Pheonix (Chapter 1)
"Gambler-1, come in.. This is Stalker 2-5, I'm going down just outside OP Bagpipe. One of them bastards clipped my tail, and I think I lost my crew... My co- is dead, repeat, my co-pilot is dead. 25-mil got him in the fuckin' collar bone, please assist, over." Man, my voice sounded like crap... I think I might give up cigars if I survive this. This as just supposed to be a routine patrol through the valley.July 19th, 2017. Korengal Valley, Afghanistan. My name is Chief Warrant Officer Jack Taylor, 160th S.O.A.R., Alpha Company, Second Platoon (Stalker), 5th Squadron. I fly UH-60s and AH-64s. Sometimes UH-1s, but they're becoming obsolete with the Black Hawks around. Whatever. You don't need to know that. What really matters is that I can't hold my fucking bird steady and I'm going to die if that Javelin finds me again... Man, can't wait to hear what my el-tee's got in store for me when I get back to Pheonix."Stalker 2-5, this is Gambler-1, we read you loud and clear. You got clipped by a Javelin according to Stalker 1-2. As for your crew, yeah... They're gone, 2-5. When that Javelin hit you, you about dumped everyone out of your starboard door. Jesus Christ, Jack, did you at least see where he came from?"My throat's burning now. That's not tobacco, that's engine smoke. Some one must've riddled me with a few AK rounds in the confusion. Shit... "Negative, Gambler-1, I didn't see shit. Bastard's somewhere in the mountains... Damn, Johnson, my engine's smoking up, I got nowhere to land!""Kid, you're gonna have to go in hard. Do it like I taught you, okay? You'll be just fine, just hold her steady, got it?"I sighed. Real heavy. I picked up my mic again, clicking my tongue. I was gonna have to wreck my baby. "Yes sir, I can handle this. I'm the best in the Company, remember?""Hah, that's the spirit, kiddo."I growled after I set the mic down. That's the spirit, my ass... I'm gonna fuckin' die in this shithole of a valley, and he's fucking laughing about it. He's lucky that I can't kick his ass, Lt. Johnson is...So I'm lowering the collective, trying to set this bird down in the MIDDLE of the FUCKING VALLEY where EVERYONE and EVERYTHING can KILL ME, and I've got not the faintest clue about what to do after I total this bird.Figures, really.Man, these controls are really shaky. It's hard enough trying to set this thing down without dying, but then, out of nowhere, I hear
a pwoosh-shwooooooOOOOOMM-SKIDOOSH!! and I know that bastard just took off my entire fucking tail cuz now I'm spinning, spinning, spinning real real fast. He must have fired from behind me because I didn't see shit. We need damn missile alert systems on these things... "Aw, crap! Gambler-1, he just took my whole damn tail! I'm going down! Mayday mayday mayday!!""JACK! Brace for impa--"All I heard after that was a loud crunch! and a dirt-and-grass-filled Swuh-Fwoosh-THUD! while I crashed and skidded to a halt. I could feel that the bird was tilted forward about 20 degrees, but as something hit my head, I blacked out.After a while of trying to shake it all off, my ears began to recover and sound faded back in."Five! Stalker 2-5! Jack! God dammit, Taylor, answer me!! Jack, do you copy, over!?"I opened my eyes, slowly at first, and then all the way with a snap when I saw one of my rotor blades had come through the windshield and stopped about four inches in front of my face. I can tell I'm hanging in my seat at a roughly eighteen percent incline. Falling now would shove that blade through my forehead.I made a grasp for the mic. "Gah, fuck.... Yeah, Gambler-1, I'm here... Jesus Christ, I about had the scare of my life... one of the main rotors almost went through my face.""It's a good thing it didn't, Jack, now you need to get the fuck out of that bird! You've got about ten tangos coming down from the mountain on your left, you need to GET UP!"Oh, now he wants get all serious...I open up the door of my bird, sliding out and reaching back in, in order to grab my Colt Anaconda. I run with my revolver in my left hand, going to the mountains to the right. I heard gunfire and bullets pinging on the gravelly dirt around my feet and kept sprinting. A signal came in on my ECHO comm on my right shoulder. "Jack! You need to keep running, you've got a friendly sniper team up in a COP, they'll provide you cover! KEEP MOVING!!" Sometimes I wonder what the hell we're doing here in Afghanistan. I doubt Achmed's got a spare nuke somewhere in these foothills. I can't even think straight because I just lost four of the best men I've ever known to a damn Javelin.That's when I heard a loud Cra-FWOOSH!! and knew