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“Coulson!”
Coulson turns and sees Blake heading towards him. “I saw that you’re partnered up with May and Garrett for the training exercise. You must have really pissed someone off to get stuck with those two.”
Coulson keeps his reaction neutral. “Garrett and May are both good cadets.”
Blake rolls his eyes. “All those two do together are fight and fuck. The three of you are going to get knocked out immediately.”
Coulson is afraid that Blake is right, but he does not want to show his doubt in his teammates. “We’ll see.”
For the training exercise, the cadets are broken into teams of three and dropped off in a remote wooded area. Each team has been assigned a safe house containing a package. The object of the game is simple, capture the other packages without losing your own.
It takes a while for Coulson, May, and Garrett to find the safe house, mostly because May and Garrett cannot agree on which direction to go. Finally Coulson grabs the map and the compass and marches off without them. As they trail after him, bickering the entire way, he wonders if he would be disqualified for taking out his own team members. Probably so. Working together as a team seems to be a major component of the exercise.
The safe house is a small wooden cabin containing a single room with a cot, table and chairs, and an old couch. There is no electricity, though at least they have a sink with running water. After dumping off their gear and finding the package, which turns out to be a large briefcase, Garrett immediately takes charge, much to the annoyance of Coulson and May.
“I’ll go out and survey the area, see what we’re up against and where the other cadets are. You stay here and guard the package.”
“Why do we have to stay behind?” May demands.
“The other teams are going to send strike teams to capture our package,” Garrett says. “Someone’s got to be here to meet them.”
May crosses her arms. “Why do we have to stay behind instead of you?”
“Because I’m the best at reconnaissance work.”
“We should all stay in the safe house,” Coulson says. “If the other teams are splitting up too, they’ll only send one or two people against us at a time. If there are three of us here, we can cross them off and turn the odds in our favor.”
“I’m not sitting around here waiting to be attacked,” Garrett says. He grabs one of the guns that has been issued for the exercise. Instead of bullets it emits a laser that triggers the sensors that they are wearing under their uniforms to signal a kill. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon. Try not to let yourselves get crossed off before I do.” He leaves before they can protest further.
May rolls her eyes. “So how do you want to do this?” she asks Coulson.
“You check out the perimeter, see which way the enemy is most likely going to approach from. I’ll try to limit our visibility here.”
She nods. Their safe house is in a valley surrounded by trees. The north side of the valley is too steep for anyone to climb down safely without climbing equipment, but there is a grove of trees to the southwest that would serve as adequate cover for an assault. While she is outside she spots a team on the north side of the valley debating the best way to make it down to their safe house. They are so busy planning their attack that they do not notice May until she after she has picked them off from under a bush.
“I knocked off two cadets,” she says when she returns. “The north end of the valley is too steep to climb down, but we should watch for the enemy approaching from the southwest.”
Coulson nods. “Good.” While she has been gone, he has covered up the windows with scraps of wood. There are two doors, and he has moved the table and couch to provide cover so that they can crouch behind the furniture and shoot through the door. “Let’s get into position. I’m sure more teams will be coming our way.”
They each take position behind one of the doors and sit perfectly still waiting. They do not have to wait long before they hear the crunch of footsteps across the wooded ground. True to Coulson’s prediction, the other teams come individually or in pairs, and it is easy for them to pick them off one by one. By the time the sun starts to set they have picked off at least one person from most of the other teams.
“That’s probably the last of them for a while,” May says as the sun dips below the horizon. “No one is going to risk an assault in the dark.”
“Good point. I wonder where Garrett is.”
May shrugs. “If he doesn’t get back soon, he probably got picked off like the guys who came after us.”
“This is going to take forever. These safe houses are too easy to protect with just one or two people for us to make an assault single handedly.”
While they wait for Garrett, they barricade the doors and eat some rations. Finally May says, “He must have been taken out. What should we do tomorrow?”
“Barricade ourselves against further assaults. You’re right, I don’t think it’s worth one of us going out alone, and the other one isn’t going to be able to protect the package alone.”
“We’re not going to win by playing defense,” May says.
“Maybe not, but let’s get some sleep now, and we can talk about it more in the morning. Do you want the first shift?”
“Okay. Wake me in a couple of hours.”
She flops onto the couch. It is not long before the only sound in the cabin is her slow even breathing. Coulson listens and watches for any sign of an assault, but everything is quiet. After a few hours he shakes her awake so he can get some sleep, but even after lying down on the couch, he has a hard time quieting his mind enough to let him sleep. He wonders what they are going to do tomorrow, how they are going to be able to protect the package and collect everyone else’s.
