August 2076
Old Yosemite National Park
Republic of the Pacific

“Alpha Team, you are go for insertion,” Alex said to Shawn through his microphone. 

The gloomy night barely left enough light from the moon to penetrate the clouds. Alex clicked the night vision lense he had attached to his father’s scope and the world became illuminated by ghostly hues of green and black. He watched as Shawn held up his hand for those behind him, then waved forward three times.

Dempsey, Jimmy, and Rock ran past Shawn, all crouched low. Shawn followed them, scanning the road to either side as he crossed. Nothing moved down either side. He glanced back and up, towards the spot on the hill where Alex lay prone, rifle at the ready. Over the past few days, Alex had found Dempsey to be an extremely reliable first officer. But it was Shawn who had surprised everyone else, taking Alex’s old role as corporal and embracing it fully. He now acted as Dempsey’s right hand, just as Dempsey acted as Alex’s. Alex would cover their entry and extraction of the hostages. Shawn flashed him a thumbs up before returning his attention to the door in front of him.

“Goliath, plant the charges,” Alex whispered into his mic. Shawn nodded and Alex watched as he removed the small C4 charges from his belt, placing them over the hinges and locking mechanisms of the door. “When we breach, they’ll all just be waking up, so we should have the upper hand. I want more survivors than just the two who we are here for. But if they have you in their sights, kill them. We can’t afford any more losses.” 

Shawn clicked his mic once in acknowledgment before nodding once to each of the rest of the team, then took his place just to the right of the door. They would be sheltered from shrapnel by the concrete walls of the bunker. 

Alex closed his eyes to avoid any damage from the flash of the detonation and said, “Blow it.”

The explosion followed an instant after Shawn hit the detonator. Shards of metal blasted in all directions and Alex prayed they hadn’t inadvertently killed the hostages inside. The bunker was old, almost 60 years old. The team had observed the patrol schedules and shift changes for two days, waiting to find the opportune moment to strike. They had slipped between two patrol groups on their way to blow the entrance to the bunker. But the didn’t know what the layout inside would be.

 Alex opened his eyes and watched the team enter the building. He flipped open the small video screen attached to the side of his rifle and switched the channel to Shawn’s helmet-borne video feed. That camera had also been set on night vision mode and he said a silent prayer of thanks for the lights inside being off. There was nothing worse than storming a room at night with night vision on, only to find yourself blinded by the lights inside the room.

“Everybody put down your weapons and you won’t be harmed,” he heard Shawn bellow as soldiers on both sides of the room looked up in a daze, either from being in deep sleep or from the shock of the exploding door. The first man to Shawn’s right must have been on guard duty, because he lay on his back, gun raised. 

BRRRAPPP! 

Shawn’s rifle spat flame as a three-round burst of bullets sprayed the man’s blood across the ceiling of the room. Alex watched as if through Shawn’s eyes as his friend moved past the dead man, kicking the next soldier in the side of the head before he could scramble for his weapon.

Alex heard the others move in behind Shawn, their shouts to drop weapons echoing his own. He could hear weapons fire through Shawn’s feed, but it was thankfully all from his team’s M4C3s. He saw Shawn was approaching a door at the back of the bunker, open just a jar. There was no sign of activity inside, but the noise from the entrance and the subsequent shouting for surrender rendered anyone inside the next room invisible and silent.

“Careful, Shawn,” Alex cautioned his friend. He saw the video feed bobble up and down and took that to be Shawn’s agreement. Shawn pushed the door open, gun at the read, but stopped after only two steps into the room.

“Uh-oh,” was all Shawn said as he gazed around the room.

Two men were strapped to metal chairs in the middle of the room. Behind them stood three others. The two to either side had pistols pressed firmly to heads of the prisoners. The third man stood between them, smiling cruelly at Shawn.

“Quite impressive, Mr. Woods,” said the mysterious man in the middle. “Too bad, you got all this way to find that the ones you seek will die anyway.”

“Kill him, Goliath. He’s working for the C-” the hooded figure in the left chair started to say, before he was struck over the back of the head by the gunman behind him.

“What do you want us to do?” Shawn asked and Alex knew he wasn’t speaking to the man behind the chairs.

“Move slowly right. Put your gun down, like you want to negotiate,” Alex said quietly. If Shawn thought the idea was idiotic, he didn’t show it or say anything and followed Alex’s orders.

