FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter XXII - Iron Rain

The rangefinders read 960 meters, which Buck told him in a whisper so quiet the tiger could barely hear it - even with the sound amplifiers in their lashes - over the sounds of bombardment going on in the background. Arlen did his best to ignore the artillery; it wasn't hitting near them, and they weren't involved on either side.

It had made getting through the siege line one hell of a trick. Luckily, they'd managed to just sneak right on in thanks to the total chaos that was the Serbian logistical trains. Getting the rifles through had been harder. Walking through a military checkpoint with a rifle on one's shoulder would have resulted in them being asked for their orders, and since neither of them spoke the local language, such a thing would have ended poorly.

Luckily, their teammates had managed to figure something out for them. When Arlen and Buck had reached their safe house, they'd found Rene and Zebra there, playing 'who's better at cheating in poker.'

Four hours and a couple of satellite phone calls for intelligence later, the two shooters were in a bombed-out 10 story building looking across a street lit more by artillery flares than street lights into what used to be some kind of bureaucratic office of the pre-war government.

Arlen shifted, rolling his shoulders to keep them from locking up, and lowered the rifle while whispering at Buck.

"So you think Milosevic is going to get what he wants? Serbian state of his own or whatever?"

The stag shrugged, still looking through the rangefinders.

"Don't know and don't care. We're here for Gecko's boys, and they're here to destroy some records before good old Milo can get 'em, if our intel is right."

The black tiger nodded, and in the dark of the blacked-out city, Buck noted that he couldn't see the other fur at all, except for the reflection of flashes off his eyes when he moved. Not out of the corners of his eyes anyway. The thought was both heartening and disquieting; the black tiger was basically born for this sort of fighting.

Arlen raised the rifle's butt to his shoulder again, laid down as he was on the floor of what might once have been an office building. Still in a whisper, he kept up their slow talk, as much to stay awake as anything.

"We got any description on the principal target? I assume this is a kill mission, not a capture and interrogate."

Buck kept scanning the office building across from them, pausing only to occasionally double-check the building schematics Tamra had given them on the printouts Zebra had made.

"Just that there's a Gecko Corporation team either already in or heading to that building in order to get some papers. I figure they'll be kind of obvious, given there's not a lot of other people moving around out there."

Arlen nodded, then raised a brow and very slowly shifted his rifle as an artillery flare lit up somewhere far off and caused what might have been a lens reflection to become visible, just for an instant.

"Hey Cap. Check three o-clock low. Third or fourth floor, grey three-story building. Just saw lens flare, I think."

Buck shifted his position slowly, to avoid becoming visible by motion, and started to scan. The grey three-story Arl had asked about was in decent enough shape, given the months of bombardment the city had suffered, a largely concrete residential building in the style of common post-WW2 reconstruction housing.

At first, he didn't see anything but old concrete, broken glass, a few windows boarded up with particle wood...Then another strobe went off in the night sky, accompanied by a distant thud that was felt in his gut as much as heard, and something glinted on the second floor. The captain sat perfectly still, knowing that the flare might mean a sniper was pointed right at them. He made his movements as slowly as he could, and a minute or so later, they paid off.

Dressed in clothes that were rather artfully covered in grey cement dust was some fur of unidentifiable species, laid flat behind a window with an old M-1 rifle in his paws, the scope looking like it'd been modified just to fit, possibly from a wholly different kind of rack system. Luckily, he wasn't pointed at Arlen and Buck. They were lucky, he knew, to have seen the lens flare at all. Older equipment, without anti-flare coating.

"Second floor right, second window from the corner. No idea if he's local or not, but no sign of our target group yet."

Arlen didn't bother acknowledging, he just shifted to look, and within a few seconds had spotted the fur. Feline eyes shifted, their slitted architecture helping him make out things the older stag couldn't.

"Field mouse, juvenile. Gecko doesn't hire kids, right?"

"Too unreliable for the psycho. Too hard to control."

The tiger frowned, and weighed the options. Even with his flash suppressor on, the shot would be heard if he took the mouse out. Also, they had no way to know which side of the conflict the fur was on, and if its death would draw more complications than it solved.

"Leaving him alone for now. Keep an eye?"

Buck nodded and shifted slowly to get in a better position for watching that angle, then settled in to wait, checking his watch.

"Three hours till dawn. If they don't show up by dawn minus thirty, we head back to the safe house."

Arlen shifted again, scanning over the target building again, trusting Buck to warn him if the mouse moved.

"Yeah."

One of the biggest problems Arlen had with this sort of sniping was the fatigue involved with being so still for so long. It was hard to keep from going rigid when one had to lie in such a position for extended periods.

He was stretching his back by shifting his legs back and pushing with them, two hours after the last word between them, when he noticed Buck perk up. Without asking, he put his eye to the scope and started looking, knowing by instinct what his spotter was thinking.