someone had just died a horrible death. From the sound of the rifle, it had to be a .50 caliber anti-materiel rifle, probably an M82 or something like that. "Jack, to your left, up that path!"Mumbling to myself, I kept moving up the foothills. I could hear could gunfire everywhere. All the sudden, just because my bird fell out of the sky, the whole mountain woke up. Everything was alive! There was a ratatatatatatatat in front of me, a crack! crack-crack-crack! behind, and there I was trying not to die. I keep climbing.Slipping on a rock brought me to the ground, and I almost ate it right there. My reaction was fast enough and I picked myself up again before charging forward. I saw someone, a leapord, flailing his arms and trying to get my attention. A bullet whizzed past my ear and then the whole right side of my head was ringing. I brought my right index finger to my ear and shouted a curse, don't remember which one it was. The guy kept screaming. Real persistent, this guy.I pull out my mahogany-colored, sweat-and-blood stained bandana, with its long trailing tails, and wipe my forehead and behind my neck. I tie it around my head and keep going. I slip again, cuz the trail was so damn steep, and the right side of my face smacks the gravel. For a second, I worried I had just reopened my set of four or five scars I earned in an illegal POW camp in Boznia. Even today, we still have prisoners there-- sorry. That's a different story for a different day.Point is, I've got some asshole in a multicam uniform SCREAMING at me, I've got Muslim assholes behind me screaming about their ALLAH and spraying their annoying Russian GUNS around my feet, and here's ME wondering how the FUCK I got here.I hate Afghanistan.I get to the top of the path to meet up with the guy screaming at me. I high-five him sarcastically. He pauses for a moment to stare at his paw before someone starts shooting at him. He then follows me into the make-shift bunker. There, I see him. Storm. Captain Storm Stone of the 38th Scorpion platoon. He's the finest specimen of military prodigy one could ever have the opportunity to meet. And I've known him since our time together as Special Forces operators. He's a Ranger, a Sniper, Airborne certified, and he's a Green Beret. By far, the best of the best. And he's a wolf/snow tiger cross breed.I get a little giddy just thinking about him. He's 6'8", making him almost a foot taller than me, and he's completely ripped. Muscles bigger than my head. Swings both ways, so I have found.And if there's one thing for sure, it's that he'll stand up for what he cares about, and who he cares about, at the drop of a hat. Sometimes I wish my platoon acted like he did."Jack!" He says heartily. He drags me into a tight,
affectionate hug before letting go. Man, that knocked the wind outta me. "What the hell happened, man?""Anti-Aircraft. Fucker got me good, I'm the only survivor." I sighed, sitting on a stack of sand bags. I didn't feel like saying anything else. The paperwork would speak for itself.One of Storm's snipers, a young lookin' cheetah, called out, "Shot!" And then three other people repeated it. He then fired that massive Barrett M107, and holy shit did it kick up dust! He looked through his scope again and grinned, chirping. "Got him, Cap, that fucker is gone." Storm patted him on the back, relieving him of the rifle."Good job, Riker. That's 10 shots this morning, 10 kills, you're at your weekly quota. Go get cleaned up, ya lil killer!" I sensed a little flirt in his tone and chuckle to myself. "What?" He asked."Nothing." I shook my head and kept laughing. He handed the rifle off to someone else and whispered in my ear."Want to go 'catch up' later tonight? We're being lifted out at 1500 hours. We can meet in my quarters on base."I blushed, deep and red. I sure hope no one saw that blush. I knew exactly what he meant by "catch up", and let me tell you, it's not something you want to turn down, so I nod fervently without a word, which got him to start up his deep, attractive laugh, the one he only let out on rare occasion. Dammit, why am I thinking about this? A bunch of people I knew just died in front of me..."Heh heh heh, great. Knew you couldn't turn that down, Jack. Now, go get cleaned up, I've got work to do."So I walked off to where Riker had gone. Was it a shower area?I moved through this tunnel leading inside the mountain and realized, no... It's a cave with a pool. Riker was already naked and bathing himself. Several red and green glow sticks kept the area lit for now. Riker saw me coming and blushed, turning around and covering his "special areas" with his long tail. The stripes down his face made him look adorable while also cutting down on glare from the sun, and I knew he would blend in perfectly with this desert environment as well with those spots.Sergeant Riker Williams was 24, a bit shy around new people, but not afraid to use his voice. And he was sleek and damn attractive. "Y-you can hop in if you want, the water's not too cold, just a little b-bit warm actually. I can get out if you want, uh, mister, uh... ""Jack," I said smoothly. "Jack
