The Rescue (closed)

[zydrate]

Jessica Waters
Phoenix Recon
Call sign: Raven
Age: 31
------------------------------

Another mission success.

Of course, nothing else was to be expected. Out a team of 10 individuals that did the work like a team of 40, Phoenix Recon had earned it's name for that very reason. They were a small team that went on the most dangerous missions. Missions that were mostly off the book.

Their most recent consisted of storming into a North Korean ruler's home, grabbing him and bringing him to justice in another country.

As far as the team were concerned, the US government never acknowledged them. There would never be any award ceremonies for them after a mission. There wouldn't even be a funeral with all the honors either. They kept themselves low key both in public and in private. It was almost like fight club, they were known but not really.

Now, even though they weren't home for long, their next mission was waiting for them. Usually only Jessica dealt with the higher ups and reported back to the team on what was expected of them. Once they got the details, which most of the time, was always very little. They made plans about every possible situation that could occur. Although it wasn't possible to plan for it all, they had no problem thinking on their feet.

And that's what made the team work.

The next mission was nothing new. A hostage rescue. To say these were the easiest would be jinxing it all. They weren't easy. It all depended on who they were rescuing and from where.

A reporter and his camera man were currently being held far inside some part of the Brazilian jungle but some drug lords and in turn for their release, they wanted the Colombian government, as well as the US government to release a few fellow members out of the Mexican and the US prisons.

Seems the hotshot reporter had gotten too close and gotten himself caught. Great. Just great.

"Alright...here we go.." Jessi said as she and the team got to work on their latest plans. If anything, they would be home with in a few days and Mister Reporter guy will be safe and sound...

 

[ArcticAvenue]

“HEY”, Diego screamed desperately, “English! Do you SPEAK English.”

The man dressed in full camo acted as if he didn’t hear Diego’s voice, even though he only sat twenty feet away down the at the end of the hall.

“My Friend, he is dying. Do you understand? Dying?” In his hand, Diego held a metal plate that at one point of time held his breakfast of bread and fruit, but now was nothing more than a noise maker. He slammed it against the bars of the cell over and over again. “I know you can hear me, you got to help him. HE … IS … DYING!!!”

Finally the guard stood and walked slowly down the hallway. Diego could hear the drips of water that covered the floor of the ramshackle prison they were kept in as each of the guard’s boots splashed against the puddles. The place had a mildew stink that only overcame the growing stench of the filth that grew out of the excuse for a toilet in the corner. They had only been in this place for four days, but it had already become a wet & cold hell.

The guard stopped that cell and peered in. Garcia lay on the cot in a fetal position, the tatters of his pants were covered in his own mess. Garcia had vomited and shit himself all night, product of something in the water in this place, but now the dehydration was literally about to finish him. The guard looked uncaringly at Garcia, turned back to Diego, and grabbed the metal plate from him. Shortly the guard walked off and left the building. As far as he could tell, Diego just assumed the guard was leaving to get away from the noise. And that just let the desperation of this situation sink in.

Diego Silva thought this would be the assignment of a lifetime. With Garcia, they were going to imbed themselves into Columbia, under the guise of being Brazilian newsmen in search of football stories; but intent to dig in deep with a drug cartel. Diego had worked hard to get this kind of break since joining the major news network, and his producers just like the fact that his sandy brown hair, South American complexation, and hint of an accent from his immigrant parents could allow him to hide amongst the crowd.

Two weeks in, shit hit the fan.

The guard returned soon, with him another older man who wore the same camo uniform as if they were of some type of military. They looked into the cell and didn’t say a word.

“Hey … hey,” Diego interrupted and got their attention. “Good, you can understand me.”

The older one scowled, proving that he did understand the language.

“You know you can’t ransom out a dead man. You know that.”

The two men turned to each other and started speaking in low tones, using some form of Spanish Diego didn’t understand.

“Hear me? You won’t get anything if you have nothing to bargain with.”

The older one turned back to Diego, and growled, “We know you’re government will pay for bodies. You keep making noise, we will send them two bodies not one.” They turned and started down the hallway away from the cell.

“You can’t just let him die,” Diego screamed.

The old one just replied while walking off, “we already have.”

Diego turned slowly turned back to his cameraman. With a heavy swallow, he accepted the truth of it all. Garcia was dead, leaving this world covered in his own filth. Diego closed his eyes and said a quiet prayer for the colleague. Doing what he could to avoid the hard truth that if something wouldn’t change, this would be his fate as well.

 

[zydrate]

It was nightfall by the time Phoenix Recon arrived. The small compound was heavily guarded but still, it wasn't something they hadn't come across before. It hadn't taken long to issue out orders and deploy before half the team found themselves inside the compound and the other half distracting the rest of the militia.

