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Foreword: If anyone has noticed, Chapter one of Delta Chronicles has been missing for a period of several weeks. This is because I have been reworking it to my current writing style, the following being the fruits of that labor. I have a feeling that all of you will appreciate the reworked version. It's still got the Bravado, it's still got the Hollywood-esque dialog (at points), and it's also slightly longer to boot! I feel that this version is far better than the other, and I hope you agree. Aufwiedersehen, mein freunden.

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     A single black wolf travelled silently through the deserted baghdad street, using potholes, buildings, and the occasional trash can for cover, he scouted the area before him with the ACOG mounted on his rifles upper rail.

     "All clear," he muttured through the sandstorms wind. Three more soldiers sprinted from cover and joined the first behind the sandstone arch under the Iraqi night sky. "So what do we do now Captain?" the second soldier asked.

     "Take roll, make sure we're all present." the Wolf replied, not looking back. There were now four of them behind the boulder, each checking behind the other to make sure none of them had gotten lost in the near opaque gusts. Their names were Jack Hernandez, Dylan Sikhes, Clarice Gonzalez, and John Graham. They were here for a single reason, which was to secure a checkpoint for a Coalition advance through the city.

     "All accounted for. Check it with your scope." the wolf, Jack, said, and got down so that John could see past him.

     "I've got one insurgent, looks like he's holding an AK or FAL, definitely not one of ours. Permission to fire, Sir?" John said, still as a rock.

     "Granted, fire at will." Jack replied, and then popped out of cover with a pair of low-light binoculars as John pulled the trigger. A muffled gunshot came from John's SR25 as the rifle spouted chemical fire from one end, and smoking brass from it's side. Through the dusty wind Jack saw a figure jerk, then hold still for a moment, and then drop, as a small silhouetted pire of blood spewed from their chest.

     "Good hit. Confirmed kill, Sergeant." Jack said as he and John slipped back into cover.

     "Was all clear as far as I could see, which is damned far, Sir."

     "Good. We move to the next cover on my count, got it?"

     "Yessir!" the squad replied in unison, in a hushed tone. But Clarice seemed to have other Ideas.

     "I'll keep up as long as Dylan doesn't keep trying stare at my Tit's, Sir." This was a bad thing, Jack knew. Somehow, months ago, Clarice had Irked Dylan and the two had attemted to bait each other into arguments since, usually at the most unfathomable times. Jack also knew that Dylan couldn't help but to respond.

     "Shut yer trap! And I weren't staring at her tits. I'm a Delta, Sir, not some unprofessional bimbo like her." Upon hearing this, Clarice, John, and Jack all whipped around, the latter pair just in time to find the female Puma attempting to pummel Dylan with the M16 in her hands. However, Jack, reaching over John, grabbed her arm with a look of fury in his eyes.

     "Quit it! You're acting like fucking amateurs, not goddamned Spec-Ops! At this rate you're going to get us all killed, you idiots!" Jack hissed violently over the wind, as he and John traded places. Dylan was not wrong in his assertion, as the entire squad knew full well that Clarice possessed an overactive sex drive, oft mistaken for being loose, but it was the wrong time and wrong place to bring it up. Once the two had calmed down, Jack turned back to John, also now the pointman, who had mounted his rifle again.

     "What have you got?" Jack asked, curious as to what had spurred the normally lax sniper into action.

     "Three more just came out of the mosque at twelve O'clock, armed to the teeth, probably to see what happened to poor old Mohammed, whom I shot if you'll remember. They're about fifty yards out, and fifteen from the body, Jack. We've only got a couple seconds at most before they see the body, Sir. If you don't give the order, I'm going to take 'em anyways." John's body was almost trembling with anticipation.

     "Go for it, soldier. They cannot sound the alarm. If they do, then we're all fucked worse than an upturned blonde." Jack said, urging the white fox to shoot. Accordingly, three shots sounded out, muffled blasts one after the other. A second of waiting, a gurgling noise, and then a fourth shot. Then silence. 

