Where Wolves Dare

Chobe, Ngamiland, Botswana

As we approached the place, we shook the cars and Wolf took out a box, we walked a little before opening it, on the inside it had a new combat drone, a stealth variant from what I had seen, the same model that the Alliance used in the continental war, so it wasn't cheap. The device had everything, high definition 3d camera, low-noise propellers, temperature protectors, small, radio frequency scanners, thermal cameras. Iron Maiden took its controls and took a couple of turns with it around the place trying to look for vulnerabilities to exploit.

A three-story high, square-style mansion with an interior courtyard, long hallways, a probably already ransacked armory, guard towers, security cameras with thermal vision, several vehicles ready to go in pursuit, and especially no idea where the boy might be holed up. The report Iron Maiden was making with the information he was getting was not encouraging, nor could he get much more without the risk of getting too close to the drone and getting caught.

The plan was not particularly careful due to the short time and the fact that it had been created on the fly, but it would be useful not to screw it up right away. The first thing would be to divide the group into several smaller ones. Hawk would go alone and take up his position as a sniper in a tree, he would keep watch for a longer time trying to get more information and intervene when necessary. Hammer, Bulldoze and Iron Maiden would stay close to the vehicles to cover our exit, while Sparrow would just stand by inside one of the vehicles to take care of the boy if needed. The other group was where Wolf, Blitz, and I were, the ones in charge of getting in and getting the boy out by any means, first we waited until it was dark to slowly drag Raz off the ground, little by little approaching the mansion throughout the night, taking advantage of our night vision goggles, to confuse the thermal cameras we would use an old trick of the war, simply take the windshields of the cars and put them in front of us, thanks to the fact that it will have low temperature together with the cold of the night we could confuse the cameras relatively well, at the same time that being a glass it will allow us to see through it.

The real problem was the lack of information about the possible location of our target, once we started our attack, chaos would break out, the ones that were closer to the boy would try to take it out in the opposite direction to the one we were going. As if that wasn't enough Wolf would have to divert with a different objective, he would try to destroy the rebel vehicles to give us a head start on the chase that would follow after that. Iron Maiden could zoom in on the drone to get a better look at where the prisoner was and rescue him, but the time window was short, one minute and thirty seconds would be all it would take, and most likely it would be even less. We also had to be careful not to shoot the boy by mistake in the middle of the fight, the idea was to deliver him in one piece to his father after all.

"West tower guards neutralized."
"All set, good luck" Said hawk,

It was close to midnight when the green light was given to act. Blitz and I entered from opposite places to have more probably to succeed, the time was counting down when it seemed that Blitz gave the first shot which alarmed the others. The place was filled with shouts, the rebels warning of the enemy attack. I seemed to have entered through the kitchen, I found two guards with shotguns, one of them saw me and shot immediately, he did not hit me, but the shot was so powerful that it sent hundreds of things through the air, I responded by shooting their guns, when they fell, their heads followed. With no time to waste, I took one of the shotguns and put all the ammunition I could into my bag, right after more screams down the hallway stopped me, I put two more rounds in the shotgun before pumping it in case it was unloaded, thank God I did, because when I pumped it no other cartridge came out, indicating that the gun was indeed empty. I dropped to the ground again hoping that the first shot would miss and that someone would come in before I shot him in the head, I could notice how his companion took cover next to the door, unfortunately, the wall was made of thin wood so a shotgun blast penetrated completely, making a huge hole through the wall and the guy now on the ground.

"We have a lot of enemies gathering on the west side of the house."
"There is a group gathering at the staircase to the north, it seems to be the Rehen's Escape route."
"Blitz you are the one who is close by get ready."
"Wolf is almost done planting the explosives."
"Emperor tries to draw more attention to try to make Blitz's job easier."
"When the target's safety is confirmed Hammer will use the machine gun against the west facade to give them a chance to escape." Iron Maiden said on the radio coordinating everything.