The plan was to enter the compound, extract the two hostages, get them to the LZ and get them out of the jungle and into friendly territory. Nothing complicated. If everyone did their part and didn't get killed, they would all be back home within 48 hours and on American soil before the drug lords knew how to handle the situation.

Reaching the holding cells, Jessi and two others from her team moved quietly as Raider moved on ahead, taking out each guard with a single bullet to the head. Their Intel was dead on, it was amazing what a little money could buy…Jessi quickly directed the others to the one that was holding the reporter and his camera man. Holding a hand up to motion her team to stop…with a quick glance from the shadows, she saw one man standing at a cell, leaning against the door and looking down at his phone...obviously not paying attention. With a few quick gestures, Jessi signaled for one of the other team members to take out the guard on her mark.

A sickening sound of skin-to-skin followed by a groan and some shouting in Portuguese, all which Jessi understood perfectly… they were asking, rather yelling at the other person when she signaled for Raider to take the shot on the guard by the door…he soon went down…slumping on to the floor in a heap.

Jessi waited for 15 seconds before they advanced on the remaining men in the small holding area. The only shouts were from the guards…all while her team killed and silenced them.

It all happened in less than a minute. The area was secure and Jessi, as well as Draco, her 2nd in command, went to the holding cell where the shouts in English came from. Kneeling beside the man, Jessi pushed his face up by his chin and looked at him, trying to identify him as one of the two men. By the way he was dressed, she could only assume this was the reporter but there was only one way to be sure. She pulled out a small device from her pocket and held it against the man’s thumb and looked at her small military issued phone. It brought up the man’s information but verbally, Jessi didn’t say anything out loud, instead she looked at the man before nodding to Draco to help the man up.

They already stayed too long but there was a problem with the other man…the camera man, he was dead. It didn’t matter; it was part of the contingency. They prepared for all they could think of. It was then she switched with Draco who picked up the dead body and slung it over his shoulder fireman style.

Jessi took point and led her team back out the way the way they had come--Easy part down, hard part was getting them all to the extraction point alive.

With a few smartly planted devices on the perimeter of the camp, Jessi's team was able to distract the militia as they went forth with the rescue attempt. There was no way to call this mission a success...not until everyone got out safe. There was no way in hell she was going to jinx anything, especially at such a critical moment when they were so far from completing--Shots started to ring out beyond the camp and it was then Jessi realized that the remaining team was taking on hostiles! This was why they had several plans worked out... "Archer 4!" Jessi called out into her comm until and only her team would understand what that would mean. She readied her weapon as she had another man assist the report, as she preceded forward, her men behind her with the reporter and the deceased camera man.

Suddenly explosives went off outside of the compound and that meant the team had less than 5 minutes to get their asses out of there immediately. They had planned for the hostages to be either hurt or immobile but thankfully, both were able to move, albeit slowly but still, it was better than nothing. "Let's get moving!" Jessi said calmly into her mic. They were less than 2 clicks away from the rendezvous point and after that, they would head to a small unmanned airport and from there, head back to US territory.

Once they all reached the point and were inside the chopper as it didn’t wait to take off once the last crew-member barely stepped in. As the chopper was in the air as her team assessed the damages they took while the fresh soldiers took over with the one remaining hostage, looking him over and asking them questions to see how badly he was injured and giving him an IV of fluids while the deceased camera man was placed in a body bag and secured.

 

[ArcticAvenue]

It’s said that when placed into a situation of greater intensity, people’s instincts change from their normal personna. Diego, the one who is normally so calm & confident in the face of any challenging interview or situation, never faced a more intense situation like what played out in that prison those short dark moments. Earlier that day, he watched Garcia die, but those last few hours seemed to last years. Garcia was the first person he saw die in front of his own eyes. The guard outside of his cell went so much quicker. There was no suggestion of trouble, then his head exploded right in front Diego. Before that had a chance to register, he was on the ground, held in place, and fingerprinted. The words used were English, American English, and the before a breath had passed, they were heading for the exit.

Suddenly, everything around him seemed to go mad. Gunfire. Demolitions. Screams and shouts. Diego couldn’t connect to those commands given to him, but he complied. All he knew was to move, move quickly, and stay on his feet.

Only once he was in the copter, and an IV was stuck into his arm, did it all start to catch up with him. And BOY did it ever catch up with him.

“Holy ….” he stopped and breathed, breathed again, and finished, “.. Shit”

“What is your name, can you remember your name?” a male American voice cut through the dark.

“Holy Shit!”

He could feel hands on his head and neck as if searching for injuries. “I need you to tell me your name,” the same voice asked. It didn’t sound like it came from the one who had his hands on him, but there were a lot of people inside this thing.

“Diego,” he found in his memory.

“Diego what?”

