That Others May Live

by CptBrony

Operation: Desert Fury

Operation: Desert Fury

Duke and Frost had gotten up early the morning of the mission to make sure that they were totally prepared. They suited up with their plates, basic gear, water, ammo, grenades, flashbangs, and guns. Duke grabbed the binoculars as well. One can never be too careful, and surveillance is the ultimate tool for a special operator.

When they set out that morning, Amel didn’t follow them out of the palace for fear of being kept out. She said goodbye from the room, grabbing Frost’s leg and hugging him tight. “Good luck.” She sounded like she was actually afraid that the men might not come back. After assuring her that they would return, the men went to the war room to meet their sister team for the mission.

They had met up at the front gate and set out immediately, taking little time to go over anything. The stallions seemed a bit uncomfortable around the men, just as the men were around the stallions. While they traveled, the men would catch the stallions sneaking looks at them and whispering amongst themselves. It made them uneasy.

“Boss, I don’t trust these guys,” Frost said.

Duke nodded. “Me neither. But they’re all we’ve got for now.”

They rode for the entire day, with Duke and Frost in a small carriage and the stallions walking beside them. The sun was hot, but the men were in the shade to avoid sunburn, while the stallions had light fur to keep them from getting burned.

They arrived at the infill zone that night around 2340 hours. The moon was only a sliver in the sky, providing very little light for them to be detected in. Above, the stars ruled over the sky, suspended in place like leaves under water. The hills had become all out mountains and valleys, with villages like Afaf’s scattered throughout the valleys. The night was completely silent, save for a few distressed voices from the valley below the infill point.

Nedal crawled to the edge of the cliff that the team was waiting on, followed by his second-in-command and the PJ’s. Duke pulled out his binoculars and took a look, getting an envious look from Nedal over his better tech.

Duke looked through his lenses at a fairly large village down in the valley. The place looked pretty normal, with mud houses, a little street market, and small farms. But that was quickly overshadowed when he spotted a large group of horses -- possibly the entire population of the village -- being kept in a small area toward what was likely main building of the village. They were surrounded by a group of griffons that were carrying scimitars and clubs. The griffons barked orders at the villagers, causing them to cower in fear.

Nedal was already impatient, but not knowing what was happening while a foreigner did was getting to him. “Well?” he asked. “What do you see?”

Duke lowered the binoculars and put them into his gear web. “The majority of the villagers are being kept around the main building, and they are surrounded by a group of griffons that did NOT look friendly.” Nedal grunted a response. “And I couldn’t see if they have anyone patrolling the area.”

Nedal contemplated this. “Alright.” He crawled his way away from the edge of the cliff with the men. “Here’s the mission.” The men had not been given specifics until just now. “You two have to go in and look for one of our guys. And yours, I suppose.” He sounded disgusted. “If you find them, you get them out. While you’re searching outside of the fight, we’ll be attacking from the hillside.”

Frost listened and voiced his concerns about the plan. “What about the villagers?” he asked. “If they see you coming, the griffons might hurt them or worse.”

Nedal growled at Frost, which only drew a dissatisfied frown from the man. “They aren’t our concern. We’re only here to show them that they can’t get away with committing their acts of terror within our borders. To Tartarus with the villagers.”

Frost looked at Duke, who looked back at Frost. “Those aren’t the rules of engagement that we follow,” he explained calmly. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing this our way.”

Nedal stood all the way up to intimidate the men. “No. You want our help, you do this OUR way.”

Duke and Frost stood up, hands on their weapons. “We’re helping you, ass. So if you want us to help you with your quite frankly primitive war, then you do what we want,” Duke explained.

Nedal growled, but didn’t continue. Duke took this as his chance to explain the new rules. “Nedal, you translate.” Duke pulled in the group. “Frost and I are going to go down there first under the cover of darkness. We’ll move through the village, searching for our objectives, and if we find them, we’ll get them out. After that, we’ll come back down and put ourselves in a position to make sure nothing happens to the hostages when you assault.” He listened intently as Nedal translated for him. “Questions?”

Nedal finished, and the stallions looked a bit confused, which worried Duke. He had no way of making sure that Nedal said what he wanted him to; he didn’t trust him. Still, this had to happen tonight, so Duke just had to hope for the best. “Good.” He and Frost stood up and made their way back to the edge of the cliff to get one last look at the village.

