The joint team ‘mounted up’ and took off in an unmarked stealth jet just before midafternoon, timing their departure so they would be flying over the jungle as night fell.
The team sat in the cramped and noisy passenger area, wearing small chute packs, dressed in jumpsuits. Lastshot, Temper, Skorpion and Firststrike's jumpsuits had drab color inserts similar to their Exceptional costumes. Everyone had their minds on the mission and was running through last minute checks of gear.
Skorpion walked over and sat by Lastshot, who was going over a map.
"Conner, you've been really hinky about this whole thing. What's up?"
He put down the map and looked up at her. “Just do your job,” he snapped. “And let me do mine."
Skorpion looked at him curiously. Then she slowly nodded her head. “Look, leave that crap at home, Mr. Le'Schott. You know damn well I do my job. We've got a job to do together, and whatever's rolling around in that boxcar of a skull you've got, don't let it interfere ‘cause you know damn well that if you put my life in danger, ‘cause you can't pull it together, I'll shoot you before I go down."
She walked away, leaving her team leader to his thoughts. He looked after her, and then returned to his brooding. He pulled the letter from the parents of the little boy Billy from his pocket. He stared at it again, like he did so many times in a day and then crumpled it up, mumbling the word “hero” under his breath.
Skorpion saw her friend and team leader throw the crumpled paper to the floor of the plane. She was able to pick it up when he wasn't looking, read it and with a grim nod, tucked it into a pocket for later.
Across the plane, Temper was sitting with her head in her hands. Ursa Major came over and sat by her. The big Russian Exceptional put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
"What is wrong, little one?” He purred at her and smiled. When he did, he looked like a recruitment poster for a people's collective, his blonde hair just waiting for a breeze to gently blow through it. Even his blue eyes seemed to twinkle.
"Why do we have to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?” If she noticed his poster smile, she gave no sign. “I mean, I could understand if it was on fire.” She pleaded like a little child being sent to her first day of school.
"Shall I carry you down?” he said, trying to joke with her. She gave him a grateful smile, but it was clear his attention really didn't help.
Firststrike, who was sitting very close to Sunray, looked over to Ursa Major. “She'll be fine—she doesn't like heights."
"Heights are fine; hitting the ground is what I don't like.” She sounded very reasonable. “Why couldn't they send Floater?"
"Why are you painted so?” Ursa said, pointing to the apparently random daubs of color around her right eye and left cheek. She looked at him oddly, suddenly pulled back from her own problem to focus on his question.
"Just for optical distortion,” she said. “Even though the Regen makes taking a photo almost impossible, someone with a good memory might be able to draw me—like a court room sketch. This makes it difficult for most to recognize me with it off and my hair done differently. But—"
"But?"
"But, it of course does nothing against any imaging where it could easily be removed with a photo shop type program. Without the refractive properties in the Regen, it would be a pretty lame disguise. As it is, like everyone else, I always come out pixilated. I find ‘hiding in plain sight’ the best disguise."
"So you are always a ‘pixie’ on camera?"
"No Pixilat—” She stopped herself when she realized it was not a language barrier, but rather a noble gesture. She smiled.
"You really are a big bear."
"Da,” he smiled back. “And so cuddly."
At that moment, the pilot's voice came over the intercom. “One minute to drop zone."
Lastshot stood up. “Okay, tourists, on your feet."
The team stood up as one, even Temper, though she was a little shaky. Sunray deliberately stumbled and leaned against Firststrike for support. Skorpion caught the move, though Firststrike was oblivious to it. They all moved to the jump door as a countdown commenced. Then the words: “Go one!” were given and, one by one, on the mark, they ‘hit the silk.'
They jumped HALO—High Altitude, Low Opening. This meant they would fall for the first two thousand feet without opening their parachutes, guiding their bodies through the Stygian sky like living guided missiles. They opened their ‘chutes in a coordinated pattern based on altimeter instruments so that their fall space would be grouped together. It was the dark of the moon and they were tiny spots of black against an ink dark sky. Their parachutes were black and billowed out like midnight orchids in a tight bundle.
Despite her dislike of heights and jumping from them, Temper was as skilled in parachute insertions as the rest of the team. They landed without incident, within a quarter mile of each other thanks to their night vision goggles—except for Sunray and Lastshot who had their own ‘built in'—and quickly secured and buried their chutes.
They soon formed a circle around Lastshot.
"We should reach the plantation around dawn,” he said. “Let's move."
They all moved as one, quietly, into the jungle.
The team prowled through the jungle for some time, encountering and hiding from a number of patrols which increased in frequency as they moved closer to their target. Though each one of the group had jungle training at one point or another in their professional lives, there was no time on this mission to acclimatize, as there would be on a normal mission. None of them, save Lastshot, were quite able to cope with the thick humidity and fierce heat of the jungle. He had spent time all around the world and adjusted quickly without any need to employ any of his implants.