     "Clear." John said, and switched places again with Jack. Now next to the Jaguar, John smiled at Clarice, and clarice rolled her eyes as John moved to kiss her. T'was not weant to be. 

     "Move up!" Jack said, and John and Clarice grumbled for a split second before John tapped Jack on the shoulder signaling the squad was ready. The four of them sprinted to a dumpster, and stacked up behind it. Jack nodded, and the quartet of Delta's kept moving forward until they were dead even with the first man John had shot, who had a ragged hole through his chest where his heart should've been.

     "Good hit. Time at the range well spent from that little look-see." Dylan said to John before he and Jack sprinted out into the dust, and helped the Delta captain move the insurgent's body into a nearby alleyway, before dumping the obviously overweight body into a handy dumpster.

     "Mohammed were a fat motherfucker" Dylan said to John as he sprinted back, nearly out of breath from the exertion of lifting the body, in addition to the nearly 90 pounds of gear he already wore.

Clarice looked at John for a moment, seemingly contemplating whether to engage in an act of affection, but instead said:

     "If the other three aren't dead, there won't be any for you when we get back, Sniper.", and snickered, blushing a little bit under her pitch matte black fur. John took his turn to roll his eyes, and carried on with his business of continually scraping dust out of the SR25's reciever. 

      The Delta's moved up once again, now even with the trio of Insurgents that John had killed, and a mere fifty feet from the Mosque they had emerged from. They were all obviously dead, and John sighed a dramatized sigh of relief, which Clarice smacked him on the chest for, through his armor. Then all four of them moved out of cover, and dragged the bodies into the next visible alleyway, before sprinting to the door of the Mosque. Dylan stood ready to kick the door in, and the rest of them lined up on either side of him, their weapons drawn, when Jack heard the roar of an engine. Within seconds, they had all disappeared from sight, behind several crated of what appeared to be melons, hoping the vehicle would pass them by. However, Jack cursed his luck when the Technical MG mounted pickup stopped right in front of the mosque. 

     "You can come out guys! And gal. There ain't nobody in that mosque at this time of night, 'cept for the Whores and their Johns." a disembodied voice said, seeming to come from the truck. Jack peeked from his cover, and instantly relaxed. A freindly face was seen to be peeking from the passenger side window of the white pickup truck, leaning over from the drivers side. It was the fifth, and only human member of Jack's squad, Jeremiah Johnson, or JJ for short. He was Jack's fellow Captain, official weapons specialist, and unofficial tough guy egotist of the squad, and was handy in a close up firefight. 

     "Innie's might not see you, but with these..." JJ held up a pair of thermal goggles "You light up like a box full of thermite in a housefire. So hurry up and pile in gang, Scooby Snax for everyone! Only for the dogs though. Sorry, Clarice, you wouldn't like these anyways." JJ said as he handed beef sandwiches to the three canine members of the squad, who took them with nods and began climbing into the truck.

     "Besides," he whispered to Clarice as the other Operators busied themselves unwrapping their well deserved snacks. "I made you and me Tuna sandwiches. Thought you might appreciate it." Clarice blushed, and kissed him on the lips quickly while no-one was looking, as best she could anyways, possesing a muzzle rather than lips, and took her sandwich, winking at JJ before she bit into it hungrily. Three taps on the roof from Dylan, who had gotten into position on the RPK mounted to the roof of the cab, and JJ hit the gas.

     "Roadtrip!" JJ said, and he took the next left.

     "What have you got from USSOCOM that brings you here, Brawn-for-brains?" Jack joked from the back in between bites, as he watched a block of houses go by, stenciled with arab graffiti. It was all part of an ongoing rivalry between Jack and JJ, who were equally ranked as Captains. One would find a good insult, and then so would the other, and then they would find a new one when the other became less funny.

