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The SUV skids to a stop just beyond the clearing where the small, tightly-packed cluster of buildings awaits. Ghost and Soap flank you on either side, Price rounding the hood to address your little group with a stolid disposition that belies the true urgency of the mission.
“Alright, we all know the drill.” He says, backlit by the moonlight. “Sweep and search, look for actionable intel, weapons, anything that might tell us what the hell this lot is doing in Champoléon.”
Your forces are spread perilously thin; so thin that Gaz had to be sent to another country altogether. The militia your team has been tasked with tracking down is proliferating like a disease, popping up in locations thousands of kilometers apart and seemingly at random.
It’s taken far too long to connect the dots, and now you’re all going to pay for it.
“The terrain’s gonna interfere with our usual tech, so we’re going with short-range UHF handhelds.” Price continues while you look on solemnly.
You place your hand over the bulky radio clipped to your belt.
“Now, these things don’t come with an earpiece so restrict traffic to emergencies only. Understood?”
Three affirmatives punctuate the Captain’s words.
“Good.” Price nods at each of you in turn. “Watch your backs. Let’s move.”
You cast a glance at Soap and Ghost before trailing after Price, and they seem to share your unease. Each of you will be sweeping a separate building - alone. But needs will out and this is what you’re trained to do, so the four of you trudge onwards.
Price motions for each of you to break off, and the four of you part ways. You flip down your night vision goggles and head towards your building - a quaint little house whose schematics you had poured over thoroughly on the ride over.
You readjust your grip on your suppressed M16, trying to work past the sudden sweatiness of your palms. Out here in the remote mountains of France, it’s eerily quiet, and your ears strain to compensate.
The ground floor of your building is conspicuously vacant, but you still sweep every corner of every room with practiced efficiency. You slink back to the staircase you bypassed on your way in, recoiling when the steps squeak loudly under your boots.
You pause, waiting to see if someone will come to investigate, but the house remains ominously still.
Your unease deepens to dread when you make it upstairs. There’s no one here. The house is perfectly empty - not even a single file or flashdrive to be found.
Something’s wrong. You need to radio your team, but the attention it would draw to them could prove deadly. Your eyes dart around the room almost frantically - What are you missing?
Descending back to the ground floor, you make your way to the basement door you recall from the schematics. Placing your hand on the doorknob, you take one deep, steadying breath before pushing it open slowly.
The staircase is tinged a sickly green, your night vision goggles limiting your field of view substantially as you lower yourself down step by step.
You sweep your muzzle across the room, the quiet hissing of the boiler almost deafeningly loud in the dingy basement. Your eyes flick back and forth, searching for something, anything that might allude to this situation being the set-up you now suspect it to be.
And then you get your wish in the form of a quiet, rhythmic beeping emanating from the nook under the staircase. You spin around, tensing for whatever you might find, but your grip on your rifle slackens when your gaze falls on an unassuming little package, wrapped in duct tape with a timer adhered to the front. 00:23, 00:22.
Semtex. A whole lot of it. This definitely falls under Price’s definition of ‘emergency,’ and you wrench your radio off your belt.
“Got eyes on an IED, twenty seconds to bug out!”
You’re already hightailing it back to the staircase when you get two terse acknowledgments and some choice words from Soap. You knew this was a trap - why why why didn’t you listen to your gut?
You barely manage to get your boot on the first step when a hand clamps around your ankle in a vice grip and yanks, pulling your feet out from under you and causing you to tip forward. Your nose collides painfully with the wooden beams and your night vision goggles snap clean off the visor.
You nearly growl in frustration, kicking out fruitlessly and struggling to get your gun into position as you’re dragged backwards. Goddamnit, you don’t have time for this!
A crushing weight drops onto your lower back and a hand sinks into your hair, forcing your face and your broken nose into the cold cement.
Your rifle is pinned underneath you and an almost animalistic survival instinct electrifies the blood in your veins. The weight on your back shifts, compressing your lungs, and suddenly there’s a mouth speaking directly into your ear.
“You were all meant to be here.” He snarls in a heavy French accent. “But we will settle for just one.”
“Switch, you’ve got ten seconds - where the fuck are you?!” Ghost’s bellow comes through the tinny speakers of your radio. It rests not two feet away from you, just out of your reach.
“Ghost, get your arse back here!” Price’s voice sounds as frantic as you feel and it’s disquieting - it’s a rare thing, indeed, for you to be able to bear witness to a lapse in his composure.
“She’s still fuckin’ in there, Price!”
The man lowers his lips to your ear again, and you summon every ounce of adrenaline-fueled strength in your body and throw your head backward. Grim satisfaction registers in your hindbrain when your skull connects with his nose; he howls, reels back, and you use the opening to slip out from under him.
He spits a string of curses in elaborate French, barely having the time to morph his expression into shock when he finds himself looking down the barrel of your M16. He was intending to die down here, anyway, and you let that remedy the guilt that usually follows the pull of the trigger.
“Goddamnit, Switch, come in!”
You scoop your radio off the floor and launch yourself up the stairs, hoping against hope that you have enough time to make it out - you didn’t even waste a millisecond glancing at the countdown.
“Johnny, let me go- get your fuckin’ hands off me-”
There’s the door, tauntingly wide open. You bring your radio to your lips.
“Ghost, fall back! I’m almost-“
A deafening blast accompanies a shockwave that strikes you squarely in the back and you’re violently ripped from consciousness before you even hit the ground.
-
bzzzzzzzzzzzzz
The radio hangs limply in Soap’s hand, nothing but static on the other end. He lets it clatter to the ground.
Price’s gaze is transfixed on the flames rising from the little house. He reaches up listlessly, pulling the brim of his hat over his eyes and ducking his head.
“I fuckin’ sent ‘er in there.” He says lowly, but the hitch in his voice is painfully audible.
“Steamin’ fuckin’ jesus!” Soap turns away from the blaze, dropping into a crouch and clasping his hands to the sides of his head, digging his fingertips into his skull.
And Ghost-
Ghost just sits down before his legs have the chance to give out. He stares and stares and stares. As if you’re going to come walking out of the inferno like a valkyrie. But you don’t.
It’s almost irreverent, blasphemous, profane that such a brightly shining star can be snuffed out with the snap of a finger and a homemade bomb.
His forearms are draped loosely over his bent knees, his expression as vacant as the building he just searched.
It was a fuckin’ set-up, and everyone played their part seamlessly.
His gaze is locked onto the oranges and reds dancing into the night sky and Ghost knows with terrible certainty that this will be the last warmth he feels for a very long time.