Diego lifted his hand and looked down at it. The shaking was so pronounced it felt like he was in a cartoon. “I … I can’t stop my hand from … “

“You name sir, I need your full name.”

A flashlight shot into one of his eyes. Before he could squint or put his hand up, it moved to the other eye, then shut off. “Diego Raymond Silva,” he blurted. “What … who are you?”

“Do you remember where you were at,” the voice came again.

A second voice, now coming from the hands, also seemingly male cut through. “No sign of head trauma, no evidence of concussion.”

“I was, the prison, that’s where I was at.” He crossed his arms, and tightened down on his shaking hands. “The Monstro Tigre Cartel had us.”

A voice across the way stated quietly, “other is DOA.”

Diego leaned forward sharply. “Garcia … they let him die. He got sick and they ..”

A hand pressed into his chest and pushed him back into the seat. “Just try to relax sir. Let us take care of you.”

It was madness. All of it. No more than anything of time passed, and now he was free of that cell moving skyward and towards safety. Yet it all went so quick that none of it made sense.

One of the voices came through and called, “permission to use morphine to calm him?” It seemed like a request, not like a medical clearance but something more strategic. Like it wasn’t meant for another medic.

Diego just sat back, felt his heart start to beat up to his throat. If that was meant for him, than God knows what could be still to come.

 

[zydrate]

Two days had passed since they arrived at one of the bases in the states. Raven's team was grounded due to some intelligence that her team had been found out after they rescued the hostages. It probably a cheap deploy to get the Military to talk about who it was they had sent over to rescue them. She felt that she didn't have anything to worry about seeing as how this would probably blow over soon and they'd be put back to work.

The whole rescue couldn't have gone any better. No casualties on her team. Well, except for the camera man, who unfortunately was already deceased by the time they got there. His body wouldn't be released to his family until the higher ups talked to his family about it.

Jessi on the other hand, wondered about the reporter, who had been in the base hospital since they landed. She was curious to see how he was doing. He was a mess in the chopper on the way back but that was to be expected. Hell, even seasoned veterans had a hard time dealing with such traumatic events. Seems this poor guy went in blindly not knowing the dangers he could run into out in such sensitive territory...and dangerous to boot.

In fact, on her down time, Jessi had pulled up some recent clips of Mr. Silva's news stories, thank goodness for YouTube, there was plenty. Jessi found stories he did on bomb threats, bank robberies and other little stories here and there.

She had to admit he was good. And he looked really good too.

"Whoa...where did that come from?" she thought as she shut off her laptop and sat back, thinking about him.

 

[ArcticAvenue]

Diego picked at the tape holding the needle in his arm. It was nothing more than a thin piece of metal stuck into a vein but it felt as confining as that prison did. Since arriving back stateside, they kept him in a hospital and watched him recover. Didn’t take long for him to become rehydrated, and didn’t take him long to get bored of daytime TV. It wasn’t that he had a problem with hospitals, it was that he had a problem with sitting around. Diego kept in shape mostly by running, and liked that freedom of putting feet to the ground. Between the hospital, the escape, the prison, the capture; he’d gone way too long without that feeling - and now he had no way to release that energy, all he could do was pick at the tape.

The door to his room unlocked, reminding him once more than his reward for release from a locked cage was a locked room; but shortly a man in military fatigues entered and quickly started speaking to him. “Mr. Silva. We’ve granted your employer the ability to speak to you to verify your condition.” He opened up a laptop and placed it on the food tray, but tapped out some things outside of Diego's vision. “You will have no more than five minutes. You are not allowed to disclose your location or details of the operation to extract you. If you do, the communication will be termination and we will have to take your employer into containment. Is that understood?”

Diego had an eyebrow raised, and replied, “Good morning Major Biggs, did you catch the game last night?”

The major snapped a look quickly at him, not seemingly too into game. “If you are not well, I can reshedule and have the doctor look …”

“No no,” Diego interrupted. “It’s understood sir.”

One quick tap of the keyboard, and he swung the laptop to face him. There on the webcam was his current boss (and former girlfriend) Katie Mathers.

“Oh my god, thank goodness,” she screamed through the screen. “Have you been shot? Did they hurt you?”

“Kate … I’m fine,” he tried to interrupt.

“But with Garcia, I was sure … you heard about what happened to him …”

“I was there, Katie.”

“You were there … I was sure that if it happened …”

“Katie, Stop. We have only five minutes. Can I get to work on the story. I can’t talk to you about the ending, but I can get the beginning of it all started. ”

She caught her breath, and tried to go into boss mode. “Right. Well. At this point of time, the military hasn’t released your footage. So we can’t do a story yet. But that could be the least of your problems. There is a video out there from Monstro Tigre Cartel; they made some pretty serious statements.”

“Statements like what?”

