Sam Samson 0 Posted September 16, 2002 Got inspired by the war story thread. Didn't want to mess up the other's story thread, so I made up my own. Had some time yesterday afternoon and came up with this. Has it all: action, psychology, a storyline... To read it takes about 13 min. Please critique it, (if you know something about literature... ) ******************************************* The Phantom Suicide [K](2002 by Sam Samson)[/K] It was close to 0100 when the agile little MH-6 helicopter finally descended on the cold desert floor and hovered there for a second. The rotor wash kicked up a dust cloud big enough to pass for a small sandstorm. The operator held his breath as he burst from the cockpit into the deafening roar of the engine. He started digging as soon as his feet hit the ground, not once glancing back as the Little Bird left him. It was a windless night. When the dust finally settled and the stars came back out, there was no trace of him anywhere. At around 1900 that same day Ali Hamd'awl on the bench of his horse cart scratched his scraggly head and muttered expletives when the lanky, thickly mustachioed wanderer caught his eye. The tall man was languidly strolling in the direction of the big city, which Ali had left a good while ago. A string of beads dangled from the man's hand. This fellow in his white haik, his robe, walked alone and without the trademark AK every man in this part of the world had ordinarily slung over his shoulder. Travellers normally banded together and moved in groups for safety, since power still flowed from the barrel of a gun around here. This man walked alone and unarmed! Ali Hamd'awl judged the man a fool. The operator had turned his head to acknowledge the old farmer rattling by, giving the muttering man a gentle smile. Ali Hamd'awl didn't know it of course, but the wanderer had prepared for this walk all of four weeks. He was glad to finally be here and get on with his job. He wanted to reach the city before sundown, and the sun had already begun to set. The op belonged to Echo Echelon, the army's invisible unit for impossible tasks. Not a soul knew about Echo and the brass thought that was just dandy. They wouldn't even admit to the unit's existence. Echo operated strictly in secret. So far they were successful: not even the preying eyes of notoriously nosy investigative reporters had found out about them. And the brief paragraph in Jane's Defense Digest seemed to be a mere April fool's prank, since it had appeared precisely on..., you know which day. Echo consisted solely of "black" operators, which meant nobody knew they were even present. They walked a fine line, working in strange, postapocalyptic countries in which they were not welcome, doing strange things their government would never acknowledge publicly. They were the army's top hunter/killers. They would appear out of nowhere. And after taking down their tango they would vanish into the flitting shadows like the phantoms they were. They seemed to just evaporate. The men never assassinated heads of state. The law of their land was against that, which they didn't mind. But when some two bit warmonger or troublesome drug lord needed to pass away, Echo made it happen. They were swift, silent and deadly. They were the hale pale secret supersoldiers of the world. They trained hard enough. The outward circumstances of the present job didn't faze the wanderer. The differences between this harsh land and his own country didn't weigh him down. He'd been doing this kind of thing many times before. He was deeply tanned. And when his natural beard didn't grow as thickly as it would have been welcome, somebody stuck a fake mustache under his nose. It worked. He looked like the real thing. He was at ease posing as a local, even though he was really of caucasian origin. It didn't make him nervous. Since he didn't quite master the local language as well as he would have liked, he decided to pose as somebody high on khat, the local drug of choice. He colored his teeth some rotten red and practiced the crazed grin khat-users generally sport. He did look sort of deranged. The operator smiled. He was actually a very mild and soft-spoken man. He didn't really cherish the bouts of horrendous violence in which he had to engage frequently, like some of the others did. He was a loner all right, but he did like people. Their destruction was nothing he celebrated. His mind returned to the job on hand. Once he would arrive in the big city he would find his street. Then he would scout the house, maybe actually observe his tango and assess the situation. Next he would take it easy in some coffee shop on some busy intersection close by. Later he would melt into the shadows before reappearing at 0200. He would make his hit. He would take out the well-known leader of a ruthless tribal organization notorious for its indiscriminate acts of terror. This guy had been the mastermind behind a long string of terrorist attacks on citizens and institutions of the operator's and other western nations. This guy needed to die and the operator knew he could do it. Tonight he would relieve humanity of one of it's vilest enemies. But something bothered him as he drew closer to the city. He was wondering about the ammo in his HK PDW Echo7, a foot long, three pound sub employing the brand new 4.6mm caliber, now well concealed under his flowing robe. (It was custom made for him by Heckler & Koch.) Silence would be no problem. His gun was equiped with an integral aluminum sound suppressor and flash hider. It sported the Navy trigger group, which meant it could fire either on full- or semi-auto, no two or three round bursts. It had less than half the recoil of a regular 9mm HK MP5 KA4, the next best weapon. His PDW had the firepower of a serious sub, the medium range capabilities of an assault rifle and pistol-like close combat qualities. It was the best gun for the job. But the ammo... In this operation speed was all that mattered. His