"I much prefer the dry heat of the Afghani desert or the Sahara,” Skorpion said, doing almost as well as her team leader.
"Please,” Ursa Major said with a smile on his handsome face. “Don't mention Afghanistan to a Russian, it gives us chill."
"I should think you could use a chill about now,” Temper said. She enjoyed the Russian Exceptional's wider smile at her comment.
"Da,” the big Russian said. “But then I would get, how you say—hot and bothered again when you talk."
She blushed a bit as Skorpion laughed.
"Okay, tourists,” Lastshot said. “Button it up; or get on a loud speaker and announce us—it'll be just as about effective."
They moved in silence after that, through foliage so thick that often they had to detour around clusters of bushes and vines too thick to hack through in any good time. The insects were as dense as fog in some places, though each had his own way to deal with them: The Russian became his own ‘bug zapper’ sending out short microwave pulses that kept the air around him fairly free of flying pests. Susan Winters, Skorpion and Temper used an experimental bug repellant cream. Lastshot seemed impervious to the insect bites and just shrugged when Temper asked how he did it.
"I must just taste bad,” he joked.
Sunray shared her own home remedy with Firststrike and noted, “Chew Kim Chee: kills all bugs."
Regardless of how they dealt with the insects, the presence of them, the leeches and the stifling heat made progress slower than Lastshot wanted. There was little he could do about it, however; as a military leader, he knew that if he pushed things too hard he would endanger them all needlessly. So he fought his own impatience and fear with a tight-lipped stoicism.
Even when they found an animal track, very possibly used by water buffalo on the way to or from some watering hole, it made moving faster. But because of the ease it also increased the danger of encountering a wild beast or something even more deadly.
Several hours later, Temper, on point, gave a hand signal to halt and they all melted into the trees in a group. Sunray stood in front of the team, and brought her hands together. A patch of darkness appeared in front of her, and spread outward, obscuring the group as if they were in a deep hollow.
After a few minutes, a band of Khmer Rouge guerrilla fighters wearing uniforms without insignia, moved down the trail and past the team. When they were gone a safe distance, the team continued back up the way the Khmer Rouge had come from.
"Nice trick,” Firststrike said to Sunray. “You did optically what Echo can do with sound."
"I know other tricks,” she said with a Cheshire cat smile. This time, the one-eyed Exceptional made a point of ‘not getting’ her reference.
Ursa Major moved closer to Lastshot and whispered, “That makes four patrols in the last hour. Eventually, we will have to confront them."
"That's not what we're here for; keep noise discipline,” Lastshot said while he scanned the trail to the left side with his thermal vision. “Keep moving."
Just as he said that, eight more Khmer Rouge came through the foliage from an intersecting trail to the right.
For a moment both groups stared at each other stunned, in one of those frozen timeless moments that seem to precede the explosive chaos of combat, then the Khmer Rouge raised their weapons to fire.
Temper and Firststrike launched several razor sharp throwing stars, taking down two of the soldiers, and knocking the weapons of two others to the ground.
Sunray blinded two more of the Khmer Rouge with a small patch of concentrated darkness. Ursa Major cast a narrow microwave beam that fried one soldier's weapon, causing him to drop it.
Lastshot dropped the nearest soldier with a right cross to the chin and a ridge hand to his throat when he hit the ground. Skorpion uncoiled her whip, wrapped it around the wrist of another soldier, and jerked him off his feet with a lethal charge of electricity.
"No sound!” Lastshot hissed.
Firststrike leapt forward, and flattened one of the remaining soldiers with an elbow to the chin that snapped his head around. Right beside him, Sunray moved in and slammed her extended fingers into the throat of another Khmer Rouge.
Ursa Major, Skorpion, and Lastshot engaged the remaining soldiers. The last man to drop fell to Lastshot's knife, his throat slit from ear to ear. Lastshot stood over the dead man and felt a momentary wave of nausea as, in his mind's eye, he saw a young Conner Le'Schott standing over the body of a Cambodian soldier whose throat he had just cut. Eddie Winters stepped up and put his hand on Le'Schott's shoulder and said “Good job; clean, quick and quiet."
He snapped back to reality when he heard Firststrike whisper, “...quick and quiet. Conner. Area secured—” Firststrike shook Lastshot's arm
"Wha—yeah, good...” Lastshot said. “Uh, hide the bodies."
Skorpion saw her teammate come back to reality from his momentary flashback; she was sure no one else noticed, but she made a mental note to talk to him about it later.
Susan Winters, who stood paralyzed to the side as the violence erupted all around her, looked on as the team dragged the bodies to a shallow depression off the trail. They covered the corpses with foliage and debris to conceal them. Susan was on the verge of being sick. Ursa Major came up to her, and put his arm around her.
"It will be all right, little one. Sometimes world is harsh."
"But, did they have to die?"
He shrugged his shoulders with Russian philosophical acceptance and shook his head. He spoke to her as to a child. “Today it is them, tomorrow ... who can say?"