It looked like I had to play the goat again if we were going to get Kabelo Masisi out alive for his father. I finished reloading the shotgun until no more rounds came in and left the kitchen towards one of the long corridors outside, where I could see that they were already waiting for me. On the other side of the corridor, three rebels were watching me with their weapons already raised, I pulled to the left and fell to the side of the stairs and started to climb them, I met two soldiers quite close when I got to the top, one shot was enough to finish them both off. Then I went into one of the rooms next door and fired a couple of shells at the fragile walls, which with the large holes that remained I could see better the next room where several rebels had just arrived to take their weapons from a piece of furniture, I shot a couple of times to finish them off and then I reloaded the shotgun again. But the other three rebels in the hallway had already managed to reach my side, so I had to draw my pistol to deal with them.

The main problem of this place is its construction, the whole house was designed with the theme of a traditional cabin but very large, so the materials used were wooden boards, which made it have over-penetration problems with almost any weapon, even my pistol could easily reach the next room, maybe use armor piercing ammunition not good idea either, but it was what I had because most of the enemies with whom I usually fight are soldiers with body armor.

I quickly checked among the dead for an assault rifle that I could use, I found an old Soviet SKS in bad condition, but it was still better than no condition, I checked that its magazine still had something in it and took another two that I kept in my bag. As I left I could see on the other side of the house how a group of 4 rebels had the young boy we were looking for, they were fighting with someone down in the stairs, most likely it was Blitz, so to help him I took a moment to aim well and shot one of them who was farther away from the boy, The kidnappers got scared and started shooting at my place, but Blitz took the opportunity to finish climbing the stairs and finish them off before they did anything else, then he arrived with the boy, checked that he was open and put him on his shoulders to take him out immediately. I went all the way around to follow them from behind and cover them, it was not very difficult because the ones that were left were on the third floor and no doubt they had never fired weapons before, because they had horrible aim and their own shots scared them as well.

As fast as we could we ran out of the place, Blitz carrying the child in his arms, I was trying to cover the retreat by shooting everywhere, while Wolf pulled out his detonator and set off the bombs to create a big distraction. We made it to the cars which were fired up and ready to go, as soon as we got in we sped off. The last one to arrive 30 seconds after us was Hawk, who was the farthest away.

We had succeeded, we had rescued the child without major problems despite the haste of the plan, although we must not fool ourselves, the greatest contributor to our success had been the very poorly prepared troops of the rebels because if we had faced a well-trained military force things would have gone very wrong.

What followed was a high-speed race across the African savannah to get as fast as we could to Zimbabwe, sure the Kalhari Crusaders were trying to follow us somehow even if it was by bike, but their group was better prepared than we thought when we ran into a couple of roadblocks that had predicted our route, although they weren't very effective when the whole place is fucking flat and you can just ride through the middle of the savannah. But no doubt those Rebels had better communications and strategy than pure combat ability. Despite the attempts of our enemies we had managed to advance a little, the neighboring country was already close, but when we approached the village of Nata a new problem appeared, one that would make our mission much more difficult from now on.

A loud mechanical roar sounded very close to where we were, something was turning on and moving, something big, heavy sound of footsteps, something problematic no doubt. Three Walkers came out from between the buildings, it was terrifying to see those big robots come out from behind a three-story building and see that it started to aim at the cars. Wolf immediately turned to the right to avoid the first shot of that thing, the rest of us followed him, in a couple of seconds the whole street where we had passed was full of bullets destroying absolutely everything.

The walkers had camouflage patterns and also the distinctive logos of the Zimbabwean army, they were expensive and too difficult to operate that they could simply have been stolen by the resistance, this had been a deliberate attack, one clearly perpetrated by the Zimbabwean government, one led by Sizwe Mabena, who seemed to want to have the child for his own purposes.

"What the fuck are those things!" asked a frightened Hawk.

"They're walkers, first generation."
"They're like tanks with legs"
"Not very fast but agile" I replied looking back trying to see if they were following us.

"Fuck, the I.S.C. ones? Are they already in production?"
"We're going to be among the first to take those things on!" Hawk spoke again.

"Whatever, at the end of the day, it's just another machine."
"A rocket's going to blow it to shit anyway."

Hammer from one of his bags pulled out and assembled an SMAW, a rocket launcher to try to deal with the new threat, Wolf again turned the car into a new intersection, putting us behind a slightly unsuspecting Walker. The man with the rocket launcher climbed out the window, took aim, and then fired rapidly, the explosive traveled at full speed down the street on its way to its target until it exploded. But after the explosion, it only revealed the same giant robot intact, and what was worse, turning almost immediately in our direction. Again, the cars spun back into an alley to avoid enemy fire.