They concluded that there was nothing new for them to see, and so they used some long ropes brought by the horses to climb down the cliff. It made the men uncomfortable to be held up by nothing but the strength of the mouths of the horses above them, topped by the lack of trust, but the only other way would take too long. It only took them a few minutes to get all the way down to the ground, where they took up shooting positions to make sure the area was safe.

Once they knew they were clear, the men started making their way to the village, keeping low and quiet along the way. Up above, Nedal and his stallions watched on, the enlisted looking on in wonder, Nedal with a scowl on his face. He looked up ahead at the enemy-controlled village, then back to the men. They would be there in a relatively short time.

“الخروج.” Nedal ordered. The stallions stood up and followed orders.

Duke and Frost were approaching the village; they were about two hundred meters away from the edge of it. Weapons held up and rounds chambered, they scanned the area up ahead for any griffons. “Clear,” Duke stated quietly. The two men took the opportunity to stand up and run to the village.

As soon as they were within arm’s reach of the first building, they dropped back into their low stances to evade detection. Frost moved forward to take point and peeked around the corner of the building. Nothing. “Clear.” The two men quietly made their way around the corner and to the end of the next wall. Once there, they stopped. “Hold,” Frost said. He looked around the corner again, but instead of seeing no one, this time there was a griffon patrol walking down the street. In the darkness, they didn’t see Frost’s head poke out of the corner. He quickly retracted it.

“Boss, we got a patrol. Three griffons, all with swords and chest armor.”

“Alright. Wait til’ they pass. We do this silently,” Duke ordered. Frost nodded back to him and they waited.

A few minutes later, the griffon patrol walked past them, not really paying attention to their surroundings. One was incredibly gruff sounding, while the other two sounded much more submissive, like underlings.. One said something in their language and prompted the gruff one to claw him across the face. Evidently, the gruff one was the leader.

Once the patrol was far enough to their left, they left the relative safety of the alley they were in and ran across the street into a small home. With their weapons drawn they scanned the interior, and when they saw no hostiles they entered. Duke took a look outside to check if the patrol was turning around, but they turned a corner and went out of sight.

He turned to Frost, who had his ear to the wall on the opposite side, probably trying to listen for anything outside. “Frost, over here,” Duke whispered. Frost left the wall and approached Duke. “We gotta look for OGA, see if he’s here. We start with the buildings on the outskirts, then move onto the inner section of the village. And remember: do it silently.” Frost nodded, and the men got ready to move out again.

No one was outside, and they took the chance to make a move to the next home. For the single-room huts, they just peeked inside and moved on. It was easy enough to check those, only without entering -- there was a bit more risk of being caught. For some of the bigger homes, multiple rooms -- the only multi-floor home was the main house -- they had to enter inside and check each room.

They went around the village perimeter and slowly made their way deeper in as they went. Once they started getting farther in, that was when the multi-room homes started becoming more common. It ate away time. On top of it taking longer, they had to move slower and more quietly as they penetrated the village, with patrols becoming more common and larger. Instead of hiding between homes, they had to hide in them because the new patrols were carrying torches, and actually checked the alleys. Probably looking for villagers that were hiding.

The men were about eighty meters from the center of town when they came to a house much larger than most, one that had several rooms and even a ladder to the roof. Presumably, there was something up there of value, which was likely gone now. Still, it held value to the Pararescuemen; it was a vantage point. The ladder outside was broken, but with any luck, there would be one inside.

“Inside,” Duke ordered. He and Frost took up positions at the doorway that had a cloth instead of a door and poked in at the same time. No one. “Move.” The two men entered the home silent as a pair of cockroaches crawling across your bed at night.

The men stayed together in the house. They started out in the foyer where they entered, looking around for anything that they could use to get up top. It wasn’t that they were inspired by the ladder to go to the roof; it was that the ladder indicated that the roof was a safe place to go and wouldn’t collapse.

After finding nothing in the foyer, the men decided to go to the right and check the next room there. They would start right and if they found nothing, they would go back to the left. The first room they went through was a living room.

It was filled with books, so the previous owner of this home was definitely educated and wealthy. The place was ransacked; the books were all over the floor, torn apart and tossed about. There were ripped up cushions for sitting toward the wall, their stuffing all over the floor. The magical light fixture above them was flickering just a bit, but not enough to mess with a person’s vision.

“Someone had a bad day,” Frost commented. They moved into the room and looked around for anything they could use to get to the roof. When they found nothing, Frost took point and went into the next room. “Clear,” he announced in a whisper. The men moved into the kitchen of the house.