“I would like you to surrender peacefully,” the unknown man said. He hefted his rifle up as he watched Shawn move sideways. “Capturing you all would advance my career significantly.”

“We don’t want to kill anyone we don’t have to,” Shawn said to the men behind the hostages, as if agreeing with their idea.

“In case you haven’t noticed, Goliath,” said the man in the middle with derision, “you have disarmed your own weapon, and have only three others to guard twenty of my men who will quickly overwhelm them on my command.” He grinned maliciously. He raised his hands as if to clap for the guards to do just that.

“Any time now,” Shawn said quietly into his headset.

“What did you say?” the man asked, his hands flexed on the grip of his rifle.

“Lights out,” Alex said into his mic as he toggled the auto reload switch on his M27 sniper rifle.

BAM! BAM! BAM! 

Three .40 caliber rounds spiraled through the cold, winter air. They flew across the 75 yards between Alex’s position and the bunker entrance, through both doors, before passing through the chests of all three men behind the prisoners. Blood splattered across the wall behind the two strapped to the chairs as their captors’ chests exploded backwards against the cold, sheet metal walls. Panicked shouting rose up as the men who’d been ready to overwhelm the team now fell to the floor for fear that they might be the next victim of the onslaught.

“Clear,” Shawn said. Alex could tell by the edge in his voice that he hadn’t expected all three of them to be taken out.

Alex trotted up to the blown out bunker door, rifle resting in the crook of his right arm. Snow had started to accumulate during the assault and it now crunched beneath his boots as they walked. Entering the first room, he found Dempsey, Rock, and Jimmy guarding the men who had been taken by surprise. Five bodies lay in the corner, obviously those killed in the fighting. He nodded to his team but didn’t stop. He heard voices coming from the second room as he crossed.

“Thanks for the covering fire, Scope,” Darren Blake said as Alex entered the room. “Could have gotten real ugly and I wasn’t too keen on having my head blown off by those goons.”

“Always here to lend a helping hand, sir,” Alex said with a slight smile. “Your head alright, Captain?” He looked at Captain Yoshito, who was still shaking his head and rubbing the spot where the guard had struck him.

“I’ll be fine, just a little banged up. Is it just you five that came to get us?” he asked.

“Me, Goliath, Rock, Dash, and Church, yeah. Viboro and a few others are watching our retreat path. The rest of the team is back at HQ. We didn’t want to risk more people than we had to. We have extra weapons and winter gear for the two of you,” Alex replied. “We should get moving if we are going to make it back to base by tomorrow morning.”

“We’re not going back to headquarters,” Blake interjected bluntly. “At least, you and your team aren’t.”

Alex didn’t question the update, though he wondered what Blake knew that would make him want to send out a quarter of what was left of the company. He had planned to bring the two of them back to base to plan the next move. They knew several key players and their roles in the attacks on Chicago, but obviously Blake had other ideas about when, where, and how to confront the Council.

“Yoshito and I will head back to headquarters. Your team has a new mission, Captain Samuelson, one of grave importance to defeating the Council,” Blake said. 

He handed a small shred of paper to Alex. Alex barely even noticed the writing on the scrap as he reeled from the surprise promotion. Blake and Yoshito chuckled. After a moment he studied the paper. The scrap had only one name. 

“Devaux,” Alex read from the scrap. “Is this -?”

“Prime Minister Dominique Devaux, of the New Canadian Commonwealth, yes,” Blake said without waiting for Alex to finish. “She is one of perhaps many foreign entities sitting on the Council, that much is clear. If we were to simply walk into the Capitol in San Jose and reveal the list of membership of the Council, and we don’t even have a complete list, we’d be laughed out and then imprisoned, or maybe just shot on the spot. We need to get proof of foreign involvement in the Council. If we can prove they collaborated with the Canadians, we’ll have a bigger bargaining chip against them. Treason is a hard charge to casually dismiss, especially for a group who claim to be the ultimate patriots.”

“Which is where we come in,” Alex said, already piecing together their new mission. “If I understand you correctly sir, and I hope I don’t, you want us to kidnap and interrogate the leader of the most powerful nation in the northern hemisphere, is that about right?”

“That’s exactly what I want you to do, Scope,” Blake said with a grin. “Good luck.”