     "Quite a bit actually, Underdog." JJ said, immitating the cartoon characters voice perfectly. Jack nearly choked on his sandwich, surpressing a chuckle. "From what I gather, we've got Insurgents rigging a block of buildings to blow where the three prongs of the Coalition advance through the city are supposed to meet. We clear the buildings, and the Brass sends in EOD's to get all the bombs out. Easy enough. After that we get to hitch a free ride out of this dump on Charlie team's whirlybird when they relieve us."

     "That seems far to easy. You simplify things too much, Jeremiah." Jack said, raising a cynical brow at JJ's outline of the mission objective

     "It probably does. And I probably do." the Human replied, looking away from the road for a moment to switch the truck's manual gears. 

     The Technical skidded to a stop in front of a row of limestone houses and apartment buildings, and the four in the cab got out, while Dylan stayed on the RPK, panning over the houses with a look of unease plastered on his face. He glanced down to Jack with a worried, questioning look in his eyes.

"I don't like this at all, Cap'n. If someone's in that building, they sure as hell got the drop on us right now."

     "This the right address, cap?" Dylan said, addressing JJ.

     "This is the convergence point for American, and Bitish forces. If there's any bombs, they're going to be on this block."

Up in a second story window of the apartment building, the barrel of an AKM clone peeked out from one of the windows, unnoticed by the Delta's below. Without warning, a lead rain perforated the Technical, and the Delta's immediately took cover behind it, while Dylan was thrown from the top with a panicked yelp, and landed hard on his back letting out a pained groan, bleeding from somewhere. Putting aside her previous confrontation, Clarice rushed over to try and find his wound. Eventually, after around ten seconds of bursts from the AKM, the Insurgent stopped to reload. All of the squad was annoyed, maybe frightened, and Dylan was bleeding from somewhere, but JJ was truly enraged.

     Before Jack could stop the giant of a man, JJ had taken the advantange of the pause in the firing, and mantled over the still smoking hood of the truck, and emptied his magazine into the house. The insurgent went down, a tettered corpse comprising of his remains, and the rest of the rounds wither hit the window sill, or went further into the house. Unfortunately, further into the house there lay a stockpile of homemade explosives. A tracer round struck this stockpile, it's phosphorus charge igniting a bottle of sulphur that resulted in a chain reaction, in turn creating an explosion tha blew out the walls of the house, demolishing it, and half of several others surrounding it. The shockwave seemed to take the ground out from under the Deltas, akin to a feeling of weightlessness, before the shockwave struck, and tossed the Operators back, and flipped the Technical on it's side.

A pyre of smoke and dust rose into the air where the house once stood, it, and the resulting tremor signaling the explosion. When Jack uncovered his eyes, the entire squad was on the ground, writhing from the blastwave. From the other side of the truck, Jack heard JJ exclaim that his 'Everything' hurt. Jack couldn't punish JJ, as they were equally ranked, but would be sure to write this into the Mission debrief when they got back. If beaurocracy by some miracle wasn't working, then maybe JJ would get reprimanded for this asenine stunt. Jack helped his squadmates up, and then rushed around the overturned truck to JJ, who was slumped against the truck. 

     "Shit, JJ, Are you alright?!" Jack said, rushing to the fellow Captain's side, and checking his vitals, as well as for any crimson stains.

     "Yeah, I'm fine. I just didn't expect that. Motherfucking overpenetration on those walls, what ere they made of around here, plywood?" JJ coughed, and spit out a bit of blood. Jack panicked for a moment before he realized that JJ had only bitten his tongue.

     "Knowing this place, they probably are. Just don't pull that shit again, you could've killed us all with that stunt, Jeremiah"

     "Goddamnit, I know. I don't need a lecture, Hernandez. Something's got my head swimming, some sweet smell. Wait, is Clarice in heat again? If she is, she's damned strong, I can smell it, and I haven't even got the nose for it." JJ said as Jack finished helping him up, and the JJ rushed back around the truck toward the rest of the squad, and Jack covered him before following behind the Human.

