Well, there was this one time, back in the last millenium...
You see, I'm part of a SOCOM light infantry unit. Light infantry, you know, like scouts or snipers. We run at night - with thermal imaging goggles of course - through the woods of Afghanistan with a minimal loadout, taking down Taliban with a integrally-supressed Vihkr (yeah, I said Vihkr - for those of you chairborne rangers who think you know all about guns - the Soviet SR-3 Vihkr. Fires subsonic 9x39mm rounds, so you get both AK-style impact energy and the sectional density of a 9. Quieter than a cat's whisper. I took it off some Republican Guards who thought they were hot s***. Called themselves elite. Ha! The last thing that went through their minds was a sabot from my FiveseveN. Yep, you heard me right. You see, when you're a dead-sure shot like me, anything will do at close range. The .15cal sabots travels at nearly 3000fps. The shock effect alone produces massive trauma. Then, the sabot's unique design causes it to yaw, effectively creating huge wound channels. And you can forget about armor - these little sweethearts can penetrate a NATO helmet at 50 meters.) But back to the subject at hand. So there I was, running through the Afghani woods taking down Taliban just like Ol' Silvester himself in First Blood.
So here I am in the present. I can never truly be off duty, for there are some jobs that - quite frankly - no one else is qualified to take. I prefer to call it deferred activation. I'm too much of a trooper to rest on my laurels though, far be it. Because of my superb conditioning and advanced training, I don't really need to hit the trails every morning, but I do it anyway, just to demonstrate to others what it means to aspire to new heights. Frankly, I'm concerned about the level of physical conditioning in my unit. Some of these guys barely get 7 min miles. I run 20 miles every morning before my 0900 tripart tactical re-energization interval (what the mindless sheeple call it breakfast!). Normal terrain isn't even a challenge, so I run cross-country across the rugged backcountry of the national forests. With a full 30lb. battlepack and oakley assault boots naturally - those who practice sweating....
And that brings us to the circumstances which I am about to describe. So there I was, last day of deferred activation before reverting to full duty, with a 30lb backpack and oakley boots jogging through an undisclosed national forest. I came to what my finely-honed senses (sharpened by years of operating in-country) told me was a fork in the trail. Making an instantaneous and intuitive decisiob, I ground on, only to nearly trip over some stupid rocks that somebody had piled into little stacks of three. Looked like snowmen. Ye gad, don't civvies have anything worthwhile to do with the time operators like me buy for them everyday? And what do they do with it? The tree-huggers go and build little rock shrines in the middle of nowhere. Confident in my pathfinding abilities, I side-stepped these contemptible little piles of stone and continued along the trail. The trail got harder and harder to follow. Foliage constantly darted out at me. Only my keen scoutcraft and natural agility helped me to continue. You see, after countless incursions, running through forests with a 15lb weapon and full loadout, under constant suppressing fire from insurgent 14.5mm heavy machine-guns, this becomes 2nd nature.
Suddenly, a branch comes out of nowhere and snakes my foot. I react instantly by tranferring my forward momentum into a controlled fall. I hit the ground in prone position. Combat instinct, what can I say? Old habits die hard. I look at the muddy ground in front of me. My mind has already analyzed the situation before I can consciously become aware of it. A footprint. What was someone else doing out here? My sense switched into overdrive - my whole awareness was on high alert. I trekked warily down the "trail." Aha! My tactical SEAL sunglassses with enhanced differentation and color perception caught a glimpse of a horizontal line stretching across the trail. A wire! Someone had cleverly strung a wire between trees, no doubt to trigger a silent alarm. I have special authorization to investigate matters judged to be potentially important to national security, and tripwires in a forest - how much more ominous can it get? No doubt some domestic terror cell trying to build a WMD, far from the farseeing eyes of America's spooks.
I crept forward to investigate. Several men dressed in black pajamas milled around in a clearing, armed with silenced MAC10s and Chi-com AK47s. There were rows of foliage, some strange-looking bushes...suddenly it hit me like a point blank shot straight in the face: this was no NBC site; this was a drug farm for one of the cartels. *Splat* A chuck of bark flew off the tree trunk above my head. Too late, I realized my error as I simultaneously turned and executed a tight combat roll to my left. Up above me, on a cunningly hidden platform, another guard took aim with a MP5SD. Smoothly drawing the FivenseveN from its custom thigh holder, I squeezed off several rounds. Tango down. The commotion had alerted the others, and suddenly wild bursts of gunfire were all around. Marine crawling through the underbrush, I recognized the desperate need for a diversion. Popping the pin on a AN-M14 incendiary grenade I hurled it into a stack of dried bales. The dry material catches immediately. Distracted by the blaze, the remaining bad guys divert their attention for one crucial second, but it's all I need. I immediately spring up and Mozambique 3 of them. The air fills with a smell, almost like burnt sage, as thickening smoke hides me from the remaining assailant as I load another mag. Suddenly, out of the mist, an AK muzzle emerges, inches away from my head. Reacting instantly, I perform a powerful telegraphic sweeping motion with my left hand, diverting the barrel away from my CNS. Stunned and deafened by the muzzle blast, I instinctively thrust the FiveseveN forward into into the attacker. Feeling contact, I fire, and keeping firing until I hear a click. Exhausted, I slump onto my back. The smoke is strange somehow, it's making my eyes water. That weird smell... I feel lightheaded, almost giddy. All's well with the world. I get up and start jogging back. Funny, I have a hard time concentrating. Things seem hilarious. Somehow, I get lost. It takes hours to find my way out.
I can't be late for my next assignment, so I take the first flight to the airport nearest to*undisclosed location*. A simple call would've gotten me picked up by a military chopper, but I'm trying to stay low profile. During the flight, the guy in the next seat keeping looking at me funny. Finally I arrive at *undisclosed location*, and head straight in to see my CO. Walking up to his desk, I stand at rigid attention. He looks up, and -- pauses. Sniffs. To me: that better not be what I think it is....
I'm sure even the liberals have people like this.
