest of my team were a stalling action if needed, they were tasked to slow down anyone following us. My hands rose above my head and I signed to Trisha that I'm going to go fast, so if she has to, then hold on tight to the harness. I repeated that part to emphasize its importance. Her hands appeared in front of me and all she did was acknowledge what I had said to her.

With one more look at the carnage we had already caused, I set off at our pace. The forest floor slowed us down, but we picked up the pace over some of the open ground and areas of little or no vegetation. The shooting started ten minutes into our speed march.

I fingered the button on my vest, a million and one computations ran through my brain. As we picked up more speed, I moved a few thoughts around, reminded myself yet again that I had the best team ever and then pressed down on the transmit button. "Three (Chad,) hold your position, four (Jackson) reinforce three and punch a hole through anything that gets in the way of both of you."