regular 4.6 mm rounds had a tungsten carbide penetrator at the tip, which was green. Those bullets could punch neat round holes into solid metal. But they would also just fly right through a man. It was one thing that this ammo was able to penetrate CRISAT-protection (1.6 mm Titanium combined with 20 layers of Kevlar) over 200 m distance, which is four times more than NATO-requirements call for). It was something entirely different to floor a man permanently. He would have to squeeze the trigger three or four times just to get his tango to go down, not mentioning killing him! Even on full auto he knew stopping a man with this ammo would be difficult. He had actually seen an M60 gunner blast two dozen rounds into a target and the target kept operating! It was ridiculous. And it took too much time. The only nice thing about this method was that the tango would stay integrated. Even if he used the other slugs, plastic coated titanium slap rounds, - less penetrating, higher energy transfer into the target -, the tango would remain integrated. But he would have to shoot several times. And in a situation like that you wanted to only fire once and be done with. Speed! A job like that was supposed to take just seconds. Then you needed to go. Tardiness was deadly in this line of work. Using the Royal O's deformation ammunition on the other hand would change everything. He carried that too. With a hollow point, just one, he'd get his tango down for good. But the guy's innards or his brain would splatter all over the place. And at the height of his close quarter battles the operator would always change into a strange high serotonin/adrenaline mode. Time seemed to pass slower. Actually, sometimes he felt the world passed him by in slow motion while he handled his tangos at full speed. And if a tango literally went to pieces right in front of your eyes, ... in slow motion! Now that was stressful. You had to live with that image for the rest of your life. After all, even tangos were made in the image of God. The operator knew that those mental picture of mangled enemies could do a man in after a while. Even hardened soldiers carried loads nobody knew about. Just recently several special forces guys had handled this kind of stress badly. They had killed their wives, and in at least one case killed themselves right afterwards. None of them had been with Echo. But the operator knew about the hidden dangers that lurk in the dark recesses of a soldier's mind, undetected, buried under heaps of machismo. Yet waiting to pounce. They came stealthily, in dreams at night. They drove people insane. He dreaded the images. When he finally arrived in the city, at nightfall, everything went according to plan. He found his street, checked the house out and hung around. Nobody paid any attention to the dazed weirdo. Everybody left him alone. Just the way he liked it. A while later he was gone again. At 0203 he suddenly reappeared. The kid at the door posed no problem. Standing in the doorframe of the white two story appartment building he tried to wave the operator off who played his role as nervous khat-user rather well. After some banter the op simply delivered a quick, hard kick to the guy's thigh, shocking the femoral artery. The kid simply passed out. The op flex-cuffed and muzzled him. Then he stuck him into the next best broom closet. Strange, he thought. Tango did not put up any serious guards. He must feel very secure here. Slowly moving down the dark hallway he reached for his PDW concealed by his robe and retracted the bolt. Needed to walk softly now. If somebody saw you move fast they got suspicious. You caught the eye and provoked reactions by moving fast. He moved slowly. He still had time. As he did his senses went into overdrive. The operator could have heard a pin drop a mile away. The house was perfectly tranquil. Upstairs was a source of light. The staircase consisted of well worn wooden planks. Creaky. The op hesitated for a moment. Then he decided to simply walk upstairs without trying to conceal his steps. Going up proved to be no problem. He quickly peeked into the open room with the light source. The op knew the folks inside wouldn't be able to detect him in the shadow outside. The room was nearly empty. But the op was lucky. Tango sat at his desk facing the entrance, apparently still working, even though it was after two o'clock in the morning. One other man sat on a soft couch under the small, barred window high in the wall, sleeping. Two guns, worn AKs, hung from the window. Another one lay on the sill. A hand grenade was perched on the desk in front of Tango. A large silver handgun was lying next to it. The operator said a quiet prayer while he kept his eyes on his enemy. Then he moved the safety on his PDW to single shot. The gun went plop. The tile floor snapped. Tango looked up. The gun went plop again. Tango stood up. His hand reached for the silver pistol. Plop. Floop. Plop. The bullets hammered the wall as Tango sank to the floor without a sound. The sleeper on the couch sighed. The operator sneaked in, took the handgun from the desk and placed it in Tango's right hand. Then he checked: Tango was dead. And he didn't even bleed. The operator vanished. *** On August 23, 2002, Reuters news agency reported that Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist, had commited suicide in his Baghdad appartment. Reuters did not explain why the man shot himself five times. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cloney 0 Posted September 16, 2002 Nice man! You should have added to the War Story. We are thinking of doing another one soon! Please contribute your stuff is brilliant! The was a very interesting exposition and it did a lot for the final action sequence but there wasn't really much of a resolution. Maybe you could have told how he escaped? Still Very good work! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Espectro (DayZ) 0 Posted September 16, 2002 Im gonna read this tomorrow.... It better be good Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Col. Kurtz 0 Posted September 17, 2002 Didnt read right through it becuase I personaly dont like the writing style, but if you could pump out a few hundred pages, Im sure you could get published and could at least compete aginst Tom Clancy Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