There was nothing here either, and this was apparently the end of this section of the house. “Back to the foyer.” Duke thought. He got Frost’s attention by keying his mic and then pointed back the way they came. Frost nodded back to him, and they moved with the noise of a church mouse on the way back to the foyer, listening for movement outside.

There was nothing. They proceeded into the next room.

Within was something they hadn’t been expecting: a griffon, sitting at a desk, writing furiously on something. He or she was hunched over and sounded frustrated, though with their different customs, he could have been feeling anything. Around him were several small piles of papers, each with a little weight on it. He never heard the men enter the room.

Duke was about to move forward to dispatch the griffon when Frost tapped his shoulder. He turned around to look and was greeted by Frost putting his finger to his lips. Duke nodded and stepped back to let Frost go.

He stepped forward, quiet as a mouse, and pulled his CRKT FE9 from its sheath. The anodized black blade was almost invisible in the room, save for the uncolored, razor sharp edge of the knife. As Frost moved forward toward the enemy, he shifted the knife in his hand to get a better hold on it. For this particular function, he knew that the hammer grip was best.

Frost got right up behind the griffon and looked back at Duke. He nodded. With the okay to make the kill, Frost quickly brought his hand around and closed it on the griffon’s beak, keeping him from squawking about while he plunged the nine inch blade into the back of his neck, severing the brainstem for an instant kill. Frost pulled the knife out and gently lowered the body of his foe to the floor, where it silently lay still.

“Nice,” Duke said as he passed by Frost to take point on the next room.

Frost fell in behind instantly, and they made their way through the rest of the rooms. There were no more griffons or papers, so they returned to the room with the dead griffon and looked through the documents. There was a problem: the documents, as expected, weren’t written in English. But that wasn’t it; they were written in a language that did not look like the one they had been seeing on the walls of the palace.

“Damn,” Duke thought as he looked over the documents. If these could have provided any intel on the village, they were made useless by this language. No one would be able to read them. “Best to leave them for now.” he decided. They could have come back for them later.

Frost called to him from the corner of the room. “Boss, I think I got something here.” Duke turned around to look. “It’s a ladder to a hatch in the ceiling.”

Duke observed the ladder and followed it up to the ceiling, where there was, in fact, a hatch. How these horses were supposed to use it, he wasn’t sure. Magic. “Good work,” he said back. Frost started climbing the ladder, followed soon after by Duke, and they found themselves on the roof.

Up on the roof, the men crawled over to the edge to get a decent look at the hostage situation below them. Part of the arrangement was to help them with their war, as much as it felt weird to them, so they had to make sure the villagers came out okay. Once at the edge, they made a sitrep.

They weren’t far at all from where the hostages were being held. The entire village was there, by the looks of it. Mares held their foals close and stallions stood between their families and the griffons. Down below, the situation was clearly extremely tense; one thing wrong, and it might explode. The men kept their eyes on the area.

“Boss, it doesn’t look too good for them,” Frost commented grimly.

“I know.”

“What should we do?”

Duke thought for a moment. “Well, our priority is OGA and info regarding him, but we may already have that. But then again, he might be in the main house.”

“There’s no way we’re getting in there without a fight.”

“I know.” Duke thought again. “Alright. I think I’ve got it. We-” He paused. Off in the distance, he spotted something. In fact, he spotted a bunch of things. And they were all moving. “What the hell?”

Frost followed his eyes, and as the two men realized what they were looking at, alarm bells started ringing.

That bastard was going through with his original plan!

“Dammit!” Duke cursed in a whisper. “We gotta move.”

“Roger that,” Frost replied. The two men went back down through the hatch and into the house. “Boss, what’re we gonna do? If they get here, it’ll be total chaos.” Voices were no longer low.

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking.” Duke tried to come up with a plan. Nothing looked particularly good here. “Argh! Why is he so... argh!” He held his weapon in ready position and got moving. “Come on, we’re gonna try to make a distraction right before the attack force gets here. We need to get to good positions.” Frost nodded.

They ran around the house, sticking to the shadows as much as possible, and approached the situational area. “Frost, get over to the side. Cover the hostages from there.”

“Rog’.” He turned back around and took the longer way over to the side of the area.

Once he was in position, Frost took up a firing stance in the shade of an alleyway and waited. With trained eyes, the two men found each other again and waited. Frost didn’t need a signal to know when to open fire, though; he would be able to tell when Duke wanted to attack.

