A/N: Bear with me, as this is the first fic I've written, and is also the first collab project I've done. This looks like it doesn't have anything to do with Mass Effect right now, but trust me, we'll get there. Just gotta upload the chapters as they get completed.
And the Disclaimer: We don't own Mass Effect or any of its characters. That belongs to BioWare. However, Daniel is ours! :P
"Your mission is to cut off the escape route of the terrorist leadership while main force Army troops close in from all other directions. Gentlemen, if we pull this off, we have a chance to significantly reduce, if not eliminate, insurgency in Afghanistan. I don't need to tell you how much is riding on this operation. Good luck."
'Good luck my ass,' First Lieutenant Daniel White thought as another salvo of bullets chipped away at the small boulder providing him cover. He leaned around the side of the boulder, attempting to find the location of the MG nest pinning him and his men down in the small canyon.
He spotted it at the same time it spotted him. About five hundred meters away, nestled on top of the cliff ahead and to the left of his squad was what appeared to be an obsolete Russian DShK 38, a relic from the Second World War.
Age really didn't matter at the moment though, because the turreted machine gun still worked just fine, forcing White to fall back into cover.
"Steele, get over here!" he shouted to his radioman, who was hiding in a nearby ditch. The man looked up at Daniel.
"I can't go anywhere until this fire lightens up!" Corporal Jason Steele shouted back as the MG targeted his position.
"Dammit!" White swore angrily. "Concentrate fire on that MG nest!" he ordered the rest of his team. Lance Corporal Alexander Patterson was first, letting his M249 SAW light machine gun spit its deadly rounds into the hillside around the MG nest. PFC Alex Sanders was next with his M4A1.
The machine gun nest fell silent as its occupants dove into cover, giving Steele a chance to sprint to his commander. His shoulders slammed into the boulder, and he turned to face White.
"What now, sir?" he asked, sweat running down his face.
"Get command on the line. Tell them we're pinned down, and see if they can't get us a gunship or something to support," White said, leaning out of cover again to assess the situation. He was rewarded with another burst of fire, this time splintering off pieces of rock which went flying and managed to slice his hand.
"Ah, that sonofabitch!" he roared.
"LT, command's giving us a negative, telling us we need to maintain cover!" White felt more contempt at HQ than ever these days. It seemed it only existed to make his mission impossible.
"What cover, dammit? The whole base knows we're here! Tell command that if we don't get some support, or some reinforcements damn soon, they can kiss their operation goodbye!" White readied his own ACR, otherwise known as the Bushmaster Adaptive Combat Rifle. He personally preferred the acronym, ACR. His weapon was equipped with a decent 6x scope, an underslung 40mm grenade launcher, and an extended magazine, bringing the total number of rounds in the clip from 30 to 40.
"Squad, suppressing fire!" he bellowed, stepping out of cover and raising the scope to his eye. He made sure to bring the 7.62x39mm rounds with him on this mission; he would need the extra range and stopping power. The other men were firing at the small sandbagged position, but it was too far away for them to effectively hit it.
White was considered one of the best shots in his battalion: the 1st Battalion of the U.S. Army's 75th Ranger Regiment. To him, it seemed like time stood still. He could always see the target clearly, and put a bullet exactly where he wanted it. This time was no different. Through the scope, he could clearly see the insurgent frantically swinging the mounted gun in his direction.
White calmly squeezed the trigger of his rifle, and felt the recoil as the round left the barrel with a crack! He watched as the round entered the middle of the man's forehead, making a nice, neat hole before exiting out the back in a spray of blood, skull, and brains. Daniel felt no remorse at taking the man's life. This man had been attempting to kill his friends, his family, and had known the consequences if he failed.
"Alright, let's move!" he shouted over his shoulder. "We've still got to close in before…" his voice faded as he heard the unmistakable whuppa-whuppa-whuppa of a chopper approaching from farther up the canyon, where it widened out into a flatland that served as the terrorists' main base.
"Get down!" he screamed as he fell into a small bush nearby, his desert camouflage blending in perfectly with the stubborn foliage. He knew that sound. It belonged to the distinctive Russian Mi-24 gunship, otherwise known as the Hind. The hind was an older Russian chopper, but as with the machine gun, age wasn't an issue. There was a reason they were nicknamed 'flying tanks.'