     "JJ, I think a better question is when is she not in heat. I'm pretty sure every one of us on the squad has wet their pricks on her account. Maybe even Dylan, before their falling out. Of course, we can't really do anything about that, she's the only Medic we've got, even if she does have Nymphomania. And even if we could get another Medic, USSOCOM wouldn't do anything. She was the biggest PR boost for the Army since Operation Anaconda." Jack said as he followed JJ back around the truck.

     "Amen to that." JJ ended the quiet conversation quickly as they rounded the end of the Technical, as the suad was picking themselves up, dusting themselves off. Happy, buy not happy enough to come out of cover. JJ plopped down next to Clarice, who shared some quiet words with him before hitting him in the stomach, and winking at him again.

     Dylan rolled his eyes, and looked back at Jack.

      "What now, since Captain Oblivious is chatting with the Bimbo?"

      "Well, lets think of our options. You're wounded, and out of action. Don't even try to go against me on this one. JJ seems okay, but after a blast like that, I'm not entirely sure. That leaves Me, John, and Clarice as the only ones one-hundred-percent fit for combat, so far as I know."  Jack sighed, and reclined against the drive train of the truck for a minute, contemplating. And then a plan of attack struck him.

     "The rest of you, get over here, I think I've got an idea." he almost said, just loud enough for the rest of the squad to hear, and motioned for the others to look at something.

     "Okay, here's the plan..." he said once the squad was gathered around him. "Dylan, John, You two are going to be on the roof opposite the main apartment building. There's a fire escape, so you won't have to strain yourself, Dylan." He then motioned to JJ. "You're going to be on the building opposite of John and Dylan's building. Now, the three of you are going to provide cover fire when we need it, and situation awareness. If you see movement in the windows, tell me." Jack then turned to Clarice, addressing her specifically. "You're going to be with me. We're lighter than them, so if the staircase got weakened in the blast, we'll still be able to search the building without the stairs caving in, right? Is everybody clear?"

     "Yes, sir." the four others said, and then broke off, going to their respective positions. Inside of five minutes, Jack and Clarice were at the door, ready with a breaching charge. Dylan and John were working as a Sniper/spotter team on one side of the building, while on the other side of the Apartments JJ was ready to supress any movement in the windows, that wasn't the two Delta's about to enter.

     "Is everybody in position?" Jack asked through his Throat mike. 

     "Everybody's green, Delta lead. Cleared for entry." John replied, settling into his rifle beside Dylan.

     "Green, I'm in position. You're a-go." JJ said and hunkered down.

     Jack looked over his shoulder at Clarice and she nodded. Jakc turned back to the the door, and slapped what looked for all the world like a lump of clay with an antenna in it on the door, and pulled Clarice around the corner. He pulled out a detonator, and flipped up the safety cap, pulling the trigger.

     On the inside of the metal door, a man leaning against it had his innards jellified by the shockwave of hte explosion, felt as vibrations through the metal, milliseconds before the door ripped off it's hinges and crushed him against the wall, leaving a crimson stain where the freshly made cadaver impacted hard enough to rupture the body. Almost immediately following the detonation of the breaching charge, Jack and Clarice entered the room, sweeping their firearms through the dusty air as they searched for more threats. 

     An unlucky man froze on the stairs when the two Delta's entered, unsure of what to do.

     "Stop! On the ground now!" Jack yelled, and the man reached for something at his hip instead. Two cracks were heard, and two ragged holes erupted in the man's chest. He fell down, limp, and bleeding.

      Clarice rushed over to the fallen man, quickly doing a pat down. She extracted a .25 caliber Pocket-Pistol from his jeans pocket, as well as two magazines, and quickly stuffed them into one of the pouches on her vest. Then, when it was assured that he was completely diarmed, did she feel for a pulse in both his neck and wrist. Nothing.