Taylor." I added a wink for dramatic effect and he blushed. Definitely an in-the-closet gay, I'm sure. "And it's quite alright, sergeant, I don't mind sharing!" Another blush. A scootch to his left. I got in, and marveled at the amazing feeling of the water on my warm fur... Fantastic."S-saw your bird go down... Nasty crash, Taylor, amazing you survived.""I'm a tough bastard, Williams, nothing can kill me unless I let it." I splash some water over my head and mane... Oooh, that's the spot... Right over my shoulder blades. Feels amazing, something pressing on them... Wait... "Williams, are... Are you giving me a massage?" I knew it."U-uh, Oh! I'm sorry, I just couldn't help it. I give just about everyone around here free massages, I find it relaxing giving them out. Besides, helps me practice my grip. I'll stop if you want.""No no no, keep going, please! It felt amazing." He nods and keeps rubbing the knots out of my muscles. Never seen an NCO act like that, to be honest... I imagine he only does this sort of thing... "When no one is around, right?" He nods again. "Yeah... It'd make me look pretty gay, you don't want to be an NCO with that kind of rep... But I get bored easily, ya know? It's fuckin' boring out here." I nod. Coulda fooled me."Yeah, I know... War ain't fun. Never is. Most of the time it's dull periods of waiting for the fighting to start, and for most soldiers these days, that never comes. Sometimes, I wonder if we're losing this war...""We ain't, Taylor. When you get the US Army involved, ain't no mountain can hide these fuckers...""Too right, Sergeant. Ooh, little to the left!" He adjusted his force. He really had some nice hands, I wondered if I could put them to different use... That thought was quickly dashed when he started applying force right to the spot where my muscles really ached. I yelped, he stopped, and I growled, "I didn't tell ya to stop, kid..." He kept going, chuckling to himself."Don't enjoy yourself too much, Taylor, I can only do it so long before my hands start to hurt, ya know?" He giggled again, and I looked back at him with my left eye, grinning. "What if I found a better use for them paws?" His eyes went wide. Ooh, there was that blush again. "Pssshh, there can't possibly be a better use for them unless I'm killing Ahmed out there." He rolled his eyes. I turned around all the way. "Soldier, I don't think you're catching my drift," I said in an intimidating tone.He stuttered again, kinda cute. His tail was bobbing in the water, and his ears
folded back. "S-sir?" He tilted his head, not exactly sure what was going on, I suppose. I chuckled richly, liking where this was going. "B-b-but sir, we're on duty, aren't we?" I nodded a yes, but I clearly didn't care. Maybe this was just me trying to forget about the fact that the four men I worked with every day with for the last four months just died horrible deaths... You can't blame me, that's not something people wanna remember. "Long as your buddies out there are still busy, we've got all this time to ourselves, ain't that right?" I leaned back against the edge of the pool, exposing my junk. He looked down at it once, and his eyes were locked on it. "Now, I won't make you do anything you don't want to, Sergeant. Hell, if you help me out, I'll even return the favor, how bout it?" He was speechless. Man, I could get so busted for this, I thought. And yet, what happened next, I totally saw coming. He reached forward tentatively, gently touching my sheath, stroking it back a little, letting my thick, blood-red member poke out of it some. Damn, he really did have good hands. Soft pads, supple, young, zero callouses. I wondered how the hell that could be when he's constantly using the big guns out on the Middle East's firing range (yes, that means Afghanistan). Plenty of Taliban, and if he's going to be getting ten kills every week, he's going to need the paws for it.I don't doubt that he's got some strong hands, however. After that massage, I felt like I was being touched by a god, both in strength and tenderness. And here again was the tenderness. He coaxed the head and half the shaft out of my sheath, and