The first light of morning brings with it a few eager cadets who try to launch an assault on the cabin, hoping to catch them unawares. Unfortunately for them, they are the ones who are surprised by gunfire. By now May and Coulson know the paths that their assailants tend to take through the valley to reach them, and can cross off the enemy from quite a distance.
By mid morning though everything is quiet, and after hours go by without another assault, Coulson decides that it is time for them to go on the offensive.
“Get your gear together. We’re going on the offensive,” he says.
“What about the package?”
He has thought about that all morning. “We’ll take it with us.” The briefcase is large and heavy, but not so cumbersome that they cannot take it with them. “We’re not going to make it if we split up.”
“Okay. Where are we going to go?”
“Most of the cadets have come from down the western slope where it’s less steep. I bet most of the cabins are either in that direction or to the north. Once we’re at the top of the valley we can see the paths that people have taken.”
It does not take long for them to get their gear together. He carries the package, and together they set off through the valley. It is very quiet. By their count they knocked off about a quarter of their peers, and if the other safe houses had similar results, there are only a handful of cadets left.
As he predicted, when they get to the top of the cliff at the north end of the valley they can see paths worn in the grass from the cadets the day before. They follow the most worn one until they see another cabin surrounded by a thick grove of trees. May grabs him and pulls him behind a tree nearby.
“Do you see anyone?” she asks.
“No. Visibility in the safe house must not be very good with all those trees.”
“Or they’re hiding in the trees high above us, waiting to pick us off.” She squints into the trees but all she can see is a faint rustling of the leaves. There is a strong breeze, but just to be sure she fires several shots where there is the most rustling.
“Damn it!” a voice shouts, and Blake jumps to the ground. He looks around to see who got him, but not able to find anyone, he stalks off towards the debriefing station.
The two of them open fire on the grove of trees, sweeping their guns until they are satisfied that there is no one else hiding there. They cautiously approach the cabin, and are pleasantly surprised to find it completely empty. The team’s package, an identical briefcase to their own, is sitting on the table. May grabs it.
“One down, four more to go,” she says.
It is relatively easy to find the remaining cabins. Two of them are guarded by only a single cadet, and they are able to kill him before he kills either of them. It does become cumbersome carrying the briefcases around, and they move slowly between sites to make sure no one gets the drop on them.
The last one is perched on the top of a cliff. The only way to reach it is to climb up a rocky ledge that would leave the climber exposed to gunfire from the cabin. Coulson and May stop several meters away from the cliff, concealed behind some bushes, to discuss their strategy.
“It’s too exposed for a direct assault, and I can’t see another way up there,” she says.
“What we need is a way to lure whoever’s inside out.” He surveys the landscape. “If you approach from over there, they’ll have to leave the cabin to get a clear shot. I’ll can hide here and cross them off when they come close enough.”
She nods grimly and drops her gear behind the bushes. “Just don’t let them cross me off, Goose.”
He smiles at her. “I’ve got your back, Maverick.”
As soon as May steps out from behind the bush, they hear the electronic dings of gunfire coming from the cabin. She manages to avoid the shots by climbing towards the cabin partially concealed behind some boulders. She is halfway up the cliff when the gunfire stops, and Coulson guesses that they are coming out on foot to take her out. He wonders if they realize that they are the last cadets left.
When the two other cadets come into view their guns are out and pointed in May’s direction. He only has a second before they open fire, and without hesitation he fires two direct shots.
“Nice shooting,” she says when he joins her outside the cabin.
He gestures to the open door through which they can see the last two packages. “Shall we?”
She rolls her eyes and enters with him behind her. As soon as they are inside, they hear a crackle of static through their comms, and a distant voice says, “Congratulations, cadets. Meet for debriefing at the rendezvous point.”
When they arrive back at the rendezvous point, the other cadets look surprised that they won, but most are gracious enough to say congratulations. Garrett however is sitting in one corner away from everyone else, looking annoyed.
“Who crossed you off?” Coulson asks.
“Blake. He was hiding in one of the trees.”
Coulson smirks. “Yeah, we saw him up there. Maybe next time you’ll listen when we tell you we need to work together.”
He looks at them with grudging admiration. “I got to admit, you make a pretty good team. The other cadets will think twice before going up against the two of you.”