The Primal War : First Elements Saga Book 1

Chapter 11: Gunfight at the Panama Canal

Marcus returned Val’s look with a thoughtful one of his own. It would take fairly good timing to pull it off. But, if he could, the idea he had ran a very good chance of buying the operators the time they needed to get in and plant their explosives. He then nodded.

“I do, actually.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “Can your abilities wrap a light bending fog around each team, Val?” Marcus asked. And it was the water primal’s turn to frown.
“I … believe so,” she said after a thoughtful pause.

“Good. Cloak them with your fog banks. I’m going to use a flare to put a fire source in close to our Soulless friends out there, then skip in grenades to give them a hot potato to deal with. While they’re distracted, our demo teams will move in under cover of your camo fog and start planting their explosives.”

Marcus looked at the waiting RedSky operators.

“As soon as you hear the first round of grenades go off, you will need to move double time.”

“Copy that, sir,” Jenkins said as the other operators nodded their understanding of what the fire primal wanted them to do and began preparing their equipment and supplies.

Marcus nodded himself in satisfaction before looking back at Val.

“Start spinning out your cloaking fog banks, Val. As soon as they’re cohesive, I’m firing the first flare!”

The water primal nodded and turned to her team, already making subtle movements with her hands as she did to gather humidity out of the air and start coalescing it around each operator. For his part, Marcus pulled his pack around and quickly began to root around inside it, looking for the kit holding his flare gun and flares.

To make his idea work, he would need to use a starburst flare, one that would burst apart into dozens of smaller points of brilliance instead of staying in a lump, like a standard flare. That way, he could use whichever point of light that gave him the maximum angle to attack and catch the Soulless assets by surprise.

Marcus’s eyes abruptly narrowed. Which, beyond the first group, they wouldn’t be when those grenades started going off. He needed to use something significantly more stealthy, if he was to keep the various Soulless teams from realizing they were under attack.

As he considered options, the young fire primal found his eyes drifting to his fellow Descendant. As he watched her coalesce the heavy humidity surrounding them into shifting clouds of light reflecting moisture, Marcus had a thought about how Val could help him achieve a stealthy attack without cloaking him in light-bending fog!

Val glanced at him as Marcus stepped closer.

“Just about done here, matchstick,” she said in a low voice, her expression determined as she focused on her task.

“Good,” Marcus said with a nod. “Because I have an idea you can help me with. Something that should make our assault even more stealthy than before!”

That was enough to lift Val’s eyebrow in curiosity. But the water primal was too much of a veteran operator to be easily distracted from the task at hand. So Marcus had to wait until she was done weaving the last of the cloaks before she finally turned to him.

“So tell me, mijo,” she directed with a motion with her chin.

“What’s this amazing idea of yours??”

****
The keen eyed air Soulless let her eyes swing over the perimeter. Other than a mist rising off the canal, it was empty of enemy forces as it had been the dozen times she had checked it before. She was about to turn to the squad of her fellow elementals, as they referred to themselves as, that she was assigned to by Null Faction Operations when a flash of light in the periphery of her vision caught her attention.