"Wouldn't the rocket make it shit?" said a frightened paramedic.

"Those Walkers have Trophy countermeasures."
"I don't have that many rockets to exhaust their system" Hammer reported calmly despite the situation.

"Fuck!"

"We have to do something or we won't get out of this."  Blitz shouted as he drove like a madman trying to avoid the gunfire.

"You said you knew how to unfuck things , didn't you?"
"Any ideas?" Said Wolf with concern

"You just keep going until you get to that tall building, then I'll go down there and take care of them."
"You guys take the opportunity to escape." I answer confidently instead

"What do you plan?  fighting on three giant robots with just a pistol?"

"That's right."
"Don't worry. It's easy once you know the trick."

"Well, if you want to volunteer, I'm not opposed."
"If you get left behind and need to escape, try to get to Bulawayo in Zimbabwe, there is a clandestine airport there."
"If you talk to a pilot he could fly you to South Africa to a big airport and I'll see what I can do to help you get out of here safely."

"Alright guys this is my stop,this was a pleasure".
"I hope I don't have to see you guys for work for a while."
"See you later"

Wolf slowed the car down as it passed by the building but did not stop completely, I immediately got out and ran down the street towards the big building, in the distance I could see the Walker still in pursuit of the cars. When I got to the front door I was greeted by a man with a rifle, with no time to do much I shot him several times as I had bigger problems to deal with. I looked for the stairs and climbed as fast as I could to the rooftop as I reloaded my gun, the door stopped me but after shooting the door locks with the shotgun, unfortunately, I didn't have much time as I saw the Walker already advancing to the side of the building, so I threw the shotgun to the ground and started to run even faster.  I jumped from the top of the building until I landed on the big robot, I quickly reached for the emergency rescue lever and pulled it, it opened by ejected the cockpit door, while the soldier was confused by what just happened I appeared in front of him and fired my weapon. It didn't kill him right away but I didn't have time to wait, I removed his belts and threw the man out still making grotesque choking noises as he died. I did not know exactly the controls of this model, but as an ex-pilot of the Walkes that Rose had invented, I could see several similarities, enough to allow me to retrieve the robot to face the other two. The problem was the front protection plate, which was on the ground and unusable, so the most vulnerable part of the Walker was exposed at all times, its pilot.

I turned the combat robot and saw how another one of the two Walkers was walking towards me, I pulled the trigger and the vulcan machine gun filled the whole place with bullets, I didn't know if it was enough to damage the armor but just in case I moved laterally to use the same building I had jumped from as cover. One of them did manage to get to where I was in a short time and started shooting, I summoned Avalon and placed it in front of me to protect myself from the shots. I couldn't see because of the sword that was in front of me in the pilot, but I knew that I had to have my enemy in front of me, so I fired in response until the other one stopped shooting at me. When the fight ended both machines were completely destroyed, the two enemy units were full of holes releasing lots of blood from them, mine was also in the same condition, the only thing that had protected me as always was my great sword, it seemed that the current Walkers had armor problems, their weapons were more powerful than the robots themselves could withstand. 

But the time to stay was running out, when the residents of the village saw that the three Walkers had been destroyed they started to come out of their houses armed, about ten people started to come out with firearms and started to shoot at my place, I could hear their war cries, they were rebels, they were everywhere and I was not welcome here, they seemed to know exactly what I had done back in Chobe. I fired a couple of shots in their place to force them to hide while I ran away as fast as I could.

My only remaining plan to get out of this was to try to get to the river and jump in and go as far downstream as I could if I wanted to escape. But when I got to the bridge all I saw was dry land underneath it, there was not a single drop of water to hide my escape. The only thing left for me to do was to run off into the middle of the desert or try to hijack a car when I had the chance, but suddenly out of nowhere, one approached me at full speed.

"Need help? Get in!"

A car stopped in front of me, it was not very modern but it was in one piece, its windows were black, but the driver opened one of the doors welcoming me. I didn't know at all the man inside the car, but now I had to get out of here, because the whole town full of rebels was looking for me and I needed to escape, so despite the danger I got in the car hoping that whatever foolish thing I was doing would go well.