Major Biggs stepped closer at that moment and commanded, “we are working to verify the validity of the video at this time; however, we haven’t confirmed there is truth to it. Miss Mathers, I ask you to withhold any other speculations at this time.”

Katie growled, put her fingers into her hair. They twiched like they used to when she was stressed on a project. Boss mode was fading on her.

“Hey, Kate, look at me,” Diego stated. When she looked towards her screen once more he spoke in a softer and direct tone. “I’m okay. I’m going to continue to be okay. They are taking care of me, and in no time we can get the gang together for shots at The Reserve, alright?”

She broke a little bit of a smile, and the spark that shown before their relationship went sour lit in her eye. “We’re all happy to know you made it. All of us.”

“Alright time,” chimed in the Major and started to close the laptop on him.

“Soon, Katie, soon,” Diego called before the cover closed.

Briskly, the Major turned to the door but stated over his shoulder, “when we are ready with intel on that video, we will share it with you.” Just as quick, he was gone, the door was closed, and the lock snapped into place.

Diego let out a long sigh, and peered towards the sliver of a window next to him. He shrugged his shoulders. Then started picking at the tape on his arm again.

 

[zydrate]

“You should know better than to hide this sort of shit from the Major.” Draco said as he watched a nurse bandage up Raven’s leg. Despite the success of the mission, she had taken a bullet…although it was just a graze, it was something she still needed to report.

Jessi sighed. If anyone would worry, it was Draco. “I told you before, I didn’t even know until after we landed at the LZ and got out of our gear. Besides, all we have to do is wait for the Major to clear me in a couple of days. We’re grounded after all. The team needs some leave anyway.”

“Yeah well, he wants to talk to you after this.”

Another sigh escaped her and Jessi nodded, “Yeah, I know.”

“Makes me wonder if it has something to do with that reporter guy we rescued. I heard he was being kept under lockdown because of some threat made against him.”

Jessi shrugged, “Maybe.” She knew it did. There were just some things she couldn’t share with the team. The Major had wanted to talk to her because of a video that had surfaced showing the Cartel executing the rest of the men in the compound that Jessi and her team had infiltrated in order to rescue the reporter.

Diego. That was his name. It was hard to refer to him as an individual seeing as how he was always referred to as “subject”, “victim”, or “reporter”. There was no time to get personal with him seeing as how if they didn’t succeed it wouldn’t seem like such a loss. It may have seemed kind of heartless but it was needed.

Except Jessi had formed an attachment. Probable because he was still on base. Probably because she had watched a lot of his reports…or perhaps—

“OK Sergeant, you’re free to go.” The nurse said, finishing up on Jessi’s leg after bandaging it up. This was the last time she would be in here. She was free to remove the dressing tomorrow but still needed to take antibiotics for the next 5 days.

***
After her meeting with the Major, Jessi found herself standing outside the door to the reporter’s room. The guard assigned to watch over the report had unlocked the door for Jessi. She stepped inside in and looked at the man she and her team had rescued. He looked extremely bored…who could blame him? She hated her time in the infirmary too. They were alike, in a few ways…they each had to be part of the action…

“Mr. Silva, I’m Sgt. Jessica Waters, and I’m here to escort you home.”

 

[ArcticAvenue]

He heard the door unlock. Heard someone enter. Heard he say what she said. But didn’t look direclty at her, not at first. Instead he raised a single finger up to her to have her wait, and staring at the TV he stated in direct and staccato words:

“In One Ear And Out The Other”

Just then the voices on the TV mimicked it, “I’d like to solve, Pat.” “Go Ahead.” “In One Ear And Out The Other”

Music started playing, and Diego clapped his hands beamed a little out of the oh so simple triumph over the boredom if just for one minute. He swung his feet to the floor off the bed, and grabbed at his water bottle. It was the only thing he had to grab, doctor’s orders to drink a couple of those a day to make sure he is hydrated properly. There wasn’t anything else to grab because there was nothing to take home. He landed at this hotel with only the clothes on his back. Noone was allowed to visit so he had no pack to go home with either. So, if it weren’t for the bottle he would walk out of the hospital empty handed.

Not that he was too wild about the clothes either. It was quite literally the same thing he wore going into the forest where they were captured. The hospital was kind enough to wash all the stink off of them, but the first thing he wanted to do was get out of the outfit he spent the most traumatic time of his life in. Maybe better, he’d get home and burn the kakhi shorts & dull blue polo shirt just to put that chapter behind him.

Turning to his escort, he stopped in his tracks briefly. She was a beautiful sight for sure. Dark hair, dark eyes, and full lips. Yet there was something familiar about her, something he couldn’t quite place. Taking a moment to pull the bottle to his suddenly dry mouth, he swallowed and answered.

“Escort home. I’ll be happy to get there. But … can’t I just head there on my own? Or is this something to do with that video or something?”