EveronVetsAgainstTheWar 1 Posted September 17, 2002 In the 8th grade I wrote a short story where the U.S. decided it wanted to dominate the world without having to worry about anyone else after the collapse of the U.N., so decided to nuke pretty much any developed country with any power. It was called "The Light" due to the flash of light in an atomic explosion or whatever and it ended something like this: "Frustrated because the President [Who was female by the way - what a weird 8th graded I was] wouldn't listen to his pleas, and knowing that at that very minute nuclear armed missles where racing torwards him, he stormed out of the Pentagon doors and walked down the concrete pathway. He looked over the Potomac at the Washington skyline and dropped his coffee cup onto the ground, breaking it into pieces. He saw the light." I thought it was pretty good and I only wish I still had a copy of it so I could read through it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Col. Kurtz 0 Posted September 17, 2002 My own little project is coming to an end. Last year I decided to start writing. My first stories did not get anywhere, but my latest project has. It is 90pages long and contains 60,000 words to rival Tom Clancy MWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA I have enjoyed writing it over the lst few months and I hope it will be good enough to publish so then I can get money to buy a beasty computer so I can run Resistance on full settings at 1600x1200 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cloney 0 Posted September 17, 2002 </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">"Frustrated because the President [Who was female by the way - what a weird 8th graded I was] wouldn't listen to his pleas, and knowing that at that very minute nuclear armed missles where racing torwards him, he stormed out of the Pentagon doors and walked down the concrete pathway. <span id='postcolor'> A transvestite president perhaps? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sam Samson 0 Posted September 17, 2002 </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Nice man! You should have added to the War Story. We are thinking of doing another one soon! Please contribute your stuff is brilliant!<span id='postcolor'> Gee! Thanks Cloney. I will, if I find the time to get involved. Had to cut it short. (Dunno how many read this as long as it already is. ) </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Im gonna read this tomorrow.... It better be good <span id='postcolor'> Did..., did you? </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Didnt read right through it becuase I personaly dont like the writing style, but if you could pump out a few hundred pages, Im sure you could get published and could at least compete aginst Tom Clancy <span id='postcolor'> Well now, Curnel, c'mon. Gotta read the piece, especially if you say you write yourself, before you pass judgment on the style. Then you, - I'm talking to the writer in you -, didn't even notice that I'm employing inner dialog, precise info, true tactics... Blast it! I entertain and educate all at the same time! Competing against Clancy? Actually I had Shakespeare in mind... (Boy am I vain. ) </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">In the 8th grade I wrote a short story where the U.S. decided it wanted to dominate the world...<span id='postcolor'> Hmmm. I'm not gonna talk politics. Not in here </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">My own little project is coming to an end. Last year I decided to start writing. My first stories did not get anywhere, but my latest project has. It is 90pages long and contains 60,000 words to rival Tom Clancy MWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA I have enjoyed writing it over the lst few months and I hope it will be good enough to publish so then I can get money to buy a beasty computer so I can run Resistance on full settings at 1600x1200 <span id='postcolor'> Well, post a couple of highlights in here. Let the masses decide whether you got it or not. Hey, we'll critique you. (And steal your ideas.) </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Frustrated because the President [*Who was female by the way - what a weird 8th graded I was*] wouldnt listen to *his* pleas, and knowing that at that very minute nuclear armed missles where racing torwards *him*, he stormed out of the Pentagon doors and walked down the concrete pathway.<span id='postcolor'> A transvestite president perhaps?<span id='postcolor'> Mmmaybe we should let that story rest in peace. It obviously got nuked by mother nature somewhere down the line. Did any of the, umm, real life operators frequenting this forum (unregistered of course) want to contribute something? Like..., how the op escaped? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
EveronVetsAgainstTheWar 1 Posted September 17, 2002 </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Cloney @ Sep. 17 2002,06:18)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">"Frustrated because the President [Who was female by the way - what a weird 8th graded I was] wouldn't listen to his pleas, and knowing that at that very minute nuclear armed missles where racing torwards him, he stormed out of the Pentagon doors and walked down the concrete pathway. <span id='postcolor'> A transvestite president perhaps?<span id='postcolor'> Obviously the character I'm talking about is a male, and the president is a female. The president wouldn't listen to his pleas. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