As the chopper rose up from a bend in the dry river, White could only watch in horror as the attack chopper let loose with both 3.8 inch rockets and a 30-mm autocannon. The rockets impacted directly behind him, and he could hear a scream. The autocannon peppered the area, but eh couldn't tell if they had hit anyone.
The chopper flew directly overhead before landing about one hundred yards behind them, offloading about a dozen troops as it did so.
"Status!" White yelled, looking for his squad mates.
"Steele, sounding off!"
"Patterson, sounding off!"
The only thing Daniel heard after that was silence.
"Sanders? Sanders!" he got to his feet and turned around. "Oh Jesus…" Nearly sick, White just shook his head slowly, looking at what had once been a human being. Now all that was left was a crater and a smoking boot.
"He had a wife and kids man, dammit!" Patterson hissed. Suddenly, the sound of gunfire began echoing off the canyon walls.
"Steele, tell command we need reinforcements now! We're in danger of being overrun, and we've got a man down! Patterson, put those bastards out of their misery!" White began barking orders, when something caught his eye. Enemy militia were advancing on them from the opposite direction, effectively trapping the Ranger team in the dry riverbed.
"HQ, this is Viper! I repeat, HQ this is Viper! We are pinned down and surrounded, and we have a man down! We need an extraction, over!" Steele was screaming at HQ over the field radio, Meanwhile, Patterson was covering the southern approach while White covered the northern one.
A volley of bullets suddenly started landing at Daniel's feet, and he looked up and to his right to see a group of militia firing on them from the cliffs, taking away their advantage of cover.
"We need to move, now!" he shouted, grabbing Steele by the arm. Firing one-handed, he managed to hit an insurgent once, twice, right in the chest. The man fell face first into the sand, dead as the rocks around him. White managed to pull the radioman into the nearby creek bed, between two boulders, giving a defendable position from all but one side.
"Make room!" he heard Patterson shout as the African-American man leapt headfirst down into the riverbed. White took one more look around him and knew what he had to do.
"Steele! Broken Arrow!" he roared to the nearby soldier.
"Are you sure—"
"Yes goddammit, I'm sure! Now if you don't call that in, we are going to die! Do you understand me?" he shouted at the man. Broken Arrow was a code not to be used lightly. It meant that a ground squad was about to be overrun, and that all nearby aircraft were to divert and provide assistance.
Steele looked at him numbly. "I…yes sir." He turned around and began yelling into the handset with earnest.
"Broken Arrow! I repeat, Broken Arrow!" White turned to Patterson as Steele continued bitching at HQ.
"We've got to hold out till reinforcements arrive," he said quietly.
"I'm game. Let's do this," was his team mate's reply.
30 minutes later…
All White could see were blurs. He could recall the enemy firing at him, returning fire back at them, but not much else.
"Lieutenant White! Are you okay?" a voice broke through the haze. The weary soldier looked up from his prone position, face covered in dirt and sweat. The soldier standing in front of him was a regular army grunt, carrying the standard issue M16A2.
"I…I…" White mumbled incoherently, before one thought came to his mind.
"Where's Patterson? Steele?" he asked. The Army soldier looked at him, confused.
"Sir? Corporals Patterson and Steele are dead, sir…you radioed it in yourself." All White could do was look at him blankly.
"What…?" He looked around him slowly. Expended cartridges, empty magazines, and blood lay strewn around his makeshift fortification. No, it couldn't be…but it was. Steele was leaning back against the boulder, his face a bloody mess. Turning his head to the right, he saw Patterson, missing an arm and a leg, with blood pooled all around him.
"No…no, no, no, no…" was all he could whisper. He felt the soldier drag him to his feet and haul him towards a UH-60 helicopter that was waiting nearby. White's mind, however, was focused on something else entirely. Those two men, his comrades…brothers, had been alive, dammit, he knew it! As the soldier sat him down in a seat on the combat transport, his mind couldn't take on the information, and White nearly passed out from a combination of exhaustion, dehydration, and emotional drainage. The men loaded up the two dead bodies, and then chopper took off, with White staring into space, still muttering.
"No…no…no…"