     "He's wasted, Sir. Good kill." She said, before looping her hands under the man's armpits as Jack grabbed an ankle in each hand, and together they picked up the dead and bleeding insurgent. Moving carefully back down the few steps, they eventually tossed the man into the WC where he landed qith a muffled thud.

     Turning around and heading back up the stairs, Clarice fell in behind Jack, and they made their way slowly up the stairs, crouching at the lest few steps, out of sight from the men on the next floor.

     "John, JJ, give me a SITREP. I want to know how many Tangoes there are, and where they are." Jack said, pinching his Throat-Mic.

     "Gotcha, Jack." JJ was the first to respond. "On the left side of the building, the side you're on now, you've got three Tangoes that I can see in the windows. They look pretty high-strung, probably from that guy you shot. Not budging yet, so I'm pretty sure they think he was the shooter. As soon as you come up the stairs, I'll smoke these guys."

     "Four on this side, Jack." John said. "Same deal. You come up the stairs, I'll start shooting."

     "Good. Me and Clarice come up the stairs in: Three. Two. One. Go, Go, Go!" Jack shouted the last part. As the shooting started, and windows shattered, Jack stood, his rifle shouldered. However, a crunching noise behind him caught his attention.

     The wolf came about just quickly enough to see Clarice stumble, and the stairs beneath her give way, shattering, weakened by the blast from earlier. A piece of jutting rebar caught Clarices sling, coming within inches of impaling the pantheress, before severing her rifle's sling and letting her fall. Jack lunged down the stairs, half his torso hanging precariously over the edge, as he reached for Clarices arm. Clarice caught his wrist, as he did hers, tugging on Jack's shoulder painfully, and gripping his hand so hard that it hade him cringe. The look in her eyes was one of fear as she looked down in time to see her M16 clatter to the ground, its fiberglass stock splintering from the force of the thirty foot drop.

     Hauling his entire body back, Jack brought Clarice, who was panting heavily, up and over the edge. However, much to Jack's surprise, Clarice drew the confiscated .25 caliber pistol, and aimed it at Jack's head. 

     "Corporal what the fuck do yo-" Jack's panicked line of questioning was cut off as the pistol fired, temporarily blinding him, and singing the fur on the right side of his face, as he heard a bullet whiz past his ear, and impact with a wet slap. Moments later, a warm, limp mass fell on Jacks back, and as his senses recovered, Jack recognized it as a body.

     "You can thank me later, Sir." Clarice said, smiling, and groping Jack's crotch as she got up, probably not on accident. Jack shrugged the body off of his back, and laid it gently on the stairs. Once he was sure that the weakened stairwell would support the combined weight of two fully laden Delta operators and a dead body, Jack reached down and grabbed the AKS off of the body, as well as a couple of magazines, and handed them to Clarice. She pulled the bolt halfway back, checking the chamber, and gave the thumbs up.

     "Sir, you've got them running scared. Whatever you and Gonzalez did wracked their nerves real good. I got one in my scope that's shaking like a leaf in the breeze. They all look like that, Sir. Can't say the same for the next floor up or the roof. They've all gone into cover" came John's voice over the earpiece on Jack's headset.

     "John, Jeremiah. You fire on my mark, alright?" They gave the greenlight over the radio. "Okay. One. Two. Three. Fire at will! Fire at Will!" Jack said, and not a second later the sound of imploding windows was heard as the two snipers eliminated the insurgents occupying the current floor.

     "Fuck occupy Wall Street, Sir. Who needs that when you could be occupying a bomb-laden apartment building in the middle of Iraq, Sir." Clarice said from behind Jack as they ascended the final few steps onto the second floor.

     "Cease fire, snipers. We're coming up to finish clearing the floor." Jack said as he crested the stairs and swept his M16 across the room. There was a hallway on each side of the room, directly across from each other, flanked by apartements.

