Ways of the shadow

Chapter 2: The Crusaders

    It's been 5 weeks since Lieutenant Sarah Kerns joined the team and I can already tell that she belongs with us. Besides the occasional glare from Matt, everyone liked her. During her training she proved to me that she's not just a pretty face. She beat Christian in a sparring battle and almost beat Wesley in a shooting test. And to top that she came within points of my high score in Halo.

Shadow Team One was set to deploy on our first mission with her at 2100 hours and we were all getting our gear ready. Our mission was to inflitrate one of The Crusaders main facility's in Venezuela. I was in the process of taking apart and cleaning my Colt 45 when Sarah walked up to me.

"Hey Sam, I have a question" she told me.

"Shoot" I said putting my gun down.

"Why am I Shadow 8 when there is no Shadow 7?" She asked

I sighed, " I knew you would ask this soon enough. 5 years ago Shadow 7 went rouge and is the founder of the terrorist group that we are about to attack." I explained

  "What was his name?" Sarah asked trying to figure more out.

  "That's classified" I said cutting off the conversation. It was mean but I didn't like talking about it.

     I put my gun back together, picked up my gear and head for the jet hanger on the other side of Carmichael industries. I walked through the hallways and cleared my head for the upcoming mission. A distracted soldier is a dead soldier.

I came to the hangar and opens the doors to the massive underground hangar. To my left was the tunnel that lead to the surface and to my right was the jet warming up for take off. As I entered the jet I noticed that the pilot was Colonel Ryan was the pilot.

"I didn't know you had your pilots license Colonel" I remarked setting my gear down.

"I don't, I'm not even here" he said while he was checking the various knobs and switches.

"That's reassuring" I mumbled under my breath as the rest of my team entered the jet and found their seats.

"What's Colonel doing here?" Christian asked me

"He's not here" I relied making sure I said it loud enough for everyone to hear , stopping anyone else from asking.

    "I suggest that you get as much sleep as you can, cause your not gonna be able to until we're back" I sitting down and pulling out my earbuds

      I listened to Eminem until I fell asleep, then there was nothing but the sound of my breathing against the movement of the jet

   "Reds light, everyone strap on" said Colonel Ryan over the intercom.

      My eyes shot open as the light in the corner turned red, signaling us to strap our parachutes to the pull cable that went over our heads. Although from the outside it looked like a normal commercial jet we had modified the inside to fit out purposes.

As every one stood up and we clipped our parachutes to the pull cable, we checked each other to make sure the straps were all tight. After about fifteen more seconds the lights started to flash and we all moved to the door and opened the hatch. Even though I had done this countless times I still got that nervous excitement in the pit of my stomach.

"Get ready to jump" Colonel yelled  from the cockpit, "five more seconds until we're to the drop zone."

"Five...four...three...two...one" I said quietly to my self. As soon as I said one the light turned green and I jumped.

Everything around me slowed down, and the only thing I heard was the roar of the wind against my helmet, and the beating of my heart as I fell through the sky.

  I counted to five and then the parachute opened as the cable pulled open. I jerked up as the parachute opened all the way and I looked down to see the ground approaching fast.

I landed with a thud on the soft grass in an open field surrounded by trees. I took of my parachute, unstrapped my M4 assault rifle.

     When every one else touched down and got their weapon out we took out the gps and, map, and started to figure out where to go.

  "Colonel told us that The Crusaders are operating in an abandoned warehouse ten miles to the east of the drop zone" I said configuring the gps.

     We found our path through the jungle and started down it, single file making sure we kept an even distance between us.

I noticed that some of the leaves around me were  torn off  and sticks were broken in half. That just meant that someone had been down this path recently. Or a group of people.

Every thing was quiet until we heard a snap in the forest to the right. As soon as we heard it every body knelt down and brought their guns up. Since I was in the front in the front, my gun whipped to the right as soon as I heard it. Wesley was behind me and pointed his gun to the left to prevent an attack from behind. Shadows 3, 5, and 7 followed my suit and and Shadows 4 and 6 followed Wesleys lead.

     I counted to one hundred waiting for something to happen. When nothing happened I put my hand up and waved the Shadows on. We walked for another five hundred feet and then we heard the sound again. The Shadows went down and I slid on my thermal vision goggles to try and spot what was making the sound. I was looking around the trail when a leaf fell on my head. I slowly looked up and saw five thermal images standing in the branches . And each thermal image was holding what looked like a machine gun.

I slowly took off my goggles and put the signal to take the weapons off of safety. I heard 7 metallic clicks and we opened fire on the soldiers. Each of our guns had suppressors on so our guns made little to no noise.

Three of the five bodies fell from the trees and I crept over to one. The soldiers uniform looked suspiciously like army spec ops and he was using a Army issued machine gun.

"Ohh noooo" I thought

I knelt down quickly and ripped off the face mask the soldier was wearing. I shook my head in frustration and slowly stood all the way up and turned to my team. Wesley and Matt both held up the "what's wrong" signal.

I walked over to my team and took off my helmet.

  "We aren't looking for a Crusaders base, we were looking for one of our own" I said. Every one just looked at me in confusion.

"The soldiers we just killed" I said pausing, looking down in sadness,"they were part of Shadow 4"