Sure enough, down below and at the base of the target building, a matte black-painted van rolled up and stopped just outside of his line of sight. Keeping down the urge to curse, Arlen calmly checked their field mouse sniper, and noticed the fur had seen what was going on too, and was moving either to investigate or open fire on them.

Well...It IS a kill mission. Guess I won't begrudge the help, heh.

The radio linked into his headset suddenly squawked to life.

"Sword team, come in, this is Oversight One."

Buck responded, tapping the mic twice to indicate they were receiving.

"You guys better get the fuck back here. I'm on the rooftop of the safehouse, and I can see Milosevic has just rolled in a whole fucking tank column. I think he's getting ready to storm the city for good."

Arl could hear the anxiety in the pilot's voice. Rene had a plane to get them out of Sarajevo, but it wouldn't do them a whole hell of a lot of good if the tanks rolled over the warehouse they'd stashed it in, or shot up the street they had planned to use as a takeoff strip.

Buck spoke into the mic, quietly but with firmness.

"You and Zebra get to the plane and get it ready. Targets just showed up. We'll complete the mission and rendezvous before this gets hairy."

Rene growled into the radio.

"Captain, you don't have that long. We can get these assholes later."

Buck patted Arlen's shoulder and pointed, and the tiger shifted his rifle...There, in the window of the second floor, was a silhouette he knew well despite having not seen it in almost a year. A big lion, the long brutal snout of an M-60 LMG hanging down in its paws. Collin Tetherman, Lieutenant of Simon Gecko.

"Target spotted. Meet you at the rendezvous. Arlen, wait till more are in sight, then open fire."

The tiger wanted to shoot that damn lion so badly...His crosshairs were just a hair above the male's eartips to compensate for drop and glass. It would be the work of an instant to end that miserable traitorous bastard's life and leave it sprayed all over his comrades in chunky bits, and all it would take was a gentle squeeze.

The captain was right though. He had to wait. They needed to wipe out the whole team, not just one fur. For the millionth time, the black tiger wished Sato was with them. He would have been able to rig the whole damn building to go up, instead of sitting around and trying to pick these assholes off one at a time.

"I saw four. Two lions, one otter, some kind of avian." Buck didn't mention recognizing them, or how personal this had just gotten. For all Arlen knew, the lion might have been the one who put those rounds into Sato, wrecking his career, his knee, putting him in so much pain...

The tiger grit his jaw and waited, as the lion moved out of sight again.

"Fuck. They're parked on the wrong side. If we wait for all of them, they'll get aw-"

The night lit up, artillery flares exploding over their heads and dropping streamers of burning phosphorous so close to their position that they could actually see the burning metal hit and sizzle into surrounding structures.

Arlen winced, closing his eyes and covering his face with his arm as his pupils irised nearly shut thanks to the sudden burst of light. It was the only thing that saved him from losing his eyes when, a moment later, the world shook and glass flew, slicing into his armored arm, shoulder, and his unarmored scalp, and a smoking hole burst into existence with a dust-cloud of explosion to welcome it.

The barrage started so suddenly that Arlen thought he was suffering from artillery shock before the mortars ever hit, their screaming whine filling the air with a thousand chords of deadly promises, howled from the throats of an army of devils screaming for blood.

His training told him to take cover, and he listened, hurling himself backwards from the window even as Buck was advancing forward, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him away from the windows, as the shells started detonating in the night, filling Arlen's sight with flashes and strobes that seemed to burn images into his eyes, images of exploding buildings, flying shrapnel, bits of masonry rendered to dust in an instant.

The big tiger grabbed onto his captain and his rifle, having the presence of mind to do so despite the red filling his vision, and he saw the stag yelling, his eyes hard and wide, but couldn't hear him, until he was tossed to the ground by a shockwave that seemed to jostle his brain loose of its torpor.

"Sword Team do you read?! Answer me goddamnit!"

"Stop fucking yelling! We're alive! What the fuck is going on?"

Rene's voice didn't lose any volume, and Arlen realized the hare was yelling because he couldn't hear either.

"The whole column just rolled towards the city edge. They're going to barrage with fucking tanks! The mortars are just to soften up resistance!"

Buck and Arlen's eyes met then, and they looked back outside. In a moment that seemed to go slower than the clock, Arlen raised his rifle and took a shot before he even realized what he'd fired at.

He watched, stunned, as in the moment before another bomb blast blocked his line of sight, the big lion spun a circle, his run abruptly truncated, and bounced off a wall inside the building and out of sight down a stairwell.

Buck blinked, grabbed the rifle, and pulled Arlen close.

"Good shot, but we're getting out of here. Don't even fucking think of waiting!"

With that, the two took off running, hoping to get perpendicular to the attacking tank column and stay there.

Collin had just handed off his M-60 to the other lion and stooped down to mess with a safe, when he got the warning.

"Boss, this is Black two. The main Serb force is starting to move. Get the documents quick, man."

