Joshua Chrisstoff
Published: 2012-04-24
Total Pages: 220
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They call us SPECIAL THEY CALL US SPECIAL is an adventure in NE Africa, what could possibly go wrong? Wild animals, shooting the coup d’etat instigator, run from govt forces, his forces, regulars, militia, insurgents, rebels, renegades, criminals and then get attacked by those you never knew about. At home, asleep, dog tired from working too long without breaks, WULFGANG von WULF is in bed. Why would he be woken and dragged back into work after just 90 minutes sleep? On the chopper, on Wulf’s front lawn, it is all most unmilitary like. Off the chopper, into the old man’s office, then nod off every time he starts a new sentence. The TEAM arrive, they get light jungle kit, and very skimpy at that. 22 minutes to take off the briefing starts, a non-military all black jet waits, strange even for special ops. There are 5 pinkish, yellowish space suits. Put them on, some hours are gone, take them off some more hours are gone. Put the suits on, jump out of the plane at 60,000 feet, twice the height of Mount Everest, head downward and achieve 400 mph, sheer insanity. Wulf and the team try to locate a man on the ground pointing a laser pencil into the night sky. Steer towards him. It is tough for Wulf who has never done a parachute jump before. He has to land near someone else. The suits can only be unlatched from the outside. Eight minutes of oxygen is all you have, start to finish. Suffocation is all you have to look forward to after eight minutes. They load the truck, travel across country at sunrise. It is rough and ready. The old truck maybe reliable but doesn’t have a single pane of glass in it. It is not this year’s model. They stop to take on water. Along come two strange vehicles, with apparently, two Germans and three local guides or assistants. They look suspiciously like us, the same sort of deadly contractors. There is not enough time to negotiate, to share information, possibly band together in a common cause. We leave, unhappy to say the least. Worried, concerned, distrustful, all of these and more. 10 am we are in place at the village when the Colonel will come by, that is what our intel says. We are all positioned well, just as we like it. Not more than about two minutes before 10 am, those two Toyota Landcruisers appear in the middle of the village and begin refuelling. They came in from the north, the Colonel is expected from the south. The Germans begin to shoot before the Colonel’s trucks have come to halt, it is premature, it is creating problems. Instead of six bodyguards we expect, he has twenty four. We have to support shoot for the Germans, we have no choice unless we abandon the mission. That is not good form at all. After the carnage, we “speak” to the Germans, they feign ignorance of our language yet they reply instantly to our inquisitorial approach. They leave, we leave. The second part of the mission is to secure the niece of the Colonel, abduct her without abducting her. She will not be safe now with her uncle dead, she may even be suspected of playing a part in our assassination of him. She has valuable local knowledge of politics, of who is in bed with whom else. We have to get her to come with us. We flee town. The niece is with us, although she is large and difficult to manage, culturally, emotionally and physically. Hyena attack us, the defence is rugged, we decimate the pack although we don’t necessarily want to. It is them or us. The niece is terrified. We get to the pickup point. It is a one off option, totally unheard of in these modern times. There is always a backup plan, alternatives, and options. We can’t communicate with the plane or home base, or even Kentucky Fried Chicken. Could the plane have come and gone, early maybe? Would we have to run cross country with this 300 lbs girl or woman? Surely that is impossible. The team could split and run across any country and all get home, easily, it is within our skill set and we had done this many times, but 300