They waited in place for a few minutes, but those minutes felt like centuries. They knew that Nedal’s team was attacking, it was just a matter of time until they arrived. They had no idea of how the griffons would react, what they might try to do to the villagers. They didn’t know if there were traps waiting for Nedal’s force. All in all, it made waiting really suck.

There was shouting at the edge of the village. In the distance, the clash of metal on metal could be heard. The griffons around the villagers faced that direction; Duke and Frost faced them with itchy trigger fingers. One of the griffons shouted something, and about one quarter of the guarding griffons flew off in a haste. The others all became much more alert, watching the villagers with grim elation and controlled anger. They were waiting for this to happen.

Suddenly, one started talking. It was the gruff sounding one from earlier. “أراهن كنت تعتقد أن الملك الخاص بك وسوف تساعدك.” he said. “أنه سيفشل لك تماما كما فشلت شعبنا ببعيد.” The villagers didn’t move an inch, so the griffon took the chance to put himself closer to a single mare. “وأتساءل ما كنت مثل.” She stepped back from him, terrified, into the crowd of hostages. The griffon moved closer, but a stallion got in the way. “تحرك.” The stallion shook his head; in response, the griffon knocked him aside.

Duke looked to Frost, who nodded, and both men stood out of the shadows. With controlled shots, they each started shooting the guards around the group of hostages, taking each one down with one or two shots. They never even knew what was hitting them before most of them were down.

“:تشغيل!” one yelled. It and several others ran into the main building and shut the door as they ran in.

Duke and Frost exited their spots and took up positions around the group. Primarily, they had their eyes on the building, but being special operators, they had their eyes everywhere. That was how they saw the oncoming enemies from the sky.

“Duke, up high!” Frost shouted. The men aimed up and opened fire at the group of seven griffons descending upon them from above. With controlled shots, the men used the remainders of their mags to take down four of them. The other three landed on the ground, one with a wound to its shoulder, the other two uninjured, not twelve feet from either man. Hitting moving targets is far from easy.

The men let their weapons fall to their sides, secured by straps, and pulled their sidearms. Duke got two shots off at one before the other closed in for a close quarters fight. It got close and swiped at Duke’s arm, keeping the pistol pointed away from it, and went for a slash across his neck with its vicious claws. Duke dodged and went back, using his left hand to pull out his knife, a simple KaBar, and slashed at his attacker. He missed, but it got the griffon to back off. With more space, he brought his hand back around and fired three shots into the griffon, two in the chest, one in the neck. It fell down in a mess of sticky feathers.

Frost had been less fortunate; the griffon landed right next to him. Before he could get his pistol around, it was on top of him, trying to peck at his throat. Frost knee’d it in the gut and tossed it off of him. As it fell away, it landed on his wrist and he dropped his pistol. He and the griffon got back up quickly, the pistol in between them.

Frost looked at the pistol, then at the griffon, and grinned. “It’s been a while,” he said as he pulled out his FE9 again, “since I’ve had a good fight.” The griffon snorted at him, clearly not understanding him, and dragged its talons against the dirt. Frost responded by putting his knife out in front of him, holding it in standard position. “Bring it on.”

The griffon moved fast towards him, faster than he would have thought, and drew its sword. The blade was a scimitar, long, curvy, and heavy, and made a whoosh as it fell. Frost sidestepped it, letting the weight of the weapon take it out of harm’s way, and moved in for the kill. He took the knife and pushed it into what might be considered the wrist of the giant bird and pushed up from there, drawing the blade across its arm-like appendage. The knife continued across the neck of the bird and went into the air, where it then came back down with force into the back of the griffon’s neck. The griffon made a shocked noise in Frost’s cold embrace, and it tried to breath in. The knife was lodged into its windpipe.

“Looks like it’ll be a bit longer.” He took the scimitar out of the griffon’s talons with his left hand and pulled his knife out, then stepped away. “Thanks for trying.” The griffon fell with an unceremonious thud to the ground.

Frost picked up his pistol and set it back in his holster, then walked over to Duke. “You good?” he asked. Duke nodded, and the men looked over the villagers. “They look alright,” he commented. “Should we go into the main building?”

Duke stood. “Let’s.”

Duke got up and took the lead in the assault on the building, ignoring the cheers that were coming from the village horses behind the men. At the door, they both reloaded, Duke taking the left side and Frost the right. Duke reached around his back and pulled out a flashbang.