Collin grimaced. That had been what he was worried about, and this fucking safe was in his way. He gave it a frustrated whack with the side of his paw.

"Any sign of our shadows?"

Gavin shook his head, scanning the horizon to get an idea where the tanks were moving.

"None, but that doesn't mean they're not here. That tiger of theirs could disappear in perfect visibility on a field made of glass at noon."

Collin quirked an eyebrow as the safe clicked open, though mostly because the otter wasn't given to hyperbole. Then again, considering how many men they'd lost in the last year to those two fuckers, he wasn't surprised they'd developed a bit of a legend. Gecko had been furious at first, then livid, then amused. It was a game to their boss now.

He grabbed a cracked leather satchel and gave it the once-over, spotting a swastika on its clasp. The lion grinned.

"Got it!"

Right then, the world just blew up. What was left of the windows blew apart as artillery slammed into the ground all around them, and Collin's face ran right into the top of the safe, breaking several teeth and hurling him on his back with rebound.

Blinking, stunned, his mouth full of copper taste, he saw the lion over him, holding the M-60, getting back to his feet...Then jerk sideways as a rifle round caught him in the center of the chest. Collin watched, eyes wide, as the lion spun in a graceful pirouette brought on by physics and not by physicality, and tumbled down the stairs.

With a curse, the lion covered his ears in response to the sudden cacophony of mortars hitting all around, and turned on his side, crawling to the second stairwell on elbows and knees to get away from the sniper.

"Sniper! Gav, get the fucking van!"

All he got in response was fuzz, and what he hoped was the sound of exertion panting.

Arlen and Buck leaped out the second floor window of their sniper's perch, landing in a pair of heavy rolls on top of a short roof, then took off at a sprint for the next low building. Going down on the street was suicide in this town, snipers everywhere plenty ready to pot someone just for being there.

All around them, artillery was exploding, filling the tiger's eyes with flash-images of destruction, craters, smoking buildings, and somewhere not too far distant he heard children screaming...Some in agony, some just in horror.

He was jangled, and he knew it. Things were moving in slow-motion, his heart racing, as he leapt across an alleyway along with his commander, and felt his stomach pull out from under him as the roof they hit suddenly collapsed, weakened by a shell that had punched through without detonating.

The jarring nature of the fall had him stunned again, and as his vision cleared, he winced back from hot metal that had touched his face...And saw, in a moment of staring horror, the unexploded ordnance that had just caressed his face.

One in a fucking million for that thing not to explode...And that's no fucking mortar!

He was jerked again, as the stag grabbed him and pulled him towards the back wall of the building, slamming through a door with his shoulder. Arlen's eyes glanced down and saw Buck's leg was broken from the fall, a big circle of blood halfway up his thigh, his hopping, and the fact that legs didn't have two knees telling him much of what he needed to know. Then again, the stag wasn't stopping or even letting it slow him much, just using Arlen as a crutch and hopping forward towards another building.

Somewhere nearby, the squeal of caterpillar tracks told him the tanks were already getting here. The fwoosh-sound that came right after told him that the locals were fighting back, using rusty old Soviet RPG's on the tanks...WW2 era technology versus 1970's vintage Soviet armor. Somehow it made the tiger smirk.

The smirk died when they tried to turn a corner, and were nearly crushed to death by a tank that drove right through the building they were about to take cover in, firing its cannon so close to them that both furs pitched to their faces by sheer instinct, holding their ears from the shockwave.

Arlen felt a paw grab his shoulder and, blinded and deafened by dust and tank fire, he could still tell it wasn't Buck just by hand size and grip. He reached back, grabbed the wrist, and twisted it, blinking and hsifting his weight to throw the fur who had touched him as his off paw grabbed at his combat knife.

Then the dust cleared, and he saw the mouse, the same one he hadn't killed earlier, blinking up at him in surprise, upside-down on the rubble pile.

Female...No knife...Doesn't look panicked, just surprised.

Arlen let go of the knife hilt, scrunched up his brows, and watched her.

As the mouse got up, he saw she was young. Maybe 15 or 16, skinny like a pole with just enough chest to tell her gender. She was pointing, signaling, and fearlessly grabbed Arlen and pushed him towards what looked like a wrecked building. The powder on her clothes was ground in, and he noted in a calm corner of his mind that she was pretty damn good at that...Probably why she was still alive in this horrid hell-hole of a town.

She then grabbed Buck and pulled him up, sliding herself under the heavier fur's arm pit to help him along. Arlen slid under the other arm, and between the two of htem they stumbled into the raggedy ruin of a building. Leaving him with the full weight of his captain, she darted forward and moved a pile of rubble that turned out to be a bunch of rocks glued to wooden sheeting, and gestured him towards a concrete stair. The busted, rusty sign over top of it read something he couldn't read, but had a picture of a train.

Subway tunnel! God-damn...I guess good kharma does exist...