Chimera

Okay, that’s four… no… five vehicles… and the first one looks like the newer APC model. Well, let’s see what it can withstand. Should gain some good intel from this…

He removed his goggles and rubbed his eyes again.

We have been out here for too long. In danger of becoming complacent. Must stay alert at all times, Damn it!

The teams had been out here long enough, he reckoned. They had hit a few targets worth mentioning in the time, and that was more than what the second team commanded by Major Ngawang, his second-in-command, or 2IC, had achieved. Gephel’s targets had included an isolated military checkpoint on the highway through this region manned by a squad of troops. His men had raided this post in the dark of the night with noise-suppressed weapons and killed all of the soldiers there in under a minute. His men had taken no prisoners and shown no remorse, but they had taken all the documents present inside the office of the dead enemy lieutenant.

The documents had shown them all they had needed to know about the convoys expected to cross this section of the highway in the next few days. Now one of those convoys was within his sights. The raid on the outpost had been clean and efficient. The bodies had been removed and all signs of combat cleared over. The team had made sure that the now dead lieutenant did not make his last desperate radio call to issue a warning.

Not that he hadn’t tried… Gephel recalled.

When Gephel had slammed open the door of the lieutenant’s office during the raid, he had found him reaching for the radio. He never got there. Three bursts of automatic fire had sent him reeling and crashing down to the floor under the impact. Another burst had punched five holes on the radio sets and made them unusable. And that was that. No more radio calls, no extra convoy escorts and no enemy troops beating the bush trying to locate Gephel’s men.

Of course, by the time this attack was over, the enemy’s entire Internal Security Force and the local army infantry division garrisoning the region would be out of their bases and looking for the culprits, but that couldn’t be helped. In any case, one of the first attacks conducted by the teams had been far to the north, and it had been a spectacular one at that. The target had been an enemy communications center on a hilltop. It had been catering to both the local civilian and military communication needs. Since it had been the first target on the list for his team, the enemy hadn’t been expecting them. They had hit it during the night and caught the guards outside relaxed and flat footed. With them taken care of, Gephel and his men had burst into the building and neutralized all resistance as they went down floor by floor, making sure that the military equipment was left untouched. This had allowed Gephel’s comms-specialist to determine what all he needed to know about enemy communications before they had left, leaving the system working, the place booby-trapped, the bodies cleared up and after sending a distress call. Within hours the reinforcements had arrived via Mi-17 helicopters and Gephel and his men had the satisfaction of hearing the large thunder and an orange-black fireball rising to the sky as the trap had gone off. As that fireball had gone up into the sky, turning into a black pillar of smoke, all enemy forces in the region had instantly mobilized, and had begun searching for the perpetrators. But by that time Gephel and his men had travelled far to the south…

“Pathfinder-One to all Pathfinder elements, Thirty seconds. Stand by,” he spoke softly into his comms mouthpiece attached to the helmet. His eyes never left the road and the convoy approaching that one special spot along the highway. The response was a whisper:

“Copy.”

And then there was the silence. The calm before the storm…

Gephel reflected on where he was and what he was doing as he waited for the exact time to act. He realized that this was probably the first time in half a century that someone from his side had managed to be where his men were now, much less doing what he was about to do. It was just too bad that he couldn’t talk about it to anyone afterwards. Assuming he survived to talk about it in the first place.

The unsuspecting convoy finally reached that one spot on the road.

“This is it! Light it up! Now!”

The explosives-specialist in each team reached for the cover of their firing triggers, flipped it open with their thumbs and then depressed the button all the way in…

There was a split-second delay that caused Gephel’s heart to skip a beat… and then there was a massive flash in the darkness that overpowered the dim light of the moon.

Then another.