     "Gonzalez, you take left, I'll take right." Jack said to Clarice as he ran across the room, entering the hallway and rearing back his leg before kicking in the first door. Behind him, in the other hallway, Clarice was doing the same. 

     The door cracked and broke off it's hinges, falling inward into the room. Now that he could see inside, it wasn't a pretty sight. Brain matter coated a poste of Angelina Jolie, and the Insurgent to whom the Brain matter belinged to was crumpled on the floor, a gaping hole where the Human's nose should have been, and his head looking like a deflated water balloon. Jack didn't look long enough to find the entry wound on the back of the mans skull as he pulled out a Sniffer device and began to wave it over various objects in the room. A red light flashed on the end of the sniffer wand as he hovered it over the television.

     "Got a possible. Tagging it now for the EOD." he said into the headset as he put a large yellow strip of tape on the TV's screen.

     "I've got nothing, Sir. Moving onto the next room." Clarice said into the radio as they both exited their respective rooms and repeated the process in each of the next twenty-eight rooms. By the time the room-by-room sweep was done, Five bombs had been uncovered, total, three by Clarice, and two by Jack.

     "Wonderdog, heads up." JJ chimed in. "I don't know how I missed it before, but the Third floor has had some extensive remodeling done to it. And I mean extensive. The entire floor has been cleared out, even the rooms. Floor's concrete, no more carpet. It looks like a warehouse, Jack. I think this is why they were trying to blow this block." JJ said. Jack and Clarice looked at each other in confusion for a moment before rushing to the stairwell.

     "Jeremiah, we're on our way up to the Third floor now! You and Graham clear out the floor of any hostiles you can see before we get there, and then cease fire. Am I clear?" 

     "Crystal." JJ said and the firing started again. Screams in Arabic eminated from the next floor up as glass shattered and bullets pinged off concrete. A few found their mark and ellicited screams of pain from Insurgents. A metal clang on the floor, and then a loud booming noise that knocked Jack and Clarice on their asses as they ran to the stairwell. 

     "Was that-" Clarice was about to ask before she was cut off by Jack.

     "A grenade, Clarice. These guys are amateurs. Someone probably dropped it when JJ started firing." Jack said as he stormed up the stairwell, Clarice close behind him.

     "Cease fire! We'll do a mop-up. Move your fire to the roof and clear it out so the Extract can drop off Bravo team, and the EODs and pick us up." Jack said to John, Dylan, and JJ.

     "Yessir." John and Dylan replied. JJ neglected to answer, but Jack saw the lone figure adjust their aim outside the window.

     As soon as they cleared the stairs, a burst of fire cam from a group of boxes on the opposite side of the room, as well as several more bursts from different locations. Jack and Clarice dove into cover behind a pallet of boxes marked as Inert RPG grenades. Jack hoped they were truly inert. 

     Without warning, Jack reached over, and grabbed Clarices breast. She seemed shocked, until Jack's hand found it's way inside her breast pocket and grabbed a small dental mirror that she always kept there, giving her nipple a pinch and making her jump on the way out.

     She gave Jack a look of death, and Jack just raised a brow as he slid the dental mirror into view, using it as an impromptu periscope, the reason why Clarice kept it with her.

     "Stop giving me the evil eye." Jack whispered as he surveyed the room, seeing a flash of movement in the dental mirror. "You're the one who groped my package when I saved you from falling and possibly dying." Jack said, training the mirror in the muzzle of an AK sticking out from behind a box.

     "That was-" Clarice defended herself in a whisper.

     "Bullshit. Whatever excuse you have is bullshit. I know it, you know it. You're pent up, that's why you've been arguing with Dylan. Get laid when we get back to FOB Freedom. That's an order." Jack said, handinga stunned Clarice her Mirror before slamming another magazine home and popping out of cover as Gunfire broke out on the roof.

