Deadlock || ᴠᴍɪɴ

Chapter 1

The mountain was dotted with shabby huts, all with their doors shut and their inhabitants sound asleep. Three watchmen, from the looks of it, seemed to have their guard down, drinking alcohol as they warmed themselves around the campfire. Although morning fog filled the air, the surroundings were visible as the sky was beginning to lighten.

Fritz Bonaham lowered his binoculars and checked the time on his watch. His men were likely already at their positions, waiting for Bonaham’s signal to attack.

“This is Alpha speaking. Bravo, Charlie, Delta, are we clear?” he said over the radio. Each team responded to say that they were ready. Bonaham ordered the attack to commence as planned, at five o’clock sharp, and crouched in the bushes.

“…Are you ready?”

“Whenever you are,” said a boy’s voice at Bonaham’s side. The boy was chewing on a piece of gum, lying on his belly on the ground in a prone position as he peered through the scope of his M24 Sniper Weapon System mounted on a bipod. Neither tension nor uncertainty could be observed from his demeanour.

A few minutes later, gunshots rang out in the quiet mountains. His men had started moving in. As Bonaham hid himself in the bushes, watching the battle play out through his binoculars, the guerilla fighters burst out of their huts with guns in hand, now caught on to the surprise attack.

The boy honed in on his target through the Leupold power scope and pulled the trigger without hesitation. Although they were more than three hundred metres away, the boy took down enemy after enemy with ease.

Bonaham’s men soon overpowered the enemies and gained control of the guerilla camp. Less than thirty minutes had passed since the attack began. Bonaham felt immense satisfaction at the results of their training. The boy piped up excitedly beside him.

“Hey, Bonaham. This new rifle is amazing. She takes people down like no other.” The boy, who had just finished murdering numerous people, wore an innocent, boyish smile.

“That’s all you,” Bonaham praised, consciously sweeping aside his conflicting feelings. “You’re as good as snipers come.”

It took skill to get the hang of sniping through a metric sight scope, but this boy had a God-given knack for it from the very beginning; he was able to read the appropriate angle and point of impact almost instantly, and needed no instruction.

“I’m tired of sniping. Let me go into close combat. It gets boring being backup all the time,” the boy pouted. Bonaham couldn’t help but feel pity for him. In his active duty days, Bonaham was often called the iron man, but it wasn’t like his heart was made of iron, too.

“Maybe some other time. When Willy gives you permission.”

“I’ll try asking Willy the next time he comes to the camp, then,” said the boy casually, as if he were asking for a new toy. “I got six guys today. You think Willy’ll compliment me?”

“Of course he will,” Bonaham replied, and the boy smiled happily. To the boy, Willy was like God.

“You make him a proud father,” Bonaham added for the sake of saying it. However, he knew more than anyone else that the man would not shed a single tear if the boy were to die.

-

“I highly doubt it was Egan,” Mark Heiden said decisively.

“Couldn’t it have been, though?” Jimin Lennix objected. “Only a select few people know that Rob and I met with Egan the day before.”

Heiden tapped his finger irritably against his immaculately organized desk.

“That may be, but that’s not enough to launch an investigation into Egan. We looked up the plate of the car that you remembered, but the car didn’t exist. At the moment, there’s no evidence that links Egan with the men who attacked you.”