DEFCON Year New Generation: Leigh Barton

Chapter 15

On the third week of the NEO, Leigh and her team were still onto rooftops to help oversee the evacuation efforts, which were still going on well thanks to accurate orders and intelligence provided to ground troops by the authorities, which enabled those troops to hope about finishing the job now being a matter of days at best or a matter of weeks at worse.

Leigh was still looking through her binoculars when she saw a long convoy of evacuee-filled buses escorted by armored guntrucks operated by Dutch and German special operations troops. Looking further on the sides, she, Darnell and Tores saw no one dared to come anywhere near the convoys due to the threat posed by the Allied snipers and the Allied drones, including loitering munitions, to any ground threat.

But she knew they had to stay sharp if they were to finish the job, meaning Leigh and her team, as well as other force protection members were to evacuate last in order to enable the commandos to evacuate the civilians and foreign officials safely before leaving China themselves.

As Leigh and her team kept watching the surroundings of the airport, another huge busload of evacuees boarded the evacuation planes bound for American bases in the Luzon Sea, also referred to as the Southeast Asia Sea since the end of World War III. Leigh then spotted another individual, who was behaving suspiciously. But as said individual took an AK variant out of his trenchcoat, he was shot dead by a French squad, who prompty seized the AK rifle after Leigh had reported the guy to the other Allied units.

After reporting and enabling their allies to shoot down the gunmen, Leigh and her squad then heard the last civilian-loaded cargo planes taking off before the force protection teams from conventional units began loading the equipment into recently-landed C-17 Globemaster III cargo planes from the US, Australia, the UK, Canada, Indian and the UAE as well as Japanese Kawasaki C2 cargo planes while the rooftop-positioned teams were still watching the surroundings of the airport.

Leigh and her squad, including Darnell, LaRue, Dunning, Marquez and Tores, kept their eyes open for any sign of hostiles despite being sleep-deprived. But they still managed to focus on their job since they actually took turns to watch over the surroundings to avoid any signs of burnout, like the rest of the teams involved in the NEO.