“Ready?” he asked. Frost grunted and nodded. “Breach!”

Frost came around and kicked the door down, and Duke pulled the pin on the flashbang and tossed it inside. Once the flash went off and the angry shouts resounded from inside, the men stormed in. Rather than take the griffons down, there were three in the first room, the men tackled them and broke their wings, then threw them outside, either through a window or the open door. Once there, the villagers were able to take care of them.

Frost took a look outside and saw that Nedal’s force had made its way to the center of town. His stallions were outside, barking orders at the living griffons, and giving terse orders to the villagers. Figuring that the villagers were safe enough, Frost turned away from the window and refocused his attention on the task at hand.

Duke was already making his way further into the house, so Frost fell in behind and covered his six as he advanced. Each time they entered a room to clear it, it was empty.

“Damn!” Duke cursed. “They left already. Get out back, they might still be around.”

“Got it.”

The men ran out the back entrance to the building and scanned the area. Frost spotted movement to the right. “There!” he shouted as he started to give chase. Duke followed suit, and they ran after the figures in the dark. The two men could hear a struggle of some kind coming from the group. “They must have a prisoner with them!” Frost shouted.

They followed the group all the way out of the village to a small opening with a large number of boulders. The men kept on alert as they entered the area, keeping their eyes on the boulders for any hostiles that might pop out. Duke put up a fist and they stopped and listened; there was a scuffle in the distance, directly ahead. “Go.” It was time to be silent again.

They advanced, using the shadows of the boulders for cover of darkness as they moved out. The scuffle wasn’t moving; they could tell because it was rapidly getting closer. Now, the men could hear multiple voices. “Might be more than one POW,” Duke thought. Now, the sounds were just over the next boulder. Just on the other side...

“العدو في الأفق!” a voice shouted from their left. The men looked over; a male sounding griffon was yelling and pointing at them. The men each fired off one shot, both hitting the center of mass, knocking the stupid bird off its feet. On the other side of the boulder, several voices shouted out.

“Get him out of here!” a female voice angrily ordered. Duke and Frost ran around the boulder and saw a small group of griffons, four, with a very strange prisoner.

“OGA!?!?” Duke shouted.

“JSOC!?!?” the prisoner shouted back. Then the prisoner was struck across the face with a rock, knocking him unconscious, and the griffons flew away with him, rapidly gaining altitude. Duke and Frost took aim at the one carrying OGA, but neither fired off a shot. If he fell from there, he could very easily die on landing.

Duke let his weapon fall from firing stance and angrily kicked at a nearby boulder. “Dammit dammit dammit!” he shouted. “We almost had him! We were THAT close!” He paced around for a couple of seconds, then fell to the ground and sat. “So close.”

Frost looked up at the sky, following the griffons as the flew off. “It’s never that easy, boss. Murphy’s never allowed for that.” He didn’t take his eyes off of the flying beasts as he continued. “But you know what this means, right boss?”

“Yeah...”

“It means that he’s alive. And it means that we’re gonna go get him.” He turned to Duke. “Even if we have to fight for him.” Duke got up and looked at his partner. “And we’re gonna win.”

With new determination and a reason to want to fight these griffons, the men went back to the village to move on with their mission, ready for whatever came at them.

Comments

[Ogatasensei123]

They arrived at the infill zone

this would actually be infil zone infill would be filling something up, wheras infil is short for infiltration

other than that it's pretty good

[Amethyst Blade]

I find these guys performance lacking for the supposely well trained soldiers tag...
Like that shooting moving targets...if im not wrong, those griffon were moving toward them. the whole took of with prisoner thing...if they react fast enough like any competent soldier, they would have shot them immediately before any decent attitule were gained...griffon is a big target and human isn't good for being meat shield to such big targets even if we consider the average pony mare to be about 3.1 feet tall and scale it to the griffon.

[Titan Commander Sebaste]

Ooh, that's gonna smart for Duke and Frost, having their objective a few feet from them and then getting snatched from their grasp

[ArcaneVisions]

Little to much mindless vIolence. why wouldn't they interrogate the lone griffon first.

[Truthseeker]

Aaaand why were our two operators not issued silencers for a covert op?

[Reganadex]

7027622
Because there’s no such thing as silencing weapons and in such a close proximity suppressors wouldn’t make much of a difference.