gazed at it lovingly. I could only imagine he was getting just as excited; after all, why else would he be doing this? But of course, that's when the undesirable happened. Suddenly we felt the mountain shaking and heard a loud explosion echo through the cavern walls. "Incoming!!" I screamed. Both of us darted up, immediately grabbing our clothing and our gear. We practically sprinted out of the cave, just as two artillery shells smacked into the side of the alp. We both hit the deck as soon as rocks and dirt and plants came tumbling down onto us. I picked myself and the sergeant back up and made a mad dash for a barricade where some first sergeant was hacking away at someone with an Mk19. I looked around to see if I could spot Storm, and there he was by the radio, making a call."Negative, negative!" He shouted into the microphone. "That's danger-close, repeat, danger-close! We're on that fucking mountain dammit! Redirect fire to sector Alpha-Tango-Niner-Fife, we need an immediate artillery or air strike on that position! The fire is coming from there, I can see the guns! They found us, dammit! Over!" He paused for a moment, listening to the response while more shells came in. "No, I don't have a fucking laser tagger, dumbass!! You tell your el-tee he'd better call in the strike on the opposite side of
the valley before I take it out on his ass! And relay to Pheonix that our pickup needs to come early, at this rate, 1500 hours will be a no-go! Do you copy, over?"I jumped over to Sergeant Williams, who had manned one of the other Mk19s. I realized now with all these guns and ordinances lying around, this platoon had to have been dug in real deep into the side of the mountain. I shouted to Williams if there was anything I could do. He looked at the marksman pins on my uniform and said, "Yessir, get on the 107 and shoot some damn melons! Aim for the mortar crews!" I nodded, rather impressed out how the cheetah was handling this pressure. I dashed over to the lonely M107 and hopped on the bench, drawing up the scope. It was an interesting thing, with several different settings, like black infrared, white infrared, cool stuff like that, even laser targeting systems that allowed bullet drop adjustments. I peered through the powered lenses and took a keen eye to one of the guns sitting on the ledge across the valley, firing shells at us. Where the hell did these bastards get this kind of firepower?I adjusted the cross hairs and laid them over the forehead of an ugly panther towelhead. I inhaled, holding the rifle absolutely steady, and exhaled, squeezing the trigger gently.The recoil was enormous, but I managed to keep the rifle in its place. I knew for sure I'd have a bruise later, but I quickly brought the scope back in front of my eye and reacquainted myself with the enemy mortar crew. The mountain shook again as more shells slammed into it, and I grunted, trying to hold steady. I noticed my previous shot was dead-on, if you'll excuse the expression, and successfully decapitated the panther just below the jaw. The other two guys looked spooked, but they kept shoving mortars into the tube. I decided to eliminate the problem and set my sights on the actual mortar itself. As soon as they were about to drop another rocket in the tube, I fired, and even from here, with my eye off the scope, I could see the mass explosion of all the ordinance they had left going up in a bright flash. It was... Beautiful.Riker looked over at me, stunned. "Holy shit, man... That's one way to do it!" I nodded in agreement, standing up. Storm was staring at me with an eyebrow raised. "Cancel that fire request, Hotel Actual, threat eliminated. But the evac request is still in effect, out." He put the transmitter back on the radio box and whistled long and slow. "Hot damn, Jack, how come you didn't go into sniper school with me?"I thrust the M107 into his arms, sighing exhaustedly. "Because I wanted to be a helicopter pilot, dammit..." Why does no one seem to understand that helicopters are much safer than being in the shit with these crazy buffoons? "I wouldn't go back to ground Special Ops if I can avoid it. No offense, Storm, but I belong in a bird with rockets and machine guns." He chuckled softly, and I could tell he respected
that kind of preference. After all, not every soldier as crazy as I am, and certainly not as crazy as Storm and the 38th."And Storm," I said, looking over at him just as I was about to walk back to the cave. "I want a damn search team in that valley. Someone needs to find my fucking crew, dead or alive."He nodded assuringly. "Of course, Jack," he said to me. "Of course."