     Jack emptied nine rounds into the crate with the AK muzzle behind it and the rifle clattered into view, followed by a bleeding Ocelot.

     Another insurgent tried to rush Jack, only to be cut down by AK fire coming from next to him, which made Jack jump before he remembered that he had given Clarice the AKS from earlier.

     Jack and Clarice both pulled grenades from their webbing as they reached near the end of the room. They pulled the pins and released the spoons in unison, letting the grenades roll behind the last rown of boxes, their interlapping killzones making sure that anything hiding behind them was dead. 

     A quick check confirmed this, and the two insurgents mangled bodies were left for the EODs to handle.

     "Uh, Sir? There's enough RPG's, Grenades and Carl Gustav warheads in this room to take out half the city if they were actually used right. I'm not sure there's any point in yellow tape anymore." Clarice said, as she rifled through one of the crates. Jack just laughed, happy to have not caught a bullet yet.

Jack shrugged. "I guess not. I'm going to get on the horn with our extract bird and see what their ETA is. Should be aby time now, seeing as we got held up a bit." Jack said as he pulled out a two-way radio from a pouch fastened to his plate-carrier.

     "Whiskey-one-nine, this is Delta-One actual. We have wounded, and have partially completed a sweep of the block, but cannot continue the operation. Please bring a relieving team, and a team of EOD's."

     "Delta-One, whis is Whiskey-One-nine actual. I have recieved your request, and am pleased to inform you that you have replacements and an EOD team en-route. Bravo team has been informed, and I can't say they're pleased to be room-clearing, but oblige. ETA is three minutes."

     Jack smiled and pointed upward. 

     "Let's get on the roof and get some smoke out there. Our loyal steed shall be here in three minutes and counting." Jack said and began to jog towards the steps, quickly making short work of them, and emerging out into the cool night ait, closely followed by Clarince.

     Once they were both on the tar roof, Jack pointed out a spot on the roof to pop smoke.Clarice began to run towards it when Jack was flung backward, arcing through the air before his limp form hit the roof, bouncing once, an audible sigh escaping his mouth.   

     Clarice turned to see an Iraqi man struggling to unjam his FAL, and she raised her AKS and let loose five round to the mans chest. He went down. She dropped the AKS and scampered back to Jack, popping the red smoke grenade as she did, coming to a kneeling stop next to him, and quickly locating the ragged hole in his armor where the bullet had entered.

     Clarice stuck her finger into the hole, and found the bullet. Floating amongst cracked Ceramic, the vest had stopped the mushroomed 7.62 millimeter bullet before it had penetrated through the Kevlar. Jack grinned through the pain as he pulled out her fingers and reached into the plate carrier on his chest and pulled out the shattered ceramic insert, along with one flat bullet, tucking it into a pocket on his shoulder. 

     "A souvenir." she said, grinning, and hugged Jack tightly.

     "Goddamnit Corporal!" Jack yelled painfully and Clarice recoiled, startled at the sudden outburst. "Don't touch me just yet. Just because the armor stopped the bullet doesn't mean I don't feel like I just got hit by a train. Which is in fact what I feel like." Jack siad and Clarice helped him to his feet. A pyre of flourescent red smoke wafted into the air as the modified Blackhawk came into view, it's angular rotors and forward swept stabilizers keeping it silent as it sped towards them.

     "Hoo-rah." Jack whispered to himself as he leaned on Clarice for support and watched the Helicopter swing in low with it's load of Delta operators, SEAL EOD technicians, and a medic who helped Jack on board. Jack was asleep hefore his head hit the floor of the cabin, so he never felt the Helicoper lift off again and pick up Dylan, JJ, and John from their respective rooves, using the newly apparent pyres of Green and Yellow smoke as guides. Each one of them took a look at the sleeping wolf, before they too succumbed to sleep, as the UH-60S' doors slammed shut, and the Helicopter made a sharp bank back toward FOB Freedom.