Soldiers of misfortune

One step at a time

The sun crested the horizon bringing much-needed warmth to the damp air that permeated the area and chilled Mason to the bone.

Throughout the night, he sketched out some rough star positions in hopes of providing another navigational aid to use.

When he looked at his handiwork, he was surprised to recognize a few of the constellations. Those being the Little Dipper and Orion. With the night sky being so clear the enormous number of stars visible prevented him from finding any other recognizable constellations.

He decided to get up and make some coffee, since cooking duties either fell to junior members or however were on rotation he decided to start the process, keeping busy to stave off the exhaustion.

Luckily some of the mess gear was intact, with a few large pots and pans. There were a few pieces of cast iron cookware that Cookie, who was a chef in his family's restaurant, had bought to make some better home-cooked style meals.

The cooking of food was normally for more permanent locations, if a permanent location wasn't available or if they were mid-operation local food was preferred, or if all else failed MREs.

Many of the guys that thought they were good cooks quickly learned that they weren't, usually with many insults hurled their way.

A few fires had been built the previous night since it was obvious now that other people weren't anywhere close.

Mason rolled up his sleeves having already removed his plate carrier to be more comfortable.

He stoked the coals and threw on a few more pieces of wood, getting hot coals was required for cooking.

After a good half hour of waiting, he grabbed a very nice cast iron kettle and filled it with some water from a nearby stream. He put in a purification tablet and let it sit for the required time. By the time the water had finished purifying, men started to wake up.

When he put the 2/3 cup of coffee into the pot and set it on the coals Brick mosied over and sat down, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

Mason looked over at his second in command

"Morning"

Brick still half asleep blearily looked into the fire

"Did you even sleep last night?"

Mason sat down. "Making sure we didn't get caught by surprise again was more important than sleep."

Brick finally looked over at him. The benefits of being young he mused.

"Well, fearless leader, what's going to be our next move?" it was now Mason's turn to stare into the flames "I don't have a fucking clue, but we need to move, if Frenchie can't get ahold of someone this morning, then... I guess we'll have to look at the area, and try and find civilization." he looked over to the east, looking at the mountains visible in the distance.

Other TLs moved over to the fire and started into the flames, thinking about the day to come.

The coffee finally finished boiling, Mason moved and started to fill coffee cups. Unfortunately, they didn't have any creamer so black coffee was the only option. Mason however hated black coffee, but in the current circumstances, any coffee was better than nothing.

As Mason internally debated the best way to have coffee the rest of their "command" gathered.

When they all had gathered, they started the process of planning how they would find civilization.

Unfortunately, everything would need to be done on foot which would increase the time dramatically.

Thompson brought up his phone, which had ATAK loaded onto it. He punched in some numbers and calculated how far the nearest highpoint looked to be. "I can get my guys up to that peak over there." he pointed over to the highest hill over to the.

"With the RECCE gear and the GO 12, we should be able to see any sign of civilization within 30 clicks."

"Affirm, my guys and I will be able to use the Datalink to read it wherever we need to be. Also, bring the 2 drones with you, I'll set up a search cordon for them. With both the radar and the drones we will find anything resembling a building within the day." Kowalski started to nail down the final details. They would soon find someone Mason thought.

The other TLs started prepping to move out once they were given the go-ahead. It looked like this would be a short stay in the middle of nowhere Mason mused.

Reaper (Thompson's squad) started their march to a clearing on a hill some 6 clicks away. It would take them the better part of 2 hours to make it since the entire time would require them to blaze a new trail. The 11-man squad moved on, eventually disappearing into the tree line on the edge of the valley.

As the day wore on, multiple fighting positions had been made with 4 medium machine gun emplacements facing outward towards the surrounding tree lines and towards the distant ocean each holding a M60E6.

Two other positions were dug to hold the two M224 mortar system's that we're available. And finally, many foxholes held the rest of the company-sized group of men.

Everyone had mounted their NVGs so as not to be caught by surprise again. The marksman had set up positions with thermal optics at hand to scan the surrounding land.

Over the course of 3 hours since Thompson and some of the guys in Reaper platoon had left Mason had ensured that they had fighting positions to hold off another assault by the monsters.

Mason had now been awake for over 24 hours and was starting to feel his decision-making becoming slower. While he could stay up for another day or two it would be a terrible choice; as he had found out during a training exercise where the platoon had stumbled into an enemy position because of his poor decision-making from having not slept for over 3 days in a row.

Since as far as he could see they wouldn't be bothered for the foreseeable future and decided to take a nap. He set an alarm on his watch for 4 hours and dozed off under a warm afternoon sun.

While he dozed the men at the newly established OP were combing through over a hundred square miles.

Thompson was seated and going through the movement data from the GO 12. Dozens of contacts were being recorded and then investigated by binoculars.

"Human target bearing 327"

"Copy." One of the men looked out into the endless trees "Wonder if we'll actually find something." the man carefully adjusted his binoculars bringing something? Into focus. He was confused. "Hey, ah, TL... you might want to take a look at this."

Thompson snapped up from his work on the laptop. "What you got Johnson?" Johnson continued to stare through the binoculars.

"Um, it looks like a man roughly uhm" he squinted. "Roughly 6ft in height range 900m" Thompson got up and took the binoculars from the man's outstretched hand. When he put the binoculars to his eye, he immediately started to scan a large open field. And then he saw him, a blond-haired man wearing white clothing was looking right at him.

The unknown man appears to know exactly where he is and is staring at him. He almost looked like a ghost.

As Thompson panned around searching for where the man could have possibly come from, he started to waive his right hand over his head as if to grab his attention. He then turned and pointed out toward the middle of the field.

And then a bright white light filled his vision, his eyes burned as if he had been flash banged.

He had to look away, colors danced in his eyes.

"Ahh Fuck!" he rubbed his eyes, the colors quickly fading, when he looked back however, he saw an unbelievable sight.

What was once an empty field in between two ridges now held what could only be described as a military installation.

And on a sign at the gates, labeled in the same way as any other US installation were the words "Fort Present: Home of Dark Eagle PMC"