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// The Mission 
// Story: Gray's Gone 
// by ArmOfSorrow 
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No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. 
-Edgar Allen Poe; The Masque of the Red Death
Now, I was the Red Death. My bullet was my Avatar, and the silent fall of their bodies were it’s seal.
I was in the Ukraine. More specifically, North of Polesskoje, West of Pripyat, eight-hundred miles outside of Chernobyl. Here with my teammate, my best friend, and my superior, Staff Sergeant Matt Barker. Here to take out the leader of some crazy as shit ex-Soviet extremist group, who blamed the United States for the Soviet Union’s downfall. They were currently in the middle of a large arms deal with a representative from what I assumed was the Taliban.
Aiming down the sights of my scope, I could easily make out the objective of this mission, talking with the Rep from Afghanistan. He was a silver haired man, with a Stalin-esque mustache, and had taken to calling himself Commissar Markova, or in English, General Markova. I was ready to pull the trigger, to end this man’s life, and go home back to my brother and sister, but a sharp hand signal from my team mate stopped me. 
“Gray, we’ve got a 5 man patrol heading directly toward us, standard armament; AK-47’s, a grenade each, and radios. We’d better not engage the target until this group is far enough away.” So wait we did, for seconds, then minutes, then almost an hour, because those lazy bastards had decided to sit down and smoke a pack of cigarettes. Finally, they moved on, flicking a butt right into my face, which was covered in dark green flecktarn face-paint and a matching ghillie hood. I was again ready to fire, when my heart stopped. One of the Commies had tripped on Matt’s foot; a careless mistake for someone two ranks higher than me. The man stumbled, recovered, and started walking around us, looking for what he had tripped on. Our luck had finally ran out; he must’ve seen one of our boots underneath the ghillie suit. “Vrag snaypery! Bitʹ trevogu!”
Matt reacted fast as lightning, unsheathing his knife and plunging it into the man’s calf, using it as leverage to pull himself up and slit the man’s throat. I rolled over onto my back, firing my “Light Fifty” Barrett M82, not even bothering to aim down the scope at such a close range. The 50. Caliber BMG round tore into the men, nearly ripping them in half. Thankfully, we were on a cliff face, overlooking the lake-side transaction point, far enough away that the ear splitting boom of my rifle wouldn’t be heard for  a couple of seconds. “Take the shot, we’re out of time!” Matt screamed, already packing his gear into his bag to make our escape. I quickly aimed though the scope, adjusting for distance and wind disruption, and fired, standing up before I was sure the bullet met it’s mark.
Then we ran. Our cover was blown, any other patrols in the area would have heard the commotion and radioed their leaders, informing them of what they heard. We ran into the woods, desperate to get to our rendezvous point with the last two backup sniper teams that made up our platoon. In our haste to get away, we got careless, forgetting our countless hours in a classroom, our training, and ran straight into a minefield. The only minefield for miles, the one that I forced myself to remember the location of, because we had been only fifty yards from it. Thankfully, Matt and I made it through safely, until we stopped for breath. With only two-hundred yards left, we started to walk back to our team, knowing that the enemy patrols wouldn’t venture past the minefield. 
Click.
I froze, Matt froze, and our blood went cold. Looking down, I was relieved to find that it wasn’t me who stepped on the mind, my relief quickly replaced with horror as I saw Matt’s left boot resting on a trigger. I dropped down, carefully digging out the mine, taking note of it’s model and trying to think of how to get ourselves out of this mess. It was a PMN-4, an old Soviet mine used during the 80’s. Go figure. Unfortunately, I could see only one way out of this. I looked at Matt and gave him quick directions, having him slide his foot off of it while simultaneously putting weight onto the mine with my hands. Once I was leaning entirely on the mine, I slowly picked it up, keeping as much pressure on it as I could, hoping to delay the one hundred and twenty second fuse. As fast as I could, I flung the mine to my left, running to the right. It detonated only ten feet away from us, sending a spray of shrapnel in all directions.
Instantly, I heard Matt scream. I threw myself over to him, searching for a wound to put pressure on, hoping that it wasn’t lethal. Finding the entrance would on his upper thigh, I clamped my hands over the gaping wound, trying to stem the flow of blood, hoping that the shrapnel hadn’t severed his femoral artery. We stayed still for what seemed like hours, frantically radioing for help, for a medic, for anything, but it never came. Searching for help, I hoped that one of the other teams heard the explosion and came to investigate. And, subsequently, felt pure despair as our Chinook transport helicopter rise up in the distance and fly in the opposite direction, abandoning us. Our portable radio crackled to life, and we heard our commander’s voice speak to us. “Sorry boys, our area’s too hot. Rendezvous at reserve point Bravo.” I’m ashamed to say, I gave up. Reserve point Bravo was 100 kilometers to the North, at the bottom of the mountain range that we had so easily flown up just the day before.
Fourteen hours later, at eight o’ clock, it turned to night, and started to rain. We were huddling under a tree, cold and miserable, waiting for Matt’s wound to close up enough to begin a trek to a friendly town or city where we could call for help, since it obviously wasn’t going to come on it’s own. As far as the military was concerned, our mission didn’t even happen, and we were MIA in the middle of Afghanistan right now. I was tired, nearly passing out, but refusing to because if I did, Matt could bleed out. In my daze, I thought I saw a figure, walking toward us. Maybe hovering? Nah, I decided. Just a vision then, I’m sure, from too many hours without food or proper rest. None the less, it was creepy. It appeared to be a grey wisp smoke, in the vague form of a person, face in a grotesque mockery of a smile. It stared down at me, asked me if we wanted a second chance to save my friend’s life and mine. I heard it’s voice in my head, a deep, raspy whisper. Out of desperation I accepted, either my biggest mistake or my greatest stroke of luck. As I blacked out, I could have sworn that our bodies were melting into the Earth.